Your private drone opens up limitless possibilities – how can manufacturers and policymakers ensure you are able to realize them? As private drone ownership becomes the norm, drone makers and lawmakers will need to make important policy decisions that account for the privacy and free speech issues raised by this new technology. What legal and technical rules are being considered right now, and how might they affect your ability to do things like record footage at a city park, monitor police at a protest, or fly near a government building? These decisions will dictate the technical limitations (or lack thereof) placed on drones, and the legal consequences of operating them. Join Eric Cheng, General Manager of DJI SF and DJI's Director of Aerial Imaging, and Matt Cagle, a Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Attorney with the ACLU of Northern California, to discuss the policy issues at this leading edge of law and consumer technologies.
Matt Cagle is a Technology and Civil Liberties Policy Attorney at the ACLU of Northern California. At the ACLU-NC, Matt's work focuses on the privacy and free speech issues raised by new services and technologies, including surveillance equipment, social media services, and connected devices. Last fall, Matt co-authored Making Smart Decisions About Surveillance: A Guide for Communities, a paper that provides a framework for communities considering surveillance technology proposals. Matt has worked in private practice advising technology companies on the privacy issues related to new products and services. Matt has substantial experience responding to state and federal law enforcement requests for online user information, and he co-authored reddit's first ever transparency report. Matt regularly speaks at conferences ranging from SXSW to RightsCon, and he served on the privacy committee for Oakland's controversial surveillance complex, the Domain Awareness Center. He grew up in Southern Arizona, studied Latin American history in Guatemala, and holds a JD from Stanford Law School. Twitter: @matt_cagle
Eric Cheng is an award-winning photographer and publisher, and is the Director of Aerial Imaging and General Manager of the San Francisco office at DJI, the creators of the popular Phantom aerial-imaging quadcopter. Throughout his career, Cheng has straddled passions for photography, entrepreneurship, technology and communication. He publishes Wetpixel.com, the leading underwater-photography community on the web, and writes about his aerial-imaging pursuits at skypixel.org. His work as a photographer has been featured at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum and in many media outlets including Wired, Outdoor Photographer, Popular Photography, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Make, ABC, Good Morning America, CBS, CNN and others. His video work has been shown on the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel, and on virtually every news network around the world. Caught between technical and creative pursuits, Eric holds bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from Stanford University, where he also studied classical cello performance. He leads regular photography expeditions and workshops around the world, and has given seminars and lectures internationally at events including TEDx, the Churchill Club, Photoshelter Luminance, CES, SXSW, AsiaD, DEMA, and others. Twitter: @echeng