{"id":313088,"date":"2026-08-04T02:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T02:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/313088\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T02:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T02:22:08","slug":"faa-mulls-critical-infrastructure-designations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/313088\/","title":{"rendered":"FAA mulls critical infrastructure designations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>What exactly is critical infrastructure? The definition of the term is sparking debate across New York state and nationally as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mulls putting drone no-fly zones in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.faa.gov\/newsroom\/trumps-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-unveils-new-rule-protect-critical\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">16 categories of locations.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDrones pose a threat to critical infrastructure if they\u2019re being misused,&#8221; New York state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Services Commissioner Terence O&#8217;Leary said. &#8220;There\u2019s no two ways about that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Some independent operators like Gavin Snyder, CEO and Founder of Imagine Aerial, said the particulars of the state Legislature have him watching closely.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe complexity comes up when we\u2019re assessing infrastructure near the jail and how that gets defined,\u201d Snyder said.<\/p>\n<p>The Onondaga County Correctional Facility and dozens of other facilities in New York state\u00a0\u2014 across the 16 sectors\u00a0\u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.criminaljustice.ny.gov\/crimnet\/ojsa\/jail_pop_y.pdf\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won&#8217;t qualify<\/a> based on the FAA&#8217;s current proposal to only include places with more than 500 inmates.<\/p>\n<p>Snyder said it&#8217;s hard for him to envision no-fly zones without debate either for or against some aspects of the 16 industries of critical infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTo protect every single one of them is going to create a patchwork of rulings across the nation that the FAA frankly doesn\u2019t want to deal with,&#8221; Snyder said. &#8220;Or can\u2019t deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Others like\u00a0American Civil Liberties Union senior policy analyst Jay Stanley have stronger opinions about the damage a patchwork national legislation could cause.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am concerned that the public interest isn\u2019t represented at the table enough,\u201d Stanley said. \u201cIt\u2019s important that the government doesn\u2019t have a monopoly on aerial footage of what\u2019s happening.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As critical infrastructure designations get rolled out in late 2026, anticipate debate from both sides about the scope of privacy, Snyder said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCritical infrastructure is something that we need to survive as a society,\u201d Snyder said.<\/p>\n<p>If a company or location in the 16 protected categories successfully applies for critical infrastructure designation, drone flyers would have &#8220;clearly defined&#8221; vertical and horizontal boundaries and violators could face civil or criminal penalties. All drone users must already be licensed to fly.<\/p>\n<p>As of Aug. 1, more than 900,000 public comments have been made to regulations.gov. The public comment period about this regulation runs out Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What exactly is critical infrastructure? The definition of the term is sparking debate across New York state and&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[257,17202,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,308,200],"class_list":["post-313088","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-central-ny","tag-david-jacobs","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-news","tag-public-safety","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313088"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313088\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}