Legal Review: Virginia Joins Other States in Seeking to Expand Drone Usage

By Henrico County criminal defense attorney Nicholas Braswell with Price Benowitz, LLP.

States across the Union are looking at ways to improve the services they provide while lowering the cost to provide those services.

Whether it is property mapping, emergency response, disaster services, or police pursuit, states are attempting to identify any avenues where technology may be underutilized.

Virginia, along with California, Connecticut, Oklahoma, Montana and Utah, have identified drones (small, unmanned aerial vehicles) as a method for improving and delivering services and have issued a national request for proposals for pricing out the use of drones in delivery of these services.

At the initial pre-proposal meeting, over 50 drone operators were in attendance.

“Drones have proven to be viable vehicles in numerous areas and, as their uses continue to grow, so do the privacy concerns that come along with them,” said Nicholas Braswell, a Virginia Criminal Surveillance Attorney with the law firm of Price Benowitz, LLP.

One of the primary concerns related to the use of drones is the possibility that their use may violate the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches and seizures.

This portion of the Constitution limits the manner in which law enforcement may surveil you or your home and the case law surrounding it has come to set forth the requirements that must be met before a search warrant will be issued allowing other types of surveillance.

Drones, due to their small size and nearly noiseless operation, can present many opportunities for surreptitious observation by their operators. The concern held by many is that the introduction of drones into law enforcement will increase the number of unconstitutional searches and seizures and lead to charges and arrests that have to be challenged as unconstitutional to be overturned.

It is up to law enforcement to abide by the Constitution and its requirements, and each individual department will be responsible for ensuring the proper operation of its drone or drones.

Drones have many obvious benefits: low-cost mapping, surveying of disaster areas that are unreachable by vehicle, search and rescue operations. However, the risk that use of these aircraft may violate constitutional rights is real and it is serious.

Law enforcement agencies will have to be vigilant regarding their use, and citizens will have to vigilant that technology creep does not end up making them numb to drones floating outside their windows.