Rise of the Drones – UAVs After 9/11

[Ed Jewett]

DARPA Wants to Give Soldiers Robot Surrogates, Avatar Style

February 19th, 2012Via: IEEE:
In the movie Avatar, humans hooked themselves up to brain-machine-interface pods with which they could control giant genetically engineered human-alien hybrids. It's just a movie, but DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, doesn't care: It wants this kind of system to be real, just replace "giant genetically engineered human-alien hybrids" with "robots."
In its 2012 budget, DARPA has decided to pour US $7 million into the "Avatar Project," whose goal is the following: "develop interfaces and algorithms to enable a soldier to effectively partner with a semi-autonomous bi-pedal machine and allow it to act as the soldier's surrogate."
Posted in Rise of the Machines, Technology, War

[Ed Jewett]

Why did US Census Bureau award $500M Contract to Lockheed Martin, Worlds' Largest Defense Contractor?

By: SCMLA
Tags:

• COMPUTERS/INTERNET/SECURITY
  
• CURRENT EVENTS
  
• WAR/DRAFT/VETERAN AFFAIRS
  

Tying this all together, it seems as though the government has implemented the United Nations' plan to GPS mark all residences and this will make it possible to send in drones instead of personnel when the government chooses?

»

[Peter Lemkin]

Red License Plate in Nevada Means the Driver Is a Robot
February 23rd, 2012

Via: Singularity Hub:

An extended campaign in Nevada by Google has led to a new host of provisions which will allow automated cars to legally drive in the state. Starting March 1st, 2012 innovators like Google can officially apply for a new kind of robot driver's license that will give them permission to openly test their cars on the road. Automated vehicles will be able to travel the same streets and highways as human drivers, with only a red license plate marking them as robots. Once research on those automated cars is complete (which may take years), the Nevada Department of Motorized Vehicles will issue them a neon green license plate an indication that the robot drivers are good to go. Google, whose robotic Prius cars have already driven 200,000+ miles in California quasi-legally, will undoubtedly take full advantage of Nevada's openness and further develop their technology for general use. Just as important, other states like Hawaii, Florida, and Oklahoma may follow Nevada's example, paving the way for robot cars to operate all across the United States.

[Peter Lemkin]

Pentagon Lawyer Defends Killing of U.S. Citizens Abroad

A top Pentagon lawyer has openly declared the administration's claim to free reign on assassinating U.S. citizens who join al-Qaeda without court review. In a speech at Yale Law School, Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, said courts should have no role in reviewing presidential decisions on who can be targeted. Johnson said, "Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives." Johnson appeared to be referring to the case of U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a U.S. drone strike last year. Al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son was also killed two weeks later.

[Peter Lemkin]

Targeted Killings: Broad Spectrum of Organizations Support ACLU Legal Fight for Transparency on U.S. Drone Program
23rd March 2012

By Nathan Freed Wessler

ACLU National Security Project, March 22, 2012

blog dronehellfire1 300x168 Targeted Killings: Broad Spectrum of Organizations Support ACLU Legal Fight for Transparency on U.S. Drone ProgramToday, nine organizations submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about the CIA's use of drones to carry out targeted killings around the world.

The organizations work on a diverse array of issues that don't always overlap, including international human rights and rule of law, government transparency, investigative journalism, civil liberties and national security policy. Although some of these groups seldom have occasion to collaborate, they joined together to urge the court to reject the CIA's position that it can't confirm whether it has a drone strike program at all.

The ACLU filed its appeal brief in the case last week in Washington. We argued that because high-ranking government officials have already acknowledged the existence of the drone program in public, the agency can't try to avoid public scrutiny by refusing to acknowledge the same program in court. Today, the amicus brief added depth to that argument by carefully cataloguing just how much information about the drone program has already been made public by government officials, frequently quoted anonymously in press reports.

Here's how the amicus brief framed the issues:

In this Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") lawsuit, the CIA maintains that revealing the very existence of records relating to its program of targeted killing via drone-based missile strikes would expose a classified secret and cause national security harms. The existence of the CIA's targeted killing program, however, is so widely acknowledged and heavily reported upon that it can hardly be called a secret anymore.

First, the President and the CIA Director have officially acknowledged the CIA's targeted killing program. Second, unnamed government officials have not only confirmed the program's existence, but revealed important details, such as its geographic scope and target selection process. Moreover, the Attorney General publicly defended the program in a recent speech that provided the government's legal rationale for targeted killings. The volume and breadth of program information originating from government officials calls into grave doubt the CIA's claim that national security harms will result from the CIA merely acknowledging that it has responsive records.

The public has a significant interest in obtaining information on the CIA's program, as demonstrated by the fierce ongoing public debate on the issue of targeted killing. Having tolerated or allowed significant informational disclosures on the classified program, the CIA should not be allowed to hide behind its "Glomar" response to avoid the governmental accountability and transparency enabled by FOIA.

The organizations signing the brief are:

Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
Center for Constitutional Rights
Center on National Security at Fordham Law School
The Constitution Project
First Amendment Coalition
Human Rights Watch
International Commission of Jurists
National Security Archive

The brief was written by the National Security Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

http://www.aclu.org/blog/national-securi...y-us-drone

[Peter Lemkin]

The White House has approved a radical expansion of how it carries out drone strikes inside Yemen. The Washington Post reports President Obama has granted a CIA request to launch drone attacks even if it does not know the identities of those who will be killed. The so-called "signature" strike policy went into effect earlier this month, and at least one attack has already been launched. It is widely expected the number of U.S. drone strikes will see a radical jump with the new policy in place. At least 48 civilians have been killed in 27 U.S. strikes inside Yemen since 2009. The sweeping leeway for the strikes has already been in effect in Pakistan, where U.S. drones have killed hundreds of civilians. :flypig:

[Jan Klimkowski]

The Washington Post reports President Obama has granted a CIA request to launch drone attacks even if it does not know the identities of those who will be killed.

Obama should take a trip around the world, look at the corpses of men, women and children being murdered on his authority, stare deeply into their cold, dead, eyes, and see if they remind them of his wife, his daughter, his father, the son he doesn't have.

[Adele Edisen]

Wed, May 16, 2012 4:03:50 AM
Instruments of war to be used domestically
From: Brasscheck TV <news@brasschecktv.com>

(VIDEO - 5:39 min. long - below)

Despite promises that the 2012 NDAA wouldn't apply to military
operations on U.S. soil or be used against American Citizens,
Congressional Record makes it clear the act will deploy military
drones controlled by NASA and the DOJ under authorization contained
with the 2012 NDAA.

It's NOT just about privacy, which is a worthy concern on its own,
but it is also about using the military and military equipment
against American citizens.

Video:

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/10599.html

Goodman Green
- Brasscheck

P.S. Please share Brasscheck TV e-mails and
videos with friends and colleagues.

That's how we grow. Thanks.

Brasscheck TV
2380 California St.
San Francisco, CA 94115

[Peter Lemkin]

Pretty sad it has all come to this.....drones and soon robots to be used against all enemies of the Oligarchy - foreign AND domestic. Spying upon and killings without trials or any due process. While, as we have discussed several times here on this forum before - and Adele demonstrated elsewhere on the Forum with historical detail - this kind of fascist tendency has been both latent and active in the USA for all of its existence; however, it is really on the march [again] since [IMHO] the successful coup of 11/22/63 and while the coup plotters were still heady over winning WW2, and hellbent on retaining US dominance over all others till the end of time...no matter what the cost...or what part of the Constitution, Laws, Liberties or Rights were infringed upon - no matter what the death toll / suffering among the Sheeple - foreign or domestic. Technology has only given these monsters more power and more opportunity to carry this all out. 9/11/01 was the final nail in the coffin of anything resembling a democratic republic, IMO. As a child when reading books such as Brave New World or 1984, I did feel they might well come to pass...at some point...but never expected to live to see it. It has to be dealt with now! It is already getting a bit 'too late' in the day. While most thinking people are uncomfortable with all of 'this', there is not yet an outcry to stop and REVERSE all of this. Stop it cold and reverse it at 100x the speed it was implemented! Sad times we live in, sorry to say. All we can do it point out the horrors most prefer not to see before their very eyes, and fight the good fight that has been waged [at times more successfully than at others] against these dark forces in the Jungian shadow of man - that seems to reign supreme among those who think they own and run the Country and Planet.

[Magda Hassan]

I read today that it looks like Austin Texas might be the lucky forst to have this tried on them....