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Beware the knock at the door

Today's column follows on somewhat from yesterday's.

The new Civil Aviation Act 2023 is due to come into effect in the relatively near future and with it comes some rather disturbing "powers' that have been awarded to authorities.

Of course when the lives of people, including airline passengers are at risk it makes sense that our authorities have whatever powers are needed to ensure safety. We don't want them standing around unable to act if there's a very real risk to human life... right?

I'm certainly not disagreeing with this but I fear that we are once again seeing those in a position of making rules, regulations and laws, hugely overstating risk in order to gain powers that have a huge potential for misuse.

The part of the new Act that I find most worrying is section 316 "Power to seize, detain, or destroy aircraft without person on board".

What's this all about?

Well in essence, it gives authorities the power to break into a building or enter any premises in order to seize and destroy any unmanned aircraft (ie: drone or RC flying model), seemingly without warrant or any form of endorsement by the courts.

If I'm interpreting this correctly (disclaimer: I'm no lawyer), it would empower "a constable or response officer" to break down the door to my house, enter, grab all my drones, RC transmitters and anything else that they deemed to be related to the control of those craft and then remove or destroy them.

Of course they can't do this merely on a whim... but the threshold for such actions seems extraordinarily low.

The Act states the constable/oficer need only have what they consider to be "reasonable grounds to believe" that craft are being used or are about to be used to commit an offence under the Civil Aviation Legislation.

The offence in question does not even have to be one that creates a safety risk -- simply a violation of the legislation.

That ought to be as disturbing as hell to anyone who values their freedoms.

For example...

I have a pretty significant collection of drones and RC flying models. I fly many of them quite regularly and, I'll freely admit, from time to time they are not flown totally in compliance with the CAA regulations. I should qualify that by saying that at no time do I fly in a manner that is likely to cause risk to other people or other people's property.

I've been doing this for more than 60 years and have an unblemished record of safety. I'm also very competent at what I do and quite risk-averse. However, rules and regulations created by people who've never actually flown a drone or RC model, sitting behind a shiny desk in a high-rise building hundreds of Km from where I actually am are not in a position to accurately establish whether something is risky or not. The only person actually qualified to decide whether something is safe or not is *me* and I always err on the side of caution.

However, with this in mind, and with plenty of video evidence online to show that I am a recidivist rule-breaker:

there would be nothing to stop this part of the Act being used to do a dawn raid on my home and workshop so as to quite legally clear it out and destroy thousands of dollars of my property.

Of course those who create such draconian pieces of legislation will argue "this would never happen" and that the application of such law would be carefully considered. Do I believe this?

Well if we look at the number of times the police have been found to have committed "unlawful" acts such as in the raid of Kim Dotcom's mansion, the holding of small communities at gunpoint, the raiding of journalists' homes etc then I certainly do not believe that authorities can always be trusted to weild such powers responsibly.

Bookmark this column because the MoT has made it very clear that they intend to demand changes to the rules which would require all drone and RC model owners to sign a "potential offenders'" register. Apparently the dangers posed by such craft are now so high that we must all be identified in advance -- as is the case in most overseas countries -- despite the fact that nobody has *ever* died as the result of the recreational use of a multirotor drone in the entire history of mankind.

I will not be registering myself or my craft, regardless of any legal requirement to do so. No doubt this will illicit a response and I have no doubt that part of that response could be the seizure and destruction of my collection of toys because I would be in breach of the legislation. Does anyone *really* think I'm a threat to the nation or the safety of airspace users? Of course not... yet that will not matter one jot.

Yes, the world continues to devolve into an assylum run by the insane.

One might argue that this power, as provided by the Act, is essential to give police the legal authority to stop (for instance) a bad actor using a drone to do something evil -- and you'd be right. However, it is only because the CAA has decided to declare that flying toys are "aircraft" that this provision is needed. If they were simply declared as what they are then no such jackboot-friendly powers would be needed at all -- but then they couldn't regulate my little foam toys to the extent they desire.

Carpe Diem folks!

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