East Bay at forefront of drone debate PRIVACY

Opponents of drones rally last week outside the Alameda County Administration Building, where supervisors are weighing the sheriff's office's request to buy one. Opponents of drones rally last week outside the Alameda County Administration Building, where supervisors are weighing the sheriff's office's request to buy one. Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Michael Short, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close East Bay at forefront of drone debate 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

If everything goes as planned, UC Merced Professor Yang Quan Chen will soon get a "drone license" from the federal government to help farmers monitor vast swaths of land from the air.

Chen has developed an unmanned aircraft that can detect soil moisture levels over several acres and relay that information to the farmer, who can then decide where to plant his crops and which fields to water.

Sounds harmless enough. But a lack of regulation governing who can launch an eye in the sky and for what purpose has privacy advocates worried about a slippery slope from soil to surveillance.

The issue has jumped to public attention in the East Bay, where the Alameda County Sheriff's Office wants to spend federal homeland security money to buy a drone that it says would be used for non-surveillance purposes.

Critics including the American Civil Liberties Union say there's nothing to stop law enforcement from changing the rules, and at least one member of the county Board of Supervisors wants the federal and state governments to pass laws regarding domestic use of drones before the sheriff gets the go-ahead.

10,000 drones

In September 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration is scheduled to open the airways to robotic-aircraft users who have been certified under guidelines the agency is still drawing up. The agency estimates that as many as 10,000 commercial drones could be airborne by 2020.

The image of drone congestion overhead has civil liberties groups and some lawmakers worried the technology will outpace the law books, and that the devices, no matter how benevolent the intent, will be used to gather data for companies and conduct warrantless searches for police.

"The pace at which government reacts to developments in science and technology is often too slow," said state Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Pacoima (Los Angeles County), who introduced a bill in December to regulate the aircraft in California. "Technology is deployed, and only later are the impacts to safety and privacy considered."

Lawmakers in at least 11 other states have drafted similar proposals.

Responsible research

Chen, who teaches in the school of engineering at UC Merced, is among 81 applicants affiliated with public universities and law enforcement agencies who are seeking special authorization to fly their aircraft now.

Chen said his dream is to bring "optimal growth and harvest to the Central Valley" through unmanned aircraft. But he cautioned that a license should come with responsibility.

"This should be for professionals," Chen said. "For well-trained people with well-defined missions, and with full awareness of privacy concerns."

As federal aviation regulators develop their certification process for drone operators, local legislators from Washington state to Virginia are showing a decidedly antidrone mentality.

Earlier this month, the City Council in Charlottesville, Va., passed what members billed as the nation's first antidrone legislation and ordered a two-year moratorium on unmanned aircraft. The author of the moratorium, John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute civil liberties organization in Charlottesville, said it was aimed at stopping local police from getting any ideas they could loft mobile cameras into the sky.

"I'm not antidrone," Whitehead said. "There are plenty of beneficial purposes to this technology. But it's a question of, 'One day, will police use them as a catch-all and use them to keep us in jail?' I think it could go that way."

Seattle backtracks

Residents in Seattle agreed. Police there had purchased two drones, saying they planned to use them for search-and-rescue missions. But on Feb. 7, a day after a public hearing dominated by opponents, Mayor Mike McGinn ordered the aircraft returned.

"We have a lot of priority work ahead of us in regard to public safety and community building," McGinn said. "And this just wasn't a priority."

In Alameda County, Sheriff Greg Ahern pressed for his department to become the first law enforcement agency in the state to use the machines at a supervisors hearing Thursday. If he wins the board's approval, he would still need a permit from the Federal Aviation Administration.

Ahern promised to use the aircraft only for mission-specific cases, such as searching for a lost child or tracking down a fugitive in remote areas of the county.

"We want it now for the same reason people want an iPhone right now," Ahern said after the hearing, at which nearly all of the 40 people who spoke on the issue opposed the drone purchase. "It's the best technology out there. The technology is available to us, and it's a technology that could help save lives. Why wouldn't we use it?"

What might happen

But Supervisor Richard Valle said he would vote "no" on any proposal to purchase the devices before state or federal lawmakers regulate them, agreeing with critics who said a future sheriff may not make the same promises as Ahern.

"We may get a sheriff with a whole new frame of mind toward these things, but the tool will already be in the toolbox," Valle said. "It could escalate very quickly. Just because the technology is at our fingertips, I think that's the worst reason to make that decision."

Ahern, who has met with ACLU attorneys to try to draft guidelines both sides can live with, said law enforcement agencies around the state are watching to see what happens.

"Some would have given up if they faced this kind of conflict," he said. "But we believe in talking with people and working on it. That's why we want to make the best policy possible. We want something we can be proud of and others can follow."