France’s World Cup soccer team has filed a complaint with FIFA, claiming that someone used a small unmanned aircraft to spy on the team’s training camp near São Paulo, Brazil as players prepared for their match against Honduras Sunday, the BBC reports. The quadrocopter appears from video to be a Phantom II autonomous micro-drone with a video camera.
“Apparently, drones are being used more and more,” France’s manager Didier Deschamps told the BBC. “We don’t want intrusion into our privacy. It’s hard to fight.” Deschamps did not comment on who might be behind the surveillance but said in an interview with Football Italia that he believed the drone was operated by one of France’s potential opponents or by a French news agency.
At a pre-match press conference, a Honduran reporter assured Deschamps that “the drone was not from us.”
FIFA has not yet commented on the report. The incident was first reported June 11. The French website BFMTV reported that local police caught the pilot an hour after the flyover. The operator told police he “just wanted to have fun watching training since he could not be at the stadium,” BFMTV said. Charges are still pending.
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