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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.
Terrorists have already used drones as IEDs in the middle east war arena to attack troops and bases. It is well known that they exploit public disclosure to improve their destructive techniques. The US military knows too well that you don't disclose tactics to the enemy. I'm no fan of gun control but drones bent on terrorist objectives are so covert that they should have a "kill" switch, so I find it hard to dispute the government's position of classifying records.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Yup, if records are open to inspection then I'd normally 100% agree, but this article is pretty scant on details. I didn't buy my UAV from a vendor, I put it together with COTS parts. Will this require me to purchase, install, and support a "Government Interface" that will allow them to track and take over my UAV at their will? Or does it just authorize them to use one of their fancy "drone cannons" (as pictured in the article) to overwhelm my device causing it to crash? One of those things I am perfectly OK with, the other I would need a bit more detail on. Either way, they shouldn't be able to do it in secret.