Here's a potentially scary thought for you: in ~2000, this would have been proof positive of state involvement. In 2011, this is barely newsworthy. In 2021, this will be about as within the reach of the average middle class teenager as a three ounce device capable of instantaneous worldwide encrypted communication.
This is not going to be a happy adjustment for people who have to maintain physical security of e.g. a base in Iraq or a community center in a small town in Iowa outside which the president is speaking. At the moment the man-portable drones mostly carry cameras, but the US is proving in spades that cameras are really lethal if you do them correctly. The smart money is not on "a camera will be the most lethal thing ever attached to a $100 electronic device the size of a seagull."
Several years ago I thought about writing a short story which included an attack/assassination of an important political figure. The point was to do some brainstorming about ways such an attack could be conducted.
After an hour or two, I decided never to write about this subject. The exercise was very eye-opening.
The difference between a normal, naked person and a person armed with tech is increasingly dramatically. I do not think this is a similar situation as we had with machine guns -- you could just outlaw all of them. Nobody is going to want to outlaw RC planes, or wearable cameras, or some sort of AI-augmented robotics. And even if you could, vast numbers of people would simply break the law. Disarming the population is not an option here.
But the trend that you describe is definitely unmistakable.
And they'll do it just the same way they're doing the internet: a little nibble at a time. It will be efforts to "Save children" "protect orphans" "help the little guy" "control the evil corporations" and every other overused FUD campaign that's worked so well in the past. They'll just re-purpose it -- and take tiny bites.
If they told us up front how much control they wanted, nobody would ever agree to it. (This is a systemic problem and not related to some hypothetical "they". I anthropomorphise and use hyperbole simply to express how frustrating it all is. The really sad part is that "they" -- who will be different people in different situations -- mean well and only want to help out. I think it would be much easier on everybody if Darth Vader showed up. At least it would be obvious what was going on. Reasoning about systemic problems is not for those with cartoon ideas of good guys and bad guys.)
"The really sad part is that "they" -- who will be different people in different situations -- mean well and only want to help out."
I used to think so, but no longer. It looks to me that issues are merely pasture for politicians to feed on. They don't care about the issues or the people the issues affect, they only notice an issue that can be used to further their career.
I would ask you to consider that the nature of this problem is folks picking sides. Once you have picked your side, the restrictions in freedom your side proposes seem okay -- or at least tolerable -- while the other side is always draconian and worthy of disdain, protest, and rebellion.
That's what I mean by systemic. Everybody is ready to jump up and go fight for truth and justice -- as long as what they are really doing is sticking it to the other side. When it's their guys doing the same thing? Suddenly it's bad, but not that bad. Hey, maybe it's bad, but they mean well.
I'll never forget after our current president got elected. A reporter went to talk to some demonstrators outside the White House. These guys were very upset about the killing of civilians, the police state, scanning records, and all of that. But -- guess what? They were all packing up and going home.
The reporter asked "But aren't all these things continuing to happen?"
I'll never forget the guy. He said, "Yes, but we have a new president now, and I think we should give him a chance."
Here's a guy screaming about killing babies one day. The next day, we're still killing babies, but hey, gotta let the new guy get a feel for the job. No fewer people got killed -- he was no closer to the goals he himself identified -- but his protest wasn't worth it any more.
I can't say this enough: it's not one side or the other. Thinking in terms of good guys and bad guys is a critical part of this problem: it's the engine that allows the system itself to continue to ratchet down on freedoms. We have met the enemy, and he is us. A systemic problem is a problem where everybody is acting for a good cause, working as intelligently as they can, and yet the outcome is still poor. Many times a facet or an exacerbator of these problems is the creation of groups of people who blame other groups for being the "real" cause of the problem. [Insert long discussion about evolutionary nature of us-versus-them reasoning and clan formation]
> After an hour or two, I decided never to write about this subject.
I have to say, you made the right choice. You would have probably ended up with a visit from Secret Service, FBI or other such organization.
Someone I know wrote about a similar hypothetical scenario and ended up getting a visit from FBI at their workplace, in front of everyone, then also at home. You know, just a friendly "chat"... They ended up lecturing him about 1st Ammendment rights, oh the irony.
"The difference between a normal, naked person and a person armed with tech is increasingly dramatically. "
The Golden Age books deal with this rather dramatically. It takes various ideas (augmented reality, global network connectivity, the singularity, etc.) to an extreme, to the point that a severe social punishment is to be disconnected from all globally integrated technology. A person in this state virtually becomes a non-person, unable to even achieve basic communication with other people physically in the same room, most other people even filtering disconnected persons out of their entire sensory experience.
Sure it is. Replace general purpose computers with centrally and permanently connected (It's a feature!) computing devices that only run signed apps. Then whenever someone does something too clever you just revoke their developer ID and everything they've written stops working. Justify this control with "piracy" and it'll be accepted.
It won't really work, but it seems like it would to an authoritarian, so it's pretty likely where we're going in such a hurry. Like all false security it just opens us up to a bigger attack, but reality never won an election so government will never handle this properly.
We talk about how nasty Iran, Egypt, Libya, etc, shut down communications preventing the people from changing things, but what measures do we have against our own governments doing the same things? I imagine we're totally screwed. Our government has the resources to do things thoroughly, and as the BART incident recently showed, the willingness to deny service to the innocent to inconvenience protestors.
>Sure it is. Replace general purpose computers with centrally and permanently connected (It's a feature!) computing devices that only run signed apps. Then whenever someone does something too clever you just revoke their developer ID and everything they've written stops working.
There was this one short story I've read months ago which essentially described this, just with compilers instead of apps. Oh the horror...
They've already clamped down on model rocketry as a hobby. I wouldn't be surprised to see restrictions on flying devices capable of carrying payloads larger than a certain size.
As you point out, it's not hard to imagine nefarious uses. Which is, of course, one of the reasons we can't have nice things.
The differences between model rocketry and model aircraft are significant enough that any "clamping down" on model aircraft would not be effective. The materials are too generic.
I disagree. You can pour your own sugar motor in nearly any impulse you desire. Granted technically it's not simple, but the materials required are easily obtained.
As for the rest of the rocket, I don't think the materials could get more generic. Fiberglass, carbon fiber, metal, and phenolic are all easily obtained.
They do have to leave their country to pursue their hobby. That may be some evidence of clamping. (they probably have to take to the water for safety reasons, but they seem to go amlot further outthan safety demands.)
They're still in Danish territorial waters when they launch. The reason they launch at sea is safety. It's hard to know exactly where the rocket will land, and there just aren't any good places in Denmark where there's a 50 mile radius where you can be certain that nobody will be hit by debris.
The part of the Baltic they launch from is actually a millitary training area that they borrow every year for launches.
Disclaimer: I'm involved with Copenhagen Suborbitals.
Considering there are multiple teams shooting for over 100k ft flights at Black Rock this year I'd say the US isn't as restrictive as they could be. For instance, here in Australia it's nearly impossible to get a waver for 100k ft flights due to the financial considerations.
I am interested in what kind of protection or defence is there against the drones. First is how would one detect them and how would one knock them out.
Can one make another drone that patrolls an area looking for these spy drones and then somehow shoots them down. Homes in on them then autodestructs...
A radar + a laser? An EMP device that would fry their electronics?
Would a small heat seeking missile work?
Well then there is always the moral side of it. If it is a plane with a human pilot in it, or a patrol car with a human in it, destroying it is equivalent to murder. Disabling or blinding one of these drones is just property damage.
You'd need to pick a scalable solution; where we have one drone today, we could have 20 in the same place for half the cost in the future.
In my opinion, the best solutions I can think of are:
1) EMP. May not shut off the motors, but should shut off the brains.
2) Base station with targeting system. Laser would be too slow, too dangerous. Maybe a high-powered water jet. Knock them right out of the sky. Break their wings.
3) A swarm of predator drones. Good ones would not be self-sacrificial.
I think a laser would scale much better than a water jet. Not to mention, isn't it hard to justify spraying water at every bird that flies by when you're stationed in a desert?
I think in the end, the cheapest thing will be something like a small gun mounted on turnable mount, with a camera attached. If it sees small something flying overhead, it shoots - normal airplanes will be too far up to hit, and if you have a lot of low-flying traffic, you could replace the bullets with rubber. Make certain - by physical means, not software - that the gun can't swivel below a certain angle to avoid shooting basketball players in the head.
You could probably use pretty standard ECM techniques to figure out what is a drone and what isn't by listening for their control signals. Of course that wouldn't help with autonomous drones, but those are still a ways off.
A laser sounds pretty good, they're big but you can swivel the beam very fast since you just have to move the mirrors. And they don't fall back to earth like bullets do.
EMPs are hard to produce without explosions of some kind[1], the energy requirements are similar to lasers but the power is way higher. They're hard to make directional, too, leading to a lot of collateral damage whenever you set one off.
"Of course that wouldn't help with autonomous drones, but those are still a ways off."
I can assure you that those are not a long way off. Fully autonomous drones can be deployed today by anyone with a few hundred dollars and a little electronic skills.
I think you'd just float some blimps with various sensors to watch for anything suspicious. [1] If you did spot anything suspicious, you'd simply move your high-value target as if you'd spotted someone with a gun or a suspicious bag in the area.
A jammer could be put into a ground-based vehicle and activated as part of a response, but even if you could engage a suspicious drone with your own, you'd still need to move the would-be target for safety's sake. So why bother?
[1] I'm rather surprised these things aren't already in use. They could be trivially disguised as promotional material for an event and even be tethered to provide superior power/data resources to your spotter blimp.
If jamming becomes common, it would take very little time for drones to be modified to be autonomous, or to follow a predetermined flight path if they lose contact with the controller. It might be effective now, and it gets points for being fairly easy to implement, but it's not going to be effective for long.
It's already possible for amateurs to use an RC plane/drone without a line of sight, it's called FPV(first person view) piloting. They have a videocamera onboard and transmit the video signal into their VR googles. Then they control their plane with a normal radio controller.
Since electrical systems already exist for driving servos and other devices, all you need is a detonator and some explosives to make a lethal and accurate flying bomb that can be remote controlled from a distance.
The really scary thought is that when these are available as consumer items, and can be coupled to visual processing software which can recognize people's ethnicity, the resulting industrialization of ethnic oppression will make the Holocaust look tame.
This is not the Festo SmartBird from the TED talk. As noted in the article, there are several design differences, as well as the severe restrictions on weight when it comes to the flight mechanics of the SmartBird.
The SmartBird is a really great tech demo, but ornithopter style flight is not practical in settings like those found in military operations. The extreme weight restrictions, delicate mechanisms, complicated flight, and slow speed make other traditional flight mechanisms far more practical. The small propeller and ailerons are nearly invisible from the ground, and if kept light weight, the sound of the propeller won't be heard over ground noise. There's no reason to use a more complex design.
Quite right. There is one that is the size of a small humming bird as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they're bein used as well. It may be almost impossible to spot them.
This is not going to be a happy adjustment for people who have to maintain physical security of e.g. a base in Iraq or a community center in a small town in Iowa outside which the president is speaking. At the moment the man-portable drones mostly carry cameras, but the US is proving in spades that cameras are really lethal if you do them correctly. The smart money is not on "a camera will be the most lethal thing ever attached to a $100 electronic device the size of a seagull."