Stephen Dinan reports:
The nation’s police chiefs have adopted a code of conduct for their use of drones, including letting any images captured by unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, be open to inspection by the public, and that the images not be stored unless they are evidence of a crime or part of an ongoing investigation.
The chiefs also said that if they plan to fly drones over an area where they are likely to spot criminal activity and where they would be intruding on someone’s “reasonable expectations of privacy,” they should seek to get a search warrant first.
Read more on Washington Times.
Update: Thanks to Ryan Calo, who pointed me to the full code of conduct. The full code contains a statement on image retention that was omitted in the media report:
IMAGE RETENTION:
1. Unless required as evidence of a crime, as part of an on-going investigation, for training, or required by law, images captured by a UA should not be retained by the agency.
2. Unless exempt by law, retained images should be open for public inspection.
The “for training” in (1) seems like a pretty permissive standard, and it would be better if that were limited.