Texas Legislators Think Drones Armed With Tasers And Pepper Spray Will Stop School Shootings

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the whatever-helps-kill-us-makes-us-stronger? dept

In the only country in the world where this sort of violence happens frequently enough it’s become a despairing meme, legislators continue to ignore the obvious solutions in favor of throwing money at esoteric options that won’t stop Americans from entering schools to murder children en masse.

In Texas, this problem hits home harder. Not only does the state do everything it can to encourage gun ownership, it is also home to one of the more devastating school shootings in recent history — one in which Uvalde, Texas police officers rushed to the scene of school shooting only to spend nearly 90 minutes doing nothing about it.

The simple answer would be stricter gun control laws. But no Texan legislator is willing to do that, not if they expect to be re-elected. And there are plenty of people who claim the Second Amendment is the best amendment, because arming citizens means the government will be too scared to engage in overreach lest it get [checks notes] shot the fuck up.

In reality, most Second Amendment enthusiasts aren’t arming themselves to prevent the government from being overtaken by authoritarians. After all, they voted for Trump at least twice, and he’s the kind of autocrat their window decals have warned against. Most exercises of the Second Amendment are purely performative — “rolling coal” but it’s dudes in camo walking through Walmarts strapped with AR-15s.

And, given recent election results, perhaps now is not the time to start asking questions about the Second Amendment, not when the inbound president has said stuff that might make us genuinely concerned about our Third Amendment rights.

But it’s all just stupidity. You can either try to implement even the most minimal control over firearms sales and purchases. Or you can do whatever the fuck this bullshit is, as reported by Edward McKinley for the San Antonio Express-News.

Texas public schools could be guarded by drones armed with pepper spray or Tasers under a new bill filed in the Texas Legislature meant to beef up school security. 

The measure would boost funding for safety upgrades and let schools deploy drones in place of the armed guards that lawmakers required on every campus in response to the Uvalde school shooting. Districts have said they don’t have the money to make those hires, and Hearst Newspaper previously found many haven’t complied or have instead armed teachers.

Normal people will obviously ask questions about this proposal. Non-normal people are the ones who won’t ask questions, because it doesn’t threaten their “right” to own guns. But it is completely asinine for multiple reasons.

First of all, pepper spray is not something that can be safely deployed from a distance. It’s aerosolized, which means anyone in the area can be negatively affected, even if the intent is to disable an armed suspect. It has to be deployed up close and directly at the eyes/nasal passages of the target. Unless the drones are going to zooming down to eye level with incoming school shooters, this method has as much potential to harm innocent students and teachers as it has to incapacitate a threat.

Tasers are no better. Closer is better and even Taser maker Axon — or at least its board of ethics — has already objected to mounting Tasers on drones. Of course, none of that objection really matters. The entire Axon ethics board resigned following the company’s announcement it would pursue this option, only to see the company acquire a drone manufacturer that does frequent business with the US Department of Defense.

But even if the tech aligns, it’s still a bad idea. Tasers are not precision weapons. They do their best at close range and, even then, they’re not guaranteed to incapacitate. Firing Taser darts at a moving target from a moving object isn’t a recipe for success.

All in all, it’s about as stupid as thinking the solution is arming teachers. Teachers should not be expected to do the work of trained law enforcement. And teachers should never be expected to consider trading fire with school shooters a part of their job description. Again, the problem is the easy access to weapons, not the lack of defensive options. If anything, dumbass legislators should be advocating for arming students. After all, there are far more students than teachers and surely the presence of 30 or so “good guys with guns” in any classroom would be a significant deterrent to school shootings.

Despite the absolute lack of anything indicating arming drones this way will result in fewer school shootings, government contractors are encouraged by the willingness of legislators to throw money at bad ideas. Mithril Defense has already posted its own opening for an aspiring person who’s apparently going to get paid only a commission for talking more legislators into buying more drones, Tasers, and drone-mounted pepper sprayers.

This CV (of sorts) is inadvertently hilarious:

Our team includes a former Navy SEAL team SIX Command Master Chief, a serial tech entrepreneur, the #1 American drone pilot on ESPN, and various technical teams.

If there’s anything worse for anything than a “serial tech entrepreneur,” I’ve never met it. And despite the presence of SEAL Team Six and ESPN in the write-up, I’m far more interested in the makeup of the “various technical teams.” Keep in mind, this is an hourly position with “upside based on success.” To those interested, I would assume this means minimum wage and an immediate culling from the “advocacy group” once Mithril Defense secures a government contract.

Perhaps the best slam is inadvertent. Here’s how the San Antonio paper describes the company:

Employees for the company, which appears to be named after a magical silver-colored metal from “Lord of the Rings…”

And it would appear the “serial tech entrepreneur” is its founder, Justin Marston, whose LinkedIn profile shows he’s never been able to make anything go ever.

NONETHELESS, Texas legislators — led by Rep. Ryan Guillen — think this is what will solve our school shooting problem.

Guillen’s bill says the drones would be armed with “less lethal interdiction capability by means of air-based irritant delivery or other mechanisms,” and it would require one drone for every 200 students. 

lol

Just flying around in the air dispensing “air-based irritants” like it’s not going to “irritate” the people it’s supposed to be saving far more often than it’s preventing school shootings. And, if I’m doing the math right, this means the state’s educational facilities need to acquire nearly 26,000 drones to comply with the law. And only Guillen knows why one-drone-per-200-students is the appropriate ratio to prevent school shootings, but that’s what he and his supporters are going with.

Not that schools are getting fucked entirely. A state that can’t seem to get behind school funding in any meaningful way will perhaps be talked into funding schools in the most meaningless way. Guillen’s bill amps up per student funding from $10/per to $100/per… but only if that extra money is spent on “hardening campuses, hiring security guards, or starting a drone program.” There will be no educational advantage here. Instead, students will see that extra money being spent on surrounding them with weapons that aren’t actually guns but are allegedly going to protect them from actual guns.

This is dumb stuff that ignores the real issue. It’s not going to save any students from school shooters. But, if implemented, it will cost Texas millions of dollars in the furtherance of nothing more than respecting their right to head out on a shopping trip with a load out that might seem excessive in Call of Duty multi-player. God Bless America.

Filed Under: 2nd amendment, drones, pepper spray, school shootings, taser, texas
Companies: axon, mithril

New Tennessee Law Says Law Enforcement Doesn’t Need Warrants To Fly Drones Over Private Property

Privacy

from the why-it's-probably-just-like-flying-an-airplane dept

This is not great news, even if the law pretty much aligns with case law. Nonetheless, this is concerning.

Tennessee law enforcement agencies will continue to be able to use drones without a search warrant in various investigations following the approval of a bill earlier this year.

In 2021, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a new set of laws regarding law enforcement use of drones. The provisions would have ended on July 1, 2024. However, during the latest legislative session, lawmakers voted to extend them.

So, the first concern is that state legislators felt compelled to craft a new law creating a warrant exception. Most case law says there’s no expectation of privacy in areas that can be viewed by the public. Now, you can put a privacy fence around your property to ensure passersby can’t see what’s happening in your yard, but the prevailing argument is that any plane passing over your place would unveil the contents of your property despite your proactive fencing.

Now, it’s tough to compare the random flyover by high altitude planes to police surveillance. But courts have, and they’ve found that whether it’s a passenger plane, cop helicopter, or that one guy in your neighborhood with levitation superpowers, it’s all just plain view.

But Tennessee is different. Prior to 2021, warrants were required to fly drones over personal property. And for good reason! You should need a demonstrable and justifiable reason to fly a camera over someone’s private property, especially one that is as maneuverable as a drone. There’s no comparison to this and a low-flying plane. A plane can’t perform the tight circling needed to engage in uninterrupted surveillance. And a plane can’t fly low enough to get all up and personal with the curtilage, like a well-piloted drone can.

Because cops deserve all the deference and despite the fact that tons of warrant exceptions exist that officers could make use of to invade someone’s privacy by piloting a drone into their yard, Tennessee legislators still felt compelled to change the law.

And, of course, law enforcement officials showed up to defend the removal of a warrant requirement, using highly specific anecdotal evidence.

Several law enforcement agencies across Middle Tennessee have employed drones in various capacities over the past few years. In July 2023, the Sumner County Sheriff’s Office said a drone helped deputies save a man’s life during a tense welfare check.

While responding to the call, authorities said they spotted a razor blade and a blood trail leading into a 50-acre cornfield. The 5-foot-tall crops were so dense that deputies could not see the man. Minutes after launching a drone, they found him in the middle of the field.

[…]

Drones were deployed to help search for 22-year-old Riley Strain after he went missing in Nashville during a fraternity trip in March.

In Putnam County, the devices have been useful in helping deputies track suspects and during drug investigations. When a man crashed his car and ran into the woods in February, deputies launched one of their tracking drones to quickly take the man into custody.

It all sounds so logical! Of course a warrant requirement would get in the way in these particular situations. But that’s not what people are worried about when they demand warrant requirements for drone deployments. Every single one of the anecdotes offered would already fall outside of the state’s warrant requirements. The first one would fall under the community caretaking exception. The second would be exigent circumstances. And the third arguably wouldn’t need a warrant because the drone may have only surveilled publicly property. (Even if it didn’t, the “hot pursuit” exception would have applied.)

What’s of concern here is the other stuff. Bored officers lofting drones into the air for minutes or hours on end trolling for some sort of “plain view” evidence they can use to obtain search warrants or, in even worse scenarios, use to claim search warrants (for on the ground, in-person searches) weren’t necessary.

What lawmakers should have done is kept the warrant requirement to remain in place. There’s no reason to remove it entirely just because there will periodically be cases where warrants aren’t practicable. But in those cases, plenty of long-existing warrant requirements already apply. So, law enforcement agencies wouldn’t be losing anything under the pre-2021 law. But now, they stand to gain everything because the state has declared warrants are the exception, not the rule.

Filed Under: drones, fourth amendment, privacy, surveillance, tennessee

The House Ban On DJI Drones Is Mindless Anticompetitive Fear Mongering

Overhype

from the hyperbolic-hyperventilation dept

When it comes to China, the U.S. likes to pretend its business policies are well-crafted, logic-driven decisions based on the welfare of the markets and the public, but very often that’s simply not the case. We’ve already noted how the TikTok ban is an unconstitutional mess that doesn’t have the public’s support, in large part because it doesn’t actually fix any of the problems supporters of a ban like to claim.

Similarly our ban of Huawei, based on the unproven premise that the company was using network gear to spy on Americans en masse, has also been a hot mess. The government demanded U.S. telecoms engage in the costly act of ripping out all Huawei gear then replacing it with more expensive hardware, but failed to follow up on the demand or ensure the effort was adequately funded. Then they just forgot about it.

Now the House of Representatives is back again “fixing stuff,” with a new narrowly passed bill that would ban Chinese dronemaker from doing business in the U.S. The “Countering CCP Drones Act,” rolled into a broader military funding bill, put DJI on an FCC “covered list” created by the  Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Act of 2019, effectively barring DJI from functioning in the U.S.

Republican bill sponsors Mike Gallagher and Elise Stefanik say the ban is necessary because China has somehow using the dronemaker to spy on Americans:

“DJI drones pose the national security threat of TikTok, but with wings. The possibility that DJI drones could be equipped to send live imagery of military installations, critical infrastructure, and the personal lives of American citizens to China poses too great a threat.”

As with past mass hyperventilation efforts of this type, there’s no actual evidence that’s true. But the fact there’s no evidence supporting any of these claims is barely mentioned in press coverage (try to find where the New York Times clearly informs readers of the total lack of evidence in this lengthy expose).

As Jason Koebler at 404 Media notes in a must-read piece, not only is there no evidence of DJI wrongdoing, the company is senselessly being punished for adhering to past drone regulations designed by the U.S. government:

“Essentially, the US government pressured drone manufacturers to implement privacy and safety features that required internet infrastructure to operate, DJI built those features, and now lawmakers say those same features could be used by China to spy on Americans and are the reason for the ban. Meanwhile, the only existing American drone manufacturers create far more invasive products that are sold exclusively to law enforcement and government entities, which are increasingly using them to conduct surveillance on American citizens and communities.”

As with TikTok, if Congress was genuinely worried about consumer privacy, they’d regulate data brokers and pass a meaningful internet-era privacy law (data brokers sell vast, detailed demographic, behavior, and location data to anybody with two nickels to rub together, including foreign intelligence). If they were concerned about meaningful Chinese influence on government, they’d battle corruption.

Almost every time you dig beneath the hyperventilation over Chinese tech you’ll find some U.S. company that is whispering bullshit in the ears of Congress. Facebook spent years seeding worries about TikTok across Congress. Cisco did the same thing to Huawei. It’s trivial to get already xenophobic, paranoid, and trigger-happy policymakers all hot and bothered on the subject of China:

“What happens is you get competitors who are able to gin up lawmakers who are already wound up about China,” said one Hill staffer who was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. “What they do is pull the string and see where the top spins.”

DJI enjoys a massive (90%ish) market share on the U.S. drone market, and despite years of trying, most U.S. drone making companies have failed to compete on both quality and price. Since they can’t compete, competitors like SkyDio (themselves ironically tethered to U.S. first responder surveillance) want the competitor removed. It’s often genuinely that simple. Privacy or public welfare doesn’t enter into it.

This is all once again a byproduct of corruption, not malicious Chinese influence (not to suggest the Chinese government doesn’t routinely spy or can’t be malicious). But most of our tech policy “solutions” for China aren’t actual solutions; they’re hyperbolic freak outs carefully cultivated by companies that don’t want to compete with less expensive Chinese hardware.

It would be one thing if we implemented bans based on solid evidence and careful consideration, crafted to have a meaningful, lasting impact. But that’s rarely what happens. Instead we usually get a massive wave of hyperbole parroted by a broken press, a sloppy and rushed solution, and absolutely zero follow up.

Filed Under: china, chinese, congress, drones, elise stefanik, fearmongering, mike gallagher, privacy, security, surveillance
Companies: dji

NYPD’s New Labor Day Tradition Involves Drone Surveillance Of People’s Private Parties And Property

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the fight-for-your-right-to-party dept

Never let it be said the NYPD doesn’t know how to have a good time. The question remains as to whether it’s possible for the NYPD to allow others to have a good time.

The NYPD has always been in the business of acquiring the latest in law enforcement tech. The arrival of easily affordable drones attracted the NYPD’s acquisition team, which began obtaining these eyes-in-the-sky more than a decade ago when they were still considered to be mostly a military plaything.

The acquisition of drones also attracted the eye of a local artist, who was arrested by the NYPD for satirizing its drone fleet with publicly posted “ads” that suggested the PD was getting into the drone strike business. The NYPD had drones. It did not, however, have a sense of humor. It engaged in a “weeks-long manhunt” for the artist behind the satirical posters that so offended the NYPD it decided it must be a criminal offense.

This criticism was shut down with the heaviest hand the NYPD could apply to the situation. The criticism (at least in this form) stopped. The NYPD’s acquisition and deployment of drones did not.

The NYPD is subject to some limitations on drone use by city law. The POST (Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology) Act requires the NYPD to inform the public about any new use of surveillance tech 90 days ahead of deployment. It did not do this… not in this case.

What it has said about its drones is that their use will be limited to the following situations, as noted by Sean Hollister for The Verge:

[W]hile the NYPD did publish a document about how it uses drones back in 2021, it suggested back then that drones would only be used for:

search and rescue operations, documentation of collisions and crimes scenes, evidence searches at large inaccessible scenes, hazardous material incidents, monitoring vehicular traffic and pedestrian congestion at large scale events, visual assistance at hostage/barricaded suspect situations, rooftop security, observations at shooting or large scale events, public safety, emergency, and other situations with the approval of the Chief of Department

Missing from this list? The thing the NYPD has decided its drones are going to do over the Labor Day weekend:

The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday.

“If a caller states there’s a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party,” Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, said at a press conference.

While it could be argued (poorly, but argued nonetheless) that drone deployments might reduce wasted law enforcement resources by determining whether noise complaints are worth an in-person follow-up, the decision to convert a holiday weekend into a trial run for unfettered surveillance isn’t the sort of thing anyone (outside of the NYPD) is ever going to embrace.

You see, it’s not just about the parties. It’s about what can be seen and where it can be seen from. An officer at street level outside of a fenced yard can only see so much. A drone flying over enclosed yards can give officers a form of “plain view” they simply cannot achieve on their own. And since law enforcement believes anything its eyes (or its proxy eyes) can see is fair game when it comes to warrantless searches, flying drones over yards just because someone said a party is too loud is an abusive use of surveillance tech, which should be limited to the far more serious suspected criminal acts enumerated in the NYPD’s 2021 drone use document.

Considering the city’s size and population, one would expect the NYPD’s drones to be flying nonstop all weekend long. If the only justification for deployment is complaints about parties, the NYPD will have all the reason it needs to engage in extended, expansive surveillance of entire neighborhoods under the pretense of keeping the peace during a period of celebration.

Should the latent “threat” of people enjoying themselves a bit too much justify this kind of surveillance? The answer is obviously “no.” And a drone flight over a reported party can easily provide glimpses into neighboring property that has been the subject of zero complaints.

Then there’s the chilling effect. Is a Labor Day party protected by the First Amendment? Quite possibly. Not only is it an exercise of the right to freely associate, the perhaps-rowdy statements made by attendees are protected speech that should not be deterred by surveillance efforts seemingly completely divorced from anything resembling probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Sure, the city has an interest in ensuring neighboring residents aren’t subjected to excessive noise or intoxicated spillover, but those objectives can still be achieved without sending a camera into the curtilage without developing an articulable reason for doing so.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, 4th amendment, association, chilling effects, drones, nypd, surveillance

The Pillow Guy Unveils Nonsensical Plan To ‘Monitor’ Imagined Election Fraud With Drones

Too Much Free Time

from the weirdo-fanfiction dept

Having clearly not learned many lessons from the ongoing and growing repercussions for false claims of election fraud, election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell last week unveiled his new plan (see video) to “monitor” election polling places by using… drones. According to Ars Technica, Lindell claimed he’d developed a first-of-its-kind drone technology to monitor for election fraud:

“This was the lie that’s been told to every person in our country… these electronic voting machines—from routers to printers to polling books—they’re not online. Well, what if I told you there was a device that’s been made for the first time in history that can tell you that that machine was online?”

Except this amazing new device was basically just an ordinary drone with a Wi-Fi sniffer attached to it via Velcro. You’ll be surprised to learn that said sniffer doesn’t do much of anything meaningful when it comes to election fraud, it simply hoovers up nearby Wi-Fi network information and the MAC addresses of any devices looking to connect to them.

Amusingly there were numerous times were Lindell tried to convince the rubes in attendance that the ordinary act of simply detecting when wireless routers/networks come online was somehow thwarting election fraud:

“There’s a command center where this information goes down and flashes, it’ll go—’router online,'” Lindell said. It’s not clear why a router connecting to the Internet would be evidence of election fraud, but Lindell provided that as an example multiple times. “If you’re in this room and this is an election room, beep beep beep, router just went online, this red alert goes out there,” he said.

Granted this is the same guy who last year declared he’d be “suing all machines” (yes, all of them) over election fraud, so it’s not particularly surprising he may not actually understand that simply discovering a new wireless network doesn’t mean you’ve uncovered a vast election conspiracy.

Lindell told Newsweek (which presents Lindell’s vision with unearned credibility) “that he has probably 5,000 devices ready for fall elections this year, with the anticipation of having devices present across all 50 states by next November’s elections,” which, like the rest of this sad tale, is likely wholly imagined.

Filed Under: drones, election fraud, maga, mike lindell, privacy, the pillow guy

Company That Turned ‘Excited Delirium’ Into A Thing Thinks It Can Prevent School Shootings With Drone-Mounted Tasers [UPDATED]

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the maybe-just-shut-the-fuck-up dept

UPDATE: Since this post’s composition over the weekend, there has been a notable development. Axon has, for the moment, pulled the ends of its toes from overhanging the precipice. It only took the resignation of most of the Ethics Board (nine of twelve members) to force the company to reconsider its move towards offering schools access to armed drones.

But this statement from Axon’s CEO seems to imply the company is still willing to crane its neck to peer over the precipice until it’s socially feasible to go over the edge of it.

Axon’s founder and CEO Rick Smith said the company’s announcement last week — which drew a rebuke from its artificial intelligence ethics board — was intended to “initiate a conversation on this as a potential solution.” Smith said the ensuing discussion “provided us with a deeper appreciation of the complex and important considerations” around the issue.

As a result, “we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to further engage with key constituencies to fully explore the best path forward,” he said.

“Pausing” is not “scrapping.” This suggests the company is still exploring the option, but isn’t willing to fight the current membership of its Ethics Board over it. If the nine resigned members un-resign, the pause should be indefinite. If Axon decides to replace these members with ones more willing to let Axon do what it wants to, the project could be un-paused in the near future.

[Original post follows below.]

Axon — the company that crafted a pseudo-scientific form of plausible deniability for cops who’ve killed people — now wants to modify the ever-popular (and patently ridiculous) maxim “The only person who can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”

There were plenty of “good” guys with guns present at the last major school shooting. They did nothing to stop the killing. Instead, they huddled a safe distance away until another law enforcement agency showed up to actually stop the school shooter.

If law enforcement can’t handle mass shootings quickly and competently (and agencies have given us little indication that they can), they certainly shouldn’t be entrusted with an airborne weapon now being pushed by a company that sees shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas as another way to bump year-over-year sales increases.

Here’s the EFF’s take on this announcement of Axon’s armed drone proposal:

Taser and surveillance vendor Axon has proposed what it claims to be the solution to the epidemic of school shootings in the United States: a remote-controlled flying drone armed with a taser. For many many reasons, this is a dangerous idea. Armed drones would mission-creep their way into more every-day policing. We must oppose a process of normalizing the arming of drones and robots.

[…]

Police currently deploy many different kinds of moving and task-performing technologies. These include flying drones, remote control bomb-defusing robots, and autonomous patrol robots. While these different devices serve different functions and operate differently, none of them—absolutely none—should be armed with any kind of weapon.

Here’s Axon’s far more cheery take on the addition of Taser devices to drones:

Put together, these two technologies may effectively combat mass shootings. In brief, non-lethal drones can be installed in schools and other venues and play the same role that sprinklers and other fire suppression tools do for firefighters: Preventing a catastrophic event, or at least mitigating its worst effects.

The full press release digs deeper into Axon’s plan for armed drones, which actually includes a nod to the “good guy with a gun” maxim. Axon wants the good guys to have guns. Well, specifically its “gun,” which is “less lethal” and attached to its drones, all of which will be attached to Axon’s contracts and be governed by the company’s terms of use. Footage obtained by drones during non-killings will be controlled by Axon and the agencies it works with, supposedly to allow better oversight, but this will likely serve to limit public access to footage pertaining to controversial actions or killings committed with supposedly “non-lethal” tech.

The press release and Axon’s blog post say plenty of nice things about clean, ethical disarming of mass shooters. But neither acknowledge the statement made by Axon’s Ethics Board, which is firmly opposed to Axon moving forward with this plan.

Having… deliberated at length, a majority of the Ethics Board last month ultimately voted against Axon moving forward, even on those limited terms.

Axon’s decision to announce publicly that it is proceeding with developing TASER-equipped drones and robots to be embedded in schools, and operated by someone other than police, gives us considerable pause. It is a notable expansion of what the Board discussed at length. Axon’s announcement came before the company even began to find workable solutions to address many of the Board’s already-stated concerns about the far more limited pilot we considered, and before any opportunity to consider the impact this technology will have on communities. Now, Axon has announced it would not limit the technology to policing agencies, but would make it more widely available. And the surveillance aspect of this proposal is wholly new to us. Reasonable minds can differ on the merits of police-controlled TASER-equipped drones — our own Board disagreed internally — but we unanimously are concerned with the process Axon has employed regarding this idea of drones in school classrooms.

So, why even bother having an Ethics Board? If their contribution ultimately means nothing, Axon is free to do whatever it wants while still pretending it has a conscience. If it has overridden this decision, it’s free to walk back its Ethics Board-guided decision to keep its body cameras free of facial recognition tech.

The downsides of this program are immense. The Ethics Board knows this. Axon knows it too. It just doesn’t appear to care. It turns kids into surveillance subjects and operates on the wholly unproven concept that a drone with a Taser is capable of incapacitating a mass shooter. And while the rollout is still months or years away, Axon appears to believe it’s actually capable of providing a solution to a problem the United States has steadfastly refused to solve — one wholly reliant on its products.

Filed Under: armed drones, drones, school shootings, taser
Companies: axon

Court Says Texas Drone Law Violates The First Amendment

Free Speech

from the if-you-can't-do-laws-right,-maybe-just-don't-do-them-at-all dept

The Texas government has passed a law that places a lot of restrictions on those operating drones. The law (passed in 2013 and amended in 2015) also creates a cause of action for residents who feel their privacy has been violated by UAV operators. There’s a single carve out: one for researchers operating drones “on behalf of an institution of higher education.”

This leaves journalists and news-gathering agencies out in the cold. The law forbids use of drones to “capture an image of an individual or privately owned property” for the “intent to conduct surveillance.” The Texas Press Association, National Press Photographers Association, and independent journalist Joe Pappalardo (who is an FAA-certified drone operator) sued in 2019, challenging the law’s apparent damage to First Amendment protections.

Oddly, the law allows commercial entities to fly over areas journalists and their drones are forbidden to access, including critical infrastructure, arenas, stadiums, and other “sports venues.” As the plaintiffs point out, this exception that excludes journalists indicates the Texas government is engaged in viewpoint discrimination, where commercial entities are allowed to do things journalists can’t, even though both entities are using the same equipment.

The journalists have won, as Volokh Conspiracy reports. The state law is unconstitutional precisely for the reasons stated in the plaintiffs’ complaint: content and viewpoint discrimination. From the decision [PDF]:

The No-Fly Provisions are also subject to strict scrutiny by conditioning the legality of images based on their purpose. “Whether laws define regulated speech by particular subject matter or by its function or purpose, they are subject to strict scrutiny.” Under the No-Fly Provisions, expression that would otherwise be prohibited is permissible if “used for a commercial purpose.” Indeed, Calzada and Wade both note that, as journalists, they cannot take drone images of Nelson Wolff Stadium and Globe Life Park, respectively. But Wade was hired by the Rangers to take the very same images of Globe Life Park “for their own public relations purposes”—that he was “not permitted to share … with members of the news media.” Here too, then, the purpose determines the legality of the speech. For both the Surveillance and No-Fly Provisions, the subject or purpose of the drone-captured image is the key to its applicability. Thus, both constitute content-based restrictions and trigger strict scrutiny under the First Amendment.

The Surveillance Provisions are separately subject to strict scrutiny as they discriminate based on the identity of the speaker. A regulation may also constitute a content-based restriction if it discriminates between speakers in a way that “disfavors” certain speakers in exercising their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court has admonished that “[s]peech restrictions based on the identity of the speaker are all too often simply a means to control content.” Section 423.003 provides an extensive list of individuals whose use of drones is not proscribed. Professors, students, employees of insurance companies, and real estate brokers all appear on this list; journalists do not. As Plaintiffs note, the same drone image taken legally by a professor would constitute a misdemeanor if captured by a journalist….

The state raised a variety of nonsensical defenses, each of which is dismantled by the federal court.

Defendants claim that drone photography cannot be entitled to First Amendment protections because it was not contemplated by the Framers when they drafted the protections for expression and the press. (Defs.’ Mot. Summ. J., Dkt. 65, at 16). But neither did the Framers anticipate photography in any form, much less video or internet communications, all of which are today covered by the First Amendment. Applying the Constitution’s protections to new technological contexts is far from a novel exercise.

And:

Here, Plaintiffs have established that Chapter 423 restricts their use of drones to record the news, necessarily constraining their ability to disseminate the news. It is uncontested that budgetary and other constraints may make drones the only option for recording certain events. Defendants assert that other options—namely expensive helicopters—can fill the same role in facilitating news production. Yet they cannot dispute the extreme price and safety differences between these technologies. Furthermore, Pappalardo and the organizational plaintiffs’ members have stated that drones are central to their journalistic pursuits, claims which Defendants do not refute. The Court thus finds that Plaintiffs have established that, as a matter of law, use of drones to document the news by journalists is protected expression, and, by regulating this activity, Chapter 423 implicates the First Amendment.

The state also argued that anyone would know the difference between news-gathering and surveillance. But, as the plaintiffs point out (and the judge as well), the government is unable to define the term narrowly, much less state what it considers to be the bright line that separates the two.

Defendants themselves double down on their refusal to define the term and its applicability to journalism, stating that “‘journalism’ . . . may or may not constitute ‘surveillance,’ . . . depend[ing] on factual determinations by a jury.” Defendants claim that “surveillance” is distinct from “observation,” because it “involves prolonged time periods and/or some degree of surreptitiousness or invasion of one’s expectation that they are not being watched. But this contention only highlights the vagueness in the word’s meaning, for it in no way clarifies whether journalism is covered. Defendants further claim that the intent requirement in Chapter 423 is the operative word, and that persons who do not “intend” to surveil, or do not intend to surveil individuals or private property more specifically, are not liable under the statute. But without knowing what constitutes surveillance it is impossible to know whether one’s intention constitutes that prohibited activity. These arguments cannot save a fatally vague statutory term.

The state loses.

It is ordered that Plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment is granted.

It is further ordered that TEX. GOV’T CODE §§ 423.002, 423.003, 423.004, 423.0045, 423.0046, and 423.006 violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments and are therefore unconstitutional.

The state is blocked from enforcing the unconstitutional law. And it may end up having to pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees before all is said and done. It will probably waste more time and money appealing this decision, since expensive litigation moves are pretty much free when you’re forcing taxpayers to cover the expenses. But for now, the law is dead and journalists can go back to news-gathering without fear of criminal or civil reprisal.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, drones, journalists, texas, viewpoint discrimination

Phoenix City Council Says PD Can Have Surveillance Drones Without Any Policy In Place Because Some Officers Recently Got Shot

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the I-guess-there-will-always-be-time-to-regret-things-later dept

The Phoenix Police Department wants drones and it wants them now. And, according to this report by the Phoenix New Times, it’s going to get them.

After several hours of debate and spirited public response during the Phoenix City Council meeting this week, local officials agreed to authorize the police department to purchase public safety drones right away.

Late Wednesday night the Phoenix City Council voted 6-3 after a lengthy, and at times heated, discussion.

The request was submitted to the city council at the last minute, fast-tracking the agency’s plans to implement the technology.

Why the rush? Well, according to a letter [PDF] signed by Mayor Kate Gallego and two council members, having a drone in the air would have… not changed anything at all about a recent incident where officers were shot.

In the early morning hours of February 11, our officers were ambushed when responding to a call for service at a two-story home in Southwest Phoenix near 54th Avenue and Broadway. Nine of our police officers were injured but thankfully all of them are recovering.

During this incident was determined for the safety of our officers drone would need to be utilized to neutralize the situation. Currently, Phoenix does not own any drones for use by our Police Department, therefore we had to rely on the grace of our neighbor, the City of Glendale, to provide our department with a drone.

News reports about the ambush shooting make no mention of a deployed drone or describe what difference it made in resolving the deadly situation. But that shooting that happened to have a late-arriving drone is being used to justify the sudden acquisition of drones by the PD, which will presumably be deployed as soon as they’re obtained.

Since it’s apparently a matter of life and death, the request made by the council for the police to develop a drone policy and deployment plan before seeking funding and permission to acquire them has been abandoned. It’s apparently now far too urgent a problem to be slowed down by accountability and transparency.

The committee agreed to allow Phoenix Fire to go ahead with its drone purchases — so it could roll the tech out by the summer — but asked Phoenix police to come back for approval separately, with a more fleshed-out plan.

This new proposal will circumvent that, instead allowing Phoenix police to go ahead with the drone purchase “as soon as possible,” according to a memo, without presenting a policy first to the council.

That gives the Phoenix PD permission to send eyes into the skies without meaningful restrictions or oversight. Far too much slack is being cut for a police department that is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice following years of abusive behavior by its officers. Here’s what the DOJ — which announced this investigation last August — will be digging into:

This investigation will assess all types of use of force by PhxPD officers, including deadly force. The investigation will also seek to determine whether PhxPD engages in retaliatory activity against people for conduct protected by the First Amendment; whether PhxPD engages in discriminatory policing; and whether PhxPD unlawfully seizes or disposes of the belongings of individuals experiencing homelessness. In addition, the investigation will assess the City and PhxPD’s systems and practices for responding to people with disabilities. The investigation will include a comprehensive review of PhxPD policies, training, supervision, and force investigations, as well as PhxPD’s systems of accountability, including misconduct complaint intake, investigation, review, disposition, and discipline.

Not exactly the sort of thing that inspires trust. And certainly not the sort of thing that warrants a free pass on surveillance policies until long after new surveillance tech has been deployed. The Phoenix PD may have recently been involved in an unexpected burst of violence (I mean, committed by someone else against police officers), but that hardly justifies a careless rush into an expansion of the department’s surveillance capabilities.

Filed Under: drones, phoenix, phoenix pd, surveillance

Canadian Cops Blow Off Drone Operation Laws, Crash Their Drone Into A Landing Airplane

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the laws-must-be-for-other-people-eh dept

Someone finally hit an airplane with a drone while flying it near an airport. And of all people, it was the cops. (h/t Justin England, via Hackaday)

The Transportation Safety Board is investigating after a York regional police drone collided with an airplane approaching Buttonville Airport in Markham last week.

Police confirmed to CityNews they had deployed a Remote Piloted Vehicle (RPV), known more commonly as a drone, as part of an investigation near the airport on August 10.

While it was being operated, the drone collided with a Cessna 172 operated by Canadian Flyers International that was attempting to land. There was an instructor and student pilot on board.

No injuries were reported and the plane was able to land without any further incidents.

This may sound like an open and transparent response by the York police about its irresponsible drone piloting, but this admission about the incident at the Toronto airport was prompted by the Canadian government’s report on the incident, which was released eight days after the accident.

And the police haven’t had much else to say about its errant drone, which apparently came only inches from killing everyone on board.

Dario Matrundola, who is one of the owners of the flight school Canadian Flyers, said had the drone struck a few inches further away, both occupants could’ve been killed.

“It would have been a tragedy, it would’ve been loss of life or injuries for sure. The pilots are very lucky they were able to land the plane and avoid injuries,” said Matrundola.

Here’s Transport Canada’s summary of the accident:

The instructor for a Canadian Flyers International Inc. Cessna 172N (C-GKWL) reported that they had just turned from base leg to final for Runway 15 at Toronto/Buttonville, ON (CYKZ) and were established and stable at 1100 ASL, or about 500 AGL, when they felt a jolt that pushed them back on their seat. They thought they had hit a large bird. They proceeded to land. There was no change in configuration or power since they were about to land. When exiting the aircraft, they were shocked to see a major dent on the left underside of the engine cowling. The airbox was also bent. A few hours later, a police detective confirmed a York Regional Police drone had struck their aircraft. The aircraft suffered major damage, including a propeller strike.

The report also points out NavCanada, which oversees the country’s civil air navigation system, was not made aware of the drone flight nor the York Police’s interest in sending a drone up into the airport’s airspace to engage in an investigation.

If this had been a “civilian” drone, the public would have been informed immediately and regularly updated with progress on catching the perp. But this was a cop flight, so the cops acknowledged the flight when they could no longer deny it, and only because they were now the subject of an investigation by another government body.

It is indeed illegal to fly a drone within three nautical miles of an airport. This ban on operation can only be temporarily lifted with the explicit permission of NavCanada. Obviously this didn’t happen. The only question now should be whether the York Police is an individual or a corporation.

Fines for individuals

• up to $1,000 for flying without a drone pilot certificate

• up to $1,000 for flying unregistered or unmarked drones

• up to $1,000 for flying where you are not allowed

• up to $3,000 for putting aircraft and people at risk

Fines for corporations

• up to $5,000 for flying without a drone pilot certificate

• up to $5,000 for flying unregistered or unmarked drones

• up to $5,000 for flying where you are not allowed

• up to $15,000 for putting aircraft and people at risk

And don’t forget to stack the charges!

If you break more than one rule, you could receive multiple penalties.

Supposedly, everyone is just waiting for the TSB to conclude its investigation. And then there will be more waiting while the York Police engages in its own investigation. Possibly in the next few weeks or months, the news will have cycled often enough someone can fire off a press release late in the afternoon just ahead of the next convenient bank holiday.

Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. Maybe someone will get rung up for being completely irresponsible on top of actually violating federal law. But I doubt it. When a citizen does it, nothing can get the police to shut up about it. But when the police do it, no member of the public can get them to start talking, much less treat their own internal lawbreaking as seriously as they treat lawbreaking by outsiders.

Filed Under: airplanes, canada, drones, police, surveillance, york regional police