Aerial Surveillance Negative Wave 2

Counterplans

Congress CP

1NCThe United States federal government should [do the plan].The CP has congress do the plan, it solves drones best Rothfuss 2014 (Ian F [George Mason School of Law]; Student Comment: An Economic Perspective on the Privacy Implications of Domestic Drone Surveillance; 10 J.L. Econ. & Pol'y 441; kdf)

IV. Legislative and Policy Recommendations This section discusses the current policy and legislative recommendations regarding drone

surveillance and applies economic analysis to recommend an optimal way forward. Developing new laws and policies to address the privacy threats presented by domestic drone surveillance will involve the difficult balancing of many special interests and the individual privacy rights of U.S. citizens . n147 Therefore, in drafting a legal

framework for domestic drone surveillance, Congress should consider economic factors and establish a framework which allows the use of drones with constraints to protect the privacy interests of U.S. citizens . As an

objective methodology, these economic perspectives should lead lawmakers and policymakers to enact rules that will efficiently maximize utility while protecting privacy interests. The new framework should address the privacy

concerns arising out of the domestic use of drones, while still allowing society to realize the technological benefits. Congress must consider many factors when determining how to best integrate drones into U.S. airspace . n148 In addition, the proposed policies should be compared with the policies in countries such as the United Kingdom, where general surveillance is more commonplace. n149 In July 2012, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) issued a code of conduct that attempted to address concerns associated with the deployment of drones. n150 Among other elements, the code of conduct requires industry members to "respect the privacy of individuals" and "comply with all federal, state, and local laws, ordinances, covenants, and restrictions." n151 The code of conduct has been viewed as insufficient since it only lists broad topics, does not discuss specific privacy concerns, and does not elaborate on how the provisions will be enforced. n152 Current recommendations address a number of concerns regarding the widespread deployment of drones in the United States. Among these are recommendations from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) n153 and legislation currently pending in both houses of Congress. n154 The first group of recommendations to consider is usage restrictions. It is generally accepted that drones and other means of surveillance may be used when a warrant has been issued because probable cause exists. Therefore, the focus of [*459] pending legislation and policy recommendations is on when the use of drones should be allowed without a

warrant, if at all. The ACLU proposes that drone use should be limited to three purposes: (1) "where there are specific and articulable grounds to believe that the drone will collect evidence relating to a specific instance of criminal wrongdoing or, if the drone will intrude upon reasonable expectations of privacy, where the government has obtained a warrant based on probable cause;" n155 (2) "where there is a geographically confined, time-limited emergency situation in which particular individuals' lives are at risk;" n156 or (3) "for reasonable non-law enforcement purposes . . . where privacy will not be substantially affected." n157 Similarly, both the House and Senate versions of the Preserving Freedom from Unwanted Surveillance Act of 2013 provide for three exceptions to the warrant requirement: (1) "patrol of borders"; (2) "exigent circumstances"; and (3) "high risk" of terrorist attack, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. n158 The definition of exigent circumstances differs in the two bills. The Senate bill defines exigent circumstances to only include action necessary to "prevent imminent danger to life," n159 while the House bill uses a broader definition that also includes "serious

damage to property, or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect, or destruction of evidence." n160 The broader definition of exigent circumstances in the House of Representatives version of the bill n161 is appropriate since it will give law enforcement more latitude to protect the American people in addition to providing for civil liability n162 as a check against improper use of this authority. The next recommendation is to consider whether there should be an exclusionary rule that would make any evidence gathered without a warrant or other legal authorization inadmissible in a criminal proceeding. The Senate bill also includes an exclusionary rule that would prohibit evidence collected in violation of the Act from being used in criminal prosecution. n163 Exclusionary rules can overdeter criminal investigations. n164 Therefore, unless a compelling case can be made as to why it is necessary, it would be more efficient not to include an exclusionary rule in the legislation. Another consideration is whether drones operating in the United States should be allowed to carry weapons like drones operating overseas which [*460] are used to target enemy combatants. One recommendation is to prohibit law enforcement from arming drones. n165 Drones have the ability to conduct remote precision strikes on suspects, but due process concerns and the dangers resulting from armed unmanned aircraft preclude the viability of this

option within the United States. Therefore, domestic drones should be prohibited from carrying weapons of any kind. Congress should enact rules to govern domestic drone use. One recommendation is that Congress should require the Department of Transportation to conduct a Privacy Impact Assessment of the operation of drones domestically. n166 Pending legislation

proposes amending the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 to address drone privacy concerns. n167 With the proper focus on privacy

concerns, drones may be deployed domestically while still protecting the privacy of American citizens. In addition, Congress should require a warrant for "extended surveillance of a particular target." n168 As discussed earlier, the Fourth Amendment

would not necessarily require a warrant in these situations. Even so, such a requirement extending warrant protections makes sense and will provide a valuable check against law enforcement abuse of the new technology .

Congress should require authorization from an independent official for generalized surveillance that collects personally identifiable information such as facial features and license plate numbers . n169 This recommendation would apply to situations where a warrant was not required but personally identifiable information was still being gathered, such as surveillance at a public event. This recommendation should be enacted as a safeguard of the public's privacy interests. To adequately protect privacy interests, Congress should direct that the independent official, vested with decision-making power on applications for general surveillance, be a neutral and detached magistrate who is completely separated from any law enforcement or intelligence agency. As discussed in the previous section, legislation should be crafted to maximize the social utility from the domestic use of drones. The legislation should be structured according to the three levels of scrutiny proposed by Song to ensure that the governmental interest in the surveillance outweighs the disutility or social cost that will result from the loss of privacy. n170 The neutral and detached magistrate discussed above could determine when a sufficient government interest exists to warrant allowing generalized drone surveillance. [*461] Additional policy recommendations include an image retention restriction n171 and a requirement to file a data collection statement to obtain a FAA license to operate a drone. n172 These recommendations should be incorporated into the legislation. Congress should require a data collection statement with applications for a FAA license to operate a drone. A key element of the required data collection statement should address the retention of images and other data obtained. n173 Such a restriction would mandate that all images and other sensory data gathered through surveillance be deleted unless the information serves a valid, legal purpose that requires retention. n174 This restriction is necessary to prevent the government or any other entity from amassing an essentially limitless database of information on the activities of U.S. citizens without a valid

and specified purpose. Collectively, enacting these recommendations would prevent widespread, general drone surveillance while allowing drones to be utilized domestically when reasonably warranted to maintain security or protect the interests of American citizens. Therefore, these recommendations would adequately protect the privacy interests of American citizens while allowing law enforcement and other entities to utilize drones to protect our country and serve other worthwhile endeavors.

Congressional leadership goodExpiration of section 215 proves congress is poised to take leadership in limiting executive powers in domestic surveillanceButtar 15 (Shahid Buttar is a constitutional lawyer, electronic musician, grassroots organizer and executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. 5/26/15, "Senate Moves to Check Executive Spying Power" pg. online @ www.truth-out.org/news/item/30976-senate-starts-to-rethink-mass-surveillance-checking-executive-spying-power//DM)What Happened? Congressional allies of the intelligence agencies failed to muster enough votes to extend Section 215 in the face of opposition, including a dramatic bipartisan filibuster initiated by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). The Freedom Act, proposed as a compromise after negotiation with the administration (which launched a failed 11th-hour blitz to ram it through) fell three votes short of the required minimum to force a vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) then tried to force votes on a short-term reauthorization without proposed reforms, which several senators from both parties flatly rejected.

While the Freedom Act would have imposed some limits on domestic spying, the compromise it embodied was profoundly unambitious. The bill was built in relative secret, without nearly enough public input, and ignored most of the issues raised by the Snowden disclosures two years ago. Having failed to sustain either the proposed compromise or several short-term reauthorization attempts proposed by the Senate majority leader, Congress need not waste further time considering whether to

resuscitate Section 215. A federal appellate court recently ruled that its prior incarnation was illegal, anyway, reducing another potential vote to bickering over "yesterday's news." The political shift indicates a direction for future reform. Who Wins and Who Loses? The most obvious losers are the NSA and FBI. After 15 years of breaking already permissive laws, yet not congressional blank checks, the agencies must finally start complying with constitutional limits . Within the agencies, senior leaders of the intelligence establishment also emerge looking like clowns. Section 215 survived this long only because agency officials - including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former NSA Director Michael Hayden - lied under oath to evade oversight. The Senate's

decision to end a program that senators learned about from whistleblowers, instead of those officials, further discredits their legacies. Even if they remain above the law by evading the prosecution for perjury sought by multiple members of Congress, their careers will be defined by congressional and judicial rejection of illegal programs they built in secret. To the extent intelligence officials are clowns, the many congressional leaders from both parties who supported them are stooges. Establishment Democrats and Republicans alike uncritically accepted lies, deferred to them and went along with the Beltway consensus - in sharp contrast to their populist colleagues who proved willing to uphold their oath of office to "defend the Constitution against all

enemies, foreign and domestic." Several winners also emerged from this drama. Congressional rejection of mass spying vindicates several principles at once, including transparency, oversight, checks and balances, the separation of powers and constitutional rights enshrined in the First and Fourth Amendments. Each of those values is cherished across the political continuum, making them especially powerful during a presidential election year. Senator Paul is another clear winner. He demonstrated leadership, surged among the crowded GOP field of 2016 presidential hopefuls and effectively seized control of the Senate from the majority leader. With its senators leading both the surveillance/secrecy/corruption caucus, as well as the competing constitutional/privacy/accountability caucus, Kentucky could also claim victory. The US Constitution may be the most important winner. By proxy, "We the People of the United States" actually scored two victories at once. Narrowly, the expiration of Patriot Act Section 215 advances Fourth Amendment privacy interests. Even though mass surveillance will continue for

now under other legal authorities, one program through which our government monitors phone calls and tracks everyone's behavior, regardless of wrongdoing, will end. More broadly, this vote begins a long-overdue process of limiting executive powers , expanded during a period of seeming emergency, which grew entrenched despite proving ineffective as well as constitutionally offensive. In this sense, congressional assertiveness supports democracy in a long-running battle to avoid the erosion from within foreseen by both Alexis de Tocqueville and President and Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower. What Comes Next? With reformers having

triumphed in Congress, the debate over surveillance reform must expand. Further reforms are necessary to enable an adversarial process and greater transparency at the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, and also to limit other legal authorities - like

Executive Order 12333 and FISA Section 702 - used to justify unconstitutional domestic surveillance. It's a good thing that a bipartisan measure, the Surveillance State Repeal Act ( HR 1466), is poised to do exactly that . Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wisconsin) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) introduced the

SSRA to force the agencies to justify the expansion of any powers from a constitutional baseline , rather than one contrived by a decade of executive lies. Congress has long abandoned its role of checking and balancing runaway executive power, but the Senate's recent vote suggests an overdue

awakening. Members should heed the political wind, and embrace bipartisan calls for aggressive limits as the starting point for comprehensive surveillance reform.

Congress Solves Congress best to regulate drones – previous experienceFarber 14 (Hillary B., J.D., Associate Professor of Law at the University of Massachusetts’ School of Law, “Eyes in the Sky: Constitutional and Regulatory Approaches to Domestic Drone Development, 64 Syracuse L. Rev. 1, pg. 27-30, 2014)

IV. Efforts to Regulate on the Federal Level The FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 directs the FAA to promulgate regulations so airways can accommodate drones by 2015. n156 It is estimated that, by end of this decade, 30,000 drones will be operating in national airspace . n157 The FAA has selected six test sites to conduct research on how to safely integrate drones into the airspace. The six public entities include Griffiss International Airport in New York, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), the University of Alaska, the State of Nevada, the North Dakota Department of Commerce, and Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi. n158Drone flights from these test sites are expected to begin by [*28] June 2014 and end in 2017. n159 The public and some members of Congress have called upon the FAA to establish a privacy policy as part of its mission to integrate drones into domestic airspace. n160 While the FAA maintains its chief mission is to ensure safety and efficiency of all aviation systems, it has responded in part by instituting privacy requirements for all test sites. n161 Regulation is imperative if there is any promise of curtailing the slow demise of a citizen's right to privacy in the face of these powerful, aerial observers. In light of inadequate Fourth Amendment protections, privacy violations could occur without redress if Congress does not act soon. Congressional regulation in the face of technological advancement is not without precedent. Congress has preemptively acted to address privacy issues in response to government surveillance of communication in transit (wiretapping), n162 communications in storage such as emails, n163 bank records, n164 and health records. n165 As one scholar commented, "with the Electronic Communication Privacy Act of 1986, Congress was protecting people's emails before most people knew what email was". n166 Possibly the most comprehensive and promising piece of legislation in Congress is the Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency [*29] Act, introduced in March 2013 by Senator Edward Markey. n167 The bill proposes strict guidelines for the collection and retention of information gathered by drones. The legislation would prohibit the FAA from issuing drones licenses unless the application includes a data collection statement disclosing who will operate the drone, where thedrone will be flown, the flight path, the type of data to be collected, how the data will be used, how long the data will be retained, and whether information will be shared with third parties. n168 Moreover, all this information will be available in a publicly searchable database, along with disclosures of any data security breaches suffered by a licensee and the times and locations of all drone flights. n169 The act further requires law enforcement agencies to file a data minimization statement that explains how the agency will minimize the collection and retention of data unrelated to the criminal investigation. n170 This adds a layer of transparency to the certification process, which has been veiled in a shroud of secrecy. It also elevates the privacy concerns beyond those of ordinary citizens to a federal regulatory agency. Privacy rights groups support this legislation as a significant step toward safeguarding privacy threatened by pervasive aerial surveillance. n171 At present, law enforcement agencies are deploying drones without any established privacy guidelines in place, and information pertaining to drone data has been virtually impossible to obtain despite Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by privacy rights groups. n172 The Drone Aircraft and Transparency Act is not the only attempt to regulate drone deployment at the federal level. In 2012, Senator Rand Paul introduced the Preserving Freedom from Unwanted SurveillanceAct, which called for

a sweeping prohibition of drone usage for surveillance by any person or entity affiliated with the U.S. government. n173 Paul reintroduced the bill in May 2013. n174 The [*30] legislation currently resides in the Senate Judiciary Committee. n175

Congress’ oversight on wiretapping in the past indicates its expertise in regulating surveillance Kerr ’04, professor of law at George Washington Law (Orin, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, scholar in the subjects of computer crime law and internet surveillance, “The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution”, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Mar., 2004), pp. 801-888, cl)

This Part explores the history of wiretapping law and concludes that this account overstates the impact of the Fourth Amendment and understates the role of legislative privacy protections. To be sure, Katz and Berger remain good law, and modern wiretapping law reflects their influence. But from its inception in the mid-nineteenth century through the present, wiretapping law has remained a primarily statutory field governed by statutory commands. Indeed, it turns out that very few cases in the history of wiretapping law have ruled that a wiretapping practice violated the Fourth Amendment. Despite the big splash of Berger and Katz , later courts generally have declined to extend privacy against wiretapping beyond statutory commands . Fourth Amendment decisions may have affected the shape of legislation in important ways, but legislation rather than the Fourth Amendment has provided the primary protection against invasions of privacy from wiretapping . To some extent, this is not exactly news: pick up any practitioner’s treatise on wiretapping law and you will find that it is concerned primarily with statutory law.224 At the same time, the extent to which courts have refused to regulate wiretapping practices via judicial standards post-Katz is quite surprising. Wiretapping law is more legislative and less constitutional than most people realize. This Part examines the history of wiretapping law, with a focus on the source of legal protections. I divide the history of wiretapping law into four periods: first, pre-1934, including the period before and during the National Prohibition Act;225 second, from 1934 until 1967; third, from 1967 to 1968, involving the critical period of Berger v. New York, 226 Katz v. United States, 227 and the enactment of the federal Wiretap Act;

and fourth, the period post-1968, which is the modern era following Katz. I argue that within each period, statutory protections rather than constitutional limits have been the primary regulators of wiretapping law and practice. I conclude by suggesting that the statutory regulation of wiretapping may be more the rule than the exception. While commentators have focused their attention on constitutional decisions, Congress has passed dozens of statutory laws that regulate law enforcement practices implicating new technologies. If wiretapping law provides a case study of whether courts or legislatures take the lead role in regulating privacy in new technologies, that case study suggests that Congress plays the lead, not the courts.

Legislative rule creation ensures up to date rules that the courts cannot provide in regards to privacyKerr ’04, professor of law at George Washington Law (Orin, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, scholar in the subjects of computer crime law and internet surveillance, “The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution”, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Mar., 2004), pp. 801-888, cl)

In this part, I will argue that such enthusiasm for judicial solutions overlooks significant institutional limitations of judicial rulemaking. Courts tend to be poorly suited to generate effective rules regulating criminal investigations involving new technologies. In contrast, legislatures possess a significant institutional advantage in this area over courts. While courts have successfully created rules that

establish important privacy rights in many areas, it is difficult for judges to fashion lasting guidance when technologies are new and rapidly changing . Th e context of judicial decisionmaking often leaves the law surprisingly unclear. Courts lack the institutional capacity to easily grasp the privacy implications of new technologies they encounter. Judges cannot readily understand how the technologies may develop, cannot easily appreciate context, and often canno t even recognize whether the facts of the case before them raise privacy implications that happen to be typical or atypical . Judicially created rules also lack necessary flexibility; they cannot change quickly and cannot test various regulatory approaches. As a result, judicially created rules regulating government investigations tend to become quickly outdated or uncertain as technology changes. The context of legislative rule-creation offers significantly better prospects for the generation of balanced, nuanced, and effective investigative rule s involving new technologies. In light of these institutional realities, courts should place a thumb on the scale in favor of judicial deference to legislative privacy protections

AT: Congress FailsCongress already has expertise in drones—The Consumer Drone Safety Act is regulating drones nowDillow 6/23

(Clay Dillow [contributing to Fortune since 2013, writing frequently about technology, aerospace, and defense], 6/23/15, "Is Congress' new drone safety act an innovation killer?," Fortune, fortune.com/2015/06/23/congress-drone-safety/, MX)

The proposed Consumer Drone Safety Act calls for more guidelines about when and where drones can fly in the U.S. With a wealth of aerospace engineering talent located in the south and Silicon Valley’s software programming talent up north, California has quietly grown into a hub for the growing U.S. drone industry. But, some in the industry are worried that a bill put forth by California’s own Sen. Dianne Feinstein could push the brakes

on innovation by placing onerous restrictions on consumer drone technologies. Under pressure from Feinstein, the FAA recently released data showing 190 incidents during a nine-month period in 2014 where unauthorized drones were sighted by members of the general

aviation community operating in areas where they were not authorized. Of those, some two dozen were reportedly described as close shaves, where a mid-air collision was narrowly avoided. In response, Sen. Feinstein has introduced the Consumer Drone Safety Act, which would create stricter federal laws governing consumer drone operations and require safety features to be incorporated into new consumer drones. “If we don’t act now, it’s only a matter of time before we have a tragedy on our hands,”

Senator Feinstein said in a statement. While many industry advocates dispute the meaningfulness of the FAA’s incident data, they’re more concerned about the fallout from what they see as legislative overkill. “There’s potential for this to turn into a rather draconian set of limits on both the user and the manufacturer,” says Brendan Schulman, head of the Unmanned

Aircraft Systems practice at New York City-based law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel. At issue for Feinstein, it seems, is the fact that while the FAA has moved to heavily restrict and regulate drones flown for commercial purposes , drones flown recreationally are governed

more or less by a set of non-regulatory best practices, rather than by federal law. The Consumer Drone Safety Act aims to create federal regulations regarding when, where, and how consumer drones can be operated, as well as require that new safety technologies be built into all new drones. These include collision-avoidance technology, transponders that signal a drones location to air traffic controllers and other aircraft, and geo-fencing—technology that creates a GPS virtual fence around no-fly zones that would prevent the drone from entering areas near airports or other restricted airspace. The bill also calls for “anti-tampering” safeguards that would prevent users from modifying consumer

drones after they are purchased. However, some of these technologies are already emerging from within the industry . Geo-fencing technology is already built into the latest iteration of Shenzhen, China-based DJI’s popular consumer drones, which make up more than half of the consumer drone marketplace. Startups like AirMap provide consumer and commercial drone operators alike with a bevy of information about restricted airspaces and other

localized regulations based on where an aircraft is flying. Still other technologies—like collision avoidance or so-called “sense and avoid” technologies—

are still being developed by drone manufacturers, creating something of a cart-before-the-horse problem for manufacturers and regulators should the Consumer Drone Safety Act be passed into law. Besides questions about technological feasibility, industry advocates also worry that such a policy would kill innovation in a new industry that’s predicted to be worth tens of billions to American companies over the next decade. “If you were to incorporate all of these technologies on consumer drones, I don’t know if they would be affordable anymore,” Schulman says. “And that’s going to put a lot of these new startups out of business.” These startups range from any number of small, crowdfunded drone makers to growing commercial ventures with millions in venture backing and revenues like DJI, France-based Parrot, or Silicon Valley’s own 3D Robotics (3DR). For a company like 3DR that has staked its business model on an open platform that encourages users to tinker with its products’ software and hardware, the bill’s anti-tampering provisions are doubly damaging. Such restrictions would drive up development and manufacturing costs as well as stifle innovation among the company’s users. The onus to create safe consumer drones does fall on the industry, says Jesse Kallman, director of business development and regulatory affairs for Airware, a San Francisco-based startup focused on the software side of commercial drones. But, in many respects, the industry is already doing many of the things the bill mandates without subjecting itself to burdensome—and somewhat misguided—technology imperatives. “I think a lot of the responsibility does fall on the manufacturers, and we do need to think about safety from the very beginning and bake it into the product,” Kallman says. “So, I think there are benefits to this bill in terms of creating a safety mentality.” But, he adds, there are several aspects of the bill that are going to be tough to implement and enforce, especially for the FAA whose budget and manpower are already stretched very thin. The larger problem, he says, is the wide availability of the technology and the relatively narrow scope of opportunities for new users to educate themselves. “It’s a new market, it’s really easy to get your hands on this stuff, and users aren’t educated,” Kallman says. “Education is the biggest thing we can do for the industry. Imposing a bunch of technology restrictions doesn’t make sense in a lot of cases.” Some of the technologies that the bill would require manufacturers include in their products are still in their infancy, says Lisa Ellman, Co-Chair of the Global UAS Practice at the Washington, D.C. office of law firm Hogan Lovells. The legal expert, who also was a one-time policy advisor to the Obama administration says, that the bill, if passed, could derail the development of the very technologies it’s pressing the

industry for. This type of disconnect between government officials and the industry, perhaps, best embodies

the ongoing regulatory conflict that’s taking place in the drone industry these days. The drone industry has formed its own lobbying group, the Small UAV Coalition, which includes such deep-pocketed backers as Amazon and Google (Airware, Airmap, DJI, and 3DR are all also members) to represent its side of the argument on Capitol Hill. How effective the industry is at pushing pro-regulation legislators like Sen. Feinstein toward a middle ground will have a lot of impact on what the future U.S. drone industry looks like.

AT: Courts bestEmpirics prove—stare decisis prevents the judicial branch from making resolute decisionsKerr ’04, professor of law at George Washington Law (Orin, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, scholar in the subjects of computer crime law and internet surveillance, “The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution”, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Mar., 2004), pp. 801-888, cl)

A second difference between judicial and legislative rulemaking concerns their operative constraints. Judicial rulemaking is limited by strong stare decisis norms that limit the ability of judicial rules to change quickly ; in contrast, legislatures enjoy wide-ranging discretion to enact new rules. The difference favors legislatures when technology is in flux because the privacy implications of particular rules can fluctuate as technology advances. To ensure that the law maintains its intended balance, it needs mechanisms that can adapt to technological chang e. Legislatures are up to the task; courts generally are not. Legislatures can experiment with different rules and make frequent amendments; they can place restrictions on both public and private actors; and they can even “sunset” rules so that they apply only for a particular period of time. The courts cannot. As a result, Fourth Amendment rules will tend to lack the flexibility that a regulatory response to new technologies may require. The statutory framework that governs Internet privacy demonstrates the flexibility and creative potential of legislative approaches . Congress enacted the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (“ ECPA ”) in 1986 to regulate the privacy of Internet communication s. 424 Since that time, Congress has amended the framework no less than eleven times : once in 1988, 425 twice in 1994,426 three times in 1996,427 once 1998, 428 twice in 2001, 429 and twice in 2002. 430 Some of those changes were only minor technical amendments, while others were more significant alterations to the statutory scheme . Moreover, the structure of Congress’s statutory Internet privacy laws demonstrates how legislative rules can impose creative and flexible regulatory regimes involving new technologies. For example, Congress opted to regulate both public and private parties to best protect privacy. This would be difficult if not impossible under the Fourth Amendment , which regulates only the government and private parties acting on the government’s behalf.431 But ECPA recognizes that private parties acting on their own can pose a serious threat to Internet privacy: if America Online can look through the e-mails of its 30 million subscribers and disclose the evidence to the police without restriction, this would gut Internet privacy protections. The Fourth Amendment does not restrict this disclosure, but ECPA does:432 in addition to restricting the ability of law enforcement to order private ISPs to disclose communications to law enforcement,433 the law also restricts the ability of private ISPs to disclose communications to law enforcement voluntarily.

AT: Court Sets precedent Legislative processes generate more informed rules than the court’s closed environment Kerr ’04, professor of law at George Washington Law (Orin, professor of law at the George Washington University Law School, scholar in the subjects of computer crime law and internet surveillance, “The Fourth Amendment and New Technologies: Constitutional Myths and the Case for Caution”, Vol. 102, No. 5 (Mar., 2004), pp. 801-888, cl)

The limitations of judicial rulemaking in the Fourth Amendment context are illustrated by tw o recent cases applying the Fourth Amendment to computers. Let’s start with United States v. Bach. 465 Bach raised a constitutional challenge to the law enforcement practice of faxing search warrants to ISPs for information on their servers. 466 Rather than execute the search at the ISP, the police in Bach ordered the ISP that possessed the information to collect the evidence on its own and send it to law enforcement.467 The defendant argued that the Fourth Amendment required law enforcement to be physically present at the ISP (in this case, the California-based ISP Yahoo!) to execute the warrant themselves, or at least to oversee the process. According to the defendant, merely faxing the warrant to Yahoo! threatened privacy because it granted too much discretion to Yahoo! employees who could easily exceed the scope of the warrant… To be sure, legislative rulemaking is not a panacea. At the same time, the information environment of legislative rulemaking is superior to that of judicial rulemaking in the context of developing technologies. Legislatures can receive input from a wide range of sources, and can use these inputs to generate well-informed rules. The open legislative process and the accompanying public scrutiny tend to ferret out rules that are particularly unbalanced, and often lead to amendments that temper proposed rules that go too far in either direction. For example, Congress generally legislates in the area of high-tech privacy only after holding extensive hearings in which experts testify and comment on various technologies and regulatory strategies.483 Legislators typically ask both the Justice Department and civil liberties groups for comment, and consider objections from both sources before voting on legislation. The legislature can also amend proposed rules in response to concerns of the public, media coverage, or any experts the legislature wishes to consult. 484 Given this environment, the legislative process tends to generate more informed rules governing developing technologies than is likely to result from the closed environment of the judicial process.

AT: CP Doesn’t solve 4 th Amend Establishing limits on drones is the only method to revitalize the fourth amendmentSan Pedro 2014 (Victoria [J.D. Candidate, Stetson University College of Law]; STUDENT WORK: DRONE LEGISLATION: KEEPING AN EYE ON LAW ENFORCEMENT'S LATEST SURVEILLANCE TECHNOLOGY; 43 Stetson L. Rev. 679; kdf)

V. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS With the ubiquity of drone licenses among American law enforcement agencies, n288 the drag-net

surveillance that was once a laughable concept n289 is now a reality. n290 While state statutes and proposed federal legislation attempt to limit law enforcement's ability to use drones in surveillance efforts, those proposals and statutes do not adequately address the duration of the sur-veillance or the sophistication of the technology used by law enforcement to enhance drone capabilities . Therefore, by requir-ing a warrant and restricting law enforcement from conducting drone surveillance for a period lasting longer than twenty-four hours, the proposed legislation will

best address the issues left open by Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. [*720] Further, including the exigent circumstances language into the legislation will allow law enforcement agencies to better understand the circumstances that would permit the use of a drone. Because the courts have addressed exigent circumstances on

numerous occasions, n291 law enforcement agencies may already have protocols and officer training dealing with exigent cir-cumstances. Rather than drafting legislation that attempts to describe a circumstance meriting the use of a drone, n292 using the exigent circumstances language will allow law enforcement agen-cies to comply with Fourth Amendment jurisprudence already

defined by the Court. Similarly, legislation imposing a time restriction on the dura-tion of the surveillance will provide law enforcement agencies with a bright-line rule that facilitates application across the board. Since the current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence provides that one does not have a reasonable expectation of pri-vacy from all observations of one's property, n293 this statutory lan-guage will provide a reasonable expectation of privacy from prolonged observations of one's

property. This proposal would comply with current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence regarding fly-over aerial observations and would also be consistent with the mosaic theory. n294 Further, this proposal limits law enforcement's ability to use any form of drone technology. Given that the technological advancements in this field will likely continue to progress at a rapid pace, any proposed legislation should incorporate an objective standard defining the permissible level of technology or an outright prohibition on the use of all drone surveillance. In this way, we can align the use of this form of technology with Fourth Amendment protections. Rather than providing vague standards, such as technology that is not in general public use, the general restriction provides a

bright-line rule to law enforcement agencies. [*721] Therefore, this proposal would allow law enforcement to be exempt from the warrant requirement for exigent circumstances, while also allowing them to obtain a warrant from a neutral and detached magistrate when law enforcement intends to conduct long-term surveillance, thereby ensuring that law enforcement agencies comply with the warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment and respect citizens' privacy rights.

AT: SOP Add on Legislative reform is key to ensure effective jurisdiction over the executive— congress is a pre-requisite to court actionDivoll 12 (Vicki Divoll is a lawyer and national security expert based in Washington D.C. Until 2012, Divoll taught United States Government and Constitutional Develo, 3/25/12, "Targeted killings: Who's checking the executive branch?" pg. online @ articles.latimes.com/2012/mar/25/opinion/la-oe-divoll-congress-and-targeted-assassinations-20120325//DM)The courts have recognized repeatedly that in order to perform its basic constitutional responsibilities, Congress can and must acquire information from the president and the departments and agencies of the executive branch . The fact that the memo is highly classified is no excuse, nor is it likely to fit within the very narrow doctrine of executive privilege, as enunciated by the Supreme Court. So Leahy would be within his

rights to be piqued. But is Congress getting or not getting this memo really the point here? Holder has publicly outlined the memo's bottom line, and he has likely given more detail in closed session committee briefings. But shouldn't Leahy ask his own legion of lawyers, who are at least as competent as those in the executive branch, to assess the state of the law for him? Here, in a nutshell, is what they would probably find: First, the Supreme Court has not ruled (yet) that the due process clause of the Constitution prohibits the executive branch, without judicial review, from targeting and killing an American outside a war zone. Second, there are no statutes on the books that prevent the president from ordering such an action. Third, any executive orders or other policy statements that might be interpreted to preclude such a killing do not bind the president. Finally, it may be that the justification of self-defense is sufficiently strong to answer the moral and ethical questions, (although we do not know the details of the administration's position). So, Sen. Leahy, now

you can stop asking for memos that you neither need nor are likely to obtain, and get to work. In the 1970s, Congress did just that, tak ing a hard look at the excessive intelligence activities of agencies within the executive branch . It did not like what it found ,

nor did the American people. Months of hearings by select committees of the House and the Senate resulted in new laws limiting, most notably, the power of the executive branch to target American citizens . Back then we were outraged that our phones could be tapped without a judge's order, so Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to require judicial oversight. Regarding targeted

killing, pressure from Congress got President Ford to issue an executive order prohibiting assassinations altogether, though we were killing only foreigners in those days. So now we are targeting not just the phones but the lives of Americans , and there is no constitutional doctrine, statute or executive order addressing the

issue. This is where the framers would have expected the legislature to take a good, hard look. The framers — political realists one and all — would not be surprised, however, by the deafening silence on this issue from Capitol Hill. Presumably, the Republican majority in the House is in favor of the aggressive policy, and the Democratic majority in the Senate may be reluctant to lead the charge against a policy embraced by one of its own in the White House. But Leahy wants to do

something, so he is checking the oversight box by publicly asking for memos, rather than holding hearings to examine whether, once again, we may need legislation to curb executive branch excesses. In the 1970s, Congress enacted the safeguard of judicial review before the executive could conduct electronic surveillance of Americans , and noncitizens, inside the United States, not trusting the executive to make those decisions on its own. And in 2008, the law was amended to protect Americans' phones and email overseas too. Leahy should redirect his attention from

asking for memoranda from the Justice Department to focus his committee's energy on the real issue facing Congress: Should the president of the United States be able to order the killing of an American citizen with no review outside his own executive branch advisors? Even if Leahy trusts this president to tread cautiously with such enormous, unchecked power, what about the next one, or the one after that?

FAA CP

1NC CPCounterplan- The United States federal government should amend the FAA Modernization and Reform Act by mandating interagency cooperation to create a Memorandum of Understanding that clarifies responsibilities, recommends permissible use guidelines, and creates accountability for the privacy implications of drone use.

Counterplan key to solve privacyHendriksen 13 (Patrice Hendriksen is an associate at Goodwin Proctor LLP and an executive editor for The George Washington Law Review, “Unmanned and Unchecked: Confronting the Unmanned Aircraft System Privacy Threat Through Interagency Coordination,” Published December 2013, George Washington Law Review, Volume 82:207,

http://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GWN105.pdf, SZ)

To address the UAS privacy gap, Congress should amend the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 to require creation of an MOU addressing the privacy issues implicated by rapid UAS integration in the national airspace system. The proposed amendment requires participation of three primary stakeholders—the FAA, DOJ, and DHS—and permits their discretionary consultation with other interested agencies.223 The FAA is well versed as the primary actor in UAS integration already. Of the remaining interested agencies, the DOJ has the closest connection to the crux of the issue: the use of UASs by law enforcement.224 DHS has demonstrated a vested interest in and developing expertise regarding the privacy implications of government UAS operations.225 Interagency coordination preserves the current lead status of the FAA while bringing in additional interested agencies to offer their expertise on the issue. A congressionally mandated MOU provides an appropriate vehicle to accomplish this goal: it is flexible enough to respond to the constantly evolving status of UASs and can be structured to create accountability among involved agencies. Substantively, the mandated MOU should clarify jurisdictional lines among agencies, require interagency communication, and recommend substantive guidelines for permissible UAS operations. Further, the amendment should call for the MOU’s timely revision, defined to reflect the FAA’s timeline for integration. Stakeholders agree that developing guidelines for permissible UAS uses ahead of their widespread adoption may preclude abuse.226 This proposal ensures that privacy constraints develop in step with the problem itself by evolving in response to the FAA’s already established integration timeline.227 Finally, to further promote the accountability of member agencies under this amendment, the agencies should publish the MOU and submit a report of the resulting plan to relevant congressional committees for consideration.

Plan can’t solve- tech is too sophisticated- Counterplan provides only way to solveHendriksen 13 (Patrice Hendriksen is an associate at Goodwin Proctor LLP and an executive editor for The George Washington Law Review, “Unmanned and Unchecked: Confronting the Unmanned Aircraft System Privacy Threat Through Interagency Coordination,” Published December 2013, George Washington Law Review, Volume 82:207,

http://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GWN105.pdf, SZ)

Complete UAS integration into the domestic airspace is a steadily approaching reality. As law enforcement surveillance missions increase, so does the threat to citizens’ Fourth Amendment and related privacy rights. However, sophisticated UAS technology can be constrained by neither existing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence nor the current statutory scheme. Additionally, legislative and single-agency solutions fail to address the complex

nature of UAS use. Congress should revise the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012 to require coordination between the FAA and other agencies invested in UAS privacy issues though an MOU that clarifies jurisdictional bounds, assigns responsibilities, and creates accountability for the privacy “gap” in

UAS integration. Such an amendment would respond to the complex and changing nature of the UAS privacy issue and take the much-needed initial step of assigning responsibility for its resolution.

Overview

The counterplan solves for the entirety of the plan. Solves for privacy concerns without linking to the <insert net benefit>. Solves best by mandating interagency cooperation to create a Memorandum of Understanding. This creates an efficient guaranteed way to solve clarifying responsibilities, recommends permissible use guidelines, and creates accountability for the privacy implications of drone use. The CP would change the FAA Modernization and Reform Act to solve for privacy concerns. The FAA is key to solve because it is the primary agency regulating drone use.

Ext. CP SolvencyExt. 1NC Hendriksen evidence- Counterplan key to solve privacy. By mandating cooperation, a Memorandum of Understanding will be formed that solves for all concerns about drone use Privacy is an increasing concern- Counterplan is only way to solveHendriksen 13 (Patrice Hendriksen is an associate at Goodwin Proctor LLP and an executive editor for The George Washington Law Review, “Unmanned and Unchecked: Confronting the Unmanned Aircraft System Privacy Threat Through Interagency Coordination,” Published December 2013, George Washington Law Review, Volume 82:207,

http://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GWN105.pdf, SZ)

Unmanned aircraft systems (“UASs”), popularly known as “drones,” are an evolving technology that provides a tempting

alternative to more traditional law enforcement surveillance methods. Their presence in the national airspace is a quickly approaching reality. The Federal Aviation Administration (“FAA”) is the primary agency regulating UAS use, but its reach extends to safety, not privacy. The FAA must integrate UASs into the national airspace by 2015. UAS technology and its

market are also changing. Models are becoming smaller, faster, and less expensive to build and operate. There will likely be 30,000 UASs in our skies by 2030, with law enforcement agencies representing their most significant future users. Domestic UAS surveillance operations implicate the Fourth Amendment right to freedom from unreasonable searches and other privacy interests. UASs have great potential to violate citizens’ “reasonable expectations of privacy” as explained by the Supreme Court in aerial surveillance and sense-enhancing technology cases because the technology lacks certain practical boundaries that formerly constrained traditional surveillance. This Note proposes that Congress amend the FAA Modernization and Reform Act to mandate interagency coordination among UAS federal stake-holders. Congress should require these stakeholders to create a Memorandum of Understanding that clarifies responsibilities,

recommends permissible use guidelines, and creates accountability for the privacy implications of UAS integration. Such an amendment will effectively address the complexity of UAS operations and close the privacy gap that exists under the law today.

AT: Plan solves better/AT: Courts keyWarrants are insufficient to solve- the FAA has the greatest authority over dronesHendriksen 13 (Patrice Hendriksen is an associate at Goodwin Proctor LLP and an executive editor for The George Washington Law Review, “Unmanned and Unchecked: Confronting the Unmanned Aircraft System Privacy Threat Through Interagency Coordination,” Published December 2013, George Washington Law Review, Volume 82:207,

http://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/GWN105.pdf, SZ)

The proposed statutory amendment is necessary because neither existing case law nor the current statutory regime places adequate limitations on domestic UAS surveillance by law enforcement . Courts have not yet applied the Fourth Amendment to UAS surveillance,166 and when they do, the degree to which UAS use will be circumscribed is difficult to predict.167 Moreover, even if the courts that ultimately

confront this issue do provide meaningful protections from UAS abuse, those protections will come too late, after UASs have become more prevalent. UAS stakeholders agree that developing usage guidelines before UASs become more popular may prevent abuses by law enforcement and a negative public perception of UASs.168 Waiting for courts to speak on the issue opens the door for

such abuses to occur in the meantime. Legislative guidance is also lacking. As Justice Alito suggested in Jones, legislative or regulatory action may better safeguard privacy interests from new technology than courts of law .169 Legislatures can respond to public attitudes, draw appropriately detailed lines, and balance comprehensive public interests.170 Congress has not yet spoken

directly on UAS privacy issues. Under the current statutory regime, the FAA apparently has the greatest authority over UASs due to its general responsibility to regulate the national airspace, and its specific charge to facilitate the safe

integration of UASs into the airspace under the FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012.171 Some UAS stakeholders have already urged the FAA to incorporate privacy concerns into its UAS rulemaking procedures .172 FAA officials have rejected the call to address privacy, explaining that it is outside the FAA’s mission of aviation safety.173 Despite the FAA’s earlier protest, however, in November 2013, the agency released Final Privacy Requirements for its six UAS test sites.174 Rather than prescribing substantive privacy policies for test site operators, the requirements mandate that operators develop their own privacy and data retention policies and comply with applicable privacy law.175

AT: Perm do bothIf we prove that the counterplan solves the aff and avoids the net-benefit, we only need to win a risk of the DA to prove the perm would cause the impacts of the DA.

The plan and CP are incompatible – the perm would include the warrants which would link to <insert net benefit> OR they sever the plan and makes going for the counterplan impossible, unique reason to vote negativeMcNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)

Conclusion The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles in domestic skies raises understandable privacy concerns that require careful and

sometimes creative solutions. The smartest and most effective solution is to adopt a property rights approach that does not disrupt the status quo. Such an approach, coupled with time-based prohibitions on persistent surveillance,

transparency, and data retention procedures will create the most effective and clear legislative package. Legislators should reject alarmist calls that suggest we are on the verge of an Orwellian police state.[73] In 1985, the ACLU argued in an amicus brief filed in California v. Ciraolo that police observation from an airplane was “invasive modern technology” and upholding the search of Ciraolo’s yard would “alter society’s very concept of privacy.” Later, in 1988, the ACLU argued in Florida v. Riley that allowing police surveillance by helicopter was “Orwellian” and “would expose all Americans, their homes and effects, to highly intrusive snooping by government agents...” In a different context in 2004 (before the advent of the iPhone) police in Boston were going to use

Blackberry phones to access public databases (the equivalent of Googling). Privacy advocates decried the use of these handheld phones as “mass scrutiny of the lives and activities of innocent people,” and “a violation of the core democratic principle that the government should not be permitted to violate a person’s privacy, unless it has a reason to believe that he or she is involved in wrongdoing.”[74] Reactionary claims such as these get

the public’s attention and are easy to make, but have the predicted harms come true? Is the sky truly falling? We should be careful to not craft hasty legislation based on emotionally charged rhetoric. Outright bans on the use of drones and broadly worded warrant requirements that function as the equivalent of an outright ban do little to protect privacy or public safety and in some instances will only serve to protect criminal wrongdoing .

Legislators should instead enact legislation that maintains the current balance between legitimate surveillance and individuals’ privacy rights. The best way to achieve that goal is to follow a property centric approach, coupled with limits on pervasive surveillance, enhanced transparency measures, and data protection procedures.

AT: Perm do CPPerm do the CP is illegitimate- they are severing out of the warrants of the plan. This is a voting issue for fairness and education.The plan links to the net benefit whereas the counterplan avoids the link. Proves the Counterplan is competitive. Policy precision is unique in the instance of drones- proves competitionYang 2014 (Y. Douglas [JD Boston U]; BIG BROTHER'S GROWN WINGS: THE DOMESTIC PROLIFERATION OF DRONE SURVEILLANCE AND THE LAW'S RESPONSE; 23 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 343; kdf)

IV. Conclusion Drones present a revolutionary problem that requires both the Judiciary and legislatures to modify their approaches to regulating and controlling government surveillance. n309 Upholding the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, a spirit that embodies notions of privacy and security from unwarranted government intervention, n310 requires that society at least attempt to maintain a similar degree of privacy with drones that people enjoyed without drones. The Supreme Court's framework for analyzing Fourth Amendment questions underlines the difficulty and sheer magnitude of this task, however. n311 Over the course numerous terms, the Supreme Court has oscillated between the rigid interpretations of Olmstead, to practical yet indeterminate constructions of privacy in Katz, and back to a mixture of both in Jones. n312 Even when discussing narrowly tailored issues such as aerial surveillance, the Court struggles to maintain a firm footing as to what constitutes a "search," and what does not. n313 Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's framework provides useful guidance for forming a solution that answers how society can successfully assimilate drone surveillance into the American landscape without further deteriorating individual

privacy rights and expectations. Beyond the Supreme Court's guidance, the various federal and state legislative responses to the rise of drone surveillance provide yet another insight into how drone surveillance should be treated .

n314 Analyzing legislative responses generally yields a much closer view of how the general public views drone use, [*388] simply because "[a] legislative body is well situated to gauge changing public attitudes, to draw detailed lines, and to

balance privacy and public safety in a comprehensive way." n315 The near-ubiquitous warrant requirements among both the federal and state proposals clearly indicate that the legislatures intend to restrict drone use above and beyond the Supreme Court's baseline rules. n316 Nevertheless, neither the Supreme Court nor the various legislative proposals properly address how to define and restrict drone surveillance; the Court simply has not addressed the limits of drone use as of yet, and the legislatures have misapplied warrant requirements to drones when such requirements are too broad, too blunt, and unreasonably

restrictive. n317 To effectively address the privacy issues that surround drone surveillance, one needs to apply a new approach that is founded on legal precedent and embraces a balance between society's interest in effective law enforcement and the individual's interest in personal privacy. Instead of applying a near-universal warrant requirement, courts and legislatures should look to bright-line rules that are more precise, attuned, and reasonable, while affording a similar level of protection that an ordinary person enjoys today. n318 This Note presents six bright-line rules to assist legislatures and courts in their determinations of how drone surveillance should be regulated. n319 Each of the six rules restates the Supreme Court's understanding of the Fourth Amendment, yet simultaneously incorporate suggestions from various federal and state legislative proposals that addressed the public's concerns. n320 As the world of privacy law and the Fourth Amendment wander into the uncertain caverns of drone surveillance, this Note aims to shed some light

onto the right path forward. While society may currently see drones as an unknown entity, society may soon find a path that preserves its fundamental values and security, while enabling genuine law enforcement work to carry out its duty to protect us all.

McNeal CP

1NCThe United States federal government should limit the persistent use of aerial surveillance, require law enforcement agents to delete impertinent information after 48 hours, and mandate that aerial surveillance occur at least 350 feet above the ground.

The CP is preferable to the warrant-based logic of the affMcNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)

While warrants are appealing to privacy advocates, the enactment of overly broad restrictions on drone use can curtail non-invasive, beneficial uses of drones. Legislators should reject a warrant-based,

technology centric approach as it is unworkable and counterproductive. Instead, legislators should follow a property rights centric approach, coupled with limits on persistent surveillance, data retention procedures, transparency and accountability measures and a recognition of the possibility that technology may make unmanned aerial surveillance more protective of privacy than manned surveillance. This paper makes five core recommendations: Legislators should follow a property rights approach to aerial surveillance. This approach provides landowners with the right to exclude aircraft, persons, and other objects from a column of airspace extending from the surface of their land up to 350 feet above ground level. Such an approach may solve most public and private harms associated with drones.

Legislators should craft simple, duration-based surveillance legislation that will limit the aggregate amount of time the government may surveil a specific individual. Such legislation can address the potential harm of

persistent surveillance, a harm that is capable of being committed by manned and unmanned aircraft. Legislators should adopt data retention procedures that require heightened levels of suspicion and increased procedural protections for accessing stored data gathered by aerial surveillance. After a legislatively determined period of time, all stored data

should be deleted. Legislators should enact transparency and accountability measures, requiring government agencies to publish on a regular basis information about the use of aerial surveillance devices (both manned

and unmanned). Legislators should recognize that technology such as geofencing and auto-redaction, may make aerial surveillance by drones more protective of privacy than human surveillance .

OverviewWe are counterplanning out of the affirmatives warrant requirements because those provisions uniquely make it difficult to prevent terror attacks. Our McNeal evidence says that the best approach to drones is to require transparency on data collection, erasing impertinent information, and making to so drones have to fly in higher airspace. This solves the privacy advantage because it ensures that only information pertinent to investigations is kept and puts drones under the same laws as helicopter surveillance. We solve the drone warfare advantage because the counterplan would send the same signal internationally as the plan by not allowing for the weaponization of domestic drones. Lastly, we avoid the link to the terrorism disad because instead of grounding drones, we allow for the constant collection of evidence that could be vital in preventing a looming attack.

AT: Perm Do Both1. If we prove that the counterplan solves the aff and avoids the net-benefit, we only need to win a risk of the DA to prove the perm would cause terrorism

2. The aff and CP are incompatible – the perm would include the baggage of warrants OR they sever the plan and makes going negative impossible, unique reason to vote negativeMcNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)

Conclusion The emergence of unmanned aerial vehicles in domestic skies raises understandable privacy concerns that require careful and

sometimes creative solutions. The smartest and most effective solution is to adopt a property rights approach that does not disrupt the status quo. Such an approach, coupled with time-based prohibitions on persistent surveillance,

transparency, and data retention procedures will create the most effective and clear legislative package . Legislators should reject alarmist calls that suggest we are on the verge of an Orwellian police state .[ 73] In 1985, the ACLU argued in an amicus brief filed in California v. Ciraolo that police observation from an airplane was “invasive modern technology” and upholding the search of Ciraolo’s yard would “alter society’s very concept of privacy.” Later, in 1988, the ACLU argued in Florida v. Riley that allowing police surveillance by helicopter was “Orwellian” and “would expose all Americans, their homes and effects, to highly intrusive snooping by government agents...” In a different context in 2004 (before the advent of the iPhone) police in Boston were going to use

Blackberry phones to access public databases (the equivalent of Googling). Privacy advocates decried the use of these handheld phones as “ mass scrutiny of the lives and activities of innocent people,” and “ a violation of the core democratic principle that the government should not be permitted to violate a person’s privacy, unless it has a reason to believe that he or she is involved in wrongdoing.”[74] Reactionary claims such as these get

the public’s attention and are easy to make, but have the predicted harms come true? Is the sky truly falling? We should be careful to not craft hasty legislation based on emotionally charged rhetoric . Outright bans on the use of drones and broadly worded warrant requirements that function as the equivalent of an outright ban do little to protect privacy or public safety and in some instances will only serve to protect criminal wrongdoing .

Legislators should instead enact legislation that maintains the current balance between legitimate surveillance and individuals’ privacy rights. The best way to achieve that goal is to follow a property centric approach, coupled with limits on pervasive surveillance, enhanced transparency measures, and data protection procedures.

AT: Perm do the CPPolicy precision is unique in the instance of drones – the perm would sever out of the warrant provision of the 1ac, voting issues for education and fairnessYang 2014 (Y. Douglas [JD Boston U]; BIG BROTHER'S GROWN WINGS: THE DOMESTIC PROLIFERATION OF DRONE SURVEILLANCE AND THE LAW'S RESPONSE; 23 B.U. Pub. Int. L.J. 343; kdf)

IV. Conclusion Drones present a revolutionary problem that requires both the Judiciary and legislatures to modify their approaches to regulating and controlling government surveillance. n309 Upholding the spirit of the Fourth Amendment, a spirit that embodies notions of privacy and security from unwarranted government intervention, n310 requires that society at least attempt to maintain a similar degree of privacy with drones that people enjoyed without drones. The Supreme Court's framework for analyzing Fourth Amendment questions underlines the difficulty and sheer magnitude of this task, however. n311 Over the course numerous terms, the Supreme Court has oscillated between the rigid interpretations of Olmstead, to practical yet indeterminate constructions of privacy in Katz, and back to a mixture of both in Jones. n312 Even when discussing narrowly tailored issues such as aerial surveillance, the Court struggles to maintain a firm footing as to what constitutes a "search," and what does not. n313 Nonetheless, the Supreme Court's framework provides useful guidance for forming a solution that answers how society can successfully assimilate drone surveillance into the American landscape without further deteriorating individual

privacy rights and expectations. Beyond the Supreme Court's guidance, the various federal and state legislative responses to the rise of drone surveillance provide yet another insight into how drone surveillance should be treated .

n314 Analyzing legislative responses generally yields a much closer view of how the general public views drone use, [*388] simply because "[a] legislative body is well situated to gauge changing public attitudes, to draw detailed lines, and to

balance privacy and public safety in a comprehensive way." n315 The near-ubiquitous warrant requirements among both the federal and state proposals clearly indicate that the legislatures intend to restrict drone use above and beyond the Supreme Court's baseline rules. n316 Nevertheless, neither the Supreme Court nor the various legislative proposals properly address how to define and restrict drone surveillance; the Court simply has not addressed the limits of drone use as of yet, and the legislatures have misapplied warrant requirements to drones when such requirements are too broad, too blunt, and unreasonably

restrictive. n317 To effectively address the privacy issues that surround drone surveillance, one needs to apply a new approach that is founded on legal precedent and embraces a balance between society's interest in effective law enforcement and the individual's interest in personal privacy. Instead of applying a near-universal warrant requirement, courts and legislatures should look to bright-line rules that are more precise, attuned, and reasonable, while affording a similar level of protection that an ordinary person enjoys today. n318 This Note presents six bright-line rules to assist legislatures and courts in their determinations of how drone surveillance should be regulated. n319 Each of the six rules restates the Supreme Court's understanding of the Fourth Amendment, yet simultaneously incorporate suggestions from various federal and state legislative proposals that addressed the public's concerns. n320 As the world of privacy law and the Fourth Amendment wander into the uncertain caverns of drone surveillance, this Note aims to shed some light

onto the right path forward. While society may currently see drones as an unknown entity, society may soon find a path that preserves its fundamental values and security, while enabling genuine law enforcement work to carry out its duty to protect us all.

AT: Exigent circumstances solve the NB /AT: Perm do the CPExigent circumstances don’t solve the net-benefit, prefer our evidence because it cites the same sources as the 1AC authorsMcNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)

Legislators should reject broadly worded use restrictions. Some jurisdictions have enacted limitations on how information

gathered from drones may be used. Legislators should reject these broadly worded use restrictions that prohibit the use of any evidence gathered by drones in nearly any proceeding . Such restrictions exceed the parameters of the Fourth Amendment and in some circumstances may only serve to protect criminals while not deterring governmental wrongdoing. For example, the Alameda County California Sheriff’s Department proposed the use of small drones for: crime scene documentation, EOD missions, HAZMAT response, search and rescue, public safety and life preservation missions, disaster response, fire prevention, and documentation of a felony when such documentation is premised upon probable cause.[53] Linda Lyle, a privacy advocate with the ACLU criticized the proposal, stating: “If the sheriff wants a drone for search and rescue then the policy should say he can only use it for search and rescue...Unfortunately under his policy he can deploy a drone for search and rescue, but

then use the data for untold other purposes. That is a huge loophole, it’s an exception that swallows the rule.”[54] Her points mirror the ACLU’s position in their December 2011 white paper where they state that drone use is acceptable so long as “the surveillance will not be used for secondary law enforcement purposes.”[55] It is also similar to the language used in other proposals prohibiting the use of information gathered by a drone “as evidence against an individual in any trial, hearing or other proceeding....”[56] A simple hypothetical can help to illustrate the

problem with this approach. Imagine that law enforcement uses a drone to search for a lost hiker in a state park. This is a search and rescue mission that fits within the public safety, emergency, or exigency exceptions in most legislative proposals

aimed at controlling drone usage. However, imagine that during the course of the search the drone observed a man stabbing a woman to death in the park. That collection was entirely inadvertent, and as such suppressing the videotape of the stabbing would not serve to deter the police from using drones in the future as they were not searching for an unrelated stabbing crime, they were searching for a lost hiker. Yet, that evidence under the blanket use restrictions found in various proposals circulating in state legislatures, Congress, and under the ACLU’s “secondary law enforcement

purposes” standard would need to be suppressed.[57] Suppressing secondarily gathered evidence doesn’t protect privacy (as inadvertent discovery can’t be deterred); it merely protects a criminal who if observed from a helicopter, an airplane, or from the ground would face evidence of his crime, but under broadly worded drone focused privacy bills

may be more difficult to prosecute. It is difficult to see what public policy goal is furthered by suppressing evidence of a crime merely because the evidence was gathered from a drone instead of a helicopter . Do legislators

really want to be in the position of making it harder to punish perpetrators of violent crime? If the discovery were genuinely inadvertent, there is little to no deterrent value that justifies suppressing such evidence.

AT: CP doesn’t solve 4 th Amendment They say that the counterplan doesn’t solve the privacy advantage, but McNeal disagrees – by mandating drones to be at least 350 feet off the ground there is no reason they can look into bedroom windows and by requiring law enforcement agencies to delete impertinent data every 48 hours ensures that they cannot aggregate data about our lives. Furthermore, the counterplan requires law enforcement agencies to report on a regular basis how they are using drones providing the counterplan with verification.

Beyond all of this – they simply over-hype how drone surveillance occurs – that’s the McNeal evidence I read on the perm and on the case debate.

Police abuse, not privacy concerns, are the real issue – the CP resolves themReid 2014 (Melanie [Associate Professor of Law, Lincoln Memorial University-Duncan School of Law]; GROUNDING DRONES: BIG BROTHER'S TOOL BOX NEEDS REGULATION NOT ELIMINATION; 20 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 9; kdf)

VI. THE REAL FEAR BEHIND DRONE USE: GOVERNMENT ABUSE P77 If privacy is not the real concern behind drone use, perhaps it is the fear of law enforcement abuse. If law enforcement uses drone technology to target particular areas of the community and randomly "search for crime," is there another way to keep law enforcement in check than to say drone use automatically triggers the Fourth Amendment and requires a warrant? General crime monitoring has never been considered an acceptable practice by the Court. n242 Drones should be used only for investigations of specific targets, not merely to "look for crime." Citizens of the United States do not want to become citizens of the next Soviet Union where agents and drones randomly patrol for criminal or anti-state activity. Citizens fear that regular drone flights might inadvertently

collect data from a whole range of individuals unrelated to a specific investigation. P78 The answer lies not in requiring a warrant or a particular exception to the warrant requirement, but in requiring law enforcement to seek a court order similar to that required for a pen register under 18 U.S.C § 2703. n243 To obtain such a court order, law enforcement officials would need to demonstrate specific and articulable facts indicating that the data is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation. This would prevent law enforcement from using drones to randomly search for crime in a particular area. The order would specify the identity, if known, of the person who is the subject of the criminal investigation and whom law enforcement would like to surveil and describe the particularized need for the information that can

be gathered with the drone. n244 P79 The order also should contain language requiring law enforcement to discard any information collected by the drone that is not relevant to the scope of the investigation within twenty-four to forty-eighty hours. This requirement would alleviate any concerns that the government would collect this information for other nefarious purposes in the future. Being that it is a court order, this requirement would have teeth as long as magistrates signing these orders follow up and demand that law enforcement demonstrate that they in fact have complied with the order and destroyed any irrelevant information. If a law enforcement officer fails to comply, a variety of sanctions could be used to demand compliance. Sanctions

even as severe as jail time would cause any law enforcement agent to comply fully. P80 The court order also should include a penalty for disclosing to unauthorized persons data obtained from a drone, thereby limiting exposure of the information to government personnel working on the particular case, similar to grand jury secrecy requirements under the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e). n245 Under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e)(7), "[a] knowing violation of Rule 6 . . . may be punished as a contempt of court." n246 Moreover, if the drone is flown outside the FAA regulated navigable airspace and views activity not within the public's vantage point, penalties should also be in place to punish those individuals in violation of strict flight guidelines provided in the court order. Punishing individual agents with contempt of court holds both law enforcement and judges accountable and likely will serve

as a more effective means to prevent government abuse than requiring warrants prior to drone flights. P81 The requirement of a court order similar to that found pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 2703 eliminates the charade of fitting drone use within the Fourth Amendment context. Instead, it mandates a standard similar to that required for any information the government requests via a court order, such as a request for a pen register. n247 While the Supreme Court deemed a pen register to be outside the Fourth Amendment, Congress later passed 18 U.S.C. § 2703 to provide some protections against governmental abuse. n248 Drone use does not give rise to privacy issues; it gives rise to concerns of

government abuse and should follow the pen register precedent. n249 P82 The U.S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy, but the Fourth Amendment provides certain guarantees for the privacy of the person and possessions. n250 The "liberty" guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment has been broadly interpreted to guarantee a fairly broad right of

privacy and privacy issues. n251 The Court can address the possible infringement on these undefined privacy issues by focusing on the legality of drone surveillance through the prism of "reasonable" use. If law enforcement utilizes the drone to collect data that is relevant to a particular, ongoing investigation, then the drone use is reasonable. n252 The greater the intrusiveness of the investigatory tool, the greater the possibility that tool will move into the "search" category of the Fourth Amendment, at which point the tool becomes unreasonable without a warrant. n253 Therefore, a drone that hovers around bedroom windows and takes photographs of the lady of the house taking her daily sauna would be intrusive and unreasonable and would constitute a "search" under the Fourth Amendment (as would a drone with thermal imaging or x-ray capabilities), and a warrant is required. However, if the lady of the house chooses to walk outside and tend to her garden in her front yard, she must come to terms with the fact that prying eyes may be watching--whether it be realtors, Hollywood filmmakers, or law enforcement. The tool used in public areas is reasonable and can be utilized without a warrant. It would be reasonable for any of these actors to come across the gardener in the process of conducting their own drone projects. If law enforcement requested the utilization of a drone via a § 2703 court order to assist them in the surveillance of a real-time drug transaction and happen upon the lady of the house tending her marijuana garden, then it would be reasonable for the government to use that evidence against her in a criminal prosecution. n254 Language in the court order should allow for the subsequent use of this type of information. Once outside, the lady of the house takes the risk that her actions will be seen; our zones of privacy where a warrant is required

have traditionally been reserved for our indoor activities. P83 Our right to privacy stems from our desire to be free from governmental interference in our daily lives. In the Fourth Amendment context, we have a right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures and a right to be free from governmental abuse . However, these protections do not extend to any limitation on law enforcement's use of drone surveillance in public areas for a specific purpose. There is no realistic expectation of privacy when a drone passes over one's house or car or observes our

activity in public. We gave up the luxury of privacy in public places long ago. P84 Drone use by law enforcement must be limited but not unduly subjected to Fourth Amendment scrutiny, as drones should not constitute a "search." To limit the temptation to use drones to "look for crime," law enforcement could be subject to the court order process prior to utilizing a drone in an investigation. P85 In my opinion, in the following scenarios drone use by law enforcement might fall closer towards a "search" under the Fourth Amendment and a warrant would most likely be required: (1) The drone is flown outside FAA navigable airspace for aircraft and helicopters (below 400 feet); (2) The drone collects information emanating from within the home (similar to thermal imaging or infrared sensors that detect movement); (3) Law enforcement uses highly sophisticated technology that is not commercially available (e.g., automated license plate readers or facial recognition technology); (4) The drone hovers around a particular area which may constitute a long-term sustained monitoring as mentioned in Jones, and a reasonable expectation of privacy is triggered; or (5) The drone hovers and creates an undue amount of wind, noise, dust, or threat of injury that could constitute a "trespass." P86 Fourth Amendment cases invoking the Katz or Jones doctrines all touch upon the nature of the technology used (does it permit the government to "see" what would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye, even in daylight, from a lawful vantage point) and the nature of the place being observed (is it an open field, the curtilage of a home, commercial property as in Dow Chemical, or the interior of a home?). n255 The more a drone operates outside of FAA guidelines and the more a drone causes undue dust, noise, and wind, the more the drone operation will constitute a trespass and the Fourth Amendment is triggered. The more a drone uses highly sophisticated technology not available for public use or collects information from inside the home, the more the drone operation will constitute a "search" under the Fourth Amendment as citizens will have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the area and activities being observed. P87 Therefore, drones that fly within FAA navigable airspace, observing private property below that can be seen by the public in an aircraft, and using commercially available cameras or enhanced sensory technology, would fall outside Fourth Amendment protections and should be regulated via court order as previously suggested.

AT: Doesn’t solve Drone Warfare advantage There is nothing intrinsic about requiring the cops to get warrants in the US being key to get other countries to reign in their drone use. To whatever extend the aff solves for drones abroad, the restrictions that the counterplan mandates would do the same because we prevent domestic drone weaponization too.

AT: Doesn’t Solve EconThe cp’s limits on where drones can fly stimulates the industryRule 2015 (Troy A [Associate prof of law @ Sandra Day O'Connor college of law]; Airspace in the age of drones; 95 B.U.L. Rev. 155; kdf)

Conclusion Innovations in the domestic drone industry are making it possible for citizens to access low-altitude airspace like

never before. Although these technological advances have the potential to greatly benefit humankind, they [*208] are also creating new and unprecedented conflicts involving the space through which they fly. Prior to the advent of modern drones, there was no pressing need to precisely define the scope of landowners' property interests in low-altitude airspace. Unfortunately, as a

growing flock of domestic drones stands ready for takeoff, ambiguous airspace rights laws are now threatening to impede the growth of an important new industry. In the midst of these pressures, principles of microeconomics and

property theory call for new laws giving landowners more definite rights to exclude drones from the airspace directly above their land. These exclusion rights would be most effective if they were treated as equivalent to rights that landowners have long enjoyed in surface land and if they extended all the way up to the navigable airspace line where the public highway for air travel begins. Laws establishing such rights would create a simple "exclusion" regime for low-

altitude airspace that is better suited to handle aerial trespass and takings questions involving domestic drones. They could also be an integral part of a broader system of new federal, state, and local laws tailored to drones' unique characteristics. By enacting clear and efficient drone laws, policymakers can help to ensure that the sky is the limit for the domestic drone industry in the twenty-first century .

AT: CP Links to the terror DAThere is a key distinction between the aff and the counterplan – they make it more onerous for drones to collect data that will prevent a terror attack. The CP allows for constant surveillance but only keeps the data that is useful in solving terror – that’s multiple pieces of McNeal evidence. At worse for us, the CP links to the NB less than the aff does.

AT: Separation of Powers Add-onDomestic spying isn’t an issue of Separation of PowersLener 2014 (Mark [leads the Constitutional Alliance]; The Chilling Effect of Domestic Spying; Aug 5; americanpolicy.org/2014/08/05/the-chilling-effect-of-domestic-spying/; kdf)

Congress has its share of the blame for the domestic spying that has and even to this day is taking place .

After all it is congress that has the responsibility of oversight over agencies and departments of the federal government. All too often congress has failed to do what it has been tasked with doing; performing oversight. In fact, not too long ago congress gave retroactive immunity to telecom companies for the roles telecom companies played in illegally collecting information for the NSA at the request of former President Bush. When it comes down to it, there is plenty of “blame” to go around. Some are guilty: All are

responsible including the public for not demanding better of our elected and appointed officials. Whether a Democrat or Republican occupied the White House or regardless of which party controlled the Senate and/or the House of Representatives, domestic spying took place and is still taking place. Domestic spying is not a “Right” or “Left” issue. Domestic spying is an equal opportunity offender.

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Generic Impact

Politics - AT Courts ShieldPresident gets blamed for Court’s decisions Toobin ’15- staff writer at The New Yorker since 1993 and the senior legal analyst for CNN since 2002 (“Obama’s Game of Chicken with the Supreme Court,” May 2015, http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/obamas-game-of-chicken-with-the-supreme-court) VD

No, it’s not. If the Obama Administration loses in the Supreme Court, the political pain will fall almost exclusively on the President a nd his Party. To paraphrase Colin Powell and the Pottery Barn rule, President Obama will have

broken health care, so he owns it. To the vast mass of Americans who follow politics casually or not at all, Obamacare and the American system of health care have become virtually synonymous. This may not be exactly right or fair, but it’s a reasonable perception on the part of most people. The scope of the Affordable Care Act is so vast, and its effects so pervasive, that there is

scarcely a corner of health care, especially with regard to insurance, that is unaffected by it. So if millions lose insurance, they will hold it against Obamacare, and against Obama. Blaming the President in these circumstances may be unfair, but it’s the way American politics works .¶ Republicans, of course, will encourage this sentiment. The precise legal claim in King v. Burwell is an esoteric one. It is not based on a claim that Obamacare is unconstitutional. (The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law three years ago.) Rather, the central assertion by the plaintiffs is that the Obama Administration violated the law itself. In any event, the subtlety of the issue at the heart of the case will surely be lost in its aftermath. The headlines will read, correctly, “Court rules against Obamacare,” and this will be all that matters. The Republicans will argue that the Supreme Court showed that the law was flawed from the start, that the Obama Administration is lawless, that a full repeal of the law is the only appropriate response to the Court’s decision—and that the millions who lose their subsides should blame the sponsor of the law. Watch for references to a “failed Presidency.” There’ll be plenty of them.¶ Understandably, perhaps, the Administration has courted this kind of reaction. Better than anyone, Administration officials know the scale of the problems that would be created by a loss in

the Supreme Court . Advertising this possibility makes sense as a litigation strategy; Obama officials don’t want to make it easy for the Supreme Court to rule against them. In testimony before Congress and elsewhere, Sylvia Burwell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (and the defendant in the case), said that the Administration has no contingency plan for an adverse ruling in the Supreme Court. But playing chicken with the Justices only works if it works. If the Supreme Court strikes down the subsidies, the

Administration will also have to answer for why it didn’t prepare for this possibility.¶ For many people, the President of the United States is the government of the United States. It’s why he gets the credit and blame for so many things, like the economy, where his influence can be hard to discern. This is particularly true for a subject in which

the President has invested so much of his personal and political capital. If the Supreme Court rules against him, the President can blame the Justices or the Republicans or anyone he likes, and he may even be correct. But the buck will stop with him.

Court Rulings cause political backlash Mangan ’15- health care reporter for CNBC news (Dan M., “GOP risks political backlash from Obamacare case: Poll,” March 2015, http://www.cnbc.com/id/102469283) VD It might be a bittersweet victory for Republican leaders if the Supreme Court rules the way their party wants it to in a huge legal challenge to Obamacare that threatens financial aid to people in two-thirds of the United States, a new poll suggests.¶ The survey, commissioned by a major labor union that supports Obamacare, shows that even as the Affordable Care Act continues to be viewed unfavorably by many people, a majority of them would strongly disapprove of eliminating federal tax credits that help more than 6 million HealthCare.gov customers pay their insurance premiums. And the Service Employees International Union survey released Monday also reveals that a strong majority of registered voters likely to vote in next year's presidential and congressional elections would view Republicans less favorably if they did nothing to

replace those billions of dollars of lost subsidies, and used such a Supreme Court decision as leverage to completely repeal Obamacare.

Supreme Court decisions require legislative and executive action -- ensures controversial decisions are perceived by the public Mondak and Smithey 97(Jeffery J., Florida State University, Shannon Ishiyama, University of Pittsburgh, “The Dynamics of Public Support for the Supreme Court” The Journal of Politics, Nov., (59)4 , p. 1114-1142) The Supreme Court is an inherently weak institution. To give impact to its decisions, the Court depends on legislators for funding, the executive for enforcement, and the public for compliance. This last relationship-between the Supreme Court and the public provides the Court with its most daunting obstacles. A disgruntled public may not only refuse to cooperate with a Supreme Court decision, but may also pressure elected officials to resist implementation of judicial orders. As such, despite the Supreme Court's nominal insulation from the American people, the Court's justices have strong incentives to be concerned with their public standing. The Supreme Court would seem to be in a perilous strategic position: if the Court acts as a policy leader, it risks loss of critical public esteem; conversely, if the Court's justices attend too closely to their standing in the polls, they may avoid addressing the thorny social and political questions for which a judicial decision is most needed.

AT: Privacy outweighsDrones are key to first amendment rights, turns the aff Berry 2014 (Michael [partner in the Philadelphia office of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP]; THE DRONES ARE COMING: ... AND FOR NOW WE SHOULD GET OUT OF THEIR WAY; 36 Pennsylvania Lawyer 50; kdf)

Drones. When most Americans hear the word, they think of one thing -- flying machines that kill people in far-off lands. Yet, as 2013 came to a close and 2014 got under way, Americans began to hear more about drones flying domestically, right here, over U.S. soil. Last year brought a spate of drone-related headlines: A Colorado town considered an ordinance allowing its residents to shoot down government drones. In Manhattan a small drone caromed off a skyscraper and crashed onto a busy sidewalk. On "60 Minutes," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced that

his company hopes one day to use drones to deliver packages. As we saw these headlines, people began to realize that drones are not simply massive bomb-dropping, foreign-spying airplanes. They come in all shapes and sizes and have countless uses. Some drones look like airplanes. Others look like small, high-tech helicopters. And still others look like nothing you've ever seen before

and can even fit in your hand. People can put drones to work in many ways. They can do seemingly obvious things, like check traffic conditions, film thrilling action scenes for movies or provide aerial photographs for real estate agents seeking to show off houses.

Drones can also do more complicated work that currently requires great effort or puts people in harm's way: They can help farmers monitor their crops. They can take measurements to track environmental conditions. And, following natural disasters, they can survey damage and look for survivors. Drones can also make seemingly impossible tasks possible -- whether quickly flying flotation devices to people adrift in the ocean or delivering a pizza in 30 minutes or

less. And drones can serve a significant public interest by providing a new tool for journalists to use in gathering and disseminating information. They already have been filling this role internationally, capturing dramatic images of government protests in Kiev, chronicling the devastation wrought by a typhoon in the Philippines and providing eye-popping sports footage in Australia. These are just some of the things we know that drones can do today. Their potential use is being [*52] explored by academics and industries around the country, including right here in Pennsylvania. Indeed, the University of Pennsylvania and Carnegie Mellon University are

home to several of the country's leading drone researchers. While this technology is developing rapidly, the legal landscape governing the use of drones is far from clear. The Federal Aviation Administration has long had voluntary guidelines for people who fly model airplanes. In 2007, the FAA issued a policy statement providing that those guidelines permit only hobbyists

to fly drones and that drones cannot be flown for commercial purposes. Essentially the FAA has staked out the position that government entities can fly drones if specifically approved by the FAA and private citizens can fly drones only if they are hobbyists or if the FAA grants them a waiver to experiment under limited circumstances.

Economy DA

1NCThe economy is strong—but can easily be reversed Saphir 2015 (Ann; U.S. economy isn't as weak as estimates suggest, Fed paper says; www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/18/us-usa-fed-gdp-idUSKBN0O31T520150518; kdf)

The U.S. economy is probably not as weak as current estimates suggest, a paper published Monday by the Federal

Reserve Bank of San Francisco said, potentially adding to arguments for raising interest rates sooner rather than later. A government report late last month put first-quarter growth at a mere 0.2 percent , far below economists' expectations and uncomfortably close to an outright contraction like that experienced in the first quarter of 2014. But by running a series of statistical corrections

for the way the government accounts for seasonal variations in output, the paper's authors found "a good chance that underlying economic growth so far this year was substantially stronger than reported." A chart in the paper suggested first-quarter growth may have been closer to 1.8 percent. That's still below the economy's potential but not dramatically so. A

stronger economy suggests a lower hurdle for the Fed to raise interest rates that have been near zero since December 2008. San Francisco Fed President John Williams, whose chief research economist co-authored Monday's paper, has said he believes the economy will bounce back this quarter and may be strong enough for the Fed to begin raising interest rates even as soon as June. The paper's conclusions are at odds with the findings published last week by economists at the Washington-based Federal Reserve Board. They argued that the recent pattern of first-quarter economic slowdowns isn't a reflection of a statistical fluke in the way U.S. gross domestic product is measured.

The plan guts tens of thousands of good paying jobsWolfgang 2013 (Ben; Drone industry predicts explosive economic boost; Mar 12; www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/12/drone-industry-predicts-explosive-economic-boost/?page=all; kdf)

Drones as weapons and drones as spies remain matters of intense debate across the country, but the controversial aircraft are poised to make an impact as something else: economic engines. Private-sector drones — also called unmanned aerial

systems or UAVs — will create more than 70,000 jobs within three years and will pump more than $82 billion into the U.S. economy by 2025, according to a major new study commissioned by the industry’s leading trade group. But the report, authored by aerospace specialist and former George Washington University professor Darryl Jenkins, assumes that the White House and Congress stick to the current schedule and have in place the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks. Current law calls for full drone integration into U.S. airspace by September 2015, but many key privacy questions surrounding UAVs have yet to be answered. There’s also growing doubt that the Federal Aviation Administration can meet the congressionally mandated timetable. If deadlines are met and drones become commonplace in American skies, some states will be especially big

winners. Virginia, for example, stands to gain nearly 2,500 jobs by 2017. It also could take in $4.4 million in tax revenue and see more than $460 million in overall economic activity by 2017 , the report says. Virginia would gain the

eighth-most jobs of any state as a result of drone integration. Maryland isn’t far behind, with projections of more than 1,700 new jobs by 2017. California would be by far the biggest winner in terms of jobs, with more than 12,000 expected . Florida, Texas, New York,

Washington, Connecticut, Kansas, Arizona and Pennsylvania are also expected to be benefit greatly from the coming drone economy. “This is an incredibly exciting time for an industry developing technology that will benefit society, as well as the economy,” said Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group that has existed for more

than 40 years but has come into the public eye only recently. Drone expansion “means the creation of quality, high-paying American jobs,” Mr. Toscano continued. But the motivation behind Tuesday’s report — arguably the most sweeping look ever at the economic potential of drones — runs deeper than just dollars and cents. The industry faces an uncertain future in light of growing public paranoia surrounding the craft — paranoia that has only been heightened by the debate over whether the Obama administration would ever consider using a drone to kill an American on U.S. soil. While the drones that will be employed by U.S. companies or law enforcement agencies are far different than the military-style UAVs equipped with Hellfire missiles, those distinctions aren’t always clear. Tuesday’s report not only offered the industry a chance to shine the spotlight on drones’ positive uses and economic potential, but also served as an opportunity — or, perhaps a warning — to lawmakers seeking to limit UAVs. More than 20 states are considering bills to establish strict guidelines for what drones can do. Virginia is mulling a measure that would put a two-year moratorium on all government use of drones. Such a measure would be especially

harsh because first-responders such as police and fire departments are expected to be one of the largest markets for UAVs. Like other growing and thriving sectors of the economy, the drone business likely will set up shop in friendly environments . “While we project more than 100,000 new jobs by 2025, states that create favorable regulatory and business environments for the industry and the technology will likely siphon jobs away from states that do not,” said Mr. Jenkins, the report’s lead author who used to head George Washington University’s Aviation Institute and also is a former professor at Embry-Riddle University. On another front, the FAA appears to be in danger of missing the congressionally mandated 2015 deadline for drone integration. The agency just recently began taking applications for its test-site program, where drones will be studied to see how they respond in different climate conditions and at different altitudes. More than 30 states have expressed interest in the program, but it’s unclear when it will be fully established; further delays put

the 2015 date in even greater jeopardy. “Every year that we delay integration, the U.S. will lose more than $10 billion in total economic impact,” Mr. Jenkins said.

New jobs underpin current economic growth Davidson 2015 (Paul; Rise in higher-paying jobs lighting US economy; May 11; www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2015/05/10/april-job-gains-better-paying/27008875/; kdf)

Job growth last month shifted to higher-paying positions in a sign of a broadening labor market recovery. Professional and business services, construction and health care led the solid 223,000 job gains reported by the Labor Department on Friday. Retail and leisure and hospitality lagged. Both have been engines of payroll gains through most of the U.S. employment upswing

since 2010. "We're seeing more quality jobs," says Diane Swonk, chief economist of Mesirow Financial. The trend, she says, partly

reflects a widening recovery that includes a pickup in full-time positions. Professional and business services added 62,000 jobs in April, with strong advances in computer systems design , management and technical consulting, and architectural

and engineering services.

Economic decline causes extinctionRichard N. Haass 13, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, 4/30/13, “The World Without America,” http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/repairing-the-roots-of-american-power-by-richard-n--haass

Let me posit a radical idea: The most critical threat facing the United States now and for the foreseeable future is not a rising

China, a reckless North Korea, a nuclear Iran, modern terrorism, or climate change. Although all of these constitute potential or actual threats, the biggest challenges facing the US are its burgeoning debt, crumbling infrastructure, second-rate primary and secondary schools, outdated immigration

system, and slow economic growth – in short, the domestic foundations of American power. Readers in other countries may be tempted to react to this judgment with a dose of schadenfreude, finding more than a little satisfaction in America’s difficulties. Such a response should not be surprising. The US and those representing it have been guilty of hubris (the US may often be the indispensable nation, but it would be better if others pointed this out), and examples of inconsistency between America’s practices and its principles understandably provoke charges of hypocrisy. When America does not adhere to the principles that it preaches to others, it breeds resentment. But, like most

temptations, the urge to gloat at America’s imperfections and struggles ought to be resisted. People around the globe should be careful what they wish for. America’s failure to deal with its internal challenges would come at a steep price . Indeed, the rest of the world’s stake in American success is nearly as large as

that of the US itself. Part of the reason is economic. The US economy still accounts for about one-quarter of global output. If US growth accelerates, America’s capacity to consume other countries’ goods and services will increase , thereby boosting growth around the world. At a time when Europe is drifting and Asia is slowing, only the US (or, more broadly, North America) has the potential to drive global economic recovery . The US remains a unique source of innovation. Most of the world’s citizens communicate with mobile devices based on

technology developed in Silicon Valley; likewise, the Internet was made in America. More recently, new technologies developed in the US greatly increase the ability to extract oil and natural gas from underground formations. This technology is now making its way around the globe, allowing other societies to increase their energy production and decrease both their reliance on costly imports and their carbon emissions. The US is also an invaluable source of ideas. Its world-class universities educate a significant percentage of future world leaders. More

fundamentally, the US has long been a leading example of what market economies and democratic politics can accomplish. People and governments around the world are far more likely to become more open if the American model is perceived to be succeeding. Finally, the world faces many serious challenges, ranging from the need

to halt the spread of w eapons of m ass d estruction , fight climate change , and maintain a functioning world economic order that promotes trade and investment to regulating practices in cyber space , improving global

health, and preventing armed conflicts . These problems will not simply go away or sort themselves out . While Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” may ensure the success of free markets, it is powerless in the world of geopolitics . Order

requires the visible hand of leadership to formulate and realize global responses to global challenges . Don’t get me wrong: None of this is meant to suggest that the US can deal effectively with the world’s problems on its own. Unilateralism rarely works. It is not just that the US lacks the means; the

very nature of contemporary global problems suggests that only collective responses stand a good chance of succeeding. But multilateralism is much easier to advocate than to design and implement. Right now there is only one candidate for this role: the US. No other country has the necessary combination of capability and outlook. This brings me back to the argument that the US must put its house in order – economically , physically, socially, and politically – if it is to have the resources needed to promote order in the world . Everyone should hope that it does: The alternative to a world led by the US is not a world led by China, Europe, Russia, Japan, India, or any other country, but rather a world that is not led at all . Such a world would almost certainly be

characterized by chronic crisis and conflict. That would be bad not just for Americans, but for the vast majority of the planet’s inhabitants.

2NC Link: Must read The plan creates uncertainty within the industry -- derails growth Koebler 2013 (Jason; Drone Industry: Privacy 'Distractions' Could Have Major Economic Impacts; Mar 13; http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/13/drone-industry-privacy-distractions-could-have-major-economic-impacts; kdf)

A new report released by a drone industry trade group suggests that using unmanned planes in the United States could create more than 70,000 jobs and $82 billion in economic impact over the next few years. But the head of the

organization warns that "privacy distractions" could derail the industry. The report, released Tuesday by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, suggests that most of the impact will come within the first three years of commercial integration of drones—tentatively set by the Federal Aviation Administration to occur in 2015—and that drones will most commonly be used in agricultural settings and for public safety reasons. [READ: Hagel Orders Review of 'Drone Medal'] So far, at least 31 states are considering legislation that would limit the use of drones, and a bill in Virginia that would put a two-year moratorium on drone use is waiting to be signed by governor Bob

McDonnell. Many of the bills being considered have been championed by civil liberties groups such as the ACLU

and would put severe limits on the commercial use of drones in those states. Some proposed bills would require police to get a search warrant before operating a drone . Most of the proposed bills, according to

Michael Toscano, president and CEO of AUVSI, would delay or diminish the positive economic impacts that the drone industry can have in a state. "This privacy stuff is a distraction," he says. "Look how much energy we're spending on that. It has the ability to affect things going forward."

Link: Regs BadCurrent laws on drones are sufficient, the plan destroys the industryBerry 2014 (Michael [partner in the Philadelphia office of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP]; THE DRONES ARE COMING: ... AND FOR NOW WE SHOULD GET OUT OF THEIR WAY; 36 Pennsylvania Lawyer 50; kdf)

In the meantime state and local governments around the country have begun to consider drone legislation. By the end of 2013, 43 states, including Pennsylvania, had considered drone legislation, with nine passing laws. All nine of those states have placed restrictions on the

government's use of drones. Most of those laws regulate law enforcement, permitting drones to be used only in limited circumstances such as when the police have a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement applies. Three states have placed limits on the private use of drones. Oregon allows private property owners to file suit against drone operators under certain circumstances if the drones are flown less than 400 feet above their property. Texas allows people and companies to use drones to capture images in some circumstances (such as for scholarly research, mapping land or monitoring gas utilities). But Texas law makes it a crime to use a drone to capture an image of a person or private property "with the intent to conduct surveillance." Idaho has gone even farther, banning people from using drones to photograph or film others without their consent for the purpose of publication. Pennsylvania should not rush to follow these states' examples of restricting private drone use. The Texas and Idaho laws pose serious constitutional questions. People can take photographs of others in places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, whether their subjects consent or not. This principle is deeply etched into the law and has proven essential to newsgathering and reporting on matters of

public concern. Legislators should not trample this fundamental legal principle. Second, these laws are unnecessary here. Pennsylvania already has a number of laws in place to protect people against the harms those other states are seeking to prevent. For example, our stalking, harassment and "Peeping Tom" laws already make it illegal for people to use drones in potentially nefarious ways. If someone believes he or she has been victimized by a drone, Pennsylvania already provides an array of remedies. Some examples: If a person claims that a drone operator invaded his or her privacy by filming the person in a private place, the person would have a remedy through a claim for an intrusion. If that private footage were then tortiously broadcast, the person could file a claim for publication of private facts. Similarly, if a person were physically injured by someone's drone, that person could file a claim for battery. And if a person claims that drones are interfering

with enjoyment of his or her property, that [*54] person can file a claim for nuisance. When it comes to private use of drones, there is simply no need to rush to pass new state laws. Finally, rushing to enact new laws could threaten to extinguish the nascent drone industry before it gets off the ground and before we fully understand drones' potential uses and benefits. We should see how drones develop, what we learn from the FAA test sites and what rules the FAA proposes and implements. We should not act before we have a more complete record. In the meantime, if problems arise, we should allow existing laws to do their job. Drones are coming. As they begin to arrive, let's monitor their progress and get out of their way for now.

Link: Drones k2 EconomyDrones are a vital component of the economy Heverly 2015 (Robert A [Associate Professor of Law, Albany Law School]; Game of Drones: The Uses and Potential Abuses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the U.S. and Abroad: ARTICLE: THE STATE OF DRONES: STATE AUTHORITY TO REGULATE DRONES; 8 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 29; kdf)

Supporting Drones: Economic Incentives Domestic use of drones has been on the federal radar for some time. Predicted to have an economic impact of over $ 82 billion between 2015 and 2025, n102 with total job creation during that period estimated to be in excess of 100,000 jobs and tax revenue to the states totaling $ 635 billion , n103

states are understandably interested in ensuring they receive a portion of the drone economy's benefits . This shows not only in official statements from state and local leaders regarding drones and drone development n104 and funds allocated to drone development, n105 but $=P49 also in state responses to the Federal Aviation Administration's Test Site competition, a competition required by two different Congressional Acts. n106 The competition sought applications from those interested in and capable of setting up drone test ranges. n107 The legislation required that the FAA award operational status to six such ranges. n108 At the first stage of the competition, fifty applications for test range status were received, and states and local governments were involved as partners and supporters in a number of these applications. n109 The initial group of applicants was reduced to twenty-five by the FAA, which ultimately awarded six

sites with test range status. n110 All six sites are currently in operation (or, in the parlance of the FAA, all six are now "standing up"). n111 The number of filed applications, including those at the initial stage, show state and local interest in ensuring their role in the drone economy. n112 In addition, state and local governments in the $=P50 areas covered by the "losing" applications have stated their intent to pursue alternative paths to drone development within their jurisdictions. n113 Other states are studying drone issues,

n114 or creating task forces, n115 and committees n116 to study drones. Even when regulating drones, states are careful at times not to overlook the economic benefits of drone development, as was Utah when it noted that its law regulating drone use was not intended "to prohibit or impede the public and private research, development, or manufacture of unmanned aerial

vehicles." n117 Regardless of their concerns about privacy, surveillance and potential invasiveness of use, states are keenly aware of the economic stakes involved in the game of drones. n118

Link: California Economy Drones are key to California’s economyWeiner and Sherman 2014 (Robert and Tom; Drones spare troops, have powerful impact; Oct 9; www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/09/drones-troops-impact/; kdf)

Southern California has been a national leader of the drone industry, ever since the San Diego-based General Atomics

pioneered the first Predator drone development more than two decades ago. Currently, 13 California drone manufacturers operate across the state, including 3D Robotics of San Diego and Datron Communication Systems of Vista. Pentagon officials initially purchased 10 drones from General Atomics — that number has now swelled to over 10,000 drones currently under Pentagon control, according to The Washington Post, and unknown numbers in CIA hands; a Defense

News report estimates at least 80. “The defense industry has been a huge incubator of jobs in California, especially

Southern California,” said Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, last year. “We want these well-paying, high-tech manufacturing jobs to continue to grow here in California.” Californians, whether liberal or conservative, should champion drone programs that save American troops from having a larger footprint and having to put their lives in danger in foreign territories. Drones reduce ground troops, yet they have as powerful an impact.

California key to US and global econNavarro, ‘8 Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine and holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University (Peter Navarro, SFGate, 15 August 2008, “California nightmare for the global economy?” http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/California-nightmare-for-the-global-economy-3273234.php)//CC

Will the California budget crisis tip the United States into recession? The California economy is certainly

large enough to inflict such damage. It's the seventh-largest economy in the world and home to close to 38 million Americans. California's budget deficit is by any reasonable measure enormous. This budget deficit is estimated at $17.2 billion and represents more than 17 percent of the state's general fund expenditures (about $101 billion). In contrast, New York, which faces the second-worst budget gap in the nation for fiscal year 2009, has a gap of about $5 billion, which represents less than 10 percent of its budget. In closing

its past budgetary gaps, California has acted more like the federal government rather than merely one of 50 states. Indeed, unlike the federal government (or sovereign nations), each state is required to balance its budget each year; and no state, at least in principle, has the authority to engage in the kind of discretionary deficit spending both the federal government and nations around the world routinely use to stimulate their economies. In the past, a profligate California has gotten around this balanced-budget requirement by using a technique that effectively allows the Golden State to administer its own fiscal stimulus. In particular, California - under both Democratic

and Republican governors - has simply issued new bonds every time that it has spent far beyond its means. California's problem this

time, however, is that its deficit is so big, its balance sheet is so bad, and world credit markets are so tight that issuing new bonds alone is no longer a viable option. Instead, California's politicians are inexorably being forced toward a solution that will prominently feature both a large tax increase and significant spending cuts. Indeed, this is not a partisan matter of choosing one's poison. The budget deficit is so large that it cannot be eliminated without raising taxes, anathema to the state's Republicans, and spending cuts, equally unpalatable to California Democrats. Of course, the faster the state Legislature accepts this harsh reality, the faster the deadlock can be broken. Viewed from a macroeconomic perspective, there is an even harsher reality. Increased taxes and reduced spending will send a very nasty contractionary shock through a California economy that is already reeling from a housing market meltdown and punishing

gas prices. Should Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's budgetary medicine - including firing many state employees - trigger a recession, this may well serve as a tipping point for a national recession and , in the worst case scenario, even a global recession. In considering these dangers, it is worth noting that California provides close to 13 percent of America's real GDP growth. In contrast, the second-largest contributor to U.S. gross domestic product is Texas, and it provides only half that stimulus. It also worth noting that California is an important destination for both U.S. manufactured goods and world imports, particularly from Asia. Already, California's unemployment rate is more than 6.8 percent and well above the national average of 5.7 percent. At least some economists believe California may already be experiencing negative growth. The economy is likely to get a lot worse before its gets better. If there is any one civics lesson to be learned from this fine mess, it is that the state's politicians must learn to resist overspending in good times so that the state won't face bankruptcy when bad times hit. It should be equally clear that any damn fool can issue bonds to balance a budget. However, it takes real political courage and economic foresight to put a state budget on an even keel through fiscally conservative

tax-and-spend policies. At this juncture, California is nowhere close to that - and the rest of the country, and perhaps the world, may soon pay the Golden State's piper.

Internal – Shocks crash economyAny shock to the economy can cause a recession Gula 2015 (Alan [Chief Income Analyst @ Wall St Daily]; U.S. Economy Edges Closer to Recession; www.wallstreetdaily.com/2015/05/18/u-s-economy-recession/; kdf)

“It is hard to imagine any time in history when such rampant pessimism about the economy has existed with so little evidence of serious trouble,” said a prominent economist. No, he wasn’t referring to our current situation. This statement was made in January 2008, and the worst

U.S. recession since the Great Depression had already started. In a display of revisionist history, everyone seems to believe that the housing bubble and ensuing recession were widely foreseen, but they simply weren’t. Despite all that

we’ve been through, economists seem to be as clueless as ever. What’s more, the next recession isn’t likely to be as bad as the last one (at least in the United States). So, if economists had a hard time spotting the Great Recession in real time, then

rest assured that a garden variety recession is going to be completely unanticipated. And we may be witnessing the start of a recession right now… In late April, we learned that preliminary U.S. real GDP growth for the first quarter of 2015 was just 0.2% – lower than 82 of the 86 estimates from economists polled by Bloomberg. Interestingly, the Atlanta Fed’s

GDPNow forecasting model actually nailed the number by predicting 0.1% growth. However, information released in May indicates that growth actually contracted quarter over quarter. Barclays Capital and JPMorgan (JPM) both lowered U.S. Q1 GDP estimates to negative 1.1% after disappointing factory order data revisions last Thursday. Now, it even looks as if the second quarter is imperiled. Retail sales for April were disappointing. Again, economists had expected that a decline in gasoline prices would boost consumption, which hasn’t happened. What’s truly amazing is that retail sales and food services (excluding motor vehicles and parts dealers) contracted versus the year-ago figure. As can be seen in the chart below, retail sales growth is actually lower than it was at any point during the recession in 2001! On Friday, we learned that industrial production contracted in April. GDPNow’s forecast for the second-quarter growth is running at

just +0.7%. Granted, some components of GDP – such as net exports (trade) and changes in private inventory levels – are extremely difficult to forecast, so the model isn’t going to appear prophetic every quarter. Nonetheless, it’s a good approximation. All of this points to a grim conclusion: The probability of a U.S. recession is increasing. Ironically, the Federal Reserve is supposed to be raising short-term interest rates sometime this year.

Internal – Economy on the brinkSustained growth is necessary to stave off a recession Schweppe 2015 (Sarah; Is the US economy slipping into another recession; May 10; www.cheatsheet.com/politics/is-the-u-s-economy-slipping-into-another-recession.html/?a=viewall; kdf)

While we’re supposed to be in a period of recovery from the Great Recession, the economy has been lagging more than expected lately. Does this lack of growth mean we’re slipping back into a recession? If we are, it’s not one similar to what

we saw in 2008 because the unemployment rate isn’t soaring up. Rather growth has been stalling this year, enough to make the Federal Reserve question whether to hike interest rates in June as it has said it wants to. Growth stalled a lot in the winter, dropping to 0.2%, and according to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, it’s only bumped up to 0.9% since. And the Washington Post suspects that any positive growth in the first quarter could be revised now that we know the U.S. trade deficit grew to the highest level in more than six years in March. The gap increased 43.1% to $51.4 billion, according to the Commerce Department, exceeding the estimates of 70 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Foreign goods, capital goods, and consumer products were purchased at

record rates, while demand for petroleum dropped. Those facts are what make economists nervous, but the jobs growth may be keeping us from falling into a real recession. How is this affecting jobs? Despite adding 591,000 jobs this year, the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.4%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In April, the number of unemployed persons (8.5 million) stayed about the same as the previous month. Overall, the unemployment rate went down by 0.8 percentage point for the month, and the number of unemployed dropped by 1.1 million for the month.

AT: ChecksGovernments are out of safety-valves – the next recession will spiral out of control The Economist 2015 (Watch out: It is only a matter of time before the next recession strikes. The rich world is not ready; Jun 13; www.economist.com/news/leaders/21654053-it-only-matter-time-next-recession-strikes-rich-world-not-ready-watch?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/watch_out; kdf)

THE struggle has been long and arduous. But gazing across the battered economies of the rich world it is time to declare that the fight against financial chaos and deflation is won. In 2015 , the IMF says, for the first time since 2007 every advanced economy will expand. Rich-world growth should exceed 2% for the first time since 2010 and

America’s central bank is likely to raise its rock-bottom interest rates. However, the global economy still faces all manner of hazards, from the Greek debt saga to China’s shaky markets. Few economies have ever gone as long as a decade without

tipping into recession—America’s started growing in 2009. Sod’s law decrees that, sooner or later, policymakers will face another downturn. The danger is that, having used up their arsenal, governments and central banks will not have the ammunition to fight the next recession. Paradoxically, reducing that risk requires a willingness to keep policy looser for longer today. The smoke is clearing The good news comes mainly from America, which leads the rich-world pack. Its unexpected contraction in the first quarter looks like a blip, owing a lot to factors like the weather (see article). The most recent data, including surging vehicle sales and another round of robust employment figures, show that the pace of growth is rebounding. American firms took on 280,000 new workers last month. Bosses are at last having to pay more to find the workers they need. In other parts of the rich world things are also looking up. In the euro zone unemployment is falling and prices are rising again. Britain’s recovery has lost a bit of puff, but strong employment growth suggests that expansion will continue. Japan roared ahead in the first quarter, growing by 3.9% at an annualised rate. A recovery so broad-based and

persistent is no fluke. Inevitably fragilities remain. Europe is deep in debt and dependent on exports. Japan cannot get inflation to take hold. Wage growth could quickly dent corporate earnings and valuations in America. Emerging economies, which accounted for the bulk of growth in the post-crisis years, have seen better days. The economies of both Brazil and Russia are expected to shrink this year. Poor trade data suggest that Chinese growth may be slowing faster than

the government wishes. If any of these worries causes a downturn the world will be in a rotten position to do much about it. Rarely have so many large economies been so ill-equipped to manage a recession, whatever its provenance, as our “wriggle-room” ranking makes clear (see article). Rich countries’ average debt-to-GDP ratio has risen by about 50% since 2007. In

Britain and Spain debt has more than doubled. Nobody knows where the ceiling is, but governments that want to splurge will have to win over jumpy electorates as well as nervous creditors. Countries with only tenuous access to bond markets, as in the euro zone’s periphery, may be unable to launch a big fiscal stimulus. Monetary policy is yet more cramped . The last time the Fed eral Reserve raised interest rates was in 2006. The Bank of England’s base rate sits at 0.5%. Records dating back to the 17th century show that, before 2009, it had never fallen below 2%; and futures

prices suggest that in early 2018 it will still be only around 1.5%. That is healthy compared with the euro area and Japan, where rates in 2018 are expected to remain stuck near zero. When central banks face their next recession, in other words, they risk having almost no room to boost their economies by cutting interest rates. That would make the next downturn even harder to escape.

AT: Drones inevitableEconomic growth will only happen if the industry isn’t burdened by regsWolfgang 2013 (Ben; Drone industry predicts explosive economic boost; Mar 12; www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/12/drone-industry-predicts-explosive-economic-boost/?page=all; kdf)

Drones as weapons and drones as spies remain matters of intense debate across the country, but the controversial aircraft are poised to make an impact as something else: economic engines. Private-sector drones — also called

unmanned aerial systems or UAVs — will create more than 70,000 jobs within three years and will pump more than $82 billion into the U.S. economy by 2025, according to a major new study commissioned by the industry’s

leading trade group. But the report, authored by aerospace specialist and former George Washington University professor Darryl Jenkins,

assumes that the White House and Congress stick to the current schedule and have in place the necessary legal and regulatory frameworks. Current law calls for full drone integration into U.S. airspace by September 2015, but many key privacy questions surrounding UAVs have yet to be answered. There’s also growing doubt that the Federal Aviation Administration can meet the congressionally mandated timetable.

AT: Industry report exaggerates economic impactThere is consensus on the economic impact of dronesDrugan 2015 (John; Drones a source of debate-and economic impact; Feb 5; www.uschamberfoundation.org/blog/post/drones-source-debate-and-economic-impact/42600; kdf)

At a recent hearing held by the House Science Space and Technology Committee, lawmakers and business leaders cited studies predicting as many as 200,000 new jobs and an $82 million economic impact from this new technology. A majority of the hearing was a dialogue between witnesses and Congress to discuss how the FAA should shape regulation to introduce them into the National Airspace System in a manner that will best foster growth within the industry. The regulatory debate surrounding the FAA’s UAV policies will no doubt be intensified and expedited, given the recent alarming incident of a UAV drone landing on the White House lawn.

Surprisingly, despite disagreement on the FAA’s regulation, Congress and industry experts were in complete agreement on the potentially massive economic impact that UAV technology could have on the American economy and the necessity to act as soon as possible. What may be even more surprising than the impact UAV technology may have are the different sectors of American industry that will be influenced by it.

AT: Other drones solveLaw enforcement drones underpin the entire industryReid 2014 (Melanie [Associate Professor of Law, Lincoln Memorial University-Duncan School of Law]; GROUNDING DRONES: BIG BROTHER'S TOOL BOX NEEDS REGULATION NOT ELIMINATION; 20 Rich. J.L. & Tech. 9; kdf)

The Pentagon cut spending on military drones from $ 4.8 billion in 2012 to $ 3.8 billion in 2013 with further reductions anticipated. n53 Initially, drones were used by the military as a reconnaissance tool, with the D-21 drone making its first reconnaissance mission over China in 1969. n54 In 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) sent drones on more than 600 reconnaissance missions in the Bosnian conflict, and the drones also provided intelligence for NATO forces in the 1999 Kosovo air campaign by "searching for targets" and "keeping an eye on Kosovar-Albanian refugee camps." n55 In January 2001, the CIA considered assassinating Osama bin Laden with the Predator drone, but the Predator had only been used for reconnaissance missions. n56 This was the first occasion that the

military considered using drones as a weapon rather than as a reconnaissance tool. n57 Today, with significant military budget cuts looming, drone manufacturers need to find a new market for their creations . P14 Therefore, aerospace manufacturers are looking to create a lucrative civilian market. The chief operating officer of a Los Angeles-based company that makes operating systems for drones, Denis Clements, remarked that the drone industry is transitioning "from all-military on a relatively small scale to international and commercial on a large scale." n58 The AUVSI estimates that the industry will be worth $ 82 billion and

employ 100,000 people by 2025. n59 P15 Law enforcement, in particular, is interested in using drones as they are typically smaller than traditional aircraft, less likely to be detected, create less noise and vibrations, and less expensive than aircraft and helicopters so they can afford to purchase and use more of them. n60 Of course, the cost depends upon the size and sophistication of the drone, and law enforcement need also worry about collisions and tort liability if one of their drones collides with other aircraft or destroys personal property on the ground.

AT: Advantages

AT: Courts Advantage

Fourth Amendment doctrine badThe Fourth Amendment doctrine is unfit to govern modern surveillance – outdated reasoning and privacy expectationsRushin 11(Stephen, Ph.D in Jurisprudence and Social Policy, Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama’s School of Law, THE JUDICIAL RESPONSE TO MASS POLICE SURVEILLANCE, University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, Vol. 2011, No. 2, pg. 282-283, 2011)

Law enforcement technology has become ubiquitous in the urban landscape. Closed circuit surveillance cameras indiscriminately record individuals’ physical movements.1 Facial recognition software compares images of passing pedestrians with extensive databases of suspected criminals.2 Red light cameras capture photographs of traffic violations. The National Security Agency (NSA) logs phone calls made by millions of citizens across the country in hopes of identifying suspected terrorist activity.3 And automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) systems, already in use in various jurisdictions across the country, digitally read and record the license plates of passing automobiles into expansive databases.4 Indeed, we live today in an increasingly digitally efficient investigative state—a state where law enforcement can both observe and record information about our whereabouts in an unprecedentedly efficient manner. The retention of surveillance data raises many serious constitutional concerns. But Fourth Amendment doctrine on search and seizures reflects outdated assumptions about the once-limited capabilities of public surveillance technologies and is, therefore, ill-equipped to deal with the challenges posed by the digitally efficient investigative state. The existing Fourth Amendment doctrine on surveillance technologies focuses primarily on three issues: (1) whether a person had a subjective expectation of privacy; (2) the socially objective reasonableness of that expectation of privacy; and (3) the relative intrusiveness of the supposed privacy violation.5 The Supreme Court has also drawn a distinction between presumptively constitutional technologies that merely improve the efficiency of legitimate law enforcement, like digital tracking devices, and unconstitutional technologies that give law enforcement an intrusive extrasensory ability, like heat sensors.6 Under this framework, the warrantless use of most surveillance technologies and the collection of personal data fits comfortably within constitutional doctrine—after all, a person does not have an objectively reasonable expectation to privacy when driving her car or walking on a public sidewalk. The recording of a person’s movements in public is not especially intrusive and certainly does not provide police with any intrusive, extrasensory abilities beyond mere observation. A recent Seventh Circuit case engaged in just this type of analysis when it found that the warrantless use of global position system (GPS) surveillance by law enforcement did not violate the Fourth Amendment.7 There, Judge Posner and the Seventh Circuit concluded that GPS monitoring of a single suspect without a warrant does not amount to “wholesale surveillance.” 8

Courts Can’t Solve Courts can’t solve — highly conservative and submissive to the security state post 9/11 Greenwald 14 (Glenn Greenwald is an American lawyer, journalist and author. He was a columnist for Guardian US from August 2012 to October 2013, 11/19/14, "CONGRESS IS IRRELEVANT ON MASS SURVEILLANCE. HERE’S WHAT MATTERS INSTEAD," pg. online @ https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance//DM)A U.S. federal judge already ruled that the NSA’s domestic bulk collection program likely violates the 4th Amendment, and in doing so, obliterated many of the government’s underlying justifications. Multiple cases are now on appeal, almost certainly headed to the Supreme Court. None of this was possible in the absence of Snowden disclosures. For a variety of reasons,

when it comes to placing real limits on the NSA , I place almost as little faith in the judiciary as I do in the Congress and executive branch . To begin with, the Supreme Court is dominated by five right-wing justices on whom the Obama Justice Department has repeatedly relied to endorse their most extreme civil-liberties-destroying theories. For another, of all the U.S. institutions that have completely abdicated their role in the post-9/11 era, the federal judiciary has probably been the worst, the most consistently subservient to the National Security State . Still, there is some chance that one of these cases will result in a favorable outcome that restores some 4th Amendment protections inside the U.S. The effect is likely to be marginal, but not entirely insignificant.

Courts are structurally incapable of regulation Thompson 15 (Richard, legislative attorney, Mar. 30, “Domestic Drones and Privacy: A Primer”, http://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43965.pdf, cl)

This issue of the law keeping up with technology is a constantly recurring theme in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. Some have argued that the judiciary is not the ideal forum for creating adequate privacy rules when fast-moving technology is involved .99 Courts tend to be backward lookin g —resolving past factual scenarios between two discrete parties. This characteristic makes courts reactive rather than proactive, leading to privacy rules that might fall behind the particular technology in question. For instance, the Supreme Court has yet to resolve whether individuals are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in their emails, a technology that has been around for decades. Part of the problem is that the Court has been unsure of its role in developing privacy rules when technology is in flux,101 with some Justices preferring that legislatures, rather than the courts, take the lead role . 102 This is not to say that this approach is ineffective: this case-by-case approach allows the courts to formulate rules more cautiously based on concrete facts in an adversarial setting, and reduces the risk of creating rules with potentially unintended consequences.

Courts aren’t the best actor at curtailing the use of drones- they are too slowFarber 13- associate profesor

(Hillary, EYES IN THE SKY: CONSTITUTIONAL AND REGULATORY APPROACHES TO DOMESTIC DRONE DEPLOYMENT, 64 Syracuse Law Review 1) JB

Meanwhile, Fourth Amendment privacy jurisprudence has yet to grapple with drones and their unprecedented surveillance capabilities. Courts are slow to respond when it comes to evaluating the constitutional implications of new technology. n11 Supreme Court case law on aerial surveillance has

only considered manned aircraft flying at relatively low altitudes, which is not equivalent to the characteristics and capabilities of drones. n12 At least in the short term, legislative [*5] regulation will likely provide more substantive protection for individual privacy interests in the face of the ever-increasing presence of unmanned aerial surveillance. n13 Congress

has held a series of hearings to investigate the future of drones and the privacy and safety issues they present. n14 There is bipartisan concern over how and by whom drones will be used. n15 Yet, progress has been slow. On the other hand, states are moving rapidly to regulate or ban the commercial use of drones, as well as place restrictions on government use without a warrant. n16 In 2013, forty-three states considered more than 130 bills or resolutions on drone use, addressing a range of issues including privacy implications, economic impact, and utilization. n17 Eight states have enacted laws regulating drone use. n18

Judicial Activism Bad-EmergenciesPresident must have control to enforce and modify the law in emergenciesPosner 11 (Eric Andrew Posner is an American law professor and son of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit judge Richard Posner. He is an expert in law and economics, international law, contract law, and bankruptcy, September 2011, "DEFERENCE TO THE EXECUTIVE IN THE UNITED STATES AFTER 9/11: CONGRESS, THE COURTS AND THE OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL," pgs. 20//DM)The medical protocol analogy does not provide any reason for doubting the deference thesis. Rules are valuable in many settings, including emergencies; but it does not follow from that observation that courts and legislatures rather than the executive should create and enforce the rules . Each institution has specific advantages; the executive’s advantages are

salient during emergencies. The notion that the executive can be constrained by its own components is a paradoxical idea, and has little to recommend it. In the end, someone must have discretion to respond to unforeseen events, and in the U.S. system that role has been given to the president . The theory that OLC or some similar office within the executive branch could constrain the president rests on a confusion between rational self-binding, which presidents may (albeit with

difficulty) engage in, and external constraint, which presidents resist. OLC may serve as a device for rational self-binding, which extends the executive power; it is highly unlikely, however, that it can serve as a constraint.

Judicial Activism Bad- Executive Checks Self Judicial activism is unnecessary – executive checks itselfMichaels 11 (Jon D., J.D., professor at UCLA’s School of Law, “The (Willingly) Fettered Executive: Presidential Spinoffs in National Security Domains and Beyond”, 97 Va. L. Rev. 801, pg. 804-808, 2011)

n3 This Article presents two apparent counterexamples. The case studies depict a very different Executive. This Executive does not appear singularly focused on becoming unshackled, unconstrained, and unfettered. To the contrary, the Executive appears to expend [*805] considerable energy to disempower itself. n4 It does so to dramatic effect, and in innovative, far-reaching, yet subtle ways. In one case, the Executive shackles itself to the market. The privatization of government responsibilities is frequently a means of evading constraints such as the Administrative Procedure Act ("APA") and judicial review. n5 Yet in this particular context already shorn of law, government outsourcing seems to cut in the opposite direction. It serves as a disciplining agent, introducing constraints where unfettered presidential discretion is apt to be disruptive and counterproductive. In the other case, the Executive employs one of the worst forms of institutional design, a sure-fire recipe for bureaucratic dysfunction. Indeed, versions of it are often advanced by those seeking to undermine a President or her regulatory agenda. n6 Yet in this particular and similarly unregulated domain, the recipe seems to work, likewise in imaginative and salutary ways. Here, too, the result is a harmonious cabining of discretion where presidential autonomy appears problematic if not self-defeating. Consider first In-Q-Tel, the CIA's shiny new venture capital ("VC") outfit. A private non-profit organization, In-Q-Tel is entrusted to be the Intelligence Community's gateway to the future, investing in and incubating new technologies that will give our spies a leg up on the bad guys for years to come. Heralded in the [*806] popular press as hip and edgy, n7 In-Q-Tel is a curiosity beyond its novelty. The CIA is as free from administrative law constraints as a government agency can be. Its budget is classified n8 and highly discretionary, its operations are beyond public (and often judicial and congressional) scrutiny, n9 and it can fire employees for any reason short of discrimination based on unconstitutional considerations. n10 The Agency further enjoys incomparable discretion to wheel and deal on the private market. n11 The CIA can establish shady front operations, n12 procure goods and services unburdened by the onerous Federal Acquisition Regulation ("FAR"), n13 and enter into secret personnel contracts that are unenforceable in court. n14 So, why, then, did the already unencumbered CIA create In-Q-Tel and [*807] thereby introduce a host of constraints on the presidentially appointed Director's discretion? After all, In-Q-Tel is a private corporation, legally insulated from the Agency in terms of day-to-day decisions regarding personnel, investment priorities, and resource allocation. Moreover, as a private entity and as a registered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, In-Q-Tel is subject to greater legal restrictions - in terms of mandatory public disclosures, limitations on executive compensation, and anti-discrimination and labor laws - than would be the case were the investment and incubation responsibilities housed within the Agency. n15 Consider second the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ("CFIUS"). In 1988, Congress vested in the President the authority to review and block proposed foreign investments deemed detrimental to national security. n16 This is a sensitive and significant responsibility, perhaps most closely identified with the now-infamous 2006 Dubai Ports deal. n17 Other than some broad guidelines and reporting requirements, Congress imposed almost no limitations or checks on the President's power. n18 Yet, notwithstanding the President possessing essentially unfettered control and discretion as to whether to block foreign firms from acquiring controlling stakes of American firms, President Reagan voluntarily reassigned the bulk of the

responsibilities. Pursuant to an Executive Order, Reagan empowered CFIUS, an inter-agency committee of officials from various Executive departments. n19 That is to say, rather than Reagan keeping the authority for himself or engaging [*808] in the usual practice of assigning responsibility to one agency, he charged CFIUS with primary responsibility for investigating proposed investments, and did so in a manner that significantly reduced presidential control. n20 These are revealing case studies, weighty in their own right and interesting complements to one another. They give us insight into how these strategically important, but largely unknown, responsibilities are administered. They show how the Executive, rather than the Executive's usual rivals - Congress and the courts - can constrain public administration, through mechanisms within the administrative state and outside of it. And, they suggest why the Executive might welcome those constraints (and possibly others as well).

Judicial Activism Bad-Judicial FailsAdministrative power shouldn’t be checked by judicial review – speed, secrecy, and popular accountabilityMichaels 11 (Jon D., J.D., professor at UCLA’s School of Law, “The (Willingly) Fettered Executive: Presidential Spinoffs in National Security Domains and Beyond”, 97 Va. L. Rev. 801, pg. 829-831, 2011)

When it comes to the CIA, most everything that the spy agency does is largely free from legal control. Professional spies, intelligence analysts, and R&D gurus need flexibility. The imposition of legal constraints such as judicial review, civil service protections, and the APA could jeopardize the twin imperatives of speed and secrecy. n120 For these reasons, Congress has insulated the Agency [*830] from the range of legal checks that attach to most other agencies. Moreover, even where the legislature has failed to ensure sufficiently robust insulation, the courts have typically pro-vided minimal scrutiny and generally looked unfavorably on lawsuits seeking to hold the CIA legally accountable. n121 Political accountability, where it exists, n122 can supplement legal constraints or compensate for the absence of such legal checks. n123 The electorate's mindfulness - and capacity to discipline the President - encourages reasoned, prudent agency action. n124 Accordingly, even if Congress has not imposed strong procedural or substantive constraints on Ex-ecutive agencies, an administration still cannot abuse its discretion lest it jeopardize the President's popular support. Political accountability no doubt helps legitimate Executive primacy in military and foreign affairs n125 and justifies in large part the judiciary's deference to agency action. n126 Yet political accountability might have perverse effects when it comes to intelligence incubation. Political pressure from the electorate might result in the shortchanging of long-term investments in order to devote maximum resources to current and near-future needs. This is a pervasive problem for political officials responsible [*831] for long-term planning yet dependent on short-term popular approval. And, it is especially acute in this context because the fruits of long-term intelligence planning cannot, for secrecy reasons, be announced ex ante to the public - and thus the incum-bent administration will not receive immediate credit for its foresight. n127 By contrast, the costs of failing today to de-vote (or be seen as devoting) maximal resources to the present task could be politically disastrous in the event an intel-ligence failure paves the way to another attack. n128 Hence, there appears to be a tension between the responsibility to pursue long-term technology incubation and political accountability. With respect to scrutinizing foreign investments, a similar accountability deficit to the one just described would arise were the responsibility conventionally assigned to a single line agency or kept within the White House. Here, too, legal accountability is ratcheted down on the assumption that national security and diplomacy would be endangered by such safeguards as procedural transparency and judicial review. n129

AT: Drone Strikes Bad Advantage

1NC – AT: Aff solves international drone violenceNorms fail and US can't create them

Boot, Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, 2011(Max; We Cannot Afford to Stop Drone Strikes,” Commentary Magazine; http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2011/10/09/drone-arms-race/)

The New York Times engages in some scare-mongering today about a drone ams race. Scott Shane notes correctly other

nations such as China are building their own drones and in the future U.S. forces could be attacked by them–our forces will not have a

monopoly on their use forever. Fair enough, but he goes further, suggesting our current use of drones to target terrorists will backfire: If China, for instance, sends killer drones into Kazakhstan to hunt minority Uighur Muslims it accuses of plotting terrorism,

what will the United States say? What if India uses remotely controlled craft to hit terrorism suspects in Kashmir, or Russia sends drones after militants in the Caucasus? American officials who protest will likely find their own example thrown back at them. “The problem is that we’re creating an international norm” — asserting the right to strike preemptively against those we suspect of planning attacks, argues Dennis M. Gormley, a senior research fellow at the University of

Pittsburgh and author of Missile Contagion, who has called for tougher export controls on American drone technology. “The copycatting is what I worry about

most.” This is a familiar trope of liberal critics who are always claiming we should forego “X” weapons system or capability, otherwise our enemies will adopt it too. We have heard this with regard to ballistic missile defense, ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons, chemical and biological weapons, land mines, exploding bullets, and other fearsome weapons. Some have even suggested the U.S. should abjure the first use of nuclear weapons–and cut down our own arsenal–to

encourage similar restraint from Iran. The argument falls apart rather quickly because it is founded on a false premise: that

other nations will follow our example. In point of fact, Iran is hell-bent on getting nuclear weapons no matter what we do; China is hell-bent on getting drones; and so forth. Whether and under what circumstances they will use those weapons remains an open question–but there is little reason to think self-restraint on our part will be matched by equal self-restraint on theirs. Is Pakistan avoiding nuking India because we haven’t used nuclear weapons since 1945? Hardly. The reason is that India has a powerful nuclear deterrent to use against Pakistan. If there is one lesson of history it is a strong deterrent is a

better upholder of peace than is unilateral disarmament–which is what the New York Times implicitly suggests. Imagine if we did refrain from drone strikes against al-Qaeda–what would be the consequence? If we were to stop the strikes, would China really decide to take a softer line on Uighurs or Russia on Chechen separatists? That seems unlikely given the viciousness those states already employ in their battles against ethnic separatists–which

at least in Russia’s case already includes the suspected assassination of Chechen leaders abroad. What’s the difference between sending a hit team and sending a drone? While a decision on our part to stop drone strikes would be unlikely to alter Russian or Chinese thinking, it would have one immediate consequence: al-Qaeda would be strengthened and could regenerate the ability to attack our homeland. Drone strikes are the only effective weapon we have to combat terrorist groups in places like Pakistan or Yemen where we don’t have a lot of boots on the ground or a lot of cooperation from local authorities. We cannot afford to give them up in the vain hope it will encourage disarmament on the part of dictatorial states.

1NC—Impact Inevitable Inevitably, all countries will have drones by 2024 because of ChinaRussia Times 2014 (All countries will have drone kill technology in 10 years - report; May 7; rt.com/news/157340-us-drones-military-defense/; kdf)

In just one decade, just about every country in the world will have the means to either build or buy unmanned

aerial vehicles (UAV) capable of launching missiles at enemy targets, thus dramatically changing the face of warfare. Despite a

track record that is stained with the blood of innocent victims, drone technology is quickly becoming the weapon of choice for militaries around the globe , and it’s too late for the United States – presently the leader in UAV

technologies – to stop the rush, according to Defense One, a site devoted to security issues. Just a few countries now hold membership in the elite drone club, including the US, United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, Iran, Pakistan and China. Other countries, such as South Africa and India, are actively seeking to join. According to the RAND organization, however, another 23 countries “are developing or have developed” armed

drones. Experts point to China’s prowess in building knockoff drones, which are expected to flood the market very soon. “Once countries like China start exporting these, they’re going to be everywhere really quickly. Within the next 10 years, every country will have these,” Noel Sharkey, a robotics and artificial intelligence professor from the University of Sheffield, UK, told Defense One. “There’s nothing illegal about these unless you use them to attack other countries. Anything you can [legally] do with a fighter jet, you can do with a drone.”

xt—Drone Prolif InevitableIndia is ramping up its program now- importing from Israel Mallapur 2015 (Chaitanya; India tops list of drone-importing nations; May 4; www.indiatvnews.com/news/india/india-considered-top-as-drone-importing-nations-50428.html; kdf)

The decision by India's National Disaster Response Force to use drones to help Nepal map the scale of devastation

caused by last month's earthquake indicates how India has enthusiastically taken to these pilot-less aircraft -the so-called eyes in the sky. With 22.5 percent the world's unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) imports, between 1985 and

2014, India ranks first among drone-importing nations, followed by United Kingdom and France. UAVs, or drones as they are commonly known, are pilotless aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance, surveillance, intelligence gathering and aerial combat missions. The advantage of UAVs is that they come at a fraction of the cost of manned aircraft with no risk to human lives. The data here relate to drone/UAV transfers (imports/exports) between countries. There are also drones that have been indigenously developed, so the actual number of UAVs possessed by each nation may be different. A total of 1,574 UAV transfers have taken place across the world between 1985 and 2014. Of these, 16 are armed UAVs, according to data provided by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), an independent global conflict-research institute. UAV trade recorded an increase of 137 percent between 1985 and 2014. The period between 1985 and 1990 saw sales of 185 UAVs globally, which increased to 439 between 2010 and 2014. Egypt and Italy are among the other large importers. The last decade also registered sales of 16 armed UAVs. India's first UAV delivery came from Israel in 1998. The UK, on the other hand, imported its first UAV in 1972

from Canada. But Japan was the first country in the world to import a UAV, it got one from the US in 1968. India's UAV imports, have almost all been from Israel , according to SIPRI data. Of 176 UAVs, 108 are Searcher UAVs and 68 are Heron UAVs. Israel is the leading exporter of drones, accounting for 60.7 percent 1985 and 2014. The US, with a 23.9 percent of UAV exports, ranks second, followed by Canada with 6.4 percent. Israel shipped has shipped 783 drones since 1980.

Russian drone prolif nowCabural 2015 (Marie; Russia to build hundreds of drones for it's military by 2025; www.valuewalk.com/2015/05/russia-military-drones-2025/; kdf)

Russia is planning to build hundreds of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or drones for its military by 2025, according to RIA Novosti based on information from a representative from United Industrial Defense Corporation Oboronprom. The source said Russia plans to integrate the drones in its military to perform different functions. “By 2025, as a result of the implementation of [new] measures, the government will get several hundred modern, Russian-made unmanned aerial vehicles [UAVs] of various types. Most of them will be drones

used for short ranges, the most needed in [Russian] armed forces,” according to the source. The state-owned defense corporation will build the drones domestically in collaboration with JSC Vegas Radio Engineering, a company expert in surveillance devices. It is still uncertain as to when Russia plans to deploy its first batch of drones. Russia already completed R&D on drones Andrei Shibitov, deputy head of Russian Helicopters Company, a subsidiary United Industrial Defense Corporation Oboronprom recently stated

that the Russia’s Defense Ministry already ordered the tactical and technical characteristics of the new drones, which are currently under development. We’ve done all necessary R&D work and together with the Defense Ministry, we are going to work on UAVs weighing over 750 kilograms,” said Shibitov. He added that they were working on heavier types of drones. Earlier this year, the engineers at United Instrument Corporation, a unit of Rostec State Corporation developed a new concept for a two-ton drone,

which has the ability to transport personnel, supplies, reconnaissance equipment, and onboard weapons systems. Russia is expected to approve a prototype of the two-ton drone after conducting a series of tests this summer.

xt - No Escalation No risk of runaway drone norms

Lewis and Crawford 2013 “DRONES AND DISTINCTION: HOW IHL ENCOURAGED THE RISE OF DRONES”, http://www.law.georgetown.edu/academics/law-journals/gjil/recent/upload/zsx00313001127.PDF)

Before discussing the legal merits of the norms that the United States is shaping through its present conduct of drone warfare, it is

first necessary to dispel a pervasive misconception about drones that Alston and many other commentators have promulgated. That misconception is that the current manner in which the United States is using drones broadly justifies any use of drones by other countries against the United States and that drones represent a serious threat to the United States. 159 This misconception has spread so easily because the reciprocity theme is intuitively appealing and, to a point, legally correct . It is true that whatever legal basis the United

States offers for utilizing drones in Yemen, Pakistan, or Somalia must also be available to any other nation wishing to use drones

as well. However, that does not mean that drones will be appearing over New York City anytime soon , in

large part because drones are very vulnerable to air defense systems and signal interruption and because they are particularly unsuited to use by terror groups. 160 Even the most advanced drones that the United States possesses are relatively slow and vulnerable to fighters or surface-to-air missiles, meaning that, as conventional weapons, drones would have limited utility in a traditional state-on-state armed conflict . 161 Perhaps more importantly,

the physical realities associated with using drones makes them of limited usefulness to terrorists . Drones that are capable of carrying any significant payload need hard surfaced runways and significant maintenance support. Any drone returning to such facilities would be closely followed by U.S. forces, meaning that any drone used by terrorists would be a single strike proposition, and

quite an expensive one at that. Therefore, from a practical standpoint, car bombs, suicide bombs, and attacks on airliners remain by far the most credible threat to the United States, regardless of how it pursues its drone policy.

But the misconceptions concerning drones are not limited to the practical effects of U.S. drone policy. Legally, the United States’ position is not one of “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” 162

The “entitlement” to use drones, just like the entitlement to engage in any other action on the sovereign territory of another state, is largely based upon the consent of the nation in which drones are being used. It is clear that Yemen consented to the strikes undertaken on its territory. 163 This is supported by the WikiLeaks release of cables indicating

Yemeni government consent for the actions taken there. 164 Likewise, there is evidence that the Pakistani government has privately consented to most of the strikes that the States had conducted on its territory. 165 To the extent that the norm being shaped by U.S. behavior is limited to cases of consent, it is hard to see how the United States will one day be disadvantaged by that norm .

Outside of situations in which the host state consents to the strike, the United States has only asserted an “entitlement” to target al Qaeda in situations where the host state has proven itself to be unable or unwilling to incapacitate or expel al Qaeda from its territory. 166 It has long been established that states not involved in armed conflicts have a responsibility not to aid

either belligerent. 167 The United States’ position that the law of armed conflict allows it to conduct proportional strikes against al Qaeda targets within states that have proven themselves to be unable or unwilling to incapacitate or expel those targets cannot be fairly characterized as creating an “ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe.” 168

Drones Solve TerrorDrones stop terrorism Johnson and Sarbahi, April 21, 2015 (Patrick Johnson, a Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation. He specializes in terrorism, counterterrorism, and threat finance, with particular expertise on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Philippines. In addition to his RAND research, Johnston's research and commentary has been published or is forthcoming in a range of peer-reviewed journals, media outlets, and policy venues, including American Economic Review, International Security, The New York Times, Newsday, Security Studies, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Civil Wars, U.S. News & World Report, and congressional testimony on the Islamic State's financing. Before coming to RAND, Johnston completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Northwestern University and held fellowships at the Harvard Kennedy School, Stanford University, and the United States Institute of Peace, and Anoop K. Sarbahi, a visiting scholar in the Department of Political Science at Stanford. Previously, in addition to being a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford, Anoop has also held pre- and post-doctoral positions at Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his PhD in Political Science from UCLA in December 2011. He also holds an MPhil degree in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, “The Impact of U.S. Drone Strikes on Terrorism in

Pakistan,” Rand Corporation and University of Minnesota, http://patrickjohnston.info/materials/drones.pdf, Accessed: June 24, 2015, YDEL)

The first mechanism involves the “disruption” of militant operations. This disruption ¶ mechanism suggests drone strikes reduce militants’ ability to operate in a cohesive, ¶ efficient, manner and limit their ability to control local areas. Even if an insurgent¶ or terrorist organization is the only armed actor in an area, as is often the case in¶ FATA localities, the greater the threat drones pose, the harder it is for the militants ¶ to exercise direct control in that area . ¶ This runs counter to Kalyvas (2006), whose “logic of violence” predicts that¶ when insurgents are the sovereign in an area, insurgent violence will be absent, since¶ betraying an area’s sovereign carries prohibitive risks for civilians. This equilibrium¶ makes violence against civilians unnecessary for the sovereign. In this case, government¶ or U.S. forces seeking to root out militants from an area they control lack the¶ necessary information to target militants selectively. Kalyvas’ logic of violence suggests¶ counterterrorist operations would thus be likely to rely on indiscriminate force. Drones’¶ novel intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities change these dynamics¶ 10¶ in contemporary Pakistan vis-a-vis the earlier conflicts that Kalyvas seeks to explain.¶ Not only do drones enable the U.S. to collect information in denied areas where they ¶ have no ground presence—as is currently the case for the U.S. in Pakistan— but they ¶ can also credibly threaten to punish militants from afar, with lethal and discriminate ¶ force. ¶ Our argument is that, in this scenario, militant violence should decrease , both ¶ in terms of its frequency and its lethality. The reason is that drone strikes in an ¶ area represent a meaningful indication of an increased security risk to militants ¶ operating in that area. The increased risk associated with continuing to operate in the ¶ targeted areas should apply to any type of militant activity that is vulnerable to drone ¶ capabilities, including conducting terror attacks , regardless of whether militants would¶

otherwise conduct operations at their “average” rate and level of lethality (the null¶ hypothesis), or if they would otherwise escalate the frequency and lethality of their¶ operations to deter potential defectors (the alternative) “logic of violence” hypothesis.¶ We thus advance the

following hypothesis:¶ H2: All else equal, drone strikes decrease terrorist violence . ¶ We should note that there are a couple of other mechanisms that would be¶ consistent with this observable implication. First, there is a possibility that drone¶ strikes make the population more reticent to inform, and therefore reduce the need¶ for terrorist violence in retribution. If this were the case, we would expect to see a¶ relatively small number of drone strikes drying up the pool of available informers and¶ making additional drone strikes based on multi-source intelligence difficult. This is¶ not what we see—there have been over 350 drone strikes conducted in Pakistan’s¶ tribal areas since 2004–which is consistent with the disruption mechanism described¶ above. The disruption mechanism’s implication is that semi- frequent drone strikes are ¶ used to pursue persistent disruption of terrorist operations . This is consistent with ¶ the empirical record. Second, it can be argued that recent technological advancement,¶ 11¶ including the use of drones and tracking of cellular and satellite phones, has enabled¶ counterinsurgents to reduce their reliance on human intelligence. This not only implies¶ that there are fewer potential targets for insurgents, and that civilians have more¶ credible basis for ‘deniability’, but it also implies that if insurgents kill more civilians,¶ they are more likely to make mistakes, which would be counterproductive ¶

Turn: Drone expansion good – ISISDrone sales key to crush ISISTucker and Weisgerber 2015 (Patrick and Marcus; Obama to Sell Armed Drones to More Countries; Feb 17; www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/02/obama-sell-armed-drones-more-countries/105495/; kdf)

The State Department on Tuesday announced that the United States would be expanding the sale of armed unmanned aerial

vehicles, or UAVs, to carefully selected allied countries. The announcement suggests that strategic partners – especially

in the Middle East — could acquire American-made armed drones before the year is out. Some of those could go toward the

international campaign against the Islamic State, or ISIS. Battlefield commanders and the intelligence community are hungry for large, armed drones as they could loiter over targets for hours. The footage captured by high-powered cameras attached to these unmanned aircraft has been critical in determining the locations for airstrikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, U.S. officials say. State Department officials maintained that every export request would meet “a strong presumption of denial,” according to Tuesday’s release, but U.S. officials will allow exports on “’rare occasions’ that are justified in terms of the nonproliferation and export control factors specified in the [Missile Technology Control Regime Guidelines.]” The Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, is a voluntary partnership that the United States and 33 other countries established in 1987 to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Officials who spoke to the Washington Post said that new export applications would be approved or denied within months of receipt, clearing the way for armed drones and armed drone technology to potentially arrive in other countries by year’s end. The new policy affects drones that are capable of flying a distance of 300 kilometers and carrying a payload of 500 kilograms. Those specifications come from the MTCR but apply to drones like the Reaper, which

are capable of carrying laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles. Exporting more drones—either armed or outfitted with laser targeting

systems for smart bombs—to key allies and partners in the Middle East like Jordan would help them strike Islamic State, according to experts. “Transferring drones, particularly those that had laser designators so they could designate targets for strikes from manned fighter aircraft, to coalition partners such as Jordan participating in strikes against ISIL could be a significant advantage to them,” Paul Scharre, fellow and director of the 20YY Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American Security, told Defense One. Earlier this year, a member of the House Armed Services Committee disclosed to the Washington Times that the Obama administration had denied a request from Jordan for unarmed Predator spy drones. But that was before Jordan stepped up its F-16-led air assault to retaliate against Islamic State for the brutal burning alive of First Lt. Moaz al-Kasasbeh, the Jordanian pilot captured by the terrorist group. “Given our mutual interests, and our strong relationship, it’s absolutely critical that we provide Jordan the support needed to defeat the Islamic State,” Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif.,

wrote to President Obama in a Feb. 5 letter. The loosened export rules do not mean that every ally in a pinch will be fast-tracked for the most lethal drones that America produces. Ukraine is reportedly seeking unarmed drones to bolster its campaign against Russian-supported separatists. “I find it hard to imagine that this would lead to transferring large-scale armed drones to Ukraine, not to mention the fact that they would likely have difficulty operating them effectively. This might help pave the way for transferring small, tactical drones to Ukrainian forces, which wouldn’t be a game-changer, but would help them with tactical reconnaissance and would be a

sensible move,” said Scharre. “The new drone export policy is unlikely to lead to the transfer of armed drones to Ukraine,” Michael Horowitz, associate professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, told Defense One. Horowitz and other experts argue that the policy change could allow the U.S. to regain some control if not over armed proliferation at least over how proliferation occurs. Last May, the Chinese Times reported that China would be selling their Wing Loong armed UAV, sometime called a Predator knockoff, to U.S. ally Saudi Arabia.

ISIS will get nuclear and chemical weaponsCirincione 2014 (Joe [president of Ploughshares Fund, a global security foundation]; ISIS will be in position to get nuclear weapons if allowed to consolidate power, resources, says expert; www.nydailynews.com/news/world/isis-nukes-allowed-consolidate-expert-article-1.1958855; kdf)

The risk of a terrorist attack using nuclear or chemical weapons has just gone up . ISIS is willing to kill large numbers of innocents, and it has added three capabilities that catapult the threat beyond anything seen before: control of large, urban

territories, huge amounts of cash, and a global network of recruits. British Home Secretary Theresa May warned that if ISIS consolidates its control over the land it occupies, “We will see the world’s first truly terrorist state” with “the space to plot attacks against us.” Its seizure of banks and oil fields gave it more than $2 billion in assets. If ISIS could make the right connection to corrupt officials in Russia or Pakistan, the group might be able to buy enough highly enriched uranium (about 50 pounds) and the technical help to build a crude nuclear device. Militants recruited from

Europe or America could help smuggle it into their home nations. Or ISIS could try to build a “dirty bomb,” conventional explosives like dynamite laced with highly radioactive materials. The blast would not kill

many directly, but it would force the evacuation of tens of square blocks contaminated with radioactive particles. The terror and economic consequences of a bomb detonated in the financial districts of London or New York would be enormous. ISIS could also try to get chemical weapons, such as deadly nerve gases or mustard gas. Fortunately, the most likely source of these terror weapons was just eliminated. The Obama administration struck a deal with Syrian President Bashar Assad that has now destroyed the 1,300 tons of chemical bombs Assad built. Without this deal, ISIS would likely already have these weapons. There are two good answers to these threats. First, drain the swamp: Secure or eliminate the materials ISIS would need to build terror bombs. Second, deter any attack by making sure ISIS knows our retribution would be swift, certain and devastating.

Turn: Indefinite DetentionThe alternative to drones is boots on the ground, results in indefinite detention—turns the affByman 2013 (Daniel [Professor in the Security Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution]; Why Drones Work; July/ August; kdf)

Of course, it was a Navy SEAL team and not a drone strike that finally got bin Laden, but in many cases in which the United States needs to capture or eliminate an enemy, raids are too risky and costly. And even if a raid results in a successful capture, it begets another problem: what to do with the detainee. Prosecuting detainees in a federal or military court is difficult because often the intelligence against terrorists is inadmissible or using it risks jeopardizing sources and

methods. And given the fact that the United States is trying to close, rather than expand, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, it has become much harder to justify holding suspects indefinitely. It has become more politically palatable for the United States to kill rather than detain suspected terrorists.

AT: Drones kill civiliansDrones save more lives than they harm Weiner and Sherman 2014 (Robert and Tom; Drones spare troops, have powerful impact; Oct 9; www.utsandiego.com/news/2014/oct/09/drones-troops-impact/; kdf)

A note from Osama bin Laden discovered at his Abbottabad residence by U.S. Seal Team Six during the U.S. raid on May 2, 2011, revealed, “Brothers said they were frankly exhausted from the enemy’s air bombardments.” Osama bin Laden hated drones, because they work. Drones save American troops from risk of death, kill far fewer civilians than ground troops operations, and make our military more effective against enemy combatants . Regardless, drones are often decried by many liberals as too invasive, too impersonal and too deadly to innocent civilians. Southern California has been a national leader of the drone industry, ever since the San Diego-based General Atomics pioneered the first Predator drone development more than two decades ago. Currently, 13 California drone manufacturers operate across the state, including 3D Robotics of San Diego and Datron Communication Systems of Vista. Pentagon officials initially purchased 10 drones from General Atomics — that number has now swelled to over 10,000 drones currently under Pentagon control, according to The Washington Post, and unknown numbers in CIA hands; a Defense News report estimates at least 80. “The defense industry has been a huge incubator of jobs in California, especially Southern California,” said Assemblyman Steven Bradford, D-Gardena, last year. “We want these well-paying, high-tech manufacturing jobs to continue to grow here in California.” Californians, whether liberal or conservative, should champion drone programs that save American troops from having a larger footprint and having to put their lives in danger in foreign territories. Drones reduce ground troops, yet they have as powerful an

impact. Hillary Clinton points out, in her recent memoir “Hard Choices,” that during her tenure as secretary of state, drone programs were “one of the most effective and controversial elements of the Obama administration’s strategy against Al Qaeda and like-minded terrorists … bin Laden himself worried about the heavy losses that drones were inflicting.” It is a key plus for drones that U.S. troops are three times safer from friendly fire attacks when deployed in war zones covered by drones compared with traditional warfare. During the Gulf War, American casualties totaled 382 in-theater deaths, of which nearly 62 percent were due to either friendly fire or other accidents, according to Navy research. However, during the current age of drones, only 21.5 percent of casualties are classified as “non-hostile,” according to Pentagon stats. America and our allies are sometimes literally our own worst enemy on the battlefield. Drones protect our troops from their own traditional battlefield errors. In a letter to President Obama in 2012, 25 congressmen stated, “We are concerned that the use of such “signature” strikes could raise the risk of killing innocent civilians or individuals who may have

no relationship to attacks on the United States.” They are just wrong. In fact, it is a myth that drones disproportionately kill civilians. After a review of the deaths inflicted by American drones since 2004, the Pakistani Defense Ministry concluded that citizen fatalities occurred at a rate of 3 percent of total kills — a total of 67 innocent civilians.

Drones strikes are necessary in the war on terror- they are cost-effective, efficient, and reduce civilian deathsBadway and BILODEAU 14- contributors at SAIS Europe

(Aaron, Cloe, US Drone Strikes: Beneficial to US Security, http://saisobserver.org/2014/04/14/us-drone-strikes-beneficial-to-us-security/) JB

First, drone strikes are necessary. The US faces a real threat from terrorist groups like al al-Qaida, which actively recruit individuals in remote areas to attack US citizens. These groups currently kill civilians whom they perceive to be threats to their ideology, while promoting the notion that the US is an enemy of Islam. Further, while the US funds development and capacity building programs in both

Pakistan and Yemen, drone strikes ensure these programs can be implemented. They are therefore necessary to US security and complementary to development initiatives aiming to stem terrorism . Second, drone strikes are effective. Drone attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia have killed approximately 3500 militants, including top leaders, and reduced these groups’ communication networks and recruitment mechanisms. Bin Laden himself stated that al-Qaida would not be able to fight repeated drone strikes against their leadership. In Pakistan, strikes have disrupted threats to the US and reduced the violence of the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida. There is no evidence that drone strikes

create more terrorism against the US, but a lot of data suggests that drone strikes dismantle militant networks. Additionally, drone strikes are cost-efficient. The US can now sustain a longer-term presence in remote areas than was not

possible using conventional warfare tactics. This poses a blow to terrorists’ long-term strategy . The drone program costs around one percent of the US military budget, compared to ground troops or manned aerial vehicles which can cost between six

to 42 times more. Drone strikes also reduce civilian deaths. Drones kill fewer foreign civilians as a percentage of total fatalities than any other military weapon. The New America Foundation estimates civilian casualties caused by drones are around six to 17 percent. This low number has decreased as drones become more precise. Further, drones have reduced

terrorist groups’ ability to kill civilians in their home countries. Drone strikes are also more humane than relying on the Pakistani or Yemeni militaries, which have a history of unprofessionalism and of human rights violations. Civilians do not flee from drones en masse, but whenever the Yemeni military launches an offensive against terrorist strongholds, civilians leave by the thousands.

Drones are very effective in combatting terrorism and don’t kill many civiliansWSJ 10

(WSJ, The Drone Wars, http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704130904574644632368664254) JB

The Obama Administration has with good reason taken flak for its approach to terrorism since the Christmas Day near-bombing over Detroit. So permit us to laud an antiterror success in the Commander in Chief's first year in office. Though you won't hear him brag about it, President

Obama has embraced and ramped up the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones. As tactic and as a technology, drones are one of the main U.S. advantages that have emerged from this long war. (IEDs are one of the

enemy's.) Yet their use isn't without controversy, and it took nerve for the White House to approve some 50 strikes last year, exceeding the total in the last three years of the Bush Administration. Supporters of Pakistani Labour Party rally against the United States and

drone attacks on militants in Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghanistan border. From Pakistan to Yemen, Islamic terrorists now fear the Predator and its cousin, the better-armed Reaper. So do critics on the left in the academy, media and

United Nations; they're calling drones an unaccountable tool of "targeted assassination" that inflames anti-American

passions and kills civilians. At some point, the President may have to defend the drone campaign on military and legal grounds. The case is easy. Not even the critics deny its success against terrorists. Able to go where American soldiers can't, the Predator and Reaper have since 9/11 killed more than half of the 20 most wanted al Qaeda suspects, the Uzbek, Yemeni and Pakistani heads of allied groups and hundreds of militants. Most of those hits were in the last four years. "Very frankly, it's the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership," CIA Director Leon Panetta noted last May. The agency's own troubles with gathering human intelligence were exposed by last week's deadly bombing attack on the CIA station near Khost, Afghanistan. Critics such as counterinsurgency writers David Kilcullen and Andrew Exum allege that drones have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians. The U.N. Human Rights Council's investigator on extrajudicial executions, Philip Alston, has warned the Administration that the attacks could fall afoul of "international humanitarian law

principles." Civilian casualties are hard to verify, since independent observers often can't access the bombing sites, and estimates vary widely. But Pakistani government as well as independent studies have shown the Taliban claims are wild exaggerations. The civilian toll is relatively low, especially if compared with previous conflicts .

AT: Economy Advantage

Link TurnThe plan creates uncertainty within the industry -- derails growth Koebler 2013 (Jason; Drone Industry: Privacy 'Distractions' Could Have Major Economic Impacts; Mar 13; http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/03/13/drone-industry-privacy-distractions-could-have-major-economic-impacts; kdf)

A new report released by a drone industry trade group suggests that using unmanned planes in the United States could create more than 70,000 jobs and $82 billion in economic impact over the next few years. But the head of the

organization warns that "privacy distractions" could derail the industry. The report, released Tuesday by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, suggests that most of the impact will come within the first three years of commercial integration of drones—tentatively set by the Federal Aviation Administration to occur in 2015—and that drones will most commonly be used in agricultural settings and for public safety reasons. [READ: Hagel Orders Review of 'Drone Medal'] So far, at least 31 states are considering legislation that would limit the use of drones, and a bill in Virginia that would put a two-year moratorium on drone use is waiting to be signed by governor Bob

McDonnell. Many of the bills being considered have been championed by civil liberties groups such as the ACLU

and would put severe limits on the commercial use of drones in those states. Some proposed bills would require police to get a search warrant before operating a drone . Most of the proposed bills, according to

Michael Toscano, president and CEO of AUVSI, would delay or diminish the positive economic impacts that the drone industry can have in a state. "This privacy stuff is a distraction," he says. "Look how much energy we're spending on that. It has the ability to affect things going forward."

Current laws on drones are sufficient, the plan destroys the industryBerry 2014 (Michael [partner in the Philadelphia office of Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz LLP]; THE DRONES ARE COMING: ... AND FOR NOW WE SHOULD GET OUT OF THEIR WAY; 36 Pennsylvania Lawyer 50; kdf)

In the meantime state and local governments around the country have begun to consider drone legislation. By the end of 2013, 43 states, including Pennsylvania, had considered drone legislation, with nine passing laws. All nine of those states have placed restrictions on the

government's use of drones. Most of those laws regulate law enforcement, permitting drones to be used only in limited circumstances such as when the police have a warrant or an exception to the warrant requirement applies. Three states have placed limits on the private use of drones. Oregon allows private property owners to file suit against drone operators under certain circumstances if the drones are flown less than 400 feet above their property. Texas allows people and companies to use drones to capture images in some circumstances (such as for scholarly research, mapping land or monitoring gas utilities). But Texas law makes it a crime to use a drone to capture an image of a person or private property "with the intent to conduct surveillance." Idaho has gone even farther, banning people from using drones to photograph or film others without their consent for the purpose of publication. Pennsylvania should not rush to follow these states' examples of restricting private drone use. The Texas and Idaho laws pose serious constitutional questions. People can take photographs of others in places where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, whether their subjects consent or not. This principle is deeply etched into the law and has proven essential to newsgathering and reporting on matters of

public concern. Legislators should not trample this fundamental legal principle. Second, these laws are unnecessary here. Pennsylvania already has a number of laws in place to protect people against the harms those other states are seeking to prevent. For example, our stalking, harassment and "Peeping Tom" laws already make it illegal for people to use drones in potentially nefarious ways. If someone believes he or she has been victimized by a drone, Pennsylvania already provides an array of remedies. Some examples: If a person claims that a drone operator invaded his or her privacy by filming the person in a private place, the person would have a remedy through a claim for an intrusion. If that private footage were then tortiously broadcast, the person could file a claim for publication of private facts. Similarly, if a person were physically injured by someone's drone, that person could file a claim for battery. And if a person claims that drones are interfering

with enjoyment of his or her property, that [*54] person can file a claim for nuisance. When it comes to private use of drones, there is simply no need to rush to pass new state laws. Finally, rushing to enact new laws could threaten to extinguish the nascent drone industry before it gets off the ground and before we fully understand drones' potential uses and benefits. We should see how drones develop, what we learn from the FAA

test sites and what rules the FAA proposes and implements. We should not act before we have a more complete record. In the meantime, if problems arise, we should allow existing laws to do their job. Drones are coming. As they begin to arrive, let's monitor their progress and get out of their way for now.

Impact DThe US isn’t key to the global economy Kenny 2015 (Charles; Why the Developing World Won't Catch the U.S. Economy's Cold; May 4; www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-04/why-the-developing-world-won-t-catch-the-u-s-economy-s-cold; kdf)

Last week the U.S. Commerce Department announced that first-quarter GDP growth for 2015 was an anemic 0.2 percent. This immediately sparked fears that a U.S. slowdown could lead to a global recession . But the cliché about America sneezing and the rest of the world catching the cold doesn’t hold like it used to . The U.S. isn’t as

contagious as it was, and developing countries in particular are far more robust to economic shocks. That’s good

news for everyone. It means less volatility in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, which contributes to happier people, greater political

stability, and stronger long-term growth—all of which should help lift the U.S. out of its own doldrums. A team of IMF researchers has looked at the long-term record of the world’s economies when it comes to growth and recession . They measured how long economies expanded without interruption, as well as the depth and length of downturns. Over the past two decades, low and middle-income economies have spent more time in expansions, while downturns and recoveries have become shallower and shorter. This suggests countries have become more resilient to shocks. In the 1970s and '80s, the median developing economy took more than 10 years after a downturn to recover to the GDP per capita it had prior to that slump. By the early 2000s, that recovery time had dropped to two years. In the 1970s and '80s, countries of the developing world spent more than a third of their time in downturns, but by the 2000s they spent 80 percent of their time in expansions. The first decade of the 21st century was the first time that developing economies saw more expansion and shorter downturns than did advanced economies: Median growth in the developing world was at its highest since 1950 and volatility at its lowest. Developing countries still face a larger risk of deeper recession when terms of trade turn against them, capital flows dry up, or advanced economies enter recessions themselves. But the scale of that risk has diminished. That’s because low and middle-income economies have introduced policy reforms that increase resilience: flexible exchange rates, inflation targeting, and lower debt. Economies with inflation-targeting regimes see recovery periods less than a third as long as economies without targeting, for example. Larger reserves are associated with longer expansions. And median reserves in developing countries more than doubled as a percentage of GDP between the 1990s and 2010. Median external debt has dropped from 60 percent to 35 percent of GDP over that same period. Such policy changes account for two-thirds of the increased recession-resilience of developing countries since the turn of the century, suggest the IMF researchers—leaving external factors, such as positive terms of trade, accounting for just one-third. That’s good news for the developing world—not least because volatile growth is particularly bad for poorer people, who are most at risk of falling into malnutrition or being forced to take children out of school, which has long-term consequences for future earnings. That might help explain the relationship between growth volatility, slower reductions in poverty, and rising inequality. Sudden negative income shocks can also be a factor in sparking violence: When rains fail, the risk of civil war in Africa spikes, and when coffee prices in Colombia fall, municipalities cultivating more coffee see increased drug-related conflict. The African analysis suggests that a five percentage-point drop in income growth is associated with a 10 percent increase in the risk of civil conflict in the following

year. Finally, because volatility increases the uncertainty attached to investments, it can also be a drag on overall long-term economic performance. Viktoria Hnatkovska and Norman Loayza of the World Bank estimated that moving from a comparatively stable to a relatively volatile growth trajectory is associated with a drop in average annual growth of as much as 2 percent

of GDP. Lower volatility in the developing world and its associated long-term growth performance is also good news for the U.S. A strong global economy is still a positive force for growth in every country, including developed nations. And with the developing world accounting for about one-third of trade and GDP at market rates, as well as three-fifths of U.S. exports, its role in

supporting American economic performance has never been greater. Those hoping for a recovery in U.S. output should be grateful for stronger economic immune systems in the rest of the world.

AT: Privacy Advantage

1NC – No Impact – No Right to PrivacyThere is no engrained right to privacyGallington 2014 (Daniel J; Uncle Sam's Right to Know The right to privacy has never been unconditional; Oct 20; www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2014/10/20/you-have-no-absolute-right-to-privacy-including-in-your-data-encryption; kdf)

Technically, such a capability is not all that difficult – however, the policy and legal aspects of such technologies are the most perplexing. To begin with, do we have the right to keep any information we choose private from everybody, including the government? If we do, then the

technologies – and private companies that implemented this principle – would simply be an exercise of that right. However, we don’t have and never have had, even in our unique democratic society, that broad and unconditional right of privacy. Nevertheless, we sometimes forget this, especially in today’s information-focused age with its heightened awareness of individual

privacy. Ironically perhaps, but especially in discussions such as these, I’m always reminded of the wisdom of my late mother: One day she and I were watching a report on privacy and so-called government snooping . And

my mom said, “I don’t think the government should be listening to anyone’s telephone conversations.” I

responded, “OK, mom, but what about terrorists, spies and kidnappers?” She thought about it for a second and said, “Well, those kind of people … for sure." Sounds like my mom and the FBI director, who also was the former deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, are in basic agreement on this issue – as I’m sure most thoughtful people would be.

1NC—No Impact – Nothing To HideIf you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry aboutHuffington Post 2011 (Google CEO On Privacy (VIDEO): 'If You Have Something You Don't Want Anyone To Know, Maybe You Shouldn't Be Doing It'; May 25; www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/07/google-ceo-on-privacy-if_n_383105.html; kdf)

Yahoo, Verizon, Sprint, and others have recently come under fire for sharing customer data with the authorities, and admitting to "spying"

abilities that would "shock" and "confuse" customers. A CNBC interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt suggests the search giant Google shouldn't get off easy, and users should be wary of what Google knows about them -- and with whom they can share that information. CNBC's Mario Bartiromo asked CEO Schmidt in her December 3, 2009 interview: "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they?" Schmidt's reply hints that if there's scandalous information out there

about you, it's your problem, not Google's. Schmidt tells Baritoromo: If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. He expands on his answer, adding that the your information could be made available not only to curious searchers or prying friends, but also to the authorities, and that there's little recourse for people worried about unintentionally "oversharing" online: But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And [...] we're all subject, in the US, to the Patriot Act, and it is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities. Leaked documents revealing Yahoo's guide for law enforcement officials, which explains how they can obtain consumer data, highlights the type of information internet companies may have about their users -- and can share with the authorities. Silicon Alley Insider notes, For example, Yahoo's document helpfully alerts law enforcement that if they'd like to read a user's instant messanger logs, they better ask within 45 days and come bearing a 2703(d) order. That is, unless there's "imminent danger of death or serious physical injury." If that's the case, there's another letter to fax entirely See a video clip of Schmidt's below.

1NC - Drones solve the affDrone expansion results in broader 4th amendment rights and solves all crimeMorrison 2015 (Caren Myers [Associate Professor, Georgia State University College of Law]; DR. PANOPTICON, OR, HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE DRONE; 27 J. Civ. Rts. & Econ. Dev. 747; kdf)

B. What Universal Surveillance Might Bring Of course, universal drone surveillance might simply be overlaid upon current discriminatory practices. Even if the (mostly) white and middle class started to get a taste of being constantly scrutinized,

there is no assurance that empathy and reform would necessarily follow. Those with political power would probably be more likely to complain of the encroachment on their own privacy than to use it as an opportunity to reconsider all the ways in which the Fourth Amendment, as interpreted, has failed others. As a historical moment, we've been somewhere like this before: with the advent of wiretapping technology. n88 At the time, the middle class was outraged at the idea that the government might be able to listen to their private telephone calls. n89 The year after the passage of Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control Act of 1968, which allowed for and regulated wiretaps, one commentator asked, "can one fairly characterize the idea of law enforcement officers secretly and pervasively monitoring the homes, offices, and meeting places of the citizenry in search of proof of crime as

anything less than deeply offensive to the values of a decent society?" n90 In [*763] much the same way, at the oral argument in United States v. Jones, the Justices were appalled by the thought that the police could potentially attach GPS trackers to the Justices' own cars. n91 The outrage against Title III did not translate into reform of many police practices that violated the privacy of the politically and economically disadvantaged. But Title III was passed before the ramifications of Terry v. Ohio, which approved stop and frisk practices, n92 were fully felt. It was before the Court decided Michigan v. Chesternut, which held that people on the street have no expectation of privacy against police inquiries, even if those inquiries include chasing someone down the street in a police cruiser, n93 and Whren v. United States, which held that if the police have probable cause for a traffic stop, that stop is lawful even if motivated by other, possibly discriminatory reasons, n94 and Illinois v. Wardlow, which held that flight from the police in a "high crime area" is enough to justify a stop, n95 and all the other cases that allowed

"race-dependent decision making to become a normal part of police practice." n96 It could be that we are more aware of the differential impact of police practices today than we were in 1968. The short-lived district court case holding that New York City's stop and frisk practices violated the Fourth Amendment may reflect this. n97 "No one should live in fear of being stopped whenever he leaves his home to go about the activities of daily life," wrote Judge Scheindlin. "Those who are routinely subjected to stops are overwhelmingly people of color, and they are justifiably troubled to be singled out when many of them have done nothing to attract the

unwanted attention." n98 We obviously need a new way of policing the streets, investigating crime, and keeping the public safe. If we turned to the universal surveillance that drones could technically provide, could the very omniscience of such a system make the entire enterprise more egalitarian? [*764] There is

something else too. Unlike wiretapping, which focuses only on specific suspects, drones and their capacity for universal surveillance evoke what one commentator called "the idolatrous dream of omniperception embodied in the panopticon." n99 In simpler terms, drones contain the promise that somehow, with the right tools, we could achieve perfect knowledge. If there were a record of everything that ever happened, we could know the truth. We could know what really happened between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman

on that night in February 2012. n100 We would be able to solve all the unsolved shootings and disappearances and faulty eyewitness identifications. n101 So much of what happens out in the world is a mystery. People are abducted, raped, shot. Other people are accused of these misdeeds, sometimes convicted and executed for them, sometimes wrongfully. We never really know.

If there is a seductive quality to the seamless surveillance of the future, it is that we wouldn't make these mistakes again.

Warrants BadRequiring warrants in the instance of drones is non-senseMcNeal 2014 (Gregory [prof at Pepperdine University]; Drones and Aerial surveillance: Considerations for Legislators; Nov; www.brookings.edu/research/reports2/2014/11/drones-and-aerial-surveillance; kdf)

Legislators should reject calls for a blanket requirement that all drone use be accompanied by a warrant. If legislators forgo the property rights approach detailed in Part A. above, they should eschew proposals that require warrants for the use of

drones. Such prohibitions are overbroad and ill-advised.[50] Legislation that requires warrants for drones treats the information from a drone differently than information gathered from a manned aircraft ,

differently than that gathered by a police officer in a patrol car, or even from an officer on foot patrol. Under current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, police are not required to shield their eyes from wrongdoing until they have a warrant. Why impose such a requirement on the collection of information by drones? Much of the anti-drone activists efforts are aimed at

the threat of persistent and pervasive surveillance of the population by the government, an understandable fear. But what is an unreasonable fear, and should not work its way into legislation, is a ban on ordinary aerial observations that are only controversial because they take place with a remote controlled helicopter rather than a manned one. If anybody in a Cessna can see the pollution pouring from a factory, or if the police flying in a helicopter can see a cartel’s drug operations or human trafficking ring --- and such observations can be admitted as evidence in a criminal trial, shouldn’t citizens and the police be able to make the same observations and expect that the evidence won’t be excluded merely because it is collected with a remote control aircraft? For example, imagine a police officer was on patrol in her patrol car. While driving, she witnesses the car in front of her strike a pedestrian and speed off. Until witnessing the crime she did not have probable cause (the predicate level of suspicion for a warrant), or even reasonable suspicion (the predicate level of suspicion for a brief investigatory stop) to believe the vehicle in front of her would be involved in a

crime. Let’s further assume that her dash camera recorded the entire incident. Nonetheless, that dashcam video may be used as evidence against the driver in a subsequent criminal proceeding. However, under broadly worded proposals that have been introduced in many state legislatures and the U.S. Congress, the same piece of evidence if gathered by a drone would be inadmissible in court because police did not have a warrant. Consider another example. Police receive an anonymous tip that someone is growing marijuana in their backyard. A police officer attempts to view the backyard from the ground but his view is blocked by a 10 foot tall fence. The officer next decides to fly a commercially available remote controlled helicopter[51] over the backyard and from a vantage point that does not violate FAA regulations observes marijuana plants growing in the yard. This observation would be unlawful under proposals that require a warrant for observations from a drone. However, these facts are nearly identical to the facts in the Supreme Court’s 1986 California v. Ciraolo[52] decision which upheld aerial surveillance (discussed above). The only difference is that in Ciraolo, the officer flew over the backyard in an airplane, rather than using a drone. In fact, in Ciraolo the Court noted that not only would observation of the marijuana plants from the air (as described above) be lawful, police officers peering over the fence from the top of a police truck would also be behaving lawfully, and by extension, observation of the marijuana plants by police from the third floor of a neighboring home would also be lawful. But under proposals requiring a warrant for observations by a drone, this evidence would be inadmissible. The examples above raise questions about what public policy goals are advanced by the suppression of evidence of a crime when documented by a drone, when the same evidence if recorded by a dashcam, observed from an airplane, or viewed from a

neighboring home would be admissible in court. Such examples highlight the requiring warrants for evidence gathered by drones, when other methods of gathering the same evidence would not require a warrant.

Drones good – laundry list Drones are necessary to protect the border, stop trafficking, and find missing personsWhitlock and Timberg 2014 (Craig [covers the Pentagon and national security] and Craig [National tech reporter]; Border-patrol drones being borrowed by other agencies more often than previously known; Jan 14; www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/border-patrol-drones-being-borrowed-by-other-agencies-more-often-than-previously-known/2014/01/14/5f987af0-7d49-11e3-9556-4a4bf7bcbd84_story.html; kdf)

Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies are increasingly borrowing border-patrol drones for domestic surveillance operations, newly released records show, a harbinger of what is expected to become the commonplace use

of unmanned aircraft by police. Customs and Border Protection, which has the largest U.S. drone fleet of its kind outside the

Defense Department, flew nearly 700 such surveillance missions on behalf of other agencies from 2010 to 2012, according to flight logs released recently in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier

Foundation, a civil-liberties group. The records show that the border- patrol drones are being commissioned by other agencies more often than previously known. Most of the missions are performed for the Coast Guard, the Drug Enforcement Administration and immigration authorities. But they also aid in disaster relief and in the search for marijuana crops, methamphetamine labs and missing persons, among other missions not directly related to border protection. Because they have sophisticated cameras and can remain in flight for many hours at a time, drones create novel privacy challenges. Civil libertarians have argued that these aircraft could lead to persistent visual surveillance of Americans on private property. Government lawyers have argued, however, that there is no meaningful legal distinction between the use of unmanned and piloted aircraft for surveillance. Hundreds of missions The issue has become a hot topic in Congress; the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the subject Wednesday. For now, drone flights in the United States are tightly restricted for safety reasons. Other than the military, Customs and Border Protection is one of the few agencies permitted by the Federal Aviation Administration to fly unmanned aircraft on a daily basis within the country’s borders. As a result, Customs and Border Protection is facing heavy demand to fly its unarmed drones to benefit other law enforcement agencies that lack their own. In 2010, for example, Customs and Border Protection conducted 76 drone missions for other agencies. The next year, that number quadrupled, and it remained at nearly the same level in 2012. Although the border agency has acknowledged that it flies drones for other law-enforcement departments, it has revealed little about the number and precise nature of the missions. All told, Customs and Border Protection flew 687 drone missions for other agencies from 2010 to 2012, according to the records provided to the San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation. Last summer, the border agency released a batch of records indicating that it had flown fewer than 500 missions during that period. Officials offered no explanation for why the earlier release of documents was incomplete. Congress has directed the FAA to gradually open the national airspace to public and commercial drone traffic in the coming years. In the meantime, however, there is a huge, unfed appetite among police agencies for drones and their powerful surveillance tools, which include infrared cameras and specialized radar. Customs and Border Protection has a fleet of 10 unarmed Predator B drones. They are virtually identical to an Air Force drone known as the Reaper. Both are manufactured by General Atomics, a major drone

producer based in Southern California. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies have their own drones, but they are more rudimentary than those operated by Customs and Border Protection . The Defense Department is prohibited from using its drones in the United States for law enforcement

Drones Good- War on DrugsDrones are critical to fighting the war on drugs Heverly 2015 (Robert A [Associate Professor of Law, Albany Law School]; Game of Drones: The Uses and Potential Abuses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the U.S. and Abroad: ARTICLE: THE STATE OF DRONES: STATE AUTHORITY TO REGULATE DRONES; 8 Alb. Gov't L. Rev. 29; kdf)

Drones come in a variety of shapes and sizes, and with varying abilities and configurations. n21 Some of the best known drone technologies are the military drones used in foreign countries to seek out and kill terrorists. n22 It is these drones that people react to most negatively, especially when non-combatants and innocent civilians die either as collateral damage in a successful drone attack, or by mistake when either drone technology or human intelligence kill people not intentionally targeted. n23 Military drones of this type are often fixed wing aircraft, relatively large, with the ability to carry heavy payloads. n24 Payloads may include rockets and other weapons, as well as electronics and surveillance technologies. n25 With names like "Predator" and "Reaper," these drones can be found in the skies in a number of foreign countries and are now being deployed to strategic missions within the United States. n26

Domestic missions are said to be primarily surveillance missions, including patrolling the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, and also tracking drug traffickers attempting to bring illicit drugs into the United States. n27

Unchecked violence causes nuclear terror AND collapses the economy

Metz 2014(Stephen, Strategic Horizons: All Options Bad If Mexico's Drug Violence Expands to U.S., February 19, www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/13576/strategic-horizons-all-options-bad-if-mexico-s-drug-violence-expands-to-u-s)

Over the past few decades, violence in Mexico has reached horrific levels, claiming the lives of 70,000 as criminal organizations fight each other for control of the drug trade and wage war on the Mexican police, military, government officials and anyone else unlucky enough to get caught in the crossfire.

The chaos has spread southward, engulfing Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. Americans must face the possibility that the conflict may also expand northward, with intergang warfare, assassinations of government officials and outright terrorism in the United States. If so, this will force Americans to undertake a fundamental reassessment of the threat, possibly redefining it as a

security issue demanding the use of U.S. military power. One way that large-scale drug violence might move to the United States is if the cartels miscalculate and think they can intimidate the U.S. government or strike at American targets safely from a Mexican sanctuary. The most likely candidate would be the group known as the Zetas. They were created when elite government anti-drug commandos switched sides in the drug war, first serving as mercenaries for the Gulf Cartel and then becoming a powerful cartel in their own right. The Zetas used to recruit mostly ex-military and ex-law enforcement members in large part to maintain discipline and control. But the pool of soldiers and policemen willing to join the narcotraffickers was inadequate to fuel the group’s ambition. Now the Zetas are tapping a very different,

much larger, but less disciplined pool of recruits in U.S. prisons and street gangs. This is an ominous turn of events. Since intimidation through extreme violence is a trademark of the Zetas, its spread to the United States raises the possibility of large-scale violence on American soil. As George Grayson of the College of William and Mary put it, “The Zetas are determined to gain the reputation of being the most sadistic, cruel and beastly organization that ever existed.” And without concern for extradition,

which helped break the back of the Colombian drug cartels, the Zetas show little fear of the United States government, already having ordered direct violence against American law enforcement. Like the Zetas, most of the other Mexican cartels are expanding their operations inside the United States. Only a handful of U.S. states are free of them today. So far the cartels don’t appear

directly responsible for large numbers of killings in the United States, but as expansion and reliance on undisciplined recruits looking to make a name for themselves through ferocity continue, the chances of miscalculation or violent freelancing by a cartel affiliate mount. This could potentially move beyond intergang warfare to the killing of U.S. officials or outright terrorism like the car bombs that drug cartels used in Mexico and Colombia. In an assessment for the U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, Robert Bunker and John Sullivan considered narcotrafficker car bombs inside the United States to be unlikely but not impossible. A second way that

Mexico’s violence could spread north is via the partnership between the narcotraffickers and ideologically

motivated terrorist groups. The Zetas already have a substantial connection to Hezbollah , based on collaborative narcotrafficking and arms smuggling. Hezbollah has relied on terrorism since its founding and has few qualms about conducting attacks far from its home turf in southern Lebanon. Since Hezbollah is a close ally or proxy of Iran, it might some day attempt to strike the United States in retribution for American action against Tehran. If so, it would likely attempt to exploit its connection with the Zetas , pulling the narcotraffickers

into a transnational proxy war. The foundation for this scenario is already in place: Security analysts like Douglas Farah have warned of a “tier-one security threat for the United States” from an “improbable alliance” between narcotraffickers and anti-American states like Iran and the “Bolivarian”

regime in Venezuela. The longer this relationship continues and the more it expands, the greater the chances of dangerous miscalculation. ¶ No matter how violence from the Mexican cartels came to the United States, the key issue would be Washington’s

response. If the Zetas, another Mexican cartel or someone acting in their stead launched a campaign of assassinations or bombings in the United States or helped Hezbollah or some other transnational terrorist organization with a mass casualty attack, and the Mexican government proved unwilling or unable to respond in a way that Washington considered adequate, the United States

would have to consider military action. ¶ While the United States has deep cultural and economic ties to Mexico and works closely with Mexican law enforcement on the narcotrafficking problem, the security relationship between the two has always been difficult—understandably so given the long

history of U.S. military intervention in Mexico. Mexico would be unlikely to allow the U.S. military or other government agencies free rein to strike at narcotrafficking cartels in its territory, even if those organizations were tied to assassinations, bombings or terrorism

in the United States. But any U.S. president would face immense political pressure to strike at America’s enemies if the Mexican government could not or would not do so itself. Failing to act firmly and decisively would weaken the president and encourage the Mexican cartels to believe that they could attack U.S. targets with impunity. After all, the primary lesson from Sept. 11 was that playing only defense and allowing

groups that attack the United States undisturbed foreign sanctuary does not work. But using the U.S. military against the cartels on Mexican

soil could weaken the Mexican government or even cause its collapse, end further security cooperation between Mexico and the United States and damage one of the most important and intimate bilateral economic relationships in the world. Quite simply, every available strategic option would be disastrous.¶ Hopefully, cooperation between Mexican and U.S.

security and intelligence services will be able to forestall such a crisis. No one wants to see U.S. drones over Mexico. But so long as the core dynamic of narcotrafficking—massive demand for drugs in the United States combined with their prohibition—persists, the utter ruthlessness, lack of restraint and unlimited ambition of the narcotraffickers raises the possibility of violent miscalculation and the political and economic calamity that would follow.

AT: Racism Advantage

Drones Solve Racism Drone expansion provides a check against police violenceBernd 2013 (Candice [assistant editor/reporter with Truthout]; The Coming Domestic Drone Wars; Sep 19; www.truth-out.org/news/item/18951-the-coming-domestic-drone-wars#; kdf)

Private Citizens and Domestic Drone Technology But in addition to major corporations, media activists also are beginning to look at the

possibilities of domestic drones to broadcast live streaming coverage of protests and other actions in such a way that could provide greater transparency of police activity during political clashes , such as those that

occurred in 2011 during the height of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Occupy live-streamer Tim Pool, now a producer with Vice

Media, has been experimenting with a small radio-controlled quadcopter drone called the Parrot AR.Drone, which can be controlled from a tablet or smartphone. Pool hopes to lower the cost of media production for the individual by using drone technology to gather audio and visual content from the air. "These things make it a lot easier for the average person to pick up the control and say, 'OK, I can do this,' whereas with something like the more expensive drones that have proprietary controllers, you have to learn how to fly those. The AR.Drone is an iPhone app. It looks like a video game," Pool told Truthout. But he admits that in moments when events are breaking it becomes harder to fly a drone. "It's difficult with all the ruckus, the police, with people running. There's no way to predict what's going to happen. It's hard to take your focus away." Pool was on the ground in Turkey during the Occupy Gezi Park demonstrations, which protested an urban development plan to replace the park with a shopping mall. During the demonstrations, Pool witnessed the police forces there shoot down a DJI Phantom drone used by an accompanying journalist, whom he said was detained by police for hours afterward. He expects the same

thing could happen in the US. "Governments will be a bit behind in adopting drones for surveillance or quad-roters like this. I think we'll see the private sector first. We'll see private individuals filming major breaking news with their drones, hobbyists and eventually I know a lot of news organizations are researching drone potential. Once that gets legal they'll start flying drones all over the place, and eventually the police will start filming with drones as well," Pool said. And he's right - scores of law enforcement agencies are experimenting with domestic drone technology already.

AT: Racial BiasTechnology prevents police bias – r/c of racial prejudiceRushin 11(Stephen, Ph.D in Jurisprudence and Social Policy (acquired after writing), Assistant Professor at The University of Alabama’s School of Law, THE JUDICIAL RESPONSE TO MASS POLICE SURVEILLANCE, University of Illinois Journal of Law, Technology & Policy, Vol. 2011, No. 2, p. 298-299, 2011)

Second, the use of surveillance technologies like ALPR limits police discretion, which may reduce racial or ethnic profiling. At least one study “analyzed computer traffic from police cruisers in a predominantly white suburban town and found that the officers were more likely to run license-plate checks on cars with black drivers than on cars with white drivers . . . .”127 Even more disturbing, the likelihood an officer would run the license plate of a black driver increased the “farther they were from the border of the neighboring, black-dominated metropolis.” 128 The use of ALPR for broad and undifferentiated observational comparison could, conceivably, correct for this kind of implicit bias. Previously police officers had to exercise a significant amount of discretion in deciding which license plates to run through a computerized database. ALPR, by contrast, is efficient enough to run the plates of all nearby automobiles through a computerized database, without making any potentially biased choices. Facial recognition could potentially provide this same benefit as well—rather than relying on officers to make unbiased investigative choices, facial recognition systems of the future may be efficient enough to engage in undifferentiated observational comparison of all surrounding individuals.

State Checks Solve States will check police drone useHeverly 15 (Robert. A. [Associate proffessor of law, Albany Law School]; The Uses and Potential Abuses of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in the U.S. and Abroad; 2015; http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T22258911519&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDoc No=26&resultsUrlKey=29_T22258911523&cisb=22_T22258911522&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=338787&docNo=31)//AJ

States have the authority to regulate their own affairs. Authority not provided to the federal government by the Constitution remains with the states. n154 That authority allows states to set restrictions on actions taken on their behalf. So long as state laws and policies are not in conflict with Constitutional guarantees or relevant federal policies, states can restrict or otherwise place limitations on the actions of those who act on their behalf. n155

For our purposes here, a number of states have provided for limited uses or imposed requirements on public uses of drones, especially for law enforcement purposes. n156 These laws do not conflict with any federally recognized rights or laws, and as such, are within the power of the states to enact and enforce. n157 They are matters of local control. Even the requirement that public drone operators have a state issued operator's license, after undergoing required training, is squarely within a state's authority to regulate its own affairs.

Police will limit their use of dronesJohnson 12 (Kevin [Reporter for USA Today]; Police chiefs urge limits on use of drones; September 7; http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-09-06/cop-drones/57639048/1)//AJ

The nation's largest consortium of police officials is calling for the limited use of unmanned drones in local law enforcement operations and urging that the controversial aircraft — now popular weapons on international battlefields — not be armed. The first national advisory for the use of unmanned aircraft issued by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) comes as federal lawmakers and civil rights advocates have expressed deep concerns about the vehicles' use in domestic law enforcement, especially in aerial surveillance. Only a handful of police agencies, including the Mesa County, Colo., Sheriff's Department, are currently using unmanned aircraft. But Don Roby, chairman of the IACP's aviation committee, said an increasing number of departments are considering unmanned aircraft for such things as search and rescue operations, traffic accident scene mapping and some surveillance activities. In July, federal lawmakers, including Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, expressed concerns about the potential risk of arming the vehicles as they are being increasingly considered for use. Some of the vehicles, Thompson said, have the capacity to "shoot (stun-gun) projectiles, tear gas and rubber balls from 300 feet above ground." Roby said the guidelines represent an "urgent" attempt to redefine the value of aerial drones away from the battlefields of Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. "It's very important that people understand that we won't be up there with armed predator drones firing away," said Roby, who also is a Baltimore Police Department captain. "Everytime you hear someone talking about the use of these vehicles, it's always in

the context of a military operation. That's not what we're talking about." In cases in which a drone is to be used to collect evidence that would likely "intrude upon reasonable expectations of privacy," the IACP's new guidelines recommend that police secure search warrants prior to launching the vehicle. On the question of arming drones, however, the IACP issued its most emphatic recommendation: "Equipping the aircraft with weapons of any type is strongly discouraged. Given the current state of the technology, the ability to effectively deploy weapons from a small UA (un-manned aircraft) is doubtful … (and) public acceptance of airborne use of force is likewise doubtful and could result in unnecessary community resistance to the program." The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a statement that it "applauded" the police group for "issuing recommendations that are quite strong in some areas." "At the same time, we don't think these recommendations go far enough to ensure true protection of privacy from drones," the ACLU said, adding that privacy protections need to be enshrined in law, "not merely promulgated by the police themselves." Some legislative proposals, including a bill by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., call for authorities to secure warrants before all uses, except in cases when the aircraft is being used to patrol the borders, when there is a threat of terrorist attack or in cases when life is threatened. "Like other tools used to collect information in law enforcement, in order to use drones a warrant needs to be issued," Paul said when introducing the legislation in June. "Americans going about their everyday lives should not be treated like criminals or terrorists and have their rights infringed upon by military tactics." Steve Ingley, executive director of the Airborne Law Enforcement Association, which promotes the use of aviation in public-safety missions, said it is necessary for police to respond quickly to the civil liberties concerns outlined in proposed legislation and by civil rights advocates. "This (drone use) is a good potential tool for law enforcement … but it's important for people to know that this is not the Predator. This is very different." Ben Gielow, general counsel of Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which represents manufacturers, said the aircraft used by police would be miniature counterparts to the drones used by the military and CIA. The police drones, he said, would likely weigh as little as five pounds and could represent a more affordable aviation option at a cost of $30,000 to $50,000, rather than a $3 million helicopter. "There is still a lot of education that needs to take place to determine how this can be used domestically," Gielow said.

State drone statutes check drone useMatiteyahu 15 (Taly [J.D. candidate, Columbia Law School]; Drone Regulations and Fourth Amendment Rights: The Interaction of State Drone Statutes and the Reasonable Expectation of Privacy; Winter 2015; http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?docLinkInd=true&risb=21_T22257901627&format=G NBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey=29_T22257901631&cisb=22_T22257901630&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&selRCNodeID=2&nodeStateId=411en_US,1&docs InCategory=56&csi=148378&docNo=25)//AJ

Current Fourth Amendment jurisprudence would seem to allow unmanned aerial vehicles operating in legally navigable airspace to observe curtilage and open fields of a home. As drone use proliferates domestically and the FAA regulates drone operation, Fourth Amendment privacy issues are sure to emerge. In response to the increasing use of drones and technological developments, states are regulating drone use. The resulting state drone laws may inform the Court's "reasonable expectation of privacy" analysis, which is used to determine when an unreasonable search in violation of the Fourth Amendment has occurred.

After reviewing Fourth Amendment jurisprudence and providing a survey of existing state laws and their practical effects, this Note addresses how the two may interact and inform the Court's understanding of reasonable expectations of privacy. Ultimately, although the Court may never make reference to state drone statutes and may even expressly decline to give them weight while ruling on privacy issues in drone cases, this Note predicts that the novelty of drones leaves societal expectations susceptible [*307] to the influence of state statutes. State statutes can inform social norms with regard to drone use and influence the type of information discoverable by law enforcement and the likelihood that information will be discovered. Furthermore, drone laws provide a notable source of protection for privacy interests outside the Fourth Amendment. Finally, state drone statutes will provide a foundation for policy arguments and inform judges' perceptions of the types of police practices that should be regulated by the Fourth Amendment. Thus, despite the Court's inconsistent approach to determining whether an individual's subjective expectation of privacy is one that society is prepared to recognize as reasonable, state drone statutes will likely influence the Court's interpretations of the reasonable expectation of privacy, whether explicitly or implicitly, as drones and their capabilities develop and are regulated.

AT: SOP Advantage

SOP HighThe Zivotofsky decision crushes presidential powersGlennon 2015 (Michael J [Prof of International Law at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University]; Recognizable power: The Supreme Court Deals a Blow to Executive Authority; Jun 23; https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2015-06-23/recognizable-power; kdf)

On its face, the Supreme Court’s landmark decision this month in Zivotofsky v. Kerry looks like an ode to presidential power. In it, the Court, for the first time, struck down an act of Congress in the field of foreign affairs. The law had required the State Department to designate Israel as the nation of birth of certain Americans born in Jerusalem. For 60 years, though, the United States has recognized no country as having sovereignty over Jerusalem. When the Court invalidated the act, it affirmed that it is the exclusive power of the president to recognize foreign governments, stressing the need for the nation to speak with one voice. It is easy to think that, with this decision, the Supreme Court handed the president an epic victory in its perpetual struggle with Congress to control the nation’s foreign policy. That conclusion would be tempting

but wrong. In fact, the Court’s opinion took nothing from Congress—and may actually have enhanced its power. That the Court affirmed the president’s exclusive power to recognize foreign governments is unsurprising. Since President George Washington recognized the revolutionary government of France by receiving Citizen Genet as its representative, few have seriously believed that Congress could ever second-guess a president’s decision to recognize a foreign government. During the dispute following President Jimmy Carter’s recognition of the People’s Republic of China in 1979, congressional opponents challenged his authority to unilaterally terminate the United States’ mutual security treaty with Taiwan, but no one doubted that he had sole power to decide whether to derecognize Taiwan or recognize the PRC. It is true that the Court’s opinion rests in part on the need for the United States to “speak with one voice.” The Court lifted the so-called one-voice doctrine from recent federalism cases in which it found states to have interfered impermissibly in the federal government’s foreign policy prerogatives. In one, for example, it struck down a Massachusetts law barring state entities from buying goods or services from any person doing business with Myanmar (also called Burma). In another, it struck down a California law that required any insurer doing business in that state to disclose information about all policies it sold in Europe between 1920 and 1945. But the Court’s references to the doctrine in Zivotofsky relate only to the president’s recognition power. Nothing in the opinion implies that the one-voice doctrine narrows any of the long-established powers that Congress exercises in other areas. The Court referred to the one-voice doctrine as a “functional consideration”—a practical concern relating to a branch’s particular institutional advantages in exercising a given power. “Unlike Congress,” the Court noted, “the President is … capable of engaging in the delicate and often secret diplomatic contacts that may lead to a recognition decision.” Some suggest that this approach could be a formula for justifying across-the-boards presidential unilateralism. But functionalism cuts both ways. In future disputes, institutional attributes could easily point toward predominant congressional power. Unlike the executive, Congress can ask pointed questions, bring diverse viewpoints to bear, build a consensus, and sell a policy to the public. Absent a national emergency, such decisive functional advantages would counsel in favor of including the legislative branch in a decision to introduce troops into combat, impose economic sanctions, or enter into a mutual security commitment. The opinion’s greatest significance lies in its treatment of two earlier, conflicting precedents. The Court deflated the executive’s perennial favorite, the 1936 Curtiss-Wright case, and resurrected an all-but-forgotten opinion of Chief Justice John Marshall that tightly circumscribed presidential power, Little v. Barreme (1804). For its part, Curtiss-Wright implied that the president, as the “sole organ of the nation in its external relations,” has exclusive authority over foreign policy generally; no wonder, then, that the Obama administration cited Curtiss-Wright no fewer than ten times in its Zivotofsky pleadings, claiming broad, undefined foreign affairs powers. But Curtiss-Wright’s sweeping language, the Court said in Zivotofsky, was merely dicta—it was not necessitated by the facts of that case, in which President Franklin Roosevelt initiated an arms embargo that Congress had authorized, not prohibited. The Court proceeded to reject the Obama administration’s claim of “unbounded power” in relying upon Curtiss-Wright. “It is Congress that makes laws,” the Court said, “and in countless ways its laws will and should shape the Nation’s course.” The more important precedent, the Zivotofsky Court suggested, is Little v. Barreme. The 1804 case is significant because it involved the exercise of the president’s commander-in-chief powers during the undeclared naval war with France in the 1790s. In it, the Marshall Court held that an act of Congress

prohibiting the seizure of a certain ship trumped a military order requiring it. “The Executive is not free from the ordinary controls and checks of Congress merely because foreign affairs are at issue,” the Zivotofsky Court said ,

citing Little. “It is not for the President alone to determine the whole content of the Nation’s foreign policy .”

These are not words, or citations, in which an imperial president could take much comfort. It remains to be seen how much Little will influence the resolution of future foreign affairs controversies, such as the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution

or the validity of a nuclear deal with Iran. Judicial decisions resolving foreign policy disputes are heavily fact-dependent. Precedents inevitably are elastic. But beyond the narrow confines of recognition, nothing in Zivotofsky makes a future presidential victory more likely.

No Link – Surveillance not an SOPDomestic spying isn’t an issue of Separation of PowersLener 2014 (Mark [leads the Constitutional Alliance]; The Chilling Effect of Domestic Spying; Aug 5; americanpolicy.org/2014/08/05/the-chilling-effect-of-domestic-spying/; kdf)

Congress has its share of the blame for the domestic spying that has and even to this day is taking place .

After all it is congress that has the responsibility of oversight over agencies and departments of the federal government. All too often congress has failed to do what it has been tasked with doing; performing oversight. In fact, not too long ago congress gave retroactive immunity to telecom companies for the roles telecom companies played in illegally collecting information for the NSA at the request of former President Bush. When it comes down to it, there is plenty of “blame” to go around. Some are guilty: All are

responsible including the public for not demanding better of our elected and appointed officials. Whether a Democrat or Republican occupied the White House or regardless of which party controlled the Senate and/or the House of Representatives, domestic spying took place and is still taking place. Domestic spying is not a “Right” or “Left” issue. Domestic spying is an equal opportunity offender.

AT: Spy Planes Advantage

Spy Planes GoodSpy planes ensure police safety, solves crime and drug traffickingYbarra 15 (Maggie, “FBI keeps tabs on cellphones with aircraft despite Patriot Act expirations,” The Washington Times, 6-2-15, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/2/fbi-keeping-tabs-cellphones-aircraft/?page=all)//BPS

The spy planes are sometimes used to collect evidence and, at other times, to ensure the safety of those police officers who have been sent to disrupt a criminal operation in a remote area , said Jon Adler, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.

FBI agents and police typically work together in a task force when they crack down on large-scale drug trafficking operations or terrorist threats, which means that when they do opt to conduct a pricey surveillance flight, they use federal funds to pay for that service, Mr. Adler said.

The FBI has single- and multi-engine fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters which its 56 domestic field offices can access at any given time, according to a 2012 Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General audit of the FBI’s aviation operations.

“The FBI’s aviation program is not secret; specific aircraft and their capabilities are protected for operational security purposes,”

FBI spokesman Christopher Allen said in a statement. “FBI routinely uses aviation assets in support of predicated investigations targeting specific individuals. The aircraft are not equipped, designed, or used for bulk collection activities or mass surveillance. The FBI uses all tools and equipment, and conducts all investigations, in accordance with the Attorney General Guidelines and the FBI’s Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide.”

Additionally, the federal agency’s resources are finite, said Ron Hosko, president of Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund and the FBI’s former assistant director.

“There’s a limited number of planes,” he said. “Most field offices have a Cessna, a high-wing surveillance plane, and their regional resources can always call Quantico and say, ‘Hey, we need more help.’”

Quantico is a U.S. Marine Corps base in Virginia where the FBI has a training academy and other operational facilities.

Spy Planes Don’t Violate PrivacySpy planes don’t violate privacy – operations are transparentSmith 15 (Chris, “The FBI is making it too easy for us to track down its spy planes,” BGR, 6-3-15, http://bgr.com/2015/06/03/fbi-spy-planes-online-tracking/)//BPS

The Associated Press revealed earlier this week that the FBI appears to be the intelligence agency that’s flying spy planes in America for surveillance operations. Even though the FBI tried to keep its spy planes a secret by using dummy companies set up solely to hide them, it turns

out that anyone can use a few readily available tools to track FBI planes in real-time and find out who’s operating them.

A report on Fusion details how people were able to identify suspected spy planes, track them while they were flying overhead, and even find out information about the companies they supposedly belong to .

The FBI used dummy companies to hide its spy operations and protect the identities of pilots, asking AP not to publish the names of those companies. But as it turns out, that request was pointless.

John Wiseman, a technologist in Los Angeles, used public records to discover FBI plans, and he used a device he programmed to intercept airplane transmissions, identifying several spy operations in the process.

Because there’s plenty of paperwork needed to fly a plane in the U.S., a public record containing flight details for each spy plane flight exists, and Internet users who know where to look can easily find it.

“It seems the FBI is uncreative when it comes to spy craft; the fake companies tracked down by the AP and by Wiseman mainly had three-letter

names, including FVX Research, KQM Aviation, NBR Aviation and PXW Services. Because flight records in the U.S. are public, and planes are trackable on radar, the AP was able to track down where these planes flew,” Fusion notes. Furthermore, it looks like the FBI uses special transmission codes (squawk) and callsigns, for its spy planes.

Wiseman got his data even before the AP published its extensive report on the matter.

“I decided to check my database for planes that have squawked 4414/4415 or used one of the suspicious callsigns: I found 8 aircraft in the past 2 months, several of which exhibit suspicious behavior,” he said in a post on Hacker News last month. “Flying for hours at a time without going anywhere in particular (I don’t have position information for them, but I know they’re in the air and not leaving the LA area), flying almost every day for months at a time.”

“I call what I’m doing ‘persistent surveillance': using historical sensor data to retroactively identify and track new subjects, it’s just that my

subjects are the government,” Wiseman said. “One of the surprising things I’ve found is that all you need to do is look: the weird stuff jumps out right away, e.g. Cessnas registered to fake-sounding companies that loiter overhead for hours every day.”

Spy planes rarely violate privacy – mainly used in investigations, tech isn’t powerful and rarely usedNgan 15 (Mandel, “FBI defends secret surveillance flights as Senate threatens to down them,” RT, 6-18-15, http://rt.com/usa/268216-fbi-spy-planes-law/)//BPS

Spy flights are legal, and only rarely use cellphone snooping technology, the FBI told the Senate in a confidential briefing, defending a program that has been around for 30 years, but only recently attracted the attention of lawmakers and activists.

Agents told Senators that most of their spy fleet uses commercially available still and video, infrared cameras, while 15 percent of the planes rely only on binoculars, according to Senate staffers talking to

Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. Only eight planes have high-definition cameras, though the agency said it would like to have more.

The controversial “dirtbox” (DRT) technology, which simulates a cell-tower signal and tricks mobile phones into revealing their identification numbers, has only been used five times over the past five years, the FBI agents said. Close to two thirds of all spy flights were reportedly conducted as part of national security investigations.