A Clever Radio Trick Can Tell If a Drone Is Watching You

As flying, camera-wielding machines get ever cheaper and more ubiquitous, inventors of anti-drone technologies are marketing every possible idea for protection from hovering eyes in the sky: Drone-spotting radar. Now one group of Israeli researchers has developed a new technique for that drone-control arsenal--one that can not only detect that a drone is nearby, but determine with surprising precision if it's spying on you, your home, or your high-security facility. Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva, Israel have built a proof-of-concept system for counter-surveillance against spy drones that demonstrates a clever, if not exactly simple, way to determine whether a certain person or object is under aerial surveillance. They first generate a recognizable pattern on whatever subject--a window, say--someone might want to guard from potential surveillance. Then they remotely intercept a drone's radio signals to look for that pattern in the streaming video the drone sends back to its operator.