Obama's Drone Kills 16-Year-Old Pakistani Boy Days After He Attends Anti-Drone Organizing Meeting

A group of Pakistanis met in Islamabad late last month to discuss the impact of U.S. drone strikes in their communities. One of the attendees was a 16-year-old boy named Tariq Aziz, who had volunteered to learn photography to begin documenting drone strikes near his home. Within 72 hours of the meeting, Aziz was killed in a U.S. drone strike. His 12-year-old cousin was also killed in the Oct. 31 attack. "People were aware of the threat to them. Yet they volunteered—Tariq, in particular, because he, at his age in that remote community, was familiar with computers, was excited about the idea of being able to document the civilian casualties," says reporter Pratap Chatterjee, who met Aziz days before he was killed. As part of a larger investigation on the CIA-led U.S. covert drone war, Chatterjee and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that drone strikes in Pakistan have killed at least 392 civilians, including 175 children. "I question as to whether the CIA is really attempting to identify people before they kill them," he says. "It would have been so easy for the CIA, the ISI, to come question these kids, to have taken them aside, even put them in jail or interrogated them... But instead they chose to kill them."
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U.S. Deploys Kamikaze Drones to Attack Targets
U.S. Army and Air Force special operations forces have used miniature kamikaze drones against Taliban targets and plan to renew the attacks next year, according to documents and an Army official. The tube-launched Switchblade drone, made by Monrovia, California-based Aerovironment Inc. (AVAV), was secretly sent to Afghanistan for the first time last year. “Under a dozen” were fired, said Army Deputy Product Director William Nichols.  “It’s been used in Afghanistan by military personnel” and “shown to be effective,” Nichols said. The drone’s GPS guidance is made by Rockwell Collins Inc. (COL) and the warhead by Alliant Techsystems Inc. (ATK)  Disclosure of the Switchblade’s use in Afghanistan highlights the Pentagon’s expanding range of missions for remotely piloted aircraft. The fleet also includes broad-area surveillance aircraft such as the Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) Global Hawk, the missile-firing General Atomics Co. Predator and Reaper drones.
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Army Tracking Plan: Drones That Never Forget a Face

Perhaps the idea of spy drones already makes your nervous. Maybe you’re uncomfortable with the notion of an unblinking, robotic eye in the sky that can watch your every move. If so, you may want to click away now. Because if the Army has its way, drones won’t just be able to look at what you do. They’ll be able to recognize your face — and track you, based on how you look. If the military machines assemble enough information, they might just be able to peer into your heart. The Pentagon has tried all sort of tricks to keep tabs on its foes as they move around: tiny transmitters, lingering scents, even “human thermal fingerprints.” The military calls the effort “Tagging, Tracking, and Locating,” or “TTL.” And, as the strategy in places like Afghanistan has shifted from rebuilding societies to taking out individual insurgents, TTL has become increasingly central to the American effort. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been devoted to it.  The current technologies have their limits, however. Transmitters can be discovered, and discarded. Scents eventually waft away. Even the tagged can get lost in a crowd. But there are some things that can’t be so easily discarded. Like the shape of your face. Or the feelings you keep inside. That’s why the Army just handed out a half-dozen contracts to firms to find faces from above, track targets, and even spot “adversarial intent.”
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