say drones don't have to be in the hands of just governments individuals can get their hands on drones and this is where it is leading to now as you say this is not high tech compared to something like a nuclear weapon i have my own drone you could buy a month amazon dot com google parrot drones that cost a couple hundred dollars and you manipulate it with your smart phone and who knows who could rig up some kind of. terrible chemical or biological weapon on a tiny little drone like that so there's speculation the iranians the big drug drawn a while back that they had to actually act the drone the iranians said we hacked the drone because look it came down in one beautiful piece and thanked president obama and they reversed engineered it and they're making their own that's a very sophisticated spy drone but the iranians had already been producing their own weaponized drones. so in a way drones are are kind of the genie out of the bottle sort of like nuclear the nuclear bomb. and even more so because now if you think seventy six countries have some sort of drone most of them for a surve

he is not using drones. he is waiting for somebody to get him and law enforcement agencies some direction on the use of roads. seems to be two issues. law-enforcement use and private use and what is the expectation of privacy in those areas and should we do anything about it or just wait? let me ask you, mr. calabrese, there were comments that courts should make these decisions, fourth amendment which courts have been doing, applying what law-enforcement on the fourth amendment, should the courts be the answer for solving the issue of rhones in the fourth amendment? >> i think your legislation does a very good job creating a careful balance, something congress is particularly good at and the courts are not particularly good. when we think about how we would want to use a drone is clear that most of the uses, finding a missing person, fighting a forest fire, are not uses that particularly implicate the fourth amendment and your legislation is careful to carve those out and i think by creating clarity you all

our weapons ever appropriate with drones?>> i think we need to explore the question of weaponization carefully. by and large, the answer is no. weapons should never be used because a drone is not in the same kind of danger as a police officer is. clearly, a police officer has to be able to defend himself. we all understand that. or take appropriate action to apprehend someone. a drone will not need to defend itself or will not need to apprehend anyone. a drone operator may not have the same judgment or expertise. through a camera as a police officer does on the ground. all of that ayargues limited e, but by and large weapons do not belong on drones. >> you mentioned the possibility of discrimination. howyou say a wa word about you would choose who was under surveillance? >> that is an outstanding question. it goes to a couple important issues. one is having the community involved. you should know if there is surveillance. the community should be able to decide if they think getting a drone is an important -- appropriate tool

before we get into the drone. and this extraordinarily and i just have to say i started reading this and i couldn't stop i thought ok i'm just going to skim this book and get ready for it and i just this is so well written and you start out with these stories of these people it's just in the case of the stories of the people how do you go from being a war you want to con a most to being the person who everybody's always seen you know being arrested in washington d.c. as the person who is speaking the truth that really need to be said so yes sometimes i ask myself that if i've sort of gone backwards there i was twenty one years old working for the united nations i had a very exciting job traveling all around the world and i just felt like. it was a very cushy job but i wasn't really able to solve problems when i saw them because of the bureaucracy of the united nations so i'd see these terrible problems like one of the first things i started out with was. watching these fake doctors come into small african villages

drones are enormously various. the term drone is very old. in terms of whether we should use the word, we've been using it. this is good with aircraft going back for two thirds of a century at this point. it's not a new term. it's been moved over this technology. so we understood in the context of work and understood the payload. a lot of talk today about whether drones a robot when actually these pilots behind them. i would raise the question to you, that doesn't resolve the question politically because even if you're not afraid of a robot, you can be afraid of the person who is operating drone. another difference, i'm a big or small? people think of drones is these big things. i too will not resolve the political question because although the smaller are less powerful, they are not carrying the payload. it is invisibility. in terms of fear of being spied on, it would be a bigger threat in a lot of people's minds. finally, the question had been armed or unarmed out of the question is killed or spied on. that i suggest to you is the one that

the usefulness of drones what they're not seeing is the impact the drones are having across the world on local tribes local communities where entire communities are being shattered so you may have one or two or three intended targets being killed the bad guys but then you have one hundred two hundred three hundred completely innocent people being killed women children and these are recorded you can look up the stanford university board new york university united nations there are many many reports on this confirming this i have interviewed people in waziristan to i have that information in the book now what that is doing is that creates hundreds of more enemies if you take out one enemy and you end up by creating one hundred one. and in his speaking of the debate as drones moved into the mainstream and they received quite a bit of attention in the us media lately i felt like the main point of these discussions was still whether or not the drones should kill american citizens whether or not they should kill at all without due process in absolute secrecy that's seem to be you know it re

so he is not using drones. he is waiting for somebody to give him and other law enforcement agencies some direction on the use of drones. it seems to me two issues. law enforcement use, and private use. and what is the expectation of privacy in those areas, and should we do anything or just wait? mr. calabrese, there's been comments made that the court should make these decisions about the fourth amendment, whichcourts have been doing, applying what is lawful or not lawful under the fourth amendment should the courts be the answer for solving this issue of drones and the fourth amendment? >> well, i think that your legislation does a very good job of creating a careful balance. something that congress is particularly good at and the courts are not always particularly good at. we -- when we think about how we would want to use a drone, it's clear that most of the uses, finding a missing person, fighting a forest fire, are not uses that particularly implicate the fourth amendment in your legislation is very caref

has done, less than 20 of them were not by drones. 97% of them were by drones. and the fact of the matter is, you're more -- >> rose: what is it? 95? >> 95% were conducted by drones. and if other states emulate u.s. practice and lower the threshold for which they'll decide to use military force and follow our emulated practice, that would be a dangerous world. >> rose: go ahead. somebody, anybody jump in. >> i was going to agree with that. that's a very, very important point that we need to take into account. i would also just point to one other thing which i think micah may want to pick up on as well. when talking about the raid on osama bin laden, president mentioned that it depended on a very substantial infrastructure in afghanistan. somethat that a lot of people don't realize about drones is that that effectiveness of that policy also requires a infrastructure. the drones are controlled from places like the air force base in nevada or places in upstate new york but they're flown from bases that are actually forward deployed very close to the target. so ther

so he is not using drones. waiting for somebody to give him and other law enforcement agencies some direction on the use of drones. so, seems to me two issues. law enforcement use, and private use. and what is the expectation of privacy? in those areas? and should we do anything about it or just wait? >> mr. calabrese, let me ask you, there's been commentses made that the courts should make these decisions about -- the fourth amendment, which the courts have been dying, apply what is lawful, what is not lawful under the fourth amendment. should the courts be the answer for solving this issue of drones and the fourth amendment? >> well, i think that your legislation does a very good job of creating a careful balance, something that congress is particularly good at and the courts are not always particularly good at. we would think how we would want to use a drone, it's clear that most of the uses, finding a missing person, fighting a forest fire, are not uses that particularly implicate the fourth amendment, and

ok more of it in washington is the drone policy working what dividends is it producing. because of the art obama's there's a lot given is not. right not a lot no no it's become much more discriminating in the last several months certainly whether that continues to be the case and i think it will be. the value of the drone program his not been just to take out the high profile al-qaeda types taliban types that's not been the purpose of it it's been mainly to disrupt the operations of the insurgency as they mount a tax cut coming across the border in other words they have to always be conscious of the fact that if they're out in the open if if they're if they are the targets they're going to be hit let me say this i wrote a very strong editorial against the drones back in two thousand and seven and never thought i should say an op-ed in the washington post and which i argued against the use because i said it's going to turn the pakistani public against that and the cost and benefits didn't work out that was at a time when we were actually we had a lot of collateral damage

to acquire i mean you know you take i mean so you know the drone the use of drone policy in my humble opinion is nothing but an art of failure it has to be revisited it has we have to have a kind of a discussion we have we have to bring in the pakistani army we have to bring in the baggage very civilly and government and really create some stake for them you see and that's what we're that's where we are i mean if we if we want them to be part be a responsible stakeholder if i can bring the phrase from from us china relations are here if we have to make progress done in a responsible stakeholder then perhaps we can be more effective but more important than that what we are not doing in pakistan is that we're having we're not having a dialogue about getting partly sunny government a comprehensive security and economic. assistance to do it in order for them to really stabilize the government now as long as the government is not going to be stabilized drone policy is not going to be any successful any more successful tomorrow than it is today ok martin you had a lot of sad dam arvin you w

conducted its first ever drone strike from british soil that's to say they controlled a drone from adrone center actually in wedding ten before all drone operations were mostly control from an american base in nevada the british forces and tonight reaper drone to support its troops in afghanistan helmand province r.t. international correspondent sara firth has more. well the world's military drones used to be directed from a small u.s. base in the volatile but no more after the carried out its first joint strike in afghanistan launched from u.k. soil and an area based in lincolnshire not many official details have been released about the drone strike and nor are many likely to be given the level of secrecy surrounding the ministry of defense have confirmed that one of their reproduction is controlled by pilots from thirteen squadron an area affording to in lincolnshire fired a weapon supporting u.k. treats only ground in afghanistan now this is cause huge concern amongst and campaign is at a recent protest here in the cave the organizers had said that they see this is a sign that the

the navy's goal is to use these drones to attack military targets. >>> cal fire is using drones to monitor spots. peta uses them to keep an eye on hunters, and these days, your neighbors might even have one. kpix 5's allen martin shows us the legal way that people could be spying on you. >> with the homeowner's permission, we launched our drone and shot this video from the backyard, never getting that close to the fence line yet clearly you can see right into the next door neighbor's yards. we bought this drone at the brookstone store at the mall for a little over $300. the company's web site says it has sold more than 66,005 of these things. it comes with two hd cameras, one at the bottom, one at the front and you control it using an app on your ipad or smart phone. even hobbyists admit the cool factor of having your very own drone comes with privacy concerns. >> i see on internet people doing things they shouldn't be doing. >> the drones really range in shiez, everything from the size of a small insect to the size of a jet aircraft. >> jennifer lynch sh an attorney with the electronic fr

but in the end they love the drone program. they don't want to use it and i think obama views himself in this lincolnesque mold of a benefit -- benevolent dictator because i will make it stronger. that's why he's instituting the legal frameworks under the -- that didn't exist under bush administration. >> john: can ya west will buy 700 for himself. we've seen a rise in ultra nationalism throughout europe. the most recently in london in the wake of the killing of the soldier last week by what appears to be terrorists. there have been marches at mosques throughout the u.k. how concerning is ultra nationalism and islam ma phobia to the people you talk with? >> it is very concerning because you never really know at any given moment what you may be a target of some retaliation. even though you have nothing to do with it. i think we need to remember muslims are not monolithic. it is not that they attacked us or they killed this poor soldier in the london streets. muslims are also victimized by the same ideology. today, tule, incident

drone strikes overseas. we will speak with a longtime friend who knew him growing up in raleigh, north carolina. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. in a major policy address on thursday, president obama defended the secret overseas drone war but said the u.s. cannot continue waging what he described as a boundless global war on terror. obama's comments came one day after attorney general eric holder confirmed u.s. drone strikes had killed four u.s. citizens in yemen and pakistan. >> simply put, the strikes have saved lives. moreover, america's actions are illegal. we were attacked on 9/11. within a week, congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of force. under domestic law and international law, the united states is at war with al qaeda. the taliban, and their associated forces. >> according to a gun to newspapers, and the speech appeared to expand those who could be targeted in drone strikes and other undisclosed legal -- legal actions. up until thursday,

we think about the drone war while with him on khan in general he really has transformed. how voting is perceived in pakistan we see the youth come out on the streets in a way that's unprecedented even though i was sitting here across the world social media was blowing up in for graphics they had all sorts of different tools that you could use to learn more about the election and that i think is. doing is that he radically transformed the population especially the youth and turned them into voter apathy and he turned that voter apathy around so we see a lot of people coming out that would not have come out before so that's props to him for doing that and he is he is ethnically push tune so he's used to his advantage when it comes to talking about drone policy since those take place in the tribal territories and also his party one all the seats in. which is the closest area to the tribal territories in general so that is huge when it comes to drone policy but we also have to think about how feasible his stance is about drone policy i think that he is on the brink of a dange

manufacturers yep policy make dot com defense contractors who make surveillance and predator drones are also shelling out cash tons of it to be eligible to community on the one hand it's great that the movement is growing stronger with its members recognized as ordinary americans just as they should be but you see these donors want to protect their interests and they can potentially hold the gay rights groups hostage to do just that so is accepting money from these war corporations tainting the message and progress of this movement and moreover by siding with the giant world profiteers r l g b t rights groups isolating themselves from a larger movement fighting for human rights and equality across the board the same equality that people fight when they see cia drones attacking their land and killing their families and until we recognize that breaking the set. i. can ghaziabad in gaza even ghazi for what seems like the hundredth week in a row continues to dominate the corporate media this along with news the emerging i.r.s. scandal has been the perfect storm for washington's media pu

we think about the drone war while with him on khan in general he really has transformed. how voting is perceived in pakistan we see the youth come out on the streets in a way that's unprecedented even though i was sitting here across the world social media was blowing up in for graphics they had all sorts of different tools that you could use to learn more about the election and i think is. doing is that he radically transformed the population especially the youth and turn them into voter apathy he turned that voter apathy around so we see a lot of people coming out that would not have come out before so that's props to him for doing that and he is he is ethnically push tune so he's used to his advantage when it comes to talking about drone policy since those take place in the tribal territories and also his party one all the seats in. which is the closest area to the tribal territories in general so that is huge when it comes to drone policy but we also have to think about how feasible his stance is about drone policy i think that he is on the brink of danger when he say

policy on the way that drones are used. there's a lot of domestic considerations when drones are being us autoed when it comes to americans towards their country but there's no doubt that it raises questions about international law and the use of drones that violates the sovereignty of other countries, the collateral damage that it causes in many of the cities and villages in yemen and pakistan that we have seen in the past. there's going to be those in the middle east that watch this to see if this is more for domestic political consumption in the united states or only about americans overseas or will this produce a tangible shift in the way that the united states is conducting drone strikes in the worst part of the world but also has caused tremendous civilian casualties. >> as part of this, michael, you reported in a piece just yesterday that some of the information, the fbi was not even aware of. >> right. i mean, if you want a real example of the secrecy that surrounds this program and just how absurd it gets at times,

through the targeted drone program. it was interesting to me the president only addressed one of them. and that was part of what made that moment so intense was that medea benjamin was talking about the elephant in the room, which is anwar al awlaki, it seems there's a reasonable and credible case that he was actively involved in plotting attacks against the u.s. no one has made that case about his 16-year-old son, and that part of what the drone program is was left unaddressed in the speech. >> well, it was only indirectly addressed in which the president said the killing of innocent civilians is an unfortunate and horrible side effect of any war. including this one. which is why he wanted to make sure he calibrated it down as tightly as he possibly could. i agree with you, chris. i think it was remarkable. i think it showed an aspect of president obama, barack obama, that people found appealing initially. and even though i said earlier he gave a spirited defense of the drone program and defense of domestic surveillanc

drone strike 18 months ago. despite the fact that as of yesterday, according to "the new york times," his name remained on the fbi's most wanted list. an fbi spokesman, kathleen wright said on wednesday, that it would be removed. joining me today, senior fellow at the center on budget and policy priorities and msnbc contributor, jared bernstein and heather mcgee head of deem 0s. and executive editor of msnbc.com and msnbc political analyst, richard wolffe and joining us from washington, is mark mazetti author of "the way of the knife." >> an experiment that's lasted more than a decade, do you think we've learned anything from that experiment? >> we've learned how to use armed drones in hundreds of occasions. i said that a little flippantly. the the experiment has been in manhunting and killing that really from around 2008 on has been a pretty entense campaign. primarily in pakistan, but also in yemen and elsewhere. what the president is apparently going to lay out today. is some sort of framework that he hopes w

colleges are now offering courses on drones from piloting drones to engineering drones of the future students are taught these skills in a growing industry an in-depth look at drone one i one coming up on the show. what's friday may third eight pm and watching d.c. i'm margaret how old you are watching our t.v. . we're out late less than six months past the last us presidential election and more than three and a half years until the next one and this horse race has already begun that's fate tonight c.-span launches its road to the white house twenty sixteen coverage and other news outlets have already started speculating about who those contenders are for the next presidency despite the fact that we've only reached one hundred days in this president's term so what's with the obsession with the race for the presidency is there nothing else going on in the world well maybe it's just easier to cover a horse race politics than the actual policy debates but even if media outlets are looking to specialize in election coverage rather than the day to day there is an election coming up much s

most drone deaths are happening in pakistan. the figures can't be completely reliable but it is estimated that since 2004 as many as 2,700 militants have died in drone strikes. estimates of civilian deaths range from 250 to 800. elizabeth palmer looked at all of this for us in islamabad. >> reporter: a vast majority of pakistanis resent american drone strikes. shahzad akbar, a former prosecutor turned human rights lawyer, has collected hard evidence of civilian casualties from drone strikes. these are what's left of the missile that's fired from the drone. this month he won a landmark legal victory. pakistan's high court ruled that drone strikes are illegal and issued a clear order to pakistan's government. >> you have to give a sterb stern warning to the united states to shut down the drones and if they don't then you are within your rights under the international law to shoot the drone down. >> reporter: pakistan's shooting them down is unlikely. the new prime minister, nawaz sharif, has said he wants to improve relations with

drone strikes. but at the same time, you have seen in pakistan this tremendous backlash to the drone program. and in 2011, especially, great sort of divisions within the american government about the potential costs of the drone strikes. now even though we've seen the decline in drone strikes in pakistan, you've also seen last year, there was a big spike in operations in yemen. so some of the american operations have just short of shifted from pakistan to yemen. the obama administration really came into office and after a year in office, escalated the war in yemen and it's still going on. >> ben, there's also the question, i mean i think when we talk about sort of, how much we are at the beginning of this conversationing or maybe in the middle as far as u.s. counterterrorism policy post 9/11, one of the reasons i think this conversation hasn't happened is because of the sort of political realities, which is to say republicans have had a very hard time figuring out their position on this, right? i me

with the drone program, it got to a ridiculous degree.we knew it was happening in pakistan and yemen, the white house would not even comment on it at all or use the word. it is part of a culture of secrecy. i also think president obama and his advisers are very concerned that if there is some sort of a terrorist attack against the united states that the republicans would eat him alive. today we have known about the whole time." is partly based on a fear of another attack, a part of it is that the republicans are engaged in such a situation in the way that they attack the president that we do not have any legitimate opposition in congress that is calling the to accounts. tavis: so you are telling me than the politics or political theification for putting bush drug program on steroids? i am not being funny. you wrote the book. they make the bush administration look like child's play when it comes to drone years. -- use. >> i think when he came to power, he realized he would not be to close guantÁnamo. par 3 also, the republicans are blockin

would you use a drone and would you not use a drone.ela, let me start withangle--andrew, let me start with you. >> the drones have been used in a way that i don't see as appropriate. one of the property things that we lament drone strikes we use it when it's against americans but it has been proven to create blow back in these other countries which is a serious serious problems. it per pits perpetuates this endless war. >> cenk: david. >> the president is trying to get to exigent circumstances. we authorize authorities to shoot and kill people if they think it's necessary in the line of duty. that's what the president is trying to get at. and i think as commander in chief he's got the authority to do that, distasteful and troubling and abuseed as it might be. the problem is i don't know of any technology and it may be in my colleague here on the panel can help, but i don't know any military technology that works that we haven't rejected outright. we have nuclear weapons canons, my expectation is that drones are going to be a permanent p

what the debate is not about, talk a lot about drones, the problem is not the use of. of drones. the problem is not targeted killings. if we are in a real war with germany or japan in world war ii and we have developed a weapon in which one could only kill a single person rather than engage in mass bombings in dresden, everybody would say that is wonderful, that is legal, that's good. so it is not that targeted killings are bad. targeted killings, when they are lawful and legitimate can be good. begins to-- and this fit with what philip is saying -- is that there's a fundamental disagreement around the world, experienced when i was a legal adviser, as to whether the u.s. is really in a war at all. we are about the only country to world that really thinks we are in an armed conflict with al qaeda. i spent four years as legal adviser in the bush administration engaged in a dialogue that was picked off by the 9/11 commission. one of the 9/11 commission recommendations was that we needed to work with our allies to develop common standards -- in those cases for detention -- based on c