Three seemingly unrelated events explain a lot about the federal government’s complicated and hypocritical reaction to the proliferation of drones and other technology – technology they love to use to track millions of citizens but to which they don’t want citizens to have access.

First, a drunk intelligence agency employee crashed a two-foot toy drone into the White House lawn at 3am earlier this week, while the Federal Aviation Administration banned drones from flying over the Super Bowl on Sunday in Arizona. Then, police started loudly complaining about a traffic app called Waze that also alerts travelers about the location of police cars operating speed traps.

It may be hard to remember now, but the number one privacy issue in America before Edward Snowden came along was invasive police drones, which sparked broad left-right coalitions in state governments across the country. The NSA’s repeated invasions of Americans’ privacy replaced drones on the front pages, but that hasn’t stopped law enforcement from trying to acquire the technology or the federal government from trying to warn of the vast dangers of civilians doing the same thing.

The Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service are using the White House incident to raise alarms about supposed terrorists using widely-available commercial drones to carry out some sort of terrorist attack, according to The New York Times – nevermind that the drone that crashed at the White House was much too small to do so.

That fits directly into federal and local police’s long-standing “technology for me but not for thee” policy: DHS has issued dire warnings about the threat of a terrorist attack from civilian drones, while also providing police all over the country much more sophisticated drone technology than the public has. DHS spends millions of dollars to “facilitate and accelerate the adoption” of drones by police agencies, much like they underwrite the militarization of the same local police forces. Many of these drones can potentially spy on people from long distances, carry infrared cameras that can see through walls, intercept cell phone data or wifi signals, and otherwise act as the ultimate surveillance devices.

(It’s also ironic that DHS is calling drones a new threat to public safety and warning of their potential use in a terrorist attack when the US government’s much larger, much more sophisticated military drones have been killing people overseas. American drones have created a state of terror for civilians in places like Yemen and Pakistan, who fear they may be mistaken for a terrorist and killed – as has happened many times in the past few years.)

Parker Higgins (@xor) I can think of no downside to foreign drone manufacturers demonstrating the ability to push mandatory modifications to all units, carry on

But hobby drone enthusiasts didn’t even have to wait for even more restrictive commercial drone regulations at the administration’s behest, since DJI – the Chinese manufacturer which makes the Phantom quadcopter that crashed near the White House – said that they would send a mandatory software update to all its drones technically prohibiting them from flying DC airspace. As EFF’s Parker Higgins wrote, “No matter where you stand on drones, this leap from ‘regulation is needed’ to ‘mandatory firmware update’ is chilling. Today it’s drone makers disabling flight in certain cities. Tomorrow, anything with a networked computer: cars, hearing aids, you name it.”

The government doesn’t exclusively insist on a monopoly over certain technologies: they are also advocating for exclusivity of information. Just look at law enforcement’s recent hysterical complaints about Google’s Waze app, which – along with giving drivers the most effective route to their destination – allows users to identify where cops are stationed for speed traps. The National Sheriffs’ Association threw a fit over the app, absurdly claiming that it puts police officers’ “lives at risk”. (They probably meant “livelihood,” given that the app means less speeding ticket revenue for local agencies.) But the Sheriff’s Association’s campaign has already backfired: as soon as they started complaining, downloads for the Waze app skyrocketed.

Of course, the cops can track you whenever they want, wherever they want when you are in public spaces – or at least that is their position. Local police across the country have tracked people’s cell phone locations over days or weeks millions of times, and most of the time without a warrant, let alone public disclosure. God forbid you let someone else know where a visible speed trap is located, which forces them to go the speed limit.

We absolutely need public debate about the proper regulation to manage the safety and privacy issues of commercial drones before they become ubiquitous, just as we need more debate and thought about the proliferation of mobile technology that maps out our public spaces. But the answer to the obvious questions that these technologies raise isn’t just to bar civilians from accessing it and to allow the US government use it uninhibited. We’ve got to be smarter than that, or we risk giving away even more of our rights.

This article was amended on 1 February 2015 to correct the name of the drone manufacturer.