Last week, Congress passed legislation that requires the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to draw up plans by 2015 to allow for commercial drones in national airspace. This, along with the integration of returning military drones into U.S. airspace, is being promoted by Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) and Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-Santa Clarita), who co-chair the bipartisan drone caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives. The bipartisan caucus, officially called the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus, was formed in 2009.
With the integration of the military, law enforcement, and domestic intelligence gathering, along with the outsourcing of many intelligence gathering, processing, and data storing functions to the private sector, its easy to imagine a public/private surveillance system being created using drones. If you add to that the REAL ID implemented biometrics in state-issued ID's based on international standards and the advancement of facial recognition software, you can see how such a system could and probably will be developed. It would allow for the real time tracking of persons in the U.S.
I am sure many legitimate arguments can and will be made about the need and usefulness of drones. Many of those arguements might be legitimate, but we need to keep the bigger picture in mind as government continues to create the infrastructure of a survellance state.
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