"'In the 1989 case Florida v. Riley, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that since airplanes and helicopters often fly over private property, citizens do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy that their activities will not be observed from the air,' Ronald Bailey explains in Reason.' Consequently, the police were permitted use of evidence obtained without a search warrant from helicopter observation of a greenhouse in which they suspected marijuana was being grown.'
At the time, aerial surveillance was at least constrained in practice by the significant cost of flying a helicopter. But today, at the dawn of the cheap-drone era, precedents like the one set in 1989 pose a novel threat to privacy rights. Hence the effort by California lawmakers to pass added protections into law:
Earlier this month the California State Assembly voted to require police to obtain warrants to use drones for surveillance except in exigent circumstances. Now the State Senate has handily passed the legislation with a 25 to 8 vote.'If police need a warrant to enter your property to look through your window, then their quadcopter would need a warrant too. My opinion.
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