Sheriff's Planned Drone Purchase Faces Opposition

Drones intended for surveillance use

Yesterday the Alameda County Sheriff's Office presented a proposal for the purchase of a drone in a public hearing with the Board of Supervisors Public Protection Committee in Oakland, California. EFF joined the ACLU of Northern California and several other public interest groups in testifying against a drone purchase until the Sheriff's Office adopts a substantive, binding privacy policy—with no loopholes—that protects citizens from undue surveillance.

The hearing comes after a number of inauspicious false starts for an Alameda County drone program. In October, documents obtained in the EFF/Muckrock 2012 Drone Census revealed a significant discrepancy between the Office's proposal to the County Supervisors and its request to another agency for funding. In particular, while the Sheriff's Office had told the County that it intended to use the drone only for emergency purposes, its funding request named surveillance on "suspicious persons," "large crowd control disturbances," and counter-terrorism applications.