8 ms·
This is a joke. Consumer electronics radio communication systems may be trivially jammed, with little to no effort. It's simply a matter of political protocol (
by downer68 8y ago
This is a joke. Consumer electronics radio communication systems may be trivially jammed, with little to no effort. It's simply a matter of political protocol (aka: warrants) for when and where such things must happen.
The article states that the services used to relay data links were common wi-fi and ordinary cellular telephone service.
The first thing that usually happens in a war zone is HAM radio service experiences disruption. [0] Cell phone back doors via CALEA [1] are already used to disrupt would-be suicide bombers around the world, and yes even in the United States. [2]
If push comes to shove, we'll all lose wi-fi and cell phones in an area of effect, around any hostile activity, whenever shit gets real.
[0] http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-radio14jan14-story.html http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-radio14jan14-story.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...
[2] http://codegreenprep.com/2013/04/boston-bombing-shows-you-cant-rely-on-cell-phones-in-an-emergency/ http://codegreenprep.com/2013/04/boston-bombing-shows-you-ca...
- bufferoverflow 8y agoHow would you "trivially" block LED/light sensor communication? It's not insanely hard to create a drone swarm with zero radio.
- jasonjayr 8y agoA brighter light to overwhelm the carrier signal
- downer68 8y ago"Lasers." (although, line of sight, point-to-point communication is admittedly less trivial to interfere with) The point being that, if "criminal gangs" are up to no good, but they're parting their equipment with off-the-shelf Best Buy and Radio Shack products, they probably aren't programming DSP interfaces, aren't encoding and decoding raw bit streams, aren't masking binary objects with base64 blobs, aren't rolling their own encryption. Or, if they are rolling their own encryption, they're using Excel spreadsheets to do it. [0] [0] https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_sentencing/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_s...
- k__ 8y agoDoes this work? I had the impression, you can't out-light shadows for example.
- jacquesm 8y agoThere's a pretty bright light on between sunrise and sunset, doesn't affect free air optical transmission at all unless the sun happens to align with the sender or the receiver. The biggest limitations are water vapor in the air, precipitation and dust. Also, the distance is rather limited compared to radio.
- raducu 8y agoThis doesn't work if the receiver on the drone is directed backwards and you usually are in front of the drone as its target.
- sshine 8y agoTwo words: Trained Falcons.
- Verdex_3 8y agoI mean this theoretically works until the gangs decide to start putting small bombs in the drones that detonate on impact. I bet they can build drones faster than people can breed and train the birds.
- wincy 8y agoWell yeah then you have a counter swarm of exploding drones. The government can always afford more than the criminals because they can just squeeze their tax cattle a little harder.
- sshine 8y agoIt doesn't just theoretically work. Trained falcons and eagles are being used by police forces already: https://www.google.dk/search?q=training+birds+to+attack+drones https://www.google.dk/search?q=training+birds+to+attack+dron... I don't know if any counter-measures are getting popular yet, but it's probably cheaper to poison or shoot them than explode them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- samfisher83 8y agoYou could do waypoint so the drone isn't being controlled by the controller.
- sshine 8y agoThe article mentions criminal use-cases where direct radio frequency isn't necessary (moving small quantities of high-value drugs across borders) and where jamming isn't an option (surveilling police stations for snitches). Crude military methods aren't always an option, although I'm sure we'll come up with smarter counter-measures, potentially at the cost of everyday privacy.
- Verdex_3 8y agoNot to mention eventually someone is going to figure out how to get a drone to understand sign language. The only way I can think to jam a drone's camera from reading sign language is going to be shining a bunch of lasers at anything that looks like a camera (probably using your own counter drones). Or someone is going to figure out how to take videogame AI and jam it into a drone. Even if we somehow restrict criminals from getting drone AI (which is on it's face reasonable ... most AI experts probably don't want their work falling into the hands of criminals building kill bots), then I doubt we'll be willing to restrict people from owning half-life because it turns out its AI makes a good autonomous FBI obstructing bot.
- sorokod 8y agoThese are early days - I expect an arms race of measures / countermeasures (many of them spilling over from the military ) to develop.