It’s ‘Nearly Impossible’ to Police Drone Use, US Admits

(Source: motherboard.vice.com)  

A high-level federal government official admitted today what business owners and hobbyists have realized for a while: There’s no good way for the Federal Aviation Administration or any other government agency to stop the proliferation of drones, and it’s probably “impossible” to police them all.

What a difference a year and some change makes. This morning, ​the House of Representatives’ Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure held a hearing to discuss drone regulation, and it had a distinctly different ring to it than many I’ve watched in the past. The representatives not only didn’t bring in some tiny drone to demonstrate to their colleagues what it was, ask dumb questions about Predators, or spend two hours fearmongering. Several of them openly talked about owning or wanting the things themselves.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) said he’s probably already broken the law by flying his drone.

“I violated a federal law by taking pictures of a golf course,” he said. “I think there was probably more danger of someone getting hit by a golf ball than someone getting hit by the drone.”

The FAA has missed most every deadline that Congress has set for it to establish an easy way to fly a drone commercially. Meadows and his colleagues were just as frustrated by the holdup as small business owners and corporations such as Amazon—or at least, frustrated on their behalf.

They’re not seeing progress, and the FAA continues to inch along at a “geological timescale” in making rules, according to Kentucky’s Thomas Massie. In the meantime, no one’s waiting for them.

Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) said he’ll soon be a drone owner, and that lots of other people are about to be, also. How the hell is the FAA going to police these?

“I’ve got a quadcopter on my Christmas list, as I expect quite a few other people do,” he said. “We’ve reached a point where we’ve got to wonder—is the cat out of the bag?”

“Is it even feasible to enforce the rules?” he asked Gerald Dillingham, Director of Aviation Issues for the Government Accountability Office, which is overseeing the FAA’s implementation of commercial drones.

“It’s going to be a difficult or almost impossible task,” Dillingham admitted. “The FAA already has so many calls on its resources. I think we have to worry about education for the public, and ​when they see individuals being fined, that’ll be one of the incentives [to not break the law.]”

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