You cant legally (edit: in the USA, at least) shoot at drones even if they are tresspassing.
Well, technically they wouldn’t even be tresspassing since FAA owns all airspace, they’d be inside FAA airspace.
Shooting down a drone is treated the same as shooting down a manned aircraft, a felony. (not that they would actually enforce it, but its technically on the books)
Signal jammers are also illegal (again, not that someone would enforce it, but its on the books)
What would likely happens is:
If a rich person shoot down a non-rich person’s drone, the drone operator gets punished for “reckless drone flight” slap a huge fine if first offence, potentially jail time for future offences. The illegal act of shooting down a drone would not be enforced.
If a rich person flew a drone to harass a non-rich person, and the non-rich person shoots it down, boom, felony conviction for the person shooting down the drone, zero punishment for the drone operator.
This is how drone issues would be resolved
You cant legally
Which jurisdiction?
USA, sorry my American-centrism was kicking in, my bad 😉
Interesting I dig up a bit for Europe :
France
https://www.mondrone.net/drones/peut-on-abattre-un-drone-au-dessus-de-chez-soi
According to Article L. 6211-3 of the Transportation Code, airspace does not belong to the landowner. Therefore, a drone can fly over your property as long as it does not infringe on your property rights.
The Penal Code, Article 322-1, specifies that destroying a drone is equivalent to damaging someone else’s property, punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of 30,000 euros.
Germany
https://www.gelbeseiten.de/ratgeber/rf/darf-man-drohnen-abschießen-hier-gibt-es-die-antwort
If the drone flight reaches an intensity that the owner of a property considers a nuisance, this justifies a shooting. This is also how the Riesa District Court saw it, which on 24. April 2019 (file number: 9 Cs 926 Js 3044/19). The facts: A drone flew over a property and followed the movements of a woman and her daughter. The woman’s daughter felt threatened by the drone. This flew around at a height of 5 to 15 meters above the two women. The woman’s husband first called out to the drone to leave. He also signaled this by clear hand signals. Since the pilot did not steer the drone away from the property, the defendant shot at the drone with an air rifle. After the drone was shot down, it fell from the sky and was completely destroyed. There was a damage of 1,500 euros. The owner of the drone filed a criminal complaint for property damage in accordance with § 303c of the Criminal Code.However: According to § 228 BGB, the man was allowed to shoot the drone. He acted in a state of emergency and averted imminent damage from his family. There was a threat of further images.
UK
https://dronesaferegister.org.uk/blog/is-it-legal-to-shoot-down-a-drone-over-your-property/
You can’t shoot down a drone, even if it is flying over your house or land, not even if you are really unhappy with it being there. There are a number of reasons for this. If you fire a gun at a drone, even over your property, there is a chance that you might miss and hit something or someone that you didn’t intend to. If you hit your target, there is a chance that the drone might just drop from the sky and hit something or someone that you didn’t intend it to. Both of these possibilities carry particularly disastrous consequences and somewhat pale beside the legal fact that you could be charged with endangering an aircraft (the same as if you shot at an aeroplane) and face a prison sentence.
Switzerland
According to legal opinions, it is even permissible to catch a drone in mid-air if it is flying over one’s own property. This can be done with a net, a rope or a throwing object, as long as no one is endangered and no one’s property is compromised. However, it is forbidden to shoot down the drone with a firearm, crossbow or arrow.
Like with all emerging technologies let’s wait for jurisprudence on those… though in europe we generally frown upon anything firearms I guess there will be some interesting evolutions with drones.
As platforms they open too many possibilities and a rather constraining framework is already preventing their operation unless you have a license… which could become more of an access barrier if abuses become more prevalent.
Anecdotally I have seen first hand in 2 occasions unlicensed operators getting caught and largely fined; which was in the end more expensive that having the little drone shot.
Anyway having references that broadly seem to offer protection to drone operators isn’t necessarily a good news even where gun maniacs aren’t plentiful.
Thanks for the research!
The UK one seems like a good general argument against hunting ;)
Interesting research, thanks.
Seems these systems don’t need to shoot. It has interceptor drones. These can fly into the spy drone, so the rich guy can just claim it was a mid-air collision and offer to pay back the owner if they just identify themselves.
If you own a yacht, you are already rich enough to be above the law.
The thing is though, if a drone is spying on you the police have to do something about it. And if they can’t or won’t then you document everything and when they show up saying you did something, you tell them “so you found the guy who’s been stalking me via drone?” /S for obvious reasons, but these laws are going to have to change sooner rather than later because there’s a lot going on that technically isn’t legal with drones but can’t be prosecuted by the legal system because of this law.
Add that to the military airspace drones keep violating (not under FAA jurisdiction) and eventually this is going to be a problem that the government can’t ignore.
is there a particular reason the air above your lawn is the faa’s? would it still be the faas if there was mosquito netting above it?
The particular reason is “government loves doing government things” 🤷♂️
If people had wings, I’m sure the FAA would regulate human flight too.
They do occasionally enforce the signal jamming laws. Do it with any regularity in a way that messes up police radio, and they will work to catch you.
What about international waters 3+ miles off the coast?
Then laws don’t apply and you get kidnapped and put into Squid Game.
/jk lolol but like as far as I know, there’s no national laws that cover airspace over internatinal waters, and international laws generally prohibit countries from controlling air space over internstional waters, so it’d just be a civil dispute between 2 civillians and the person who has their property damaged probably have to sue in the assailant’s home country to have any chance of getting a payout.
What if instead of shooting them, I hit them with a really long stick? Or throw a rock or a spear?
Same thing, you’re destroying an aircraft in flight, a felony.
You could just get your own cheap drone and “Oopsie” accidentally hit them. Then you could pull an uno reverse and claim they hit your first. FAA would not touch this and its a “civil matter”
All that doesn’t matter in international waters.
We really are living in a cyberpunk dystopia.
that quarter-billion dollar-plus superyachts, and the VIPs who own and cruise in them, may be vulnerable.
Then don’t cruise in them but instead sit in a bunker like you deserve or alternatively, don’t be a rich shoddy.
Privacy is a fundamental right though
“Privacy for me, not for thee” means I, as a non-billionaire, get my privacy back before I give one iota about some billionaire not being able to hide a mistress on his super yacht.
Is it still a mistress if he can’t get it up so she has to slurp it as best she can?
Calling her a cleaning lady seems more degrading than the situation is, to me.
And the billionaires like Zuckerberg that make a lot of money trying to track you everywhere you go on the internet or with your cellphone factor into that statement where?
You know they are not all the same person? Nevertheless even Zuckerberg has right to privacy, not to ours, but to his
When anyone else has an actual right to privacy I’ll give a shit about Zuckerberg’s – who btw has done more to destroy privacy rights than perhaps any other human being in history – “right to privacy”.
I know who he his 🙄 It doen’t change the fact that equalling all rich people to bad people is counterproductive. And human rights apply to all humans, except if what you mean by the lack of privacy ls that he should go to prision, to which I agree
Except the right to privacy isn’t an enshrined human right at all and this particular asshole would lobby government to make sure that any effort to make it one would fall flat.
And private yachts in the same category as private jets: transport in public space.
“Fundamental” is awfully subjective, though, isn’t it?
Absolutely, I don’t deny jt
I mean the rich yacht owners have a reason to be afraid.
Its not difficult to build a drone with an explosive payload used to sink ships. And attacking rich people with violence is so hot right now
Are there any videos of these drone vs yacht battles?
Best I can do is this:
https://x.com/Zlatti_71/status/1841588202270031921?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1841588202270031921%7Ctwgr%5E37a77d031ffe0ada2f471370ee71a40088b83304%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.twz.com%2Fsea%2Ftheres-a-growing-market-for-counter-drone-systems-for-superyachts
Care to send a longer link?
We and our 1287 partners
Hahaholy shit!
Is this a “drones are coming to harm us” thing or a “paparazzi drones are taking pictures/videos where we thought we were out of sight” thing?
It’s partly “in case we’re deciding to be idiots and go to active war zones” stuff, but I see those rich fucks using military level weapons against civilian drones because they can afford to act above the law.
Crazy things happen in international waters
So you know that guy who tracks elon Musk’s jet? Do we have an equivalent for billionaire’s yachts?
There’s are some good ship tracking apps
Link? Is there a billionaire filter?
I think it’s findships on iPhone. No, you would have to know the ship which is a quick search away I’m sure. It’s very good! I used it previously for container ships
I wait for one of these systems to interfere with a legal drone operation or better some other radio/radar systems. Some countries will ignore it,but other very very much will not. And that will be a very happy day for me.
This mini-doco on drone warfare in Ukraine is bone chilling:
That was really interesting.
I’ve got to admit that I felt that elation/rush that they felt when finishing off that guy on the field.
Horrible that the Russian is probably just a normal guy, but they are the invading force attacking a sovereign nation.
Violence towards Billionaires will only justify further well funded and aggressive responses.
And the responses will be good for the economy!
I’m not surprised. Ukraine has taught us that drones can be a cheap and shockingly effective attack vector for ships.
If you find out that for $200 or often less you can remotely deploy a drone that sinks a ship, you’re obviously going to look into defensive measures.
The drones attacking ships in Ukraine are boats loaded with explosives, and they cost much more than $200
If you fly in maverick into a ship all it’s going to happen is you’re going to have a broken maverick. The drones attacking ships in Ukraine are kamikaze boats, not flying vehicles.
I don’t think some random nobody with a vendetta is going to be able to get hold of one
Foss app idea: librewardrone
It uses itself as the weapon.
What about under water drones where the payload floats to your hull instead if dropping from the sky?
Gotta get serious about yacht safety if you wanna do all those wonderful pornhub things in international waters.
Dronepedo?
