Schumer wants changes to drone rules

Sen. Charles Schumer has a couple of changes he’d like to see to the Federal Aviation Administration’s draft rules for the private companies’ use of drones before they get enacted into law.  

The New York Democrat this week said that the FAA should back off restrictions that would force drone operators to continuously keep the machines within their line of sight.

{mosads}That restriction “could significantly hinder” private companies’ use of the drones, he wrote to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker on Thursday. It could, for instance, bar companies like Amazon from using drones to deliver packages to people’s doorstep. 

The No. 3 Senate Democrat also added his voice to the chorus of calls for stronger privacy rules.

The FAA’s proposal would call for the Commerce Department to get input from all corners and work on a framework to guide companies.

Schumer wanted to make sure that those guidelines were “very stringent” and would make sure that American’s don’t wake up to find drones peering it at them through their bedroom windows.

“These guidelines should include stringent measures to prevent the use of [unmanned aerial systems] to spy on unaware parties, as well as other strong privacy protections,” he wrote.

Schumer also said that the FAA should require drone manufacturers to install GPS tracking and software that allows them to control where the machines fly. Those controls could lead to “geo-fencing,” in which the drone manufacturer prevents people from flying the machines into off-limits zones of the country, as one major company did following the crash of a machine on the White House’s lawn earlier this year.