Written by: Manu Meel and Isaiah Sirois #mags lab

AT Public Criticism

No risk that criticism of drones collapses the program

This view has currency among European allies, among advocacy groups, and in the legal academy. Unfortunately for its proponents, it has no currency among the three branches of government of the United States. The courts and the executive branch have both taken the opposite view, and the Congress passed a broad authorization for the use of force and despite many opportunities, has never revisited that document to impose limitations by geography or to preclude force on the basis of co-belligerency—much less to clarify that the AUMF does not, any longer, authorize the use of military force at all. Congress has been repeatedly briefed on U.S. targeting decisions, including those involving U.S. persons.[5] It was therefore surely empowered to either use the power of the purse to prohibit such action or to modify the AUMF in a way that undermined the President’s legal reasoning. Not only has it taken neither of these steps, but Congress has also funded the relevant programs. Moreover, as I noted above, Congress’s recent reaffirmation of the AUMF in the 2012 NDAA with respect to detention, once again contains no geographical limitation. There is, in other words, a consensus among the branches of government on the point that the United States is engaged in an armed conflict that involves co-belligerent forces and follows the enemy to the new territorial ground it stakes out. It is a consensus that rejects the particular view of the law advanced by numerous critics. And it is a consensus on which the executive branch is entitled to rely in formulating its legal views.

Drone program is sustainable- assumes criticism

Chesney 12 [Robert Chesney- professor at the University of Texas School of Law, nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, distinguished scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, August 2012, “Beyond the Battlefield, Beyond Al Qaeda: The Destabilizing Legal Architecture of Counterterrorism,” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2138623, mm]

This multi-year pattern of cross-branch and cross-party consensus gives the impression that the legal architecture of detention has stabilized at last. But the settlement phenomenon is not limited to detention policy. The same thing has happened, albeit to a lesser extent, in other areas. The military commission prosecution system provides a good example. When the Obama administration came into office, it seemed quite possible, indeed likely, that it would shut down the commissions system. Indeed, the new president promptly ordered all commission proceedings suspended pending a policy review.48 In the end, however, the administration worked with the then Democratic-controlled Congress to pursue a mend-it-don’t-end-it approach culminating in passage of the Military Commissions Act of 2009, which addressed a number of key objections to the statutory framework Congress and the Bush administration had crafted in 2006. In his National Archives address in spring 2009, moreover, President Obama also made clear that he would make use of this system in appropriate cases.49 He has duly done so, notwithstanding his administration’s doomed attempt to prosecute the so-called “9/11 defendants” (especially Khalid Sheikh Mohamed) in civilian courts. Difficult questions continue to surround the commissions system as to particular issues—such as the propriety of charging “material support” offenses for pre-2006 conduct50—but the system as a whole is far more stable today than at any point in the past decade.51 There have been strong elements of cross-party continuity between the Bush and Obama administration on an array of other counterterrorism policy questions, including the propriety of using rendition in at least some circumstances and, perhaps most notably, the legality of using lethal force not just in contexts of overt combat deployments but also in areas physically remote from the “hot battlefield.” Indeed, the Obama administration quickly outstripped the Bush administration in terms of the quantity and location of its airstrikes outside of Afghanistan,52 and it also greatly surpassed the Bush administration in its efforts to marshal public defenses of the legality of these actions.53 What’s more, the Obama administration also succeeded in fending off a lawsuit challenging the legality of the drone strike program (in the specific context of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and member of AQAP known to be on a list of approved targets for the use of deadly force in Yemen who was in fact killed in a drone strike some months later).54 The point of all this is not to claim that legal disputes surrounding these counterterrorism policies have effectively ended. Far from it; a steady drumbeat of criticism persists, especially in relation to the use of lethal force via drones. But by the end of the first post-9/11 decade, this criticism no longer seemed likely to spill over in the form of disruptive judicial rulings, newly-restrictive legislation, or significant spikes in diplomatic or domestic political pressure, as had repeatedly occurred in earlier years. Years of law-conscious policy refinement—and quite possibly some degree of public fatigue or inurement when it comes to legal criticisms—had made possible an extended period of cross-branch and cross-party consensus, and this in turn left the impression that the underlying legal architecture had reached a stage of stability that was good enough for the time being.

Drones are inevitable- criticism doesn’t matter

Kohl 12 [Geoff Kohl- editorial director for Cygnus Security Media, and also serves as conference director for Secured Cities, June 2012, “Here Come the Surveillance Drones,” http://www.securityinfowatch.com/blog/10730239/here-come-the-surveillance-drones, mm]

Americans aren’t comfortable with drones in their hometowns. That was the short summary of a public opinion research poll about UAV drones conducted by Monmouth University Polling Institute. The poll research said that while most people are OK with UAV drones for search and rescue, they’re less excited, but generally OK with drones for border surveillance and tracking down criminals (2/3rds said they would support such use cases). Where they draw the line was the use of drones on themselves. Only a quarter of the respondents supported use of UAV drones for issuing speeding tickets, and about 4 out of 5 said they would have concerns with law enforcement loading on high-tech cameras and using the drones for surveillance. The American public may have reservations, but I would say that “public opinion be damned”, this technology is coming. We’ve already seen public officials support for drone UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), with Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell saying he would support police use of drones in his state for reasons of increased law enforcement productivity. It’s not a far jump to the world of speeding tickets, I suppose, especially since it’s fairly common to see the “Speed limit enforced by aircraft” signs on the state’s roads. (For a detailed discussion of how aerial speed limit enforcement works, I recommend this discussion thread on aircraft-issuance of speeding tickets from our sister website Officer.com.) The reason the technology is coming is 3-fold. First, military-grade technology often moves downstream to law enforcement and corporate security as it loses its classification level and as it becomes more affordable. Second, as we’ve seen in our Secured Cities conference, cities have been very keen on investing in force-multiplier technology. If you’re limited on officers, think like a chief. Once the technology matures, a drone and an officer would both be able to capture speeders, but only an officer can interview witnesses and develop informants. You put your resources where they are best applied based on your available funding. Third, there’s an upstream movement of this technology from hobbyists that is at work as well. This upstream movement from hobbyists and from the cinematography/broadcast industry recently came to my attention when I heard of the company Quadrocopter that sells UAV systems for cinematography. Here’s why it’s heading upstream: Quadrocopter is selling complete UAV systems from $3,000 to $6,500 for the CineStar solution (see a cool video of a CineStar UAV filming in snowy weather). The $6,500 version not only allows for the flying UAV ability, but it also includes full gimbals control for the pan/tilt controls of the camera payload. These units can handle payloads of up to three pounds and can fly up to about 10 minutes. That kind of payload supports high-quality cameras with great lenses and that amount of flying time allows for actual surveillance operations. Think about this: How long would it take to fly a unit like that up to a window on a building to see if the suspects are in there making a drug deal? That upstream movement, combined with the support from public officials and the downstream movement of technology that came out of the military is going to mean that drones are coming. They’re already heading to the southern border, which makes sense. According to the International Boundary & Water Commission, the U.S.-Mexico border is 1,954 miles long, which makes it a manpower monster. Last decade’s virtual fence concept SBInet was a failed project, so it makes sense that drones are going to become a popular technology for border security – especially when you consider the drug cartel violence that is occurring around the border. They’re already headed to the London Olympics, as well, so where is this coming next? It’s a big leap from using drones for high security events, border patrol and military applications to using them in our hometowns and cities. There are FAA airspace issues and the aforementioned privacy concerns. There are costs that have to come down. Just recently, we’ve seen bills introduced that would expressly require warrants for domestic surveillance use of drones. But like it or not, that leap will happen, and I believe there will be a day when the technology become ubiquitous.

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