Search: drones

One of the highlights of my Fall semester was the opportunity to host a one-day workshop at Temple Law on how autonomous technology may impact the future of international humanitarian law (IHL) and the lawyers who practice it. With co-sponsorship from the International Committee of the Red Cross (specifically, Rob Ramey and Tracey Begley) as well as Gary Brown of Marine Corps University, we wanted to have an inter-disciplinary conversation on the way autonomy may implicate the practice of law across a range of new technologies, including cyberwar, drones, and...

...footing, Koh’s concerns are focused on the dangers of wars that are unbounded in their substantive and temporal scope—who we are fighting and for how long. When it comes to geographic boundaries for wartime targeting, however, he offers only the unwilling and unable test and the Presidential Policy Guidance put into place by President Obama as constraints. Koh is of course right to argue that the use of armed drones in wartime can be lawful. But if peace is to be the norm and war the exception, as Koh argues...

The skies over Somalia have become so congested with drones that the UAVs pose a threat to air traffic and potentially to an arms-embargo. In a shift from the past, the Egyptian president, Mohamed Mursi, met with the leader of Hamas, Ismael Haniyeh. The Netherlands suspended $6.15 million in aid to Rwanda yesterday, following a similar move by the US a day earlier, over Rwanda’s support for rebels in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urges nations to “bridge their differences” in coming to a...

...October 2014. Proposals for papers should be submitted to the editors by July 31, 2014. Contact details are available on the TDM website. Announcements The ICRC has launched its first Research & Debate Cycle on New Technologies and the Modern Battlespace. In recent years, a wide array of new technologies has entered the modern battlefield, giving rise to new methods and means of warfare, such as cyber attacks, armed drones and robots. While there can be no doubt that IHL applies to them, applying pre-existing legal rules to new technologies...

...he was accused of heinous crimes. When I have spoken on this topic, whether to my students or at conferences, I have made the politically incorrect statement that if we want Bashir so badly that we are willing to bend the rules of international law beyond recognition, then we should simply send one of those ubiquitous drones to “take him out”. But our desire “to get Bashir” is now out of way since he will be on KLM flight to The Hague pretty soon, and I think this offers the...

...after NATO troops leave the country in 2014, Afghanistan will not be used as a launch pad for US drones. Two Tunisians have been jailed for seven years after posting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed on Facebook, fueling allegations that new leaders are placing a chokehold on free speech. Invisible Children has released its follow-up video to the viral Kony 2012 sensation: Kony 2012 Part II: Beyond Famous. Ahead of the Easter weekend, the Pope issued a statement reaffirming the ban on female priests in the Catholic Church and underscoring...

...the Congo. The Syrian opposition has decided to boycott international talks, saying that the world has turned its back on the war-torn nation and calling the lack of international action “shameful.” The US has sent 100 troops to Niger to construct a drone base from which Predator drones will operate. In other drone news, a recent study found that drone pilots are susceptible to the same bouts of depression, post-traumatic stress and anxiety as pilots of manned aircraft deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. Dozens of people have been killed in...

...due diligence standard. To answer this question, it is necessary to examine the economic and military capabilities of the “Great Powers” of the international order – in particular, the US. The US has the world’s largest economy and military. It has thousands of military bases in hundreds of countries on every continent in the world. And it has a blue water navy and a global fleet of fighters, bombers, and drones, among other assets, that are unrivalled by any other single state. In short, the US possesses the means to...

...law, and offers a novel theory of rationality to explain why nations should comply with international law. Ohlin’s research also focuses on the laws of war, in particular the impact of new technology on the regulation of warfare, including remotely piloted drones and the strategy of targeted killings, cyber-warfare, and the role of non-state actors in armed conflicts. His books in this area include Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World (Oxford University Press 2012, with A. Altman & C. Finkelstein); Cyber-War: Law & Ethics for Virtual Conflicts...

Benjamin G. Davis We will see what they say. One thing though is whatever the legal analysis whether Al-Awlaki met the standard or whether this is murder. I say that because Former Acting General Counsel of the CIA Rizzo referred to some of these occasions as murder in a recent interview I referred to in this oped at SALTLAW/Blog entitled "Bringing Light to Dark Matter: Drones, Torture and Illegal Wars" available at http://www.saltlaw.org/blog/2011/07/20/bringing-light-to-dark-matter-drones-torture-illegal-wars/ The apology to the family of Mr. Khan who is another American who was killed in that...

Howard Gilbert Pakistan can prosecute an American for killing someone in Pakistan, and Article 51 national self-defense is not a legal defense against a charge of murder brought under Pakistani domestic law. There is nothing the US can do here, so the CIA would do well to maintain secrecy and people involved in such operations would do well to vacation in India instead. That is one of the reasons why the premise of the hypothesis is flawed. Currently the CIA operates drones inside Pakistan with the consent and cooperation of...

...family, but I kept up with his scholarship. I didn't agree with his position on drones but he certainly had a rare credibility to hold them based on his direct experience. The last time I saw him, I ran into him briefly at the AALS hiring conference in Washington DC in October 2014. It was a brief conversation--he never told me about his illness. I am stunned that he is gone now, and regret that we didn't get the chance to have one last good talk. Fair winds and following...