Image by Douglas Rissing via iStock / Getty Images Plus.The US Secret Service and other agencies plan to deploy “numerous security and surveillance drones” around DC over the next few weeks, the Associated Press reports. That’s remarkable because FAA regulations typically prohibit unmanned aerial vehicle flights in the entire region. But it’s also an acceleration of the security state apparatus that has metastasized around Washington over the last two decades. The drones are part of federal, state, and local agencies’ responses to the three “National Special Security Events” taking place this month: Monday’s certification of the results of the presidential election, Jimmy Carter’s state funeral, and the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20. The US Secret Service typically leads coordination of National Special Security Events. In a statement to Washingtonian, Secret Service spokesperson Nate Herring confirms the agency “will use unmanned aerial vehicles as part of our security plans for this month’s National Special Security Events and the public may see these assets operating both before and during these events.” Herring continues: The Secret Service and our local, state and federal partners employ a multitude of seen and unseen security measures operating in tandem to ensure comprehensive and seamless security plans. To maintain operational security, we are unable to provide additional details. The recent history of law enforcement and aerial surveillance is not an entirely happy one from a civil liberties perspective. Sometimes, they cross the Fourth Amendment line of surveilling private property, as when a New York Police Department helicopter that monitored a bicycle protest in 2005 picked up footage of what the New York Times delicately called “A man and woman who shared an intimate moment on a secluded, dark rooftop.” And other times, as when federal officials used UAVs to monitor the protests that followed George Floyd’s murder, they invite further scrutiny into what courts may consider warrantless surveillance. A federal appeals court in 2021, for example, ruled that the Baltimore Police Department’s six-month-long aerial surveillance program of Baltimore residents was unconstitutional. It’s not clear whether “seen and unseen security measures” will mean eyes in the skies during happenings around the upcoming National Special Security Events, such as the January 18 People’s March or the January 19 Trump rally at Capital One Arena. And to be sure, the drones are only part of a web of plans to prevent anything like what happened on January 6, 2021. But their buzz will arrive on the heels of a national drone panic and in a city where many folks are a bit nervous about what the next four years will bring.The post Look Up, DC: Drones Could Be Watching You first appeared on Washingtonian.