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by rhizome 4401 days ago
And however much they do use them will be their definition of "sparingly."

This is the only time that a yes or no can be lodged. Once they start they will be allowed to do whatever they want with them, only experiencing the occasional paid suspension and press conference for overstepping. All law enforcement technologies have experieniced this history.

1 comments

>>And however much they do use them will be their definition of "sparingly."

Sparingly = Almost never used in affluent neighborhoods... but any that are of low income or high diversity? Those folks will never see the clouds or the sun again... just a blanket of drones. Then those people will begin shooting them down, then the police will start to patrol more to catch the people destroying them, then local residents get arrested, then a police officer will be hurt, then the police will increase their force to "protect" themselves... then the local residents will complain about being profiled and stopped "randomly" on the streets without cause, then they'll all start wearing hoodies & hats to cover their faces, then they'll all "look suspicious", then the police will "accidentally" kill one of the residents - a person of color I'm sure, then a leaked email/voicemail of an LAPD officer making a racist comment will surface, then they'll apologize, then the drones will be limited again... maybe...

An idea I had over the weekend was that if drones are going to be used in cities, they should first be used to find potholes. Then, once they are measured to be good at that (and the potholes are fixed), then we can talk about other uses, like finding burned-out streetlights, bad/missing street lane striping, and poorly-visible signage.