[masraum]

I know we had the other thread on the what-ifs. Here, we are probably going to see some precedent set.

Kentucky man shoots down drone hovering over his backyard | Ars Technica

Just the beginning of the article

The way William Merideth sees it, it’s pretty clear-cut: a drone flying over his backyard was a well-defined invasion of privacy, analogous to a physical trespassing.

Not knowing who owned it, the Kentucky man took out his shotgun and fired three blasts of Number 8 birdshot to take the drone out.

"It was just right there," he told Ars. "It was hovering, I would never have shot it if it was flying. When he came down with a video camera right over my back deck, that's not going to work. I know they're neat little vehicles, but one of those uses shouldn’t be flying into people's yards and videotaping."

Minutes later, a car full of four men that he didn’t recognize rolled up, "looking for a fight."

"Are you the son of a ***** that shot my drone?" one said, according to Merideth.

His terse reply to the men, while wearing a 10mm Glock holstered on his hip: "If you cross that sidewalk onto my property, there’s going to be another shooting."

The men backed down, retreated to their car, and waited for the police to arrive.

"His only comment was that he hoped I had a big checkbook because his drone cost $1,800," Merideth added.

The Kentuckian was arrested Sunday evening in Hillview, Kentucky, just south of Louisville and charged with criminal mischief and wanton endangerment. He was released the following day. The Hillview Police Department did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment.

Clearly, he wasn't too concerned with firing a gun at his house, but maybe he should have been.

Here's the latest

New telemetry suggests shot-down drone was higher than alleged | Ars Technica

The pilot of the drone shot down Sunday evening over a Kentucky property has now come forward with video provided to Ars, seemingly showing that the drone wasn’t nearly as close as the property owner made it out to be. However, the federal legal standard for how far into the air a person’s private property extends remains in dispute.

According to the telemetry provided by David Boggs, the drone pilot, his aircraft was only in flight for barely two minutes before it was shot down. The data also shows that it was well over 200 feet above the ground before the fatal shots fired by William Merideth.

Boggs told Ars that this was the maiden voyage of his DJI Phantom 3, and that his intentions were not to snoop on anyone—his aim was simply to fly over a vacationing friend’s property, a few doors away from Merideth’s property in Hillview, Kentucky, south of Louisville.

"The truth is that this man lied and he's doubling down," Boggs said. "The video speaks for itself."

Merideth, meanwhile, continues to maintain that the drone flew 20 feet over a neighbor’s house before ascending to "60 to 80 [feet] above me."

When Ars asked how long he observed the drone before pulling the trigger, he responded by text message: "Not long, I watched it come in and when it stopped I took aim and fired."

The precise height of the drone may determine whether Merideth was justified in opening fire on the Phantom 3. The best case law on the issue dates back to 1946, long before drones were even technically feasible.

That year, the Supreme Court decided in a case known as United States v. Causby that that a farmer in North Carolina could assert property rights up to 83 feet in the air. In that case, American military aircraft were flying above his farm, disturbing his sleep and his chickens. As such, the court found he was owed compensation.

However, the same decision also specifically mentioned a "minimum safe altitude of flight" at 500 feet—leaving the zone between 83 feet and 500 feet as a legal grey area.

As the majority opinion wrote at the time:

The airplane is part of the modern environment of life, and the inconveniences which it causes are normally not compensable under the Fifth Amendment. The airspace, apart from the immediate reaches above the land, is part of the public domain. We need not determine at this time what those precise limits are. Flights over private land are not a taking, unless they are so low and so frequent as to be a direct and immediate interference with the enjoyment and use of the land. We need not speculate on that phase of the present case.

But in 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) asserts its right to all airspace.

"The FAA is responsible for the safety and management of US airspace from the ground up," Les Dorr, an FAA spokesman told Ars in a statement on Friday.

Peter Sachs, a Connecticut-based attorney, private investigator and drone advocate, concurred.

"There is no defined aerial trespass law," he told Ars. "You do not own the airspace over your own property."

The lawyer also pointed out to Ars, through an online hunting course, that hitting an object at 272 feet with Number 8 birdshot would be feasible.

[UPDATE Monday 9:20am CT: A few Ars readers pointed out that this diagram assumes a horizontal shot, not one into the air—questioning whether Number 8 birdshot could reach so high into the air.]

Still, both Boggs and Merideth seem to just want a calm resolution to the entire affair.

"What he needs to do now is just say: ‘my bad man, I misjudged it, let's make it right," Boggs said.

Previously, Merideth said that he would like to tell the drone operator:

"I would just like [him] to get some education on his toy and learn to respect the rights of the people," he said.

I don't think the fella with the gun is going to fair too well in this instance.