Ethics Report

Andrew Misiani, Bryce Gruber, Casey Martin, Mason Reck, Michael Turnbull

Ethics are the moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an

activity. Ethics touches various aspects from individual based, group based, community based,

company or institution. It plays a key role in corporate responsibility, consumer rights, civil

rights, personal privacy, and protection as well as online security. It is the responsibility of not

just governments and but also the people to make sure ethical virtues are observed in everything

they do. In this report we’ll look at some of the ethical issues that come with building a UAS

tracker, such as the sourcing of parts, environmental impact, data and privacy, as well as

licensing / code usage.

The impact of COVID-19 on the general supply chain has been massive, and even more so for

manufacturers of specialty electronics parts. Certain parts needed for the PCB assembly are, at

time of writing, backordered for multiple months with no sign of a break soon (notably the

RFD900ux-SMT). Even acquiring the hardware development kits was difficult early on in the Commented [GU1]: Bryce -- double-check model
number?
project, as the group is using brand new hardware that only rolled out for commercial purchase a

few weeks before the semester started. Luckily, the physical location of DigiKey headquarters

has meant that when something is in stock, it can ship extremely quickly. There can be some

ethical concerns with where the chips we use are made. As they are often manufactured overseas

in countries that don’t have strict work regulations. As a small project that is making a single

module, we can only assume that these widely used parts are not being made using abused
workers. If this was a large-scale project, it would be a crucial step to investigate the factories for

ethical issues. Commented [MC2]: An attempt to bring in an ethical

issue. Feel free to delete
Commented [GU3R2]: I think it's fine, It's definitely
Since the drones/UAVs aren’t fully autonomous, their actions are subjected to various something that often gets overlooked
Commented [GU4R2]: -Mason
ethical based issues which lie upon the operator of the UAV, the purpose of the use and the

consequences which may be produced by the UAV. The person/s controlling the UAV is the one

subjected to moral ethical evaluation. For instance, ethical issues associated with recreational

UAVs come hand in hand with the character of the operator and the intention of the usage

together with its consequences of use. Ethical issues emerging as a result of interaction of how

the UAV is used by a user in contrast with how those experience the way the UAV is used by the

user. The control of the UAV and what influences the UAV activities. The intention of the user

of the UAV comprises instrumental reasoning and establishment of UAV purposes well as those

affected by its purpose which involves technical issue of being under surveillance. Due to these

interactions, the user and the technical use of the UAV has its effect on another person that

ethical issues with UAVs arise.

The environmental impact of this project should be relatively low, as it doesn’t leave behind

extra waste material or pollution. The device emits zero carbon or other fumes of any type, and

only consumes electricity from the battery. However, it does emit radio signals in the 900MHz

range potentially at a relatively high power compared to other 900MHz-band emitters. To help

with this, the air module’s power setting is user-configurable; if the operators know they don’t

need to fly far, they may turn down the transmission power for that flight, and only increase

power for longer distances when it will be needed.

Noise pollution and visual pollution is something to take into account with this project. Our

module will endorse the use of medium sized drones. While some people enjoy the sight and
sound of drones, others may find it disturbing to their everyday lives. Our team ultimately cannot

decide when and where our module is used, however we know that the specific people we are

developing this module for will be using it in a UAS test site. This will mitigate the effect of

noise and visual pollution respectively by using the module in a controlled area, outside the

earshot of the everyday person.

A unique aspect of this particular project is its impact on privacy and information

disclosure. By nature, a GPS tracking device is designed to give location information to a

remote observer over a wireless connection. Due to the nature of wireless connections, anyone

can intercept and spy on such a link so long as they are within range (which with the radios

selected for this project, is quite large), resulting in a violation of expected privacy. To combat

this, the team plans to utilize AES-256 encryption of the data flowing over the radio link with a

pre-shared key to increase security and privacy.

In order to keep the scope of this project to a sane and manageable level, some amount of

using others’ work is required. However, all of it is done in accordance with applicable licensing

and/or payment. For example, the air segment code is written to work with, and compiled

alongside, FreeRTOS, which is a free and open-source program under the MIT license. The

RFD900x radios in use run a proprietary firmware, but a branch of the free and open-source SiK

Radio Firmware developed by the ArduPilot project. In order to ensure work is credited

appropriately, a list of software packages used, their licenses, and links to source code (wherever

applicable) will be provided to the Test Site with the product delivery.

Overall, the most important ethical issues for this project are data protection, privacy, and

crediting others’ work. As discussed, environmental impact is relatively low from the module
itself and consists mostly of power draw and radio emissions in a band intended for this type of

use. The utmost concern is the protection of the users’ information as it transits the radio link.