Congress gets mixed advice on regulating drones
5/17/2013WASHINGTON — The growing use of unmanned “eyes in the sky” is raising many privacy concerns, but Congress is getting mixed advice on what to do about civilian drones.
Chris Calabrese of the American Civil Liberties Union tells a House subcommittee that a law is needed to prevent police and government officials will overuse the drones.
He raises the prospect of people finding drones hovering outside their home windows.
But Pepperdine law professor Gregory McNeal compares drones to the Internet in the 1990s.
McNeal says trying to regulate the Internet out of concern for people’s privacy would have stymied its rapid growth.
Civilian drone use is now limited to government agencies and some public universities. Congress last year ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to allow widespread drone flights by 2015.