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 Elemental wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I think drones will be targeted for more control due to their ability to make public statements that those in power donct like. I understsnd in Britain anything the government doesn't want said gets a D notice stuck on it and that's that's it, it can't be discussed or else.

I'd love to know where you got that idea from.

I'm going to guess it's informed almost entirely by that time Churchill tried to "slap" a D-notice on The Mirror. Even though that failed, it's the most famous example of a D-notice.

Maybe Profumo.

Also, FWIW, while they're generally respected, a D-notice is not legally enforceable.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

I'm almost totally ignorant about drones, so bear with me here.

How easy would it be, in theory, to attach an IED to a drone and fly it into, say, Trafalgar Square?

IMO, that's a potential huge difference between drones and other tools on the market that could also cause harm, like chainsaws.

I don't attach IEDs to drones, so I'm not an expert, but I'd imagine the biggest difficulty would be payload weight. Lower end drones can't take much weight. Once you solve that issue, I'd think it'd be trivial. You could probably even have it trigger via the drone transmitter and not even need to worry about having a separate detonator if you really wanted to.

Also, now I'm picturing drones armed with chainsaws attacking people.

Thing is though, heavily regulating drones wouldn't do very much to prevent malicious actors from using drones, because they're relatively trivial to construct yourself. All "clamping down" would do is provide yet another tool for the police/government/state security apparatus to use against everyday citizens and protestors - these aren't firearms, they don't require specialist gear and training to manufacture, just a 3D printer and some commonplace electronics parts.

As with so, so many other things that we keep making up new laws to supposedly combat(which are in reality either Security Theatre, or ways of slipping additional powers for the police etc through without the appropriate level of scrutiny), it's entirely possible to send anyone engaging in this kind of act away for a very long time using existing laws, which covers the "deterrent" side of things fine(assuming you buy the idea that deterrence actually works on people who were never going to commit the crime anyway).

The way to deal with incidents like this is to have appropriate countermeasures(net guns, interceptor drones, anti-drone lasers etc) in sensitive locations, and to prosecute anyone caught doing it to the full extent of the already perfectly adequate law - all the rabble rabble that will inevitably follow about cracking down on drone use is just politicians and the airport authorities covering their own arses for being completely unprepared.

That people break laws is not an argument to not have laws.

 Yodhrin wrote:
- these aren't firearms, they don't require specialist gear and training to manufacture, just a 3D printer and some commonplace electronics parts.

Actually, firearms are far less complex then a drone. Look up the Luty guns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIhGCRIQnCA

Functional firearms can be made just with stuff from your hardware store. A drone would require a much larger amount of electrical and programming knowledge in addition to mechanical knowledge.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

That people break laws is not an argument to not have laws.

'That people break laws is not an argument to not have laws' is not an argument to invent new laws to do something about people who break laws.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
Functional firearms can be made just with stuff from your hardware store. A drone would require a much larger amount of electrical and programming knowledge in addition to mechanical knowledge.

I bet if we made new laws to require all firearms to possess fingerprint reading technology in order to be used, we could solve that issue overnight!

 Grey Templar wrote:
A drone would require a much larger amount of electrical and programming knowledge in addition to mechanical knowledge.

Not necessarily. Designing a new drone from scratch sure would require a lot of engineering knowledge (stability and control are NOT easy), but following blueprints to build one wouldn't be any harder than following the instructions to build that hardware store gun. You're literally just downloading some files for your 3d printer and then screwing together various off the shelf components. The only people an anti-drone law would stop are the "hold my beer and watch this" types that buy a toy and impulsively think it's really cool to go take pictures of planes as they're landing, and geofencing already deals with those idiots.

 daedalus wrote:


'That people break laws is not an argument to not have laws' is not an argument to invent new laws to do something about people who break laws.

In the quiet words of the Virgin Mary, come again?

 Excommunicatus wrote:
How easy would it be, in theory, to attach an IED to a drone and fly it into, say, Trafalgar Square?

Extremely difficult. Payload weight is a major problem, and there are almost certainly easier ways to deliver a bomb that will kill way more people.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Excommunicatus wrote:
How easy would it be, in theory, to attach an IED to a drone and fly it into, say, Trafalgar Square?

Extremely difficult. Payload weight is a major problem, and there are almost certainly easier ways to deliver a bomb that will kill way more people.

Depends on the drone. The Amazon delivery drones could drop off bombs, but as you say there would be way cheaper, and less noticeable, ways to get a bomb into Trafalgar square. Drones capable of delivering even a small package are quite large and noisy.

Arguing that building a drone-based IED is harder than, say, radicalizing a suicide-bomber reeks of naked assertions to me.

It might be. It might not be. I don't know and the overwhelming likelihood is that nobody else here does either.

So let's change it up. It is extremely unlikely you're going to be able to get an IED in a backpack into Wembley Stadium or onto the grounds of Westminster, what's to stop someone flying an IED-drone in? As far as I can see, nothing except budget.

And terrorist groups often aren't exactly short of a bob or two.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm almost totally ignorant about drones, so bear with me here.

How easy would it be, in theory, to attach an IED to a drone and fly it into, say, Trafalgar Square?

IMO, that's a potential huge difference between drones and other tools on the market that could also cause harm, like chainsaws.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Terrorism doesn't have to be political, it has to be ideological.

Incredibly easy. It's already happening in Syria. However, you are limited in the size of your potential payload. Eg, you're not going to be able to pack as much in as you would a VBIED. The ones used in the middle east have been dropping home made dumb bombs the size of small mortars.

So it would appear to me that there are in fact compelling public policy reasons as to why drones should be legislated on a different basis to, inter alia, chainsaws.

I think they need some sort of legislation. But then theres nothing to say that a terrorist wouldn't just steal one or get them off the black market.

Laws against murder don't stop murder in toto and you can argue that murder is almost always an impulsive act undertaken with no thought as to the consequences. In fact, most crimes are impulsive acts undertaken with no thought at all as to the consequences, so you can argue that the entire criminal law system is utterly ineffective and ought to be abolished.

Right?

The standard is not and has never, ever, ever, been perfection or the complete eradication of undesirable behaviours and pretending that it is is disingenuous.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Arguing that building a drone-based IED is harder than, say, radicalizing a suicide-bomber reeks of naked assertions to me.

But you don't need to argue for suicide bombers. Park the truck bomb, walk away, detonate remotely. No suicide required. You just need the same willingness to kill people that a drone bomb requires.

So let's change it up. It is extremely unlikely you're going to be able to get an IED in a backpack into Wembley Stadium or onto the grounds of Westminster, what's to stop someone flying an IED-drone in? As far as I can see, nothing except budget.

What's to stop them from building/buying a mortar and shelling the crowd? Or just targeting the security lines (nice packed crowds, lots of kills) outside the checkpoints instead of bothering to get through the gates?


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 Excommunicatus wrote:
Laws against murder don't stop murder in toto and you can argue that murder is almost always an impulsive act undertaken with no thought as to the consequences. In fact, most crimes are impulsive acts undertaken with no thought at all as to the consequences, so you can argue that the entire criminal law system is utterly ineffective and ought to be abolished.

The point is that existing laws already cover the impulsive moron problem. The drunk idiot who impulsively thinks it would be cool to fly their toy around real planes is already dealt with by geofencing, they aren't going to screw around with custom software and such to defeat the restriction. And the people that have the desire and ability to defeat the existing restrictions are not going to be stopped by additional laws. Perfection is not the standard, but we should expect new laws to be effective and not just pass more laws because Something Must Be Done.

 Peregrine wrote:

The point is that existing laws already cover the impulsive moron problem. The drunk idiot who impulsively thinks it would be cool to fly their toy around real planes is already dealt with by geofencing, they aren't going to screw around with custom software and such to defeat the restriction. And the people that have the desire and ability to defeat the existing restrictions are not going to be stopped by additional laws. Perfection is not the standard, but we should expect new laws to be effective and not just pass more laws because Something Must Be Done.

Rewriting the firmware of the drone to bypass any geofencing or other such safety features may be something that is already capable of being prosecuted under overly broad copyright and computer abuse and fraud laws as well. As well as those laws everyone has everywhere about "intent to cause harm" and so forth. Well, I dunno about the UK, but it would likely happen here.

And I agree with you. Much as writing law to add "... on a computer" to the end of existing laws didn't solve any of the world's problems and created a pile more, writing laws to be somewhat harsher than existing laws and slapping "...with a drone" on the end isn't really a reasonable solution.

Arguing that a truck-bombing is easier is just a variant naked assertion that I seriously doubt you're qualified to make out. And how do you get a truck to the kick-off dot at Wembley? Or onto the grounds of Westminster? Or into the middle of the pedestrianized Trafalgar Square?

I'd imagine the reason that people don't go around shelling the City of London with mortars is that there are strict laws governing the acquisition of such things.

And no, current laws don't cover the "impulsive moron", because those "impulsive morons" aren't deterred from committing crimes by the law because they don't consider the law before they commit criminal acts.

You have to draw a distinction between preventative and reactive laws. Laws already exist to deliver a punishment to somebody using a drone as an IED. As far as I can see, very little is preventing them from trying to. Quod erat demonstrandum at Gatwick. Other preventative laws meanwhile, like speed limits or driver licensing, are commonplace and largely uncontroversial.

Having to register a drone is a restriction on your autonomy for sure, but it is a tiny, tiny, tiny, restriction aimed at increasing public security.

And don't bring up Franklin unless you actually know what he said rather than the vox-populi version of what he said.

 Dr Coconut wrote:

 Techpriestsupport wrote:
I don't know what the doer is trying to do or say. If he wanted a simple panic that would be easy. A drone with a few small bags of red powder, like powdered chalk or dyed flour, could hover over a city and release the powder to be spread by the down wash of the rotors and produce instant massive panic as peolle stampede in terror of a possible chemical or biological attack. That would so simple and obvious anyone would think of it.

So this guy isn't trying to produce a panic, he could do that pretty easy.

Doubt there would be panic at all. In a university town, most would think it a student prank. The vast majority wouldn't even notice, beyond tutting at the annoying toy buzzing about. Most cities, if you look anywhere else than straight ahead, you're a tourist, who should be banned from the pavement while people are on their way to/from work.

You sure about that? I know england has had repeated mass shooting attacks by terrorists, if someoe drone dispersed some red powder and claimed it was an attack it could get some people panicking.

"Repeated mass shootings".

[Citation Needed]

There was Hungerford, then gun control was tightened and nothing like it ever happened again. Then there was Dunblane, then gun control was tightened and nothing like it ever happened again. Then there was that taxi-driver in Cumbria and nothing like it has happened since. That's three incidents over 31 years and none of them were terrorism.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Arguing that a truck-bombing is easier is just a variant naked assertion that I seriously doubt you're qualified to make out.

I absolutely am qualified to make it because I know at least basic information about drones. The payload capacity of a drone is tiny, the payload capacity of a truck is huge. A 1 pound bomb is going to do much less damage than a 1000 pound bomb. Using a drone is putting severe limits on the size of the bomb for no real advantage in placement.

And how do you get a truck to the kick-off dot at Wembley? Or onto the grounds of Westminster? Or into the middle of the pedestrianized Trafalgar Square?

Why do you care about the exact location? If your goal is mass murder why would you prefer to drop a tiny bomb on the kick-off dot, where a player or two are the only people within the blast radius, when you could drive a truck bomb into the security line outside the stadium and kill a lot more people?

I'd imagine the reason that people don't go around shelling the City of London with mortars is that there are strict laws governing the acquisition of such things.

You can build a mortar. It's not a very complicated device. The explosive is the hard part, and that's just as illegal on a drone.

And no, current laws don't cover the "impulsive moron", because those "impulsive morons" aren't deterred from committing crimes by the law because they don't consider the law before they commit criminal acts.

Again, it's not about considering the law, it's about the difficulty of bypassing the existing laws. The idiot saying "hold my beer and watch this" isn't going to spend a bunch of time working on custom control software to bypass the geofencing required by existing laws, they're going to see the "not permitted" message and go find some other stupid thing to do with their drone.

Having to register a drone is a restriction on your autonomy for sure, but it is a tiny, tiny, tiny, restriction aimed at increasing public security.

It is a tiny restriction but it also produces essentially zero effect on public security. You can't just say Something Must Be Done and start passing laws without bothering to establish that they will have the desired effect.

 Techpriestsupport wrote:


You sure about that? I know england has had repeated mass shooting attacks by terrorists, if someoe drone dispersed some red powder and claimed it was an attack it could get some people panicking.

I repeat. You really need to work on your information sources because quite frankly, they are appalling.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
Having to register a drone is a restriction on your autonomy for sure, but it is a tiny, tiny, tiny, restriction aimed at increasing public security.

But think that through. What would it actually look like? That is, how could you implement it in such a way that it would be effective, useful, or even just not more bureaucratic cruft to wade through?

So, all implementations of it I have seen so far currently in the real world, applied to this scenario, would result in the drone's user being identified successfully 100% of the time so long as everyone is actively attempting to follow the law.

It only has a couple minor weaknesses. In order to be effective in identifying the drone's user:
1. The drone's owner must be the user
2. The drone's user didn't remove the FAA (or equivalent) designation (remember: the drone simply has to be marked, it could be a sticker!) on the side of it, AND the owner didn't simply skip applying such designation to begin with.
3. The drone was actually registered in the first place.

So effectively, the registration can be effectively circumvented by the user taking no action whatsoever via numbers 2 and/or 3.

So what does registration do to increase public security? I guess this would help the authorities to have identified the user responsible in this case so long as they were not acting in bad faith. The lack of registration would also indicate to the authorities that the person buzzing the airport for hours on end with their drone was in fact, after all, acting in bad faith as well. I'm sure that would be helpful because you could already start getting the process started for the ASBO.

You may know about drones, you're relying entirely on assumptions and naked assertions to suggest that putting together a truck-bomb is easier.

The location matters because different methods of attack are used for different targets. You can't blow up a target that has no road access or is behind strong security with a truck-bomb, no matter how big you make it and it's very unlikely you're going to get a wearable IED past security.

You can, seemingly, currently fly 1,000 1lb bombs into Wembley, however.

I'm really not qualified to get into an argument as to why people don't use mortars from the standpoint of ease of construction or ease of use. I don't know why they don't. The fact remains however that they don't, and there are laws against building or acquiring a mortar which, prima facie and granted a little syllogistically, supports my point not yours.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
They’re saying it’s not “terror related”, but it’s an effective terrorism tactic. Clearly everyone needs to wake up to the fact drones are a very cheap way to cause a huge amount of distruption and economic damage for which it is very difficult to be caught. Shutting down an international airport for a day and a half in the middle of the holiday season is far too easy for someone maliciously minded, and could be repeated over and over to seriously impact operations in a country.

I really think that if you start to class economic fallout as terrorism, you are heading towards the suppression of all protest.

Rent strike = economic consequences = terrorism.
Fare strike = economic consequences = terrorism.
Mass demo closing major roads = economic consequences = terrorism.

and so on.

Terrorism has always been classed as violence in the pursuit of political ends.

My money is on a hostile state actor.

I really think it’s not shutting down protest. Not all forms of terrorism has to be direct violence depending on the definition. But forms of criminal warfare that attack infrastructure and the economy could instead be thought of as a fifth column instead of a terrorist if that’s an important difference to make, I don’t mind. After all, the people operating these drones are persistently trying to shut down an international airport by means that could potentially down a plane. There’s rather a difference between that and peaceful protest that inconveniences people.


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 Excommunicatus wrote:

I'm really not qualified to get into an argument as to why people don't use mortars from the standpoint of ease of construction or ease of use. I don't know why they don't. The fact remains however that they don't, and there are laws against building or acquiring a mortar which, prima facie and granted a little syllogistically, supports my point not yours.

I’m just old enough to recall the IRA making a mortar attack on Downing Street. It can be done, but I don’t think it’s a very easy means of fast attack given the equipment needed, preparation and a level of expertise.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
You may know about drones, you're relying entirely on assumptions and naked assertions to suggest that putting together a truck-bomb is easier.

No, I'm relying on obvious facts about payload capacity. A truck can carry more than a drone, period. Are you honestly trying to dispute this fact?

The location matters because different methods of attack are used for different targets. You can't blow up a target that has no road access or is behind strong security with a truck-bomb, no matter how big you make it and it's very unlikely you're going to get a wearable IED past security.

But, again, why does the target matter so much? If the goal is mass murder then there are plenty of accessible targets without using drones, and attacking those targets will kill a lot more people than any drone attack.

You can, seemingly, currently fly 1,000 1lb bombs into Wembley, however.

Ok, yes, if you coordinate a whole bunch of drones in a mass swarm attack without this massive operation being spotted by the police before you can launch the attack. One drone shutting down an airport is hard to chase. Someone trying to buy 1000 drones is a little less stealthy.

I'm really not qualified to get into an argument as to why people don't use mortars from the standpoint of ease of construction or ease of use. I don't know why they don't. The fact remains however that they don't, and there are laws against building or acquiring a mortar which, prima facie and granted a little syllogistically, supports my point not yours.

If you aren't qualified to comment then why are you assuming that it is the law successfully preventing anyone from doing it and not other factors?

However difficult it is to build a drone bomb or a mortar or whatever, there is very little to nothing standing in the way of renting or stealing a truck and just driving it into an enormous crowd. Laws don't protect you from that happening, the fact most people are not homicidal maniacs does.

You cannot stop malicious actors from doing this from a legal standpoint. Drones are too easy and cheap to get, and if you ban then, they're easy to build from scratch with off-the-shelf components (I've done it), or with 3d printing some parts you need (which i also have done). The software to program and drive them is free and open source.

There will need to be a technological solution, ie a signal jammer, which is presumably exactly what they are asking the military to do now. Geofencing will work for the vast, overwhelming majority of other users.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I really think it’s not shutting down protest. Not all forms of terrorism has to be direct violence depending on the definition. But forms of criminal warfare that attack infrastructure and the economy could instead be thought of as a fifth column instead of a terrorist if that’s an important difference to make, I don’t mind. After all, the people operating these drones are persistently trying to shut down an international airport by means that could potentially down a plane. There’s rather a difference between that and peaceful protest that inconveniences people.

Yes, terrorism has to be direct violence (or at least the credible threat of it), that's the whole point of the term. Terrorism is the use of violence, and the fear of continued violence, against non-military targets to achieve political goals. Shutting down an airport because LOL THIS IS SO FUNNY is not terrorism. Shutting down an airport without a credible threat of violence (and a drone is a pretty damn ineffective anti-aircraft weapon) is not terrorism. Blocking a road to hurt the economy is not terrorism. Etc. Using the term "terrorism" to apply to any random inconvenience dilutes the meaning of the term and helps the political groups that use "fighting terrorism" as an excuse to advance their agenda in ways that do little, if anything, to stop actual terrorism.

No, I'm not disputing that a truck can carry more than a drone.

I'm pointing out all the other parts of assembling and detonating a truck-bomb that you're just ignoring for convenience.

'Cause, you know, there are preventative laws on the books that can make acquiring a truck, which can cause lots of damage in unqualiied/malicious hands, pretty hard.

Weird, huh?

Your definition of terrorism is also completely wrong. Terrorism is a specified act carried out for an ideological purpose. Not all offences can be terrorism, regardless of the intent, and an act can be terrorism without having a political intent.

Ok, I’d generally had the understanding that terrorism covered actions by non-uniformed combatants and those acting outside state control or periods of declared war. It didn’t have to explicitly be only actions killing people. Things like blowing up bridges, destroying various infrastructure would be counts as acts of terrorism even if no one is killed by them.

But if I’m mistaken I’m happy to call it something else, I’ve already suggested that it amounts to a fifth column, particularly if sponsored by another state. I’d hardly call what these drones are doing to the airport a “random inconvenience” though in much the same way that pointing lasers into plane cockpits isn’t. Another issue that’s occurred in recent years. I’m not claiming that anything like blocking a road is “terrorism”, but persistently threatening the safety of aircraft is rather quite a bit closer.