The right way to regulate drone privacy

2013/08/14 Leave a comment

On August 6th, I had the honor of testifying in front of the California State Assembly Public Safety Committee on regulation of drones, by the state of California.  The committee is considering several bills that have been introduced on the regulation of drones particularly with respect to privacy and law enforcement use.

The committee discussions, hopefully indicative of the general tone of legislators everywhere:

The committee seemed to be wrestling with several questions about where to start.  Several wondered what exactly is a drone (Good luck!  If anyone figures out a clear definition let me know) and what the capabilities of this class of technology are.  I hope that the message that came through from the witnesses was the “drones” are not distinct from other vehicle and sensing technologies, but are just a subset of the flying class of these technologies and that the capabilities are similar to manned platforms of the same class.   I was also very pleased to see that the committee was eager not to foreclose beneficial uses of the technology.  Some of the committee members specifically cited my company, TerrAvion, as an example of they type of application they wanted to avoid regulating.

The committee and the witnesses all recognized that air safety is regulated by the FAA, but that the states can impose additional regulations on privacy, particularly in law enforcement.  If we are to live in a democracy, there have to be limits on the government’s ability to collect information on citizens.  However, I think that the thoughtful testimony of Sheriff Geoff Dean of Ventura County pointed to the fact that law enforcement agencies are ready for the challenge of using new technology under the supervision of the courts and elected officials in a way that is focused on creating real community benefits and is not generally invasive–even to people who might be kind of sort of breaking the law, like speeding or possessing marijuana here in California.

Modular Information Cycle

 Principles for regulating drones:

Uniformity:  I believe that greater regulation of surveillance by the government is required.  Some of the things western intelligence agencies are doing are terrifying.  As a patriot and a veteran, I am dismayed at how our government relates to collecting data on its own citizens.  As a drone operations leader, who has participated at the pointy end of the intelligence spear in Afghanistan, I can tell you that cellphone and e-mail monitoring represents an exponentially greater threat to democracy than having a whole fleet of drones at the government’s beck and call.  When we make privacy regulations, let’s regulate what, not how, individuals and the government can collect information.  The platform that is used to collect the information should not matter.  If I can’t collect information with a plane, then I shouldn’t be allowed to collect it with a cellphone camera either.

Moreover, private individuals ought to have the same right to collect information that the government does.  In practice this might mean that if the government can fly a drone, I as a private citizen should be able to fly a drone.  If the government can issue a subpoena (or national security letter), I as a private citizen should be able to discover those same records in litigation for things that have nothing to do with national security.  There should be uniformity, no institution should be sitting in privileged position, if there are extra steps for government uses of data, I’m okay with that.

Regulate Late in the Information Cycle:  A corollary to  the idea of regulating uniformly, is to regulate late in the information cycle.  One of the key ideas of modern information networks is the idea that the information cycle is being modularized.  This modularization means that instead of a single organization that delivers “the answer” through all the steps, a decision maker can change one part of the process at time to deliver better results.  The implication of this, is that collection is likely to be used in many unanticipated ways.  Regulations that are targeted “upstream” in the data cycle are likely to become obsolete and have unintended effects very quickly.  If legislators are looking curtail specific negative effects of data collection, they should target them later in the information cycle, most importantly at taking actions.

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I love the United States’ robust take on personal freedom.  Taking our cherished rights and freedoms into the digital age is going to require hard, thoughtful work from legislators, voters, and public and private officials.   I hope the robotics community wakes up to the fact that data collection and privacy are not just drone issues, but issues that we share across domains and with other data-rich technology sectors.  I am heartened by my participation thus far in our democratic process, it seems like people are really working to accommodate each other’s concerns and arrive at future that we will all be happy to live in.

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I missed this one in Foreign Policy…

2013/04/17 Leave a comment

Last September featured and excellent article in Foreign Policy magazine running down most of the nonsensical arguments commonly used against drone warfare.  I too have concerns about how both the current and the previous administration conduct wars, but I’m a firm believer in our country using the most humane and effective means if we are going to conduct war.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/05/whats_not_wrong_with_drones?page=0,0

The article features an excellent rundown of the evidence on civilian casualties in particular.  The improvement in discrimination through the Obama administration’s first term is quite remarkable.  I’m surprised that the administration has not discussed the program more.

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VLAB: Drones – the commercial era takes off, but breaking the law is going to blow-up in our faces

2013/03/25 Leave a comment

Last Tuesday, I had the pleasure of attending VLAB: Drones – The Commercial Era Takes Off at Stanford GSB.   The event was truly fantastic and the panel was amazing.  The moderator was Chris Anderson, former editor at Wired and CEO of 3D robotics.  I’m really struck by how much he has become the face of the commercial drone industry.  From his appearances on NPR and print media, he’s probably the most recognized drone advocate.  He makes some very powerful points.  Fueled by Moore’s Law and the cellphone industry supply chain, unmanned aircraft technology is coming and we’ve got to prepare for it.  Like it or not, the drone/robotic era is coming–it doesn’t have to be scary–all kinds of things are possible.

VLAB Drones Panel at Stanford GSB March 19th, 2013

VLAB Drones Panel from left to right: Chris Anderson, 3D Robotics; Helen Greiner, Cyphy Works; Zach Schildhorn, Lux Capital; Jonathan Downey, Airware; Matthew Pobloske, BAE

The one theme that deserves the attention of our industry at large, promoted by Chris Anderson, was that many people in our industry are operating in a “legal gray area” (read: violating regulations because they think the regulations are stupid and won’t be enforced) and that operating in the “gray area” is a good thing that will force regulatory movement.  Anderson gave two examples of this “gray area.” He talked about how ridiculous it was to be violating export controls by turning Lego Mindstorms into what could be considered a cruise missile guidance system.  Later he talked about flying drones in contravention to the FAA regulations governing the use of unmanned aircraft.

The FAA regulations are pretty clear, and let’s stipulate that they are stupid.  However they are the rules, and they have worked pretty well for the FAA’s primary goal of keeping people from getting killed by aircraft.  Technologists in general and Silicon Valley in particular take a dim view of regulations promulgated under the old order (e.g. Lyft, Uber, AirBnB).  I’m not completely outraged when technologists facilitate contract formation between consenting adults, even if local regulation contravene some of the particulars of the contracts.  However, let’s be clear that is absolutely not what we’re talking about when it comes to aircraft.

When it comes to aircraft–manned or unmanned–one of the main beneficiaries of regulation is the people on the ground.  This isn’t renting your room to some strangers who choose to be there; it is hurtling a heavy object over the heads of people who haven’t consented to be part of an experiment.  Our society rightly asks the government to ensure that activities that impose risk on others, especially those that did not consent, be minimized.  We need to update our regulations, but aircraft operators need to respect the letter and spirit of the law as it stands.  What standards do we have if not the law?   If we follow the path of breaking all the rules, someone is going to accidentally kill a  sympathetic bystander.  Beyond the personal tragedy that will create, that accident will set back our industry and the benefits we can provide to society by a decade.

In Afghanistan, one of my planes almost smacked into a helicopter–but it was the helicopter, not the drone–who had come, without clearance or radio calls, into an active artillery firing ROZ (restricted operating zone–an airspace control measure to make sure that aircraft don’t run into artillery fire).  Similarly, the first full sized drone and manned aircraft collision had the C-130 violating airspace control measures around the airfield.  Pilots are not infallible and often break the rules.   The best drone operators have a different safety culture.  Military drone safety culture is one where there is proper approval for everything, because every move will be recorded and second guessed.  I hope this culture will permeate the civilian unmanned aircraft community as well.

Although breaking the rules might move us toward our unmanned enabled future a little bit faster, this is an incredibly dangerous path for our industry and our bystanders.  The closing thought of VLAB Drones was that unmanned aircraft will eventually make the airspace safer for all users.  The panel wondered if this was hyperbole, but it is inevitable when drones have a strong safety culture.  Conversely, as long as we are the irresponsible jerks of the air, safety conscious regulators–like the FAA –will be unsupportive of us flying.    When we, as a civilian unmanned aircraft industry, can be counted on as strong safety partner, and when general aviation and commercial aviation are learning safety lessons from us, there will be no more foot dragging.  We will get our airspace and the drone revolution will finally be here.

In the meantime, seriously, don’t do anything that could kill anyone, please–especially if it is illegal.  You will ruin it for the rest of us.

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Military Robots: No Reason to Freak Out

2013/03/17 Leave a comment

As a robotic warfare veteran, there are three common misperceptions about the use of robots in warfare that I’d like to address.

Misperception #1: There is some sort of ethical quandary or challenge in using robotic weapons.

There is no controversy about the legality or ethics of current and contemplated robotic weapons. The controversy is manufactured.   There are legitimate concerns about the ethics of the campaigns these weapons are used in.  Western law and ethics tell us that necessity (a true and ethical need to attack a target), proportionality (minimizing unnecessary destruction), and discrimination (minimizing the destruction targets that are prohibited or non-combatant) are all required for legal and moral use of force.  Despite the ceaseless talk of civilian casualties, robots and drones enable unprecedented proportionality and discrimination.  The statistical record of even the most controversial program shows that these systems are among the most precise and humane weapons in history.

An RQ-7B "Shadow" unmanned aircraft from the author's unit exhibiting icing from operations in Afghanistan.

An RQ-7B “Shadow” unmanned aircraft from the author’s unit exhibiting icing from operations in Afghanistan.

Having seen the war in Afghanistan, I am sympathetic to the idea that the United States has gone too far in the Global War on Terror.  However, resorting to debate over the means obscures the real question we face as a democracy: Should we be engaged in this war at all?  If we decide that we should be engaged in war, robotic weapons represent a huge improvement in almost all ways over 19 year olds with automatic weapons.

I saw first-hand how horrible this path is.  When troops of the 82nd Airborne Division (one of the most elite in the U.S. Army) came to relieve my brigade, the first thing they did was shoot a farmer because he was “armed” with a shovel.  I could go on about the pregnant women, families, and the doctors shot at by convoys and check points, the botched raids by uber-elite units… Let us not delude ourselves: no matter how it is conducted, war is a horrible, disgusting business.  If the alternative to war is so horrible that a war is justified, our values demand that we conduct war with most proportionality and discrimination that we muster.  With a drone strike, the decisions are being made with better intelligence, certainty of review, in places removed from the fear and chaos of a firefight, and in accordance with procedures.  So much so that lawyers literally stand with the commanders ordering a drone strike to review it before it happens.

Misperception #2: Drones and robots will change the way that militaries relate to societies.

Some inventions change the way that militaries and societies relate by changing who is in charge and how society will be managed.  For example, the Phalanx allowed the first rise of democratic society, the mounted knight enforced feudalism, and electronic and atomic weapons required the creation of the bureaucratic state.   Other inventions change warfare for soldiers but do not affect how the military relates to society.  Britannia ruled the seas under both sail and steam, and the flintlock was replaced by the percussion cap, but societies didn’t have to evolve as a result.  The entry of robotics into warfare will likely not change the relation of militaries to societies.  Robotics are a natural growth of and response to precision weapons. The same classes of people and similar organizations are needed for both robotic and precision weapons systems.  Military robotics are the next stage of development for weapons we’ve had for the whole electronic age.  If the surveillance state becomes a reality, it will be cellphones – not drones – that bring it about.

Misperception #3: Military organizations will continue on as before with robotic weapons

Lost in the sound and fury about drones is an understanding of their true nature for the military.  The value of a military drone is not in weapons, hours of endurance, or even keeping pilots out of harm’s way.  The value is in giving the commander and his staff the most information-privileged position on the battlefield.  Especially on the fast-moving, post-WWI, mechanized battlefield, commanders had to be close to the main effort to make the best decisions.  Forces were positioned and organized to support the maneuver of the main effort.

Contemporary technology, particularly networks and robotics, pushes the military in other directions.  Information is most available at network hubs where information from multiple sources can be fused by a staff.  Forces are spread out to guard and support dispersed operations.  Smaller groups and smaller platforms are more capable when used in conjunction with supporting networks.  Even services that have used drones and robots extensively have not found the optimum model for organizing and supervising the systems they will need on the battlefield of the future.  The political and budgetary systems that oversee the military have not grasped how resources need to be allocated to make the forces of the future.

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It is not a secret any more…

2013/02/07 3 Comments

This is what I’ve been working on that’s been keeping me away from the blog:

 

TerrAvion-Logo-textverticalpng

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Is anyone surprised the FAA is delaying UAS test site selection indefinitely?

2012/11/27 Leave a comment

I have to agree completely with the sentiments of Congressman Austria on this issue. The FAA is just dragging its feet.  The point of the test sites is to solve the issues of safety and privacy.  If these issues were completely worked out, we wouldn’t need test sites–do not pass go, do not collect more appropriations, proceed directly to airspace integration.

The point of the test sites is to work on these issues and give the general, civil, and commercial aviation community time to come to grips that some new craft are going to be joining their previously exclusive community.  Delaying the test site selection is the complete wrong approach.  The right approach is to begin testing–as most other developed countries already have.

How is privacy even the FAA’s jurisdiction?  In all seriousness, I hope that whatever regulations apply to UAS apply to cellphones.  I’m a lot more likely to have my privacy invaded through cell phone than through unmanned aircraft.

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Do you know anyone thinking about the future of aviation?

2012/10/29 Leave a comment

If you do, please make an introduction for me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of aviation lately.  I’m trying to write a major piece for Patrick Egan at sUAS News and also thinking about this for reasons related to my business.  I’m not sure that we in the unmanned aviation community have done enough to think about what the future of the aviation industry is like.  Clayton Christensen’s Seeing What’s Next has a great discussion of disruption in aviation, but even though it was written in 2004, it makes nary a mention of unmanned aircraft.  Steve Morris at MLB Company also was kind enough to have lunch with me last week and talk about what he sees coming.

Photo Credit: DARPA / DTIC.mil

Hypothesized Developments in Aviation from Unmanned Aircraft:

-Aircraft building, particularly on the low end will approach a commodity industry more analogous to PCs or cellphones than current aircraft building paradigms.

-Unmanned aircraft companies (both builders and operators) are going to look more like software or networking companies than they are going to look like industrial companies, this has implications for both human resource practices and the capital structure of the companies.

-Scheduling, routing, and planning will be done according to the new paradigm.  Currently in aviation, everything is optimized around getting the most out of any particular flight hour or unit of plane time.  Unmanned flips this on its head and allows for the aircraft to be treated like other tools that wait on the main job.  Don’t know when you’ll need the plane up?  That’s okay, we’ll park it in the sky (maybe doing a lower value mission) until you need it.  Want to go from point A to B?  Great we’ll take you there, directly, when you want to go.  We will not worry about crew duty cycles, hubs, or returning the plane to its home base.

-Large airports will loose their centrality to the system–this is not to say they will experience a decline in traffic, but rather, they will not be the key limits on a network-like system of small airfields and ad hoc landing or operating sites (think more like a heliport than an airport).

Predicted Market Effects:

-Differentiation and customization will likely become the norm in unmanned aircraft operations.  Most airlines are pretty undifferentiated, but when the business customer is going to tie their ERP system to their aerial service provider’s dispatch system and automatically task aerial missions based on orders, sustained relationships and differentiated services are going to be much more meaningful.

-Data gathering / reconnaissance is likely to switch almost entirely to unmanned systems after the FAA changes the rules.

-Air Cargo is going to be significantly changed, mostly at the interface between trucking and air, with more work being done by air and less by trucking.

-In the long run personalized aviation, whether that is passenger aviation or other types of aviation consumption is going to be the big development.  Aircraft of today are like mainframes of the 70’s.  Only anointed experts who get to go into the restricted area can operate these machines.  Unmanned aircraft are going to be like PC’s, so cheap and easy to use that anyone can have one.  The possibilities here are quite remarkable.  Data collection, aerial work, cargo, and passenger transport are likely to feel the effects of this shift.

-Long haul, passenger, mass transportation will be the last segment to be effected.  The first segments to be effected will be small, light-weight, short duration applications.

So what else?  

I don’t really have a clear idea of how this effects incumbents.  It will definitely be change.  On the one hand, I think that the big guys at the top of the market will be fine.  I don’t expect Boeing or the airlines to disappear.  On the other hand, I don’t think that axis will have the control over aviation that they do today.  They will be more like bus companies and builders in the large automotive industry.

The cult of the pilot will be diminished (as it already is in military aviation) and air travel will continue to be democratized.  I believe that we are witnessing something akin to the introduction of the automobile.  Prior to the automobile, mechanized transportation had been too expensive and hard to use for anyone that was not an expert.  Prior to aerial automation, aircraft were too expensive and hard to use for anyone but an expert.  That’s changing, if we can hurry up the FAA, we have an amazing industrial explosion ahead of us.

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