Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast, your source for policy rants and raves from Tech Freedom,

your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate. I'm Evan Swartz-Sharber, your host.

On today's show, drone safety, right before Christmas, the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration,

rushed through rules requiring that drones that weigh over half a pound be registered

with the agency for $5. And as part of that registration, you have to give away personal

information like your home address. Will these regulations make drones and our airspace safer?

Joining me to discuss this is Eli Dorado, Director of Technology Policy at the Mercatus Center,

a research center based at George Mason University. Eli, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, Evan. So, Eli, are these regulations a good idea? Is making, you know, every kid that

got a drone from Santa register it with the government for five bucks? Is that going to make our skies

safer? Well, you know, Evan, I, you know, I was really surprised in December when the FAA came out

with these, with these rules. I, you know, I didn't expect that they would go down to 250 grams for requiring a registration.

And for contacts, as you noted, that's a little over half a pound.

And the FAA gives guidelines.

This is the weight of two sticks of butter.

So if your drone weighs more than two sticks of butter, you have to register it with them.

These dangerous objects that weigh the equivalent of two sticks of butter.

Two sticks of butter. So I was really surprised. And, you know, the thing that we wanted

to do, my colleague Sam Hammond and I, we wanted to find out, you know, is this really going

to implicate drone, you knowate the safety of the airspace?

You know, the big fear, of course, is that a drone is going to fly into the path of a big, giant commercial jet,

and take down the jet and kill everybody on board.

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