Privacy is a topic I’ve discussed at some length in earlier posts. (http://www.leejhinkle.com/2016/08/28/child-theft-why-you-posting-things-about-your-children-ends-up-damaging-them/).
I bought a drone this weekend and spent some time yesterday flying around.
First reactions: The stuff my relatively cheap drone can do is freaking awesome.
But.
I can fly the thing like 4 miles away in less than 10 mins. Four miles is WAY off of my property. And I can fly over a number of businesses.
Which brings up the privacy question.
While fooling around, we played “the drone can see you; can you see the drone?” with the kids.
Usually, the drone could get a lot of details of us long before we could see the thing.
Sometimes we could hear it first, but it was rare.
Which means that even at 100m altitude, we basically now own a spy plane.
So this brings up a host of ethical questions I haven’t even started to work through.
So for now, the best thing I can come up with is: other people’s property is vertical also. Even at 100m, you’re trespassing with a drone.