[hmottestad]

New UK startup:

We deliver your package by anonymous drone. Drop from any height with or without parachute at any hour of the day.

You mail us your package together and a form specifying when, where and how your package should be delivered. Use the calulator on our webpages to calculate the price of the delivery. Cash or check is accepted. Any change can be delivered with your package.

Specify drop height, parachute, time and coordinates. We will deliver within 30-60-120 minute windows at different prices.

[vitalique]

My thoughts exactly (except for the part of making it an underground startup): in these days of drones and copters boom, I wonder how much time will pass before we hear about phones, guns, tobacco or whatever being smuggled into prisons by swarms of elusive quadrocopters.

[superuser2]

Prisons will probably have to adopt some form of electronic countermeasures. Civilian GPS is easily spoofed, auto-targeting lasers could make onboard cameras useless, and radio jamming ought to be put in place regardless of drones to combat cell phones.

Governments are able to play the game of constantly one-upping electronic warfare systems, but you could make it too expensive for civilians to have any sort of control or visibility when flying a drone over your site.

[celticninja]

accept bitcoin instead of cheques adds to the anonymous nature of the service.

[tomjen3]

Interesting idea, but that wouldn't work, the authorities wouldn't let the drones close enough to the prisons.

Oh and the drones I have seen available can't handle enough weight to lift much of anything.

[TeMPOraL]

> Interesting idea, but that wouldn't work, the authorities wouldn't let the drones close enough to the prisons.

Couldn't they instead mortar things into the prison? Shoot a capsule with a phone on a very steep ballistic trajectory.

[steauengeglase]

You don't need to patch the problem and anyone trying is probably out to sell you $50 million system.

In my state an inmate was broken out with a helicopter. The Dept of Corrections had an interesting solution. Anyone caught looking up at the sky goes into solitary confinement. No one has tried it since.

You don't patch the cause of the problem, you break the part of the will that would even make you think about the solution. It is much cheaper and it creates a more malleable population.

Not that I approve of the approach but the voters wanting anything that can't be painted as 3 hots and a cot.

[tomjen3]

That is likely very illegal (read illegal and somebody cares) which could get you into that prison.