drones Tag

May 5, 2016 In Infrastructure, Standards & Governance

FutureGov: Drones and Open Data

By Kristine Gloria, CTSP Fellow | Permalink

As we’ve explored in previous blog posts, civil drone applications are growing, and concerns regarding violations of privacy follow closely. We’ve thrown in our own two cents offering a privacy policy-by-design framework. But, this post isn’t (necessarily) about privacy. Instead, we pivot our focus towards the benefits and challenges of producing Open Government Drone Data. As proponents of open data initiatives, we advocate its potential for increased collaboration, accessibility and transparency of government programs. The question, therefore, is: How can we make government drone data more open?

A drone’s capability to capture large amounts of data – audio, sensory, geospatial and visual – serves as a promising pathway for future smart city proposals. It also has many data collection, use and retention policies that require considering data formats and structures.

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March 29, 2016 In Digital Citizenship, Infrastructure, Standards & Governance

Privacy for Citizen Drones: Use Cases for Municipal Drone Applications

By Timothy Yim, CTSP Fellow and Director of Data & Privacy at Startup Policy Lab | Permalink

Previous Citizen Drone Articles:

  1. Citizen Drones: delivering burritos and changing public policy
  2. Privacy for Citizen Drones: Privacy Policy-By-Design
  3. Privacy for Citizen Drones: Use Cases for Municipal Drone Applications

Startup Policy Lab is leading a multi-disciplinary initiative to create a model policy and framework for municipal drone use.

A Day in the Park

We previously conceptualized a privacy policy-by-design framework for municipal drone applications—one that begins with gathering broad stakeholder input from academia, industry, civil society organizations, and municipal departments themselves. To demonstrate the benefits of such an approach, we play out a basic scenario.

A city’s Recreation and Parks Department (“Parks Dept.”) wants to use a drone to monitor the state of its public parks for maintenance purposes, such as proactive tree trimming prior to heavy seasonal winds, vegetation pruning around walking paths, and any directional or turbidity changes in water flows. For most parks, this would amount to twice-daily flights of approximately 15–30 minutes each. The flight video would then be reviewed, processed, and stored by the Parks Dept.

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March 22, 2016 In Digital Citizenship, Infrastructure, Standards & Governance

Privacy for Citizen Drones: Privacy Policy-By-Design

By Timothy Yim, CTSP Fellow and Director of Data & Privacy at Startup Policy Lab | Permalink

Startup Policy Lab is leading a multi-disciplinary initiative to create a model policy and framework for municipal drone use.

Towards A More Reasoned Approach

Significant policy questions have arisen from the nascent but rapidly increasing adoption of drones in society today. The developing drone ecosystem is a prime example of how law and policy must evolve with and respond to emerging technology, in order for society to thrive while still preserving its normative values.

Privacy has quickly become a vital issue in the debate over acceptable drone use by government municipalities. In some instances, privacy concerns over the increased potential for government surveillance have even led to wholesale bans on the use of drones by municipalities.

Let me clear. This is a misguided approach.

Without a doubt, emerging drone technology is rapidly increasing the potential ability of government to engage in surveillance, both intentionally and unintentionally, and therefore to intrude on the privacy of its citizenry. And likewise, it’s also absolutely true that applying traditional privacy principles—such as notice, consent, and choice—has proven incredibly challenging in the drone space. For the record, these are legitimate and serious concerns.

Yet even under exceptionally strong constructions of modern privacy rights, including those enhanced protections afforded under state constitutions such as California’s, an indiscriminate municipal drone ban makes little long-term sense. A wholesale ban cuts off municipal modernization and the many potential benefits of municipal drone use—for instance, decreased costs and increased frequency of monitoring for the maintenance of public parks, docks, and bridges.

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February 2, 2016 In Digital Citizenship, Infrastructure, Standards & Governance

Citizen Drones: delivering burritos and changing public policy

By Charles Belle, CTSP Fellow and CEO of Startup Policy Lab | Permalink

It’s official: drones are now mainstream. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) estimates that consumers purchased 1 million drones — or if you prefer to use the more cumbersome technical term “Unmanned Aerial Systems” (UAS) — during the past holiday season alone. Fears about how government agencies might use data collected by drones, however, have led to bans against public agencies operating drones across the country. These concerns about individual privacy are important, but they are obstructing an important discussion about the benefits drones can bring to government operations. A more constructive approach to policymaking begins by asking: how do we want government agencies to use drones?

Reticence amongst policymakers to allow public agencies to operate drones is valid. There are legitimate concerns about how government agencies will collect, stockpile, mine, and have enduring access to data collected. And to make things more complicated, the FAA has clear jurisdictional primacy, but has not set out any clear direction on future regulations. Nonetheless, policymakers and citizens should keep in mind that drones are more than just a series of challenges to privacy and “being under the thumb” of Federal agencies. Drones also offer local public agencies exciting opportunities to expand ambulatory care, deliver other government services more effectively, and support local innovation.

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