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Living Under Drones: A Stanford/NYU study
pjl44
Posts: 8,058
A sobering reminder on how little our foreign policy has changed over the past four years. If you supported and/or voted for this administration again, now that four more years have been secured I hope you have the conviction to criticize these actions as they continue/expand. Unless I've completely misunderstood how progressives/liberals view our military's role abroad.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... one-deaths
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... one-deaths
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Seems my preconceptions are what should have been burned...
I AM MINE
The issue of drones is not just limited to the machines them self. There is the fact that they are being used to target specific persons in efforts that can be simply described as assassinations.
the problem with drones are:
beside the obvious, who determines who will be killed and why without oversight
they fly over international and national airspace
inaccuracy of hitting target, "collateral damage" = killing innocent civilians
how the intelligence is gathered on a target, reliable sources on the ground or ??
why is the drone program a "secret war"
It's a secret war simply because it can be a secret war...no US lives on the line, so Joe Q. Public is not expected to be either concerned or interested.
Those are the issues that come to my mind.
The pilot 'flying' these sorties is a combatant... there is no question about that. He is dropping bombs on targets in a war zone.
Does this mean we are opening up the locations where he operates as part of the battle field?
Example: The Drone pilot operate out of an air base in Phoenix. He gets his mission orders from command and launches his aircraft. He acquires the missoin target and unleashed 2 Hellfire missiles that hit its target and returns his aircraft to its base in Afghanistan.
He walks off base and to his home to have dinner with his family.
...
Now. If he were based in Afghanistan and flew conventional aircraft to deliver the same weapons to the same target... he is clearly an active combatant. Whether he has an F-15E strapped to his back or relaxing in the air base's cafeteria. if he is killed by an enemy combatant, it is clearly an act of War.
But... what if he is at home with his family? Is he still an active combatant? What is an enemy mortar shell falls in his dining room as he eats his dinner... Act of War? Act of Terrorism? Murder?
Hail, Hail!!!
US drone pilots hide in a country outside the theatre of war and wage battle.
:?:
We need to consider what we do.
How would we feel if Drone pilots of a foriegn country where attacking target insoide the U.S? We'd go after them, right? They have created targets inside their borders by launching attacks from that point, right?
...
Doesn't the same set of rule apply... going the other way?
...
We really need to think about these types of things before we open this Pandora's Box of Shit in our own living room.
Hail, Hail!!!
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/iran-fired-u-d ... 48709.html
The poison from the poison stream caught up to you ELEVEN years ago and you floated out of here. Sept. 14, 08
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12 ... r/?pid=999
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12 ... r/?pid=995
The military has 61 Predator and Reaper “combat air patrols,” each with three or four robotic planes. The CIA’s inventory is believed to be just a fraction of that: 30 to 35 drones total, although there is thought to be some overlap between the military and intelligence agency fleets. The Washington Post reported last month that the CIA is looking for another 10 drones as the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) become more and more central to the agency’s worldwide counterterror campaign.
The U.S. military is now launching more drone strikes — an average of 33 per month — than at any moment in the 11 years of the Afghan conflict. It’s a major escalation from just last year, when the monthly average was 24.5.
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11 ... n-air-war/
"Life Is What Happens To You When Your Busy Making Other Plans" John Lennon
Drone sorties are typically solo flights. Unlike manned mission that require several tactical and support aircraft. And the 'pilots' are not at risk of being killed or captured. That is why the Air Force likes using them.
...
Unrelated point:
A couple of years ago, the Defense Department successfully conducted a test at the China Lake Naval Weapons Range where a drone was pre-programmed to perform a mission. There were no pilots flying the drone... it was being monitored by air and ground crews.
What made this test different... the drone was also programmed to think on its own.
So, it took off from base and flew towards its stated mission.
En route, it encountered targets of opportunity along the way.
The drone identified the target as friend or foe... in this case, foe.
It assessed the threat level and had to prioritize the data it had collected... does it continue on its stated mission or address the newly discovered threat directly.
It decided that this pop-up target was of lower priority and continued on its mission.
It arrived at the initial target and destroyed it.
It saved its secondary ordinance to take out the pop-up target it had previously encountered... went back and destroyed it on its way back to base.
Landed safely.
It thought out the mission autonomously.
...
Kind of amazing and scary at the same time, huh?
Hail, Hail!!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... ck-america
The coming drone attack on America
Drones on domestic surveillance duties are already deployed by police and corporations. In time, they will likely be weaponised
Naomi Wolf
guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 December 2012
People often ask me, in terms of my argument about "ten steps" that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, "a huge push by […] the defense sector" to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won't necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.
Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them.
An unclassified US air force document reported by CBS (pdf) news expands on this unprecedented and unconstitutional step – one that formally brings the military into the role of controlling domestic populations on US soil, which is the bright line that separates a democracy from a military oligarchy. (The US constitution allows for the deployment of National Guard units by governors, who are answerable to the people; but this system is intended, as is posse comitatus, to prevent the military from taking action aimed at US citizens domestically.)
The air force document explains that the air force will be overseeing the deployment of its own military surveillance drones within the borders of the US; that it may keep video and other data it collects with these drones for 90 days without a warrant – and will then, retroactively, determine if the material can be retained – which does away for good with the fourth amendment in these cases. While the drones are not supposed to specifically "conduct non-consensual surveillance on on specifically identified US persons", according to the document, the wording allows for domestic military surveillance of non-"specifically identified" people (that is, a group of activists or protesters) and it comes with the important caveat, also seemingly wholly unconstitutional, that it may not target individuals "unless expressly approved by the secretary of Defense".
In other words, the Pentagon can now send a domestic drone to hover outside your apartment window, collecting footage of you and your family, if the secretary of Defense approves it. Or it may track you and your friends and pick up audio of your conversations, on your way, say, to protest or vote or talk to your representative, if you are not "specifically identified", a determination that is so vague as to be meaningless.
What happens to those images, that audio? "Distribution of domestic imagery" can go to various other government agencies without your consent, and that imagery can, in that case, be distributed to various government agencies; it may also include your most private moments and most personal activities. The authorized "collected information may incidentally include US persons or private property without consent". Jennifer Lynch of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told CBS:
"In some records that were released by the air force recently … under their rules, they are allowed to fly drones in public areas and record information on domestic situations."
This document accompanies a major federal push for drone deployment this year in the United States, accompanied by federal policies to encourage law enforcement agencies to obtain and use them locally, as well as by federal support for their commercial deployment. That is to say: now HSBC, Chase, Halliburton etc can have their very own fleets of domestic surveillance drones. The FAA recently established a more efficient process for local police departments to get permits for their own squadrons of drones.
Given the Department of Homeland Security militarization of police departments, once the circle is completed with San Francisco or New York or Chicago local cops having their own drone fleet – and with Chase, HSBC and other banks having hired local police, as I reported here last week – the meshing of military, domestic law enforcement, and commercial interests is absolute. You don't need a messy, distressing declaration of martial law.
And drone fleets owned by private corporations means that a first amendment right of assembly is now over: if Occupy is massing outside of a bank, send the drone fleet to surveil, track and harass them. If citizens rally outside the local Capitol? Same thing. As one of my readers put it, the scary thing about this new arrangement is deniability: bad things done to citizens by drones can be denied by private interests – "Oh, that must have been an LAPD drone" – and LAPD can insist that it must have been a private industry drone. For where, of course, will be the accountability from citizens buzzed or worse by these things?
Domestic drone use is here, and the meshing has begun: local cops in Grand Forks, North Dakota called in a DHS Predator drone – the same make that has caused hundreds of civilian casualties in Pakistan – over a dispute involving a herd of cattle. The military rollout in process and planned, within the US, is massive: the Christian Science Monitor reports that a total of 110 military sites for drone activity are either built or will be built, in 39 states. That covers America.
We don't need a military takeover: with these capabilities on US soil and this air force white paper authorization for data collection, the military will be effectively in control of the private lives of American citizens. And these drones are not yet weaponized.
"I don't think it's crazy to worry about weaponized drones. There is a real consensus that has emerged against allowing weaponized drones domestically. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has recommended against it," warns Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the ACLU, noting that there is already political pressure in favor of weaponization:
"At the same time, it is inevitable that we will see [increased] pressure to allow weaponized drones. The way that it will unfold is probably this: somebody will want to put a relatively 'soft' nonlethal weapon on a drone for crowd control. And then things will ratchet up from there."
And the risk of that? The New America Foundation's report on drone use in Pakistan noted that the Guardian had confirmed 193 children's deaths from drone attacks in seven years. It noted that for the deaths of ten militants, 1,400 civilians with no involvement in terrorism also died. Not surprisingly, everyone in that region is traumatized: children scream when they hear drones. An NYU and Stanford Law School report notes that drones "terrorize citizens 24 hours a day".
If US drones may first be weaponized with crowd-control features, not lethal force features, but with no risk to military or to police departments or DHS, the playing field for freedom of assembly is changed forever. So is our private life, as the ACLU's Stanley explains:
"Our biggest concerns about the deployment of drones domestically is that they will be used to create pervasive surveillance networks. The danger would be that an ordinary individual once they step out of their house will be monitored by a drone everywhere they walk or drive. They may not be aware of it. They might monitored or tracked by some silent invisible drone everywhere they walk or drive."
"So what? Why should they worry?" I asked.
"Your comings and goings can be very revealing of who you are and what you are doing and reveal very intrusive things about you – what houses of worship you are going to, political meetings, particular doctors, your friends' and lovers' houses."
I mentioned the air force white paper. "Isn't the military not supposed to be spying on Americans?" I asked.
"Yes, the posse comitatus act passed in the 19th century forbids a military role in law enforcement among Americans."
What can we do if we want to oppose this? I wondered. According to Stanley, many states are passing legislation banning domestic drone use. Once again, in the fight to keep America a republic, grassroots activism is pitched in an unequal contest against a militarized federal government.
In Aulaqi v. Panetta, the court held that the father of Anwar al-Awlaki, whose American-born son was killed by a drone strike in Yemen in September of 2011, did not have standing to sue on his son’s behalf, and that the ACLU’s request for judicial review raised “political” questions that the court could not decide.
This judicial reticence could not come at a worse time. Drone attacks are apparently on the rise in 2013 after a two-year downward trend since 2010. As of January 8, 2013, there were already six strikes in eight days in Pakistan, leaving thirty-five dead.
The legality of the program, which is entirely a function of the Executive Branch with no form of judicial review, has come under much scrutiny, especially since Awlaki’s killing. As a citizen, Awlaki was entitled to due process as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states in relevant part: “No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” In almost all cases, that right has been construed as entailing the right of the accused to have an opportunity to present his or her case before a fair and impartial tribunal, i.e. a trial. Awlaki, who was never publicly charged with a crime and whose location in Yemen effectively rendered him removed from any “hot” battlefield, was deprived of a trial.
“Where national security operations are at stake, due process takes into account the realities of combat.” The government further argues that Awlaki’s capture was not feasible, that he posed an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States, and as such, his extra-judicial killing was, and is, constitutional.
The Supreme Court, in Rumsfeld v. Padilla, affirmed that a U.S. citizen picked up on U.S. soil can be put into military detention pursuant to the AUMF. Given Padilla and the government’s vague due process “standard,” there is little reason to believe the government wouldn’t kill a U.S. citizen on U.S. soil whom it determines can’t feasibly be captured and who poses an imminent threat to the United States.
The NDAA 2013, while not discussing targeting and killing, broadens the scope of the AUMF in the context of detention by removing the 9/11 nexus. It redefines the enemy as “a person who was a part of or who substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces who are engaged in hostilities against the United States…”. More than coincidentally, the term “associated forces” has been read into the AUMF for some time now by the Obama administration, and the Bush administration before it, for targeting and killing. The “associated forces” doctrine gives greater leeway to the Executive to detain, target and kill individuals who had no connection to al-Qaeda’s 9/11 attack, but who now support groups “associated” with those involved in 9/11, e.g. al-Qaeda Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), The Pakistani Taliban, Somalia’s al-Shabaab, and others. In fact, Awlaki’s killing was justified under the “associated forces” doctrine, as the government never claimed he bore any responsibility for the 9/11 attacks.
I'd like to add Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org
as a site to check out sometime; donate if you want.
Seems the sites providing organized opposition to over-reaching gov's of whatever bounds -- always need $$.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B004JFMOG ... sm_1_fb_lk
http://droneswatch.org/2013/01/20/list- ... and-yemen/