http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-25552825



Yeah, that's pretty much what I'd be worried about, and not just the authorities either.

There are some very good uses for drones to be used domestically. They could be used to monitor radiation or pollution from power stations; Carbon emissions for verification schemes; Measure land use for agricultural grants; Traffic monitoring; 3D Mapping; Mapping animal migration; Anti poaching measure; General security; Fire warning; Flood management. In fact there are far more ways that they can be use which really do not have much objection from the public. If the police helicopter that crashed in Glasgow last month was a drone then it would have been a lot smaller and there may have been no fatalities if it crashed in the same location. We really should restrict air use of military drones domestically.

Depends on the drone. An RQ-4 surveillance UAV is significantly bigger and heavier than the Eurocoptor involved the the crash.

The proper paranoid response is to buy your own drone, and then start hunting other people's drones with it. Some innocent guy is going to be counting sheep with his toy airoplane, and then I'm going to shout Banzai and dive bomb the [LIFTED] with my Fokker.

But I doubt that one of those would have hovering a few hundred feet above a pub. An RQ-4 would be useful as an agricultural or environmental monitoring drone even very good at monitoring fishing with the right sensors. They are seriously long range and so would be useful mapping a whole country. I do take your point though.