Wall Street Recap

Stocks trended higher on Monday with the Dow Jones industrial average ending at 12,959, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index at 1371, and the Nasdaq ending at 2,983. On Tuesday the markets continued their upward climb. At last check, the Dow was up to 13,037, the S&P 500 at 1,380 and the Nasdaq at 3,005. Data gathered from the Monday close and Tuesday open on Wall Street.

Drones enter American Airspace

President Barack Obama recently signed an aviation bill requiring the Federal Aviation Administration to begin integrating drones into American Airspace.

In an interview with NPR, John Villasenor, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, described what the function of the drones would be, along with the privacy and national security concerns. Villasenor discussed some of the positive applications of using drones, such as monitoring wildfires and keeping an eye out for illegal immigration across the border. He did not make clear, though, what the legal ramifications of using drones for surveillance would be.

Discussion turned to the case of Kyllo v. United States, which dealt with using a thermal imaging device to monitor heat radiating in someone’s house, which the Supreme Court ruled was a violation of the fourth Amendment.

Villasenor said the FAA’s job is to provide the “safest, most efficient aerospace system in the world” and he said they have done that.