Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Pentagon, CIA Sued for Lethal Drone Attacks on U.S. Citizens
July 18th, 2012Via: Wired: Survivors of three Americans killed by targeted drone attacks in Yemen last year sued top-ranking members of the United States government, alleging Wednesday they illegally killed the three, including a 16-year-old boy, in violation of international human rights law and the U.S. Constitution. “The government has killed three Americans. It should account for […]
Google Settles with U.S. Government on Privacy Violations
July 12th, 2012Where does $22.5 million show up on Google’s list of expenses? Hmm… In other words, for Google and other companies: Do more of this. The penalty for getting caught is trivial. Via: New York Times: Google and the Federal Trade Commission are near a $22.5 million settlement agreement related to charges that Google bypassed privacy […]
Neurotechnology for Intelligence Analysts
July 12th, 2012Via: The Chronicle of Higher Education: In a small, anonymous office in the Trump Tower, 28 floors above Wall Street, a man sits in front of a computer screen sifting through satellite images of a foreign desert. The images depict a vast, sandy emptiness, marked every so often by dunes and hills. He is searching […]
14 Incredibly Creepy Surveillance Technologies
July 10th, 2012Via: Blacklisted News: Most of us don’t think much about it, but the truth is that people are being watched, tracked and monitored more today than at any other time in human history. The explosive growth of technology in recent years has given governments, spy agencies and big corporations monitoring tools that the despots and […]
Air Force Trains Drone Pilots by Tracking Civilian Cars in U.S.
July 8th, 2012Via: New York Times: Today many of the pilots at Holloman never get off the ground. The base has been converted into the U.S. Air Force’s primary training center for drone operators, where pilots spend their days in sand-colored trailers near a runway from which their planes take off without them. Inside each trailer, a […]
Swarms of Maple Seed Drones
July 6th, 2012Via: Talking Points Memo: Imagine a cheap, tiny, hovering aerial drone capable of being launched with the flick of a person’s wrist and able to provide manipulable 360-degree surveillance views. It’s real, it’s inspired by maple seeds, and the company behind it, Lockheed Martin, envisions a future in which swarms of the new drones can […]
Drone Makers Urge U.S. to Let Them Sell More Overseas
July 2nd, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times: Despite concerns about U.S.-made drones ending up in enemy hands, American military contractors are lobbying the government to loosen export restrictions and open up foreign markets to the unmanned aircraft that have reshaped modern warfare. Companies such as Northrop Grumman Corp.and other arms makers are eager to tap a growing foreign […]
Why is SOCOM Lying About Domestic Drone Activities?
June 28th, 2012Via: Public Intelligence: A spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has provided statements to publications in New Hampshire and Oregon indicating that information regarding domestic drone activities provided by Public Intelligence is inaccurate, despite confirmations from the offices of two U.S. Senators. Following our publication last week of a map of current and proposed […]
The American War Racket
June 26th, 2012Via: Daily Reckoning: Our president is a portrait of failure and homicide… According to The New York Times he personally approves the list of unfortunates his drones will assassinate. And for what? Philip Giraldi does the “Terrorism Arithmetic”: Only three American citizens were kidnapped by overseas terrorists in 2011 (in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, all […]
The Case Against Autonomous Killing Machines
June 22nd, 2012Via: io9: In his conversation with io9, Wallach seemed frustrated that some people see this issue as something that’s too futuristic to care about. “We’re at a potential inflection point in the development of autonomous weaponry,” he said. “That inflection point won’t last for a long period of time, and if we wait too long, […]
