hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered i'm peter lavelle drones and orwellian skies this is what worries many opponents of aerial surveillance of society does the use of drones make citizen safer what about the

issues of privacy and civil liberties could armed drone soon one day be part of our everyday life and who profits from these intrusive in the sky. to cross drone surveillance i'm joined by medea benjamin in washington she is a co-founder of code pink and author of drone warfare also in washington we have ray mcgovern he is a co-founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity and in dallas we crossed to christopher jencks he is director of the criminal justice clinic and assistant professor of law at s m u deadman school of law all right folks in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want but if i go to you first in washington when i read orwell's one thousand nine hundred four i didn't see drones in it but i think he would have been happy if they had been. well i certainly agree with you there i think the potential of having these eyes in the sky twenty four seven

spying on us could have the potential of turning the u.s. into a surveillance society that would change the nature of public life in this country ok chris in dallas what do you say to that. i think potential is the keyword there i think the prevalence of drones is only going to exponentially increase forecasts are that by the end of the decade there may be as many as fifty to sixty thousand unmanned aerial systems of various kinds and types operating here in the u.s. so there certainly are potential concerns ok but are you worried about it chris in dallas are you worried about this these numbers in the sky i think i think it's it's all contextual peter i mean i think to the extent that you talk about a drone loitering in someone's someone's backyard i think that raises that raises

some challenges and a dozen states here in the u.s. currently have legislation pending that would limit the use of drones by by law enforcement but i think it's important to keep in mind there are almost limitless innocuous uses of these systems essential to any task that we perform that involves remoteness or danger drones may be able to perform those operations better and more cost effectively mean ranging from farmers trying to check livestock to how firefighters fight fires so there are any number of innocuous uses for this technology going forward but also that some problematic ones with law enforcement ok if i could go back to washington ray i mean one of the problematic ones for you i can think of many. well i think as chris suggested one of the key words is potential but i would have to say in my own experience and

i've been around a while the potential very quickly becomes the actual. i was around when the drones would develop they were developed for a specific purpose to have a do well capability over a certain area which was not possible for these satellites keep going around the world which could photograph this thing would be once or twice a day and so the dwell capability was to make sure that we had imagery over a certain location over a period of time and then some general in the pentagon said hey i'll bet we could put missiles on those things. and sure enough the potential became the actual the actual upwards of a thousand civilians have been killed. by road and drones and if you're speaking america more secure think of that solo who tried to bomb times square and search specifically does he watch what was active happening to his home country

pocky his rejigger instant increase to the point where he was to blow people up the times square in india what do you think about that because people are worried that they could be weaponized took a few of the technology to do it people will do it eventually. well i think that we can just look at one of the press conferences of the sheriff's department outside of houston and chris you might know of this case when they were actually bragging about how the new drone that they got thanks to the money from homeland security because you might know peter that most of the police departments in this country are strapped for money so they don't have extra hundreds of thousands of dollars hanging out to buy some drones and this one outside of houston bragged at the press conference about how the drone was designed to be weaponized so we have seen as race and how surveillance drones have become lethal drones we might very well see in this country how drones that are supposed to be for

a serious search and rescue operations or being told that they can help find your elderly grandpa with alzheimer's who is wandering in the in the streets could become a drone that is either armed with less than lethal weapons like stun grenades or. even. tasers to something that could be armed with lethal equipment so chris that this is mission creep we could see that very easily. well again i agree there is the potential there but i'm struck by the juxtaposition of on the one hand the police forces in the united states have been increasingly weaponized. with similar equipment to that of the u.s. military but on the other on the other hand i mean i note that police helicopters in the united states could be but are not weaponized we've had the technology both

helicopters and army helicopters for some fifty years and as a policy decision police helicopters in the united states have not been weaponized so i think that that counters the to some extent of the possible becoming reality ok raise that comfort for you. know it's really more a question of how they're already being used now i think chris use for this same solemn oath when you get out of the u.s. military academy but when i was commissioned a second lieutenant the united states army i took a solemn oath to support and defend the constitution the united states against all enemies foreign and domestic i take that both very seriously it has no expiration date the fifth amendment of our constitution says and i quote no person doesn't say no american does it say no citizen says no person shall be deprived of life liberty

or property without due process of law and for the executive in this country now to reverse seven hundred ninety eight years of precedent i'm thinking of the magna carta of course and all manner of common law and constitutional law and claim the right to assassinate americans and foreigners because foreigners list i check the bible there are human beings to without due process is a tragedy it's a it's there are lots of other adjectives and nouns i could use but it's the first time in my professional life and in my life here in washington fifty years we have become to ask ask myself will what does this oath mean when the executive itself is claiming the right to violate so clearly not only the fifth amendment but especially the fifth amendment in this issue ok chris would you like to feel that was a lot said there no indeed. i would say that. i

would i disagree the there is no right there has never been a or the right to constitutional due process of an american or anyone who has taken up arms against the united states is significantly different significantly less than the due process that would otherwise be afforded an american or anyone who is present in the in the united states so i think i'd come out differently on the equation of the use of force against persons who have taken up arms with enemies of the united states comedienne but it looks like a slippery slope to me ok even suspicion abroad could that be brought home and he already is brought home by the way yet let's look at the case right. sure i mean the fact that under the obama administration there have been three americans including a sixteen year old boy bill born in denver who have been killed by u.s.

drones overseas with no acknowledge and knowledge meant by the united states never any indictment i don't think a sixteen year old is a high level leader of al qaeda and then the congress people have been asking will controls be used to kill people here in the united states and they have never so far gotten a no so as far as we understand it americans have been killed overseas with these drones without any kind of judicial process and the same kind of thing can happen it appears here in the united states why is it illegal for the government to wiretap somebody in the united states without a court warrant but we don't know can a drone be used against them to kill them well actually we know that it could be done overseas so why couldn't it be done here at home i would say it's indeed a very slippery slope and

a very dangerous and scary slope ok christopher go back to. the slippery slope. no i mean there certainly is potential i believe the present in the last week or two and somewhat of an odd forum to be transmitted in policy positions but in a an online question and answer forum. the president was asked essentially that question the use of drones on americans or persons in the united states and the president's response was that the feasibility of lesser forms of force or the feasibility of detention in pakistan or afghanistan is a very different proposition than the feasibility of someone here in the us so he did not outright say we would not use such force but he drew some heat contrasted the circumstances in afghanistan and pakistan that here domestically rain you would

respond to that real quickly before we go to the break. yeah sure. and the question is due process here believe chris you're a lawyer i would hope you take due process for less seriously you don't do have to process this in the white house as much as john brennan the candidate to be head of the cia says we do due process here for that what's the problem right on the nose and i know we're going to go to a short break we're going to go to a break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on domestic drone state party.

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welcome to cross talk where all things are considered on peter a little too mind you were talking about the use of drones for domestic surveillance. but do you satisfied with the domestic discussion on this topic because congress has already acted well i think there is a big lobby of the drone manufacturers that force through a piece of legislation that will make the federal aviation administration open up u.s. airwaves to drones by september twenty fifth teen this is being done by the manufacturers because they look at the eighteen thousand police stations around this country and they see. sales sales dollars dollars so this is being driven by the industry

without the measures in place to guarantee our privacy or to guarantee our safety because these drones are pretty flimsy they're still in their early stages of development and they crash all the time so i am very worried and i don't think there has been a national discussion about this in fact the discussion is now happening on the very local level among communities police departments have already bought these drones and it's very interesting peter to see that kind of heated debates that are happening where in places like seattle the mayor is actually had to return those drones to the manufacturers because the community is up in arms about having this new technology without the guarantees that we deserve chris i saw you agreeing in dallas what are you agreeing to. basically everything that was was just said for the outgrowth of this technology it is it is stunning how little

national debate there is in the president signed legislation in the last week that went little reported dealing with the f.a.a. and drone integration chris cuomo how do you think that's why do you think that's the case why do you think that's the case why isn't there more discussion. i'm not sure i mean i think the i mean there certainly is a an industry lobby i mean i think many americans might be surprised to know that there is a actual unmanned aerial systems caucus yessiree on capitol hill. i also take americans would be somewhat surprised if you look in the fall of two thousand and twelve the organizations that have applied to the federal aviation administration to license and use drones include not surprising entities like a host of police departments around the country but also things like community

colleges indian gaming casino and the ohio department of transportation at the same time you have states like washington and texas that are considering legislation restricting their use and charlottesville virginia has an active statute that already does so i believe the first in the country ok ray why don't why do you think there is a little discussion in the unit ok media go ahead jump in this is crosstalk go ahead let's go ahead. and i just wanted to say that one of the reasons is a little discussion is this a little known and the list that chris started to put forth of the communities and the different entities that have licenses to experimentally use drones that has been a secret list and it's only thanks to a lawsuit by the electronic frontier foundation that we've gotten some of this information out but why should it be a secret to the american put people with police departments have permits to use

drones what community college have permits this should be open and where it opened there would be more public debate about it ray jump in go ahead. well i think medea is right on and chris as well but if you look a little deeper you see there is no discussion there's very little publicity well the people who are manufacturing the drones and other instruments of war are the same people that are running the mainstream media so you know you look at couey bono here who profits from a lack of discussion from these things i will add one element here it's a very encouraging thing that charles fills seattle and other places in this country are very sensitive to killing people without due process but those are mostly people like us the people who don't look like us don't deserve the same respect and i refer specifically to the largest english language widely read

journal in hockey ston dawn it ran an article by a fellow from the woodrow wilson center who his name is cool goodman by the way which translated from german means bullet man he's a hit man and he's hitting against those who have these squeamish thoughts about killing people that don't look like us ok and he says you know those figures are probably right from the british investigatory center say nine hundred people killed over the last nine years well that's only one hundred a year and twice that are killed by disease. three times that are killed by dirty water so what's the big deal my point here is that if americans if enough americans do not have a direct experience of innocent suffering ok if they don't have that kind of experience they have no way to reflect on what we're doing and then took perhaps

to justice work to stop what we're doing that's the key and we'll never know if the captive media doesn't tell us we think about that chris captive media. i think i think much of the concern over the use of drones in armed conflict is misplaced. moral or ethical legitimate but dressed up as a legal concern and as as a proposition or as a test for that i would ask anytime you have an issue with a drone strike if you were just a substitute instead of hellfire missile fired from a predator drone what if the us said used a cruise missile what if the u.s. it used a conventional bomb what if the u.s. it used artillery i submitted almost all instances the same concerns would be extant you would have so i don't think the drone is

a mode ality is in and of itself the concern it's the broader use of force not the mechanism and and i would just note that throughout this discussion and most discussions we use the term drone and that's a convenient overarching label but it's a little misleading and i say that because drones implies autonomy and these systems are remotely piloted that's significant because as we move forward whatever the concerns people have for current remotely piloted vehicles and systems we will have and do have autonomous systems and i think those present even more challenges and indeed when you want to react to that it's the use of force. well in terms of using of drones overseas i would say in some ways chris you're right in that we're concerned about whether it was somebody was killed by a drone or by a fighter jet we don't want to be violating sovereign nations and

killing people in places that we haven't declared war just on the basis of suspicion but the drones do present a new opportunity which is to hover over villages and that has resulted as i have seen myself going to pakistan in the terrorizing of entire communities that this technology allows to happen because when you can harbor over a village twenty four hours a day seven days a week and people are hearing the buzzing sound and never knowing when the hellfire missile is going to be launched and who it's going to be killed that in itself is a form of terror and if you want to then bring that back to the united states there is then that capacity of these drones to be hovering over our communities and be watching us twenty four seven whether or not they're used to kill us or taser us or laser us do we want to live in a society where we're being constantly watched by big brother and i don't think that's a left right issue i think that's

a basic civil liberties issue and i'm happy that communities are starting to rise up against that potential and so you're taking some notes there go ahead. well i guess i'm bothered by the moral issue here and by the end moral as reflected in the law issue i mentioned the magna carter the question i have is two years hence when we are celebrating the eight hundredth anniversary of the magna carter which poses the extreme restraints on the king of england gutsy barons doing that will it be an inquest will it be a funeral what will it be will it be a celebration that we stood up and said look people have rights people cannot be summarily interned or executed without due process of law and so what we have here is extra extra judicial and people sort of you want to say well. you know well extrajudicial killing is murder and that's what we're doing in places

like yemen and somalia and other places where we don of course what we are not at war that's pure and simple now the fact that those people don't look like us. is that america do we not really care because they don't look at them because we never see it on t.v. screens i don't think that's america i think we have to reform and face up to what we're doing and realize that no person not no american but no person under the fifth amendment shall be deprived of life without due process of law the president no one can act as judge jury and executioner that's what the magna carta was all about and that's what our constitution is all about kristie think that think technology is keeping up with law and the other way around go ahead chris real quick. no absolutely though the law is significantly behind the technology decades if not

a generation or more so when you when you look at questions like drones or cyber attack the law regulating conduct of hostilities is very very far gone what do you think about that well i think chris is right but i'd like to hear from the dia media go ahead you get the last word well i would say that certainly whether it's domestically or internationally the law has not kept up with the technology and we need to change that and i would also say that if we indeed want to call ourselves a democratic society we can have policies that are veiled in secrecy these need to come out into the light how are using drones overseas how we might use them here at home and let the i'm alright fascinating discussion we've run out of time thank you very much many thanks indeed to my guests in washington and in dallas and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember top.

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