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Google helps Pentagon analyze military drone footage–employees “outraged”
- DLA 9y agoLove how “some employees” at Google are bent out of shape that Google would help the DoD. To those employees: it’s cool, just sit back, write code, drink your fancy coffees and be self absorbed while patriots defend you and do the hard work of defending freedoms.
- IntronExon 9y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-reveal-uncomfortable-truth-us-is-often-unsure-about-who-will-die.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/drone-strikes-... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone-strikes-kill-1147 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/nov/24/-sp-us-drone... Whatever you think of civilian deaths, don’t forget that we assasinated 6 US citizens without a trial. Freedoms my ass. What about the freedom of people attending a wedding or receiving medical treatment not to be killed? If this was another country doing the same to the US, would your non-argument hold water?
- riku_iki 9y agoWars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs.
- tibyat 9y agobecause wars would have far fewer casualties without firebombing and nukes
- MertsA 9y agoIn fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states. We have the national guard for a reason. Capturing those targets wasn't an objective, the government wanted them dead and it didn't afford any of those American citizens the rights laid out in the constitution. How is that any different than murder?
- lotu 9y agoJapanese internment camps? I’m sure at that scale people died that would not have. Next given the scale of wwii I’m sure there were us citizens fighting for the axis powers. The main difference is we lacked the ability to track, research, and target individuals like we do today.
- IntronExon 9y agoWhile those camps were morally reprehensible and constitutionally indefensible, the goal was not to kill people. Can we at least agree that the whole , “A secret court has ordered your death from the sky,” thing is a lot more purposefully murderous? Not capture, not detain, just kill.
- anigbrowl 9y agoWell that's the whole problem with the War on Terror, isn't it - the designation of who's an enemy is rather unilateral.
- anigbrowl 9y agoWell that's the whole problem with the War on Terror, isn't it - the designation of who's an enemy is rather unilateral. At least in Al-Awlaki's case he was advertising his ultra-militant intentions about as clearly as possible.
- riku_iki 9y ago> where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? alleged criminals are killed on the streets almost every day. From legal standpoint, what is difference between them and terrorists in your opinion?
- dragonwriter 9y ago> In fairness, can you name a time in WW2 where the US government intentionally killed US citizens without regard to due process? Not off the top of my head, but the Supreme Court decision in Ex Parte Quirin, From WWII, makes entirely clear that enemy combatants who are US citizens are not entitled to special treatment as compared to enemy combatants who are not citizens. > There is supposed to be a strict separation of never using the military against the citizens of the united states There is no legal or historical basis for this claim; in fact, the Constitution explicitly envisions the use of military force to suppress insurrection, which is ordinarily carried out by civilians; it is clearly intended that the government not act extrajudicially against persons (not just civilians) within the jurisdiction of the US when access to the civilians justice system is available, but enemy combatants, regardless of citizenship, at least when outside the practical reach of the US civilian justice system, don't seem to have any protection from the application of military power at any time in history. Most of the people targeted, individually or generally, by the US military in the Civil War were US citizens, for instance.
- dragonwriter 9y ago> Wars always have casualties. Technology helps to reduce them. In WW2 it was normal to wipe whole cities using bombs. Large scale aerial bombardment of cities in WWII was enabled by advances in technology in the period shortly before that period, so it's really not a good thing to bring up to support a blanket “technology helps reduce them” claim about casualties.
- riku_iki 9y agoStill I believe it is hard to ignore improvements in modern weapons precision.
- IntronExon 9y agoOh for sure, you can get much more bang for your buck out of a swarm of MIRV’ed ICBMs carrying megatons of hydrogen bombs than bayonets and muskets. I mean, just try ignoring intersecting blast waves and thermal pulses! And chlorine gas? Pffft, piss on your socks and you can breathe through them but try that shit with VX! Get it?
- riku_iki 9y agobecause superpowers have ICBMs, we don't see large scale wars with 10s millions of casualties for 70 years.
- IntronExon 9y agohttps://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-million-people-in-37-victim-nations-since-world-war-ii/5492051 https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mil... That’s tens of millions, and I’m being generous in ignoring how you’ve moved the goalposts. Your thesis is simply unsupportable, sorry. Besides, we don’t know what the future holds, but in terms of raw possibilities we can now end all human life on Earth thanks to technology. That’s also new in the last 70 years. Hopefully we’ll never do it, but we could. Thst also flies in the face of the “technology reduces casualties” business. Of course, so does all of human history for thousands of years, but hey, let’s keep it simple.
- oldcynic 9y agoTechnology progresses fastest during wartime. Without WW2 and Enigma, who knows when, or even if, computers might have developed? 20 years later, 40? Technology of the airplane went from the first 200kts monoplanes, through to the hard limits of propeller aviation, and the birth of jets and rocketry by the end of the war. Without the development of tacho bomb sights (eg Norden and Mk XIV), mass bombing would not have been worthwhile, as it was too inaccurate. They would lead to inertial guidance systems, enabling the ICBM. Technology was the enabler of most of those deaths.
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop using HN for ideological arguments? It's not ok. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tibyat 9y ago/r/thedonald is leaking
- craftyguy 9y ago> while patriots defend you and do the hard work of defending freedoms. You probably don't realize that there are war veterans, and active service members (e.g. National Guard, Reserves) working for tech companies like Google. But then again, such realization would be a real downer to your agenda.
- dang 9y agoPlease do not post ideological flame tropes to Hacker News. They're predictable, and so do not gratify intellectual curiosity. They lead to flamewars, which destroy the container here. We all have an interest in not letting that happen. Please (re-)read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. The good things about HN are all fragile. The default forces of the internet all tend to destroy them. Everyone posting here is responsible to take care of the container—just like you wouldn't litter in a city park, or set one on fire.
- peterwwillis 9y agoI think this is a good example of how their old ethos of "Do no evil" was a narrow-minded fantasy by privileged white people who never had to face the world they were born into. Sitting in your expensive apartment (raising rents so that the former neighbors can no longer afford to live here), sipping your Starbucks (a global commodity dependent on trade deals to somewhat stabilize paying farmers around the world about a dollar a day), eating your Blue Apron salad (sourced by illegal immigrants who have to work for peanuts with virtually no rights or social services because their livelihood is constantly in jeopardy), sitting at your desk in your clothes with your gadgets (which were all made overseas by poor people for pennies in order for them to send money back to their families), tweeting away (absorbing and perpetuating the consumer-driven media machine infused into all of our lives). We do evil all the time. Then the military comes along and says, "Hey, remember how your silent consent helped a political machine fight wars built on lies to drive poor Islamic people to want to kill and drive out any foreigners from their countries? We need you to help us kill them now." And you say, how dare you. Romans lived a pampered privileged life that was literally only logistically possible by an army of slaves doing everything for them. We're not so different - the slaves are just less visible now.
- utopcell 9y agoI am either an evil person for paying my rent, drinking coffee, eating a salad and reading wikipedia on my phone while dressed, or you are a moron.
- whatshisface 9y agoYour argument is basically an encouragement to participate in the tradgedy of the commons. Just because other people are already doing evil doesn't give you an excuse to do more! None of the things you listed are fundamentally evil, they're just arenas in which the specific bad ethics of other individuals can play out. Other similar arenas include everything else in life. Is that a license to join in? No, it's all the more reason to make sure that everything you do is good.
- hashkb 9y ago> Just because other people are already doing evil doesn't give you an excuse to do more! The excuse is that you're at a disadvantages if you don't. In a world of 99% cheaters, the 1% who follow the rules and suffer are acting irrationally.
- dang 9y agoComments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16532112. Not the flamewars though. All: we eventually ban accounts that propagate flamewars like these. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for how HN is intended to be used, and then please use it that way.