Statistics on the number of crimes committed using drones are hard to come by. The press reports a variety of data. For example, in 2016, UK law enforcement reported that illegal activity using drones increased by 3,52% from 2014 to 2015, and over 272 drone-related incidents were recorded in the first five months of 2016. It is worth noting that most of these cases involved drug dealers or pedophiles using drones to stalk victims in playgrounds.
Drones allow you to capture breathtaking landscapes, deliver packages, patrol the area, and perform many other useful functions. However, since this revolutionary product changes our lives, it can be dangerous if used for bad purposes. After all, criminals are among the first to adopt new technologies. Here are the top 10 crimes involving drones.
1. Removing the ATM keypad
When you go to an ATM to withdraw money, you probably want to make sure no one is watching you as you enter your personal identification number (PIN). However, you probably don’t look up at the sky while you do so. In August 2016, a drone was spotted filming people standing near an ATM in Templepatrick, Northern Ireland. It was probably watching people enter their PIN. Once someone noticed the drone sticking its camera where it shouldn’t, it flew away and collided with a nearby taxi. Although the man suspected of operating the drone was forced to pay the taxi owner for the damage, police were unable to prove that the footage was recorded with criminal intent.
2. Drug Delivery to Ohio Prison
Instead of trying to smuggle the drugs, one inmate's buddies loaded 7 grams of heroin, 57 grams of marijuana, and 142 grams of tobacco onto a drone and sent it flying over the walls of Mansfield Correctional Institution in Ohio. Once the drone dropped the drugs, a fight broke out between inmates over the "gifts." Prison officials managed to quell the riot, but had to search nearly 200 inmates to find the drugs. And the nine inmates who started the fight were placed in solitary confinement.
3. Delivering Guns to Oklahoma Prison
Another criminal group took note of the aforementioned Ohio State Penitentiary incident. However, they expanded their “delivery repertoire” to include a cell phone, hacksaws, drugs, and super glue. The criminals tied all of this to a drone with fishing line so that the contraband could be easily pulled out. Unfortunately for the criminals, the drone got caught on the prison’s barbed wire walls and crashed, forcing inmates to fight over its luggage until prison officials intervened. The broken drone was taken into police custody as evidence. It is unknown if anyone was arrested for the incident.
4. Hacking
To catch a hacker, you have to think like a hacker. Fran Brown and David Latimer, who work at Bishop Fox (a security consultancy), have developed a drone to access various types of Wi-Fi networks. This type of hacking is called the Danger Drone and consists of a Raspberry Pi computer tethered to the body of a drone. The computer is equipped with hacking software and has a range of 1.6 kilometers. It is controlled using a regular radio, but can be configured to receive signals from cell towers. For example, the Danger Drone can “rickroll” vulnerable Chromecast devices. This is the equivalent of secretly changing the TV channel.
5. Military actions
Militants from the Islamic State terrorist organization (banned in Russia) have acquired hundreds of inexpensive, portable drones. These devices have been used to wage war in Iraq and Syria. When the ISIS stronghold of Mosul was captured in 2017, Iraqi troops found numerous drone factories. The militants were making two types of drones. One could drop light explosives, while the other exploded when it approached a target. Some of the drones that dropped explosives also filmed the events. Other terrorist groups, such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa, have also adopted drones, but on a relatively limited scale.
6. Burglary
In June 2018, a drone was spotted flying over a village in the English county of Cambridgeshire for four days in a row. A local man’s home was burgled a few days later. The thieves knew exactly the best entry point, as they were able to easily break in through a bathroom window and ransack the home. However, police were unable to connect the drone sightings to the burglary.
7. Flights over restricted areas
In 2017, almost 250 unregistered drones were detected at airports around the world. This poses a serious risk to large aircraft, as drones can get caught in engines or fly through cockpit windows, which can result in injury or even death to pilots. Rosaviatsia plans to install special equipment around airports to forcibly land drones that enter restricted areas. However, so far, there are no special units at Russian airfields to combat illegal drones.
8. Obstructing the release of hostages
The third place in the list of crimes committed using drones is taken by a story that happened in 2017. A team of FBI agents was planning an operation to free hostages in one of the American cities. While the entire rescue team was at an observation post to assess the situation, a swarm of unmanned aerial vehicles flew towards them. Not only did the criminals wait for the FBI to arrive, but the cameras that were attached to the drones constantly broadcast video of the agents on YouTube. Criminals also use drones to identify potential informants visiting police stations.
9. Voyeurism
In 2017, a drone was “caught” in Utah doing a voyeuristic act. John Henson was getting ready for work. As he stepped out of the shower, he heard the drone buzzing outside his bathroom window. When he opened the window, the drone flew away. However, John pursued it until the drone landed in a church parking lot. Henson grabbed the device and called the police. Officers discovered that the red lights on the drone had been taped over so it could fly undetected in the dark. They examined the camera footage and found that the drone was filming someone else’s private life. The police were able to track down the two drone owners and charged them with voyeurism.
10. Assassination attempt on the President of Venezuela
On August 4, during a military parade in Caracas, assailants attempted to assassinate Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. The assassination attempt was carried out using drones loaded with C4 explosives. At least one of the drones was shot down by a sniper, and security guards covered their protégé with bulletproof shields. In a televised address to the nation, Maduro said that the Colombian government and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos personally were to blame for the assassination attempt. However, he did not provide evidence of their guilt. So far, a little-known group, the National Movement of T-Shirt Soldiers, has claimed responsibility for the drone attack.
11. A photo of a sunbathing woman ended up on a billboard
In 2014, 50-year-old Mandy Lingard from Australia was left deeply offended to discover that her photo had been placed on a billboard without her consent. Normally, such a situation would only result in a small claim. However, the woman was photographed sunbathing while wearing only a thong, leaving her entire family embarrassed.
The photo was taken by a drone owned by a real estate agent. The agent uploaded the photo online, printed it in a property magazine and put it on a huge billboard. The image was quickly taken down, but Lingard still felt her rights had been violated. Australia’s laws around filming people on their property are currently not as strict as they should be. Another Darwin woman was filmed naked in a pool in 2017.
12. Theft
To steal someone else's property, the drone is equipped with mechanical devices for capturing any objects on the ground. For example, according to The Independent, criminals in the British county of Shropshire have begun using unmanned aerial vehicles to steal cannabis from plantations.
13. Murder
Criminals can use drone weapons (guns, missiles, bombs) to kill unwanted people. For now, they are used mainly in anti-terrorist operations. Example: according to American media, in early 2016, the leader of the terrorist group ISIS* in Yemen, Jalal Balidi, was killed in a drone strike.
14. Causing death by negligence
Accidents with drones are becoming more frequent; when they fall, they threaten people's lives. In December 2015, in Italy, during the performance of Austrian slalom skier Marcel Hirscher at one of the stages of the World Cup in alpine skiing, a large drone with a camera fell right onto the track. This incident could have ended tragically; the athlete was only miraculously not injured.
15. Violation of privacy
With the help of quadcopters, journalists in the West are actively hunting for stars. For example, the sharks of the pen do not leave the famous racer Michael Schumacher alone. They use drones to monitor the home of the Formula 1 star, where he is recovering from a serious injury he received while skiing.
16. Smuggling of funds
No drones have been recorded transporting currency across the Russian border. Theoretically, it is possible, but in practice, the border airspace is “locked down.”
17. Smuggling of alcohol and tobacco products
Mainly cigarettes are transported across the border on quadcopters. Currently, this illegal business is thriving in Ukraine. Dealers import drones duty-free into the territory of Nezalezhnaya, allegedly for reconnaissance in the ATO zone, and then resell them to smugglers. They attach blocks of cigarettes to these mini-airplanes on radio control and send them across the border, since smoking abroad is several times more expensive.
18. Terrorist act
A drone controlled by a terrorist is a terrible weapon. Fortunately, drones have not yet been used for terrorist attacks. But there have been dangerous precedents. In September 2013, a 40-centimeter drone, which had lost control, suddenly fell at the feet of Chancellor Angela Merkel at an election event of the Christian Democratic Union in Dresden. The Chancellor remained calm, but Defense Minister Thomas de Maizière was visibly nervous: the drone could have been packed with explosives.
19. Hooliganism
Unmanned aerial vehicles often fly in protected areas — they are specially launched there by operators to test the vigilance of the military. Japanese police have been particularly successful in catching rogue drones that fly in unauthorized places. To detect them, special drones are used that immobilize violators using electronics.
20. Illegal transportation of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances
A very effective way to transport small batches of drugs. There have been no such cases in Russia yet, but they are not uncommon in the West. Mostly, we are talking about quadcopters transporting drugs to prisons. This is especially common in the US and Canada. For example, in Melbourne two years ago, a drone was spotted hovering over a local correctional facility. Soon, the police found a man and a woman in a car parked nearby. The man was controlling a small drone, which he used to transport a batch of drugs to the prison.
21. Smuggling of poisonous, toxic, explosive, radioactive substances
There have been no cases of such substances being transported across borders using drones in global practice. But theoretically, it is possible.
22. Illegal search for archaeological objects
Scientists from many countries are already using data obtained by unmanned aerial vehicles in archaeological research. So it is possible that Russian illegal diggers will soon be interested in drones to conduct aerial reconnaissance of the area.
23. Illegal hunting
Hunters have been using drones in their expeditions for several years, but only recently have animal rights activists and politicians begun to take notice and implement regulations to limit their use.
24. Sabotage
Drones can be used to blow up infrastructure, industrial, and transport facilities. They are usually used during military operations.
25. Espionage
In some countries in Asia and the Middle East, drones are actively used to fish out secrets from foreign countries. Moreover, they are launched both from the territory of the country that keeps the secrets and across the border.
