Posted on 01/14/2016 11:12:23 AM PST by Kaslin
The Washington Post has an interesting interview this week with William Merideth, the Kentucky businessman who famously took a shotgun and introduced a terminal malfunction to a camera equipped drone hovering over his property last year. The case, while providing some amusement to the public initially, has raised vexing questions about property rights, privacy, and the limits of the government (under the auspices of the Federal Aviation Administration) to control the airspace over your property. It’s been mostly settled law for quite some time that property owners control the mineral rights and other resources under their land, but how much of the air do you control over it?
"There is gray area in terms of how far your property rights extend," said Jeramie Scott, national security counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "It's going to need to be addressed sooner rather than later as drones are integrated into the national airspace."
The issue is becoming more urgent as drones are crowding America's skies: The Consumer Technology Association estimated 700,000 were sold last year.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, every inch above the tip of your grass blades is the government's jurisdiction. "The FAA is responsible for the safety and management of U.S. airspace from the ground up," said an agency spokesman, echoing rules laid out on its website.
But common law long held that landowners’ rights went "all the way to Heaven." And today, it's clear that they have some rights.
What we have here is yet another case of technology rapidly outstripping existing laws which didn’t take the pace of such advances into account. There was never a question as to whether or not you could forbid Delta from flying a jet 30,000 feet over your house. By the same token, nobody can just walk across your property without your permission. (Or a court order in the case of law enforcement.) But what about the spaces closer to the ground? If you’re not allowed to come onto your neighbor’s property and peer into their bedroom window, is it somehow different if you send a camera mounted on a drone to do the job? That seems like it should be a no brainer to me. After all, as the author notes, if a neighbor’s tree has a branch hanging in the air over your fence you can cut it off.
The only court case referenced in this debate is that of United States v. Causby, but that doesn’t really seem to address the key questions in play here. Causby was a chicken rancher who lived near a military air strip and government planes were regularly flying over his property at altitudes of less than 100 feet causing havoc among his birds and putting him out of business. (He was awarded compensation in the judgement.) The Causby case would seem to at least imply that the planes had violated his property rights, but it’s more of an issue of a noise nuisance.
It sounds to me as if the courts will need to either take a huge smack at personal privacy and agree that the FAA controls every inch above the tip of your grass blades or set some sort of arbitrary limit. If that limit is too low then anyone with a drone camera can still act as a peeping Tom, but how high would be high enough? Google Earth has pictures of your house and yard in fairly amazing detail (taken from space!) though not close enough to peer in your windows. (Yet, anyway.) And what about all of those new drone delivery systems under discussion, such as the scheme Amazon has been developing? Will they be forced to fly at 500 or 1,000 feet until they reach their destination and then drop straight down? Or will the operators be forced to follow the public roadways below them until the drone reaches your house?
Personally, I’m with William Merideth on this one, at least on an emotional level. Nobody should be able to send a camera into your yard to spy on you without your permission, and if they do you should be able to shoot the perpetrator’s craft down. Somehow I don’t think the courts are going to agree, though.
I can.
You just lay the bead on it and squeeze.
Can I? You bet. Will I? Depends. May I? Probably not.
If enough people do it, they can’t stop it.
10-15 years ago, I remember hearing a rumor that a F-16 returned to base at Selfridge ANG base in Michigan with some shotgun pellets in the belly. FWIW
Apparently, #8 bird shot is the most effective at this stage of the recreational drone game.
OTOH, somebody's selling depleted uranium shot too.
Need more time at the range.
Easy to say when faith was the only thing that could get you up there. Or, on very rare occasions, a catapult.
Now $25 can get you (well, a camera on your behalf) anywhere in someone else's airspace.
They now fly A-10’s from Selfridge. I doubt anyone would try to outgun those.
If it flies quickly over your property; no.
If it says there hovering; shick shick
Like you could get 12 jurors to convict someone for shooting down a drone over his own property.
The last sentence of the first paragraph is completely false. You absolutely do not control the rights to minerals and resources under your land. Water rights and mineral rights are entirely separate from property rights.
If Exxon pumps oil next door to your house, very likely some of the oil will come from below your property. Exxon will not give you one thin dime for any oil they pump.
If your neighbor has a well and pumps water from the aquifer, some of that water may be under your land. They will owe you nothing for it. You can’t even pump water from under your own land unless you have the water rights, which are bought and sold separately.
As far as the space above your property, the electric utilities and the telecom companies can hang wires above your property and you don’t have any recourse.
Carbon credits will eventually be air rights. You won’t be able to burn anything in your own house because you will not own any of the air that exists within your home, even if you have trees outside making oxygen.
So, really, you don’t have any control of the airspace above your house.
If the “right to privacy” can be used to kill your baby, I will use it to bag a drone.
“Airspace” is NOT a factor.
From what I understand, your property rights extend about 500’ above your property, which is where the FAA takes jurisdiction. Fly below that, and you’re fair game to someone with a shotgun and some birdshot.
Anti-drone drone “armed” with a net.
Snag and bag, “what drone?” when the owner asks for his privacy invasion tool back.
Drone Blind.....
Try flying one over the White House and see how THEY react to it.
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