Drone hovering over TISS campus in Mumbai sets off alarms

The sight of a drone hovering 20-meters over the Tata Institute of Social Sciences complex in Trombay has set off an alarm of sorts because Bhabha Atomic Research Centre BARC, which is on the hit list of terrorists, is located nearby.
This has been reported in dnaindia.com dated 7 July 2015.

Drones used to, once, be a weapon in the control of militaries the world over and were used to trace out and eliminate terrorist hideouts or the terrorists themselves. But, today these have come into the civil domain and anyone can procure one. It is being employed in any number of activities like delivery of goods, monitoring acres of land, keeping track of cattle from the air etcetera.
A professor of TISS had seen the drone and immediately alerted the police control room and the police have identified the person who was behind this incident. It seems he was taking the images on behalf of his company to download on the website.
Flying any object over the city without the permission of the police is illegal.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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Man flying drone in Lafayette Park near White House – man arrested, drone seized

It was a man and a machine that sent the Secret Service staff climbing up a wall because the man was flying a drone at an altitude of around 100-ft in Lafayette Park in the vicinity of the White House, say US officials. This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 15 May 2015.
The Secret Service first asked the individual to land the small, remote-controlled aircraft. Then the park was evacuated and the White House was placed on temporary lockdown as the Secret Service investigated.
The man was handed over to the US Park Police.

The drone is a Parrot BeBop drone, which is equipped with a camera and costs up to $900. Washington DC's Metropolitan Police Department have checked the drone and declared it safe.
At the time of the incident, President Barack Obama was meeting Gulf leaders at his rural Camp David retreat in Maryland. Because of security concerns, the airspace around the capital is more restricted than any other part of the country and it is illegal to fly drones in the area without specific approval. The no-drone policy applies to a 15-mile radius of Ronald Reagan National Airport.
(Image curtesy wikimediacommons.org)

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Three reporters of Al-Jazeera arrested for flying a drone in Paris

#drone #Paris #EiffelTower #Aljazeera #BastilleSquare The sightings of drones flying at night over important landmarks of Paris had the police in a real frenzy because the general presumption was that there was some ulterior motives, probably with links to terrorists.
The Paris police have now got hold of three Al-Jazeera reporters who were allegedly flying a drone just after drones in the night sky had sparked a terror alert in the city as reported in dailymail.co.uk dated 25 February 2015.
The three journalists from the Qatar-funded news network have been arrested in a park in Paris from where they had been operating a drone illegally. The arrested men are aged 70, 54 and 36 and the arrest was done after the police saw a drone flying in the Bois de Boulogne woods in western Paris. The first man was piloting the drone, the second one was filming and the third was watching.
The motive of flying the drone is still not clear. Incidentally, flying drones without a license in France is illegal and it carries a maximum one-year prison sentence and a fine of 75,000 euros.
It may be recalled that, in the recent past, drones had been seen in the vicinity of important landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Bastille Square, the U.S. embassy, the Place de la Concorde and the Invalides military museum, where Napoleon lies buried. Obviously, the police would check out whether there is any link.

Quadcopter drone lands unannounced in the grounds of the White House

#quadcopter #drone #WhiteHouse #UAV The appearance of a quadcopter drone in the grounds of the White House has put a huge question mark on the security system in the White House and has highlighted the growing security threat posed by small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). It is believed to be a harmless drone but the fact remains that it had breached security belt.
The incident in the White House has come less than two weeks after a drone flew over the French presidential palace in Paris.
Drones can fly at low altitudes and, hence, detecting these devices poses a challenge to those involved in providing security cover to people who matter.
As the Secret Service has clarified - the drone was a 2-foot-long commercially available "quadcopter." An officer posted on the south grounds of the White House complex had, reportedly, "heard and observed" the device "flying at a very low altitude" shortly after 3 a.m. ET. It was a commercially available device and did not pose any threat.
However, the possible dangers of drones cannot be ruled out. As Caroline Baylon, a cybersecurity researcher at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, in London, has indicated – due to their small size and ability to hover low over the ground, the drones can pose a huge security headache.
Drones have opened up an area that has not been defended before – most of the available radars cannot detect drones that have the ability to fly really low.