Congressman Releases Draft of Legislation On Domestic Drones and Privacy

An anonymous reader writes "Police would be required to get a warrant to use drones for certain types of surveillance under legislation introduced on Capitol Hill. The proposed bill would also tighten regulations on what kind of data can be collected by the government and private companies and how it can be used. To safeguard against abuses, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus and a longtime member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, released a draft of the Drone Aircraft Privacy and Transparency Act of 2012 on Wednesday." In related news, garymortimer points out that a North Dakota court has preliminarily upheld the first-ever use of an unmanned drone to assist in the arrest of an American citizen.

Comments

Simple Idea:

[jxander]

How about we just treat drones like Military Hardware, because that's exactly what they are.

I don't expect to see police officers in Tanks, or wearing flack jackets and kevlar helmets, wielding M-16s. At least not on a day to day basis. So what makes it even remotely ok to use the same level of tech/hardware in the skies? Just because we can't see it??

Maybe for emergency use. "Call the National Guard" type stuff, then sure, bust out whatever hardware is required to get the job done. But for day to day business, make the cops walk their beat.