But those early units were “fielded so fast that it was done with an unencrypted signal. It could be both intercepted (e.g. hacked into) and jammed,” e-mails an Air Force officer with knowledge of the program. In a presentation last month before a conference of the Army Aviation Association of America, a military official noted that the current ROVER terminal “receives only unencrypted L, C, S, Ku [satellite] bands.” So the same security breach that allowed insurgent to use satellite dishes and $26 software to intercept drone feeds can be used the tap into the video transmissions of any plane.

It seems fairly unlikely that being able to tap the feed would be helpful without a lot of additional capabilities. You would be hard-pressed to even evacuate a site in the time you would have between the time the plane gets close enough for you to pick up its feed and the time it would be punching your ticket ...