Should Police Be Allowed to Use Drones?

     This is a subject that gets into the area of letting the police do the things they need to do to enforce the law and prevent crime versus protecting people's rights. The Left and the Ron Paul libertarians are generally opposed to the use of drones, but some among the neoconservative right, who are usually okay with more expanded governmental powers for stopping terrorism (for example the Patriot Act, which many on the left and libertarian right are against) and maintaining a strong standing military, are also against this.

     The reasoning is that drones are an instrument of war, and their use will end up being abused, even if they try to create safeguards to protect against such a thing, and thus that police forces should not be allowed to utilize such tools of warfare. Just like the standing military, modern police forces are militarized a lot more than they used to be. With the problems of terrorism and modern weapons and so forth, and in major cities in particular, the police forces are in some ways paramilitary forces, some capable of counter-terrorism, complete with highly-trained fighting units that wear helmets and body-armor, are equipped with high-powered weapons, snipers, armored vehicles, etc...but at the same time, just as with granting the government some extended capabilities to deal with terrorism, there is a limit, after which you really begin infringing on people's rights and freedoms. With police, it's the same. Police may be more militarized today, but there's still a limit in terms of just how much capability they should be given.

     Charles Krauthammer, a prominent neoconservative, believes usage of drones by police should be outlawed completely, which I find very interesting. This is one of the things that has made me interested in this issue, as usually the folks like Krauthammer are the ones arguing about how the Left, the ACLU, and the Libertarians are blowing things out of proportion and that America is not becoming a police state as they often claim. But in this case, he agrees completely with them.