Slashdot Mirror
UK Police Plan To Use Military-Style Spy Drones
krou writes "According to documents obtained by the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, the UK police plan on deploying unmanned drones in the UK to 'revolutionize policing' and extend domestic 'surveillance, monitoring and evidence gathering,' which will be used in 'the routine work of the police, border authorities and other government agencies.' The documents come from the South Coast Partnership, 'a Home Office-backed project in which Kent police and others are developing a national drone plan' in conjunction with BAE Systems. The stated aim is to introduce the system in time for the 2012 Olympics. Initially, Kent police stated that the system would be used to monitor shipping lanes and illegal immigrants, but the documents reveal that this was part of a PR strategy: 'There is potential for these [maritime] uses to be projected as a "good news" story to the public rather than more "big brother."' However, the documents talk about a much wider range of usage, such as '[detecting] theft from cash machines, preventing theft of tractors and monitoring antisocial driving,' as well as 'road and railway monitoring, search and rescue, event security and covert urban surveillance.' Also, due to the expense involved, it has also been suggested that some data could be sold off to private companies, or the drones could be used for commercial purposes."
In the United States, we'll shoot at helicopters with actual people in them. If Homeland Security tried to spy on us with drones, it would become a sport to shoot them down. And they WOULD go down, too. Lots of expensive wreckage.
I hear in the UK you've got people dropping tires on traffic cameras and setting them on fire. Your hearts are in the right place, but it's tough to get a tire over a UAV.
What are the laws going to be on probable cause to stop someone that is on "candid camera"?
What I mean is, if it spots you jaywalking, can they just follow you around and order local units to stop you? If you're walking by a street vendor and they see you reach into a bin, then moments later just happen to put your hand in your pocket, are they allowed to detain and search you?
Anecdotal evidence here, take this as you will.
A few years back I joined a "Citizens Police Academy". Basically, at its core, it is a PR program setup to bring the community and its police together. We got to basically take a free 10 week course meeting once a week where we went over the basics of all the police duties.
Personally, I got to partake in classes where they taught you about evidence gathering, etc. We got to do mock pull overs in the parking lot (quite interesting scenarios), I got to go on ride alongs (4 hours "on the beat" with an officer), I got to fire their weapons at their range, and I also got to partake (although limited) in on site SWAT training where I got to be the bad guy and we basically played hide and seek.
The most enlightening part of the whole experience, as well as my point, lie in the ride along.
Once nighttime hit, we were patrolling the back roads and an out of town car was just going along doing its thing. The driver, as far as myself and the officer were concerned, was obeying the traffic laws. However, the officer I was with had a hunch that this kid might be up to "something".
We followed him for a bit waiting for him to screw up. Although, we were certain he knew we were behind him (crown vic headlights are easily spotted when you know what they look like). Eventually the car we were following pulled off onto a private driveway.
The officer still was suspicious of his activity and wanted a reason (probable cause) to stop him. So we quickly u-turned and headed out to a "lookout" spot above the side street the officer expected him to exit from. The reason he wanted a good lookout spot was to see if he would not come to a complete stop at a particular stop sign.
Interestingly enough, the kid did come out the way the officer was expecting, however, he did come to a complete, 2 second, stop. No probable cause.
We followed him for a while longer and finally, the kid didn't come to a complete stop at another stop sign. Bam, cue the flashing lights and Signal 6.
While I wasn't allowed out of the vehicle, I noticed him take his time in talking to the driver. Smelling for smells and looking for things to see.
In the end, no ticket was written and it was a simple stop. However, I'm sure the kid had no idea we were 100% focused on stopping _him_ for the better part of half an hour.
We had no reason to suspect anything and simply followed him long enough until he made a simple and honest mistake. At that point the noose was tightened and we had Probable Cause to interrupt his night for no other reason than to quench the curiosity of a random police officer.
**For the record I want to state I didn't sense any malice or any power trip from the officer I was with. I also want to state that I won't second guess the intuition and gut feelings of police officers who deal with scum on a day to day basis. You never know when they will be right, then again, shoot a gun blindly into an ocean enough times and eventually you'll catch dinner.**
Now is this same thing going to be commonplace with drones overhead? Are officers going to look for anyone they find interesting and purposely waste time following them until the person does _anything_ to trip probable cause?
This just reeks of abuse of power and reeks of "show me your papers". Sure, you'll still need Probable Cause (hopefully) to stop the person, but with an unseen eye watching your every move from above, what are the chances you _won't_ do _something_ to trip PC and have your privacy invaded?
The potential here is scary...