Drone privacy is about much more than protecting girls in bikinis

Last July, a father in Kentucky spotted a drone watching his two daughters sunbathe in his backyard. He pulled out his gun and fired at the drone. And he thought, “We don’t know if he’s a pedophile, we don’t know if he’s a thief, we don’t know if he’s IS. “

Drones include surveillance. They provide a visual and sometimes physical purpose for privacy concerns. Drones have strengthened national privacy laws and caused much discussion about future privacy issues. Interestingly, the drone privacy story has nothing to do with location tracking or widespread government surveillance. It’s about female tanners.

A protective father in Kentucky wants to be with his daughter. A New Jersey man shot down a drone to protect his family’s privacy. A woman in Virginia Beach, Georgia, told the drone operator that sunbathing on a private beach is “dangerous“. Connecticut woman attacks drone manufacturer with ‘helicopter’ for filming on public beach A California man throws t-shirt at drone on public beach and makes announcement : “We have a stalker.” One Florida resident claims drones are spying on his young neighbors sunbathing: “They pick up boys in swimsuits on the patio or girls in bikinis on the street.” Since his arrest, the issue of protecting his children has been raised. He won in state court, but a federal lawsuit by drone owners is still pending. )

A story about sunbathers in the UK, as the residents of Bristol immediately shut down their overhead drone when they saw it. There are scientific and political works. Drone expert Gregory McNeil wrote about the woman sunbathing in the Brookings Institution report on Drones and Aerial Surveillance: 123 Main Street While taking pictures, he saw a person woman sunbathing on a nearby street. Located at 125 main road. … In his proposal for a local drone zoning system, law professor Troy Rule of Arizona State University discusses “in ways people can fly drones in the air.” camera-equipped riders pass through residential buildings and beachgoers in their own courtyards” (Arizona). State University with Slate and New America.)

Given the complexities of privacy we all know, why do stories about women’s entertainment still attract attention?

Perhaps because the story of the sunbather is simple and concrete. Suddenly, the woman or girl who didn’t show off her bikini had a larger audience than she expected. Perhaps because beachgoers’ stories are more common than other privacy issues; People are corrupt, and corruption is a big driver. Or perhaps the story of the sunbather is an updated version of the old Lady Godiva story: a prying looks at a naked woman and either goes blind or dies.

The story of Lady Godiva is full of gender dynamics. Most scholars believe the trip did not happen. According to legend, Lady Godiva asked her husband Count Leofric to lower his taxes. He said he would do it during the day while walking around the city naked. When he did this in protest, the people of Coventry stayed at home out of disrespect to show modesty. But Spanner ignored the social contract and fought greedily and with punishment. According to Professor Daniel Donoghue, who studies the development of Godiva mythology, the story revolves around what Tom sees through time. Donoghue explains:

Tom will be the scapegoat and symbolic responsibility for those who want to see this naked woman. Gluttony serves as a platform for free, controlling impulses and conflicting desires.

People on the beach being chased by drones is a story about Lady Godiva, beyond tax policy. Teenage naughty girls show their independence by wearing bikinis in the park or on the beach. In general, everyone follows social norms and does not watch, take pictures or record videos for a long time. But drones break protocol and should be punished like Tom. Usually the father is punished, but sometimes it is the Good Samaritan. The law is not very helpful. Existing state law on voyeurism generally does not cover such incidents, as many involve actual burglaries or window peeping.

The problem with allowing seafarers’ stories to govern drone privacy is that it provides an incomplete account of the privacy issues that drones pose. When we legislate to protect the ethics of beachgoers, we overlook important issues. This raises the question of whether privacy and modesty are the same (they are not) and whether the paternity that led to the downing of a drone is rewarding (inference). guess).

Homelessness fails because it ignores privacy. Drones collect a lot of data and there is no federal privacy law for the data they collect (there is no such law in the US), there is almost nothing to regulate the processing or use that data. This involves combining data from the drone with data from other devices to create an almost complete picture of the physical interaction. For example, agents and insurance companies may be encouraged to create such portraits. (As of the time of this writing, insurers have received 276 special approvals from the FAA for drone use.) Data brokers told us about it online. ; companies have reason to try to extend this analysis to the physical space. And he didn’t want to ask permission.

Our current federal privacy regime, enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, is designed to protect consumers from the false promises and deceptive practices of the companies we do business with business. The problem with drones and other new technologies is that people being tracked often don’t have them. Therefore, they do not have a consumer relationship with a drone company that would trigger FTC protection. The FTC is no more likely to do this than others have to regulate the Internet of Things.

The story of the sunset does not disappoint us in any other way. For example, it does not apply to facial recognition technology. Inevitably biometric identifiers mean we can escape the ambiguity of the reality of the physical spaces in which we usually live. Society may or may not recognize us, but drones do. This makes it easy to include people in the drone footage. Also not often mentioned in wandering stories, drones gather information with superhuman senses, like thermal cameras that we don’t use and have less defense. Beach’s report makes no mention of cybersecurity. If you think drones are boring now, wait until you hack them.

However, the tanner’s claim is not entirely false.

This resonates precisely because drones, like many other emerging technologies, lie at the intersection of space and information security. The beach-goers’ story reflects the privacy issue of space: Fathers often think they protect their daughters with a two-meter fence. (naked girls probably don’t care.) Now drones have rendered fences meaningless. In the past, physical buildings blocked people’s view of the courtyard or the windows above; Today, drones, like thermal imaging, can detect information that is hard to find. The question is whether legislation should come in to collect legal fees and when physical and financial constraints will be eased. The law allows us to continue to regulate our privacy using the real-world qualities we grew up with and addicted to.

As social agents, we often use cues from the physical and social environment to decide how much information to reveal in a given environment. Technologies like drones destroy the environment. They broke the wall. They avoid social norms in certain settings, such as the beach. They hinder our ability to calculate our exposure and track our behavior over time at a fraction of the cost of a helicopter.

The Supreme Court is beginning to understand these things, but it may take some time. In 2001, a court ruled that police use of thermal imaging equipment violated the Fourth Amendment because it “could reveal, for example, when a housewife takes a sauna and bath every day.” dark.” (Again Godiva.) The judges decide what’s new. This technology is used to identify new information technologies and space privacy. This causes many people to worry about the death of privacy laws; Will we lose Fourth Amendment protection due to the widespread adoption of new technologies?

However, in 2012, five judges found that using GPS technology to track a person’s location for nearly a month, even in public places, could violate privacy expectations. legal and growing. These judges’ claims are reasonable based on the assumption that it would be too difficult or too costly to observe our behavior consistently over long periods of time. Continuous monitoring over time and space can reveal sensitive information such as religious beliefs, sexual or political preferences.

The Fourth Amendment applies to law enforcement agencies, not groups of individuals. But new developments offer a better way to think about data-collecting technologies like drones. Like GPS, drones make it cheaper and easier for your pesky neighbors to track people in the long run. Like thermal images (and sometimes thermal images), they make the physical barriers we rely on less effective. Drones are concerned with information and space privacy issues. This mixed problem is becoming more and more difficult to solve in our time.

There is currently no national regulatory framework for drone privacy.

(There are many state privacy laws, but most do not cover tanning, drone surveillance or the use of drone data.) The Federal Aviation Administration said it wanted to. avoid privacy concerns; Just this month, the Court refused to force the FAA to look into the privacy issue before issuing the final rule. Last year, the president directed the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to develop industry best practices for using drones. This process is ongoing, but many public stakeholders have declined to participate according to NTIA’s facial recognition best practices.

In April, the Senate passed a bill to restore the FAA. Among other things, the bill encourages (but does not require) drone operators to have a privacy policy that the FTC can use “for payment, recruitment, or business support purposes.” business.” The law leaves no substantive requirements in the rules, allowing companies to set lower standards or no standards at all. The lack of clarity between consumers and individuals being monitored by drones will prompt companies to implement sound privacy policies. The act also directs the NTIA to report to Congress on industry best practices that underlie federal legislation. Again, this is not a serious source of privacy advice due to weaknesses in the NTIA process (of which I am a participant). Senate bill, passed before state drone law, would ban local trials with drone policies, including privacy ones . This is not recommended. It remains to be seen what happens at home, but the controversial Aviation, Innovation, Reform and Licensing also belongs to the NTIA.

Drones have many positive uses, from security checks to environmental surveys to police behavior monitoring. But while we’re talking about privacy-related topics, it’s time to ditch the bikini.