Analyst's note:  Better watch out ... the uses are almost endless for this big-brother technology.  We now see that Europe, for example, is turning to drones to improve their patchy record on preventing fraud and waste on their farms, to assure the rules on hedges and ponds and buffer strips around arable fields are followed, and to count the animials in the fields.  They are even keeping track of what is planted. Just what we need here in America ... our federal government to monitor our private farms!  We can only speculate how long it will take for the feds to destroy our ability to feed the world.  One has to wonder what is being preparing for?

[....] The FAA Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of commercial drones by 2015.

Privacy advocates say the measure will lead to widespread use of drones for electronic surveillance by police agencies across the country and eventually by private companies as well.

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is “concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies,” said attorney Jennifer Lynch.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.[....]