Surveillance drones in development at N.C. State have great potential and many widespread applications, though the privacy policies that will dictate drone usage are not yet clear to the public.

Privacy issues regarding the usage and testing of drones in North Carolina have arisen due to the testing done by the NextGen Air Transportation Center located on Centennial Campus.

Larry Silverberg, a professor and associate head in the department of mechanical and aerospace engineering, said that at N.C. State the purpose of the research is to further develop these technologies.

“You have technology development on one hand, and then you have the user community that has their own specific needs, and we will develop technologies that will help the users,” Silverberg said.

The two main issues regarding drones are safety and privacy, with privacy being the one that concerns the public the most, according to Silverberg.

“One of the things that [Director of the NextGen Air Transportation Center] Kyle Snyder and I are working on is putting together a position statement on privacy that does a better job for the community in explaining what’s allowed and what’s not allowed,” Silverberg said.

Silverberg said only current privacy laws will regulate drone use. 

“For the most part, there are already a lot of laws on privacy so what will happen is the privacy laws pertaining to drones will only reinforce privacy laws that have not before been applied to drones,” Silverberg said.

Silverberg said the application of drones needs to have boundaries so it doesn’t infringe upon privacy rights.

“We want this technology to move forward for economic development and business development, and we want to ensure there’s not infringement on privacy,” Silverberg said.

According to Silverberg, permission must also be acquired if the drones are being used on public land.

“The permission becomes stringent depending on what the use is. All of this is fairly unclear to the public and what we need are better guidelines for all of this,” Silverberg said.

Kyle Snyder, the director of the NextGen Air Transportation center, said the primary purpose of the unmanned aircraft systems program is to help companies fly and test the drones at N.C. State, which will give students a chance to be involved with the program.

“The goal here is how do we help companies that are growing fly and test here, so they can grow their companies here and get access to our students such as our computer science students, and our aerospace engineering students,” Snyder said

According to Snyder, some of the concerns regarding privacy issues were addressed by the government’s plan and the strategies put in place by the center.

“The initial concerns are being addressed through the government’s plan and the integration strategies that we have taken such as not employing law enforcement missions right now,” Snyder said.

In addition, Snyder said another major goal is to support state agencies that want access to the technology, with the approval of the FAA.

“We want to support state agencies that want access to the capabilities of the technology, such as the Department of Energy and Natural Resources and law enforcement agencies,” Snyder said. “The goal is to figure out how we can support all these agencies with FAA approval.”

N.C. State’s role in the usage of drones is to determine the safety of the aircrafts, the airspace that is being used and the policies that are being used for data management, Snyder said.