back to article Drones are dropping drugs into prisons and the US govt just doesn't know what to do

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons has appealed for help in stopping contraband-laden drones from flying over prison grounds. The bureaucrats insist they're not after formal proposals nor price quotes. Instead, they want to hear your suggestions for the best ways to stop people from using quadcopters to smuggle items in and out …

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  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Train up top gun drone pilots? Or there's always that bloke with the shotgun...

    1. Aqua Marina

      Kaboom

      Exactly, legislate a 500 yard no-model-aircraft exclusion zone round the perimeter of a prison, and shoot them down if they enter it.

      1. dan1980

        Re: Kaboom

        @Aqua Marina

        Let's put aside the 'shoot them down' part because there is still the question of exactly how you would accomplish that. I'm not saying it's impossible - just that it is something that would need at least some measure of discussion on which method or technology would be best.

        The first part of your comment, however, is SPOT ON. You start by making some laws restricting drone use in sensitive areas.

        That's a roll-a-six-to-start because if it's not illegal then what right to you have to stop the drones flying overhead in the first place?

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Kaboom

          Something a little less powerful, but similar.

          http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/phalanx/

          1. RikC

            Re: Kaboom

            That thing eerily look like a Dalek!

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Kaboom

            Interesting thought, but unless manned, it could find it hard to tell the difference between a drone and a bird, and if a rare bird gets accidentally downed by one of these, environmentalists would be up in arms over it.

            1. GitMeMyShootinIrons

              Re: Kaboom

              "If a rare bird gets accidentally downed by one" - let me make that more accurate - "if a rare bird gets accidentally turned into red mist by one"

        2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Kaboom

          "You start by making some laws restricting drone use in sensitive areas."

          OTOH you don't stop people who are already breaking laws by giving them more laws to break.

          1. Paul Kinsler

            Re: OTOH you don't stop people who are already breaking laws by giving them more laws to break.

            Hypothetically you might, /if/ the new law that they will now (also) break enables you to either (a) disrupt the specific lawbreaking activities more easily, or if it (b) enabled you to catch and/or convict them more easily.

            But you are right that merely passing the law is not what will stop them - its the enforcement that counts. But enabling easier or simpler enforcement can still be beneficial.

          2. Trigonoceps occipitalis

            Re: Kaboom

            You do if you make the new law strict liability. Current laws making flying drone to deliver drugs etc into prison probably need some form of provable intent.

      2. Mark 85

        Re: Kaboom

        That's probably the most easy answer since there's no money for development costs. The only problem is the "shooting down". Most prisons in the States these days don't have high walls nor the staff to fully patrol the fence line. You definitely don't want someone with a shotgun (goose gun, maybe?) inside the fence line. Since the prisons are designed to keep the prisoners in and generally not to keep things out, it's a problem. More staff.. full-time... three shifts with night googles... one guard every (back of the napkin calculation...) 200 yards or so?

        The problem is detection. These things are so small and fast.

        1. elDog

          Re: Kaboom

          And that's NOT the Winner! Easy Answers aren't what THEY want!

          THEY want expensive, militarized and ineffective Answers! How else will they pay for their other toys?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      What the hell..

      Prisons are the places where drugs are needed the most... Why would they want to spoil what little fun those people have left in their lives?

      Hand out extacy, make them feel good, they'll rehabilitate that much faster.

      Oh crap, I forgot that nobody is really interested in rehabilitation. Running prisons is way too profitable to want to loose customers who's stay is fully paid by the government.

  2. Nunyabiznes

    alternatively

    Let out all the non-violent drug offenders. Legalize all the drugs - I don't care anymore what you do to yourself.

    For those people that have done something that really requires lockup - let them do all the drugs they want. Just don't intervene when they OD. Lots of problems solved right there.

    I'm only kidding a little...

    1. Mark 85

      Re: alternatively

      Yeah but.. letting them drop drugs is one thing. What if the drone pilots start flying in guns?

      1. TheVogon

        Re: alternatively

        "What if the drone pilots start flying in guns?"

        Well according to the average gun owning American, this should lower the risk of anyone coming to any harm...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: alternatively

          Well since average gun-grabbing leftists only feel the need to disarm law-abiding citizens, they should have no trouble with it either.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: alternatively

            "feel the need to disarm law-abiding citizens"

            Law abiding citizens don't need weapons.

    2. wayward4now

      Re: alternatively

      Legalize ALL drugs. Evolution in action.

      1. Charles 9

        Re: alternatively

        "Legalize ALL drugs. Evolution in action."

        Many drug users don't live in isolation. What are you going to do if there's a resulting rise in widows and orphans? It's like with the divorce dilemma: outlaw divorce and you'll likely see an increase in spousal homicides.

  3. Stratman

    Netting.

    1. Stretch

      yeah i had the same thought straight away. surely this is a solved problem?

    2. Mark 85

      IIRC, they have netting (or a net gun?) for use against helicopters. Or were at least looking into it after a couple of high-profile attempts at getting a prisoner out that way.

      1. ratfox

        Thousands of buildings use nets to keep the pigeons away. I don't even know what the problem is.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          The drones can just fly over any practical vertical netting you can deploy. As for horizontal netting, that has physical weight limitations to the point one good payload with a spike on the bottom should be able to punch through.

          1. Roq D. Kasba

            Netting but also fine cotton or kevlar or whatever steamers hanging all around. Get one of those in a propeller and it'll quickly gum up the works (as anyone who ever had to recover a C120 cassette from the heart of a tape player will attest). Combined with some suitable, angled shade netting, I'll bet you can reduce the problem by 95% in a week.

            Preventing yard access if a drone is spotted, or found in the yard seems an obvious option, sure there's a reason they don't rely on that. Control signals are probably fairly easy to detect, to set off the 'clear the yard' alarm.

            1. Bluto Nash
              FAIL

              C-120

              Everyone knows you're not supposed to use anything over a C-90 if you want decent tape life. Sounds like you got what you deserved...

    3. Crazy Operations Guy

      A large mosquito net laid out in a circus-tent like form would work quite well. Plus now you can prevent the people inside from getting sick via mosquito-borne illnesses. Make it out of metal to resist the drones from just cutting the net open, with the added bonus that you just created a Faraday cage so that only approved and cleared cell phones can be used inside (using a femto-cell like arrangement inside that filters which phones can get out).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Some of these prison yards can get pretty large. How do you prevent the netting from getting too heavy, especially if you try the metal thread approach? I suspect anything you can deploy that covers the entire yard will have to be too light to effectively stop a drone delivery. It'll either cut its way through or deploy a payload with a spike or sharp blades underneath to take advantage of gravity.

        1. Pen-y-gors

          Chicken wire?

          Seems to fit the bill. With a few supporting poles here and there weight is no problem, and immune to blades etc.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Chicken wire?

            "Seems to fit the bill. With a few supporting poles here and there weight is no problem, and immune to blades etc"

            The supports cannot be in the yard else someone can climb them, use the wire as a weapon etc

            the issue is not as clear cut as it looks

            safety and escape prevention will stop 90% of ideas

  4. Duncan Macdonald

    Dungeon ?

    If all the cells (and other prisoner accessible areas) are underground then drones are no longer a problem.

    (Some civil liberty types might object however!!!)

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Dungeon ?

      No, the health and safety people will object. And the unions (if there are any). Prisons are workplaces after all.

    2. Nolveys
      Happy

      Re: Dungeon ?

      They could just use an old mine, preferably one full of monsters and treasure.

      1. MrDamage Silver badge

        Re: Dungeon ?

        We could use that for those sentenced to death. No need to worry about a shortage of the drug cocktails when we can just have the condemned eaten by a Grue.

      2. Squander Two

        Re: Dungeon ?

        Hey, if it's good enough for federal pension bureaucrats, why not prison guards?

  5. TVC

    Set up a clay pigeon shooting club next door to each prison and pay them a bounty for each drone.

  6. Brian Miller

    Drone cannon

    Jam them with a directed radio burst. Some of the drones can be hacked in flight, too. How about directional pinpointing to nab the drone operator?

    All of this is just basic radio opsec, something the military has mastered for decades.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Drone cannon

      then people will just start using dead-reckoning or computer-vision to have drones navigate themselves: no radios required.

    2. Dadmin
      Joke

      Re: Drone cannon

      Also there is GPS navigation, so harder to jam that. Seriously, what would they do if you just launched a box of pills and hash cookies from a trebuchet into the prison yard? Or a homing pigeon loaded with contraband pr0n on microfiche? Holy crap, this sounds like a challenge to me!

      The only real xyz-axis solution is that all prisoners shall be tied up with piano wire, then put into small, electric, cyclone-fence cages, while armies of fake drones drop decoy contraband upon the yard like leaves in autumn.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        Re: Drone cannon

        The only real xyz-axis solution is that all prisoners shall be left to hang by the balls with piano wire from the prison perimeter, while armies of fake drones drop decoy contraband upon the yard like leaves in autumn.

        FTFY.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Drone cannon

        " Seriously, what would they do if you just launched a box of pills and hash cookies from a trebuchet into the prison yard?"

        There was a lo-tech attempt reported in England this week - using a fishing line.

        http://news.sky.com/story/1580343/fishing-line-used-to-smuggle-mcmuffin-into-jail

      3. x 7

        Re: Drone cannon

        "GPS navigation, so harder to jam that2

        dead easy to jam with off-the-shelf kit, it would jam mobile phone signals as well, so an added benefit

  7. elDog

    The problem is that prisons are mainly two-dimensional

    We have long relied on the fact that most two-legged animals can only traverse easily in the x and y directions. Once you add the z component (digging tunnels or jumping over fences) the fences become less effective. Of course you can increase the height/depth of the fence but it doesn't eliminate the ability to fly something higher or dig a tunnel deeper.

    Totally enclosed (x*y*z) would work in these three dimensions as it mainly did in the Truman Show. However the barriers can still be breached over time (t).

    For the best protection the inmates would need to encapsulated in a total x*y*z*t shield. Some type of suspended animation might work but would be very expensive for the US prisoner population (the largest in the world.) I can't think a another ultimate solution.

    1. Danny 2

      Re: The problem is that prisons are mainly two-dimensional

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Zone

      The Phantom Zone was discovered by Jor-El and used on the planet Krypton as a method of imprisoning criminals. Previously, criminals were punished by being sealed into capsules and rocketed into orbit in suspended animation with crystal meths attached to their foreheads to slowly erase their criminal tendencies

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The problem is that prisons are mainly two-dimensional

      "Of course you can increase the height/depth of the fence but it doesn't eliminate the ability to fly something higher or dig a tunnel deeper."

      Well, down has a practical limit. If the wall goes down to bedrock, the only way under it will be rock-drilling equipment: harder to come by and subject to physical limitations: you can be fast or quiet, but not both.

      As for up, that poses a problem, too, especially if the drone users get wise and start applying lexan shields around their drone, making them extremely difficult to take down. The lexan will require ammo of a gauge large enough to penetrate that if they miss they risk "bullets fired up" collateral damage, the underside is protected by the payload, and the top is not exposed when it flies above everyone. Radio-based attacks will require an FCC exemption since they count as jammers, and I see someone's already thought about the old-fashioned trebuchet (the only catch is it's not as stealthy as the drone, which can be launched covertly from some distance away and can even be cheap enough to send on a one-way trip, making it tougher to trace the source).

      1. Karl Vegar

        Re: The problem is that prisons are mainly two-dimensional

        Lexan shield hanging under the drone?

        Yeah, should be pretty sure the drone won't get shot down... since it will never take off.

        The propellers create lift by pushing air down. The mentioned air going down will be pushing down on the shield and create a negative lift that will be aprox of equal the positive lift generated, and kind of negate any upwards mobility.

  8. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Wait until a prisoner orders something from Amazon and a large 'copter comes in and a small prisoner jumps on. Beats building tunnels or hang gliders (Colditz reference there for non-WW2 historians).

    1. Will 30

      It wasn't a hang glider.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    1. Shield the drone electronics

    2. Use laser wireless, and have a comprehensive algorithmic fall-back, should the control signal be blocked.

    3. Fly up very high and release the contraband as a free-fall bomb.

    4. Minimize mechanical noise of motors, and aerodynamic noise of propellers.

    5. Camouflage coatings

    6. Decoy drones and payloads

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