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State Prison Officials Blame An Escape On Drones And Cellphones (usatoday.com)
An anonymous reader quotes USA Today:
A fugitive South Carolina inmate recaptured in Texas this week had chopped his way through a prison fence using wire cutters apparently dropped by a drone, prison officials said Friday. Jimmy Causey, 46, fled the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, S.C., on the evening of July 4th after leaving a paper mache doll in his bed to fool guards into thinking he was asleep. He was not discovered missing until Wednesday afternoon. Causey was captured early Friday 1,200 miles away in a motel in Austin by Texas Rangers acting on a tip, WLTX-TV reported... "We believe a drone was used to fly in the tools that allow(ed) him to escape," South Carolina Corrections Director Bryan Stirling said...
Stirling said prison officials are investigating the performance by prison guards that night but pointed to cellphones and drones as the main problem. The director said he and other officials have sought federal help for years to combat the use of drones to drop contraband into prison. "It's a simple fix," Stirling said. "Allow us to block the signal... They are physically incarcerated, but they are not virtually incarcerated."
It's the second time the same convict escaped from South Carolina's maximum security prison -- albeit the first time he's (allegedly) used a drone. The state's Law Enforcement Division Chief also complains that the federal government still prohibits state corrections officials from blocking cellphones, and "as long as cellphones continue to be utilized by inmates in prisons we're going to have things like this -- we're going to have very well-planned escapes..."
Stirling said prison officials are investigating the performance by prison guards that night but pointed to cellphones and drones as the main problem. The director said he and other officials have sought federal help for years to combat the use of drones to drop contraband into prison. "It's a simple fix," Stirling said. "Allow us to block the signal... They are physically incarcerated, but they are not virtually incarcerated."
It's the second time the same convict escaped from South Carolina's maximum security prison -- albeit the first time he's (allegedly) used a drone. The state's Law Enforcement Division Chief also complains that the federal government still prohibits state corrections officials from blocking cellphones, and "as long as cellphones continue to be utilized by inmates in prisons we're going to have things like this -- we're going to have very well-planned escapes..."
Where did he get the drone?
Trust me on this, if you've ever been to a SC prison, you know the guards are the real problem. They're paid shit and are often just ghetto thugs themselves. This is the perfect formula for guards willing to look the other way or even help for a small bribe. There have been numerous escapes in recent years where it was later revealed that the guards themselves had smuggled in handcuff keys and bolt-cutters to help in escapes.
Bryan Sterling was a pure political appointee who wants to distract from the real problem by blaming drones, cellphones and other bullshit excuses so he can continue to insist that his agency doesn't need additional funding to hire decent guards and staff. He and other directors were under direct orders from Nikki Haley to never ask for a budget increase, and I suspect he's still under similar orders from Henry McMaster. It's an ongoing problem in a state where the Republican status quo is to continuously cut taxes to appease their political benefactors, no matter the consequences.
When someone can escape a prison with a pair of wire cutters, a drone is not the problem. How did he get access to the fence? Why does it only take the possession of a pair of wire cutters to escape the prison?
This is a "think about the children" moment where the signal blocking technology is what they want, but not the problem.
If the prison pays for all outgoing and incoming calls, then they may block cellphone calls.
Prisons have instituted ridiculously expensive phone plans to help pay for their costs.
This is wrong, placing an undue burden on both the families and the prisoners. Wealthy prisoners should not be allowed to buy a better prison experience, which means you can not overcharge prisoners for so called luxuries.
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At this point, premade UAVs can easily be reprogrammed to be fully autonomous (with minimal skill) and microwave jamming won't do anything to stop it. What's really needed here is for the prison guards to actually... guard the prison. -_-
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
God no. I voted for Hillary. When I heard about what she did to Seth Rich, I fucking cheered.
Drone flights can be automated so that once released, they fly the predetermined route and drop the payload.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Make inmates wear tamper-resistant collars with a grenade attached. They mess with the collar, they get blown up, and so does anyone else that was messing with the collar. Also make it so that the collars can be remote detonated. Someone escapes a California prison and goes to Maine? One phone call, and the felon's body gets ripped to shreds. :) Bonus points if his or her family members also get blown up.
Someone's been watching too much Running Man. Where are we going to find a sufficiently sadistic game show host for phase 2?
The mesh is a good idea; I suspect you might be able to drop things "in parts" through the mesh though unless it was very fine mesh. Parts to assemble a rudimentary wire cutter dropped one at a time through the mesh.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Notice the title says "Blame". I think that is the perfect word. Rather than accepting responsibility, they are blaming technology. If an escape happens it's the people securing the facilities fault, whether they use a pitchfork or a drone.
Sent from my TARDIS
Certainly, it is possible to ban flying RC models say eight miles around prisons, but it would not help as criminals would not observe it.
The correctional officers should definitively learn to pilot an electric RC FPV glider, and soar above the prison, watching for drones, pilots on the ground, and other suspect activity. A glider can be in the air for hours with one battery.
I can built such a glider at home from readily available components. Surely the mighty US state is capable to do it too and stop crying constantly "drones, drones,..."
Jimmy Causey, 46, fled the Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, S.C., on the evening of July 4th after leaving a paper mache doll in his bed to fool guards into thinking he was asleep. He was not discovered missing until Wednesday afternoon.
Recent advances in paper mache technology have moved beyond the limits where society can control them, and are clearly to blame for this escape. Paper mache obviously must be banned from all prisons and areas near them, as well as public parks, schools, and tattoo parlors. Paper mache has no legitimate uses that I can imagine, therefore only criminals use paper mache.
Nobody ever heard of cellphone jammers? You can make smart ones that auto switch on when a local transmitting device is detected. Or why isn't every "cell tower" in range of that prison actually a Stingray(like) device, and all conversations are listened in to, being recorded and used in court. Encrypted data connections that cannot be decrypted (via backdoor or otherwise) are of course being denied/dropped/messed with.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
How do you know that an editor modded you down instead of ordinary users? Claims like this require supporting evidence.
Jamming will jam the surrounding neighborhood, and might well interfere with emergency communication from security staff. If the problem is that someone had a cellphone when they're not supposed to, fix THAT problem, just like they would deal with someone having a knife when they're not supposed to.
So a guard at the prison (or an elderly grandma nearby) has a heart attack and calls 911. Opps! Sorry, no cellular coverage. You're life is not as important as maintaining America's record as the world's largest incarcerater.
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Clearly democracy itself is the problem and must be outlawed. Now if only we had a dear leader who was bold and unconventional enough to help us. /s
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
I mention in another reply that the focus should be on signal detection rather than jamming. You could narrow down the location of contraband phones. Know how many there are. Know who they call or receive calls from. And further, designated areas of the prison would be safe places for staff to use cell phones. The neighbors wouldn't have their legitimate cell phones jammed as a side effect.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
> Where are we going to find a sufficiently sadistic game show host for phase 2?
Seriously? There are a whole slew of congress critters voting to take away people's health care and try to starve poor people. They don't even think themselves to be savages.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Is there any hope US will be able to control the flow of narcotics? Drones can come over the border and drop drugs and prearranged locations. There is no way to stop them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
A surgical tube slingshot can shoot wirecuters over the fence too. Or a homemade, easy set up, catapult. Another sensationalized witch hunt against new and not comprehended tech.
Perhaps they can but a slingshot or catapult can't get the wire cutters to the right place. Especially since there are multiple fences spaced apart. the person operating the catapult would probably not be able to see who they are delivering the goods too.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
A stingray is much more complex, and expensive, than a jammer. It's hard to get good numbers on what they cost, but it's tens of thousands of dollars, whereas a short range jammer is a couple hundred.
If a drone can fly over the fence and drop tools to a prisoner, how intrinsically different is that than basically THROWING the tools over the fence?
Sure the drone is a lot more accurate, but heck of a lot noisier too.
I smell excuse-hunting here; this guy already escaped them once (how is it that every jackass with a DWI can get an ankle monitor, yet a prisoner IDENTIFIED as a successful escapee doesn't have one?). On the second escape, they're looking harder to CYA than to find him.
-Styopa
I keep hearing suggestions like this for blocking signals. Why do people confuse lead with a faraday cage? Lead is good for blocking particle radiation, ie alpha or beta. A faraday cage is good for blocking radio. Lead is a big heavy atom that gets in the way of the particles. It will even help block some electromagnetic radiation, especially high frequencies, if thick enough. However, it's a poor conductor. Electromagnetic radiation is more easily blocked with a faraday cage, ie a conductive shell. The more conductive, the better. So a superconductor would be best, followed by silver, or copper. Lead is far down the list. Also, lead is poisonous, and exposure is cumulative.
But what about wrapping the building in grounded wire mesh, not only would it keep the drones out, you will have created a Faraday cage, you aren't jamming anything, just blocking transmission to and from.
This is old old news. I remember when "Howling mad" Murdock built a drone out of hair dryers and garbage bags which carried him out of the prison, and that was something like forty years ago.
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I can't believe nobody will let you do that!
Some shitbag company that sells grossly overpriced 5ghz jammers is probably sending him sales literature.
The drone/wire cutter aspect isn't the staggering part...How the hell did he build a convincing papier-maché doll of himself to fool the guards is what I'm curious about. Never underestimate the resourcefulness of a man whose liberty has been denied...
prison tv systems is paid for with the funds from commissar commissary and you do need some thing to keep the lifers with nothing to lose in line.
They sell bird nets for keeping birds out (or in) to cover things like fish farms to prevent birds from eating all the fish. They're relatively inexpensive and I'm sure you could get them in a finer mesh if you wanted (so drones can't drop stabbing implements, though I suspect prisoners can already make a shiv with stuff they find in the prison).
Just because it's a high-tech problem doesn't mean it needs a high-tech solution. Although prison guards might get a sense of satisfaction actively watching for drones, then commanding a Phalanx to take it out, it's unnecessary and profligate.
some people us prisons are there doctor for the stuff that the ER does not cover.
With minimal skill, most drones will land or otherwise not function correctly if you jam the gps signal,
It would be easy today to build a custom tasked drone that relied on visual navigation only along with accelerometers.
Remember the drone needs only to fly in a straight line over a wall, drop something, then come back along that same path. You could probably accomplish this even with just accelerometers...
Also what about drones controlled remotely entirely over cell phone data from a phone strapped to the drone? Can a prison legally have a strong enough signal blocker for a drone 500+ft in the air?? That would swamp signal in a huge area around the prison...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a topic that has no simple answer and really covers two completely different subjects...
Let me start by saying that IMHO the prison system in the United States is broken.
It's often more about making a profit and/or punishing people rather than actually correcting behavior.
That said, I'll move on to the problem.
For blocking drones, just umm.. order a cheap baby monitor from... Alibaba.
Actually, that one I don't have a real solution to. SDR would make it next to impossible to block signals from a really determined bad guy.
As for phones:
This is really a "What's the best worst option."
Here's one bad option:
1: Cell Phones have GPS's in them. Many have several different kinds of GPS receivers.
2: Using GPS, Carriers and cell phones are quite capable of determining when a phone is in the exact footprint of a correctional facility.
3: We could fund carriers to pay folks like us so we can develop a method where cell phone calls are restricted within certain geographical areas.
- Commercial Drones already do that by themselves.
4: Instead of blocking calls within that footprint, we could allow emergency calls and not impede the safety of legitimate cell phone users.
5: If done right, this is the kind of thing that can be implemented without violating the privacy or security of legitimate cell phone users.
Worst of the best? Nope. Best of the worst? There are probably better ideas.
-Dan
I absolutely LOVE this. They have people locked in little rooms and supervised 24 hours a day and they can't prevent someone from using a fucking phone without blocking all EM transmissions?
These fuckers (authorities in general) want to turn the entire country into a police state so that they can control every aspect of our lives, and then prove that once they have full control, they can't prevent the behavior that prompted them to seek full control to begin with.
What. The. Fuck.
Meh. Whatever. As long as they can send the Jews on long train rides, everyone is happy. Right?
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Make prison/jail cells faraday cages. No electronic signal gets in, none gets out. Oh! But they won't be able to watch TV or listen to the radio. SO WHAT! It's not a bed & breakfast! IT'S A PRISON!
> they could just put a mesh net over the prison yard. maybe take it out of the
> budget they use for locking up non-violent offenders for decades at a time.
While we're at it, use metallic mesh, e.g. chicken wire. In addition to blocking dropped objects, it would also block radio waves. Note that *BLOCKING* radio transmissions is perfectly legal, as opposed to *JAMMING* radio signals.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
Jamming is the problem. It creates a lot of collateral damage. If a cheap physical net works, then great. But there are other ways to smuggle phones into the prison. You, yourself mentioned grift. So I propose that your cheap net simply won't work. So I pointed out detection of mobile phones rather than jamming.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.