Drones
317 Articles
Human rights groups petition UN on drone strikes
At the UN Human Rights Council this week, a coalition of human rights groups is calling on all governments to take steps to monitor and promote transparency and legal compliance…
The Erosion of a Secret
Drone Timeline (Click to Enlarge) In connection with an ACLU Freedom of Information Act lawsuit pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the CIA has…
Australia’s collateral damage in the US drone program
In the last few years there has been a hotly contested global debate about the civilian impact of the U.S. drone strike program and its moral and legal justifications. Despite…
UN Disarmament Board: New proposals to improve drone strike transparency and accountability
A new report of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (full text) contains a number of recommendations related to both autonomous weapons and current…
How Deep is U.S. Public Support for Airstrikes in Iraq?
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center/USA TODAY is being described by commentators as revealing a high level of US public support for airstrikes in Iraq. But how much comfort…
Did the U.S. drone strike and secretly compensate Yemeni civilians?
New documentary evidence has emerged indicating that the families of those killed in a controversial December 2013 U.S. strike in Yemen received upwards of $1 million dollars in…
New Court Orders Signal More Drone Documents Are on the Way
For more than four years of Freedom of Information Act litigation concerning the government’s targeted-killing program, the government managed to avoid releasing a single document…
Autonomy, “Killer Robots,” and Human Control in the Use of Force – Part I
[Editor’s Note: This is Part I of a two-part guest post from Paul Scharre, a fellow and Project Director for the 20YY Warfare Initiative at the Center for a New American…
Transparency and Lethal Operations: A Checklist of What’s Public and What’s Still Secret [Updated]
Transparency is the touchstone for many debates about US lethal operations against Al Qaeda and associated forces. This post contains a checklist of sorts—cataloguing what information…
Social Science Data on Public Reactions to Drone Strikes and Civilian Casualties
One of the hats I wear is that of a social scientist. I don’t often write at Just Security in that capacity, but recent empirical research — on public attitudes toward…
NYC Bar Association Releases Report on Legality of Drones
Last month (and somewhat unnoticed — at least by many of us here), the International Law Committee of the NYC Bar Association released a report evaluating the legality of…
The importance (and difficulty) of the Stimson Task Force transparency recommendations . . . and a couple of legal corrections
Like Steve, I strongly recommend to Just Security readers the report on drone policy that the Stimson Task Force published yesterday. The report is very thoughtful and balanced,…