Surveillance drones were already used by the police in South Africa during the national elections back in 1994, in that case on loan from the Air Force. After further successful deployments in the years since, the SA Police Service is considering issuing an RFP for a small UAV fleet.
Conceptually, surveillance-only UAVs are not dissimilar from police helicopters, which have been used for decades without massive privacy issues. In fact, when evaluating the option between acquiring a larger UAV platform or additional manned helicopters with high-end electro-optical camera gear for the Football World Cup, the local police went went for the helicopters as they performed better in that specific role and there was no cost saving.
I don't see much chance of police departments weaponising UAVs any time soon either. Not only does it push up the cost significantly, but there are accuracy and liability issues that will take some time to sort out. At most I could see helicopter-based UAVs being used to drop tear-gas near crowds and even that's iffy.
Excellent point, although we're still quite far from the point where that sort of technology exists and is cheap enough for police to be able to buy.
You'd also have to presume that if technology has progressed that far then things like extremely accurate long-range cameras and the ability to record sound from some distance away by measuring the vibrations on glass will also be available to them.
To some extent this is already here; the local police here have recently begun using a mobile van with a mast-mounted optical ball and have made arrests using footage captured as far as 3km away. Similar technology has been used to watch over the Occupy Wall Street protestors in NYC and elsewhere.
Point is the ability of the state to conduct surveillance on its citizens, both close-up and from a distance, is only going to increase. Fretting about individual pieces of technology misses the big picture, which is that only changes to the law and proper oversight will prevent it from happening.
They're closer in concept (and presumably in deployment scale) to mobile CCTV cameras than they are to police helicopters, and there certainly have been privacy issues with those.
I'm not so sure. With the latest electro-optical turrets a helicopter can be pretty far away and still get usable footage. During the Football World Cup I observed some police helicopters orbiting just about out of earshot during their operations.
I've also seen a demonstration of an experimental locally-produced surveillance camera (in this case intended for maritime observation) that was able to display the name on a small boat 20-30km out to sea. Granted, the camera was mounted on the top of a mountain to get the required height, but nonetheless the technology was phenomenal.
The difference between all the different varieties of surveillance technologies is starting to blur quite a bit.
There's a huge difference in price, though. The numbers will probably work out that you can throw up a hundred or so drones for the price of a single helicopter. With a single expensive platform, expensive optics and highly trained operators make sense.
Conceptually, surveillance-only UAVs are not dissimilar from police helicopters, which have been used for decades without massive privacy issues. In fact, when evaluating the option between acquiring a larger UAV platform or additional manned helicopters with high-end electro-optical camera gear for the Football World Cup, the local police went went for the helicopters as they performed better in that specific role and there was no cost saving.
I don't see much chance of police departments weaponising UAVs any time soon either. Not only does it push up the cost significantly, but there are accuracy and liability issues that will take some time to sort out. At most I could see helicopter-based UAVs being used to drop tear-gas near crowds and even that's iffy.