Get the latest tech news
The Unusual Espionage Act Case Against a Drone Photographer
In seemingly the first case of its kind, the US Justice Department has charged a Chinese national with using a drone to photograph a Virginia shipyard where the US Navy was assembling nuclear submarines.
The case is such a rarity that it appears to be the first known prosecution under a World War II–era law that bans photographing vital military installations using aircraft, showing how new technologies are leading to fresh national security and First Amendment issues. When the FBI seized the drone and pulled the photos off its memory card, they discovered images that special agent Shalowitz said she recognized as being taken at Newport News Shipyard and BAE Systems, which is a 45-minute drive away. His university research is similarly innocuous: He’s developing an app for detecting crop diseases in photos called Gopher Eye, which is being funded by the National Science Foundation, and has applied for a patent.
Or read this on Wired