Author: Clark Scally
Before long, the skies above Los Angeles might be home to an airborne creature better known for its lethal presence high above Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. The Washington Post has reported that in recent years, a wide variety of battle-tested drones have been manufactured for domestic service and approved by the government for use on a case-by-case basis. But these Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are about to be given the green light, allowing them to begin patrolling the skies of the United States on a much greater scale. It’s hard to feel comfortable with tiny, hypersensitive surveillance robots hovering around, monitoring cross-section scans of an entire city in “real time.” With the right to privacy existing only in the shadowy legal penumbra of the Bill of Rights, there is little restriction to the extent federal authorities might use these drones in the future. Knowing how the concern for “national security” has pushed the government to infringe on privacy rights in the past, citizens are right to feel uneasy. Unfortunately, drones appear to be on their way to stay.
Congress has instructed the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to allow civilian drones to fly in American airspace by September 2015. Already the FAA has rules that allow limited commercial use of small drones for activities like archaeological surveying and industrial research and development. And these developments are paving the way for a gold rush that benefits everyone – except ordinary citizens.
Research and development of unmanned aerial vehicles has seen exponential growth in the past decade. Dizzying sums of money and enthusiasm are being pumped into domestic drone development and legalization.
The corporations behind drone production, who are counted as people in today’s politics, have especially loud voices on Capitol Hill. Through their lobbies, General Atomics and Northrop Grumman, the two largest drone makers, have a huge stake in maintaining the government’s favorable stance toward drone usage, marketing the most successful weapon in America’s “War on Terror.”
Their products have been invaluable in assassinating Al-Qaeda leaders. We are now learning that they might also assist local law enforcement in apprehending international border-crossing criminals such as Canadian cattle rustlers.
Drones have already been deployed domestically by the US government, albeit in limited numbers. Analyst Micah Zenko of Foreign Policy writes, “As of last October, the Federal Aviation Administration 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 did disclose] that one year ago that 35 percent were held by the Pentagon, 11 percent by NASA and 5 percent by the Department of Homeland Security.” There is already a blossoming use for UAVs in the civilian world as well. MIT students have flown a Boeing UAV from up to 3,000 miles away – with an iPhone app. A T-Hawk drone, manufactured by the American Honeywell company, flew several important missions into the crippled nuclear reactors of the Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant last year. Safer, easier and more cost effective than using good old-fashioned humans in helicopters, the UAV has proven itself to be the new horizon in aviation. Its promotion for such distinguished service? Spying on the American people in their own country.
To the federal government, drones are almost too good to be true. Keep in mind that all aircraft are astronomically expensive: a contemporary F-16 runs $550 million per plane. Meanwhile the unit price for the MQ-1 Predator runs a mere $10 million. In their emerging market, drone development creates American jobs at a time when creating jobs is practically the government’s primary focus. General Atomics and Northrop Grumman alone, which hold the most government contracts, take on multi-billion dollar projects, creating immense demand for highly educated professionals. The fresh capital flowing around this industry surely nourishes everyone employed in its dealings, offering a politico-economic incentive for their development right beside their “security” purposes, legitimate or not.
Given the Supreme Court’s record of siding with law enforcement agencies and other government organizations on privacy cases, the apparently inevitable march toward domestic drones should leave all people in a state of grave concern. Remember, the individual privacy Americans enjoy isn’t even explicitly protected in the Constitution; it’s a legal grey area. In the landmark case of “Griswold v. Connecticut” in 1964, the Supreme Court decided that right to privacy did, indeed, exist, but only in the “penumbra” of the legal guarantees stated in the Bill of Rights. This “penumbra,” in the legal sense, refers to the freedoms only implied by explicitly stated civil liberties. At best, it’s a flimsy protection of privacy especially from the current Roberts Court. Individual citizens are unlikely to be successful challenging the constitutionality of the drones observing them in their very own back yards. Considering their efficacy, efficiency and cost-effectiveness abroad, and their creeping presence already here stateside, drone aircraft seem set to fly in unprecedented numbers in American skies. One can only hope that the law and American public opinion can catch up and ensure only the responsible use of this new generation of airborne surveillance systems.
Clark Scally is an undeclared first-year. He can be reached at scally@oxy.edu.
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