Hacker News Reader

Comment by sathackr | Hacker News Reader

If there is no property being damaged, no law being violated, why does law enforcement need to be involved at all?

Law enforcement doesn't have to have an answer or info about every single event.

If I'm driving a car down the highway, law enforcement doesn't need to know where I am going or why. I'm not breaking any laws and not infringing on anyone's rights.

As a pilot I can go fly my plane at any altitude I wish as long as I am not entering any controlled airspace. I don't have to ask or tell anyone what I'm doing.

So why do they need to know why I'm flying my drone and where I'm going?

View on HN

Sure but once a law is broken, what recourse does anyone have in the submitted article? The answer can't be to call the Feds... Cars have license plates, planes have N-numbers. If drones are too small to have a visible registration number, they need a transponder. Again, this is only when you're flying high and out of visible range.

Drones over 249g are required to be registered have a registration number affixed.

Your point is valid, in that every other motor vehicle that operates on public property has a requirement to be able to be positively identified to a owning entity. But there is no requirement that this be identifiable from great distance.

A drone in the air does create a unique challenge that a transponder would help resolve. But just like any other form of identification, it's an 'honor system' in that I could just put any vessel ID number on my boat, could steal a tag, or transmit a fake transponder ID if I were engaging in illegal activity. A trivial matter if I am advanced enough to be conducting operations with unmanned aircraft.

So I'm not sure that resolving someone's curiosity about my legal activity is a compelling enough reason to require me to attach a broadcasting identification device to my drone, or otherwise identify myself or my aircraft to law enforcement 'just because they should know'

I'm not sure why everyone thinks a transponder code is an ultimate solution. A transponder code is easier to fake or hide than a license plate number. If you are doing a ham operated, you just transmit another number. If it's a store bought and you have zero tech savviness, you just don't register it (which is going to happen quite frequently, just because people don't know, will forget, or just not care enough and there's not enough police force or need to crack down on this. Resources needed elsewhere).

Transponder codes aren't just going to be used by lawful citizens, but specifically lawful citizens that are careful and read the instructions (and have bought a drone with proper instructions or they independently looked them up). With how few people read instructions, I don't think this is a good solution.

Transponders also use a lot of power.. assuming you are looking for 'real' aircraft to see them. Most of the hobby class drones don't have the payload capacity for extra battery. Even a Cessna can't pull of a transponder if the alternator goes bad (for very long).

The N number is there for when the drone crashes into something/someone. They had dropped the requirement for a while - looks like it is back on again.

> As a pilot I can go fly my plane at any altitude I wish as long as I am not entering any controlled airspace.

Well, no. That’s not true. Firstly there are rules about the altitude you can fly at when it’s greater than 3000’, and second you are required to file a flight plan any time you are flying IFR.

That's not for security or some sense of needing to know what someone is doing. It's so that ATC can effectively route and deconflict traffic. If a UAS is ever operating IFR it must do the same.

It was a general statement that applies to the scenario being discussed in the article.

If you want to get pedantic, you're also required to file a flight plan if there is some restriction in place requiring such for the area you are flying in. For example a TFR, or operation in an ADIZ or SFRA/FRZ(Washington DC). Or if you are flying internationally.

They specified "controlled airspace". Those rules you are talking about are controlled airspace. The previous comment clearly doesn't explicitly mean class A. It's too complicated to say anything but controlled airspace because that varies all over and can frequently extent up to class A.

And why are you bring up IFR? Most private pilots are flying VFR, even if they are IFR certified. But even in controlled airspace you don't have to file a flight plan. I can take off from a class C, fly through uncontrolled space and am not required to talk to anyone again. I don't have to say anything until I decide to land.

This is pretty common among pilots too. I'm not sure why drone pilots should be held to higher standard. Really they should be held to lower.

> This is pretty common among pilots too. I'm not sure why drone pilots should be held to higher standard. Really they should be held to lower.

Drone pilots have to be held to a higher standard, because they have no skin in the game.

If a plane pilot flies like an idiot, they might hurt other people in the air... But they are very likely to also get themselves killed in the process.

This creates an incredibly strong incentive to not fly like an idiot.

A drone operator flying like an idiot is far more likely to get other people killed, than they are to get themselves killed.

If drone pilots could only operate them, while wearing a suicide vest that explodes if the drone crashes, I'd be more open to holding them to a lower standard than pilots.

> A drone operator flying like an idiot is far more likely to get other people killed

IF something catastrophic happens. Issue is that a 2lb drone is much less likely to do damage than a plane. You seriously can not compare the two. The danger levels of the two are nothing alike. If they were, I'd agree with you, but these things have magnitudes of difference in danger.

If it turns out that this was used to prepare for a terrorist attack then law enforcement would look pretty negligent not having looked into this. I think if you do something on this scale it’s just common courtesy to inform the public what you are doing.

Pulling the terrorist card is pretty cheap and probably why the downvotes. LEO cannot be expected to be prescient of every crime or we will become a surveillance state much worse than we already are.

I agree that common courtesy would dictate that you inform the public, but it's not a requirement and not something that should become law.

That’s exactly my point. Be courteous and tell people what you are doing so they don’t have to be concerned. It’s this kind of behavior that triggers creation of laws because some people are jerks that push things too far. I watched this with camera drones in national parks. First they were fun but then idiots had to fly them all the time, over crowded areas, lose them in protected areas, wild fires and airports and now we have restrictive laws.

I doesn’t seem to be acceptable that somebody is flying pretty heavy drones every night without anybody knowing who or why.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com