About MSDI & Missouri State U..
For twenty years, the Missouri State Debate Institute has offered an excellent educational
experience in the middle of the high school topic. MSDI is distinct from other camps in six ways.
First, our skills focus assures that a typical 2-week debater gets nearly 80 speeches, including
over 20 debates. Second, we emphasize the largest cases on topic, with students getting both
aff and neg rounds on each. Third, our senior faculty are comparable with top lab leaders in any
camp. Fourth, MSDI students can earn highly transferable college credit in public speaking for a
minimal cost. Fifth, we respect variance in home debate circuits – our goal is to improve line by
line debating in ways that will help students no matter who judges in their home circuit. Finally,
our price is below any comparable camp and far below most camps. Our 2016 information will
be available shortly at: http://debate.missouristate.edu/camp.htm.
Missouri State University is a large comprehensive university (enrollment over 24k), with nearly
any major you might want. The university has excellent academic scholarship support – most
debaters combine academic “entitlement” scholarships (guaranteed based on GPA/test scores)
with debate scholarships. The Spicer Debate Forum competes in two year-long policy debate
formats: NDT and NFA-LD. We’ve national semis or finals in both in the last decade. Our
debaters have an average GPA over 3.5, a 97% graduation rate, and 70% complete law/grad
school afterward. Our program is a high-impact academic experience with an exceptional alumni
network. Please contact Dr. Eric Morris for more information (EricMorris@MissouriState.edu).
http://debate.missouristate.edu/
http://www.missouristate.edu/FinancialAid/scholarships/
Drones AFF
DRONE 1AC
Drones 1AC – Inherency
Drones are set to expand fast domestically due to a lack of domestic federal
regulation.
Robert A. Heverly, February 6, 2015, Robert Heverly is an Associate Professor of Law at the
Albany Law School, “THE STATE OF DRONES: STATE AUTHORITY TO REGULATE DRONES,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 30-61,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.0029-Heverly.pdf, p. 30-32
Unmanned aircraft systems are the newest entrant into realms of flight. Though varied in their specific configurations and
capabilities, unmanned aircraft systems, known more popularly as drones, are exactly what their name implies: flying vehicles that
do not have an onboard pilot.4 Originally developed as training aids to facilitate targeting practice in WWII, they have since
progressed into sophisticated flying systems that include both those piloted from the ground and those that can pilot themselves
based on programmed instructions.5 When
it comes to drones in the skies, however, and regardless of the
federal government’s control of the nation’s airspace, the federal government has been relatively
slow to act. Some have argued that the federal government’s failure to act more quickly in this area has slowed development of
and deployment of drone technology, with its attendant benefits, in the United States.6 In 2012, Congress passed and
the President signed the Federal Aviation Administration Modernization and Reform Act of 2012
(“the 2012 Act”).7 Among other things, the 2012 Act directed the Federal Aviation Administration (the
FAA) “to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national
airspace system.”8 Since 2012, the FAA has taken a number of actions required or permitted by the legislation.9 The FAA’s
current drone authority covers some aspects of regulation in relation to some users, but not other relevant aspects,
and not as to all users.10 Even with these legislative and regulatory acts, however, federal
drone regulation is
considered thin , at best, and the basic structure of the FAA’s drone regulation program—the
dissection of drone operations into commercial and noncommercial uses, with the latter allowed and the former allowed only on
special application to the FAA—is
in question.11 It is thus not surprising that states and local governments have
stepped into the perceived vacuum, passing laws directed at a variety of aspects of drone regulation.12 Some of these are
suspect on grounds of federal supremacy.13 Others are suspect on simple policy grounds, as they put
states in the position of limiting what
is a growing and likely important aspect of future commerce and
development.14 The laws follow quite expectedly from public and media pressure to react to the perceived threats that drones
present to safety, property and privacy.15
Drones are tentatively in use now, but are set to expand dramatically – 2015 is
the key year.
Richard M. Thompson II, April 3, 2013, Richard Thompson II is a CRS researcher and
legislative attorney, “Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment
Implications and Legislative Responses,” Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21,
http://www.a51.nl/storage/pdf/R42701.pdf, p. i
Although relatively few drones are currently flown over U.S. soil, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
predicts that 30,000 drones will fill the nation’s skies in less than 20 years. Congress has played a large role
in this expansion. In February 2012, Congress enacted the FAA Modernization and Reform Act (P.L. 112-95),
which calls for the FAA to accelerate the integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace
system
by 2015 . However, some Members of Congress and the public fear there are insufficient safeguards
in place to
ensure that drones are not used to spy on American citizens and unduly infringe upon
their fundamental privacy. These observers caution that the FAA is primarily charged with ensuring air
traffic safety, and is not adequately prepared to handle the issues of privacy and civil liberties
raised by drone use.
Drones 1AC – Proliferation advantage
ADVANTAGE:__ Proliferation
Other countries are looking to acquire drone technology – U.S. so far remains
unchallenged.
William Wan and Peter Finn, July 4, 2011, William Wan and Peter Finn are both staff
researchers, “Global race on to match U.S. dron e capabilities,” The Washington Post,
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/drones_517/517V_2_2011_
Global_Race_on_to_Match_U.S._Drone_Capabilities_July_4_2012_Washington_Post.pdf
No country has ramped up its research in recent years faster than China. It displayed a drone model for the first time at the Zhuhai
air show five years ago, but now every major manufacturer for the
Chinese military has a research center devoted
to drones, according to Chinese analysts. Much of this work remains secret, but the large number of drones at recent
exhibitions underlines not only China’s determination to catch up in that sector — by building equivalents to
the leading U.S. combat and surveillance models, the Predator and the Global Hawk — but also its desire to sell this technology
abroad. “The United States doesn’t export many attack drones, so we’re taking advantage of that hole in the market,” said Zhang
Qiaoliang, a representative of the Chengdu Aircraft Design and Research Institute, which manufactures many of the most advanced
military aircraft for the People’s Liberation Army. “The main reason is the amazing demand in the market for drones after 9/11.”
Although surveillance drones have become widely used around the world, armed drones are more difficult to acquire. Israel, the
second-largest drone manufacturer after the United States, has flown armed models, but few details are available. India announced
this year that it is developing ones that will fire missiles and fly at 30,000 feet. Russia
has shown models of drones with
there is little evidence that they are operational. Pakistan has said it plans to obtain
armed drones from China, which has already sold the nation ones for surveillance. And Iran last summer unveiled a
drone that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the “ambassador of death” but whose effectiveness is still unproven,
according to military analysts. The United States is not yet threatened by any of these developments. No
other country can match its array of aircraft with advanced weapons and sensors, coupled with the necessary satellite and
telecommunications systems to deploy drones successfully across the globe.
weapons, but
Lack of push for U.S. drone surveillance has so far stymied efforts to export this
technology to other states – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, etc.
Micah Zenko, January 2013, Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for
Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike
Policies,” Council on Foreign Relations, Council Special Report, no. 65, pp. 1-35,
http://upstatedroneaction.org/documents/Reports/Thinktank/Drones_CSR65.pdf, p. 19-20
In the absence of an indigenous armed drone capacity, interested states are looking to buy .
Thus far, the United States has refrained from selling armed drones to states, such as Pakistan,
Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), that have requested the technology, though it has
made exceptions for Great Britain and possibly Italy. U.S. aerospace companies have lobbied to relax the export
regulations for drones, primarily those that conduct surveillance missions.56 One hurdle is that the
United States is a member of the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), an informal and voluntary multilateral
arrangement comprising thirty-four states that attempts to constrain ballistic missile proliferation. Under the MTCR, drones capable
of delivering at least a five-hundred-kilogram payload a minimum of three hundred kilometers are classified as Category I items, for
which “there will be a strong presumption to deny such transfers.” So
far, the United States has largely followed
the Category I guidelines. General Atomics, manufacturer of the Predator, recently unveiled the
Predator XP surveillance drone, which lacks the hard points—or mounting brackets for aerial munitions—
wing strength, and fire control system required for weaponization. There are also few examples of armed
drone sales by other countries. After the United States, Israel has the most developed and varied drone capabilities; according to the
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Israel was responsible for 41 percent of drones exported between 2001
and 2011. 57 While Israel has used armed drones in the Palestinian territories and is not a member of the MTCR, it has
predominantly sold surveillance drones that lack hard points and electrical engineering. Israel reportedly sold the Harop, a shortrange attack drone, to France, Germany, Turkey, and India. Furthermore, Israel allows the United States to veto transfers of
weapons with U.S.-origin technology to select states, including China.58Other states invested in developing and selling surveillance
drones have reportedly refrained from selling fully armed versions. For example, the UAE spent five years building the armed
United-40 drone with an associated Namrod missile, but there have been no reported deliveries.59 A March 2011 analysis by the
marketing research firm Lucintel projected that a “fully developed [armed drone] product will take another decade.”60
U.S. domestic drone policy has been fueling proliferation – lack of appropriate
regulatory framework and undermining of international legal norms – 2015
ensures rapid expansion.
Tom Barry, April 2013, Tom Barry works for the Center for International Policy, “DRONES
OVER THE HOMELAND HOW POLITICS, MONEY AND LACK OF OVERSIGHT HAVE SPARKED DRONE
PROLIFERATION, AND WHAT WE CAN DO,” International Policy Report,
http://www.ciponline.org/research/html/drones-over-the-homeland
Due to a surge in U.S. military contracting since 2001, the
United States is the world leader in drone production and deployment.
Other nations, especially China, are also rapidly gaining a larger market share of the international drone market. The United
States, however, will remain the dominant driver in drone manufacturing and deployment for at least
another decade. The
central U.S. role in drone proliferation is the direct result of the Pentagon’s rapidly
increasing expenditures for UAVs. Also fueling drone proliferation is UAV procurement by the
Department of Homeland Security, by other federal agencies such as NASA, and by local police,
as well as by individuals and corporations. Drones are also proliferating among state-level Air National Guard units. Despite
its lead role in the proliferation of drones, the U.S. government has failed to take the lead in
establishing appropriate regulatory frameworks and oversight processes. Without this
necessary regulatory infrastructure – at both the national and international levels – drone proliferation
threatens to undermine constitutional guarantees, civil liberties and international law.
Now is key to shape international norms - only the U.S. can lead in setting
drone policy.
James Whibley, February 6, 2013, James Whibley received a M.A. in International Relations
from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, "The Proliferation of Drone Warfare: The
Weakening of Norms and International Precedent," Georgetown Journal of International Affairs,
journal.georgetown.edu/2013/02/06/the-proliferation-of-drone-warfare-the-weakening-ofnorms-and-international-precedent-by-james-whibley/
America, power has
an undeniable effect in establishing which norms are respected or enforced. America used its power in the
While drone advocates such as Max Boot argue that other countries are unlikely to follow any precedents about drone use established by
international system after World War 2 to embed norms about human rights and liberal political organization, not only in allies, but in former adversaries and the international
norms have set precedents on the appropriate
war-fighting and deterrence policies when using weapons of mass destruction and the practices of colonialism and human intervention. Therefore, drones
advocates must consider the possible unintended consequences of lending legitimacy to the
unrestricted use of drones. However, with the Obama administration only now beginning to formulate rules about using drones and seemingly uninterested in restraining
its current practices, the US may miss an opportunity to entrench international norms about drone
system as a whole. Likewise, the literature on rule-oriented constructivism presents a powerful case that
operations. If countries begin to follow the precedent set by the US, there is also the risk of weakening pre-existing international norms about the use of violence. In
the summer 2000 issue of International Security, Ward Thomas warned that, while the long-standing norm against assassination has always been less applicable to terrorist
groups, the targeting of terrorists is, “likely to undermine the norm as a whole and erode the barriers to the use of assassination in other circumstances.” Such an occurrence
would represent a deleterious unintended consequence to an already inhumane international system, justifying greater scrutiny of the drone program. Realism cautions scholars
not to expect ethical behaviour in international politics. Yet,
little accountability
the widespread use of drones by recent administrations with
and the lack of any normative framework about their deployment on the battlefield
could come to be seen as a
serious strategic error and moral failing. If the Obama administration was nervous about leaving
an amorphous drone policy to a possible Romney Presidency, then surely China or Russia
possessing such a program would be terrifying.
Lack of legal reform and an increase in drone proliferation risks causing a
laundry list of problems – undermining rule of law, human rights, and
prevention of great power war.
Micah Zenko, January 2013, Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for
Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike
Policies,” Council on Foreign Relations, Council Special Report, no. 65, pp. 1-35,
http://upstatedroneaction.org/documents/Reports/Thinktank/Drones_CSR65.pdf, p. 25
History shows that how states adopt and use new military capabilities is often influenced by
how other states have—or have not—used them in the past. Furthermore,
norms can deter states from
acquiring new technologies.72 Norms—sometimes but not always codified as legal regimes—have
dissuaded states from deploying blinding lasers and landmines, as well as chemical, biological,
and nuclear weapons. A Recommendations 25 well-articulated and internationally supported normative
framework, bolstered by a strong U.S. example, can shape armed drone proliferation and
employment in the coming decades. Such norms would not hinder U.S. freedom of action;
rather, they would internationalize already-necessary domestic policy reforms and, of course, they
would be acceptable only insofar as the limitations placed reciprocally on U.S. drones furthered U.S. objectives. And
even if
hostile states do not accept norms regulating drone use, the existence of an international normative framework, and
U.S. compliance with that framework, would preserve Washington’s ability to apply diplomatic
pressure. Models for developing such a framework would be based in existing international laws that emphasize the principles of
necessity, proportionality, and distinction—to which the United States claims to adhere for its drone strikes—and should be
informed by comparable efforts in the realms of cyber and space. In
short, a world characterized by the
proliferation of armed drones—used with little transparency or constraint—would undermine
core U.S. interests, such as preventing armed conflict, promoting human rights, and
strengthening international legal regimes. It would be a world in which targeted killings occur with
impunity against anyone deemed an “enemy” by states or nonstate actors, without
accountability for legal justification, civilian casualties, and proportionality. Perhaps more troubling, it
would be a world where such lethal force no longer heeds the borders of sovereign states. Because
of drones’ inherent advantages over other weapons platforms, states and nonstate actors would be much more
likely to use lethal force against the United States and its allies.
Escalation is likely – too tempting to use once you acquire.
Eric Posner, May 15, 2013, Eric Posner is a professor at the University of Chicago Law School,
"The Killer Robot War is Coming," Slate,
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/05/drone_warfare_and_s
pying_we_need_new_laws.html
Drone defenders mocked
for demanding the administration declare whether it
it
could kill people with drones on American territory
drone technology poses a paradox that its
defenders have not confronted. Because drones are cheap, effective, riskless for their operators,
also
Rand Paul
that
Obama
believed that
. Existing law permits the police to shoot criminals who pose an imminent threat to others; if police can gun down hostage
takers and rampaging shooters, why can’t they drone them down too? While there is much to be said in favor of these arguments,
and adept at minimizing civilian casualties, governments may be tempted to use them too
frequently .
Indeed, a
panic has already arisen that the government will use drones to place the public
under surveillance.
Many municipalities have passed laws prohibiting such spying even though it has not yet taken place. Why can’t we just assume that existing privacy laws and constitutional rights are sufficient to prevent abuses?
To see why, consider U.S. v. Jones, a 2012 case in which the Supreme Court held that the police must get a search warrant before attaching a GPS tracking device to a car, because the physical attachment of the device trespassed on property rights. Justice Samuel
Alito argued that this protection was insufficient, because the government could still spy on people from the air. While piloted aircraft are too expensive to use routinely, drones are not, or will not be. One might argue that if the police can observe and follow you in
public without obtaining a search warrant, they should be able to do the same thing with drones. But when the cost of surveillance declines, more surveillance takes place. If police face manpower limits, then they will spy only when strong suspicions justify the
intrusion on targets’ privacy.
If police can launch limitless drones, then we may fear that police will be tempted
to shadow
ordinary people without good reason. Similarly, we may be comfortable with giving the president authority to use military force on his own when he must put soldiers into harm’s way, knowing that he will not risk lives lightly. Presidents have learned through hard
when drones eliminate the risk of casualties
The same problem arises internationally. The international laws that predate
drones assume that military intervention across borders risks significant casualties.
international law could give a lot of leeway
if the risk of casualties
experience that the public will not tolerate even a handful of casualties if it does not believe that the mission is justified. But
, the president is
more likely to launch wars too often.
Since that check normally kept the
peace,
for using military force to chase down terrorists. But
disappears, then nations might too eagerly attack , resulting in blowback and retaliation
. Ironically, the
reduced threat to civilians in tactical operations could wind up destabilizing relationships
between countries, including even major powers like the United States and China, making the
long-term threat to human life much greater
When those technological barriers fall, legal restrictions need to be
tightened.
. These three scenarios illustrate the same lesson: that law and technology work in tandem. When technological barriers limit the risk of
government abuse, legal restrictions on governmental action can be looser.
may
A strong rule of law serves as a framework to de-escalate conflict – some of
these could escalate to nuclear war.
Charles S. Rhyne, May 1, 1958, Charles S. Rhyne has is J.D, and is a U.N. High Commissioner on
Refugees, President of the American Bar Association, Law Day Speech for Voice of America
delivered on the first Law Day, http://www.abanet.org/publiced/lawday/rhyne58.html
Law and courts exist to protect every citizen of the United States in his person and property and in his individual rights and privileges
under the Constitution. The ultimate power to change or expand the law in our system remains with its source, the people. They can
elect as lawmakers those who will vote for wise laws and vote out of office those who do not. They can also amend the Constitution
as experience dictates the necessity of change. In these days of soul-searching and re-evaluation and inventorying of basic concepts
and principles brought on by the expansion of man’s vision to the new frontiers and horizons of outer space, we want the people of
the world to know that we in America have an unshakable belief in the most essential ingredient of our way of life—the
rule of
law. The law we honor is the basis and foundation of our nation’s freedom and the freedom for the individual, which
exists here. And to Americans our freedom is more important than our very lives. The rule of law has been the bulwark of our
democracy. It has afforded protection to the weak, the oppressed, the minorities, the unpopular; it has made it possible to achieve
responsiveness of the government to the will of people. It stands as the very antithesis of Communism and dictatorship. When we
talk about “justice” under our rule of law, the absence of such justice behind the Iron Curtain is apparent to all. When we talk about
“freedom” for the individual, Hungary is recalled to the minds of all men. And when we
talk about peace under law—
peace without the bloodbath of war—we are appealing to the foremost desire of all peoples everywhere. The
tremendous yearning of all peoples for peace can only be answered by the use of law to replace weapons in resolving international
disputes. We in our country sincerely believe that mankind’s best
hope for preventing the tragic consequences of
nuclear-satellite-missile warfare is to persuade the nations of the entire world to submit all disputes to tribunals of justice
for all adjudication under the rule of law. We lawyers of America would like to join lawyers from every nation in the world in
fashioning an international code of law so appealing that sentiment will compel its general acceptance. Man’s relation to man is the
most neglected field of study, exploration and development in the world community. It is also the most critical. The most important
basic fact of our generation is that the rapid advance of knowledge in science and technology has forced increased international
relationships in a shrunken and indivisible world. Men
must either live together in peace or in modern war we
will surely die together. History teaches that the rule of law has enabled mankind to live
together peacefully within nations and it is clear that this same rule of law offers our best hope
as a mechanism to achieve and maintain peace between nations. The lawyer is the technician in man’s
relationship to man. There exists a worldwide challenge to our profession to develop law to replace weapons before the dreadful
holocaust of nuclear war overtake our people. It is said that an idea can be more powerful than an atom because
strength today resides in man’s mind—not his muscle. We lawyers of the world must take the idea of peace under the rule of law
and make it a force superior to weapons and thus outlaw wars of weapons. Law offers the best hope for order in a disordered world.
The law of force or the force of law will rule the world. In the field of human conduct the law has never confessed failure. The
struggle for a world ruled by law must go on with increased intensity. We must prove that the genius of man in the field of science
and technology has not so far outstripped his inventiveness in the sphere of human relations as to make catastrophe inevitable. If
can conquer space he can also solve the need for legal machinery to insure universal and lasting
peace. In our country ignorance of the value of law in international relations and what it could do for the people of the world is
man
appalling. A major purpose of “Law Day-U.S.A.” is therefore to demonstrate to our people that the need for law in the world
community is the greatest gap in the growing structure of civilization. And we lawyers of America are anxious to work with lawyers
and men of good of all nations in filling this gap in that structure. We believe that no greater challenge exists for any profession and
that no
greater service to mankind can be performed.
Drone proliferation increases the chance of terrorists compromising the UAV’s
and turning them against the U.S.
William Wan and Peter Finn, July 4, 2011, William Wan and Peter Finn are both staff
researchers, “Global race on to match U.S. drone capabilities,” The Washington Post,
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/drones_517/517V_2_2011_
Global_Race_on_to_Match_U.S._Drone_Capabilities_July_4_2012_Washington_Post.pdf
China’s rapid development has pushed its neighbors into action. After a diplomatic clash with China last fall
over disputed territories in the South China Sea, Japan announced that it planned to send military officials to the
United States to study how it operates and maintains its Global Hawk high-altitude surveillance
drones. In South Korea, lawmakers this year accused China of hacking into military computers to learn about the country’s plans
to acquire Global Hawk, which could peer into not only North Korea but also parts of China and other neighboring countries. On top
of the increasing anxieties of individual countries, there
also are international concerns that some
governments might not be able to protect these new weapons from hackers and terrorists.
Sharkey, the University of Sheffield professor who also co-founded the International Committee
for Robot Arms Control, noted that Iraqi insurgents, using a $30 piece of software, intercepted
live feeds from U.S. drones; the video was later found on the laptop of a captured militant.
Terrorists could commandeer UAV’s to carry out chemical, biological, or
radiological attacks.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 11
In addition to safety risks, the operation of civilian unmanned aircraft in domestic airspace raises
potential security risks, including the possibility that terrorists could use a drone to carry out an
attack against a ground target. It is also possible that drones themselves could be targeted by
terrorists or cybercriminals seeking to tap into sensor data transmissions or to cause mayhem by hacking
or jamming command and control signals. Drone Weapons Terrorists could potentially use drones to carry out
small-scale attacks using explosives, or
as platforms for chemical, biological , or radiological attacks. In
September 2011, the FBI arrested Rezwan Ferdaus, a U.S. citizen from Ashland, MA, charging him in a terrorist plot to attack the
Pentagon and the Capitol using large model aircraft packed with high explosives. While the small payload of the model aircraft may
have limited the lethality of the explosions, Ferdaus planned to recruit others to use assault rifles to target people fleeing the
Pentagon after the drone attack.26 In July 2012, Ferdaus pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material support to terrorists and
attempting to damage and destroy federal buildings by means of an explosive in a plea agreement under which additional charges
were dropped. The incident has raised specific concerns about potential terrorist attacks using unmanned aircraft, although the
payload capacities of small UAVs would limit the damage these attacks could inflict using only conventional explosives.
Terrorist development of biological agents is likely – all they need are the
means.
Gary Ackerman and Kevin S. Moran, March 2011, Gary Ackerman is the U.S. Representative
for New York's 5th congressional district, Kevin S. Moran is in the foreign service, U.S.
Department of State, Executive Assistant to the National Security Advisor, Chief of Staff,
International Information Programs, U.S. Information Agency, special assistant to two
presidential Chiefs of Staff, special assistant for White House Communications, Center for
Nonproliferation Studies, Bioterrorism and Threat Assessment, PREPARED FOR THE WEAPONS
OF MASS DESTRUCTION COMMISSION, Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism Research
Program, http://www.blixassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/No22.pdf
Regarding the capability of terrorists to engage in mass-casualty biological attack10, several
authors contend that previous technical
obstacles to obtaining or developing biological weapons have
eroded, and that a biological weapons capability is most likely within the reach of at least a certain subset of
terrorist groups. The group most commonly cited as being likely to “overcome the technical, organizational and logistical
obstacles to WMD”11is the al-Qa`ida network, which is reported to be pursuing several types of WMD, including biological weapons.
Other commentators are more sanguine about current terrorist capabilities, believing that they have been exaggerated and that
technical hurdles still prevent terrorists from engaging in anything more than small to medium-sized attacks using biological
weapons (which would not constitute true WMD events). For example, at the more conservative end of the spectrum, a renowned
expert like Donald Henderson believes that it is unlikely that more than a few terrorist groups would be able to succeed in procuring
any of the agents of highest concern in a form that could be dispensed by aerosol in a manner that would result in
masscasualties.12Yet even the most
conservative of these authors do not unequivocally dismiss the prospect
of a group currently (or in the near future) being able to field a biological weapon. Indeed, the only discernible
area of agreement between analysts seems to be that there exists at least a minimal possibility of a technologically
and organizationally adept terrorist organization succeeding in acquiring a biological weapon capable
of causing mass casualties. One remarkable feature within the broader discussion about terrorist capabilities for bioterrorism is that
hardly any of those who believe terrorists currently lack this capacity mention anything about future developments. If recent trends
in terrorism have taught us anything, it is that terrorists are nimble, highly adaptive actors who can be innovative when necessary.
Terrorist capabilities in general display an upward trend and one must bear in mind that even
though a terrorist group’s
ideology may seem in the eyes of their opponents to be archaic and obscurantist, this does not mean that
the group lacks a solid grasp of the most modern technology. At the same time, general advances in
several areas of biotechnology and the rapid commercialization and diffusion of this technology mean
that equipment and techniques that once resided within the sole purview of a state’s military
apparatus (such as the ability to synthesize complex chemicals or identify single nucleotide polymorphisms) can now be found in
off-the-shelf commercial applications.
Biological weapons culminate in a possibility of extinction of human life on the
planet - this is far more likely than a nuclear war escalating.
Richard Ochs, April 9, 2002, Richard Ochs has published articles in the Baltimore Sun,
Baltimore Chronicle, Science magazine, past president of the Aberdeen Proving Ground
Superfund Citizens Coalition, member of the Depleted Uranium Task force of the Military Toxics
Project and a member of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, “Biological Weapons must be
abolished immediately,” http://www.freefromterror.net/other_articles/abolish.html
Of all the weapons of mass destruction, the genetically engineered biological weapons, many without a
known cure or vaccine, are an extreme danger to the continued survival of life on earth. Any
perceived military value or deterrence pales in comparison to the great risk these weapons pose
just sitting in vials in laboratories. While a "nuclear winter," resulting from a massive exchange of nuclear
weapons, could also kill off most of life on earth and severely compromise the health of future generations, they are easier
to control. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can get out of control very easily, as the recent
anthrax attacks have demonstrated. There is no way to guarantee the security of these doomsday weapons because very tiny
amounts can be stolen or accidentally released and then grow or be grown to horrendous proportions. The Black Death of the
Middle Ages would be small in comparison to the potential damage bioweapons could cause. Abolition of chemical weapons is less
of a priority because, while they can also kill millions of people outright, their persistence in the environment would be less than
nuclear or biological agents or more localized. Hence, chemical weapons would have a lesser effect on future generations of
innocent people and the natural environment. Like the Holocaust, once a localized chemical extermination is over, it is over. With
nuclear and biological
weapons, the killing will probably never end. Radioactive elements last tens of thousands
of years and will keep causing cancers virtually forever. Potentially worse than that, bio-engineered agents by
the hundreds with no known cure could wreck even greater calamity on the human race than
could persistent radiation. AIDS and Ebola viruses are just a small example of recently emerging plagues with no known
cure or vaccine. Can
we imagine hundreds of such plagues? HUMAN EXTINCTION IS NOW POSSIBLE.
Drones 1AC – Privacy advantage
ADVANTAGE:__PRIVACY
Drone searches are not subject to fourth amendment curtailment.
Richard M. Thompson II, April 3, 2013, Richard Thompson II is a CRS researcher and
legislative attorney, “Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment
Implications and Legislative Responses,” Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21,
http://www.a51.nl/storage/pdf/R42701.pdf, p. 7-8
In a series of cases that provide the closest analogy to UAVs, the Supreme Court addressed the
use of manned aircraft to conduct domestic surveillance over residential and industrial areas. In each, the
Court held that the fly-over at issue was not a search prohibited by the Fourth Amendment, as
the areas surveilled were open to public view. In California v. Ciraolo, police received a tip that
an individual was growing marijuana in his backyard next to his suburban home.54 Because two fences
blocked their view of the yard, officers flew a fixed-wing aircraft at an altitude of 1,000 feet over the
property to conduct a visual inspection. From this vantage point, the officers readily identified with the naked eye
marijuana plants growing in the defendant’s yard. The Court held that the defendant’s expectation of privacy
in the area immediately surrounding his home was not reasonable, since “what a person knowingly exposes
to the public ... is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”55 “Any member of the public flying in this airspace who glanced
down could have seen everything these officers observed,” the Court remarked.56 Much weight was placed on the fact that the
plane was at all times in navigable airspace as defined by federal statute.57 Similarly, in
Florida v. Riley, local police
received a tip that an individual was growing marijuana in a greenhouse located 10 to 20 feet
away from his mobile home.58 The officers could not see the contents of the greenhouse from the ground, so they flew a
helicopter over the defendant’s backyard at an altitude of 400 feet. While overhead, an officer saw marijuana plants through a crack
in the greenhouse roof. Because
the helicopter, like the plane in Ciraolo, was in navigable airspace—where
any member of the public could have flown—the Court did not consider this a search for which
a warrant was required.59 In the final case of the series, Dow Chemical v. United States, the Court
was asked whether a theory of “industrial curtilage” would prevent a government agency from conducting aerial surveillance over a
2,000-acre commercial plant.60 There, after Dow Chemical Co. refused access to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the
EPA hired a commercial aerial photographer to take photos of the facility using a precision aerial mapping camera. Having ruled out
the argument that the areas surrounding an industrial complex are entitled to the same protection as similar areas surrounding a
home, the Court concluded
that photographing the plant from navigable airspace was not a
search.61
Domestic drone expansion could push for miniaturization – will create society
of constant surveillance.
Jim Dratwa, May 20, 2014, Jim Dratwa is the Chief Editor and head of the EGE Secretariat,
“Ethics of Security and Surveillance Technologies,” European Group on Ethics in Science and
New Technologies to the European Commission, pp. 17-31,
http://www.grundrechte.ch/2014/opinion_28_securityandsurveillancetechnologies.pdf, p. 7980
The rapid
advances in drone technologies have also sparked interest from law enforcement
agencies, as it would allow them to bolster their surveillance capacity. Drones could be introduced for a
fraction of the cost of manned vehicles and helicopters, which are limited in areas they can access. Drones equipped with
cameras, communication interception and listening devices, and by linking images with facial recognition software,
could continuously track individuals in a public space. The Office of Justice Programs (OJP) and the Office of
Community Orientated Policing Services (COPS) in the US have provided US$1.2 million to seven local law enforcement agencies to
purchase drones for testing or use241. Drones were considered particularly suited to law enforcement because this type of aircraft
had the capability to “manoeuvre covertly in areas where individual expectations of privacy are not well defined, such as in the
immediate vicinity of residences.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has expressed concerns that increased
domestic
deployment of drones will eventually result in routine aerial surveillance, which would
profoundly change the character of public life. The ACLU has called for limits and regulations to be put on law
enforcement use of drones in order to avoid a "surveillance society in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded and
scrutinized by the authorities"242. Privacy
concerns are exacerbated by developments in drone
miniaturisation. Researchers have turned to birds and insects as models and have mimicked their complex aerodynamics and
navigation techniques to produce micro air vehicles (MAVs). Due to there small size they can access confined
spaces and navigate their interiors more effectively than ground robots, all without those under
observation knowing they are there. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the USA has funded
the development of a tiny drone called the "nano hummingbird" whose purpose is for stealth surveillance; flying through open
windows and doorways. It can fly up to 11 miles per hour and can hover for up to eight minutes. With a wingspan of just six and a
half inches and weighing 19g (less than a single AA battery), the hummingbird includes a video camera and communications links
243. The ability for pervasive surveillance using drone technology will not be limited to Governments, or organisations in the future.
The personal drone revolution is piggy backing on the popularity of existing consumer
technology particularly smart phones. Their small efficient batteries, GPS receivers and cheap memory chips have all
become components of micro drones. Mass-produced, miniature electronics have made drones small and
cheap enough to be accessible to the individual. The French company Parrot has sold over half a million of the AR
drone 2.0 since its launch in 2010. It can be operated by a smart phone or tablet and can be purchased on Amazon for around $250.
Online communities have sprung up on the Internet of do-it-yourself drone enthusiasts, raising the spectre of skies full of drones for
personal uses ranging from aerial photography to spying on your neighbours. In the USA, it is illegal for to operate a drone above
120 metres and beyond the line of sight for any non-military purpose unless authorisation has been granted by the Federal Aviation
authority (FAA). Between 2007 and February 2013, the FAA has issued 1,428 licences to federal and law enforcement agencies, as
well as universities engaged in research projects244. In anticipation of growing drone use, Barack Obama signed the FAA
Modernisation Act into law in February 2012, which tasks the FAA with opening American airspace to unarmed drones by 2015. In
November 2013, the FAA published a Roadmap for Integration of Civil Unmanned Aircraft Systems in the National Airspace System
245.
Without statutory limits widespread surveillance will take place – no court
doctrine to prevent privacy violations.
Paul Rosenzwei et al., September 20, 2012, Paul Rosenzweig is a Visiting Fellow in the
Center for Legal & Judicial Studies and in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy
Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at
The Heritage Foundation, Steven P. Bucci, PhD, is Senior Research Fellow for Defense and
Homeland Security in the Allison Center, Charles D. Stimson is Senior Legal Fellow in the Center
for Legal & Judicial Studies, and James Jay Carafano, PhD, is Deputy Director of the Davis
Institute and Director of the Allison Center at The Heritage Foundation, “Drones in U.S. Airspace:
Principles for Governance,” The Heritage Foundation,
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/09/drones-in-us-airspace-principles-forgovernance
Limits on domestic drone use may also arise when and if drones proliferate such that widespread
and large-scale
observation and data-collection mechanisms are enabled. Here, the Supreme Court doctrine is still
in development, but the Court has sounded a cautionary note. This past term, in United States v. Jones,[9] Justice Samuel Alito
wrote a concurrence (speaking for only four Justices) in which he posited that even though the collection of an
individual piece of data might be lawful without a warrant, the collection of numerous such
pieces of data to form a larger mosaic picture would raise constitutional concerns. Under this socalled mosaic theory, limits on the collection of routine images throughout a city—linked to a facial recognition program, for
instance—might exist. As mentioned, this legal doctrine has yet to be adopted by the Supreme Court, but it, too, sounds a
cautionary note: Certainly, the
routine and systematic use of drones for widespread surveillance and
analysis is likely to be suspect on constitutional grounds. These precedents clearly suggest a “sweet spot” for lawful
domestic drone activity. Camera-equipped drones used for routine purposes, such as observing public
activity, will likely pass constitutional muster. Legal limits on such use, if any, will come from
policy development or statutory enactments.
Independently, a decline in U.S. privacy standards by UAV’s is catastrophic –
privacy is fundamental to human existence.
Saby Ghoshray, 2013, Saby Ghoshray founded the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies to
foster and disseminate advanced legal scholarship, “Domestic Surveillance Via Drones: Looking
Through the Lens of the Fourth Amendment,” Northern Illinois University Law Review vol. 33,
pp. 580-599,
http://www.iia.niu.edu/law/organizations/law_review/pdfs/full_issues/33_3/Ghoshray%204.pd
f, p. 583
The seduction of drones within the law enforcement parlance is a product of two diverging strands of societal progression—superior
technological advancement and debilitating addiction of fear. The
use of drones and their superficial success in dealing with
terror suspects on foreign shores has jump started this seduction, which unfortunately is unfolding into a future state of
affairs that would shrink individual privacy to a nonexistent dystopian reality. Despite
technology’s broader intrusion into our lives, privacy is still recognized as a fundamental life
force of human existence . There is a universal recognition of privacy as a necessary steppingstone for fulfilling the
promise of individual liberty.15 Yet, technology’s advancement has
allowed individual privacy to rapidly
shrink along many dimensions. With the reality of drones buzzing the domestic skylines, the time is now
for an introspective look at the emerging chasm between privacy law’s inert contour and
technology’s innovative trajectory. 16 In this evolving reality, mass adoption of drones for law enforcement is simply
following the contour of least resistance by developing societal conditions that are conducive to lowering individuals’ subjective
evaluation of privacy. Will the drone culture destroy individual privacy for the post-modern individual? Is domestic surveillance a
constitutionally sanctified governmental intrusion? The facial inconsistency of this new paradigm calls for a reevaluation of both the
constitutional framework and ethical dialectic of this drone-induced privacy intrusion.17
An erosion of the Fourth Amendment protection of privacy by UAV’s threatens
U.S. democracy.
Abigail Rehfuss, February 6, 2015, Abigail Rehfuss is an Associate at Rehfuss, Liguori &
Associates, P.C., “THE DOMESTIC USE OF DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 314-335,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313-Rehfuss.pdf, p. 332-333
The Fourth Amendment, as it is now interpreted, is highly inadequate to protect the substantive
privacy rights that Americans have always enjoyed. Arguably, our society has simply evolved towards requiring
less privacy than it did centuries ago, possibly because some people are willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience or have come to
accept this reduced privacy as an inevitable consequence of increased luxury, but privacy
will never stop being a
fundamental human right.135 While the introduction of drones on the home front has the potential to offer many
significant advantages on a number of different levels, sufficient safeguards need to be in place if the integrity
of our democratic system of government is to be preserved. Technology moves faster than the
laws that govern it.136 This axiomatic principle has compelled numerous states throughout the
country to become actively engaged in efforts to implement appropriate safeguards to prevent
the abuse and misuse of modern day technology, particularly commercial drones.137 Undoubtedly, the states are viable
alternative sources equipped to rectify current Fourth Amendment issues. In fact, as the late Justice Brennan once argued,
“Americans should look to the states as a beacon of protection in a ‘new federalism.’”138 According to an ACLU review of state
constitutions and jurisprudence, a significant number of states have departed from the Supreme Court in areas where the states
consider federal jurisprudence to be problematic.139 Some states have shifted away from the third party doctrine test simply
because they feel their state constitutions lack the language to sustain it, while other states whose constitutions practically mirror
the federal constitution have similarly paved a different path.140
Democracy key to avoid extinction.
Larry Diamond, 1995, Larry Diamond is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Promoting
Democracy in the 1990s, December, http://wwics.si.edu/subsites/ccpdc/pubs/di/1.htm)
OTHER THREATS This hardly exhausts the lists of threats to our security and well-being in the coming years and decades. In the
former Yugoslavia nationalist aggression tears at the stability of Europe and could easily spread. The flow of illegal drugs intensifies
through increasingly powerful international crime syndicates that have made common cause with authoritarian regimes and have
utterly corrupted the institutions of tenuous, democratic ones. Nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons continue to proliferate.
The very source of life on Earth, the global ecosystem, appears increasingly endangered. Most of these
new and unconventional threats to security are associated with or aggravated by the weakness
or absence of democracy, with its provisions for legality, accountability, popular sovereignty, and openness. LESSONS OF
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY The experience of this century offers important lessons. Countries that govern themselves
in a truly democratic fashion do not go to war with one another. They do not aggress against
their neighbors to aggrandize themselves or glorify their leaders. Democratic governments do
not ethnically "cleanse" their own populations, and they are much less likely to face ethnic insurgency.
Democracies do not sponsor terrorism against one another. They do not build weapons of mass
destruction to use on or to threaten one another. Democratic countries form more reliable,
open, and enduring trading partnerships. In the long run they offer better and more stable climates for investment.
They are more environmentally responsible because they must answer to their own citizens, who organize to protest the destruction
of their environments. They are better bets to honor international treaties since they value legal obligations and because their
openness makes it much more difficult to breach agreements in secret. Precisely because, within
their own borders, they
respect competition, civil liberties, property rights, and the rule of law, democracies are the only
reliable foundation on which a new world order of international security and prosperity can be
built.
Drones 1AC – Plan
The United States Federal Government should substantially curtail its domestic
surveillance by passing the Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of
2013.
Drones 1AC – Solvency
DAPTA solves - addresses Fourth Amendment concerns while establishing new
norms to limit purpose and capability.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1868-1872
The recently
proposed Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2013187 (DAPTA) would, if
enacted, fill many critical privacy holes. The bill would amend the FAA Modernization and Reform
Act of 2012 to provide guidance and limitations absent from that legislation regarding the
integration of drones into the national airspace system.188 Acknowledging the “potential for unmanned aircraft
system technology to enable invasive and pervasive surveillance without adequate privacy protections,” the bill presents a
detailed series of findings and requirements that would severely restrict the ability of law
enforcement to use drones as evidence-gathering machines.189 For example, the Secretary of Transportation
would first be required to carry out a study, in conjunction with other executive agencies, that will identify “any potential threats to
privacy protections posed by the integration of” drones.190 The
bill would constrain the Secretary of Transportation (and
thereby, the FAA) from approving drone licenses for organizations, including law enforcement bodies, that do
not comply with data collection requirements in the bill.191 Law enforcement agencies would have to
supply a data minimization statement before they would be permitted to operate drones for police
purposes.192 The inclusion of these extra requirements for police is potentially significant, beyond the public notice provided by
these reporting requirements. The bill explicitly interjects the authority of the Secretary of Transportation into the privacy
considerations of drone operation.193 This potentially subjects law enforcement agencies to an extra layer of review and an extra
forum to which people can bring their grievances. The bill also prohibits generalized surveillance, with exceptions
made for exigent circumstances.194 Even in those exigent circumstances, however, documentation “justifying the exception” shall
be submitted to the Secretary of Transportation, (6) the specific steps that will be taken to mitigate any possible impact identified
under paragraph (5), including steps to protect against unauthorized disclosure of any information or data described in paragraph
(4), such as the use of encryption methods and other security features that will be used; (7) a telephone number or electronic mail
address that an individual with complaints about the operation of the unmanned aircraft system may use to report such complaints
and to request confirmation that personally identifiable data relating to such individual has been collected; (8) in the case that
personally identifiable data relating to such individual has been collected, a reasonable process for such individual to request to
obtain such data in a timely and an intelligible manner; (9) in the case that a request described in paragraph (8) is denied, a process
by which such individual may obtain the reasons for the denial and challenge the denial; and (10) in the case that personally
identifiable data relating to such individual has been collected, a process by which such individual may challenge the accuracy of
such data and, if the challenge is successful, have such data erased or amended. The
bill would disallow the direct or
indirect gathering of that evidence without a warrant.196 This is perhaps the most important
aspect of the bill because it imposes resource costs (namely, time and money) on law enforcement agencies
that will likely have the effect of reducing the number of drones in the air.197 Any bill with a realistic
hope of controlling the use of such an inexpensive and nimble technology must impose these kinds of procedural impediments, the
added benefit of which is to inform the public about how and when the government uses this technology. Finally,
the bill
articulates a comprehensive system of enforcement and remedies, including injunctive relief, and,
in the case of intentional violations, treble damages.198 While it is unknown how many of these protections will survive the
legislative process, in its present state the
bill systematically addresses the most fundamental Fourth
Amendment concerns raised by police drone use. This legislation, or another bill like it, would validate the notion
that drones are different and deserve special safeguards because of their unique capabilities.199 In order to stay ahead of the
technology’s problems, substantial safeguards should be in place before drones’ widespread use.
DAPTA is needed to provide opposition to drone proliferation.
Max Bauer, 2013, Max Bauer works for the ACLU of Massachusetts, “Domestic Drone
Surveillance Usage: Threats and Opportunities for Regulation,” PrivacySOS,
https://privacysos.org/domestic_drones
While the acceleration of local law enforcement to military-style operations may be inevitable, [26] legislative and public
opposition to drone proliferation can be successful. Already, efforts to restrict drone surveillance powers have
been successful in multiple state legislatures. And communities have rebelled against the technology. Earlier this year in Seattle,
public pressure caused the Seattle Police Department to cancel its drone program. [27] Around the same time, Charlottesville,
Virginia passed a law banning any use of drones by its municipal agencies, becoming the first city in the country to pass anti-drone
legislation. [28] More recently, the governor of Florida signed a drone-regulation bill, endorsed by both Republicans and the ACLU,
which requires a judge to approve most drone surveillance operations (with an imminent danger exception). [29] A bill pending in
Massachusetts provides similar protections. [30] The federal government also has opportunities to act on drone
privacy. In Congress, several bills have been introduced to reign in domestic drone usage. The Preserving Freedom from
Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2013 requires a probable-cause warrant for drone surveillance, with some exceptions. [31] (Senator
Rand Paul filed similar legislation during the previous session but has not re-introduced it.) Another bill, the Preserving American
Privacy Act of 2013, prohibits domestic drones except with warrants, or for border searches or emergencies. The bill also requires
government entities to file a detailed data collection statements about their drone surveillance. [32] Then there's the
Drone
Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2013, which would amend the FAA Modernization and
Reform Act of 2012, requiring a study of privacy concerns, a data collection statement for each
drone operation, including a data minimization statement, and enforcement mechanisms
including license revocation for violators of these requirements.
The FAA’s guidelines are primarily put in place to provide an avenue for future
domestic drone activity expansion – a change in Congressional attitudes is
needed.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1842-1845
The FAA has issued several sets of guidelines outlining its treatment of domestic drones.51 Prior to
2012, a rigid, individualized licensing process stymied the prospect of widespread drone usage in the United States.52 The FAA approval
system now employed requires careful, case-by-case agency evaluation of the operator’s request to
use drones.53 The FAA also has different approval standards for drones based on size and
capability.54 Many smaller drones, and drones operated recreationally as model airplanes, are currently permitted by regulation to operate at
altitudes much lower than the minimum acceptable altitudes for helicopters and fixed-wing aircrafts.55 Government users—including local
law enforcement and public universities—may operate drones only after obtaining a Certificate of Waiver or
Authorization (COA) from the FAA.56 The COA restricts the drone operation to a defined airspace
and “includes special provisions unique to the proposed operation.”57 Designation of the drone
as an experimental aircraft is another avenue for drone licensing, but public-use drones typically go through the
more detailed COA process.58 The FAA will sometimes deny COA requests, but those denials are almost
invariably for safety-of-flight reasons, not privacy considerations.59 A new mandate for the expanded use of
drones, however, will scrap the current policies of case-by-case authorization. Congress has made clear its intention to
rapidly expand domestic drone activity. In February 2012, the legislative reauthorization of the FAA carried with it a requirement
that the Agency promulgate regulations and develop a comprehensive plan for the integration of drones into the national airspace system.60 As a
result, by some estimates there could be 30,000 or more drones operating in U.S. skies in the next few decades.61 The increasing law enforcement
preference for warrantless spying techniques—for example, the Justice Department’s warrantless surveillance has increased 600% in the past
decade62—may help explain why a third of the public fears that the use of drones by police will threaten their privacy interests.63
Drone surveillance systems are inefficient and create new problems – utilize
biases, which can harm people they’re monitoring.
Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan, August 2011, Tyler Wall is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Justice Studies as Eastern Kentucky University and Torin Monahan is an Associate
Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“Surveillance and Violence from Afar: The Politics of Drones and Liminal Security-scapes,”
Theoretical Criminology vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 239-254, SAGE Journals, p. 240
In addition to being used in warzones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and northern Pakistan, UAV
systems are being used for
managing emergencies caused by natural disasters (Dean, 2007), spying on foreign drug cartels
(Padgett, 2009), finding criminal activity in urban and rural areas (Lewis, 2010; Public Intelligence, 2010), and
conducting border control operations (Walters and Weber, 2010). While drones appear to affirm the primacy of visual
modalities of surveillance, their underlying rationalities are more nuanced and problematic. As complex technological systems,
drones are both predicated upon and productive of an actuarial form of surveillance. They are employed to amass data about risk
probabilities and then manage populations or eliminate network nodes considered to exceed acceptable risk thresholds. In part,
drones are forms of surveillance in keeping with the precepts of categorical suspicion and social sorting that define other
contemporary surveillance systems (Gandy, 1993; Murakami Wood et al., 2006; Lyon, 2007; Monahan, 2010). Drones
may
perform predominately in the discursive register of automated precision and positive
identification of known threats, but in practice, these surveillance systems and their agents
actively interpret ambiguous information that continuously defies exact matches or clear
responses. In the process, UAV systems may force homogenization upon difference, thereby
reducing variation to functional categories that correspond to the needs and biases of the
operators, not the targets, of surveillance. All surveillance and dataveillance systems are prone to errors
that have harsh ramifications for the subjects whose flawed ‘data doubles’ haunt them (Haggerty
and Ericson, 2006). Drone-based surveillance systems are no exception, as witnessed by verified cases of ‘collateral
damage’ caused by drone strikes (Bergen and Tiedemann, 2010).
A drastic increase in drones would be catastrophic – too many technological
problems to make it safe.
Michael J. Jordan, March 15, 2006, Michael Jordan is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army
and student at the U.S. Army War College in the Strategic Studies Master’s Program, “MERGING
THE TRIBES: STREAMLINING DOD’S ACQUISITION OF UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS,” USAWC
Strategy Research Project, pp. 1-17, p. 11
Senior Commanders have repeatedly identified airspace control and deconfliction issues as a
potentially serious problem. In fact, there have already been three collisions between small UAS
and helicopters, and the airspace deconfliction issues have still not been resolved. 81 Theater airspace control
measures are the responsibility of the Joint Force Commander, who normally delegates airspace control authority to the Joint Force
Air Component Commander (JFACC). The JFACC is responsible for developing the overall airspace control plan and produces the
airspace control order (ACO). The ACO and the corresponding air tasking order (ATO) serve as the single-source documents for
integration and deconfliction of fixed wing aviation, rotary-wing aviation, and indirect fires.82 UAS missions scheduled on the ATO
must comply with procedures in the ACO, and normally operate in a specifically designated restricted operating zone, which is
airspace specially reserved and protected for the duration of UAS operations. But as UAS continue to proliferate and acquire new
missions and capabilities, the deconlifction issues on the battlefield have become increasingly complex. The range, endurance,
performance, and flexibility of UAS have constantly improved, which has allowed commanders to seek additional opportunities to
exploit the full capabilities of the systems. This places demands for frequency and airspace deconlifction procedures. The increased
complexity of airspace control measures required for deconfliction are likely to become so complex and ponderous that airpower
will lose its inherent flexibility, and manned aircraft will find it difficult to operate efficiently in such complex environment. As UAS
become the predominant imagery collection systems across virtually every echelon of command, the need to coordinate, share, and
integrate into the larger warfighting community has become painfully apparent. Due
in large part to persistence,
range, and improved communications capability, UAS no longer serve a single user or even a
single Service. Recent combat operations have highlighted the deficiencies in several areas,
including “lack of standard communications frequencies and waveforms, lack of standardized
sensor products, lack of standardized data for both sensors and platform information, and lack
of a common tasking system that crosses the traditional command seams.”83 The 2005 Roadmap also identifies
“issues concerning training, logistics support, airspace integration, and CONOPS that could benefit from
greater cross-Service interoperability.”84 Air Force officials worry that, as more UAS from every service join the battle, it
will become increasingly difficult to manage and coordinate air combat operations, because each UAS comes with its own unique
software and mission-control stations.85 Finally, as UAS capabilities increase, the services will seek to expand the roles and missions
UAS are expected to perform. UAS have traditionally been used for ISR, but the weaponization of the Predator and the development
of the Joint Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle clearly demonstrate that the role of the UAS is expanding. In fact, in 2004 the Joint
Staff had each Combatant Commander rank the importance of 18 different types of missions for future UAS, to include electronic
warfare, combat search and rescue, and strike.86 While there is no doubt that the services will expect more from future UAS, the
challenge will be ensuring the services do not acquire redundant capabilities or attempt to perform missions that are not included in
their core competencies. For example, brigade commanders with a robust UAS capability should not seek to use the stroke capability
inherent in the systems to perform missions that have traditionally belonged to manned aircraft.
***INHERENCY***
FAA pushing to expand
The FAA is expediting the process to streamline drone use for domestic
surveillance.
Philip J. Hiltner, 2013, Phil Hiltner is currently a lawyer in the Washtenaw County Office of
Public Defender’s Office and also works for the Law Offices of Jonathan Dills, North Carolina
Thirteenth Prosecutorial District, “THE DRONES ARE COMING: USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL
VEHICLES FOR POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND ITS FOURTH AMENDMENT IMPLICATIONS,” Wake
Forest Journal of Law and Policy vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 397-415,
http://lawpolicyjournal.law.wfu.edu/files/2013/06/Vol.3-2-Comment-Hiltner.pdf, p. 398-399
The Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) projects that as many as 30,000 drones could be patrolling
the United States’ airspace by the year 2020.6 In 2011, the FAA issued 313 certificates authorizing government
agencies to use UASs, 295 of which were still active at the end of the year.7 Furthermore, Congress recently passed
legislation requiring the FAA to create a system that will expedite the process of issuing Certificates of
Waiver and Authorization (“COAs”) for both civil and public unmanned aircraft systems.8 This was in large part a
response to pressure placed on the legislature by the burgeoning UAS industry,9 as the value of the potential UAS market has been
estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.10 The
combination of the forthcoming streamlined
procedures for UAS licensure and the opportunity for big profits almost guarantee that the use
of UASs by domestic police forces is here to stay. Increased police use of UASs is not, in itself, a bad thing. These
machines offer the opportunity for police officers to more safely conduct surveillance11 and apprehend criminals.12 Drones can also
be used for noncriminal functions, such as searching for missing persons and responding to automobile accidents or chemical
spills.13 They are also less expensive to purchase and operate than traditional helicopters. The Montgomery County Police
Department outside of Houston, Texas estimates that its UAS costs $30 per hour to operate as compared to the $500 per hour
minimum for operating a helicopter.14 Improved public safety at a lower cost is better for everyone.
Drone authorization has been going on for years prior to the FMRA – only
codified national airspace policy.
Wells C. Bennett, December 2012, Wells C. Bennett is a visiting fellow in National Security
Law at the Brookings Institution, “Unmanned at Any Speed: Bringing Drones into Our National
Airspace,” The Brookings Institute, no. 55, pp. 1-20,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/12/14-dronesbennett/1214_drones_bennett.pdf, p. 10-11
In carrying its FMRA-mandated assignments, the FAA won’t have to paint on a blank canvass: in
fact, domestic unmanned flight had been on its radar screen for a good time before the statute’s
enactment. The FAA has permitted UAS operations – albeit on a limited and ad hoc basis – since as
early as 2003. Thus FMRA is mostly an effort to accelerate and expand a policy that has existed,
if only in rough form, for nearly a decade.54 (The lone exception here, again, has to do with civil UAS: FMRA
contemplates the widespread commercial operation of drones – something the law currently forbids.) To put the point another way:
with FMRA, Congress expressed its dissatisfaction with the gradual development of domestic UAS norms. These days, the
name
of the game is speeding things up. Officially, the FAA first glanced towards domestic unmanned flight back in 1981, by
issuing voluntary standards for hobbyists’ use of remote-controlled model aircraft. This terse, one-page document recommended a
maximum altitude of four hundred feet and encouraged amateur pilots to fly their aircraft at a reasonably safe distance from
populated areas.55 At the time, no other policies or laws touched on domestic UAS flight, in no small part because, apart from
enthusiasts’ remote-controlled planes – and experimental projects conducted by the military – unmanned aircraft did not make
consistent use of the skies. Nevertheless, by issuing some standards, the FAA raised the question of whether, and how, unmanned
machines eventually might do just that. The answer has a lot to do with technology. The next twenty years would witness a spike in
UAS research, design, and manufacturing, even as UAS remained mostly a military concern. 56 But the more the military harvested
the technology, the more evident its civilian applications became. That, in turn, created pressure to relax some of the restrictions on
domestic UAS flight. The progression evidently was on Congress’s mind in 2003, when it passed the Vision 100 —The Century of
Aviation Reauthorization Act. In broad strokes, this statute sketched out an ambitious transformation of the aerospace industry and
of the regulation of domestic air traffic. Essential to this was the creation of the Next Generation Air Transportation System or
“NextGen” – a modernized, satellite-based aviation management scheme that, Congress hoped, would address the exponentially
increasing volume of aviation in the United States.57 As legislators imagined things, NextGen essentially would “accommodate a
wide range of aircraft operations, including airlines, air taxis, helicopters, general aviation, and unmanned aerial vehicles.”58 A
special entity within the FAA, the Joint Planning and Development Office, was established in order to realize that objective, along
with the others Congress had set forth in Vision 100. 59 Of course none of this meant changing federal law immediately, so as to
permit domestic UAS flights. Still, by
including unmanned aircraft in its long-term revamping of the
aviation sector, the legislature made explicit what the FAA had implied so many years earlier,
when it issued its model aircraft standards. In the not-toodistant future, more and more aircraft would not have a
human pilot inside.
Agencies want drones
Various police departments are looking to utilize UAV’s for routine law
enforcement activities.
Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan, August 2011, Tyler Wall is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Justice Studies as Eastern Kentucky University and Torin Monahan is an Associate
Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“Surveillance and Violence from Afar: The Politics of Drones and Liminal Security-scapes,”
Theoretical Criminology vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 239-254, SAGE Journals, p. 245
In 2007, the
Houston Police Department in Texas controversially tested the use of unarmed
surveillance drones, with the eventual objective of monitoring traffic, aiding evacuations during natural disasters, helping
with search and rescue operations, and assisting with other ‘tactical’ police incidents (Dean, 2007). The Executive Assistant Police
Chief admitted that UAVs over the skies of Houston ‘could include covert police actions’ and that the police force was ‘not ruling out
someday using the drones for writing traffic tickets’ (Dean, 2007). In another example, a confidential document revealed that the
Las Vegas Police Department may have been using UAVs above the city of Las Vegas as early as
2007 (Public Intelligence, 2010). The document further outlines a plan for UAVs to help monitor special
events and discusses ways in which the Las Vegas UAVs are integrated into Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) ‘fusion centers’ to assist with the investigation of suspicious activity reports (Public
Intelligence, 2010). As noted in other work on the militarization of cities, the application of drone technologies to
urban areas promises to extend the surveillance networks within which people are caught
(Murakami Wood, 2007) and intensify the policing of cultural difference and political dissent that have historically marked cities as
vibrant, democratic spaces (Graham, 2010).
Drone use is starting to increase domestically.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1837-1839
Drone technology burst onto the public scene during America’s relatively recent military
involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq, 25 but remotely controlled aircraft have been around in one form or another for nearly
one hundred years.26 Indeed, drones have long been a part of public imagination through works of literature and science fiction.27
Yet their
presence has often seemed distant. Now, rather than on a far-off planet or above a foreign battlefield,
the next stop for drones is directly above American backyards. Drones go by many names,28 but they are
essentially aircraft remotely controlled by pilots on the ground, by preprogrammed instruction,
or by pilots in chase aircraft.29 Dozens of agencies have already applied for and use drones to
perform agency functions.30 Drone certificate holders presently include more than one hundred
agencies, universities, companies, and organizations.31 Those groups include the U.S. Air Force, numerous local
police and sheriff’s departments, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, universities and community colleges, the
Department of Agriculture, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Raytheon Company, and Blackwater Airships
LLC.32 From that sample of interested parties alone, drone technology’s economic and lifesaving usefulness appears limited only by
the imagination. Wirelessly controlled airplanes marketed as “spy drones” dotted the shelves during the 2012 holiday shopping
season at major U.S. retailers.33 The number of anticipated uses for commercial and private drones seems to be matched in
quantity only by the number of news articles fearing their misuse.34 Pleas for caution and safeguards are understandable, given the
types of presently available drones and the knowledge that technology tends to shrink size and expand capabilities over time.
No guidelines
FBI is using drones for surveillance purposes now – no guidelines in place.
Kevin Johnson, June 20, 2013, “Mueller tells lawmakers FBI has used drones in U.S.,” USA
Today, Ebsco Host
FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged Wednesday that the agency has deployed drones to
conduct surveillance in the U.S., and that the bureau is developing guidelines for their future law
enforcement use. Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the unmanned aerial vehicles, whose use by law
enforcement has raised questions from privacy advocates and civil liberties groups, are deployed in "a very minimal way and very
seldom." Responding to questions posed by lawmakers, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Mueller said he would provide
more details about how information and images collected during surveillance operations are used and stored. He said drone use was
"narrowly focused on particular cases and particular needs." Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the panel's ranking Republican, said that
Attorney General Eric Holder in previous testimony had said the Drug Enforcement Administration and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives had "purchased drones and were exploring their use." "Absent from (Holder's) response was an indication
of how the FBI was using" drone technology, he said. Chris Calabrese, American Civil Liberties
Union's legislative
counsel on privacy issues, said it was "a little troubling" that the bureau had begun using the
technology as guidelines were still being developed: "If you are going to use potentially invasive surveillance, it
seems like you should have the standards in advance." Sen. Mark Udall, D-Utah, also expressed concern that the FBI was only in the
initial stages of "developing privacy guidelines that protect civil liberties." Drones "have the potential to more efficiently and
effectively perform law enforcement duties," he said, "but the American people expect the FBI and other government agencies to
first and foremost protect their constitutional rights." In a separate written statement following the director's testimony, the FBI said
drone use is limited to learning "critical information that otherwise would be difficult to obtain without introducing serious risk to
law enforcement personnel."
There is a large amount of flexibility within FAA drone regulations that allow for
them to be operated in national airspace.
Wells C. Bennett, December 2012, Wells C. Bennett is a visiting fellow in National Security
Law at the Brookings Institution, “Unmanned at Any Speed: Bringing Drones into Our National
Airspace,” The Brookings Institute, no. 55, pp. 1-20,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/12/14-dronesbennett/1214_drones_bennett.pdf, p. 12-13
Other regulations do come into play, though, and can frustrate unmanned flight. This category includes some of the FAA’s bedrock
safety principles, like the requirement that “vigilance shall be maintained by each person operating an aircraft so as to see and avoid
other aircraft.”62 Not even the most lens-laden drone can “see” neighboring air traffic like an ordinary pilot can. Sure, a groundbased operator or observer might be able to see passing planes with his or her naked eye – but only if the UAS does not stray
beyond the line of sight, the skies are clear and sufficient daylight remains. For these reasons, in 2005, the FAA publicly concluded
that UAS could not meet the “see and avoid” standard – and thus also could not fly in strict accordance with federal law.63 See and
avoid being out of the question, the UAS community has focused instead on developing a means for UAS to “sense and avoid”
potential collisions.64 Of course, simply
because a drone cannot satisfy every jot and tittle of federal
aviation law does not mean it can never be operated safely. The FAA long has recognized this, by
authorizing domestic UAS operations on a case-by-case basis. The agency’s approach has been to consider
individual requests to exempt UAS from otherwise prohibitive aviation rules. There are two exemption regimes.
Which one applies depends upon the intended use of a particular UAS. For a “public” use – say, a
survey of a controlled fire’s progress through a national park – the applicant must obtain a Certificate of Waiver
or Authorization (“COA”) from the FAA before it may operate the UAS. Conversely, if the UAS operation is
private in nature – or “civil,” to use the aviation jargon – then another body of regulations is triggered.
Private concerns wishing to fly a UAS must apply for a “Special Airworthiness Certificate” in the “experimental” category (“SAC”).
The COA and SAC procedures differ. In theory, for example, a COA may issue for any public purpose. By contrast, an SAC authorizes
private drone flights only for research and development, market survey and crew training objectives. (Again, Civil UAS cannot fly on
a for-hire basis.) And because governments drive most of today’s drones, the COA process naturally has done the bulk of the
exemption work. Early this year, the FAA claimed that, since 2006, it had approved between 700 and 750 COAs65, as opposed to
only 94 SACs – though the FAA last tallied SAC numbers in July of 2011.66 Still, regardless of whether the applicant seeks a COA or an
SAC, the point of the exercise is the same. Either way, the FAA examines the proposed UAS project, and asks if, despite the failure to
meet this or that safety standard, the applicant nevertheless can mitigate the risks of non-compliance. If the answer is “yes,” then a
COA or SAC will issue – and the UAS can fly, subject to the conditions imposed by the FAA in granting the exemption. The agency
might, for example, insist on flight within the operator’s visual line of sight, or with a manned aircraft tailing along. Such has been
the FAA’s method since at least 2003, when it permitted the Department of Defense to operate, on a nation-wide basis, Northrop
Grumman’s Global Hawk Aerial Reconnaissance System. The criteria underlying that authorization were spelled out two years later,
in what appeared to be the first official FAA policy regarding the temporary licensure of domestic drones.67 Among other
things, the agency said it would require UAS pilots to understand the aviation rules relevant to
the airspace where their robots planned to fly; the UAS also would have to possess a “lost-link” capability, so as to
permit the aircraft’s safe recovery in the event of a break in communications between operator and aircraft.68 Such guidance
accompanied an increase in drone approvals. In 2005, for example, the FAA blessed a bid by General Atomics to fly, on an
experimental basis, its Altair UAS.
***NUTS/BOLTS***
Drones cause accidents
The frequency of UAV accidents ensures hampered national airspace
integration.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
6-7
The technical capabilities of
the UAVs have been tested in a military context, but safety and
technical issues need to be addressed if the program is to be expanded domestically. Chief
among these issues is the FAA’s concerns about the NAS and whether UAVs can be safely
incorporated into the nation’s crowded skies. It has been noted that UAVs suffer accident rates
multiple times higher than manned aircraft. However, in an effort to support the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, DOD
fielded UAVs such as Predator and Global Hawk before their development programs were complete. Thus, the UAV accident rate
might be lower if these systems had been allowed to mature under the full development program.
UAV’s could potentially cause as much damage as a large corporate jet when it
crashes – accidents happen frequently.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 10
UAVs may be expected to crash more frequently, the potential for catastrophic consequences is less given that these
vehicles do not weigh enough or carry enough fuel to cause major damage on the ground. On the other hand, larger UAVs, like
the MQ-9 Reaper or the RQ-4 Global Hawk, can potentially cause as much damage as a mid- to
large-sized corporate jet. However, safety considerations in the design and operation of these more complex systems may
reduce the likelihood of a crash. Additional procedures that can be incorporated into safety regulations for unmanned aircraft
systems may further mitigate flight risks. These procedures may include • formal risk assessments for systems certification and
mission planning; • development of ground impact models and mitigation plans to reduce risks to persons and property on the
ground;23 and • structured training and certification requirements for unmanned aircraft pilots, systems operators, and other safety
critical personnel.
Human interaction is required for UAV’s causing crashes – new forms of training
needs to happen.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 10
The issue of training and certification requirements for unmanned aircraft systems personnel
raises a much broader issue regarding the role of humans in these systems. Indeed, the term
unmanned aircraft system (UAS) is a misnomer: while the aircraft themselves may be
unmanned, the systems needed to operate them safely depend extensively on human
interaction. Although drones operate without a pilot on board, human performance is a major consideration in setting policy for
the integration of unmanned aircraft systems in domestic airspace. Key
human factors to be considered include
operator interfaces and controls and the training and qualifications of drone pilots, systems operators, and other safety
critical personnel. The previously mentioned 2006 crash of a UAV operated by Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) illustrates the importance of these human factors considerations. On April 25, 2006,
a Predator B (MQ-9) drone crashed in a remote area along the U.S.-Mexico border near Nogales, AZ following a loss of engine
power. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the probable cause of the mishap was the drone pilot’s
failure to follow appropriate procedures when switching to an alternate control console in the ground control station following a
computer malfunction.24 The error resulted in the pilot inadvertently cutting off the vehicle’s fuel supply. CBP had only been
operating the Predator B aircraft since September 2005, eight months prior to the mishap. NTSB concluded that during this time CBP
was providing a minimal amount of operational oversight of its UAS program and cited its inadequate surveillance of the program as
a contributing factor in the crash.
UAV’s suffer from high accident rates due to an inability in adapting to
differences in weather and climate.
Abigail Rehfuss, February 6, 2015, Abigail Rehfuss is an Associate at Rehfuss, Liguori &
Associates, P.C., “THE DOMESTIC USE OF DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 314-335,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313-Rehfuss.pdf,p. 323
Despite the marked advantages of drone technology, a 2003 report raised concerns about the
high accident rate of UAVs when its findings indicated that UAV accident rates are “multiple times higher than that of
manned aircraft.”70 One projected reason for this emanates from the fact that the advent and
development of UAV technology is relatively recent and ongoing.71 Ultimately, it has been suggested that
“there is less redundancy built into the operating system of UAVs than of manned aircraft and until
redundant systems are perfected mishap rates are expected to remain high[er]” than crash rates of manned aircraft.72
Inclement weather further threatens UAVs surveillance capability, especially those UAVs that are only
equipped with an ElectroOptical (EO) camera and Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) equipment.73 In cloudy conditions
and high humidity climates, the imagery produced by EO and FLIR equipment can become extremely
distorted.74 Moreover, it has been further estimated that unlike control system failures in manned aircraft where a well-trained
pilot is better positioned to discover the source of the problem due to his or her proximity to the issue in question, an operator of a
UAV is at a significant disadvantage because he or she is much further removed from the problematic event.75 Regardless, as one
commentator points out, “‘[t]here tend to be more mishaps and mistakes with any new technology, manned or unmanned’ . . . .
When the kinks get worked out and expertise builds, ‘crash rates tend to go down.’”76
Drones are anti-immigration
UAV’s are utilized for domestic surveillance purposes – immigration.
Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan, August 2011, Tyler Wall is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Justice Studies as Eastern Kentucky University and Torin Monahan is an Associate
Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“Surveillance and Violence from Afar: The Politics of Drones and Liminal Security-scapes,”
Theoretical Criminology vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 239-254, SAGE Journals, p. 244
By meshing aerial reconnaissance with aerial bombardment, drones function primarily as
technologies of war. Yet UAVs are also being used as technologies of state surveillance and
policing and are deployed in security-scapes other than military combat zones. For instance, in the USA drones are
increasingly being used to police foreign migrants in relationship to its territorial borderzones,
particularly by locating people who are attempting to enter the country illegally. In addition, as we will detail below, some
police departments are now conceiving of drones as surveillance devices that might prove useful
in the routine policing and monitoring of domestic territories. Soon after President Obama announced in May
2010 that 1200 National Guard soldiers (Werner and Billeaud, 2010) would be deployed to the already heavily militarized
Downloaded from tcr.sagepub.com at MISSOURI STATE UNIV on June 1, 2015 244 Theoretical Criminology 15(3) and surveilled US–
Mexico border (Dunn, 1996; Pallitto and Heyman, 2008), conservative Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wrote a letter to Obama urging
him to send also what she referred to as ‘aviation assets’, specifically military UAVs and helicopters (Lach, 2010).
Border security is trying to utilize drones to prevent terrorist crossings along –
ineffective despite the amount they’re spending.
Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan, August 2011, Tyler Wall is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Justice Studies as Eastern Kentucky University and Torin Monahan is an Associate
Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“Surveillance and Violence from Afar: The Politics of Drones and Liminal Security-scapes,”
Theoretical Criminology vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 239-254, SAGE Journals, p. 244
This appeal for drones at the border obscures the fact that UAVs have already been providing
aerial surveillance over US border regions (Shachtman, 2005; Gilson, 2010). Since 2006, the USA has spent
approximately $100 million for UAVs on both the southern and northern US borders as part of its
efforts to create a so-called virtual fence (Canwest News Service, 2007). As of 2010 the US Customs and Border
Protection (CBP) was operating six unarmed Predator drones for overhead surveillance missions
along the US–Mexico border, five of which were based in Brewer’s state of Arizona (Gilson, 2010). Since late 2007 or early 2008, the
CBP has been testing drones in US/ Canada border regions (Canwest News Service, 2007). CBP officials credit their drones with
‘helping bust 15,000 lbs of pot and 4,000 illegal immigrants’ (Gilson, 2010). In the words of a defense executive: ‘It
is quite easy
to envision a future in which (UAVs), unaffected by pilot fatigue, provide 24–7 border and port
surveillance to protect against terrorist intrusion … Other examples [of possible uses] are limited
only by our imagination’ (McCullagh, 2006). Clearly, drones have been enlisted in efforts to restrict
illegal immigration and combat the war on drugs. The notion of ‘drug drones’ has become
fashionable in international drug enforcement, especially for use in maritime operations (Padgett,
2009). For instance, under the name ‘Monitoreo’, which is Spanish for monitoring, the US Southern Command recently conducted a
drone ‘testing project’ that mobilized an Israeli-made $6.5 million Heron drone from El Salvador’s Comalapa Air Base to track down
suspected drug cartel members who were allegedly using the open waters to smuggle drugs into the USA (Padgett, 2009; see also
Shachtman, 2009). By remaining thousands of feet in the air for up to 20-hours while being equipped with a ‘set of sensors better
suited for spotting the subs [mini-submarines] that have become so popular among narco-cartels’ (Shachtman, 2009), this particular
Heron drone promises to be a longer endurance technology than conventional planes commonly used in drug surveillance.
Multiple problems with UAV’s prove it won’t be effective at patrolling the
border.
Jason Blazakis, January 2, 2004, Jason Blazakis is an analyst in the Social Legislation Domestic
Social Policy Division, “Border Security and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” Congressional Research
Service Report for Congress, pp. 1-6, p. 4-5
Despite potential benefits of using UAVs for homeland security, various problems encountered in
the past may hinder UAV implementation on the border. There are concerns regarding UAVs high
accident rate. Currently, the UAV accident rate is 100 times higher than that of manned
aircraft.17 Because UAV technology is still evolving there is less redundancy built into the operating system
of UAVs than of manned aircraft and until redundant systems are perfected mishap rates are expected to remain high.
Additionally, if control systems fail in a manned aircraft, a well-trained pilot is better positioned to find the source of the problem
because of his/her physical proximity. If a UAV encountered a similar system failure, or if
a UAV landing was attempted
during difficult weather conditions, the ground control pilot would be at a disadvantage because he
or she is removed from the event. Unlike a manned pilot, the remote pilot would not be able to assess
important sensory information such as wind speed.18 The key component of Operation Safeguard was to identify
potential threats crossing the southern border illegally. The surveillance capabilities of UAVs equipped with only
an E-O camera and Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) sensor have been limited in the past by
poor weather conditions. Cloudy conditions and high humidity climates can distort the imagery produced by E-O and FLIR
equipment. Although the Predator B is operating in the low-humidity environment of the Southwest, the effects of extreme climatic
or atmospheric conditions on its sensors reportedly can be mitigated if DHS decides to outfit the Predator B with a synthetic
aperture radar (SAR) system.19 Radars can produce high-resolution imagery in inclement weather. The ability of SAR to function
during adverse weather conditions sets it apart from optical or infrared systems.20 However, its ability
to track moving
targets is limited. This limitation can be mitigated by accompanying SAR with moving target indicator (MTI) radar technology.
Adding SAR and MTI to the Predator B’s platform could significantly enhance its operational capability for border missions. By adding
SAR and MTI to the UAV platform, however, the costs of using UAVs on the border would increase.
UAV’s are not as cost-effective as alternative technologies provided at a lower
cost – ineffective at curtailing illegal immigration.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
6
Questions as to the effectiveness of UAVs persist. Although “Homeland Security officials praised the (UAVs) as a
safe and important tool that … has contributed to the seizing of more than 22,000 pounds of marijuana and the apprehension of
5,000 illegal immigrants,” others disagree.24 “Unmanned aircraft serve a very useful role in military combat situations, but are not
economical or efficient in civilian law enforcement applications,” said T. J. Bonner, president of the Border Patrol union. “There
are a number of other technologies that are capable of providing a greater level of usefulness at
a far lower cost.”25 The DHS Inspector General noted that UAVs were less effective, in their limited tests,
than manned aircraft in supporting the apprehension of unauthorized aliens.26 In addition, the UAVs
were used to assist in the apprehensions of aliens who had already been detected by other means. However, the ability of UAVs to
maintain position for over 20 hours represents a significant advantage over manned aircraft; in the future, they may be used to
actually detect unauthorized entries as opposed to merely supporting apprehensions of aliens already detected. An issue for
Congress could entail whether UAVs are an effective tool for securing the border.
Drone use expanding
Drones are currently heavily restricted due to FAA regulations.
M. Ryan Calo, December 12, 2011, M. Ryan Calo is the Director for Privacy and Robotics at the
Center for Internet & Society, “The Drone as Privacy Catalyst,” Stanford Law Review Online vol.
64, issue 29, http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/drone-privacycatalyst?utm_source=publish2&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=www.kpbs.org
You might think drones would already be ubiquitous. There are, however, Federal Aviation
Administration restrictions on the use of unmanned aircraft systems, restrictions that date back several
years. Some public agencies have petitioned for waiver. Customs and Border Protection uses
drones to police our borders. Recently the state of Oklahoma asked the FAA for a blanket waiver of eighty miles of
airspace. Going forward, waiver may not be necessary. The FAA faces increasing pressure to relax
its restrictions and is considering rulemaking to reexamine drone use in domestic airspace.[4]
There is a lack of national airspace restrictions pertaining to UAV’s – just now
expanding into homeland security roles.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 2
Until recently, civilian interest in operating unmanned aircraft in U.S. airspace had largely been
limited to long-standing hobbyist use of radio-controlled model aircraft. The Academy of Model Aeronautics, a national
organization representing model aviation enthusiasts, was founded in 1936 and claims a membership of more than 150,000.4 It
serves as the chartering organization for more than 2,400 model airplane clubs across the United States. At
present, radiocontrolled model aircraft operate under a voluntary standard that generally permits flights only
below 400 feet above the surface. These guidelines specify that model aircraft be flown away from populated areas and
not in close proximity to full-scale aircraft. They further request coordination with air traffic facilities when planning operations
within 3 miles of an airport and suggest that model aircraft be adequately flight tested before being operated in front of spectators.5
While most radio-controlled model aircraft are powered by small propeller engines and weigh only a few pounds, some are jetpowered scale models weighing over 100 pounds. The
distinction between functional model aircraft and small
unmanned aerial vehicles is, therefore, largely based on an aircraft’s use rather than its size or
capabilities: whereas model aircraft are regarded as being used for recreational purposes, UAVs serve public use
missions, such as law enforcement and disaster relief, and commercial applications. The
prospect of robust growth in use of UAVs had triggered more formal analysis of the process for
granting approvals and development of regulations for UAV operations. The challenges associated with
safely integrating civilian UAVs into domestic airspace are discussed in detail below (see “Domestic Airspace Integration Issues”).
Flight missions considered to be “dirty, dull, or dangerous” are regarded as prime candidates for the use of
unmanned aircraft. Examples include aerial surveillance missions for homeland security, border
protection, and law enforcement; highway traffic monitoring; forest fire scouting; disaster response; aerial applications
of pesticides; pipeline and transmission line inspection; aerial surveying and geospatial imaging; atmospheric and environmental
science; wildlife and natural resources management; scientific data collection; and hurricane and severe storm monitoring. Some
industry experts foresee eventual use of unmanned aircraft for cargo transport. At this point, however, passenger-carrying UAVs are
not on the horizon. Industry analysts anticipate a robust market for unmanned aircraft systems, although the extent to which civilian
sales will contribute to this market is highly dependent on how the regulation of civilian drones proceeds. The Teal Group, an
aviation and aerospace consulting firm, predicted that, over the next ten years, annual spending on unmanned aircraft systems and
sensor payloads will increase by 73% and worldwide spending on unmanned aircraft systems will total $89 billion, with the United
States accounting for 62% of the research and development spending and 55% of procurement totals.6 Similarly, VisionGain, a UK-
based business information provider, foresees strong demand for unmanned aircraft payloads and subsystems, as well for UAV flight
training and simulation.7
Drones are resource intensive
Drones require an immense amount of personnel to provide support and keep
them in the air.
Scott Shane and Thom Shanker, October 1, 2011, “Strike Reflects U.S. Shift to Drones in
Terror Fight,” The New York Times,
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/drones_517/517V_2_2011_
Yemen_U.S._Drone_Strikes_Yemen_Reflects_U.S._Shift_to_Drone_Use_OCT_1_2011_NYTimes_
Questions_Targeting_Americans.pdf
The apparent simplicity
of a drone aloft, with its pilot operating from the United States, can be misleading. Behind
each aircraft is a team of 150 or more personnel, repairing and maintaining the plane and the
heap of ground technology that keeps it in the air, poring over the hours of videos and radio
signals it collects, and gathering the voluminous intelligence necessary to prompt a single strike.
No airspace
Public agencies utilizing unmanned aircraft have the disadvantage of not
designating airspace for their operation.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 15
One significant difference between military unmanned aircraft and unmanned aircraft operated
by other public agencies or by civilian users is that the military, for many years, has negotiated with
FAA to set aside airspace designated for military training, testing, and other purposes. Military
airspace consists of military operations areas, military training routes, test ranges, and other restricted or prohibited airspace.
Military operations areas and training routes are typically located in remote areas. While not set aside
exclusively for military use, these areas and routes are charted and documented, allowing other airspace users,
especially smaller general aviation aircraft, to be alert for military flight operations, including operations involving
unmanned aircraft. The military has also worked with FAA to set aside specific restricted and prohibited airspace (e.g., above
test sites and bombing ranges) to accommodate operations that pose greater risks to other air traffic. This airspace is charted and
documented to allow pilots to avoid these areas when restrictions designating them as off limits to non-military users are in effect.
Airspace restrictions can serve as an effective tool for mitigating risks to civilian air traffic. However, their use concerns some
airspace users because they pose inconveniences and sometimes raise additional safety issues. With additional restrictions, civilian
pilots may be forced to fly more circuitous routes, leaving pilots with fewer options to avoid bad weather or plan for fuel stops. The
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA), which represents more than 400,000 general aviation pilots and aviation enthusiasts
across the United States, has been particularly critical of the use of restricted airspace designations to separate unmanned aircraft
operations from other air traffic. AOPA has asserted that unmanned aircraft operations should not have a negative impact on
general aviation operations and should not require special airspace designations, such as restricted airspace, for their operation.34
It, however, generally supports the integration of unmanned aircraft so long as they do no harm to current manned operations.35
Kyllo decision
Kyllo helped establish a firm bright line for when to use or not use drone
technology in the United States.
Philip J. Hiltner, 2013, Phil Hiltner is currently a lawyer in the Washtenaw County Office of
Public Defender’s Office and also works for the Law Offices of Jonathan Dills, North Carolina
Thirteenth Prosecutorial District, “THE DRONES ARE COMING: USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL
VEHICLES FOR POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND ITS FOURTH AMENDMENT IMPLICATIONS,” Wake
Forest Journal of Law and Policy vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 397-415,
http://lawpolicyjournal.law.wfu.edu/files/2013/06/Vol.3-2-Comment-Hiltner.pdf, p. 410-411
It has already been shown that UASs may be equipped with a variety of tools to increase their
surveillance capabilities. What information we have about the Fourth Amendment implications
of observations that cannot be made by the naked eye comes primarily from the Supreme Court case of
Kyllo v. United States. 99 In Kyllo, Department of the Interior agents suspected that the
defendant was growing marijuana in his home, which requires the use of high-powered halide
lamps.100 In order to detect the amount of heat emanating from the home, two agents used a
thermal imager to scan the home from across the street.101 The thermal imager used by the agents detects infrared radiation
coming off of objects, and converts the radiation into an image on a small screen in black-and-white.102 Cooler objects appear as
darker shades of gray, while hotter images are whiter.103 The agents could see that the defendant’s house was emitting an unusual
amount of heat compared to his neighbors and were able to acquire a search warrant based on this information.104 The
Supreme Court held that this was an unlawful intrusion into the home.105 The Court opened its reasoning
saying, “It would be foolish to contend that the degree of privacy secured to citizens by the Fourth Amendment has been entirely
unaffected by the advance of technology.”106 Justice Scalia reasoned that the information the officers obtained through the
thermal imager was information that could not otherwise be obtained without intrusion into a constitutionally protected area.107 It
appears that the Court wanted to create a firm, bright-line rule at the threshold of the home.
However, this holding came with an important limitation. The Court said that such observations
with technologically sophisticated devices would be considered searches “at least where . . . the technology in
question is not in general public use.”108 Therefore, the Court left open the possibility that, if a
technology became easily accessible by the general population, intrusions into the home
through use of that technology might not be constitutionally protected. Another concern that arises with
drone technology is the ability for the police to easily follow individuals undetected for extended periods of time. In these cases, the
police are not using technology to do what would be impossible to the naked eye—like detect the amount of heat radiating from a
home—but they are using it to do what otherwise might be impractical—namely, constantly track an object’s whereabouts over a
several-day period. The Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Knotts109 and United States v. Karo110 are particularly helpful
in this area.111 In Knotts, Minnesota police tracked the movements of a suspected drug manufacturer for three days by placing a
radio transmitter (or beeper) in a drum of chloroform that was purchased by the defendant. 112 The police were able to use the
information they gained from tracking the defendant to secure a search warrant, which lead to the discovery of a
methamphetamine laboratory.113 The Court held that the information gained from tracking the defendant on public roads was not
protected.114
Kyllo helps leave open the possibility to restrict drone usage for privacy reasons
in the future.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1858-1860
The Supreme Court considered the issue of whether police use of a thermal imaging device
constituted an improper residential search in Kyllo. 134 Its ruling has potential implications in the
context of emerging drone technology. The five-to-four majority held that the use of a sense-enhancing technology to
view the contents of a home was a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment.135 The case also discussed the
appropriate interpretation of Katz under more modern circumstances.136 The Kyllo majority rejected the
contention that a passive collection of extra-sensory information emanating from the exterior of a home (without revealing intimate
details of the interior) was reasonable.137 Instead, the Court determined that “obtaining by sense-enhancing technology any
information regarding the interior of the home that could not otherwise have been obtained without” physical, in-person inspection
of a residence “constitutes a search—at least where (as here) the technology in question is not in general public use.”138 This
statement effectively means that a naked-eye observation from a public vantage point is likely not a search, while technology that
improves observation beyond what an un-aided person can sense must be questioned further. The majority’s test in Kyllo tracks
closely with Katz. Police are not required to “avert their eyes” from criminal activity.139 There will always be close cases involving
rapidly emerging technologies. But the majority’s test may not actually demand eye aversion.140 Kyllo’s standard
applies:
(1) when there is an enhancement technology, (2) when the interior contents of a house could
be ascertained through no other means, and (3) when a technology is not so prevalent as to
defeat a reasonable individual’s expectation of privacy.141 An interesting question arises when
one considers whether a drone is inherently a sense-enhancing technology (regardless of the onboard
cameras or equipment). Arguably, a drone augments the user’s ability to collect sensory information by extending the operator’s
visual and auditory capacities to previously impossible vantage points. But it is unlikely a court would adopt this reasoning because
without any additional equipment (such as telescopic camera lenses, thermal imaging devices, etc.), drones provide no independent
sensory enhancement. It remains to be seen whether courts will distinguish between images captured by navigational cameras
onboard drones and those directed intentionally downward on their surveillance subjects. A
court using Kyllo to evaluate
the facts of a drone case may wish to distinguish between these different cameras. The closest
analogue is, understandably, to helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft which are discussed in Part IV.A–C of this Note.142 Like those
aircraft, they are more accurately a platform technology that carries sensory technology on board.143 Therefore, the equipment
carried by the drone should determine whether Kyllo applies.144 Interestingly,
the Kyllo test leaves open the
possibility that the permissibility of using a particular technology can change over time.
Widespread drone usage may have precisely that effect on the social conceptions of the
reasonable expectation of privacy.145 Drones may someday share the same familiarity that the public apparently had
with the small planes in Ciraolo and Dow Chemical.146 If so, the existing aerial observation cases would offer little constitutional
protection because many drones would have the capability to remain at a legal altitude, yet also make observations far beyond the
abilities of a manned helicopter or plane considered by Riley.
Navy - FYI
Navy has their own fleet of drone aircraft.
Valerie Insinna, May 2014, “Navy Surveillance Drone Undergoes First Round of Flight Tests,”
National Defense vol. 98, issue 726, Ebsco Host, p. 13
The Navy is one step closer to having its own fleet of unmanned aircraft capable of conducting long-endurance surveillance
missions at high altitudes. The MQ-4C Triton completed its initial test flight phase in March. “The system performed exceptionally
well during flight test,” Capt. Jim Hoke, the service’s Triton UAS program manager, said in a statement. The service plans
to buy
70 aircraft from prime contractor Northrop Grumman at a cost of $189 million per unit, according to
a 2013 report by the Government Accountability Office. Initial operating capability is scheduled for 2017. During testing
designed to evaluate the air vehicle’s performance at various altitudes and speeds, the Triton
flew a combined 81 hours during 13 flights. It reached a maximum altitude of almost 60,000
feet.
DOD - FYI
Domestic military flights utilizing drones can only currently operate freely
within restricted areas – exceptions require intense scrutiny and issuance of a
COA.
Hector L. Cruz, 2010, Hector Cruz is a Lieutenant Colonel with the United States Air Force
Reserve, “Role of DOD Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Homeland Security,” U.S. Army War
College Strategy Research Project, pp. 1-32, p. 16
Access to National Airspace System. According to a Defense Science Board study, “DoD
has an urgent need to allow
UAVs unencumbered access to the National Airspace System (NAS) outside of restricted areas
here in the US and around the world.”74 Currently UAV operations inside restricted and warning areas in the United
States are conducted at the discretion of the Air Force. Operations outside these areas and within the NAS
require a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Certificate of Authorization (COA), as well as a
Letter of Authorization negotiated with the appropriate FAA region.75 This process can take up to 60 days
and COAs remain valid for no longer than a year.76 Exceptions to this are the National COA issued to the Air Force for Global Hawk
operations and the Disaster Relief COA issued to Northern Command’s (NORTHCOM) Joint Force Air Component Commander for the
Predator and Global Hawk UAVs along the southern and northern borders.77 Policy and procedures to allow UAVs routine access to
the NAS is currently in development. However this change may not occur until 2020.78 Currently
airspace coordination
must begin several months prior to planned missions. However in the event of an emergency response mission,
exceptions can be made fairly quickly. UAV operations in airspace not requiring aircraft to participate with air traffic control (below
18,000 feet in the U.S.) will normally require the UAV to be followed by a chase aircraft and/or primary radar coverage until it
reaches restricted or military airspace, which adds significant cost.79 Furthermore, UAVs must avoid flight over populated areas and
must remain clear of commercial air traffic corridors.80
A2 Drones better than manned aircraft
UAV collisions are likely due to an adequate substitute for manned observance
of aerial separation.
Hector L. Cruz, 2010, Hector Cruz is a Lieutenant Colonel with the United States Air Force
Reserve, “Role of DOD Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Homeland Security,” U.S. Army War
College Strategy Research Project, pp. 1-32, p. 17-18
Another major challenge with unrestricted access to the NAS is that UAVs
are currently unable to ‘see and avoid.’
As manned aviation increased through the years the ability to ensure traffic separation was
needed in order to increase safety of flight. “Vigilance shall be maintained by each person operating an
aircraft so as to see and avoid other aircraft.”84 This is the most universal means to ensure
separations when all other means, to include air traffic control (ATC) radar, fail and holds pilots responsible when operating in a
visual environment. This basic tenet will not be easily changed or waived for UAV operations.85 Since
UAVs by definition do not have a person on board the aircraft, on-board equipment, radar, or direct human observation must
substitute for this capability. No
technology has been identified as a suitable substitute for a person on
board the aircraft in seeing and avoiding other aircraft.86 The FAA is assisting DoD efforts by sponsoring research on detect,
sense and avoid (DSA).87 Current situational awareness/collision avoidance technologies such as Traffic Collision Avoidance System
(TCAS) and 18 Automatic Dependent Surveillance-B provide a level of DSA but only against cooperating traffic equipped with
appropriate transponders. Additional DSA technologies will be required to detect general aviation aircraft not equipped with
transponders. Systems providing protection from both may be required in each UAV to satisfy the FAA.88
Drone manufacturing is shoddy and expensive.
Amy Butler, August 23, 2010, “Risk Avoidance,” Aviation Week & Space Technology vol. 172,
issue 32, Ebsco Host, p. 60
Just over one year into the contract to develop a new U.S. Navy maritime surveillance aircraft, service
officials are
preparing for a critical design review in February and laying plans to avoid the same technology pitfalls of building a
high-flying unmanned aerial system (UAS) now plaguing the U.S. Air Force. The Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program,
an $11-billion project to field 68 high-altitude UAS, expects to conduct its first flight in Fiscal 2012, says Jennifer Clarke, the Navy's
BAMS program deputy director. Northrop Grumman won the $1.16-billion contract in April 2008 to develop BAMS, including two
developmental vehicles for the Navy. A third developmental vehicle will be built, but the company will retain ownership of it, says
Steve Enewold, Northrop's BAMS vice president. BAMS
is being designed to provide intelligence on surface
shipping targets; together with the 737-based P-8 being built by Boeing, the new aircraft will replace the
Navy's aging P-3 fleet. The BAMS UAS is being built on the Air Force Global Hawk Block 40 platform, including thickened skins and
spars on the wing to allow the UAS to transit turbulent air over the littorals, Enewold says. While the Air Force system carries the
Northrop Grumman/Raytheon Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion Program (MP-RTIP) side-looking active, electronically
scanned array (AESA) radar, BAMS will employ the Multi-Function Active Sensor (MFAS). It is a 360-deg. mechanically steered AESA
based on a special project funded through the Office of Naval Research. BAMS will also use an Automatic Identification System (AIS)
shipping tracking capability and a nose mounted air-to-air AESA to provide a situational awareness capability. "It is the first step in
providing a due-regard capability in hopes of getting to an autonomous sense-and-avoid," system, Clarke says. "Once we can get
[due regard] solved for the big platforms, then let's work on making the solution smaller" for other UAS. BAMS will also carry the
Raytheon MTS-B electro-optical/infrared sensor, full-motion video system carried by the Predator fleet, as well as an electronic
support measures (ESM) system for radio-frequency monitoring. All of these elements are wrapped into the Northrop Grumman
BAMS contract managed by a single office at Naval Air Systems Command. This management approach resulted from difficult
lessons learned by the Air Force on the Global Hawk. In that program, the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Center in Ohio oversees
the airframe development while the Electronic Systems Center is handling the previously turbulent MP-RTIP work. The two
timelines didn't marry well, and the program is over budget with deliveries expected late. Also, Air
Force officials were issuing too many undefinitized contract actions (UCAs) in order to keep work flow
moving, sparking concern by some in Congress. UCAs are used to allow a contractor to start work without defining the contract
price, which is usually set at a later time; the upshot is that if these pile up, accounting for a program can be problematic. "We are
learning from everyone else's challenges," Clarke says. "If we see a problem that they are having we are going to go triple check and
try and avoid that same problem." She adds that the Navy has taken measures to allow for the time needed to get and approve
proposals from Northrop (Air Force officials claimed the company took too long to build proposals). The Office of the Secretary of
Defense is also conducting preliminary meetings to assess whether Global Hawk is at risk for a second breach of the Nunn-McCurdy
statute, which mandates a review of over-budget programs. Much of the cost growth, however, includes
items such as
depot work and spares never included in the original Air Force program budget. David Van Buren, the Air
Force's top procurement official, has upbraided Northrop for cost and contracting problems. "We've had a very
good experience with Northrop," Clarke says, unlike Van Buren. "It [the program] is managed out of [an office in Bethpage, N.Y.],
which has a strong systems engineering background." To avoid surprises, Navy officials obtained an independent assessment from
experts at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory on Northrop's modeling for the MFAS sensor, and Clarke says the models from both are "very
close." Also, the Navy decided upfront to use a leased Gulfstream G-II as a surrogate aircraft for early MFAS flight-testing, in advance
of an available UAS. During the Global Hawk development the Air Force added Northrop's high-flying Proteus as a surrogate asset to
work out software problems with the MP-RTIP.
***SOLVENCY***
DAPTA solves
Congressional action to curtail drone privacy would allay many public concerns
about UAV adoption.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1865-1867
To begin with, there are certain general principles that Congress should consider adopting. Legal author
Troy Roberts has assembled a list of recommendations for legislative fixes that would plug many privacy holes.173 His proposed
solutions include some of the following: 1. Write
plain language statutes requiring warrants for [Unmanned
on nonvisual navigation and safety of flight
technology. 3. Require any UAVs to power down sensory enhancing technology when
transitioning to the target of the warrant or other mission. 4. Require logs of sensory enhancing
technology use on all UAVs. 5. Create exceptions for immediate warrantless observation
requirements, such as criminal chases, fires, and chemical exposures. 6. Establish an objective regulatory body
to enforce the rules on operators.174 In particular, Roberts’s third, fourth, and fifth
recommendations would allay many general societal fears regarding drones because they would reduce
Aerial Vehicle (UAV)] searches. 2. Focus efforts
police incentives to employ large numbers of drones for observational purposes.175 Brookings Institute fellow John Villasenor has
added that federal legislation may be prone to over-reaching by containing so many privacy protections that
legitimate police work will be impeded with little victory for privacy.176 In a recent article addressing drones and privacy,
Villasenor describes one scenario where more stringent rules would stifle an otherwise critically
important piece of criminal evidence: Suppose that a brutal assault that takes place on a sidewalk is captured on video
by a government‐operated [drone] that happens to be monitoring traffic on the adjacent street. Suppose further that the
video from the [drone] turns out to be the only available evidence that can identify the
perpetrator. It would defy common sense if the police or prosecutors were barred by new [drone]
privacy rules from making use of this information.177 Villasenor therefore cautions that a blanket warrant
requirement would be foolish.178 He instead argues for a more limited scope of legislated privacy protections targeting the data
retention of drone images and mandating that police keep thorough public records of drone operations.179 In addition to Roberts’s
and Villasenor’s recommendations, police drones should be employed only on specific missions, not sent to scour a city for
undiscovered crimes. At a minimum, this limitation would minimize the number of ethical quandaries like the one raised by
professor Villasenor above. Despite
its appeal to logic, Villasenor’s hypothetical seems to concede too
much ground to the technical capabilities of drones. This same sort of logic would seemingly
justify almost any form of invasiveness widely deployed in public spaces so long as the technical capability
exists.180 But the legislature has the flexibility to customize its laws to address a unique technical threat while taking advantage of
its unique capabilities.181 If political
will permits passage of a drone privacy bill, the real challenge will
be to carve out the right exceptions. Perhaps the best way to ensure that private citizens are not the subject of regular
Fourth Amendment search violations— from any source—is to incentivize police and prosecutors by restricting the availability of
drone-collected evidence at trial.182
Legal restrictions key to industry
Without a robust national legal framework the drone industry will collapse
altogether.
Pierre Hines, September 17, 2013, “Learn to Stop Worrying and Love the Drones,” The Daily
Beast, http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/17/learn-to-stop-worrying-and-lovethe-drones.html
However, given the precedent for drone use, there
is a legitimate fear that law-enforcement officials will use
them to monitor the activities of American citizens, a scenario made possible by advancements
in “wide-area surveillance.” Military drones, with ominous code names like Gorgon Stare and Constant Hawk, can monitor
movement across an entire urban area. Efforts to curtail the domestic use of drones generally call for four privacy protections: (1)
limiting tracking operations to specific individuals; (2) obtaining a warrant; (3) discarding any data unrelated to the specific target of
the investigation; and (4) denying the use of drone-collected evidence in court if the evidence was obtained unlawfully or
unintentionally. The current legal
regime is well suited to deal with most, but not all, of the privacy
concerns drones create. For instance, it is settled law that high-powered technology cannot be used without a warrant to
spy on Americans in their residences because the home is a protected place under the Constitution. One issue the legal regime is not
prepared for is how to deal with constant surveillance outside the home—in parks, on roads, and in other public areas. Theoretically,
the police could still tail you to accomplish the same objective without a warrant, but limited resources serve as a check on this
power. The
decreasing cost of drones and increasing capabilities mean that drones won’t strain
police resources the same way old-fashioned police work would. Legislation to restrict drone
use amid privacy concerns has been proposed in at least 42 states. That isn’t the problem; the problem is
that there’s no coherent legal framework at a national level. At least one state, Arizona, proposed legislation
that distinguishes between how police can use drones to track U.S. citizens and noncitizens. One of the many benefits of
drones is the ability to travel long distances, but if the law changes every time a drone crosses a
county line, it could significantly affect the cost-benefit analysis of using them. While safety and privacy
concerns are well founded, we shouldn’t let them stunt the growth of an entire industry. And without an overall legal
framework that aligns state laws, an overabundance of regulation has the potential to ground the
drone industry before it ever takes off. Beyond the military and law-enforcement applications, drones have the
potential to benefit our lives in everything from disaster relief to assessing power lines. In the not-too-distant future, if drone policy
is properly established, you might look up and see not a bird, not a plane, but a drone.
Until a regulatory framework is put in place safe drone expansion will be
hampered.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 4
While a substantial portion of this market will be accounted for by the defense sector,
manufacturers are increasingly looking toward the civilian sector, fearing that military sales may
stagnate as operations in Afghanistan are scaled back and U.S. defense budgets grow tighter. However, some
forecasters have concluded that growth in the civilian market is unlikely until a regulatory
framework allowing routine UAS operations is established.8 FAA anticipates that once such
regulations are put in place, roughly 10,000 active civilian UASs will commence operations within
the first five years.9 It is important to distinguish public-use missions from purely civilian activities
involving UAVs, although certain commercial operations, such as utility line inspection, may serve a public benefit. The
distinction matters because aircraft
owned or leased by federal and state agencies, counties, and
municipalities, are regulated differently from civil aircraft operated by private individuals and corporations.10
Although the regulatory distinctions are complex, in general, FAA oversight and authority over public-use aircraft are more limited.
For this reason, some public sector entities, particularly
homeland security and law enforcement agencies
and public universities, are already making limited use of UAVs while the commercial market awaits
FAA regulatory action.
Current technological limitations hamper widespread effective UAV adoption.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 8
Domestic airspace accommodates more than 70,000 flights per day18 at a variety of altitudes, including
low- and high-altitude military training flights, high-altitude air carrier and business jet flights, medium-altitude commuter
and general aviation flights, and low-altitude recreational and sightseeing flights and helicopter operations. The risk of
collision between these users and unmanned aircraft must be adequately mitigated before
unmanned aircraft can routinely utilize the national airspace system. The Government
Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that no suitable technology is currently available to
provide unmanned aircraft, particularly small UAVs, with the detect, sense, and avoid requirements needed to safely operate
within the national airspace system. GAO noted that small-unmanned aircraft pose a particular challenge
because they operate at low altitudes. Many other aircraft operating at these altitudes do not use electronic
transponders to broadcast their position and altitude, and in any case many small UAVs lack the ability to
receive transponder signals. The needed equipment is simply too large and heavy to install on many small UAVs.19
Currently, these limitations substantially restrict UAV operations to line-of-sight scenarios, where
operators on the ground or spotters in chase planes can provide the necessary capabilities to detect and avoid other air traffic. FAA
is currently evaluating options for routinely allowing small-unmanned aircraft to use line-of-sight as an acceptable means to detect
and avoid manned aircraft under a regulatory regime for small UAVs. For more sophisticated medium and large-sized UAVs seeking
approval for operations beyond line of sight, technology advancements are needed to assure safety in an environment shared with
manned flights. Remote sensing capabilities, including onboard cameras, airborne radars, and equipment to interrogate aircraft
transponder signals (similar to the traffic collision avoidance systems on jetliners) can combine to provide operators with robust air
traffic information.
A2 Law enforcement use
Law enforcement confidence in UAV surveillance use has declined.
William Bloss, 2007, William Bloss is Chair of the Department of Criminal Justice, College of
Human Ecology, at East Carolina University, “Escalating U.S. Police Surveillance after 9/11: an
Examination of Causes and Effects,” Surveillance and Society vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 208-228,
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/3448/3411, p.
221
Another surveillance
technology being used by the police in border protection is the Unmanned Aerial
Vehicle (UAV). Designed primarily for military applications, these unmanned drones are being
used by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Coast Guard to conduct aerial surveillance
of perimeter and border regions (Fairbank, 2005). The stated purpose is to increase electronic monitoring and surveillance capability
across a broad span of territory to detect illegal border crossings. Reports have shown that the UAV
efficacy remains
uncertain and border apprehensions have declined by 50 percent, since 2000, during the period of drone
use along U.S. territorial borders (Electronic Privacy Information Center, 2005a).
A2 Legal restrictions solve now
The courts have net yet ruled on privacy concerns for drones.
Melanie Reid, 2014, Melanie Reid is an Associate Professor of Law at the Lincoln Memorial
University-Duncan School of Law, “GROUNDING DRONES: BIG BROTHER’S TOOL BOX NEEDS
REGULATION NOT ELIMINATION,” Richmond Journal of Law & Technology vol. 20, issue 3, pp. 173, http://jolt.richmond.edu/v20i3/article9.pdf, p. 4-5
With the expected rise in drone use in the next several years, Congress appears to have two concerns:
safety and privacy. Congress passed its safety concerns onto the FAA with the passage of the FAA
Modernization and Reform Act of 2012.10 The FAA has been assigned the task to create regulations for
government and civilian drone use by September 2015.11 These regulations, Congress hopes, will
alleviate any safety concerns surrounding drone flights. As to privacy, the federal government has yet
to pass legislation arising from privacy concerns with the increase in drone use by civilians and government actors
alike; however, several bills are being considered. The Preserving American Privacy Act of 2013 would effectively require a warrant
before a drone could be used.12 As
mentioned, several states have already tackled the privacy
implications of government drone use head-on. [5] These safety and privacy concerns will lead to regulations for
two types of drone users: government actors or law enforcement, and civilians. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on
the use of drones by government actors or private civilians and whether it would constitute a
“search” under the Fourth Amendment with respect to law enforcement use, or a trespass or invasion of privacy with
respect to private actors.13 With the influx of state regulations and increased usage by both government and civilian actors, the
Supreme Court will undoubtedly face this issue in the near future.
No significant court case in twenty-three years to place limits on drone
surveillance.
Brandon Nagy, May 1, 2014, Brandon Nagy practices Business Litigation at Stinson Leonard
Street, “Why They Can Watch You: Assessing the Constitutionality of Warrantless Unmanned
Aerial Surveillance by Law Enforcement,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal vol. 29, issue 1, pp.
136-152, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020&context=btlj, p.
155-156
In the twenty-three years since Riley, the Court has not commented specifically on the
constitutionality of warrantless aerial surveillance despite the many questions left unanswered
by Riley, Dow, and Ciraolo. For example, by speaking only to aerial surveillance of curtilage, Riley did not opine on
the constitutionality of aerial surveillance of the inside of a home. Additionally, while the aerial
surveillance cases appear to allow the use of cameras, they do not explain the extent to which
law enforcement agencies may use technology, such as infrared, electro-optical, or night-vision cameras, to
enhance their observational powers without a warrant. Clues to the answers to these questions, however, can
be found in three recent, notable cases: Minnesota v. Carter, 143 Kyllo v. United States, 144 and United States v. Jones. 145
Courts are divided on what to do with UAV surveillance – no concrete legal
action.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1862-1864
Supreme Court cases dealing with rapidly advancing surveillance technologies have divided the
Court over how to best handle Fourth Amendment implications. In the recent case of United
States v. Jones,157 five of the Justices expressed their considerable hesitation in the face of a cheap,
newly widespread, and useful police surveillance technology—Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking
technology.158 The Court examined whether a GPS tracking device mounted on the undercarriage of a suspect’s Jeep constituted a
search.159 The four-justice plurality opinion authored by Justice Scalia looked largely to the property law of trespass to conclude
there was a search, and a warrant was required.160 But Justice Scalia acknowledged, with caution, that “[w]e may have to grapple
with . . . ‘vexing problems’ in some future case where a classic trespassory search is not involved and resort must be had to Katz
analysis; but there is no reason for rushing forward to resolve them here.”161 Drone
technology should present
precisely this sort of nontrespassory search issue that could compel Justice Scalia and others to revive a
more basic, Katz-like approach. For instance, in a recent and fiery dissent, Justice Scalia excoriated the Court for its
allowance of unwarranted DNA collection for the purpose of cross referencing it against a database of incriminating samples.162 In
Jones, Justice Sotomayor opined that the unique qualities of a new technology should be evaluated to properly apply Katz
analysis.163 GPS tracking technology presents a problem for Fourth Amendment jurisprudence because it is “cheap in comparison to
conventional surveillance techniques and, by design, proceeds surreptitiously, [so] it evades the ordinary checks that constrain
abusive law enforcement practices: ‘limited police resources and community hostility.’”164 Justice Sotomayor identified GPS
technology as a “tool so amenable to misuse” that its unique attributes should be taken into account when evaluating applying Katz.
165 Justice Sotomayor asked, somewhat rhetorically, “whether people reasonably expect that their movements will be recorded and
aggregated in a manner that enables the Government to ascertain, more or less at will, their political and religious beliefs, sexual
habits, and so on.”166 She implied they would not.167 Justice Alito’s concurrence in Jones also noted that “science has brought
forth far more effective devices for the invasion of a person’s privacy than the direct and obvious methods of oppression which were
detested by our forebears and which inspired the Fourth Amendment.”168 He determined that the Constitution’s protections
should adapt with technology.169 Justices Sotomayor and Alito thus described the dangers of GPS technology that, almost word-forword, could be applied to the capabilities of drones and the problems that widespread police surveillance employing drones would
entail. If
the Supreme Court views the threat of drone surveillance similarly, restrictions on
unwarranted drone use could be forthcoming.
A2 Certificate is enough restriction
Special certificates only address part of the problem.
Philip J. Hiltner, 2013, Phil Hiltner is currently a lawyer in the Washtenaw County Office of
Public Defender’s Office and also works for the Law Offices of Jonathan Dills, North Carolina
Thirteenth Prosecutorial District, “THE DRONES ARE COMING: USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL
VEHICLES FOR POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND ITS FOURTH AMENDMENT IMPLICATIONS,” Wake
Forest Journal of Law and Policy vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 397-415,
http://lawpolicyjournal.law.wfu.edu/files/2013/06/Vol.3-2-Comment-Hiltner.pdf, p. 402-403
Presently, there are only two ways one can legally operate a UAS in the NAS, and permissible
use of UASs is, of course, limited to nonrestricted airspace. The only way for civil operators to
use UASs is to obtain a Special Airworthiness Certificate in the Experimental Category (“SAC-EC”).39 These
certificates allow civil UAS users to perform “operations for research and development, market
survey, and crew training.”40 Only ninety-four SAC-ECs have been issued by the FAA since 2005.41 The second alternative
is through Certificates of Waiver or Authorization (“COAs”), which are available to governmental agencies, including law
enforcement.42 Applications
for COAs may be filled out online, and the issuance of these certificates
is quickly growing.43 The number of COAs issued by the FAA more than doubled, up from 146 in 2009 to 298 in 2010.44 COAs
generally define the permitted airspace in which the UAS may be used, require coordination with an air traffic control facility,
require operation within eyesight when used in public airspace, and include special provisions unique to the specific UAS’s
operation.45 When looking at the numbers above, there does not seem to be much cause for alarm. Three hundred UASs across the
entire United States does not indicate a significant privacy threat. However, one can expect that number to skyrocket over the next
few years.46 Congress
expressed this intention with the enactment of the FAA Modernization and
Reform Act on February 14, 2012.47 This Act calls for the Secretary of Transportation to expedite the process for issuing COAs to
both civil organizations48 and government agencies.49 H.R. 658 passed the House 248 to 169 and easily cleared the Senate 75 to
20.50 The message
from the legislature was loud and clear: they wanted to open the door wide
for the use of UASs in domestic airspace. A rapid influx of UASs should give rise to serious
misgivings for those concerned with privacy protection if corresponding privacy regulations are
not forthcoming.
FAA regulations do not pertain to what drones can do after being licensed to
fly.
Ajoke Oyegunle, 2013, Aioke Oyengunle was at the Catholic University School of Law,
“DRONES IN THE HOMELAND: A POTENTIAL PRIVACY OBSTRUCTION UNDER THE FOURTH
AMENDMENT AND THE COMMON LAW TRESPASS DOCTRINE,” Commlaw Conspectus vol. 21,
pp. 365-393, http://scholarship.law.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1528&context=commlaw,
p. 368-370
The FAA Act amends Title 49 of the U.S. Code to address the expansion of drones in American airspace.3 2 Though innocuously
titled, the FAA Act introduces the potential wide-scale use of drones into American airspace, prompting concerns over its long-term
effects.33 Notably, the FAA Act does not contemplate an effort to inform the public of the impending expansion of drones, as other
agencies have done in the past.34 Likewise, the Act fails to articulate requirements for applicants to secure approval for drone
deployment. 5 Concerns persist over the private sector's authority to sell or share the information collected from private individuals
through the use of drones.36 Equally important, the
FAA Act fails to address what entities may use drones,
and, pertinently, the ways in which the information gathered may be used. 7 The Act directs the
FAA to clear airspace in order to accommodate increased drone presence," giving the FAA the exclusive
authority to issue licenses for drones.39 In addition, the Act requires the FAA to permit not only the government (e.g., law
enforcement agencies), but also public and private entities to operate drones in domestic airspace."0 The
Act directs the
FAA to expedite the process through which applicants for drone operation become licensed to
fly in the NAS.4 When the FAA shortens the application process, the criteria may also be simplified, which is an alarming possibility
considering the possible lack of comprehensive privacy and safety assessments.42 Until the FAA publishes regulations in 2014 or
explains what the regulations might in- clude, public uncertainty will persist. Private companies that have received authorization to
operate drones-including Raytheon and General Atomics,"- may operate with little oversight in just a few short years." Drones
present an untapped and lucrative market, valued at $5.9 billion. 5 NASA forecasts "significant capacity growth for [civil] UAVs."46
Integration of drones into national airspace will begin with drone deployments at six testing sites throughout the country-in order to
vary in climate and geography, presumably to increase the chance of detecting complications-as mandated in the Act.47
***PROLIFERATION ADV***
Drone use  internationally
Drone production for surveillance purposes has increased internationally.
Micah Zenko, January 2013, Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for
Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike
Policies,” Council on Foreign Relations, Council Special Report, no. 65, pp. 1-35,
http://upstatedroneaction.org/documents/Reports/Thinktank/Drones_CSR65.pdf, p. 18-19
It is estimated that the
number of states that have acquired a complete drone system has grown from
forty-one in 2005 to seventy-six in 2012.49 Over that same period of time, the number of total drone
programs within those states increased from one hundred ninety-five to nine hundred.50 Like the United States, the
vast majority of all drones developed by other countries will be used exclusively for government
or civilian intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) missions. Some advanced industrial economies—such as Russia,
Taiwan, and South Korea—have developed increasingly sophisticated and largely indigenous drone capabilities, but they have also
missed deadlines for when they would field armed drones, according to their own defense ministries. There
is no
international association for drone manufacturers and operators—similar to those that exist for civilian
nuclear facilities or commercial space launches—that provides reliable information Drone Strikes by Other States or Nonstate Actors
Drone Strikes by Other States or Nonstate Actors 19 on drones or serves as a forum to exchange best practices to limit the
associated risks and costs. Since most publicly available information is limited to air shows and the defense trade press, it is possible
that there have been intentionally hidden advances toward states’ development of weaponized drones.
Domestic use  secondary acquisition
With future drone expansion this lead in drone technology will become eroded
– secondary acquisition.
Scott Shane, October 8, 2011, “Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race,” The New York Times,
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/drones_517/517K_2_2011_
Coming_Soon_The_Drone_Arms_Race_October_8_2011_NYTimes.pdf
“The virtue of most U.A.V.’s is that they have long wings and you can strap anything to them,” Mr. Gormley says. That includes video
cameras, eavesdropping equipment and munitions, he says. “It’s spreading like wildfire.” So
far, the United States has a
huge lead in the number and sophistication of unmanned aerial vehicles (about 7,000, by one official’s
estimate, mostly unarmed). The Air Force prefers to call them not U.A.V.’s but R.P.A.’s, or remotely piloted aircraft, in
acknowledgment of the human role; Air Force officials should know, since their service is now training more pilots to operate drones
than fighters and bombers. Philip Finnegan, director of corporate analysis for the Teal Group, a company that tracks defense and
aerospace markets, says global
spending on research and procurement of drones over the next decade is
expected to total more than $94 billion, including $9 billion on remotely piloted combat aircraft. Israel and
China are aggressively developing and marketing drones, and Russia, Iran, India, Pakistan and several
other countries are not far behind. The Defense Security Service, which protects the Pentagon and its contractors from
espionage, warned in a report last year that American drone technology had become a prime target for
foreign spies.
Drone prolif lacks safeguards
States that acquire drone technology second hand endanger U.S. interests –
lack of safeguards present in current U.S. military infrastructure.
Micah Zenko, January 2013, Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for
Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike
Policies,” Council on Foreign Relations, Council Special Report, no. 65, pp. 1-35,
http://upstatedroneaction.org/documents/Reports/Thinktank/Drones_CSR65.pdf, p. 20
Based on current trends, it is unlikely that most states will have, within ten years, the complete
system architecture required to carry out distant drone strikes that would be harmful to U.S.
national interests. However, those candidates able to obtain this technology will most likely be
states with the financial resources to purchase or the industrial base to manufacture tactical short-range armed drones with
limited firepower that lack the precision of U.S. laser-guided munitions; the intelligence collection
and military command-and-control capabilities needed to deploy drones via line-of-sight
communications; and crossborder adversaries who currently face attacks or the threat of attacks by manned
aircraft, such as Israel into Lebanon, Egypt, or Syria; Russia into Georgia or Azerbaijan; Turkey into
Iraq; and Saudi Arabia into Yemen. When compared to distant U.S. drone strikes, these contingencies do not require
system-wide infrastructure and host-state support. Given the costs to conduct manned-aircraft strikes with minimal threat to pilots,
it is questionable whether states will undertake the significant investment required for armed drones in the near term.
Having a lack of oversight and regulation on drone use and manufacturing risks
states acquiring drone technology and using it in harmful ways.
Micah Zenko, January 2013, Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon fellow in the Center for
Preventive Action (CPA) at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike
Policies,” Council on Foreign Relations, Council Special Report, no. 65, pp. 1-35,
http://upstatedroneaction.org/documents/Reports/Thinktank/Drones_CSR65.pdf, p. 24
Beyond the United States, drones are proliferating even as they are
becoming increasingly sophisticated, lethal,
stealthy, resilient, and autonomous. At least a dozen other states and nonstate actors could possess armed drones within
the next ten years and leverage the technology in unforeseen and harmful ways. It is the stated position of the Obama
administration that its strategy toward drones will be emulated by other states and nonstate actors. In an interview, President Obama
revealed, “I think creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned
weapons is going to be a challenge for me and for my successors for some time to come—partly because technology may evolve
fairly rapidly for other countries as well.”71
Drones = military purposes
Domestic drone demand over the next decade is expected to increase with new
technological innovation – utilized for military purposes.
Ann Cavoukian, August 2012, Ann Cavoukian is the former Information and Privacy
Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario serving from 1997 to 2014, “Privacy and
Drones: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” Privacy by Design, pp. 1-27,
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/cnmcs-plcng/cn29822-eng.pdf, p. 4
The domestic use of UAVs is nonetheless expected to continually push toward smaller platforms
that are more manageable and more affordable. It has been noted that the reduced cost of UAVs has become a
significant selling point. This is being enabled by the ongoing process of miniaturization of sensors, controls,
data link solutions, and computing elements. A UAV system that includes a ground operating computer can cost less than US
$50,000, whereas a police helicopter performing the same function can cost up to US $1 million.9 A lack of access to national
airspace, as well as lack of suitable UAV standards and practices, are among the reasons cited for the relatively slow emergence of
the UAV market in the domestic context. Domestic
demand is expected to increase over the next decade,
starting with government organizations requiring surveillance systems similar to military UAVs,
such as coast guards, border patrol organizations, and similar national security agencies.10
U.S. is modeled
By setting an example of lax control on drone technology the U.S. is sending a
message abroad that development and use is permissible.
Scott Shane, October 8, 2011, “Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race,” The New York Times,
http://www.agriculturedefensecoalition.org/sites/default/files/file/drones_517/517K_2_2011_
Coming_Soon_The_Drone_Arms_Race_October_8_2011_NYTimes.pdf
AT the Zhuhai air show in southeastern China last November, Chinese
companies startled some Americans by
unveiling 25 different models of remotely controlled aircraft and showing video animation of a
missile-armed drone taking out an armored vehicle and attacking a United States aircraft carrier. The
presentation appeared to be more marketing hype than military threat; the event is China’s biggest aviation market, drawing both
Chinese and foreign military buyers. But it was stark evidence that the
United States’ near monopoly on armed
drones was coming to an end, with far-reaching consequences for American security,
international law and the future of warfare. Eventually, the United States will face a military
adversary or terrorist group armed with drones, military analysts say. But what the short-run hazard
experts foresee is not an attack on the United States, which faces no enemies with significant combat drone capabilities, but
the political and legal challenges posed when another country follows the American example.
The Bush administration, and even more aggressively the Obama administration, embraced an extraordinary principle: that the
United States can send this robotic weapon over borders to kill perceived enemies, even American citizens, who are viewed as a
threat.
Failure to adopt rules for U.S. drones sets a dangerous international precedent.
Kristen Roberts, March 21, 2013, Kristen Roberts is a news editor for National Journal,
master's in security studies from Georgetown University, master's degree in journalism from
Columbia University, "When the Whole World Has Drones," National Journal,
www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/when-the-whole-world-has-drones-20130321
the administration has adopted a tool that lowers the threshold for lethal force
by reducing the cost and risk of combat. This still-expanding counterterrorism use of drones to kill people, including its own citizens, outside of
traditionally defined battlefields and established protocols for warfare, has given friends and foes a green light to employ these aircraft in extraterritorial operations that could not
To implement this covert program,
only affect relations between the nation-states involved but also destabilize entire regions
and potentially upset geopolitical order . Hyperbole? Consider this: Iran, with the approval of
Damascus, carries out a lethal strike on anti-Syrian forces inside Syria; Russia picks off militants
tampering with oil and gas lines in Ukraine or Georgia; Turkey arms a U.S.-provided Predator to
kill Kurdish militants in northern Iraq who it believes are planning attacks along the border. Label the
targets as terrorists, and
in each case, Tehran, Moscow, and Ankara may point toward Washington and say,
we learned it by watching you. In Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. This is the unintended consequence of American drone
warfare. For all of the attention paid to the drone program in recent weeks—about Americans on the target list (there are none at this writing) and the executive branch’s legal authority to kill by drone outside
what goes undiscussed is Washington’s deliberate failure to establish
clear and demonstrable rules for itself that would at minimum create a globally relevant
standard for delineating between legitimate and rogue uses of one of the most awesome
military robotics capabilities of this generation.
war zones (thin, by officials’ own private admission)—
U.S. leadership solves
U.S. regulation and restrictions on drones spurs other countries to cooperate on
their proliferation.
Omar S. Bashir, September 24, 2012, Omar Bashir is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Politics at Princeton University and a graduate of the Department of Aeronautics and
Astronautics at MIT, "Who Watches the Drones?" Foreign Affairs,
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138141/omar-s-bashir/who-watches-the-drones
Aside from enabling accountability at home, the oversight system could also help
with foreign publics and
governments. The United States has taken expensive steps in order to avoid perceptions of recklessness abroad: for instance,
Georgetown professor David Koplow argues that the Pentagon's recent investments in less-destructive weaponry reflect, in part, a
growing emphasis on global perceptions. Washington should thus worry that more than
half of respondents in 17 of
20 countries disapprove of U.S. drone strikes, according to a Pew Global survey. An independent oversight program
is not going to change minds in Lahore or Karachi, where opposition to drones seems to be driven more by the perceived violation of
sovereignty than by indiscriminate killing (there are indications that opposition to drones is actually lower in regions where drone
strikes are clustered). Still, because
the drone is a salient symbol of American recklessness, oversight
might reduce public opposition to U.S. policy in Europe and elsewhere. That would make it easier for
foreign leaders to overcome domestic opposition to security cooperation with the United States.
Further, the U.S. counterterrorism chief John Brennan has noted that the administration is "establishing precedents
that other nations may follow." But, for now, other countries have no reason to believe that the United States carries out
its own targeted killing operations responsibly. Without
a credible oversight program , those negative
perceptions of U.S. behavior will fill the vacuum, and an anything-goes standard might be the result. U.S.
denunciations of other countries' programs could come to ring hollow. If the United States did adopt an oversight system, those
denunciations would carry more weight. So, too, would U.S. pressure on other states to adopt similar systems: just as suspicions
grow when countries refuse nuclear inspection, foreign governments that turned down invitations to apply a proven system of
oversight to their own drone campaigns would reveal their disregard for humanitarian concerns.
International norms = real
Norm setting is effective – the U.S. can make a difference on drones.
Micah Zenko, January 2013, CFR Douglas Dillon Fellow in the Center for Preventive Action,
PhD in Political Science from Brandeis University, “Reforming U.S. Drone Strike Policies,” CFR
Special Report 65
History shows that
how states adopt and use new military capabilities is often influenced by how other
states have—or have not—used them in the past. Furthermore, norms can deter states from acquiring
new technologies.72 Norms—sometimes but not always codified as legal regimes—have dissuaded states from deploying
blinding lasers and landmines, as well as chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. A well-articulated and internationally supported normative
framework, bolstered by
a strong U.S. example , can shape armed drone proliferation and employment in the
coming decades. Such norms would not hinder U.S. freedom of action; rather, they would internationalize already-necessary domestic policy reforms and, of course, they would be acceptable only insofar as the
limitations placed reciprocally on U.S. drones furthered U.S. objectives. And
even if hostile states do not accept norms regulating drone use, the
existence of an international normative framework, and U.S. compliance
with that framework,
would preserve Washington’s ability
to apply diplomatic pressure. Models for developing such a framework would be based in existing international laws that emphasize the principles of necessity, proportionality,
and distinction—to which the United States claims to adhere for its drone strikes—and should be informed by comparable efforts in the realms of cyber and space.
Prolif impact ext.
Drone prolif conflicts go nuclear.
Michael J. Boyle, January 2013, Michael Boyle is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at
La Salle University, former Lecturer in International Relations and Research Fellow at the Centre
for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrews, PhD from
Cambridge University, “The costs and consequences of drone warfare,” International Affairs vol.
89, issue 1, pp. 1–29,
http://www.chathamhouse.org/sites/default/files/public/International%20Affairs/2013/89_1/8
9_1Boyle.pdf
A second consequence of the spread of drones is that many of the traditional concepts which have
underwritten stability in the international system will be radically reshaped by drone
technology. For example, much of the stability among the Great Powers in the international
system is driven by deterrence, specifically nuclear deterrence.135 Deterrence operates with informal rules of the
game and tacit bargains that govern what states, particularly those holding nuclear weapons, may and may not do to one
another.136 While
it is widely understood that nuclear-capable states will conduct aerial
surveillance and spy on one another, overt military confrontations between nuclear powers are
rare because they are assumed to be costly and prone to escalation. One open question is
whether these states will exercise the same level of restraint with drone surveillance, which is
unmanned, low cost, and possibly deniable. States may be more willing to engage in drone
overflights which test the resolve of their rivals, or engage in ‘salami tactics’ to see what kind of droneled incursion, if any, will motivate a response.137 This may have been Hezbollah’s logic in sending a
drone into Israeli airspace in October 2012, possibly to relay information on Israel’s nuclear
capabilities.138 After the incursion, both Hezbollah and Iran boasted that the drone incident demonstrated their military
capabilities.139 One could imagine two rival states—for example, India and Pakistan—deploying
drones to test each other’s capability and resolve, with untold consequences if such a probe
were misinterpreted
by the other
they develop a greater flying range, the
military installations might
as an attack . As drones get physically smaller and more precise, and as
temptation to use them to spy on a rival’s nuclear programme or
prove too strong to resist. If this were to happen, drones might gradually erode
the deterrent relationships
that exist between
spiral of conflict between them.
nuclear powers, thus magnifying the risks of a
Terrorists can hack drones
Terrorists to take over control of aircraft operations could easily spoof UAV’s.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 11
Additionally, unmanned
aircraft command and control links could potentially be intentionally
jammed or hacked resulting in a loss or hostile takeover of control. For example, Todd Humphreys, an
assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, demonstrated a remote hijacking of an
unmanned aircraft by GPS guidance signals. In congressional testimony, he warned that advances in
software-defined radio and the availability of GPS signal simulators may provide average hackers
with the capability to interfere with unmanned aircraft operations.27 Humphreys recommended that nonrecreational civilian unmanned aircraft weighing more than 18 pounds be required to have spoof-resistant navigation systems. More
broadly, he recommended that GPS-based timing and navigation systems used in national critical infrastructure also be required to
be spoof-resistant. He noted that while “[t]here
is no quick, easy, and cheap fix for the civil GPS spoofing
problem…reasonable, cost-effective spoofing defenses exist which, if implemented, will make successful spoofing much
harder.”28 As a long-range solution, he further recommended that the Department of Homeland Security commit to funding the
development and implementation of methods for performing cryptographic authentication of GPS signals, or at least for the
augmented GPS signals used for civil aviation.
CBW causes extinction
Many rogue leaders are willing and able to use CBWs that spread rapidly and
kill hundreds of millions in hours alone which also cause extinction.
Clifford Singer, Spring 2001, Director of the Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and
International Security at the University of Illinois at Urbana, Champaign, The Bulletin of the
Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, “Will Mankind Survive the
Millennium?,” http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/research/S&Ps/2001-Sp/S&P_XIII/Singer.htm
In recent years the fear of the apocalypse (or religious hope for it) has been in part a child of the Cold War, but its seeds in Western
culture go back to the Black Death and earlier. Recent polls suggest that the majority in the United States that believe man would
survive into the future for substantially less than a millennium was about 10 percent higher in the Cold War than afterward.
However fear of annihilation of the human species through nuclear warfare was confused with the admittedly terrifying, but much
different matter of destruction of a dominant civilization. The destruction of a third or more of much of the globe’s population
through the disruption from the direct consequences of nuclear blast and fire damage was certainly possible. There was, and still
is, what is now known to be a rather small chance
that dust raised by an all-out nuclear
war would cause a so-
called nuclear winter, substantially reducing agricultural yields especially in temperate regions for a year or more. As noted
above mankind as a whole has weathered a number of mind-boggling disasters in the past fifty thousand years even if older cultures
or civilizations have sometimes eventually given way to new ones in the process. Moreover the fear that radioactive fallout would
make the globe uninhabitable, publicized by widely seen works such as "On the Beach," was a metaphor for the horror of nuclear
war rather than reality. The
epidemiological lethal results of well over a hundred atmospheric nuclear tests
are barely statistically detectable except in immediate fallout plumes. The increase in radiation exposure far from
the combatants in even a full scale nuclear exchange at the height of the Cold War would have been
modest compared to the variations in natural background radiation doses that have readily been adapted
to by a number of human populations. Nor is there any reason to believe that global warming or other insults to our physical
environment resulting from currently used technologies will challenge the survival of mankind as a whole beyond what it has already
handily survived through the past fifty thousand years. There
are, however, two technologies currently under
development that may pose a more serious threat to human survival. The first and most immediate is
biological warfare combined with genetic engineering. Smallpox is the most fearsome of natural biological warfare
agents in existence. By the end of the next decade, global immunity to smallpox will likely be at a low
unprecedented since the emergence of this disease in the distant past, while the opportunity for it to
spread rapidly across the globe will be at an all time high . In the absence of other complications such as
nuclear war near the peak of an epidemic, developed countries may respond with quarantine and vaccination to limit the damage.
Otherwise mortality there may match the rate of 30 percent or more expected in unprepared developing countries. With respect
to genetic engineering using currently available knowledge and technology, the simple expedient of spreading an ample
mixture of coat protein variants could render a vaccination response largely ineffective, but this would otherwise not be expected to
substantially increase overall mortality rates. With development of new biological technology, however, there
is a possibility
that a variety of infectious agents may be engineered for combinations of greater than natural
virulence and mortality, rather than just to overwhelm currently available antibiotics or vaccines.
There is no a priori known upper limit to the power of this type of technology base, and thus the
survival of a globally connected human family may be in question when and if this is achieved.
Biological weapons cannot be controlled once they are released making
escalation inevitable.
Michael Quinlan, 2009, Former Permanent Under-Sec. State UK Ministry of Defense, Thinking
about Nuclear Weapons: Principles, Problems, Prospects, p. 31, Google Books
There are good reasons for fearing escalation: the confusion of war, its stresses, anger, hatred, and the desire for revenge ,
reluctance to accept the humiliation of backing down; perhaps the temptation to get further blows in first. Given all this, the risk of
escalation—which Western leaders were rightly want to emphasise in the interests of deterrence—are grave. But this is not to say
that they are virtually certain, or even necessarily odds-on; still less that they are so for all the assorted circumstances in which the
situation might arise, in a nuclear world to which past experience is only a limited guide. It is entirely possible, for example, that
the initial use of nuclear weapons, breaching a barrier that has been held since 1945, might so appall both
sides in a conflict that they recognised an overwhelming common interest in composing their
differences.
pressures in that direction would be very great. Even if initial nuclear use did not
quickly end the fighting, the supposition of inexorable momentum in a developing exchange, with each side
rushing to overreaction amid confusion and uncertainty, is implausible; it fails to consider what the decision-makers’ situation
would really be.
The human
Neither side could want escalation ; both would be appalled at what was going on; both would
be desperately looking for signs that the other was ready to call a halt; both, given the capacity
for evasion or concealment which modern delivery systems can possess, could have in reserve ample
forces invulnerable enough not to impose ‘use or lose’ pressures .
As a result, neither could have any
predisposition to suppose, in an ambiguous situation of enormous risk, that the right course when in doubt was to go on copiously
launching weapons. And none
of this analysis rests on any presumtion of highly subtle, pre-concerterd or
cultural-specific rationality; the rationality required is plain and basic.
Bioweapons cause retaliation
Absent extinction, a small biological weapon death toll on U.S. soil shatters
American restraint – triggering nuclear reprisal.
Harry W Conley, spring 2003, is chief of the Systems Analysis Branch, Directorate of
Requirements, Headquarters Air Combat Command (ACC), Langley AFB, Virginia, Air & Space
Power Journal, http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj03/spr03/conley.html
The number of American casualties suffered due to a WMD attack may well be the most
important variable in determining the nature of the US reprisal. A key question here is how
many Americans would have to be killed to prompt a massive response by the U nited S tates. The
bombing of marines in Lebanon, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 each resulted in a casualty
count of roughly the same magnitude (150–300 deaths). Although these events caused anger and a desire for retaliation among the
American public, they prompted no serious call for massive or nuclear retaliation.
The body count from a single
biological attack could easily be one or two orders of magnitude higher than the casualties
caused by these events. Using the rule of proportionality as a guide, one could justifiably debate whether the United States
should use massive force in responding to an event that resulted in only a few thousand deaths. However, what if the casualty count
was around 300,000? Such an unthinkable result from a single CBW incident is not beyond the realm of possibility: “According to the
U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment, 100 kg of anthrax spores delivered by an efficient aerosol generator on a large urban
target would be between two and six times as lethal as a one megaton thermo-nuclear bomb.”46 Would the deaths of
300,000 Americans be enough to trigger a nuclear response? In this case, proportionality does not rule out the
use of nuclear weapons. Besides simply the total number of casualties, the types of casualties- predominantly military versus civilianwill also affect the nature and scope of the US reprisal action. Military combat entails known risks, and the emotions resulting from a
significant number of military casualties are not likely to be as forceful as they would be if the attack were against civilians. World
War II provides perhaps the best examples for the kind of event or circumstance that would have to take place to trigger a nuclear
response. A
CBW event that produced a shock and death toll roughly equivalent to those arising from the
attack on Pearl Harbor might be sufficient to prompt a nuclear retaliation. President Harry Truman’s decision to
drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki- based upon a calculation that up to one million casualties might be incurred in an
invasion of the Japanese homeland 47- is an example of the kind of thought process that would have to occur prior to a nuclear
response to a CBW event. Victor Utgoff suggests that “if nuclear retaliation is seen at the time to offer the best prospects for
suppressing further CB
attacks and speeding the defeat of the aggressor, and if the original attacks
had caused severe damage that had outraged American or allied publics, nuclear retaliation
would be more than just a possibility, whatever promises had been made.”
Countries are developing
Multiple experts confirm Syria and North Korea have smallpox that overcomes
vaccines – a long incubation period means it spreads rapidly.
Janet E. Levy, 6-8-2007, an independent scholar whose research interests covered the theory
and analysis, The American Thinker, “The Threat of Bioweapons,”
www.americanthinker.com/2007/06/the_threat_of_bioweapons.html
Intelligence analysts and academics report that North Korea has developed anthrax, plague,
and botulism toxin and conducted extensive research on smallpox, typhoid and cholera. A worldrenowned bioweapons expert has confirmed that Syria has weapons grade smallpox resistant to all
current vaccines developed under the cover of legitimate veterinary research on camelpox, a very closely related virus. The researcher further
reports that Syria
is suspected of testing the pathogen on prison populations and possibly in the
Sudan. Although there are close to 50 organisms that could be used offensively, rogue nations have concentrated their bioweapons development
efforts on smallpox, anthrax, plague, botulinum, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers. With the exception of smallpox, which is exclusively a
human host disease, all of the other pathogens lend themselves to animal testing as they are zoonotic, or can be transmitted to humans by other
species. Biological
weapons are among the most dangerous in the world today and can be
engineered and disseminated to achieve a more deadly result than a nuclear attack. Whereas the
explosion of a nuclear bomb would cause massive death in a specific location, a biological attack with smallpox could infect multitudes of people
across the globe. With incubation periods of up to 17 days, human disseminators could unwittingly cause widespread exposure before diagnosable
symptoms indicate an infection and appropriate quarantine procedures are in place. Unlike any other type of weapon, bioweapons
such
as smallpox can replicate and infect a chain of people over an indeterminate amount of time
from a single undetectable point of release. According to science writer and author of The Hot Zone, Richard Preston, "If
you took a gram of smallpox, which is highly contagious and lethal, and for which there's no vaccine available globally now, and
released it in the air and created about a hundred cases, the chances are excellent that the virus would go global in six weeks as people moved from
city to city......the
death toll could easily hit the hundreds of millions.....in scale, that's like a nuclear war."[1]
Can’t contain the spread
Bioweapons would lead to huge casualties and collapse health care systems.
Jennifer Brower and Peter Chalk, 2003, Jennifer Brower is the RAND Co-Project Director and
Peter Chalk is a RAND Political Scientist specializing in emerging threats, “The Global Threat of
New and Reemerging Infectious Diseases: Reconciling U.S. National Security and Public Health
Policy,” www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1602/
Finally, disease
can assume a highly significant strategic dimension, through the threat of
biowarfare (BW) and/or bioterrorism (BT). Considerations of virulence, morbidity, and rapidity of
infectious spread would make the threat far greater than that posed by conventional or even
chemical weapons.30 International attention on BW and BT has increased over the last ten years, particularly in the United
States, due to a number of factors: • Anthrax attacks in fall 2001 • Discoveries of the scope of Iraq’s BW efforts after the Persian Gulf
War • Revelations by Boris Yeltsin and Ken Alibek31 about the depth and breadth of the Soviet Union’s BW program • Evidence that
Aum Shinrikyo was actively trying to acquire and disseminate biological agents both prior to and after its 1995 sarin nerve gas attack
in Tokyo • Indications that terrorist organizations not sponsored by states, including Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network, have an
interest in developing a BT capability.32 The consequences of a large-scale, successful act of BW or BT would be catastrophic.
Whereas the spread of most infectious diseases spread slowly through natural processes of
contagion, deliberate, large-scale releases of virus or bacteria, especially in unvaccinated
populations, would lead to the immediate exposure of a specific target to a large quantity of
(possibly enhanced) infectious organisms. The result would be a massive, largely simultaneous
outbreak of disease after an incubation period of only a few days. This would not only cause
widespread casualties and panic, but also severely strain and possibly collapse entire public
health and response capacities.33
A biological attack would kill more than a nuclear attack.
Jessica Stern, March 2003, Jessica Stern is a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard, International
Security, “Dreaded Risks and the Control of Biological Weapons,” 89-123, Project Muse
Technical Difficulties with Predicting The Impact of BW Attacks There are also technical problems with predicting the likely impact of
a biological attack. Biological
weapons are potentially as deadly as thermonuclear weapons. For example,
one U.S. government study concluded that 100 kilograms of Bacillus anthracis, a fraction of the amount
produced by Iraq, could kill from 1 to 3 million people if dispersed under optimal conditions. 47
In comparison, a Hiroshima-type fission bomb could kill as many as 80,000, while a more
powerful hydrogen bomb could kill 600,000 to 2 million. 48 Contagious agents could kill even more people than
anthrax. Joshua Lederberg calls the 1918 flu pandemic, which is estimated to have killed more than 20 million
people worldwide, a model for the type of disaster that a biological weapon containing a
contagious pathogen could wreak. 49 The public health infrastructure [End Page 100] was overwhelmed in the first
couple of weeks, despite the low case fatality rate of influenza compared with a typical biological warfare threat agent. 50
A2 Weather will stop it
Some pathogens do not rely on weather and terrorist would release many
strains to maximize death toll.
Mark Wheelis, July 1, 2002, Mark Wheellis works in the Section of Microbiology, University of
California, research interests are in the history of biological warfare, especially in the First World
War, and the scientific aspects of biological and chemical arms control, BioScience, Lexis Nexis
Dissemination of many introduced pathogens likewise requires relatively little expertise. Animal virus preparations could be diluted
and disseminated with a simple atomizer in close proximity to target animals, or the preparation smeared directly on the nostrils or
mouths of a small number of animals. This could be done from rural roads with essentially no chance of detection. Dissemination of
animal diseases could also be done surreptitiously at an animal auction or near barns where animals are densely penned (as in
chicken houses or piggeries). For plant diseases, simply exposing a mass of sporulating fungi to the air immediately upwind of a
target field could be effective, if environmental conditions were favorable for infection. The
biggest challenge of
introducing a plant pathogen is probably timing the release with the appropriate weather
conditions (Campbell and Madden 1990). If pathogens are released immediately before the start of a dry period, few, if any,
infections are likely to result. However, If released at the start of a rainy period, these pathogens could
cause a major epidemic. The technical ease of introducing many agricultural pathogens makes it more
likely that terrorists or criminals would release pathogens in several locations in an attempt to
initiate multiple, simultaneous outbreaks. This would ensure that trade sanctions would be imposed, because it
would undermine any argument that the outbreaks are localized and do not jeopardize importing countries. It would also be
more likely to overwhelm the response capacity and lead to the uncontrollable spread of disease.
This is the principal way in which a bioterrorist attack would differ from a natural disease introduction, and it raises the question
whether a system designed to respond to natural introductions can deal effectively with sudden, multifocal outbreaks.
Their “weather” argument is wrong– terrorist will still try no matter what.
The Record, October 7, 2001, Bergen County, NJ, Lexis Nexis
To produce mass casualties, airborne delivery would be the preferred method for unleashing all types of chemical or biological
weapons. The poisoning of water supplies is unlikely, experts say, because the amount of toxic agent required would be prohibitively
large. Airborne delivery, however, is fraught with problems. There's an optimal size for particles to be inhaled into
the lungs. Many terrorism experts are reluctant to discuss this topic, although details are readily available from many sources. In
general, producing aerosols of the right size, either of liquids or powders, is extremely difficult or impossible without special
equipment and expertise. Crop dusting sprayers, for instance, are designed to produce droplets many times larger than ideal.
Weather conditions can also make a huge difference. Efficiency, though, may be low on a
terrorist's list of concerns. That fact alone raises the chance that some group may eventually
attempt an act of terror using biological or chemical means.
A2 BW won’t be used
Biological weapons will be used in future conflicts.
Gregory Koblentz, Winter 2004, Gregory Koblentz has a PhD in Political Science at MIT, MA
Public Policy at Kennedy School, Harvard, Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University and a Research Fellow with the Security Studies Program at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, International Security, “Pathogens as Weapons, The
International Security Implications of Biological Warfare,” Ebsco Host
The third likely objection is that because biological weapons have been used so rarely, this
restraint is likely to hold. Therefore, despite their potential military utility, biological weapons will remain marginal in most
states' national security calculations. Although modern biological weapons based on aerosol dissemination technology have not
been successfully employed by states or terrorists, cruder weapons have been used in modern times. 164 There
are also
disturbing signs that the normative, operational, and political restraints that have limited the
use of these weapons are weaker now then they were thirty years ago. Most of the states currently
suspected of developing biological weapons are parties to the 1972 BWC, which illustrates the permeability of the normative barrier
to proliferation. 165 The
2001 anthrax letter attacks, the first overt use of biological weapons, weakened the
taboo against using disease as a weapon. In addition, advanced biotechnologies that can ameliorate
problems in safely producing, storing, and handling these weapons as well as effectively
employing them in combat are becoming increasingly available. 166 Furthermore, [End Page 119] the
overwhelming conventional superiority of Western states and their allies provides dissatisfied
actors with strong incentives to employ biological weapons as part of an asymmetric strategy
that may outweigh the political andstrategic hazards of using these weapons. 167 Leaders may
calculate that they can use their biological weapons as force multipliers to accomplish a faitaccompli, tailor their
use of these weapons to avoid provoking regime- threatening retaliation, or conduct anonymous attacks and
avoid retaliation. Extremist religious terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates that have emerged as direct threats to the
United States and its allies are among those most likely to resort to unconventional weapons in their drive to inflict as many
casualties and as much terror as possible. As with nuclear weapons, the lack of large-scale use of biological weapons since 1945 is a
cause for celebration, but not grounds for complacency.
A2 Dispersal issues
Careful selection of agents and delivery systems overcomes dispersal issues.
Gregory Koblentz, Winter 2004, Gregory Koblentz has a PhD in Political Science at MIT, MA
Public Policy at Kennedy School, Harvard, Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Foreign
Service at Georgetown University and a Research Fellow with the Security Studies Program at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, International Security, “Pathogens as Weapons, The
International Security Implications of Biological Warfare,” Ebsco Host
Modern biological weapons are designed to disseminate pathogens or toxins in an aerosol cloud
of microscopic particles that can be readily inhaled and re- tained in the lungs of the exposed
population.10 These aerosols are most effec- tive when composed of particles ranging from 1 to 10 microns that can stay
airborne longer and cause more severe cases of disease.11 Aerosols are taste- less, odorless, and invisible, thus facilitating
clandestine attacks. They
can be generated either by bomblets loaded into cluster bombs or missile
warheads or by spraying devices that are mounted on aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles,
ships, or vehicles, or that are carried by hand.12 The key drawbacks to biologi-cal weapons include their
delayed effects; their sensitivity to environmental and meteorological conditions, which could result in
uncertain area coverage and effects; the risk of infecting friendly forces; and the prospect of long-term
contamination. For example, wind speed and direction, humidity, atmospheric stability, and the presence of sunlight can all
in�uence the performance of a biological weapon.13 The careful selection of agents, delivery systems, and
tar- gets, however, as well as the timing of the attack, could compensate for most of these
limitations.14
A2 We can respond
The U.S. is unprepared to respond to terrorist attacks.
Tara O’Toole, March 29, 2007, Tara O’ Toole provides testimony before Congress, Center for
Biosecurity, “Hearing on Bioterrorism Preparedness and the Role of DHS Chief Medical Officer,”
http://www.upmcbiosecurity.org/website/resources/hearings/content/Hearings_2007/2007032
9-btprepanddhscmo.html
The U.S. healthcare delivery sector is not equipped or prepared to provide timely medical care
to the tens or possibly even hundreds of thousands of casualties that could result from a
successful bioattack. No municipality could care for a sudden flood of even 500 victims with
inhalational anthrax—there simply is not enough “surge capacity” in today’s financially stressed
healthcare system to handle this load. The problem of lack of medical surge capacity is not specific to bioterrorist
attacks. Nearly every type of terrorist attack or large-scale natural disaster would impose significant demands on healthcare
facilities. At a March 15, 2007, meeting of medical and public health experts sponsored by the White House Homeland Security
Council, attendees warned that the U.S. healthcare system would likely “collapse” in such events. Yet, as we saw in the response to
Hurricane Katrina, there is no national doctrine or operational plan that guides how healthcare facilities should prepare for or react
to such calamities. Astonishingly, more than five years after high grade anthrax was mailed to members of Congress and the media,
there is no conduct of operations plan for how the U.S. healthcare system would cope with the casualties of an anthrax attack. This
is the case even though a bioterrorist attack is the mass casualty scenario judged by the National Intelligence Council to be “of
greatest concern.” The
federal government has not proposed or endorsed a coherent strategy or
conduct of operations plan for medical response to mass casualty events, and has not
adequately funded even minimal hospital preparedness activities. Responsibility and accountability for
medical preparedness and response during large-scale catastrophes within HHS and DHS are unclear, and in both agencies these
functions are grossly understaffed and underfunded.
The U.S. remains woefully unprepared for a biological attack– increasing its
vulnerability.
Jessica Stern, 2003, Jessica Stern is a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard, International
Security, “Dreaded Risks and the Control of Biological Weapons,” 89-123, Project Muse
Inadequate Preparedness Against the Terrorist Threat U.S.
efforts to characterize the terrorist threat have
entailed assessments of the country's vulnerability. Exercises in the 1990s tested the U.S. government's
preparedness for responding to WMD attacks. The tests revealed that hospitals were likely to quickly exhaust their supplies of
antidotes and vaccines; first responders (police, firefighters, and other emergency workers) were inadequately trained and likely to
Hospital
laboratories were poorly prepared for biological attacks. Secure communication links among
doctors, veterinarians, and local and federal public-health officials were inadequate. Systems for
ensuring that medication and personnel were distributed appropriately were undeveloped. The public health
infrastructure was—and remains—unprepared for timely response and containment of outbreaks. Moreover, critics
succumb themselves; and coordination among [End Page 97] federal, state, and local officials was all but nonexistent.
argue that the lack of a fully coordinated global disease surveillance system could obstruct early response to a bioterrorist attack.
Congress enacted legislation to address some of these shortfalls, but many of these problems remain unresolved. 40
***PRIVACY ADV***
Drones cause constant surveillance
With a lack of legal restrictions drones can constantly spy on the U.S. public
constantly.
Brandon Nagy, May 1, 2014, Brandon Nagy practices Business Litigation at Stinson Leonard
Street, “Why They Can Watch You: Assessing the Constitutionality of Warrantless Unmanned
Aerial Surveillance by Law Enforcement,” Berkeley Technology Law Journal vol. 29, issue 1, pp.
136-152, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2020&context=btlj, p.
170-172
Riley and Ciraolo establish the lawfulness of a vantage point as critical to whether or not a
Fourth Amendment search occurred. Kyllo and Jones’s return of property concepts to the equation further confirmed
that visual surveillance must not be trespassory. A UAS surveilling from the same vantage point as Ciraolo’s
fixed-wing craft or Riley’s helicopter would likely be considered to be similarly lawful. However, it is
easy to imagine (and perhaps expect) that law enforcement agencies will deploy UAS to surveil from vantage points impossible in
conventional aircraft simply because UASs can provide the capability to do so. In his dissent in Riley, Justice Brennan could have
been describing current UAS technology and FAA regulations when he asked the reader to imagine “a helicopter capable of hovering
just above an enclosed courtyard or patio without generating any noise, wind, or dust at all—and, for good measure, without posing
any threat of injury.”245 Law enforcement use under then- controlling FAA regulations meant that the vantage point was lawful and
therefore observations from that vantage point, even into the house, were not a Fourth Amendment search.246 Current
FAA
regulations, which still emphasize safety over privacy, are not materially different from those in
Riley. Even assuming the presence of the UAS did not interfere with the use of the home (an
important factor in Riley and the FAA regulations), under Riley, it would appear that this type of law
enforcement UAS surveillance remains constitutional. In contrast, Kyllo and Jones’s emphasis on a propertybased approach suggests that the Court might entertain the argument that the physical presence of the UAS over the property at
sufficiently low heights renders it a trespass, and, therefore, a Fourth Amendment search. United States v. Causby may have
abolished the common-law “ancient doctrine . . . that ownership of the land extend[s] to the periphery of the universe,”247 but the
Court could find that a resident retains some right of exclusion from the airspace above her property that is not usable by
conventional craft. It is difficult to imagine that the airspace between a house’s curtilage and the height of its roof is a “public
highway” such that granting the property owner some right of exclusion “seriously interfere[s] with [its] control and development in
the public interest.”248 It is also possible that UAS surveillance from a non-trespassory, lawful vantage point could be found to be
sufficiently intrusive. Imagine that law enforcement officers, like those in Carter, wish to peer inside of an apartment several stories
above ground to confirm a tip that criminal activity was occurring. Unable to walk up to the window and peer in, the officers
warrantlessly launch a small UAS from the street below. The UAS quickly ascends to the height of the apartment’s window and
relays video of the activities within to the officers on the ground. Assuming the UAS flight was within FAA guidelines and that no
trespass or physical intrusion into the apartment occurred, the vantage point was clearly lawful and appears constitutional under
existing precedent. Once
FAA regulations open the skies to low-altitude UAS flight, such a holding
effectively creates an Orwellian state: using UAS, law enforcement could surveil from the
position of any possible viewer at any possible vantage point. If the Court wishes to avoid such
Orwellian effects, it may be persuaded by a Kyllo-based argument. More specifically, because the activity
within the apartment could only have been seen via the angle of the UAS or through an actual physical law enforcement intrusion
into the apartment, the Court could use Kyllo’s rule to interpret that a Fourth Amendment search occurred as long as the Court first
finds that UASs are not within “general public use.”249 However, if such an angle of observation could have been achieved from an
adjacent building, regardless of police law enforcement agent’s actual ability to physically observe from that location, it is unlikely
that Kyllo would be found applicable because the general public could have been afforded the same view. Alternatively, the
Court may choose to differentiate the hypothetical above from Riley and Ciraolo because a
traditional aircraft would have been incapable of observing from the angle the UAS observed
from. This potential differentiation underscores Justice O’Connor’s criticism of judicial reliance on FAA regulations for a
determination of the lawfulness of a vantage point. A future Court could find grounds to declare that the
lawfulness of a vantage point is not determined merely by compliance with FAA regulations
because the FAA is primarily concerned with safety and not privacy or Fourth Amendment
protections, as highlighted by its recent mandate from Congress in the FAAMA.250 In such a case, law enforcement attempting
to introduce evidence so obtained may need to heed Justice O’Connor’s suggestion and demonstrate that UAS flights at that altitude
are routine enough to prevent an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy. Unfortunately this argument for the
unconstitutionality of certain UAS surveillance may expire soon: the FAAMA’s stated goal is to rapidly increase the routine private
and governmental use of UAS in the United States.25
A lack of restraint risks drone use in a way that risks people’s privacy and
security.
Ann Cavoukian, August 2012, Ann Cavoukian is the former Information and Privacy
Commissioner for the Canadian province of Ontario serving from 1997 to 2014, “Privacy and
Drones: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles,” Privacy by Design, pp. 1-27,
http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/lbrr/archives/cnmcs-plcng/cn29822-eng.pdf, p. 10-11
The United States has followed an interesting trajectory in the use of surveillance devices and
video cameras. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that police use of a private plane deploying
video surveillance cameras to detect otherwise hidden marijuana plants in a backyard, did not
constitute a search because the observations were made from “public navigable airspace.”20
However, in 2001, in Kyllo v. United States,21 it was held that the use of a thermal imaging device
from a public vantage point to monitor the radiation of heat from a person’s home constituted a
“search” within the meaning of the Constitution and thus required a warrant. The court in Kyllo viewed
use of thermal imaging equipment (not readily accessible to the public) as being different from observations made in “plain view.”
The courts’ reasoning in these cases centres upon individual expectations of privacy. However
individual expectations
are likely to change as the technologies of surveillance become more widespread. More recently, the
U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Jones,22 considered whether the warrantless use of a
tracking device on a motor vehicle operating on public roadways constituted a “search” and therefore
violated the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment. On January 23, 2012, the Supreme Court
unanimously held that the Government’s attachment of the GPS device to the vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the
vehicle’s movements, constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. The decision recognizes that judicial warrants may be
constitutionally required to protect privacy interests implicated by the use of sophisticated surveillance technologies, including in
public spaces. In the context of civil aviation, in
2012, the Obama administration signed into law a reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),23 requiring that agency to write rules
opening U.S. airspace to UAVs. Professors Wittes and Villasenor have suggested that this re-authorization
places the FAA at the centre of a set of considerable policy changes, effectively obliging the
agency to take on the role of “privacy czar” for UAVs.24 In a partial response to the privacy implications of
civilian drones operating in US airspace, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) issued an
Unmanned Aircraft System Operations Industry “Code of Conduct.”25 (The AUVSI is an influential group
representing the UAV industry.) Though this is a step in the right direction, the code of conduct is very broad
and consists of generic promises not to operate UAVs in a manner that presents “undue risk”
and to “respect the privacy of individuals.” Critics have noted that there is nothing in the
document that attempts to provide a detailed explanation as to how the code will be enforced
and by whom.26
Tech leads to surveillance
Surveillance of citizens has become the norm with new technology.
Christopher Slobogin, 2012, Christopher Slobogin is a Professor of Law at Vanderbuilt
University Law School, “Making the Most of United States v. Jones in a Surveillance Society: A
Statutory Implementation of Mosaic Theory,” Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public
Policy Special Issue vol. 8, pp. 1-37,
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=djclpp, p. 2
The decision in Jones is long overdue. Federal, state, and local governments are rapidly taking
advantage of advances in technology to keep tabs on their citizenry, in increasingly intrusive ways. Millions
of times each year, the police track individuals using technology attached to cars, as in Jones, or signals from either phones or
3factoryinstalled transponders.4 Thousands of cameras, many with zoom, tracking, and facial recognition capacity, continuously
scan hundreds of urban and suburban areas.5 Equipped with powerful magnification devices, hundreds of drones will soon be flying
over a number of jurisdictions.6 The
capacity of computers to access, store, and analyze data has made
mountains of personal information—ranging from phone and e-mail logs to credit card and bank transactions—
available to government officials at virtually the touch of a button.7 Before Jones, the third party
doctrine ensured that none of this activity was regulated by the Fourth Amendment.8
Drones undermine 4th amendment
Domestic drone use will undermine the Fourth Amendment.
David L. Hudson Jr., February 2015, “How Should States Regulate Drones and Aerial
Surveillance?,” ABA Journal, pp. 1-1, Ebsco Host, p. 1
"Domestic drones will devastate the Fourth Amendment unless there are some really strict guidelines," warns
John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute, a Charlottesville, Virginia-based nonprofit legal group. "Information collected
by a drone should not be used as evidence by a court of law," adds Whitehead, who wrote about the technology in his 2013 book, A
Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State. States are taking notice and considering regulation. According to the
National Conference of State Legislators, more than 20 states have passed laws related to drones. Some limit law enforcement's use
of drones or other unmanned aircraft. For example, in Idaho, a law signed in 2013 provides that, except for emergencies "for safety,
search-and-rescue or controlled substance investigations," no person or agency may use a drone to conduct surveillance of private
property without a warrant. Tennessee has a similar law known as the Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act. The law allows
aggrieved individuals the right to sue law enforcement agencies in civil court for violations. It also provides that "no data collected
on an individual, home or areas other than the target that justified deployment may be used, copied or disclosed for any purpose,"
and that such data must be deleted within 24 hours of collection. "The legislation doesn't eliminate the use of drones," says Austin,
Texas-based attorney Gerry Morris, co-chair of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys' Fourth Amendment
Committee. They "require some sort of showing
of probable cause. This is something that is constantly
overlooked. Just because government officials are required to go get a warrant doesn't mean
they won't be able to use the drones. It just means that they are required to follow the Constitution when they use
them." However, in California, Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a measure in September that would have required law enforcement to
obtain a warrant for the vast majority of uses of drones. Brown claimed the bill, AB 1327, would put greater standards on law
enforcement than those required by the U.S. and state constitutions. "AB 1327 would have been the first law in California to
regulate drones," says constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California at Irvine School of Law.
"Drones may be a very valuable tool for investigation in some cases. Under AB 1327, the police still could use drones if they
demonstrated to a judge that there was probable cause. I strongly favored AB 1327 and was very disappointed when Gov. Brown
vetoed it." On the other hand, states have passed laws related to drones that fund the technology or encourage the development of
testing sites. For example, the North Dakota legislature passed a law funding a drone test site. Legal
experts believe that
at some point courts will need to address the constitutionality of these measures and of law
enforcement's use of the technology. "I do think more legislation is needed," Morris says. "I don't think
the court opinions at this point have caught up with the technology. Legislators have to address
the issue and get out in front of it." On the federal level, the 2012 Federal Aviation
Administration Modernization and Reform Act governs the rules regulating drones' domestic
use.
Widespread drone use presents a serious threat to privacy – individual
violations and lingering presence.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1835-1836
The novel and widespread use of drones will likely impact many areas of the law.19 This Note considers a
small slice of relevant jurisprudence, mainly how courts should treat law enforcement observations made by drones of American
citizens or their property in or near the domestic residence setting.20 Privacy
threats will no doubt originate from
sources other than law enforcement entities.21 In order to preserve a manageable scope of review, this Note will
not address the significant privacy threats posed by privately operated drones, drones flying near the border, or those used against
foreign nationals in the United States. But the primary threat to the average American’s privacy arguably does not come from some
of these sources.22 The
routine use of drones by police would, under present law, constitute a more
serious threat to privacy if the evidence gathered therefrom is permitted to be used in court or stored indefinitely.
Rapidly evolving drone technology raises two primary privacy concerns in the law enforcement
setting: (1) that the privacy rights of an individual will be violated; and (2) that the presence of
numerous lingering drones overhead will threaten privacy in society as a whole by providing police
with an Orwellian omniscience.23 These two distinct privacy threats are correlated, because the remedies
for one problem will indirectly alleviate the other.24 Therefore, both individual and societal impacts must be
considered when attempting to craft solutions to the problems that drones pose.
Drone surveillance is undercutting the spirit of the Fourth Amendment – new
regulations are needed now.
Saby Ghoshray, 2013, Saby Ghoshray founded the Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies to
foster and disseminate advanced legal scholarship, “Domestic Surveillance Via Drones: Looking
Through the Lens of the Fourth Amendment,” Northern Illinois University Law Review vol. 33,
pp. 580-599,
http://www.iia.niu.edu/law/organizations/law_review/pdfs/full_issues/33_3/Ghoshray%204.pd
f, p. 585-586
Surveillance via drones is a violent assault against individual privacy. The Framers introduced the Fourth
Amendment as a constitutional bulwark against privacy violation. It was intended to protect private space and personal property,
including an individual’s zone of private seclusion. Thus, the
original contour of the Fourth Amendment was
shaped by the Framers’ natural conception of common law. As the Framers were predominantly driven
towards prohibiting trespass into an individual’s secluded zone of private affairs, they were reluctant to allow law enforcement
wider discretion within the search and seizure framework. Unfortunately, various interacting components of privacy, fundamental
possessory interest, trespass prohibition, and the warrant requirement posed doctrinal difficulties for the Fourth Amendment
jurisprudence. However, later jurisprudence allowed wider latitude in police search and seizure on account of exigencies of
situations. Regardless of facial exigencies articulated by law enforcement, allowing domestic surveillance by drones will certainly
jeopardize such trespass barriers, which until now has been solemnized in law as a constitutional inheritance of the U.S. citizen. As
the post-9/11 societal landscape continues to dilute the various sacrosanct constitutional grants, such as the individual privacy, the
absence of passionate discourse on drones intruding our privacy is a hallmark of a society that is
gradually failing to recognize its constitutional roots. Yet, this failure is the historic emerging reality of the
twenty-first century evolution of the Fourth Amendment. The modern doctrinal constructions of the Fourth Amendment have
authorized carving out countless exceptions to warrantless searches. However, this
evolution in jurisprudence is
contrary to the original intent. The post-Framing period has witnessed the Supreme Court
crafting various exceptions to the warrant requirement. This outgrowth of creative judicial interpretation of the
Fourth Amendment was primarily designed to satisfy the needs of law enforcement’s administrative responsibilities. As political
manipulation started to shape societal aspirations for individual liberty, judicial constructions began to relegate individual liberty
interests in favor of administrative interests.27 As a result, the judiciary began to grant maximal discretion to the law enforcement
administrative mechanisms. With this, the doctrinal components of warrantless search and seizure and law enforcement trespass
became distorted by the predominance of the basic law paradigm.28 Consequently, police power rose asymmetrically, and
warrantless intrusions became the prominent Fourth Amendment concern for individuals. Thus, the amendment’s original aspiration
has become nearly forgotten under the reality of modern times and, now, is quickly losing its original context and relevance. The
above interpretative lens of law enforcement’s trespass into an individual’s private space provides a necessary construct through
which to understand drone surveillance’s deleterious impact on individual privacy. While the framing period’s privacy debate was
focused at securing a person’s right from physical trespass, the construct nonetheless calls for a revitalized discussion. Therefore, in
our current discourse, we must introspect over how secure a person’s secluded zone of private
affairs must be from digital and remote trespass via unmanned aerial vehicles.
Absence of privacy protections in FAA regulations threatens massive fourth
amendment violations with drones.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1847-1848
The absence of privacy protections in the Reauthorization is conspicuous, considering the ease
with which some measures could have been included.75 Congress’s intent may simply have been
to confront privacy at a later date with separate legislation. But regardless of why privacy protections were
not originally included in the Reauthorization, the effect is, in essence, to accelerate a speeding car toward
an unfinished bridge. Whether that bridge can best be spanned by further congressional action, state legislative responses,
or judicial reinterpretation is the subject of Part V.76 As it stands, Congress continues to pressure the FAA to meet
legislative deadlines—some of which having already been missed77—and the Agency has been putting
portions of its plan into action.78 While the main portion of the FAA’s response to the Reauthorization is forthcoming,
there will likely be an explosion of drone usage by interested parties, including law enforcement
agencies.79 The Reauthorization will likely decrease administrative burdens to own and operate a drone, and therefore increase the
market for creating new drones.80 Irrespective of how Congress responds to the privacy problem it now confronts, increased
drone operation by police may have significant legal consequences for courts applying Fourth
Amendment principles because expanded drone use may change the calculus for determining
when a search by drones has occurred.81
Fourth Amendment = poor condition
The Fourth Amendment is in need of reform – its effectiveness is low in
checking privacy concerns.
Abigail Rehfuss, February 6, 2015, Abigail Rehfuss is an Associate at Rehfuss, Liguori &
Associates, P.C., “THE DOMESTIC USE OF DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 314-335,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313-Rehfuss.pdf, p. 325-327
The broken state of our
current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence is in dire need of reform. As we
ability to conceptualize what constitutes an
unreasonable search and seizure has become a daunting endeavor. Although our Constitution and many of the
amendments thereto have withstood the test of time, the Fourth Amendment has faced exceptional pressure
imploring it to adapt with the changing technological era.90 Despite its tenure of strength and reliability, the
mercurial application of the Amendment has rendered it constitutionally infirm, and many of
the cracks in its foundation stem from three current, unworkable tests: (1) the 18th century tort law
test, which renders any physical trespass unconstitutional; (2) the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test, which
strips Fourth Amendment protection from situations where no reasonable expectation of privacy is deemed to exist; and (3) the
“third-party doctrine” test, which deprives information shared with any third party of all Fourth Amendment protection.91
continue to maneuver through a dynamic era dominated by technology, the
Prior to the formulation of both the reasonable expectation of privacy and the third party doctrine tests, Fourth Amendment
violations were thought to have occurred strictly in those circumstances where technical, physical trespasses were committed.92
This heavy reliance on the common-law trespass controlled Fourth Amendment jurisprudence all the way through the latter half of
twentieth century.93 Application of this test rendered a wiretap attached to telephone wires on public streets constitutional on the
grounds that neither the offices nor houses of the defendants were unlawfully entered.94 This common law rule also included the
understanding that “the admissibility of evidence [was] not affected by the illegality of the means by which it was obtained,” and the
only limitation imposed was that “the exclusion of evidence should be confined to cases where rights under the Constitution would
be violated by admitting it.”95 This rule was justified on the premise that “[a] standard which would forbid the reception of evidence
if obtained by other than nice ethical conduct by government officials would make society suffer and give criminals greater immunity
. . . .”96 Thus, where federal officers intercepted telephone messages over the course of several months without committing any
trespass upon any property of the defendants, the Court sustained the admission of the evidence.97 Although this
exclusively property-based approach guided Fourth Amendment applications for quite some
time, it has since been discredited.98 Perhaps the most influential decision to initiate the shift
away from this property based approach was Katz v. United States, wherein the Court realized
that the strict trespass test “in the present day, [is] bad physics as well as bad law, for reasonable
expectations of privacy may be defeated by electronic as well as physical invasion.”99 In Katz, a
petitioner was convicted under an eight-count indictment that charged him with disclosing wagering information by telephone from
Los Angeles to Miami and Boston in violation of a federal statute.100 At the petitioner’s trial, the District Court allowed the
Government to present evidence of the petitioner’s end of telephone conversations, which were overheard by FBI agents who had
affixed an electronic listening and recording device to the outside of the public telephone booth where petitioner had placed his
calls.101 In holding that the Government’s actions violated the Fourth Amendment, the Supreme Court noted that, “the Fourth
Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a
subject of Fourth Amendment protection.”102 The Court further remarked that the reach of the Fourth Amendment can no longer
depend on the presence or absence of a physical intrusion into any given enclosure.103
The Fourth Amendment’s disorienting interpretation is anachronistic with
regards to modern day surveillance technology.
Abigail Rehfuss, February 6, 2015, Abigail Rehfuss is an Associate at Rehfuss, Liguori &
Associates, P.C., “THE DOMESTIC USE OF DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 314-335,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313-Rehfuss.pdf, p. 331-332
As it pertains to the third party doctrine test, the Supreme Court has consistently held that the
Fourth Amendment does not forbid the procurement of information revealed to a third party,
even in situations where the information is communicated “‘on the assumption that it will be used only for a limited purpose and
the confidence placed in a third party will not be betrayed.’”128 For example, in Smith v. Maryland, the
Court applied the
third party doctrine test to a situation where, at the request of law enforcement authorities, a
telephone company installed a pen register to record the telephone numbers dialed by the suspect, and the
information derived from it was later used to obtain a search warrant of his home.129 Ultimately, the Supreme Court
held that the installation and use of the pen register was not a search in violation of the Fourth
Amendment because “[w]hen he used his phone, petitioner voluntarily conveyed numerical information to the telephone
company and ‘exposed’ that information to its equipment in the ordinary course of business. In doing so, petitioner assumed the risk
that the company would reveal to police the numbers that he dialed.”130 This
third party doctrine test continues to
be endorsed today, as was recently exemplified by United States v. Madison. 131 There, a defendant
knowingly and freely gave specific location information to his cell phone provider when he made and received telephone calls on his
cell phone.132 Ultimately, the court relied on earlier precedent and rejected the contention that the Defendant had a subjective
expectation of privacy in the cell tower location data for his cell-phone usage.133 As illustrated by the disparate results emanating
from these tests, the
Fourth Amendment is currently entangled in a disorienting state of flux that has
left many citizens and lawmakers unsure of the law’s modern day parameters. The inconsistent
applications of the 18th century tort law test, the reasonable expectation of privacy test, and
the third party doctrine test have led to incongruous outcomes, and ultimately, this absence of
uniformity renders it difficult for citizens to manage their affairs successfully.134 While there may
be some historical value to these three enumerated tests, they have consistently proven to be
unworkable in today’s highly advanced technological era.
Drone surveillance ineffective
Drones are poor at domestic surveillance tasks for several reasons.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
4
Despite potential benefits of using UAVs for homeland security, various problems
encountered in the past may
hinder UAV implementation on the border. According to a 2003 report, there have been concerns
regarding the high accident rate of UAVs, which can be multiple times higher than that of
manned aircraft.15 Because UAV technology is still evolving, there is less redundancy built into the operating
system of UAVs than of manned aircraft and until redundant systems are perfected mishap rates are expected to remain high.
Additionally, if control systems fail in a manned aircraft, a well-trained pilot is better positioned
to find the source of the problem because of his/her physical proximity. If a UAV encountered a
similar system failure, or if a UAV landing was attempted during difficult weather conditions, the
ground control pilot would be at a disadvantage because he or she is removed from the event. Unlike a manned
pilot, the remote pilot would not be able to assess important sensory information such as wind
speed.16
Weather conditions make drones ineffective at surveillance tasks.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
4
Inclement weather conditions can also impinge on a UAV’s surveillance capability, especially UAVs
equipped with only an EO camera and Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR), because cloudy conditions and high
humidity climates can distort the imagery produced by EO and FLIR equipment. Although the Predator B is operating
in the low-humidity environment of the Southwest, the effects of extreme climatic or atmospheric conditions
on its sensors reportedly can be mitigated if DHS decides to outfit the Predator B with a synthetic aperture radar
(SAR) system17 and a moving target indicator (MTI) radar. Adding SAR and MTI to the Predator B’s platform could significantly
enhance its operational capability for border missions. However, adding
SAR and MTI to the UAV platform
would increase the costs associated with using UAVs on the border.
Privacy bright line key
A bright line needs to be established with regards to a reasonable expectation
of privacy.
Abigail Rehfuss, February 6, 2015, Abigail Rehfuss is an Associate at Rehfuss, Liguori &
Associates, P.C., “THE DOMESTIC USE OF DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 314-335,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313-Rehfuss.pdf, p. 327-328
Ultimately, determining
whether a person has a “constitutionally protected reasonable expectation
of privacy” requires a two-part analysis: “first, has the individual manifested a subjective
expectation of privacy in the object of the challenged search? Second, is society willing to recognize that
expectation as reasonable?”104 In ascertaining whether or not an expectation is reasonable, “‘[the] test of legitimacy is
not whether the individual chooses to conceal assertedly ‘private’ activity,’ but instead ‘whether the government’s intrusion
infringes upon the personal and societal values protected by the Fourth Amendment.’”105 Yet, despite the formulation of the
reasonable expectation of privacy test in Katz, confusion has persisted as to whether or not this is the guiding standard. The
need
for a bright-line rule to determine when a search and seizure is unconstitutional was most
recently demonstrated in the United State’s Supreme Court’s decision United States v. Jones,
where there was a discernible split in reasoning among the Justices despite the fact that they all reached a unanimous result.106
Jones involved the Government’s warrantless attachment of a GPS tracking device to the undercarriage of a vehicle belonging to an
individual (Jones) who was the target of an FBI investigation for the suspected trafficking of narcotics.107 Over the course of four
weeks, the Government used the GPS device to monitor the vehicle’s movements on public streets.108 The device ultimately
transmitted more than 2,000 pages of data that led to a multiplecount indictment arising from violations of 21 U.S.C. §§ 841 and
846.109
Democracy impact ext.
Global democratic transitions are inevitable – preventing democratic sliding
prevents war.
Fareed Zakaria, 1997, Fareed Zakaria has a PhD in Political Science from Harvard, he’s also the
managing editor for Foreign Affairs, Lexis Nexis
This is not a plea for the wholesale adoption of the American
way but rather for a more variegated conception of liberal democracy, one that emphasizes
both parts of that phrase.
there lies an intellectual task of recovering the
constitutional liberal tradition, central to
the development of good government
throughout the world
If a democracy does not preserve liberty and law, that it is a democracy is
a small consolation.
Of course cultures vary, and different societies will require different frameworks of government.
Before new policies can be adopted,
the Western experience and to
. Political progress in Western history has been the result of a growing recognition over the centuries that, as the Declaration of Independence puts it, human beings have "certain inalienable rights" and that
"it is to secure these rights that governments are instituted."
LIBERALIZING FOREIGN POLICY A proper appreciation of constitutional liberalism has a variety of implications for American foreign policy. First, it suggests a certain humility. While it is easy to impose elections
on a country, it is more difficult to push constitutional liberalism on a society. The process of genuine liberalization and democratization is gradual and long-term, in which an election is only one step. Without appropriate preparation, it might even be a false step.
Recognizing this, governments and nongovernmental organizations are increasingly promoting a wide array of measures designed to bolster constitutional liberalism in developing countries. The National Endowment for Democracy promotes free markets,
independent labor movements, and political parties. The U.S. Agency for International Development funds independent judiciaries. In the end, however, elections trump everything. If a country holds elections, Washington and the world will tolerate a great deal
from the resulting government, as they have with Yeltsin, Akayev, and Menem. In an age of images and symbols, elections are easy to capture on film. (How do you televise the rule of law?) But there is life after elections, especially for the people who live there.
Conversely, the absence of free and fair elections should be viewed as one flaw, not the definition of tyranny. Elections are an important virtue of governance, but they are not the only virtue. Governments should be judged by yardsticks related to constitutional
liberalism as well. Economic, civil, and religious liberties are at the core of human autonomy and dignity. If a government with limited democracy steadily expands these freedoms, it should not be branded a dictatorship. Despite the limited political choice they offer,
countries like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand provide a better environment for the life, liberty, and happiness of their citizens than do either dictatorships like Iraq and Libya or illiberal democracies like Slovakia or Ghana. And the pressures of global capitalism can
push the process of liberalization forward. Markets and morals can work together. Even China, which remains a deeply repressive regime, has given its citizens more autonomy and economic liberty than they have had in generations. Much more needs to change
before China can even be called a liberalizing autocracy, but that should not mask the fact that much has changed. Finally, we need to revive constitutionalism. One effect of the overemphasis on pure democracy is that little effort is given to creating imaginative
constitutions for transitional countries. Constitutionalism, as it was understood by its greatest eighteenth century exponents, such as Montesquieu and Madison, is a complicated system of checks and balances designed to prevent the accumulation of power and the
abuse of office. This is done not by simply writing up a list of rights but by constructing a system in which government will not violate those rights. Various groups must be included and empowered because, as Madison explained, "ambition must be made to
counteract ambition."
Constitutions were also meant to tame the passions of the public
, creating not simply democratic but also deliberative
government. Unfortunately, the rich variety of unelected bodies, indirect voting, federal arrangements, and checks and balances that characterized so many of the formal and informal constitutions of Europe are now regarded with suspicion. What could be called
the Weimar syndrome -- named after interwar Germany's beautifully constructed constitution, which failed to avert fascism -- has made people regard constitutions as simply paperwork that cannot make much difference. (As if any political system in Germany
would have easily weathered military defeat, social revolution, the Great Depression, and hyperinflation.) Procedures that inhibit direct democracy are seen as inauthentic, muzzling the voice of the people. Today around the world we see variations on the same
majoritarian theme. But the trouble with these winner-take-all systems is that, in most democratizing countries, the winner really does take all. DEMOCRACY'S DISCONTENTS
We live in a democratic age.
Through
much of human history the danger to an individual's life, liberty and happiness came from the absolutism of monarchies, the dogma of churches, the terror of dictatorships, and the iron grip of totalitarianism. Dictators and a few straggling totalitarian regimes still
persist, but increasingly they are anachronisms in a world of global markets, information, and media.
is part of the fashionable attire of modernity.
There are no longer respectable alternatives to democracy
; it
Thus the problems of governance in the 21st century will likely be problems
within democracy .
This makes them more difficult to handle, wrapped as they are in the mantle of legitimacy. Illiberal democracies gain legitimacy, and thus strength, from the fact that they are reasonably democratic.
the greatest danger that illiberal democracy poses
is that it will discredit liberal
democracy itself, casting a shadow on democratic governance.
Every wave of
democracy has been followed by setbacks
The last
such period of disenchantment, in Europe during the interwar years, was seized upon by
demagogues
Conversely,
-- other than to its own people --
This would not be unprecedented.
in which the system was seen as inadequate and new alternatives were sought by ambitious leaders and restless masses.
, many of whom were initially popular and even elected. Today, in the face of a spreading virus of illiberalism, the most useful role that the internati onal community, and most importantly the United States, can play is -- instead of
searching for new lands to democratize and new places to hold elections -- to consolidate democracy where it has taken root and to encourage the gradual development of constitutional liberalism across the globe. Democracy without constitutional liberalism is not
simply inadequate, but dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the abuse of power, ethnic divisions, and even war. Eighty years ago, Woodrow Wilson took America into the twentieth century with a challenge, to make the world safe for democracy. As we
approach the next century, our task is to make democracy safe for the world.
Democratic backsliding causes great power war.
Azar Gat, 2011, Azar Gat is the Ezer Weizman Professor of National Security at Tel Aviv
University, 2011, “The Changing Character of War,” in The Changing Character of War, ed. Hew
Strachan and Sibylle Scheipers, p. 30-32
Since 1945, the decline of major great power war has deepened further. Nuclear weapons have concentrated the
minds of all concerned wonderfully, but no less important have been the institutionalization of free trade and the closely related
process of rapid and sustained economic growth throughout the capitalist world. The communist bloc did not participate in the
system of free trade, but at least initially it too experienced substantial growth, and, unlike Germany and Japan, it was always
sufficiently large and rich in natural resources to maintain an autarky of sorts. With the Soviet collapse and with the integration of
the former communist powers into the global capitalist economy, the prospect of a major war within the developed world seems to
have become very remote indeed. This is one of the main sources for the feeling that war has been transformed: its geopolitical
centre of gravity has shifted radically. The modernized, economically developed parts of the world constitute a ‘zone of peace’.
War now seems to be confined to the less-developed parts of the globe, the world’s ‘zone of
war’, where countries that have so far failed to embrace modernization and its pacifying spin-off
effects continue to be engaged in wars among themselves, as well as with developed countries. While the trend is
very real, one wonders if the near disappearance of armed conflict within the developed world is
likely to remain as stark as it has been since the collapse of communism. The post-Cold War
moment may turn out to be a fleeting
one. The
probability of major wars within the developed world
remains low—because of the factors already mentioned: increasing wealth, economic openness and interdependence, and
nuclear deterrence. But the deep sense of change prevailing since 1989 has been based on the far more
radical notion that the triumph of capitalism also spelled the irresistible ultimate victory of
democracy; and that in an affluent and democratic world, major conflict no longer needs to be feared or seriously prepared for.
This notion, however, is fast eroding with the return of capitalist non-democratic great powers
that have been absent from the international system since 1945. Above all, there is the formerly communist
and fast industrializing authoritarian-capitalist China, whose massive growth represents the greatest change in the
global balance of power. Russia, too, is retreating from its postcommunist liberalism and
assuming an increasingly authoritarian character. Authoritarian capitalism may be more viable
than people tend to assume . 8 The communist great powers failed even though they were potentially larger than the
democracies, because their economic systems failed them. By contrast, the capitalist
authoritarian/totalitarian
powers during the first half of the twentieth century, Germany and Japan, particularly the former, were
as efficient economically as, and if anything more successful militarily than, their democratic
counterparts. They were defeated in war mainly because they were too small and ultimately succumbed to the exceptional
continental size of the United States (in alliance with the communist Soviet Union during the Second World War). However, the
new non-democratic powers are both large and capitalist. China in particular is the largest player in
the international system in terms of population and is showing spectacular economic growth that
within a generation or two is likely to make it a true non-democratic superpower. Although the return of capitalist nondemocratic great powers does not necessarily imply open conflict or war, it might indicate that the
democratic hegemony since the Soviet Union’s collapse could be short-lived and that a
universal ‘democratic peace’ may still be far off . The new capitalist authoritarian powers are deeply integrated
into the world economy. They partake of the development-open-trade-capitalist cause of peace, but not of the liberal democratic
cause. Thus, it is crucially important that any protectionist turn in the system is avoided so as to prevent a grab for markets and raw
materials such as that which followed the disastrous slide into imperial protectionism and conflict during the first part of the
twentieth century. Of course, the openness of the world economy does not depend exclusively on the democracies. In time, China
itself might become more protectionist, as it grows wealthier, its labour costs rise, and its current competitive edge diminishes. With
the possible exception of the sore Taiwan problem, China is likely to be less restless and revisionist than the territorially confined
Germany and Japan were. Russia, which is still reeling from having lost an empire, may be more problematic. However, as
China
grows in power, it is likely to become more assertive, flex its muscles, and behave like a
superpower, even if it does not become particularly aggressive. The democratic and non-democratic powers
may coexist more or less peacefully, albeit warily, side by side, armed because of mutual fear and suspicion, as a result
of the so-called ‘security dilemma’, and against worst-case scenarios. But there is also the prospect of more
antagonistic relations, accentuated ideological rivalry, potential and actual conflict, intensified
arms races, and even new cold wars, with spheres of influence and opposing coalitions. Although great power relations will
probably vary from those that prevailed during any of the great twentieth-century conflicts, as conditions are never quite the same,
they may vary less than seemed likely only a short while ago.
A2 Requires a warrant
UAV surveillance is distinct enough from traditional aircraft it would not require
a warrant.
Richard M. Thompson II, April 3, 2013, Richard Thompson II is a CRS researcher and
legislative attorney, “Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment
Implications and Legislative Responses,” Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21,
http://www.a51.nl/storage/pdf/R42701.pdf, p. 13
Based on the aerial surveillance cases, it may be reasonable to presume a warrant would not be
required (nor, perhaps, any suspicion, for that matter) to conduct drone surveillance of most public places for a
relatively short period of time. The Supreme Court remarked in Ciraolo that the “Fourth Amendment
simply does not require the police traveling in the public airways at [1,000 feet] to obtain a warrant
to observe what is visible to the naked eye.”100 However, the rarity of drone flights may
distinguish their use from surveillance by the piloted aircraft used in the three aerial cases decided by the Court. All
three of these cases were premised on the fact that each aircraft was flying in navigable
airspace, and that these flights were not “sufficiently rare” to provide a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area to be
searched. To this point, Justice White remarked in Riley that “there is nothing in the record or before us to suggest that helicopters
flying at 400 feet are sufficiently rare in this country to lend substance to respondent’s claim that he reasonably anticipated that his
greenhouse would not be subject to observation from that altitude.”101 Presently, use
of UAVs in U.S. airspace is
considerably less common. The FAA has issued only approximately 300 licenses for drone use in U.S. airspace.102
A2 Privacy is protected
Manned surveillance privacy protections are not enough – new legislation is
needed.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1854-1856
In Riley, the Supreme Court decided to apply the same method-focused rationale, despite the use of a
different aerial technology—police helicopters. This similar approach suggests a deliberate retreat from what
could have been a firmer defense of privacy—an approach made and evaluated without regard
to the surveillance technology employed. The Riley decision was badly split. The four-justice plurality
concluded that an aerial police observation made “from a public vantage point where [the aircraft has] a
right to be” does not require a search warrant so long as a reasonable man would not have
“expected that his [curtilage] was protected from public or official observation.”113 This rationale leans
heavily on whether the aircraft making the observation had a legal right to be where it was in the sky (pursuant to FAA regulations
governing airspace).114 Interestingly, a majority of the Court did not accept this rationale.115 Justice O’Connor agreed with the final
disposition but differed in her analysis.116 Along with Justices Brennan, Marshall, Stevens, and Blackmun, Justice O’Connor
deemphasized the FAA regulations in any privacy analysis, and did not endorse the plurality’s analogy between helicopter
observations and ground-level observations.117 These five Justices instead focused their judgment on the reasonableness of an
individual’s expectation of privacy.118 This
reasonableness determination is based on the circumstances of
the case (such as where the individual was and what precautions the individual took to shield the property from public view).119
Justice O’Connor argued that the Court should “ask whether the helicopter was in the public airways at an altitude at which
members of the public travel with sufficient regularity” and that “society is prepared to recognize as reasonable,” regardless of
technical compliance with FAA safety regulations.120 Additionally, Justice Brennan’s dissent, as joined by Justices Marshall and
Stevens, appears to anticipate a future technology that would be more intrusive than the helicopters of the 1980s.121 He noted that
the plurality appeared to dismiss the intrusiveness of the helicopter merely because it had a legal right to be where it was and due to
the lack of “undue noise . . . wind, dust, or threat of injury”122 created by its presence. Arguing that the proper analysis depends on
safeguarding the privacy and security of private citizens, Justice Brennan asked the Court to “imagine a helicopter capable of
hovering just above [the ground] without generating any noise, wind, or dust at all . . . . Suppose police employed this miraculous
tool to discover not only what crops people were growing . . . but also what books they were reading.”123 This hypothetical is
quite similar to the capabilities possessed by certain modern high-tech drones.124 The dissent thus
addresses a model approach for the Supreme Court to take when applying aerial observation law to drones precisely because it
imagines the potential abuse of the plurality’s emphasis on the location of the observing aircraft. Courts may
decide to
break from present case law because of the differences between helicopter and manned aircraft
compared with unmanned drones.125 These cases may not apply to observations made from
aircraft using cameras that enhance sensory abilities—as would be the case with most drones— because such an observation
loses any tenable comparison to the proverbial policeman on a public street.126 At some point, the analogy loses its credence in the
face of an overly piercing spy technology, at least if some degree of privacy is to be retained. When technology emerges that
fundamentally alters the privacy analysis, change becomes appropriate.127 Drones
may very well be the line in the
sand.
Law enforcement surveillance enjoys legal flexibility – hampers privacy
protections.
Richard M. Thompson II, April 3, 2013, Richard Thompson II is a CRS researcher and
legislative attorney, “Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment
Implications and Legislative Responses,” Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21,
http://www.a51.nl/storage/pdf/R42701.pdf, p. 10
Even more so than surveillance of public places generally, law
enforcement agencies are granted significant
deference to conduct surveillance at or near American borders. The federal government has a significant
interest in protecting American borders from crossings by persons attempting to enter unlawfully, drug trafficking,
and, perhaps most importantly, the transit of weapons and persons seeking to do harm to American people and infrastructure.
Congress has granted federal law enforcement agencies significant search powers at the border.
Section 287 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), codified at 8 U.S.C. Section 1357, authorizes immigration officers to
conduct warrantless searches of any vessel within a reasonable distance from the United States border and any vehicle within 25
miles from a border for the “purpose of patrolling the border to prevent the illegal entry of aliens into the United States.”71
Similarly, 19 U.S.C. Section 482 authorizes customs officers to search vehicles and persons on which or whom they have reasonable
cause to believe are carrying goods unlawfully into the United States.72 The
Supreme Court has likewise
acknowledged this federal interest in the borders, observing that “[t]he Government’s interest
in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the international
border.”73 Again, the touchstone in every Fourth Amendment case is whether the search is
reasonable. 74 The Court observed in United States v. Montoya De Hernandez “the Fourth
Amendment balance of reasonableness is qualitatively different at the international border.”75
“Routine searches,” the Court continued, “are not subject to any requirement of reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or
warrant.”76
A2 Court checks
Applying the Fourth Amendment to drones requires a court case that can draw
a meaningful distinction between UAV’s and traditional forms of aerial
surveillance – unlikely to happen.
Richard M. Thompson II, April 3, 2013, Richard Thompson II is a CRS researcher and
legislative attorney, “Drones in Domestic Surveillance Operations: Fourth Amendment
Implications and Legislative Responses,” Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21,
http://www.a51.nl/storage/pdf/R42701.pdf, p. 17
Applying the Fourth Amendment to drones requires application of the threshold question: was
there a search? Again, this will depend on all the factors discussed above—the area of the search, the
technology used, and whether society would respect the target’s expectation of privacy in the place
searched. If a reviewing court concludes that the drone surveillance was not a search, neither a
warrant nor any degree of individualized suspicion would be required. If, however, the court
concluded there was a search, then a court would ask whether a warrant is required, if one of the
exceptions apply, and what level of suspicion, if any, is necessary to uphold the search. Unless a
meaningful distinction can be made between drone surveillance and more traditional forms of
government tracking, existing jurisprudence suggests that a reviewing court would likely uphold
drone surveillance conducted with no individualized suspicion when conducted for purposes other than strict
law enforcement. The Supreme Court has hesitated from interfering in what they see as the executive’s function in protecting the
health and safety of the American population.
So far there is no legal restriction on the use of drones in domestic airspace.
Philip J. Hiltner, 2013, Phil Hiltner is currently a lawyer in the Washtenaw County Office of
Public Defender’s Office and also works for the Law Offices of Jonathan Dills, North Carolina
Thirteenth Prosecutorial District, “THE DRONES ARE COMING: USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL
VEHICLES FOR POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND ITS FOURTH AMENDMENT IMPLICATIONS,” Wake
Forest Journal of Law and Policy vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 397-415,
http://lawpolicyjournal.law.wfu.edu/files/2013/06/Vol.3-2-Comment-Hiltner.pdf, p. 409-410
UASs provide the government with an unprecedented ability to observe one’s home and its
curtilage from a much closer distance than crop dusters and helicopters. The Court has permitted observation
from an elevation of four hundred feet, but what about observation from four feet? There is nothing in the
Court’s previous decisions that would point to a different outcome as long as the observation
was being made from authorized airspace. The fact that much more intimate observations may be made with a
drone hovering just above a skylight than by a helicopter several hundred feet in the air hardly needs to be noted. The concern with
such capabilities may be obvious, but that does not necessarily mean courts will be able to find an exception for such observations in
their Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Finally, there is the remaining question about what type of sense enhancement may be
used to observe the home. In
Dow Chemical, the court said the use of a commercial aerial mapping
camera did not raise constitutional concerns but reserved judgment on what other types of
technological enhancements might be problematic.97 Additionally, caution should be used when expanding Dow
Chemical’s analysis to different contexts. Dow Chemical involved surveillance of an industrial facility, which “is not an area
immediately adjacent to the private home, where privacy expectations are most heightened.”98
With the expansion of drone use for domestic surveillance purposes – court
rulings will be invalidated.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1834-1835
Currently, when police observe from the air, courts will inquire whether the aircraft had a legal
right to be flying there and whether a reasonable man should have expected that his activities
were exposed to public viewing from the air.13 Some of these inquiries likely now protect Americans from much drone
observation,14 but issues remain. Widespread police operation of drones has the potential to upend
current Supreme Court precedent.15 While previous cases have held that “mere visual
observation does not constitute a search,”16 that law is, in part, predicated on assumptions of
resource scarcity that will cease to be true in the face of widespread police use of drones.17
Concerned members of Congress and civil libertarians tend to focus on the broad societal “implications of increased [drone] use
including potential privacy implications.”18 In the face of new legislation and confusion in the lower courts, the
Supreme
Court will likely have new opportunities to revisit its decisions governing aerial observation.
Before evaluating legislative or judicial solutions, however, the upcoming changes to drone policy must be outlined so that the
precise vulnerabilities of existing jurisprudence can be appreciated.
A2 FAA checks
UAV’s presents an immense privacy challenge – no jurisdictional protection and
breadth of surveillance capabilities.
Wells C. Bennett, December 2012, Wells C. Bennett is a visiting fellow in National Security
Law at the Brookings Institution, “Unmanned at Any Speed: Bringing Drones into Our National
Airspace,” The Brookings Institute, no. 55, pp. 1-20,
http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/12/14-dronesbennett/1214_drones_bennett.pdf, p. 19-20
UAS pose serious privacy challenges. The reasons are straightforward. When mounted on a remotelypiloted craft, today’s sensors can scoop up quite a lot of information, at times more easily or more
broadly than can helicopters, airplanes, or ground-mounted surveillance equipment. There’s also the
relevant but outdated case law: the Supreme Court has suggested that warrantless surveillance, if conducted from FAA-defined
“public navigable airspace,” will not trigger a violation of the Fourth Amendment.94 Just how much use will UAS make of that and
other airspace – for surveillance, among myriad other purposes? The
FAA reportedly believes that as many as
30,000 unmanned craft could take to our skies by 2020. Having all of this in mind, the
groundswell of privacy concerns seems pretty well justified. The question is how privacy fits with the FAA’s
integration effort. Some legislators want to ensure the agency’s engagement with privacy issues, by
adding them to FMRA’s task list. Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) would amend FMRA, by (among other things) directing the Secretary
of Transportation to identify privacy threats posed by domestic UAS endeavors, and by precluding the FAA from licensing domestic
UAS unless and until the operator has explained, in detail, how he or she will mitigate possible harms to third-party privacy
interests.95 Other proposals focus on the FAA’s independent authority. Just days after the FMRA’s signing, advocacy organizations
wrote to the FAA’s Acting Director, Michael Huerta, and urged his agency to “conduct a rulemaking to address the threat to privacy
and civil liberties that will result from the deployment of aerial drones within the United States.”96 The FAA balked at that request,
but similar ones followed. Others have urged the FAA to account for privacy matters, as the agency works through the FMRA
timetable. That latter approach seems to have caught on. As discussed in Section Two, the Acting FAA Administrator, Michael
Huerta, publicly cited the need to resolve privacy concerns before selecting experimental UAS flight ranges. Why do so if, as some
have suggested, the FAA has no special jurisdiction over the issue? One answer has to do with expediency; the
FAA might have thought that, regardless of its FMRA obligations, the agency nevertheless must address a matter of tremendous
significance to the public. Another theory is that the
FAA indeed views itself as legally bound to resolve
privacy issues as they arise – though this does not follow from FMRA’s plain text, and also doesn’t neatly jibe
with some legislative proposals to shunt privacy into the FMRA process. The latter would not be necessary
if, indeed, FMRA already obligated the FAA to account for privacy concerns. Whatever the explanation, one thing is certain. By
emphasizing privacy’s centrality to the test site selection exercise, the Acting Administrator’s response effectively commits the FAA
to tackling other privacy problems in the future, as it reaches other statutory milestones. Although its mission is only to ensure safe
flight within the national airspace system, the agency now is officially in the privacy game, for better or worse.
The FAA is lacking any coherent regulatory framework for the integration of
UAV’s into national airspace.
Bart Elias, September 10, 2012, Bart Elias is a specialist in aviation policy and a researcher for
the Congressional Research Service, “Pilotless Drones: Background and Considerations for
Congress Regarding Unmanned Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-21, http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/crs/R42718.pdf, p. 7
UAV manufacturers and users are seeking a regulatory structure for the certification of UAV
systems and approval for operation in domestic airspace. Ideally, operators of approved systems want the
ability to “file and fly,” meaning that they would be granted vehicle certification with broad operating authority akin to current
manned aircraft certification standards. Such regulation would potentially allow unmanned aircraft operators to file routine flight
plans, or in some cases simply carry out flight operations without any specific notification requirements, much as manned aircraft
do.15 While
FAA’s approach to address the mandates set forth in P.L. 112-95 regarding unmanned aircraft
integration into the national airspace system is yet to be defined, it is most likely that FAA
regulation and oversight of UAVs will adopt an evolving, risk-based approach toward this end goal of
seamless integration. As a first step, P.L. 112-95 mandated that FAA identify six test sites to specifically test concepts and
technologies for integrated unmanned aircraft operations. FAA held public meetings and webinars and solicited public comments on
the selection of test sites in March 2012, but has not yet gone through a formal source selection process or announced further
details regarding test site selection, even though it was mandated to identify the sites by the summer of 2012 and have at least one
site operational by February 2013. Under P.L. 112-95, FAA
is also required to develop a comprehensive plan to
safely accelerate integration of civilian unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system as
soon as practical but not later than September 2015. Meeting this mandate will require extensive research and
regulatory action over the next three years.
The lack of reasonable privacy expectations puts strain on FAA regulations
pertaining to drones.
Philip J. Hiltner, 2013, Phil Hiltner is currently a lawyer in the Washtenaw County Office of
Public Defender’s Office and also works for the Law Offices of Jonathan Dills, North Carolina
Thirteenth Prosecutorial District, “THE DRONES ARE COMING: USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL
VEHICLES FOR POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND ITS FOURTH AMENDMENT IMPLICATIONS,” Wake
Forest Journal of Law and Policy vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 397-415,
http://lawpolicyjournal.law.wfu.edu/files/2013/06/Vol.3-2-Comment-Hiltner.pdf, p. 408-409
What does this tell us about the use of drones for aerial surveillance of private property? One principle that can be distilled from
these three cases is that if
the police can see something from airspace where they have a legal right to
be, then there is no reasonable privacy expectation in that item. This puts a lot of weight on FAA
regulations. If the FAA drafts highly restrictive regulations of where and at what elevations
drones may be flown, there are fewer vantage points from which police may lawfully observe
private property. The problem with this approach is that highly restrictive airspace regulations
of UASs will likely diminish their utility to police forces. Furthermore, how much weight should be given FAA
regulations is not entirely certain. As Justice Blackmun pointed out in his Riley dissent, five of the justices agreed that the case
should not turn on compliance with FAA regulations.94 Additionally,
the Court’s indication in Dow Chemical
that sophisticated technology that is generally unavailable to the public might trigger
constitutional protection seems to indicate that this principle should not be taken to its logical
extreme. Police use of military satellites for surveillance purposes would likely require a warrant.95 However, the use of a small,
remotely operated helicopter with a high-powered zoom lens seems closer to the facts of the above cases than the satellite
hypothetical. For those desirous of greater protection from aerial surveillance, the approach used by Justice O’Connor and the
dissent in Riley has some immediate appeal. That test asked not whether the police had a right to be in the place from where they
made their observation, but whether the homeowner could reasonably expect someone to observe their property from that
location.96 However, this test is not without its problems. First, it raises line-drawing issues. How
frequent does travel in
the airspace at that specific altitude have to be in order for the individual to have an expectation
of privacy that society is prepared to recognize? Does such air travel have to be frequent, or
does it simply have to be plausible? Would people in urban locations or that live near airports be afforded less
constitutional protection than those who live in the desert? Another issue that arises with such an approach is that one’s
expectation of privacy would be diminished as the use of drones becomes more frequent. Ten years ago, no one could reasonably
expect a three-foot, remote controlled police helicopter to be peering over their backyard fence. But ten years from now, if virtually
every police department has its own fleet of UASs, that expectation would be considerably more reasonable. Should one’s
expectations of privacy be diminished as technology advances?
A2 Jones standard for privacy
Jones doesn’t’ go far enough in curtailing privacy concerns – does away with
individualized suspicion.
Christopher Slobogin, 2012, Christopher Slobogin is a Professor of Law at Vanderbuilt
University Law School, “Making the Most of United States v. Jones in a Surveillance Society: A
Statutory Implementation of Mosaic Theory,” Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public
Policy Special Issue vol. 8, pp. 1-37,
http://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&context=djclpp, p. 32
Thus, for instance, a
drone or camera surveillance system would be permissible under this provision only if
the relevant municipal government approved it and the system covered the entire municipality
or rotated its focus on a random or neutral basis. If instead the drones or cameras were programmed to monitor
particular areas, reasonable suspicion or probable cause, depending upon the length of the surveillance, would be required.
Rather than “individualized suspicion,” the justification in such cases could be based on
statistical analysis of crime within the area. As another example, a data-mining program run by the
federal government that will access monthly records would have to be authorized by Congress
and would need to apply to the entire country unless algorithms can produce, within a subset of
targets, evidence of crime against fifty percent of that subset during the time of the warrant.150
***ADD-ONS***
Drones dehumanization add-on
Use of domestic drone use, with vague judicial review, could be used to target
U.S. citizens to kill.
Marshall Thompson, March 1, 2013, Marshall Thompson is currently an attorney at
Thompson Appeals, “The Legality of Armed Drone Strikes against U.S. Citizens within the United
States,” BYU Law Review vol. 1, article 4, pp. 153-182,
http://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2704&context=lawreview, p.
171
The first element for targeting a U.S. citizen has two main parts. The government must conduct
a "thorough and careful review," and that review must conclude that the targeted person poses
an "imminent threat of violent attack against the United States."116 The review process is
apparently where the Obama administration is attempting to satisfy the requirements of due
process. The vague nature of Holder's statement, however, raises questions about notice and
independent judicial review. Al-Aulaqi had effective notice of his status as a targeted enemy combatant, but he did not
have official notice. 117 Giving notice to a target would cause the U.S. military to lose a strategic
advantage, but it may also encourage targeted individuals to disassociate themselves from alQaeda. These considerations, however, are not legal, but strategic and tactical and probably reside within an executive's
discretion as Commander-inChief.118 However, the Supreme Court in Hamdi found that for detention, a person must at least
"receive notice of the factual basis for his classification." ng This assumes, however, that the government already has custody of an
enemy combatant.120 Targeting assumes the opposite: that it is not feasible to detain the enemy combatant. 121 Using the
balancing test in Matthews, 122 failure to give notice to a potential target increases the chances of error, but may be outweighed by
the government's interest in an effective and workable strategy during armed conflict.
Drones create a dehumanized perception of men they are surveying – its
compounded by the track, monitor, and kill mentality.
Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan, August 2011, Tyler Wall is an Assistant Professor in the
School of Justice Studies as Eastern Kentucky University and Torin Monahan is an Associate
Professor of Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
“Surveillance and Violence from Afar: The Politics of Drones and Liminal Security-scapes,”
Theoretical Criminology vol. 15, issue 3, pp. 239-254, SAGE Journals, p. 246
Journalist Noah Shachtman (2005), who
observed drone operators monitoring the US–Mexico border,
betrays through his description the dehumanizing tendency of dronemediated perceptions:
‘Everyone looks like germs, like ants, from the Hunter’s 15,000- foot point of view. Especially when the ant hill breaks
apart, and everybody scatters in a dozen different directions.’ But this particular articulation makes no distinction
between ‘illegal immigrants’, political refugees, or Mexican-American citizens. In this sense, the drone
system radically homogenizes these identities into a single cluster of racialized information that is used for remote-controlled processes of control and
harm. Bodies
below become things to track, monitor, apprehend, and kill, while the pilot and
Dehumanization should be treated like extinction.
David Berube, 1997, David Berube is a Professor of English at the University of South Carolina,
“Nanotechnological Prolongevity: The Down Side,” http://www.cas.sc.ed...ube/prolong.htm
Assuming we are able to predict who or what are optimized humans, this entire resultant worldview smacks of eugenics and Nazi
racial science. This would involve valuing people as means. Moreover, there would always be a superhuman more super than the
current ones, humans would never be able to escape their treatment as means to an always further and distant end. This means-
ends dispute is at the core of Montagu and Matson's treatise on the dehumanization of
humanity. They warn: "its
destructive toll is already greater than that of any war, plague, famine, or natural calamity on record -and its potential danger to the quality of life and the fabric of civilized society is beyond
calculation. For that reason this sickness of the soul might well be called the Fifth Horseman of the
Apocalypse.... Behind the genocide of the holocaust lay a dehumanized thought; beneath the menticide of deviants and
dissidents... in the cuckoo's next of America, lies a dehumanized image of man... (Montagu & Matson, 1983, p. xi-xii). While it may
never be possible to quantify the impact dehumanizing ethics may have had on humanity, it is safe to conclude the foundations of
humanness offer great opportunities which would be foregone. When
we calculate the actual losses and the
virtual benefits, we approach a nearly inestimable value greater than any tools, which we can currently
use to measure it. Dehumanization is nuclear war, environmental apocalypse, and international
genocide. When people become things, they become dispensable. When people are dispensable, any and every atrocity can be
justified. Once justified, they seem to be inevitable for every epoch has evil and dehumanization is evil's most powerful weapon.
Drones border security add-on
UAV’s lose control when in close proximity to each other, causing accidents –
not enough resources to identify false-positives and causes overstretch.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
6
Testing of UAVs along the border has been limited. A robust program to test multiple UAVs on the
borders might ascertain where, how, and whether UAVs should be deployed. Larger scale testing would
provide an opportunity to evaluate whether the limitations of UAVs would hinder their utility on the border. In the past, multiple
UAVs piloted in close proximity have experienced interference and loss of control between the
UAV and the remote pilot. In many cases, interference led to accidents. A possible issue for Congress
could include whether testing should be expanded before any decisions are made regarding the wide-scale use of UAVs along the
border. While UAVs
may, in the future, be used to detect unauthorized entries, the fact remains that
USBP agents must be deployed to apprehend any aliens identified. A possible issue for Congress
could entail whether there are enough border patrol resources to investigate all UAV identified
targets.
With a strain in resources and a decrease in surveillance effectiveness, the risk
of WMD terrorism increases drastically.
Hector L. Cruz, 2010, Hector Cruz is a Lieutenant Colonel with the United States Air Force
Reserve, “Role of DOD Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Homeland Security,” U.S. Army War
College Strategy Research Project, pp. 1-32, p. 1-2
The U.S. border with Canada stretches over 5,400 miles. To the south, the border with Mexico is in excess of 1,950 miles.
Additionally, the
U.S. has over 12,380 miles of coastline to defend.2 These expansive borders and
vast amounts of coastline present a large challenge to those agencies responsible for U.S.
security. The difficulty with securing our southern border, in particular, is well documented. The U.S.-Mexico
border has 43 legitimate crossing points. However the rest of the border consists of open desert terrain, rugged mountains and
other geographic obstacles making surveillance. Inability
of U.S. security forces to monitor the whole border
all of the time makes it easier to smuggle drugs and illegal aliens into the United States.3 Not only
are 2 drugs a menace to the U.S., a larger concern would be if terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda
choose to smuggle in their operatives and/or weapons of mass destruction (WMD) via the same
routes used for drug trafficking. Today, numerous federal and state organizations are charged with maintaining the security and
defense of the homeland: Northern Command (NORTHCOM), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border
Patrol (CBP), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Border Patrol, Coast Guard, state and local
police departments. Many of these organizations operate
under strained budgets and may lack sufficient
funding and personnel to acquire and maintain all of the surveillance capabilities they seek.
Nuclear material is easy to acquire – they only need the means to sneak it in.
Stephen Menesick, Summer 2011, Stephen Menesick is a Political Science Peace, War and
Defense, public policy analysis, University of Chapel Hill, Global Security Studies, Vol. 2 Issue 3, “
Preventing the Unthinkable: An Overview of Threats, Risks, and US Policy Response to Nuclear
Terrorism,” p. 5-6, http://globalsecuritystudies.com/Menesick%20Nuclear%20Final.pdf
Reports by
Russian officials have confirmed that terrorists have conducted intelligence-gathering
operations on Russian stockpiles, and to date, it is the only country where documentation of terrorist
surveillance exists (Bunn 2010, 35). Equipping all sites with state of the art security measures has been a
difficult challenge. The Russian government, and consequently the security contractors who are responsible for the upkeep of these facilities,
suffers from a lack of financial resources (Joyner & Parkhouse 2009, 215). Additionally, significant internal threats are present. Because the government
employs independent security companies to coordinate much of management of nuclear materials, there are two channels for insiders to aid terrorist
groups—high level government officials and low level technical personnel. Both groups have incentive to divulge information at the right price, and
Russia has a political environment that has been rife with corruption for decades (Bunn 2010, 32-33 and Joyner & Parkhouse 2009, 216). Finally, there is
the security risk of Highly Enriched Uranium-fueled reactors (HEU’s). Because
of its chemical composition and
refinement, HEU can be used easily to make crude nuclear weapons even by non-experts
(Norwegian Project Secretariat). Because of the ease with which a weapon can be made out of HEU, it is easy to see why terrorist acquisition is a direct
security risk. As of 2009, about half of the 200 remaining reactors were still using HEU fuel, and do not have capability to be converted to lower
enriched uranium (LEU) (World Nuclear Association 2011). Most of these are in Russia, where the government has invested little in research to convert
their own reactors to LEU power or other alternatives (World Nuclear Association 2011). Further, and most alarming, is that the security at many of
these HEU sites is inadequate to prevent theft of HEU, making research reactors a prime target for terrorists seeking to obtain nuclear material (Bunn,
2010, 45). If a terrorist group only acquires nuclear material, and not a functional weapon, they will have to successfully create a weapon that they can
detonate. Unfortunately, this is an achievable end that can be done with little resources or expertise. As discussed above, Highly Enriched Uranium is
pure enough that it can be made into a devastating weapon relatively easily, and it is also the most likely nuclear material that terrorists would get their
hands on. The perception of modern nuclear weapons may be that they are highly technical instruments of warfare backed by complex science. While
this may be true, a “crude” nuclear weapon, one that takes little skill to create, would still be incredibly deadly—capable of destroying the downtown of
a major city (Bunn, 2010, 16). The process of building a weapon of this type is not entirely simple, and anyone who wanted to construct such a device
would need a technical team with at least some experience. However, in comparison to the nuclear weapons manufactured today, a crude bomb would
be a more feasible project, as it would not have to comply with rigorous military and safety specifications. Thus, it is plausible to see that this kind of
power is not out of reach for dedicated terrorist groups, should they acquire nuclear material (Ferguson & Potter 2003, 116). Having acquired nuclear
material and created a weapon, the final obstacle a terrorist group would need to pass would be delivery and detonation in the target location. Likely,
this would involve them smuggling a bomb or device into the United States, and then into a major city, undetected. Nuclear material is quite difficult to
track, especially the small amounts that would be needed for a crude weapon (Bunn 2010, 18). Journalists have repeatedly demonstrated the ease with
which radioactive materials can be transported and shielded from detection while traveling (Ferguson & Potter 2003, 141). Even
with the
most advanced technology, HEU is among the most difficult kind of radiological material to
detect (Montgomery 2009, 79). Also, terrorists could use existing port and transport systems in place, as they are relatively unsecure. Customs and
Border Patrol inspects only around 6% of cargo containers entering the US (Medalia 2005). Even with increased security measures and Port Authority
reorganization in 2003, there are still plausible scenarios for terrorist groups sneaking radioactive materials into the US via boat undetected (Ferguson
& Potter 2003, 300). Furthermore, terrorists could avoid this obstacle entirely by taking materials that were already inside the US. Once inside the US,
delivery and detonation to target site would also not be insurmountable. As Matthew Bunn and E. P. Maslin write: The length of national borders, the
diversity of means of transport, the vast scale of legitimate traffic across borders, and the ease of shielding the radiation from plutonium or especially
from HEU all operate in favor of the terrorists. Building the overall system of legal infrastructure, intelligence, law enforcement, border and customs
forces, and radiation detectors needed to find and recover stolen nuclear weapons or materials, or to interdict these as they crossnational borders, is
an extraordinarily difficult challenge. (Bun & Maslin 2010) In order for a terrorist group to be “successful” in carrying out a nuclear attack, many
elements must come together. There is no doubt that the end result of a nuclear terrorist attack would be terrible, so even
with a low
probability of attack, the high impact possibility means steps should still be taken to prevent it. In
each link of the chain of attack, there are security measures that have been put in place, and continue to be upgraded. make it into a usable weapon if
they cannot themselves.
By itself terrorism causes extinction.
Owen B. Toon, April 19, 2007, Owen B. Toon is a professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic
Sciences and a fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the
University of Colorado received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, in cloud physics, atmospheric
chemistry and radiative transfer, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional
scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism,” Atmosphere Chemistry Physics
To an increasing extent, people are congregating in the world’s great urban centers, creating
megacities with popula- tions exceeding 10 million individuals. At the same time, ad- vanced technology has
designed nuclear explosives of such small size they can be easily transported in a car, small plane or
boat to the heart of a city. We demonstrate here that a sin- gle detonation in the 15 kiloton range can produce urban fatalities approaching one million in some cases, and casualties exceeding one million. Thousands of small
weapons still ex- ist in the arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, and there are at least six other countries with substantial
nuclear weapons invento-
ries. In all, thirty-three countries control sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium or
plutonium to assemble nuclear explosives. A conflict between any of these countries involv- ing 50-100 weapons with yields of
15kt has the potential to create fatalities rivaling those of the Second World War. Moreover, even a single surface nuclear explosion,
or an air burst in rainy conditions, in a city center is likely to cause the entire metropolitan area to be abandoned at least for decades
owing to infrastructure damage and radioactive contamina- tion. As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in Louisiana sug- gests, the
economic consequences of even a localized nuclear catastrophe would most likely have severe national and inter- national economic
consequences. Striking
effects result even from relatively small nuclear attacks because low yield detonations are most effective against city centers where busi- ness and social activity as well as population are concentrated. Rogue nations and terrorists would be most likely to strike there. Accordingly, an organized attack on the
www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/1973/2007/ Atmos. Chem. Phys., 7, 1973–2002, 2007 Page 28 2000 O. B. Toon et al.:
Consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts U.S. by a small nuclear state, or terrorists supported by such a state,
could generate casualties comparable to those once predicted for a full-scale nuclear
“counterforce” exchange in a superpower conflict . Remarkably, the estimated quantities of smoke
generated by attacks totaling about one megaton of nuclear explosives could lead to significant global climate
perturbations (Robock et al., 2007). While we did not ex- tend our casualty and damage predictions to include poten- tial
medical, social or economic impacts following the initial explosions, such analyses have been performed in the past for large-scale
nuclear war scenarios (Harwell and Hutchin- son, 1985). Such a study should be carried out as well for the present scenarios and
physical outcomes.
Nuclear terrorism likely
Nuclear terrorism is extremely likely and is comparatively the largest threat to
international stability.
Zafar Nawaz Jaspal, 2012, is Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Quaid-I-Azam University,
Islamabad, Pakistan, is advisor on Non-Proliferation at the South Asian Strategic Stability Institute, London, Center of Excellence:
Defense against Terrorism, Ankara, Turkey and Armed Forces War College, National Defense University, Islamabad, Command and
Staff College Quetta, a Course Coordinator at the Foreign Services Academy, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a Research Fellow at the
Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad and Islamabad Policy Research Institute, Journal of Political Studies, Vol. 19 Issue 1,
"Nuclear/Radiological Terrorism: Myth or Reality?,” Ebsco Host
The misperception, miscalculation and above all ignorance of the ruling elite about security puzzles are perilous for the national
security of a state. Indeed, in
an age of transnational terrorism and unprecedented dissemination of
dual-use nuclear technology, ignoring nuclear terrorism threat is an imprudent policy choice. The incapability
of terrorist organizations to engineer fissile material does not eliminate completely the possibility of nuclear terrorism. At the same
time, the absence
of an example or precedent of a nuclear/radiological terrorism does not qualify
the assertion that the nuclear/radiological terrorism ought to be remained a myth. Farsighted rationality obligates
that one should not miscalculate transnational terrorist groups — whose behavior suggests that they have a death wish
— of acquiring nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological material producing capabilities. In addition, one could be sensible about
the published information that huge
amount of nuclear material is spread around the globe. According to
estimate it is enough to build more than 120,000 Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs (Fissile Material
Working Group, 2010, April 1). The alarming fact is that a few storage sites of nuclear/radiological
inadequately secured
materials are
and continue to be accumulated in unstable regions (Sambaiew, 2010, February). Attempts
at
stealing fissile material had already been discovered (Din & Zhiwei, 2003: 18).Numerous evidences confirm that
terrorist groups had aspired to acquire fissile material for their terrorist acts. Late Osama bin Laden, the founder of AL Qaeda
stated that acquiring nuclear weapons was a “religious duty” (Yusufzai, 1999, January 11). The IAEA also
reported that “al-Qaeda was actively seeking an atomic bomb.” Jamal Ahmad al-Fadl, a dissenter of Al Qaeda, in his trial testimony
had “revealed his extensive but unsuccessful efforts to acquire enriched uranium for al-Qaeda” (Allison, 2010, January: 11). On
November 9, 2001, Osama bin Laden claimed that “we have chemical and nuclear weapons as a deterrent and if America used them
against us we reserve the right to use them (Mir, 2001, November 10).” On May 28, 2010, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a Pakistani
nuclear scientist confessed that he met Osama bin Laden. He claimed that “I met Osama bin Laden before 9/11not to give him
nuclear know-how, but to seek funds for establishing a technical college in Kabul (Syed, 2010, May 29).” He was arrested in 2003 and
after extensive interrogation by American and Pakistani intelligence agencies he was released (Syed, 2010, May 29). Agreed, Mr.
Mahmood did not share nuclear know-how with Al Qaeda, but his meeting with Osama establishes the fact that the
terrorist
organization was in contact with nuclear scientists. Second, the terrorist group has sympathizers in the nuclear
scientific bureaucracies. It also authenticates bin Laden’s Deputy Ayman Zawahiri’s claim which he made in December 2001: “If you
have $30 million, go to the black market in the central Asia, contact any disgruntled Soviet scientist and a lot of dozens of smart
briefcase bombs are available (Allison,2010, January: 2).”The covert meetings between nuclear scientists and al Qaeda members
could not be interpreted as idle threats and thereby the threat of nuclear/radiological terrorism is real. The
33Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted in 2008 that “what keeps every senior government leader awake at night is the thought
of a terrorist ending up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear(Mueller, 2011, August 2).” Indeed, the
nuclear
deterrence strategy cannot deter the transnational terrorist syndicate from
nuclear/radiological terrorist attacks. Daniel Whiteneck pointed out: “Evidence suggests, for example, that al Qaeda
might not only use WMD simply to demonstrate the magnitude of its capability but that it might actually welcome the
escalation of a strong U.S. response, especially if it included catalytic effects on governments and societies in the Muslim
world. An adversary that prefers escalation regardless of the consequences cannot be deterred” (Whiteneck, 2005, summer: 187)
since taking office, President Obama has been reiterating that “nuclear weapons represent the ‘gravest threat’ to United States and
international security.” While realizing that the US could not prevent nuclear/radiological terrorist attacks singlehandedly, he
launched 47an international campaign to convince the international community about the increasing threat of nuclear/radiological
terrorism. He stated on April 5, 2009: “Black
market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound.
The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our
efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules,
we could reach the point where the center cannot hold (Remarks by President Barack Obama, 2009, April 5).” He added: “One
terrorist with one nuclear weapon could unleash massive destruction. Al Qaeda has said it seeks a bomb and that it would have no
problem with using it. And we know that there is unsecured nuclear material across the globe” (Remarks by President Barack
Obama, 2009, April 5). In July 2009, at the G-8 Summit, President Obama announced the convening of a Nuclear Security Summit in
2010 to deliberate on the mechanism to “secure nuclear materials, combat nuclear smuggling, and prevent nuclear terrorism”
(Luongo, 2009, November 10). President Obama’s nuclear/radiological threat perceptions were also accentuated by the United
Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 1887 (2009). The UNSC expressed its grave concern regarding ‘the threat of nuclear
terrorism.” It also recognized the need for all States “to take effective measures to prevent nuclear material or technical assistance
becoming available to terrorists.” The UNSC Resolution called “for universal adherence to the Convention on Physical Protection of
Nuclear Materials and its 2005 Amendment, and the Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.” (UNSC
Resolution, 2009)The United States Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) document revealed on April6, 2010 declared that “terrorism
and proliferation are far greater threats to the U nited S tates and international stability.” (Security of
Defense, 2010, April 6:i). The United States declared that it reserved the right to “hold fully accountable” any state or group “that
supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction, whether by facilitating, financing, or providing
expertise or safe haven for such efforts (Nuclear Posture Review Report, 2010, April: 12)”. This declaration underscores the
possibility that terrorist groups could acquire fissile material from the rogue states.
Terrorism bad impact
Nuclear terrorism causes the same causalities and full-scale nuke war and
nuclear winter.
Owen B. Toon, April 19, 2007, Owen Toon is a professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences
and a fellow at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of
Colorado received his Ph.D. from Cornell University, in cloud physics, atmospheric chemistry and
radiative transfer, “Atmospheric effects and societal consequences of regional scale nuclear
conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism,” Atmosphere Chemistry Physics
To an increasing extent, people are congregating in the world’s great urban centers, creating
megacities with popula- tions exceeding 10 million individuals. At the same time, ad- vanced technology has
designed nuclear explosives of such small size they can be easily transported in a car, small plane or
boat to the heart of a city. We demonstrate here that a sin- gle detonation in the 15 kiloton range can produce urban fatalities approaching one million in some cases, and casualties exceeding one million. Thousands of small
weapons still ex- ist in the arsenals of the U.S. and Russia, and there are at least six other countries with substantial
nuclear weapons invento- ries. In all, thirty-three countries control sufficient amounts of highly enriched uranium or
plutonium to assemble nuclear explosives. A conflict between any of these countries involv- ing 50-100 weapons with yields of
15kt has the potential to create fatalities rivaling those of the Second World War. Moreover, even a single surface nuclear explosion,
or an air burst in rainy conditions, in a city center is likely to cause the entire metropolitan area to be abandoned at least for decades
owing to infrastructure damage and radioactive contamina- tion. As the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in Louisiana sug- gests, the
economic consequences of even a localized nuclear catastrophe would most likely have severe national and inter- national economic
consequences. Striking
effects result even from relatively small nuclear attacks because low yield detagainst city centers where busi- ness and social activity as well as population are concentrated. Rogue nations and terrorists would be most likely to strike there. Accordingly, an organized attack on the
onations are most effective
www.atmos-chem-phys.net/7/1973/2007/ Atmos. Chem. Phys., 7, 1973–2002, 2007 Page 28 2000 O. B. Toon et al.:
Consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts U.S. by a small nuclear state, or terrorists supported by such a state,
could generate casualties comparable to those once predicted for a full-scale nuclear
“counterforce” exchange in a superpower conflict . Remarkably, the estimated quantities of smoke
generated by attacks totaling about one megaton of nuclear explosives could lead to significant global climate
perturbations (Robock et al., 2007). While we did not ex- tend our casualty and damage predictions to include poten- tial
medical, social or economic impacts following the initial explosions, such analyses have been performed in the past for large-scale
nuclear war scenarios (Harwell and Hutchin- son, 1985). Such a study should be carried out as well for the present scenarios and
physical outcomes.
***POLITICS***
Drones unpopular - media
Drone use is politically and publically unpopular – media spin and leaked
memo.
Sara Sorcher, March 9, 2013, “The Wonderful World of Drones,” National Journal, Ebsco Host,
p. 5
Congress directed the Federal Aviation Administration to make it safe for drones to fly
domestically by 2015. The agency expects some 10,000 commercial drones (think news outlets and
private businesses) to fly by 2017. And all 18,000 state and local law-enforcement agencies will be
potential customers. But the public's suspicions about drones could stifle their positive
potential. Lawmakers in 30 states are seeking to restrict or require warrants for their use. And the leaked Justice
Department memo justifying the targeted killing of American terrorism suspects in far-off
countries raised concerns that armed drones might eventually take out citizens on U.S. soil.
Washington's drone lobby is not happy. "We've come to recognize that 'drone' is a pejorative term," says Mario Mairena of the
Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which has more than 600 corporate members, including Northrop
Grumman and Raytheon. "People picture the unmanned aircraft systems that are used in-theater, and that scares people, because
all they see are these images of [the aircraft] used with missiles." Mairena laments that
media outlets often illustrate
their stories about domestic drones with pictures of Predator aircraft, while the FAA is working to expedite
permits for much smaller robots (under 25 pounds).
Drones unpopular – privacy
The public is rejecting drone use, as groups fear privacy problems.
Paul Marks, March 2, 2013, “Drone Backlash Begins,” New Scientist vol. 217, issue 2906, pp.
24-24, Ebsco Host, p. 24
Privacy fears are fuelling the US public's rejection of civilian drones "THE first guy who uses a weapon to
bring down a drone that's hovering over his house is going to become a folk hero in this country." So said commentator Charles
Krauthammer on Fox News in May last year, after the
US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said that
drones will soon be licensed for law enforcement and commercial surveillance work. Krauthammer's
words seem to have captured the mood of a nation. Privacy fears are sparking a backlash against the use of
drones in civilian airspace. Seattle's police force was forced to abandon its drone programme last month, following anger
from residents. Meanwhile, Virginia has imposed a two-year moratorium on the use of drones by police and at least 13 other states
are now deliberating similar anti-drone legislation. But some privacy
advocates have gone beyond lobbying their
local councilor. Online discussion groups have sprung up about what kind of drone countermeasures could prevent privacy
invasion from the air. Their ideas range from the absurd -- wearing drone-camera-proof clothing or using stunt kites to tangle their
rotors -- to the more plausible -- jamming radio-control frequencies or shooting the drones out of the sky. The FAA's announcement
on 14 February that it is pressing ahead with the opening of six test centres for civilian drones will only have reinforced such
sentiments. After Krauthammer's comments, pro-gun shock jock Alex Jones ran a video on his website, Infowars.com, which shows
him visiting a sprawling Texas ranch to practise shooting down the coming wave of drones with assault rifles. Steve Hindi of Geneva,
Illinois, who runs an animal rights charity, has first-hand experience of what happens when those being watched by a drone decide
to do something about it. He uses eight-rotor drones, which cost about $8000 each, to expose a controversial type of pigeon shoot
in which birds are ejected from a box on the ground and shot with a shotgun. "We've had drones shot down… losing one
permanently, and twice more they were hit but made it back," Hindi says. He flies his drones beyond shotgun range but says the
shooters are switching to rifles to down his drones. "Mister Krauthammer is completely wrong. The shooters are like the people who
wanted to ban the internet in case people learned something," he says. "They are not folk heroes. They are cowards." So what
happens next? A shake-up of the law is needed, says Peter van Blyenburgh, head of drone trade body Unmanned Vehicle Systems
International, based in Paris, France. He says small drones, like the $300 Parrot AR Drone, sold as a toy, could become a real
neighbourhood nuisance, provoking risky shoot-downs. "Big Texas landowners now talk of firing shoulder-fired rockets at drones,"
he says. "They are in cloud cuckoo land." In May, the European Commission's Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems panel, on which van
Blyenburgh sits, will investigate if the rules that govern radio-controlled model aircraft can be enforced on users of "toy" drones.
This could go some way towards addressing the concerns of privacy advocates, van Blyenburgh believes. "Model planes cannot take
a camera anywhere near to a house or garden," he says. "If they do, the operator can't get public liability insurance. That could apply
to these toys, too."
Drones are publically unpopular for use domestically – Fourth Amendment
problems.
Abigail Rehfuss, February 6, 2015, Abigail Rehfuss is an Associate at Rehfuss, Liguori &
Associates, P.C., “THE DOMESTIC USE OF DRONES AND THE FOURTH AMENDMENT,” Albany
Government Law Review vol. 8, pp. 314-335,
http://www.albanygovernmentlawreview.org/Articles/Vol08_1/8.1.313-Rehfuss.pdf, p. 314-315
Not surprisingly, angst
over the vacillating scope of Fourth Amendment protections has left many
Americans antagonistic to the idea of introducing Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (hereinafter “UAVs”) 6
into the national security system.7 For many, the fear of “Big Brother’s Prying Eyes in the Sky”
has generated overwhelming trepidation that law enforcement agencies will abuse the convenience
of the technology to monitor individuals for no cause at all, and in doing so will incidentally collect private
information about individuals who are perfectly innocent, law abiding citizens.8 In short, the fear is that the use of UAVs will erode
the very axiom the Fourth Amendment stands to protect— personal privacy. But as
legitimate as these concerns may
be, it is doubtful that they are strong enough to categorically prohibit the assimilation of this
incredibly powerful, highly sophisticated technology into the national sphere. For years, the United
States has relied on the use of unmanned aircraft to carry out dangerous missions in foreign territories such as Afghanistan and
Yemen.9 As a
result of the remarkable success of UAVs overseas, today there is a tremendous
demand and congressional pressure to use these aircrafts at home to carry out an abundance of
tasks, ranging from the dangerous and dirty, to the dull and boring.10 In February 2012, President Obama
signed the FAA Modernization and Reform Act into law, which calls for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to accelerate the
integration of unmanned aircraft into the national airspace system by 2015.11 While numerous privacy and safety concerns
continue to be ironed out in preparation for the deployment of domestic UAVs, predictions secured by the FAA estimate that as
many as 30,000 drones will fill the nation’s skies by 2020.12
Drones popular - lobbying
FAA certification for UAS has been increasing as pressure has grown from the
Unmanned Systems Caucus.
Micah Zenko, March/April 2012, “10 Things You Didn't Know About Drones,” Foreign Policy,
issue 192, pp. 1-5, Ebsco Host, p. 5
Worried about the militarization of U.S. airspace by unmanned aerial vehicles? As of October, the
Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) had reportedly issued 285 active certificates for 85 users,
covering 82 drone types. The FAA has refused to say who received the clearances, but it was estimated over a
year ago that 35 percent were held by the Pentagon, 11 percent by NASA, and 5 percent by the
Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And it's growing. U.S. Customs and Border Protection
already operates eight Predator drones. Under pressure from the congressional Unmanned
Systems Caucus -- yes, there's already a drone lobby, with 50 members -- two additional Predators were sent to
Texas in the fall, though a DHS official noted: "We didn't ask for them." Last June, a Predator drone intended to patrol the U.S.Canada border helped locate three suspected cattle rustlers in North Dakota in what was the first reported use of a drone to arrest
U.S. citizens.
Drones popular – kids
Conservatives strongly support drone use – security and Universalist values.
Jarret T. Crawford et al., 2013, Jarret Crawford is an Associate Professor of Psychology at
The College of New Jersey, Shaun Wiley is an Association Professor of Psychology at The College
of New Jersey, and Nina Ventresco is a Research Assistant at Lehigh University, “Examining
Americans’ Attitudes toward Drone Strikes on the Eve of the 2012 Presidential Election,”
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy vol. 0, no. 0, pp. 1-15,
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jarret_Crawford/publication/256414649_Examining_Ame
ricans_attitudes_towards_drone_strikes_on_the_eve_of_the_2012_Presidential_election/links/
0c960524c0fdb06236000000.pdf, p. 2-3
People who hold right-wing attitudes and beliefs support war and militarism more strongly, both generally and in specific conflicts
(e.g., Cohrs, Moschner, Maes, & Kielmann, 2005; Doty, Winter, Peterson, & Kemmelmeier, 1997). Thus, conservatives should
more strongly support the
U.S. military’s drone warfare policy and liberals should more strongly oppose it. Moreover,
distinct values may explain ideological differences in support for drone strikes. Personal values are theorized to form
the bases of political belief systems (Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1994). According to Schwartz’s (1992) theory of basic
human values, there are ten universal value orientations, two of which we expected to be directly
relevant to drone policy attitudes: security values, which express the goal of maintaining the
safety, harmony and stability of society, and universalism values, which express the goal of
protecting the welfare of all people (Schwartz, 1992). A host of studies have found positive correlations between
conservatism and security values, on the one hand, and liberalism and universalism values, on the other (Braithwaite, 1998; Cohrs,
Maes, Moschner, & Kielman, 2007; Morgan, Mullen, & Skitka, 2010). Other evidence indicates that security values are positively
associated with support for war, whereas universalism values are negatively associated with support for war (Cohrs et al., 2005).
Together, these findings suggest that conservatives should support drone warfare because of its relevance to security values,
whereas liberals should oppose drone warfare because of its relevance to universalism values.
Drones popular – media
Drone policy is popular in the U.S. due to political and media manipulation.
Jarret T. Crawford et al., 2013, Jarret Crawford is an Associate Professor of Psychology at
The College of New Jersey, Shaun Wiley is an Association Professor of Psychology at The College
of New Jersey, and Nina Ventresco is a Research Assistant at Lehigh University, “Examining
Americans’ Attitudes toward Drone Strikes on the Eve of the 2012 Presidential Election,”
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy vol. 0, no. 0, pp. 1-15,
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jarret_Crawford/publication/256414649_Examining_Ame
ricans_attitudes_towards_drone_strikes_on_the_eve_of_the_2012_Presidential_election/links/
0c960524c0fdb06236000000.pdf, p. 3-4
Conservatism alone, however, cannot account for the widespread support for drone strikes in the
United States; while polling shows a majority of Americans support drone strikes (Pew Research
Center, 2012), only one-third of Americans identify as conservative (American National Election Studies, 2008). Anecdotal evidence
suggests that politicians
and the media play a role in shaping Americans’ attitudes toward drone
strikes, across party lines. For example, Margaret Sullivan (2012), public editor of the New York Times, cites critics who
attribute public support for drone strikes to uncritical reporting. Those critics argue that the media have neither
challenged the Obama administration’s portrayal of the policy as necessary to combat enemy fighters,
nor adequately emphasized the policy’s human costs. This argument is consistent with research on message
framing. There is ample evidence that individual attitudes on a political issue can be shifted by
making some values and concerns more relevant to that issue than others (see Chong & Druckman, 2007
for a review). Thus, people would be more likely to evaluate drone strikes in terms of security values—
and subsequently support the policy— if they see the issue in terms of the Obama administration’s “national security”
frame. In contrast, people would be more likely to evaluate drone strikes in terms of universalism values—and subsequently oppose
the policy—if they see the issue in terms of a “human costs” frame. These frames are echoed in the arguments for and against drone
strikes: supporters argue that drone warfare is a necessary and efficient means of ensuring U.S. national security (e.g., Curtis, 2011),
whereas critics have called on the United States to clarify, revise or dismantle its drone warfare policy because of the resulting
civilian casualties (e.g., Human Rights Watch, 2011).
***AFF – COUNTERPLANS***
2AC states CP
Perm – do both – will be seen as government implementing states’ lead shields the link to politics
Perm – do the CP - must be textually and functionally competitive.
The federal government has expertise regulating drone surveillance and should
be used as the floor for future state action.
Margot E. Kaminski, May 2013, Margot Kaminski is an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State
Law School and the former Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law,
“Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the Things They Carry,” California Law Review vol. 4, pp.
57-74,
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=clrcircuit, p. 59
Civilians will fly drones in the national airspace soon, if Congress has its way. 1 Drones can carry a wide
array of privacy-invading technologies, from cameras to heat sensors to sensors that detect movement
to odor detectors that can sniff the air.2 Drones are also cheap to own and operate, compared to manned aircraft.3
States, fearing dragnet surveillance, have started examining gaps in privacy law.4 Their fears are wellfounded; a Seattle woman recently reported a drone hovering over her yard and outside her third-story window.5 At the time of this
Essay’s writing, over thirty states are actively considering drone related legislation, and the
federal government has
proposed several bills, one of which likely preempts most state regulation.6 This legislative surge demands a
study of whether drone privacy law is better handled by the federal government, or by the
states. The federal government has a history of regulating law enforcement surveillance through
the federal wiretap statute, which could be updated to govern other law enforcement uses of drones.
An updated federal statute could therefore provide the floor for state regulation of law enforcement
drone use, and the more limited subject matter of remote wiretapping by private parties.7 However, governing civilian drone use on
other matters, particularly video and image capture, will be far more complex, and will more closely resemble the regulation of
subject matter traditionally covered by the states. Like all laws governing videos by private actors, drone surveillance laws will exist
between a privacy floor and a First Amendment ceiling. For now, I argue, this complex space of privacy regulation is best left to the
states.
50-state fiat is voting issue –
Fiating uniformity decreases education – it’s not real world and robs-us of
patchwork arguments – the central question in the literature.
Crushes fairness – Aff could always re-create the Federal government on a subnational level and run politics. We could never win.
Conditionality bad - 2AC time and strategy skew - depth better than breadth best for clash and generating offense – dispo solves - voter for fairness and
education.
A federal action, utilizing the framework for ECPA, would be the best actor to
avoid lengthy legal experimentation.
Margot E. Kaminski, May 2013, Margot Kaminski is an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State
Law School and the former Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law,
“Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the Things They Carry,” California Law Review vol. 4, pp.
57-74,
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=clrcircuit, p. 65
A federal, or mixed state and federal, approach to law enforcement drone use makes perfect
sense. A federal law governing law enforcement drone use would follow in the well-trod—albeit,
outdated—footsteps of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).44 Like ECPA, federal legislation on
law enforcement drone use could establish a statutory core to be shared by the states, or a statutory floor, permitting state
deviation towards more protection. Additionally,
because ECPA already establishes a familiar framework
for warrants and court orders governing law enforcement surveillance, a federal law
enforcement drone statute need not wait on extensive state experimentation. The updates need not
be drone-specific, and could cover location tracking, video surveillance, or use of biometric identification, or other new technologies,
if these are the concerns raised by drone surveillance. As noted, legislation governing video or photographic surveillance by civilian
drone users will be far trickier. It will have to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of privacy and the First Amendment. And if enacted
federally, it will deviate from how privacy regulation has historically been divided between the federal government and the states.
There is no federal omnibus privacy law in the United States. Federal privacy law consists of a series of sectoral regulations, enacted
somewhat haphazardly. One federal statute governs privacy in video watching, one governs drivers’ license information, one
governs health information, one governs financial privacy, and so on.45 Drone-specific regulation would add to this patchwork.
Links to politics – if fifty states acted uniformly there is no realistic way the
public can tell the difference.
There is no legal downside to federal preemption regarding drone surveillance.
Margot E. Kaminski, May 2013, Margot Kaminski is an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State
Law School and the former Executive Director of the Information Society Project at Yale Law,
“Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the Things They Carry,” California Law Review vol. 4, pp.
57-74,
http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=clrcircuit, p. 5960
The federal government could regulate law enforcement drone use as it has historically
regulated other law enforcement behavior, by providing a floor for state laws.12 Federal legislation
already governs law enforcement use of wiretaps and pen registers.13 Drone surveillance is likely to
additionally involve video surveillance, location tracking, and/or facial recognition, among other possible technologies. Thus
federal legislation governing law enforcement surveillance could be expanded to govern location
tracking, video surveillance, and the use of facial recognition software by law enforcement.14 Regulating law enforcement
drone use poses few countervailing dangers from legislating thoughtlessly or in haste; such
legislation would implicate Fourth Amendment rights rather than First Amendment rights, so the worst
case scenario is that such legislation might eventually be found by courts not to protect enough
privacy.15 The more interesting and difficult privacy puzzle arises from drone use by private—not public—actors. Regulating
civilian drone use will be treacherous, as such regulation potentially threatens First Amendment rights. Because of that threat,
civilian drone regulation may get overturned, as courts sort out the scope of those First Amendment rights. Regulating civilian drone
use on the federal level thus risks being unconstitutional or, barring that, unstable. Several states are considering banning civilian
drone photography, or more broadly, civilian drone use.16 The proposed Texas Privacy Act, H.B. 912, bans drone photography
without the consent of the property owner on whose property the image is taken, and at the time of this Essay’s writing, has passed
the Texas House and is up for debate in the state Senate.17 Two proposed federal bills restrict the gathering of images and other
information by civilians.18 One of these federal bills can be read to preempt state regulation of drone flights between states. 19 This
Essay argues that preemption of state drone regulation would be a mistake.
2AC Courts
Perm do the CP - agent CP’s set a bad interp. for debate – allows the neg to
infinitely break down processes allowing bad CPs like signing statement or veto
cheato which skirts topic-based debate and education – ‘The’ means to
emphasize one of a group or type as the most outstanding or prominent or to
indicate uniqueness.
American Heritage Dictionary, 2009, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/the
Must be textually and functionally competitive
And, federal government just denotes separation between central and
disaggregated authority – doesn’t mean it acts in unison.
D. Elazar, 1954, prominent political theorist and scientist, American Federalism
Perm do both – if their shielding links arguments are true then this should
resolve the link to politics
Congress is preferable over the courts - sends the necessary signal to solve for
privacy and proliferation issues.
Philip J. Hiltner, 2013, Phil Hiltner is currently a lawyer in the Washtenaw County Office of
Public Defender’s Office and also works for the Law Offices of Jonathan Dills, North Carolina
Thirteenth Prosecutorial District, “THE DRONES ARE COMING: USE OF UNMANNED AERIAL
VEHICLES FOR POLICE SURVEILLANCE AND ITS FOURTH AMENDMENT IMPLICATIONS,” Wake
Forest Journal of Law and Policy vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 397-415,
http://lawpolicyjournal.law.wfu.edu/files/2013/06/Vol.3-2-Comment-Hiltner.pdf, p. 413-415
The arrival of UASs at domestic police offices has serious Fourth Amendment implications. UASs
give police departments the ability to easily survey vast areas as well make intimate
observations. The sorts of protections afforded by current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence are not particularly reassuring.
The ability to make aerial observations has been so far unbounded. If the FAA does not restrict
the elevations at which UASs may fly, the area constituting curtilage, or possibly even observation of the interior of
one’s residence, then the public is rendered almost completely unprotected from aerial observation.
Furthermore, the ability to use the devices to track individuals outside of their homes is restricted only by a UAS’s flight time
limitations. Finally, if
UASs ever become a part of general public use, there might not even be
protection from their observations inside the home. However, their surveillance abilities could be restricted
through four possible means. First, change could come through judicial decision-making. Courts could
decide to create new rules that limit the types of observations that may be made by UASs. The Supreme Court
has already created reasonable protection for individuals inside the home. The Court may very well decide that individuals have a
reasonable expectation of privacy from observations made only a few feet outside their windows or above their patios. However, if
limitations on police UAS use are to come from the courts, change will likely be slow. If exponential growth
can continue to be expected in the UAS market, police surveillance by UAS may become commonplace by the time such a case
reaches the Supreme Court. As discussed above, there might be even less chance of constitutional protection as technological
devices become a part of general public use. A
more democratic and slightly faster means of protection could
come from the legislature. Much like wiretapping, privacy protection from UAS observation could
become the purview of Congress rather than the courts. Congress could pass legislation that
defines the types of and circumstances under which observations are permitted by UASs and what is forbidden. A further
benefit of change coming through the legislature is that changes can continue to be made in the future as technology advances, and
parts of the law that prove unworkable or impractical can be adjusted. Thereby, the
proper balance can be achieved
between allowing the police to use a tool that makes them more efficient in their work and
protecting the privacy of citizens. However, this same benefit of legislative action can also be its downfall. It does not
provide the permanence of constitutional interpretation, and, therefore, the protections it affords can be eroded over time. A third
avenue of protection is through FAA regulation. This is less powerful than the above two options but would not be insignificant. In
Riley, the Court put particular emphasis on the fact that the police officer was making an observation from unrestricted airspace.122
If the FAA restricted the ability of UASs to fly below certain elevations, then their ability to track individuals and to look inside homes
would be diminished. Still, the FAA is concerned with safety, not privacy. Any regulations they craft regarding the airspace UASs may
occupy will be based on safety concerns. Furthermore, considering the fact that Congress recently pushed the FAA to widen the door
for UAS usage, it is unlikely that it will regulate permissible airspace too severely. And highly restrictive regulations might not be
desired, after all. If UAS use is too restricted, then they will lose their usefulness to police departments. Finally, police department
policies are a simple tool that may be used to protect privacy concerns. Though policies are the least permanent and formal of any of
the above options, they can still be meaningful. A sergeant with the Miami-Dade Police Department said that its UASs were only
going to be used for emergencies, like car crashes, and not surveillance.123 Even if restrictions on a police department’s use of
drones do not come from above, local police departments may limit themselves. They are especially likely to do so when they know
that the members of their community have serious concerns about UAS use. Much like the direction of technology, what protections
the Fourth Amendment provides to citizens from drone observation is unknown. The best that citizens concerned with their privacy
protection can do is make sure that their lawmakers and local police departments are aware of these concerns. If citizens are able to
make their concerns about unfettered drone usage well-known, a court would be hard-pressed to find the expectation of privacy at
the foundation of those concerns unreasonable.
Time based competition is bad – no link offensive argument against the CP by
protracting the delay – forces us to garner offense only of reasons why the aff is
bad - voting issue for fairness
Conditionality bad - 2AC time and strategy skew - depth better than breadth best for clash and generating offense – dispo solves - voter for fairness and
education.
Congress is preferable over the courts for restricting drone surveillance –
speedy and consistent.
J. Tyler Black, 2013, J. Tyler Black is an associate in the firm Thompson Coburn LLP’s
transportation regulatory practice, “Over Your Head, Under the Radar: An Examination of
Changing Legislation, Aging Case Law, and Possible Solutions to the Domestic Police Drone
Puzzle,” Washington and Lee Law Review vol. 70, pp. 1830-1883,
http://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4347&context=wlulr, p.
1872-1874
Overall, Congress
should use its advantages over courts to take speedy action and make
comprehensive and consistent rules.212 activity under circumstances in which the individual had a reasonable
expectation of privacy, through the use of a visual or auditory enhancing device, regardless of whether there is a physical trespass, if
this image, sound recording, or other physical impression could not have been achieved without a trespass unless the visual or
auditory enhancing device was used. Recently, the
House Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on
Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations held a lengthy series of hearings on the
subject of privacy solutions to police drones.213 Among the panelists were John Villasenor (Brookings Institution),
Gregory S. McNeal (Pepperdine University School of Law), Tracey Maclin (Boston University School of Law), and Chris Calabrese
(American Civil Liberties Union).214 Villasenor argues, both in his scholarly writing and testimony, that a judicial solution to the
problem will have fewer legal consequences as compared with congressional legislation.215 This argument is misguided because
judicial solutions are prone to inconsistencies.216 By contrast, panelist Calabrese advocated for
legislative action because Congress is in the best position to swiftly effect change.217
Obama gets blame for courts – Republican spin.
Time, January 26, 2009, “Obama's Supreme Move to the Center,”
http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1818334,00.html
When the Supreme Court issues rulings on hot-button issues like gun control and the death penalty in the
middle of a presidential campaign, Republicans could be excused for thinking they'll have the perfect
opportunity to paint their Democratic opponent as an out-of-touch social liberal. But while Barack
Obama may be ranked as one of the Senate's most liberal members, his reactions to this week's
controversial court decisions showed yet again how he is carefully moving to the center ahead of
the fall campaign. On Wednesday, after the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional in cases of child rape,
Obama surprised some observers by siding with the hardline minority of Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito. At a press
conference after the decision, Obama said, "I think that the rape of a small child, six or eight years old, is a heinous crime and if a
state makes a decision that under narrow, limited, well-defined circumstances the death penalty is at least potentially applicable,
that that does not violate our Constitution." Then Thursday, after Justice Scalia released his majority opinion knocking down the city
of Washington's ban on handguns, Obama said in a statement, "I have always believed that the Second Amendment protects the
right of individuals to bear arms, but I also identify with the need for crime-ravaged communities to save their children from the
violence that plagues our streets through common-sense, effective safety measures. The Supreme Court has now endorsed that
view." John McCain's camp wasted no time in attacking, with one surrogate, conservative Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, calling
Obama's gun control statement "incredible flip-flopping." McCain advisor Randy Scheunemann was even tougher in a conference
call Thursday. "What's becoming clear in this campaign," Scheunemann said, is "that for Senator Obama the most important issue in
the election is the political fortunes of Senator Obama. He has demonstrated that there really is no position he holds that isn't
Politicians are
always happy to get a chance to accuse opponents of flip-flopping, but McCain's team may be
more afraid of Obama's shift to the center than their words betray. Obama has some centrist positions to
negotiable or isn't subject to change depending on how he calculates it will affect his political fortunes."
highlight in the general election campaign on foreign policy and national security, social issues and economics. His position on the
child rape death penalty case, for example, is in line with his record in Illinois of supporting the death penalty. He is on less solid
ground on the gun ban as his campaign said during the primary that he believed the D.C. law was constitutional. A top legal adviser
to Obama says both cases are consistent with his previous positions. "I don't see him as moving in his statements on the death
penalty or the gun case," says Cass Sunstein, a former colleague of Obama's at the University of Chicago. Sunstein says Obama is
"not easily characterized" on social issues, and says the Senator's support for allowing government use of the Ten Commandments
in public, in some cases, is another example of his unpredictability on such issues. On the issue of gun control, he says Obama has
always expressed a belief that the Second Amendment guarantees a private right to bear arms, as the court found Thursday. But
Obama's sudden social centrism would sound more convincing in a different context. Since he wrapped up the primary earlier this
month and began to concentrate on the independent and moderate swing voters so key in a general election, Obama has
consistently moved to the middle. He hired centrist economist Jason Furman, known for defending the benefits of globalization and
private Social Security accounts, to the displeasure of liberal economists. On Father's Day, Obama gave a speech about the problem
of absentee fathers and the negative effects it has on society, in particular scolding some fathers for failing to "realize that what
makes you a man is not the ability to have a child — it's the courage to raise one." Last week, after the House passed a compromise
bill on domestic spying that enraged liberals and civil libertarians, Obama announced that though he was against other
eavesdropping compromises in the past, this time he was going to vote for it. Whether Obama's new centrist sheen is the result of
flip-flopping or reemphasizing moderate positions, the Supreme Court decisions have focused attention again on the role of the
court in the campaign season. McCain himself is vulnerable to charges of using the Supreme Court for political purposes. Earlier this
month, when the court granted habeas corpus rights to accused terrorist prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, McCain attacked the
opinion in particularly harsh language, though advisers say closing the prison there is high on his list of actions to rehabilitate
America's image around the world. Liberals are hoping that despite
Obama's moderate response to the
Supreme Court decisions, the issues alone will rally supporters to him. "What both of these decisions say to
me is that the Supreme Court really is an election-year issue," says Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For
the American Way. "We're still only one justice away from a range of really negative decisions that would take away rights that most
Americans take for granted," she says. And Obama's run
to the center surely won't stop conservatives from
using the specter of a Democratic-appointed Supreme Court to try to rally support.
Justices will be hampered by seeming too political.
Mark Tushnet, 2009, Mark Tushnet is a Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School, “A Court
Divided: The Rehnquist Court and the Future of Constitutional Law,” p. 11
So the Rehnquist Court is a political court. For scholars, tying
the Supreme Court to party politics is not all that
new. The standard view of the Warren Court, for example, is that it worked in conjunction with the
Democratic Party to implement a New Deal/Great Society vision of the Constitution. The Rehnquist
Court resembles the Warren Court in implementing a constitutional vision associated with the nation’s dominant political party.
What makes its story more complicated (and interesting) is that the Republican Party has remained a coalition of economic and
cultural conservatives. The Republicans on the Court who would use the Constitution to advance the economic and cultural
agendas of the modern Republican Party have been able to lay the groundwork for later
advances. But their actual accomplishments have been meager because they have been
thwarted, not by activist liberals or by Democrats but by Republicans uneasy about the Republican cultural
agenda.
2AC Executive order CP
Perm do the CP – agent CP’s set a bad interp. For debate – allows the neg to
infinitely break down processes allowing bad CPs like signing statement or veto
cheato which skirts topic-based debate and education – ‘The’ means to
emphasize one of a group or type as the most outstanding or prominent or to
indicate uniqueness.
American Heritage Dictionary, 2009, http://www.thefreedictionary.com/the
Must be textually and functionally competitive
Perm do both – if their shielding links arguments are true then this should
resolve the link to politics
An executive order links to politics more.
Billy Hallowell, February 11, 2013, writer for The Blaze, B.A. in journalism and broadcasting
from the College of Mount Saint Vincent in Riverdale, New York and an M.S. in social research
from Hunter College in Manhattan, “HERE’S HOW OBAMA IS USING EXECUTIVE POWER TO
BYPASS LEGISLATIVE PROCESS,” http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/02/11/heres-howobamas-using-executive-power-to-bylass-legislative-process-plus-a-brief-history-of-executiveorders/
“In an era of polarized parties and a fragmented Congress, the opportunities to legislate are few and far between,” Howell said. “So
presidents have powerful incentive to go it alone. And they do.Ӧ And the political opposition
howls.¶
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a possible contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, said that on
the
gun-control front in particular, Obama is “abusing his power by imposing his policies via executive
fiat instead of allowing them to be debated in Congress.Ӧ The Republican reaction is to be
expected, said John Woolley, co-director of the American Presidency Project at the University of California in Santa Barbara.¶
“For years
there has been a growing concern about unchecked executive power ,” Woolley said. “It
tends to have a partisan content, with contemporary complaints coming from the incumbent
president’s opponents.”
Congress is key to democratic legitimacy and preventing future vacillation in
executive policy.
Benjamin Wittes, November 3, 2009, senior fellow and research director in public law at the
Brookings Institution, Stuart Taylor, an American journalist, graduated from Princeton University
and Harvard Law School, Legislating the War on Terror: An Agenda for Reform, p. 329-330
While President Obama’s policy makes a clean break with the Bush record, it actually does not effectively answer the question of how best to handle
this group. Indeed, the new
policy seems likely to fail on both a substantive and a procedural level. First, it
rule is unstable because it can so easily be changed at
the whim of the president, whether Obama or, perhaps, a successor more like Bush. An
administration down the road that wanted to resume waterboarding could rescind the current
goes too far by banning all coercion all the time. Second, the
order and adopt legal positions like those of the prior administration. Unless the Obama
hammer out rules that provide
interrogators with
administration
and Congress
clear guidance about what is and is not allowed
and write those rules into statute, the U nited S tates risks vacillating under the vagaries of
current law between overly permissive and overly restrictive guidance. The general goals of new legislation
should be threefold: —To make it a crime beyond cavil to use interrogation methods considered by reasonable people to be torture. The torture
statute already does that to some degree, but the fact that it arguably permitted techniques as severe as waterboarding suggests that it may require
some tightening. The key here is that the statute should cover all techniques the use of which ought to prompt criminal prosecution. —To subject CIA
interrogators in almost all cases to rules that, without relaxing current law’s ban on cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, permit relatively mild
forms of coercion that are properly off limits to military interrogators. —To allow the president, subject to strict safeguards, to authorize use of harsher
methods short of torture (as defined in the revised criminal statute) in true emergencies or on extraordinarily high-value captives such as KSM.
Only Congress can provide the democratic legitimacy and the fine-tuning of criminal laws
that can deliver such a regime. Only Congress can , for example, pass a new law making it clear
waterboarding— or any other technique of comparable severity— will henceforth be a federal crime. Only Congress can offer clear assurances to
operatives in the field that there exists a safe harbor against prosecution for conduct ordered by higher-ups in a crisis in the genuine belief that an
attack may be around the corner. Only
Congress, in other words, can create a regime that plausibly turns
away from the past without giving up what the United States will need in the future.
that
Conditionality bad - 2AC time and strategy skew - depth better than breadth best for clash and generating offense – dispo solves - voter for fairness and
education.
2AC Regulatory authority CP
Perm do both – Congress will blame the FAA for regulatory mishaps shielding
them from political backlash
FAA regulates the national airspace for drone flights.
Melanie Reid, 2014, Melanie Reid is an Associate Professor of Law at the Lincoln Memorial
University-Duncan School of Law, “GROUNDING DRONES: BIG BROTHER’S TOOL BOX NEEDS
REGULATION NOT ELIMINATION,” Richmond Journal of Law & Technology vol. 20, issue 3, pp. 173, http://jolt.richmond.edu/v20i3/article9.pdf, p. 14-15
Who owns the airspace and who can regulate drone flights? In early English and American
common law, courts followed the rule that whoever owned the land possessed all the space
above the land extending upwards into the heavens.61 Much later, Congress changed that tradition by passing the Air
Commerce Act of 192662 and the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, 63 which granted the United States complete sovereignty over its
own airspace. Then,
in 1958, the passage of the Federal Aviation Act 64 gave the new Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) the responsibility to set uniform rules for the operation of aircraft
in United States airspace.65 [17] According to FAA regulations, fixed-wing aircraft must operate at least
“1,000 feet above the highest obstacle within a horizontal radius of 2,000 feet of the aircraft” in
congested areas and “500 feet above the surface” in non-congested areas.66 A helicopter may fly below
the minimum safe altitudes prescribed for fixed-wing aircraft if it is operated “without hazard to persons or property on the
surface.”67 According to a 1981 FAA advisory circular, recreational users of model aircraft may fly a sufficient distance from
populated areas and may not fly in the vicinity of full scale aircraft, into noise-sensitive areas such as parks, schools, hospitals, or
churches, or more than 400 feet above the surface.68
Conditionality bad - 2AC time and strategy skew - depth better than breadth best for clash and generating offense – dispo solves - voter for fairness and
education.
Must obtain a certificate of authorization by the FAA in order to fly a drone.
Melanie Reid, 2014, Melanie Reid is an Associate Professor of Law at the Lincoln Memorial
University-Duncan School of Law, “GROUNDING DRONES: BIG BROTHER’S TOOL BOX NEEDS
REGULATION NOT ELIMINATION,” Richmond Journal of Law & Technology vol. 20, issue 3, pp. 173, http://jolt.richmond.edu/v20i3/article9.pdf, p. 18
Currently, any
federal, state, or local agency wanting to operate a drone in national airspace needs
a certificate of authorization from the FAA.81 The FAA conducts an operational and technical
review of the drone in order to ensure citizens’ safety when the drone is in use in national airspace.82 Private
commercial operators must receive a special airworthiness certificate in order to operate a
drone.83 [24] While drafting new regulations, the FAA is also creating a series of test ranges and
designating specific airspace throughout the country to be used to operate drone flights in order to
develop better certification and air traffic standards.84 These test flights will assist the FAA in learning more about the safe
operation of drones while traveling in navigable U.S. airspace.85 Twenty-five applicants from twenty-four states applied to be test
sites and of those twenty-five applicants, the FAA chose Alaska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Texas, and Virginia to host drone
test sites.86
***AFF – DISADVANTAGES***
2AC Spending
This disad doesn’t make sense – restricting drone surveillance would reduce
spending and reign in fiscal irresponsibility.
Drones are set to take off this year – until NAS integration this DA links just as
much to the status quo as the plan.
Drones are inefficient cost wise – requires a large amount of support personnel
and results in fewer successful surveillance patrols.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
4-5
According to the CBP Inspector General, the costs of operating a UAV are more than double the
costs of operating a manned aircraft. This is because UAVs require a significant amount of logistical
support and specialized operator and maintenance training. Operating one UAV requires a crew
of up to 20 support personnel. Additionally, the use of UAVs has resulted in fewer alien apprehensions
per flight hour than the use of manned aircraft.18 The high comparative costs of operating a UAV may be offset
somewhat by their comparatively lower unit costs. The unit cost of UAVs varies widely, from $350,000 for the Shadow UAV to $4.5
million for the Predator.19 In contrast, the unit cost for manned aircraft used along the border varies from $8.6 million for the CBP
Blackhawk helicopters to $36 million for Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s P-3 airplanes. However, the benefit of
the
Blackhawk’s relative low unit cost is offset by its lack of endurance, given its maximum flight
time of 2 hours and 18 minutes.20
Plan solves costly overstretch.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
6
Testing of UAVs along the border has been limited. A robust program to test multiple UAVs on the
borders might ascertain where, how, and whether UAVs should be deployed. Larger scale testing would
provide an opportunity to evaluate whether the limitations of UAVs would hinder their utility on the border. In the past, multiple
UAVs piloted in close proximity have experienced interference and loss of control between the
UAV and the remote pilot. In many cases, interference led to accidents. A possible issue for Congress
could include whether testing should be expanded before any decisions are made regarding the wide-scale use of UAVs along the
border. While UAVs
may, in the future, be used to detect unauthorized entries, the fact remains that
USBP agents must be deployed to apprehend any aliens identified. A possible issue for Congress
could entail whether there are enough border patrol resources to investigate all UAV identified
targets.
No deficit collapse.
James K. Galbraith, 2011, professor at University of Texas at Austin, Lloyd M. Bentsen Jr.
Chair in Government/Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, “Is the Federal Debt
Unsustainable?,” Levy Economics Institute of Bard College,
http://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/pn_11_02.pdf
By general agreement, the federal budget is on an “unsustainable path.” Try typing the phrase into Google News. When I did it, 19 of
the first 20 hits referred to the federal debt.But what does this mean? The phrase is often stated, but rarely defined clearly. One is
led to suspect that some who use the phrase are guided by vague fears, or even that they do not quite know what to be afraid of.
After a brief discussion of the major worries, this note will attempt to clarify one, and only one, critical issue: the actual behavior of
the public-debt-to-GDP ratio under differing economic assumptions through time.Some people fear
that there may come
a moment when the government’s bond markets would close, forcing a default or “bankruptcy.”
But this betrays nonunderstanding of both public finances and debt markets. The government
controls the legal-tender currency in which its bonds are issued and can always pay its bills with
cash. Apart (possibly) from the self-imposed politics of debt ceilings, a US government default on dollar bonds is impossible, and
the word “bank- ruptcy”—which is a court proceeding to protect private debtors from their creditors—also does not apply.A more
plausible worry is inflation, alongside depreciation of the dollar, either of which would reduce the real return on government
bonds.1 There are reasons to fear inflation: notably, the threat of rising energy prices in an oil-short world. And a lower dollar is not
only happening at the moment, it’s actual US government policy, at least with respect to one major currency: theChinese renminbi.
But neither oil-price inflation nor dollar devaluation constitutes default, and neither would be intrinsi- cally
“unsustainable.”Runaway inflation actually generated by the budget deficits is harder to worry about. Except for commodities, the
economy remains depressed, with nearly 9 percent unemployment and falling home prices. Medical costs are a problem—but
the “runaway inflation” scenario is based on a
fringe fear—that the money deficits create will magically translate into price increases without first having any effect on real
they’re not a problem caused by budget deficits. So far as I can tell,
activity. Or perhaps that the world will someday suddenly panic and dump the dollar for the euro, yen, or renminbi. That would
mean selling US bonds en masse to buy (say) Italian bonds. It could happen, maybe, on some political planet far from this one.2A
more prosaic problem with the runaway-inflation sce- nario is that the “nonpartisan, professional” economic forecast- ers of the
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), whose work is often cited
as the benchmark proof of an
“unsustainable path,” do not expect it to happen. The CBO baseline resolutely asserts that inflation will stay
where it is now: around 2 percent. So one can’t logically cite the inflation threat and the CBO baseline at the same time. So far as I
know, the CBO does not trouble itself to model the exchange value of the dollar.What the CBO
does warn is that, under
their assumptions, the ratio of US federal debt (held by the public) to GDP will rise relentlessly, passing 200
percent by 2035 and 300 percent by midcentury. Correspondingly, net interest payments on that debt would rise to exceed 20
percent of GDP. This certainly seems worrisome, and the
CBO warns about “investor confidence” and
“crowding out” without actually building these things into their model. Indeed, in their model this
remarkable and unprecedented ratio of debt to GDP goes right along with steady growth, full
employment, and low inflation, world without end! Why one should care about mere financial ratios if they produce
such good—and, according to the CBO model— “sustainable” results is another mystery the CBO does not explain.
DHS allocations
DHS appropriations are already allocated for domestic drone use.
Chad C. Haddal and Jeremiah Gertler, July 8, 2010, Chad Haddal is a coordinator specialist in
immigration policy and Jeremiah Gertler is a specialist in military aviation for the Congressional
Research Service, “Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance,”
Congressional Research Service, pp. 1-7, http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a524297.pdf, p.
2-3
Congress has directed DHS to study the feasibility of using UAVs and to implement the
technology to surveil the border on numerous occasions. In the 108th Congress, the Intelligence Reform and
Terrorism Prevention Act (P.L. 108-458) included provisions calling for a pilot program to study the use of these technologies,
including UAVs, along the northern border. The
law also required DHS to present a plan within six months of
enactment to comprehensively monitor the southwest border with UAVs, and to implement the
plan as a pilot program as soon as funds are appropriated for that purpose.12 The 2003 DOD
Authorization Act (P.L. 108-136) required the President to issue a report “on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for support of
homeland security missions.” In the 109th Congress, the conference report to the FY2007 DHS
Appropriations Act (P.L. 109295) urged DHS to work with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to implement a pilot
program for the use of UAVs to surveil the northern border.13 Outside CBP, UAVs have also been
used by other agencies in domestic settings. The NASA-sponsored Environmental Research
Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program has produced civilian UAVs to monitor pollution
and measure ozone levels. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been involved in developing Global
Positioning Systems (GPS) and video camera guidance for using UAVs to locate and identify toxic substances (Hugh McDaid, Smart
Weapons (New York: Barnes and Nobles Books, 1997), p. 9.). Lastly, the Department
in 2003 that it
of Energy recently announced
would test UAVs outfitted with radiation sensors to detect potential nuclear reactor
accidents (Jefferson Morris, “GoldenEye UAV to perform flight demo for DOE,” Aerospace Daily, December 5, 2003.). A Predator
B UAV model was used as part of the Arizona Border Control Initiative, a multi-disciplinary initiative that seeks to coordinate federal,
state, and local authorities to control the Arizona border, until it was destroyed in a crash on April 25, 2006. Congress required DHS
to report on its findings related to this crash and other UAV mishaps by January 23, 2007, in the conference report to P.L. 109-295.
The FY2006 DHS Appropriations Act (P.L. 108-90) provided $35.2 million to establish a Northern Border air
wing and tasked the DHS Under Secretary of Border and Transportation Security to devise a report
outlining operational plans by which the Air and Marine Operations Center (AMOC) would eliminate surveillance gaps affecting the
northern border and western United States. The act also provided $10 million for the use of UAVs. P.L. 108-334, the FY2006
Homeland Security Appropriations Act, provided another $10 million for UAVs in border security. P.L. 109-295 provided $20 million
in FY2007 for DHS’s use of UAVs. P.L. 110-161 provided $14.7 million in FY2008 for the operation and maintenance of UAVs. In
FY2009, Congress did not specify the amount of funding A&M should put toward UAVs. The Supplemental Appropriations Bill of
FY2010 (H.R. 4899) would include $32 million for the acquisition of two additional UAVs by A&M.