Amidst the cacophonous finger-pointing of Washington’s government shutdown drama, certain ongoing and weighty arguments have been glossed over. Locally, these include a recent anti-domestic drone use march staged by Buddhist monks and nuns from the Nipponzan Myohoji order.

Admittedly, this doesn’t seem like the most gripping of issues, as no matter how loud the furor between Congressional politicos raged, martial law was nowhere near being instituted. However, the increasing affordability of drone technology is leading to an increased use of drones by private individuals.

In a state like Maine, which is blanketed by vast expanses of unnavigable wilderness, it’s easy to see how drones could be of use. Remote areas of the state could become much more accessible, an undoubted asset in search and rescue missions. For ecologists, drone surveillance could reveal much about the habits of wildlife in the state.

But the Fourth Amendment guarantees that citizens be free in their persons, properties and effects from unreasonable searches and seizures. When drones traverse airspace adjacent to private property, it’s easy to see how civil liberty-conscious citizens and groups become uneasy, especially in the wake of revelations regarding the National Security Agency’s recording of phone conversations.

The relative newness of drone technology means there are few laws regulating how they may be used in domestic airspace, lending credibility to privacy concerns.

As alarming as the threats posed by privately owned drones may be from a surveillance standpoint, there are others, even more eerie — and this is domestic drone strikes.

Real concern began when Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida recruiter and American citizen was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. The administration justified this violation of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments by stating that his alleged involvement in planning terrorist attacks fell within the caveat carved out in the Fifth Amendment that, on the battlefield, the right to a fair trial is negated.

But al-Awlaki was not killed in the middle of an actual, physical battle. In this context, ‘on the battlefield’ meant being involved in operations within a terrorist organization. This, to many, seemed to enlarge the exception within the Fifth Amendment and could possibly mean drone strikes could be carried out on American soil.

Hence Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul’s 13-hour filibuster of John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director aimed at forcing the Obama administration to state unequivocally that the battlefield does not extend to the United States and that drone strikes will not be used domestically on citizens.

While the administration eventually caved to the furor raised by Paul’s argument, they did so begrudgingly. And left room to walk back that position in future, should the need arise.

And it’s not hard to imagine such a situation. Only a few months ago, the argument could have quite easily been made that drones should be used to search the city for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects and, if necessary, have taken them out to save lives.

As easy as it is to get behind a position similar to this, does it withstand reason?

Not if you buy into the slippery-slope argument. Once one exception to civil liberties has been made, precedent has been set. And once set, precedent is nearly always expounded upon. Equivocation is the death of absolutes. And civil liberties, inalienably granted to the American citizen, are pretty absolute, which is why the discussion, though seemingly irrelevant to the general populace, should gain seriousness and traction in the public sphere.