drones

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is seeking $84,000 in attorney fees as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Courthouse News reports. EFF sued the Department of Homeland Security and obtained 700 pages on the use of drones by U.S. Customs and border Patrol.

EFF says it is entitled to the attorney fees because it alleges its FOIA lawsuit was the catalyst for the records to be released, Courthouse News also reports.

An audit by the Transportation Department's inspector general has found that the Federal Aviation Administration is going to miss the September 2015 deadline for integrating drones into the national airspace, The Washington Post reported earlier this week. While Congress legalized drones in 2012, the FAA was supposed to come up with rules by September 30, 2015.

Kentucky is the latest state to consider legislation to prohibit the warrantless use of drones by law enforcement, the Kentucky Enquirer reports. A Northern Kentucky legislator is reintroducing a bill to bar law enforcement agencies from using drones to gather evidence without warrants. Fourteen states have passed laws limiting the use of drones, the Enquirer reports.

Meanwhile, there are three drone bills pending in Pennsylvania, including two bills to bar drone interference with hunting and fishing.

Two separate reports are showing the privacy issues raised by the growing use of drones.

The Hartford Courant's Kelly Glista reports about how a beachgoer called the police because a teenager was flying his drone at the public park. He wasn't breaking any laws, but the incident raised the question of what expectation of privacy people have in a public place: "The right to personal privacy is both profoundly valued and highly debated in the U.S., but the advancement of technology has blurred the line between what is public and what is private, from cellphone records to emails and information posted to social media. In Connecticut and around the country, drone technology is quickly becoming the next arena for that debate." Lawyers told the Courant that drone operators are like photographers: Photographing strangers in a public place is legal until the activity becomes harassing or a nuisance.

Matt Riedl, writing for the Wichita Eagle, out of Kansas, reports "interest in personal drones – which can cost as little as $1,000 to set up – has been rising exponentially. Consequently, local drone enthusiasts say the FAA is going to have to update its policies in the coming years to accommodate what they believe is a revolutionary and profitable technology." Lawyer Patrick Hughes told the Eagle that using a drone to do something you can normally do isn't going to change the law, but privacy issues could arise depending upon how drones are being used. The parameters for privacy and drone usage will likely develop out of FAA regulations or federal legislation, Hughes said.
 

Many in the burgeoning drone industry are frustrated by the Federal Aviation Administration's glacial pace in issuing new rules to regulate the use of these lightweight flying devices and regulators' application of old rules to ground the use of drones for newsgathering and other commercial purposes. Gigaom's Jeff John Roberts suggests the FAA should use a permit system like the one used for motor vehicles. The CEO of Airware, a startup that provides hardware and software to drone businesses, told Gigaom "the best way to resolve the ongoing legal conflicts involving drones is to designate separate airspaces for manned and unmanned aircraft, including a buffer zone between them. Doing so, he said in a recent phone interview, would permit a more relaxed set of rules for drones. Specifically, [CEO Jonathan] Downey suggested this might involve a permit system where drone owners could obtain a license after passing a test."

Even though the Federal Aviation Administration restricts the use of unmanned aircraft for commerical purposes, enforcement is "scattershot," "emboldening even more drone operators," the Wall Street Journal reports. While regulation lags, Matt Waite, the journalism professor who runs a drone-journalism program, told the WSJ that the "'longer it takes to have the rules of the road in place, the more the technology advances and the cheaper it gets, the closer we get to some knucklehead doing something dumb and hurting someone.'"

Another little media law nugget: TV station KATV in Little Rock, Ark., was informed that using a drone to film the aftermath of recent tornadoes was an FAA violation but the station wasn't told to stop using drones, WSJ reports.  "The FAA said it regulates the use of drones, not how news organizations use footage," WSJ further reports.

Media outlets have filed an amicus brief in support of a drone hobbyist facing a $10,000 fine for using a drone to make a promotional video, Gigaom reports. The media companies argue that the Federal Aviation Administration is violating the First Amendment by banning the use of unmanned aircraft for news photography.

Read the full brief here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/222414475/NYT-Et-Al-Amicus-for-Drones

The implications of a decision by an administrative law judge that the Federal Aviation Administration can't impose a $10,000 fine for the commercial use of a small UAV, or drone, is overstated, C. Andrew Keisner, an attorney writing in TVNewser, says. The FAA will likely proceed to create binding rules for drones under the Administrative Procedure Act, and it is "risky for advertising & media companies engaging UAV operators to enter into any long-term contracts that assume the FAA will not proceed with making whatever binding rules it deems necessary to regulate UAVs," he says.

An administrative judge has ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration "lacks clear-cut authority to ban the commercial use of drones in the continental U.S.," MarketWatch reports. "Some lawyers and drone users have argued for months that the FAA has no statutory power to enforce its prohibition of commercial-drone use," MarketWatch further reports. The decison can be appealed to the National Transportation Safety Board and then to federal court.

Journalist Pedro Rivera has filed a lawsuit alleging the Hartford police violated his First Amendment rights by questioning his use of a drone to record images of a car wreck, the Associated Press reports. Rivera claims that he was told to leave the area and that his TV-station employer was told he had interfered with a police investigation. At the time, Rivera was not working for WFSB-TV but is on call for them. Rivera also alleges violations of his Fourth Amendment rights. The complaint can be accessed here.