Unmanned aircraft systems: Surveillance, ethics and privacy in civil applications

Swiss military drones and the border space: a critical study of the surveillance exercised by border guards

“…More precisely, we find that they generate inequality among the spaces under surveillance. Indeed, our analysis follows the same direction as the research by Heyman (2010) and Finn and Wright (2012), who note sociospatial inequalities arising from the use of drones. In our case, these are produced in particular by "systemic and routine attention practices and techniques" (Lyon, 2007:14) focused on certain areas (residential, industrial, abandoned, etc.)…”

Domestic drones: the politics of verticality and the surveillance industrial complex

“…UAVs differ from other forms of visual surveillance, notably terrestrial camera surveillance, due to their aerial capabilities and increased mobility. Additionally, their increased mobility and aeriality appears to give visual surveillance new possibilities in comparison to other traditional modes of visual surveillance like CCTV, which is fixed and terrestrial (Finn and Wright, 2012). However, due to the variation in the capabilities of UAVs, their payload technologies, and the ways that they can collect data, UAVs present several unique privacy challenges.…”

“…UAVs differ from other technologies of aerial surveillance, such as helicopters, as they are less conspicuous in terms of both audibility and their visibility to those being surveilled (Finn and Wright, 2012). Perhaps the most significant feature of UAVs in terms of surveillance implications and marketability of the technologies is the range of possible technologies with which they can be equipped (in drone parlance known as "payload").…”

“…Firstly, when individuals from the public, civil liberties groups, and academia are excluded from drone policy development, where government and industry have a seat at the table, then the discourse and policymaking discussion will often negate the implications of these technologies for privacy, human rights, and civil liberties (Hayes, 2012). Secondly, the visibility that the technologies offer can be used to prohibit protests and raise concerns about privacy to the extent that individuals will no longer feel that they are free to assemble, and so drones transform many spaces that reshape social life (Clarke, 2014;Bauman and Lyon, 2012;Finn and Wright, 2012;Murakami Wood, 2007). Therefore, power relations and tensions are further intensified by the new politics of verticality and the visibility made possible by drones.…”

“…The dominant debates around drones in the domestic realm tend to highlight regulatory issues emerging in western democracies (Klauser and Pedrozo, 2015;Bracken-Roche et al, 2014;Finn and Wright, 2012) and the challenges posed by hobbyist drone users, including issues such as the "peeping drone" (Davison, 2014) and drones flying near airports (Young, 2015). News media also highlight their use for focused and innocuous tasks such as accident scene surveying by law enforcement agencies (Lamcja, 2015), crop monitoring by farmers (Cornell, 2015), and energy and pipeline surveying (Pachner, 2015).…”