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posted by n1 on Tuesday October 20 2015, @11:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the department-of-droneland-security dept.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is set to announce plans to require registration for every drone sold:

Have a drone? You're going to have to register it with the U.S. Department of Transportation, according to NBC News.

The federal government will announce a plan within days that will require anyone who buys a drone to register it with the Department of Transportation, NBC reported Friday evening.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson told MarketWatch that U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx and Administrator Michael Huerta of the Federal Aviation Administration will release more details on Monday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time.

"The hobbyist drone community has self-regulated itself for decades," said Lisa Ellman, co-chair of the unmanned aircraft systems practice at Hogan Lovells, a New York–based law firm. "But with the technology getting so cheap and improving so much, we have more and more drones."

FAA official Rich Swayze said last month that the agency expects that a million drones could be sold this holiday season.

"A lot of people are buying them and thinking they are toys," Ellman said. "They are not toys."

Florida lawyer Jonathan Rupprecht, author of a book on drone law, said he believes any plan centered around drone registration is a necessary first step toward regulating drones but is curious how the regulation will play out and whether the rule will apply to hobbyists with small drones.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:04PM

    by bradley13 (3053) on Tuesday October 20 2015, @05:04PM (#252376) Homepage Journal

    That's the point: they are not lawmakers. But Congress has given their agencies the authority to write regulations, so they do.

    What empires can they build? You clearly haven't worked for the government. You want your position to be upgraded? Then you need to justify more people and a bigger budget. One way to do that is to expand the programs that you are in charge of. It's hard to steal programs from other people, so the best way is to create a new program. For example, create an entirely new licensing regime. That will require a new IT infrastructure, thousands of pages of regulations, and a whole raft of additional employees to run it - jackpot!

    This is what Pournelle's Iron Law [wikipedia.org] is all about: in any bureaucracy, ambitious people want to enhance their personal positions. If that happens to involve doing something useful for the public, that's a happy coincidence, but it's not a priority. Consider: what penalty does the IRS, the TSA, or any other government agency suffer, if it mistreats the public? On the other hand, new programs and regulations increase an agency's reach and power. It's obvious where you want to invest your time...

    I used to work for the US federal government. I've seen it in action.

    --
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