News that by 2013, the FAA expects to have formulated new rules that would allow police across the country to routinely fly lightweight UAS up to 400 feet above the ground – high enough for them to be largely invisible eyes in the sky – has sparked off fresh debates about the boundaries of privacy in the US media, lead by The Washington Post.
As of December 1st 2010, according to the FAA, there were more than 270 active authorisations for the use of dozens of kinds of UAS. Approximately 35 percent of these permissions are held by the Defense Department, 11 percent by NASA and 5 percent by the Department of Homeland Security, including permission to fly Predators on the northern and southern borders.
Other users are law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, as well as manufacturers and academic institutions. For now, only a handful of police departments and sheriff’s offices in the United States – including in Queen Anne’s County, Md., Miami-Dade County, Fla., and Mesa County, Colo. – fly UAS. They so do as part of pilot programmes that mostly limit their use to training exercises over unpopulated areas.
Among state and local agencies, the Texas Department of Public Safety has been the most active user of UAS for high-risk operations. The agency has run several operations, all near the southern border, where officers conducted surveillance of drug and human traffickers.
A consortium of police departments in the UK is developing plans to use UAS to monitor the roads, watch public events such as protests, and conduct covert urban surveillance, according to the Guardian newspaper. Senior British police officials would like the machines to be in the air in time for the 2012 Olympics in London.