Peter La Franchi is an internationally respected unmanned systems sector analyst and former unmanned aviation editor of Flight International magazine.
Peter’s interest in privacy law stems from working as a specialist researcher in the former Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission during 1988-1989, a time when Australia brought its first national privacy laws into being. Effective 9 January 2012 Peter is the editor in chief and head of research at LFRG, a specialist analysis firm focussed on the defence, aerospace and remote sensing sectors.
The rapid progression towards opening of airspace to civil RPAS operations offers to open the door to a lucrative commercial future for a long waiting industry, however a final set of hurdles is now looming in the form of growing concerns about privacy law implications in most western nations. This paper argues that the rise of the privacy debate surrounding RPAS should be seen as part of a wider community debate about privacy laws as a whole, with many matters becoming confused and conflated because of those origins and associations. However, this paper also accepts that there are valid privacy matters that need attention by the RPAS community and proposes a model framework for a practical approach that maximises commercial opportunities whilst still ensuring the legal rights of the common man. The paper looks in detail at the privacy challenges facing civil RPAS operations in the context of US constitutional law, US Supreme Court judgements, European Union laws and policies and Australian law.
The key question of who should be responsible for compliance with national and international privacy law obligations will be explored in the context of whether this function should be taken on by airspace regulators as an additional overhead or is best addressed, as is the case with other social policy matters, as a wider function of government.