Ottawa Police flying drones at CityFolk, Bluesfest worries surveillance experts

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Tara Shannon was watching pop-country star Maren Morris perform at CityFolk a couple of weeks ago when something overhead caught her eye. 

It was a drone, apparently monitoring the crowd gathered in front of the festival’s main stage on the Great Lawn at Lansdowne Park. The sight of the blinking device sharing airspace with the almost-full moon gave her pause on the warm late-summer night. 

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“I remember noticing it and thinking, ‘This feels weird,’” said Shannon, who’s the recently appointed executive director of Ottawa Festivals, a not-for-profit networking organization that represents festivals, fairs and other special events in Ottawa-Gatineau. “It felt very Hunger Games-ish or Big Brother-ish. It changed how I was enjoying the show.” 

Her instincts were not far off the mark. The drone was part of the fleet of remotely piloted aircraft systems (RPAS) belonging to the Ottawa Police Service, and CityFolk was not the only music festival they flew over this summer. 

It’s a practice that raises concerns about privacy, transparency, police power and what one of Canada’s top drone-privacy experts refers to as “mission creep.”

Drones were acquired by the Ottawa police six years ago to assist in investigative work such as mapping traffic accidents or crime scenes, or searching for missing persons. 

“Once you have a technology that can do a lot of different things, there will be this tendency to use it for a wider range of purposes, and it sounds to me like this is a good example,” said Kristen Thomasen, Associate Professor and Chair in Law Robotics and Society at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law.

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“When law enforcement in Canada first started using drones to capture footage of the ground below, there was always this reaction of, ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’re only going to use it for search and rescue.’ Or, ‘We’re only going to use it in a serious emergency.’ 

“It doesn’t sound like there was a serious emergency happening at CityFolk, and it obviously isn’t a search and rescue. It’s just information gathering.” 

Ottawa police spokesperson Cailey Walker confirmed the use of a drone at CityFolk on Sept. 14 and 15, and at Bluesfest, Ottawa’s biggest summer music festival, which ran from July 6 to 16 at LeBreton Flats Park on the grounds of the Canadian War Museum. She did not specify the dates it was used at Bluesfest.

In an email, Walker said drones are deployed to “ensure public safety,” “assess crowd dynamics” and determine “the appropriate operational deployment of officers.”

“Drones can provide real-time information in relation to overall security of the venues and give event commanders a strategic view where there are large gatherings of people,” Walker wrote. 

They’re also used at “all outdoor activities where police are concerned about public safety,” she added.

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Thomasen considers that rationale inadequate in the discussion of a powerful technology that carries multiple high-resolution cameras, sophisticated sensors and precise GPS capabilities. Drones can take detailed photos, track heat signatures and recognize faces. 

“That’s a very vague justification for operating a drone over a public space, especially given the availability of things like facial-recognition technologies,” she said. “When we don’t have transparency or good clarity on what’s happening or why, I think there’s reason to be concerned about privacy. If every person at that festival could be identified, and the people they were standing with could be identified, a lot of information could be gleaned from that footage.

“We’re talking about greater state surveillance of public spaces, seemingly without concrete reasons, and that’s very concerning,” Thomasen said. “It will be interesting to see if there was ever a Privacy Impact Assessment.” 

A PIA is a document that reflects on the use of technology, demonstrating the impact on people’s privacy and how its use complies with privacy laws.

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Ottawa Police did not confirm whether or not a PIA had been completed. Neither did they respond to a request to see the drone flight logs, which would reveal how often the technology has been deployed and may contain details on why it was used. 

Police also did not answer multiple requests for comment on the use of facial-recognition technology, nor did they respond to questions about the storage of data and images captured by drones.

Regardless, if public safety is the main reason for police monitoring music festivals from the air, festival organizers should be involved in the decision, and be able to let their audiences know in advance, Shannon says. “There is a desire on the part of our members for a more collaborative effort to determine risk assessment and what’s necessary for public safety.”

Currently, festival organizers get a heads-up from police when the drone is in flight, said Mark Monahan, executive and artistic director of Bluesfest and CityFolk. 

“Once it’s up and confirmed it’s up, then they let us know there’s a drone up there,” Monahan said. “If there’s a purpose for it, we’d like to know but we are not informed why it’s up there.” 

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Shannon points out that festival organizers have “decades of data” on the demographics and behaviour patterns of their patrons to help inform a risk assessment. People who attend a Maren Morris concert, for example, are unlikely to cause trouble and probably don’t need the extra oversight of a drone.

Police drones can also change how people experience a festival, as evidenced by Shannon’s reaction during the Morris concert. Thomasen calls the tactic a power move that underscores police authority and demonstrates the expansion of police technologies. 

Shannon also has concerns about copyright infringement if the footage captured by the police drone happens to include snippets of an artist’s performance. 

At the same time, there’s also the question of what happens to the footage after the event. If it’s retained, stored and reviewed at a later date, there are major privacy considerations, Thomasen noted. 

“It would signal to me that they might be looking to use identification technology like facial recognition, and there are utterly enormous privacy concerns when it comes to facial-recognition technology,” she said.

lsaxberg@postmedia.com

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