Efficiency is a problem in it's own right. It drives down cost. Which means that surveillance will be used more often and for less important reasons. It's not uncommon for people to need to skirt the law from time to time. This is particularly true of people in the lower classes of society. Is it fair to ding a retail worker whose car registration just expired but needs a few days to get it all straightened out? That's something modern surveillance could easily handle nearly perfectly.

The "bright line" here is "at the entrance to the home". But there is no indication in the article that the plane in question is seeing things inside people's homes, or imaging heat given off from inside the home (which was the issue in the Supreme Court case). It's just (the article speculates) observing activites outside people's homes, in public spaces. So I don't think the precedent you cite is relevant.