Amazon’s ambitious plan to use drones to deliver your purchases sounds like a pie-in-the-sky idea, but drones are already being used in Connecticut. Now a recent court decision is throwing the FAA’s regulations on drone use up in the air.
In March, a National Transportation
Safety Board judge dismissed a Federal Aviation Administration levied
ten-thousand dollar fine against commercial aerial drone photographer,
Raphael Pirker.
The FAA accused Pirker of flying his
5-pound Styrofoam glider in a “reckless and dangerous manner” when he
shot video at the University of Virginia Medical Center for an
advertising agency in 2011.
Pirker’s attorney’s argued the FAA
had no authority over the regulation of drones, or small unmanned aerial
systems. Arguing the FAA’s assertion that drones can’t be used for
commercial use are based on 1981 voluntary guidelines meant for model
aircraft hobbyists.
The judge ruled with Pirker. The FAA is now appealing the decision.
Quinnipiac law professor John Thomas
believes the ruling is comparable to the dawn of the Internet age for
drone technology. He calls the current state of drone regulation the
“Wild West” and believes the case will be upheld on appeal.
“Under the FAA’s contentions, says the judge, the FAA regulatory authority would extend to paper airplanes,” Thomas said.
The NBC Connecticut Troubleshooters
found that drone technology is already being used in the public and
private sectors here in Connecticut.
Drones have been spotted over a
quarry in Branford. With the fire approaching sheds filled with dynamite
at a granite company, Branford Fire Chief Jack Ahern asked one of his
volunteers, Peter Sachs, a drone hobbyist, to give him a bird’s eye view
before sending in any firefighters.
It worked and the firefighters were
able to put out the fire and return hundreds of evacuated residents back
to their homes within hours.
“The chief did say that the flight
itself made all the difference whether they could send firefighters in
safely,” said Sachs, who authors a blog dronelawjournal.com.
That successful flight led to the
owner of the granite company donating a drone to the department. It’s
been used once – to rescue a lost puppy in a marsh. It's a situation
Ahern calls “a perfect test case.”
“We really look at this as public
safety and I don’t think the FAA is going to go against public safety,”
said Ahern, who does not believe they are defying the FAA by its use of
the drone in rescue operations.
A drone is also being used to help market luxury homes in Fairfield County.
New Canaan Realtor Mark Pires says
he’s picked up several listings based solely on his creative pictures
and videos. He says the Pirker case gives him more confidence that he is
in the right.
“People that are coming to buy a
house like this, they’re looking online first,” said Pires. “If they’re
not taken by what they see online first, then it's six seconds and on
to the next house.”
A drone was also spotted over a
fatal car crash in Hartford. The drone photographer, a freelance
journalist who says he was off-duty at the time, is currently suing the Hartford Police Department over their brief confiscation of the three pound quadcopter.
The New York City based attorney for
Pirker, Brendan Schulman, says his client has caught the attention of
the FAA before. Most notably, after posting drone video from a joy ride
over downtown Manhattan. He says the reason for the fine this time was
the fact that Pirker got paid to shoot the video at UVA Medical School.
“I do think the case has started a
national dialogue about how we should regulate, whether we should
regulate,” said Schulman, who heads a special drone law division at his
midtown Manhattan law firm, Kramer Levin Naftalis and Frankel. “It’s a
discussion we should have had a long time ago.”
Last week, Schulman sued the FAA on
behalf of a Texas-based volunteer search and rescue group. The suit
alleges that the FAA told Texas EquuSearch to “stop immediately” with
their use of a drone to assist in their searches for missing persons.
The suit says the company has assisted in over 1,400 missing persons
cases and have found 300 missing people alive.
When reached for a response to the lawsuit, the FAA wrote:
"The FAA is reviewing the appeal.
The agency approves emergency Certificates of Authorization (COAs) for
natural disaster relief, search and rescue operations and other urgent
circumstances, sometimes in a matter of hours. We are not aware that any
government entity with an existing COA has applied for an emergency
naming Texas EquuSearch as its contractor."
The FAA tells the NBC Connecticut
Troubleshooters that they plan on releasing a draft proposal for the
operation of small drones by the end of this year, with the hope being
that regulations will be in place by the end of 2015.
With them, some scholars believe our notion of privacy will be greatly changed.
“We got get this Orwellian notion of
big brother, but it’s not really just big brother,” said Thomas. “We’re
gonna have little brother, little sister, annoying neighbor, the
paparazzi. It transforms, sort of, an entire social life in our country
from a legal perspective, commercial perspective and from a personal
privacy perspective.”
As for those federal regulations,
Thomas would not be surprised if the FAA never issues any regulations
regarding drones, leaving states to enact their own individual sets of
laws.
Story and video: http://www.nbcconnecticut.com