She could have approved drone strikes using smoke signals or carrier pigeons... - it all boils down to the same thing - execution of human beings without a trial...
This description fits almost any action that you can perform when you're at war. So, either you advocate that war courts review cases of all the enemy soldiers before aithorizing an attack, or you have to come up with a more precise definition of what is exactly wrong here.
Clarification: I'm not a fan of CIA assasinations, far from it; but "execution without a trial" isn't logically justifiable complaint: we do it in a lot of situations no reasonable person would argue with.
Edit: my original comment was pointing out errors in someone's logic. Sadly, everybody seems to think that this means that I've taken a certain side in drone debate. This is not the case; please, read my comment and understand what exactly am I saying — and what I'm not — before reacting.
Whenever I hear something about US drone Strikes I always think how long until the other side starts getting drones developed and and easy way to mass produce them and smuggle them into the US assemble them and start launching drone strikes from within the US on US persons of interest like politicians and CIA officials.
Drone parts are getting cheaper and cheaper and easier to get it's only a matter a time someone start using them as assassination tools.
Plus they don't really need to be as big or as powerful as what the CIA uses they can be small and weak and make it up in numbers. I certainly would hate to be on the receiving end of a swarm of assassination drones.
It's a slippery slope and the more they get used the more pissed off people with the know-how and the reason to do it are created like people who have lost family members in these strikes.
Which of course is the only bad thing about drone strikes, right? That they could ever hit the "right guys"?
Who cares that hundreds of innocent civilians are killed, if they are not american citizens?
Disgusting, really.
EDIT, for the downvoters
you'll have to justify what in my comment you do not like. The parent is making the case that what worries him/her is that drone strikes will eventually be used to attack american targets, and by implication suggesting that the current targets are not really something to worry about.
Or he/she is at least suggesting that is not as serious, since what he really is worried about are american targets. Which, if you ask me, is a very widespread opinion, thus my comment.
Well Deash and Al Queda don't seem to have much ability to get the good explosives required for that - Compare them to the PIRA and UDF during the troubles.
I am surprised that they haven't tried the sort of improvised mortars the the IRA used an almost hit the Cabinet at no 10
> easy way to mass produce them and smuggle them into the US assemble them and start launching drone strikes from within the US on US persons of interest like politicians and CIA officials
It's political, but if you think about it, it's really technology/security.
I mean not only about this information falling into the wrong hands, but also the fact that using unsecured channels for these things could lead to hackers approving or even ordering drone strikes themselves.
Maybe I'm being nitpicky, but this line really bothers me:
Under Sec. Clinton, State Department officials approved almost every single proposed CIA drone assassination. They only objected to one or two attacks.
One or two? Which one is it? If they have actually gone through a list of requests and vetted which ones were approved by the State Department, then they know the actual number. A hand-wavy figure indicates that someone sat down, skimmed through the list, found "a couple, I think" and wrote the article. Something of this importance deserves rigor.
I finished watching "13 Hours" last night, a movie about the Benghazi events. The use of drones to kill indirect threats is ubiquitous and yet when it came to saving Americans citizens, drones suddenly weren't in use? dafuq.
Drone strikes are arranged and approved weeks and even months in advance it's not like the US has an army of drones waiting to strike at targets of opportunity.
Also allot of the "drone strikes" that happen over pakistan aren't actually drone strikes it's just more convenient to both Pakistan and the US to claim that no manned aircraft are used but quite a few released/leaked BDA images show craters that are way too big for AGM-114's and even the GBU-12's which is the biggest thing that US drones can currently carry.
While some of the craters might be caused due to secondaries many of them don't show the tell signs of being secondary explosions.
But onto Benghazi drones wouldn't really help, drones won't stop mobs of 100's of people with AK47's storming a compound, even full on CAS with gunships could had very little effect on the end result as far as US casualties go, the people storming the both the embassy and the secondary "support compound" were doing it knowing that they will most likely die in the process.
These aren't regular armies that when they suffer even high single digit %'s force depletion sound the retreat because it would be foolish to stay otherwise.
What's scary is that most still don't seem to realize how much worse this will be made by autonomous killer robots.
They're already killing people essentially based on an algorithm, that may have only a 51% chance of identifying the "right target" (that's the logic they use to spy on Americans, too). They've already admitted to targeting people with drone strikes based on the phone SIM alone, which is not much better than targeting someone based on their IP address.
But now they would be able to just build that into an autonomous drone, and allow it to kill anyone it meets that has a 51%+ chance of being a "bad guy".
Truly scary stuff, which many still seem to excuse with nonsense such as "yeah, but they would've killed those guys just the same with Apache helicopters!".
No, they wouldn't. They would only target the most important targets and the ones they are most sure it's who they think they are. With autonomous killer drones they can just launch 1,000 of them upon a country and allow them to kill anyone on sight that has whatever chance of being a target is implemented into their code.
It's also the same BS excuse people used post-Snowden revelations: "But NSA has always spied on a few dictators and rival countries - surely that's just the same as them now spying on everything billions of people are doing every day, storing everything for decades, and from all ally countries as well? Right?!"
And that's without even discussing the possibility of these machines being hacked, or having software bugs (which they'll probably use as an excuse everytime they get caught killing innocent people by the media - "Whoopsie, a software bug just killed 20 innocent people - What ya gonna do? - What's important is that nobody takes responsibility and gets punished for it now..."
How would drone strikes have saved the americans inside the compound? How can drones be deployed so quickly at a moments notice, let alone get near their target in a reasonable time?
You're thinking of Iron Man. We're not there...yet.
Is this against the law, or just the way things are done now? My gut instinct would be there's more examination that goes into a drone strike but after the Snowden revelations I don't know what to believe.
My bigger problem is with the Secretary of State approving drone strikes than with the "with her cell phone" part. The Secretary of State isn't the Director of the CIA, nor in any chain of command above the Director of the CIA, nor anywhere in the military chain of command.
The US had some "bad luck" with drone strikes during her tenure. There's been no evidence released to prove it (and it may well not exist), but for people still questioning why this email setup matters: Given that it's abundantly clear any state-sponsored hacker would have no difficulty hacking her server, it isn't exactly a stretch for our enemies to move the targets of drone strikes and put innocent civilians in their place to win the propaganda war. A former State Department aide attached his name to claims that her sloppy comms may have foiled multiple counterterrorism operations. [1]
That said, this isn't "just what it is that the FBI is looking to" as this article says. The FBI director originally said they expected to wrap this up by October 2015. If we were talking about a few emails sent over the holidays, this would've been wrapped up a long time ago. In a separate civil suit, the FBI filed a motion to prevent the release of documents, or even the number of documents, for which a FOIA request had been issued. [2] Even the number of documents would tip their hand? The only explanation that really makes sense there is that they're building a RICO case against the Clinton Foundation - and thus a ton more documents than would otherwise be relevant are in play. The fact that they started investigating VA governor McAuliffe's time at the Clinton Foundation shortly after receiving the backups of Clinton's server from their third-party data backup service makes this kind of obvious. Yes, the backups that Clinton's associates attempted to have destroyed even after the State Department asked them to turn over her emails. [3]
[3]Despite Boian’s statement that Platte River set up a 30-day revolving retention policy for Clinton’s emails, Johnson’s letter noted that Platte River employees were directed to reduce the amount of email data being stored with each backup. Late this summer, Johnson wrote, a Platte River employee took note of this change and inquired whether the company could search its archives for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.
Those reductions would have occurred after the State Department requested that Clinton turn over her emails.
It was here that a Platte River employee voiced suspicions about a cover-up and sought to protect the company. “If we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups,” the employee wrote, “and that we can go public with our statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” according to the email cited by Johnson.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
[+] [-] cyberferret|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huffmsa|9 years ago|reply
Now, independent of that, if the regulations and law do not treat them equally, they are not legally equal.
[+] [-] factorialboy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] golergka|9 years ago|reply
Clarification: I'm not a fan of CIA assasinations, far from it; but "execution without a trial" isn't logically justifiable complaint: we do it in a lot of situations no reasonable person would argue with.
Edit: my original comment was pointing out errors in someone's logic. Sadly, everybody seems to think that this means that I've taken a certain side in drone debate. This is not the case; please, read my comment and understand what exactly am I saying — and what I'm not — before reacting.
[+] [-] tomjen3|9 years ago|reply
War will always have civilian casualties and it will always be with us.
[+] [-] Fuxy|9 years ago|reply
Drone parts are getting cheaper and cheaper and easier to get it's only a matter a time someone start using them as assassination tools.
Plus they don't really need to be as big or as powerful as what the CIA uses they can be small and weak and make it up in numbers. I certainly would hate to be on the receiving end of a swarm of assassination drones.
It's a slippery slope and the more they get used the more pissed off people with the know-how and the reason to do it are created like people who have lost family members in these strikes.
[+] [-] gonvaled|9 years ago|reply
Who cares that hundreds of innocent civilians are killed, if they are not american citizens?
Disgusting, really.
EDIT, for the downvoters
you'll have to justify what in my comment you do not like. The parent is making the case that what worries him/her is that drone strikes will eventually be used to attack american targets, and by implication suggesting that the current targets are not really something to worry about.
Or he/she is at least suggesting that is not as serious, since what he really is worried about are american targets. Which, if you ask me, is a very widespread opinion, thus my comment.
[+] [-] tremon|9 years ago|reply
Then how would you say they're used now?
[+] [-] wslh|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.605...
[2] http://www.haaretz.com/report-iran-admits-supplying-hezbolla...
[+] [-] spacecowboy_lon|9 years ago|reply
I am surprised that they haven't tried the sort of improvised mortars the the IRA used an almost hit the Cabinet at no 10
[+] [-] return0|9 years ago|reply
Terrorists are a form of those drones.
[+] [-] ape4|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Patient0|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rando444|9 years ago|reply
I mean not only about this information falling into the wrong hands, but also the fact that using unsecured channels for these things could lead to hackers approving or even ordering drone strikes themselves.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kogus|9 years ago|reply
Under Sec. Clinton, State Department officials approved almost every single proposed CIA drone assassination. They only objected to one or two attacks.
One or two? Which one is it? If they have actually gone through a list of requests and vetted which ones were approved by the State Department, then they know the actual number. A hand-wavy figure indicates that someone sat down, skimmed through the list, found "a couple, I think" and wrote the article. Something of this importance deserves rigor.
[+] [-] elcapitan|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rvense|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] curiousgal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dogma1138|9 years ago|reply
But onto Benghazi drones wouldn't really help, drones won't stop mobs of 100's of people with AK47's storming a compound, even full on CAS with gunships could had very little effect on the end result as far as US casualties go, the people storming the both the embassy and the secondary "support compound" were doing it knowing that they will most likely die in the process. These aren't regular armies that when they suffer even high single digit %'s force depletion sound the retreat because it would be foolish to stay otherwise.
[+] [-] mtgx|9 years ago|reply
They're already killing people essentially based on an algorithm, that may have only a 51% chance of identifying the "right target" (that's the logic they use to spy on Americans, too). They've already admitted to targeting people with drone strikes based on the phone SIM alone, which is not much better than targeting someone based on their IP address.
But now they would be able to just build that into an autonomous drone, and allow it to kill anyone it meets that has a 51%+ chance of being a "bad guy".
Truly scary stuff, which many still seem to excuse with nonsense such as "yeah, but they would've killed those guys just the same with Apache helicopters!".
No, they wouldn't. They would only target the most important targets and the ones they are most sure it's who they think they are. With autonomous killer drones they can just launch 1,000 of them upon a country and allow them to kill anyone on sight that has whatever chance of being a target is implemented into their code.
It's also the same BS excuse people used post-Snowden revelations: "But NSA has always spied on a few dictators and rival countries - surely that's just the same as them now spying on everything billions of people are doing every day, storing everything for decades, and from all ally countries as well? Right?!"
And that's without even discussing the possibility of these machines being hacked, or having software bugs (which they'll probably use as an excuse everytime they get caught killing innocent people by the media - "Whoopsie, a software bug just killed 20 innocent people - What ya gonna do? - What's important is that nobody takes responsibility and gets punished for it now..."
[+] [-] barneygumble742|9 years ago|reply
You're thinking of Iron Man. We're not there...yet.
[+] [-] littletimmy|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dragonwriter|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nmc|9 years ago|reply
(may be paywalled, just google the headline to bypass)
[+] [-] gloves|9 years ago|reply
Just give me the actual news, not your opinion of it.
[+] [-] whbk|9 years ago|reply
That said, this isn't "just what it is that the FBI is looking to" as this article says. The FBI director originally said they expected to wrap this up by October 2015. If we were talking about a few emails sent over the holidays, this would've been wrapped up a long time ago. In a separate civil suit, the FBI filed a motion to prevent the release of documents, or even the number of documents, for which a FOIA request had been issued. [2] Even the number of documents would tip their hand? The only explanation that really makes sense there is that they're building a RICO case against the Clinton Foundation - and thus a ton more documents than would otherwise be relevant are in play. The fact that they started investigating VA governor McAuliffe's time at the Clinton Foundation shortly after receiving the backups of Clinton's server from their third-party data backup service makes this kind of obvious. Yes, the backups that Clinton's associates attempted to have destroyed even after the State Department asked them to turn over her emails. [3]
[1] http://www.newsweek.com/hillary-clinton-email-terrorism-slop...
[2] "disclosure of these records [his immunity agreement] could reasonably be expected to reveal the nature, scope, and focus of the FBI’s activities in the investigation.” http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/new-fbi-filings-reveal-pendi...
[3]Despite Boian’s statement that Platte River set up a 30-day revolving retention policy for Clinton’s emails, Johnson’s letter noted that Platte River employees were directed to reduce the amount of email data being stored with each backup. Late this summer, Johnson wrote, a Platte River employee took note of this change and inquired whether the company could search its archives for an email from Clinton Executive Service Corp. directing such a reduction in October or November 2014 and then again around February, advising Platte River to save only emails sent during the most recent 30 days.
Those reductions would have occurred after the State Department requested that Clinton turn over her emails.
It was here that a Platte River employee voiced suspicions about a cover-up and sought to protect the company. “If we have it in writing that they told us to cut the backups,” the employee wrote, “and that we can go public with our statement saying we have had backups since day one, then we were told to trim to 30 days, it would make us look a WHOLE LOT better,” according to the email cited by Johnson. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/articl...
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] okoksowhatis|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bvtd22|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]