Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced new rules on drones. It is an understandable move but one that has the feel of a scramble to keep up with a phenomenon out of control. And with that, it risks serious overreach.
There is no doubt that drones rate some sort of attention. The FAA says about 1.6 million of them will be sold this year. The agency is getting more and more reports of drones coming near aircraft, and in dozens of cases, piloted craft have had to take evasive action.
Concerns for privacy are also well-founded. Drones fly low and can easily be used to watch over others and their property. That could constitute legitimate surveillance, but it could just as easily be unwarranted snooping or even amount to an airborne peeping tom. With the price of models equipped with cameras having dipped well into Christmas-present range, all that is going to escalate.
But pressure to “do something” is rarely the basis of sound policy, and there is little about the announced regulations that seems thought through. The rules require owners to register their drones online, where they would also pay a $5 fee and get a unique number to affix to the drone.
The idea is that registration could help the FAA hold reckless drone operators accountable. It is also meant to give the agency an opportunity to educate people who typically are not trained pilots.
Because the FAA is acting under existing law, failure to comply with the registration requirement would technically carry the same penalties as failure to register an airplane – a fine of as much as $250,000 and up to three years in prison. Would anyone actually apply those penalties to a kid playing with a toy?
But if not, what would be the penalty? A talking to might be appropriate in that example, and a spokesman told The Wall Street Journal its aim would be to get unregistered drone operators to comply rather than to punish them. But how does that comport with the urgency the FAA seems to feel about drones?
And who would enforce these rules to begin with? The FAA does not have that kind of resources. The agency has said it would seek help from local law enforcement. One can only imagine law enforcement agencies’ enthusiasm for devoting local resources to enforcing a federal regulation requiring registration of items sold as children’s toys.
Of course, one basis for the FAA’s new regs may be bureaucratic turf. With more and more state and local governments seeking to control drones, the agency may be jealous of its monopoly on airspace regulation. And when it comes to airports and proximity to other aircraft, that is legitimate. Those are FAA issues and pose real dangers.
Otherwise, why not focus on the behavior and intent of the operator instead of the drone? If the drone was used to try to fly drugs into a prison or over the White House – both of which have happened – existing laws were broken. The same is true if its camera was aimed at a bedroom window.
A national conversation about drones and privacy is past due. The place to start, though, is not with registration requirements and fees on the millions of drone owners who have done nothing wrong.
