REP. BOEBERT: DRONES ARE BRINGING THE SURVEILLANCE STATE TO YOUR FRONT DOOR
LONE TREE, CO — Rep. Lauren Boebert (CO-04) warned that government drone programs are expanding without a public inventory, without sufficient Fourth Amendment protections, and with too many Chinese drones and parts still in the fleet.
“Not one piece of hardware or software from the People’s Republic of China belongs on a police or federal drone in the United States,” Rep. Boebert wrote. “Not the chip, camera, battery, flight controller, app, firmware, or cloud login. American first responders deserve American supply chains.”
“Until recently,” she noted, “most drones sold to police departments were made in China.” Even if new sales slow, fleets of Chinese drones remain deployed, and efforts continue to keep Chinese components, software, and supply chains in the fleet.
“The United States government has no official public count of how many drones law enforcement agencies own and fly,” Rep. Boebert wrote. “Congress should not have to take its numbers from corporate earnings calls about how many aircraft are already circling overhead.” Rep. Boebert wrote that all drones across the United States should be registered within 30 days of operational deployment.
Rep. Boebert wrote that federal tax dollars should go to real emergencies, including search and rescue, wrecks, officer safety, and barricaded suspects, rather than persistent aerial patrols above American homes. “‘Drone as first responder’ is not a substitute for a warrant,” she wrote. “Persistent neighborhood surveillance is a general warrant from the sky, and a microphone on a drone is an intercept.” She wrote that listening should require the same legal process as a Title III wiretap, with no fishing expeditions, audit logs, and short retention.
“I stand with law enforcement. I stand even more firmly with the Constitution,” Rep. Boebert wrote. “We can give first responders the tools they need without surrendering the right of free Americans to live unmonitored lives. Protecting individual privacy is essential if freedom is to mean anything for the next generation.”
Read the full commentary in the Daily Caller: