Prison smug­gling via drone de­liv­ery is a grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al prob­lem. This month, Cather­ine Tun­ney, writ­ing for CBC News Cana­da, re­port­ed, “The drone de­liv­ered Mc­Don­ald’s chick­en nuggets and fries com­plete with sauce and some al­co­hol straight to the in­mate’s cell win­dow in the spe­cial han­dling unit. This is de­spite drone de­tec­tion radars be­ing de­ployed at the prison.”

The ar­ti­cle rais­es the is­sue that the on­ly sure way to stop the drone breach­es is to cov­er vast ar­eas of the prison in nets.

While a drone de­liv­ery of chick­en nuggets to prison is a hu­mor­ous in­tro­duc­tion to this col­umn, the re­al threat of crim­i­nal ac­ti­va­tion of drones re­mains in their weapon­i­sa­tion.

NBC re­port­ed that us­ing the lat­est AI mod­els from An­throp­ic and Ope­nAI, a US$100 drone was out­fit­ted with fa­cial recog­ni­tion tech­nol­o­gy, al­low­ing it to au­to­mat­i­cal­ly stalk a spe­cif­ic per­son. While crim­i­nals in T&T gen­er­al­ly lack the so­phis­ti­ca­tion to im­ple­ment the same soft­ware, it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore crim­i­nals in Latin Amer­i­ca and world­wide nor­malise us­ing this tech­nol­o­gy for their own ends.

A fur­ther mod­i­fi­ca­tion to at­tach a small ex­plo­sive de­vice could turn the same cheap drone in­to a small cruise mis­sile that can loi­ter along a street un­til a spe­cif­ic per­son walks by. Un­like a firearm, such a weapon will re­quire no line of sight, leave no pow­der residue or bul­let cas­ings for foren­sics to find and have far greater po­ten­tial lethal­i­ty than a bul­let: drone-based ex­plo­sives could de­stroy ve­hi­cles, set fire to build­ings or sneak in­to open doors and bed­rooms and kill peo­ple in­side their own homes.

The Russ­ian mil­i­tary has al­ready up­grad­ed some of its drones and cruise mis­siles with Nvidia con­sumer chips to al­low them to make au­tonomous tar­get­ing de­ci­sions, even if Ukrain­ian forces jam GPS and con­trol links.

Such night­mare weapons must nev­er be al­lowed to fall in­to the hands of crim­i­nals in T&T, and strict mon­i­tor­ing of ports and strict reg­is­tra­tion of drones are nec­es­sary to de­ter the po­ten­tial fu­ture of crim­i­nals con­duct­ing as­sas­si­na­tions with drones.

The Civ­il Avi­a­tion No. 19 Un­manned Air­craft Sys­tems Reg­u­la­tions, 2016, thank­ful­ly al­ready has a frame­work for reg­is­tra­tion of drones. Un­der this law, small recre­ation­al drones re­main un­reg­u­lat­ed, but larg­er drones that could pose a risk to air­craft or hu­man life re­quire reg­is­tra­tion.

The leg­is­la­tion cov­ers “Un­manned Air­craft” or UAs and di­vides them in­to five cat­e­gories by weight. Cat­e­go­ry one com­pris­es drones that are less than 750g or 1.65 pounds, and by virtue of Reg­u­la­tion 45, these small drones are not sub­ject to reg­is­tra­tion.

Cat­e­gories two to five com­prise larg­er drones. Reg­u­la­tion four pro­vides for manda­to­ry reg­is­tra­tion of these drones.

Reg­u­la­tion 49 of the Civ­il Avi­a­tion No. 19 Un­manned Air­craft Sys­tems Reg­u­la­tions, 2016: “49. The use of an un­manned air­craft sys­tem with the in­tent to dis­rupt or en­dan­ger civ­il avi­a­tion or any pub­lic or pri­vate prop­er­ty shall at­tract a fine of three hun­dred and fifty thou­sand dol­lars and im­pris­on­ment for five years.”

Reg­u­la­tions 38 to 43 of the law al­so pro­vide for un­manned air­craft clubs to be reg­is­tered and keep a reg­istry of mem­bers; this is a good way to as­sist in train­ing peo­ple not to breach the law and po­ten­tial­ly en­dan­ger them­selves and oth­ers with reck­less or il­le­gal use of drones.

In my view, the ex­ist­ing law needs up­dat­ing to match the threats that law en­force­ment face from il­lic­it drone use. Fur­ther re­stric­tions on drone op­er­a­tions near pris­ons and oth­er hold­ing fa­cil­i­ties are need­ed. The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice should be al­lowed to stop and search all ve­hi­cles near a prison fa­cil­i­ty for il­lic­it sub­stances and drones, and se­vere penal­ties should be im­ple­ment­ed for any­one caught smug­gling con­tra­band in­to the prison us­ing drones.

Fur­ther­more, Cat­e­go­ry 2-5 un­manned air­craft are large enough to car­ry ex­plo­sives that can de­stroy small build­ings or ve­hi­cles. Any un­reg­is­tered pos­ses­sion, sale and/or mod­i­fi­ca­tion of these de­vices should car­ry se­vere penal­ties and a term of im­pris­on­ment to de­ter any crim­i­nal from seek­ing to mod­i­fy these drones in­to weapons.

Cat­e­gories 2-5 un­manned air­craft should on­ly be im­port­ed with spe­cial li­cences or through reg­is­tered deal­ers to pre­vent il­lic­it use. In the fu­ture, any­one found in pos­ses­sion of a large (cat­e­go­ry 2-5) un­manned air­craft that is un­reg­is­tered should be treat­ed with the same lev­el of scruti­ny as a per­son found with an un­reg­is­tered firearm and no firearms user li­cence.

While crit­ics may find my leg­isla­tive sug­ges­tions harsh, the ex­am­ple at the be­gin­ning of this col­umn il­lus­trates how dif­fi­cult it is for a first-world coun­try like Cana­da to con­trol il­lic­it drone us­age. Ei­ther our Gov­ern­ment will find it­self spend­ing mil­lions se­cur­ing pris­ons and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties with drone radar and nets in the fu­ture, or the State can choose to pos­si­bly earn rev­enue through a strict sys­tem of drone im­port li­cenc­ing and reg­is­tra­tion that al­so helps crack down on il­lic­it drone use.