DRONE BAN RESOLUTION FOR MADISON, DANE CTY, STATE OF WISCONSIN

Hello everybody,

Please let me know your thoughts and let’s get working. There will be a groups page set up that we all can join in and get this finalized and begin work on presenting to the community.

One of the things we have wanted to work on and introduce since we started on the anti-drone work here in Madison , was to present a no drone resolution to the Madison Common Council and Dane County, leading to a statewide ban on their use.

The fact Kyle Richmond's “Bring our war dollars home”, resolution to Dane County , was passed by the Dane County Board on January 10, 2013 with a vote of 26 supporting, 5 opposing and 5 absent or abstaining: CALLING ON CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT TO REDIRECT U.S. MILITARY SPENDING TO ADDRESS CRITICAL DOMESTIC PRIORITIES: BRING OUR WAR DOLLARS HOME, which is in itself extremely uplifting, I feel the time is now right to get the no drone resolution on the street and into the Madison Common Council, followed by introduction to Dane County.

I am excited to say we have the draft for the drone ban resolution completed. I am in prep to conduct a meeting of all interested parties to hammer out the details and give it a final approval, or this can be accomplished via email or Google groups, with the goal of introducing the resolution into the Madison Common Council in April. We need to get this on the street within the next couple of weeks, to gain support from the peace groups in the area, alders, supervisors, legislators, and the public.

It is essential that this get in place as soon as possible, as Milwaukee is looking at the purchase of 4 drones at $15,000 each. Not sure if the approval has been given for the purchase or not, but we need to prevent this from taking place at all in Madison. We can be at the forefront of this effort as there are only a few places in the country that have attempted to introduce a resolution.

I have also placed in this email below a model drone resolution. This could be a good example of what needs to be done here in Madison... good solid background and sources.

Please let me know your thoughts and let’s get working. There will be a groups page set up that we all can join in and get this finalized and begin work on presenting to the community.

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Proclaim Madison Wisconsin a No Drone Zone and Enact an Ordinance to that Effect

   DRAFT: Monday, January 21, 2013

WHEREAS, United States airspace is the busiest in the world, with up to 87,000 flights per

day, including commercial airliners and freight haulers, air taxis and private and military aircraft; and

WHEREAS, unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, are not now allowed in United States general airspace because of the threat they present to other aircraft; and

WHEREAS, under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, the FAA is directed to create regulations that will enable drones to fly throughout US airspace by September 2015; and

WHERAS, small drones, 25 pounds or under, are now permitted to fly in general airspace below 400 feet for the use of police and first responders, with FAA permission; and

WHEREAS, Camp Williams/Volk Field in Juneau County, Wisconsin is a National Guard facility where testing and training for the RQ-7 Shadow 200 drones is being conducted; and

WHEREAS, drones have limitations in “vision” compared to the vision of human pilots, do not have the same capability to avoid other aircraft as aircraft piloted by humans, and there has been at least one instance outside the United States of a drone collision with an aircraft with a human pilot on aboard and as well as a near miss. These instances occurred in airspace much less crowded than that of the United States; and

WHEREAS, drones have at times gotten out of human control, in at least one instance having to be shot down, and drones are susceptible to having control seized electronically by unauthorized operators; and

WHEREAS, drones have the capability of carrying a variety of weapons, including 12-gauge shotguns, tear gas, rubber bullet guns, bombs and missiles, but drones have significant limitations in identifying specific individuals and groups; and

WHEREAS, unmanned aerial vehicles have the capability to watch individuals, groups and

populations on a 24-hour basis, following and recording their movements for days and weeks in an unprecedented way; and

WHEREAS, unmanned aerial vehicles have the capability to continuously monitor cell phone

and text messaging of individuals, groups and populations; and

WHEREAS, drones are being developed that will use computerized facial images to target

individuals and, once launched, to operate, autonomously, without further human involvement, to locate and harm those individuals; and

WHEREAS, drones present an unreasonable and unacceptable threat to public safety in the air and to persons and property due to limitations in drone “vision,” capability to avoid other aircraft and adequate control; and

WHEREAS, armed drones and surveillance drones present an unreasonable and unacceptable threat to the rights of individual privacy, freedom of association and assembly, equal protection and judicial due process;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that the Common Council of the City of Madison, in the State of Wisconsin, with this Resolution and by Proclamation proclaims Madison a No

Drone Zone, and instructs the City Attorney to perform the necessary legal tasks to
transform this declaration of a No Drone Zone into an Ordinance for the City of Madison
wherein drones are hereby banned from airspace over the City of Madison, including
drones in transit. Under that Ordinance, flying of a drone within the airspace of the City
of Madison shall be considered a misdemeanor carrying a maximum penalty of up to
one year in jail and a fine not to exceed $10,000. Each offense that is more than one
offense of flying a drone within said airspace will be considered to be an additional
misdemeanor, with jail time and fines based on the number of violations.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that drones will not be purchased, leased, borrowed,

Tested, contracted or otherwise used by any agency of the City of Madison.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that exemptions will be made for hobbyists to continue to

ly remote controlled model aircraft in specified areas, away from dwellings and the urban cityscape of people and buildings as long as those devices are not equipped to monitor any person or private residence or equipped with any weapon.

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Rutherford Institute Issues Model Drone Resolution, Calls on Charlottesville-Albemarle Officials to Establish Limits on Police Spy Drones

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Rutherford Institute — With at least 30,000 drones expected to occupy U.S. airspace by 2020, John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, is calling on government officials in Charlottesville and Albemarle County to do their part to safeguard Virginians against the use of drones by police, especially for surveillance and crowd control purposes. Specifically, Whitehead has provided the Albemarle Board of Supervisors and Charlottesville City Council with a model resolution urging the General Assembly to prevent police agencies from utilizing drones outfitted with anti-personnel devices such as tasers and tear gas and prohibit the government from using data recorded via police spy drones in criminal prosecutions. Rutherford Institute attorneys have drafted and made available to the public language that can be adopted at all levels of government—local, state and federal—in order to address concerns being raised about the threats posed by drones to citizens’ privacy and civil liberties.
“Once these drones take to the skies, there really will be no place to hide,” said Whitehead. “If we are to have any hope of safeguarding our privacy rights, it needs to start with our elected representatives at all levels of government—local, state and federal—establishing clear limits on how and when these aerial, robotic threats to privacy and security can be used by law enforcement officials.”
As The Rutherford Institute’s fact sheet details, the FAA Reauthorization Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2012, has authorized the use of drones domestically for a wide range of functions, both public and private, governmental and corporate. Prior to this, drones had been confined to military use in the battlefields over Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet as attorney John Whitehead points out, without proper safeguards, these drones, some of which are deceptively small and capable of videotaping the facial expressions of people on the ground from hundreds of feet in the air, will usher in a new age of surveillance in American society. Not even those indoors, in the privacy of their homes, will be safe from these aerial spies, which can be equipped with technology capable of peering through walls.
In addition to their surveillance capabilities, drone manufacturers have confirmed that drones can also be equipped with automatic weapons, grenade launchers, tear gas, and tasers. Aside from the very serious and grave implications for privacy and civil liberties raised by Whitehead, there are also a number of safety issues involved with drone technology, with the paramount concern being that drones have a history of malfunctioning mid-air. Drones are also vulnerable to hackers, allowing unauthorized persons to access information gathered via drone, or to take control of the drone’s flight path. Many local police departments throughout the country, including in Florida and California, have already begun utilizing drones in police procedures without any real regulations in place.
In calling on lawmakers to be proactive in safeguarding their constituents against drones, Whitehead warned against adopting legislation either too narrow in scope to have any serious impact on the widespread threat to privacy and civil liberties or providing law enforcement officials with greater leeway to use drones conditioned only on their first acquiring a court-issued warrant.

Rutherford Institute Issues Model Drone Legislation, Calls on Congress to Protect Americans from Weaponized Drones and Police Spy Drone

Within this document are links to further reading as well as the sample resolution.