

Google Gives $5 Million to Drone Program That Will Track Poachers - gatsby
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/12/google-gives-5-million-to-drone-program-that-will-track-poachers/266133/

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ComputerGuru
This is old news, already heavily discussed ~2 months ago here:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4935623>

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product50
It was the featured article in Reddit Today I Learned subreddit:
<http://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/>

Probably the author just got the idea from there and shared it here.

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rikacomet
There is one worry that I have: In this age, where hacking is so dominant, and
not even the most secure places are completely secure. I don't reckon that
these drones would have same level of cyber security, as military drones have,
and even those were vulnerable (remember how Iran got one). So, if the
poachers hire a exploit of this system, the animals would not be able to
exercise their natural defense, i.e currently, poachers depend on a lot of
tracking maneuvers, but still they don't know where the animal is actually.

If by chance, they get someone skilled to hack the drone system's
communication system only, (and they can afford it, given how big this whole
thing is) , they can poach with point-blank accuracy :(

I hope, google would provide them not just a secure system, but, also one that
they can't profitably exploit through a hacker.

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tiziano88
again?

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qompiler
Good idea! Lets make the Africans who manually track poachers jobless!

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fijal
Have you been to the kruger park? Do you have any idea how big it is? It's
impossible to cover such areas on foot and poachers can move even by
helicopters. Also if it continues like that, we'll be out of rhinos at some
point soon, so no guards at all (and no tourists either)

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qompiler
So use helicopters aswell?

