Flying a drone within 1/2 mile of ICE vehicles, which may be unmarked, is illegal? You can be flying a drone and if an unmarked ICE vehicle drives close enough, without warning, you have now broken serious FAA laws? This isn’t the kind of restriction that gets passed when the people making the rules care about being fair or consistent. It’s a power grab.

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idle_zealot 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is par for the course for rules regarding law enforcement. A group of armed men bust down your door in the middle of the night without identifying themselves. They're aiming guns at you and your family. Are you allowed to fire on them with your legally owned firearm? The law says yes, but also that police are allowed to be those people knocking down the door and shoot you if you aim a gun at them. So if that happens, who is in the wrong? Courts have been dodging the question, but in practice the answer is that you're going to be killed and the police won't be liable. You can do everything right and law enforcement is allowed to arrest you, steal your shit, destroy your property, or kill you, and officially you're the criminal for perfectly normal and normally legal behavior.

	▲	gruez 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>Courts have been dodging the question It's not hard to find contradictions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Ridge_standoff#Trials_of_... If by "courts" you mean appellate (precedent setting) courts, cases like these usually never get to that stage because cases like these are straightforward enough that juries can rule on them without lawyers getting into esoteric arguments.

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helterskelter 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I expect a court would rule against the government if they tried to enforce this against somebody unknowingly flying within a 1/2 mile of an unmarked ICE vehicle. I'd feel sorry for the poor soul that would have to fight it though.

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themafia 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The NOTAM reads:

"ALL UNMANNED ACFT ARE PROHIBITED FROM FLYING WITHIN A STAND-OFF DISTANCE OF 3000FT LATERALLY AND 1000FT ABOVE."

That is somewhat narrowly defined. I'm sure you can still effectively film them from 1100ft.

further:

"FACILITIES AND MOBILE ASSETS, INCLUDING VESSELS AND GROUND VEHICLE CONVOYS AND THEIR ASSOCIATED ESCORTS"

I think you'd easily beat this language in court. "Please show us where 'mobile asset' is legally and narrowly defined."

	▲	light_hue_1 33 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You cannot fly drones over 400ft above the ground (with some very narrow exceptions). So this isn't narrow, it's extremely broad. You can't read such rules in a vacuum without knowing their context.

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jimbob45 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Pfffff the rules for flying drones as set by the FAA are already draconian as is and that’s before you begin to run afoul of city/state rules. They’re usually banned in residential areas to begin with (without permits) so you’re screwed even before this rule. Hope you kept VLOS the whole time too or none of the other rules matter.