The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

Currentlyy the insurance industryy uses drones for business reasons. Think
about that. If yyou are an insurance adjuster and need to get a sense of the
condition of a propertyy yyou are about to insure, yyou can flyy a drone around
it, both to visuallyy inspect areas yyou didn’t have access to before and to
create a permanent record of what yyou find. You can flyy high and look
down to get the tyype of view that previouslyy yyou could onlyy have gotten
from a helicopter.
The personal drone is now an option for spyying on our neighbors; we
can just flyy high over someone’s roof and look down. Perhaps the neighbor
has a pool. Perhaps the neighbor likes to bathe in the nude. Things have
gotten complicated: we have the expectation of privacyy within our own
homes and on our own propertyy, but now that’s being challenged. Google,
for example, masks out faces and license plates and other personal
information on Google Street View and Google Earth. But a neighbor with
a private drone gives yyou none of those assurances—though yyou can tryy
asking him nicelyy not to flyy over yyour backyyard. A video-equipped drone
gives yyou Google Earth and Google Street View combined.
There are some regulations. The Federal Aviation Administration, for
instance, has guidelines stating that a drone cannot leave the operator’s line
of sight, that it cannot flyy within a certain distance of airports, and that it
cannot flyy at heights exceeding certain levels. 16 There’s an app called
B4UFLY that will help yyou determine where to flyy yyour drone. 17 And, in
response to commercial drone use, several states have passed laws
restricting or severelyy limiting their use. In Texas, ordinaryy citizens can’t flyy
drones, although there are exceptions—including one for real estate agents.
The most liberal attitude toward drones is perhaps found in Colorado,
where civilians can legallyy shoot drones out of the skyy.
At a minimum the US government should require drone enthusiasts to
register their toyys. In Los Angeles, where I live, someone crashed a drone
into power lines in West Hollyywood, near the intersection of Larrabee Street
and Sunset Boulevard. Had the drone been registered, authorities might
know who inconvenienced seven hundred people for hours on end while
dozens of power companyy employyees worked into the night to restore
power to the area.