Maybe Drone Privacy Shouldn't Be a Federal Case

Yesterday, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's new drone rules went into effect. While many drone enthusiasts were pleased to see some long-awaited progress on this front, the folks at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., don't count in that group. They've been wrangling in court with the FAA over the lack of privacy safeguards in the new regulations--an issue that has dogged drone regulation for years. EPIC's lawyers contend that the FAA hasn't lived up to the mandate Congress set for it back in 2012 to create "comprehensive" regulations for the use of small drones. After all, how comprehensive can any set of drone regulations be if they ignore privacy issues? When EPIC first petitioned the courts back in February, the judge's response was that such objections were premature, given that the FAA had merely presented proposed regulations, not final ones.