Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down

Post by ajuc » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 12:35 PM UTC

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

MereInterest wrote: post #5

From 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?

Post by codeduck » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 12:45 PM UTC

b6 wrote: post #2

Yeah, 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…

Post by TeMPOraL » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 1:09 PM UTC

codeduck wrote: post #13

b6 wrote: post #2

Yeah, 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…

Lasers would be more effective. 1W and above lasers are readily available on the open market, and output more than enough power to fuse or burn out any optics that are not shielded.

Post by codeduck » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 1:14 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #15

codeduck wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lasers would be more effective. 1W and above lasers are readily available on the open market, and output more than enough power to fuse or burn out any optics that are not shielded.

Including eyeballs. Using high-power lasers in crowded area seems even more dangerous than bullets - the latter at least don't reflect off surfaces.

Post by hga » Fri, Feb 06, 2015, 1:22 PM UTC

vwruetag wrote: post #3

b6 wrote: post #2

Yeah, 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, r…