Law struggling to catch up with use of drone technology, says privacy expert
Charlottesville, Va. recently became the first town
in the U.S. to pass an anti-drone resolution, calling for a restriction
on the use of the unmanned surveillance vehicles. “For drones, I
think the problem is that they do have some legitimate law enforcement
purposes, but they raise massive problems of invasion of privacy and
government surveillance that we need to think through before we deploy
drones in vast numbers in our skies,” says Neil Richards, professor of
law at Washington University in St. Louis.
Privacy legal fights should focus on intrusion, not hurt feelings (VIDEO)
Privacy lawsuits in the United States usually seek damages for revealing embarrassing but true facts by the media— the so-called “disclosure tort” — but this is a “poor vehicle for grappling with the problems of privacy and reputation in the digital age,” says Neil M. Richards, JD, privacy law expert and professor at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “The disclosure tort has never really worked successfully,” he says. “It’s largely unconstitutional.” Richards notes that there are two existing privacy law concepts that may be good supplements or even replacements to the disclosure tort.