Have you ever seen one live? I bought one a few months back, and they are definitely not fit for good, discrete surveillance yet. They are loud, batteries don't last very long, and most of them don't have cameras good enough to really "spy" on someone that well.

That being said, I met a lot of the guys involved and, unlike the firearms industry, they are strongly in support and pushing for more regulation, to make clear what is ok and what is not ok. Too many idiots are doing things like crashing into buildings in urban areas, flying into aircraft paths, etc. and that crap needs to stop. One of the proposals goes so far as to say you'd actually have to get some sort of drone "pilots" license from the FAA to be able to fly one.

It will be interesting to see how the technology evolves over the next 5 years. How many sci-fi shows have some sort of automated drone thing flying around? That stuff won't be science fiction for too much longer. They are improving very fast, and "piloting" one of the latest generation of drones is super easy compared to what it was like just a few years ago. Somebody developed a GPS-enabled drone not too long ago that will follow you around with a tracker - the idea is that it will keep filming you if you are skiing, surfing, biking, jeeping, whatever. Obviously this could have other unintended uses pretty easy.