From AOPA's March 8, 2018 Aviation Brief

Ray K

Ray K
This was in my AOPA Aviation Brief today. Thought I'd share it with our forum.
THE RECORDER
By Ben Hancock
A rule requiring drone identification technology could help pave the way for other, more permissive regulations. But it's up in the air how the FAA will handle legal restrictions on regulating hobbyists and privacy challenges.
If you thought that “drone law” sounded interesting before, it’s about to get even more exciting.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is poised to announce soon—possibly as early as this week—action toward a new rule that would eventually clear the way for drones flying over people and beyond the line-of-sight of their operators.
The forthcoming FAA proposal would require adoption of what is known as “remote ID” technology for drones and is seen by attorneys who follow drone law as a critical first step toward permitting a wider range of business uses for unmanned aircraft.
“The FAA is not going to create future rules for expanded operation of drones until the remote identification framework is in place,” said Brendan Schulman, vice president of policy and legal affairs at DJI, a large drone manufacturer.
But the idea that authorities should be able to identify who is piloting every drone moving through the airspace is not without controversy. Depending on its approach, the FAA could find itself involved in litigation over the scope of its authority over drones—or become embroiled in a wider debate about drone operators’ privacy rights.
Some attorneys speculate the FAA could make an announcement about its remote ID proposal at the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Symposium kicking off on Tuesday in Baltimore. The event runs through Thursday and features a number of FAA officials, including Earl Lawrence, director of the agency’s UAS integration office. If the FAA keeps mum this week, it will have another opportunity to make a splash at another major industry conference scheduled in April.
Sara Baxenberg of Wiley Rein said she anticipates the FAA is going to move forward with its formal rule-making process for remote ID in “relatively short order” and that the agency might use the Baltimore symposium to at least shed some light on the approach it wants to take.
An FAA spokesman said he could not comment on whether the agency planned to make any new rule announcements soon.
‘Security Concerns’
The FAA’s momentum toward requiring drones to be equipped with remote ID technology began in early 2017, not long after the agency began rolling out a regulation that would allow drone flights over people. Current FAA rules prohibit that and allow commercial drone use only on case-by-case basis.
The move drew pushback from law enforcement and national security officials who feared they would not be able to determine who was piloting a drone if it suddenly posed a danger to humans or infrastructure below. In response, the FAA pumped the brakes on the flights-over-people rule and began talking with drone makers, hobbyist groups, companies and authorities about how to implement remote ID technology.
In a speech in March 2017 at the last UAS Symposium, FAA’s then-Administrator Michael Huerta publicly acknowledged the fears raised by authorities. “In the coming weeks, we will begin bringing the industry and national security leadership together to address these issues,” he said. “We hope to create a mutual understanding about the government’s security concerns and discuss how we can collaborate to address them.”
The agency subsequently formed the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Identification and Tracking Aviation Rulemaking Committee, or ARC, to put forward a set of recommendations for how to identify drones remotely. The resulting report was issued in fall of last year and recommended two options for remote ID technology: having drones broadcast a unique identifier similar to a license plate number locally with a radio signal or having the drone connect to the cellular network and send its ID data to a government database.
There was general agreement among the various industry and law enforcement stakeholders on those points. But the ARC split on the issue of how broadly the rule should apply to noncommercial drones flown by hobbyists.
A number of industry organizations, including the Commercial Drone Alliance and Aerospace Industries Association, filed dissents to the report’s recommendation that certain lower-capability aircraft flown by modelers be carved out from the remote ID rules.
“This exemption is a loophole that swallows the rule,” the Commercial Drone Alliance dissent said. “It would permit a huge segment of the UAS community to avoid participating in the UAS ID and Tracking system and complying with the corresponding ID and Tracking regulations.”
Air War?
The tension over hobbyists stems from legislation enacted in 2012 known as Section 336, or the Special Rule for Model Aircraft. The provision generally prohibits FAA from issuing regulations for drones not flown for a business purpose.
The FAA has been sued under the provision before and lost. After it rolled out an emergency rule to require registration of all drones above a certain weight in 2015, a man named John Taylor sued the agency pro se under Section 336, arguing it had overstepped its authority. In a March 2017 ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed.
In a subsequent defense spending bill, Congress nullified that ruling by giving the FAA express authority for its registration regulation. But it left up in the air whether the agency could announce other rules that would affect hobbyists, raising the question of whether it might again face litigation over the remote ID regulation if it applies to craft flown by hobbyists.
The Academy of Model Aeronautics, an Indiana-based group that represents some 200,000 hobbyist members and participated in the ARC, has indicated it is amenable to remote ID requirements as long as they wouldn’t rope in low-capability drones, like toys. “We agree that tracking and remote identification makes sense at some level, depending on the UAS sophistication and capability,” the group said in a statement in December.
The FAA appears to be treading cautiously, though. As attorneys from Jones Day noted in an article in January, the administration has said that the FAA plans to start by issuing an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on remote ID, rather than just rolling out a fully-baked proposal. That approach indicates the FAA “is still in fact-finding mode and not yet ready to lock into a proposal,” attorneys Dean Griffith and Benjamin Lee wrote.
According to a Department of Transportation document, FAA is currently set to publish its advanced notice on June 28, after it clears the White House Office of Management & Budget.
Drone Privacy
From a technological standpoint, how the FAA chooses to mandate remote ID could also implicate the privacy interests of drone users. Having drones broadcast their location via cellular networks, for example, could allow the government to create a database with historical information of everywhere a drone has ever flown.
That’s something the ARC didn’t really delve into, said DJI’s Schulman, who participated in the advisory committee. “In some ways it was an unbalanced ARC, because it had a narrow objective” to identify ways to ID drones. There was little consideration for balancing those interests against the civil liberties and privacy concerns of operators, he added.
A coalition of news media groups, in a dissent from the ARC report, also highlighted those concerns, saying it “contains insufficient consideration of the constitutional guarantees for journalists to gather, and the public to receive, news and information in the public interest.”
If followed, the recommendations would give officials “unbridled discretion before accessing a database containing personal identifying information or historical tracking information about the operation” of unmanned aircraft,” the coalition added.
Josh Turner of Wiley Rein, whose firm represents the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, said that drone-makers and businesses are mindful of those interests—as well as the need to adopt a standard that is easy to implement. “I think everyone in the process understands the importance of privacy,” he said.

Correction: An earlier version of this story gave the incorrect projected date for when the FAA is set to publish its advanced notice.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Sadly this is yet another attempt by clueless fear mongering morons in bad suits to establish more government control and tracking of individuals. This is all based on a path to monetize yet another aspect of American life thru taxes, licencing and the main money grab MORE insurance tacked on to peoples earnings. They care nothing about saftey of people at the levels where the F.A.A is getting its direction or motivation to do all this.

How do I justify this as fake and nothing more then a money grab you ask.. Simple.. I can load down an RC car with far more explosives and be even more accurate and deadly then any hobby based aircraft. Yet not a word has been said to regulate any other aspect of the RC hobby for which the F.A.A has no control. They use fear of drones to motivate sheeple with zero clue about what the hobby is as leverage to gain more power to manipulate and extort the public wanting to use what they wish to monetize.

When all the legal aspects fail and there is too much opposition we will see more and more "drone incidences" in the media perpetrated by "black ops level government plants" just as they are currently doing with all the "Assault weapon" attacks escalating. Its not hard to get on line and talk a kid with low self esteem or mental issues into doing stupid things. Its just things like that are now easier to manipulate while keeping links to government involvement out of the light.

Am I paranoid or crazy.. probably... doesn't change the facts that if our government does this type of control crap around the world that they are not doing it on our own people. Love my country.. Despise our government as it is now...


Edit: add to this that mandated identification broadcasting devices would make the hobby less safe due to more weight and a higher power penalty to deal with. No room on most these quads to put a label on that is readable let alone some other transmitter.
 
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Ray K

Ray K
Bill, I love your post. I particularly liked the parts about the rc car and the black ops. Paranoid? Possibly, but I happen to agree with you and suspect you've been down some of the same roads I have. And maybe, just maybe we have a reason for being "paranoid".
 

F106DeltaDart

Elite member
I thought I’d add in a few of my thoughts on this as well. To say the least, it makes no sense in recreational models flown within line of sight distances. It’s completely impractical in wieght and cost at such a small scale.

However, for certain cases, this actually makes sense. Now before you ask me if I’ve gone off my rocker, here’s why I say this.

Beginning in 2020, it is mandated for all aircraft that wish to fly into controlled airspace or above 2500 ft, to have an ADS-B position reporting transmitter. It makes sense on some level, that this would apply to UAVs. If you are operating a UAV above the maximum “model” wieght of 55 lbs, and out of line of sight, this would have a lot of benefits. It allows you to continue operating and give a safe warning of your position to other aircraft. This is especially important due to the reduced situational awareness of piloting an aircraft remotely.

This would be the first option, for a passive onboard transponder. The second option, with transmitting everything to a government maintained database, is the scary one, and really brings up the privacy question. Not to mention doing it through cell networks would be a recurring cost, rather than a one-time transponder purchase. This option had better not leave the table, because I want nothing to do with it.

For anything in the RC model class, this still makes no sense in general. Even ultralights aren’t required to have a transponder. It’s too much of a penalty in size, wieght, and cost. And any transponder would have to certified by the FAA, which is pretty much an instant doubling of the price point.
 

PsyBorg

Wake up! Time to fly!
Like I said another money grab to fleece us people who want to do right and play by the "rules". The criminals and terrorists this is all supposed to be stopping still wont care, still wont use any of it and most certainly not pay for any of it.
 

Ray K

Ray K
I
Beginning in 2020, it is mandated for all aircraft that wish to fly into controlled airspace or above 2500 ft, to have an ADS-B position reporting transmitter. It makes sense on some level, that this would apply to UAVs. If you are operating a UAV above the maximum “model” wieght of 55 lbs, and out of line of sight, this would have a lot of benefits. It allows you to continue operating and give a safe warning of your position to other aircraft. This is especially important due to the reduced situational awareness of piloting an aircraft remotely.

This would be the first option, for a passive onboard transponder. The second option, with transmitting everything to a government maintained database, is the scary one, and really brings up the privacy question. Not to mention doing it through cell networks would be a recurring cost, rather than a one-time transponder purchase. This option had better not leave the table, because I want nothing to do with it.

For anything in the RC model class, this still makes no sense in general. Even ultralights aren’t required to have a transponder. It’s too much of a penalty in size, wieght, and cost. And any transponder would have to certified by the FAA, which is pretty much an instant doubling of the price point.

So long as utralights and other, smaller aircraft stay out of controlled airspace, I agree. Why on earth would any r/c hobbyist need to climb to 2,500 or better, anyway. VFR helos usually stay around 800 AGL, so the conflict with drones would begin there. And in Class A or B, heck even C, it makes no sense for drones to be there. If I hit one of those drones while on approach with my little experimental, there's a good chance it could knock me out of the sky. I need to pick up one of the ADS-B radios for my plane. They're slowly coming down in price and size, so it's becoming feasible for me, even though I avoid A and B like the plague.

The whole thing comes back to a pilot taking on the responsibility for maintaining separation, just like it always has. And that can easily become a problem for drone "pilots" without good training.