And that makes it OK?

I see nothing wrong with it, actually. People want — and have a perfect right — to know, who they are about to trust with powers over them and/or their businesses. And the higher the position, the greater the powers and, consequently, the greater the extent people might go in their investigations.

The "opposition research" is just another facet of this. If it is legitimate for all of us to study, how Donald Trump parted with his ex-wide 30 years ago before we hire him, it is certainly legitimate for a would-be employer to check criminal history of a candidate, or inquire, whether he has done something, which may betray certain things about his character or judgement. Did he torture animals? Is he prone to binge-drinking? Has he burned the national flag? Is he a racist, sexist, or communist?

So long as private employers' hiring decisions remain their own, they ought to remain free to base them on whatever considerations they please — with the specific (if regrettable) restrictions imposed by the law, of course.

Well clearly I'm not going to have such studies to hand, not sure how you would study such a thing

Well, you made a wide-reaching statement about a certain fact. If you can not cite anything to confirm the fact, your statement remains unsubstantiated and the "fact" — highly suspect.

there is inbuilt racism / nationalism in CV selection

I can believe that — and in my not-so-humble opinion, those concerns ought to remain up to the employer as well. Both from the principled standpoint — being free must imply freedom to be wrong, as well as practical — the war on thought-crimes, waged in this country since the 1960-ies, is even less winnable than the coterminous war on drugs.

Obvious problem being that like many other legal requirements, they go ignored in an actual war, as soldiers do not generally spend a lot of time debating the "lawfulness" of the said order for fairly self-evident reasons.

Except there is ample precedent for that NOT being the case. Has nothing to do with neighbors flying toy copters around, or someone flying a Cessna at 500'.

If a drone is hovering "in" your suburban back yard, then shooting it with a shotgun is wildly inappropriate, because you're shooting at an angle barely above the horizontal. We also have no idea if the guy's toy copter was hovering "over" his yard, or just near it. It's much more difficult than most people think to gauge a small quadcopter's actual position over objects on the ground. I've yet to meet anyone who hasn't personally operated a given machine for many, many hours who was ever correct about that sort of thing.

I don't agree with the murder of unborn children either.

Well, you may not, but the country's laws see nothing wrong with it — and it certainly is not considered "murder". And yet, what you do with that same child only a few years after he is born, is suddenly a matter of police concern. That's the inconsistency — in the general thinking, not yours — of which I'm trying to raise awareness here.

I am not trying to claim [...] I think

Wouldn't it be nice, if people applied their opinions on rearing children to their own children only?

There's nothing wrong with wanting it gone, perhaps, but what's wrong about enforcing that desire by law is that it amounts to trying to censor factual information about the past. You don't have to tell anyone about your more embarrassing historical moments, but it's wrong to forcibly prevent others from sharing what information they possess.

The right answer here is to simply recognize that people change, that it's normal to have some things in one's past that may be embarrassing (or even outright illegal), that everyone goes through this period of growing up, and that what one said or did as a child—or for that matter, as a younger adult—does not necessarily correlate with one's views or behavior in the present.

Nonsense. I've been hit in the face by #8 birdshot used by a gunner over 200 yards away. If I didn't have field glasses on, I'd have lost an eye.

We'd have to see a lot more detail about where the copter actually was, the angle at which Dad shot it, etc. My observation, as someone who flies drones of several sizes and who has also shot many things out of the air using a variety of shotguns and loads, is that there's essentially no safe way to do what this idiot did.

Separately from that: the FAA is quite clear that shooting at ANY aircraft is a crime. Big time.

People getting married at 16 did so under the guidance of closely kept family - something that's far less common these days. When the culture was more agrarian and infant death rates were much higher, you started hatching out babies as early as possible while everyone involved is young and resilient. We now have a much, much lower rate of multi-generational households (when that was common, that 16 year old husband was very unlikely to be the one calling the shots about the family business, farm, finances, etc). We're also expecting young people today to be tuned into a LOT more information and complexity than their counterparts from a century ago.

And this is why we have privacy. That people have disconnected lives where they are one person at work and another with their friends

If, for whatever reasons, an employer wants to know, what sort of a person you are with your friends — and they all will, once the positions they are considering you for reach a certain height, they'll find out. With private investigators, if need be.

What you present to the employer being separate from your personal life is actually a really important part of how we function as a society.

Is it? How so? Can you cite any studies showing usefulness of such separation? Or how this separation changed over the years — for the betterment of society, or otherwise?

I've had a great teacher. Despite my best efforts I will never achieve your level of mastery though.

The problem isn't embarrassment, it's judgemental people with the power to affect your live.

Oh, thank you for identifying "the problem". For a while here, I thought it was the irresponsible statements and other behaviour of certain people. Turns out, it is the other people's opinion of same...

there may be some issues there for good reason

If we, as a society, trust parents with the decision to abort their children before birth, what possible "good reason" can there be for us to intervene in the decision to let them wonder in the park until dinner after the umbilical cord is cut?

Your logic is not universal. Do people have a right to go shooting people on the street? Of course not. Do people have a right to shoot a home invader? Of course. If a creepy guy climbs your fence to take pictures of your teenage daughter in her bathing suit do you have a right to smash his camera? Many juries would say so. If he uses an RC drone camera instead? Same thing. Let's hear what's on the memory card.

And the police might note that they received a call. I doubt that they'll respond to it.

I hope that the homeowner wins, and in the process that this defines the boundary on the airspace that is considered owned with the land.

Except that you can't ask a drone questions.

I expect this to be a legal mess for a long time. This will probably come down to property rights.

The area above the property is private, but the extent of that ownership is not entirely defined. Cases like this will probably define it.