FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, December 16, 2024
HARTFORD – Senate President Martin M. Looney (D-New Haven), Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff (D-Norwalk), and state Senator James Maroney (D-Milford) announced today that they intend to introduce a new version of 2024’s Senate Bill 3, “An Act Concerning Consumer Protection,” when the General Assembly meets in January to begin the 2025 legislative session.
SB3 was a far-ranging consumer protection bill that included a prohibition on the purchase and use of Chinese or Russian-made drones by local and state agencies in Connecticut. The ban arose out of concerns that these foreign drones may purposefully, or inadvertently, expose Americans and their public safety agencies to various “cyber vulnerabilities,” such as capturing and storing sensitive details about America’s infrastructure (i.e. bridges and water treatment plants).
The bill has become even more relevant over the past month as reports have increased of unexplained, nighttime drone sightings along the East Coast.
At a mid-November National Conference of State Legislatures meeting at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, former Defense Secretary James Mattis was asked by Sen. Duff if Chinese-made drones should be banned for sale and use by state and federal agencies. Mattis’s response? “Absolutely.”
In October, the U.S. Defense Department added DJI — a major Chinese drone manufacturer — to its list of companies allegedly working with Beijing’s military. DJI is the world’s largest drone manufacturer, and it sells more than half of all the commercial drones available in America. That DOD policy followed a September vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to ban new DJI drones from operating in the United States.
The Senate Democrats’ Senate Bill 3 last session offered a host of pro-consumer legislation: affordable broadband internet access, ending deceptive fees, requiring net neutrality by internet service providers, regulating streaming service billing, and banning the purchase and use of some foreign-made drones in Connecticut after a particular date.
“Americans are in fear over a recent rise in drone sightings at night. Various guesses – from corporate research to foreign spying to an alien takeover of the planet – abound. The federal Department of Homeland Security’s explanation that a recent FAA change allowing drones to fly at night isn’t cutting it with a population that’s been fed eight years of Republican conspiracy theories about everything from national elections to local pizza parlors,” Sens. Looney, Duff and Maroney said.
“Now, some of the same Republicans who helped kill a Democratic bill earlier this year that would have prohibited state agencies from purchasing and using Russian and Chinese drones are claiming that they’re concerned about drones and are wondering how Connecticut would handle malicious drone activity in our own airspace,” Sens. Looney, Duff and Maroney said. “This is classic Connecticut Republican bait and switch: they’re vehemently opposed to something until the moment arrives when it appears that a Democratic public policy proposal would actually benefit Connecticut citizens. We can and should do better, and we can do better by debating and passing a new consumer protection bill in the upcoming session – including a ban on the purchase and use of Russian and Chinese drones by local and state agencies.”
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