UAS News Podcast — 2013-09-04
Transcript
Music Welcome to the next installment of the UAS News Podcast Series where we interview newsmakers and discuss the news and applications relevant to the global unmanned technologies community. I'm your program host Patrick Egan and as always let's say hello and welcome to our co-host Mr. Gene Robinson. Hey Gene, how's it going?
Good day Mr. Patrick and how are you sir?
Doing good. You know, another sunny day out here in wonderful California. You know, not near the fire so I'm doing pretty good. Stay out of the fire.
But how about yourself? We are well over here. We are experiencing quite the heat wave still. We're hoping that September will kind of cool us down a little bit.
But other than that, we are at least not on fire. That is one of the good things. We are celebrating the anniversary of the Bastrop Fire which occurred this past weekend which was probably one of the more devastating fires here in Texas because of the number of homes that it destroyed and the ferocity of the fire itself. I've had the duty of going over and surveying, flying some of that and surveying some of the damage.
And you know, until you really look at what one of these fires can do, it is just incredible. It's along the lines of a tornado or even worse because there's nothing but ash. And it is just devastating the look of the land after it's gone through. I just can't imagine what the Yosemite Fire looks like from even a mile away because the pictures that I've seen from the ground with flames hundreds of feet in the air just are incredible.
But it's good that we're now seeing some positive use. I mean, we always ask about things that catch your eye at the beginning of the show. And the fact that they are using an unmanned aircraft and it is P-word, it is the Predator, and it is a military asset. But by golly, it's getting out there and it's doing some good because as I understand it, the commanders are able to see the video real time now which is something that hasn't been available to them in the past.
It is good. I still think that the cost per hour thing is prohibitive, but hey, let's do it. Let's use one of these things for some good. Let's see what we get out of it.
And really, I guess better late than never. I don't want to be in E.O.R. again. Well, you know, given that a military operation, I don't care what you say, is going to be more expensive than a commercial civilian operation.
That's just the way it works. But to get to this point, to be able to get out and show that, wow, this is something that is a real help and that is something that can help the IC guys, the Instantly Command on the ground, keep their people safe and to actually combat this thing and fight the hotspots and the backfires that start and that sort of thing. I'm all about thinking, you know, regardless of who made it
and who's flying it, this is a good deal. Yeah, it's expensive, but the benefits to be derived when you consider the billions of dollars worth of damage that are being done, no question in my mind.
Roll it out, you know, do anything you can to save as many trees and houses as you possibly can. Right, right. So yeah, it's a good overall. I'm going to put it in the positive column for sure.
So all right, well, moving along, today's because that is good news. We'll have to see what comes out of it. I'm sure we'll be talking about more about that in the future. But let's bring on today, we're going to talk to three of the people behind the drone and aerial robotics conference are dark as it's being called.
And we have conference director Ben Moskowitz, Christopher Wong and director of research, Leah Rosen. So we're going to bring them on and we're going to have them discuss a little bit about the discuss a little about the conference. So I think, you know, we'll do first is we'll do it in order here and we'll bring on Ben Moskowitz first. And I was wondering, Ben, are you there first off?
We have been or no, Ben? Sounds like we don't have been. Okay. How about Christopher?
Christopher Wong, you out there? Yeah. Hey, can you hear me?
I can hear you. I can hear you now. Ben is actually going to jump on in just one second. I got to just forward him the number real quick.
Okay. Well, then maybe you could introduce yourself to the audience and give us a little bio about yourself and how you got started. How you got involved with unmanned aircraft systems. Yeah, absolutely.
And just first, thank you so much, Patrick, for having us today. We really appreciate it. Sure. I'm Christopher Wong.
I'm the executive director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, which is a center at NYU School of Law that focuses on issues that are generally associated with innovation. So what we typically focus on, things like intellectual property, we have a strong focus on competition and a very strong focus on information. Also things like privacy and surveillance. So that's sort of how I got to...
So I worked at this center, and that's sort of how we got interested in the drone phenomenon, the UAB phenomenon, is that this is sort of a new technology that kind of crosses a lot of the different things that are of interest to us in this sort of legal academic space that we function in. So there are a ton of innovation law and policy issues that sort of come to the forefront when you talk about UABs.
And so we decided that one of the really important things to do whenever there's a new technology that's set to proliferate in the near future, it's certainly great to at least first start a dialogue of some sort.
But we also know that with the integration development on the horizon, we do know that there will be at least some opportunities for influencing some of the policy issues that come along with this law. And so we thought that one of the really good ways that we could do this was to pull together something like JARC in order to bring together a really massively disciplinary group of people to the table and give them a forum for considering, for discussing ways that these unmanned systems affect society, as well as coming up with some ways to take action.
All right. Okay. Well, let's not get too far ahead. Let's do the introductions here first.
But that's pretty good. Okay. Is Ben with us now?
Hey, good morning, guys. Hey, Ben. Maybe you could kind of do the same. Give us an introduction, a little bio, and how you got interested or involved with unmanned aircraft systems.
Sure. So that's a very good question because I think like most of the folks who sort of initiated the conference, we don't really have anything to do with UAS. And yet we're really interested in them as technologists and as legal scholars. I'm also involved in some sort of legal scholarship.
I have a personal history of doing technology advocacy. And I guess like Chris was just explaining, we've all been reading about UAS in the news. And we've built small hobby quadcopters just sort of out of interest. And we all see the potential for UAS to really change the way that a lot of industries work, but also to upend some of the balances, the balance of rights that we have in certain places.
So we look at the essential interests that people have in privacy. And obviously that can be a bit of a red herring when you talk about UAS. But at the same time, there's a whole history of legislation and regulation and jurisprudence around how privacy works and how we balance people's interests in privacy. And UAS, obviously, is a throw-and-wrenching now.
But also I think Chris will unpack this a little bit. We're really trying not to zero in on privacy as the one big thing for this event. I mean, that's one part of a really massive landscape that we're going to need to take a look at. And when you look at innovation law and policy broadly, there's lots of questions around automation, secrecy, intellectual property, and so on and so on.
And Chris is the lawyer, I think, who will help us unpack some of that. We're really excited. Good. Good.
All right. And then finally, Leah, are you there?
I am. Hi. You are. And so maybe you could oblige us kind of with the same introduction and how you got interested in unmanned aircraft systems.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm a lawyer, like Chris, but unlike Chris, I am not in academia. I'm based in Oakland, California. And I've done some work early on kind of in my career.
I've done work that involved law, technology, and sort of human life and civil society. So I did some work with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which deals with civil liberties and technology issues. I did some work that was less tech focused on human rights, but I tried to bring my interest in technology into that. And through just sort of working with a lot of interesting people and having a broad interest in how technology
and people interact as the technology develops, I eventually became really interested in UAVs and unmanned aircraft systems because I think this is true of all three of us, because I was struck by how intensely people react to them.
And it almost seems to me like there might be something unique about the ways that people understand this specific kind of technology, this kind of aerial robotics. So I did some work on it in law school and I wound up writing a piece on unmanned aircraft for the students' publication of the ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery. And then I was asked to write a more broad audience, popular audience piece on the FAA Modernization Reform Act for a publication called The New Inquiry. And sort of one thing led to another.
And I'm privileged to know Chris and Ben through my kind of social circle. So I was brought on kind of on the ground floor when I discovered that they were thinking about maybe pulling together a different kind of conference about this technology. And you were also at the Small Unmanned Systems Business Expo that we threw. I was.
It was a terrific event and I continue to regale people with anecdotes about it. And I thought that that was a really interesting event because I think in a sense it was more boundary pushing than I think was obvious. Simply because I mean even calling it the Small Unmanned Systems Business Expo kind of, I mean the Small Unmanned Systems Business is still sort of nascent. So it's very forward thinking which I think is something that we share in spite of the fact that we come from a different kind of sector.
Well it's interesting that you say that. And I appreciate the kind words about the Expo. It was more than I thought it was going to be. But it is kind of an interesting thing.
And one of the reasons that I'm going to speak at the DART show is it seems like there's a wide or a gulf in kind of information or history in this deal. And I think that that's kind of one thing that I bring to the table. But I mean this used to be a thriving business, the commercial use of unmanned aircraft systems. And actually it still is.
And you know I mean there are thousands, probably tens of thousands of people who go out and do this commercially. They just do it kind of under the radar and in the closet. But how does that, you know I guess from the other side, kind of the law side of things, people talking about privacy and whatever else, how does that fit into the equation?
Are people, has anybody really been complaining about their privacy being violated by all the people that are already flying? Let's say commercially?
Does anyone want to? Yeah I think just to kind of reiterate, the privacy thing is maybe one-tenth of the slice of the pie that we're baking. You know we're sort of taking a long-range view and sort of a think tank. So DART is a bit of a think tank where we're saying let's get the people manufacturing UAS, let's get the people flying UAS, get the people drafting the regulatory and legal frameworks for UAS.
And you know let's look at the next 10, 15, maybe even 50 or 100 years of automation and UAS. And so we're going to avoid to the extent possible kind of pigeonholing on, you know, well is someone going to be snooping on me in my backyard or through my window?
Because I think you're totally right that that's a red herring. You know but at the same time there are questions around the First Amendment that need to be ironed out, right?
And so like we're really interested in drone journalism. And when you start to drill down on what a drone journalist is and what the protocol for doing drone journalism should be, you know, and what happens when you get the shot and how do you get the shot?
And you know is there a duty of care around ethics or should the operator and the journalist be two different people? You know should the drone journalist be the guy flying the UAS because maybe that puts people in a weird and awkward and unethical position. So it's not like we want to get a whole bunch of smart people in a room, you know 500 smart people in a room and waste their time on, well you know, is this going to be by privacy?
But we really do want to look at some of the specific questions that may have been unexamined or need more attention. I think, Drone, you feel good?
Oh no, go ahead, you finished your thought there. Yeah, I just wanted to also say, you know, you're totally right. One of the things that we're hoping to do in the event is to get people who have a legacy, you know, of working in this space and to tell that story. You know there are a few people who will be taking part in our event who, you know, perhaps their livelihood or some part of their business was reliant on UAS.
And because of regulatory changes, you know, they've actually had to sort of backtrack. So a big part of the event too is how can we stay competitive, you know, as America. If you look at sort of the competitive drone law landscape, we're going to have people who study the regulations in the EU and in other states. And so, you know, we're also going to be looking at not just in the United States, but also globally what is the sort of regime for flying this stuff in the private sector.
Well, that's interesting. And I guess that's good because I've noticed that, you know, well, I mean, I don't want to talk before the show, but it's just one of those things that kind of... The argument seems compartmentalized to me, you know, that what about drones?
I mean, it's been going on, the safety thing, the privacy thing, and then the kind of the, let's say, presidential administrative thing, the human rights thing. I mean, these are kind of all broad brushes. But do you have anything to add on what's been discussed thus far?
Well, and you'll have to bear with me here because I don't know if the stun spot is right over Texas or not because half the conversation I've been missing out on dropping out. So one thing that I would like to comment on that I like the approach that you guys are taking is that it's not only about unmanned aircraft. Robotics in general, I think, is going to be a huge topic, whether it's a driverless car, whether it's a machine doing repetitive tasks. And I go back to the iRobot days and Ray Bradbury and all that stuff where the three laws of robotics come in.
And we're rapidly reaching that point. So I'm looking forward to that sort of thing. And I think you guys are on the right track. I wonder, Patrick, if I could jump in for a sec to comment on what Gene said.
Because I think that's a really interesting point. And one of the things that has been lacking in the discussion, which, like you said, and I think the three of us agree, it's been unnecessarily compartmentalized or maybe necessarily for reasons of economy, but not healthfully in terms of moving the conversation forward. So one of the reasons that I am so excited about the conference is that we're trying to look at the... I mean, as people who come from a law and policy background primarily, we're very familiar with the privacy concerns and the sort of free speech concerns.
And then the question becomes, you know, if those really come from, we can sense that there's a lot of public discomfort around the idea of unmanned aircraft. But then, you know, sort of trying, like Ben said, to sort of drill down into that issue and ask, you know, what is that really discomfort about?
And I think that Gene is on the right track when he says that a lot of this has to do with robotics generally and with our kind of cultural comfort with automation. So that's something that I think is worth kind of unpacking and then identifying so that we don't fall into the trap of, you know, kind of getting stuck in a conversation just because we haven't addressed it. And, you know, one other thing. All those lawyers and scholars are there.
Unlike maybe some other similar events where people are kind of talking about, well, why should we be afraid of drones and how should we limit the use of drones, we are going to have people who are very firmly looking at how can we enshrine the right to drones. Is there a First Amendment argument for drones?
Is there a Second Amendment argument for drones? You know, does the media need to have access to this?
Does the private sector need to have access to this? And what are the bases on which we build, you know, the idea that civilian UAS is not something that we should be limiting but rather enabling and strengthening, you know, as an industry. I think that's another difference between, you know, what we are doing versus some of the more pure think tank events we've seen by the New America Foundation or
so on. I mean, we are really building something that if it goes well, we would like to do it year in, year out, and have sort of form as a space for the industry and the community to sort of continue building on that momentum.
I did notice, you know, talking to people in the industry and I talked about your show and, you know, asked them about their participation or whatever. I will say that there was a little bit of apprehension and, you know, maybe it's because you're kind of unknown in this space or possibly, you know, some of the lineup like I was saying. I mean, the lineup of speakers, there are a lot of people that are dealing with human rights
and law and things like that. I think even from my own experience doing UC Berkeley law and during the Berkeley Drone Town Hall meeting and a few other, even ABA, the American Bar Association show, it seems like industry people kind of get, let's say, sandbagged with a myriad of red herring type of arguments.
And some of them even border on the absurd. I mean, even at the ABA thing, I forget the woman's name exactly, from EFF, I mean, it was getting absurd. You know, I mean, drones seem to be collated to all of the ills. I mean, at Berkeley, the Berkeley Town Hall meeting, it was, you know, demise of the Black Panthers, Vietnam War.
I mean, it just went on and on, but even at ABA, EFF likened it to, you know, was putting it right up there with rape and making comparisons. I mean, to me, that's absurd. We're talking about technology. Patrick, this is definitely a challenge.
I think, you know, we have a lot of things we're doing to keep this as constructive as possible. So, you know, for starters, we shaped the program around an open call for proposals. So this is pointed at both lawyers, but also people who are in the U.S. industry.
We said, you know, what would you like to tackle in this event? You know, what do you want to talk about in a roundtable?
What's the working group you want to convene to solve a legal problem? And we had quite a few submissions, and, you know, we could very clearly weed out the ones that were kind of crazy or off the mark. So the sort of backbone of programming that we have is from people who are really doing serious work in this space. I think it's the first thing I would say.
If you look at the way the event works, day one is pretty much a show. So we have an auditorium. We're going to have a bunch of really interesting talks and panels. We're going to have a few indoor demos on the evening, which is kind of, the second day of the conference is nothing at all like that.
So we won't have a stage where people are sort of in an auditorium watching, but we'll have six or seven concurrent sessions during all day, kind of like a bigger industry conference. But instead of coming in and watching a panel on safety, for instance, and what the safety concerns are, you know, and how Sense and Evade will be implemented and so on, you'll be sitting around a table, you know, actually interactively engaging in an effort to draft a best practices guide for that, or an article that will explain to laymen what's happening, or some other sort of tangible output.
So the second day of the conference is much more like a think tank in that people are working together on things like this rather than just blabbing, right? Which is really a doing, you know, hacking, not hacking kind of environment. And I think that you'll find that people who are really off the mark will get neutralized, right?
If someone comes in and starts talking about drones being analogous to dragons in a medieval lore, you know, they're going to kind of get neutralized when you've got the FAA guy and the industry guy and the lawyer in the room. So I think that's sort of what we're counting on and we're trying to build a serious space here. Did you get that you have participation from the FAA?
Is someone coming? We're still working on it. We've had a lot of talks with folks at the Department of Transportation about it, and actually it's tied in to the point you're making about industry and the way that these kinds of things are viewed typically. One of the big criticisms is that we are potentially looking too academic and too civil libertarian.
And so what Ben is describing is sort of a very purposeful design that we've tried to undertake in order to create a much better sort of experience for people. So what we, especially speaking for myself, as a legal academic, we tend to look at these sorts of opportunities for changing policy through a very narrow academic lens. And so one of the really interesting things and one of the things about DARC that I'm very excited about is this idea that we will bring together
so many different voices. And so while we haven't announced anyone from the FAA just yet, we've confirmed Robbie Hood from NOAA.
We've got a few folks from NASA coming. Obviously our keynote speaker is Vijay Kumar who is speaking on his own behalf but is on leave from his U Penn professorship as the Director of Robotics and Cyber Physical Systems at the White House, OSTP. And so we're very serious about trying to create a very interdisciplinary space for all of this to happen. We don't want these working groups and these workshops and these round tables to...
We don't want them to reflect what we within academia and civil libertarians are really concerned about without addressing what are the sort of practicalities and what are the practical issues and perspectives that you can bring in by including people that are part of industry. And so we're working hard on trying to do that right now. Yes, and if I could jump in just one more time just to point something out. It has been really interesting just in organizing the conference with Chris and Ben.
I feel as though, and this is something Patrick that I think you and I have talked about once or twice as well, that increasingly what I see is that there's a real cultural divide between the sort of academia that we, I suppose, represent which accounts, I think, reasonably for a lot of the industry kind of uncertainty about our event. So there's a big cultural divide between that kind of world and industry.
And yet, especially after going to the Small and Mentioned Business Expo, I really think that if we sort of think through the uncomfortable topics of conversation, which include things like privacy and the First Amendment, and it's not so much...
Because I don't think that it's really that we all totally disagree. I think that there's just big complicated questions that are hard. And I think that ultimately the entrepreneurial side of the UAV world and the kind of civil libertarian side actually have very similar interests at heart. I think that for the most part, at least the people that Ben and Chris and I have convened to come to the conference
and be part of our network of sort of legal minds, we're all people who are really invested in a future that enables us to access the promise of this technology without violating the things that people in civil society really find important to maintain.
And so one of the reasons that we want to foster the conversation is just to sort of bring to the forefront that if we work together to figure out what is making people uncomfortable, what we can do on a practical technical level and what we can't, all these kinds of things, just get them on the table, then I think our interests are very similar. Well, and I would agree with that, but one thing that the anti-drone message of saying, like there's this gentleman from the Foundation of Fundamental Rights,
and it is true that there are people that get killed by drones or whatever, but that's not really a drone problem.
That's more of an administrative problem as far as I see it. I mean, the drone manufacturer is not saying, you know, hey, let's put these folks on the kill chain. That's the president. So sometimes I get defensive about that because it's not really the drone's fault.
You're blaming the drone, not you personally, but the drone, the blame is being laid on the drone and it's misplaced because it's the president of the United States that signs up on the kill list. So I get my hackles getting up a little bit. Anybody want to comment on that?
I mean, I'm happy to. I mean, I think that that is something that we've seen a lot in organizing the conference, and it's completely understandable, right, and it's reasonable that people from industry and people who are drone enthusiasts, people who are really into the technology, are frustrated when the conversations that they have end up being conversations about things that are far outside their purview like U.S. foreign policy or the morality of war, which are really the bigger issues when you talk about something, for example, like the targeted killing program.
That's not really, you know, about drone manufacture or drone business. It's really about whether or not it's okay to do that, and that's outside the purview of our conference for sure. And I just want to briefly address the presence of Shazad Akbar, who is the lawyer you mentioned from the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, because I invited him and he's on a panel I'm organizing so I can speak to why he's there
and what he'll be talking about. And that's, I mean, I'm willing to take, kind of take the responsibility for this one and shoulder it, because I know that that particular panel, this title, Life Under Drone, probably raises a lot of red flags for folks in industry who don't want to get stuck, you know, in a position, in an impossible position where they, you know, are being accused of things that they may or may not even be involved with
and all of these things about far-fetched getting collapsed into the question of aerial robotics.
But the goal of that panel for me was to try to, and it's an ambitious goal, was to try to illustrate that when we think about the future of civilian drone application, when we think about the future of living in a world where there are lots of UAVs in the sky, un-airial systems are being used by a number of different, probably, you know, applications that we can't even anticipate right now, much like most other technologies, you know, then it's worth it to think about what evidence we have, what information today about what that could be like.
And for better or for worse, I would say for worse, but again it's not a question that we're going to ask, right? For better or for worse, the people who have been living every day under unmanned aircraft, which is to say, like, conducting their daily lives in states that is controlled above by sometimes kind of unmanned aerial systems, as opposed to something like Japan where they're used in agriculture,
but they'd be over fields or over sort of inhabited areas. The people who have been living in this state for the longest amount of time are people in Afghanistan and the UAVs that they've been under have been armed military UAVs.
So the real purpose of this panel, and I admit that it may seem a little too deep for most people, but I think it will be really interesting, is to try to figure out what are any insights that we as kind of policy and industry people can gain from listening to these stories. And so we're not going to speak about the laws, we're going to speak about interviews, and the other people on the panel are ethnographers and people like that. Anything that we can gain that might actually teach us something about how unmanned aerial robotics in the sky affect people, you know, in general.
I agree. Well, I mean, I don't know if you're going to have any industry people on that panel, but I mean, you know, it goes right back to that's the policy laid down by the current administration, and it was the policy laid down before the election. It's not really a drone issue, as far as I'm concerned. You know, the thing is like, you're totally right.
It's not the target killing con, you know, it's not TK Con. It's the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference. So we want to give a full spectrum treatment to drones, and also that's the thing we're talking about. You know, drones is kind of the scary word for people in the UAS industry.
It doesn't bug me. I mean, I don't care what you call them. You can call them unicorns or whatever. It doesn't bug me.
Right, yeah, yeah. So we're working on what you can classically call drones, RGAs, UAVs, AAs. And from time to time, when we have people, we try to bring them into the research project that we're doing, you know, you'll have people point out things exactly what you're saying, you know. This is not a drones issue.
This is a due process issue in this case. Well, it's kind of the same, well, not to cut you off, but it's the same with the privacy thing. I mean, when you talk about police use or government use and storing photos or storing video or how it's used or whatever, I mean, these are public policy issues. And it kind of, you know, I've got to be honest, it kind of gets my goat when I hear people say, oh, well, you know, well, these drones are going to be doing all kinds of the surveillance.
All of these sensors already exist and, you know, the drone's just a platform. So, I mean, again, those are public policy issues. I guess you could have like, you know, public policy about drones or whatever. But to me, that's part of the, I guess, broad brush, but also compartmentalized thing with the anti-drone thing.
And I'm not putting your show down. I just think that these might be some of the reasons. There's like not really a lot of private or let's say industry participation. I mean, I don't know.
And again, I'm not trying to be critical, but I mean, you know, who else is going to be on this panel? Is it going to be that girl from TacoCopter talking about human rights or I mean?
Yeah, it's fair to say that this is one of the only panels, if not the only panel, that touches foreign policy and due process and targeted killing. In fact, we had a lot of internal debate whether we would even have this panel. We have something like 12 panels and 24 other sessions. And, you know, we had to really think, well, are we going to do this?
Are we actually going to like open the door for people with tachypathy? And the decision we made with respect to this one particular panel about targeted killing is we can't possibly give a full spectrum treatment to drones as a phenomenon. If we don't acknowledge that, you know, in the public, in the zeitgeist, this is what most people associate them with. So it should add up to the bigger sort of serious policy conversation.
Do we need, you know, a new set of laws and frameworks to govern drones or and this is, I think, our hunch in a lot of cases. Do the existing laws and policies map pretty well to drones?
And, you know, can we identify places where they don't and fix them? This is a really constructive sort of event and we may be able to provide some examples of what's unique and specific to drugs, I think. Yeah, and absolutely. I'll jump in to correct something that Ben said because in no sense is this panel a panel about targeted killing.
We'll certainly discuss it in the context of the ways that the capacity that the drone people have shaped their experience of them. But we're going to be speaking specifically and on a very kind of granular level about what it's like for ordinary people in these areas to live with this technology. And we'll try to see if we can parse out the military issues. It may be that we decide that we can't and that there aren't too many insights we can gain.
But on the off chance that there are. So the reason that the panel is constructed the way it is is we have Mr. Ackbar, who as an attorney has interviewed many, many people who live in these areas. We have Wajma Osman, whose ethnographic work focuses on journalists in Afghanistan, which is one reason I thought she'd be interesting.
We have obviously some of the issues about what affects journalists. There may also be relevant for journalists here since they're another group domestically that's very interested in the tech. And Madiha Tahir, who's looked a lot at young people in the parts of Pakistan that are patrolled by UAVs. So sort of people who have grown up with these things always being present because they've been there for about 10 years.
So people between the ages of like 10 and 20, young people, and sort of looking at how that may or may not have shaped their understanding of their world. And so certainly we'll need to mention that for these people these are lethal things. We're really curious to know in the first-person account that our panelists have, what is it that points to something bigger than that?
I understand all that. But you're talking about, I really didn't want to get too deep into this, but you live in a war zone. Who gets killed in war zones?
It's an unfortunate thing. Again, this is an administrative policy issue. It's a technology. There's lots of ISR.
I've worked on ISR projects. And a lot of these people that get zapped protecting, well, let's say if there's boots on the ground, they're not over there minding their own affairs. And they're getting whacked. So it's a weapon system.
Yeah, that's totally right. And I think the thought is when we're looking at evergreen issues, like how do people think of the sky?
That's actually a really interesting question. When you start to imagine the 50-year horizon where it's much cheaper to get a robot in the sky, how does that change people's perception of the sky?
So if you want to answer that question, I think our idea is you get a legal scholar. We have someone like Stuart Banner who wrote a book called Who Owns the Sky?
And he looks at the history of crop dusting and farmers questioning whether they own the airspace above their real estate. So we have a guy like him who's looked into the past. We have people who have studied satellite reconnaissance. Then we have people who are living under drones.
And maybe they're not enemy combatants. But in fact, growing up as a five or six or seven-year-old kid, it may change your perception of the sky. So our idea in the conference with all these things is when we're answering questions like this and we're exploring a long-range theoretical question like this, we want to get different perspectives on it. And I think this is kind of a challenging example of that because it's really charged.
It's people in a war zone. And I think that this is going to be one of those very passionate moments in the event. But we're also going to have a very practical moment. So you look at a very specific legal area of interest is FOIA requests, Freedom of Information Act requests.
And so we have a working group on FOIA and drones. And there's a few dimensions to this. One is you can't really know who has UAS in law enforcement and in agencies unless you go and file thousands and thousands and thousands of FOIA requests to start to paint a picture of who does. There's no definite list of this.
So one of the projects of the folks coming to the conference is can we kind of build a mosaic of which agencies have UAS and understand how they're using them, right? But another side of the question is if agencies and if states and if sort of public institutions start acquiring drones, who does that data belong to, right?
So we as taxpayers paid a lot of money to put weather satellites in place. And in fact, the weather satellite is public domain. Now, if we're going to start flying drones around to monitor hurricanes or stop forest fires or to catch bad guys or whatever, when I file a FOIA request to get the data that that publicly owned drone has captured, what should happen?
Should I as a taxpayer have access to that? And so these aren't really pro or anti-drone questions. These are questions attenuated by drones. Right.
We're going to run long today, but if you guys want to stay on, we'll just keep rolling on. If anybody's got to go, they can go too. But I agree with that. The FOIA request thing ought to be interesting.
It's funny is that request for all the COAs and experimentals and whatever else, I first put in a FOIA request for that back in 2008, and I'm actually still waiting. So I would actually be... You should jump in. Yeah.
Well, I'll be interested in seeing that one too, because actually I've been trying to, let's say, reach out to EFF or ACLU and talk about these issues and also maybe try and work together to get... I've got a bunch of FOIA requests out there as far as progress reports of the UAPO, FOIA request for the financials for those offices, what happened with the money, who did what, what's going on here. And I've got nothing on any of that really. The last thing I did get was the job descriptions for the manager of the UAPO, which is now the UASIO, but anyway, that's another story.
I do want to let Gene... Gene, do you want to hop in here?
We covered a lot of real estate and you were silent. Well, the reason I was silent is because I'm having a heck of a time with the connection here. I don't know what the deal is, but one of the things that I kind of... From the perspective of a drone in a war zone, say for example PACS and the type of uses that we're doing here, we've never found weaponizing anything and we don't think that that's a proper use for drone tier conus.
And granted, there is a sociological study that needs to be done to see what it's like to live under drones, I think it's going to be very much along the same lines of surveillance cameras on red lights and that sort of thing. No one has really asked me how I feel about having my picture taken every time I go to the ATM and ATM it out cash. But I can remember growing up when people were asking those sorts of questions and it just generally became more acceptable and nobody asked a thing about it after that.
So I think it's a very different perspective from being on the civilian side and being in a war zone, not only from a technology standpoint, from a social standpoint as well. That's one of the things I wanted to talk about. Well, and I mean I understand too. I mean I can understand people's apprehension with privacy, but I mean it's just, you know, with the NSA thing and...
But nobody has complained about traffic light cameras or going down a tollway where they take your picture every mile. Nobody has complained about that. Nobody has really gotten into an uproar over cookies being installed in your computer. I mean they're a nuisance, yeah, and some of them can be malicious, but where's the hue and cry over that?
Anybody want to field that one? Or is it just... Well, go ahead. Sorry.
Well, you know, I was just going to quickly say that part of that is within the privacy space, within the legal world, we have a concept of what is the reasonable expectation of privacy. And when you talk about things like the cameras that are in the red light, there's a difference between the reasonable expectation of privacy there when you're driving your car in public versus the one where you're in your bedroom and the drone with a camera flies by, right?
So what is really interesting about, I mean particularly in this space, is what... And then touch on this a little bit before. You know, this is about looking at the way that this technology actually transforms some of those concepts. You know, it's about thinking about where, you know, what are the existing sort of regulatory frameworks and legal and policy frameworks that govern these kinds of things, and how do unmanned systems actually transform that and change that into something else?
And, you know, by investigating what that gets changed into, you know, that's one of the ways that we can begin to have this conversation about, you know, how do we need new laws? You know, how do the existing laws map onto it, and what are the sort of analogs and corollaries that we can look at when it comes to this stuff?
What can we look at in the past? What kind of history of, you know, technological change and the way that we've accepted those things can we look at in the past, and what can we correct here?
But I mean there is, I think, a difference between what drones and unmanned systems do that are slightly different from, you know, what happens when you are driving, you know, when you're speeding or you run a red light. Well, I mean it's not so much that I see the difference there, but the impact at the time of their introduction was just as profound, and it was just as far-reaching. I'm not using that as a specific example, you know, as an apples-to-apples comparison. I'm talking about a broader sense of...
Absolutely. I think you're totally right. Part of the thing that we've noticed, at least to me, is that... One at a time, one at a time.
But, you know, it is a normative phenomenon, right, where we think of... we have to think about these things and think about the way these technologies transform, you know, specific parts of our lives. And I agree with you, like these were probably questions that were asked a while ago, but that is sort of, you know, one of the reasons that we are bringing together this thing to look at, you know, not everyone that we're bringing to the table here is, you know, a per se, you know, drone expert, right?
A lot of the people that we're bringing to the table here are people that have been working in spaces that are sort of similar or have some sort of tangential relationship to the unmanned systems phenomenon. And we're bringing them in because they're experts in that, and we think that there's... you know, having them as part of the conversation to map some of those past experiences onto what's happening right now, I think is sort of, you know, it's a very beneficial sort of thing to have going on.
Yeah. And I, as someone, along with Leah and Chris, putting this into gear, I think I cannot resist an opportunity to plug the event itself. So, Pat, you may have listeners who are interested. Oh, yeah, yeah.
There's a lot of interest in the thing. And I think we're, I mean, I hope, you know, we didn't like bringing you on here and beat you up. I just think that we're, you know, we're talking about some of these zeitgeist issues, and I think we're laying that out here right now. And this is, I kind of, my participation in the show, this is kind of what I hope is going on out there.
I mean, I hope it's, you know, three days of some in-depth, you know, let's say, real discussions. But I do want you to plug the show and give people the... Can we get the web address while you're on that topic?
Yes, absolutely. So it's the Drones and Aerial Robotics Conference at droneconference.org. Droneconference.org, October 11th, 12th, and an extra special day of hands-on hacking on the 13th. You can find out more at that website.
I just, I want to impress that, you know, if you have any interest in any of the issues that we talked about, whether at the zeitgeist level or at the sort of very granular policy level, it's really kind of an open and inclusive event. So you can check out the schedule. You can see what's going on. We have talks, panels, workshops.
It would be a really interesting... It will. And, you know, like I said, that's one of the reasons I'll be there. I want to participate.
I think it's going to be good to kind of get this out here. And, you know, we're trying to get folks a flavor for what's going to be happening. But Leah, did you get to say what you wanted to say or did I cut you off?
Oh, it's all right. I wanted to just say that, I mean, what you said about having, you know, real in-depth conversations is I think that's really what we are going for. And it's, you know, I think that there's more commonality than maybe most of us think. But there will also be points where everybody disagrees.
And that's also great. We want to foster just a conversation that's safe. And I think what Gene said, I just wanted to piggyback on it and say that something that I noticed, you know, about UAVs that was so fascinating is how present they are in the public's kind of imagination in a way that, for example, cameras on ATMs maybe aren't or aren't anymore. So it's actually a way to have that bigger conversation about whether we're okay with all of those things.
You know, because a particular subject is one that captures people's imaginations. And I think that's a big part of why we think this is going to be a productive discussion overall. Absolutely. And I'm glad, I mean, I think this is a good primer for this show.
And I've got to be honest. I mean, if you go to, let's say, a conference and you're talking about a meeting, you're talking about a meeting with a group of people, you know, and I think that's going to be a good primer for this show. And I've got to be honest. I mean, if you go to, let's say, a conference and there's not, let's say, a conversation like this, I don't even know what the point is of going, you know, it's a self-adolation society thing.
So I think this is going to be good. And I do want, you know, the guests, and I appreciate you guys sticking it out. And I hope nobody thought I was beating up on them. I'm just, it's like, we're here now.
I don't know what this show is all about. But I do want to, I want to give everyone a chance to, somebody waiting for a bus, I want to give everyone a chance to say something in closing that they may have not yet covered during the program. So we'll start with Ben. Ben, do you have some closing statements that you would like to make, sir?
Yeah, I'll make it brief. We are trying to create an event where a hobby roboticist, you know, somebody building an FPV quadcopter can meet and have a constructive dialogue with the people writing his destiny at the FAA and other agencies. And so that's really what we're going for. We want beards and suits.
So if you are, if you're a beard and you're a long-haired hacker type, we want you there. If you're a suit and you're involved in some of the serious policy questions, we want you there. And we think you'll have a good time. I think that might be a good name for a pub, you know, beards and suits.
If the drone thing doesn't work out, you might have a future in the entertainment or, you know, public sector. All right. Christopher, something you'd like to say, sir?
Oh, yeah, no, I mean, I was obviously second to everything that you said. You know, great name for a pub. But yeah, this is the point of this is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of people. And we have to understand that drones, that unmanned systems as a sort of technology are really, you know, the teachable moment of this technology is very interesting because it's such an amalgamation of so many different things that are sort of all coming together at the same time.
And so the confluence of the technology and the law and policy issues and all the things that you can do with these things makes this an important opportunity for us as the public to sort of get our voices in there and make sure that what happens in the next couple years is actually a responsible policy and responsible framework for governing something that's going to have an effect on all of us. Right, right. I think that makes sense. And Leah, we'll give you kind of the last word.
I got a lot of words and edgewise. But I just want to thank you again, Patrick, for having us on your podcast and giving us this opportunity and for your support of our event. Because as we said at the beginning, we're kind of an unknown quantity to the UAV industry, but we've been fortunate in being able to get a lot of interesting people from that sector as well. So hopefully it'll be a really exciting conference.
And yeah, just generally, we want it to be very hands-on and participatory because I think part of it is the relative ignorance in the sort of hobby world and even in the industry world when it comes to who's actually writing the rules or the rule sets and what the rule sets will say. It's been very opaque. And so it's important, I think, for those of us who will be directly affected by the future of this technology, which may very well be kind of all of us just to different degrees. But it's important for us to jump in now when we can and say publicly what we want or what we think.
And that includes everyone. That includes skeptics and enthusiasts and everything in the middle. And as Ben said, we're hoping to have a persistent presence in the discussion and to be a useful resource across the board for people who want to find that kind of general information about the landscape of UAV. You guys can all come.
It's October 11th and 13th in New York, droneconference.org. That's all. All right. Well, yeah, and I agree with all of that.
I think it's going to be a good thing. Gene?
Yep, I agreed with a lot of it too and wanted to make comments on stuff. But for the sake of continuity, I guess I'll sit over here and keep hoping for a good solid cell signal so I can participate better next week. Well, you know, sometimes that happens. Technology is great when it's working.
Anyway, I think this was a very productive conversation. I think it gives something for people to really think about. And I would suggest you come on out to dark and listen to what's going to be talked about and hopefully participate in the conversation. Like I said, that's why I'm going to be there.
I hope to dispel some, let's say, some ill will or wrong feelings or whatever. We'll see what we can do. But anyway, that's all we have time for this week. We'll hear everyone next week.
Thanks to all our guests. And I'll see you guys soon. Okay, you're welcome to show. Bye-bye.
Thank you. Bye now.