
Drone carrying drugs, hacksaw blades crashes at Oklahoma prison - corndoge
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/10/27/us-oklahoma-prison-idUSKCN0SL22220151027
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GordonS
> in what the officials said was the first attempt in the state to smuggle
> material into a prison with an unmanned aerial vehicle

Eh.. surely it's the first _detected_ attempt?!

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swiley
There have been others, at least one last year. I don't know why they say this
is the first.

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nmc
In Oklahoma? They clearly say it is the first _in the state_.

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oneJob
Perhaps someone should fork this behavior and start dropping care packages for
prisoners. Good chocolate. Textbooks, self help books, poetry and literature.
Letters from family members. Comfortable underwear. Assistance for those soon
to be released. A kind rebellion against the unblinking barbed wire.

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giarc
I think there are legal ways of getting all of these inside the walls of a
prison.

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oneJob
Which is prob just as fun and pleasant of an experience as delivery by drone.

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TeMPOraL
Unless I'm missing something important, it takes some special level of
incompetence to fail like that. I have 1 hour and 10 minutes of total flight
time of a quadcopter under my belt and could probably navigate better than
that.

Which makes me wonder, given the other apparently trivial failures mentioned
in the article, how many more drone drops are successful and go unnoticed?

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giarc
It says the stuff was attached by fishing line. I imagine the pilot was trying
to keep the drone as low as possible and misjudged the clearance of the
fishing line from the top of the fence. Once it was caught, there's nothing
you can really do.

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jessaustin
It's only a matter of time before someone uses a bigger drone to get _out_.

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jsjohnst
Have you seen any of the drones able to lift a human? Absolutely no way that's
sneaking around undetected unless the prison is uber incompetent.

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richardw
Doesn't need to be undetected, just fast enough that the escapee doesn't get
shot and slow enough that the escapee doesn't die from the G-forces. There's a
lot of room between those two extremes. You'd have to install drone guns to
protect against the escape drones, but are invulnerable to attacking drone
guns. This could get ugly.

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jschwartzi
I know what all the other stuff would be useful for, but does anyone know why
it was carrying super-glue? I find it hard to believe an inmate would huff
that if they had access to anything else in that package.

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dkbrk
This is just speculation on my part, but a glue such as cyanoacrylate would be
extremely useful for attaching a handle to an improvised tool or weapon.

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jschwartzi
I guess it's lighter than duct-tape and concealable too. I know the hacksaw
blades would be useless as anything but weapons, so it's probable that there's
an inmate who's now stuck with a surplus of handles and no blades. Worse yet,
he could also have a bunch of late drug orders.

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JoeAltmaier
Sounds like trade goods. If you're escaping (hacksaw blades) why do you need
drugs _now_ (leaving soon)?

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Roodgorf
I assumed the hacksaw blades were also trade goods to be used for making
weapons. I imagine if you were really determined to escape you may need more
materials than that.

