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Search: drones

12 Mar

...“Commission of Inquiry” by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate potential human rights abuses, calling it a “plot” against their nation filled with “faked material … invented by the hostile forces, defectors and other rabbles.” A British judge has delayed the decision on Islamic Cleric Abu Qatada’s deportation until the end of this month. The Volokh Conspiracy has a post about ICC jurisdiction over Israeli settlements. Foreign Policy weighs in on drones and reports that not only do more countries have access to them, they’re becoming smaller and smarter....
12.03.13 | |

29 Mar

...the types of terrorism suspects who may be detained without trials as wartime prisoners. The outcome of the yearlong debate could reverberate through national security policies, ranging from the number of people the United States ultimately detains to decisions about who may be lawfully selected for killing using drones. I actually think the article overstates the differences somewhat. All the key players agree there is a war against Al Qaeda and that there is a power to detain and try Al Qaeda folks. The only question dividing them seems to...
29.03.10 | |

18 Mar

...battlefield robots. The immediate issues stemmed from the use aerial drones, of course, but on the horizon has been the possibility of robots being deployed in ground combat (as opposed to in bomb demolition, or other areas where remotely controlled units are already deployed). I am all for lawyers anticipating issues caused by technological change. But before we get there, there are a host of legal issues concerning the transactions that will support the R&D that will develop this technology. With the potential sale of Boston Dynamics to Toyota, it...
18.03.16 | |

18 Mar

...arguing that a civil a suit against American military contractors by victims of abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq should be allowed to proceed. And he sided against the government in requiring the CIA to disclose whether it possessed any documents concerning drones used in targeted killings.) By the time the remaining three Guantanamo detainee status cases got to Garland, another panel of the D.C. Circuit had held that the AUMF passed by Congress before the Afghanistan invasion in 2001 granted the President authority to detain individuals who...
18.03.16 | |

04 Apr

...at speed. The reported use by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of the Gospel and its companion systems, Fire Factory, Depth of Wisdom, Alchemist, and Lavender, within the targeting cycle demonstrates a growing reliance on AI-DSS for military operations. Along with the development, testing and potential deployment of other AI-DSS for targeting, such as Project Maven, the US’ Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, the integrated Gorgon Stare and Agile Condor systems on MQ-9 Reaper drones or other systems such as Palantir’s Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) Defense and MetaConstellation which are being...
04.04.24 | and |

26 Dec

...new Japanese PM. Eight children were among the 20 dead in a northern Syrian province after attacks. The Russian Parliament has unanimously approved a ban on Americans adopting Russian children in retaliation for a US law punishing human rights violations. The United States formally proposed a controversial sale of advanced spy drones to help South Korea bear more of its defense from any attack by the heavily armed North. Rebels in Central African Republic have advanced on the town of Kaga-Bangoro, moving them closer to the capital. The Washington Post...
26.12.12 | |

26 Mar

Greg Miller has a fascinating front-page story in the Washington Post yesterday (Sunday; it appears to be behind a free registration wall) profiling “Roger,” the mysterious head of the Counterterrorism Center at the CIA, a key figure in the pursuit of Bin Laden, and a principal architect of the drones program. Here’s the money quote, borrowing from Lawfare: Roger, which is the first name of his cover identity, may be the most consequential but least visible national security official in Washington — the principal architect of the CIA’s drone campaign...
26.03.12 | |

23 Feb

...national for drugs trafficking. Oceania Australian air force personnel have begun training on armed drones in the United States, Australian defense officials said on Monday, less than a week after Washington said it would begin exporting the controversial weapons system. Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott has announced that his government will tighten immigration laws and crack down on groups that incite hatred under a raft of counterterrorism measures introduced in a bid to combat the threat from “home-grown terrorists”. UN/World United Nations war crimes investigators plan to publish names of...
23.02.15 | |

05 Dec

...a sufficient explanation, nor is technological innovation. True, we didn’t have drones 30 or 40 years ago, but the Cold War did witness many examples of extraterritorial projection of state power, with assassinations through poisoned-tip umbrellas and the like – but few gave human rights treaties more than a second thought in such situations. Without the cultural shift that we have been experiencing, the increasing emphasis on individual rights and law generally, I don’t think we would be discussing these cases no matter how powerful globalization turned out to be....
05.12.11 | |

12 Dec

...as follows: “[As civil libertarians wearing ‘rose colored glasses’ would have it,] [t]he AUMF triggered the president’s commander-in-chief power, which enables him to detain enemy combatants indefinitely and kill them with drones and other weapons….” As an initial matter, hard to figure out what Eric means, “the AUMF triggered” the President’s Commander-in-Chief power. The President is CINC in wartime and not, and whatever powers Article II of the Constitution provides him (more on which anon) I figure they’d exist whether Congress “triggers” them or not. More to the point, it...
12.12.12 | |

04 Mar

...qualms about drones as technologies that enable the first two without putting US personnel at risk. Cave on anything beyond statements of legal principles and process, and the result will not be “institutional settlement,” but instead merely moving the goal posts; there isn’t really room for “dialogue,” let alone negotiation, but simply and necessarily one-sided articulation. That said, the articulation is important, because there is a problem when even a Kimberly Dozier story cannot resist a mild intimation of unsavory lack of accountability: “But a CIA-run war would mean that...
04.03.12 | |

30 Oct

...example, Reuters reported that of the 500 “militants” killed by drones between 2008 and 2010, only 8% were the kind “top-tier militant targets” or “mid-to-high-level organizers” whose identities could have been known prior to being killed. Similarly, in 2011, a U.S. official revealed that the U.S. had killed “twice as many ‘wanted terrorists’ in signature strikes than in personality strikes.” Despite the U.S.’s intense reliance on signature strikes, scholars have paid almost no attention to their legality under international law. This article attempts to fill that lacuna. Section I explains...
30.10.12 | |