Criminal Law

Should drones over neighbouring residential properties and making visual recordings of other people without their consent be criminalised?

Crime

1. To understand criminalisation it is essential to define Crime. As there is no unified definition of crime, scholars such as G Williams in the text book of Criminal Law (Steven and Sons, 2nd Ed, 1983) 27, defines crime as “A crime (of offence) is a legal wrong that can be followed by criminal proceeding which may result in punishment”.

2. Oxford dictionary of Law (6th Ed, 2006) 140 defined Crime as an act (or sometimes failure to act) that is deemed by statute or by the common law to be a public wrong and is therefore punishable by the state in criminal proceeding.

Role of the criminal law in

The Civil Safety Regulation 1998 (CTH) have provided the rules for all air craft. Part 101 was added into the regulation in 2002 which regulates drones until this day. Nothing in the act mentions visual recording made from a flying drone. It provided a guideline for the operation of drones; no drones to be flown over 400ft and it cannot discharge or drop anything that may cause harm. Regulating small drones seems to be a difficult task as Terry Farquharson noted in his speech in 2013.

8. A drone flying over a private land could raise a few causes of action such as trespass to land and private nuisance. In Bernstein V Skyviews & General Ltd it was established that a cause of action for trespass may arise if the trespass happens over the surface of land in its airspace.

9. Justice Gleeson CJ in Lenah Game Meats mentioned that an act could not always be considered private as such due to the fact that it is not been committed in public, for example anyone could be sitting in their own privacy of their backyard and be surrounded by taller buildings they are exposed to the eyes of others. Or another example given if someone is sunbathing nude on a nudist beach the act itself could be seen as a private act done in a public place. Des Butler, ‘The Dawn of the Age of the Drones: An Australian Privacy Law Perspective.