Slashdot Mirror
ACLU Sues Over Legality of "Targeted Killing" By Drones
MacAndrew writes "The ACLU has sued the United States Government to enforce a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for 'the release of records relating to the use of unmanned aerial vehicles — commonly known as 'drones' — for the purpose of targeting and killing individuals since September 11, 2001.' (Complaint.) The information sought includes the legal basis for use of the drones, how the program is managed, and the number of civilian deaths in areas of operation such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen. The ACLU further claims that 'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.' Aside from one's view of the wisdom, effectiveness, and morality of these military operations, the inclusion of US citizens suggests that summary remote-control executions are becoming routine. Especially given the difficulty in locating and targeting individuals from aircraft, risks of human and machine error are obvious, and these likely increase as the robots become increasingly autonomous (please no Skynet jokes). This must give pause to anyone who's ever spent time coding or debugging or even driving certain willful late model automobiles, and the US government evidently doesn't want to discuss it."
The defense's response was merely a motion for discovery of the plaintiff's latitude and longitude.
My work here is dung.
I can almost guarantee that the information sought is either classified or at least FOUO (For Official Use Only) which means it's exempt from the FOIA.
Well then, lets have some untargeted killing then. Thats much better for everyone.
"His name was James Damore."
Resistance is futile. This article will be assimiliated into the collective conscious of slashdot, and will become subject to Skynet jokes whether you like it or not.
There. A skynet comment and a borg comment rolled into one...
Bet you didn't see that coming, submitter.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
If US Citizens are employed in the service of enemies of this Republic on foreign soil, then what the hell does the ACLU want? The FBI to paradrop into Afghanistan, slap the cuffs on them and read them their Miranda rights? What the hell?
Next up: ACLU objects to US Military engaging in warfare, suggests borrowing a page from Steven Spielberg and replacing all issued M-16s with walkie-talkies.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
From the summary:
'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.'
That's part of the reason why the ACLU would be involved.
Another part is that they're a watchdog group. When the government is keeping secrets from its citizens, watchdog groups make noise. That's what they do. I'm glad for it - too much gets shoved under the label of "national security" and the press is useless if you can't provide them a decent "some say ... while others claim ..." narrative to wrap facts in.
UCAVs are not at all autonomous. For the very reasons already mentioned, they basically can't be. They can autonomously fly around and look at things, but firing weapons requires somebody on the ground calling for a strike, and somebody in a shack somewhere actually making it. It's not as though a drone can actually see the face of any people its shooting at; how would it know that it has found somebody on The Dreaded List unless somebody on the ground first said "he's over there?" The legality of killing people with drones is thus basically identical to the legality of doing so from any other aircraft. Good luck stopping that.
UAVs allow operators to make intelligent decisions because they are not in the heat of battle, change shifts every hour, have someone behind them helping them make decisions, and have advanced payloads identifying actual threats versus civilians. There is no comparison to other methods in regards to reducing civilian casualties.
'Recent reports, including public statements from the director of national intelligence, indicate that US citizens have been placed on the list of targets who can be hunted and killed with drones.'
Read the summary but somehow totally missed this part. Thanks for the polite response. :-)
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Not that I completely agree with them, but I thought the articles said that they thought we were targeting US citizens. My rights as a citizen of the US shouldn't expire with respect to the US government if I leave the country. I'd like to hope the US isn't just waiting for me to step into mexico to snipe me.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Yeah, because an airplane in a few miles with only thermal vision on has the same accuracy than when a sniper is stalking and on a good opportunity targeting and shooting a target.
Hmm, that'll be a fun meeting. "Fellow lawyers, honored celebrity guests and bleeding heart liberals. It is so good to see so many of you in one room. We are gathered here today to stab at the heart of the neo-con agenda... hey, what's that droning noise?"
If he's the Walrus then can I be a penguin please?
And who cares if they are targeting US citizens?
I seem to recall something about having a right to a fair trial if I'm a US citizen. Also, I was hoping I would be considered innocent until proven guilty by a jury of my peers. Yes, I know that's been thrown out the window in some cases but I would still prefer that over "Oh, they killed the Jones' today. Huh, they must have been consorting with terrorists." The ACLU is trying to protect your civil liberties and freedoms whether you want them to or not. Because to them and many other people, things like this are important.
My work here is dung.
There is supposed to be a legal process where one gets found guilty in a court of law, gets to appeal and then get sentenced to execution. Even then most states have recognized the process has a number of flaws.
Here we apparently have the US government selecting US citizens for death and then carrying out the killing without the involvement of the courts. The ACLU is asking how such operation is valid under the US constitution. Every US citizen should be worried about a process where the government is able to execute citizens without going through the court system. Because the men in black masks might start making local visits.
Despite the standard inaccurate Slashdot headline, they're not actually suing over the legality of targeted killing by drones, they're suing over the disclosure of information. Government transparency is a big part of what the ACLU is all about, and they're suing to get the government to hand over the documents. If impropriety is found once/if the documents are released, most likely a different group would actually sue over the abuses, since they are, as you say, not a civil liberties issue.
I have always felt this method of targeting individuals illegal at best. It may be legal to use force when there is a declared war happening and this is among soldiers.
But such targeted killing of individuals has happened in many countries now, without any trial. In several cases, surrounding civilians also become causalities, even though they may just be passers-by. WTF?
Before al-Zarqawi was killed in Iraq, nobody wanted him alive. But that bombing which caused his death also killed civilians including children in that building, who may have had no choice but to be there.
How is a government any better than the terrorists then? Like many say, if such things happen where there is no due process and no care about collateral damage, then the terrorists have already won and there's no difference between us and them.
Banu
The people who are being targeted have done a little bit more than leave the country. They've left the country and joined up with enemies of the country who are actively engaged in the process of trying it do it harm.
And this has been proven in a court of law? Or is based on the hunch of some intelligence analyst who is contracted through a corporation to provide support to the DoD?
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
As far as I can tell, this seems to be about killing a Citizen that has a gun and is presently involved in shooting at American soldiers (Or is somehow presently engaged in other acts of war against the US)... It's not about finding one on the street and saying he's a bad guy, kill him. If you shoot at a police officer (or even raise a gun towards him for that matter), is he/she going to stop and say "Well, he deserves the right to a fair trial, so I'm going to let him shoot at me while I go try to put him in handcuffs"? No, they are going to shoot back. If the suspect survives, then they will be tried by their peers. But once you engage against either the military or the police, you should consider yourself lucky if you do survive...
I'm not saying that these kinds of things are important, but why the focus on drones? Why not focus on ALL targeted killing? They pick drones, because it's new and scary (They can rally support through sensationalism). Not because it's radically changed the way the military has operated (in terms of who to kill, not in strategy). Don't get me wrong, I think it needs to be looked into, but this appears to me to be a media stunt to try to get the public's interest roused to the point where the military will have to say SOMETHING...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
If it was only targeting combatants on a battlefield it wouldn't be a problem. The problem is there is a list of people that the military is trying to hunt down and execute outside of a battlefield, the list includes US citizens that haven't been convicted of anything in any court of law or military tribunal.
This means that someone in the US government is deciding which US citizens to execute, with no public or judicial oversight. This seems like exactly the sort of thing the ACLU would be interested in, it is just a pity that news organizations aren't.
I am sure that this secret power to execute US citizens could never be abused and that the people making these decisions would never make a mistake, or cover up that mistake they would never make, but I would feel more comfortable if I knew how the process of deciding who to hunt down and execute worked.
Killing someone who isn't a member of any nations military and isn't currently on a battlefield or actively trying to kill you at the time is a job for the courts not the military.
i was a 1N051 with an above TS clearance during the Clinton years. i taught LoAC stuff.
If a US Citizen is an enemy, they are fair game. Citizenship is a non-issue, enemy combatant trumps citizenship (and rightly so)
Drones/UAVs are NOT ROBOTS, they do not select targets or pull the trigger. By law they cannot.
Targeted killing is fine in combat. Popping a cap in Mrs. Merkel's ass right now would be illegal and a bad idea for many reasons. If we were fighting Germany, she'd be fair game because she is leader of enemy forces (civilian or not). Germany's minister of arts or some such would NOT be.
If the Taliban has a bomb factory (legit target) in a mosque/hospital/kitten orphanage (illegal target) it becomes a legit target, and for good reason. A AAA cannon mounted on the Eiffel Tower would be a legit target.
Civilian != Innocent - If Bob the Plumber makes a pipebomb he forgoes his protection under GenCon and is now an unlawful combatant.
i normally cheer for the ACLU, but i think they are defending the wrong people for the wrong reasons. This smells political.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
I'm sorry but if you leave the US, travel to a foreign battlefield and willingly enlist in the service of those who are fighting our country you've committed treason.
Treason is a crime. Crimes are dealt with by arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing.
Responding to purported treason by assassination is a cowardly, banana republic approach.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The other reason to focus on drones, besides their novelty, is the fact that they are(notably unlike men with guns) commonly used on targets not immediately engaged in hostilities.
If somebody is actively involved in a firefight, this creates both a strong presumption of guilt and a strong practical difficultly in apprehension. Returning fire and killing them isn't ideal; but it is about as good as is practical. And, in such situations, I wouldn't see it as terribly relevant whether the shot is delivered by the forces on the ground, manned air support, or robotic air support.
However, one of the drone roles is the "We believe person X to be in building Y, not doing anything of note at present; but a known enemy on other occasions. Send a drone to blow up building Y." Here, there is none of the immediacy of the firefight scenario. In effect, a "trial" has occurred of citizen X, based on some sort of intelligence data, and now a sentence is being carried out. I'm sure that there are plenty of cases where, by high quality intelligence or by luck, the judgement is correct; but a request for information on how these judgements are carried out seems neither unreasonable, nor equivalent to demanding that soldiers in active engagement undergo absurd risks to take their opponents into custody undamaged.
When drones are used for air support of an active operation, they are generally called that. "Targeted killing", at least historically, always refers to the execution, by military means, of somebody believed to be an enemy in the context of some sort of military conflict; but not immediately engaged in hostilities.
Bunch of pussies shooting a $30000.00 bullet far away at some people, without accountability. No warriors, only point and click. Now you can be fat and not even be able to walk to kill. The civilian victims should start suing the government(s) responsible. They are wronged and this should clearly be illegal. I am very pro democracy and without accountability you are not in a real democracy. More like a republic led by pseudo dictators. I call them dictators because they say "national security" then they dictate what will happen, no debate, no constitution, no UN, no Geneva convention just... dictation.
I do hope all taliban/terrorists die, it just has to be done right or WE are the terrorists. They are hurting innocent people and to stop them from doing that we do the same? Strange world.
The second amendment is important. So are laws against cruelty to animals. Fortunately we have advocacy groups that defend these causes.
The ACLU is a private advocacy group, the get to decide what they advocate for - and they can't do everything.
I cant really think of many legitimate reasons a US born person should have be wandering around in the tribal regions of Pakistan.
US Born != US citizen. It might surprise you to learn that there are many Pakistan born US citizens. Should going home to visit your family make you a legitimate target for a UAV?
There's also missionaries, womens rights workers, etc., etc.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
*picks up ACLU*
*hits e2d2*
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Although I usually like causes taken up by the ACLU this cause sounds really dumb. Weapons of war always take innocents along with combatants. Make no mistake there were nursing homes and kindergartens at Hiroshima and just about every other city that we have bombed in our various wars.
The real question is whether drones will kill of unusual numbers of innocents compared to other weapons of war. I suspect that drones are part of the notion of kinder and gentler warfare.
As to targeting American citizens in war zones, well sure, if they are aiding the enemy then they are fair game.
And keep in mind that using drones keeps our own soldiers and airmen out of harms way. If we are lucky we may be able to create an entirely robotic military in the future.
That's fine, we don't have to use the drones for precision attacks, we can keep them in a surveillance only role.
We can just go back to daisy cutters and carpet bombing once the target has been spotted.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Look, during hostilities, people get killed. That's what happens. US citizen or not, if they are on the battlefield fighting American troops they will get shot at. But if they are hanging out at the Taliban Tavern drinking a pint of Osama bin Lager with their mates, possibly planning the next 9/11 attack, killing them then is a summary execution rather than an act of war. I think the ACLU has a point that we should investigate, arrest and try them rather than summarily executing them.
We are talking about a war zone here. Are you seriously asking the US military to arrest every enemy soldier who is firing on them, find out if they are a US citizen, and then put them on trial?
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Rational people disagree about the meaning of the 4th amendment. This has been debated for like the past 100 years. The ACLU has a view on gun rights that I don't agree with, and a lot of other people don't. That doesn't make them a hypocrite because they disagree with me. Let me ask this: have the ACLU actively fought against individual rights? Or have they just avoided supporting individual rights cases? ( That's not a rhetorical question, I honestly don't know ).
Everybody is a hypocrite on something. That's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's plenty of good that the ACLU is doing, and if they don't do it, there's not much of anybody else doing it. Don't cut your nose to spite your face, I say. Like I said, we have the NRA supporting individual gun rights, but who is supporting the first and fourth amendment ( amongst others )? The ACLU.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
If you'd like to volunteer to serve them papers I'm sure we can manage to kill two birds with one stone.
It always amazes me how much people take their civil liberties for granted.
Instead of RTFA, a number of Slashdotters went off on tirades against the ACLU, an organization with the sole purpose of protecting your rights as an American citizen. The ACLU has sued to seek the legal justification of using drones, to find out what the limits are, and who has the authorization to use drones. They have not sued to stop it's practice.
Even in war, there are laws that govern the U.S. Military and it's personnel. A soldier cannot just go and randomly kill people, just because they are in hostile territory. Soldiers must follow orders by someone who has the legal authority to order an attack or strike.
This lawsuit aims to clarify who has legal authority to use drones and how they can be used, not only to insure the drones are being used properly, but also to protect the rights of the personnel who use them.
I am not weighing in on either the pro- or anti- "killing from drones" question.
But I would like to point out that drones create an opportunity that is perhaps in a blindspot for many in and out of the military.
When a soldier goes into a firefight, why must he shoot to kill? Because the other side is shooting to kill him. A remote controlled drone breaks that model. The enemy cannot kill the drone operator, they can only damage the drone - a matter of expense rather than life or death.
In the sort of "war" we're now in, with enemies who hide amongst their own families and neighbors, the chances are very high that you create one new enemy for every enemy you kill, and several for every civilian. So with drones, the military value equation is strongly tipped toward NOT killing, if you can achieve your objective in other ways.
Instead of blowing up that car full of insurgent leaders, disable it in the middle of the desert by blowing a hole through the engine block. Develop knock-out gas bombs, or a fragmentation bomb that injects tiny frozen pellets of a knock out drug. THEN send in your troops, or even a drone "paddy wagon". Taze that guy who MAY have a gun, then have the drone roll over and inject him with a sedative.
Yeah, I know, it sounds all "liberal, peace-nik, kumbaya-ish". But if it does a better job than bullets and bombs, without risking your soldiers - why not? You can always follow up with lethal force if it doesn't work.
http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/lets-kill-all-lawyers
Guess they were unpopular even before Brooks Bro's suits were invented
"No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"
It seems pretty clear that to many people here, a non-citizen isn't a "person". OTOH, in the US at least, a registered corporation is a "person". So corporations should be protected but visiting tourists shouldn't.
At least that's the idea that many are expressing here.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I'm reminded of someone...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyFpOp8Ft0Q
While unfortunate that you lost your hearing killing gooks for god and country, that doesn't absolve you of your anti-Americanism. This is a nation founded in liberty. Our nation's moral justification is based in a respect for "inalienable rights".
Throughout its history the ACLU has been the leading advocate for civil liberties in America. Nearly every single important Supreme Court case related to liberty has been argued by ACLU members. They have never backed down from fighting for our freedom, even when it requires defending the rights of anti-American idiots like you to be anti-American idiots.
I'm not a US citizen, but I'm pretty certain that Posse Comitatus is violated by such actions on behalf of your government.
"It's here, but no one wants it." - The Sugar Speaker
Everyone is suitably impressed that you lost your hearing killing brown people. That doesn't change the fact that this is exactly the kind of thing you were supposed to be fighting against. Targeting US citzens? The only difference between this and what the commies were doing is that we've upgraded from secret police in the middle of the night to robots in the sky.