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Egg on face time

Oh dear, I have a feeling that certain three-leter agencies of the US government are going to have egg all over their faces when I'm finished.

As regular readers will know, I'm pursuing a bit of a crusade to protect drone and RC model flyers from ridiculous levels of over-regulation and in the USA the FAA is about to roll out the next phase of something called "Remote ID".

Remote ID (RID) involves attaching a small transmitter to every drone and model aircraft that leaves the ground. That transmitter broadcasts a whole bunch of data including the position of the drone, the position of the pilot, flight status, etc.

The justification for this imposition is that RID is essential to preserve the national security of the USA. It will (allegedly) prevent bad actors from using drones for nefarious purposes.

Hahahaha... oh dear. This is what happens when cloth-heads try to regulate from a position of ignorance and arrogance.

A small number of folk from within the hobby have protested loudly (even forming a tiny placard-toting group outside the FAA headquarters) at this imposition but their cries have been dismissed.

The national model flying body in the USA, which should be working in the interests of the hobby, has been bought-off by the offer of "special privilege" that they can use to boost their membership numbers (and associated revenues) so they're barely making a whimper.

There have been email campaigns to politicians which did nothing but prove how disorganised and small in number is the group that is opposed to the RID system.

So now I'm on the job and I'm going to do my best to get the RID system thrown out.

Hang on, I'm just a grumpy old man living in rural New Zealand. How could I have more effect than US citizens writing to their congressman and milling about on the FAA's front lawn with banners in their hands?

Well I've been doing this sort of thing all my life and I know that the only way to beat "the man" is to recruit big powerful allies.

So here's what I'm going to do... it may or it may not work but the only war truly lost is the one that you couldn't be bothered waging. Surrender is not an option so it's time to break out the "smart guns".

I've already posted my response to the FAA"s propaganda video in this column from earlier this week so it's easy to see that they view this as a way of protecting against nefarious drones.

Unfortunately for them, they seem to have overlooked one very important thing...

Remote ID has created a *huge* vulnerability for the US air transport industry.

Previously, if an environmental (or other) group wanted to disrupt an airport, they had to actually fly a drone at the end of the runway -- as the Extinction Rebellion group threatened to do at Heathrow Airport in the UK a few years ago.

Such activism is risky however. Those who fly the drones will almost certainly be arrested and there is also the risk (albeit very small) that lives could be lost with such direct-action protests.

However, with Remote ID, all any protest group (or bad actor from a hostile state) need do is drive past an airport and throw a few of these out the window.

All the drone detection systems that are now being installed in large airports around the world will immediately be triggered by these fake RID signals and you can be certain that the airport operator will suspend flights -- because they don't want to take *any* risks.

Even though the other elements of the drone detection system may say "there's nothing there", we've already seen (at Gatwick last month) that the airport will still be shut down on the merest hint of a drone from any part of the system. Nobody running an airport wants to become "that guy" who allowed a drone to collide with an airliner because he ignored a warning.

It becomes obvious now that RID will be a fantastic tool for all those eco-warriors who cringe at the environmental damage that every departing airliner creates. At last the FAA has handed them a tool whereby they can wreak havoc with no risk of being caught and punished for their deeds.

Such a RID-based attack could even be done from a distance, using hi-gain antennas and power boosters to deliver the RID signal from many Km away.

Now I would *never* sanction this kind of commercial terrorism but I think it only fair that I let the mainstream media know of the massive disruption that this RID technology may be about to inflict on airlines and airports.

You see, those who designed this stuff know nothing. There's no digital signing of the data packets so they can be spoofed by anyone with half a brain. In fact, because it's all Bluetooth based, you could even write an app for your smartphone and have it running while you wander around the carpark of your local international airport -- and nobody would know.

If your in any doubt that environmental protesters will do this, remember that in Germany protesters attacked aircraft with orange paint to make their point. They will do whatever they can to disrupt aviation.

From a security perspective, this actually makes the system worse. The only option that authorities will have is to become desensitised to the RID signals near airports, in which case, *real* bad actors will find it that much easier to use drones for nefarious purposes -- exactly the opposite of what they were claiming RID would achieve.

I love it when clowns pretending they know how to keep us safe, come up with hairbrained, half-baked schemes that blow up in their faces -- and I'm just the guy to light that fuse!

Carpe Diem folks!

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