Escaped inmate may have used wire cutters delivered by drone | Hacker News Reader

Escaped inmate may have used wire cutters delivered by drone

washingtonpost.com

38 pointsendswapper53 comments

""“They have to land for you to get the contraband off of them,” he said. “They can’t drop it like a bomb.”

This doesn't seem logical. I mean, (if) I were to attempt this, I'd fly a drone very high out of site of the guards, with a downward facing camera. Wait until I was over the correct area, and release the (heavy) tool that would fall mostly straight down. Seems pretty hard to spot / track / fail at. As far as dropping it, thats just a servo, hardly difficult.

Depending on the size of the wire cutters (which are definitely tiny vs bolt cutters) the servo drop method is extremely plausible, it's the same delivery system ISIS has been using for consumer drones in Syria and Iraq.

There seems to be some inconsistencies in this article- wire cutters, or bolt cutters? Big difference.

I have a DJI quad. You can't hear it (and you can hardly see it) when it's hundreds of meters up, but there's no way the guards could miss the whine if it came into the yard to land.

If I were going to do this:

Take one of the more powerful DJI quads like the Phantom Pro, connect some high strength fishing line to it, run the drone up 200-300 feet until you couldn't hear it anymore, then tie the contraband on to the end. The fishing line adds minimal weight and puts the drone out of range of eyes/ears.

It would be swinging around pretty wildly at the bottom (depending on wind), but now I really want to see somebody do this.

Right, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. Had he even done the most trivial of searches he would have seen that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F74m2hph1l8

> But an official aerial photo of the prison shows rings of tall fences and an expanse of more than 50 yards between the prison perimeter and the cellblocks, making it unlikely someone could have thrown or catapulted tools to him.

Have they never heard of a potato cannon?

>“They have to land for you to get the contraband off of them,” he said. “They can’t drop it like a bomb.”

I see no reason why this is entirely impossible in all circumstances.

The headline is unsubstantiated speculation by the prison. There's no evidence cited that the wire cutters were delivered by drone.

And so begins the push to require that all drones be registered with the police and equipped with an ID transponder and a remote kill switch...

They're already pushing that to a degree, DJI is actually a proponent of a digital tracking ID and registration.

On DJI drones, you already need to be "signed in" to the app in order to fly in regulated airspace (or what DJI thinks is regulated airspace). It is also necessary to exceed the legal height limit of 400ft. I wonder if anyone is stupid enough to do that?

That only affects the newer ones the ones even the phantom 3 basic can be flown without the app.

Also it's not that the registration is tied to a government issues ID at this point.

Throwaway email and a basic android bruner phone can't really be tracked.

The people that would make that decision would pat themselves on the back for making the world a better place despite it being trivial to make your own multirotor device.

This is already on due to idiots flying them near airports.

>"Tamez said there is no easy way for prisons to protect against the use of small, unmanned aircraft, other than hiring more guards to watch the fences."

Can the drone and controller radio signals be detected, recognized and triangulated? seems cheaper than staffing up..

How about a net?

Yeah, it's not like 3D, open-to-weather but not flying things (usually birds have been the bigger concern) enclosures are a new concept.

A company called Skysafe released some press in 2015 (nothing since), which showed them taking control of a DJI Phantom 2. It should definitely be feasible to intercept and take over many consumer drones, with the right hardware, but there may be some FCC limitations to consider.

The reason they haven't released anything since the Phantom 2 is because that was the last DJI drone before they started using the Lightbridge protocol. Lightbridge (and now OcuSync) have strong encryption and have not been broken yet AFAIK.

well prisons aren't even allowed to block cell phones within prison walls, the state of Georgia confiscated over twenty two thousand cell phones in 2016. Yes, twenty two thousand. [1]. This lets them continue to commit crimes while behind bars.

The rules that prevent anyone else from blocking radio and cellular signals apply to prisons as well. so in a battle against drones one of the only steps would be to keep all inmates inside 24x7 but that still leaves you with exposure on details and worst yet, the staff.

http://www.myajc.com/news/local/georgia-prisons-inmates-use-...

> well prisons aren't even allowed to block cell phones within prison walls, the state of Georgia confiscated over twenty two thousand cell phones in 2016.

Seems to me that blocking cell phones is the wrong solution; preventing smuggling of contraband is the solution.

If you can smuggle cellphones in, cellphones are far from your only problem, and probably far from your biggest.

Seems like it'd be a lot easier to jam cellphones with a few hundred bucks worth of parts than apply Supermax security standards to every low-security inmate.

The technology isn't the issue. FCC and similar regulations are.

I'm aware of that. This seems like the sort of thing where an exemption should be a no-brainer, and I'm fairly shocked there hasn't been a law allowing jammers in prisons yet.

Even if that worked, it will only buy a little bit of time. Drones already have partial autonomy capabilities and will probably be fully autonomous, with no signals to jam, before too long.

You could jam the GPS.

you could fly high, you could use optical flow, pattern detection

Military aircraft and missiles use celestial navigation in GPS denied areas. All you need is one or two cameras pointed up and a bit of software.

The Trident system did it back in the 70s, it's not really that hard.

Not always.

You can use cameras [1] plus magnetometers and accelerometers to do dead reckoning and get pretty good results.

[1] https://pixhawk.org/modules/px4flow

https://www.droneshield.com

They have a detector that can listen for drones that people can't hear.

Why are they so sure he didn't obtain the wire cutters the classic way: via dirty guard?

I've never understood how escapees are smart enough to put together an elaborate escape plan, but then don't have the sense to lay low.

Sometimes I think there are plenty of people who escape but it's not publicized so as to not encourage it and that the ones who do escape and are caught are made examples of.

If you're smart enough and patient enough to lay low, you tend to realize that you're better rewarded by working within the system.

Like, the fundamental character flaw that leads to criminality is believing that you're entitled to significantly more than society says you are based on the skills you've developed and the effort you've put in.

That's kind of implying a meritocracy actually exists.

Whoops, forgot to mention the parents you were born to. If they're higher class or just plain old spend more resources on you, society winds up letting you get more stuff.

It's not just about intelligence, but also about impulse control, mental illness, desperation, etc. Someone could be reasonably or even very intelligent and still have issues in these other areas.

That's kind of the point I was trying to make though.

Isn't planning an escape a display of those traits?

Planning an elaborate escape, securing cash, biding your time, roping others in - isn't that a display of controlling your impulses, clear enough thinking to plan something out long term?

Seems like it's a display of more than just intelligence.

It's almost like these people just lack focus and if they had something productive to devote their time to they may have avoided this life.

If you are smart enough to now where the line is draw and patient enough to play the moves in the right order and time, you might as well be given a high job in some companies. /s

Anyone think life behind bars is harsh for just holding someone up at gunpoint? Though a lawyer - probably has connections w/ judges and other lawyers so--he got the book thrown at him... Kind of sad that we waste tax payer dollars keeping people in jail this long who don't need to be.

I don't know. The way I see it, pointing a gun at someone is a threat to kill them; why else do you point a gun at them? Anyone who is willing to kill (as the victim must surely assume) doesn't belong out on the street. Can they be rehabilitated? Maybe, and then maybe life in prison is harsh. But if someone points a gun at me I'm going to assume they're going to kill me and as far as I'm concerned they should be treated as if they were going to. There's a difference between saying you're going to kill someone and actually being only the slightest twitch away from doing so, intentionally. I have little sympathy for those who would care so little for the lives of others. Life is too precious to be soft on those who disregard it.

Just watched... going in style--where old geezers robbed a bank.. the guns were loaded w/ blanks--so just pointing a gun doesn't always mean intent to kill -- plus some people at age 19 might intend to kill, but by age 30 they see htey were an idiot and come around and are nothing like that, shouldn't they be able to re-enter society if not a threat any longer?

Now if they did kill someone that's a whole separate thing, and also aren't you innocent till proven guilty? Intent should not matter you can't be convicted of your intent, but of your actual actions which is you pointed a gun at a person, you did not fire said gun so shouldn't be accountable for the higher crime.. Not saying don't punish, but temper based on final outcomes...

had an uncle who's son robbed a hotel w/ his gun he was 18, his dad like 40's... he got something like 5-10 years. His dad who was asleep in the hotel room got 75 years because he owned the gun... He's been in jail since 1993, my grandpa died never having been able to visit/see him because he was all the way in Texas.

Ah, the low-budget variation on the old classic -- the helicopter prison escape!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_esca...

Even as a preteen in the mid 90s, I was intrigued by the obvious criminal possibilities presented by remote-controlled helicopters. Only a matter of time until someone is murdered with a consumer drone.

Considering how small, fast, and cheap drones are these days, I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened yet.

I've thought about this too... I can imagine a kamikaze drone armed with an explosive (or swarm of them) would be a pretty effective weapon.

I've had the exact same thought. Drones are the perfect assassination tool. I mean, they are already being used as such by ISIS and the US (e.g. Yemen). But you would think that the common criminal would have begun using them by now too. So far all I've heard of in that regard is them being used for drug trafficking.

A teen in CT attached a pistol to a Drone a few years ago. He only did it for "test" purposes. I was very impressed how the drone handled the recoil.

There have been occasions in California recently where fire-fighting aircraft have been grounded because of amateur drone flights in the vicinity [1]. It would seem to be in the vicinity of homicide, if a civilian died in a fire that had had fire-fighting aircraft deployed but interfered with.

[1] http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/communications_ifyoufl...

ISIS certainly has murdered people with consumer drones.

Trebuchet seems like it'd be a lot cheaper with larger payload...

But way harder to correctly aim in first try.

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