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Police in Minnesota are buying and flying more drones than ever before, according to an annual report recently released by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Minnesotan law enforcement flew their drones without a warrant 4,326 times in 2023, racking up a state-wide expense of over $1 million. This marks a large, 41 percent increase from 2022, when departments across the state used drones 3,076 times and spent $646,531.24 on using them. The data show that more was spent on drones last year than in the previous two years combined. Minneapolis Police Department, the state’s largest police department, implemented a new drone program at the end of 2022 and reported that its 63 warrantless flights in 2023 cost nearly $100,000.

California law enforcement should take note: the state’s Attorney General has issued a new bulletin advising them on how to comply with AB 481—a state law that regulates how law enforcement agencies can use, purchase, and disclose information about military equipment at their disposal. This important guidance comes...

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Artificial intelligence dominated the technology talk on panels, among sponsors, and across the trade floor at this year’s annual conference of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP).IACP, held Oct. 19 - 22 in Boston, brings together thousands of police employees with the businesses who want to sell them...

Since 2020, the state of Minnesota has been obligated to put out a yearly report documenting every time and reason law enforcement agencies in the state — local, county, or state-wide — used unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones, without a warrant. This is partly because Minnesota law requires a warrant for law enforcement to use drones except for specific situations listed in the statute. The State Court Administrator is also required to provide a public report of the number of warrants issued for the use of UAVs, and the data gathered by them. These regular reports give us a glimpse into how police are actually using these devices and how often. As more and more police departments around the country use drones or experiment with drones as first responders, it offers an example of how transparency around drone adoption can be done.

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The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into our criminal justice system is one of the most worrying developments across policing and the courts, and EFF has been tracking it for years. EFF recently contributed a chapter on AI’s use by law enforcement to the American Bar Association’s annual publication, ...

Are drones really just a 1 million dollar training tool? We’ve argued many times that tools deployed by police for very specific purposes often find punitive uses that far outreach their original, possibly more innocuous intention. In the case of Minnesota’s drone usage, that can be seen in the other exceptions to the warrant requirement, such as surveilling a public event where there’s a “heightened risk” for participant security. The warrant requirement is meant to prevent using aerial surveillance in violation of civil liberties, but these exceptions open the door to surveillance of First Amendment-protected gatherings and demonstrations.

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The Federal Trade Commission has entered a settlement with self-styled “weapon detection” company Evolv, to resolve the FTC’s claim that the company “knowingly” and repeatedly” engaged in “unlawful” acts of misleading claims about their technology. Essentially, Evolv’s technology, which is in schools, subways, and stadiums, does far less...

In its recent report, Civil Rights Implications of Face Recognition Technology (FRT), the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights identified serious problems with the federal government’s use of face recognition technology, and in doing so recognized EFF’s expertise on this issue. The Commission focused its investigation on the Department of...

According to EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance, 130 of Minnesota’s 408 law enforcement agencies have drones. Of the Minnesota agencies known to have drones prior to this month’s report, 29 of them did not provide the BCA with 2023 use and cost data.

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This post was written by Gowri Nayar, an EFF legal intern. Imagine driving to get your nails done with your family and all of a sudden, you are pulled over by police officers for allegedly driving a stolen car. You are dragged out of the car and detained at gun...

One of the more revealing aspects of drone deployment provided by  the report is the purpose for which police are using them. A vast majority of uses, almost three-quarters of every time police in Minnesota used drones, were either related to obtaining an aerial view of incidents involving injuries  or death, like car accidents, or for police training and public relations purposes.

The post was written by Laura Vidal (PhD), independent researcher in learning and digital rights.This is part two of a series. Part one on surveillance and control around the July election is here.Over the past decade, the government in Venezuela has meticulously constructed a framework of surveillance...

The King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, which handles all prosecutions in the Seattle area, has instructed police in no uncertain terms: do not use AI to write police reports...for now. This is a good development. We hope prosecutors across the country will exercise such caution as companies continue to...