Controversial Baltimore police surveillance planes will take flight next week, police say after judg
BALTIMORE — Surveillance planes will return to the skies over Baltimore next week, the police department says, after a federal judge rejected Friday an attempt to halt the controversial program.
U.S. District Judge Richard Bennett ruled that the camera-equipped airplanes do not violate privacy rights of city residents. He allowed a trial run of the flights to proceed.
“Images produced by the AIR pilot program will only depict individuals as minuscule dots moving about a city landscape,” the judge wrote. “The movement of these dots cannot be tracked without significant labor. Gaps in the imagery data foreclose the tracking of a single person over the course of several days. This limited form of aerial surveillance does not constitute a ‘search’ under the Fourth Amendment, nor does it burden First Amendment speech activities.”
Baltimore activists sued the police department and asked Bennett to ground the planes until their lawsuit is resolved. The nonprofit American Civil Liberties Union had petitioned him for an emergency injunction, saying the planes amounted to the “most wide-reaching surveillance dragnet ever employed in an American city.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/controversial-baltimore-police-surveillance-planes-will-take-flight-next-week-police-say-after-judges-ruling/ar-BB13a2MZ?li=BBnb7Kz
