Bills permitting new drone uses for law enforcement draws privacy concerns

New rules for overseeing public safety from aloft could be forthcoming.

A bill to expand the conditions under which police can legally use drones was approved Wednesday, after opponents warned it may not pass constitutional muster.

HF1396, as amended to combine two other drone bills, HF561 and HF1275, and then further amended, would permit four new law enforcement uses for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:

• facilitating the search for a missing person;
• preserving or protecting evidence from the imminent risk of destruction;
• locating a correctional facility escapee; and
• assisting in the lawful pursuit of a suspect who is fleeing law enforcement or who the law enforcement agency reasonably believes might flee.

Police could use drones over a private area for officer training or public relations purposes, provided they get written consent of the occupant. Existing law only allows such uses over public areas.

The House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee approved the bill and sent it to the House Judiciary Finance and Civil Law Committee.

Rep. Jeff Witte (R-Lakeville), who sponsors HF1396, said the unique properties of drones make them especially useful for law enforcement. He cited their ability to be deployed to survey scenes both at ground level and at higher elevations and their ability launch quickly.

“Seconds and minutes matter,” he said.

Not incidentally, he said, they are also much cheaper to operate than the State Patrol’s helicopters.

BCA Superintendent Drew Evans spoke to the benefits of using drones to pursue fleeing suspects and allow for safer arrests. “Often times what we’re doing now is we have our agents and partners running through backyards, jumping fences, not able to see what’s just beyond them."

A BCA fact sheet outlines several other reasons the agency supports greater drone usage, such as allowing for more time to deescalate situations and find suspects without putting people at risk through high-speed vehicle pursuits.

Constitutional concerns

Teresa Nelson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union Minnesota, voiced both due process and privacy concerns.

“Drones are cheap, small and quiet, and because of that, they’re particularly well-suited to secret surveillance,” she said.

She explained that the bill would expand law enforcement drone use by making more search and surveillance situations exempt from obtaining search warrants.

And without temporal limitations, she said police would be allowed to use warrantless surveillance drones above private property for persons “who have been missing for months or years.”

Because drones have such powerful surveillance abilities, the 2022 law that first allowed their use by law enforcement agencies only permitted their use under very specific conditions, such as during or in the aftermath of an emergency situation that involves the risk of death or bodily harm to a person.

It also prohibits drones equipped with facial recognition or other biometric-matching technology unless expressly authorized by a warrant.

Making more exceptions to these restrictions will only chip away at civil liberties and they should only be very narrowly expanded, and only if there are extremely compelling reasons, Nelson said.

Rep. Kelly Moller (DFL-Shoreview) said many of the conditions specified for expanded drone use “need narrowing,” which she anticipates will be discussed when the bill gets to the judiciary committee that she co-chairs.