Search: drones
22 May Weekday News Wrap: Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Iraq is buying US-made drones in order to carry out surveillance over their oil fields. After a suicide bomber kills 90 people in Yemen, al-Qaeda vows more attacks until the US-backed campaign against militants stops. The US is apparently weighing their stance on secrecy of the drone program employed to carry out targeted killings, according to the Wall Street Journal. Former dictator of Guatemala, Efrain Rios Montt, will face a second genocide trial after a judge ordered he could be prosecuted for ordering a 1982 massacre that killed 201 people....27 Dec Besides the Year-End Reviews, How About Looking Forward to the Year, or the Century, to Come?
...the flying car fly itself. Thus, not only technological change, but regulatory changes concerning pilotless vehicles (such as Google’s self-driving car [Youtube clip] and drone tech) will make the flying cars more plausible. And, for autonomous cars (ground or flying) to have a global market, there will need to be coordinated–or at least non-contradictory–regulatory changes in many of the key markets around the world. So the regulatory environment (both in the U.S. and in other jurisdictions) of civilian drones and that of driverless-cars may incentivize or disincentivize investment in these...20 May Battlefield Robotics, a Very Brief Introduction
...aircraft. But again, given that the machine’s weapons are operated in real time by a human being, the ethical and legal questions are not so many (there are some, but I will skip over them). Here is a US Air Force photo of a Predator: A third layer carries robotics from air drones to the ground. The US military in 2007 deployed for the first time a remote operated ground vehicle with a weapon mounted on top to Iraq for field testing. (It has also been withdrawn again for further...29 Mar The Obama Administration’s Overblown Internal Debate Over War on Terrorism Policy
...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...18 Mar When A.I. Met R.O.I.
...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 Mar Worried About Garland’s National Security Law Record? Don’t Be.
...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...