Aerial Surveillance 1AC
Plan
The Supreme Court of the United States should rule that deploying domestic drones
for surveillance purposes is unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment.
Advantage One: The Surveillance State
Federal regulations on data collection from aerial surveillance is lacking and easily
circumvented – violation of privacy rights will only continue to grow as use of drones
expand
New York Times 2/19 (The Editorial Board, The editorial board is composed of 19 journalists with
many different areas of expertise, who write the Times's editorials and are part of the Times's editorial
department. "Regulating the Drone Economy", New York Times, February 19, 2015,
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/19/opinion/regulating-the-drone-economy.html?_r=0) Padiyar
Mr. Obama’s action on drone use by government agencies is much more problematic. For example, the
president’s memorandum says the government should not retain personally identifiable information
collected by drones for more than 180 days. But agencies can keep the data for longer if it is
“determined to be necessary to an authorized mission of the retaining agency” — a standard that grants
officials far too much latitude. Moreover, the administration says agencies have to provide only a “general
summary” of how they use drones, and only once a year. Law enforcement agencies like the F.B.I. and local
police departments are already using drones and manned aircraft for surveillance, often without obtaining
warrants, but they have said little publicly about what they are doing with the information collected.¶ The
use of drones is likely to grow, and the devices could become as common as utility and delivery trucks. At the dawn of this
technology, it’s appropriate to set sound safety and privacy rules.
Scenario One: Multilateralism
Codifying the right to data privacy is key to broader multilateral efforts.
Bygrave 2010. Lee, Professor - Norwegian Research Center for Computers and Law. “Privacy and Data
Protection in an International Perspective.” Stockholm Institute for Scandinavian Law.
http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/jus/jus/JUS5630/v13/undervisningsmateriale/privacy-and-dataprotection-in-international-perspective.pdf
5.1 International Instruments
The formal normative basis for data protection laws derives mainly from catalogues of fundamental
human rights set out in certain multilateral instruments, notably the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (U.D.H.R.),82 the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (I.C.C.P.R.)83 along with the
main regional human rights treaties, such as the European Convention on Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms (E.C.H.R.)84 and the American Convention on Human Rights (A.C.H.R.).85 All of
these instruments – with the exception of the African Charter on Human and People’s Rights86 –
expressly recognise privacy as a fundamental human right.87 The omission of privacy in the African
Charter is not repeated in all human rights catalogues from outside the Western, liberal-democratic
sphere. For example, the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam88 expressly recognises a right to
privacy for individuals (see Article 18(b) – (c)).
The right to privacy in these instruments is closely linked to the ideals and principles of data protection
laws, though other human rights, such as freedom from discrimination and freedom of expression, are
relevant too. The special importance of the right to privacy in this context is reflected in the fact that
data protection laws frequently single out protection of that right as central to their formal rationale.89
It is also reflected in case law developed pursuant to I.C.C.P.R. Article 17 and E.C.H.R. Article 8: both
provisions have been authoritatively construed as requiring national implementation of the basic
principles of data protection laws with respect to both the public and private sectors.90 Indeed, these
provisions function, in effect, as data protection instruments in themselves. However, case law has yet
to apply them in ways that add significantly to the principles already found in other data protection
laws, and, in some respects, the protection they are currently held to offer, falls short of the protection
afforded by many of the latter instruments.91
Rejection of multilateral principles is the worst impact – guarantees massive global
wars
Commander Scott 1997 (Judge Advocate General’s Corps, US Navy, Assistant Legal Adviser, US
European Command, Military Law Review, October, 154 Mil. L. Rev. 27)
National self-interest
international commitments generally. Self-interest in the stability of expectations is
the cornerstone of the doctrine of pacta sunt servanda. n60 If treaties were just so many pieces of paper, to be honored when
convenient, foreign investments and property, the global flow of money, access to foreign resources and
foreign markets for our products, status of forces agreements, the protection of embassies and foreign ministers, freedom of navigation, flight
safety, the regulation of transboundary pollution, cultural exchanges--all organized international activity would be
jeopardized. n61 International interests would depend on the whim of the moment and the willingness
of states to enforce their interests with weapons. If the world seems a violent, disorderly place today, it
would be apocalyptic in the return of a "Force as Fact" milieu . The efficacy of a universal commitment to peaceful
Dutiful obedience to the raw authority of rules and regulations, however, is not the chief motivation for compliance with treaties.
motivates the promotion of reciprocal
observance of
relations should not be measured by the number of feeble defectors, but by the greater number of powerful adherents. When discussing defectors, strategists should not
Resort to martial solutions for every brushfire du
jour must be measured against the certain collapse of whatever interstate firebreaks hold back the
real [*38] conflagrations of a future world--a world awash with weapons and yet unforeseen applications of amazing
technology. When the gloves come off, they will come off in all corners, in arenas around the world. Should
the United States trade today's handful of recalcitrant states and networks of petty substate criminals
for a nation-to-nation order where force returns as the norm ? The capacity of nation-states to mobilize resources for dedication to
be too quick to advocate a convenient solution which ignores global consequences.
war far exceeds the capacity of substate threats catalogued by the new alarmists; it is the difference between cockfights and cataclysms. It is tempting to measure the
If the United States could
always prevail under force-based ground rules, why not bend or change the rules to maximize our
advantage? Why dicker with Huck when we can force him to whitewash at gunpoint? This bully perspective overlooks two
consequences of a force-based environment: (1) Force or displays of force would be required with increasing frequency to
obtain international objectives, diverting resources from economically productive peacetime activities. The
result would be similar to British imperial militarism n62 or exhausted isolationism.(2) The United States is not the
only country in the world; a force-based world order would lead to explosive arms buildups
everywhere and regional conflicts such as those that precipitated two World Wars.
risks and rewards of a force-based environment by comparing current U.S. military might to the capabilities of other nations.
Scenario Two: Terrorism
Unchecked surveillance by the state will only exacerbate the harms that we are trying
to prevent – it will create increased resentment which will lead to more violence and
terrorism
Bauer 13 [Max – ACLU of Massachusetts, “Domestic Drone Surveillance Usage: Threats and
Opportunities for Regulation,” ACLU, 7/15, https://privacysos.org/domestic_drones] Zhang
Beyond its technological flaws, surveillance technology is exorbitantly expensive given its remarkable
ineffectiveness. A bipartisan Senate committee report concluded the fusion centers around the country, implemented to conglomerate federal and local law enforcement
resources to fight terrorism, [44] do not provide useful intelligence. [45] In the words of Senator Tom Coburn, “Instead of strengthening
our counterterrorism efforts, they have too often wasted money and stepped on Americans’ civil
liberties.” ∂ Even without the presence of drones, the sprawling dimensions of the surveillance state are
vastly unprecedented. Research by John Mueller and Mark G. Stewart noted in 2012 that homeland security expenditures have exceeded $1 trillion since the September 11
attacks. ∂ According to a 2010 report by the Washington Post, every day the National Security Agency intercepts 1.7 billion emails and other communications. [49]∂ But despite all the costly
one security expert
wrote: “Cameras won’t help. They don’t prevent terrorist attacks, and their forensic value after the fact
is minimal.” In contrast to vast sums of money being spent on prevention, the actual likelihood of a
terrorist attack is exceedingly small. [52] Followers of American counterterrorism policy have observed
that the United States has overreacted. [53]∂ Constant drone surveillance could be the next symptom of
this panic.∂ Finally, Orwellian measures have the potential to exacerbate the security problem by
provoking resentment against the government. [54] There is evidence that the worst-case scenario is
already happening: in the process of trying to fight terrorism, the government can exacerbate the
terrorism problem by creating new enemies.
data surveillance and sharing, events like the Boston Marathon bombing are still likely to occur. [50] Following the 2010 attempted Times Square bombing,
Terrorism causes extinction.
Nathan Myhrvold '13, Phd in theoretical and mathematical physics from Princeton, and founded
Intellectual Ventures after retiring as chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft
Corporation , July 2013, "Stratgic Terrorism: A Call to Action," The Lawfare Research Paper Series No.2,
http://www.lawfareblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Strategic-Terrorism-Myhrvold-7-3-2013.pdf
Several powerful trends have aligned to profoundly change the way that the world works. Technology ¶ now
allows stateless groups to organize, recruit, and fund ¶ themselves in an unprecedented fashion. That,
coupled ¶ with the extreme difficulty of finding and punishing a stateless group, means that stateless groups are
positioned to be ¶ lead players on the world stage. They may act on their own, ¶ or they may act as proxies
for nation-states that wish to ¶ duck responsibility. Either way, stateless groups are forces ¶ to be reckoned with.¶ At the
same time, a different set of technology trends ¶ means that small numbers of people can obtain incredibly ¶
lethal power. Now, for the first time in human history, a ¶ small group can be as lethal as the largest superpower.
Such ¶ a group could execute an attack that could kill millions of ¶ people. It is technically feasible for such a group to kill
billions of people, to end modern civilization—perhaps even ¶ to drive the human race to extinction. Our defense
establishment was shaped over decades to ¶ address what was, for a long time, the only strategic threat ¶ our nation faced: Soviet or Chinese
missiles. More recently, ¶ it has started retooling to address tactical terror attacks like ¶ those launched on the morning of 9/11, but the reform
is incomplete and inconsistent. A real defense will ¶ require rebuilding our military and intelligence
capabilities from the ground up. Yet, so far, strategic terrorism has ¶ received relatively little attention in defense
agencies, and ¶ the efforts that have been launched to combat this existential threat seem fragmented.¶
History suggests what will happen. The only thing that shakes America out of complacency is a direct
threat from a determined adversary that confronts us with our shortcomings by repeatedly attacking us
or hectoring us for decades.
¶ process
Scenario Three: Dehumanization
Creating a state where privacy is non-existent ushers in totalitarianism, undermining
our democratic state
Burow 2013 (Matthew – JD candidate @ New England School of Law, “The Sentinel Clouds above the
Nameless Crowd: Prosecuting Anonymity from Domestic Drones”, 39 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ.
Confinement 443] ttate
Walking down the street. Driving a car. Sitting on a park bench. By themselves, these actions do not exhibit an iota of privacy. The individual has
no intention to conceal their movements; no confidentiality in their purpose. The individual is in the open, enjoying a quiet day or a peaceful
Sunday drive. Yet as Chief Justice Rehnquist commented,
there is uneasiness if an individual suspected that these
innocuous and benign movements were being recorded and scrutinized for future reference. 119 If the "uneasy"
reaction to which the Chief Justice referred is not based on a sense of privacy invasion, it stems from something very close to it-a sense
that one has a right to public anonymity. 120 Anonymity is the state of being unnamed. 121 The right to public anonymity
is the assurance that, when in public, one is unremarked and part of the undifferentiated crowd as far as the government is concerned. 122 That right is usually surrendered only when one
But when that attention is gained by
surreptitiously operated UASs that are becoming more affordable for local law enforcement agencies, 124
does or says something that merits government attention, which most often includes criminal activity. 123
"it evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices ... : 'limited police resources and
community hostility."' 12 5 This association of public anonymity and privacy is not new. 126 Privacy expert and Columbia University Law
professor Alan F. Westin points out that "anonymity [] occurs when the individual is in public places or performing public acts but still seeks,
and finds, freedom from identification and surveillance." 127 Westin continued by stating that: [A person] may be riding a subway, attending a
ball game, or walking the streets; he is among people and knows that he is being observed; but unless he is a well-known celebrity, he does not
expect to be personally identified and held to the full rules of behavior and role that would operate if he were known to those observing him. In
this state the individual is able to merge into the "situational landscape." 128 While most people would share the intuition of Chief Justice
Rehnquist and professor Westin that we expect some degree of anonymity in public, there is no such right to be found in the Constitution.
Therefore,
with a potentially handcuffed judiciary, the protection of anonymity falls to the legislature.
Based on current trends in technology and a keen interest taken by law enforcement in the
advancement of UAS integration into national airspace, it is clear that drones pose a looming threat to
Americans' anonymity. 129 Even when UASs are authorized for noble uses such as search and rescue missions, fighting wildfires, and
assisting in dangerous tactical police operations, UASs are likely to be quickly embraced by law enforcement for more
controversial purposes. 130 What follows are compelling interdisciplinary reasons why the legislature should take up the call to protect
the subspecies of privacy that is anonymity. A. Philosophic: The Panopticon Harm Between 1789 and 1812, the Panopticon prison was the
central obsession of the renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's life. 131 The Panopticon is a circular building with cells occupying the
circumference and the guard tower standing in the center. 132 By using blinds to obscure the guards located in the tower, "the keeper [is]
concealed from the observation of the prisoners ... the sentiment of an invisible omnipresence."'133 The effect of such architectural brilliance is
simple: the lone fact that there might be a guard watching is enough to keep the prisoners on their best behavior. 134 As the twentieth-century
French philosopher Michel Foucault observed, the major effect of the Panopticon is "to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and
permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power."'135 In Bentham's vision,
there is no need for prison bars,
chains or heavy locks; the person who is subjected to the field of visibility of the omnipresent guard plays
both roles and he becomes the subject of his own subjection. 136 For Foucault, this "panopticism" was not necessarily
bad when compared to other methods of exercising control as this sort of "subtle coercion" could lead people to be more productive and
efficient members of society. 137 Following Foucault's reasoning, an
omnipresent UAS circling above a city may be similar
to a Panopticon guard tower and an effective way of keeping the peace. The mere thought of detection
may keep streets safer and potential criminals at bay. However, the impact on cherished democratic ideals
may be too severe. For example, in a case regarding the constitutionally vague city ordinance that prohibited "nightwalking," Justice
Douglas commented on the importance of public vitality and locomotion in America: The difficulty is that [walking and strolling] are historically
part of the amenities of life as we have known them. They are not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Bill of Rights. These unwritten
amenities have been in part responsible for giving our people the feeling of independence and self-confidence, the feeling of creativity. These
amenities have dignified the right of dissent and have honored the right to be nonconformists and the right to defy submissiveness. They have
encouraged lives of high spirits rather than hushed, suffocating silence. 138 As Justice Douglas understood, government
surveillance
stifles the cherished ideal of an American society that thrives on free-spiritedness in public. 39 Without
the right to walk the streets in public, free from the fear of high surveillance, our American values would
dissipate into that resembling a totalitarian state that attacks the idea of privacy as immoral, antisocial
and part of the dissident cult of individualism. 140
This form of dehumanization justifies the worst type of atrocities
Burow 2013 (Matthew – JD candidate @ New England School of Law, “The Sentinel Clouds above the
Nameless Crowd: Prosecuting Anonymity from Domestic Drones”, 39 New Eng. J. on Crim. & Civ.
Confinement 443] ttate
This Note has explored the philosophical and psychological effects of panoptic surveillance and the need for protection.2 29 A mere suspicion of a
UAS flying high in sky can have a chilling effect on democracy that most Americans would consider
intolerable. 230 But what about the psychological changes UASs will bring about in law enforcement? The following is an excerpt from a news report on the
mindset of UAS pilots who operate military drones in overseas combat missions: Bugsplat is the official term used by US authorities
when humans are killed by drone missiles .... [I]t is deliberately employed as a psychological tactic to
dehumanise targets so operatives overcome their inhibition to kill .... It was Hitler who coined this
phraseology in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. In Mein Kampf, Hitler refers to Jews as vermin (volksungeziefer) or parasites
(volksschtidling). In the infamous Nazi film, Der ewige Jude, Jews were portrayed as harmful pests that deserve to die. Similarly, in the Rwandan
genocide, the Tutsis were described as "cockroaches." This is not to infer genocidal intent in US drone
warfare, but rather to emphasise the dehumanising effect of this terminology in Nazi Germany and that
the very same terms are used by the US in respect of their Pakistani targets. 231 Will John and Jane Doe-the casual
saunterer-become part of the next group of bugs that must be swatted in the name of effective law
enforcement? In answering that question, we should look to the skies once again and pray to the better angels of
our nature for a worthy answer.
Advantage Two: Judicial Deference
Judicial deference high now due to era of terrorist threats – Court giving Executive
Branch carte blanche in areas of surveillance
Brand and Guiora 15 (Jeffrey S., J.D., Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law, Director Center for Law
and Global Justice, University of San Francisco School of Law, and Amos N., Ph.D, Professor of Law, S.J.
Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, Co-Director, Center for Global Justice, The Steep Price of
Executive Power Post 9/11: Reclaiming Our Past to Insure Our Future, Jan. 27, 2015,
http://www.law.utah.edu/the-steep-price-of-executive-power-post-911-reclaiming-our-past-to-insureour-future/) harshitha
It is no surprise that the September 11th attacks – which killed 3000 civilians, reduced the World Trade Center to molten
steel, and left a gaping hole in the Pentagon – ushered in an era of relentless pursuit of suspected terrorists, including
ramped up surveillance, detention and interrogation, and the use of technologically advanced weaponry.¶ What is alarming, if
not surprising, however, is the degree to which 9/11 produced U.S. counterterrorism measures that include the
warrantless monitoring of hundreds of millions of phone calls, systematic use of illegal and immoral torture, and the conduct of
a faceless drone offensive whose legality and morality are murky, at best.¶ The U.S. government’s response to
the events of September 11th exposes a fundamental weakness in the state of America’s 21st century
democracy: The unrestrained use of power by the Executive Branch in the name of national security,
and the total absence of any semblance of the separation of powers or checks and balances that our
Founding Fathers deemed critical to the survival of the Republic.¶ The breathtaking scope of America’s post 9/11 is
well documented:¶ 2005: The New York Times reports the existence of Stellar Wind, a program in which the Bush
Administration monitors millions and millions of phone calls in the United States.¶ 2012: A joint study from NYU and Stanford concludes that
U.S. drone attacks are not “surgically precise” as claimed; by 2014, the Pentagon launches its own
investigation, concerned that nearly one-third of drone strikes are killing innocent civilians.¶ 2014: The
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases its study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs,
describing in horrifying detail policies that include prisoners subjected to rectal feeding, waterboarding, hanging by their wrists,
confinement in coffins, sleep-deprivation, threatened with death or brutally beaten.¶ Days after the report’s release, in a stunning editorial, the
New York Times demands that the United States come to terms with “legal and moral abhorrence” by appointing a special prosecutor to
investigate “a vast criminal conspiracy, under color of law, to commit torture and other serious crimes.”¶ Each
of these accounts is
connected by a common thread – the exercise of unrestrained Executive Branch power that ignores the
fundamental principle that the President and his subordinates do not have unilateral authority to surveil
any call, to engage in illegal torture, or to launch attacks almost certain to kill. Each reflects policies that pursue
national security while ignoring a fundamental truth about our democracy: Absent appropriate checks and balances, the rule
of law is undermined and individual liberty is likely to be sacrificed. Of course, this observation is hardly
novel and has been reiterated constantly throughout the 240 year history of the Republic. James
Madison articulated it in the Federalist Papers: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive,
and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
American Jurisprudence is modeled worldwide to maintain the rule of law
KERSCH-PROF POLITICS PRINCETON-2004 – ASSISTANT PROF POLITICS PRINCETON
THE GLOBALIZED JUDICIARY, THE GOOD SOCEITY, VOLUM 13 NO 3
Scholars of the emerging globalized judiciary have described a process that looks very much like that of bureaucratic formation at work
amongst judges around the world. In charting the development of transnational judicial networks and support structures, Anne-Marie
Slaughter, Andrew S. Tulumello, and Stepan Wood have suggested that "a wide range of possibilities exist for
strengthening formal and informal links between international and domestic institutions in
ways that blur the distinction between international and domestic law ...."7 As this process develops, she and her co-authors add, "it is
possible that domestic
institutions will become more interested in and receptive to their counterpart
international institutions as they begin to perform the same functions horizontally rather then
vertically." And, indeed, this is precisely what they observe happening amongst judges. "Domestic judges, at least in the
United States," they add, "are beginning to articulate their responsibility to 'help the world's legal systems
work together, in harmony, rather than at cross purposes.' Such cooperation includes not only
procedural mechanisms of deference and collaboration, but also substantive evaluation of the degree of
convergence between domestic and foreign law."8 This cooperation has been made possible by "a deep sense of
participation in a common global enterprise of judging." "It [involves]," Slaughter asserts, "a vision of a
global community of law, established not by the World Court in the Hague, but by national courts
working together around the world."9 "Constitutional cross-fertilization," as Slaughter calls its, is a
crucial part of this trend.
Collapse of rule of law leads to extinction.
NAGAN-Research Scholar Prof U Florida-1 – RESEARCH SCHOLAR PROF U FLORIDA
LAWYER ROLES, IDENTITY, AND PROFESSIONAL RESPONSIBILITY, 13 FLA. J. INT’L L. 131
Lawyers may be critical "engineers" in the restructuring of command, corrupt and inefficient
economies. This is because governance that honors a minimal rule of law concept will prescribe
rules for transparency, accountability and responsibility. These "values" are critical for
working, effective markets. How are such economies in fact being reorganized? In other words
what exactly will be the role of lawyers in the new vision of global economic order? The emphasis
on lawyer roles in development should not obscure the challenge for lawyer roles for other
problems inherent in the concept of globalism. These are listed for the sake of brevity as
follows: Law and Global apartheid or global poverty (development, poverty, income distribution,
economic equity, population policy, etc.) Law and the Global Public Health Crisis (HIV/AIDS)
Law, emerging markets and the trend toward "harmonization" Law and Proliferation and threat
of nuclear arsenals Law and the global war system (arms race, armed conflict, ethnic conflict,
etc.) [*141] Law and basic human rights (the epidemic of gross abuse of human rights and human
atrocity) Law and global constitutional order Law and the crisis of the rule of law (failed states,
corrupt states, drug controlled states, terrorists states, garrison states, authoritarian states,
totalitarian states). 12
Solvency
Federal action requiring warrants key to solving – state action too inconsistent
Candice Bernd, 2/24/15, (Candice Bernd, an assistant editor/reporter with Truthout, “Proposed Rules
Regulating Domestic Drone Use Lack Police Warrant Requirement”, Truth-out.org, http://www.truthout.org/news/item/29250-proposed-rules-regulating-domestic-drone-use-lack-police-warrantrequirement#, accessed date: 7/20/15) Salehitezangi
States requiring warrants now- Fed regulation key A crucial element that is missing from the White House order and
proposed FAA rules, according to Guliani: a warrant requirement for law enforcement officials seeking to
deploy domestic drones for surveillance purposes. "The fact that [the memo] leaves that to the discretion of each agency
could be a concern down the line if the agency decides not to adopt that requirement," Guliani said. Many state, federal agencies
and corporations are already using domestic drones, with more than 80 law enforcement agencies having applied for a
special "Certificate of Authorization" from the FAA to use UAS since 2008. While the White House directive is aimed at addressing federal
agencies, many
states are still grappling with how to regulate the use of domestic drones. More than a dozen
states have enacted legislation regulating domestic drone use, while more than half of all states have introduced legislation regarding
domestic drones, with a majority of those bills as well as already-enacted legislation requiring law enforcement agencies to
obtain a probable cause warrant before a drone can be deployed. But in the states that have enacted
legislation, the laws vary widely and establish inconsistent standards. States such as Texas, for example, restrict
domestic drone use, but the legislation contains so many exemptions for law enforcement agencies the ACLU have
called it "an outlier" in terms of protecting privacy. Meanwhile states such as Florida, Oregon, Illinois, Montana and Tennessee require a
warrant for law enforcement use in nearly all cases. "That
there are states that have looked at, and have adopted that
warrant requirement, makes the omission in the presidential memo even more obvious," Guliani said. With
no national legislation regulating domestic drone use, inconsistent and varying standards by which law
enforcement agencies and corporations can deploy UAS in states, and the glaring omission of a warrant
requirement at this point in the White House's guidelines, a dangerous loophole remains present in
which law enforcement agencies, and potentially corporations, in only a couple of years, can deploy UAS
in masse to conduct surveillance on civilians who have not been charged with any crime. But beyond the
immediate concerns about domestic drone use, when we look at how drones may be integrated with other forms of nascent police surveillance
technology, an even more Orwellian picture of the future of domestic drones begins to emerge.With
loopholes in national and
state standards regulating UAS, law enforcement agencies could potentially be able to use invasive police
surveillance technologies in conjunction with UAS to obtain information on large numbers of people that
they otherwise wouldn't be able to obtain without a warrant. "The fact that drones now have also been
combining with other forms of technology creates even a larger privacy risk," Guliani says. "Imagine if there was a
drone that was also combined with facial recognition technology. A drone flying overhead could identify large
numbers of people and be tracking their movements." A leading manufacturer of the "StingRay"
surveillance technology, used by federal agencies and municipal police departments alike to sweep up
vast numbers of cell phone records from people who are simply in the radius of a targeted suspect, has
already developed a kit to deploy the technology on aerial vehicles and unmanned aerial vehicles This type. of deployment may become the
next logical step for the industry. The use of StingRay technology as it currently stands is already incredibly secretive, with
police departments and manufacturers such as Harris Corporation concealing their use of the phone-tracking
equipment from the courts through the use of non-disclosure agreements. The Department of Homeland Security's
US Customs and Border Protection and the FBI already use planes and drones in areas that are more than 100 miles of the Mexican border to
conduct aerial surveillance, and government agencies have been revealed to have been using Cessna planes outfitted with StingRay technology
to track suspects. The
FBI has been resistant to answer even lawmakers' questions about how many drones it
operates and how often they are used. "It is both technologically possible and by no means a leap to imagine that once the FAA
approves broader use of drones within the US by law enforcement, [law enforcement officials] may put StingRays on them," said Nathan Freed
Wessler, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, and an expert on StingRay technology. UAS
have also
been outfitted with thermal sensing technologies to produce heat maps of people inside buildings. Other
advocates worry if domestic
drones are deployed as a platform for providing temporary internet service to consumers, it could
potentially give corporate drone operators access to the internet data of those consumers and threaten
net neutrality. "If internet companies were to deliver internet service in hard-to-reach places, which would be a good thing, would
they then be collecting information in large quantities and would that information then be something that their contacts
would then have access to?" asked Drew Mitnick who is junior policy counsel at Access, an organization dedicated to issues of internet
freedom. It's questions like this that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration has been ordered by the White House to
answer in a collaborative process, alongside civil society and industry groups, to develop guidelines for commercial drone use
Fourth Amendment ruling key – the doctrine requires a set of rules for the regulation
to follow
Solove 2005 [Daniel – Fourth Amendment professor, “Kerr's Misguided Call for Judicial Deference”
http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4113&context=flr] jason
Kerr makes a number of arguments in support of his call for judicial restraint. Kerr's key contentions are that (1) legislatures create rules that are more comprehensive, balanced, clear, and
flexible; (2) legislatures are better able to keep up with technological change; and (3) legislatures are more adept at understanding complex new technologies. The following sections examine
each contention in turn. Creating a Comprehensive and Balanced Set of Rules Kerr argues that a key goal in drafting criminal procedure rules is to create "a rule-structure that simultaneously
respects privacy interests and law enforcement needs." According to Kerr, unlike courts, "[l]egislatures can enact comprehensive rules based on expert input and can update them frequently
as technology changes."' Moreover, legislative rules "are more nuanced, clear, and . . . optimize the critical balance between privacy and public safety more effectively when technology is in
, there seems to be no reason why a statutory regime will inevitably be any more
comprehensive, balanced, or clear than a regime based on Fourth Amendment principles. When the
Fourth Amendment covers a particular law enforcement activity, it provides a set of rules to regulate it.
Once a law enforcement activity falls within the Fourth Amendment's regulatory regime, courts will
examine whether the search or seizure was "reasonable."' A search with a warrant supported by probable cause is generally reasonable. Only
flux." However
on very rare occasions are searches pursuant to a valid warrant unreasonable. A search without a valid warrant is often deemed unreasonable. This is known as the "per se warrant rule."'
Warrants are a judicial authorization for a particular search. Warrants must be supported by probable
cause, which exists when there is "reasonably trustworthy information" that the search will turn up
evidence of a crime. The purpose of a warrant is to have an independent party (judges or magistrates) ensure that government officials really do have probable cause to
conduct a search. Kerr criticizes the Fourth Amendment rules as inflexible, but in reality they show a remarkable degree of flexibility. First, the warrant requirement
balances privacy interests and law enforcement needs by allowing searches and seizures to occur only
after law enforcement officials justify them before a judge or magistrate. Second, in situations where
warrants and probable cause do not work well, the Court has made exceptions. Indeed, there are
numerous exceptions to the warrant and probable cause requirements, such as Terry stops, exigent circumstances, and "special
needs" in schools and workplaces. These exceptions allow the courts to accommodate a wide range of government investigative
activity within the protective framework of the Fourth Amendment. In contrast, the statutory regime that
Kerr extols has many deficiencies that caution against Kerr's enthusiasm for legislative rules. When the statutes are examined as a whole-as an alternative regulatory regime
to the Fourth Amendment-there are many severe problems that refute Kerr's belief in the superiority of a legislative regime. In his reply, Kerr contends that I unfairly pit an idealized Fourth
Amendment regime against the statutory regime. In other words, I am comparing a Fourth Amendment regime as if the courts had applied the Fourth Amendment to various new technologies
against the statutory regime as is. But Kerr's contention is normative and proscriptive in that he recommends that going forward, legislatures, and not courts, should be the primary
rulemakers. He criticizes scholars who call for the courts to expand Fourth Amendment applicability. The current status quo reveals areas where the courts refused to apply the Fourth
First, Congress's statutes lack effective remedies because
the federal statutes often lack exclusionary rules. For example, there is no exclusionary rule to protect e-mail under the Wiretap Act,' 25 and the
Amendment and where legislatures became involved. I aim to ask, are we better off
Stored Communications Act and Pen Register Act both lack an exclusionary rule. Kerr, in fact, wrote an article lamenting exactly this fact. 127 Most of the statutes regulating law enforcement
As a result, there is often little incentive for criminal defendants
to challenge violations of these statutes. Second, there are many gaps in the statutes. Consider electronic surveillance
access to records held by third parties also lack an exclusionary rule. 128
law, for example. The Wiretap Act fails to cover silent video surveillance. As one court observed, Television surveillance is identical in its indiscriminate character to wiretapping and bugging. It
is even more invasive of privacy, just as a strip search is more invasive than a pat-down search, but it is not more indiscriminate: the microphone is as "dumb" as the television camera; both
devices pick up anything within their electronic reach, however irrelevant to the investigation. As another court observed, "[V]ideo surveillance can be vastly more intrusive [than audio
surveillance], as demonstrated by the surveillance in this case that recorded a person masturbating before the hidden camera." Beyond video surveillance, there are numerous technologies
Congress has failed to regulate. Global positioning systems enable people's movements to be tracked wherever they go. Facial recognition systems can enable surveillance photos and videos
to be scanned to identify particular people based on their facial features. Satellite technology may be used to examine practically any open area on earth. Radio frequency identification
("RFID") involves tags placed into products, objects, and with the void as filled by the legislative rules, or would we be better off had the Fourth Amendment been interpreted to encompass a
particular law enforcement activity? I believe in many instances, the latter would be better. even human beings that emit a decipherable signal.135 As this technology develops and tags can
be read at greater distances, RFID might be used to track people's movements. Congress has not passed
statutes to address the privacy implications of any of these technologies. Nor has Congress passed a law
to regulate video surveillance of citizens. Ironically, FISA regulates video surveillance, but the ECPA does not, 136 meaning that the video surveillance of a
Nor has Congress regulated the use of tracking devices,
key logging devices, or other new technologies.
foreign spy receives more federal statutory protection than that of a U.S. citizen. 137
Aff Core
Inherency
Surveillance Increasing
Federal use of aerial surveillance is high and increasing – numerous federal agencies
using them
Heller 6/17 [dean, senator for Nevada “Heller, Wyden Bill Requires Warrants for Aerial Surveillance”,
hellersenate.gov, June{ 17,http://www.heller.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2015/6/heller-wyden-billrequires-warrants-for-aerial-surveillance] Sheikh
Senator Wyden added, “Americans’ privacy rights shouldn’t stop at the treetops. Technology has made it possible to conduct
round-the-clock aerial surveillance. The law needs to keep up.” Wyden continued, “Clear rules for when and how the
federal government can watch Americans from the sky will provide critical certainty for the government, and help the unmanned aircraft
industry reach its potential as an economic powerhouse in Oregon and the United States.”
Recent press reports have detailed
numerous instances of aerial surveillance by the federal government. Under one program, the FBI has surveilled people
in dozens of American cities without warrants, using a fleet of small airplanes. To further protect Americans’ privacy: The bill would apply to
both manned- and unmanned-aircraft. Unlawfully collected information would be inadmissible in court. The government would be prohibited
from identifying persons who show up incidentally in surveillance, unless there is probable cause to believe such persons have committed a
crime. The bill prohibits the government from soliciting to commercial/private operators to conduct surveillance that the government itself is
not authorized to do. The bill includes exceptions for border patrol (within 25 miles of land border), testing operations, public land surveillance,
including surveying for weather-related damage, research, scoping for environmental dangers and illegal vegetation, as well for as wildlife
management. It does not impact commercial operations or apply to state and local law-enforcement agencies.
The inexpensive cost of drones means they will continue to expand – there are no
safeguards in place to protect privacy and liberties from the mass surveillance coming
– they will uniquely spur a surveillance state
Huffington Post 12 – [Huffington Post, American online news, “Drone Use In U.S. Could Lead To
'Warrantless Mass Surveillance': ACLU”, Huffington Post, 10-19,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/19/drones-in-the-us-surveillance_n_1988540.html] huang
A request for drones from a California sheriff's office prompted the American Civil Liberties Union to
point out, what officials say, are significant dangers posed by the proliferation and misuse of the aerial
surveillance devices.¶ The Alameda County Sheriff's office in Northern California has requested a grant to purchase unmanned aerial
drones for video and infrared surveillance in police, fire and rescue settings, according to Pleasanton Patch.¶ Sheriff Gregory Ahern insists a
drone deployed by his department would not be used as a "patrol tool."¶ "It would be a mission-specific tool for evaluating and testing for
specific incidents," Ahern said. "If we do this, we have to have permission from the [federal aviation administration] defined for each specific
civil
liberties group notes that strong "safeguards and accountability mechanisms" must be in place to
ensure that "law enforcement does not use drones to engage in warrantless mass surveillance,"
according to an ACLU blogpost.¶ Ahern touted the affordability of drones, noting that a single drone
costs between $50,000 to $100,000, whereas a helicopter costs $3 million and is expensive to operate.¶
But the ACLU sees the cheapness of drones as another potential danger.¶ "When the police have to
mount elaborate and costly foot and squad patrols to follow a suspect 24/7, the expenditure of
resources serves as a deterrent to abuse; it forces the police to limit their surveillance to instances when
it is actually necessary," the blog post says. "Drones permit the police to surveil people at all hours of
the day and, apparently, at 1/30 the cost of other forms of aerial surveillance. The natural deterrent to
abuse goes away, and invites abuse."¶ Current Guardian columnist and former Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald echoed those
concerns in a December, 2011 piece.¶ The fact is that drones vest vast new powers that police helicopters and existing
weapons do not vest: and that’s true not just for weaponization but for surveillance. Drones enable a
Surveillance State unlike anything we’ve seen. Because small drones are so much cheaper than police
helicopters, many more of them can be deployed at once, ensuring far greater surveillance over a much
larger area. Their small size and stealth capability means they can hover without any detection, and they
type of mission such as search and rescue, fires or for explosive ordinances teams to take photos of suspicious devices."¶ But the
can remain in the air for far longer than police helicopters.¶ Armed drones have become a common and controversial tool
used in the so called "War on Terror" overseas.¶ Congress approved the use of unarmed drones in the US earlier this year.¶ Since then, worry
over privacy and other civil rights abuses has inspired legislation in Congress that would put some clamps on law enforcement's ability to use
the unmanned aircrafts.¶ “When
it comes to privacy protections for the American people, drones are flying
blind,” Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said in a statement released in August. “Drones are already flying in
U.S. airspace – with thousands more to come – but with no privacy protections or transparency
measures in place."
The next generation of surveillance drones will be nuclear-powered – will only
continue the path to a militaristic, security state
Jones, 12 [Alex, journalist at infowars.com, “NEXT PHASE OF THE SURVEILLANCE STATE: NUCLEAR
POWERED DRONES,” Infowars.com, 4/2, http://www.infowars.com/next-phase-of-the-surveillancestate-nuclear-powered-drones/] Zhang
The next generation of surveillance drones will be nuclear powered. Instead of flying for hours, the new
drones will be able to stay in the air for months. The development represents a bonanza for the national
security state and its military-industrial complex ministries like the Department of Homeland Security.∂
The blueprints for the new drones, which have been developed by Sandia National Laboratories – the US
government’s principal nuclear research and development agency – and defense contractor Northrop
Grumman, were designed to increase flying time “from days to months” while making more power
available for operating equipment, according to a project summary published by Sandia.∂ Using nuclear
power would enable the Reaper [a Northrop Grumman drone] not only to remain airborne for far
longer, but to carry more missiles or surveillance equipment, and to dispense with the need for ground
crews based in remote and dangerous areas.∂ “The bottom line is: domestic drones are potentially
extremely powerful surveillance tools, and that power — like all government power — needs to be
subject to checks and balances We hope that Congress will carefully consider the privacy implications
that this technology can lead to.”∂ Congress has spoken. By 2015 and probably sooner the surveillance
state will take to the air. It’s the next phase of a high-tech surveillance state: 24-7 aerial drones to
monitor the masses and “prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to
keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together,” as Zbigniew
Brzezinski writes. “The bottom line is: domestic drones are potentially extremely powerful surveillance
tools, and that power — like all government power — needs to be subject to checks and balances We
hope that Congress will carefully consider the privacy implications that this technology can lead to.”
Aerial surveillance drastically expanding – federal licensing
Greenwald 2013 (Greenwald, former columnist on civil liberties and US national security, March,
“Domestic drones and their unique dangers”,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-dangers)
In contrast to weaponized drones, even the most naïve among us do not doubt the imminent proliferation of domestic surveillance drones.
With little debate, they have already arrived. As the ACLU put it in their recent report: "US law
enforcement is greatly expanding
its use of domestic drones for surveillance." An LA Times article from last month reported that "federal authorities
have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in US
airspace" and that "the Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic
drone operators since 2007, far more than were previously known." Moreover, the agency "has estimated
10,000 drones could be aloft five years later" and "local and state law enforcement agencies are
expected to be among the largest customers."Concerns about the proliferation of domestic surveillance drones are typically
dismissed with the claim that they do nothing more than police helicopters and satellites already do. Such claims are completely misinformed.
As the ACLU's 2011 comprehensive report on domestic drones explained: "Unmanned
aircraft carrying cameras raise the
prospect of a significant new avenue for the surveillance of American life."Multiple attributes of
surveillance drones make them uniquely threatening. Because they are so cheap and getting cheaper,
huge numbers of them can be deployed to create ubiquitous surveillance in a way that helicopters or
satellites never could. How this works can already been seen in Afghanistan, where the US military has dubbed its drone surveillance
system "the Gorgon Stare", named after the "mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them". That
drone surveillance system is "able to scan an area the size of a small town" and "the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that
[can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity". Boasted one US General: "Gorgon
Stare will be looking at a whole
city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see
everything."
AT: Status Quo Solves
Status quo is not enough - Current federal regulations actually make it easier for
drones to fly without privacy concerns
Candice Bernd, 2/24/15, (Candice Bernd, an assistant editor/reporter with Truthout, “Proposed Rules
Regulating Domestic Drone Use Lack Police Warrant Requirement”, Truth-out.org, http://www.truthout.org/news/item/29250-proposed-rules-regulating-domestic-drone-use-lack-police-warrantrequirement#, accessed date: 7/20/15) Salehitezangi
In about two years, the number of municipal police departments and federal agencies using unmanned
aerial systems (UAS) for surveillance purposes is expected to skyrocket as the Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) streamlines the process by which a drone operator can apply for a permit. The FAA
released proposed rules governing the commercial use of UAS on February 15 in a move widely expected to
give thousands of businesses and public agencies the green light to use UAS for work purposes sometime in
2017, after the rules undergo a lengthy public review process. The White House simultaneously released an executive
order February 15 intended to safeguard privacy and civil rights by directing federal agencies to publicly disclose
information about how they use UAS in domestic airspace. The proposed rules, which apply to drones that weigh only
55 pounds or less, would make it much easier not only for police departments, but also a variety of
businesses, including journalists, photographers and agricultural workers, to fly domestic drones for
work purposes. The FAA is currently working on a separate set of rules for larger drones, which the agency is expected to release in a few
years. Under the rules, operators will be required to pass a proficiency exam, and pay about $200 in fees
to register their drone. Operators will have to fly their drones at speeds of less than 100 miles-per-hour,
at altitudes under 500 feet, during daylight hours only and within either their own unaided line of sight
or within the eyesight of designated observers on the ground. The White House's executive order directs
federal agencies using domestic drones to draft a policy framework governing oversight and
transparency of UAS use within 90 days. The directive outlines guidelines for data retention and
dissemination of policies, as well as reporting requirements which mandate public disclosure of how
federal agencies use UAS. But the executive order doesn't go far enough in the eyes of the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), despite being described as a step in the right direction. Neema Singh Guliani, who is legislative counsel with the
ACLU, praised the White House's directive for its public reporting requirements, saying the requirements will allow greater public discourse and
debate about the appropriate uses of domestic drones by federal agencies. She also celebrated the fact that federal agencies will be mandated
to draft policy frameworks on UAS use, because many of those agencies currently have no such policy framework. However, Guliani said
the directive alone isn't sufficient to protect people's privacy from the particularly invasive surveillance
opportunities that domestic drones represent as used by law enforcement agencies. While federal
agencies will be required to create a basic framework regulating domestic drone use, each agency will be
developing those guidelines separately, which could lead to inconsistency or deficient standards within some
agencies, according to Guliani. She also took issue with certain aspects of the directive's information-sharing rules, saying they were
vague on the question of whether or not federal agencies can share information unrelated to the reason
the data was collected by UAS in the first place. The executive order outlines that agencies can use UAS for any
"authorized purpose," but the order does not outline exactly what an "authorized purpose" is. The executive
order maintains that agencies must purge the data collected from UAS after 180 days, that is, unless an agency
decides to keep the information because, again, it relates to an "authorized purpose." In this instance, too, Guliani
maintains that "purpose" is vague, and could potentially lead to a broad interpretation by federal agencies. "I think there are certain minimum
guidelines that I think should have been put in place by [the executive order] or should certainly be a part of whatever agency guidelines are
produced," Guliani said.
Current privacy laws inadequate at addressing concerns of civil liberties violations
from aerial surveillance
Ahsanuddin 14 – [Sadia Ahsanuddin, graduate of Harvard University, “Domestic Drones: Implications
for Privacy and Due Process in the United States”, MPAC, 9-8,
http://www.mpac.org/publications/policy-papers/domestic-drones.php] Huang
Drones are capable of housing a variety of highly intrusive surveillance technologies. As such, drones will aid
governmental agencies in conducting surveillance with high efficiency. How should drones be regulated in order to preserve privacy? How will existing privacy law affect domestic drones? As it
existing privacy law is inadequate in addressing domestic drone operations. Although privacy
statutes exist on the federal and state levels and the Fourth Amendment theoretically protects
individuals from unwarranted surveillance, these measures prove inadequate because the statutes are
out of step with today’s technological realities and the standards set forth in case law may prove tenuous with the mass introduction of drones.
Drones also impact due process rights. Drones are perhaps best known for the role they play in conducting signature strikes against suspected militants
abroad. Will civilians on American soil ever be subjected to drone attacks? Should civilians fear the weaponization of drones or their use in delivering lethal payloads? Although the
Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments assure individuals of the right to due process before the deprivation
of life, liberty, or property, these rights have already begun to erode due to the global war on terror and
the use of drones to conduct signature strikes by virtue of executive decisions that are devoid of judicial review. With the mass introduction of
domestic drones, there remains a threat and real fear that drones may be used to deprive individuals of
life, liberty, or property with no opportunity to dispute the charges brought against them. Americans of
all ethnicities and creeds are likely to be affected by the domestic deployment of drones. American Muslims have a
turns out,
special contribution to make to this discussion. Having been subjected to special law enforcement attention and scrutiny, American Muslims find themselves particularly ¶ susceptible to
infractions of civil liberties. As ¶ representatives of the American Muslim population ¶ and with the expertise to ground our analysis, the ¶ Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) proposes ¶ the
Adequate
protection of privacy is necessary to allow the public to take advantage of drone technology without
becoming a society in which every movement is monitored by the authorities. Simultaneously, drone developers need
following guidelines to address the issues of ¶ law enforcement use of drones, data collection, ¶ weaponization of drones, due process, oversight, ¶ and transparency:
regulations ¶ so that they can conduct research and development ¶ unimpeded by protests and news reports. ¶ Additionally, the weaponization of drones on ¶ domestic soil poses a threat to
due process rights ¶ and public safety. This was acknowledged by Sen. ¶ Dianne Feinstein, who called for a total prohibition ¶ on the weaponization of domestic drones.13 Indeed, ¶ politicians
Drones pose an unprecedented threat to
civil liberties. They can be utilized to conduct incessant mass surveillance through the mutual
coordination of multiple drones over a given neighborhood. ¶ This report presents an overview of the existing ¶ law on privacy and due
and policymakers representing a broad ¶ spectrum of political views advocate regulations for ¶ domestic drones.
process and an analysis of ¶ legislative proposals in order to ascertain whether ¶ they will adequately protect civil liberties or ¶ whether more is required. Part I lays out existing ¶ law on
privacy and due process and addresses the ¶ integration of drones into the national airspace ¶ from those vantage points. Part II proposes ¶ guidelines for regulations, while Part III describes ¶
the various bills and other measures being taken ¶ to regulate drones
.
Solvency
Fed Action Key
And, federal action chills state and local use of warrantless aerial surveillance
Kelli Sladick, Feb. 26, 2015, (Kelli Sladick, Journalist and writer, “To the Governor’s Desk: Virginia Bill
Bans Warrantless Drone Surveillance”, tenthamendmentcenter.com
http://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2015/02/to-the-governors-desk-virginia-bill-bans-warrantlessdrone-surveillance/, accessed date: 07/15/15) Salehitezangi
Impact on the Federal Surveillance State Although SB1301 focuses exclusively on state and local drone use and does not apply directly federal
agencies, the legislation would throw a high hurdle in front of some federal programs. Much of
the funding for drones at the
state and local level comes from the federal government, in and of itself a constitutional violation. In
return, federal agencies tap into the information gathered by state and local law enforcement through
fusion centers and a federal program known as the information sharing environment. According to its website,
the ISE “provides analysts, operators, and investigators with information needed to enhance national security. These analysts, operators, and
investigators… have mission needs to collaborate and share information with each other and with private sector partners and our foreign
allies.” In other words, ISE serves as a conduit for the sharing of information gathered without a warrant. The
federal government
encourages and funds a network of drones at the state and local level across the U.S., thereby gaining
access to a massive data pool on Americans without having to expend the resources to collect the
information itself. By placing restrictions on drone use, state and local governments limit the data
available that the feds can access. In a nutshell, without state and local cooperation, the feds have a
much more difficult time gathering information. This represents a major blow to the surveillance state
and a win for privacy.
Courts Key
Court action key – judicial interpretations needed to enhance privacy doctrine to keep
pace with new technologies
Rushin 2011 (Stephen - PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, Jurisprudence and Social
Policy Program; THE JUDICIAL RESPONSE TO MASS POLICE SURVEILLANCE; 2011 U. Ill. J.L. Tech. & Pol'y
281/ zhang
Under the current Fourth Amendment doctrine, the warrantless use of surveillance technologies probably does not amount to
a search. These technologies do not provide officers with any extrasensory abilities, but merely improve
the efficiency of law enforcement investigations. Additionally, these technologies do not interfere with
any reasonable expectation of privacy on public thoroughfares. This demonstrates a need for the Court to rethink the current Fourth
Amendment doctrine to account for the possibility of mass surveillance. Such a major doctrinal shift may be imminent, as the Court has already granted certiorari to a controversial surveillance
case, United States v. Jones, 240 involving the warrantless installation of a GPS device. The Court’s pending decision in this case could have major implications for the judiciary’s future
Despite the enormous powers of the digitally efficient investigative state, the
courts have avoided regulating these emerging technological trends, largely for fear of limiting policing
efficiency. In the absence of legislative or judicial regulation, the digitally efficient investigative state is
radically reshaping social conceptions of privacy.∂ What remains inconclusive, though, is whether the
use of these technologies for mere observational comparison or indiscriminate data retention affects
the technology‘s usefulness as a criminal deterrent. Since individuals are notoriously bad at risk assessment, there may be a strong argument that
the technologies serve as a psychological deterrent, whether they merely work as observational comparison tools or as true vehicles for widespread data collection. More
psychological research would be helpful in understanding how individuals perceive surveillance
technologies, and whether limiting their uses to mere observational comparison would tangibly affect
their usefulness as criminal deterrents ∂ [P]rivacy is not simply an empirical and historical question that measures the collective sense in any given society of
what is and has long been considered private. Without a normative component, a conception of privacy can only provide a
status report on existing privacy norms rather than guide us toward shaping privacy law and policy in
the future. If we focus simply on people‘s current expectation of privacy, our conception of privacy
would continually shrink given the increasing surveillance in the modern world.375 The judiciary can and
should play a fundamental role in protecting a normatively forceful conception of privacy in all regards.
willingness to regulate surveillance technologies.
Do we reasonably expect a person to assume the risk that, every time they enter a public space, the state can monitor their every movement with ALPR? Do we reasonably expect a person to
should we expect
individuals to completely abandon all anonymity in public? I believe the clear, normative answer to these questions∂ is a resounding no,
and the implications of the digitally efficient investigative state only add weight to the claims previously made by
assume the risk that the state will keep extensive, centralized data on their movements indefinitely? Or perhaps the more important question is
Professor Solove and others.
Fourth Amendment Key
Plan should rule on Fourth Amendment grounds – it is key to re-establishing
boundaries in public/private spheres
Ahsanuddin et al 2014 (Sadia - principal investigator for the report and MPAC research fellow;
Domestic Drones: Implications for Privacy and Due Process in the United States; Sep 8;
www.mpac.org/publications/policy-papers/domestic-drones.php0) Zhang
For Fourth Amendment purposes, a search occurs when the government trespasses upon the areas that are protected by the Fourth Amendment (including persons,
houses, papers, and effects) 92 or otherwise intrudes upon an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy.93 A
reasonable expectation of privacy exists when (1) a person exhibits an actual, subjective expectation of
privacy, and (2) society as a whole would deem that individual’s expectation of privacy reasonable.
Reasonable expectation of privacy standard may provide inadequate protection in the age of mass
surveillance: if the average individual constantly expects to be surveilled, this standard may be rendered
meaningless and ineffective. The courts should re-think this standard. In the age of mass surveillance, however, the reasonable expectation of
privacy standard will have to be reassessed. Courts will have to address whether individuals have any reasonable expectation of privacy, even when at
home. As Professor Woodrow Hartzog stated, “Once you’ve been put on notice that you can have no expectation of privacy, then it’s not reasonable to expect any privacy in any area in
The demarcation between the public and private spheres is crucial when considering an
individual’s right to privacy.∂ As drones become increasingly used by law enforcement agencies, it is
likely that there will be legal challenges and a reviewing court will have to determine the location of the
individual and whether they had a reasonable expectation of privacy to determine whether an
unreasonable search took place. Alternatively, courts may decide to determine whether the surveillance
itself is reasonable, regardless of where it took place.∂ Although the Supreme Court has held that warrantless location tracking on public roads is permissible, as in United
particular.”107∂
States v. Knotts, a majority of justices in two concurrences in United States v. Jones indicated an awareness that prolonged surveillance of an individual encroaches upon Fourth Amendment
In August 2012, a North Dakota court upheld the use of the drone to arrest the suspects, denying a
request brought by the suspect’s attorney to dismiss charges for unwarranted use of an unmanned
aircraft.∂ Privacy experts agree. In an article in the Stanford Law Review Online, Professor Ryan Calo of the University of
Washington School of Law states that drones “may be just the visceral jolt society needs to drag privacy
law into the twenty-first century.” American privacy law has developed at a “slow and uneven” pace,
whereas technology has developed at a rapid speed.∂ The need for legislation is clear. With recent
revelations that the federal government has been conducting surveillance of the American public on an
unprecedented level, the threat that unregulated and immensely capable technologies pose to civil
liberties is profound. The law must catch up with technology.
rights∂
AT: Drones Effective
Aerial surveillance not effective – high rate of accidents
Bolkcom 04 [Christopher Specialist in National Defense, Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division,
“Homeland Security: Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and Border Surveillance”
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a477727.pdf] Naviaux
UAVs are less expensive than manned aircraft used for border security. The unit cost of UAVs varies widely. The Shadow UAV costs $350,000 while the
Predator costs $4.5 million.14 In contrast, the unit cost of a P-3 manned aircraft used by U.S.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement is $36 million. Blackhawk helicopters which are frequently used
on the borders cost $8.6 million per unit. However, the benefit of the Blackhawk’s relative low unit cost is diminished by its lack of endurance. Blackhawks
have a maximum endurance of 2 hours and 18 minutes.15 Consequently, UAVs longer dwell time would allow them to patrol the border longer. Despite potential benefits of using UAVs for
There are concerns regarding UAVs high
accident rate. Currently, the UAV accident rate is 100 times higher than that of manned aircraft.16 Because
homeland security, various problems encountered in the past may hinder UAV implementation on the border.
UAV technology is still evolving there is less redundancy built into the operating system of UAVs than of manned aircraft and until redundant systems are perfected mishap rates are expected
a well-trained pilot is better positioned to find the source of the
problem because of his/her physical proximity. If a UAV encountered a similar system failure, or if a UAV
landing was attempted during difficult weather conditions, the ground control pilot would be at a disadvantage because he or she is
removed from the event. Unlike a manned pilot, the remote pilot would not be able to assess important
sensory information such as wind speed.17The key component of Operation Safeguard was to identify potential threats crossing the southern border illegally.
to remain high. Additionally, if control systems fail in a manned aircraft,
The surveillance capabilities of UAVs equipped with only an E-O camera and Forward Looking Infrared Radar (FLIR) sensor have been limited in the past by poor weather conditions.
Cloudy conditions and high humidity climates can distort the imagery produced by EO and FLIR
equipment. Although the Predator B is operating in the low-humidity environment of the Southwest, the
effects of extreme climatic or atmospheric conditions on its sensors reportedly can be mitigated if DHS
decides to outfit the Predator B with a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system.18 Radars can produce
high resolution imagery in inclement weather. The ability of SAR to function during adverse weather
conditions sets it apart from optical or infrared systems.19 However, its ability to track moving targets is
limited. This limitation can be mitigated by accompanying SAR with moving target indicator (MTI) radar technology. Adding SAR and MTI to the Predator B’s platform could significantly
enhance its operational capability for border missions. By adding SAR and MTI to the UAV platform, however, the costs of using UAVs on the border would increase.
Militants can hack drones at a low cost--- we have no protections
Harvard Law School National Security Journal 2010 (Harvard Law School National Security
Journal, "NSJ Analysis: Increasing Use of Unmanned Drones Raises Data Security Issues", February 22,
2010, http://harvardnsj.org/2010/02/nsj-analysis-increasing-use-of-unmanned-drones-raises-datasecurity-issues/)
Drones raise unique security issues as their data streams, and possibly control streams, must be
secured. Unlike a manned airplane controlled from a cockpit and generally involving a closed system of
control, a drone is often remote-controlled through a two-way data stream carried over sometimes
thousands of miles. Such data streams can be vulnerable to hacking , like any computer network.
According to the Wall Street Journal, in December 2009, militants in Iraq were able to hack a drone’s
video feed using low cost off-the-shelf software. While there was no evidence that the militants were
able to take control of the drone, they were able to download and see the drone’s video feed, perhaps
allowing them to evade U.S. operations.¶ The stark difference between resource requirements between
the militant hackers and the U.S. military is telling. While Reaper drones like the one hacked can cost
over $10 million, the militants used a computer program that cost around $25. The low cost of the
program allows militants to proliferate the software and thereby increase the danger that drones can be
hacked and their video feeds watched by enemy forces.¶ The ability of militants in Iraq to hack drone
video feeds should be cause for concern, especially as far more advanced military forces such as Russia
and China have extensive cyber-warfare capabilities. While Iraqi militants relied on cheap software to
capture a video feed, other states’ capabilities could conceivably allow a foreign force to hijack a drone,
either to alter the mission or crash the drone before the mission can be completed. Increased reliance
on drone warfare will also increase the opportunities for enemy cyber-warfare units to hack or hijack
the unmanned vehicles.¶ U.S. drone vulnerability stems from the fact that once a drone is far from its
base, satellite uplinks are necessary to link the drone to the base. Such uplinks are vulnerable to hacking,
unless the data stream is encrypted. But the drones’ data stream is unencrypted, and unless significant
expenditures are made to add encryption to the proprietary satellite technology, the vulnerability will
remain. The unencrypted data stream vulnerability carries over to other U.S. satellite traffic, as a 2005
CIA report describes. While the control data stream of drones is encrypted, the ability of enemies to
access U.S. drone intelligence seriously undermines the ability of the United States to use that
intelligence for mission purposes.¶ U.S. drone vulnerabilities have been known to the U.S. military since
at least the 1999 Yugoslav war. Whether it was bureaucratic indifference or inertia, the problem was not
addressed. Most worrying, U.S. commanders may have seriously underestimated the ingenuity and
technical proficiency of militants. If this is so, it must be hoped that the same commanders will not
continue to underestimate the threat to drone data-gathering and control posed by a lack of data
stream security. Only by addressing this security hole can the ever-growing drone force be considered
a fully functional weapon of war, useful in all possible conflicts and with a varied mission profile.
AT: Drones Good – War on Drugs
Drones not needed for drug war – the amount of drugs they are responsible for
finding is less than .01% of our total seizures
Stamey, 14 [Barcley, Navy Lieutenant Commander, Masters of Arts Degree in Security Studies
“DOMESTIC AERIAL SURVEILLANCE AND HOMELAND SECURITY” 3/2014
http://calhoun.nps.edu/bitstream/handle/10945/41446/14Mar_Stamey_Barcley.pdf?sequence=1]
Naviaux
According to retired Air Force Major General Michael Kostelnik, who heads CBP’s Office of Air and
Marine (OAM), drones are extremely maintenance intensive, cost more to operate than traditional
means, and are often unavailable to assist border agents because DHS has farmed them out to other
entities such as the FBI.11 Since the beginning of CBP’s UAS program in 2005, drones have logged more
than 12,000 flight hours in support of border security operations similar to what experts envision using
drones for on a national, counter-terrorism scale. Over that time, approximately 46,600 pounds of illicit
drugs and 7,500 individuals have been seized or detained during UAS supported operations.12 Although
these numbers might seem high, they are comparatively insignificant when taking into account CBP’s
total interception. On average, CBP seizes 3,500 pounds of marijuana every day in Arizona alone. In
2012, the Border Patrol seized 2.3 million pounds of pot. From 2005–2011, CBP alone detained 4.1
million immigrants; therefore, the 7,500 individuals apprehended with UAS assistance equates to less
than .01 percent—further diminishing the effectiveness of drone use. The single-most destructive
statistic that opponents to drones tout is that in the previously mentioned years, not a single terrorist,
member of the middle or top echelon of Transnational Criminal Organizations, or drug cartels has been
arrested with the help of UAS.13
Drones Bad – 4th Amendment
Advanced surveillance capabilities of drones make them unique offenders of the 4 th
Amendment – it is an abuse of governmental power
Selinger, 15 3/9/2015, Evan, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Rochester Institute of Technology,
“Why domestic drones stir more debate than ones used in warfighting abroad”, csmoniter, March 9,
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/Passcode-Voices/2015/0309/Why-domestic-drones-stirmore-debate-than-ones-used-in-warfighting-abroad, Hsiao
The use of drones domestically has sparked heated debate around the potential threats to both privacy
and safety. The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation warns that drones "raise significant
issues for privacy and civil liberties" since they are capable of "highly advanced surveillance." In terms of
commercial use, the Federal Aviation Administration has proposed rules to limit where drones can fly.¶ While military drone usage abroad has been opposed by various groups, it hasn't drawn
the same kind of attention stateside as the emergence of commercial drones. The US appears more interested in whether drones will be approved for package delivery than whether it's
acceptable to use drones for targeted killings in Yemen.¶ I recently spoke with John Kaag about that contradiction. Mr. Kagg is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of
Massachusetts at Lowell. He recently coauthored a book called "Drone Warfare" with Sarah Kreps, an associate professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University. Edited
The first reason has to do with the legal and political origins of the United States. US citizens
know – quite rightly – that the country was set up in such a way, at least in theory, to protect its citizens
from the abuse of governmental power. Most of us have internalized some version of the Fourth Amendment that prohibits
the government from conducting searches of citizens without probable cause and requires a court to
issue a warrant prior to a search commencing. The abuse of domestic drone surveillance would violate
this amendment, and so Americans are quick to get their hackles up. Using drones in targeted killings abroad is different. There’s a sense – again, an accurate one – that the laws
excerpts follow.¶
of war are different than the domestic laws that govern a nation.
Lack of regulations on aerial surveillance hurts civil liberties – violates 4th Amendment
Heartland News 2012 Artz “Congress Approves Domestic Use of Aerial Surveillance Drones”
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/congress-approves-domestic-use-aerial-surveillancedrones, Feb, 8, 2008, Hsiao
Congress passed – and President Obama is expected to sign – House Resolution 658, the “Federal
Aviation Administration Air Transportation Modernization and Safety Improvement Act,” which would,
in part, allow domestic use of aerial drone spy planes. HR 658 was sent to the President on February 8.
The resolution has sparked opposition from privacy advocates who claim employing drones for domestic
surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.¶ According to a poll conducted by
Rasmussen Reports, released February 13, 52 percent of voters oppose the use of surveillance drones
compared to 30 percent who favor it and 17 percent who are undecided.¶ Jay Stanley, senior policy
analyst for the American Civil Liberty Union’s Speech, Policy and Technology Project, says that drone
deployment is “bad from the point of view of the Constitution because the founding fathers put in place
rules to prevent us from being surveilled 24/7. They’re bad from a policy perspective because no one
wants to be constantly watched.”
Drones Bad – War
Reliance on drones will lead to more wars – a drone-reliance state takes little initial
risk in their use
Greenwald 2013(Greenwald, former columnist on civil liberties and US national security, March,
“Domestic drones and their unique dangers”,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-dangers)
Suffice to say, there is an enormous profit to be made from exploiting the domestic drone market, and as usual, that factor is thus far driving
the (basically nonexistent) political response to these threats. What
is most often ignored by drone proponents, or those
who scoff at anti-drone activism, are the unique features of drones: the way they enable more warfare,
more aggression, and more surveillance. Drones make war more likely precisely because they entail so
little risk to the war-making country. Similarly, while the propensity of drones to kill innocent people receives the bulk of media
attention, the way in which drones psychologically terrorize the population - simply by constantly hovering over them: unseen but heard - is
usually ignored, because it's not happening in the US, so few people care (see this AP report from yesterday on how the increasing use of drone
attacks in Afghanistan is truly terrorizing local villagers). It
remains to be seen how Americans will react to drones
constantly hovering over their homes and their childrens' schools, though by that point, their presence
will be so institutionalized that it will be likely be too late to stop. Notably, this may be one area where an actual
bipartisan/trans-partisan alliance can meaningfully emerge, as most advocates working on these issues with whom I've spoken say that
libertarian-minded GOP state legislators have been as responsive as more left-wing Democratic ones in working to impose some limits. One
bill now pending in Congress would prohibit the use of surveillance drones on US soil in the absence of a
specific search warrant, and has bipartisan support. Only the most authoritarian among us will be
incapable of understanding the multiple dangers posed by a domestic drone regime (particularly when their
party is in control of the government and they are incapable of perceiving threats from increased state police power). But the proliferation of
domestic drones affords a real opportunity to forge an enduring coalition in defense of core privacy and other rights that transcends partisan
allegiance, by working toward meaningful limits on their use. Making people aware of exactly what these unique threats are from a domestic
drone regime is the key first step in constructing that coalition.
Drones Bad – Terrorism
Expansion of drones means a weapon of aggression for terrorist groups
Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Sanchez, 2/2
Sanchez 2/2/2015, Senior Research Fellow at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and Cameron
McKibben, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. “Worst Case Scenario: The
Criminal Use of Drones” Council on Hemispheric Affairs, http://www.coha.org/worst-case-scenario-thecriminal-use-of-drones/, Hsiao
In the U.S., the worst possible scenario of how drones can be utilized for violent outcomes in sensitive locations took a
new turn on January 26, when a small drone crashed on the lawn of the White House. While this incident (involving an inebriated
government employee) seems to have just been an accident, it begins to illuminate just how easily drones can fly into restricted
areas. The event also provokes worries over how destructive these machines can be if they were to be used as “terror drones,”
and loaded with some sort of explosive. Additionally, it is important to remember that this is not the first time that drones have entered no-fly zones. Over
the past year, unauthorized drones have flown close to other sensitive targets, like nuclear power plants in France and Belgium. So far, no one has been detained for these incidents, and these
could have been staged by some harmless environmental group. Nevertheless, given the recent attacks against the Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in France and the terrorist attacks in the
The idea
that terrorist movements will begin to utilize drones is no longer a hypothetical scenario, but a grim reality. For example,
the global media has reported that ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has procured a drone and is using it to conduct
reconnaissance and aid in launching ground attacks on the Syrian military.[iii] Likewise, it is believed that groups like Hamas and
UK and Spain over the past decade, one major concern is that terror drones could be use by an extremist Islamic militant organization for some kind of terrorist operation.¶
Hezbollah also possess drones.¶ A word of caution is necessary. The drones used by the aforementioned militant movements are generally believed to be very crude models, nothing more
than a small plane or helicopter with a video camera and GPS attached. Such aircraft cannot be compared to the capabilities of US or Israeli drones like the NightEagle or ScanEagle, much less
armed drones like the Predators. Nevertheless, even the most rudimentary drone can serve as an effective “eye in the sky” that would provide invaluable intelligence information to a terrorist
movement. Moreover, in the case of Israel, one genuine fear is that Hezbollah’s drones can be adapted as “suicide drones” – namely that they can be loaded with explosives so they would
cause maximum damage if they collide against an Israeli military (or civilian) facility.[iv]¶ Even criminals that do not necessarily belong to some major terrorist or criminal network can use
individuals have already used small drones to try to
smuggle marijuana, cell phones, and other contraband into prisons in South Carolina and Georgia. These attempts were discovered
drones for smuggling. This has already been the case in the U.S. and Australia. [v] For example,
because the drones failed to cross over the fence line and crashed (one likely reason being that they were carrying too much weight for the machine to fly properly), but there could certainly
be other instances when drones were able to fly over a prison fence, were unloaded by prisoners, and then managed to fly back unnoticed.¶ As UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) are now
coming into the hands of criminals and terrorist movements across the world, either for transportation of contraband or surveillance purposes, it should come as little surprise that drones are
now beginning to be utilized by Latin American DTOs. At this point we must ask ourselves, what are the implications for the use of drones by these Latin American illicit groups?
Surveillance State Adv
Ext – Drones Bad – Privacy
Aerial surveillance has the potential for crushing privacy expectations than any other
monitoring technology – it could gather information for days without probable cause
Scott 12 – [Austin Scott, Representative for Georgia's 8th Congressional District, “Domestic drones
risky?”, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 6-22,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?do
cLinkInd=true&risb=21_T22336192241&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey
=29_T22336192247&cisb=22_T22336192245&treeMax=true&treeWidth=0&csi=8379&docNo=6] Huang
For the past few years, unmanned aerial vehicles, or "drones" as they are often called, have become a common tool used by our military overseas. Drone technology has been an invaluable
We've also used drone surveillance along our southern border to prevent
illegal immigration and combat drug trafficking. Drones are an attractive tool for the military because of
their cost-effectiveness and operator safety, among other things. Because of these benefits, drones also are being more widely
resource to our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
considered by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies for domestic use in the United States. Naturally, this development has stirred debate among many Americans. The alarm
over domestic drone use does not reflect an anti-drone sentiment; rather, it stems from questions about the consequences these relatively quiet unmanned aircraft --- some of which are as
drones could present a risk to the protections against
"unreasonable searches and seizures" outlined in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. While
highly effective and certainly an attractive alternative to risking American lives, drone technology
presents a greater risk of being used in a much more intrusive manner than other aerial surveillance
technology. Drones are capable of staying aloft for days at a time and can be equipped with highly
sophisticated camera technology that can collect a constant stream of surveillance footage. With
advances in drone technology and without a requirement that federal agencies obtain a warrant, drones
could conduct surveillance for days without just cause. To ensure that drones are not used to violate
Americans' Fourth Amendment rights, I recently introduced HR 5925, Preserving Freedom from
Unwarranted Surveillance Act. This bill would require the government to obtain a warrant before
conducting drone surveillance in the United States. Recognizing that there are situations where the use of drones is necessary and appropriate,
such as search and rescue, my bill aims to balance privacy concerns and the ability to harness drone technology for legitimate domestic use. Drones have proved highly
effective in emergency situations requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to life --- such as
wildfires. For these reasons, my bill has emergency exceptions and also would permit the federal
government to use drones to patrol the national borders or when they are needed to prevent a terrorist
attack.¶ Beyond these public safety exceptions, the legislation would require law enforcement to acquire a warrant from a judge. This follows the spirit of current laws regarding
small as a hummingbird --- will have on Americans' privacy. Therefore,
surveillance.¶ This technology is evolving rapidly and will soon reach previously unforeseen capabilities. Therefore, we must be proactive and ensure that our laws address these new
technologies and maintain the safeguards enshrined in our Constitution.¶ Without the ability to foresee where drone technology could lead, it is important that we protect Americans' civil
liberties from the outset. This legislation may not be the last word on the issue, but it is an important start in this effort to ensure that
drones are not used to infringe
on Americans' privacy rights.
Aerial surveillance uniquely impacts privacy rights of US citizens in ways we have not
endured before – their technology eradicates barriers on existing ways to monitor
from the air
Greenwald, 13 [Glenn, a fomer columnist on civil liberties and US national security issues for the
Guardian. An ex-constitutional lawyer, he was until 2012 a contributing writer at Salon. He is the author
of How Would a Patriot Act? (May 2006), acritique of the Bush administration's use of executive power;
A Tragic Legacy (June, 2007), which examines the Bush legacy; and With Liberty and Justice For Some:
How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, “Domestic Drones and their Unique
Dangers,” theguardian, 5/29, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domesticdrones-unique-dangers] Zhang
, civil liberties and privacy
groups led by the ACLU - while accepting that domestic drones are inevitable - have been devoting increasing efforts to
publicizing their unique dangers and agitating for statutory limits. These efforts are being impeded by those who mock the idea that
domestic drones pose unique dangers (often the same people who mock concern over their usage on foreign soil). This dismissive posture is grounded not
only in soft authoritarianism (a religious-type faith in the Goodness of US political leaders and state
power generally) but also ignorance over current drone capabilities, the ways drones are now being
developed and marketed for domestic use, and the activities of the increasingly powerful domestic
drone lobby. So it's quite worthwhile to lay out the key under-discussed facts shaping this issue. In contrast to weaponized drones, even the most naïve among us do not doubt the
The use of drones by domestic US law enforcement agencies is growing rapidly, both in terms of numbers and types of usage. As a result
imminent proliferation of domestic surveillance drones. With little debate, they have already arrived. As the ACLU put it in their recent report: "US law enforcement is greatly expanding its use
"federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license
surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in US airspace" and that "the Federal Aviation
Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, far more
than were previously known." Moreover, the agency "has estimated 10,000 drones could be aloft five years later" and "local and state law enforcement agencies are
expected to be among the largest customers." Concerns about the proliferation of domestic surveillance drones are typically
dismissed with the claim that they do nothing more than police helicopters and satellites already do.
Such claims are completely misinformed. As the ACLU's 2011 comprehensive report on domestic drones
explained: "Unmanned aircraft carrying cameras raise the prospect of a significant new avenue for the
surveillance of American life." Multiple attributes of surveillance drones make them uniquely threatening. Because they are so cheap and
getting cheaper, huge numbers of them can be deployed to create ubiquitous surveillance in a way that
helicopters or satellites never could. How this works can already been seen in Afghanistan, where the US military has dubbed its drone surveillance system "the
of domestic drones for surveillance." An LA Times article from last month reported that
Gorgon Stare", named after the "mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them". That drone surveillance system is "able to scan an area the size of a
small town" and "the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity". Boasted one US General: "Gorgon Stare will be
The NSA already maintains
ubiquitous surveillance of electronic communications, but the Surveillance State faces serious limits on
its ability to replicate that for physical surveillance. Drones easily overcome those barriers. As the ACLU report put
it: But manned aircraft are expensive to purchase, operate and maintain, and this expense has always imposed a natural limit on the government’s aerial
surveillance capability. Now that surveillance can be carried out by unmanned aircraft, this natural limit is eroding. 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. What is most often ignored by drone proponents, or those who scoff at antidrone activism, are the unique features of drones: the way they enable more warfare, more aggression,
and more surveillance. Drones make war more likely precisely because they entail so little risk to the war-making country. Similarly, while the propensity of drones to kill
innocent people receives the bulk of media attention, the way in which drones psychologically terrorize the population - simply by
constantly hovering over them: unseen but heard - is usually ignored, because it's not happening in the US, so few people care (see this AP report
from yesterday on how the increasing use of drone attacks in Afghanistan is truly terrorizing local villagers). It remains to be seen how Americans will
react to drones constantly hovering over their homes and their childrens' schools, though by that point,
their presence will be so institutionalized that it will be likely be too late to stop. Only the most authoritarian among us will
looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything."
be incapable of understanding the multiple dangers posed by a domestic drone regime (particularly when their party is in control of the government and they are incapable of perceiving
the proliferation of domestic drones affords a real opportunity to forge an
enduring coalition in defense of core privacy and other rights that transcends partisan allegiance, by
working toward meaningful limits on their use. Making people aware of exactly what these unique threats are from a domestic drone regime is the key
threats from increased state police power). But
first step in constructing that coalition.
Drone surveillance is a unique threat to the 4th Amendment – Right to privacy is first
priority
Healy 12 – [Gene Healy, vice president at the Cato Institute, “Drones Pose a Threat to Americans’
Privacy”, Cato Institute, 5-21, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/drones-pose-threatamericans-privacy] Huang
Don’t drone, me, bro!” — that’s one way to sum up Charles Krauthammer’s heated reaction to last week’s news that the Federal Aviation
Administration had loosened restrictions on local police departments’ use of surveillance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.¶ “Stop it here, stop it
now,” Krauthammer exclaimed on Fox News’s “Special Report” Monday, “I don’t want to see it hovering over anybody’s home… I’m not
encouraging, but I am predicting that the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that’s been hovering over his
house is going to be a folk hero in this country.Ӧ The neoconservative Krauthammer is rarely mistaken for a civil libertarian, yet here he finds
himself to the left of the ACLU. And he has a point. “Drones
present a unique threat to privacy,” the Electronic Privacy
Information Center explains; they’re designed to “undertake constant, persistent surveillance,” and with
special equipment, they’re capable of “peering inside high-level windows,” perhaps even “through solid
barriers, such as fences, trees and even walls.Ӧ Ҧ Over the past decade, the creeping militarization of the homefront has
proceeded almost unnoticed…”¶ In several cases, the Supreme Court has held that warrantless surveillance by
manned aircraft doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment. But small, cheap, maneuverable, and often
undetectable drones may create cases in which a difference in degree becomes a difference in kind.¶
Pressure is mounting to normalize the use of drones in the United States. A 2010 Department of Defense report
emphasizes the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security’s need for “routine access to U.S. airspace” in order “to execute a wide
range of missions including… surveillance and tracking operations.”¶ The Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, under the aegis of the
Department of Homeland Security, has seven non-weaponized Predator drones in operation, one of which it used to assist a North Dakota
sheriff with an arrest last summer, and “the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations,”
the Los Angeles Times reported in December.¶ From Miami, Florida, to Arlington, Texas, local police departments have received federal grants
to purchase UAVs. Police in Ogden, Utah, used federal tax dollars for a surveillance blimp outfitted with night-vision cameras. “We believe it will
be a deterrent to crime when it is out and about,” says the mayor.¶ In an incident that typifies everything wrong with the growing militarization
of U.S. law enforcement, members of a Houston-area sheriff’s department brought some of their coolest gear out to a defense contractor’s
training facility last September for a drone demonstration-slash-photo op. The $300,000 “Shadowhawk” UAV they were looking to buy with
DHS grant money lost control and crashed into the SWAT Team’s “Bearcat” armored personnel carrier (also purchased with DHS boodle).¶ Not
to worry — they bought a Shadowhawk drone anyway. Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel enthused: “I absolutely believe it will become a critical
component on all SWAT callouts and narcotics raids and emergency management operations.Ӧ Over the past decade, the creeping
militarization of the homefront has proceeded almost unnoticed, with DHS grants subsidizing the proliferation of security cameras and military
Reps. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Joe Barton, R-Texas, co-chairs of the
Congressional Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, sent a letter to the head of the FAA urging the adoption of
privacy protections, given the “potential for drone technology to enable invasive and pervasive
surveillance.” But Congress needn’t wait on Obama’s FAA to start protecting Americans’ privacy rights.
ordnance for local police departments.¶ On April 19,
Use of Surveillance Drones domestically destroys privacy for all American citizens
Greenwald 2013(Greenwald, former columnist on civil liberties and US national security, March,
“Domestic drones and their unique dangers”,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-dangers)
Surveillance drones or unmanned aerial systems (UASs) raise significant issues for privacy and civil liberties. Drones are
capable highly advanced surveillance, and drones already in use by law enforcement can carry various types of
equipment including live-feed video cameras, infrared cameras, heat sensors, and radar. Some military
versions can stay in air the hours for hours or days at a time, and their high-tech cameras can scan entire cities, or
alternatively, zoom in and read a milk carton from 60,000 feet. They can also carry wifi crackers and fake
cell phone towers that can determine your location or intercept your texts and phone calls. Drone
manufacturers even admit they are made to carry “less lethal” weapons such as tasers or rubber bullets. Thanks to a provision in the
FAA Modernization and Reform Act of 2012, drones use in the United States is set to expand rapidly
over the next few years. The Act includes provisions to make the licensing process easier and quicker for
law enforcement, and by 2015, commercial entities will also be able to apply for a drone authorization. In
January 2012, EFF sued the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) under the Freedom of Information Act to determine which public and private
entities had applied for authorization to fly drones.
In response to the lawsuit, the FAA has released lists of the 60
public entities and 12 private drone manufacturers that have sought permission to fly drones in the US.
The agency has also released several thousand pages of records related to the entities’ drone license applications. The FAA has yet to provide
information on how these drones will be used. EFF has also partnered with MuckRock, the open government organization, to conduct a “drone
census” with the goal of determining just that. We have provided an easy-to-use form that ordinary citizens can use to file a public records
request with their local police agency to ask what type of surveillance the agency plans to conduct with drones, if any, and what type of privacy
protections it is providing its citizens.
Ext – Slippery Slope
Persistent surveillance uniquely undermines liberal democracy – it sets us on a
slippery slope to lack of privacy in other areas
The Economist, 15 [K., Staff writer for The Economist, “Drones and Privacy: A Looming Threat,” The
Economist, 5/19, http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/03/drones-and-privacy]
Zhang
At issue is the way some drones can loiter overhead for long stretches, engaging in what is called “persistent surveillance”. As drones—and other airborne surveillance
platforms, such as circling manned aircraft and lighter-than-air craft—become cheaper and more effective, persistent aerial surveillance
could become the norm, and no privacy or transparency measures currently exist in the law. So figuring out how
to protect privacy without pre-empting innovation is as tricky as it is necessary. On February 15th, the same day the FAA announced its new proposed rules for small drones, Barack Obama
The president also called on an agency in the Commerce
Department to examine the privacy implications of drones used by individuals and corporations.∂ The
current state of the law—both legislation and court decisions—is poorly suited to deal with persistent
surveillance. This is because privacy law is tailored to questions of whether one is in public—an open
field—or in a space where one has a “reasonable expectation of privacy”. The Supreme Court has, at times, expanded such spaces,
for instance finding in 1967 that the FBI cannot eavesdrop on conversations in telephone booths without a
warrant. But in this era of “big data”, the line between public and private can no longer be delimited by
physical boundaries.∂ People tend to invoke Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren’s definition of privacy in 1890 as the “right to be let alone”. But this view does not fully
capture the purpose of privacy in modern society. A better explanation comes from Julie Cohen at the Georgetown Law School, who argues that “the liberal self and the
liberal democratic society are symbiotic ideals.” So persistent surveillance—whether through monitoring
internet browsing habits or from a drone overhead—undermines the formation of liberal individuals in
the way that an over-reliance on GPS undermines the formation of a sense of direction. This is because
pervasive surveillance tends to shape the actions, thoughts and personalities of those being observed.
Such changes happen gradually, even imperceptibly. But ultimately excessive surveillance encourages people to behave predictably. To
published a memorandum calling on government agencies to study the matter.
oversimplify her argument, democracy needs privacy to breathe.∂ Plenty of similar information is available from mobile-phone records, which track the physical position of their users. Indeed,
many technologies, from mobile telephony to e-mail, have been widely adopted before their impacts on privacy could be parsed by either consumers or regulators. But therein lies the value of
drones may serve as a “privacy catalyst”. Once
regulators assess the ramifications of persistent aerial surveillance, he argues, they may then turn to the
privacy implications of a whole host of other gadgets and innovations.∂ It is worth noting that not all
persistent drones are a threat to privacy—NASA’s Global Hawk Earth science missions, for instance, are
exactly what they claim to be: new tools for studying hurricanes and other natural phenomena. But it is
essential that these questions about drones and privacy are being asked now. This is because the “reasonable expectation of privacy” test depends
on whether technologies are already widely adopted. If no restrictions are put in place and persistent
drones become more common, then the legal system allows the fait accompli to stand.
regulating drones. As Ryan Calo, a University of Washington law professor, optimistically suggests,
Expansion of unregulated aerial surveillance occurring – lack of regulations will spillover to eroding privacy protections in other areas
Chow 15 (Eugene K. Chow, former executive editor of Homeland Security NewsWire, “Hello Drones,
Goodbye Privacy”, Huffingtonpost.com, 5/07/15, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eugene-kchow/domestic-drone-surveillance_b_1324546.html) Salehitezangi
A future where unmanned surveillance drones zip through the skies keeping tabs on civilians is no longer relegated to dystopic novels. The panopticon has arrived
and privacy
rights are in danger. In less than three months, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will allow law
enforcement agencies to operate drones in U.S. airspace, and by 2015, commercial drones will be
permitted as well. More troublingly, the ink has hardly dried on the new FAA regulations and Pentagon officials are already pushing to
fly the same powerful military drones that track terrorists abroad in the United States. With these aircraft hovering above our heads, privacy is at
risk as drone technology has far outpaced the development of corresponding regulatory laws. Drones -- as
small as hummingbirds and as large as the 116-foot wingspan Global Hawk -- can
hover for hours silently observing individuals with
advanced surveillance tools like thermal sensors, cell-phone eavesdropping devices, Wi-Fi network hacking tools,
and sophisticated video technology like the military's Gorgon Stare, which can observe an entire city from multiple angles and track several targets at once. For the
most part, when these high-tech surveillance tools have been challenged
in court, judicial rulings have largely erred on the
side of law enforcement agencies over individual rights. "Citizens do not generally enjoy a reasonable expectation of
privacy in public, nor even in the portions of their property visible from a public vantage," writes Ryan Calo, the director for Privacy and Robotics at
Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. " Neither the Constitution nor common law appears to prohibit police or
the media from routinely operating surveillance drones in urban and other environments." As evidence, Calo points to
a 1986 Supreme Court case which upholds the right of local police to fly over residents' backyards without a search warrant. In addition, in 1989, the Supreme Court
admitted evidence from a police officer in a helicopter who peeked through two missing panels in a greenhouse and saw a marijuana growing operation. On a
brighter note, Calo believes that the egregious violations
of privacy rights that drones represent "could be just the visceral
jolt society needs to drag privacy law into the twenty-first century." The growing ubiquity of both government and
private drones will inevitably raise difficult questions like how long can they follow an individual and will it require a warrant, can
drones with thermal sensors be used to detect individuals growing marijuana indoors, and can images
taken by drones be sold to third parties. But before these questions are answered, drones will likely become ubiquitous considering the
lobbying might of the Congressional "Drone Caucus." The Drone Caucus, a collection of fifty representatives primarily from districts in Southern California, a major
unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturing hub, has proven so effective in expanding the government's use of drones it allocated $32 million for the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) to purchase three new aerial surveillance drones, despite the agency's objections. "We didn't ask for them," and the agency lacks the
resources and manpower to even fly the additional surveillance vehicles, said an anonymous DHS official speaking to the Los Angeles Times. In just seven years,
drones have come to account for nearly one-third of the military's aircraft. In 2005, only 5 percent of military airplanes were
unmanned, but now the Pentagon owns nearly 7,500 drones. As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan wind down, much of the military's fleet will
be returning to the United States and it is doubtful that the planes will sit idly in hangars. If recent trends are any indication, military drone flights could be coming
sooner than we think. DHS already flies Predator drones along the border and is entertaining the notion of outfitting its fleet with military-grade visual sensors,
which can see as much as four square miles at once. Even if these
drones are only deployed at borders and airports, those are still areas where U.S. citizens
live and are protected by the Constitution. Furthermore, with more and more military technology being sold to local police departments, it is
only a matter of time before these intrusive sensors make their way to our neighborhoods. Drones have their
legitimate uses -- they can help first responders search for missing persons, farmers can use them to spot irrigation leaks, and reporters can use them to gather
news -- but as an emerging technology that is largely unregulated, we
personal freedoms are protected.
must carefully monitor how and what they are used for to ensure that our
Loss of Privacy  Totalitarianism
Lack of privacy chills democracies – ushers in totalitarian states
Dr. Glen T. Martin, 01/03/14
(Dr. Glen T. Martin, Professor of Philosophy and chair of the program
in Peace Studies at Radford University, President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association
(WCPA), the Institute on World Problems(IOWP), and International Philosophers for Peace, “NSA Spying,
Secrecy, and the Totalitarian Threat”, Readersupportednews.org, http://readersupportednews.org/pmsection/425-national-security/21795-nsa-spying-secrecy-and-the-totalitarian-threat, date accessed:
7/14/15) Salehitezangi
But as American political thinker, Hannah Arendt, and French philosopher, Claude LeFort, have pointed out,
the drift toward totalitarianism, and the nature of totalitarian societies, have very clear signs, signs which
are clearly visible in the U.S. government. I want to examine why this is so. Much democratic theory since the 18th century
has stated that the people are sovereign, that legitimate governmental authority arises from the people themselves and
is responsible to the people. Both the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the U.S. Declaration of Independence (written by Thomas Jefferson), claim that the
natural and inalienable “rights of man” are morally and conceptually prior to the political constitution of society
and, therefore, prior to any specific government. It there is such a thing as human rights, then people (civil society) are prior
to government. All three of these features are indicative of totalitarianism: Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and
the Communist regime of East Germany through the end of the Cold War, all claimed that the Nazi,
Fascist, or Communist parties, respectively, represented (in some mythical or ideological way) the whole meaning and spirit of
their respective societies and that this totalizing ideology gave them the authority to operate in secret,
to spy on their populations, and to repress dissenters as traitors. This is what is truly scary about what the U.S. has become. The issue is not
whether we the people have anything to hide that would preclude someone watching us. The issue is that the simple facts of spying and secrecy
themselves are both manifestations of, and further steps in the direction of, totalitarianism. In a
democracy, civil society and the rights of citizens are prior to and constitutive of government.
Government does not and cannot represent the totality. Dissenters and whistleblowers are not traitors.
They are essential to the plurality of civil society. We know through experience that President Obama, James Clapper, and most of the
rest lie to us with every public statement they make, and yet we keep repeating their propaganda about endless wars and threats. Absolute
secrecy breeds corruption, yet we accept the reassuring face of Obama that speaks to us from the summit of a secretive empire of nuclear weapons, cruise missiles,
torture, murder, and death, encircling the world. Only Snowden, Private Manning, Julian Assange, and some others have told
the truth, and look at the way they are treated by both government and big media. Totalitarian regimes
need enemies. Hitler needed the ‘Jewish conspiracy,’ while Stalin needed ‘subversives and decadents.’ Our secretive, totalized U.S. government
claims that we are under terrorist threat and attack around the world, as assessed by secret criteria and supported by secret
evidence. Many progressive thinkers in the U.S. believe that the CIA and other agencies of the U.S. government set up or facilitate
terror attacks, creating “false-flag” bombings and other forms of mass-murder that serve to justify their
continuing secrecy, ever-increasing power, and totalitarian policies of gulag prisons, assassinations, and disappearances. Many believe
they were instrumental in causing the attacks of 911 in order to provide “the new Pearl Harbor” called for by their “Project for the New American Century” declaration. Whatever the truth of
the fact of the chaotic, undemocratic international system of militarized sovereign nation-states, many of which
have their own secret spy and killer organizations, along with the ungovernable system of international shadowy organizations like al-Qaeda, and the corruption of
transnational corporations with their own systems of bribery, protection, and violence, form the perfect
context for the growth of totalitarianism within the U.S.. Spying, militarism, secrecy, and authoritarian
policies are necessary, we are told, in this dangerous and chaotic world. Our government is justified, we are told, in
“protecting us” by spying on us from a position of absolute, unbreachable secrecy. They represent the
government and the nation—a secretive, shadowy in-crowd with security clearances and ideological conformity, very
much like Stalin’s Communist Party. We the people do not. The government set up under the Earth Constitution would clearly arrest President
Obama and put him, along with George W. Bush, in jail where they belong. They are not only totalitarian violators of our U.S. Constitution, they are
war criminals, heading up torture and murder of people around the world without even the most elementary due process of law.
the matter is,
It is surely torture, as well as unspeakable barbarism, to blow the legs off children in Afghanistan or Yemen with these hideous drone attacks. Yet the reason why they are war criminals is
primarily structural: among militarized sovereign nation-states there is, and can be, no genuine rule of law, and certainly no due process of law that properly holds individuals accountable for
If we want to
establish democracy within the U.S., we have to examine seriously the chaos of a world disorder that
defeats democracy within nations at every turn. By requiring militarized nation-states, this world disorder wastes more than one trillion U.S. dollars per
year that could be used for jobs, protecting the environment, and global social justice. This world system manifests a chaos that gives
totalitarian elements and totalitarian attitudes a breeding ground for secrecy, spying, and unrestrained
violence. We cannot reverse totalitarianism within the U.S. by ignoring the rest of the world and the
structural elements that breed the totalitarian attitude. We should be studying and discussing the Earth Constitution on a daily basis if we are
serious about democracy. Not only our future, but the future of our planet and its two billion children, depends on our
willingness to think globally about democracy. The Earth Constitution is by far the most promising and realistic option that we have before us.
Democracy and human rights are inherently universal. They are not for a privileged few among a fragmented system of sovereign nation-states.
Everyone deserves authentic democracy. Everyone deserves to live with freedom and dignity under the
their actions before an impartial court of law. There can only be the rule of power, violence, secrecy, spying, murder, threat, and ideological posturing.
Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
Ext – Key to all other rights
Privacy is a prerequisite for all other rights -- a lack of privacy our ability to be
autonomous beings
Sundquist 12 (Matthew Lee, graduate of Harvard college, Privacy Manager at Inflection, Student
Fellow of the Harvard Law School Program, "ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION: PROTECTING PRIVACY, THE
SOCIAL CONTRACT, AND THE RULE OF LAW IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD", Regent University Law Review,
July 30, 2012, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2120148) Padiyar
Justice Brandeis considered privacy—“the right to be let alone”—to be “the most comprehensive of rights and the
right most valued by civilized men.”22 But why is privacy so valuable and important?23 Presumably, privacy has a political value in deterring
government overreach into our lives. Privacy also seems necessary to ensure citizens can discuss and
voice their views in private without fear of outside intervention, thus ensuring democratic
participation.24 It is, however, difficult to categorize privacy as a value,25 let alone to quantify its risks or benefits. 26 We value some things as instrumental goods, for example,
which provide a means to an end, like money. We also value intrinsic moral goods and virtues, like justice.27 Privacy, however, is difficult to categorize as either clearly intrinsic or clearly
instrumental. Professor Charles Fried notes, “[W]e do not feel comfortable about asserting that privacy is intrinsically valuable, an end in itself—privacy is always for or in relation to
28¶ So what is the value
of privacy? Privacy creates a framework that allows other values to exist and develop. Where privacy
is available, we can have freedom, liberty, and other intrinsic goods. We can develop friendships,
relationships, and love.29 As anyone who has had a camera pointed at them knows, we act
something or someone. On the other hand, to view privacy as simply instrumental, as one way of getting other goods, seems unsatisfactory too.”
differently when being recorded . Now consider that everything we do online, over the phone, or with
a credit card can be monitored and recorded. If this information is used abusively, similar to how we
might feel if we were filmed all the time, it compromises our ability to act naturally and freely . A social
dynamic exists in this as well. In society, when people are around, we must react to external stimulants
and forces. But alone, we can choose and create our stimulants and environment and react accordingly.
Thus, we develop as independent beings and people when we have privacy .30
Ext – Government stability
Maintaining privacy is the lynchpin of maintaining a stable and credible government
Sundquist 12 (Matthew Lee, graduate of Harvard college, Privacy Manager at Inflection, Student
Fellow of the Harvard Law School Program, "ONLINE PRIVACY PROTECTION: PROTECTING PRIVACY, THE
SOCIAL CONTRACT, AND THE RULE OF LAW IN THE VIRTUAL WORLD", Regent University Law Review,
July 30, 2012, http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2120148) Padiyar
Given the value of privacy, I posit we should prioritize privacy threats of three types: (1) law-breaking ;
(2) insufficient enforcement ; and (3) subversion of social expectations by laws, practices, or
frameworks. The first two speak to the role of government and the social contract . According to the
social contract, a pervasive idea in American society and government,31 we trade the state of nature—the world
without government—to form a society and enjoy protection, security, and property.32 To protect our
values, we create laws tasked with the goal of “secur[ing] a situation whereby moral goals which, given
the current social situation in the country whose law it is, would be unlikely to be achieved without it.” 33
The law should serve the common interest and secure values that will be broadly useful to society .34
Once established, the law (and associated rules) must be enforced
35 since
the government derives
authority from creating and enforcing laws . 36 Thus, there is an immediate, positive benefit when we
protect a valued good like privacy. Additionally, there is a broader benefit, as enforcing the law gives the
government credibility and creates a stable society. 37
Ext – Totalitarianism
Privacy rights guard against totalitarianism---evidence proves
Helen Nissenbaum, 04, professor of Media, Culture and Communication and Computer Science at New
York University, PRIVACY AS CONTEXTUAL INTEGRITY
http://www.kentlaw.edu/faculty/rwarner/classes/internetlaw/2011/materials/nissenbaum_norms.pdf
For purpose discussion more relevant than the specific details about legal
restrictions on government agents is the general source of momentum behind
these restrictions
protecting
privacy against government intrusion can be portrayed as an insurance policy
against the emergence of totalitarianism
limiting government powers can be
parlayed into protection of privacy
the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare’s Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems
found a receptive audience for their seminal 1973 report
The report emphasized this concern for balancing power, and for
limiting the power of state and large institutions over individuals by warning that
“the net effect of computerization is that it is becoming much easier for
recordkeeping systems to affect people than for people to affect record-keeping
systems.”
The
lasting legacy of the report and its Code of Fair Information Practices is the need
to protect privacy
as one powerful mechanism for leveling the playing field
in a game where participants have unequal starting positions
s of our
,
, in particular, a principled commitment to limited government powers in the name of individual autonomy and liberty. To the extent that
, the rhetoric of
. During the 1950s until the end of the Cold War, when regimes to the East loomed vividly in public consciousness and fictional
constructions, like George Orwell’s Big Brother in 1984, entered the public imagination,
on the impacts of computerized record-keeping on individuals,
organizations, and society as a whole.
Further, “[a]lthough there is nothing inherently unfair in trading some measure of privacy for a benefit, both parties to the exchange should participate in setting the terms.”
, at least in part,
.
Ext – Multilat
Use of drones by the US extremely unpopular with global citizenry
Popular resistance 8/21/2014, “Acting Against Drones: A Global Movement For All” Popular resistance,
https://www.popularresistance.org/acting-against-drones-a-global-movement-for-all/, Hsiao
On October 4th, 2014 citizens around the world attended demonstrations against the use of drones, satellites, and ground stations for
surveillance and killing. It was a day known as theGlobal Day of Action Against Drones, with events that connected the
international community by the palpable threat that lowers the threshold to war and diminishes
international security: drones. On this fall morning I was outside the Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C with a group of activists dedicated to the anti-drone
movement. We held up signs saying, “When drones fly, children die!” and passed out pamphlets with information about the horrors of drones. Some people were intrigued, some were
confused, and others were in disbelief. All eyes were focused on the animated protestors of killer drones.¶ Taking turns on the mic, we described to perplexed tourists the raw truth that
United States killer drones have killed 2,379 people in Pakistan alone. We explained that just behind the museum walls was a glorified drone exhibit which failed to reveal that the very same
technology was responsible for killing at least 200 children in Pakistan. We illustrated that this number could be represented in the amount of children that entered the doors of the exhibit
drones fail to
make our citizens safer, but rather increase anti-American sentiment. We called for a worldwide ban of these weapons that undermine global stability.¶ Meanwhile in
Germany, multiple actions were occurring from “Fly Kites, Not Drones” in Dresden to the “Rally Against
Drones” outside Africa Command (AFRICOM), where so-called “targeted killings” in Somalia are coordinated from. At the very same time people were
gathering in London to collect signatures against drones while groups in Jeju Island, South Korean activists held educational events on how
drones violate human rights. The Global Day of Action Against Drones exemplified how global citizens embrace the idea that one’s identity transcends geographic and
that very same day. We spoke about the fear the United States has instilled halfway across the globe where families no longer trust blue skies. We described how killer
political borders. With the awareness of the strong interdependence of individuals and systems there is a certain sense of accountability. The international community must be held
accountable to fuel the effort needed to stop drone warfare and invasive drone surveillance.
Our rights as human beings depend on it.
Judicial Deference Adv
High Now
The executive branch is in sole control of surveillance activities-- any appearance of
judicial influence is a pretense
Brand and Guiora 15 (Jeffrey S., J.D., Dean Emeritus and Professor of Law, Director Center for Law
and Global Justice, University of San Francisco School of Law, and Amos N., Ph.D, Professor of Law, S.J.
Quinney College of Law, University of Utah, Co-Director, Center for Global Justice, The Steep Price of
Executive Power Post 9/11: Reclaiming Our Past to Insure Our Future, Jan. 27, 2015,
http://www.law.utah.edu/the-steep-price-of-executive-power-post-911-reclaiming-our-past-to-insureour-future/)
Justice Kennedy wrote about it in 2004, upholding the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees: “The
Framers’ inherent distrust of
governmental power was the driving force behind the constitutional plan that allocated powers among
three independent branches. This design serves not only to make Government accountable but also to
secure individual liberty.”¶ America’s post-9/11 response abandons this foundational principle, ceding
unitary authority to the Executive Branch, despite strong evidence that its surveillance, interrogation and drone
policies have been ineffective, counter-productive, lack transparency, and are devoid of specific
standards or oversight for their implementation.¶ The policies’ inefficacy bears emphasis. The United States has yet to
present evidence that its massive collection of meta-data thwarted a significant terrorist plot. The Select
Senate Committee’s report concludes that U.S. engagement in torture has been “ineffective,” and mercilessly details the lack of reliable information that so-called
enhanced interrogation techniques yield, along the way painting a disturbing portrait of Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded, “blowing bubbles through his mouth”
and being completely “unresponsive.”¶ The report also concludes that the information torture tactics did yield could have been obtained by “other means.” ¶
Drones may hit their targets on occasion, but their efficacy must also be measured by the number of resulting civilian deaths and injuries, and by the magnitude of
the unintended consequences that the drone policy has engendered, including adverse world reaction and providing invaluable marketing footage for terrorist
recruitment campaigns around the globe.¶ The
Executive Branch’s false public assurances about its surveillance,
interrogation and drone policies and the total failure of any branch of government to abide by
separation of powers principles also bear emphasis. With regard to the latter, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC),
created in 1978 as part of the Foreign Intelligence Services Act (FISA) to insure Executive Branch accountability for its
surveillance activities, is Exhibit A.¶ The FISC’s structure abandons any pretense of judicial independence,
operating as a tool of the Executive Branch, which is solely authorized to appear before it and to determine the evidence that the FISC
considers. Is it any wonder that in the thirty-three years from 1979 to 2012, the FISC granted 33,942
requests for warrants and denied only eleven, a denial rate of three tenths of one percent of the total warrants requested?¶ Is it any
wonder that the FISC is routinely characterized as a “rubber stamp” of the Executive Branch?¶ Similarly, the
Executive Branch’s iron grip on interrogation policies is a story vividly and disturbingly told by the Senate Select Committee report.¶ And with respect to
drones, the Executive Branch is totally unrestrained, not even bothering to justify a program begun in
2004. Only in 2013 did the Obama Administration, in a Justice Department White Paper, make bold promises about precision targeting now belied by mounting
civilian casualties, while, at the same time, providing disturbingly loose definitions of what constitutes a legitimate target or an imminent threat, standards critical to
nurturing the rule of law.¶ So
what is to be done? The ingenious scheme of the Framers of our Constitution must
be reclaimed in the realm of national security. No longer should threats to the homeland, no matter
how serious, be an excuse for a power grab by the Executive Branch to determine unilaterally matters of
individual liberty or who shall live and who shall die.
Deference Bad – Democracy
Judicial Deference destroys democracy
Vermeule 2003 (Bernard - D. Meltzer Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, Interpretation and
Institutions, http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1110&context=public_law_and_legal_theory)
chen
In practice, however, it is striking
that democratic failure theorists say little or nothing about the problem of
excessive liberty. No theorist has suggested that courts should reallocate anti-terrorism appropriations
to beef up the security apparatus where it is most needed, or should second-guess the government’s
policies for protecting blue state ports from terrorist attack. The reason, presumably, is that judicial review of this sort
would prove infeasible, and possibly counterproductive. Courts might suspect democratic failure in the under provision of security to
minorities, but would be hard pressed to know what the optimal arrangements would be, and hard-pressed to enforce those arrangements
even if they were known; government might circumvent
the courts’ decisions by reallocating funding on other
margins, or simply by ignoring them. There are two lessons here, which we draw out in Part IV. First, the same? problems of
judicial capacity that constrain judicial review of inadequate security also constrain judicial review of excessive security. The courts’
institutional capacities are the same, whatever the mechanism of democratic failure. Thus, if critics of
judicial deference do not believe courts should scrutinize laws that enhance liberty during times of
emergency – such as the provisions of the Patriot Act that strengthen privacy protections – they need to
explain what it is about security-enhancing laws that justifies special judicial scrutiny. Second, systemic effects
and dynamic governmental responses also undercut judicial review of policies that impose excessive security. If courts police policies that
produce excessive security but not policies that produce excessive liberty, government may tend to substitute the latter type of exploitation for
the former. Here we merely note these problems of judicial capacities and systemic effects.
2AC Add-Ons
Weaponization Add-On
Continued, unchecked use of aerial surveillance by drones leads to mission creep – the
technology will continue to be used for more and more militaristic and violent
purposes
ACLU 2011 (American Civil Liberties Union, Non-profit, nonpartisan national organization for
advocating individual rights, "Protecting Privacy From Aerial Surveillance: Recommendations for
Government Use of Drone Aircraft", ACLU, December 2011,
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf)
UAVs and privacy-¶ With the federal government likely to permit more widespread use of drones, and
the technology likely to become ever more powerful, the question becomes: what role will drones play
in American life? Based on current trends—technology development, law enforcement interest, political
and industry pressure, and the lack of legal safeguards—it is clear that drones pose a looming threat to
Americans’ privacy. The reasons for concern reach across a number of different dimensions:¶ Mission
creep. Even where UAVs are being envisioned for search and rescue, fighting wildfires, and in
dangerous tactical police operations, they are likely to be quickly embraced by law enforcement around
the nation for other, more controversial purposes. The police in Ogden, Utah think that floating a
surveillance blimp above their city “will be a deterrent to crime when it is out and about.”58 In Houston,
police suggested that drones could possibly be used for writing traffic tickets.59 The potential result is
that they become commonplace in American life.60¶ Tracking . The Justice Department currently claims
the authority to monitor Americans’ comings and goings using GPS tracking devices—without a warrant.
Fleets of UAVs, interconnected and augmented with analytics software, could enable the mass tracking
of vehicles and pedestrians around a wide area. ¶ New uses. The use of drones could also be expanded
from surveillance to actual intervention in law enforcement situations on the ground. Airborne
technologies could be developed that could, for example, be used to control or dispel protesters
(perhaps by deploying tear gas or other technologies), stop a fleeing vehicle, or even deploy weapons.61
And this means a wider acceptance of weaponized drones – it will lead to an
expansion of drone violence and a military state
The Guardian 12 12/21/2012, “The coming drone attack on America” The Guardian,
http://www.lexisnexis.com.turing.library.northwestern.edu/lnacui2api/results/docview/docview.do?do
cLinkInd=true&risb=21_T22336187456&format=GNBFI&sort=RELEVANCE&startDocNo=1&resultsUrlKey
=29_T22336187460&cisb=22_T22336187459&treeMax=tru
e&treeWidth=0&csi=138620&docNo=13, Hsiao
People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a police state or closed
society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by
commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for
weaponization - which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year - it means that the police state is now officially
here.¶ In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of
drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by [...] the defense
sector" to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020 , some as small as hummingbirds meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation
with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.¶ Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have
one that formally
brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line
that separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who
are answerable to the people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.)¶ The air force
document explains that the air force will be overseeing the deployment of its own military surveillance drones within the borders
of the US; that it may keep video and other data it collects with these drones for 90 days without a
warrant - and will then, retroactively, determine if the material can be retained - which does away for good with the fourth amendment in these cases. While the drones are not
already deployed them.¶ An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS (pdf) news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step -
supposed to specifically "conduct non-consensual surveillance on on specifically identified US persons", according to the document, the wording allows for domestic military surveillance of
non-"specifically identified" people (that is, a group of activists or protesters) and it comes with the important caveat, also seemingly wholly unconstitutional, that it may not target individuals
the Pentagon can now send a domestic drone to hover outside
your apartment window, collecting footage of you and your family, if the secretary of Defense approves it. Or it may track you and your
"unless expressly approved by the secretary of Defense".¶ In other words,
friends and pick up audio of your conversations, on your way, say, to protest or vote or talk to your representative, if you are not "specifically identified", a determination that is so vague as to
be meaningless.¶ What happens to those images, that audio? "Distribution of domestic imagery" can go to various other government agencies without your consent, and that imagery can, in
that case, be distributed to various government agencies
; it may also include your most private moments and most personal
activities. The authorized "collected information may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent". Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told
CBS:
1AR Ext – Weaponization
Continued reliance on drones for surveillance will lead to their inevitable expansion by
law enforcement – will become a tool of weaponization
Stanley, 11 [Jay, reporter for ACLU, Catherine Crump, reporter for ACLU, “Protecting Privacy From
Aerial Surveillance:
Recommendations for Government Use of Drone Aircraft,” ACLU, 12,
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/protectingprivacyfromaerialsurveillance.pdf] Zhang
The aircraft themselves are steadily improving and, as with so many technologies, that is likely to
continue. They are becoming smaller. The military and law enforcement are keenly interested in
developing small drones, which have the advantages of being versatile, cheap to buy and maintain, and
in some cases so small and quiet that they will escape notice.16 They are also becoming cheaper. The
surveillance technologies attached to UAVs will become less expensive and yet more powerful—and
with mass production, the aircraft that carry those electronics will become inexpensive enough for a
police department to fill the skies over a town with them. Drones are also becoming smarter. Artificial
intelligence advances will likely help drones carry out spying missions. Korean researchers, for example,
are working to teach robots how to hide from and sneak up upon a subject.17 They also will have better
staying power, with a greater ability to stay aloft for longer periods of time. Mechanisms for increasing
time aloft could include solar power, or the use of blimps or gliders.1 ∂ Even where UAVs are being
envisioned for search and rescue, fighting wildfires, and in dangerous tactical police operations, they are
likely to be quickly embraced by law enforcement around the nation for other, more controversial
purposes. The potential result is that they become commonplace in American life.∂ The Justice
Department currently claims the authority to monitor Americans’ comings and goings using GPS tracking
devices—without a warrant. Fleets of UAVs, interconnected and augmented with analytics software,
could enable the mass tracking of vehicles and pedestrians around a wide area.∂ The use of drones could
also be expanded from surveillance to actual intervention in law enforcement situations on the ground.
Airborne technologies could be developed that could, for example, be used to control or dispel
protesters (perhaps by deploying tear gas or other technologies), stop a fleeing vehicle, or even deploy
weapons.∂ The Supreme Court has never taken a position on whether the Fourth Amendment places
limits on government use of UAV surveillance. However, it allowed some warrantless aerial surveillance
from manned aircraft. California v. Ciraolo (1986), Dow Chemical Co. v. United States (1986), and Florida
v. Riley (1989).
Surveillance Drones controlled by the police can carry weapons with destruction –
killing instead of collecting data
Greenwald 2013(Greenwald, former columnist on civil liberties and US national security, March,
“Domestic drones and their unique dangers”,
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/29/domestic-drones-unique-dangers)
Like many drone manufacturers, AV is now focused on drone products - such as the "Qube" - that are so small that they can be "transported in
the trunk of a police vehicle or carried in a backpack" and assembled and deployed within a matter of minutes. One news report AV touts is
headlined "Drone technology
could be coming to a Police Department near you", which focuses on the Qube.
product dubbed the
"Switchblade", which, says the article, is "the leading edge of what is likely to be the broader, even
wholesale, weaponization of unmanned systems." The article creepily hails the Switchblade drone as "the
ultimate assassin bug". That's because, as I wrote back in 2011, "it is controlled by the operator at the scene, and it works its way
around buildings and into small areas, sending its surveillance imagery to an i-Pad held by the operator,
Advertisement But another article prominently touted on AV's website describes the tiny UAS
who can then direct the Switchblade to lunge toward and kill the target (hence the name) by exploding in his face."
AV's website right now proudly touts a February, 2013 Defense News article describing how much the US Army loves the "Switchblade" and
how it is preparing to purchase more. Time Magazine heralded this tiny drone weapon as "one of the best inventions of 2012", gushing: "the
Switchblade drone can be carried into battle in a backpack. It's a kamikaze: the person controlling it uses a real-time video feed from the drone
to crash it into a precise target - say, a sniper. Its tiny warhead detonates on impact." What possible reason could someone identify as to why
these small, portable weaponized UAS products will not imminently be used by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies in the US?
They're designed to protect their users in dangerous situations and to enable a target to be more easily killed. Police
agencies and the
increasingly powerful drone industry will tout their utility in capturing and killing dangerous criminals
and their ability to keep officers safe, and media reports will do the same. The handful of genuinely positive uses
from drones will be endlessly touted to distract attention away from the dangers they pose.
SOP Add-On
Plan would revitalize Separation of Powers – oversight on Executive Branch needed on
broad domestic surveillance
Reynolds 2014 [Glenn Harlan - professor of law @ U of Tennessee, “NSA spying undermines
separation of powers”, USA TODAY, www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/02/10/nsa-spyingsurveillance-congress-column/5340281] chan
Most of the worry about the National Security Agency's bulk interception of telephone calls, e-mail and the
like has centered around threats to privacy. And, in fact, the evidence suggests that if you've got a particularly steamy phoneor Skype-sex session going on, it just might wind up being shared by voyeuristic NSA analysts. But most Americans figure, probably rightly, that
the NSA isn't likely to be interested in their stuff. (Anyone who hacks my e-mail is automatically punished, by having to read it.) There is,
however, a class of people who can't take that disinterest for granted:
members of Congress and the judiciary. What they
have to say is likely to be pretty interesting to anyone with a political ax to grind. And the ability of the
executive branch to snoop on the phone calls of people in the other branches isn't just a threat to privacy,
but a threat to the separation of powers and the Constitution. As the Framers conceived it, our system of government is
divided into three branches -- the executive, legislative and judicial -- each of which is designed to serve as a check on the others. If the
president gets out of control, Congress can defund his efforts, or impeach him, and the judiciary can declare his acts unconstitutional. If
Congress passes unconstitutional laws, the president can veto them, or refuse to enforce them, and the judiciary, again, can declare them
invalid. If the judiciary gets carried away, the president can appoint new judges, and Congress can change the laws, or even impeach. But if
the federal government has broad domestic-spying powers, and if those are controlled by the executive
branch without significant oversight, then the president has the power to snoop on political enemies,
getting an advantage in countering their plans, and gathering material that can be used to blackmail or
destroy them. With such power in the executive, the traditional role of the other branches as checks would be seriously undermined, and
our system of government would veer toward what James Madison in The Federalist No. 47 called "the very definition of tyranny," that is, "the
accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands." That such widespread spying power exists, of course,
doesn't prove that it has actually been abused. But the temptation to make use of such a power for self-serving political ends is likely to be very
great. And, given the secrecy surrounding such programs, outsiders might never know. In fact, given the compartmentalization that goes on in
the intelligence world, almost everyone at the NSA might be acting properly, completely unaware that one small section is devoted to gather
political intelligence. We can hope, of course, that such abuses would leak out, but they might not. Rather
than counting on leakers
to protect us, we need strong structural controls that don't depend on people being heroically honest or
unusually immune to political temptation, two characteristics not in oversupply among our political class. That means that
the government shouldn't be able to spy on Americans without a warrant — a warrant that comes from a
different branch of government, and requires probable cause. The government should also have to keep a clear record
of who was spied on, and why, and of exactly who had access to the information once it was gathered. We need the kind of extensive audit
trails for access to information that, as the Edward Snowden experience clearly illustrates, don't currently exist. In addition, we need civil
damages — with, perhaps, a waiver of governmental immunities — for abuse of power here. Perhaps we should have bounties for
whistleblowers, too, to help encourage wrongdoing to be aired. Is this strong medicine? Yes. But widespread spying on Americans is a threat to
constitutional government. That is a serious disease, one that demands the strongest of medicines.
Destruction of separation of powers risks nuclear war
Redish and Cisar 91
(Martin H. and Elizabeth J., Duke University School of Law, “’If Angels Were to Govern’: The Need for
Pragmatic Formalism in Separation of Powers Theory” Duke Law Journal, (41)3, Dec., p. 449-506)
In any event, the political history of which the Framers were aware tends to confirm that quite often
concentration of political power ultimately leads to the loss of liberty. Indeed, if we have begun to take the
value of separation of powers for granted, we need only look to modern American history to remind ourselves
about both the general vulnerability of representative government, and the direct correlation between the
concentration of political power and the threat to individual liberty . The widespread violations of individual
rights that took place when Pres- ident Lincoln assumed an inordinate level of power, for example, are
well documented.128 Arguably as egregious were the threats to basic freedoms that arose during the
Nixon administration, when the power of the executive branch reached what are widely deemed to
have been intolerable levels.129 Although in neither instance did the executive's usurpations of power
ultimately degenerate into complete and irreversible tyranny, the reason for that may well have been
the resilience of our political traditions, among the most important of which is separation of powers
itself. In any event, it would be political folly to be overly smug about the security of either representative
government or individual liberty. Although it would be all but impossible to create an empirical proof to
demonstrate that our constitutional tradition of separation of powers has been an essential catalyst in the
avoidance of tyranny, common sense should tell us that the simultaneous division of power and the
creation of interbranch checking play important roles toward that end. To underscore the point, one
need imagine only a limited modification of the actual scenario surrounding the recent Persian Gulf War.
In actuality, the war was an extremely popular endeavor, thought by many to be a politically and morally
justified exercise. But imagine a situation in which a President, concerned about his failure to resolve
significant social and economic problems at home, has callously decided to engage the nation in war,
simply to defer public attention from his domestic failures. To be sure, the President was presumably
elected by a majority of the electorate, and may have to stand for reelection in the future. However, at
this particular point in time, but for the system established by separation of powers, his authority as
Commander in Chief 130 to en- gage the nation in war would be effectively dictatorial. Because the Constitution reserves to the arguably even more representative and accountable Congress the authority to
declare war,131 the Constitution has attempted to prevent such misuses of power by the executive.132 It
remains unproven whether any governmental structure other than one based on a system of separation
of powers could avoid such harmful results. In summary, no defender of separation of powers can prove
with certitude that, but for the existence of separation of powers, tyranny would be the inevitable
outcome. But the question is whether we wish to take that risk, given the obvious severity of the harm that might
result. Given both the relatively limited cost imposed by use of separation of powers and the great severity of the
harm sought to be avoided, one should not demand a great showing of the likelihood that the feared harm
would result. For just as in the case of the threat of nuclear war, no one wants to be forced into the position of
saying, "I told you so."474 [Vol. 41:449]
Independent Judiciary Add-On
Strong judicial model prevents Russian loose nukes
Nagle, Independent Research Consultant Specializing in the Soviet Union, 1994 (Chad. “What
America needs to do to help Russia avoid chaos” Washington Times, August 1, Lexis Nexis)
As things stand right now, there is indeed potential for danger and instability in Russia, as Mr. Criner notes. But this is not
because America has failed to act as a "moral compass" in the marketplace. Rather , Russia's inherent instability at present stems
from the fact that in all of its 1,000-year history, it never had a strong, independent judiciary to act as a check
on political power. The overwhelming, monolithic power of the executive, whether czar or Communist Party, has always been the main guarantor
of law and order. Now, as a fragile multiparty democracy, Russia has no more than an embryo of a
judiciary. The useless Constitutional Court is gone, the Ministry of Justice is weak, and the court system is chaotic and ineffective. Hence, the executive
determined the best safeguard against the recurrence of popular unrest, the kind that occurred in October 1993, to be the concentration of as much power as
possible in its hands at the expense of a troublemaking parliament. Under a sane and benign president, Russia with a "super presidency" represents the best
alternative for America and the West. The danger lies in something happening to cause Mr. Yeltsin's untimely removal from office. If Russia is ever to
the United States can
provide a model to Russia of a system in which the judiciary functions magnificently. America, the
world's only remaining superpower, can provide advice and technical expertise to the Russians as
they try to develop a law-based society. We can also send clear signals to the new Russia instead of the mixed ones emanating from
the Clinton administration. Now is the time for America to forge ahead with the "new world order," by promoting the alliance of the industrialized democracies of the Northern
develop a respected legal system, it will need the protracted rule of a non-tyrannical head of state. In the meantime,
Hemisphere on American terms, not Russian. This constitutes the real "historical moment" to which Mr. Criner refers. Russia is not in a position to make threats to
or demands of the United States any more so than when it ruled a totalitarian empire. It should learn to play by new rules as a first lesson in joining the
family of nations. Coddling an aggressive Russia and giving it unconditional economic aid (as Alexander Rutskoi has called for) would be counterproductive,
and might even encourage Russia to "manufacture" crises whenever it wanted another handout .
Russia is indeed a dangerous and
unstable place. The prospect of ordinary Third World political chaos in an economically marginal
country with a huge stockpile of intercontinental ballistic missiles is a nightmare. However, Mr. Yeltsin is
busily consolidating power, and the presidential apparatus is growing quickly. With his new team of gray, non-ideological figures intent on establishing
order in the face of economic decline and opposition from demagogues (e.g. Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Mr. Rutskoi), Mr. Yeltsin is already showing signs of
Under such circumstances, the best America can do is stand firm, extend the hand of
friendship and pray for Mr. Yeltsin's continued good health.
success.
Extinction
Helfand and Pastore 9 [Ira Helfand, M.D., and John O. Pastore, M.D., are past presidents of Physicians for Social
Responsibility. March 31, 2009, “U.S.-Russia nuclear war still a threat”,
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_pastoreline_03-31-09_EODSCAO_v15.bbdf23.html]
President Obama and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev are scheduled to Wednesday in London during the G-20 summit. They
must not let the current economic crisis keep them from focusing on one of the greatest threats confronting humanity: the
danger of nuclear war. Since the end of the Cold War, many have acted as though the danger of nuclear war has ended. It has not . There
remain in the world more than 20,000 nuclear weapons. Alarmingly, more than 2,000 of these weapons in the U.S. and
Russian arsenals remain on ready-alert status, commonly known as hair-trigger alert. They can be fired within
five minutes and reach targets in the other country 30 minutes later. Just one of these weapons can destroy a city.
A war involving a substantial number would cause devastation on a scale unprecedented in human
history. A study conducted by Physicians for Social Responsibility in 2002 showed that if only 500 of the Russian weapons on high alert exploded over
our cities, 100 million Americans would die in the first 30 minutes. An attack of this magnitude also
would destroy the entire economic, communications and transportation infrastructure on which
we all depend. Those who survived the initial attack would inhabit a nightmare landscape with
huge swaths of the country blanketed with radioactive fallout and epidemic diseases rampant.
They would have no food, no fuel, no electricity, no medicine, and certainly no organized health care. In the following months it is likely the vast majority of
the U.S. population would die. Recent studies by the eminent climatologists Toon and Robock have shown that such a war would have a huge and immediate
impact on climate world wide.
If all of the warheads in the U.S. and Russian strategic arsenals were drawn into
the conflict, the firestorms they caused would loft 180 million tons of soot and debris into the
upper atmosphere — blotting out the sun. Temperatures across the globe would fall an average of 18 degrees
Fahrenheit to levels not seen on earth since the depth of the last ice age, 18,000 years ago. Agriculture would stop,
eco-systems would collapse, and many species, including perhaps our own, would become
extinct. It is common to discuss nuclear war as a low-probabillity event. But is this true? We know of five occcasions during the
last 30 years when either the U.S. or Russia believed it was under attack and prepared a counterattack. The most recent of these near misses occurred after the end of the Cold War on Jan. 25, 1995, when the Russians mistook a U.S. weather rocket
launched from Norway for a possible attack. Jan. 25, 1995, was an ordinary day with no major crisis involving the U.S. and Russia. But, unknown to almost
every inhabitant on the planet, a misunderstanding led to the potential for a nuclear war. The ready alert status of nuclear weapons that existed in 1995
remains in place today.
Off-Case Answers
Disad Answers
Drone Industry DA – No Link
Plan does not eliminate drone use – just applies regulations
Galizio 2014 [Gregory – JD @ Suffolk University, “NOTE: A DIGITAL ALBATROSS: NAVIGATING THE
LEGAL FRAMEWORK OF DOMESTIC POLICE DRONE TECHNOLOGY VERSUS PRIVACY RIGHTS IN
MASSACHUSETTS AND BEYOND”, 20 Suffolk J. Trial & App. Adv. 117] ttate
V. CONCLUSION While law enforcement drones need to be strictly restrained by [*143] statute, the courts, and government
agencies, this emerging technology need not be universally condemned as the advent of George Orwell's dystopian
world. American legislatures and courts should legally discourage all dragnet surveillance conducted with
drones. If sensible legislation, along with strict judicial review, can be established, domestic drones should be
integrated into American skies. The courts must evolve and confront the rapid pace of technology with
more stringent approaches to protecting privacy rights. On the practical side, civil libertarians should not
unconditionally reject law enforcement's operation of drones if used in the same manner as existing
police technology. The arrival of domestic drones offers a new battle within the dichotomy of privacy and security interests. Just as
drones may benefit domestic security interests, they burden the right of privacy. As drone and other technologies further complicate this legal
clash of competing interests, it will be up to lawmakers and judges to offer reasonable and balanced solutions. While
drones possess
benefits to public safety, the failure to adapt our Fourth Amendment jurisprudence to the digital age will
create a digital albatross upon the privacy interests of us all. n156
Politics – Plan bipartisan
Plan has support from both sides of the aisle – GOP even included regulations on
drone surveillance in their 2012 platform
Gilens 12 – [Naomi Gilens, Legal Assistant with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project,
“Republican Party Platform Advocates Regulation of Drone Surveillance”, American Civil Liberties Union,
8-31, https://www.aclu.org/blog/republican-party-platform-advocates-regulation-drone-surveillance]
huang
The Republican Party’s 2012 platform, unveiled at the RNC Tuesday, includes this reference to domestic
drone surveillance: Affirming ‘the right of the people to be secure in their houses, papers, and effects,
against unreasonable searches and seizures,’ we support pending legislation to prevent unwarranted or
unreasonable governmental intrusion through the use of aerial surveillance or flyovers on U.S. soil, with
the exception of patrolling our national borders. All security measures and police actions should be
viewed through the lens of the Fourth Amendment; for if we trade liberty for security, we shall have
neither.¶ The ACLU expressed similar concerns in a report earlier this year, in which we emphasized that the government should be
required to obtain a warrant based on probable cause when drone surveillance intrudes on reasonable
expectations of privacy. That the Republicans are staking out a stance on aerial surveillance highlights how important this issue has become. Domestic aerial surveillance by
both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles is steadily increasing . Lawmakers from across the aisle have introduced legislation to
regulate drone surveillance, including Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), Representative Austin Scott (R-GA), and
Rush Holt (D-NJ). As new technologies like this become increasingly common, it is essential that both parties fight to protect our
constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties. By invoking the Fourth Amendment in their party platform and
recognizing the threat to privacy posed by this new technology, the Republicans have taken a small but
important step in the right direction.
Politics – Plan popular Senate
Many key Senators opposed to drone surveillance due to privacy concerns
Cratty 13 – [Carol Cratty, CNN Senior Producer, “FBI uses drones for surveillance in U.S”, CNN.com, 620, http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/19/politics/fbi-drones/] huang
Surveillance fallout¶ Mueller's comments come as the Obama administration grapples with political and
other fallout from the public disclosure of top-secret surveillance programs, which has triggered new debate over
reach of national security vs. privacy rights.¶ National security and law enforcement officials have defended National Security Agency
telephone and e-mail surveillance of overseas communications as an effective tool in fighting terror.¶ President Barack Obama has assured
Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa
Republican, asked Mueller whether the FBI had guidelines for using drones that would consider the
"privacy impact on American citizens."¶ Mueller replied the agency was in the initial stages of developing them.¶ "I will tell you
that our footprint is very small," he said.¶ Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein expressed
concern over drone use domestically.¶ "I think the greatest threat to the privacy of Americans is the
drone and the use of the drone, and the very few regulations that are on it today and the booming industry of commercial
Americans the government is not listening to their phone conversations or reading their e-mail.¶ But
drones," the California Democrat said.¶ Mueller said he would need to check on the bureau's policy for retaining images from drones and
report back to the panel.¶ "It is very narrowly focused on particularized cases and particularized needs and particularized cases," said Mueller.
"And that is the principal privacy limitations we have."¶ Sen.
Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, said he was concerned
the FBI was deploying drone technology and only in the initial stages of developing guidelines "to
protect Americans' privacy rights."
Spending Helpers
Drones expensive – government agencies keep underestimating the costs
BRIAN BENNETT, 15 (BRIAN BENNETT, Reporter for Time magazine, “Border drones are ineffective,
badly managed, too expensive, official says,” LATIMES.com, 1/07/15,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/immigration/la-na-bBRIAN BENNETT contact the reporter2orderdrones-20150107-story.html) Salehitezangi
Drones patrolling the U.S. border are poorly managed and ineffective at stopping illegal immigration, and
the government should abandon a $400-million plan to expand their use, according to an internal watchdog report
released Tuesday. The 8-year-old drone program has cost more than expected, according to a report by the
Department of Homeland Security's inspector general, John Roth. Rather than spend more on drones, the department
should "put those funds to better use," Roth recommended. He described the Predator B drones flown along the border by U.S. Customs and
Border Protection as "dubious achievers." It's time for Congress to agree on a humane immigration solution "Notwithstanding the significant investment, we see
no evidence that the drones contribute to a more secure border, and there is no reason to invest
additional taxpayer funds at this time," Roth said in a statement. The audit concluded that Customs and Border Protection could better use the
funds on manned aircraft and ground surveillance technology. The drones were designed to fly over the border to spot smugglers and illegal border crossers. But
auditors found that 78% of the time that agents had planned to use the craft, they were grounded because of
bad weather, budget constraints or maintenance problems. Even when aloft, auditors found, the drones contributed little. Three drones flying
around the Tucson area helped apprehend about 2,200 people illegally crossing the border in 2013, fewer than 2% of the 120,939 apprehended that year in the
area. Border Patrol supervisors had planned on using drones to inspect ground-sensor alerts. But a drone was used in that scenario only six times in 2013. Auditors
found that officials
underestimated the cost of the drones by leaving out operating costs such as pilot salaries,
equipment and overhead. Adding such items increased the flying cost nearly fivefold, to $12,255 per hour. People think these kinds of
surveillance technologies will be a silver bullet. Time after time, we see the practical realities of these systems don't live up to the
hype. - Jay Stanley, ACLU privacy expert "It really doesn't feel like [Customs and Border Protection] has a good handle on how it is using its drones, how much it
costs to operate the drones, where that money is coming from or whether it is meeting any of its performance metrics," said Jennifer Lynch, a lawyer for the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based privacy and digital rights group. The report's conclusions will make it harder for officials to justify further
investment in the border surveillance drones, especially at a time when Homeland Security's budget is at the center of the battle over President Obama's program
to give work permits to millions of immigrants in the country illegally. Each Predator B system costs about $20 million. "People think these kinds of surveillance
technologies will be a silver bullet," said Jay Stanley, a privacy expert at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Time after time, we see the practical realities of these
systems don't live up to the hype." Customs
and Border Protection, which is part of Homeland Security, operates the fleet of nine long-range
11 drones, but one crashed in Arizona in 2006 and
another fell into the Pacific Ocean off San Diego after a mechanical failure last year. Agency officials said in response to the
Predator B drones from bases in Arizona, Texas and North Dakota. The agency purchased
audit that they had no plans to expand the fleet aside from replacing the Predator that crashed last year. The agency is authorized to spend an additional $433
million to buy up to 14 more drones. How Obama's immigration plan is expected to roll out How Obama's immigration plan is expected to roll out The drones —
unarmed versions of the MQ-9 Reaper drone flown by the Air Force to hunt targets in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere — fly the vast majority of their missions in
narrowly defined sections of the Southwest border, the audit found. They spent most of their time along 100 miles of border in Arizona near Tucson and 70 miles of
border in Texas. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) has promoted the use of drones along the border but believes the agency should improve how it measures their
effectiveness. Homeland
Security "can't prove the program is effective because they don't have the right
measures," Cuellar said in an interview. "The technology is good, but how you implement and use it — that is another question."
The audit also said that drones had been flown to help the FBI, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Such
missions have long frustrated Border
Patrol agents, who complain that drones and other aircraft aren't available when
they need them, said Shawn Moran, vice president of the Border Patrol agents' union. "We saw the drones were being lent out to
many entities for nonborder-related operations and we said, 'These drones, if they belong to [Customs and Border Protection], should
be used to support [its] operations primarily,'" Moran said.
Border Security DA
Federal government using aerial surveillance to police the borders now – officials
continue to hide details of the program
THOR BENSON, 05.20.15 (Thor Benson, Journalist for the Rolling Stones Magazine, Wired, and The
Verge, “5 Ways We Must Regulate Drones at the US Border,” Wired.com,
http://www.wired.com/2015/05/drones-at-the-border/, access date: 7/13/15) Salehitezangi
THERE HAS BEEN much talk about the use of drones by police within the United States and by the military abroad, but a subject that gets a lot
less play is the use of drones at the US border. As someone who lives near the border, in sunny Los Angeles, I’m ready for a thorough debate. As
a city dweller, I find myself with some unlikely bedfellows, too, because a recent Associated Press video showed cattle ranchers at the border are
sick of having government cameras on their land and drones flying over their ranches attempting to find illegal
immigrants. In a country where politicians harp constantly on the need to keep “illegals” out, a cool new toy is hard for them to deny. Border patrol
agents have Predator drones at their disposal, and using them has the potential to become a serious
breach of privacy—but it also could be a terrific tool for other needs, if it’s done right. I’ve been writing about drones and surveillance for years, and I’ve
discussed these topics with some of the nation’s top experts. When it comes to giving federal agencies like the US Customs and Border Protection some
Predator drones for surveillance, one major concern is “mission creep.” That’s when a federal agency decides to loan its drones to a state or local
agency to assist with some objective, as seen in North Dakota when the border patrol loaned a Predator B to a sheriff to help him wrangle a
few missing cows. It is clear they will lend the drones only to those truly in dire straits. Drones and cattle are becoming inextricably
tied. Legislation like the Secure Our Borders First Act that recently reared its ugly head in Congress seeks to significantly
expand the use of drone surveillance at the border. The bill would add more drones to the border
patrol’s fleet and extend radar capabilities. Such legislation can be like steroids for the surveillance state. If that legislation doesn’t pass, it
seems likely future legislation will appear. Drones can be equipped with “facial recognition technology, live-feed video
cameras, thermal imaging, fake cell phone towers to intercept phone calls, texts and GPS locations, as well
as backend software tools like license plate recognition, GPS tracking, and facial recognition,” as the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes. And we’ve seen these
technologies used by government agencies in similar situations, like when the US Marshals Service used Stingray cell phone surveillance equipment in small planes
to capture everyone’s metadata on the ground below. That’s a little concerning, to put it mildly. Border
agencies are becoming known for
denying Freedom of Information Act requests that would reveal more about these programs, preventing
citizens from understanding what these agencies are doing with drones. If you value privacy and have worries about an
expanding drone surveillance program, drones being shared by agencies and the lack of transparency are concerning, but that’s not to say drone
use at the border should be banned.
Data proves that aerial surveillance fails at the border – each flight is 5x more
expensive than thought and zero evidence that they have led to any apprehensions
Eddington 15 - [Patrick G. Eddington, policy analyst in homeland, “Border Surveillance Follies”, Cato
Institute, 1-28, http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/border-surveillance-follies] Huang
For more than a decade, the Department of Homeland Security has employed some of the same kinds of
drones used by our military. The ostensible purpose of having unarmed Predator drones was to give U.S.
Customs and Border Protection additional aerial surveillance capabilities along the Southern border.
Homeland Security officials argued the drones were cost-effective and needed. As a cost-savings
measure, the Obama administration proposed major cuts to the DHS drone program in 2010, but House
Appropriations Committee leaders, who supported the program and felt the expansion should continue,
shot that proposal down. They should’ve thought through that decision far more carefully.¶ On
Christmas Eve 2014, the DHS’s inspector general released a report on the department’s drone
surveillance program, and it is an indictment of the program.¶ “¶ The DHS’s inspector general released a
report on the department’s drone surveillance program, and it is an indictment of the program.”¶ The
DHS IG found that “ … after 8 years, CBP cannot prove that the program is effective.” Worse, the CBP
low-balled the per-hour cost of operating its drones. Instead of the claimed $2,468 per flight hour, the
DHS IG found the cost was $12,255 per hour — nearly five times as much as CBP officials have claimed.
Almost no illegal border crossing apprehensions could be attributed to information from the drones, and
the CBP could not show the drones actually reduced the cost of border surveillance. Despite these
findings, the CBP has not abandoned plans to spend nearly half a billion dollars more to expand its drone
program.¶ These are the kind of audit results that should spur Congress to terminate a wasteful,
ineffective government program. Instead, this week Congress is poised to pass legislation that would
direct the DHS to double-down on the use of drones for border surveillance.¶ The so-called Secure Our
Borders First Act (HR 399), sponsored by the House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, RTexas, directs on virtually a sector-by-sector basis the employment of drones for aerial surveillance —
either the larger drones like Predator for “maritime surveillance” or man-portable drones for more
overland aerial surveillance.
Drones ineffective for border patrol – lack of personnel and parts plus bad weather
means little air time
Whitlock 15 – [Craig Whitlock, journalist working for The Washington Post, “U.S. surveillance drones
largely ineffective along border, report says”, The Washington Post, 1-6,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-surveillance-drones-largely-ineffectivealong-border-report-says/2015/01/06/5243abea-95bc-11e4-aabd-d0b93ff613d5_story.html] huang
U.S. drones deployed along the borders are grounded most of the time, cost far more than initially
estimated and help to apprehend only a tiny number of people trying to cross illegally, according to a
federal audit released Tuesday.¶ In a report that could undermine political support for using more drones to secure the nation’s borders,
the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general found “little or no evidence” that the fleet
had met expectations or was effective in conducting surveillance.¶ U.S. Customs and Border Protection has been flying surveillance drones for nearly a
has nine of the Predator B model — a modified version of the MQ-9 Reaper drone
flown by the Air Force — and has plans to more than double the size of its drone fleet to 24 as part of a $443 million expansion.¶ The inspector
general, however, questioned whether those plans make any sense or would be cost-effective.¶ In an audit of the fleet’s operations during
decade, launching them from bases in Texas, Florida, North Dakota and Arizona. The agency
that it cost $12,255 per flight hour to operate the drones, five times as
much as Customs and Border Protection had estimated.¶ Although the agency planned to fly four drone
patrols a day — each for an average of 16 hours — the aircraft were in the air for less than a quarter of
that time, the audit showed. Bad weather and a lack of personnel and spare parts hindered operations,
it concluded.¶ “The unmanned aircraft are not meeting flight hour goals,” the auditors wrote, adding more
fiscal 2013, the inspector general calculated
broadly that Customs and Border Protection “cannot demonstrate how much the program has improved border security.”¶ As evidence, the
statistics showing that of the 120,939 illegal border crossers apprehended in Arizona during
2013, fewer than 2 percent were caught with the help of drones providing aerial surveillance.¶ In Texas
and the Rio Grande Valley, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of border-crossing apprehensions were
attributed to drone detection.¶ The findings echo earlier audits by the inspector general of the domestic drone program but could
report cited
carry extra weight as Congress considers whether to spend more on drone surveillance to secure the borders as part of immigration
legislation.¶ In a written response to the audit, Eugene Schied, an assistant commissioner with Customs and Border Protection, disputed the
characterization in the findings. The drone program, he said, “has achieved or exceeded all relevant performance expectations.”
Aerial surveillance does not secure our borders – account for very little of the
apprehensions
Peck 15 – [Michael Peck, Award-winning writer specializing in defense and national security, “DHS's
border drones prove ineffective”, Federal Times, 1-13,
http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/dhs/programs/2015/01/07/dhs-border-dronecbp/21385613/] huang
Unmanned aerial vehicles have become a mainstay for surveillance operations by the U.S. military.
However, a new audit suggests that for border surveillance, they are a flop.¶ Customs and Border Patrol
drones such as Predator-B, which have been guarding the U.S. border for eight years, have proven
ineffective, according to a report by DHS's Office of Inspector General. As a result, the IG suggests the
department's request for additional funding for the program is not warranted.¶ Resource: Read the
Report¶ "Drone surveillance was credited with assisting in less than 2 percent of CBP apprehensions of
illegal border crossers," stated a DHS OIG news release¶ That's not all. The auditors found that the cost
of operating the craft has been understated. For example, CBP's Office of Air and Marine estimated a
cost of $2,468 per hour to operate a UAV. The real price, counting expenses such as salaries and
overhead, is $12,255 per hour, according to the IG.¶ CBP's goal was to fly UAVs was 16 hours per day,
365 days a year. Actual flight time reached only 22 percent of that goal, mostly because of weather
conditions that prevented flights.¶ Further, instead of covering the entire southwest border as planned,
coverage was limited to just a 100-mile stretch in Arizona and a 70 miles in Texas.¶ CBP's request for an
additional $443 million to acquire 14 more UAVs would bring the total program cost to $802 million.
"Notwithstanding the significant investment, we see no evidence that the drones contribute to a more
secure border, and there is no reason to invest additional taxpayer funds at this time," said DHS IG John
Roth. "Securing our borders is a crucial mission for CBP and DHS. CBP's drone program has so far fallen
far short of being an asset to that effort."
Counterplan Answers
States CP Answers – Federal Action Key
Federal action key – response requires large national response to direct state/local
and private entities
Harman 5/1 (Jane Harman, former Democratic Representative of California, "The undercooked
debate on domestic drones", The Hill, May 1, 2015, http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/240728-theundercooked-debate-on-domestic-drones) Padiyar
The Federal Aviation Administration unveiled rules this February that would make it much easier to
operate drones in the United States: for law enforcement agencies conducting surveillance, for commercial firms,
and for private individuals. Make no mistake: eventually, the last two groups could include bad actors, even terrorists . It’s hard to overstate how
undercooked the debate on this future is. The stakes are high; our privacy and our security are at risk.¶
The implications for privacy and surveillance are huge. In 2012, the Supreme Court ruled that tracking a car using an attached GPS beacon, without
a warrant, is unconstitutional. But what if police use a roving drone instead? That debate is raging in Virginia now, which two years ago imposed a two-year moratorium on warrantless drone
At the federal level, we
have a leadership vacuum. With a technological revolution on its way, Washington is AWOL. How do you square this
surveillance. That’s where most of the regulatory action is happening on this issue: in concerned states and municipalities across the country.
new world with our Constitution? As Brookings Institution senior fellow John Villasenor said in 2012, “The FAA, I would imagine, has more aviation lawyers than Fourth Amendment
there are the new security challenges. Authorities have a poor track record detecting
small aircraft that fly where they shouldn’t. In 2010, a Mexican government drone went down in an El Paso backyard; though NORAD later said it had been
constitutional lawyers.Ӧ Then
tracking the plane, local officials seem to have been taken entirely by surprise. This month, a postal employee flew a (manned) gyrocopter to Capitol Hill through some of the most restricted
airspace in the country. Incidents like these severely undermine confidence in our preparedness. One day, one of the craft slipping under our radar will do us harm. ¶ Iran has poured funds
into developing a “suicide drone” – essentially a cheap, nimble cruise missile. It’s not hard to imagine terrorists building do-it-yourself versions of the same device, a pipe bomb or pressure
cooker strapped to a small UAV. This is a concern others have raised for years, but it took a drone landing feet from the White House for the Secret Service to start trying out jamming
. Many drone countermeasures are still primitive; some of the
solutions are worse than the problem. Popular Science advised the White House, “Simple netting, used often at drone trade shows to keep small drones
confident to their exhibitions, could also work, if the President wanted to live inside a net all the time.Ӧ We need a serious policy response that
engages Congress; federal, state, and local government – and the private sector. This issue is too big for
the FAA, too urgent to postpone, and too important to leave off the national agenda. Lately, Congress
has devoted impressive attention to new risks in cyberspace. It should put at least as much effort into
understanding drones. One option is to encourage commercial firms—through either voluntary or mandatory standards—to hardwire restrictions into the drones they build
technology – an issue they should have been thinking about years ago
and sell. Some companies already program their drones to stay out of restricted airspace and away from sensitive sites. Those efforts need a push and a signal boost from government.¶ Two
years ago, a resident of Deer Trail, Colorado, proposed that the town issue hunting licenses and bounties for downing drones. In Montana last year, one Congressional candidate ran an ad in
which he takes aim at a UAV with a rifle.¶ I have to hope we can do better than that – and fast.
We need federal action on drone surveillance – state experimentation and action is
too patchwork to solve – federal action provides a key statutory core
Kaminski 2013 (Margot E. Kaminski, Assistant Professor of Law at Ohio State University, Graduate of
Harvard University and Yale Law School, "Drone Federalism: Civilian Drones and the Things They Carry",
California Law Review Circuit, April 26, 2013,
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2257080) Padiyar
A federal, or mixed state and federal, approach to law enforcement drone use makes perfect sense. A federal
law governing law enforcement drone use¶ would follow in the well-trod—albeit, outdated—footsteps of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).44 Like ECPA, federal legislation on law
enforcement drone use could establish a statutory core to be shared by the states, or a statutory floor,
permitting state deviation towards more protection. Additionally, because ECPA already establishes a familiar framework for warrants and court orders governing law
enforcement surveillance, a federal law enforcement drone statute need not wait on extensive state experimentation.
The updates need not be drone-specific, and could cover location tracking, video surveillance, or use of biometric identification, or other new technologies, if these are the concerns raised by drone surveillance. As noted,
legislation governing video or photographic surveillance by¶ civilian drone users will be far trickier. It will
have to navigate the Scylla and Charybdis of privacy and the First Amendment. And if enacted federally, it
will deviate from how privacy regulation has historically been divided between the federal government
and the states. There is no federal omnibus privacy law in the United States. Federal privacy law consists
of a series of sectoral regulations, enacted somewhat haphazardly. One federal statute governs privacy
in video watching, one governs drivers’ license information, one governs health information, one
governs financial privacy, and so on. Drone-specific regulation would add to¶ this patchwork.
Kritik Answers
Kritik Helpers – Plan decreases state control
Aerial surveillance is a key tool by the state to chill freedom of expression – it
relocates the power imbalance in the hands of the state
Dizard 15 – [Wilson Dizard, Digital News Producer, “Report: FBI aircraft secretly monitored Baltimore
protests”, Aljazeera, 5-6, http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/5/6/fbi-aircraft-secretlymonitored-baltimore-protests.html] Huang
Civil liberties groups are concerned that the FBI may have violated the privacy rights of West Baltimore
residents after it was revealed that the bureau secretly piloted two unmarked aircraft over the city’s
skies during public unrest after the death of a black man in police custody, The Washington Post reported Tuesday.¶ Twitter users
spotted and identified the two aircraft — one small jet and one small propeller plane — circling above the area where city residents rallied in
support of Freddie Gray and protested, some violently, against alleged police brutality.¶ The FBI on Wednesday confirmed to the Post that it did
provide aircraft to city police for the purpose of “providing aerial imagery of possible criminal activity.”¶ Gray, 25, was arrested on April 12 and
suffered a spinal injury while in police custody. His death one week later sparked protests across the city. While most were peaceful, some
protesters turned violent, clashing with police and setting public and private property on fire. Maryland Gov. Lawrence Hogan responded by
declaring a state of emergency and deploying the Maryland National Guard.¶ Baltimore police helicopters hovered day and night over West
Baltimore during the protests. At night, they swept over the streets with searchlights as officers commanded residents through megaphones to
obey a 10 p.m. curfew or face arrest.¶ The unrest largely subsided on May 1, after state attorney Marilyn Mosby announced that six police
officers involved in Gray’s arrest would face criminal charges ranging from assault to second-degree murder. Nevertheless, the malaise exposed
deep fissures between the city’s police department and black community.¶ With trust in city police weakened, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie
Rawlings-Blake on Wednesday asked the Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, to investigate whether the city’s police department has
a pattern of abuse or discrimination.¶ On the same day, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the
FBI and Federal Aviation Administration to determine what the aircraft were doing patrolling Baltimore’s skies.¶ The request asks for “all
records regarding surveillance or monitoring equipment carried on such flights, including its capabilities and description of the data gathered by
it.Ӧ In a statement on Wednesday, ACLU senior policy analyst Jay Stanley said the group was concerned that law enforcement was using the
aircraft to violate residents’ Fourth Amendment rights.¶ “Today planes can carry new surveillance technologies, like cellphone trackers and high
resolution cameras that can follow the movements of many people at once,” he said. “These are not the kinds of things that law enforcement
should be using in secret. The public needs to know about the government’s use of these powerful technologies to ensure that people’s rights
are protected.Ӧ In recent years, police departments across the U.S. have added new, more capable spy equipment to their arsenals, including
tools that can track people’s locations through cellphone data. Civil liberties groups worry such technology puts at risk the privacy of people
who are not suspected of any crimes.¶ The FBI told the Post that it did not employ such surveillance technology during the Baltimore protests,
but the bureau declined to comment on the planes.¶ Electronic Frontier Foundation senior counsel Jennifer Lynch told Al Jazeera that phone
data isn’t the only thing protesters have to worry about. Powerful cameras circling above can record individuals’ faces and activities.¶ In 2012,
she said, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department flew a spy plane over the Compton area of Los Angeles, observing the commission of
crimes. Most of them amounted to petty theft, The Los Angeles Times reported. But the flights went on in secret for nine days. ¶ The people of
Compton, a historically impoverished black neighborhood, didn’t know about the flights, just as the residents of Baltimore didn’t know they
were being monitored by the FBI last month.¶ “When the
government conducts surveillance on people without
telling people what kind of information they’re collecting, the power balance shifts,” Lynch said.
“Instead of being in hands of people, it’s completely in the hands of government.”¶ According to Greg
Nojeim, a lawyer focusing on privacy issues at the Center for Democracy and Technology, that shift
could stifle free speech and political activity.¶ “Police monitoring can chill free speech because people
don’t speak as freely when they believe that law enforcement or other government entities are
recording what they say,” he said.
Kritik Helpers – Plan is a prerequisite to alt
Aerial surveillance is a crush on civil society, which is a prerequisite to any government
that protects natural rights – plan allows us to have a voice to show outrage against a
governmental norm created that privacy is not necessary
Dr. Glen T. Martin, 01/03/14
(Dr. Glen T. Martin, Professor of Philosophy and chair of the program
in Peace Studies at Radford University, President of the World Constitution and Parliament Association
(WCPA), the Institute on World Problems(IOWP), and International Philosophers for Peace, “NSA Spying,
Secrecy, and the Totalitarian Threat”, Readersupportednews.org, http://readersupportednews.org/pmsection/425-national-security/21795-nsa-spying-secrecy-and-the-totalitarian-threat, date accessed:
7/14/15) Salehitezangi
Commentators have also reflected on the general lack of outrage by the majority of American citizens
concerning this vast system of spying that reveals their comings and goings, purchases, medical histories,
personal associations, and life-patterns in great detail. In a recent article, William Reich reflects that people who are
struggling from paycheck to paycheck, or students who are loaded with thousands of dollars in debt, are unwilling to rock the boat by
protesting the corruption and absurdity of U.S. government policies. Others have suggested that the average
citizen feels they have “nothing to hide” so why not let the government collect their personal data. It is not
necessary to claim a literal belief in the doctrine of natural rights to understand a principle that is here fundamental to the very
foundations of democracy. Government is constituted by the people to represent them in the performance of certain functions: it is not
coextensive with society itself. Civil society in a democracy, therefore, is prior to and constitutive of,
government. It is not an extension of government and government is certainly not morally or politically
prior to civil society. For John Locke, who was the chief theorist drawn upon by the founders of the U.S. Constitution, the proper functions
of government included promoting the equality and freedom of all citizens, protecting their natural
rights, and ensuring fairness or impartiality in creating and enforcing the law across all three branches of
government. For Locke, when government failed in any of these functions people retained the right of revolution, or in the words of the Declaration of
Independence, “the right to alter or abolish” the offending government. Civil society is prior to government. In a democracy, the
idea of a set of human rights based on the principle of human dignity, and the priority of civil society
over government, is absolutely fundamental. The behavior of the U.S. government, especially since 911, has
been just the opposite. Spying and secrecy violate both our rights and our dignity. The government has acted
as if it were identical or coextensive with the U.S. as a nation, as if it were an absolute totality that
functioned in the mode of “the nation” and represented “loyalty to the nation.” The NSA, the military, the Obama
administration, many of the courts, and much of the legislature manifest the attitude that they represent the whole and the symbolic meaning of U.S. society, an
attitude which is very much a mythical and ideological fantasy. At the same time that they claim to represent the whole and the symbolic meaning of U.S. society,
they also assert that they have the right to operate in secret from the rest of society and the right to spy
on the rest of society. The government is not the nation and has no such rights. Yet the reason why they are war
criminals is primarily structural: among militarized sovereign nation-states there is, and can be, no genuine rule of law, and certainly no due process of law that
properly holds individuals accountable for their actions before an impartial court of law. There can only be the rule of power, violence, secrecy, spying, murder,
threat, and ideological posturing. If
we want to establish democracy within the U.S., we have to examine seriously
the chaos of a world disorder that defeats democracy within nations at every turn. By requiring militarized nationstates, this world disorder wastes more than one trillion U.S. dollars per year that could be used for jobs, protecting the environment, and global social justice.
This world system manifests a chaos that gives totalitarian elements and totalitarian attitudes a
breeding ground for secrecy, spying, and unrestrained violence. The Earth Constitution is by far the most promising and
realistic option that we have before us. Democracy and human rights are inherently universal. They are not for a privileged few
among a fragmented system of sovereign nation-states. Everyone deserves authentic democracy. Everyone deserves to live
with freedom and dignity under the Constitution for the Federation of Earth.
Antiblackness – Link-turns
Specifically, aerial surveillance targets minority communities – we are living in the
“New Jim Crow” era as the state expands its ability to control minority populations
Malkia Amala Cyril, 05/15, (Malkia Amala Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media
Justice (CMJ) and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network, a national network of 175
organizations working to ensure media access, rights, and representation for marginalized communities,
“Black America's State of Surveillance”, Progressive.org,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance, accessed date:
07/21/15) Salehitezangi
Ten years ago, on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, my mother, a former Black Panther, died from complications of sickle cell anemia. Weeks
before she died, the
FBI came knocking at our door, demanding that my mother testify in a secret trial proceeding against other
or face arrest. My mother, unable to walk, refused. The detectives told my mother as they left
that they would be watching her. They didn’t get to do that. My mother died just two weeks later. My mother
was not the only black person to come under the watchful eye of American law enforcement for
perceived and actual dissidence. Nor is dissidence always a requirement for being subject to spying. Files obtained during a break-in at
an FBI office in 1971 revealed that African Americans, J. Edger Hoover’s largest target group, didn’t have to
be perceived as dissident to warrant surveillance. They just had to be black. As I write this, the same
philosophy is driving the increasing adoption and use of surveillance technologies by local law enforcement agencies across the United
former Panthers
States.
Today, media reporting on government surveillance is laser-focused on the revelations by Edward Snowden that millions of Americans
were being spied on by the NSA. Yet my mother’s visit from the FBI reminds me that, from
the slave pass system to laws that
deputized white civilians as enforcers of Jim Crow, black people and other people of color have lived for centuries
with surveillance practices aimed at maintaining a racial hierarchy. It’s time for journalists to tell a new story that does
not start the clock when privileged classes learn they are targets of surveillance. We need to understand that data has historically been
the
Internet has increased the speed and secrecy of data collection. Thanks to new surveillance
technologies, law enforcement agencies are now able to collect massive amounts of indiscriminate data.
Yet legal protections and policies have not caught up to this technological advance. Concerned advocates see mass surveillance as
overused to repress dissidence, monitor perceived criminality, and perpetually maintain an impoverished underclass. In an era of big data,
the problem and protecting privacy as the goal.
Targeted surveillance is an obvious answer—it may be discriminatory, but it helps protect the privacy
perceived as an earned privilege of the inherently innocent. The trouble is,
targeted surveillance frequently includes the indiscriminate collection of the private data
For targeted communities, there is little to no expectation of privacy
from government or corporate surveillance. Instead, we are watched, either as criminals or as consumers. We
of people targeted by race but not involved in any crime.
do not expect policies to protect us. Instead, we’ve birthed a complex and coded culture—from jazz to spoken dialects—in order to navigate a
world in which spying, from AT&T and Walmart to public benefits programs and beat cops on the block, is as much a part of our built
environment as the streets covered in our blood. In a recent address, New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton made it clear: “2015 will
be one of the most significant years in the history of this organization. It will be the year of technology, in which we literally will give to every
member of this department technology that would’ve been unheard of even a few years ago.” Predictive policing, also known as “Total Information
Awareness,” is described as using advanced technological tools and data analysis to “preempt” crime. It utilizes trends, patterns, sequences, and affinities found in data to make
In a racially
discriminatory criminal justice system, surveillance technologies reproduce injustice. Instead of reducing
discrimination, predictive policing is a face of what author Michelle Alexander calls the “New Jim Crow”—a de
facto system of separate and unequal application of laws, police practices, conviction rates, sentencing
terms, and conditions of confinement that operate more as a system of social control by racial hierarchy
than as crime prevention or punishment. In New York City, the predictive policing approach in use is “Broken Windows.” This
determinations about when and where crimes will occur. This model is deceptive, however, because it presumes data inputs to be neutral. They aren’t.
approach to policing places an undue focus on quality of life crimes—like selling loose cigarettes, the kind of offense for which Eric Garner was
predictive policing is just high-tech racial profiling—
indiscriminate data collection that drives discriminatory policing practices.
choked to death. Without oversight, accountability, transparency, or rights,
Federal surveillance is the lynchpin of structural racism in this century – leads to
a system of detention of minority communities
Malkia Amala Cyril, 05/15, (Malkia Amala Cyril, founder and executive director of the Center for Media
Justice (CMJ) and co-founder of the Media Action Grassroots Network, a national network of 175
organizations working to ensure media access, rights, and representation for marginalized communities,
“Black America's State of Surveillance”, Progressive.org,
http://www.progressive.org/news/2015/03/188074/black-americas-state-surveillance, accessed date:
07/21/15) Salehitezangi
Predictive policing doesn’t just lead to racial and religious profiling—it relies on it. Just as stop and frisk
legitimized an initial, unwarranted contact between police and people of color, almost 90 percent of
whom turn out to be innocent of any crime, suspicious activities reporting and the dragnet approach of
fusion centers target communities of color. One review of such reports collected in Los Angeles shows
approximately 75 percent were of people of color. This is the future of policing in America, and it should terrify you as much
as it terrifies me. Unfortunately, it probably doesn’t, because my life is at far greater risk than the lives of white Americans, especially those
reporting on the issue in the media or advocating in the halls of power. One of the most terrifying aspects of high-tech surveillance is the
invisibility of those it disproportionately impacts. The
NSA and FBI have engaged local law enforcement agencies and
electronic surveillance technologies to spy on Muslims living in the United States. According to FBI
training materials uncovered by Wired in 2011, the bureau taught agents to treat “mainstream” Muslims
as supporters of terrorism, to view charitable donations by Muslims as “a funding mechanism for
combat,” and to view Islam itself as a “Death Star” that must be destroyed if terrorism is to be contained. From New York
City to Chicago and beyond, local law enforcement agencies have expanded unlawful and covert racial and religious profiling against Muslims
not suspected of any crime. There is no national security reason to profile all Muslims. At the same time, almost
450,000 migrants
are in detention facilities throughout the United States, including survivors of torture, asylum seekers,
families with small children, and the elderly. Undocumented migrant communities enjoy few legal
protections, and are therefore subject to brutal policing practices, including illegal surveillance practices.
According to the Sentencing Project, of the more than 2 million people incarcerated in the United States, more than 60 percent
are racial and ethnic minorities. But by far, the widest net is cast over black communities. Black people
alone represent 40 percent of those incarcerated. More black men are incarcerated than were held in
slavery in 1850, on the eve of the Civil War. Lest some misinterpret that statistic as evidence of greater criminality, a 2012 study
confirms that black defendants are at least 30 percent more likely to be imprisoned than whites for the
same crime. This is not a broken system, it is a system working perfectly as intended, to the detriment of all. The
NSA could not have spied on millions of cellphones if it were not already spying on black people,
Muslims, and migrants. As surveillance technologies are increasingly adopted and integrated by law enforcement agencies today,
racial disparities are being made invisible by a media environment that has failed to tell the story of
surveillance in the context of structural racism. Reporters love to tell the technology story. For some, it’s a sexier read. To me,
freedom from repression and racism is far sexier than the newest gadget used to reinforce racial hierarchy. As civil rights protections catch up
with the technological terrain, reporting needs to catch up, too. Many journalists still
focus their reporting on the
technological trends and not the racial hierarchies that these trends are enforcing. Martin Luther King Jr. once
said, “Everything we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.” Journalists have an obligation to tell the stories that are hidden from
view. We are living in an incredible time, when migrant activists have blocked deportation buses, and a movement for black lives has emerged,
and when women, queer, and trans experiences have been placed right at the center. The decentralized power of the Internet makes that
high-tech surveillance that threatens to drive structural racism in the
twenty-first century. We can help black lives matter by ensuring that technology is not used to cement a
racial hierarchy that leaves too many people like me dead or in jail. Our communities need partners, not gatekeepers.
Together, we can change the cultural terrain that makes killing black people routine. We can counter inequality by ensuring
that both the technology and the police departments that use it are democratized. We can change the story on
surveillance to raise the voices of those who have been left out. There are no voiceless people, only those that ain’t been heard yet. Let’s
birth a new norm in which the technological tools of the twenty-first century create equity and justice
for all—so all bodies enjoy full and equal protection, and the Jim Crow surveillance state exists no more.
possible. But the Internet also makes possible the
Communities of color uniquely targeted by federal aerial surveillance – expands
abusive power of police state
Candice Bernd, 2/24/15, (Candice Bernd, an assistant editor/reporter with Truthout, “Proposed Rules
Regulating Domestic Drone Use Lack Police Warrant Requirement”, Truth-out.org, http://www.truthout.org/news/item/29250-proposed-rules-regulating-domestic-drone-use-lack-police-warrantrequirement#, accessed date: 7/20/15) Salehitezangi
The ACLU's Guliani pointed out, however, that invasive forms of surveillance, especially police surveillance,
often impact communities of color disproportionately, pointing to US Customs and Border Protections'
ubiquitous use of drone surveillance in vast border regions impacting huge swaths of the populations
that live in those areas. "You're not just talking about the physical border, you're talking about an area that
encompasses many major cities that have large minority populations, and the idea that these drones can
be flown with little or no privacy protections really mean that, people, just by virtue of living in that
region are somehow accepting that they have a right to less privacy," she said. African-American
communities could well feel the disproportionate impacts of the integrated use of domestic drones and
other surveillance in the coming years, as technologies such as StingRay are already being used mostly in
the ongoing war on drugs to track those suspected of selling and buying drugs. The drug war has long
negatively impacted communities of color, based on racialized drug policies and racial discrimination by
law enforcement; two-thirds of all those convicted of drug crimes are people of color, despite similar
rates of drug use among whites and people of color. These already-existing racial disparities in intrusive
policing tactics and deployment of surveillance technologies are one of the primary reasons civil liberties
experts are saying the government often gets it backward when thinking about privacy issues: deploying
intrusive technologies first, and coming up with privacy policies governing their use afterward (when they may already be violating many
people's civil rights). "What we see with StingRays is the same phenomenon that we're seeing with [UAS], where federal agencies are using
them," Guliani said. "State and local agencies are using them. There's federal dollars that are going to buy them, and we're kind of having the
privacy debate after the fact with very little information."