Scary drone. (Photo: Flickr/Don McCullough)

A Seattle man ascended to a new level of creepiness recently when he flew a drone just a “few feet away” from a family’s home and defended his right to do so because he was flying it in the air, and thus not trespassing. He also claimed it was for research. The camera-equipped device emitted a loud noise, similar to that of a weed-whacker, which caught the attention of a woman inside.

She told Capitol Hill Seattle Blog that she saw the man on the sidewalk controlling the device near a third-story window in the eastern neighborhood. Her husband approached the man, who was standing on the sidewalk, and told him to desist from being creepy. The man told him that he was doing "research" and the camera was transmitting the images to his glasses. They called the police, but they didn't show up since Inspector Gadget had already left.

"We are extremely concerned, as he could very easily be a criminal who plans to break into our house or a peeping-tom," the wife told the hyperlocal blog.

Although this ordeal was undoubtedly suspicious, harrowing, and a breach of privacy, the man might've hovered his way into a legal gray area. As pointed out by the Atlantic, a 1946 Supreme Court ruling declared that the "air is a public highway." But does that law extend to current day situations, like crazy people flying drones around? Well, that's unclear since the details of the case (i.e. type of drone, how was it flown, where was the man exactly standing) are unclear.

The Atlantic adds:

As for the privacy concerns, one of the most important questions is what was being photographed. "If the camera on the drone was always aimed at the public street," writes John Villasenor, a law expert, "then that's very different than if it was capturing images into the home through the window."

Regardless of the current laws, can't we just be decent human beings and spy on our neighbors the old-fashioned way by hiding in the bushes?

(Photo: Meme Generator)

Candy companies will go pretty far when it comes to Halloween time stunt advertising, but Swiss chocolatier Nestle has truly outdone itself this season. The York Press reports that the company has decided to embed a GPS device into the wrapper of some KitKat bars in a bizarre attempt to reward men for eating candy.

The campaign is casually titled "We Will Find You," and will award a 10,000 GBP prize to the six lucky winners who happen to find a tracking device embedded into an otherwise innocuous manufactured treat. The GPS device is activated by a special strip that will be pulled when customers open the candy bar, and a team of Nestle employees will be dispatched within 24 hours to reward the winner with their prize.

Considering no one except hoarders keep candy wrappers hanging around, we assume all the winners will be trash cans and misused recycling bins.

A Nestle spokesperson told The York Press, “We believe this promotion will particularly appeal to men, attracting them to the chocolate singles category and thus driving incremental sales.” Like war movies and video games, all dudes enjoy GPS technology. Everybody knows that.

But Americans need not worry about a candy company following them home. GPS devices will only be embedded in the wrappers of British candies like "KitKat 4 Finger, KitKat Chunky, Aero Peppermint Medium and Yorkie Milk," whatever those are.

(h/t PopSci)

Creepy. (Screengrab)

Google engineer Morgan Marquis-Boire and Ph.D. computer science student Bill Marczak introduced New York Times readers today to FinSpy, one of the scariest spyware packages you've probably never heard of. Mr. Marquis-Boire and Mr. Marczak have been on FinSpy's trail, mapping all its nasty flavors, since earlier this year. The software suite is available to law enforcement for legitimate investigative use, but the researchers have found it is also being used by oppressive governments to track the communications, activities and personal connections of political dissidents.

In a report  linked by the Times, Mr. Marquis-Boire and Mr. Marczak detail how they first learned of the spyware as a Trojan payload attached to emails sent to Bahraini human rights activists, then began peeling apart its other, much creepier uses--tracking everything a target does with a smart phone. Pretty much any smart phone. The researchers' list of what FinSpy Mobile can do is chilling:

• Recording of common communications like Voice Calls, SMS/MMS and Emails
• Live Surveillance through silent calls
• File Download (Contacts, Calendar, Pictures, Files)
• Country Tracing of Target (GPS and Cell ID)
• Full Recording of all BlackBerry Messenger communications
• Covert Communications with Headquarters

The list of governments likely using this creepy software includes Bahrain and Turkmenistan, with command and control servers traced to Singapore, Indonesia, Mongolia and Brunei.

As the Times notes, servers in those countries were already offline by Thursday afternoon.

Really, it's not like the more oppressive governments even need FinSpy--as Yahoo proved when it aided the Chinese in jailing Wang Xiaoning a decade ago.

Watch the Next Media-style video below for a simple breakdown of just how creepy FinSpy Mobile truly is.

Update: A commenter noted on an earlier version of this post that another command and control server was hosted by Amazon, which is pretty distressing--however Mr. Marquis-Boire and Mr. Marczak told the Times they believe the Amazon server was a proxy used to conceal the true host.