Civil liberty fears as police consider using drones that film from 1,500ft | Hacker News Reader

Civil liberty fears as police consider using drones that film from 1,500ft

theguardian.com

75 pointspseudolus55 comments

Related: A company flew a surveillance plane over Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. When a murder occurred, they were able to roll back the footage and see it happen in real time, and the get away, and where they went in the city.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-23/watch-thi...

We would be even safer if every citizen had a chip implanted, and when a crime is committed, everyone within 300 feet gets enough electricity through their bodies to be knocked out.

Or if there was robots patrolling the streets, making sure all citizens behavior is within programmed parameters.

I'm sometimes surprised how people here are completely unaware of the society they support because "safety". You can't all be dumb, so I'm guessing... No experience from dictatorships.

Chips are a good conversation piece because it's something invasive that people will call you crazy for claiming that they'll be mandatory and then when it's mandatory they'll say you're overreacting and it's not a big deal.

The military has been doing this in non-visible parts of the IR spectrum for a decade. Every (important) checkpoint in Iraq has/had this feature.

If that's the case, in any measurable way, that rather undercuts any case for its efficacy.

In Iraq the intel was lacking. You have a car or a person and the prior locations they've been (only a subset, because spotty coverage) but you don't know who's in the car or who the person is unless you've already allocated resources toward them (i.e. they're someone already on your radar of being interesting).

In rich first world nations who have money they can freely piss away on database integrations and all other manner of orwellian shit you get much more info. A license plate is as good as bank records and a life story of the owner.

In iraq a license plate is just a license plate.

The FBI does this with surveillance planes over major US cities[1][2][3][4].

[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-survei...

[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/spies-in-t...

[3] https://theintercept.com/2021/09/01/fbi-spy-plane-alazhari-s...

[4] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/02/fbi-surveill...

That's a nice anecdote.

When they rolled it all back, did the person come back to life? Did his wife suddenly have a husband again? Did his children get their father back?

By that logic, we should not work to rehabilitate criminals. Will rehabilitation bring back the money stolen? The people killed?

Wait, what? Surveillance drones are for rehabilitation???

It’s obvious you aren’t arguing in good faith.

I dislike surveillance, but I'm not sure what your point is here. The alternatives appear to be necromancy (okay not really) and precrime detection (way worse)

In Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, its actually conjuration magic to bring people back from the dead (as fully alive). Conjuration magic is healing, summoning, etc. etc. So its seen as a healing spell, basically.

Necromancy is when you reanimate a corpse: such as turning them into a zombie or skeleton.

Well, this is never going to happen. I mean the majority of society doesn’t want this. Western societies are strongholds of privacy and civil liberties.

I mean in our countries, the government can not just come up with some „emergency“ in order to scare the masses into willfully abandoning their liberties, like "domestic-terrorism" or a blown out of proportions "health emergency"…

Oh, uh, Never mind…

The selling point for this technology is found at the end of the story "The Home Office is understood to believe that increased use of drones would allow police forces to replace helicopters, reducing noise and carbon emissions." Totalitarianism covered in the velvet glove of reduced carbon emissions. It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic.

Oh, I'm laughing.

As I'm being downvoted by people who apparently don't like pointing out what they effectively did the last 18 months. I'll refrain wasting my time explaining the word "precedence"...

Just call those drones "Health Birds" or "Eco-Rule Abidence Angels" and my fellow downvoters here on HN will turn from civil-libertistas into "responsible citizens"...

Police: "We will use these drones to ensure the unvaccinated aren't out spreading Covid."

Half the public: "Hooray! Get them up ASAP, buy as many as you need!"

> Half the public: "Hooray! Get them up ASAP

Well my neighbor having to pay a fine of over 3000 € for attempting(!) to shop at a home improvment store really had it coming. I mean how dare he endanger us all like that?

BTW: I loved the lockdown.

Where I live, some German 'burb, it's so calm, police is usually nowhere to be seen.

But the lockdown gave us more patrols in a week than all the prior decade. Plus police helicopters day and night. It felt very comfortable!

For once the threat they're scaremongering about actually does kill people, not that the police drones and patrols keep people alive when cops here refuse to wear masks or get vaccinated...

I'm glad we have so many upright citizens.

What else does kill people? Well heart desease is killing twice as many americans each year than covid [1].

Better get out and excercise, the drones are watching!

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2778234

Difference is, nobody other than me is at risk if I go out shopping with heart disease.

Is it?

Nobody at risk from you having a heart Attack while driving to the grocery store?

Nobody mentally at risk watching you collapse, or hitting your head while doing so in a splattery way or outright die in front of him/her? I mean #MentalHeatlhMonth did use to mean somthing...

Not great, but the whole Ring™ doorbell law enforcement relationship scares me more. The "boiling frogs" way it happened, and how nobody was really up in arms about it is interesting.

On Nextdoor this past week a neighbor posted about her doorbell camera capturing a naked guy running down the street at 3am. Everyone thought it was funny (probably lost a bet, her husband probably came home early, etc.), but my thought is, what is this world coming to when I can’t run down the street naked at 3 am without being filmed. Where is my privacy?

I am so glad my "party" days were pre smart phone, social media and private security cameras. The thought of growing up without the opportunity to make mistakes without them being recorded for eternity depresses me for the generations to come.

I agree and if there's some consolation it's that digital records tend to also get eroded over time, maybe quicker than old school photos. The key thing is to ensure they are not too save-worthy.

> The key thing is to ensure they are not too save-worthy.

Basically the definition of a chilling effect...

If you’re in a public space, there is no expectation of privacy. Sorry dude, that horse left the barn along time ago.

On the flip side is the question of whether private citizens ought to be able to record each other in public; or even record police encounters, protests, crimes, etc. Rights must begin and end at the boundary of another person.

So, to what degree should one be private when "exposed" to the public? And how might we secure such a private boundary?

There is no expectation of privacy in public. Public buildings (and increasingly, outdoor spaces) are littered with security cameras. That footage is subject to FOIA disclosure.

If you are in public, you appear in public. Anyone who sees you can tell anyone else that they saw you, and they are a lot less reliable than a camera recording, for now. Changing this would require amending the first amendment’s freedom of the press clause.

Frank the Tank[0] as role model?

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVi91fo8gw4

Not only that, but from what I can tell, the use of ubiquitous, privately owned security cameras for police and other uses is being lauded by the public as a massive success.

It's. Well. Terrifying to me that more than likely, my day-to-day is being recorded by someone, at all times. I genuinely do not like it, and I am sure that it is compounding my existing anxieties.

And it's often in the safest neighbourhoods.

My family lives out in the safest burbs imaginable, with not a funny looking person for miles. 0 homeless. 0 crime. They all have these heavy security systems and door cameras.

And the absence of crime is not due to these cameras. Just a kind of fearful mindset, and a lot of extra money.

"And the absence of crime is not due to these cameras."

Really?

Otherwise safe neighbourhoods used to be a preferred target for burglars once, because there is a lot of valuable items to steal there. This kind of burglary is becoming less viable due to modern security systems, especially the sort that connect to a remote security service that sends a car to every alarm.

Claiming that low level of crime means that security systems are a result of fearful mindset is not unlike claiming that being in good health shows that the immune system is superfluous and not worth the metabolic investment.

The crime rate in those burbs was nil for the last 50 years and has not changed 'because spy cameras'.

In my urban neighbourhood, the crime is visible, I see people trying to steal bikes. Crack deals out in the open. I left my door unlocked for 15 minutes and had Mac stolen. And I don't think cameras would make a blink of a difference.

Semi-smart criminals with resources, driving across town to random middle class suburb to rob people of their Mircowave ovens is not really a thing. Surely it does happen, but it's a very rare event.

If you live in the Hollywood Hills, you'll want cameras everywhere, or adjacent to a serious 'problem area' likewise, but otherwise, no.

This really depends on the willingness of the local police force to review and use the footage. Sometimes, the insurance companies conduct their own investigation too, if they suspect insurance fraud or if the stolen items were extra expensive.

Anyway, after I wrote my first comment, I started recalling all the burglary incidents in my surroundings and among my friends. There were like 20 of them in this century, so approximately one a year, not supercommon, but not too rare either. And their common denominator was poor home security.

No one with a good door and closed windows got successfully broken into (there were failed attempts). People with subpar door/locks or leaving ground floor windows open at night OTOH definitely attracted successful criminal attention, even in better neighbourhoods.

The country I live in is fairly safe otherwise, but theft of all kinds is depressingly common.

Funnily, a friend of mine described me his own "security setup" in his old car. Two visible red LEDs on the dashboard, blinking, one of them starts to blink a little faster from time to time. Nothing else. Total cost like 2 USD. No one ever tried to steal his car. Good psychology.

I did not install cameras to keep my family safe. I did it for insurance purposes and to have an objective account of what happened in case the police try to lie about something since their word is better than mine in court. Same with dash cams in cars.

There's a level of paranoia and distrust that's endemic to many suburbs. I've met a lot of suburban residents who genuinely fantasize about society collapsing so they can shoot their hungry neighbors if they come knocking.

Depends upon where you are. Here in Blighty at least, it looks like people are paying attention... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-58911296 ("Neighbour wins privacy row over smart doorbell and cameras").

Now is as good a time as any to read Michel Foucault's "Panopticism"[0].

> ...not the collective festival, but strict divisions; not laws transgressed, but the penetration of regulation into even the smallest details of everyday life through the mediation of the complete hierarchy that assured the capillary functioning of power; not masks that were put on and taken off, but the assignment to each individual of their 'true' name, their 'true' place, their 'true' body, their 'true' disease.

0. https://libcom.org/files/michel-foucault-panopticism.pdf

Kinda feel this is just going to be normal. Cameras and storage are so cheap and just getting cheaper. Wouldn't surprise me to see 100x as many cameras in 10 years.

See it used to be normal to have less privacy but it was local. I grew up in a small community where most people knew each other and knew what happened, if u did something stupid everybody found out. This was the norm for a lot of yrs.

But it wasn't everywhere, people could leave and go to some other small community if they wanted and be a "new person" or whatever. Not any more, you have One Name that is you everywhere, on your id, on the internet. If yall think there's a problem with ppl getting cancelled for old stupid stuff now just wait until we get a first generation where everybody is recorded from birth.

I think there is a market for mini drones on police cars for localized surveillance as well, that can decrease dangers (important to selling for police) and better audit policeman;

You need a quick charger for a drone on a roof mount to a police car, now the officer can check license plates, around corners, etc, hands in air, weapons down (with remote officer for second visuals). And no more, whoops i covered the my body cam, combined with a clearer 3rd point of view.

In order to discourage covert surveillance, I propose drones should be required to emit a high-pitch shriek audible at a 1,500ft distance. That way we can know when we're being watched...

I feel like that's already the case, at least when I'm out hiking.

To reduce discomfort, I propose the government to support research in developing tools and devices to reduce discomfort due to said audio, while also subsidise such products on market.

Not sure if omniscience should be added, along side omnipotence, to the list of powers for the State.

It depends. Is it a list of ought to or does have?

I feel like there is an entire layer of state bureaucracy and institutional policy wonks who are saying to each other, "we keep adding these absurdist totalitarian measures and dismantling socities piece by piece, but the populace, they all seem a bit quiet, don't you think? No resistance at all, paper tigers, no doubt. I wonder if they've even noticed..."

If we must surveil, make sure it covers lawmakers and police too. Nobody is above the law (except a drone at 1500' apparently).

I think this is a perfect example of taking for granted certain privacies.

See, you never actually had privacy when you were in public. It was not a right. It was just assumed to be a right, because no one was bothering to record where you went. It was impractical.

What we had was a false belief that--barring we were not under active FBI surveillance or something--our comings and goings were secret. But I don't think this was ever explicitly inscribed in law. This drone is just shattering that illusion.

We are going to keep having technology vanquish our illusions. Consider that Tesla could in theory have their dashcam in every car they manufacture record every license plate number it sees, with time and location. They could make this information public if they wanted to. With enough Teslas in an area, you could effectively lookup where and when every vehcile has been. And there is nothing wrong they are doing because it's not a fundamental change. In theory, they could hire a million people to drive around and record the license plates manually. It was only the impracticality it that stopped anyway.

I don't know what the solution is. We are going to have to accept that certain assumptions we had are now gone, or re-write the rules.

Make your own drone which follows you around and blinds the police drone with a laser

They'll just make that a felony.

They really shouldn't be able to afford drones of that class.

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