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These spy machines come in all kinds of diffreent sizess
At one time or another, many of us have woken up in the morning and felt a little embarrassed or uncertain about the events of the night before.
But that feeling usually doesn’t involve the realization that those events included crashing a drone on White House grounds.
See also: Will This Fly?: A Primer on Drone Laws
The still-unnamed employee of a government outfit called the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency turned himself in on Monday as the man behind the mysterious crash of a DJI Phantom quadcopter on White House grounds, according to an official NGA statement. And now we know that the man in question had been drinking in a friend’s apartment near the White House, according to what Secret Service investigators told the New York Times.
They also claim that that after the drone crashed, the operator went to bed rather than immediately reporting it.
President Barack Obama was not at the residence at the time of the crash, at 3:08 a.m. ET on Monday, and Obama downplayed the incident, pointing out that the drone was the kind you could find in any RadioShack.
Still, the incident highlights a troubling hole in executive security, not to mention the irony that an employee in charge of geospatial awareness for the White House hampered his own geospatial awareness while flying a drone and lost control of it over the White House.
Technically, flying a drone of any kind is illegal in Washington, DC. As we pointed out Monday, the FAA established a restricted zone that prevents any kind of light aircraft from flying in or around the city. And yes, that includes quadcopters.
The problem is that the Secret Service doesn’t have any sort of official policy on drones that breach the White House perimeter. Shooting them down could do more harm than good, as could jamming their transmissions. MOREHERE