Sheriff Gregory Ahern is seeking a grant to purchase unmanned aerial drones to provide video and infrared surveillance in police, fire and rescue settings.
"We're not getting this thing on Tuesday," Ahern told his advisory committee in a briefing Monday afternoon.
But the sheriff's office has already done preliminary tests of a four-pound drone that could carry a camera to provide live video or an infrared device to track the heat of bodies, fires or possibly the lights of indoor pot growing operations.
The device, which would cost $50,000 to $100,000, would be remotely controlled by an operator on the ground and hover over crime or fire scenes.
"This would be less expensive, more valuable and have more uses (than a helicopter)," said Ahern, adding that a helicopter cost $3 million buy and upwards of $300 an hour to operate.
If Ahern's plan moves forward, Alameda County would become a pioneer in the deployment of small -- and, so far, nonlethal -- versions of the drones that the military is using in Afghanistan.
The county's plans are the tip of an iceberg that Congress set in motion when it passed the Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization act earlier this year.
That act required the FAA to create rules to permit the deployment of civilian drones weighing 25 pounds or less - not just for law enforcement but for any business that wants eyes in the skies.
News sources that followed the development estimate that 30,000 civilian drones could be flying U.S. skies by 2020.
The American Civil Liberties Union has criticized the move toward civilian drones.
“This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected,” the ACLU has said.
The FAA is supposed to write rules governing the use of civilian drones for law enforcement by the end of 2012. At that point the county will apply for a "certificate of authorization" or a permit spelling out what sorts of uses would be permitted.
Sheriff's department officials said Alameda County could be the first jurisdiction in California to deploy drones and among the first nationwide.
Members of the sheriff's advisory committee asked Monday if the drones would be armed. They were told there no.
Police surveillance technology has been in the news.
A recent Wall Street Journal article focused on how San Leandro police use an automated license plate tracking technology to capture and keep information about law-abiding citizens at the same time they use it to fight crime.
San Leandro political activist and school board member Mike Katz-Lacabe told the Journal that the technology gave police too much power to track citizens who had broken no law.
San Leandro Police Chief Sandra Spagnoli has countered that the plate reader solves crimes such as the recent recovery of a truck that stolen at gunpoint during a carjacking.
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We are already at the edge of a police state where everything you do is monitored to make the job of the police easier. Sure, they can solve crimes more easily. If they could monitor every conversation everyone has in their home, monitor everywhere everyone goes, monitor every penny everyone spends and on what, monitor every email, listen in on every phone call, monitor every web site everyone visits, monitor every web posting everyone makes, monitor everything, then they could solve a LOT more crimes. Is that the world we want to live in?
Drone over some of our neighbor's illegal grow operations on these 1/4 acre lots, please. :-)
It's another thing to peer into your private property, and under traditional definitions of property, you own your land "and the blue skies above." I seem to recall some part of the Bill of Rights having to do with preventing unlawful searches and seizures. If only our "public servants" recalled that same Constitution.
This mature facial recognition technology means that one camera picture of you is matched to your Drivers License, and from then on the system knows who you are. Everywhere a camera see you your face is recognized. Where you go, how long you stayed, who you met with, who your friends are, if you do something every day, if you do something out of the ordinary, and every piece of information about you and who you meet is directly analyzed. Did you park near a drug house? Or go up to the wrong address? Expect a knock on your door from Big Brother. It's just not OK to say that monitoring our every move in public is a satisfactory compromise if only they would just "leave us alone on our property". It's a sad day when the answer is to retreat behind steel walls (to prevent IR imaging) in windowless boxes to keep the prying eyes of the airborne government peeping toms from watching our every move.
Here's my kind of backyard hobby - a film created by my daughter Simone when she was about 10 years old featuring our neighbor and Orchid enthusiast, Paul Chim "The Flower Man." Our hero! http://sanleandro.patch.com/events/orchid-garden-fundraiser-in-the-broadmoor#youtube_video-5636855
Check out more information on this subject from on article on drones in your backyard in the Week: http://theweek.com/article/index/228830/the-drone-over-your-backyard-a-guide
"A drone of one's own" Drone manufacturers and law enforcement aren't the only ones eager to see unmanned vehicles hit the skies. There's a growing and enthusiastic subculture of do-it-yourself drone-makers across the United States, who spend weekends tinkering on homemade drones. Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, is perhaps their biggest evangelist. Several years ago, he brought home a toy robotics kit and a remote-controlled airplane and combined the two, so that the plane could fly on autopilot. His kids went back to their video games, but Anderson was hooked. He created DIYDrones.com, a site for amateur drone enthusiasts that now has more than 25,000 members. They say the proliferation of cheap sensors, chips, and cameras makes it easier than ever to assemble your own flying robot. "If you have an iPhone or an Android, you basically have an autopilot in your pocket," says Anderson, who compares DIY drone-makers to early personal computer hobbyists. "Right now, drones are scary," Anderson says. "I'd like to make them unscary." With some safeguards in place, I am a happy camper with law enforcement's exploration/application of drones. Folks, when it comes to flying powerful high resolution cameras around remotely in the air, I say "try to stop them if you can."
http://www.hinkles.us/chuckbo/Humor/Detectives.html