Just because you may not have seen a drone overhead doesn’t mean it hasn’t seen you. And, as was demonstrated by the killing of two British jihadi in Syria recently, these unmanned aerial vehicles are increasingly deployed by the West as front-line weapons of war.
Drones are set to become a defining feature of this century. Thousands are already in operation in most developed countries worldwide—and that is likely to grow to hundreds of thousands as drones of different shapes and sizes are deployed by the media, emergency services, scientists, farmers, sports enthusiasts, hobbyists, photographers, the armed forces, and government agencies.
Eventually commercial uses will dwarf all others. Amazon promises to deliver purchases within 30 minutes via delivery drones. Domino’s Pizza has staged hot pizza drone delivery. More than 20 industries are approved to fly commercial drones in the United States alone, and developing countries are following suit.
The question is, is this boom in drones moving faster than the law? How to fit such a proliferation of drones into the current regulations? The answers will need to be written into national and international laws quickly in order to govern an increasingly busy airspace. Many existing laws may need to be tweaked, including those governing cybersecurity, stalking, privacy and human rights legislation, insurance, contract and commercial law, even the laws of war.
There have after all been numerous suspect or dangerous uses of drones already. For example, illegal flights over seven nuclear plants across France, disruption to U.S. forest firefighting, and seven near-misses at airports in the U.K. In the United States several landowners have shot them down, leading to court cases that pit claims of trespass and the right to privacy against criminal damage.
Piecemeal Legal Changes Not Enough
French legislators responded swiftly with a police order to the first balloon flights by the Montgolfier Brothers in 1784 by prohibiting all flights over Paris without prior authorization. In the same way sovereign states ought to define precisely how and when they will permit drone flights over their territories. So far legal development to govern drone use has been very piecemeal; most countries have done nothing yet.
Again, it was France that was first to introduce dedicated legislation governing drones through a decree in 2012 bringing drones within its civil aviation regulations. Drones are allowed to fly between 50–150 meters (164–492 feet) from the ground and there are penalties up to five years in prison and fines of 75,000 euros for unlawful use of a drone.
