UK Criminals Use Drones To Case Burglary Prospects 71
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."
Anti drone nonsense (Score:1)
A burglar wouldn't draw attention to themselves like that, so that's just some rozzer trying to dream up anti-drone propaganda.
Re:Anti drone nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Paul Ford (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Paul Ford (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
Given that I can buy a drone for about 60 quid at the local Maplin (or one for 20 quid that fell off the back of a lorry) and do all of that with essentially zero training... sure why not?
Whatever suspicions one might have of the police, this is not an especially unlikely use of drones.
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" sure why not?"
Makes a movie plot, well apart from the reality of the short range, and noise, and difficulty of controlling those 60 quid drones in any breeze or around obstacles like buildings. But movies have "suspension of disbelief" to carry them past this crap.
Just because you can hypothesize it, doesn't make it a police matter. It's not for the police to try to invent fake plots to scare people with.
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Go ahead, pick up a drone for ~100$ USD that can record stable HD video with a first person view.
Pretty much can guarantee any footage you'd find in that price range would be no more useful than aerial photos on google. I have shitty 100$ ultra micro helicopters and multi rotors. They are not easily controllable outside nor do they have any kind of video capabilities.
I have 1000$-2500$USD helicopters that could mount an HD camera and a first person view thing so that I could take 'useful' video. It would co
Re:Anti drone nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
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Fear the new things! Fear the unknown! The government will protect you!
So true. The hysteria surrounding toy helicopters (not drones!) is reminiscent of the hysteria around the internet 15 years ago - "you are welcoming the predators into your home and they're going to lure your children away!" Fear, fear, fear.
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"Many burglars read the newspaper and look at death notices to search for potential victims. People and maybe their neighbors go to the funeral for 3-4 hours and burglars have free reign in the middle of the day when everyone can see them."
Movie plot nonsense. An obituary announcement is a bad correlation of a empty houses.
"I've one time been warned by police officers for a particular kind of grafity on the street. It was secret code where burglars wrote the time when it was best to try to break in."
Silly n
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Not in a city, obviously. But there's still some countryside left in the UK, and a fair few rich people live in it.
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A burglar wouldn't draw attention to themselves like that, so that's just some rozzer trying to dream up anti-drone propaganda.
That's strange because the law enforcement office is very in favour of using drones (for surveillance). It would be very strange indeed if they falsely try to put the image in the general public that drones could possibly not be trusted. For me, this would be a perfect reason to just shoot every drone out of the sky because it's coming right at^H^H^H^H^H possibly a criminal drone.
protip (Score:5, Funny)
Protip: if you're not sure which preposition to use, put both.
At least one report (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
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Are you seriously questioning the validity of trends based on single data points? You're on dangerous waters there, that would effectively discredit 90% of everything we believe in!
Re:At least one report (Score:5, Funny)
And calls to the "non-emergency number" would result in the police doing absolutely nothing
Not true. Please save the New Emergency Services number, 0118 999 881 999 119 7253 for genuine emergencies only.
Re:At least one report (Score:5, Funny)
And calls to the "non-emergency number" would result in the police doing absolutely nothing
Not true. Please save the New Emergency Services number, 0118 999 881 999 119 725.......3 for genuine emergencies only.
FTFY
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Yep, clearly the police know this is bullshit and are not interested. The 101 number is just to fob people off or report crimes that don't get investigated so you can make an insurance claim. They just like to keep fear levels up by mentioning new threats, that's all.
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So no one ever does anything first. Mind blowing man.
The next trend (Score:2)
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Let me see (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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At this rate, we'll see a story about the hypervisor floppy-disk vulnerability [arstechnica.com] in... December.
yeah now... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now they are noisy, but wait a while and you won't notice even one that's hanging above your head for about 2 meters..
Also there are already pretty quiet drones out there with camera's..
But it is one of the things I already expected would happen, next to the modern peeping tom's (which you already see some video's on youtube)..
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Comment removed (Score:3)
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Re: I learn something new each day (Score:1)
I have a drone horse which is very maned, even when unmanned.
Sensaltionalism (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sensaltionalism (Score:5, Insightful)
EVERY single "police" recommendation/story I read about how criminals are now doing X and we should be on the lookout for it? Utter bullshit.
Criminals are "marking" houses with little signs to indicate whether they have things of value. No. They're not.
Criminals are knocking on your door to see if you have a dog they can steal. No. They're not.
Criminals are trawling Facebook to see when you're on holiday. No. They're not. (And if you have the vaguest sense of privacy, they wouldn't be able to see it anyway).
Criminals are flying drones to see if you have anything worth nicking. No. They're not.
It's not that they aren't that sophisticated, that they couldn't do this, that there has never been a recorded instance of it, but that they - generally speaking - ARE NOT DOING THESE THINGS.
What can you see from flying a drone that will change your mind from "Oh, well, I was in two minds about this house" to "Let's rob it" (or, indeed, vice versa)?. Virtually nothing. Do you park a Lamboughini at the back of your rotten cheap house and never take it out? Unlikely. Do you keep hordes of rabid dogs that are otherwise undetectable? No.
Live your lives people. Take sensible precautions. Lock your door. Put an alarm on (and don't bother about it making lots of noise if nobody is going to care - better a silent alarm to your smartphone than something disturbing the neighbours so much that they smash it off the wall or don't care about it). And don't leave big expensive things on show.
Generally speaking, criminals are opportunists and don't care about your property anyway. If they see an open door, they'll go through it (have had this happen to me in a previous house while I was behind the open front-door doing some repairs - some guy walked past into my house and started looking around. "*cough* Can I help you, mate?" and he (thankfully) ran a mile.). If they want to burgle you, they won't wait until your smart meter reads the energy usage as low, they'll just ring the doorbell and if there's no answer, they'll force or smash their way in. Even if there's nothing worth nicking (very unusual in any house), they're in by that point so they will find something.
"Casing the joint" is for high-level planned burglaries that rarely happen outside of extremely affluent areas and they can afford their own security anyway.
Like all these things, it's rubbish.
This isn't news (Score:3)
Of course criminals are casing their turf with drones, they have CCTV cams all over the City of London too don't they?
drug delivery? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Maybe part of a package deal, plus pilot salary costs.
I don't need a subject (Score:3)
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But... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I do find it funny that I can go to the park and fly my F450 clone with 10 inch props legally as long as it's safe, but my mate technically can't do the same with his tiny hubsan X4 without a 30 meter exclusion zone on take off or landing, purely because his has a camera on it.
PS. Slashot is still around. Holy crap.
OOTO (Score:2)
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 an
Oblig South Park Coverage (Score:3)
Prospect? (Score:2)
No need to get caught in the act., if a window is open somewhere, the done just flies in and grabs the jewellery and other light stuff that's lying around, that's what the camera is for. It's much more secure in the back of the van outside.
A 'window opening device' shouldn't be that complicated to add as well, just a plastic tube with a spring and a stone to be released by a servo.
Also I'm waiting for arsonists to do the same thing, just with a pound of fire accelerants instead of a grabbing arm.
Starship Troopers (Score:2)
The only good drone is a dead drone!
SAMs (Score:2)
Hm.
Might a growth opportunity for the home Surface to Air Missile defense market.
Noisy? (Score:3)
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.