Racism adv

Drones are racist

Kindynis 12
(Theo, writer and researcher considers issues of policing, security and social control, October
14th 2012, Eyes in the sky: the rise of the police
drones,https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/eye-sky-primer-police-drones/)

The notoriously brutal LAPD long seen by many in the black community as an
occupying (para)military force was the first police force to use the technology,
flying a lightweight SkySeer surveillance drone over the streets of South Central
since 2006. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security has awarded
hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants for small UAVs to at least 13 police
departments, and the Supreme Court has ruled that individuals have no right to
privacy from police observation from public airspace. Until now, restrictions imposed by the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have kept many drones on the ground. However, Congress recently
passed a law requiring the FAA to loosen these restrictions and most police forces
are expected to be able to fly small UAVs by next year. In the meantime, the New
York Police Department is investigating the possible use of UAVs as a law
enforcement tool, whilst the Miami-Dade Police Department already has a fleet of
drones ready to fly. Within the UK, arms manufacturer BAE Systems was revealed in 2010 to be
working alongside several government agencies to develop an unprecedented
national strategy for the use of drones by police in routine surveillance,
monitoring and evidence gathering. According to a recent report by Drone Wars UK, the British
government has spent 2 billion on military drones since 2007. BAE, which already produces a range of UCAVs for
use in warzones such as Afghanistan and Iraq including the deadly Mantis and stealth bomber-style Taranis drones
are now reported to be adapting military-style drones for a range of police uses. At least four constabularies are
known to have already used or trialed drones, with many more expressing an interest in the technology. However,
those aircraft trialled so far have been little more than small remote-controlled helicopters fitted with cameras.
Furthermore, British law enforcements forays into UAV surveillance have met with decidedly mixed results.
Merseyside police have reportedly trialled a lightweight helicopter-style drone from 2007 until early 2010 when they
crashed the 13,000 UAV into the River Mersey. To make matters worse, the force could face prosecution for using
the aircraft without a license a criminal offence. The British Transport Police apparently conducted a short trial
with a similar model, though eventually deciding not to purchase one. Meanwhile, a drone acquired by Essex police
has been left to languish in a warehouse after the force decided it wasnt worth the money. Whilst Staffordshire
police have managed to use a drone to spy on revellers at V Festival, they were unable to fly it over the main arena
because of fears it might crash and injure someone. Most recently, plans to use larger military-style drones for
aerial crowd surveillance during the London 2012 Olympic Games were hampered by Civil Aviation Authority (CAA)
regulations. However, the prospects for drone surveillance by British law enforcement agencies look likely to
change in the near future. Speaking at the launch of a new National Police Air Service last week, police minister
Damian Green endorsed the use of drones by British police for aerial surveillance purposes. Drones are like any
other piece of kit claimed Green; Where its appropriate or proportionate to use them then we will look at using
them. For his part, Chief Constable Alex Marshall further remarked that whilst drones are not currently used in
mainstream policing they may well offer something for the future. According to Chris Cole from Drone Wars UK,
current CAA regulations are too severe for police drone use to be practical for most forces, although this may be set
to change in the next few years (the CAA has already licensed the testing of drones at ParcAberporth in Wales).
Regulations regarding small radio-controlled aircraft however remain dangerously lax, according to Emma Carr
from privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, and this is something it appears those selling
drones are keen to exploit. Furthermore, surveillance may only be the start. Military drones quickly moved from
reconnaissance to strike recounts Wired magazines David Hambling. If the British police follow suit, their drones
could be armed but with non-lethal weapons rather than Hellfire missiles. Noel Sharkey, a professor of Artificial
Intelligence and Robotics at Sheffield University expressed similar concerns, asking, How long will it be before
someone gets tasered from the air for dropping litter? The answer may be: not that long at all; a $300,000
Vanguard Shadowhawk drone purchased by the Montgomery County Sherriffs Department is already capable of
firing rubber bullets, tear gas canisters and taser projectiles. According to Salon, an Ohio police lieutenant
interested in the drone was told by Vanguard representatives that it can also carry grenade launchers and 12-gauge

shotguns. Particularly worrying here is how drone surveillance tends to abstract people from their contexts,
reducing variation and ambiguity that might otherwise impede action such as pepper spraying or shooting a
suspect by trigger-happy police.

A year ago the UK was shaken by rioting on a scale not

seen in decades, a key contributing factor to which was the disastrous breakdown of
relations between police and inner-city communities. According to the Guardians
Reading The Riots survey, many involved in the disorder cited policing as the
single most significant cause of the riots. In light of this, it seems reasonable to
suggest that the kind of remote control policing-at-arms-length that drone-based
technology inevitably encourages, whereby the local community is viewed from afar
in a form of mechanised surveillance that dehumanises both the watched and the
watcher, is precisely what is not needed. Withdrawing from the beat to watch over
the streets through electronic eyes in the sky will only stand to further alienate an
already overwhelmingly and visibly homogeneous (white, male, respectable
working-class) police force from the diverse inner city communities it exists to
serve. Furthermore, the use of drones by police will be seen by many as a refusal to
engage with the public at the most fundamentally human level, and thus further
undermine their already dwindling legitimacy.

Domestic drones fuel the militarization of police exports

violence abroad to minority bodies
Thrasher 12
(Greg, VOD Washington Bureau, Writer, May 24,2012, Drone Alert
,http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/05/24/drone-alert/)

Our country spends billions of dollars on the purchase of weapons and hi tech
security devices under the premise of national defense and the protection and
safety of the home land. Retired generals leave our armed forces to peddle their services to defense
contractors in the weapons industry. America not only arms itself but our nation is also the number one arms dealer

We have more weapons of mass destruction than any

other nation on the globe. America is indeed a profitable merchant in the market of
warfare products.. Last week this escalation in military purchases and devices came to the
our homeland, not to protect us from our external foes but to assist and augment
the armory of our local police departments. The Federal Aviation Administration
loosened the restrictions on local police departments surveillance of us to allow
them to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, also commonly known as DRONE S. Our nations
and weapons supplier in the world.

high court, the Supreme Court, has even ruled that warrantless surveillance by manned aircraft is not

In far too many

powerful public and private circles there are advocates focused on introducing the
military into our cities and other venues. We now face the specter of entire cities
being profiled by the usage of military-designed DRONES. Local municipalities,
already burdened by fiscal deficits and lousy revenues, are actually spending huge
outlays of their budgets in the purchase of these hi tech anti- freedom profile driven
devices. Where is the outrage from our public officials, activist groups and even police unions over these invasive
surveillance and anti -privacy domestic military machines in our nations urban airspace? One of the real
dark potentials of these DRONES is not only their ugly invasion and violation of
privacy rights, but these DRONES also have the capacity to be lethal and deadly.
The applications and operational features of DRONES are truly unimaginable. The
growing militarization of our local law enforcement departments is not to be
unconstitutional and does not violate the 4th Amendment of our federal constitution.

excused by fictional claims of terrorism and excessive urban crimes . We must reject
and defeat the myths about crime and anarchy in our cities. We must defuse and
deflate the notions that our cities are cesspools of violence and crime. The
proliferation of the myth of crime and the profiling of entire bandwidths of people
based upon their hue and types of clothing is dangerous. Such a public policy
creates a fertile soil for the introduction of military devices like DRONES into our
domestic venues. DRONES are part of the arsenal of gadgets and devices which
destroy the freedoms of all Americans. We must reject all kinds of devices and
gadgets which at the end of the day are WMDs on American soil.

Drones be racist
Cyril 3/30
(Malkia, founder and executive director of the Center for Media Justice, March 30, 2015,
Black America's State of Surveillance,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance)

The ACLU's Guliani pointed out, however, that invasive forms of surveillance,
especially police surveillance, often impact communities of color disproportionately,
pointing to US Customs and Border Protections' ubiquitous use of drone surveillance
in vast border regions impacting huge swaths of the populations that live in those
areas. "You're not just talking about the physical border, you're talking about an area that encompasses many
major cities that have large minority populations, and the idea that these drones can be flown with little
or no privacy protections really mean that, people, just by virtue of living in that
region are somehow accepting that they have a right to less privacy," she said.
African-American communities could well feel the disproportionate impacts of the
integrated use of domestic drones and other surveillance in the coming years, as
technologies such as StingRay are already being used mostly in the ongoing war on
drugs to track those suspected of selling and buying drugs. The drug war has long
negatively impacted communities of color, based on racialized drug policies and
racial discrimination by law enforcement; two-thirds of all those convicted of drug
crimes are people of color, despite similar rates of drug use among whites and
people of color. These already-existing racial disparities in intrusive policing tactics and deployment of
surveillance technologies are one of the primary reasons civil liberties experts are saying the government often
gets it backward when thinking about privacy issues: deploying intrusive technologies first, and coming up with
privacy policies governing their use afterward (when they may already be violating many people's civil rights).
"What we see with StingRays is the same phenomenon that we're seeing with [UAS], where federal agencies are
using them," Guliani said. "State and local agencies are using them. There's federal dollars that are going to buy
them, and we're kind of having the privacy debate after the fact with very little information."

The government already uses surveillance to control Muslim

populations in the US. Drone expansion would only expand
government Islamophobia.
Knefel 13
(John, journalist, March 11, 2013, Police Spying on American Muslims Is a Pointless National
Shame, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/police-spying-on-american-muslims-is-apointless-national-shame-20130311)
Civil liberties groups led by the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition released a new report
today detailing the detrimental effects of the NYPDs spying on Muslim communities in recent
years. The report, called Mapping Muslims: NYPD Spying and its Impact on American Muslims , alleges that

more than a decade of surveillance of Muslims throughout the Northeast has chilled
constitutionally protected rights curtailing religious practice, censoring speech and
stunting political organizing. They describe their communities as being under a pervasive
climate of fear and suspicion that affects every aspect of individual and community life.
The report combines publicly available documentation about the NYPDs snooping regime including the Associated
Press groundbreaking investigations into the departments Demographics Unit with original interviews of 57
Muslims in New York City. But the significance of this report reaches far beyond New Yorks Muslim

community and even beyond the American Muslim community at large. The authors have
provided a needed rebuttal to the common argument that surveillance isnt a problem if you
have nothing to hide, and that spying itself is essentially value-neutral so long as you dont become a target of
an investigation. The Muslims interviewed in the report describe a terrifying reality where trust and privacy are
virtually impossible, and where lives are severely harmed by spying alone. The pervasive spying regime has
effectively intimidated many would-be critics. Many of the Shia organizations who were approached by activists to
speak up or speak out were hesitant to do so, says community organizer Ali Naquvi in the report. A lot of it seems
to be fear. They dont want to be targeted for additional surveillance. Discouraging this legitimate, constitutionally
protected behavior isnt simply an unfortunate by-product of total surveillance, but rather a primary and predictable
outcome. As anyone who has ever suspected themselves of being under surveillance will tell

you, that fear changes the way you think and act. Instilling such fears is an extremely
effective form of social control. And whether limiting civil rights and liberties in this way was the stated aim
of the Intelligence Division doesnt really matter. That has been the effect one that was entirely foreseeable. So
what has all this surveillance, this so-called intelligence gathering, gotten us? A terrorized local Muslim
population, a police department that grossly exaggerates the terror plots it has disrupted and a crown jewel
investigation of a troubled man named Ahmed Ferhani that was so problematic even the FBI recently dubbed the
terror factory by one author because of its role in manufacturing plots that its own agents then disrupt wanted
nothing to do with it. And as the report reminds us, Thomas Galati, the commanding officer of the NYPDs
Intelligence Division, admitted during sworn testimony that in the six years of his tenure, the unit tasked with
monitoring American Muslim life had not yielded a single criminal lead. While Muslims in the Northeast are the
people most directly affected by this surveillance, it is a national problem both in the sense that all of our rights
are infringed if anyones are, but also in a more concrete way. The states capacity for surveillance is

already enormous, and will only expand as technologies, including domestic drones,
continue to increase in sophistication. When total surveillance of one population becomes normalized, we
are all at a greater risk of being illegally spied on. This report is an important document that illustrates just how
damaging that can be.

Warrant requirement is key

Sengupta 13
(SOMINI, United Nations bureau chief at The New York Times, 24 February 2015 10:18,
Proposed Rules Regulating Domestic Drone Use Lack Police Warrant Requirement,
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/29250-proposed-rules-regulating-domestic-drone-uselack-police-warrant-requirement)
The use of StingRay technology as it currently stands is already incredibly secretive, with police departments and
manufacturers such as Harris Corporation concealing their use of the phone-tracking equipment from the courts
through the use of non-disclosure agreements. The Department of Homeland Security's US Customs

and Border Protection and the FBI already use planes and drones in areas that are more than
100 miles of the Mexican border to conduct aerial surveillance, and government agencies
have been revealed to have been using Cessna planes outfitted with StingRay technology to
track suspects. The FBI has been resistant to answer even lawmakers' questions about how many drones it
operates and how often they are used. "It is both technologically possible and by no means a leap to imagine that
once the FAA approves broader use of drones within the US by law enforcement, [law enforcement officials] may
put StingRays on them," said Nathan Freed Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and
Technology Project, and an expert on StingRay technology. UAS have also been outfitted with thermal sensing
technologies to produce heat maps of people inside buildings. Other advocates worry if domestic drones are
deployed as a platform for providing temporary internet service to consumers, it could potentially give corporate
drone operators access to the internet data of those consumers and threaten net neutrality. "If internet companies
were to deliver internet service in hard-to-reach places, which would be a good thing, would they then be collecting

information in large quantities and would that information then be something that their contacts would then have
access to?" asked Drew Mitnick who is junior policy counsel at Access, an organization dedicated to issues of
internet freedom. It's questions like this that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has
been ordered by the White House to answer in a collaborative process, alongside civil society and industry groups,

invasive forms
of surveillance, especially police surveillance, often impact communities of color
disproportionately, pointing to US Customs and Border Protections' ubiquitous use of drone surveillance in
to develop guidelines for commercial drone use. The ACLU's Guliani pointed out, however, that

"You're not just talking

about the physical border, you're talking about an area that encompasses many major cities
that have large minority populations, and the idea that these drones can be flown with little
or no privacy protections really mean that, people, just by virtue of living in that region are
somehow accepting that they have a right to less privacy," she said. African-American
communities could well feel the disproportionate impacts of the integrated use of
vast border regions impacting huge swaths of the populations that live in those areas.

domestic drones and other surveillance in the coming years, as technologies such
as StingRay are already being used mostly in the ongoing war on drugs to track
those suspected of selling and buying drugs. The drug war has long negatively
impacted communities of color, based on racialized drug policies and racial
discrimination by law enforcement; two-thirds of all those convicted of drug crimes
are people of color, despite similar rates of drug use among whites and people of color.
These already-existing racial disparities in intrusive policing tactics and deployment of
surveillance technologies are one of the primary reasons civil liberties experts are saying the
government often gets it backward when thinking about privacy issues: deploying intrusive
technologies first, and coming up with privacy policies governing their use afterward (when
they may already be violating many people's civil rights). "What we see with StingRays is the same
phenomenon that we're seeing with [UAS], where federal agencies are using them," Guliani said. "State and local
agencies are using them. There's federal dollars that are going to buy them, and we're kind of having the privacy
debate after the fact with very little information."

Current UAVs are used to police and militarize the border

WALL AND MONAHAN 2011
(Tyler Wall, Eastern Kentucky University and Torin Monahan, Vanderbilt University, 2011
Surveillance and Violence from afar: The politics of drones and liminal security-scapes
http://www.antoniocasella.eu/nume/Wall_Monahan_drones_politics_2011.pdf)

Yet
UAVs are also being used as technologies of state surveillance and policing and are
deployed in security-scapes other than military combat zones. For instance, in the USA
drones are increasingly being used to police foreign migrants in relationship to its
territorial borderzones, particularly by locating people who are attempting to enter
the country illegally. In addition, as we will detail below, some police departments are now
conceiving of drones as surveillance devices that might prove useful in the routine
policing and monitoring of domestic territories. Soon after President Obama announced in May
By meshing aerial reconnaissance with aerial bombardment, drones function primarily as technologies of war.

2010 that 1200 National Guard soldiers (Werner and Billeaud, 2010) would be deployed to the already heavily
militarized 244 Theoretical Criminology 15(3) and surveilled USMexico border (Dunn, 1996; Pallitto and Heyman,

Brewer wrote a letter to Obama urging him to send also what she
asserted that
drones have proven effective in US military campaigns overseas and that they
would therefore assist in securing the US border : I would also ask you, as overseas operations in
2008), conservative Arizona Governor Jan

referred to as aviation assets, specifically military UAVs and helicopters (Lach, 2010). Brewer

Iraq and Afghanistan permit, to consider wider deployment of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] along our nations
southern border. I am aware of how effective these assets have become in Operations Iraqi and Enduring Freedom,
and

it seems UAVs operations would be ideal for border security and counter-drug

missions. (Quoted in Lach, 2010) This appeal for drones at the border obscures the fact
that UAVs have already been providing aerial surveillance over US border regions
(Shachtman, 2005; Gilson, 2010). Since 2006, the USA has spent approximately $100 million for
UAVs on both the southern and northern US borders as part of its efforts to create a
so-called virtual fence (Canwest News Service, 2007). As of 2010 the US Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) was operating six unarmed Predator drones for overhead surveillance missions along the USMexico border,
five of which were based in Brewers state of Arizona (Gilson, 2010). Since late 2007 or early 2008, the CBP has

CBP officials credit their

drones with helping bust 15,000 lbs of pot and 4,000 illegal immigrants ( Gilson, 2010).
In the words of a defense executive: It is quite easy to envision a future in which (UAVs),
unaffected by pilot fatigue, provide 247 border and port surveillance to protect
against terrorist intrusion Other examples [of possible uses] are limited only by our imagination
been testing drones in US/ Canada border regions (Canwest News Service, 2007).

(McCullagh, 2006).

Surveillence in the US most directly affects and targets

marginalized people. Drones only serve to exacerbate this.
Cyril 15
(Malika Amala, reporter, April 2015, Black Americas State of Surveillance,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance)
As local law enforcement agencies increasingly adopt surveillance technologies, they use
them in three primary ways: to listen in on specific conversations on and offline; to observe daily
movements of individuals and groups; and to observe data trends. Police departments like Brattons aim
to use sophisticated technologies to do all three. They will use technologies like license plate readers,
which the Electronic Frontier Foundation found to be disproportionately used in communities
of color and communities in the process of being gentrified. They will use facial recognition, biometric scanning software, which
the FBI has now rolled out as a national system, to be adopted by local police departments for any criminal justice purpose. They
intend to use body and dashboard cameras, which have been touted as an effective step toward accountability
based on the results of one study, yet storage and archiving procedures, among many other issues, remain unclear. They will
use Stingray cellphone interceptors. According to the ACLU, Stingray technology is an invasive cellphone surveillance
device that mimics cellphone towers and sends out signals to trick cellphones in the area into transmitting their locations and

When used to track a suspects cellphone, they also gather information

about the phones of countless bystanders who happen to be nearby. The same is true of
domestic drones, which are in increasing use by U.S. law enforcement to conduct routine
aerial surveillance. While drones are currently unarmed, drone manufacturers are
considering arming these remote-controlled aircraft with weapons like rubber bullets, tasers,
and tear gas. They will use fusion centers. Originally designed to increase interagency collaboration for the purposes of
identifying information.

counterterrorism, these have instead become the local arm of the intelligence community. According to Electronic Frontier
Foundation, there are currently seventy-eight on record. They are the clearinghouse for increasingly used suspicious activity
reportsdescribed as official documentation of observed behavior reasonably indicative of pre-operational planning related to
terrorism or other criminal activity. These reports and other collected data are often stored in massive databases like e-Verify and
Prism. As anybody whos ever dealt with gang databases knows, its almost impossible to get off a federal or state database, even
when the data collected is incorrect or no longer true.

Predictive policing doesnt just lead to racial and

religious profilingit relies on it. Just as stop and frisk legitimized an initial, unwarranted contact between police and
people of color, almost 90 percent of whom turn out to be innocent of any crime, suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet
approach of fusion centers target communities of color. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows approximately 75
percent were of people of color. This is the future of policing in America, and it should terrify you as much
as it terrifies me. Unfortunately, it probably doesnt, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans,

One of the most terrifying

aspects of high-tech surveillance is the invisibility of those it disproportionately impacts. The
especially those reporting on the issue in the media or advocating in the halls of power.

NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and electronic surveillance technologies to spy on Muslims living in the

United States.

According to FBI training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau

taught agents to treat mainstream Muslims as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable
donations by Muslims as a funding mechanism for combat, and to view Islam itself as a
Death Star that must be destroyed if terrorism is to be contained. From New York City to Chicago and
beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded unlawful and covert racial and
religious profiling against Muslims not suspected of any crime. There is no national security
reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost 450,000 migrants are in detention facilities throughout the United
States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers, families with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant
communities enjoy few legal protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance

of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United

States, more than 60 percent are racial and ethnic minorities. But by far, the widest net is
cast over black communities. Black people alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated. More black men are
practices. According to the Sentencing Project,

incarcerated than were held in slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic as evidence of

a 2012 study confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more
likely to be imprisoned than whites for the same crime. This is not a broken system, it is a
system working perfectly as intended, to the detriment of all. The NSA could not have spied
on millions of cellphones if it were not already spying on black people, Muslims, and
migrants. As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and integrated by law
enforcement agencies today, racial disparities are being made invisible by a media
environment that has failed to tell the story of surveillance in the context of structural
racism.
greater criminality,

Modeling privacy rights adv

Domestic drones risks authoritarianism
Compliance 13
(Complaince Campaign, Campaigning for a United States in compliance with its international
obligations, October 24, 2013, Police brutality, drone wars and international norms
https://compliancecampaign.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/drones-police-violence-andinternational-norms/__)

The ACLU, however, notes that U.S. law enforcement is greatly expanding its use of
domestic drones for surveillance and says that rules must be put in place to
ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of this new technology without bringing us
closer to a surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked,
recorded, and scrutinized by the government. Drone manufacturers are also
offering police the option of arming these flying robots with weapons like rubber
bullets, Tasers, and tear gas, notes the ACLU . The group warns that drones should be deployed by
law enforcement only with a warrant, in an emergency, or when there are specific and articulable grounds to
believe that the drone will collect evidence relating to a specific criminal act. Further, domestic drones should not

Considering the growing proclivity of

U.S. police forces to engage in lethal force against civilians at home, and the U.S.
militarys troubling track record abroad, it could be said that the ACLUs mild
admonitions could be considered understated at best. The violence and impunity
with which security forces operate are a clear danger to society both
within the United States and overseas. Adding domestic drones to the arsenal of local police
weapons is only inviting further tragedy. Indeed, unless the American people and the world
community begin to demand that the U.S. abides by the international
norms that it demands of rogue states such as Syria or Iran, the United
States will likely continue its slide into an authoritarian country in which
human rights are cast aside as an irrelevant nuisance.
be equipped with lethal or non-lethal weapons, says the ACLU.

The plan revitalizes right to privacy and privacy law

Calo 11
(M. Ryan, Director of Privacy and Robotics, Center for Internet and Society, December 12,
2011, The Drone as Privacy Catalyst64 Stan. L. Rev. Online 29
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/drone-privacy-catalyst)

Associated today with the theatre of war, the widespread domestic use of drones for
surveillance seems inevitable. Existing privacy law will not stand in its way. It may
be tempting to conclude on this basis that drones will further erode our individual
and collective privacy. Yet the opposite may happen. Drones may help restore our mental
model of a privacy violation. They could be just the visceral jolt society needs to
drag privacy law into the twenty-first century. Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis knew what a privacy
violation looked like: yellow journalists armed with newly developed instantaneous photographs splashing pictures of a
respectable wedding on the pages of every newspaper.[1] Their influential 1890 article The Right To Privacy crystallized an image of
technology-fueled excess, which the authors leveraged to jump-start privacy law in the United States. But what do privacy violations
look like today? They tend to be hard to visualize. Maybe somewhere, in some distant server farm, the government correlates two
pieces of disparate information. Maybe one online advertiser you have never heard of merges with another to share email lists.
Perhaps a shoppers purchase of an organic product increases the likelihood she is a Democrat just enough to cause her identity to
be sold to a campaign. At most one can picture the occasional harmful outcome; its mechanism remains obscure.

It is hard to

know exactly what role the inscrutability of privacy has played in the development
of contemporary privacy law. But the law has clearly stalled. Tort recovery founders on the
question of damages. Privacy statutes tend to respond to specific incidences or abuses: for instance, no provider of videos (broadly
defined) may release customer rental history because journalists once managed to procure a list of the videos enjoyed by a
Supreme Court nominee. And it must be possible for officers practically to glimpse the proverbial lady in her sauna before the

The development of
American privacy law has been slow and uneven; the advancement of information
technology has not. The result is a widening chasm between our collective and
individual capacity to observe one another and the protections available to
consumers and citizens under the law. We are only now, in 2011, revisiting The Electronic Communications
Fourth Amendment places serious limits on the deployment of surveillance technology.[2]

Privacy Act, which controls the circumstances under which the government can intercept or access electronic communications such
as emails. The Act was passed in 1986. At the time, lawmakers kids were trading in their Walkman for a Discman. Al Gore had only
just invented the Internet.[3] Recent shifts in technology and attendant changes to business practices have not led to similar shifts
in privacy law, at least not on the order of 1890. Computers, the Internet, RFID, GPS, biometrics, facial recognitionnone of these

might reasonably wonder whether we

will ever have another Warren and Brandeis moment, whether any technology will
dramatize the need to rethink the very nature of privacy law. One good candidate is
the drone. In routine use by todays military, these unmanned aircraft systems threaten to perfect the art of surveillance.
developments has created the same sea change in privacy thinking. One

Drones are capable of finding or following a specific person. They can fly patterns in search of suspicious activities or hover over a
location in wait. Some are as small as birds or insects, others as big as blimps. In addition to high-resolution cameras and

That
drones will see widespread domestic use seems inevitable. They represent an
efficient and cost-effective alternative to helicopters and airplanes. Police, firefighters, and
microphones, drones can be equipped with thermal imaging and the capacity to intercept wireless communications.

geologists willand douse drones for surveillance and research. But drones will not be limited to government or scientific uses.
The private sector has incentives to use drones as well. The media, in particular, could make widespread use of drones to cover
unfolding police activity or traffic stories. Imagine what drones would do for the lucrative paparazzi industry, especially coupled with
commercially available facial recognition technology. You might think drones would already be ubiquitous. There are, however,
Federal Aviation Administration restrictions on the use of unmanned aircraft systems, restrictions that date back several years. Some
public agencies have petitioned for waiver. Customs and Border Protection uses drones to police our borders. Recently the state of
Oklahoma asked the FAA for a blanket waiver of eighty miles of airspace. Going forward, waiver may not be necessary. The FAA
faces increasing pressure to relax its restrictions and is considering rulemaking to reexamine drone use in domestic airspace.[4]

Agency rules impede the use of drones for now; United States privacy law does not.
There is very little in our privacy law that would prohibit the use of drones within our
borders. Citizens do not generally enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy in
public, nor even in the portions of their property visible from a public vantage. In 1986,
the Supreme Court found no search where local police flew over the defendants backyard with a private plane.[5] A few years later,
the Court admitted evidence spotted by an officer in a helicopter looking through two missing roof panels in a greenhouse.[6]

Constitution nor common law appears to prohibit police or the media from
routinely operating surveillance drones in urban and other environments .[7] If anything,
Neither the

observations by drones may occasion less scrutiny than manned aerial vehicles. Several prominent cases, and a significant body of
scholarship, reflect the view that no privacy violation has occurred unless and until a human observes a person, object, or attribute.
[8] Just as a dog might sniff packages and alert an officer only in the presence of contraband, so might a drone scan for various

drones
like those in widespread military use today will tomorrow be used by police,
scientists, newspapers, hobbyists, and others here at home. And privacy law will not
have much to say about it. Privacy advocates will. As with previous emerging
technologies, advocates will argue that drones threaten our dwindling individual and
collective privacy. But unlike the debates of recent decades, I think these arguments
will gain serious traction among courts, regulators, and the general public. I have in mind
chemicals or heat signatures and alert an officer only upon spotting the telltale signs of drug production.[9] In short,

the effect on citizens of drones flying around United States cities. These machines are disquieting. Virtually any robot can engender
a certain amount of discomfort, let alone one associated in the mind of the average American with spy operations or targeted killing.
If you will pardon the inevitable reference to 1984, George Orwell specifically describes small flying devices that roam
neighborhoods and peer into windows. Yet one need not travel to Orwells Oceaniaor the offices of our own Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agencyto encounter one of these machines. You could travel to one of several counties where American police

The parallels to The Right to Privacy are

also acute. Once journalists needed to convince high society to pose for a
photograph. New technologies made it possible for a journalist automatically to
officers are presently putting this technology through its paces.

snap a picture, which in turn led to salacious news coverage . Americans in 1890 could just
picture that tweedy journalist in the bushes of a posh wedding, hear the slap of the newspaper the next day, and see the mortified

Todays police have to follow hunches, cultivate

informants, subpoena ATM camera footage; journalists must ghost about the
restaurant or party of the moment. Tomorrows police and journalists might sit in an
office or vehicle as their metal agents methodically search for interesting behavior
to record and relay. Americans can visualize and experience this activity as a
physical violation of their privacy. There are ways that drones might be introduced without this effect. Previous
look of the bridal party in the cover art.

military technology has found its way into domestic use through an acclimation process: it is used in large events requiring
heightened security, for instance, and then simply left in place.[10] We could delay public awareness of drones by limiting use to
those that are capable of observing the ground without detection. But these efforts would take a knowing, coordinated effort by the
government. The more likely scenario, as suggested by Oklahomas plan, is one in which FAA restrictions relax and private and
public drones quickly fill the sky. Daniel Solove has argued that the proper metaphor for contemporary privacy violations is not the

the lack of a
coherent mental model of privacy harm helps account for the lag between
the advancement of technology and privacy law. There is no story, no vivid and specific
Big Brother of Orwells 1984, but the inscrutable courts of Franz Kafkas The Trial.[11] I agree, and believe that

instance of a paradigmatic privacy violation in a digital universe, upon which citizens and lawmakers can premise their concern.

Drones and other robots have the potential to restore that mental model . They represent
the cold, technological embodiment of observation. Unlike, say, NSA network surveillance or commercial data brokerage,
government or industry surveillance of the populace with drones would be visible and highly salient. People would feel observed,
regardless of how or whether the information was actually used. The resulting backlash could force us to reexamine not merely the
use of drones to observe, but the doctrines that today permit this use.

Widespread Drone use destroys 4th amendment rights

Leahy 13,
(Patrick, US Senator of Iowa, March 20th 2013, THE FUTURE OF DRONES IN AMERICA: LAW
ENFORCEMENT AND PRIVACY CONSIDERATIONS,
http://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CHRG-113shrg81775.pdf )

With the Federal Aviation Administration estimating that as many as 30,000 drones
like this will be operating in the national airspace by the end of this decade, I think
we have to carefully consider the policy implications of this fast-emerging
technology. I know that we are going to hear a lot of things about the unique advantages of
using unmanned aircraft as opposed to manned vehicles. Drones are able to carry out
arduous and dangerous tasks that would otherwise be expensive or difficult for a human to
undertake. For example, in addition to law enforcement surveillance, drones will potentially
be used for scientific experiments, agricultural research, geological surveying, pipeline
maintenance, and search-and-rescue operations. So there are many valuable uses, but at
the same time, the use of unmanned aircraft raises serious concerns about the
impact on the constitutional and privacy rights of all Americans . The Department of
Homeland Security, through Customs and Border Protection, already operates modified,
unarmed drones to patrol rural parts of our northern and southern borders, as well as to
support drug interdiction efforts by law enforcement. A number of local law enforcement
agencies have begun to explore using drones to assist with operational surveillance. This

raises a number of questions regarding the adequacy of current privacy laws and
the scope of existing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. When is it appropriate for
law enforcement to use a drone, and for what purposes? Under what circumstances
should law enforcement be required to first obtain a search warrant? And then what
should be done with the data that is collected and how long should it be kept? And
although no drones operating in the U.S. are yet weaponized, I am advised, should law
enforcement be permitted to equip unmanned aircraft with non-lethal tools such as tear gas
or pepper spray? My concerns about the domestic use of drones extend beyond

Government and law enforcement. Before we allow widespread use of drones in the
domestic airspace, we have to carefully consider the impact on the privacy rights of
Americans. Just last week, we were reminded how one companys push to gather
data on Americans led vast over-collection and potential privacy violations.
Similarly, a simple scan of amateur videos on the Internet demonstrates how
prevalent drone technology is becoming among private citizens. Small, quiet
unmanned aircraft can easily be built or purchased online for only a few hundred
dollars and then equipped with high-definition video cameras while flying in areas
impossible for manned aircraft to operate without being detected. It is not hard to
imagine the serious privacy problems that this type of technology could cause. In a State
like mine, in Vermont, where we protect and guard our privacy, this is raising some very
serious questions from people from the far right to the far left.

Privacy is a Human Right

Siddique 13
( Haroon, news reporter on the Guardian, December 26th 2013, Internet privacy as
important as human rights, says UN's Navi Pillay,
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/26/un-navi-pillay-internet-privacy )
The UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay, has compared the uproar in the international

community caused by revelations of mass surveillance with the collective response

that helped bring down the apartheid regime in South Africa. Pillay, the first non-white
woman to serve as a high-court judge in South Africa, made the comments in an interview
with Sir Tim Berners-Lee on a special edition of BBC Radio 4's Today programme, which the
inventor of the world wide web was guest editing. Pillay has been asked by the UN to
prepare a report on protection of the right to privacy, in the wake of the former National
Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden leaking classified documents about UK and US
spying and the collection of personal data. The former international criminal court judge

said her encounters with serious human rights abuses, which included serving on
the Rwanda tribunal, did not make her take online privacy less seriously. "I don't
grade human rights," she said. "I feel I have to look after and promote the rights of
all persons. I'm not put off by the lifetime experience of violations I have seen." She
said apartheid ended in South Africa principally because the international
community co-operated to denounce it, adding: "Combined and collective action by
everybody can end serious violations of human rights That experience inspires
me to go on and address the issue of internet [privacy], which right now is
extremely troubling because the revelations of surveillance have implications for
human rights People are really afraid that all their personal details are being used in
violation of traditional national protections." The UN general assembly unanimously
voted last week to adopt a resolution, introduced by Germany and Brazil, stating
that "the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online,
including the right to privacy". Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, and the German
chancellor, Angela Merkel, were among those spied on, according to the documents leaked
by Snowden. The resolution called on the 193 UN member states "to review their
procedures, practices and legislation regarding the surveillance of communications, their
interception and collection of personal data, with a view to upholding the right to privacy of
all their obligations under international human rights law". It also directed Pillay to publish a
report on the protection and promotion of privacy "in the context of domestic and
extraterritorial surveillance ... including on a mass scale". She told Berners-Lee it was "very

important that governments now want to discuss the matters of mass surveillance
and right to privacy in a serious way ". Berners-Lee has warned that online surveillance
undermines confidence in the internet, and last week published an open letter, with more
than 100 free speech groups and leading activists, to protest against the routine interception
of data by governments around the world.

The United Statess constitution is modelled globally

Ginsburg et al. 12 (Tom Ginsburg, Zachary Elkins, and James Melton, Tom Ginsburg
is Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees
from the University of California at Berkeley. His books include Rule By Law: The Politics of
Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (2008) and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003),
which won the American Political Science Associations C. Herman Pritchett Award for best
book on law and courts. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project at
Illinois, and is working on a book on constitutional endurance, Comments on Law and
Versteegs The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2486776)
This introduces some special analytic problems. One aspect of this problem is that the
contexts in which any two constitutions are written may be radically different, and, as a
result, assessments of similarity between an eighteenth-century document and a twentiethcentury document are complicated, to say the least. Comparing older and modern
documents against a set of modern rights essentially measures whether the old document
adopted or anticipated modern fashions. Such a comparison is not a good measure of the
older document's influence. How might we assess the influence of older documents and,
for that matter, the similarity of constitutions across contexts? One way is to examine

constitutional development along only those features that would be theoretically

"possible" to adopt in a given era. It would be unfair to expect an eighteenth-century
constitution to have provisions for consumer or environmental rights; and conversely, we
should not evaluate modern constitutions on whether they allow slavery. Operationally, then,
one way to refine a measure of similarity might be to limit the set of rights under
consideration to those features that had been adopted by some percentage (say, twenty-five
percent) of constitutions in each era. Call this set of rights "common rights"-that is, rights
that are common to each temporal context. The question is whether the set of rights

selected by the U.S. Constitution's framers remains more influential than

do the other sets of rights in circulation during the same time that the framers
did not select. After all, even for those drafting constitutions in the nineteenth century, the
rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution offered just one set of a larger universe of rights.
New Latin American countries and democratizing states in Europe had several

different "menus" to choose from, such as those in the series of French charters
starting in 1791 or that in the widely disseminated Spanish Constitution of 1812 ,
known as the Cidiz Constitution.19 These menus, or models, were decidedly different
with respect to their content. Of the twenty-three common rights in general circulation,
only eleven in both the U.S. Constitution and French Constitution of 1791 "match," meaning
that both constitutions either exclude or include the right. The other twelve rights are
included in one constitution but not the other. The number of matching common rights for
the U.S. and Cidiz constitutions is similar. This scattered distribution of rights is helpful
analytically: One can assess the influence of one "menu" of rights against real
alternatives. One way to do this is by following the methodology we describe above-that is,

comparing measures of similarity composed of items common across all eras (or, in
our operationalization, rights prevalent in at least twenty-five percent of constitutions in
each half century). We can then see how well the U.S. menu of rights tracks across time,
compared to its alternatives. Figure 3 presents an analysis of the similarity of the U.S.
Constitution to others with respect to common rights. As in Figure 2, we analyze two
samples: one of Latin American constitutions and one drawn from all constitutions. These
graphs can be contrasted against those in Figure 2, which replicate and extend Law and
Versteeg's analysis by plotting the similarity of each set of constitutions to the U.S.
Constitution across all rights. We see that, as expected, in Figure 2, constitutions appear

increasingly dissimilar to the U.S. Constitution, suggesting that, on average,

constitutions have evolved and absorbed modern rights. Figure 3, however, plots the
similarity of constitutions to the U.S. Constitution across those rights that were
popular (that is, found in at least twenty-five percent of constitutions) before 1850. As we
suggest above, this metric better captures the influence of the U.S. Constitution.
We see that across this set of rights, the U.S. Constitution is actually
increasingly similar to other constitutions over time .

U.S.s Constitution modelled globally small laws prove

Ginsburg et al. 12 (Tom Ginsburg, Zachary Elkins, and James Melton, Tom Ginsburg
is Professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He holds B.A., J.D. and Ph.D. degrees
from the University of California at Berkeley. His books include Rule By Law: The Politics of
Courts in Authoritarian Regimes (2008) and Judicial Review in New Democracies (2003),
which won the American Political Science Associations C. Herman Pritchett Award for best
book on law and courts. He currently co-directs the Comparative Constitutions Project at
Illinois, and is working on a book on constitutional endurance, Comments on Law and
Versteegs The Declining Influence of the United States Constitution
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2486776)

SOME SIGNATURE, IF LESS CENTRAL, ELEMENTS OF U.S. INFLUENCE

may seem inconsequential. But it is in part because of their
triviality-or at least their arbitrary selection by the founders-that these elements tell
us something about influence.
Many types of constitutional rules have little distributive
consequence. Nevertheless, some rule must be adopted.
, the rule from one
constitution simply may be more likely to be emulated by constitutional
drafters, further increasing similarity between constitutions. For example, many
constitutions have a minimum age requirement to hold certain offices, an
innovation of the U.S. Constitution Article II requires one to be at least thirty-five
years old to become president. This number has been remarkably
borrowed
by a plurality of constitutions
Similarly, the
U.S. age limit
the U.S. "solution" has remained in place.
This is an example of constitutional drafters failing to modernize and suggests
evidence of textual influence Consider another example: term limits
the U.S.
version
has become the single most popular option
This is another example of increasing U.S. influence over time, in which
modernization has moved in the direction of the U.S. model.
most constitutions followed the American approach of using preambles.
V

We close with a regrettably short discussion

of some arcane elements of the U.S. Constitution, which

To understand why, consider another function of constitutional text: simple coordination. David Strauss has noted that "it is more important that

some things be settled than that they be settled right." 20

In such cases

21

22

sticky, having been

in our sample (thirty percent of the 534 constitutions that specify an age limit for the head of state). 2 3

(twenty-five) for serving in the lower house of the legislature remains the most popular number globally (thirty-seven percent of the 565 constitutions that specify an age limit for members of the

lower house). 24 Despite a significant increase in life expectancies since the eighteenth century,

. Most presidential constitutions have had

term limits. As we show in our study of term limits, the most popular form historically was a version in which the officer could serve for multiple nonconsecutive terms but no consecutive terms. 25 However,
, which was not codified until the Twenty-Second Amendment was ratified in 1951,

.26

As a final example, we note that

In an early working paper, we find

"We the People" is the single most popular phrase found in national
preambles
and that its use is increasing in popularity over time
that the expression

since 1789

. 27 We do not have space for a complete

analysis of what aspects of constitutions are most likely to exhibit declining or increasing similarity over time. Our only point is that rights may not be completely representative of constitutional influence or similarity. To their credit,
Law and Versteeg push their analysis beyond rights, but their analysis still leaves many areas of constitutions untouched. After all, constitutional drafters are expansive, and increasingly so, in what they try to regulate. Other features
of the U.S. Constitution may well be different, or they may show more enduring influence.

It has been suggested, with growing frequency, that the United States may be losing its

influence over constitutionalism in other countries because it is increasingly out of

sync with an evolving global consensus on issues of human rights. Little is known in
an empirical and systematic way, however, about the extent to which the U.S. Constitution
influences the revision and adoption of formal constitutions in other countries. In this Article,
we show empirically that other countries have, in recent decades, become increasingly
unlikely to model either the rights-related provisions or the basic structural provisions of
their own constitutions upon those found in the U.S. Constitution. Analysis of sixty years of
comprehensive data on the content of the worlds constitutions reveals that there is a
significant and growing generic component to global constitutionalism, in the form of a set of

rights provisions that appear in nearly all formal constitutions. On the basis of this data, we
are able to identify the worlds most and least generic constitutions. Our analysis also
confirms, however, that the U.S. Constitution is increasingly far from the global mainstream.
The fact that the U.S. Constitution is not widely emulated raises the question of whether
there is an alternative paradigm that constitutional drafters in other countries now employ
as a model instead. One possibility is that their attention has shifted to some other
prominent national constitution. To evaluate this possibility, we analyze the content of the
worlds constitutions for telltale patterns of similarity to the constitutions of Canada,
Germany, South Africa, and India, which have often been identified as especially influential.
We find some support in the data for the notion that the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms has influenced constitution making in other countries. This influence is neither
uniform nor global in scope, however, but instead reflects an evolutionary path shared
primarily by other common law countries. By comparison, we uncover no patterns that
would suggest widespread constitutional emulation of Germany, South Africa, or India.

Privacy is key to defending the Fourth Amendment and vice

versa; warrantless search devices impede privacy
Ohm 12

(Paul Ohm, Paul Ohm is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
at the University of Colorado Law School. He specializes in information privacy, computer crime law,
intellectual property, and criminal procedure, The Fourth Amendment in a World Without Privacy
http://mississippilawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/16-Ohm_FINAL.pdf)

No more Expectations of Privacy In Katz, the Supreme Court embraced a new doctrine of
the Fourth Amendment built on privacy. This took the form of the majoritys pronouncement that the Fourth
Amendment protects people, not places,56 and Justice Harlans reasonable expectation of privacy test in a concurring opinion, which was later
embraced by the Court as the test for the meaning of search within the amendment. Although the rest of this
Part will examine indepth what happens to a privacy-centric Fourth Amendment in a world without
privacy, the punch line is both easy to state and preordained almost to the point of
being tautologicalin a world without privacy, a Fourth Amendment built
around reasonable expectations of privacy will no longer apply. Specifically, the courts
have given the reasonable expectation of privacy test three additional elaborations, and each suggests that when courts face fact patterns
arising from the rise of the surveillance society, they might hold that the Fourth
Amendment does not apply. 1. Assumption of Risk According to the Supreme Court, an individual takes the risk, in revealing his affairs to another, that
the information will be conveyed by that person to the Government. . . . [E]ven if the information is revealed on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and the
confidence placed in the third party will not be betrayed.59 This reasoning has been applied in at least two important and broad contexts, which are both implicated by the surveillance
society: the false friends rule and the third-party doctrine. Under the false friends rule, exemplified by cases like Hoffa v. United States,60 we share secrets with other people at our own
risk, and if the people we think are trusted confidants turn out instead to be government agents wearing a wire, we have only ourselves to blame, and the Constitution provides no
relief.61 The reasoning has extended not only to friends but also to the companies we use for essential services. The Supreme Court has declared that the Fourth Amendment does not

this rule automatically

expands police power to some of the new forms of private surveillance. Consider for example the
apply to our banks records of our financial transactions,62 or to our phone companys lists of numbers we have dialed.63 Notice how

location records people now share regularly with Loopt64 and Foursquare.65 2. Knowing Exposure Because we share our location consensually with companies like these, courts are
likely to treat this information as constitutionally unprotected under the reasoning of the assumption of risk cases. Under the knowing exposure rule, [w]hat a person knowingly exposes
to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.66 The Supreme Court has used this reasoning to rule that the police can track a car with
an electronic beeper as it moves around city streets, because the car remains on public thoroughfares.67 It has also used the concept of knowing exposure to deem outside the Fourth
Amendment the use by the police of airplanes and helicopters to look at the open fields and even the curtilage next to a persons home.68 Knowing exposure means that some of the
information shared online through private services may be accessed by the police, because new online services obscure the already blurry line between what we treat as private and
public. Consider for example what you say on your Facebook account. Is a Facebook account a public or private space? Does it depend on the number of friends you have or the
configuration of your privacy settings? Complicating this considerably is Facebooks ongoing war with its users about those privacy settings and, in particular, what the default settings

following conventional
Fourth Amendment law, rule that it may be obtained by the police without a
warrant. 3. General Public Use Finally, the general public use rule comes from two cases, Dow Chemical69 and Kyllo.70 According to this rule, the police
may deploy powerful surveillance devices to track suspects without a
warrant so long as the tool is generally accessible to the public. In Dow Chemical, the court held that a $22,000 camera
qualified under this rule.71 Although the Court backtracked a bit in Kyllo, finding a $1000 thermal heat-imaging machine did not qualify as one in general
public use, it refused to overrule Dow Chemical.72 As the power of private surveillance increases, the devices
and systems they create may be available to the police without process because of
should be. A court could reasonably hold that some of the content posted to Facebook has been knowingly exposed to the public and,

this rule. Consider for example powerful reidentification techniques. Some day, private companies may develop a tool to convert the supposedly anonymous comments on a
public message board into the commenters true identity by cross-referencing the attributes of the communication with rich outside databases using powerful reidentification techniques.
Whether the police could use technology like this without a warrant may turn on the general public use test, which means a warrant may not be needed once reidentification tools
become cheap and widespread in ways that they would not have been; records of their behavior would be created and retained when once they would have been never created or
destroyed; and traditional forms of surveillance would occur much more thoroughly and efficiently than they have before.

Fourth amendment declining now, allowing for a private sector-led

police state
Ohm 12

(Paul Ohm, Paul Ohm is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
at the University of Colorado Law School. He specializes in information privacy, computer crime law,
intellectual property, and criminal procedure, The Fourth Amendment in a World Without Privacy
http://mississippilawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/16-Ohm_FINAL.pdf)

The diminished Fourth Amendment While some legal scholars have argued that we abandon the reasonable expectation of
privacy test, and still others have anchored the Fourth Amendment in principles other than privacy, none of these scholars has considered the central

we are headed for a world without privacy ? This shift in focus gives a different, more
In a world
without privacy, a Fourth Amendment focused on privacy becomes nearly a dead
letter. Todays Fourth Amendment has been built around the reasonable expectation
of privacy test, but no expectation of privacy will be deemed reasonable in a world
without privacy. Even worse, the great bulwark of the Fourth Amendment, probable cause and a warrant,
will become much less important as pervasive monitoring and record collection will
give the police probable cause most of the time. The diminishment of the Fourth
Amendment will change police behavior. Police agencies will begin to abdicate their
traditional role as conductor of surveillance, because it will be eclipsed by the
powerful new systems of private surveillance . The FBI and other law enforcement agencies
will shift from being active producers of surveillance to passive consumers,
essentially outsourcing all of their surveillance activities to private third parties , ones
question of this Article: what if

urgent impetus to some of the prescriptions that others have offered, but it also gives rise to the need for new prescriptions.

who are not only ungoverned by the state action requirements of the Fourth Amendment, but also who have honed the ability to convince private citizens
to agree to be watched. It is likely, however, that courts will resist this change, refusing to accept a nugatory Fourth Amendment. To save the Fourth
Amendment, they will transform it, abandoning the reasonable expectation of privacy test. To replace it, courts may turn to legal scholarship, which to
date has failed to fully elaborate what should come next.

Decreases in the privacy of society is leading to an increased

reliance on the private-sector
Ohm 12 (Paul Ohm, Paul Ohm is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
at the University of Colorado Law School. He specializes in information privacy, computer crime law,
intellectual property, and criminal procedure, The Fourth Amendment in a World Without Privacy
http://mississippilawjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/16-Ohm_FINAL.pdf)

the rise of the surveillance society means for the Fourth Amendment, consider what it means for
We should expect a major shift in the center of activity of crime
fighting from the police to private industry . The surveillance society will greatly diminish the importance of self-help
Before examining what

the practicalities of policing.

policing. In constitutional criminal procedure, the difference between self-help policing and assisted policing has received little attention, because almost
all court attention has focused on the former. In the near century since Olmstead,32 almost all of the cases discussing what new technology means for the
Fourth Amendment have involved police self-help and home-grown tools. The police inserted the wires into the telephone lines in Olmstead,33 mounted
the recording device in Katz,34 deployed its own microphones in Goldman35 and Silverman,36 chartered aircraft for their own use in Ciraolo37 and Dow
Chemical,38 and installed their own tracking beepers in Karo39 and Knotts.40 Future students of the amendment are likely to marvel at these historical
relics, trying to imagine a time when the FBI was forced to build its own tools and collect its own data. It will likely seem a far cry from the FBI they know:
agents sitting in offices, acting as a central clearing house for the observations of private industry, mining their way through mountains of data collected

field
offices named Apple, Google, Facebook, Comcast, and AT&T .41 On the surface, these private labs seem
similar to FBI labs with big buildings and smart engineers. But peel back a layer and it is obvious these labs c an do something
important that no FBI lab could ever hope to do convince the surveillance targets of
the world to consensually adopt their surveillance technologies, acting as a neat
by other people and for other purposes. It is as if todays FBI has developed a sophisticated surveillance research-and-development arm with

end-around circumventing the Fourth Amendment .42 Although few scholars have noted what the end of self-help
policing means for the Fourth Amendment, some have noted the descriptive shift in the amount the
police and intelligence community rely on the fruits of private surveillance. Jon Michaels has
carefully tracked the increasing reliance on technological advances and private surveillance
by the intelligence community.43 Others have noted how much the CIA, FBI, and Defense
Department rely on the services of data aggregators like ChoicePoint .44 As proof of the shift
away from a self-help police force, consider the annual Wiretap Report. By statute, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts is charged with
issuing a report each year that tallies the number of applications for court-ordered wiretaps in state and federal court and requires a small number of
summary statistics about each jurisdiction.45 One table of the report breaks down wiretap orders by the type of surveillance used, oral (voice), wire
(telephone), electronic (computer network).46 Some have expressed surprise, even suspicion, at the low number of electronic orders granted every year.
For example, in calendar year 2010, out of 2,311 wiretaps ordered nationwide, only sixteen involved electronic surveillance (defined as Digital Pager, Fax,
and Computer), or approximately 0.7%.47 This is not an outlier, as indicated by Figure 1, which plots both the total number and percentage of all
wiretaps that involved electronic surveillance for the past fifteen years. Figure 1 provides a compelling visual image of the decline of self-help policing.
Clearly, the number of court ordered wiretaps involving electronic evidence dropped precipitously at the turn of the century. Chris Soghoian, a close
watcher of these statistics, speculates that this is proof of the declining importance of fax transmissions in criminal surveillance, which are included in this
reporting category.49 But the drop since 2000 is nearly as pronounced, with a near linear decline from 2000 (eighty-nine intercepts, nearly eight percent
of all)50 to 2006 (thirteen intercepts, 0.76%).51 Since 2006, the nations courts have authorized fewer than twenty wiretaps of digital networks a year,
never topping one percent of all orders in that time span.52 The dramatic decrease is almost certainly not an indication that criminals use computer

it likely represents a shift in police tactics

away from self-help. Today, it makes little sense for the police to engage in court-ordered wiretapping. Not only is it easier
to secure private cooperation than judicial sanction, but also the fruits of private
surveillance are simply betterfed as they are by our sensor-laden world and
empowered by consensualsharing. Figure 1 is a bellwether not an outlier. With each passing year, the
police will learn to borrow and beg rather than build. Our mental image of the FBI agent
networks less or that the police rely less on network surveillance. Instead,

conducting surveillance, wearing headphones in a white van parked on the curb, clipping alligator clips to telephone wires, and working with a white-

will soon be replaced by an agent sitting in his office, hitting the refresh button on his web browser, and reading
the latest log file dump sent from private industry. Consider one final example. In the late 1990s, the FBI faced a
coated FBI scientist

firestorm surrounding its Carnivore systema piece of software developed in-house and designed to perform electronic wiretapping on digital networks in
technical terms, a filtering packet sniffer.53 The public story is well known: the press dug deep, the public complained, and Congress raged, ultimately
passing laws requiring better reporting about the FBIs use of the system.54 The less-well-known denouement is also telling: a few years after the
controversy, the FBI abandoned Carnivores successor, realizing that the private computer security industry had designed better filtering packet sniffers

shift in role and responsibility for surveillance from

FBI labs to private companies, which we will see repeated constantly in the years to
come.
than the FBI could do on its own. This shift is a herald of the

Domestic drones = panopticon

Cavoukian 12

(Ann, Ph.D., Information & Privacy Commissioner, August 2012, Privacy and Drones:
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/cnmcsplcng/cn29822-eng.pdf)

The Panopticon prison design was the creation of English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy
Bentham. The design consisted of a circular structure with an inspection house at its
centre. From this vantage point, managers or guards of the institution were easily
able to watch (and control) the behaviour of the inmates stationed around the
perimeter. Bentham intended the basic plan to have widespread application. Benthams initial concept was
later invoked by Michel Foucault (in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison) as a
metaphor for modern disciplinary societies and their pervasive inclination to
observe and normalize. Foucault proposed that not only prisons, but all hierarchical
structures (i.e., armies, schools, hospitals, and factories) have evolved through
history to resemble Benthams Panopticon. Our societies are becoming increasingly
acclimatized to panoptic surveillance by closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras in
both public and private spaces, accepting that law enforcement agencies have a
legitimate and compelling need to engage in authorized surveillance. However, there is

potential for serious violations of privacy to arise from the misuse of this
technology. Thus we set out video surveillance guidelines to control potential excesses of such technology.1
Echoing Bentham and Foucault, the increased use of drones or unmanned aerial vehicles
has the potential to result in the widespread deployment of panoptic structures that
may persist invisibly throughout society. These developments oblige us to revisit
fundamental issues regarding our expectations of privacy. We are called upon to once again
also the

fortify our defence of privacy, including respect for activities that occur in public spaces, in order to ensure that this
central tenet of freedom remains protected in a manner that is consistent with our shared values.

UAVs destroy privacy

OLIVITO 2013
(Jonathan Olivito, JD canidate Ohio State Univ. Moritz College of Law, December 8, 2013
Beyond the Fourth Amendment: Limiting Drone Surveillance Through the Constitutional
Right to Informational Privacy http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/oslj/files/2013/12/8Olivito.pdf)

In conjunction with the recent proliferation of drones operating domestically,

commentators have begun to recognize the serious potential for privacy
invasions posed by widespread drone use.41 To illuminate why drones pose such a grave
danger to privacy in the United States, the following sections explore the physical capabilities, current uses,
and potential uses of drones. A. Physical Capabilities of Drones Government Agencies and businesses of all
varieties envision using drones for a multitude of purposes . Drones can serve in such a broad
range of functions precisely because of the diversity of drone sizes and designs.42 Complementing the diversity of
drone designs are the myriad sensors, cameras, and other surveillance equipment
that operators can install on drones. Drones vary in size from the miniature to the gargantuan. Measuring 6.5
inches and weighing in at nineteen grams, AeroVironments Nano Hummingbird might be the most diminutive drone at present.43
More typically, however, small drones have wingspans of ten feet or less and weigh between four and twenty pounds.44 Operating
at speeds of less than 100 knots and at altitudes below 500 feet, small drones often run on batteries and can stay airborne for as
long as two hours.45 Large drones have wingspans of up to 150 feet and can weigh over 30,000 pounds.46 These systems can
operate at altitudes of up to 65,000 feet, cruise at speeds of up to 320 knots, and remain airborne without refueling for anywhere
from thirty-five hours to four days.47 Small drones enjoy stealth and maneuverability, making them ideal for urban surveillance

the relatively
slow cruising speeds of small drones permit them to loiter over a surveillance target
for extended periods of time.50 Some drones do not ever need to loiter, as certain drone designs
permit the aircraft to both hover and fly normally.51 In order to extend flight time, other drones
engage in perch-and-stare surveillance .52 Most pertinent to privacy concerns,
drones can be equipped with a wide variety of surveillance equipment.5 3 Civilian
operators can easily install cameras and recorders with high-powered zoom lenses
on drones. Certain cameras have been developed specifically for civilian UAS use. The
operations.48 Because many small drones operate on electricity, they produce very little noise.49 Additionally,

gimbal camera, for example, automatically remains focused on a single object even as the drone continues on its flight path.54

More worrisome to privacy advocates, drones can be equipped with infrared and
ultraviolet imaging devices,55 seethrough imaging (radar technology),56 and distributed video systems.57 Drones
engaged in perch-and-stare surveillance might also utilize acoustical eavesdropping devices, such as conventional microphones or
laser optical microphones.58 In terms of software, drones operating in the near future will likely utilize video processing systems,

Finally, civilian drones, like their military

counterparts, can carry weaponry. Although lethal weapons are almost certainly out
of the question, law enforcement drones might soon pack rubber bullets and tear
gas.60 Taking full advantage of drone capabilities, domestic users have already put drones to work in a variety of capacities .
Although domestic drones have numerous beneficial applications, they also carry
the potential for abuse. Exacerbating this concern, government agencies and
including face and body recognition technology.59

private operators intend to employ drones for so many purposes that drones will
someday form a ubiquitous part of life. Even in the immediate future, however,
targeted and inadvertent UAS surveillance poses a threat to privacy.

AT Squo solves privacy

Not enough protection against government drone surveillance
OLIVITO 2013
(Jonathan Olivito, JD canidate Ohio State Univ. Moritz College of Law, December 8, 2013
Beyond the Fourth Amendment: Limiting Drone Surveillance Through the Constitutional
Right to Informational Privacy http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/students/groups/oslj/files/2013/12/8Olivito.pdf)
As 2015 and widespread domestic drone use draw closer, Americans currently have at

their disposal only a handful of legal protections to guard against invasive

government drone surveillance . Confronted with drone surveillance perpetrated by
private businesses or other nongovernmental actors, individuals might rely on tort law
claims73 including nuisance,74 trespass,75 intrusion upon seclusion,76 and public exposure
of private facts.77 However, torts typically will not constitute an effective
recourse to drone privacy invasions committed by government entities, due
to sovereign-immunity principles. As such, the potential safeguards against government
drone surveillance include statutory and regulatory protections and the Fourth
Amendment. Currently, both of these options fail to provide satisfactory privacy
protections, especially in the context of information gathered by drones in public
places.

4th amendment weaker after War on Terror

Vagle 2015
(Jeffrey L. Vagle, University of Penn. Law School, Winter 2015 Furtive encryption: Power,
Trusts, and the COnstitituional Cost of Collective Surveillance V. 90 Iss. 1 Indiana Law
Journal http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=11134&context=ilj)

The War on Terror that followed the catastrophic events of September 11, 2001,
increased the frequency of suspicionless searches by law enforcement , including contexts
such as searches at entrances to subways, on ferries, near political conventions, near sports arenas, at protest
rallies, and around water reservoirs.148 In particular,

the genuine problem of global terrorism and

the governments duty to provide for national security have added even more
momentum to the courts consistent trend toward analyzing Fourth Amendment
problems from the governments point of view .149 This is not to say that courts routinely adopt
the governments arguments in Fourth Amendment cases, but rather that over the past three decades,
the Supreme Court has been formulating Fourth Amendment doctrine from the
perspective of the government or police agency engaged in searches or seizures. 150
This is contrary to the Courts orientation toward the individual in Katz and turns Fourth Amendment doctrine on its
head;

the Fourth Amendment was designed to protect citizens from

unjustified and arbitrary government intrusions, not to facilitate the
governments needs.151 This core constitutional tenet is especially important
when addressing government collective-surveillance programs in the face of
government claims of national security necessity. Current Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence has been steadily moving toward analysis that begins from the
governments perspective, a trend made plain in post-Katz cases that complain of the burden placed on

government by Fourth Amendment requirements.152 This doctrinal trend has been even more prevalent in cases

the government argues that the needs of national

security require an even freer hand unencumbered by nave Fourth Amendment
analysis made quaint by the global war on terrorism.
argued after September 11, 2001, where

Privacy is easily infiltrated by government

Vagle 2015
(Jeffrey L. Vagle, University of Penn. Law School, Winter 2015 Furtive encryption: Power,
Trusts, and the Constitutional Cost of Collective Surveillance V. 90 Iss. 1 Indiana Law Journal
http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11134&context=ilj)

Government use of advances in information technologies to collect and analyze

ever larger and more detailed citizen databases should come as no surprise . Questions
of efficacy aside for the moment, the States increased use of data collection and analysis is a predictable result of

this growth is not a new phenomenon.

Governments used data collection and analysis long before the post-2001
counterterrorism efforts to accomplish such well-established goals as crime
prevention, delivery of welfare benefits, and protection of citizens rights. 183 The
the continued realization of Moores Law.182 Furthermore,

government, therefore, has many compelling reasons to collect and store information about its citizens, and the
increasing ease with which we communicate over the Internet has made it a natural tool for information
gathering.184 With the ability to collect and store virtually all information communicated over the Internet,

the
government could apply analytical tools to reveal a very detailed portrait of who we are
based on what we buy, what organizations we belong to, what we read, and what
we watch.185 The base analytical tools made available under existing Fourth Amendment doctrine
are sound but have been gradually (and artificially) limited to a characterization of
the underlying constitutional issues that have little basis in the Framers intent. This
characterization, focusing on an ill-defined concept of privacy and taken from the
perspective of the government agent engaged in search and seizure, has been
redefined from a prohibition against impermissible government intrusions based
firmly on the Fourth Amendments Warrant Clause186 to a balancing test which
weighs an individuals right to privacy against the government interest in effective
law enforcement. This balancing test departs from the language of the Warrant Clause and relies instead on
the Reasonableness Clause, based on the special needs of government.

Drolif Advantage
Weaponized drones are coming and have dangerous
applications
Greenwald 11
(Glenn, Journalist and lawyer, December 6 2011, NPRs Domestic Drone Commercial,
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/06/nprs_domestic_drone_commercial/)
Excitement over Americas use of drones in multiple Muslim countries is, predictably, causing those
weapons to be imported onto U.S. soil. Federal law enforcement agencies and local police
forces are buying more and more of them and putting them to increasingly diverse domestic
uses, as well as patrolling the border, and even private corporations are now considering
how to use them. One U.S. drone manufacturer advertises its product as ideal for urban monitoring. Orlandos
police department originally requested two drones to use for security at next years GOP convention, only to change
their minds for budgetary reasons. One new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan the
Gorgon Stare, named after the mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld
them is able to scan an area the size of a small town and the most sophisticated robotics use artificial
intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity; boasted one U.S. General: Gorgon
Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what were looking at, and
we can see everything. As of the 2010 year-end report from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), there were
already more than 270 active authorizations for the use of dozens of kinds of drones (35% held by the Pentagon,
5% by Homeland Security and others by the FBI). Employing them for domestic police actions is following the model
quickly being implemented in surveillance-happy Britain, where drones are used for the routine monitoring of
antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state
surveillance. Even leaving aside the issue of weaponization (police officials now openly talk

about equipping drones with nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun), the
use of drones for domestic surveillance raises all sorts of extremely serious privacy concerns
and other issues of potential abuse. Their ability to hover in the air undetected for long

periods of time along with their comparatively cheap cost enables a type of broad,
sustained societal surveillance that is now impractical, while equipping them with
infra-red or heat-seeking detectors and high-powered cameras can provide
extremely invasive imagery. The holes eaten into the Fourth Amendments search and seizure
protections by the Drug War and the War on Terror means there are few Constitutional limits on how this technology
can be used, and there are no real statutory or regulatory restrictions limiting their use. In sum, the potential for

abuse is vast, the escalation in surveillance they ensure is substantial, and the effect they
have on the culture of personal privacy having the state employ hovering, high-tech,
stealth video cameras that invade homes and other private spaces is simply creepy. But
listeners of NPR would know about virtually none of that. On its All Things Considered program yesterday, NPR
broadcast a five-minute report (audio below) from Brian Naylor that purported to be a news story on the domestic
use of drones but was, in fact, much more akin to a commercial for the drone industry. Naylor began by describing a
video on the website of a drone manufacturer, AeroVironment, which names its drone the Qube; the video,
gushed Naylor, shows police officers chasing a criminal who hides, only for the police to pull a drone out of their
trunk, launch it airborne, receive images of where the criminal is hiding on their iPad, and then find and arrest the
suspect, who was armed and dangerous. NPR listeners then heard from that corporations Vice President touting
how much the Qube will help public safety professionals like law enforcement, search and rescue, and first
responders. Naylor then told NPR listeners that drones have been a success with the military though he didnt
mention things like this, this or this and then moved on to talk to an official in a Sheriffs office in Colorado who
uses the Dragonfly X6; in Naylors words, that police official explained how the drone product has been especially
useful in search operations. The Sheriff official then hailed the drones low cost, light weight, and fantastic safety
record. Next up in NPRs report was seriously an official with the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems
International, which Naylor called an industry trade group. Thats the organization that represents the drone
manufacturing industry, and NPR decided that this, too, was an important source for its story examining the
domestic use of drones. That official touted all the fantastic private-sector uses for drones, including Utility
companies so oil and gas using a UAS to do surveillance over a pipeline; electrical companies that want to do
surveillance over some of their electrical wires; the agriculture market. So, you can use UAS for crop testing. You
could use UAS for tracking livestock. With about 20 seconds left in the report, it came time to tack on a brief,
cursory note about privacy and abuse issues. Said Naylor: All that flying around of unmanned aircraft has some

people a little wary. A privacy advocate was put on the air for about ten seconds to note that drones can easily
be equipped with facial recognition cameras, infrared cameras, or open WiFi sniffers and could also be used by
paparazzi, your homeowners association, your neighbor. Naylor then noted that the FAA is working now on safety
regulations, and with that, the report ended. So NPR listeners heard for 4 1/2 minutes about the wonderful, exciting
uses of drones from an executive of a drone corporation, an official with the drone industry, and a sheriffs
spokesman using drones, and then for about 10 seconds at the end from someone who is a little wary. If the drone
industry had purchased commercial time on NPR, how would this report have been any different? (An industry
commercial might have given more prominent play to the privacy advocate just to make it seem less one-sided).

Weaponized drones are inevitable and coming fast

Greenwald 13
(Glenn, Journalist and lawyer, March 29 2013, Domestic Drones ad Their Unique Dangers,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-dangers)
The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in
terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result, civil liberties and privacy groups led by the ACLU - while accepting
that domestic drones are inevitable - have been devoting increasing efforts topublicizing their unique dangers and agitating for
statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the
same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not only in soft
authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state power generally) but also ignorance over
current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the
increasingly powerful domestic drone lobby. So it's quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue. I'm

The belief
that weaponized drones won't be used on US soil is patently irrational. Of course they will
be. It's not just likely but inevitable. Police departments are already speaking openly about
how their drones "could be equipped to carry nonlethal weapons such as Tasers or a beanbag gun." The drone industry has already developed and is now aggressively marketing
precisely such weaponized drones for domestic law enforcement use . It likely won't be in the form that
going to focus here most on domestic surveillance drones, but I want to say a few words about weaponized drones.

has received the most media attention: the type of large Predator or Reaper drones that shoot Hellfire missiles which destroy homes
and cars in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and multiple other countries aimed at Muslims (although US law enforcement
agencies already possess Predator drones and have used them over US soil for surveillance). Instead, as I detailed in a 2012

domestic weaponized
drones will be much smaller and cheaper, as well as more agile - but just as lethal. The nation's
examination of the drone industry's own promotional materials and reports to their shareholders,

leading manufacturer of small "unmanned aircraft systems" (UAS), used both for surveillance and attack purposes, is
AeroVironment, Inc. (AV). Its2011 Annual Report filed with the SEC repeatedly emphasizes that its business strategy depends upon
expanding its market from foreign wars to domestic usage including law enforcement: [PHOTO] AV's annual report added: "Initial
likely non-military users of small UAS include public safety organizations such as law enforcement agencies. . . ." These domestic
marketing efforts are intensifying with the perception that US spending on foreign wars will decrease. As a February, 2013 CBS News
report noted, focusing on AV's surveillance drones: "Now,

drones are headed off the battlefield. They're

already coming your way. "AeroVironment, the California company that sells the military something like 85 percent of its
fleet, is marketing them now to public safety agencies." Like many drone manufacturers, AV is now focused on drone products - such
as the "Qube" - that are so small that they can be "transported in the trunk of a police vehicle or carried in a backpack" and
assembled and deployed within a matter of minutes. One news report AV touts is headlined "Drone technology could be coming to a
Police Department near you", which focuses on the Qube. But another article prominently touted on AV's website describes the tiny
UAS product dubbed the "Switchblade", which, says the article, is "the leading edge of what is likely to be the broader, even
wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems." The article creepily hails the Switchblade drone as "the ultimate assassin bug".
That's because, as I wrote back in 2011, "it is controlled by the operator at the scene, and it worms its way around buildings and into
small areas, sending its surveillance imagery to an i-Pad held by the operator, who can then direct the Switchblade to lunge toward
and kill the target (hence the name) by exploding in his face." AV's website right now proudly touts a February, 2013 Defense News
article describing how much the US Army loves the "Switchblade" and how it is preparing to purchase more. Time Magazine heralded
this tiny drone weapon as "one of the best inventions of 2012", gushing: "the Switchblade drone can be carried into battle in a
backpack. It's a kamikaze: the person controlling it uses a real-time video feed from the drone to crash it into a precise target - say,

What possible reason could someone identify as to why

these small, portable weaponized UAS products will not imminently be used by federal, state
and local law enforcement agencies in the US? They're designed to protect their users in
dangerous situations and to enable a target to be more easily killed. Police agencies and the
increasingly powerful drone industry will tout their utility in capturing and killing dangerous
criminals and their ability to keep officers safe, and media reports will do the same. The
handful of genuinely positive uses from drones will be endlessly touted to distract attention
away from the dangers they pose. One has to be incredibly nave to think that these
"assassin bugs" and other lethal drone products will not be widely used on US soil by an
a sniper. Its tiny warhead detonates on impact."

already para-militarized domestic police force.

As Radley Balko's forthcoming book "Rise of the Warrior Cop"

details, the primary trend in US law enforcement is what its title describes as "The Militarization of America's Police Forces". The
history of domestic law enforcement particularly after 9/11 has been the importation of military techniques and weapons into

It would be shocking if these weapons were not imminently used by domestic

law enforcement agencies.
domestic policing.

Domestic Drone surveillance leads to a mass, weaponized,

violent surveillance state, justifying human-rights abuses
throughout the nation
Greenwald 11 (Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Greenwald is a journalist, constitutional lawyer, and
author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law. His most recent book, No Place
to Hide, is about the U.S. surveillance state and his experiences reporting on the Snowden documents
around the world for the Guardian, December 12, 2011. The growing meanace of domestic drones
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/12/the_growing_menace_of_domestic_drones/)

There is always a large segment of the population that reflexively supports the use of greater
government and police power its usually the same segment that has little objection to
Endless War and its grounded in a mix of standard authoritarianism (I side with
authority over those they accused of being Bad and want authorities increasingly empowered to stop the Bad people) along with naivet (I dont really worry
that new weapons and powers will be abused by those in power, especially when like now those in power are Good). This mindset manifests in
the domestic drone context weapons such as Tasers or a bean-bag gun. Anyone who doubts that this is going to happen should just consider
what the drone manufacturing industry itself is saying. They continuously
emphasize to investors and others that a major source of business growth for their drone products will be domestic, nonmilitary use. Consider the case of AeroVironment, Inc. (AV), the nations leading manufacturer of
small drones, used both for surveillance and attack purposes (the leading manufacturer of the larger drones, such as the Predator, is General Atomics Aeronautical
Systems, Inc., owned by the privately-held General Atomics). In their 2011 Annual Report, AV repeatedly touts domestic uses as the source for
future growth:AV specializes in the manufacture of drone products so small that they can be transported in the trunk of a car and assembled
and deployed within a matter of minutes. In other words, rather than being remote-operated from a military base, they can be used by a single soldier or police officer chasing
a suspect, and can be deployed to find suspects around corners, behind buildings, in urban environments: and not just find them, but kill
them. The product which AV appears to believe holds the greatest promise is one they have christened The Switchblade, the research and
development of which has been funded in part by the U.S. Government. As I noted last week, AV
prominently touts an article hailing the Switchblade as an ingenious, miniature unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is also a weapon and the leading edge of
what is likely to be the broader, even wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems . Because of how small,
light and easily deployable it is, the article dubs this new product the ultimate assassin bug. Basically, controlled by the operator at the scene, it worms its way around buildings and
into small areas, sending its surveillance imagery to an i-Pad held by the operator, who can then direct the Switchblade to lunge toward and kill the target (hence the name) by exploding

For those dismissing concerns about drones by claiming

(falsely) that they are the equivalent of police helicopters, wont those same people
dismiss concerns over weaponized drones by arguing: theres no difference between
allowing the police to Taser you or shoot you themselves and allowing them to do that by
drone? This is always how creeping police state powers are entrenched: one
step at a time. For those who are perfectly content with having stealth, hovering drones over U.S. soil for sustained surveillance purposes based on the reasoning
in his face. Heres how AV describes its new product:

that the police can already engage in surveillance so why not let them do it more efficiently? what possible objections will there be to having the police use weaponized drones? After
all, the police can already Taser, pepper spray and shoot people: why not let them do it with drones? AV itself certainly expects precisely that lack of resistance:The fact is that

drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing weapons do not
vest: and thats true not just for weaponization but for surveillance . Drones
enable a Surveillance State unlike anything weve seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper
than police helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater
surveillance over a much larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without
any detection, and they can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters. Their hovering capability also means
they can surveil a single spot for much longer than military satellites, which move with the earths rotation (see AVs Report at p. 11 the section entitled Stratospheric Persistent UAS

drones can provide uniquely sustained surveillance in ways that satellites

and police helicopters cannot).As I noted last week, one new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in
for all the reasons

is able to scan an
area the size of a small town and the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can]
seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity ; boasted one U.S. General: Gorgon Stare will be looking at a
whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what were looking at, and we
can see everything. Only ignorance and irrationality can lead someone to assert that surveillance drones do nothing more than what police helicopters already
enable. Beyond the natural extension of the authoritarian mindset if we use drones to find
Afghanistan the Gorgon Stare, named after the mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them

and/or kill Bad Guys over there, why not let our leaders use them over here? (and Wired today published photographs of the civilian impact of President Obamas drone campaign over

domestic importation of drones is highly likely is that this industry is

spending large amounts of money to ensure it. When a scandal erupted several years ago over corporate-paid trips for members
there) a separate reason the

of Congress and their staffs the most common destinations being such strategically vital locales such as Paris, Hawaii, and Italy it was General Atomics, the maker of the Predator
drone, that was the largest underwriter of those trips. This is an industry that has long consolidated its control over Congress using the standard mix of campaign contributions, legalized
bribery, and bipartisan lobbyist armies.General Atomics employs a large team of lobbyist firms filled with former government officials, Congressional staffers and even members of
Congress. Those lobbyists include former GOP Sen. Al DAmato and his son Christopher (ex-Senior Counsel at the SEC); Dave Kilian, who boasts of 29 years of service to the Federal
Government in both the executive and legislative branches and 21 years as a professional staffer for various leaders of the House Appropriations Committee; Letita White, who for 21
years worked for [GOP Democratic] Congressman Jerry Lewis, the current Ranking Minority Member of the House Appropriations Committee; Jessica Eggimann, former House staffer to
GOP Rep. Joe Wilson on the Veterans Affairs Committee; and Clayton Heil, the former deputy staff director and general counsel to the Senate Appropriations Committee. Thats just a
fraction of the influence-peddlers laboring in the halls of Washington for GA. Unsurprisingly, GAs annual lobbying budget is in excess of $2 million. AeroVironments lobbying
expenditures are now close to $1 million each year. Meanwhile, a top GA in-house lobbyist, Gary Hopper, personally doles out tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to
key House members of both parties who work on defense issues. They are focused on lobbying for exactly the bills one would expect: defense appropriations, Homeland Security budgets

their future growth depends upon expanding the use of

into domestic law enforcement settings. With these armies of influence-peddlers lined up to ensure
that happens, combined with the security-fixated mentality of America s political and media classes and the
authoritarian factions of its citizenry, what is going to stop the full-scale importation of drone technology for surveillance and weaponization
onto American soil? Why would anyone think thats not going to happen? * * * * * Not just the potential for abuse but the
likelihood of it, really the inevitability is self-evident for so many reasons . Today, Paul Krugman decreed that the U.S.
and the like. They believe, as they make very clear, that

drones

beyond military uses

and Europe are suffering not a recession but a depression, and highlighted the social unrest and anti-democratic forces growing in Europe. Economic- and austerity-fuelled riots have

excessive
police force has been repeatedly used against Occupy protesters on U.S. soil. And U.S. Terrorism officials now
routinely emphasize the supposedly domestic nature of the Terrorist threat, with
greater powers constantly being seized in its name for domestic uses. Its beyond obvious that
policy planners and law enforcement officials expect serious social unrest. Why wouldnt they: when has sustained, severe economic suffering
and anxiety of the sort we are now seeing along with pervasive, deep anger at the political class and its institutions not produced that type of unrest? Drones are
the ultimate tool for invasive, sustained surveillance and control, and one
would have to be historically ignorant and pathologically naive not to
understand its capacity for abuse. Take the case just reported on by the LA Times. At first, I was somewhat baffled as to why this case
already struck London and Athens. Police in England have formally labeled the Occupy movement a Terrorist threat alongside Al Qaeda and FARC and, of course,

involving a minor dispute over 6 wandering cows, followed by some not unusual hostility from farm owners toward law enforcement would prompt the first use of a Predator B drone
to apprehend domestic suspects. But looking a bit further into the matter made it clear. The suspects in question are basically political dissidents: they are adherents to the sovereign
citizen movement which basically engages in mischievous

civil disobedience

the filing of fraudulent lien documents and the like to protest what it believes to

be illegitimate government authority. Although a few members of that movement have engaged in violence (as is true for most political movements), these particular suspects are not

led federal authorities to

lend their Predator drone to apprehend them.In the name of homegrown Terrorism, so many of the
most recent War on Terror expansions have entailed application for domestic uses: from the Obama
administrations assault on Miranda rights to its claimed power to assassinate U.S. citizens to the latest detention bill about to pass Congress. The Surveillance
State and the police powers ushered in by the War on Terror have been widely
applied to domestic political dissent. The U.S. Governments fixation on identifying and punishing dissidents is illustrated by the
accused of any wrongdoing with regard to any of that, but their participation in an anti-government movement is obviously what

administrations creepy new hear-something, see-something campaign against domestic radicalization: encouraging teachers and children to spot and then report those making

takes
extreme denseness and authoritarian trust to dismiss it as paranoia or hysteria .
statements that indicate a rejection of American society. It takes little imagination to see the dangers of this militarization of domestic police powers; in fact, it

Heres how Matt Taibbi put it when trumpeting the dangers of potential domestic application of the new detention bill: Heres where I think were in very dangerous territory. We have two
very different but similarly large protest movements going on right now in the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement. What if one of them is linked to a violent act? What if a bomb goes
off in a police station in Oakland, or an IRS office in Texas? What if the FBI then linked those acts to Occupy or the Tea Party? . . . . This effort to eat away at the rights of the accused was
originally gradual, but to me it looks like that

process is accelerating. It began in the Bush years with a nebulous description of terrorist sedition that may or

may not have included links to Sunni extremist groups in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. But words like associated and substantial and betray have crept into the discussion,

This
confusion about the definition of terrorism comes at a time when the economy is terrible, the domestic government is more unpopular
than ever, and there is quite a lot of radical and even revolutionary political agitation going on right here
at home. There are people out there Ive met some of them, in both the Occupy and Tea Party movements who think that the entire American political system needs to be
overthrown, or at least reconfigured, in order for progress to be made. . . . At what point do those luminaries start equating
and now it feels like the definition of a terrorist is anyone who crosses some sort of steadily-advancing invisible line in their opposition to the current government. . . .

al-Qaeda supporters with, say, radical anti-capitalists in the Occupy movement ? What
exactly is the difference between such groups in the minds (excuse me, in what passes for the minds) of
the people who run this country? That difference seems to be getting smaller and
smaller all the time, and such niceties as American citizenship and the legal tradition of due process
seem to be less and less meaningful to the people who run things in America . What does
seem real to them is this battlefield earth vision of the world, in which they are behind one set of lines and an increasingly enormous group of other people is on the other side. No

the escalating addition of drones weaponized or even just

surveillance to the vast arsenal of domestic weapons that already exist is a serious, consequential development.
The fact that it has happened with almost no debate and no real legal authorization is itself highly significant . One thing is
for certain: this is a development that is going to continue and increase rapidly. It needs far more
matter ones views,

attention than it has thus far received.

Current FAA regulations fail to stop weaponization

Gallagher 13
(Ryan, journalist who reports on surveillance, security, and civil liberties, July 3 2013, U.S.
Border Agency Has Considered Weaponizing Domestic Drones to "Immobilize" People,
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/07/03/documents_show_customs_and_border_
protection_considered_weaponized_domestic.html)
Drones in the United States are currently only authorized to be used for surveillance
purposes. But that hasnt stopped the Department of Homeland Security from considering
weaponizing its unmanned aircraft so they can immobilize targets in border areas. Newly released
documents, dated 2010, show that the DHSs Customs and Border Protection arm has weighed the
possibility of adding non-lethal weapons to its Predator unmanned aircraft, which are currently
used predominantly to monitor border zones in Arizona and Texas. The documents, obtained by the Electronic
Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act request, show the CPB suggesting in a law enforcement
sensitive report to Congress that its drones could be upgraded to include the weapons to shoot at

targets of interest. The documents do not detail specific weapons, but non-lethal rounds
deployed on drones could feasibly include rubber bullets, tear gas, or a Taser-like shock. That
CBP has considered weaponizing its drones will add to concerns about potential mission
creep with unmanned technology being used domestically. Rights groups have previously raised
concerns about the possibility of drones in the United States being equipped with weapons, which may have
prompted President Obama during a speech in May to state that he believed no president should deploy armed
drones over U.S. soil." The FAA, which is working to integrate drones into the national airspace system by
September 2015,

has said that it has rules in place that prohibit weapons from being installed
on a civil aircraft and that it does not have any plans on changing them for unmanned
aircraft. But as drone technology is increasingly adopted by law enforcement agencies, the
agency may come under pressure to rethink those regulations.

Prior action is key

Burgess 15
(Rep. Michael, congressman, 26th district Texas, May 1 2015, Its Time to Ban Armed
Drones on American Soil, http://dailycaller.com/2015/05/01/its-time-to-ban-armed-droneson-american-soil/)
When most people heard about an Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS), or drone, for the first time, it was almost
solely in the context of military strategy. It doesnt seem very long ago that this technology seemed exclusively
military-grade and too hyper-advanced to concern the average American. But, we live in fast times. Federal

Aviation Administration (FAA) rules have been relaxed in recent years . In fact, the programs last
re-authorization even acknowledged the field was rapidly advancing unpredictably, which would necessitate new
oversight. And sure enough, in a few short years drones have rapidly integrated into our everyday

lives. Delivery companies like Amazon want them, energy companies want them to monitor multi-acre pipelines
and wind farms, and scaled down versions are even sought after for recreation. These adaptations are similar to the
after-effects of any groundbreaking technology, and arent threatening in and of themselves. However , local

police agencies across the country are increasingly requesting FAA approval to deploy
drones. Most could have reasonable intentions, but some departments are seeking to arm
drones with tear gas, rubber bullets, and other riot control-like projectiles. The first local police to
show interest were in my home state of Texas and, since, interest has become more widespread in nationwide local
departments. Whats worse is that federal law enforcement seems to be complicit. The Drug
Enforcement Administration (DEA) is entertaining the idea of deploying drones with drug sensing capabilities.
Meanwhile, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) directly contradicts their own mission statement by carrying out
drone strikes abroad. This path is unacceptable. Before drones become a widespread staple of local law
enforcement, we owe it to ourselves to have a national discussion. We need the chance to answer the serious
questions that drones pose before we go down a path we cant reverse. These questions hit at the very core of our
nations most cherished principles of personal privacy and freedom from oppression. Our founders laid the
foundation for a society where the use of military tactics by agents of our justice system really has no place. In that
context, I believe that free citizens are innocent unless proven guilty, and that they arent to be treated as suspects,
or terrorists, while going about their everyday lives. Dont confuse the matter. Drones are a legitimate tactical
benefit to those in contested regions like our soldiers fighting overseas or the agents working to secure our
borders. But, arming a remote-controlled surveillance drone for day-to-day domestic law

enforcement is blatantly an over-the-top use of force. There is no reason that any law
abiding American should experience that kind of oppression , and I intend to make it so that they
wont have to. Just last week, I introduced the No Armed Drones Act (NADA) to bar the use of armed drones
lethal or non-lethal against any person or property in the entirety of our national airspace . Even before we

can get to having thoughtful discussion on many of the issues surrounding drones, it is of
the utmost importance that we start those talks on an even surface that doesnt include
armed, unmanned, flying police aircraft. This is a constitutional issue, not a partisan one. And I swore to
defend our Constitution. So, rest-assured, I will continue fighting to ensure that, before the FAA approves a single
drone for local policing or our federal agencies create a surveillance state full of citizens who constantly look over
their shoulders, we as a nation have the opportunity to choose liberty in this dynamic age of innovation.

The FAA is currently stripping away drone regulationsno

guarantee that any bans on drone weaponization will last
Dillow 15
(Clay, technology, aerospace, and defense reporter, March 24 2015, FAA issues blanket
approval for commercial drone use below 200 feet, http://fortune.com/2015/03/24/faacommercial-drone-approval/)
The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday released anew interim policy governing the
use of certain small drones for commercial purposes, issuing a blanket authorization for unmanned
aircraft flights below 200 feet. But the new rules wont benefit everyone equally . The new policy only applies
to the roughly 45 companies that have already obtained permission to fly through the FAAs
slow and stringent Section 333 process. Under existing FAA rules, there are two ways to gain clearance
for unmanned aircraft system (UAS) operations. One can apply for a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA),
which typically grant government agencies or research institutions permission to use drones under fairly restrictive
circumstances, usually for research. Businesses can also apply for permission to use drones through

whats known as Section 333 of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, under which
the FAA can grant companies approval to fly drones commercially under certain defined
parameters. The FAA has approved only 53 Section 333 applications for roughly 45 companies thus far. Some
600 applications are still pending, stuck in a slow-moving approval pipeline. The FAAs new policy grants any
company or entity that has already cleared the Section 333 approval process a blanket COA to fly below 200 feet. In
other words, those companies that are already approved to fly under Section 333 now have blanket approval to fly
below 200 feet. If all that sounds a bit confusing, heres what it really means: If you werent authorized to fly before,
you still cant. But for those with Section 333 exemptions, the FAA just slashed through a whole

lot of red tape. Section 333 exemptions come with a lot of bureaucratic baggage. For instance, users that simply
want to test a new flight software patch or use a drone to inspect something no higher than a power line have to file
flight plans with the FAA. The blanket COA essentially allows those same companies to operate

much more flexibly and without so much government oversight provided theyre willing to
keep their aircraft below 200 feet.

Drone regulation needs to happen now-prolif coming soon

WADHWA 2014
(Vivek Wadhwa, Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research
Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University , 12-10-2014,
"Banning Drones Won't Solve the Problem," Huffington Post,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivek-wadhwa/banning-drones-wont-solve-theproblem_b_6301134.html)

Senator Dianne Feinstein

(D-Calif.) has vowed to push legislation that would crack down on the commercial
use of drones,
India's Directorate General for Civil Aviation has
already banned all use of drones in the country -- even for civilian purposes. There
are valid concerns that the proliferation of drones will endanger
commercial flights and cause serious accidents. U.S. military is
worried
that drones will be weaponized as killing machines and become autonomous flying
improvised explosive devices
. Banning commercial drone
use will not solve these problems; it will just give us a false sense of comfort
The Federal Aviation Administration recently released a report detailing more than 190 safety incidents involving drones and commercial aircraft. In response,

also called Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS).

The

IEDs (

rightfully

) that target a specific individual by means of facial recognition

and kick the can

further down the road. About two years ago, I wrote a Washington Post column in which I argued that we need to prepare ourselves for the "drone age." It isn't just the United States that is developing drone capabilities; governments
and DIYers all over the world are doing the same, particularly the Chinese. This isn't all bad; there are many good uses for drone technologies. To start with, there isn't yet a clear consensus on what a drone is. Is it something that
flies and is remote controlled? If that is the case, should the FAA also ban remote-controlled airplanes and helicopters that hobbyists have flown happily and relatively safely for many years? The drone encounter that Senator
Feinstein cited in a Senate Commerce Committee hearing as a reason to regulate commercial drone flights was reportedly just a pink toy helicopter. Then there is the practicability of enforcement. If the government should institute
restrictions and penalties, who will enforce them? Will the police buy high-performance drones to shoot down illicit drones? Can we scramble the Air Force to blow a flock of $300 quadcopters out of the sky? Should we equip legions

that drones will be common

in our skies and that they will play an integral role in our economy and society
of young children with air rifles? Proposing laws without realistic hope of enforcement does nothing to solve the problems at hand. Let's first acknowledge

. We know that

drones are saving money and improving safety on many types of remote inspection such as that of distant pipelines and tall broadcast towers. Documentary filmmakers use drones to get aerial shots that are not affordable with a
regular plane or helicopter. As well, start-ups like Matternet are pioneering the use of drones to deliver critical medical supplies to remote parts of the developing world. Drones could be used as long-haul cargo-delivery vehicles,
allowing for more efficient point-to-point delivery of goods and materials. Then of course, companies such as Google and Amazon are developing drone delivery services that provide within-the-hour delivery of ordered goods--without

if we don't ban the drones, what can we do to prepare for

them and weave their capabilities into a broader picture of economic development
there needs to be a core technology framework for collision avoidance
putting any more traffic onto the streets or carbon into the skies. So

First,

. This is no small problem. Even

the best computer-vision algorithms struggle to navigate complex cityscapes. The vehicles in NASA's DARPA challenge weighed thousands of pounds and carried serious computational and sensor firepower. Yet they could barely
navigate barren wastelands without flipping themselves over or running into a wall. So how will a drone the size of a shoebox carry enough intelligence to avoid hitting a building, a person, a car, a power line or, worst case, a
commercial aircraft? It's a wonderful engineering challenge and worth the focus of some of our best minds. Assuming we have collision-avoidance systems in place, how can we build a system of distributed air-traffic control for
drones? It would obviously need to be computer-driven and automatic, and to include safety measures and emergency kill switches or other mechanisms to bring down a drone that is malfunctioning or poses a danger. We would

We also
need to build private and commercial air-defense systems, just as the military is
developing, to shield our schools, homes, and businesses from drone surveillance
, we need to debate what is socially
acceptable and to create legal frameworks.
need to plan for specific air corridors in city areas that are dedicated to drones and confine the drones to those places. Again, this is a huge engineering challenge, but not one that is insurmountable.

or

attack. I wonder whether force fields such as we saw on Star Trek may become a practical reality. Beyond the technical issues

Should the cameras of delivery drones be recording and saving all video footage as they enter into the airspace

of a customer's home? For that matter, should drones be allowed to fly over private property at all -- or should they be limited to public roads between droneports? Should we have the right to shoot down unauthorized drones on our
property? If the Second Amendment grants the right of gun ownership to individuals for self-defense, then does it allow them to fly their own defensive drones? These are issues we need to tackle -- and soon. The drones are coming,
whether we are ready or not.

US regulation spillover only way to stop backlash in Asia and

ME
ATLANTIC COUNCIL OF CANADA 2014
(Atlantic Council of Canada, 6-18-2014, "The Economy of Drones and their Proliferation,"
http://natocouncil.ca/the-economy-of-drones-and-their-proliferation/)
In their article, William Wan and Peter Finn, state that More than 50 countries have
purchased surveillance drones, and many have started in-country development programs
for armed versions. In recent years, China has shown great interest in expanding its
drone technology and following the USAs example of shifting military technology
towards robotics orientated weapons. In the November 2011 Zhuhai air show, the Chinese
unveiled their new WJ-600 drone along with a dozen other models. China is perhaps the

fastest developer of UAVs with models which have a striking resemblance to US

aircraft such as General Atomics Predator and Northrop Grummans Global Hawk. The
Chinese have also been quick to notice a window of profit for selling drone technologies as
previously the US has exported this technology to close allies only. Zhang Qiaoliang, a
representative of the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute said the United States
doesnt export many attack drones, so were taking advantage of that hole in the market.
Chinas role in exporting drones is increasing drastically as it does not have many trade
restrictions, and the country has begun showing more drones in international air shows with
intent to sell. Among other models, they now boast the pterodactyl, a model comparable to
the US Predator, with an anticipated market in Pakistan, the Middle East, and Africa. The

increasing Chinese role in exporting drones and drone technology has also
pressured the US to broaden its list of drone export approved countries in order to
counter Chinese exports and gain an upper hand in the market. The US also has a
military strategic interest in maintaining a monopoly in the drone market , because it
gives the US and its allies a military advantage over other nations. General Atomics has
received approval from the Pentagon to sell unarmed surveillance drones to the
Middle East and Latin America. The company is now pending approval to sell to Saudi
Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. The US has also simultaneously been
controlling where its allies sell their drones. In 2008 Israel sold and anti-radar attack drone to
China, for which it had been penalized by a temporary exclusion from the F-35 Joint Strike
Fighter programme. All nations are, however, equally privileged to develop and use drones
and the US should not have the right to maintain a monopoly over the
drone market by coercive means. Although the drone market is economically and
strategically beneficial to many nations, the proliferation of this technology does have some
adverse effects. For example, Chinas aggressive drone exports have created unrest in

its neighbouring countries, which could lead toregional instability if this new Chinese
military advantage is not accounted for. In response, Japan has stated it will send
military officials to the US in order to study UAV technologies and recently the US has sent
two global hawk surveillance drones to Japan in a statement that it is committed to Asian
security. The proliferation of the UAV is highly alarming as it signals a greater
movement towards the proliferation of robotic weapons, which raises questions about
the rules of engagement. Noel Sharkey stated that one of the great inhibitors of war is the
body bag count, but that is undermined by the idea of riskless war, he further explained
that widespread use of attack drones could reduce the threshold for going to war. The

current use of drones by the US is also very controversial as many targeted killing in
Pakistan are de facto a violation of Pakistans sovereignty. Targeted killing is also
disputed by many academics of international law, and the drone movement in itself lacks
clear international legal governing structures, which could lead to the misuse of drones by
more nations outside the US. To conclude, the growing drone market and possibly an
emerging military robotics market have high economic and strategic values for
many nations; however, uncontrolled proliferation could prove dangerous. Greater
supply and market access to these weapons could lead unwanted parties such as terrorist
groups or irrational states like North Korea to acquire these weapons.

Domestic drone policy gets modeled regulations like the plan

are key
Barry 13

(Tom, policy analyst at Center for International Policy, April 23, 2013, DRONES OVER THE
HOMELAND HOW POLITICS, MONEY AND LACK OF OVERSIGHT HAVE SPARKED DRONE
PROLIFERATION, AND WHAT WE CAN DO https://www.ciponline.org/research/html/dronesover-the-homeland)

Drones are proliferating at home and abroad. A new high-tech realm is emerging,
where remotely controlled and autonomous unmanned systems do our bidding .
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) commonly known as drones are already

the military-industrial
complex and the emergence of the homeland security apparatus have put border
drones at the forefront of the intensifying public debate about the proper role of
drones domestically. Drones Over the Homeland focuses on the deployment of drones by the Department of
working for us in many ways. This new CIP International Policy Report reveals how

Homeland Security (DHS), which is developing a drone fleet that it projects will be capable of quickly responding to
homeland security threats, national security threats and national emergencies across the entire nation. In addition,
DHS says that its drone fleet is available to assist local law-enforcement agencies. Due to a surge in U.S. military
contracting since 2001, the United States is the world leader in drone production and deployment. Other nations,

The United
States, however, will remain the dominant driver in drone manufacturing and
deployment for at least another decade. The central U.S. role in drone proliferation
is the direct result of the Pentagons rapidly increasing expenditures for UAVs. Also
fueling drone proliferation is UAV procurement by the Department of Homeland
Security, by other federal agencies such as NASA, and by local police, as well as by
individuals and corporations. Drones are also proliferating among state-level Air
National Guard units. Despite its lead role in the proliferation of drones, the
U.S. government has failed to take the lead in establishing appropriate
regulatory frameworks and oversight processes. Without this necessary
regulatory infrastructure at both the national and international levels drone
proliferation threatens to undermine constitutional guarantees, civil
liberties and international law. This policy report begins with a brief overview of the development and deployment of UAVs, including a
especially China, are also rapidly gaining a larger market share of the international drone market.

summary of the DHS drone program. The second section details and critically examines the role of Congress and industry in promoting drone proliferation. In the third part, we explore
the expanding scope of the DHS drone program, extending to public safety and national security. The reports fourth section focuses on the stated objectives of the homeland security
drone program. It debunks the dubious assertions and myths that DHS wields in presentations to the public and Congress to justify this poorly conceived, grossly ineffective and entirely
nonstrategic border program. The reports final section summarizes our conclusions, and then sets forward our recommendations. I. UAV OVERVIEW AND ORIGIN OF HOMELAND
SECURITY DRONES UAVs are ideal instruments for what the military calls ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) missions. Yet, with no need for an onboard crew and with the
capacity to hover unseen at high altitudes for long periods, drones also have many nonmilitary uses. Whether deployed in the air, on the ground or in the water, unmanned drones are
ideally suited for a broad range of scientific, business, public-safety and even humanitarian tasks. That is due to what are known as the three Ds capabilities Dull (they can work long
hours, conducting repetitive tasks), Dirty (drones are impervious to toxicity) and Dangerous (no lives lost if a drone is destroyed). Indicative of the many possibilities for UAV use, some
human rights advocates are now suggesting drones can be used to defend human rights, noting their ISR capabilities could be used to monitor human rights violations by repressive
regimes and non-state actors in such countries as Syria.1 Manufacturers, led by the largest military contractors, are rapidly producing drones for a boom market, whose customers
include governments (with the U.S. commanding dominant market share), law enforcement agencies, corporations, individual consumers and rogue forces. Drones are proliferating so
rapidly that a consensus about their formal name has not yet formed. The most common designation is Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), although Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) is
also frequently used. Other less common terms include Unmanned Systems (US) and Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA). The more inclusive Unmanned Systems term covers ground and
marine drones , while highlighting the elaborate control and communications systems used to launch, operate and recover drones. However, because most drones require staffed
command-and-control centers, Remotely Piloted Aircraft may be the best descriptive term. DRONES TAKE OFF Although the U.S. military and intelligence sectors had been promoting
drone development since the early 1960s,2 it was the Israeli Air Force in the late 1970s that led the way in drone technology and manufacture. However, after the Persian Gulf War in
1991, the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the U.S. Air Force became the major drivers in drone development and proliferation.3 Because the intelligence budget is classified, there are no
hard figures publicly available that quantify the intelligence communitys contributions to drone development in the United States. It has been credibly estimated that prior to 2000, such
contributions made up about 40% of total drone research and development (R&D) expenditures, with the U.S. Air Force being the other major source of development funds for drone
research by U.S. military contractors.4 In the early 1990s, as part of a classified weapons project, the U.S. Air Force and the CIA underwrote and guided the development and production
of what became the Predator UAV, the first war-fighting drones that were initially deployed in ISR missions during the Balkan wars in 1995. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-SI),
an affiliate of privately held, San Diego-based company General Atomics, produced the first Predator UAVs now known as Predator A with research and development funding from
Pentagon, the Air Force and a highly secret intelligence organization called the National Reconnaissance Organization.5 The 1995 deployment of the unarmed Predator A by the CIA and
Air Force sparked new interest within the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, resulting in at least $600 million in new R&D contracting for drones with General Atomics. According to
a U.S. Air Force study, The CIAs UAV program that existed in the early 1990s and that still exists today gave Predator and GA-ASI an important opportunity that laid the foundation for
Predators success. The study goes on to document what is known of the collaboration between the intelligence community and General Atomics.6 General Atomics is a privately held
firm, owned by brothers Neal and Linden Blue. The Blue brothers bought the firm (which was originally a start-up division of General Dynamics) in 1986 for $50 million and the next year
hired Ret. Rear Admiral Thomas J. Cassidy to run GA-SI. The Blue brothers are well connected nationally and internationally with arch-conservative, anti-communist networks. These links
stem in part from their past associations with right-wing leaders; one such example being the 100,000-acre banana and cocoa farm Neal Blue co-owned with the Somoza family in
Nicaragua, another being Linden Blues 1961 imprisonment in Cuba shortly before the Bay of Pigs for flying into Cuban airspace, and especially their record of providing substantial
campaign support for congressional hawks.7 In 1997, the U.S. Air Forces high-tech development and procurement divisions took the first steps toward weaponizing the Predator. This
push led to the Air Forces Big Safari rapid high-tech acquisitions program, which proved instrumental in having an armed Predator ready for deployment in 2000. The newly
weaponized MQ Predator-B was in action from the first day of the invasion of Afghanistan on October 21, 2001, when a Hellfire missile was fired from a remote operator sitting in an
improvised command and control center situated in the parking lot of the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.8 The post-9/11 launch of the global war on terrorism opened the
floodgates for drone R&D funding and procurement by the CIA and all branches of the U.S. military, led by the Air Force. Starting in Afghanistan, and later in Iraq, the Predator
transitioned from an unmanned surveillance aircraft to what General Atomics proudly called a Hunter-Killer. Since 2004, the CIA and the Joint Special Operations Command, a covert
unit of the U.S. military, have routinely made clandestine strikes in Pakistan and more recently in Yemen and Somalia. These clandestine strikes increased during the first Obama
Administration and continued into the second amid growing criticism that drone strikes were unconstitutional and counterproductive.9 The rise of the Predators along with later drone
models produced by General Atomics the Reaper, Guardian and Avenger drones can be attributed to aggressive marketing, influence-peddling and lobbying initiatives by General
Atomics and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems (GA-SI). The selling of the Predator could also count on the close personal ties forged over decades in the military-industrial complex,
which resulted in key R&D grants from the military and intelligence sectors. Another important factor in the Predators increasing popularity has been General Atomics willingness to
adapt models to meet varying demands from DOD, DHS and the intelligence community for different armed and unarmed variants. Also working in General Atomics favor is its ongoing
commitment to curry favor in Congress with substantial campaign contributions and special favors. Speaking at the Citadel on December 11, 2001, President George W. Bush
underscored the Predators central role in U.S. global counterterrorism missions: Before the war, the Predator had skeptics because it did not fit the old ways. Now it is clear the military
does not have enough unmanned vehicles.10 At the time, there was widespread public, media and congressional enthusiasm for UAVs where suspected terrorists were purportedly

killed with surgical precision while UAV pilots sat in front of video screens out of harms way drinking coffee. Little was known then about the high-accident rates for the UAVs or the
shocking collateral damage from their targeted strikes. Nor was it well known that the Predators were being piloted from command and control centers at the CIA and at Creech Air Force
Base in Nevada. PREDATORS ALIGHT ON THE BORDER In the late-1990s, about the same time that the U.S. Border Patrol started contracting for ground-based electronic surveillance, the
agency also began planning to integrate drone surveillance into ground-based electronic surveillance systems. It is also when it began the practice of entering into sole-source contracts
with high-tech firms.11 The Border Patrols grand high-tech plan was to integrate drone ISR operations with its planned Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System (ISIS).12 The plan,
albeit never detailed in the project proposal, was to integrate geospatial images from yet-to-be acquired Border Patrol UAVs into an elaborate command, control and communications
systems managed by the Border Patrol an agency not known for its high-level technical or management skills.13 Soon after the CIA and the U.S. Air Force began flooding General
Atomics with procurement contracts for armed Predators in 2001, disarmed Predator UAVs were summoned for border security duty. In 2003, the Border Patrol with funding not from the
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) budget but rather from the Homeland Securitys newly created Science and Technology Directorate began testing small, relatively inexpensive
UAVs for border surveillance. In 2005, CBP took full control over the DHS drone program, with the launch of its own Predator drone program under the supervision of the newly created
Office of Air and Marine (OAM). OAM was a CBP division that united all the aerial and marine assets of the Office of the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
According to the CBP, The UAV program focuses operations on the CBP priority mission of anti-terrorism by helping to identify and intercept potential terrorists and illegal cross-border
activity. Tens of billions of dollars began to flow into the Department of Homeland Security for border security the term that superseded border control in the aftermath of 9/11 and
the DHS drone program was propelled forward. To direct OAM, DHS appointed Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired Air Force major general. During his tenure in the Air Force, Kostelnik
supervised weapons acquisitions and was one of the leading players in encouraging General Atomics to quickly equip the Predator with bombs or missiles.14 The more expensive, armed
Predator drones and their variants became the preferred border drone as a result of widespread enthusiasm for the surge in Predator operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the close
collaborative relationship that developed between General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and CBP. CBP began using its first Predator for operations in October 2005, but the drone
crashed in April 2006 in the Arizona desert near Nogales due an error made by General Atomics contracted pilot. Crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board
found the pilot had shut off the drones engine when he thought he was redirecting the drones camera. As Kostelnik explained to the Border and Marine Subcommittee of the House
Homeland Security Committee, There was a momentary loss link that switched to the second control and the Predator fell out of the sky.15 The Fleet By early 2013, CBP had a fleet of
seven Predator drones and three Guardians drones, all stationed at military bases. Two Guardians Predators modified for marine surveillance are based at the Naval Air Station in
Corpus Christi, Texas, while another patrols the Caribbean as part of a drug war mission from its base at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Four of the seven Predators are
stationed at Libby Army Airfield, part of Fort Huachuca near the Mexican border in southeastern Arizona, while two have homes at the Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota. The
tenth Predator drone will also be based at Cape Canaveral. According to the CBP Strategic Air and Marine Plan of 2010, OAM intends to deploy a fleet of 24 Guardians and Predators. In
2008, as part of its acquisition strategy, CBP planned to have the 24-drone fleet ready by 2016, boasting that OAM would then be capable of deploying drones anywhere in national
airspace in three hours or less.16 In late 2012, CBP signed a major new five-drone contract with General Atomics. The $443.1 million five-year contract includes $237.7 million for the
prospective purchase of up to 14 additional Predators and Predator variations, and $205.4 million for operational costs and maintenance by General Atomics crews.17 This new contract
was signed, despite increasing budget restrictions, a series of critical reports by the Congressional Research Service (CRS), Government Accountability Office and the DHS Office of
Inspector General, and continuing technical failures and poor results. Only One Source CBP insists that General Atomics Aeronautical Systems is the only responsible source for its
drone needs and that no other suppliers or servicers can satisfy agency requirements for these $18-20 million drones. According to CBPs justification for sole-source contracting, U.S.
national security would be put at risk if DHS switched drone contractors. In a November 1, 2012 statement titled Justification for Other than Full and Open Competition, DHS contends
that The Predator-B/Guardian UAS combination is unmatched by any other UAS available. To procure an alternative systemor support serviceswould detrimentally impact national
security, most notably due to decreased interdictions of contraband (e.g., illegal narcotics, undocumented immigrants). Furthermore, CBP claimed, The GA-ASI MQ-9 UAS provides
the best value to OAMs documented and approved operational requirements and programmatic constraints. With 38% of planned systems on-online, MQ-9 operations are mature, wellunderstood, and a critical component of DHSs daily Homeland Security campaign. When asked by this author for information documenting specific data, comparative studies, costbenefit evaluations, record of the achievements of the drone program, or threat assessment to support such conclusions, CBP simply responded: CBP deploys and operates the UAS only
after careful examination where the UAS can most responsibly aid in countering threats of our Nations security. As threats change, CBP adjusts its enforcement posture accordingly and
may consider moving the location of assets.18 II. MORE DRONE BOOSTERISM THAN OVERSIGHT IN CONGRESS The Pentagon, military, intelligence agencies and military contractors are
longtime proponents of UAVs for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Following President Bushs declaration of a global war on terrorism, the White House
became directly involved in expanding drone deployment in foreign wars especially in directing drone strikes. The most unabashed advocates of drone proliferation, however, are in
Congress. They claim drones can solve many of Americas most pressing problems from eliminating terrorists to keeping the homeland safe from unwanted immigrants. However, there
has been little congressional oversight of drone deployments, both at home and abroad. Since the post-9/11 congressional interest in drone issues budgets, role in national airspace,
overseas sales, border deployment and UAVs by law enforcement agencies drone boosterism in Congress has been devoid of any incipient oversight or governance role. Drones made
an appearance in the Senate in the first foray to implement immigration reform, when on January 28, 2013 a bipartisan group of senators argued their proposal legislation would
increase the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and surveillance equipment.19 Drone promotion by U.S. representatives and senators in Congress pops up in what at first may
seem the unlikeliest of places. Annually, House members join with UAS manufacturers to fill the foyer and front rooms of the Rayburn House Office Building with displays of the latest
drones an industry show introduced in glowing speeches by highly influential House leaders, notably Buck McKeon, the Southern California Republican who chairs the House Armed
Service Committee and co-chairs the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus (CUSC). Advances in communications, aviation and surveillance technology have all accelerated the
coming of UAVs to the home front. Yet drones are not solely about technological advances. Money flows and political influence also factor in. Congressional Caucus on Unmanned
Systems At the forefront of the money/politics nexus is the Congressional Caucus on Unmanned Systems (CCUS). Four years ago, the CCUS (then known as the House Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle Caucus) was formed by a small group of congressional representatives mainly Republicans and mostly hailing from districts with drone industries or bases. By late 2012, the
House caucus had 60 members and had changed its name to encompass all unmanned systems whether aerial, marine or ground-based.20 This bipartisan caucus, together with its
allies in the drone industry, has been promoting UAV use at home and abroad through drone fairs on Capitol Hill, new legislation and drone-favored budgets. CCUS aims to educate
members of Congress and the public on the strategic, tactical, and scientific value of unmanned systems; actively support further development and acquisition of more systems, and to
more effectively engage the civilian aviation community on unmanned system use and safety.21 In late 2012, the caucus comprised a collection of border hawks, immigration hardliners
and leading congressional voices for the military contracting industry. The two caucus co-chairs, Howard Buck McKeon, R-California, and Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, are well positioned to
accelerate drone proliferation. McKeon, whose southern California district includes major drone production facilities, notably General Atomics, is the caucus founder and chair of the
House Armed Services Committee. Cuellar, who represents the Texas border district of Laredo, is the ranking member (and former chairman) of the House Subcommittee on Border and
Maritime Security. Other caucus members include Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), who heads the House Immigration Reform Caucus; Candice Miller (R-Minn.), who heads the Homeland Security
subcommittee that reviews the air and marine operations of DHS; Joe Wilson (R-SC); Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.); Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.); Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.); and Duncan Hunter (RCalif.). Eight caucus members were also members of the powerful House Appropriations Committee in the 112th Congress. The caucus and its leading members (along with drone
proponents in the Senate) have played key roles in drone proliferation at home and abroad through channeling earmarks to Predator manufacturer General Atomics, prodding the
Department of Homeland Security to establish a major drone program, adding amendments to authorization bills for the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense to
ensure the more rapid integration of UAVs into the national airspace, and increasing annual DOD and DHS budgets for drone R&D and procurements. To accelerate drone acquisitions and
deployment at home, Congress has an illustrative track record of legislative measures (see accompanying box). Congressional support for the development and procurement of Predators
dates back to 1996, and is reflected in the defense and intelligence authorization acts. An Air Force-sponsored study of the Predators rise charted the increases mandated by the House
Armed Service and the House Intelligence committees over the Predator budget requests made by the Air Force in its budgets requests. Between 1996 and 2006 (ending date of study),
Congress has recommended an increase, over and above USAF requests, in the Predator budget for nearly 10 years in a row. This has resulted in a sum total increase of over a half a
billion dollars over the years.22 Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems CCUS cosponsors the annual drone fete with the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International
(AUVSI), an industry group that brings together the leading drone manufacturers and universities with UAV research projects. AUVSI represents the interests in the expansion of
unmanned systems expressed by many of the estimated 100 U.S. companies and academic institutions involved in developing and deploying the some 300 of the currently existing UAV
models.23 The drone association has a $7.5-million annual operating budget, including $2 million a year for conferences and trade shows to encourage government agencies and
companies to use unmanned aircraft.24 AUVSI also has its own congressional advocacy committee that is closely linked to the caucus. The keynote speaker at the drone associations
annual conference in early 2012 was Representative McKeon. The congressman was also the featured speaker at AUVSIs AIR Day 2011, in recognition, says AUVSIs president, that
Congressman McKeon has been one of the biggest supporters of the unmanned systems community. The close relationship between the congressional drone caucus and AUVSI was
reflected in a similar relationship between CBP/OAM and AUVSI. Tom Faller, the CBP official who directed the UAV program at OAM, joined the AUVSI 23-member board-of-directors in
August 2011, a month before the association hosted a technology fair in the foyer of the Rayburn House Office Building. OAM participated in the fair. Faller resigned from the unpaid
position on Nov. 23, 2011 after the Los Angeles Times queried DHS about Fallers unpaid position in the industry association. Faller is currently subject of a DHS internal ethics-violation
investigation.25 Contracts, contributions, earmarks and favors Once a relatively insignificant part of the military-industrial complex, the UAV development and manufacturing sector is
currently expanding faster than any other component of military contracting. Drone orders from various federal departments and agencies are rolling in to AUVSI corporate members,
including such leading military contractors as General Atomics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.26 (Unlike most major military contractors, General Atomics is not a corporation
but a privately held firm, whose two major figures are Linden and Neal Blue, both of whom have high security clearances) U.S. government drone purchases not counting contracts for
an array of related UAV services and payloads rose from $588 million to $1.3 billion over the past five years.27 The FY2013 DOD budget includes $5.8 billion for UAVs, which does not
include drone spending by the intelligence community, DHS or other federal entities. The Pentagon says that its high-priority commitment to expenditures for drone defense and
warfare has resulted in strong funding for unmanned aerial vehicles that enhance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.29 While the relationship between
increasing drone contracts and the increasing campaign contributions received by drone caucus members can only be speculated, caucus members are favored recipients of
contributions by AUVSI members. In the 2010 and 2012 election cycles, political action committees associated with companies that produce drones donated more than $2.4 million to
members of the congressional drone caucus.30 The leading recipient was McKeon, with Representative Silvestre Reyes, the influential Democrat from El Paso (who lost his seat in the
2012 election), coming in a close second.31 General Atomics counted among McKeons top five contributors in the last election. (See Figure 1) Frank W. Pace, the director of General
Atomics Aeronautical Systems, contributed to two candidates Buck McKeon and Jerry Lewis during the 2012 electoral campaign. (See Figure 2) Who were the top recipients of the
General Atomics campaign contributions in the 2012 cycle? Four of the top five recipients were not surprising Buck McKeon, Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter and Brian Bilbray given their
record of support for UAVs, and their position among the most influential drone caucus members. (See Figure 3) The relationship that has been consolidating between General Atomics
and the U.S. Air Force since the early 1990s has been mediated and facilitated in Congress by influential congressional representatives, led by southern Californian Republican Rep. Jerry
Lewis, a member of the House Appropriations Defense Committee and vice-chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Lewis, a favored recipient of General
Atomics campaign contributions, used his appropriations influence to ensure that the Air Force gained full control of the UAV program by 1998. Lewis, a prominent member of the Drone
Caucus, has received at least $10,000 every two years in campaign contributions from General Atomics political action committee $80,000 since 1998, according to OpenSecrets.org.
During the 2012 campaign cycle, General Atomics was the congressmans top campaign donor.32 The top ranking recipient of General Atomics campaign contributions is not a CUSC
member. Senator Diane Feinsteins (D-Calif.) contributions from General Atomics easily placed her at the top of the list. Feinstein, who chairs the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee,
was also favored in campaign contributions by Linden Blue, the president of General Atomics. (See Figure 4) Senator Feinstein has been a highly consistent supporter of the intelligence
community and military budgets. Her failure to oppose the clandestine drone strikes ordered by the White House and CIA have sparked widespread criticism by those who argue the
strikes are unconstitutional, illegal under international law and counterproductive as a counterterrorism tactic.33 In 2012, General Atomics was Feinsteins third largest campaign
contributor, while other leading contributors were the military contractors General Dynamics (from which General Atomics emerged), BAE Systems and Northrup Grumman.34 Feinsteins
connections to General Atomics extend beyond being top recipient of their campaign contributions. Rachel Miller, a former (2003-2007) legislative assistant for Feinstein, has served as a

paid lobbyist for General Atomics, both working directly for the firm (in 2011) and as a General Atomics lobbyist employed by Capitol Solutions (2009 - present), one of the leading
lobbying firms contracted by General Atomics.35 And did you know that Linden Blue plans to marry Retired Rear Adm. Ronne Froman? Few others knew about the engagement of this
high-society San Diego couple until Senator Feinstein announced the planned marriage at a mid-November 2012 meeting of the downtown San Diego business community news that
quickly appeared in the Society pages of the San Diego Union-Tribune. There has been no explanation offered why Feinstein broke this high-society news, but the announcement certainly
did point to the senators likely personal connections to Blue and Froman (who was hired by General Atomics as senior vice-president in December 2007 and has since left the firm).36
Campaign contributions and personal connections create goodwill and facilitate contracts. General Atomics also counts on the results produced by a steady stream of lobbying dollars
which have risen dramatically since 2003, and been averaging $2.5 million annually since 2005. In 2012, General Atomics spent $2,470,000 lobbying Congress.37 Congressional
earmarks were critical to the rise of the Predator, both its earlier unarmed version as well as the later Hunter-Killer. The late senator Daniel K. Inouye, the Hawaii Democrat who chaired
the Senate Appropriations Committee, told the New York Times that if the House ban on commercial earmarks that was introduced in 2010 had been in effect earlier, we would not have
the Predator today. Tens of millions of dollars in congressional earmarks in the 1990s went to General Atomics and other military contractors for the early development of what became
the Predator program, reported the New York Times.38 Inouye was a source of a number of these multimillion earmarks for General Atomics, whose large campaign contributions to the
influential Hawaii senator from 1998 to 2012 ($5000 in this last campaign) could be regarded as thank-you notes since Inouye faced insignificant political opposition. Besides campaign
contributions, General Atomics routinely hands out favors to congressional representatives thought likely to support drone proliferation. A 2006 report by the Center for Public Integrity
identified Jerry Lewis as one of two congressional members and more than five dozen congressional staffers who traveled overseas courtesy of General Atomics. The centers report, The
Top Gun of Travel, observed this little-known California defense contractor [has] far outspent its industry competitors on travel for more than five years and in 2005 landed promises
of billions of dollars in federal business. Most of this business was in the form of drone development and procurement by the Pentagon and DHS. Questioned about this pattern of
corporate-sponsored trips, Thomas Cassidy, founder of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, said, [Its] useful and very helpful, in fact, when you go down and talk to the government
officials to have congressional people go along and discuss the capabilities of [the plane] with them, A follow-up investigation by the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, Most of that
was spent on overseas travel related to the unmanned Predator spy plane made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliated company.39 Looking desperately for oversight In
practice, theres more boosterism than effective oversight in the House Homeland Security Committee and its Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security, which oversees DHSs
rush to deploy drones to keep the homeland secure. The same holds true for most of the more than one hundred other congressional committees that purportedly oversee the DHS and
its budget.40 Since DHSs creation, Congress has routinely approved annual and supplementary budgets for border security that have been higher than those requested by the president
and DHS. CCUS member and chair of the House Border and Maritime Security subcommittee, Representative Candice Miller, R-Michigan, is effusive and unconditional in her support of
drones. Miller described her personal conviction that drones are the answer to border insecurity at the July 15, 2010 subcommittee hearing on UAVs.41 You know, my husband was a
fighter pilot in Vietnam theater, sofrom another generation, but I told him, I said, Dear, the glory days of the fighter jocks are over. The UAVs, the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are
coming, continued Miller, and now you see our military siting in a cubicle sometimes in Nevada, drinking a Starbucks, running these things in theater and being incredibly, incredibly
successful. The uncritical drone boosterism in Congress was underscored in a Washington Post article on the use of drones for border security. In his trips to testify on Capitol Hill,
Kostelnik said he had never been challenged in Congress about the appropriate use of homeland security drones. Instead, the question is: Why cant we have more of them in my
district? remarked the OAM chief.42 Since 2004, the DHSs UAV program has drawn mounting concern and criticism from the governments own oversight and research agencies,
including the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office and the DHSs own Office of Inspector General.43 These government entities have repeatedly raised
questions about the cost-efficiency, strategic focus and performance of the homeland security drones. Yet, rather than subjecting DHS officials to sharp questioning, the congressional
committees overseeing homeland security and border security operations have, for the most part, readily and often enthusiastically accepted the validity of undocumented assertions by
testifying CBP officials. The House Subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security has been especially notorious for its lack of critical oversight. As part of the budgetary and oversight
process, the House and Senate committees that oversee DHS have not insisted that CBP undertake cost-benefit evaluations, institute performance measures, implement comparative
evaluations of its high-tech border security initiatives, or document how its UAV program responds to realistic threat assessments. Instead of providing proper oversight and ensuring
that CBP/OAMs drone program is accountable and transparent, congressional members from both parties seem more intent on boosting drone purchases and drone deployment. As CBP
was about to begin its first drone deployments in 2005 as part of the Operation Safeguard pilot project, the Congressional Research Service observed: Congress will likely conduct
oversight of Operation Safeguard before considering wider implementation of this technology. Unfortunately, Congress never reviewed the results of Operation Safeguard pilot project,
and CBP declined requests by this writer to release the report of this UAV pilot project.44 Congress has been delinquent in its oversight duties. In addition to the governmental research
and monitoring institutions, it has been mainly the nongovernmental sector including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Constitutional Rights,
and the Center for International Policy that has alerted the public about the lack of transparency and accountability in the DHS drone program and the absence of responsible
governance over the domestic and international proliferation of UAVs. In September 2012, the Senate formed its own bipartisan drone caucus, the Senate Unmanned Aerial Systems
Caucus, co-chaired by Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). This caucus will help develop and direct responsible policy to best serve the interests of U.S. national defense and
emergency response, and work to address any concerns from senators, staff and their constituents, said Inhofe.45 It is still too early to ascertain if the Senates drone caucus will follow
its counterpart in the House in almost exclusively focusing on promoting drone proliferation at home and abroad. It is expected, however, that caucus members will experience increased
flows of campaign contributions from the UAS industry. While Senator Manchin just won his first full-term in the 2012 election, Senator Inhofe has been favored by campaign
contributions from military contractors, including General Atomics ($14,000 in 2012), since he took office in 2007. His top campaign contributor was Koch Industries. For its part, AUVSI,
the drone industry association, gushed in its quickly offered commendation. I would like to commend Senators Inhofe and Manchin for their leadership and commitment in establishing
the caucus, which will enable AUVSI to work with the Senate and stakeholders on the important issues that face the unmanned systems community as the expanded use of the
technology transitions to the civil and commercial markets, said AUVSI President and CEO Michael Toscano. It is our hope to establish the same open dialogue with the Senate caucus
as we have for the past three years with the House Unmanned Systems Caucus, the AUVSI executive added.46 There is rising citizen concern about drones and privacy and civil rights
violations. The prospective opening of national airspace to UAVs has sparked a surge of concern among many communities and states eleven of which are considering legislation in
2013 that would restrict how police and other agencies would deploy drones. But paralleling new concern about the threats posed by drone proliferation is local and state interest in
attracting new UAV testing facilities and airbases for the FAA and other federal entities. FAA and industry projections about the number of UAVs (15,000 by 2020, 30,000 by 2030) that
may be using national airspace the same space used by all commercial and private aircraft have sparked a surge of new congressional activism, with several new bills introduced by
non-drone caucus members in the new Congress that respond to the new fears about drone proliferation. Yet there is no one committee in the House or the Senate that has assumed the
responsibility for UAV oversight to lead the way toward creating a foundation of laws and regulations establishing a political framework for UAV use going forward.

At this point,

there is no federal agency or congressional committee that is providing oversight

over drone proliferation whether in regard to U.S. drone exports, the expanding drone program of DHS,
drone-related privacy concerns, or UAV use by private or public firms and agencies. Gerald Dillingham, top official of

When asked
which part of the federal government was responsible for regulating drone
proliferation in the interest of public safety and civil rights, the GAO director said,
At best, we can say its unknown at this point.47 III. CROSSOVER DRONES Homeland
security drones are expanding their range beyond the border, crossing over to local
law enforcement agencies, other federal civilian operations, and into national
security missions. BORDER SECURITY TO LOCAL SURVEILLANCE The rapid advance of drone
technology has sparked interest by police and sheriff offices in acquiring drones.
The federal government has closely nurtured this new eagerness. Through grants, training
the Government Accountability Office, testified in Congress about this oversight conundrum.

programs and centers of excellence, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have been collaborating
with the drone industry and local law enforcement agencies to introduce unmanned aerial vehicles to the
homeland. One example is DHSs Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI), a Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) program established to assist communities with counterterrorism projects that provides grants to enable
police and sheriffs departments to launch their own drone programs. In 2011, a DHS UASI grant of $258,000
enabled the Montgomery County Sheriffs Office in Texas to purchase a ShadowHawk drone from Vanguard Defense
Industries. DHS UASI grants also allowed the city of Arlington, Texas to buy two small drones.48 Miami also counted
on DHS funding to purchase its UAV. According to DHS, UASI provides funding to address the unique planning,
organization, equipment, training, and exercise needs of high-threat, high-density urban areas, and assists them in
building an enhanced and sustainable capacity to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from acts of
terrorism.49 However, in the UASI project proposals there is little or no mention of terrorism or counterterrorism.
Instead, local police forces want drones to bolster their surveillance capabilities and as an adjunct to their SWAT

teams and narc squads. DHS is not the only federal department promoting drone deployment in the homeland.
Over the past four decades, the Department of Justices criminal-justice assistance grants have played a central role
in shaping the priorities and operations of state and local law enforcement.50 Through its National Institute of
Justice, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been working closely with industry and local law enforcement to
develop and evaluate low-cost unmanned aircraft systems.51 In 2011, National Institute of Justice grants went to
such large military contractors and drone manufacturers as Lockheed Martin, ManTech and L-3 Systems to operate
DOJ-sponsored centers of excellence devoted to the use of technology by local law enforcement for surveillance,
communications, biometrics and sensors.53 In an October 4, 2012 presentation to the National Defense Industrial
Association, OAM chief Kostelnik explained that the CBP drones were not limited to border control duties. The OAM
was, he said, the leading edge of deployment of UAS in the national airspace. This deployment wasnt limited to
what are commonly understood homeland security missions but extended to rapid contingency supports for
Federal/State/Local missions. According to CBP: OAM provides investigative air and marine support to Immigration
and Customs Enforcement, as well as other federal, state, local, and international law enforcement agencies.53
Incidents involving CBP drones in local law enforcement operations have surfaced in media reports, but CBP has
thus far not released a record of its support for local and state police, despite repeated requests by media and

DHS and CBP/OAM in particular have failed to define the legal and
constitutional limits of its drone operations. Rather than following strict guidelines
about the scope of its mission and the range of homeland security drones, Kostelnik
argued before the association of military contractors that CBP operations [are]
shaping the UAS policy debate in the United States. According to Kostelnik, the
CBPs drones are on the leading edge in homeland security. This cutting edge role
of the CBP/OAM drones not only extends to local and state operations, including
support for local law enforcement, but also to national security. [The] CBP UAS
deployment vision strengthens the National Security Response Capability. Border
Security to National Security Most of the concern about the domestic deployment of drones
by DHS has focused on the crossover to law-enforcement missions that threaten
privacy and civil rights and without more regulations in place will accelerate the
transition to what critics call a surveillance society. Also worth public attention and
research organizations.

congressional review is the increasing interface between border drones and national security and military missions.
The prevalence of military jargon used by CBP officials such as defense in depth and situational awareness
points to at least a rhetorical overlapping of border control and military strategy. Another sign of the increasing
coincidence between CBP/OAM drone program and the military is that the commanders and deputies of OAM are
retired military officers. Both Major General Michael Kostelnik and his successor Major General Randolph Alles,
retired from U.S. Marines, were highly placed military commanders involved in drone development and
procurement. Kostelnik was involved in the development of the Predator by General Atomics since the mid-1990s
and was an early proponent of providing Air Force funding to weaponize the Predator. As commander of the Marine
Corps Warfighting Laboratory, Alles was a leading proponent of having each military branch work with military
contractors to develop their own drone breeds, including near replicas of the Predator manufactured for the Army
by General Atomics.57 promoting and justifying the DHS drone program, Kostelnik routinely alluded to the
national security potential of drones slated for border security duty. On several occasions Kostelnik pointed to the
seamless interoperability with DOD UAV forces. At a moments notice, Kostelnik said that OAM could be CHOPed
meaning a Change in Operational Command from DHS to DOD.58 DHS has not released operational data about
CBP/OAM drone operations. Therefore, the extent of the participation of DHS drones in domestic and international
operations is unknown. But statements by CBP officials and media reports from the Caribbean point to a rapidly
expanding participation of DHS Guardian UAVs in drug-interdiction and other unspecified operations as far south as
Panama. CBP states that OAM routinely provides air and marine support to other federal, state, and local law
enforcement agencies and works with the U.S. military in joint international anti-smuggling operations and in
support of National Security Special Events [such as the Olympics]. According to Kostelnik, CBP planned a Spring
2011 deployment of the Guardian to a Central American country in association with Joint Interagency Task Force
South (JIATF-South) based at the naval station in Key West, Florida.59 JIATF-South is a subordinate command to the
United States Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM), whose geographical purview includes the Caribbean, Central
America and South America. In mid-2012, CBP/OAM participated in a JIATF-South collaborative venture called
Operation Caribbean Focus that involved flight over the Caribbean Sea and nations in the region with the
Dominican Republic acting as the regional host for the Guardian operations, which CBP/OAM considers a prototype
for future transit zone UAS deployments. CBP says that OAM drones have not been deployed within Mexico, but
notes that OAM works in collaboration with the Government of Mexico in addressing border security issues,
without specifying the form and objectives of this collaboration.60 As part of the U.S. global drug war and as an
extension of border security, unarmed drones are also crossing the border into Mexico. The U.S. Northern Command
has acknowledged that the U.S. military does fly a $38-million Global Hawk drone into Mexico to assist the Mexicos
war against the drug cartels.61 Communities, state legislatures and even some congressional members are

proceeding to enact legislation and revise ordinances to decriminalize or legalize the consumption of drugs,
especially marijuana, targeted by the federal governments drug war of more than four decades. At the same time,
DHS has been escalating its contributions to the domestic and international drug war in the name of both
homeland security and national security. Drug seizures on the border and drug interdiction over coastal and
neighboring waters are certainly the top operative priorities of OAM. Enlisting its Guardian drones in SOUTHCOMs
drug interdiction efforts underscores the increasing emphasis within the entire CBP on counternarcotic operations.
CBP is a DHS agency that is almost exclusively focused on tactics. While CBP as the umbrella agency and the Office
of the Border Patrol and OAM all have strategic plans, these plans are marked by their rigid military frameworks,
their startling absence of serious strategic thinking, and the diffuse distinctions between strategic goals and tactics.
As a result of the border security buildup, south-north drug flows (particularly cocaine and more high-value drugs)
have shifted back to marine smuggling, mainly through the Caribbean, but also through the Gulf of Mexico and the
Pacific.62 Rather than reevaluating drug prohibition and drug control frameworks for border policy, CBP/OAM has
rationalized the procurement of more UAVs on the shifts in the geographical arenas of the drug war albeit
couching the tactical changes in the new drug war language of transnational criminal organizations and
narcoterrorism. The overriding framework for CBP/OAM operations is evolving from border security and homeland
security to national security, as recent CBP presentations about its Guardian deployments illustrates. Shortly before
retiring after seven years as OAM first chief, Major General Kostelnik told a gathering of military contractors: CPBs
UAS Deployment Vision strengthens the National Security Response Capability.63 He may well be right, but the
U.S. public and Congress need to know if DHS plans to institute guidelines and limits that regulate the extent of
DHS operational collaboration with DOD and the CIA. IV. No Transparency, No Accountability, No Defined Limits to

The UAV program of CBPs Office of Air and Marine is not

top secret there are no secret ops, no targeted killings, no signature strikes
against suspected terrorists, no clandestine bases like the CIA and U.S. military
UAV operations overseas. While the UAV program under DHS isnt classified,
information about the program is scarce shielded by evasive program officials, the
classification of key documents, and the failure of CBP/OAM to share information
about the number, objectives and performance of its UAV operations . DHS has also not
Homeland Security Drone Missions

been forthcoming about its partnerships and shared missions with local law enforcement, foreign governments and
the U.S. military and intelligence sectors. CBP has kept a tight lid on its drone program. Over the past nine years,
CBP has steadily expanded its UAV program without providing any detailed information about the programs
strategic plan, performance and total costs. Information about the homeland security drones has been limited, for
the most part, to a handful of CBP announcements about new drone purchases and a series of unverifiable CBP
statistics about drone-related drug seizures and immigrant arrests. Testimony in House and Senate hearings about
the role of drones in border security by CBP has been restricted, with few exceptions, to undocumented assertions
and anecdotes about the achievements of the border drones. CBP has declined to share documents about its drone
program with the Center for International Policy and other public-education organizations, asserting, among other
reasons, that they are law-enforcement sensitive or not in their possession. These requested documents include
the OAM strategic plan (which calls for two dozen drones), the report of the pilot study of Predators organized
with General Atomics in 2004 that CBP claims proved their value as border security instruments, and a 2010 report
to Congress in reference to its UAV program. The three reports cited above were all referenced by DHSs Office of
Inspector General in a report published in May 2012.64 DHS has also failed to respond favorably to public-records
requests by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for records and logs of CBP drone flights conducted in conjunction
with other agencies.65 It is unlikely that the CBP/OAM program is involved in the type of drone strikes that have
sparked rage, indignation over civil rights violations, and counterattacks by nonstate terrorists. Despite the lack of
transparency, it is highly unlikely that CBP Predators and Guardians have been the tools of hunter-killer missions

the lack of transparency and

accountability that characterizes the homeland security drone program is worrisome
of CIA and military Predators, Hunters and Reapers. Still,

not least because of the commitments of hundreds of millions of dollars to these operations. At least several
hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent based on procurement records but we dont even know the
entire financial commitment to homeland drones because DHS has never provided an accounting of all
procurement, maintenance, staffing, data-processing and service contract expenses. Clearly, CBP needs to be more
transparent and accountable. Of the 14 DHS agencies, it receives the largest portion 21 percent of the $59
billion annual DHS budget.66 Although other DHS agencies such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (which process visas and naturalization petitions) are
experiencing budget cuts (8 percent decrease for FEMA), CBP is receiving a 2 percent increase, even as illegal
immigration flows have plummeted to historic lows. Yet, it is more than a budget concern. Shortly before retiring at
the end of 2012, Major General Kostelnik asserted that the Air and Marine UAS Operations Remain on the Leading
Edge the title of his October presentation of a military contractors association. Its not that the DHS itself has

Kostelnik was referring more to the way CBP/OAM

is pushing the border security envelope. Under the new OAM office established
become the leading edge of drone technology.

under Kostelniks leadership, these UAS operations have, in Kostelniks words, done
much more than complement other manifestations of the low-tech and high-tech
border security buildup. Among other things, the unmanned systems, according to CBP, are: Shaping the
UAS policy debate; Strengthen[ing] the National Security Response Capability; Providing rapid contingency
responses to federal, state, and local agencies; Functioning as the leading edge deployment of UAS in the
national airspace; and Increasing involvement in Caribbean and foreign deployments. With the UAV program, as
with other border-security operations (in particular its many high-tech initiatives), CBP has acted as if exempt from

Much like
the military and the CIA, CBP shields itself behind its post-9/11 security mission.
the transparency, accountability and performance evaluations that apply to other federal agencies.

Police Adv

Undermines police relations

Drones skew public perception of law enforcement
LOMBERG 2015
(Jason Lomberg, editor at ECNMag, 4-9-15, Why arming drones is a very bad idea
http://www.ecnmag.com/blogs/2015/04/why-arming-domestic-drones-very-bad-idea)

Deploying drones to perform the same functions as flesh-and-blood police officers

keeps the latter out of harms way. And putting a drone in jeopardy is far less likely to result in anyones death a drone is worth less than a
human life, so drone operators wouldnt employ self-defense as zealously as real-life humans (and the
drones probably wouldnt be armed with lethal countermeasures, anyway). But I cannot
overstate how serious a PR disaster this could become. Im general very supportive of our nations law enforcement
agencies, but I also understand the PR campaign that guides the publics perception of the
police. Whether an individual officer was justified or not is almost irrelevant in the greater scheme of things. What matters is which narrative
the public embraces. And what narrative can a soulless automaton shooting pepper
spray possibly convey but fear? I cant imagine any instance where a drone injuring protestors
justified or not could possibly be seen favorably. Has an unruly crowd switched from constitutionally protected free speech to general mayhem? The best
way to garner sympathy for their cause is to attack them with a flying
personification of fear. Sure, using a drone would ensure the incident in question is filmed, but the PR issues are hard to dismiss. Oh, and were
considering arming domestic drones here in the U.S. While the usual anti-drone
rhetoric focuses on the privacy and associated surveillance issues, at least one company, Vanguard
Defense Industries, wants to arm domestic drones with buckshot, tear gas, grenades, and less-lethal capabilities. The idea of a drone patrolling
Mainstreet, U.S.A., armed with anything more than a camera (or claws to grasp a package) is terrifying.

Solvency

Congress
Congress key to effective privacy restrictions

Scientific American 13
(Scientific American is a leading journal on Sciences, 3/19/13, As Spy Drones Come
to the U.S., We Must Protect Our Privacy
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spy-drones-come-us-we-must-protectprivacy/?print=true)
The
limited regulations accompanying those permits (which, thankfully, preclude attaching any weapons
to the drones) are insufficient to protect the privacy of citizens. Perhaps this should not be surprising. The faa
is not in the business of privacy protection. Its primary concern is with the safety of domestic airspace. No
federal agency, in fact, can be held accountable if drones are not used responsibly
and in a way that respects the Fourth Amendment. As such, Congress should
proactively enact laws that confine domestic drones to reasonable, useful
purposes. Several sensible ideas were proposed during the last session of Congress,
including a bill that would have outlawed drone spying without a warrant and
instituted important transparency and accountability measures for their use. But
that bill failed to make it out of a subcommittee. The present Congress must be more active
than its predecessor in heading off this clear and impending threat to personal
privacy.
Already the faa has permitted a handful of law-enforcement agencies to operate drones on a short-term basis.

Congress should take action on drone surveillance and current

regulations and ideas fail
Jenkins 14
(Ben, University of Kentucky College of Law, January 2014, Watching the Watchmen: Drone
Privacy and the Need for Oversight, http://law-apache.uky.edu/wordpress/wpcontent/uploads/2014/01/9-Jenkins.pdf)
This note argues that in order to safeguard Americans privacy against government drone surveillance in an actively
growing field, Congress should implement legislation that provides a framework for protection

while allowing for industry growth and innovation. Although several bills are pending, it is uncertain if or
when those bills will pass. While it would be a large step towards ensuring privacy protection from drone
surveillance if the proposed bills pass, there is still room for improvement. Even the most promising bill, the Drone
Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2013 (DAPTA),8

fails to provide a process for ongoing

oversight of drone operators to ensure transparency and continued compliance with the Acts
privacy protections. DAPTA and other pending legislation should be amended to charge a single agency with
responsibility for drone privacy oversight, including audits to make sure drone operators comply with privacy
regulations. Operators should be required to submit ongoing reports of their data collection, retention, and disposal
procedures to the agency, and these reports should be gathered and submitted to Congress annually. Proper

legislative action would ensure that the constitutional right to privacy is not overrun by
rapidly growing technologies, diminishing privacy norms, and heightened security interests.
With proper privacy protections in place, society could be more receptive to increased use,
development, and application of drones in daily life. Part I of this Note provides background on drones:
their nature, use, technology, and the current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence relevant to such. Part II explains
why drones present a unique threat to privacy and addresses current shortfalls in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence
and in legislative efforts to address privacy concerns connected with their widespread use. Part III suggests
amendments to proposed legislation to address shortfalls therein, concluding that proper anticipatory action and
ongoing oversight are necessary to ensure that police technology does not erode the minimum expectations of
privacy guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment.

Congressional action K2 public perception about drones

Black 13
(J. Tyler, received a B.A. in Political Science from Emory University and a J.D., cum laude,
from Washington and Lee University, where he was a Lead Articles Editor of the Washington
and Lee Law Review, , 06/2013, Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle, http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/do/search/?q=author_lname%3A%22Black
%22%20author_fname%3A%22J.%22&start=0&context=2035930)
Before courts ever become involved, some solutions will likely originate from a number of federal, state, or local
legislative bodies. These legislative measures will become an important fix for Fourth Amendment holes while aerial

Most importantly, Congress should

pass a detailed, comprehensive, and enforceable law the PAPA or DAPTA bills would be a
significant startthat would reduce public anxiety about drones, inform the public about
how and when the government uses this technology, and concretely protect Fourth
Amendment liberties. Any bill with a realistic hope of controlling the use of such an
inexpensive and nimble technology must impose procedural impediments that act
to limit the appeal of widespread employment. The thought of police drones carries with it a 260.
observation jurisprudence catches up with changing circumstances.

See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27, 31 (2001) (At the very core of the Fourth Amendment stands the right of a
man to retreat into his own home and there be free from unreasonable governmental intrusion. (quotations and
citation omitted)). 261. Indeed, some degree of privacy has survived the innovations of wiretapping, aerial
observation, satellite observation, and sense-enhancing technology. Technology has produced many and varied
means of observation and surveillance. But the fact that something can be done does not make the doing of it
constitutional. State v. Bryant, 950 A.2d 467, 479 (Vt. 2008). 1884 70 WASH. & LEE L. REV. 1829 (2013) visceral
Orwellian implication of Big Brother intruding where it ought not.262 That fear must not be ignored, lest it be
realized. The elimination of drones hovering for extended periods of time without a targeted purpose may
substantially abate public fears of a constant surveillance. People may be more inclined to support drones if they
are cast in the role of a lifesaving vehicle.263

Requiring a warrant legitimizes FISA courts squo insufficient

to solve
Goitein, Patel 2015
(Elizabeth and Faiza, co-directors of the Brennan Center for
Justices Liberty and National Security Program, 2015, What
Went Wrong With the FISA Court
http://litigation.utahbar.org/assets/materials/2015FedSymposiu
m/3c_What_Went_%20Wrong_With_The_FISA_Court.pdf
under current law, the FISA Court does not provide the check on
executive action that the Fourth Amendment demands. Interception of
Americans communications generally requires the government to obtain a
warrant based on probable cause of criminal activity. Although some courts have held
Moreover,

that a traditional warrant is not needed to collect foreign intelligence, they have imposed strict limits on the scope

The
FISA Courts minimal involvement in overseeing programmatic
surveillance does not meet these constitutional standards. Fundamental changes are
of such surveillance and have emphasized the importance of close judicial scrutiny in policing these limits.

needed to fix these flaws. Following Snowdens disclosures, several bills were introduced to try to ensure that the
court would hear the other side of the argument, generally from some type of public advocate. Other bills
addressed the courts secrecy by requiring the executive branch to declassify significant opinions or release
summaries. These proposals would make important improvements, but they do not address the full range of
constitutional deficiencies resulting from the changes in law and technology detailed in this report. The problem
with the FISA Court is far broader than a particular procedure or rule. The problem with the FISA Court is FISA. The

Congress should
end programmatic surveillance and require the government to obtain
judicial approval whenever it seeks to obtain communications or
information involving Americans. This would resolve many constitutional concerns.
Congress should shore up the Article III soundness of the FISA Court by
ensuring that the interests of those affected by surveillance are
represented in court proceedings, increasing transparency, and facilitating
the ability of affected individuals to challenge surveillance programs in
regular federal courts. WhAT WENT WRONG WITH THE FISA COURT | 5 Finally, Congress
should address additional Fourth Amendment concerns by ensuring that
the collection of information under the rubric of foreign intelligence
actually relates to our national security and does not constitute an endrun around the constitutional standards for criminal investigations. Under
todays foreign intelligence surveillance system, the governments ability
to collect information about ordinary Americans lives has increased
exponentially while judicial oversight has been reduced to nearnothingness. Nothing less than a fundamental overhaul of the type
proposed here is needed to restore the system to its constitutional
moorings.
report proposes a set of key changes to FISA to help restore the courts legitimacy.

Plan solves for police flexibility requiring a warrant allows for

necessity while preserving 4th ammendment rights
Bryan 14
(Thomas, J.D. and Masters Degree in International Politics, June 24 2014, State v. Brossart:
Adapting the Fourth Amendment for a Future With Drones,
http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3260&context=lawreview)
Current legislative initiatives suggest that there is a bipartisan push for legislation to balance the governments use of UAVs with the
publics privacy concerns.199 Three bills aiming to protect the publics privacy from increased use of UAVs for civilian government
purposes were introduced in the 112th Congress.200 However, these bills have been criticized as overly broad in protecting privacy
and severely limiting the governments ability to use [FOOTNOTE BEGINS] 192. See Starks, supra note 118, at 2090 (noting the
potential privacy concerns of widespread UAV use and the need for legislative action). 193. See supra notes 98105 and
accompanying text. 194. United States v. Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 956 (Sotomayor, J., concurring), mandamus denied sub nom. In re
Jones, 670 F.3d 265 (D.C. Cir. 2012). Scholars have pointed to this language as supporting the adoption of the mosaic theory of the
Fourth Amendment. See supra note 108. 195. See Jones, 132 S. Ct. at 956. 196. See supra Part II.C. 197. See Jones, 132 S. Ct. at
96364 (Alito, J., concurring). 198. Congressional action to regulate the use of emerging practices and technologies for privacy
purposes has firm precedents. See id. at 96263 (discussing legislation passed to deal with Fourth Amendment questions related to
wiretapping). 199. See Starks, supra note 118, at 2090, 209293 (discussing bipartisan legislative action to address the privacy
concerns related to UAVs); see also Associated Press, supra note 125 (noting that concerns over the civil-liberty issues raised by the
use of UAVs has led to bipartisan discussions of UAV legislation). 200. See THOMPSON, supra note 145, at 1819. The bills include
the Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012 (H.R. 5925, S. 3287), the Preserving American Privacy Act of
2012 (H.R. 6199), and the Farmers Privacy Act of 2012 (H.R. 5961). Id. Concerns over the potential dangers the governments
domestic use of UAVs have also been raised in the new 113th Congress, leading to a thirteen-hour filibuster seeking to block the
Senates approval of the Presidents nominee to lead the CIA. See Ed OKeefe and Aaron Blake, Senator Holds Long Fillibuster to
Oppose Obamas Drone Policy, WASH. POST, Mar. 7, 2013, at A2. 494 Catholic University Law Review [Vol. 63:465 [END FOOTNOTE]
UAVs.201 For example, the Preserving American Privacy Act of 2012 would only permit UAV use by law enforcement except

pursuant to [a] warrant and in the investigation of a felony and excludes all evidence obtained in violation of the Act from criminal
proceedings.202 This approach may prevent law enforcement from operating UAVs in open fields for securing large-crowd events or
enforcing traffic laws, both of which are permitted under current jurisprudence. The Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted
Surveillance Act of 2012 takes a more nuanced approach, prohibiting the warrantless use of a UAV to collect evidence regarding
criminal conduct or a violation of a regulation, but specifically allowing UAVs to be used to patrol the border, to prevent imminent
danger to life, and to manage situation with high risks of terrorist attacks.203 Yet, this proposed Act is overly restrictive because it

Congress should find a way to allow law

enforcement to use this valuable tool in all necessary circumstances, while also taking into
consideration Fourth Amendment rights.205 To accomplish this, Congress should aim to clarify how
current principles of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence apply to UAVs and add additional
privacy protections that account for their unique capabilities.206 Following current Fourth Amendment
principles, stronger privacy protections should be applied to criminal and regulatory
investigations and more liberal rules applied to non-invasive uses, such as locating lost
persons or assessing damages from natural disasters.207 Similarly, Congress should codify the
Fourth Amendments strong protection of the home by requiring that a warrant be issued
before the government can use UAV-mounted technologies 201. [FOOTNOTE BEGINS] See Starks, supra
prevents law enforcement from using UAVs in open fields.204 Instead,

note 118, at 209596 (noting that some members of Congress, local government officials, and UAV industry representatives have
expressed concerns that an overregulation of privacy concerns may stifle the industrys growth and prevent the government from
using UAVs for desirable purposes); Tim Adelman, Flurry of Drone Bills Shows Congress Has Much to Learn, THE HILL (Sept. 20,
2012, 6:59 AM), http://thehill.com/blogs/congressblog/foreign-policy/250597-flurry-of-drone-bills-shows-congress-has-much-to-learn
(arguing that Congress is right to consider privacy protection measures as UAV technology becomes widely used, but that such
measures should not excessively limit the governments use of UAVs). 202. H.R. 6199, 112th Cong. 23 (2012). 203. S. 3287,
112th Cong. 34 (2012); H.R. 5925, 112th Cong. 23 (2012). 204. See THOMPSON, supra note 145, at 18 (showing there is no
open fields exception under either form of the bill). 205. See Starks, supra note 118, at 2095 (noting the importance of legislation
that does not overly restrict UAV use). 206. See THOMPSON, supra note 145, at 18 (discussing legislation that has restricted
government surveillance tools further than the court, and suggesting Congress do the same with UAVs). 207. Jones suggests that
the latter category would not constitute a search, as mere visual observation does not constitute a search. See United States v.
Jones, 132 S. Ct. 945, 950 (2012), mandamus denied sub nom. In re Jones, 670 F.3d 265 (D.C. Cir. 2012). Tim Adelman argues that
the use of UAVs to find lost hikers, survey multi-car crashes, and other similar activities are government uses of drones that do not
intrude on privacy and should not be discouraged. Adelman, supra note 201. 2014] Adapting the Fourth Amendment for a Future
with Drones 495[END FOOTNOTE] to conduct surveillance revealing information about the interior of the home.208 To address
privacy concerns of long-term UAV surveillance, Congress should permit surveillance of spaces falling within the open fields doctrine,
but place a time limit on aerial surveillance preventing the government from conducting long-term investigations of individuals
without prior judicial approval.209 Lastly, Congressional action should also aim to limit unwanted invasions of privacy by private
citizens, which falls outside of the scope of the Fourth Amendment.210

Congress must enact drone reform

Oyegunle 12 (Ajoke Oyegunle, Oyegunle finished first in the 2012-2013 National Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) Diversity Task Force Essay Competition, Drones in the Homeland:
A Potential Privacy Obstruction Under the Fourth Amendment and The Common Law Trespass
Doctrine http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1528&context=commlaw)
Additionally,

Congress should regulate the use of drones by law enforcement agencies

by requiring warrants before using drones to obtain information from individuals .
Because of its sophistication and potential for harm, a drone aerial search should be prohibited,
unless accompanied by a warrant.2 " The FAA should address the potential ramifications of putting
drone technology into the hands of private companies, especially without instituting strict regulations regarding the
use of drones. Like other electronic devices, drones might be vulnerable to hackers who can penetrate firewalls and
intercept personal data from private individuals. 45 Potentially, drones can be susceptible to attacks by terrorists
who hijack them.246 Unregulated use of drones can potentially lead to a variety of abuses by government agencies

It is a point worth reiterating that

the expansion of drones into the national airspace should not be permitted before
comprehensive and widely disseminated privacy guidelines are in place . If the FAA does
not institute such protections in its rulemaking, Congress should pass legislation requiring them.
using drones to gain unfettered access into homes and businesses.

In June, Representative Austin Scott of Georgia introduced a House bill entitled, "Preserving Freedom From
Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012," which proposes necessary privacy safeguards in response to drones.247

One such privacy measure would prohibit law enforcement from using drones to
collect evidence against criminal suspects without a warrant. 24 The Senate version of the
bill, sponsored by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, would reinforce the warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment by
requiring the government to obtain a warrant to gather evidence against a criminal suspect. 249 Senator Paul
proposed exceptions to the warrant requirement in regard to border patrol and in cases of imminent threats to life.

Congress, should ensure that drone technology does not

abridge the right to privacy. Privacy law is ill-equipped to properly address the
burgeoning advances in technology without strengthening existing law with a
"balancing approach to aerial surveillance." 25' Courts should allow "aerial surveillance of open
The judiciary, working in tandem with

fields, but mandat[e] stricter scrutiny of surveillance over homes and curtilage ... [to] enable courts to preserve the
right to privacy where expectations are highest without placing undue re-strictions on law enforcement."

Congress must enact sweeping domestic drone legislation

Stepanovich 12 (Amie Stepanovich, Amie Stepanovich is U.S. Policy Manager at Access. Amie
is an expert in domestic surveillance, cybersecurity, and privacy law, July 19, 2012, Using Unmanned
Aeiraial Systems Within the Homeland: Security Game-Changer. Hearing Before the Subcomittee on
Oversight, Investigations, and Management of the Committee on Homeland Security House of
Representatives One Hundred Twelfth Congress Second Session
http://fas.org/irp/congress/2012_hr/uas-homeland.pdf)
Customs and Border Protection Bureau, a DHS component. Earlier this year in a formal petition to the FAA, EPIC urged the agency to
conduct a rulemaking to implement privacy rules for domestic drones. EPICs petition was joined by more than 100 other
organizations, experts, and members of the public who also believed that privacy rules are necessary before drones enter our
domestic skies in a more widespread way. The FAA has not yet responded to EPICs request for agency action, and this failure to act

there is also no administrative framework in place to regulate drones in our

skies. As has previously been mentioned, CBP currently operates 10 drones in the United States. The DHS Inspector General
means that

recently assessed CBPs practice in making drones available by other Federal agencies, including the Department of Defense, the
FBI, the Secret Service, many local law enforcement agencies, and others. Regarding privacy concerns, the Inspector General said
that a standardized process was needed to request CBP drones for nonCBP purposes in order to provide transparency. To the extent
that DHS chooses to operate drones within the United States, the agency must develop appropriate regulations to safeguard privacy.
As you have indicated, Chairman McCaul, the privacy and security concerns arising from the use of drones needs to be addressed.

efforts to address some of the privacy threats of drone .

are not sufficient. There are several simple steps that we believe can protect privacy as
the use of drones increases in our skies. First, Congress should pass targeted legislation. An
initial step would be the passage of Congressman Austin Scotts bill to limit drone surveillance
in the United States in cases where a warrant has not been first obtained. However, to
fully address the invasive nature of drones, new legislation must prohibit nonspecific untargeted
drone surveillance, limit the use of drone surveillance data collected, transmitted,
stored, or shared, and require notice of drone surveillance operations and policies.
The law should also provide for independent audits and oversight. Second, Congress should expressly require Federal
Several of your colleagues have made
However, we believe those efforts

drone operators, including DHS and its components, to implement regulations subject to public notice and comment that

address the privacy implications of drone use. Finally , I think Congress should clarify
the circumstances under which drones purchased by CBP in pursuit of its mission may be deployed
for other purposes. The failure to make clear the circumstances when Federal and State agencies may deploy drones for
aerial surveillance has already raised significant concerns about the agencys programs. Once again I thank you for the opportunity
to testify today, and I will be pleased to answer your questions

Congress must enact comprehensive drone reform lacking now

Stepanovich 12 (Amie Stepanovich, Amie Stepanovich is U.S. Policy Manager at Access. Amie
is an expert in domestic surveillance, cybersecurity, and privacy law, July 19, 2012, Using Unmanned
Aeiraial Systems Within the Homeland: Security Game-Changer. Hearing Before the Subcomittee on
Oversight, Investigations, and Management of the Committee on Homeland Security House of
Representatives One Hundred Twelfth Congress Second Session
http://fas.org/irp/congress/2012_hr/uas-homeland.pdf)
IV.

CONGRESS SHOULD ESTABLISH SAFEGUARDS RELATED TO THE USE OF

DRONES There are several strategies to provide meaningful privacy protections that address the increased use of drones in our
domestic skies. First, Congress should pass targeted legislation, based on principles of
transparency and accountability. A first step would be the consideration and passage of Congressman Scotts bill
to limit the use of drone surveillance in criminal investigations without a warrant. State and local governments have also considered
laws and regulations to further prevent abuses of drone technology.42 These proposals would serve as a good basis for Federal

legislation. Drone legislation should include: Use Limitations. Prohibitions on general surveillance
that limit drone surveillance to specific, enumerated circumstances, such as in the case of criminal surveillance subject to a warrant,
a geographically-confined emergency, or for reasonable non-law enforcement use where privacy will not be substantially affected;

Data Retention Limitations.Prohibitions on retaining or sharing surveillance data collected by drones, with
emphasis on identifiable images of individuals; Transparency.Requiring notice of drone surveillance operations to the
extent possible while allowing law enforcement to conduct effective investigations. In addition, requiring notice of all drone

These three principles would help protect the

privacy interests of individuals. In addition, the law should provide for accountability,
surveillance policies through the Administrative Procedure Act.

including third-party audits and oversight for Federally-operated drones and a private right of action against private entities that

Second, Congress should act to expressly require Federal

agencies that choose to operate drones, such as DHS and its components, to implement
regulations, subject to public notice and comment, that address the privacy implications of drone use. Recently, in EPIC v.
violate statutory privacy rights.

DHS, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Department of Homeland Security violated the Administrative Procedure Act
when it chose to deploy body scanners as the primary screening technique in U.S. airports without the opportunity for public
comment.43 The Court observed that there was no justification for having failed to conduct a notice-and-comment rulemaking.44
We believe that the public has a similar right to comment on new surveillance techniques, such as unmanned aerial vehicles,

States. Finally, Congress must clarify the

circumstances under which the drones purchased by the CBP in pursuit of its mission may be
deployed by other agencies for other purposes. The failure to make clear the circumstances when Federal and State agencies
undertaken by Federal agencies within the United

may deploy drones for aerial surveillance has already raised significant concerns about the agencys program.45 V. CONCLUSION

The increased use of drones to conduct surveillance in the United States must be
accompanied by increased privacy protection s. We recognize that drone technology has the potential to
be used in positive ways. For example, drones may be used to monitor for environmental abuse, prevent the spread of forest fires,
and assist in the rescue of individuals in dangerous situations.46 However ,

the current state of the law is

insufficient to address the drone surveillance threat. EPIC supports legislation aimed at
strengthening safeguards related to the use of drones as surveillance tools and allowing for redress for drone operators who fail to
comply with the mandated standards of protection. We also support compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act for the
deployment of drone technology and limitations for Federal agencies and other organizations that initially obtain a drone for one
purpose and then wish to expand that purpose. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I will be pleased to answer your
questions.

Congress must enact a warrant requirement on drones

Kaminski 2013 (Margot Kaminski, Margot Kaminski is the executive director of the
Information Society Project at Yale Law School, May 2013, Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the
Things They Carry http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1007&context=clrcircuit)

This argument is conditioned on several important qualifications. First, Congress must

legislatively close the trap door that is the third-party or Miller doctrine. The

third-party doctrine allows law enforcement to avoid the warrant requirement by

getting information from third parties that in turn observe the subject. 47 If courts do
not fix this loophole, Congress should require law enforcement to obtain a warrant
before obtaining information gathered by private parties that it cannot otherwise
obtain without a warrant. Otherwise the flexibility explored by states in regulating private
drone use will also turn out to be a way for law enforcement to obtain information gathered
by private parties. Second, state experimentation with private drone surveillance
should not preclude federal consideration of broader data privacy regulations, even
regulations governing private actors. The aggregation of stored information implicates a
different set of both First Amendment and privacy concerns than the initial gathering of
individual pieces of information.48 Thus arguing for state-by-state regulation of informationgathering that implicates First Amendment values does not preclude consideration of federal
data privacy protection along the lines of the European Unions Data Protection Directive,
which governs the way personal data is processed, moved, and stored.49 Third, this Essay

does not intend to wrest safety or other basic aviation licensing matters from the Federal
Aviation Administration. And the Federal Aviation Administration should use its licensing
programs to solve perhaps the biggest puzzle of drone regulation: how to provide notice or
at least transparency to those being observed so they can determine whether they have
been subjected to a privacy violation. Unlike surveillance by camera phone or most forms of
CCTV, drone surveillance will often provide no visible notice to the watched party if the
drone is high up in the sky.50 As Representative Ed Markey proposed in a draft bill, the FAA
could, as part of its licensing scheme, require that those using drones for surveillance submit
a data collection statement indicating when, where, and for how long such surveillance will
take place.51 The federal government should require such data collection statements to be
easily searchable, and aid individuals in obtaining any footage or data gathered about them.
Both of these provisions are included in the proposed Markey bill. Alternatively, or in addition
to this scheme, the federal government could require drone radio frequency identification
(RFID) license plates to track the location of drones at any given time .52 Tracking
drones is essential to establishing whether a tort has occurred in any given state. Fourth,
states should decriminalize the use of basic privacy-protective technologies. It may surprise
many to learn that a large number of states have anti-mask laws that criminalize maskwearing in public, except under certain circumstances.53 Such laws prevent individuals from
choosing to avoid surveillance in public places, inhibiting individuals expressive choices
about whether to remain anonymous. In a world of increasing surveillance, giving more
agency to the watched will justify maintaining protection of the expressive freedom of the
watchers.

Congress must restrict drone usage in some ways, in order to

protect 4th amendment values
Bucci et al. 12 (Steven Bucci, Paul Rosenzweig, Charles
Stimson, and James Carafano, Bucci is director of the Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation,
9/20/12, Drones in U.S. Airspace: Principles for Governance,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/drones-inus-airspace-principles-for-governance)
General Principles Any guidelines must ensure appropriate protections of the
freedoms guaranteed to U.S. citizens under the Constitution. The general rule
balancing security and freedom is to be found, in large part, in the structure of
American constitutional government itself. The protections codified in the Bill of Rights are
an additional firewall against any intrusions on liberty that would unravel the checks in the
Constitution. The Fourth Amendments prohibition against unlawful search and

seizure is the right most directly implicated by unbounded and unrestrained use of
domestic drones. Now is the time to return to first principles of individual liberty in a
free society and assess their interaction with technology and governance in an age
of domestic drones. There are basic first principles that underlie any use of new
technology and the existing constitutional limitations that might apply to drones. An
assessment of these principles suggests that there are: Substantial liberty interests ;

Acceptable domestic uses of drone technology that should be permitted and in fact
fostered, such as the use of drones to search for survivors after a disaster; and
Prohibited uses of drone technology that raise significant questions of law and
policysuch as the deployment of drones operated by the military within U.S. borders in a

manner that violates existing rules (such as Posse Comitatus) on the use of military force
domestically. Beyond these uses, the challenge for the Administration and Congress is to

define strict, appropriate implementation policies and oversight structures that can
protect individual liberties while allowing appropriate uses of domestic drones with
appropriate oversight.

FAA cannot properly implement drone reform a

comprehensive framework by other governmental bodies is
key
Bucci et al. 12 (Steven Bucci, Paul Rosenzweig, Charles
Stimson, and James Carafano, Bucci is director of the Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation,
9/20/12, Drones in U.S. Airspace: Principles for Governance,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/drones-inus-airspace-principles-for-governance)
As a practical matter, the FAA has expertise in and is the appropriate forum for
considering safety and technical questions, but other governmental bodies have

expertise in and are better suited to address privacy and civil liberties concerns.
Given the potentially wide range of uses for drones in U.S. territory, resolving airtraffic safety and security issues alone is inadequate. Washington needs a more
comprehensive and thoughtful framework.

Restrictions on drone tech should be implemented to promote

democracatic and privacy ideals
Bucci et al. 12 (Steven Bucci, Paul Rosenzweig, Charles
Stimson, and James Carafano, Bucci is director of the Allison
Center for Foreign Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation,
9/20/12, Drones in U.S. Airspace: Principles for Governance,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/drones-inus-airspace-principles-for-governance)
Fundamentally, these are questions of law and policy. The issue is not whether the use of
drones is technically feasible: Obviously, it is and will be increasingly so. Nor is it a question
of legality: Most current uses are lawful, and most future uses are likely to be. Rather, the
proper subject for discussion is the extent to which society wants to provide tools to the
state that have beneficial uses and are also susceptible to abuse. This question is not a new
one; it is one that has been a tension point within American society since the Founding.

Americans want a government that fosters liberty and freedom and that provides
security. Americans want a constrained government that is subject to checks and
balances and one that has energy in the executive (to quote Hamilton) to achieve
legitimate governmental objectives. As always, striking the proper balance is both difficult
and essential. As a first step, several first principles should guide the analysis:[5] No

fundamental liberty guaranteed by the Constitution can be breached or infringed

upon. Any increased intrusion on American privacy interests must be justified through an
understanding of the particular nature, significance, and severity of the threat addressed by
the program. The less significant the threat, the less justified the intrusion. The full extent
and nature of the intrusion worked by any new technology must be understood and
appropriately limited. Not all intrusions are justified simply because they are effective.
Strip searches at airports would certainly prevent people from boarding planes with
weapons, but they would do so at too high a cost. Whatever the justification for the
intrusion, if there are less intrusive means of achieving the same end at a reasonably
comparable cost, the less intrusive means ought to be preferred. There is no reason to erode
Americans privacy when equivalent results can be achieved without doing so. Any new

system that is developed and implemented must be designed to be tolerable in the

long term. The war against terrorism, uniquely, is one with no foreseeable end. Thus,
excessive intrusions may not be justified as emergency measures that will lapse upon the
termination of hostilities. Policymakers must be restrained in their actions; Americans might
have to live with their consequences for a long time. From these general principles one can
derive certain other, more concrete conclusions regarding the development and construction
of any new technologyprinciples that are directly relevant to the deployment of drones
domestically: No new system should alter or contravene existing legal restrictions on the
governments ability to access data about private individuals. Any new system should
mirror and implement existing legal limitations on domestic or foreign activity,
depending on its sphere of operation. Similarly, no new system should alter or contravene
existing operational system limitations. Development of new technology is not a basis
for authorizing new government powers or new government capabilities. Any such
expansion should be justified independently. No new system that materially affects

citizens privacy should be developed without specific authorization by the

American peoples representatives in Congress and without provisions for their
oversight of the operation of the system. Finally, no new system should be
implemented without the full panoply of protections against its abuse. As James
Madison told the Virginia ratifying convention in 1788, There are more instances of the
abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in
power than by violent and sudden usurpations.[6]

Congress should curtail drone surveillance

Rothfuss 14
(Ian, George Mason University School of Law, J.D. Candidate, May 2015; Boston University,
M.S., Business Administration and Management; North Carolina State University, B.S.,
Business Management., Spring 2014, An Economic Perspective On The Privacy Implications
Of Domestic Drone Surveillance)
Congress should enact rules to govern domestic drone use. One recommendation is that Congress
should require the Department of Transportation to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment of the
operation of drones domestically.'66 Pending legislation proposes amending the FAA Modernization and
Reform Act of 2012 to address drone privacy concerns.'6 7 With the proper focus on privacy concerns, drones may
be deployed domestically while still protecting the privacy of American citizens. In addition, Congress should

require a warrant for "extended surveillance of a particular target. '68 As discussed earlier, the
Fourth Amendment would not necessarily require a warrant in these situations. Even so, such a requirement
extending warrant protections makes sense and will provide a valuable check against law
enforcement abuse of the new technology. Congress should require authorization from an
independent official for generalized surveillance that collects personally identifiable
information such as facial features and license plate numbers. 69 This recommendation would apply to situations

where a warrant was not required but personally identifiable information was still being gathered, such as
surveillance at a public event. This recommendation should be enacted as a safeguard of the

public's privacy interests. To adequately protect privacy interests, Congress should direct that the
independent official, vested with decisionmaking power on applications for general
surveillance, be a neutral and detached magistrate who is completely separated from any
law enforcement or intelligence agency. As discussed in the previous section, legislation should be
crafted to maximize the social utility from the domestic use of drones. The legislation should be
structured according to the three levels of scrutiny proposed by Song to ensure that the governmental interest in
the surveillance outweighs the disutility or social cost that will result from the loss of privacy. 7 The neutral and
detached magistrate discussed above could determine when a sufficient government interest exists to warrant
allowing generalized drone surveillance.

Legislation must be enacted to curtail drone surveillance

Rothfuss 14
(Ian, George Mason University School of Law, J.D. Candidate, May 2015; Boston University,
M.S., Business Administration and Management; North Carolina State University, B.S.,
Business Management., Spring 2014, An Economic Perspective On The Privacy Implications
Of Domestic Drone Surveillance)
U.S. citizens want to be safe from terrorist attacks and other threats, but not at the expense of their
privacy rights. Therefore, a delicate balance must be achieved between privacy and security interests. Drones
represent a surveillance technology advancement that threatens to dramatically alter the balance between these
interests. As discussed in this comment, the current legal framework does not adequately protect

privacy from the widespread surveillance that will likely result from the unrestricted
domestic use of drones. Therefore, prompt legislative action is necessary to address the
fundamental privacy challenges presented by the use of drones. Such legislation should
allow for constructive use of drones within a framework that contains restrictions to protect
individual privacy rights. While widespread general surveillance could make the nation safer from crime and
terrorism, such extensive surveillance will ultimately be inefficient. The surveillance that could result from the
domestic use of drones would detract from individual privacy and cause individuals to reduce productive activities
and invest in countermeasures. Such "privacy disutility" will outweigh the societal benefits unless domestic drone
surveillance is restricted. Therefore, [FOOTNOTE] 171 AM. CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION, supra note 153, at 15. 172
Geiger, supra note 16. 173 id. 174 id. 20141 JOURNAL OF LAW, ECONOMICS & POLICY [END FOOTNOTE] without

legislative action we may soon live in a world where "every time we walk out of our front
door we have to look up and wonder whether some invisible eye in the sky is monitoring us.
75

'

AT Squo Solves
Drone regulation is failing and negative impacts have a high
potential to be seen
Michel 14
(Arthur Holland, co-director of the Center for the Study of the Drone, August 6 2014, The
Drones Will Have Their Day, http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/08/06/the-droneregulation-debate-needs-to-be-better)
In 2012, when small drones, the kind that weigh just a few pounds and carry a small object (like a camera, or a
burrito) became affordable, the idea of a drone-filled airspace began shifting from sci-fi fantasy

to
reality. But the passage toward integration was set to be turbulent. Drones were more commonly
thought of as the weaponized, ghostlike military spy aircraft that lurked over Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, killing
enemy militants and, occasionally, civilians and children. While these drones have little in common with small
domestic drones, the public was spooked. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union raised alarms. Fearing for
privacy and safety, lawmakers from Washington state to Virginia rushed to propose legislation to limit or ban
drones, even very small ones. The Federal Aviation Administration stressed, sternly, that commercial drone use
would be absolutely prohibited until 2015, when it would enact comprehensive and strict safety regulations. The
agency reminded the public that private drone users were subject to restrictions, too .

Two years later, the

drones are soaring, while the efforts to limit their use have stalled and the public debate has
gone into a tailspin. In June, a company called Squadrone System started aKickstarter campaign to fund a
small multi-rotor drone called the HEXO+, which the company described as an intelligent drone that follows and
films you autonomously, perfect for making exciting action sports videos. Within a few hours, the campaign had
raised more than three times its $50,000 target. When the campaign ended, the company had raised $1.3 million.
That same week, a company called APlus Mobile made its own Kickstarter campaign. Instead of a drone, the
company proposed a Personal Drone Detection System essentially, an anti-drone radar. Our intent is to keep your
privacy safe from your neighbors and people you may not know who are flying small drones near your home or
office, it said. The campaign only managed to raise $1,435 of its $8,500 goal. Its clear: The drone is

winning. In state legislatures, drone regulation is one of the few issues that has enjoyed
bipartisan support. In 2013, according to the ACLU, 43 states debated 96 drone bills; however, all but eight of
these bills died in session. This year, just four out of 36 states that considered drone legislation have enacted any
laws. This is not enough to keep pace with drone proliferation. And lawmakers in Washington arent

jumping to regulate the drone. In fact, some have caught drone fever. Last month, Democratic Rep. Sean
Patrick Maloney of New York hired a photographer who used a drone to capture (admittedly rather stunning) aerial
views of the congressmans wedding. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who filibustered Congress for 13 hours in protest of
government drone use, owns a toy drone. When he flew it on Fox News, the look on his face was childlike. Even

the FAA has been toothless. Desperate to prevent the midair meeting of a drone and a
manned aircraft, the agency has released a number of policy statements intended to limit
unsafe drone use. These statements include the ban on commercial use. But policy statements are not legally
binding. They are recommendations, placeholders for the real, legally enforceable regulations
that will come sometime after 2015. While private individuals and companies often respect
federal agency policy statements, in the case of the FAA, droners, eager to get airborne,
have openly flaunted them. The FAA has attempted to enforce these policy statements through cease-anddesist letters and, in one case, a $10,000 fine. But these actions have been repeatedly struck down in court. The
FAAs attempts at enforcement have therefore only served to highlight that it has its hands tied. Meanwhile , the

rules that actually are legal (like keeping away from airports) are easy to break and difficult
to enforce.

AT Squo solves FAA

FAA doesnt solve privacy
Scientific American 13
(Scientific American, March 19 2013, Domestic Drones
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spy-drones-come-us-we-must-protect-privacy/)
Before the decade is out, there may be thousands more eyes in the sky. Unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly
known as drones, are already a staple of modern warfare. Now they are set to take on a much larger role in the U.S.
Congress has directed the Federal Aviation Administration to set rules by 2015 for how drones may be used in
domestic airspace. These rules could open up the skies to unmanned vehicles of all typesfrom large surveillance
drones used by the military to insect-size prototypes being developed in university laboratories. The technology
promises to be immensely useful. Public safety agencies can use drones to survey wildfires, conduct search-andrescue operations, or pursue heavily armed suspects. Farmers will use them to survey their fields; energy
companies will fly drones over critical machinery. Still, drones also pose an immense threat to privacy.
The proliferation of small, inexpensive aerial vehicles with video downlinks will dramatically alter the cost-benefit
ratio of surveillance. No longer will law-enforcement agencies need to consider the expense and risk of operating a
helicopter when gathering evidence. Consequently, law-enforcement agencies will have ample opportunity and
motivation to deploy drones on open-ended sorties. It is not hard to imagine blanket campaigns that survey entire
cities for backyard marijuana plants or even building code violations . Privacy advocates rightly worry that

drones, equipped with high-resolution video cameras, infrared detectors and even facialrecognition software, will let snoops into realms that have long been considered privat e. The
privacy threat does not just come from law enforcement, either. Paparazzi and private detectives will find drones
just as easy to use as the cops. Your neighbor is not allowed go into your yard without your permissionwill he be
able to keep a drone hovering just above it? Case law paints a hazy picture of how drones could be employed for
surveillance. A 1989 Supreme Court decision ruled that police may use helicopters to peer into semiprivate areas
say, the backyard of a homewithout first obtaining a warrant. Such speculative reconnaissance, however, has
been naturally limited by the costs of helicopter operations. Will the same law apply to unmanned drones, which are
not similarly constrained? A more recent case poses troubling questions about access to the most sacrosanct
spaces. In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that police could not use thermal-imaging technology to gather evidence
about the goings-on hidden inside a residence without first obtaining a warrant. The court reasoned that
governmental use of a device that is not in general public usea thermal imagerconstitutes a search under the
Fourth Amendment and therefore requires a judge's approval. Yet if unmanned aerial vehicles become as prevalent
as manufacturers hope, one could argue that drones are exempt from that precedent. Already the faa has

permitted a handful of law-enforcement agencies to operate drones on a short-term basis.

The limited regulations accompanying those permits (which, thankfully, preclude attaching any weapons
to the drones) are insufficient to protect the privacy of citizens . Perhaps this should not be surprising.
The faa is not in the business of privacy protection. Its primary concern is with the safety of domestic airspace. No
federal agency, in fact, can be held accountable if drones are not used responsibly and in a way that respects the
Fourth Amendment. As such, Congress should proactively enact laws that confine domestic drones

to reasonable, useful purposes. Several sensible ideas were proposed during the last session
of Congress, including a bill that would have outlawed drone spying without a warrant and
instituted important transparency and accountability measures for their use. But that bill
failed to make it out of a subcommittee. The present Congress must be more active than its
predecessor in heading off this clear and impending threat to personal privacy.

Schnier 13
(Bruce, contributing writer for The Atlantic and the chief technology officer of the computersecurity firm Co3 Systems, September 11 2013, The NSA-Reform Paradox: Stop Domestic
Spying, Get More Security http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/09/the-nsareform-paradox-stop-domestic-spying-get-more-security/279537/
Leaks from the whistleblower Edward Snowden have catapulted the NSA into newspaper headlines and
demonstrated that it has become one of the most powerful government agencies in the country. From

the secret
court rulings that allow it collect data on all Americans to its systematic subversion of the
entire Internet as a surveillance platform, the NSA has amassed an enormous amount of
power. There are two basic schools of thought about how this came to pass. The first focuses on the agencys
power. Like J. Edgar Hoover, NSA Director Keith Alexander has become so powerful as to be above the law. He is

able to get away with what he does because neither political party -- and nowhere near enough individual
lawmakers -- dare cross him. Longtime NSA watcher James Bamford recently quoted a CIA official: We jokingly
referred to him as Emperor Alexander -- with good cause, because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets. Possibly the
best evidence for this position is how well Alexander has weathered the Snowden leaks. The NSAs most intimate
secrets are front-page headlines, week after week. Morale at the agency is in shambles. Revelation after revelation
has demonstrated that Alexander has exceeded his authority, deceived Congress, and possibly broken the law. Tens
of thousands of additional top-secret documents are still waiting to come. Alexander has admitted that he still
doesnt know what Snowden took with him and wouldnt have known about the leak at all had Snowden not gone
public. He has no idea who else might have stolen secrets before Snowden, or who such insiders might have
provided them to. Alexander had no contingency plans in place to deal with this sort of security breach, and even
now -- four months after Snowden fled the country -- still has no coherent response to all this. For an organization
that prides itself on secrecy and security, this is what failure looks like. It is a testament to Alexanders power that
he still has a job. The second school of thought is that its the administrations fault -- not just the present one, but
the most recent several. According to this theory, the NSA is simply doing its job. If theres a problem with the
NSAs actions, its because the rules its operating under are bad. Like the military, the NSA is merely an instrument
of national policy. Blaming the NSA for creating a surveillance state is comparable to blaming the U.S. military for
the conduct of the Iraq war. Alexander is performing the mission given to him as best he can, under the rules he has
been given, with the sort of zeal youd expect from someone promoted into that position. And the NSAs power
predated his directorship. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden exemplifies this in a quote from late July: Give me
the box you will allow me to operate in. Im going to play to the very edges of that box. This doesnt necessarily
mean the administration is deliberately giving the NSA too big a box. More likely, its simply that the laws arent
keeping pace with technology. Every year, technology gives us possibilities that our laws simply dont cover clearly.

And whenever theres a gray area, the NSA interprets whatever law there is to give them the
most expansive authority. They simply run rings around the secret court that rules on these things. My guess
is that while they have clearly broken the spirit of the law, itll be harder to demonstrate that they broke the letter
of the law. In football terms, the first school of thought says the NSA is out of bounds. The second says the field is
too big. I believe that both perspectives have some truth to them, and that the real problem comes from their
combination. Regardless of how we got here, the NSA cant reform itself. Change cannot come

from within; it has to come from above. Its the job of government: of Congress, of the
courts, and of the president. These are the people who have the ability to investigate how
things became so bad, rein in the rogue agency, and establish new systems of transparency,
oversight, and accountability. Any solution we devise will make the NSA less efficient at its
eavesdropping job. That's a trade-off we should be willing to make , just as we accept reduced
police efficiency caused by requiring warrants for searches and warning suspects that they have the right to an
attorney before answering police questions. We do this because we realize that a too-powerful police force is itself a
danger, and we need to balance our need for public safety with our aversion of a police state. The same reasoning
needs to apply to the NSA. We want it to eavesdrop on our enemies, but it needs to do so in a way that doesnt
trample on the constitutional rights of Americans, or fundamentally jeopardize their privacy or security. This means
that sometimes the NSA wont get to eavesdrop, just as the protections we put in place to restrain police sometimes
result in a criminal getting away. This is a trade-off we need to make willingly and openly, because overall we are
safer that way. Once we do this, there needs to be a cultural change within the NSA. Like at the FBI and CIA after
past abuses, the NSA needs new leadership committed to changing its culture. And giving up power. Our society

can handle the occasional terrorist act; were resilient, and -- if we decided to act that way -indomitable. But a government agency that is above the law ... its hard to see how America
and its freedoms can survive that.

Domestic drones inevitable but squo safegards are insufficient

to solve privacy concerns FAA insufficient to solve
Koebler 2/17 JASON

February 17, 2015 Staff writer for Mother Board, professional writer for U.S. News &
World Report, Washington Magazine, The Washington Post, Drones on the US border: Are they worth the price?
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2014/0205/Drones-on-the-US-border-Are-they-worth-the-price

the Federal Aviation

Administration has finally provided a path forward for the legal use of drones in the
United States.The news dropped Sunday morning, so there's a good chance you've already heard a bit about the new
After more than five years of handwringing, missed deadlines, and court cases,

proposed regulations. Commercial drones must stay within line of sight of the operator, must fly during daylight hours, must stay at
speeds below 100 miles per hour and altitudes of less than 500 feet, and must not fly above people who are uninvolved with the
flight. Overall, it's a major win for the commercial drone industry , especially considering that rules
being floated and rumored over the last several months were much more strictone report suggested that drone operators would
have to be licensed private pilots in order to get their foot in the door, in fact. Drone pilots I know are over-the-moon that the FAA
seems to have finally seen the light on this technology, especially after years of legal battles and threats that have come from the
agency for businesses that have operated in a legal grey area. Here's what we can take away and reasonably infer from the FAA's

document: What you're looking at is probably the final rule Drone pilots and the drone industry are pretty ecstatic with what the FAA
has put out there. There are some sticking points: Experienced pilots want to fly over processions and people for photography
purposes (a concert shot with drone footage, for instance). But, overall, from the industry side, people are happy with this. I wouldn't
expect a lot of pushback or comments asking the FAA for even wider latitude to fly. I also wouldn't expect a ton of pushback coming

There are privacy advocates who fear camera-wielding

drones will prove intrusive, and want to keep them grounded, and they have a
point. But right now, there's so much money and momentum pushing drones forward that
it seems likely privacy will be tackled by some other entity or at a later date . The only
other real opposition drones have had has come from crop dusting pilots, who argue that a drone-crop
duster crash would be catastrophic. They're not wrong, but that argument
comes from a fear of losing their jobs more than anything else, and the agricultural
pilot lobby simply isn't a very strong voice. Delivery drones are not dead One of the
from those wanting to limit drones.

biggest misconceptions going around right now is that Amazon's delivery drones are now DOA. It's true that delivery drones aren't
going to be legal under this rule, but this is the first of many drone regulations that will eventually come out. The FAA wasn't ready
to tackle flying outside the line of sight or with drones that drop things, which seems pretty sensible. FAA administrator Michael
Huerta has noted that the FAA will continue researching delivery drones. So, not yet, but to say that delivery drones are never going
to happen is shortsighted. Many of the lawsuits against the FAA will probably go away Three separate groupsmodel aircraft pilots,
drone business owners, and a group of universities filed suit against the FAA last summer after the agency made it more difficult
to fly drones legally. Brendan Schulman, the lawyer representing the firms, would not tell me more about ongoing litigation
(understandably so). However, it seems like a safe bet that drone businesses will drop their suit, considering all they were really
asking for was a way to fly legally. The Academy of Model Aeronautics was angry that model aircraft, which have never been
regulated, were being lumped in with more stringent commercial drone rules. The FAA's actual rule, however, lets model aircraft
flyers continue as they always have. The AMA seemed pleased in an emailed press release: "The

preliminary
information released today indicates that the proposed regulation will treat the
recreational use of small unmanned aircraft separately from that of commercial use ,"
it said. University researchers are probably not pleased Schulmans last group of FAA-suing clients, however, a group of drone-using
universities, cant be happy about the ruling. "Research and development" and "educational and academic uses" are classified as

that provision would be a "huge

blow" to existing research programs. Universities are clients of his, so I would expect that lawsuit to move
forward.The FAA has done everything slowly with drones. There will be a comment period of 60 days
before the FAA actually votes on a final set of rules, and I wouldn't be surprised if the process
somehow drags for months before they're ultimately finalized. The FAA will also
have to beef up its air traffic control staffing (it requires drone operators to call control towers before flying
anywhere remotely near an airport) and its drone licensing and testing sites. This process isn't over, not by a
longshot. But now, finally, there appears to be light at the end of the tunnel.
commercial uses of drones subject to new regulations. Schulman tweeted

AT 4th Ammendment
UAVs dont violate 4th ammendment
Thompson 2013
(Richard, Legislative Attorney, April 3,2015, Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations:
Fourth Amendment Implications and Legislative Responses
http://www.pennyhill.com/jmsfileseller/docs/R42701.pdf0

Based on existing case law, it is reasonable to assume that surveillance of an

individual while in his homean area accorded the greatest Fourth Amendment
protectionusing technology not in general public use would be an unlawful search
absent a search warrant. The Supreme Court in Kyllo was particularly concerned about law enforcements
use of powerful equipment to peer inside an individuals home. Currently, UAVs carry high-megapixel
cameras and thermal imaging, and will soon have the capacity to see through walls
and ceilings.98 These technologies are not generally available to the public, and
under current jurisprudence, their use by law enforcement would probably
constitute a search covered by the Fourth Amendment. However, the use of low-powered
cameras or other unsophisticated technology to view people and objects in plain view while in their home might not
trigger Fourth Amendment protections. The rationale for this notion is that officers are not required to avert their
eyes when they see illegal activity in plain view, especially when the subject of the search has taken no affirmative
efforts to hide their activity from public view. Moving beyond the home, it is unclear whether circumstances exist in
which the area immediately surrounding the homefor instance, a backyard, a swimming pool, a deck, or a porch
would receive similar protections as the interior of the home if surveilled by drones or other aerial vehicles.99

Supreme Court has recited on many occasions that a person located in a

homes curtilage is accorded similar privacy protections as when inside the home ,
the aerial surveillance cases arguably constitute an exception to this general
principle. In the two aerial cases, Riley and Ciraolo, the area surveilled was within close proximity of the home,
Although the

yet the police surveillance at altitudes of 400 and 1,000 feet were not considered a search. Based on the aerial
surveillance cases, it may be reasonable to presume a warrant would not be required (nor, perhaps, any suspicion,
for that matter) to conduct drone surveillance of most public places for a relatively short period of time. The
Supreme Court remarked in Ciraolo that the Fourth Amendment simply does not require the police traveling in the

the
rarity of drone flights may distinguish their use from surveillance by the piloted
aircraft used in the three aerial cases decided by the Court. All three of these cases
were premised on the fact that each aircraft was flying in navigable airspace, and
that these flights were not sufficiently rare to provide a reasonable expectation of
privacy in the area to be searched. To this point, Justice White remarked in Riley that there is nothing
public airways at [1,000 feet] to obtain a warrant to observe what is visible to the naked eye.100 However,

in the record or before us to suggest that helicopters flying at 400 feet are sufficiently rare in this country to lend
substance to respondents claim that he reasonably anticipated that his greenhouse would not be subject to
observation from that altitude.101 Presently, use of UAVs in U.S. airspace is considerably less common. The FAA
has issued only approximately 300 licenses for drone use in U.S. airspace.102 The general public would likely find it

This rarity might

factor into a reviewing courts determination of whether individuals have a
legitimate expectation of privacy from various forms of drone surveillance while in a
public place.103 The federal governments authority to use unmanned aircraft is undoubtedly at its maximum
near U.S. borders. One of the federal governments only affirmative duties is to protect
citizens from external harm.104 This includes securing the borders. The Court has
hesitated from interfering with the performance of this duty, and it would in all
likelihood demonstrate the same deference when it comes to the use of UAVs .
exceedingly unusual for a drone to fly over their homes taking surveillance photographs.

Moreover, the Supreme Courts rulings in border cases have all involved active searcheseither a physical search
of a vehicle or stopping and questioning a vehicles passenger.

Surveillance by UAVs, on the other hand,

may be considered more passive and therefore may be even less likely to run afoul
of Fourth Amendment requirements. Drone surveillance does not require any
physical manipulation of a person or his things. UAVs also do not require the seizure
of a person for any period of time (though drone surveillance may lead to law enforcement physically
apprehending a person who is seen engaging in suspected illegal activity). However, the Court has shown some
reticence about giving law enforcement carte blanche search power at the border. Roving vehicle patrols and
indiscriminate searches in Almeida-Sanchez v. United States and United States v. Brignoni-Ponce were deemed
unconstitutional.105 It is unclear whether this reticence would extend to drone surveillance along the border if it
were to become significantly widespread.

A2 T

AT Drones =/= Surveillance

Drones are used for surveillance
ACLU 4/12
(American Civil Liberties Union, Apr 12, 2015, Domestic Drones,
https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/domestic-drones )

U.S. law enforcement is greatly expanding its use of surveillance

drones, and private actors are also seeking to use the technology for personal and commercial use.
More ev
Mitnick & Bussell 2/15
(Drew Mitnick, Jack Bussell Access, Access is an international human rights organization,
11:02am | 15 February 2015, Taming the skies: Obama memo looks at commercial drones,
restricts government use, https://www.accessnow.org/blog/2015/02/15/taming-the-skiesobama-memo-looks-at-commercial-drones-restricts-government)
Drones also increase the opportunities for governments to conduct first-hand surveillance of
users electronic communications by intercepting signals and information. Official documents demonstrate that
government agencies are already exploring aerial platforms for surveillance technologies,
like Stingray technology, which conducts bulk surveillance of user location information .
Currently, the FBI believes it can use Stingrays without a warrant any time the device is deployed in public, a practice which would
be limited by the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, which was recently re-introduced by Senator Wyden and
Representative Chaffetz. Conversely, also this year, Representative Michael McCaul is pushing legislation that would increase the
use of drones on the U.S. borders, potentially collecting a large amount of digital data. The potential for drones to violate individual
rights supports the need for legislation and regulations for government uses of drones as well as commercial vehicles.

A2 CP

A2 Consult justice department

Justice Department supports privacy frame and use is high
AP 5/22
(Associated Press, May. 22, 2015 6:37 PM EDT, Justice Department issues policy on
domestic drone use,
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/8041e46a7a3a4fb4bc85acb05598fecc/justice-departmentissues-policy-domestic-drone-use )

The Justice Department is acknowledging that the FBI, DEA and other federal law
enforcement agencies are likely to make increasing use of unmanned aerial drones
in the United States. The department on Friday issued its first written guidelines for
domestic drone use and emphasized the need to respect civil and constitutional
rights. The unmanned aircraft already have been used in kidnapping, drug and
fugitive cases, as well as search and rescue operations, the department said. They
also can be operated relatively cheaply.

AT States CP
State laws will be too restrictive kills the industry
Gruber 15
(Robert, litigation associate at Greenberg Traurig, LLP,
COMMERCIAL DRONES AND PRIVACY: CAN WE TRUST STATES WITH DRONE FEDERALISM?
21 RICH. J.L. & TECH. 14 (2015), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v21i4/article14.pdf)
It is possible that a pure federalism model would work well ifas is probably the case for
less-controversial areas of the lawstates cautiously tested the waters of restrictions on
civil/commercial drones. Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case here; they are
diving straight in.220 The specter of drone warfare and robotic monitoring has
wrought enough damage on drones image that, by the time the FAA fully integrates
private UAS in the national airspace, it may be impossible in a significant number of
states to operate one without risking civil or criminal liability. 221 As mentioned earlier,

as long as the third-party doctrine remains viable, the incentive for states to bring
civil drone restrictions up to speed with moratoria on government surveillance will
be great.222 [77] The states have also done little to demonstrate that they are
concerned with the complex space between the First Amendment and privacy . The
Texas Privacy Act, enacted in response to a drones discovery of environmental violations,
arguably violates the First Amendment outright. The cattle industry has sponsored bills in
several states forbidding the recording of farmland.223 Some states, by prohibiting flights
over private property, appear to be straining to reach as much conduct as existing
First Amendment precedent could possibly allow. [78] Moreover, the Supreme Courts

preference against issuing broad holdings when privacy and the First Amendment
collide suggests that even some unconstitutional attempts are unlikely to be
overturned in one fell swoop. Instead, courts might invalidate statutes on particular
cases facts. The result could be that unconstitutional laws persist for some
time, continuing to infringe on First Amendment rights, eroding rather
than being overturned. Finally, of the three possible approaches, drone federalism
would result in the greatest level of interstate variation and legal uncertainty. The
aviation industry benefited from a consistent federal approach in 1926, and would
again today, to the extent possible.

AT wait and see cp

Too late and cp is unenforceable federal regulations are key
Gruber 15
(Robert, litigation associate at Greenberg Traurig, LLP,
COMMERCIAL DRONES AND PRIVACY: CAN WE TRUST STATES WITH DRONE FEDERALISM?
21 RICH. J.L. & TECH. 14 (2015), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v21i4/article14.pdf)
Perhaps the most conclusive argument against the wait and see option is simply

that the ship may have already sailed. At least forty-three states have proposed
drone bills, and laws are on the books in at least twenty of them. There might still be
hope that states will be more open to commercial applications, as only a quarter or so of
states have specifically addressed private use.210 It seems likely, however, that more
states will take up that cause as it becomes more pressing. 211 For example, many
states that addressed only public surveillance forbade the government from storing
information collected inadvertently, or from using in court information about anyone other
than the subject of the warrant.212 Presumably those states will want to consider
drafting similar restrictions for information collected by third-party UAVs. [72]

Another potential problem with such an approach is that, in all likelihood, it will be
very difficult to enforce existing privacy laws against improper actors without at least
some drone-specific rules on the books. UAVs can be light, quiet, and virtually
unnoticeable. They can observe from angles one normally would not expect, and
see over walls and on rooftops. People who are illegally observed by UAS for
example, in violation of a Peeping Tom statutemay never know their rights have
been violated, unless government imposes some restrictions.213

AT States
States insufficient to solve the aff law enforcement
circumvents
Schlag 13
(Chris, J.D. candidate, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, May 2014; B.S., Environmental
Health,
Colorado State University; M.S. Occupational Health, Safety and Environmental
Management, Columbia Southern University, Spring 2013, The New Privacy Battle: How the
Expanding Use of Drones Continues to Erode Our Concept of Privacy and Privacy Rights
Journal of Technology Law & Policy Volume XIII Spring 2013)
The argument has been made that drones are no more invasive to privacy than the standard
helicopter surveillance.134 However, a survey of proposed legislation clearly suggests that
privacy during drone surveillance is actually a major concern. In a majority of proposed

state bills, states want to implement, at a minimum, a probable cause requirement

before law enforcement can obtain a warrant for the use of drones to collect
evidence against an individual.135 Some states proposed legislation would ban
weaponization of drones owned and operated within the state;136 other states have focused
their bills on limiting aerial surveillance of groups such as farmers and ranchers, or for
specific types of crimes, such as felonies.137 Additionally, two states, Massachusetts and
North Dakota, have explicitly limited drone surveillance when that surveillance implicates an
individuals First Amendment protected activities.138 State proposed legislation is a step

in the right direction but is still largely insufficient in protecting all of an individuals
privacy interests. Currently, none of the proposed state legislation fully addresses
privacy nor provides sufficient privacy checks on third party use of drones for
surveillance purposes. Under many of the proposed bills, drones can still be used by
law enforcement to obtain information available in plain view or open space
without a warrant, regardless of any existing individual expectation of privacy.
Additionally, privately owned drones used for security and/or scientific purposes by
third parties are not even discussed under the proposed bills.

Federal reform key and perm solves

Kaminski 2013

(Margot Kaminski, Margot Kaminski is the executive director of the

Information Society Project at Yale Law School, May 2013, Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the
Things They Carry http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1007&context=clrcircuit)

A federal, or mixed state and federal, approach to law enforcement drone

use makes perfect sense. A federal law governing law enforcement drone use
would follow in the well-trodalbeit, outdatedfootsteps of the Electronic
Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).44 Like ECPA, federal legislation on law
enforcement drone use could establish a statutory core to be shared by the states,
or a statutory floor, permitting state deviation towards more protection . Additionally,
because ECPA already establishes a familiar framework for warrants and court orders
governing law enforcement surveillance, a federal law enforcement drone statute need
not wait on extensive state experimentation . The updates need not be drone-specific,

and could cover location tracking, video surveillance, or use of biometric identification, or
other new technologies, if these are the concerns raised by drone surveillance.

Over-restrictive patchwork state regulations destroy drone

competitiveness causes the market to shift overseas now is
key
Gruber 15
(Robert, litigation associate at Greenberg Traurig, LLP,
COMMERCIAL DRONES AND PRIVACY: CAN WE TRUST STATES WITH DRONE FEDERALISM?
21 RICH. J.L. & TECH. 14 (2015), http://jolt.richmond.edu/v21i4/article14.pdf)
At this stage, it is impossible to accurately predict the scope of the future UAS industry. Its
potential benefits are vast and varied: beyond mere job creation, drones will contribute to
efficiency in various industries and aspects of society. This is particularly true in the
commercial sphere, where competition and innovation can drive progress towards functions
far removed from the individual surveillance people fear. UAS have already proven useful in
functions from crop monitoring9 to gathering atmospheric data.10 Dominos Pizza made
headlines when it announced the development of delivery UAS systems, as have other
companiesand while some skeptics dismissed the press releases as publicity stunts,11 it
is not too difficult to imagine a future in which packages appear on our doorstep out of the
sky.12 Recently, Facebook announced a plan that epitomizes the benevolent possibilities of
commercial UAS.13 It haspurchased the U.K.-based company Ascenta, which manufactures
solar- powered aircraft that can stay aloft at high altitudes for years at a time. Facebooks
goal? Providing Internet access in areas where traditional connections are impractical or
impossible.14 Even though commercial UAS flight is still largely prohibited in the

United States, the battle over drone regulation has already begun, fixated largely on
imagined harms to peoples privacy .15 And the privacy advocates are winning: more
than twenty states have passed laws restricting UAS operations .16 Many of these
address law enforcement surveillance, but an increasing number of states are proposing
and enactingrestrictions on private and commercial aircraft. For example, a bill
proposed and enrolled in Texas makes it a misdemeanor to collect an image of a persons
land without consent.17 Other states are considering similar legislation. 18 One town in
Colorado must have gotten Napolitanos memoit considered issuing drone hunting
licenses that would authorize its citizens to shoot any unpiloted aircraft.19 [5] This sort of

legislation is both premature and problematic, particularly with respect to the kind
of drones that will be used for commercial or civil purposes (as opposed to law
enforcement purposes). It is premature because legislators cannot foresee and
therefore cannot balanceall of the potential benefits and harms of commercial drone
use. Many of the privacy interests purportedly advanced by restrictive legislation
are already protected by other areas of the law.20 It is problematic because
inconsistent and overly-restrictive regulations (1) potentially violate the First
Amendment right to gather information and (2) threaten to chill industry growth. 21
The harms such legislation causes are analogous, in a sense, to those that would
have arisen if states had created a patchwork of Internet privacy laws several years

before the development of the World Wide Web. 22 Right now, the United States
leads the pack in UAS technology. If the current legislative pattern
continues, the U.S. might very well drive a market with incredible
potential overseas, to more open-minded nations.23 [6] Is restrictive legislation
nevertheless justified, as a means of vindicating legitimate privacy interests?24 Perhaps not,
particularly where commercial UAS use is concerned. There are few cognizable
circumstances in which using drones to monitor individual people will be profitable for nongovernment actors and entities.25 First, a primary advantage of unmanned aircraft is that
they can go swiftly and easily where people cannot. UAS could be used profitably to survey
mines, monitor power lines in remote areas, collect traffic-flow information, spray and
monitor crops, and so forth. Some predict that eighty-percent of commercial drones will be
used for agricultural purposes 26 so the majority will seldom even accidentally interfere
with individual privacy interests. As one person put it, corn doesnt mind if you watch it.27
Second, even if a particular commercial drones images could be processed and linked to
individuals identities, what would justify the cost of such directed monitoring? Demographic
information may be valuable, but our phones and Internet activity paint a cheaper and more
accurate picture of consumer activitieswhere individuals go, where they shop, and what
they buy. [7] The global market for UAS is growing fast .28 At the moment, the best
available UAS technology belongs to the United States and Israel. 29 Developed for
military purposes, this technology nevertheless has massive export potential for civil and
commercial uses. However, the United States monopoly on UAS technology may

already be eroding. In 2013 Israel surpassed the U.S. as the chief exporter of UAS
technologyalthough Israel remains second to the U.S. in production.30 What accounts
for this discrepancy? A regulatory barrier: the companies that develop our military
drones are restricted from marketing their technology elsewhere. 31 China and other
countries are now entering the ring.32 By competing in the global market, the U.S.
can realize all the benefits of a multi-billion dollar industry once the FAA opens up
the national airspace33which it is poised to begin doing soon but only if the U.S.
avoids establishing a draconian regulatory framework for commercial UAS.

AT Executive Comission CP
Destroys separation of powers
Kaag 15
(John, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, March 9, 2015,
Why domestic drones stir more debate than ones used in warfighting abroad
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2015/0309/Why-domesticdrones-stir-more-debate-than-ones-used-in-warfighting-abroad)
Sarah Kreps and I have argued that one of the more disturbing aspects of the FISA courts are their recent expansion
of the special needs doctrine, which allows the government to carry out surveillance without detailed warrants in
order to address an overriding public danger. We are concerned that this sort of governance, when applied to the
issue of drones, might provide strategists and policy makers with a type of carte blanche over the targeted killing

The alternative proposed by the Obama administration what the President called
independent oversight board in the executive branch doesnt make us feel
much better. It does not address the question of checks and balances that has
prompted calls for judicial oversight. Selinger: What do you mean by checks and balances? Kaag:
The call for transparency in the targeted killing program was amplified early in 2013
around the confirmation hearings of John Brennan as the director of the CIA . At this
time, there was a call for the Obama administration to release secret legal
memoranda concerning the targeting of American citizens on foreign soil. Some of
these documents were released to Congress in the lead up to the Brennan
confirmation. This is the sort of information exchange at the heart of checks and
balances. And this exchange shouldnt simply be used in the deal making of a
confirmation hearing, but rather should slowly and carefully become the
norm in our age of drone warfare. Obviously, Congress is regularly briefed about the drone
program.
an

program, but the Brennan hearing highlighted that there is a long way to go for sufficient oversight. This is what

Without making significant compromises to national security,

we, the people, could have an informed debate not only about the status of
American terror suspects abroad, but also about the deeper political and military
rationale for targeting foreign nationals in accord with international law. What exactly is
would happen in an ideal word:

the risk that these targets pose to US national security? Thats a question Americans need to ask and answer in a
sober and detailed way.

AT FISA CP
Doesnt solve the aff FISA courts special needs doctrine
allows for unlimited surveilliance
Kaag 15
(John, associate professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, March 9, 2015,
Why domestic drones stir more debate than ones used in warfighting abroad
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2015/0309/Why-domesticdrones-stir-more-debate-than-ones-used-in-warfighting-abroad)

The FISA courts are very weird. Our legal system is based on an adversarial
model. In other words, courts are places to dispute charges and impartial parties a judge and jury make a
decision about the case. The FISA courts arent like this. At all. FISA requests are not
disputed. Only a very, very small percentage of FISA requests have been denied
over the courts 30 year history. Most are approved as a matter of course . Sarah Kreps
and I have argued that one of the more disturbing aspects of the FISA courts are
their recent expansion of the special needs doctrine, which allows the
government to carry out surveillance without detailed warrants in order to
address an overriding public danger. We are concerned that this sort of
governance, when applied to the issue of drones, might provide strategists and
policy makers with a type of carte blanche over the targeted killing program . The
Kaag:

alternative proposed by the Obama administration what the President called an independent oversight board in
the executive branch doesnt make us feel much better. It does not address the question of checks and balances
that has prompted calls for judicial oversight.

AT States CP
Perm sovles best federal baseline is a prerequisite to
effective state policy
Schlag 13
(Chris, J.D. candidate, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, May 2014; B.S., Environmental
Health,
Colorado State University; M.S. Occupational Health, Safety and Environmental
Management, Columbia Southern University, Spring 2013, The New Privacy Battle: How the
Expanding Use of Drones Continues to Erode Our Concept of Privacy and Privacy Rights
Journal of Technology Law & Policy Volume XIII Spring 2013)

Drone technology is an exciting and quickly evolving technology that has created a modern
tool capable of a variety of positive applications. Like many other technologies developed in
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, drones have many positives and many negatives
associated with their use. Therefore, proactive steps should be taken by both the Legislature
and the Judiciary to ensure individual privacy rights are not eroded with the incorporation of
this new technology into our daily lives. The best way to ensure that our reasonable

expectation of privacy is maintained is for Congress to enact a baseline consumer

protection law that manages both governmental and private party use of drones in
national airspace. Following the development of a baseline federal law, states could
further protect individual rights by adding state specific legislation to the baseline
protection.

AT Study cp
Doesnt solve the aff
-CP = the squo
-lack of resources means cant solve individual privacy or rights

Schlag 13
(Chris, J.D. candidate, University of Pittsburgh School of Law, May 2014; B.S., Environmental
Health,
Colorado State University; M.S. Occupational Health, Safety and Environmental
Management, Columbia Southern University, Spring 2013, The New Privacy Battle: How the
Expanding Use of Drones Continues to Erode Our Concept of Privacy and Privacy Rights
Journal of Technology Law & Policy Volume XIII Spring 2013)

A final proposal has been to allow for studies by DOT and FAA , as part of the initiative
of the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, to assess the privacy impact from
the integration of drones into national airspace. 143 While FAA and DOT together have already
initiated multiple studies on privacy impacts, resulting in the FAA delaying the naming of several drone-testing

studies do not protect against current privacy invasions and cannot replace
proactive controls in privacy protection. Furthermore, DOT and FAA are administrative
agencies tasked with the protection and safety of vehicles in our national airspace.
These agencies are not equipped with the necessary expertise to protect individual
rights or individual privacy. While there is a definite benefit in the DOT and FAA
assessing drones impact on privacy during the incorporation of additional drones
into national airspace, this benefit should not deter the enactment of additional
controls that would more assertively protect individual privacy rights.
sites,144

Congress AT States CP

AT Executive CP
CP destroys SOP congress is key
Williams 2014
(Ryan Williams, Assoc. Professor Western State College of Law, August 2014, The Road Most
Travel: Is the Executives Growing Preeminence Making America More Like Authoritarian
Regimes It Fights So Hard Against? http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1006&context=ryan_williams)

Defining imminence in a way that eliminates the immediacy requirement is

especially troubling when one recalls the imminence requirement for standing to
challenge the NSA surveillance program. As noted earlier, the plaintiffs in Clapper were not allowed
to challenge the NSA surveillance program because they failed to present ssome case for imminent harm or a

when Americans try to challenge Executive power,

imminence means imminence, as they must have a certainly impending injury in
order to have standing.214 However, when the Executive wants to kill Americans,
imminence does not mean imminence, and as long as some harm may happen
sometime in the futurethat is sufficient.215 This double standard is problematic,
especially if one wants to maintain any type of democracy and separation of powers
in America. Whenever there are different rules for different people, where the
people in control of the military give different definitions of the exact same word,
that nation no longer resembles a land of the people. Congress is supposed to make
the laws and the Judiciary defines them, not the Executive doing all of the above
sua sponte.
certainly impending injury.213 Thus,

AT Warrants PIC
No link to the NB
Yang 14
(Y. Douglas, J.D., Boston University School of Law, Big Brother's Grown Wings: The Domestic
Proliferation of Drone Surveillance and the Law's Response 23 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 343 (2014))

Rule I embodies the desire of both federal and state legislatures to exclude certain
situations from the burden of a warrant requirement .228 Common exam- ples of nonlaw enforcement operations include, but are not limited to, land surveying ,229
weather and climate observation and scientific research ,230 wild- life management
and protection, 23 1 and search and rescue missions. 232 In addi- tion to Rule l's exemption of
non-law enforcement uses of drones, Rule I also exempts situations where a high risk of
terrorist attack or imminent danger to life or property exists. This specific provision finds its
inspiration in Virginia's warrant exception that allows drone use for responses to Amber Alerts,233 Se- nior

While the Fourth Amend- ment covers all

government intrusions of privacy, government activity that does not involve
criminal investigation tends to involve "a less hostile intrusion than the typical
policeman's search for the fruits and instrumentalities of crime. "236 Moreover, drones can
Alerts,234 and search-and-rescue missions."235

be a potent tool to assist in searching for miss- ing persons and in police emergencies, much in the same way that
police heli- copters and aircraft currently provide aerial support, albeit at a much higher cost and with less

Rule I reflects a desire by federal and state legislative proposals to

exempt exigent circumstances from restrictions on drone use.238 Thus, where a law
enforcement agency believes that a particular area, event, or situation poses a high
risk of attack by terrorists; or that there is an imminent and articulable threat to a
specific person's life or property, sub- stantial legal obstacles should not hamper
that agency. Rule l's first paragraph is a compromise measure that allows the
government to promptly respond to urgent situations, while ensuring that the
government, and particularly law enforcement agencies, adhere to the privacy
protections of the Rule by demonstrating that probable cause of a high risk of
terrorist attack existed or that an imminent danger to life or property existed at the
time and general location of the drone's operation.
flexibility.237

_____

No link exceptions are predictable and solve the link

Yang 14
(Y. Douglas, J.D., Boston University School of Law, Big Brother's Grown Wings: The Domestic
Proliferation of Drone Surveillance and the Law's Response 23 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 343 (2014))

Congress has moved slowly to react to the rise of domestic drone use.

Rather than
address the relevant privacy concerns surrounding drones, Congress has instead focused on rapidly integrating
drones into domestic airspace.'"9 Nonetheless, individual members of Congress have raised their concerns with domestic drone use, and some have gone so far as to introduce legislation to restrict the government's ability to use

Paul's proposed bill, the Preserving Freedom from

would require a warrant for most situations in which

drones as surveillance platforms.1 60 Senator Rand

Unwarrant- ed Surveillance Act of 2013,

drones are used "to gather evidence or other information pertaining to criminal
conduct or conduct in violation of a statute or regulation."' 61Excep- tions to the
blanket warrant requirement would include border patrol missions, prevention of
terrorist attacks, and circumstances in which police have reasona- ble suspicion that
an imminent danger to life is at hand and are thus required to take immediate
action.

A2 K

Framework
Debates about drones are important public understanding is
low debates are key
VOGEL 15
(Nate Vogel, Legislative Counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union , February 11, 2015
Drones at Home: The Debate Over Unmanned Aircraft in State Legislature
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.204-N.%20Vogel.pdf)

Privacy advocates are apparently generally unsuccessful at convincing lawmakers

to limit the surveillance infrastructure. The ACLU found that in 2013, [o]nly five states have laws on
the books governing license plate readers.23 There are many factors that may limit the success
of privacy advocates. Public debate about whether surveillance is appropriate or
whether there should be new limits to protect privacy tends to only happen
occasionally, and only after the infrastructure has been in place for some time. 24
Sometimes this happens because the public does not even learn of a new surveillance
technique until it is a wellestablished practice .25 Even when there is evidence that a particular
kind of surveillance is happening, decision makers judges, for examplemay not wish to take action unless there
are injuries in fact.26 This, notwithstanding the fact that the history of surveillance techniques, from writs of
assistance to electronic wiretaps,27 provides strong evidence that surveillance tools are highly likely to be abused

With every new surveillance technology, there are

invariably economic arguments supporting governments and companies use of the
technology. Drones and ALPRs create revenue and jobs, according to supporters .28
without clear limits and consistent oversight.

The congressional committee that reported major 2011 federal legislation on unmanned aircraft declared that the
unmanned aircraft industry would create 23,000 high-paying jobs in the United States.29 A resolution from
Louisiana, SCR 124, was even more optimistic, estimating that once the Federal Aviation Administration establishes
guidelines for commercial use, the drone industry expects more than one hundred thousand jobs to be created and

There are also often industry groups

that emerge to lobby for governments to use the technology technologies make
law abiding citizens safer and only threaten the bad guys.32 Every privacy
advocate has heard someone and probably many peoplesay, I dont really care
what theyre watching. Ive got nothing to hide. Many authors have identified flaws with this
nearly half a billion in tax revenue to be generated by 2025[.]30

perspective33 so I will not repeat them here, despite the many critiques this argument endures.

Drones are key to civil government and commercial sector

REHFUSS 15
(Abigail Rehfuss, previous Editor for Albany Government Law Review/Assistant Albany
District Attorney , February 6, 2015 The Domestic Use of Drones and the Fourth
Amendement http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313Rehfuss.pdf)
In addition to their resourcefulness along the border, UAVs have proven to be similarly
advantageous in a variety of other peaceful contexts . For example, UAVs have civil

government applications that include emergency response, law enforcement

surveillance, search and rescue, forest fire monitoring, communications relay, flood
mapping, high altitude imaging, traffic monitoring, humanitarian aid, land use
mapping, and chemical and petroleum spill monitoring. On the scientific front, UAV
applications include natural hazards research and monitoring, environmental
monitoring and mapping, in-situ atmospheric monitoring, hyperspectral imaging,
sea ice flow observations, plume dispersion and tracking, soil moisture imaging, and

aerosol source determinations. In the commercial sector, UAVs are used in areas such as
crop monitoring, communications relay, and utility inspection

A2 DA

Mexico DA Drones suck

Drones fail at the border DHS audit
Harrington 1/6
Elizabeth, January 1, 2015, Audit: DHS Drone Program Ineffective at Border Security,
http://freebeacon.com/issues/audit-dhs-drone-program-ineffective-at-border-security/
Elizabeth Harrington is a staff writer for the Washington Free Beacon. Elizabeth graduated
from Temple University in 2010. Prior to joining the Free Beacon, she worked as a staff writer
for CNSNews.com.

Custom and Border Protections (CBP) drone program is ineffective and surveys less
than 200 miles of the southwest border, according to an audit by the Department of Homeland
Securitys (DHS) Office of Inspector General .The program operates 10 Predator B drones at a cost
of more than $12,000 for every hour a drone spends in the air, funding which could be put to better use elsewhere,
according to the OIG.The program costs $10,000 more per flight hour than what DHS claims, according to the OIG.
We estimate that, in fiscal year 2013, it cost at least $62.5 million to operate the program, or about $12,255 per
[flight] hour, the audit said. The Office of Air and Marines calculation of $2,468 per flight hour does not include
operating costs, such as the costs of pilots, equipment, and overhead. Although

CBPs Unmanned
Aircraft System program contributes to border security, after 8 years, CBP cannot
prove that the program is effective because it has not developed performance
measures, the audit, released on Christmas Eve, said. The program has also not achieved the expected
results.The OIG found that the Unmanned Aircraft System program (UAS) has not met
flight hour goals, and that DHS lacks evidence that drones have contributed to more
border apprehensions.[U]nless CBP fully discloses all operating costs, Congress and
the public are unaware of all the resources committed to the Unmanned Aircraft
System program, they said. As a result, CBP has invested significant funds in a program that has not
achieved the expected results, and it cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border
security.Drones have flown along the border 80 percent less than what CBP originally imagined of four 16 hour
unmanned aircraft patrols every day of the year, or 23,296 total flight hours. In reality, drones were only in the air
for 5,102 flight hours in 2013. The CBP blamed the lack of drone flights on budget constraints. The government has
already spent $360 million on the program since 2005, and DHS hopes to add 14 more drones at a cost of $443
million. However, the OIG said the agency has not proved the program deserves to be expanded. Given the cost of
the Unmanned Aircraft System program and its unproven effectiveness, CBP should reconsider its plan to expand
the program, the audit said. The $443 million that CBP plans to spend on program expansion could be put to
better use by investing in alternatives, such as manned aircraft and ground surveillance assets. The drones, which
can fly for 20 hours at a speed of 276 miles per hour, are operating on a small section of the 1,993-mile southwest
border, contrary to the governments claims. According to the audit, drones only focused on 100 miles of the
Arizona border and 70 miles of the Texas border. DHS claimed in their annual report ending in 2014 that they had
expanded unmanned aircraft system coverage to the entire Southwest Border. However, CBP drones are
sometimes in use elsewhere, including Cocoa Beach, Fla., Grand Forks, N.D., and Sierra Vista, Ariz. Drones were also
responsible for only 1.8 percent of apprehensions in the Tucson, Ariz. region, and a mere 0.7 percent in the Rio
Grande Valley.According

to border patrol agents and intelligence personnel in Arizona,

USBP probably would have detected the people using ground-based assets, without
the assistance of unmanned aircraft, the audit said.

Terrorism DA Link turn

Unregulated drones risks terror attacks
VILLASENIOR 14
(John, Nonresident Senior Fellow , The Brookings Institution Professor, Electrical Engineering,
April 4, 2012, UCLA, Panel: THE COMING PROLIFERATIO N OF DOMESTIC DRONES: WHAT
WILL BE THE IMPACT ON PRIVAC Y, SAFETY AND NATIONAL SECURITY?
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/events/2012/4/04-domesticdrones/20120404_domestic_drones.pdf)
The last area is national security.

It would be naive to deny that sufficiently large unmanned

aircraft don't create some new risks. It would make no sense at all for a terrorist to attack a shopping
center or an office building using a drone. As we saw in Oklahoma City in 1995, a car or truc k filled with explosives

sensitive governm ent and military facilities are a

different story because of their access restrictions. At these facilitie s drones could
be far harder to detect and stop than a car, truck or small passenger-bearing plant .
would be far easier and more deadly. However,

An unclassified 2005 report issued by the federally funded Institute for Defense A nalyses explicitly recognized

report stat ed, and I'm quoting here, "A small team could launch a
UAV from hiding with a relatively small launch footprint and make their escape
before impact." The report also stated that, "There would be little danger of
detection and transportation, launch or escape." And that with a precision-guided
UAV there is a "high probability of succes sful execution."
these types of concerns. That

No link U
No link uniqueness debates about drones and privacy high
now
HAMILTON SPECTATOR 13
(Hamilton Spectator , (Metroland News) June 20, 2013 FBI uses drones in domestic
surveillance: Mueller Bloomberg Ebscoe http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail/detail?
sid=895808dc-136e-4fac-8323da303f4367f8%40sessionmgr110&vid=0&hid=115&bdata=JkF1dGhUeXBlPWlwLHVybCxnZ
W8sY3BpZCx1aWQmY3VzdGlkPWthbnNhcyZnZW9jdXN0aWQ9a2Fuc2FzJnNpdGU9ZWhvc3Qt
bGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=n5h&AN=Q4KHSON2013062024664145

The FBI uses drones in domestic surveillance operations in a "very, very minimal
way," director Robert Mueller said. Mueller, in Senate testimony Wednesday, acknowledged for the first time that
the Federal Bureau of Investigation uses "very few" drones in a limited capacity for surveillance. "It's very seldom
used and generally used in a particular incident when you need the capability," Mueller said when asked about the
bureau's use of pilotless aircraft with surveillance capabilities. "It is very narrowly focused on particularized cases

remarks about the FBI's use of drones - and the regular

use of the vehicles by other law enforcement agencies - come as lawmakers and
civil liberties groups are raising concerns about the reach of the government in the
wake of the disclosure of two highly classified National Security Agency surveillance
programs. Leaks by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden to the Washington Post
and Britain's Guardian newspaper unveiled surveillance programs that sweeps up telephone
call data from millions of U.S. citizens as well as Internet traffic that the Obama
administration says involves foreigners based outside the U.S. suspected of plotting
terrorist attacks. The revelations about the surveillance programs have reignited a
political debate that has repeatedly flared since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S. about the balance
between civil liberties and protection from terrorism . Lawmakers and civil liberties groups have
raised concerns about the impact on privacy of drones used by federal law
enforcement agencies. The Homeland Security Department regularly deploys
drones to oversee the southern border. Mueller said the FBI is in "the initial stages"
of formulating privacy guidelines related to its drone use.
and particularized needs." Mueller's

N/U Obama XO means hes already received backlash

Whitlock 2014
(Craig, covers pentagon and national security- Washington Post, 26 September 2014, White
House Plans to Require Federal Federal Agencies to provide details about drones
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-plans-to-requirefederal-agencies-to-provide-details-about-drones)

The White House is preparing a directive that would require federal agencies to
publicly disclose for the first time where they fly drones in the United States and
what they do with the torrents of data collected from aerial surveillance. The
presidential executive order would force the Pentagon, the Justice
Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies to
reveal more details about the size and surveillance capabilities of their

growing drone fleets information that until now has been largely kept
under wraps. The mandate would apply only to federal drone flights in U.S.
airspace. Overseas military and intelligence operations would not be covered. President Obama has yet to sign
the executive order, but officials said that drafts have been distributed to federal agencies and that the process is in
its final stages. An interagency review of the issue is underway, said Ned Price, a White House spokesman. He
declined to comment further. Privacy advocates said the measure was long overdue. Little is known about the scope
of the federal governments domestic drone operations and surveillance policies. Much of what has emerged was
obtained under court order as a result of public-records lawsuits. Were undergoing a quiet revolution in aerial
surveillance, said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. But we havent had
all in one place a clear picture of how this technology is being used. Nor is it clear that the agencies themselves

Most affected by the executive order would be the

Pentagon, which conducts drone training missions in most states, and
Homeland Security, which flies surveillance drones along the nations
borders round-the-clock. It would also cover other agencies with littleknown drone programs, including NASA, the Interior Department and the
Commerce Department. Military and law enforcement agencies would not have to reveal sensitive
know how it is being used.

operations. But they would have to post basic information about their privacy safeguards for the vast amount of

Until now, the armed forces and federal

law enforcement agencies have been reflexively secretive about drone flights and
even less forthcoming about how often they use the aircraft to conduct domestic
surveillance. Security officials are generally reluctant to disclose operational
methods and techniques. But drones are in a special category of sensitivity, given
the top-secret role theyve long played in CIA and military counterterrorism
missions. Theres also evidence that federal agencies simply have been unable to develop internal guidelines
full-motion video and other imagery collected by drones.

and policies quickly enough to keep up with rapid advances in drone technology. Federal use of drones has gone
way up, but its hard to document how much, said Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
a San Francisco-based group that has sued the Federal Aviation Administration for records on government drone

Congress has struggled to uncover the extent to

which the federal government uses drones as a surveillance tool in U.S. airspace. In
March 2013, lawmakers directed the Defense Department to produce a report,
within 90 days, describing its policies for sharing drone surveillance imagery with
law enforcement agencies. Eighteen months later, the Pentagon still has not
completed the report. Air Force Lt. Col. Thomas Crosson, a Defense Department spokesman, said officials
operations. Its been incredibly difficult. Even

hoped to provide an interim response next week and a full version in the coming months. Department of Justice
officials have also been reluctant to answer queries from lawmakers about their drone operations. The FBI first
disclosed its use of small, unarmed surveillance drones to Congress in June 2013 and subsequently revealed that it
had been flying them since 2006. The Justice Department inspector general reported last fall that the FBI had not
developed new privacy guidelines for its drone surveillance and was relying instead on old rules for collecting
imagery from regular aircraft. Since then, Justice officials have said they are reviewing their drone surveillance
policies but have not disclosed any results. An FBI spokesman did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI
has resisted other attempts to divulge details about the size of its drone fleet and its surveillance practices. Citizens
for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a nonprofit group that pushes for transparency in government,
sued the FBI last year under the Freedom of Information Act for records on its drone program. Although the FBI has
turned over thousands of pages of documents, many have been redacted or provide only limited insights. Theyve
been dragging their feet from the outset, and its been enormously frustrating, said Anne Weismann, CREWs chief

theyve been operating

without any clear guidance or if they just dont like to talk about it. Another section of
Obamas draft executive order would instruct the Commerce Department to
help develop voluntary privacy guidelines for private-sector drone flights.
counsel. I dont know if its because they dont want to expose the fact that

The intent is to shape nonbinding industry standards for commercial surveillance instead of imposing new
regulations by law. The executive order is an attempt to cope with a projected surge in drone flights in the United
States. For years, the FAA has enforced a de facto ban on commercial drone flights. The FAA permits government
agencies to fly drones only under tightly controlled circumstances. Under a 2012 law passed by Congress, however,
the FAA is developing rules that will gradually open the skies to drones of all kinds. The drone industry, which
lobbied Congress to pass the law, predicts $82 billion in economic benefits and 100,000 new jobs by 2025. On

Thursday, the FAA approved requests from six Hollywood filmmakers to fly small camera-equipped drones on movie
sets, the first time businesses will be allowed to operate such aircraft in populated areas. About 40 companies,
including Amazon.com, have filed similar requests with the FAA. Amazons chief executive, Jeffrey P. Bezos, owns
The Washington Post. Federal lawmakers have introduced several bills in recent years to regulate the use of drones

No department flies
more drones than the Pentagon, which has about 10,000 of the aircraft in its
inventory, from four-pound Wasps to the 15-ton Global Hawk. While many are deployed overseas, Defense
Department documents show that the military is making plans to base
drones at 144 sites in the United States. Pentagon officials have said they
soon expect to fly more drones in civilian airspace in the United States
than in military-only zones. The Department of Homeland Security also conducts extensive
by law enforcement agencies and strengthen privacy protections, but none has passed.

surveillance with unarmed drones. Its Customs and Border Protection service has nine large Predator B models,
which account for about three-quarters of all drone flight hours reported by federal civilian agencies. Customs and
Border Protection drones patrol a 25-mile-wide corridor along the nations northern and southern borders, as well as
over the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. Records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that the
Border Patrol has also outsourced its drones on hundreds of occasions to other law enforcement agencies
throughout the United States. Details of most of those operations remain secret.

More ev
Barack 2015
(Obama, President of the United States, 15 February 2015,
Promoting Economic Competitiveness While Safeguarding
Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties in Domestic Us of
Unmanned Aircraft Systems https://www.whitehouse.gov/thepress-office/2015/02/15/presidential-memorandum-promotingeconomic-competitiveness-while-safegua.)
Presidential Memorandum: Promoting Economic Competitiveness While Safeguarding Privacy, Civil Rights, and Civil
Liberties in Domestic Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE
DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: Promoting Economic Competitiveness While Safeguarding Privacy, Civil
Rights, and Civil Liberties in Domestic Use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)
technology continues to improve rapidly, and increasingly UAS are able to perform a variety of missions with
greater operational flexibility and at a lower cost than comparable manned aircraft. A wide spectrum of domestic
users -- including industry, private citizens, and Federal, State, local, tribal, and territorial governments -- are
using or expect to use these systems, which may play a transformative role in fields as diverse as urban
infrastructure management, farming, public safety, coastal security, military training, search and rescue, and
disaster response. The Congress recognized the potential wide-ranging benefits of UAS operations within the
United States in the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 (Public Law 112-95), which requires a plan to
safely integrate civil UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS) by September 30, 2015. As compared to
manned aircraft, UAS may provide lower-cost operation and augment existing capabilities while reducing risks to
human life. Estimates suggest the positive economic impact to U.S. industry of the integration of UAS into the
NAS could be substantial and likely will grow for the foreseeable future. As UAS are integrated into the NAS,

the

Federal Government will take steps to ensure that the integration takes into account not only
our economic competitiveness and public safety, but also the privacy, civil rights,
and civil liberties concerns these systems may raise. By the authority vested in me as President by the
Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish transparent principles that
govern the Federal Government's use of UAS in the NAS, and to promote the responsible use of this technology in
the private and commercial sectors, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. UAS Policies and

Procedures for Federal Government Use . The Federal Government currently operates UAS in the United
States for several purposes, including to manage Federal lands, monitor wildfires, conduct scientific research,
monitor our borders, support law enforcement, and effectively train our military. As with information collected by
the Federal Government using any technology, where UAS is the platform for collection, information must be
collected, used, retained, and disseminated consistent with the Constitution, Federal law, and other applicable
regulations and policies.

Agencies must, for example, comply with the Privacy Act

of 1974 (5 U.S.C. 552a) (the "Privacy Act"), which, among other things,
restricts the collection and dissemination of individuals' information that
is maintained in systems of records, including personally identifiable
information (PII), and permits individuals to seek access to and
amendment of records. (a) Privacy Protections . Particularly in light of the diverse potential uses
of UAS in the NAS, expected advancements in UAS technologies, and the anticipated increase in UAS use in the
future,

the Federal Government shall take steps to ensure that privacy protections

and policies relative to UAS continue to keep pace with these developments.
Accordingly, agencies shall, prior to deployment of new UAS technology and at least
every 3 years, examine their existing UAS policies and procedures relating to the
collection, use, retention, and dissemination of information obtained by UAS, to
ensure that privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties are protected. Agencies shall update their
policies and procedures, or issue new policies and procedures, as necessary. In addition to requiring compliance
with the Privacy Act in applicable circumstances, agencies that collect information through UAS in the NAS shall
ensure that their policies and procedures with respect to such information incorporate the following
requirements: (i)

Collection and Use . Agencies shall only collect information using UAS, or use UAS-collected

information, to the extent that such collection or use is consistent with and relevant to an authorized purpose. (ii)

Retention. Information collected using UAS that may contain PII shall not be retained for more than 180 days
unless retention of the information is determined to be necessary to an authorized mission of the retaining
agency, is maintained in a system of records covered by the Privacy Act, or is required to be retained for a longer
period by any other applicable law or regulation. (iii)

Dissemination. UAS-collected information that is not

maintained in a system of records covered by the Privacy Act shall not be disseminated outside of the agency
unless dissemination is required by law, or fulfills an authorized purpose and complies with agency requirements.
(b)

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Protections . To protect civil rights and civil liberties, agencies

shall: (i) ensure that policies are in place to prohibit the collection, use,
retention, or dissemination of data in any manner that would violate the
First Amendment or in any manner that would discriminate against

persons based upon their ethnicity, race, gender, national origin, religion,
sexual orientation, or gender identity, in violation of law; (ii) ensure that
UAS activities are performed in a manner consistent with the Constitution
and applicable laws, Executive Orders, and other Presidential directives;
and (iii) ensure that adequate procedures are in place to receive,
investigate, and address, as appropriate, privacy, civil rights, and civil
liberties complaints.

(c)

Accountability . To provide for effective oversight, agencies shall: (i) ensure

that oversight procedures for agencies' UAS use, including audits or assessments, comply with existing agency
policies and regulations; (ii) verify the existence of rules of conduct and training for Federal Government
personnel and contractors who work on UAS programs, and procedures for reporting suspected cases of misuse
or abuse of UAS technologies; (iii) establish policies and procedures, or confirm that policies and procedures are
in place, that provide meaningful oversight of individuals who have access to sensitive information (including any
PII) collected using UAS; (iv) ensure that any data-sharing agreements or policies, data use policies, and record
management policies applicable to UAS conform to applicable laws, regulations, and policies; (v) establish
policies and procedures, or confirm that policies and procedures are in place, to authorize the use of UAS in
response to a request for UAS assistance in support of Federal, State, local, tribal, or territorial government
operations; and (vi) require that State, local, tribal, and territorial government recipients of Federal grant funding
for the purchase or use of UAS for their own operations have in place policies and procedures to safeguard
individuals' privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties prior to expending such funds. (d)

Transparency. To

promote transparency about their UAS activities within the NAS, agencies
that use UAS shall, while not revealing information that could reasonably be expected to compromise
law enforcement or national security: (i)

provide notice to the public regarding where the

agency's UAS are authorized to operate in the NAS; (ii) keep the public informed
about the agency's UAS program as well as changes that would significantly affect
privacy, civil rights, or civil liberties; and (iii) make available to the public, on an
annual basis, a general summary of the agency's UAS operations during the
previous fiscal year, to include a brief description of types or categories of missions
flown, and the number of times the agency provided assistance to other agencies,
or to State, local, tribal, or territorial governments. (e) Reports. Within 180 days of the date of
this memorandum, agencies shall provide the President with a status report on the implementation of this
section. Within 1 year of the date of this memorandum, agencies shall publish information on how to access their
publicly available policies and procedures implementing this section.

Sec. 2. Multi-stakeholder

Engagement Process. In addition to the Federal uses of UAS described in section 1 of this memorandum, the
combination of greater operational flexibility, lower capital requirements, and lower operating costs could allow
UAS to be a transformative technology in the commercial and private sectors for fields as diverse as urban
infrastructure management, farming, and disaster response. Although these opportunities will enhance American
economic competitiveness, our Nation must be mindful of the potential implications for privacy, civil rights, and
civil liberties. The Federal Government is committed to promoting the responsible use of this technology in a way
that does not diminish rights and freedoms. (a) There is hereby established a multi-stakeholder engagement

process to develop and communicate best practices for privacy, accountability, and transparency issues
regarding commercial and private UAS use in the NAS. The process will include stakeholders from the private
sector. (b) Within 90 days of the date of this memorandum, the Department of Commerce, through the National
Telecommunications and Information Administration, and in consultation with other interested agencies, will
initiate this multi-stakeholder engagement process to develop a framework regarding privacy, accountability,
and transparency for commercial and private UAS use. For this process, commercial and private use includes the
use of UAS for commercial purposes as civil aircraft, even if the use would qualify a UAS as a public aircraft under
49 U.S.C. 40102(a)(41) and 40125. The process shall not focus on law enforcement or other noncommercial
governmental use. Sec. 3.

Definitions. As used in this memorandum: (a) "Agencies" means

executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government that conduct UAS
operations in the NAS. (b) "Federal Government use" means operations in which
agencies operate UAS in the NAS. Federal Government use includes agency UAS operations on behalf
of another agency or on behalf of a State, local, tribal, or territorial government, or when a nongovernmental
entity operates UAS on behalf of an agency. (c) " National

Airspace System" means the common

network of U.S. airspace; air navigation facilities, equipment, and services; airports
or landing areas; aeronautical charts, information, and services; related rules,
regulations, and procedures; technical information; and manpower and material.
Included in this definition are system components shared jointly by the Departments of Defense, Transportation,
and Homeland Security. (d)

"Unmanned Aircraft System" means an unmanned aircraft (an

aircraft that is operated without direct human intervention from within or on the
aircraft) and associated elements (including communication links and components that control the unmanned
aircraft) that are required for the pilot or system operator in command to operate safely and efficiently in the
NAS. (e)

"Personally identifiable information" refers to information that can be used to

distinguish or trace an individual's identity, either alone or when combined with

other personal or identifying information that is linked or linkable to a specific
individual, as set forth in Office of Management and Budget Memorandum M-07-16 (May 22, 2007) and Office
of Management and Budget Memorandum M-10-23 (June 25, 2010).

Sec. 4. General Provisions. (a) This

memorandum complements and is not intended to supersede existing laws and policies for UAS operations in the
NAS, including the National Strategy for Aviation Security and its supporting plans, the FAA Modernization and
Reform Act of 2012, the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA's) Integration of Civil UAS in the NAS Roadmap,
and the FAA's UAS Comprehensive Plan. (b)

This memorandum shall be implemented

consistent with applicable law, and subject to the availability of

appropriations. (c) Nothing in this memorandum shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect: (i) the
authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or (ii) the functions of the
Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(d) Independent agencies are strongly encouraged to comply with this memorandum. (e) This memorandum is
not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in
equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or

agents, or any other person. (f) The Secretary of Commerce is hereby authorized and directed to publish this
memorandum in the Federal Register.

Mexico/Border racism adv