The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
1–10 of 55 posts
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#2the NSA often locates drone targets by analyzing the activity of a SIM card, rather than the actual content of the calls. Based on his experience, he has come to believe that the drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata.
"I've got nothing to hide..."
The Obama administration has repeatedly insisted that its operations kill terrorists with the utmost precision.
Note that "accuracy" and "precision" aren't the same thing. A sharp knife is precise, but if you slice in the wrong place, it's not being used accurately. Noting that the language here isn't a quote but a description from Scahill and Greenwald.
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#3>According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies.
Well, it's not like they believe their targets are human, anyway. Their lives are worth nothing to those analysts, innocent or not.
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#4Jacob Appelbaum has been saying this for a while already. They use NSA's data to do "signature strikes", i.e. strikes where they may assassinate someone only based on the "harmless metadata" they have on him. Talked to someone who may have talked to someone else from a "terrorist organization"? Well, you may now be on a drone target list.
This is going to get exponentially worse as they move to automated drone assassinations, where they just create an "algorithm" that's supposed to decide who is going to die next.
This is going to be their next logical conclusion, and to them it's "inevitable". Of course, it will be done in secret, too, probably for years before there are even leaks about it. Going by how "accurate" their algorithms are for determining who's American and who's not (there has to be only a 51 percent chance, which is almost like flipping a coin on whether someone is American or not), I imagine this algorithm on who to kill will be pretty loose, too. Better safe and kill more innocent people, than sorry and not kill the right target, is what they will choose for that algorithm.
You could say the rules for killing are already very loose right now, but the killing itself is done manually, and they are somewhat restricted to how many people they can hire for this. Once it's automated, expect the assassinations to rise by an order of magnitude, because it will just be "so easy", and also sending a drone should become much cheaper in 10 years.
Drone assassination defenders have been saying "but would it be any different if they just sent some guy with an F-16 in there to attack the target?". Well, even if such an attack wouldn't be anymore precise and it would still kill a lot of innocent people in that strike, the difference between killing people like that and killing them with automated drones or even manual ones, is about as big as spying on highly expensive targets, and doing "mass collections on everyone". It becomes so easy and so cheap technologically, that their rules for doing that action become radically more loose.
Just as for spying, they will do it simply because they can. Instead of attacking Osama's #2 with an air strike, they will be attacking a lot more people who are just very remotely associated with an organization, and in many of these cases, the decision to kill will be done by loose understanding of what is a target from the NSA mass spying (whether it's the understanding of the people deciding the drone targets now, or the algorithm for the automated drones in the future).
Recommended watching: Daniel Suarez on automated killer robots:
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#5> According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Well, it's not like they believe their targets are human, anyway. Their lives are worth nothing to those analysts, innocent or not.
I don't think it is analysts that make such a call.
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#6> According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Well, it's not like they believe their targets are human, anyway. Their lives are worth nothing to those analysts, innocent or not.
I don't think it is analysts that make such a call.
I don't know anything about how they target their victim, but I am assuming the have very little time between seeing the victim and deciding to execute him/her/them. So I suspect an algorithm makes the call.
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#7Error 503 Service Unavailable
Service Unavailable Guru Meditation:
XID: 1198255034
Varnish cache server
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#8 Error 503 Service Unavailable
Service Unavailable
Guru Meditation:
XID: 1422544503
Varnish cache server
[edit] Scratch that, the page finally loaded for me.
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#9> According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Well, it's not like they believe their targets are human, anyway. Their lives are worth nothing to those analysts, innocent or not.
I don't think it is analysts that make such a call.
They can always resign..
On the other hand, I was reading through Stanley Milgram's Obedience some time ago (a book about his famous experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment).
One interesting part was, that in some of the minds of the subjects ("teachers"), the "learner" could not do or say anything to "convince the teacher to stop". This is almost direct quote from a woman which was a hospital sister in real life. So she wasn't evil; she just was conditioned to not consider "learner" as a human being (or his opinion).
So that before we morally judge others..
Re: The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
#10>>"The NSA geolocation system used by JSOC is known by the code name GILGAMESH. Under the program, a specially constructed device is attached to the drone. As the drone circles, the device locates the SIM card or handset that the military believes is used by the target."
>>"The agency also equips drones and other aircraft with devices known as “virtual base-tower transceivers” – creating, in effect, a fake cell phone tower that can force a targeted person’s device to lock onto the NSA’s receiver without their knowledge."
This is unsettling! I always suspected this technology was used by law enforcement but equipping killer robots for live missile guidance?!?!?