I wish our President would say he opposes 30,000+ drones in American skies,

[sad sally]

30. Military surplus combat drones will soon be sold here - newer, more deadly ones make old

ones obsolete. Not to worry, excess military hardware never ends up in the wrong hands, right?
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Combat Drones Soon To Fly Over U.S. Airspace
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While combat drones are not allowed in the U.S. airspace without a special certificate from the FAA, the military is in a fix over the 7,500 military drones deployed overseas, that need to be recalled home.

While the fleet of unmanned robotic aircraft keeps growing and adding to the nation’s arsenal, the Pentagon is working out procedures to enable the Federal Aviation Administration to open U.S. Airspace for military drones.
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Steve Pennington, the Director of Ranges, Bases, and Airspace for the Air Force said that “The stuff from Afghanistan is going to come back,” and that the Department of Defense wanted to use the drones for needs of the nation and that the Department “doesn’t want a segregated environment. We want a fully integrated environment.” This can mean that military drones would be brought under the same rules as other military aircraft.
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While the smaller drones, which are mostly as large as hobby planes may be brought under a system, the question is different for the large Global Hawks, MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers which can wreak havoc in the wrong hands.

http://www.jdjournal.com/2012/02/14/combat-drones-soon-to-fly-over-us-airspace/

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Okay, so there are those who approve of killing anyone our government says is a terrorist by drone attacks. Some even seem to think it's okay that innocent people are "colateral damage," and even approve or simply shrug and say, too bad that children get blown to bits or that rescuers get blown up - that's what happens in a country with occupiers waging war.

My point is that the legal and moral issue of wartime use of drones by the US hasn't been challenged and may not be until drone attacks on US soil happens. However, there's also a moral and ethical issue of non-armed drones being used as "journalists" in the US - gathering information and sending it to ??? (homeland security, fbi, cia, private businesses - who knows)?
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UNL to study ethical, legal issues of ‘drone journalism’
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And news organizations, says University of Nebraska-Lincoln journalism professor Matthew Waite, will begin to inject them into areas ground-bound reporters can’t easily go to capture news footage, such as tornado-ravaged neighborhoods or above crowded squares where protesters may be gathered.

But before the first drone is launched in the name of newsgathering, a host of questions and concerns arise – from how to best use the new technology to deliver news and information efficiently to whether drones are a privacy and safety threat that would lump them, in the public’s mind, in the same camp as celebrity-chasing paparazzi.

That’s why Waite, a professor of practice at UNL’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications, says the time is right to study just how exactly the use of the unmanned aircraft may affect the practice of journalism. Last month, he founded the Drone Journalism Lab at UNL to examine the practical, ethical and legal issues involving drones and news reporting.
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“We have a responsibility to discuss the use of this new platform, its safety, its legality,” Waite said. “We also need to lay out an ethical framework for its use. What are the right uses of civilian drones? How can journalists use them responsibly? How do you balance the public’s right to know with privacy or security?”

http://newsroom.unl.edu/blog/?p=912