Janice and the drone (and no, I don’t mean the Justice Minister)

When the government flew a camera-equipped drone over the deputy Opposition leader’s home and then got a cabinet minister’s mistress to turn it into a news item for the Labour Party television station, some people began debating whether it is legal or illegal to fly drones over people’s property and whether you would be within your rights to shoot them down.

This caused me some distress at the way people miss the point because they strip incidents and people of context and therefore miss the significance entirely. The drone wasn’t just any drone. The house wasn’t just any home. The owner wasn’t just any other person. The drone wasn’t flown over by somebody random. The person who ran with the news story wasn’t primarily a journalist or even working for the independent news media.

All of that means that the point here is not whether it is legal or illegal to fly a drone over somebody’s house. After all, Google Earth tells you pretty much what you need to know and drones are unnecessary.

The point is whether it is commensurate with the norms of democracy for the governing party to fly a camera-equipped drone over the home of the Opposition’s deputy leader and a vociferous critic of the government so as to intimidate him while the governing party itself is in the throes of the very major corruption scandal for which it is being held to account by that very same Opposition deputy leader. A second point is whether it is commensurate with the norms of democracy for the mistress of a cabinet minister to get out of the cabinet minister’s bed, drive to the governing party’s television studios, and go on camera to hype up a false scandal about the swimming-pool in the home of an enemy of her boyfriend’s government.

This is the kind of thing that happens in Azerbaijan, Russia, and Turkey.