Posted Mar. 2, 2013
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, for commercial and law enforcement use in the United States is under increased scrutiny as the Federal Aviation Administration moves forward on implementing laws to regulate the technology. But the value of the small, relatively inexpensive surveillance technology has not escaped the notice of another group of potential users – journalists.
At least three journalism schools – at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Syracuse University and the University of Missouri – are experimenting with small drones to determine their usefulness and practicality in newsgathering and storytelling. In addition, a few news organizations have also put some drones in the air, as did the Occupy protesters to monitor police action. And they are being used by realtors and other commercial outlets as the FAA deliberates the safety and privacy regulations needed, which is to be completed by 2015 when wide-scale use is anticipated. A Congressional Research Service report estimated that the drone industry will reach about $89 billion in 10 years.
A look at drones that operate on land and water and in the air.
“There are a lot of arguments for why journalists might want to use UAVs to do journalism,” said Matt Waite, a journalism professor and director of the Drone Journalism Lab at the UN-L College of Journalism and Mass Communications. “The economic one may be the most powerful: That manned helicopters you might want to use get to photos of fire or disasters, it’s going to cost thousands of dollars. … A UAV, particularly the small ones, you can buy a really good one for a few thousand dollars and have it do those aerial photos.
“But I prefer to think about how much better natural disaster coverage I could do if I have small UAV, how much better perspective we could give to readers if they could see how far the damage extended. … That’s where the real power is – reporting about issues of large spatial extent.”
To fly a large drone, operators need authorization from the FAA, which has issued about 300 approvals, mainly to law enforcement and universities for research. However, small drones – often used by hobbyists or “modelers” – may be flown without approval. Model aircraft drones must be flown lower than 400 feet in the air, away from airports and populated areas, within sight of the operator and cannot be used for commercial purposes; Waite and others tend to follow these rules as guides. One expert noted that news organizations, as commercial ventures, should not be using drones, nor should realtors and others; the FAA will order them to stop if it notices the uses.
Waite and some of the students in his lab teamed up with the UN-L NIMBUS Lab and its $25,000 Falcon 8 drone, which was operated by computer science professor Carrick Detweiler. Waited noted that one of the questions in drone use is whether newsrooms want to develop the skills needed to fly these aircraft or whether they will have to hired experienced operators.
The students used the drones for their series on the effects of the drought on Nebraska’s farms and how the Platte River, which supplies them with much of their water, had dried up in many places. The drones provided aerial views of the dry riverbed and to get water samples from the river, just to prove they could be used to gather physical evidence.
“People would have a really clear understanding of what the drought’s impact would be,” Waite said. “It turned out great.”
At the University of Missouri, science journalism professor Bill Allen’s class is using drones in cooperation with the engineering department, whose students build the drones based on input from the journalism students. The engineering students also operate the drones in the field because they are trickier to fly than you might think , Allen said.
“ You can’t get them wet and can’t fly in gusty winds,” her said. “Over 10 mile per hour winds, they’re hard to control. You have people who have never been remote-control operators who have to learn how to fly with two joysticks.”
They are doing a series on restoring Midwest native prairies, which includes setting some of the prairies on fire deliberately. Capturing the burns on video is where the drones come in. As soon as the snow clears and the grass dries, they’ll send the drones up.
Allen sees two major uses for the UAVs:
- Valued-added reporting: Getting images you otherwise couldn’t for a story you’d already planned, like the prairie series.
- Drone-led reporting: Using drones to find information, like flying up a river and discovering environmentally damaging sewage runoff.
“Why (are drones) good for journalism? We don’t know that they are,” Allen said. “That’s part of what this class is about. We’re trying to find out if they’re going to be useful in a way that we believe in. We teach journalists to be responsible, ethical, have a strong public service mentality. We don’t train paparazzi.”
But drones do allow journalists to view and record things they otherwise might not be able to access. The FAA is considering privacy concerns – in drone use both by law enforcement and commercial interests, including journalists.
“All the focus on police using drones and legislation coming out against it is going to get in way of responsible citizen use of drones,” said Syracuse University journalism professor Dan Pacheco, who has sponsored a contest for students to offer innovative ideas for drones in newsgathering. “They’re not thinking about how aerial photos could be useful in watching police in riot situations, how (journalists) can watch them to make sure they are acting properly.”
In the contest, students compete for a small Parrot drone based on either the best proposal for a news story that could be enhanced by the use of aerial footage or for an application that could help reporters using the drones to shoot video.
Pacheco said he is trying to ensure future reporters are aware of the latest technology, but also how to use it responsibly.
“It’s in everybody’s interest to have responsible people who are modeling good behavior and then talking about potential for others to do harm if they’re not careful,” he said.
Pacheco noted that Americans already are being watched and videotaped on the many police and private cameras posted on buildings, stoplights and elsewhere.
“It’s the same fear people had then, the same conversation,” he said.
All three professors emphasized the UAVs are simply tools to tell stories, in many ways no different than smartphones or iPads.
Waite said there are two things to consider in journalistic uses of drones:
- What is it going to take to use them? What kind of equipment, training, skill? Can you carry them with you? Is it practical to use them?
- What are the ethics?
“Just because they may become legal doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” he said. “The power that journalists have is attention – we can focus people’s attention. Something being public and being in front of a large audience are two different things.”
With UAVs, video capturing a person outside his home is possible, but publishing it is an ethical choice, issues that Amie Stpeanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said journalists already must ponder as they collect images and information through more traditional means.
She also warned that states increasingly may pass anti-paparazzi laws if drones become prevalent and “everyone can be a photojournalist in invasive ways.”
EPIC supports government privacy regulations to government, commercial interests and journalists know the rules.
“The thing we’re lacking now is rules of the road,” agreed Waite, “both from the FAA and how do we as journalists fit (drones) in existing ethical frameworks.Is this a new ethical problem or is this an old ethical problem with new technology?”
Ellen Shearern co-director of the National Security Journalism Initiative, as well as the William F. Thomas Professor of the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications at Northwestern University. She teaches in the school’s Washington Program. Before joining the Medill faculty, she was a senior editor at New York Newsday, a consulting editor at Newhouse News Service, marketing executive at Reuters, and held positions as senior executive, bureau chief and reporter at United Press International.
EPIC lawyer fighting for privacy rights
Amie Stepanovich, an energetic redhead with a turned-up nose and big smile, seems an unlikely Fourth Amendment warrior. But her passion for defending privacy and civil liberties has pushed her through law school and a demanding job at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.
Now, she is one of EPIC’s prime advocates for ensuring privacy protections are front and center when unmanned aerial vehicles – drones – are allowed into U.S. airspace in a few years. Already, about 300 licenses for their use have been granted and experts predict a $89 billion industry in 10 years. Stepanovich wants to be sure all those drones, equipped with cameras, aren’t collecting private information without limits.
Sitting in her well-organized office looking out through white gauzy drapes onto Connecticut Avenue in Washington, D.C., she said she knew she wanted a career in media from a young age, taking journalism at Okeechobee High School high school in Florida and moving on to advertising at the University of Florida, where she took the required media law class. She still has the textbook on her office bookshelf.
“It made me want to go to law school,” she said, and ignited her passion for defending First Amendment rights.
She graduated from New York Law School, in 2010, primarily interested in First Amendment issues, but a summer internship at EPIC hooked on the Fourth Amendment.
“A lot of the same issues are involved. You don’t have free speech if you don’t have privacy.”
The internship turned into a job and now “I largely focus on domestic surveillance,” which includes the use of drones by law enforcement, commercial interests, researchers and individuals.
Amie Stepanovich of EPIC holds the organization’s drone.
EPIC identified the need for privacy protections as domestic drone use becomes more prevalent as a big issue early on, she said.
“More than any other issue, it has really take on a life of its own with the public,” said Stepanovich,
“People know drones from their use overseas and seeing them in Star Trek (and other sci-fi movies) and the can relate to them. They’re scared of them and now they’re coming here. What does that mean?”
At the extreme, there is concern that the drones can be used for more than surveillance, they can be armed, said Stepanovich, just back from a conference in Oklahoma.
Leaning on her desk is a whiteboard with her monthly schedule neatly printed in blue marker and to-do lists lining the edges. Dry cleaning is hanging on a hook on her office door. Files are arranged neatly in stacked trays and vertical file holders on her desk.
As she typed a quick email, her computer screen propped on two law books, she noted that it’s possible, without privacy protections, for the government or private interests to see what a person is typing on the computer, even when it’s not information that the person is sharing online.
“You don’t need very advanced technology to collect everything” from someone’s computer, she said.
One of the issues in advocating for privacy protections is the lack of public awareness of how much is being collected about them and what their rights are, she said. And the government excuse of national security interests can make it harder.
She noted a personal experience: At an airport a Transportation Security Administration agent tried to convince her that a body scanner emitted no radiation when she said she’d prefer not to be scanned, but studies have shown that is not the case. The scanners were deployed to airports around the country to boost security because of their ability to “see” more than metal detectors, but opponents said they were too intrusive.
She said with satisfaction that they’ve been shut down.
Protecting people from this type of intrusion is why EPIC’s work is importan, she believes.
She noted the FAA’s announcement recently that it was including privacy issues as part of its review process for regulating drones shows “we made a difference.”
