Drones. Current challenges and standardisation solutions in the field of privacy and data protection

The issue of drones has burst onto the public agenda due to the rapid expansion from their military and enforcement use to the domestic market where seemingly endless uses appear. This paper is focused on the analysis of the risks to privacy and data protection that arise from these devices and the efforts in Europe to establish a framework to address the problems. The paper's thesis is double: first, the current data protection rules in the European Union (EU) do not adequately cover the implications for civil liberties of the potential use of pervasive aerial surveillance systems and second, the idea that privacy standards have a supportive role to the regulations as they can have added value by mitigating some privacy risks and promoting compliance of the drone operators and data controllers with data protection principles.