The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday.
“If a caller states there’s a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party,” Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, said at a press conference.
The plan drew immediate backlash from privacy and civil liberties advocates, raising questions about whether such drone use violated existing laws for police surveillance.
“It’s a troubling announcement and it flies in the face of the POST Act,” said Daniel Schwarz, a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to a 2020 city law that requires the NYPD to disclose its surveillance tactics. “Deploying drones in this way is a sci-fi inspired scenario.”
It becomes illegal when there are too many people there, or there is violence, underage drinking, drug usage, and if it’s too loud, the attendees are parking in the street blocking traffic, fire risks all sorts of shit
They are not responding to complains, they are searching themselves.
EDIT: my eyes. They are responding. Still very wierd. Crowd itself is not a crime, article 20 of DoHR says so.
It will be construed as, they can start indefinite surveillance on an area after a complaint is filed at any time.
Only in the context of like, fire safety. You can’t have more people in a building than it is designed to safely hold.
Of course, cops use this safety regulation as an excuse to control people and be dicks…
How would a drone know? Other than capacity and street violations, there’s nothing that a drone should realistically be able to identify.
no, as grass is legal in nyc now, but if you’re blowing lines and smoking crack, trippin balls, or tweakin, they probably should, you know, for the kids in the neighborhood you nincompoop
