Are there any privacy laws regarding hovering drones over someone else's property for extended periods or constant over flying?
Yes. It is illegal to fly or hover a drone over someones property. By Law the airspace is owned up to 500' by the property owner and it is trespassing to fly or hover in that airspace ( SCOTUS U. S. v. Causby ). Many municipalities discovered that the hard way by being sued by land owners when they used a spy drone to check on broken ordinances.
Permission is required to conduct such practices. It is illegal to shoot one down using a firearm, but then again a Nerf Gel Fire can be fun to try. All manufactured drones have serial numbers that can be used to track down who it is sold to, so when you knock it down, you find the manufacturer and can trace the serial number. If the owner of the drone shows up to get it, you can have them arrested for trespassing. If they don't there is still a way to track them down.
Anything above 500' is FAA controlled and a plane flying over your property is legal, as long as they are over that 500' limit. Since the FAA regulates Drone flight to 400' maximum, this makes it trespassing.
Everything above was navigable air space, available to the public. The Court didn't announce a precise altitude after which landowners lost their rights. Instead, they offered two general guidelines that would be applied in each case:
- Airspace that can be occupied or used by the landowner must be his, and
- The landowner is entitled to a "buffer zone," to protect him from intrusions that would limit the owner's full enjoyment of the land and limit his ability to exploit it.
There are some exceptions to the rule for drones. FAA licensed delivery drones can be exempted.
There are several cases where people tried flying over property and were sued and lost, One was about the police using a drone to check on a backyard to see if the owner was doing something against a zoning ordinance, which they were, but because the drone was sent over the persons property without a search warrant, it was deemed an illegal search, as well as trespassing, and they were ordered to pay the landowner a settlement and all the evidence regarding the ordinance thrown out as well as all the fines associated.
Another one was a paraglider taking pictures of property and publishing them. The landowner sued for damages based on the trespassing in the airspace because the paraglider was under 500'.