With 45 drones deployed since last week, the Bengaluru city police says they are enforcing the lockdown better.
“The drones are like a third eye in the sky and give us a quick grasp of what’s happening on the ground. We don’t have to depend on a third party,” city police commissioner Bhaskar Rao told Metrolife.
Images captured by drones are directly beamed into the police control room.
“This is what we call drone patrolling. The drone rises high in the air and scours every minute detail on the ground. What manpower on foot achieves in 15 minutes the drone achieves in less than 30 seconds,” Rao says.
This means that the police can monitor and track areas lane by lane and find out where social distancing has been compromised, he explains.
Around 15,000 police personnel are on duty at any given time and the drones have now become a constant companion. Each police station is allotted three to six drones.
Deputy commissioner of police (Bengaluru South) Dr Rohini Katoch Sepat has six drones in her
jurisdiction. “Drones give us real time feedback about the ‘bandobast’ required. I get an exact idea of how many people to deploy. It gives us an understanding of the movement of people. We deploy men accordingly and are able to implement the lockdown more effectively now,” she says.
Drones can deliver face grabs of those violating lockdown rules. “We have been able to track them and warn them. This has helped them mend their behaviour to a large extent,” she says.
Rohini says the drones have been particularly effective in patrolling the low-income neighbourhoods.
Are use of drones intrusive? Here’s a perspective
Aayush Rathi, programme officer, The Centre for Internet & Society says, “It appears that drones made by a popular manufacturer, DJI, are being used by law enforcement in several states. DJI drone fall afoul of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) directions that require integration with DGCA’s No-Permission No-Take off (NPNT) platform.”
He points out that drones can be useful in the current situation for the delivery of essential items, especially in remote locations and designated hotspots. “However, there is a strong tendency for the use of such technological tools to display function creep. There are talks about fitting drones with Aadhaar linked-facial recognition cameras to test people, and surveil their movements,” he cautions.
About whether this technology is intrusive, Aayush, says “Technology such as CCTVs, drones and FRT operate at a distance which makes their privacy intrusion especially pervasive. The deployment of drones is also an open-and-shut case of the discarding of the right to privacy laid out by the Supreme Court in Puttaswamy I.”
He also feels that historically, surveillance systems have been used to control and manage
populations, especially those in the low-income groups. “It is necessary to strongly push back on these techno-solutionist approaches right now. It is also pertinent to hold the state and law enforcement accountable in a post-Covid19 world to ensure that these systems are discarded and their use is not normalised,” he suggests.
Drones act as a deterrent
Dr Kiran Kumar, director of Vishal Infrastruture Limited, joined hands with Abhishek Burman, founder-director of General Aeronautics and his team, to develop the drone at the request of city police commissioner Bhaskar Rao. Dr Kiran Kumar shares details with Metrolife.
Do you think drones were necessary?
The magnitude of a continuous lockdown needs more than conventional ways of monitoring. Drones can capture images of large areas and also stream real-time video to pilots. This helps police personnel monitor their jurisdiction from a selected few places. It also avoids putting police personnel in harm.
What are the unique features of this drone?
It is a heavy-lift hexacopter (6 rotors), fitted with a megaphone with a 500-metre audio range. It weighs about six kg and has a communication range of 5 km and service altitude of 100 m. It is equipped with a GPS system. The drone is used to monitor the lockdown and sealed-off areas. The megaphone has live audio transmission from the ground station so that police can give live instructions when they spot gatherings.
What is the storage capacity?
100 GB. The drone is tamper-proof with the onboard video having 128-bit encryption. The radio signals for controlling the drone are also protected by specific frequency modulation.
Do drones act as a deterrent?
A drone in the sky acts as a deterrent for those wanting to break the law or come out during a curfew. It also saves time and resources for the police.
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