Google wing warns new drone laws ‘could have unintended consequences’ for privacy

Last week, the U.S. government made the biggest and most impactful set of drone law changes we’ve ever seen – deciding that nearly all drones in U.S. airspace will have to broadcast their locations. , as well as the location of their pilots, in order to “address safety, national security and law enforcement concerns regarding the continued integration of these aircraft into United States airspace. “.

Google (technically, Alphabet) isn’t very happy with these new rules, after all. The company’s drone delivery subsidiary Wing wrote a somewhat alarmist article (via Reuters) titled “Remote identification of drones by broadcast only may have unintended consequences for U.S. consumers,” which argues that the FAA’s decision to have their location broadcast by drones could allow observers to track your movements, determining where you are going, where you live and where and when you receive packages, among other examples.

“American communities would not accept this type of monitoring of their deliveries or their taxi rides on the road. They shouldn’t accept it in heaven, ”Wing argues.

With that kind of language, you might think Wing is arguing that drones shouldn’t broadcast their location, right? Funny, no: the Alphabet subsidiary just wants them to send it over the Internet instead of distributing it locally. I think my old one CNET The tweet from colleague Ian Sherr is appropriate:

By the way, internet-based tracking is exactly what the FAA originally planned to do when it proposed the remote identification rules in December 2019, before receiving a long list of reasons from commentators. for which internet tracking could be problematic and decided to abandon it. Here are a few of those mentioned:

• The cost of adding a cellular modem to a drone to get started
• The cost of paying for a monthly cellular data plan just to fly a drone
• Lack of reliable cell coverage across the United States
• The cost of paying a third-party data broker to track and store that data
• The possibility of this third-party data broker being breached
• The possibility of this data broker or network receiving DDoS, grounding drones in the United States

If you want to read the whole argument for yourself, the FAA is devoting 15 pages to presenting and investigating all objections to Internet-based remote identification in its Full Rule (PDF) starting on page 60.

Personally, I think it’s pretty ridiculous that the FAA felt it had to choose between “everyone has to broadcast their position to everyone within earshot” and “everyone has to pay huge sums to the industry. private and trust a data broker with their location, ”but the reasons we don’t use internet based tracking make sense to me.

Most proponents of remote ID technology, including Wing, like to explain that this is simply a “license plate” for the sky, perhaps nothing more intrusive than what you say. would already have on your car. Here’s Wing on that:

This allows a drone to be identified as it flies over without necessarily sharing that drone’s full flight path or flight history, and this information, which may be more sensitive, is not displayed to the public and only available to them. law enforcement agencies if they have the correct credentials. and a reason for needing this information.

But the problem with license plates is that, traditionally, you have to be within sight to see them. You would have to physically follow a car to follow it. This is not necessarily true for a broadcasting transmitter, and it is potentially far less true for an internet-based solution like the One Wing’s seems to wish the FAA had offered instead. Of course, it depends on the owner of the internet solution and your trust and security.

Either way, it will be some time before we find out how secure or vulnerable these remote ID broadcasts really will be, how big or how narrow these broadcasts will be. This is because the FAA’s final rule doesn’t actually dictate the type of broadcast technology drones that will be required to use: companies have a year and a half to figure it out, and they must submit it to the FAA for approval. The FAA is also clear that the dissemination of remote ID is only a first step, an “initial framework”, suggesting that Internet-based remote ID may still be an option in the future.