Middle East vs Middle Ages police

Are terror groups adapting hightech flying toys to use against us? Erm… the UK’s IT police will have to get back to you on that one

Finally… by The Secret Policeman

So there’s a detective typing away on the 15th floor of Scotland Yard. Maybe he’s tapping out code-red intel. Maybe he’s checking the latest spreads on Betfair. Either way, he looks round… To find a drone staring back at him. OK, it’s a remote-control plane with a camera duct-taped to it, rather than the kind of thing you’ll find on p71. But it still scares the bejesus out of him.

The word on the street is that the terrorist action is now in the skies. Drones over police buildings. Drones over football matches. Drones over the existing American embassy and the new one currently being built in Vauxhall, just down the road from… oh, MI6.

Cue a lot of worry that these ‘eyes in the skies’ could be about to start raining ebola down on football fans, or capture American embassy staff emailing nuclear launch codes to each other. Or something.

Or, of course, they could be the result of ordinary members of the public filming absobloody-lutely everything. “We’ve captured everything there is to see at ground level,” they cry. “Now to the skies, lads!”

The police service is, sad to say, not tech-savvy. It pays £60 per minute for its IT helpline, thanks to some PFI madness, so it’s not going to learn anything about tech without shelling out a lot of dosh.

Two years ago, we installed a ‘state of the art’ computer system running on… Windows XP. Two weeks later, Microsoft discontinued support. Now, we’re upgrading, to… Windows 8! You see a pattern emerging here?

So, hopefully terrorists aren’t planning to attack us with drones and/or toy planes with cameras duct-taped to them. Because if they are, you can expect the UK’s fuzz to be scrambling biplanes in response. Evening all. The Secret Policeman works for a major UK police service in a techy role