Hacked Drone
Sunday, October 9th, 2011For all who care to take the time to think on the matter, the recent attack on two Americans in Yemen – alleged Al-Qaeda operatives killed by an unmanned “drone” aircraft, with no trial or other sort of due process – is a rather disturbing new precedent. Among other issues (like the sheer principle of the act, or rather the sheer civil liberty principles it violated), there’s the question of what happens when other nations have a similar military capability and want to use it in the same way, i.e. to kill on foreign soil persons they perceive as dangerous. That is even the subject of an article in today’s (Sunday) New York Times: Coming Soon: The Drone Arms Race. (Killer quote therein: “Is this the world we want to live in? Because we’re creating it.”)
And then there is this tweet from the German newsmagazine Stern:
Seemingly little relief there: that first sentence after all translates as “Out-of-control death machines?” But the larger point is that US drone aircraft have now fallen prey to the same modern vexation that afflicts so many of us: computer viruses. (more…)
