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Беспилотные воздушные суда и государственный надзор: приватность, полномочия, технические риски
Introduction: Drawing on the legal orders of the United States, the European Union, and the Russian
Federation, the article provides a comparative legal analysis of three regulatory models governing the
use of unmanned aircraft (UA; drones, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)) by public authorities for gov-
ernment oversight: the U.S. model, based on a combination of aviation rules and constitutional safe-
guards against unreasonable searches under the Fourth Amendment; the European model, centered on
personal data protection (GDPR, Directive (EU) 2016/680) and proportionality; and the Russian model,
focused primarily on aviation and technical requirements, with privacy and accountability issues re-
maining insufficiently developed. The purpose of the study is to determine whether any of these models
simultaneously addresses three key issues: legal certainty of supervisory powers, protection of privacy,
and mitigation of technical risks (cybersecurity and algorithmic bias).
Methodology and materials: The study uses comparative legal and formal legal methods. It analyzes legal
acts of the three jurisdictions (the United States, the EU, and the Russian Federation), including Commission
Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/947, the GDPR, the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act), the Air Code of
the Russian Federation, Federal Law No. 248-FZ On State Control (Supervision) and Municipal Control in the
Russian Federation, and the Federal Law On Police, as well as case law and academic literature.
Results and discussion: The U.S. model is the most developed in terms of constitutional safeguards
against unjustified surveillance, but it is multi-level and fragmented: federal law sets aviation require-
ments and general constitutional limits on government intrusion into privacy, while specific restrictions
on the use of unmanned aircraft by law-enforcement and other public authorities are to a significant ex-
tent established by state law. The European model provides a mature personal data protection frame-
work (GDPR, DPIA, AI Act), although implementation and national rules remain uneven. The Russian
model prioritizes aviation safety, while personal data protection and accountability in the use of unmanned aircraft remain insufficiently developed. The article also examines the legal implications of in-
tegrating computer vision algorithms into supervisory systems and identifies the risk of function creep.
Conclusions: The article substantiates the need for an integrated legal regime incorporating privacy by
design, mandatory audits of algorithmic systems, cybersecurity standards for unmanned aircraft, and
mechanisms of public accountability. It formulates de lege ferenda proposals: supplementing Federal
Law No. 248-FZ with rules governing the use of unmanned aircraft, introducing a personal data pro-
tection impact assessment, and extending cybersecurity requirements to the information systems of
unmanned aircraft used for government oversight.