Surveillance drones fly over protests in the United States | Press review n°10
I selected important news on artificial intelligence during the week of June 9 to 15, 2025. Here's my commentary.
Welcome to the tenth press review of Artificial reality. This week I focused on the protests in the United States and their implications regarding surveillance, including with artificial intelligence. Have a good read!
📰 Read
Surveillance drones fly over protests in the United States
Many cities in the United States have been the scene of protests this week, some of them violent. In the face of the popular turmoil, the federal government deployed very advanced surveillance tools.
The demonstrations started on Friday, June 6 in Los Angeles, when dozens of people gathered in front of a clothing wholesaler after federal agents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrived in two armored trucks and other unmarked vehicles. Other immigration sweeps were conducted in the city that day, one of them at a Home Depot.
Revolting against the many raids on migrants and undocumented people that are carried out throughout the country, the protesters rapidly grew in number in downtown Los Angeles before they were dispersed by officers from the Department of Homeland Security, who fired pepper balls at them.
The next day, the protests also spread to Paramount, a small city about 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of downtown Los Angeles. Around 6 p.m. Pacific, President Donald Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard members to Los Angeles to assist federal officers conducting immigration operations.
The revolts kept growing the following days and became more violent. They took place in at least two dozen other cities on Monday. On Tuesday, hundreds of Army Marines sent by the Trump administration arrived in the Los Angeles area.
Officers Confront L.A. Protesters for Third Day in Conflict Over ICE Raids (The New York Times)
The protests reached a peak on Saturday with around 2,000 events across the country under the banner “No Kings”, while a military parade celebrating the US Army 250th anniversary was happening in Washington. The demonstrators wanted to denounce the anti-immigration policy of Donald Trump and his decision to send the military in the streets of Los Angeles against the will of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a choice they saw as an abuse of power.
‘No Kings’ Protests Contrast With Trump’s Parade (The New York Times)
Surveillance drones
While the streets in Los Angeles were restless, the sky above the protests was just as busy. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency flew several Predator drones over the rallies on Sunday, June 8, 404 Media revealed in an article published on Tuesday.
The Predator drones, military vehicles with 66 feet (20 meters) wings, are infamous for carrying out drone strikes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. But they are also used as surveillance tools inside the United States.
In a second article published on 404 Media, journalist Joseph Cox quotes a statement from the CBP, who recognized it was using these drones in Los Angeles to support their federal law enforcement partners, including ICE, with aerial support of their operations. It added that it was “not engaged in the surveillance of first amendment activities”. The first amendment protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly, among other rights.
However, Joseph Cox states that these drones flew repeatedly above Paramount the day after the anti-ICE protests started in that city and the same day in downtown Los Angeles, where much of the protest activity was happening.
Wired considers that it is “unclear” how the Predator surveillance could support ICE agents and other federal law enforcement without monitoring the protests and capturing images of participants.
“I have all of you on camera”
Drones are not the only aerial surveillance tool at the disposition of law enforcement. On Sunday, June 8, a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter flew over a crowd on 1st Street while an agent announced via the loudspeaker: “I have all of you on camera. I’m going to come to your house”, the Los Angeles Times reported.
This threat, which suggests that the police could be using artificial intelligence tools like facial recognition to identify and retaliate against protesters, was greeted with extreme concern by civil liberties and digital privacy groups, according to the media Mother Jones. Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, considers that “the real fear has always been that a helicopter or a drone will fly over a crowd and generate a list of all the people who have attended the protest. At that point it’s a recipe for reprisals and retribution by the police for your politics.”
How Governments Spy On Protestors—And How To Avoid It (Wired)
Aerial surveillance during protests is not a new practice. In May 2020, a Predator drone flew over Minneapolis amid demonstrations against police violence that started after the death of George Floyd. A month later, The New York Times reported that aerial surveillance had also been used in fourteen other cities during these demonstrations. Surveillance flights were also conducted over Baltimore in 2015 during the protests that happened following the death of Freddie Gray.
In 2020, Vice revealed that the Customs and Border Protection was regularly flying Predator drones over American cities for surveillance. In 2014, the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated that this agency had flown its drones 700 times between 2010 and 2012 on behalf of local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE.
Many surveillance methods
It’s probable that other surveillance tools were used by law enforcement during the rallies on the day of the military parade in Washington, according to The Verge.
In addition to drones and facial recognition, the media mentions automatic license plate readers, cell site simulators (which collect information on mobiles phones within a certain perimeter) and geofence warrants (which require a technology company to hand over information on all the users present at a certain time in a given area).
Other surveillance sources include Amazon Ring cameras, location data obtained via smartphones apps and data brokers, emotions analysis systems, and shops' cameras.
The list doesn’t stop here: the driverless cars Waymo are equipped with 29 external cameras, providing a simultaneous 360° view around the vehicle. These cars are driving in several cities in the United States and their company has already shared video footage with police repeatedly. Tesla cars also embark many cameras, raising doubts about the lack of privacy for drivers and other people around.
The Truth About Burning Waymos (Taylor Lorenz)
Seven important news this week
Silicon Valley tech execs are joining the US Army Reserve (TechCrunch)
Microsoft is prepping an AI Copilot for the Pentagon (Business Insider)
Algorithmic Arms Race: How Tech is Fueling Weapons Systems and Mass Surveillance (Technology Made Simple)
Apple’s new research paper says AI reasoning isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (The Verge)
They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling (The New York Times)
Zuckerberg Is Personally Recruiting New ‘Superintelligence’ AI Team at Meta (Bloomberg)
AI Therapy Bots Are Conducting 'Illegal Behavior,' Digital Rights Organizations Say (404 Media)
Read the other articles of the week I have selected by clicking here.
🎥 Watch
Inside the investigation about drones
In the new episode of the 404 Media podcast, journalist Joseph Cox explains how he discovered that the United States government was flying surveillance drones over the protests in Los Angeles and Paramount.
Seven important videos this week
Fake LA Riots Video Tricks Internet With AI (Breaking Points)
Military Parades on Trump’s Birthday, While Troops Deploy in US Cities Against Protests (BreakThrough News)
Palantir Exposed: The New Deep State (Glenn Greenwald)
Watch a Tesla with FSD ignore a stop sign and run over a child-sized dummy (The Verge)
Apple Execs on AI Setbacks, What Went Wrong with Siri and More (The Wall Street Journal)
Yuval Noah Harari on AI and Human Evolution (The Wall Street Journal)
AI Job Loss & the Rise of Techno-Feudalism (Daniel Pinchbeck)
Watch the other videos of the week I have selected by clicking here.
🔈 Listen
Chatbots misinform about the LA protests
In the new episode of Wired’s Uncanny Valley podcast, journalists Zoë Schiffer and Leah Feiger explain that Grok and ChatGPT delivered incorrect answers about the anti-ICE protest in Los Angeles, sometimes inflaming online tensions.
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Have a good week,
Arnaud
