The case of Chicken v Bomber, and how it might impact drone law

The first thing you should know is if you run afoul (pun very much intended) of the law, I can’t bail you out. If you read the “About the Author” page on MentalMunition.com, you’ll note that I’m not a lawyer. My only legal qualifications are an undergraduate course in media law.

Having said that, I started researching drone law and writing back in March, shortly before the Brookings Institution organized a panel on domestic drones and privacy. The ACLU had just published a report in December 2011 called “Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft” that referenced important Supreme Court cases that might play a role in drone law.

Just this week, Alexis Madrigal, the senior editor for the Technology channel at the Atlantic, wrote about two cases that could have some bearing on drone law, Guille v. Swan, and U.S. v. Causby. The latter involved dead chickens.

I’ll be writing about that case here. When we talk about drone laws, we’re talking about a speculative thing. To date, no journalist has been sued for violating rights of privacy with an unmanned aerial system. There is no legal precedent specifically for drones as of yet, although that might change in the near future. As drone technology proliferates, so too does the potential for abuse and for court cases.

But the United States courts are not absent of precedent that would come up in a privacy case involving drones. It’s is important to keep in mind that in many cases drone journalism is a form of aerial photography, albeit an unmanned form of aerial photography. Additionally, cases that consider whether the National Airspace System (NAS) is public or private are highly relevant.

Journalism Drone Development: aerial photo mosiacs, and what's the spatial resolution on this drone, anyway?

Above is an aerial mosaic -- a series of 11 photos taken from a small unmanned aerial vehicle (colloquially known as a drone) that have been stitched together in a mosaiking program.

That program, Microsoft Image Composite Editor, is normally used to stitch together a series of sweeping photos taken from the ground to make a single panoramic image. However, the algorithm used to find and match the edges of a series of sweeping photos of, say, the Grand Canyon, is the same algorithm needed to fit photos together to make a map or similar map-esque image from aerial photos.

So, what kind of drone journalism could you do with this kind of image? Aerial photographers have been able to capture a breathtaking, panoramic view of Moscow protests from drones. These drones offer a perspective that is especially helpful at documenting the scope or extent of protests, political rallies, construction projects, landmarks, geographic features, and natural and man-made disasters.

But what kind of data journalism can you do with these drones? That's to say, what kind of hard data can you obtain from these images to launch investigations? How about proving the existence of or extent of something, such as oil spills, wild fires, droughts, or lax construction codes following a disaster, with actual metrics?

Muck Rack hosts Drone Journalism Q&A

What are the rules on drone use right now? What would you use one for in journalism? What about ethics? Last week, the Muck Rack invited Nebraska Drone Journalism Lab's Matt Waite and DroneJournalism.org's Matthew Schroyer to a Twitter Q&A on drones to help answer those questions and more.

Read more on Muck Rack's site, which documented the fourteenth installment of their #muckedup chat.

Reposted from DroneJournalism.org

Drone Development In Progress: Aerial Photos and Videos

Despite JournoDrone 2 still being in the shop after its maiden flight, drone development is continuing onward and upward. Above is an aerial photo taken from my latest drone project, which has caused that previous drone to collect dust in the basement.

However, this new drone is superior in at least a couple of ways. One, it's much more stable in flight, thanks to its 68.5" wingspan. Its size also means it can loft a larger payload. The photo above was taken using an 11Mpx GoPro Hero 2, which is small, but has a not insignifcant weight penalty.

JournoDrone 2 was a plastic shell that I wrapped in carbon-fiber and epoxy, which could take a crash on the nose without much harm. This newest drone is made of balsa wood, but it's such a docile aircraft that the need for crash resistance is minimal. All that balsa, some 5 or so pounds of it, is also pretty good at flexing and absorbing a hard landing.

Drone Journalism at SXSW, now on the PanelPicker

We almost didn't make it on the list, but at the last minute, several of the DroneJournalism.org developers and myself were able to get on the PanelPicker for SXSW Interactive.

We want to show one of the most important tech conferences in the country what Drone Journalism is all about, with a panel we call "Drones for Journalists: Reporting Evolved." We'll be taking the audience through the basics: what is a drone, how can journalists use them to cover live events and augment investigative journalism, and what's been done to this point. We'll also answer questions about ethics, regulation, and the DIY tech behind this emerging field of journalism.

Here's the description we put on the PanelPicker:

Civilian and commercial drones are coming. As many as 30,000 drones, or unmanned aerial systems (UAS), will be flying in the national airspace within 8 years, by FAA estimates. For the first time, the kind of intelligence once reserved for governments is opening to journalists and the media. This panel brings together an expert in disaster reporting, a data-minded journalist who is developing drones to conduct investigations, and a former war reporter and Discovery Channel documentarian who uses a drone to record landscapes and events from a new perspective, to discuss how this technology is being used today, and how it may be applied in the future

At the speed drone development is coming along, March seems pretty distant in the future. But we've got some pretty interesting things to show, and we anticipate even more impressive things (i.e. some brand new drone-assisted reporting that we have in the works) will happen by presentation time.

We just have one problem. Many of these panels and presentations vying for a spot in this prestigious event had at least a couple more weeks than we had to generate votes (these votes count 30% to the ultimate decision). We are trying to get as many votes as possible to narrow the gap, so we can make it to SXSW and show the public what these drones are all about.

Hopefully we will see you in Austin this March.

Drones are monitoring sea mammals, keeping tabs on oil spills, helping governments prevent floods.

Every year, AUVSI, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International,hosts the biggest conference and trade show for drones in the country (but don't call them drones there; the term is UAS, for Unmanned Aerial Systems, please).

The industry group's last convention was in Las Vegas, and wrapped up earlier this month. A colleague who was there sent me the exhibition catalog. As is the custom nowadays, you could have read all that info online. But the printed version was still worth reading, and served as a snapshot of the "state of the drone."

I've taken four of what I thought were the most interesting talks, and pasted their descriptions here. The list includes researchers and developers using drones to monitor oil spills and the health of marine mammals. In one discussion, a Thai UAV company claims their technology helped the government make decisions that averted a major flood from inundating Bangkok.

Innovations, the future, and the history of drone journalism: Q&A

Recently I was asked by a Brazilian Journalist, Nina Gazire of the art and design magazine seLeCT, about where drone journalism came from, where it exists now, and where it might be going in the future. Below are the answers I sent. A lot of progress with developing the drones has been made since this email, but everything else is still very relevant to the subject of drone journalism.