Sci-Fi Police of the year 2049 AD

[Prince Charon]

An important thing to consider in the use of drones and robots is the difficulty of hacking them. There's already concerns over the Internet of Things being hacked, or cars being hacked, but an armed police drone or police robot being hacked is a different sort of problem, even if only armed with a tangler.

Of course, if it's sufficiently Transhuman Space-like, the organic cops could also potentially be hacked.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

An important thing to consider in the use of drones and robots is the difficulty of hacking them. There's already concerns over the Internet of Things being hacked, or cars being hacked, but an armed police drone or police robot being hacked is a different sort of problem, even if only armed with a tangler.

Armed police drones should probably be hardened to such attacks to military standards. If drones are of use to the military, they are likely functionally unhackable by the resources possessed by those the police will be facing off against.

That said, I think part of what keeps military drones from being hacked is that it's really difficult to get ahold of one intact enough that you can do a proper physical and software analysis of it (in order to find potential vulnerabilities). Giving police drones a "soft" self-destruct (that serves to fry components and wipe memory, but doesn't actually explode) would probably be necessary to prevent exploitation after capture by a skilled adversary.

Originally Posted by Agemegos

You can analyse bribery, ideological corruption, coercion, and blackmail as forms of wet hacking, which makes it possible now.

I've read scifi stories that refer to typical social engineering as "meat-hacking." Notably, Schlock Mercenary here.

[AlexanderHowl]

A lot of the security of military drones is smoke and mirrors. Any sufficiently developed nation can hack the computers that control the drones (especially since quantum computers are starting to take off), and they will share their back doors with sympathetic criminal and/or terrorist networks. In addition, few nations will be careless enough to share military grade encryption with civilian police, as they would want to minimize potential breeches.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

A lot of the security of military drones is smoke and mirrors. Any sufficiently developed nation can hack the computers that control the drones, ... and they will share their back doors with sympathetic criminal and/or terrorist networks.

OK... so if it's cyberpunk, and police assets are in the way:

• Hack the local police data link
• Erase all footage of PC/NPC team members and vehicles. Replace with substitute video/audio
• Divert target police officers data and coms to a dummy interface, run by a captive AI using video software emulator software.
• Use same technology to ghost targeted police assets to wider police data network
• Take control/destroy all drones; neutralise any police personal

Q: Given that police in this environment would be aware of the fragility of their data net security, how would an isolated team respond to what appeared to be a cyber attack on their data network link?

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

Q: Given that police in this environment would be aware of the fragility of their data net security, how would an isolated team respond to what appeared to be a cyber attack on their data network link?

So if they want to fight the attack, they attempt to contact headquarters via an alternate method. There are many ways this can happen. The most obvious is to commandeer a civilian phone and call the station. If that fails, use a civilian computer and email.

If that's not an option (and it can be messy to not make it an option), they can try to send an analog signal. Firing shots in a pattern is one method. getting up on a tower and waving flags or manipulating a billboard is another. At the very least, they can send someone on foot or in a vehicle. Slow, but it eventually gets through.

If this is a common attack, you give the police analog radios to deal with this situation. You CAN jam analog radios, but its a lot more obvious that you're doing so and literally broadcasts your location. While you can listen in on the police, they're only using that frequency to draw attention to cyber attacks, and if you get a positive, the station sends in fresh assets that are harder to hack (such as all-meat officers).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

A lot of the security of military drones is smoke and mirrors. Any sufficiently developed nation can hack the computers that control the drones (especially since quantum computers are starting to take off), and they will share their back doors with sympathetic criminal and/or terrorist networks. In addition, few nations will be careless enough to share military grade encryption with civilian police, as they would want to minimize potential breeches.

Good security design should mitigate a lot of that (and if quantum computing is available for breaking encryption, you either use quantum encryption or skip the whole problem with one time pads). Honestly, at the point you have secure whitelisting and are using some sort of rotating one time pad arrangement, you pretty much have to hack the meat (that is, use social engineering) to get anywhere. I agree the police are unlikely to be using actual military hardware, I was just saying their stuff should be built to military standards.

That said, I'm no computer security expert; the above is mostly from information I've gleaned speaking with such.

Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip

Q: Given that police in this environment would be aware of the fragility of their data net security, how would an isolated team respond to what appeared to be a cyber attack on their data network link?

They would likely have protocols in place for dealing with such a situation, which I'd imagine would amount to them disregarding the potentially-false information (or actively analyzing it to see if they can figure out OpFor's actions/plans by seeing what OpFor wants them to believe) and acting based on their own judgement. Given the increased seriousness of the situation, they may be more willing to use deadly force, meaning the OpFor's plans may well backfire. They may have some method of establishing a more secure (but less convenient) communication channel back to "home" or to their other assets (perhaps a line-of-sight laser comm) that they'll want to get online ASAP.

Note if OpFor is aware of their protocols, they may be able to exploit them. If cut-off LEO's tend to resort to deadly force, cutting them off while they are raiding OpFor's competition can be a good way to eliminate such. If they need to setup their laser comm, making certain there are only a few routes to reach an eligible area can make ambushes easier.

[Luke Bunyip]

Originally Posted by Varyon

They would likely have protocols in place for dealing with such a situation...
<SNIP>
They may have some method of establishing a more secure (but less convenient) communication channel back to "home" or to their other assets (perhaps a line-of-sight laser comm) that they'll want to get online ASAP.

Nice. What's the black market price on specialist smoke grenades?

Must say, I do like Eric the Red's segway into alternative work arounds for comms.

[Luke Bunyip]

On a tangent, but possibly relevant, is how police resources are distributed. It occurred to me, that population density and the associated urbanisation will present challenges (and dictate the nature of actual committed personal and vehicles), but the geography of medium and low density population centres may require a nuanced response.

More VTOL squad vehicles? Dedicated recon drones? The last of the Pursuit Specials?

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by Prince Charon

An important thing to consider in the use of drones and robots is the difficulty of hacking them. There's already concerns over the Internet of Things being hacked, or cars being hacked, but an armed police drone or police robot being hacked is a different sort of problem, even if only armed with a tangler.

Of course, if it's sufficiently Transhuman Space-like, the organic cops could also potentially be hacked.

Or, you can go low tech:

https://hackaday.com/2014/04/04/sql-...s-your-record/

Typical speed camera traps have built-in OCR software that is used to recognize license plates. A clever hacker decided to see if he could defeat the system by using SQL Injection…

The basic premise of this hack is that the hacker has created a simple SQL statement which will hopefully cause the database to delete any record of his license plate. Or so he (she?) hopes. Talk about getting off scot-free!
The reason this works (or could work?) is because while you would think a traffic camera is only taught to recognize the license plate characters, the developers of the third-party image recognition software simply digitize the entire thing — recognizing any and all of the characters present. While it’s certainly clever, we’re pretty sure you’ll still get pulled over and questioned — but at least it’s not as extreme as building a flashbulb array to blind traffic cameras…

[L.J.Steele]

Originally Posted by naloth

In our system it just needs to confuse the issue enough to prevent prosecution... However, all of this is merely a requirement on how mature the technology needs to be. Perhaps it's optimistic for 30 years, but current tech can do some pretty impressive 3d pictures that capture information where as 30 years ago digital photography hardly existed.

I'd venture that appropriate chain of evidence from certain bonded sources is how future footage is authenticated. It won't be trusted because it can't be faked. It will allowed by fiat, from powerful agencies that expect what they provide to be taken as fact.

The American Federal Rules of Evidence requirements for authentication of a recording are laughably low. To get into court, the person who made the recording testifies that it accurately reflects what he/she heard or saw. That's about it. In many cases, you don't even need to provide the original. The jury is responsible for then deciding if the recording is trustworthy.

Yes, there are defense attorneys trying to challenge all sorts of evidence, some of which is demonstrably flawed (bite mark comparison, for example), but largely the trial courts and appellate courts don't care about science. Almost anything plausible sounding can come into the courtroom and the jurors are left to decide what they believe.

For gaming, it depends a lot on the story you want to tell. Do you want police who have a bunch of shiny toys and fancy CSI gear? Do you want to tell the story of underfunded cops struggling against more technically sophisticated foes? Do you want to tell the story of a resistance against a pervasive surveillance state?