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Drone pilot makes US rescind no-fly zones around unmarked, moving ICE vehicles
- sameers 6mo agoSlowly clawing back liberties against this fascist administration.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- Computer0 6mo agoNow they are allowed to shoot them down at will.
- solidsnack9000 6mo agoNot really. The FAA revised the rule, but that was their choice, not the result of a ruling or even the reasoned application of a general principle. The very broad power of administrative rulemaking held by that agency is unchanged -- and the power of agencies generally, to make law without legislating, without accountability to the electorate, actually has nothing to do with this administration, does it? It actually has nothing to do with any of them. It's something the legislature has allowed to grow and grow over successive administrations, whether Democrats or Republicans are in power.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 6mo agoI am not sure what is a better alternative. Laws can set the broad guidelines, but the people in those administrative roles have to make explicit decisions when gray areas inevitably arise. The legislature is free to codify the exact rules it wants when they disagree with the current setup.
- solidsnack9000 6mo agoThey are free to do it but don't. That's exactly the problem. They also don't respond to overreach in rulemaking by revising the grants they have made, so it has been a cumulative process.
- sameers 6mo agoInteresting points, glad to have started this conversation. Re this being the FAA's choice, I was reacting to this line in the reporting: "On April 10, Levine and his lawyers pressed ahead by filing an emergency motion [... which... ] may have expedited the government’s next move [to replace] the sweeping flight restrictions with a “national security advisory” [and dropping] all mentions of flight restrictions and criminal charges." Maybe Ars is being too rosy-viewed about the causality there, idk. I have no partic feeling one way or the other though I do want to take whatever comfort I can in the notion that the "system of checks and balances" is working. I'd rather go to bed thinking it is, than tell myself cynically that this was just another whim of an agency, with no real principled attitude. I believe that the Trump administration in particular - not Republicans as opposed to Democrats - has abused agency independence in a manner unprecedented in recent American politics. I think agencies SHOULD act autonomously to determine specifics just like this one - what vehicles/devices, with what capabilities, can fly where and in what manner, and that we SHOULD value "expert advice" in such situations instead of using that phrase as invective. I think the American people should celebrate that we grant such freedoms because it lets us all benefit from expertise - but they should also understand that there is a price to pay in vigilance, of having to challenge the legality of agency actions if the particular implementation of regulations infringes on constitutional rights. But it's not just litigation that will prevent abuse - the first line of defense against it should be the expectation that administrations will consider themselves beholden to certain social norms of cautious use of power. Do you believe that there is no daylight between this administration and previous ones in terms of how they view what norms they ought to consider themselves bound by? That's a genuine question, not a rhetorical one - if you don't believe that, I am curious to know more. I don't think legislatures can possibly identify a priori all the ways in which rights could possibly be infringed and make their grants so granular that agencies can't possibly find abusive interpretations. Those can only be determined in specific, real, cases, when fallible individuals attempt to meet the legislated objectives by taking concrete action. I don't understand this idea that federal agencies have become "unaccountable" merely because they issue intepretations every day as and when they encounter real-world situations. The Chevron doctrine seemed a perfectly fine compromise to me - how this court thinks the legislative body can magically divine all the future possibilities and encode them into the acts that govern the agencies is just beyond me.
- delichon 6mo agoUnmarked no-fly zones at unannounced times and locations are a remarkable innovation. Hopefully they will tell you when and where you shouldn't have been when they charge you for it, but that may be classified.
- helterskelter 6mo agoUp next, secret interpretations of laws to do things with zero accountability or public overaight. Oh wait we already have that.
- throwaway85825 6mo agoAnd have had that for a while.
- solid_fuel 6mo agoBefore you know it, they'll be detaining people without legal representation, shipping them to overseas black sites, and murdering citizens in the street. Oh, wait that's been the entirety of this treasonous administration.
- cindyllm 6mo ago[dead]
- t-3 6mo ago> Oh, wait that's been the entirety of this treasonous administration. That's been the case for at least 25 years. Still bad, but not new or unique to Trump. I'm too young to have a good idea of what the pre-Patriot Act American military/intelligence/secret police was like, but the historical stuff that comes to light from time to time doesn't lend much confidence that they were all that much better - they just did it illegally and ashamedly whereas now it's quasi-legal and fully acceptable.
- solid_fuel 6mo ago
- tamimio 6mo ago> the order extended no-fly zones to ground vehicles belonging to the Department of Homeland Security. Even while the vehicles were in motion. Even if they were unmarked. And even if their routes had not been announced. I want to know the genius who wrote this, and the mastermind who approved it.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- nkrisc 6mo agoWhoever it was knew exactly what they were doing, and it was intentional.
- crooked-v 6mo agoOr in other words: the cruelty is the point.
- lenerdenator 6mo agoSomeone who doesn't get that we're supposed to have a representative government with enumerated powers in this country. Or maybe they do get that, but find it incredibly inconvenient to their own aspirations.
- solid_fuel 6mo agoThis is exactly how corrupt, authoritarian governments have always operated.
- fluoridation 6mo agoDo no-fly zones extend indefinitely upwards? If so, can you build a no-fly wall out of cars?
- kccqzy 6mo agoThe article states 1,000 vertical feet. Obviously this is targeting small drones and not commercial aircraft or even general aviation.
- avazhi 6mo ago[flagged]
- actionfromafar 6mo ago[flagged]
- gbin 6mo agoWhat are you talking about. Read part 107. Flying a drone is almost as hard as flying legally a private plane. Fines are huge. They are enforced.
- avazhi 6mo ago> Flying a drone is almost as hard as flying legally a private plane What universe are you in? The FAA can’t even find and identify most of the dickheads flying drones around restricted airspace. You think they give a shit about drones in rural areas around smaller airports? Drones are cheap and easily accessible, orders of magnitude easier to get than an airplane in terms of actual acquisition and the license (spoiler: most drone users aren’t licensed). Compare both of those things with the cost of getting a PPL, to say nothing of how expensive even a small plane is. It isn’t just the US, either - I’ve flown small planes in both America and Australia, and drones are something that both the FAA and CASA clearly aren’t equipped to deal with. Regulations and laws don’t matter if you can’t enforce them because you can’t identify the perpetrator.
- Artoooooor 6mo agoCouldn't it be used to identify/track the ICE vehicles? Observe where drones suddenly become enclosed in a no-fly zone (do I understand correctly that operators get notification that they should land immediately)?
- stavros 6mo agoThe problem (which I've had happen) is that a no-fly zone suddenly popping up might prevent your drone from coming back to you. Not that a government that just pops up no-fly zones would care about your drone, but just saying.
- jagged-chisel 6mo agoAre you suggesting that the system is efficient enough, and the users of it are competent enough, that a live moving no-fly zone would be placed somewhere that a drone in the immediate vicinity would be informed and be disabled? I have my doubts. I would guess one "popping up" would at least be delayed such that it's pretty pointless by the time the drones are notified. Annoying indeed, useful (even to the ne'er-do-wells trying to enforce this crazy stuff) not so much.
- stavros 6mo agoDJI has (or, at least, had, a few years ago) a no-fly system that was updated via the Internet. Maybe it's not live, but then what would be the point of these no-fly zones? Just so ICE agents can shoot your drone down with impunity? If they didn't need license to execute people in the streets, I don't see why they'd need license to shoot down a drone.
- zahlman 6mo ago[flagged]
- jagged-chisel 6mo agoJournalists documenting the behavior of law enforcement. One needn't report live streaming information for use of a drone to be valuable in a civil society. Law enforcement officers are granted power to perform their jobs, but that power should remain in check lest it be used to deny citizens their rights.
- zahlman 6mo agoA drone is less useful for "documenting the behaviour of law enforcement" than a cell phone camera operated at ground level. Because it is filming from entirely the wrong angle, at the wrong time (in transit rather than at the enforcement site).
- tdb7893 6mo agoThis is pretty ironic given that the government can and absolutely does track American citizens everywhere without a warrant. I've known people who were harassed by police because they were near a crime that happened and the police used it's surveillance tools to find likely people in the area.
- kulahan 6mo agoIt has never been the case in America (at least not since any of us have been alive) that warrants are always required. There are plenty of situations where they are not.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- tdb7893 6mo agoIt's not about the warrant (which was mentioned just to reinforce the lack of oversight law enforcement has when it invades people's privacy) but the massive assymmetry here and the person I'm responding to compared this situation to the rights Americans have. Normal citizens can't get full no fly zones and are subject to even more invasive tactics. The comparison to normal citizens highlights that what was done here was far in excess of what is done for normal citizens and seems counter to their overall argument.
- tantalor 6mo ago[flagged]
- miltonlost 6mo agoIn no way is that the most important point of the article, especially when you are cherrypicking that sentence and deleting part of it and still don't include how the updated guideline is still ambiguous. You are the "shit writer" here and commenter. "On April 15, the FAA removed the no-fly zones by replacing the sweeping flight restrictions with a “national security advisory” titled NOTAM FDC 6/2824. The revised notice dropped all mentions of flight restrictions and criminal charges. It instead “advised” drone pilots to avoid flying near “covered mobile assets” belonging to the Department of Homeland Security and several other federal agencies." "The new FAA advisory wording is “a lot better than it was,” but it still comes off as “too ambiguous,” according to Moss at the Drone Service Providers Alliance. He suggested that the Department of Homeland Security could handle any potential drone concerns rather than making it an FAA issue."
- defrost 6mo ago> You are the "shit writer" here and commenter. Your comment is just as good w/out this. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )
- gsibble 6mo ago[flagged]
- catcowcostume 6mo agoDo you feel hurt when reality exposes the nonsense of your almighty dictator?
- manishsharan 6mo agoThis is not your feed. I appreciate the fact that HN does not have personalized echo chamber aka feeds. Government overreach is a concern for a lot of HNers; hence this was voted up.
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- chneu 6mo ago"Muh safe space! My privilege! My entitlement! Won't anyone think of me?! The victim here is me!"