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Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

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Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#141

Post by fragsworth »

bluedino wrote: post #35
gldalmaso wrote: post #22

When all you have is a weapon everything looks like a target. US are being irresponsible pricks playing with guns and technology that is obviously not well suited for this kind of threat assessment. Also $5,000 per family? Really? Even after admitting the error? The U.S. Special Forces, Military, CIA or whatever are that low on budget (hardly) or simply do not give a flying fuck?

On the other hand, in theatre, a false positive is better than the alternative for mission success. Just like anti-virus software. You're better off flagging calc.exe as a virus than letting a 'maybe' through.

But `calc.exe` doesn't have family/children

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#142

Post by primroot »

karmacondon wrote: post #21
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #2

It is always intriguing that people in the West are so sheltered from the fact that this has been going on for over a decade. And they then are, not surprisingly, surprised that the people at the receiving end of this and those that are from the area are very upset about it. What if some other nation had been bombing remote villages in your country whilst attempting to target "terrorists and extremists", but often ki…

The links you posted reference Iraq, which was not a very nice place over the last decade. In many cases, a strong personality would emerge as a local leader. He'll usually have access to several small arms and enough money to feed and pay several dozen militia fighters. To legitimize his power he'll coordinate attacks on US personnel, usually ambushes, and make deals with people who have connections to global "terro…

I know it's just utterly besides the point to cite the opinion of the locals regarding a foreign country bombing them in the name of their own country's well-being. Hence I'll choose to cite a Nobel Peace Laureate. "A drone attack may kill two or three terrorists but it will not kill terrorism. If the drones continue terrorism will spread." [1] There you have the better plan.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2014/10/21/nobel-p...

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#143

Post by shostack »

memossy wrote: post #44

The more degrees of separation there are between the order to kill and killing, the easier killing becomes. This can cause all sorts of effects, including a fear of the sky itself, as can be see by the comments of this 13 year old who shortly after became the third member of his family to be killed by a drone in Yemen: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/10/drones-dream-ye... It is also notable that the weapons…

But think of the opportunities for the drone counter-measures industry that hasn't been born yet.

In all seriousness, drones are tools. If you put hellfire's on them, they become quite deadly tools. However the root of the problem is not the tool, it is the people who decide to deploy the tool and the mechanisms in place that enable them to do so.

Focusing on "drone assassinations" detracts from the main storyline of "assassinations." The "drone" angle is just that, an angle.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#144

Post by wj »

tokenizerrr wrote: post #45

Daniel Suarez has a nice, fictional, book about a world where drones are used for targeted autonomous assassinations. http://thedaemon.com/killdecisionsynopsis.html

Jon Evans (writer at Techcrunch) also wrote a novel with a similar plot (it was a sequel of a previous book called Invisible Armies that dealt with hackers) which you can download for free:

http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/24466/swarm

I enjoyed both Swarm and Kill Decision.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#145

Post by shostack »

newman8r wrote: post #10

I have been talking about this a lot with my friends. The question I raise is: when is the first private drone murder going to happen in the US and what will the implications be? There was a great ted talk on this http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho... It's really not even something that's technically difficult. I am just thankful the best minds in the US tend to have plenty of healthy outlet…

Haven't seen the talk, but having just finished his Influx novel I'll have to check it out. REALLY scary how...possible...his story seemed with regards to how powerless a well-equipped/funded government entity can make someone in this day and age if you happen to piss them off. Terrifying.

That said, drone murder is an interesting concept. Given the size of drones and the many discrete ways of killing someone, you don't even need a gun at this point. Ram a small drone tipped with a poisoned needle into someone, land a drone on their roof and start a fire, etc. The reality is someone with the time and energy can get really creative and the technology is only improving.

It will be fascinating and probably not fun to watch how our police forces and government evolve to combat this as soon as it becomes high-profile enough.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#146

Post by glitchdout »

tomjen3 wrote: post #129
sschueller wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Armed drones is terrorism. Imagine for a moment that drones were flying over the US and at anytime may strike. You don't know where or when but you are in constant fear of an attack. Next time you go to an outdoor wedding take a moment and think about how that would feel. Do you absolutely know that everyone attending is not a 'person if interest' or even just related to one?

With that kind of argument all kind of warfare is terrorism, which means the word terrorism is redundant and useless. Fact is we are at war with some bad people and when we do so innocent people are getting hurt - however we try really hard to minimize their numbers and one of the ways we do that is using drones. And if you feel bad about it think this way: we try to avoid killing civilians, they use human shields.

> innocent people are getting hurt - however we try really hard to minimize their numbers

From the article:

> Sensor: Maybe just a warm spot from where he’s been sitting.

> Pilot: I was hoping we could make a rifle out. Never mind.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#147

Post by zimbu668 »

joyeuse6701 wrote: post #136
zimbu668 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_relations_of_Switzerlan...

Effective for your own people, but not your neighbors. For example. Let's take WWII for example. If your neighbors house is on fire would you not try to assist them, or would you shut your blinds because that fire is too bright in the middle of the night. That was the official attitude of Switzerland while Europe burned under Nazi occupation. Isolationism alone is not an end all be all answer, we must use our best ju…

> Effective for your own people

That's why nation states exist.

> For example. Let's take WWII for example

And your evidence that Switzerland would have helped prevent any of that?

While we're throwing unbacked statements around, had the US tried some "isolationism" in WW1, WW2 never would have happened! The Germans wouldn't have been forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles and the conditions that led to the rise of the Nazis wouldn't have existed.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#148

Post by dalke »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #123
dalke wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the OP who has made a statement about innocence, and implied that it's meaningful to make a comparison. The Guardian article sets a baseline as otherwise we're just flapping jaws. Another baseline is to declare that all males of military age in a given zone are be definition enemy combatants. (Or that all people living in a city which contributes war materiel to the enemy are enemy combatants.) The Guardian say…

I think it's worth making the distinction among the people killed in addition to the target. These guys aren't just sitting alone in some hut, nor are they exclusively surrounded by innocent families. They're on top of a hierarchy of militants. I say this worth knowing because even if we assume these were all 100% innocent civilians, this rate of collateral damage is far better than has ever been achieved in an armed…

We don't know these numbers. The US government uses numbers with a horrible baseline, or at the very least, one that is very different than used for previous wars. In the recent ISIS bombings, for example:

> Washington also continues to insist it cannot confirm a single noncombatant death from more than 1,100 airstrikes against Islamic State targets — despite a number of apparently well-documented cases of error or collateral damage in both Iraq and Syria. - http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/12/03/pentagon-in-denial-about...

As that Foreign Policy article describes, the numbers from the US government are not believable.

I know that you are over exaggerating when you say "this rate of collateral damage is far better than has ever been achieved in an armed conflict" because there have been had wars with no casualties at all ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloodless_war ).

Even in wars with casualties, the first Gulf War had some 3,500 civilian casualties in Iraq, and about ~25K military casualties. That's 1 civilian killed for every 10 military.

The numbers in the recent Guardian article are 1 civilian killed for at least every 6 enemy combatants, if you assume that only the children are non-combatants, or up to several innocent civilians killed for each enemy combatant if assume these were all 100% innocent civilians. Hardly "far better than" the first Gulf War.

Re: Drones and the rise of the high tech assassins

#149

Post by yardie »

kordless wrote: post #56

Can we seriously stop using 'drone' for both remote controlled multi-million dollar military grade weapons and quad-copter plastic toys that cost $20? It's fucking stupid.

The word 'drone' has existed far longer than the $20 toy. As far back as the 60s when the military was using them for target practice.
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