Illegally shot drone footage of non compliant structures used by Dunedin City Council to issue notices.

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Illegally shot drone footage of non compliant structures used by Dunedin City Council to issue notices.

tehgerbil

758 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#255842 2-Sep-2019 21:29

Neighbours at war situation, one used a drone to perv on their neighbours and noticed non-compliant structures on their property.

They gave the illegally obtained footage to the Council, who were more than happy to act on it and issue notices to those whose privacy had been completely obstructed upon.

The DCC should have immediately reported this guy to the CAA for breaching Drone laws, rather than acting on this information?

News Article

What are your thoughts below.

Mark

1549 posts

Uber Geek

#2309700 2-Sep-2019 21:35

They also did the drone flyer for none consented structures as well .. which at least was a nice thing to do.

tehgerbil

758 posts

Ultimate Geek

Subscriber

#2309701 2-Sep-2019 21:36

Yeah, I have a laugh at that, typical self righteous hypocrite ay!

Gordy7

1130 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2309702 2-Sep-2019 21:40

The DCC will most likely have high resolution GIS property images anyway.

Gordy

My first ever network connection was a 1MHz AM crystal(OA91) radio receiver.

Bung

3492 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#2309731 2-Sep-2019 22:37

Mark:
They also did the drone flyer for none consented structures as well .. which at least was a nice thing to do.

Trouble was Mr Drone then decided that if he was going down he'd spread the misery around the neighbourhood. If the Council had made it clear that the original footage was taken illegally maybe he wouldn't have persisted.

""The way this developed is a complaint between two neighbours. The council was brought in as a weapon, unfortunately."

It was an issue of "pettiness" between neighbours."

It's a bit rich for the Council to be describing application of its rules as pettiness.

Our street is full of woodpiles and small sheds against fences. There is one shed that is a nuisance only because elderly type escapes to the shed and spends a lot of time bashing things in it. No one would care if it was just full of the usual junk.

lxsw20

2486 posts

Uber Geek

#2309747 3-Sep-2019 01:20

Think this was on Fair Go a couple of weeks back, something about a non consented wood cover. Who ever is doing it needs to get a life. Not sure why you would want to make yourself an enemy to your neighbours somewhere as small as Mosgiel.

Oblivian

4298 posts

Uber Geek

#2309772 3-Sep-2019 08:36

lxsw20:

Think this was on Fair Go a couple of weeks back, something about a non consented wood cover. Who ever is doing it needs to get a life. Not sure why you would want to make yourself an enemy to your neighbours somewhere as small as Mosgiel.

Sure was. And even then they could see over fences a number of additional ones that at the time were not targeted. It's possibly FairGo and the drone op seeing their place that has spurred it.

Funny how they know they got footage in a dodgy way. But also got a list of the subjects in the footage separately from it. And since that was a document able to be used for complaint, decided to ignore the dodgy footage/obtain method and pursue.

Seems to say, as long as you don't want to give purely video evidence, the world is your oyster.

skewt

643 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2309774 3-Sep-2019 08:56

I have heard from multiple builders that the DCC building services department is one of the worst to deal with in the country so i'm not surprised they used the footage.

For the original shed issue, the advice for sheds on the website under "Do I need consent" was:

sheds greater than 10 square metres in floor area

After the issue with fair go, they added "(For more information please go to advice on back yard sheds page)" which then tells you that you cant be close to a fence/boundary

Every property I can think of has a shed on the edge of the boundary.