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Today, the U.S. Secret Service apparently discovered an inexpensive quadcopter drone that had been accidentally flown onto the White House grounds by a government employee.
Oh dear. (At this point and after numerous security breaches, it feels like a toddler could sneak into the President’s home and take a nap in the Lincoln bedroom before anyone protecting the place would notice. Wait, that already happened.)
The remote-controlled device — you can read all about them here — apparently landed, according to various reports. But, thankfully, it was not dangerous to the First Family. As Bloomberg noted:
“Such class of drones have limited ability to carry anything beyond a small camera and can only fly for about 20 minutes or less,” said Benjamin Trapnell, an associate professor of aeronautics at the University of North Dakota. “It would be quite difficult to weaponize unless someone had access to the right kind of explosives, I guess,” Trapnell said in an interview.
He guesses? I’d guess the incident will set off a new round of what-shall-we-do-about-drones handwringing. Which is why the crack team of investigative reporters at Re/code — who also happen to be very good with the Photoshopping — found these images from the archives to show that drones have been there, done that at the White House all along.
Enjoy:
Abraham Lincoln used to store his personal drone in his stovepipe hat. (Bonus: History mystery solved as to why he wore one!):
Teddy Roosevelt named his drone “Bully” and used it to hunt rhinos in the Rose Garden:
It is well known that Richard Nixon enjoyed drones, especially if they could hover above his enemies and record 18-minute gaps:
Jed Bartlet liked to keep a drone on his desk to tape those high-flying speeches to his staff:
Olivia Pope did not realize that the Mellie-cam was always shadowing her:
As Frank Underwood said, clearly referring to drones, “Power is a lot like real estate. It’s all about location, location, location. The closer you are to the source, the higher your property value.”:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
