TPT March 2016

G LOBA L MARKE T P L AC E

Lawmakers, she wrote, say the agency’s drone rules do not “go as far as many states and municipalities that are explicitly banning flights within cities and over homes, strengthening privacy protections, and imposing steep criminal and financial penalties on violators”. On 17 December, the FAA published a fact sheet on federal laws that would preempt local rules. Its position is that, as the top regulator, it should handle any bans on flights or permits for drone pilots. Because it was given that authority by Congress, the agency claims, many local or state drone rules would not stand up to legal challenge. › If, as seems likely, the stand-off should reach the courts, there are interested parties beyond the principals. In particular, any rollback by the FAA of local drone regulations would benefit one group: tech companies. In 2015, Amazon and Google, among others, dispatched dozens of lobbyists to visit aviation committees in Congress. Wrote Ms Kang, “The companies want a light touch by regulators to help give their drone efforts the widest possible latitude.” › Tom McMahon, a vice-president for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a lobbying group that represents drone makers, gave the Times his interpretation of FAA jurisdiction over the nation’s airspace. “That means from the top of blades of grass to infinity,” Mr McMahon said. “So I think and I hope you will start to see some rollback in these local regulations.”

Aviation Administration and municipalities in the matter of drones. No blanket federal rule about the increasingly popular remote-controlled flying devices would, he told the New York Times , address the unique concerns of his city, a target of terrorist attacks. (“FAA Drone Laws Start to Clash With Stricter Local Rules,” 27 December) Frank Carollo, Mr Garodnick’s opposite number in the City Council of Miami, voiced a similar concern. “We understand the FAA regulates drones, but the FAA doesn’t have bodies on the ground to enforce their rules,” he told the Times ’s Cecilia Kang. “That is why I believed Miami had to have its own rules.” Their objections grew out of the announcement by the FAA of new rules requiring registration in a national database by users of recreational drones. But the federal agency’s renewed assertion of ultimate control over the airspace did not occur in a vacuum. Local and state lawmakers, concerned about the safety and privacy risks posed by drones, had already been passing rules about the machines at a rapid pace. More than 20 states approved drone laws last year, as did major cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami, with many of the regulations placing tough restrictions on flying areas and clamping down on the use of drones for snooping purposes. Now, as noted by Ms Kang, the intervention of the FAA is frustrating local lawmakers who complain that the agency wants them to back off their own rules even as it is seen as too lenient with drone users.

Dorothy Fabian, Features Editor (USA)

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