DUBLIN, Calif. — At the headquarters of the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO), 34 miles east of San Francisco, Sheriff Gregory Ahern formally announced on Wednesday that his agency had finally acquired two drones just one day earlier.

Once approved by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is likely to happen some time in 2015, the ACSO could become the first law enforcement agency in California (the most populous state in the United States) to deploy an authorized drone. The Los Angeles and San Jose police departments also have drones, but have yet to deploy them.

According to its own website, the ACSO regularly provides "patrols and investigative services to the unincorporated areas" of the county and contracts with some regional areas and cities, including the city of Dublin and the Oakland International Airport, to provide similar services. Alameda County encompasses 1.5 million people and a land area of 738 square miles.

Ahern faced vociferous protest at a county hearing in Oakland in February 2013, after which the plan was seemingly shelved. By contrast, this hastily called press conference—in which nearly only local media attended—had more sheriff’s deputies and staff than reporters, and no community members at all.

Again, Ahern emphasized that the ACSO’s $97,000 worth of drones and related equipment, funded from the agency's own budget, were not going to be used for surveillance.

"The reason for specifically acquiring this is search and rescue," he said, adding later that the ACSO responds to "25 to 30" such major incidents per year and "hundreds" of minor search operations.

No lawyers or privacy activists from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) or the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) were in attendance—both organizations told Ars they only found out about the event from a story in the San Francisco Chronicle posted Tuesday evening. Despite the previous outcry, the ACSO has only made minor changes to its draft policy since 2013—it released a new version on Wednesday, which Ars is publishing here.

In particular, both advocacy organizations have asked the ACSO to explicitly limit drone use to search and rescue in particular.

"The Sheriff has done nothing to address the concerns expressed by the community at the February 2013 hearing," Nadia Kayyali, an EFF activist, told Ars by e-mail. "And the Sheriff still hasn't addressed the most basic standard for drone policies: law enforcement must be required to get a warrant before using drones."

The order would apply even if the ACSO were to loan out one of its drones to a neighboring jurisdiction or under a "mutual aid" agreement.

Just one of the offices of the five members of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors responded to Ars' request for comment.

"I am just getting the details of what is happening here," Rodney Brooks, the chief of staff for District 5 supervisor Keith Carson, told Ars by e-mail. "As a reminder, Supervisor Carson was against the use of the drone when this issue came up before."

“Privacy safeguards need to be enforceable and this is not.”

The new draft order states in very general language:

The use of a [drone] can support first responders in situations which would benefit from an aerial perspective and enable responders to detect dangers that could otherwise not be seen. The [drone] can also be utilized for approved training missions.

It also makes specific reference to other "authorized missions" including "post-incident crime scene preservation and documentation," "public safety and life preservation missions to include barricaded suspects, hostage situations, active shooters," "when there is probable cause to believe that (1) the [drone] will record images of a place, thing, or event; and (2) that those images would be relevant in proving that a certain felony had occurred or is occurring," among others.

When Ars asked why the ACSO would not restrict its policy to accommodate privacy concerns, Sheriff Ahern said not having a more flexible policy would "endanger my people."

"It creates a safer environment for our [Explosive Ordnance Disposal] people," he said. "If you have children, do you allow your children to ride a bike without a helmet?"

"I want to make sure that my people are as safe as they can be in each and every mission. It's not easy to send people into harms way and not deploy tools that could help them," he said.

After reviewing the new draft order, Linda Lye, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California said that the policy still falls down.

"First, any ‘safeguards’ are not meaningful because this is simply an internal Sheriff’s department policy, which the Sheriff can unilaterally change," she told Ars by e-mail.

"Privacy safeguards need to be enforceable and this is not. Second, the policy lacks a key privacy safeguard—a requirement that information collected for one purpose only be used for the purpose for which it was collected. Section VII would authorize information collected from a drone to be reviewed and evaluated for ‘evidentiary value.’ This would allow data collected during a drone mission that was ostensibly conducted for ‘search and rescue’ to be analyzed for unrelated surveillance purposes. This portion of the policy therefore invites the very kind of generalized surveillance that the Sheriff has repeatedly said he will not conduct. And he has retained this language despite the ACLU’s repeated criticism of this provision."

There remains a huge gulf between local privacy advocates and the ACSO—Sheriff Ahern said his agency had not met with the ACLU or the EFF since late 2013.

Capt. Tom Madigan told Ars after the meeting: "I would argue that [our draft policy] complies with what they're saying," and that "we implemented what they wanted to the extent possible."

Survey says…

Specifically, the two drones are the AirCover QuadRotor QR425, which Sheriff Ahern said had a flying time of 25 minutes per battery—the agency has a total of six batteries. But the drones won’t be flying until the agency receives a Certificate of Authorization from the FAA and the ACSO has trained "four to eight people." Sheriff Ahern added that he anticipated the drones would be ready to deploy within "six months to a year."

AirCover’s website, however, specifically states that this model has the capability to be used for surveillance purposes, touting the fact that this model is "designed for perch mode operations in order to monitor areas for up to several hours of full motion video in EO, IR, and HD modes."

The sheriff noted that the ACSO had purchased a FLIR infrared camera to attach to the drone.

"We have data retention where it tracks the flight of the unit, and it is given a mission number and refers back to that," he told reporters. "It has capability to attach other devices, it's light enough to meet requirements of the FAA, and already has been approved in other areas of the country."

Sheriff Ahern tried to make the case that the ACSO was being "very open to the public" about its activities and displayed a timeline of the agency’s drone-related activities during the press conference.

"You didn't learn about the device, we told you about the device," he said, alluding to a similar situation in nearby San Jose, where journalists found out about police efforts to acquire a drone in July 2014.

He also cited a survey that indicated "the majority of the people are in support once we indicate to them our intentions, capabilities, and limitations."

However, that survey turned out to not be a representative random sample, but rather a group of self-selecting people attending an ACSO-hosted "Cop Shop BBQ/community meeting" in September 2014. The ACSO made the hundreds of pages of survey responses available for inspection at the press conference.

The ACSO touted its "statistical analysis," finding that of its 500 surveys distributed, 336 were turned in. In response to one question: "Would you be in support of the usage of Unarmed Aerial Vehicles (UAV) to aid in law enforcement efforts in the following circumstances?"

People answered YES TO ALL: 305 (90.7 percent)

People answered NO TO ALL: 6 (1 percent)

The circumstances included "search and rescue operations," "explosive ordnance device," "missing persons (elderly/juveniles)," and "apprehension of violent crime suspects."

"Anything that helps catch criminals is fine with me," wrote one respondent.

Still, Sheriff Ahern told Ars after the press conference that he had come up with another idea for a way to placate community worries.

"We're looking at a [smartphone] application that if someone were so concerned about our deployment that they could be immediately notified each and every time it's deployed," he said, mentioning that he had brought it up in May 2014 at the Alameda County App Challenge, but it has yet to be developed.