Single-Click Double-Tap Murder

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/22/single-click-double-tap-murder/

by iProject • 14 years ago

96 81 14 years ago

mtgx• 14 years ago

"Worse yet, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time until alpha insurgencies like Hezbollah and the Zetas have their own fleets of armed or kamikaze drones."

And who will make and sell them those drones? Probably the same companies that are selling them to the US Army today. The way things are going right now, I envision warfare in the future being much like in the Terminator Salvation movie. The only difference is that the "machines" might not be self-aware (although they could be automatic), but they will be controlled by other humans. But in places where the war will actually happen, all you'll see is a battle between machines and men being slaughtered by them.

tomjen35• 14 years ago

Steal a tacocopter and stick a granade under it -- that should enable you to take out the target (and leave a pretty decent mystery for the local authorities to solve. How do you prove who flew the plane? Who fixed the handgranade?).

Dove13• 14 years ago

I don't think it's that simple. For starters, there's probably a very short list of people who own tacocopters, let alone people who own grenades.

If it becomes a problem, I can think of countermeasures -- register the things, ban them in public spaces/require flight plans, detect and triangulate the control signal. Heck, you could just look around; with a low tech system like that, whoever's flying the thing needs line of sight to it in order to identify the target. It's noisy and slow and I'd expect not nearly as effective as stealing a car and doing a drive-by shooting.

But more than that, I'd be very surprised if that sort of thing becomes a problem. Normal people aren't murderers. Think about all the poisons, explosives, and highly kinetic pieces of equipment normal people have access to right now.

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

> And who will make and sell them those drones?

TFA mentions this in paragraph 4.

Also, drones aren't nuclear science. Any number can play. the Iranians may or may not be making useful drones now ( http://theaviationist.com/2012/01/30/iran-a1/ ), to give some idea.

I'd guess that the enabling parts that didn't exist 20 years ago are today found in mass-market cellphones, so controlling the technology as if it was big uranium-enriching plants is not going to happen.

c1sc0• 14 years ago

From Wikipedia (Al Qassam rockets): "The cost of the materials used for manufacturing each Qassam is up to $800 or €500"

I'm sure the cost of building a drone with decent carrying capacity will come within that range pretty soon. Hell, with the average Qassam's precision, does it even matter if it costs 4x if your hit rate increases?

philwelch5• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure Hamas doesn't really care about precision.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> psychotic mass murderers.

"Psychosis" is a real word with real meaning. It's frustrating when people use it as a slang word because that use stigmatises people with mental health problems.

It's possible that someone in a spree shooting has never had a psychotic episode and was not psychotic when they were shooting.

(https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001553.htm)

Psychotic episodes are not just caused by mental illness. They can be a symptom of other illnesses - Brain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease; Brain tumors or cysts; HIV and other infections that affect the brain; Some types of epilepsy; or Stroke.

(It's a shame that 'psychotic' is similar to 'psychopathic'. And that most people have almost no understanding of either condition.)

> The same applies to drone warfare. It’s suddenly so much easier to pull the trigger, and you’re not putting any of your own people at risk. And so more people die.

The military kills people. We stopped caring whether those people were civilians during WWII. Our military kills people with a variety of weapons. Shock and awe didn't feel particularly targeted. The cluster bombs that kill and maim hundreds of people each year don't feel particularly targeted. Cluster bombs are currently illegal, but the US and Britain have been trying to get the ban over-turned.

I don't understand why drones, as a weapon of war, are getting so much attention at the moment compared to other weapons of war. Dead civilians are dead whether they're killed by drones or landmines or cluster bomblets or whatever.

mc325• 14 years ago

I think if one is going to have a war or be at war, it's reasonable to use a method which tries to minimize 'friendly' casualties first and e'enemy' collateral damage second. Ie. does it reduce 'friendly' casualties? Does it reduce collateral deaths on the other side? I think the answer is yes to both.

I think drones reduce both and as such are a good thing, if one is going to be at war. Recall how in VN the VC suffered 2million casualties? Lots of that was due to collateral damage. Or in Afghanistan how the Russians decimated the enemy? That's traditional warfare.

The issue with remoteness and 'coldness' is an attempt to make this approach less palatable (appeal to some kind of war ethics?) on the other hand, if we were sending personnel on foot (a la vietnam) and people (soldiers) were dying by the dozen daily, people would feel aggrieved too (naturally).

Therefore I think what people should protest is 'war' not just a 'kind of war' because, to be honest, this new kind of war, if there needs to be one (and that's debatable of course), has its advantages over traditional (and that's becoming less traditional) warfare. It's less bloody and incurs less collateral damage is more targeted and effective.

So I think psychologically perhaps UAVs seem asymmetrical and unfair to a technological backward foe but realistically, they are at a huge disadvantage in traditional warfare anyway.

As weird as it sounds, I think UAVs are more effective and antiseptic than traditional warfare and thus 'better' as compared to boots on the ground.

pyre2• 14 years ago

I think that the general fear is that war will turn into a 'video game' played by a bunch of people in a secure warehouse in middle America. This will remove the human aspect of what is going on at the other end of the controls, and we'll be less likely to get 'soldiers' doing things like questioning orders.

mayanksinghal• 14 years ago

>it's reasonable to use a method which tries to minimize 'friendly' casualties first and e'enemy' collateral damage second

That is a very broad statement. Would it apply to enemies using Chemical, Biological or Nuclear weapons?

> people (soldiers) were dying by the dozen daily

I don't think that you intend to, but it seems like you are counting only friendly casualties as people casualties.

> asymmetrical and unfair to a technological backward foe

Which would probably be all foes but one, if popular media is to be trusted with statistics. There is no country that spends asuch as US and that has been the case for a long long time I believe. So all foes are backward and hence a war, if the technology is the criteria of fairness, is going to be extremely unfair to them.

deadbea72• 14 years ago

They don't reduce "enemy collateral damage", though. In fact, the collateral fatalities from drone attacks are one of the highest at 98%, according to some estimates [1]. Compare this to estimated civillian casualty rate of 60% in WWII [2] and around 50% in Vietnam [3] (distorted figures because anyone in a "free-fire" zone is considered the enemy).

The intelligence for drone strikes are based on patterns, such as a party of men carrying guns or a group of unknown people plotting something. And so these strikes routinely -- and sometimes deliberately -- target wedding parties [4], funerals, and rescue workers [5], and children [6].

Add to this the psychological trauma of constantly living under the threat of drones [7], it is no wonder citizens of countries where these programs are carried out hold somewhat of a grudge against the US [8]. You can call it signature strike, or whatever you want, the fact is that bombs do not know the difference between combatants and women/children/civilians. They kill indiscriminately. So forgive me if I don't see the "advantage" of using drones over boots on the ground or see how they are "better".

[1] http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/05/opinion/bergen-obama-drone/ind...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

[3] http://www.vn-agentorange.org/edmaterials/cost_of_vn_war.htm...

[4] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57448041/afghanistan-off...

[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/20/us-drone...

[6] http://tribune.com.pk/story/229844/the-day-69-children-died/

[7] http://livingunderdrones.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Stan...

[8] http://www.pewglobal.org/2012/06/27/pakistani-public-opinion...

ZoFreX• 14 years ago

> "Psychosis" is a real word with real meaning. It's frustrating when people use it as a slang word because that use stigmatises people with mental health problems.

The media make a habit of hyperbolically using words to the point that their original meaning is destroyed - see "mayhem" for a good example.

philwelch5• 14 years ago

> We stopped caring whether those people were civilians during WWII.

This is almost completely backwards. We only started caring at some point after WWII--the avoidance of civilian casualties is, for Western countries at least, one of the problems taken most seriously.

joe_the_user• 14 years ago

The military kills people. We stopped caring whether those people were civilians during WWII.

Uh, one might regret that civilian deaths were ignored during one or another time period (and they've been ignored many times). But putting it as "we've gotten away with this killing, now we have carte blanche, forever" is rather objectionable.

A balanced view of the overall toll of war is nice but we shouldn't dismiss one concern simply with the excuse that it doesn't mention another.

Another reason people object to drones is that they are weapon of, uh, terror, in the sense that having flying, killing machines around terrifies far more people than are actually kiled by the drone (the use of aircraft to inspire terror has always been part of its military use btw).

Edit: Also, the talk of "friends" and "enemies" is glib and doesn't reflect the situation is Afghanistan. It is a counter-insurgency war where most of the population is civilians that are neither "friendly" nor "unfriendly" off-the-bat. But keep your drones in the air long enough and it seem like you will find a hostile civilian population.

aufreak3• 14 years ago

> I don't understand why drones, as a weapon of war, are getting so much attention at the moment compared to other weapons of war. Dead civilians are dead whether they're killed by drones or landmines or cluster bomblets or whatever.

Guns were weapons of war (canons) before they were made portable and more people, including civilians, could get one. Likewise, club a radio controlled quadcopter with, say, an automatic rifle and you've got a home brew drone.

Since without a gun, such a home brew drone is mostly harmless (TM D.Adams), gun control would significantly reduce the risk of such home brew drones. So, yes, drones need to be included in the argument against guns.

CapitalistCartr• 14 years ago

Drones are only the beginning. The US military leads the World in developing military 'bots. The problem with having such an excessive military as ours is that the civilian leaders use to commit more and more stupid acts. With robotic weapons, so far fewer body bags returning to Dover, what will our "leaders" do then?

pretoriusB3• 14 years ago

Another problem is that we, in other countries, don't think of America as the pinnacle of democracy or progress, don't think your causes as just, nor we believe you have any moral or other right to play global cop or to have access to cheap oil.

And yet, a large part of the US public and lots of its leaders, thinks those things about the US, and gives its blessing to foreign intervention.

Add to that that we also (what a shocker) value our lives and our cultures, and don't consider ourselves inferior barbarians to be "civilised" or "invaded", and you can understand our problem with drones.

In fact, some of us, view the US as the barbarians, burning villages 15.000 away from their country or throwing chemicals that kill and harm hundreds of thousands of people (Agent Orange), throwing nuclear bombs at civilians, doing medical tests on unsuspecting people ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment ), invading sovereign countries with BS pretexts, keeping at "beyond law" prison, pushing for mass surveillance, ACTA and such. Heck, you even have segregated buses until 50 years ago. Even today, 70% of the prison population is non whites, while at the same time you have the highest incarceration rate on earth ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat... ). Heck, you guys still have the death penalty!

A country like that PLUS drones? The stuff that nightmares are made of...

Klinky4• 14 years ago

The U.S. was founded by hypocrites who didn't want to be enslaved to a regime, so they killed off the natives, and enslaved people of color then called it freedom.

Hypocritical idealism from the U.S. should probably be expected. Though at times the U.S. was probably the least evil option.

mseebach• 14 years ago

Well, it works both ways. When the US can fight a war with few or no casualties, it gets harder to fight a war of attrition against it - which was explicitly part of Al-Qaida's strategy, and not by coincidence, this was the strategy leveraged against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Also, I think this point in time is similar to the period when the US had the nuclear bomb until the Soviets and others had it too. Right now it gives the US an edge that's disconcerting, but on a longer horizon, every military will have these capabilities.

tomjen35• 14 years ago

Drones really needs to be studied badly in terms of how they are going to change the future of warfare, especially as more and more new countries gets access to them.

If I was a secret service coordinator, I would be shacking in my boots when I think about how to protect the president when any enemy, whether they are a country, a terrorist group, or just a lone nutjob (and how do you even identify a lone nut job? The norwegian police pretty much admitted that they couldn't, after the debacle with the loser who shot up a kid camp), can make or adapt a drone and fly it from far away?

The president is safe now, because very few people are completely unconcerned with their own lives, but with drones we may never know who was really responsible for the attack.

Drones even have the potential to be more dangerous to political groups than nukes, because nukes are so difficult to make that the only entities who could make them are the large, advanced, countries that have too much to lose if they were ever used. Drones are much easier, especially as all it really takes to make a lethal killing machine from a standard drone is to strap a rocket launcher on one.

And yes, private people can buy drones (http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-drone/select-site) for surprisingly little money (less than all but the cheapest computers) -- true they can't carry any load at present, but that is almost guaranteed to change in the future since drones have plenty of business usages, in industries such construction and transportation (and possible in the service industry, if the tacocopter takes of).

And if there is one thing a terrorist could get their hands on with relative ease it is rockets and even if they somehow can't you can properly do pretty decent damage just putting an AK47 on it.

There is a final, perhaps more sinister issue with drones -- unlike nukes you don't have much, if any, idea of where they came from; and if you don't know where they came form, how do you make sure that the enemy knows that you will retaliate? And if they don't know that, what is to stop them from using the nukes on you? Heck isn't it better, all things considered, that you attack first?

sek• 14 years ago

Ever heard about suicide bombers?

They are even smart as real humans and don't care about their life.

The other point, terrorism is not abut effectiveness it's about publicity. Drones are not so much changing the game as it is right now.

tomjen35• 14 years ago

Oh, I have heard about them. But there aren't that many people who are interested in blowing themselves up, and it is all but impossible to get any of them near the president (or any other highvalue target, but the president is probably the most difficult target that people actually want to get) - drones? Not so much.

polyfractal• 14 years ago

One of my hobbies is FPV flying with RC planes and quads, so I can comment on "consumer grade" drones.

The ARDrone is completely a toy. It has a range of about 20m before the video cuts out and the quad flies away by itself, crashing into a building or just falling out of the sky.

That said, you can make a long distance plane complete with video, gps and autopilot for $1000 - $2000. Depending on setup, flight time is between 15 minutes and an hour, with effective ranges up to 20km.

HOWEVER, very few people are capable of pulling off long distance FPV. Hell, most people fail at short distance FPV. The gear is hard, radio interference is a huge bitch (especially if you are near any urban area) and frankly, it's hard to fly a little plane made out of foam. They get knocked around by wind gusts really easily.

Any rotor platform (tris, quads, etc) are limited in range to 1-2km max, simply because you can't strap enough batteries onto the thing for longer range. Flight times are 15-30 minutes with current technology

Obviously, technology is going to continue to advance. And if the project is bankrolled by a government, all bets are off. But lone terrorists are going to have a hard time pulling off a drone attack. You can simply triangulate their signal (both the radio control and the video feed, which also usually includes a GPS downlink) and know exactly where they are transmitting from. Interfering with a drone is as simple as jamming the radio spectrum they are using...most drones (planes or quads) have about 10seconds before they crash into the ground when uncontrolled.

Lastly, carrying gear is really hard for any rotor platform. Max payload right now is a couple of kilos, usually a DSLR on a gimbal. These have to be lifted by octocopter setups (8 rotors) which absolutely kills battery efficiency. You get 15 minutes flighttime max, and the thing sounds like a swarm of killer bees.

kronusaturn• 14 years ago

I doubt terrorist-made drones will be remote controlled for exactly the reasons you just described; the skill level required is just too high. I'd expect them to work more like cruise missiles, a hand grenade strapped to a fixed-wing plane with a crude GPS-based autopilot that simply flies straight at the target. They might miss their targets more often than not, but that's not a big problem if your primary goal is to cause terror and mayhem.

mkr-hn• 14 years ago

The airspace around the President is heavily regulated, wherever (s)he goes. A drone big enough to be a threat would be noticed in an otherwise empty sky.

philwelch5• 14 years ago

Plus, there's no possible downside to just shooting down a drone and asking questions later. You might feel silly about shooting down a tacocopter when you find out all it had was tacos, but you won't kill anyone.

jackpirate• 14 years ago

drones don't offer any more of a threat to the president than cruise missiles do, and those have been around for a long time

tomjen35• 14 years ago

How many people have access to cruise misiles?

dharma12• 14 years ago

You can buy remote control aircraft that can carry up to 10kg weight. We make custom built octocopters for carrying a RED EPIC digital cinema camera, large lens, gyro and a hefty bunch of batteries (check http://londonhelicam.co.uk).

Right now, drones larger than Parrot AR Drone are fairly complex pieces of technology, which will hopefully help to keep them away from crazy people. But I admit it's scary to think what they could be used for once they become a commodity.

DenisM• 14 years ago

Cool stuff! What is the price range currently, on order of magnitude - 1k? 10k? 100k?

dharma12• 14 years ago

DenisM - depends on your requirements, definitely not 100k, but not 1k either. Feel free to drop me a line if you have something in mind?

weeksie2• 14 years ago

I feel like the article is mostly empty scaremongering. Drones are inevitable, you can't stop technology marching forward. They may not be a bad thing, however. More drone warfare means fewer soldiers involved in conflict and fewer deaths. I think a lot of the handwringing over drones is just because it's OMG ROBOTS, rather than considering that these deaths would have happened anyway but would have also caused casualties and psychological damage to the troops that would have been in their place.

Joeri2• 14 years ago

Drone operators work with less intel than boots on the ground, and have less ability to precisely target, so it's pretty much a given that there will be more civilian casualties, not less.

If drones didn't make it easier to kill, they wouldn't be used on such a massive scale (the US military now trains more drone operators than fighter pilots).

weeksie2• 14 years ago

All weapons make it easier to kill. We have been on a steady march forward as far as the efficiency of killing goes. We have guns, bombs, etc. . . And the same arguments were made about planes, I'm sure. The pilots are too detached from what's happening on the ground, etc. . . However, the order to kill is going to happen regardless and drones are better than carpet bombing, let alone the Shock and Awe crap that we were doing in Iraq.

War is horrid. It's the worst thing we do as humans, but I can't see how drones really make it worse. Are they used to kill the wrong people sometimes? Yes. Are there civilian casualties? Yes. But that happens with all warfare. And as we've gotten more efficient at killing we've been doing less of it. Wars have become less brutal over time, not more and I don't see that trend changing.

alecperkins• 14 years ago

The criticism of drones isn't of the technology, but the attitude of those operating them. The article mentions that it doesn't put the operator's own people at risk, and is trying to point out that this creates a detachment from the consequences. Before, taking out a target required people on the ground in some capacity, actually carrying out the mission or just identifying the target. Drones undoubtably save the lives of troops on a per-engagement basis, but now that there isn't that risk, and without some process or oversight, it's becoming too easy to just pull the trigger and destroy some pixels on a screen.

mc325• 14 years ago

I won't speak to the balance, as I have no idea what it is, never the less, I would tend to think that not being in immediate danger would allow for tracking and confirmation, whereas in conventional warfare, one might have acted a lot more on "gut feeling" (ie. that form running across the street is acting suspiciously and indeed seems threatening, it's either me or them.

philwelch5• 14 years ago

I think it's actually the other way around. The stress of combat, the instinct to self-preservation, close contact with the horrors of war, and the loss of comrades likely makes troops on the ground more, not less, likely to commit atrocities or act callously towards civilians. Drone strikes are also easier to supervise and review.

philwelch5• 14 years ago

Simpsons called it: "The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."

Dove13• 14 years ago

This is a very serious charge. Whether it's with drones, artillery, rifles, or bare hands doesn't matter. If they have solid evidence of the military intentionally (or recklessly) targeting civilian first-responders, I'd think they should be looking to have charges filed against the individuals responsible.

nkurz• 14 years ago

You are correct that they should charged if they were to target a civilian, but you are neglecting the definition of “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.”.

Once that male first responder is in the US-determined strike zone (ie, his country of birth) he is a combatant -- and hence an justified target ---until proven otherwise, which can only be after he is dead. By this definition, there is legally no such thing as a living male adult civilian first responder.

Sadly, the US doesn't even deny that they make follow-up strikes: 'We don’t discuss classified programs or comment on alleged strikes.' Anyway, who else would attempt to aid a wounded combatant (male funeral goer) other than another combatant (grieving male relative)?

http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror...

aresant• 14 years ago

A fascinating parallel field is the development of EMP weapons - and they're no longer science fiction as Boeing recently detonated the first "successful EMP bomb" (1) w/the help of the military.

A well placed EMP could literally knock out a Drone operator's electronics (even if the operator is deep in a bunker (2)), or target a drone itself.

(1) http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-m...

(2) http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb4.htm

kevinpet• 14 years ago

An easy way to spot a bullshit article with more concern for their agenda than truth is implying a comparison between numbers that can't be compared.

"Meanwhile, only 2 percent of the victims of the American drone war — a body count that now far exceeds the number who died in the World Trade Center — were “high-level militants” and hundreds upon hundreds were civilians."

Aside from quibbling with using "victims" to refer to "high-level militants", I would expect similar numbers from any military operation ever. How's this sound "only 2% of the victims of the american invasion of Iwo Jima were field-grade Japanese officers"?

Then we see the switch to comparing percentages to raw numbers. American's likely killed significantly more civilians in European bombing campaigns than we did in Hiroshima, but anyone with a shred of moral judgment can differentiate between civilians killed due to proximity to military targets (European bombing) vs. what we would call today state terrorism -- the intent to kill large numbers of civilians at Hiroshima to demonstrate our power.

So what percent of those killed in the drone strikes are civilians? To what extent does the military weigh the risk of killing civilians when evaluating potential missions? Is any of this unique to drone strikes?

I can't come to any conclusion but that this was just a generic collection of musings to generate outrage. It has nothing to do with Connecticut. It has nothing valuable to say about the ethics of drones. It's just troll baiting.

DanBC2• 14 years ago

Just a minor nitpick, but a lot of the (European Bombing) was deliberately at civilian targets, with up to 600,000 civilian deaths. The second world war started with an agreement to try to avoid civilian targets, but that stopped in 1940. Later developments included incendiary bombs and "firestorms".

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Bomber_Command)

The UK RAF Bomber Command had a mind-boggling rate of death. About 44% of crew died. (About 55,000 killed out of about 125,000 crew).

jacquesm• 14 years ago

Dresden.

gus_massa• 14 years ago

Dresden: 200K

Hiroshima: 100K

Nagasaki: 70K

Single-Click Double-Tap Murder

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