Man shoots down neighbor's drone: Where's the privacy line?

Current rules are unclear about whether the Kentucky man lawfully defended his family's privacy or illegally destroyed someone's personal property.

|
Adrees Latif/Reuters
A police helicopter flies past a UAV drone which was flying over a post-march street celebration in west Baltimore, Maryland. The Federal Aviation Administration announced industry partnerships on Wednesday to test commercial drones that can fly beyond an operator's line of sight, seen as a necessary precursor to autonomous drone operations such as package delivery.

William Merideth of Hillview, Ky., is getting his 15 minutes of fame – or infamy, depending on your opinion of personal drones. Mr. Merideth was arrested on August 26 after shooting down a hobby drone that he alleges was flying over his yard and sun-bathing daughters.

“You know, when you’re in your own property, within a six-foot privacy fence, you have the expectation of privacy," he told Fox affiliate WDRB on Tuesday. "We don't know if he was looking at the girls. We don’t know if he was looking for something to steal. To me, it was the same as trespassing.”

As the news broke, Twitter lit up. Many tweets criticized Merideth for destroying someone else’s property, but others celebrated him for defending his home and privacy.

Opinions aside, what are the actual laws governing this situation? Where is the line between innocent drone piloting and invasions of privacy? Right now, it’s hard to tell.

Though the rules for the commercial use of drones are still in development, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has fairly simple rules for amateur drone pilots:

  • Don’t fly higher than 400 feet off the ground.
  • Never lose line of sight with the vehicle.
  • Make sure the drone weighs less than 55 pounds (about the heft of two cinder blocks).
  • Stay away from airports and other manned vehicles, such as helicopters.
  • And do not try to make money off of your new toy. Flying a drone for profit is illegal without an FAA waiver.

The pilot in Kentucky seems to have obeyed each of these rules.

A homeowner in California lost a recent legal battle over a similar situation, perhaps setting precedent in favor of pilots. A small claims court fined Brett McBay of Medesto, Calif., $850 after he shot down a drone flying in a neighboring yard. That case revolved around the fact that Mr. McBay destroyed someone else’s property even though it never actually entered his yard. Other jurisdictions may rule differently.

That said, federal law states that, “Whoever willfully ... sets fire to, damages, destroys, disables, or wrecks any aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States or any civil aircraft used, operated, or employed in interstate, overseas, or foreign air commerce … shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years or both.”

Even the United States Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that property could be surveilled at altitudes above or below 500 feet (the FAA lower limit for flight by fixed-winged vehicles). The case, Florida v. Riley, centered around surveillance that authorities had done on a greenhouse using a helicopter. The officers had not obtained a warrant, and the Supreme Court was to decide if this kind of surveillance was legal. In the end, they ruled that warrant-less surveillance was legal from a helicopter flying below the FAA limit as long as that surveillance was done with the “naked eye.” At the time, no one had invented tiny digital cameras, like the ones attached to modern drones, so it’s unclear how new technology will affect this legal precedent.

This debate is too new to be over. Florida v. Riley is several decades old at this point and was not specifically about hobby or commercial drone operation. There is much more to be considered and discussed.

Even the FAA’s opening statement on its website concerning unmanned flying machines admits this is not a closed issue. “Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are inherently different from manned aircraft,” it says. “Introducing UAS into the nation's airspace is challenging for both the FAA and aviation community, because the U.S. has the busiest, most complex airspace in the world. The FAA is taking an incremental approach to safe UAS integration.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Man shoots down neighbor's drone: Where's the privacy line?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2015/0731/Man-shoots-down-neighbor-s-drone-Where-s-the-privacy-line
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe