drone laws

Winter is a great time to visit national parks. Many national parks in the US have recreation centers that support winter activities such as skiing, sledding, and snowshoeing or offer guided tours and classes. But if you’re thinking of taking that drone with you to admire the beauty of nature from a different vantage point, think again. Flying a drone may be prohibited at the park you are visiting.

A provincial court in Canada has ordered a man to pay nearly $7,400 (CAD 10,000) in penalties for piloting a drone near a wildfire in Alberta’s Jasper National Park. This is reportedly the “largest fine ever” issued for flying a drone illegally in a national park in Canada.

So much for the abide-no-rules rock and roll attitude. Whoever said UAVs produced some of the world’s loudest whining hadn’t heard Guns ‘N Roses singer Axl Rose complain about drone flights at the group’s recent concerts for having distracted him, rather than for posing potential (and illegal) danger to his fans.

The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has joined a chorus of voices urging Congress to take steps to maintain or expand the counter-drone capacities of US security authorities, backing up his urging with revelations of the agency’s ongoing investigations into UAVs being equipped to transport homemade bombs.

A court has fined a Chinese student $3,500 for taking drone photos and videos of his girlfriend at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore.

AUVSI, the world’s largest nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of uncrewed systems, autonomy, and robotics, says it’s willing to take the fight to state legislative sessions to stop all proposals that infringe on the FAA’s authority of the airspace, promote the creation of drone toll lanes, and seek to impose undue taxes on drone operations.

Moves are afoot in Congress to pass legislation replacing existing laws expiring October 5 authorizing the identification and mitigation of drones posing security threats. Yet a new House of Representatives bill aiming to do that reportedly falls well short of the robust proposals circulated by the White House earlier this year.

It’s the sort of legal conflict likely to proliferate as the number of UAVs flown by private users continues to multiply. A couple in Massachusetts is threatening “criminal harassment” charges against neighbors who used drones to capture video evidence of continuing motocross races on their property that officials previously ordered to cease.

The US House of Representatives passed a bipartisan bill today that aims to earmark up to $200 million in spending for drones use in wide-ranging inspections of the nation’s aging infrastructure. 

Ahead of Thursday night’s kickoff of the National Football League’s (NFL) 2022 season, officials stepped up to reiterate concerns about the looming expiration of legislation that allows a limited number of federal agencies to take out drones invading airspaces or otherwise posing threats during large events.

A US district judge has ruled that Brooklyn-based media production company Xizmo can proceed with its lawsuit challenging New York City’s local “Avigation Law,” which effectively bans the use of drones in the city. Interestingly, this avigation rule was originally adopted into New York City’s Administrative Code in 1948, way before small civilian drones even existed.

Ireland is expected to hear debate later this year on proposed legislation that would allow the nation’s police force, An Garda Síochána, expanded use of drones for surveillance and other missions that critics claim pose data use and personal privacy risks.

A $13,000 DJI M300 RTK drone was fired upon multiples time by a vacationer last week while the aircraft was inspecting critical infrastructure in the Netherlands. UAS service provider Zero Gravity Drone, which was conducting the inspection, says it has filed a complaint with the local police.

A bipartisan bill has been introduced in the Senate that seeks to create the mechanisms and allot $100 million in funding for the deployment of drones in infrastructure inspections overseen by local, state, and US government entities.

US lawmakers, government officials, and even major sports organizations are stepping up to back a Biden administration call to create legislation that would considerably expand the number of actors permitted to undertake anti-drone measures to neutralize potential threats from UAVs.

The state legislature of Hawai‘i is moving closer to passing a law that would prohibit the use of drones for fishing, which supporters call both unfair and a threat to traditional methods of manually casting from the shore relying on physical strength and technique.

A Singaporean man has been slapped with a $37,000 fine (SGD $51,000) for flying a DJI Mavic 2 Zoom drone unlawfully in September 2020. If he’s unable to pay the fine, the drone pilot will face a jail time of 100 days.

A federal court has ruled a Texas law considerably limiting the use of drones to be unconstitutional, particularly articles restricting images collected by journalists using UAVs in their reporting.

A trio of US Senators has launched a bipartisan effort to create comprehensive federal law that will specifically criminalize most forms of dangerous drone use, from terror and trafficking activity to interfering with public responders to emergencies.

An Iranian court on Tuesday sentenced a French man to eight years in prison on charges of spying. Benjamin Brière, 36, was arrested in May 2020 for flying a recreational drone in the desert near the Turkmenistan-Iran border while on vacation in Iran.

French police will again be permitted to use drones for surveillance and certain other law enforcement purposes, the nation’s constitutional authority has ruled, ending the nearly two-year legal ban of that activity on grounds it posed privacy violation risks.