Luis Garcia LGST 196 05/19/16 “It’s Not Freedom, It’s Fear” Police Use of Drones and Artificial Intelligence Our country has been founded on the foundation that we, as people, have certain rights that should be acknowledged and respected. If we allow local police forces to implement drones and artificial intelligence into their deep array of equipment, we would essentially be giving them the power to infringe those rights in the name of freedom. We have already seen the magnitude of harm that a drone is capable of through military uses of them, and that is with a person manning the machine. What sort of outcome can we expect from a heartless machine in artificial intelligence? This country would only be welcoming a great danger if we grant police forces access to such a weapon. America should not allow advanced technologies, such as drones and artificial intelligence, into enforcement units because what we would gain from it does not overcome what we would sacrifice, which includes the loss of security within our nation, any form of progression leading away from discrimination, and most importantly, we would sacrifice our freedom. Some of the most important rights we would lose to the installation of advanced technology in police forces are those written in the Bill of Rights. It limits our first amendment right to speech in our own backyard due to fear of repercussions if a drone were to be monitoring above. It brushes against the third amendment of not allowing soldiers to be quartered in times of peace in any house because we would be allowing enforcement drones within our living spaces, albeit air spaces. It disregards the fourth amendment by yielding people to feel secure within their own homes from unreasonable searches without warrants1. Without these protections it is difficult to feel secure in our nation, let alone within our own homes. In the 1967 Supreme Court case, Katz v. United States, Justice Potter Stewart stated that “The Fourth Amendment protects people, not places.2” This was in response to the United States placing an eavesdropping device on the outside of a phone booth that the defendant was using to acquire evidence. The defendant argued that this intrusion of privacy was unconstitutional and therefore void. The Court of Appeals responded by pointing out the fact that there was no actual physical invasion of the phone booth. The Supreme Court of the United States declared that what had transpired warranted enough of a breach to violate the Fourth Amendment. This established the grounds of a reasonable expectation of privacy protection. Two more cases emerged, California v Ciraolo in 1985 and Florida v Riley other in 1988, which determined that evidence acquired through aerial exposure is considered acceptable. It is constitutional as long as the officers flying are doing so in public navigable airspace and in a non-intrusive manner. In this case flying drones over homes should be unconstitutional because y allowing local police to patrol using piloted drones they are doing so with the intent of locating crimes. This is not a standard flyby like in the cases mentioned before. This intent qualifies the drones as intrusive. 1 2 http://www.billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/bill-of-rights/ https://www.oyez.org/cases/1967/35 Police forces have been plagued with the stigma of practicing police brutality, or “the use of any force exceeding that reasonably necessary to accomplish a lawful police purpose”3. 3 http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401803303.html