You basically say mass surveillance is (figuratively) "literally Hitler", and you think that's an "unpopular opinion" on HN? Well, have I got some fortunate news for you...
The fact is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a police department flying an airplane over an area under their jurisdiction with the intent of surveying the area as an intelligence gathering activity.
What's actually absurd is the idea that they shouldn't do this. What the hell might you cite as a reason they shouldn't?
You made the Godwin leap that the GP avoided, and putting words in another's mouth like that is an unfortunate way of polarizing discussion.
They shouldn't fly an airplane over their jurisdiction without an express specific intent (e.g., hot criminal pursuit of an individual or individuals) because "gathering intelligence" is not their purpose. Are they in a warzone? Are their taxpaying funders now somehow their subjugated and subservient peoples? Why patrol the area as such?
"Intelligence" appears nowhere in the Public Laws of Baltimore that set out the Police Department's purpose (starting on pg. 73 of the PDF linked below).
I stand fast by the notion that they shouldn't be performing general "intelligence operations", nor should they be recruiting the FBI to so on their behalf. They should be proactively fighting crime, but that doesn't need to (and legally shouldn't) entail wholesale monitoring of everyone in their jurisdiction (and then some, judging by the range of the drones and the involvement of the FBI). Do you actually think that the Baltimore PD has a cogent sense of probable cause and articuable suspicion for everyone that this device is collecting information on? If not, then this thing has no place being in the sky. This is unnecessary dragnet surveillance so that "boys can play with their toys", not proactive crime fighting with good purpose.
I get where you're coming from, but it's not "unnecessary dragnet surveillance" to fly a drone over a hot zone in a city during a period of riots to monitor the state of the area, nor should the employees of companies who offer such services to these police departments "be ashamed".
What is a "hot zone"? People obstructing traffic and breaking a few windows merits recording the location of every cell phone (basically every person over the age of 10) for an extended period of time? That's textbook "unnecessary dragnet surveillance".
EDIT: How do you separate out:
1. People in the streets participating in marches. (maybe articuable suspicion)
2. People in the streets not participating in marches. (ipso facto no articuable suspicion)
3. People in their homes with their cell phones on. (ipso facto no articuable suspicion)
I am not sure I understand your question. I do see a difference, and that's exactly what I'm pointing out. Video cameras cannot see into homes and they require their attention to be focused on a particular area. Video cameras' very nature forces them to be used in a more selective fashion. The same cannot be said for these hypothetical Stingray laden drones. Hence, they shouldn't be available for use for general "population control," which is what the use in Baltimore amounts to.
Video cameras no longer need to be aimed, the way you're thinking. Gigapixel camera arrays mentioned in the article make it possible to do wide-area visual surveillance, and storage! So, find a person of interest, and then rewind the last 20 hours of their video.
We need to consider the difference between ephemeral / archived (and searchable), not just public / private.
We're talking about a single organization having access to 24-hour video of every street in the city, with the ability to select and rewind every car and every person. It's fundamentally more powerful than public video snippets.
In the hypothetical situation where these drones were taking recorded video of publicly accessible areas of Baltimore ("the streets", so to speak), would you have a problem with that?
I would have a problem with that, as I still think that the PD should be required to have articuable suspicion to collect information on any and all who may be caught on camera. It's inevitable that some people caught on video camera will not be "potentially" committing a crime. Video cameras might be easier for the legal weasels to defend than the Stingrays (radio waves don't care about walls, and "oh, those people were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and too bad if they are video taped"), but I still find it personally detestable. It's ridiculous for the Baltimore City PD to have the ability to video tape the whole of the Baltimore Metro area's landscape, merely under the guise of some crowds milling about in limited downtown areas. Compare to body-cameras: I have no problem with body-cameras and their potential to capture people in all walks of life. Presumably if a police officer's body camera is going to be focused on you, then the police officer him/herself will also be there, exercising judgment and discretion regarding which people are of interest or are potentially committing a crime. The same can't be said for the use of video cameras on drones.
Instead of smarmily moving the goal posts with these decreasingly relevant questions, why not add some of your own opinions or retorts to the points I've been trying to make?
I don't find speeding cameras detestable, if indeed they are activated by staggered induction/magnetic sensors and are not simply 24/7 video recording cameras.
Unstated assumption: that these "intelligence operations" are both legally permitted, and that even if they are, that they prevent enough crime to justify their existence.
The cops are already flying their choppers all over Baltimore and back in order to keep track of the protests/rioters.
This is something a bit more insidious than simple crowd/crime spotting for ground units. As the article states, this airplane was likely utilizing a few privacy-smashing technologies such as an aerial Stingray (dirtbox) or an ARGOS camera suite, complete with individual identification and tracking for sustained periods of time.
Basically, imagine that airplane having the ability to identify individuals, then track their movements and actions around the city for the duration of its loiter time. Without a warrant. Without any oversight. See the problem?
Anything the BPD is doing to circumvent warrants is obviously bad and needs to stop. I'm not arguing they should be allowed to do any of that stuff.
What I am saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with arial surveillance, to the point where everyone who works for companies offering such services is "evil".
I haven't heard anyone complaining about surveillance limited in scope to something with demonstrable cause.
It's warrant-less and widespread data gathering and databases (be they license plates, phone records, image/video or what have you) for speculative use that has people concerned, that I've heard.
Mass surveillance of the type where a warrant would be required individually is problematic.
Flying in public airspace taking video of public locations is just another GoPro ad though. Except, apparently, when it's the police taking the video (though in fairness, the Supreme Court has restricted what police can look at and what sensors police can use, even from public airspace).
But, I've got a good solution: Strap the cameras onto the police officers in the plane and call it "body cameras" and all of a sudden it's 100% kosher progressive again, no?
I don't see how you can argue you with a straight (or smug, in your case) face that body cameras are the same as unfiltered, mass, indiscriminate and wholesale video recording of an entire metro area. Body cameras are subject to the visual field of the individual police officer. Body cameras are not wide-lens, 360-degree panoramic, 1080p-4k for each 15-30-60 degree sub-field, that can identify hundreds of people in a given frame. If a police officer's body camera has you in focus, then I would say it is reasonable to assume that they are using their discretion in choosing to interact with you. The same cannot be said for aerial surveillance of the sort in the OP.
(Cue an argument stating that, "Well, the operator of the drone is using their discretion!" Can the operator of the drone put forth a reasonable suspicion for all that they are recording information on?)
> The same cannot be said for aerial surveillance of the sort in the OP
Which is nice, but aerial surveillance of that sort can be done by the local TV news station, or a local resident getting their general aviation training.
Arguing the police should not have extra surveillance powers certainly makes sense, but arguing the police cannot do something that anyone else in the public can do is where you start to lose the plot.
Care to share the Amazon link where I can get me one of these Dirtboxes? Or what about the high-resolution 360 degree cameras plus tracking/ID software that they are presumably using? Oh, you mean that they aren't AGPL licensed? Shucks.
Practicality and availability is a non-negligible component of determining what a member of the public can actually do. Using military grade equipment on the presumably innocent general public, that is ~5+ years ahead of the tech on the market, is a disturbing phenomenon whose significance seems lost on you. No warrants, no articuable suspicion, yet it's OK to use these glorified, classified, and shady war toys on the general public?
I am being a bit disingenuous here: I don't expect all equipment used by government officials to be publicly available. But, if you are going to make the argument that the public can do what the police are doing here, that's equally disingenuous. The public cannot practically buy this equipment from the manufacturers. The public wouldn't be able to get a flight plan approved as quickly (or at all) given the circumstances. Most importantly, these aren't escaped murderers or criminals which would necessitate exigent means (like these glorified war toys): these are general citizens wandering around a downtown area. Police aren't funded by taxpayer dollars so they can be curious about what's going on around town, and in this case, in peoples' homes. Private citizens can do that to the extent permissible by trespass and decency laws. I would hope to see cases taken up the legal ladder that question the PD's actions on these sorts of terms.
> Police aren't funded by taxpayer dollars so they can be curious about what's going on around town
Actually, yes they are. That's what "patrols" are for in the first place. We expect police to be familiar with the communities in which they serve.
You act as if police should police from an ivory tower somewhere, only coming out of their barracks when a 911 dispatcher authorizes them to. But that's actually more dystopian than the behavior you criticize here though (seriously, read about the "proles" in 1984 to see the similarities).
As I've indicated elsewhere in this thread, I am completely fine with both beat patrols and body cameras for reasons I've given elsewhere. (In short: the discretion that a beat cop uses in their daily patrol lends itself better to the legal ways of obtaining information, i.e., the path from casual interaction to suspicion to arrest is an unmuddled one if the police officer is acting appropriately. Body cameras are an extension of these daily interactions, and do not/would not capture more than the minimum amount of ancillary information.)
I agree with you: we expect and want police officers to be familiar with the communities in which they serve. However, a drone flying a mile in the sky over the entire city does nothing to further that familiarity. (To say nothing of their legality.) The familiarity should be person-to-person, socioeconomic group to socioeconomic group. Flying a drone in the sky only serves to stratify the position of the police and ostracize those whom they are obligated to serve. This is part of the larger issue of the militarization of local police departments. See the 1033 program.
I've read 1984 several times, and I fail to see the connection you're drawing between proles and this situation. The only (admittedly superficial) parallel I can draw between this situation is telescreens and the desire for authority to be omnipresent. Or, at a minimum drones help give the aura of of omnipresence, which is generally enough in 1984 to keep proles and outer party alike in line.
EDIT: Thank you for continuing to argue in good faith. I do not mean to be rude or condescending, but I can definitely see myself tending towards that. If so, I apologize. This is actually an interesting discussion despite being far from the original post (in both time and content).
> However, a drone flying a mile in the sky over the entire city does nothing to further that familiarity.
I think this is where we actually start to diverge. Aerial surveillance (whether by drone or by manned aircraft) is an excellent way of directing limited police at actual problems (hopefully before they become crises) during tense situations.
As only one example, being able to see that a given protester group was substantially "imported" from out-of-town might change the appropriate response dynamic significantly from a protest where the protesters are all pouring onto the streets from their own communities. Beat cops should be familiar with the members of the latter group at least, but how can they be familiar with people who come in from out-of-town?
As far as legality, things may change with future rulings but as of this point the question's already been put before the Supreme Court, and the answer is that aerial surveillance is legal -- you just can't use sensors above-and-beyond the types of senses a patrolling cop might have walking around the street.
So perhaps high-zoom lenses would be ruled against at a court level (things like IR have already been struck down), but as a general principle the law is already clear on this (in favor of the police).
> I fail to see the connection you're drawing between proles and this situation
The proles were kept more or less completely alone to rot in their own slums as long as they didn't do anything to draw the attention of the Party. They didn't even have to worry about telescreens, they were simply apart from the government completely for better and for worse, left to fend for themselves as best they could.
In 1984's world that would probably be a better fate than being in the outer Party, but my point is that in the real world one of the responsibilities of functioning governments is to forestall security crises by acting before crises appear. You can't do that without at least paying attention to what's going on outside the police HQ, and during riot situations there's no way to stay aware of what's going on in the community by just sending out a beat cop to go make a round.
If we were talking about a normal day in a normal city then I think I'd agree completely that police shouldn't just be having drones hover around taking livefeeds of downtown (though it would probably be legal barring future statute changes or court rulings). But Baltimore during the riots wasn't a normal city going through just another day, there were literally state military forces walking through the city to help keep order...
There are limits to jurisdiction, well defined. For example, police cannot enter your home without your permission, unless they have a warrant from a judge. So if the airplane surveillance is being used to collect and act on data that would normally require a warrant, then "jurisdiction" is not sufficient. Even having the ability to do this is problematic in the eyes of many judges and many civilians (it would be the equivalent of saying "Well, we went into the house with a warrant, but we didn't actually search the house..."
So I am citing as a reason they should not do this the traditions and precedents of common law.
I'd go further and say the nature of these new technologies changes what observations should be permitted by law enforcement, with or without a warrant.
While automated license plate readers may be collecting the same information that police officers can from a public vantage point, the scale that they can be used at changes the nature of the information. Suddenly it can be used to track the movements of everyone in a city. While it's arguably the "same" information, it vastly changes the calculus of the public benefit vs privacy of the individual.
We ought to be having a deliberate debate about how to change our laws to reflect the fundamental differences these new technologies bring about. While it may be legal for law enforcement to fly these surveillance missions now, the public has every right to demand that the laws be changed. The police in Baltimore have proven they are incapable of wielding the privileged status they have without systematically oppressing minorities. It makes sense that we roll back some of the surveillance tools they use to prevent dissent.
We ought to be having a deliberate debate about how to change our laws to reflect
Yes, but the powers-that-be are content to let it all happen by default, because most potential outcomes lets them win. If we just shrug and ignore it, they win. If we wait too long to take action, they can argue that the surveillance is understood and that we've grown used to it, and thus under conventional 4th Amendment analysis, there's no more expectation of privacy.
Really, the only way they can lose is by putting the question forward for debate.
If the airplanes are just capturing data that is already in public view (no expectation of privacy), then how is that any different from cameras mounted on buildings? One uses a plane to cover larger ground, and one is fixed. Neither one requires a warrant if it's just recording things that happen out in the open.
I don't disagree with you, but this doesn't seem like a good argument.
> So if the airplane surveillance is being used to collect and act on data that would normally require a warrant, then "jurisdiction" is not sufficient.
Very true, I agree.
However, I don't see any reason why this would be taking place given what we currently know. Arial surveillance has the distinct advantage of safely observing a public area under their jurisdiction.
So yes, they shouldn't avoid warrants by way of arial surveillence (e.g. peeping into back yards), but it's (practically speaking) useful to cover a lot of ground (the same ground they'd already cover) quickly.
My concern isn't aerial monitoring of large crowds. It's picking out individuals from within those crowds and data-mining their activities before they joined the crowd. That's two removes away from the original idea of aerial surveillance. The ACLU is right to be concerned about it.
Depends on what their gear is. If they're only looking at things an average person can already see, but on a large scale? Eh, can't really argue with that. If it's in the public eye, it ain't private.
If they're trying to read the heat coming off of buildings, or laser-micing windows, or otherwise trying to look into areas that are not public, they need to knock it off and get a warrant based on probable cause first.
Then maybe we should be talking about what people (and governments) should do, rather than what they can do. Perhaps you think it's appropriate for the government to record your every step, just in case. I don't.
Perhaps, but that's an open question with a different resolution. It would take nothing short of an act of congress, possibly even constitutional amendments to redefine the current legal doctrine surrounding public and private spaces into what you suggest.
Me, I find it very hard to get worked up over someone recording what I'm doing in public.
Not at all. The right to privacy, while not spelled out explicitly in the Constitution, is recognized by the Supreme Court and the basis of most modern boundaries on what government can and cannot do with regard to surveillance without a warrant. New technology that makes it possible to observe "public" behavior in ways that were previously impossible is still subject to the right to privacy, and courts may well rule it intrusive and unconstitutional.
Consider the case of license-reading cameras. Not intrusive, right? But that data, not being collected under warrant, is more or less public, at least obtainable via FOIA requests. It's already been demonstrated that this data can be used to trace someone's address (and other critical addresses, like work or favorite stores) quickly. So it's not just a matter of government collecting "public" data... it's making it available to anyone, some of whom may not have your best interests at heart.
Now, imagine you have a violent ex who might well kill you if they could find you. I know multiple people in that situation. And government surveillance data, publicly available with a little effort, could find you. Is that okay?
> The right to privacy, while not spelled out explicitly in the Constitution, is recognized by the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court decision you speak of also makes very clear in its ruling that there is, legally speaking, no such thing as a "general right to privacy". It simply doesn't exist in U.S. jurisprudence. There can be a "reasonable expectation of privacy" in many situations, but that's not quite the same thing.
Of course, courts can rule things unconstitutional and break with prior precedent anyways. But until they do police aerial surveillance is not only "not illegal", but it's been to the Supreme Court already and upheld.
> New technology that makes it possible to observe "public" behavior in ways that were previously impossible is still subject to the right to privacy, and courts may well rule it intrusive and unconstitutional.
Airplanes are simply not "new" technology. Nor are helicopters. Nor are cameras, or radio control. I watched helicopter footage of O.J. fleeing in a white Bronco as a child. None of this is "new".
Those helicopters pursuing O.J. were private helicopters, not subject to jurisdictional restrictions or limitations on their interactions with general citizens. Police Departments have explicit charters that state their purpose and scope. Likely to your chagrin, the words "surveillance" and "intelligence" do not appear in the Baltimore PD's charter. (See below [1]) Furthermore, using airplanes, helicopters, cameras and radio control to pursue someone (note, my specific use of someone) that the police have good reason to believe committed a crime is perfectly fine, and that is the context of the legal doctrines you reference. Do you actually think that the police have articuable suspicion that everyone whose video/cell phone information is being recorded by these surveillance planes has committed a crime? That's to say nothing of the jurisdictional overreach (if not in letter of the law, then in spirit of the law) in asking the FBI to come in and use these toys of war on local citizens who have not committed any federal offenses. The Baltimore PD charter repeatedly makes reference to the "boundaries of the city."
Lastly, you'll notice that the most recent developments in GPS tracking state that warrants are required to use GPS trackers even when police have reasonable suspicion. [2] Since the ostensible reasons for using these drones are to track the movements of individuals, and Stingray devices essentially have that as their sole feature, do you really think it's justified to (quite possibly illegally) track all of these "innocent until proven guilty" citizens using aerial drones? We aren't just talking about a few people who stole a car or are fleeing the scene of a murder. This is wholesale tracking of everyone on the streets -- and possibly in their homes if cell signals are being monitored -- in a 10 mile radius of Inner Harbor.
What about my backyard? What about the roof of my house? My neighbors can't see all of that area due to one reason or another (fences, trees, lack of windows on their house, etc. etc.) As many others have already noted, just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
Well, this case en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_v._Riley pertains to your question. Some of the dissenting opinions raise the same questions you do, but there's a reason I had to call them 'dissenting opinions'.
If indeed these drones are using Dirtboxes and are indiscriminately tracking people based on cell phone signatures, then I would posit that the combination of [1] and [2], and ongoing issues like [3], make what law enforcement is doing Baltimore disgustingly illegal and oppressive. Targeted and specific aerial imagery and inspection is a totally different ballpark than what these drones are doing.
The fact is, there's absolutely nothing wrong with a police department flying an airplane over an area under their jurisdiction with the intent of surveying the area as an intelligence gathering activity.
What's actually absurd is the idea that they shouldn't do this. What the hell might you cite as a reason they shouldn't?