MEDIA ROOTS — Obama’s Chief Counterterrorism Advisor, or, as Jeremy Scahill puts it, “for all practical purposes, President Obama’s hit man or assassination czar,” John Brennan has been exposed by the declassification of a 30-page document, wherein he’s asked about drone strikes and targeted killings in the US.

Brennan did not rule out the possibility, and began to lay the groundwork for setting legal language precedent and codification of targeted assassinations of US citizens. As Scahill points out, there is little to no push-back from Congress when Brennan’s responses approach the absurd.

Messina

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TRUTH OUT — According to the Wall Street Journal (in a February 15 article), Obama’s nominee to head the CIA, John Brennan, ambiguously left open the possibility that US citizens could be targeted for assassination in the United States:

John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s nominee to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency, didn’t rule out the use of unmanned drones in the U.S. when quizzed about the matter.

Mr. Brennan’s written answer came in response to questions from the Senate intelligence committee following his confirmation hearing last week. The Senate intelligence committee released a declassified version of Mr. Brennan’s responses in a 30-page document Friday.

Mr. Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism chief, was asked, “Could the Administration carry out drone strikes inside the United States?” His reply was: “This Administration has not carried out drone strikes inside the United States and has no intention of doing so.”

A few days back, Democracy Now analyzed excerpts from the Brennan Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on his nomination, including this one:

SEN. RON WYDEN: Let me ask you several other questions with respect to the president’s authority to kill Americans. I’ve asked you how much evidence the president needs to decide that a particular American can be lawfully killed and whether the administration believes that the president can use this authority inside the United States. In my judgment, both the Congress and the public need to understand the answers to these kind of fundamental questions. What do you think needs to be done to ensure that members of the public understand more about when the government thinks it’s allowed to kill them, particularly with respect to those two issues, the question of evidence and the authority to use this power within the United States?

JOHN BRENNAN: I have been a strong proponent of trying to be as open as possible with these programs, as far as our explaining what we’re doing. What we need to do is optimize transparency on these issues, but at the same time optimize secrecy and the protection of our national security. I don’t think that it’s one or the other. It’s trying to optimize both of them. And so, what we need to do is make sure we explain to the American people what are the thresholds for action, what are the procedures, the practices, the processes, the approvals, the reviews. The Office of Legal Counsel advice establishes the legal boundaries within which we can operate. It doesn’t mean that we operate at those out of boundaries. And, in fact, I think the American people will be quite pleased to know that we’ve been very disciplined, very judicious, and we only use these authorities and these capabilities as a last resort.

If ever there was the epitome of obfuscating bureaucratic blather, Brennan achieved it in pointedly not ruling out the killing of US citizens on US soil.

Jeremy Scahill, author of the best selling “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army,” commented about the exchange posted above at Brennan’s confirmation:

Well, you know, if you listen to John Brennan, I mean, it’s like he’s talking about buying a used car and what, you know, sort of little gadgets and whistles it has on it. He used “optimize”? Ron Wyden was asking him about whether—about the extent of the CIA’s lethal authority against U.S. citizens, on U.S. soil and abroad. And, see, the problem is that while some questions were asked that are central questions, there was almost no follow-up. People wouldn’t push—senators wouldn’t push Brennan back when he would float things that were nonsensical or just gibberish, you know, or using terms like “we need to optimize this, we need to optimize that.” There was no sense that—I mean, remember, this is a guy who is, for all practical purposes, President Obama’s hit man or assassination czar.

Read more about John Brennan Doesn’t Rule Out Targeting Americans for Assassination in the United States.

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THE GUARDIAN — Prior to President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, a controversy erupted over reports that he intended to appoint John Brennan as CIA director. That controversy, in which I participated, centered around the fact that Brennan, as a Bush-era CIA official, had expressly endorsed Bush’s programs of torture (other than waterboarding) and rendition and also was a vocal advocate of immunizing lawbreaking telecoms for their role in the illegal Bush NSA eavesdropping program. As a result, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration, issuing a bitter letter blaming “strong criticism in some quarters prompted by [his] previous service with the” CIA.

This “victory” of forcing Brennan’s withdrawal proved somewhat Pyrrhic, as Obama then appointed him as his top counter-terrorism adviser, where he exerted at least as much influence as he would have had as CIA Director, if not more. In that position, Brennan last year got caught outright lying when he claimed Obama’s drone program caused no civilian deaths in Pakistan over the prior year. He also spouted complete though highly influential falsehoods to the world in the immediate aftermath of the Osama bin Laden killing, including claiming that bin Laden “engaged in a firefight” with Navy SEALS and had “used his wife as a human shield”. Brennan has also been in charge of many of Obama’s most controversial and radical policies, including “signature strikes” in Yemen – targeting people without even knowing who they are – and generally seizing the power to determine who will be marked for execution without any due process, oversight or transparency.

Read more about John Brennan’s extremism and dishonesty rewarded with CIA Director nomination.

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Image by Flicker user JimNTexas

MEDIA ROOTS – On this episode of Breaking the Set: Abby Martin talks about Obama’s kill list, which one official has called a macabre “baseball card” set of alleged “terrorists”; Andy Roth, Associate Director of Project Censored, talks about the danger of Obama’s drone wars on the year anniversary of the drone assassination that killed Anwar al-Aulaqi and his teenage son, both of which were American citizens.

Former CNN Investigative Reporter, Amber Lyon, discusses CNN’s corrupt media empire, calling into question a media establishment where censorship can be bought; BTS wraps up with a look at the upcoming elections in Venezuela, highlighting the successes and controversies that have led to this critical election.

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Record deaths by UAVs makes Obama “Drone King,” CNN paid by government of Bahrain to spread propaganda.

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MEDIA ROOTS – While privacy is certainly the dominant concern surrounding the controversial use of drones in this country, the lack of technological barriers to entry is the grease on the slippery slope. However, despite privacy concerns, the defense industry will continue its voracious lobbying effort to make sure drone technology becomes increasingly accessible to corporate commercialization. Abby Martin of Media Roots and RT reports on the use of domestic drones in the US:

Abby Martin – Domestic Drones 101 for RT

4^th Amendment to the United States Constitution

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It is reasonable to assert that in the course of your friendly local police department launching a drone over the neighborhood every chimney, window and blade of grass in the neighborhood becomes “the place to be searched.” Many court cases have discussed and ruled that privacy is not protected for incriminating activity that exists from a public vantage point. For the most part, these decisions were always considered with respect to the naked human eye. However, drones are electronic eyes that extend the reach of the human eye making the right to be secure in your person, house, papers and effects substantially more difficult by the day.

Kyllo v. United States

Federal agents from a public vantage point used a thermal-imaging device to search Danny Kyllo’s residence for heat emissions not visible to the naked eye. In 2001, the Supreme Court explained, “[to] explore the details of the home that would previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion, the surveillance is a search and is presumptively unreasonable without a warrant.”  The decision asserted Americans have an expected privacy that cannot be violated even by technology that does not enter the home. This decision contrasted with the lower courts assertion that the device could not “penetrate walls or windows to reveal conversations or human activities.” This oxy-moronic contrast acknowledges that walls and windows are off limits.

Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the majority decision and his words are prophetic. Justice Scalia specifically tailored a “firm but bright” line drawn by the Fourth Amendment as the entrance to the house. Justice Scalia described this interpretation as “the long view” of the Fourth Amendment to specifically protect against more sophisticated future technology. Dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens argued the line would be crossed as soon as this surveillance technology becomes available to the public. While Kyllo v. United States is not drone specific it lifts the veil on the inherent capacity of drones to violate privacy with their electronic eyes and the potential rapid assimilation of drone technology into the commercial and private market.

Drone Commercialization

Though chaperoning Susie on her first date and having a drone dive bomb a pizza onto your front porch are gallows humor, the feasibility and potential use of drones for commercial use is real and ongoing. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) was instrumental in crafting legislative language directing the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to expedite approval of police departments and universities to deploy drones under five pounds this year. Further, this language sets forth the plans for larger drones to fly the American skies in 2015.

Companies previously shy of entering the drone market due to FAA ambiguity on drones in American airspace are now all clamoring to get a piece of the evil seeping from Pandora’s box. Drone technology was born from war and the companies migrating from weapons of war to “softer” domestic applications still maintain an emphasis on spy and weapons capabilities. Once American police departments and universities are saturated with drones and their long term service contracts the technology will creep into more “innocuous” commercial applications. It is not hard to imagine this evolution ending with Billy, living in the year 2050, building a spy drone from a kit in the garage to spy on his neighbors.

Technological Barriers

This evolution of technology and the increasing accessibility to the average person takes on several dimensions of concern. It is easy to extrapolate Billy’s neighborhood spy drone wreaking havoc on nude sun bathers enjoying the privacy of their back yard or snapping a few photos through Mr. and Mrs. Jones window as they fail to close the blinds in their lust to embrace. A look into the future of drone technology we find hundreds of sovereign states across the world developing advanced war capable drones to launch against America or other states with which they disagree. It is important to understand that weapons proliferation is a collective response to technological monopoly.

A look at nuclear technology reveals technological barriers to entry serve as a counter-balance to proliferation. Because nuclear technology is high science and the materials necessary are only accessible to advanced societies, humans are only able to delay nuclear proliferation. As nuclear technology and materials are shared amongst “friends,” the barriers to entry are demolished. The result of this proliferation today is the placement of social barriers to assign who is worthy of nuclear technology and who is not. These social barriers will only delay the inevitable. Drones being significantly less advanced technologically than nukes will rapidly proliferate beyond Western domination and the Earth may plummet into global drone warfare.

Chris Martin for Media Roots

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SALON – In November 2010, a police lieutenant from Parma, Ohio, asked Vanguard Defense Industries if the Texas-based drone manufacturer could mount a “grenade launcher and/or 12-gauge shotgun” on its ShadowHawk drone for U.S. law enforcement agencies. The answer was yes.

Last month, police officers from 10 public safety departments around the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area gathered at an airfield in southern Maryland to view a demonstration of a camera-equipped aerial drone — first developed for military use — that flies at speeds up to 20 knots or hovers for as long as an hour.

In short, the business of marketing drones to law enforcement is booming. Now that Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open up U.S. airspace to unmanned vehicles, the aerial surveillance technology first developed in the battle space of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan is fueling a burgeoning market in North America. And even though they’re moving from war zones to American markets, the language of combat and conflict remains an important part of their sales pitch — a fact that ought to concern citizens worried about the privacy implications of domestic drones.

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Photo by Flickr user Jim n Texas