Eye In the Sky For City Crime Fighting 389
Tiger4 writes "The mayor of the City of Lancaster in the Antelope Valley of southern California is considering a high-definition video flying platform to aid in crime fighting. The aircraft, would circle the city constantly, able to zoom in on activity spots instantly. 'You never know when you are being watched or followed. It would be stupid to commit a crime. You see it with such detail,' said Mayor R. Rex Parris, who took a ride last week in a camera-equipped airplane with pilot Dick Rutan. 'I have every hope that Lancaster will be the first city to deploy it. I've never been so excited about anything.' Dick Rutan is the same pilot who flew around the world non-stop in the Voyager, custom built by his brother Burt Rutan at Scaled Composites in Mojave." The aircraft is nothing special, a garden-variety Cessna or the like, but "the camera is an example of technology developed for and used by the military making a transition to civilian applications, Rutan said."
Re:Next step (Score:5, Interesting)
Btw, could someone tag the story "bluethunder"? I can't seem to add tags.
Agreed. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, well. (Score:2, Interesting)
Luckily, the police are not at all confused [radgeek.com] about their role...
Re:Whoa, they invented the maintenance-free plane? (Score:5, Interesting)
Privacy outside of a building is not constitutionally mandated. Walking on the street? Anyone can take pictures of you - media, gov't, private citizens and you have zero privacy claims. There is no expectation of privacy when you leave the protection of a building.
But as soon as an individual points a camera at this aircraft, you can bet that police will be telling them they're not allowed to do it, that they must delete the photos, or arresting them on some terrorism charge (at least, that's what would happen in the UK).
It's as if objects, buildings and so on have more of an expectation of privacy than individuals do...
Re:Whoa, they invented the maintenance-free plane? (Score:3, Interesting)
$5.25 * 7 = $36.75/hr.
$36.75 * 24 = $882/day.
$882 * 365 = $321,930/year.
As such...
Cessna Surveillance Plan: $125,000
1 year of fuel: $321,930
Killing both privacy, the economy, and the budget is one fell swoop: Priceless.
Re:And criminals... (Score:5, Interesting)
You bring up a very interesting point. What if the flying-camera-drone catches some police abuse on civilians, or some other egregious violation of human or civil rights? Do we, as civilians, have the right to request the footage of that incident at that time? After all OUR money paid for this plan, the pilot's salary, the camera, the fuel and everything else related to putting that object in the air. Does the FOIA [state.gov] cover this too?
Re:Next step (Score:4, Interesting)
Curiously enough, here in the UK, the fashion trend for 'hoodies' among teenagers took off pretty much in parallel with the explosion of CCTV monitoring in the cities.
And you expect a mayor to obey the same laws? (Score:3, Interesting)
because here in Atlanta when police protecting the mayor scanned the plates of a car visiting her son and found the car stolen the policeman doing got into trouble and the police were prevented from doing future scans.
Lancaster needs the tech (Score:2, Interesting)
If any place in southern California needs military surveillance technology to crack down on crime, its Lancaster. One of the trends that took place in the early 21st century was that large numbers of people from South Central moved out to Lancaster and Palmdale. They were drawn by the affordable housing and the hope for a new start. Unfortunately they took all of their ghetto children and relatives with them, and now Palmdale is nick named Pompton to reflect its characteristic similarities to everything bad about Compton. The tax revenues in those cities are very low and consequently the police departments are small and under funded. It's a good place to be if you're a gangster and a bad place to be if you're just about anyone else.
When I see people on here decrying surveillance technology, I wonder if they've ever lived in borderline neighborhoods. I live in Long Beach, and it isn't by any means a full fledged, crime ridden neighborhood like Watts, but it has its fair share of property crime and other crimes of opportunity. One of the nicer neighborhoods that I used to live in just put up cameras because the residents were sick of having their cars and homes broken into. The cameras are accessible by the police department. To nobody's surprise, crime has gone down in the neighborhood.
Its easy to live in the comfort of a place like South Orange County, or any other affluent suburb and moan on internet about the evils of big brother surveillance technology. Where the police already have everything under control and you can safely walk down the street at night, there probably isn't a need for a network of cameras blanketing the city. On the other hand, in places that are borderline, where there aren't enough police to be everywhere and there are good sized populations of convicted criminals on probation and parole, a simple technology like security cameras can make a difference.
Re:Next step (Score:3, Interesting)
If something takes place in public, I don't think there's any violation of here. If they put a camera in the sky that can "see" through walls, or bounce lasers off our home windows to "hear" what's going on inside WITHOUT a warrant and trust me, I'll grab the pitchfork, you grab the torch.
Yeah, I'm sure they'll close their eyes if they see something in your privacy fenced-in backyard.