Disturbing Trend Of Police Wanting Drones For Routine Infractions
After lulling the public into believing that using drones in the U.S. would be confined to border patrol or for counter-terrorism in the event of an imminent threat, we are beginning to see police calling for far wider implementation of drone surveillance. I’ve reported several times about the years-long battle in Los Angeles over the use of police drones. The plan resulted in severe pushback from civil liberties groups such as the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition and eventually resulted in an agreement to in fact limit their use to extreme threats and never for surveillance. More recently, Connecticut went much further with a new plan for integrating drones into their fusion center matrix of camera surveillance that would also utilize citizen cooperation into a far-reaching local spy network. Most troubling was the list of “quality-of-life-issues” that included “illegal dumping, ATVs and dirt bikes, motor vehicle violations, narcotics markets, car break-ins and larcenies.” All of which might spark tracking and pursuit by police drone. In a typical step-by-step movement of the Overton window, it’s Brunswick, Maine that would like to usher in a new level of acceptance of an even greater degree of intrusion.
