Concern For Drone Program Overreach In New York
The NYPD is the largest police force in the United States with an estimated 40,000 officers or more. And they've signaled their interest to move forward with implementing more drone use to help police carry-out their daily duties. We can expect to start seeing the drones gradually being used more often at popular social events and political demonstrations.
From gathering information to conducting surveillance for protests and more, there are many ways that the drones can be used to provide value to the department. And police departments around the country and elsewhere in the world have already made the move to work with drones in a myriad of circumstances.
The NYCLU has voiced their concern for the growing prevalence of drone use with everyday police work though.
Privacy concerns have been raised about the drone use, specifically the potential for the police to use the drones to spy on and collect data on protesters and other individuals in public.
The drones will be assisting with search and rescue, crime scene documentation, hostage situations, and other emergency situations.
"Police cameras in the skies of New York City offer a new frontier for both public safety and abuses of power. When the NYPD provided us with an early look at a draft policy that would govern the Department’s deployment of drones, the NYCLU expressed serious concerns. The NYPD did make some changes, but we continue to believe the NYPD’s drone program poses a serious threat to New Yorkers’ privacy." - C Dunn, NYCLU associate legal director
There are concerns that the police haven't provided meaningful restrictions surrounding police use of drones in the city and the NYCLU worries about the police using the drones to build a permanent archive of drone footage that contains details of political activity and intimate private behavior that's visible only from the sky.
Concern for individual liberty arises when the state starts to conduct massive surveillance expeditions that sweep-up millions of unsuspecting Americans. Aside from concerns for police drones unjustly conducting surveillance on Americans there are also worries about drones eventually being used by various police departments that have been equipped with deadly weapons. Hopefully that is the sort of environment that Americans would overwhelmingly push-back against because having broad drone surveillance programs provides the arena for widespread violations to personal liberty.
There are supposed to be Constitutionally-protected rights that protect Americans from being unjustly spied upon, their natural rights shouldn't be violated simply because the violation is taking place from thousands of feet above.
Pics:
Pixabay
Neat thing about drones: they're cheap, easy to make, and government agencies have no right to privacy, which enables individuals and groups intent on discovering government corruption, graft, and malfeasance to use drones right back.
While government has far over reached it's authority historically, and particularly of late, surveilling American citizens, this is not the greatest challenge to privacy. Public and private companies, and other nefarious organizations, are doing the lion's share of surveillance, and simply cutting in spooks in return for the (unlawful) authority.
Given the ubiquity of cameras, their increasing sophistication and decreasing size, it is hard to see that privacy will actually exist soon. This is kind of alarming, but the most frightening thing about the information that is going to be possessed about each and every one of us is that it will be proprietary to the agencies and outfits that collect it.
They'll have it, and won't share.
The blockchain model shows us how to prevent overlords from gaining the upper hand by having our information, not sharing it, and keeping us from having their information.
We can harvest THEIR information and share it on decentralized networks where they can't delete it, lie about it, or pretend it isn't real. Since it is the corrupt that have to hide in darkness, sharing their vile acts indelibly in the daylight of censorship proof and publicly auditable DLTs is far more frightening to evil doers than it is to we ordinary working stiffs, mom and pops, and good Joes.
I reckon the cat's out of the bag, and getting it back in the bag isn't gonna happen. So, let's use that to our advantage. Corrupt and lying 'public servants' have a lot more to fear from being caught on camera than we do.
Thanks!
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