Police in the UK are
planning to use
unmanned
spy drones,
controversially deployed in
Afghanistan,
for the "routine"
monitoring of
antisocial
motorists,
protesters,
agricultural thieves and
fly-
tippers, in a
significant expansion of
covert state
surveillance.The arms
manufacturer
BAE Systems, which
produces a range of
unmanned
aerial vehicles (UAVs) for war zones, is adapting
the military-style planes for a
consortium of
government
agencies led by Kent police.
Documents from the
South Coast
Partnership, a
Home
Office-backed project in which Kent police and
others are
developing a
national drone plan with BAE,
have been obtained by the
Guardian under the Freedom
of
Information Act.
They
reveal the
partnership intends to
begin
using the
drones in
time for the 2012 Olympics. They
also
indicate that
police claims that the
technology
will be used for
maritime surveillance fall well
short of
their intended use – which could span a
range of police activity – and that officers have
talked about selling the
surveillance data to
private companies. A
prototype drone
equipped with
high-powered cameras and sensors is set to take to
the skies for test flights later this year.
The
Civil Aviation Authority,
which regulates UK
airspace,
has been
told by
BAE and Kent police
that civilian UAVs
would "greatly extend" the
government's surveillance capacity and "revolutionise
policing". The CAA is
currently reluctant to license
UAVs in normal
airspace because of the risk of
collisions with
other aircraft, but adequate "
sense and avoid" systems for drones are only a few
years
away.
Five other
police forces have signed up to the
scheme, which is
considered a pilot preceding the
countrywide adoption of the technology for
"surveillance,
monitoring and evidence gathering".
The partnership's stated
mission is to
introduce
drones "into the routine work of the
police, border
authorities and other government agencies" across
the UK.
Concerned about the slow pace of
progress of
licensing issues, Kent police's assistant chief
constable, Allyn Thomas,
wrote to the
CAA last March
arguing that
military drones would be
useful "in the
policing of major events, whether they be
protests
or the Olympics". He said
interest in their use in
the UK had "
developed after the
terrorist attack in
Mumbai".
Stressing that he was not
seeking to interfere
with
the regulatory
process, Thomas
pointed out that
there was "rather more urgency
in the work since
Mumbai and we have a clear deadline of the 2012
Olympics".
BAE d
rones are
programmed to take
off and land on their own, stay
airborne for up to 15 hours and reach heights of 20,000ft,
making them
invisible from the
ground.
Far more
sophisticated than
the remote-
controlled
rotor-blade robots that hover 50-metres above the
ground –
which police
already use –
BAE UAVs are
programmed to
undertake specific
operations. They can, for
example,
deviate from a routine flightpath after
encountering
suspicious activity on the ground, or undertake
numerous
reconnaissance tasks simultaneously.
The
surveillance data is fed back to control
rooms via
monitoring equipment such as high-
definition cameras, radar
devices and infrared
sensors.
Previously,
Kent police has said the drone scheme was
intended for use over the
English Channel to monitor
shipping and detect im
migrants crossing
from France.
However, the documents suggest the
maritime focus was, at
least in part, a public relations
strategy designed to
minimise civil liberty concerns.
"There is
potential for these
[maritime] uses to be
projected as a 'good news' story to the
public rather than
more
'big brother'," a
minute from the
one of the earliest
meetings, in July 2007, states.
Behind closed
doors, the scope for UAVs has expanded
significantly.
Working with various
policing organisations
as well as the Serious and
Organised Crime Agency, the
Maritime and Fisheries Agency, HM
Revenue and
Customs and
the
UK Border Agency, BAE and Kent police have
drawn up
wider lists of potential uses.
One
document lists "[detecting] theft from cash
machines,
preventing theft of tractors and
monitoring antisocial driving" as future tasks for
police drones, while another
states the aircraft could be used for road and railway
monitoring, search and
rescue, event security and covert
urban surveillance.
Under a
section entitled "Other routine tasks (Local
Councils) –
surveillance", another
document states the
drones could be
used to combat
"fly-posting, fly-tipping,
abandoned vehicles,
abnormal loads, waste
management".
Senior
officers have
conceded there will be "large
capital costs"
involved in buying the
drones, but argue this
will be shared by various
government agencies. They also say
unmanned aircraft are no more intrusive
than CCTV
cameras
and far
cheaper to run than
helicopters.
Partnership officials have said the
UAVs could raise
revenue from
private companies. At one strategy
meeting it
was
proposed the aircraft could
undertake commercial
work during spare time to offset some of the running costs.
There are two
models of BAE drone under
consideration,
neither of which has been licensed to fly in
non-segregated
airspace by the CAA. The Herti (High Endurance Rapid
Technology Insertion) is a five-metre long aircraft
that the Ministry of Defence deployed in
Afghanistan for tests in
2007 and 2009.
CAA officials
are sceptical that any Herti-type drone
manufacturer can develop the
technology to
make them airworthy for the
UK before 2015 at the earliest.
However
the South Coast Partnership has set its sights on another
BAE prototype drone, the GA22
airship, developed by
Lindstrand
Technologies which would be subject to different
regulations. BAE and Kent police believe the 22-metre
long airship could be certified for civilian use by 2012.
Military drones have been used
extensively by the US to
assist
reconnaissance and
airstrikes in
Afghanistan and
Iraq.
But their use in war
zones has been
blamed for high
civilian
death tolls.