Why we should worry about domestic drones and how to bring them down | Hacker News Reader

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

blogs.reuters.com

37 pointsprostoalex57 comments

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?

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.

It has always been this way, and we're supposed to have a system of government that realizes and actively fights this desire.

Over the past several decades, however, the system of self-restraints has broken, however, probably irreparably. I don't think there was any one reason or master conspiracy or anything -- just lots of little compromises made by people doing the best they could.

Understanding why it happened doesn't make it any better, though.

Back in Lincoln's day you could ride all the way to DC, wait in line at the White House, and based on a lottery be able to go in and talk to the president. And he would feel embarrassed for whatever problems you had and would listen to you patiently.

Those days are long gone. And the goal of perfect safety for elected officials is still just as far away now as it was then. Not a good trade for the republic.

I wonder how different Lincoln's listening was from petitions.whitehouse.gov.

>>a huge percentage of the population wants a king

Only because those making arguments against having a king are not persuasive.

>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.

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.

It's like they think people should fear government not the other way around.

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.

> As one of the richest, most comfortable, most stable countries in the world?

I'm frankly shocked people think this way. I feel it requires a robust whitewashing of US activities over the last couple decades.

We have been in more active wars than any other nation over the last decade. Our banks caused a fiscal crisis that bore international financial ruin. Our presidential candidates speak openly about overthrowing foreign governments during public debates. The NSA has set the info era surveillance bar so high that i fear we, as a people, will never be able to reverse it.

I won't even begin to rebuttal a hilariously hypocritical stance the US is taking on domestic vs militaristic drone use. Though, it is much the same stance they have with NSA snooping, so we should not be shocked.

Throughout history, the U.S. has intervened militarily and toppled foreign governments in order to maintain a status quo that favors itself. Before the Middle East it was Asia, and before that, going back to quite early in the nation's history, it was Latin America. These days, we get into a lot of wars relative to other Western democracies because we've agreed to take on the role of maintaining a world order that keeps these countries at the top. Western Europe didn't spend hundreds of years fighting strategic wars then simply evolve past that in the 20th century--they just outsourced the job to us.

As for the fiscal crisis, in the grand scheme of things it's quite a short blip on a very long streak of prosperity, and it wasn't just U.S. banks involved--their counterparts in Europe were doing the exact same things.

> 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

How did you get that from the article?

Isn't your post a better example of fearmongering? The article says absolutely nothing about banning, or even regulations or laws, beyond those that apply to jamming (e.g. anti-drone).

Drones are and will increasingly be used for criminal enterprise. Being rational about how that changes things seems like a pretty reasonable thing to do, just as personal backpack helicopters would probably lead to a rapid rise in robberies where someone escapes via their helicopter, necessitating the appropriate change in capture techniques.

>For the recreational pilot who loses control of his machine, better firmware can keep it from hovering over prohibited areas like the White House. Sense-and-avoid radars can instruct pilots on what to avoid.

From the second-to-last paragraph of the article. That is why I said "stops one step short of". The one step that the article left unstated was "And since sufficiently advanced firmware is impossible, these should be banned."

Rather than controlling it remotely, you could programme in a destination and time and it could rely on GPS and a backup gyroscope for when GPS is unavailable. Fast forward a decade or two when the tech has improved a bit, and add a camera and facial recognition and let it rip on your target of choice. They get good at shooting them down? Make sure you send 50 of them instead of 1.

[edit] It seems inevitable to me that this will happen at some point in the next few decades. It also seems inevitable to me that countries will enact laws to try and prevent it. But that it will happen anyway. No matter what law is created.

It's not hard to imagine cheap(ish) long range autonomous drones that can't be jammed. Such a drone can't communicate or coordinate attacks in flight, but a mere timer or location trigger can still make an attack pretty exact.

The technology is sufficiently cheap and available off the shelf today that even a moderately skilled person could assemble an autonomous drone that carries a small bomb and detonates it at a specific coordinate at a speficic point in time. Any viable defense is a dome, either physical or virtual (e.g. realized by autonomous lasers, some form of projectile weapon, or a swarm of counter dronws). In any case it's clear how asymmetric the threat is in the sense that any viable defense is orders of magnitude more advanced and expensive than the attack.

The simplest way of avoiding these attacks in their simplest form is likely already in place for high value targets: you don't reveal an exact time and place for an appearance, being a few meters or a few minutes off is enough to thwart the dumbest drones.

There are communication channels that can't be jammed in practice (eg. color and shape codes). The drone does not need to be completely mute and uncordianted.

The way to avoid this kind of attack is the same way people has been avoiding for ages somebody hiding a bomb with a clock at the target. It's done by police investigation and arresting the people as soon as they start making bombs. Helped by the fact that most people that want to do something like that are too stupid not to blow themselves while trying, this has been good enough for a long time.

We need to teach our children how to make airplanes. As long as we can, as a living generation, assure future generations that this technology will be something they can, themselves, benefit from, then we have a chance.

It is true of all technology: it can be weaponized. So, use it more peacefully, with more enthusiasm to promote life, and stay safe. Fact: drones are good for the environment. Conversion to a drone-based delivery system could be a very positive impact on our environment through transportation. The drone-pizzabox is a good idea, death robots from the sky are a very, very bad idea. As long as you know how to make a flying thing out of a bit of greasy cardboard, you can stay safe in the universe. Pizza helps too.

Not to get all libertarian, but this reminds me of the gun control debate. What this person seems to be most worried about (a drone attack) would necessarily be the work of a criminal. But what this person seems to be endorsing (a law restricting civilian drone use) would mostly limit the freedom of those who follow the law. It's very silly and a bit disappointing.

a law restricting civilian drone use

Was this submission originally linked to something else? The submission talks about jamming and techniques to shoot down drones. I coincidentally mentioned on here yesterday the business opportunities around anti-drone technology-

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8998369

None of this has anything to do with banning drones. Several comments thus far have fearmongered a worry that the article doesn't even remotely claim.

EDIT: While I know that commenting on moderation is verboten, and seldom beneficial, the moderation in this discussion are embarrassing. Fear-mongering hysterics of the actual worst kind, incapable of discussing actual changes without rhetoric and propaganda. Though now I see this was flagged to the fourth page, unseen by normal rational people.

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 rhetoric at this stage is troubling, because I have a pretty good idea where it's headed.

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.

Stupid frat guys aren't going to fly explosive laden drones over restricted areas. However, everyone will have to pay the cost of this stupid DRM as it slows down operations and sucks battery. Worse, if it's made mandatory, it might stifle open source hardware.

The blind urge to control and regulate is one of the most destructive force in the economy.

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.

The author was clearly discussing the recent events regarding the drone that went over the White House. For normal buyers of drones, and for drone companies, such "blacklists" make sense because it protects the drone operator. Right now if you fly your drone over the White House, an airport, and so on, you -- the operator -- are taking significant legal risks. DJI and other companies know that their average user doesn't want that, hence the "blacklist". But it (flying in restricted areas) remains against the law, and a serious risk, whether your drone complies with it or not. The author of the piece seemed to talk about that from a "normal device" perspective.

But of course everyone knows that such a list would do nothing against a real criminal who would override such functionality. It isn't really clever for anyone to point that out, and it's reacting in advance to a non-law or regulation, but hysterically responding to a company trying to ensure that their customers don't accidentally get in trouble with the law.

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-drone drones, and hope that they're faster and more aggressive than the attacker's. Another might be to place a rifle under the control of a CV system. Both options seem awful to me, and inevitable.

I doubt the first (civilian) drone assasination will be that sophisticated. Face recognition from a moving object at an unfortunate angle is not easy and it's even harder if you want to do it from a fixed-wing drone that can't hover like a quadcopter. I'd rather expect an assassination by a fixed-wing remote-controlled UAV targeted at someone speaking at a public event, some place where traditional methods (knives, rifles, car bombs) fail because line-of-sight access is heavily restricted.

Line of sight for rifles goes out to as much as 2,707 yards for .338 Lapua Magnum (in the very longest recorded sniper kill). 1,000 yards is a very standard range for long range target shooting.

What's more significant here is that people so exquisitely experienced just have no reason (today) to assassinate, and protection out to, oh, 500-600 yards is I suppose generally good enough.

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.

Lasers would be more effective. 1W and above lasers are readily available on the open market, and output more than enough power to fuse or burn out any optics that are not shielded.

Including eyeballs. Using high-power lasers in crowded area seems even more dangerous than bullets - the latter at least don't reflect off surfaces.

No, but they follow ballistic trajectories and can ricochet. A laser is at least predictable, and given that most drones would fly above ground level for visibility, it would take a very unlucky reflection to injure someone on the ground.

A bullet is going to come down somewhere.

And we're likely talking about fairly low angles, i.e. less than 45 degrees up from horizontal. Straight up is fairly safe because air resistance slows the bullet on its way down. Less than 45 degrees, it's going to come down hard a long distance away.

Shotguns are another possible approach, but I'm pretty sure the shot size required would be big enough to cause harm to more than people's eyes. And for this sort of thing civilian shotguns would have an effective range of maybe 50 yards max, so it would be a CIWS.

The US Navy is moving from the 20mm Vulcan Gatling gun based Phalanx to a missile based CIWS ... that might be the most discriminating system after a laser, but still very problematic, you would have issues with the operators being very hesitant to set them to firing because there would likely be civilian casualties, and if it just turned out to be a paparazzi or otherwise non-dangerous drone, they'd get crucified.... And neither an effective laser nor an effective kinetic/explosive CIWS would be cheap.

I didn't do the math here, but my intuition tells me that as lasers scatter, if you point a 1MW beam at a rough surface, you'll have a lot of high-power reflections in every direction - even a laser pointer reflecting off a wall is annoying for the eyes. I'd love someone more knowledgable about high-powered lasers to chime in here.

Anyway, neither of those two options seem safe for drones flying just above people's heads. Maybe microwave lasers would be better? Also low-powered visible-light lasers could be enough to blind sensors and force the drone to rely on dead reckoning while not risking eye damage.

Lasers are slow to impact (unless using an obscene amount of power) and require precise tracking of the target over time (because they're slow).

Conversely, it is far easier to hit a moving target with a laser than it is to hit a moving target with a projectile. With a projectile, you have to aim where the target is projected to be, whereas with a laser you aim where it is now.

CIWS systems and fighter cannon are gatling guns precisely because the probability of any single round hitting a small, moving target is low.

If all you need to do is overload the optical circuits of a drone, a 1W laser is sufficient. Whether you kill the drone by incinerating it in midair or kill it by causing it to crash due to loss of orientation, the result is the same.

A lot of CIWS systems are missle based: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system#Missile... And the US and Germany are moving from Gatling gun based ones to a "Rolling Airframe Missile" that as I read it is self-guided once fired: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-116_Rolling_Airframe_Missi... Needless to say, using blast fragmentation warheads near crowds is sub-optimal.

This really sounds like a job for Death Rays, err, the laser finally getting a serious workout as a kill mechanism.

Or hunter-killer drones that can close in and fire some sort of directed fragmentation / shaped charge warhead? That might be a viable alternative, especially once 3d fabrication reaches an acceptable maturity.

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).

http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-30369701 and http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-30446136 for more info on that near-miss.

> 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 certification:

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

And if it did, any commercial aircraft certificated since the late 1940s will survive an engine failure on take-off, and continue to climb.

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.

Yet sometimes a single bird will take out an engine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KhZwsYtNDE

Modern engines are designed to contain the damage, and multi-engine jets are designed to be able to maintain control, climb to a safe altitude, and return to the airport with an engine out, so flying a small drone into an engine probably won't cause a major disaster, but it will cause a lot of disruption as the plane declares an emergency and returns to the airport, and cost a lot of money to repair or replace the engine.

One of the suggested videos for that one was interesting. It's a video from a forward facing camera in an F-16 as it gets hit by a bird, which shuts down the engine. The pilot tries for a while to restart, fails, ejects, and the plane crashes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zN_Zl64OQEw

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 amazing ignorance or are people really this dumb and crazy(I usually avoid mainstream news).

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 very first day(it's just inevitable) and then you just keep on spending money on parts. It's most definitely not a "drone" like the quadrocopters are, not any more than R/C electric cars are.

Edit: that's a lama V3 if you were wondering: http://www.dx.com/p/e-sky-lama-v3-r-c-helicopter-1166

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

"The American public largely hates domestic use of drones, and only 3 percent are “very likely” to buy one this year, according to a recent Reuters American Insights poll."

Huh? Hate is a very strong word for a technology that the "public" planned to showcase during a big collage football game but was shut down by the FAA. http://www.freep.com/story/sports/college/university-michiga...

I have no doubt that the FAA, "hates" the domestic use of drones but the public keeps finding tons of incredible uses for them, which seems to be complicating the security issue. The security issue is clear, even if you could jam the whole frequency spectrum how do you deal with possibly disrupting emergency medical care, package delivery, surveillance... This article grossly oversimplifies the security issue. Garbage.

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.

Well, an errant drone recently crash landed on the White House grounds: https://www.google.com/search?q=drone+white+house+grounds

I see cost, controls, range, autonomous operation, and accuracy as all being factors.

If you've got people who don't like you, small cheap ways of delivering hurt or death become an issue.

> Like the car bomb, the drone bomb could become a cheap, ubiquitous and anonymous way to deliver explosives.

Should we ban cars as well then?

I'm sure jamming Wifi and GPS will have fun effects on drones as is jamming common frequencies for radio controllers at 72Mhz will also have fun effects of crashed drones.

Not sure if this is possible but actually if you make a broad frequency listener with software controlled radio then you can try and just jam all local heard frequencies with a stronger noise signal.

http://www.amazon.com/Kill-Decision-Daniel-Suarez/dp/0451417...

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