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US Air Force scrubs drone strike data from reports

RT | March 9, 2013

The US Air Force has stopped sharing information on the number of drone strikes in Afghanistan. Going one step further, it has removed those statistics from prior reports on its website.

The Air Force’s Central Command began keeping track of drone weapon releases in October 2012, according to the Air Force Times. The move was described at that time as a bid to “provide more detailed information on [drone] ops in Afghanistan,” said Central Command spokeswoman Capt. Kim Bender, the magazine reports.

Statistics were recorded as part of the policy for November, December and January. But when February’s numbers were published on March 7, there was only a blank space where the drone statistics were normally placed.

And beyond that, the monthly reports posted to the Air Force’s website had the drone data removed from them in recent weeks, with the data still being posted as late as February 16.

The data wipe comes as drone-use has fallen under close scrutiny in connection with the nomination of John Brennan to lead the CIA. Brennan faced fierce opposition in the Senate, though he was ultimately approved, because of his defense of drone use while acting as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

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March 9, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | 1 Comment

Crashed US reconnaissance drone found in Philippine waters

Press TV – January 7, 2013

A US-made reconnaissance drone has been recovered in waters off Ticao Island of the Philippines, a navy official says.

Captain Rommel Jason Galang, a Philippine navy commander, said the drone was recovered on Monday, after it was found by fishermen floating near the island.

Galang also said the navy had deployed a ship with ordnance experts to the scene after the fishermen reported that the 3.65-meter object could have been a bomb.

“We will first study this drone but initially it appears to be a UAV used largely in reconnaissance,” he stated, adding that it was not clear why the BQM-74E drone had crashed.

The US embassy in Manila was informed of the discovery of the drone, which is expected to be turned over to US authorities.

The Philippines has seen a resurgence of US troops since late 2011, when the White House announced a turn in Washington’s foreign, economic and security policy toward the region.

Some 600 US soldiers have been stationed in the southern Philippines since 2002 to train local troops there.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino said last year that US drones were allowed to fly over the country for reconnaissance purposes.

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January 7, 2013 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Easily Abused, Domestic Drones Raise Enormous Privacy Concerns

By Linda Lye, ACLU of Northern California  | October 19, 2012

Shortly before next week’s one-year anniversary of the Oakland Police Department’s brutal crackdown on Occupy Oakland, Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern announced that he was seeking funds to purchase a drone to engage in unspecified unmanned aerial surveillance. One of the many unfortunate lessons of OPD’s Occupy crackdown is that when law enforcement has powerful and dangerous tools in its arsenal, it will use them. Drones raise enormous privacy concerns and can easily be abused. Before any drone acquisition proceeds, we need to ask a threshold question – are drones really necessary in our community? – and have a transparent and democratic process for debating that question. In addition, if the decision is made to acquire a drone, do we have rigid safeguards and accountability mechanisms in place, so that law enforcement does not use drones to engage in warrantless mass surveillance? The ACLU of Northern California has sent the Sheriff a Public Records Act request, demanding answers to these crucial questions.

Drones should never be used for indiscriminate mass surveillance, and police should never use them unless there are legitimate grounds to believe they will collect evidence related to a specific instance of criminal wrongdoing or in emergencies.

One of the reasons cited by Sheriff Ahern in support of drones is that they are much cheaper than other forms of aerial surveillance; by his account, a helicopter costs $3 million to purchase and a drone less than 1/30 of that. But the relative inexpensiveness of electronic surveillance is also precisely why strong safeguards need to be in place. When the police have to mount elaborate and costly foot and squad patrols to follow a suspect 24/7, the expenditure of resources serves as a deterrent to abuse; it forces the police to limit their surveillance to instances when it is actually necessary. Drones permit the police to surveil people at all hours of the day and, apparently, at 1/30 the cost of other forms of aerial surveillance. The natural deterrent to abuse goes away, and invites abuse. This makes strong safeguards absolutely essential.

Before Sheriff Ahern proceeds with the drone acquisition, the community deserves answers to the questions we raised in our Public Records Act request: Why are drones necessary? How much will they cost? And what safeguards will be in place to prevent abuse?

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October 19, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

Downed Hezbollah drone may have relayed intel on secret Israeli military sites

RT | October 14, 2012

The IDF shot down a Hezbollah-piloted drone over the northern Negev desert earlier this month after it possibly captured images of secret Israeli military sites. Earlier, Tel Aviv praised the IDF for its rapid response to the security breach.

­The drone was launched from Lebanon and crossed into Israeli airspace on October 6, and stayed airborne for three hours before being intercepted, the Sunday Times reported.

Sources in the region claimed that the unmanned aircraft traveled more than 300 kilometers, and transmitted pictures of preparations for Israel’s joint military exercise with the US, the newspaper said. The aircraft also reportedly spotted ballistic missiles, airfields and likely the nuclear reactor in Dimona.

The British newspaper said that the first missile an Israeli F-16 fighter jet shot at the done missed its target. After the incident, Israeli leadership praised the country’s air forces for their “sharp and effective” response to the violation of the country’s airspace.

The drone is the new Iranian Shahed-129, operated by Iranian Revolutionary Guard technicians with the help of the Hezbollah, the report said.

Earlier, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah took credit for the aerial infiltration, saying that the aircraft was designed by Iran and assembled in Lebanon.

He said the drone was deployed in response to what he called Israel’s repeated violations of Lebanese airspace since 2006. He identified the Dimona reactor as the mission’s main target.

“This flight was not our first will not be our last, and we give assurances we can reach any point we want. We have the right to dispatch recon planes over occupied Palestine at any time,” Nasrallah said.

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October 14, 2012 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , , | 2 Comments

Israeli Occupation Forces Shoot down Unidentified Drone over Negev

Al-Manar | October 7, 2012

The Zionist air force on Saturday intercepted an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that penetrated the claimed airspace of the Zionist entity from the Mediterranean Sea and headed south, its military said in a statement.

A military spokesman of the occupation regime said two fighter jets were scrambled from a southern air base at around 10 a.m. local time (0800 GMT) after a ground control station identified the drone, which was shot down over the Yatir Forest, an area in the northern Negev.

“At this time we do not know where it originated from and what its objective was,” Zionist Captain Roni Kaplan told the Chinese news agency Xinhua.

Zionist troops surveyed the area where the drone was downed in an effort to locate debris that could shed light on its origin and objective, while the Air Force launched its own investigation into the incident, Kaplan said.

Local media outlets speculated, however, that the drone was either sent to collect intelligence or crash into a Zionist town or military installation.

A retired Lebanese major general Hisham Jaber said in an interview with Press TV on Saturday that the drone was probably operated by Americans.

“(The drone must have come) from an American aircraft carrier or from (air force and military bases in) Saudi Arabia, also American bases. That’s the only possibility so far until we know after investigation.”

Considering the good relationship between the Zionist regime and Jordan, the Lebanese military analyst went on to say that he did not think the drone could have been operated from Jordan, adding that it is “impossible” that it came from Lebanon.

In a statement, Zionist Defense Minister Ehud Barak praised the military and the Air force in the entity of occupation for what he called “their quick and effective response.”

“We view with severity the attempt to harm Israeli airspace, and we will weigh our response,” Barak said.

It’s worthy to recall here that the Zionists’ own drones have also crashed in and around Palestine during recent years.

Cited article and video report

October 7, 2012 Posted by | Video | , | 1 Comment

Drone surveillance: now in the US

The FAA has been adopting new rules to expand the use of small drones domestically, and by 2012 UAVs are expected to dominate the country’s airspace. Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier Foundation brings his take on whether Americans should worry about what law enforcement is doing.

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July 24, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Italy may also launch drone attacks on Pak-Afghan border area

By Akhtar Jamal | Pakistan Observer | June 3, 2012

Islamabad—According to Airforce-technology.com the United States is now planning to arm Italy’s fleet of MQ-9 Reaper unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) with missiles and bombs, in a bid to “protect Italian armed forces from enemy threats” in Afghanistan.

Until now the United States and Britain had been using drones against “enemy elements” but almost all drone attacks carried out along Pak-Afghan borders areas had been carried out by American CIA.

The website claimed that the Obama administration was likely to announce the deal within two weeks, following which the US-built drones, operated by Italian air forces, will be equipped with weapons such as laser-guided bombs and Hellfire missiles.

The publication quoted Pentagon spokesman, George Little, as saying: “Italy is one of our strongest partners and Nato allies, and it’s important for us, for a variety of reasons, to share technologies and capabilities with them for purposes of burden sharing and to enable them to better protect themselves and, by extension, to protect the United States and our other allies.”

The American CIA carries out drone attacks citing “threats from unidentified enemies” and there are fears that if armed with missiles the Italian drones may also hit “possible enemies” considered a “threat to NATO forces”.

The report added that “Italy currently operates surveillance drones to protect its troops deployed to Afghanistan and it is likely that around six of them will be armed.”

The proposed sale may also assist the US in reallocating the global military operations burden, especially at a time when the Pentagon’s budget is facing deficit-reduction by requirements, report added.

According to the report the MQ-9 Reaper is a medium-to-high altitude UAV primarily designed for reconnaissance and surveillance and uses several kinds of sensors, including a thermal camera, and has six stores pylons that can carry a maximum of 4,600lb of weapons and external fuel tanks.

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June 3, 2012 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Attack of the drones

By Chizom Ekeh | Morning Star Online | May 20, 2012

Drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), have become the centrepiece of the allied military strategy in the “war on terror.”

In 2011 they were deployed in Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq, Palestine and Turkey.

According to the Economist, drone strikes have increased by 1,200 per cent since 2005. This is equivalent to one strike every four days.

Modern warfare is transforming and could lead to the deployment of military robots that make attack decisions independently.

Termed as “automatic deletion,” human operators would be taken out of the loop and preprogrammed robots would carry out missions guided by artificial intelligence.

According to Teal Group, a US aerospace and defence analysis firm, investment in the industry is projected to rise to $89 billion over the next 10 years.

Author of the study and director of Teal’s corporate analysis Philip Finnegan predicted that “the UAV market will continue to be strong despite cuts in defence spending.

“UAVs have proved their value in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan and will continue to be a high priority for militaries in the US and worldwide.”

Israel is the leading global exporter of UAVs, while other key players in the industry include Canada, France, Italy and South Africa. There are currently 40 companies selling and manufacturing drones, and 50 countries have acquired the technology.

In recent years Britain has been using Israeli drones in Afghanistan which it has rented on a pay by the hour basis from the company Elbit Systems.

British soldiers have also received training in Israel on how to operate the weapons.

Proponents of drone warfare claim that UAVs bring down the costs of war. They argue that civilian casualties are reduced due to higher-precision strikes.

Furthermore, they highlight that robots could make war more ethical, as they cannot act out of malice or hatred which can lead to war crimes or other abuses of human rights.

While the Economist asserts that “claims that drones are constantly blowing up Afghan weddings is wrong,” the fact remains that civilian casualties are rising and protests against their use are intensifying worldwide. In response, savvy industry leaders have mobilised to discuss “how to stop the public hysteria surrounding UAV operations in the 21st century?” and the MoD has committed to implementing a communications strategy to counter negative publicity.

The Bureau for Investigative Journalism has reported that between 2004 and August 2011, 2,347 people were killed by US drones. Between 392 and 781 were civilians, and of these 175 were children.

Other sources state that at least one of these victims was disabled and confined to a wheelchair.

Additionally, six of these victims were British nationals, but the British government has not investigated their deaths.

Meanwhile, of the two US citizens killed in strikes, one was alleged by the CIA to have been al-Qaida’s leader in the Arabian Peninsula.

In September 2011 Anwar al-Awlaki was assassinated in Yemen by a US drone. Two weeks later, in a separate attack, his 16-year-old son was one of nine people killed.

Concerns have been raised by lawyers about the legality of Awlaki’s assassination as a US citizen with no criminal charge.

Against this background the American Civil Liberties Union said: “If the constitution means anything, it surely means that the president does not have the unreviewable authority to summarily execute any citizen who it concludes is an enemy of the state.”

In November 2011, 16-year-old Tariq Aziz and his 12-year-old cousin Waheed Khan were both killed by US drone strikes in Northern Waziristan. Just days before his death, Tariq had attended a meeting organised by the British charity Reprieve.

Tariq had agreed to assist the organisation by taking pictures of the aftermath of Allied strikes.

Mounting civilian casualties and the lack of accountability for these deaths is fuelling anger globally. In November 2011, 2,000 people staged an anti-drone demonstration outside the parliament building in Islamabad, and for the first time Yemeni citizens came together to voice their outrage in Sana’a.

Human rights lawyer Shazad Akbar is suing the CIA for the killing of Pakistani civilians.

Furthermore, legal action taken by human rights groups against Foreign Secretary William Hague could lead to his prosecution for war crimes. He is accused of providing intelligence that assisted CIA-targeted killings in Pakistan.

In April last year a civil disobedience action was staged at Hancock Air National Guard Base in the US. Thirty-eight anti-drone protesters were arrested and some have been put on trial.

Meanwhile at RMT University in Melbourne, protesters disrupted a meeting organised by UAV manufacturers. They urged attendees to reject technological innovations which enable killing from great distance and condemned the use of the weapons as immoral.

Drone Wars UK has demanded the classification of drones as “too cruel to use, like cluster munitions and landmines.” This has been backed by critics who warn that the use of robots to achieve military objectives could amount to a disproportionate use of force.

In future, drones could be developed that achieve superhuman levels of accuracy, reaching a 100 per cent rate of effectiveness. However such capability would break rules of proportionality under international humanitarian law (IHL).

Overseen by the International Red Cross, IHL bans weapons that cause more than 25 per cent mortality on the battlefield and 5 per cent mortality in hospitals.

The question of the legality of targeted killing remains unanswered. The US and British governments either refuse to disclose information about when this policy is applied or deny outright that it is happening. Lawyers state that targeted killings contravene the rule of law and argue that this amounts to state-sanctioned assassination.

Criticising the EU’s silence on targeted killing in Pakistan, analyst Nathalie Van Raemdonck contends that drone warfare could be illegal, and that the EU’s failure to put pressure on the US to explain the legal basis of its policy is due to a lack of consensus caused by vested interests among member states.

She warns: “Even though the analysis of the US’s targeted killing makes it clear that it is a legally and morally controversial practice, it is possible that the EU finds advantages of avoiding the subject to be greater than those of living up to its moral obligation of urging the US to comply with international law.”

Agreeing with Van Raemdonk’s warnings against a backlash, critics argue that robotic warfare could destabilise global security and deepen hostility towards British and US peacekeeping or military interventions overseas.

Robots, they say, would make war easier to wage, as the safety of remote operators thousands of miles away from their targets would make them less concerned about killing.

An adviser to the CIA and expert on robots has emphasised the need for continued human diplomacy to avoid fuelling resentment.

Highlighting Iraq, he said: “Sending in robot patrols into Baghdad to keep the peace would send the wrong message about our willingness to connect with residents. We still need human diplomacy for that. In war this could backfire against us, as our enemies mark us as dishonourable and cowardly for not willing to engage them man to man. This serves to make them more resolute in fighting us and leads to a new crop of determined terrorists.”

As has occurred with all war technologies in the past, the risk of UAV proliferation is high.

Noting this danger, UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Killing Christof Heyns warned: “The use of such methods by some states to eliminate opponents around the world raises the question why other states should not engage in the same practices.

“The danger is one of global war without borders, in which no one is safe.”

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May 21, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Drones: The Nightmare Scenario

By Jay Stanley, Senior Policy Analyst, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | May 2, 2012

In our drones report, we discuss the coming onslaught of domestic drones and the weak state of the privacy laws that should protect us, and we outline our recommendations for protections that Congress and local governments should put in place.

But if nothing is done, how might things go? Let’s take a look at how police drone use could unfold:

  1. The FAA’s new rules go into effect. Acting under orders from Congress, the FAA in coming months and years will significantly loosen the regulations that have been holding back broader deployment of drones. Starting later this year, for example, the FAA must allow any “government public safety agency” to operate any small drone (under 4.4 pounds) as long as certain conditions are met.
  1. More and more police departments begin using them. The FAA’s new rules allow for the release of pent-up demand among police departments for cheap aerial surveillance. Ownership of drones quickly becomes common among departments large and small. Organizations are formed by police drone operators, who exchange tips and advice. We also begin to hear about their deployment by federal agencies, other than on the border.
  1. We start to hear stories about how they’re being used. Most departments and agencies are relatively careful at first, and we begin to hear stories about drones being put to use in specific, mostly unobjectionable police operations such as raids, chases, and searches supported by warrants.
  1. Drone use broadens. Fairly quickly, however, we begin to hear about a few departments deploying drones for broader, more general uses: drug surveillance, marches and rallies, and generalized monitoring of troubled neighborhoods.
  1. Private use is banned. A terrorist like the pilot who crashed his plane into an IRS building in Texas uses an explosives-laden drone to try to attack a public facility. In response, the government clamps down on private use of the technology. The net result is that the government can use it for surveillance but individuals cannot use it to watch the government.
  1. Drones become able to mutually coordinate. Multiple drones deployed over neighborhoods can be linked together, and communicate and coordinate with each other (see this video for an early taste of what that could look like). This allows a swarm of craft to form a single, distributed wide-area surveillance system such as that envisioned by the “Gorgon Stare” program.
  1. The analytics gets better. At the same time, drones and the computers behind them become more intelligent and capable of analyzing the video feeds they are generating. They gain the ability to automatically track multiple vehicles and bodies as they move around a city or town, with different drones handing off the tracking to each other just as a mobile phone network passes a signal from one cell to another as a user rides down the highway.
  1. Flight durations grow. Technology improvements (involving blimps, perhaps, or solar-power innovations) allow for drones to stay aloft for longer periods more cheaply, which becomes key in permitting their use for persistent surveillance.
  1. The cycle accelerates. The advancing technology incentivizes agencies to buy even more drones, which in turn spurs more technology development, and the cycle becomes self-perpetuating.
  1. Laws are further loosened. As drones get smarter and more reliable and very good at sensing and avoiding other aircraft, FAA restrictions are further loosened, permitting even autonomous flight.
  1. Pervasive tracking becomes common. Despite opposition, a few police departments begin deploying drones 24/7 over certain areas. The media covers the controversy but Congress takes no action, and eventually it becomes old news, and the practice spreads until many or most American towns and cities are subject to the practice.
  1. Technologies are combined. Drone video cameras and tracking analytics are combined or synched up with other technologies such as face recognition, gait recognition, license-plate scanners, and cell phone location data.
  1. The data is mined. With individuals’ comings and goings routinely monitored, databases are able build up records of where people live, work, and play—what friends they visit, bars they drink at, doctors they visit, what houses of worship, or political events, or sexually oriented establishments they go to—and who else is at those places at the same time. Computers comb through this data looking for “suspicious patterns,” and when the algorithms kick up an alarm, the person involved becomes the subject of much more extensive surveillance.

Ultimately, such surveillance leads to an oppressive atmosphere where people learn to think twice about everything they do, knowing that it will be recorded, charted, scrutinized by increasingly intelligent computers, and possibly used to target them.

I’m not sure how realistic this scenario is. Perhaps it is far-fetched (I hope so). But the questions to ask are: which of the above steps is unlikely to take place, and why? And if we don’t end up in the situation described, how close will we get?

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May 2, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

FAA approves spy drones to fly US skies

Press TV – April 23, 2012

US law enforcement agencies have received the approval of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to use unmanned aircraft known as drones for mass surveillance.

More than 50 non-military organizations within the United States have received approval to fly drones, according to documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act requests by the advocacy group, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Major agencies like the FBI, the US Department of Homeland Security and the US Department of Justice had been cleared to launch drones, US President Barack Obama administration’s favorite weapon of war which is being used in countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Yemen.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation civil liberty group warned that the use of drones poses a serious threat to personal privacy.

The documents revealed that individual city police forces are also drawing up plans to use the reconnaissance aircraft.

In February, the US Congress passed a bill which approved the government’s deployment of up to 30,000 spy drones in American airspace by 2020.

The Federal Aviation Administration Reauthorization Act, which President Obama is expected to sign, also ordered the FAA to develop regulations for the testing and licensing of drones by 2015.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Currently almost 50 companies are developing some 150 different drone systems.

The US has been using the unmanned vehicles for its spy operations and assassination missions worldwide and the strikes have intensified since Obama took office three years ago.

April 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , | 2 Comments

Obama’s Drones Threaten World Civilization

By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | April 11, 2012

When Barack Obama was running for president, in 2008, he vowed to increase the use of drones against al Qaida elements in Pakistan and Afghanistan. His surrogates roamed the talk shows, advocating a “smarter” and cheaper kind of robotic war, allowing the U.S. to avoid pouring more troops into the “Af-Pak” theater of conflict. Vastly increased deployment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), the argument went, would jettison George Bush’s “dumb” approach to warfare in favor of a cheaper and more humane use of U.S. technological resources, saving both American and South Asian lives.

What the “peace” candidate was actually proposing, was a qualitative leap in the U.S. drive for “full spectrum dominance” over the planet. The U.S. would elevate to a strategic principle its self-arrogated entitlement to use whatever technical means at its disposal – mainly drones – to target and kill designated adversaries at will, anyplace on the globe, at any time, accountable only to itself. It was a declaration of war against international law, as it has evolved over the centuries.

This administration has expanded the Air Force inventory of active drones to at least 7,500. Drones have joined Special Operations forces as the “tip of the spear” of U.S. power projection in the developing world, the “front lines” of the current imperial offensive.

Virtually all of the drones’ lethal missions are, in legal terms, assassinations, with or without “collateral damage.” They are also acts of terror, certainly in the broad sense of the word, and intended to be so.

As Canadian political scientist David Model points out in a recent article “Assassination by Drones”: “It is clearly evident that for a State to launch an attack by a UAV is a violation of international law and those responsible for such acts become suspects of war crimes.” Drone warfare utterly shreds the very concept of the rule of law. In killing those “suspected” of committing or planning actions against the U.S., Washington “precludes the application of due process,” writes Model.

Therefore, in the quest to make the entire world a free-fire (and law-free) zone, drone warfare requires that due process be destroyed everywhere, including within the borders of the United States.The Obama-shaped preventive detention bill signed into law this past New Years Eve is the logical extension of the international lawlessness called forth by drone warfare, and by the larger aims of full spectrum American dominance. Barack Obama is not just another “war president” – he is a destroyer of world civilization, the terms by which humans deal with one another as states, social groupings and individuals. It is not an exaggeration to describe this leap into depravity as a war against humanity at-large, and against the human historical legacy.

Certainly, it is a war against peace, the highest international crime. If a state can kill individuals and designated (or alleged) organizations by fiat, without due process or any shred of accountability to any authority but the president of the superpower, that state can also “execute” other states at will. Under Obama, the U.S. has articulated an alternative notion of global legality that purports to replace the body of international law accrued over centuries and so elegantly codified after World War Two. “Humanitarian” military intervention is the fraudulent doctrine through which the U.S. seeks to justify its current, desperate offensive against all obstacles to its global dominance.

Where George Bush often spoke in unilateralist terms of a U.S. mission to “spread democracy” as justification for his regime-changing aggression in Iraq and elsewhere, Obama invokes the higher calling of “humanitarian intervention” as a universal, pseudo-legal principle of international conduct. It is a doctrine designed for a Final Conflict for American supremacy on the planet, a doomsday construct that conflates perceived U.S. (corporate) geopolitical interests with the destiny of humankind – unbounded imperial criminality posing as the highest bar of justice!

Since the Vietnam War era, the U.S. has traveled from being the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” in Dr. Martin Luther King’s words, to an existential threat to world order, the rule of law, and the security of the Earth’s inhabitants – to civilization itself. The nation’s first Black President has taken us on the final descent into international barbarity with his drone offensive. It is a joy stick to Hell.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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April 11, 2012 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

US: Congress Trying to Fast-Track Domestic Drone Use, Sideline Privacy

ACLU | February 6, 2012

Congress is poised to give final passage to legislation that would give a big boost to domestic unmanned aerial surveillance — aka “drones.”

As we explained in our recent report, drone technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, and there is a lot of pent-up demand for them within the law enforcement community. But, domestic deployment of unmanned aircraft for surveillance purposes has largely been blocked so far by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which is rightly concerned about the safety effects of filling our skies with flying robots (which crash significantly more often than manned aircraft).

As we also explained in our report, the FAA is under pressure to loosen the reins and permit broader deployment of drones by government agencies.

One result of that pressure is this legislation (H.R. 658 — see conference report for more details), which authorizes appropriations for the FAA through fiscal 2014. Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected.

Congress — and to the extent possible, the FAA — need to impose some rules (such as those we proposed in our report) to protect Americans’ privacy from the inevitable invasions that this technology will otherwise lead to. We don’t want to wonder, every time we step out our front door, whether some eye in the sky is watching our every move.

On Friday, the House gave final passage to the legislation. House approval came on a quite partisan vote, with most Republicans in favor and most Democrats opposing. The Senate is scheduled to take up the bill later today.

Here are details on what the bill would do in terms of drones:

  • Require the FAA to simplify and speed up the process by which it issues permission to government agencies to operate drones. It must do this within 90 days. The FAA has already been working on a set of proposed regulations to loosen the rules around drones, reportedly set for release in the spring of 2012.
  • Require the FAA to allow “a government public safety agency” to operate any drone weighing 4.4 pounds or less as long as certain conditions are met (within line of sight, during the day, below 400 feet in altitude, and only in safe categories of airspace).
  • Require the FAA to establish a pilot project within six months to create six test zones for integrating drones “into the national airspace system.”
  • Require the FAA to create a comprehensive plan “to safely accelerate the integration of civil unmanned aircraft systems into the national airspace system.” “Civil” drones means those operated by the private sector; currently it is all but impossible for any non-government entity, except for hobbyists, to get permission to fly drones (for-profit use of drones is banned). Industry groups and their congressional supporters see this as a potential area for growth. Congress specifies that the plan must provide for the integration of drones into the national airspace system “as soon as practicable, but not later than September 30, 2015.” The FAA has nine months to create the plan. The FAA is also required to create a “5-year roadmap for the introduction” of civil drones into the national airspace.
  • Require the FAA to publish a final rule within 18 months after the comprehensive plan is submitted, “that will allow” civil operation of small (under 55 pounds) drones in the national airspace, and a proposed rule for carrying out the comprehensive plan.

The bottom line is: domestic drones are potentially extremely powerful surveillance tools, and that power — like all government power — needs to be subject to checks and balances. We hope that Congress will carefully consider the privacy implications that this technology can lead to.

February 9, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | 1 Comment

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