Baltimore's Surveillance Plane: The legal implications of “the spy plane”

Baltimore's Surveillance Plane: The legal implications of “the spy plane”

This year, Baltimore will become the first city in the country to openly subject its citizens to continuous aerial video surveillance. This follows 2016's secret flights, which were first exposed in the Bloomberg Businessweek story, “Secret Cameras Record Baltimore’s Every Move From Above.” Plenty of public debate followed the Bloomberg story, but there was little public understanding of how the plane operated.

As Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison announced at the end of last year, the city will begin a pilot program in May with Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS), the company that created the surveillance plane. PSS’s plane collects continuous day time recordings of Baltimore City. Both the Baltimore Police and PSS creator Ross McNutt have promised transparency about the plane’s activities this time around.

Along with ongoing questions raised by city officials and activists about the plane's effectiveness in helping solve violent crimes, continuous aerial video surveillance raises many legal concerns.

Back in 2016, Baltimore criminal defense attorney—and former candidate for Baltimore State's Attorney—Ivan Bates represented a client who was shot by Baltimore Police. This shooting was captured by the surveillance plane, as reported in, Baltimore Beat’s “Aerial Surveillance Returns: Debate over its effectiveness continues and documents show the spy plane captured a police shooting in 2016.” The officers who shot Bates’s client were later federally-indicted as part of the ongoing Gun Trace Task Force scandal. But police and prosecutors prevented Bates from knowing exactly what the plane captured of his clients’ shooting until years after his client was shot. Earlier this year, Bates was granted access to view the surveillance plane footage and worked with PSS's McNutt to understand how the plane works. This first-hand experience gives Bates a unique perspective into the technology behind the surveillance plane.

Come out to the University of Baltimore Law School at 7:00 pm on February 25th to participate in a discussion with Bates and reporter Brandon Soderberg about how the spy plane works and the legal—and political—implications of its use. Soderberg has covered the surveillance plane since 2016 and has a book coming out about the Gun Trace Task Force later this year.