Topic: Drones

The Drone Speech and the Hyperexcited Return of Intellectual Obama

Associated Press

President Obama's speech on counterterrorism on Thursday won rave reviews among some who seemed to see it as a return of the liberal constitutional law professor who ran for president in 2008. But while the tone might have been refreshing, maybe we should wait to see Obama's follow-through?

By Connor Simpson

Nov 27, 2012

TMZ Thinks Drones Are 'Awesome' but Doesn't Want One

Early this afternoon, the world was briefly confronted with the horror that gossip gulag TMZ had applied for a drone license. Thankfully, TMZ has denied the rumor in the most TMZ way possible.

Comments | 1,074 Views

By Connor Simpson

Nov 25, 2012

They're Drafting a Rule Book for the 'Kill List'

The secret list the White House uses to determine who to target with a drone strike, known as the 'kill list' -- or 'disposition matrix,' whatever -- is still highly classified, but we know there isn't a hard-and-fast set of rules they follow. Well, it seems like there will be soon. 

Comments | 4,421 Views

By David Wagner

Nov 14, 2012

Today's Best

Five Best Wednesday Columns

Thomas L. Friedman on Syria, Chuck Thompson on Texas, Vali Nasr on drones, Christopher Dickey on Jordan, and Doyle McManus on Obama's cabinet. 

Comments | 2,119 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Nov 9, 2012

Iran Tried to Shoot Down a U.S. Drone and Missed

American military officials revealed yesterday that two Iranian fighter jets intercepted a Predator surveillance drone over international water, and even tried to shoot it down

Comments | 3,104 Views

By John Hudson

Oct 24, 2012

How the White House 'Kill List' Became the White House 'Disposition Matrix'

It sounds like the ultimate Washington euphemism but it's the name White House officials are moving toward: The secret list the president uses to order drone strikes on unsuspecting militants is being re-vamped under the name "disposition matrix."

Comments | 2,166 Views

By John Hudson

Oct 11, 2012

Hezbollah Takes Credit for Mystery Drone Shot Down in Israel

The leader of the Lebanese militant movement Hezbollah has taken credit for the unidentified drone shot down in Israel last Saturday.

Comments | 517 Views

By Connor Simpson

Oct 6, 2012

Israel Shoots Down a Mystery Drone

Intrigue in the Middle East! Israeli officials are currently trying to figure out where a drone that flew into their airspace on Saturday morning came from. They shot it down just to be sure. 

Comments | 8,328 Views

By Connor Simpson

Sep 29, 2012

Yemen's President Thinks Drones Are Smarter than Humans

Yemen's president is so in love with the fleet of drones the U.S. uses in his country that he thinks they're more advanced than the human brain. 

Comments | 2,743 Views

By John Hudson

Sep 26, 2012

U.S. Isn't Waiting for Pakistan's Permission on Drone Strikes

The Obama administration has soothed concerns about its Predator drone program by assuring that foreign governments give "full consent" before drones drop Hellfire missiles on unsuspecting targets on their territory. Turns out, though, that's not always the case.

Comments | 172 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Sep 25, 2012

Study Claims Drones Haven't Made Americans Any Safer

A new study by law professors at Stanford and New York University found that drones strikes have killed far more civilians in Pakistan than the U.S. has acknowledged and that the program has a "damaging and counterproductive effect."

Comments | 528 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Sep 12, 2012

U.S. Sending Drones to Hunt Libyan Attackers

CNN reports that the United States will send unmanned drones to Libya to look for jihadist camps, as the White House now accepts the belief that the Benghazi attack was the premeditated work of terrorists.  

Comments | 9,850 Views

By Rebecca Greenfield

Aug 30, 2012

Apple Rejected the Drone Tracker App Because it Could

Apple has for the third—and what looks like the final—time rejected an app that would send alerts every time a U.S. military drone made a kill.

Comments | 5,679 Views

By John Hudson

Aug 24, 2012

The Hardcore Security Gear Protecting the Conventions

Congress gave Tampa and Charlotte police $50 million each to keep America's egg-throwing anarchists at bay during the Republican and Democratic conventions. Turns out, both cities got quite a lot of bang for their buck.

Comments | 6,000 Views

By Esther Zuckerman

Jul 30, 2012

Trimming the Times

Women at the Olympics, Syrians in Iraq, and Discarded Pianos

A summary of the best reads found behind the paywall of The New York Times.

Comments | 345 Views

By John Hudson

Jul 30, 2012

A Day in the Life of a U.S. Drone Operator

You wouldn't think of suburban New York as a battlefront for the war in Afghanistan, but for the growing number of U.S. drone operators at the Hancock Field Air National Guard Base, that's exactly what it is.

Comments | 1,489 Views

By Connor Simpson

Jul 22, 2012

Head of Drone Company Asks Why You're So Worried About Drones

Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your grow op. Drones are flying across American skies and there's nothing we can do about it. The head of a drone company especially doesn't care about your privacy concerns because you don't have anything to hide, right? 

Comments | 3,786 Views

By Eric Randall

Jul 19, 2012

Lasers May Soon Keep Drones Perpetually Aloft

Two companies have managed to keep the Stalker Unmanned Aerial System, also known as a drone, in flight for over 48 hours by using lasers on the ground to recharge the aircraft's battery mid-flight. That's terrifying and cool.

Comments | 3,324 Views

By Adam Martin

Jun 11, 2012

A Big, Jet-Powered Navy Drone Crashed in Maryland

The drone that crashed in an uninhabited, marshy area of Maryland Monday afternoon was no model plane but a 44-foot-long jet-powered Navy aircraft.

Comments | 5,000 Views

Dissecting Obama’s Standard on Drone Strike Deaths

ProPublica's Justin Elliott tries to lay out exactly what's known (not much) about President Obama's policy on drone strikes, what's not (a lot), and what the White House is saying in response to a New York Times report.

Comments | 2,451 Views

A Look at Obama's Other Secret National Security Policies

Inspired by The New York Timesexposé on Obama's "secret 'kill list,'" we collected some of the best pieces of watchdog journalism on Obama's national security policies.

Comments | 1,724 Views

By Cora Currier, ProPublica

May 31, 2012

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Drones

Everyone is talking about drones. Domestically, their surveillance power is being hyped for everything from fighting crimeto monitoring hurricanes or spawning salmon. Meanwhile, concerns are cropping up about privacy, ethics and safety. ProPublica has rounded up some of the best coverage of drones to get you oriented.

Comments | 8,794 Views

By John Hudson

Apr 30, 2012

Someone's Lying About America's Secret Drone Program

It's starting to make sense why the Obama administration rarely acknowledges its secret drone program: When it does it, it reveals some unreconcilable contradictions.

Comments | 3,408 Views

By John Hudson

Apr 24, 2012

Nobody Knows if Iran's Drone Hack Was a Hoax

Iran's reverse-engineering of a U.S. Sentinel drone was either a complete hoax or an unprecedented intelligence coup.

Comments | 944 Views

By Connor Simpson

Apr 22, 2012

Iran Is Building a Copycat Drone

Iran is claiming they've finally cracked the computer system and accessed information stored on the U.S. drone they captured in December of last year, and now they're building their own.

Comments | 3,053 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Apr 20, 2012

Who Gets to Fly Drones?

Following a number of FOIA requests, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) now has a list of the towns, counties, states and agencies with permission to fly drones.

Comments | 5,662 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Mar 22, 2012

How to Make Drones Scarier: Make Them Nuclear Powered

Government scientists find it "disappointing" that “current political conditions will not allow use" of a nuclear-powered drone that can fly around the Earth for months.

Comments | 3,966 Views

By Adam Martin

Feb 6, 2012

The C.I.A.'s Silence on Drone Strikes Is Getting Awkward

The C.I.A.'s policy of silence around its drone program has really gotten in the agency's way as it tries to defend against a scathing new investigative report that found U.S. drones target rescuers and funerals in Pakistan.

Comments | 2,029 Views

By Dashiell Bennett

Jan 30, 2012

State Department Drones Are Still Patrolling Iraqi Skies

The lead story in The New York Times today concerns U.S. surveillance drones, operated not by the Pentagon or the CIA, but by the State Department, that are patrolling the skies over Iraq even after our combat troops have gone home. 

Comments | 1,732 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Jan 27, 2012

You Can Build a Flying Spybot for Less Than $50

As the U.S. government spends billions and billions outfitting the military with sophisticated spy drones, one hacker's taken things into his own hands and built a very cheap but very functional drone-ready surveillance device.

Comments | 2,410 Views

By John Hudson

Jan 26, 2012

The Pentagon Is Doubling Down on Drones to Save Money

The Pentagon has a new game plan for a leaner military: fewer soldiers and more drones.

Comments | 1,929 Views

By Adam Martin

Jan 25, 2012

By John Hudson

Jan 17, 2012

Iran Agrees to Return the U.S. Stealth Drone in Toy Form

Iranians won't return the advanced RQ-170 Sentinel drone downed in their country late last year but they will give the White House a toy replica.

Comments | 49,249 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Dec 15, 2011

There May Be a Drone Spying on You Right Now

We don't mean to scare you, but the ACLU certainly does with 13-pages of startling details (PDF) about how the threat of "routine aerial surveillance of American life" is real.

Comments | 211 Views

By John Hudson

Dec 12, 2011

Don't Hold Your Breath for Iran's Copycat Drones

Iran has vowed to "mass produce" the high-tech U.S. drone it recovered two weeks ago but defense experts are laughing the claim out of the room. 

 

Comments | 6,717 Views

By John Hudson

Dec 9, 2011

Is Iran Showing Us the Real Drone?

The sharpest minds in unmanned aerial aircrafts are being hauled out to scrutinize the high-resolution photographs taken by Iranian officials of the fallen U.S. drone captured in Iran last Thursday. 

Comments | 5,829 Views

By Dino Grandoni

Dec 8, 2011

Downed U.S. Drone Looks Pretty Intact on Iranian TV

The Iranian government is airing images of the captured U.S drone plane on its state-run, English-language TV station this evening, reports CNN, and it looks like it's in pretty good shape considering that Iran claimed to have shot it down. 

Comments | 7,553 Views

By Erik Hayden

Dec 8, 2011

Jon Stewart's Theory on How a U.S. Spy Drone Wound Up In Iran

The downing of the super-secret RQ-170 drone in Iran resulted in plenty of head-scratching reports about how it happened, so Jon Stewart offered his own theories for why the aspiring nuke nation now has our spy technology.

Comments | 18,031 Views

By Adam Martin

Dec 7, 2011

Occupy Wall Street Has a Drone: The Occucopter

It's pretty well-established that Occupy Wall Street is no fan of Rupert Murdoch's media empire, but after one Occupy-friendly videographer test-flew a video-capturing drone he hopes to use to film protests, it looks like they've got something very specific in common.

Comments | 7,429 Views

By John Hudson

Dec 7, 2011

Fallen U.S. Drone Nearly Led to Covert Strike in Iran

New reports on the CIA drone lost in Iran last week reveal the scope of the stealth plane's mission and just how far the U.S. was willing to go to recover it.

 

Comments | 12,857 Views

By John Hudson

Dec 6, 2011

What Iran Can Learn from the CIA's Fallen Drone

U.S. military officials have confirmed with NBC News and The Washington Post  that the American drone recovered by Iran last Thursday is an advanced RQ-170 drone flying on a secret CIA mission.

Comments | 6,244 Views

By Adam Martin

Dec 6, 2011

That Secret Drone Lost in Iran Was Flying for the C.I.A.

The U.S. lost one of its most advanced surveillance drones on a C.I.A. mission in Iran, unnamed "U.S. officials" said on Monday, which means Tehran now likely possesses the stealth aircraft.

Comments | 6,478 Views

By Alexander Abad-Santos

Dec 5, 2011

The U.S. Is Abandoning a Drone Base in Pakistan It Doesn't Really Need

Following the publicized lack of an Obama apology for the airstrikes which ended in the friendly-fire death of 24 Pakistani soldiers, the U.S. is vacating a drone base in Shamsi base in Pakistan--a move that sounds way more serious than it actually is.

Comments | 600 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Nov 17, 2011

Drone Journalism Is the New Human Journalism

Robert Mackey at The New York Times boldly declared on Thursday afternoon, "Drone Journalism Arrives" — it's actually been around for a while over at News Corp.

Comments | 1,239 Views

By Erik Hayden

Nov 4, 2011

Pakistani Complaints Led to New Rules for U.S. Drone Strikes

It seems that some top U.S. officials were concerned about our roaming, Hellfire missile-equipped Predator drones in Pakistan--so some concessions have been made about when they can and can't target terrorists, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Comments | 1,694 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Oct 13, 2011

The Virus Infecting the U.S. Drone Fleet Came from Mafia Wars

The case of the mysterious drone virus is starting to sound like an Onion article

Comments | 22,965 Views

By Elspeth Reeve

Oct 7, 2011

American Drones Are Infected with a Computer Virus

Wired reports every keystroke typed by drone pilots is being recorded

Comments | 7,849 Views

By John Hudson

Sep 1, 2011

U.S. Air Strikes Kill 30 Al Qaeda Suspects in Yemen

Yemeni forces helped carry out the attack, say reports

Comments | 4,694 Views

By Adam Clark Estes

Aug 2, 2011

Should News Corp. Be Trusted with a Flying Robot Camera?

The FAA is investigating whether or not The Daily is operating an illegal aircraft

Comments | 1,267 Views

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