Drone Summit: Killing and Spying by Remote Control

Washington DC, Saturday, April 28
Register here!

The peace group CODEPINK, the legal advocacy organization Reprieve, and the Center for Constitutional Rights are hosting the first international drone summit. We are bringing together drone-strike victims, human rights advocates, robotics technology experts, journalists and activists. The summit’s objective is to inform the American public about the widespread and rapidly expanding deployment of both killer and surveillance drones.

Details:

The summit will be held on Saturday, April 28, 2012 in Washington, DC.
Participants will have the opportunity to listen to the personal stories of Pakistani drone-strike victims.

Topics will include:

• disputed legality of drone warfare
• compensation for victims
• transparency and accountability for drone operations
• domestic drone surveillance
• development of autonomous drones.

Speakers will include:

• Clive Stafford Smith from UK legal group Reprieve that represents drone victims
• Hina Shamsi, ACLU national security expert
• Jay Stanley, ACLU privacy expert
• Medea Benjamin, author of forthcoming book Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control
• Pardiss Kebriaei from the Center for Constitutional Rights attorney
• Shahzad Akbar from the Pakistani Foundation for Fundamental Fights
• Sarah Holewinski from Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
• Tom Barry, Drone border expert, from the Center for International Policy

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks the U.S. government has increasingly deployed drones in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. While the U.S. military and the CIA initially used drones primarily for surveillance, these remotely controlled aerial vehicles are currently routinely used to launch missiles against human targets in countries where the United States is not at war, including Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. As many as 3,000 people, including hundreds of noncombatants and even American citizens, have been killed in covert missions.

Our nation is leading the way toward a new form of warfare – where pilots sitting on the ground thousands of miles away command drone strikes and where targets are (in military jargon) “neutralized,” and where unintended victims are dismissed as “collateral damage.” Close observers, both inside and outside the U.S. military, call this “video-game warfare.” These killer drone operations, directed largely by the CIA, lack necessary transparency and accountability.

Drones are also being deployed domestically for “border security” and law enforcement. Predator drones deployed by Customs and Border Protection search for immigrants and drugs on the northern and southern borders, while metropolitan police and county sheriffs are acquiring smaller drones to assist their SWAT operations.Congress recently mandated that the Federal Aviation Administration open up domestic airspace to private and commercial drones by 2015 and that it immediately speed-up the licensing process to permit the deployment of government (military, homeland security, and law enforcement) in commercial U.S. airways.As drones become an increasingly preferred form of warfare and as their presence expands at home, it is time to educate ourselves, the U.S. public, and our policymakers about drone proliferation. As remotely controlled warfare and spying race forward, it is also time to organize to end current abuses and to prevent the potentially widespread misuse both overseas and here at home.