Make it a “no drone fly zone”.
o_0 what exactly was violated? By what authority?
Sorry, this and a lot of other responses sounds too much like paranoid hand wringing. Just because you can imagine something happening, doesn’t mean that it is. This is like the over hyped “stranger danger” where now it’s assumed any male in public is a potential pedophile ready to snatch your kids into a windowless van. Don’t even get me started if you happen to actually own a windowless van.
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You’re quite right, I have no proof. And it’s entirely possible those creeps who install cameras on the toe of their shoe in order to take surreptitious upskirt panty shots will all decide that drone technology is just a step too far.
As for the stranger danger, what are you worried about? That drones will be treated with suspicion?
o_0 what exactly was violated? By what authority?
FAA regulations against operating an UAS for commercial purposes without an airworthiness certificate. http://www.faa.gov/about/initiatives/uas/reg/
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More like “@SkyrisNSFW,” amirite?
A few years back, I was coming out of the shower and kept hearing a weird, loud ‘whoosh’ sound… I suddenly realized there was a hot air balloon basket floating about 15 feet from my bathroom window. Of course, I had an initial shocked/embarrassed reaction. However, they hadn’t hovered down from the sky just to see my ass. They were having issues with the temperature and wind and had bigger fish to fry.
Curtains. You never know when you’ll really need 'em.
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Well, be fair, there is a difference in that the building constantly announces itself. You know there’s a vantage point where somebody can look at you. With the drone, every time you look out the window, you’re assured there’s nobody who could possibly see you walking around naked.
Until suddenly, one day you are, and you happen to look out the window and there’s a drone there.
If you looked five minutes ago, you might not have seen it. If you looked five minutes later, you might have missed it, and (if that was what it was doing, which there doesn’t seem to be any evidence) they could have taken pervy photos with you never being aware of it. So how do you know that this hasn’t happened already on a day you just didn’t happen to look out the window, because there’s no building there? It might be something we eventually just have to come to live with, that even if you think nobody can see you, they can and probably do. But it’s still perfectly appropriate to be a little creeped out about.
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If they’re in America - shoot 'em down! Perfect for the gun nuts who jump in to every thread after a mass shooting.
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How long will it be before Urban Americans take to downing drones buzzing and peeping about our cityscapes?
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I thought that it wasn’t legal to use drones for commercial purposes…
At least illegal unless one gets a FAA license.
edit – thought that I had read all responses, but must have scrolled by… I see @CLamb beat me to that angle…
I cannot agree with this substantive reprhasing, because it misses my point entirely. The building exists or does not. It is inanimate, it cannot verb.
What ‘announces’ itself was a need for privacy that was felt by someone with a greater expectation to it than that to which she was entitled.
She was incorrect, and in being so, she was not wronged. (except by hersef, which is 99% of why humans get grouchy, because they expect something that is not theirs to expect, just because it always was that way). As I said, she buys title to the nearby lot, then and only then she is entitled to have no drones flying there.
Inanimate objects can’t verb? That seems to fly in the face of how English has been historically used.
What people are entitled to isn’t clear cut and permanent, it’s a matter of constant discussion. If she, as you say, buys title to the nearby lot, is she entitled to have no drones flying there? Legally, I’m not sure that’s actually the case, I don’t think courts allow me to say “nothing’s allowed to fly over my house.” But even if it were the case, that entitlement is actually the removal of somebody else’s potential entitlement to fly their drones/planes where they want. Are they entitled to put a drone up to take pictures that might potentially capture somebody in their own home, naked and unaware? Maybe, maybe not… there’s no “natural” answer that happens to be correct. It’s part of the ongoing discussion. Likely, the answer is going to be “yes, they are”, and, correspondingly, if she decided to take a gun and pre-emptively destroy the drone, the answer would be “no, she’s not entitled to do that” (except in some states). Again, there’s no natural reason for this, just the law, and she’s free to advocate for her position.
In many places, legally, a person peeking into your windows with a telescope actually IS illegal, as a person is entitled to privacy… it doesn’t matter whether you own their house or not, they’re still not entitled to peep into your windows with a telescope. That’s not what happened here, of course, at least not deliberately, but it doesn’t make her expectation to privacy wrong. If they took pictures of the inside of her house and her naked, even if that wasn’t the intent, because a drone was there when it had never been there before, I think she has a right to feel upset. I’m at least more sympathetic to her feelings than the drone’s (after all, it’s not alive and can have no rights). But again, we may decide in the end that she’s not entitled to such privacy.
But, to get back to the initial point, your claim that it’s not significantly different whether there’s a building there or a drone. I think you’re being disingenuous if you claim you don’t see a difference between something that is always there that you will take steps to modify your behavior around, or something that might, on a rare occasion, be there, but such cannot be predicted or expected and the rest of the time your behavior will be different. Buildings do not suddenly spring up and catch you by surprise, and so it’s significantly different than something which can. Otherwise, by your logic, sticking out your foot to trip somebody is exactly the same as if there happened to be a step there. After all, if there was a step there, they would have had to raise their foot a little higher, and if they didn’t, well, that’s their own fault, right?
Fair enough. Non living things cannot exposit, announce, or intend. Thats more the lines of what I meant.
The article says that the drone was only flown over property it had permission to be. For the most part you can declare a no-fly zone over your own property, although this doesn’t apply to higher altitudes and/civil aviation.
Most jurisdictions recognize an “invasion of solitude” tort, which is basically what you’re describing. There are two points about this tort that are relevant here: 1) there must be an expectation of privacy, and 2) the manner of invasion into this privacy must be highly offensive to the ordinary person. Both of these factors might differentiate the drone situation from the situation of being observed by the naked eye by someone in a neighboring apartment. If your apartment is on the 20th floor, but is directly across from another apartment, perhaps you actually don’t expect any privacy when your drapes are open. And someone looking in with a drone is probably highly offensive to most people in a way that someone looking out their own window (without binoculars or a telescope) is not.
Do you live across the street from this lady?
http://the-bulb.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Gladys.jpg
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Being on the 26th floor does not give one the super power of invisibility. As some sensible folk have pointed out here there is a surprisingly simple and low tech solution to this “problem”: curtains or blinds.
The discussion here have inspired me to inquire if there are targeted advertising opportunities on Boing Boing ash I see a great potential market for all weather yet fashionable tin foil head gear in seasonal colors.
Try harder.
I think the issue here is whether or not being on the 26th floor entitles one to a reasonable expectation of privacy.
No, the reasonable expectation of privacy is for fourth amendment cases, where the government is doing the searching. Private actors aren’t subject to the 4th amendment.
The invasion of privacy/solitude tort (discussed in a comment above) does apply to private actors, and while it also requires an expectation of privacy, it only requires a subjective expectation of privacy (which is obviously much broader, although the other elements of the tort narrow the scope significantly).
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