The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) wants to get a robot quadruped, popularly known as a robot dog. The city’s Board of Supervisors has a regulatory duty to probe into this intended purchase, including potentially blocking it altogether.

The SFPD recently proposed the acquisition of a new robot dog in a report about the department’s existing military arsenal and its proposed future expansion. The particular model that SFPD claims they are exploring, Boston Dynamics’s Spot, is capable of intrusion and surveillance in a manner similar to drones and other unmanned vehicles and is able to hold “payloads” like cameras.

The SFPD’s disclosure came about as a result of a California law, A.B. 481, which requires police departments to make publicly available information about “military equipment,” including weapons and surveillance tools such as drones, firearms, tanks, and robots. Some of this equipment may come through the federal government’s military surplus program.

A.B. 481 also requires a law enforcement agency to seek approval from its local governing body when acquiring, using, or seeking funds for military equipment and submit a military equipment policy. That policy must be made publicly available and must be approved by the governing body of the jurisdiction on a yearly basis. As part of that approval process, the governing body must determine that the policy meets the following criteria:

• The military equipment is necessary because there is no reasonable alternative that can achieve the same objective of officer and civilian safety
• The proposed military equipment use policy will safeguard the public’s welfare, safety, civil rights, and civil liberties
• If purchasing the equipment, the equipment is reasonably cost effective compared to available alternatives that can achieve the same objective of officer and civilian safety
• Prior military equipment use complied with the military equipment use policy that was in effect at the time, or if prior uses did not comply with the accompanying military equipment use policy, corrective action has been taken to remedy nonconforming uses and ensure future compliance

Based on the oversight requirements imposed by A.B. 481, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors must ask the SFPD some important questions before deciding if the police department actually needs a robot dog: How will the SFPD use this surveillance equipment? Given that the robot dog does not have the utility of one of the department’s bomb disposal robots, why would this robot be useful? What can this robot do that other devices it already has at its disposal cannot do? Does the potential limited use of this device justify its expenditure? How does the SFPD intend to safeguard civil rights and civil liberties in deploying this robot into communities that may already be overpoliced?

If the SFPD cannot make a compelling case for the purchase of a robot quadruped, the Board of Supervisors has a responsibility to block the sale.

A.B. 481 serves as an important tool for democratic control of police’s acquisition of surveillance technology despite recent local efforts to undermine such oversight. In 2019, San Francisco passed a Community Control of Police Surveillance (CCOPS) ordinance, which required city departments like the SFPD to seek Board approval before acquiring or using new surveillance technologies, in a transparent process that offered the opportunity for public comment. This past March, voters scaled back this law by enacting Proposition E, which allows the SFPD a one-year “experimentation” period to test out new surveillance technologies without a use policy or Board approval. However, the state statute still governs military equipment, such as the proposed robot dog, which continues to need Board approval before purchasing and still requires a publicly available policy that takes into consideration the uses of the equipment and the civil liberties impacts on the public.

In 2022, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors banned police deployment of deadly force via remote control robot, so at least we know this robot dog will not be used in that way. It should also be noted that Boston Dynamics has vowed not to arm their robots. But just because this robot dog doesn’t have a bomb strapped to it, doesn’t mean it will prove innocuous to the public, useful to police, or at all helpful to the city. The Board of Supervisors has an opportunity and a responsibility to ensure that any procurement of robots comes with a strong justification from the SFPD, clear policy around how it can be used, and consideration of the impacts on civil rights and civil liberties. Just because narratives about rising crime have gained a foothold does not mean that elected officials get to abdicate any sense of reason or practicality in what technology they allow police departments to buy and use. When it comes to military equipment, the state of California has given cities an oversight tool—and San Francisco should use it. 

Law enforcement wants more drones, and we’ll probably see many more of them overhead as police departments seek to implement a popular project justifying the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs): the “drone as first responder” (DFR).

Police DFR programs involve a fleet of drones, which can range in number from four or five to hundreds. In response to 911 calls and other law enforcement calls for service, a camera-equipped drone is launched from a regular base (like the police station roof) to get to the incident first, giving responding officers a view of the scene before they arrive. In theory and in marketing materials, the advance view from the drone will help officers understand the situation more thoroughly before they get there, better preparing them for the scene and assisting them in things such as locating wanted or missing individuals more quickly. Police call this “situational awareness.”

In practice, law enforcement's desire to get “a view of the scene” becomes a justification for over-surveilling neighborhoods that produce more 911 calls and for collecting information on anyone who happens to be in the drone’s path. For example, a drone responding to a vandalism case may capture video footage of everyone it passes along the way. Also, drones are subject to the same mission-creep issues that already plague other police tools designed to record the public; what is pitched as a solution to violent crime can quickly become a tool for policing homelessness or low-level infractions that otherwise wouldn't merit police resources.

With their birds-eye view, drones can observe individuals in previously private and constitutionally protected spaces, like their backyards, roofs, and even through home windows. And they can capture crowds of people, like protestors and other peaceful gatherers exercising their First Amendment rights. Drones can be equipped with cameras, thermal imaging, microphones, license plate readers, face recognition, mapping technology, cell-site simulators, weapons, and other payloads. Proliferation of these devices enables state surveillance even for routine operations and in response to innocuous calls —situations unrelated to the original concerns of terrorism or violent crime originally used to justify their adoption.

Drones are also increasingly tied into other forms of surveillance. More departments — including those in Las Vegas, Louisville, and New York City — are toying with the idea of dispatching drones in response to ShotSpotter gunshot detection alerts, which are known to send many false positive alerts. This could lead to drone surveillance of communities that happen to have a higher concentration of ShotSpotter microphones or other acoustic gunshot detection technology. Data revealed recently shows that a disproportionate number of these gunshot detection sensors  are located in Black communities in the United States. Also, artificial intelligence is also being added to drone data collection; connecting what's gathered from the sky to what has been gathered on the street and through other methods is a trending part of the police panopticon plan.

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A CVPD official explains the DFR program to EFF staff in 2022. Credit: Jason Kelley (EFF)

DFR programs have been growing in popularity since first launched by the Chula Vista Police Department in 2018. Now there are a few dozen departments with known DFR programs among the approximately 1,500 police departments known to have any drone program at all, according to EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance, the most comprehensive dataset of this kind of information. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates use of drones and is currently mandated to prepare new regulations for how they can be operated beyond the operator’s line of sight (BVLOS), the kind of long-distance flight that currently requires a special waiver. All the while, police departments and the companies that sell drones are eager to move forward with more DFR initiatives.

Transparency around the acquisition and use of drones will be important to the effort to protect civilians from government and police overreach and abuse as agencies commission more of these flying machines. A recent Wired investigation raised concerns about Chula Vista’s program, finding that roughly one in 10 drone flights lacked a stated purpose, and for nearly 500 of its recent flights, the reason for deployment was an “unknown problem.” That same investigation also found that each average drone flight exposes nearly 5,000 city residents to enhanced surveillance, primarily in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods.

“For residents we spoke to,” Wired wrote, “the discrepancy raises serious concerns about the accuracy and reliability of the department's transparency efforts—and experts say the use of the drones is a classic case of self-perpetuating mission creep, with their existence both justifying and necessitating their use.”

Chula Vista's "Drone-Related Activity Dashboard" indicates that more than 20 percent of drone flights are welfare checks or mental health crises, while only roughly 6% are responding to assault calls. Chula Vista Police claim that the DFR program lets them avoid potentially dangerous or deadly interactions with members of the public, with drone responses resulting in their department avoiding sending a patrol unit in response to 4,303 calls. However, this theory and the supporting data needs to be meaningfully evaluated by independent researchers.

This type of analysis is not possible without transparency around the program in Chula Vista, which, to its credit, publishes regular details like the location and reason for each of its deployments. Still, that department has also tried to prevent the public from learning about its program, rejecting California Public Records Act (CPRA) requests for drone footage. This led to a lawsuit in which EFF submitted an amicus brief, and ultimately the California Court of Appeal correctly found that drone footage is not exempt from CPRA requests.

While some might take for granted that the government is not allowed to conduct surveillance — intentional, incidental, or otherwise — on you in spaces like your fenced-in backyard, this is not always the case. It took a lawsuit and a recent Alaska Supreme Court decision to ensure that police in that state must obtain a warrant for drone surveillance in otherwise private areas. While some states do require a warrant to use a drone to violate the privacy of a person’s airspace, Alaska, California, Hawaii, and Vermont are currently the only states where courts have held that warrantless aerial surveillance violates residents’ constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure absent specific exceptions.

Clear policies around the use of drones are a valuable part of holding police departments accountable for their drone use. These policies must include rules around why a drone is deployed and guardrails on the kind of footage that is collected, the length of time it is retained, and with whom it can be shared.

A few state legislatures have taken some steps toward providing some public accountability over growing drone use.

• In Minnesota, law enforcement agencies are required to annually report their drone programs' costs and the number of times they deployed drones with, including how many times they were deployed without a warrant.
• In Illinois, the Drones as First Responders Act went into effect June 2023, requiring agencies to report whether they own drones; how many are owned; the number of times the drones were deployed, as well as the date, location, and reason for the deployment; and whether video was captured and then retained from each deployment. Illinois agencies also must share a copy of their latest use policies, drone footage is generally supposed to be deleted after 24 hours, and the use of face recognition technology is prohibited except in certain circumstances.
• In California, AB 481 — which took effect in May 2022 with the aim of providing public oversight over military-grade police equipment — requires police departments to publicly share a regular inventory of the drones that they use. Under this law, police acquisition of drones and the policies governing their use require approval from local elected officials following an opportunity for public comment, giving communities an important chance to provide feedback.
  

DFR programs are just one way police are acquiring drones, but law enforcement and UAV manufacturers are interested in adding drones in other ways, including as part of regular patrols and in response to high-speed vehicle pursuits. These uses also create the risk of law enforcement bypassing important safeguards.  Reasonable protections for public privacy, like robust use policies, are not a barrier to public safety but a crucial part of ensuring just and constitutional policing.

Companies are eager to tap this growing market. Police technology company Axon —known for its Tasers and body-worn cameras — recently acquired drone company Dedrone, specifically citing that company’s efforts to push DFR programs as one reason for the acquisition. Axon since has established a partnership with Skydio in order to expand their DFR sales.

It’s clear that as the skies open up for more drone usage, law enforcement will push to procure more of these flying surveillance tools. But police and lawmakers must exercise far more skepticism over what may ultimately prove to be a flashy trend that wastes resources, infringes on people's rights, and results in unforeseen shifts in policing strategy. The public must be kept aware of how cops are coming for their privacy from above.

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.

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.

You can read our blog about the 2021 Minnesota report here.

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.

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.

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. 

Dozens of policing agencies are currently using cell-site simulators (CSS) by Jacobs Technology and its Engineering Integration Group (EIG), according to newly-available documents on how that company provides CSS capabilities to local law enforcement. 

A proposal document from Jacobs Technology, provided to the Massachusetts State Police (MSP) and first spotted by the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism (BINJ), outlines elements of the company’s CSS services, which include discreet integration of the CSS system into a Chevrolet Silverado and lifetime technical support. The proposal document is part of a winning bid Jacobs submitted to MSP earlier this year for a nearly $1-million contract to provide CSS services, representing the latest customer for one of the largest providers of CSS equipment.

An image of the Jacobs CSS system as integrated into a Chevrolet Silverado for the Virginia State Police. Source: 2024 Jacobs Proposal Response

The proposal document from Jacobs provides some of the most comprehensive information about modern CSS that the public has had access to in years. It confirms that law enforcement has access to CSS capable of operating on 5G as well as older cellular standards. It also gives us our first look at modern CSS hardware. The Jacobs system runs on at least nine software-defined radios that simulate cellular network protocols on multiple frequencies and can also gather wifi intelligence. As these documents describe, these CSS are meant to be concealed within a common vehicle. Antennas are hidden under a false roof so nothing can be seen outside the vehicles, which is a shift from the more visible antennas and cargo van-sized deployments we’ve seen before.  The system also comes with a TRACHEA2+ and JUGULAR2+ for direction finding and mobile direction finding. 

The Jacobs 5G CSS base station system. Source: 2024 Jacobs Proposal Response

CSS, also known as IMSI catchers, are among law enforcement’s most closely-guarded secret surveillance tools. They act like real cell phone towers, “tricking” mobile devices into connecting to them, designed to intercept the information that phones send and receive, like the location of the user and metadata for phone calls, text messages, and other app traffic. CSS are highly invasive and used discreetly. In the past, law enforcement used a technique called “parallel construction”—collecting evidence in a different way to reach an existing conclusion in order to avoid disclosing how law enforcement originally collected it—to circumvent public disclosure of location findings made through CSS. In Massachusetts, agencies are expected to get a warrant before conducting any cell-based location tracking. The City of Boston is also known to own a CSS. 

This technology is like a dragging fishing net, rather than a focused single hook in the water. Every phone in the vicinity connects with the device; even people completely unrelated to an investigation get wrapped up in the surveillance. CSS, like other surveillance technologies, subjects civilians to widespread data collection, even those who have not been involved with a crime, and has been used against protestors and other protected groups, undermining their civil liberties. Their adoption should require public disclosure, but this rarely occurs. These new records provide insight into the continued adoption of this technology. It remains unclear whether MSP has policies to govern its use. CSS may also interfere with the ability to call emergency services, especially for people who have to use accessibility technologies for those who cannot hear.

Important to the MSP contract is the modification of a Chevrolet Silverado with the CSS system. This includes both the surreptitious installment of the CSS hardware into the truck and the integration of its software user interface into the navigational system of the vehicle. According to Jacobs, this is the kind of installation with which they have a lot of experience.

Jacobs has built its CSS project on military and intelligence community relationships, which are now informing development of a tool used in domestic communities, not foreign warzones in the years after September 11, 2001. Harris Corporation, later L3Harris Technologies, Inc., was the largest provider of CSS technology to domestic law enforcement but stopped selling to non-federal agencies in 2020. Once Harris stopped selling to local law enforcement the market was open to several competitors, one of the largest of which was KeyW Corporation. Following Jacobs’s 2019 acquisition of The KeyW Corporation and its Engineering Integration Group (EIG), Jacobs is now a leading provider of CSS to police, and it claims to have more than 300 current CSS deployments globally. EIG’s CSS engineers have experience with the tool dating to late 2001, and they now provide the spectrum of CSS-related services to clients, including integration into vehicles, training, and maintenance, according to the document. Jacobs CSS equipment is operational in 35 state and local police departments, according to the documents.

EFF has been able to identify 13 agencies using the Jacobs equipment, and, according to EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance, more than 70 police departments have been known to use CSS. Our team is currently investigating possible acquisitions in California, Massachusetts, Michigan, and Virginia. 

An image of the Jacobs CSS system interface integrated into the factory-provided vehicle navigation system. Source: 2024 Jacobs Proposal Response

The proposal also includes details on other agencies’ use of the tool, including that of the Fontana, CA Police Department, which it says has deployed its CSS more than 300 times between 2022 and 2023, and Prince George's County Sheriff (MO), which has also had a Chevrolet Silverado outfitted with CSS. 

Jacobs isn’t the lone competitor in the domestic CSS market. Cognyte Software and Tactical Support Equipment, Inc. also bid on the MSP contract, and last month, the City of Albuquerque closed a call for a cell-site simulator that it awarded to Cognyte Software Ltd.