Threats Of Using Drones For Amazon’s Delivery

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Today, it’s possible to order almost any product through an online retailer and receive it the next day with a few clicks on a computer. Companies like Amazon is taking that idea one step further by experimenting with aerial drones that deliver parcels to paying customers a short few hours after purchase. However, these innovative machines are not as safe as many may think. In fact, a number of crashes have occurred in the past few trial periods. Also, each delivery drone has an onboard camera that may be possibly tampered with in an adversarial way.

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The drone’s video capabilities give ill-intentioned individuals lots of potential to wreak havoc. Specifically, it can be used by hackers and unofficial operators for purposes such as voyeurism, harassment, stalking, and even acts of gratuity.

According to recent figures, Amazon is the leading e-retailer in the United States with close to 178 billion U.S. dollars in net sales in 2018. The majority of the company’s revenue is generated through e-retail sales of electronics and other products, commissions from third-party sellers, subscription services, and AWS activities.

As of the first quarter of 2016, the e-retailer reported more than 310 million active customer accounts worldwide.

This statistic gives information on the global number of active Amazon customer accounts as of the first quarter of 2016. As of the last reported period, Amazon had 310 million active customers. Such a large amount customers mean that a large-scale drone delivery business model will be profitable.

Regardless, I adamantly believe that using drones for Amazon’s delivery is too dangerous.

Among many reasons, the first of which I will be arguing is fundamental safety. Per Amazon’s current projected model, delivery drones will take pictures and videos for the duration of their flight. This poses a great risk of inappropriate usage. Because these images will contain customer’s personal information such as family members, the vacancy of their house, as well as information pertaining to the particulars of their area, there is a great chance of misusage. For instance, hackers may use that information as blackmail or sell for nefarious purposes.

My first argument will be the threat to overall safety. A drone crash is unpredictable and can cause substantial injury to persons, property, and generally everything. This is a primary concern with the usage of drones in general. Similarly, it was passed as a law that the operation of commercial or recreational drones in Canada must be allowed with a flying permit, showing the extent of the danger that the public considers drones to pose. To emphasize, a malfunction, even one in a smaller public space, can cause unimaginable consequences. A crash may injure a number of people because of the fast-spinning blades on the body of the drone, and a crash into an electric pole or careless wanders into airspace will be highly dangerous. A rogue drone will often be surprising to those in its vicinity. For examples, a civil incident reported in November 2015 documented a British toddler losing eyesight in his left eye because a neighbor lost control of a drone that had its rotors spin out of control from a tree; the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) then crashed into the young child. Similarly, a drone used in a professional capacity also had an accident. In the 2015-2016 FIS Alpine Ski World Cup, four-time World Cup champion Marcel Hirscher was almost hit by a footage-capturing drone, which led to a delay in his run and losing the first-place title to Norwegian skier Henrik Kristoffersen by 1.25 seconds. Following this incident, the International Ski Federation (FIS) announced that the usage of camera drones for competition footage will be banned in all future World Cup events. Hirscher told press in an interview that he was shocked by the accident and very lucky he was not hit. If he was, both competitors and the organizer would suffer losses due to a small mechanical dysfunction of a camera equipment. Through this incident, we can only imagine the amount of potential danger that widespread usage of delivery drones would cause. With one drone, a professional international ski competition almost spun into havoc. With millions of drones working on a daily basis, the amount of damage can be truly unbelievable.

Furthermore, I would like to argue that a crash increases the danger to public property which includes but are not limited to: natural amenities and environments such as a park; office buildings; and protected airspace. Several of these incidents have already occurred in the United States. In September 2015 during a US Open Tennis Match, a UAV crashed into an empty section of the Louis Armstrong Stadium, a public space that has a seating capacity of over 10,000 people. Fortunately, the section that the UAV crashed into was unoccupied, so no injuries were sustained. In October of 2015, another drone vigorously crashed into power lines in West Hollywood, causing a mass blackout on the electricity grid. In November of 2015, a UAV fell to the ground in pieces after crashing into a large metal sign of Kiro TV station near the Ferris Wheel in Seattle, missing many pedestrians by chance. These three events are only the tip of the iceberg, however. The Drone Crash Database listed 225 incidents of UAV crashes or other accidents since 2007 with a little over 2.5 million active drones in the USA as of March 2016.

Secondly, we need to consider the privacy side of this safety risk. Amazon drones are equipped with gigapixel cameras that can capture high definition images and videos easily. Such developed innovations call for a stringent review of the benefits and cons of using it. We need to consider the fundamental issues with our expectations of privacy, as well as our intrinsic rights to privacy as humans. Though a large corporation like Amazon will employ professional operators and drone pilots to control their delivery UAVS, they operate in an alternate space that is not only linked to the space of their UAV through data and camera feeds. They are considerably detached from the reality of the environment that they monitor through a long-distance camera. This weakens their ethics in judgment and lessens some psychological constraints that are applied normally in “metaspace” that is reinforced by social controls. Being in power from a distance will undoubtedly lessen their mentality and expose them to easy manipulation of acts in voyeurism, harassment, stalking, and even acts of gratuitous violence.

Let’s firstly consider issues of voyeurism, harassment, and stalking issue. Amazon delivery drones will capture personal information from the customer, including their house, delivery, and anything else that the drone passes over during its flight, there is a great potential for this information to be abused. Imagine sitting in your backyard as a drone flies over. The camera tilts in your direction, obviously photographing you, and flies away as you rack your brain for a reason that it would notice you. You’ll never find out who was operating this unmanned aerial vehicle or why it captured you. You may even be naked in your own home and be taken aback by a camera-equipped drone. KGW News Portland reports that an increasing amount of women have claimed to be woken at night by thoughts or encounters of intrusive drones. According to KGW Portland, Lisa Pleiss was wandering in her 26th-floor apartment whilst undressed. A drone flies to her window, pivots to her direction, and flies away. This serves as an example of how voyeurism can be widespread with an influx of drones. With millions of camera-equipped drones flying over buildings, homes, and cities, it will take an evolutionary step negatively in how easy it is to infringe on someone’s privacy. Amazon delivery drones may be well-intentioned, but it is more than likely that criminals will turn them into ill-intentioned machines designed to exploit personal and private data.

Next, I would like to discuss the many psychological drawbacks of employing such a system of UAVs for corporate purposes. The first of which is the how this furthers military drone operators our distance from each other as humans and allows us to rely more on technology that has a drastically different thought process than that of the native human brain. We process information not only on a mathematical and logical aspect but also with a big influence on our emotional reason. These machines, however, rely solely on pre-programmed mathematics and statistics. They may very well have a “digital brain” but they lack a heart and soul. The many people employed to operate these machines for hours on end will eventually turn to robots, especially the operators with bad intentions. Because they are operating a machine with invaluable information-gathering capabilities from a far away room, only monitoring from a computer, they can be considered extremely detached from the world of these UAVs. So, if they indeed want to use this machine for the wrong purposes, all they have to do is press a few buttons and gather information that they can abuse. If they wish to sell this information, they do not suffer any consequences. There is a very big possibility that they will not value the privacy of their targets over the money that they can make over being bad people.

Also, this model of operators or supervisors monitoring the flight of a far away vehicle with great potential for havoc closely mimics the model of an operation that is perhaps considered the most inhumane: the operation of drone strikes. For decades, countries like the United States of America have used remote-operated unmanned aerial vehicles to bomb or gather intelligence in other parts of the world. Its operators will wipe out a village from thousands of kilometers away without any consideration for the consequences that victims suffer. They can simply click a button and ruin history, family, and the future of many young individuals. Though Amazon’s delivery drones do not have the capability to attack civilians with bombs and firepower, they can very well attack their privacy, rights, and safety. A drone that crashes into an important power generator or a large crowd may cause dozens of casualties and injuries among other complications.

Another issue is the concept of utilitarianism, which we will define as the idea that the benefits of most should be weighed over the loss of a few. By using these drones, we expose the public to privacy infringement, a loss of integrity in safety in their own private households, and the changed mindset in many. Though we will have more efficient, faster and more economical ways to receive purchases, as well to push forward an industry that has not had drastic change for years, we risk the well-being of the few that may be intentionally or unintentionally targeted. Although this concept is accepted and even considered socially ethical to many people, we should not be reducing the lives and privacy of human beings to a certain amount. This will push the concept of putting a numerical value on human lives to a greater audience and become even more widespread. I believe that this is negative because like machines and even the Amazon drone, this concept is on a mathematical basis and does not take in emotion, which is programmed into humans from birth. Therefore, a concept that goes against human nature should naturally be frowned upon. What’s more, because of Amazon’s size and industry impact, a clear indication at utilitarianism will affect societies all around the world, and before we know it, we will consider even our closest families and friends simple numbers and not real humans with both a heart and a brain. Once this concept is introduced and out there, we can never take it back. Even if the drone program stops, there will still always be this concept in people’s minds. To know about the concept is one thing, but to follow it because a large company employs it is much more severe.

Many proponents of this program will claim that no nefarious issues will happen because of how reputable and large of a company Amazon is. Though I am sure that Amazon will try their best to employ only the most ethical and well-trained operators, mistakes will be inescapable in a project this large. Furthermore, even though Amazon is offering this service as the source and user, there is a great possibility that third-party groups and individuals will take advantage of this technology and use it for inappropriate purposes. This issue may be pertinent for the near future because there is no guaranteed way to the purpose of these arguments against the instant implementation of Amazon’s delivery service was not an attempt to doubt the technology or integrity of such a large corporation, but rather to look at the potential drawbacks and compare them with the advantages. In conclusion, I believe that this technology is indeed not yet ready for mass-market usage. Many issues remain unaddressed and Amazon must target them before providing this service. After these issues of fundamental privacy, safety, psychology, and proper mitigation techniques have been developed, it may be time to “fly” into the future and embrace a new technology that is much less dangerous while restructuring the entire delivery industry.

Without a tangible resolution to tackle and mitigate the issues of safety, privacy, and the negative trend towards an unhealthy and detached mindset, to release these UAVs would be one of the most dangerous experiments in the world. Though these issues will be extremely hard to tackle, it is a challenge that we must take to ensure that we do not release technology that can gather information we will never take back. Once footage used for voyeurism is on the internet, it will forever remain on the web. Once drone black out the power grid of a city, millions will be lost and the injuries cannot be reversed. Once an army of UAV flies into people and causes casualties or severe body damage from its propellers, this cannot be reversed. In a world that is so consumed by practicality and ease of use, a lucrative innovation like delivery drones will be very popular and therefore the target for many criminals.