D. Parvaz interviewed Woodrow Hartzog during the recent Drones and Aerial Robotics conference. Here’s a snippet from the interview:
Woodrow Hartzog: There’s a fair amount of hand-wringing over drones and privacy, but I think in many instances it’s often dismissed because drones fly in public and they fly in public spaces and the law, as it’s traditionally been conceived, does not protect privacy when you’re walking out in the middle of the street. But I don’t think that’s entirely true.
I don’t think that when push comes to shove that we’re going to concede, as a society, that any time we’re in public we’re fair game to be surveyed or photographed, particularly over long distances. Say you’re being targeted in public….what if I have a drone and it’s dedicated to you, and I only monitor you, in public, for over the period of a year. Have I violated any expectation of privacy?… Well, at that point, it’s harassment. Right now, the law, as configured, does not really protect against that.
So the drones are going to force us to answer some difficult questions about [what] “public” means and when we should be protected, even when in public.
Read more on Aljazeera.