US, UK Programs Would Turn Government Eyes in the Skies Toward Domestic Populations
The Telegraph UK reports that the British government is considering the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), commonly used in military operations, in surveillance operations in the UK. “The miniature aircraft could be fitted with cameras and heat-seeking equipment, allowing police to carry out aerial reconnaissance from a control room,” the Telegraph reports.
The UK Home Office (equivalent to the US departments of Justice and Homeland Security) suggested the use of UAVs for domestic law enforcement purposes in its “Science and Innovation Strategy” report (pdf) for 2009-2012.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are likely to become an increasingly useful tool for the police in the future, potentially reducing the number of dangerous situations the police may have to enter and also providing evidence for prosecutions. However, we will need to investigate how such vehicles could be used, and their ability to provide high quality evidence for convictions and to support police operations in ‘real time’.
The US uses UAVs along the Mexican border, and recently began testing their use along the Canadian border. With new technology, the question should be: Is this new device more effective and cost-effective than other devices or programs? Currently, the UAVs have numerous problems with weather, flora and fauna, but the technology will only get better. Last year, Slate reported on how the US was connecting UAVs with and STTW, “sense-through-the-wall” technology (pdf) creating UAVs that could see through walls. The conclusion from Slate was chilling:
The effect of these devices, according to a former U.S. military official interviewed by the [Los Angeles] Times, is that insurgents, even indoors, “are living with a red dot on their head.”
Cool, huh? Except that if their walls are now transparent, so are yours. As fozzy astutely asks: “What happens when the government ‘brings this technology home’?” And do you think our government is the only one merging STTW with UAVs? Heck, even the Canadians are well into it. [...]
Congratulations. The good news is, we might win in Iraq and Afghanistan after all. The bad news is, now we all have red dots on our heads.
At some point, UAVs will become very effective, perhaps even including face recognition technology. That will lead to numerous privacy questions. Also, there are legal questions about the use of such technology. In Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001), the Supreme Court held that law enforcement use of a thermal imaging device to surveil and gather details about a private home is a “search” under the Fourth Amendment and presumptively unreasonable without a warrant. Scalia’s opinion said, “in the sanctity of the home, all details are intimate details,” and he noted the concern that technological advances would leave the homeowner at the mercy of “imaging technology that could discern all human activity in the home.”
This debate also brings to mind the uproar over a spy-satellite program from the Department of Homeland Security’s National Applications Office, which would greatly expand the domestic use of military technology. In June, 33 groups sent a letter (pdf) to Congress urging members not to fund the National Applications Office. “Satellite imagery and the other vast capacities at issue are powerful weapons that have been used against our nation’s enemies and that are now poised to be used against our nation’s citizens. Congress must ensure that neither DHS nor any other agency is entrusted with such vast and unsupervised powers,” the groups said.
Members of Congress also questioned the privacy and civil liberty implications of this program. The Government Accountability Office reviewed the Office and reported in November, “DHS lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards.” The GAO noted that DHS had not addressed “significant issues, including the potential for improper use or retention of intelligence information by customers and the potential for overly broad annual memorandums about customers’ planned uses, which may facilitate the acceptance of requests that should be rejected.”
The Department of Homeland Security wrote a post in July about why the NAO is necessary for security. The post sought to reassure the public about the Office, stating, “The Department of Homeland Security, with the assistance of a number of partner agencies, has designed the NAO with an extraordinary amount of scrutiny and oversight to ensure that the civil liberties, civil rights and privacy of Americans are protected.”
Last I heard, the National Applications Office was funded through early March, so the debate should begin anew soon.
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