With Amazon’s announcement of a drone delivery service, the Federal Aviation Administration’s recent inclusion of Hawaii in its drone test program, and the frequent news of drone strikes in war zones, it seems impossible to get away from hearing about drones these days.
A common theme among all the stories is that the technology is evolving faster than the public and government can keep up with. Politicians on both sides of the aisle bemoan a near-future "Big Brother" state with drones spying from above.
Forty-three state legislatures have heard the public’s concern and last year they introduced 118 bills or resolutions concerning drones. For instance, Texas passed a stringent law that prohibits most drone usage by Texans but grants law enforcement broad exceptions to use the technology, seemingly in response to an environmental group using a drone to uncover corporate pollution. Conversely, Florida enacted a law expressly to rein in law enforcement use of drones but has left most citizen conduct alone. As the American Civil Liberties Union dubbed it, 2013 was the "Year of the Drone."
Lost in the noise about drones is that a community of hobbyists has been safely operating substantially similar remote control aircraft for over half a century. An estimated 300,000 Americans remotely pilot a variety of aircraft, from unpowered sailplanes to multi-rotor aerial photography platforms.
These hobbyists operate their aircraft under the stringent safety codes of community-based, nationwide nonprofits such as the Academy of Model Aeronautics or our organization, the Remote Control Flight Leadership Initiative (RCFLI), and seek to be good neighbors within their communities.
The remote control hobby is often a family pastime and allows citizens from all lifestyles to learn about the aircraft hobby in a congenial atmosphere. Additionally, as the technology has developed and the price of entry into the hobby has come down, a new wave of hobbyists have begun to explore the fantastic possibilities of remote control flight.
Unfortunately, this hobby is in danger. Legislators and regulators contemplating the future of remote control aviation are unaware or have turned a blind eye to the significant number of their constituents already flying hobby aircraft. Hawaii alone has eight remote control flight clubs, yet legislators here still introduce bills like Senate Bill 783, which would prohibit the use of hobby aircraft by Hawaii’s hobbyists.
The bill seeks to ensure the privacy of residents of Hawaii from aerial eavesdropping unless there is an emergency. This is a laudable goal, and RCFLI agrees that privacy from aerial photography is important. However, the bill’s mechanism to preserve privacy is a blanket ban on all remote control flight.
And SB 783 is not alone. Numerous jurisdictions are considering similar measures that could affect hobby aircraft.
A threshold question many legislatures, including Hawaii’s, are failing to ask is whether there are already laws on the books to protect citizen privacy from aerial snooping.
Hawaii has a "Peeping Tom" law, Hawaii Revised Statutes 711-1111 (Violation of Privacy in the Second Degree), that could be used to punish illicit aerial surveillance as a second-degree misdemeanor. Supplementing a sufficient existing law with a draconian ban on a wide swath of conduct is destructive and legislative overkill.
If after a diligent review of existing law legislators are still unsatisfied, RCFLI asks that they consider a more holistic approach; it is possible to balance the privacy and safety of citizens with hobbyists’ right to fly remote control aircraft. The hobby community has been operating in this manner for decades and welcomes the discussion.
A legislative ban of all remote control flight that protects your privacy but prohibits the flying of hobby aircraft by Hawaii’s hobbyists is not a good law.
