"The FAA has released a set of cease and desist letters sent in 2012 and 2013 to people operating drone vehicles for a variety of purposes including: tornado research, inspecting gas well stacks, aerial photography, journalism education, and other purposes. Drone cease and desist letters sent during 2014 are available from the FAA upon request." The text of the letters (bureaucratically polite, but bureaucratically firm) often starts with notes indicating that the UAV operators to whom they were sent that the FAA became interested in them because it "became aware of" their web sites, or even because someone tipped them off about an article in a community newsletter. The letters go on to outline the conditions under which the FAA allows the operation of unmanned aircraft, and specifically notes: Those who use UAS only for recreational enjoyment, operate in accordance with Advisory arcular 91-57. This generally applies to operations in remotely populated areas away from airports, persons and buildings, below 400 feet Above Ground Level, and within visual line of sight. On February 6, 2007 the FAA published UAS guidance in the Federal Register, 14 CPR Part 91 / Docket No. FAA-2006-25714 I Unmanned Airaaft Operations in the National Airspace System. Toward the end of the docket it says, ''The FAA recognizes that people and companies other than modelers might be flying UAS with the mistaken understanding that they are legally operating under the authority of AC 91-57. AC 91-57 only applies to modelers, and thus specifically excludes Its use by pecions or companies for business purposes."
You need to be a member of diydrones to add comments!
Comments
What if UAV operators blocked the FAA's IP address from accessing their sites? :-D
Didn't american judges dismissed twice now this FAA interpretation of things, ie forbidden to operate drones ? If correct FAA should be put back at its place firmly requesting that they follow their country's justice decisions.
@Chim might want to take a closer look at the original post. There is a link to the cease and desist letters sent in 2012 and 2013
The link is to a PDF that has a copies of the letter towards the bottom of the PDF.
PDF link:
http://www.governmentattic.org/12docs/FAA-UASwarnings_2012-2013.pdf
This post, title and contents, is a seething pile of misleading hysterical propaganda. We have enough problems without worrying about bogeymen under the bed:
1. "Scans" (not to be confused with "skims") is a big,big word. Google may have the horsepower to "scan the Internet" and maybe the NSA has, but the FAA certainly has no such ability. The string "drone user" returns 21,900,000 hits in Google search.
2. "Drone Users" is not what the FAA is looking for, if they are indeed "looking" for anything in particular.
3. "...Sends Cease and Desist Letters:" Not a single example of any such thing is given in this post. All we see are generalizations. "Cease and Desist" has a specific legal meaning. Is that term actually used in these alleged letters? If it is, and if its use is based on a look at someone's Web site, that would be astonishingly incompetent even by FAA standards.
4. "...bureaucratically polite, but bureaucratically firm..." What does that mean? Do we see impolite letters from gov't agencies? No, that's language intended to be subtly fear-inducing ... the smiling fellow with the knife behind his back. The actual FAA is more buffoon-like, blundering about and harrumphing, rather than all creepy-scary.
5. At the beginning there's a list of activities that the casual or naive reader would assume from this post are considered illegal by the FAA, including "aerial photography." Really? Not one of these is in fact claimed by the FAA to be illegal. It is only in the last three words of the post, "for business purposes," that a vaguely more accurate picture of reality emerges.
6. 2012? Why not bring 1945 into this, it would be as relevant.
7. Why is the FAA seal posted above this post?? Ooooo.... i'm soooooo frightened ... oh, wait, it's not the FAA posting here? What is this seal then, a Halloween mask??
8. A bit of googling indicates that this post has appeared elsewhere, also under anonymous authorship, but with a couple of gross spelling errors (pecions and arcular) corrected.
There is a constant drumbeat of irrelevant negative posts on this site that are worse than worthless and actually damage the efforts being made to drag the FAA into the 21st century. They scare people away from the hobby and they also fuel anti-drone people who are not sophisticated enough to sense the inaccuracies. We certainly are interested in hard information, of which there's not one single bit here, but ignorant, blubbering fear-mongering is the last thing we need.
Maybe the FAA should worry more about meeting the deadlines Congress gave it, rather than waste resources chasing law-abiding operators doing more good than harm.
yes, there were daily visits to sites. As someone who works for an organization that received a letter - i had visits in 2013 to my site from the FAA:
4/1
4/3
4/5
4/7
4/9
4/13
4/14
4/20
4/21
5/2
5/12
7/2
7/3 (a lot on this date)
7/8
7/17
7/25
7/31
amcproxy.faa.gov - - [31/Jul/2013:13:35:34 -0500] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200
54396
"http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q {snip}
-
1
-
2
-
3
of 3 Next