How Can a Drone Be Used for Surveillance

When a mission is considered dangerous, dirty or annoying to humans, UAVs are desirable and used for such operations. Unmanned aerial vehicles have different purposes, but one of its most useful goals is tracking and monitoring. Popularly known as drones, UAVs have become an essential gadget for the law enforcement agencies. Individuals and actors are also seeking its usage for personal and private purposes. Surveillance drones have different sizes and capabilities. Many of them can be launched manually, while some are as large as an airplane.

Components of UAVs

Although some surveillance drones are installed with facial recognition applications, heat sensors, infrared technologies, motion detectors, live feed cameras, GPS, dash cam, license plate reader, and speakers for listening to conversations. Tiny drones will easily go unnoticed through the window or in a restricted area without people noticing that someone is spying on them. The notable thing about UAVs is that it is easy for anyone to fly. In fact, a drone can be remotely controlled or automatically controlled depending on the objectives of the pilot.

Usefulness of UAVs

Surveillance UAVs are often equipped with sophisticated imaging gadgets that offer the detailed flyer photographs of people, terrain, vehicles, homes, and even minuscule objects. They are designed to perform surveillance project that former monitoring techniques cannot carry out due to their limited capabilities. UAVs have been successfully deployed to support missions like fugitive investigations, drug bust interdictions, kidnappings, and search and rescue operations. Some years back, the FBI has successfully implemented UAV in more than eight operations, two of which jeopardized concerns about national security. UAVs can be used for emergencies and catastrophe management, national weather service and traffic management, and crisis/crowd control management. Flying just one drone for surveillance is like having 20 police officers on patrol. Yes, that’s the fact.
UAV Users and Privacy Issues

Due to their small size which makes them undetectable in urban and rural areas, UAVs will continue to fulfill the functionality and efficiency of current police tasks. UAVs are not only available to law enforcement agencies; it is also used as a hidden camera by companies and private individuals. But when used by entities, apart from government agencies will endanger the privacy of individuals. Technological companies are using surveillance drones to monitor the movement of celebrities and governmental officials; they also take their pictures without their consent. Private investigators have also deployed the use of surveillance drones to track and monitor their targets, thus waiting for “prey” to fall into the bait. Technological giants like Google also make use of this surveillance drones to update Google Earth and Maps. The elements of the underworld are not excluded. They use the UAV gadgets to stalk and track their victims.

Advantages of UAVs

The pros of UAVs for surveillance outnumber the cons. With UAVs, smuggling, trafficking, theft, and terrorism can be carefully monitored and controlled. Natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, earthquakes, iceberg breakage and floods can be controlled and humans evacuated to avoid losing lives. Finally, surveillance can be placed on poaching, road traffic, and others. Surveillance drones are here to stay, and by 2020 there will be saturation of drones all over the world. Then drones will be our new form of kite.

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