Drones in land border missions: Benefits and accountability concerns

Drone technology can potentially be useful for land-borer security - unmanned drone missions could be performed in the sky, supported by embedded sensors and data processing. Algorithmic rules can be incorporated in the drone software to make instant decisions, whereas other decisions might be made on the ground on the basis of monitoring data received from the drone. This allows for achieving context-awareness: the operation of the drone depends on the situation at hand. The mix of algorithmic and human decision-making distributed over many components raises questions that concern accountability - who would be responsible in case of an accident or a 'wrong doing': the hardware or software developers, the ground station managers, the law (regulations) makers, or the ones who have decided to use drones in the particular situation? In the current work we analyze the usability of drones with regard to land border security, featuring benefits and corresponding accountability concerns. To achieve this, we have studied drone technology and in particular: the technical features as well as the corresponding actor-roles and relationships, considering a land-border-security-related application scenario. On that basis we have carried out an analysis from an accountability perspective.