Growing number of universities want to fly drones over campus -

Growing number of universities want to fly drones over campus - 


As college students are finding themselves, are schools using drones to find them?
Thirty-four colleges and universities applied for permission to fly unmanned surveillance drones over campuses across the country in 2012, according to records obtained by a privacy watchdog group. The schools cite plans for a wide array of scientific research, yet activists and privacy experts are nevertheless concerned about the high-flying spies.
“I find it troubling that this is the first most students have heard of secret plans to fly military-grade spy machines high above their dorms, classrooms and quads,” Josiah Ryan, editor-in-chief of conservative education blog Campus Reform, told FoxNews.com.
"The constitutional right to privacy does not end on campus. The presidents of each of these 34 institutions owe their students, donors and taxpayers an explanation."

The use of unmanned drones has soared in the U.S. military, which has come to rely on the robotic planes for targeted attacks and covert spying worldwide. Domestically, drone use has skyrocketed as well: More than 80 applications for drone-flying permits were filed with the Federal Aviation Administration in 2012, including more than thirty universities, according to records obtained by watchdog group the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“We were concerned about the domestic use of drones. Especially about who would be using them,” Jennifer Lynch, staff attorney for the EFF, told FoxNews.com. “It’s been good to get the information because people can go informed with questions to their local officials.”
The lists of higher-learning institutions that have applied for the drone permits include:
Cornell University, which applied for a permit to use a university-built unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to collect atmosphere and weather data as well as to track airborne spores in a study drafted to combat potato blight. The study was done in 2012 and the permit has since expired, and school officials say they have no other active permits.
the University of Michigan for use on Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay for “persistent surveillance on open water by gathering data as a drifting surface buoy that repositions via flight.”
the University of Florida, which applied for a permit to fly a NOVA “in support of ongoing aerospace, geomatics, ecological and aquatic research.”
the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the purpose of attaching a camera to a remotely controlled plane to take “low-altitude pictures” for a river restoration project.
One campus public safety organization even applied to use drones to assist in monitoring the school grounds.


Read more: - 

http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/02/28/high-flying-drones-over-halls-higher-ed/