Send In The Drones? Privacy Advocates Fear Increase In Sky Spies.
WASHINGTON, D.C. (WUSA) - Congress this week directed the Federal Aviation Administration to allow American airspace to be shared by unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones. Privacy advocates warned of potential snooping dangers by police agencies, and want the FAA to issue regulations that will strictly limit when and why the machines can be used.
"Currently, most air surveillance is conducted through planes or helicopters, things that people can see from their house or from the ground. With drones, which, by the way were developed in a militaristic environments, people aren't going to be able to see them.
"Drones are either designed to be very small, which means they're harder to spot, or to fly very, very high in the air, which means, also, that people won't be able to see them, so there is this degree of being on notice that people are being observed. The Fourth Amendment allows observation of people by the government in public places, but this is to an entirely new, unprecedented degree," said Aime Stepanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC.
"The real privacy concern with drones is that people are not going to be able to be safe anywhere, that they're going to have this persistent tracking that can happen at any point in time, that nobody really knows when and how these are used.
"They are not public, the applications aren't public so that nobody can even try to know who is using drones. Nobody knows who is deploying them, so we have this really weird inconsistency with people not knowing when the government is going to be watching them in opposition to our very beloved constitutional right not to be observed by the government unless there is a warrant, unless there is probable cause for them to observe us," she said.
Manufacturers see an untapped market worth billions of dollars.
"The technology has matured to the point now where a lot of the potential uses could be used here domestically, civilly, so there is a huge, potential market here in the United States that is waiting for this ability to fly these things safely in our airspace," said Ben Gielow of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
"Law Enforcement and First Responders are going to be big potential users of these systems, in particular law enforcement. When you think about how many law enforcement associations there are across the country, there's roughly 15 thousand of them and only a few hundred have some sort of manned aviation platform, so if you can get a small unmanned system that only costs tens of thousands of dollars as opposed to millions of dollars for a manned helicopter, you can give law enforcement the ability to have some kind of aerial asset at a much cheaper cost, and you can still get 70 percent of that mission capability taken care of," he said.
He hears the concerns of privacy advocates.
"I think its important to realize that an unmanned system itself isn't any kind of new technology. It is a tool to use. You know, cameras and other sensors that currently exist are are being used by law enforcement and others.
It might be a new way to implement them, but I think it's important to recognize that this technology isn't necessarily anthing new. Police have been using cameras on helicopters and other manned aviation for decades, so I think there is an ability to have unmanned aircraft follow some of those guidelines that already exist, Gielow told 9NewsNow.
EPIC wants more; specific guidelines that limit drone use.
Without that, said Stepanovich," the high high potential of abuse is present and able to be taken advantage of."