The IF Blog » UAVs http://inferentialfocus.com/blog We uncover change... Thu, 27 May 2010 22:23:21 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 RoboCop? Kind of… http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/2010/02/18/robocop-kind-of/ http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/2010/02/18/robocop-kind-of/#comments Thu, 18 Feb 2010 19:50:19 +0000 Administrator http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/?p=48 Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority is in a legal spat with a local police department that used an aerial drone.  Their dispute belies the fact that the drone helped police catch a car thief last week.  (BBC News, 2/16/10)

How long until American police departments seek to use unmanned aerial vehicles as part of routine police work, and what will be the public’s response on the privacy front? Nevermind, the U.S. can’t afford it…

Michael Hines

]]> http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/2010/02/18/robocop-kind-of/feed/ 0 Attacking the Drones http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/2009/12/24/attacking-the-drones/ http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/2009/12/24/attacking-the-drones/#comments Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:05:47 +0000 Administrator http://inferentialfocus.com/blog/?p=7 Iraqi militants used $26 software to intercept and record live video feeds from American predator drones conducting surveillance in Iraq.  Apparently, the U.S. military officials have known since the 1990s campaign in Bosnia that video surveillance from UAVs is sent unencrypted from the aircraft to ground control, but assumed that local adversaries would not know how to exploit this weakness and monitor the video feeds.  (Wall Street Journal, 12/17/09)

Seriously? SERIOUSLY!? With the accelerating rise in cyber warfare over the past three years, much of it conducted not necessarily by central governments but by rogue citizens who feel antipathy toward a foreign state, how could the Pentagon assume such a high level of naiveté about the trained and organized Iraqi insurgency?  It appears the U.S.military command still needs to reassess some of its assumptions about military tactics in the asymmetrical warfare increasingly common today.

Michael Hines

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