White House Seeks More Power To Counter Use of Drones In US (apnews.com) 93
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: The Biden administration is calling on Congress to expand authority for federal and local governments to take action to counter the nefarious use in the U.S. of drones, which are becoming a growing security concern and nuisance. The White House on Monday released an action plan that calls for expanding the number of agencies that can track and monitor drones flying in their airspace. It calls for establishing a list of U.S. government-authorized detection equipment that federal and local authorities can purchase, and creating a national training center on countering the malicious use of drones. The White House in a statement said it was critical that Congress "adopt legislation to close critical gaps in existing law and policy that currently impede government and law enforcement from protecting the American people and our vital security interests."
The federal-government-wide focus comes as the Federal Aviation Administration projects that more than 2 million drones will be in circulation in the U.S. by 2024 and as availability of detection and mitigation technologies -- including jamming systems -- are limited under current law. The White House plan calls for expanding existing counter-drone authorities for the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, Energy, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency and NASA in limited situations. The proposal also seeks to expand drone detection authorities for state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement agencies and critical infrastructure owners and operators. The proposal also calls for establishing a six-year pilot program for a small number of state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement agencies to take part in a drone detection and mitigation operations under supervision of the Justice Department and Homeland Security. Currently, no state or local agencies have such authorization.
The federal-government-wide focus comes as the Federal Aviation Administration projects that more than 2 million drones will be in circulation in the U.S. by 2024 and as availability of detection and mitigation technologies -- including jamming systems -- are limited under current law. The White House plan calls for expanding existing counter-drone authorities for the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, Defense, Energy, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency and NASA in limited situations. The proposal also seeks to expand drone detection authorities for state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement agencies and critical infrastructure owners and operators. The proposal also calls for establishing a six-year pilot program for a small number of state, local, territorial and tribal law enforcement agencies to take part in a drone detection and mitigation operations under supervision of the Justice Department and Homeland Security. Currently, no state or local agencies have such authorization.
Eh bound to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't like the idea that the government has to step in on this and enforce it but it's pretty clear that people can't be trusted with this type of thing to self regulate. Back when this was only the realm of RC planes, copters and scale rockets there is a good sense of community there and designated spaces and that community has had to adapt to the proper rules so there is a good sense of discipline amongst a group of enthusiasts
Now that anyone can go to Best Buy, order up a set of flying saw blades and operate it with close to zero skill or training they were bound to ruin it for the rest of us.
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Re:Eh bound to happen (Score:5, Informative)
How can drone enthusiasts "police" bad actors?
These bad actors aren't part of the "drone enthusiast" community so how would we even know who they were or where they were operating?
The FAA initially told the hobbyists "You need to register with the government, that will mitigate the risk of bad actors using these craft inappropriately"
Then they said "Oh gosh, we got that wrong, now you'll have to fit remote ID technology to your craft, *that* will do the trick"
And now they're effectively saying "We (the government/FAA) actually have no idea what we're talking about because clearly neither of those two options have had an effect so we're going to come up with more (equally useless) rules to burden you with, even though we probably know that they'll be as ineffective as the ones we've foisted on you already".
Idiots.
I remember this one... (Score:1)
> And now they're effectively saying "We (the government/FAA) actually have no idea what we're talking about because clearly neither of those two options have had an effect so we're going to come up with more (equally useless) rules to burden you with, even though we probably know that they'll be as ineffective as the ones we've foisted on you already".
Hey, it's gun rights all over again!
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Well to be fair this is uncharted territory. With RC planes there was a skill and commitment floor to the hobby. You had to put in some effort and therefore were more likely to seek out groups and learn the rules.
The idea of anyone having access to aircraft with cameras that can fly themselves is an interesting problem. The atom bomb of regulation is requiring a license to purchase, own and operate said vehichles, similar to how the FCC restricts and enforces regulation around amatuer radio. I don't thi
Re:Eh bound to happen (Score:5, Informative)
"What can the enthusiast community can do is probably offer alternatives to the FAA that can help mitigate the problems we are seeing without taking such a draconian action"
This has already been done. The community is *very* active at providing the FAA with feedback and ideas -- unfortunately, the decisions appear to have already been made and although there is a legal requirement for the FAA to consult with the community -- there is no requirement for them to actually listen to what is being said.
A recent NPRM regarding remote ID received a massive 50K+ responses from the community, most against the idea. Regardless of that, the FAA just went ahead and mandated it anyway.
Bureaucrats are only interested in ticking boxes, not in creating a just and fair outcome.
Most of the public aren't even aware that pretty soon, everything but the smallest child's flying toy will have to be fitted with a beacon that broacasts not only the position of the model aircraft or drone but also the exact location of the operator. This isn't just "drones"... it also includes things like a small scale model of a Piper Cub that might weigh just 251 grams.
The hobby is being treated like it's a threat when in fact *we* have not changed one bit and in the past 70+ years we have proven ourselves to be safe, responsible and serious about public safety.
If these new rules applied only to "store bought" multirotor-drones with GPS, cameras and the ability be flown by anyone with zero skill or training then it'd be okay -- but they're applying them to *EVERYTHING* that flies, even our traditional models with no camera and which require a good degree of knowledge, understanding and practice to use at all.
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If these new rules applied only to "store bought" multirotor-drones with GPS, cameras and the ability be flown by anyone with zero skill or training then it'd be okay -- but they're applying them to *EVERYTHING* that flies
I think thats a good idea but the only possible way to enforce that is to have some type of licensing that says "These people can be excepted from the rules because they are proven to be competent".
Seems like beacons or licensure are the only two reasonable, enforcable solutions. The FAA isn't going to take "no solution" as the answer, that time has passed.
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FAA's rules are probably to address all of those. FAA's main and overarching directive is to prevent these types of bad outcomes before they happen. Most of the rules we have about civil aviation are written in blood. We can feel they may be overburdensome and maybe right, but on the other hand the FAA has had a pretty good track record over the past 20 years for commercial aviation.
As far as "what is a drone" that's an even stickier proposition to regulate even though the FAA is only concerned about airs
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The problem is that while people may object to ID, they aren't suggesting a viable alternative.
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license and insurance.
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Isn't that the same thing as ID? The licence and insurance documents will have your name and photo on. In the UK the licence has your address too (so they know where to send nastygrams).
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Do your licenses and insurance documents in the UK have radio transmitters embedded in them? The remote ID stuff being forced on UAVs broadcasts this information in the clear to anyone within reception range. We're not talking about tail numbers here, we're talking about radio transmitters that broadcast this information.
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Well there is ADS-B but fair point. So what is the issue with broadcasting that information? Is the database of ID numbers going to be public?
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The "problem" depends on who you ask.
For the big companies that want to begin running drone deliveries, they don't want pirates scanning for drones and hitting their deliveries afterward. They want an Internet beacon.
For drone racers, they just want to fly without the mandatory hardware (and weight), and all the mandatory pre-flight checks of a Cessna for an FPS drone the size of a chicken and 1/8th the weight. There's also the Big Brother aspects that not only are pilots required to run one of these radio
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"The problem is that while people may object to ID, they aren't suggesting a viable alternative."
Why does there have to be a viable alternative?
What is the problem we're trying to solve here?
We trying to reduce the death toll associated with these things from its current level (zero) to what?
We're trying to reduce the damage total that these things produce from its current level (zero) to what?
Remote ID is a solution for which there is no problem.
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Does a thing have to cause problems before we can do anything about it, even if we can foresee them?
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People flying drones into controlled airspace or other dangerous areas.
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The issue would be the huge number of drones that don't have the hardware to detect the signal, and imported drones that lack it after the requirement comes in.
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Meanwhile anyone could just buy the parts and use an open source flight controller to remove any legal restrictions and fly where ever they want. It might stop some kids goofing off but anyone with some determination can still go about doing whatever illegal or immoral behavior they wish with their drone.
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Same applies to cars. Anyone can build one from parts. In fact anyone can buy a junked car, fix it and then illegally drive it. They could even injure or kill people with it.
Still, it's worth having a licencing system, don't you think? It may not be perfect but it does seem to stop a lot of abuse of motor vehicles.
Re: Eh bound to happen (Score:2)
Background checks soon to come (Score:2)
The rules for drones are following the same path as for guns. One ineffective law after another with lots of handwringing when each one proves ineffective.
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Re: Eh bound to happen (Score:2)
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Now that anyone can go to Best Buy, order up a set of flying saw blades and operate it with close to zero skill or training they were bound to ruin it for the rest of us.
Well, there is precedent. Teenagers find this out when they let the masses into a party and watch as they wreck the entire area. The Internet found that out when they allowed the masses into usenet, and again when social media was created.
Pretty much anytime the unwashed masses are allowed into an area, they destroy it. It should surprise no-one that drones share the same fate. Society has no self-control until it's forced upon them.
Re: The Internet has stopped being useful. (Score:2)
I love that you respond to him, I often scroll past the long post just to see what comeback was posted below.
You make them worth it
I smell BS (Score:3)
What a load of bullshirt!
We've already seen from the recent coverage of the war in Ukraine that bad actors or enemy states can get all the hi-res images they want from orbit.
The US government's paranoia is now overwhelming and is warping its sense of justice and perverting its behavior to an unacceptable extent.
Looks as if one of the world's safest hobbies will once again be burdened with even great levels of over-regulation as a result of this stupidity. Not one person, anywhere, at any time in the history of the hobby has ever been killed as a result of the recreational use of multi-rotor drones -- how many other popular activities can boast the same safety record?
What's more, cameras with long lenses operated from space, aircraft or high-points on the ground can provide a far more covert way of acquiring the sort of data that the US government seems to think is at risk.
Idiots!
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Satellites can't spy on you through your window, or loiter for hours watching your movements, or shoot a rocket at you from a few thousand feet away.
The legislation isn't aimed at hobbyists flying quadcopters, and drones can definitely be used maliciously.
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Recreational drones can't do any of the stuff you talk about either -- but you can bet your bottom dollar that these new regulations will be applied to those craft.
Hey, I'm the guy who built his own DIY cruise-missile in a garage in rural New Zealand 20 years ago as a proof of concept (and got into a shit-load of trouble with the US government as a result). At that stage they tried to cover up the vulnerability that rogue drones might represent to the US national security.
Now, when they don't actually pres
Re: I smell BS (Score:2)
I would like to hear more information about this garage cruise missile and how the US had anything to say about what you were doing in New Zealand?
Do tell...
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Some links for you:
A DIY cruise missile: yours for £3,000 [theguardian.com]
And some comments from a former US defense official in this TV documentary about the incident:
part 1 [youtube.com]
part 2 [youtube.com]
The US government is so far behind that it's simply not funny and now they have allowed paranoia to overwhelm their commonsense.
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"you can bet your bottom dollar that these new regulations will be applied to those craft"
From the article;
"standards for legal and illegal uses of drones, and bolster cooperation with other countries on counter-drone technologies."
That sounds entirely reasonable to me, and recreational drones can definitely be used for abuse which should be regulated.
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"and recreational drones can definitely be used for abuse which should be regulated"
Hey, pressure cookers were converted to bombs that killed 3 people and injured 280 in the Boston Bombing.
Recreational multirotor drones have never killed anyone in the USA.
So tell me again why you think we should FURTHER regulate something that has been proven safe over more than a decade but not regulate something that has been proven to be lethal in the hands of a bad actor.
And the reality is that drones *are* regulated b
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"Recreational multirotor drones have never killed anyone in the USA."
Obvious strawman, nobody said they have.
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"Obvious strawman, nobody said they have."
Then why the need for MORE regulation?
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"standards for legal and illegal uses of drones, and bolster cooperation with other countries on counter-drone technologies."
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Did you actually read the article? Here's the kind of activity that would be addressed;
'DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the administration’s legislative recommendations “are vital to enabling DHS and our partners to have the necessary authorities and tools to protect the public, the President and other senior officials, federal facilities, and U.S. critical infrastructure from threats posed by the malicious and illicit use” of drones.'
'In January 2019, Newark Liberty International Ai
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Ah drones as part of the second amendment. Right to bear drones. Now we can overthrow properly.
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"Ah drones as part of the second amendment"
All of my drones have bare arms -- they're not covered at all. The 2nd ammendment says there is a right to bare arms -- if not, teeshirts might be illegal too! :-)
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Ah drones as part of the second amendment. Right to bear drones. Now we can overthrow properly.
To be fair, the government is the one who opened the door to that when they expanded the definition of "arms" by classifying encryption as a "munition."
Given the current situation in Ukraine where the use of small drones is wide spread by both sides (to the point where the Russians are supposedly using aircraft made of spit, bailing wire, duct tape, and a DSLR) the test established in US v. Miller ("a reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia") would seem to be me
This isn't going to go well (Score:3)
If I were a nasty-minded, evil person intent on creating havoc, I wouldn't necessarily use flying drones. Something programmed to move on the ground, at night until it reached the area of its intended target, when it would radically change its behaviour, might be a lot more difficult to defend against. And no doubt that would lead to even more stringent regulations.
If you thought 3D printed guns were bad, imagine something that could creep around literally "under the radar" carrying a five pound payload of...well, anything, really. Now imagine a few hundred of them.
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Robodogs. Now if you really wanted to be sneaky make them look like a children's toy [wikipedia.org], and then unleash mayhem.
drones, robots, selfdriving cars, jetski's, people (Score:2)
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Excellent questions.
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Words on a piece paper, that'll fix it. Whenever has this stopped a bad guy with bad intentions? Guns, drugs, assaults, etc.
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If I were a nasty-minded, evil person intent on creating havoc,.
you are too modest.
Countermeasures needed (Score:2)
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It is clear that countermeasures are needed
Countermeasures to what????
Please provide any documentary evidence that a drone has been used to steal state secrets or compromise the security of any critical infrastructure in the USA.
Bureaucrats and politicians are good at hyping up risk so as to justify their own existance and to justify over-regulation plus wholy disproportionate spending.
Before we start infringing the freedoms of innocent people, how about we prove that the risk is actually something other th
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Again.. these are utterly ridiculous knee-jerk reactions to *perceived* threats.
Show me where someone flying a drone where they shouldn't has caused any significant damage, injury or death?
The hysteria surrounding the "danger" of drones is wildly over-stated and not supported by the evidence accumulated over the past 10 years.
Then there are the false-flag incidents such as the alleged appearance of drones at Gatwick Airport a few years ago. Investigations are proving that there were no drones and that thi
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Do you suspect that the United States is preparing to attack its own people? Why does it need countermeasures against hobby drones?
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There are lots of options [robinradar.com]. And those are just some commercially available options. If you're the military, you have a lot more.
Counter-drone tech (Score:2)
I think there should be (and maybe already is) a focus on detecting drones that may be acting maliciously and developing similarly inexpensive tech to take them out. And it isn't just drones that perform surveillance. The US is deploying suicide drones that can loiter around looking for targets of value, other countries must have them as well. There is talk of drone swarms that would be very hard to counter.
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Nobody claimed "there are foreign nations just lining up to launch attacks on US soil", why did you make that up? And nobody said "there is any credible risk from recreational drones" either.
Jamming systems (Score:2)
"mitigation technologies -- including jamming systems -- are limited under current law"
Perfect idea. (My filling in gaps) At all airports, jam the control signal and GPS so drones can't fly pre-programmed flight paths. No one solves problems like the US government!
Whatever bureaucrat initially thought to limit jamming systems obviously didn't have have the foresight of the Biden administration.
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"At all airports, jam the control signal and GPS so drones can't fly pre-programmed flight paths."
Yeah, because it's not like aircraft use GPS for navigation eh? :-D
These things seem to be the playhings of pervs. (Score:4, Interesting)
He started watching my ex and her sister sunbathing in back yard. In bathing suits, not nude.
They approached him the next day. He stated that there wasn't a thing they could do about it.
Next time they called the cops. He was cited under a nuisance ordinance similar to play loud music.
Next time they called the cops, he was cited and they took his toy.
He bought another one.
My ex asked me to help
Next time, I went into the back yard and waved him off. He buzzed me. I shot his perv-copter out of he sky with a semi-automatic paintball gun and frozen paintballs.
He showed up at their door with a baseball bat demanding his copter back, Screaming that he was going to sue me for damaging (I totally destroyed it) his property.
He had the bat, I had a semi-automatic 9mm.
Cops were called
Arrested hum.
He resisted.
Still arrested him
He had a record for other pervy things.
It is still winding its way through the legal system, but he was denied bail and is looking at 2-5
That said, at least in Idaho, there are existing laws to deal with this type of thing. We don't need more laws on the books, just the even enforcement of the existing ones.
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" I shot his perv-copter out of he sky with a semi-automatic paintball gun and frozen paintballs"
You do realise that you commited a federal offense by shooting at an aircraft... right?
Yep, that's how badly the government has screwed up the regulations. They've defined "drones" as "aircraft" now and it is a federal offense to endanger any aircraft.
You should think yourself lucky that the cops (like most of the public) weren't aware of that or they'd have hauled you both off to jail.
The whole area of drone a
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I'm calling the cops the next time my big brother smashes my paper airplane. Politician and lobbyists rarely fully understand what the problem is and even less what the impact of their "solution" is. The fiasco of all pools and spas having to replace their drains and also install a secondary drain too because a single child of a congressman died is absolutely over reacting & we had to pay the financial costs!
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Ada County Ordinance No. 883
This ordinance requires anyone flying a drone, regardless of the drone’s weight or intended use, in Ada County to register their drone with the FAA. The ordinance also states that drones should not be operated in a way that would cause damage to people or property, nor should drones be used for the purpose of capturing a person’s visual image, audio recording, or other physi
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Felony in every state,
You are splitting hairs. Any pervy-ness skeletons in your closet. Or are you just wishing?
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You're lucky. Shooting anything at any aircraft is a felony in the US. Glad the police had some common sense and didn't pursue anything.
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A pervy guy who lived down the block from my ex-girlfriend in Nampa, Idaho bought one of these. It went down like this.
Is this the only way to spend your free time in Nampa, Idaho?
Result (Score:2)
I can guarantee no drug drones will be stopped, instead drones flown for fun will be stopped. That's what usually happens, the low hanging fruit gets shafted while the ones causing actual harm get away.
Well Armed Militia (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S has seen what Ukrainians were able to do with Russian tanks and they don't want U.S civilians to be able to do that if things go sour. The timing says it all.
Taking away drones that can be armed that way is simply removing the possibility that tank assets would be rendered ineffective against armed U.S civilians.
Too much transparency (Score:2)
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More flann from Joe (Score:2)
Just like his "ghost gun" ban this is more redundant useless legislation used as an attempted distraction.
A drone license is already required to fly a drone Who Needs a License to Fly a Drone? [pilotinstitute.com]
Unless this is what Biden meant when he said "[if] you want to keep someone away from your house, just fire the shotgun through the door." [usnews.com]