Data from the Sky: The oversight of police drones in England and Wales

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, are regularly operated by police forces across England and Wales for various policing operations, including missing person searches and crime scene investigations. One purpose of using UAVs is to conduct surveillance during large events where there may be security threats or public disorder. As a result, the visual data of many individuals can be live-streamed, captured, stored, and processed. The technological developments that allow for its use in surveillance activities are ever-increasing; however, it is questionable whether the legal and policy measures in place for assessing the necessary and proportional uses of the technology are adequate to meet these advancements. An analysis of the FOI responses in this study has identified that police forces in England and Wales cannot agree on which policies and procedures should be adhered to when they use drones. The deployments of surveillance drones are also occurring in an environment where UK police forces are increasingly utilising probabilistic artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, which can also be combined with drones. The validity of the guidelines such as the Surveillance Camera Code, that specifically addresses surveillance camera technologies, has also been dissected. This paper advocates for clear regulations, more transparency, and better oversight on police drone deployments to mitigate the possible harms of surveillance drone operations, including privacy and discrimination issues. A movement towards restoring the public's trust in policing technologies and the policing by consent model is essential for effective policing operations.