The elaborate and intrusive security theater at airport security check-points is well-known to travelers, in the U.S. and abroad. Cameras, x-ray machines, remote tracking devices and sound recorders are becoming eerily commonplace. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), created in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks to secure airports, is busily expanding its reach to bus and train terminals and even interstate highways.
Now, in a move that might surprise even George Orwell, whose dystopian novel 1984 foreshadowed many of these surveillance techniques, federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are pressing to employ unmanned drone aircraft to monitor streets, neighborhoods, rural areas and even backyards. Unfortunately, many members of Congress are all too eager to accelerate this move, notwithstanding the serious safety concerns that have been raised.
Drones were initially developed for military use, but police departments soon realized their law enforcement potential. Uncle Sam, with huge pots of taxpayer dollars to divvy up to state and local agencies echoing the magic words “homeland security,” is more than happy to encourage the move.
The House of Representatives recently passed the annual budget for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). According to The Wall Street Journal, while bipartisan proponents of the funding bill argue that it allows for a “modernization of the nation’s air-traffic control system,” the bill also “calls for integrating a wide range of so-called unmanned aerial vehicles — operated by both governmental and corporate entities — with commercial and general aviation traffic across the nation’s skies by September 2015.”
Unmanned drones are currently employed within the United States — along stretches of the U.S.-Mexican border, for example — but their use has been limited, primarily because of safety concerns raised by pilots and commercial airlines. Now, the federal government is not only giving the green light to the FAA to accelerate much broader approval for civilian drones, but is forcing it to do so.
Corporations that manufacture drone equipment are also pushing for expanded civilian drone usage. Brian Koenig of The New American notes that “[s]ome analysts predict that the commercial drone market in the U.S. could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA authorizes their use, and that 30,000 drones could be flying domestically by 2020.”
Data developed through the use of drone aircraft will quickly become a valuable commodity not only for law enforcement agencies, but for local governments strapped for cash, and for commercial interests and lawyers. Americans must open their eyes to the safety and privacy implications of the effort to expand drone activity before it’s too late to shut these peering eyes in the sky.
Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003. He provides regular commentary to Daily Caller readers.