> If we are talking about recorded data, ... You could encrypt the data with a public key and store it so that the drone itself can't read it. About the only reason to do this would be to ensure if it was captured, the target wouldn't see what was on it.
In fact, there's a commercial (non-military) video recorder that does exactly that:
It's basically on-the-fly encryption of continuous digital video (and, in this case, audio as well).
It would work something like the following: A new random symmetric key would be generated every X minutes, and a snippet of incoming video would be encrypted with that key. Each of those random symmetric keys would be encrypted with public key encryption and saved so that the video can be recovered later by someone who has the private key.
Given that a commercial product exists to do this, you would think that a military drone must obviously be doing it as well, right?
Well, I'm not so sure since we learned that drones were not even encrypting the live video feed back to ground controllers as recently as 2009:
"Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations."
In fact, there's a commercial (non-military) video recorder that does exactly that:
https://deniablevideo.com/
It's basically on-the-fly encryption of continuous digital video (and, in this case, audio as well).
It would work something like the following: A new random symmetric key would be generated every X minutes, and a snippet of incoming video would be encrypted with that key. Each of those random symmetric keys would be encrypted with public key encryption and saved so that the video can be recovered later by someone who has the private key.
Given that a commercial product exists to do this, you would think that a military drone must obviously be doing it as well, right?
Well, I'm not so sure since we learned that drones were not even encrypting the live video feed back to ground controllers as recently as 2009:
"Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations."
Full article is here: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB126102247889095011