More drones, please, of all sizes. They're cooler than cameras at intersections, and they can perform more law enforcement duties. Create some small drones that operate like big dragonflies, and let them hover over the area, controlled by a TPD nerve center downtown.
Once we get accustomed to traffic enforcement cameras, it will be easier for us to accept drones.
July 2012 - Talking Points Memo - Maple Seed Drones Will Swarm The Future
Imagine a cheap, tiny, hovering aerial drone capable of being launched with the flick of a person’s wrist and able to provide manipulable 360-degree surveillance views.
It’s real, it’s inspired by maple seeds, and the company behind it, Lockheed Martin, envisions a future in which swarms of the new drones can be deployed at a fraction of the cost and with greater capabilities than drones being used today by the military and other agencies.
In June, Lockheed Martin released a video demo of the drone’s capabilities, and it is clearly impressive, launched by hand and piloted using a tablet computer, which also displays the drone’s live surveillance feed.
Borgia said that the drone, or unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), was designed to be deployed in confined settings, such as urban environments or even inside buildings, where it could be piloted into different rooms and hover outside of windows, collecting surveillance footage with ease.
Lockheed Martin began work on the Samarai in 2007 under a Defense Department program called “nano air,” designed to produce “an extremely small, ultra lightweight air vehicle system.”
June 2012 - CBS - The Age Of Drones: Military May Be Using Drones In US To Help Police
The Air Force guidelines permit using drones domestically to assist law enforcement in “investigating or preventing clandestine intelligence activities by foreign powers, international narcotics activities , or international terrorist activities.” More vague is language that also allows military cooperation with local law enforcement for the purposes of “preventing, detecting, or investigating other violations of law.”
June 2012 - ABC - Popularity of drones raising privacy concerns
"So, with the aircraft, you can put that aircraft up at 400 or 500 feet, be able to scan the area for other individuals and again, contain it more visibly from the air than you could from the ground," explains Vanguard Industries CEO Mike Buscher.
That's raising big concerns about privacy and how the government is using drones to watch all of us. People, when they step outside their door, could end up being tracked 24-7 by these cameras," Trevor Timm with Electronic Frontier Foundation says. He thinks it's getting too easy for government agencies to spy on us with drones.
The [EFF] sued, demanding to know who has applied for a drone license. They won, so the federal government turned over a list of 60 government agencies who want to use them. On the list were a few dozen law enforcement agencies across the country. "The FAA actually estimates that by 2020 there may be as many as 30,000 drones flying in U.S. skies," Timm says.
February 2012 - RT.com - US opens skies for drones
Earlier this week the US Congress passed a bill that would send aviation in America to the next generation. Therefore making unmanned drone sightings more prevalent in the US. The bill grants military, commercial and private unmanned aerial vehicles amplified access to US airspace.
In an article by Forbes, the use of these unmanned drones would make it easy for companies like Google to ditch the street view and easily transition “Google street drone view.”
The American Civil Liberties Union doesn’t see a real need for unmanned drones to hover around all over the US. “Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.”
The ACLU went on to say that Congress needs to address these privacy concerns with rules that will protect the American people. “We don’t want to wonder, every time we step out our front door, whether some eye in the sky is watching our every move,” the ACLU added.
December 2011 - LA Times - Police employ Predator drone spy planes on home front
"I am for the use of drones," said Howard Safir, former head of operations for the U.S. Marshals Service and former New York City police commissioner.
But privacy advocates say drones help police snoop on citizens in ways that push current law to the breaking point.
"Any time you have a tool like that in the hands of law enforcement that makes it easier to do surveillance, they will do more of it," said Ryan Calo, director for privacy and robotics at the Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society.
We need to marginalize those radical, tinfoil hat groups like the EFF and ACLU, so that we can have more cameras in the sky for our own safety and security.