It's the humans, not the drones, that worry me

Leave town for one lousy weekend and I miss seeing my first drone protest.

Maybe you also missed it when protesters apparently affiliated with Occupy groups in Cedar Rapids and elsewhere in Iowa chanted and marched and beat drums Saturday around the Cherry Building in the New Bohemia neighborhood. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, I was able to witness some of the spectacle, tape delayed.

The object of Occupy's ire is AirCover Integrated Solutions, which is set to start making unmanned surveillance drones in the Cherry Building early next year. The California-based company's product is, basically, a high-tech box with a camera lens and four helicopter-like rotors, weighing less than 5 pounds.

The company's president says it's a perfect tool for search and rescue. The protesters insist it's a perfect tool for a police state. Bring the two together and, for a while, it looked like a less than Very Cherry Holiday for other small business owners in the building looking for holiday shoppers.

“AirCover go home, we don't want surveillance drones,” protesters chanted, among other things. At one point they even tried to convince police who showed up to keep things orderly that drones could take their jobs. “Keep police jobs!” some protesters chanted, briefly.

“Our product is about public safety, about first-responders in a crisis,” said James Hill, AirCover's president. He says the company's drones don't carry weapons, can operate in high winds and see through forest fire smoke.

I certainly sympathize with the worries driving the protest. We've seen a drumbeat in recent years of eroding civil liberties, expanded surveillance and diminished privacy. And frankly, there's been too little public push-back.

But this seems like raging against a tool instead of the policymakers who might misuse it. It's sort of like protesting a pepper spray factory.

AirCover's drones actually could be used to help find a small, lost child who wanders out into the cold, or in any of a number of lifesaving situations when an eye in the sky would be useful. Or, they could be used to conduct legally questionable surveillance of citizens.

The difference between those two scenarios is in the hands of our elected leaders. You can chase AirCover out of town, but that won't make our politicians and law enforcement agencies any more responsible or accountable. In a day and age that's spawned an endless array of privacy-defying technologies, we need wise leaders who understand which lines must not be crossed.

So rail at the drones if you want. But it's the humans I'm worried about.