Victoria Police Suggest Using Drones for Public Surveillance

The Assistant Commissioner of Victoria Police has suggested that UAVs may be used for surveillance during public events such as football finals and festivals for irregular behaviour.

Victoria Police has announced its counter-terrorism strategy for the next three years, with Assistant Commissioner Ross Guenther suggesting that UAVs might be used to monitor crowd behaviour.

Whilst this technique is not referred to directly in the strategy document, Mr. Guenther made reference to a presentation from a drone provider on police applications of their technology, and emphasised the need to utilise the latest technology when announcing the new strategy.

The strategy would also require all serving officers to undertake a training course to identify individuals seen to be at risk of radicalisation.

Guenther commented, “Say you went to the Myer Music Bowl, and you took a backpack with you. You drop the backpack down, but then you just left the property, that would be irregular behaviour. If we had a drone in the area using that sort of functionality, it would identify this sort of behaviour and send that information back to police command post. The intention is to protect the community and it’s not that we’re using that technology 24 hours a day at all our meeting places.”