Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
blogs.reuters.com
Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
1–10 of 58 posts
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#2Yeah, this worries me. I think we're probably counting down the final months before the first time someone is assassinated via civilian drone. It could be trained to keep its distance until it recognizes its target's face, and then approach very fast and detonate explosive when close enough. The attack could be complete before anyone realizes anything is wrong.
One defense might be to have your own fleet of anti-drone drones, and hope that they're faster and more aggressive than the attacker's. Another might be to place a rifle under the control of a CV system. Both options seem awful to me, and inevitable.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#3Yeah, this worries me. I think we're probably counting down the final months before the first time someone is assassinated via civilian drone. It could be trained to keep its distance until it recognizes its target's face, and then approach very fast and detonate explosive when close enough. The attack could be complete before anyone realizes anything is wrong. One defense might be to have your own fleet of anti-dron…
I doubt the first (civilian) drone assasination will be that sophisticated. Face recognition from a moving object at an unfortunate angle is not easy and it's even harder if you want to do it from a fixed-wing drone that can't hover like a quadcopter. I'd rather expect an assassination by a fixed-wing remote-controlled UAV targeted at someone speaking at a public event, some place where traditional methods (knives, rifles, car bombs) fail because line-of-sight access is heavily restricted.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#4It's not hard to imagine cheap(ish) long range autonomous drones that can't be jammed. Such a drone can't communicate or coordinate attacks in flight, but a mere timer or location trigger can still make an attack pretty exact.
The technology is sufficiently cheap and available off the shelf today that even a moderately skilled person could assemble an autonomous drone that carries a small bomb and detonates it at a specific coordinate at a speficic point in time. Any viable defense is a dome, either physical or virtual (e.g. realized by autonomous lasers, some form of projectile weapon, or a swarm of counter dronws). In any case it's clear how asymmetric the threat is in the sense that any viable defense is orders of magnitude more advanced and expensive than the attack.
The simplest way of avoiding these attacks in their simplest form is likely already in place for high value targets: you don't reveal an exact time and place for an appearance, being a few meters or a few minutes off is enough to thwart the dumbest drones.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#5From the title, I thought that the article was going to be about the rise of the surveillance state, and how monitoring/tracking drones would be the next battleground in the War on Privacy. Instead, we get a fearmongering article that stops one step short of suggesting that civilian drone ownership be banned.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#6From the title, I thought that the article was going to be about the rise of the surveillance state, and how monitoring/tracking drones would be the next battleground in the War on Privacy. Instead, we get a fearmongering article that stops one step short of suggesting that civilian drone ownership be banned.
Yes, the implications here are very troubling: that security for high government officials is more important than privacy and anonymity for the rest of us.
For those of us in the states, how the &*$# did we end up here? Was this value system mentioned anywhere in our founding documents? In any government/civics class that any of us took in school? Who are the people they have making these arguments?
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#7From the title, I thought that the article was going to be about the rise of the surveillance state, and how monitoring/tracking drones would be the next battleground in the War on Privacy. Instead, we get a fearmongering article that stops one step short of suggesting that civilian drone ownership be banned.
Yes, the implications here are very troubling: that security for high government officials is more important than privacy and anonymity for the rest of us. For those of us in the states, how the &*$# did we end up here? Was this value system mentioned anywhere in our founding documents? In any government/civics class that any of us took in school? Who are the people they have making these arguments?
If you squint just a little bit, a huge percentage of the population wants a king. Starting from there, it's not surprising that leaders get that treatment.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#8We need to teach our children how to make airplanes. As long as we can, as a living generation, assure future generations that this technology will be something they can, themselves, benefit from, then we have a chance.
It is true of all technology: it can be weaponized. So, use it more peacefully, with more enthusiasm to promote life, and stay safe. Fact: drones are good for the environment. Conversion to a drone-based delivery system could be a very positive impact on our environment through transportation. The drone-pizzabox is a good idea, death robots from the sky are a very, very bad idea. As long as you know how to make a flying thing out of a bit of greasy cardboard, you can stay safe in the universe. Pizza helps too.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#9Yeah, this worries me. I think we're probably counting down the final months before the first time someone is assassinated via civilian drone. It could be trained to keep its distance until it recognizes its target's face, and then approach very fast and detonate explosive when close enough. The attack could be complete before anyone realizes anything is wrong. One defense might be to have your own fleet of anti-dron…
I don't think a rifle would be a good anti-drone solution. The problem is you would be operating close to other people and missing a shot could end up killing someone else.
Perhaps the solution could be in shooting a web over the drone and having the wires entangled in the rotors or maybe a tennis ball cannon could work.
Re: Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the implications here are very troubling: that security for high government officials is more important than privacy and anonymity for the rest of us. For those of us in the states, how the &*$# did we end up here? Was this value system mentioned anywhere in our founding documents? In any government/civics class that any of us took in school? Who are the people they have making these arguments?
If you squint just a little bit, a huge percentage of the population wants a king. Starting from there, it's not surprising that leaders get that treatment.
It has always been this way, and we're supposed to have a system of government that realizes and actively fights this desire.
Over the past several decades, however, the system of self-restraints has broken, however, probably irreparably. I don't think there was any one reason or master conspiracy or anything -- just lots of little compromises made by people doing the best they could.
Understanding why it happened doesn't make it any better, though.
Back in Lincoln's day you could ride all the way to DC, wait in line at the White House, and based on a lottery be able to go in and talk to the president. And he would feel embarrassed for whatever problems you had and would listen to you patiently.
Those days are long gone. And the goal of perfect safety for elected officials is still just as far away now as it was then. Not a good trade for the republic.