The UAV was, for most intents and purposes, trespassing[1], and had a camera. Even as a UAV operator myself who is getting into putting cameras on my multirotors and setting up FPV gear, I have a hard time placing any blame on the homeowner in this story.
The operator should not have had been flying their craft on another's property.
Sorry but currently this drone was considered an aircraft and you don't have the right to shoot down aircraft over your property. You can build structures that block them but not shoot at them.
Edit: OK This is getting downvoted, so I'll clarify. I'm not saying I like the fact that this is how the law in the USA is, but that's how it is. It is legally considered an aircraft. He shot down an aircraft.
Does it need to change? Yes. Is it changed now? No.
Unless the drone was over 500 ft and met all the regs for an aircraft and was being operated by someone with all the appropriate licenses, this was most certainly NOT an aircraft. Under 500 ft and you're inside someone's air rights which is generally just the same as standing on their front porch.
That's just not the case. [1] The law is not that you have rights 500ft above your property the correct hight is 83ft due to some chickens getting scared.
I lost my reference - but you don't own any of the air above the highest structure of your property. The 83ft, if I remember correctly, was the height of the tallest structure of that farmer's farm. So that isn't a value set in stone either.
There's also limitations to how tall you can build structures, even on your own property, so erecting a giant tower to claim more airspace isn't a solution!
Bonus Trivia: Few homeowners own the ground beneath their home unless they have something called "Mineral Rights".
Thanks, I want to add that the article mixes a lot of stuff. For example the limitation on the pig drone has almost everything to do with using the drone for commercial purposes and nothing really to do about the 83-500' issue itself.
> Unless the drone was over 500 ft and met all the regs for an aircraft and was being operated by someone with all the appropriate licenses, this was most certainly NOT an aircraft.
No, it is an aircraft in any case. It may be an improperly-operated aircraft, which would open the operator up to sanction, but I'm pretty sure that you aren't allowed to shoot down improperly-operated aircraft over your property, including in the altitude range in which the airspace is within the scope of your legal property rights.
You don't have to be above 400ft to be an aircraft. You have to be above 400ft for the FAA to give a shit about regulating what you do. If you shot down an airplane landing on your field you'd be in trouble.
"Myth #3: The FAA doesn't control airspace below 400 feet
Fact—The FAA is responsible for air safety from the ground up. Under 49 U.S.C. § 40103(b)(2), the FAA has broad authority to prescribe regulations to protect individuals and property on the ground and to prevent collisions between aircraft, between aircraft and land or water vehicles, and between aircraft and airborne objects. Consistent with its authority, the FAA presently has regulations that apply to the operation of all aircraft, whether manned or unmanned, and irrespective of the altitude at which the aircraft is operating. For example, 14 C.F.R. § 91.13 prohibits any person from operating an aircraft in a careless or reckless manner so as to endanger the life or property of another."
I would say in this case, it's reasonable to assume a hovering drone with a camera, pointed at your house is reckless enough to warrant suspicion from the homeowner, and allow him to act accordingly.
> I would say in this case, it's reasonable to assume a hovering drone with a camera, pointed at your house is reckless enough to warrant suspicion from the homeowner, and allow him to act accordingly.
The operator of the drone was definitely operating outside of the regulations in place, but that doesn't make it any less an aircraft. He should have been within line of sight of his craft. If he wasn't then the operator was breaking regulations.
https://www.faa.gov/uas/model_aircraft/
>Don't be careless or reckless with your unmanned aircraft – you could be fined for endangering people or other aircraft
So the operator could get fined, but does that give the home owner the right to shoot down an aircraft? We'll see as this issue plays out in court.
If you want to get absurd then give me a piece of paper and a minute and I can make you an "aircraft" that has a value of $0.05 or less. Just because it's flying through the air it's not necessarily an "aircraft".
The point is that there are certain classes of aircraft with varying degrees of certification for airworthiness and if it doesn't fall into any of those classes I'm not sure that I agree that it's an "aircraft" at least in the legal sense.
If you really want to argue that anything which is in the air and not touching the ground is an aircraft then I am an aircraft. Every time I jump off the ground.
I mean, sure they're on a ballistic trajectory but they're still up in the air in an unsupported fashion. Motocross riders now need pilot's licenses.
I'm all for a good reductionist argument, probably moreso than the average "reasonable" person. But the mental and linguistic gymnastics you're doing to make an RC toy an aircraft are reaching, and not just a little bit.
> It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil,[1] or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.
Drones, also have the requirement to be autonomously controlled (UAV), none of your examples meet both requirements. Most don't meet the first, otherwise shooting skeet would be illegal, because they generate more lift then most your other examples.
> It counters the force of gravity by using either static lift or by using the dynamic lift of an airfoil,[1] or in a few cases the downward thrust from jet engines.
Also, if it needs to have a power source, the rubber band helicopter or the rubber band airplane is super legit. That's a power source.
My point isn't that I really think that these are aircraft. It's that trying to apply the rules for "mechanical devices which carry people in them" to things which don't carry people is pretty silly.
You are re-iterating a position which is currently under a lot of debate. There are two components here:
1) Model Aircraft (your first FAA link) are not "Aircraft" in the sense of operating under the rules and regulations of private aircraft or commercial aircraft.
2) Within the definitions of personal property, the owner has rights about what they can and cannot do to other property that intrudes on that space.
So in the 2nd case, if a "toy" (aka Model Aircraft) was on their property intentionally (which is to say the owner put it there), there is a bunch of case law that says that can impound it or do what ever they want with it. From errant baseballs breaking windows to toy airplanes (or rockets) which land on their land. Further the owner is liable for any damage it does. So in that regard the landowner was well within their rights to "shoot"[1] a toy airplane out of the sky above their house if they felt threatened. The means employed, a shotgun, only has an effective range of about 250' so by definition the flying vehicle was within the 400' exclusion zone. It doesn't matter if it was a $1500 quad-copter drone or a $1.50 balsa wood wind up airplane.
But then there is the whole question of police usage and surveillance. So for a police unit to be lawfully surveilling you under the 400' limit they need a warrant (currently). Its possible it extends farther than that given opinions like this one [1]. And as the article points out, if you can't tell its the police you can't really be expected to know you aren't within your rights in disabling it.
[1] "Held: Where, as here, the Government uses a device that is not in general public use, to explore details of a private home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a Fourth Amendment "search," and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. Pp. 3-13." - http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html
Well, they don't really. If someone wanders onto your property and starts shooting video, you're going to be in big trouble if you just blast away at them without warning.
The law will differ from state to state, but in Texas, I believe that the use of deadly force is not justified in preventing trespass unless you believe that you are in danger of injury or death.
The tl;dr of that - it is a bad idea to trespass in Texas as the threshold for a property owner being able to justify a shoot first and ask questions later policy is pretty low.
In all my years living here, I can't recall a single incident in the news where a property owner who used deadly force against a trepasser was actually indicted by a grand jury. I'm obviously not trying to imply that it couldn't possibly happen though.
I meant for my comment to be more facetious about the laws governing us, but yes, you're right and I agree: there has to be a dire threat. At least you can warn a human, though. If drones are going to be protected like an endangered species, then lawmakers better be able to justify treating the robots like living things.
The article specifically discusses the urgent need for new law surrounding this new class of technology – that the existing laws for aircraft are insufficient.
You also don't have the right to shoot as a person acting in a lawful manner. The user was not operating the UAV in a lawful manner (as outlined in the documents you linked).
This impacts the legality of shooting at the aircraft. To what degree this impacts will be up to the courts and the attorneys.
Of course, the shooter was an idiot for shooting at something in the sky, where the bullets would remain stable and lethal for potentially miles. He should absolutely be punished for that, but not necessarily for destroying the UAV operating illegally aside his house.
Trespassing is defined by Kentucky state law when "a person ... knowingly enters or remains unlawfully in or upon premises" [1]. Premises is defined in this section as "buildings and real property."
As a flyer of things over multiple decades, I would like to point out something that has been learned, over and over, by generations of people who have been flying things - remotely and otherwise - countless times: Don't fly in a way that it bothers people. Use flight responsibly, because you - or, indeed, others - can perish from the attempt. It has been learned, again and again, that those who claim the right to fly, must be responsible for the possibility of death, or otherwise, all the way .. down.
Flying things under human control are unusual. They are not acts of nature, they are acts of Human-kind.
At the very least: if you are going to fly, and bother people, expect a bothering response.
The owner claims (with video/telemetry) that the drone was over 200ft in the air and not over his property at the time [1]. And that the SD card with the video was removed from the drone before he could recover it [2].
(Just adding a bit from the other side of the story)
200ft changes the story quite considerably as it is outside of the homeowners airspace (83ft) and it's reasonable to assume the drone was just up to get a panoramic shot/video of the area not to take video of a single house. There are easier ways to peep on someone then flying a noisy drone over them.
It depends entirely on the skill of the person shooting and what they're shooting at it with. If stationary, it's not an amazing feat of marksmanship, either. Even a moving drone at that distance is certainly possible for most people with any formal training.
He fired at it with 3 shots of number 8 birdshot[1], which means he fires hundreds of pellets per shot[2] and those pellets spread out as they travel. All it takes is one pellet to bring down the drone. It would have been trivial.
I'm sick of seeing "effective range" used to claim "absurd!"
Yes. If you want your pellets to go inside of a goose and harm it, then your birdshot is only effective at about 40 yards. Further than that, you won't be bringing a bird down, because the birdshot isn't hitting with enough force anymore. But you aren't shooting a bird. You're shooting a drone.
Some birdshot hitting and damaging the propeller is enough to bring the drone down. It doesn't need to penetrate and because it doesn't need to penetrate, it doesn't need to be within effective range.
The great risk here is that politicians are going to do something stupid before the people work out a more 'reasonable' solution; for example a very reasonable solution is giving the owner a warning somehow and then shooting the drone if it goes unheeded.
The question is "how?" How do we make laws like that? For example, contract law is often very reasonable and frequently aims for fairness. How do we get other purely material disputes between people to mirror this rationality?
I'm reminded of the old adage that there's no situation that can't be made worse by involving the police. Sure, it may be the case that the drone owner wins the legal case, but if this behaviour persists, and if shooting the thing down becomes impossible, owning drones may become impossible too.
Frankly I would prefer a world where the solution to dickheads messing around with drones is that the drone gets blown out of the air to a world where the government decide that drones need to be heavily regulated. (A place I rather suspect we'll end up in if this behaviour becomes widespread.)
i have a hard time understanding how the police could/would help.
"what did the perpetrator look like"
"well. it was hovering and had a camera and just hung out in my backyard. i asked it to leave but it didnt."
so then do the police launch a full-scale invasive search of the neighborhood to find evidence of a drone owner? then we have two problems --- we have government overreach or we have unbridled menacing and trespassing, unless i'm failing to see a mediating position.
Ah - I think you just gave me the insight I had been missing into why America seems to have issues trusting the police, and consider self-help as a necessary supplement to calling the cops. You think of them as an active preventive measure - they have to get to the scene of the crime and actively stop it.
A more useful police function is to investigate and prosecute offences after the fact. If you know you won't get away with doing something, you'll be discouraged from doing it. In this case, what are the cops going to do? How about follow the drone, figure out who it belongs to, then go and have a word with them? Is 'conducting a criminal investigation' government overreach?
Fully agree. Likely the drone is long gone before the police arrive, and if it isn't, what are they going to do about it? Shoot it down is about all they can do, unless someone comes up with some kind of EMP drone disabler.
So what is the correct legal response? Do you record the drone on your property and bring up trespassing charges? Are there any successful cases of this happening?
I suspect if you take a drone apart you'll find a manufacturer serial number on the PCB. But it's not a registration which would tell you who the responsible party is. In both cases.
The vast majority of guns are also registered, too. The only way to have an unregistered gun is to make it yourself, or to buy it directly from another owner who is not a dealer. If you buy a gun from a dealer the sale is recorded. There is a background check, too.
It's a lot further from the wild west than politicians and the media would have you believe in the wake of a mass shooting.
The paperwork done when buying a firearm from an FFL is not a registration. The government is not provided the serial number as a part of a sale, in fact they don't even find out wether or not you purchased the firearm. Similarly, if you get a rejection during the NICS background check the dealer doesn't find out why, just that you are not eligible to purchase. Both parties are kept blind to information that they shouldn't be privy to.
Unless you live in a state that requires registration of firearms, the government doesn't just find out who owns one. That isn't to say there isn't some legal mechanism by which the government can get that info from the shop that sold it. If you truly want an anonymous firearm, buying one in a face-to-face transaction is the closest your typical person will reasonably get, and that still requires you to show some form of ID (a drivers license or a carry permit, typically) to the seller. At least that's how it works in South Carolina.
last week saw a video taken from plane taking off, the end of the wing hit a drone (actually quite high) and got damaged badly (no access to youtube now at work, but it should be easy to find). Damage to wing can easily get to few tens of thousands of USD, if not more. Be it engine, the aircraft would be having much bigger issues, since after takeoff, it needs a lot of thrust to gain altitude.
as usually, the whole drone community is going to suffer because of few arrogant d*ckheads. initially i was pro-drone, but after couple of similar videos showing how some owners of drones behave (privacy is unknown term for quite a few), I don't have that much sympathy anymore.
Regulate, allow in some areas but under strict rules, punish harshly those who ignore rules. When one wields ability to potentially kill few hundred people and do 200 mil USD damage (or much more, imagine falling plane hitting some urban area), personal sympathies are irrelevant.
I get the desire to take cool pictures, and drones open up the ability to do things with video and photography that in the past was only accessible to people paying lots of money. But it's also causing problems that need to be solved.
Given that most of these cases seem to be about property owners shooting off guns in populated (often suburban) neighborhoods, I'm not sure how much they say about how the law would view shooting down a drone taking pictures around an isolated house on a rural property.
Many municipalities have laws against discharge of a firearm within the city limits. That said, a shotgun blast up into the air at a hovering drone doesn't pose much risk to anyone else (bullets are a different matter).
In a rural area, I'd think the most he could be charged with is property damage, but a drone hovering at a low altitude over private property must in my view (not sure about legally) be considered trespassing, which would be a mitigating factor. If a robot with a camera rolled or walked onto your property, what are your rights? The same should apply to flying drones, at least below a certain altitude.
You're not generally allowed to destroy other people's property just because they're trespassing with it. They may have committed a crime by trespassing, but that's a matter for the police and the courts.
This is of particular personal interest to me, because I fly gliders and sometimes we end up making emergency landings on other people's property when the weather doesn't quite cooperate with us.
My understanding of the law there is that I'm liable (and covered by my insurance) for any damage I cause to their property in the course of landing and retrieval, but the property owner can't stop me from retrieving my aircraft, and can't intentionally damage it.
Now, the fact that it's technically an emergency landing does change things a bit, for example my actions aren't a crime the way normal trespass would be. But I don't believe it changes the property owner's rights and responsibilities.
The trajectory of the bullet generally doesn't matter with city ordinances. If you don't have a reason to be using the deadly weapon (self-defense) you generally aren't allowed to use it in a populated area.
I had a neighbor who was shooting his assault rifle into the ground in his back yard (a typical suburban neighborhood). After a few shots, the police were called, and they showed up with an entire SWAT team. Confiscated his weapons and threw him in jail for a couple days. He wasn't waving it around, and wasn't threatening anyone. It was only 3 rounds, actually, but it was enough.
I have a lot of trouble believing that, if a robotic camera rolled onto your rural property and started taking video of your kids playing in the yard, there are many police departments that would charge you if you took a baseball bat to it.
poster said shot, not bullets:
"That said, a shotgun blast up into the air at a hovering drone doesn't pose much risk to anyone else (bullets are a different matter)."
If he was using birdshot, there would be no risk to anyone past a few hundred feet. If there was a risk, trap/skeet would not be possible in most of the places where you can shoot it.
And just to clarify why that matters, shot is lots of small pellets, and small objects experience much more deceleration due to aerodynamic drag, and have a much lower terminal velocity.
I'm wondering if hobby style weapons like bb or paintball guns would take down the drone. If that would work, then are there any laws against you shooting a bb/paintball gun in your backyard?
Similarly, if someone is flying a kite and it is over your backyard and you shoot the kite with a bb gun enough to bring it down, what would the police do? Is a kite any different than a drone, legally speaking?
It's pretty difficult for an individual to get all of the 'facts' before actually reporting to initiate an investigation. Mean while the crime has already been committed. Not to mention there are no requirements for identifying markers.
The risk of loss of cargo and loss of vehicle is one of the things which I think will keep low altitude drones from becoming a widespread delivery vehicle, at least in places where firearms are plentiful.
Aside from that, the faa and industry, et al, need to quickly come to grips with their proliferation and need to establish parameters, whether licensing, insurance, privacy protections, etc, before things escalate and retaliation stunts people's appetite for drones.
Cases like this could define how we look at drones in the future, whether you agree or not, drones need to have better rules and/or licensing. One of the main issues is that currently drones are considered aircraft and you DO NOT shoot down an aircraft. If the government really wanted to prosecute this guy he'd be sitting over a very hot fire (I hope that doesn't happen)
I don't think the FAA wants that to happen, but I might be wrong. I know they are attempting to define drones in the air space, however it's a long and very complicated issue, mostly because of the who owns the different airspace and how they regulate hobbyists vs commercial.
The issue is that there is a lot of interplay between the FAA (internal between ATO and other groups) and the lobby for model aircraft association. Currently much of the non-commercial flight falls under their jurisdiction. The issue is that many people who buy drones don't go through the full process and aren't really involved so they don't know hobbyist rules for drones. http://www.modelaircraft.org/
Commercial operation of a drone however, requires a much longer process.
"Why do commercial operations require a different process?
All operations conducted in civil airspace must meet minimum levels of safety. Public UAS operators have the ability to self-certify their equipment and personnel, but civil operators are certified by the FAA. We believe civil operators will benefit from the collaboration between the FAA and the public operators. Presently, the FAA is drafting a rule to address small UAS (less than 55 lbs.). Until that rule is promulgated, anyone wishing to operate a UAS for purposes other than hobby/recreational must obtain a grant of exemption issued under Section 333 or type and airworthiness certificate."
https://www.faa.gov/uas/faq/#qn14
Depending on the gun, this person could be guilty of reckless endangerment. I imagine it would be pretty easy to miss a drone, and even if he used a shotgun with small shot, you can still hurt someone with the falling shot.
Our smart devices seem to mandate syncing to the cloud, treating data as valuable, hardware as expendable.
However smart or self aware our household bot becomes, their brain should probably be stored on Dropbox or S3. Their thoughts might as well run in Lambda or Ethereum.
Well. Yeah, you don't need to utilise 'lethal' force on the little robotic fellas. This is completely reckless, pointless, an abuse of your right to own a firearm, all of those things. Then to threaten the lives of human beings who aren't even on your lawn yet.
I mean, I get it. It's the wild west still and there's frontier towns popping up all over the place. But this man is anti-social, and trouble, for anyone living in a currently active century.
why does it matter whether or not he knew what would happen if he shot the drone? i'm not exactly sure what relevance precognition would have to do with this.
Because "defend yourself" means that you threaten or use force when there's a threat against you. In this particular instance, the shooter used force first, and only afterwards was there a threat against him.
fair enough, i see your point. it's hard to quantify a "threat" though. seems like this guy felt "threatened" because of the hovering and lingering of the drone. i'm not advocating the practice of blasting things out of the sky, but we're focusing too much attention on the gunner and not enough on the pilots in this conversation of "threatening." the display of entitlement to be able to deliberately invade someone's personal privacy and then act appalled that someone forcefully stopped them from doing so is absurd.
There may be gray areas to "threat" but this was far outside them. There was no potential for imminent harm. It's certainly possible that the shooter felt threatened, but that's simply not enough. A crazy person might feel threatened at people walking by on the sidewalk, but that's not justification for opening fire.
People are focused on the shooter because abuse of a deadly weapon is a serious crime. The drone operator's crime was extremely minor by comparison, if any.
It's not "entitlement" to be appalled that someone used deadly force against your property in a completely inappropriate and likely criminal manner. You don't lose all your rights when you do something wrong, and if someone escalates the situation far beyond where it was, that's a major problem.
Yeah, but he could when the 4 owners turned up an threatened him. I think if someone is flying a mobile video camera over my house to spy on me, I don't think it's unreasonable to shoot their toy down.
If you know of a non-permanent way to bring one down I'd be happy to hear of it.
If you bring your toy onto my shooting range and I shoot it, that's your problem not mine. Since it's not alive there should be zero question of lethality or violence.
Yes, I know that within most municipalities you cannot shoot guns, but if you are in a rural setting outside of the city limits, you most certainly can shoot as long as you take proper safety measures. Shooting a shotgun into the air is not a danger to anyone. By the time it comes down it'll have the ballistic properties of a handful of BBs thrown into the air.
The operator should not have had been flying their craft on another's property.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights#United_States