The FAA’s NPRM directly fosters the development of a nationwide aerial surveillance system, using the fleet of commercial and recreational drones to record data all over the country and log that data in real time.

This includes close in, low altitude detailed photos of your yard, your children, your pets, businesses and their inventories and finished products, their potential expansion, and data for law enforcement.

It is right there in the NPRM itself:

“However, the proposal does not prohibit designers, producers, or operators from including a capability for limited remote identification UAS to broadcast information or data unrelated to remote identification, such as a camera feed or telemetry data.” Page 97, Section X, A, 2, Paragraph 2

KittyHawk noted in a blog post that some Remote ID USS business models may be offered for “free”.

When a service is offered or “free” it means we or our privacy are being sold for a profit.

Imagine the market value of obtaining very low altitude high resolution images of your back yard, your children, the clothing you wear, the quality of backyard furniture you have, the types of automobiles you drive, how well you care for your yard, the types of toys your children are playing with – and so much more. This information can be used to discern your household income and wealth. With modern image AI techniques, much of this image analysis can be done automatically.

Commercial drone fleets can and will be mapping your Wi-Fi networks and identifying what Bluetooth services are located inside your homes. Your own recreational drone, flying in your backyard, might be simultaneously taking photos to share with your Remote ID USS – and you might not even be aware of it.

All of this information will be collected, analyzed, interpreted, and sold to third parties.

Law enforcement may use these close range aerial images to look for suspicious activities.

Local government will use these images to check for non-compliant property uses, code violations, and home modifications without a permit. I lived in a city where putting in a portable 3 x 5 foot garden shed is treated as permit-required event, and a taxable addition to one’s property. They hired a company to conduct aerial photography to find potential violators. Now, with the data paid for by drone operators, this information will be available at much lower cost.

In that same city, if your lawn grass exceeded six inches in height, you could be subject to a code enforcement officer. For now, they only enforce that rule if a neighbor calls in a complaint. With low cost data from drones, this can be determined automatically – does not even need artificial intelligence!

Businesses will purchase low altitude photos from drone companies to keep tabs on their competitors. Analysts can discern arrivals of inventory and departures of finished products, just by counting trucks. In some cases, inventory and finished products may be stored outside and will now be accessible to competitors.

I hypothesized in a post yesterday that something was missing in this NPRM process. This week, the FAA rejected requests from the EAA and AMA to extend the comment period, and did so using unduly harsh language, stating that they needed to enact the final rule as fast as possible.

The FAA is hell bent on enacting this NPRM – an NPRM that does not even solve the problems they say they are trying to solve due to numerous and necessary loopholes (indoor flight capable drones and COPPA).

Is this national aerial surveillance network the actual goal?

This is Orwell’s 1984 on steroids. This is the story the media needs to grab on to in regards to this FAA NPRM and future automated drone fleets. This is the story Congress needs to hear about.

The purpose of this FAA NPRM is the establishment of automated drone delivery AND nationwide aerial surveillance. The rest of the goals and claims seem like just noise.

Update: Imagine Remote ID USS collecting close in high resolution of your kids in your yard, or walking to school. All of this is violating COPPA and it will be very hard for parents to identify the offending drone operator, and then obtain the Remote ID USS, and then figure out how to contact them to remove those images from their database.