[s_q_b]

I agree. A change in quantity is a change in quality when it comes to privacy.

The occasional flyover to look for narcotics operations may be permissible, because there is no expectation of privacy in a public space.

But monitoring an entire city with aerostats and quadrotors, or storing the location information of the entire population through license plate readers, while justifiable under the same legal rationale, is a completely different situation.

From a practical reading of the Constitution, it is clearly violative of the Fourth Amendment.