Drones in the right hands

Culture | June 30th, 2016

By Georgia Burnside

burnsidegeorgia@gmail.com

Over the past several years the drone industry has grown rapidly. The origin of much of this development was in North Dakota, as hundreds of businesses flock to the area to do research and development of unmanned aircraft and their accompanying technologies. The essential capital of drone development is the Grand Forks Air Force base, which has been flying exclusively drones since 2013.

There are many commercial uses for drones. Where they may not serve much of a purpose in densely populated areas, where they are seen as a privacy and safety issue, drones allow rural areas to be monitored more efficiently. Drones can be used to help monitor pipelines and wind turbines, help farmers keep track of livestock, gather data on crops, and even help fishermen locate their catch with greater accuracy and speed.

But until the commercial sale of drones is legal none of this will happen. Quentin Hardy from the New York Times states in his article on the growth of drone technology in North Dakota, “Right now, private sector drones are where personal computers were in the 1970s: a hobbyist technology waiting to become mainstream.” As long as the commercial use of drones is banned, the businesses in North Dakota are stuck in the research and development phase.

The largest and perhaps most wildly unregulated user of drones is the U.S. Air Force. Since the early 2000s the Air Force has been using unmanned aircraft for surveillance, and since then developed highly accurate and deadly weapons that can be controlled from thousands of miles away. But where technological advances rapidly increase, intelligence and concern for human rights fall behind.

In the award-winning documentary “Drone,” it is brought to light how the Air Force uses drones to hunt and kill suspected terrorists in Pakistan, using unreliable intelligence and showing little to no concern for civilian casualties. We hear testimony from those who piloted those drones and how the system is flawed and inhumane, as well as testimony from the villagers themselves, who lost family members during a drone strike.

Jonathan Borge Lie, the assistant director and producer of “Drone,” spoke of his loss of faith in the U.S Government over the duration of shooting this film. “There needs to be transparency, so we know how they are picking their targets…The other one is accountability. There have been so many errors, so many civilians that have been killed; there hasn’t been a single instance of accountability.” Unfortunately there are still some voices in the U.S. Government that believe killing a terrorist is worth any cost.

What if it were at the cost of American citizens? One of the most powerful points made in “Drone” is made by Hina Shamsi, the director of the ACLU National Security Project.

“Those who are okay with the United States wielding this authority have to ask themselves what their response would be if Russia, China, Iran claimed the authority to target and kill enemies of the state without identifying who they are, what standards apply, what factual basis there is, what civilian casualties occur. This is a precedent that we are setting for others to follow.”

What would we think if our enemies started conducting drone strikes on our own civilians under the same pretenses? How would we be different from them?

There are lots of questions to be asked about the misuse of drone technology, but the question that the drone companies in North Dakota should be asking is: How are drones banned for commercial use when the government misuses them so wildly itself?

Watch the full interview at: http://vikingnews.org/1166/showcase/interview-dron...

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