Woman Accuses Drone of Spying, Verdict Still Out

Drones – the modern scourge of the airways according to some – have struck again, this time alleged spying on a woman in the United States state of Missouri and captured by her on camera, natch.

Using her own surveillance system to spot the drone, the woman’s story was eventually picked up by local news media outlet KMOV which ran the story under the title “‘It’s disgusting’; surveillance shows drone flying outside woman’s window at night,” though, as PetaPixel points out, it has yet to be confirmed that what the woman’s own spy system captured was in fact a drone hovering outside of her house spying on her.

Image via Peter Fazekas from Pexels.com.

The whole drama unfolded when the complainant purchased a Wyse surveillance camera that she then positioned on her back porch. Describing the incident to KMOV, she said “The drone flies quite close to my camera…I’m really glad I know this was happening, instead of being inside and not knowing somebody was looking in.” The video of the incident shows buoyant lights that some users are adamant are not those of a drone.

Threatening to lodge a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration, the lady further asserts that the person piloting the drone is a man and that she “wants him to stop” though, as we’ve said has been reported across multiple outlets, nothing is confirmed about her allegations.

Nonetheless, the citizen has taken it upon herself to print up a letter warning others in the neighborhood about the alleged drone surveillance. As Twitter users are pointing out to KMOV, it is one thing to report on an actual, confirmed story of a drone being used illicitly to spy on people but a whole other thing to spin a story somewhat out of whole cloth based upon the unconfirmed suspicions of one person.

As PetaPixel highlights, a user on the Mavic Pilots forum, so named for the DJI Mavic series of consumer-grade drones, notes that he isn’t aware of a drone that can fly sideways as depicted in the woman’s video.

One forum member named Lisadoc according to PetaPixel theorized it was a spider web wafting in the breeze, the user saying: “It is an IR image of a spider web (a single thread) that is blowing in the wind across the frame of the camera lens. I’ve seen it hundreds of times before and recognized it immediately. …It is why it moves at that angle, ‘hovers’ across the camera frame several times, and only appeared at 4 AM. The ‘lights’ are simply drops of condensation (or globules produced by thickening of the spider thread) viewed by the lens at a relatively close distance.”

Since everyone is jumping to conclusions, what do you think?

You can view a video of the KMOV story here and an awesome video of the effects spider webs can cast on camera with a YouTube video here. Thanks to PetaPixel for finding that.

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