Truthout is an indispensable resource for activists, movement leaders and workers everywhere. Please make this work possible with a quick donation.

Police in cities across the U.S. are rolling out a pro-drone PR blitz as hundreds of local police departments prepare to deploy autonomous, AI-driven surveillance drones. The drones are capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally recording daily life from the sky without being noticed.

As of February, more than 1,000 law enforcement and public safety agencies had received waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate autonomous surveillance drones as part of so-called “drone-as-first-responder” (DFR) programs, according to public records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and released in July. While the list of waiver recipients includes fire departments and other first responders, the vast majority are law enforcement agencies, including police in cities large and small.

The automated drone push comes as resistance to mass surveillance by license plate-reading cameras goes viral. Residents are packing city council meetings across the country to demand restrictions on the data gathered by high-tech drones and cameras — or an end to mass surveillance altogether.

Scandals over digital stalking by police and other abuses are erupting as new surveillance tech empowers the state to violate privacy in entirely fresh ways. In response, people are taking direct action, sabotaging automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that are capable of building complex profiles of individual vehicles.

Flock Safety, a top surveillance tech firm, is the company most associated with ALPRs and is itself often at the center of controversy. But Flock also has a number of competitors, including Axon and Motorola Solutions. And business across the surveillance tech economy is booming.

Resistance to Flock Cameras and Police Surveillance Is Exploding

In many cities, local cops have extra funding for surveillance from wealthy private donors, police foundations, and federal grants; surveillance companies also often offer police free trials and help with applying for grants and waivers. Those surveillance firms have expanded from offering singular technologies such as ALPRs or body-worn cameras to become one-stop shops for police seeking the latest surveillance setup — including advanced drones.

Unlike most consumer drones, which are controlled by an operator looking up from the ground, autonomous surveillance drones used for DFR programs are operated remotely, allowing police to send drones much longer distances and stream live video footage back to headquarters. Cops in many cities have launched camera-carrying drones for years, but autonomous drones guided by AI are capable of flying “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator (also known as BVLOS drones) and can be managed from a central launch pad, freeing up police time and capacity.

“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot.”

“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot.”

“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot,” said Beryl Lipton, the senior investigative researcher at EFF, in an interview. “They don’t have a pilot, but there is often a human person who is there to manage the feed.”

Instead of attending a street parade and launching a drone overhead, for example, police can fly multiple drones with AI-driven navigation from a desk, as EFF writes:

FAA rules for police drones also required a human operator to manually fly the device to a scene, but DFR technology has become a more common and more automated police technology. DFR programs increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to automate drone flights from launchpads placed around the city, often atop municipal buildings, and make it possible for one drone operator to “fly” multiple devices at once.

FAA rules for police drones also required a human operator to manually fly the device to a scene, but DFR technology has become a more common and more automated police technology. DFR programs increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to automate drone flights from........

© Truthout