Here's a Picture of a Naked Guy On a Beach Taken By a Drone (NSFW)

This is what porn shot from a drone looks like. Disappointed?

In recent months, there have been a number of incidents where some dude with a drone flies near sunbathing people (or, where there could be sunbathing people), which has started quite a ruckus on local news channels and the like, with people wondering when this tech will be used to "spy" on naked sunbathers and that sort of thing.

Well, now it's happened, apparently. And this is what it looks like. Unless the drone is flying like, a couple feet from your face, you can't see much of anything. And it's going to stay that way until drones get zoom lenses.

Redditor Aliensmack posted his story last night—he was apparently flying his drone on a seemingly empty public beach, when he captured some video of two people walking along the beach. One of them, a man, happened to be naked. If you zoom in REALLY CLOSE, you can tell that he's naked and, were the res high enough, you'd be able to see his dick, given his IDGAF, hands on hips pose. But, as you can see, you can't identify who he is, and, at the moment, zoom lenses on drones are very rare (if they exist at all on consumer models).

Aliensmack says he was approached by a woman, ironically carrying a telephoto lens capable of taking much higher res photos, who told him that A) there was a naked man on the beach, B) that naked man was throwing rocks at the drone, and C) stop being a creep. Apparently dick pics are cool, as long as they're shot from the ground.

According to Aliensmack, he had no idea the man was there in the first place, let alone that he was naked. That sounds plausible, because, as you can see in the photo, the naked dude is positively tiny from the drone's perspective. Assuming this happened in the United States on a public beach (I've reached out to the Redditor but haven't heard back yet), nothing illegal went down here, and there's every reason to believe that Aliensmack simply wanted to take some pictures of the tide pools, not create a porno called Hot Aerial Drone Dicks.

Let's get this out of the way: There is absolutely nothing illegal about flying a drone on the beach, or any other sort of public property. People (mostly internet commenters) who threaten to "shoot down" drones if they fly near them on public property are saying they're going to commit a crime, plain and simple. Destroying someone's property is illegal. But hey, let's also get this out of the way: Just because you can fly a drone anywhere you want doesn't mean you have to fly a drone anywhere you want.

This seems like an unfortunate situation that can only be avoided by banning drones outright. That's not reasonable, and it's not going to happen. There's too much money there, there's too many legitimate good uses for drones, and there's that thing called the First Amendment that protects photography rights.

People are right to be concerned about their privacy, and people are right to be concerned that drones—which can can be piloted from hundreds of feet away—are going to be a technology that can take their privacy away from them. But, for now at least, no one can agree on how to codify any of these concerns in a reasonable, fair, Constitutionally-sound way. Even when that's done, you're going to see more of these cases pop up—people break laws, all the time. It isn't the drone's fault. Hell, who knows if this was even a nude beach. Maybe sir hands-on-hips was breaking the law, too.

There are going to be more roadblocks and cases like this. There are going to be creeps who use the technology and there are going to be people who assert their right to fly anywhere, anytime, and there are going to be psychos who beat up children because they don't understand how the technology works or why anyone would want to use it.

A little common sense and empathy from, really, everyone, would go a long way toward figuring this whole thing out in a rational manner. As would a little effort from the general public into learning the capabilities and uses of these things, along with the laws.

Update 6/20: The drone pilot, Steve Wood, emailed me last night with this response:

I like to fly my FPV quadcopter with goggles and a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition after work and on the weekends in various parks and beaches near where I live in BC. I make videos of my flights and post them to Youtube.

Please understand that that the events of that day at the beach with the Naked Dude had me rolling on the floor with laughter. The whole idea of this naked person going ape and throwing rocks at my machine is just so ridiculous I had to share it. I don't actually believe the woman with the telephoto lens on her camera was taking pics of the naked dude, that she was there was just serendipity, but it certainly highlights the fact that there is a fast growing segment of the population that feels extreme insecurity at the sight of what they perceive to be a Drone aircraft and are complacent when it comes to all the other cameras that can invade our privacy in some way to a much greater degree than can an aerial camera. It also brings up the question of how much privacy do we really have at a given time, what is privacy and what rights are there to privacy, I think lots of people have different definitions or understandings of what privacy means and peoples lack of understanding of technology creates a huge problem especially when it can influence lawmakers who also are guilty of not always understanding technology either.

I went to the beach on June 18th at about 4:20 in the afternoon with my FPV quadcopter to get some flights in after work. The location is here; its called Crescent Beach. After looking more closely on Google maps it does appear to show something called "Naturist Beach" but thats news to me. I have never heard of that being "Naturists Beach" ever before and I have been down to that location quite a few times over my life and I have lived here my entire life, I can only assume at this point that "Naturist" means Nudist in this context but it could just as easily mean bird watchers or clam diggers or something else who knows, its not really clear. Everyone has heard of Wreck Beach in Vancouver the famous nudist beach. I would never in a million years want to fly there. I have zero interest in video taping naked people.

I was at the beach for around 45 minutes and in that time I flew 3 times, 5 minutes each time. On my last flight I was returning to my landing spot when the lady with the telephoto lens approached me and asked me about what I was doing, if I had cameras and if I was recording. I told her I had two cameras and that I was recording. She then told me there was a naked man down the beach and that he had been throwing rocks at my quadcopter.

I believe that as a society we think for some reason other people want to know what we are doing or that what we are doing interests somebody else or that what we are doing is important to someone other than ourselves. But the reality is nobody gives a shit what anyone else is doing, people are too busy and self absorbed to be bothered with you, its why the word 'selfie' has entered the popular lexicon, its as if we are living in the new Copernican Generation where we have all become the center of our own separate little Universes where everything revolves around us.

Thats it, I wont fly there again, Naked Dude ruined my day and I ruined his. We're even Steven, and I'll respect that he wants to get naked at that beach. Plenty of other places to fly.

…Some more random info. Im 37 years old, Ive been an RC hobbyist for 13 years flying model helicopters exclusively and FPV multi-rotors the last 3 years. Over the last 3 years I would say that people that I meet in public places here in Canada BC now vs 3 years ago are more aware of what it is but that now Im getting a lot more snide comments about how I could be spying. The laws around hobby RC aircrafts in both our Countries differ but are similar and the general population is certainly heavily influenced by American Media and so I worry about the future of my hobby to some degree.