The Next Stage in Drone Regulation: Privacy

Now that the Federal Aviation Administration has released proposed rules for integrating small commercial drones into the American airspace, the next regulatory front for drones is privacy, Slate's Margot E. Kaminski reports. The FAA isn't going to set privacy rules for drones; instead, President Barack Obama issued a presidential memorandum giving federal agencies marching orders on only keeping data collected from drones for 180 days and ordering agencies not to "violate the First Amendment or discriminate against people based on ethnicity, race, gender, or national origin" through their use of drones.

State law may provide the protection for privacy from drones, Kaminski reports, but First Amendment challenges are likely to ensue against such regulation. Wisconsin may have the best model for regulating privacy vis-a-vis drones because that state's law hinges "on whether the subject of surveillance has a reasonable expectation of privacy," Kaminski reports.