Vacate a Drone Restriction That Criminalized Recording Immigration Agents
EFF and other organizations filed an amicus brief urging the D.C. Circuit to vacate an FAA drone restriction that effectively criminalized the recording of immigration agents. The brief argues that the restriction violated First Amendment rights by targeting specific government activities and hindering public accountability. Although the FAA rescinded the rule, the petitioners contend that judicial review is necessary to prevent future reinstatement and protect drone operators from past penalties.
- ▪EFF, ACLU, and other groups filed an amicus brief in the Levine v. FAA case to challenge an FAA drone flight restriction.
- ▪The restriction prohibited drones from flying near Department of Homeland Security officers and vehicles, effectively criminalizing the recording of immigration agents.
- ▪The FAA rescinded the flight restriction in April, but the petitioner argues the court should still evaluate its legality to prevent future reinstatement.
- ▪The amicus brief asserts that drone recording is protected First Amendment activity similar to using cell phones to document law enforcement.
- ▪The brief contends the restriction was a content-based measure designed to hinder accountability for immigration enforcement actions.
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| Original publisher | Electronic Frontier Foundation |
| Canonical URL | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/dc-circuit-must-vacate-drone-flight-restriction-criminalized-recording-immigration |
| Publication time | Tue, 22 Sep 2026 15:07:03 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-09-22T15:43:51.725Z |
| Last seen | 2026-09-22T15:43:51.725Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | i0yG8ZHpMeFG · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
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Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
EFF joined an amicus brief with ACLU, ACLU of D.C., National Press Photographers Association, and Professional Photographers of America to urge the D.C. Circuit to vacate an FAA drone flight restriction that violated the First Amendment right to record law enforcement. This is an important case—Levine v. FAA—challenging the ability of the government to punish drone pilots who record law enforcement officers engaged in official business. As we wrote about earlier this year, the FAA issued a flight restriction for drones that had effectively criminalized the recording of Department of Homeland Security officers, including immigration agents from ICE and CBP, and their vehicles (what the FAA called “mobile assets” including “ground vehicle convoys and their associated escorts”) even if the…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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