I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on • Hacker News Board

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#371

Post by yincrash » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

mrobot wrote: post #364

jusben1369 wrote: post #112

We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read. We all kno…

> We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read. I had so…

The writer was an Air Force imagery analyst.

"Heather Linebaugh served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan."

http://www.theguardian.com/profile/heather-linebaugh

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#372

Post by mrobot » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 11:41 PM UTC

yincrash wrote: post #371

mrobot wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need to make sure we're not being manipulated. Here the Guardian is just serving up an emotional, unsubstantiated, one sided view of this discussion. I'm not sure how this is different to much of the chest beating I'd see on Fox News. I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Just that if we pride ourselves on being educated and critical thinkers that we apply that to all sources of data we read. I had so…

The writer was an Air Force imagery analyst. "Heather Linebaugh served in the United Stated Air Force from 2009 until March 2012. She worked in intelligence as an imagery analyst and geo-spatial analyst for the drone program during the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan." http://www.theguardian.com/profile/heather-linebaugh

Thank you, i made an assumption, i thought it was published on behalf of an anonymous source.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#373

Post by TruthElixirX » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 11:53 PM UTC

hammerzeit wrote: post #282

TruthElixirX wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're a sack of shit: >I'm not here to argue for or against the drones. Congrats on being a mediocre person who doesn't believe in anything or have any opinions. This is the most offensive thing I think, even more than me disagreeing with you. Just picking middle of the road bland boring contrariness. >We all know war is hell. Apparently "we" don't because people continue to wage war. >We know using weapons to attac…

This response should be exhibit A as to why HN was better when PG was enforcing the no-politics rule. It's phenomenally rude, emotionally charged, wildly unfocused, and somehow actively advocating being loud and uninformed. It's hard to engage with a post like this in any sort of rational way. Posts like this crowd out people like me from participating at all on HN by creating an unhealthy environment for discourse.

I actually agree political posts suck on HN. I would like it more if they weren't (unless related to NSA back dooring tech type stuff). I have flagged this post.

I'll still comment if its here though.

I'm not sure how I advocated being loud and uninformed though.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#374

Post by jusben1369 » Sun, Dec 29, 2013, 11:54 PM UTC

mark_l_watson wrote: post #350

jusben1369 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Mark. I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion that I have a calloused view towards civilian casualties? I'm really confused by drones. In one camp you could argue that without them there would be a much greater loss of life and more horrors of war. We would still be going after various members of the Taliban in the Afghanistan/Pakistan mountains only now it would be fighter jets and boots on the ground and the…

Sorry if I misinterpreted your post. In any case, I fail to see why our government needs to spend as much money as all other countries combined on our military. I don't think we need boots on the ground when there is little real threat to people inside the USA. I am in favor of almost all of our military being redeployed back inside our country. I saw a statistic last week that bathroom accidents kill 100 times more…

The last statistic I saw was that our military budget was 17x larger than the next on the list - China. Agree that's a pretty wasteful spend vs investing those dollars in education, infrastructure etc at home.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#375

Post by fatca » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 12:01 AM UTC

dba7dba wrote: post #326

lemmsjid wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to put myself in the shoes of the potential drone targets. I live in Los Angeles, which seems to be the official city of the police helicopter (always followed closely by the news helicopter, because the possibility of violence is entertainment). Over the years it's gotten to the point where multiple times a week they're buzzing around the neighborhood, stabbing the backyard with their searchlights. I've never…

>> When due process is undermined, the population becomes more alienated from the government, and more individuals become radicalized, and more terrorism happens. How many lives of soldiers would be risked and how much money would be spent for operations to 'capture' the terrorists in foreign nations? And will nations like Pakistan allow military (or law enforcement) operations on their soil by foreign govts to captu…

Your justification for the murder of innocent civilians falls short in many ways. You have simply rationalized the murderous ideological propaganda of the US military-industrial complex.

As long as you keep murdering just goatherders, you may indeed still get away with this kind of impunity. You fail to understand, however, how vulnerable the ones doing the killing are, to reprisals and retaliations.

It only takes a small bit of serious hacking and/or data mining to figure out the home addresses of everyone involved in these massacres, and from there to schedule them one by one for termination. The 40 million Target credit cards were much more difficult to obtain than that.

There is a tremendous asymmetry of information between your centralized murder engine and your decentralized enemies. The database of everyone involved on your side exists and can be stolen. The other way around is not true, regardless of all the surveillance that the NSA does. Therefore, the murderers are guaranteed to lose this conflict.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#376

Post by joshfraser » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 12:04 AM UTC

Sometimes they can't tell if someone is carrying a weapon or not. Consider that for a moment. Even if they are carrying a weapon, why should that be enough information to issue a death sentence for them and everyone in their near proximity?

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#377

Post by fatca » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 12:05 AM UTC

allochthon wrote: post #317

lemmsjid wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to put myself in the shoes of the potential drone targets. I live in Los Angeles, which seems to be the official city of the police helicopter (always followed closely by the news helicopter, because the possibility of violence is entertainment). Over the years it's gotten to the point where multiple times a week they're buzzing around the neighborhood, stabbing the backyard with their searchlights. I've never…

And as an American I do live with a particular type of fear, which is that of the DEA and SWAT team escalations. I disagree that this is something to be all that worried about. It detracts from the rest of your argument.

The Bombay terrorist bombings are indeed -- like so many terrorist attacks -- a false-flag operation, organized by the United States' intelligence services.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#378

Post by jaekwon » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 12:12 AM UTC

classicsnoot wrote: post #262

jaekwon wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you're intelligent enough to see the distinction between Barber surgeons, grave robbers, and killing machines. There's a whole world of applications for AI and machinery that we could be pooling our resources into, but instead we're funding a continuing war on "terror" abroad. There's no reason why the war is necessary, no reason why technological progress would be made faster in the art of killing vs anything…

Your use of "us" is adorable. There have always been more of "you". Who else would make up the wave assaults, mass labour pools, and factory employees? War may not be necessary from an emotional standpoint, but from a technological standpoint it is the only game in town. The recent developments in peaceful IT are unique in human history, and they themselves are predicated on war technology and research. In fact, i ch…

Nor can you name a single device that is not built off of something non-war related. If you refuse to admit your logical fallacies, then I have no point arguing with you.

You think that your psychopathy puts you in some elite category of non-labouring factory commander. It doesn't, it just makes you aberration to be tolerated until you all kill each other. Your failure to ground your value system into your nature -- a fellow human -- makes you an evolution inconsistency waiting to resolve itself. That is why you are outnumbered.

If not, you'll find that the future holds unexpected surprises for you as your pet machine comes to crush your frail body, only after realizing through trial and failure that you weren't able to transcend your physical nature.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#379

Post by anderspetersson » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 12:20 AM UTC

dchichkov wrote: post #352

anderspetersson wrote: post #167

All this criticism against drones. Drones are awesome. I've worked on the ground in Afghanistan on a Mechanized Infantry Platoon. There's nothing more calming than hearing the buzz from a drone keeping an eye on the terrain from above and reporting to the TACP while you're on the ground. We where saved multiple times from running into ambushes and IEDs thanks to drones. Sure, Apache's could do the job as-well, but wh…

Best comment in the thread. So we should concentrate on development of 'guardian' and 'intelligence' drones, and leave the offense part to the soldiers on the ground, right?

I believe both types of drones are needed, if the "fly-to-pakistan-and-drop-a-bomb-on-a-compound"-drones didnt exist, the SOF guys would have more to do, and would take more losses, I guess.

I'm pretty sure the intel needed to carry out a drone-strike is insanely high.

Drones are also great when the insurgents flees on their motorcycles, as often happens when the ground forces come in.

Re: I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

#380

Post by shirkey » Mon, Dec 30, 2013, 12:22 AM UTC

allochthon wrote: post #317

lemmsjid wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try to put myself in the shoes of the potential drone targets. I live in Los Angeles, which seems to be the official city of the police helicopter (always followed closely by the news helicopter, because the possibility of violence is entertainment). Over the years it's gotten to the point where multiple times a week they're buzzing around the neighborhood, stabbing the backyard with their searchlights. I've never…

And as an American I do live with a particular type of fear, which is that of the DEA and SWAT team escalations. I disagree that this is something to be all that worried about. It detracts from the rest of your argument.

If you think that the concern about DEA and SWAT can be easily dismissed, consider that SWAT teams regularly get involved in serving warrants for non-violent crimes -- in 1995, 3 out of 4 SWAT raids were based on drug warrants alone... and mistakes on those warrants can be made repeatedly:

"Perhaps no one was more victimized by the battlefield mentality that had set in at the NYPD than Walter and Rose Martin. The Brooklyn couple, both in their eighties, were wrongly raided more than fifty times between 2002 and 2010. The couple filed numerous complaints with the police department. They wrote letters to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly. They were ignored. In 2007 they at least got someone at the NYPD to try to wipe their address out of the department’s computer system. But the raids continued. It wasn’t until the couple went to the media in 2010 that the city finally looked into the problem. Back in 2002, someone had used the Martins’ address as a dummy address to test the department’s new computer system. When the new system was implemented, no one removed their address. So anytime NYPD cops in certain precincts used the system for a warrant and forgot to remove the dummy address to put in the correct one, the police would end up at the Martins’ door."[1]

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Warrior-Cop-Militarization-Americ...