Last week, the United States government made the largest and most impactful set of changes to drone law we’ve ever seen – determining that almost all drones in U.S. airspace will need to transmit their locations, as well as the locations of their pilots, in order to “address national security and law enforcement issues in relation to the greater integration of these aircraft in the airspace of the United States”.
Google (technically, Alphabet) is not very happy with these new rules. The company’s drone delivery subsidiary Wing wrote a rather thought-provoking post (via Reuters) entitled “Remote identification of drones for transmission only may have unintended consequences for American consumers”, which argues that the FAA’s decision to allow drones to transmit their location may allow observers to track their movements, finding out where you are going , where you live and where and when you receive packages, among other examples.
“American communities would not accept this kind of surveillance on their deliveries or road taxi trips. They shouldn’t accept that in heaven, ”argues Wing.
With that kind of language, you can think that Wing is arguing that drones shouldn’t transmit their location, right? Funny, no: Alphabet’s subsidiary just wants them to send it over the Internet instead of broadcasting it locally. I think my old CNET colleague Ian Sherr’s tweet is appropriate:
I am shocked – shocked – that a company being investigated for antitrust issues over the abuse of its power on the Internet recommends that the FAA abandon its newest radio frequency identification program for Internet-based tracking. https://t.co/d6VNMPapth
– Ian Sherr (@iansherr) December 31, 2020
By the way, Internet-based tracking is exactly what the FAA intended to do when it originally proposed remote identification rules in December 2019 – before receiving a list of reasons from commentators why Internet-based tracking can be problematic and decided to abandon it. Here are just a few of those mentioned:
- The cost of adding a cellular modem to a drone, to start
- The cost of paying for a monthly cellular data plan just to fly on a drone
- Lack of reliable cell coverage across the U.S.
- The cost of paying a third party data broker to track and store that data
- The possibility of the outsourced data broker being breached
- The possibility of this data broker or network receiving DDoS, drones landed in the USA
If you want to read the whole argument for yourself, the FAA spends 15 pages outlining and contemplating all objections to the internet-based Remote ID in its full rule (PDF) starting on page 60.
Personally, I think it is ridiculous that the FAA felt that it had to choose between “everyone has to disclose their location to everyone within earshot” and “everyone has to pay streams of money to the private industry and entrust their location to some broker of data “but the reasons why we are not adopting Internet-based tracking make sense to me.
Most proponents of remote identification technology, including Wing, like to explain that it is just a “license plate” for the heavens, perhaps nothing more intrusive than you would already have in your car. Here’s Wing on this:
This allows a drone to be identified as it flies without necessarily sharing the complete flight path or flight history of that drone, and that information, which may be more confidential, is not displayed to the public and only available to authorities if they have the proper credentials and a reason to need that information.
But what happens with the signs is, traditionally, you need to be within sight to see them. You would have to physically follow a car to track it. This is not necessarily true for a broadcast transmitter and is potentially far less true for an Internet-based solution like the one that Wing seems to wish the FAA had offered. Of course, it depends on who owns the Internet-based solution and how much you trust it and its security.
Anyway, it will take a while to figure out how secure or vulnerable, how wide or restricted these remote ID transmissions will actually be. That’s because the FAA’s final rule does not dictate what type of broadcast technology drones they will be required to use: companies have the next year and a half to discover this and must submit it for FAA approval. The FAA also makes it clear that Remote ID transmission is just a first step, an “initial framework”, suggesting that Internet-based Remote ID may still be an option in the future.