"Hobby Drone Task Force Snookered by FAA"
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/001135.html
The report of the FAA-mandated "Drone Task Force" is out -- and it
appears that the good folks who offered to help the FAA in its rush to
regulate hobby drones have been pretty thorough snookered. Not their
fault, but that's the obvious result.
Considering that the federal government wants to register aircraft
hobbyists when it doesn't register gun owners, you'd think any action
would require careful deliberation. But the report indicates otherwise:
Everybody admits this is a terribly rushed job, with key aspects that
should have been important to consideration steamrolled over and
ignored -- as required by the FAA's inane and nonsensical timeline.
The task force hopes that this doesn't turn into an identity and privacy
nightmare. There's no way to validate the identity of registrants except
perhaps (in some cases) at point-of-sale for fully-assembled units
purchased commercially. For the many other ways these devices are
assembled, registered names and addresses could easily be fabricated out
of whole cloth -- or perhaps simply registered using the name and
address of that neighbor down the street whom you despise!
The task force hopes that the FAA can protect the information in the
databases -- names, addresses, and often more -- from abuse, misuse,
broad "freedom of information" requests, leaks, etc. -- but there's no
guarantee that the FAA is willing to do this or could legally accomplish it.
And that doesn't even cover black hat hackers attacking a government
that has shown itself -- repeatedly -- to be utterly incompetent to
protect personal data in their databases. How long before the entire
hobby drone database with all that personal information is floating
around the Net to be abused?
Ignorance and ignoring of the registration requirement will be vast. The
task force hopes that the FAA can do something to lower the statutory
FAA fine structure (often currently exceeding $25K -- aimed at
penalizing drug traffickers and the like) so that ordinary hobbyists
aren't wiped out by obviously inappropriate fines. But again, the task
force admits that they don't know if the FAA would want to make such
changes, or if they legally could do so.
And of course, the folks that all this has ostensibly been aimed to
catch -- irresponsible flyers, the theoretical cadre of "drone
terrorists" -- and assorted other bad guys -- will as noted above either
falsely register to evade identification (and/or to transfer blame to
innocent parties) -- or simply won't register at all.
This is shaping up to be a quintessential example of USA regulatory
processes at their very worst.
You can read the full report here:
https://www.faa.gov/uas/publications/media/RTFARCFinalReport_11-21-15.pdf
Happy flying.
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein ([email protected]): http://www.vortex.com/lauren
Founder:
- Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org
- PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info
Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy
Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com
Google+: http://google.com/+LaurenWeinstein
Twitter: http://twitter.com/laurenweinstein
Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com
I have consulted to Google, but I am not currently doing so.
My opinions expressed here are mine alone.
_______________________________________________
pfir mailing list
http://lists.pfir.org/mailman/listinfo/pfir
