Agency working on code for drones amid privacy concerns

It's nearly three decades past the time in George Orwell's "1984" novel in which the all-knowing, television-monitor character, Big Brother, became the face of government surveillance and privacy invasion.

Now, with the Federal Aviation Administration trying to get its bureaucratic arms around the issue of privacy because of small unmanned aerial vehicles conducting police operations and larger UAVs sharing airspace with manned aircraft, a law enforcement group has suggested a code to deal with the Big Brother specter.

Less than a week after an FAA official said at last month's Las Vegas drone conference that the privacy issue was being discussed at "the highest levels of the government," the International Association of Chiefs of Police announced guidelines for using UAVs for public safety purposes while respecting citizens' privacy.

Officials for the association and the Metropolitan Police Department discussed the issue in recent interviews with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Privacy "is a big deal and should be a big deal," said Don Roby, chairman of the association's Aviation Committee.

"We're there to protect the Constitution, and it shouldn't be violated," said Roby, a captain with the Baltimore County Police Department in Maryland.

In announcing the guidelines' approval on Aug. 13, the Aviation Committee said Americans "live in a culture that is extremely sensitive to the idea of preventing unnecessary government intrusion into any facet of their lives."

"Personal rights are cherished and legally protected by the Constitution. Despite their proven effectiveness, concerns about privacy threaten to overshadow the benefits this technology promises to bring to public safety," according to the committee's three-page report on its recommended guidelines.

Among the benefits would be using a small drone, weighing less than 5 pounds, that could be carried in the trunk of a police cruiser to send back video images to a ground-station monitor for search-and-rescue missions.

Las Vegas police Air Support Commander Lt. Tom Monahan, who is in charge of search-and-rescue and canine operations, said such a drone would have been another tool that police could have used to find the body of William Mootz. The 17-year-old Green Valley High School senior drowned after falling into the fast-moving rapids of Pittman Wash after heavy rainstorms caused flash floods on Aug. 22. His body was found two days later.

Las Vegas police have no drones for search-and-rescue missions. The department has two HH-1H Huey helicopter "rescue ships" in addition to five other helicopters for police operations, plus a Cessna-182 airplane that is used for high-altitude surveillance. In all, 17 pilots who are rated for both helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft fly the fleet.

Helicopters carrying video equipment already present privacy issues, but Monahan pointed to existing precautions that citizens can take to ensure privacy from police patrols, such as block walls and window shades.

"Now there's a notion that low-flying, remotely piloted aircraft could peer in back windows," he said. "We need to be engaged on what their capabilities are. We do not have the capabilities to see through walls."

Nevertheless, helicopters in search of burglars over neighborhoods present privacy issues similar to those that residents would encounter with low-flying, orbiting drones.

"The difference is, if there is a helicopter orbiting over their house, they could hear it, whereas drones would be relatively silent. That might be a concern," Monahan said.

As law enforcement agencies evolve into the drone era, other issues surface. They include congested air space, in the case of the Las Vegas Valley, and training for operators.

More agencies and institutions began to explore use of small drones after the U.S. military proved their effectiveness in finding, tracking and killing enemy combatants in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Air Force MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers can fire missiles to knock out targets from miles away and thousands of feet in altitude while they are controlled, via satellite links from ground stations more than 7,500 miles away from battlefields, by pilots and sensor operators.

Reapers can fly higher and faster and carry more weapons than MQ-1 Predators. Both can track targets with high-tech video and infrared cameras, and both can fire laser-guided Hellfire missiles. But the Reaper can also be armed with 500-pound "smart bombs."

Mindful of those capabilities, the police chiefs association stressed that equipping drone aircraft, including small UAVs, "with weapons of any type is strongly discouraged."

While the FAA is developing regulations for small UAVs, it also is closing in on a mandate from Congress to designate six sites in the United States to demonstrate the compatibility of larger unmanned aircraft and manned aircraft flying simultaneously in national airspace.

From late 2006 through mid-2011, the FAA issued 62 Certificates of Authorization or waivers to operate UAVs. The list included a variety of entities in government and academia from the Air Force to Middle Tennessee State University to the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Roby, the police chiefs association Aviation Committee chairman, said use of small, battery-powered UAVs is in its infancy with two law enforcement agencies deploying them on a limited, pilot-program basis.

"The majority of the people want to use them for tactical SWAT operations to check backyards and get a bird's-eye view of fires and traffic accidents and for photographing crime scenes," he said.

The Mesa County Sheriff's Department in Colorado has been using a Draganflyer X6 UAV surveillance helicopter since 2009. It costs the department $3.36 an hour to operate the drone compared with $250 to $600 an hour for a manned aircraft, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, which sponsored last month's conference in Las Vegas.

In a news release Friday, the Unmanned Vehicle Systems group applauded the Airborne Law Enforcement Association, the FBI Law Enforcement Executive Development Association and the FBI National Academy Associates for endorsing the police chiefs' "code of conduct" for using UAVs.

The group said the Arlington Police Department in Texas has been testing a drone helicopter. The 58-inch-long, remote-controlled Leptron Avenger helicopter with high-tech, heat-sensing cameras can be used for search-and-rescue operations.

"This is the tip of the iceberg," Roby said. "There are new devices out there. Five years from now will look entirely different than from today."