Bubble of protection is 3000 feet laterally and 1000 feet vertically. From the article:
“Unlike traditional Temporary Flight Restrictions, the NOTAM does not provide geographic coordinates, activation times, or public notification when the restriction is in effect near a specific location. Instead, the restricted airspace moves with DHS assets, meaning the no-fly zone can appear wherever ICE or other DHS units operate.”
“In practical terms, a drone operator flying legally in a public area could unknowingly enter restricted airspace if an ICE convoy passes within the protected radius.”
One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is to have laws that are virtually impossible to not break.
I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional for being overly vague and arbitrary. For example, Montana used to have some maximum speed limits that were just "reasonable and prudent", but they were eventually rejected by courts as being too vague (what's prudent to you may not be prudent to someone else). This is similar, in that the FAA has a no fly zone but they don't actually publish what it is.
Catch-22 and 1984 weren't supposed to be instruction manuals.
> I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional
The rule of law has left the building. The SC is willing to rubber-stamp nearly anything right now.
Waiting and hoping for common sense to prevail is what allows authoritarian regimes to bulldoze through existing laws and norms. Even if the courts were an avenue for redress, they are being overwhelmed by the daily barrage of new illegal and unconstitutional actions. Once the courts get around to addressing these cases, the damage has been done and the precedent has been set.
One time I was racing across the country in a moving van because my wife was injured. The truck was speed-governed to 75 mph, which I was sitting at for most of the trip. I have a picture of the back of a school bus that handily passed me by on highway 90 :-)
The gun free school zone act has been upheld even though you could be within 1000 ft of one with no real indication there is one there. Supposedly you can only be convicted for doing it knowingly, but IIRC knowingly has been interpreted to mean as little as you live near the area so reasonably should have known.
Also note, i.e. stuff like statutory rape has been upheld even in cases where the perpetrator in all good faith thought the victim was 18+, the victim initiated selling the services, and the victim provided fake ID showing they were 18+.
So there is not necessarily any need for mens rea in the US legal system.
Speed limits are biology and physics derived. The eye has a max speed, over which it starts to rewrite the history of what you saw. Everytime you have been "frozzen in fear" the first few milliseconds are just the eye rewriting the logs.
So you take that the saccade speed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade) + speed of visual buffer reaction + reasonable time to break and you get a max speed for that.
Same goes when you have two points of attention, like traffic in front of you and merging traffic, the speed gets reduced to compensate.
I'm guessing that's entirely the idea. There will be even more cameras on them after yesterday, and they're trying to be proactive in having the authority to arrest all of them. They want the authority to arrest someone who was just out flying a drone and happened to film them as they moved.
IDK, it's probably more a matter where they don't want people to be flying RPGs into their windscreens and this is the first step for them to carry around frequency jammers. The last time I was in Iraq they used them to stop the cellphone detonated IEDs and all the convoys has one or two.
Coincidentally, folks won't be able to live stream their encounters but I'm sure that's totally unrelated...
> “In practical terms, a drone operator flying legally in a public area could unknowingly enter restricted airspace if an ICE convoy passes within the protected radius.”
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” ― Oscar R. Benavides (Peru)
This is a useful measure to point the law as a weapon against drone operators who may be recording what’s going on by accident or on purpose. Any drone made in the last few years is going to be emitting its ID, which likely has been registered with the pilot’s name and contact information.
They can then after the fact come down on that person without having to get facial recognition, grab cellphone beacons, or other similar steps.
How is an operator supposed to recognize these “MOBILE ASSETS”? For the case of ICE, ICE is reputed to try fairly hard to make it challenging to recognize their mobile assets. But the NOTAM says nothing about ICE per se, and there are lots of things that seem like they would qualify. On multiple occasions, I suspect that I have personally transported “DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY … MOBILE ASSETS”, and any drone flying nearby would have seen this as … a rental car with a couple people in it. All the DOE assets would have been in the trunk or maybe the back seat. Definitely assets and definitely mobile, but I suppose a court would need to determine whether they were MOBILE ASSETS or whether they were sufficiently associated with the DOE.
(Also, had this been in effect and if a drone had been a part of the project, which would not have been unreasonable [0], it would have been really annoying if I was carrying a portable do-not-fly zone and needed to get permission from the agency to take some photos of the equipment I was carrying.)
[0] To be fair, part of this project was in a location where operating a drone would have been inappropriate for reasons that have nothing to do with the FAA or national security.
This is the real danger of religion. When you train people from birth to turn off their brains and submit to authority without question, this is what happens.
> ALL UNMANNED ACFT ARE PROHIBITED FROM FLYING WITHIN A STAND-OFF DISTANCE OF 3000FT ... LATERALLY AND 1000FT ABOVE ...
> TO: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD), DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE), AND DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS) FACILITIES AND MOBILE ASSETS, INCLUDING VESSELS AND GROUND VEHICLE CONVOYS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED ESCORTS, SUCH AS UNITED STATES COAST GUARD (USCG) OPERATED VESSELS
So be a polite and compliant drone operator and when you find yourself in the middle of an operation because there was not an actual TFR, park the drone on the edge of a building roof where the camera can still operate thus the drone is silent, saving power and compliant. Being parked on the edge of a roof with props powered off is not flying.
@FAA can you tell I am still annoyed by your poorly thought out highly spoofable clear text RemoteID implementation and lack of integration to ADS-B... Also, NOTAM != TFR unless all drone operators are using foreflight to consolidate all surrounding NOTAMS which hint, they are not.
I don’t fully understand why drone operators follow these laws. Or any “no-fly” rules in general. Around an airport, it seems like common sense to not fly. Can’t someone just…buy/build a drone and fly is surreptitiously?
Woah woah woah, let's not encourage domestic terrorism here! Because they'll bring criminal charges and that's also what they'll call you so you better not get caught.
What if you're already flying when they enter your vicinity. It's pretty easy to do in a city. Also they may not announce themselves until you're already violating or even after when they charge you
Do not attribute to fascists/tin pot governments any concern over law/rulemaking with judicious consideration for minimizing blast radius or logistical/legal concerns for the populace. At this point, they are hardcore speed running the delegitinazation of the U.S. state in just about every practical sense.
This is literally been the entire purpose of all drone regulations. Hobby aircraft have never been a legitimate public safety issue, but they are an issue for the state's ability to hide. There is and will always be a public interest in recording activity happening in public places, but a majority of drone laws essentially make it impossible to legally record public events from a private drone.
When I was a child I was a libertarian. I was screaming about how these regulations were going to be enforced at gunpoint, how this was just a way for the establishment to make money, etc...
I'm not a libertarian anymore, but I can tell you, I was a genius fortune teller.
My assets performed really well ignoring economic orthodoxy about supposed 2% inflation.
Are you saying the FAA has a permanent and up to date list of ICE operations? Because if so, that's a public list and something that some might be very interested in for knowing when and where ICE is operating.
And if they don't, there is no basis for enforcement, so we're done.
Doesn’t anything under 250g basically slip under the radar (not literally radar). Seems like most drones they care about might end up not being trackable anyway.
My understanding is that DJI drones no longer enforce no-fly zones. Supposedly they still warn you when entering a restricted zone, but hard geofencing functionality is no longer in effect. Anyone know if that's true?
I wonder if these vessels, convoys, etc. are going to jam drones or use some other anti-drone weapon and this NOTAM allows that by saying "we can intercept or destroy it if it comes too close". That way they don't have to identify how much of a threat each individual drone is.
Loudly broadcasting electronic signals out of something you’re trying to keep hidden seems like a tactical error, but these cats aren’t the best trained, are they?
They aren't trying to keep hidden. They are trying to avoid their murders from being filmed by drones with cameras. Jamming is perfectly compatible with this goal.
Pilot here. This is not unprecedented. The same kind of thing applies to all major sporting events. They have no-fly zones but FAA provides NO official source for getting the info of when such events occur and why. It is left to the pilots to find out all major sporting events and stadiums around and when they have events, under serious penalties. It forces pilots to care about sportsball.
Also relevant to this situation is that the groups this is likely targeting are actively tracking ICE convoys and personnel in group chats (and random civilians who they think are ICE too) so the excuse of “oh woe is me how can I know where not to fly” falls flat. My parents are in Minneapolis and they are saying things haven’t felt this dangerous since the riots in 2020.
Bubble of protection is 3000 feet laterally and 1000 feet vertically. From the article:
“Unlike traditional Temporary Flight Restrictions, the NOTAM does not provide geographic coordinates, activation times, or public notification when the restriction is in effect near a specific location. Instead, the restricted airspace moves with DHS assets, meaning the no-fly zone can appear wherever ICE or other DHS units operate.”
“In practical terms, a drone operator flying legally in a public area could unknowingly enter restricted airspace if an ICE convoy passes within the protected radius.”
One of the hallmarks of authoritarianism is to have laws that are virtually impossible to not break.
I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional for being overly vague and arbitrary. For example, Montana used to have some maximum speed limits that were just "reasonable and prudent", but they were eventually rejected by courts as being too vague (what's prudent to you may not be prudent to someone else). This is similar, in that the FAA has a no fly zone but they don't actually publish what it is.
Catch-22 and 1984 weren't supposed to be instruction manuals.
> I hope this gets tested in court and declared unconstitutional
The rule of law has left the building. The SC is willing to rubber-stamp nearly anything right now.
Waiting and hoping for common sense to prevail is what allows authoritarian regimes to bulldoze through existing laws and norms. Even if the courts were an avenue for redress, they are being overwhelmed by the daily barrage of new illegal and unconstitutional actions. Once the courts get around to addressing these cases, the damage has been done and the precedent has been set.
33 replies →
One time I was racing across the country in a moving van because my wife was injured. The truck was speed-governed to 75 mph, which I was sitting at for most of the trip. I have a picture of the back of a school bus that handily passed me by on highway 90 :-)
The gun free school zone act has been upheld even though you could be within 1000 ft of one with no real indication there is one there. Supposedly you can only be convicted for doing it knowingly, but IIRC knowingly has been interpreted to mean as little as you live near the area so reasonably should have known.
Also note, i.e. stuff like statutory rape has been upheld even in cases where the perpetrator in all good faith thought the victim was 18+, the victim initiated selling the services, and the victim provided fake ID showing they were 18+.
So there is not necessarily any need for mens rea in the US legal system.
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Speed limits are biology and physics derived. The eye has a max speed, over which it starts to rewrite the history of what you saw. Everytime you have been "frozzen in fear" the first few milliseconds are just the eye rewriting the logs.
So you take that the saccade speed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saccade) + speed of visual buffer reaction + reasonable time to break and you get a max speed for that.
Same goes when you have two points of attention, like traffic in front of you and merging traffic, the speed gets reduced to compensate.
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So the unannounced movements of the secret police in their unmarked vehicles also create a bubble around them where usually-legal activity is illegal?
And reciprocally, where usually illegal activity (beating up people and kidnapping them) is legal.
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That's the goal, it just isn't spelled out.
See no crimes. Hear no truth. Speak no facts.
I'm guessing that's entirely the idea. There will be even more cameras on them after yesterday, and they're trying to be proactive in having the authority to arrest all of them. They want the authority to arrest someone who was just out flying a drone and happened to film them as they moved.
IDK, it's probably more a matter where they don't want people to be flying RPGs into their windscreens and this is the first step for them to carry around frequency jammers. The last time I was in Iraq they used them to stop the cellphone detonated IEDs and all the convoys has one or two.
Coincidentally, folks won't be able to live stream their encounters but I'm sure that's totally unrelated...
2 replies →
> “In practical terms, a drone operator flying legally in a public area could unknowingly enter restricted airspace if an ICE convoy passes within the protected radius.”
“For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.” ― Oscar R. Benavides (Peru)
This is a useful measure to point the law as a weapon against drone operators who may be recording what’s going on by accident or on purpose. Any drone made in the last few years is going to be emitting its ID, which likely has been registered with the pilot’s name and contact information.
They can then after the fact come down on that person without having to get facial recognition, grab cellphone beacons, or other similar steps.
It's trivial to build your own drone without a DroneID.
And you will be labeled a terrorist for doing so, regardless of intent.
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For some people
How is an operator supposed to recognize these “MOBILE ASSETS”? For the case of ICE, ICE is reputed to try fairly hard to make it challenging to recognize their mobile assets. But the NOTAM says nothing about ICE per se, and there are lots of things that seem like they would qualify. On multiple occasions, I suspect that I have personally transported “DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY … MOBILE ASSETS”, and any drone flying nearby would have seen this as … a rental car with a couple people in it. All the DOE assets would have been in the trunk or maybe the back seat. Definitely assets and definitely mobile, but I suppose a court would need to determine whether they were MOBILE ASSETS or whether they were sufficiently associated with the DOE.
(Also, had this been in effect and if a drone had been a part of the project, which would not have been unreasonable [0], it would have been really annoying if I was carrying a portable do-not-fly zone and needed to get permission from the agency to take some photos of the equipment I was carrying.)
[0] To be fair, part of this project was in a location where operating a drone would have been inappropriate for reasons that have nothing to do with the FAA or national security.
Not shady at all. Can’t have the public see what’s going on.
You don't understand. You must always respect authority. Trump is the highest authority in the land, put there by God.
This is the real danger of religion. When you train people from birth to turn off their brains and submit to authority without question, this is what happens.
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I’m sure they said the same about Obama…. Right?
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I no longer know if it's sarcasm
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[flagged]
People should be interfering with the murders
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Not nearly well-funded enough. You get $50000 for joining ICE, you get ten bullets in the back for filming them.
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This is overreach. Congress didn't give them this power.
See Loper-Bright
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loper_Bright_Enterprises_v._Ra...
It's been overreach since the start of FAA claims on low altitude space.
From what I understand their jurisdiction didn't begin until 500 feet into the air.
Not only is it overreach, it's encouraging impediments on what has been largely considered private property.
> ALL UNMANNED ACFT ARE PROHIBITED FROM FLYING WITHIN A STAND-OFF DISTANCE OF 3000FT ... LATERALLY AND 1000FT ABOVE ...
> TO: DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE (DOD), DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE), AND DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY (DHS) FACILITIES AND MOBILE ASSETS, INCLUDING VESSELS AND GROUND VEHICLE CONVOYS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED ESCORTS, SUCH AS UNITED STATES COAST GUARD (USCG) OPERATED VESSELS
Much more restrictive than just ICE operations.
See also: https://udds-faa.opendata.arcgis.com/search
So be a polite and compliant drone operator and when you find yourself in the middle of an operation because there was not an actual TFR, park the drone on the edge of a building roof where the camera can still operate thus the drone is silent, saving power and compliant. Being parked on the edge of a roof with props powered off is not flying.
@FAA can you tell I am still annoyed by your poorly thought out highly spoofable clear text RemoteID implementation and lack of integration to ADS-B... Also, NOTAM != TFR unless all drone operators are using foreflight to consolidate all surrounding NOTAMS which hint, they are not.
I don’t fully understand why drone operators follow these laws. Or any “no-fly” rules in general. Around an airport, it seems like common sense to not fly. Can’t someone just…buy/build a drone and fly is surreptitiously?
Woah woah woah, let's not encourage domestic terrorism here! Because they'll bring criminal charges and that's also what they'll call you so you better not get caught.
Traditional, permanent no-fly areas tend to be enforced by the drone firmware (via GPS checks), so sometimes there is also a technological obstacle.
This is probably not the case here, but IIRC there are criminal charges attached to violating NOTAMs, so there’s still some kind of deterrence.
What is the best hackable drone brand these days? Where you can remove all this bs remote ID and GPS disobedience?
6 replies →
What if you're already flying when they enter your vicinity. It's pretty easy to do in a city. Also they may not announce themselves until you're already violating or even after when they charge you
I think that's the point.
Do not attribute to fascists/tin pot governments any concern over law/rulemaking with judicious consideration for minimizing blast radius or logistical/legal concerns for the populace. At this point, they are hardcore speed running the delegitinazation of the U.S. state in just about every practical sense.
Potential criminal charges are enough to deter most people.
This is literally been the entire purpose of all drone regulations. Hobby aircraft have never been a legitimate public safety issue, but they are an issue for the state's ability to hide. There is and will always be a public interest in recording activity happening in public places, but a majority of drone laws essentially make it impossible to legally record public events from a private drone.
When I was a child I was a libertarian. I was screaming about how these regulations were going to be enforced at gunpoint, how this was just a way for the establishment to make money, etc...
I'm not a libertarian anymore, but I can tell you, I was a genius fortune teller.
My assets performed really well ignoring economic orthodoxy about supposed 2% inflation.
So, is the FAA going to provide something like IceBlock so that it's possible to obey the new regulations?
Are you saying the FAA has a permanent and up to date list of ICE operations? Because if so, that's a public list and something that some might be very interested in for knowing when and where ICE is operating.
And if they don't, there is no basis for enforcement, so we're done.
It's just an extra chilling effect. Or yet another reason to shoot you and your terrist drone.
Doesn’t anything under 250g basically slip under the radar (not literally radar). Seems like most drones they care about might end up not being trackable anyway.
My understanding is that DJI drones no longer enforce no-fly zones. Supposedly they still warn you when entering a restricted zone, but hard geofencing functionality is no longer in effect. Anyone know if that's true?
There’s a checkbox in the app that implies that. I haven’t had a reason or way to test it yet.
I can confirm altitude restrictions can be turned off.
I highly doubt this
Edit: owner of matrice m100 and a few other DJI drones
Matrice is a nice bit of kit. Building that kind of functionality from scratch with the same weight and range is very difficult.
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I wonder if these vessels, convoys, etc. are going to jam drones or use some other anti-drone weapon and this NOTAM allows that by saying "we can intercept or destroy it if it comes too close". That way they don't have to identify how much of a threat each individual drone is.
Loudly broadcasting electronic signals out of something you’re trying to keep hidden seems like a tactical error, but these cats aren’t the best trained, are they?
They aren't trying to keep hidden. They are trying to avoid their murders from being filmed by drones with cameras. Jamming is perfectly compatible with this goal.
That's when the fiber optic lines will become necessary
> But how will i know where such zones are ?!
Pilot here. This is not unprecedented. The same kind of thing applies to all major sporting events. They have no-fly zones but FAA provides NO official source for getting the info of when such events occur and why. It is left to the pilots to find out all major sporting events and stadiums around and when they have events, under serious penalties. It forces pilots to care about sportsball.
Aren't NOTAMs published for those with specific information about the TFR, including location and time window?
NO. They just say “any event”
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Also relevant to this situation is that the groups this is likely targeting are actively tracking ICE convoys and personnel in group chats (and random civilians who they think are ICE too) so the excuse of “oh woe is me how can I know where not to fly” falls flat. My parents are in Minneapolis and they are saying things haven’t felt this dangerous since the riots in 2020.