Ann Arbor drone policy focuses on citizens’ privacy rights
By DRONELIFE Features Editor Jim Magill
The city of Ann Arbor Michigan recently adopted a policy regulating the city’s use of drones, which emphasizes individuals’ privacy rights and the strict control of data collected during UAV missions.
Ann Arbor’s City Council voted unanimously Aug. 7 to adopt the policy, which covers employees, third-party providers, consultants and others operating drones on behalf of the city.
Under the new policy drone operators “must take reasonable precautions to avoid inadvertently recording or transmitting images of areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” such as in a resident’s home or yard. These precautions could include deactivating the UAV’s cameras during flights to and from an operational site.
City Councilman Travis Radina said city leaders recognized the need to adopt a policy to govern its planned increase in the use of drones to accomplish law enforcement and other missions.
“Because of my concerns around making sure that we were protecting the civil liberties of our citizens while we were also using this important technology, I spearheaded a budget amendment last cycle requiring council approval of a policy prior to expending any city money this cycle on drone technology,” he said in an interview.
Radina said he believes that the policy strikes the right balance between taking advantage of the benefits of a new and rapidly developing technology and protecting the civil rights of the community’s residents against intrusive surveillance.
“This was really about looking forward, knowing that there are some cases in which law enforcement, our fire department and others might be using this technology, and wanting to make sure that we were proactively looking at ways to ensure that we’re also protecting the privacy rights of our citizens.”
City leaders worked with American Civil Liberties Union in crafting the new policy, Radina said.
The policy sets out some basic guidelines for operating an unmanned aerial system (UAS), such as ensuring that “UAS should not intentionally be operated in a way that causes personal injury, property damage, or in a way that distracts drivers or other aircraft.”
In addition, the policy sets standards for the handling of drone-collected data, saying such data “will not be collected, disseminated or retained for the sole purpose of monitoring activities protected by the U.S. Constitution or the Michigan Constitution.”
Under the new policy, drone operators are prohibited from conducting surveillance activities “in an effort to capture a crime in progress without cause to suspect that a crime is occurring.” In addition, any aerial observation conducted as part of a felony criminal investigation must be done under the existing laws, such as those regarding the requirements for a search warrant.
Also, all drone-collected data are subject to the state laws regarding the classification and retention of public records.
Any UAS operator found to be in willful violation of the policy will be prohibited from taking part in any future drone operations and “will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including discharge.”
Concerns over the collection and use of drone data have grown in recent days. In a recent move, the California Supreme Court allowed to stand a lower court ruling that requires police departments to allow public access to drone footage on a case-by-case basis under the California Public Records Act (CPRA, rather than having police agencies issue blanket denials.
In July, five Democratic senators sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding to know why the Department of Homeland Security released footage taken by DHS Predator drones of Immigration and Customs Enforcement protests in Los Angeles in June. The letter states that DHS posted the drone video to X, in violation of its own policies against such public disclosure.
The senators claim that the publication of the video could lead to participants in the protest having their privacy rights violated by being identified by law enforcement personnel and others using facial-recognition technology.
Radina said Ann Arbor new drone policy is designed to ensure that UAV data collected by the city does not imperil citizens’ rights to privacy.
“We’re wanting to make sure that as we’re looking for a missing person, we’re not also capturing and then saving footage of folks who would be unsuspecting of that,” he said.
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Jim Magill is a Houston-based writer with almost a quarter-century of experience covering technical and economic developments in the oil and gas industry. After retiring in December 2019 as a senior editor with S&P Global Platts, Jim began writing about emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, robots and drones, and the ways in which they’re contributing to our society. In addition to DroneLife, Jim is a contributor to Forbes.com and his work has appeared in the Houston Chronicle, U.S. News & World Report, and Unmanned Systems, a publication of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
