From gun-toting, on-the-lam tech giants to flying drones and internet uprisings, these are the privacy and security stories that dominated Threat Level in 2012.
It’s not enough that the U.S. government uses drones to pick off targets on a death wishlist — unmanned spybots are being scooped up by municipalities across the country as if they were one-off wedding dresses at a Filene’s fire sale.
The Seattle Police Department is already using them, as are the Miami-Dade Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Alameda County in California is looking to purchase them, too.
This despite the fact that privacy and security issues around the use of drones have yet to be worked out.
Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office warned that the push to bring drone surveillance into U.S. airspace had failed to take into account either of these concerns.
“[T]here is very little in American privacy law that prohibits drone surveillance within our borders,” points out Ryan Calo, the director for Privacy and Robotics at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society.
The GAO report called for the government to set guidelines on drone spying in order to “preclude abuses of the technology.” But the report seemed more concerned about the negative public perception that could result from such abuses — and how that could affect the public’s acceptance of drones — than the actual consequences of the abuse on members of the public.
FAA documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation indicate that dozens of local law enforcement agencies already fly drones in U.S. airspace. The Seattle Police Department’s drone comes with four separate cameras that offer thermal infrared video, low-light “dusk-dawn” video, and a 1080p HD video camera attachment.
Commercial and government drone expenditures are expected to top $89 billion over the next 10 years.
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From Internet Uprisings to John McAfee: The Year in Privacy and Security
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From Internet Uprisings to John McAfee: The Year in Privacy and Security
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From Internet Uprisings to John McAfee: The Year in Privacy and Security
