Bill That Was Supposed To Limit Police Drone Activity Changed By Lobbyist To Enable Weaponized Drones

from the this-won't-go-wrong-at-all... dept

Fri, Aug 28th 2015 8:18am — Mike Masnick

North Dakota state representative Rick Becker had a good idea with his House Bill 1328, which would forbid the use of drones by law enforcement in the state without a warrant. A few other states have been looking at similar proposals, after there have been growing concerns about police using drones for surveillance activities. Virginia, for example, recently passed a law that requires a warrant for police drone use. So, good idea, Rep. Becker.

Except... in stepped Bruce Burkett, a lobbyist from the North Dakota Peace Officer's Association, who "was allowed by the state house committee to amend HB 1328" to now make it about legalizing weaponized drones for police. Yes, a "peace officer" representative just made it possible to weaponize drones. The trick? He amended the bill to make it only about "lethal weapons," which now opens the door to what police like to refer to as "less than lethal" weapons like "rubber bullets, pepper spray, tear gas, sound cannons, and Tasers" -- some of which have a history of leading to deaths, despite their "less than lethal" claims.

Even “less than lethal” weapons can kill though. At least 39 people have been killed by police Tasers in 2015 so far, according to The Guardian. Bean bags, rubber bullets, and flying tear gas canisters have also maimed, if not killed, in the U.S. and abroad.

Meanwhile, local police are still freaking out about the need to require a warrant. Check out this bit of police state nonsense:

Grand Forks County Sheriff Bob Rost said his department’s drones are only equipped with cameras and he doesn’t think he should need a warrant to go snooping.

“It was a bad bill to start with,” Rost told The Daily Beast. “We just thought the whole thing was ridiculous.”

Rost said he needs to use drones for surveillance in order to obtain a warrant in the first place.

Yes, we need to spy on your first, to then see if we should get a warrant to spy on you some more. That's not how this works.

And, now, while there will be warrant requirements for some uses -- though with broad exceptions including within 25 miles of the US/Canada border and for "exigent circumstances" -- the bill will (thanks to a lobbyist) allow the police to also experiment with weaponizing drones. If you thought the militarization of police wasn't screwed up enough, now you might need to worry about stun guns and rubber bullets hailing down from the sky...

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Filed Under: bruce burkett, drones, north dakota, rick becker, warrants, weaponized drones

57 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 7:46am

Uh, because there's no history of police hitting the wrong people, right? Because drones are very, very precise and don't miss, ever, right? Because they would never apply military tactics to deal with citizens and fire at those trying to provide help to the target right?

Conspiracy? They've been real too many times to rule something as impossible or improbable.
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That One Guy (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 7:46am

If the local police don't like it that sounds like a pretty solid endorsement for it to me.

The 'lethal weapons' clause, 5.1, could be fixed easily enough simply by striking out 'lethal', such that it prohibits any drone mounted weapons, rather that just lethal ones. If someone wants to play around with weaponized drones they can join the army, otherwise they can do without.

The rest of it looks fairly solid, though the 'Exigent circumstances' clause, 4.1, seems rather open to abuse, given how easy it would be to argue that every call presents 'imminent danger to life or bodily harm'. A nice modification to that would be a requirement post-event to submit a justification for the need of the drone's deployment, with any gathered or resulting evidence barred from use if the justification was found to be too weak. Not perfect, but it would at least do something regarding the large loophole.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:29am

Re:
But we sure did laugh at all of the conspiracies along the way didn't we?

The problem with government is that somewhere along the line someone came up with the idea that government can or should be trusted.

The founding fathers made it clear that government can never be trusted, not trusting the government helps keep it honest.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:32am

At least now they can't whine about their jobs being so god damn dangerous all the time while they sit behind a screen in a protected area and fly their drones around.
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Roger Strong (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:34am

"Citizen, may I see your ID."

Fifteen years ago this was a tag line representing a dystopian near-future we seemed to be heading into. Turns out we were naïve and optimistic back then.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:35am

even better give the thugs with badges a more efficient means to murder people without getting hurt by people that stand up for their rights and fight back
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:36am

Re: Re:
I would have been happy to have found out I was insane instead of all my conspiracy theories turn out to be reality
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:40am

a) why was he allowed to 'amend th bill'?

b) why can nothing now be done? he is a lobbyist, not someone who can actually introduce a bill, surely?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:41am

A "Peace Officer" lobbying for rhe use of an armed weapon. How Orwellian
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:45am

the great thing about drones is they take the citizen with a camera out of the equation
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AJ, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:47am

Great.. now were going to put weapons on machines and fly them around our neighborhoods. What could possibly go wrong?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:51am

Re: Re: Re:
Agree, funny that my 'Special Pic' kinda looks like a swastika? Something musta gotten past quality control maybe.
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JoeCool (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:52am

Re:
What do you mean, NOT DANGEROUS? They could get hemorrhoids and varicose veins from all the sitting they would be required to do! They need legislation mandating a 2 hour work day to prevent severe and irreversible damage!

/s
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:52am

Re:
Let me guess, you don't know how government works.

Most do not even know how it is supposed to work, this includes those actually IN government too.

Those that do serve and know, pretty much don't care until they can use the rules unto their own ends.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:05am

Re:
Sad truth is that much of our legislation is written not by legislators (elected to and paid to perform that function) by instead written by lobbyists. I have long fantasized about a requirement that all legislation have attribution within it regarding who wrote what and who authored what amendment.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:09am

How does a drone announce itself as a police officer?
If my life is threatened, I'm allowed to use deadly force, right?

However, when a police officer announces his/her official status & displays a badge, then I must stand down.

How does a drone display a badge?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:15am

Re: How does a drone announce itself as a police officer?
Emptying its magazine into a black teenager?
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Roger Strong (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:18am

Re: Re:
Don't worry; you're not necessarily handing this power to your government.

The armed drones lording over you will eventually use the technology developed to allow people in California to control drones in Iraq and Pakistan. Which means that not only can their manufacturing be off-shored to save money, but so can their operation.

This has the added advantage of making it harder to sue when someone feels that they've been unjustly tazed or tear gassed by an overseas security contractor. And those constantly predicting a "cyber-Pearl Harbor" will have a new twist to write about.

Hope This Helps!
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sigalrm (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:22am

Re:
The 'lethal weapons' clause, 5.1, could be fixed easily enough simply by striking out 'lethal', such that it prohibits any drone mounted weapons, rather that just lethal ones. If someone wants to play around with weaponized drones they can join the army, otherwise they can do without.

In a world where Congress has redefined pizza to be a vegetable (in, what, 2011?), I have to imagine it would be fairly easy to redefine certain "non-lethal weapons" - say, pepper spray as an "aerosol-based anti-psychotic medication with pacifying qualities" or similar. Of course, many medications have negative side effects, but as long as the label is properly formatted, FDA should be fine with it.

I can hear the smooth, deep-voiced voice over in the commercial now:

"Imagine a world where drones aren't weaponized - they've been re-purposed and converted into unmanned aerial medical dispensaries..."

I mean, who could argue against that?
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sigalrm (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:24am

Re: Re: Re:
Heh.

Bets on how long it takes state governments to outsource drone operations to India?
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sigalrm (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:30am

Re: Re:
Not to mention the possibility of the emotional trauma of their drone capturing and displaying images of elderly, overweight nude sunbathers in the "privacy" of their back yards.
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ECA (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:35am

Beyond the NEED for police
Police should have the concept that I CAN DO to myself, what I wish, on my OWN LAND...An idiot pays for his OWN mistakes, he needs little help from ANOTHER IDIOT..

I really dont Mind cameras in public locations. WHY the hell do they need a drone? Cheaper then a Chopper?
WHAT he wants to watch the BAR at closing time from a remote location?? The Donut shop?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:35am

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Remember that the police are armed, and the behave as though that allows them to tell the politicians what the rules governing them are, so they will ensure that they retain control over the drones.
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That One Other Not So Random Guy, 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:37am

"now you might need to worry about stun guns and rubber bullets hailing down from the sky..."
Bullets travel up too... juss sayin.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 9:57am

Tear gas, I'd believe. Tasers... maybe.

Rubber bullets? Well, you remember Newton's laws, don't you? How well does a Quad Copter react to such things? Just how accurate do you think a small drone would be when firing kinetic rounds, rather than simply dropping something?

And how big would the drone have to be before firing shots of some sort would be easily correctable? (And the answer is: large, but not huge. And not "quad". And probably not excessively accurate would be my guess.)

Admittedly, ED-209 was something of overkill for drone size, but still...
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 10:02am

The old bait and switch. Present a bill the public wants to get public support and, once it gains public support, change it last minute to a bill that would never get public support had it been originally presented.
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btr1701 (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 10:41am

Drones
I don't agree with arming these things, but why should one with just a camera require a warrant?

The cops don't need a warrant to fly over your property in a plane or a helicopter, and the cameras they can attach to those aircraft are every bit as hi-tech and intrusive as what you can put on drone. Sometimes more so, because those platforms are larger and can carry much more robust equipment than a little drone can.

It seems like this is another one of those tech panics over the fact that it's a drone, not what it's capable of actually doing.

I've never understood this in the military context, either. People clutch their pearls and get the vapors over drone strikes, except they don't necessarily question the legitimacy of the strikes themselves, but rather that they are done with drones. The implication being they wouldn't have much of a problem with it if the military used an F-16 or an F-22 jet fighter piloted by a person to deliver the same bomb to the same target to kill the same people. It's just doing it with a drone that gets their shorts in a twist. I don't get it. Who cares *how* the bomb reaches its target? If the target is legitimate, then whether it's flown there by a drone or a plane piloted by a person is irrelevant.

Same here. If the surveillance is legal with a helicopter, why should that legal analysis change merely because the pilot is at the other end of a signal instead of sitting in the cockpit?
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 10:49am

Upon reading this article, I was reminded of ....
this little gem. http://www.villainsource.com/blog/463/weaponry/heavy-arms/accukak-systems-non-lethal-anti-personnel- unit

As for how large a drone needs to be in order to mount and control a firearm, not very large at all. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=york5EYv2Fo

Looks to me like the drone is handling the recoil quite well. I estimate the quadcopter to be about 2 feet long by about 1.5 feet wide (assuming 7" slide length on pistol which is the slide length of an M1911. I don't know what pistol is mounted on the drone, but the M1911 looks like a reasonable match).
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Gwiz (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 11:11am

Re: Drones
The cops don't need a warrant to fly over your property in a plane or a helicopter, and the cameras they can attach to those aircraft are every bit as hi-tech and intrusive as what you can put on drone.

Has this ever been tested in court?

In Kyllo v. United States, 533 U.S. 27 (2001) the majority opinion argued that a person has an expectation of privacy in his or her home and therefore, the government cannot conduct unreasonable searches, even with technology that does not enter the home.

It seems that using hi-tech cameras from airplanes is something that is "not commonly available to the public", which was a deciding factor in Kyllo.
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Roger Strong (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 11:27am

Re: Drones
The implication being they wouldn't have much of a problem with it if the military used an F-16 or an F-22 jet fighter piloted by a person to deliver the same bomb to the same target to kill the same people. It's just doing it with a drone that gets their shorts in a twist.

I disagree. There's an argument about gun control that covers it:
"Handguns are available for self protection in Seattle, but not in nearby Vancouver, Canada; handgun killings are five times more common and the handgun suicide rate is ten times greater in Seattle. Guns make impulsive killing easy."
- Carl Sagan, Demon Haunted World

Drones are cheap compared to F-16s and F-22s. They're FAR cheaper to operate. The drone pilot if FAR cheaper to train. You don't risk a pilot. You don't risk the political fall-out of a pilot being captured.

Consider the US's first Predator drone murder, back in 2002. Three men in Afghanistan. Murdered because one of them was tall, so obviously he must be Osama Bin Laden.

Drones make impulsive killing easy.
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 12:02pm

Re: Re: Drones
...The cops don't need a warrant to fly over your property in a plane or a helicopter, and the cameras they can attach to those aircraft are every bit as hi-tech and intrusive as what you can put on drone...

...the majority opinion argued that a person has an expectation of privacy in his or her home...

The key phrase there is in his or her home. Any camera or technology, such as infra-red and thermal cameras, that can see inside of a home does require a warrant. Visible light (only) cameras can only see the home and what's outside, not anything inside; thus no warrant required. Police likely won't go after nude sunbathing in the back yard even with an indecent exposure law, but grow marijuana plants in the back yard and it's fair game for the police to start an investigation.

Police helicopters have been around for decades and the concept is no different than being on foot or in a car: if an officer sees something amiss it's fair game to start an investigation.
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Gwiz (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 12:29pm

Re: Re: Re: Drones
The key phrase there is in his or her home.

Yeah, I was thinking in terms of an airplane, helicopter or drone viewing into a house through a window from an angle that normally wouldn't be available to a normal person standing on the sidewalk or street.

I know that there's not much expectation of privacy in your own backyard, although United States v. Vargas has pushed back this a little bit by declaring the warrantless video surveillance of a man's front door with camera mounted outside his property to be unconstitutional.
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samshovel (profile), 28 Aug 2015 @ 2:28pm

Re: Re: Re:
Why do you mention just the elderly and overweight?
Is it because otherwise "hip" folks like you would
welcome showing off to law enforcement
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 2:41pm

Re:
"Rubber bullets? Well, you remember Newton's laws, don't you? How well does a Quad Copter react to such things? Just how accurate do you think a small drone would be when firing kinetic rounds, rather than simply dropping something?

And how big would the drone have to be before firing shots of some sort would be easily correctable? (And the answer is: large, but not huge. And not "quad". And probably not excessively accurate would be my guess.)"

A lightweight quad-copter 'drone' using a "recoilless rifle"-type weapon would be able to shoot even very heavy bullets while remaining motionless. That's because a recoilesss rifle has its gun barrel open at both ends, so the kinetic energy resulting from the fired shot (in both directions) is equalized, and therefore there is no recoil.

As far as the challenge of being able to hold a rifle accurately on target while airborne, how about one of these gyroscope-stabilized, remote-controlled rifle platforms? Mounted on drone vehicles and aircraft, police could conduct a SWAT raid while safely sitting behind a desktop computer screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p411Til7VC4

But the big question is whether armed robots would be more likely or less likely to fire in "self defense" - since "plausible deniability" or "computer error" could easily be claimed whenever innocent people are killed.
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Mike, 28 Aug 2015 @ 3:31pm

Drone-based deployment of directed-energy weapons
Mike, It's worse than that: This opens up the door for "less than lethal" Directed Energy Weapons (DEW). Imagine noiseless, invisible lasers, particle-beams, etc. deployed from drones against American citizens. Such weapons, even when tuned to be "less than lethal," are perfectly capable of inflicting *covert* torture and maiming.

Some of this is already covertly going on (though not necessary from drones)

I wish I were joking about this.

Mike
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Anonymous Coward, 28 Aug 2015 @ 5:01pm

Pride Integrity and Guts? Sometimes a pig is just a pig.
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Buzz bomb from virgina, 28 Aug 2015 @ 5:42pm

Faceless types hate you
Boom,

Jello would be so disappointed..

BUG BOMB!
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Rekrul, 28 Aug 2015 @ 8:06pm

Re: Re: Re: Re:
Agree, funny that my 'Special Pic' kinda looks like a swastika? Something musta gotten past quality control maybe.

How did you know what your randomly picked icon would be? I never get the same one that shows up in the preview and once the message is posted, it's too late to edit it.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2015 @ 12:14am

Re: Re: Re: Drones
A plane or a helicopter have to fly a minimum height above your property, which which limits their ability to see through windows, a drone on the other hand can hover right next to the window. This make the drone capable of much more intrusive surveillance.
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btr1701 (profile), 29 Aug 2015 @ 10:22am

Re: Re: Drones
> You don't risk a pilot. You don't risk the political fall-out of a pilot
> being captured.

I can't believe you're advocating that only systems that put your own countrymen in *more* danger be utilized. That it's somehow unfair for the enemy not to have the opportunity to capture our own personnel.

How about armor on tanks and Humvees? That protects the soldiers, too. Is that an unfair advantage? Should we have to conduct our operations only using methods that put our service personnel in the most vulnerable possible?
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Roger Strong (profile), 29 Aug 2015 @ 1:26pm

Re: Re: Re: Drones
> I can't believe you're advocating that
> only systems that put your own countrymen
> in *more* danger be utilized.

I can't believe you're advocating only practices that kill a lot of innocent bystanders be utilized.

See? Two can play that game.

Armor on tanks and Humvees does not kill innocent bystanders.

One more time, since you obviously missed it: It's not about fairness. It's about not making impulsive killing easy.
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Anonymous Coward, 29 Aug 2015 @ 7:17pm

Huh?
"That's not how this works."

Umm, you haven't been paying much attention lately, have you?
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Vladilyich, 30 Aug 2015 @ 2:44pm

Less than lethal?
This is precisely why I own (and wear at times) military spec body armor, Kevlar helmet and mask as well as a Russian made gas mask that's good against CS gas. Police have been allowed by nutcases like this to get totally out of control.

So far my self-defense measures are perfectly legal, BUT, the state of California has a bill pending in their legislature to make it illegal for "civilians" to own protective gear.
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nasch (profile), 30 Aug 2015 @ 7:07pm

Re: Re: Re: Drones
I can't believe you're advocating that only systems that put your own countrymen in *more* danger be utilized.

Well that makes sense, because he didn't. ;-)
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nasch (profile), 30 Aug 2015 @ 7:09pm

Re: Less than lethal?
This is precisely why I own (and wear at times) military spec body armor, Kevlar helmet and mask as well as a Russian made gas mask that's good against CS gas.

You wear a Kevlar helmet and gas mask every time you leave the house?
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GEMont, 30 Aug 2015 @ 7:26pm

Re: Less than lethal?
Err.... isn't that sort of protective, anti-police-bullet gear, illegal for American citizens to wear outside.

Seems to me there was an article right here on techdirt about that.

Yeah, I'm pretty certain the Cops got, or wanted at least, legislation making body armor on civilians, 100% verboten in der Landt oov der Vree.

Heil Clapper!

---
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tqk (profile), 30 Aug 2015 @ 8:33pm

Re: Re: Less than lethal?

This is precisely why I own (and wear at times) ...

You wear a Kevlar helmet and gas mask every time you leave the house?

Is everyone nowadays using tech that fails to produce readable text (and, if so, why), or does it just look like that to me?
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btr1701 (profile), 31 Aug 2015 @ 12:28am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
> I can't believe you're advocating only practices that kill a lot of
> innocent bystanders be utilized.

No more bystanders are killed using drones than using fighter jets. Try again.

Once again, you're complaining about the targets and the accuracy of the bombs hitting them, not the delivery vehicle.
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me@me.net, 31 Aug 2015 @ 4:53am

Remember this guys name
Because when the first inevitable fatality occurs, that blood is on his head.
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tqk (profile), 31 Aug 2015 @ 6:27am

Re: Remember this guys name
Because when the first inevitable fatality occurs, that blood is on his head.

No, he's just one spoke in the wheel. He's just doing his job for his employer, selling drones. Very sneakily, kind of admirably in a twisted sort of way.

But on that day, he won't be pushing the button, he won't be the guy giving the okay, he won't be the guy who procures and deploys them, and he's only part of the "us" that lets them all get away with this. It'll be a team effort.
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nasch (profile), 31 Aug 2015 @ 6:56am

Re: Re: Re: Less than lethal?
Oops my brain put an "all" in there for some reason.
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hegemon13, 31 Aug 2015 @ 8:23am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
Flying a fighter jet into a civilian zone of a country we're not at war with and dropping a bomb would be an act of war, and likely even a war crime. Yet, somehow, it's been deemed okay to do the same thing with a drone. Your analogy is not apples-to-apples. Not even close.
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btr1701 (profile), 31 Aug 2015 @ 9:00am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
> Flying a fighter jet into a civilian zone of a
> country we're not at war with and dropping a
> bomb would be an act of war, and likely even a
> war crime

If it's an act of war with a fighter jet, then it's an act of war with a drone.

Once again, it's the bombing that determines the act of war, not the delivery vehicle.
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nasch (profile), 31 Aug 2015 @ 9:56am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
If it's an act of war with a fighter jet, then it's an act of war with a drone.

Is that actually what international law says, or just what makes sense?
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btr1701 (profile), 1 Sep 2015 @ 12:39pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
> Is that actually what international law says, or just what makes sense?

There's no such thing as "international law". There's no International Congress or Parliament out there passing statutes which every country must obey.

There's only treaties and agreements between nations, and those differ from nation to nation. So what constitutes an act of war between Nation A and Nation B isn't necessarily and act of war between Nation A and Nation C.
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nasch (profile), 1 Sep 2015 @ 12:50pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
There's no such thing as "international law"... There's only treaties and agreements between nations,

Commonly referred to as "international law".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law

But if you feel there is no such thing and can back that up with references, by all means suggest the WP article for deletion. ;-)

When discussing acts of war, usually agreements between the major powers (and others) such as the Geneva conventions are relevant.
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btr1701 (profile), 5 Sep 2015 @ 9:59pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Drones
> When discussing acts of war, usually agreements between the
> major powers (and others) such as the Geneva conventions
> are relevant.

It would only be relevant if one of the nations involved is one of those "major nations" of which you speak, or is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions. Otherwise the nation is not bound by either one.
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