Why Won’t the FAA Tell EFF Who’s Flying the Drones in US Airspace?
According to this October 2010 report, these are all the locations at which someone–DOD, DHS, and NASA are publicly admitted users; “Other Government Agencies” (spooks) are always included in the discussion though not detailed–got waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration since 2008 to operate drones outside of restricted airspace. And we know they’ve been active since then, doing things like helping to arrest Sovereign Citizens who had stolen 6 cows.
Last April, the Electronic Frontier Foundation FOIAed to find out who was operating these drones.
(1) any active certificates or authorizations issued by the FAA for any type of drone or unmanned aircract (UA), including public UAs and private UAs, and all corresponding agency records;
(2) any expired certificates or authorizations issued by the FAA for any type of drone or UA, including public UAs and private UAs, and all corresponding agency records;
(3) any applications for UA certificates or authorizations that were denied by the FAA, and all corresponding agency records.
But thus far, the agency has refused to fulfill the FOIA request. On Tuesday, EFF sued to get those records.
Kudos to the EFF for suing to get these records. But FAA’s silence thus far really raises questions about what kind of drone surveillance they’ve already got us under.
Question, are the yellow, red and green markers on the map places where the flights took off, or are they the places where there were overflights?
@Sean Paul Kelley:
They are places where overflights are allowed by the FAA. From the Executive Summary of the report in the link above:
@Sean Paul Kelley: If you click though, you’ll also see some maps showing where the drones are based–almost all of which are at a base operating under the border exception. But we know DOD has plans for drones at 4 bases–which would reach every state but CA, and two more locations have been added. Syracuse, NY (which has ties to Fort Drum) is one, not sure of the other.
But also remember some of these are very small drones–basically model airplanes (they’re also working on an exception for those drones to need to be FAA compliant). So they might just get launched from a field somewhere.
I found it interesting that the October 2010 report describes their reporting requirements for “expanded access to the national airspace for unmanned aircraft systems of the Department of Defense.” (My Bold)
One of the questions that occurs to me is whether “ownership” of these drones flying over the US are still with the DOD. I thought I had read recently that Homeland Security was piloting its own drones (with former military pilots now working as private contractors?), but I could be mistaken.
And I also note that the EFF is only suing the DOT as the government organization responsible for regulating UAV flights within US borders. I wonder if it wouldn’t have been more helpful to add in organizations like DOD, DHS, the CIA, the NSA, and the FBI to shake all the trees for possible fruit rather than just the DOT.
Lookung forward to the FOIA reports. I wonder if they will include the Hummingbird and Bumblebee drone projects too.
@MadDog: The FAA controls all the domestic airspace, so whatever the others are doing, they do have to go to the FAA and get their waiver to operate in FAA’s space. DOD, of course, has restricted airspace over the domestic bases where they’re using drones for “training.” Those drones can’t leave that airspace or other limited airspace (like above parks–remember the bear drones over the Adirondacks). Of course, that doesn’t mean the drones can’t spy on us.
I suspect a lot of these are DEA flights.
@MadDog: I’ve also read where large cities and rural area police/sheriff departments are allowed to have drones.
It really needs to be made public and scrutinized. However, you have to remember all those top secret laws that Feinstein and those on the Patriot Act oversight committee will not allow the public to know about. I know that I have railed against laws we are supposed to live by that are so secret we aren’t to know about them.
If you think it is only limited to cell phone tracking, I have some cheap bridges to sell you. ;-)
@William Ockham: Good point. Which is particularly interesting bc they don’t mention DOJ as a client.
It seems like that would be a pretty simple question to answer. It might take some digging but if it is all regulated by the FAA, you’d think they would have that information already collected, no?
What do we think they might be hiding? The military is allowed to fly them at their test sites, I guess, so nobody would be shocked about that. Who else is flying them here? Is it the pilots that they don’t want to talk about or is the areas where they are flying them that they don’t want to talk about? Or since the CIA seem to be the drone masters these days are we worried that they are flying drones in this country? Since we have the collaboration between the CIA and the military with drones, do they also do their training here in the US? Is that collaboration the thing that they don’t want to shine the light on?
I’m just wondering aloud there. My real question is for feedback on what we think they might be trying to hide.
Okay, I read some more at EFF and I can see that they are asking a broader question about how drones are being used here and why, and by asking this question about authorizations it will allow them to derive more information to answer their basic questions (the how and why questions).
More from another EFF article that clarifies the situation: