If we have a huge earthquake, everyone will be demanding to know why we don't have enough drones.

use the drones to deliver messages and supplies to ex-Chief Jim Pugel at his Kurtz-like outpost somewhere in SoDo.

Told you all the surveillance stuff would still be there.

All of it.

Not just the drones.

Seriously, do you GET that you're Serfs, not Citizens?

That said @1 is correct- but that's SFD not SPD

No mention of Bruce Harrell's ineffective "opposition"? Lackey for the Police Union, that guy.

You'd think they'd have taken the fucking things up to Snohomish county 72 hours ago where they could do some good.

Meh.

Mayor McGinn shutting down the SPD drone program and declaring that they would be sent back to the vendor was mostly a strike at then-mayoral-candidate Bruce Harrell, who had recently introduced a bill to restrict use of those drones. McGinn stole Harrell's thunder, then let SPD staff continue to do whatever they wanted. That SPD has these outdated machines sitting on a shelf somewhere doesn't worry me much. 2010's $41,000 cop equipment supplier machine is 2015's $400 Sharper Image gadget. These things' batteries last 15 minutes and they can't fly in the rain.

What worries me is that SPD continue to do whatever they damned well please, and none of our elected public servants--not Mike McGinn, not Ed Murray, not City Council (save, maybe, for Sawant)--has demonstrated any willingness to stand up to them. I'm worried that SPD will continue to use their U.S. Department of Homeland Security slush fund to purchase equipment that the public rightfully distrust that they'll use in a constitutional manner. I'm worried that City Council will continue to rubber-stamp SPD's acceptance of federal gifts of surveillance equipment and paramilitary gear.

Our City Council need advice from technologists and privacy advocates in order to fend off the ever-encroaching surveillance state at the local level. They need to examine SPD policies with an eye for loopholes, considering not just how they'll stand up to those police officers with the best of intentions, but how they would stand up to those who regard civil liberties as nothing but an impediment to police work.

Until City Council start taking advice from technologists and privacy advocates, and until they start looking at what SPD staff tell them with a good deal of skepticism, they're going to continue to find themselves blind-sided by police department deployment of equipment used to treat everyone as a potential suspect. In the United States, people are supposed to be treated as innocent until proven guilty. Somebody needs to make that crystal clear to SPD staff.

I'm not surprised at all. Welcome to the Panopticon.

We just have to make sure we can turn the all seeing eyes back on the watchmen as well. Simple. Transparency for all.

@9, Treacle wrote, "Transparency for all."

I prefer to call for institutional transparency and individual privacy. Neither you nor I should be required to live our individual lives in a transparent manner; privacy is a fundamental human right. Government agencies, however, should be required to operate in a transparent manner. Those institutions have no right to privacy. They should be prohibited from operating in secrecy.

The people of this state do not yield their sovereignty to the agencies that serve them. The people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to know.

4 legs good, technology bad.