The Department of Homeland Security plans to use four-legged robot dogs, similar to those developed by Boston Dynamics, in raids on suspects. The robots will be used to jam networks, disable devices, communicate with humans and otherwise act as walking "denial of service attacks."
"NEO can enter a potentially dangerous environment to provide video and audio feedback to the officers before entry and allow them to communicate with those in that environment," says Huffman. "NEO carries an onboard computer and antenna array that will allow officers the ability to create a 'denial-of-service' (DoS) event to disable 'Internet of Things' devices that could potentially cause harm while entry is made."
The disruptive features center on things that recording devices do or depend on. The specific devices to be disabled are cameras: the incentive for deployment was reportedly a suspect using a Ring doorbell to see the cops at his door, then shooting two of them without opening it.
Here's a Hollwood-esque scenario for them to worry about:
"A suspect who has been searched and is under the control of officers can cause these actions to happen with a simple voice command which can start a chain of events to occur within a house, such as turning off lights, locking doors, activating the HVAC system to introduce chemicals into the environment and cause a fire or explosion to take place."
Everyday villains don't have robot dogs, but savvy homeowners surely already know that wireless cameras are easily disabled with cheap WiFi-jamming gadgets. Disabling a Ring-type camera is even easier. Home security calls for wired gear, not running the wires outside, and having the footage copied to the cloud automatically—even cheapo Chinese camera sets can dump over FTP.