Secret Service Testing Drones, and How to Disrupt Them

schwit1 writes with this news from the Associated Press: Mysterious, middle-of-the-night drone flights by the U.S. Secret Service during the next several weeks over parts of Washington — usually off-limits as a strict no-fly zone — are part of secret government testing intended to find ways to interfere with rogue drones or knock them out of the sky, The Associated Press has learned.

A U.S. official briefed on the plans said the Secret Service was testing drones for law enforcement or protection efforts and to look for ways, such as signal jamming, to thwart threats from civilian drones. The drones were being flown between 1 a.m. and 4 a.m. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because this person was not authorized to publicly discuss the plans. The Secret Service has said details were classified. ... The challenge for the Secret Service is quickly detecting a rogue drone flying near the White House or the president's location, then within moments either hacking it to seize control over its flight or jamming its signal to send it off course or make it crash.

Comments

Re:They need a Microwave

[plover]

I suspect they've already done all the controlled environment testing they can. As you know, deployment in the field is the ultimate test. Washington is saturated with RF noise, with legitimate transceivers operating on every possible frequency and at varying levels of power. Being able to play "spot the drone amidst the noisy backdrop" is hard enough. Being able to 100% protect the President is something they have to get right the first time, and every time. Responding harshly to too many false positives may also create a nuisance backlash, so they may just be tuning their rejection filters.

slashdotters have already defined the real problem

[nimbius]

Being able to 100% protect the President

this will never happen and is reflected in the structure of our government. Special air planes and multi million dollar car-shaped tanks are perfect expressions of how neurotic and misguided our approach to government security is. Being a government official means you represent the people. it means you take that risk every day that it could be the last day you come to work. Being indoors makes the white house staff pretty safe from the kinds of drones our SS are worried about, the president included, as he is just staff with a special title. there are numerous ways to shoot a drone out of the sky, or render it functionless, but it starts a needless arms race between drone hobbyists and some classified faction of the government that is unaccountably mysterious.

the ultimate solution to americas psychosis of security is to take a step back and try to work with or call a truce between the people hell bent on killing americans and government workers. "They cant be reasoned with" is a dishonest statement in most cases meant to whitewash public opinion. Did anyone know one of Osama Bin Ladens requests was for america to ease up on our blank-cheque support of the Palestinian apartheid? Sounds cost effective and reasonable but instead we embarked on an 80 trillion dollar campaign of senseless bloodshed that alienated us reason and plunged countless lives into misery. It also formed ISIS. So maybe this time we ease up and let people fly hobby drones.