No, You Can’t Shoot Down Drones Over Your House

(Source: venturebeat.com)  

When Rand Paul went on CNN last month and warned anyone looking to fly a drone over his house that they should “beware” because “I’ve got a shotgun,” you could imagine lots of heads nodding in agreement.

For instance, you might imagine security managers at Apple’s new Silicon Valley “spaceship” headquarters would like to shoot down overhead drones snooping on the construction project. And guards in the Secret Service security shack at the White House might welcome that capability too, after an off-duty intelligence officer crashed his DJI Phantom there last month.

Bravado aside, Paul — the Republican senator from Kentucky and a likely 2016 presidential candidate — was doubtless voicing the opinion of many who believe that drones flying overhead present a huge threat to their personal and business privacy.

But don’t load your shotgun just yet, Senator. Existing federal law and judicial rulings make it clear property owners do not enjoy unlimited privacy rights to their airspace. In fact, some believe that drones — quadcopters, octocopters, and other small-scale unmanned aerial vehicles — are already governed under the same laws that regulate aircraft like helicopters and airplanes.

Those laws, unsurprisingly, make it a crime to shoot down planes flying over your house.

“We don’t want people taking out their shotguns in urban areas and shooting things,” said Hannah-Beth Jackson, a Democrat and state senator from California, adding that Rand Paul “needs to beware that he will be violating a lot of laws and ordinances about shooting a firearm in an urban area. That’s not acceptable behavior.”

Eric Cheng, the director of aerial imaging at DJI, one of the world’s largest consumer drone makers, agrees. “The law,” Cheng said, “is pretty clear about fining or imprisoning people who shoot at aircraft.”

And while Paul himself hasn’t yet shot at anyone’s drone, these opinions haven’t prevented all gun-on-drone hostilities. Last fall, a New Jersey man was arrested after allegedly shooting down a neighbor’s drone. According to CBS Philly, the man was charged with “possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose and criminal mischief.”

But shotguns aside, do we even have a legal expectation of privacy when it comes to being photographed from above? Can you do anything at all to stop someone from sending their flying camera buzzing over your property?

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