6 ms·

US Department of Homeland Security looking for (more than) a few good drones

41 points by godbolev 14y ago

ktizo 14y ago
UK already has these for police. The Merseyside Police managed to ditch one of theirs into a lake. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-15520279 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-15520279
- eckyptang 14y ago
  That does it. I'm defending my airspace with anti-drone drones (until they are illegal).
  - mtgx 14y ago
    Illegal for you.
  - dhughes 14y ago
    As soon as I saw the Parrot AR Drone I imagined putting a small stripped down pellet gun on it. I bet AR Drone will mysteriously become illegal soon.
    - ktizo 14y ago
      Technically, it already is for outdoor use in the UK, unless the person flying it is not the person looking at the first person view, as the pilot has to keep visual contact with the aircraft. Also if you use one for anything commercial you are required to hold a civil pilots licence. http://www.buzzflyer.co.uk/aerial-photo-uav-fpv-law.asp http://www.buzzflyer.co.uk/aerial-photo-uav-fpv-law.asp
  - ktizo 14y ago
    This brings up an interesting point. Anti-drone drones may well be much cheaper and more maneuverable than general purpose drones and people in general have far fewer ethical concerns when targeting a drone, as it is basically just property damage. In fact I suspect that some people would even look on drone hunting as some sort of extreme sport. Another social effect of the introduction of a mass of visible drones is that it has the potential to drive a reasonable amount of an armed and already fairly paranoid population, completely and utterly nuts. And whatever the police think about how useful these things are, I doubt that having a lot of drones flying around is going to encourage politeness, to put it mildly. A hell of a lot of people fear these things and fear makes a lot of people go crazy.
ck2 14y ago
That's federal level. State and local police are already shopping and some are already working with local military bases to use theirs. All warrantless, no oversight. The mission creep is going to be scary. They'll have to find a way to justify their incredible expense for the 99% of time they would be idle, so imagine the equal to speeding ticket quotas that will emerge.
fourmii 14y ago
Speaking of drones: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/drone-finds-dummy-bushwalker-in-worldfirst-20121005-273lv.html http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/drone-fi...
sturadnidge 14y ago
I was watching a documentary the other day about border smuggling - surely it's only a matter of time before drones are used for that, in which case what hope has domestic law enforcement got if they don't go down the same path.
- revelation 14y ago
  Smugglers have used submarines. Law enforcement has already "no hope", and that is entirely by design. If you want LE and criminals to be equal then you end up in a country run by criminals.
  - mmagin 14y ago
    No, there is more than the technical advantage held by police which factors into this. There is also the extent to which the mass of people tend to believe whether it is better to do things in a law-abiding manner or whether legal authority is completely disrespectable and not worth obeying.
- gnaritas 14y ago
  Preventing drug use has always been a lost cause anyway, there never was hope to be had on that path.
- mobweb 14y ago
  There was a post here on HN not too long ago about exactly this. Drug cartels using ultralight drones to smuggle drugs across borders. Found it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508
secure 14y ago
Obligatory book recommendation: http://www.amazon.de/Kill-Decision-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0525952616 http://www.amazon.de/Kill-Decision-Daniel-Suarez/dp/05259526...
kmfrk 14y ago
There are many perfectly good uses for drones, but we all know the regulatory oversight will be completely negligent and insufficient. It's in light of that that I have to wonder whether drones should just be vilified altogther.
- bdunbar 14y ago
  I have to wonder whether drones should just be vilified altogther. Good question. I can see uses for drones. I know guys who will personally benefit from automation like this. I say take a hard stand against them: no drones, period. Because 'give them an inch they'll take a mile' is why.
ktizo 14y ago
The scariest thing about drones is that if both sides have drones, the winning strategy would seem to be in having millions of cheap drones directed by the sort of algorithms currently used in high frequency trading. Putting humans in the decision making loop for all of those just slows them down and vastly increases the expense and manpower requirements.
- starpilot 14y ago
  There's very, very little work going on with AI in drones. We're not there yet. We're still working on getting the sensors right and dealing with datalinks. The vast majority are remotely piloted, some are remotely directed (point and click to location, the drone maneuvers to get there), all are controlled by humans. This "robot drone aircraft freakout" sounds as silly to me as an aerospace engineer as worries about malicious hackers shutting down the US power grid sound to you.
  - rdl 14y ago
    I'm fairly knowledgeable about computer security and slightly to somewhat about power distribution, and for a well-resourced hacker ($10-50mm), shutting down the US power grid actually wouldn't be terribly difficult. Leaving aside any attacks on the control system, the actual physical infrastructure is quite vulnerable. It operates close to breakdown on many days anyway, so it would just take the loss of some critical lines and maybe substations to cause (if lucky) widespread controlled blackouts and load shedding, or if unlucky, uncontrolled massive blackouts. Since 9/11 they've fortified certain pieces (in the late 1990s, a 3 guys with crowbars and pistols could have broken into major grid operations centers and shut them down), but a lot of it is still fairly vulnerable.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      The UK experienced chaos when a small group of farmers and lorry drivers blocked oil refineries. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_protests_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_protests_in_the_United_Kin...) Some aspects of security are purely reactive (One man with a shoe bomb? All passengers now remove their shoes. One man with an underwear bomb? All passengers now go through millimetre wave scanners) and so this vulnerability has been fixed. Other protests were much less successful.
DanielBMarkham 14y ago
I know this is going to sound like hyperbole, and I apologize, but I believe that the networked computer is a bigger danger to mankind than nuclear weapons. We are completely destroying the innate quality that we've had as humans since we came out of the trees - anonymity and privacy. I'm not saying technology is bad; I'm no Luddite. But we are entering places in our societal structures that we've never been before even in the strictest police states. Maybe it's grumpy old guy day again, but I do not feel that this is going to turn out well over the long run. ADD: Of all the things I thought 20 years ago that I might be concerned about in the 2010s, "swarms of flying robots able to watch and record my every move" was not one of them. The future is not only stranger than you imagine; it is stranger than you can imagine. And that's just robotic drone surveillance. There's a dozen other networked technology devices that are much more worrying.
- mtgx 14y ago
  When you see the video below, it's easy to imagine how likely that future will be if citizens don't care about what their Government is doing and simply let them pass all the bad laws, without any major outrage: http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/05/plurality-an-amazing-short-film-about-surveillance-in-2023/ http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/05/plurality-an-amazing-short-f... We've already seen how advanced western Governments think about stuff like this (in UK, but also in US) - "when it's easy and cheap enough to apply mass-surveillance of all forms of communications, why not do it?". So they'll do it even if it's unconstitutional, once the technology becomes cheap enough and people still don't react to these moves en mass. There will be new technologies in the future that will simply be irresistible to the Governments that can implement them nation-wide. It's the population's job to be very vigilant about it and make sure they don't abuse them (or use them at all).
- pi18n 14y ago
  Perhaps people will get clued in and protest. I'm hoping for a grassroots org to use handheld devices and, in aggregate, constantly monitor all police and lawmakers, posting their every move online.
- yequalsx 14y ago
  We've always been social creatures and when we came out of the trees did we really have anonymity and privacy? Village life has been the norm for most of your history and I believe that anonymity and privacy aren't the norm in village life. Am I wrong? It seems to me that only since mass urbanization has there been anonymity and privacy and we begin to revert back to the historical mean. Although at a much grander scale. Is it the scale that is the danger? In the past one could leave the village for another location (in theory) and get away from stigma. Maybe now it is much harder. Of course now there is much more information and many more instances of instant fame. Perhaps the noise will be anonymize us except to the powers that be.
vectorbunny 14y ago
Excellent podcast on the ethics of automated systems deployed by military, LEOs, etc. featuring Noel Sharkey: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/6600 http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/6600 From the teaser: "Noel Sharkey is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield. He holds a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology and a Doctorate of Science, and lectures extensively across academic disciplines, including engineering, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, artificial intelligence and computer science. In addition to having published well over a hundred academic articles and books, Sharkey has worked closely with policy makers and the military to create awareness about the limitations of AI and the dangers of automated warfare."
telecuda 14y ago
I was at a law enforcement show this week and drones were the big new thing. Most were either quadcopters with GoPros while others looked like mini helicopters with PTZ cameras strapped to them. Better funded departments are starting to test them out, but the demand from local police still isn't quite there. They require obtaining a special FAA license and lots of training, which makes the sales cycles on drones long and unattractive to vendors selling one at a time to local PDs. Still though, their pitch is: "A helicopter flight cost is $450/hr. A drone is $14." Saving PDs the cost of flying a drone to/over an accident scene is more the draw than snooping into buildings.

41 points by godbolev 14y ago

ktizo 14y ago

UK already has these for police. The Merseyside Police managed to ditch one of theirs into a lake. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-15520279 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-15520279

eckyptang 14y ago
That does it. I'm defending my airspace with anti-drone drones (until they are illegal).
- mtgx 14y ago
  Illegal for you.
- dhughes 14y ago
  As soon as I saw the Parrot AR Drone I imagined putting a small stripped down pellet gun on it. I bet AR Drone will mysteriously become illegal soon.
  - ktizo 14y ago
    Technically, it already is for outdoor use in the UK, unless the person flying it is not the person looking at the first person view, as the pilot has to keep visual contact with the aircraft. Also if you use one for anything commercial you are required to hold a civil pilots licence. http://www.buzzflyer.co.uk/aerial-photo-uav-fpv-law.asp http://www.buzzflyer.co.uk/aerial-photo-uav-fpv-law.asp
- ktizo 14y ago
  This brings up an interesting point. Anti-drone drones may well be much cheaper and more maneuverable than general purpose drones and people in general have far fewer ethical concerns when targeting a drone, as it is basically just property damage. In fact I suspect that some people would even look on drone hunting as some sort of extreme sport. Another social effect of the introduction of a mass of visible drones is that it has the potential to drive a reasonable amount of an armed and already fairly paranoid population, completely and utterly nuts. And whatever the police think about how useful these things are, I doubt that having a lot of drones flying around is going to encourage politeness, to put it mildly. A hell of a lot of people fear these things and fear makes a lot of people go crazy.

ck2 14y ago

That's federal level. State and local police are already shopping and some are already working with local military bases to use theirs. All warrantless, no oversight. The mission creep is going to be scary. They'll have to find a way to justify their incredible expense for the 99% of time they would be idle, so imagine the equal to speeding ticket quotas that will emerge.

fourmii 14y ago

Speaking of drones: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/drone-finds-dummy-bushwalker-in-worldfirst-20121005-273lv.html http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/drone-fi...

sturadnidge 14y ago

I was watching a documentary the other day about border smuggling - surely it's only a matter of time before drones are used for that, in which case what hope has domestic law enforcement got if they don't go down the same path.

revelation 14y ago
Smugglers have used submarines. Law enforcement has already "no hope", and that is entirely by design. If you want LE and criminals to be equal then you end up in a country run by criminals.
- mmagin 14y ago
  No, there is more than the technical advantage held by police which factors into this. There is also the extent to which the mass of people tend to believe whether it is better to do things in a law-abiding manner or whether legal authority is completely disrespectable and not worth obeying.
gnaritas 14y ago
Preventing drug use has always been a lost cause anyway, there never was hope to be had on that path.
mobweb 14y ago
There was a post here on HN not too long ago about exactly this. Drug cartels using ultralight drones to smuggle drugs across borders. Found it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4415508

secure 14y ago

Obligatory book recommendation: http://www.amazon.de/Kill-Decision-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0525952616 http://www.amazon.de/Kill-Decision-Daniel-Suarez/dp/05259526...

kmfrk 14y ago

There are many perfectly good uses for drones, but we all know the regulatory oversight will be completely negligent and insufficient. It's in light of that that I have to wonder whether drones should just be vilified altogther.

bdunbar 14y ago
I have to wonder whether drones should just be vilified altogther. Good question. I can see uses for drones. I know guys who will personally benefit from automation like this. I say take a hard stand against them: no drones, period. Because 'give them an inch they'll take a mile' is why.

ktizo 14y ago

The scariest thing about drones is that if both sides have drones, the winning strategy would seem to be in having millions of cheap drones directed by the sort of algorithms currently used in high frequency trading. Putting humans in the decision making loop for all of those just slows them down and vastly increases the expense and manpower requirements.

starpilot 14y ago
There's very, very little work going on with AI in drones. We're not there yet. We're still working on getting the sensors right and dealing with datalinks. The vast majority are remotely piloted, some are remotely directed (point and click to location, the drone maneuvers to get there), all are controlled by humans. This "robot drone aircraft freakout" sounds as silly to me as an aerospace engineer as worries about malicious hackers shutting down the US power grid sound to you.
- rdl 14y ago
  I'm fairly knowledgeable about computer security and slightly to somewhat about power distribution, and for a well-resourced hacker ($10-50mm), shutting down the US power grid actually wouldn't be terribly difficult. Leaving aside any attacks on the control system, the actual physical infrastructure is quite vulnerable. It operates close to breakdown on many days anyway, so it would just take the loss of some critical lines and maybe substations to cause (if lucky) widespread controlled blackouts and load shedding, or if unlucky, uncontrolled massive blackouts. Since 9/11 they've fortified certain pieces (in the late 1990s, a 3 guys with crowbars and pistols could have broken into major grid operations centers and shut them down), but a lot of it is still fairly vulnerable.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    The UK experienced chaos when a small group of farmers and lorry drivers blocked oil refineries. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_protests_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_protests_in_the_United_Kin...) Some aspects of security are purely reactive (One man with a shoe bomb? All passengers now remove their shoes. One man with an underwear bomb? All passengers now go through millimetre wave scanners) and so this vulnerability has been fixed. Other protests were much less successful.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

I know this is going to sound like hyperbole, and I apologize, but I believe that the networked computer is a bigger danger to mankind than nuclear weapons. We are completely destroying the innate quality that we've had as humans since we came out of the trees - anonymity and privacy. I'm not saying technology is bad; I'm no Luddite. But we are entering places in our societal structures that we've never been before even in the strictest police states. Maybe it's grumpy old guy day again, but I do not feel that this is going to turn out well over the long run. ADD: Of all the things I thought 20 years ago that I might be concerned about in the 2010s, "swarms of flying robots able to watch and record my every move" was not one of them. The future is not only stranger than you imagine; it is stranger than you can imagine. And that's just robotic drone surveillance. There's a dozen other networked technology devices that are much more worrying.

mtgx 14y ago
When you see the video below, it's easy to imagine how likely that future will be if citizens don't care about what their Government is doing and simply let them pass all the bad laws, without any major outrage: http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/05/plurality-an-amazing-short-film-about-surveillance-in-2023/ http://falkvinge.net/2012/10/05/plurality-an-amazing-short-f... We've already seen how advanced western Governments think about stuff like this (in UK, but also in US) - "when it's easy and cheap enough to apply mass-surveillance of all forms of communications, why not do it?". So they'll do it even if it's unconstitutional, once the technology becomes cheap enough and people still don't react to these moves en mass. There will be new technologies in the future that will simply be irresistible to the Governments that can implement them nation-wide. It's the population's job to be very vigilant about it and make sure they don't abuse them (or use them at all).
pi18n 14y ago
Perhaps people will get clued in and protest. I'm hoping for a grassroots org to use handheld devices and, in aggregate, constantly monitor all police and lawmakers, posting their every move online.
yequalsx 14y ago
We've always been social creatures and when we came out of the trees did we really have anonymity and privacy? Village life has been the norm for most of your history and I believe that anonymity and privacy aren't the norm in village life. Am I wrong? It seems to me that only since mass urbanization has there been anonymity and privacy and we begin to revert back to the historical mean. Although at a much grander scale. Is it the scale that is the danger? In the past one could leave the village for another location (in theory) and get away from stigma. Maybe now it is much harder. Of course now there is much more information and many more instances of instant fame. Perhaps the noise will be anonymize us except to the powers that be.

vectorbunny 14y ago

Excellent podcast on the ethics of automated systems deployed by military, LEOs, etc. featuring Noel Sharkey: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/6600 http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/print/6600 From the teaser: "Noel Sharkey is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, and Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield. He holds a Doctorate in Experimental Psychology and a Doctorate of Science, and lectures extensively across academic disciplines, including engineering, philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, artificial intelligence and computer science. In addition to having published well over a hundred academic articles and books, Sharkey has worked closely with policy makers and the military to create awareness about the limitations of AI and the dangers of automated warfare."

telecuda 14y ago

I was at a law enforcement show this week and drones were the big new thing. Most were either quadcopters with GoPros while others looked like mini helicopters with PTZ cameras strapped to them. Better funded departments are starting to test them out, but the demand from local police still isn't quite there. They require obtaining a special FAA license and lots of training, which makes the sales cycles on drones long and unattractive to vendors selling one at a time to local PDs. Still though, their pitch is: "A helicopter flight cost is $450/hr. A drone is $14." Saving PDs the cost of flying a drone to/over an accident scene is more the draw than snooping into buildings.