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While this may sound like some far-fetched futuristic scenario, it's actually something that could by 2015. That's because an aviation bill signed into law by President Obama earlier this year will allow domestic use of "unmanned aircraft systems" by both the government and private citizens and businesses for the first time. In other words, if the Federal Aviation Administration meets its deadline for integrating unmanned drones into national airspace, we could see unmanned aircraft flying around our neighborhoods in just three years' time.

Naturally, this raises some significant privacy and safety concerns, which is why the Brookings Institute this week held a discussion panel to debate the implications that domestic drones will have for private citizens. Although there was certainly disagreement on the panel, all four participants basically believed that unmanned drones were a potentially useful technology for domestic use as long as the government put in the proper restrictions on their use by both the public and private sector.

Just what those restrictions will be, however, is certainly still up for debate. Paul Rosenzweig, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and the founder of Red Branch Consulting PLLC, said that drones had plenty of natural for law enforcement, particularly when it comes to surveillance of the U.S.-Mexico border where Border Patrol agents have difficulty efficiently monitoring thousands of miles of space. However, he also acknowledged that law enforcement agencies needed to be given strict limitations on how they can use drones. For instance, he said that doing surveillance along the border would not give law enforcement the right to deploy surveillance on local Tea Party of ACLU chapters that happened to be meeting in the area.