Anti-drone bill thrown out by Louisiana House committee

 

 

Earlier today, we reported on two anti-drone bills passed by the Louisiana State Senate, both of which promised to criminalize drone photography in the state. Just hours later, one of those two bills has now been thrown out.

According to an article from New Orleans City Business, Senate Bill 356 was voted down 7-4 by the House criminal justice committee. The bill would have banned unmanned aircraft from flying over anything termed critical infrastructure -- a surprisingly broad list including everything from state and federal government facilities and petrochemical plants to highways and even telecommunications networks. The bill was opposed by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, among others.

That leaves the cornily-named (but decidedly alarming) DRONE Act still standing for House consideration. The bill, a backronym standing for Deterrence of Reconnaissance Over Noncriminal Entities, would make it illegal to use unmanned aircraft “with the intent to conduct surveillance” in all but a handful of tightly-defined situations.

More details on the DRONE Act can be found in our earlier article.

(via TheDroneGuy. Hexacopter thumbnail courtesy of unten44 / Flickr used under a Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 license.)