A lot of people have been discussing lately of the potential use of drones on American Citizens.

Generally speaking, the discussions regarding the use of drones have been referring to criticisms of both the United States, and particularly the executive branch, but this latest news regarding drones comes to us from a far more sinister and dangerous angle.

An Iranian group of hackers, calling themselves Parastoo, have announced they have both the ability to hijack and control our very own weapons against us.

The latest drone hijacking is being reported as late as a few days ago.

As has been reported in the news, Iranian forces have already successfully captured American drones, and the implications of this news is clear; There may well be nothing standing between Iranian hackers and Predator Drones flying over American soil.

It begs several questions:

Why are these drones hackable in the first place?  Shouldn’t there be measures in place to stop that from happening?  How easily are these sorts of attacks carried out?

Presumably, if these drones were made to be quite secure, and the hackers cleverly found a novel way into the drone’s operations, one must then ask themselves, why we are trying to use rapidly outdated military hardware when it’s clear the hardware will  eventually become the battlegrounds themselves? It’s apparent that we quickly moving into an age where conventional warfare is finding less of a use, and the average individual with enough time, knowledge, and energy can wield far more power than Emperors and Kings before him.  It’s no doubt the implications are chilling, but so far, it’s just been threats from Parastoo.

Threats include hijacking drones and flying them into the following things:

• A Secret Service Convoy (With Joe Biden)
• An Embassy
• A 20 Acre Nuclear Waste Site in Nevada
• A Facility in Israel

But Parastoo’s activities haven’t just stopped at hijacking drones.  They’ve also hacked into a Colorado-based military intelligence company called IHS Jane’s Group, and stolen data involving chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as intelligence involving armed forces.

Even more, they claim to have IHS’s customers’ credit card records, identities of nuclear workers in multiple countries, information on military facilities, oh, and of course medical records.  For something that’s so hard to get legitimately, it sure seems medical records are stolen quite often.

Anyway, if this isn’t the definition of cyber-terrorism, then nothing is.  But what is our government doing to stop it?

Well, other than an executive order issued earlier this month, the President urged congress to do something – anything to help protect the nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure.  So far, all congress has done is reintroduce the wildly unpopular CISPA bill.

With congress focused on keeping their eyes on their own people, it leaves one feeling a bit hopeless that anything can be done to stop these cyber-terrorists.

We’ll keep you updated as more news comes out.

To keep up with this and much more news, don’t forget to watch us live and online on the Morning NewsDesk Show with Kristin Feledy.

 photo credit: Anguskirk via photopin cc