Next week,  the Maine Legislature's Judiciary Committee will conduct a public hearing on LD 236 (SP 72), "An Act To Protect the Privacy of Citizens from Domestic Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Use."   LD 236 would place state limits on domestic drone use, including requiring a warrant or court order for law enforcement purposes.

We need stronger privacy protections to ensure that new technologies will be used responsibly and consistently with our democratic values.  Current privacy laws have not kept with the rapid advances of surveillance technology that is simply extraordinary. 

Here's an example.  Jay Stanley on the ACLU Blog Free Future, writes about the "Nightmare Scenario" Drone called ARGUS (watch the video below):

To identify someone there’s no need for face or license-plate recognition (which may be impractical from above anyhow), cell phone tracking, gait recognition, or what have you. Even knowing where a little green square starts and finishes its day can reveal a lot, because it turns out that even relatively rough location information about a person will often identify them uniquely.

 

mytubethumb play
%3Ciframe%20allowfullscreen%3D%22%22%20frameborder%3D%220%22%20height%3D%22315%22%20src%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2F13BahrdkMU8%3Fautoplay%3D1%26version%3D3%26playsinline%3D1%22%20width%3D%22560%22%20allow%3D%22autoplay%22%3E%3C%2Fiframe%3E
Privacy statement. This embed will serve content from youtube.com.