Review - S 896 Introduced – SHIELD U Act

Review - Last month, Sen Lee (R,UT) introduced S 896, the Stopping Harmful Incidents to Enforce Lawful Drone Use (SHIELD U) Act. The bill would give airport operators the authority to conduct counter-drone activities at commercial airports. It would also allow State and local law enforcement personnel broad authority to conduct counter drone operations with little federal restrictions. No additional funding is authorized by this legislation.

The wording of the bill is identical to S 4801 that was introduced in the last session. No action was taken on that bill.

Moving Forward

Lee is not a member (this session) of the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee to which this bill is assigned for consideration. This means that there is not enough influence to see the bill considered in Committee. I suspect that the relatively unrestricted authorization for State and local law enforcement officials to conduct counter-drone operations will draw at least some organized opposition, whether it would be enough to stall consideration of the bill remains to be seen.

Commentary

Counter-UAS operations would seem to violate a number of current federal laws, including:

49 USC 46502 (air piracy),

18 USC 32 (destruction of aircraft),

18 USC 1030 (computer fraud),

18 USC 1367 (operation of a satellite),

18 USC Chapter 119 (communications interception), and

18 USC Chapter 206 (trap and trace).

Instead of specifical exempting counter-drone operations from concerns about those statute provisions, this bill uses two broad phrases: ‘Notwithstanding any other provision of law’, and ‘in a manner consistent with the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States’. The first is so broad as to remove any legal restrictions against counter-drone operations, technically even allowing operations against military drones transiting non-military airspace. To counter that, the second requirement would seem to require the use of a search warrant to be allowed to seize a drone, but it is not clear that the language is specific enough to require a search warrant to be provided before any counter-UAS operations are undertaken, short of seizing the drone once it is forced to land.

 

For more details about the provisions of the bill, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/s-896-introduced - subscription required.