UAS News Podcast — 2013-02-06
Transcript
Alright, hello and welcome everyone to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast series where today we're going to share insights and commentary relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I am your program host, Patrick Egan. Let's say hello and welcome as we always do to our co-host, Gene Robinson. Gene?
Hello Patrick, how are you today sir? I'm doing good. I was a little out of the loop. I was down in San Francisco yesterday.
We'll talk more about that in a little bit. But I want to launch right in because today we are scheduled to go 30 minutes, a little short, last minute, impromptu, lots going on to say the least. This is usually where I would say, hey Gene, you know, any news stories catch your attention this week. However, this show is all news because there's just tons of stuff going on.
I mean, it's crazy. Anyway, so what I want to do this week's episode is called Musical Chairs. And we'll get into why it's called Musical Chairs. But we're going to talk about the following upbeat topics.
Drone Ethics, Bands, and Regulatory Musical Chairs. And when I started thinking about this podcast, I started to have like a, I'm thinking and in my mind I'm rolling back or flashing back to that scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian where they're stoning the old man. They tell him that he's only making it worse for himself. And he says, how can it get any worse than this?
Do you think that that kind of is a good analogy of the current news situation? Boy, I think I'd have to agree with that completely because it just seems like the stones keep a coming. They do. They do.
It's getting kind of crazy. Well, today we don't have any guests as the cat had a schedule conflict and we came up short. So we're going to have to march on without him. However, I did put it out on Twitter and Google that we want to hear some commentary from the audience.
And if time permits, we may take some live calls. Again, short show. Also, I put it out there a little late. But, you know, we'll see what happens with that.
And I would have to if you're going to call in, I have to urge everyone to remember that this is a family show. So nothing blue. If you're listening to this recorded, follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera. And you can join the conversation there or next time you may be in the know that we're going to take live callers.
But anyway, all of that good stuff aside, I think we're going to we're going to march right in here, Gene. And I'm going to start with you. I'm going to I'm going to put you in the hot seat. And we have been talking about this UAS safety study team over the past few weeks.
And, you know, we've been blowing the trumpet that, you know, S.U.S. News is going to help with some of the overhead. And we're all, you know, excited and that you're going to be on this thing and move forward. Hopefully, maybe you could tell us what's going on with that.
I think it's interesting. And you're going to have to work awfully hard to make my seat any hotter there, Patrick. But we'll see what we can do here. You know, it's a trend.
We thought it was a trend back in the day, 2007, 2008, when we were working with the FAA and trying to work the regulations. And it seemed that every time we would get a group of managers and people trained, that they would be reassigned to other areas or they would disappear completely to show up in the private sector somewhere. And we'd have to start all over again with a new group. And it seemed to be that was the norm in government.
And it may be. But as you know, and as you mentioned, you know, there were several of us. Some of our U.S.S. guests that were on were invited as well to the NextGen Institute's U.A.
Safety Team. That was just before the holidays. And since it is here now, February, I decided to start doing a little digging to see exactly what was going on with that particular team, because I hadn't heard anything. And I didn't want to think that, you know, maybe I had kind of been stopped on the list or anything like that.
I just wanted to check it out. That never happens to you, right?
I mean, any time you get it. No, it never happens before. Okay, good. I'm not saying.
Yeah, we wanted to clear that one up. So I started, you know, going back to my contacts. And when I contacted the originator of the email with my invitation, I got the postmaster's email return notice that it was undeliverable, which was a little surprising but not unusual. So I sent a few more undeliverable emails and decided to call the numbers that I had available to me, the NextGen Institute, and spoke with a young lady there.
And the director of that particular team or position is no longer with them anymore. Shocked. I'm shocked, yes, terribly shocked. And it only seems to be the case that if you don't hear anything for a little while, you can bet that something is going on.
And we have had something going on with the UA proposition since 2007, obviously, because once a person gets to the point where they understand the situation, it's time to move them on to Siberia or some other place where they're skilled or needed. Yes, kicked upstairs to some obscure position. There's a lot of that. Or moved into the mushroom cave.
You know, there's a lot of folks in the cave. Yeah, you know, heaven forbid. I mean, you know, I've found – well, it's been a little bit of my experience that if you're a doer – they don't like doers. But I don't know if that's everywhere in the Fed, let's say, realm.
But I do think that that's kind of weird. It's only been a short time. The email is not even happening. They don't have that forwarded to some other person that could, like, take up the cause.
It's kind of weird. You think that they must have spent some energy, man hours, overhead into putting this all together, a little bit of thought, yada, yada, yada. I mean, obviously somebody knew that they were going to take off for another job. I mean, I would think that, you know, you got irons in the fire, one of them is going to come up.
So again, very disappointing. Now, when you talk to – I know you did get somebody on the phone there. Did any – hey, we're going to get back to you in this time, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do that. Or is it just nothing there?
No, actually the person that I spoke to was very helpful and, you know, tried to explain the situation to me as judiciously as possible and said that they would try to gather as much information as they could, and they would either email me or they would call me back. But nothing today. That happened today this morning, so, you know, I will expect that, you know, within a week I should have something. I think you're optimistic.
Well. That's you. He's that plucky kid down there in Texas. He's got the gleam in his eye.
All right. Well, that seems kind of strange too. You think they would have scrambled and came up with something or shot out an email, hey, this is what's happening. But, you know, this shouldn't come as a surprise to most of the folks that are close to the effort.
Now, the show is short today because it was all kind of a last minute thing. I liked the Know Your Animal Rights show. The guy going for the exemption show, which kind of leads into the next thing I want to talk about. I thought the exemption thing was good.
Getting a lot of people asking me, hey, what can I do to help? We want to start lobbying, which we'll talk a little bit more about. But I'm telling people, hey, man, write a letter and support the dude in the Federal Register right now. And that is something you can do.
It takes 10 minutes a year time. Get cracking. So what have you done about that, Gene?
Well, I was so inspired by Gus's show and the things that he had made effort to get into work that I followed his suit. I went ahead and, as of yesterday, filed my petition for exemption as well. Gus was kind enough to give me some guidance. And I submitted that with all the appropriate signatures and hopefully all the categories filled.
Now, the time period is from 90 to 120 days. So if we assume that the clock started yesterday, we should be able to see something going on by the summer sometime. Of course, the docket number will come probably in the next week or so. And once that starts, then we'll be in the queue and the process will begin.
But I think that if they offer that opportunity to us, we need to take it. And hopefully, if mine gets up there, we can ask our listeners to support ours as well, because ours is for search and rescue and law enforcement, which as we know from the queue poll, that 80% of the people said that that isn't acceptable use for unmanned aircraft. Right. Well, this will be a great saga.
We'll have to watch it and check in with this one. We'll have multiples going on. But that will be good. And then hopefully, we'll get some action and learn about the process.
Now, it sounds like you ferreted out the email address and the rest for the information. And I'm going to make that assumption because you got it in. But now I had called, like I said I was going to do, I called over there to the UASIO. That's another thing with the musical chairs, musical acronyms, musical offices, musical people, new people coming up to speed.
I got to figure this out, yada, yada, yada. Anyway, I called over there and I had asked about getting the information so we could put it out there to our listeners, readers, yada, yada. And, you know, I haven't gotten a call back. But I was also calling about, you know, I think I had talked about this a few months ago.
Well, I think last year, and I did a news story about it on the SES News, and I foiled the progress report. First it was the job descriptions for the Associate Administrator for Aviation Safety, Ms. Peggy Gilligan, and also the head of the Unmanned Aircraft Program Office, Mr. Rick Prozac.
And I wanted to get the job descriptions to see, you know, maybe I thought maybe I was just asking too much. You know, I got to see what they're doing over there, what's expected of them on their duties. And I had run across some information in there that both of those physicians were to write up a progress report for what they were doing for the year and then also a budget and money spent and all the rest of that. And then Mr.
Prozac would send that up to Ms. Gilligan, and she would add her information or whatever she was doing as managing that office and send that up to the administrator at the time, the acting administrator. So I said, well, you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to FOIA the progress reports. I'm going to FOIA the budgets. I'm going to see what's going on over there because there's, you know, I mean, is it a fair assumption to say, hey, you know, we've been out here since 2005, and I'm waiting to kind of see what's happening. And I don't really feel like there's a lot of action.
Do you think that's a fair question to ask, Gene? Well, you know, since we have discovered that one government day is like seven public days or individual days, I don't think you've waited long enough. You're probably right. Now, they have statutes and whatnot that, you know, when you do a FOIA request, you have a certain amount of time to turn it around.
And, you know, I'm out here waiting. I'm still waiting for one that I did from 2008 for who's got coas. Nothing there. I've had my congressperson look in on that multiple times.
The letters that they send back from the FAA to the congressperson or so. I mean, I'd be mad if I was a congressperson. I'd be a little upset. Oh, look, you know, I represent several million people over here and you're treating me like a child.
Thanks. So but whatever. Anyway, I have not gotten the reports, but I am interested in reading the reports and sharing that information with our listeners and the people that visit the news site because I think that information is very relevant. I think we're going to get a lot of insight into what's happened over the past few years, what progress they've made, the data they've collected, the data matrix, you know, the different efforts that have been made in the office under the, you know, under their leadership.
I know it's changed now to the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration Office, and I'll take that stuff, too. I'm interested to see what's happening there. You know, and maybe it'll give us some insight into, you know, how the FAA is leading the way. So we're waiting on that.
I called in. I haven't got a call back yet. If you're listening, I'm still waiting and I'm available. You got my cell phone number.
I got that with me all the time wherever I'm at. So I'm interested to hear back on that. And I know I kind of got long-winded on that, Gene, but I do that. So the other thing is I went to San Francisco yesterday and I talked to a reporter from Reuters for about three hours.
Good guy. That should be an interesting story. I passed your number on to him, Gene, and he is interested in speaking with you and all so interested in your book. Yes.
You know, when you tell people that, hey, there's this guy out there that's got 10 years of experience, or eight, nine years of experience that he's got 10 fines to his credit, he's out been looking for Bigfoot and llamas and all the rest of this, and then wrote a book about it, people take notice. Do you find that to be the case?
Yeah. Is it like a... It's getting... There is some momentum starting to build, and I think we've discussed where the book has been kind of tucked away on the web.
And I was in San Diego here just last week at the AFC-EA show, and there was quite a bit of interest in that as well. And by the way, the AFC-EA show is the Armed Forces Communications and Engineering Association, and it is typically a very military-centric sort of show. And one of the things that I discovered, I've been to it in 2009, several years ago, and most of the attendees were in uniform. And this time I went, you saw very few uniforms.
There were a few there, but it was more civilian-based than I had ever seen it. And I know I kind of digressed off of our original question, but I wanted to throw that out there, in that there is significantly more civilian interest in this than there was the last time. And the segue into that was that there were many people interested in the search and rescue, search and recovery use of unmanned aircraft. And that's what generated quite a bit of interest in the book while I was there.
And I did donate a few copies to some of the folks who could potentially use it to the best of their ability. So I think it was a good show. It was definitely down. I mean, there were a lot more people in attendance because the military presence with the frustration and the budget cuts coming up in March really, really cut into the show, I think.
Oh, yeah. I mean, it is like spend to no money. And when I say no money, I'm talking about not even $25, no money. They're counting the paper clips now, aren't they?
Yeah, that's where it came down to. And that's another thing I've been busy coming up with ideas for. You know, looking for funding, I'm thinking about booking a trip to the Pentagon to check the couch cushions for money. Although somebody's probably doing that today.
Anyway, I do think that's going to be an issue. But that kind of segues into the next thing I wanted to talk about. And I don't want to really get too political, but we do talk about this now and again in the drone ethics thing. And they broke that story and it kind of mirrored what we've been talking about and what we've been saying about the kind of public perception thing with the drone strikes and yada yada and weaponizing the drones and everything else.
And, you know, I think we all agree when you're supporting the war fighter and, you know, trying to keep people safe, that's all great. You know, I had expressed issues with the ethics of, you know, when these people are American citizens. And so the story broke and I read the DOJ memo and I have to say, you know, this is me personally. I'm not a lawyer.
I didn't stay at a Holiday Inn or anything else, but I thought the arguments were weak. You know, I don't know, but, you know, in any event with it all, I think it is bad for this industry, you know, especially that bad for the industry. And I think that that segues right into the drone bans that we're seeing across the states. Gene, what do you think?
You know, it's a knee-jerk reaction. Before we get into that, Patrick, I think it's interesting that just this morning, you know, when you talk about the heavy-handed use, and this is not particularly heavy-handed and it was justified, but the hostage situation in Alabama where the young child was being held at a bunker. This morning, the FBI has alluded to using unmanned aircraft in that situation. Now, this individual was underground.
So here we have a situation where they're sending in cameras and they're mapping the bunker and that sort of thing in very clever different ways, but they also alluded to the fact that they had 24-hour aerial surveillance. Now, where did that come from? 24-hour, one would think it would be one of the larger unmanned aircraft, and was it flying under a COA?
Was there a TFR in place? Just exactly how did that work?
They also alluded to smaller unmanned aircraft that were being used. I find it very interesting that, you know, again, the happy outcome was that the child was retrieved safe and that situation is over. And really the sidebar is the drone use, but I think it's interesting that those agencies are being able to actively pursue and use those in those situations, which I think could help us in the long run because it shows a positive use and that they were. I'm not sure how they used them, but it is a positive use in those situations.
Right. I think the last count was now 19 states that have some sort of anti-drone legislation that they're trying to push forward. Right. Well, and that's the point, but I do think that, I mean, it is kind of interesting, and I mean, I let out a little chuckle, but it's just ironic that this was an underground situation with unmanned aircraft.
But I can see how it would be useful, and I do think it's a positive use. I just think that, you know, part of the ethics thing is raising questions in people's minds and also, you know, let's say tweaking the privacy issues. And for people, you know, I think they're just like, well, you know, they don't understand it. I'm not really interested in it.
But I have to say that the advocacy effort and where are the advocates and what is going on here, the program is not working. I mean, I think it's confirmed today, waking up, reading the news, whatever's going on and whoever's advocating and saying they're doing things and they're doing this and yada yada, it's not working. Would you agree or disagree?
Yes, I'd have to agree with you 100%. It's been the major slayers have gone military-centric, and there is so many missed PR possibilities that could have been used in the past for positive use that have not been utilized. It's been such a negative smear of the industry from the get-go that it's just gotten pathetic. Well, it's almost like, you know, Mr.
Magoo is driving the advocacy mobile or something. I mean, you know, it's been a DOD-centric thing. They're still, you know, you got them all on the new arc here. You know, they're representing small business.
Every time you see, you know, oh, it's a drone. You know, it's a Predator. It's a, you know, DOD product. I'm not just outlining or I'm not trying to malign the Predator.
But I mean, when people talk about drones, that's a picture you see a lot. Even the cartoon with the droney or no, Blastie, the magic drone, you know, was a Predator knockoff. But the point with that is I've been telling the people in this industry for years. This is not the new four years.
You've got to get the positive uses out there. You've got to get, you know, the small business and even what happened out there at DHS with Search and Rescue and them using AeroVironment and it being closed to the public. You are just, you know, I mean, I don't think you could do any worse if you want to like, hey, let's let's what do you think?
Let's sit around here. I want to you know what I want to do. I want to stoke up some privacy fears. I want to stoke up some big brother fears and I want to stoke up some scare.
What do we do? Oh, hey, I got a good idea. Let's get a DOD vendor. We're going to get them out here.
We're going to say it's for Homeland Security and law enforcement. And it's going to be something that's been over there used eyeballing the Taliban and taking Al Qaeda out. We're going to use it here. We're going to do the demo and we're not going to invite the public.
It'll be great. And, you know, they'll be we'll see. Well, I'm sure we'll get a lot of negative feedback out of that. Now, of course, I'm being facetious and exaggerating here.
But I mean, to me, it's a no brainer. You know, I've even expressed it to people. I left the gentleman at DHS a message on the phone. Hey, you might want to rethink that.
I had and I hate to put you out there on Front Street, Gene, but I used you as an example. So, hey, we got this Gene Robinson guy. He wrote a book. He's been doing search and rescue with unmanned aircraft for eight plus years.
You know, I ran through the 10 fines, blah, blah, blah. He's an expert. And we're not talking about made up expert. This guy's got the time out in the field and he manufactures a small US and he's not afraid of the public.
He would have come out, done the demo and happy to entertain the media, public, anyone that had any questions. You got nothing to hide, right?
Not a thing. Right. Well, the vendor that they chose had proprietary issues and didn't want to share with the public. And, you know, again, feeding the flames or stoking the fire of, you know, privacy issues and the big brother thing.
It makes no sense to me. And again, you know, I'm just I'm just some dude out here. I don't know. Does it sound alien to you?
Is this this is part of my flamethrower thing? Oh, that guy's a flamethrower. You know, to me, they just it's it's pragmatic and makes sense. You want to you want to sway some of the people's fears, put some daylight on the thing, put some people from the public on the on the arc that's going on now.
Somebody from ACLU or that EFF or whatever else. Put some daylight on it. Take the scare out of it. Is this is that crazy talk, Gene, or you think I'm on target?
Well, the problem is, is sense, common sense, as you say. And it seems like legislatures and lawmakers have lost all grasp of common sense. Now, we talked about the states putting these things on drones or unmanned aircraft and wanting to limit their use. Lance Gooden here in Texas, just to give you an example.
It's OK if you're flying on public land with a camera and an unmanned aircraft or small unmanned aircraft and you take pictures of somebody else's private property, it's OK. But if you're on private property and you take someone else's private property as an image, then you can be fined a thousand dollars per frame. Doesn't make any difference whether it's video or sales. Well, I mean, is that just from the air or is that like me and the kids, we jump out of the car and take some snaps?
Unmanned aircraft. Oh, OK. It's specifically unmanned aircraft. And it states so.
So at 60 frames per second, that could wrap up into some pretty good money. Right. Well, now, if I want to jump out of the car and take a picture of a tumbleweed on the ground and I get some people's private property, I'm cool. But OK.
I'm just trying to figure it out and it makes sense to me. Sounds pretty knee-jerky, not very well thought out. But again, I think that, you know, what's in the media now and all in the knee-jerk and people asking questions and this whole ethics thing is all over the media. Everybody's like, whoa, what's going on here?
You know, including myself, I think it's bizarre. But then again, with all the bands and all the states coming on, I think as a community, you know, you need to step back. You need to think about where you're putting your money. You need to think about what we're doing.
And I'm telling you, I didn't think it would get this bad, but it's getting bad. And, you know, flashing back to the opening, I don't see how it could get much worse. Do you?
I think, yeah, I hate to be the pessimist in this one, but I think it could get worse, Patrick. I really don't. It's going to get worse because if you look at the wording in some of these proposed laws, the wording itself is so ambiguous and vague and even outright deceptive and wrong. For example, there are mentions of state-controlled airspace.
Well, the state doesn't control airspace. The Federal Aviation Administration controls all airspace in the NAS, which is the National Airspace System. So there is stuff that is just wrong in these proposed laws. And I think if any of them should suddenly get passed through a rough session, you will find some very, very onerous and downright draconian statements in there that can be used to cover a lot of things.
And they will. They will. Well, I get, you know, like I said, it's confirmation. It's time to change up the game plan like yesterday.
Sitting back and waiting is just not going to do it. You're probably right. I hope things have a way of getting worse. Just ask the lobster in the pot.
Is that garlic I smell? Anyway, interesting show. It went quick because it was only 30 minutes. But, you know, until next week, Gene.
Sounds good, Patrick. Have a good one. You too. Bye-bye.