The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday.
“If a caller states there’s a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party,” Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, said at a press conference.
The plan drew immediate backlash from privacy and civil liberties advocates, raising questions about whether such drone use violated existing laws for police surveillance.
“It’s a troubling announcement and it flies in the face of the POST Act,” said Daniel Schwarz, a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to a 2020 city law that requires the NYPD to disclose its surveillance tactics. “Deploying drones in this way is a sci-fi inspired scenario.”
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Is it illegal to have house parties in NYC? Why is the NYPD busting up keggers like campus police?
It becomes illegal when there are too many people there, or there is violence, underage drinking, drug usage, and if it’s too loud, the attendees are parking in the street blocking traffic, fire risks all sorts of shit
They are not responding to complains, they are searching themselves.
EDIT: my eyes. They are responding. Still very wierd. Crowd itself is not a crime, article 20 of DoHR says so.
The article specifically says in response to complaints…
It will be construed as, they can start indefinite surveillance on an area after a complaint is filed at any time.
“Someone complained 3 weeks ago so we’re just checking it out”
As does the first amendment of the Constitution of the United States.
Those sound like things they need a warrant to learn about in a place with a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Are they doing this in white, affluent communities?
We should try to make them
It is illegal to have to many people at your own home? That’s a new one.
Only in the context of like, fire safety. You can’t have more people in a building than it is designed to safely hold.
Of course, cops use this safety regulation as an excuse to control people and be dicks…
Country of freedom my ass.
Nyc’s greatest act was convincing everyone they’re a liberal city.
Freedom isn’t free. And the price tag has been increasing so fast
That’s all stuff people can call the cops for, no need for surveillance.
So you didn’t read the article?
They say ‘if a caller reports a large crowd, they’ll send a drone’, not ‘if a crime is reported’. That’s still surveillance, being in a large crowd isn’t a crime by itself.
It was an incomplete article that did not properly explain what the supposed legitimate issue is.
So the cops and fuck with your backyard party if you smoke a joint?
Joint? Nah, hard drugs, fo sho (unless you are a billionaire).
What a waste of time and resources.
How they will distinguish cigaretes, joints and hard drugs?
Skin color
How would a drone know? Other than capacity and street violations, there’s nothing that a drone should realistically be able to identify.
I think the drone operators would do the identifying part
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no, as grass is legal in nyc now, but if you’re blowing lines and smoking crack, trippin balls, or tweakin, they probably should, you know, for the kids in the neighborhood you nincompoop
Stfu. No.
So people having fun is a problem for you lol
Ah, it wouldn’t be the police if they didn’t try to violate people’s rights before lawmakers can tell them no.
They shoud have to fire and not rehire half the police force every time this kind of thing haopens
We’d get to zero point zero remaining in a few minutes. So, I’m obviously in favor.
Oh no, not a large crowd on private property - this deservers police spying! /S
They totally won’t use this to perv on girls sunning themselves on their private property. They have already been busted multiple times perving on girls walking in midtown but they would never do anything like that again and again and again.
So I’ve installed and operated PTZ cameras for multiple television shows and events, sometimes with junior operators - or just production assistants or other crew. These are in places where people know cameras are present. I can guarantee it doesn’t take long for people at the camera control unit to learn they can zoom in on people’s phones on set or follow girls around - and these are all professional people.
Cops with a drone that can zoom in on people unwittingly, in their back yards?! Oh, they are certainly going to do shit like this, or worse - they’ll likely record for themselves.
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The US has a whole amendment to its constitution about it, and SCOTUS has been carving out exceptions at an accelerating pace, especially after the PATRIOT act.
But what is telling is how law enforcement can choose to implement technology without oversight or review, and it is up to the public to make an argument.
That said, I look forward to the method we develop to detect and neutralize or capture police drones, so we can ask to see a warrant.
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We still think the repeal of prohibition is embarrassing. But no, rather than actually tell us what rights we have, there are a lot of menial carve-outs. Law enforcement is allowed to do whatever they want until someone argues overreach in court at which point a judge might specify a new precedent (which stays in effect until the legislature passes a new law).
So, for instance, for a while if the police wanted to get you, they’d search your phone for anything incriminating, on the presumption that was like finding drug paraphernalia or something on your person. A court had to reconsider that a person’s entire lives are on their phone (including all violations of the CFAA, which everyone does), so peeking into someone’s phone without cause is fishing for crime.
Now, if you’re arrested, a warrant is required to search your phone (but in a lot of districts, they’ll search your phone first and get a warrant later if they find anything a DA might find interesting). A current SCOTUS ruling says we are not required to unlock our phone on command (by password) though if they hack into it, or borrow your biometrics to get in then that’s legit. iPhones 5 and before are easily crackable. After 6 might be secure from police but they routinely purchase state-of-the-art cracking software, and the public only gets to know when it comes out in a court case. So there’s an ongoing arms race between smartphone developers and law enforcement.
Maybe the tech industry should stop “moving fast and breaking things”.
This ties nicely to today’s video from Sophie From Mars on AI - Our Shiny New Robot King which gets into the Silicon Valley business philosophy which is all about moving fast and breaking things.
Flying the drone might be permissible under the open fields doctrine, but stopping people from assembly on their own private residential properties absolutely spits in the face of the “The right of the people peaceably to assemble” clause of the 1A.
Not open fields, plain view. It’s public airspace and what you can see from public you can record in public.
I doubt that would hold up in a court of law. The ability to record in public hinges on having no “reasonable expectation to privacy” while in public spaces. You DO have a reasonable right to privacy in the backyard of your own property, even if it’s visible from some public airspaces.
It’s new York so long as your neighbor could see into your yard so could they.
Does it include the number 2? That is the only important number.
This wouldn’t qualify as a search.
If it did qualify as a search, it probably wouldn’t be considered unreasonable because someone called the police to file a complaint.
You’re thinking of Germany. They have the privacy protections to keep people safe from government and corporate intrusion.
I’m not from US - why is it forbidden to have a large group of people in the backyard?
As for the drones - just wow…I’m not from US - why is it forbidden to have a large group of people in the backyard?
It isn’t.
But, you see, yes, all.
Any excuse to use surveillance cameras to spy on people will be used. It’s not forbidden to have a party, but the shithead cops want to spy on people anyway just in case they might catch them breaking some laws.
There is also a nationwide program being implemented to feed the video from private security cameras into police surveillance systems. It’s called FUSUS and they use equipment installed in private networks to upload the private security cameras’ video to the police surveillance systems. Lots of people are signing on to this horrific program - businesses, schools, churches, community centers, etc. The police can use it to track people with video surveillance without a warrant. Security cameras anywhere you go could be potentially tapped into by government authorities to monitor you. It’s already all over the USA and being rolled out in the UK now too.
Just as it is in the UK with their surveillance cameras everywhere, this is the future that George Orwell tried to warn us about.
It’s not forbidden. This is a huge overstep by the police but typical of American police, who are allowed to violate our civil rights with impunity.
Yeah this is nothing compared to shooting people.
It’s not forbidden.
Probably due to the lead up to 9/11
we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party
Still bitter that they were never invited to any parties in high school and college. Seriously though, they need to back the fuck up. We have an amendment that requires them to get a warrant to spy on us on our own property or in our own house. Civil liberties groups need to stop raising questions and sue the fuck out of the police, judges, Mayor, and legislature. I hope someone knocks those drones out of the air. This kind of shit is infuriating. And no this isn’t a sci-fi scenario, this is a clear and present dystopia.
Reading comments defending cops for launching drones to surveill people in their homes really boosts my morning faith in humanity.
Land of the not even slightly free.
what a crazy abuse of power and resources fuck the police
This all seems stupid.
If you have a party big and crazy enough to justify airborne surveillance, the police will be able to figure it out just by showing up at your door. No drones are needed.
That being said, NYC has been flying helicopters for decades, so really nothing new privacy wise other than the size of the aircraft and the fact that “drone” invokes fears that drive clicks.
Don’t forget scale. Significantly more practical to have a couple dozen drones than helicopters
They would not launch a helicopter to confirm a large scale party.
But even still, so they use a drone and they do confirm a large scale party, then what? They have to deploy the police to the house anyhow. Isn’t better to have police just out patrolling and visiting these complaints? Then at least they look like they are doing something for the community.
Drones can get closer without detection. Also there’s a limit to helicopter use since they cause noise pollution.
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Sorry what’s the problem with a party?
I think it is country what is wrong, where Declaration of Human Rights used as toilet paper.
See: article 20(relevant to topic) and article 3(irrelevant to topic)
I would guess that when people start calling the cops to complain about an assembly, the assembly is no longer considered peaceful.
It doesn’t work this way. At least normally.
If you’re too loud, the cops may issue a citation, and ask you to be quieter. They do not typically dissolve the assembly.
the way folks in the city throw them, sometimes, there are more problems than party
Belive me, I agree that there are a lot of shitheads in the world that make it a crappy place to live.
But I still think this kind of surveillance is overreach. The people doing the surveilling are not good people either.
in a city whose physical geography is small in comparison to the enormity of humanity crammed into it, everyone’s gotta behave or people die. simple as that. say what you like, but the communities must be policed, and if police can’t see what you’re doing if there’s a problem or emergency, from the street, then air it is
Might as well preemptively lock everyone in a cell. That’d be the safest way to do it.
For people wanting to take down drones, I think a directed energy weapon would work. It uses a beam high frequency radio waves or microwaves to disable electronics. Since there’s no projectile, it would be easier to use without getting caught.
The inverse square law will ensure that anything you have that’s powerful enough to disable a drone in flight will be at least the size of a semi truck.
Electromagnetic radiation is great for communication, not so much energy transfer.
There are already effective “guns” for jamming drones that are the size of a large rifle.
We can shape EM “beams” – lasers, directional antennas, etc. Inverse square law is far less of a concern for collimated beams.
Yeah my initial response to the dispersal problem is to see if we can’t weaponize Pringles can WiFi into something that can either physically disable the electronics or interrupt communication between the spybot and home base.
Inb4 someone gets charged with assaulting an officer for being impolite to an NYPD robot
I miss the early 2000s WokFi craze – wifi and cheap off-the-shelf solutions are so widespread these days.
I used to “borrow” internet from the library that was 2 miles away. I waterproofed a USB wifi dongle and zip tied it to the feedhorn of an old Direct TV dish. I brought the setup anytime we had a LAN party at a house that didn’t have broadband internet.
The military already uses such devices. They look like bulky sci-fi rifles and are quite man-portable. They aren’t frying the drone, they just need to send a signal stronger than its control signal so the inverse square law works in its favor.
Are they legal in the US?
As long as you don’t use them, sure. They are composed of basic parts, just well adjusted to the purpose. But if you do decide do use them, be aware that you cannot interfere with any radio communications in any way and/or destroy someone’s property. Which does not mean I am against shooting down someone’s drone on your property that is spying you, it’s just not really legal per se.
Unless someone would stumble upon a combination of microwave magnetron that “just so happens” to fit a satellite dish LNC mount. I can neither confirm nor deny that such combinations might exist.
It certainly would seem a very good way to impart… “energy” into all and sundry besides the intended target, and as such horribly dangerous and irresponsible.
The inverse square law only applies to undirected things, because the surface area of a sphere is proportional to the square of radius. The parent specified directed, like a laser.
I have a dream of engineering a drone to hover while it engages an rf jammer for some set amount of time.
Then you will get the FAA and FCC involved.
Got it.
Easy fix. Take a picture of the ground, using a drone. Then get a big marquee and have that picture painted on the marquee.
Your party is now invisible.
Pervert cops hate this one simple trick.
easy
This was actually done for entire blocks during WWII, specifically in Southern California where aerospace design & mfg companies where located. The covers were painted to look like dirt lots or undeveloped spaces to hide the actual buildings & roads from potential aerial assaults.
Seems a great use of an anti drone gun
