The Federal Aviation Administration in the US warns that shooting down drones is both illegal and dangerous, but a new bill proposed in the Florida Senate could allow property owners to use “reasonable force” to prevent a drone from conducting surveillance. An unnamed bill proposed to the Florida Senate earlier this month seeks to elevate the penalties for drone flight over private property, but also includes a clause that would allow the property owner to interfere with drones violating that law, provided those unmanned aerial vehicles are flying below 500 feet.
Florida is currently an “expectation of privacy” state for drone pilots. An expectation of privacy means that drones cannot fly to view something that isn’t possible to see while standing on the ground of publicly accessible property. For example, flying a drone over someone’s privacy fence is illegal in expectation of privacy states because that area cannot be viewed from the road and therefore has the expectation of privacy. Legislation typically has exceptions, such as for first responders, but drone pilots are largely prohibited from flying over expectation of privacy areas without the property owner’s permission.
