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millions of lives, but it could also have chilling effects on social and political life.
Surveillance tools typically work best for social control when people know they are being watched. Even in liberal societies, people might think twice about joining climate or racial justice protests if they know they’ll be recorded by a drone overhead.
Feeling like you’re constantly being watched can create a kind of atmo- spheric anxiety, particularly for mar- ginalized groups that are already closely monitored because of their religion or welfare status.
Putting more drones in the sky raises concerns about trust, priva-
cy, data protection and ownership.
In a crisis, those questions are often ignored. This was clear after 9/11, when the world learned the lessons of surveil- lance systems and draconian national security laws.
The impact would hit home
Police in Australia are already deploy- ing drones for various purposes, includ- ing at sporting events. Our defense force is buying MQ-9B Reaper drones because they are cleared for use in civil- ian airspace.
We might be fine with delivery
drones in Canberra or disaster drones ferrying urgent medical supplies, but how would we feel if they were indis- tinguishable from drones piloted by police, the military or private security companies?
A team at the University of South Australia is currently designing a “pan- demic” drone to detect virus symptoms such as fever and coughing from a dis- tance. Valuable as that is now, this tool
could easily be used to intrusively managethepublic’shealth
after the crisis is over.
It can be difficult to see the long-term impacts of choices made in an emer- gency, but now is the best time for poli- cymakers to set limits on how drones can be used in public space.
They need to write sunset clauses into new laws so that surveillance and control systems are rolled back once the pandemic eases, and they need to create accountability mechanisms to ensure oversight. n
Michael Richardson is a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. This article was first posted on
The Conversation.
It is clear drones are helping combat COVID-19 because governments use them to control and monitor.
But these measures may be difficult to roll back once the pandemic passes.