Portland, ORE. — Today, community leaders and organizations gathered to sound the alarm on a warrantless drone bill (SB 238A). This bill could allow police and sheriffs to use drones to spy on almost all Oregonians, in most areas across our state, including residential and urban neighborhoods, healthcare centers, schools, ranches, farms, hunting and fishing areas, and at public gatherings, including protests.
Oregon law already permits the use of drones with a warrant, when exigent circumstances exist, for accident scene reconstruction, and for search and rescue. SB 238A would significantly expand law enforcement authority at the expense of courts and communities, without meaningful and necessary public consultation, stakeholder engagement, and evidence-based policy design. Not to mention the disproportionate impacts on Oregonians more frequently targeted, harassed, and surveilled by the government and law enforcement, including dissenters, activists, and Black, Indigenous, and Oregonians of color.
Among many issues, community members are concerned that Senate Bill 238A is a blank check for law enforcement agencies to begin broadly deploying drones and sets the stage for unlimited police drones, without a court warrant, in a wide variety of situations and with powerful technological surveillance capabilities. This could mean law enforcement could use drones to gather all types of personal data about each of us as we protest, travel, or go about our everyday life using the pretexts that SB 238A would establish. Such pretexts include, but are not limited to, language that allows police to predict what might happen at events or in our communities. All this would happen without court oversight.
Proponents of SB 238A — some of whom may be aligned with the big-money drone industry — are unnecessarily pushing this bill through the Oregon legislature without taking sufficient time to understand and address all its intended and intended consequences. This is being done at a time when the Trump Administration and local police are increasingly using high-powered data analysis technology from companies like Palantir that allows law enforcement and other government agencies to pool data from all manner of sources, including Axon drones and Flock automatic license plate readers, to lay the groundwork for the government to keep files on each person that records our personal and intimate details.
Indeed, there has been no consideration or conversation about how this expansion of police surveillance power will serve the aims of the Trump Administration who is partnering with tech giants like Palantir to integrate data sources and compile files on all of us. Surveillance technologies used by police are already being weaponized against groups that the Trump Administration and its conservative state allies are targeting.
It was recently reported that a police officer in Texas used the Flock camera system to perform a nationwide search of more than 83,000 cameras while looking for a woman who had an abortion, including cameras in Washington and Illinois where abortion is legal. Investigative journalists also uncovered that ICE used local law enforcement access to the Flock database to seek location data from all over the country for immigration enforcement.
Flock announced last fall that they are expanding into the drone business and a recent leak indicated Flock is working on the technological capacity to go from identifying cars to identifying people. Flock has been active in state legislatures across the county to push for laws that allow police to use its technologies as expansively as possible. This approach by Flock is not surprising because the law enforcement camera and drone business is big business, one fueled by our taxpayer dollars. The Law Enforcement Drone Association based in Eugene is one of the proponent groups supporting SB 238A, and the City of Eugene just announced that it would be rolling out 57 new Flock automatic license plate leaders across the city.
Jessica Maravilla, ACLU of Oregon, Policy Director: “We should not allow drone surveillance, without court oversight, at protests and rallies, over our homes and backyards, above abortion clinics, over our places of worship, in rural areas of Oregon, and in too many more places across our state. Especially at a time when our courts have been a truly necessary line of defense against Trump’s fascist, authoritarian policies, it is bewildering that Oregon lawmakers are considering SB 238A, a bill that takes away legitimate and necessary authority from our courts.”
Bonnie Reagan, Retired Family Physician: “If Senate Bill 238A passes, police will be able to use drones in too many situations — including potentially over protests, clinics, and hospitals. The fear that police may surveil people related to abortions or gender-affirming care is real.”
Portland City Councilor, Tiffany Koyama Lane: “I am committed to advocating with state lawmakers to ensure that with bills like Senate Bill 238A, they prioritize listening to the community, adopting policies that protect Oregonians from threats of aggression by the federal government and other states, and curtailing the lucrative business of surveillance that is rapidly expanding with tax dollars. I stand on the moral authority of Japanese Americans who suffered the atrocities of U.S. concentration camps and I call on lawmakers to stop repeating history by opposing Senate Bill 238A.”
Beaverton City Councilor, Nadia Hasan: “The Trump administration has threatened birthright citizenship, used the Alien Enemies Act to destroy due process, threatened to use the Insurrection Act to deploy the National Guard and our military against people living in the US, and re-implemented his racist Muslim travel ban. My question for our state lawmakers is why increase police ability to spy on Oregonians with drones by removing court oversight – at this critical time when our democracy and our courts are under attack by the White House.”
Nick Caleb, Breach Collective, Climate and Energy Attorney: “Like many activist communities, the government has frequently targeted environmental and climate activists for surveillance. With fascism rising in our country — and our environment and climate at stake — lawmakers must affirm our democratic values, free speech rights, and environment and climate protection by saying no to Senate Bill 238A.”
Je Amaechi, Unite Oregon, Organizing Director: “Senate Bill 238A will have disproportionate impacts on the activists fighting for greater justice in Oregon — especially Black, Indigenous, and Oregonians of color. For too long, the mass surveillance apparatus has been used by the federal government and local law enforcement against Black and Brown communities.”
Senate Bill 238A is opposed by a coalition of community and advocacy organizations including: The ACLU of Oregon, Don’t Shoot PDX (DSPDX), Unite Oregon, Oregon Justice Resource Center (OJRC), Centro Cultural, 350PDX, Oregon Criminal Defense Lawyers Association (OCDLA), Latino Network, and Latino Policy Council.
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