Abstract
Comparing Australian and Canadian government attempts to regulate aerial surveillance technology provides an interesting window into how unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance, and surveillance technologies more broadly, are enabled and constrained by factors beyond the conventional purview of national security and law enforcement activities. This chapter examines current uses of UAVs in Australia and Canada, and considers the associated legal, privacy and social implications of their use in each jurisdiction. The chapter considers how institutional drivers and regulatory responses to UAV technologies in each country—shaped by a configuration of transport safety requirements, privacy regimes, technical developments, laws, and social norms—inform different pathways of emergence of UAV technologies and strategies of surveillance in national security and law enforcement.
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Notes
- 1.
For this reason UAV surveillance will not supplant more efficient modes of terrestrial intelligence-collection, such as accessing stored telecommunications data.
- 2.
Making matters worse, warranting processes under the Surveillance Devices Act place relatively weak limitations on subsequent disclosures of the collected information.
- 3.
CAP was identified only in abbreviated form in the obtained RCMP internal documents and, given this, we cannot provide its full definition or RCMP affiliation.
- 4.
It is unclear exactly whether “available” refers to strict ownership or whether vehicles are tasked from the USA, Defence, or another source.
- 5.
Provincial and municipal law enforcement agencies are also subject to provincial legislation and regulations in addition to the federal requirements, though we do not deal with these in detail.
- 6.
The Bill identifies the following 17 institutions and departments: Canadian Border Services Agency; Canada Revenue Agency; Canadian Armed Forces; Canadian Food Inspection Agency; Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission; Canadian Security Intelligence Services; Canadian Communication Security Establishment (CSE); Citizen and Immigration; Finance, Foreign Affairs Trade and Development; Health; National Defence; Public Safety; Transport Canada; FINTRAC; Public Health Agency; Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This list can expand or contract under ministerial authorisation.
- 7.
For a review of how PIPEDA applies to UAV surveillance in Canada, see Bracken-Roche et al. 2014.
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Molnar, A., Parsons, C. (2016). Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Law Enforcement in Australia and Canada: Governance Through ‘Privacy’ in an Era of Counter-Law?. In: Lippert, R., Walby, K., Warren, I., Palmer, D. (eds) National Security, Surveillance and Terror. Crime Prevention and Security Management. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43243-4_10
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