Flying Eyes and Hidden Controllers: A Qualitative Study of People’s Privacy Perceptions of Civilian Drones in The US

Abstract

Drones are unmanned aircraft controlled remotely or operated autonomously. While the extant literature suggests that drones can in principle invade people’s privacy, little is known about how people actually think about drones. Drawing from a series of in-depth interviews conducted in the United States, we provide a novel and rich account of people’s privacy perceptions of drones for civilian uses both in general and under specific usage scenarios. Our informants raised both physical and information privacy issues against government, organization and individual use of drones. Informants’ reasoning about the acceptance of drone use was in part based on whether the drone is operating in a public or private space. However, our informants differed significantly in their definitions of public and private spaces. While our informants’ privacy concerns such as surveillance, data collection and sharing have been raised for other tracking technologies such as camera phones and closed-circuit television (CCTV), our interviews highlight two heightened issues of drones: (1) powerful yet inconspicuous data collection, (2) hidden and inaccessible drone controllers. These two aspects of drones render some of people’s existing privacy practices futile (e.g., notice recording and ask controllers to stop or delete the recording). Some informants demanded notifications of drones near them and expected drone controllers asking for their explicit permissions before recording. We discuss implications for future privacy-enhancing drone designs.

Pets without PETs: on pet owners’ under-estimation of privacy concerns in pet wearables

“…Potentially relevant to the way dogs in public space are likely perceived as innocuous (from a privacy perspective), Wang et al [70] showed that privacy concerns regarding drone usage particularly highlight powerful yet inconspicuous data collection, as well as hidden and inaccessible drone controllers, rendering their existing privacy practices futile. Similar to drones, dogs in public space whose location is tracked could also have significant privacy implications.…”

“…Yet, they do not seem to realize that this extends to anyone interacting with their dog, nor themselves interacting with a different dog. This may be due to the novelty of these devices, and the known major concern of inconspicuous data collection when consumers are not aware of how these devices work (such as studied in drones [70]). Unlike the case of pervasive photography where younger generations have been shown to be aware of potential privacy impacts and devised 'workarounds' to prevent negative impacts [56], it seems that pervasive indirect monitoring such as in the case of pet wearables has not yet reached awareness in a large extent of the population.…”

Integrating small Unmanned Air-Craft Systems (sUAS) into Meteorology and Atmospheric Science: Challenges and Opportunities for GIScience

“…Given the many ethical debates surrounding military drones, the use of sUAS for geospatial data collection has motivated renewed discussions of privacy issues with regard to the collection, use, and analysis of geospatial data. In a qualitative study about the privacy implications of UAS, Wang, Xia, Yao, and Huang (2016) found that territoriality (public vs. private spaces) played a key role in shaping participants' privacy concerns in relation to UAS. Unmanned systems flying within 'private spaces' (defined loosely by ownership of the space, sensitivity of the space, and activities performed within the space) were considered by respondents to be a greater invasion of privacy than those flying in 'pubic spaces'.…”

Reported UAV incidents in Canada: analysis and potential solutions

“…While it is unclear how many penalties for unsafe behaviour can be levied -these types of efforts can act as deterrents. It is important to note that these efforts are aimed at safety, rather than security or privacy concerns (see other analyses: Bracken-Roche et al, 2014;Wang et al, 2016).…”