Drone Usage Concern for Privacy Advocates, NTIA Told

“As directed by the President, NTIA will convene stakeholders to develop best practices for privacy, transparency, and accountability regarding unmanned aircraft systems (UAS),” an NTIA spokeswoman said. “Leading representatives from industry, civil society, and others support the NTIA process.”

The U.S. approach on consumer privacy for UAS regulation is “particularly strong,” Amazon Vice President-Global Public Policy Paul Misener said, but Amazon recognizes that “UAS technology could cause privacy infringement if commercial or private use is not undertaken in a sensible, privacy-conscious manner, so we welcome and support NTIA’s leadership” in the multistakeholder process.

There should be "reasonable limits on the duration of flights and on the number of flights during a particular period, as well as limits on the size of the geographic area over which the UAS flies,” New America’s Open Technology Institute said. “The NTIA process should develop guidance for when UAS operators may and may not correlate UAS-derived data with other data such that those captured by UAS surveillance may be personally identified." International human rights organization Access urged NTIA to “adequately address threats to privacy and free expression posed by the public use of drone technology, particularly the unique challenges of drones as mobile internet service platforms.” Never before has an ISP "been able to connect the provision of service to a device that could also be used to conduct persistent and invasive physical surveillance using cameras and other sensors,” Access said.

Privacy and Technology Project Program Director Jill Bronfman said there's a need to “redefine legal privacy parameters and physical space perimeters to include aerial space.” Leaving this space unregulated “is to invite commerce in without safeguards for individual privacy,” Bronfman said. “Detriments to individual privacy include unpermitted use of images of private individuals, private spaces, and private ideas,” she said. “Detriments to business development include unlicensed use of copyrighted ideas, trade secrets, and other intellectual property.”

“Protecting individuals’ privacy and encouraging UAS operators’ transparency and accountability requires practical solutions that are grounded in the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) and that respect free expression values,” CDT said. It recommended NTIA develop best practices around notice, choice, data minimization and use restrictions and said that “self-regulation cannot be the sole method for protecting individual privacy.”

“The best way to ensure that the economic benefits of drones are realized and the risks to individual privacy minimized will be to focus on how the data collected by UAS technologies are used,” FPF said. “There is much work to be done to determine how general privacy principles can be applied to diverse UAS technologies.” NTIA "is well positioned to direct a fruitful dialog to develop best practices that promote privacy, transparency, and accountability,” the group said.

TechFreedom suspects "that much of the ‘privacy’ anxiety about drones is really anxiety about their increasing use by law enforcement and national security agencies -- a trend that has been developing for decades.” The Supreme Court “has failed to rein in” surveillance conducted by law enforcement “for essentially the same reason it has failed to protect Americans’ emails from snooping by the Federal government without proper judicial approval,” the group said. "Rules written in advance will tend to inflate hypothetical threats and under-estimate both the unseen benefits of new technologies and our collective ability to adapt our expectations and social norms.” Because UAS is "an emerging technology, privacy fears are likely to be heightened,” ITIF said. “Privacy is also highly subjective, so concerns will differ from one person to another,” they said. “NTIA should not create rules that try to solve problems that have yet to arise.”