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CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

theregister.co.uk

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Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#11

Post by mmaro »

rdtsc wrote: post #3

> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work" Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy. What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the…

It's important to remember that neither Bush nor Obama are king of the U.S. government. Our newspapers, universities, and civil servants turned on Bush because of his entry to Iraq, acting out of step with the rest of the government (which includes a lot more than people think). Anything they said to reduce Bush's power was fair game. You, like me, probably fell for it. People in the government generally don't have a problem with the government's power and actions. They did pull off a great trick though, assigning everything bad to Bush for six years.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#12

Post by rdtsc »

mmaro wrote: post #11
rdtsc wrote: post #3

> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work" Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy. What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the…

It's important to remember that neither Bush nor Obama are king of the U.S. government. Our newspapers, universities, and civil servants turned on Bush because of his entry to Iraq, acting out of step with the rest of the government (which includes a lot more than people think). Anything they said to reduce Bush's power was fair game. You, like me, probably fell for it. People in the government generally don't have a…

> It's important to remember that neither Bush nor Obama are king of the U.S. government.

That is true. I was just using the names as shorthand for the governments they run.

> You, like me, probably fell for it.

Unfortunately that is true. Since then I started to pay more attention to how propaganda works in US.

> They did pull off a great trick though, assigning everything bad to Bush for six years.

Yes that was brilliant of them. It looks like it worked rather well.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#13

Post by wheaties »

I love government contracting. First we pick a schedule, then we pick a technology, then we decide who gets the contract and who will supervise the execution of said contract. The best part? When something gets delivered, no matter how sad a state of affairs it is code-wise, no matter how difficult or expensive it will be to bring up to any sensible standards of maintainability, they won't pay for it. No, they'll only pay for a new feature.

This is why government contracting is fun. You never know when a story like this is going to come out and if you're going to be involved with it.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#14

Post by rdtsc »

patio11 wrote: post #5
rdtsc wrote: post #3

> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work" Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy. What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the…

There was a great piece whose identifying information I'm blanking on that explained how we stumbled into drone warfare. Basically, we tried doing snatch & grabs with commando teams for a while, and that kept generating one negative externality we weren't willing to tolerate. Illegal acts? No. Media pressure? No. Collateral damage? No. Diplomatic reprecussions? No. Prisoners. Prisoners are a real handful. What are ou…

> You know what has never once happened as a result of a Predator drone strike? A live prisoner in US custody.

That makes a lot of sense. It is the optimal way of disposing of people on hidden black lists.

The other upside for them -- Americans don't put their lives in danger, unless we consider driving to Langley in DC traffic every day as "danger". So they never have to deal with that PR aspect of the operation.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#15

Post by rdtsc »

dschobel wrote: post #6
rdtsc wrote: post #3

> "They want to kill people with my software that doesn't work" Let's see, we assassinate people without any trial, in a country we are not even at war with, and the obvious problem is that the software is a little buggy. What is "buggy" here is the whole assassination system. When Bush wanted to dispatch special ops around the world to assassinate "terrorists", everyone was up and arms about it, When Obama does the…

This whole conversation is way off-topic but the operations happen with the partnership of the Pakistani government (so the bit about "...in a country we're not at war with" is irrelevant) against military targets who are not fighting under any nation's flag. The days of two armies lining up at opposite ends of a battle-field are gone.

> This whole conversation is way off-topic.

I think not when software is used to kill people. I refuse to sanitize and rationalize that fact away and happily discuss UAV realtime software development patterns.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#16

Post by rhtml »

krschultz wrote: post #2

You really can't tell a lot from this article. It all comes down to what this piece of software does. A faulty component in the UAV doesn't necessarily mean that the weapon lands off target. They definitely aren't modifying the guidance system on the weapon - those weapons are not built by the CIA. It sounds like this piece of software helps them correlate coordinates for targeting from one computer system to another…

This article is missing some key facts.

Netezza appliance has nothing to do with controlling drones. The tenuous link in the article is established by a failure to understand the intel use of the word targeting (gathering info on a target), as opposed to the aiming a missile military sense. Why would a drone use a data warehouse plugin to control anything operational? It wouldn't. Could a coordinate come out of the system- sure, but just a coordinate that someone else put in there.

Netezza sued IISi in 2009 for failing to deliver the port of their software. It looks like they didn't seem to get much traction with that, made some surprisingly clumsy document releases, showing where they laid down some stupid spy BS to try and push IISi to deliver or give up, or at least hand over the code so the customer could get it working. http://www.thestreet.com/print/story/10810646.html

Now, we're at the third stage, where the countersuit is claiming reverse engineering (considering that Netezza probably wrote the specs, hard to prove) and Netezza is getting bought by IBM, perhaps to get their legal team aimed at the issue...meanwhile, it gives everyone a good excuse to talk about drones.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#17

Post by JabavuAdams »

templaedhel wrote: post #8
pavel_lishin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A faulty component in the UAV doesn't necessarily mean that the weapon lands off target. Someone on reddit pointed out that even if it does, it doesn't matter. If the kill radius is 20 yards, and the bugs mean that it has an error of up to 5 yards... that's not really significant. edit: Unless, of course, you happen to be bombing something next to an elementary school, a mosque, or a hospital.

I would argue that any time accuracy (or any feature) is expected, then a lack of said feature does matter. You never know when someone somewhere could be relying on the fact that they can get within 5 yards.

Look up "circular error probable" (CEP). When they say "accurate to x meters", they might well mean that 50% of munitions land in an x meter circle --- the other 50%? anywhere (maybe gaussian distro). So all this talk of x meter accuracy is quite misleading.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#18

Post by dschobel »

rdtsc wrote: post #15
dschobel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This whole conversation is way off-topic but the operations happen with the partnership of the Pakistani government (so the bit about "...in a country we're not at war with" is irrelevant) against military targets who are not fighting under any nation's flag. The days of two armies lining up at opposite ends of a battle-field are gone.

> This whole conversation is way off-topic. I think not when software is used to kill people. I refuse to sanitize and rationalize that fact away and happily discuss UAV realtime software development patterns.

The story was about UAV software, your agenda is extraneous. Otherwise any story can be used as a jumping off point for politics and righteous indignation.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#19

Post by derefr »

dschobel wrote: post #18
rdtsc wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This whole conversation is way off-topic. I think not when software is used to kill people. I refuse to sanitize and rationalize that fact away and happily discuss UAV realtime software development patterns.

The story was about UAV software, your agenda is extraneous. Otherwise any story can be used as a jumping off point for politics and righteous indignation.

Indeed. As someone who is:

1. Currently living neither in the US, nor the places it deploys these drones—and therefore unable to affect, or be affected by, the US's foreign policy re: drones;

2. and who rationally values their time;

I can't see any benefit to investing said time in analyzing US drone deployment policy. The technology of drones, however, is fascinating.

Re: CIA used 'illegal, inaccurate code to target kill drones'

#20

Post by yummyfajitas »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #17
templaedhel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that any time accuracy (or any feature) is expected, then a lack of said feature does matter. You never know when someone somewhere could be relying on the fact that they can get within 5 yards.

Look up "circular error probable" (CEP). When they say "accurate to x meters", they might well mean that 50% of munitions land in an x meter circle --- the other 50%? anywhere (maybe gaussian distro). So all this talk of x meter accuracy is quite misleading.

That may be true, but (assuming a normal distribution [1]) that would also imply that 99% of shots land within 2.6x meters (assuming I didn't mess up my arithmetic).

Whoever is doing the aiming gets a big red circle that encloses the margin of error. If you are off by 5 meters, that big red circle is in the wrong place. The pilot expects a 1% chance of error, in reality it might be 4% (i.e., 4x as many screwups).

[1] Of course it isn't a normal distribution, but this only changes the programming details.

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