Rand Paul Doesn't Want Drones Looking At You, American

Well, that sure didn’t take long. Just as the Federal Aviation Administration begins streamlining its process for approving requests from drone-hungry government and law enforcement agencies – a move that’s drawing fire from digital and privacy rights advocates who say the FAA’s so-called drone act, if left unchecked, may only stoke the non-consensual surveillance of civilians – a newly proposed bill in the U.S. Senate aims to put a ceiling over the Feds’ domestic drone spree.

The Preserving Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012 states that, save a few exceptions concerning border patrol, “high risk” terror threats and other “exigent circumstances,” the U.S. government would only be able to roll out spy craft after getting warrants that line up with the Fourth Amendment. “Like other tools used to collect information in law enforcement, in order to use drones a warrant needs to be issued,” said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), the bill’s sponsor. “Americans going about their everyday lives should not be treated like criminals or terrorists and have their rights infringed upon by military tactics.”

We already know, thanks to some ace FOIA sleuthing via the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that the FAA has already issued 300 drone flight authorizations to universities, police departments, seemingly not-so-random small towns, and other authorized agencies. But Paul’s legislation takes on a certain urgency, introduced as it was on the same day Public Intelligence, a nonprofit advocacy group, released a map pinpointing the over 60 operational (and over 20 planned) Department of Defense drone bases strewn over American soil.

Of course, this is only what the DoD willingly admits to – Public Intelligence relied entirely on “several publicly released DoD presentations” to mine out the locations.

But what’s maybe more alarming, here, and what could very well determine the fate of Paul’s drone bill, could be the relative nonchalance with which U.S. civilians take to the prospect of the full integration of drones into domestic airspace. A majority of Americans, according to a recent poll conducted by Monmouth University, support the use of domestic drones for search and rescue missions, to hunt down at-large criminals and to keep steady watch over the borderlands. Americans are surprisingly chill when it comes to aerial spy planes buzzing overhead, so long as the things aren’t, you know, issuing speeding tickets.

That, or spying on cows.

Reach this writer at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson

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