Drone industry admits they enable murder

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This video says about itself:

America’s use for domestic drones

What are the technological advantages and privacy concerns as drones become cheaper and more accessible?

The Stream talks to journalist and former U.S. Marine, Josh Rushing who has just finished a documentary on U.S. military technology including drones. We also talk with Ryan Calo, director of Privacy and Robotics at Stanford Law School.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Drones kill unlawfully, says leading mag

Thursday 09 August 2012

Drone warfare is “tantamount to extra-judicial killings” – and that’s the verdict of the industry’s trade mag.

Peace activists were surprised to find the surprisingly frank admission in the latest issue of Unmanned Vehicles magazine, “the world’s leading independent bi-monthly publication for the unmanned systems industry.”

Acting editor Darren Lake bemoaned a “depressing trend” of public hostility to drones both in warfare and as a tool of domestic surveillance.

“Many people would agree that the policy of targeted assassination carried out by the US in Pakistan and elsewhere has been taken too far and is tantamount to extra-judicial killings.

“UAVs do to some extent, enable this policy, but the same could be achieved with a manned system,” he wrote.

At Drone Convention, Zero Tolerance for Peace: here.

Gareth Porter, Truthout: “Detailed information from the families of those killed in drone strikes in Pakistan and from local sources on strikes that have targeted mourners and rescue workers provides credible new evidence that the majority of the deaths in the drone war in Pakistan have been civilian noncombatants – not ‘militants,’ as the Obama administration has claimed”: here.

General Petraeus and the Drone War. Richard Sale, Truthout in the USA: “With no hobbies, no fishing, no hunting, no golf, the five-foot-nine, 155-pound [Gen. David] Petraeus, who wears his brown hair neatly parted, is known as a colossal worker….Today, Petraeus heads a massive, ‘secret’ policy under President Barack Obama that uses drones, cell phone monitoring and night assaults by US troops to eliminate high-value targets in the war on terror”: here.

Cover-up of civilian drone deaths revealed by new evidence: here.

German Defence Minister Thomas de Maizière confirmed earlier this month that the country’s military is planning to purchase and employ armed drones: here.