Officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, have put plans on hold to purchase a batch of new drones, about $3,500 each, that would've gone to first response services in the region.
Government officials there insist that they are looking for more public input on the decision because of the privacy concerns that are involved with adopting drones in the community fora myriad of emergency service needs.
The Board of Supervisors that was supposed to approve the new drone policy manual, that would've endorsed the purchase of several drones, voted instead to defer the adoption of the manual and drone purchase. The policy regarding the use of drones for fire, police, and emergency services, in the Fairfax county region, was only allegedly unveiled just recently (last week) and the board reportedly didn't have adequate time to review it before they were expected to approve the changes.
It's likely that they might revisit the issue within a few months, which hopefully will be enough time for more community members to voice their concerns about whether they are in favor of the program adoption or not.
Officials have suggested having further discussions with various organizations on the potential changes, such as home owners' associations, privacy groups, and potential parties.
“It’s already the law that if there is a legal and proper police stop or surveillance and then you see something, that you can usually use what you see to do further action. We turn a camera on as it flies over somebody’s backyard and it picks up something, that picture’s probably going to be enough for a judge to issue a warrant and then the police can go into somebody’s house, and so this is serious,” said Public Safety Committee Chairman, John Cook
After the new drone policies do get approved, the county will then allegedly be looking to apply for FAA authority so that they can operate their drone program.
Once approved, the new drones would act as an additional tool for emergency response teams that could help them to conduct search and rescue, survey crash sites, survey disaster sites or fires, engage in infrastructure assessment, and much more.
Pics:
Pixabay
@doitvoluntarily it's a shame that these projects are stopped. The implementation of it can be very beneficial for people. It is true that this is the subject of privacy, but as I said at the beginning if these devices are well managed there is no need to worry
Thank you very much for publishing this good material
Here in Venezuela the drones are not authorized and it is unfortunate because if there was good control there would be less corruption, of course this is also the case of the privacy of the people but everything could be controlled to a certain extent, but here nothing works everything is a real disaster
I see this as both bad and good. I worry about local governments getting big brother and start spying. Are the allowed to point their cameras in my windows? If the blinds are down can they fly up or down so they can see in? At the same time It would be great for looking for missing children who are lost in the woods.
I am not sure what they want with the drones but it looks like the drones are either too high spec or somebody is looting the government. I have seen university students make a pretty good projects with surveillance capabilities, hi-res camera, off-platform but live facial recognition, Night vision and IR capabilities in under five thousand dollars.
Do they really need all of the above for just police surveillance.
To me it seems as an invasion of privacy , I don’t know it could be better use for safety as well
amigo buen trabajo,espero contar con su apoyo ,espero su visita.saludos desde venezuela,feliz domingo
I am from Virginia and I can tell you they will be using those to look for marijuana plants. I say this because certain times of year they have helicopters that fly low in the regions of the area looking for it. So who’s to say they won’t do this as well with the drones