AFP using drones to investigate major crime as questions raised over privacy

Updated

The Australian Federal Police has told a federal parliamentary inquiry that drones are among the latest tools it is using in major crime investigations.

A parliamentary committee has begun examining the growing use and popularity of drone technology, as well as the privacy concerns it raises for Australians.

Drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), were used to search for the body of murdered 1970s anti-drugs campaigner, Donald Mackay, in rural New South Wales last year.

"We assisted in the imagery and the recording of that search and excavation and the UAV provided a different and unique perspective to aid and assist in that process," AFP Commander Mark Harrison said.

It is the first time the AFP has publicly acknowledged it is using drones.

The agency says their use so far has been limited.

"We currently use UAV to image crime scenes where it's lawfully under a warrant - so we have a lawful authority to be present there," he said.

"It's just a further extension of the normal imaging that we would do at that scene."

If the AFP were to expand its use of drones to include covert surveillance, it would need to get a warrant, Mr Harrison said.

"We'd be no different to any other intrusion into that sort of area," he said.

"The imaging is undertaken by our own staff, our own trained staff, from the forensic area and these would be the people that are trained to operate both the imaging equipment and the UAV."

Drones are already used by the military, both to save lives and to take them.

Now the technology is being embraced by hobbyists and commercial operators, as well as real estate agents, emergency personnel and media companies.

Authorities admit they have no idea how many unmanned aerial vehicles there are in Australia, but it is believed there could be hundreds of thousands of them.

Privacy concerns under scrutiny

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner says it has started receiving more inquiries about the use of drones from concerned members of the public.

"There are cases where people have woken up in the morning, pulled their curtains open and there's been a drone hovering outside," Commissioner Timothy Pilgram said.

There are cases where people have woken up in the morning, pulled their curtains open and there's been a drone hovering outside. Privacy Commissioner Timothy Pilgram

"It's starting to suggest to us that there's a point in time at which we need to sit back and say: 'do we have the right laws in place to make sure that we can regulate to the best extent possible how these devices can be used?'

"That is the challenge now facing lawmakers in Federal Parliament and across Australia."

Mr Pilgram says law enforcement agencies must act within certain boundaries and within the law.

"For example, when they're using certain surveillance devices they'd need to get warrants and we'd have to look at whether those warrants and the system for approving them is going to extend across to the use of drones as well," he said.

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Topics: police, crime, defence-and-national-security, science-and-technology, ethics, australia

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