A Rational Approach to Regulating Private Drones

Making the most compelling reason why all the privacy stuff currently happening might be misleading, Larry Downes writes in HBR:-

Drones will by no means be the last Big Bang technology to invoke the creepy factor. So it’s worth underscoring the fact that in privacy law, a little outrage can go a long way, and often in the wrong direction. Caution is a virtue more honored in the breach, unfortunately.

Even today, for example, the most influential law review article on privacy is one that was written for the Harvard Law Review in 1890 by future Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and his law partner Samuel Warren. The two, outraged by new technological advances that challenged their notion of personal privacy, called on governments to enact strong new protections to safeguard what they called “the right to be let alone.”

Few states took up the call, and those that did have largely backtracked. Which is probably just as well. The creepy new technology that upset Brandeis and Warren was short-exposure photography and the ability it gave newspapers to capture and report news events with pictures.

For better and for worse, it’s hard to imagine the world without those developments. Just as someday it may be hard to imagine a world without millions of drones flying around, doing our bidding.

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/04/a_rational_approach_to_drone_r.html

To reiterate this is the most sensible piece I have read to date from somebody outside of the industry.