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UK Government Wants Prisons Geoblocked By Drone Manufacturers (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A new report from the UK's Ministry of Justice promises to work with drone manufacturers to get prison locations geoblocked as a native feature of the drone, in the face of rising incidents of drone incursion into prison space. The report, which outlines many proposed reforms to the UK's prison system, says that the MoJ will "trial, together with industry, the inclusion of prison coordinates in no-fly zones which have the potential to be programmed into the majority of drones on the market (although we must think carefully about how much information we are willing to put into the public domain and therefore make available to the criminal community)." The last few years have seen increased pressure on government to enforce geoblock zones on drone manufacturers, who have responded to controversial drone incursion incidents with permanent or temporary geoblock software updates.
I am pretty sure we don't have to be careful with how much information about a gigantic facility right next to the highway gets into the public domain.
Doesn't always get what it wants.
Instead of locking the drones out of prisons, maybe lock them in?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
In every single prison escape movie, I remember seeing guards in every tower, armed with 12-gauge, um, geoblockers
They should have geoblocked the world trade center buildings and the pentagon for real aircrafts first. Am I too smart?
And don't just stop there. Include airports in that, my house, your house, the neighbor's house and while you're at it just ban the entire thing altogether. Regular people shouldn't be allowed to have drones in the first place.
\subject
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I have a better idea: The police should track the drone's signal back to the person controlling it, and arrest them.
Why not just get rid of all prisons?
They're archaic and inhumane. We should be rehabilitating criminals with work programs and job training not locking them away.
This stuff mostly already exist, and device with GPS (which these would have to have in order to be geoblocked in the first place), has places in the world they won't work. Primarily though they can't go over a certain speed or altitude, this is to avoid commerical GPS units from being used for guided missiles.
Is made in Atlanta, GA, *not* Canada. Can you believe that shiz?
I've been cockblocked, but never geoblocked. Or is cockblocking just a very specific form of geoblocking?
This would mean that Drone software would have to be closed source - this would remove the ability to do interesting things. Also: what happens when a new prison is built; or if I buy a drone in Germany ? Will drones have to have, nailed in, the location of every prison (or other no fly zone) in every country in the world ?
Stupid idea, won't work.
With all the many homebrew / opensource flight controllers out there, this law is useless. Ok, the off the shelf crap wont work, but if you are looking for something to carry weight, your not buying a premade flying toy.
It's not like criminal organizations are technologically incompetent these days. They'll just get someone to hack the drone's firmware to disable geoblocking -- or just build their own drones.
In cases like this, "they" always come up with simple, persuasive scenario; crime, terrorism, will nobody think of the children?!!, etc.; to push through this kind of legislation. When the law's enacted, we then find out that it mostly gets used for something entirely different and may actually turn out to be useless for the stated purpose. So... what do you think "they" are really after? What do they want to achieve with having hard-wired and probably secret lists of locations/areas that drones are unable to enter?
Good luck with that.
Firstly there are several different satellite geolocation systems in use that cover the entire world, US has GPS, EU has Gallileo, and USSR has GLONASS. Many receivers can pick them all up, so you'd need them all to agree to not cover UK prisons. Good luck convincing the Russians, and I'd bet you'd have a hard time even with the controlling authorities of the other two.
Secondly, why would drones necessarily need GPS anyway? Just fly them with a camera.
I honestly don't think this solution will work for a couple of important issues. First of all you don't even need a Drone to do a drop. Any RC plane could do it in a flyby. Also there's no reason why you need GPS to operate a drone although it makes it simpler. A drone could be hacked quite easily. Ontop of that not all drone manufacturers are in the UK and there's no reason why anyone outside of the UK would go through the trouble of enforcing these guidelines. Plus there's the problem of how to maintain all that data. Although prisons don't move very often, imagine how would you update all those devices if your prison did move.
Better solution, mount an EMP gun on the roof and shoot them down. (I imagine a prison should be a no-fly zone anyhow.) Or maybe even a sharpshooter with a real rifle. Or maybe the prison should fly their own defensive drones?
I think the trouble with Geoblocking drones (and I'm not saying that it shouldn't be done, but pointing this out), is that if we Geoblock for prisons for reasons of security, then we do the same for government buildings, military bases; again, all for likely good security reasons. Then we add banks or other money storage facilities and clearing houses or places likely the target of prying eyes. Then we add primary schools, for the safety of the children. Then how about the universities, because they do sensitive research for the military..and so on and so forth. The question about Geoblocking is: Where do we draw the line?
Can I Geoblock my business or property because I do business with the government?
How far beyond my property line can I Geoblock? Just because you can't fly the drone directly over a prison, doesn't mean I can't fly high enough to get a good look into it.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
There's open source software for most of the hobbyist "quad+ copter" kits and anyone can patch or modify the firmware to ignore or just remove those coordinates.
Setting up towers to jam the wireless signals probably wouldn't help as they can just switch frequencies or switch to line-of-site / laser, cellular or even just GPS coordinates.
Too many ways to get around this legislative hack.
The larger QUADCOPTERS / HEXACOPTERS are custom builds anyway.
Drone receives coordinates. Drone does math to see if coordinates falls within predefined geofences. Drone decides whether it's allowed to continue on its course. At no point is the GPS system involved in enforcing or contributing to this rule.
Just wrapping the top of the drone in aluminum foil would mean it wouldn't have a GPS signal strong enough to use any kind of geo fence, so you would be able to fly it manually wherever you wanted. Jo drone maker is going to make a drone that doesn't fly if it can't pick up GPS, since GPS is already pretty flaky...
Or maybe the prison should fly their own defensive drones?
I think intercept suicide drones are the best idea. But it seems like it would be really hard to detect incoming drones that are mostly plastic... not sure if the motors and battery offer enough material to detect. Maybe just an audio detector though since drone motors/rotors are pretty distinctive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can build a drone MYSELF for less than a hundred bucks in half a day. You don't need a "manufacturer" to have one.
Birdshot.
Just have a few guards patrolling outside the fences with a shotgun. Load them up with birdshot or rocksalt (we can do some testing for effectiveness) and tell them to pop any drones they see.
If prisons want to keep drones out, then they need to step up their game and do something about it. Trying to hamstring every legally purchases hobby drone is not the way to go.
This signature is false.
[2 Prison guards speaking, in British accents]
Guard 1: Wot's that then?
Guard 2: Looks like a drone, doesn't it? It's flying right at us, looks like it's got a package suspended from it. That would no doubt have some contraband in it, wouldn't it?
Guard 1: Well, should we alert the others?
Guard 2: No need. They can't fly over the prison, you see. There's a little bit right in there, which actually stops the thing from flying over any prison. Brilliant, isn't it?
Guard 1: Brilliant! But it looks like it just flew over the wall and into the yard, when is that bit supposed to kick in to stop it?
Guard 2: It did fly over the wall, didn't it? See if you can reach the warden on the radio.
Guard 1: What should I tell him?
Guard 2: Tell him that we're in the wrong place, apparently the prison got moved and we need to know where we're supposed to be.
-fin-
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The stupidity of some people in government truly knows no bounds. Anyone who is going to commit the crime of attempting to smuggle contraband into a prison or gather information for some kind prison break isn't going to think twice about disabling the GPS, flashing the firmware or just building their own drone from components. This is a little like outlawing Halloween masks because someone might use them in a robbery, ignoring the fact that someone could simply grab a hat, some sunglasses, a cold weather facemask or any number of other things to hide their faces just as easily.
Throw them over the wall. Job done.
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/local-news/drugs-smuggled-oakwood-prison-inside-6178685
Instead of Geoblocking why not have the drones land and power off at a designated landing spot. And instead of some massive database in the drones code, just have the hardware respond as a priority to an override signal. That means the prisons can control where they land. In the case of accidental intrusions a fine at the jurisdictions discretion. In the event of a criminal intrusion of a purposeful nature, confiscate the drone, and followup to prosecute the drone operator. So delivery of drugs by quadcopter, then intervention and prosecute. Maybe even have the drone remember its launch point for the authorities to recover for their investigation. So what's the penalty for aiding in a prison break? Delivery of drugs to a prisoner? Delivery of random contraband? Or, put a net over the top of open areas where prisoners can be? Monofilament fishing line nets would be hard for drones to avoid.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
It's trivial to build and program your own drone for cheap, with an arduino or raspberry pi.
Do you really think that those criminal won't do it?
Try it! Library of Babel
I think the FAA has greatly underestimated the chaos that will ensue when the air is full of drones that can buzz your house and invade your privacy. So why not allow individual property owners to have their property geoblocked up to a certain altitude, say 500 feet. I can have my phone listed in the federal Do-Not-Call Registry. Why not have a federal geoblock registry to keep the pesky things away?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Funny, but stupid. You will get sued or worse if you try this. You may even get to see the inside of that prison.
That's what they do anyway. These consumer drones are flown by line of sight, then by camera.
GPS is used for stability - latitude, longitude, altitude. Positioning in 3-d space.
The GPS block means because the bird is aware of its gps coordinates, it will physically prevent it from entering the area. This is how it works near some airports, the White House, and military regions.
Just because tin foil works on the top of your head to keep the voices out, does not mean it will work on the top of the drone.
The same think couldn't be accomplished with a catapult or trebuchet?
Failure to remain in control of our devices leads to 1984 scenarios where the government and an elite few rather than the citizenry are in control of everything. We can't allow the government to institute rules and regulations that prevent the complete release of source code or require said devices to be locked down (as is what is happened with modern wireless routers).
Do we really want to be tracked and manipulated like that? I know I don't. When we lose having complete control of our devices and we can't even begin to reasonably assure the security or privacy of them we lose control of our security, privacy, and can be more easily manipulated. It's why it's so dangerous when Intel and AMD insert backdoors in its CPUs- or any components are dependant on proprietary bits on our computers. Even if no backdoors existed it would be naive and nothing to assume they don't exist when there are places to hide. The only thing which might be protecting us is the incompetence of security agencies of the world. I'm seriously doubtful of that though given our major adversaries are all working on home-grown CPUs at insane price points. They know they can't trust or rely on US designed CPUs from Intel and AMD for military scenarios.
OK, sure, the prison isn't a secret, but what about the Van Down By the River??
(Salute to Chris Farley)
I can't see this working, because there are many pairs of jurisdictions x,y such that jurisdiction x will not require that all drones and drone control modules have geofencing for prohibited locations in jurisdiction y and vice versa, I don't think drone control modules will have enough memory to store the geofence for every prohibited location on the planet, and even if it did, people would find ways to build controllers without the restrictions. This is just another example of a law that's going to be completely ignored by lawbreakers anyway.