Deflating anxiety

“Drone technology certainly raises novel issues that merit careful examination. This bill, however, while well-intentioned, could expose the occasional hobbyist and the FAA-approved commercial user alike to burdensome litigation and new causes of action,” Brown noted in his veto statement, as the Los Angeles Times reported.

Amateur drone enthusiasts have recently taken heat for interfering with emergency responders and posing a hazard to air traffic. But a recent study conducted by hobbyists’ advocacy group the Academy of Model Aeronautics challenged that blanket judgment. “Hobbyists who scrutinized reports to the FAA of alleged close calls with drones found that pilots reported near misses in only a small fraction of the cases,” as USA Today reported. “The study found that of the 764 close-call incidents between drones and other aircraft, only 27 were actually described by pilots as a ‘near miss,'” with pilots taking evasive action just 10 times.

The governor also cautioned that the legislation’s height restriction would criminalize drone use “whether or not anyone’s privacy was violated by the flight,” the Orange County Register observed.

State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, took the defeat stoically. “I am obviously disappointed that the governor vetoed my drone privacy legislation, but pleased the bill launched an important discussion on our privacy and private property rights and drones,” she said in a post to Facebook, according to Wired.

Industry advocates, on the other hand, showed little restraint in hailing the move. “Brendan Schulman, the vice president of policy and legal affairs for drone maker DJI, called the veto ‘a huge victory for drone innovation,'” Wired added.

Big implications

Fearing a slippery slope, prominent names in news media also jumped into the fray, warning Brown of insurmountable difficulties if he signed the bill into law. “The groups, including professional organizations like the Society of Professional Journalists and outlets like CNN and the parent company of the Los Angeles Times, said in a letter Thursday to Gov. Jerry Brown that this restriction will make it incredibly difficult for reporters to use drones for newsgathering purposes,” The Hill reported. The would-be hurdles threatened “the public’s right to receive news,” the letter cautioned, especially during the early moments of breaking news coverage.

Although Brown’s decision was also seen as a big win for companies like Amazon and Google, which are poised to incorporate drones into their businesses, neither of those tech titans have come forward with comment. Significant questions remain as to how they could proceed with possible innovations like drone delivery of packages under current FAA regulations.

Legal uncertainty

The government agency recently turned its attention to laying out strictures that could govern a more drone-heavy future. “The Federal Aviation Administration has proposed rules for commercial drones that would restrict flights to below 500 feet,” as the Wall Street Journal reported. “Above that level is generally reserved for manned aircraft. Under those rules, the bill would have left commercial drone users just a 150-foot ribbon of airspace over much of the state. If companies wanted to fly lower, they would have needed to get permission from dozens of landowners for some flights, which could be a logistical nightmare.”

Brown’s decision increased the likelihood that Washington, D.C., would move faster than Sacramento in getting new rules and guidelines through. “The Federal Aviation Administration is moving toward finalizing rules for drone use, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is leading stakeholder discussions to develop best practices for using drones,” The Hill observed.

In the meanwhile, according to the Journal, the FAA has insisted that its regulations preempt state law, a stance that likely tees up judicial intervention. Some 17 states have passed laws of their own setting limits on drone use.

Privacy vs. productivity

The bill cleared both chambers of the state Legislature “despite bipartisan concern about regulating the budding drone industry,” Courthouse News reported. “If signed by the governor, the bill would make it a trespass violation to fly an unmanned drone over private property without consent.” Any drone flying below 350 feet above private property without “express permission” would run afoul of the would-be law.

Drone industry figures and pro-tech activists have warned that excessively restrictive regulations would throw a monkeywrench into the explosive, lucrative and potentially very useful application of UAV technology. In a joint statement reported by Courthouse News, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International and the Consumer Electronic Association lambasted the bill. “SB142 would damage California’s leadership and handcuff innovation, just as this largely California-based and dynamically expanding industry is poised to bring major job growth to the state — adding roughly 18,000 new jobs and more than $14 billion in economic impact in the first decade once federal guidelines are implemented,” they warned.

In remarks supplied to Inc. magazine, Mike Winn, CEO of San Francisco-based software developer DroneDeploy, complained that the bill “doesn’t meaningfully address privacy issues,” instead “arbitrarily reducing the ways drones can create value. We’d encourage California and other law makers to enforce existing laws that prevent trespassing and provide remedies for privacy violations and focus on the bigger issues in the states,” he suggested.

But Assemblyman Mike Gatto, D-Glendale, a supporter of the drone-curbing bill SB142 introduced by state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, claimed that “the 50-foot zone between private property and federally controlled airspace could potentially be used as a corridor for commercial drones performing such functions as delivering packages,” McClatchy reported.

Drone politics have not divided neatly along party lines. In the Assembly, the bill drew opposition from both sides of the aisle.

Improvising solutions

In the absence of statewide guidance, law enforcement officials availing themselves of drones have had to improvise a public relations and public safety strategy.

In Ventura County, where the police force became the first in Southern California to receive FAA drone authorization, the sheriff’s department had to use “the reverse 911 system [in the] immediate area to notify residents we were about to deploy a UAV,” Cmdr. Chris Dunn told lawmakers in a hearing of the Joint Legislative Committee of Emergency Management, according to the area paper the Moorpark Acorn.

“We do that so that, one, they won’t be shocked at the sight of the device in their area, and two, in hopes that they don’t interfere in the operation of the device by throwing things at it or trying to launch their own device in support of our mission,” he said.

Although SB142 would lift the burden of sorting out drone protocols from city and municipal officials, critics insisted that the problem of inconsistent, confusing and conflicting law would only be pushed upward. Without nationwide standards of guidance supplied by the FAA, “states will continue to set laws that will inevitably conflict with each other and will cause confusion about where and how operators can fly,” Christian Sanz, CEO of San Francisco drone manufacturer Skycatch, told Inc.

The FAA has slowly turned its attention toward the nationwide commercial use of drones. “In April, the Federal Aviation Administration granted Amazon authorization to test drones outdoors for its yet-to-be-launched Prime Air service, which hopes to use drones to deliver products to a customer’s doorstep within 30 minutes of an online order,” as the Sacramento Bee reported. But the proliferation of drones among hobbyists, rather than corporations, has remained the foremost preoccupation of legislators in California and elsewhere.