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Surveillance Technology:
How Drones are going to Change the Definition of Privacy on Domestic Soil
Nicholas D. Short
Drones, which are names for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are
as the year 2015. The court system within the United States appears to be
enforcement and many problems will arise due to the technology itself being
everyday Americans and their rights to privacy comes with the fact that the
court system has granted responsibility upon the wings of the Federal
protecting our civil liberties while also setting standards and regulations as to
FAA gives us an idea about the sheer amount of tasks Congress has given
the FAA to handle with regards to the usage and regulations of drones. It
2012, Congress directed the FAA to allow unmanned aircraft weighing 4.4
pounds or less to be flown domestically. The FAA also set standards for the
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drones besides the weight which said they, must be flown within the line of
sight of the operator, less than 400 feet above the ground, during daylight
and more than 5 miles from an airport or any other aviation activity
airspace, but now with these provisions and new tasks, they are placed into a
position that will come with an enforcement role that they are not prepared
for.
Authorization Act and by 2015 the FAA will be in charge of tens of thousands
of flying drones by hobbyists and law enforcement officials alike. Kashmir Hill
(2012) from Congress Welcomes the Drones, states that, by 2015 the FAA
has to start allowing the commercial use of drones. They are required to
2015. This means that they will be permitting unmanned drones controlled
cargo planes, business jets and private aircraft. This monumental task is
something the FAA is in no way prepared for, and even if plans, provisions
and regulations for safety are all met, it is not addressing the possibility that
shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
expectations of privacy are upheld and in doing this they must also adhere to
Jay Stanley (2012) Senior Policy Analyst of the American Civil Liberties
Union is beginning to voice some of the concerns that we will see based
upon the rights of privacy governed under the 4th Amendment. He states,
The bottom line is: domestic drones are potentially extremely powerful
surveillance tools, and that power like all government power needs to
consider the privacy implications that this technology can lead to. Stanley is
not only referring to the fact that Congress must step in and realize the
privacy implications this will have and how the FAA does not have the
resources nor the standing to truly enforce their laws, but also how there
individual rights.
We must look to the court and case law to see exactly how the 4th
the use of invasive technology similar to drones, has been interpreted by the
courts in previous rulings. This will show us how previous concerns of privacy
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issues in the past will play crucial roles in privacy issues of the future,
starting with what constitutes a legal search under the 4th Amendment. This
the issues we will see in the future involving a search and a persons
California v. Ciraolo (1986), involved a local California man who was growing
marijuana in his backyard. The yard was enclosed by two fences and
anonymous tip and observed the marijuana plants from 1,000 ft. in the sky
with the naked eye using their department helicopter, without reasonable
suspicion to do so. The defendant, Ciraolo, believed that his 4th Amendment
right protecting him against warrantless searches and seizures had been
infringed upon. The court ruled against Ciraolo claiming that it did not
violate the 4th Amendment because the police observation took place within
The second case, Florida v. Riley (1989) took place 3 years later in
Florida and involved essentially the same thing but with a lower flying
helicopter. The Florida County Sheriffs office received a tip about man
could not be seen at ground level. The Sheriffs office responded by flying a
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helicopter, 400 feet over the backyard, while peering in with the naked eye,
down into the greenhouse. The officers observed marijuana plants growing in
the greenhouse through open shutters, allowing officers to see clearly inside
upon his 4th Amendment protections and once again the court rejected his
claim. The court stated that, 4th Amendment does not require that police
in order to observe what is visible to the naked eye. Furthermore, the most
concerning aspect of the ruling in Rileys case came from the courts
[Riley] could not reasonably have expected that the contents of his
greenhouse were protected from public or official inspection from the air,
since he left the greenhouse roof partially open. This ruling may lead others
to feel they have a right to look into your house if your garage door or a
Based upon these two prior cases which involved police and their
the court has granted law enforcement the discretion to essentially spy on
concern or tip, rather than reasonable suspicion. This difficult problem will
enforcement agencies. Our right to privacy will come under jeopardy if law
be used and much more. This poses another major concern and that is the
technology that law enforcement drones may possess in the near future
sensors and networks which allow an individual to fly the mini UAV by
operator can then direct the Switchblade to lunge forward and kill the target
with a direct explosion to the targets face or body. This 24-inch, labeled
assassins bug by Goure, demonstrates not only the power of one of the
drones that could potentially be used by police, but also the damage and
shown the weapons capability and transparent nature that these drones
truly defines how drones are going to change the definition of privacy on
Surveillance Imaging System, which is the essential eye in the sky type of
sensory system for future drone usage. According to D.L. Cade (2013) from
that can scan twenty five square miles of ground surface in extremely high
detail from over twenty thousand feet in the air. The true significance, other
than the ability to continuously scan an area the size of a small town, is that
it can pick up objects as small as six inches from the ground and can see
your every move (Cade, 2013). ARGUS-IS is currently used on drones that
are massive in size and are comparable to being a little larger than a Boeing
757. For example, Robert Johnson (2012) from Business Insider draws the
comparisons between a Boeing 757 and a MQ-4C Reaper. The Boeing 757
has a wingspan of 124 feet and a maximum of range of just over 4,000
nautical miles, with an operating ceiling of 42,000 feet., whereas, the MQ-4C
Reaper has a wingspan of 130 feet, with a maximum range of over 8,000
nautical miles and an operating ceiling of 56,500 feet. The size of this type of
that the sensor package, ARGUS-IS, that the drone is equipped with, has the
agencies will not likely have the funding and money to fly such predator
drones, the concern over ARGUS-IS is its ability to be mounted to smaller and
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less expensive Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. This is a much more realistic type
of UAV that will be flying with this new type of sensory technology.
new policies over the use and regulations of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The
problem that this technology poses though is something the FAA cant
handle, at least legally for now, because the law appears to be lagging quite
case law and precedent set in Florida and California over thirty years ago, we
see that with regards to helicopters flying 1,000 feet and 400 feet, the
of the past. This is because of the sheer capability of drones, from their size
to their sensory perception. The question then becomes how will the public
even know it is being watched? Also, what can we possibly do to combat this
when the law itself appears to justify the warrantless searches of say
someones backyard because they can simply see it from the sky with the
naked eye? Furthermore, whos to say that drones wont be used in ways
that are more invasive when the court rules that an officer peering into ones
property does not need a warrant because the property is not protected
These are the questions the FAA will inevitably face as well as what this
argument is based upon, which is the growing number of concerns this will
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themselves. The court needs to focus on the future aspects that pertain to an
technology, while the FAA has to figure out how they will go about ensuring
George Orwells description from his book Nineteen Eighty-Four more than
captures and illustrates the realities of what is to come the closer we get to
increased domestic drone usage. Orwell states that, Big Brother is watching
you the caption saidIn the far distance a helicopter skimmed down
between the rooftops, hovered for an instant like a blue bottle, and darted
away again with a curving flight. It was the Police Patrol, snooping into
prime illustration of drones and how the domestic landscape could eventually
activity, while hardly being detected. This may soon be the reality for
technology are written in a way that truly preserves our 4th Amendment
rights. It may also be necessary for Congress to place the enforcement role