>Currently, it would let anyone with a “reasonable expectation of privacy” on their property use “reasonable force” to stop drones from conducting surveillance.
This is an interesting twist as since drones are new ... I have zero clue what "reasonable" is in either case.
I'd be a bit concerned if my neighbor decided he needed to deal with a drone and started shooting in the air. Bullets do come down.
If you use a shotgun for this sort of thing, there's not a high risk of serious injury---particularly if you obey gun safety standards e.g. identifying everything in line with your target to the full range of your ammo.
The interesting theoreticals happen when a drone has a legitimate purpose (a drone owned by the county used for property appraisal, law enforcement, control of invasive species, etc.) or when someone causes serious harm/damage to a third party or even starts a fire from a falling drone.
Per Florida legislation: Reasonable expectation of privacy means circumstances under which a reasonable person would believe that he or she could fully disrobe in privacy, without being concerned that the person’s undressing was being viewed, recorded, or broadcasted by another---inside a house, bathroom, changing room, dressing room, tanning booth, etc.
(They keep falling back on 'reasonable'. I'm not sure I could describe the border between a reasonable and unreasonable person.)
For non-lawyers, "reasonable" is the law word for, first, whatever the judge thinks is OK (often despite being unable to articulate a clear standard for present and future analysis) in order to allow the case to advance to trial; next, whatever the finder of fact at trial (whether jury or judge) thinks is right (again, often despite being unable to articulate a standard, and almost never explaining the reasoning) in order to make a decision; and finally, whatever the appellate court(s) think(s) about the previous decisions.
In other words, "reasonable" is a logical slush fund and an indication to decide based on gut feelings.
True, we claim that certain synthesizing explanations and precedents develop over time, but those developments, and the applications of those precedents, often continue to turn on the decision-makers' gut feelings.
It makes sense to me that the law would have to frequently refer to "reasonableness". It's hard to be absolutely rigid about human behavior. We're programmers; we know how hard it is to properly think through every possible case even in the highly confined world of software. Humans are so, so much harder. I'm OK with that.
But that makes me not OK with it when lawyers pretend that they are being rigorous. I've never seen a single Supreme Court decision that I did not consider utterly appalling -- even the ones I agree with. If they were to write "because that's what I think is reasonable" I'd have some respect for it. They call it an "opinion"; go ahead and say that.
Reasonable, as used in the law in many if not most situations, has become a contronym. Reasonableness should be rigorous: it's in the term itself (capability of being reasoned / derived through reasoning). The intent behind the term is to use logic to ascertain / derive / apply the (sometimes tacit) social rule; but many judges turn that into "I'm reasonable (i.e., I'm not unreasonable, meaning clearly wrong much of the time), and this is my decision (whether or not I explain my supposed reasons to expose them to analysis and criticism), so therefore my decisions (and the things at issue) are reasonable; or, in my view, the thing at issue was not reasonable." Of course, such reasoning is itself illogical and, in my view, therefore unreasonable.
Bullets coming down are dangerous, but the angle has a huge effect on the lethality. The point though isn't to get you thinking about that. It's to get dronne operators to think about the price of their drone when they fly near their neighbors shower window.
They do. Most crime is prevented when a) there is a penalty, b) the penalty is applied 100% of the time.
When these two things exist, crime removes itself! This is the exact concept the left seems to have forgotten... until recently. (recently I mentioned this in Hacker News and suddenly leftists got mad and made references to SF removing Boudin - as if the right was responsible for getting him elected in the first place.)
You get credit for changing, but not for enabling in the first place.
No doubt there will be some "Florida Man" stories that end up coming out of this but the real gain for most people will be curtailing the casual use of drones by insurance companies and local tax assessors to spy on people for various revenue purposes.
This is an interesting twist as since drones are new ... I have zero clue what "reasonable" is in either case.
I'd be a bit concerned if my neighbor decided he needed to deal with a drone and started shooting in the air. Bullets do come down.