FAA Bill Authorizes Surveillance Drones Over US

fyngyrz writes "Congress passed a bill this week that makes it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace. From the article: 'The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015. Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.'"

Re:Don't worry

[WrongSizeGlass]

If you aren't doing anything illegal, you really have nothing to hide. The world will be a safer place.

I can't imagine the headache this will cause for air traffic controllers. They'll have these little blips on their radar ... and if it's a small airport these things could make it less safe for local air traffic.

Re:If they were manned aircraft would it be an iss

[FauxPasIII]

> Put the same equipment in a manned aircraft and it's a snoozer.

Interesting point. I guess on some level, we're hoping that with a manned aircraft, an egregiously and obviously illegal order to target U.S. citizens might be disobeyed or even made public.

Re:Converging steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh you poor fool, Ron Paul is one of "them" as well.

Re:Don't worry

[michelcolman]

I hope these things are at least carrying transponders so they even make a blip on the radar at all. Without a transponder they'll be invisible to ATC and also won't trigger TCAS avoidance manoeuvers from aircraft. I don't know what altitude those things fly at, and whether or not there is any contact between the operators and air traffic controllers, but I hope they'll at least try to keep some kind of separation with normal aircraft.

Privacy advocates are targettng the wrong thing

[91degrees]

This in itself is not unreasonable. I can see many potential legitimate uses for pilotless drones both for law enforcement and such things as disaster recovery. In itself there's nothing wrong with this law.

What is unreasonable is law enforcements desire to spy on everyone all the time. This is something that needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed directly. Not by attacking legislation that happens to enable it. We need to fight for legislation that explicitly sets limits on where the police are allowed to watch us.

Re:Disturbing mental image

[whovian]

That's just the first layer. Now you also have names, perhaps also personal and social connections because you have a Facebook or similar account. It could be interesting for sociological studies and literally knowing who your audience is. The police state would be thrilled, too.

Re:Not cost-effective

[gambino21]

Seems this is not a cost-effective way to catch some bad guys.

The real goal of this is not to save money. The goal is to make money for the drone companies, and to score political points for the politician that can say they value national security.

Re:If they were manned aircraft would it be an iss

[michelcolman]

That's because most automation failures are corrected by pilots. Electronic components fail regularly, which is usually no big deal as long as there are humans to fix things and fly manually if necessary. If every autopilot failure would result in a crash, there would be multiple crashes every day.

We're giving our freedom away.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what gets me about my countrymen: they get all bent out of shape and spew shit like "small government", "freedom" and whatnot over TAXES - one of the lowest rates in the industrialized World, but when it comes to government surveillance and monitoring under the PATRIOT Act, no problemo. If you do nothing wrong, there's nothing to worry about is the attitude among John Q. Public. Outside of the Slashdot crowd here, most people that I know at least, think there's nothing wrong about the Patriot Act. I keeps them "safe" after all from those Muslims that want to kill us over our fredom and make us live under Sharia law. You'll never see a Teabagger dress up as Franklin or Jefferson saying "Abolish our police state!" Nah uh. Not gonna happen.

Americans don't know what Freedom is, I'm afraid. Most of us think Freedom is no taxes.

A person is smart. People are stupid.

Im all for this

[RenderSeven]

...as long as civilians get to use drones to watch the police, members of congress, etc. You know, the stuff we're supposed to do in a democracy.

Re:Don't worry

[g0bshiTe]

You won't have to do anything illegal. Say one day you are going about your normal routine, one of these drones is flying overhead and you do something in view of it that is deemed "suspicious behavior". Due to one act that was perceived as suspicious you get your very own drone following your full time. Sooner or later you will do something that compounds your situation.

You are right, the world would be a safer place, and I see no opportunity for abuse of these.

Re:If they were manned aircraft would it be an iss

[michelcolman]

So far I haven't had any fellow pilots fail on me, but I can't begin to count the number of failures of navigation systems, autopilots, etcetera that I've experienced. The automation does usually work much more precisely than humans, but it lacks common sense and sometimes just completely fails. That's when things get interesting for us pilots. The industry is not even close to beginning to consider getting rid of pilots or even going down to a single pilot in airliners. Except the military with their drones which, guess what, do crash frequently. For them, the benefits outweigh the cost of losing the occasional piece of equipment.

Re:Don't worry

[Gideon Wells]

Paraphrasing Scott Adams from "The Dilbert Future", written in the mid-early nineties:

"In the future we will have mechanisms to observe and convict 100% of all crime. We will also quickly learn that 100% of the population is guilty of some crime."

EMF pulse guns

[wytcld]

Please sell me an EMF pulse gun to use against any drone flying in my airspace.

BTW, what is a property owner's airspace? How high from the ground does "No Trespassing" apply? It has to be more than just a few inches from the ground. How much more?

Spending

[Anonymous Coward]

Spending is fundamentally different when you're spending other people's money. When you spend your own money (for example you own a business), you view every dollar as an investment and make damn sure every dollar is accounted for. When your spending doesn't bring a return, you stop.

In the business of government, on the other hand, the people spending the money aren't spending their own money. They don't care where it comes from or where it goes -- what matters is that it passes through their hands, giving them a chance to exploit that cash flow for personal gain. The rules are different, the outcome is different, and the people making the decisions are different. They are there for personal gain, same as the private business owner -- but their business strategy is entirely different. Their profits don't come from making an honest return on every dollar. Their profits aren't tied to success or failure, but rather how much political leverage they control with those dollars.

When the bureaucrat's spending fails to bring a return, this isn't a reason to stop. This is a justification for more spending.

You're not in the business of government, are you?

Yes, actually, it does.

[d3ac0n]

And yet, every day we are witness to and victims of the depredations of unelected bureaucrats who trample our civil liberties and freedoms in clear violation of the Constitution and nothing whatsoever is done about it save said bureaucrats having a good chuckle about it over coffee.

Also, if the task of electing that many officials is a problem, then perhaps we could do with an order of magnitude LESS officials. Very few bureaucracies are actually critical to the function of good government. Most could be partly or wholly done away with and nobody would notice, now or in the future.

Smaller, cheaper, leaner and less intrusive government is something every freedom-loving person should want. Those who want MORE government invariably want to use it against YOU.

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