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Armed Robot Drones To Join UK Police Force
Lanxon writes "British criminals should soon prepare to be shot at from unmanned airborne police robots. Last month it was revealed that modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from British protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers. But these drones could be armed with tasers, non-lethal projectiles and ultra-powerful disorienting strobe lighting apparatus, reports Wired. The flying robot fleet will range from miniature tactical craft such as the miniature AirRobot being tested by one police force, to BAE System's new 12m-wide armed HERTI drone as flown in Afghanistan."
The LRAD is a highly directional speaker made of a flat array of piezoelectric transducers, producing intense beam of sound in a 30-degree cone. It can be used as a loudhailer, or deafen the target with a jarring, discordant noise. Some ships now carry LRAD as an anti-pirate measure: It was used to drive off an attack on the Seabourn Spirit off Somalia in 2005.
I recommend UK people carry rubber bungs to put in their ears, in the case of planetary destruction by Vogons and attack by insane police UAVs.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
February 10 @ 6:43 PM: When Will AI Surpass Human Intelligence?
February 10 @ 9:45 PM: Six-legged Robot Teaches Itself to Walk
February 11 @ 2:24 AM: Armed Robot Drones to Join UK Police Force
In less than 8 hours we have gone from wondering about AI, to robots that have learned how to walk, to robots that are flying around shooting at people. This is all happening much too fast.
Neato! No longer will a call to the cops that your house has been burgled and there are footprints and fingerprints all over the place result in a response of 'we are too busy to investigate, here's a crime number for your insurance claim'. Now it will be 'we will have a unit over the area within minutes, here's a crime number for your insurance claim'. Still no investigation, but maybe the drone can measure how cars are parked and issue some tickets.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Anything sub-lethal will be childishly easy to defeat, once it's been seen in action a few times. And no doubt the methods used will quickly be adapted by terrorists for Third World use on the more dangerous versions of the drones.
I sat here for barely a minute and came up with three ways to mislead and confuse the drones that would almost certainly have a high degree of success. And I'm no expert.
One hint: how will the cops look when they taser a minor who happens to be dressed like the alleged criminal, and how difficult would it be to engineer such a substitution?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Dammit you guys...
1984 and Brazil (movie not country) are not bloody HOWTO guides!
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
This is a highly speculative article, assuming that because these drones can carry weapons that they will.
While I wouldn't put it past the Home Office to want to do this, I'd be surprised if the Police were too keen.
Here in the UK there is a strange dichotomy, we seem perfectly happy to be watched all the time, but the idea of armed police is an absolute no go.
Riot police in the UK don't even use water cannon, and rubber bullets haven't been used by british police in decades. There are a few areas which have introduced a handful of Tasers, but these are used by specialist armed response units, not the average bobby on the beat. The idea of launching anything potentially dangerous from the air seem highly unlikely when they don't even use it on the ground.
Of course that doesn't stop the police from being violent, but when they are it tends to be national news for weeks after. See the death of Ian Tomlinson and the controversial "ketteling" technique used at the demonstrations in the summer for good examples.
The UK Police are currently trying desperately trying to improve their public image after a lot of bad press from the 2009 demos, and the ongoing harassment of photographers and the abuse of the Section 44 Stop and Search powers. Doing something like this would put them back to square one the moment it goes wrong.
So while not impossible, this report seemed to be highly speculative and purely designed to get clicks and build paranoia.
For all their flaws, the UK police are not actually idiots, and in a land where police are not armed, and using a baton in a riot is considered heavy handed, let alone water cannon and rubber bullets, launching Tasers from the sky would be public relations disaster.
Paul Leader
And because it's Britain, there isn't much to worry about. The project will be delayed by 8 years, overrun its budget by about 12 Million GBP. They'll come up with a crap logo for it as they did for the Olympics, and within a few hours of launch, the drones will malfunction and start tasering trees; eventually the whole project will be scrapped for health and safety reasons, I mean, what if the tree falls on someone while it's being tasered?
Always proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
Nate here from Wired. Somehow the URL Slashdot's pointing to has been truncated. Correct one is: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-02/10/future-police-meet-the-uk's-armed-robot-drones.aspx
I know this part of TFS was about a slightly different story, but: "[...] modified military aircraft drones will carry out surveillance on everyone from British protesters and antisocial motorists to fly-tippers" sums up the state of the UK perfectly, our Glorious Government will spend millions on police drones that carry out surveillance on everyone from protesters to motorists to people throwing away rubbish, so everyone except criminals then?
It's the same old pattern, if it costs a fortune and can be used to keep the guy on the street under control, the budget is endless whether the excuse is terrorism/crime (new strict laws, insane airport security, full body scanners, ID cards, numerous measures to spy on everything we do) or our own "safety" (miles and miles of speed cameras, even on roads where you're lucky to be doing half the speed limit most of the time), and yet nobody seems to feel any safer.
Actually, I'd have to disagree with that.
They'll find a way to monetise this - have the robots automatically hand out fines, for instance - and believe me, within a year they will be amazingly efficient.
on unmaned remote controled vehicles is ultimately the only thing that will deter shoplifters.
"... and yet nobody seems to feel any safer."
And of course there is good reason for that: nobody is any safer.
Traffic cameras have actually increased accident rates. A recent report said that approximately 1 crime was solved for every 100,000 surveillance cameras installed (there are over a million in London). The report did not say whether any of them were major crimes, or whether the same crime might have been solved anyway had the cops been on the street instead of behind cameras. And how about cost? How much does it cost to install 100,000 cameras and pay someone to watch them?
And so on. It seems like it has just been an endless stream of the same old thing: give up your liberties in order to make you "safer", but in reality it inconveniences you greatly, costs you a lot of money, and doesn't work. But you have still lost those liberties.
--
"They that give up essential liberties in order to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - Benjamin Franklin
They'll never program robots to have the hatred, malice and spite of real coppers. Maybe a robot could gun down an unarmed man on a tube station platform, but could it convincingly circulate a wholly misleading account of events afterwards? And then, after the inquest, issue a press release basically saying "We don't care, we'll do it again if we feel like it".
"That's not relevant."
Why isn't it? I don't know about the UK, but here, cameras were installed at traffic lights for the specific purpose of catching people running red lights. The onstensible motivation for installing the cameras was to discourage people from running those red lights, and thereby prevent accidents. But according to reports from the UK (who have had them longer than we), and those U.S. cities which have had them for a couple of years, pretty consistently indicate that they have the opposite effect: that of actually increasing the accident rate. None of the studies of which I am aware noted any significant increase or decrease in relative injury or fatality rate of those accidents.
So, basically, they have just the opposite societal effect as was intended, and as was used to justify their expense to the public. But the fact of the matter is, we KNOW why they were installed in our community, despite what the local politicians said: they were put there to generate revenue for the police department through the issuance of traffic tickets. I know that is so because they are required to report it. Those same politicians recently voted to increase the number of cameras in my city, using as justification the fact that each existing camera brought in a bit more than 3 times the revenue than what it cost. They did not even bother to pretend this time that they were for preventing accidents.
"A small proportion of installed cameras in the UK are monitored. Most of them are owned privately (in shops etc), and the recording is only looked at if something happens."
Whether they are owned privately or not is the part that is irrelevant. It still eventually comes down to societal cost. Those businesses that installed cameras will increase their prices or their margins so the "the people" eventually pay for them.
As for the other part: so, only a small proportion are monitored. How small? Is maybe 0.1% a good rough guess? If so, then here is what you still have in London, according to those figures from the BBC: you still have the societal cost of installing 1,000,000 cameras and the video systems that go with them, plus the cost of 1,000 people to watch those systems, to solve 10 crimes. Not even necessarily major crimes.
That is a lot of cost. And even if you figure the initial cost is gone after the first year, you still have the cost of paying 1,000 people to watch cameras in order to solve 10 crimes. That is still a lot of cost. 1000 x annual wages or salary, to solve 10 crimes.
And that is one of the reasons we don't do it here.
I am a lot more afraid of the increasingly draconian powers of governments than I am of terrorists.
Next to this lot, one more drone in the sky that isn't going to do more than spy on you, tase you or cause an epileptic fit with its strobe lights seems like nothing, which tells you have far we have fallen. Roll in 6 May, and may none of the big parties achieve a working majority that lets them take any of this madness any further.
By the way, was anyone else dumbfounded while listening to David Miliband talking about the release of the torture information yesterday? Speaking in Parliament, he seemed far more interested in being nice to the US and protecting the intelligence agencies than he was about the fact that our government knew about torture being carried out on a British resident, and did nothing about it! He even had the cheek to claim that the revelation of this information now showed that everyone had recourse to the law and the system was working, which I'm sure will be a great comfort to those under control orders who clearly do not have any such thing, not to mention to the man who was held and tortured for years in this particular case. I thought our succession of increasingly abusive Home Secretaries was bad, but Miliband, D. has just made it to second place on my "really doesn't get it" scale, right behind Blair, T.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
"That's not relevant."
Why isn't it?
It's not relevant, in the sense that I don't really care about someone causing minor vehicle damage rear-ending a car that stops a bit too quickly at the lights. I care about the people suffering serious injury when someone runs the lights.
But according to reports from the UK (who have had them longer than we), and those U.S. cities which have had them for a couple of years, pretty consistently indicate that they have the opposite effect
The only reports like that I've seen have been from very biased motoring organisations.
The government statistics show the number of "KSI" (people killed or seriously injured) is reduced.
they were put there to generate revenue for the police department through the issuance of traffic tickets
Which doesn't happen in the UK (at least, not at a local level). The revenue goes to central government. Local authorities (local government) get grants for road safety, which they might use on cameras, or they might use on education, training, or redesigning roads.
In the USA there seem to be places that have installed cameras and decreased the yellow-light time. Here, the yellow light time is standard (for a given speed of road).
That is a lot of cost. And even if you figure the initial cost is gone after the first year, you still have the cost of paying 1,000 people to watch cameras in order to solve 10 crimes. That is still a lot of cost. 1000 x annual wages or salary, to solve 10 crimes.
You've just made up a load of numbers.
People monitoring cameras don't solve crimes, although they might witness them. Police looking through what was recorded may get evidence which they can use to solve crimes and convict criminals.
Monitored cameras are either a deterrent -- they move the problem elsewhere, although obviously not as well as a policeman standing in the street would -- or they are used for directing the police.