Back on January 26 (I think) a small recreational drone crashed on the White House grounds. It was an accident \u2014 an employee of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency had been drinking at a nearby apartment and was \u201cdemonstrating\u201d the drone to friend(s).<\/p>\n
According to the President, this crash on the White House grounds shows that the U.S. must take steps to ensure commercial and consumer drones are used safely. Obama indicated that the drone that crashed was one much like those that could be bought at Radio Shack, that sell for $50 to $500. So, it\u2019s a toy.
\nCongress wants rules in place to regulate these drones. If past experience is any indication, even after such rules are proposed, it\u2019ll probably take years before the regulations become final \u2014 and worse yet, knowing our government, we\u2019ll probably wind up with a Federal Drone Assessment Agency that will probably fall under Homeland Security or one of the Intelligence Agencies that will argue over interpretation and enforcement of the rules\/regulations. I think I said this before \u2014 some of the things to be regulated are toys.
\nRules already exist for Radio Controlled (RC) model aircraft and that essentially is what these devices are. Leave it to Congress to come up with an entirely new set of rules. I agree that the current rules might need to be modified to address the use of cameras and microphones, but a whole new set? If that happens, the odds are they\u2019ll be messed up and we\u2019ll spend millions rewriting, correcting, revising and updating to make them useable. Of course if Congress does make new rules to protect us, criminals and terrorists will be out of luck not being able to use these things.<\/p>\n
When I was younger, junior high into high school, one of my hobbies was building model airplanes. I knew enough about electronics to build a radio system to control the model. It didn\u2019t do much, but I could control the altitude and direction and bring it back to land without wires. Who would have thought that I had stumbled on one of the hottest technical and controversial areas today \u2014 drones. One definition of a drone is any unmanned aircraft or ship that is guided remotely. So I was building drones \u2014 who knew?
\n\u2014 30 \u2014<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Back on January 26 (I think) a small recreational drone crashed on the White House grounds. It was an accident \u2014 an employee of the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency had been drinking at a nearby apartment and was \u201cdemonstrating\u201d the … Continue reading