Drones and the U.S. Government by Michael Erbschloe - HTML preview

APPENDIX

Guidelines for Neighborly Drone Use

Drones are useful. New, fairly cheap drones are easy to use. But just because they are cheap and simple to fly doesn’t mean the pictures and video they take can’t harm other people. The FAA and partner organizations have put safety guidance online at http://knowbeforeyoufly.org. But even safe flight might not respect other people’s privacy. These are voluntary guidelines. No one is forcing you to obey them. Privacy is hard to define, but it is important. There is a balance between your rights as a drone user and other people’s rights to privacy. That balance isn’t easy to find. You should follow the detailed “UAS Privacy Best Practices”, on which these guidelines are based, especially if you fly drones often, or use them commercially. The overarching principle should be peaceful issue resolution.

1. If you can, tell other people you’ll be taking pictures or video of them before you do.
2. If you think someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy, don’t violate that privacy by taking pictures, video, or otherwise gathering sensitive data, unless you’ve got a very good reason.
3. Don’t fly over other people’s private property without permission if you can easily avoid doing so.
4. Don’t gather personal data for no reason, and don’t keep it for longer than you think you have to.
5. If you keep sensitive data about other people, secure it against loss or theft.
6. If someone asks you to delete personal data about him or her that you’ve gathered, do so, unless you’ve got a good reason not to.
7. If anyone raises privacy, security, or safety concerns with you, try and listen to what they have to say, as long as they’re polite and reasonable about it.
8. Don’t harass people with your drone.

Footnotes

1 The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has convened a series of multi-stakeholder efforts as a way to increase privacy protections based upon the Administration’s framework for consumer information privacy. On February 15, 2015, President Obama issued a Presidential Memorandum instructing NTIA to convene such a process to develop and communicate best practices for privacy, accountability, and transparency issues regarding commercial and private UAS use in the National Airspace System. These Voluntary Best Practices are the result of that multi-stakeholder engagement process.

2 What qualifies as a practicable and reasonable effort to provide prior notice will depend on operators’ circumstances and the context of the UAS operation. For example, delivery UAS operators may provide customers with an estimated time of delivery. Real estate professionals using UAS may provide a home seller (and possibly immediate neighbors) with prior notice of the estimated date of UAS photography of the property. Hobbyist UAS operators may not need to notify nearby individuals of UAS flight in the vicinity.

3 These Best Practices recognize that UAS operators may not be able to predict all future uses of data. Accordingly, these Best Practices do not intend to discourage unplanned or innovative data uses that may result in desirable economic or societal benefits.

4 If it is not practicable to provide an exact retention period, because, for example, the retention period depends on legal hold requirements or evolving business operations, the UAS operator may explain that to data subjects when disclosing its retention policies.

5 This may be as simple as talking to an individual who approaches the UAS operator with a concern.

6 As with the privacy policy referenced in § IV.1(b), UAS operators may modify a broader existing security policy to incorporate data collected via UAS. A security policy should include, at minimum, such basic steps as keeping software up to date and downloading security patches for known vulnerabilities.