Civilian Drones: Small, Cheap, and Easy to Hack
There are some factions of America that revel in the notion we have around 7,000 military drones deployed overseas, patrolling foreign grounds.
But is anyone excited about the fact that by 2015, we’ll be seeing drones patrolling U.S. soil?
In February, Obama passed a controversial bill–H.R. 658, the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012—allowing the commercial use of drones in 2015. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates that 30,000 civilian drones will swarm the country within a decade. Officially these drones will be used by law enforcement agencies, colleges, and other groups, to keep an eye on the country.
These far-flung plans really hit home for us when, earlier this month, the U.S. Army began testing former military drones for domestic use. The FAA is responsible for regulating this initiative, but according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), there’s been very little progress on this front.
Over the weekend at the HOPE 9 conference in New York City, a miniature version of Def Con, the EFF’s Trevor Timms and Parker Higgins discussed how easy it is to hack into civilian drones.
The implications are pretty serious. Civilian drones can be outfitted with software that collects video footage, recognizes faces, intercepts cell towers, scans entire cities, and much, much more. Leaving aside privacy concerns, no one wants that much information falling into the wrong hands either.