Don’t let drones fly away with your privacy

Prince Harry’s and Meghan Markle’s settlement last week in a privacy lawsuit is a reminder that Illinois needs rules to govern exactly where camera-equipped drones can fly and record images.

Harry and Meghan’s California case centered on a paparazzi drone taking photos of their 14-month-old son, Archie, as he played in a backyard with his grandmother. The photos appeared in a German magazine. Under the settlement, the company must turn over the photos to the family, destroy any copies and help pay the family’s legal fees.

Not everyone can afford to go to court, though. Hence the need for enforceable rules to protect our privacy.

In 2014, the Illinois Legislature regulated the use of drones by government, but it has yet to establish rules for the use of commercial and private drones. When the pandemic hit last spring, state Rep. Robyn Gabel, D-Evanston, tells us, proposed legislation got pushed to the back burner.

But the drones, also called unmanned aerial vehicles, are still out there, some 1.7 million of them. On Sept. 16, a small drone landed in the Wrigley Field outfield during a Cubs-Indians baseball game. It flew away after stopping the game.

Chicago passed drone regulations in 2015 that ban flying near the airports or over schools, hospitals, open-air stadiums, police stations, places of worship and directly over people or private property without permission. Critics complain the city’s ordinance is so restrictive it effectively bans drone operators from flying a drone anywhere except over their own property.

Federal Aviation Administration regulations, which are evolving, require operators to keep their drones in their line of sight and prohibit flights over people on the ground. But whether drones can record images of people who are not directly below them is a gray area.

Drones have definite value. They can be fun to fly and provide helpful aerial images, and they appear to have a big future in making deliveries. But, given how unobtrusively small they can be, they pose all sorts of privacy threats. And as drones fill the skies to deliver packages — a distinct possibility — it will become more difficult to spot the drones that are up to no good.

According to the Illinois State Bar Association, property owners can try to keep drones at bay right now by suing on trespassing and invasion of privacy grounds. But that’s an expensive game of cat-and-mouse. Better to put a leash on the cat.

In an age of rapidly advancing technology, writing privacy legislation is a game of Whac-A-Mole. Keep whacking, Springfield.

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