Pizza Delivery Drones, EU's Internet Changes – Talking Tech w/ Harley Geiger & Jens-Henrik Jeppesen
Host Brian Wesolowski first chats with Harley Geiger about his vision of a pizza delivery drone (and other potential positive uses of drones), their unique perspective and thus privacy implications, potential rules and regulations and where they should come from, and more.<br><br>Then Jens-Henrik Jeppesen joins from the other side of the pond to talk about "what the heck is going on in Europe?" – the Digital Single Market strategy, the RTBF ("right to be forgotten"), online hosting liability, and more.<br><br>Attribution: sounds used from Psykophobia, Taira Komori,BenKoning, Zabuhailo, bloomypetal, guitarguy1985, bmusic92, and offthesky of freesound.org.
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Transcript
Welcome to Tech Talk by
CT. Welcome to CDT's Tech Talk, where we chat up the smartest people in tech policy to go beyond the headlines and make sense of how developments will actually affect your life. I'm Brian Waslowski, and it's time to talk tech policy. This week, we'll be talking drones. Many people know them for their military purposes, but they have a lot of potential commercial and law enforcement uses as well. Will our skies soon be filled with drones, and should we be concerned? We'll also be looking to Europe, where there have been a number of developments on the privacy and free expression fronts that have the potential to impact the Internet globally. From online commenting to erasing your past from searches, European courts and policy makers are coming to profound and sometimes troubling conclusions. Drones, drones everywhere, but where's our privacy? Yes. Drones are a hot topic right now. From landing on the White House lawn to potentially delivering groceries, we're hearing about the good and the bad of our skies potentially filled with drones. Recently, CDT's Harley Geiger testified before Congress on what sort of policies and regulations should be in place around both the use of domestic and law enforcement drones. Harley joins us today. Welcome, Harley. Hi. Thank you. In reading your testimony, I learned a new term for drones, unarmed aircraft systems or UASs. Unmanned. Unmanned. Oh, yeah. Unmanned. That's what I wrote wrong there. Unmanned. But I think drones is catchier. So can we use drones throughout the conversation and get away with it? Sure. Okay. Awesome. So you started your congressional testimony with the potential benefits of drones and the opportunities for innovation.
What are some of the most exciting things you're hearing right now? The most exciting thing I'm hearing right now is a pizza delivery drone. I am I have visions of walking in to a Super Bowl party with, like, several drones carrying pizzas behind me and everyone just going nuts. That would be so awesome. That would be good. But there's a lot better uses for that. I mean, drones can be used for for humanitarian assistance, for, relaying WiFi into remote areas, for journalism, for film making and art. And there are a great number of, research as well as, commercial and artistic uses for drones that, I think are very positive and have a very low impact on civil liberties. And CDT wants to see those applications, in in practice. We are not trying to, to hold back the technology or put the genie back in the bottle. But we do wanna see the technology be used in a way that is respectful also of privacy.
So let's go into that a little bit more. The privacy concerns, the civil liberties concerns. We'll leave military drones out of of this. A lot of people do think military when they think drones, but we're looking more at commercial uses and then also government uses or law enforcement uses. So let's let's start with the government ones and specifically law enforcement. What are our primary concerns there with them using drones?
The primary concern is that drones can enable new kinds of pervasive surveillance because they can reach vantage points that older systems cannot. Specific I mean, the the same things that make drones unique and valuable for commercial and scientific purposes, namely that they fly, they can move around, Also means that they pose, pose new privacy issues. And specifically the concern is that they can be used for pervasive constant monitoring, over private property and over public property that is currently not subject
to commercial or government monitoring. So things like your backyard, you know, they can actually look down on it is what you're saying. That's right. And,
I sometimes hear people say, well, this is not different from a helicopter. And, in a sense that is true, but the from from our perspective, a helicopter, yes, could be used for aerial surveillance, but the helicopters generally cannot be used for, quiet, long term, surveillance over a very wide area without refueling the way that, some high grade drones or a network of drones can. And and helicopters are also very expensive and, so they're they're just not gonna be used as often and by as many, entities, you know, like a small town can afford several drones or probably cannot afford afford to fly a helicopter every day. Mhmm. And, for the so for the first time, many Americans are facing a much more realistic possibility of drones looking into their, looking into their, fenced in private property, but also, monitoring public property that is currently not subject to to monitoring, like a rural highway or a public park. Yeah. And I actually thought in your
you mentioned that the perspective of drones goes even further because a lot of people say it's like, oh, it's just another form of camera. But, you know, a red light camera captures a moment, whereas a drone can do a much broader swath and you don't actually really know where it is. That's right. I mean, it's it is different than a ground based CCTV network. I mean, although a a big CCTV network could cover a wide area,
if you turn a corner or enter your fenced in yard or leave the intersection or leave the city, then you are no longer in that observable field. But drones can change the equation by covering all of those areas because they fly. I mean, that's sort of the point is that they can reach vantages that ground based systems cannot. So are law enforcement using drones right now? They are. It's somewhat limited because the, the rules for drones entering airspace have not really been finalized by the FAA. So law enforcement agencies are using them on a somewhat limited basis with the expectation. And, in fact, the law says, that this will change and the FAA will release rules and we will see a lot more, UAS. I think it's been predicted that maybe 30,000, could be used by the end of the by the end of the decade. And I'm not sure whether or not that's gonna happen, but there are certainly tens of thousands of law enforcement agencies in The United States, and they are predicted to be a big customer. So then the actions that we need on this one in terms of civil liberties protections come from the FAA and Congress? Or who needs to act here? Largely Congress. The FAA is, responsible for regulating the airspace, but they're not really a privacy,
agency. The Department of Transportation might be a better fit. They probably have more manpower and more expertise.
Transportation might be a better fit. They probably have more manpower, more expertise, but really there's not a statutory authority for agencies to do a whole lot about this. So it's I think that it really needs to come from, from Congress. And when it comes to government drones, what we think is necessary is to have a, transparency and due process requirements established in the law. I mean, the way that the law is right now, the Fourth Amendment, just the way the courts have interpreted it, does not really provide protection from aerial surveillance. The courts have, so the Supreme Court, in fact, has routinely said that, from the publicly navigable airspace, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy, and, therefore, the government does not need a warrant in order to spy on you from the publicly navigable airspace. And this has led to a lot of public distrust of the technology.
Mhmm. Well, that's not a good thing. Let's pivot to the commercial uses. This is your pizza. This is, you know, delivery of diapers or something like that. What would be the what would CDT like to see in terms of either regulations or policies in this space?
So, for commercial UAS, there are like with government, there there are not a lot of laws that protect privacy from, private entities. Right? So private use of of drones. And there there are some that they're not nothing, common law privacy torts. So there's a type of, type of law that is, found throughout The United States, and they they include things like, trespass or voyeurism, intrusion upon seclusion. And the standard though is kinda squishy. It's it's basically if it's highly offensive to a reasonable person. And that is actually not an easy standard to meet in court when it comes to aerial surveillance. And the more UAS, the more drones that are in the sky, the harder it's going to be approved that when one of them is looking at you, it is highly offensive. So that I think privacy expectation to the extent that it's there is going to shrink. But nonetheless, like I said, like, something like voyeurism, it's it does help protect against the more egregious misuses of the technology, like looking in through a window. Sure. So the use case that we're really trying to focus on with, commercial UAS is, outdoor surveillance. So, I mean, looking at people while they are outside of the home, outside of their, constitutionally protected area. And there though, we have a competing interest. So we're the CDT, of course, is not just a privacy advocacy organization. We are also a free speech advocacy organization. And we believe in the first amendment right to take photographs in public places. And that applies also to UAS, to drones, because they can be used to take photographs in public places. And so we think that, it would be, in conflict with the first amendment to have congressional regulation that is too heavy handed when it comes to private UAS, taking photos outdoors. And so, any any legislation would have to, I think, probably stick to that torch standard that I mentioned earlier. So something like, highly offensive to a reasonable person and circumstances where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy, they're not very strong standards, but we don't think that they would conflict with the first amendment, at least not as written, at least not on their face. And so to avoid a First Amendment conflict while still providing some privacy, an industry code of conduct could actually provide privacy, transparency, and accountability where direct regulation cannot. Mhmm. But it's only gonna work if businesses adopt a strong and enforceable code of conduct. If it's very weak or if they just don't adhere to it, and they don't adopt it as a formal code, then,
then it's not really gonna advance the ball very far. And top line, what would be the elements of that code of conduct?
Top line is a, reasonable restrictions, reasonable limitations on the collection and use and retention of data collected by drones. And, as well as transparency, by, for example, having a registry with data collection statements, a publicly accessible registry with data collection statements, and perhaps even flight patterns of, private commercial UAS. Now, there can be exceptions to all of these things. I mean, different industries are going to have different use cases like the, Amazon delivery drones are gonna be different than journalism drones. Sure. And an investigative journalist might have a really good reason why they don't want a their license and their data collection statements publicly accessible. So I think that the code, it may be more than one code, but it needs to be flexible enough to, to provide for cases like this. And two other things that I would say that the code ought to be looking into. One is, cybersecurity standards for drones. One drones do represents in some ways a physical threat, because they they can be hijacked and they can be used, as a, you know, as as something of a flying missile. And so cybersecurity standards that prevent, unauthorized damage to the drone, I think, would be a very good thing for, the industry to coalesce around. And then second, and this is somewhat more innovative, but this would be, technical specifications. And the industry and the government should be looking at ways that, to protect people's privacy in physical space such as by something called geofencing where you delineate a property and that, that delineation that, that property is built into the drone's GPS so that the drone either does not fly over that property or does not retain information as it is flying over that property. There's So like a virtual mask over your your yard. That's right. And, we have several other ideas in in that regard but there there's a couple technical things that that we think that the industry could be looking into that would at least help. There's not really gonna be a silver bullet but all of these things,
help. Sure. I think a lot of people have visions of drones falling in their pools or, you know, just on the street. So figuring out cybersecurity a big piece of that, but it, you know, are they a safe technology in general? Well, that is, definitely one of the things that the FAA is focused very heavily on. And I cannot comment on the state of,
the safety technology only, only to the extent that I I I read about it and I know that they that they are working on it. One thing that they are trying to work on is, what they call, sense and avoid where, drones above a certain weight limit are able to sense the presence or proximity of other drones or manned aircraft like airplanes and avoid them. And, you know, I hear from some folks that it's still in the works. I hear from other folks that it's,
ready to go. And I'm not sure what to believe. But in So I personally am glad that they're working on it because I too do not want flying robots to come crashing down. Yeah. It sounds like there's a lot of work to be done in drones in terms of both the technology, but also certainly the policies around it and the regulations around it. Let's close looking at the future here. You know, are we gonna have our friendly skies filled with buzzing things? What does it look like ten years from now? Just predict. Well, ten years from now,
I think that it would be rather shocking if we do not have looser, restrictions on the use of, commercial commercial drones. Right right now, there there's pretty much a blanket ban. The folks that are flying commercial drones are doing so under under a waiver. They're the exception, not the rule. And so, I think that that will flip and the rule will become that commercial drones are able to fly. I think that we'll see greater use of government drones. And I think one way or another, we're gonna see privacy rules, whether it is on the federal level or on a state level. Those rules are actually already coming. There are at least 16 states that have put forth, privacy laws, specifically with regard to UAS. And I think that once these things take to the air, it seems to me that,
states will, will probably ramp up that effort if the federal government has actually not done anything substantial on it. Great. Well, thanks so much, Harley. Pleasure having you on Tech Talk, and hope to have you back again. Sure. Thank you. Europeans love their privacy, but lately, their governments also seem to really love surveillance. Also, as European nations shout from the rooftops in support of their free expression rights, their courts and lawmakers are handing down rulings and making laws that seem to favor privacy over open expression online. Of course, decisions made in Europe have the potential to impact the Internet globally. What do all these new policies, rules, laws, and decisions mean for the global Internet? And will we see any of the more controversial proposals proposals embraced elsewhere? Joining me today all the way from Brussels is Jens Henrich Jeppesen, who heads our work out there. Thanks for coming, Jens. Thank you. Pleasure to have you on Tech Talk. We don't get you in DC very much, so it's nice to have you here. Jens, there is so much happening in Europe right now. It's hard to keep track of it. From the release of the digital single market strategy to the implementation of the right to be forgotten, and also countries trying to make that an a global effort. We've also a ruling that would hold Internet platforms accountable for user comments. What the heck is going on in Europe?
Yes. Thanks, Brian. There there are many, many moving pieces, and and you mentioned, a lot of them here. So so let's start with the with the digital single market strategy. So this is Europe's great effort to drive forward, Europe's digital economy, make sure that we benefit in terms of new jobs, growth, innovation, investment, etcetera. There's a lot of good stuff in the strategy troubling, ideas launched in the strategy is, the idea, that Internet intermediaries should have new responsibilities or what the drafters call a duty of care, to deal, proactively with illegal content, whatever that might be.
So So, like, illegal content being maybe like extremist content or copyright infringing content, that sort of content? That's exactly right. There are
three different kinds of of content, are mentioned in the strategy. And one is is extremist Okay. Content, clearly. Charlie Hebdo, the Copenhagen attacks, the onward march of ISIS in The Middle East, and the attraction that has on on some people Sure. Living in Europe, brings, Internet companies and social media platforms, in the crosshairs of law enforcement, agencies who want to try and stop the kind of propaganda that is being, that's being propagated. Now and in the other, the other part of it is IP infringing content where holders of IP or intellectual property are keen to have trading platforms do more policing, monitoring, filtering, to, keep, whether it's counterfeit goods or or pirated goods, off their networks. So this is the this is a discussion. And, we, as CDT, have always said, and we will continue to say that you have to move extremely carefully here. When we look at the history of the Internet, it has been, the, the, the Internet as this, let's say, permissionless forum for commerce, entrepreneurship,
free expression, political debate, and so forth. Yeah. A lot of people don't think about necessarily that you need the platforms for people to post content to. Otherwise, how are people gonna find that content? And if those platforms don't exist that are willing to host that content, whether it's your cat video or something far more meaningful like the CDT podcast,
that's a problem. That's exactly right. And and if you and it it's kind of productive in another way as well. Because what Europe wants to do rightly is to, is to have homegrown Internet companies innovate and scale and and and grow. Now, if you if you then change the rules and impose new upfront, liabilities and the today's giants, they can handle a lot of this with armies of lawyers. Sure. Start ups won't be able to do that. Good point.
I keep interrupting you. I know there was a lot more that listed. So that was the digital single market strategy. What are It's okay. But I mean, it's the, you you mentioned the Delphi case, which is which That's the one on the commenting. Right? That's the one where Exactly right. Delphi was held responsible for their user comments. Exactly right. Exactly right. Think I think this is the,
this is a case in point, of the dangers of of of taking, these obligations, too far, which the the court has done. So the victim here is, first of all, of course, the online platforms that have, that facilitate this debate. But it's also users,
who will not be able to engage in the kind of discussion that we have Yeah. It seems like a a very easy response to this, unfortunately, would be just to shut down the comment section on, you know, an article or something if you're gonna suddenly be held responsible for what users say. And, you know, we've all read the comment sections on a news site, and sometimes it's, you know, it borders on site and sometimes it's, you know, it borders on hilarious. It can be awful. Sometimes it's insightful. There's value to it and you don't want it shut down. I I wouldn't think. Absolutely
not. But that would be not an irrational choice for a, for an online moderator or an online company to do. Sure. So you mentioned a bit that,
you know, the incentive or why Europeans are looking at a digital single market, and these incentives for this to grow a vibrant European, digital economy. Do you think that any of it comes from a different view in privacy between Americans and Europeans in general? I've heard that before. Do you think there's any truth to that?
Yes and no. So discussions on data protection have been going on in Europe for quite a while. There is a, there's a data protection regulation that's being negotiated and has been since 2012. The, and it will replace when finally adopted, it will replace a piece of legislation dating back from 1995. The big difference in terms of, of the legislative constitutional environment is that Europe has this, horizontal piece of legislation that covers personal data in whatever context. That's a difference to The US where protection protections exist, but in silos. There's certain protections in within health care, within finance, and so on and so forth, but no broad consumer bill of rights. Such a thing is is in draft states right now, but but nothing has been adopted. So so that's the legal and constitutional sort of side of it. On the other hand, I think it's clear that Europeans and Americans have similar concerns about privacy and data protection. I think there were, there were as late as November, there were a few, polls out to show that, in fact, you have very similar, concerns. People are worried about, what happens with their digital footprint. Mhmm. What data is collected? How is it used? Who's it shared with? And so on and so forth. These are these are concerns that need to be addressed, both on the European side and on on The US side. So similar citizen concerns, but
concerns, but perhaps slightly different approaches from a policy perspective.
Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely. And and now you mentioned the the the free expression issue, and and that is probably that is an area where there are clear differences in terms of of the the weighing of these these rights.
So Is the right to be forgotten an example? The right to be forgotten.
We talked about it. The, you have in The US, you have your first amendment. We have, in Europe, we have the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees freedom of expression. It also guarantees the right to privacy and data protection. So, in the right to be forgotten context, these two rights are at loggerheads.
And, And just can you give a little context on the right to be forgotten for people who may not be familiar with it? I mean, it's very catchy. Whoever did the branding of that did a brilliant job. But can you explain it a little bit?
Very briefly, yes. In a Spanish a Spanish lawyer, was, tax debt, a default and a public debt. He went to the newspaper where the articles were published and asked them to be taken, taken off record. They would not and could not do that, and then the, they he went to the, to the search engine, in this case, Google, and, and asked that, links would be removed when searches on his name were were done. So that's how the the case started. It worked its way all the way up to the court of justice of the EU, which is the equivalent to the US Supreme Court. And, it handed down, last year a very controversial, decision and must, under certain circumstances, take down, not take down, but delist,
remove links, actually, this type of Google's actually started doing this in Europe. Correct?
They started, they started implementation, I believe,
last summer. Yeah. So there's almost a And what types of people are taking advantage of this? I mean, is it probably a a broad swath of people, but Correct. Correct. I
we don't have a full picture, of how this is handled. But Google has certainly, made public some, material about the kinds of requests that they grant and the kinds of requests that they don't grant. Sure. Examples of requests that they would be, let's say, for example, a victim of a rape whose name was reported in a news story. And that that story then keeps sort of dogging that thing. Sure. That would be an example of of something that Google has has granted. Makes sense. Examples of requests that were not granted would be financial advisors or medical practitioners who have malpracticed Mhmm. And have had bad comments in the press or maybe even maybe even, convictions.
I can imagine politicians would love to have certain things they said in the past really erased from the record. That that was certainly discussed,
but I think it was very clear. That was one one of the one of the pieces of guidance the court the court gave was that public figures, would benefit from this figures, would benefit from this right to delisting, much much less than,
private persons. That makes sense. So are things like this catching up? Do think, you know, like, the right to be forgotten or, you know, the ruling that came down in the Delphi case around commenting, do you see any momentum outside of Europe, whether it's in The US or other parts of the world, this catching on? On the right to be
forgotten, again, there are probably similar concerns among people in The US. Mhmm. And I think studies bear that out. That there is an unease about what's out there about me. I am aware of developments in Japan with I I believe this is being discussed. But I I don't think that anybody has yet passed this this type of this type of of legislation. Certainly. And, again, we would I I I say it again, you know, CDT has fundamental concerns with this type of of of legislation.
Yeah. I mean, Europe certainly has a profound impact on the Internet. I mean, they're very vocal. They have citizens that are very engaged. So, I can only imagine that something that happens in Europe reverberates around the world. I'm going to wrap it up here. If you were a business owner, an online publisher running a website that hosted user content and wanted to do business in Europe, Any advice for them based on the climate right now?
Well, I you know, you would need to take a lot of legal advice on some of these questions. That's for sure. I I think the what will happen now on the on the digital single market strategy and the ideas around liability is that there'll be consultation, there'll be reports written, and so on and so forth. So legislative change is still a ways off. So there's there's certainly time to make, to make improvements
that that we want to make. So if you're doing there, pay attention and make sure you have a good lawyer on your side if you wanna log something. That that would be sensible. Thanks so much, Jens. Appreciate having you stop by. Thank you very much. And that's it for this week's CDT Tech Talk. You can find more information about our efforts in Europe and those buzzing drones at www.cdtt.org. As always, tweet us any questions you have or topics you'd like us to cover to at sendem tech. Thanks for listening, and I've always wanted to say this, keep it classy.
