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The Police Foundation does not want the police to call drones "drones". Because of the public's badociation with "military-style weapons like the Predator," the organization's 311-page report the term "drone" is "a major impediment to the forces' ability to Order to convince the public "that police drone programs" could actually increase public safety, not compromise it ".
(UAS): "Guidelines for Enhance Community Trust", published in 2016, suggests as alternative the "unmanned aircraft system". UAS was invented by the Department of Defense in 2001, now reused by the police, to make military weapons more acceptable.
To market the drone as part of a public safety system instead of a weapon, the first step is to convince a suspicious public that this is not a weapon but a friendly flying gadget. The commercial dronemaker DJI has made it a priority after the announcement of a partnership with the Axon body camera manufacturer, formerly Taser. Axon now offers the forces of order two surveillance UAVs: the Phantom 4 Pro, white egg shell and equipped with a software recognition image; and the more expensive series Matrix 200, Metallic Gray and has been tested for its resilience to high winds and rain. DJI provides the drones, while Axon integrates the data they collect with Evidence.com, its cloud storage system used for managing body camera images.
DJI offers videos of the Matrix to film exotic holidays and save lost hikers. But, anti-vigilant activists worry that drones' supervision around film rescue missions obscures confidentiality issues when drones are used for police.
This is a major concern of police technology experts: Is technology defined by the way it is used in everyday or extreme scenarios? Gizmodo has been meeting with representatives of DJI and Axon, including members of his newly formed Artificial Intelligence Ethics Council, and to understand a simple question: what problem does police drone surveillance solve?
"I do not think anyone would ask the question whether it's a real life-and-death search for a missing child that you allow a drone to fly anywhere," he said. Adam Lisberg, director of corporate communications at DJI. "In the same way that you hope to allow researchers to access the properties they need to find that child." The Matrix 200 series is optimized for search and rescue missions, tested for resistance to wind and rain and capable of carrying payloads of food or radios. In rescue missions, says Lisberg, drones could investigate specific areas, using live long-range cameras and thermal imaging to detect survivors or missing children without spending the day's work. to launch a comprehensive search. "These drones will gain popularity," said Steve Tuttle, vice president of strategic communications for Axon, in Gizmodo. "They are expanding, going to be used for more evidence of crime scenes, for more search rescues, [and are] will be used to check what are called deadly funnels." Deadly funnels are confined spaces, usually staircases or corridors, which trap the police without cover. In 2012, a man from Utah shot six members of a strike team, killing one. The prosecutor of the case said that he had the intention of "going out in a blaze of glory", hiding as the police cleaned the lower floors of his house, and then opened fire a once they entered a narrow hallway. Drones, for example the Phantom 4 Pro with its small size, object detection, and infrared systems, could spot dangerous areas ahead of the agents. "It's a safe way of seeing things." 19659010] Like many police technologies, there is no unifying national policy on drones. The way each department will actually use drones is not entirely clear. The FAA requires certifications and other restrictions (driving near prisons or airports is prohibited, for example) but does not offer specific guidance on most uses of the police. Without this clear legal framework, police drone policies vary considerably from one agency to another. "We do not have a good system for the police to share best practices.It's still an old-fashioned word-of-mouth [system]," he said. Jim Gizmodo Jim Bueermann, AI / Ethics Committee Member and President of the Police Foundation, who released the 2016 report. "What suppliers can do, because they know a lot about products and because they interact with so many agencies, they are a wonderful source of best practice, it is difficult to get multiple lessons from multiple police departments at the same time, these providers serve as de facto centers of knowledge of best practices. " Axon and DJI do not take a specific political stance, although both encourage police work with communities to form their own bylaws, which creates recommendations and best practices but not enforced, leaving an opening for wildly flickering uses. In Kentucky, municipal authorities proposed to use drones in coordination with bullet-sensing technology. Under the system proposed in a federal grant application, if the acoustic monitoring devices detected the sound of the shots, they recorded their location and sent the coordinates to the drones. The proposal came in response to a long-standing problem: people in high-crime areas do not call 911 when they hear gunshots. Drones could theoretically capture evidence of suspects and witnesses, but send drones "build community trust," to borrow the expression of the police, if there is none? In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel supported a bill to monitor protesters. Protests may become violent, surely, but they are also an activity protected by the First Amendment. Monitoring drones could dissuade people from attending, for fear of being monitored by the government, especially if it is the government that they are protesting. In May, Oakland achieved what the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation regard as the strongest anti-surveillance regulations, requiring the approval of city council before they can. acquire new monitoring devices or even solicit funding. The order requires public hearings, invalidates many NDAs, offers whistleblower protections and limits the retention of data. It is there that the power of the devices framing is fully visible. The public may want drones because they are designed as security devices, but the police can use them as surveillance devices. "I think the technological space of the police is demanding regulation" Barry Friedman, director of the New York University Police Project. Law and another member of the board of directors of AI / Ethics, told Gizmodo. "If the providers and police departments do not start self-regulating, they will at some point, in the not-too-distant future, be regulated." Friedman has issued the badumption of a regulatory regime the party audits, self-regulation and specific use mandates, get permission from a judge if the police wanted to use drones for anything that came out of normal operations. He said, "I think it would be up to the police technology industry to do self-regulation, to think about the kinds of things that it would build, for example that it reinforces the responsibility in the case. " [19659003] An example is Axon's "buffer" function, which instantly records the last 30 seconds before a body camera is activated. The feature caught a Baltimore cop planting drugs that he then turned on his camera to "discover" and use as evidence. The same characteristic led several police officers to film themselves involuntarily during police misconduct. Integrated accountability is not perfect, though. Last year, the body's cameras did not record the death of Justine Damond, shot by police in Minneapolis. State policy required agents to turn on their camera during investigations. They do not have it. With the "Axon Signal" device purchased by the Minnesota Police, the body cameras can be configured to automatically turn on at the same time as the camera cameras or open the car doors. The feature was not activated and the images of the death of Damond, or the actions taken by the officers who responded, have never been recorded. Technology and politics can be extremely useful, but not foolproof, in terms of the misuse of agents, a point that some critics believe is neglected. Hamid Khan, campaign coordinator for the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, says agencies have long used anomalies to obscure averages. Khan argues that while the terms of the debate on public drones articulate around more uses of rescue and prevention, agencies will always leave the door open for more troubling uses, even though the politics originally prohibited . You have to see not only this unique tool, but also how it integrates into larger architectures monitoring and information gathering. Rather than watching these technologies individually, it's best to watch them in tandem, especially The goal of Evidence.com is to collect images from different sources: CCTV, body cameras, even drones mobile phone videos submitted by the public. Useful during the reconstruction of a traffic accident, but deeply worrying if it is used during events. Without firm laws preventing "mission drift," where the technology is used for reasons other than those provided for, Khan is concerned that agents are setting the conditions themselves. "Drones mean what is the" creeping mission, "says Khan. A report published in 2017 by Stop LAPD Spying draws a parallel between the use of drones and LAPD use of helicopters and SWAT teams. As the report states, in both cases police mechanisms are introduced for use in "limited circumstances", but they have finally become routine. SWAT, the report notes, was originally delineated for specific cases of riots in 1967, but is now used to serve warrants and search for drugs. The helicopters, introduced in 1956, were intended for traffic control, but are now used to track fugitive suspects and monitor cities from above. A study conducted in May by the Bard Drone Study Center found that twice as many organizations, including firefighters and lifeguards, possessed drones as piloted aircraft. The report estimates that 68% of these drones were provided by DJI. If drones offer improved capabilities to the police, Khan explains, until when will these extraordinary improvements be normalized? Through Evidence.com, agents have access to advanced search and editing tools, aided by computer vision and object detection, which allows them to easily locate tiny details. What does it mean when they can do it from a mile in the air? "A responsible sole proprietorship will not be enough to solve the problem of the ethical / legal use of police technology facing various technology providers with different ethical standards, sometimes too permissive local policies , and "Miles Brundage, another board member and researcher in AI policy at the University of Oxford, told Gizmodo by e-mail. Although Axon himself can not regulate all police drones, Mr. Brundage said, they can develop best internal practices, which would influence self-regulation throughout the industry and could possibly to be counteract the most alarming uses. "The board has already discussed the internal controls used to ensure the privacy and integrity of body camera data, and related discussions will need to be conducted for data related to drones," said M Brundage. Liability issues remain unresolved with body cameras. In Baltimore, police officers sadly manipulated body images to encourage a safe flight, filming themselves "discovering" thousands of dollars in cash while they had already found and pocketed half of the money before pressing on their cameras. A report published in 2017 by the non-profit political magazine Upturn revealed that police services are making it harder and harder for the public or the media to see body images, thus undermining their original purpose as an organization. accountability tools. Forty percent of all body camera images are never seen by the public. Who can see images of drones? Who makes sure that it tells the whole story? And who is held responsible when one or the other fails? "We are the company that makes the drones," Lisberg told DJI. "We would certainly advise law enforcement agencies to develop a firm policy on how they will use drones and the data they collect, but that's not really our role." to suggest them. " The public knows better than to ask the police to control themselves. Technology companies claim to be concerned about public safety, but the responsibility of the police is also a public safety issue. And yet, tech companies continue to increase police powers without having firm and direct enforcement goals. Activists were hoping for quick fixes provided the policy coverage for the body's cameras, but turned on after misuse. Fortunately, absurdly lavish vacation videos will not provide the same coverage for drones, before striking abuse arises. Otherwise, our rights could disappear over our heads. Can regulation help?
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