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Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. Congress OK's drones over US Cities

It seems a little known provision in the 2005 bill authorizing the use of Predator drones along the U.S. border allowed other agencies to borrow the drones for, “interior law enforcement support.” So, now the same MQ-9 “hunter/killer” drones used for CIA assassinations in Yemen and Pakistan are being used to track down stray cattle in North Dakota… no joke.

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys.......

Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet

An Air Force simulation says researchers are at work on killer robots so tiny that a group of them could blend into a cityscape.

Science writer John Horgan's feature on the many ways drones will be used in coming years is interesting throughout, and terrifying in the passage where he describes an effort to build micro-drones that are, as the U.S. Air Force describes them, "Unobtrusive, pervasive, and lethal."

See related stories within too. The algorithms that enable drone swarms is advancing EXTREMELY quickly. In the next couple of years, the number of advances in technology, deployments, use cases, and awareness of drones will be intense. In 5 years, they will be part of every day life. You will see them everywhere.

Not just one or two drones. SWARMS of drones. Tens. Hundreds. Thousands. Millions (potentially if the cost per unit is small enough)?

government wants to have unmaned drones patrolling the skies.

"Perhaps the idea of spy drones already makes your nervous. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with the notion of an unblinking, robotic eye in the sky that can watch your every move. If so, you may want to click away now. Because if the Army has its way, drones won’t just be able to look at what you do. They’ll be able to recognize your face — and track you, based on how you look. If the military machines assemble enough information, they might just be able to peer into your heart."

In the span of just three years, we have seen drone surveillance become openly operational on American soil.

In 2007, Texas reporters first filmed a predator drone test being conducted by the local police department in tandem with Homeland Security. And in 2009, it was revealed that an operation was underway to use predator drones inland over major cities, far from “border control” functions. This year it has been announced that not only will drone operations fly over the Mexican border, but the United States and Canada are partnering to cover 900 miles of the northern border as well.

Washington, D.C. - Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Jennifer Lynch will testify this week at a Senate hearing on facial recognition technology and the privacy and civil liberties risks associated with rapidly growing biometric databases. The hearing is set for Wednesday, July 18, at 2:30 p.m. Facial recognition technology is becoming increasingly sensitive and sophisticated, creating new ways for government and private entities to identify and track people throughout the United States.