MN drone flier gets $55K fine by FAA.

I refrain from fly over private property where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
It is an interesting and rapidly evolving concept of privacy these days. With satellites (both government and commercial) having resolutions higher than we get on our drones, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy from the air anymore. The Netherlands drone laws, as an example, assume there is no aerial privacy and that is not an issue there. It will as usual in the US, require a court (or several) decision, to eliminate this nonsensical assumption of a right to privacy from the air. That has been gone a long time now yet the courts haven't been tested yet on this subject. This is probably more to do with national security issues than anything else. But, the fact is there is no privacy whatsoever and in fact it has been well established now that this kind of data is being unmasked and used by local/state police for enforcement using classified federal data. They have to invent some probable cause for enforcement but the data is the source for a lot of enforcement actions now in the US.

What is also interesting to me is that Kite Aerial Photography is completely unregulated and can be performed almost anywhere. As cameras have gotten very small they can be easily put on a kite and you can shoot photos all day from your kite (battery limited). With the newer 360 degree cameras with 5.7k resolution and weighing under 150 grams this is a very viable alternative to drones. So, where is the privacy aspect to this type of aerial photography for non-drone acquired imaging? You can take this argument a long ways. It is only a matter of time before we get insect sized camera drones (maybe they already exist in some DARPA funded project). So, any expectation of privacy is absurd now.
 
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