Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/07/10/what-you-need-to-know-about-po.html
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There is a police annex near my office and almost every week they have drone training in the parking lot.
They are getting good.
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Well I appreciate the sentiment, sending up projectiles over populated areas is a great way to seriously hurt some innocent person a few blocks over.
What you need is something like this: https://ctstechnologys.com/how-to-diy-a-drones-jammer.html
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(Sorry, good call.)
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Phew, I’m relieved. If its one thing police are increasingly known for, it is following the rules. I know that none of what the protests are about is at all about police not following the rules or that police reactions to the protests about them not following the rules, also follow the rules.
… the rules. … that are followed. … by police.
Look see: I made a funny!
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Very cool article, thanks for that link. Do you know if the FCC has a position about intentionally interfering with radio communications used to control a remotely operated vehicle?
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While the current technology might not allow them to effectively surveil with drones, the time to legislate the issue is now (before the tech improves). Having the police increasingly flying drones without anyone being arrested or ID’d by them is a great way to normalize it and make people think its no big deal.
The battery life will improve, lighter cameras will gain resolution, and while correct facial recognition will always be difficult the police are unconcerned about false positives so this won’t stop its use. We shouldn’t delay implementing effective privacy laws until after there is an idustry in place to fight against those laws
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Definitely prohibited. I presume if your’re looking for options to bring down a law enforcement drone, though, that you’re not overly concerned with legality.
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You can buy little, compressed pellets that expand quickly into nets =).
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A nut or washer trailing a few feet of fishing line or dental floss should work well. It doesn’t have to hit, just entangle the blades.
And then, since they’re using commercial toys, they possibly have hacker exploits. A realtor was taking shots of a neighbour’s house with a DJI drone, and it had an unencrypted open access point. If I’d been feeling mean, I’d have port-scanned it.
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Yeah, well the Brown Shirts were cosplaying big boy military as well. I’m not about downplaying the significance of blanket surveillance by the police. It doesn’t take a whole lot of competence or training to crack a skull.
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There’s more than one way to hack and steal a drone:
More disturbing (to me anyway), is that drones can become a point for all sorts of hacks:
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Precisely. ‘Member back in May when everyone was all like “they’re just using Predator drones over Minneapolis for fire spotting!” (as if it’s hard to spot a fire from literally any angle)? Forgive me if I still call utter bullshit. Just because the police may not have sophisticated equipment and training (yet) doesn’t mean their Federal counterparts aren’t more than willing to jump in and supply them with both. The thin blue line doesn’t stop at the police union.
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So… every protest should be started with a call to the FAA: “I think someone is illegally flying a drone over [X] right now and it looks like it may crash into a crowd of people.” ?
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FAA: “Yeah, we know. Name and address, please?”
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Remember when people used to joke about the “black helicopters” – good times.
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IANAL, but doesn’t a drone operating illegally, by violating the rules in the post, make the evidence they collect unusable for prosecuting?
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Once they’ve identified who they want to imprison, they’ll just fabricate a charge unrelated to the evidence collected by the drone.
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