Drone sightings are back in New Jersey with creepy privacy concerns

🔴 Camden County police have deployed the region's largest drone fleet

🔴 They're funded by $430,000 in private donations from power brokers

🔴 The ACLU is sounding the alarm, warning drones could lead to unconstitutional spying

Memories from the New Jersey drone hysteria are still fresh, and now South Jersey residents are again looking up to see quadcopters flying overhead.

This time, though, the drones are definitely not aliens, commercial planes, the Pentagon, a foreign adversary, or searching for radioactive materials.

And unlike the December 2024 reports, these drones aren't as large as SUVs. They're as large as any remotely piloted aircraft available to the public, which are usually less than 16 inches wide.

Camden County police expand drone fleet with private funding

At least two of the new drones hovering over the streets in Camden County have been paid for by Democratic power broker George Norcross and NFI trucking CEO Sid Brown. Each donated $215,000. It comes as the Paterson Police Department, under the oversight of the Attorney General's Office, expands its drone fleet.

They add to the new Camden County Police Department drone fleet, which is now nine units strong. It's the largest drone fleet of its kind in South Jersey — a brag for local officials, but a major concern for privacy experts and locals.

As of last month, the Camden County police had 10 trained drone pilots. Police Chief Gabriel Rodriguez said these drones can be used to track ATVs on city streets and stolen vehicles, find missing people and illegal firearms, and identify illegal dumping.

“Having the ability to launch these drones from rooftops across the city is an ideal investment for us and allows us to achieve our objectives without having to borrow equipment from other agencies. These new resources have already been utilized in several situations," Rodriguez said.

High-tech surveillance and eye-in-the-sky policing

Launching drones from the rooftops also lets police stay on top of emergencies anywhere in Camden. This eye-in-the-sky support is monitored from the drone operations center at police headquarters, where dozens of screens show every angle from drones and street cameras alike.

This surveillance modernization is not limited to Camden, which has experienced an inspiring decline in violent crime. In North Jersey, the Paterson Police Department, under the oversight of the Attorney General's Office, is also expanding its drone fleet.

But more drones also raise questions around technology misuse in Camden, a city that had its police department disbanded only 13 years ago, following a loss of public trust.

Each year, the Attorney General's Office names and shames police officers for misconduct. That includes abuses of technology, such as unauthorized searches of police databases to gather information for personal reasons. The American Civil Liberties Union has also flagged automated license plate readers as ripe for abuse.

ACLU warns of privacy violations and Fourth Amendment rights

Camden County police Lt. Gordon Harvey, who oversees the drones, tells NJ.com that they follow best practices established by the OAG. And Camden County spokesman Dan Keashen said to WHYY that they follow rules about how long recordings are kept.

But Daniel Reisman, a staff attorney for the New Jersey chapter of the ACLU, says the public has no idea what the police department's policy actually is.

"We don't know if a pilot is going to be able to use this without oversight, whether or not their use of it is going to be audited by another officer. Will they fly drones to look into people's backyards at people sunbathing? These questions might sound silly but they are the sorts of abuses we see when it comes to surveillance tech," Reisman said.

Even if police drone pilots are following best practices, the use of surveillance cameras on quadcopters has made Camden residents uncomfortable. They'll be outside, look up, and see a drone over their home.

And drones don't need warrants, unless they're flying low to look into homes or other private buildings. In Camden, they can fly almost anywhere for 12 hours a day, seven days a week.

These drones with high-resolution cameras will be used to keep tabs on people, Reisman said. He says it's not paranoia; in Maryland, the Baltimore Police Department’s aerial surveillance program was ruled unconstitutional after an ACLU civil rights lawsuit. It found that constant surveillance, without a specific crime, was a violation of privacy rights enshrined in the Constitution.

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