If the government wanted to watch you or your home they can already do that with satellites - they would not need drones. Drones already exist and they grow every 6 months in capability and decrease in price. Period. There is no way to prevent them - we can only attempt to put safeguards in place to protect personal liberties pursuant to the constitution.
However, outside of your home there is very little legal basis for privacy - if I can see your house in a plane there is no way to legally prevent the government to see your home with a drone. Google Earth is pretty darned accurate and we can’t legally stop them. I have heard of cases where county tax assessors have used it to locate new construction on homes, new swimming pools, and new decks/patios and levy new property taxes on homeowners.
Technology is here to stay and it will continue to grow- the key question for those of us concerned with personal liberties is how we protect personal freedoms. The blanket “no” is not going to win us a chair at the table and it does not reflect reality. They already do the same stuff with planes and the blanket negative response is not realistic and it will preclude conservatives from shaping the debate.
Do you think a majority of Americans would oppose the use of a drone to find a lost 10 year old in the forest, or track a wildfire from the air, or catch smugglers on the border? The obvious answer is a majority of Americans would be fine with it.
Your SWAT analogy is very valid and I agree that it is now far overused and abused. However, the answer to that problem is the same as the drone problem - have a government that people can trust and demand accountability from them.
“If the government wanted to watch you or your home they can already do that with satellites - they would not need drones.”
Ah, but satellites are not equivalent to drones, or nobody would need drones. Drones have benefits that make them desirable for the government, and more intrusive of our liberties than satellites. First, they can be equipped with thermal and other technologies to look right through your walls. You might be able to equip a satellite like that, but without the second advantage of drones, higher resolution, such surveillance from a satellite would still be very limited. Third, drones are much cheaper, versatile, and easier to deploy than satellites. Only the feds can afford to field spy satellites, while every police department in the country will soon have drones. The few satellites out there that can spy on you mostly can only do it a few minutes a day, while a fleet of cheap drones can target many people 24 hours a day, and follow them wherever they go.
We may not be there yet, but soon enough drones will also have other, wider spectrum surveillance abilities. They will be able to pick up the audio inside your house, or siphon traffic from your home wireless network. Small drones will even be able to crawl right into your house undetected. Satellites will never be able to do those things.
“However, the answer to that problem is the same as the drone problem - have a government that people can trust and demand accountability from them.”
I guess this is where we will have a pretty fundamental disagreement. I say we’ll never have a government people can trust, and to think that we will is foolhardy. We have to assume that government will abuse any tool that we give them, and try to make it unfeasible for them to do so, perhaps by limiting their funding or setting up counterbalances to their powers. Oversight and accountability are easy solutions to trumpet, but government has already demonstrated that they are well versed in co-opting or evading any of those kind of measures we put in place.
...”The blanket “no” is not going to win us a chair at the table and it does not reflect reality.”... So, we need to win a chair at the table? The table we already own?