
Shooting Down Drones - ChrisArchitect
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/08/shooting_down_d.html
======
falcolas
The UAV was, for most intents and purposes, trespassing[1], and had a camera.
Even as a UAV operator myself who is getting into putting cameras on my
multirotors and setting up FPV gear, I have a hard time placing any blame on
the homeowner in this story.

The operator should not have had been flying their craft on another's
property.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights#United_States)

~~~
bargl
Sorry but currently this drone was considered an aircraft and you don't have
the right to shoot down aircraft over your property. You can build structures
that block them but not shoot at them.

Edit: OK This is getting downvoted, so I'll clarify. I'm not saying I _like_
the fact that this is how the law in the USA is, but that's how it is. It is
legally considered an aircraft. He shot down an aircraft.

Does it need to change? Yes. Is it changed now? No.

Edit 2: links for people interested.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmanned_aerial_vehicle)
> is an aircraft without a human pilot aboard
[https://www.faa.gov/uas/model_aircraft/](https://www.faa.gov/uas/model_aircraft/)
[https://www.faa.gov/uas/publications/model_aircraft_operator...](https://www.faa.gov/uas/publications/model_aircraft_operators/)

~~~
manyxcxi
Unless the drone was over 500 ft and met all the regs for an aircraft and was
being operated by someone with all the appropriate licenses, this was most
certainly NOT an aircraft. Under 500 ft and you're inside someone's air rights
which is generally just the same as standing on their front porch.

~~~
kenrikm
That's just not the case. [1] The law is not that you have rights 500ft above
your property the correct hight is 83ft due to some chickens getting scared.

[1]
[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/30/317074394/drone...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/05/30/317074394/drone-
wars-who-owns-the-air)

~~~
Nadya
I lost my reference - but you don't own any of the air above the highest
structure of your property. The 83ft, if I remember correctly, was the height
of the tallest structure of that farmer's farm. So that isn't a value set in
stone either.

There's also limitations to how tall you can build structures, even on your
own property, so erecting a giant tower to claim more airspace isn't a
solution!

Bonus Trivia: Few homeowners own the ground _beneath_ their home unless they
have something called "Mineral Rights".

~~~
mzs
Interesting I looked into it a bit and it was more about being compensated on
grounds of the taking clause and for an easement, thanks.

------
Ardren
The owner claims (with video/telemetry) that the drone was over 200ft in the
air and not over his property at the time [1]. And that the SD card with the
video was removed from the drone before he could recover it [2].

(Just adding a bit from the other side of the story)

[1] [http://www.wdrb.com/story/29670583/update-drone-owner-
disput...](http://www.wdrb.com/story/29670583/update-drone-owner-disputes-
shooters-story-produces-video-he-claims-shows-flight-path) [2]
[http://www.wdrb.com/story/29675427/drone-owner-responds-
to-c...](http://www.wdrb.com/story/29675427/drone-owner-responds-to-claims-of-
privacy-invasion)

~~~
perlgeek
How easy is it to shoot a drone that's 200ft high?

Sounds like not quite trivial to me, though having never shot a gun, I'm not
certain at all.

~~~
skwirl
He fired at it with 3 shots of number 8 birdshot[1], which means he fires
hundreds of pellets per shot[2] and those pellets spread out as they travel.
All it takes is one pellet to bring down the drone. It would have been
trivial.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/kentucky-man-
shoo...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/kentucky-man-shoots-down-
drone-hovering-over-his-backyard/) [2]
[http://www.gunnersden.com/index.htm.shotgun-
shells.html](http://www.gunnersden.com/index.htm.shotgun-shells.html)

~~~
pjungwir
I wouldn't call it trivial. Have you tried it? I'm not sure about kill-with-
one-pellet either.

40 yards (120 feet) is about the effective range for birdshot. Also at 40
yards your spread is about 40 inches. It's not a flamethrower. :-)

~~~
Nadya
I'm sick of seeing "effective range" used to claim "absurd!"

Yes. If you want your pellets to go inside of a goose and harm it, then your
birdshot is only effective at about 40 yards. Further than that, you won't be
bringing a bird down, because the birdshot isn't hitting with enough force
anymore. But you aren't shooting a bird. You're shooting a drone.

Some birdshot hitting and damaging the propeller is enough to bring the drone
down. It doesn't need to penetrate and because it doesn't need to penetrate,
it doesn't need to be within effective range.

------
arafa
Specifically regarding this story, apparently some of the facts are in
dispute. That the drone was hovering a few feet outside of the yard
([http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/new-drone-
telemet...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/08/new-drone-telemetry-
suggests-shot-down-drone-was-higher-than-alleged/)) and that the drone owners
came in one car and cursed at the shooter ([http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2015/07/kentucky-man-shoo...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2015/07/kentucky-man-shoots-down-drone-hovering-over-his-backyard/)).
Might be sloppy reporting. It would make the article less click-baity and
doesn't paint the shooter in a great light.

edit: I see someone else posted similar points while I was digging up the
links.

------
DickingAround
The great risk here is that politicians are going to do something stupid
before the people work out a more 'reasonable' solution; for example a very
reasonable solution is giving the owner a warning somehow and then shooting
the drone if it goes unheeded.

The question is "how?" How do we make laws like that? For example, contract
law is often very reasonable and frequently aims for fairness. How do we get
other purely material disputes between people to mirror this rationality?

------
6d0debc071
I'm reminded of the old adage that there's no situation that can't be made
worse by involving the police. Sure, it may be the case that the drone owner
wins the legal case, but if this behaviour persists, and if shooting the thing
down becomes impossible, owning drones may become impossible too.

Frankly I would prefer a world where the solution to dickheads messing around
with drones is that the drone gets blown out of the air to a world where the
government decide that drones need to be heavily regulated. (A place I rather
suspect we'll end up in if this behaviour becomes widespread.)

~~~
swasheck
i have a hard time understanding how the police could/would help.

"what did the perpetrator look like" "well. it was hovering and had a camera
and just hung out in my backyard. i asked it to leave but it didnt."

so then do the police launch a full-scale invasive search of the neighborhood
to find evidence of a drone owner? then we have two problems --- we have
government overreach or we have unbridled menacing and trespassing, unless i'm
failing to see a mediating position.

~~~
jameshart
Ah - I think you just gave me the insight I had been missing into why America
seems to have issues trusting the police, and consider self-help as a
necessary supplement to calling the cops. You think of them as an active
preventive measure - they have to get to the scene of the crime and actively
stop it.

A more useful police function is to investigate and prosecute offences after
the fact. If you know you won't get away with doing something, you'll be
discouraged from doing it. In this case, what are the cops going to do? How
about follow the drone, figure out who it belongs to, then go and have a word
with them? Is 'conducting a criminal investigation' government overreach?

~~~
imh
The point is the drone will be gone by the time the police arrive, so there is
no drone to follow.

~~~
swasheck
thanks for clarifying my position.

------
forthefuture
So what is the correct legal response? Do you record the drone on your
property and bring up trespassing charges? Are there any successful cases of
this happening?

~~~
swasheck
imagine trying to pick the drone owner out of a lineup if there was no reason
for them to accost the homeowner.

------
Symmetry
It's hard to see how the police could help given that drones don't come with
licence plates.

~~~
pjc50
To be fair, neither do the guns.

~~~
msandford
Guns all have serial numbers that the BATF requires firearm manufacturers to
imprint on the gun prior to sale.

The only way around that is to make the gun yourself, which you can legally
do, but you then can't sell it.

Technically not a license plate, but a lot closer to one than what drones
carry.

~~~
pjc50
I suspect if you take a drone apart you'll find a manufacturer serial number
on the PCB. But it's not a _registration_ which would tell you who the
responsible party is. In both cases.

~~~
msandford
The vast majority of guns are also registered, too. The only way to have an
unregistered gun is to make it yourself, or to buy it directly from another
owner who is not a dealer. If you buy a gun from a dealer the sale is
recorded. There is a background check, too.

It's a lot further from the wild west than politicians and the media would
have you believe in the wake of a mass shooting.

~~~
67726e
The paperwork done when buying a firearm from an FFL is not a registration.
The government is not provided the serial number as a part of a sale, in fact
they don't even find out wether or not you purchased the firearm. Similarly,
if you get a rejection during the NICS background check the dealer doesn't
find out why, just that you are not eligible to purchase. Both parties are
kept blind to information that they shouldn't be privy to.

Unless you live in a state that requires registration of firearms, the
government doesn't just find out who owns one. That isn't to say there isn't
some legal mechanism by which the government can get that info from the shop
that sold it. If you truly want an anonymous firearm, buying one in a face-to-
face transaction is the closest your typical person will reasonably get, and
that still requires you to show some form of ID (a drivers license or a carry
permit, typically) to the seller. At least that's how it works in South
Carolina.

------
saiya-jin
last week saw a video taken from plane taking off, the end of the wing hit a
drone (actually quite high) and got damaged badly (no access to youtube now at
work, but it should be easy to find). Damage to wing can easily get to few
tens of thousands of USD, if not more. Be it engine, the aircraft would be
having much bigger issues, since after takeoff, it needs a lot of thrust to
gain altitude.

as usually, the whole drone community is going to suffer because of few
arrogant d*ckheads. initially i was pro-drone, but after couple of similar
videos showing how some owners of drones behave (privacy is unknown term for
quite a few), I don't have that much sympathy anymore.

Regulate, allow in some areas but under strict rules, punish harshly those who
ignore rules. When one wields ability to potentially kill few hundred people
and do 200 mil USD damage (or much more, imagine falling plane hitting some
urban area), personal sympathies are irrelevant.

~~~
jmcqk6
Another problem, and the reason drones are banned in National Parks, is
crashing in inaccessible places.

[http://time.com/3433295/yellowstone-drone-
crash/](http://time.com/3433295/yellowstone-drone-crash/)

I get the desire to take cool pictures, and drones open up the ability to do
things with video and photography that in the past was only accessible to
people paying lots of money. But it's also causing problems that need to be
solved.

------
ghaff
Given that most of these cases seem to be about property owners shooting off
guns in populated (often suburban) neighborhoods, I'm not sure how much they
say about how the law would view shooting down a drone taking pictures around
an isolated house on a rural property.

~~~
ams6110
Many municipalities have laws against discharge of a firearm within the city
limits. That said, a shotgun blast up into the air at a hovering drone doesn't
pose much risk to anyone else (bullets are a different matter).

In a rural area, I'd think the most he could be charged with is property
damage, but a drone hovering at a low altitude over private property must in
my view (not sure about legally) be considered trespassing, which would be a
mitigating factor. If a robot with a camera rolled or walked onto your
property, what are your rights? The same should apply to flying drones, at
least below a certain altitude.

~~~
tajen
What about when the bullet falls back on the ground?

~~~
spathi_fwiffo
poster said shot, not bullets: "That said, a shotgun blast up into the air at
a hovering drone doesn't pose much risk to anyone else (bullets are a
different matter)."

If he was using birdshot, there would be no risk to anyone past a few hundred
feet. If there was a risk, trap/skeet would not be possible in most of the
places where you can shoot it.

~~~
mikeash
And just to clarify why that matters, shot is lots of small pellets, and small
objects experience much more deceleration due to aerodynamic drag, and have a
much lower terminal velocity.

------
millzlane
It's pretty difficult for an individual to get all of the 'facts' before
actually reporting to initiate an investigation. Mean while the crime has
already been committed. Not to mention there are no requirements for
identifying markers.

[http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/atl/l...](http://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/field_offices/fsdo/atl/local_more/media/nlowfly.pdf)

------
mc32
The risk of loss of cargo and loss of vehicle is one of the things which I
think will keep low altitude drones from becoming a widespread delivery
vehicle, at least in places where firearms are plentiful.

Aside from that, the faa and industry, et al, need to quickly come to grips
with their proliferation and need to establish parameters, whether licensing,
insurance, privacy protections, etc, before things escalate and retaliation
stunts people's appetite for drones.

------
bargl
Cases like this could define how we look at drones in the future, whether you
agree or not, drones need to have better rules and/or licensing. One of the
main issues is that currently drones are considered aircraft and you DO NOT
shoot down an aircraft. If the government really wanted to prosecute this guy
he'd be sitting over a _very_ hot fire (I hope that doesn't happen)

I don't think the FAA wants that to happen, but I might be wrong. I know they
are attempting to define drones in the air space, however it's a long and very
complicated issue, mostly because of the who owns the different airspace and
how they regulate hobbyists vs commercial.

The issue is that there is a lot of interplay between the FAA (internal
between ATO and other groups) and the lobby for model aircraft association.
Currently much of the non-commercial flight falls under their jurisdiction.
The issue is that many people who buy drones don't go through the full process
and aren't really involved so they don't know hobbyist rules for drones.
[http://www.modelaircraft.org/](http://www.modelaircraft.org/)

Commercial operation of a drone however, requires a much longer process.

"Why do commercial operations require a different process?

All operations conducted in civil airspace must meet minimum levels of safety.
Public UAS operators have the ability to self-certify their equipment and
personnel, but civil operators are certified by the FAA. We believe civil
operators will benefit from the collaboration between the FAA and the public
operators. Presently, the FAA is drafting a rule to address small UAS (less
than 55 lbs.). Until that rule is promulgated, anyone wishing to operate a UAS
for purposes other than hobby/recreational must obtain a grant of exemption
issued under Section 333 or type and airworthiness certificate."
[https://www.faa.gov/uas/faq/#qn14](https://www.faa.gov/uas/faq/#qn14)

That could possibly include you if you post your video to youtube and make
money off of it. [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-faa-says-you-cant-
post-...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-faa-says-you-cant-post-drone-
videos-on-youtube)

Again much of this is being flushed out as we work through it.

------
hamoid
I wonder if someone will sell a product that takes control of hovering drones
and lands them without breaking them.

------
wehadfun
What if he would have used a water hose to spray the thing down. Spraying
water on your own property is legal.

~~~
ams6110
A lot of inventive legal options -- compressed air blast, bean-bags and
slingshots -- would be effective on low-altitude drones.

------
DigitalJack
Depending on the gun, this person could be guilty of reckless endangerment. I
imagine it would be pretty easy to miss a drone, and even if he used a shotgun
with small shot, you can still hurt someone with the falling shot.

Much easier would be hosing it with water.

Much geekier would be a low power jammer.

------
dvh
Drones are the new laser pointers :)

------
some1else
Our smart devices seem to mandate syncing to the cloud, treating data as
valuable, hardware as expendable.

However smart or self aware our household bot becomes, their brain should
probably be stored on Dropbox or S3. Their thoughts might as well run in
Lambda or Ethereum.

------
Kequc
Well. Yeah, you don't need to utilise 'lethal' force on the little robotic
fellas. This is completely reckless, pointless, an abuse of your right to own
a firearm, all of those things. Then to threaten the lives of human beings who
aren't even on your lawn yet.

I mean, I get it. It's the wild west still and there's frontier towns popping
up all over the place. But this man is anti-social, and trouble, for anyone
living in a currently active century.

~~~
gadders
>>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 bitch that shot my drone?" one said, according to
Merideth.

I think if four people turn up looking for a fight, you are entitled to defend
yourself.

~~~
vardump
That's true, if you can see the future. Somehow I don't think this guy could
when he shot the drone.

~~~
swasheck
why does it matter whether or not he knew what would happen if he shot the
drone? i'm not exactly sure what relevance precognition would have to do with
this.

~~~
mikeash
Because "defend yourself" means that you threaten or use force when there's a
threat against you. In this particular instance, the shooter used force
_first_ , and only _afterwards_ was there a threat against him.

~~~
swasheck
fair enough, i see your point. it's hard to quantify a "threat" though. seems
like this guy felt "threatened" because of the hovering and lingering of the
drone. i'm not advocating the practice of blasting things out of the sky, but
we're focusing too much attention on the gunner and not enough on the pilots
in this conversation of "threatening." the display of entitlement to be able
to deliberately invade someone's personal privacy and then act appalled that
someone forcefully stopped them from doing so is absurd.

~~~
mikeash
There may be gray areas to "threat" but this was far outside them. There was
no potential for imminent harm. It's certainly possible that the shooter felt
threatened, but that's simply not enough. A crazy person might feel threatened
at people walking by on the sidewalk, but that's not justification for opening
fire.

People are focused on the shooter because abuse of a deadly weapon is a
serious crime. The drone operator's crime was extremely minor by comparison,
_if any_.

It's not "entitlement" to be appalled that someone used deadly force against
your property in a completely inappropriate and likely criminal manner. You
don't lose all your rights when you do something wrong, and if someone
escalates the situation far beyond where it was, that's a major problem.

