If a privately owned, unauthorized by you, photo drone was flying over your property...

<p>Get even. Short of a 12 gauge, there's always the Phantom "Snowden" signature model:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/technology/personaltech/review-the-phantom-2-vision-photo-drone-from-dji.html?hp&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/02/technology/personaltech/review-the-phantom-2-vision-photo-drone-from-dji.html?hp&_r=0</a></p>

<p>Garden gnome holding a "No Fly Zone" placard?</p>

<p>I'd get used to it. There are WAY too many commercial interests involved for drones to be outlawed. The best you can expect is action after the fact assuming where you live has privacy regulations related to drones and you can afford to bring a law suit.</p>

<p>The temptation would certainly be to shoot it out of the sky (...assuming you live in Texas...), though perhaps a market in attack fighter drones, anti-drone missiles or high power radio frequency jammers will develop, all of which will be illegal and all of which will probably result in a less than friendly talk with Homeland Security and other men in black.</p>

<p>You could blind it with a laser, but that too is illegal. The FAA take a very negative view of anyone shining high (or even low) power lasers at aircraft.</p>

<p>On the other hand if it's just some kid (or adult) flying their $200 quadcopter around the neighborhood, and it isn't constantly hovering over my house, I wouldn't get too upset about it. If it was over my house a lot, I'd simply follow it to wherever it landed and talk with the operator. Those "toy" drones don't have a lot of range and they don't have much air-time, so finding out where it lands should be pretty easy.</p>

<p>A fellow in Fort Mojave Arizona got annoyed at the cropduster airplanes flying near his house so he plugged one of the planes one day and it crashed. The FBI came knocking and a judge put him in the slammer for several years. He learned it is a federal felony to shoot down aircraft.<br>

Now I have no idea about drones as aircraft but I think the authorities might take a dim view of shooting drones.<br>

An agriculture corporation near Indio California sued the tourist balloon industry for ruining their crops and it ruined the tourist balloon business in the Coachella Valley for several years.<br>

Commercial airliners can fly over your property at any time but they are a few to a lot of thousands of feet in the air. About drones -- well, a lot of courts and lawyers and judges will have sort it all out.</p>

<p>It shouldn't be too difficult to introduce enough EM interference to disrupt the transmitter/receiver connection of a hobbyist drone. </p>

<p>It'd be a piece of cake to interrupt older FM transmitters. Modern 2.4GHz systems might have better immunity to interference, but plenty of modern appliances like cordless phones, amateur radio and microwave ovens operate in those bands that it should be quite easy to jury-rig something to disrupt drone remotes. </p>

<p>" <em>it should be quite easy to jury-rig something to disrupt drone remotes</em>."<br>

<br>

That too would be illegal. <em>Deliberately</em> disrupting communications is frowned upon. You probably also have to exceed unlicenced legal power levels to effectively disrupt communications. The more sophisticated amateur drone have a homing system which will return the drone safely to base if communication is lost.</p>

<p>You could easily exceed required power if you were a licensed radio amateur, but again deliberate interference with a 2.4GHz ISM device would get you into trouble with the FCC.</p>

<p>I still think a fighter drone is the answer...though I'm assuming the FAA might have something to say about that.</p>

<p>Look forward to the drone wars.</p>

<p>Bob, suppose I was a backyard tinkerer; I dismantled my microwave oven and stuck a waveguide on the exposed magnetron to essentially create a "dome of interference" above my property but not affecting my neighbors, you think the law will come after me? </p>

<p>>>; I dismantled my microwave oven and stuck a waveguide on the exposed magnetron<br /></p>

<p>I would be afraid of radiaton from something like that. Some of you are being quite silly about this. I don't care if some private individual runs a small drone thing across my farm or where ever. I'm much more worried about the government doing it, considering their track record the past three or four years now. That's the real threat, not "regular people."</p>

<p>Kent in SD</p>

"considering their track record the past three or four years now. That's the real threat, not "regular people."

 

As I said earlier and history shows, this kind of data harvesting has been going on for far longer than the past 3 or 4

years. I know that a lot people like too try and forget the years between 200 and 2009 but life is better without blinders

on.

 

"How do you define "regular people"? Does that include big businesses? Or just your self-employed neighbor down the

lane? What if he's a private detective working for an ex-spouse or your insurance company?

"considering their track record the past three or four years now. That's the real threat, not "regular people."

 

As I said earlier and history shows, this kind of data harvesting has been going on for far longer than the past 3 or 4

years. I know that a lot people like to try and forget the years between 2000 and 2009 but life is better without blinders

on.

 

"How do you define "regular people"? Does that include big businesses? Or just your snoopy neighbor down the

lane? What if he's a private detective working for an ex-spouse, your insurance company? Is that okay?

<p>Never knew there was such a thing as "your property".</p>

<p>Always thought the goverment (local or federal) owned everthing and all we ever owned was the right to pay property taxes. </p>

<p>As a test I suppose one could stop paying property taxes and see what transpires. </p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>The moment they leave the cam it's considered abandoned property - period.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Abandonment requires surrender, relinquishment, disclaimer, or termination of any claim to the property. Since trail cams are used to obtain imagery and are almost always retrieved and not considered disposable, the claim above has no merit. Especially the "period" part.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>This isn't about manners - it's what the law would consider a reasonable expectation of privacy</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The relevant law (in the non-criminal context) is one of the four invasion of privacy torts. Namely, "intrusion". It occurs when one intrudes upon the private space, solitude, or seclusion of a person, or their private affairs or concerns of a person if such intrusion would be highly offensive to a reasonable person. Whether use of a drone over property amounts to intrusion depends on the context and circumstances of its use. Merely flying over real estate alone isn't sufficient. Manners is relevant not only for social issues which Matt seemed to be discussing but also to the legal issue raised here since manners may be considered in what is offensive conduct.</p>

<p>All of this is U.S. based as is the rest of the discussion apparently.</p>

<p>As to the original question, how would I react? It depends on the circumstances. </p>

<p>Thought #1: As long as it brings me a package from Amazon, I would be happy.</p>

<p>Thought #2: Always wear a bathing suit.</p>

<p>All kidding aside, I would expect that FAA regulations might apply, along with those of the local jurisdiction. But I doubt if YOU control the rights. Aircraft have a right of way to fly over most places.</p>

<p>I've skimmed the responses to this question. I've had a pre-drone government interaction on my farm.</p>

<p>I've had the following happen on my previous little 32 acre farm:</p>

<p>We had a chopper narrow it's focus on our property. We were raising around 45 hogs at the time. A chopper came in, hovering over our pastured hog area.</p>

<p>The chopper was hovering over our property. I went out with our shotgun to see what was going on. As I was approaching our hog pen (with shotgun), several SUV's came charging up our driveway.</p>

<p>I was in communication with my partner, who had the sheriff on the line. She was reporting an invasion by air of our property. The sheriff's department said something to the effect they were raiding a drug farm.</p>

<p>Apparently, ragweed often looks like pot from the air. We eventually convinced the sheriff's office that our ragweed was not pot. We also convinced them their low-flying chopper was really annoying our hogs and that I would shoot at their chopper (and their folks in our driveway) if they kept buzzing our hog pen.</p>

<p>If I would have had a 3rd arm for my camera I would have recorded this. It was really ugly and tense at the time.</p>

<p>I'm not a tinfoil hat type of person, but you really have to be on the alert for locals and feds.</p>

<p>Heaven help the poor dairy farmer that sells raw milk to his neighbor....he'll end up doing more prison time than the drug dealer down the street.</p>

<p>Fed Ex will fly in the pot from Colorado and land it right at your front door. How convenient!</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Bob, suppose I was a backyard tinkerer; I dismantled my microwave oven and stuck a waveguide on the exposed magnetron to essentially create a "dome of interference" above my property but not affecting my neighbors, you think the law will come after me?<br>

</p>

</blockquote>

<p>If they did, they'd have cause. What you suggest is not only pretty dangerous, it violates a bunch of FCC part 15 regulations on maximum power and maximum radiated power. I'm sure there are other general purpose regulations it violates, for example those relating to public safety.<br>

<br>

Note also that most, if not all, 2.4GHz radio control systems use spread spectrum techniques, one of the consequences of which is that they are much harder to jam than single frequency systems. That's one reason that they use spread spectrum. To jam the signal you'd have to transmit with enough power to desense the receiver, not an easy thing to do, even with a microwave oven! Some are direct sequence and some are frequency hoping. Unless you have the right PRN codes you can't interfere with the control signal.<br>

<br>

Like I said, best solution is a fighter drone you can scramble when the black drone helicopters come hovering over your house...</p>

<p>The situation Bob described would apply to some other nations' radio frequency regulatory agencies as well. It's likely Industry Canada would be concerned since such modification potentially affects FM and official or emergency communications. But Canadian officials have usually ignored HF/shortwave transmissions as long as they don't interfere with official comms. Ofcom in the UK have a reputation for being extremely aggressive toward any unauthorized radio frequency use across the entire spectrum. The FCC in the US tend to fall somewhere between the relaxed attitude of Industry Canada and the more aggressive Ofcom.</p>

<p>You'd have to throw a lot of 2.4GHz stuff at one of these to annoy it these days. My larger drone has this on board:<br /><br />1) Main flight controller radio - receiving from a controller on the ground at 2.4GHz<br /><br />2) Camera/gimbal controller radio - receiving from a second controller on the ground, also at 2.4Gh<br /><br />3) Video downlink transmitter, sending analog video to the camera operator (along with flight telemetry) at 5.8Ghz.<br /><br />4) Bluetooth transceiver supporting iOS device programming of the flight controller, firmware updates, etc.<br /><br />5) 2.4GHz datalink transceiver, sending and receiving with a mating ground station that in turn uses Bluetooth to talk to an iPad for pre-planned waypoint-based flight.<br /><br />6) A GPS receiver (the antenna for which is integrated with a large compass sensor). The flight controller is happiest when it can see at least 7 GPS satellites - though I routinely see it acquiring as many as 12 or 15. It's a very high-gain GPS unit.<br /><br />And as mentioned above ... if the machine loses track of the groundstation and/or the normal flight control radio, it will climb to a pre-defined altitude (I've got it set to 60 meters above ground), make its way back to the position from which it took off, and then slowly descend for a very well-controlled landing. It usually finds its way within a meter and half. But it's amazing that all of those radios can get along with each other, and even more amazing: you could have a dozen people flying similar rigs right next to each other - that's how good the radios now are at frequency hopping on the fly and never skipping a beat.<br /><br />Not counting lead projectiles, the way to knock these personal devices out of the air is with a heavy-duty EMP "cannon" of some sort. Overwhelm the flight controller computer with more sensory input than it can handle, and it will fail. People flying these in dangerous conditions will add one <em>more</em> radio, separate from the rest, and its only job is to fire the release on a heavy spring-powered parachute system. That same release can also be set to go if the onboard systems sense sufficient altitude but any of several scary failure modes (multiple motors dying, a dead flight controller, etc). <br /><br />The smaller recreational quadcopters can't possibly haul all of that around (it's all they can do to lift a small gimbal and a GoPro with some supporting electronics), so if they encounter a problem with the flight controller "brain," they just fall out of the air and you're in for some replacement parts shopping.<br /><br />I like Bob's idea of the counter-drone drone. One of those mall kiosk toy helicopters would work fine as a kamikaze unit. I'd be rather unhappy to have someone drop my hexacopter (below) from the sky, so I'll try really hard not to annoy people with it.</p><div></div>

<p>True enough, this all started way before Obama took office but the situation is deteriorating in terms of privacy. I have no problem with aerial vehicles of any kind coming and going but if one decides to start hovering around and becomes intrusive, I'm going to have a problem with it. Matt is right that it is mostly about good manners and that multirotors anyway don't have as much range though I expect that to change. There are some fixed wing machines though that have quite a bit of range along with First Person View as well as more than a few morons operating them and giving RCer's like me a bad name. As if I needed any help with that.</p>

<p>Rick H.</p>

<p>My reaction would be slightly annoyed, but I would advise against shooting it down with a double barrel shotgun. If it was hovering outside my windows peeping in, release the Kraken, steam would be shooting from my nostrils and ears.</p>

<p>During the Reagan administration the US Supreme Court allowed warrantless aerial surveillance to be conducted by state law enforcement officers. This arose in a pot growing case in California. The police flew over in a little Cessna at 500 feet or so altitude (the minimum legal altitude at that location) and took photos of the pot growing in a guy's backyard behind a 10 foot high solid privacy fence. The SC decided that looking down on your property from above without a warrant was ok, because the folks in the plane were looking down from public space. So, we should worry about law enforcement use of drones in the future. They could literally fly over our homes at will at a legal altitude and take pictures of our property and activities and even look into our windows to see what we are doing. <br>

The point of this somewhat tangential comment is that the FAA needs to act as soon as possible to determine the rules of flying drones (whether public or private) over private property. Because they operate in airspace, the FAA has exclusive jurisdiction over the problem. Until the FAA acts, I don't think the law is clear with regard to drones flying over. As someone else pointed out, it is not even clear how far up your property rights extend. <br>

Perhaps we would have some kind of trespass argument as to a private drone, but we currently have no argument with regards to a government operated drone flying over and taking photos. Thanks to that conservative Supreme Court back in the 1980s the government needs no warrant to do from the air (look into your backyard or back windows) what it cannot do from ground level (due to lack of probable cause for a warrant to search your property.) </p>

<p>A <a href="

launcher</strong></a> using compressed air, CO2 or other unregulated propellant might be a safer alternative for snaring and fouling those pesky drones.</p>

<p>It'll be interesting to see who's first to develop a recoilless airborne snare launcher and no-crash recovery system for hunting and capturing other drones - the military and law enforcement, or some well heeled eccentric enthusiast.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"they just fall out of the air"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I wonder if Lilly W would consider that abandonment.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>"It'll be interesting to see who's first to develop a recoilless airborne snare launcher and no-crash recovery system for hunting and capturing other drones - the military and law enforcement, or some well heeled eccentric enthusiast."</p>

</blockquote>

<p>or Iran... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93U.S._RQ-170_incident</p>

<p>Matt: How do you protect the camera when you land?</p>