The drone sightings all over Europe are frustrating me somewhat, but a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), published on March 26 2026, makes me consider if the regulatory madness across the pond is an even bigger threat to our industry. The author, Jay Stanley, argues that an emerging regulatory regime is turning drones into an authoritarian tool reserved for police, government and corporations, while ordinary people are increasingly boxed out.

It is the classic story of “drones for them but not for us”, and quite frankly, the clock is ticking for anyone who thinks amateur aviation is safe from corporate and government overreach.

Under the Trump administration, there has been a push to give deportation agents and the Department of Homeland Security broad authority to seize or destroy drones they simply do not like. If you fly a drone over a moving ICE vehicle, for instance, they treat it as a violation of “national defense airspace” – a tough day at the office for anyone attempting aerial journalism or civil rights monitoring. Security agencies and local police officers are being handed unchecked powers to swat civilian aircraft out of the sky through force. But the actual threat of violence from hobbyist drones is, for the most part, a nothing burger; illegal flights are almost always just “clueless and careless” operators.

Then there is the hardware issue, and the US is, in my view, on the back foot here. The Trump administration’s sweeping ban on foreign-made drones has skyrocketed costs and crippled the consumer market. Chinese giant DJI previously controlled about 80% of the US drone market, offering tech at a fraction of the cost of inferior American alternatives. Now, thanks to strategic protectionism framed as cybersecurity concerns, drones are becoming an expensive luxury item designed mainly for police and the military. As the drone expert Faine Greenwood pointed out, we are facing a scenario where only the wealthy and state authorities can afford to fly.

While ordinary citizens are grounded, the skies are being handed over to corporate giants. Companies such as Amazon and Walmart are eagerly preparing for “beyond the visual line of sight” (BVLOS) operations, aiming to scale up drone delivery services over our communities. The FAA’s proposed rules would outsource air traffic management for these drones to private, profit-motivated companies serving as Automated Data Service Providers. This neoliberal approach is BS and nest feathering at its finest, leaving private companies to arbitrate airspace conflicts. If there is a dispute between an Amazon delivery drone and a newsgathering organisation trying to cover a union rally, you have to wonder if these corporate service providers will give the less powerful party a fair shake.

Furthermore, the FAA claims “exclusive domain” over the nation’s airspace, meaning local councils cannot necessarily ban these corporate fleets from buzzing over parks and schools. People are being forced to accept these drones in their communities, complete with the privacy risks of invasive aerial imagery collection. At the same time, police departments – a minimum of 1,500 of them – are scaling up their own surveillance operations, with “drones as first responder” programmes rapidly spreading.

If that was not enough, the FAA’s Remote ID system ensures you are kept completely in the dark. It acts like a digital licence plate, but only the authorities can link it to the actual operator’s identity. The drone industry is even working on a standard protocol to provide temporary “session IDs” for operators, granting corporate and government flights a veil of secrecy. Drones can watch us closely enough to see our pores, but we have little way of knowing what information they are collecting or who is watching the video.

It is too late to stop the madness if we just sit back and let the counter-drone industry milk these new powers for all they are worth. Unless policymakers enact narrow definitions for drone interdiction, take a hard look at the foreign drone ban, and grant localities the authority to limit flights, the hobbyists and innovators who built this industry will be entirely grounded