"Without developing an oversight mechanism to prevent misuse we won't ever get to see the beneficial uses of drones," he said.

Catherine Crump, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, expressed concerns about law enforcement gaining access to unmanned drones if private citizens weren't given the same type of access. She also said she was alarmed at how many law enforcement officials she's talked with were interested in attaching non-lethal weapons such as tear gas canisters to drones and using them for crowd control.

"I always thought that it was far-fetched but law enforcement agents have expressed serious interest in [weaponized drones] because they can contain crowds without having any officers present," she said. "One of the things I wonder about is will drones become a tool of law enforcement agents but will private citizens be restricted from using them due to safety concerns?"

Crump also said that drones were more problematic from a civil liberties perspective because they were much less costly to operate and maintain than manned aircraft such as helicopters that police currently use for aerial surveillance. 

John Villasenor, a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institute, shared Crump's view that unmanned drones can be particularly problematic for privacy issues since they're so much smaller and harder to detect than traditional aerial craft.