“The agency issued more waivers between April 2025 and February 2026 than it had in the previous seven years combined.”
Over 1,000 agencies now hold FAA waivers to fly automated police drones, up from 976 total across the program’s entire first seven years. The FAA streamlined the paperwork and the floodgates opened. A drone sees into backyards, onto roofs and through windows from a distance where nobody knows it is there, and the footage feeds the same plate-reader pipelines everything else does. The label is first responder. The capability is persistent aerial surveillance with no warrant attached.