In what way(s) do you see drone obstruction of police raids as a good for society? The bad seems pretty obvious, but I'm struggling to see how this is an open question ("net good or bad?").
Another issue is that much progress in the past has been the product of unlawful activity. How long would slavery have lasted if abolitionists were able to have been effectively snuffed out? How would it be if the "founding fathers" instead were rotely hung, drawn, and quartered -- a practice that persisted in the English empire all the way up until 1870? Would America have been a better or worse place if every person who ever once indulged in a controlled substance or drunk before age was prosecuted? Imagine if prohibition or other morality based laws, including for instance laws against homosexuality, could have been effectively enacted. What sort of path of puritanism would that have set us on?
Of course I don't think anybody knows the answers to these questions, but I do think there is a strong argument that law enforcement does not have an inherent right to any means that would make their work more efficient. So do police have a right to obstruct all of society's freedom to operate drones for the sake of increased efficiency? I am not sure, but I do think any issue that proposes sacrificing freedom for security should be questioned.
> The most fundamental issue is that history has shown time and again that the corruption of the powers that be is not a question of if but a question of when.
History has also shown it goes the other way as well.
Most people are naturally not particularly well informed on most things. Expecting them to collectively vote on the people most likely to lead them in all things is bound to result in bad results more than occasionally. Even moreso when we're so easily manipulated by tribalism, charisma, and so on. A successful politician and a successful conman share mostly the same skill set! And restricting voting to some group deemed sufficiently informed is an even worse solution as you'd end up with something like gerrymandering ramped up exponentially.
Elaborate on "history has shown it goes the other way as well"?
Would you still say everything's fine and we shouldn't make them less efficient because we're worried about hypotheticals?