Considering the steady flow of reports about the United States executing its foreign policy abroad using unmanned aircraft, one could easily assume that the government is a fan of what are colloquially known as “drones.” But on the home front, where, instead of dropping bombs, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could easily be used in roles as diverse as saving lives to bettering the environment, the federal government is hell-bent on jealously controlling the ways that the public can access this revolutionary technology. [contextly_auto_sidebar id=”aA0Qo560E3bBTCzSGvGE6BA4MFtbbOsh”]
It’s time the public takes notice.
Despite a recent court ruling in favor of a small UAV operator, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been using its clout to go after private UAV users working in a variety of fields, many of which would greatly benefit the public.
One of the FAA’s most recent victims was the Texas EquuSearch Mounted Search and Recovery Team (TES), a volunteer search and rescue organization that helps finding lost people. Texas EquuSearch uses a five-pound Styrofoam-and-plastic, camera-equipped hobbyists model aircraft in conjunction with ground teams to search for missing people.
Despite the aircraft’s small size, inexpensiveness, and unlikeliness of causing serious damage in the event of a catastrophic failure, Texas EquuSearch’s UAV is a powerful tool that can photograph a square mile in less than ten minutes, allowing search planners to direct ground parties to areas of interest quickly.
According to the founder, Tim Miller, the UAVs “are an absolutely irreplaceable resource during our searches. This technology gives us a better chance at finding missing people alive, without the high cost of using helicopters, which are often not even available, and make the best and safest use of our volunteer searchers’ time during the critical first hours.
“The drones help me fulfill the promise I make to families that I will use every resource available to bring home their missing loved ones.”
According to Texas EquuSearch, UAVs helped pinpoint the location of 11 missing people.
The FAA’s ridiculous restrictions on civilian UAVs intrude far beyond volunteer search and recovery teams and intrude into the realm of the First Amendment protected activity. By classifying journalism as a commercial activity, the FAA has been banning domestic UAV use by news organizations seeking to collect footage and data of interest to the public.
The FAA has taken this to the extreme. In a recent case, an Ohio UAV hobbyist recorded an enormous fire and offered to donate the footage to the Dayton Business Journal free of charge. But when the Journal inquired about whether they would run afoul of FAA regulation, they were told not to publish the video because, according to an FAA spokesman, “It’s still prohibited in the U.S. to use drones for commercial operations, and if it had to go through the court we would get our lawyers involved.”
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that a federal entity that has no compunction about closing the airspace around the Bundy ranch to discourage aerial news coverage has a permeating culture that lacks respect for First Amendment protected activity. After all, how long will it be before civilian watchdog organizations can turn the tables and, using AUV technology, afford to keep an eye on the government in the same manner in which they currently watch us?
Given the enormous potential that unmanned aerial vehicles possess, Americans should not roll over and wait for the FAA to issue absurd regulations in 2015 that will surely place enormous burdens on small businesses and individual operators, limiting our ability to harness this groundbreaking technology.
Besides, wouldn’t you all like gun reviews on TLR that are shot with a drone?
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