Axios - Local law enforcement agencies are facing chronic staffing shortages amid pressures to reduce violent crime. AI-powered drones can do some police work — but using them raises new questions about surveillance and privacy,
Some 1,500 police and sheriff's departments were flying drones by late 2024 — a 150% jump since 2018, per Police1.com, a law enforcement news site. Drones cost a fraction of human-flown helicopters, and federal grants and state budgets are increasingly footing the bill for equipment and training.
Police deploy drones powered with AI and equipped with cameras and sensors, which means they can interpret footage and act on it.
- The technology is far more powerful than your standard human-operated drone. They're dispatched in response to 911 calls and act as a new kind of first-responder unit, assessing active shooter events or natural disasters and dropping off supplies and medicine.
It's unclear what police are doing with that data or what's happening to the data in the hands of private companies, Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Axios.
The ACLU Foundation of Northern California is going after Sonoma County in a lawsuit that's being closely monitored as a test case that could set limits of police drone use.
The suit was filed over allegations the county is using drones to collect images of residents' backyards, swimming pools and homes through windows without warrants.
- It claims that, after drone flights, residents have received citations about code violations and warnings about too many hemp plants on properties. Share this story.
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