Anything the BPD is doing to circumvent warrants is obviously bad and needs to stop. I'm not arguing they should be allowed to do any of that stuff.

What I am saying is there's nothing inherently wrong with arial surveillance, to the point where everyone who works for companies offering such services is "evil".

I think the problem a lot of people have is with the "mass" part, not the "surveillance" part, of mass-surveillance.

Really? That's news to me, I thought the issue primarily revolved around "surveillance".

I haven't heard anyone complaining about surveillance limited in scope to something with demonstrable cause.

It's warrant-less and widespread data gathering and databases (be they license plates, phone records, image/video or what have you) for speculative use that has people concerned, that I've heard.

Mass surveillance of the type where a warrant would be required individually is problematic.

Flying in public airspace taking video of public locations is just another GoPro ad though. Except, apparently, when it's the police taking the video (though in fairness, the Supreme Court has restricted what police can look at and what sensors police can use, even from public airspace).

But, I've got a good solution: Strap the cameras onto the police officers in the plane and call it "body cameras" and all of a sudden it's 100% kosher progressive again, no?

I don't see how you can argue you with a straight (or smug, in your case) face that body cameras are the same as unfiltered, mass, indiscriminate and wholesale video recording of an entire metro area. Body cameras are subject to the visual field of the individual police officer. Body cameras are not wide-lens, 360-degree panoramic, 1080p-4k for each 15-30-60 degree sub-field, that can identify hundreds of people in a given frame. If a police officer's body camera has you in focus, then I would say it is reasonable to assume that they are using their discretion in choosing to interact with you. The same cannot be said for aerial surveillance of the sort in the OP.

(Cue an argument stating that, "Well, the operator of the drone is using their discretion!" Can the operator of the drone put forth a reasonable suspicion for all that they are recording information on?)

> The same cannot be said for aerial surveillance of the sort in the OP

Which is nice, but aerial surveillance of that sort can be done by the local TV news station, or a local resident getting their general aviation training.

Arguing the police should not have extra surveillance powers certainly makes sense, but arguing the police cannot do something that anyone else in the public can do is where you start to lose the plot.

Care to share the Amazon link where I can get me one of these Dirtboxes? Or what about the high-resolution 360 degree cameras plus tracking/ID software that they are presumably using? Oh, you mean that they aren't AGPL licensed? Shucks.

Practicality and availability is a non-negligible component of determining what a member of the public can actually do. Using military grade equipment on the presumably innocent general public, that is ~5+ years ahead of the tech on the market, is a disturbing phenomenon whose significance seems lost on you. No warrants, no articuable suspicion, yet it's OK to use these glorified, classified, and shady war toys on the general public?

I am being a bit disingenuous here: I don't expect all equipment used by government officials to be publicly available. But, if you are going to make the argument that the public can do what the police are doing here, that's equally disingenuous. The public cannot practically buy this equipment from the manufacturers. The public wouldn't be able to get a flight plan approved as quickly (or at all) given the circumstances. Most importantly, these aren't escaped murderers or criminals which would necessitate exigent means (like these glorified war toys): these are general citizens wandering around a downtown area. Police aren't funded by taxpayer dollars so they can be curious about what's going on around town, and in this case, in peoples' homes. Private citizens can do that to the extent permissible by trespass and decency laws. I would hope to see cases taken up the legal ladder that question the PD's actions on these sorts of terms.

> Police aren't funded by taxpayer dollars so they can be curious about what's going on around town

Actually, yes they are. That's what "patrols" are for in the first place. We expect police to be familiar with the communities in which they serve.

You act as if police should police from an ivory tower somewhere, only coming out of their barracks when a 911 dispatcher authorizes them to. But that's actually more dystopian than the behavior you criticize here though (seriously, read about the "proles" in 1984 to see the similarities).

As I've indicated elsewhere in this thread, I am completely fine with both beat patrols and body cameras for reasons I've given elsewhere. (In short: the discretion that a beat cop uses in their daily patrol lends itself better to the legal ways of obtaining information, i.e., the path from casual interaction to suspicion to arrest is an unmuddled one if the police officer is acting appropriately. Body cameras are an extension of these daily interactions, and do not/would not capture more than the minimum amount of ancillary information.)

I agree with you: we expect and want police officers to be familiar with the communities in which they serve. However, a drone flying a mile in the sky over the entire city does nothing to further that familiarity. (To say nothing of their legality.) The familiarity should be person-to-person, socioeconomic group to socioeconomic group. Flying a drone in the sky only serves to stratify the position of the police and ostracize those whom they are obligated to serve. This is part of the larger issue of the militarization of local police departments. See the 1033 program.

I've read 1984 several times, and I fail to see the connection you're drawing between proles and this situation. The only (admittedly superficial) parallel I can draw between this situation is telescreens and the desire for authority to be omnipresent. Or, at a minimum drones help give the aura of of omnipresence, which is generally enough in 1984 to keep proles and outer party alike in line.

EDIT: Thank you for continuing to argue in good faith. I do not mean to be rude or condescending, but I can definitely see myself tending towards that. If so, I apologize. This is actually an interesting discussion despite being far from the original post (in both time and content).

> However, a drone flying a mile in the sky over the entire city does nothing to further that familiarity.

I think this is where we actually start to diverge. Aerial surveillance (whether by drone or by manned aircraft) is an excellent way of directing limited police at actual problems (hopefully before they become crises) during tense situations.

As only one example, being able to see that a given protester group was substantially "imported" from out-of-town might change the appropriate response dynamic significantly from a protest where the protesters are all pouring onto the streets from their own communities. Beat cops should be familiar with the members of the latter group at least, but how can they be familiar with people who come in from out-of-town?

As far as legality, things may change with future rulings but as of this point the question's already been put before the Supreme Court, and the answer is that aerial surveillance is legal -- you just can't use sensors above-and-beyond the types of senses a patrolling cop might have walking around the street.

So perhaps high-zoom lenses would be ruled against at a court level (things like IR have already been struck down), but as a general principle the law is already clear on this (in favor of the police).

> I fail to see the connection you're drawing between proles and this situation

The proles were kept more or less completely alone to rot in their own slums as long as they didn't do anything to draw the attention of the Party. They didn't even have to worry about telescreens, they were simply apart from the government completely for better and for worse, left to fend for themselves as best they could.

In 1984's world that would probably be a better fate than being in the outer Party, but my point is that in the real world one of the responsibilities of functioning governments is to forestall security crises by acting before crises appear. You can't do that without at least paying attention to what's going on outside the police HQ, and during riot situations there's no way to stay aware of what's going on in the community by just sending out a beat cop to go make a round.

If we were talking about a normal day in a normal city then I think I'd agree completely that police shouldn't just be having drones hover around taking livefeeds of downtown (though it would probably be legal barring future statute changes or court rulings). But Baltimore during the riots wasn't a normal city going through just another day, there were literally state military forces walking through the city to help keep order...

> Mass surveillance of the type where a warrant would be required individually is problematic.

Yes, yes it is. It isn't at all clear that the potential benefits of allowing it outweigh the potential costs.