An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, from the French UAV Squadron, waits to be flown, here July 11. The French UAV is very similar to the U.S. Predator MQ-1 UAV.
(Senior Airman Felicia Juenke/U.S. Air Force)
The legality of the United States targeted killing and drone program is big news these days. This week we got more of a clear sense of the Obama administration's legal case for drone use when NBC News reported on a Justice Department White Paper that laid out the legal justifications of that program. It will surely inspire more calls for the United States to clarify the legality of drone use in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan.
But it's easy to get lost in the legalese. What if we tried to imagine what it must be like living in a city under threat of our drone program? The thought of those under constant threat led one law student to think of the United States drone program as a design problem.
Asher J. Kohn, a law student at Washington University at Saint Louis, recently audited an architecture class where he decided to imagine a drone-proof city.
What would that look like? It would be gated for starters. And fitted with a high tech code that got you into the safety of the city.
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The show is a co-production of WNYC Radio and Public Radio International, in collaboration with New York Times Radio and WGBH Boston.
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Comments [1]
The biggest fear about drones is not really about drones at all. It's the government employees allowed to justify killing someone from such a distance without proof that the person was involved in something nefarious. At least James Bond had to infiltrate an organization before he "applied" his license to kill.
What I would like to see is a drone pilot landing his craft in front of an oncoming freight train -ala Roy Schieder in Blue Thunder- before blindly executing someone without due process. Though I'm pretty sure such an action will result in Facebook replacing human pilots.
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