ARS TECHNICA: California law enforcement moves to buy drones, draws controversy

GPS · Oct 5, 2013

Since Congress passed legislation in February ordering the Federal Aviation Administration to fast-track the approval of unmanned aerial vehicles—more colloquially known as drones—for use by law enforcement agencies, police and sheriff departments across the country have been scrambling to purchase the smaller, unarmed cousins of the Predator and Reaper drones which carry out daily sorties over Afghanistan, Yemen, and other theaters of operation.

Alameda County in California has become one of the central battlegrounds over the introduction of drones to domestic police work. Earlier this year, Alameda County Sheriff Gregory Ahern raised the hackles of local civil libertarians (and there are quite a few of those in the county, which encompasses Berkeley and Oakland) by declaring his intention to purchase a drone to assist with “emergency response.” According to Ahern, Alameda Sheriff's personnel first tested a UAV in fall 2011 and gave a public demonstration of the machine's usefulness for emergency responses during the Urban Shield SWAT competition in late October.

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Source:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...orcement-move-to-buy-drones-draw-controversy/

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