Drones on US soil

Robotics in the military is a relatively new area.

It began with drones flying for reconnaissance purposes. Uncontroversial.

They then began firing missiles off them. Pretty uncontroversial

A democratic president uses them loads. Controversial.

First, lets get something clear. What we call drones are UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicles. The armed ones are generally piloted by a human being, but remotely. So there are bases in the US where people pilot drones on kill missions in Pashtunistan. For the US political class, and public, this is also pretty uncontroversial.

Then there are the new surveillance drones being flown over US cities. there is no suggestion that these are going to be armed, or that if they are armed, that the person with their finger on the button would not be culpable, but the issue has become controversial. It lead to an actual talking filibuster in the senate! (http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/rand-paul-filibuster-john-brennan-cia-nominee-88507.html)

I am not entirely clear on what the point of the controversy is. Police officers shoot people now and again. When they do, they have to go through a process and possibly face a court. Should a senior officer tell a subordinate to go out and shoot someone, would that not be murder?

If he uses a gun, remote controlled bomb or remote controlled drone, that is still murder. Kind of more likely to get into trouble if you don't have the self defence argument.

Opposing surveillance is reasonable. Pretending that the President is about to start randomly killing US citizens is not. Not reasonable, not rational, it is just plain silly.

Although Rand Paul, who lead the filibuster can talk shit for 13 hours non stop, and therefore I feel we must be related and he must be a fine upstanding man,

If a person in US jurisdiction uses a remote control device to kill another person in US jurisdiction, that is surely homicide. The only problems are when persons is US jurisdiction start killing people in other jurisdictions, and claiming never to be culpable. But I already noted that is uncontroversial.

It sends a stark message about how many Americans view the world that they can get so worked up about this non existent threat, while ignoring the thing that has gone well beyond the threat stage just because the victims are not US citizens.

After the death of Chavez yesterday, it seems the whole world are the Latino farmers of the 80s today.