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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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.
