and in the meantime people rot in jail but i guess no harm no foul :shrug:
Nobody claimed no foul. Constraining a problem isn't the same as saying it's not one.
"Authoritarian regimes’ unclear laws make anyone a suspect" - https://ge.usembassy.gov/authoritarian-regimes-unclear-laws-...
All three seem to be important facts for an Authoritarian Regieme
I point this out, because I believe the US has long had vague laws, and our Due Process helps kick out arbitrary enforcement. I also believe that our Checks and Balance system (part of Due Process) is currently broken
It's like the sudden concern with shipping ICE detainees to play 'jurisdiction' and 'standing' games. This has been going on forever and isn't novel, it's just suddenly defense attorneys care because of the immigration/deportation angle instead of just someone losing their home, job, car, life.
Our system of 'checks and balances' doesn't work when prosecutors/defense attorneys are indifferent to this kind of life destroying consequence simply from an accusation. If they are apathetic to this, what other injustices in the judicial system are all of the lawyers apathetic to?
"They devise laws that are broad and vague, but then they apply them like a scapel against those that they deem a threat" - William Dobson
When combined with a comical inability to secure government systems, it's honestly super cute that any federal agency thinks engaging in such dark patterns is in any way, shape, or form going to achieve their goals.
Well, yeah, but that's the goal. People will correctly conclude that their ability to act unmolested is entirely contingent upon remaining in the good graces of local and remote authority figures. This produces extreme chilling on dissent or disagreement and promotes deals, bribes, and bootlicking. The law is transformed into a transparent legitimization mechanism for what the powerful wanted to do anyway, applied and ignored according to the real power structure adjacent to the legal bureaucracy. This is the default state of human civilization when the rule of law is not proactively defended.
In my experience, folks from a legal/court context who think they can get cute playing the "you can't prove I broke the rules" game will literally void their bowels in fear when the same is done to them by just one skilled hacker, let alone a group of them all focused on a singular task.
~ P. J. O'Rourke, "Parliament of Whores"
The evidence could be just some regular looking vehicle you can't find anything about and it's just "trust me bro those were feds" and you're out of luck.
That's been the case for at least 25 years. Still bad, but not new or unique to Trump. I'm too young to have a good idea of what the pre-Patriot Act American military/intelligence/secret police was like, but the historical stuff that comes to light from time to time doesn't lend much confidence that they were all that much better - they just did it illegally and ashamedly whereas now it's quasi-legal and fully acceptable.
Not that a government that just pops up no-fly zones would care about your drone, but just saying.
I have my doubts. I would guess one "popping up" would at least be delayed such that it's pretty pointless by the time the drones are notified. Annoying indeed, useful (even to the ne'er-do-wells trying to enforce this crazy stuff) not so much.
I want to know the genius who wrote this, and the mastermind who approved it.
As we learned in El Paso in February, if the federal government wants a no fly zone, it can just create one.
Or maybe they do get that, but find it incredibly inconvenient to their own aspirations.
The very broad power of administrative rulemaking held by that agency is unchanged -- and the power of agencies generally, to make law without legislating, without accountability to the electorate, actually has nothing to do with this administration, does it? It actually has nothing to do with any of them. It's something the legislature has allowed to grow and grow over successive administrations, whether Democrats or Republicans are in power.
Re this being the FAA's choice, I was reacting to this line in the reporting: "On April 10, Levine and his lawyers pressed ahead by filing an emergency motion [... which... ] may have expedited the government’s next move [to replace] the sweeping flight restrictions with a “national security advisory” [and dropping] all mentions of flight restrictions and criminal charges." Maybe Ars is being too rosy-viewed about the causality there, idk. I have no partic feeling one way or the other though I do want to take whatever comfort I can in the notion that the "system of checks and balances" is working. I'd rather go to bed thinking it is, than tell myself cynically that this was just another whim of an agency, with no real principled attitude.
I believe that the Trump administration in particular - not Republicans as opposed to Democrats - has abused agency independence in a manner unprecedented in recent American politics. I think agencies SHOULD act autonomously to determine specifics just like this one - what vehicles/devices, with what capabilities, can fly where and in what manner, and that we SHOULD value "expert advice" in such situations instead of using that phrase as invective. I think the American people should celebrate that we grant such freedoms because it lets us all benefit from expertise - but they should also understand that there is a price to pay in vigilance, of having to challenge the legality of agency actions if the particular implementation of regulations infringes on constitutional rights. But it's not just litigation that will prevent abuse - the first line of defense against it should be the expectation that administrations will consider themselves beholden to certain social norms of cautious use of power. Do you believe that there is no daylight between this administration and previous ones in terms of how they view what norms they ought to consider themselves bound by? That's a genuine question, not a rhetorical one - if you don't believe that, I am curious to know more.
I don't think legislatures can possibly identify a priori all the ways in which rights could possibly be infringed and make their grants so granular that agencies can't possibly find abusive interpretations. Those can only be determined in specific, real, cases, when fallible individuals attempt to meet the legislated objectives by taking concrete action. I don't understand this idea that federal agencies have become "unaccountable" merely because they issue intepretations every day as and when they encounter real-world situations. The Chevron doctrine seemed a perfectly fine compromise to me - how this court thinks the legislative body can magically divine all the future possibilities and encode them into the acts that govern the agencies is just beyond me.
The FAA needs to get off its ass with drones, it’s only a matter of time before some dipshit trying to get TikTok footage or an actual bad actor brings down a fucking airliner with one of these. It’s insane to me how unregulated drones generally are.
This particular restriction we're talking about was completely unjustifiable. But the regs exist, and they aren't just made up nonsense. They're the result of systems engineering and a real risk management process.
In all seriousness, a high barrier to entry, expense, actual knowledge of how systems and physics work, etc, all converge to make it basically impossible for an idiot off the street to jump into a Cessna and wreak havoc, which is why it doesn't happen all that often. Drones have none of those barriers to entry. Regulations only work if people know about them and have an incentive to follow them. Drones are extremely cheap and easy to use and because of how small they are and they are also extremely difficult to track once they are flying around. It is absolutely insane, and it's only a matter of time until somebody either inadvertently or intentionally brings an airliner down, at which point the EASA and FAA and CASA et all will finally do something drastic, ostensibly, but it's going to take something like the DCA accident to make it happen, which is diabolical.
What universe are you in?
The FAA can’t even find and identify most of the dickheads flying drones around restricted airspace. You think they give a shit about drones in rural areas around smaller airports? Drones are cheap and easily accessible, orders of magnitude easier to get than an airplane in terms of actual acquisition and the license (spoiler: most drone users aren’t licensed). Compare both of those things with the cost of getting a PPL, to say nothing of how expensive even a small plane is. It isn’t just the US, either - I’ve flown small planes in both America and Australia, and drones are something that both the FAA and CASA clearly aren’t equipped to deal with. Regulations and laws don’t matter if you can’t enforce them because you can’t identify the perpetrator.
I appreciate the fact that HN does not have personalized echo chamber aka feeds.
Government overreach is a concern for a lot of HNers; hence this was voted up.
> On April 15, the FAA removed the no-fly zones by replacing the sweeping flight restrictions...
This should have been in the FIRST paragraph, not 24th.
You can give me all the background you want AFTER you tell me the most important point.
"On April 15, the FAA removed the no-fly zones by replacing the sweeping flight restrictions with a “national security advisory” titled NOTAM FDC 6/2824. The revised notice dropped all mentions of flight restrictions and criminal charges. It instead “advised” drone pilots to avoid flying near “covered mobile assets” belonging to the Department of Homeland Security and several other federal agencies."
"The new FAA advisory wording is “a lot better than it was,” but it still comes off as “too ambiguous,” according to Moss at the Drone Service Providers Alliance. He suggested that the Department of Homeland Security could handle any potential drone concerns rather than making it an FAA issue."
Your comment is just as good w/out this. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html )
Is the general public in the USA is supposedly entitled to know whether a given vehicle contains ICE agents? By what legal theory?
Is there a similar nationwide prohibition on, say, plainclothes police officers?
Is there no concern for what would happen in case of mistaken identity?
Knowing that a vehicle contains ICE agents, is there a reason that someone should be able to pursue it with a drone? Does this accomplish a legitimate purpose other than tracking the vehicle's position (again, presumably to disseminate the information "this is an ICE vehicle")? Is there a reason why this would not reasonably be seen as harassment from the agents' perspective?
Are ICE agents American citizens, entitled to the same rights as other American citizens?
Do people here believe that the purpose of enacting such no-fly zones is something other than preventing drones from following the vehicles for surveillance and information-sharing purposes? Especially given the idea that the zone moves with the vehicle?
Is there a reason why the government of the USA should not be permitted to enforce its own immigration law? In particular, is there a reason why people who have illegally entered the country per that law, and who have what I'm told is called a "final order of removal", should be permitted to remain within the country?
Edit: Is there something wrong with asking any of the above questions? If so, why?
- No one is saying they need to know what vehicles contain ICE agents
- Not sure your meaning exactly, but there's no expectation for plainclothes officers to be locatable by the general public
- Concern for whom? Whose mistaken identity?
- This isn't about "knowing" a vehicle contains ICE agents.
- Government officials *should* be held to higher scrutiny than the general public.
- Their objective was to prevent *legally permitted* public recording of these operations
- Here you are delving into a fraught space. Given that many people in that status are guilty of *civil* infractions and the level of force being deployed is highly disproportionate, many people are understandably upset. There's a ton to discuss in just this one line item.
This is an inversion of the problem. The general public is entitled to fly drones in many areas and should not be punished just because ICE claims they are operating in an area.
Is there a similar nationwide prohibition on, say, plainclothes police officers?
This is not a valid comparison.
Is there no concern for what would happen in case of mistaken identity?
What does this mean? Why do you think the government should be able to arbitrarily restrict drone operations?
Knowing that a vehicle contains ICE agents, is there a reason that someone should be able to pursue it with a drone? Does this accomplish a legitimate purpose other than tracking the vehicle's position (again, presumably to disseminate the information "this is an ICE vehicle")? Is there a reason why this would not reasonably be seen as harassment from the agents' perspective?
Again, this is an inversion of the problem. If the general public is allowed to operate drones in certain areas, that use should not be subject to widespread, unjustified restrictions.
re ICE agents American citizens, entitled to the same rights as other American citizens?
Most of them probably are citizens.
Do people here believe that the purpose of enacting such no-fly zones is something other than preventing drones from following the vehicles for surveillance and information-sharing purposes? Especially given the idea that the zone moves with the vehicle?
The motivation isn't the problem, the problem is that the implementation infringes on the rights of citizens.
Is there a reason why the government of the USA should not be permitted to enforce its own immigration law? In particular, is there a reason why people who have illegally entered the country per that law, and who have what I'm told is called a "final order of removal", should be permitted to remain within the country?
People opposing the current immigration enforcement regime are not protesting the existence of law, they disagree with the formulation and implementation of the laws. Is it your position that questioning the formulation or implementation of a law should not be allowed?
Normal citizens can't get full no fly zones and are subject to even more invasive tactics. The comparison to normal citizens highlights that what was done here was far in excess of what is done for normal citizens and seems counter to their overall argument.
If a stranger told you your baby was ugly, you would think the stranger was an asshole even if everyone in your family agreed that the baby is hideous.
Enjoy living in your country.