As another State of the Union Address has come and gone, President Barack Obama’s promises—to close the Guantanamo Bay camp and to stop federal racial profiling—lie where he shelved them. But if Obama did nothing but maintain the status quo, I would say little to his detriment. Obama has not only strengthened the government policies that George W. Bush introduced to fight terrorism, he continues to expand them—especially through his use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), more commonly known as drones. The Obama administration has ordered at least 390 drone strikes in the last four years. The Bush administration ordered 44 over the course of eight years.

Earlier this month, NBC correspondent Michael Isikoff reported on the leak of an undated, confidential Justice Department “white paper.” The secret memo is comprised of 16 pages of legal justifications for the assassination of American citizens on foreign soil. Citizens considered “imminent” threats, the memo clarifies, forfeit their right to a fair trial. Basically, this means that it’s okay for “informed, high-level” government officials to kill them with remote-control explosives.

The lack of political outrage astounds me, but I can understand. Americans who act suspiciously overseas might be treasonous, and smart leaders with our best interests in mind should stop them before they harm us here at home. Within our borders, everyone still gets a fair trial. But even when news organizations reported that drones were possibly targeting Christopher Dorner, the now deceasedex-police officer from Los Angeles reported to have killed four people, Democrats barely winced. The “armed” part, of course, was a miscommunication.

Nevertheless, the misunderstanding should have drawn attention to the fact that last March, Obama signed a federal law that allows surveillance drones to take to the skies across the United States. In its official report, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed plans for those drones to carry nonlethal weapons like rubber bullets, tasers and tear gas. Obama didn’t suggest or request any kind of rulebook to help police officers use the drones appropriately, which makes me wonder if the president ever got to the Fifth Amendment when he read the Constitution. Am I supposed to believe we’ll all feel safer when drones with magnifying cameras, night vision and tasers buzz above our homes?

Though I find the ACLU and its members vexatious at best, today I sympathize with their demands for precise, transparent and publically agreed-upon guidelines for domestic drones. I support technological advances: if we can hunt threatening individuals abroad with spy drones, we should have the same protection here at home. But as the technology to search for criminals advances, citizens need more—not less—protection against unwarranted search and seizure. People who think that law enforcement won’t abuse this new power are sorely misled: as long as American citizens overseas can be hunted and executed without regard for privacy or due process, I cannot trust the government to use domestic drones responsibly.

I also sympathize, to some extent, with John Brennan, whose nomination as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency depends on his ability to make concrete statements about the Obama administration’s drone policies and plans, specifically on U.S. soil. Republicans have delayed their decision on his election for this very reason. He doesn’t want to lie, but he doesn’t want to make his boss look bad, either; so he’s delaying his answer to Senator Rand Paul’s question, “Is it acceptable to order lethal drone strikes against American citizens on American soil?” If I had to try to defend our president’s flagrant disregard for citizens’ rights to a fair trial, I’d sputter too.

This Tuesday, I listened to the State of the Union Address in hope that Obama would reassure me, and he said a few comforting words:

“In the months ahead, I will continue to engage with Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.”

If the president replaces “continue” with “start,” and if he actually keeps this promise, I will feel better. I might even go back to lampooning the ACLU.