I’m surely not the only guy who gets chills reading this story about US-airspace drone flights:

The US Federal Aviation Administration will have until the end of 2015 to open national airspace to unmanned civil and commercial craft. The bill, which granted funding to the FAA, requires the agency to draft a plan for licensing remote-piloted drones to operate in areas that were previously reserved for manned planes. Currently, drones can be used in certain parts of military airspace and at low altitudes or isolated areas; this bill will let them occupy the same space as passenger planes and other traditional aircraft.

The ACLU is already preparing a lawsuit concerning how cheap drones open the door to wider surveillance by government and private companies, but honestly, my other concern is sticking these into already crowded airspace. My question: considering that the FAA still uses antiquated 1980s technology (the GPS in your phone is better than what the FAA uses, which is to say, none), is this really the priority Congress should be focusing on?

Update: apparently $11 billion of the $63.4 billion authorization passed by Congress is dedicated towards GPS upgrades for the FAA. So that’s good news. No link available, as I can see it in Google Reader but the original page isn’t coming up on The Verge.