Options For Limiting Overhead Drone Traffic

Does anyone seriously doubt that drones are going to be an increasingly large part of our lives in the near future? So, if we accept that premise, the next question becomes what can we do about the prospect of these things buzzing over our property?

Well here’s one approach:

The pros? It’s very old school and possibly effective. This of course depends on your marksmanship skills. Of course, if you actually hit one, it seems to me it could plummet to the ground and do who knows what damage to your property or your neighbor’s. So there’s that.

An alternative, less, um, noisy approach may be to register your property as a “no fly zone.”  Here’s a piece from Techcrunch.com talking about a Web site that allows property owners to register their real estate as a no fly zone. According to the article, many drone hardware and software firms have promised to honor the request. Seems like a less risky strategy than using the drone for target practice. 

But it begs the question about whether it will be effective. That of course remains to be seen. But as drones increasingly cloud our skies, there will be questions about privacy.  And one threshold question will be whether and to what extent a homeowner has an expectation of privacy about what happens in his/her yard or any other space that can be viewed by a drone. If there is no expectation of privacy (or a very limited expectation) an invasion of privacy lawsuit against the drone operator will fail. It may be worth registering for the no fly protection simply to bolster the case that there is an expectation of privacy. That piece of evidence could be useful in a civil suit.

That of course, assumes you don’t opt for the shoot ‘em up solution.