Canada_ (Commonwealth) _ a vehicle collision in Hamilton’s rural area on a lookout for a missing senior woman. The CFL Grey Cup in 2021. a demonstration during Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s visit. Even though the events and occurrences were very diverse, they all had one thing: a Hamilton Police Service (HPS) drone was hovering overhead and keeping watch.
Police departments across Canada, including those in Charlottetown, Fredericton, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Winnipeg, are using the technology more frequently. Drone usage by Hamilton police started in 2021, but the HPS hasn’t shared much information about them or the procedures for utilizing them.
By failing to post a page describing the drone program to its website for two years, they also demonstrate that the HPS did not adhere to a portion of its own PIA. The HPS drone PIA was examined by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and three privacy experts. They applauded the police for conducting the review but noted its shortcomings. According to Brenda McPhail, head of the CCLA’s privacy, technology, and surveillance program, “It all sounds very orderly, and considerate, and thought through, but there are red flags.”
The PIA doesn’t address arming drones or employing contentious technologies, such as face recognition, to analyze drone photos. McMaster’s Fake Homecoming, protests and demonstrations at city hall, and Supercrawl, the yearly downtown music and arts street festival, according to the HPS’s then-police chief, Eric Girt, who made this recommendation to the police services board in 2020. According to a tweet from HPS, Hamilton police utilized drones at least once in 2021, at the Grey Cup game in December.
According to Bharaj, the HPS spent a total of $30,000 on four drones, including two that the police department purchased in 2022. The majority of trips between January 2022 and 2022 lasted a few minutes or a few hours, although one voyage lasted about nine hours.
