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