Police make first direct arrest using spy drone

So this is what they look like.

Merseyside police have claimed the first arrest made after using a spy drone to track someone, albeit that they appear to have broken aviation law while doing so. (D'oh!)

Which kind of answers one point I made here. But just because these things are (potentially) useful to police, does this mean they should automatically have them? At a time when most crime is continuing to fall, do the police need even more powers of surveillance than they already have?

While there is much debate about ID cards and other high profile civil liberty issues there seems to be much less about these more mundane aspects of police and government surveillance. But they are potentially just as insidious. I don't think I'd automatically rule out drones, specifically, but things like this need to be much more fully, and thoughtfully, debated than currently seems to be the case.