Paris Police Want Hexacopter Drones For Crowd Surveillance

When it comes to technology, people are often suspicious when the technology is used to monitor them. Only recently it was revealed that the Stingrays, a set of devices that would pretend to be mobile towers and record messages and calls made through them, were being used by authorities but couldn’t be revealed because of their ‘secret’ status that the FBI asked for the devices to maintain. The next step in policing could be something a little subtle with the police in Paris asking to be allowed to use hexacopter drones for surveillance.

The hexacopter drones in question will have to meet a very specific set of requirements before they can be utilized by the police in Paris. The drones must be capable of not only flying at 100m but be able to spot a license plate at 50m. The drones will have to employ encrypted connections as to protect them being hacked and would require no more than 5 days of training to use.

The idea behind this request is that the police would be able to use the drones to help monitor and track people in large groups and crowds, such as those that might appear as part of upcoming Tour de France and Euro 2016 football games which tend to attract large crowds blocking police from watching and tracking everyone they might need to.

What do you think about the plan? Would you feel safer walking into your local town or city and seeing police drones flying around overhead knowing that someone nearby was using them to watch the crowd for your safety?