Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress

[mauler]

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/feb/7/coming-to-a-sky-near-you/

Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congress passed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

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.

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is “concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies,” said attorney Jennifer Lynch.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

The highest-profile use of drones by the United States has been in the CIA’s armed Predator-drone program, which targets al Qaeda terrorist leaders. But the vast majority of U.S. drone missions, even in war zones, are flown for surveillance. Some drones are as small as model aircraft, while others have the wingspan of a full-size jet.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. use of drone surveillance has grown so rapidly that it has created a glut of video material to be analyzed.

The legislation would order the FAA, before the end of the year, to expedite the process through which it authorizes the use of drones by federal, state and local police and other agencies. The FAA currently issues certificates, which can cover multiple flights by more than one aircraft in a particular area, on a case-by-case basis.

The Department of Homeland Security is the only federal agency to discuss openly its use of drones in domestic airspace.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection, an agency within the department, operates nine drones, variants of the CIA’s feared Predator. The aircraft, which are flown remotely by a team of 80 fully qualified pilots, are used principally for border and counternarcotics surveillance under four long-term FAA certificates.

Officials say they can be used on a short-term basis for a variety of other public-safety and emergency-management missions if a separate certificate is issued for that mission.

“It’s not all about surveillance,” Mr. Aftergood said.

Homeland Security has deployed drones to support disaster relief operations. Unmanned aircraft also could be useful for fighting fires or finding missing climbers or hikers, he added.

The FAA has issued hundreds of certificates to police and other government agencies, and a handful to research institutions to allow them to fly drones of various kinds over the United States for particular missions.

The agency said it issued 313 certificates in 2011 and 295 of them were still active at the end of the year, but the FAA refuses to disclose which agencies have the certificates and what their purposes are.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the FAA to obtain records of the certifications.

“We need a list so we can ask [each agency], ‘What are your policies on drone use? How do you protect privacy? How do you ensure compliance with the Fourth Amendment?’ ” Ms. Lynch said.

“Currently, the only barrier to the routine use of drones for persistent surveillance are the procedural requirements imposed by the FAA for the issuance of certificates,” said Amie Stepanovich, national security counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a research center in Washington.

The Department of Transportation, the parent agency of the FAA, has announced plans to streamline the certification process for government drone flights this year, she said.

“We are looking at our options” to oppose that, she added.

Section 332 of the new FAA legislation also orders the agency to develop a system for licensing commercial drone flights as part of the nation’s air traffic control system by 2015.

The agency must establish six flight ranges across the country where drones can be test-flown to determine whether they are safe for travel in congested skies.

Representatives of the fast-growing unmanned aircraft systems industry say they worked hard to get the provisions into law.

“It sets deadlines for the integration of [the drones] into the national airspace,” said Gretchen West, executive vice president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry group.

She said drone technology is new to the FAA.

The legislation, which provides several deadlines for the FAA to report progress to Congress, “will move the [drones] issue up their list of priorities,” Ms. West said.

[MikeBjerum]

This is the influence of the video game generation.  We have a "geek society" that loves all things electronic, and desk based.  I come from the generation that perfected the name "couch potato," and now we need a name for these people that would rather sit at a counsel and do something than go out in the field and use their bodies to do the job.  Deer hunting in Texas from your office computer in downtown Chicago, flying a police aircraft from a basement room, navigating an assault vehicle from the command center, etc.

This technology has been available and used in other fields for years, but it has also been regulated.  John Deere introduced a tractor without a cab in the 80's that was controlled by GPS and computer input from the farmers office.  California stated that the tractor must have a driver in the seat to override the automation, so you rarely see these cabless machines, but you will see nearly every field tractor capable of near hands free operation.

The question here, and I stated it on the other thread concerning this, is not whether we are up in arms over drones doing this or not:  The question is do we accept that the government is capable of doing this at all?  If it is that they can do this we need to act now, because they have been doing it for decades!

[mauler]

This is the influence of the video game generation.  We have a "geek society" that loves all things electronic, and desk based.  I come from the generation that perfected the name "couch potato," and now we need a name for these people that would rather sit at a counsel and do something than go out in the field and use their bodies to do the job.  Deer hunting in Texas from your office computer in downtown Chicago, flying a police aircraft from a basement room, navigating an assault vehicle from the command center, etc.

This technology has been available and used in other fields for years, but it has also been regulated.  John Deere introduced a tractor without a cab in the 80's that was controlled by GPS and computer input from the farmers office.  California stated that the tractor must have a driver in the seat to override the automation, so you rarely see these cabless machines, but you will see nearly every field tractor capable of near hands free operation.

The question here, and I stated it on the other thread concerning this, is not whether we are up in arms over drones doing this or not:  The question is do we accept that the government is capable of doing this at all?  If it is that they can do this we need to act now, because they have been doing it for decades!

I agree with you.  It is not that the government is now just starting to do despicable acts such as torture, murder of citizens, spying on citizens etc.  It is that they are now being so open and brazen about it.  Like they are just daring us to do something about it.  This brazenness began right after 9-11 and has only gotten more pronounced since.

[jnevis]

The gov't doesn't have to do anything to monitor the population, they are doing it for them.
There was a study done that since the advent of the Internet, especially social media, the general population is more willing to tell anyone who'll listen EVERYTHING they are doing, saying, or thinking, with the knowledge that they have no expectation of privacy when doing it.  You can complain all you want about the gov't watching you, your still allowing it by just being online.

If you don't want the gov't watching you, unplug the computer, cell phone, tv, and Wii, and throw it all away, plus your bank cards, because YOU are the one that is giving them the access to the information.  If it's on the Internet, or passes over the Internet in any way, there is NO/NONE/NADA expectation of privacy, therefore protection.

BTW if you look a the other thread, I posted that the requests for UAV flights are not coming mainly from the gov't, they are coming from schools, universities, and organizations outside the gov't.  They include projects for better crop production/insect infestation alerting, weather forcasting and research into better storm warning systems, and disaster recovery (survivor location, contamination response). 

f your're going to throw up a flag, research it a little bit.  The bill is designed to not only allow more access to UAVs but better safer air travel overall.  The current ATC system is SEVERLY broken and outdated.  It is a wonder, almost miracle, that more aircraft aren't getting banged up.  Most major airports are at capacity or worse.  Funding for repairs and upgrades have been stripped from the budget for decades so it will only get worse as air travel increases.  Better departure/approach procedures are available but the equipment at a lot of airports can't support it.  Only some of the planes flying can too.  You think flights delays are bad now, wait a couple years at the rate we're going.

[tombogan03884]

The gov't doesn't have to do anything to monitor the population, they are doing it for them.
There was a study done that since the advent of the Internet, especially social media, the general population is more willing to tell anyone who'll listen EVERYTHING they are doing, saying, or thinking, with the knowledge that they have no expectation of privacy when doing it.  You can complain all you want about the gov't watching you, your still allowing it by just being online.

If you don't want the gov't watching you, unplug the computer, cell phone, tv, and Wii, and throw it all away, plus your bank cards, because YOU are the one that is giving them the access to the information.  If it's on the Internet, or passes over the Internet in any way, there is NO/NONE/NADA expectation of privacy, therefore protection.

BTW if you look a the other thread, I posted that the requests for UAV flights are not coming mainly from the gov't, they are coming from schools, universities, and organizations outside the gov't.  They include projects for better crop production/insect infestation alerting, weather forcasting and research into better storm warning systems, and disaster recovery (survivor location, contamination response). 

f your're going to throw up a flag, research it a little bit.  The bill is designed to not only allow more access to UAVs but better safer air travel overall.  The current ATC system is SEVERLY broken and outdated.  It is a wonder, almost miracle, that more aircraft aren't getting banged up.  Most major airports are at capacity or worse.  Funding for repairs and upgrades have been stripped from the budget for decades so it will only get worse as air travel increases.  Better departure/approach procedures are available but the equipment at a lot of airports can't support it.  Only some of the planes flying can too.  You think flights delays are bad now, wait a couple years at the rate we're going.

How DARE YOU confuse his BS with facts !

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[jnevis]

I try