>The Michigan Supreme Court heard a case Wednesday that will determine if it was legal under the Fourth Amendment.
Is this something that's common in the USA? That you use the constitution right of the bat instead of federal laws like civil rights act?
And while I'm no lawyer, if I were to armchair; at first the title alone makes it a slam dunk for the house owner.
Unless the defendant can argue either there's a consent clause to surveillance/inspection in the zoning agreement the house owner agreed upon or that drone footage is evidence in plain sight[1].
It's complicated. It's in their state supreme court because the appeals court decided unreasonable search and seizure laws are excluded from a civil case (as opposed to a criminal one).
The government can do practically anything to you using civil laws because there's so few protections. That's why they keep expanding those sorts of civil actions like red flag laws, civil asset forfeiture, etc since they're much harder to fight.
What if the title were: “government employee drove down the nearby road to look at the property”?
Seems fine.
The only question is: “at what altitude does the airspace over your property become the same as a road?”: ie public right-of-way
Another question would be what would happen if they had of kept the drone over the road. From the looks of it, they could have gotten all the pictures they wanted without flying above his property.
Agree, so it seems this is a very narrow case about whether a cessna at 500 feet (which is clearly legal) is more invasive of 4th amendment rights than a drone at 400 feet which sounds like a dumb question
If a government action is unlawful under the Constitution, there's the case won bing nice and easy.
If it is lawful under the Constitution, then there may be hope still but it gets enormously more complicated. The chance of winning the case and still being held liable for court costs and other fines goes way up. Basically "I fought the law" will cost even if you do win.
So people jump for the big gun first, they've seen it work and its comprehensible. Lawyers like to go for the detail points that make careers out of fence disputes.
The lowest courts hear issues related to legality of actions. Appeals courts may overturn if the government is acting outside of its authority (the constitution).
In this case, he's already gone through the appeals court, which made a bad decision.
The supreme Court only hears cases on constitutionality.
Other documents suggest the drone was below 400 feet of altitude, to comply with FAA regulations. That makes the surveillance fall outside some established case law that law enforcement can surveil from "publicly navigable airspace (above 400 feet)" without a warrant.
The 400 feet AGL rule has nothing to do with the FAA's definition of publicly navigable airspace.
FAA considers anything above "blades of grass" to be subject to under their authority. There's some question about what makes a given airspace "publicly navigable", but it's generally understood (at least by hobby drone operators like myself) that if there's nothing overhead and there are no tall structures close by, the FAA considers that airspace publicly navigable.
On the 400' rule: Outside of specially-granted permission and certain other specific situations (e.g., around tall buildings), the FAA requires all unmanned aerial systems ("drones", although that includes things like RC planes) to operate lower than 400' AGL within Class G airspace. The LAANC system is a somewhat automated way to obtain permissions in some controlled airspace.
Since the surveillance in this case appears to be from publicly navigable airspace (according to the FAA's definition), I would expect established case law discussed in the aerial surveillance doctrine Wikipedia page to allow it, regardless of the use of a drone. The use of a private contractor might be of some interest in the case, but I'd wager it's viewed by the court as irrelevant so long as the pilot was complying with the Part 107 rules.
In this particular instance, I would be much more interested if the overflight was legal to maintain compliance in response to the original judicial ruling.
They could order 6 inch resolution satellite photos or even better from companies like Maxar and Airbus, too.
I wasn't rendering that as my opinion, but rather looking at some of the prior cases cited in this case. Here's one example, there are others.
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989)
"Because there is reason to believe that there is considerable public use of airspace at altitudes of 400 feet and above, and because respondent introduced no evidence to the contrary before the state courts, it must be concluded that his expectation of privacy here was not reasonable. However, public use of altitudes lower than 400 feet -- particularly public observations from helicopters circling over the curtilage of a home -- may be sufficiently rare that police surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations of privacy, despite compliance with FAA regulations."
Two sides to this, the operator could have requested clearance of the airspace to fly above 500' OR the township should have hired a fixed wing aircraft to photograph this.
> Maxon and the township signed an agreement in 2008 that Maxon would not face any zoning action if he did not increase the number of cars he had on his property. In 2010, 2016, 2017, and 2018, the township hired a company called Zero Gravity Aerial to do aerial drone surveys of Maxon’s property to ensure he was complying with the settlement.
Is there a reason why they couldn’t just use Satellite data from Google Maps? Or pay for existing commercial satellite images? Can’t believe it’s cheaper to pay for a drone for multiple years to validate the number of cars in his yard.
They didn't say he increased the number of vehicles, rather they argued he was using existing trucks as storage which violated some other ordinance. I'm guessing they tried Google maps, which didn't pan out because the number hadn't increased. So they wanted more detail to find more technicalities.
They use "scope" rather than "count" or something more clear because they never use an actual count showing the number of vehicles being higher, which would be straightforward.
They mention the trailers being used as storage, and phrases like "significant increase in the amount of junk". Note "junk" as opposed to "vehicles".
The article seems to skimp on selected detail. It looks like a violation of his agreement as to how many junk vehicles he can keep on the property.
But it isn't; they're not going after him for having too much junk, they've redefined some of his covered trucks as buildings, presumably because he hadn't violated his agreement.
> The town filed a complaint against Maxon stating that he and his wife “significantly increased the scope of the junk cars and other junk material being kept on their property,” as determined by “aerial photographs.”
I think they are saying there are many more vehicles & the amount of junk is increasing.
It seems like a weird bit of culture in the Land of the Free, where it's somehow acceptable to be surveilled by drone so people can see what you're doing in your own yard, so they can fine you.
I understand it if someone is doing it in view of other people, causing an eyesore, but if you have to go to such lengths to see what they're doing, then whom exactly are they harming with what they're doing on their own property?
i've always taken this to explain why americans are so obsessed by 'dont tred on me' freedom -- they have so little of it where its actually experienced: at the daily, local, level
I've always taken comments like this to explain why [whoever you are] are so obsessed by 'dont tred on me' freedom -- they have so little of it where its actually experienced: at the daily, local, level
And it's self-reinforcing. I live in a rural county the size of Connecticut with just 5k people in it. The people that choose to live out here are frequently the ones who particularly value that extra freedom ... including law enforcement. It is almost routine here for the sheriff to announce that he will not enforce some state or federal code or another. Talk to a deputy about crime and he'll ask if you have guns, and then recommend that you buy one if you don't.
The county government does little and our property taxes reflect that.
I can and have burned very large piles in my yard, but we're not savages. I have to notify the local volunteer fire department first, or they're libel to show up, and not happily.
Odd, I live in a rural area as well. When I cross the state line into the new york state back country, I literally see garbage piles in some people's front yards. Like they don't wanna pay for garbage collection, so it piles up in their yard for months until they burn it all. The fire dept are all volunteers and don't just randomly show up to a fire unless someone calls it in. We burn wood in the yard for leisure or to get rid of brush, but im more of a get garbage to its place kind of guy.
We have no garbage pickup in the county, we haul it to one of four collection areas. Those cost $140/year plus about $7/100lbs, so no doubt some more thrifty neighbors are burning household trash instead, but I just burn slash and take household trash to the dumpsters.
There's a high fire risk in this area and smoke watchers will report it, and the VFD gets dispatched. They don't respond individually.
I don’t have a particular rural vs. urban point to make, only a general observation about law and freedom: a place where law enforcement feels empowered to ignore the law is a place where law enforcement is effectively the sole power. In effect, a dictator’s prescribed freedom.
I agree. Rule of law is critical and requires consistency. But given the choice I'd rather live in a jurisdiction where law enforcement tends to use their discretion in favor of less rather than more centralized control. That bias towards less control seems to be inversely correlated with population density.
We spent 25 years out in the rural West, though we preferred to live in a town.
We left because over the last 15 years the decay of uniform public law enforcement has essentially led to "norms" being enforced by the local landowning elites. And they have certain characteristics that make them highly identifiable. IOW, if you look like them, you get all the space you have said you prefer. If not, well, there's not a lot to limit the potential downsides.
This has also led to a large increase in trash behavior out on the public lands. Lots of new wildcat trails/double track for instance. For us it got pretty uncomfortable a few times in the last 5-6 years. We began to post the shotguns in a highly visible place in the camp, or in the truck. That definitely helped.
I guess that works just as long as according to their discretion that you're "one of the good ones". Folks who are in the out-groups have experienced the tyranny of this "discretion" for generations. Sundown towns didn't disappear as soon as the civil rights act was passed.
> a place where law enforcement feels empowered to ignore the law is a place where law enforcement is effectively the sole power
Like New York? The above commenter said law enforcement advised them to get guns which is what I've experienced growing up rural; tyrannical power mongers who are as you said, the sole power, try to take people's guns away.
This equivocation doesn’t make sense: New York has so far respected federal court rulings that repeal its attempts at gun control. You can complain about their attempts, but it seems incorrect to use legislative failures as evidence of selective enforcement.
>a place where law enforcement feels empowered to ignore the law
In the history of the world, there has never been a law enforcement institution that enforced the rules equally to itself. The same is true of every power structure e.g. governance; financial elites; ...
Or it’s a practical statement on how if you have someone breaking into your house, police may be well over 15+ minutes away if they can rush straight over. Hell, there are quite a few places were response time is going to be measure in hours. Same reason it’s good to have a chainsaw and know how to use it to clear a felled tree on a road, waiting for someone to take care of it for you isn’t always a great plan.
Dictators don’t strike me as generally inclined to recommend having the capacity for self defense. I think you are just trying to come up with the worst possible interpretation of intention.
it feels to me Americans are more legislated: city laws, county, state, federal. That there are more neighbourly oppressions: your community has more rights against you (about what your lawn looks like, etc.). And so on.
Americans also feel more taxed, again, at every level above.
Ironically, I think the more centralised power is, the more uniformly its managed, the more free one feels under it -- since there arent as many competing interests to worry about
Actually it's funny, my grandfather has been cited numerous times for burning brush on his property recently. Apparently it's always been a law on the books where he lives but the fire department never enforced it
This kind of thing makes the news because it's rare. Drawing conclusions about the amount of freedom experienced by everyday Americans from your news reports is like doing the same for airplane safety: you'll come to the conclusion that the aberrations are the norm.
Where I'm at, the city doesn't even care if you put up a fence blocking sight triangles at an intersection, much less what you do with your property that they can't see.
It makes the news because of the state’s (or any public institution’s) obsession with undermining and reinterpreting our rights for their benefit
The obsession with reminding us how flawed and comedic our checks and balances are, how little accountability there is. how “but at least you can talk about it” will be used to invalidate the issue by people indoctrinated by our compromisestitution
> obsession with reminding us how flawed and comedic our checks and balances are
Literally on an article documenting the state being checked. A corollary to those who choose security over freedom deserving neither is those who choose nihilism over truth and activism are choosing a weak form of mental security.
That’s not really true, when many cities and towns love HOAs—all the property tax income, none of the responsibilities (plowing, paving, trash, fixing broken water mains), but still all of the regulatory oversight (permitting and inspection fees).
We lived for fifteen years in a development with an HOA. The HOA saw to lawn mowing, snow removal, and perhaps tree replacement. Eventually, after fuss about parking, the HOA painted house numbers on parking spaces to be sure that we could each claim or two.
But garbage pickup was as far as I know managed by the county.
My brother's house is in a HOA and, as far as I know, pretty much the only thing the HOA is concerned with is the maintenance and plowing of the private road. I'm not sure how you do that without some form of organization/agreement. It's not rare for there to be common areas that aren't maintained by the government (which is really the only alternative) unless a group of neighbors just handle things informally and hope it all works out.
My HOA does. It mows lawns and removes snow. That's almost it: the rules are largely about not storing explosives in your house, which is apparently a thing in Wyoming.
Let me tell you about mine. Apart from snow removal and mowing the common lands, we handle curbside trash collection, repairs to water mains, flushing hydrants, maintaining streetlights (and paying for the electricity to light them), capital projects to manage stormwater, paving, sewer maintenance, installing fiber, forest management, etc. We also negotiate group rates for utilities like gas and electricity. A recent major project is replacing the pumps in our sewer lift station to the tune of $17k (an expense we budgeted for, thankfully). So yeah, apart from things like education and emergency services, we are basically a 19 house municipality.
No need to make that look sensible, early HOAs where quite blunt about their core purpose: "no property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race."[1]
Do you think this is valid for todays HOAs in general?
Seems like a weird point to make today. I doubt the main purpose of a Home Owners Association today is keep out unwanted ethnicities.
Rules that prescribe particular materials or levels or methods of upkeep that are significantly more expensive to implement or maintain than others, or that clash with one's culturally-based desires. A common one is a prohibition against small farm animals or front food gardens. Another is part of a hustle where a required exterior finish is only available from a privileged provider or contractor, similar to how apartment buildings limit your choice of ISP.
Failing to adhere to HOA rules (which may not be readily apparent) results in fines and conflict with a group that's empowered to make decisions about your property. When homeowners have these decisions taken away and are forced to shell out, it becomes a financial and psychological strain that prompts people who would otherwise be enjoying the property to leave (or to not purchase it in the first place).
I live in a condo in the suburbs of NH. My neighborhood mostly looks like a series of houses smushed together like townhouses in a city, but with a shared spacious yard in front of them & behind them. Most of them are linked on both sides but there are also ones that are only linked in pairs. It's certainly an efficient use of land and I ended up with something much nicer than if I had bought a traditional house.
My neighborhood has an HOA. I'm not allowed to use a grill on my deck. I can't just leave piles of trash in my yard. I can't install a garbage disposal unit in my sink. There are rules and the kind I would have really rolled my eyes at when I was younger.
Condos are "common interest living spaces", if someone's house caught fire it can spread to the others. If the septic tank gets screwed up we all need to contribute to get that fixed. There are certain liabilities involved here that require some kind of legal entity to adjudicate, this is the role our HOA fills.
While I don't have the numbers, I speculate that the majority of HOAs in the United States were likely created for similar reasons. Fundamentally an HOA is kind of like the residential version of a workers cooperative, they enable high density housing where everyone gets to have equity. Living under an HOA will always be better than living under a landlord, yet I feel few make this connection, especially when considering who is more likely to discriminate.
People choose to live in HOA neighborhoods. Those people running the HOA are normal homeowners, usually like minded. So to bitch and moan about HOAs is like moving somewhere people think differently than you and being mad you have to follow their rules. I prefer to avoid that myself, so I don't live in and HOA neighborhood.
1. Let’s keep our arguments a bit higher brow. 2. Most people have no option other than to live in an HOA neighborhood, which is not a choice. At least short of abandoning their family.
That’s no excuse to say that people are bitching and meaning. In that sense we’re all bitching and meaning about something or another, and dismissing someone’s argument as such just degrades quality.
The important part about a downward spiral is to not continue it. This is doubly true in a context where the parent post is using questionable rhetorical tricks.
Having been a selectboard member in a small town in MA, I can put forth that rigorous enforcement of contracts, bylaws and laws is the best way to avoid issues spiraling out of control to becoming bigger costlier time-sucks affecting more and more people and wasting more of everybody's time.
With many people who push the boundaries, one thing often leads to another, which leads to more costly measures of getting violators back into compliance.
Yes, often the first violation doesn't seem too big, but those violations are often indications of more to come.
Punish them for their future crimes, oh wise precog!
HOA mentality is cult like or a mini police state and the comment here is a perfect example of that. Nothing happening in that HOA is that important, and ultimately does not matter. In other parts of the world people are dying of hunger and being slaughtered, in America there are tent cities, and people in HOA are so isolated and safe that they take to freaking out about Betty 2 streets down not getting approval before putting a sign in her front yard. Spend your lives worried about more important shit, both HOA and zoning (who will roll up on properties snapping pictures too), because the things you are losing your minds over are things that do not matter. At all.
It's human nature. Same reason republics decline into democracies, or why Europe spent centuries on crusades. It's not enough to live your life the way you want to live it, humans need the validation that their neighbors (or people across the country, or even people in other countries) are forced to live that way too.
No, it's actually not at all about forcing people to live the way I (or the townsfolk) want to live, it's actually about making it so that the way you live your life is in harmony with the rules the municipality set. In Massaschusetts towns, zoning laws require a 2/3 vote at town meeting to be enacted - but I'm not sure how it works in MI.
It seems like you folks have never read zoning bylaws which a municipalities use to say what can and can't be done in certain areas. Believe it or not, city planning is incredibly important to ensure that a town can efficiently tax its inhabitants to fund the services that have become an expectation of normal life.
If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like.
In fact Long Lake Township has a 238 page document that lays this out.
Ok, so, you put stuff in your backyard where it's out of the way. Your stuff, on your property, not even visible to other people. The city zoning workers use a drone to gain access to your backyard because walking back there would be a criminal activity, trespassing, and possible breaking and entering if a fence gate is involved, so they find a way to circumvent privacy and private property laws to illegally surveil you. You have broken no laws and they are not law enforcement, they themselves are likely breaking the law, and now, you have to comply with their orders and make your back yard be in line with something written in a TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT page book of zoning rules about how you are not allowed to live your life on your property that you own.
And your recommending that the solution is to become an expert in a 238 book, which is larger than some of the worlds most infamous novels, then, spend the rest of your life doing the recommended "If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like." fighting for years to get any attention on your issue, mostly being ignored because they already talk shit about you in the entire zoning department (I used to date a woman who worked zoning and they have nicknames for people, call them trashy, etc), then maybe one day, years down the road, you might get some compromised version of what you wanted, that still doesn't allow you to do as you wish on your property so long as it's legal and out of sight, and you've wasted a bunch of your life's free time, spent most of it frustrated, and ultimately don't get what you want and just say fuck it and go back to doing what you want and saying screw the zoning rules anyway.
The "if you don't like it, get involved and change it from the inside" solution doesn't work well in individual issues (or large issues honestly), and shouldn't be needed in cases like this anyway.
No, not at all punishing for future crimes - just acknowledging issues and making sure they get attention to prevent them from getting worse. Local government has very little power to actually undo things that go wrong - it can often takes years, if it can happen at all. The time spent dealing with stupid shit that goes wrong is incredibly wasteful and means time and money is spent on that instead of actually moving the municipality forward. Therefore, the best medicine is equal and rigorous enforcement.
HOA is a whole different ballgame, not the same as zoning.
The first comment I saw coming in here is claiming that this isn't a problem because, "it's not as if the drone is looking in windows."
I don't know how much this applies to that comment, but "the Land of the Free" is actually full of Calvinist predestination.
"A bad thing happened to someone so they must have deserved it. I'll never have a town surveilling my yard from the sky searching for any excuse to fine me."
They’re getting paid when they discover people are breaking the weird little useless rules they wrote. As Adam Smith wrote in the Wealth of Nations: “Power is money”. Remove their power and you give money back to the people.
It’s weird this is a story about the USA and not somewhere I’d expect it more like Russia.
You can count cars now with commercial satellite photography. (I'm not trying to articulate any point about the thread topic; I just think this is neat).
If the city had used commercially available photos from an airplane or satellite, I doubt if there would be an issue. In many situations, flying a drone over someone's property can be considered trespass. However in many states tax assessors have the right to come onto your property to look around--code inspectors might have a similar right.
What they were looking for could probably have been obtained with drone photographs without going over the individual's property which would have probably given the town a stronger argument for being able to say they were "observing from outside the property."
What I'm curious about is what would happen if the property owner hired the company to fly over the city commissioners houses or government buildlings to take pictures.
Tax and Code inspectors ask for permission to enter the property. I do not believe they have the right to open trespass in any state. I'd be interested if you could provide a link.
The position of the Attorney General in KS. While usually they do ask in order to preserve peace, the state doesn't feel they are required to.
> We believe the duty enjoined upon the appraiser to value real
property from an actual view and inspection of the property
carries with it the implied authority for the appraiser to enter
upon real property to perform this duty, without such action
constituting a trespass. However, we also believe that all
persons, perhaps especially governmental officers, owe a duty
to preserve the public peace. Therefore, it is our opinion
that for the limited purpose of appraising a taxpayer's real
property and the improvements made thereon, by actual view and
inspection, an appraiser may enter upon such property, at a
reasonable time, without the prior permission of the taxpayer.
> In many situations, flying a drone over someone's property can be considered trespass.
In zero situations. As regulations are written, drones are aircraft navigating through federal airspace in the same way as fixed-wing, helicopters, ultralights, hot air balloons, etc. That airspace extends from your shoelaces to the heavens.
The method of obtaining the photos is not the question here, because the photos were taken from public property (the airspace). It’s the overall strategy of the town basically hiring a private investigator.
Yes, the case is being tried on 4th amendment, but surely there are more to the regulations than that. If they were that simple, I could fly my registered drone outside my neighbors window 24x7.
> If they were that simple, I could fly my registered drone outside my neighbors window 24x7.
There is nothing in Title 14 of the CFR preventing you from doing that. It would fall under the same laws (harassment, peeping tom laws, etc.) as you standing on the street 24x7 with a massive telephoto lens pointed towards your neighbors bedroom windows.
> As regulations are written, drones are aircraft navigating through federal airspace in the same way as fixed-wing, helicopters, ultralights, hot air balloons, etc. That airspace extends from your shoelaces to the heavens.
> Specifically, the Federal Aviation Act provides that: "The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States" and "A citizen of the United States has a public right of transit through the navigable airspace."[3] The "navigable airspace" in which the public has a right of transit has been defined as "the airspace at or above the minimum altitudes of flight that includes the airspace needed to ensure safety in the takeoff and landing of aircraft."[4]
> The exact altitude(s) at which the airspace over private land can become subject to "substantial impairment" is often debated. Case law in the past has used the height of 500 ft (150 m) in urban or suburban areas,[5] and 360 ft (110 m) above the surface or tallest structure in rural areas[6] as the demarcation of where impairment of property rights can occur.
" because the photos were taken from public property " ==> By that logic - someone in a tree, on "public property" (aka outside your courtyard) can take photos of your family in the pool (in your courtyard).
A number of states have passed laws restricting drones over private property. It’s not always called “trespass” but for a casual discussion it definitely counts as a restriction.
There’s a list here - look for privacy and you’ll find both laws like California’s (which does class it as trespass) and Florida’s (which refers to it as surveillance):
I'm in Canada so that would be a better option if I ever get in the same situation but I'm in a flight path so probably not.
At least people in Canada have to register it with Nav Canada for any drone flight over 250g but still it would be nice to know people can't fly in the airspace above my yard an spy on me.
Although I was thinking of a shotgun not a rifle, I'm not sure who could hit a done with a rifle. I think a half blind grandmother could hit a drone with a shotgun with a full choke that would be a 1m diameter spread of ~10mm 000 shot at 40m away.
The issue isn't getting the capability to take down drones, it's getting assurances you won't be imprisoned for doing so. Net cannons are legal to own, and I would imagine directed energy weapons are probably legal to own but not use. Even bird shot in a 12 gauge is probably enough, and I don't think would pose a significant risk when it falls back down.
> the FAA ... confirmed that shooting down a drone is a federal crime and cited 18 USC 32. That statute makes it a felony to damage or destroy an aircraft.
I worked very closely with policymakers and armed forces on drone/UAV matters in a Central European country around the time consumer drones became popular (a bit after 2010). I also have a UAV operator and a UAV pilot license where I live, which involved some training, although surprisingly little actually.
Anyways, the common understanding among lawmakers and armed forces in early 10s was that land owners do not own the airspace above their land. Now this is more clearly enshrined in laws in many different countries.
It is often either:
1. You don't own the airspace above the tallest construction on your land.
2. You don't own the airspace above a certain altitude above your land (often 50 meters or less in Europe).
3. You don't own the airspace above a "reasonable" height. This is more common in common law countries like the US or the UK. It usually involves owning the airspace above your land that is necessary for the ordinary use and enjoyment of the land, and the structures on it. You don't own high altitude space, you do own the land, and everything else depends on the courts either case-by-case or based on precedent.
4. You don't own any airspace above your land, but navigational easement and zoning laws prevent any aircraft including drones flying at low altitudes above your land.
The drone in the article was a purpose-built commercial surveillance UAV that almost certainly flew outside the airspace this man could have owned, even if it was in a case law country. It would have been quite criminal to shoot it down.
The consumer drones, you can probably take down in most of the world if they fly close to your structures and not too high above your land. Though still, it makes a lot of sense to check the laws before doing so. If the privacy invasion with a drone is repeated, that means you have enough time to look it up.
Lots of people act irrationally and shoot down or take down other people's drones with cameras believing they have the right. But from a legal perspective, they are shooting down an aircraft, which is not usually a very wishy-washy thing in laws. Especially in civil law.
So when I say you can PROBABLY do so in some situations, what I mean is it's not very likely you will go to prison for it. I don't want it to sound like "yeah, just do it lol". Depending on the country, it can still be treated as a serious criminal offense. And if this incident is properly reported to the aviation authority, you will probably have to provide at least a written or in-person statement about what happened. Even if you are totally in the right. So I would say it's still almost never ever worth the hassle.
Another interesting thing to note is that the large commercial surveillance UAVs tend to weigh between 230 and 2500 kilograms, or 500 to 5000 pounds. When you see such an aircraft at an altitude of 500 meters or more, it doesn't look that different from a manned glider or a helicopter. The drones don't all look like GA Predator drones in movies. And if it's a small drone (around 2.5 kilograms, just slightly bigger than most consumer ones), then you won't be able to see it or hear it when it's at the altitude from which pictures like the ones in the article would be taken. If you shoot at a large commercial drone you can see at significant altitude, it might not even be unmanned at all. Consider what that means.
Finally, a disabled drone is considered far more dangerous to people on the ground than when it stays in the air. So there are often laws about that. If the UAV falls onto a person, at best it will cause a small injury, at worst it will maim or kill them. Even drones that weigh 2.5 kilograms have propellers that can cut through cheeks, eyeballs, ears, and fingers. It is no joke. This is why there are often such strict laws about UAVs flying above people - not because the sound is annoying or the privacy may be invaded, but because it can fail.
Ah, the American dream, owning land! Land that you can’t have any privacy on, or do with as you wish (in a resident capacity), because of the militant department called zoning who’s jobs consist of harassing the citizens they work for, sneaking around and snapping pictures, sending out threatening legal action warnings (yet rarely have the funds to persue legal action). But hey, it’s your land! Your chunk of America! You made it! Except, is it really yours when at any time, with or without the need to compensate you, the land can be taken by the local or federal government if they decide they want it for something else?
We are the land of the free, it’s true. Free to do whatever we want inside the invisible box restricting our freedoms that we don’t see around us our entire lives. But go live your life, you’re totally free to do so! Evenings after work, and maybe the weekends! If you make enough to enjoy that limited time off, and aren’t too tired.
They can't "take" it without compensating you. And very few people created their land from their inner mind or something anyway, it is being taken from everyone else for you to have possession of it, in exchange for hopefully you (or as it is set up, someone who willed it to you) having contributed to society as imperfectedly reflected in the markets.
You're right, they now are required by federal law to provide "just compensation", but that wasn't always the case, and even so, they are not required to reach a settlement with you. If you like the price or not, that's what they are paying and that's what you're getting. It's also true that if we go back in time far enough, the land is always being taken from someone. I am speaking about the times since the government was established, because it would be hard for me to say things about something before it existed.
It wasn't always the case that land claimed with eminent domain was for public use, either. There's a long history of the government taking people's land, throwing money at them and using it for things not in the best interest of the public.
> The Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) went a step further and affirmed the authority of New London, Connecticut, to take non-blighted private property by eminent domain, and then transfer it for a dollar a year to a private developer solely for the purpose of increasing municipal revenues.
> Eminent domain has been used to acquire land from African-Americans for urban renewal redevelopments[25] and in other cases to dispossess them and remove them from areas where their presence was not desired by white neighbors, e.g. Bruce's Beach subdivision in Los Angeles, California.[26] Seneca Village was an African-American majority settlement in an area of what became New York City's Central Park. South Glencoe was an African-American neighborhood in Glencoe, IL[27] Central Avenue was an African-American neighborhood in Tampa, Florida.
> Eminent domain was used to take property from Japanese-Americans incarcerated by the United States government during World War II. For many, their homes and businesses were then sold while they were incarcerated.
So, you're right, people are paid when their property is taken without consent, as they should be, but the whole practice is still a shit one to have happen to you. I think my main point, that owning land, the thing America was built on and was preached to me growing up, isn't a thing you are ever guaranteed, even after you purchase the land.
I didn’t see this mentioned in the article (but also I admittedly skimmed the article) but is it legal for me, a private citizen, to hire a drone company to fly over this guy’s yard? If so, I don’t see why the town can’t do it.
Presumably they didn't get a warrant to search his property because they didn't have probable cause for what they believed would be a Fourth Amendment search
It's kind of the whole point of this escapade. If they had the probable cause to get a warrant they would've just done it and not paid the money for a drone flight.
They believe that because this search did not involve going into his private property behind a locked gate by government agents and instead the evidence was gathered by flying above his property in airspace that he does not control it was not a search that is subject to court review or the need for a warrant under the Fourth Amendment
If they could've gotten a warrant they would've just done that, and because they couldn't they came up with this alternate scheme
It’s interesting to note that the county restricted the amount of cars that could occupy the property, but did not otherwise control the environmental effects of running a maintenance yard.
What does the owner do with waste disposal? Various fluids and solids from the vehicles must be dealt with according to regulations. Are there any?
What about leak abatement?
Effects on groundwater and waterways?
Tires? Other hazardous waste?
Air pollution?
From a Fourth Amendment perspective, the doctrine is “people, not places”.
It’s difficult to assert that you intended for parts of your property that can easily be observed from the air to be private. It’s not like they used a drone to peer through his window and see the contents of his safe or something.
Seems reasonable to me that they'd hire a commercial company to do the drone surveillance instead of their own LE for the same reason that LE purchases e.g. cell phone data: to avoid an easily discoverable record and maintain plausible deniability.
126 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 159 ms ] threadwhat's the point of owning land if you can't keep your junk on it
Is this something that's common in the USA? That you use the constitution right of the bat instead of federal laws like civil rights act?
And while I'm no lawyer, if I were to armchair; at first the title alone makes it a slam dunk for the house owner.
Unless the defendant can argue either there's a consent clause to surveillance/inspection in the zoning agreement the house owner agreed upon or that drone footage is evidence in plain sight[1].
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_view_doctrine
If a government action is unlawful under the Constitution, there's the case won bing nice and easy.
If it is lawful under the Constitution, then there may be hope still but it gets enormously more complicated. The chance of winning the case and still being held liable for court costs and other fines goes way up. Basically "I fought the law" will cost even if you do win.
So people jump for the big gun first, they've seen it work and its comprehensible. Lawyers like to go for the detail points that make careers out of fence disputes.
In this case, he's already gone through the appeals court, which made a bad decision.
The supreme Court only hears cases on constitutionality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_surveillance_doctrine
FAA considers anything above "blades of grass" to be subject to under their authority. There's some question about what makes a given airspace "publicly navigable", but it's generally understood (at least by hobby drone operators like myself) that if there's nothing overhead and there are no tall structures close by, the FAA considers that airspace publicly navigable.
On the 400' rule: Outside of specially-granted permission and certain other specific situations (e.g., around tall buildings), the FAA requires all unmanned aerial systems ("drones", although that includes things like RC planes) to operate lower than 400' AGL within Class G airspace. The LAANC system is a somewhat automated way to obtain permissions in some controlled airspace.
More info on UAS airspace use: https://www.faa.gov/uas/getting_started/where_can_i_fly/airs...
Since the surveillance in this case appears to be from publicly navigable airspace (according to the FAA's definition), I would expect established case law discussed in the aerial surveillance doctrine Wikipedia page to allow it, regardless of the use of a drone. The use of a private contractor might be of some interest in the case, but I'd wager it's viewed by the court as irrelevant so long as the pilot was complying with the Part 107 rules.
General property rights are 500 ft in uncongested airspace and 1000 ft in congested areas, but case law is vague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Causby
In this particular instance, I would be much more interested if the overflight was legal to maintain compliance in response to the original judicial ruling.
They could order 6 inch resolution satellite photos or even better from companies like Maxar and Airbus, too.
Florida v. Riley, 488 U.S. 445 (1989)
"Because there is reason to believe that there is considerable public use of airspace at altitudes of 400 feet and above, and because respondent introduced no evidence to the contrary before the state courts, it must be concluded that his expectation of privacy here was not reasonable. However, public use of altitudes lower than 400 feet -- particularly public observations from helicopters circling over the curtilage of a home -- may be sufficiently rare that police surveillance from such altitudes would violate reasonable expectations of privacy, despite compliance with FAA regulations."
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/488/445/
Wonder if the township will recoup that $1200?
Is there a reason why they couldn’t just use Satellite data from Google Maps? Or pay for existing commercial satellite images? Can’t believe it’s cheaper to pay for a drone for multiple years to validate the number of cars in his yard.
“significantly increased the scope of the junk cars and other junk material being kept on their property,” as determined by “aerial photographs.”
“scope” reads to me as “amount” (in violation of the agreement).
They mention the trailers being used as storage, and phrases like "significant increase in the amount of junk". Note "junk" as opposed to "vehicles".
The original settlement isn't easy to find, but you can find this document from the township...their answer to the homeowner claiming unreasonable search/seizure: https://www.courts.michigan.gov/49bcc0/siteassets/case-docum...
But it isn't; they're not going after him for having too much junk, they've redefined some of his covered trucks as buildings, presumably because he hadn't violated his agreement.
Is that right?
I think they are saying there are many more vehicles & the amount of junk is increasing.
earsore
I understand it if someone is doing it in view of other people, causing an eyesore, but if you have to go to such lengths to see what they're doing, then whom exactly are they harming with what they're doing on their own property?
In a city I can't even leave a garbage bin in front of my garage. Rural, I could burn it in my front yard
Big country is big, isn't homogeneous.
The county government does little and our property taxes reflect that.
I can and have burned very large piles in my yard, but we're not savages. I have to notify the local volunteer fire department first, or they're libel to show up, and not happily.
There's a high fire risk in this area and smoke watchers will report it, and the VFD gets dispatched. They don't respond individually.
We left because over the last 15 years the decay of uniform public law enforcement has essentially led to "norms" being enforced by the local landowning elites. And they have certain characteristics that make them highly identifiable. IOW, if you look like them, you get all the space you have said you prefer. If not, well, there's not a lot to limit the potential downsides.
This has also led to a large increase in trash behavior out on the public lands. Lots of new wildcat trails/double track for instance. For us it got pretty uncomfortable a few times in the last 5-6 years. We began to post the shotguns in a highly visible place in the camp, or in the truck. That definitely helped.
Like New York? The above commenter said law enforcement advised them to get guns which is what I've experienced growing up rural; tyrannical power mongers who are as you said, the sole power, try to take people's guns away.
https://www.quora.com/Who-originally-said-To-my-friends-ever...
In the history of the world, there has never been a law enforcement institution that enforced the rules equally to itself. The same is true of every power structure e.g. governance; financial elites; ...
Dictators don’t strike me as generally inclined to recommend having the capacity for self defense. I think you are just trying to come up with the worst possible interpretation of intention.
Americans also feel more taxed, again, at every level above.
Ironically, I think the more centralised power is, the more uniformly its managed, the more free one feels under it -- since there arent as many competing interests to worry about
Quite a sweeping generalization considering we're talking about a headline of a single, unusual case.
Where I'm at, the city doesn't even care if you put up a fence blocking sight triangles at an intersection, much less what you do with your property that they can't see.
The obsession with reminding us how flawed and comedic our checks and balances are, how little accountability there is. how “but at least you can talk about it” will be used to invalidate the issue by people indoctrinated by our compromisestitution
Literally on an article documenting the state being checked. A corollary to those who choose security over freedom deserving neither is those who choose nihilism over truth and activism are choosing a weak form of mental security.
Zoning and the use of police powers generally seem to have almost no limits.
It’s almost always just related to standards of appearance. Landscaping, building modifications, having junk laying around, etc.
But garbage pickup was as far as I know managed by the county.
My HOA does. It mows lawns and removes snow. That's almost it: the rules are largely about not storing explosives in your house, which is apparently a thing in Wyoming.
Let me tell you about mine. Apart from snow removal and mowing the common lands, we handle curbside trash collection, repairs to water mains, flushing hydrants, maintaining streetlights (and paying for the electricity to light them), capital projects to manage stormwater, paving, sewer maintenance, installing fiber, forest management, etc. We also negotiate group rates for utilities like gas and electricity. A recent major project is replacing the pumps in our sewer lift station to the tune of $17k (an expense we budgeted for, thankfully). So yeah, apart from things like education and emergency services, we are basically a 19 house municipality.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association
Failing to adhere to HOA rules (which may not be readily apparent) results in fines and conflict with a group that's empowered to make decisions about your property. When homeowners have these decisions taken away and are forced to shell out, it becomes a financial and psychological strain that prompts people who would otherwise be enjoying the property to leave (or to not purchase it in the first place).
My neighborhood has an HOA. I'm not allowed to use a grill on my deck. I can't just leave piles of trash in my yard. I can't install a garbage disposal unit in my sink. There are rules and the kind I would have really rolled my eyes at when I was younger.
But these rules, the HOA, they are required by state and federal law: https://www.hopb.co/new-hampshire
Condos are "common interest living spaces", if someone's house caught fire it can spread to the others. If the septic tank gets screwed up we all need to contribute to get that fixed. There are certain liabilities involved here that require some kind of legal entity to adjudicate, this is the role our HOA fills.
While I don't have the numbers, I speculate that the majority of HOAs in the United States were likely created for similar reasons. Fundamentally an HOA is kind of like the residential version of a workers cooperative, they enable high density housing where everyone gets to have equity. Living under an HOA will always be better than living under a landlord, yet I feel few make this connection, especially when considering who is more likely to discriminate.
The important part about a downward spiral is to not continue it. This is doubly true in a context where the parent post is using questionable rhetorical tricks.
Where?
They don't choose to live there, they have to because a lot/almost all of new developments is done under HOA rules and you gotta live somewhere.
With many people who push the boundaries, one thing often leads to another, which leads to more costly measures of getting violators back into compliance.
Yes, often the first violation doesn't seem too big, but those violations are often indications of more to come.
HOA mentality is cult like or a mini police state and the comment here is a perfect example of that. Nothing happening in that HOA is that important, and ultimately does not matter. In other parts of the world people are dying of hunger and being slaughtered, in America there are tent cities, and people in HOA are so isolated and safe that they take to freaking out about Betty 2 streets down not getting approval before putting a sign in her front yard. Spend your lives worried about more important shit, both HOA and zoning (who will roll up on properties snapping pictures too), because the things you are losing your minds over are things that do not matter. At all.
It seems like you folks have never read zoning bylaws which a municipalities use to say what can and can't be done in certain areas. Believe it or not, city planning is incredibly important to ensure that a town can efficiently tax its inhabitants to fund the services that have become an expectation of normal life.
If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like.
In fact Long Lake Township has a 238 page document that lays this out.
https://longlaketownship.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Zoni...
And your recommending that the solution is to become an expert in a 238 book, which is larger than some of the worlds most infamous novels, then, spend the rest of your life doing the recommended "If you don't like your zoning laws, you should get involved in local politics and try to change the things you don't like." fighting for years to get any attention on your issue, mostly being ignored because they already talk shit about you in the entire zoning department (I used to date a woman who worked zoning and they have nicknames for people, call them trashy, etc), then maybe one day, years down the road, you might get some compromised version of what you wanted, that still doesn't allow you to do as you wish on your property so long as it's legal and out of sight, and you've wasted a bunch of your life's free time, spent most of it frustrated, and ultimately don't get what you want and just say fuck it and go back to doing what you want and saying screw the zoning rules anyway.
The "if you don't like it, get involved and change it from the inside" solution doesn't work well in individual issues (or large issues honestly), and shouldn't be needed in cases like this anyway.
HOA is a whole different ballgame, not the same as zoning.
I don't know how much this applies to that comment, but "the Land of the Free" is actually full of Calvinist predestination.
"A bad thing happened to someone so they must have deserved it. I'll never have a town surveilling my yard from the sky searching for any excuse to fine me."
You're saying this on an article documenting how this is likely illegal.
It’s weird this is a story about the USA and not somewhere I’d expect it more like Russia.
https://www.planet.com/pulse/tasking-dashboard-50cm-12x-revi... ("Planet Announces 50 cm SkySat Imagery")
I love how the RGB Bayer (?) grid turns moving cars into tiny rainbows! You can identify the lane directions by which way the colors go.
What they were looking for could probably have been obtained with drone photographs without going over the individual's property which would have probably given the town a stronger argument for being able to say they were "observing from outside the property."
What I'm curious about is what would happen if the property owner hired the company to fly over the city commissioners houses or government buildlings to take pictures.
> We believe the duty enjoined upon the appraiser to value real property from an actual view and inspection of the property carries with it the implied authority for the appraiser to enter upon real property to perform this duty, without such action constituting a trespass. However, we also believe that all persons, perhaps especially governmental officers, owe a duty to preserve the public peace. Therefore, it is our opinion that for the limited purpose of appraising a taxpayer's real property and the improvements made thereon, by actual view and inspection, an appraiser may enter upon such property, at a reasonable time, without the prior permission of the taxpayer.
In zero situations. As regulations are written, drones are aircraft navigating through federal airspace in the same way as fixed-wing, helicopters, ultralights, hot air balloons, etc. That airspace extends from your shoelaces to the heavens.
The method of obtaining the photos is not the question here, because the photos were taken from public property (the airspace). It’s the overall strategy of the town basically hiring a private investigator.
There is nothing in Title 14 of the CFR preventing you from doing that. It would fall under the same laws (harassment, peeping tom laws, etc.) as you standing on the street 24x7 with a massive telephoto lens pointed towards your neighbors bedroom windows.
I'm not entirely sure that's correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_rights
> Specifically, the Federal Aviation Act provides that: "The United States Government has exclusive sovereignty of airspace of the United States" and "A citizen of the United States has a public right of transit through the navigable airspace."[3] The "navigable airspace" in which the public has a right of transit has been defined as "the airspace at or above the minimum altitudes of flight that includes the airspace needed to ensure safety in the takeoff and landing of aircraft."[4]
> The exact altitude(s) at which the airspace over private land can become subject to "substantial impairment" is often debated. Case law in the past has used the height of 500 ft (150 m) in urban or suburban areas,[5] and 360 ft (110 m) above the surface or tallest structure in rural areas[6] as the demarcation of where impairment of property rights can occur.
There’s a list here - look for privacy and you’ll find both laws like California’s (which does class it as trespass) and Florida’s (which refers to it as surveillance):
https://www.findlaw.com/consumer/consumer-transactions/drone...
At least people in Canada have to register it with Nav Canada for any drone flight over 250g but still it would be nice to know people can't fly in the airspace above my yard an spy on me.
Although I was thinking of a shotgun not a rifle, I'm not sure who could hit a done with a rifle. I think a half blind grandmother could hit a drone with a shotgun with a full choke that would be a 1m diameter spread of ~10mm 000 shot at 40m away.
> the FAA ... confirmed that shooting down a drone is a federal crime and cited 18 USC 32. That statute makes it a felony to damage or destroy an aircraft.
Advocating for breaking the law is also, generally speaking, kosher.
Anyways, the common understanding among lawmakers and armed forces in early 10s was that land owners do not own the airspace above their land. Now this is more clearly enshrined in laws in many different countries.
It is often either:
1. You don't own the airspace above the tallest construction on your land.
2. You don't own the airspace above a certain altitude above your land (often 50 meters or less in Europe).
3. You don't own the airspace above a "reasonable" height. This is more common in common law countries like the US or the UK. It usually involves owning the airspace above your land that is necessary for the ordinary use and enjoyment of the land, and the structures on it. You don't own high altitude space, you do own the land, and everything else depends on the courts either case-by-case or based on precedent.
4. You don't own any airspace above your land, but navigational easement and zoning laws prevent any aircraft including drones flying at low altitudes above your land.
The drone in the article was a purpose-built commercial surveillance UAV that almost certainly flew outside the airspace this man could have owned, even if it was in a case law country. It would have been quite criminal to shoot it down.
The consumer drones, you can probably take down in most of the world if they fly close to your structures and not too high above your land. Though still, it makes a lot of sense to check the laws before doing so. If the privacy invasion with a drone is repeated, that means you have enough time to look it up.
Lots of people act irrationally and shoot down or take down other people's drones with cameras believing they have the right. But from a legal perspective, they are shooting down an aircraft, which is not usually a very wishy-washy thing in laws. Especially in civil law.
So when I say you can PROBABLY do so in some situations, what I mean is it's not very likely you will go to prison for it. I don't want it to sound like "yeah, just do it lol". Depending on the country, it can still be treated as a serious criminal offense. And if this incident is properly reported to the aviation authority, you will probably have to provide at least a written or in-person statement about what happened. Even if you are totally in the right. So I would say it's still almost never ever worth the hassle.
Another interesting thing to note is that the large commercial surveillance UAVs tend to weigh between 230 and 2500 kilograms, or 500 to 5000 pounds. When you see such an aircraft at an altitude of 500 meters or more, it doesn't look that different from a manned glider or a helicopter. The drones don't all look like GA Predator drones in movies. And if it's a small drone (around 2.5 kilograms, just slightly bigger than most consumer ones), then you won't be able to see it or hear it when it's at the altitude from which pictures like the ones in the article would be taken. If you shoot at a large commercial drone you can see at significant altitude, it might not even be unmanned at all. Consider what that means.
Finally, a disabled drone is considered far more dangerous to people on the ground than when it stays in the air. So there are often laws about that. If the UAV falls onto a person, at best it will cause a small injury, at worst it will maim or kill them. Even drones that weigh 2.5 kilograms have propellers that can cut through cheeks, eyeballs, ears, and fingers. It is no joke. This is why there are often such strict laws about UAVs flying above people - not because the sound is annoying or the privacy may be invaded, but because it can fail.
Overall, it's complicated. Appreciate the ...
We are the land of the free, it’s true. Free to do whatever we want inside the invisible box restricting our freedoms that we don’t see around us our entire lives. But go live your life, you’re totally free to do so! Evenings after work, and maybe the weekends! If you make enough to enjoy that limited time off, and aren’t too tired.
/tangent
/rant
It wasn't always the case that land claimed with eminent domain was for public use, either. There's a long history of the government taking people's land, throwing money at them and using it for things not in the best interest of the public.
> The Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) went a step further and affirmed the authority of New London, Connecticut, to take non-blighted private property by eminent domain, and then transfer it for a dollar a year to a private developer solely for the purpose of increasing municipal revenues.
> Eminent domain has been used to acquire land from African-Americans for urban renewal redevelopments[25] and in other cases to dispossess them and remove them from areas where their presence was not desired by white neighbors, e.g. Bruce's Beach subdivision in Los Angeles, California.[26] Seneca Village was an African-American majority settlement in an area of what became New York City's Central Park. South Glencoe was an African-American neighborhood in Glencoe, IL[27] Central Avenue was an African-American neighborhood in Tampa, Florida.
> Eminent domain was used to take property from Japanese-Americans incarcerated by the United States government during World War II. For many, their homes and businesses were then sold while they were incarcerated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain_in_the_United_S...
So, you're right, people are paid when their property is taken without consent, as they should be, but the whole practice is still a shit one to have happen to you. I think my main point, that owning land, the thing America was built on and was preached to me growing up, isn't a thing you are ever guaranteed, even after you purchase the land.
The latter is covered by airspace rights: 49 USC 40103, and US v. Causby.
<https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/40103>
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Causby>
Those might be limited by harassment or stalking principles.
They need some kind of probable cause that leads them (and a judge) to believe the landowner might be in violation of the agreement
"We just want to make sure" is not probable cause
If they cannot get a warrant, then they cannot do the search. Done and done.
I'm not sure what are you talking about?
It's kind of the whole point of this escapade. If they had the probable cause to get a warrant they would've just done it and not paid the money for a drone flight.
They believe that because this search did not involve going into his private property behind a locked gate by government agents and instead the evidence was gathered by flying above his property in airspace that he does not control it was not a search that is subject to court review or the need for a warrant under the Fourth Amendment
If they could've gotten a warrant they would've just done that, and because they couldn't they came up with this alternate scheme
What does the owner do with waste disposal? Various fluids and solids from the vehicles must be dealt with according to regulations. Are there any? What about leak abatement? Effects on groundwater and waterways? Tires? Other hazardous waste? Air pollution?
It’s difficult to assert that you intended for parts of your property that can easily be observed from the air to be private. It’s not like they used a drone to peer through his window and see the contents of his safe or something.