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> "No, you really can't just look at people from above," that's gonna have serious consequences for how we make maps in this day and age. it would potentially

• petsfed 2y ago
  There's already straightforward legal precedent around privacy re: what my neighbors can see from their property. If police want to set up surveillance from my neighbor's house, they can get permission from them, and/or a court order for it. The question is, can the government put a camera in a place you can't (in principle) walk to, even with permission, specifically to perform surveillance on you. And part of the threat here is that an independent "researcher" could just habitually fly a drone over a bunch of houses, then offer to sell the footage from those flights that they were already doing to the government. And so it doesn't violate any currently existing laws or obvious extensions to those laws, but law enforcement still gets to see into "private" spaces without a warrant. I think the straightforward answer here is that the police cannot use footage taken from places they can't walk to, without a warrant, as evidence, period. Further, warrants for aerial surveillance must be closely tailored such that "incidental" surveillance of things not named in the warrant (e.g., the neighbor's house) can't be used in court either. Want to use google earth images as evidence in court? Fine, but first you use the images as justification for a warrant and send up your own drone.