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Australian authorities renew calls for no-fly zones over prisons

Xinhua, August 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

Australia's state and territory governments have again made a request to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) to implement no-fly zones over prisons to prevent drones dropping objects into prison yards.

New South Wales Corrections Minister David Elliott told Australia's national broadcaster on Monday the accessibility of drones present a threat to security.

"Unfortunately, criminals are getting smarter ... and my job as minister is to ensure we stay ahead of the game," Elliott said.

"This is a specific request to CASA [Civil Aviation Safety Authority] ... it shouldn't be seen as a difficult request."

In March, 2014, an Australian man was arrested for allegedly trying to use a drone to smuggle drugs into a Melbourne prison.

Australia's state and territory ministers originally made this call in February 2015, urging CASA to create no-fly zones over prisons to prevent the "explosion" in sales of drones being used to smuggle contraband.

"We think we need to be ahead of this, rather than behind this in terms of making very clear that we want no-fly zones over prisons to be created," Victoria's Corrections Minister Wade Noonan said at that time.

"We can put walls around our prisons but we don't control the airspace around those prisons."

CASA spokesman Peter Gibson told Xinhua on Monday as Australia 's legislation currently stands, creating no-fly zones over prisons is not possible, a point he said was clearly made to the politicians when they first raised the issue in February.

"The issue is for restricted airspace, to be done on public safety grounds: it can be done on national security grounds and for aviation safety reasons ... of course none of them apply to a jail," Gibson said.

Those current rules require drone operators to keep them more than 30 meters away from people, not to overly grounds and to be kept in the line of sight.

"All of those rules would be highly likely to be (breached) if you were flying a drone into or around a prison," Gibson said.

Gibson said CASA is undertaking a complete review of all drone safety regulations in 2016, "and we said to (the politicians) ' feel free to contribute to that process if you wish'." Endi