You don't need RID to find drone pilots flying drones in public. The drones make a very distinctive sound and the pilot is usually nearby with his head tilted down, looking at device with a screen that he's holding in both hands while wiggling his thumbs. Some of those robbery targets even wear bright yellow or red vests with "DRONE PILOT" in bold letters so everyone knows exactly what they're doing. Other's put out yard-wide bright orange locator discs on the ground and stand next to them.
If robbing these easily located drone pilots of their gear while they're out in the field is a common crime and serious threat why have we not heard of a single incident?
The obvious answer is that it's not a significant problem and all the fretting and posturing about post-RID armed self-defense and roving bands of drone bandits ready to strike as soon as a home point has been set is just plain silly.
I will admit that there is a possibility that some highly motivated anti-drone fussbudget named Karen might go to the trouble of using RID to get my serial number and find me so they can say something rude. Oh, my!
[Note: I'd definitely prefer not to have RID. But, I'm not personally afraid of living with it.]
There are tons of photographers/videographers robbed each year (and drones and RID aren't going to increase the percentage, probably). I've been a photographer for the last 19 years and I've never been robbed, mostly because I'm not a tool, and I don't expose my gear around.
But you only need to go with your fancy lowepro backpack full of glass to some areas and say goodbye to your gear in a moment; same for drones, which for people that were photographers/videographers before drones, are just another camera in the bag.
You won't see any seasoned photographer/videgrapher flying its drone with a vest or a foldable table/helipad because in all scenarios you want to be invisible and blend with the environment as much as you can. People with vests usually are operators that work for companies that do things like solar panel inspections, or newbies that still believe in rules and think drones are "aircrafts" and they are "pilots" even when they just needed to pass a super easy course that everyone passes.
On the other hand, even when not being robbed, you'll be interrupted; you can counter drone noise by setting your takeoff location at 300+ meters from the target because they'll hear the drone, but they won't be able to follow the drone and find you.
So let's say for example I'm doing some pics of a building for an apartment owner; I do some interiors with my regular tripod, camera and a few flashes and then want to also add some aerial pics of the building itself (probably wait for sunset), which would be a regular easy job.
If someone hears the drone flying around he will be pissed off for sure, but won't be able to locate me because I probably took off 1Km away, but with RID he can instantly get my takeoff location (with the drone nearby it takes less than 30 seconds to start the app and receive the first packet that tells you the operator location). Maybe I will still be able to finish the job without being disturbed, maybe he just picks the car and drives next to me for confrontations, which already happened to me before I decided to take off 300+ meters away from the objective.
RID is just another tool for the assaulter, it doesn't mean karens are going to rain from the sky. My
Mavic 3 is emitting RID since last year, I don't remember the exact date, but it could be picked by OpendroneID since quite a long time and for the moment it hasn't lured anyone to me, but it's just a matter of time.
PS: When flying at night I got my drone lasered quite often, so I decided to put some black electric tape on the leds and guess what, never been lasered again.
There's no hack for RID/Aeroscope on DJI drones yet, the one on github (jeepdors) only work with old firmwares, "old" drones like the
Mini 2 and with an old version of the app, else it resets back, but you can be sure I'll be hacking my
Mavic 3 whenever it becomes available, same as I hack it for FCC mode.