A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance
A Leak of San Francisco Police Drone Footage Exposes the New Reality of Urban Surveillance
旧金山警方无人机监控视频泄露，揭示城市监控新现实
Just after noon on a Saturday last month, a Skydio X10 quadcopter hovered about 200 feet over a San Francisco apartment complex, watching police chase a man hiding behind a parked car. The target of this manhunt lay down on the pavement, apparently unaware that he remained in full view of the flying eye overhead. The 5-pound drone had, in fact, already followed him across the city, zooming in on his black SUV’s license plate, keeping the vehicle locked at the center of its video frame until he pulled over. Now it watched the police as they closed in and surrounded him. 上个月的一个周六中午刚过，一架 Skydio X10 四轴无人机悬停在旧金山一处公寓大楼上方约 200 英尺处，监视着警察追捕一名躲在停放车辆后的男子。这名被追捕的目标趴在人行道上，显然没有意识到自己仍完全暴露在头顶那只“飞行之眼”的注视下。事实上，这架 5 磅重的无人机此前已在城市中追踪了他一路，不仅放大了他黑色 SUV 的车牌，还将车辆锁定在视频画面的中心，直到他靠边停车。现在，它正注视着警察靠近并将他包围。
As the officers approached, the man adjusted his hiding spot, moving to the other side of the parked car. At that moment, however, another Skydio drone zoomed in on his location, one of four Skydio quadcopters that had followed the man in just the prior hour. This one had been called away from a nearby McDonald’s, where it had been watching two people who’d exited the suspect’s car a few minutes earlier—and now began watching him from a second angle. 当警察靠近时，该男子调整了藏身处，移动到停放车辆的另一侧。然而就在那一刻，另一架 Skydio 无人机放大了他的位置——这已经是过去一小时内追踪该男子的四架 Skydio 四轴无人机之一。这架无人机原本在附近的一家麦当劳执行任务，监视着几分钟前从嫌疑人车上下来的两人，现在它开始从另一个角度监视这名男子。
Within seconds, three officers converged on the man, two pointing weapons at him, then tackled him as half a dozen more police arrived on the scene. Police records provided to WIRED by the San Francisco Police Department show the entire street-and-sky response followed from what the SFPD described as an alleged “auto boost/strip” incident—the suspected theft of car parts or another object from a vehicle. 几秒钟内，三名警察围住了该男子，其中两人用武器指向他，随后将其扑倒，此时又有六名警察赶到现场。旧金山警察局（SFPD）提供给《连线》（WIRED）的记录显示，整个“空地联动”的响应行动源于 SFPD 所称的一起所谓的“汽车零件盗窃”事件——即涉嫌从车辆上窃取零件或其他物品。
Drone footage exposed at a public web address shows how a quadcopter zoomed in on an SUV’s license plate, tracked it through traffic, then followed the driver as he exited the car and ran into an apartment complex. The suspect hid behind a vehicle, then adjusted his hiding place, yet was still visible to a second drone that arrived on the scene—one of four that tracked his location in a single hour and then captured police tackling him—all in response to what the SFPD describes as an alleged “auto boost/strip” incident, the theft of car parts or another object from a vehicle. 在一个公开网页地址上泄露的无人机画面显示，一架四轴无人机如何放大 SUV 的车牌，在车流中进行追踪，随后跟随驾驶员下车并跑进公寓大楼。嫌疑人躲在车辆后，随后调整了藏身处，但仍被第二架赶到现场的无人机发现——这是在一小时内追踪他位置的四架无人机之一，并记录下了警察扑倒他的过程。这一切仅仅是为了应对 SFPD 所描述的一起所谓的“汽车零件盗窃”事件。
This glimpse of modern drone-enabled police surveillance, including the highly sensitive video of the man’s physical takedown, wasn’t voluntarily released by the SFPD—which, like most US police departments, rarely releases drone videos even in response to public records requests. Instead, it was accidentally livestreamed onto the open internet via Skydio’s website. That’s where two security researchers, Sam Curry and Maik Robert, discovered that the SFPD was leaking all of the real-time footage from five of its surveillance drones, including both color and thermal imaging, accompanying location metadata, and the drone pilots’ names and email addresses, to anyone who merely found the public web address where the videos were hosted. 这种现代无人机警务监控的一瞥，包括该男子被武力制服的高度敏感视频，并非由 SFPD 自愿发布——像大多数美国警察部门一样，即使在收到公共记录请求时，他们也极少发布无人机视频。相反，这些视频是通过 Skydio 的网站意外地直播到了开放互联网上。两名安全研究员 Sam Curry 和 Maik Robert 正是在那里发现，SFPD 将其五架监控无人机的所有实时画面（包括彩色和热成像影像）、随附的位置元数据，以及无人机操作员的姓名和电子邮件地址，泄露给了任何找到该托管视频的公共网页地址的人。
Curry and Robert say they reported their discovery to Skydio around two days after discovering it, and it was quickly taken offline. By then, though, the researchers had watched police carry out what appeared to be multiple arrests and searches as well as tracking cars and individuals from the sky, all visible at a fully public web address. Curry 和 Robert 表示，他们在发现这一漏洞约两天后向 Skydio 进行了报告，随后该页面被迅速下线。然而在那之前，研究人员已经目睹了警方执行了多次看似逮捕和搜查的行动，以及从空中追踪车辆和个人的过程，所有这些在一个完全公开的网页地址上都清晰可见。
“There’s a certain trust given to the police to use these things correctly,” says Curry. “When you’re watching a drone feed live, you can look into dozens of different apartments, you can see police zooming in on people, you can see arrests. The fact that all of this was exposed feels like a really big issue from a privacy perspective.” “人们给予警方一定的信任，相信他们能正确使用这些设备，”Curry 说，“当你实时观看无人机画面时，你可以窥视几十个不同的公寓，你可以看到警察放大拍摄人们，你可以看到逮捕过程。所有这些被曝光的事实，从隐私角度来看是一个非常严重的问题。”
The leaked feed of video captures two forced detentions—whether any actual arrests were made is unclear from the footage—a police visit to an apartment in a high-rise apartment building, and an apparent search of an alley populated with homeless people, as well as numerous other more ambiguous instances where police used drones to surveil individuals, vehicles, or buildings. While the feed remained live, Curry and Robert began archiving the public stream of data and videos and later shared the results with WIRED. 泄露的视频流记录了两次强制拘留（从画面中无法确定是否进行了实际逮捕）、警方对一栋高层公寓楼内某住户的访问、对一条流浪者聚集的小巷的搜查，以及许多其他警方使用无人机监视个人、车辆或建筑的模糊案例。在视频流保持在线期间，Curry 和 Robert 开始对公共数据流和视频进行归档，并随后与《连线》分享了这些结果。
The archive Curry and Robert captured offers a detailed record of SFPD drone operations over about 48 hours in mid-June. It includes 60 videos from 20 separate flights, with each mission recorded from three feeds: a color camera, a thermal camera that renders people as heat signatures, and a third view from the drone’s rooftop dock. WIRED analyzed all 20 color videos with software that detects people, vehicles, and other objects in images. The review found that the cameras had filmed hundreds of people and vehicles across the 20 flights. In a single frame, as a drone hovered over a downtown intersection, the software counted 34 people crossing the street or standing on the sidewalks. Across all of the videos the footage showed clear faces of dozens of people. Curry 和 Robert 捕获的档案提供了 6 月中旬约 48 小时内 SFPD 无人机行动的详细记录。它包括来自 20 次独立飞行任务的 60 段视频，每项任务都从三个视角记录：彩色摄像头、将人呈现为热特征的热成像摄像头，以及来自无人机屋顶停机坪的第三视角。《连线》使用能够检测图像中人员、车辆和其他物体的软件分析了所有 20 段彩色视频。审查发现，这些摄像头在 20 次飞行中拍摄了数百人和车辆。在其中一帧画面中，当无人机悬停在市中心十字路口上方时，软件统计出有 34 人正在过马路或站在人行道上。在所有视频中，画面清晰地显示了数十人的面孔。
Together, the videos amount to more than three hours of aerial color footage and roughly the same amount of thermal footage. The archive also includes second-by-second telemetry logs for every flight—more than 5,000 GPS points in all tracing over some 44 miles—recording each drone’s latitude and longitude, altitude, speed, heading, and battery level from takeoff to landing. Six SFPD pilots’ names and email addresses also appear across the logs. 这些视频总计超过三小时的空中彩色画面，以及大致相同长度的热成像画面。该档案还包括每次飞行的逐秒遥测日志——总共超过 5,000 个 GPS 点，追踪轨迹约 44 英里——记录了每架无人机从起飞到降落的经纬度、高度、速度、航向和电池电量。六名 SFPD 飞行员的姓名和电子邮件地址也出现在日志中。
Skydio, based in nearby San Mateo, is one of the leading American drone companies selling to police departments, fire departments, government agencies, and the military. Its X10 drones are part of SFPD’s drone program, which began in 2024 and is authorized for vehicle pursuits and active criminal investigations. Since then, the program has grown quickly: SFPD’s fleet has expanded from six drones to 98, and officers logged more than 1,400. 总部位于附近圣马特奥市的 Skydio 是美国领先的无人机公司之一，其客户包括警察局、消防局、政府机构和军方。其 X10 无人机是 SFPD 无人机项目的一部分，该项目始于 2024 年，获准用于车辆追捕和主动刑事调查。自那时起，该项目发展迅速：SFPD 的无人机机队已从 6 架增加到 98 架，警员记录的飞行次数已超过 1,400 次。