It's a race to see which state will be the first to pass legislation governing domestic drone use. Coming out of the gate first was Florida, which passed a bill through several committees in the Senate back in January. This is notable since the Florida legislature didn鈥檛 officially convene until March 5鈥攖hey thought this issue was so important that they moved the bill during their committee organizing sessions. Then Montana pulled up from behind, passing two drones bills all the way through their Senate by mid-February. But, , sending two bills to their governor鈥檚 desk by the beginning of March, where they currently await signature.
Drone legislation has been proposed in at least 30 states so far. As part of my job working with 老澳门开奖结果 affiliates nationwide to analyze and respond to the various proposals, I have read every single one of these bills, and I thought it would be useful to summarize what we鈥檙e seeing in this legislation.
The good news is that the vast majority of the bills require a in order for law enforcement to use drones to collect information to use against someone in court. This list includes bills in , , , , , , , , , , , , New Hampshire, , , , , , , , , , and .
There are, of course, variations among these bills:
- Some ban weaponization of drones (Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and North Dakota).
- Some explicitly provide special protections from aerial surveillance for farmers or ranchers (rural states like Idaho and Missouri).
- Some require reporting on law enforcement agencies鈥� drone usage so the legislature can find out how drones work in practice. (That list includes , Illinois, , Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Washington).
- A subset of the bills also require law enforcement to justify to their city councils or other local governing body their need for a drone before acquiring one (California, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Rhode Island, , and Washington).
- Georgia鈥檚 bill allows drone use only to investigate felonies鈥攏ot misdemeanors.
Then there are the states that take a particularly high road when it comes to protecting privacy. Massachusetts and Rhode Island are the leaders here. Both states鈥� bills prohibit law enforcement from identifying anyone or anything other than the target that justified the warrant and drone deployment. And, they further ensure that wherever drones are used鈥攚hether in criminal investigations, searching for missing persons, fighting forest fires, or whatever鈥攊nformation that is incidentally collected cannot be used in court. This is very important. Unlike many traditional searches that can be narrowly tailored to collect information only on a particular target, drones can be equipped with a host of technologies that can suck in information on not just the target, but everyone else who happens to be nearby, or underneath the drone as it travels to the target area. Rhode Island鈥檚 bill requires that incidentally collected data be deleted within 24 hours, and we鈥檇 like to see others follow their lead.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts and North Dakota bills make explicit that drones cannot be used to conduct surveillance solely based on an individual鈥檚 First Amendment-protected activities. So, no parking a drone over a mosque, an Occupy protest, or a Tea Party rally unless law enforcement first obtains a warrant based on facts that are independent from the First Amendment activities in question.
Of course, there are also bills that take the low road:
- North Dakota鈥檚 bill explicitly allows incidentally collected information to be introduced in court. So, if a drone on the way to fight a forest fire happens to record you engaged in private activities, the police would not be required to delete that information and could actually use it in court against you, no warrant required鈥攂efore or after the fact. This could create some dangerous incentives.
- The bill introduced in Arizona, home of SB 1070, only protects US citizens from being spied on by drones and explicitly exempts investigations of drug crimes and human smuggling from warrant requirements in the bill.
And then there are bills, like Montana鈥檚, that prohibit private use of drones, or like Texas鈥檚, that prohibit drone photography, raising concerns.
A smaller subset of bills almost completely ban drone use for evidence collection鈥攅ven with a warrant. That list includes one of the bills, (except if there鈥檚 a risk of a terrorist attack), and (for two years, with emergency exceptions). and have bills that would prohibit *anyone* from using a drone domestically, except with permission from the person whose property is being surveilled (and, in the case of Indiana, except for hobbyists).
There are also a couple of states that have introduced a middling approach. Their bills require a probable cause warrant for drone use in most investigatory situations, but Maine allows law enforcement to use a drone for less than 48 hours with a court order based on reasonable suspicion, and Hawaii allows surveillance of public spaces based on a similar court order.
And then there鈥檚 , where the bill synopsis says the intent of the legislation is to require 鈥渢hat police obtain warrant to conduct aerial surveillance utilizing drones,鈥� but the bill text, perplexingly, refers only to court orders and says nothing about probable cause.
Finally, there are bills that just take a different road altogether. urging the creation of a committee to study drone use. had a bill (which has died) prohibiting the use of drones to monitor hunters on private lands. has a bill providing tax breaks for drone manufacturers. And Georgia has passed in praising the aerospace industry and honoring drone development in their state.
Suffice it to say, the drones are coming, and state legislatures are gearing up for them and testing out what protections will fly in their states. It鈥檚 great to see so many legislators taking the privacy threat from drones so seriously; now we must work to ensure that as a result of this concern, strong language that will actually have an effect makes it over the finish line.
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National Security
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VirginiaDec 2024
National Security
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Press ReleaseDec 2024
National Security
Immigrants' Rights
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