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Drones Used To Smuggle Drugs Into Prison
Daniel_Stuckey writes "Over the weekend, a 28-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of using a small quadcopter drone to smuggle an unknown quantity of illegal drugs into a prison in Melbourne, Australia. While it's certainly not the first time small-fry UAV technology has been used by a mid-level mule to airmail drugs into the clink, it does suggest a growing trend in the highest-tech of prison highs. Here, then, is a brief history of drone-assisted prison drug smuggling In November 2013, guards at Hull jail in Gatineau, Canada, spotted a small drone flying over the prison's walls [beware the autoplaying videos]. An exhaustive search of both Hull's grounds and the immediate vicinity turned up nothing by way of whatever contraband the drone might have been toting around.
Nevertheless, it didn't appear to be one-off incident 'This sort of thing happens often in prisons all across Quebec,' Stephane Lemaire, president of Quebec's correctional officers' union, told the Ottawa Sun. 'Usually the drones are carrying small packages of drugs or other illicit substances.' The problem, Lemaire added, is that 'the drone can be controlled from more than a kilometer away, and the [Hull] prison is surrounded by forest.'"
Nevertheless, it didn't appear to be one-off incident 'This sort of thing happens often in prisons all across Quebec,' Stephane Lemaire, president of Quebec's correctional officers' union, told the Ottawa Sun. 'Usually the drones are carrying small packages of drugs or other illicit substances.' The problem, Lemaire added, is that 'the drone can be controlled from more than a kilometer away, and the [Hull] prison is surrounded by forest.'"
Solution.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is quite an interesting idea. DYI drones are getting more and more common - and there are plenty of people with electronics background who can make the control interface.
Make the commands sent to the drone be sent encrypted/signed - allowing automatic handoffs between controlling terminals.
It would be pretty easy to make drones do the 'chore' of crossing international borders for you. Just put out a couple of 'base stations' that are quiet unless the drone is coming by .. and which directs the drone when it is close.
I'm wondering how well prepared border control / custom agents are for taking down fast moving drones that sweep in pretty low.
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
Personally I am shocked that throwing drugs to a few people in cages is the only crime a drone has committed. It strikes me that a crime committed by a drone has the huge advantage of being low risk as compared to committing those same crimes in person. Arson, terrorism, bank robberies, break and enters, murder, and why not go whole hog and even go petty thuggery and do some muggings?
Most of our existing justice system is based upon game theory. The idea is to dissuade criminals from doing their various crimes by causing them to balance the benefits of a successful heist against the penalties when they are caught. A simple example would be that bank robberies are very easy and generally net a fair amount of cash; and if done properly should be fairly low risk. So the idea is that you make the penalties huge with the hope that regular bank robbers will eventually slip up and then face a monster penalty. So even the average sociopath will think twice before saying, "stick'em up". But if you can reduce that risk to something resembling zero then your average intelligent sociopath should be out there causing all kinds of criminal mayhem.
I am willing to bet that before 2020 that we will see some very interesting crimes committed by drones, I am not talking crime of the century (although that is possible) but something where the drone was put to a very innovative use.
While what I am suggesting will be fun to read about; I am much more scared of the terroristic possibilities; again right now the only people who do the game theory on terrorism and think that the benefits outweigh the risks are either very stupid or very fanatical; these are circumstances that have generally kept terrorism as a fairly infrequent event. But again if you are changing the math so that being caught is no longer a near certainty then drone terrorism may very well become attractive to a slightly greater number of fruitcakes. I don't think there will be a tsunami of attacks but I am willing to bet that you will see a multiple of 2 or 3 times the number of serious attacks in normally stable countries.
But the sad part is that for the most part this type of technology will probably catch the public imagination and there will be all kinds of restrictions put on drone technology. The reality is that it will simply be another tool used by criminals and terrorists as the shoes they wear or the cellphones they call with.
How long until drones are used to fly a prisoner out of prison?
http://www.techspot.com/news/5...
Maybe someone in the jailhouse ordererd a package from amazon ?
Eh kinda hard to get line of sight to a drone through a forest. Maybe they should be looking for the guy clingling grimly to the tops of the trees?
driverless cars, no more suicide car bombers.
They already sold a trailer of weed to Canadian prison guards and smuggled weed into the US using a "drone" model train. This is exactly the sort of thing they would do! Bubbles buys a quadrocopter to play with, Julian figures out how to use it for selling drugs, Ricky crashes it, Trevor and Corey take the blame.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-10/police-have-charged-a-man-after-a-drone-was-found-over-a-melbou/5309798
I for one welcome our new drug-smuggling robot overlords.
What's wrong with netting the prisons open grounds? It's fairly inexpensive and will do a pretty good job..
What's to stop a terrorist from loading some C4 and rare earth magnets on one of these and attaching it to a plane while it's taxiing at a busy airport?
Bluetooth is short range, and R/C uses audible signals on CB channel 14 or so.
Just monitor the CB band for activity that seems weird, and broadcast something that can knock them down. Whistling into a mic often works. An R/C hobby enthusiast could easily override such a signal, and take control with a much stronger local unit. Any decent computer tech should be able to snoop out a Bluetooth signal, if that's what they're using.
Triangulate on the broadcast before the takeover, and you have a place to look for the perps, while having taken down the drone for analysis and follow-up.
Two birds with one stone, there.
What's to stop a terrorist from doing anything miserable to their fellow man? Did you ever actually believe the TSA dog & pony show was accomplishing anything? If you want to behave like a cunt, there's nothing stopping you from leaving this planet in infamy. Even that little retarded kid Adam Lanza was able to leave a path of devastation on his way out the door.
I think it's a good thing too. I don't want to live in a world that has been so effectively locked down that nobody can do anything dangerous. That level of pre-crime bullshit sounds absolutely miserable, and the police industrial complex required to achieve it would bankrupt the country. If people can't get away with murder/criminal homicide, there's nothing standing in the way of tyranny.
Set up a few antennas that add some noise on the controlling frequencies, problem solved.
You don't even have to shoot the drone down, just shoot any prisoner who gets anywhere near the drone.
Or even simpler, erect a net over the prison yard.
Really, the defences against this are beyond trivial.
While what I am suggesting will be fun to read about; I am much more scared of the terroristic possibilities; [...]
Congratulations, you have been properly brainwashed. Any type of technology can be used for both 'good' and 'bad'. A spear can be used to kill a wolf that attacks you, a mammoth for food and clothing, or your rival in the clan. Gunpowder can be used to build roads, conquer a fortress or send a bullet flying at the speed of sound. An airplane can be used to travel quickly to your vacation spot, bring relief goods to a disaster area or yes, crash into a building. Drones can be used to monitor nature parks, deliver packages or point a laser at a target for a bomb to strike.
So there is no point in being scared; if people want to hurt you, they can. That's just part of living. However, I do agree that newer technologies are more insidious: with a spear you have to stand face to face with your opponent, but with a drone you can kill someone from a long distance without seeing him.
And all this talk about terrorist-this, terrorist-that only got you into a mindset of fear, and that is exactly what a terrorist wants (and if you believe some, your government as well). It doesn't really help too that every little incident is blown out of proportion, even if it happened at the other side of the planet. Fear can be a very powerful weapon, one without buttons or triggers or even blood flowing; but it can also be defused easily. So it is time to overcome your fear and come out of your cave. Be careful, but not frightful.
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
A drone-finding unit that combined radar (to detect small airborne objects), with auditory recognition of drone-propeller noise signatures (using microphones distributed over the prison boundary) would be cheap and perform quite well.
The auditory component prevent false positives caused by birds, flying debris, etc.Radar could help detect helium balloon drones, or even the 'ballistic' lobbing of contraband over prison boundaries (either manually, or using catapults). The only thing it'd miss is carrier-pigeons or a new generation of flapping-wing drones in development. However, pigeons are unlikely to land in prison yards. That is, unless a creative prisoner raised pigeons in the prison. Of course, he'd have to arrange to have the pigeons smuggled out or somehow trapped outside so contraband could be 'attached' to them (perhaps by tracking them by radio transmitter foot-band previously smuggled into prison).
The alternative is steel-mesh netting.
Or conscientious prison guards.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2654580/
So you think the answer is to allow prisoners to have drugs? Are you on drugs?
fly a gun inside
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Eh?
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Nice now you'll be able to get drugs in prison that doesn't smell like shit, actually they don't, trust me, I know. He should have gone for some weapons the aftermath of politicians losing their minds "for the children" would have been very entertaining.
I wonder what prisons would be like if they actually went ahead and sold drugs to inmates?
They'd badly damage the smuggling trade which is what drives much prison gang behavior. Buying drugs would provide a behavior incentive for inmates since they'd have to do their prison job to earn commissary money to pay for them as well as display good behavior to get them.
You could hand out only pills and control doses to make them too small to split or easily overdose as well as requiring they be taken at the point of distribution. Inmates buying them would be drug tested to make sure they took them, anyone failing the test (and thus presumably selling them) would lose buying privileges.
Besides the reward component, perhaps prisoners would be less violent if they were getting high.
Most of the anti-drug messages for broader society wouldn't apply, ie, no children, no driving.
I'm surprised that drugging inmates period hasn't ever been tried, even in countries where there are no rules they seem to prefer much more difficult violence and intimidation.
Well the obvious act has already been done; assassination but using a missile not a revolver. Flying takes a lot of fuel so carrying the weapons to commit mass murder is not possible with the current batch of personal drones.
It would makes sense, since large drug operations are after quantity. Drugs and other contraband are 4-5 times more in value among prisons then on the streets. However that's within the prison, I'm not sure what the mule is getting, if they're getting street value or if the are getting -2-3 times more for delivering inside the prison grounds, tobacco, prescription drugs, street/illegal drugs, black market drugs, even at this small scale it wouldn't seem like a worthwhile venture if your not doubling or tripling the money, compared to street value.
I am self censoring myself from giving you some trivial examples of how great harm can be done without undue risk to oneself, not because I am afraid terrorists will read slashdot and carry out these diabolical deeds. But because NSA might be reading it. :-)
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
What's to stop a terrorist from loading some C4 and rare earth magnets on one of these and attaching it to a plane while it's taxiing at a busy airport?
Simple - planes aren't magnetic.
You'll have more success if you make the drone hover in the takeoff area and wait for it to be sucked into an engine.
No sig today...
Aluminum bodies.
to the concept of the remote controlled plane or helicopter? Now, the marketers have got their dirty mitts on it and have to call in a drone! It's not a drone, it's simply a fucking remote controlled aircraft. I love hearing the kids ask for drones for a birthday present or whatever. This entire thing is not a NEW concept yet everyone is drooling and oooh aaaahing it like it's white shit hot. I hate to break it to you but this shit has been around for a very long time. In fact, many ham radio operators got their license so that they could fly model aircraft higher and at longer distances. I should know, I'm one of them.
As they are the health care provider that covers stuff that the ER does not.
While what I am suggesting will be fun to read about; I am much more scared of the terroristic possibilities;
I see the government propaganda is working.
Question: What exactly is stopping "terrorists" from running riot all over the country right now?
Lack of drones? Nope.
The TSA? Nope.
Heavily armed response teams all over the place? Nope.
The only logical answer to the question is that there aren't any terrorists.
No sig today...
Anyhow, a coarse net wouldn't rain fire down on prisoners. Stretch a piece nylon (very flammable) rope and try to ignite it by throwing burning stuff onto it. Even if it does catch it will only smolder. So net would be cheap and practical, which is precisely why it would never be used in the US: not enough profits to prison operators.
Not enough profit from the net.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
A simple example would be that bank robberies are very easy and generally net a fair amount of cash; and if done properly should be fairly low risk. So the idea is that you make the penalties huge with the hope that regular bank robbers will eventually slip up and then face a monster penalty. So even the average sociopath will think twice before saying, "stick'em up". But if you can reduce that risk to something resembling zero then your average intelligent sociopath should be out there causing all kinds of criminal mayhem.
Do you see the penalties for committing such a crime, depending on if they showed a weapon [a real gun,a toy, or used the old hand in there coat pocket trick] they usually get a 1 to 2 years in prison. And after there sentence has been served and they go out an commit the same crime again it is usually the same time maybe 3-4 years.
You have to ask yourself at some point is it worth putting people in prisons when they commit non-violent petty crimes, it makes sense if they injure or killed someone. But locking up everyone would continue to stretch out tax payers money, you have law enforcement, the courts, and prisons, which are not paying for themselves.
This is what makes me laugh with the right wingers, eliminate idiot petty things, like prison time for drug offenses, as well as numerous other laws, and you will save tax payers millions, the sad part is, if they did that, politicians wouldn't do anything to reduce taxes they would just redirect the money to other dumb shit.
Really nothing you can do about it, and if you have the belief that it could be used for terrorism, terrorists have long known about drones, the feds, and uncle sam, put regulations on hobbyist planes, copters, and model rockets, with there BS "terrorist weapons list". And now they are more then likely in the process of requiring licensing/or filling out some form with ID, for you to buy fireworks.
I will say your point is more then likely why the FAA isn't allowing just anyone and everyone to buy drones.
A simple example would be that bank robberies are very easy and generally net a fair amount of cash; and if done properly should be fairly low risk.
Low risk? "Bank robbery has among the highest arrest rate of any crime in the country", maybe because the cops put a little more effort into catching the average bank robber than they do the average burglar, and because the banks have a little more in the way of security measures than the average home?
No computer access/internet in jail. If you could play WOW all day/night in jail, it would be full to capacity.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
They could enclose the yard. I'm imagining chain link fencing ran horizontally between the top of the existing fence and the roof of the building.
I guess it's good that they're no longer doing it. In other news, headlines used to avoid phraseology that allowed for multiple interpretations except when making a joke.
Our just put some fast acting adhesive on the bomb and drop it on top. But there are far easier and far less noticeable ways of doing the same thing.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Juhezuz-H-christ! Could the admins NOT post front page links to vice.com without any warning whatsoever?
I clicked that little bastard at work, and the net-nanny detected it as "Adult Pornography". Guess who's probably gonna get a visit from a manager today? THIS GUY.
dammit.
Right,
The "terrorists" we all have to be so afraid of think setting off some small firecrackers in the car with a propane cylinder is going to destroy Time Square.
The fact is only really deranged individuals want to be mass murderers. Most of time such a serious mental condition does not correlate with the mental facilities needed to acquire the education (sit attentively thru HS Chemistry) and create an effective plot.
Once in a while you get a Collide Shake Mohammad (sp?) but most of the time you get a propane cylinder and hand full blackcats.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I don't think there will be a tsunami of attacks but I am willing to bet that you will see a multiple of 2 or 3 times the number of serious attacks in normally stable countries.
Last I checked 2 or 3 times 0 is still 0. So for 2013 you might get 3 terrorist attacks on US soil. And for all years from 2002-2012? You get... 0. Well 0 successful attacks anyway. Perhaps there were plots foiled in those years.
What's to stop a terrorist from loading some C4 and rare earth magnets on one of these and attaching it to a plane while it's taxiing at a busy airport?
Level of effort.
Much easier to just detonate bombs at Grand Central Station at 5pm on Friday.
For that all you need is some IEDs and cell phones and America would immediately borrow 11 billion dollars from China to install checkpoints at the entrances to all commuter stations.
Why do they assume the people are within a kilometer? Drop a cell connection into the drone and you've got worldwide control.
Your typical drone will probably give you a 2-5 mile range bc of battery life.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
"and why not go whole hog and even go petty thuggery and do some muggings?"
I laughed at the image I had in my head of a cartoon quad copter drone sporting a newsboy cap flying up to someone and a small robot arm extends out of the bottom revealing a larger-than-the-drone-club which is used to knock the victim unconscious.
Actual my fear is that some bozo will do this every now and then causing a lockdown on any relevant robotic technologies. So actually my fear is that TSA types will declare servos a forbidden technology or some other such stupidity. So that saying "the only thing you have to fear is fear itself." is perfect. I fear a bureaucracy fueled by fear.
Look at Britain, they have this "knife culture" fear driven by the press and then run with by politicians. This makes my Swiss army knife a serious problem there. Also their police are legally less constrained when it comes to stop and frisks so I suspect that many person has fallen seriously afoul of the law for being a gadget nerd.
Exactly, my fear is an overreaction when one finally does.
When a good bank robber gets going they will often rob dozens of banks. But yes there are mostly asshats doing it who thought that with no planning they could get away with it.
I am thinking worldwide. There are all kinds of stupid attacks in places that are members of the G20 as opposed to the G8. Basically think of where there are two groups that have a serious beef with each other but not a civil war, so China, Egypt, parts of India, Pakistan, and even vaguely stable places like Iraq.
The idea is that you know that in Syria they will use every tool at their disposal so no surprises there. But if it were to happen in Egypt then people would take some notice.
A mechanically extending boxing glove!
My realistic guess for petty crimes will be something where you swoop in and steal things that are small and valuable. Sort of drone pick pocketing.
self-tuning portable RF jammer http://www.ladyada.net/make/wa...
It all starts at 0
Once in a while you get a Collide Shake Mohammad (sp?)
Actually, I kind of like that spelling. Sounds like a command to intercept and apply sinusoidal pressure to a false prophet.
(Khalid Sheik if you care).
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It's not so much that "terrorists" are dumb, as that the "America hating terrorist" is largely fictional.
The cases where there is an actual terrorist (the Unabomber, Columbine, 9/11, Boston Marathon, etc.) the attacks usually are against a vulnerable target and are fairly effective. The reason there are so few of them is that there aren't that many people pissed off to the "lets go blow some ship up" level in the US.
I am not so sure that game theory applies so simply to crime. It is obvious that we can not catch a criminal every time he commits a crime. So the bad guy steals $100. If we simply apply a punishment that regains the lost $100 we will drown in crime. Obvioulsy the criminal would reason that he should steal $100 over and over again as he would only be punished for the ones that were detected and traced back to him and therefore a life of crime would be quite lucrative, So we obvioulsy want punishment for one incident that is stunning enough to really make the criminal think about the risk. But what most people fail to understand is that the punishment is not all about the particular criminal. We want everyone who knows about the criminal to gasp when they hear the sentence for stealing that $100. Maybe 100 people will know about that criminal doing 30 years for one incident of stealing that $100. Those 100 people get a message that they sure as heck never want to steal money. Why does this not work so well in regards to illegal drug use? It is simple. The idea that youth, second chances, etc. must all be applied allows a drug user to get ever deeper into drug use until the system finally drops a big rock on their heads. Back in the bad old days getting caught with a tiny bit of dope would mean all hell breaking lose on the very first offense. People would not have anything to do with dope as a consequence. Florida had one boy's detention facility that "disciplined" young boys to death, They are still finding the corpses. My generation knew not to get sent to Marianna. We knew that second chances did not take place and that one could be carted off to such a place for a simple burglary or possession of one joint. Obvioulsy such punishments were cruel and barbaric. The catch is that failing to have such horrors seems to be even worse when we look at the broken and destroyed lives of so many of our young people who do not fear getting caught much at all.
Terrorists are dumb. That is the only thing saving humanity.
That's a hyperbole. There is a whole lot of humanity out there. There are 15,000 births PER HOUR. The 3000 people dead from 9/11 didn't even make a dent in the daily population increase.
Not trying to be callous here, it was a horrible attack, just that humanity will continue even if we give terrorists one ICBM and an instruction manual written at a second grade level.
Autonomous sentry drones patrolling the skies intercepting enemy drones! Let the Drone Wars begin!
For better coordination of attacks, you could network them all together. However for it to be effective, you will probably need some kind of neural net processor, a learning computer if you will.
Its either that, or anti-aircraft guns, which is just plain silly.
Time to build prisons underground...
mmm better in a cargo-ship in a zone with the worst climate (storms), just set and forget.
Or send them to the moon as miners.
Cut them down for 500m or so from the walls this is sop for a secure site you dont let trees grow right up to the fracking walls - its Canada for Christs sakes dont they have a glut of lumber jacks
i think you mean "white hot shit" not "white shit hot", although if one were to have "white shit", it would inevitably be warmer than the regular brown variety because the person would be very sick and probably have a high temperature.
The key to applying game theory is that most people are doing it without knowing it by balancing the risks and rewards. But you are correct many people are either uninformed or too thickheaded and don't make good choices. But my key suggestion is that most of the existing crime and punishment system is designed largely for crimes that are committed by people in person. But one could launch a drone via a networked connection from 12,000 miles away to commit a very local crime like a bank robbery or some such. Then if the drone gets away with the goods they could then reap the rewards with very little risk.
So if you are a risk adverse sociopath then what would stop you from going on a near endless crime spree?
If the crimes take place in a country will little international pull, say Jamaica and you are sitting in Nigeria and the Jamaican cops do somehow connect you to the crime then I still suspect that you will be fairly safe. It would take a fairly advanced investigation and huge international machinations to bring you to justice. Not impossible but much harder than some local guy waving a gun in the bank.
Now if you do the same crimes in NYC and you are sitting in Britain then the equation changes. Still going to be hard for the justice officials but well within their resources.
Those are pretty extreme examples but it still may apply where a guy robs a bank with a drone, flies the money to a remote location that he observes with a second drone and when the coast seems clear he flies the money to his location. Keep in mind that he can leave the money in the remote location for weeks if he needs to and even have the robot hop every now and then to a new remote location. They are going to need a whole new dye pack technology.
Aluminum?
People were using things like RC helicopters to fly mobile phones (and earlier 2-way radios) into prisons for communications during break-out attempts since - certainly the early 1990s, and probably years before that. Other contraband too (i.e. drugs, weapons, money).
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