The Military-Style Surveillance Technology Being Tested in American Cities

In the eyes of the law, there’s no difference between a photo taken by a smartphone through an airplane window and one taken by an ultrapowerful camera in a helicopter hovering over your backyard.

By Arthur Holland Michel @ TheAtlantic.com, Aug. 3

[....]  the airspace over America falls into the same legal category as other public spaces, such as sidewalks, roads, parks, and beaches—and it isn’t illegal to take photographs of private property, or private citizens, from public space. As a result, we have no expectation of privacy from above [....]

Capitalizing on this gap, as some might call it, in standing privacy law, wide-area-camera manufacturers and users often turn the all-seeing eye on peacetime populations in the United States and elsewhere without their knowledge. PV Labs, a Canadian firm, has flown a “persistent surveillance” camera over various U.S. cities, including Charlotte and Wilmington, North Carolina. The Australian Department of Defence has tested a wide-area camera in exercises over Adelaide and Montreal. The Air Force has spent hours recording Ohio State University’s campus in Columbus.

Such flights continue to this day. In the summer of 2017, the Air Force 427th Special Operations Squadron’s top-secret WAMI airplane spent more than 50 hours flying orbits over Seattle, in some cases loitering over a single neighborhood (Bellevue and Renton were favorites) for four or five hours at a time.

When it comes to law enforcement, police are likewise free to use aerial surveillance without a warrant or special permission. Under current privacy law, these operations are just as legal as policing practices whereby an officer spots unlawful activity while walking or driving through a neighborhood. Say an officer sees marijuana plants through the open window of a house. Because the officer is in a public space—a road or sidewalk—he or she doesn’t need permission to see the illicit plants, or a warrant to photograph the scene [....]