The Pros And Cons Of Drones

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Drones also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or unmanned aircraft systems (UASes), are aircrafts that can either be remotely controlled or fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans. In the past drones have mostly been associated with the Armed Forces (i.e. Unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV)), where they are used for intelligence gathering, military operations and as weapons against foreign terrorist targets. Nowadays drones are also widely and legally used by private individuals for recreational purposes, but also by law enforcement in investigative processes (i.e. drone-based photography and videography), surveillance, search and rescue, traffic and crowd monitoring. Used as an extremely efficient crime-fighting …show more content…

Since drones can be used by law enforcement officers to obtain images, pictures and recordings of individuals in their homes or other locations assumed to be private, UVA use raises privacy concerns, and thus come under the Fourth Amendment constitutional rights scrutiny. The Fourth Amendment of the U.S Constitution meant to balance out governmental investigative and prosecutorial powers with that of individuals’ constitutional rights , asserts “the right of people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.” In clear, the Amendment affirms a ban on arbitrary searches and seizures effectuated by the …show more content…

Kyllo v. the United States, 533 U.S. 27, 34 (2001)). Additionally, one must analyze the issue under the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test, using the U.S Supreme Court case Katz v. the United States approach, in which the scope of a person’s privacy expectation is outlined. Since that landmark case has determined that the Fourth Amendment protects people rather than places, and thus is not solely based on a physical intrusion, one must ascertain whether a subjective expectation of privacy exists in the location, when analyzing where drones can fly, and whether it is possible or plausible to reasonably exhibit that expectation of

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