Drone reconnaissance device by Aeryon Labs. Creative commons.
I’m not partaking in sensationalism here. I say this without an ounce of hyperbole: The fact that cops can send drones after you should scare you. They can access your iPhone, which catalogs your recently visited locations already, through "probable cause”—another 4th Amendment grey area. If you drive, they don’t even need your iPhone. Hundreds of cameras already in-place record when and where your license plate passes by. With this data, police can build a timeline of your whereabouts in SF going back up to a year.
Why should this matter to you? You’re no criminal—at least, not yet. The veil between civilian and criminal is perilously thin and only getting thinner. Any menial offense (shoplifting, fare hopping, sidewalk vending, etc.) can land you in the back of a cop car nowadays. When you’re under arrest, you may as well be at the mercy of Sid from Toy Story. Seriously, I’ve seen situations go south in seconds flat. One minute you’re pocketing DayQuil to save fifteen bucks, the next, you’re subhuman scum in cuffs on your way to the station.
We live in a heavily surveilled world.
“On February 1st, aided by drones and Flock cameras, a felony warrant suspect in possession of multiple firearms was taken into custody by plainclothes and RTIC officers.”
— SFPD
SFPD officers were in pursuit of a suspect driving a stolen vehicle reported by the US Park Service. Just not in a squad car, and neither on foot. Rather, cops operating out of some shadow HQ (called Real-Time Crime Centers, or RTCCs) sent drones to whatever coordinates they were told. The drone kept a visual on the suspect while police intercepted. In this case, a plainclothes officer arrived on the scene and positively identified the suspect from an unknown distance. Meanwhile at the RTCC, officers entered the suspect’s name into the system and found he had active warrants. Pre-existing warrants allowed police to make an arrest, and online, everybody cheered.
[RTCCs are] “control rooms that pull together all feeds from a vast warrantless digital dragnet, often including automated license plate readers, fixed cameras, officers’ body-worn cameras, drones, and other sources.”
As the SFPD and their narc simps celebrate the recent hi-tech arrest of a man and active fugitive, let us ask ourselves: is this “progress,” or just a means of securing our assent to mass surveillance?
I’m confident some readers, if they make it this far, would argue this technology is fulfilling its potential. Isn’t February’s drone-driven arrest living proof of how well it works?
Indeed—frighteningly well at that. The arrested individual and his crimes are an over-represented facet of a more sinister issue. This is about criminalizing privacy. As technology invades further into our everyday lives, I would like to know why we are being blatantly surveilled. Perhaps more urgently, why we aren’t discussing it in public, or what rapidly evaporating puddles of privacy we have left? Should you support the doctrine of “nothing to hide,” you inevitably waive your fundamental right of autonomy. ICE can literally crawl up your ass and get away with it.
French Marxist philosopher Michel Foucault adapted the panopticon, an imposing prison design by British architect Jeremy Bentham, into a metaphor for self- and mass-surveillance thinking. Image: Creative Commons.
This feels like the latest iteration of the panopticon, that insane, circular prison under one dome-turned-surveillance metaphor. Its name combines the ancient Greek pan, meaning “all,” and opticon, meaning “seeing.” From the central tower of Jeremy Bentham’s cruel rotunda, guards can observe every inmate (see above) at once. The tower doesn’t always need to be staffed for prisoners to feel watched. The gaze lives in the searchlight eternally flooding their cells, training prisoners to police themselves. It’s part of what Foucault warns about. Ubiquitous surveillance will drive us to police ourselves, effectively becoming cops to one another.
By allowing this new, roving panopticon to flourish, we shift the burden of proof onto an algorithm, fully turning our backs on the 5th Amendment and the presumption of innocence.
Why won’t SFPD do something noble for once, like when they guarded the entrance to Crazy Horse strip club on Market Street in 2003. Creative commons.
Love ubiquitous surveillance? Thank Daniel Lurie and his generous friend, Chris Larsen.
It was inevitable that ICE would co-opt this technology. Drones are a bounty hunter’s wet dream, and like bounty hunters, this means of manhunting is state-sanctioned. SFPD did not requisition a fleet of drones independently. Last year, the mayor, the SF Police Commission, and the Board of Supervisors received a $9.4 million “gift.” The donor: blockchain billionaire and party pocket liner, Chris Larsen. The donation: a new Real-Time Investigations Center.
Larsen sweetened the deal with $7.2 million “donated” by the San Francisco Police Community Foundation, which Larsen established. “Police foundations are semi-public fundraising arms of police departments that allow them to buy technology and gear that the city will not give them money for.” (EFF)
With the passage of Proposition E in March 2024, SFPD got permission from the city to employ drones for policework. That means San Francisco voted for this to happen (and if you voted for Prop E, go ahead and Prop-Eat a bag of dicks). Whether drones-as-law-enforcement were an overt or covert part of Prop E, they needed majority public approval to become a reality. Sure, the arrest in that video was um, warranted. But can the same be said for those we don’t see? And what happens when (yes, when) the robots get it wrong?
