Drones
320 Articles
Missing Transparency: Is the US Response to Reported Drone Attack on Wedding Party Self-Defeating?
On Thursday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a fact-intensive report based on the group’s investigations into a US drone strike that allegedly hit a wedding party in Yemen…
Letter to the Editor from former US Air Force Airman and drone sensor operator, Brandon Bryant
[Editor’s note: Brandon Bryant is a former U.S. Air Force Airman, who served as a sensor operator for the Air Force drone program (2005-2011). Following his active duty in the…
A Rejoinder from Jenks and Corn re U.S. SIGINT Based Targeting
There is probably no area of greater consensus between us and Professors Goodman and Jinks (their post) than the recognition that the law of armed conflict should and must be responsive…
Military Targeting Based on Cellphone Location
A recent news story by Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill details the use of NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) – including cellphone and SIM card data – to locate and kill…
Eyes Wide Shut: Scahill and Greenwald’s Flawed Critique of U.S. SIGINT Based Targeting
[Editor’s Note: Stay tuned later today for a post by Ryan Goodman and Derek Jinks responding to the guest post by Chris Jenks and Geoffrey Corn.] In The NSA’s Secret Role in…
Which Policies Apply to the Killing of U.S. Citizens in Pakistan?
Yesterday, the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, and the LA Times reported on debates within the U.S. government about “whether to authorize a lethal strike…
Where’s the “Metadata”?: What Greenwald and Scahill (Don’t) Say about NSA Metadata Collection and Lethal Targeting
There are many, many important revelations about NSA’s involvement in the US drone program in Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill’s historic debut story for First Look…
Lethal Targeting of US Citizens: AP Report Raises More Questions Than Answers
In a highly provocative piece this morning, Kimberly Dozier writes that the Obama administration is weighing another drone strike against a U.S. citizen. That is obviously a…
US to Reduce Drone Program in Pakistan – But Does Pakistan “Agree”?
A must-read story in the Wall Street Journal this morning details a “general agreement” between the US and Pakistan to “narrow” the drone program to a short list of high-level…
Alberto Gonzales and Me on Oversight for Targeted Killing
Whatever folks think about the continuing utility (vel non) of student-edited law reviews, sometimes, they can produce some pretty interesting exchanges. Thus, today, the George…
10 Things We Need to Know Now About the US Drone War
A year ago today, NBC News published a leaked copy of a Justice Department memo that justified the killing of a U.S. citizen without a trial in a foreign country outside a war…
Noor Khan: A missed opportunity?
Last week, the English Court of Appeal gave judgment in R (Noor Khan) v Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (full text). The claim was brought in an attempt…