Slashdot Mirror
UK Criminals Use Drones To Case Burglary Prospects
turkeydance writes: Burglars in the UK are sending unmanned drones over houses in order to identify potential targets, police have warned. Suffolk Constabulary confirmed it had received at least one report of drones being used by burglars for surveillance of properties. Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detectives Forum, said: “Drones can be noisy and very visible so hopefully criminals risk giving themselves away. If members of the public observe drones being used in areas which make them suspicious they should contact police using the 101 non-emergency number to report it."
Protip: if you're not sure which preposition to use, put both.
At the bottom of the
"At least one report" does not a national trend make. And calls to the "non-emergency number" would result in the police doing absolutely nothing except log it anyway.
Pointless story.
A burglar wouldn't
No, a GOOD burglar wouldn't. The thing about criminals is that like most people/jobs 80% of them are mediocre to terrible at their jobs. Most of the burglars out there are like the legions of "programmers" who fail fizzbuzz and can do nothing but copy snippets from stack overflow.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Telepresence,
incredibly difficult to trace back to operator if done properly,
Can not only reconnoiter but potentially interact with and manipulate environment.
Capable of moving and delivering goods.
Oh yeah I can't see these being used for criminal purposes. The surprising thing is we haven't seen this earlier.
At this rate, we'll see a story about the hypervisor floppy-disk vulnerability in... December.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If there are unmaned drones, that means there are manned drones as well. I never knew that. To me a drone was always unmaned.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This is strikingly similar in tone to the stories circulating a few years ago that anyone taking photos of buildings in public places was (obviously!) a terrorist.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
And yet a bad burglar is supposed to launch a drone, fly around houses, alerting people to something, 'casing' joints, then fly it back home?
Or far more likely, is that a policeman, Paul Ford in this case is looking for opportunity to expand policing:
"Paul Ford, secretary of the Police Federation National Detectives Forum.... We must remain alive to the POTENTIAL risks posed by the misuse of technology”
Just a bad policeman writing fictional crime scenarios to protect against.
Of course criminals are casing their turf with drones, they have CCTV cams all over the City of London too don't they?
A better use would be narcotics delivery service. Place the online order, pay with bitcoin, drone flies over with little packet within 30 minutes and drops it off.
The cheaper drones become, the less people will worry about losing one. Simple ROI calculation.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
A burglar wouldn't draw attention to themselves like that, so that's just some rozzer trying to dream up anti-drone propaganda.
It is anti-drone propaganda, but also just the next scaremongering. Fear the new things! Fear the unknown! The government will protect you!
Is this Slashdot or The Daily Mail?
But... but... you're not allowed to fly drones over residential areas! How are the criminals getting around this law?
Oh no, wait, it's just legitimate photography businesses (like mine) which get hurt by the drone laws. Pervs and criminals will carry on regardless.
Xkcd called it.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
And then a low flying helicopter gets its cabin illuminated and the maker of the automated laser blinding system gets to peacefully chat with SWAT teams.
OOTO - Out Of The Ordinary, is what law enforcement officers are trained to spot and is often a good starting point for possible criminal activity. But to the general public a "noisy and very visible" drone, or even someone wandering around someone else's property is not OOTO to them as the main activity is not the indicator.
So the advice given is in effect worse than useless and will result in way too many false positives / negatives. Now if the police were to offer free courses in situational awareness and OOTO then that might be a start, though isn't that what we pay taxes for non-existent beat cops for?
In finishing, a nice piece of research from a few years ago, talked to convicted burglars and what they look for in a target. One thing they found was that it was much preferred to case and burgle during the 1pm - 4pm period than any other time of the day or night because people are at work, there is lower delivery traffic, its easy to see and people don't see you are a burglar but as a workman. They also found that for those criminals that end up committing crime at night, much prefer properties with BIG Bright spot lights on than in complete darkenss because the bright lights leave dark shadows to stand in and means you don't have to carry round a flash-light which often attracts more trouble than its worth.
Once again South Park forsaw this tricky issue https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Gently reply
My drone can carry a zoom-capable point-n-shoot and at 3 meters is on average 65dB hovering at 2m. That's Toyota corolla territory... not that loud.