UK Government Wants Prisons Geoblocked By Drone Manufacturers (thestack.com) 143
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.
Prison Locations Are Secret? (Score:1, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
The issue isn't spying. It's that people are using drones to deliver mobile phones, money, drugs etc into the prisons.
Re: Prison Locations Are Secret? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you even read the fucking article or summary? Christ sakes man.
You must be new here.
Geoblock my house (Score:3)
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?
Re: (Score:2)
Because the complexity and size of the database would become unmanageable, and criminals would still easily be able to bypass it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
What about Drones where you turn off the GPS and just fly the thing manually?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Good job no criminal smuggler would dare hack their drone to ignore the geoblocking, or just buy one without a GPS.
Problem Solved (Score:5, Funny)
[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-
Re: (Score:2)
The above post is completely underrated. ;)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Geoblocking would make it significantly harder to fly a drone over a prison without much effort. Yes someone determined could expend more effort to subvert the block but that doesn't render it useless. It means they require the technical skill to hack a drone or fly it unassisted. The latter probab
Re: (Score:2)
Or, as an alternative, they need enough money to rent the technical skill ...
There are many vectors whereby this could be attacked. Try this one for size: commodity GPS receivers - the $5 (or whatever price) modules that you include in your $200 drone - are going to be made for bulk sales. So they're not going to have encryption on their output because that would reduce sales by complicating integration into products.
So for a f
Re: (Score:2)
I believe that OP was referring to "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." As in, what information would be released that could be useful to the criminal community? Prison geo-coordinates don't seem particularly sensitive as criminals could figure out the location of the prison using other methods. That is, unless the UK does a fairly thorough job of hiding their prisons.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Prison geo-coordinates don't seem particularly sensitive
They have been overly cautious, ever since the "Secret Nuclear Bunker" [google.com.au] had to be relocated.
Better idea (Score:2)
Instead of locking the drones out of prisons, maybe lock them in?
Re: (Score:2)
That was my first thought too. Pretty easy for hackers to replace the firmware in a drone. Pretty hard to defend against the far cheaper 12 gauge rock salt load which is non lethal (but very painful) and which will easily penetrate a drone's thin plastic skin.
Better yet, iron filings load for drones- short'em out.
Re: (Score:1)
Flying a drone so it avoids shotgun-equipped prison guards is easy. Real easy:
* Get a "plane" type drone. Like a rc plane but with the camera link. Payload: a bundle with dope/phone/pistol/whatever.
1. Get it up to a nice height well away from that prison. Nobody firing on it yet.
2. Turn off the motor, let the plane glide towards the prison. Nobody hear it coming, and it is too small to see. Nobody firing.
3. Drop the bundle when you see your i
Re: (Score:2)
Geoblocking is a waste of time.
Not only is geoblocking a waste of time, but it's actually an idiotic suggestion, that helps one to identify idiots.
Re: (Score:2)
Better yet, iron filings load for drones- short'em out.
That's not likely to actually work more than once or twice. It's pretty easy to protect against that sort of thing, just by potting stuff in epoxy and then wrapping that in foam.
Re: (Score:2)
correct, police state / corporate fascist ideas are beta tested in the UK before being rolled out in the USA
Re: (Score:2)
You cannot fly a drone:
Re: (Score:2)
The mission of law is not to oppress persons and plunder them of their property, even though the law may be acting in a philanthropic spirit. Its mission is to protect property.
(Frédéric Bastiat)
just shoot them down (Score:2)
\subject
Better idea (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a better idea: The police should track the drone's signal back to the person controlling it, and arrest them.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not both?
Re: (Score:2)
Because one is a colossal waste of money that results in nothing but regulatory oversight and additional expense on manufacturers while achieving nothing?
Shit my drone doesn't even have GPS and I'd have no problem flying it over the fence of something as large as a prison.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Cell phones are generally not permitted in prisons, so jamming them would be an additional benefit.
Re: (Score:2)
A lot of UK prisons are pretty small - they're often located in reasonably built up areas, and a lot of them have roads running around their perimeters (fun fact: I once scoped out a student house who's front door faced the back wall of a prison). As such, if you want to fly a drone:
1) You don't need GPS - if you happened to be able to throw uncommonly far (and knew the layout over the wall rather well) you could probably just do that. As it is, a drone with a camera would be plenty.
2) You can rock up in a
Re: (Score:2)
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.
So you're saying the punishment for murder should be working at McDonalds? Wouldn't that go against the constitution?
"Cruel and unusual punishment"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
The constitution was written by men and men are fallible. Maybe paying restitution to the victim might be a good way to punish criminals?
Murder victims might not appreciate being paid after they die. (not that they particulary get much from their killer going to jail)
The problem with fines as punishment is that, most people who commit crimes don't typically have a lot of money in the first place, that's why they turn to crime. Also, one might consider crime an investment. Got no money? Rob a bank, what's the worst that can happen, you have to give it back?
Also, what's the fine for murder? $1million? Some rich people might consider that
Re: (Score:2)
Murder victims might not appreciate being paid after they die. ... Also, what's the fine for murder?
Murder isn't something that can be repaid; no matter how much the perpetrator offers they can never "make the victim whole". As a meagre start on repaying that debt, however—and as an alternative to the death penalty, which would be justifiable retribution for any case of deliberate murder—someone could be appointed to represent the victim's interests, and whatever the victim might have chosen to do given the resources which would reasonably have been available to them becomes the murderer's obl
Already exist (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
The situation is much more complex here.
The thing with GPS is that they simply refuse to talk to you if altitude>18km and speed>1000kts. It is just a line of code in the GPS chip firmware.
For the drone thing, you need a database. You also don't want to simply block reception over prisons. In fact, you want to keep location data so that the drone can effectively avoid it, rather than act like it was in a tunnel and switch to dead reckoning.
It is a much higher level requirement, and it is much easier to
Re: (Score:2)
Is made in Atlanta, GA, *not* Canada. Can you believe that shiz?
I'm not sure how that is relevant, but Canada Dry was originally made in Canada before it got purchased by an American company.
Re: (Score:2)
"Drink Canada Dry."
I'm trying, man. I'm (hic) trying.
Closed source firmware (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
You're overthinking it. Including public records and obeying rules based on them won't require closing the source in any way. Bypassing the firmware with a modified version is a possibility, but wouldn't be the manufacturer's fault.
If you manufacture it yourself, however, you'd probably have to implement the same rules or be breaking the law. That doesn't preclude sharing that code with other people.
Re: (Score:2)
Including public records and obeying rules based on them won't require closing the source in any way.
Without strict control over the firmware there is little point in including the prisons in a built-in geofence list. The threat vector this proposal is meant to address is people deliberately using the drones to deliver prohibited items into prisons, which is already illegal with serious penalties. If the restriction is not made extremely difficult to bypass (DRM, not just closed-source firmware) then anyone interested in using drones for illicit prison deliveries would simply modify the firmware to disable
Re: (Score:2)
I wouldn't be surprised if the manufacturers are the ones pushing for these laws. They want to be able to sell the tech while also being absolved of aiding in these crimes.
Little point or not, there doesn't seem to be any talk of restricting control over the firmware.
That'll work for maybe 5 mintutes (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No security system is infallible, but you make it as hard as possible for people trying to break your security. If geoblocking blocks SOME drones and foils some attempts then overall the security of the prison is increased.
By itself it may not be enough, but it does help security.
Re: (Score:2)
If geoblocking blocks SOME drones
It won't. It will block zero. The market is absolutely full of drones which don't even have GPS in them.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yes.
Submit a list of prohibited coordinates to drone manufacturers today and they have a list of sensitive/secure facilities (filtering out the airports). Include prisons in that list and you have another layer of obfuscation to work through if you want to use this list for nefarious purposes.
So drones would be required to have working GPS? (Score:2)
Good luck with that.
This is dumb on so many levels (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
You're dumb on so many levels (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Operator simply disables GPS, or even simpler buys a drone that doesn't have it. Duh.
Re: (Score:2)
Disabling GPS means no control - drones are not line of sight. And flying by camera requires a much more stable connection than you're likely to get. Overwriting the firmware is a lot more useful of a solution.
To buy one that doesn't have it would require a black market solution.
Re: (Score:2)
There is technology out there that actively blocks satellite signals and prevents GPS/GLONASS signals being picked up by devices. I'm not sure how expensive it is to implement. Russia currently uses this around a number of sensitive areas, such as the Kremlin, presumably to prevent terrorist attacks.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Firstly, it doesn't matter what GNSS system you use. The Geo-fencing works by *coordinates* built into the nav-system inside the drone not broadcast from the GNSS system so it doesn't require any cooperation from GNSS providers, only drone manufacturers.
Secondly, have you ever flown a commercial drone? The larger ones generally support a "go-home" feature which uses GPS (newer ones support Galileo) which is useful to keep from losing your expensive drone when it loses touch with your controller. Only the
Not a good solution, EM Gun instead? (Score:2)
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 main
Don't even need to hack it (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
That's probably the most useful suggestion I've seen yet on this thread.
OTOH, with a 3-d printer of modest capabilities, making new patterns of rotors is almost trivial. 7 blades with an edge band to suppress tip-noise? No problem. Different numbers of rotors on each motor? Not much problem.
Re: (Score:2)
In Britain? Are you joking? Cops aren't armed with nything more lethal than a pepper spray, and the police force struggle to recruit enough existing officers to take firearms training to maintain the numbers of officers who can be armed. The prison service don't have any armed resources at all. Not a pop-gun, nor any legal or practical infrastructure to start one.
Nope, that's a complete n
Geoblocking In General (Score:2)
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 s
Re: (Score:2)
That is not a slippery slope. It's not even a very damp slope. Prisons are literally a well-known target for drone drops, and this just makes sure that off-the-shelf equipment won't be aiding in committing crimes.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
I don't think they care about *looking* into a prison from a mile away, only getting above it and dropping contraband into the prison (cell phones, drugs, etc)... Looking in general? That's a privacy issue not a geoblocking issue. There are many laws regarding privacy and they are different around the world. That has less to do with geoblocking as it does with the camera issue.
At least in the US, privacy is generally afforded if it is out of view of the naked eye in a place accessible to the public. Cour
Re: (Score:2)
That's why you layer security.
Your house probably has a front door lock. Hopefully you have a deadbolt too, on top of that you probably have an alarm sensor on your door if it opens. That's probably not enough so you may have a glass break sensor, a motion sensor, maybe even a security camera. Your alarm is connected to the phone line to call the alarm monitoring company; unless you have a crappy system, you also have a cell backup in your monitoring station to call the monitoring company if the phone li
Re: (Score:1)
Retards (Score:2)
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.
Or, how about ... (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Trying to hamstring every legally purchases hobby drone is not the way to go.
Is anyone who legally purchases a drone really going to care if they can't fly the drone over prisons anymore? What legitimate reason is there for flying drones over prisons?
Re: (Score:3)
Trying to hamstring every legally purchases hobby drone is not the way to go.
Is anyone who legally purchases a drone really going to care if they can't fly the drone over prisons anymore? What legitimate reason is there for flying drones over prisons?
Who owns the database? How big a database is required? Who pays the cost for the creation and storage of the database and its maintenance and updates? And the increased drown cost for extra computes and storage on the drone. What about homemade or open source drones. It is not effective to have this operate at the drone level. Can I add my house to the list if I do potentially classified work at home. What about drawing up industrial contracts that effect the economy if leaked? Heck commodities futures are
Re: (Score:2)
Now you're going beyond the scope. One presumes the government would control the database of prison locations and the information would have to be public if drone manufacturers have to be able to access it.
If home-made drones choose to not abide by the rules, it's hard to enforce, but if caught, one would have to pay for their crimes. In reality, petty theft is hard to prevent happening, most of it goes uncaught, but that doesn't mean you don't make it illegal and try to enforce it.
Re: (Score:2)
What legitimate reason is there for flying drones over prisons?
I live in a prison, you insensitive clod, and I have hobbies, too.
Re: (Score:2)
Prisons move. New prisons are built, old ones close down. Are we going to require OTA updates to keep the latest and greatest info on hobby grade equipment?
It also introduces a vector for error. Some SW monkey accidentally fat-fingers a lat.long and suddenly your entire residential area is off limits instead of a prison.
There are several ways this could go wrong or be abused... and the trade off is non-existent. There is no upside, because it will not work for the intended purpose: keeping drones away f
Re: (Score:2)
No, but legal drone purchasers will care about the added complexity (reduced reliability) and cost now associated with the legal drones they want to purchase.
Criminals on the other hand need not care about the cost as they will be perfectly happy to steal drones. And they need not care about the geoblocking as they will find ways around it anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
No, but legal drone purchasers will care about the added complexity (reduced reliability)
LMAO - that's a little bit of a stretch!
Instead of Geoblocking ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Keep the outdoor areas under mesh and only once a sentence is very near a release date could off site low security like sites be offered.
If not, next gen drones will just fly in on maps and distance, not needing active guidance that can be detected.
Once a very good map of a site is created and a launch location created good computer skills can do the rest.
T
Re: (Score:2)
If not, next gen drones will just fly in on maps and distance, not needing active guidance that can be detected.
It is very hard to build guidance systems that can be accurate without position guidance of some sort. The accelerometers and gyros used in the small single chip sensors that have made stabilized drone flight easy respond to accelerations and changes in angle. Flight in a wind which provides a consistent drift is unaccelerated and will not be detected by those devices.
If you take a Phantom 3, for example, and switch it to non-GPS mode, it will quite happily drift with the prevailing winds and require manu
Re: (Score:2)
How much land can a nation buy to out pace steady directional flight without weather been a huge factor? A very simple flight path of up, fly in one direction, drop?
With altered consumer or prosumer electronics. Build your own unexpected frequency network that only has to last the flight to guide the drone?
DIY (Score:2)
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?
Can't see it working (Score:2)