I believe the opposite. I believe a government agency like the FCC *will* do whatever it believes is intended by the law or works best within the spirit of the law. No government agency has *ever* stuck to exactly what the law says, frankly that's not their job. Their job is to understand what Congress has intended and then make it work. If the law wants DJI drone out of America but doesn't say how exactly, the FCC and the FAA will work together to figure it out. It's up to the victims to decide how they want to respond or react because Congress absolutely will not go back to work just to tell you how to do your job. They expect you to get it down and the drone community would be naive if they think they don't see specific wording in a bill so they feel "well, it could have been worse."
I mean, c'mon, can we at least learn for the past and not make the same mistakes? The law doesn't have to authorize the cleansing of drones already on the market for that to happen one day. So yes, the law doesn't say it. But that doesn't mean it can't happen without going back to Congress. Are we going to get caught off guard again? I promise you if it doesn't happen today, it will happen tomorrow. FAA could have easily grandfathered old drones for RID and they didn't bother to do something that simple knowing quite a few older drones would die off long before RID was really actually needed. They have saddle old useless drones with RID modules...for no good reason. You think they going to let a few million DJI drones continue to fly forever?
We going to let the bill go into law thinking we are *safe* because we can keep what we already have and a few years later after we are told to *stand down* we'll be hit with a "oops, change in plan" that has to be done because [insert your favorite national security reason here] and we won't have a leg to stand on because it will be clear to anyone after a few years later that it makes zero sense to ban new drones to stop spying and let the old ones continue to spy. We have to deal with bad actors and false flags and everything else that will reinforce the need for a *real* ban because "this isn't working."
The lack of grandfather wording is left out to disarm the community and to slow us down because we would for sure react poorly to any confiscation clauses or any suggestion about "grounding." Don't talk about it and we have less a reason to go to court and push for injunctions or due process. Judicial action against Congress is harder and have more visibility. Their strategy is to allow the agencies to do the dirty work because agencies can claim discretion and judicial action against them has proven to be less volatile in today's climate, i.e. "Congress told us to do this."
One way or another, our advocates have a new job going forward and for years to come, they have new focus and new purpose because of all this. Long gone are the days of only shaping rules and regulations and collaborating on procedures and processes. Welcome to my world, the activism side.
