This is the best summary I could come up with:

If there’s a drone flying over your backyard party this Labor Day / J’Ouvert / West Indian Day Parade weekend in New York City, it might be the police — because the NYPD have apparently granted themselves the power to surveil the city that way.

“If a caller states there is a large crowd, a large party in the backyard, we’re going to be utilizing our assets to go up, go check on the party,” said assistant NYPD commissioner Kaz Daughtry, at a live press conference earlier today.

Police also promised in 2021 that drones would not be used “in areas where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy without NYPD personnel first obtaining a search warrant that explicitly authorizes the use.” I am not a lawyer, but a quick search suggests that New York state residents have at least some expectation of privacy in their own backyard.

It’s possible the NYPD is exploiting a loophole in the POST Act, where the agency can decide a new tool is an “enhancement” to an existing tech policy, like we discussed the last time the NYPD stretched the drone rules with “remote-piloted public messaging capabilities.” But it’s supposed to add them to the document when it does so.

San Francisco has even been debating whether to allow police robots to kill dangerous suspects.

If you do get a police drone flyover, the NYPD should theoretically delete the recording within 30 days.

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