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 Drones over America: Public Safety Benefit or "Creepy" Privacy Threat?

Domestic Surveillance. 2015.

COPYRIGHT 2015 Greenhaven Press, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning

From Opposing Viewpoints In Context.

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Article Commentary

Anna Mulrine, "Drones over America: Public Safety Benefit or 'Creepy' Privacy Threat?," Christian Science Monitor online, March 13, 2013. www.csmonitor.com. Reproduced by permission.

Anna Mulrine is a staff reporter for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper.

With a wide variety of uses ranging from disaster response to traffic reporting, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or "drones" as they are commonly known, are a hot commodity for cities and law enforcement agencies nationwide. But along with the emergence of the popular new technology has come concern about their capabilities and skepticism about their purported uses. Critics of drones worry that they could be inappropriately used for surveillance of private property or lawful activities such as political protests, or that they could eventually be weaponized. Drone supporters point out that drones so far have very limited capabilities and that there can be no legal expectation of privacy in a public place to begin with. Some American cities have established tough antidrone regulations in anticipation of their growing popularity.

Shortly after Alan Frazier became a part-time deputy sheriff in Grand Forks, N.D., the police began looking into the possibility of buying some aircraft to boost their law enforcement capabilities. They wanted some help doing things like finding missing people or carrying out rescues in a region dotted by farmsteads threatened by flooding that wipes out access to roads.

Buying a turbine engine helicopter, however, would cost $25 million, a prohibitive price tag even with 11 law enforcement agencies—eight from North Dakota and three in western Minnesota—willing to share the cost.

So Mr. Frazier, also an assistant professor of aviation at the University of North Dakota (UND), began looking into unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a possible alternative.

But what appears, on one level, to be a sensible, practical, and affordable solution for local law enforcement—the price tag for a small UAV is about the cost of a tricked-out new police cruiser at $50,000—has run smack into public concerns about yet another high-tech invasion of privacy and the popular image of drones as stealthy weapons used against terrorists.

The US Border Patrol has the country's largest fleet of UAVs for domestic surveillance, including nine Predator drones that patrol regions like the Rio Grande, searching for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers.

Nonetheless, the technology's potential benefits in pursuing a raft of public safety measures at relatively low cost have enormous appeal for law enforcement agencies across the country, since President Obama signed a bill last year directing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to further open US airspace to drones for both public and private use.

Even before that, the number of permits, known as certificates of authorization (COAs), that the FAA issued to organizations to fly UAVs more than doubled from 146 in 2009 to 313 in 2011. As of February 2013 there were 327 active COAs.

The bulk of these permits go to the US military for training, and the Pentagon expects their numbers to grow considerably in the years to come. According to a March 2011 Pentagon estimate, the Department of Defense will have 197 drones at 105 US bases by 2015.

The US Border Patrol has the country's largest fleet of UAVs for domestic surveillance, including nine Predator drones that patrol regions like the Rio Grande, searching for illegal immigrants and drug smugglers. Unlike the missile-firing Predators used by the Central Intelligence Agency to hunt Al Qaeda operatives and their allies, the domestic version of the aircraft—say, those used by the border patrol—is more typically equipped with night-vision technology and long-range cameras that can read license plates. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also complain that these drones have see-through imaging technology similar to those used in airports, as well as facial recognition software tied to federal databases.

The growth in drones is big business. Some 50 companies are developing roughly 150 systems, according to The Wall Street Journal, ranging from miniature flying mechanical bugs to "Battlestar Galactica"-type hovering unmanned airplanes. It's an industry expected to reach some $6 billion in US sales by 2016.

Those forecasts notwithstanding, neither the FAA nor the association of UAV operators says it knows how many nonmilitary drones are operating in the United States. The ACLU is seeking that information.

The growth in the development of UAVs by both private companies and the US government has not gone unnoticed, creating a backlash in some communities.

In Seattle last month, community members quashed their city's drone program before it even got started. The program was being considered for search-and-rescue operations and some criminal investigations, but was referred to by protesters as "flying government robots watching their every move."

Mayor Mike McGinn spoke with Police Chief John Diaz, "and we agreed that it was time to end the unmanned aerial vehicle program," the mayor wrote in a statement. The drones were returned to the manufacturer.

The president says you can take out American citizens in foreign countries.... Well, if you can do that, you can take out somebody here as well.

Just days earlier, Charlottesville, Va., had become the first city in the country to pass a "no-drone zone" resolution, putting in place a two-year moratorium on the use of drones within Charlottesville limits.

"The big concern for us is that they're going to be everywhere," says John Whitehead, an attorney and president of The Rutherford Institute, a civil liberties organization in Charlottesville, which launched a preemptive fight against drones before the city council.

The move followed an Obama administration memo justifying the use of drones overseas to kill US citizens suspected of taking part in terrorist activities. "The president says you can take out American citizens in foreign countries," Mr. Whitehead says. "Well, if you can do that, you can take out somebody here as well."

On March 6, Attorney General Eric Holder may have reinforced such fears in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee when he refused to rule out the use of armed drones on US soil in an emergency "to protect the homeland."

If it all has an air of hysteria about it—Mr. Holder said there are no plans for the domestic use of armed drones and called the scenario "entirely hypothetical" and unlikely—privacy groups point to California's Alameda County, where officials insisted they wanted drones for search-and-rescue missions. An internal memo that surfaced from the sheriff's department, however, noted the drones could be used for "investigative and tactical surveillance, intelligence gathering, suspicious persons, and large crowd-control disturbances." The county dropped its plans.

The first and only known use of a drone in the arrest of a US citizen occurred in December 2011 in North Dakota, when the Nelson County Sheriff's Department asked to borrow one of the US Customs and Border Protection UAVs. The drone provided a good view of the three sons of the owner of a 3,000-acre farm who were involved in a standoff with law enforcement officers. As a result, police were able to tell that the brothers were unarmed, allowing them to enter the farm and arrest the brothers without the confrontation turning into a shootout.

Whitehead imagines a day when drones equipped with sound cannons, which release painful high-decibel sound waves that cause crowds to disperse, could be dispatched by the government to political protests and used as well to "effectively stifle free speech."

The concern that such technologies can be misused to invade privacy and suppress free speech "is a legitimate fear," says UND's Frazier. "Anytime we increase the technological capabilities of the government there's a justifiable concern there. But I think these fears can be offset by the fact that the drones we're using have very limited capabilities."

FAA regulations stipulate that weaponized drones cannot fly in unrestricted US airspace.

Nevertheless, privacy concerns are what have prompted groups including the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain hundreds of documents from the FAA outlining who has been requesting to use drones in America's skies, and why.

Roughly 40 percent of the drone flight requests submitted to the FAA are from the US military. "They are flying drones pretty regularly—eight hours a day, five days a week—to train pilots so that they will be able to fly drones," says Jessica Lynch, a staff attorney for EFF.

These drones are equipped with infrared scanning capabilities and other surveillance gadgets. "Drones have quite a number of technologies on board, including thermal cameras and the ability to intercept communications," Ms. Lynch says. "If they are training pilots, they are training them in these surveillance tools."

FAA regulations stipulate that weaponized drones cannot fly in unrestricted US airspace. The agency also has specific parameters for law enforcement drones. Law enforcement groups, for example, must maintain visual contact with the drone at all times and must also fly at relatively low altitudes.

These are regulations with which the Grand Forks Sheriff's Department has become familiar in the three years since it began looking into using drones, first establishing an Unmanned Aerial Systems unit as part of the department and then applying for COAs to use the drones. The unit, which went fully operational Feb. 1, has conducted 250 simulated missions, but has yet to use a drone in an operation.

Certification tends to be a lengthy and arduous process, Frazier says, adding that there are also some parameters for usage that are meant to promote safety, but can make it tricky for law enforcement to do its jobs.

One provision, for example, is that the drones can fly only by day. Another early rule was that the police had to give 48 hours' notice if they were going to use the drones.

"It's tough to predict if there is going to be a fire tomorrow, or a bank robbery the day after tomorrow," he says. The department was able to convince the FAA to let it fly the drones on one-hour notice instead.

That said, Frazier understands the public's concerns about the use of drones. For that reason, Grand Forks established a 15-member committee—made up of one-third public safety officials, one-third UND faculty, and one-third community residents—to evaluate the use of drones and to troubleshoot questions and concerns of the public. Every law enforcement action involving the drones is to be reviewed by the committee.

Frazier told committee members that the department did not intend to ask for the ability to use the drones for covert surveillance. "We will not use them to, quote, spy on people," Frazier says. Even if that were the intention, he adds, "These small drones are not particularly robust platforms for covert surveillance. I think the public can't understand that my little UAV can only fly for 15 minutes, can't fly out of my line of sight, and can't fly in greater than 15-knot winds."

As technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, it's tempting to use it all the time.

Out of concern that average citizens could be filmed by sensors on the aircraft, one of the committee's first acts was to instruct police to post road signs warning the public when UAVs are in use.

Yet some of the conversations EFF's Lynch has had with other law enforcement agencies haven't been as reassuring about privacy, she says. "We've talked to police about this, and they've said, 'Well, we're going to fly the drones in public airspace, and if you walk around in public you don't have an expectation of privacy in your movements.'

"While that might be true for a police officer following you down the street, I don't know if that applies when a drone can fly over and surveil everybody walking down that street for an extended period of time," Lynch says.

"You can make the case that drones are helping law enforcement better do their jobs for less [cost] and we should incorporate it," she adds. "As technology becomes cheaper and easier to use, it's tempting to use it all the time."

That is the fear of Texas state lawmaker Lance Gooden, who in February proposed some of the toughest anti-drone legislation in the country. It would prevent drone operators from collecting images, sounds, and smells—or hovering over any home—without permission.

"Two to four years from now, it'll be impossible to get legislation passed because every law enforcement agency will want drones," says Mr. Gooden. While the drone lobby is growing, it is not as powerful as it will become, he adds.

Currently, his bill has the support of 101 of the 150 members of the state Legislature. But some longtime drone experts say such laws are overkill and could impede growth of technology that is useful and relatively inexpensive.

"The ordinances that have been passed are absolutely absurd," says retired Lt. Gen. David Deptula, the first deputy chief of staff for Intelligence, Reconnaissance, and Surveillance for the US Air Force. "And what's precluded are the very valuable civilian applications in terms of traffic control, firefighting, disaster response, border security, the monitoring of power lines—the list goes on and on."

As for privacy concerns, "I can't think of another way of saying it, but that they are unfounded," Deptula adds. "All you have to do is look up in any major metropolitan city and see the cameras all around. And have they ever heard of satellites? Where do they think Google maps come from?"

Frazier concurs. People with a good zoom lens have better cameras than do his small drones, he adds, pointing out that one of the Grand Forks Sheriff's Department's drones has a simple off-the-shelf Panasonic.

The average GPS-enabled cellphone can now track people and their movements to within a few feet, he notes.

That said, "I understand what people mean when they say it's 'creepy,'" Frazier says. "I value my privacy as much as anyone does—it's very sacred in this country." Even if they could do it legally, law enforcement agencies would be making a big mistake using drones for covert surveillance—for the time being, he adds.

"It would be a fatal mistake at this point. We really need to take a crawl, walk, run approach. To go to covert surveillance brings us to a run," Frazier says of the law enforcement community. "If that means we're not Buck Rogers in the 21st century, we're comfortable with that."

Books

· Julia Angwin Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance. New York: Times Books, 2014.

· Heidi Boghosian Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance. San Francisco: City Lights, 2013.

· David Brin The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Technology and Freedom? Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 1998.

· Ronald J. Deibert Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet. Toronto, Canada: Signal, 2013.

· Christian Fuchs et al, eds. Internet and Surveillance: The Challenges of Web 2.0 and Social Media. New York: Routledge, 2012.

· Louise Gerdes At Issue: Drones. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2014.

· Glenn Greenwald No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. New York: Metropolitan, 2014.

· Luke Harding The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man. New York: Vintage, 2014.

· Shane Harris The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State. London, United Kingdom: Penguin, 2011.

· Sean P. Hier and Joshua Greenberg, eds. Surveillance: Power, Problems, and Politics. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press, 2009.

· Susan Landau Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013.

· Armand Matteralt The Globalization of Surveillance. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2010.

· Christian Parenti The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror. Cambridge, MA: Basic Books, 2004.

Periodicals and Internet Sources

· Alex Abdo "You May Have 'Nothing to Hide' but You Still Have Something to Fear," American Civil Liberties Union, August 2, 2013. www.aclu.org.

· Tami Abdollah "Officers' Body Cameras Raise Privacy Concerns," Yahoo News, March 15, 2014. http://news.yahoo.com.

· American Civil Liberties Union "The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: How the American Government Is Conscripting Businesses and Individuals in the Construction of a Surveillance Society," 2004. www.aclu.org.

· American Civil Liberties Union "Time to Rein in the Surveillance State," 2014. www.aclu.org.

· Stuart Armstrong "Life in the Fishbowl," Aeon, September 30, 2013.

· Associated Press "Edward Snowden at SXSW Conference: I Saw the Constitution Being Violated on 'Massive Scale,'" March 11, 2014. www.nbcdfw.com.

· Neal Augenstein "National License Plate Database Sparks Privacy Fears," WTOP, February 17, 2014. www.wtop.com.

· Peter Baker "Obama's Path from Critic to Overseer of Spying," New York Times, January 15, 2014.

· James Ball "NSA and GCHQ Target 'Leaky' Phone Apps Like Angry Birds to Scoop User Data," Guardian, January 27, 2014.

· Nick Bilton "The Pros and Cons of a Surveillance Society," New York Times blog, July 16, 2013. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com.

· The Blaze "Domestic Surveillance," 2014. www.theblaze.org.

· Darwin BondGraham and Ali Winston "The Real Purpose of Oakland's Surveillance Center," East Bay Express, December 18, 2013.

· Danah Boyd "The Problem with the 'I Have Nothing to Hide' Argument," Dallas Morning News, June 14, 2013.

· David Brin "World Cyberwar and the Inevitability of Radical Transparency," Metroactive, July 6, 2011. www.metroactive.com.

· Zoë Carpenter "What Obama Didn't Say in His Speech on NSA Spying," Nation, January 17, 2014.

· Bill Chappell "U.S. Agencies, Tech Firms Agree to Rules on Surveillance Info," National Public Radio, January 27, 2014. www.npr.org.

· Jessica Chasmar "L.A. Sheriff Admits to Testing Flyover Spy Program Without Notifying Residents," Washington Times, April 23, 2014.

· Kyle Chayka "Face-Recognition Software: Is This the End of Anonymity for All of Us?," Independent, April 23, 2014.

· Danielle Keats Citron and David Gray "Addressing the Harm of Total Surveillance: A Reply to Professor Neil Richards," Harvard Law Review, May 2013.

· Liat Clark "Get Ready to Have Your Biometrics Tracked 24/7," Wired, March 26, 2014.

· Richard A. Clarke et al. "Liberty and Security in a Changing World—Report and Recommendations of the President's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies," The White House, December 12, 2013. www.whitehouse.gov.

· Stephanie Clifford and Quentin Hardy "Attention, Shoppers: Store Is Tracking Your Cell," New York Times, July 14, 2013.

· Sean Cockerham "Some in Congress See Just One Option for NSA Spying: Scrap It," McClatchy, February 4, 2014. www.mcclatchydc.com.

· Andrew Cohen "Is the NSA's Spying Constitutional? It Depends Which Judge You Ask," Atlantic, December 27, 2013.

· Tom Cohen, Jim Acosta, and Mariano Castillo "Despite Obama's NSA Changes, Phone Records Still Collected," CNN, January 17, 2014. www.cnn.com.

· Catherine Crump "You Are Being Tracked—How License Plate Readers Are Being Used to Record Americans' Movements," American Civil Liberties Union, July 2013. www.aclu.org.

· Democracy Now! "Domestic Surveillance," 2014. www.democracynow.org.

· Stephen Dinan and Ben Wolfgang "Congress Split Over NSA's Domestic Spying Program, Could Just Let Laws Expire," Washington Times, January 19, 2014.

· Charles Duhigg "Psst, You in Aisle 5," New York Times, February 19, 2012.

· Electronic Frontier Foundation "Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying," 2014. www.eff.org.

· Justin Elliott and Theodoric Meyer "Claim on 'Attacks Thwarted' by NSA Spreads Despite Lack of Evidence," ProPublica, October 23, 2013. www.propublica.org.

· Erica Fink "This Drone Can Steal What's on Your Phone," CNN/Money, March 20, 2014. http://money.cnn.com.

· Josh Gerstein "Hillary Clinton Goes Mum on NSA, Skirts Surveillance Fight," Politico, February 17, 2014. www.politico.com.

· Frida Ghitis "U.S. Needs to Get Spying Under Control," CNN, October 25, 2013. www.cnn.com.

· Amy Goodman and Denis Moynihan "America's Real Subversives: FBI Spying Then, NSA Surveillance Now," Democracy Now!, July 25, 2013. www.democracynow.org.

· Alan Greenblatt "Our Surveillance Society: What Orwell and Kafka Might Say," National Public Radio, June 8, 2013. www.npr.org.

· Glenn Greenwald "Surveillance State Evils," Salon, April 21, 2012. www.salon.com.

· Doug Gross "Microsoft Fights Back Against NSA 'Snooping,'" CNN, December 9, 2013. www.cnn.com.

· Doug Gross "Anti-NSA Activists Don't Like Obama Speech," CNN, January 17, 2014. www.cnn.com.

· Julian Hattem and Kate Tummarello "Officials Defend NSA, Decry Snowden," The Hill, January 29, 2014. http://thehill.com.

· Melanie Hicken "Big Data Is Secretly Scoring You," CNN/Money, April 2, 2014. http://money.cnn.com.

· Kashmir Hill "Federal Judge Writes Epic Smackdown of 'Likely Unconstitutional' NSA Phone Record Collection," Forbes, December 16, 2013.

· Michael Isikoff "NSA Program Stopped No Terror Attacks, Says White House Panel Member," NBCNews, December 20, 2013. www.nbcnews.com.

· Michael Isikoff "After 43 Years, Activists Admit Theft at FBI Office that Exposed Domestic Spying," NBCNews, January 6, 2014. www.nbcnews.com.

· Benny Johnson "America's Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead," BuzzFeed, January 16, 2014. www.buzzfeed.com.

· Amy Joyce "Every Move You Make," Washington Post, October 1, 2006.

· Heather Kelly "Hobbyists Pilot Small Drones for Dogfights, Photography," CNN, January 24, 2014. www.cnn.com.

· Arnold Kling "David Brin's Transparent Society Revisited," Library of Economics and Liberty, July 1, 2013. www.econlib.org.

· Richard Leon "Memorandum Opinion, United States District Court for the District of Columbia," Legal Times, December 16, 2013.

· Todd Lewan "Microchips in Humans Spark Privacy Debate," USA Today, July 21, 2007.

· Ashley Lutz and Matt Townsend "Big Brother Is Watching You Shop," Business Week, December 15, 2011.

· Katherine Mangu-Ward "Don't Want the NSA to Read Your Documents? Use This Font," Reason.com, June 21, 2013. http://reason.com.

· Kathleen Miller "IRS Among Agencies Using License Plate-Tracking Vendor," Bloomberg, April 16, 2014. www.bloomberg.com.

· Ellen Nakashima "U.S. Reasserts Need to Keep Domestic Surveillance Secret," Washington Post, December 21, 2013.

· Steven Nelson "Snowden Says 'Many Other' Spy Programs Remain Secret, for Now," US News & World Report, March 7, 2014.

· Scott Neuman "The Case Against Clemency: Expert Says Snowden's Leaks Hurt Security," National Public Radio, January 9, 2014. www.npr.org.

· New York Post "Judge Says NSA Working to Save American Lives Within the Law, Rejects ACLU Lawsuit," December 27, 2013.

· Ed O'Keefe "Dianne Feinstein, Saxby Chambliss Explain, Defend NSA Phone Records Program," Washington Post, June 6, 2013.

· Michael Pearson "What Obama Changed at the NSA: 5 Takeaways," CNN, January 17, 2014. www.cnn.com.

· Evan Perez "U.S. to Let Tech Companies Release More Surveillance Data," CNN, January 27, 2014. www.cnn.com.

· Daniel B. Prieto "Civil Liberties and National Security After 9/11: A CFR Working Paper," Council on Foreign Relations, February 2009. www.cfr.org.

· Neil M. Richards "The Dangers of Surveillance," Harvard Law Review, May 2013.

· Eugene Robinson "Domestic Surveillance a Betrayal of Our Values," mySanAntonio.com, December 17, 2013. www.mysanantonio.com.

· Mike Rosenberg "San Jose Police Could Tap into Volunteer Residents' Private Security Cameras Under New Proposal," San Jose Mercury News, January 23, 2014.

· George Santayana "History Repeated: The Dangers of Domestic Spying by Federal Law Enforcement," American Civil Liberties Union, 2007. www.aclu.org.

· Adrian Short "When Does Face Scanning Tip Over into the Full-Time Surveillance Society?," Guardian, November 5, 2013.

· Natasha Singer "Shoppers Who Can't Have Secrets," New York Times, May 1, 2010.

· Natasha Singer "Revelations by AOL Boss Raise Fears Over Privacy," New York Times, February 10, 2014.

· Daniel J. Solove "Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide,'" Chronicle of Higher Education, May 15, 2011.

· Doug Stanglin "Federal Judge: NSA Phone Surveillance Legal," USA Today, December 27, 2013.

· Jay Stanley "Persistent Aerial Surveillance: Do We Want To Go There, America?," American Civil Liberties Union, February 7, 2014. www.aclu.org.

· Jay Stanley and Catherine Crump "Protecting Privacy from Drone Surveillance: Recommendations for Governmental Use of Drone Aircraft," American Civil Liberties Union, December 2011. www.aclu.org.

· Bruce Stokes "NSA Spying: A Threat to US Interests?," YaleGlobal, December 5, 2013. http://yaleglobal.yale.edu.

· Geoffrey R. Stone "The NSA's Telephone Metadata Program Is Unconstitutional," Huffington Post, January 9, 2014. www.huffingtonpost.com.

· Randall Stross "Wearing a Badge, and a Video Camera," New York Times, April 6, 2013.

· Gavin P. Sullivan "Big Brother's Tracking Shines Light on Emerging Facial Recognition Technology," Forbes, July 9, 2013.

· Craig Timberg "New Surveillance Technology Can Track Everyone in an Area for Several Hours at a Time," Washington Post, February 5, 2014.

· Craig Timberg and Ashkan Soltani "By Cracking Cellphone Code, NSA Has Capacity for Decoding Private Conversations," Washington Post, December 13, 2013.

· Time "The Surveillance Society," accessed May 1, 2014. http://nation.time.com/surveillance-society.

· Trevor Timm "President Obama Claims the NSA Has Never Abused Its Authority. That's False," Guardian, December 31, 2013.

· Alec Torres "Tenn. State University Requires Students to Wear Trackable IDs," National Review, February 28, 2014.

· Mario Trujillo "Paul on NSA Data: 'It Is Not About Who Holds It,'" The Hill, January 17, 2014. http://thehill.com.

· US Department of Justice "Administration White Paper: Bulk Collection of Telephony Metadata Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act," August 9, 2013. https://publicintelligence.net.

· Matt Vespa "NSA Official: 'We Are Now a Police State,'" Christian News Service, December 19, 2013. www.cnsnews.com.

· James Vlahos "Surveillance Society: New High-Tech Cameras Are Watching You," Popular Mechanics, October 1, 2009.

· David Von Drehle "The Surveillance Society," Time, August 1, 2013.

· Wall Street Journal "What They Know," accessed May 1, 2014. http://online.wsj.com/public/page/what-they-know-digital-privacy.html.

· Washington Times "Total Surveillance Society," June 10, 2013.

· David Welna "What's the NSA Doing Now? Training More Cyberwarriors," National Public Radio, April 30, 2014. www.npr.org.

· Mark White "Online Privacy: 'Big Data' Is Watching, and Building Your Digital Profile," Sydney Morning Herald, January 18, 2014.

Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)

Mulrine, Anna. "Drones over America: Public Safety Benefit or 'Creepy' Privacy Threat?" Domestic Surveillance, edited by Tamara Thompson, Greenhaven Press, 2015. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints In Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/EJ3010928212/OVIC?u=uphoenix&sid=OVIC&xid=4882a392. Accessed 11 June 2018. Originally published as "Drones over America: Public Safety Benefit or 'Creepy' Privacy Threat?" www.csmonitor.com, 13 Mar. 2013.

Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010928212

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THE BLOG 

10/06/2015 12:47 pm ET Updated Oct 06, 2016

Will Robots Take Our Jobs?

By Robert Brenner

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In 1920, Czech author Karel Čapek wrote a play about mechanical men replacing human workers in factories. The play, Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti (“Rossum’s Universal Robots”) gave us the word “robot,” and we’ve been worrying about robots taking our jobs ever since.

Now reality seems to be catching up with science fiction. Last week, the first World Summit On Technological Unemployment was held at the TIME Conference Center in New York City. It was sponsored by the World Technology Network, which presents the annual World Technology awards.

This was not Comic Con cosplayers that had seen too many Terminator movies (“I’ll be back—with my resume”); this was thought leaders from the worlds of technology and economics, including:

· Gerald Huff, Principal Software Engineer at Tesla Motors

· Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize-winning economist

· Irving Wladawsky-Berger, former companywide leader IBM initiatives on Internet, e-business, supercomputing, and Linux

· Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Clinton

They shared one common concern: the impact of robots on unemployment.  Not as sexy as killer drones from the future or, for that matter, sexbots, but arguably a bigger threat to humanity.

Take self-driving vehicles, for example. Google is already piloting this technology. Uber has made no secret of its long-range plans to replace human drivers with self-driving cabs. (Yes, the “Johnny Cab” from Total Recall is on the way.) But what happens to all these unemployed taxi, limousine, and truck drivers? Do they get retrained for exciting new careers in the digital economy? Or do they become a new permanent underclass?

Now add fast food workers, hotel desk clerks and bellboys, airport luggage handlers... the list goes on and on. And not just physical workers; the thinking and creative classes will be impacted as well. We already have medical expert systems that can out-diagnose doctors and legal expert systems that can out-brief lawyers. A recent study indicates a whopping 47 percent of U.S. jobs may be automated in the next 20 years.

(Personal note: I am old enough to remember ATMs replacing bank clerks. Where did all those human tellers go?)

The attendees split into two camps: the techno-optimists (“robots will generate more jobs and/or more leisure time”), and the techno-pessimists (“robots will cause mass unemployment and social upheaval”). This in turn led to sometimes heated debate on income inequality and a guaranteed basic income. (You can’t enjoy your increased leisure time if you’re broke.)

As James P. Clark, Founder/Chairman of the World Technology Network said in his opening statement:

Many of the so-called techno-optimists and the vast majority of capitalists argue that creative destruction due to technological innovation will continue to play out positively in the coming years and perhaps even without much of a hitch.

The most intense techno-pessimists think we are headed for a job-copalypse that will unravel civilization and that there is no way to avoid it.  ...

Let’s avoid dystopia and shoot if not for utopia than for something much better than what we’ve got, something MUCH more politically and environmentally sustainable. Something for the first time ever perhaps that is actually morally defensible in every way.

This was something, at least, the summit participants could all agree on. Now about those killer drones and sexbots...

Follow Robert Brenner on Twitter:  www.twitter.com/robert_brenner