Of course they aren't. Imaging satellites fly in polar sun-synchronous orbits. They pass over the same spot on earth at roughly the same time each day, and can view that spot for less than fifteen minutes at a time. Do you really think that anybody can afford the constellation of 96 high resolution satellites it would require to provide 24/7 coverage of every spot on the globe? Or that there would be enough bandwidth to process the downlinks?

Boy, you are a friggin' moron. Just how do you figure that? Do you know how many high resolution imaging satellites there are, how they work, what they can do? Obviously, you don't, but that's not going to stop you from blowing smoke out your nether fundament. Yes, what NRO platforms can do is classified, but if you study the unclassified material closely, and know some elementary physics, you can piece together the puzzle rather easily.

You don't need a warrant to fly over anything and take pictures. We operate under an "open skies" policy, and always have.

But the government has a compelling interest in monitoring the state of rangeland, of the water supply, of the forests and croplands, etc., etc., etc. I bet said rancher has no objection to RPVs when he's thrown off his horse, breaks a leg in the middle of nowhere, and needs someone to come find him before the wolves get there.

So, basically, yours is an aesthetic objection to remotely piloted vehicles.

If you are in public, it's not spying. You have no expectation of privacy in your backyard, or on the street, or in the woods or any other place. You also don't own the sky above your house, and anyone can use it to look down on you.

Satellites are a non-issue. They cannot do "real time" imaging, no matter what you see on television, and it takes the better part of a day to download just one 1-meter res multispectral image, not counting post-processing to make the imagery useful.

The TR-1 (U-2) has proven superior to the Global Hawk RPV as an imaging platform, which is why the Air Force wants to retain the former and retire the latter for that mission.

I've worked with RPV sensor output. For merely scanning an area, it leaves a lot to be desired, except at night, when thermal imaging is superior to the human eyeball. Most of the time, operational RPVs are cued to a specific area by other sources--either ELINT or SIGINT, HUMINT, or other imaging systems. Once you get an RPV in the ballpark, it's pretty good at ferreting out things on the ground, mainly because of its persistence (you can see changed in patterns of movement or location), but it's lousy for targets of opportunity, because the FOV is too narrow in high resolution, while the resolution is lousy in wide FOV. Everything is a tradeoff.

No, but your reading comprehension leaves a lot to be desired. The Border Patrol's use of Predators falls under the "specially controlled experiments" rubric. Of course, the Border Patrol could use manned aircraft, but that would require dozens of planes, manned by hundreds of pilots, supported by thousands of mechanics, and requiring tens of thousands of dollars per hour to operate. On the other hand, a Predator, flying up and down the border, can do the same thing for a couple of hundred per hour.

Well, I already asked that question, and nobody has answered yet. But let me supply my own answer: nothing, except that by having a man in the cockpit, the helicopter is able to scan a much larger area much more quickly.