ShiftCentral Blog Get off my...sky?

A rash of vigilante 'drone-hunters' exposes the absence of federal regulation to address privacy concerns.Last month, a Virginia woman was out in her back yard when she spotted a small drone hovering above her lawn. She didn't hesitate before shooting it down, later explaining that the two men operating the aircraft from a car near her driveway "were trespassing in [her] airspace." She joins a slate of people in recent years who've shot down "creepy" unmanned aircrafts they believed to be trespassing on their private property - in some cases triggering legal action from the drone owners.These incidents raise several questions surrounding the rights of both drone hobbyists and those who feel their privacy is being invaded at the ground level. Does one own the patch of sky above their home? And if so, who determines ownership boundaries?While the limits of navigable airspace for commercial drones have yet to be clearly defined by the Federal Aviation Administration, those rules are even murkier when it comes to the actions of private actors. In fact, there's currently no national regulatory regime in place to handle drone privacy. Unfortunately, it may remain that way for a while. Even if the FAA's jurisdiction over "navigable airspace" extended to the surface - a disputed notion - the agency isn't especially focused on privacy issues right now, stating that these don't "raise an immediate safety concern."Fair enough. But while the FAA is off frying bigger fish, most of the court cases involving the take-down of overhead drones by civilians are still pending. We can only hope that as they are reached, court rulings will help shape a more concrete set of privacy rules in this space.