terror , technology and tearing up the constitution and humanity

It's easy to forget sometimes, but here's the world we're living in: over the past several years, the United States has conducted hundreds of drone strikes under the secret authority of the CIA—which is accountable to no one—resulting in the deaths of several thousand people. These people are killed based on a process that creates a secret list that is disclosed to no one outside of the intelligence community elite, and executed via flying robots, which track humans from above and then blow up them up with Hellfire missiles in the sovereign territory of other countries.

According to members of the panel selected by Kucinich's office, the CIA frequently engages in the practice of "double tapping"—firing a second Hellfire volley after the initial blast, often killing emergency workers and first responders, and clearly violating international law. Reports of CIA targeting "chips" were also mentioned, a shadowy practice wherein the CIA distributes tracking chips to lock in Hellfire strikes, presumably planted on suspicious targets by trusted local informants. Increasingly, though, the panel reported, the chips are now used as a black market currency, allowing tribal Pakistanis to buy an assassination against, say, a local foe, courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Kucinich: No, not at all! It isn't a question of whether the technology is so far out of the box that we can't roll it back, the question is have we put the Constitution in a box and buried it. That's the question

Gizmodo: What do you think that does to our humanity, as a country that wages war that way?

Kucinich: It is not just a target that is obliterated, it is our own humanity. So we are moving into a world and creating a time and space which may become post-human. Food that's genetically engineered. Robots that fights wars. A surveillance society that gathers pieces of information and stores them for use at a later date. Cloning. Alfred North Whitehead once wrote that the greatest technological advances of mankind are processes that all but destroy the societies in which they occur

The Obama administration isn't going to budge a micron when it comes to the business of secret robot killing. The CIA is, well, the CIA—secret killing is its bread and butter. But the tragedy of people who either shrug, "Drones, sure"—or don't even know the campaigns happen—is a massive one. Our America is one ignorant of its robot war, the most advanced, secretive, and concerning in military history. Humans have simply never killed each other this way before. And it's too secret for us to know almost anything about.

But the notion of inscrutable extrajudicial death from above rubs you the wrong way, talk about it. Think about it. Tell someone else about it. Argue about it. Disagree with me. Disagree with Congressman Kucinich. Maybe you don't find CIA drone strikes disturbing. But to conduct a war by tiny robots and put it out of mind, silent, like a bad spring break? That's something that should make us all ill.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/new-army-arsenal/?pid=1651&viewall=true