Source: https://rutgerspolicyjournal.org/drone-use-law-enforcement-economic-considerations
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 12:45:15+00:00

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Currently, UAVs are emerging as a cutting-edge, state-of-the-art technology for law enforcement agencies. Many of us know these technological devices simply by the name of “drones.” Several law enforcement entities around the country have been considering the use of these semi-autonomous devices for purposes of conducting surveillance. In many areas around the country, law enforcement officials are already authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to utilize drones. In North Dakota, a man was actually found guilty with admissible evidence obtained from a drone. This new dynamic begs the question presented above: Are we willing to trade off our privacy for the use of these all-seeing-eyes of the sky for the sake of our safety and security? From an economic standpoint, do the marginal social benefits of drone use outweigh the marginal social costs that they impose?
Reality is beginning to set in that drones could pose a considerable privacy issue in the near future. One of the main areas of conflict is whether or not a warrant should be required to use a UAV or drone. Generally, a “search” without a warrant is considered unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment unless it falls under an exception. However, the use of drones may actually not be considered to be a “search” at all, which explains the growing concerns. As is the case with many states, policymakers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware are considering this very issue.
The objective of this note is to analyze this issue from an economic standpoint, by considering the social costs and benefits in using drones and the policy purposes they could potentially serve. Following an analysis, this note argues that, with a lack of current laws governing the use of drones by law enforcement, future regulations and legislation should be enacted to permit law enforcement to utilize drones without a warrant.
I. What Exactly Is A Drone?
Drones are high-tech aircraft, controlled by a crew potentially miles away from any dangers and are amply equipped for the task of reconnaissance. Not only are these devices cost-effective in comparison to helicopters and other mobile aerial surveillance vehicles, but drones and UAVs are, without question, strongly effective in their surveillance and reconnaissance abilities, which would suggest why the military uses them to conduct these very tasks. A bird’s-eye view of a given situation is often times much more effective than a ground view. Drones make a new kind of surveillance possible because they can be relatively quiet, have hovering and stealth capabilities, can be solar powered, can fly autonomously, can cover a very wide area in a short time, and are mounted with high-resolution cameras and capable of holding other technologies. Drones could revolutionize law enforcement in ways that were impossible to do before.
To one, this may provide an incredibly secure safety blanket over us. To another, however, a semi-autonomous machine comparable to modern day police officers is alarming. Lawmakers in favor of drones would argue law enforcement officials would save a great deal of money, and possibly lives, by deploying more drones for both surveillance and other operations, like a modern day patrol officer. Those against using drones for anything but emergencies would argue that flying machines that can watch, record, and transmit our every move are an excessive breach of personal privacy. “Can you imagine? You’re sitting in your backyard enjoying some quiet time with your family, and the government’s there photographing and recording what you’re saying.” This note provides analysis on this very concern.
“The legal issue of domestic drone deployment in the context of law enforcement is itself a little like a drone: it has stolen up on us and is now hovering noiselessly overhead.” The interesting thing about the equilibrium between privacy and security is that both interests are quite difficult to put a value on. However, the Supreme Court of the United States has tried to draw a line where it believes that the balance ought to be, but has yet to address an issue regarding drones in the law enforcement context. Nonetheless, drones seem to circumvent the current doctrines that would govern them, effectively allowing law enforcement agencies to utilize these machines to conduct surveillance, just as a patrol officer would, without a warrant so long as they are in compliance with other regulations and legislation. Therefore, drones may actually disrupt this balance that the Supreme Court has imposed in an unprecedented way. The following should illustrate this point.
Under Supreme Court precedent, drones would circumvent the current doctrines that would deem their use as a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. Under what is known as the trespass doctrine, police would have to physically trespass on one’s property in order for a “search” to be deemed to have occurred, and a warrant be required. In other words, they would have to land a drone on someone’s property in order for the action to constitute a search and thus require a warrant. But in this era of “big data,” the line between public and private can no longer be delimited by physical boundaries. A unique ability that drones possess is that they hover, which would not constitute a trespass, and thus not constitute a “search” for Fourth Amendment purposes. Unlike helicopters or airplanes, drones can safely operate at very low altitudes with very little interference to their surroundings. Only a small handful of laws address conflicts over low-altitude air space trespass through governance rules, and even they are not very reconcilable.
Under what is known as the reasonable expectation of privacy doctrine, warrantless drone use would not be a violation either because there is no reasonable expectation of privacy over something that is observable to the public in legally navigable airspace.
The only doctrine that could deem drone use a “search” is the general public use doctrine, and even this doctrine would likely fail to offer any protection to privacy. Under this doctrine, use of technology by law enforcement focuses not on the capabilities of the equipment or the intimate details the equipment may reveal, but rather on whether the technology in question was in the “general public use.” This still would likely not suffice to deem drone use as a “search” under the Fourth Amendment: drones are now available in many department stores and even your local 7-Eleven.
Imagine a police officer was on patrol in her patrol car with her dash cam on. While driving, she witnesses a passenger a few cars in front of her lean out and commit a drive-by shooting on an individual. The car speeds off and the officer becomes engaged in a hot pursuit, endangering the lives of not only herself, but also innocent bystanders. Until witnessing the crime, the officer did not have probable cause or even reasonable suspicion to believe the person in the vehicle in front of her would be involved in a crime. Nonetheless, that dash cam video may be used as evidence against the driver in a subsequent criminal proceeding.
Now imagine the same situation, but instead of a police officer in a patrol car, a drone was patrolling the area. With rules requiring a warrant, the same piece of evidence gathered by that drone that was patrolling a wide area from the air, in lieu of a policeman in a police car with a dash cam, which can only see what is directly in front of it, would be inadmissible in court because no warrant was obtained. In addition to providing a bird’s-eye view of the crime that took place, the drone could follow the suspect and even help in making the identification. Furthermore, there would be less of a risk of endangering the lives of either law enforcement personnel or innocent bystanders due to the suspect’s attempt to evade the police because they would likely not even know a drone was above patrolling the area in the first place, whereas they would very likely be aware if a police officer were present.
The next section provides further insight on the economic analysis on drone use by law enforcement by weighing the marginal costs and benefits of it.
The critics of drone use mainly argue that these devices will infringe upon privacy rights. In this day and age, the marginal privacy cost seems very overvalued and the marginal benefits of safety are undervalued. This does not mean that police should be able to use drones to roam around places without a warrant with free reign. Drones should have some restrictions, but a balance in social costs and benefits could be met without going so far as requiring a warrant.
The prospect of cheap, small, portable flying video surveillance machines threatens to eradicate existing practical limits on aerial monitoring and allow for pervasive surveillance, police fishing expeditions, and abusive use of these tools in a way that could eventually eliminate the privacy Americans have traditionally enjoyed in their movements and activities.
Advocates of placing warrant restrictions on drones would likely concede that drones are unquestionably effective at surveillance. Indeed, it is that aspect alone that probably justifies their fear and privacy concerns with drones in the first place. These advocates feel that these “machines,” with their hover-and-stare capabilities are going to ruffle some feathers, and give us this uncomfortable feeling of being watched on an everyday basis.
[B]efore September 11th, the idea that Americans would voluntarily agree to live their lives under the gaze of a network of biometric surveillance cameras, peering at them in government buildings, shopping malls, subways and stadiums, would have seemed unthinkable, a dystopian fantasy of a society that had surrendered privacy and anonymity.
“Cameras on every corner, Google, Facebook, cell phones: the data-mining regime is well entrenched, for good or ill, and a few aerial shots from drones, the thinking goes, are not going to change much.” If it is strictly our privacy that we are so worried about, then drones will not make much of a negative impact. Not too long ago, to be on camera, one would have to rob a bank; now cameras are on street corners and everyone has one in the palm of their hand. Think about how many times you are on camera on a daily basis, whether it is from a traffic light or a surveillance camera in the local bank. Many of these mechanisms are not used by law enforcement, but they still invade our privacy to a great extent.
One who is not naïve certainly has to acknowledge that while privacy is not necessarily gone, it has been drawn back severely since the age of the Internet. It is almost contradicting to mark our privacy as so high and yet use, or at least not oppose, all of these technologies that invade it. As Mark Zuckerburg, the CEO of Facebook, said, privacy is no longer a "social norm." Our information is already out there in some way and regardless of how badly we want it back or want it to be completely secure, it is not going to happen.
While privacy is certainly a social value, its value cannot be as high as many think that it is. One certainly may question whether this changes when we consider the government’s use of this technology versus a private citizen’s use of it. In other words, does it bother us that the government is watching us perform activities more than a private individual?
It probably should not: our privacy has greatly diminished with technology and, whether you think it is beneficial or not, we cannot un-invent something. The gravamen of this argument is that drones taking pictures in the sky by law enforcement are not any more intrusive than say, the cameras on the street corners, the smart phone cameras that nearly everyone has, or even civilian drones, which were recently legalized for use in early 2015. We utilize an immense amount of technology even though we know that, in some way, it may be intruding on our privacy, or has the potential to do so. However, we deem these intrusions to be less valuable than the benefits we obtain from the use of that technology. Is it so ludicrous that the same argument be advanced to drones used by those we deem as the protectors of our community?
Imagine an everyday situation where the police receive an anonymous tip of a crime occurring. Specifically, the person in question is manufacturing heroin in their backyard in a greenhouse. They have “Do Not Enter” signs, a large fence, and bushes are surrounding the outside of the fence. Without a warrant, the police decide to fly a drone over the back yard and they observe several blocks of heroin in the green house. This observation would be unlawful under proposals that require the use of a warrant because there is no probable cause in this instance. In addition, it would be very burdensome for a local police force to get an overhead look without an aerial vehicle.
However, these facts are nearly the exact same as the 1986 Supreme Court case, California v. Ciraolo. The only difference is that in Ciraolo, the police used a helicopter to fly over the property and the drugs in question were marijuana plants. An overwhelming majority of police departments cannot afford to purchase airplanes or helicopters. In this situation, under proposals requiring a warrant, that same exact evidence obtained from a drone would not be admissible. A drone is the functional equivalent of a helicopter or an airplane in this situation and could be utilized for a fraction of the price. This would expand the capabilities of law enforcement personnel greatly.
Consider another example. Aside from dismantling dangerous on-going situations, law enforcement could even utilize drones as preventative measures against crime to deter it from taking place in the first place, much like a patrol officer. With shootings occurring on a near daily basis now, drones over watching schools or playgrounds, outside of large sports events, over watching national monuments for suspicious activity and the like would provide very strong security without risking life or limb. This may not be the ideal example to address the privacy concerns that drones pose, but it does effectively address the opportunity cost of requiring warrants to use drones for law enforcement purposes.
In light of the tragic shooting that occurred in Paris, police may want to fly a drone above other events or cities with large amounts of people to ensure the safety of the public. Under regulations or a bill requiring the use of a warrant, police would not be allowed to use a drone in this way unless they had a warrant premised upon probable cause that a crime had been or was about to be committed.
This requirement would be extremely difficult to meet under current Fourth Amendment protections due to the reasonableness of observing activities in public places. In other words, the police would have to have facts to prove to a judge that they had probable cause, which would need to define, with particularity, the place to be searched, or the people to be surveilled, so that they could obtain a search warrant. All of this would be required in order to observe people gathered in a place completely open to the public, simply because the observation was taking place from a drone, rather than from an officer in their car, on a rooftop, observation deck, or a manned aircraft. A drone would increase the marginal benefits greatly because they can move from place to place quickly, and scan the area for any threats at various angles and views at a relatively low cost. Thus, there is little privacy concern, and immense marginal social benefits in the prevention of a bombing, terroristic act, or other violent crime.
The bottom line is that law enforcement entities will be unable to harvest the unique benefits drones afford them should legislators or regulatory agencies require a warrant to use these devices. Some regulations could be imposed, but a broad-sweeping need for a warrant would not be necessary. A drone could watch over a huge area that a police officer, or even several police officers, could not, preempting or preventing possible threats for a fraction of the cost.
In terms of policy analysis, if it is the safety of law enforcement officers and the general public that is of paramount concern, support for warrantless use of UAVs or drones should be at the top of the list, so that this technology can be used by law enforcement in this tri-state area and in other states.
* Executive Editor, Rutgers Journal of Law and Public Policy; J.D. Candidate 2016, Rutgers Law School; B.S. 2013, The Florida State University.
 Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 329 (1987).
 Interestingly, those in favor of these devices call them UAVs because “drones” have a negative connotation due to how they are used overseas. See generally, Spencer Ackerman, 41 Men Targeted but 1,147 People Killed: US Drone Strikes – the Facts on the Ground, GUARDIAN (Nov. 24, 2014, 11:55 AM), http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill.... This would probably explain why the ACLU continues to call them “drones.” Nonetheless, they will be referred to synonymously in this note.
 See Stuart, supra note 3.
 See e.g., Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 14-15 (1948) (noting that searches without warrants are “exceptional").
 See generally Robert Valdes, How the Predator UAV Works, HOW STUFF WORKS, http://science.howstuffworks.com/predator.htm (last visited Apr. 3, 2015, 9:32 PM).
 Ian G. R. Shaw, The Rise of the Predator Empire: Tracing the History of U.S. Drones, UNDERSTANDING EMPIRE, https://understandingempire.wordpress.com/2-0-a-brief-history-of-u-s-dro... (last visited Dec. 11, 2015, 8:55 PM).
 Mark Betancourt, Will Drones Be the Next Police Cars?, AIR & SPACE MAG. (May 2014), http://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/will-drones-be-next-police-cars-.
 See Valdes, supra note 10.
 Dave Smith, Drones: Coming Soon To The New Jersey Turnpike?, INT'L BUS. TIMES (May 13, 2013, 6:24 PM), http://www.ibtimes.com/drones-coming-soon-new-jersey-turnpike-1255967.
 Nick Paumgarten, Here’s Looking At You, NEW YORKER (May 14, 2012), http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/14/heres-looking-at-you.
 See Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 438 (1928) (holding that a search requires a “physical trespass”).
 See Bomboy, supra note 12.
 Because drones are only now emerging as a prominent technology and have relatively unique capabilities, not many cases have issued rules regarding low airspace trespass because, only until recently,“ domestic drones were still more a science fiction dream than a reality. ” Troy A. Rule, Article: Airspace In The Age Of Drones, 95 B.U. L. REV. 155, 185 (2015). Some of the current rules require a substantial interference with the land. Again, it is a hard-pressed argument to make that drones substantially interfere with the land because they would never touch the ground in the first place. For a more detailed discussion on this point, see generally id.
 See California v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207, 213-14 (1986) (holding that a helicopter flight 400 feet above a home for the purpose of looking for marijuana inside the greenhouse outside not to be a “search” because “[a]ny member of the public could legally have been flying over [defendant]'s property . . . at the altitude . . . and could have observed [the defendant’s incriminating evidence]).
 See Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001). The rationale behind the Court’s holding is that it seems pointless to bar the government from seeing something everyone else could possibly see.
 See, e.g., Eleven Last Minute Gift Ideas From 7-Eleven, PR NEWSWIRE, http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/eleven-last-minute-gift-ideas-fr... (last visited Mar. 21, 2015); Parrot Bebop Drone – Red, BESTBUY, http://www.bestbuy.com/site/parrot-bebop-drone-red/9882135.p?id=12194431... (last visited Mar. 21, 2015).
 See generally supra note 13.
 Probable cause is the predicate level of suspicion for a warrant. See U.S. CONST. amend. IV.
 Reasonable suspicion is the predicate level of suspicion for a brief investigatory stop. See generally Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968).
 Jay Stanley, The Coming Clash Over Drones, FREE FUTURE (Sept. 10, 2015, 11:00 AM), https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/coming-clash-over-drones.
 While it is beyond the scope of this note, Professor Gregory McNeal of Pepperdine Law School provides very insightful recommendations to curb privacy concerns. See Gregory McNeal, supra note 27.
 There are also other concerns such as the argument that allowing drones may open up Pandora’s box and allow other technology to get their foot in the door. For purposes of brevity, I only analyze the privacy issue.
 GEORGE ORWELL, NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR 28 (Secker & Warburg 1949).
 John W. Whitehead, Orwell Revisited: Privacy In the Age of Surveillance, INTREPID REP. (Jun. 20, 2013), http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/9971.
 Bobbie Johnson, Privacy No Longer A Social Norm, Says Facebook Founder, GUARDIAN (Jan. 10, 2010, 10:58 PM), http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2010/jan/11/facebook-privacy.
 Recreational Users, KNOW BEFORE YOU FLY, http://knowbeforeyoufly.org/for-recreational-users/ (last visited Jan. 25, 2016).
 Note that an anonymous tip alone is not enough to meet the reasonable suspicion standard, let alone the probable cause standard. See, e.g., Florida v. J.L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000).
 Cal. v. Ciraolo, 476 U.S. 207 (1986).
 See U.S. CONST. amend. IV.

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