I would venture to guess that a considerable factor is resources. Recent FOIA responses<http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/3426/nick_turse_the_crash_and_burn/>state that keeping a Predator drone in the air for 24 hours requires 170 personnel. Granted this is a) a Predator drone, and b) few (if any) on this list would argue that the Military is an exemplar of efficiency, there is a time and expense in supporting drones with a considerable range. I support thinking about positive ways of exploiting technology but a greater question might be: what is the goal of the operation? I agree with the proposal that "Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot." and I think on that front, there are a number of innovative ways to approach transparency. For example, this past year students in Chile used<http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/live-iphone-balloon-video-coverage-150000-student-rally-chile>a weather balloon and an iPhone to provide coverage of a protest. Along this line of thinking, what is the range, the type of coverage, and requirements that should be considered? Best, J On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:28 PM, Nabiha Syed <nabiha.syed@gmail.com> wrote:

It* is* surprising that it's not more widespread already, right? But it is getting more and more popular --the Drone Journalism Lab<http://dronejournalism.tumblr.com/about>is trying to encourage the use of drones, and I believe the Occupy folks< http://techland.time.com/2011/12/21/occupy-wall-streets-new-drone-the-occuco...

...

have been using drones to monitor their encampments recently, too.

As shameless self-promotion, I'll be interviewing Mickey Osterreicher<https://twitter.com/#!/nppalawyer>of the National Press Photographers Association about surveillance drones and drone journalism for the Harvard Law and Policy Review blog -- I'd be happy to share the link once it's up!

Nabiha

Nabiha Syed First Amendment Fellow The New York Times Company 620 Eighth Avenue New York, NY 10018 nabiha.syed@nytimes.com | 212.556.5187

On Thu, Feb 2, 2012 at 7:20 PM, Yosem Companys <companys@stanford.edu

...

wrote:

...

A group of Stanford students pitched this idea for a startup 8 years ago! And yet no one is doing it yet?

YC

**********************

January 30, 2012

Drones for Human Rights

By ANDREW STOBO SNIDERMAN and MARK HANIS, New York Times

DRONES are not just for firing missiles in Pakistan. In Iraq, the State Department is using them to watch for threats to Americans. Itbs time we used the revolution in military affairs to serve human rights advocacy.

With drones, we could take clear pictures and videos of human rights abuses, and we could start with Syria.

The need there is even more urgent now, because the Arab Leaguebs observers suspended operations last week.

They fled the very violence they were trying to monitor. Drones could replace them, and could even go to some places the observers, who were escorted and restricted by the government, could not see. This we know: the Syrian government isnbt just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is shooting unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on news media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they make us YouTube witnesses.

Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a birdbs-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.

Drones are increasingly small, affordable and available to nonmilitary buyers. For hundreds of thousands of dollars b no longer many millions b a surveillance drone could be flying over protests and clashes in Syria.

An environmental group, the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, has reported that it is using drones to monitor illegal Japanese whaling in the waters of the Southern Hemisphere. In the past few years, human-rights groups and the actor and activist George Clooney, among others, have purchased satellite imagery of conflict zones. Drones can see even more clearly, and broadcast in real time.

We could record the repression in Syria with unprecedented precision and scope. The better the evidence, the clearer the crimes, the higher the likelihood that the world would become as outraged as it should be.

This sounds a lot like surveillance, and it would be. It would violate Syrian airspace, and perhaps a number of Syrian and international laws. It isnbt the kind of thing nongovernmental organizations usually do. But it is very different from what governments and armies do. Yes, we (like them) have an agenda, but ours is transparent: human rights. We have a duty, recognized internationally, to monitor governments that massacre their own people in large numbers. Human rights organizations have always done this. Why not get drones to assist the good work?

It may be illegal in the Syrian governmentbs eyes, but supporting Nelson Mandela in South Africa was deemed illegal during the apartheid era. To fly over Syriabs territory may violate official norms of international relations, but governments do this when they support opposition groups with weapons, money or intelligence, as NATO countries did recently in Libya. In any event, violations of Syrian sovereignty would be the direct consequence of the Syrian statebs brutality, not the imperialism of outsiders.

There are some obvious risks and downsides to the drone approach. The Syrian government would undoubtedly seize the opportunity to blame a foreign conspiracy for its troubles. Local operators of the drones could be at risk, though a higher-end drone could be controlled from a remote location or a neighboring country.

Such considerations figured in conversations we have had with human rights organizations that considered hiring drones in Syria, but opted in the end for supplying protesters with phones, satellite modems and safe houses. For nearly a year now, brave amateurs with their tiny cameras arguably have been doing the trick in Syria. In those circumstances, the value that a drone could add might not be worth the investment and risks.

Even if humanitarian drones are not used in Syria, they should assume their place in the arsenal of human rights advocates. It is a precedent worth setting, especially in situations where evidence of large-scale human rights violations is hard to come by.

Drones can reach places and see things cell phones cannot. Social media did not document the worst of the genocide in the remote villages of Darfur in 2003 and 2004. Camera-toting protesters could not enter the fields where 8,000 men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995. Graphic and detailed evidence of crimes against humanity does not guarantee a just response, but it helps.

If human rights organizations can spy on evil, they should.

*Andrew Stobo Sniderman and Mark Hanis are co-founders of the Genocide Intervention Network.* _______________________________________________ liberationtech mailing list liberationtech@lists.stanford.edu

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