Speaker 1: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Now,
Speaker 1: last week I spent a few days in Las Vegas
Speaker 1: for the Consumer Electronics Showcase. Most of the time of
Speaker 1: the convention, I was just walking around the show floor
Speaker 1: looking at various new types of surveillance equipment, AI products,
Speaker 1: and various other bullshit that was being pedled to many
Speaker 1: industry attendees of CEES. But I was also able to
Speaker 1: go to a few panels. Now, panels are really interesting
Speaker 1: because you get to hear people who are working inside
Speaker 1: industries talk about stuff that they don't usually really publicly
Speaker 1: talk about very much. And on the first day of
Speaker 1: the convention, I went to a panel about drone technology.
Speaker 1: Half of the panel was about how Walmart is launching
Speaker 1: new delivery drones in Dallas, Texas. The other half was
Speaker 1: about police drones. And that's what we're going to be
Speaker 1: talking about here today, how the police are using dr zones,
Speaker 1: why they're using drones, and how you can probably expect
Speaker 1: to be seeing a lot more drones up in the
Speaker 1: sky piloted by either an AI or a police officer.
Speaker 1: So let's get started. Cheula Vista is the southernmost kind
Speaker 1: of medium sized city in California with the population of
Speaker 1: two hundred and seventy eight thousand people. Cheulavista has a
Speaker 1: police force of two hundred and eighty nine sworn officers
Speaker 1: as well as one hundred and twenty civilian employees. On
Speaker 1: top of their nearly three hundred officers, they operate a
Speaker 1: drone fleet ten hours a day, seven days a week,
Speaker 1: launching high deff camera mounted drones from four locations throughout
Speaker 1: their small city. I'm going to quote from an article
Speaker 1: from the MIT Technology Review, which did a deep dive
Speaker 1: onto Cheullavista's police drones back in February of twenty twenty three. Quote.
Speaker 1: Cheulavista uses these drones to extend the power of its
Speaker 1: workforce in a number of ways. For example, if only
Speaker 1: one officer is available, when two calls come in, one
Speaker 1: for an armed suspect and another for shoplifting, an officer
Speaker 1: will respond to the first one. But now cvpd's public
Speaker 1: Information Officer, Sergeant Anthony Molina, says that dispatchers can send
Speaker 1: a drone to surreptitiously trail the suspected shoplifter. Quote, and
Speaker 1: this really gets at the heart of how these drones
Speaker 1: are going to get used. They exist to funnel more
Speaker 1: people into the criminal justice system. Instead of having to
Speaker 1: choose between two calls, one of which actually could relate
Speaker 1: to saving someone's life, the other just a petty crime.
Speaker 1: Now the police can easily follow someone doing a petty
Speaker 1: crime while responding to other calls and eventually catch up.
Speaker 1: It's a way to just expand the amount of people
Speaker 1: that can be arrested and thrown into jail. Nowadays, drones
Speaker 1: are pretty common tools for police. Over one thy five
Speaker 1: hundred departments currently use drones, usually for special occasions though,
Speaker 1: like search and rescue, crime scene documentation, protest surveillance, and
Speaker 1: sometimes tracking suspects. But at the moment, only about a
Speaker 1: dozen police departments regularly dispatched drones in response to nine
Speaker 1: to one one calls, the first of which was Chew
Speaker 1: La Vista PD, who launched their quote drone as first
Speaker 1: Responder program back in twenty eighteen. Would the goal of
Speaker 1: having an unmanned aerial system or drone be proactively deployed
Speaker 1: before an officer is on scene. Now we'll hear from
Speaker 1: Chief Roxanna Kennedy of the Cheu La Vista Police Department
Speaker 1: talking on the drone technology panel at CS We are.
Speaker 2: Seven miles from the Mexico border, and we are the
Speaker 2: second largest city in San Diego County. So we have
Speaker 2: about two hundred and ninety officers and we serve a
Speaker 2: community of about three hundred thousand. Because of the close
Speaker 2: proximity to the door, we have a lot of people
Speaker 2: that have traveled back and forth. We have a drone
Speaker 2: program that I'm awfully proud of. We are responding proactively
Speaker 2: to calls for service in our community, and so we
Speaker 2: have drone station from fortifuent locations throughout our city. We
Speaker 2: have pilots in command that are on the rooftop, and
Speaker 2: then we have a operation center where we have smart
Speaker 2: officers that are part one to seven pilots that fly
Speaker 2: the drones. So we are responding now to calls for
Speaker 2: service on average, and an officer on seeing a drone
Speaker 2: on scene that's sharing information with our officers light streaming
Speaker 2: that information on our cell phones or in our computers
Speaker 2: that we're siving information about the call within ninety seconds
Speaker 2: on average. And so what it's doing for us in
Speaker 2: sure Vista and for our community is we are providing
Speaker 2: information rapidly, real time information to officers so that they
Speaker 2: can make better decisions so that everyone goes home safely.
Speaker 2: We say, the community safer, the officers are safer, and
Speaker 2: the subjects that we encounter are safer, so we're offully
Speaker 2: proud of what we're doing.
Speaker 1: The way police are able to deploy drones used to
Speaker 1: be a lot more limited. The use of drones is
Speaker 1: regulated by the FFA, the Federal Aviation Administration. In most cases,
Speaker 1: the FFA requires that both hobbyists and police departments only
Speaker 1: fly drones within the operator's own line of sight. But
Speaker 1: starting back in twenty nineteen, agencies and vendors could start
Speaker 1: applying for a beyond visual line of sight or bev
Speaker 1: LOOSS waiver from the FFA to fly drones remotely, allowing
Speaker 1: for much longer flights in restricted airspace. Chula Vista Pedi
Speaker 1: was the first department to get a BEVLOST waiver. The
Speaker 1: MIT Tech Review estimated last year that roughly two hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty five more departments now have one as well.
Speaker 2: Another thing that I always talk about, because I think
Speaker 2: it's critical, is the concept of why we're using drones,
Speaker 2: what the benefit is to the community with the use
Speaker 2: of our drones, And I truly believe them. And my
Speaker 2: officers can pick up their cell phone before they even
Speaker 2: respond to the call, and they can look and see
Speaker 2: the scene, what's happening, where the individual is. If the
Speaker 2: person's facing in the middle of the park, there are
Speaker 2: no children around, and there are noo, there's nobody that's
Speaker 2: within the reach of this individual harmy, you might not
Speaker 2: have to rush into that scene so quickly officers can
Speaker 2: de escalate, make better decisions. And I mean, this is
Speaker 2: just a game changer for law enforcement. And right now,
Speaker 2: you know, we were the first agent agency to be
Speaker 2: involved in the integrated Pilot program with the FAA. We're
Speaker 2: very proud of that that they trusted us enough for
Speaker 2: us to be the organization that brought forward all these
Speaker 2: these ideas that are now being utilized in law enforcements. Now.
Speaker 1: I've watched a lot of videos of police talking about
Speaker 1: why they're using drones, of drone training companies talking about
Speaker 1: why police drones are so important. In one video on
Speaker 1: their website, this guy from Skyfire Consulting was talking about
Speaker 1: how how police may not have had to kill Tameror
Speaker 1: Rice if they simply had a drone watching beforehand so
Speaker 1: they could see that it was a toy gun, which
Speaker 1: is a ridiculous thing to say, because in the nine
Speaker 1: one call that jump started this entire police interaction, it
Speaker 1: was expressed that the caller thought the gun was probably
Speaker 1: a toy. And this notion that is simply if police
Speaker 1: have more ability to surveil, they'll be able to respond
Speaker 1: safer and apply less deadly force, I think is a
Speaker 1: pretty suspect premise. Now, the effectiveness of drone technology in
Speaker 1: law enforcement is challenging to verify and quantify. The MIT
Speaker 1: Tech review cannot find any third party studies showing that
Speaker 1: drones reduce crime, even after interviewing CVPD officers as well
Speaker 1: as drone vendors and researchers quote, nor could anyone provide
Speaker 1: statistics on how many additional arrests or convictions came from
Speaker 1: using drone technology. I was able to find some on
Speaker 1: cvpd's website talking about how many drone initiated interactions resulted
Speaker 1: in arrests, but quantifying additional arrests seems to be a
Speaker 1: little challenging. Now, if you look at Cheulavista PD's own
Speaker 1: drone response to stats, the vast majority of deployments I
Speaker 1: estimate around seventy percent are for what the director of
Speaker 1: investigations for the privacy rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Speaker 1: refers to as quote crimes of poverty unquote, which he
Speaker 1: believes will be the target of most drone policing as
Speaker 1: opposed to violent crime. Nearly thirty percent of Cheulavista's drone
Speaker 1: deployments are for what's categorized as disturbances. Almost fifteen percent
Speaker 1: are for psychological evaluations, ten percent are for quote, check
Speaker 1: the area and information, over seven percent are for welfare checks,
Speaker 1: six point five percent is for quote, unknown problem, and
Speaker 1: over six percent is for suspicious person and another six
Speaker 1: percent for traffic accidents. Now, some drone of deployments do
Speaker 1: result in patrol units not having to be dispatched, but
Speaker 1: CVPD also says that drones have assisted in thousands of arrests.
Speaker 1: And I'm really not sure if having a drone following
Speaker 1: someone around is the best thing for a fifty one
Speaker 1: to fifty psych evaluation. The presence of a police officer
Speaker 1: doesn't always make the situations better either, but I don't
Speaker 1: see having a drone be a really calming presence if
Speaker 1: you think someone needs mental help. Funding a whole fleet
Speaker 1: of heavy duty surveillance drones and paying dedicated operators costs money. Now,
Speaker 1: it's unclear to me how many drones to LEVISTAPD currently has,
Speaker 1: and on their website they list ten different drone models
Speaker 1: currently being in their fleet, most of them really expensive
Speaker 1: DGI drones like the DGI Matrix, the DGI Inspire, the
Speaker 1: DGA Phantom, the dj Maverick, as well as drones from
Speaker 1: a few other random companies. But nevertheless, Chief Kennedy is
Speaker 1: very grateful for their local police Foundation for heading up
Speaker 1: the funding for their DFR drone first Responder program. Let's
Speaker 1: hear from her.
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone here is in law enforcement,
Speaker 2: but many agencies use drunes and there are all different
Speaker 2: types of drones that are available. I call them reactive
Speaker 2: drums or ones that are like the tactical drunes that
Speaker 2: you can use to go in on a hostage situation
Speaker 2: or a missing person to check in the canyon areas,
Speaker 2: or you know, interior drones. We have drums that go
Speaker 2: underneath bands, go inside addicts, all types of different drones,
Speaker 2: and many organizations have drones like that, But a DFR
Speaker 2: drone is very unique and different because these drones are flying.
Speaker 2: As you can imagine, eighteen thousand missions, it puts a
Speaker 2: lot of wear and tear on But that is one
Speaker 2: of the biggest challenges beyond the fact of funding. So
Speaker 2: we don't have huge budgets that are allotted for drone programs,
Speaker 2: and so we've had to be very, very creative in
Speaker 2: our police department, and we were very blessed to have
Speaker 2: a police Foundation that has taken on the responsibility to
Speaker 2: help us really start our drone program and continue going forward.
Speaker 2: So funding is always going to be a challenge and
Speaker 2: dependent upon the drone that you use. There are some
Speaker 2: drones that you can't get any as you can't use
Speaker 2: for assets seizure funding, nor can you get grants for
Speaker 2: because sometimes when it comes to foreign drones there are
Speaker 2: many challenges as well. So you have to think of
Speaker 2: that and then we deal with legislation. Right now, that's
Speaker 2: the new challenge that we all have. We have to
Speaker 2: fite some bals. Like I said, I'm agnostic. I want
Speaker 2: to use what's the best drum out there and protect
Speaker 2: the information and we do that with encrypted software programs
Speaker 2: that are on private servers. But you'll see that there's
Speaker 2: a lot of discussion about drones and what drones we
Speaker 2: should be using right now.
Speaker 1: We'll get back to the chief's offhanded mention of legal
Speaker 1: battles in a bit here, but Chula Vista's budgetary situation
Speaker 1: may not be as dire as the Chief makes it
Speaker 1: out to be, on top of their current fifty five
Speaker 1: million dollar operating budget. Back in twenty twenty, the Loprenza
Speaker 1: newspaper revealed that departments in San Diego County had secretly
Speaker 1: been getting hundreds of millions of dollars in high tech
Speaker 1: police equipment, including armored vehicles, facial recognition and phone breaking software,
Speaker 1: license plate readers, drones, riot gear, among other miscellaneous technology,
Speaker 1: as a part of a DHS grant program. Due to
Speaker 1: their close proximity to the US Mexico border, Cheula Vista
Speaker 1: was one such department, and as of twenty twenty, so
Speaker 1: four years ago, they had already received over one million
Speaker 1: dollars in grant funds from this DHS program, titled the
Speaker 1: quote Urban Area Security Initiative. Considering Chief Kennedy's budgetary concerns,
Speaker 1: drones actually have a lot of upsides financially, as they
Speaker 1: are often a lot cheaper than alternative surveillance methods, as
Speaker 1: well as being relatively easy to deploy remotely, either with
Speaker 1: a joystick or just by clicking a point on a
Speaker 1: map from a comfy office building. Issues around this ease
Speaker 1: of use was pointed out by Dave Moss, the director
Speaker 1: of investigations for the privacy rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
Speaker 1: who was quoted in the MIT article saying, quote, up
Speaker 1: until the last like five to ten years, there was
Speaker 1: this unspoken check and balance on law enforcement power money.
Speaker 1: You cannot have a police officer standing on every corner
Speaker 1: of every street. You can't have a helicopter flying twenty
Speaker 1: four seven because of fuel and insurance is really expensive.
Speaker 1: But with all these new technologies, we don't have that
Speaker 1: check and balance anymore. That's just going to result in
Speaker 1: more people being pulled through the criminal justice system.
Speaker 2: My officers constantly are on the air now is U
Speaker 2: as one available? Is US one available? Because it's giving
Speaker 2: them more information. Think about the fact that you can
Speaker 2: look at your cell phone. I could be anywhere in
Speaker 2: the world and I can look at kit lets me
Speaker 2: know whenever there's a drone flock, and I can walk.
Speaker 2: I can have visual awareness, aial overlay of what's happening
Speaker 2: in my community, no matter where I am.
Speaker 1: Advancements in technology are leading to further normalization of police surveillance.
Speaker 1: Ten years ago, would people react to news of a
Speaker 1: twenty four hour police drone program the same way they
Speaker 1: would now. What was once the threat of big Brother
Speaker 1: has since become a very sought after, unfetishized nanny state.
Speaker 1: In the v for Veneta graphic novel, anarchist writer Alan
Speaker 1: Moore imagined a fascist Britain characterized by surveillance cameras around
Speaker 1: every corner, and now cities around the country are setting
Speaker 1: up their own street mounted cameras, linked to private security
Speaker 1: cameras and ring doorbell cameras to create a network of
Speaker 1: life coverage around a whole city which is instantly accessible
Speaker 1: to police. The more widespread consumer adoption of new technologies
Speaker 1: like small camera mounted drones and doorbell cameras, the more
Speaker 1: acceptable it seems for police to add such technology to
Speaker 1: their arsenal of surveillance tools. It almost becomes expected to
Speaker 1: LAVISTIPEDI has routinely declined to answer why their drones are
Speaker 1: always recording both to and from the scene, and the
Speaker 1: department has put in a lot of effort into managing
Speaker 1: the backlash against their expanding drone program.
Speaker 2: And I'll tell you one thing. Even some of the
Speaker 2: day after this, they were very concerned about drones in
Speaker 2: the sense of privacy. What are you doing with these drones?
Speaker 2: As you're responding, you're trying to gather data and information
Speaker 2: to spy on us, right, And we had to go
Speaker 2: to a lot of detail and explaining that as our
Speaker 2: drone lits off, it is immediately it is recording because
Speaker 2: that's the information gatherer for us. As that drone responds,
Speaker 2: the camera is already going almost three miles down the
Speaker 2: roads where the scene is and giving us vital information
Speaker 2: as the officers are responding. But one of the criticism was, well,
Speaker 2: on the way back, is your drone just going in
Speaker 2: my backyard? What if we're spoking marijuana in our backyard?
Speaker 2: And I said, you're in California, it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2: But what we let that way go, right, But we said, okay,
Speaker 2: we gave your concern. And so what we did was
Speaker 2: we worked with the software company that we were with,
Speaker 2: and they created an automatic so that as a drone returns,
Speaker 2: it automatically tilts to the horizon. So we're not recording anything.
Speaker 2: If another call came out, we can immediately we'll go
Speaker 2: back a flight mapping for us and it will share
Speaker 2: that information later on. But the goal is to listen
Speaker 2: to your community as well.
Speaker 1: Chief Kennedy's claim here is difficult to back up because
Speaker 1: CVPD have refused to show the public any of the
Speaker 1: drone footage they routinely collect. But if we take the
Speaker 1: Chief at her word here anyway, she admits that the
Speaker 1: drone goes back to recording at street level as soon
Speaker 1: as there's another nine one one call, as they record
Speaker 1: everything on the way to a scene. And the way
Speaker 1: she phrases this whole tilt feature is quite misleading because
Speaker 1: the camera never actually stops recording. She just claims that
Speaker 1: it tilts slightly upwards in between nine one one calls,
Speaker 1: but it's still capturing footage up to three miles away
Speaker 1: the entire time it's in the air. Police in Cheulavista
Speaker 1: have flown over eighteen thousand missions with their drowns. That's
Speaker 1: a lot of footage. When talking about the privacy concerns
Speaker 1: had by some residents of Cheulavista, Chief Kennedy really emphasized
Speaker 1: how much her in the department really care about listening
Speaker 1: to community feedback and how data transparency is so important
Speaker 1: to CVPD.
Speaker 2: Community engagement is essential, especially in law enforcement because there
Speaker 2: is there are so many challenges when it comes to
Speaker 2: misinformation that's out there, and whenever you're a part of
Speaker 2: what's deemed as a government, everyone thinks that you have
Speaker 2: some ulterior motive when you're involved with any type of technology,
Speaker 2: and so we have worked really hard to build very
Speaker 2: strong relationships with every aspect of our community. So it
Speaker 2: was about in twenty fifteen when we started talking about
Speaker 2: the concept and the possibility of drones and a laugh
Speaker 2: with Chancel, said George Jensen, because that's my story that
Speaker 2: I used to and I love it because I made
Speaker 2: fun of my guys when they said that we want
Speaker 2: to fly drunes. I said, oh, come on, now, what
Speaker 2: are we in me? George jetson blind the cars, and
Speaker 2: then I saw today they talked about a blind car.
Speaker 2: So it happens. It happens, right, And so with the community,
Speaker 2: we started having these conversations. We created a working group,
Speaker 2: we started doing community forums. We started asking the community
Speaker 2: about what would you think if we were able to
Speaker 2: do something like this. We even went to some of
Speaker 2: the organizations that may not always be so supportive of
Speaker 2: these types of groups. We worked with the ASL you
Speaker 2: and asked for their input on our policy. So before
Speaker 2: we ever flew a drune, we call it the krawl
Speaker 2: walk run base. We're still at the very end of crawl.
Speaker 2: We're not into lock yet and we've been doing it
Speaker 2: again also for five years. So you have to make
Speaker 2: certain that you're transparent and we provided all types of
Speaker 2: information that are available. If you go to all you
Speaker 2: have put in is jobs to place drums and it'll
Speaker 2: come up with us and you can look at all
Speaker 2: the things that we do, all the information that we share,
Speaker 2: the flight maps that we share. I mean, it's just
Speaker 2: super important to have those community forums. Every year. We
Speaker 2: do a community forum twice a year where we ask
Speaker 2: for from our community.
Speaker 1: Later on in the panel, Chief Kennedy said that CVPD
Speaker 1: is quote unquote extremely transparent about their flight data and
Speaker 1: quote unquote have nothing to hide relating to their use
Speaker 1: of surveillance drones, which is a curious claim considering the
Speaker 1: fact that CVPD has historically kept all drone footage hidden
Speaker 1: from the public and has fought in court to do so,
Speaker 1: despite the chief's emphasis on the police's commitment to transparency
Speaker 1: and the importance of listening to community feedback, even going
Speaker 1: as far as to consult the ACLU when developing their
Speaker 1: drone program. For years now, the Cheulvista Police Department has
Speaker 1: denied all FOYA and public records requests for any drone footage.
Speaker 1: In response, are Turno Castanares, a Teu Livista resident and
Speaker 1: owner of the local bilingual newspaper Loprenza, filed a lawsuit
Speaker 1: against the city. CVPD argued that all drone footage should
Speaker 1: be categorically exempt from the public records requests on the
Speaker 1: basis that the footage could be used for a future investigation.
Speaker 1: Just last December, only a few weeks before Cees, the
Speaker 1: California Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that this blanket
Speaker 1: exemption is invalid and that not all drone first responder
Speaker 1: footage could be classified as part of appending or ongoing
Speaker 1: criminal investigation, pointing to examples such as nine oh one
Speaker 1: calls about a roaming mountain lion or a stranded motorist.
Speaker 1: And police were not happy about this ruling. I'll talk
Speaker 1: about their reaction at the end of the episode, but
Speaker 1: controlling the narrative about the drone first Responder program has
Speaker 1: been of the utmost importance to Trulavista Police. As the
Speaker 1: chief herself expressed at the panel, feel good about telling
Speaker 1: our story.
Speaker 2: If you don't tell your own story in law enforcement,
Speaker 2: other people will tell it for it and it might
Speaker 2: not be the right story. So we've gotten really good
Speaker 2: at sharing on our social media and through YouTube channels
Speaker 2: and everything success stories of what we're doing.
Speaker 1: That is quite the claim there, to paraphrase the Electronic
Speaker 1: Frontier Foundation. Without public access to their drone footage, it
Speaker 1: makes it very difficult to assess how much privacy you
Speaker 1: have in Cheula Vista and whether police are even following
Speaker 1: their own rules about when and whether they record sensitive
Speaker 1: places like people's homes, backyards, or public protests. And that's
Speaker 1: why this recent ruling and the legal precedent it sets
Speaker 1: is a huge win for actual transparency and marks the
Speaker 1: first step towards the public finally getting a look at
Speaker 1: how these drones are being used in Scheula Vista. With
Speaker 1: drone first responder programs is spreading to police departments across
Speaker 1: the country, modeled after the one in Chula Vesta. Combined
Speaker 1: with the increasing presence of stationary street level cameras, the
Speaker 1: ability for police to be watching everywhere without the need
Speaker 1: for on the ground officers creates what the eff refers
Speaker 1: to as quote, a fundamental change in strategy with police
Speaker 1: responding to a much much larger number of situations with drones,
Speaker 1: resulting in pervasive, if not persistent, surveillance of communities unquote.
Speaker 1: Speaking of persistent surveillance, near the end of the panel,
Speaker 1: the chief announced that to Lavesta, PD is planning to
Speaker 1: expand their ten hour a day drone first responder program
Speaker 1: to a constant twenty four hour a day drone surveillance program,
Speaker 1: more than doubling the department's capaccy need to have eyes
Speaker 1: in the sky would mean a lot more work hours
Speaker 1: for drone operators, as well as a large increase in
Speaker 1: the amount of video files being stored indefinitely, But Chief
Speaker 1: Kennedy claimed that they're looking into offsetting costs by replacing
Speaker 1: some of the drone piloting team with AI assisted piloting
Speaker 1: and autonomous devices.
Speaker 2: You've clearly been a leader with thrones's first responder and technology.
Speaker 2: Looking forward, what is the future hole for the Department.
Speaker 2: I assume you're spending a lot of time telling others
Speaker 2: about the program edition using drones, but beyond that, what's
Speaker 2: it at Well, my hope is that we'll be moving
Speaker 2: towards twenty four hour operations. Right now, we're from sunrise
Speaker 2: to sunset. We go till close to ten o'clock at night,
Speaker 2: which goes a little bit beyond that. And then one
Speaker 2: of the challenges, and I know you're only getting like
Speaker 2: a little piece of the information about exactly how we're
Speaker 2: doing this, but from the four different locations that we
Speaker 2: fly on each of the rooftops, we have what's called
Speaker 2: piloting command, and that piloting command is contracted through a
Speaker 2: company and we and they just have visual awareness of
Speaker 2: the sky and they work in coordination with our drone
Speaker 2: pilot that's inside our operations center. But that's a huge
Speaker 2: expense for us to pay lead for each site. Right now,
Speaker 2: with the operations that we have, we paint about one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars per year, So that's four hundred thousand
Speaker 2: dollars for four locations. Beyond all the other proces associating
Speaker 2: and so if you get expensive, my hope is that
Speaker 2: and we keep hearing about it. We've seen some of
Speaker 2: the testing and we've been testing it as well in
Speaker 2: our area. Are what's called drone in the box or
Speaker 2: there's some of the systems that are out there right
Speaker 2: now that organizations are using that are autonomous, and so
Speaker 2: we're getting there, but we're not quite there because it's
Speaker 2: very different when you're dealing with flying over people and
Speaker 2: you're flying into areas where the drone was to drop
Speaker 2: out of the sky and harkey a community. That could
Speaker 2: create tremendous challenges for a silver Barry. As I mentioned
Speaker 2: the crawl things.
Speaker 1: So to explain how these AI autonomous drones would work,
Speaker 1: It's essentially this box about the size of a truck
Speaker 1: bed that can either be mounted in like a police
Speaker 1: pickup truck or be stored on various rooftops around the city,
Speaker 1: and someone just needs to point at a place on
Speaker 1: a map and the drone will fly in pilot itself
Speaker 1: around obstacles and basically circle around an area to do
Speaker 1: surveillance and you can call it back when you're done.
Speaker 1: This would require a whole bunch of drones to just
Speaker 1: be launching and being piloted by themselves. You wouldn't have
Speaker 1: to train random police officers to become FAA licensed pilots,
Speaker 1: and you could just have the whole thing in the box,
Speaker 1: like it's called drone in the box. And these are
Speaker 1: only going to become more common and cheaper. Imagine having
Speaker 1: ten of these throw out a city, launching from like
Speaker 1: ten different rooftops, being able to fly around by themselves,
Speaker 1: constantly going around in communities, constantly going to GPS coordinates
Speaker 1: linked to the nine one one calls, creating a whole
Speaker 1: wealth of footage instantly available to police, live streamed from
Speaker 1: the air. Matt Sloane, the founder of Skyfire Consulting, a
Speaker 1: company here in Atlanta that trains law enforcement agencies on
Speaker 1: the use of drones and DFR programs, thinks that we'll
Speaker 1: start seeing autonomous deployment of police drones within the next
Speaker 1: year or two, as police budgets increase and become allocated
Speaker 1: for unmanned aerial systems. He referred to the state of
Speaker 1: drone use by police as quote rapidly escalating. Chula Vista
Speaker 1: likes to market itself as a pioneer of this smart
Speaker 1: city movement, which consequently makes them able to receive a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of grant funding. Now, the idea of the
Speaker 1: smart city is built around having a massive amount of
Speaker 1: data to automate certain city services. So for this idea
Speaker 1: to work, there needs to be a way to collect
Speaker 1: that data, and these drones are a major part of that.
Speaker 1: The website for the City of Tula Vista also lists
Speaker 1: projects like electronic transportation, adaptive traffic signals in app for
Speaker 1: non emergency city services, as well as quote crime mapping
Speaker 1: and police dispatch modernization unquote as also being smart city initiatives.
Speaker 2: We have what's called by nine one one one and
Speaker 2: that allows my officers to hear incoming nine more one
Speaker 2: calls before dispatchally even puts it into the system. They
Speaker 2: can hear what's going on there, and that is tremendously
Speaker 2: in valuable to them. We have so many different layers
Speaker 2: of technology that have really showcase the value.
Speaker 1: Live nine one one is a new piece of software
Speaker 1: that allows patrol officers to listen to live stream to
Speaker 1: nine one one calls directly and pinpoints the location of
Speaker 1: the caller via GPS. Now, I don't even have time
Speaker 1: to get into the many reasons that this could be
Speaker 1: a bad idea, but simply but police do not need
Speaker 1: to respond to every call that goes into nine one one,
Speaker 1: let alone be giving random cops this ability to self
Speaker 1: dispatch on their own. It just seems like that could
Speaker 1: have many, many consequences. But anyway, back to drones. According
Speaker 1: to a twenty twenty article in the newspaper Loprenza, cities
Speaker 1: in San Diego County like Chula Vista have received equipment
Speaker 1: such as tethered drones used for stationary surveillance, poll cameras,
Speaker 1: license plate readers, and cell phone cracking technology used to
Speaker 1: circumvent passwords from the Urban Area Security Initiative DHS grant program.
Speaker 1: A lot of these technologies have use in the Smart
Speaker 1: City Idyllic plan for data collection to automate city services.
Speaker 1: After the drone panel was over and I was walking
Speaker 1: around the show floor at CEES, I couldn't help but
Speaker 1: notice all of the smart cameras and AI image recognition
Speaker 1: systems being advertised for law enforcement applications. Software that can
Speaker 1: almost instantaneously scan through a wealth of footage and track
Speaker 1: people's movements, run facial recognition, and identify every article of clothing.
Speaker 1: Versions of this type of software are already in use
Speaker 1: by many police departments, and they will only get better, cheaper,
Speaker 1: and more common. In effect, what this does is remove
Speaker 1: a lot of the detective legwork. Instead of having to
Speaker 1: manually map someone's movements and track down what niche etsy
Speaker 1: shirt someone's wearing, these aisystems can now do this all automatically.
Speaker 1: To quote the MIT Tech Review article on cvpd's dfr
Speaker 1: drone program, quote, As the technology continues to spread, privacy
Speaker 1: and civil liberty groups are raising the question of what
Speaker 1: happens when drones are combined with license plate readers, networks
Speaker 1: of fixed cameras, and new real time command centers that
Speaker 1: digest and sort through video evidence. This digital dragnet could
Speaker 1: dramatically expand surveillance capabilities and lead to even more police
Speaker 1: interactions demographics that have historically suffered from over policing. Unquote.
Speaker 1: Pedro Rios, a human rights advocate with the American Friends
Speaker 1: Service Committee and a member of Chula Vista's Community Tech Council,
Speaker 1: was quoted in the MIT article saying, quote, people in
Speaker 1: the community have no awareness of what images are captured,
Speaker 1: how the footage is retained, and who has access. It's
Speaker 1: a big red flag for a city that says it's
Speaker 1: at the forefront of the smart city movement.
Speaker 2: Unquote, these drawns, they're revolutionizing the world. You I mean
Speaker 2: people who are not taking drawn seriously right now, who
Speaker 2: will be left behind. We have flown eighteen one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty missions. You can go on a web page,
Speaker 2: you can see the flight dream. We're extremely transparent. We
Speaker 2: share all that with our community. We have no need
Speaker 2: to hide. We are in the business of saving wise
Speaker 2: and I believe drones are one of the best estories.
Speaker 2: She folds them.
Speaker 1: If they truly have nothing to hide and are extremely
Speaker 1: transparent about the use of their camera mounted drones, I
Speaker 1: wonder why they've spent years in court fighting to keep
Speaker 1: every second of drone footage from being seen by the public. Luckily,
Speaker 1: after Chief Kennedy talked for like thirty minutes about how
Speaker 1: much they care about community engagement and how transparent they
Speaker 1: are with their flight data, I was able to ask
Speaker 1: the Chief how their commitment to transparency relates to the
Speaker 1: recent lawsuit she just lost over hiding drone footage. And
Speaker 1: I also threw in a question about drones at protests.
Speaker 1: Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a question for the chief.
Speaker 3: So I know you talked about the importance of like
Speaker 3: listening to the community and community engagement. And I'm not
Speaker 3: sure this is the case for your department, but other
Speaker 3: departments who've kind of followed suit, for your example, have
Speaker 3: been using drones to surveil first time in activity stuff.
Speaker 3: And i know you recently lost a court case regarding
Speaker 3: the availability of drone footage, so I'm curious about kind
Speaker 3: of what the rationale for that footage is and how
Speaker 3: that plays into this idea of trying to be transparent
Speaker 3: with the community for how these drones are being used.
Speaker 2: That's going to be going to be a little bit
Speaker 2: difficult for me to answer because the court case is
Speaker 2: still moving forward. It's an active case. If you read it,
Speaker 2: we didn't lose the case. It was recommended to go
Speaker 2: to a lower core to go back for some clarification
Speaker 2: under three categories.
Speaker 1: Now this is either a straight upply or a huge
Speaker 1: cope and a gross mischaracterization. But more on that in
Speaker 1: a sec I think.
Speaker 2: It's really important. As I mentioned, there are ethics involved
Speaker 2: in The ethical responsibility that you have as a law
Speaker 2: enforcement agency is super important. So how you utilize your
Speaker 2: drones and how you do outreach with your community is
Speaker 2: fundamentally important, and so we don't use our drones for
Speaker 2: if there was a protest, we would not use our
Speaker 2: drones if there was if it turned into a riot.
Speaker 2: So if people were out there and they have the
Speaker 2: ability to to speak freely, to share their concerns, and
Speaker 2: if it's in opposition, our goal is to make sure
Speaker 2: that we keep it safe for all parties involved on
Speaker 2: either side. So my hope is that other people look
Speaker 2: at it the same way that we do, and hopefully
Speaker 2: I've been able to answer it as much as I
Speaker 2: leave me. I'm dying to give you more than I can't. Okay,
Speaker 2: thank you for those questions. Folks were out of time.
Speaker 2: Maybe there could be questions after the session.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there were no more questions after mine. I
Speaker 1: kind of shut down that possibility anyway. Okay. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, the line between a protest and a riot
Speaker 1: is meaningless. Police can declare a riot for any reason
Speaker 1: they see fit, including people being in a road marching.
Speaker 1: I've seen this happen and times, nearly hundreds of times actually,
Speaker 1: So just moving on from that immediately, let's go back
Speaker 1: to the court case. The city of Cheulavista did lose
Speaker 1: the argument that they were trying to make. They did
Speaker 1: lose the case. The Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled
Speaker 1: that claiming exemption from the Public Records Act was unlawful
Speaker 1: and sent the case back to trial court to hammer
Speaker 1: the details of how much footage is subject to public
Speaker 1: disclosure and figure out a process for standardizing the release
Speaker 1: of the footage. Now. The same day I attended this
Speaker 1: panel in Las Vegas, January ninth, the city of Chula
Speaker 1: Vista requested an appeal to the California Supreme Court to
Speaker 1: prevent the release of their aerial video footage. There is
Speaker 1: a sixty day waiting period where the High Court will
Speaker 1: decide whether or not to take the case, and if
Speaker 1: they decline finally, it will go back to trial court
Speaker 1: to decide on the process of how selected drone footage
Speaker 1: shall be made publicly available. The police US are now
Speaker 1: currently claiming that making DFI footage adhere to the Public
Speaker 1: Records Act would violate the privacy of Chula Vista residents
Speaker 1: captured in the videos, which perhaps demonstrates that the aerial
Speaker 1: videos should have never been captured in the first place.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read a press release from the city's
Speaker 1: communication manager. Quote, the city declined to provide the copies
Speaker 1: because doing so might have violated individual privacy rights. The
Speaker 1: city would have to manually review and redact every video
Speaker 1: recording to protect information considered personal, such as the images
Speaker 1: of faces, license plates, backyards, and more unquote. So the
Speaker 1: city is both trying to argue that having to manually
Speaker 1: review each requested file to determine if the video in
Speaker 1: question is related to a pending investigation, as well as
Speaker 1: redacting personal information captured on camera, would be way too
Speaker 1: costly and time consuming. City officials claim that reviewing and
Speaker 1: redacting videos from one month to obscure faces, license plates,
Speaker 1: and backyards would take a full time employee around two
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty days. I'm going to read a little
Speaker 1: bit more from the city's recent statement.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 1: While the city takes very seriously its obligation to provide
Speaker 1: the public access to public records, the city is concerned
Speaker 1: that the Court of Appeal's opinion may compromise significant privacy
Speaker 1: concerns of members of the public in this case or
Speaker 1: in future requests unquote. Somehow, the city is missing the
Speaker 1: point that this is the very reason the drone footage
Speaker 1: is being requested. To learn the actual nature of this
Speaker 1: highly influential drone first responder program that's being adopted across
Speaker 1: the country. If the existence of this footage is such
Speaker 1: a massive privacy violation, that implies that the recording of
Speaker 1: said footage itself implicitly violates people's privacy, And the harder
Speaker 1: police fight to hide their sweeping collection of aerial footage
Speaker 1: wi all the more suspicious this entire program seems. So
Speaker 1: that is what I have to say about Chula Vista's
Speaker 1: drone first responder program. In about a month and a half,
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court of California will make their decision on
Speaker 1: whether or not they're going to hear this case. If
Speaker 1: they decline, then the president will be set statewide against
Speaker 1: this exemption of the Public Records Act by hiding drone footage.
Speaker 1: So that will be really cool, And then hopefully within
Speaker 1: the next year we'll finally be able to see what
Speaker 1: some of this footage actually looks like, how good their
Speaker 1: cameras are, how much they can zoom in all of
Speaker 1: the details of how much of the city they're capturing,
Speaker 1: all this kind of stuff, how often the drones are
Speaker 1: in the air, all of those types of things that
Speaker 1: it will be easier to highlight once we can actually
Speaker 1: take a look at the footage. And I assume that
Speaker 1: going through and releasing requested files for one month will
Speaker 1: probably end up not taking two hundred and thirty days.
Speaker 1: But I do know how the police love to love
Speaker 1: to stretch out these public records requests for as long
Speaker 1: as they can. As the request that this lawsuit stems from.
Speaker 1: It's all the way back to April of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: so hopefully, hopefully more than three years later, we'll finally
Speaker 1: get a look. Special thanks to Loprenza for starting this
Speaker 1: lawsuit and doing all of the hard work to actually
Speaker 1: force the police to be transparent. And if you want
Speaker 1: to read more, I'd recommend checking out their website to
Speaker 1: Loprensa dot org, as well as the MIT tech review piece,
Speaker 1: which provided some really really useful information to fill in
Speaker 1: the gaps between my own research. So yeah, thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to It could happen here. It certainly could
Speaker 1: happen here in terms of seeing more of these little
Speaker 1: fuckers flying around in the air. It could happen here
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