In association with the International Commission of Jurists

Search: drones

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 | |

27 Dec

...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...
27.12.12 | |

01 Jul

...apart after an onslaught by Sunni Islamists who have declared a “caliphate” to rule over all the world’s Muslims. Americas The US has armed drones flying over Baghdad to protect US troops that have recently arrived to assess Iraq’s deteriorating security, the Pentagon said on Friday. The White House says the US will no longer produce or acquire anti-personnel landmines in the future and intends to join the Ottawa Convention that bans their use. BNP Paribas has pleaded guilty to two criminal charges and agreed to pay $8.83 billion in...
01.07.14 | |

01 Jun

...meetings on Olympic Games, was acutely aware that with every attack he was pushing the United States into new territory, much as his predecessors had with the first use of atomic weapons in the 1940s, of intercontinental missiles in the 1950s and of drones in the past decade. He repeatedly expressed concerns that any American acknowledgment that it was using cyberweapons — even under the most careful and limited circumstances — could enable other countries, terrorists or hackers to justify their own attacks. One interesting sidenote not discussed in the...
01.06.12 | |

14 Oct

...IS terrorists using drones and France’s joining the air campaign to bomb IS positions in Syrian territory. The extent to which air strikes would meet the necessity and proportionality requirements in the exercise of the right to self-defense under Article 51, however, remains less explored. This post does not aim to consider the issue of the permissibility of engaging in unilateral forcible measures against unattributable attacks by private groups. However, even assuming that the lawful exercise of the right of self-defense extends to action against irregular forces, it can be...
14.10.15 | |

13 Dec

...discussion is about battlefield robotics in the sense of “autonomous” firing systems – not the current robotics question of human controlled, but remote platform unmanned combat vehicles, Predators and drones. I will try to put up a post soon noting several new papers on the targeted killing and UCV-drone issues in international law, including new papers on SSRN by Mary Ellen O’Connell, Jordan Paust, and others – I’ll try to do a roundup of recent papers on the subject (once past grading my corporate finance and IBT finals, that is)....
13.12.09 | |

10 Oct

...history of major contradictions, paradoxes, potentials, and limits, is far less teleological, or unitary, than what many have said so far. Sometimes they, the work of the laws of war and that of peacemaking, overlap and work cooperatively, whereas at other times they operate completely independently, or even work in ways going directly against each other, with occasionally potentially dangerous implications in light of relatively new technological (e.g. drones, autonomous weapons), legal (such as the 9/11 AUMF, the responsibility to protect), and certain ideological developments (the rise of emergency doctrines)....
10.10.16 | |

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 | |

30 May

...as it was tracked for more than three hours. Its movements matched radio intercepts of militants calling on others to join the battle near Khod, about seven miles (12 kilometers) from the site of the attack. No women were seen in the vehicles, but two children were spotted near them at one point. This was inaccurately reported by the drone crew, the report said. We usually think about drones killing innocent civilians directly. But let’s give them their due — they can kill innocent civilians in recon mode, as well....
30.05.10 | |