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

blogs.reuters.com

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

#41

Post by crdoconnor »

maxerickson wrote: post #7
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

>If you squint just a little bit, a huge percentage of the population wants a king.

If you squint too much you will end up confusing the media generated with the opinions of the population. They are very different though.

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

#42

Post by tormeh »

murbard2 wrote: post #35
guscost wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A restriction does not necessarily mean a ban. From the article: > For the recreational pilot who loses control of his machine, better firmware can keep it from hovering over prohibited areas like the White House. Now of course it's hard to argue that a special blacklist for programmable GPS does not make some sense. But this kind of agenda always starts out at the fringes. What I'm saying is that even the mild rheto…

It is not a sensible idea. First of, people will be able to go around your DRM by patching the firmware, or spoofing the data coming from the GPS. Second, your proposal would require the GPS to be always on. Not every drone needs a GPS, and not every drone needs the battery drain of using a GPS all the time.

But it would prevent some frat guys from doing something stupid. Of course hard-core criminals and the mafia will always have access to dangerous things, but that doesn't mean restricting access for the small-timers and the stupid/drunk is not worthwhile.

You can't always win, but you can win 95% of the time.

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

#43

Post by guscost »

murbard2 wrote: post #35
guscost wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A restriction does not necessarily mean a ban. From the article: > For the recreational pilot who loses control of his machine, better firmware can keep it from hovering over prohibited areas like the White House. Now of course it's hard to argue that a special blacklist for programmable GPS does not make some sense. But this kind of agenda always starts out at the fringes. What I'm saying is that even the mild rheto…

It is not a sensible idea. First of, people will be able to go around your DRM by patching the firmware, or spoofing the data coming from the GPS. Second, your proposal would require the GPS to be always on. Not every drone needs a GPS, and not every drone needs the battery drain of using a GPS all the time.

OK, I'd guess that the blacklist would only apply when said drone is operating in GPS navigation mode. Of course this does nothing to prevent manual operation in restricted airspace, but that has always been the case with RC aircraft.

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

#44

Post by ecocentrik »

maxerickson wrote: post #7
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

Some might want a king but most of us want stability which you don't get by letting your leaders be assassinated at their opposition's earliest convenience. I'm not saying this is justified, I'm just saying that your king making argument is incomplete.

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

#45

Post by morsch »

dingaling wrote: post #37
pjc50 wrote: post #28

Doesn't even require explosives. It's more like the laser pointer threat to aircraft; all it needs is for someone to fly a reasonably solid drone into a jet engine on takeoff to achieve a major air disaster. This has come close to happening by accident at least once (drone near Heathrow).

> to fly a reasonably solid drone into a jet engine on takeoff to achieve a major air disaster Any modern turbine engine can swallow vast quantities ice without much of an issue. I think the baseline is in the region of 500 kilos of ice in 1 minute. A small commercial drone won't make much of an impact to an engine that can fly through a hailstorm without burping. Edit: the abuse a modern engine endures for certifica…

By weight a drone is trivial, but the other properties of the ingested material clearly matter -- water and ice are more malleable than, say, a steal beam. I guess most hobby drones are similar to a bird strike, which is a well understood thing.

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

#46

Post by rayiner »

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?

End up where? As one of the richest, most comfortable, most stable countries in the world?

The U.S. has always been a deeply conservative place, skeptical of dramatic change or threats to the existing order. Even the American Revolution was conservative--while the French were running around beheading people and switching to 10-day weeks, we decided to keep everything running pretty much the same, with a few tweaks.[1]

The value system of "we have a tremendous amount to lose and so are excessively cautious" doesn't need to be written down anywhere--it's the sociological default. We've gotten by fine without drones so far, and they hold the potential for disrupting a status quo that is at the end of the day pretty damn good. So why should people not be deeply skeptical?

[1] The difference between British Parliamentary monarchy and American democracy was, even in 1776, more significant in rhetoric than in substance.

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

#47

Post by hga »

ecocentrik wrote: post #44
maxerickson wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Some might want a king but most of us want stability which you don't get by letting your leaders be assassinated at their opposition's earliest convenience. I'm not saying this is justified, I'm just saying that your king making argument is incomplete.

Indeed.

In our fairly strong President system, we have a temporary king, and very much related to your point, we solve the succession problem that has historically haunted hereditary systems of nobility with things like assassinations. FDR didn't respect that, so we fixed it with a Constitutional amendment.

That significantly weakens a lot of arguments for "killing the king", President for Life, etc., because you just have to wait 4 or 8 years and he's no longer has much power.

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

#48

Post by jason46 »

gambiting wrote: post #23
jason46 wrote: post #20

Really, the Honeybee helicopter is an Air Force drone?? I had one of those 4-5 years ago and was lucky to keep it in the air for 30 seconds. Its the heli in the article with a purple tailboom and training-gear. I was eating somewhere that had CNN on TV and they were discussing the use of rockets to take out civilian drones. Not which part of that scenario is more dangerous. I'm not sure this is sensationalism with am…

I honestly thought that was Lama V3 without a canopy. These have been available for years, and yeah, controlling one is a huge feat, the battery life is around 10 minutes and they can lift absolutely nothing. It's a toy essentially. I used to be really interested in R/C helicopters years ago, but it is(or used to be) a very expensive hobby. Usually you spend few hundred dollars on a helicopter only to crash it on the…

The lama is a coax heli. This is the heli in the article with training gear. http://www.xheli.com/2blhokirtf.html

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

#49

Post by ihnorton »

Can someone explain why this is an issue now? Is it ubiquity and reduced cost, or is there some fundamental advance that I am unaware of? From a layman's perspective, I feel like high-performance RC planes and copters have been available in kit form for well over 30 years.

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

#50

Post by bryondowd »

Patrikvo wrote: post #9
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 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.

How about something like a firehose? Water wouldn't be a threat to people, but a high pressure water cannon could probably down a drone within a reasonable range.
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