Does faster toilet paper delivery justify filling LAs skies with thousands of drones?
In Los Angeles, the sky has always just been what we stare into instead of reading vanity plates when were sitting in traffic. But the empty space above our heads may someday soon fill up with drones  delivering our goods, helping police, and always watching us. Lets imagine that future LA together. The big tech companies are certainly planning on it, says Gregory McNeal, a law professor at Pepperdine University and an expert on drones. I attended a conference at NASA's Ames field, where a representative from Google stated that when they're operating at scale, they expect at least 100,000 daily flights over a city like Los Angeles, he says. If you think of the number of people, post-COVID, who are getting deliveries on a daily basis, many of those deliveries could be accomplished with a drone, small packages, right under five pounds. I expect that number will be much more than 100,000 flights a day.  Some of your favorite giant corporations are looking at this: Amazon, Walmart, Google, UPS, FedEx, and Uber Eats. Kroger announced it will start drone delivery at a Ralphs in California this summer. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), meanwhile, is granting approvals right and left for growing these operations. McNeal says, The technology will improve, such that it will get quieter. But it might not be quiet enough in some very quiet neighborhoods, and it might be perfectly fine in urban areas where there's ambient noise.  So, like delivery trucks, McNeal says some neighborhoods may allow drones, while others dont. Lou Villalvazo is principal officer and secretary treasurer for LAs Teamsters local union 630, which represents drivers. He says the potential loss of those jobs will resonate through communities. In the end, the reality is  eliminating ... American jobs. Not to mention, in our case, good union jobs, middle-class jobs, he says. It impacts your police officers, your fire department, your teachers.  I think it only serves a purpose to benefit that 1% and corporations that basically are looking for the bottom line.  McNeal points out that the drone industry would create other jobs  building the drones, maintaining them, working in warehouses to stage deliveries. And keeping the machines busy in the skies, which also means a lot of cameras flying around. Back in 2015, then-California State Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, a former California State Senator representing Ventura and Santa Barbara, addressed the question of where drones can fly (and what they can photograph). The result was AB-856, a paparazzi-focused bill to protect against someone using a drone to make money off filming you. McNeal envisions navigation apps offering a whole new level of detail. Imagine that at any point in time, you could dial up on Google Maps and see  my neighbors are having a barbecue or  my daughter's car is at her boyfriend's house right now, he says. Delivering our toilet paper would be one part of the business model. Jackson thinks the drone industrys plan is to hurry up and convince us that faster toilet paper is better toilet paper, and never mind the data thing. We see this now  with this whole issue of consumer privacy in the use of the internet and technologies today, where companies are insisting that our personal information really belongs to them, she says. It's just data that they're entitled to sell. LAPD has the largest fleet of helicopters. And now they're expanding it with drones as well, says Hamid Khan, the founder of StopLAPDSpying, which is a coalition of groups fighting police surveillance and militarization. Hes been campaigning against law enforcement drones in LA County since 2014. So we see these local law enforcement agencies, you know, just engaging and expanding and creating their own Air Forces.  Khan says were not just talking about surveillance. In North Dakota, the legislature approved police using tasers and tear gas in drones, and Connecticut proposed a bill to allow police drones to carry lethal weapons. In LA, police say drones are only used minimally, for SWAT operations. But its one thing for the police to have a few dozen drones. Its another for thousands of delivery drones to be constantly watching as they bring your cereal, and for that footage to be available to law enforcement. Khan points to Amazons Ring doorbell division partnering with law enforcement. In fact, according to emails obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, during the Black Lives Matter protests in LA last year, LAPD reached out to Ring owners, asking for footage of protestors. Its important to understand that these developments are happening slowly, incrementally, so these changes are easy to ignore. Which ones become our future depends on whos writing the rules. Right now, airspace is controlled by the FAA, and big companies dont want to hand it over to local governments. Because haggling with hundreds or thousands of different legal frameworks nationwide would be a huge headache for companies like Amazon or Walmart, says McNeal. If you're a well-moneyed player like Amazon, you're waiting for the moment when you are prepared to scale. And then at once, you're going to unleash tens of thousands of drones across the United States all at once, and squash all competition, he says. If theres local control of the airspace, it makes it harder for big players to dominate what the consulting company Deloitte estimates will be an industry worth $115 billion per year by 2035. You also, if you're Amazon, don't want to have to go to the city of Los Angeles and deal with their community concern about the fact that your distribution facility that has takeoff and landing 25 times a day happens to be located in a low-income community, instead of in the sort of richest toniest area of Los Angeles.  Jackson says corporations want to design the skies of the future. And theyre hoping we ignore the irritation of thinking about it. Frankly, if the current situation is any indication of the future, technology is going to control, she says. Industry is driving the train. And I think that's unfortunate. I think a lot of the problem is that we really don't even know what that technology looks like. The industry does, the industry is planning for it. But we as public policymakers, we as the public, are not as aware. And because money is the driver, we are not taking the lead.  My hope is that its a conversation where the public leads. Thats right. Sit back and let it all come to you in time. For now, enjoy another cookie, and dont worry about whos watching.