Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The police in Ixelles and Brussels City are launching a pilot project. They are testing drones with cameras for surveillance until October 30th, 2025. Privacy experts, Citymesh, and Ligue des droits humains raise concerns about privacy and surveillance rules.
The police in Ixelles and Brussels City are launching a pilot project. They are going to use drones with cameras to help them do their job. The drones will be used from April 15th to October 30, 2025. The police said that they will help stop crime, keep things safe, and find out what happened when something bad happens.
They mentioned that the main goal is to make sure that everything the police do is recorded, keep the police safe, and reduce violence or false complaints against them. The drones will be flown by people from a company called Citymesh, but the police will be in charge of what the drones see. The videos from the drones will be kept for a year, but only the police can see them after the first month.
Do Brussels police drones compromise privacy and safety?
A privacy expert is worried about the police in Brussels using drones. He says the police should use methods that don’t affect people’s privacy as much as possible, and using drones flown by a private company doesn’t do that.
He believes the police lack adequate rules for the use of drones and that police officers should not have to be very well trained to use them. He believes the constant use of drones might be an issue for people’s privacy, even though the police occasionally use cameras and drones in unusual circumstances, such as during protests.
“But, as the test phase is now described, you can keep a drone in the air permanently. That is also much more invasive than a normal ANPR camera: you will have a lot of private gardens in view while filming. And then the images are also kept for a year, which is not much different from what China is doing in terms of government surveillance,”
Dobbelaere-Welvaert said.
The Ligue des droits humains, a group that protects human rights, is also concerned about the drone project. They wrote a letter to the city governments of Brussels and Ixelles, saying the project is too broad and doesn’t follow important privacy rules. They think the police should only use drones when it’s necessary, and that using them should be balanced and the least intrusive option.
They believe the drones don’t protect people’s rights enough, and that using them isn’t justified. People are worried about using drones for surveillance in public spaces, especially when private companies are involved and there aren’t clear rules about how the technology can be used.
