It is now illegal for anyone to pilot a commercial drone in St. Louis in what could be considered a surveillance operation without written permission from the city, thanks to a single, divisive operator.
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The continuing evolution of rules and legal interpretations on official drone use in the US took another twist this week with the decision by a California appellate court rebuffing Chula Vista municipal police claims that all videos its UAVs capture on duty are “records of investigations,” and as such protected from public scrutiny.
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When New York Mayor Eric Adams announced the liberalization of permitting rules for drone operation in the city last July, he predicted it would lead to a growth of aerial services improving residents’ daily lives. One application he didn’t mention is one many New Yorkers are least enamored with: UAV surveillance by the police, which has increased exponentially over the past year.
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As a reflection of just how strong public sentiment in France remains against police use of drones to monitor people, officials waited well into the nation’s six-straight nights of rioting before giving law enforcement agencies the green light to fly UAVs for security purposes in response to the unrest.
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As virtually inevitable after a long series of protracted legal battles, the seemingly eternal case of a Michigan couple suing local authorities for having allegedly violated their privacy and constitutional rights by using a drone to inspect their cluttered yard is now heading to the state’s Supreme Court for final adjudication.
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The US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is preparing to begin drone inspections of airports and other transport hubs to assess the security of those facilities, but before doing so has moved to address any public concerns that images or other identifying data will be collected of people who happen to be around areas under surveillance.
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It’s the sort of legal conflict likely to proliferate as the number of UAVs flown by private users continues to multiply. A couple in Massachusetts is threatening “criminal harassment” charges against neighbors who used drones to capture video evidence of continuing motocross races on their property that officials previously ordered to cease.
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Grambling State University, a historically Black college in northern Louisiana, has announced that it is starting drone patrols on the campus. According to Police Chief Rod Demery, security drones will help his department get a better view of the events on campus.
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French police will again be permitted to use drones for surveillance and certain other law enforcement purposes, the nation’s constitutional authority has ruled, ending the nearly two-year legal ban of that activity on grounds it posed privacy violation risks.
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As the backlash against it continues to grow, DJI insists it’s getting even more focused on data privacy. For the last five years, DJI has had a team of 30 devoted entirely to the privacy and data security features of its products. Collectively, this team has contributed more than 300,000 hours to bolster DJI’s apps, servers, chipsets, and firmware, the company says.
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India’s most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, wants to make its capital city, Lucknow, safer for women. And it wants to do so by establishing a broad-ranging surveillance setup that uses tools such as drones, facial recognition-enabled CCTV cameras, and AI-based video analytics. However, in the absence of robust data privacy laws, critics fear the program will infringe upon the privacy of citizens in a state infamous for communal polarization.
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A municipal commissioner in a small Tennessee town is facing multiple charges for grabbing a gun and shooting a drone above his property that annoyed him. Then he refused to give the blasted vehicle back to its owner. Is that nice?
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The latest innovation to battle thousands of migrants attempting illegal Channel crossings from northern France to England has been thwarted on legal grounds. Plans to fly police drones detecting and monitoring the organization and launch of illicit passages have been grounded by French laws as violating individual privacy rights.
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This is likely to set a precedent affecting drone pilots in the United States.
An appeals court rules a drone violated the privacy rights of a northern Michigan couple when it took photos of their property.
“It’s going to cause a ripple,” attorney William Burdette says. “We stood up for the little guy.”
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The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has developed an interesting method to solve drone privacy when it comes to delivery and other commercial operations. The method involves each host airspaces developing their own drone privacy policies.
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The privacy watchdog in France has banned the use of drones for the purpose of monitoring people during the pandemic and also by law enforcement as a generic monitoring tool. Some groups had been arguing that drone camera use since the pandemic was overly intrusive and an invasion of privacy.
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To give users more control over their privacy, DJI has introduced Local Data Mode, disabling various features to keep all your drone data on your device. With the expansion of the mode, the GO 4 app, and DJI Fly app now have the new privacy feature.
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On January 12th, a new drone law will come into effect in Pennsylvania that aims to protect people’s privacy from drones. The ‘Unlawful Use of Unmanned Aircraft’ law will prohibit anyone from gathering aerial photos or footage of someone in a private place using a drone.
A hovering drone seemed to be spying on a sunbathing mother and daughter in Mt Wellington, New Zealand. Melissa Rays and her daughter Morgaine Halligan were soaking up the sun in their backyard late in the afternoon when the drone showed up. The video footage shows the drone hovering above their house and backyard, seemingly spying on them.
