The latest innovation to battle thousands of migrants attempting illegal Channel crossings from northern France to England has been thwarted on legal grounds. Plans to fly police drones detecting and monitoring the organization and launch of illicit passages have been grounded by French laws as violating individual privacy rights.
French laws ground police UAV for video surveillance
The development is only the most recent setback for French police officials seeking to use drones in surveillance operations – only to be barred from doing so over privacy rights concerns. Indeed, the new ruling protecting migrants attempting illegal crossing in order to apply for asylum in England is an extension of earlier decisions banning uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAV) as policing tools. Three separate motions on that activity have successively clipped the wings of drone-flying French cops, with an interpretation last weekend broadening what had largely a domestic privacy rights issue to…
