When discussing environmental crime like flytipping many focus on stuff like random guys in a white van at night dumping a sofa on Snake Pass when much of it is on industrial scale that generates profits for organised crime and needs more than a few drones to be stopped www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... - ThreadSky

aphclarkson.bsky.social • 33 days ago

When discussing environmental crime like flytipping many focus on stuff like random guys in a white van at night dumping a sofa on Snake Pass when much of it is on industrial scale that generates profits for organised crime and needs more than a few drones to be stopped
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c75z09zxy09o

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aphclarkson.bsky.social•33 days ago

A decades-old business model that without substantial investment in policing, environmental agency staff and a willingness to crack down on wider industry practices will survive a couple of hundred drones just as it has every previous crackdown before local elections

aphclarkson.bsky.social•33 days ago

You also have to ask whether UK governments would rather do a bit of macho posturing before local elections rather than engage in wider strategic investment against environmental crime because a more systematic approach would snare larger businesses that provide substantial local investment

aphclarkson.bsky.social•33 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/aphclarkson.bsky.social/post/3lo3zrenfbs2v

ctimmermann.bsky.social•33 days ago

How about new tech, though?

jaybut707.bsky.social•33 days ago

New tech. Musky stuff?

atomictriangles.bsky.social•33 days ago

Also important that the guys in a white van are what most voter complaints are about and are too low-level and random for drones to be a practical response.

At least the industrial scale stuff might be handled by requiring everything over a certain tonnage to have some sort of always-on GPS tracker

aphclarkson.bsky.social•33 days ago

For that I'd have the same source of scepticism as this nonsense over drones. The problem isn't sourcing the equipment, it's managing systems to connect the right gear to the right people in real time and then adequately training and paying enough people to do the monitoring and analyse the data

atomictriangles.bsky.social•33 days ago

I don't mean GPS broadcasting, just tamper-resistant loggers. Then you just need them to upload their logs on a regular basis and cross check against fly-tipping incidents.
Doesn't have to be real time.

aphclarkson.bsky.social•33 days ago

If you look at the mess around setting up Toll Collect in Germany, which is a similar system but for other purposes, you get a sense of how much investment and personnel this would need. My argument isn't against tech solutions per se, it's against the idea that you get them fast and cheap.

atomictriangles.bsky.social•33 days ago

I'm sceptical enough in the context of using it for applications like that. I think it can hook into stuff that's already being done when it comes to just big commercial vehicles and existing collection of data on fly-tipping incidents, but I might be being too optimistic about what's already done.

aphclarkson.bsky.social•33 days ago

Just anchoring it on tech solutions, which have their place for sure, for me looks silly when there is also a "causes of crime" dynamic around access and number of waste disposal centres, rising costs for council waste disposal services, fewer bin collections, reluctance to go after large businesses

atomictriangles.bsky.social•33 days ago

Of course then the drones thing is so much worse than my 'completely impractical' starting point.

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