Drone restrictions

It was inevitable. Drones are making their way from the battlefield to burbs. The International Association of Chiefs of Police already has proposed guidelines for using unmanned aerial vehicles equipped with high-tech spy cameras.

Those guidelines call for police to acquire a search warrant before a drone flight intrudes on someone's "reasonable expectations of privacy." The guidelines also include provisions for not keeping images captured by police drones unless they're required as evidence in an ongoing investigation or for law enforcement training.

That sounds good in principle. But the "reasonable expectation of privacy" that operators blithely promise to respect is a shifting target. With cellphones easily tracked, and police and drug agency aircraft already criss-crossing overhead, future courts can expect to hear arguments that said "expectation of privacy" rapidly approaches zero.

The Fourth Amendment, which supposedly guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, is already considerably eroded. Are warrants required to pat us down at the airport when we've done nothing suspicious? Low-flying drones would be an inexpensive way to seek out residents with a couple of marijuana plants growing in the backyard, or minor zoning violations.

Between federal, state and local statutes, just about everyone breaks the law every day. Every police drone flight is a potential fishing expedition - no bait necessary, stored on a hard drive somewhere.

Provisions for not keeping images recorded by drones verge on the laughable - any violation is likely to be dismissed as a procedural error, not even meriting a slap on the wrist.

Restrictions on the use of these robots, though well-intended, could similarly turn into an exercise in futility. In this brave new world of a surveillance state, paper safeguards could end up meaning little unless they carry harsh penalties for violators. We find none here.

Yes, military drones have meant jobs in Southern Nevada, and a civilian market could mean more. Drones for air-sea rescue searches, to track reindeer herds, to inspect pipelines for leaks? All fine.

But police agencies risk coming to resemble an occupying army, should they come to regard the populace at large as suspects to be surveilled. One would hope they'd want to avoid that. But what are the chances the availability of all this high-tech gear will simply prove too great a temptation to resist?

It's hard to put a genie back in its bottle. It might be wiser to sharply limit the domestic police use of these unmanned vehicles in the first place.