On 12 August 2012 an article by Mark Brunswick on domestic drone use was published in The Star, a Canadian newspaper.
Brunswick states that as many as 30,000 may be in use in the USA by the end of the decade. A Predator drone was used in 2011 to arrest six individuals on their family farm in North Dakota, apparently for cattle rustling. Some drones are small enough to be hand-held.
The military is pleading for more money for pilots. Even though these devices are unmanned, it takes a lot of men to fly them. The Grand Forks Air Force Base is expecting to acquire about 20 more drones and about 900 more personnel to operate them.
A sheriff’s deputy reported seeing one hovering above his patrol car.
The ACLU wrote a policy paper called “Protecting Privacy from Aerial Surveillance”.
Brunswick quoted Ryan Calo, director of privacy and robotics for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School: “Think about it; they are inscrutable, flying, intelligent. They are really very difficult for the human mind to cleanly characterize.”
Brunswick quoted Al Palmer, director of the University of North Dakota’s Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Research, Education, and Training: “Where aviation was in 1925, that’s where we are today with unmanned aerial vehicles. The possibilities are endless.”
Let’s think about some of those possibilities. Clearly not everyone will be able to obtain a permit to fly a drone, so drones will serve to enhance the power of the federal government. If not properly regulated, they could allow private contractors to spy on individuals beyond the scope of government contracts. Drones have been subject to cyber attacks, so they could even be used to serve the interests of insurgents or criminals or terrorists. Alternatively, they could be used by a corrupt administration or regime to maintain power. Currently, it takes a lot of human work to operate them, but they will inevitably become more autonomous. Eventually, they could even be threatening to those who operate them.
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