Governor McAuliffe will soon have to decide whether to veto a bill that limits police use of drones without search warrants or accept the fact that the Senate decided to reject his amendments. That’s just one of the bills that the General Assembly debated today during its annual Reconvened Session.
The bill requires law enforcement to obtain search warrants to deploy drones. The governor’s amendments would allow evidence obtained by drones WITHOUT warrants to be used in criminal proceedings. Senator Richard Stuart argued that those changes weakened the bill—and left it up to an agency to reveal if it's engaged in an active criminal investigation.
“They could just fly drones seven days a week, 24 hours a day, doing surveillance on us and our constiuants – and they’d never have to have a warrant for that.”
But bill sponsor Senator Donald McEachin, using a hypothetical example, said the amendments preserve the bill’s intent.
“If a human being, a police officer, observed that hand to hand combat, the evidence would be used in the same way as it would be with a drone. All these amendments do is put drones and human beings on the same level playing field.”
The Senate rejected the amendments. The governor’s vetoes that were SUSTAINED include bills to allow home-schooled students to play public school sports AND to require General Assembly approval before the state adopts Common Core standards.
