Ever-advancing information technology has digitised everything from paperwork, to how many of us go shopping or even how we socialise. It now steps deeper into the physical world - through drones.
But as the skies fill with code-driven machines flying over our cities and streets, the question emerges: can the public’s right to privacy survive in an era of airborne, automated scrutiny?
That’s an issue Seattle-based drone maker BRINC is confronting, as it designs and produces specialised drones for use by first responders such as police and fire departments.
The company makes drones that can conduct indoor tactical missions (including breaking windows to enter premises), outdoor response vehicles for monitoring a fire from above, and a drone-as-a-first-responder model to attend police call-outs.
BRINC VP for strategy David Benowitz said whereas computers changed how the service-economy functions, “drones really change how we do work out there,” gesturing outside.
Whether its mining, utilities, public safety or disaster-recovery, “all these things that are inherently hard to digitise are now much easier” to convert to code.
“Because drones can be used to fly ahead, take photos, videos, collect that information and get people to act on them,” Benowitz said. “So drones digitise the physical space.”
The company makes a number of first-responder drones, which can be used to monitor and investigate live crime scenes and fires. BRINC also makes self-contained docks, from which drones can be launched and guided remotely by law enforcement.
While aerial drones are the majority of BRINC’s production, the company also makes a nearly indestructible two-way communication ball used by police for de-escalation and rescue situations. It allows first responders to throw the ball into the window or behind the door of a high-risk location, and communicate with inhabitants without putting officers at risk.
But the prospect of police departments integrating drones into their workflow raises questions about privacy and police accountability. Add in the capability of the drone tech to use facial-recognition software and the concerns escalate.
Indeed, in the US there is a growing backlash against the use of automatic licence-plate readers (ALPR) by police forces, a tool which has long been used in Australia.
The prospect of drones flying overhead, hoovering up the personal information of bystanders, which can be fed into databases and mined, is a parallel concern for many.
Benowitz acknowledges the risk of digital surveillance, from a company whose main customers are law enforcement. However, BRINC software is engineered to at least encourage accountability.
One of the major differences between first responder drones and ALPR is that ALPR is a “persistent surveillance system, in where they’re always on, always listening, always checking for things.”
The drone as first responder, meanwhile, is “responding to a call for service and so it’s inherently a response tool,” Benowitz said.
“So you’re only going to see a drone out there if there’s a reason for it to be launched.”
BRINC also has an automated transparency dashboard in which flights get published to a public dashboard that’s specific to the agency, Benowitz said. So anyone can look up that flight, see what the case number is. The log shows who flew what drone and when, and who had access to the footage, he said.
“So if you’re a member of the public who sees a drone flying in an area that a BRINC DFR product is being deployed in, you could Google that, find the agency, find the flight,” he said.
Then you can put in a freedom of information request for that flight as well. “So there’s a lot of accountability built in,” Benowitz said.
BRINC drones’ cameras are horizon-facing when flying to the scene, so they don’t scan people’s back gardens and uncovered patios en route, he said.
Australia’s law enforcement agencies have fully embraced the use of drones.
WA police use a variety of drones made by China’s DJI in their operations. Surf Life Saving NSW use drones for shark patrol and other operations, and use “drone in a box” (self-contained drone systems that can be deployed remotely) for their operations, while CFA Victoria use drones for bushfire monitoring and operations.
Police in NSW have used drones in the regional town of Moree – controlled 500 km away in Bankstown, Sydney – to track suspects including a man wanted for an alleged machete attack, and another man arrested on outstanding warrants for alleged burglary.
The so-called PolAir-Remote trial has raised fears of surveillance in the regional community. The Department of Transport oversees drone privacy issues for commercial and recreational users.
The Office of The Australian Information Commission enforces the Privacy Act, which covers Australian Government agencies’ rules in using drones. However, state police drone operations are typically governed by state and territory privacy and surveillance laws
And there are other questions relating to the digital security of drones: where they come from. The drone industry is dominated by one major company, China-based DJI.
China controls 80 to 90 per cent of the global drone market, according to the Centre for European Policy Analysis, through control of critical minerals and raw materials supplies and the production of drone components.
Swinburne University senior lecturer in aviation Adetokunbo Arogbonlo said the major drone brand used by law enforcement was DJI, “by a long mile”.
Australia has some sovereign-built drones, used more often by defence than law enforcement. But the barriers to the use of Australian-built drones are cost, and, the complexity compared to the “ease-of-use DJI provides”.
Arogbonlo said: “There are some privacy implications, but they can be managed with careful planning and judicious operators. DJI drones are known to upload a lot of data back home.”
While concerns about data security “may not be ideal” Arogbonlo said, “the economics and value forces the issue”.
DJI has long rejected US concerns about data security and national security risks, saying: “Concerns about DJI’s data security have not been grounded in evidence and instead reflect protectionism.”
Benowitz says that from a supply-chain perspective, DJI has built up an outstanding ecosystem of components provided by different vendors, which has driven down the price of the parts to levels Western companies can’t directly compete with.
The US has blocked the import and sale of new DJI drones, reportedly for national security reasons. The restriction will also encourage the growth of a domestic US drone industry to take hold. BRINC, among others, are racing to fill demand. The VC-backed company, formed in 2017 by Las Vegas-native Blake Resnick, now has 230 employees across four locations in the Seattle area.
As Benowtiz explains, given the ever-changing nature of drone technology, simply building competitive drones is insufficient. “We have to also build the supply chain because it doesn’t exist here,” he said in his Seattle office.
The world is currently seeing a splitting of the supply chain between China and the West, he said.
“So we’re seeing a bunch of new capabilities being built up, here in America, but also everywhere else in the Western world to really support unique novel applications for drones.”
In Melbourne, where Freespace Operations builds specialised drones for industrial use, chief executive Ken King notes that having a sovereign supply chain “is an important step naturally to security of supply”.
But it must be balanced with consistent orders from government customers, he said, including enough upfront deposit payments to justify the drone manufacturers and their local suppliers investing in the business.
“The customer need to have skin in the game and make a fair long-term commitment to their local drone manufacturing industry,” King said.
Chris Zappone travelled to Seattle as a guest of Alaska Airlines.
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