Other courts

by Jeremy Leaming

While the Obama administration has justifiably been knocked for its secretive and deadly use of Reaper and Predator drones to kill suspected terrorists overseas, the private and public use of drones here at home is in need of some serious discussion say groups and individuals concerned about eroding privacy rights.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today a law professor and Amie Stepanovich of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (epic.org) urged lawmakers to revamp the nation’s privacy laws to ensure that public and private use of drones do not shred what privacy rights we have left.

Ryan Calo, assistant professor of law at the University of Washington School of Law, told the committee that citizens have good reason to be concerned about the increasing use of drones for an array of purposes. During his testimony, Calo reiterated the need for the nation to update laws to protect privacy – technology is fast outpacing laws protecting privacy.

“Drones have a lot of people worried about privacy – and for good reason,” Calo told the Senate committee. “Drones drive down the cost of aerial surveillance to worrisome levels. Unlike fixed cameras, drones need not rely on public infrastructure or private partnerships. And they can be equipped not only with video cameras and microphones, but also the capability to sense heat patterns, chemical signatures, or the presence of a concealed firearm.

“American privacy law,” he continued, “meanwhile, places few limits on aerial surveillance. We enjoy next to no reasonable expectation of privacy in public, or from a public vantage like the nation’s airways. The Supreme Court has made it clear through a series of decisions in the nineteen-eighties that there is no search for Fourth Amendment purposes if an airplane or helicopter permits officers to peer into your backyard. I see no reason why these precedents would not extend readily to drones.” See Calo’s written testimony here.    

The drones discussed at today’s hearing are not like the types employed overseas in ongoing counterterrorism operations.  (A subcommittee led by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) will explore the drone war and its intersection with constitutional rights in April.) The drones are much, much smaller and have been used for police surveillance and by public safety agencies to assess damages from storms, study hurricanes, tornados and flooding for example. Many of those drones weigh mere pounds and are operated in a limited fashion. Michael Toscano, president & CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), told the committee that the industry does not support “weaponization” of civil drones. (He also informed the lawmakers that the industry does not refer to the technology as drones, they may be pilotless, but they are operated by humans from nearby control centers. (Sen. Leahy said he and others on the committee would refer to drones as drones regardless of what the industry dubs them.)

by Spencer Overton, a Professor of Law at The George Washington University Law School and a Senior Fellow at Demos.This piece is crossposted at The Huffington Post.

I attended yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court oral argument in the Arizona voter registration case.  The argument went well generally, but Justice Alito suggested the Justices would create a “crazy” double standard by requiring that Arizona election officials accept the federal registration form. 

Alito’s concerns are unwarranted.  Arizona chose to create two standards when it chose to add special “proof of citizenship” to register. 

The National Voter Registration Act requires that all states “accept and use” a single, uniform voter registration form for federal elections (states can also still use their own registration forms). 

The Federal Form requires that prospective voters check a box and sign an affirmation that they are U.S. citizens under penalty of perjury. 

Arizona, however, adopted a state law requiring “satisfactory proof” of U.S. citizenship to register, such as a birth certificate, U.S. passport, or state driver’s license that shows citizenship. As a result, Arizona rejected over 31,000 registrations that lacked its “proof of citizenship” -- including Federal Forms -- even though Arizona concedes it has no evidence that any of these individuals were non-citizens.

My take is that Arizona must accept all Federal Forms that comply with the citizenship affirmation rules set by Congress. The federal Act was designed to expand participation in federal elections by streamlining the registration process with a simple, uniform Federal Form that prevents states from piling on additional hurdles to register.  Indeed, as Justice Sotomayor mentioned, Congress explicitly rejected an amendment that would have allowed states to require “documentary evidence” of U.S. citizenship.