ACLU of Hawaiʻi Opposes HPD’s Drone As First Responder Program, Calls for Independent Oversight and Civil Liberties Safeguards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 6, 2026

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Nanea Lo, Communications Manager
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Sergio Alcubilla, Community Engagement Director
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ACLU OF HAWAIʻI OPPOSES HPD’S DRONE AS FIRST RESPONDER PROGRAM, CALLS FOR INDEPENDENT OVERSIGHT AND CIVIL LIBERTIES SAFEGUARDS

HONOLULU, Hawaiʻi— The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaiʻi (“ACLU of Hawaiʻi”) today issued a statement opposing the Honolulu Police Department's newly launched Drone as First Responder (“DFR”) pilot program, which began operations on August 5, 2026. The ACLU of Hawaiʻi is calling on the Honolulu Police Department (“HPD”) and the Hawaiʻi State Department of Law Enforcement to halt the program until the Honolulu City Council enacts binding oversight legislation with meaningful civil liberties protections.

HPD announced it will deploy drones in response to 911 calls in two districts: District 1, covering Downtown Honolulu, Chinatown, Nuʻuanu, Mākiki, Ala Moana, and Kakaʻako; and District 5, covering Kalihi, ʻIwilei, Kapālama, ʻAlewa, Moanalua, and Salt Lake. These are among the most diverse, working-class, and immigrant communities on Oʻahu, and now they will be the first to live under HPD's surveillance drones.

A National Pattern of Inadequate Oversight

HPD’s program is part of a rapid national expansion of drone policing that civil liberties organizations have warned is dangerously outpacing legal accountability. According to a 2023 report by the ACLU's Jay Stanley, Eye in the Sky: Policing Needs Strict Limits, more than 1,400 police departments across the United States are already operating drone programs. The report documents that DFR programs in particular have proliferated with little independent oversight or accountability and recommends that communities pause adoption until comprehensive legal safeguards are in place.
HPD’s published DFR policy prohibits “random surveillance” but does not include a warrant requirement for drone deployment, does not establish independent auditing, and does not impose binding limits on how long footage can be retained or with whom it can be shared. Departmental policy written by police, without legislative backing, is not an adequate substitute for law.

The Facial Recognition Risk

HPD has not committed to prohibiting the use of facial recognition technology in conjunction with its drone program. This omission matters. Federal research has documented that facial recognition algorithms misidentify Black, brown, and Asian faces at dramatically higher rates than white faces and in some cases are up to 100 times more likely to produce a false match, according to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s 2019 Face Recognition Vendor Test.
The consequences of that error rate are not abstract. The ACLU has documented more than a dozen wrongful arrests of people of color attributable to police reliance on faulty facial recognition matches, including cases in Michigan, New Jersey, Georgia, and Maryland. In each case, the person arrested was Black. In each case, they were innocent. Drone systems capable of capturing high-resolution imagery of individuals across large areas are a natural integration point for facial recognition technology. Without an explicit, enforceable prohibition, there is no guarantee that HPD’s DFR program will not incorporate it — now or in the future.

ACLU of Hawaiʻi Is Calling for Safeguards

Consistent with ACLU National’s recommended safeguards, the ACLU of Hawaiʻi is calling on the Honolulu City Council to enact binding legislation that requires, at minimum: a judicial warrant for investigative surveillance before drone deployment except in emergencies with immediate threat to life; strict data retention limits with footage deleted absent reasonable suspicion of a specific crime; an explicit prohibition on facial recognition and other biometric analysis; regular independent audits with public reporting; protections around third-party disclosure; and a prohibition on weaponized drones of any kind.
Community meetings and a public feedback email are not substitutes for law. Trust is built through enforceable accountability.

“HPD is launching aerial surveillance over Kalihi, Chinatown, and Kakaʻako (predominately communities of color) without a warrant requirement, independent oversight, or binding limits on how footage is stored or shared,” said Salmah Y. Rizvi, Executive Director of the ACLU of Hawaiʻi. “More than 1,400 police departments across the country have already gone down this road, and the results are consistent across jurisdictions: these programs expand faster than the rules meant to govern them. The communities bearing the weight of this surveillance are the same communities that have historically borne the weight of over-policing. That is not a coincidence, and it is not pono. Hawaiʻi can do better, and our communities deserve better.”

The ACLU of Hawaiʻi urges residents with questions or concerns about the DFR program to contact HPD at [email protected] and to contact their City Council members to demand binding oversight legislation.

Resources
ACLU National Report — Eye in the Sky: Policing Needs Strict Limits (Jay Stanley, 2023): https://www.aclu.org/documents/eye-in-the-sky-policing-needs-strict-limits
ACLU on Facial Recognition Technology: https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/surveillance-technologies/face-recognition-technology
HPD DFR Program Information: https://www.HonoluluPD.org/DFR

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The American Civil Liberties Union of Hawai‘i strives to build an equitable society. Our mission is to protect and promote civil liberties and fundamental rights enshrined in the United States and Hawai‘i constitutions through litigation, legislation, and public education. We serve – and center the voices of – our most impacted and vulnerable communities, regardless of background, status, or circumstance. As a non-partisan non-profit organization, we provide our services at no cost to the public, and we never accept government funds.