Police use helicopters for all sorts of things. What is problematic isn't the monitoring from above, it's that it is so cheap. A helicopter with crew costs over $1000 per hour, so we know you know we aren't being monitored indiscriminately from above. Its simply to expensive. With drones, the cost of air surveillance drops to a whole other level. A level that almost allows for mass surveillance.
The same argument can be made about drone warfare: it's not the shooting/bombing from above that is disturbing, it's that it can be performed at almost zero risk.
The same argument we saw in communications surveillance. When listening to a phone call was expensive it was one thing, when listening to communications became free we know what happened.
Cost, however, shouldn't be what limits surveillance, regulation should. If police can switch from a helicopter to a drone for sime mission, and save 90%, that should be a good thing.
This is similar to automated license plate scanning.
There was a discussion here a while ago (can't find it now) about an article discussing the automated license plate scanners, and one of the posts had a really good point: our society's regulations about what law enforcement can and cannot do, and the citizenry's relationship with said law enforcement, are based on a certain amount of inefficiency. Hand-scanning license plates and requiring expensive helicopter crews to perform overhead surveillance are two good examples. When technology eliminates those inefficiencies, the rules and regulations need to be re-examined.
I'm flattering myself and thinking that you may be paraphrasing an argument I frequently make and have made on hear, but you're putting better than I usually do. To you point I would add that when we conceive these laws in the first place, we do so within a particular context of technology that forms our notions of what is public and private. The context completely changes when technology advances as radically as we've seen it advance. That's why we might not give two thoughts about an individual police officer tailing someone. But affixing cheap cameras, microprocessors, and location trackers to every aspect of public life isn't the "same thing," as the proponents of these tracking devices would have you believe.
"The narrower doctrine may have satisfied the demands of society at
a time when the abuse to be guarded against could rarely have arisen
without violating a contract or a special confidence; but now that
modern devices afford abundant opportunities for the perpetration of
such wrongs without any participation by the injured party, the
protection granted by the law must be placed upon a broader foundation.
While, for instance, the state of the photographic art was such that
one's picture could seldom be taken without his consciously "sitting"
for the purpose, the law of contract or of trust might afford the
prudent man sufficient safeguards against the improper circulation of
his portrait; but since the latest advances in photographic art have
rendered it possible to take pictures surreptitiously, the doctrines of
contract and of trust are inadequate to support the required protection,
and the law of tort must be resorted to. The right of property in its
widest sense, including all possession, including all rights and
privileges, and hence embracing the right to an inviolate personality,
affords alone that broad basis upon which the protection which the
individual demands can be rested."
-- "Right to Privacy" Warren & Brandeis December 15, 1890
I think its bad to have the police capturing plates and locations. It would be better if private citizens with concerns could simply report plate numbers without location. If there is a plate associated with a crime, the police could respond by asking where it was seen and when, with no response the rest of the time.
I have no problem with police scanning plates. It's quite efficient to spot people with warrants and cars out of registration etc. The problem is if they store details of everyone else. As long as they scan only for 'plates of interest' this actually seems like a useful tool to me.
As noted in other place here and in the article, most of these technologies could be useful and good. Unfortunately they can also be easily abused, turning into very very bad. The question isn't whether there could be good, it's if the good outweighs the bad. And if it's close, it needs to be regulated and watched to be kept in check. I agree that the scanning could be helpful in many ways, helping find amber alerts, people with warrants, etc. It could also be very bad though, so we need to be careful.
> Cost, however, shouldn't be what limits surveillance, regulation should. If police can switch from a helicopter to a drone for some mission, and save 90%, that should be a good thing.
This on my top ten list of things I want to shout from the mountaintop. If you read the legal decisions about police surveillance, they're all about analogizing to how police can follow people around, but that's resource intensive and thus limited, and does this piece of tech break that balance? Which is a terrifically insane way of thinking about it. It both makes the rules of what law enforcement is allowed to do shifty and unprincipled, it also makes legitimate deployments of law enforcement pointlessly difficult. Instead, we need strong, principled (and thus not technology-specific) rules regarding privacy, and then we can decide whether particular uses of, say, drones fall within those boundaries. Starting with the technology doesn't make any sense.
I've made this point a few times on HN, but the same goes for military drones. "The problem with them is they make killing people cheaper" is a sign of a totally broken morality. Instead, start by deciding whether killing that person (and the collateral damage it will cause) is OK, and then use the most efficient means to do it. Whether there's a pilot in the aircraft can not plausibly be a proxy for whether you should blow someone up or not. (FWIW, I'm very close to categorically against killing people.)
The problem with this is we've got a bunch of 50+ year olds who don't really understand that they are basically handing over the ability to observe every aspect of our lives, in a cost effective manner by state and federal standards, even if we are not suspects.
And guess what? Even if you have strong regulations, they'll close ranks and cover up for each other.
That factor will lead to cameras mounted the officers body, but does anyone here really believe those tapes wouldn't get 'erased' and/or end up being protected by 'national security' with no real fact checking by the courts at this juncture?
I think the next 20-30 years are going to be a real problem until people who understand exactly how much power we are handing over get into power and make it stop.
Until there is a major generational change to the Supreme Court, Congress, and the Presidency...I don't see 'more regulation' actually doing us any good because it'll get ignored when its convenient. I think everyone under 35 needs to band together and say we won't sell out. :/
I assume this is exactly what said 50+ year olds were thinking about their elders circa 1970. "Generational change" is not the panacea it appears to be while in your 20s.
There are many things that were worse in the 70s [bigotry; racism; martial rape wasn't illegal in all states until something like 1993; etc].
The surveillance aspect was only 'less bad' because it wasn't financially feasible due to the tech at the time. So yes, I'd say the 'big issues' of the 70s were partially fixed by generational change.
The generational change from that generation did have effects, it didn't solve everything. It never does.
However, if you have a better plan that will have actual results, feel free to publicize and encourage people to follow it. :)
This time around, the issues are more subtle. Effective solutions will be privacy enhancing technologies adopted by individuals in a free market, rather than politics and movements, which are too blunt of an instrument. I believe, the ANC welcomed white activists and we should be careful not to alienate like-thinking people of any sort. On the false-positive side, youth can sometimes be callow and too easily persuaded to jump on the wrong bandwagon.(lovemenot aged 49.5)
Instead, start by deciding whether killing that person (and the collateral damage it will cause) is OK, and then use the most efficient means to do it.
Unfortunately, most calculations of whether a particular mission is "OK" will include cost and risk as factors.
To the extent that we're relying on "cost" as a way of avoiding otherwise undesirable missions, that's only an "answer by accident"; it should be fixed properly, but that's not a reason to reduce the cost.
That argument is the same reason we continue to have pointless programs like Selective Service registration, which actually somehow saves the government money by allowing them to avoiding paying some tuition benefits that our "draft dodgers" would otherwise qualify for.
> it also makes legitimate deployments of law enforcement pointlessly difficult.
That's a good thing. When you start from a premise of "let's make things easy for the cops", then it is inevitable that this will be at the expense of making everything harder for people who just trying live their lives.
> Instead, we need strong, principled
This is the same as saying that we need magical regulations. There's no evidence that any regulations written anytime in the last few centuries have been in any way principled.
Exactly right: it's the fact that this makes mass surveillance so much easier that is the problem with certain surveillance technology being used by law enforcement.
> Cost, however, shouldn't be what limits surveillance, regulation should.
How do you regulate the regulators? If our government follows it's current course, the "Tzar of Surveillance" will also be a (past/future) executive & major shareholder of a drone manufacturer.
It's a systemic thinking problem. You seem to want to isolate every piece. That makes it easy to "pass the buck" in a round-robin fashion.
It's a problem with democracy, so we should make it cheaper for law enforcement to take away our rights, because progress! Democracy won't be solved until the practice of special interests making most of our laws is removed. The special interests make laws to tighten their stranglehold on our "democracy" and to suppress our freedom. Law enforcement, surveillance, & additional laws becomes more pervasive in our lives so people who wish to exercise their democratic rights are suppressed. It's a "problem with democracy" again.
In the mean time, will the democracy problem ever be solved? Will we ever make progress on that front? Are we playing the right game?
To improve things, we need to start thinking more holistically, not myopically. A house, or system, divided will fall.
> If police can switch from a helicopter to a drone for sime mission, and save 90%, that should be a good thing.
Agreed, however what will really happen is 10x the number of drones will be bought & used.
Wait, if special interests make laws that's another very fundamental democracy problem.
This isn't passing the buck, it's pointing out the obvious fact that its all one and the same. Democracy is having all your authorities under scrutiny and control by the people. It's hard.
In a state with unbelievable amounts spent on lobbying and with self-monitoring intelligence authorities, there are certainly things to work on.
Imagine a country where corporations can't sponsor political campaigns. Or where surveillance isn't monitored by secret courts applying secret laws.
Democracy isn't black or white, it's always a shade of gray.
> Democracy is having all your authorities under scrutiny and control by the people. It's hard.
Agreed. The population needs to be at a point where it can handle the responsibility of having discernment. They need to see beyond the illusions spun by those who wish to suppress the mind.
> Imagine a country where corporations can't sponsor political campaigns. Or where surveillance isn't monitored by secret courts applying secret laws.
That would be wonderful! I hope we get there soon.
These are basic tools used to keep the current systems in power. The people who wish to dominate us will use technology to keep people enslaved in the current 9-7, pay you taxes, buy lots of things, spend your life commuting, live the generic American Dream, don't decide what your actual dream is, culture.
My opinion; the system is run by intelligent and malevolent souls who make the money, impose culture, have massive influence, & power. If they are hell bent on dominion, do you think they want to allow transparency in how decisions are made? IMO, that will never happen with the current structure. They will simply take "Democracy" and redefine it to what we see today. I think we agree that it's up to the people to take their power back.
> Democracy isn't black or white, it's always a shade of gray.
I hear that. However, there are still dualities at play. We can go in different directions. Toward thriving or toward death.
> With drones, the cost of air surveillance drops to a whole other level. A level that almost allows for mass surveillance.
If you remember, a few months ago, the reports of the surveillance planes being able to cover a whole city (by just 1 plane), then you know that these "drones" here are just gadgets.
The NSA does not appear to have the capability of analyzing all the data it taps in a way that would actually be considered intrusive. Knowing the state of AI I just can't imagine this. It's not like in "Person of Interest" where the government has a machine to automatically sift out problems.
Same with drones and law enforcement. I can see them using drones in a surveillance capacity, for traffic control, maybe even to track a fugitive. But large-scale drone surveillance? Peaking into people's homes? Tracking people the way they can't track them right now through CCTV footage? No way, no how.
The biggest risk from drones is that they fall out of the sky all the time. This will partly resolved through break throughs in artificial intelligence, but for now birds, lines, insects, power failures, hackers or even projectiles can take down a drone, potentially hitting someone. That's why they are used sparingly. A crashing drone is even more obvious than one flying above you making tons of noise. Not very clandestine operations...
> The NSA does not appear to have the capability of analyzing all the data it taps in a way that would actually be considered intrusive.
The intrusive nature of this context is not so much the analysis of your personal data, but storage of it. When someone falls under the microscope, sensitive data collected in the past can be pulled from storage, effectively enabling retroactive surveillance.
For example, the NSA essentially collects and stores everything they can on everyone, including American citizens. What makes American citizens unique is that they are afforded extra legal protections. However, these protections don't usually extend to the storage of data on US persons, but simply the "collection" and "interception" of said data, which, in NSA's odd legal nomenclature, can simply be translated to mean accessing data that is already stored.
In my opinion, the best hope for real privacy is not storing data that enables retroactive surveillance in the first place.
which is okay for a majority of people. that's why they keep electing the same people who create the laws. people who complain are a minority and they lose and that's how democracy works.
And however much they do use them will be their definition of "sparingly."
This is the only time that a yes or no can be lodged. Once they start they will be allowed to do whatever they want with them, only experiencing the occasional paid suspension and press conference for overstepping. All law enforcement technologies have experieniced this history.
>>And however much they do use them will be their definition of "sparingly."
Sparingly = Almost never used in affluent neighborhoods... but any that are of low income or high diversity? Those folks will never see the clouds or the sun again... just a blanket of drones. Then those people will begin shooting them down, then the police will start to patrol more to catch the people destroying them, then local residents get arrested, then a police officer will be hurt, then the police will increase their force to "protect" themselves... then the local residents will complain about being profiled and stopped "randomly" on the streets without cause, then they'll all start wearing hoodies & hats to cover their faces, then they'll all "look suspicious", then the police will "accidentally" kill one of the residents - a person of color I'm sure, then a leaked email/voicemail of an LAPD officer making a racist comment will surface, then they'll apologize, then the drones will be limited again... maybe...
An idea I had over the weekend was that if drones are going to be used in cities, they should first be used to find potholes. Then, once they are measured to be good at that (and the potholes are fixed), then we can talk about other uses, like finding burned-out streetlights, bad/missing street lane striping, and poorly-visible signage.
> Department of the Interior used a thermal imaging device outside of Danny Lee Kyllo's home in Florence, Oregon. According to the District Court that presided over Kyllo's evidentiary hearing, the device could not "penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities. The device recorded only heat being emitted from the home."
Hmmm, I wonder why the Department of the Interior is concerned with private residences in the first place? The reach of the War on Drugs is pretty incredible.
> The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the thermal imaging of Kyllo's home constituted a search. Since the police did not have a warrant when they used the device, which was not commonly available to the public, the search was presumptively unreasonable and therefore unconstitutional. The majority opinion argued that a person has an expected privacy in his or her home and therefore, the government cannot conduct unreasonable searches, even with technology that does not enter the home.
I just looked up the US Department of the Interior (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_of_the_Interior) and I'm confused about what they were doing - the war on drugs seems way outside their stated purposes. The article on the ruling doesn't seem to mention it though, would it have been fine if they'd had a warrant? I don't even see why they are able to get search warrants for a home from their stated purpose.
Interesting and recent precedent though. I wonder if it would hold for a normal camera if a drone flew past a house at human walking height and took pictures of what's inside. I'm guessing a police officer can act on seeing something in a house they're walking past, if that's the case then what if a drone took a picture and an officer later or immediately saw it?
That is very interesting. I was surprised at how easily the discussion was getting off-track at first (flashlight), but it does pick up in the end. It seems the judges try to distill the issue by a process of adversarial questioning and taking things to extremes.
Yes, they were rejected by the citizens of Seattle, which is why they gave them to the LAPD. Maybe they figured that the approval tide would be more easily begun in LA?
CCTV, as deployed today, really falls into to two categories. By far the largest of these is people who own or lease private property who are installing cameras on their own property. There are some "public private partnerships" where LEO is tapping into these feeds but, at least in the system I built, there is significant auditing involved. In order to catch "LOVEINT" style snooping. Typically though this footage goes completely unmonitored unless there is a incident though.
The second category is cameras that capture what would otherwise be "in public view." These are systems where the cameras are clearly visible and mounted close to the ground. In the context of the law having a live detective monitor a suspects house is pretty much the same as putting up a camera that would be functionally identical, which is pretty much the same as putting up a 1000 cameras and doing LPR on every car that passes by. If the feasibility of this kind of surveillance requires a change in the law is still an unresolved policy issue IMO.
With drones there are bigger issues. Because of elevation they are going to capture images of things that wouldn't be "in public view" and would therefore typically require a warrant. If these images were limited to the suspect there isn't an issue, but of course they aren't. The real kicker is going to be when someone figures out that they just need to add a $5K thermal sensor to the thing in order to net a couple incidental drug busts every time they need to track a suspect. At that point they will become profitable to operate, usage will increase, and one of the current bright-line tests for when you need a warrant will become significantly fuzzier.
Don't get me wrong. This type of technology is solving crimes that would otherwise be unsolved and helping people like Jianqing Klyzek protect themselves from police misconduct, but appropriate limits need to be put in place. The efficiency of subservience technology is only going to increase. We can't stop the world from innovating the only way to maintain a reasonable balance between privacy and safety is through policy and where to draw the line is definitely something that reasonable people can disagree on.
> We can't stop the world from innovating the only way to maintain a reasonable balance between privacy and safety is through policy and where to draw the line is definitely something that reasonable people can disagree on.
I agree.
Getting to the "in public view" point, private use of drones is becoming increasingly common too, and the law seems to be loath to prevent the police from legally doing something that J. Random Citizen could also do just as legally.
So to the extent that your random hobbyist could use drones we should expect that the police will not be far behind either, just as helicopters and planes are not forbidden to police use.
"Only for serious crimes", just like the use of SWAT teams. In other words for things like mass murder...drug possession...not paying your mortgage on time.
I live in LA. This is more complicated than you think. Example: I take the bus, because, screw traffic. It's nicer and easier. We are at Santa Monica and Westwood and a cop car pulls up right next to me. I'm higher up, and this light takes a long time, so I get a good long chance to view the cop car over.
I was surprised. The damn thing was rusted to all hell. There was a thermal scanner on the top, but good lord if it actually worked. Most of the BNC cables (yes, really, like in freshman lab) were frayed up. The top was totally rust, and a bit of liner was coming through. Remember, in SoCal, we get rain maybe 5 times a year. This car was OLD.
The thing about LA cops is that they are sensible and responding to incentives correctly. The LA basin is gigantic and they have to patrol all of it. Add in the low taxes for police support, and you get the main problem of a street officer: Backup is 25 minutes away. It's just you and your partner most of the time. This, above all else, explains the LAPD.
The US Army ran into a similar problem in Iraq right after the fall. We became the police, effectively. Problem was, just like in LA, the area was too big for the force size. All small houses, all just sprawl, no back-up. Things started out just the same as in LA. You are FORCED, in order to protect yourselves, to be the Biggest Badass all around. You must culture a sense in the populace that you DO NOT FUCK WITH the US Army. Brutality is necessary. This is what the LAPD is doing, and it makes sense.
Thing is, Iraq taught us a lot about COIN, COunter INsurgency. What the army ended up doing, and it was much more successful, was you deputize the local leaders. Make them hash things out among themselves. Only call the Army when you really need them. They do not become a patrol force, but a real big hammer that whomps on things. Patrols are the job of local deputies.
The LAPD, being in California, cannot do this. The legal system here in the states will not allow for local deputations of people in Compton and Koreatown. Just from a benefits and payment perspective alone you can't do this.
So, the LAPD is doing the best it can to stay alive, which is the situation the taxpayers of LA county have put them in. You want less drones and a better police force in LA? Pay them more to get more people on the streets. Give them back-up. Then they won't be so brutal, because they won't be alone. Otherwise, drones and the like are here to stay
> This is what the LAPD is doing, and it makes sense.
No, it doesn't. LAPD is not the fucking army. The army on foreign land during an invasion has to treat everyone like a potential enemy that can take their lives. The police does not and should not act the same way against American citizens. Their job is to protect the citizens, not see every single one of them as a potential enemy.
The police is being paid well. But what do they do? They don't hire more offiers with the money. Instead they buy tank-like vehicles, anti-air rockets [1], drones and train and equip the current officers to become more militarized (more SWAT teams, but also for regular officers).
As an army man, have you ever thought about why the army is not allowed to act on US soil? Because the army is a much more aggressive brute force sort of authority, and that's not acceptable in a democracy (unless you want to inevitably live in a civil war-like zone, as a response to that from the population). That's why we have the police. If the police becomes the army, then that kind of screws everything up.
> The army on foreign land during an invasion has to treat everyone like a potential enemy that can take their lives.
That is not true at all. The U.S. Army occupying Germany in 1946 didn't treat the locals as murderous criminals either.
The COIN mention by parent comment was not gratuitous: If you bother to go through the relevant Army and Marine Corps doctrinal guidance on counter-insurgency you'll see that gaining the support of the local population is the mantra.
> As an army man, have you ever thought about why the army is not allowed to act on US soil?
They are allowed to act on US soil. What they're not allowed to do is to act as police on US soil.
And even that prohibition (Posse Comitatus) came from Congress in the 1860s, and only applies to Federal (Title 10) forces, not Army National Guard forces under the control of a state governor.
And even with that, the Army is allowed to conduct certain missions on U.S. soil under "Defense Support to Civil Authorities".
> Because the army is a much more aggressive brute force sort of authority, and that's not acceptable in a democracy
The army has the capability and training to kill more people and break more things, sure, but that is not their only mission.
Remember, in an actual war one of the core responsibilities of military forces under international law is not just combat, but military occupation, which is inherently a policing role. That can be in conjunction with local police forces, but the responsibility still belongs to the occupying army.
Soldiers typically don't like that role, sure, but to say that an army is designed only to put bayonets through torsos is paranoiac at best.
Based on my OP, I meant it makes sense NOT in a moral way, but in a physics way. They are responding to their incentives as you would expect from any mammal.
However, as was pointed out in another comment, the main justification of '25 minutes for backup' to explain the brutality is, in fact, false. LAPD response time is ~6 minutes (still, gotta see the data, the sigma on that Gaussian may be an hour or 30 seconds, we don't know).
I agree with you, the people of LA need a better police force than this. However, they do not agree with us. If they did, you would see, at the very least, greater voter participation. Eric Garcetti was elected with a 23% voter participation of REGISTERED voters, of with there are 1.8 million in LA [0]. This was the lowest rate in 100 years. Doing the math, that mean only ~10% of Los Angelenos bothered to vote. Garcetti got a 'mandate' from ~6% of the population here. If LA wanted to see change, you'd see a much higher rate than that pitiful amount. The people of LA, for worse or better, must think things are just fine as they are.
What's funny is that the Rules of Engagement for the US Army are a million times more strict than the local police force.
My buddy fought in the Battle of Wanat[1], and had to watch helplessly as insurgents moved into position with weapons, in plain view. He was not permitted to fire, unless fired upon.
I certainly wish the police would adopt that aspect of the military.
So we have as many LAPD and LASD officers per square mile (roughly) as we had troops deployed to Iraq per square mile.
LA County:
25,000 officers. 4,752 square miles. About 5 per square mile [higher population density, so we'll call this roughly equivalent to Iraq]
Iraq:
171,000 Soldiers. 168,753 square miles. About 1 per square mile.
So, if we are going for equivalency, are you declaring LA county to be as dangerous as Iraq? And if so, why?
Please understand that these 25,000 officers are equipped with a budget of around ~5 billion [200k per officer]. I didn't total up all the little cities, I'm just extrapolating based on the LAPD+LASD budget.
http://useconomy.about.com/od/usfederalbudget/p/military_bud... Pay+Benefits per soldier is $110k. I doubt it costs $90k to equip a police officer every year. So, in theory, the LAPD+LASD should be properly equipped for a domestic policing force unless you think 90k/officer for support costs isn't enough?
I think what you are seeing is not 'They are in shitty situations' but rather 'the budget is not being properly handled' combined with some prioritization like 'maybe we need to focus on providing the human beings with the equipment and care they need vs surveillance spending'.
Thank you! I have been lookign for these stats for a while, but didn't find them.
To answer questions: No, LA is not NEARLY as bad as Baghdad after the fall. There are areas and situations where it MAY be comparable (Watts, '92, OJ, etc) but is 99% not even close to as bad.
Interesting though, I wonder what the diff is between, say, NY or NOLA and LA in cops/mile and $/cop. Hell, Dallas-FW even, thats a comparable sprawl set of cities.
90k for a cop job in LA is not very good. But then again, I'm thinking my life is worth WAY more than 90k. Though it really depends on person and family history, I guess.
Thank you most though for the 6 minutes stat. I had HEARD that LAPD was pretty isolated, but 6 minutes for average backup blows that out of the water for me. Still, I am not cop and I do not know if that is a long or acceptable time for backup (Obviously, compare to NYPD, London PD, Paris PD etc.). Still, you gotta check the data. It may be a gaussian distribution with a sigma of ~1 hour, we don't know, it may be ~30seconds for sigma.
"the budget is not being properly handled" With LAPD, no! Surely you jest! Watts, Rampart, OJ, Rodney King, Dorner, the Sherrifs Dept THIS year? No, the LAPD just has a few bad apples.
Thank you for the data, the time to source the data, and the sources themselves. This is why I come to HN, for the real story.
That's for a patrolman, as well. Senior Detectives down here in an urban area of Texas make $95,000 PA. And I learned that at least here, the pension is calculated as 75% of your last three years' salary averaged, cause a local cop just got brought up on manslaughter charges for shooting a black dude in the back of the head at point blank range.
I fly FPV aircraft as a hobby and don't find anything particulary scary about police use of drones for increased situational awareness. They are excellent low cost tools that could probably save both civilian and law enforcement lives when used correctly.
A point that I find interesting - not brought up in the discussion here so far - is that the reduced cost in equipment also makes it easier for ordinary civilians to oversee police activity to some extent.
We're living in the world where anyone can make and own this amazing bit of technology. It strikes me as bizarre to limit police from using them.
Indeed. They're not doing anything hobbyists like yourself can't do anyway. We can't expect the government to be less capable than ordinary people. The problem would be if the police can legally use drones for intrusive purposes that are illegal for normal people. But if so, that's a problem with the law, and it's the law that would need to be changed.
At some point they'll claim that a private FPV operator interfered with an investigation (their drone gave away to the suspects that they were under surveillance, control frequencies clashed, etc) and then they'll push to ban private ownership.
Regarding saving lives, police work as compared to many other professions isn't a high-risk job. Police might tell you otherwise, but the numbers don't. High altitude FPV is one thing, these are multi-rotor invasive smaller drones.
I don't know how I feel about this to be honest. On one hand I can see the benefits of reduced costs. Why fly up a helicopter if a drone can be used in its place? Why send police to patrol high-crime areas if a drone can do that much more safely without any casualties?
Then there are the downsides.
> The LAPD is not the military. With these new tools at their disposal, the police could use drones to overstep their boundaries as police.
> If the drones are equipped with any kind of tactical ability (firing ammunition or firing a taser) this could result in innocent civilians being targeted by drone strikes.
> Drones would allow for extremely affordable surveillance which in turn would mean the fears of a state becoming a surveillance state (even worse than it is now) would be realised.
> Regulation. Who is going to regulate the use of drones by the LAPD? Who decides what the purpose of a drone being used for is and are there processes in place to prevent abuse? Who regulates the regulator?
> Remember what happened when SWAT teams were introduced? They were meant to be for only serious crimes and then look what happened. Before we knew it, SWAT teams were being deployed at relatively peaceful protests, they were being used to evict people out of their foreclosed homes and they started being used on people accused of copyright infringement. Are we going to see something similar to that of the Kent State shooting in the 70's only this time drones will be used?
I think the downsides far outweigh the benefits. The police are becoming far too militarised for my liking. Although many refute these claims, you only have to look at what tools police have at their disposal nowadays compared to what they had 20 years ago. We've gone from cars and pistols to high-powered machine guns with heavy rounds and tank-like vehicles.
I wouldn't have much of a problem with this if they specified the "narrow and prescribed" uses (and they seemed relatively tightly defined). One wonders if they've actually decided on those uses internally and not shared it with the public, or they haven't even made specific decisions there. Neither answer is good, really.
Here's the problem that no seems to get (especially the police and our politicians): the more they weaponize, the more the citizenry and criminals weaponize to match. How much longer before we hear about the first mass shooting using a drone?
I'm reminded of an old Larry Niven short story where kids hide in the park and throw rocks at the "copseyes". An incidental part of the story was that the police had floating camera platforms. And people didn't like them.
Does anyone know why they're using a full-blown (possibly old-school) camera? It seems like something digital would have been inexpensive and straightforward to use, and would have fewer moving parts.
I wonder what the battery life is like, and whether they have any automated ways to get them charged and back in the sky. Like auto-landing on a charging bay - kind of like how Roombas dock and recharge.
Typical hobby aircraft lithium polymer battery lifetime is about 5 to 20 minutes. Be ready to swap batteries a few times an hour. They might have batteries that can go an hour, but I can't see the batteries getting much heavier than that.
Why shouldn't law enforcement use drones? Law enforcement are bound by the same laws any citizen is and they are the tool what we as a society use to insure security in our lives. Why wouldn't we want to make their jobs easier?
The worse I could imagine is that drones are used to catch people smoking pot in their backyards. The people who officiate over the police are elected officials and all their practices, including data retention from surveillance is subject to judicial review and the laws our representatives write.
Use of technology like this is inevitable anyway. It seems pointless to fight it, and if you do oppose it how would you fight it anyway? Write to you congress representative? Protest? Is that really going to work?
The police are excused from a great many things, specifically harm to others when they raid a home or even the wrong home. Down in my state we have this nice story about them lobbing a flash bang into a house because they had a no knock warrant.
NO KNOCK. Tell me what laws are they bound too when those are nearly freely given out and for drug offenses? If they break down your door because they got the address wrong in most jurisdictions all they have to do is apologize if that.
I have friends that are cops and on but damn if I do not like the liberties they get over us.
In this case of the toddler, the police are at least claiming that they used a battering ram on the door and it did not work. They claim that the door was blocked by the playpen.[1] As if that makes it ok.
It surprises me how no-knock can be legal. In some places, you cannot even respond with force. Or if you do, you cannot claim self-defense, as police get special privileges.
I don't even see how knock and notice is legal, as you have no timely way to authenticate someone claiming to be police. Why would an attacker simply not yell "police!" and scream orders at his victim? How would a victim possibly differentiate in this scenario?
A friend was just robbed in the middle of the night. His reaction was to yell at the intruders, claiming to have a gun. Had the intruders simply yelled back they were LE, my friend would have ceased resisting and voluntarily given into being tied up.
Incredibly sad. How much is America willing to give up for the War on Drugs? I suppose it is a similar situation to the boiling frog, they ratchet up the intensity bit by bit.
First you say that democracy means we have nothing to fear from police with drones, then you imply it's pointless to resist because the democratic methods don't work.
I made no claims about democracy at all. I made a comment about police being accountable to elected officials and another about the futility of protests in this particular instance.
The police are accountable to elected officials. If there is the sort of significant abuse this comment thread is full of, there will be popular outcry.
The futility of protests and outraged posts on social news sites is nought to do with democracy. The police are popular with the majority of Americans (This is a post about a US city), and so if a minority of people object to tools police use it is futile.
HN is rife with police hate and outrage but we have a very professional police force filled with good people who do a good job protecting our security. If you doubt it, try other countries that don't have what we have.
It's the libertarian streak of the average HN reader. If there's anything inconsistent it's the libertarian who wants personal freedom to the extreme but also a quality of life they are used to in a western democracy.
And the LAPD has NEVER shown itself to be in contempt of the laws that govern them. I mean it is a paragon of virtuous conduct that can be trusted with advanced technology like this.
Many jurisdictions tried to introduce speed trap cameras decades ago. But they failed to gain wide acceptance mainly due to public outrage. Hopefully, the LAPD will seek a compromise between utility and public image.
pervasive surveillance has a toxic effect on the human mind. it's the same reason mass surveillance by the nsa is disturbing, even if you have "nothing to hide"
The same argument can be made about drone warfare: it's not the shooting/bombing from above that is disturbing, it's that it can be performed at almost zero risk.
The same argument we saw in communications surveillance. When listening to a phone call was expensive it was one thing, when listening to communications became free we know what happened.
Cost, however, shouldn't be what limits surveillance, regulation should. If police can switch from a helicopter to a drone for sime mission, and save 90%, that should be a good thing.