Didn't this happen already?
June, 2014 in Ireland
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/euro2k-drone-crashes-in-jail-drugs-drop-273320.html
It would pay to keep up on the news, as they seem to have both gotten tangled on the way in...
The first recorded attempt to smuggle drugs into a British prison using a drone has ended in failure – after the gear-bearing gizmo got tangled in razor wire. "We were called to reports that a small drone had been discovered alongside a package in netting above a perimeter wall at HMP Bedford at 11.30pm on March 6," a …
Presumably there might be previous / other drone deliveries that didn't fail, didn't get detected and therefore didn't make the news.
These failures are likely the small tip of a very large iceberg of successful drone deliveries, that Amazon could feel inspired by.
The article does link to the attempt in Ireland. However:
>"This is the first time I have heard of a drone being used to get banned items into a prison," a source
>told the Brit newspaper.
It would appear that the "source" does not follow international news...
According to one report the plan was to hover outside a cell window while the inmate reched out to grab the booty. A seemingly hairbrained scheme likely to end with a crash or lost fingers, as well as immediate detection by the prison guards.
Simply catapulting stuff over the wall seems like a better idea.
DJI do :-) http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30387107
"Michael Perry, a spokesman for DJI, says the company is discussing compulsory licensing with regulators. All its products have a serial number that can be traced, he says. But would a Chinese manufacturer like DJI co-operate on such a system with European governments? "We're an international firm. It does behove us to work together with industry regulators," he says."
"Usually contraband is thrown over the wall and grabbed a little later" wtf??
If they *know* contraband is being thrown over the wall why the hell do they even allow people to get that close? Or even, why don't they at least have cameras recording who is near the walls and see who picks the stuff up? Or even, have, you know, a FRIGGIN GUARD watching the wall?
I'll ignore the idiot that manages to get a fairly expensive "drone" caught up in a small fence instead of just hovering a 100+ feet up in the air. Completely moron. But the whole "usually thrown over the wall and grabbed later" bit is completely baffling.
Moron's on the inside, moron's on the outside and moron's ignoring the whole thing. Geez. Are they even sure that everyone is still accounted for in the prison? I mean, hell, if no one is watching the fence line then surely it'd be trivial for them to leave.
Just wow.
Unlike the US, where prisons tend to be isolated outside population centres and can afford to have wide perimeters with more than one fence (at least that is what I see on US telly), in the UK, older prisons, many of them built in the Victorian era are often in towns or cities, where there is just no space to have a wide perimeter.
It is often the case that there are public roads right next to the perimeter wall. Prisons such as these mean that it is impossible to prevent the public getting close enough to catapult small amounts of contraband over the wall. Here are the co-ordinates of HMP Bedford: 52.139530, -0.469831. Look at it the satellite image in Google Maps or something to see the problem.
You might say that it is poor planning to have prisons in towns, but the UK is smaller and has a much higher population density than the US or many other countries. If prisons are built away from a population centre, first of all, there is a huge outcry about using precious green-field sites for prisons, and then if they do get built, a new population centre grows up around the prison, because people working in the prison tend to like living close to where they are working. The prison then has to expand because of the increasing prison population, so it tends to grow towards it's perimeter, using the space.
If prisons are built away from a population centre, first of all, there is a huge outcry about using precious green-field sites for prisons, and then if they do get built, a new population centre grows up around the prison, because people working in the prison tend to like living close to where they are working.
New prisons are built away from population centres.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/search/Rye+Hill+prison/@52.327527,-1.242744,1831m/data=!3m1!1e3
And yet, although Rye Hill is a more modern prison, it was originally built as a borstal in the 1960's when there was less opposition to this type of development. Since then, it's role has been changed more than once, probably with modifications added each time to make it more suitable for it's new purpose.
It's always easier to get agreement to extend an existing facility like this than it is to build a new one from scratch.
When I was a student in Exeter I regularly used to walk past the prison, often late at night while drunk. A couple of times I wandered past as someone was reeling stuff in through a window on the end of a bit of string, it looked like the bathroom windows looked straight out above the path next to the prison.
DJI has the ability, when the GPS is enabled, to prevent their products from being flown in prohibited airspace as in Washington, DC. This also applies to many airports and BeiJing, etc.
Since Cameron thinks he is a somebody the UK will no doubt send a long list of banned UK areas and demand that DJI enter them in their software. He wouldn't want pix of his Sammy all over the InterNet (nor would many of us).
Since VietNam and China have ongoing disputes over China's peremptory theft of some islands in the middle of nowhere, DJI units are sold here without any restrictions whatsoever!