If you don't play by the rules, we won't either
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
281 points (99.0% liked)
News
34332 readers
3343 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I guess we do what they would do. Ignore it.
What's stopping home drone operators treating that law with the same contempt ICE treats laws?
The fact that they can track your controller and hunt you down.
No they can’t. At least not easily at all. It takes a lot of specialized tools and time to sort out a drone signal from all the other background noise. They use some radio, but also cellular, wifi or bluetooth. The hundreds of signals in the immediate area of any sensors and having to sift through all of them is crazy, much less from 2-3 positions to get an accurate location of the transmitter. I live in a suburban area, and sitting in my living room I have 15 wifi signals and 7 BT. Now imagine a more urban setting in crowds all with phones running cellular, wifi, bluetooth, car systems, radio keyfobs, home and business wifi, etc.
It’s far easier to GPS jam the drone and have it drop down in lost mode, then see if you can trace ownership via serial number. Either way, seizing the drone stops the filming and the owner is out the cost of the hardware.
E: I was partly wrong. They can find out who owns a drone if they registered it with the FAA - however there are only a million registered drones and reportedly millions that are not. So don’t use a registered drone.
Newer drones are literally required by law to broadcast their remote ID, which also contains location identification. Yes, they can track you very easily.
https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/remote_id
Sure, there are cheap drones that don't abide by these requirements, and a DIY system can get around it, but the point stands that basically any "name brand" non-toy drone sold in the US is going to tell the anyone interested your location the moment you turn the transmitter on.
TIL they mandate registration now. Thanks.
That said, they cannot physically locate you via the signal, which is the point I assumed you meant when you said “track”.
Himes said that "millions" of unregistered drones were operating across the US, in addition to 800,000 registered drones that weigh more than half a pound.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2q1e238lo
So if you register, they can ID you via the broadcast registration. Seems like a lot of people aren’t too keen on registration. If you don’t register, again…they’ll need to do some legal digging and see if they can use that ID to identify the buyer, if the seller keeps that info associated.
How are people supposed to know they're within range of all the vehicles are unmarked and the officers don't wear distinct uniforms? I doubt they'd have an up to date map, this must just be an excuse to shoot down any drone (operator?) they can see.
They will know when they are prosecuted for it.
Ok, so I would argue that this is likely completely unlawful. Certainly untenable. The legal justification for the restricting flight privileges over certain government buildings is due to the security needs of a location that similarly has restricted access to your person. In other words, you need special access to go in there, and similarly you need special access to look into there, thus the justification for the no fly zone.
But a government vehicle in motion in public has no more restrictions to observation than any other vehicle in public. There is no restriction to your presence around these vehicles, nor recording them with equipment on your person. In fact, recording government operations that you have legal access to has repeated been upheld as a 1st amendment protected activity so long as you aren't interfering. Drone footage in public airspace does not constitute any more security access than one already possesses in a public space, where security is limited basically to entering the interior of the vehicle (and nothing a drone could see isn't in plain view). There is, therefore, no legal justification for restricting flight privileges in those spaces.
The only reason that they are trying to restrict this is because they are already violating people's 1st Amendment right to record their activities, knocking phones out of people's hands, confiscating devices, threatening or actually arresting those recording, etc. They don't want to be recorded while they kidnap, assault, beat up, and kill people, and it is much harder to knock down a camera attached to a drone 100 feet in the air. I say tough shit, fascists. It should be 100% protected activity. I cant wait for this to be struck down.
But also, how in the hell can someone be in violation of a no fly zone that constantly moves and and does so without any way to track it? How are you supposed to know that your drone is within HALF A MILE of a ICE vehicle, most of which are unmarked SUVs anyway. You could feasibly be standing right next to one and not know that you are. You could be flying your drone completely legally and then the no fly zone moves over your drone, likely with absolutely no way of even knowing that. It would make flying a drone a constant danger of spontaneously and unknowlingly breaking the law. No such law could ever be considered reasonable. It is far too broad.
It would be interesting if this made them publicly post their vehicles position in realtime. No drones, but everyone can see where they are located at.
I would think that that would be the bare minimum requirement to enforce a no fly zone like this, and even then it's not nearly enough. They certainly would never do such a thing though. Regardless, it won't stop them from manhandling and arresting those who continue to fly drones in the presence of their vehicles.
It is amazing how much effort is being put into arresting landscapers and kitchen staff. Imagine if this much effort was put into infrastructure repair, rehab, mental hospitals...
We could abolish ice and give everyone in America a ps5 and 3 free games of there choice and that would be more beneficial than ice on our streets.
We could abolish ice and literally dump its budget in a pit to rot and that would be more beneficial than ice on our streets.
Fiber optic drones go brrrrrrrrrrrrr
Homemade drones can easily not be bothered.