11 ms·

A Citizen Is Suing the US for Putting Him on the 'Kill List'

204 points by matt4077 8y ago

shanghaiaway 8y ago
"Democracy"
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vowelless 8y ago
This has happened before, and it was unprecedented when the US citizen [1] was assassinated by the US President with explicit targeting (putting the name on a 'kill list'). As I understand, Awlaki was an Al Qaeda member, mostly concerned himself with writing for 'Inspire' and giving YouTube lectures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Death > he became the first United States citizen to be assassinated by a U.S. drone strike without the rights of due process being afforded.[15][16] President Barack Obama ordered the strike.[17] His son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (a 16-year-old U.S. citizen), was killed in a U.S. drone strike two weeks later.[18] On January 29, 2017, al-Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter, Nawar Al-Awlaki, was killed in a U.S. commando attack in Yemen which was ordered by President Donald Trump.[19][20][21][22] [1] Please note: I am not justifying Awlaki's work. He was an Al Qaeda member. But also a natural born American citizen.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Since he was a US citizen, was he entitled to some kind of due process, maybe via extradition? Edit: it was in the OP article. There was some outcry about the president now having authority to kill even Americans without due process – “I think it’s sad,” said U.S. Congressman Ron Paul – but the uproar soon faded, and America’s assassination program accelerated still more. By late 2011, we’d killed more than 2,000 “militants.”
  - danesparza 8y ago
    I think the idea is that as long as you can make the case for classifying them as an 'enemy combatant in an active war zone' it doesn't matter that they were a US citizen. I'm not saying I agree with this -- I'm just trying to respond to your question.
    - imron 8y ago
      > as long as you can make the case for classifying them as an 'enemy combatant in an active war zone Under the Obama administration, they decided to count all military-age males in a strike zone as enemy combatants, unless there was explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent [0]. Was a bomb dropped on a wedding to kill a terrorist? Well, all the other men aged 18-50 at the wedding are also classed as enemy combatants too, meaning 'no innocent civilians' were killed. Way to go Mr. Nobel Peace Prize winner. 0: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o...
      - danesparza 8y ago
        Good lord. I wasn't aware of that one. Thanks for the link.
        imron 8y ago
        Yeah, not exactly his finest hour.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- megous 8y ago
  This guy is not openly anti U.S. though. So it's not really comparable. He just grown an outward facing (meaning outside of Syria, english language) news/commentary website/following on twitter/youtube from northwest of Syria. He interviews various people, including members of various militias (leaders and non-leaders), civilians, etc. I think he also interviewed some ex-shabaab (Somalia) disillusioned members. He doesn't seem radical. OGN is mildly interesting, as in it shows what some people deal with in the region, how militia leaders present themselves to the outside world, etc. But most of the news content can be obtained from elsewhere too. It was more unique when he was in besieged Eastern Aleppo. Bombing this guy would be like bombing The Young Turks, or whatever. It's ridiculous. He's not even in a war zone. He's in Idlib de-escalation zone.
mieseratte 8y ago
Would it be a bit too crass to say "Thanks, Obama!" for this one? It's a bit more shocking when you realize a Constitutional Law professor is the one who opened up this can of worms.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  Not at all. He was no saint.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  Obama's "Disposition Matrix" was a furthering of Bush era policies. It's not really fair to say he opened this can of worms, though that doesn't make his actions any less terrible.
  - mieseratte 8y ago
    > It's not really fair to say he opened this can of worms He was the sitting President and personally authorized the first extrajudicial assassination of an American Citizen in the GWOT. As the Executive Chief, "The buck stops (t)here."
    - StavrosK 8y ago
      > the first extrajudicial assassination of an American Citizen As in, there were extrajudicial assassinations of people before, but this one was too far because this time it was an American Citizen Capital A Capital C?
      - dmurray 8y ago
        Well, yes. It's equally evil for the government to murder a Syrian as an American, but more legal under American law. The American has more legal protections under the American Constitution. That's what a large part of the article is about. So moving into killing Americans was a step further and a new legal precedent.
      - mieseratte 8y ago
whack 8y ago
> "We kill suspects whose names we know, and whose names we don’t; we kill the guilty and the not guilty; we kill men, but also women and children; we kill by day and by night; we fire missiles at confirmed visual targets, but also at cellphone numbers we hope belong to targets." That is just chilling.
- dannyw 8y ago
  This is unfortunately the sort of action you are enabling, when you’re building a ML system for drone imagery.
  - rangibaby 8y ago
    I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists... I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawnmower. Mikhail Kalashnikov The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. Albert Einstein
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Yeah well, about Mikhael Kalashnikow. He build the famous AK47 for Stalins UdSSR. NKWD, Gulags, etc. were active since many years by that time, organized state-terrorism against anyone opposed to the glorious soviet system and their leader ... in other words, his words sound quite hypocryte. But when you consider your system belong to the good ... you probably close your eyes to everything else. But I go along with Einstein. The more technogy is avaiable to the masses, the more powerful a single persons becomes. There might come a time soon, when anyone could just tinker a atomic bomb together in his garage ... we seriously need to change our way of thinking, till that happens.
      - zeth___ 8y ago
        Given that the alternative the USSR had to Stalin was Hitler it was a pretty good deal all things considered.
to_bpr 8y ago
I got about 3 paragraphs into the article and tired of the "white folks be like... but black folks be like" narrative. Do better.
- anentropic 8y ago
  I read the whole thing without noticing that try harder
- titzer 8y ago
  Your comment is incredibly insensitive and flippant. We can do better when we try to understand someone else's perspective--get into their narrative instead of 5 second superficial scanning and immediately turn off.
- jstanley 8y ago
  This is not an accurate representation of the article.
- Jotra7 8y ago
  Perhaps you should slink back to Fox News or something, friend.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  Well, you missed a gripping account of the struggles of the judicial system to bring rule-of-law accountability to a secret executive war fighting department.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    Plus a really good joke, actually.
throwaway5752 8y ago
So to clarify - this sort of political story is okay, but increased white nationalist group activity, Russian interference in 2016 election, and forced separation of migrant families seeking asylum are not? It's a bit hard to figure out the editorial stance on HN lately. edit: this seems off the front page, which answers my (not hypothetical or sarcastically intended) question.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  It's at least partly a commentary on black box machine learning, so I can see the additional relevance. But really that's a stretch, and I think all of the above are relevant for "hackers" as long as they don't flood the front page.
  - travistravel 8y ago
    Yeah, it's just unnacountable violence wreaked with help of high technology. HN is more for, say, a technical article about reverse engineering details of an old game, and 50 comments saying "I fondly remember playing that game". A real hacker would still not care about this when they themselves end up on a kill list, because politics, the air we breathe, and other things are just totally for lamers.
  - throwaway5752 8y ago
    The Russian campaign is a hacker goldmine. AI/human force multiplication for mass social media influence campaigns, hacking social systems, data sovereignty and use of social media metadata...
- beaconstudios 8y ago
  My understanding is its based on how much it will divide the HN community, causing flame wars and unproductive conversation. Pretty much everyone agrees that US citizens shouldn't be hit by drone strikes.
  - throwaway5752 8y ago
    Really? Because in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki I think it's much more of a gray area. edit: agree entirely that the case in the article (Bilal Abdul Kareem) is no gray area. The difficulties interleaving points about the generality of a topic and specific cases.
dzdt 8y ago
Who remembers in 2002 when an American citizen was arrested on American soil and transferred to a military prison, where he was held for three and a half years with no trial while the government claimed he had no rights or recourse because they had determined him to be a terrorist? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Padilla_(prisoner) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Padilla_(prisoner)
- kimdotcom 8y ago
  I remember he was working at Taco Bell.
- dayofthedaleks 8y ago
  I do! As I recall, he sort of was a terrorist though? Something about the planning or discussion of apartment house gasline bombings? They didn't even need an agent provocateur to produce evidence for this one. On a semi-related note, I hope John Walker Lindh gets a hell of a party upon his release next May.
  - jonathanstrange 8y ago
    The idea behind due process is that everyone has a right to it, not just a select class of people your government is sympathetic with.
    - nerbert 8y ago
      It's incredible how a simple idea like that seems so difficult to grasp for many people.
      - Khaine 8y ago
        Just like free speach allows you to say horrible things.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    > As I recall, he sort of was a terrorist though? Does that matter a single iota? Does the US legal system say somewhere you can hold people in prison with no rights because "they sort of are a terrorist, though"?
flexie 8y ago
As a non-US citizen, I find it a terrible thought that somehow it should be morally better (or more legal) to kill non-US citizens than US citizens. The only concern should be whether they are proven to be dangerous terrorists, not what their nationality is. If it's okay to kill a dangerous Afghan terrorist in a war zone in Afghanistan, then it's also okay to kill a dangerous American terrorist in a war zone in Afghanistan. Outside of war zones, I don't see any excuse for killing anyone, unless in self defense. I am still not sure about what to think of the whole drone war. I see how it saves hundreds of thousands of lives, compared to bringing in ground troops, but it sure feels wrong and dystopian.
- nerdponx 8y ago
  It's more legal because they're not US citizens. There's no normative logic to it.
  - beobab 8y ago
    I humbly suggest that that law has lost it's moral compass and needs to be addressed. Once you reject the principle that "all people are created equally human", then you run the risk of being on the "wrong side", and treated in a sub-human manner.
    - nerdponx 8y ago
      Did the law ever have a moral compass like you suggest? We had slaves for 80+ years after the Constitution was written.
- jstanley 8y ago
  How many lives does it save compared to not bringing in any troops? Why does killing have to be the answer?
  - flexie 8y ago
    In the best of worlds, we could catch the bad guys in a net, put pink, fluffy handcuffs on them while we talk with them gently, get to know them and understand why they did what they did. Then we could hug, and we would become friends, and one day after a not too long stay in our beautiful, green and lounge-like prison resort, we would let them out in society again and they would become productive citizens. In our world, we sometimes have to fight. Sometimes, it's better to kill the terrorists than to risk that they attack us or to risk our soldiers getting killed in an attempt of bringing them in.
avar 8y ago
Most of the comments here, and even the article itself shows just how far the Overton window has moved when it comes to these discussions. The article makes a few mentions of how perhaps killing non-Americans isn't fine either: > We wiped out the Geneva Convention by creating the unlawful enemy combatant, a term that simply means a person not protected by the Geneva Convention. But even for the Rolling Stone the discussion has mostly moved on. The post-9/11 world of killing people in "warzones" (war was never declared) without any regard for the Geneva Convention is taken as a given.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  Okay.. what do we do, declare war on Pakistan in order to prosecute a conflict in Waziristan? War with Afghanistan to go after violent Taliban factions in northern provinces? There is not a nation state entity to declare war against, and for example in Afghanistan you have a national population on the order of the city of Beijing, and hundreds of the police die there per year in this internal conflict. The national governments are probably complicit/cooperative for their own reasons. Also, the Geneva convention has obligations for both sides of a conflict, and - even though conduct shouldn't be dictated by the lowest common denominator - it's just not intended for this situation. I think it's possible to distinguish targeted (however flawed) drone campaigns from mass casualty bio/chem attacks like are done in Syria (with Russian support) or other cases.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    I think it's worth stepping back and asking the question of why the US is involved in the conflict there in the first place? And to what extent the US is really threatened by people on the other side of the planet?
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - vorpalhex 8y ago
      > why the US is involved in the conflict there in the first place? Active and believable threats directed at the US, including sending resources and fighters to actively engage the US. It'd be great if we could give just give Iraq a ring and ask them to go shove a boot up these folks other-sides, but since they're massively losing cities and land to these warlords, they're not really in a place to handle the situation themselves. Something about a terrorist group taking large swathes of your land, borderline enslaving your people into forced labor and selling the pretty ones as "wives" to be raped endlessly kind of makes it hard to function as a normal country. > to what extent the US is really threatened by people on the other side of the planet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_linked_to_ISIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_li... + June 2016 + November 2016 + October 2017
dbatten 8y ago
Unfortunately, I think this is a thornier issue than most of these articles give it credit for. Suppose for a second that the US was at war with Canada and John Doe was an American citizen, but he was serving as a uniformed combatant in the Canadian army. Under such circumstances, I can't imagine anyone would have a problem with the United States military killing John Doe in battle without trial. Obviously, the circumstances around the kill list are murkier... The "war on terror" isn't a war in the traditional sense, terrorists or suspected terrorists are not uniformed combatants, the CIA is not necessarily the military, and it's not really certain that dropping a bomb on somebody's "cafe experience" is equivalent to killing them in a pitched battle in a declared war. Still, I have a hard time imagining what rights a US citizen is supposed to be entitled to when they are effectively a foreign terrorist working to attack the US. Are we supposed to have a trial for them without them present? (We all know how that would go.) Ask for their home country to extradite them? (Country will almost certainly either be unwilling or incapable.) Send the Navy Seals to kidnap them and force them to stand trial? (Dangerous and wildly impractical, not to mention boots on the ground increasing the risk of creating a larger conflict with a foreign nation.) Personally, I have two take-aways on the issue: 1) I wouldn't want to be the judge that has to sort this stuff out, and I hope they do it well. It's not easy. 2) I think the bigger problem is drone killings in other nations FULL STOP. Regardless of who the targets are, it's completely unacceptable for any country to think they can just fly into another nation's airspace and start dropping bombs on anybody they please without a declaration of war, some sort of cooperative MOU, or a join military exercise...
- sitkack 8y ago
  > Suppose for a second that the US was at war with Canada and John Doe was an American citizen You are in table-top-gaming territory. Constructing arbitrary hypotheticals as your base condition doesn't make your arguments stronger, it makes them apply to a non-existent universe.
- jstanley 8y ago
  > they are effectively a foreign terrorist Part of the problem is that if you haven't given them a fair trial, you haven't proved they're a terrorist rather than an ordinary member of the public.
christophilus 8y ago
I just started reading "Society and Sanity"[0]. It's an interesting read so far, and opens with a prediction that if society forgets what a human is, that society will tend towards this sort of behavior-- arbitrary treatment of fellow humans, with the only argument against such treatment being, "I don't like it, and I wish you'd be kinder to people." And the counter argument being, "I like it, and I don't want to be kinder to people." If we're to solve this problem, we have to get back to the essential foundational idea that human beings have intrinsic rights which exist and are not simply concessions of the state. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Society-Sanity-Understanding-Live-Together/dp/1586177303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532005703&sr=8-1&keywords=society+and+sanity https://www.amazon.com/Society-Sanity-Understanding-Live-Tog...
- jtbayly 8y ago
  Yes. All sorts of things like this that ignore human intrinsic value and rights. Abortion is a prime example.
  - ionised 8y ago
    How?
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      I presume the point was that, as a fetus is genetically human, treating it as something to be killed at our convenience is an example of the problem ("arbitrary treatment of fellow humans", rather than recognizing that "human beings have intrinsic rights which exist and are not simply concessions of the state").
- xd2024 8y ago
  This says a lot about our society
AdmiralAsshat 8y ago
So, hypothetical law question here: if the US government has deemed you worthy of being killed, are you legally obligated to die? I asked this question once before in the context of whether you are "breaking the law" if you flee from a cop that is shooting at you, but it seems apt here as well.
- matt4077 8y ago
  It's a somewhat silly question (what punishment would you propose for noncompliance). The obvious legal answer is "no", because you are not obligated to do something unless there's a law to that effect, and there's no law creating such an obligation because it would be silly. As an approximation, it might make sense to look as some analogues: the fifth amendment right not to incriminate yourself in a criminal trial, for example, speaks to a recognition of every humans' (even criminals') right to protect themselves. If you can't be forced to provide information against your interests, you can certainly not be obligated to inflict the ultimate punishment onto yourself. A very similar train of thought finds expression in German law, where it is not a crime to break out of prison, a fact often justified by reference to a fundamental human urge to seek freedom (any property damage, or injury inflicted on others is, however, criminal).
sschueller 8y ago
Is the kill list available online? Can we get it via FOIA request?
pjc50 8y ago
The most likely resolution to this is that the US finds some way of stripping him of his citizenship, thereby making it legal to murder him.
- ggm 8y ago
  Which is what the US did to many members of the ACP after WWI deporting them en masse to Russia (not killing them, Stalin did that for the US government distrusting the foreign communists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids [the article implies the deportees were 'aliens' but I think the legalism here is wafer thin. I think they held themselves to be Americans, internationalists maybe, but not aliens] I was very surprised when I read that the US state and federal authorities were calmly happy to deploy machine guns against strikers, and even more bemused when they chose to deport people and remove citizenship. I really didn't think states like "us" did that, but apparently I was wrong. Australia reneges on the AU-NZ treaty all the time, deporting Kiwi's for trivial offences. Green card holders can be stripped and dumped for offences which citizens would walk away from with a finger wag.
dorfsmay 8y ago
When I listen to Noam Chomsky I often think he exaggerates, and then this! And like the article points to, this is not specific to Trump or Bush, but also Clinton and Obama. I would love to know what U.S. citizens who have put thought into and truly believe that their second amendment protects them from their government abuse think of this.
turc1656 8y ago
IANAL but it seems to me the mental workflow of determining the legality of all this is definitely not what I think it should be. For the non-citizen, it seems clear to me the judge's determining that there is no standing to even raise the issue in a US court is sound. If I was theoretically plotting against some other (non-US) nation - say, Canada for argument's sake - I have no relationship, obligation, or anything really with Canada. And they have none with me. So the idea that Canada should be forced to explain itself to me or prove anything to me is absurd. They owe me nothing and I owe them nothing (unless perhaps I am within their borders, then a few obligations are there for both sides). For the US citizen, the court definitely has jurisdiction as this is a federal court and we're talking about the actions of the federal branch of the US government taking action against a citizen. Also, this is a civil case, so the question then becomes whether or not there is presiding law on this and whether the claims have merit. There is very little law for this specific type of case (drone strikes). The lawsuit didn't actually claim a rights violation (which seriously surprised me). But before all of that, the heart of this drone strike murder issue against a US citizen has it's roots in due process. The big question is whether or not due process still applies to actions against a citizen when not on US soil. That answer is most definitely not clear and to my knowledge has never been answered by a court. Clearly, the constitutional and the law in general apply within US borders. However, in most cases the law ends at the border. But there are things that citizens can do overseas and face charges for at home. So is the reverse true? Is there anything that the US government can do to us while we are not on US soil that violates the law? Does the obligation to protect (or at least not violate) my constitutional rights still exist once I cross the border? Until this question is answered, I don't think anything else in this case can be answered with certainty. This also excludes the entire examination of potential criminal (not civil) violations or violations of international law, war crimes, violations of conventions like Geneva, Hague, etc.

204 points by matt4077 8y ago

shanghaiaway 8y ago

"Democracy"

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

vowelless 8y ago

This has happened before, and it was unprecedented when the US citizen [1] was assassinated by the US President with explicit targeting (putting the name on a 'kill list'). As I understand, Awlaki was an Al Qaeda member, mostly concerned himself with writing for 'Inspire' and giving YouTube lectures. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki#Death > he became the first United States citizen to be assassinated by a U.S. drone strike without the rights of due process being afforded.[15][16] President Barack Obama ordered the strike.[17] His son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki (a 16-year-old U.S. citizen), was killed in a U.S. drone strike two weeks later.[18] On January 29, 2017, al-Awlaki's 8-year-old daughter, Nawar Al-Awlaki, was killed in a U.S. commando attack in Yemen which was ordered by President Donald Trump.[19][20][21][22] [1] Please note: I am not justifying Awlaki's work. He was an Al Qaeda member. But also a natural born American citizen.

nerdponx 8y ago
Since he was a US citizen, was he entitled to some kind of due process, maybe via extradition? Edit: it was in the OP article. There was some outcry about the president now having authority to kill even Americans without due process – “I think it’s sad,” said U.S. Congressman Ron Paul – but the uproar soon faded, and America’s assassination program accelerated still more. By late 2011, we’d killed more than 2,000 “militants.”
- danesparza 8y ago
  I think the idea is that as long as you can make the case for classifying them as an 'enemy combatant in an active war zone' it doesn't matter that they were a US citizen. I'm not saying I agree with this -- I'm just trying to respond to your question.
  - imron 8y ago
    > as long as you can make the case for classifying them as an 'enemy combatant in an active war zone Under the Obama administration, they decided to count all military-age males in a strike zone as enemy combatants, unless there was explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent [0]. Was a bomb dropped on a wedding to kill a terrorist? Well, all the other men aged 18-50 at the wedding are also classed as enemy combatants too, meaning 'no innocent civilians' were killed. Way to go Mr. Nobel Peace Prize winner. 0: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-o...
    - danesparza 8y ago
      Good lord. I wasn't aware of that one. Thanks for the link.
      - imron 8y ago
        Yeah, not exactly his finest hour.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
megous 8y ago
This guy is not openly anti U.S. though. So it's not really comparable. He just grown an outward facing (meaning outside of Syria, english language) news/commentary website/following on twitter/youtube from northwest of Syria. He interviews various people, including members of various militias (leaders and non-leaders), civilians, etc. I think he also interviewed some ex-shabaab (Somalia) disillusioned members. He doesn't seem radical. OGN is mildly interesting, as in it shows what some people deal with in the region, how militia leaders present themselves to the outside world, etc. But most of the news content can be obtained from elsewhere too. It was more unique when he was in besieged Eastern Aleppo. Bombing this guy would be like bombing The Young Turks, or whatever. It's ridiculous. He's not even in a war zone. He's in Idlib de-escalation zone.

mieseratte 8y ago

Would it be a bit too crass to say "Thanks, Obama!" for this one? It's a bit more shocking when you realize a Constitutional Law professor is the one who opened up this can of worms.

nerdponx 8y ago
Not at all. He was no saint.
boomboomsubban 8y ago
Obama's "Disposition Matrix" was a furthering of Bush era policies. It's not really fair to say he opened this can of worms, though that doesn't make his actions any less terrible.
- mieseratte 8y ago
  > It's not really fair to say he opened this can of worms He was the sitting President and personally authorized the first extrajudicial assassination of an American Citizen in the GWOT. As the Executive Chief, "The buck stops (t)here."
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    > the first extrajudicial assassination of an American Citizen As in, there were extrajudicial assassinations of people before, but this one was too far because this time it was an American Citizen Capital A Capital C?
    - dmurray 8y ago
      Well, yes. It's equally evil for the government to murder a Syrian as an American, but more legal under American law. The American has more legal protections under the American Constitution. That's what a large part of the article is about. So moving into killing Americans was a step further and a new legal precedent.
    - mieseratte 8y ago

whack 8y ago

> "We kill suspects whose names we know, and whose names we don’t; we kill the guilty and the not guilty; we kill men, but also women and children; we kill by day and by night; we fire missiles at confirmed visual targets, but also at cellphone numbers we hope belong to targets." That is just chilling.

dannyw 8y ago
This is unfortunately the sort of action you are enabling, when you’re building a ML system for drone imagery.
- rangibaby 8y ago
  I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists... I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work — for example a lawnmower. Mikhail Kalashnikov The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker. Albert Einstein
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    Yeah well, about Mikhael Kalashnikow. He build the famous AK47 for Stalins UdSSR. NKWD, Gulags, etc. were active since many years by that time, organized state-terrorism against anyone opposed to the glorious soviet system and their leader ... in other words, his words sound quite hypocryte. But when you consider your system belong to the good ... you probably close your eyes to everything else. But I go along with Einstein. The more technogy is avaiable to the masses, the more powerful a single persons becomes. There might come a time soon, when anyone could just tinker a atomic bomb together in his garage ... we seriously need to change our way of thinking, till that happens.
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      Given that the alternative the USSR had to Stalin was Hitler it was a pretty good deal all things considered.

to_bpr 8y ago

I got about 3 paragraphs into the article and tired of the "white folks be like... but black folks be like" narrative. Do better.

anentropic 8y ago
I read the whole thing without noticing that try harder
titzer 8y ago
Your comment is incredibly insensitive and flippant. We can do better when we try to understand someone else's perspective--get into their narrative instead of 5 second superficial scanning and immediately turn off.
jstanley 8y ago
This is not an accurate representation of the article.
Jotra7 8y ago
Perhaps you should slink back to Fox News or something, friend.
vinceguidry 8y ago
Well, you missed a gripping account of the struggles of the judicial system to bring rule-of-law accountability to a secret executive war fighting department.
- matt4077 8y ago
  Plus a really good joke, actually.

throwaway5752 8y ago

So to clarify - this sort of political story is okay, but increased white nationalist group activity, Russian interference in 2016 election, and forced separation of migrant families seeking asylum are not? It's a bit hard to figure out the editorial stance on HN lately. edit: this seems off the front page, which answers my (not hypothetical or sarcastically intended) question.

nerdponx 8y ago
It's at least partly a commentary on black box machine learning, so I can see the additional relevance. But really that's a stretch, and I think all of the above are relevant for "hackers" as long as they don't flood the front page.
- travistravel 8y ago
  Yeah, it's just unnacountable violence wreaked with help of high technology. HN is more for, say, a technical article about reverse engineering details of an old game, and 50 comments saying "I fondly remember playing that game". A real hacker would still not care about this when they themselves end up on a kill list, because politics, the air we breathe, and other things are just totally for lamers.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  The Russian campaign is a hacker goldmine. AI/human force multiplication for mass social media influence campaigns, hacking social systems, data sovereignty and use of social media metadata...
beaconstudios 8y ago
My understanding is its based on how much it will divide the HN community, causing flame wars and unproductive conversation. Pretty much everyone agrees that US citizens shouldn't be hit by drone strikes.
- throwaway5752 8y ago
  Really? Because in the case of Anwar al-Awlaki I think it's much more of a gray area. edit: agree entirely that the case in the article (Bilal Abdul Kareem) is no gray area. The difficulties interleaving points about the generality of a topic and specific cases.

dzdt 8y ago

Who remembers in 2002 when an American citizen was arrested on American soil and transferred to a military prison, where he was held for three and a half years with no trial while the government claimed he had no rights or recourse because they had determined him to be a terrorist? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Padilla_(prisoner) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/José_Padilla_(prisoner)

kimdotcom 8y ago
I remember he was working at Taco Bell.
dayofthedaleks 8y ago
I do! As I recall, he sort of was a terrorist though? Something about the planning or discussion of apartment house gasline bombings? They didn't even need an agent provocateur to produce evidence for this one. On a semi-related note, I hope John Walker Lindh gets a hell of a party upon his release next May.
- jonathanstrange 8y ago
  The idea behind due process is that everyone has a right to it, not just a select class of people your government is sympathetic with.
  - nerbert 8y ago
    It's incredible how a simple idea like that seems so difficult to grasp for many people.
    - Khaine 8y ago
      Just like free speach allows you to say horrible things.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  > As I recall, he sort of was a terrorist though? Does that matter a single iota? Does the US legal system say somewhere you can hold people in prison with no rights because "they sort of are a terrorist, though"?

flexie 8y ago

As a non-US citizen, I find it a terrible thought that somehow it should be morally better (or more legal) to kill non-US citizens than US citizens. The only concern should be whether they are proven to be dangerous terrorists, not what their nationality is. If it's okay to kill a dangerous Afghan terrorist in a war zone in Afghanistan, then it's also okay to kill a dangerous American terrorist in a war zone in Afghanistan. Outside of war zones, I don't see any excuse for killing anyone, unless in self defense. I am still not sure about what to think of the whole drone war. I see how it saves hundreds of thousands of lives, compared to bringing in ground troops, but it sure feels wrong and dystopian.

nerdponx 8y ago
It's more legal because they're not US citizens. There's no normative logic to it.
- beobab 8y ago
  I humbly suggest that that law has lost it's moral compass and needs to be addressed. Once you reject the principle that "all people are created equally human", then you run the risk of being on the "wrong side", and treated in a sub-human manner.
  - nerdponx 8y ago
    Did the law ever have a moral compass like you suggest? We had slaves for 80+ years after the Constitution was written.
jstanley 8y ago
How many lives does it save compared to not bringing in any troops? Why does killing have to be the answer?
- flexie 8y ago
  In the best of worlds, we could catch the bad guys in a net, put pink, fluffy handcuffs on them while we talk with them gently, get to know them and understand why they did what they did. Then we could hug, and we would become friends, and one day after a not too long stay in our beautiful, green and lounge-like prison resort, we would let them out in society again and they would become productive citizens. In our world, we sometimes have to fight. Sometimes, it's better to kill the terrorists than to risk that they attack us or to risk our soldiers getting killed in an attempt of bringing them in.

avar 8y ago

Most of the comments here, and even the article itself shows just how far the Overton window has moved when it comes to these discussions. The article makes a few mentions of how perhaps killing non-Americans isn't fine either: > We wiped out the Geneva Convention by creating the unlawful enemy combatant, a term that simply means a person not protected by the Geneva Convention. But even for the Rolling Stone the discussion has mostly moved on. The post-9/11 world of killing people in "warzones" (war was never declared) without any regard for the Geneva Convention is taken as a given.

throwaway5752 8y ago
Okay.. what do we do, declare war on Pakistan in order to prosecute a conflict in Waziristan? War with Afghanistan to go after violent Taliban factions in northern provinces? There is not a nation state entity to declare war against, and for example in Afghanistan you have a national population on the order of the city of Beijing, and hundreds of the police die there per year in this internal conflict. The national governments are probably complicit/cooperative for their own reasons. Also, the Geneva convention has obligations for both sides of a conflict, and - even though conduct shouldn't be dictated by the lowest common denominator - it's just not intended for this situation. I think it's possible to distinguish targeted (however flawed) drone campaigns from mass casualty bio/chem attacks like are done in Syria (with Russian support) or other cases.
- pjc50 8y ago
  I think it's worth stepping back and asking the question of why the US is involved in the conflict there in the first place? And to what extent the US is really threatened by people on the other side of the planet?
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    > why the US is involved in the conflict there in the first place? Active and believable threats directed at the US, including sending resources and fighters to actively engage the US. It'd be great if we could give just give Iraq a ring and ask them to go shove a boot up these folks other-sides, but since they're massively losing cities and land to these warlords, they're not really in a place to handle the situation themselves. Something about a terrorist group taking large swathes of your land, borderline enslaving your people into forced labor and selling the pretty ones as "wives" to be raped endlessly kind of makes it hard to function as a normal country. > to what extent the US is really threatened by people on the other side of the planet? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_linked_to_ISIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_li... + June 2016 + November 2016 + October 2017

dbatten 8y ago

Unfortunately, I think this is a thornier issue than most of these articles give it credit for. Suppose for a second that the US was at war with Canada and John Doe was an American citizen, but he was serving as a uniformed combatant in the Canadian army. Under such circumstances, I can't imagine anyone would have a problem with the United States military killing John Doe in battle without trial. Obviously, the circumstances around the kill list are murkier... The "war on terror" isn't a war in the traditional sense, terrorists or suspected terrorists are not uniformed combatants, the CIA is not necessarily the military, and it's not really certain that dropping a bomb on somebody's "cafe experience" is equivalent to killing them in a pitched battle in a declared war. Still, I have a hard time imagining what rights a US citizen is supposed to be entitled to when they are effectively a foreign terrorist working to attack the US. Are we supposed to have a trial for them without them present? (We all know how that would go.) Ask for their home country to extradite them? (Country will almost certainly either be unwilling or incapable.) Send the Navy Seals to kidnap them and force them to stand trial? (Dangerous and wildly impractical, not to mention boots on the ground increasing the risk of creating a larger conflict with a foreign nation.) Personally, I have two take-aways on the issue: 1) I wouldn't want to be the judge that has to sort this stuff out, and I hope they do it well. It's not easy. 2) I think the bigger problem is drone killings in other nations FULL STOP. Regardless of who the targets are, it's completely unacceptable for any country to think they can just fly into another nation's airspace and start dropping bombs on anybody they please without a declaration of war, some sort of cooperative MOU, or a join military exercise...

sitkack 8y ago
> Suppose for a second that the US was at war with Canada and John Doe was an American citizen You are in table-top-gaming territory. Constructing arbitrary hypotheticals as your base condition doesn't make your arguments stronger, it makes them apply to a non-existent universe.
jstanley 8y ago
> they are effectively a foreign terrorist Part of the problem is that if you haven't given them a fair trial, you haven't proved they're a terrorist rather than an ordinary member of the public.

christophilus 8y ago

I just started reading "Society and Sanity"[0]. It's an interesting read so far, and opens with a prediction that if society forgets what a human is, that society will tend towards this sort of behavior-- arbitrary treatment of fellow humans, with the only argument against such treatment being, "I don't like it, and I wish you'd be kinder to people." And the counter argument being, "I like it, and I don't want to be kinder to people." If we're to solve this problem, we have to get back to the essential foundational idea that human beings have intrinsic rights which exist and are not simply concessions of the state. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Society-Sanity-Understanding-Live-Together/dp/1586177303/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1532005703&sr=8-1&keywords=society+and+sanity https://www.amazon.com/Society-Sanity-Understanding-Live-Tog...

jtbayly 8y ago
Yes. All sorts of things like this that ignore human intrinsic value and rights. Abortion is a prime example.
- ionised 8y ago
  How?
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    I presume the point was that, as a fetus is genetically human, treating it as something to be killed at our convenience is an example of the problem ("arbitrary treatment of fellow humans", rather than recognizing that "human beings have intrinsic rights which exist and are not simply concessions of the state").
xd2024 8y ago
This says a lot about our society

AdmiralAsshat 8y ago

So, hypothetical law question here: if the US government has deemed you worthy of being killed, are you legally obligated to die? I asked this question once before in the context of whether you are "breaking the law" if you flee from a cop that is shooting at you, but it seems apt here as well.

matt4077 8y ago
It's a somewhat silly question (what punishment would you propose for noncompliance). The obvious legal answer is "no", because you are not obligated to do something unless there's a law to that effect, and there's no law creating such an obligation because it would be silly. As an approximation, it might make sense to look as some analogues: the fifth amendment right not to incriminate yourself in a criminal trial, for example, speaks to a recognition of every humans' (even criminals') right to protect themselves. If you can't be forced to provide information against your interests, you can certainly not be obligated to inflict the ultimate punishment onto yourself. A very similar train of thought finds expression in German law, where it is not a crime to break out of prison, a fact often justified by reference to a fundamental human urge to seek freedom (any property damage, or injury inflicted on others is, however, criminal).

sschueller 8y ago

Is the kill list available online? Can we get it via FOIA request?

pjc50 8y ago

The most likely resolution to this is that the US finds some way of stripping him of his citizenship, thereby making it legal to murder him.

ggm 8y ago
Which is what the US did to many members of the ACP after WWI deporting them en masse to Russia (not killing them, Stalin did that for the US government distrusting the foreign communists) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palmer_Raids [the article implies the deportees were 'aliens' but I think the legalism here is wafer thin. I think they held themselves to be Americans, internationalists maybe, but not aliens] I was very surprised when I read that the US state and federal authorities were calmly happy to deploy machine guns against strikers, and even more bemused when they chose to deport people and remove citizenship. I really didn't think states like "us" did that, but apparently I was wrong. Australia reneges on the AU-NZ treaty all the time, deporting Kiwi's for trivial offences. Green card holders can be stripped and dumped for offences which citizens would walk away from with a finger wag.

dorfsmay 8y ago

When I listen to Noam Chomsky I often think he exaggerates, and then this! And like the article points to, this is not specific to Trump or Bush, but also Clinton and Obama. I would love to know what U.S. citizens who have put thought into and truly believe that their second amendment protects them from their government abuse think of this.

turc1656 8y ago

IANAL but it seems to me the mental workflow of determining the legality of all this is definitely not what I think it should be. For the non-citizen, it seems clear to me the judge's determining that there is no standing to even raise the issue in a US court is sound. If I was theoretically plotting against some other (non-US) nation - say, Canada for argument's sake - I have no relationship, obligation, or anything really with Canada. And they have none with me. So the idea that Canada should be forced to explain itself to me or prove anything to me is absurd. They owe me nothing and I owe them nothing (unless perhaps I am within their borders, then a few obligations are there for both sides). For the US citizen, the court definitely has jurisdiction as this is a federal court and we're talking about the actions of the federal branch of the US government taking action against a citizen. Also, this is a civil case, so the question then becomes whether or not there is presiding law on this and whether the claims have merit. There is very little law for this specific type of case (drone strikes). The lawsuit didn't actually claim a rights violation (which seriously surprised me). But before all of that, the heart of this drone strike murder issue against a US citizen has it's roots in due process. The big question is whether or not due process still applies to actions against a citizen when not on US soil. That answer is most definitely not clear and to my knowledge has never been answered by a court. Clearly, the constitutional and the law in general apply within US borders. However, in most cases the law ends at the border. But there are things that citizens can do overseas and face charges for at home. So is the reverse true? Is there anything that the US government can do to us while we are not on US soil that violates the law? Does the obligation to protect (or at least not violate) my constitutional rights still exist once I cross the border? Until this question is answered, I don't think anything else in this case can be answered with certainty. This also excludes the entire examination of potential criminal (not civil) violations or violations of international law, war crimes, violations of conventions like Geneva, Hague, etc.