3 ms·

It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. At some point Congress or some state l

It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. At some point Congress or some state legislature is going to pass restrictive legislation regulating drone ownership and use much more strictly than is the case today. It might require manufacturers to include backdoors to enable law enforcement to take control of a drone. It will be portrayed as a safety measure, perhaps even as an antiterrorism measure. This is why we can't have nice things.

KingMachiavelli 8y ago
You could almost replace "drone" with "gun" in your comment and save for the "take control of a gun" line, it would still make sense. You could get an air port to shutdown by shooting a gun yet the consequnces of doing so are severe enough that it is in ineffective means of causing disrucption. The key difference is that a drone can go places a person with a gun cannot so I suspect that methods of finding drone operators will improve and become more widely deployed.
- azinman2 8y ago
  Not to mention that you can reconstruct where a bullet was shot from, but a drone could be operated from anywhere. Bullets are also loud when they go off, so localization becomes easier.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    We’ve been living with guns for centuries, we’ve been living with drones for decades, and only the last decade saw them in the hands of many people. I suspect the current “Wild West” of drones is a temporary phenomenon.
fucking_tragedy 8y ago
> It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. Pretty sure there are consequences for violating FAA regulations, so I doubt there will be a lot of intentional aircraft disruption by drone operators.
cortic 8y ago
Causes about the same disruption as a hoax call from a burner phone... for about 90 times the cost.
godelski 8y ago
I'm not sure about this (the regulation). At least it doesn't seem to solve anything. It is fairly easy to make a drone. If you're making it then there's no registration or back door that could help with this. The biggest concern is what if some organization (let's say ISIS) organized a drone disruption "attack". With a few thousand dollars you could disrupt TONS of airports (by keeping constant drone coverage over just a few large airports). There's only 36 class B airports (37 if you include Hawaii). You could even be smart about it and just shutting down a much smaller subset of that and you'd have HUGE disruptions. At least millions lost to the economy, if not billions, due to the inability for these airports to operate (and the loss due to passengers not being able to reach their destinations). We're talking a (bs number) lower bound of 5 drones and possibly shutting down the East coast. That's not an expensive attack. Let's even take an estimate to ball part what it would cost to shut down all class B airports in the (contiguous) US. We'll say 5 drones per airport at $1k each (upper bounding). That's still under $200k (not including operative costs). That's too cheap NOT to do. And I'm sure you can think of a million ways to extrapolate this kind of attack to make it FAR worse for not much more money. This isn't a regulation problem. This is a technical one and it needs to be solved fast. What needs to be figured out is some way to disable the drones. And then to automate that process for drones that violate these air spaces. I honestly can't see any other good solution.
bb88 8y ago
> It might require manufacturers to include backdoors to enable law enforcement to take control of a drone. It will be portrayed as a safety measure, perhaps even as an antiterrorism measure. Congress is too lazy to figure out this language. They'll just opt for harsh penalties. Minimum 5 year jail terms, say.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

KingMachiavelli 8y ago

You could almost replace "drone" with "gun" in your comment and save for the "take control of a gun" line, it would still make sense. You could get an air port to shutdown by shooting a gun yet the consequnces of doing so are severe enough that it is in ineffective means of causing disrucption. The key difference is that a drone can go places a person with a gun cannot so I suspect that methods of finding drone operators will improve and become more widely deployed.

azinman2 8y ago
Not to mention that you can reconstruct where a bullet was shot from, but a drone could be operated from anywhere. Bullets are also loud when they go off, so localization becomes easier.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  We’ve been living with guns for centuries, we’ve been living with drones for decades, and only the last decade saw them in the hands of many people. I suspect the current “Wild West” of drones is a temporary phenomenon.

fucking_tragedy 8y ago

> It seems like this is a cheap and easy way to cause a whole lot of disruption. We're going to see more and more of this. Pretty sure there are consequences for violating FAA regulations, so I doubt there will be a lot of intentional aircraft disruption by drone operators.

cortic 8y ago

Causes about the same disruption as a hoax call from a burner phone... for about 90 times the cost.

godelski 8y ago

I'm not sure about this (the regulation). At least it doesn't seem to solve anything. It is fairly easy to make a drone. If you're making it then there's no registration or back door that could help with this. The biggest concern is what if some organization (let's say ISIS) organized a drone disruption "attack". With a few thousand dollars you could disrupt TONS of airports (by keeping constant drone coverage over just a few large airports). There's only 36 class B airports (37 if you include Hawaii). You could even be smart about it and just shutting down a much smaller subset of that and you'd have HUGE disruptions. At least millions lost to the economy, if not billions, due to the inability for these airports to operate (and the loss due to passengers not being able to reach their destinations). We're talking a (bs number) lower bound of 5 drones and possibly shutting down the East coast. That's not an expensive attack. Let's even take an estimate to ball part what it would cost to shut down all class B airports in the (contiguous) US. We'll say 5 drones per airport at $1k each (upper bounding). That's still under $200k (not including operative costs). That's too cheap NOT to do. And I'm sure you can think of a million ways to extrapolate this kind of attack to make it FAR worse for not much more money. This isn't a regulation problem. This is a technical one and it needs to be solved fast. What needs to be figured out is some way to disable the drones. And then to automate that process for drones that violate these air spaces. I honestly can't see any other good solution.

bb88 8y ago

> It might require manufacturers to include backdoors to enable law enforcement to take control of a drone. It will be portrayed as a safety measure, perhaps even as an antiterrorism measure. Congress is too lazy to figure out this language. They'll just opt for harsh penalties. Minimum 5 year jail terms, say.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]