#disposition matrix

“One thing that particularly troubled him was that Americans had begun to remove the human element from the assassination process. One of the few things known about the Kill List is that it’s compiled in part by algorithm.In 2014, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said in a public debate, “We kill people based on metadata.“    

“The essence of Faisal bin Ali Jaber v. Barack Hussein Obama et al. is that when we kill abroad, even by mistake, even in an undeclared war, this is foreign policy and therefore outside of judicial authority. This left the Jabers’ claim “nonjusticiable,” i.e., literally outside the reach of the law.”

“We wiped out the Geneva Convention by creating the unlawful enemy combatant, a term that simply means a person not protected by the Geneva Convention”

When can a government kill its own people?

R.I.P. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki. He would be a young man now. Abdulrahman was killed alongside his 17-year old cousin by a U.S. drone strike on October 14, 2011. He and his father were both U.S. citizens killed by drone strikes. Abdulrahman’s murder has been called a “mistake” by the government, but no one has been held accountable for the loss of his life.

The Obama Administration, with the complicity of Attorney General Eric Holder, released a white paper justifying the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (“drones”) against any target in the world they have deemed a threat (through a secret process governed by a secret court) including American citizens. Worse still, targets are chosen by the “disposition matrix,” a complex database which utilizes coded algorithms to ascertain threats based upon surveillance acquired by the NSA’s illegal programs.  #lesseroftwoevils

tl;dr The paper concludes that the government’s interest in protecting its citizens from imminent attacks will outweigh the target’s interest in avoiding “erroneous deprivation of [his] life” which is exactly what happened to an innocent 16-year-old American named Abdulrahman al-Awlaki.

A US federal judge dismissed a lawsuit filed against the government by the families of three American citizens killed by drones in Yemen, saying senior officials cannot be held personally responsible for money damages for the act of conducting war. (x) Let us be clear: if this an act of conducting war, the war is clearly against all people who oppose American Imperialism, along with their loved ones, whether they be violent opposition or not. And in this case, the act of war was implemented against an American child.

The Disposition Matrix is a database that United States officials describe as a "next-generation capture/kill list". Developed by the Obama Administration beginning in 2010, the "Disposition Matrix" goes beyond existing kill lists, and creates a blueprint for tracking, capturing, rendering, or killing suspected enemies of the US government. It is intended to become a permanent fixture of American policy. The process determining criteria for killing is not public [...]

The Post noted that as of their publication, the number of civilian and militant casualties resulting from American drone strikes would soon exceed the number of people killed in the September 11th attacks.

Why?

"We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us... It’s a necessary part of what we do. . . . We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’” – Unnamed senior Obama Administration official

[L]es machines ne se contentent plus d’exécuter les mises à mort, elles les décident. Cette robotisation de la hiérarchie militaire pose des questions juridiques, encore sans réponse, et lourdes d’implications éthiques. Si des algorithmes ont à la fois la capacité d’établir qui doit être tué et d’exécuter cette décision via des robots, qui peut être tenu responsable du meurtre ? [...] La « kill list », que l’on connaît depuis peu sous la formule euphémique de « Disposition Matrix », suggère que les modèles informatiques peuvent servir à prendre ce type de décision. Comme le souligne le journaliste du Washington Post Greg Miller : « La matrice contient les noms des personnes soupçonnées de terrorisme. Elle répertorie pour chacun d’entre eux l’ensemble des ressources qui sont mobilisées pour les traquer, y compris les actes d’accusation scellés et les opérations secrètes. » [...] Confier la prise de décision à des systèmes automatisés produira de nouveaux rapports de pouvoir pour lesquels nous ne disposons pas encore de cadres juridiques ou de modes de résistance politique adaptés. Il est peut-être plus important encore de noter que nous n’avons pas de compréhension collective suffisante de la manière dont ces décisions peuvent être prises et fondées.

… Berjawi and Sakr both travelled to Somalia after claiming that they were being harassed by police in the UK, and were then stripped of their British citizenship. Several months later they were killed. The exact nature of any intelligence that the British government may have shared with Washington before their names were apparently entered into the disposition matrix is deeply secret: the UK has consistently refused to either confirm or deny that it shares intelligence in support of drone strikes, arguing that to do so would damage both national security and relations with the US government.

More than 12 months after Sakr’s death, his father, Gamal, a businessman who settled in London 37 years ago, still cannot talk about his loss without breaking down and weeping. He alleges that one of his two surviving sons has since been harassed by police, and suspects that this boy would also have been stripped of his citizenship had he left the country. “It’s madness,” he cries. “They’re driving these boys to Afghanistan. They’re making everything worse.”