Alarmed privacy advocates say drone technology could be used for nefarious purposes. Game of drones begins

Get ready for the game of drones.

The unmanned aerial vehicle industry could pump millions of dollars and thousands of jobs into states already chafing from sequestration and looking to inject new funds into their local economies.


But the cash influx could leave many members of Congress walking on political minefields as privacy advocates warn of potential infringement by drones and the unrelated issue of targeted killing operations by the Pentagon and CIA draws more fire.

Alarmed privacy advocates say drone technology could be used for nefarious purposes, and even journalists could use it to intrude on the reasonable expectation of privacy.

( PHOTOS: The best quotes about drones)

On Capitol Hill, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's 13-hour filibuster was squarely aimed at the CIA and Pentagon operations — and whether the Obama administration would ever undertake them on American soil. And liberal activists from Code Pink have repeatedly interrupted drone hearings.

Commercial drones already are being used by law-enforcement agencies and by others to forecast the weather, for geological and climate research and to survey landfills, among other things. And the Federal Aviation Administration is seeking to gather more information about all those uses as it prepares some drone guidelines by September 2015.

The competition for six congressionally mandated test sites has drawn 50 teams from 37 states. Set to be picked by the end of this year, the sites would be able to test the technology for a five-year period.

The states vying for the sites see an opportunity to tap into profitable new technology, arguing they could get a bigger chunk of a multibillion-dollar pie. But privacy advocates remain concerned that civil rights are at stake and that current laws aren't enough to limit drone surveillance.

At the outset of an FAA two-hour online listening session to gather public comments on privacy issues, Jim Williams, who heads the FAA's unmanned aircraft integration efforts, said the agency wouldn't respond to the concerns of each individual caller. But he did say that "there are many questions that must be answered before [the agency] is ready for safe integration."

"The UAS test sites required by the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 will provide the United States with testing and research facilities that will help answer UAS-related questions and enable us to retain our leadership role in aviation safety," he said.

Delays in selecting the federal test sites, Williams said, came because the agency wanted to be sure it could "adequately address the privacy concerns as they relate to operations."

But despite a longer wait to pick six applicants from a crowded field, some leading privacy groups still had their concerns and used the online listening session to air them.

"We've had aerial surveillance for a very long time, but drones bring a new capacity for surveillance simply because they're cheaper and easier to operate than traditional measures. Voluntary guidelines are not enough to address the privacy issues brought by drones," said Amie Stepanovich from the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "Simply by the definition, these guidelines are both voluntary and not enforceable. They don't provide the necessary protections that people need to be protected from the persistent aerial surveillance that will be allowed under drones."

The Rutherford Institute, a conservative civil liberties group based in Charlottesville, Va., argued the FAA should go on record with its views on data collection by unmanned systems.

"UAS, which are capable of videotaping the facial expressions of people on the ground from hundreds of feet in the air, will usher in a new era of surveillance in our society," said policy analyst Michael Khavari. "No person, whether he is at a political rally, exiting a house of worship or simply walking around downtown will be safe from the prying eyes of these devices."

Privacy concerns aside, Ben Gielow, general counsel for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, argued that the FAA shouldn't be in the business of privacy.

"We want to be clear. AUVSI does not believe the FAA should govern UAS operations based on privacy issues or concerns," Gielow said during the online forum, adding the FAA should instead work with other agencies with privacy experience. "The FAA should not be in the business of denying access to airspace for anything other than safety reasons."

Lawmakers and witnesses made a similar case on privacy concerns last month during a Senate Judiciary hearing focused on drone privacy.

Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law school professor, told Congress that "there's very little in American privacy law that would limit the domestic use of drones for surveillance." Because "drones drive down the cost of surveillance," he argued, the "incidence of surveillance would go up," a worry of many groups that advocate privacy laws.

The groups that hope their states will soon host a drone test site say they're not ignoring those concerns.

A coalition that wants to see a drone test site in the San Diego area argues the region already is home to a robust defense industry that regularly partners with private sector companies. Bringing in a drone test site, said Mark Cafferty, president of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, is the next logical step.

"In many ways, we have a great history of partnerships between our biotechnology sector and our telecommunications sector and our defense technology sector growing out of work directly with the military," he told POLITICO in an interview. "So I think the unmanned systems technology is something that many of us see as being the next generation of that. It'll be something that is not only beneficial to the military, where we have the largest Marine and Navy installations in the world here in San Diego, but also to the growth of the private sector around it and also to the small businesses that feed both the military and the private sector in so many ways."

As evidence, Cafferty cited the presence of companies like General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Northrop Grumman, which makes the Global Hawk drone.

Drone technology, he suggested, could also be used in another way that he said could be “game-changing”: fighting the wildfires that continually plague the region.

"Unmanned systems could prove critical in how we fight wildfires in the future, which is a very real danger here in San Diego every single year," Cafferty said. "We would be able to get up-to-date data and pictures and everything that you would need without putting an individual in harm’s way."

In Nevada, backers of a prospective drone test site suggested the state's vast airspace — restricted and commercial — could ease privacy concerns.

"The airspace is not only large, it is over areas with, for the most part, very few people," Steve Hill, executive director of the Nevada Governor's Office of Economic Development and the co-chair of the team working on his state's bid, told POLITICO. "Things like safety and security are parts of the equation that Nevada can really add to, in our opinion. The airspace allows us to test virtually any kind of unmanned vehicle from the smallest to the largest at low and high altitudes. Because of our weather, that testing can occur at least 300 days a year, which is really beneficial because you can do a lot more testing than in a compressed period of time."

The testing site, he said, would include Stead Airport, near Reno, as well as Fallon Naval Air Station and stretch through rural areas in the south.

"We've been dealing with all manner of unmanned vehicles in the state for about 25 years. So there's some level of experience that provides some comfort,” Hill explained, citing the state’s vast airspace. “There are maybe some cattle that would feel that their privacy was infringed upon, but not a lot of people.”

With 50 teams looking to win the competitive bidding process, it’s difficult to estimate economic gain. But a recent study by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International estimated that 70,000 new jobs would be created nationwide over three years, growing to 100,000 jobs by 2025. And that could mean as much as an $82 billion economic impact in the United States over a decade.

Still, the prospect of thousands of jobs hasn't consoled a wary public.

The types of applications Gretchen West, AUVSI executive president, argues are simple tools for helpful, practical purposes have grown into a behemoth because of a perception problem.

"A lot of times, there are pictures of large military UAS that are in conjunction with a story about public safety use of UAS. But what actually is going to be used and what public safety officials are using now are small UAS, which are probably around 25 pounds. Many of those are even lighter, so we're talking about things that have an endurance of 30-60 minutes. Nothing that could do widespread surveillance or persistent surveillance," West told POLITICO.

Most Americans, she said, are likely only familiar with the kinds of drones used abroad by the Pentagon and CIA.

"Historically, this industry has really been for defense purposes,” she said. “So when the public sees pictures of large, weaponized military aircraft, that's being associated with the smaller technology that we're talking about."

This article first appeared on POLITICO Pro at 5:17 a.m. on April 4, 2013.

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