This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Tuesday, August 24, 2021.

I'm cable Brown.

Drone technology is just getting started.

What does regulation of that technology for the public and private sector

look like?

And how should it change?

Matthew Feeney is editor of the new Cato volume, Eyes to the Sky, Privacy and Commerce

in the Age of the drone, available now.

Over the last decade or so, what have we seen in terms of the development of drone technology

and the use of drones by in particular law enforcement but also the private sector.

I think at the last year we've seen an interesting attempt from federal lawmakers and regulators to deal with this new emerging technology.

What we've seen is a range of institutions such as the FAA and Congress trying to grapple with the the

emergence of the drone which is posing a host of regulatory issues. The the fact is that we have this relatively cheap flying machine that can serve as a

platform for cameras and other tools is very valuable in the private sector, whether it's agriculture,

the delivery services as well as in government and defense, but also

law enforcement as you mentioned. And what we have seen is that law enforcement are increasingly interested in mounting surveillance

tools on two drones and it was these range of concerns that prompted me to put together the edited volume which we've put out and I think it's to the best of my knowledge the only book so far that combines a range of experts on these

fields so there are chapters dedicated to concerns about surveillance as well as a

chapter dedicated to the history of FAA regulation of the drone, written by policy analyst law professors, indeed a former chief

counsel for the FAA.

So people might be surprised to learn that if they're in a rural part of the country and there is a drone flying overhead and they shoot

that drone out of the sky that there are federal legal implications of doing that.

...