49 ms·

If an agitator puts up a balloon and payload, one of which contains a potentially dangerous substance, and a nation in question shoots it down, thus releasing a

by prawn 4y ago

If an agitator puts up a balloon and payload, one of which contains a potentially dangerous substance, and a nation in question shoots it down, thus releasing and activating that substance, who is responsible? And who does the public deem responsible? (I don't think this is realistic, just musing about other schemes that could be going on.)

encoderer 4y ago
Without a doubt, the person who flies the dangerous thing over the other people is the aggressor. Is this debatable to you?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  In Seattle, when a car drives into a building, it's the building's fault. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how-often-do-cars-crash-into-buildings-in-seattle-way-more-than-you-think/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how...
- megous 4y ago
  So when MH17 was shot down, would Malaysia Airlines be responsible for harm done to people of Грабове, had it fell on this village directly? Any airliner is a flying object full of dangerous chemicals, flammable and toxic.
  - ncallaway 4y ago
    This seems like a bad faith twisting of the original question and response. The original question was about a balloon filled with a dangerous substance, not civilian air traffic. Civilian air traffic is regulated by the Chicago convention, and shooting it down would be undoubtedly be the responsibility of the nation shooting it down. The difference is largely one of consent. Nations have the right to control what happens in their air space. But if they consent to civilian air traffic, then shoot down an aircraft that nation is responsible. If they consent to a balloon filled with dangerous substances in their air space and then shoot it down, then the nation is responsible. If they *do not* consent to the balloon filled with dangerous substances and shoot it down, then the originating party is responsible.
    - prawn 4y ago
      The hypothetical was about a balloon filled with a "potentially" dangerous substance. e.g., something that had a plausible reason to be there and was likely to be fine if not shot down with a missile.
      - ncallaway 4y ago
        Right, and that pretext makes sense. But it still comes down to consent. If it’s not there at the consent of the host nation (either specific to that situation or via the Chicago convention), then the host nation has every right to take the object down, and the originating party bears most of the moral burden of the situation. Now, I’d still want the host nation to act as responsibly as possible (for example, the US not shooting down the original balloon over land due to risks to people on the ground). I still think the jump from the original moral scenario of “no human on board balloon with a potentially plausible argument for being there” to a “passenger aircraft full of people, clearly operating under the Chicago convention” is… quite the leap and really not fairly representative of the original question, and therefore quite unfair to hold to the people who answered the first scenario. It feels like asking “who’s responsible if bomb disposal techs blow up abandoned luggage”, and then turning around and asking people who respond “Oh?! So what if those bomb disposal techs blow up a bus filled with people??” It’s just not close to the same scenario, to the point of feeling almost like bad faith.
    - megous 4y ago
      Aside from the fact that the person releasing the baloon might not be a signatory and thus bound by the convention... "Article 5: The aircraft of states, other than scheduled international air services, have the right to make flights across state's territories and to make stops without obtaining prior permission." Seems like you don't need permission for a flyover using a baloon because it's not a scheduled international service...
      - ncallaway 4y ago
        Article 8 clearly distinguishes a balloon from a civilian passenger aircraft. “No aircraft capable of being flown without a pilot shall be flown without a pilot over the territory of a contracting State without special authorization by that State and in accordance with the terms of such authorization. Each contracting State undertakes to insure that the flight of such aircraft without a pilot in regions open to civil aircraft shall be so controlled as to obviate danger to civil aircraft.” Separately, Article 3 rules out a state from playing “I’m not touching you” games with a balloon: “No state aircraft of a contracting State shall fly over the territory of another State or land thereon without authorization by special agreement or otherwise, and in accordance w ~ t hthe terms thereof.”
- prawn 4y ago
  OK, plane flying overhead. You shoot it down. Who's going to be held responsible? The airline or the people taking it out of the sky? Where's the line drawn if the dangerous thing I mentioned before has a practical use? Maybe the balloon is filled with a mix that is toxic to something (crop, livestock, etc). Or there's a component of the payload that is dangerous when hit by a missile or making contact with the ground? I'm guessing China sees this all as low risk research and nothing more exciting than that, but just trying to imagine what else might be going on, or come next. (I'm not anywhere near either China or the US.)
  - jrockway 4y ago
    > OK, plane flying overhead. You shoot it down. Who's going to be held responsible? The airline or the people taking it out of the sky? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 There may be airlines with slogans like "come fly the friendly skies", but entering controlled airspace without a flight plan or 2 way comms with ATC is anything but friendly. You can try it yourself! Rent a C172 and do some sightseeing in Washington DC. When you get shot down, they will blame you.
    - taneq 4y ago
      He who owns the media is the good guy, after all.
- tzs 4y ago
  One difficulty might be what counts as flying. If it is a balloon and does not include any maneuvering capability the launching country might try to argue that they just released a balloon over their territory. If the upper atmosphere winds take it somewhere else they might say that an act of God and not their problem. That might seem absurd, but I believe a lot of countries have made a similar argument for pollutants and waste they dump into the air or water. It took decades for instance to get Canada to stop dumping (literal) shit in waters that end up in Puget Sound [1]. A kind of negative of this arises too, when someone takes something out of the atmosphere or water that passes through their territory and someone downstream had been using that thing. Generally countries don't really do well when it comes to shared resources like atmospheres and oceans and rivers as far as what happens when one does something involving that resource in their territory that affects it in someone else's territory. [1] https://www.king5.com/article/news/victoria-bc-will-finally-start-treating-its-sewage/281-6fd86c69-bbc8-4766-8b48-2b52ad6854aa https://www.king5.com/article/news/victoria-bc-will-finally-...
DiggyJohnson 4y ago
The agitator, indubitably. I don’t see how that’s even a question, respectfully. Otherwise you’re following the logic of the Stop hitting yourself! defense.
- prawn 4y ago
  Can you think of anything that the agitator could launch with plausible deniability, such that shooting it down with a missile and maybe creating further trouble, wouldn't divide the opinions of the host nation? e.g., if the dangerous substance in question was a gas mix for the balloon or cooling liquid for the payload, or "Whoops, how did those fruit fly capsules get in there and accidentally drift over California?!" I'd say the balloons are chosen for a reason. Send surveillance craft over the USA and a huge percentage of the population would see it as an intrusion. Let balloons float over and some of the population will be: just weather balloons, we're wasting missiles; I haven't seen the balloons so they're making this up so China looks bad; what if the wreckage lands on a school, etc. Surveillance and destabilisation, is my guess.
  - undersuit 4y ago
    The agitator was just transferring the volatile materials in the safest way possible. Safe non-flammable helium, low chance of collision compared to roadways or rail, material can't sink into the ocean triggering sanctions.
nickysielicki 4y ago
if an agitator launches a missile at another country and a nation in question gets hit by it, thus releasing and activating an explosion, who is responsible?
- prawn 4y ago
  I'm trying to think of potential grey areas in the middle where the agitator could say "It was minding its own business. It wasn't dangerous until you shot it down. That gas mix was part of the cooling system and would've been completely fine if you didn't launch a missile at it." And some portion of the host public could be convinced that this was a reasonable opinion and hold their government responsible. I don't think your example fits that.
  - travisby 4y ago
    I think a good example for your hypothetical would be the sinking of a nuclear plant propelled ship. If country B invades the territorial waters of country A with a nuclear destroyer and country A destroys it, the fallout (morally and chemically) would still be on the aggressor for creating the situation where it's reasonable to expect their harmful payload would be destroyed.
    - prawn 4y ago
      I'm imagining something far less obviously threatening (balloon rather than a destroyer) and far less explicitly damaging (maybe a liquid or gas that would mix with the missile impact, and rain down barely noticeable granular substance that, oops, contaminates farm land). I can appreciate this is quite far fetched given that the material would need to drop such a distance rather than completely disperse with wind, and not be super obvious about it (e.g., pellets).
97365937497 4y ago
Both would have acted with (at least) careless disregard for human life, so I would consider both to be responsible. It would however be much easier to know who shot it down than it would be to know who put it up, so I think the public would primarily blame whoever shot it down in practice. There would probably be no way to know if the government was telling the truth about the origin of the object in such as situation, absent an admission.
- prawn 4y ago
  Thanks for thinking it through a bit more in the spirit of the question. That's a bit more what I was getting at. There are potentially instances where it starts to become a grey area (responsibility with both parties), and the separate question is who would the public deem responsible.
  - analog31 4y ago
    I don't think it's a grey area at all. The first party is responsible for creating the situation, the second for how they deal with it. This happens all the time in cases where the police have to deal with someone who's threatening people.
    - prawn 4y ago
      That's the grey area I'm talking about though. If China sends a missile into the US, it's shot down, but there is collateral damage, Americans will overwhelmingly consider China responsible. If a Chinese airline flies a regular route and is abruptly shot down, and the plane crashes into a populated area, Americans would hopefully consider their own government responsible. The grey area I'm musing about is in the middle, and how some portion of the public might be sympathetic, how this might be destabilising, and what avenues the agitator might explore.
      - analog31 4y ago
        Indeed, an objective of psychological warfare (aka terrorism) is to turn a population against its own government.
lyu07282 4y ago
Like floating a warhead over the US mainland? It would just count as a first strike regardless I imagine. The bigger question to think about is the fear itself that led you to this question, the fear, the vulnerability and the anxiety you are feeling. Perhaps if americans weren't so frightened all the time there would be less wars?
- prawn 4y ago
  No, not floating a warhead. See my other comments replying in this thread. 'The bigger question to think about is the fear itself that led you to this question, the fear, the vulnerability and the anxiety you are feeling. Perhaps if americans weren't so frightened all the time there would be less wars?' I'm not American. I live almost about as far from the US as it's possible to live on this earth and don't feel any anxiety about this. Just a curious observer.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  >The bigger question to think about is the fear itself that led you to this question, the fear, the vulnerability and the anxiety you are feeling. Perhaps if americans weren't so frightened all the time there would be less wars? I'm not sure what anxiety it is that you're talking about. As an American, I'm not anxious or afraid "all the time." In fact, I'm generally relaxed and happy. Sure, some folks have anxiety issues. But that's not limited to Americans, is it? While more people in developed countries are prescribed anti-anxiety meds[0] than elsewhere, such folks are a small fraction (~5%) of the global population. And so I'll ask you, of what exactly, do you think that Americans are "so frightened all the time?" Listening to politicians blather on about "keeping Americans safe" and the like, which is pure theater that's designed to generate votes, is a poor idea if you want to understand how Americans actually think and feel. These recent shoot downs are an excellent example. No one complained when similar balloons flew over the US before. Why? Because our military deemed them not to be a threat. And no one cared. The Chinese surveillance balloon was deemed not to be a threat (as was alluded to in this week's public briefing of Congress) and even when it passed over "sensitive installations," countermeasures were put in place to mitigate any intelligence gathering. That one group made a big deal about it (even though when this happened previously, they were (in closed session) briefed on the matter, and the public was none the wiser. The difference now is that the public is aware of this stuff and rather than focusing on maintaining and strengthening national security, some folks are attempting to use this to win political points. Shooting down the Chinese balloon was probably a good idea in order to better understand Chinese technology in this space, and knowing what the Chinese wanted to look at gives us even more information. As such, jamming/restricting encrypted comms/camouflaging such sites (again as was alluded to by DoD representatives in an open committee hearing, with promises of more detail about that in closed session) and then taking the vehicle down in an area where civilians aren't at risk was smart. Shooting down those other objects was a direct response (and serves the same purpose) to the political posturing about the Chinese balloon. Dumb, dumb, dumb. [0] https://www.ihealthcareanalyst.com/global-anxiety-disorders-depression-treatment-market/ https://www.ihealthcareanalyst.com/global-anxiety-disorders-...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
prettyStandard 4y ago
You might be interested in this installment of LegalEagle. I won't elaborate as the topic is complicated. https://youtu.be/P43wVDiZs8k https://youtu.be/P43wVDiZs8k
fIREpOK 4y ago
booby traps are illegal, but not in time of war (well, maybe)

by prawn 4y ago

encoderer 4y ago

Without a doubt, the person who flies the dangerous thing over the other people is the aggressor. Is this debatable to you?

WalterBright 4y ago
In Seattle, when a car drives into a building, it's the building's fault. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how-often-do-cars-crash-into-buildings-in-seattle-way-more-than-you-think/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how...
megous 4y ago
So when MH17 was shot down, would Malaysia Airlines be responsible for harm done to people of Грабове, had it fell on this village directly? Any airliner is a flying object full of dangerous chemicals, flammable and toxic.
- ncallaway 4y ago
  This seems like a bad faith twisting of the original question and response. The original question was about a balloon filled with a dangerous substance, not civilian air traffic. Civilian air traffic is regulated by the Chicago convention, and shooting it down would be undoubtedly be the responsibility of the nation shooting it down. The difference is largely one of consent. Nations have the right to control what happens in their air space. But if they consent to civilian air traffic, then shoot down an aircraft that nation is responsible. If they consent to a balloon filled with dangerous substances in their air space and then shoot it down, then the nation is responsible. If they *do not* consent to the balloon filled with dangerous substances and shoot it down, then the originating party is responsible.
  - prawn 4y ago
    The hypothetical was about a balloon filled with a "potentially" dangerous substance. e.g., something that had a plausible reason to be there and was likely to be fine if not shot down with a missile.
    - ncallaway 4y ago
      Right, and that pretext makes sense. But it still comes down to consent. If it’s not there at the consent of the host nation (either specific to that situation or via the Chicago convention), then the host nation has every right to take the object down, and the originating party bears most of the moral burden of the situation. Now, I’d still want the host nation to act as responsibly as possible (for example, the US not shooting down the original balloon over land due to risks to people on the ground). I still think the jump from the original moral scenario of “no human on board balloon with a potentially plausible argument for being there” to a “passenger aircraft full of people, clearly operating under the Chicago convention” is… quite the leap and really not fairly representative of the original question, and therefore quite unfair to hold to the people who answered the first scenario. It feels like asking “who’s responsible if bomb disposal techs blow up abandoned luggage”, and then turning around and asking people who respond “Oh?! So what if those bomb disposal techs blow up a bus filled with people??” It’s just not close to the same scenario, to the point of feeling almost like bad faith.
  - megous 4y ago
    Aside from the fact that the person releasing the baloon might not be a signatory and thus bound by the convention... "Article 5: The aircraft of states, other than scheduled international air services, have the right to make flights across state's territories and to make stops without obtaining prior permission." Seems like you don't need permission for a flyover using a baloon because it's not a scheduled international service...
    - ncallaway 4y ago
      Article 8 clearly distinguishes a balloon from a civilian passenger aircraft. “No aircraft capable of being flown without a pilot shall be flown without a pilot over the territory of a contracting State without special authorization by that State and in accordance with the terms of such authorization. Each contracting State undertakes to insure that the flight of such aircraft without a pilot in regions open to civil aircraft shall be so controlled as to obviate danger to civil aircraft.” Separately, Article 3 rules out a state from playing “I’m not touching you” games with a balloon: “No state aircraft of a contracting State shall fly over the territory of another State or land thereon without authorization by special agreement or otherwise, and in accordance w ~ t hthe terms thereof.”
prawn 4y ago
OK, plane flying overhead. You shoot it down. Who's going to be held responsible? The airline or the people taking it out of the sky? Where's the line drawn if the dangerous thing I mentioned before has a practical use? Maybe the balloon is filled with a mix that is toxic to something (crop, livestock, etc). Or there's a component of the payload that is dangerous when hit by a missile or making contact with the ground? I'm guessing China sees this all as low risk research and nothing more exciting than that, but just trying to imagine what else might be going on, or come next. (I'm not anywhere near either China or the US.)
- jrockway 4y ago
  > OK, plane flying overhead. You shoot it down. Who's going to be held responsible? The airline or the people taking it out of the sky? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007 There may be airlines with slogans like "come fly the friendly skies", but entering controlled airspace without a flight plan or 2 way comms with ATC is anything but friendly. You can try it yourself! Rent a C172 and do some sightseeing in Washington DC. When you get shot down, they will blame you.
  - taneq 4y ago
    He who owns the media is the good guy, after all.
tzs 4y ago
One difficulty might be what counts as flying. If it is a balloon and does not include any maneuvering capability the launching country might try to argue that they just released a balloon over their territory. If the upper atmosphere winds take it somewhere else they might say that an act of God and not their problem. That might seem absurd, but I believe a lot of countries have made a similar argument for pollutants and waste they dump into the air or water. It took decades for instance to get Canada to stop dumping (literal) shit in waters that end up in Puget Sound [1]. A kind of negative of this arises too, when someone takes something out of the atmosphere or water that passes through their territory and someone downstream had been using that thing. Generally countries don't really do well when it comes to shared resources like atmospheres and oceans and rivers as far as what happens when one does something involving that resource in their territory that affects it in someone else's territory. [1] https://www.king5.com/article/news/victoria-bc-will-finally-start-treating-its-sewage/281-6fd86c69-bbc8-4766-8b48-2b52ad6854aa https://www.king5.com/article/news/victoria-bc-will-finally-...

DiggyJohnson 4y ago

The agitator, indubitably. I don’t see how that’s even a question, respectfully. Otherwise you’re following the logic of the Stop hitting yourself! defense.

prawn 4y ago
Can you think of anything that the agitator could launch with plausible deniability, such that shooting it down with a missile and maybe creating further trouble, wouldn't divide the opinions of the host nation? e.g., if the dangerous substance in question was a gas mix for the balloon or cooling liquid for the payload, or "Whoops, how did those fruit fly capsules get in there and accidentally drift over California?!" I'd say the balloons are chosen for a reason. Send surveillance craft over the USA and a huge percentage of the population would see it as an intrusion. Let balloons float over and some of the population will be: just weather balloons, we're wasting missiles; I haven't seen the balloons so they're making this up so China looks bad; what if the wreckage lands on a school, etc. Surveillance and destabilisation, is my guess.
- undersuit 4y ago
  The agitator was just transferring the volatile materials in the safest way possible. Safe non-flammable helium, low chance of collision compared to roadways or rail, material can't sink into the ocean triggering sanctions.

nickysielicki 4y ago

if an agitator launches a missile at another country and a nation in question gets hit by it, thus releasing and activating an explosion, who is responsible?

prawn 4y ago
I'm trying to think of potential grey areas in the middle where the agitator could say "It was minding its own business. It wasn't dangerous until you shot it down. That gas mix was part of the cooling system and would've been completely fine if you didn't launch a missile at it." And some portion of the host public could be convinced that this was a reasonable opinion and hold their government responsible. I don't think your example fits that.
- travisby 4y ago
  I think a good example for your hypothetical would be the sinking of a nuclear plant propelled ship. If country B invades the territorial waters of country A with a nuclear destroyer and country A destroys it, the fallout (morally and chemically) would still be on the aggressor for creating the situation where it's reasonable to expect their harmful payload would be destroyed.
  - prawn 4y ago
    I'm imagining something far less obviously threatening (balloon rather than a destroyer) and far less explicitly damaging (maybe a liquid or gas that would mix with the missile impact, and rain down barely noticeable granular substance that, oops, contaminates farm land). I can appreciate this is quite far fetched given that the material would need to drop such a distance rather than completely disperse with wind, and not be super obvious about it (e.g., pellets).

97365937497 4y ago

Both would have acted with (at least) careless disregard for human life, so I would consider both to be responsible. It would however be much easier to know who shot it down than it would be to know who put it up, so I think the public would primarily blame whoever shot it down in practice. There would probably be no way to know if the government was telling the truth about the origin of the object in such as situation, absent an admission.

prawn 4y ago
Thanks for thinking it through a bit more in the spirit of the question. That's a bit more what I was getting at. There are potentially instances where it starts to become a grey area (responsibility with both parties), and the separate question is who would the public deem responsible.
- analog31 4y ago
  I don't think it's a grey area at all. The first party is responsible for creating the situation, the second for how they deal with it. This happens all the time in cases where the police have to deal with someone who's threatening people.
  - prawn 4y ago
    That's the grey area I'm talking about though. If China sends a missile into the US, it's shot down, but there is collateral damage, Americans will overwhelmingly consider China responsible. If a Chinese airline flies a regular route and is abruptly shot down, and the plane crashes into a populated area, Americans would hopefully consider their own government responsible. The grey area I'm musing about is in the middle, and how some portion of the public might be sympathetic, how this might be destabilising, and what avenues the agitator might explore.
    - analog31 4y ago
      Indeed, an objective of psychological warfare (aka terrorism) is to turn a population against its own government.

lyu07282 4y ago

Like floating a warhead over the US mainland? It would just count as a first strike regardless I imagine. The bigger question to think about is the fear itself that led you to this question, the fear, the vulnerability and the anxiety you are feeling. Perhaps if americans weren't so frightened all the time there would be less wars?

prawn 4y ago
No, not floating a warhead. See my other comments replying in this thread. 'The bigger question to think about is the fear itself that led you to this question, the fear, the vulnerability and the anxiety you are feeling. Perhaps if americans weren't so frightened all the time there would be less wars?' I'm not American. I live almost about as far from the US as it's possible to live on this earth and don't feel any anxiety about this. Just a curious observer.
nobody9999 4y ago
>The bigger question to think about is the fear itself that led you to this question, the fear, the vulnerability and the anxiety you are feeling. Perhaps if americans weren't so frightened all the time there would be less wars? I'm not sure what anxiety it is that you're talking about. As an American, I'm not anxious or afraid "all the time." In fact, I'm generally relaxed and happy. Sure, some folks have anxiety issues. But that's not limited to Americans, is it? While more people in developed countries are prescribed anti-anxiety meds[0] than elsewhere, such folks are a small fraction (~5%) of the global population. And so I'll ask you, of what exactly, do you think that Americans are "so frightened all the time?" Listening to politicians blather on about "keeping Americans safe" and the like, which is pure theater that's designed to generate votes, is a poor idea if you want to understand how Americans actually think and feel. These recent shoot downs are an excellent example. No one complained when similar balloons flew over the US before. Why? Because our military deemed them not to be a threat. And no one cared. The Chinese surveillance balloon was deemed not to be a threat (as was alluded to in this week's public briefing of Congress) and even when it passed over "sensitive installations," countermeasures were put in place to mitigate any intelligence gathering. That one group made a big deal about it (even though when this happened previously, they were (in closed session) briefed on the matter, and the public was none the wiser. The difference now is that the public is aware of this stuff and rather than focusing on maintaining and strengthening national security, some folks are attempting to use this to win political points. Shooting down the Chinese balloon was probably a good idea in order to better understand Chinese technology in this space, and knowing what the Chinese wanted to look at gives us even more information. As such, jamming/restricting encrypted comms/camouflaging such sites (again as was alluded to by DoD representatives in an open committee hearing, with promises of more detail about that in closed session) and then taking the vehicle down in an area where civilians aren't at risk was smart. Shooting down those other objects was a direct response (and serves the same purpose) to the political posturing about the Chinese balloon. Dumb, dumb, dumb. [0] https://www.ihealthcareanalyst.com/global-anxiety-disorders-depression-treatment-market/ https://www.ihealthcareanalyst.com/global-anxiety-disorders-...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

prettyStandard 4y ago

You might be interested in this installment of LegalEagle. I won't elaborate as the topic is complicated. https://youtu.be/P43wVDiZs8k https://youtu.be/P43wVDiZs8k

fIREpOK 4y ago

booby traps are illegal, but not in time of war (well, maybe)