I appreciate your comment Oak, that we've had helicopters and small aircraft flying around etc. But a drone is much smaller.

Sure google maps is the evidence. They have not perfectly blurred out faces of the unintentional capture of people in their street shots. Those might be older photos. Don't know the firm's procedures and if they are used consistently worldwide for protection of personal privacy since non-North American countries seem to have less strict privacy law (ie. photos provided on resumes is not a practice in North America, but it can be in other countries).

Some of the (bigger) municipal government authorities are moving towards some limited contracted use of drones for documenting infrastructure and then geospatially tagging the imagery.