
A Criminal Gang Used a Drone Swarm to Obstruct an FBI Hostage Raid - lnguyen
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/05/criminal-gang-used-drone-swarm-obstruct-fbi-raid/147956/
======
netsharc
Why do I smell propaganda (for more drone laws) when I read this?

Imagine if it thr subject were encryption instead of drones.

Police are able to shoo people away from crime/accident scenes, that should
apply to devices too, and can't they solve it by having a device that shoots
out a net? (Or does that only exist in movies?) US police can apply for
federal military gear for cheap anyway (not that that's a good thing, police
should deescalate, not escalate situations).

~~~
fenwick67
Yes and it's very bizarre. Here are the notes on the two amendments:

> One would make it illegal to “weaponize” consumer drones.

> The other — and arguably more important — amendment would require drones
> that fly beyond their operators’ line of sight to broadcast an identity
> allowing law enforcement to track and connect them to a real person.

Literally neither of these would have had any effect on the case at hand. I'm
reminded of gun control legislation - except you can't build a gun from
scratch in your basement and quadcopters are very ineffective at killing
people.

~~~
PurpleBoxDragon
>except you can't build a gun from scratch in your basement

You can't? While the equipment isn't something everyone owns, there are those
who do own it and can do it.

~~~
dkoubsky
While not quite from scratch, I have built guns. I might add that it is a very
interesting and educational experience for anyone interested. Also, know that
so long as you aren't a felon and the gun you build complies with federal and
state laws, it is completely legal to do so.

~~~
unit91
You've _assembled_ guns, probably, from parts you purchased. Like Legos. I
doubt very much that too many people are hammer-forging 7075 receivers in
their garages...

~~~
djrogers
You’d be surprised then - first of all, no “hammer-forging” is required, nor
is 7075 whatever.

Take this for example (warning, language!)
[https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/diy-shovel-
ak-...](https://www.northeastshooters.com/xen/threads/diy-shovel-ak-photo-
tsunami-warning.179192/)

~~~
unit91
This is actually my point. It didn't say "no one" is doing it. Even though his
means are very crude, he still needs a furnace, a welder, and a lot of other
tooling (receiver jig, etc.) to get to the point where he can use a bucket of
pre-fab parts (most notably the barrel).

That guy is building a receiver, then assembling. Most people who are into it
are just assembling.

------
downer68
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_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_Law_Enforcement_Act)

[2] [http://codegreenprep.com/2013/04/boston-bombing-shows-you-
ca...](http://codegreenprep.com/2013/04/boston-bombing-shows-you-cant-rely-on-
cell-phones-in-an-emergency/)

~~~
bufferoverflow
How would you "trivially" block LED/light sensor communication? It's not
insanely hard to create a drone swarm with zero radio.

~~~
jasonjayr
A brighter light to overwhelm the carrier signal

~~~
downer68
" _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_s...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/22/ba_jihadist_trial_sentencing/)

~~~
dalore
Block line of sight, use a smoke grenade.

~~~
downer68
To be honest, I really don't think laser/LED chanels are being used.

I've never seen a remote control quad copter sold off the shelve with IR LED
TV remote style I/O for it's tranceiver control system.

------
AliAdams
We are trending towards a world where individuals are becoming more omniscient
and more omnipotent. Where any motivated US citizen can purchase a drone, look
up how to build a bomb or plant a GPS tracker.

Regulation to prevent access to these capabilities feels like throwing rocks
into a river; it may slow some things down, but it seems an inevitability that
the capabilities of technologically augmented citizens will continue to grow -
we as a society need to work out how to adapt to deal with this future in a
meaningful way, avoiding knee-jerk policies like drone registration that
inconvenience the masses and serve as no real barrier to the malicious.

~~~
gonzo41
Make a better society.

There are a lot of crime of opportunity but just as much criminality from
circumstance.

These are smart people doing very bad things, they need to be identified and
put to constructive and rewarding work.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Universal Basic Income and decriminalization of drugs and single payer
universal healthcare would go a long way towards making the whole criminality
arms race dry up and disappear. Desperation, as a constant social background
hum, would largely stop.

~~~
stef25
Poverty, social misery and drug addiction no doubt leads to lots of petty
crime but hostage takings and illegal immigration is not going to get solved
with UBI.

Decriminalisation of drugs (Portugal) would not negate the need of going after
importers and large scale dealers.

~~~
JulianMorrison
Full drug legalization with standardized safe supply would make importing it
as negligible a business as moonshine running.

To solve illegal immigration, UBI has to be extended globally - and then the
border can simply be taken down.

~~~
stef25
Lofty ambitions, won't ever happen.

------
thaumaturgy
Here is a neat thing to do for the comments section here: open up your
browser's console, and enter something like:

    
    
        for (let i of $$('.comment span.c00')) i.innerHTML = i.innerHTML.replace(/drone/ig, 'gun');
    

It's really a stunning effect, much more so than just staring at the comments
and imagining swapping the words around.

For the record, I don't think drones are exactly equivalent to firearms. But
the parallels between the comments here and those of gun advocates is
something that should make people stop and go, "hmm."

> _Why do I smell propaganda (for more gun laws) when I read this?_

~~~
mcbits
That was great. Some other funny words to try: toy, chatbot, drug, nuke, 3D
printer, kite

------
squarefoot
Even 20 years ago almost anyone could load model RC airplanes with a grenade
then direct them beyond an embassy fence or to a human target during a speech.
Don't assume only modern stuff can be used as a weapon and don't blame
technology or attempt to overregulate it when it happens.

(Just to be clear: I'm strongly in favor of gun regulation; there's a huge
difference between something whose primary use it to harm people from tools
and toys).

------
sandworm101
The logistics of keeping a drone airborne for an extended period make
skeptical of many of the claims in this article.

A drone monitoring people who come in and out of a police station would be a
monumental task. Take the flight time of a drone, one that is both small
enough to not be noticed and yet powerful enough to spot people's faces. These
things have flight time measured in minutes. It would take a team of people
and a fleet of a dozen drones. This is batman-v-joker stuff.

Same too with the drones used at the boarder. A drone has a limited useful
range, perhaps a kilometer at most. So people will still need to hike into the
area. And the drones need recharge/refuel. A man standing on a mountain with a
telescope can continuously observe a greater area than a hundred drones. I
don't see the efficiency.

Perhaps the bad guys have experimented and these experiments have been
spotted, but I cannot believe that these are common practices.

------
iopuy
Now based on this article lawmakers can cite the dangers of drones. This is
ammunition to fund and agenda. Don't bother with trying to piece together this
dribble, it is propaganda at its finest. Look at the outlet. They have a
vested interests in restricting drones access to encumbent powers.

------
notemaker
I wholeheartedly recommend this somewhat OT video about the future of drones
and their potential harm: Slaughterbots

[https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA](https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA)

~~~
fouc
It seems scary at first glance but it doesn't take into account the
countermeasures that people would come up with.

~~~
notemaker
True. But I'd still deem that to be a very scary world.

------
codezero
Can anyone make the connection to the hostage situation in question? Did this
really happen?

~~~
mirimir
I doubt that there were hostages involved. An FBI "Hostage Rescue Team" aka
HRT likely just raided some "gang". This was last winter. It could have been
the Dakota Pipeline protests.

------
basicplus2
"The gangs will monitor port authority workers. If the workers get close to a
shipping container that houses illegal substances or contraband, the gang will
call in a fire, theft, or some other false alarm to draw off security forces."

This presents the Perfect opportunity to zero in on dodgy containers of
contraband.. walk around coming from various directions till the drones come
and they will show the area to search

------
atlasunshrugged
I think this is going to get far worse before it gets better. These drones
remind me of the use of burner phones - like most tech end up doing eventually
it's hit a price point where we can easily pick up and discard new ones with
little concern which means that it's going to be a necessity to have one of
these for any criminal operation as others start to include them in theirs
(arms races aren't just for countries, certainly happens in smaller more local
settings).

The article mentions a few options for how the authorities will limit the
criminal applications but I wonder if it'll get more extreme than that
(especially after we end up with a terrorist attack perpetrated by someone
using a drone). It won't solve all negative use cases but I wonder if there's
some way for drone manufacturers to create no fly zones automatically that
will cause a drone to redirect if it enters one and allows law enforcement to
create new temporary zones for situations like the one described in the
article.

edit for clarity

~~~
jstanley
No fly zones will only keep good guys out. The same is true of any regulation-
based solution. Anybody can build a drone at home that ignores no-fly zones
and doesn't broadcast any serial numbers, and then operate it remotely, with
very little chance of getting caught.

I don't know what the answer is, other than to hope that most people continue
to be mostly good.

In case you haven't seen it, the short film "Slaughterbots" is worth a watch:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA)

~~~
erric
I wonder if using a lower tech solution, birds of prey, would be a better
option then regulation?

~~~
cm2187
Drones are cheaper to buy in volume than it is to train birds.

~~~
erric
Indeed! Here’s one example[0]

So LE should get counter-drones. But then the “bad guys” will get anti-
counter-drones.

[0] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/12/16767000/police-
netherla...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/12/16767000/police-netherlands-
eagles-rogue-drones)

~~~
mmirate
Right, in military aviation that's just the dichotomy between bombers and
fighters. Of course your enemy won't send unescorted bombers if they know you
have fighters. That's why victory requires that your own fighters maintain air
superiority.

~~~
nradov
The US Air Force has sent unescorted B-2 bombers into enemy territory prior to
establishing air superiority.

~~~
ceejayoz
That's kinda a special case, and it's generally done with a bunch of fighters
ready to go intervene if necessary.

It works well on Syria. I doubt it'd work well on Russia/China.

~~~
nradov
There were no fighters ready to go "intervene". What would be the point?
Fighters don't have the range or speed to get there in time to accomplish
anything.

The B-2 was specifically designed to penetrate Russian (Soviet) airspace.
Hopefully we'll never find out whether it works.

~~~
ceejayoz
An F-15 can cross Syria's widest dimension in about five minutes at top speed.
Having fighter escorts loitering in the general vicinity isn't uncommon on a
B-2 run - they can jam, distract, and assist in an escape in the event the B-2
is detected and attacked by enemy fighters.

Any B-2 run on Russia/China would've been a "hope some get through" sort of
scenario. There's no reason to take that sort of risk on a $2B aircraft when
dealing with a country like Libya or Syria.

------
danesparza
Why couldn't they have just waited the 20-30 minutes it would have taken for
the drones to lose power (instead of panicking)?

~~~
ceejayoz
Drone racers already carry a bunch of spare batteries to keep flying. I
suspect a gang taking on the FBI would be capable of the same. With multiple
drones, spare batteries, and some quick chargers, waiting it out might take a
while.

------
polskibus
What now? EMP grenades like in Cyberpunk RPG?

------
stef25
Birds of prey have been trained to hunt and take down drones and they do it
very well. Seems like an elegant solution to this problem.

~~~
misnome
Without injury? What about when it becomes common and they put sharper blades
on?

~~~
stef25
Plenty of Youtube videos suggest no injury. Other drones could be employed to
drop mesh nets on the offending drones to entangle the rotors.

------
Overtonwindow
Related, some of you might enjoy the book “Kill Decision“ by Daniel Suarez,
about this very topic.

~~~
atlasunshrugged
Yes, read it just a while ago and it's a fantastic book (as are Daemon and
Freedom, his first two novels)

------
Lunatic666
I think a drone id is a good thing, but not to identify criminals. They’d
reset the id or falsify it. It would be helpful to monitor drone airspace
though, e.g. to see who’s using drones too close to restricted zones etc.

~~~
Tepix
Yep. I don't see how legislation will stop smuggling of drugs with drones.
It's illegal to start with.

------
nkrisc
Isn't this a problem shotguns with bird shot could solve?

~~~
mmirate
Unfortunately, it is quite likely that stochastic motion would be an effective
defense against any simple ballistic weaponry. Airburst munitions (i.e. flak)
would be a more robust solution.

------
jMyles
Is anyone asking the question: is drone obstruction of police raids a net good
or net bad for society? Isn't that the real question here?

~~~
loeg
In what way(s) do you see drone obstruction of police raids as a good for
society? The bad seems pretty obvious, but I'm struggling to see how this is
an open question ("net good or bad?").

~~~
TangoTrotFox
While dodging this specific issue, there is a key philsophical issue in play.
Should we desire a society where the police are 100% efficient at preventing
unlawful activity? The knee jerk answer is obviously yes, yet it's certainly a
knee jerk reaction. The most fundamental issue is that history has shown time
and again that the corruption of the powers that be is not a question of _if_
but a question of _when_. What happens when the powers that be become
corrupted, but also perfectly efficient at carrying out their will? That is
quite disconcerting and, for instance, is why the fact that society is
increasingly turning into a surveillance state should be extremely unsettling.
I'm far less concerned about a madman with a gun than I am about a madman with
a national military and police force.

Another issue is that much progress in the past has been the product of
unlawful activity. How long would slavery have lasted if abolitionists were
able to have been effectively snuffed out? How would it be if the "founding
fathers" instead were rotely hung, drawn, and quartered -- a practice that
persisted in the English empire all the way up until 1870? Would America have
been a better or worse place if every person who ever once indulged in a
controlled substance or drunk before age was prosecuted? Imagine if
prohibition or other morality based laws, including for instance laws against
homosexuality, could have been effectively enacted. What sort of path of
puritanism would that have set us on?

Of course I don't think anybody knows the answers to these questions, but I do
think there is a strong argument that law enforcement does not have an
inherent right to any means that would make their work more efficient. So do
police have a right to obstruct all of society's freedom to operate drones for
the sake of increased efficiency? I am not sure, but I do think any issue that
proposes sacrificing freedom for security should be questioned.

~~~
jonnybgood
It’s not a knee jerk yes for the simple fact the police are not the lawmakers.
If you have issues of corruption of the powers that be then the
lawmakers/elected officials are your real problem. Are you making a case for a
less efficient society based on hypotheticals?

> The most fundamental issue is that history has shown time and again that the
> corruption of the powers that be is not a question of if but a question of
> when.

History has also shown it goes the other way as well.

~~~
King-Aaron
I don't know. It seems that Police in the United States often tend to appear
as a judge, jury and executioner all rolled in to one - and that's often in
response to minor crimes (i.e. the fellow that was recently shot in a
supermarket carpark by US police). Police officers are humans, and humans have
a habit of making disastrous decisions at times.

------
aussieguy123
If you think this is bad, just wait until criminals and terrorists get their
hands on these:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HipTO_7mUOw)

~~~
zawerf
I wouldn't worry about the "AI" aspect and cheaply mass-produced aspect of
that fictional short film. At least not for a couple more years given how
terrible and expensive the existing consumer "follow me" drones are (most of
which are not computer vision based). Especially at the size depicted, it
can't possibly fly for more than a couple minutes if it also needs to process
a video feed.

In that case, a dumb human remote-controlled flying machine gun achievable by
hobbyists is about just scary (2012):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNPJMk2fgJU)

But mostly because of the machine gun.

Similarly in the kamikaze drones case, just make sure no one can amass a large
amount of explosives they can strap onto quadcopters.

~~~
mrsteveman1
> specially at the size depicted, it can't possibly fly for more than a couple
> minutes if it also needs to process a video feed.

Assuming we're talking about 10-20 years from now, what kind of power source
_could_ work for a longer period of time without increasing the size?

~~~
ceejayoz
> Assuming we're talking about 10-20 years from now, what kind of power source
> could work for a longer period of time without increasing the size?

The USAF is playing with latching onto powerlines.
[https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13093-spy-planes-
to-r...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13093-spy-planes-to-recharge-
by-clinging-to-power-lines/)

------
contourtrails
It's funny, some people are so opposed to increasing capabilities of law
enforcement but they conveniently ignore that the capabilities of criminals
are increasing too.

Law enforcement should be as many steps ahead of criminals as possible,
provided their capabilities do not infringe on our rights as citizens.

~~~
jmulho
> "provided their capabilities do not infringe on our rights as citizens"

For example blowing people up with a robot bomb without giving them a trial.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police_officers)

~~~
contourtrails
No, that particular case was a completely justified use of lethal force.

Police we're being directly fired upon. Should officers not fire back when
they are fired upon?

------
codedokode
Drones must be regulated because people are irresponsible. Sometimes I see
photos taken from a drone hanging above the people. What if it falls down?

Therefore, drones need identification. There must be a number on it and there
must be a law forbidding to operate a drone without number.

~~~
syshum
>Drones must be regulated because people are irresponsible

So does this apply to everything a person can be "irresponsible" with? I can
be "irresponsible" with my hammer do I need hammer regulation?

How far do you want to go into Authoritarianism?

~~~
codedokode
If your hammer can fly then probably yes. Are you against license plates on
cars too?

~~~
syshum
Yes actually. I do not believe I should be required by law to display a
Personally identifiable ID number that can be used to record my movements
either by government or individuals.

I value personal liberty and privacy over any perceived and hyped "safety"
justifications used to violate that liberty and privacy, for which the
advertised safety benefits/need hardly ever materialize

