Everyone That's Bitching About Spending 5 Big On Wall.....

[Mike M (the other one)]

(12-27-2018, 10:16 AM)Au165 Wrote: I mean it's pretty obvious that the wall is important to trump as it will be his "shrine" a legacy of sorts. I have pointed out often that tunneling has been used by the cartel for years to easily move tons of drugs into the U.S. and that if the wall was as effective at stopping crossing then they'd start moving people in the tunnels because the price would adjust to reflect the difficulty, eventually resulting in the wall being pointless for it's stated use.

I hadn't thought about it until Christmas, but even aside from going under in the next five years you'll easily be able to go over. Drone technology is advancing rapidly and they already have drones that could move people up and over the wall. The amount of flight time is limited, however all one really needs is to be able to make it up 20 feet over 4 then back down 20. Currently it's not efficient or cost effective to do at scale, but for the "really bad guys" if they really wanted to get in they could. In the next five years however the technology will be cheap enough and efficient enough to move people over the wall in mass.

The reality is they should be using surveillance technology not a wall to secure the border. They make 7k cameras now that can cover miles depending on terrain. These cameras are used in conjunction with cloud computing to analyze the video and throw alarms. The cost to equip the whole border in these cameras would be far less than a wall and would be much more effective as it could be used for predictive policing. The cameras can be used to monitor activity across the border and the cloud computing will basically predict where and when people will cross.

Yes they been digging for a while, and we catch a lot of them. That's just gonna happen. and there is also technology to detect those tunnels. And It can happen, but the people won't be coming out in the 100K's like they currently are.  Do you honestly think those Cartels are going to allow the people to know where their entrance/exits are for their drug smuggling operations?

As far as the drones go. I've already posted in another thread that we need to allow the laws to be changed so they can deploy jamming zone at the border. Currently the FCC will not allow it.

https://jrupprechtlaw.com/drone-jammer-gun-defender-legal-problems

Legal Issues Surrounding Counter Drone Technology

1. Communications Act of 1934
There are three sections that are problematic:

47 U.S.C Section 301 – Requires persons operating or using radio transmitters to be licensed or authorized under the Commission’s rules (47 U.S.C. § 301). So just to operate the jammer, it needs to be certified.

47 U.S.C. Section 302(b) – Prohibits the manufacture, importation, marketing, sale or operation of unlicensed jammers within the United States (47 U.S.C. § 302a(b)) ( Only exception is to the U.S. Government 302a©).  Yes, you read that right. Depending on how you market counter drone measures, you could be doing something illegal!  This section also prohibits the testing R & D of drone jammers on your own property. FCC laid the smack down on a Chinese company in 2014 with a fine of $34.9 million!  Yes, you guessed it, the FCC order cited 302(b). Hobbyking found out that the FCC is very serious about the marketing of unlicensed radio transmitters when they received this FCC order.

47 U.S.C. Section 333 – Prohibits willful or malicious interference with the radio communications of any station licensed or authorized under the Act or operated by the U.S. Government (47 U.S.C. § 333). I think Amazon is wisely planning for the future when they filed for a technology patent designed to allow their drones to fly if jamming is taking place. The jamming could be illegal or legal but we know it will be happening in the future. People will take things into their own hands and might start creating illegal drone jamming equipment as a means of “self-help.”
Just on an interesting follow up point, all sorts of things operate on the frequencies you are jamming. Let’s say you turn your jammer on, how are you going to deal with legal liability for any damage you have done? Just let this sink in….“The GPS jamming that caused 46 drones to plummet during a display over Victoria Harbour during the weekend caused at least HK$1 million (US$127,500) in damage, according to a senior official from the Hong Kong Tourism Board.”

2. FCC Regulations
47 C.F.R. Section 2.803 – prohibits the manufacture, importation, marketing, sale or operation of these devices within the United States (47 C.F.R. § 2.803)  Section 2.807 – provides for certain limited exceptions, such as the sale to U.S. government users (47 C.F.R. § 2.807)  The FCC regulations are basically echoing the federal statutes that were created. This means Congress has to either make some exceptions to the Communications Act of 1934 AND nullify or amend these regulations OR just change the underlying statute and leave it to the FCC to start the rulemaking process to repeal this regulation.

3. The United States Criminal Code 
18 U.S.C. Section 1362 – prohibits willful or malicious interference to U.S. government communications; subjects the operator to possible fines, imprisonment, or both. This could be used to apply to GPS jamming.

18 U.S.C. Section 1367(a) – prohibits intentional or malicious interference to satellite communications; subjects the operator to possible fines, imprisonment, or both.This could also be used to apply to GPS jamming.

18 U.S.C.  Section 32 – Destruction of aircraft or aircraft facilities: “(a) Whoever willfully— (1) sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce;” . . .  “shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both.” This applies to the lasers, shotguns, and my all time favorite, Russian spear thrower.

18 U.S.C. Section  2511 says, “ (1) Except as otherwise specifically provided in this chapter any person who— (a) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept, any wire, oral, or electronic communication[.]”

18 U.S.C.  Section 1030 says, “(a) Whoever . . .  (2) intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains . . . © information from any protected computer[.]” This one applies to the hackers.

4. Drone Jamming Can Affect More than the Drone
On October 26, 2016, the FAA sent out a letter to airports because “Recently, technology vendors contacted several U.S. airports, proposing to conduct demonstrations and evaluations of their UAS detection and counter measure systems at those airports. In some cases, the airport sponsors did not coordinate these assessments and demonstrations with the FAA in advance. It is important that federally obligated airports understand that the FAA has not authorized any UAS detection or counter measure assessments at any airports other than those participating in the FAA’s UAS detection program through a CRDA, and airports allowing such evaluations could be in violation of their grant assurances.”  The letter went on to say, “Unauthorized UAS detection and counter measure deployments can create a host of problems, such as electromagnetic and Radio Frequency (RF) interference affecting safety of flight and air traffic management issues.”
The FAA ended up doing some studies and on July 19, 2018 issued a follow up letter to the October 26, 2016 letter which discussed the findings of the counter drone study they did at some airports.

5. State Law
The states have also made some of these counter drone technologies illegal!  States have anti-hacking laws, anti-messing with aircraft laws, etc.  Worse yet, these laws are all over the place with how broad they are, their safe harbors/exemptions, and their punishments.  Basically, what is said in this article x 50 states.

6. Civil Lawsuit for Damages
If you violated one of the above crimes, you have potential liability from a civil lawsuit. You can get sued for negligence if you are the proximate cause of an injury by breaching a duty.  Your duty is to not commit crimes. (duh) The legal term is negligence per se. So if someone gets hurt because you committed that crime, and they were in the protected class of people the criminal statute was attempting to protect (great point to argue over in the lawsuit), and you were the proximate cause of the injury, you can be liable.
And remember the guys listed above who are interested in this?  (Amusement parks, airports, chemical plants, utilities, etc.) They are prime targets for lawsuits and might get listed as a named defendant in a lawsuit.

7.   Aviation Statutes & Regulations
If you just took control over the drone, now YOU are the pilot in command and will need a remote pilot certificate!  See 14 CFR § 107.12; see also §107.19(a).
If the drone operator was required to obtain an authorization and waiver to fly at that location and you take control of the drone, now YOU have to have a waiver and/or authorizations to fly in that area!

Conclusion:
As you can see, there are many legal issues surrounding this area which makes the creation, testing, marketing, and using of counter drone technology problematic.
There are ways that the liability can be lessened, but it cannot be completely removed. Congress and the federal agencies are going to need to start creating regulations that allow for the operation of the equipment in the U.S.  Additionally, there is going to be a need for some preemptive language in a future bill that can unclutter this area regarding state laws because I think it is not feasible to have all 50 states attempt to modify their respective laws to accommodate counter drone technology.