I believe we need a serious set of laws for use, licensing, operation and sales of drones. The laws are needed to help control the spread of the technology, and to protect our citizens against incursions on our privacy and freedoms.
Drones of all sorts are a wonderful technology for so many applications by companies, military, and police. They are inexpensive, and can be a "force multiplier" for small military or police forces to allow them to do so much more. However they are a two edged sword, that can end up hurting us. If these same drones were in the hands of terrorists, they could spread diseases, plan attacks against civilian targets, or actually deliver bombs to targets. If our government agencies use the devices to track citizens, it can help them catch "bad guys" but it could also be misused by them to blackmail, "fish" for reasons to arrest political opponents, or simply violate the privacy of citizens. How can we control them?
This Associated Press article was in North County Times this week: Drones at home raise fear of surveillance society: It states that thousands of drones will be patrolling the US skies by the end of the decade. I think this is very conservative -- I would say 10s or 100s of thousands of drones may be patrolling by that time, if there are no other controls. How will we know that the use of drones will be controlled. Are we to assume that we are always under surveillance? Will we be made aware of drones? Will we be permitted to have "anti-drone" technology, such as jammers, dazzlers, or drone warning devices? Or will they be made illegal? For example, when radar speed detection devices were given to the police, many states and cities tried to make radar detection devices illegal. I'm not sure that making them illegal is constitutional, but I don't think it was ever truly tested in the courts. Just like the "watchers" feel they have a right to watch, I believe citizens have the right to "watch back" and to be permitted to use technology to detect when they are being "watched."
There are techniques to detect if a camera is being pointed at you. Those devices are used in movie theaters to detect people who may be trying to video record a movie. Could citizens use those devices to detect drones overhead? Or would they be made illegal? If someone used one of those devices they could inhibit an important criminal surveillance activity. It could also damage the delicate imaging sensor on the drone. If a citizen tried to jam
Ryan Calb wrote an article in March 2012 Wired "Drones, Dogs and the Future of Privacy" which pointed out that the FAA is allowing more drones and requiring licenses, but is resisting attempts to release the names and organizations who are licensed to use Drones in the US. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have tried to sue the FAA to get the list of users under the freedom of information act. However they have been unsuccessful so far. So the Government already is trying to "hide" the use of drones, and are restricting the use by civilians. I suspect that this trend will continue, don't you? Of course the government doesn't want the "bad guys" to know that they are under surveillance, that could cancel out a lot of the benefits from using them. However it could also protect the rest of the citizens from mis-uses of the technology.
This article in the LA Timse today Drone makers urge U.S. to let them sell more overseas points out the difficulty of containing the technology. US manufacturers have restrictions on sale, but China and Israel are selling them to anyone. So if some day Israel is attacked by drones, I don't think they will be able to complain, since they are undercutting our restrictions on sales of these weapon systems to other countries.
It appears that almost anyone can build their own pretty sophisticated airborne drone, let alone water or land vehicles. There was a recent excellent article in Wired Magazine ("How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom" ), by the editor, Chris Anderson, who runs this web site: http://diydrones.com/ -- It is clearly a wonderful hobby to build and use these devices, and they are being used more and more for all sorts of purposes. The sophistication of the drones has grown along with the sophistication of hand held smart phones -- They have inertial navigation, gps, cameras, and all sorts of other wonderful features.
Drones of all sorts are a wonderful technology for so many applications by companies, military, and police. They are inexpensive, and can be a "force multiplier" for small military or police forces to allow them to do so much more. However they are a two edged sword, that can end up hurting us. If these same drones were in the hands of terrorists, they could spread diseases, plan attacks against civilian targets, or actually deliver bombs to targets. If our government agencies use the devices to track citizens, it can help them catch "bad guys" but it could also be misused by them to blackmail, "fish" for reasons to arrest political opponents, or simply violate the privacy of citizens. How can we control them?
This Associated Press article was in North County Times this week: Drones at home raise fear of surveillance society: It states that thousands of drones will be patrolling the US skies by the end of the decade. I think this is very conservative -- I would say 10s or 100s of thousands of drones may be patrolling by that time, if there are no other controls. How will we know that the use of drones will be controlled. Are we to assume that we are always under surveillance? Will we be made aware of drones? Will we be permitted to have "anti-drone" technology, such as jammers, dazzlers, or drone warning devices? Or will they be made illegal? For example, when radar speed detection devices were given to the police, many states and cities tried to make radar detection devices illegal. I'm not sure that making them illegal is constitutional, but I don't think it was ever truly tested in the courts. Just like the "watchers" feel they have a right to watch, I believe citizens have the right to "watch back" and to be permitted to use technology to detect when they are being "watched."
There are techniques to detect if a camera is being pointed at you. Those devices are used in movie theaters to detect people who may be trying to video record a movie. Could citizens use those devices to detect drones overhead? Or would they be made illegal? If someone used one of those devices they could inhibit an important criminal surveillance activity. It could also damage the delicate imaging sensor on the drone. If a citizen tried to jam
Ryan Calb wrote an article in March 2012 Wired "Drones, Dogs and the Future of Privacy" which pointed out that the FAA is allowing more drones and requiring licenses, but is resisting attempts to release the names and organizations who are licensed to use Drones in the US. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have tried to sue the FAA to get the list of users under the freedom of information act. However they have been unsuccessful so far. So the Government already is trying to "hide" the use of drones, and are restricting the use by civilians. I suspect that this trend will continue, don't you? Of course the government doesn't want the "bad guys" to know that they are under surveillance, that could cancel out a lot of the benefits from using them. However it could also protect the rest of the citizens from mis-uses of the technology.
This article in the LA Timse today Drone makers urge U.S. to let them sell more overseas points out the difficulty of containing the technology. US manufacturers have restrictions on sale, but China and Israel are selling them to anyone. So if some day Israel is attacked by drones, I don't think they will be able to complain, since they are undercutting our restrictions on sales of these weapon systems to other countries.
It appears that almost anyone can build their own pretty sophisticated airborne drone, let alone water or land vehicles. There was a recent excellent article in Wired Magazine ("How I Accidentally Kickstarted the Domestic Drone Boom" ), by the editor, Chris Anderson, who runs this web site: http://diydrones.com/ -- It is clearly a wonderful hobby to build and use these devices, and they are being used more and more for all sorts of purposes. The sophistication of the drones has grown along with the sophistication of hand held smart phones -- They have inertial navigation, gps, cameras, and all sorts of other wonderful features.
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