Man Arrested For Filming Football Matches With Drone

The Metropolitan Police has arrested a man for filming English premiership football matches with the aid of a drone.

It comes amid concern at the growing use of drones, and the potential dangers these lightweight flying machines could present.

Drone Arrest

The Met said that 43 year old Nigel Wilson of Nottingham had been arrested and summoned to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Thursday 16 April.

Wilson was alleged to flown a drone over Anfield Stadium in Liverpool, Arsenal’s Emirates stadium, as well as Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, and Leicester’s King Power Stadium. He also flew a drone at the Nottingham Forest Stadium, Derby Stadium and Stoke’s Britannia Stadium.

But Wilson didn’t just fly his drone over football games.

He also flew the drone over the Palace of Westminster and the Queen Victoria Memorial, without maintaining direct eye contact. He also flew his drone over HMS Belfast and The Shard.

Wilson’s arrest mirrors the arrest of another man last October for operating a drone over Manchester City’s football stadium in a match with Tottenham Hotspur.

The arrests comes after the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) becomes more active in monitoring illegal drone flights. It already is said to be trawling through YouTube drone videos and warning the user when the flight is illegal.

But the plummeting cost of components and the ease of buying remote controlled aircraft off the Internet has skyrocketed the use of consumer drones across the globe.

Safety Concerns

Last October, research by the University of Birmingham highlighted the privacy, safety and indeed security risks of drones over the next 20 years, especially as the aircraft could be possibly used by terror groups to attack public events.

However it also pointed the “significant benefits” drones would deliver.

London Major Boris Johnson for example has previously suggested that drones could be a solution to the traffic problems that plague the city. But Google’s chairman Eric Schmidt warned that drones operated by members of the public do pose a privacy and security risk.

Prior to that, in 2010, Google was accused of experimenting with unmanned aerial vehicles, something it vehemently denied at the time. But last year Google admitted it was developing its own fleet of airborne drones for home deliveries.

And it is not alone. Amazon revealed in December 2013 that it was working on its own home delivery drone fleet, and would launch an Amazon Prime Air service sometime around 2018. And last November, Amazon advertised for a full-time ‘drone flight engineer’ position in the UK.

So if any readers want to know if they can fly a drone, but are unsure about the rules, the following article should provide them with the answers.

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