Why the First Drone Arrest Isn't About the Drone at All

[rhoenix]

It was bound to happen. This week, for the first time ever, a person was sentenced to jail in a case where law enforcement used an unmanned aerial vehicle. Judging by the reaction, plenty of journalists see this as a watershed event—especially as the man, cattle rancher Rodney Brossart, argued that the drone was "dispatched without judicial approval or a warrant."

Here's the case in a nutshell: Brossart refused to return another rancher's cows, which had wandered into his property, instigating a 16-hour armed standoff with police and SWAT teams. The local cops asked the Department of Homeland Security if they could borrow a Predator drone to locate the man and his sons. After that happened, Brossart surrendered. He was acquitted of the theft of the cows, but the jury found him guilty of terrorizing the police.

Here's the thing: This case is already overrated as far as its important for the future of drones and law enforcement.

For starters, the drone in this case performed just as a helicopter would. It flew over a crime scene and provided images to the police below. There is nothing inherent to the use of a UAV that made any material difference in the outcome.

Now, if the drone had conducted surveillance over the home to find those cows, that'd be an interesting court case. States are passing and proposing laws that limit the use of drones without warrants, and Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) has proposed a federal law requiring public agencies to get a warrant before using a drone for surveillance. That makes sense, and Markey's law also makes exceptions for emergency circumstances: It would throw out the warrant provision "When (A) there is imminent danger of death or serious physical injury; (B) there is a high risk of a terrorist attack by a specific individual or organization, when the Secretary of Homeland Security has determined that credible intelligence indicates there is such a risk; or (C) a search and rescue mission is appropriate."

The Brossart case feels more like one of those in which the drone is a stand-in for government intrusion; the legal questions at hand are more about what police and SWAT teams can and can't do rather than the use of the drone itself. That's a debate that is larger than the future of unmanned aircraft.

What really matters are the things drones can do that other aircraft cannot—that's where UAVs will lead to new debates about what is legal and how the American public is policed. Most important is a drone's ability to spend a long amount of time in the air. Drones are cheaper than helicopters, and don't need to land to refuel or switch pilots, opening up a major surveillance opportunity for law enforcement.

So let's do a mental exercise. Imagine a government official from a cash-strapped county buys a drone for the sheriff's department. The drone has day/night cameras that can read license plates. It also has algorithms that can determine the speed of vehicles below. The drone captures information on every single vehicle that breaks the speed limit and meshes that evidence with an address to send a ticket to.

If you thought red-light cameras posted at intersections were bad, imagine not being able to go 2 or 3 miles per hour above the speed limit without a flying machine writing you a ticket that gets mailed to your house. That's the endurance and signal processing of drones at work. After all, most drivers speed; we just don't expect to get caught, or to get a ticket from a drone.

So what's your feeling on this, considering that drones being used by police are looking to get more ubiquitous? The idea that a warrant must be sought and approved before they can be used makes sense to me as a precaution against abuse, but what are your thoughts?

[frigidmagi]

I imagine the first county to use drones as traffic cops will see it's elected officals in hot water until it ends. I'd be more then happy to vote every crook out until they quit it for example.

My feeling is that the kerfluffle over drones is overrated. Look if they made helicoptors that could stay in the air longer, cheaper would everyone be as freaked out? No. Because it's a helicoptor and you've been dealing with police helicoptors your whole life and a better helicoptor is still a damn helicoptor. A drone fills the position with more efficient and effective performance. Saddly putting the police helicoptor pilot and ground crew out of work but techonology does that. It performs the same role.

Why is it okay for cop helicoptors to fly around but not a drone? Flight time? What if I impove the helicoptor, does it have to work under the same restrictions? The presence of a pilot? Why is that important?

I will state this. I do not support police drones being armed. There is no compelling reason for it. And frankly our police forces are becoming ridicilously overarmed as it is. They're suppose to be law officiers not a domenstic army.

[rhoenix]

I'm pretty much of the same mind. Unarmed drones being used for surveillance, whose use is authorized through warrants, is something I'd cautiously support for our police forces.

Conversely, seeing police get tanks and other very militaristic capabilities such doesn't sit well with me at all.

[frigidmagi]

Tanks and the rather frightening spread of SWAT forces and their ever expanding role (to justify their inclusion in the budget) is a different and much more important issue.

[Josh]

I'll argue the police chopper comparison.

Police choppers are a serious commitment of resources. They can only put so many in the air, just one in a lot of jurisdictions. As such, their tasking has inherent limits. Furthermore, most cop choppers are very blatant- they make noise, you know they're up there.

The entire design of the drones like the Predator is to zoom around unnoticed, soaking up data.

Drones represent a quantum leap in surveillance state capability. To make that parallel work you'd have to say that there were dozens of choppers available to the precincts and that they were essentially stealthed out.

I also think they're pretty much inevitable and that most of the conventions of privacy that we came up with are going to die for a variety of reasons (civilian/governmental drones flitting about, Google Glass, etc.)

On the other hand, our modern conception of privacy is massively different than any historical notion of privacy. Hell, having private bathrooms is a recent invention in historical terms. So we'll adapt and learn to live with it, but this particular aspect of it I'm not too keen on.

[Norseman]

It also depends on whether you live in Europe or the USA. Indeed I notice that European and American views on privacy are starting to seriously diverge, with Europeans now more and more viewing privacy as a human right.