Watching from on high: Civil rights groups worried as coronavirus pandemic leads police to use new technology.
Pandemic generates new policing style – and fears
“This is the Daytona Beach Police Department. We apologize for the inconvenience, but due to COVID-19, this park is currently closed.”
So says a drone with a loud speaker. The coronavirus pandemic has forced police departments in the U.S. and worldwide to fundamentally change the way they enforce laws. Police agencies are increasingly relying on flying contraptions to do what they have not had to do before: policing while socially distancing. In the past month, several law enforcement agencies unveiled drones that broadcast announcements at parks, beaches and homeless camps to enforce stay-at-home orders and social-distancing guidelines.
In Daytona Beach, Florida, officials say the drones can also be used during rescue operations, such as giving a drowning person a life preserver without physical contact.
“We started thinking about ways of how we can limit the ability to transmit (COVID-19),” said Messod Bendayan, spokesman for the Daytona Police Department. “Instead of risking an officer, we just fly the drone and have the drone speak a message. It keeps officers safe and keeps people safe.”
But civil rights groups have pushed back, saying the technology and some of its capabilities are invasive and pose constitutional dangers. Those include the ability to detect someone’s body temperature from a distance. To privacy advocates, this amounts to an indiscriminate warrantless search – obtaining the private health information of someone who did not give consent.
“People have a right to privacy,” said Caleb Kruckenberg, litigation counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. “You can’t just take their temperature without any reason. I think this is just an example of something that police departments have a tendency to do. Someone sells them on a new technology and they can come up with what they think is reason to use it and they use it, but they don’t necessarily think about how invasive it might be.”
New Civil Liberties Alliance, based in Washington, D.C., recently asked the Daytona Beach Police Department to stop using drones that detect body temperatures.
Bendayan said the main function of the drones is to police public places such as parks. He said officials are considering using drones to find out who may have fever, but they have not done so, and any plans to use the technology to measure people’s temperatures are limited only to those entering the police department lobby.
David Mcguire, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Connecticut, said the group is skeptical of local governments that are partnering with drone companies without information about what to do with the data being collected. Mcguire said because many of those with COVID-19 are asymptomatic, fever-detecting drones may not be effective in limiting the spread of the virus.