Companies Are Forbidden to Stop Drones: Kirk Lippold in RealClearDefense
Commander Kirk Lippold (USN, Ret.), who commanded the USS Cole during the 2000 al Qaeda attack, has a new piece in RealClearDefense on a security gap most Americans don't know exists. The companies that run our critical infrastructure can watch a drone fly over their facility, but federal law bars them from stopping it.
The key points:
A detection system that reads a drone's radio signal to identify it and locate its operator, which is what every serious system does, may put a critical infrastructure operator in violation of the federal wiretap and pen register statutes.
Congress extended counter-drone authority to state and local law enforcement last December, and the rule implementing it took effect July 1. One campus in Alabama certifies every officer in the country cleared to use it. The government hopes to reach 150 agencies within two years. There are roughly 17,500.
The FAA appeared to offer companies a remedy and withdrew it in the same document. Its proposal this May would let the operator of a critical facility petition for a flight restriction over his own plant, and it leaves the detection problem untouched.
The threat is not hypothetical. Last September a Tennessee man pleaded guilty to attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction after planning to fly an explosive-laden drone into a Nashville electrical substation. Two months later, more than 28,000 people took part in NERC's continent-wide grid security exercise, working through a scenario in which drones struck the switchyard of a nuclear generating station.
His bottom line: rules that only allow a response after a threat materializes leave critical infrastructure exposed, and that's a risk the country can't afford.
