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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.'"
Why spend so much money shipping these things to drop errant bombs on brown people when we can save the cash and do it right here at home?
If you aren't doing anything illegal, you really have nothing to hide. The world will be a safer place.
"Eeeee! Teh dronz!" Ahem...
Put the same equipment in a manned aircraft and it's a snoozer.
Some appropriate Beechcraft antenna pron. I like antennae (328X0 represent!):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Beechcraft_RC-12N_Huron_in_flight.jpg
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
...as privately owned anti-aircraft missiles are also legalized :-)
Why spy on your citizens when the overwhelmingly large majority never do anything seriously wrong?
Seems this is not a cost-effective way to catch some bad guys.
Of course, it is cheaper than have helicopters with a 2-man crew... but "cheaper than ridiculously expensive" can still mean "too expensive".
Exactly. This has to do with unmanned aircraft, which is entirely orthogonal to surveillance aircraft.
Personally, I'd like to see unmanned cargo flights; there's no real reason why every UPS/FedEx plane needs any human beings on it at all. (Of course, I supposed that would have ruined the movie Castaway).
captcha: "airmail". heh.
> 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.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
NDAA and this bill and TSA and Patriot Act and every other power that government is stealing from the people, including preventing people from moving their capital out of the country (if you are a US citizen, just try and open an account somewhere abroad), and a new 450USD fee to renounce your citizenship, which eventually can be made any arbitrary amount, why not USD45,000,000, even the fence on the US/Mexican border, all of this converging into one giant red signal - your country is being turned into a concentration camp and eventually you'll need a permit to move around, a permit to move your capital around, and once your government decides to turn it into a 'socialist heaven', there will be no just price, capital and exchange controls, but they'll 'exchange' your money 1 to 100 or 1 to 1000 or 1 to 10000 or 1 to 100000 to ensure none of you have even nominal dollars.
You still have a choice, you can still vote for Ron Paul and try and stop this before your country is turned into a bad parody of what USSR used to be.
You can't handle the truth.
Wonder what else is buried in it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
When the average person starts a) hacking them for their own use b) shooting them down with whatever they can find or make?
Do Not Want. (+1)
Unmanned means they can have more of them, which means more surveillance than manned aircraft would allow. Which translates into less privacy for us.
View from a drone over the US:
- people, looking like ants, moving about their daily business
- drone operator clicks on a button, tags overlay on the image, connecting each "ant" with their phone number, sensed by nearby cell tower geolocation
So, does this mean that:
Patriot Act of 2001 - (Some Provisions of Patriot Act of 2001) + National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 + FAA Reauthorization Act = The U.S. Government's ability to shoot and kill it's own citizens legally?
Until the automation fails and the plane crashes into a residential area.
climbers or hikers ??
"Unmanned aircraft also could be useful for fighting fires or finding missing climbers or hikers, he added."
They can spy on you from helicopters or high altitude manned aircraft, so why is it that everyone is up in arms about unmanned aircraft? I would love to see anti-spying without a warrant legislation, but this just doesn't seem to be any worse than what is already happening.
Willing to bet $100 that there's already been meetings at high levels at *insert antipiracy org here* trying to figure out how to roll out a drone fleet to catch all you evil pirates. The trick is getting the authority to call in an air strike once they catch you.
There was an article on the bbc yesterday about small UAV's being used to verify crop types etc etc for the purpose of auditing EU farming subsidies. Certain subsidies are dependant upon farmers keeping wide headlands of wild flowers etc and there is also a subsidiy called "set aside" paid for taking land out of production. They were saying that in countries such as spain which has a large number of small fields and hilly terrain UAV's were far more practical than satelite imagery (shadows in valleys etc) as they allowed oblique imagery not just top down
The calendar may say 2012, but it sure feels like 1984.
(Posting AC because I'm at work...)
I remember playing Shadowrun as a kid. You know, that cyberpunk game with magic and trolls and stuff. At the rate things are going, I'm expecting magic to make a resurgence (we already have trolls - just look around on the internet...).
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.
I don't really think you an argument since a good portion of airline accidents (most?) are pilot error.
We're getting to the point where our automation is more reliable than the unreliable fleshy meatbag doing the work.
Under the Ron Paul ideal, private companies would be free to do much worse under the banner of "individual liberty." And, if you don't like that your insurance company insists on putting a camera in your house, you'll be free to choose from the 3 other insurance companies...who also require the same thing. Or you can go live in a cabin in the wilds of Alaska. See: individual liberty.
No to Ron Paul's insanity: it's reasonable Congresscritters we need.
How long before they are circling overhead?
The 8 foot high walls surrounding my backyard are the only things keeping me from being charged with exposing myself in public when I'm sunbathing in the nude to combat my pasty basement-programmer appearance.
I currently have a reasonable expectation of privacy in my own back yard, even though aeroplanes and satellites pass overhead because they're most likely not actively recording video of the ground.
Will children be prevented from accessing the drone footage? How can you be sure when such young hackers exist today?!
Will they be publishing the planned flight paths of the drones so I can know when my reasonable expectations of privacy have become unreasonable? If not... Why Not? I'm not sure I want children playing in the vicinity of flying machines build by the lowest-bidder of a government contract.
Additionally, I've been working up the plans for a very large parabolic solar reflector, capable of "flash-tanning" me in mere milliseconds, or even acting as a large out door oven. I won't focus the mirrors as high as airliners fly, for obvious reasons; However, I must leave the oven focused far above the ground to prevent children from accidentally burning themselves.
Won't someone Think of the Children?!
Without flight plans for these new low-flying craft, they can't possibly hold me accountable for such accidents involving the drones. I've done my duty by informing the government agencies of my physical address, and herein have publicly exposed my habits. It surely won't be my fault if a drone fails to avoid flying above my home, and gets caught in the path of my new death-ray...
"commercial" pretty much means private companies, no?
Google and Microsoft are already buying aerial photography taken from manned aircraft for Google and Bing maps. (I can see my neighbor sunbathing in the nude on Bing. She's pretty hot.)
Anyway, "privacy advocates" seem to be fear mongering in this case IMO. Not really news.
have you seen the number of stories floating about talking about how primitive, out of touch, our Constitution is.
As in, its getting in their way more and more and they really don't like it. Worse, there are people in our country clamoring for stricter adherence to it.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Or can I go out side with a Sonic Screwdriver and land one on my lawn?
These drones will make it very tricky to plan the next revolution.
And privatization means the police can hire companies to do things the constitution won't let them, pesky little laws.
umbrella-brella-brella-brella-brella!
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.
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.
In other news, a police drone was shot down/disabled by an unknown anti-aircraft weapon.
...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.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what the bill really does is allows the FAA to start regulating the flight of unmanned aircraft in US airspace. It just so happens that this includes surveillance drones. In my opinion, this is a very good thing! Think about the advantages to air transport if you can have robo-blimps flying down a special corridor where they won't run into any aircraft carrying people. It's silly that we don't have a legal way to do things like this right now. Going down this path even opens the doorway to the infamous flying car - which would never be safe with human drivers.
Personally, I see drones as being being more likely to be deployed as cargo aircraft, traffic monitoring, environmental monitoring, and ultimately, as passenger aircraft.
Sure, it's possible, even likely that the government will want to deploy domestic drones but frankly we as a populace leave so many electronic breadcrumbs from credit card usage to constant internet connects to carrying gps-cellphones I don't see a huge potential additional intel windfall from drone-format intelligence gathering (for the bulk of the US population).
-Styopa
I mean, what is wrong with the current aviation laws in this regard, there is nothing stopping them operating unmanned aircraft under the current laws. They are fairly relaxed laws, one can fly any unmanned aircraft provided certain conditions are met (line of site, fail safe radio control, low altitude limit...), if one goes outside these regulations one must have flight worthiness certificate, registered pilot, contact air traffic control, transponders onboard... same as any other aircraft. There is nothing in the current (FAA) regulations as far as I know that would require a new bill to allow police and private companies to fly unmanned aircraft.
That's OK there will be drones over them too.
Go ahead...fly a drone near my home. I ALWAYS love a chance to bring out my .308 for more long range target practice.
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.
Aside from being an expensive boondoggle, the operators of this system would be bored to tears if the had to track and listen to EVERY citizen. If they trip over a few drug dealers and terrorists in the process, go for it.
We get this, but still no flying cars???
This is inevitable, eventually every plane you get on will be flown by an autopilot, with people present for backup and peace-of-mind. As stated elsewhere, the real battle here is to achieve legislation regulating the usage. Let's see states jump right out of the gate requiring warrants for searches of this sort. And ban their use by private companies (news outlets, corporations, etc.) without explicit permission by those below.
If drone aircraft had the same capabilities and cost that manned aircraft do, folks wouldn't bother to use them. UAVs in use domestically are disturbing because they provide a greater intelligence-gathering capability than regular aircraft at a much lower cost. We've reached the point in our society that making things easier for law enforcement is not to the public's benefit.
No further comment needed.
Yes you do, you've always had regulations on it. Unless under a certain size and being flown under a certain altitude it's mostly the same regulations as any other aircraft of that class.
What we really need to do the world over is force them to pass bills which allow citizens to spy on government officials at home and at work and at play. Where ever they may roam, we should be able to see what they are doing, where they are doing it and how much of our money they are spending to do so.
If I see one flying over my house will I legally be able to shoot it down, legally?
This isn't a problem unless the law allows government and private companies more power than individuals. Someone must watch the watchers. Is anyone here familiar with the bill?
Ok, I understand the concerns about privacy and all but what can a drone do that a well placed spy satellite can't? If they want to have tabs on all citizens in the country the can do that already, from space. Or they can fly manned air craft. The US Federal Government does not need this bill to spy on you and though cost might be an issue does it really look like the Fed cares about how much it spends? What this is about is whither or not local/state governments, or private citizens can use drones. I for one would like to see drone based delivery services, who doesn't want pizza delivered by a small helicopter hovering out your apartment window.
Why do I want to live in the US again?
And then the government blames the crash on radio interference, and then demands that, in the interest of protecting children, we give up all our electronic equipment that might cause RF interference.
In the meantime, in pirate-land...
"Hey, wanna crash a drone? There's an app for that!"
Dick Cheney, while trying to shoot down a drone over his house, shoots some guy he knows in the face.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I feel safer already.
Being a pilot, I can tell you that there are things that happen regularly in flight that an unmanned, ground controlled craft could not deal with. A pilot uses all his/her senses when flying a plane, not just sight. Very often, if there is a problem, it is noticed as a slight vibration or sound. How would a ground controller pick that up?
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?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Am I the only one who believes that the potential for abuse exponentially out weighs any perceived benefits? This WILL be abused by government and law enforcement.
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I juat want to paint a huge dick on my roof now
most drones are piloted by pilots..
but of course, the pilots are safely on the ground.
perhaps, the same could be done for the fedex/ups cargo planes ?
If one of these things crashes in my backyard, on my property, do I have the right to keep it?
You mean like the one that crashed in Iran? How many drones versus commercial aircraft in the sky, and how many crashes? Even if you could completely remote control a large aircraft, there would be so many points of failure: the communication link (digital datalinks break all the time, ask any airline pilot), the system to actually control the plane and its systems,... Oh, and how hard would it be for a terrorist to broadcast a jamming signal on the same frequency? I won't even get into the subject of hacking the systems, now that would be fun!
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?
I agree with most of what you're saying however you're missing one important point. You're placing the blame for all of this on the government, when in reality our government is a worthless puppet that is incapable of doing much of anything without some sort of outside force pushing and prodding it (e.g. legalized bribery... err lobbying).
giggity
For them, the benefits outweigh the cost of losing the occasional piece of equipment.
And presumably, crashing into a house and killing 4 people is just a cost.
If it's on a battlefield far away from the US... 'fraid so. The worst part is probably the publicity if someone can prove they were not terrorists or enemy combattants. But they'll still prefer that over losing a pilot and his plane which is much more expensive than a drone. Please do note I am simply describing their point of view, not mine.
Buy clown gaz, two big baloons, cables and a strong net.
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From A Scanner Darkly
"What does a scanner see? Into the head? Into the heart? Does it see into me? Clearly? Or darkly?"
Which drone crashed in Iran? My understanding is that it made a perfect landing and was completely intact for the Iranians to parade around on television. Sure it did not land where it was supposed to, but there was no crashing last I heard. Would a human pilot have done any better with his sensors and position data jammed? I guess no human pilot has ever made an emergency landing in enemy territory before.
If the planes flown in 9/11 had been fully automated then the terrorists could not have commandeered them the same way. Now every system will be ripe for abuse in some way, is it easier to hack a remote controlled plane or knock down the cockpit door and take out a pilot?
All I know is that computers are getting much better at flying planes than humans. Look at the 2009 Air France crash, the pilots ignored the warnings by the computer and did just the opposite of what they warnings told them and crashed the plane. There are plenty of examples of pilots ignoring the computer warnings and crashing. I am sure there are plenty of examples of the computer being wrong and the human pilot correcting that as well, but once the safety statistics and economics swing in favor of automation that is where we will be moving. There will always be risks, we will just be reducing them.
We're getting to the point where our automation is more reliable than the unreliable fleshy meatbag doing the work.
Ugly bag of mostly water.
First of all, stop calling them teabaggers.
Tea Party members were the ones who first called themselves teabaggers. But nowadays, you can't even use that word without being hauled off to sensitivity training.
Exactly. This has to do with unmanned aircraft, which is entirely orthogonal to surveillance aircraft.
Personally, I'd like to see unmanned cargo flights; there's no real reason why every UPS/FedEx plane needs any human beings on it at all. (Of course, I supposed that would have ruined the movie Castaway).
captcha: "airmail". heh.
Also, the fall from the UPS delivery drone to my front yard would probably be more gentle than the current treatment...
Well, to clarify a few things...
1) The article describes unmanned, not autonomous aircraft. With unmanned aircraft, there can still be a "pilot", back in a trailer somewhere, remotely controlling the aircraft. So, there's no reason that the pilot cannot be talking to the air-traffic controller(s) for the airspace the aircraft is flying in. So, I don't think I'm buying into the fears of some other posters that it's going to cause nightmares in air-traffic control.
2) I'm a little frustrated with the article in that it intersperses words like "unmanned" (which, as I've said, can mean "remotely piloted") with words like "drone", which we tend to think of as autonomous. That's kind of a big distinction, and the article doesn't clearly define which of those are being proposed.
3) The article also interchangeably refers to governmental and commercial UAV's. Whenever we hear "drones", we tend to think of missile-firing Predators, but there are plenty of benevolent commercial applications for UAV's, like pipeline inspection, for example.
4) Lastly, the article doesn't seem to mention use of armed aircraft, only surveillance ones. Now, I agree that we need to be very careful about how we draw that line. I can't, at present, think of a case where we'd need armed UAV's over our own soil. But, as much as the notion of surveillance UAV's over my head initially gives me the creeps, I have to admit that I can see legitimate uses for them.
If the government is going to hover drones over our backyards to watch our every move, then it is entirely appropriate and necessary for average Americans to park drones over the backyards of Congressman X and Giant Banker Fuck Y, and trace their every move and broadcast them live on the intertubes. But let's not stop there. MicroUAVs and cockroach/rat cams that worm inside their compounds and walls and listen to every shady deal and embarassing detail and relay that to the curious Public would be most excellent, too. After all, why should they be worried if they have nothing to hide?
These days, the barrier to entry for these technologies is so low and affordable that a great many Americans can turn the pointy end of that surveillance stick around and hoist them on their own petard.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
These are not high end units. Because they are unmanned, they have a multitude of flaws such as no data encryption and operation frequencies which are easily jammed and have a very high BER failure rate over populated areas. What a stupid idea.
Funny how congress can't get together to pass legislation to help Americans, but they have no problem passing legislation to spy on Americans.
And presumably, crashing into a house and killing 4 people is just a cost.
To the military, yes.
I actually think there are many good things drones could do inside the US. I wonder how many drones it would take to get a high resolution photograph every 15 minutes of every drilling, or strip mining site. Also... Highly concentrated pig and chicken farms... Oil refineries, chemical plants... To monitor activity and discharge at these sites.
I know everyone here in /. is going to be all up in arms over this as either police state violations of privacy or the "military-industrial complex" attacking citizens (thus the first post) But you all need to know that this was a MUCH less problematic bill than the regulations that the FAA was coming up with ON THEIR OWN.
The FAA was working on a new set of rules and regs that would have put UAV use and development COMPLETELY into the hands of the big military provider companies (Northrop Grumman, Boeing, etc.) Basically they started a new SUAS (Small Unmanned Aerial Systems, the formal name for what we call a UAV) rule process and completely left out ALL the small business and FPV hobbyist (not to mention regular citizen) concerns. The bill passed in Congress is actually a direct reaction to that and is designed to MINIMIZE the lock-in that the "Militray-Industrial complex" has on the sales and USE of SUASs in the United States.
It also has large set-asides for Hobbyist users (such as myself) and for regular citizens to create and use SUAS technology. Basically, it leaves WIDE OPEN the door for regular citizens to "watch the watchers". It's not perfect, and there are some restrictions in there that should be lifted or modified, but it's far and away better than what the unelected FAA members were about to do under the influence of "The Military-Industrial Complex".
This is why I'm conservative. Bureaucracies are by far and away the easiest things for Big Corp. or the MIC to corrupt. Bureaucrats are unelected, unaccountable, and largely uncontrollable. Thus large centralized governments INEVITABLY become corrupt, regardless of how many "controls" we put on them. (in the end, they just ignore the law anyway, so why have them?)
If concerned citizens hadn't started action on this item in time, the FAA's version of the rules would have gone into force and citizens and small businesses would have been completely locked out of SUAS and possibly even HOBBY airplane use. It would have been very bad indeed.
So while I'm not entirely satisfied with the new law, it is FAR better than the alternative we would have received otherwise. (Sadly, because of the existence of over-sized and corrupt bureaucracies like the FAA, the "Just leave us alone" option wasn't available.)
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Being someone who build drones, I can tell you the on-board diagnostics are substantially more thorough than your ability to feel random vibrations or your trick knee. By the time a human thinks there might be a problem on a hunch, or due to his/her intuition, a drone will have sensed the error, logged it, transmitted the exact error to the nearest airport, and scheduled an emergency landing if need be.
Besides, most drones have a ground crew flying the thing, or at very least monitoring the flight. So if a bit of the human touch is needed, that will be available.
Did you ever check to see how much this costs the tax payers??? Check it you won't like it.
UAVs in use domestically are disturbing because they provide a greater intelligence-gathering capability than regular aircraft at a much lower cost.
Think deeper. You sound like a Luddite. This stuff doesn't always need to be seen as the beginnings of Skynet. If the LEOs get better, finer grained information, that would be a plus. It would enable them to weed out innocuous situations from potentially truly dangerous situations. In fact, that's true as well on the battlefield. Is that an Al Quaida aiming a rifle, or a Reuters photographer with a camera?
I would have appreciated that kind of thing a couple of years ago when three teams of SWAT showed up next door, all carrying StreetSweepers (automatic shotguns), all because the neighbour had been seen cleaning up the flying rats (magpies) in his yard with a pellet rifle. If the cops had had better intel., they could have sent one patrolman over to write him a ticket instead.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
I wonder how many of these will be shot down, or at least return with bullet holes.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
most of the road signs have been blasted. I'm betting some are looking forward to seeing the Autonomous Skeet.
Nullius in verba
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Because the word "DRONE" is not in the US Constitution, the Federal Government's listed powers in Article 1, Section 8 do NOT include regulating drones. (NO, my flying a drone for the fun of it, never crossing state lines, DOES NOT consitute interstate commerce.)
Clearly the power to fly drones is reserved to the states and to the people.
I will fly what I wish.
The Federal Government is prohibited from flying drones in the 10th amendment.
http://www.sovereignman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Constitution_toilet_paper.jpg
Would a human pilot have done any better with his sensors and position data jammed?
Yes, a human pilot with sensors and position data jammed would still know how to fly out of enemy territory. He could find north by simply looking where the sun is, for example. He might have trouble finding his base, but he sure as hell would be able to get out of enemy territory.
Look at the 2009 Air France crash, the pilots ignored the warnings by the computer and did just the opposite of what they warnings told them and crashed the plane.
They had to take control because the autopilot had disengaged. Without pilots, the plane might have continued flying until it ran out of fuel and then crashed. With different pilots, similar events have been correctly handled on numerous occasions. Also, the information available to the pilots was ambiguous. In fact, at some point the stall warning stopped and then started again each time they (correctly!) tried to push the nose forward, giving them the impression they were doing something wrong.
Yes, they should never have put the plane into a stall by pulling back on the stick, but no, they were not doing "the opposite of what the warnings told them".
I would really like to see that remote pilot use his muscles to steer the aircraft when some or all of the hydraulics go out. Or get the fire extinguisher out when a short causes a minor fire. Or confirm the actual conditions when a sensor malfunctions. None of these things can be done from the ground.
Ever since the first Air Force 1 took to the skies there's been drones up there.
I doubt the OP was advocating a free for all. There's regulation of the sort that says "you're not free to poison our waterways" and then there's regulation which says "this is the price you must charge for your flight". When deregulation was applied, it was the latter sort of regulations which were disbanded.
The reason why regulating the economy leads to oppression is because people naturally seek to get around the regulations. For evidence we can look at black markets in the Iron Curtain or at the airline industry in the US. So you add more regulations to cover the instances you didn't think of first hand. If the process continues unhinded, you end up with Soviet style oppression. Which is what the OP is warning about.
Plan My Week for iPhone
ya dont worry till they need to fill more prisons up and make breathing illegal unless you got a license....
I guess it must be to protect US citizens from the hordes of low-life immigrants crossing one of the two main borders at night.
I didn't see anywhere in the article about allowing armed attack drones in US airspace. It is about surveillance drones. I doubt very much that it is legal for an armed aircraft to shoot at a civilian in the US. The same laws would go for drones.
Secondly there is still a pilot that just happens not to be in the aircraft. That pilot can refuse the order just the same as if he was in the cockpit.
How about you object to what is actually being proposed rather than a scenario that is illegal under many other laws.
There is plenty to be regretted from elected officials. We as electors don't do a great job picking. And the task of electing every official at all levels would overwhelm the voters and they would just pick by less worthy criteria.
Don't confuse "unelected" with "unremovable".
Can a drone do more? Yes:
- see under clouds
- move in any direction to get a better look
- get much closer
The big thing is that a drone can do the same thing a LOT CHEAPER. Cheap enough to be available for just about anyone. That's the scarier part. Just a few examples:
- cheaper cameras - because it is a lot closer and doesn't deal with hardships of space.
- cheaper radios - because it is a lot closer and doesn't deal with hardships of space. In fact it can just record to a card then fly back to is owner, not even needing a transmitter.
If you aren't doing anything someone else would criticize, then you probably never existed.
Welcome. Welcome to City 17.
You have chosen, or been chosen, to relocate to one of our finest remaining urban centers.
I thought so much of City 17 that I elected to establish my Administration here in the Citadel so thoughtfully provided by our benefactors.
I have been proud to call City 17 my home. And so, whether you are here to stay, or passing through on your way to parts unknown, welcome to City 17.
It's safer here.
I wonder how long before people start investing in awnings, nets, kites, balloons and other devices that can hide what's happening on the ground?
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.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
It is not merely "electronic surveillance". It includes optical, IR, audio, and a wide range of other sensors. Over time. This will provide more than a real time access to every move a targeted person makes. It will provide a history of every move everybody makes and the sensible data they emit. Then authorities can do data mining on the data, determine "risky trends" and then get secret, non-judicial search warrants that are effectively "pre-facto". This is unprecedented on several levels all at once. The temporal issue. The constant random search of everybody and everything all the time, the mere fact the police have proactive capacity and not mere respond to a citizen concern.
This is a widespread loss of liberty and privacy, and makes the police and thus the government have an unfair advantage against the very citizens they get sovereignty from. This is anti-citizen, pro-state, the precise opposite of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
And I predict it will stand and vastly expand.
JJ
This will now also stand for Your Rights Overhead
PaulW, IT Consultant
Now that the United Corporations of America is slipping steadily towards becoming the world's next police state, the use of UAVs to spy on its citizens should have been expected.
1. There are no hydraulic lines from stick to control system in modern planes. That's why fly-by-wire electronics have multiple redundancies - if they fail, you lose control of the aircraft. Period.
2. Automatic auto-extinguishing systems fare far better without humans. They can simply purge all oxygen from the aircraft and replace it with CO2. No humans in need of O2 to continue to function on board...
3. In most cases, cameras around aircraft will do a far better job then human pilot. They can be placed to show places where human will have no way of getting to.
A Barrett light .50 model M82 will get 'er done, and only costs about $9K.
Don't be depressed, just move along, that's you're first republic, we're on our fifth and we still didn't get it right, just accept the inevitable, what your founding fathers knew all along and what you forgot, you need regular bloodbaths either in the form of Stalinistic purges or Jacobin terror to embue in the ruling class 's psyche the fear of the populace (or in the form of an American Revolution). You're heading full speed ahead into a civil war, just open a history book, nothing new or surprising, but right now it is inevitable. Your ruling class is fully aware of this, why do you think these ever increasing draconian measures are being put in place? Sure the prime targets of surveillance are other politicians, to keep them in check, to keep "party voting discipline" and classic blackmailing and coercion, but it's not about getting something, anything, on political rivals anymore, it's about controlling the average citizen's reaction to the constant and increasing delapidation of what were until recently inalienable human rights. Best of luck and think positive, there will be a 2nd American Republic after this one fails, then a third and so on. It's just the natural order of things and human nature.
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.
Oh, that isn't a problem, Don't even worry about it. They are all stealthy, so the air traffic controllers won't even see them!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I say pass the bill.. If US citizens cannot be spied on, why should citizens of some other country be spied on by the drone.
What failsafes are in drones when communication is lost? Are they programmed to keep flying? To try to land?
People on slashdot always laugh their asses off when they read about normal people over reacting to things like computer viruses (should I wear gloves when touching the keyboard?) but then do the same thing when reading about drones.
Planes have been around for over 100 years and the laws covering them have been around for almost that long. Drones are just planes, they're covered by the same basic set of laws that planes are covered by now. OMG, somebody might fly over my house and take a picture of me naked! Can I shoot it down? Don't they have to give me the flight plan before it can cross my airspace.
Hey, guess what, planes can fly over your house RIGHT NOW and take a picture. Why are your panicking now, it's been a possibility for decades. And the police? Didn't you ever notice those police planes & helicopters that have been flying for decades? What the heck do you think they've been doing. Yeah, they're watching you. And of course RC people have been using video drone planes as well for years. Sheesh.
No they don't have to give you a flightplan. No you can't shoot it down. No you can't blind it. No you don't own it if it crashes on your land (although you can get compensation). No they can't film you frolicking naked in your yard & sell the video.
Get your own UAV and program it to attack other UAVs.... and birds
I didn't see anywhere in the article about allowing armed attack drones in US airspace. It is about surveillance drones. I doubt very much that it is legal for an armed aircraft to shoot at a civilian in the US. The same laws would go for drones.
It's only a matter of time between the introduction of drones and when someone (actual criminals or just ya-hoos) starts shooting at them. When that happens, law enforcement will up the ante by arming the drones.
Secondly there is still a pilot that just happens not to be in the aircraft. That pilot can refuse the order just the same as if he was in the cockpit.
The pilot may refuse the order, then again, he may not. Want to bet your life on which he chooses? WWII (and likely all wars) provided many stories about those who were just following orders.
How about you object to what is actually being proposed rather than a scenario that is illegal under many other laws.
How about we don't allow drone overflights so this can't escalate into more loss of our rights and other tragedies?
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
This is just a question and not some sort of bad idea for someone to do.
It's been proven that 99% of all pilots don't like them.
me wherever I go, strictly for self-defense, of course. It will follow me wherever I go, circling overhead, and respond to threats against me either automatically or by my control using my phone or other remote interface. I believe having an armed drone is within the limits of my 2nd amendment right to bear arms.
When the technology becomes available I want to have access to a particle beam weapon in geosynchronous orbit so that I may again defend myself against any and all threats.
I believe the next war for the U.S. will be against its own citizens. We will occupy ourselves instead of some other country. Our tax dollars will be used to service debt that is created to watch and control... Ourselves. Just ending the big war jobs program is, simply, not acceptable. Police will continue to militarize and citizens will resist measures of control in a cycle of feedback that ends goodness-knows-how.
It's only a matter of time between the introduction of drones and when someone (actual criminals or just ya-hoos) starts shooting at them. When that happens, law enforcement will up the ante by arming the drones.
How do you know what law enforcement will do? Are you psychic? How about if they do arm drones then we protest. Like all slippery slope arguments this one stops a good thing because a bad decision may be made later. By this logic we should not arm police because they might shoot an innocent person. Slipper slope arguments are logically false.
The pilot may refuse the order, then again, he may not. Want to bet your life on which he chooses? WWII (and likely all wars) provided many stories about those who were just following orders.
You missed the point completely. The GF was stating that a manned aircraft was better because a pilot could refuse an order. I was just pointing out that a UAV also has a pilot who could refuse the order.
How about we don't allow drone overflights so this can't escalate into more loss of our rights and other tragedies?
you do not seem to have an issue with manned overflights. What is the difference if the aircraft is unmanned with the pilot on the ground?
Some aircraft still use hydraulic assist mechanical controls.
And if there is air coming in from the outside which displaces the CO2?
Cameras don't work well when the only frame of reference is the air frame on a white cloud. A human can sense pitch yaw, roll, acceleration, etc. Cameras can not sense those things. The human senses fail a lot less often then mechanical or electrical sensors.
Cargo jet aircraft are much more complex than a drone. Take a look at the cockpit and try to imagine remotely controlling all those switches and transmitting all the information from all those gauges and instruments. It is not a simple feat.
It is not surprising that the tin hat brigade has dominated this discussion but here are a few things that drones cad do well that do not include arming them or spying on people.
1. Surveying dangerous areas such as train derailments, chemical plant fires, etc.
2. Surveying areas after natural disasters such as tornadoes.
3. Searching for lost people.
4. Keeping track of livestock on the open range.
5. Surveying crops for disease and lack of water.
6. Tracking and observing wildlife with minimal disturbance.
7. Tracking the spread of oils slicks.
8. Replace the dangerous job of fire spotter pilot
9. etc
There are many valid uses for drones that can not be done today due to the FAA requiring a special certificate to operate one. The new law will change that and allow drones to be used in many more instances.
1. These are not modern big ones. Older ones indeed do. We were however talking about (relatively) new aircraft, not jury-rigging old ones.
2. If the air is coming from outside, your "human extinguisher" would be useless due to loss of pressure incapacitating him. Automatic systems can still purge such fire with foam.
3. Aircraft have accelerometers that are far more accurate then our vestibular system as a part of their standard avionics kit.
4. Just downlink the avionics to the ground control?
While large jumbos, be they cargo, passenger or various military versions are indeed far more complex then drones because of their sheer size, it doesn't mean that automation and ground control of the aircraft are an impossibility. It is simply a step forward from controlling the drones from the ground, not unlike the step that was made when jumbos where put in the air for the first time.
How do you know what law enforcement will do? Are you psychic?
/.
You don't have to be psychic to have a clue about the future actions of governments. All you have to do is to look at the news. Are you completely unaware how police are becoming militarized? I find this trend very, very disturbing. Go look up the images of cops recently pepper spraying peaceful protesters at a university in California.
How about if they do arm drones then we protest. Like all slippery slope arguments this one stops a good thing because a bad decision may be made later. By this logic we should not arm police because they might shoot an innocent person. Slipper slope arguments are logically false.
How about we outlaw drone flights over the U.S. to prevent unwarranted government intrusion. If you think protesting will change anything once the drones become armed, you are just simply out of touch with reality.
You missed the point completely. The GF was stating that a manned aircraft was better because a pilot could refuse an order. I was just pointing out that a UAV also has a pilot who could refuse the order.
No, you missed the point. Any pilot, manned or uav, could choose, as well, to follow an order.
you do not seem to have an issue with manned overflights. What is the difference if the aircraft is unmanned with the pilot on the ground?
Your assertion regarding my thoughts on overflights is unwarranted by any evidence presented on
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
This is your democracy and freedom.
Recipes for USA bankrupt - http://tinypaste.com/0d66f dd = dollar deluge (printed in the infinity)
"They" want us to think that Ron Paul is one of "them", that way we don't vote for him.