 Okay, so please join me in welcoming our speakers. Well, thank you, Denise, and good morning, everyone. It's really, it's great to be here. It's great to be back on this side of the river again. I've been over at AUVSI now for a little, almost four months. And obviously I joined at a very interesting time. AUVSI for those, how many of you have heard of AUVSI just out of curiosity? Oh, fantastic. Then you'll know that a couple of things about the community that I represent, first and foremost, although I'm a pilot myself, we don't just do things that fly. We do thing unmanned vehicles on the ground, robotics, driverless cars, and just for fun, we do things that swim and float as well. So it's all three domains and there's a lot of different technologies involved. And I think what's interesting about the community that has come together over the last 40 plus years to work under the AUVSI umbrella, is that there's a lot of cross currents in these technologies, but each one of the domains is regulated by a different regulator. So I'm not sure if I'm actually engaged in one advocacy campaign right now or three. And there may be more as we go forward, given all the state activities as well. But obviously we're gonna talk about unmanned aerial systems today and as Denise indicated, there is some challenges around nomenclature in this particular arena. I actually have a t-shirt that the staff gave me that says there's nothing unmanned about an unmanned system. So I'm scratching my head in Europe and in Ikea, we call it remotely piloted, et cetera, et cetera. And I actually walked in on a rebranding exercise for the organization and I think it was one of those classic cases of it hurts so, it feels so good when we stop banging our head against the wall. So let's just leave the brand the way it is and we'll come back to that whole business about what we call this later. That said, there's a great deal going on, as you all know, from my perspective, obviously the most salient thing is what's happening. My colleagues at the FAA are in the process of now looking at I think 4,000 odd comments that have come in on the notice of proposed rulemaking for small UAS, that's anything under 55 pounds. And obviously our community also communicated through AUVSI a number of things that I can come back to that. But I wanted to start by just kind of level setting that not only are there challenges around nomenclature in this particular arena, but there are lots and lots of different platforms and many, many different applications for UAS. So part of what we are looking at is kind of taking this bite-sized pieces, what I hope will be bite-sized pieces, but working on different things in parallel so that we can take advantage of the enormous economic opportunity that is before us in embracing this technology. And the organization scoped that opportunity with a forecast that was released in 2013, which indicated that from the day we can fly, and not just by exemption, but we can fly under rules, we will create, in our community alone, over $83 billion in economic activity in the first 10 years, and create 103,000 new jobs. There's additional economic benefit, of course, associated with how this technology is going to be used in a whole variety of industries. Some of the applications Denise already pointed at, but if we just look at oil and gas, inspecting high-voltage lines all the way on through to package delivery, et cetera, there's just a tremendous amount of economic opportunity. And even my colleagues in the aviation world, I was on a panel down at Sun and Fun, and it was very sunny down there, and there was a lot of fun going on. But Congressman Graves held a town hall meeting, and I was there with Mark Baker from Aircraft Owners and Piles Association, and Matt Zaccaro from the Helicopter Association International. And Matt said, you know, we're embracing this technology too. We have lots of missions that we fly with Rotorcraft that can be done much more economically with a quadcopter. And so our community increasingly is beginning to look at this as another business tool. And why wouldn't they, if their customers are saying, gee, we really need this done, it's safer to do this with a device that's actually being controlled from the ground and vastly more economical. So it's almost impossible to anticipate all the different ways that we can utilize UAS going forward. And that's part of the fun of what we're seeing right now. We're also seeing that in the enormous number of requests that Rob is getting for exemptions at the FAA. They've done, I think, a Yeoman's job trying to organize that work better, and I'll let him speak to the summary grant process that's now underway. But this is, of course, no way to regulate. We need to get the NPRM finished, at least for the small UAS. That's a top priority for us. And frankly, we think that the FAA has done a good job getting started in that process. They've taken a risk-based approach. We like risk-based technology neutral regulation, and we're arguing that regulation is extremely important for safe and responsible use. So we like certain elements of the regulation. Our comments pointed at some things that we think can still be done in a low-risk profile that would allow us to collect data and get smarter as we go forward to enable some of the more complex operations. In the rules specifically, we'd like the FAA to consider nighttime operations. We'd like to be able to go beyond visual line of sight for certain things where we can develop and demonstrate equivalent levels of safety. There are a number of things that are included in our comments that we get into rather than giving you all of the details right away. But there's a lot that needs to be done, and as we've communicated, whether it's under that particular rule or in additional things that we'll be working on in parallel, we would like to see technologies developed that allow for us to bring technology solutions forward that frankly we think is gonna make the airspace safer for everyone, including me. Sense and avoid is something that frankly, if given what a blunt instrument seeing avoid is, if we can create sense and avoid in an economical way that can be deployed with a form factor that would work on a small drone, then why wouldn't we deploy that on all aircraft? So there's a lot that's gonna be created that creates value for end user communities. We're gonna stand up a whole new community that's supporting this industry itself, and we think that ultimately we're gonna develop technologies that are gonna make the entire airspace safer for everyone. So I'm delighted to be here, and I'll pass it on to the next gentleman. Thank you, Brian, and thank you Denise and the center for having this panel today, and for inviting me to participate. Good morning, everybody. If everybody would just indulge me, I'm gonna do a little bit of reading here just for my opening remarks. I promise I won't be very long here. I know everyone participating today already realizes the great potential of UAS technology and the wide range of applications. This technology also introduces a number of new risks into our aviation system. As UAS technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace, the challenge is to develop a regulatory framework that facilitates continued innovation while ensuring the safety of other airspace users and people and property on the ground. Since the 2012 FAA Reauthorization Act, we've made a lot of progress and learned a great deal along the way. The FAA put forward a comprehensive plan and a five-year roadmap. We also have a research program that leverages the strengths of our interagency partners and industry to overcome barriers to UAS integration, such as detect and avoid technologies and standards. The six UAS test sites we selected in 2013 to aid in UAS integration are fully operational. The FAA Tech Center in Atlantic City is receiving data from the test sites that will inform key questions such as how unmanned aircraft and their space with air traffic control. The last several years have also seen a rise in UAS operations in the NAS. The FAA issued restricted category type certificates to UAS operating in the Arctic. We've issued more than 175 special air worthings certificates in the experimental category, more than 30 of which are remain active. These approvals facilitate research and development, crew training and market surveys. We've issued more than 2000 public COAS to national, state and local public operators of UAS for many different operations, including many in the area of public safety. Almost 900 of those are active today. On the civil side, what I'm involved with most closely, we've issued close to 250 exemptions since September under section 333 of the 2012 act. Including petitions that have been closed out, we've completed assessments of almost 25% of the petitions received. These operations do not pose a risk to others, operating the NAS to the general public or to national security, and these UAS can be safely operated without any worthiness certificate. These operators are conducting operations every day and making movies, inspecting critical infrastructure, marketing real estate, aerial mapping, surveying, inspecting agriculture, improving railroad safety, and many, many other amazing applications. We learned a great deal from the earlier petitions we assessed and a little more than a month ago, we reviewed the lessons learned and to streamline the exemption process. As a result, the FAA is issuing dozens of additional exemptions on a weekly basis. Doing a little math here, that's a lot of operators currently authorized to fly right now. Section 333, demand remains remarkably high and we will continue our efforts to review these as quickly as possible. We also proposed a rule that would allow routine use of small unmanned aircraft systems for commercial purposes without an airworthiness certificate or a certificate of waiver authorization. The proposed rule, the small US NPRM, covers many potential small US operations and offers a flexible framework for the safe use of these systems. While accommodating future innovation in the industry. As proposed, the United States would have one of the most flexible US regulatory frameworks in the world. The public comment period closed on Friday and approximately 4,500 comments were submitted. As we work to finalize the small US rule, we will continue efforts on future US integration plans. As US operations in the system increase, we are reaching out to educate the public on the safe and responsible use of UAS. The FAA provided model aircraft enthusiast guidance on the do's and don'ts of safe model aircraft operations. We have partnered with members of industry and the modeling community to initiate the Know Before You Fly campaign to promote safe and responsible UAS operations. The FAA is also working to best position law enforcement to detect, deter, detect, investigate and report unauthorized or unsafe UAS operations. While our first action is to educate UAS operators about compliance, when appropriate, we will use administrative or legal enforcement action. Issuing a final rule for small UAS operations is a top priority for the FAA, but we are already looking beyond that rulemaking to identify additional types of operations and what technologies we need to certify. The FAA has consulted with the UAS Aviation Rulemaking Committee, the ARC, for recommendations for enabling UAS operations with the greatest benefits. As the industry and system grow more complex, we must ensure that our resources are directed to the areas with the highest safety risk. We will need to expand collaborative, data-driven processes with the UAS industry to improve safety and streamline certification. The FAA is safely and steadily integrating UAS into the NAS, and as we do, we continue to look to the future to make sure the proper framework and standards are in place to facilitate continued safe integration in an increasingly complex airspace system. We look forward to continuing to work with our partners in government and the aviation community and to make steady progress toward that goal. Thank you, and I look forward to our discussion today. Thanks, Rob, and maybe I'll just take this opportunity to introduce Jay Stanley from the ACLU. Jay is a senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project where he researches, writes, and speaks about technology-related privacy and civil liberties issues. He is the editor of their free future blog and has authored a variety of very influential ACLU reports on privacy and technology topics. Before joining the ACLU, he was an analyst at the technology research firm, Forrester, he served as an American politics editor of FACTS and Files World News Digest and was also a national newswire editor at MediaLink. And so I wanted to welcome Jay. I look forward to your remarks. And occasionally screws up his calendar. I apologize for being late today. I think I must have been in a different time zone when I put the today's event on. So the ACLU's primary concern when it comes to drones is that they not be used for mass suspicionless surveillance of US populations. Drones are a very powerful, potentially surveillance technology. There are technologies out there that enable persistent surveillance of entire towns, neighborhoods, cities with a single camera, single ultra-high resolution camera. There's a company now called Persistent Surveillance Solutions that operates out of Ohio that uses manned aircraft to circle over a town or a city and to constantly videotape in fairly high resolution, an entire 25 square mile area. Any pedestrian or vehicle within that area can be tracked retrospectively. So it won't be long before that kind of technology finds its way to drones probably. And the kind of tracking that can be done with that kind of technology is a very serious privacy problem. When people know everywhere that you go, they know a lot about you. They know where you work and where you live, but also what friends and lovers you might be visiting, what hours, what kinds of religious, political, sexually oriented establishments or meetings you might be going to, and many other things about you. So that is our primary concern around drones and we have called for regulation of police and government use of drones to ensure that they don't become used for mass surveillance. Unfortunately, we do have a long record of law enforcement giving in to temptations to collect everything all the time about everybody just in case somebody engages in wrongdoing. We believe that that is not consistent with our nation's traditions. The government does not look over your shoulder without particularized suspicion that you are doing something wrong. It doesn't watch you just because you might in theory do something wrong. So we have called for a set of rules that restrict law enforcement to launching a drone in particular circumstances where they have reason to believe that it will collect evidence of wrongdoing or in emergencies or for other uses that there's no reason to think would invade privacy such as environmental assays or what have you. And that law enforcement be explicit about its policies, its retention policies that it have good data retention policies and sharing policies and so forth and that local law enforcement be subject to local democratic power. All too often we see what I call policy making by procurement in which local law enforcement rather than seeking the permission let alone, I mean informing let alone getting the permission of local democratic overseers just goes out and starts buying new surveillance technology and deploying it before anybody even knows that it's on the ground. We've seen this with stingrays, we've seen this with license plate scanners and other technologies which are very sensitive and have a lot of implications for our privacy and the power balance between the individual and society. You can argue either way about how these technologies should be used but I think we should all be able to agree that we live in a democracy and those kinds of value judgments should be made democratically and not in secret by law enforcement's abrogating to themselves the power to decide where that balance should lie. When it comes to commercial side of drones we have not called for regulations at this time it's a much more complicated issue. Number one, drones are a cool technology, they're a generative technology, we're gonna see them use the platform for all kinds of the full flower of human ingenuity, good, bad and ugly and everything in between. And we don't wanna hold back, we're a pro-technology organization, we don't wanna hold back innovation. Number two, it's not clear what kind of privacy invasions we will see with private sector drones, it's certainly less clear than the incentives of law enforcement which are very clear. And we don't know the extent to which those privacy invasions that do occur will be covered by existing laws such as peeping Tom laws, trespassing, nuisance laws, et cetera. And finally, the commercial use of drones is complicated by the First Amendment. We at the ACLU are a photographer's rights organization among many other things. We have engaged in legal actions across the nation defending the rights of photographers, for example to photograph police. We see police come up to people all the time. So you need to turn that camera off but the courts have consistently found that you do have a First Amendment right to record and videotape and photograph things that are in public when you are in public and lawfully present and not interfering with legitimate police operations. So I think that our nightmare scenario would be that the government and police use drones for pervasive surveillance and individuals and the private sector and journalists are barred from using drones at all because of security concerns. And we think that the people have a right to photograph their government but the government shouldn't be tracking or monitoring or photographing individuals without individualized suspicion of wrongdoing. So that's the broad take on the ACLU's view. I guess I could go into detail in lots of different directions but maybe I'll leave it there and I'll leave it for open discussion. Thank you. Good morning. So just about everything I was going to say has pretty much already been said but I'll say some of it again with maybe a little bit of a different perspective. Talking about the technology, can everybody hear me? I'm not sure if I can. Okay. Mike didn't sound like it was on. This is an interesting problem both as a technology and as a policy issue. It's something that we definitely have to get out in front of. It's not exactly at the same speed as say the cyber issue but I think because it's such a sort of technically sexy problem, a lot of engineers like me love to get out and work on a problem like this and see what new things they can create. So as Jay was just saying this is going to become a platform for any technology you can possibly imagine. People are going to want to put this on something that flies. I mean people have been trying to fly since the dawn of time and so this allows everybody, even children, I mean these things are being marketed to children on Saturday morning cartoons and so people are going to want to put new things on this. So it's a problem we need to get out in front of. As a technologist it hurts me to say this but I don't think technology is going to be the solution for most of these problems. It may actually be the creation of more but I think we can work with the policy people hand in hand to come up with ways to, geofencing is sort of a term that's being thrown out there for a way to protect this but sort of taking that concept beyond the idea of just saying you can't fly here and saying technology can't be used to do certain things and reminding the public that there are laws in place. You can't look into your neighbor's window with a camera. You can't do certain things just because you physically can doesn't mean you can and so I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done kind of across the technology spectrum and the public policy spectrum to educate both the producers of the vehicles and the users. DHS has a very interesting and sort of narrow view of what we're doing in the UAV space. We're not trying to compete with the vendors we're actually looking at what are the vendors' claims and are they actually able to do the things they say so that we can inform both the law enforcement community and the DHS internal users about the claims vendors make. One of the things that is of great interest to us is what happens when you lose your ground link. Their sense and avoid technologies are important when you're out flying around but what happens when this does go out of the line is you go around the building and you lose your link. So what is this thing gonna do? Is it gonna crash? Is it gonna try to fly back and hit something? So there's a lot of technologies that are out there that we're really interested in understanding the implication of as law enforcement go out and use these things safely, responsibly as well as the public but how do we bring these sort of devices into the conop of the average sort of law enforcement and border surveillance, coast guard interdiction environments where you're interacting with the public but you have these safety concerns as well as privacy concerns that are now being presented by the use of UAVs. I think again I'd be repeating what a lot of people have said if I went any further so maybe we'll end there and open it up to questions. Thanks Adam. So maybe I'll just start with a few questions and then I'll open it up to the audience. Brian, I wanted to pick up on a quote that you started your remarks with which is that nothing, there's actually nothing unmanned about unmanned aerial systems. Well, when you think about some of the more innovative and impactful uses of UAVs such as search and rescue or package delivery for example, these applications require some level of autonomy and that is operation of the UAS flown without being sort of always or continuously controlled by a ground based human operator and it also requires beyond line of sight UAS flight. Both types of applications are outside of the sort of the FAA's current proposed rules. So what is the FAA and what is industry doing there to sort of pave the way for eventual integration of autonomous UAS flight as well as beyond line of sight flight? The, yeah, there is going to be at some point there will be autonomous operations. So we sort of have the pilot optional kind of stuff that's gonna go on out there as well. There's also a little bit of a debate going on and it's being played out a little bit in the rulemaking here about one operator being able to control multiple UAS at the same time. So ultimately having a system where you place an order and the computers know largely what to do with that order and ultimately a box rolls down an assembly line and gets picked up by a UAS and delivered to your front door with no human intervention we're a ways away from that. I think it's fair to say. That's what I call a more complex operation than what's currently in this contemplated in the notice of proposed rulemaking. So there's a lot of different ways that we can look at this at the end of the day. I think we're gonna start with things that are low risk profile operations and we're gonna collect data. What we've been looking at and arguing and this is one of the discussions that's underway in the Unmanned Aerial Systems Advisory Rulemaking Committee the UAS ARC and I'm just laying that out because that's one of the meetings that truly made my head hurt. You wanna get in a room where you hear more acronyms and you can possibly and I as a pilot I tried to keep up but ultimately they swamp me and it starts with UAS ARC as if everybody knows what that is. But it's a very important group inside of the basically is where industry and a lot of different other government agencies are coming together with the FAA to look at, slice and dice all the different pieces that need to be addressed in order to create true integration in the National Airspace System of UAS. And one of the things that we've been arguing is that there are ways of already doing extended, what we call extended visual line of sight that might be sort of on, let's take agriculture as an application on someone's property. It might be an aerial survey that's largely being done, it's being loaded into a computer and then the device has got the software essentially to do that survey without, and it's gonna go over someone's property because obviously some of our farms are pretty large but it's gonna go beyond someone's visual line of sight. That's an operation, for example, that we think can be conducted safely right now but is not contemplated in the rule. So we're arguing if we can get it into the rule, create an equivalent level of safety so that we're comfortable with that and that might be a situation where you've got circumstances where if the link is lost, the device is coming, it's gonna geo station, it's gonna stay where it is or it's gonna come back to its point of departure, it's gonna stay within a general boundary, the geo fencing concept and so forth and so on. I mean, these are all things that we're working on today and we think the sooner we can fly and get more people in the air, the more data we can collect and the more we can prove that safety. So that's really the approach that's underway right now. I don't think anybody in our community is saying let's snap our fingers and just have pizza delivered tomorrow all over Washington D.C. I think we understand that, A, this is very complicated airspace. In fact, well, this is not complicated airspace. This is prohibited airspace right here. So this is not complicated at all. You've gotta stay out of this airspace unless you're a meteor or a marine one. But in many instances, we've gotta have the ability to create those systems and it's gonna take a while and it's also gonna create data. So the argument that we're making is let's figure out low profile ways of doing this. Beyond visual line of sight has actually been demonstrated very effectively by Conoco Phillips and there may be people in the room that know more about this particular instance than I do, but they have been utilizing fairly large size, more than much higher weight categories than the 55 pound category to do pipeline inspections. And that was a higher endurance aircraft that was basically going up and down a pipeline out in Alaska. So that's a good example of a way we can test this technology. We can test what happens when we see two fails, when we lose a link and things like that, get more data, increase the comfort levels, et cetera, and then move to the next stage. Going to add on to that, that's sort of what I was trying to get at when I was saying need to get out in front of this because as the technology evolves, you wanna be ready to make rules and regulations based on what capabilities you know that they have. And so as vendors are able to demonstrate that it's going to be safe to use, that allows the regulators to make decisions that are informed. And again, a lot of why we've done quite a bit of evaluation of the technology is working with the FAA to help them understand, can these be used safely and responsibly within the confines of the rule and actually looking at individual systems that vendors brought out to a contained location. I wanted to touch on some of the privacy and security related issues here. So just about a month ago, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Epic, filed a lawsuit against the FAA, arguing that the agency should not have avoided proposing privacy protections in its proposed rule. And part of the reason why the FAA didn't include that may be that the presidential memorandum directed the NTIA to look into privacy, accountability, transparency issues. But this is a really interesting question. I would love to hear Rob from your perspective why the FAA rule doesn't address privacy, but it also doesn't address security. So it seems like every day we hear about new disclosures about vulnerabilities of UAVs and that could be potentially hacked or exploited. Why weren't security or privacy contemplated in the rules? Okay, that's a great question, it's not my area of expertise. But I think the FAA views its primary mission, of course, as safety, not privacy, not security. Clearly those issues are of paramount importance as we look at the continued integration of UAS into the NAS, even under the legislation and the wording in section 333, part of what the Secretary of Transportation has to consider as he evaluates these different applications and aircraft for operation under the latitude we have in section 333. National security is one of the factors that the Secretary needs to consider. I think with where we are with the small rule, we are talking about relatively small aircraft, limited applications, visual line of sight. And I think within that realm, perhaps privacy and security are really not the major focus within there. So I think with the presidential memorandum and putting NTIA as the lead government agency in charge of developing policy, the FAA is prepared along with all the other partner agencies to assist the NTIA in developing a reasonable approach. And whatever framework needs to be put in place to address privacy and security. So Jay, I'm interested in hearing your perspective on this. So the presidential memorandum sets some guidance for privacy, for retention of data, requirements for law enforcement agencies to notify the public about how they use drones, where they use them. In your perspective, is that sufficient? Are your concerns addressed by the presidential memorandum? Where would you wanna see some more work done? So yeah, it was good that the presidential memorandum was put out and it was good to have it. And it was a good start, but no, I don't think we would say that it was adequate. There was a, I think that the restrictions on the use of drones are very, very broad. It basically just says an authorized purpose. And we would like to see law enforcement only using drones when they have a warrant or otherwise very, very strong reason to believe that it would collect evidence of wrongdoing. We, you know, a lot of the memorandum was sort of basically exhorting the agencies to follow the law that already exists. You know, follow the constitution. I don't think a presidential memorandum should be necessary for agencies to follow the constitution or other existing law, but it's good to push agencies and to require them to set up procedures and so forth, which is what the memorandum did. You know, it has pretty loose retention policies. I mean, I guess it was good to have policies in all those areas, including transparency, but none of them are so tight that an agency that wanted to get around them couldn't pretty easily do so, I guess. So that's sort of our view of the thing. And certainly the multi-stakeholder process, we plan on participating in that and I look forward to that. What about the sort of legal environment at the state level? So we've seen several states establish privacy and safety-related laws with regard to domestic drone use. I'm curious to hear from sort of the industry perspective as well as yours, Jay, whether you think some of these state laws may be going too far and may have the potential to stifle innovation in this area before we can sort of realize and understand the types of applications that this technology would enable. And when you look at the state-level legislative proposals as well as those that have been enacted, are there ones that you think could potentially serve as a model? I don't think that there's any one state that's perfect that I would hold out as a model. Some of them are certainly better than others. It's been really an unprecedented outpouring of action in the last two sessions by the states. We set up a page to track all the legislation and it's just really incredible. Somebody who's been working on privacy for like 15 years to see this outpouring of action on this one privacy issue. And I'm not quite sure why it is. I think that perhaps a lot of privacy issues like big data or what have you are very abstract and drones, it doesn't take much imagination to understand why a flying robot with a camera hovering over your backyard is an invasion of privacy. And also I think that there's been a real left-right coalition on it. I think all the state bills have either been jointly sponsored by Democrats and Republicans or just sponsored by Republicans. And so there has been this outpouring and inevitably some of the state bills are better than others. Some of them are bad like Texas's which pretty much bans all private photography. And we opposed it. Some of them are just sort of sloppy. But some of them are better and impose warrant requirements for law enforcement use, which we think is a good thing. And it's possible that even some of the good ones that we like may prove to be a little bit too restrictive and that there needs to be some exceptions. For example, it's been pointed out to us that warrant requirement may prohibit police from taking photographs of accident scenes like traffic accident scenes, a use of drones that we would have no problem with whatsoever. But in a world where we're always seeing technology rushing out and being deployed with no democratic debate whatsoever, it's refreshing the thanks to the FAA and it's deliberate pace in, it's careful pace. Whatever word you wanna use, we have no dog in the fight over the safety questions. But it has created, for one way or another, the FAA has created a space for there to be a democratic debate over this technology. And it's not so bad if for once the privacy concern, the privacy restrictions are maybe a little too tight and need to be walked back a little bit rather than trying to deal with facts on the ground where you already have a technology widely deployed and trying to play catch up and put in place some privacy concerns after the fact, as we are with, for example, automatic license plate readers, which are being spread all over the country and collecting information about people's whereabouts. So yeah, I'll leave it there for now. Well, I agree with Jay, it's pretty variable out there. We're tracking all those state things as well. A lot of our chapters are directly engaged in a lot of battles at the state level and it's interesting. I mean, we're in favor of privacy. AUVSI has worked with the ACLU in the past and would be delighted to work in the future. But fundamentally, even though it's easy to get that perception or image in your mind of a drone sitting over your backyard, I think the likelihood of that is questionable and really what we're right now, I think that what concerns me is that the variability of what's going on at the state level is more a function of a lack of education. So the key will be to find that balance and we're looking to find that balance with multiple stakeholders. We're all in favor of privacy. I think it is fascinating to me that some of the larger data issues, at the end of the day, it really is about, it's about the collection of data, the retention of data, how that data is being protected, how it's being stored, et cetera. This is one more platform for collecting data, but how many people know that when you walk through Miami Airport, there are devices everywhere in Miami Airport that are assigning something to your cell phone and keeping track of where you go. It's not specifically to you. Is that a privacy invasion or not? I'm not a privacy expert, but it makes me uncomfortable. So I'm very sympathetic to this concern, but it extends well beyond and I think it's very interesting that part of our challenge is to make certain that this technology, that whatever solutions we come up with, that we come up with, they need to be appropriate and not technology specific, unless there's some very specific reason why this technology needs to be treated differently than anything else that flies, for example. Maybe we can take some questions from the audience in the front here. Do we have a microphone? Sorry. She's coming. Hold on just one sec. Thank you and please introduce yourself. Thank you so much to all panelists. I'm Akbar Hwaja, former World Bank official. You have mentioned security, surveillance and safety. My question's to FAA, Robert. If you could comment on a little bit global regulatory impact, I know you're still in proposal mode within states, but are you working with any international regulatory authorities also and also, I know the Chinese are already manufacturing and they're supplying all over. Is there any protocol that restricts manufacturing concerns also? Thank you. The UAS integration office at the FAA is working globally. We're working through IKO. We are working through an organization called JARIS in Europe, so we're very much working towards harmonization of standards, evolving regulations, approaches, framework, so the answer there is yes. Relative to working with manufacturers, regardless of where they are, obviously they're, within the NPRM, there are no particular worthiness standards. So we haven't crossed that threshold from a regulatory standpoint yet, but one can contemplate moving into the future of more complex operations that allow a greater variety of applications to take place, vehicles with different characteristics, and including endurance. We'll start to evolve and we will have to develop appropriate standards and regulations to permit those operations. So at that time, I would contemplate that we'd be moving closer towards starting to certify when certain thresholds are reached within an aircraft, and of course, regardless where that aircraft is manufactured and designed, there'll have to be some compliance with those standards and regs. Any timeline, no, I don't have a timeline for you. I'm Charlie Leocombe with Travelers United. We're an advocacy group for consumers, and Brian's gonna get tired of my questions. Every panel, he's sitting there and I'm standing here, but one of the things which kind of disturbs me about this is that we're focusing on the NPRM, and there's another big, big thing going on right now, and it's called the FAA Reauthorization Bill, and that is a bill which will set the visionary table for UASs in the future, and the FAA is doing a job right now with the NPRM which they've come out with, but as we look at this thing into the future, we have to look out 10, 20, 30 years. We've got to look at, the FAA's gonna probably not be the main player in this. The airspace will probably be bifurcated. There'll be, what's now, class G airspace will be controlled in a different way. These are kinds of things that NASA's looking at and so on, and I just think, I'd kind of like to get this panel to think about more of a visionary look of where we see things going. Right now, I'm on the hill and I'm talking to people in the Commerce Committee and the House Transportation Committee. Let's look to the future. When I walk in, they look at me like I've got two heads, but these young kids get it. All of a sudden, there's an aha moment and then they stop and already I've heard from other government affairs people who come in and they go, wow, they were asking me about what's gonna happen in 10, 20, 30 years. And it's something which I think we need to focus on and everyone in this room is obviously involved in this discussion. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. So as we look forward, I just hope that some of the answers take a look beyond the NPRM, which I really think is part of our problem right now. We're kind of looking at today and we're looking at last couple of months and maybe a couple of months into the future where we've got to start laying the table for the big future and that's what I was kind of hoping to hear when I came here. I think that's a great comment. Obviously, we're also in very deeply engaged in this conversation over FAA reauthorization. It's a very tactical discussion and I met with Paul Rinaldi last week and he said, how are you guys gonna pay to use the airspace? Which was a really legitimate question that I didn't have an answer to yet. But we've kind of got a number of things going on here and the one constant that's involved is rapid advancement of technology. So there's a lot of discussion about regulations because the regulations have not, arguably not been keeping up with this advancement of technology and I think part of what delayed the NPRM coming out was a realization that inside of the FAA, as I understand it, that the old way of thinking about this just wasn't gonna work and they went back to what we're calling a technology neutral risk-based approach and that's the result that we're dealing with and we're basically looking at that and saying good start. Now let's think about how do we enable some of these more complex operations? How do we develop that equivalent level of safety because in the aviation system we have an extremely high level of safety. Rob could tell us exactly what that number is. It's numbers at 9.99999. It's a very impressive safety record and we wanna actually add to that safety record. One of the things that we've been discussing in the reauthorization process is precisely the way you mentioned NASA. There's a fascinating conversation that's been underway at NASA how to develop an air traffic control system for UAS. Let's talk about the airspace that's rarely used below 400 feet. Most aircraft that are at 400 feet or below are landing or taking off. There are exceptions to that obviously but for the most part this is not, it's not well utilized airspace and the question is how can we utilize it better safely and there are a lot of really smart people at NASA talking about that but the big question is how does that relate to the people that have learned a great deal at DOD of how to make it safe to integrate, how to safely integrate manned and unmanned systems which they've been doing in theater for over 10 years successfully. There have been some expensive noises in the process but they've learned how to do that. How do we integrate those technologies and some of the ongoing research that's being done in that particular arena? I look at it from the standpoint of the industry is bringing those technology solutions to the government. We want to not only utilize the airspace it's incumbent upon industry to actually figure out how to do this and to do it economically and there I think vision is not going to be a problem. You have organizations like Amazon of course Jeff Bezos has a particular vision of this. You have people like Dave Voss at Google that are extremely, extremely well versed in this technology and how to literally transform the airspace into the future and I can't resist the urge to just remind us all about the joke that we have to continue to endure every time Boeing brings out a new aircraft which is who gets to fly the aircraft and the answer is the United Test Pilot and a German Shepherd. The test pilot's job is to feed the dog and the dog's job is to bite the pilot if he tries to touch the aircraft. We've been hearing this joke for a while now. I think it started with the 737 late versions and it's been ongoing. The truth of the matter is that we can do a lot and it's not just the things that fly in the air if you look at large sea going vessels in many instances someone's on the bridge but they're not necessarily at the wheel like they were in the old British Navy. So there's a lot of technology that's coming into play. The advancement of that technology is going to be the biggest challenge and if it's tough for the regulators it's probably even harder for the people trying to figure out what to do with the money going forward but we're engaged in that conversation. Hi, Vadim Allen, Voice of American News. I'd like to check. I'm not sure who should ask this question but we all know this military type drone like Predator doing the airstrikes and we know this small recreational helicopter type with four propellers horizontal. Is there anything in between? And if there is, how is it used? And if there isn't, is it coming soon? Thank you. Yeah, there's lots of stuff in between. It's fascinating. I was at an organization's crib last two weeks ago in San Francisco that provides autopilots and middleware for enterprise systems. They had devices from all over the world. Some of them were fixed wing, some of them were rotor and the most fascinating one they had actually built on a 3D printer in about two days themselves. So there are going to be as many devices here as you can imagine a mission for going forward and that's one of the reasons why we think it's extremely important to take kind of a performance-based approach here. What do we need to be doing in the profile of operation? What level of safety do we need to achieve in order for us to go ahead and operate? If it's connected to the device itself, that's going to be a challenge. If it's, you know, now if it's something that's flying 18,000 feet and above Class A airspace, you know, that's probably a little bit different. That's a larger aircraft and that's probably going to be, you know, an airworthiness certificate, et cetera, et cetera. But there's all kinds of things that are out there that you can launch from boats and so forth and so on. That's really, it's a very robust thing and we've got a database capturing all of these systems and it's very, very difficult to keep up the date. I just wanted to follow up a little bit to Brian's comments. So one of the exciting things for me working on Section 333 is I'm getting to see new things every day. It's remarkable, you know, what is being proposed to the FAA. So literally every day it's aircraft with different power sources, aircraft operating in new and novel ways. And I think, you know, the technology is a rapid pace of technology growth, technology introduction, and this very rapid decline in the cost of technology, so it's very accessible, is both an opportunity for us economically, but it's a real challenge for a regulatory agency and this is not unique to aviation, it's across the board, any kind of technology area. So, you know, I just think the government regulatory agencies in general are really struggling with, you know, how do we adapt to this new era where technology is advancing so quickly and providing a reasonable basis to get this technology out where it needs to be. Thanks, Dana Gowered with the R&T Foundation. The FCC and FBI have said that GPS disruption is getting to be more and more of a problem. Could you all comment, especially Adam and Brian, on what DOT is looking at in terms of a complementary system to add to the navigation signals available? Well, I'm actually not familiar with what DOT is doing, but that is a huge area of concern. I mean, GPS has, we've become very reliant on GPS even just as drivers around the city and so as you look at things like the sense and avoid issue for small vehicles and the other issue of the ground link loss, the GPS signal becomes very important. I think this is an area where there are some areas where the government shouldn't get in the mix because you're competing with the industry. I think this is one of those areas where the government is probably going to have to take a leading role in, because it's the sort of the tragedy of the commons, the good of the people. One of the issues that I don't think we understand yet now and is a question we need to start asking ourselves is sort of to what end do we need to do some of these things. So sense and avoid is a very broad and general topic. What are we looking for that sense and avoid to do? Is it strictly for collisions with other vehicles while in the air? Is it to avoid airspace? Is it to avoid violating a privacy act? So I think there are some questions we need to answer before we can start to pursue the technology as to what are we actually trying to accomplish so that we can start to understand the technology needed to accomplish it. I really didn't have a great... I don't have a specific answer on GPS. What I can tell you is that there... I think GPS is always going to be one of the foundational technologies. No question about that, and that system is important for a whole variety of reasons. So I think it goes well beyond UAS. What I can say is there are some really interesting ideas that are coming into the mix about how to utilize some of the infrastructure that's out there already and to navigate around that, and some of it could be ground-based navigation as well. So I don't know if that's going to be driven by an overload of the system or a degradation of the system or some of the other challenges or what we will need redundancy in the technologies, and I think there are some very interesting things that are being looked at and be happy to talk to you about that. Hi, Jesse Stepler with Measure. As a commercial operator, one of the things that we've seen is a big challenge and going back to the previous question about a predator versus a quadcopter is that there are a lot of, I think, misconceptions in this space. You know, it's an all-or-nothing thing. Either you're firing a hellfire or you're delivering packages for Amazon. Either you're flying visual line of sight or you're operating in Class A airspace. So with that in mind, I guess my question for both Brian and Robert is to what extent is the FAA working on interim steps, not the big picture stuff we were discussing 20 or 30 years down the line, but say Class G airspace that's out in the middle of nowhere, just a farmer per se, but something that doesn't even have a regional airport nearby. Are we starting to consider beyond visual line of sight operations in areas where there is no manned aircraft traffic currently? Yeah, so right now in the 333, we are considering a number of technologies that would, as currently proposed in the NPRM, that would go beyond what would be possible under that rule. Night operations, for example, we have at least one petition that's proposing night operations. So I think from the viewpoint of trying to expand the envelope into other areas, section 333 is limited to visual line of sight, but we have an exemption process that's always been there. That's always been available to review particular cases, limited cases, of course, but to review a petition by anyone to go a little bit further and to look at some potential relief to regulations. So that's what we're doing in our program. As we get requests, petitions for exemption, clearly it's all about safety. It's providing equivalent level of safety or no adverse impact to safety, but I think as we continue to look at petitions for exemption, we'll continue to look at new and novel applications, especially on a limited basis. You know, I think that there is an opportunity for both, well, really for working with the industry and learning some things from some of these limited operations. So but of course we have a very complex airspace system, you know, getting back to the previous questions. There are a lot of users in that system. There's a very high degree of safety in that system, so safety comes first, but as we can start to explore other approaches, I think there are tools available that we've been applying already that we will continue to apply. Yeah, and the principle that we're using is risk-based technology neutral. So it, you know, that's sort of a catch-all phrase that we're now using for there's going to be a lot of different platforms. Let's not be specific about it. You know, we've gone forward, we're moving forward with this initial rule, which is anything under 55 pounds and then sort of using the tools that we generally have, line of sight type of daytime operations away from people, etc. We're trying to unlock a lot of the things that we know people want to do with the technology now, but that's not the same as, you know, a FedEx truck using something to do the last mile, which might be 20 miles down a driveway in North Dakota to deliver a package. And literally, this is a concept that's being discussed openly in class G airspace versus Amazon delivering something in downtown Washington. Those are two very, very different things. And you could have the same device involved, same mission, but it's a very, very different kind of profile of operation. So I took a great deal of comfort from the administrator's words when he announced the rule on February 15th. He said, we're trying to create the most flexible airspace, UAS airspace system in the world. And Robert used the words equivalent to that, and I checked it with the administrator two weeks ago, less than two weeks ago, when I saw him face to face. And that's the objective. So flexibility, we think flexibility in that system is important. Some of the principles will always apply, you know, no harm equivalent level of safety, et cetera, et cetera. We've got to be able to, and the reason why we call it UAS, because that's what the FAA calls it. So, you know, that's, we have to deal with the regulator, right? And that's a, it's, it's, we would argue that regulations are a good thing here. We don't want things falling out of the sky, and we have 100% track record. We've never left one up there yet. Good morning. Lori Watkins from the Truman Project. I have a question. As a person who works within this industry and supports education and PR campaign, and in an effort to piggyback up the gentleman's topic of looking towards the future, I have a question. I thought up until two weeks ago that it would be questionable, as Brian said, that a gyrocopter would fly and land within restricted airspace on the line, on the lawn of the capital. But that did happen. Along with an unmanned platform a few months earlier on the lawn of the White House. In ensuring that the U.S. airspace remains the safest in the world, how can the public rest assured that the airspace is safe when there have been two incidents that took place in an area that is supposed to be one of the most safest and restricted in the world, the national capital region, and which one was manned and which one was unmanned, just because everyone keeps talking about all this technology that we have that's supposed to prevent these things. So if that could happen here, just from a PR perspective, how can the public rest assured that if that's happening in some place it's super safe, how can it not happen to where they live? Thank you. This is not a core ACLU thing, but I'll make an observation which is, I think the security risks of drones are very real. But historically in the United States we've tolerated a large amount of risk when there's huge economic benefits to be made. I mean the safety record of trains, when the train industry, train technology was new, was terrible. There were accidents, there were horrible accidents regularly and we tolerated it because of the economic benefits. We tolerate a huge amount, 30,000 a year car deaths in our country. So there are some things we'll tolerate. There are other things we have zero tolerance for. We pretty much have zero tolerance for commercial airline accidents, and we have zero tolerance for terrorism. And so I think, and we also have giant security agencies that are very, very powerful in this government and in this society, and I think that we're going to see a huge clash between, and this is sort of, I'm sort of a little bit outside this because this is not a core ACLU issue, but I mean we're going to see a huge clash between industry and the economic potential benefits of this and the security interests here. And it'll be interesting to see what happens. And I think that, you know, this is an industry that's in a fetal stage of development. And so small things that happen at this stage can have lifetime effects for many, many decades. And so I think a lot of how this industry will go, I would predict will depend on what exact types of incidents we see. If we see somebody put a gun on a drone and remotely start shooting people as a terrorist attack, then you know that may steer and it will matter if that person is a white person or an Arab or Muslim in how what framing is used to define that as a terrorist attack or yet another sort of shooting. And so, you know, I think that incidents and accidents in the next couple years could be very, very critical in shaping the direction of which this technology might go. Yeah. I think also, you know, as I said before, excuse me, we are experiencing a proliferation of this technology. It's very available. It's very cheap and really anybody is out there buying it and using it. I think the vast, vast majority of persons that are buying and using this technology are doing with the very best of intentions. They want to experience something that's enjoyable and rewarding and are not creating a particular security hazard. Like with any technology there are bad actors. There will always be the potential to put a good technology towards an ill purpose. I think one of the things that the FAA is doing along with, you know, partners in the industries like AUVSI and Small UAS Coalition and others is education and outreach. Really trying to reach the greatest number of people. We've got a number of campaigns going on to reach out and educate them on the do's and don'ts. What's safe, what's not safe. So that's a big part. I think another thing is providing timely service and I'll talk, you know, in terms of timely authorization. So one of the things we're trying to do with 333 is we are stepping up our efforts to really provide a timely response back to petitioners and what we feel is that by enabling the good actors by, you know, the ones who are coming to the FAA and seeking legal authorization to operate, the more that we can do with that, the more we help squeeze out perhaps some of the folks that are operating illegally. But trying to put that genie in the bottle and put the stopper in it is a Herculean task. I'm not really sure how we can do that completely. And just to sort of add in on that, there are a lot of efforts across government right now looking at the security and safety aspects. Can't really go into the specifics of it, but we are seeing a lot more work being done over the last year or so. Looking at how do we keep these things again, the safe and responsible use quote, how do we bring technology to bear on that problem? It's a hard one but we're looking at it. I think we have time for maybe two more questions. Good morning. Before coming here to DC, I was an UIS awarding certification manager at Italian awarding authorities and as you probably know we have been used drones like many nations since many, many years, since 2000 and we had the need to consolidate to prepare a very good regulatory framework to fly safely in country and also in theater our drones and not only to prepare a good regulatory framework but also to harmonize within NATO, NATO for example, NATO countries. And in this field we prepare a very, very good standard in our in the government group that we are in NATO, standard that are available on the table since many, many years. One of these I was the leader of this panel for unmanned aircraft with maximum weight under 150 kilos. So, when we offer these in Europe to our international community in Europe we had the very poor feedback because we offer them say this is something that is on the table, please use it because it makes a lot of experience comes from a lot of experience. So my question to you is what is your feeling about military-civil cooperation in the field of awarding certification in the US? Thank you. Yeah, I'll take a stab at that. I don't know the details of what's going on relative to within IKO in Europe and other places relative to the development of standards and regulations. I'm sure that those groups are reviewing everything that's available from various countries from NATO, from other organizations and we'll use that to the greatest extent possible. I would suspect that some of the challenges with regards to civil airspace both here in the US and in Europe and elsewhere throughout the world that there are different challenges relative to that where perhaps some of these other types of standards that you're mentioning cannot adequately fit in with or address. It's not an area of expertise but that's what I would suspect. I'm just aware of the fact that there are conversations increasingly going on that have started on the military side of this community that are now finding those best practices. A good example is the whole discussion and avoid. If you can't see something you've got to detect it and then the question becomes how much do I need to miss by? So well clear standards, for example that's a discussion that started on the military side that's been implemented on the military side in theater now it's being brought back and it's being looked at in the context of a UIS traffic management system that's essentially NASA's in the lead on that right now beginning to get into that conversation a little bit. So I think there was a real gulf between the commercial side and the military side and a lot of folks on the commercial side didn't want anything to do with the military side I think that's starting to break down. Now we didn't want to use the word drone. That drone that was a bad word that was connected to the military etc. I think we're getting over those things now and recognizing that many technologies start on the military side work their way into ubiquity via commercial applications etc. and I think that's probably what's going to happen here. And if I needed any more evidence of that I took an out brief from a very smart group of people not just military people there were some civilians but the military people from all the branches who for a year had looked at how to begin standardizing their use of UIS because each of the branches in many instances have taken different approaches to this and ultimately they decided that the smartest thing that they could do was be fast followers of the commercial sector. That was their conclusion and the other interesting conclusion that I'm happy to share was that obviously in a very very fiscally constrained environment going forward in the military they're looking for where the pots of money are that they can actually utilize to deploy this in more applications and what they came up with was logistics. So you begin to see how those two worlds come together and ultimately standards are going to be adopted that I think benefit from experts whether they currently work for the DoD or one of the branches or they've left the military and they're working for Lockheed Martin or Google they're the same people. I'd like to also I'd like to get your contact info because I know my response was hardly adequate because we do have several people in the office that this is what they do and I'd like to you know get feedback back to you. Test one. My name is Renee Marsh I'm with CNN and this question is for Rob, Brian and Adam as well if you weigh in. Going back to the issue of security as it relates to drones Rob you mentioned educating the good actors so that they know what is allowed and what isn't allowed but just from a security standpoint I just wonder does the FAA have a proposal or plan or solution in place to deal with perhaps bad actors who may want to fly a drone into restricted airspace and if not which agency is in charge or leading the charge this national security concern of bad actors who may be flying where they're not supposed to I know you mentioned there are several agencies working on this but who exactly is leading the charge? So relative to the area of surveillance and over operations in the NASA we have procedures in place we provide surveillance of the NASA today of operators in the NASA and many many different ways we use the risk-based approach to surveillance so our focal areas change first and foremost we are pursuing education and when we find cases where there has been some type of violation of a reg somebody has operated improperly the first step is not to jump towards enforcement and enforcement action but first step is to send a letter to reach out to get the dialogue going however if there is a continued violation we will use the enforcement mechanisms that we have today to take action I think we've taken action in about I think the numbers about seven cases for various reasons against operators so that's the approach that we will continue to take On the technology side no one has sort of taken the lead partly because we all have varying needs kind of back to the comment of what are we trying to solve so if you're DoD you have concern about your bases if you're the Secret Service or the Capitol Police you have concern about the facilities in the grounds that you protect so the technology being developed across the board we're looking at where there are similar needs and similar concerns and how do we address the particular security and safety issues associated with each of those areas so the works being done jointly in some cases coordinated in most of the rest so again it's something I can't really talk too much about the issue really does depend on the agency who has responsibility for that airspace or those grounds as to what they're trying to do so it's a joint interagency program I think the most important thing that we're contributing to this conversation is that the industry is working toward regulations with the FAA we want to be a regulated industry the people that I represent are going to be certificated people that are operating under regulations that are insured and as an aviator myself we use this concept of a culture of compliance there's nothing more horrific to me than seeing somebody flying down the mall in a gyrocopter it's a really abhorrent thing to see that someone who's learned these skills and knows what they're doing is intentionally violating now that was obviously an act of protest misuse is misuse whether it's somebody who's had a little bit too much to drink at three o'clock in the morning trying to impress their girlfriend and ends up on the president's lawn or real mal intent I can tell you that we collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security and generally speaking two people show up in my office one is the person that's responsible for how to utilize the technology going forward and the other is the person who is trying to deal with the security challenge that we're all concerned about and all we can do is cultivate an environment and a community that is compliance oriented and have regulations that actually define safe and responsible use and we're doing that I think we could stay here for another hour and a half to talk more about these issues I know there are a lot of questions in the room but our speakers have been more than generous with their time this has been a truly enlightening and interesting discussion and I look forward to continuing to work with you guys through CSIS here and if you can stay a little bit longer to chat with folks in the room we would welcome you to do that thank you