USA Today: Police turn to drones for domestic surveillance
Police agencies around the USA soon could have a new tool in their crime-fighting arsenal: unmanned aircraft inspired by the success of such drones on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Local governments have been pressing the Federal Aviation Administration for wider use of unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs — a demand driven largely by returning veterans who observed the crafts' effectiveness in war, according to experts at New Mexico State University and Auburn University. Police could use the smaller planes to find lost children, hunt illegal marijuana crops and ease traffic jams in evacuations of cities before hurricanes or other natural disasters.
So the police want unmanned aerial vehicles, all the better to monitor you with. The clinching argument comes at the end of the article:
The Miami-Dade Police Department has tested two 18-pound UAVs equipped with a camera for about 18 months, Sgt. Andrew Cohen says. The department has been licensed to operate the craft up to 200 feet in the air, but the drone must remain within 1,000 feet of the operator.
Cohen says the department wants to use the craft to reduce risks to manned aircraft or personnel in circumstances involving a hostage situation or a barricaded suspect. "It's an opportunity to increase safety for the officers," Cohen says.
In police-ese, this is the closing argument for just about anything. Earlier, I wrote about Sheriff Joe's antics in Arizona, including a full-scale SWAT raid on a house to serve a traffic citation. All over the United States, it's become more and more common to serve search or arrest warrants with fully-armed SWAT teams. Why? The safety of the officers. In US prisons, more and more inmates are held in solitary confinement. Why? The safety of the officers. And now here's a proposal to further invade people's privacy and increase the power of government. For the safety of the officers.
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