Stanford CIS

The Next Frontier of Police Surveillance Is Drones

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"“Axon also makes tasers, so you could imagine drones being equipped with tasers or with tear gas, rubber bullets, and other weaponry,” said Harlan Yu, the executive director of Upturn, a policy nonprofit that works on social justice and technology issues."

"By combining drone, body-camera, police-car-camera, and closed-circuit-TV footage, Axon is clearly hoping to create a central hub for police to cross-reference and access surveillance data—a treasure chest of information that, according to Elizabeth Joh, a law professor at the University of California–Davis who studies civil liberties and police surveillance technology, police departments could find difficult to stop using once they start. “Not only is there no real competition from other vendors,” said Joh, “but once a police department has bought into a certain contract with a company, it’s very hard to drop it and move on. There’s a lot of investment in training the agency and the officers how to use it.”"