[liberationtech] Drones for Human Rights

[James Losey]

I would venture to guess that a considerable factor is resources. Recent
FOIA responses<http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/3426/nick_turse_the_crash_and_burn/>state
that keeping a Predator drone in the air for 24 hours requires 170
personnel. Granted this is a) a Predator drone, and b) few (if any) on this
list would argue that the Military is an exemplar of efficiency, there is a
time and expense in supporting drones with a considerable range. I support
thinking about positive ways of exploiting technology but a greater
question might be: what is the goal of the operation?

I agree with the proposal that "Drones can reach places and see things cell
phones cannot." and I think on that front, there are a number of innovative
ways to approach transparency. For example, this past year students in
Chile used<http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/live-iphone-balloon-video-coverage-150000-student-rally-chile>a
weather balloon and an iPhone to provide coverage of a protest. Along
this line of thinking, what is the range, the type of coverage, and
requirements that should be considered?

Best,
J

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Nabiha Syed <nabiha.syed at gmail.com> wrote:

> It* is* surprising that it's not more widespread already, right? But it is
> getting more and more popular --the Drone Journalism
> Lab<http://dronejournalism.tumblr.com/about>is trying to encourage the
> use of drones, and I believe the
> Occupy folks<
> http://techland.time.com/2011/12/21/occupy-wall-streets-new-drone-the-occucopter/
> >have
> been using drones to monitor their encampments recently, too.
>
> As shameless self-promotion, I'll be interviewing Mickey
> Osterreicher<https://twitter.com/#!/nppalawyer>of the National Press
> Photographers Association about surveillance drones
> and drone journalism for the Harvard Law and Policy Review blog -- I'd be
> happy to share the link once it's up!
>
> Nabiha
>
>
>
> Nabiha Syed
> First Amendment Fellow
> The New York Times Company
> 620 Eighth Avenue
> New York, NY 10018
> nabiha.syed at nytimes.com | 212.556.5187
>
> On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Yosem Companys <companys at stanford.edu
> >wrote:
>
> > A group of Stanford students pitched this idea for a startup 8 years ago!
> >  And yet no one is doing it yet?
> >
> > YC
> >
> >
> >
> > **********************
> >
> > January 30, 2012
> >
> > Drones for Human Rights
> >
> > By ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN and MARK HANIS, New York Times
> >
> > DRONES are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan. In Iraq, the State
> > Department is using them to watch for threats to Americans. It’s time we
> > used the revolution in military affairs to serve human rights advocacy.
> >
> > With drones, we could take clear pictures and videos of human rights
> > abuses, and we could start with Syria.
> >
> > The need there is even more urgent now, because the Arab League’s
> observers
> > suspended operations last week.
> >
> > They fled the very violence they were trying to monitor. Drones could
> > replace them, and could even go to some places the observers, who were
> > escorted and restricted by the government, could not see. This we know:
> the
> > Syrian government isn’t just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is
> shooting
> > unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on
> news
> > media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous
> > cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they
> make
> > us YouTube witnesses.
> >
> > Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A
> > drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood.
> And
> > the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including
> diplomats
> > at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal
> Court.
> >
> > Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary
> > buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars — no longer many millions —
> a
> > surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria.
> >
> > An environmental group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has
> reported
> > that it is using drones to monitor illegal Japanese whaling in the waters
> > of the Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years, human-rights groups
> and
> > the actor and activist George Clooney, among others, have purchased
> > satellite imagery of conflict zones. Drones can see even more clearly,
> and
> > broadcast in real time.
> >
> > We could record the repression in Syria with unprecedented precision and
> > scope. The better the evidence, the clearer the crimes, the higher the
> > likelihood that the world would become as outraged as it should be.
> >
> > This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate
> > Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws.
> It
> > isn’t the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it
> is
> > very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them)
> > have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty,
> > recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their
> own
> > people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done
> this.
> > Why not get drones to assist the good work?
> >
> > It may be illegal in the Syrian government’s eyes, but supporting Nelson
> > Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To
> fly
> > over Syria’s territory may violate official norms of international
> > relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups
> with
> > weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya.
> In
> > any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct
> consequence
> > of the Syrian state’s brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders.
> >
> > There are some obvious risks and downsides to the drone approach. The
> > Syrian government would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to blame a
> > foreign conspiracy for its troubles. Local operators of the drones could
> be
> > at risk, though a higher-end drone could be controlled from a remote
> > location or a neighboring country.
> >
> > Such considerations figured in conversations we have had with human
> rights
> > organizations that considered hiring drones in Syria, but opted in the
> end
> > for supplying protesters with phones, satellite modems and safe houses.
> For
> > nearly a year now, brave amateurs with their tiny cameras arguably have
> > been doing the trick in Syria. In those circumstances, the value that a
> > drone could add might not be worth the investment and risks.
> >
> > Even if humanitarian drones are not used in Syria, they should assume
> their
> > place in the arsenal of human rights advocates. It is a precedent worth
> > setting, especially in situations where evidence of large-scale human
> > rights violations is hard to come by.
> >
> > Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media
> did
> > not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur
> in
> > 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where
> > 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and
> > detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just
> > response, but it helps.
> >
> > If human rights organizations can spy on evil, they should.
> >
> > *Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis are co-founders of the Genocide
> > Intervention Network.*
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