

Single-Click Double-Tap Murder - iProject
http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/22/single-click-double-tap-murder/

======
DanBC
> psychotic mass murderers.

"Psychosis" is a real word with real meaning. It's frustrating when people use
it as a slang word because that use stigmatises people with mental health
problems.

It's possible that someone in a spree shooting has never had a psychotic
episode and was not psychotic when they were shooting.

(<https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/001553.htm>)

Psychotic episodes are not just caused by mental illness. They can be a
symptom of other illnesses - Brain diseases, such as Parkinson's disease,
Huntington's disease; Brain tumors or cysts; HIV and other infections that
affect the brain; Some types of epilepsy; or Stroke.

(It's a shame that 'psychotic' is similar to 'psychopathic'. And that most
people have almost no understanding of either condition.)

> The same applies to drone warfare. It’s suddenly so much easier to pull the
> trigger, and you’re not putting any of your own people at risk. And so more
> people die.

The military kills people. We stopped caring whether those people were
civilians during WWII. Our military kills people with a variety of weapons.
Shock and awe didn't feel particularly targeted. The cluster bombs that kill
and maim hundreds of people each year don't feel particularly targeted.
Cluster bombs are currently illegal, but the US and Britain have been trying
to get the ban over-turned.

I don't understand why drones, as a weapon of war, are getting so much
attention at the moment compared to other weapons of war. Dead civilians are
dead whether they're killed by drones or landmines or cluster bomblets or
whatever.

~~~
mc32
I think if one is going to have a war or be at war, it's reasonable to use a
method which tries to minimize 'friendly' casualties first and e'enemy'
collateral damage second. Ie. does it reduce 'friendly' casualties? Does it
reduce collateral deaths on the other side? I think the answer is yes to both.

I think drones reduce both and as such are a good thing, if one is going to be
at war. Recall how in VN the VC suffered 2million casualties? Lots of that was
due to collateral damage. Or in Afghanistan how the Russians decimated the
enemy? That's traditional warfare.

The issue with remoteness and 'coldness' is an attempt to make this approach
less palatable (appeal to some kind of war ethics?) on the other hand, if we
were sending personnel on foot (a la vietnam) and people (soldiers) were dying
by the dozen daily, people would feel aggrieved too (naturally).

Therefore I think what people should protest is 'war' not just a 'kind of war'
because, to be honest, this new kind of war, if there needs to be one (and
that's debatable of course), has its advantages over traditional (and that's
becoming less traditional) warfare. It's less bloody and incurs less
collateral damage is more targeted and effective.

So I think psychologically perhaps UAVs seem asymmetrical and unfair to a
technological backward foe but realistically, they are at a huge disadvantage
in traditional warfare anyway.

As weird as it sounds, I think UAVs are more effective and antiseptic than
traditional warfare and thus 'better' as compared to boots on the ground.

~~~
pyre
I think that the general fear is that war will turn into a 'video game' played
by a bunch of people in a secure warehouse in middle America. This will remove
the human aspect of what is going on at the other end of the controls, and
we'll be less likely to get 'soldiers' doing things like questioning orders.

~~~
Dove
I think that's a rather silly fear.

If the targets on _your_ screen were real people, would you not take the
situation seriously?

Or, let's put it another way. Bombers don't interface with targets personally;
they're on the screen. Fighter pilots, too, for the most part. Artillery?
Definitely. How about SAM operators? All they see is radar blips. Cruise
missiles? ICBMs? People have to operate and launch those. How about an AWACS
doing command and control? Their screens look like Starcraft with crappy
graphics.

Do _any_ of these people see themselves as gamers rather than soldiers? I
don't know any who do.

The gravity of the situation comes from knowing that you're really involved in
combat. Not from how good the graphics are.

~~~
politician
The Milgram experiment [1] showed that people who perceived themselves to
under the influence of an authority will hurt other people when told to do so.
The idea that soldiers are immune to this effect is irrational; in reality,
this influence is probably a factor in their training regimes.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment>

~~~
Dove
Soldiers, at least in our military, are also trained to counter this effect:
they take an oath to obey lawful orders, and they know they have a _duty_ to
disobey unlawful orders. In fact, the modern soldier knows that if he obeys an
illegal order, _he can be prosecuted for it_.

This experiment hasn't been done, to my knowledge, but how do you think
milgram would have gone if they had begun the experiment by explaining the
difference between ethical and unethical orders, and telling people they could
be prosecuted for following the unethical ones?

Most normal people haven't thought that through, and are unprepared to make
that kind of decision. But soldiers have. Like a doctor professionally worries
about malpractice, a soldier spends his entire career thinking that through.

~~~
politician
That's fair. It'd be interesting to examine your perspective viz Milgram with
regard to non-American military groups.

~~~
Dove
I think it's present, but not a dominant factor. Depends on culture and
training.

What Milgram measured was how inexperienced people react to a new ethical
situation. If he had tested people who were familiar with the context--fellow
scientists--I very much suspect the results would be different. That's true in
many fields. You might be able to intimidate a junior engineer into including
a substandard part in a safety-critical area, but a senior engineer will
refuse. And then he'll quit. It's not that he has more character; he has more
experience.

Soldiers have a lot of experience. If you order them to hurt people immorally,
their reactions are more like the senior engineer than the junior one:
measures of character, not measures of how quickly they can think about a new
situation.

There have always been soldiers who said, at the eventual trial, that they
were "just following orders". I think they're generally inexperienced, but I'm
sure there are cowards who think that way at the end of a career, too. I'm
sure the prevalence depends on culture and training, but that does show that
the effect Milgram measured is present.

I do have some evidence that it isn't dominant, though. Historically speaking,
conquering armies have behaved in conquered countries pretty much as they
pleased--sometimes very badly. But to get a soldier to kill his own
countrymen, it has generally been necessary to threaten him or his family with
death -- mere orders have not been enough. The soldier has a limit on what
he'll do for authority, and he'll quit sooner than Milgram's subjects did.

It takes courage to make a high stakes moral decision correctly; I won't claim
that everyone has it. I don't know what the rate is, and I expect it varies
widely by culture and training. But I do think that in order to measure it,
you need to test professionals. Extrapolating from amateurs isn't good enough.
Perhaps a repeat Milgram would be a start: test all the same subjects again a
week later, after they've had plenty of time to think about the experience.

~~~
Daniel_Newby
Moreover, the Milgram behaviors were pretty much par for what young enlisted
men do when left to their own devices on a good day. The senior NCOs know this
and _make sure they are not left to their own devices_.

------
tomjen3
Drones really needs to be studied badly in terms of how they are going to
change the future of warfare, especially as more and more new countries gets
access to them.

If I was a secret service coordinator, I would be shacking in my boots when I
think about how to protect the president when any enemy, whether they are a
country, a terrorist group, or just a lone nutjob (and how do you even
identify a lone nut job? The norwegian police pretty much admitted that they
couldn't, after the debacle with the loser who shot up a kid camp), can make
or adapt a drone and fly it from far away?

The president is safe now, because very few people are completely unconcerned
with their own lives, but with drones we may never know who was really
responsible for the attack.

Drones even have the potential to be more dangerous to political groups than
nukes, because nukes are so difficult to make that the only entities who could
make them are the large, advanced, countries that have too much to lose if
they were ever used. Drones are much easier, especially as all it really takes
to make a lethal killing machine from a standard drone is to strap a rocket
launcher on one.

And yes, private people can buy drones (<http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-
drone/select-site>) for surprisingly little money (less than all but the
cheapest computers) -- true they can't carry any load at present, but that is
almost guaranteed to change in the future since drones have plenty of business
usages, in industries such construction and transportation (and possible in
the service industry, if the tacocopter takes of).

And if there is one thing a terrorist could get their hands on with relative
ease it is rockets and even if they somehow can't you can properly do pretty
decent damage just putting an AK47 on it.

There is a final, perhaps more sinister issue with drones -- unlike nukes you
don't have much, if any, idea of where they came from; and if you don't know
where they came form, how do you make sure that the enemy knows that you will
retaliate? And if they don't know that, what is to stop them from using the
nukes on you? Heck isn't it better, all things considered, that you attack
first?

~~~
polyfractal
One of my hobbies is FPV flying with RC planes and quads, so I can comment on
"consumer grade" drones.

The ARDrone is completely a toy. It has a range of about 20m before the video
cuts out and the quad flies away by itself, crashing into a building or just
falling out of the sky.

That said, you can make a long distance plane complete with video, gps and
autopilot for $1000 - $2000. Depending on setup, flight time is between 15
minutes and an hour, with effective ranges up to 20km.

HOWEVER, very few people are capable of pulling off long distance FPV. Hell,
most people fail at short distance FPV. The gear is hard, radio interference
is a huge bitch (especially if you are near any urban area) and frankly, it's
hard to fly a little plane made out of foam. They get knocked around by wind
gusts really easily.

Any rotor platform (tris, quads, etc) are limited in range to 1-2km max,
simply because you can't strap enough batteries onto the thing for longer
range. Flight times are 15-30 minutes with current technology

Obviously, technology is going to continue to advance. And if the project is
bankrolled by a government, all bets are off. But lone terrorists are going to
have a hard time pulling off a drone attack. You can simply triangulate their
signal (both the radio control and the video feed, which also usually includes
a GPS downlink) and know exactly where they are transmitting from. Interfering
with a drone is as simple as jamming the radio spectrum they are using...most
drones (planes or quads) have about 10seconds before they crash into the
ground when uncontrolled.

Lastly, carrying gear is really hard for any rotor platform. Max payload right
now is a couple of kilos, usually a DSLR on a gimbal. These have to be lifted
by octocopter setups (8 rotors) which absolutely kills battery efficiency. You
get 15 minutes flighttime max, and the thing sounds like a swarm of killer
bees.

~~~
kronusaturn
I doubt terrorist-made drones will be remote controlled for exactly the
reasons you just described; the skill level required is just too high. I'd
expect them to work more like cruise missiles, a hand grenade strapped to a
fixed-wing plane with a crude GPS-based autopilot that simply flies straight
at the target. They might miss their targets more often than not, but that's
not a big problem if your primary goal is to cause terror and mayhem.

------
kevinpet
An easy way to spot a bullshit article with more concern for their agenda than
truth is implying a comparison between numbers that can't be compared.

"Meanwhile, only 2 percent of the victims of the American drone war — a body
count that now far exceeds the number who died in the World Trade Center —
were “high-level militants” and hundreds upon hundreds were civilians."

Aside from quibbling with using "victims" to refer to "high-level militants",
I would expect similar numbers from any military operation ever. How's this
sound "only 2% of the victims of the american invasion of Iwo Jima were field-
grade Japanese officers"?

Then we see the switch to comparing percentages to raw numbers. American's
likely killed significantly more civilians in European bombing campaigns than
we did in Hiroshima, but anyone with a shred of moral judgment can
differentiate between civilians killed due to proximity to military targets
(European bombing) vs. what we would call today state terrorism -- the intent
to kill large numbers of civilians at Hiroshima to demonstrate our power.

So what percent of those killed in the drone strikes are civilians? To what
extent does the military weigh the risk of killing civilians when evaluating
potential missions? Is any of this unique to drone strikes?

I can't come to any conclusion but that this was just a generic collection of
musings to generate outrage. It has nothing to do with Connecticut. It has
nothing valuable to say about the ethics of drones. It's just troll baiting.

~~~
jacquesm
Dresden.

~~~
gus_massa
Dresden: 200K

Hiroshima: 100K

Nagasaki: 70K

------
weeksie
I feel like the article is mostly empty scaremongering. Drones are inevitable,
you can't stop technology marching forward. They may not be a bad thing,
however. More drone warfare means fewer soldiers involved in conflict and
fewer deaths. I think a lot of the handwringing over drones is just because
it's OMG ROBOTS, rather than considering that these deaths would have happened
anyway but would have also caused casualties and psychological damage to the
troops that would have been in their place.

~~~
alecperkins
The criticism of drones isn't of the technology, but the attitude of those
operating them. The article mentions that it doesn't put the operator's own
people at risk, and is trying to point out that this creates a detachment from
the consequences. Before, taking out a target required people on the ground in
some capacity, actually carrying out the mission or just identifying the
target. Drones undoubtably save the lives of troops on a per-engagement basis,
but now that there isn't that risk, and without some process or oversight,
it's becoming too easy to just pull the trigger and destroy some pixels on a
screen.

~~~
philwelch
I think it's actually the other way around. The stress of combat, the instinct
to self-preservation, close contact with the horrors of war, and the loss of
comrades likely makes troops on the ground more, not less, likely to commit
atrocities or act callously towards civilians. Drone strikes are also easier
to supervise and review.

------
CapitalistCartr
Drones are only the beginning. The US military leads the World in developing
military 'bots. The problem with having such an excessive military as ours is
that the civilian leaders use to commit more and more stupid acts. With
robotic weapons, so far fewer body bags returning to Dover, what will our
"leaders" do then?

~~~
pretoriusB
Another problem is that we, in other countries, don't think of America as the
pinnacle of democracy or progress, don't think your causes as just, nor we
believe you have any moral or other right to play global cop or to have access
to cheap oil.

And yet, a large part of the US public and lots of its leaders, thinks those
things about the US, and gives its blessing to foreign intervention.

Add to that that we also (what a shocker) value our lives and our cultures,
and don't consider ourselves inferior barbarians to be "civilised" or
"invaded", and you can understand our problem with drones.

In fact, some of us, view the US as the barbarians, burning villages 15.000
away from their country or throwing chemicals that kill and harm hundreds of
thousands of people (Agent Orange), throwing nuclear bombs at civilians, doing
medical tests on unsuspecting people (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiment> ), invading
sovereign countries with BS pretexts, keeping at "beyond law" prison, pushing
for mass surveillance, ACTA and such. Heck, you even have segregated buses
until 50 years ago. Even today, 70% of the prison population is non whites,
while at the same time you have the highest incarceration rate on earth (
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcerat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarceration_rate)
). Heck, you guys still have the death penalty!

A country like that PLUS drones? The stuff that nightmares are made of...

~~~
Klinky
The U.S. was founded by hypocrites who didn't want to be enslaved to a regime,
so they killed off the natives, and enslaved people of color then called it
freedom.

Hypocritical idealism from the U.S. should probably be expected. Though at
times the U.S. was probably the least evil option.

~~~
potatolicious
You really have this backwards. The slaughter of Aboriginal Americans was done
under the flags of multiple European Empires, long before independence was
even a catchphrase in the colonies.

If we want to play the historical blame game, both Europe and the USA need to
STFU. Along with every other country on Earth, each of whom have a litany of
abuses and atrocities they won't own up to.

~~~
Klinky
No, I do not have it backwards. The persecution of the Native Americans and
Africans continued well after U.S. became a nation. Just because abuses
started before the U.S. was founded, doesn't excuse the hypocritical
foundation the U.S. was built off of.

No doubt that other European countries have their own bloody histories.
However, the ease with which history is glossed over, and propaganda is spread
regarding the supposedly democratic freedoms the U.S. ushered in, seems
predominantly a U.S. issue.

~~~
Dove
Hypocracy implies no desire to change. The US did, eventually, deliver on its
promises. That says to me that the ideals were aspirational, not hypocritical.

~~~
pretoriusB
> _Hypocracy implies no desire to change. The US did, eventually, deliver on
> its promises. That says to me that the ideals were aspirational, not
> hypocritical._

Did it though? Or was it just forced to change some things due to mass
protests or because it found other ways to get the same conveniences?

I mean, who needs slave labor when you can have an industrial revolution,
factories and tractors? That doesn't mean that the old slaves are not equal --
you then have Jim Crow laws, segregation, 70% of prisoners being non-white and
other methods of control.

Plus have you talked with native americans, say, in the South Dacota? They
have some interesting things to say about the country "delivering on its
promises".

------
dharma1
You can buy remote control aircraft that can carry up to 10kg weight. We make
custom built octocopters for carrying a RED EPIC digital cinema camera, large
lens, gyro and a hefty bunch of batteries (check
<http://londonhelicam.co.uk>).

Right now, drones larger than Parrot AR Drone are fairly complex pieces of
technology, which will hopefully help to keep them away from crazy people. But
I admit it's scary to think what they could be used for once they become a
commodity.

~~~
DenisM
Cool stuff! What is the price range currently, on order of magnitude - 1k?
10k? 100k?

~~~
dharma1
DenisM - depends on your requirements, definitely not 100k, but not 1k either.
Feel free to drop me a line if you have something in mind?

------
Dove
This is a very serious charge. Whether it's with drones, artillery, rifles, or
bare hands doesn't matter. If they have solid evidence of the military
intentionally (or recklessly) targeting civilian first-responders, I'd think
they should be looking to have charges filed against the individuals
responsible.

~~~
nkurz
You are correct that they should charged if they were to target a civilian,
but you are neglecting the definition of “all military-age males in a strike
zone as combatants, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving
them innocent.”.

Once that male first responder is in the US-determined strike zone (ie, his
country of birth) he is a combatant -- and hence an justified target ---until
proven otherwise, which can only be after he is dead. By this definition,
there is legally no such thing as a living male adult civilian first
responder.

Sadly, the US doesn't even deny that they make follow-up strikes: 'We don’t
discuss classified programs or comment on alleged strikes.' Anyway, who else
would attempt to aid a wounded combatant (male funeral goer) other than
another combatant (grieving male relative)?

[http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-
terror...](http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-
drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/)

------
aresant
A fascinating parallel field is the development of EMP weapons - and they're
no longer science fiction as Boeing recently detonated the first "successful
EMP bomb" (1) w/the help of the military.

A well placed EMP could literally knock out a Drone operator's electronics
(even if the operator is deep in a bunker (2)), or target a drone itself.

(1) [http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-
new-m...](http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/futureoftech/boeings-new-missile-
takes-down-electronics-without-touching-them-1C6663618)

(2) <http://science.howstuffworks.com/e-bomb4.htm>

------
mtgx
"Worse yet, the way things are going, it’s only a matter of time until alpha
insurgencies like Hezbollah and the Zetas have their own fleets of armed or
kamikaze drones."

And who will make and sell them those drones? Probably the same companies that
are selling them to the US Army today. The way things are going right now, I
envision warfare in the future being much like in the Terminator Salvation
movie. The only difference is that the "machines" might not be self-aware
(although they could be automatic), but they will be controlled by other
humans. But in places where the war will actually happen, all you'll see is a
battle between machines and men being slaughtered by them.

~~~
tomjen3
Steal a tacocopter and stick a granade under it -- that should enable you to
take out the target (and leave a pretty decent mystery for the local
authorities to solve. How do you prove who flew the plane? Who fixed the
handgranade?).

~~~
Dove
I don't think it's that simple. For starters, there's probably a very short
list of people who own tacocopters, let alone people who own grenades.

If it becomes a problem, I can think of countermeasures -- register the
things, ban them in public spaces/require flight plans, detect and triangulate
the control signal. Heck, you could just look around; with a low tech system
like that, whoever's flying the thing needs line of sight to it in order to
identify the target. It's noisy and slow and I'd expect not nearly as
effective as stealing a car and doing a drive-by shooting.

But more than that, I'd be very surprised if that sort of thing becomes a
problem. Normal people aren't murderers. Think about all the poisons,
explosives, and highly kinetic pieces of equipment normal people have access
to _right now_.

~~~
tomjen3
Getting a grenade is pretty easy, and I meant stealing the tacopter to get
around the flightplan issue you can order him the taco using a stolen credit
card, the intercept it using a butterfly net.

