Trump Signs Law Forcing Drone Users To Register With Government (thehill.com)

President Trump signed a sweeping defense policy bill into law on Tuesday that will allow the government to require recreational drone users to register their model aircraft. This comes after a federal court ruled in May that Americans no longer have to register non-commercial drones with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) "because Congress had said in a previous law that the FAA can't regulate model aircraft," reports The Hill. From the report: In December 2015, the FAA issued an interim rule requiring drone hobbyists to register their recreational aircraft with the agency. The rule -- which had not been formally finalized -- requires model aircraft owners to provide their name, email address and physical address; pay a $5 registration fee; and display a unique drone ID number at all times. Those who fail to comply could face civil and criminal penalties. While Congress directed the FAA to safely integrate drones into the national airspace in a 2012 aviation law, lawmakers also included a special exemption to prevent model aircraft from being regulated. A D.C.-based appeals court cited the 2012 law in its ruling striking down the FAA drone registry, arguing that recreational drones count as model aircraft and that the registry counts as a rule or regulation.

Comments

Big Government

[Anonymous Coward]

I love reducing government restrictions by creating new ones.

Re: Big Government

[Reverend Green]

Yay for less freedom!

Awesome thing is, reducing domestic freedom and funding more war have huge bipartisan support:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201...
https://www.senate.gov/legisla...

Soviet Union, we're catching up! Soon we'll be just as unfree as you were. Fuck yeah, go America!

Re: Big Government

[MachineShedFred]

Net neutrality
Clean air act

Wasn't that a bargain?

Re: Big Government

[zlives]

yup you can also register you guns and use them the same exact way as you do today... not so sure about tomorrow.

Huh

[fyrewulff]

I thought he was all about the deregulation? *crickets*

Re:Huh

[olsmeister]

He is all about deregulation. For corporations.

Re:Huh

[SvnLyrBrto]

Not just technically. He flat-out hasn't built that wall. All that exists are a handful of exorbitantly priced prototypes, and the existing border fence.

The wall is just not going to happen. Almost all of the cost estimates are ludicrously low-balled. And the most realistic of the lot barely covers materials; omitting:

1) Labor: You need to find lots of people willing to move to, and work in, some of the most miserably hot and middle-of-nowhere parts of the southwestern desert states. And the companies employing that labor have to sacrifice any future business in, at the very least, California; the richest and most populous state in the US. California is especially profitable for construction firms; since everything has to be built to earthquake spec. That's a lot of potential profits to be asked to sacrifice. Plus, a few other states, and a good number of cities as well, are also working on laws banning any company that works on the border wall from bidding on government contracts. So 45 is going to have to pay a premium and princely sum for that labor.

2) Logistics: You have to get those aforementioned materials and people to the construction sites. The people have to be fed, sheltered, and amused. And it's not like you can pour the concrete in El Paso and truck it 8 hours somewhere. Concrete plants will need to be built in situ; adding to the expense. Oh, and you'll need to build roads to many of the construction sites as well.

3) Legalities: A lot of people, across four states, three federal circuit courts (Including, yes, the 9th.), and who knows how many counties, are going to fight the wall. Exempting the law from EIRs has been bandied about already. But you can bet that expensive and time-consuming lawsuits will ensue if 45 tries. And quite a lot of the land needed for the wall, worker housing and support, and roads and such, is private property. The mucilaginous morass of eminent domain suits alone brings a gleeful giggle to my throat. And it won't just be Cards Against Humanity's xmas project to buy land specifically for the purpose. It won't just be liberals either. Do you think for a second that ornery southwestern, and especially Texan and "sovereign citizen", rancher types are going to take kindly to the feds stomping in and taking their land from them? Hell, 45 will be fortunate if they ONLY fight back with expensive and time-consuming lawsuits. Remember, those Bundy peoples' feuding with the federal government didn't start with Obama. They've been at it since Bush #1.

Oh, and congress still has to allocate the money for the wall... not the fantasy-land sums 45 and his people have tossed around, but the real costs taking into account all of the above. You can take it to the bank that if the Democrats take either house in 2018, that's just not going to happen. And even a good number of republicans are ambivalent about the wall. It's a boondoggle that's going to waste a fantastic amount of money for no benefit; so any that genuinely believe in fiscal responsibility or small government are out. Some of them represent districts that will contain those soon-to-be-pissed-off victims of eminent domain attacks. And hispanics are still the fastest growing demographic in the US. I imagine at least a few republicans will look at what happened in California when former governor Pete Wilson decided to hitch his wagon to the "How I hate the Mexicans, let me count the 187 ways." train.

Re:Huh

[dwillden]

This is a law, passed by Congress by attaching to the NDAA. HE didn't do anything, but sign the bill. Not signing it would have been a much bigger issue as it would have held up funding for the military.

If anything complain about the congressional practice of attaching off-topic issues to must pass bills to slip them into law. Both parties are guilty of doing this.

Register drones, but guns?

[J053]

So, register all drones. What about guns? I don't see how the 2d Amendment prohibits gun registration (it talks about the right to "keep and bear" arms, not "keep and bear anonymously"), so if everyone has to register their drones, why shouldn't they have to register their guns?

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[J053]

And why would I register a drone?

If it's unregistered, you don't know I have it - so if you don't know I have it, why would I feel compelled to register it? You wouldn't know either way.

And let me guess, you're going to charge or tax me for the privilege of registering it. Right?

You fail.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[ShanghaiBill]

And why would I register a drone?

My Mavic Pro required registration before it would work.

My AR-15 assault rifle worked great straight out of the box. It is registered with no one.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[markdavis]

Gun registration is the first step that enables the government to enact later confiscation (a pattern seen in other countries). That is why the push back against it is so strong.

Since you mention the Constitution, there are lots of things NOT protected by the Constitution that don't require registration- knives, bear traps, fertilizer, chainsaws, etc. Drones fly around and are recovered/intercepted remotely and registration could be used to trace back to the owner. There are already methods in place for doing so with [legal] guns that are recovered. With probable cause and the appropriate approvals, law enforcement can query all the registered sellers' databases. This method allows supervised, individual, and reasonable tracing but without the government having direct access to the databases, which could be (and likely would be) severely abused.

I am not in favor of registration of drones (nor guns, nor most legal things), but if it is to be done, perhaps there are ways to do it that do not give too much power to the government.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[Whibla]

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Are Free Speech Zones purely local or state level legislation then?

I can't help but think that when protesters are corralled into specific areas out of sight of visiting dignitaries and politicians they don't really have the right of assembly, or freedom of speech.

Genuine question, by the way. I'm not particularly conversant with US law.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[omnichad]

you don't have the right to fly drones. That's a privilege.

You have the right to do anything that isn't illegal. That's how our government is set up. I don't even see how the federal government has the power to regulate this - this is a state's rights issue.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[Holi]

Can your registration be denied or delayed?

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[ScentCone]

Are Free Speech Zones purely local or state level legislation then?

It depends on which entity is responsible for the physical location where an event is being held. Let's say we're talking about one of the usual high-profile ones, like the parade and other large gatherings associated with presidential inaugurations. An event that one group or another always wants to disrupt, to make it about their thing, rather than about the inauguration. The grounds where these events take place are a patchwork of the city of the District of Columbia (handled by DC's own metro police), the National Park Service (a piece of the Dept of the Interior, a federal agency, policed by Park Police), and then places like the grounds of Capitol building, which is policed by the Capitol Police. Lots of different entities.

In each case, the entity holding the event makes arrangements with all of those jurisdictions to reserve the space for what's going to happen (a parade, a speech, etc). For that, they get a permit. They also pay a lot for the extra cost of policing those areas so that traffic is controlled, so that people can't run out in the middle of the street and blockade a parade, etc. The "free speech zones" are areas outside of the areas that have been booked, reserved, and paid for by the entity holding the event. The people who want to organize a large group of disrupters/protesters to take over the event are indeed kept, physically, by fences and by police if necessary, from doing so. Why? Because THEY GET EXACTLY THAT SAME PROTECTION when they make arrangements and carry the costs to close the street and parks and make them secure for their own event, safe from the heckler's veto of some other group that wants to wreck their event the same way they want to wreck someone else's on a different day.

Protesters aren't corralled out of the site of dignitaries, they're kept from being able to use force (of numbers, blocking streets and destroying things) to shut down an event they didn't organize. When they want to organize something with exactly the same level of effort, they'll get the exact same level of protection. This has nothing to do with run-of-the-mill standing around on a street corner holding up a sign that says the End Is Near or Eat The Rich or whatever. This is about denying one group the opportunity to veto another group's carefully arranged public event by simply using chaos. That's what permits are for when putting together large events in public spaces - so there can be some safety and care in how it plays out. Every group applying to use a public space gets the same consideration and protection from outside groups that want to shut them down by physically invading that reserved, permitted space.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[ScentCone]

I don't even see how the federal government has the power to regulate this

Because congress long ago gave the FAA statutory power over the national air space. It's not complicated.

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[cats-paw]

Really. the moderators couldn't even spend 1 minute to show that you have purposely worded that to push a right wing talking point.

https://www.thetrace.org/2015/...

Re:Register drones, but guns?

[slacker001]

Your AR-15 isn't an assault rifle because it doesn't have selective fire. If it somehow does, then you'd be required to have a federal stamp, so it would be registered with the government.

Re:Saw it coming

[Z80a]

Trump is a corporate cock sucker, not a nazilike person.
If he gets his way US will probably become a corporate feud thing, where companies are literally kingdoms and enforce their shit on population with hired "knights" etc..
If you want an empire that enforces their ideologies on other countries etc.. that's still Germany, but with a different rhetoric and tactics etc..

Re:Drones as weapons

[BlueStrat]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_rNnErg-oM
ISIS was already using them against the Syrian army, it's not theoretical anymore. For attacks like the one in this youtube video, but also in combat operations.

I'm sure the terrorists will register their home-brew drone-bombs like they registered to fly airliners before 9/11.

This isn't about terrorism, foreign or domestic, nor about safety.

This is purely government frightened that individuals with video/camera drones will expose their wrongdoing for all to see. ^That^ right there frightens them FAR more than all the crazy fringe groups and ISIS terrorists because "...can't stop the signal, Mal."

Strat

Why not make it legal to shoot them?

[mschuyler]

I would suggest making it legal to shoot those little fuckers out of the sky. If people behaved with them it would be great, but they don't. People don't want government spying on them but have no problem flying their drones over to the neighbor's pool to see if the can pick up a few nude bathers. Let me use the drones as target practice and I'll be fine.

Tourists/vistors...?

[Vylen]

Ok .. and do tourists, visitors to America, people on work visa's, etc, do they need to register their drone if they decided to bring one with them on their trip?

How is that going to work?

Re:Tourists/vistors...?

[SeaFox]

They would never believe someone from another country would have a legitimate reason to bring a drone in. They're just assume you're a terrorist since you're at the airport with one.

wtf is a drone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is a $10 Chinese quadcopter a drone? TFA doesn't explain what it is.

Re:Saw it coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump is a corporate cock sucker, not a nazilike person.
If he gets his way US will probably become a corporate feud thing, where companies are literally kingdoms and enforce their shit on population with hired "knights" etc..
If you want an empire that enforces their ideologies on other countries etc.. that's still Germany, but with a different rhetoric and tactics etc..

The word you're looking for is "Oligarchy". About time the US joined the rest of the Americas in a long established continental tradition! Kudos!

Greetings from Brazil!

Reinstates an 2015 policy

[Hal_Porter]

http://www.thedrive.com/aerial...

The controversial drone policy introduced by the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015, requiring recreational drone users to registers their UAVs, was constitutionally overturned in May of this year, but it may end up being enforced again next year by being included in the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act of 2018.

According to Bloomberg, both the House and Senate agree on slipping the unmanned aerial vehicle registry into the defense bill, as demand for regulation in the drone industry is at an all-time high. Most recently, the White House expanded drone-testing regulations to presumably push toward standardizing nationwide UAV delivery. The current administration may deem a nationwide hobby-drone registration as a necessary first step toward that.

The previous policy was overturned

http://www.thedrive.com/aerial...

In 2015, the FAA officially announced that all owners of drones heavier than 250 grams (which is about as light as a cup of water) must be registered as "drone operators" in a national database. This, of course, startled some, as it seemed this regulation could mark the beginning of the end for freedom of use regarding hobby drones. Others felt it was a fair deal in the right direction, as we reported on last year. However, in a twist of turns, the District of Columbia circuit court of appeals overturned this legislation on Friday, May 19th, as its compatibility with a previous FAA ruling from 2012 is far from symbiotic.

The 2012 "FAA Modernization and Reform Act" rules that the FAA has no right to "promulgate any rule or regulation regarding a model aircraft", and as Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh sees it, the 2015 ruling clearly interferes with this established law. He adds, "Statutory interpretation does not get much simpler. The Registration Rule is unlawful as applied to model aircraft." Essentially, recreational drone users have been exempted from the aforementioned registry, which according to Popular Science, over 800,000 people have joined since 2015. This is something we at The Drive keep a close eye on, and an issue we regularly report on.

So Congress put a paragraph into the 2018 NDAA to restore registration

https://www.bloomberg.com/news...

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington overturned the FAA drone registration system in May, finding that earlier legislation passed in 2012 didn't give the agency legal authority for it. A one-paragraph addition to the defense bill said that the registration system "shall be restored" as soon as the legislation becomes law.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

(d) Restoration Of Rules For Registration And Marking Of Unmanned Aircraft.-The rules adopted by the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in the matter of registration and marking requirements for small unmanned aircraft (FAA-2015-7396; published on December 16, 2015) that were vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Taylor v. Huerta (No. 15-1495; decided on May 19, 2017) shall be restored to effect on the date of enactment of this Act.

Re:Saw it coming

[HornWumpus]

And of course to put the quote in context, you're going to mention that private, non-government, corporations didn't exist in Italy at the time? The only corporations would now be called NGOs?

Of course you were.

We'll see what happens

[SuperKendall]

The passage of the law just allows the FAA to issue such a rule. It could be that under Trump they would not do so after all... this could be a case where a petition might do some good.

Remember the original rule was instituted by the Obama FAA.

Re:We'll see what happens

[cayenne8]

The passage of the law just allows the FAA to issue such a rule. It could be that under Trump they would not do so after all... this could be a case where a petition might do some good.

Remember the original rule was instituted by the Obama FAA.

Well, the point of worry here is...that this was snuck through attached to another bill, and no one noticed before it was too late.

The time to petition and call legislators to protest over this was BEFORE this new law was snuck through.

The federal govt has no reason to know I have a drone. As long as I fly it legally, they have no need to know of my property.

Re:We'll see what happens

[SuperKendall]

The time to petition and call legislators to protest over this was BEFORE this new law was snuck through.

That was *A* time to call, to be sure.

But there's still another chance to convince the new FAA head that it's a bad idea to try and register every single drone.

I'm a bit surprised no-one has pointed out there's a way you could paint such a move as an action of lobbying - I'm sure DJI would not be happy with this kind of regulation, at all. Where are all you people who believe Trump is controlled by the Chinese and/or Russia?

Re:We'll see what happens

[ScentCone]

No, the FAA's got statutory power to regulate the airspace - from an inch off the ground on up - across the entire country. Having each state regulate the airspace differently would be absurd. The only reason this particular matter came up was because congress - in 2012 - explicitly set aside recreational model aircraft as not being subject to any further regs. This appears to change that law, and has nothing to do with the FAA's broader statutory authority.

Re: We'll see what happens

[fazig]

I don't know who looks more delusional to me.
Here in Germany we have dozens of political parties, six of which have prospects to be elected into the parliament. I find all of them very poor in pragmatism and rich in ideological nonsense.
Looking at the two party system that has been in control of the US for a long time, and especially at people who subscribe to either side while (often) rejecting the other for the sake of opposition. Identity politics at its worst. It's miraculous that despite of this or perhaps as a result of this you've still got a functional country.

Re: We'll see what happens

[dwillden]

Rep MIA Love (R-Utah) has been pushing such a bill for two years now. Her "One Topic per Bill" bill is gaining support but slowly.

Re:We'll see what happens

[Asgard]

Why would someone intent on dropping a drone into a prison place their # on the device? Yeah it'll help for someone who has a flyaway / failure that ends up on someones lawn, but not for someone _intent_ on doing such a thing.

Re: We'll see what happens

[apoc.famine]

There should be a law against sneaking through unrelaed laws, but if would never get through...

Well, duh, just sneak it in an unrelated law!

Re:We'll see what happens

[AK Marc]

Congress is the DC government. They just delegate to subordinates with a structure and titles similar to regular cities, so I can see how you are confused, but you need to go read the Constitution about DC again.

Let's be real...

[PopeRatzo]

Show of hands: Who here believes Trump knows what the fuck he's signing? Seriously.

Re:Let's be real...

[Alypius]

We have to pass it to see what's in it.

Re:Let's be real...

[ScentCone]

He signed a law that clarified the FAA's statutory authority on a matter that his predecessor acted out without the legislature (again, as he did on so many other things) and got smacked down by the courts for operating outside of the constitution's boundaries (again). This sets the state for the FAA to arrive at rules in this area that aren't directly illegal, like the last one under Obama.

Re: Saw it coming

[Reverend Green]

You're thinking corporate like business corporations.

Mussolini style fascists were thinking corporate like the body ("corpus") of society.

Historic Fascism was totalitarian, but otherwise had little in common with the increasingly totalitarian Financialism we suffer under today.

Slashdot is a hotbed for drone dereregulation?

[Jarwulf]

I'm confused. On the posts before on this topic for the last few years there seemed a mild consensus for pragmatic regulation of drones. And you'd generally have several pages of detailed reason based calm discussion. Now all of a sudden every poster on this thread is passionately against drone laws and hurling nothing but ad hominins about how Trump is a monkey? The quality of discourse here really has plummeted.

Re:Maybe there's a loophole

[ScentCone]

That's already very well covered. Mount a gun on your aircraft and you are set up to earn yourself a federal felony. Period.

Re:Huh, (the wall)

[AbrasiveCat]

Folks, Haven't you figured this out. The President is going to have a Mexican company build the wall, and then stiff them. Then they will have paid for it. It is how he operates.

Re:Another

[serviscope_minor]

At least it was a legitimate process this time. So much of what Obama did was regulatory fiat or abuse of executive power; no legislative process, no legitimacy.

Are you banging on "Obama is bad for signing so many executive orders despite signing fewer than the Republican president before him" drum?

Net Neutrality is another example if this fake governance.

"fake" is not simply "something you don't like".

Re:Drones as weapons

[BlueStrat]

Sure it's more to do with idiots flying into people's head or planes. They SHOULD register this, and MORE. They should need to be licensed to fly them.

Safety or freedom.

Choose.

We already have plenty of laws against endangering people or property, creating a public hazard/nuisance, 'peeping Tom' laws, disturbing the peace, etc etc etc. There are another entire set of criminal laws dealing with any sort of endangerment to an aircraft. There are literally more laws than they've been able to count, and they've tried multiple times. This is akin to the early patent trolls locking up common tasks etc in patents by filing and receiving patents on nearly identical prior (usually expired) patents by adding "...with a computer."

I mean, you can already be charged with a plethora of serious federal charges with potentially decades of prison time for doing something only minimally stupid/dangerous with a drone with the laws we already have on the books.

How much 'illegaler' do you want to make it? Do we boil them in oil *before* we hang them, or after? And, where the hell does the beheading come in, before or after the flogging?

Should I submit a Slashdot poll?

Strat

Re:Another

[dwillden]

It's not and never was the number of Executive orders he signed. It was the nature of the EO's he signed. Where prior Presidents restricted their use of EO's to their designed purpose. Which is to instruct the agencies of the Executive branch on how to implement laws passed by Congress. President Obama couldn't get congress to do what he wanted even during the first two years when the Dems controlled both houses, so he tried to use the EO to go around Congress. To legislate via fiat, and change the laws without congressional approval. That is where he went wrong, repeatedly.

Yes many prior Presidents signed far more EO's but none abused that power like Obama. Trump is using them heavily in a similar manner but mostly so far to undue Obama's over-reaching EO's. The jury is still out on how Trump will do with EO's, he could very easily try to continue the Obama Style of using the Fiat of the EO to legislate where congress will not act. But so far he has not done so. And if he does, the blame for starting such style of administrative abuses falls squarely at the feet of Obama.

drones are a menace

[cjonslashdot]

I am libertarian and hate unnecessary regulation; but drones pose a huge threat to aviation - both commercial and sport aviation. Imagine hitting one of those things in the windshield of your airplane at a few hundred miles per hour. Death is the certain result. And now every kid has a drone.

Drones that are able to fly above 100 feet should be required to have transponders. Sport amphibious aircraft fly at low altitude when landing on a lake.

Perhaps registration is not needed; perhaps what we need is to require the manufacturers to embed transponders in the things, and have a $100,000 fine for flying a drone without a transponder or a defective transponder. Something needs to be done.