Imagine if we had tried to comprehensively regulate online privacy. before allow commercial use of the Internet. However, some of the proposed privacy requirements are quite onerous for commercial drone operators: their costs will likely outweigh any hypothetical benefits. Consider the example of a real estate agent using drones to create detailed 3D photographs of a property for sale. If that real estate agent treated every passer-by as a potential victim of a privacy violation, would he or she have to stop each person, ensure that each person has access and the right to review all photographs (even unused ones? on the property? listing website) and take numerous and expensive security measures to protect photographs taken in a public space?
Such requirements (and that’s just a short list) would not only be excessive, they are unnecessary. because there is already federal, state, and local laws that protect people’s rights to privacy. If drone operators violate such laws, they can be prosecuted or sued for damages. For those concerned about drones used for voyeurism, state “snooper” statutes already make such activity illegal. And by allowing court cases to proceed and be decided by juries, rather than preempting the state court process with federal regulation, we can develop a sophisticated and narrowly tailored body of law that addresses privacy violations by drone operators. without harming innovation.
We may further discover that not even need protect privacy through regulations that stifle innovation. Citizen attitudes toward commercial drones could follow the familiar pattern we’ve seen with other radical innovations: initial endurancegradual adaptationand then eventually assimilation of this new technology in society.
This pattern is more than a century old: think about the evolution of the camera and photography. In an 1890 *Harvard Law Review* article, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis lamented that “snapshot photographs and journalistic activity have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life” and stated that “numerous mechanical devices threaten to make reality the prediction that ‘whatever is whispered in the closet will be proclaimed from the housetops.'”
>After the initial panic, we almost always accept the service that once violated our visceral sense of privacy.
But today, all smartphones not only take photos but also record videos, and we tend to view those capabilities as benign, if not empowering. After the “initial panic,” Larry Downes has observed, “we almost always embrace the service that once violated our visceral sense of privacy.”
If we give social norms time to adapt, we may all get used to drones.
And even if we don’t, there are other solutions to privacy problems besides strict regulation. Drone operators could develop voluntary codes of conduct, individuals could learn to employ effective self-help or privacy protection countermeasures, the market could create solutions, etc. But unless we exercise regulatory forbearance now, we may never see less restrictive means of preserving privacy developed.
A whole new platform for innovation awaits us, and if we can integrate commercial drones into the airspace without strict, preventative regulation, the consequences (and benefits) could be as revolutionary as the Internet itself. It’s time to start seeing airspace as our next great platform for innovation.
Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90
