Like a Swarm of Lethal Bugs: The Most Terrifying Drone Video Yet - Conor Friedersdorf
An Air Force simulation says researchers are at work on killer robots so tiny that a group of them could blend into a cityscape. Science writer John Horgan's feature on the many ways drones will be used in coming years is interesting throughout, and terrifying in the passage where he describes an effort to build micro-drones that are, as the U.S. Air Force describes them, "Unobtrusive, pervasive, and lethal." Air Force officials declined a request to observe flight tests at a "micro-aviary" they've built, he reported, but they did let him see a video dramatization "starring micro-UAVs that resemble winged, multi-legged bugs. Here's that video (click "hide ad" to play): When I watch that simulation I am horrified. How far ahead is President Obama thinking?
Bradley Manning trial: 10 revelations from Wikileaks documents on Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Europe.
Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, center, is escorted as he leaves a military court at Fort Meade, Md., on Monday. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images In 2010, Army Pfc. Bradley Manning was detained in Iraq on suspicion of passing classified U.S. government documents to WikiLeaks. On Monday, after more than three years in military jail, his trial finally began at Fort Meade, Md. The 25-year-old intelligence analyst admitted earlier this year to passing documents to the whistle-blowing website, though he denies the charge of “aiding the enemy,” an offense that carries a life sentence or the death penalty. Below is a list of 10 revelations disclosed by Manning’s leaked documents that offer insight into the breadth and scope of what he revealed, help explain his motivation for leaking, and provide context for the ongoing trial. Manning’s trial is expected to last through the summer.
librarian.net
Obama Administration Claims "State Secrets" to Block Judge's Ruling on NSA Spying - Iceweasel
Madison RuppertActivist Post In an attempt to prevent a federal judge from ruling on the constitutionality of surveillance programs operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), the Obama administration told the court that litigating the case would endanger state secrets. This comes after a different federal judge ruled that the mass collection of NSA phone records is likely unconstitutional. In a pair of court filings late Friday, the White House told the court for the Northern District of California that the NSA collection of Americans’ Internet and phone data was authorized by former President George W. “President Bush issued authorizations approximately every 30-60 days,” Director of National Intelligence James R. Yet the government is now arguing that the release of more information on NSA surveillance programs in court cause “great harm to national security.” The Justice Department has asked U.S. This article first appeared at End the Lie.
The Drone War Doctrine We Still Know Nothing About
CIA director nominee John Brennan meets with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in January. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) The focus on American citizens overshadows a far more common, and less understood, type of strike: those that do not target American citizens, Al Qaeda leaders, or, in fact, any other specific individual. In these attacks, known as “signature strikes [5],” drone operators fire on people whose identities they do not know based on evidence of suspicious behavior or other “signatures.” Despite that, the administration has never publicly spoken about signature strikes. What is the legal justification for signature strikes? The administration has rebuffed repeated [8] requests from Congress to provide answers – even in secret. “How, for example, does the Administration ensure that the targets are legitimate terrorist targets and not insurgents who have no dispute with the United States?” Sen. Sen. The legal debate
Noam Chomsky: America is accelerating the apocalypse
What is the future likely to bring? A reasonable stance might be to try to look at the human species from the outside. So imagine that you’re an extraterrestrial observer who is trying to figure out what’s happening here or, for that matter, imagine you’re an historian 100 years from now — assuming there are any historians 100 years from now, which is not obvious — and you’re looking back at what’s happening today. You’d see something quite remarkable. For the first time in the history of the human species, we have clearly developed the capacity to destroy ourselves. And there are other dangers like pandemics, which have to do with globalization and interaction. The question is: What are people doing about it? There have been a range of reactions. In fact, all over the world — Australia, India, South America — there are battles going on, sometimes wars. So, at one extreme you have indigenous, tribal societies trying to stem the race to disaster. “The Most Dangerous Moment in History”
Economix blog - NYTimes.com
The State Secrets Privilege | Electronic Frontier Foundation - Iceweasel
The first step in Jewel v. NSA is for the court to decide whether to adopt or reject the government’s invocation of the controversial 'state secrets' privilege—a legal tool that started as a limited shield intended to protect legitimate and critical government national security secrets, but which the government has attempted to turn into a sword to block Americans seeking to enforce the law and the Constitution. Essentially, by invoking the state secrets privilege in this way, the government argues that even if all of the allegations of serious law-breaking and Constitutional violations are true, surveillance of millions of ordinary Americans is exempt from judicial review. In response to the government’s assertion, and as it has since the first wiretapping cases started in 2006, EFF argues that in creating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Congress preempted the state secrets privilege, creating a separate but still very secure way for the case to be decided. In Jewel v.
How Does the U.S. Mark Unidentified Men in Pakistan and Yemen as Drone Targets?
What little we know about the evidence needed to justify a drone strike on unidentified people. Earlier this week, we wrote about [1] a significant but often overlooked aspect of the drone wars in Pakistan and Yemen: so-called signature strikes, in which the U.S. kills people whose identities aren’t confirmed. While President Obama and administration officials have framed [2] the drone program as targeting particular members of Al Qaeda, attacks against unknown militants reportedly may account [3] for the majority of strikes. The government apparently calls such attacks signature strikes because the targets are identified based on intelligence “signatures” that suggest involvement in terror plots or militant activity. So what signatures does the U.S. look for and how much evidence is needed to justify a strike? The Obama administration has never spoken publicly about signature strikes. In Pakistan, a signature might include: Training camps… A group of guys…
