California is poised to introduce tough new controls on police deployment of drones for surveillance, as the debate around the acceptable uses of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) gathers pace.



Bill AB1327 has passed all stages in the California legislature and now awaits the signature of governor Jerry Brown. Should Brown give it the green light, as expected, it would send a powerful message across America about the limits of drone surveillance from the technology capital of the country.

Under the bill, police departments throughout the state would be required to seek a warrant from a judge in virtually all situations other than in emergencies, such as an oil spillage, fire or hostage-taking. Where surveillance images have been recorded, they would have to be destroyed within one year.

California’s move is the latest in a game of cat and mouse involving police departments keen to unleash the surveillance potential of the new drone technology and privacy campaigners wary of the implications on public freedoms. A total of 13 states have passed some form of legislation restricting the use of drones by public agencies, of which nine have specifically sought to rein in police snooping by requiring officers to seek warrants before using the devices.

The nine states with warrant requirements are: Florida, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Montana, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.

Should California join that list, it will give an additional hefty boost to privacy advocates. California is not only has more than 10% of the nation’s population, it also accommodates the headquarters of many of America’s leading companies in the UAS sector.

Jay Stanley, a privacy and technology policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, which backed AB1327, said that the threat of drones encroaching on the rights of the public was increasing as the technology became more readily available. “When surveillance becomes cheap it is almost always overused and abused. There’s great interest in putting checks and balances over this powerful new technology,” he said.

But other groups have decried the new legislation as a squandered opportunity to improve public safety and a discriminatory measure on a little understood new technology. The Los Angeles district attorney’s office opposed passage of the bill through the California legislature, saying it was an “inappropriate attempt to impose search and seizure requirements on California law enforcement agencies”.

Brendan Schulman, a legal expert on unmanned aerial vehicles, said AB1327 was a “huge step backwards for technology. State legislatures are engaged in a knee-jerk response to the arrival of these devices in part simply because they are called ‘drones’ and conjure up controversial uses overseas by the military.”

So far police departments have been relatively slow to adopt drones. The Federal Aviation Administration has dissuaded take-up by public bodies by granting few flight permits for drones flying higher than 400ft until it has devised new central rules on how to integrate the devices into national airspace which it has promised to do by the end of next year.

But there is evidence that law enforcement agencies are more than keen to start using the unpiloted aircraft. The ACLU of Northern California uncovered documents that showed that the San Jose police department had secretly obtained approval from the local city council to buy an $8,000 drone using federal money bequeathed to the force by the Department of Homeland Security.

The police department in Ogden, Utah, applied for FAA permission to put a “nocturnal surveillance airship” for five hours each night over high-crime neighbourhoods of Ogden City. Ogden’s request was denied.

Elsewhere, the FAA has granted approval for police forces in Arlington, Houston, Miami and Seattle, and other cities. The Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed earlier this year that the US customs and border protection, which maintains a fleet of Predator drones along the Mexican border, has loaned out its UAVs for 700 flights carried out over three years on behalf of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.