6 ms·

New whistleblower steps forward on drones

40 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

sitkack 11y ago
Cloudflare reports down in Chicago. Edit: Now Chrome reports a redirect loop. This isn't new news for most of us. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/
- viraptor 11y ago
  Change the scheme to https and it works fine.
  - eggie 11y ago
    Now that's down as well.
    - viraptor 11y ago
      Still works for me. Maybe it depends on cloudflare location...
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  NSA works fast these days. Just kidding. ;)
- lemevi 11y ago
  That reads less like new information and more like an activist campaign to stop the use of drones.
  - tedks 11y ago
    The OP article is commentary on the intercept piece. You can see that the logo on the intercept piece is the picture from the OP article. This might be surprising to a technologist who thinks that all information can be objective, but sometimes, when humans learn information, they are compelled by the morality that we evolved so long ago to protect one another and establish our species, not as a sequence of individuals but as cohesive units, to act based on that information, to change the world so that the information they have learned is possibly more or less true. It is not always possible to remain on the sidelines. Information can compel you to act, or at least, compel moral humans to act. So, to many humans, this "activism" is not a blemish, but a point of pride. Try to understand why and you will grow towards humanity.
CaioAlonso 11y ago
In case it is down: https://archive.is/MdnQY https://archive.is/MdnQY
liquidise 11y ago
> Among the leaked info is the startling revelation that, “nearly 90% of people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.” Granted this is a cherry-picked time period, this remains a damning revelation. As far as i have heard, even the most pessimistic grumbles have not suggested such numbers.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  I wonder how it compares to boots-on-the-ground operations. It seems to me that what US is doing here is not reducing the risk for their own troops (thus minimizing total combatant deaths), but shifting it towards the civilians of the other side.
rdtsc 11y ago
When Snowden, Manning and Binney happend I was hoping that one good thing it might produce is encourage others to do the same. So it is good to see this happening. I looked at a few parts from the link. Some parts I liked: --- ... 75 percent of operations in the region were strikes, and noting that “kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material"... --- It looks like these drones besides being controvercial are also pretty crappy when it comes to gathering extra intelligence for other future missions. Also interesting is this: targets seem to come from 33% CIA, 40% NSA SIGINT, 17% NSA partner (presumably other countries' intel). So a good chunk of info used to kill comes from other countries telling us who when and where, and we use that to blast away people. One more interesting excerpt: --- Hellfire missiles—the explosives fired from drones—are not always fired at people. In fact, most drone strikes are aimed at phones. The SIM card provides a person’s location—when turned on, a phone can become a deadly proxy for the individual being hunted. --- Hmm, I remember Russians in Chechnya killed the first president of a Chechen republic that way. Intercepted his satphone signal and used that to target him.
roel_v 11y ago
Granted I haven't read the linked documents, but how does the cited 90% link or compare to other tactics? If the target of your operation is to kill an enemy commander, and you kill 9 of his bodyguards as well, then 90% of the people killed weren't your targets, but I'd say that they weren't even 'collateral damage' - more an 'extra bonus' (sorry if that sounds callous). I mean I can think of several different ways to spin this number just being an uninformed citizen who knows nothing about the topic at all, so I'm hesitant to take the implied claim that drones kill many more innocent civilians than alternative methods do at face value. It could very well be true, intuitively I'd even say that yes drone strikes will have lower precision, I'm just saying that if this is the smoking gun - then it's not very convincing.
- rdtsc 11y ago
  > but I'd say that they weren't even 'collateral damage' - more an 'extra bonus' I think that exemplies exactly what is wrong here. The attitude that once we push a button and kill one Yemeni person, we won't feel a lot guilter if we kill 9. We are already killing, might as well "err on the side of caution" and kill more, just in case those are dangerous body guards there.
  - roel_v 11y ago
    Well no, I don't think that's true. I don't think you'll find many people in the military who think 'oh I'm already killing this guy with the AK74 who's shooting at my buddies, I might as well shoot the pregnant woman with the 3-year old on her arm as well, just to be safe'. I don't know about operations procedures, but I would imagine it's standard procedure to take out any armed people in the vicinity of your target. With drones you can't really just stun them or whatever, so yeah you have to kill them. But those aren't 'innocent bystanders'. They're enemy combatants in all meanings of the concept, and 'fair game' (sorry again if that sounds callous again). Furthermore, I think it's easy but simplistic to say 'all these soldiers are remorseless killing machines', neither for on-the-ground troops, drone operators or generals who take the high level decisions. I think all of them have thought and think much more and harder about what it means to kill a person, and the fact that most of them in some form or another assist in killing people 'by accident', than you or I do. I also think that for the vast majority of them, this is a major psychological burden, something that literally haunts them at night. Yet they do what they do despite that, and I don't think that the majority of them do it because they're sadistic subhumans who get off on the idea of making children in an already bad situation on the other side of the world orphans. So, if we can get past the 'killing people with drones is immoral no matter what' rhetoric, we can come back to the real question: what is the effect of drone usage on warfare, and more to the point of the OP, is the implied claim that 90% of drone killings are of innocent civilians accurate? And how does that compare to more conventional tactics, e.g. airstrikes by regular bombers, mortar attacks, or 'plain' action-movie style Special Forces droppings who engage in closed quarters shootouts?
dang 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636

40 points by pavornyoh 11y ago

Cloudflare reports down in Chicago. Edit: Now Chrome reports a redirect loop. This isn't new news for most of us. https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/ https://theintercept.com/drone-papers/

viraptor 11y ago
Change the scheme to https and it works fine.
- eggie 11y ago
  Now that's down as well.
  - viraptor 11y ago
    Still works for me. Maybe it depends on cloudflare location...
nickpsecurity 11y ago
NSA works fast these days. Just kidding. ;)
lemevi 11y ago
That reads less like new information and more like an activist campaign to stop the use of drones.
- tedks 11y ago
  The OP article is commentary on the intercept piece. You can see that the logo on the intercept piece is the picture from the OP article. This might be surprising to a technologist who thinks that all information can be objective, but sometimes, when humans learn information, they are compelled by the morality that we evolved so long ago to protect one another and establish our species, not as a sequence of individuals but as cohesive units, to act based on that information, to change the world so that the information they have learned is possibly more or less true. It is not always possible to remain on the sidelines. Information can compel you to act, or at least, compel moral humans to act. So, to many humans, this "activism" is not a blemish, but a point of pride. Try to understand why and you will grow towards humanity.

CaioAlonso 11y ago

In case it is down: https://archive.is/MdnQY https://archive.is/MdnQY

liquidise 11y ago

> Among the leaked info is the startling revelation that, “nearly 90% of people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets.” Granted this is a cherry-picked time period, this remains a damning revelation. As far as i have heard, even the most pessimistic grumbles have not suggested such numbers.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I wonder how it compares to boots-on-the-ground operations. It seems to me that what US is doing here is not reducing the risk for their own troops (thus minimizing total combatant deaths), but shifting it towards the civilians of the other side.

rdtsc 11y ago

When Snowden, Manning and Binney happend I was hoping that one good thing it might produce is encourage others to do the same. So it is good to see this happening. I looked at a few parts from the link. Some parts I liked: --- ... 75 percent of operations in the region were strikes, and noting that “kill operations significantly reduce the intelligence available from detainees and captured material"... --- It looks like these drones besides being controvercial are also pretty crappy when it comes to gathering extra intelligence for other future missions. Also interesting is this: targets seem to come from 33% CIA, 40% NSA SIGINT, 17% NSA partner (presumably other countries' intel). So a good chunk of info used to kill comes from other countries telling us who when and where, and we use that to blast away people. One more interesting excerpt: --- Hellfire missiles—the explosives fired from drones—are not always fired at people. In fact, most drone strikes are aimed at phones. The SIM card provides a person’s location—when turned on, a phone can become a deadly proxy for the individual being hunted. --- Hmm, I remember Russians in Chechnya killed the first president of a Chechen republic that way. Intercepted his satphone signal and used that to target him.

roel_v 11y ago

Granted I haven't read the linked documents, but how does the cited 90% link or compare to other tactics? If the target of your operation is to kill an enemy commander, and you kill 9 of his bodyguards as well, then 90% of the people killed weren't your targets, but I'd say that they weren't even 'collateral damage' - more an 'extra bonus' (sorry if that sounds callous). I mean I can think of several different ways to spin this number just being an uninformed citizen who knows nothing about the topic at all, so I'm hesitant to take the implied claim that drones kill many more innocent civilians than alternative methods do at face value. It could very well be true, intuitively I'd even say that yes drone strikes will have lower precision, I'm just saying that if this is the smoking gun - then it's not very convincing.

rdtsc 11y ago
> but I'd say that they weren't even 'collateral damage' - more an 'extra bonus' I think that exemplies exactly what is wrong here. The attitude that once we push a button and kill one Yemeni person, we won't feel a lot guilter if we kill 9. We are already killing, might as well "err on the side of caution" and kill more, just in case those are dangerous body guards there.
- roel_v 11y ago
  Well no, I don't think that's true. I don't think you'll find many people in the military who think 'oh I'm already killing this guy with the AK74 who's shooting at my buddies, I might as well shoot the pregnant woman with the 3-year old on her arm as well, just to be safe'. I don't know about operations procedures, but I would imagine it's standard procedure to take out any armed people in the vicinity of your target. With drones you can't really just stun them or whatever, so yeah you have to kill them. But those aren't 'innocent bystanders'. They're enemy combatants in all meanings of the concept, and 'fair game' (sorry again if that sounds callous again). Furthermore, I think it's easy but simplistic to say 'all these soldiers are remorseless killing machines', neither for on-the-ground troops, drone operators or generals who take the high level decisions. I think all of them have thought and think much more and harder about what it means to kill a person, and the fact that most of them in some form or another assist in killing people 'by accident', than you or I do. I also think that for the vast majority of them, this is a major psychological burden, something that literally haunts them at night. Yet they do what they do despite that, and I don't think that the majority of them do it because they're sadistic subhumans who get off on the idea of making children in an already bad situation on the other side of the world orphans. So, if we can get past the 'killing people with drones is immoral no matter what' rhetoric, we can come back to the real question: what is the effect of drone usage on warfare, and more to the point of the OP, is the implied claim that 90% of drone killings are of innocent civilians accurate? And how does that compare to more conventional tactics, e.g. airstrikes by regular bombers, mortar attacks, or 'plain' action-movie style Special Forces droppings who engage in closed quarters shootouts?

dang 11y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10392636