I think there should be a centralized tracking system for drones, and each drone should have a unique cryptographic identifier, so you always know who made the drone and who owned it.
Then, while you still won't be able to stop assassinations and such, just like you can't stop them now anyway, you can at least know who did it, and punish them afterwards.
Huh? What makes you think criminals will be sure to use a drone with such an ID system? There are no unique parts to a drone. Other than the motor controller and motors, it's mostly cellphone parts. Motors and controller have several other applications.
Maybe have each drone regularly broadcast their GPS's most recent NMEA sentence (latitude, longitude, timestamp, altitude, etc.) signed with their public key?
That's what came up with after thinking about it for a bit. There's probably a better solution out there.
> Then, while you still won't be able to stop assassinations and such, just like you can't stop them now anyway, you can at least know who did it
Even if you get criminals to comply as far as only operating drones with proper IDs, so that you can trace the legal purchase history of a drone, that doesn't mean you know who used the drone. Drones and their supporting control equipment can be stolen (and the owners prevented by force from reporting the theft) and people willing to commit assassination by drone certainly wouldn't be unwilling to commit theft, kidnapping, and/or murder of drone owners to acheive that.
There's little to prevent construction of unlicensed drones. Like they say, make operating drones illegal, and only criminals will have drones. And they can be made simply with mail-order parts.
Probably we're just going to have to get used to drones being around. Like we got used to cities and crowds on public streets and horseless carriages. This paranoia about drones will be seen by future historians as quaint.
Do you expect to be able to regulate the electronics industry that tightly? You'd need some universal DRM system implemented in every accelerometer, GPS module, electric motor, and microcontroller.
Then, while you still won't be able to stop assassinations and such, just like you can't stop them now anyway, you can at least know who did it, and punish them afterwards.