This article is part of the Policing and Technology Project, a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the relationship between law enforcement, police reform, and technology.
Theres a man pacing back and forth in the grocery store parking lot, evidently agitated, shouting at the sky. Concerned, you ring 911. On the phone, a police dispatcher reassures you that someone is coming over to helpand so is a drone. Soon, you hear the telltale buzz of a drone overhead. Through its camera, someone is watching the agitated man in the parking lot, feeding information back to emergency services. They are also, intentionally or not, watching you, and everyone else who happens to wander into the drone cameras expansive field of view.
In the Southern California town of Chula Vista, drone flights like this fictional example happen dozens of times a day, launched to the scene almost every time someone calls 911. The Chula Vista Police Departments is the first of its kind, enabled by a special, sweeping 2018 regulatory waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Drones were sent out more than once to situations described as fake COVIDtesting.
Most everywhere else in the U.S., drone pilots must secure hard-to-get waivers to fly beyond visual line of sight or over people. But in 2018, the Chula Vista Police Department procured a special waiver connected to the Trump-era UAS, or Unmanned Aerial Systems, Integration Pilot Program run by the FAA, which aimed to evaluate how drones can become more involved in American life. That waiver permitted the department to create its Drone as First Responder program, which allows police to fly over the entire city using small multirotor drones that are launched and piloted largely from central headquarters. By August 2019, the CVPD was permitted to use drones over 33 percent of the citys area, and in March 2021, the FAA approved an expansion of the CVPDs range to cover the entirety of the city. Now, when a call comes in to 911, the dispatcher decides whether to send a drone. The answer is usually yes, in which case the drone launches from the department HQ and flies to the scene of the incident at an altitude of about 300 to 400 feet. All along the way, it records video through a zoom camera lens, streaming footage back to HQ and to responding officers mobile devices. The footage is stored in Chula Vistas evidence.com data repository, where detectives and police can access it, as well as the district attorneys office. (The department has denied public access to the footage, claiming an exception under the California Public Records Act, but an April lawsuit filed by a San Diego newspaper is challenging this claim). According to the police force, as of March, the drones have flown more than 5,400 missions and played a role in more than 650 arrests.
But what, exactly, are those drones looking at during all these flights? In a laudable act of transparency, the Chula Vista Police Department posts detailed records online of where their drones flyand why. The data offers a poignant snapshot of the human experience, captured through the filters of 911 calls and the blinking red lens of a police drones camera. Many of the flights involve clearly dangerous scenarios: weapon threats, assaults, fires. Others are less so: a person sleeping on the sidewalk, a water leak, a report of someone drunk in public. Some are downright weird: Drones were sent out more than once to situations described as fake COVID testing.
Then, there are tragedies. Chula Vistas drones fly regularly when police conduct welfare checks and respond to reports of domestic violence. Drones fly to the scenes of child endangerment incidents and attempted suicides, and overdoses, and to scenarios described as person down or subject lying on the sidewalk, unknown if breathing/conscious. In February, the drone flew to investigate reports of a body near a taco shop. Some calls are ambiguous, leaving open room to speculate about what they might mean: suspicious circumstances, suspicious person, unknown problem, and subjects causing disturbance Finally, theres a constant drumbeat of mental subject flights and related terms: a woman walking down the freeway, a crazed person dancing in traffic, a naked transient.
Do all these very human scenarios really warrant surveillance from the sky? Im skeptical.
Chula Vistas willingness to use drones for anything and everything is a major departure from the way police have been talking about, and using, drones in the past few years. For a while, police have largely justified drones by pointing to efficiency and officer safety. These arguments and the media coverage that accompanies them tend to imply drones will be used mostly for extreme and dangerous scenarios.
In the wake of intense new scrutiny around police violence, policeChula Vista foremost among themare shifting to a new rationale for using drones: deescalation. They argue that sending a drone to the scene of an incident instead of an armed human being is a way for police to get a sense of whats going on from a detached and (if I may) Gods-eye-view perspective, reducing risk to both police and the public. Per a Chula Vista police spokesperson, 25 percent of the time the drone shows up before (human) police do, allowing them to use the drone imagery to assess whether a scenario is truly serious enough to warrant in-person response, giving everyone a moment to breath and take stock of the situation before armed officers appear on the scene. Its a compelling argument. But it fails to fully consider the downsides of a world where someone in crisis may see a drone coming to the scene before they see a person.
According to a Chula Vista spokesperson, the department works with the County of San Diego to send specially trained Psychiatric Emergency Response Team members to the scene when theyre called out to a mental health crisis, a system that can work in conjunction with the drones. The spokesperson also told me that to the best of their knowledge, the police havent encountered scenarios where the drone appeared to agitate or frighten someone. But the PERT team cant respond to every crisis.
You cant build a relationship through a buzzing blinking robot on your doorstep like you could with a person, says Eric Tars, the legal director of the National Homelessness Law Center. Then youve got the subset of the population with mental health crises that involve feelings of distrust for authority and paranoia. If youve got drones constantly buzzing overhead you dont have to be a conspiracy theorist to feel like the government is constantly watching you. Because they are.
While Chula Vistas police department says that it has done extensive community outreach around the drone program, Pedro Rios, a local resident and the director of the American Friends Service Committee U.S./Mexico Border Program, isnt convinced. From my experience, there doesnt seem to be enough public awareness and outreach to ensure that the public knows to what extent the drones are being used and for what purpose, and that they understand the safeguards that are in place so that the drone technology is actually used for proper law enforcement purposes and isnt susceptible to being abused or misused by anyone involved in the program, says Rios.
Rios has also written about how the Chula Vista police have a worrisome track record when it comes to securing the data they collect with other technologies. In early 2021, protesters demanded answers after it came to light that the departments automatic license-plate readers were sharing data with ICE and other federal agencies via the Vigilant Solutions network. While Chula Vistas police chief claimed that the data sharing was an accident, it doesnt inspire confidence in the departments ability to understand whats going on with its data.
In this, Chula Vista police have plenty of company, considering the sheer volume of reports of police across the country mishandling and misinterpretingintentionally or unintentionallythe sensitive data that they collect, often in close collaboration with private vendors. Adding huge quantities of drone data to the mix, collected multiple times a day, raises worrisome questions about U.S. police departments ability to truly understand who can access their data and for what purposes.
Perhaps the most big-picture frightening aspect of the Chula Vista drone program is that while its not quite an all-seeing system of persistent surveillance, its certainly getting there, as its always-recording drones crisscross the citys skies dozens of times a day, collecting data that police can then review at a later date. Its easy to imagine how the mere visual presence of the drone could create a major chilling effect on people in the community below, a psychological burden that will likely fall heaviest on more vulnerable people, like the unhoused, people with mental illnesses, and the considerable Southern California population of people who are undocumented or who have undocumented family.
For generations, the Fourth Amendment was not the biggest limit on surveillance, it was economics. Police had to be somewhat conservative with invasive surveillance tools because they were so expensive, says Albert Fox Cahn, founder of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P) But as these tools get cheaper and cheaper, Fourth Amendment jurisprudence fails to keep up, and you end up with a cheap and affordable surveillance state where the tools that are being used are massively disproportionate to the harms theyre combating.
This cheapness has led the police down a very familiar 21st-century path of data overcollection, in which people and organizations reason that using surveillance tech to squirrel away vast quantities of dataeven if they dont need it right nowbeats not collecting it at all. According to police technology expert Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at American Universitys law school, its a case where police are of the mindset that more info is better, and that information will outweigh any sort of concerns the community might have. Theyre only looking at it from the frame of police and police need, and not from the larger frame of What are the impacts of having drones fly out for every 911 or 311 call?
In essence, Chula Vista is running a yearslong technological and social experiment, empowered by the federal government, on how drones intersect with policing and with people. From the point of view of the police, the program has been an enormous success, one that theyre eager to export to others across the country and across the world (so eager that the department has been accused of conflict-of-interest issues after former officers jumped ship to private drone companies). Sometimes it feels more than a little like police drone advocates are asking us to make a decidedly forced choice: a sky full of surveillance drones or more police shootings. You pick.
If we want to avoid living in a world of just-in-case police drone surveillance, then well have to make it less cheap and less easy for police to use them.
Some people, like Hamid Khan of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, believe that a complete ban on police drones is the best way forward: We dont really believe in regulating or creating policies because that continues to expand their use, he says, pointing out that at the time of their introduction, police helicopters and SWAT teams were also supposed to be rarely used measures reserved exclusively for extreme situationsa distinction that swiftly broke down.
Cahn also prefers an outright ban to half measures, but he suggests one alternate strategy might be mandating that drones can be used only if someone at the very top of the police organization signs off on the matter, along the lines of how wire taps are authorized. If its something where you have to bother the chief of police, then thats something thats more a check. Anything that increases the cost in dollar and cents or time is going to be helpful in limiting these abuses, he says.
Others suggest more reform-based measures, along the lines of the ACLUs Community Control Over Police Surveillance effort, which supports the creation of community-based review boards that give people a say in how police use technology. This might take the form, as Ferguson suggests, of giving members of the community the authority to review the data to decide if a situation merits a police response or not, giving them more control over who holds the information itself.
Drones may have legitimate uses in policing. But we shouldnt accept that the constant presence of surveillance technology, from drones to facial-recognition cameras to license plate readers, is the price that our communities must pay to avoid police violence. If police want to use drones more widely than they already are, then we should demand that they truly understand the risks that fly alongside them first.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Go here to see the original:
The California City That Sends a Drone Almost Every Time Police Are Dispatched on a 911 Call - Slate
- Why Congress Must Reform FISA Section 702and How It Can - brennancenter.org - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- CIA wants more power to spy on Americans - Washington Times - April 12th, 2024 [April 12th, 2024]
- Keyboard search warrants and the Fourth Amendment | Brookings - Brookings Institution - February 22nd, 2024 [February 22nd, 2024]
- Just Published: "Terms of Service and Fourth Amendment Rights" - Reason - February 22nd, 2024 [February 22nd, 2024]
- Can Texas police set up DWI checkpoints in Dallas-Fort Worth? Here's what to know - Yahoo News Canada - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- The FBI's Lawless Raid on U.S. Private Vaults Shows Why the Founders Created the Fourth Amendment | Jon Miltimore - Foundation for Economic Education - February 16th, 2024 [February 16th, 2024]
- HCSO to release body cam footage to plaintiff alleging Fourth Amendment violation - Smoky Mountain News - December 19th, 2023 [December 19th, 2023]
- Section 702 surveillance doesn't belong in the NDAA - Defense One - December 16th, 2023 [December 16th, 2023]
- Valkyrie's Fourth Amendment for the Launch of a Bitcoin ETF - Crypto Times - December 16th, 2023 [December 16th, 2023]
- Digital justice: Supreme Court increasingly confronts law and the internet - Washington Times - December 14th, 2023 [December 14th, 2023]
- Trump and Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment: An Exploration ... - JURIST - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- Expert Q&A with David Aaron on FISA Section 702 Reauthorization ... - Just Security - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- A Constitution the Government Evades - Tenth Amendment Center - October 13th, 2023 [October 13th, 2023]
- First and Fourth Amendment Claims Over Arrest at Protest of Police ... - Reason - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Law enforcement violation of the fourth amendment - Daily Kos - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- D.C. Appeals Court weighs whether phone seizures from 2020 ... - Washington Times - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Opinion: Why you shouldn't turn on your phone in church Palo Alto ... - The Daily Post - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Court attorneys group hosts CLE seminar with esteemed Justice ... - Brooklyn Daily Eagle - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Former Dona Ana County Deputy Sheriff Charged with Federal Civil ... - Department of Justice - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Editorial: Renters rights ruling | Opinion - nwestiowa.com - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- U.S. Attorney's Statement Regarding Proposed Changes to Crime ... - Department of Justice - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- New Jersey provides a road map for fighting racially biased traffic ... - Slate - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Animal rights advocates sue after facing ongoing censorship and ... - Foundation for Individual Rights in Education - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Gerald Jako Pleads Guilty to Two Counts of Murder in Ohio County - Wheeling Intelligencer - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Supreme Court of Appeals Visits Campus The Parthenon - MU The Parthenon - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Securities and Exchange Board of India (Listing Obligations and ... - Tax Management India. Com - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Legal Strategies For A Strong Defense Against Bribery Accusations - American Judicature Society - September 25th, 2023 [September 25th, 2023]
- Police get new images of area break-in suspect - Southwest Virginia Today - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Napolitano: Is the CIA in your underwear? | News, Sports, Jobs - Standard-Examiner - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Bulletin: Maryland Juvenile Services Head Says Violence Among ... - The Trace - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Tased horseman's excessive force claims clear bar Rhode Island ... - Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- The absurdity of fact-checkers | Columnists | leader-call.com - leader-call.com - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Facial Recognition Technology and False Arrests: Should Black ... - Capital B - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Letter to the editor - Southeast Iowa Union - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Petition hopes to stop US government agencies from using ... - Cointelegraph - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Passing on the legacy of 9/11 to the next generation The ... - The Duquesne Duke - September 15th, 2023 [September 15th, 2023]
- Congress Should Reauthorize a Key Intelligence Tool - Foreign Policy Research Institute - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Kansas City police made arrests based on rescinded warrants ... - Kansas Reflector - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Tased horsemans excessive force claims clear bar - Virginia Lawyers Weekly - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Ball is in AL's court - newagebd.net - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Lawsuit against police chief just the latest shoe to drop in Marion ... - Kansas Reflector - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- In the wake of Idalia, residents of one Florida town are turning to ... - Poynter - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- NYPD using drones to monitor NYC backyard Labor Day parties, spurring privacy concerns - NBC New York - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- City of Grand Rapids dismissed, lawsuit against Christopher Schurr ... - FOX 17 West Michigan News - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- OSHA's Proposed Rule Would Allow Union Walkthroughs of All ... - Fisher Phillips - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Letters From Readers, Aug. 31, 2023 | Opinion | avpress.com - Antelope Valley Press - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Where are the Noah's Park animals? - The Pike County Courier - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- His hands were up: Attorney for football game shooting victim says civil rights violated - Yahoo News - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- NYC voters explain why theyre voting for RFK Jr. over Biden: Going ... - 1330 WFIN - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Houston Food Not Bombs in Court over Feeding the Unhoused - The Texas Observer - September 5th, 2023 [September 5th, 2023]
- Search and seizure Equal protection Discriminatory policing - Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- The Timing of Computer Search Warrants When It Takes the ... - Reason - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Councilmembers Inquired About Pretext Stops By Police One Year ... - Pasadena Now - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- BARINGS BDC, INC. : Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement, Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation or an Obligation under an Off-Balance Sheet... - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Alabama appeals court reverses murder conviction of Ala. officer ... - Police News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Oakland narrows town manager search to five | West Orange Times ... - West Orange Times & SouthWest Orange Observer - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- The Durham Report Is Right About the Need for More FBI Oversight - Reason - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Collective knowledge doctrine applies to a traffic stop - Police News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Interpretation: The Fourth Amendment | Constitution Center - March 31st, 2023 [March 31st, 2023]
- Public Schools :: Fourth Amendment -- Search and Seizure :: US ... - January 2nd, 2023 [January 2nd, 2023]
- BSE : Securities and Exchange Board of India (Issue of Capital and Disclosure Requirements) (Fourth Amendment) Regulations, 2022 - Marketscreener.com - November 27th, 2022 [November 27th, 2022]
- Trump legal counsel vows 'Fourth Amendment based' challenge to Mar-a ... - October 21st, 2022 [October 21st, 2022]
- Get to Know the EFA: Digital Fourth - EFF - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Arguments heard in body in trunk case | News, Sports, Jobs - Minot Daily News - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Ormond Beach Planning Board to meet Thursday - Ormond Beach Observer - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Limiting the Power of Police in Schools - The Regulatory Review - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Letter to the Editor: What Republicans Believe - Door County Pulse - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Trump wants other presidents investigated - KRLD - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Trump Rally Speech Shows He's 'Guilty and Scared': Former Prosecutor - Newsweek - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Court Strips Immunity From Cop Who Shot A Dog Within Seconds Of Arriving On The Scene Of A Non-Crime - Techdirt - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Claiming to have 4.3 trillion readers, the Onion supports parodist and its writers' paychecks in SCOTUS brief - ABA Journal - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- INHIBRX, INC. : Entry into a Material Definitive Agreement, Creation of a Direct Financial Obligation or an Obligation under an Off-Balance Sheet... - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- PennLive goes to court for records related to U.S. Rep. Scott Perrys cell phone - PennLive - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Rusty Hardin & Associates Strengthens Litigation Team with Addition of Attorney Aisha Dennis - PR Newswire - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Vancouver City Council asked to OK $725000 deal with family of man killed by police - The Columbian - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Govt plans to auction 22 mineral blocks in 3 states within next two months - Business Standard - October 6th, 2022 [October 6th, 2022]
- Fort Worth officers sued after being accused of violating rights - WFAA.com - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- LSU professors, students weigh in on constitutionality of room scans for online exams - The Reveille, LSU's student newspaper - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Solution for ideological division: Revising the Constitution? - The Christian Science Monitor - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]
- Lawsuit says teen was thrown in solitary confinement and abused inside Maine's youth prisons - observer-me.com - September 27th, 2022 [September 27th, 2022]