Soon You'll Be Able to Hijack Weaponized Police Drones in Connecticut
Not content with having a fleet of insecure surveillance drones, the state of Connecticut wants a fleet of insecure weaponized drones. What could possibly go wrong?
Comments
NoWay • April 3, 2017 7:32 AM
Since the military already has weaponized drones they deploy routinely, police can just use those to save taxpayer dollars. I mean, why reinvent the wheel? Just call in a drone airstrike. No doubt Erik Prince will be happy to provide that service as well.
Sad. Terrible. Very very bad, indeed.
Andrew • April 3, 2017 7:42 AM
Reversing the logic in AnyMouse’s comment:
Will now security researchers exposing vulnerabilities in these weaponized drones be charged with attempted (aggravated) murder?
’cause it sounds like a remarkably convenient approach to hiding the possibly terrible security of those things.
Dr. I. Needtob Athe • April 3, 2017 8:05 AM
“Obviously this is for very limited circumstances,” said Republican state Sen. John Kissel…
Obviously! Of course! Are we all thick? Are we blind? Why can’t we see this “obvious” fact?
Who? • April 3, 2017 8:22 AM
@ AnyMouse
Why do you think they will be sued when the first drone is hijacked? A citizen can be issued, authorities will never be (and if they are, charges will be dismissed quickly).
@ NoWay
Are you suggesting using military drones? They want to kill someone, not demolishing a building!
Alex • April 3, 2017 8:41 AM
It looks like the old Harvard/Yale rivalry is going to get really interesting.
Clive Robinson • April 3, 2017 8:56 AM
@ Bruce,
What is happening is an otherwise sensible idea that “all rules should have an exception mechanism”.
In the EU for instance there are so many directives that have a “National Security exemption” that I sometimes feel it’s part of the “boiler plate”.
However it can be problematic when it comes to “use by LEOs”. Take the taser, it could never pass the “Low Voltage Directive”, likewise it could never pass the RT&TTE directive or quite a few other directives it would otherwise have to pass before “placing on the market”. Therefor if not for the exemption it would be an illegal device in general let alone as a weapon. Like all supposadly “non lethal” weapons people have been killed when they have been used, some immediately some died shortly there after. The fact of the incorrect “non lethal” labeling appears to encorage their use way beyond what most would regard as acceptable, and when they have not killed a person they have been used in effect as a tourture weapon by LEO’s. Few if any LEOs have been prosecuted for excecive or negligent use and the worst punishment I know of was being dismissed from their job.
We’ve seen the weaponising of bomb disposal robots almost from the get go when they were all “control by wire”. Nobody appeared to object when the robots became “radio controlled” even though they are designed to carry shotguns even machine guns and explosive charges around the size of a housebrick of C4 or equivalent[1].
There was only minimal comment when a group of LEOs carried out what was technically an extrajudicial killing –execution to others– of an armed suspect holed up in a downtown garage in Dallas when they used a robot to plant / detonate what was at the end of the day a bomb designed to kill the suspect thus it was very much premeditated and in no way what most would consider self defence.
Likewise there was not much comnent when drones were armed with “non leathal” weapons, all of which have been known to kill, permantly maim or injure…
You get the feeling that in the US atleast nobody appears to care outside of the friends and families of victims and a few axe grinding politicos…
Nathan MacInnes • April 3, 2017 10:01 AM
“… insecure surveillance drones … insecure weaponized drones …”
Are the drones they have known to be insecure, or is this just for clickbait?
An RIT student in the 80s • April 3, 2017 10:01 AM
@ Alex,
It looks like the old Harvard/Yale rivalry is going to get really interesting.
I’m pretty sure MIT will pwn both Harvard and Yale on this particular topic.
William • April 3, 2017 10:02 AM
Absolutely amazing! While they’re at it, why not build autonomous drones with gigapixel cameras and facial recognition software to automatically take down the most wanted criminals once they’re in sight? What could possibly go wrong? :/
My Info • April 3, 2017 10:03 AM
Oh, I thought military drones were programmed in Ada, the super-top-secret 100% bug-free programming language, zero-defect security, yadda, yadda, yadda….
oliver • April 3, 2017 10:13 AM
No need to hijack them. Just shoot them out of the sky with a 12 gauge.
Nuff said!
Thoth • April 3, 2017 10:16 AM
@oliver
Since these drones are also armed, they could effectively take you out or call in a squadron of them to take you out as well 🙂 .
jayson • April 3, 2017 10:17 AM
It is nonsense to make a legal distinction for unmanned aerial drones and a whole set new set of laws and crimes solely for their use.
All unmanned vehicles can be weaponized (UAV/UGV/UUV’s), from Google’s driverless car to the newish submarine drones.
This has already been tried (Philly, 1985). Pre-drone, but it wouldn’t take much of a drone to deliver a pair of 1-pound um, “devices”.
John Galt • April 3, 2017 11:26 AM
Shooting down a drone will make you a hero of the American Republic.
I have a Browning Double-Barrel Goose gun and 3 1/2 Magnums for the occasion.
Spaceman Spiff • April 3, 2017 12:46 PM
Gee, I always wanted one of those? My grandson designs and builds both fixed wing as well as quad-copter drones. I’m sure he could do something with it!
DAVID RUDLING • April 3, 2017 1:41 PM
@ My Info
ADA effectively ceased to be mandated by the DOD and its use therefore plummeted after 1997.
It is so “super-top-secret” that John Barnes and Cambridge University Press are presumably regarded by some as on a par with Edward Snowdon for publishing “Programming in Ada 2012” ISBN 978-1-107=42481-4 – oops, now I am guilty too. Pity, it’s a very good book.
“100% bug-free programming language” – sorry, I am temporarily unable to continue this post as I keep collapsing in fits of laughter.
Fortunately I know you also have a sense of humour.
Dirk Praet • April 3, 2017 1:47 PM
What could possibly go wrong?
Actually, nothing. In a worst case scenario, some innocent people, most probably African Americans sharing a reefer, get blown up by an overweight, trigger-happy drone operator with a red moustache. The world-wide media coverage is priceless advertising for the manufacturer. Politicians offer their condolences telling their hearts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims. Some local street protests end with a seventy something year-old hippy couple being maced and some black adolescents arrested under domestic terrorism charges.
A subsequent investigation reveals no wrongdoing and the all-white jury fully acquits the drone operator who gets rich selling his story rights to FOX. A couple of weeks later, most other states adopt the weaponized drones too because they are a really cool tool and the Connecticut incident has just proven that nobody goes to jail anyway when something goes wrong. Weaponized drone stocks go through the roof and some more people get rich.
The majority of the US public shrugs its shoulders because you can never be secure enough with all these crazy terrorists running around and zaps back to “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”.
albert • April 3, 2017 2:05 PM
@John Galt, oliver, et al,
Shooting down a drone will get you on the hook for damages. Shooting down a a police drone will get you damages, interfering with police, and other more serious charges, depending on the case. If they can show that your action resulted in death or injury, aiding and abetting a felony is serious jail time.
Hacking is the least of your problems.
So don’t shoot down drones. There are other ways, which have been discussed here ad nauseam.
@Dirk,
I detect a note of
<<> sarcasm <>
there.
Fortunately, you have a sense of humour.
. .. . .. — ….
POLAR • April 3, 2017 2:13 PM
@Alex, RIT student
I hope its not too late to place my bet, all my chips are on MIT!
#IHTFP
stine • April 3, 2017 2:17 PM
re:
An RIT student in the 80s • April 3, 2017 10:01 AM
@ Alex,
It looks like the old Harvard/Yale rivalry is going to get really interesting.
I’m pretty sure MIT will pwn both Harvard and Yale on this particular topic.
I agree. Instead of a black weather ballon on the 50 yard line….what’ll it be? Do you think the folks at MIT have it in them to intercept a pass with a drone?
Dan H • April 3, 2017 2:37 PM
The police should remember their motto is “to protect and to serve,” unfortunately, for whatever reasons, they have become a paramilitary force. Many officers are outfitted like they’re the 75th Ranger Battalion or 5th Special Forces Group ready to enter the enemy stronghold to engage in fierce battle. Having the equivalent of Air Force and CIA drones in the police’ military arsenal is a bad idea.
@Dirk Praet
“The majority of the US public shrugs its shoulders because you can never be secure enough with all these crazy terrorists running around and zaps back to “Keeping Up with the Kardashians”.”
It is a sad commentary of the American populace.
Frank Wilhoit • April 3, 2017 2:47 PM
@AnyMouse: The primary purpose of automation is to obscure, and to prevent the assignment of, responsibility for operational failures.
ab praeceptis • April 3, 2017 3:11 PM
I find the double standard infuriating, Dirk Praet
let’s assume that you and your VPN provider use the same service provider or group of suppliers that have a hidden from their customers agreement
I consider that a reasonable assumption. Example: Many carriers and providers keep at least parts of their peering agreements closed/secret.
Moreover, we know that us of a agencies mirror traffic at critical IXs. Furthermore, we know that IXs, carriers, and providers did have agreements and deals with e.g. intelligence agencies. One example is telekoms deal with the german intelligence agency (which is but a us of a outpost).
As for google, my understanding is that at least many here mistrust or even dislike google, facebook, and the likes. I’m certainly one of them; in fact I try hard to avoid any and every us of a large corp. like the plague.
John Galt • April 3, 2017 5:52 PM
@ albert
[[[ Shooting down a drone will get you on the hook for damages. Shooting down a a police drone will get you damages, interfering with police, and other more serious charges, depending on the case. If they can show that your action resulted in death or injury, aiding and abetting a felony is serious jail time. … Hacking is the least of your problems. …
So don’t shoot down drones. There are other ways, which have been discussed here ad nauseam.
First, I’d still be an American Hero. I’ll show a Jury a few “drone clips” from the John Carpenter movie, “They Live.”
Second, you assume that the prosecution can prove that I knew the drone was owned by the State and not by my neighbor or horny neighbor kids or career criminals who are casing me and my property to cause me physical injury.
Third, shooting down a drone would be at most, a misdemeanor.
Fourth, HACKING a drone’s State-Owned Computer(s) is a felony.
Fifth, Slaves have no privacy… so, under the 13th and 14th Amendments, I have a right to defend myself from those who would try to enslave me.
I think I’ll take my chances with a good Browning and Mags.
My state is already ahead of the rest of the country in this arena, life in prison for hacking a vehicle.
What’s the legal definition of vehicle?
John Galt • April 3, 2017 6:05 PM
@ albert…
PS…
The drone could also obstruct my flight path and cause a mid-air collision with my heavily armed R/C controlled P-51 Mustang.
I could sue them for damages, too.
John Galt • April 3, 2017 6:13 PM
@ Dan H
[[[ The police should remember their motto is “to protect and to serve,” unfortunately, for whatever reasons, they have become a paramilitary force. Many officers are outfitted like they’re the 75th Ranger Battalion or 5th Special Forces Group ready to enter the enemy stronghold to engage in fierce battle. Having the equivalent of Air Force and CIA drones in the police’ military arsenal is a bad idea. ]]]
The world is ruled by psychopaths.
Psychopaths don’t like it when their victims fight back. They don’t fight in real wars, either.
They are like the psychopath in the movie “50 Shades of Grey”… expecting you to be a sex slave.
John Galt • April 3, 2017 9:01 PM
@ Bardi
[[[ Since, by the regulations, drones are considered commercial aircraft, shooting one down will lead to at least a $10,000 fine and drone replacement, assuming no other damage is incurred (drone crashing into property or humans). ]]]
1) I’m a ham, too.
2) CIA drones are considered commercial aircraft. But, that being the case, they aren’t allowed to fly those outside of designated commercial flight paths.
3) Police Drones are toys.
Anon • April 3, 2017 9:25 PM
Just what is the justification for it? Really??
tyr • April 4, 2017 12:02 AM
@Clive
Thoughtmaybe has an interesting documentary up
about the history of Tasers. In the beginning
they were fairly safe. Police departments then
talked the manufacturer into hopping them up.
So typical businesstypes they obeyed the needs
of the customer because of the money. The new
hopped up versions began to kill people when
the average doughtnut stuffer got to use them.
The saddest part of the documentary is the kid
who was stopped in front of his house (traffic
stop) and basically murdered on camera in front
of his mother on his own front lawn. Since
most LEO people haven’t a clue about anatomy or
electricity this makes it inevitable. Drones
increase the degree of separation and a magic
recipe for abuse.
For the movie contest: If you link the drone to
a game giving random teens control over the Net
it might be more popular than WOW for awhile.
John Galt • April 4, 2017 2:03 AM
@tyr
<
blockquote>[[[ Thoughtmaybe has an interesting documentary up about the history of Tasers. In the beginning they were fairly safe…. Since most LEO people haven’t a clue about anatomy or electricity this makes it inevitable. Drones increase the degree of separation and a magic
recipe for abuse.]]]
<
blockquote>
There is nothing safe about electricity to mammal anatomy and nervous systems.
PLANET OF THE APES.
It’s torture. It’s electrocution.
Same thing happened to the Ape named Caesar in the Planet of the Apes sequel. It was the sequel where when the apes retaliated and took control of the planet away from the psychopaths.
It’s even a form of torture in the movie, Rambo II. The RUSSIANS did it to Rambo.
According to the names of the CIA projects listed in the Wikileaks dump, “DART/TYRANT” is one of their systems.
You should believe their own words when they enjoy computer systems called “tyrant.” Psychopaths are in charge.
Drain the swamp.
Thom • April 4, 2017 4:24 AM
The police in our country still uses windows 95.
I think that pretty much explains everything.
Yep. Sums it right up.
Be afraid citizen.
trent • April 4, 2017 4:54 AM
@r
life in prison for hacking a vehicle
It’s great that forensics and enforcement and prosecution are already perfectly solved problems, and all we need to worry about is there being a law against it. Oh, and apparently it’s not inconvenient to the people getting shot by a hacked weaponised drone / hit by a hacked car, the work is done once the act is considered illegal, right?
Tzafrir Cohen • April 4, 2017 5:15 AM
Are the drones they have known to be insecure, or is this just for clickbait?
Name a demonstrably secure IoT device
That’s irrelevant. You keep hearing about insecure IoT devices because vendors have an incentive to develop hem quickly and not spend too much on support. I’m not familiar enough with them, but I suppose that there are IoT devices developed in a different model.
Such drones are way more expensive. They take way longer to develop. They have beefy support contracts. Furthermore, they should not have holes. If they’ll have such obvious security holes, “bad guys” will use them against police in the field.
Recall that they are intended to be used (at least also) against people who are willing to shoot at police officers. Hence the extra offense of destroying police property will not deter them.
Also:
Can you proof the security of drones used by them ?
Can you prove the security of all cars used by the police? A car is just as lethal. Can you prove the security of anything?
In other words: yes, this is a click bait. Not typical of this blog.
trent • April 4, 2017 6:40 AM
@tzafrir cohen
“bad guys” will use them against police in the field … the extra offense of destroying police property will not deter them
Yes, that is the point. Welcome to the discussion that the rest of us are already having. “That shouldn’t happen” isn’t reassuring if/when an armed drone domestic operation goes horribly wrong.
Matt from CT • April 4, 2017 9:30 AM
Being from Connecticut…
It is a certainty no matter how it’s being (mis)reported or otherwise hyped by the if-it-bleeds-it-leads media with the memory of gnat, the impetus behind this legislation is a reaction to this doofus:
http://wtnh.com/2015/12/08/clinton-teen-behind-gun-shooting-drone-makes-flamethrower-drone/
In Connecticut today it is not unlawful to arm a drone — whether you are a civilian or a police officer.
This legislation would make it illegal for civilians to arm them.
My Info • April 4, 2017 11:36 AM
@DAVID RUDLING • April 3, 2017 1:41 PM
ADA effectively ceased to be mandated by the DOD and its use therefore plummeted after 1997.
It is so “super-top-secret” that John Barnes and Cambridge University Press are presumably regarded by some as on a par with Edward Snowdon for publishing “Programming in Ada 2012” ISBN 978-1-107=42481-4 – oops, now I am guilty too. Pity, it’s a very good book.
“100% bug-free programming language” – sorry, I am temporarily unable to continue this post as I keep collapsing in fits of laughter.
Fortunately I know you also have a sense of humour.
I know next to nothing about Ada — my first impression is that the language makes heavy use of what I believe Donald Knuth originally called “syntactic salt,” and has some facilities for asserting and potentially proving some aspects of termination and correctness.
From a microeconomic point of view, this is ugly, and I really don’t think it’s funny: we look at supply and demand curves, where they cross. Two strategies were aggressively employed in its marketing.
- Increase demand by getting the good old boys at DOD to “mandate” it for government contracts.
- Decrease supply by being coy about marketing the language to the general programming public, restricting the availability of books and educational materials on it, requiring officious government clearance and over-classification for the jobs, etc., etc.
These strategies effectively raised the price point for Ada programming contracts far above what a natural or free market would have supported, even though Ada itself is technically free and open source software.
Having said all this, I have no particular reason to believe that the languages that have come to replace Ada are superior to it for such high-assurance critical applications.
vas pup • April 4, 2017 12:10 PM
@all:
Lets put emotions aside.
I like that part:
“North Dakota is the only state that allows police to use weaponized drones, but limits the use to “less lethal” weapons, including stun guns, rubber bullets and tear gas.”
Usage of drone by LEAs is spectrum thing meaning weaponized drones with lethal weapon: SWAT teams only – local/state/fed (like in recent case when kind of bomb disarmament robot was used to kill serial cop killer/sniper)with clear set of pre-authorization cases set in the law (urgent cases)when court pre approval of usage is not practical (mass violence against LEOs/civilians,hostage situation, terrorism, etc.).
Weaponozied drones with “less lethal” weapons – riot police, National Guard. I would like to add to ND Law the following very effective “less lethal” weapons like LRAD(long range acoustic device) – create noise and disperse the crowd, and Skunk – very strong stench substance. Both are with zero body injuries/casualties on both sides: LEOs and offenders. That eliminates multimillion $ lawsuits against LEAs/LEOs, escalation of violence and cost effective restoration of law and order regime. General rules of application should be set up in the law following general pattern of riot police activities.
xen0n • April 4, 2017 2:49 PM
@tzafrir cohen
Yes. You realize that the US, Israel, and China have ALL lost weaponized drones, and not just to errors: they’ve literally been stolen with little more than a laptop and some cheap transceivers, and these police drones are probably not even going to approach the cost per unit of drones in use by militaries around the world. All it literally takes is: jam the 2.4/5.0ghz signal it’s using to be actively controlled, and overpower the GPS signals so it lands somewhere else (or simply shoot it down…then walk off with it). Once you have physical control of an armed drone…it’s yours.
vas pup • April 4, 2017 3:28 PM
@xen0n:
Looks like affecting GPS signal is better option:
http://makezine.com/2015/10/16/research-company-takes-aim-uavs-portable-anti-drone-rifle/
That frequency is difficult to change to avoid interference.
ab praeceptis • April 4, 2017 3:43 PM
My Info, David Rudling
For a start, Ada usage is actually growing quite well.
The “created for the us of a dod” origin probably has both, good and bad sides. Nowadays, however, it’s probably of very low importance.
Studies haven shown again and again that Ada development is cheaper than, say the C family, and at the same time produces much more reliable code. Probably the two main factors for that are the Wirth like syntax and the “catch problems as early as possible” paradigm, which is closely linked to the view that a “picky” compiler is actually rather your friend, albeit one that initially seems cumbersome.
As for the first: Experience shows that code is (and should be) written rarely, often just once, but read often. Hence it makes sense to go Wirths way, i.e. to create code that is well readable but somewhat more expensive to write (not much, though). Not that C went the other way and emphasized (and still does) code writing rather than reading, which contributes strongly to problems like heartbleed (a 2nd dev did look over the code but failed to spot a problem).
The second point should be evident. If I catch a problem during compilation, i.e. at the earliest (implementation) phase, then that’s cheaper and more efficient than spotting it months later in a finished product that has been shipped to gazillions of customers.
The “has some facilities for asserting and potentially proving some aspects of termination and correctness.” point you make is partly right and partly wrong.
For a start many languages have facilities for assertions. What you probably mean is SPARK which allows for full verification and which has reached a satisfying full feature set only recently (roughly with Ada 2012/Spark 2014).
But there is more, much more, albeit rarely seen adequately. But I’m not here to bore or to evangelize Ada. My main point is that Ada is not more expensive for development than, say C.
Tzafrir Cohen • April 4, 2017 4:54 PM
“bad guys” will use them against police in the field … the extra offense of destroying police property will not deter them
Yes, that is the point. Welcome to the discussion that the rest of us are already having. “That shouldn’t happen” isn’t reassuring if/when an armed drone domestic operation goes horribly wrong.
I thought it was obvious that “shouldn’t happen” is not the same as “will not happen”. However it means that the devices will hopefully be developed with some more thoughts on security. But more importantly: with a decent support contract. Serviced by an organization with a decent IT department (good enough to deploy security fixes as they come).
Yes. You realize that the US, Israel, and China have ALL lost weaponized drones, and not just to errors […]
Those were isolated cases. There are many drones running non-stop in the skies of many hostile skies and they normally don’t just drop off the sky.
Furthermore,
[…] Once you have physical control of an armed drone…it’s yours.
No. This is true in Iran. This is not true when you have to hide the drone from the police. Why go through all that trouble just to gain control over a drone when you can just as easily build one on your own?
Heck, it’s just as easy to steal a police car. It’s still not that popular. I suppose people would normally rather build their own armored cars than get one from the police.
Nick P • April 4, 2017 9:50 PM
@ My Info
That’s misleading. It was the winner of a proposal for near-totally-safe language for software for DOD. The complexity led to expensive tools (even compilers). It’s performance also suffered on older machines since compiler science was still a work in progress. Open-source and small players rejected it at those times. The DOD still tried to mandate it without an effective execution of the concept. That didn’t work. So, a number of factors led it to fail in the big picture.
It at least still succeeds in niche of highly-assured software in combination with SPARK Ada. The GPL versions even let it do that on the cheap for those who can accept that licensing. Rust is getting more popular esp with dynamic memory and concurrency techniques for safety. Ada is still there with plenty of professional tooling to support developments.
ab praeceptis • April 4, 2017 11:21 PM
Nick P
Yes. And one should add the lack of good tools and libraries for a long time. It was only quite a while later that good tools, i.e. more than “there’s the compiler and that’s about it”, became available.
With libraries it took even longer. One reason was that, while Ada was quite open, de facto it was widely a dod and a few usually related segments thing; the other factor being that, of course, the defense contractors using it didn’t share their work and, of course, the market segment was too small to be attractive as a commercial target.
Besides the dod relation and what that brought with it, those are quite common phenomena. It takes many years before there is a not insignificant array of tools and tool support (e.g. syntax highlighting for editors) and libraries available. Pretty much the same can be observed with rust and could (and to a degree still can) be even with not so rarely used and mature languages like e.g. Ocaml.
That’s important because as a developer one needs more than a book and a compiler for a language (at least if one needs or wants to be productive). In fact, what I just described certainly is one of the more important factors for quite many languages floating half dead. They might be attractive but are hardly useable in the real world because they support too few or the wrong systems, have few if any library bindings, etc. Modula-[1,2,3] is a rather prominent example.
trent • April 5, 2017 4:31 AM
@Tzafrir Cohen
with a decent support contract … serviced by an organization … good enough to deploy security fixes
Are you claiming that 0-day exploits will not exist for armed drones?
I’m not familiar enough with them, but I suppose …
… they should not have holes …
… devices will hopefully be developed …
(emphasis added)
Your entire position seems based on optimistic speculation. And you might be correct, in which case, wonderful. But if not, the cost might be paid with injuries and lives. This is a social cost that the more risk averse of us specifically want to avoid.
(Have you heard about how the US nuclear arsenal is maintained? That might erode your optimism a bit too. John Oliver did a segment on it a while back.)
Ted • April 5, 2017 9:07 PM
Please radio the NRA and tell them there is absolutely no reason to fear government or police overreach. Or the militarization of law enforcement. No reason to worry at all. Nothing to see here folks. Please keep moving in an orderly fashion.
I just hope that when they say weapon they don’t mean some puny little small arms caliber thing. If they aren’t going full Hellfire missile why even bother. Maybe I can write to my state senator and suggest something in a cluster munition using white phosphorous.
Barrel bombs are so 2016.
vas pup • April 8, 2017 10:41 AM
German police hunt sunbather drone perverts in Munich:
http://www.dw.com/en/german-police-hunt-sunbather-drone-perverts-in-munich/a-38342790
Just for weekend relax! Yeah, as in US naked body images is always of greater concern of LEAs than weaponized drones which are real danger for life and health. That are stupid priorities – forget my politically incorrect comment
Patriot COMSEC • April 20, 2017 9:41 PM
I have been waiting for this one: for skies over the US to be filled with weaponized drones.
I look at it as poetic justice for what has happened overseas. Using drones to kill people is so sloppy and dumb that it is not even worth explaining. When you see weaponized drones in the sky over Iowa City, and you are not free to say what you think, you can be assured that totalitarian democracy (or some other oxymoron) has arrived.
The pressure to militarize and use whizz-bang technology is great. A lot of money is involved, and vendors are driving this. Scary.
InfoSec • July 22, 2017 1:12 PM
I know this is an old story, but it also a story that doesn’t exist…anymore. Did anyone notice that the article just has vanished? I mean, I can’t even find it by searching. Click the link; it’s like it was never there. Spooky. What news site completely deletes a story as if it never existed? Even if you retract a story, don’t you have to post the retraction?
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AnyMouse • April 3, 2017 7:21 AM
I’m interested in the liability aspect here. Let’s say one is hijacked and used in a robbery, murder etc. What are the city’s lawyers going to say when they first get sued over it? What laws would cover something like this.
Given the inevitable terrible security, I’d think they’d easily be able to prove negligence and basically allowing any grade schooler to hack them.
Or what happens when they’re turned against the police?