New York police will use drones to monitor backyard parties this weekend, spurring privacy concerns

deconstruct@lemm.ee to Technology@lemmy.world – 622 points –
New York police will use drones to monitor backyard parties this weekend, spurring privacy concerns
apnews.com

The New York City police department plans to pilot the unmanned aircrafts in response to complaints about large gatherings, including private events, over Labor Day weekend, officials announced Thursday.

“If a caller states there’s a large crowd, a large party in a backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up and go check on the party,” Kaz Daughtry, the assistant NYPD Commissioner, said at a press conference.

The plan drew immediate backlash from privacy and civil liberties advocates, raising questions about whether such drone use violated existing laws for police surveillance.

“It’s a troubling announcement and it flies in the face of the POST Act,” said Daniel Schwarz, a privacy and technology strategist at the New York Civil Liberties Union, referring to a 2020 city law that requires the NYPD to disclose its surveillance tactics. “Deploying drones in this way is a sci-fi inspired scenario.”

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Sorry what's the problem with a party?

I think it is country what is wrong, where Declaration of Human Rights used as toilet paper.

See: article 20(relevant to topic) and article 3(irrelevant to topic)

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the way folks in the city throw them, sometimes, there are more problems than party

Belive me, I agree that there are a lot of shitheads in the world that make it a crappy place to live.

But I still think this kind of surveillance is overreach. The people doing the surveilling are not good people either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Schoolcraft

in a city whose physical geography is small in comparison to the enormity of humanity crammed into it, everyone's gotta behave or people die. simple as that. say what you like, but the communities must be policed, and if police can't see what you're doing if there's a problem or emergency, from the street, then air it is

Might as well preemptively lock everyone in a cell. That'd be the safest way to do it.

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