Drone Hacked over Austin

Melissa Melton
Infowars.com
December 12, 2012

Infowars hosted the first ever drone mob this weekend, a citizen protest event where We the People could stand up and say “no” to our government entities spending our taxpayer dollars to upgrade and weaponize drone technology and turn it against us.

While many people came out to fly drones, one man came out to demonstrate that anyone can easily hack and take control of those drones.

Austin, Texas resident George Bliss showed up to the drone mob not with a drone, but with a laptop. Using a free, open source software he downloaded off the internet, Bliss was able to demonstrate how easily anyone can disrupt the signal between drone operator and drone, effectively taking control.

As seen in the video below, with a few keyboard clicks, Bliss was able to cut a drone’s WI-FI signal in seconds and take control of it multiple times.

This is not the first time a drone has been hacked.

Students at the University of Texas were able to take control of an unmanned aerial vehicle in front of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) back in June. With a mere $1,000 in parts, the team built an advanced spoofer to infiltrate drone GPS systems; the team was able to use its spoofer to take control of multiple drones and fly them wherever they chose. Iran also intercepted a top secret CIA RQ-170 stealth drone last year, and officials later admitted Iranians were able to crack the drone’s computers and hijack it. Iran announced it was able to reverse-engineer the drone to build a copy.

President Obama signed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) bill in February, streamlining the process for testing and licensing of local, state and federal drones by 2015. The FAA has now predicted that 30,000 surveillance drones are set to fill America’s skies in the next decade. Unfortunately, the FAA has also admitted drone operators have zero privacy obligations to the public. Commercially available drones include features like remote iPad or smart phone control and come equipped with high definition cameras, but these drones are easily modifiable. A wide array of organizations from police departments to the DHS are now using weaponized drone technology here in America.

“There are several consequences for any action and if anybody wants to get away with something, they’ll pick the prettiest one and they’re gonna sell it based on that,” Bliss said. “If we don’t look for ourselves at the other consequences of the actions that we are being asked to support…then we’re all gonna be enslaved. It’s going to be simple for them to do.”

American citizens are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. Now the government, military and law enforcement agencies are using drone technology to spy on the American people. The negative implications are limitless. While there appears to be a huge rush to launch all these unmanned aerial vehicles into our skies, the demonstrated ability to easily hack drones at all levels — from small surveillance units to multi-million-dollar top secret government stealth technology — continues to confirm that these machines place our freedom and civil liberties in serious jeopardy.

Submissions for the Infowars drone mob video contest are now open. Read the rules for submission here.

This article was posted: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 at 12:37 pm

Tags: activism, big brother, domestic spying, police state, technology

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