Police DFR programs involve a fleet of drones, which can range in number from four or five to hundreds.
In response to 911 calls and other law enforcement calls for service, a camera-equipped drone is launched from a regular base to get to the incident first, giving responding officers a view of the scene before they arrive.
In theory and in marketing materials, the advance view from the drone will help officers understand the situation more thoroughly before they get there, better preparing them for the scene and assisting them in things such as locating wanted or missing individuals more quickly.
A drone responding to a vandalism case may capture video footage of everyone it passes along the way.
Drones are subject to the same mission-creep issues that already plague other police tools designed to record the public; what is pitched as a solution to violent crime can quickly become a tool for policing homelessness or low-level infractions that otherwise wouldn't merit police resources.
This could lead to drone surveillance of communities that happen to have a higher concentration of ShotSpotter microphones or other acoustic gunshot detection technology.
Artificial intelligence is also being added to drone data collection; connecting what's gathered from the sky to what has been gathered on the street and through other methods is a trending part of the police panopticon plan.
Now there are a few dozen departments with known DFR programs among the approximately 1,500 police departments known to have any drone program at all, according to EFF's Atlas of Surveillance, the most comprehensive dataset of this kind of information.
Chula Vista Police claim that the DFR program lets them avoid potentially dangerous or deadly interactions with members of the public, with drone responses resulting in their department avoiding sending a patrol unit in response to 4,303 calls.
This led to a lawsuit in which EFF submitted an amicus brief, and ultimately the California Court of Appeal correctly found that drone footage is not exempt from CPRA requests.
It took a lawsuit and a recent Alaska Supreme Court decision to ensure that police in that state must obtain a warrant for drone surveillance in otherwise private areas.
While some states do require a warrant to use a drone to violate the privacy of a person's airspace, Alaska, California, Hawaii, and Vermont are currently the only states where courts have held that warrantless aerial surveillance violates residents' constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure absent specific exceptions.
Clear policies around the use of drones are a valuable part of holding police departments accountable for their drone use.
These policies must include rules around why a drone is deployed and guardrails on the kind of footage that is collected, the length of time it is retained, and with whom it can be shared.
A few state legislatures have taken some steps toward providing some public accountability over growing drone use.
In Minnesota, law enforcement agencies are required to annually report their drone programs' costs and the number of times they deployed drones with, including how many times they were deployed without a warrant.
In Illinois, the Drones as First Responders Act went into effect June 2023, requiring agencies to report whether they own drones; how many are owned; the number of times the drones were deployed, as well as the date, location, and reason for the deployment; and whether video was captured and then retained from each deployment.
Illinois agencies also must share a copy of their latest use policies, drone footage is generally supposed to be deleted after 24 hours, and the use of face recognition technology is prohibited except in certain circumstances.
DFR programs are just one way police are acquiring drones, but law enforcement and UAV manufacturers are interested in adding drones in other ways, including as part of regular patrols and in response to high-speed vehicle pursuits.
Police technology company Axon -known for its Tasers and body-worn cameras - recently acquired drone company Dedrone, specifically citing that company's efforts to push DFR programs as one reason for the acquisition.
This Cyber News was published on www.eff.org. Publication date: Thu, 27 Jun 2024 19:13:06 +0000