Baltimore Announced City Will End Spy Plane Surveillance Program After Addressing Privacy Concerns

Officials from Baltimore, Maryland, have voted to end the city police department's spy plane surveillance program.

This announcement has people scratching their heads and the public did not know that the Baltimore Police Department or BPD had a spy plane program in the first place.

Baltimore Police Department to end spy plane program

According to The Baltimore Sun, the spy plane program was called AIR, which stands for Aerial Investigation Research.

The program was run by a company called Persistent Surveillance Systems and the system used airplanes and high-resolution cameras to capture what was happening in a 32-mile square mile area of Baltimore.

The program started out as a secret, with the local police department paying for it not using the city funds, which would be subject to public scrutiny, but with funds from two billionaires from Texas, according to Baltimore Business Journal.

The Baltimore Police Department admitted to using planes to spy on Baltimore's residents in 2016, managed to approve a pilot program with a six-month timeline in 2020, and it kept flying until October 31, 2020, according to the Baltimore Sun.

In April 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in an attempt to challenge the constitutionality of the spy plane program.

The ACLU lawsuit is set to be moved into appeals court in March 2021, and Baltimore is going to be required to testify.

According to reports, the Acting City Solicitor stated that Baltimore plans to argue there is no point in continuing the lawsuit, as the spy plane program has already been officially shut down.

On the other hand, the ACLU, is not planning to drop the lawsuit. In a statement, a senior staff attorney with ACLU Maryland said that they plan to ensure that the case is heard and is pushed forward.

The senior staff attorney added that the law is clear that the city can't intentionally duck accountability by suddenly bailing on its years-long defense of this technology on the eve of March 2021 appeals court hearing.

Regardless of the outcome of the court case, it is a good thing that the spy plane program is gone. The police department officials argued that the program kept the privacy of its citizens in mind, and was only used in a limited way, tracing people from known crime scenes, but independent evaluators hired by Baltimore stated that those claims were not true.

Mayor Brandon Scott of Baltimore said that the city is now building a full strategy around public safety. The city now plans to keep 15% of the data that was captured by spy planes for ongoing criminal investigations.

Spy plane in other states

Baltimore, Maryland is not the only city that has spy planes. Back in July, an Air Force surveillance plane designed to carry high-tech sensors that are usually reserved for war zones were spotted circling in Portland, Oregon.

The Air Force surveillance plane, a DO-328 "Cougar" was seen through the open source flight tracking website ADS-B Exchange. According to The Intercept, the flight data is consistent with surveillance operations in Portland during the height of the protest last year.

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Written by Sieeka Khan