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The Trump Administration Wants To Be Able To Track and Hack Your Drone (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: The Trump administration wants federal agencies to be able to track, hack, or even destroy drones that pose a threat to law enforcement and public safety operations, The New York Times reports. A proposed law, if passed by Congress, would let the government take down unmanned aircraft posing a danger to firefighting and search-and-rescue missions, prison operations, or "authorized protection of a person." The government will be required to respect "privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties" when exercising that power, the draft bill says. But records of anti-drone actions would be exempt from public disclosure under freedom of information laws, and people's right to sue over damaged and seized drones would be limited, according to the text of the proposal published by the Times. The administration, which would not comment on the proposal, scheduled a classified briefing on Wednesday for congressional staff members to discuss the issue.
Take down drones that endanger firefighting and prison operations, sure. The problems start when undefined weasel-words like "authorized protection of a person" are used and rights of citizens are curtailed or eliminated. Clandestine hearings and elimination of FOIA for the program do not help matters. You just don't need all that secrecy to take down a drone over a fire or prison.
Beware of the Leopard.
Why is it that every other headline is TRUMP DOES BAD THING instead of tech news headlines?
This is about drones, the law, and the leader who's administration brought forth that law. The exact same headline would have happened if Obama had pushed this.
None of the editors ever pointed a finger at Obama ripping the country apart
I remember in 2008 my relatives promised me civil war, utter stock market annihilation, the literal death of the country if the black guy won. Then when it didn't happen, and everyone predicted the same thing again in 2012! And yet the opposite happened both times, the country boringly kept steadily improving the entire time he was in office. Is there ever going to be an apology? Nope, just more gasping hyperbole without demonstrable evidence or citations I guess. You want to compare them? Before Obama, people always said the market was above all the most important stat, let's start with that one.
The first rule of Democracy is that you never trust the government when they say "Trust us".
I don't trust the government to use a power to seize and destroy private property without full disclosure of how, why and when it's occurring. I'm not going to sell my rights down the river because some jackass halfway around the world strapped a bomb to a UAV.
Terrorists have already used drones as IEDs in the middle east war arena to attack troops and bases.
True, but there are BIG differences between a drone IED, a drone menacing a firefighting operation, and a drone shot down because the cops think it might have been photographing them murdering some minority homeless guy. The courts, not law enforcement, should determine what is exempt from public disclosure on a case-by-case basis.