6Īssociate Professor of Law - Pepperdine University School of Law These advocates are admittedly not focused on more sensible legislation that addresses harms irrespective of the technology used. This absurd anachronism is intentional, as privacy advocates have explicitly chosen to capitalize on the public interest and attention associated with the demonization of drone technology as a way to achieve legislative victories. 5 These legislative efforts have been aimed at restricting the government’s use of drone technology, while largely allowing the government to conduct identical surveillance when not using drone technology. 4 As of the writing of this paper, the California legislature passed a drone-related bill that was vetoed by the governor, but the bill’s sponsors have vowed to revisit the issue in the next legislative session. ![]() 3 In 2014, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Utah, and Iowa also passed laws seeking to address the use of drones by law enforcement. The first drone-related legislation appeared in 2013 in Florida, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and Texas. In many cases, this technology centric approach creates perverse results, allowing the use of extremely sophisticated pervasive surveillance technologies from manned aircraft, while disallowing benign uses of drones for mundane tasks like accident and crime scene documentation, or monitoring of industrial pollution and other environmental harms. ![]() In fact, in every state where legislation was passed, the new laws are focused on the technology (drones) not the harm (pervasive surveillance). 2 The campaigns mounted by privacy advocates oftentimes make a compelling case about the threat of pervasive surveillance, but the legislation is rarely tailored in such a way to prevent the harm that advocates fear. Privacy advocates have mounted a lobbying campaign that has succeeded in convincing thirteen states to enact laws regulating the use of drones by law enforcement, with eleven of those thirteen states requiring a warrant before the government may use a drone. ![]() 1 Those concerns have led some to call for legislation mandating that nearly all uses of drones be prohibited unless the government has first obtained a warrant. The looming prospect of expanded use of unmanned aerial vehicles, colloquially known as drones, has raised understandable concerns for lawmakers.
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