Police Launch Drones Over LA

An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo! News is reporting that law enforcement officials have launched a new form of drone aircraft to patrol the skies above Los Angeles. From the article: 'Police say the drone, called the SkySeer, will be able to accomplish tasks too dangerous for officers and free up helicopters for other missions. "This technology could be used to find missing children, search for lost hikers, or survey a fire zone," said Commander Sid Heal, head of the Technology Exploration Project of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "The ideal outcome for us is when this technology becomes instrumental in saving lives."'"

Comments

1984?

[Psychotext]

But police say that such privacy concerns are unwarranted because surveillance is already ubiquitous. "You shouldn't be worried about being spied on by your government," said Heal. "These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you whether you're in a grocery store or walking down the street."

You're already screwed, but you don't have anything to worry about unless you have something to hide. You don't have something to hide do you citizen?

Dropping the paranoia. I've been into a surveilance center in a major city and, as you would expect, half the time the people working there are too busy checking out the hot women walking about to notice any crimes...

it's good and it's bad

[mikesd81]

LA's a big city. There are some good things about this.


* It frees up man power
* It saves money on paying pilots and buying more aircraft
* They can cover more are quickly plus relay constant feed back and be remotely controlled to travel certain ares faster.

There are some bad things.

* It could, theoretically, be a privacy issue as they take pictures of people's yards (I'm sure pictures will be wide lens)
* Let's say they can hover and ease drop on a building
* I'm sure taxes will come into play (howerver this may be on neutral ground if it really beneifts the residents).

Umm, no thanks

[Anonymous Coward]

From TFA:

Though the SkySeer is not capable of spying into windows just yet, for some a future of nearly invisible eyes in the sky is an unsettling introduction of science fiction into daily life.

"A helicopter can be seen and heard, and one can make behavior choices based on that," said Beth Givens of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse. "Do we really want to live in a society where our backyard barbeques will be open to police scrutiny?"

At least someone is asking the right questions.

But police say that such privacy concerns are unwarranted because surveillance is already ubiquitous. "You shouldn't be worried about being spied on by your government," said Heal. "These days you can't go anywhere without a camera watching you whether you're in a grocery store or walking down the street."

I don't have a problem with private businesses using cameras to monitor their property as long as the cameras are not government sanctioned stations to monitor the public. I would hope that tapes from those business cameras would at least take a subpoena to be viewed. Where I do have a problem is when an officer seems to justify unwarranted surveillance devoid of probable cause using unmanned drones patrolling my backyard. What happened to my Constitutional rights regarding search and seizure?

And do you know how they sell this to the public?

"This technology could be used to find missing children, search for lost hikers, or survey a fire zone," said Commander Sid Heal, head of the Technology Exploration Project of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. "The ideal outcome for us is when this technology becomes instrumental in saving lives."

It's for the children stupid!!! How long until this is used to collect even more information on the citizen of our US? Land of the free and home of the brave indeed...

Re:They'll get distracted

[heli0]

There was a television program that conducted a similar experiment. People were hired to operate surveillance equipment to watch a suspected terrorist. During their shift a couple next door would began having sex visible through a window. All of the surveillers watched the couple and allowed the suspect to leave unnoticed.

Danger to aircraft!

[olafva]

My son flys light aircraft in the LA area. He has commented Helicopters are often
difficult to see, especially when the hover stationary at the end of runways. There
have been several crashes with loss of life in LA due to light planes hitting helos.
Perhaps since UAVs fly lower than helos, they will reduce crash danger to my son.
I'm curious if UAVs are exempt from all FAA regulations or do they require any
notification tonearby towers when they are launched?

Re:Pointing out the obvious

[R3d M3rcury]

Okay, how about doing something completely legal like parading around buck-tooth naked. As long as you cannot be viewed from the street, you're okay. Suddenly, there's police drones flying around taking video of you sunbathing in the buff.

Sure, you're not doing anything illegal. But tell me that video isn't going to get on the Internet.

Why should a drone be peeking in my backyard? To make sure that I'm not doing anything illegal? But, at least the last time I checked, I was innocent until proven guilty. It's the same idea. Would it be okay for the police to enter and search your house if they didn't bash down your door and tear things up? Suppose they were nice and polite and put everything back the way they found it. Would it still be okay? After all, you're not inconvenienced...

Let me give you a fun example: I used to drive a Jeep. I hate having a top on my car, so I often leave the top down. I've come back to my Jeep and found all sorts of entertaining things stuck in there (eg porno magazines). Once, I found a bunch of marijuana joints. I assume that some kids had them and were afraid of getting caught with them, so they stuck them in my Jeep figuring they'd come back later and pick them up.

I've been pulled over by the police. They've asked to search my vehicle and I refuse. Why? Because I don't know what some people might have hidden in the vehicle and I don't want to be responsible for anything that the cops might find. One time I had a cop who tried to tell me that my attitude was "suspicious," that was "probable cause" for him to search my vehicle, and I should just make life easier on myself and cooperate because if I made him go through the hassle, he'd have me thrown in jail for sure. After all, why should I decline a search? I have nothing to hide, do I?

I told him he had to get his captain down here. The captain came down, listened to my story, and agreed with me. The vehicle is open, anything could be in there, and declining a search does not constitute probable cause.

These rules exist to protect all of us.

Re:Pointing out the obvious

[zenhkim]

> In whose hands will the tool be? The "Protect & Serve" type of police or the "Shoot first and ask questions later" kind?

Considering that we're discussing the Los Angeles fucking Police Department I'd say the question answers itself.... (Rodney King, anyone? How about Rampart?)

Seriously, my "Army vet buddy" also worked as an LAPD cop. Now he's a private investigator who specializes in cases where the defense has suspicions regarding police corruption.

One such case involved a Latino who was stopped by police while he was walking down the street. The man had no priors, but vaguely fit the description (Latino) of a suspect. When the police proceeded to arrest the man, he protested that he had done nothing wrong. The cops then beat him up, forced him to kneel on the ground and shot him, point blank, several times in the legs.

Here's the funny/sick part. The police reported that the man broke and ran from the police (resisting arrest) and that they only shot him in the legs to stop him from fleeing. Furthermore, they claimed he was physically violent when they tried to cuff him at that point, so they had to "subdue" him. The guy was screwed, yes?

No. My PI and ex-cop friend was working for the defense attorney, and he noticed that the angle of the gunshot wounds had an extremely steep downward angle. It didn't fit the police report of the incident ....but it made perfect sense in light of the man's side of the story -- that he was on his knees when the cops, standing around him, shot the man repeatedly.

From his hospital bed, the man practically cried, "Why, oh why did they have to shoot me so many times?"

To which my friend explained to him, "Simple, mister: YOU DIDN'T DIE. When cops shoot you at point blank range like that, you're supposed to die. So when they kept shooting you and you kept *not dying* you pissed them off. Don't you know better than to piss off an LAPD cop?" My friend was, of course, joking.

To this day, my PI / Army vet buddy never runs out of work.

Re:Pointing out the obvious

[evilviper]

Removing the human element shouldn't cause the paranoia i'm seeing here.

Sure it should. It's not the "removing the human" element, it's the "adding the machine" element. It's the "law enforcement database" thing, the "CCTV" thing, all over again. When you have an automated information-collection system, you have FAR, FAR more potential for abuse. A view which has been confirmed time and time again.

The British government is getting a lot of flack lately, for their own CCTV system, as people say the police are using it to prosecute trivial infractions, while serious crimes continue unabaited. Video after video gets released of someone getting repeated beaten and/or stabbed under the watchful eye of CCTV cameras, and perhaps a half hour elapses before any officers arrive. Not to mention repeated misidentification through the CCTV system, leading to innocent people being arrested, shot, etc.

Up until the modern era, it wasn't that you had privacy, it was that it was prohibitively expensive/difficult for police to piece together your every move, as they can now at trivial cost. At least with a police helicopter, you know they aren't going to go through the trouble of hovering over private homes, waiting for trivial laws to be broken.