I can case his "ranch", count his horses and his gates, find a staging area for my trailer and darn near determine when he and his neighbors are home, just using google earth. No drone needed.
I have learned something from working/living in several countries.
The ones looking for trouble are SELDOM able to handle it.
Just be as nice as people will allow you to be to them until that time passes......
Yeah this is what really got me. If people actually stopped to think about what they are accusing and how poor of a tool it really is for these purposes maybe they would realize how asinine their thinking is. The two biggest things I see people accuse us of are spying to steal stuff or being a pervert. In both of these events it seems to me using a remote controlled quad copter would be a very poor way of going about it. Somehow I really doubt if you go into the pervert/thief/spy communities they are all discussing the best drones to use and salivating at having such the perfect criminal tool available to them. I wonder how many times in reality a "drone" has been used to actually spy on people or case a place to steal things. I have a feeling it's very a fraction of a percentage of all the flights out there. Yet the media makes it sound like it's their primary purpose and people believe it.
Like the guy that is famous for shooting down his neighbors drone last year, he said:
We don’t know if he was looking at the girls. We don’t know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing.”
This is everyone first assumption, yet it's a terrible one and this guy used it as his justification. Think about it though, if you are a dude intent on taking pictures of people for sexual gratification, what would be more effective? Hiding in the bushes with a long telephoto lens, quietly and secretly or buzzing over the heads of people creating noise and attention, while at best getting video and pictures where you can hardly see anyone in any detail. I can hear the buzzing of my Phantom from 1000ft away. I can't imagine anyone actually using it for those purposes.
I think the media has given people the idea that your average phantom has the abilities of things seen on 24 and CSI, where you can take images silently from 3000ft above and "enhance" and zoom in on the smallest details like the military. Pure fiction but that is what people believe.