Awhile back I posted an entry applauding Rand Paul’s position on drones. It was already possible to buy toy helicopters that could be fitted with cameras, so you could spy on — well, whomever, so long as you were close enough.

Well, this is the week of the Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International show. That link gets you to an LA Times article, and although it isn’t terribly detailed some parts of it are particularly juicy:

Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open the nation’s airspace to commercial drone traffic by September 2015, and experts estimate that 10,000 unmanned aircraft could be aloft five years later.

Aurora Flight Sciences… a Virginia aerospace company, exhibited a plastic foam craft … [magnets attach] a camera to a 2-foot wingspan that can be folded and stored in a backpack.

Jeff Leake, director of business development for IRcameras … pointed out footprints on the screen from people walking past.”You can see the heat from their feet left on the floor,” Leake said.

As I said in my previous post, keep those drapes closed; but if an IR camera can see a one degree difference in temperature, as Leake is quoted as saying, then that probably won’t help all that much.

Santa won’t be the only one keeping a list and checking it twice.