A Drone’s Silent SOS

 

A Drone’s Silent SOS

In the rugged wilderness of British Columbia, Jason Martin’s weekend hiking trip had gone catastrophically wrong. He had planned for a two-day trek with his drone—a sleek quadcopter he often used to capture stunning aerial shots of remote landscapes. But after straying from the trail to get the perfect sunset shot, Jason found himself disoriented in the dense forest as night fell.

The situation quickly turned dire. His phone had no signal, and his GPS watch had run out of battery after a full day of navigating challenging terrain. Worse still, Jason had underestimated the ruggedness of the terrain, and his supplies were dwindling. By the second day, his attempts to find his way back had only pushed him further into the wilderness.

Desperate, Jason deployed his drone, hoping to scout the area for signs of the trail. He launched it several times, capturing videos of the vast expanse around him, but the dense canopy offered little help. By the end of the day, the drone’s battery was nearly depleted. With no options left, Jason recorded a brief SOS message using the drone’s camera, explaining his situation and coordinates, hoping someone might eventually recover it.

What Jason didn’t know was that his drone was equipped with a feature that automatically transmitted limited GPS data back to the manufacturer’s servers after each flight, part of a diagnostics and performance reporting system. When Jason failed to return home, his worried family reported him missing, triggering a search and rescue operation.

The breakthrough came when one of Jason’s relatives contacted the drone manufacturer, hoping they could provide some insight into his last known flight. The company’s technical team reviewed the data and discovered a series of recent GPS coordinates logged deep in the forest—locations that matched the times Jason had launched his drone. Each ping painted a clear picture of his movements, pinpointing the area where he was likely stranded.

Rescue teams were immediately dispatched to the remote region, armed with the drone’s GPS data. After hours of searching through dense underbrush, they found Jason sitting beside a small clearing, his drone perched nearby like a loyal companion. Exhausted and dehydrated but alive, he was overjoyed to see help arrive.

As the helicopter lifted him out of the wilderness, Jason couldn’t help but marvel at the unexpected heroism of his drone. Designed to capture memories, it had instead saved his life. The manufacturer later shared the story publicly, emphasizing the importance of technology in life-or-death situations. Jason, meanwhile, vowed never to underestimate the wilderness again—and never to leave home without his drone.

The secret network

 

The Fall of the Unseen Network

In a quiet corner of Manchester, Marcus “Ace” Lambert prided himself on his ability to stay off the radar. For years, the low-profile drug dealer had evaded police detection, relying on burner phones, cash deals, and an uncanny knack for avoiding technology that might betray him. But it was precisely this technology—hidden in plain sight—that would lead to his downfall.

One crisp November evening, Marcus set off for a meet with a high-paying client in Leeds. He left his flat armed with a bag of carefully weighed packets and his trusty prepaid mobile phone. What he didn’t know was that his journey would inadvertently leave a trail far more incriminating than anything found in his car.

In homes and offices along his route, countless Alexa-enabled devices lay dormant, waiting for their owners to issue a command. While Marcus had never used Alexa, his phone, like many modern devices, routinely sent out signals in search of Wi-Fi networks. As he drove, it pinged unconnected Alexa devices that detected the phone’s unique MAC address and briefly logged the interaction, a feature designed to help improve Wi-Fi connectivity.

A few days later, Marcus’s luck ran out when an unrelated arrest revealed the name of his client. The police began piecing together Marcus’s movements but lacked hard evidence to connect him to specific deals. Then a tech-savvy officer stumbled upon the Alexa data, an unassuming goldmine. A warrant allowed access to logs from homes along Marcus’s suspected route. Sure enough, timestamps from Alexa devices revealed a trail of pings that matched Marcus’s burner phone.

The data told a story. From his flat in Manchester, through petrol stations and side streets, to the exact address of the client in Leeds, the unintentional digital breadcrumbs placed Marcus squarely at the scene. His car was tracked on CCTV, and the timeline of the pings corroborated every detail of his movements.

When confronted, Marcus dismissed the evidence as coincidence, but the prosecution’s case was airtight. In court, an expert explained how the passive network signals had sealed his fate. A jury, captivated by the peculiar nature of the evidence, took less than two hours to convict him.

Marcus Lambert was sentenced to seven years in prison. For all his efforts to stay invisible, it was the unseen, everyday technology surrounding him that had ensured his capture.

Not as safe as you think.

 The Yellow Betrayal

Mark had spent months undercover, unearthing a massive corruption scandal involving a prominent government official. His exposé was airtight—photos, testimonies, financial records—all meticulously compiled. With a trembling hand, he printed the draft from his home office and carried it to a trusted colleague at a local coffee shop.

Hours later, as he reviewed the final edits with his colleague, he noticed strange, nearly invisible dots scattered across the margins of the pages. He dismissed them as a printer glitch, focusing instead on his story’s imminent publication.

The next morning, a knock at his door shattered his routine. Three men in suits identified themselves as government investigators. They had a warrant, citing possession of classified documents. Mark froze. His stomach sank as they presented a printed page from his draft—one he had never shared electronically.

“How did you find this?” he stammered.

“Your printer helped us,” one agent replied coolly. “Those dots tell us when and where this was printed. Even the printer’s serial number.”

Mark's blood ran cold. The very tool he trusted to spread the truth had betrayed him. As they cuffed him, his mind raced. He had uncovered the corruption, but the hidden dots on his draft had uncovered him.

The story would go unread, buried along with his freedom.

Betrayed by the card.

 "Shuttered Shadows"

Elliot Kane was a freelance photographer, always chasing the next big story. On a misty morning in Eastern Europe, he found himself snapping pictures in a restricted industrial zone. The whir of his DSLR’s shutter echoed faintly against the barbed wire fence. Unbeknownst to him, his most valuable tool—the microSD card tucked inside his camera—was about to betray him.

The card, a cutting-edge model gifted to him by a tech-savvy friend, contained a little-known feature: a unique digital fingerprint encoded in its firmware. This fingerprint could be silently read by specialized devices. It was designed for inventory tracking, but in the wrong hands, it had become a tool for surveillance.

Elliot packed up and left the site, unaware that security services monitoring the perimeter had deployed advanced scanners. These scanners detected his microSD card's signature, logging its serial number and associating it with the camera's metadata. Within minutes, the information was relayed to a central database. Elliot had unknowingly tripped a silent alarm.

As he reviewed his shots in a café later that evening, his laptop pinged with a warning. An encrypted message from his contact: “You’ve been compromised. They’ve flagged your card. Get rid of it now.”

Heart pounding, Elliot stashed the card in a cigarette tin and headed for the nearest metro station. He knew this was more than a simple misunderstanding. The security services had likely connected his movements with reports of a foreign journalist snooping in restricted areas.

The metro was crowded, and Elliot hoped to lose himself in the sea of faces. He slipped the tin into the bag of a distracted commuter just before disembarking at the next station. His plan was simple: sever the digital trail before it led them to him.

As he walked briskly toward his safe house, Elliot’s mind raced. He had one last shot stored on his camera’s internal memory: a blurry image of men in uniforms unloading strange, unmarked crates. It wasn’t enough to blow the story wide open, but it was a start.

By the time the security services intercepted the commuter with the microSD card, Elliot was already on a train bound for another country, clutching his camera tightly. The truth was still out there, waiting to be revealed. For now, he had to stay ahead of the shadows that hunted him.

Sadiq Khan and business exhibitions

 I used to attend business exhibitions in London. Thanks to the mayor  (Sadiq Khan) and his TfL tax on visitors I avoid going to any exhibition located in the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) of London.  As his need for funding grows he expands the ULEZ to put more vehicles in scope, trying to justify it on health grounds.

Visiting London is expensive. The railway train fares are prohibitively expensive (£226 return advance booking + £13 tube) for travel during business hours. Car travel used to be an alternative, but the combination of increased fuel cost, car parking fees, Congestion Charge and TfL taxes make it less of an option.

Staying overnight in a hotel on an exhibition day currently is around £350 per night with advance booking.

The exhibition companies are fighting to regain attendees after the Covid-19 lockdowns. In London they fight against the inconvenience and tide of rising travel costs. For a 2 day trip by train from Derby to a large exhibition in London you are looking at around £600 - £700 including basic food.

Over a year since Covid-19 Lockdown and they still can't run video conferencing

 I knew I had a free afternoon, so I signed up to a paid webinar. As in paid, I mean that I paid 20 GBP/hour to attend. The topic was of interest to me, and I'm happy to support the hosting organisation. It is a telecommunications industry body representing the smaller companies who install broadband networks for the public. The speakers and other participants were company executives and directors, consultants, senior Civil Servants involved in telecoms and regulations.

After at least one year of Covid Lockdown, you'd think these people would know the basics of participating in webinars from home offices and also organisation premises. Not a chance!  There were loads of basic mistakes and it was obvious there'd been no rehearsals by the speakers. They'd all appeared to have assumed it would work okay on the day. 

The webinar software worked well with all the usual features, we even had virtual networking "tables" outside the main virtual conference "hall".

However there were lots of fundamental mistakes from the participants:

• Some speakers had no working visual presentation material, and spoke their presentation;
• Some speakers were not ready on appointed time;
• The event had not been rehearsed;
• In most cases the visible background behind speakers on camera was cluttered and distracting;
• One guy had his camera poorly mounted and the picture was frequently shaking;
• A presenter had a poor microphone set up, and his voice faded as he, frequently, moved his body;
• One presenter was drinking from a bottle on camera;
• One had a low resolution camera and an even worse internet connection. She was frequently disconnecting and was often "pixelating" on the screen;
• Some of the speakers had loud background noise;
• Another was backlit with  glare lighting into the camera
• Some couldn't get their PowerPoint presentations to work online.

These people knew their industry well, but the unprofessional approach seriously degraded the impact of the web conference.

New Epson SC-P700 printer

We found our Epson 7110 Workforce Inkjet was dead and beyond economic repair, so we looked around for a replacement device. We settled on the Epson SureColor P700 printer. It was pricy to get on the road, but we like it a lot, however it was not all plain sailing. We had a battle to sort out the Extended Warranty.

Now, it is just a regular part of the business.

The story is here in this YouTube clip: