[aklug] Re: Legal protection from drone surveillance

What about when I am walking around under a skylight I installed in my home,
or when I am inside the fence and bushes I have put up to obtain an
expectation of privacy from my neighbors? A law enforcement official can not
peek down my skylight or see through my bushes/fence easily but with aerial
surveillance your previously "reasonable expectation of privacy" has
vanished. Additionally and something no one has stated in this or any other
thread related to the use of drones is that a wider field of surveillance
opens as the drone can not only see targets below but can record large area
which can then be analyzed for movement that is currently difficult to do
with law enforcement observation restricted to two dimensions. So my
suggestions include not only writing Don Young but everyone you can think of
to thwart this incursion by government deeper into your individual freedoms,
liberties and rights. I plan on writing and urge each of you to as well.
Meanwhile does anyone have a 10 Mw CO2 laser with radar guidance that I
could experiment with?

~Dan

-----Original Message-----
From: aklug-bounce@aklug.org [mailto:aklug-bounce@aklug.org] On Behalf Of
Mike Tibor
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2012 8:29 AM
To: aklug@aklug.org
Subject: [aklug] Re: Legal protection from drone surveillance

On Sat, 30 Jun 2012, Christopher Howard wrote:

> Hopefully this qualifies as on-topic, but I want to point out a bill
> that recently was introduced in the House, called the Preserving
> Freedom from Unwarranted Surveillance Act of 2012:
>
> https://www.opencongress.org/bill/112-h5925/show
>
> Basically, it is a bill that requires the Feds to get a warrant before
> they are allowed to spy on citizens with unmanned drones. The basic
> idea is to pre-emptively prevent the U.S. from turning into a police
> state, where the government can spy on anyone they wish using
> low-flying drones.
>
> That may sound rather sci-fi, but it really isn't: the technology has
> received heavy application in the military, as well as some scientific
> and other civilian uses. It is a fairly easy step to bring them into
> law enforcement use.
>
> So, if that sounds like a concern to you, then you might consider
> e-mailing Don Young through his Web form
> (<http://donyoung.house.gov/Contact/>). There is also a Senate version
> of the bill, I believe.
> (<http://gcn.com/articles/2012/06/14/congress-rand-paul-warrants-for-d
> omestic-drone-surveillance.aspx>)
>

What most people forget when this topic comes up is that airborne drones are
really only effective when the surveillance target is out in the open.
Believe it or not, when you're out in the open you have no expectation of
privacy, and the police need no warrant to photograph you or record your
conversations. Police routinely plant cameras/microphones in open areas to
gather evidence during an investigation, so I'm not sure why mounting them
on a small airborne platform changes anything.

Violation of your privacy can only occur when you're in a place where you
have a reasonable expectation of privacy--in your home for instance. An
airborne drone isn't going to make it easier for police to watch you or
monitor your conversations when you're inside your house. Technology for
surveilling a target inside a structure from the outside has existed for
many years now. That kind of technology should be of far more concern then
the simple mounting of a camera on a little RC helicopter, and I'm not sure
why it isn't.

Don't get me wrong--I think most tools used by government agencies that have
the potential for abuse are virtually guaranteed to be abused by them, given
the opportunity. I'm just having trouble seeing the basis for the outrage
on this one.

Mike
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Received on Tue Jul 3 18:31:01 2012