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[Jopax]

If anything, a drone would be much easier to evade and/or handle by potential targets, so I really don't see much of a point atm. Sure you don't have a cop in danger anymore, but you have a criminal with a bigger chance to get away which might put other lives in danger down the line.

[misko27]

The obvious counter-point is that robots don't get angry, scared, or kill people randomly. In policing, they don't have a sense of self-preservation, and will never attack first in fear. In war, they don't rape or pillage. They don't have a sense of revenge, or bigotry. Surely, they can be *used* for such things, but they are in that respect no more dangerous then the people who already do these things, and still potentially less so.

Personally, I am against the use of weaponized drones in totality.

The use of weaponized drones removes the risk to personel that war implies, making it more attractive to use warfare to get what a government wants.

The same could be said for the use of stealth bombers against nations with no adequate air defenses, but for some strange reason the US isn't carpet bombing African states to get their riches...

Well yeah, you can't just No CB some random place. What he's saying is that the risks entailed by action are lower, so action can be taken more freely where it can already be justified. Which is not an ideal state of affairs, given the average quality of justifications we've been seeing. Maybe one day we will see drones flying over African countries blowing up random stuff to 'ensure regional stability.'

No CB?

I think your argument fails as soon as one considers the converse: To ensure better justifications, we should increase the amount of danger military our troops are exposed to. Which is a fairly insane thing to say - nobody would demand stopping the use of body armor and spotter drones, for example - but is (logically) equivalent to what you're saying, since there's nothing magical about the status quo.

Precisely. By the logic of outlawing them purely because they make war "more ethical to wage", we may as well repeal the Geneva Conventions and start subjecting enemy soldiers to summary executions again. Hang anyone suspected of collaborating with the enemy, while we're at it. Hell, maybe if we started firebombing cities again we could wrap our wars more quickly, especially if we could start using Mustard Gas as well. After all, all of it can be done back to us, so policy makers will finally stop the madness, right? 12,000 years of warfare at an end, simply because we made it too horrible to use! I mean WW1 stopped all wars forever, right? Well, WW2 stopped all wars forever, right?

[smjjames]

@misko: If said robots glitch out or something happens in a way that they go haywire, then yes they'd kill people at random.

[Zangi]

@misko: If said robots glitch out or something happens in a way that they go haywire, then yes they'd kill people at random.

Drones used by the military are remote controlled ain't they?  Though, I guess in the future, they'll want at least some with AI... and to eventually create skynet.

And random dead people are just collateral damage and/or enemy combatants after-the-fact.  Obviously nothing glitched out.

[Culise]

The obvious counter-point is that robots don't get angry, scared, or kill people randomly. In policing, they don't have a sense of self-preservation, and will never attack first in fear. In war, they don't rape or pillage. They don't have a sense of revenge, or bigotry. Surely, they can be *used* for such things, but they are in that respect no more dangerous then the people who already do these things, and still potentially less so.

Indeed.  For instance, there are circumstances where police fired on people who were pulling something out of their pockets out of self-defense, only to find it was an innocuous object rather than the weapon they feared. 

@misko: If said robots glitch out or something happens in a way that they go haywire, then yes they'd kill people at random.

A gun can misfire, too, or a police car driving that suffers brake failure could cause an accident.  Tear gas can cause severe medical reactions necessitating immediate medical attention in a significant proportion of people, and "nonlethal" rubber bullets are perfectly capable of killing.  I'm not sure what you're imagining by a drone going haywire, but these drones aren't Durandal, aren't autonomous, and they can't go rampant. 

I also don't like the argument that they depersonalize war, but others have given most of the reasons (especially the converse).  I'll just add guns to the list of "depersonalizing" agents in war that didn't actually cut back on personalization of deaths, and further note that many policymakers are already thoroughly divorced from war.  When a vote for war passes the legislature, the legislators and head of government didn't pick up their guns and march off to the front lines. 

[Baffler]

The obvious counter-point is that robots don't get angry, scared, or kill people randomly. In policing, they don't have a sense of self-preservation, and will never attack first in fear. In war, they don't rape or pillage. They don't have a sense of revenge, or bigotry. Surely, they can be *used* for such things, but they are in that respect no more dangerous then the people who already do these things, and still potentially less so.

Indeed.  For instance, there are circumstances where police fired on people who were pulling something out of their pockets out of self-defense, only to find it was an innocuous object rather than the weapon they feared. 

But there's still someone behind it. "I feared for my life, I had to act quickly" just becomes "I thought (s)he was going to destroy the drone, I had to act quickly" and the operator will be less able to pick up on other situational cues because of the drone's more limited perspective.

[Playergamer]

The destruction of a drone would be much better then the death of a cop, though. You are right, however, about the situational cues problem. That's one of the problems with body cams, for example. There's stories of cops knowing somebody's about to fight because of tactile clues, and responding, which looks like brutality on camera.

I think somebody actually linked to an article in the abusive policing thread, pointing out that problem, and completely missed the point.

[Harry Baldman]

The problem with using weaponized police drones is probably people's general experience with weaponized drones as a whole, which happens to mostly be related to their use in the Middle East and other nearby locations, where they seem to be used to somewhat indiscriminately kill brown people on the vague suspicion that they might be militants. With a track record like that, you can see how people might be a tad cautious about their introduction closer to home.

Of course, they probably won't be used to indiscriminately kill brown people in the US on the vague suspicion that they might be criminals. Probably. And they do seem like they'd be useful for surveillance, breaking sieges, that kind of thing. Signal latency ought to be a bit less of an issue, too.

[smjjames]

The problem with using weaponized police drones is probably people's general experience with weaponized drones as a whole, which happens to mostly be related to their use in the Middle East and other nearby locations, where they seem to be used to somewhat indiscriminately kill brown people on the vague suspicion that they might be militants. With a track record like that, you can see how people might be a tad cautious about their introduction closer to home.

Of course, they probably won't be used to indiscriminately kill brown/black people in the US on the vague suspicion that they might be criminals. Probably. And they do seem like they'd be useful for surveillance, breaking sieges, that kind of thing. Signal latency ought to be a bit less of an issue, too.

FIFY to make a point.

You're assuming the drones are autonomous. If it's remote controlled, then the controller behind the drone could still kill black/brown people indiscriminately because they think they might be a criminal.

[Playergamer]

You're assuming the drones are autonomous. If it's remote controlled, then the controller behind the drone could still kill black/brown people indiscriminately because they think they might be a criminal.

Because that happens enough to be a serious consideration.

[Frumple]

... yes? It does seem to, yes. We've been having a bit of a problem with that for a long damn time.

Will say that one facet of using drones would be that there would be even less of a chance of immediate medical assistance if something buggers up. Be vaguely interesting to see if that plus ease of use mitigates the recording and reduction in (perceived) immediate danger aspects insofar as needlessly dead people go. Automation could maybe help out, though. Mandate drone weapons use comes with a direct ambulance call? That might at least somewhat address the problem of police sitting on their arses while people bleed out/have heart attacks/etc. instead of actually bloody doing something about it.

[Harry Baldman]

You're assuming the drones are autonomous. If it's remote controlled, then the controller behind the drone could still kill black/brown people indiscriminately because they think they might be a criminal.

I know the drones aren't autonomous. The trouble is that they also aren't very well regulated and apparently hurt a lot of innocent people out in the war zones they're currently used. That's why people don't like them. Drone strikes are all kinds of shady business out there.

Of course, there is reason to expect they'd be better-regulated when the brown people (and yes, black people as well) they'd ostensibly kill were also American citizens - the article already mentioned search warrants being a requirement to deploy them (in North Dakota, at least - time will tell if the rest of the states will strictly regulate them as well).

On the other hand, they'd also be handled by the American police, who can be expected to be generally less competent with army equipment than the average soldier (part of why police militarization is a concern, as well as a certain zeal in applying said military tech overly often).

[misko27]

The problem with using weaponized police drones is probably people's general experience with weaponized drones as a whole, which happens to mostly be related to their use in the Middle East and other nearby locations, where they seem to be used to somewhat indiscriminately kill brown people on the vague suspicion that they might be militants. With a track record like that, you can see how people might be a tad cautious about their introduction closer to home.

Of course, they probably won't be used to indiscriminately kill brown/black people in the US on the vague suspicion that they might be criminals. Probably. And they do seem like they'd be useful for surveillance, breaking sieges, that kind of thing. Signal latency ought to be a bit less of an issue, too.

FIFY to make a point.

You're assuming the drones are autonomous. If it's remote controlled, then the controller behind the drone could still kill black/brown people indiscriminately because they think they might be a criminal.

But then it's no different then a cop committing brutality. Except the cop isn't worried about getting murdered if he makes a mistake (or at the minimum can't use that as an excuse), and so might be more inclined to ask questions first.

[FearfulJesuit]

She's back.

[Flying Dice]

To the extent that it could ever happen isn't anything on the time frame. I can't imagine anything that'd turn the military apparatus against the general civilian populace. However, protection of rights in general, and Second Amendment rights in particular aren't for just there for the protection of today, they're for tomorrow and generations to come. At some point in time, that general civilian uprising might be needed to resist against the United States of Earth, Luna, and Mars government or somesuch.

Mm, this is exactly why I'm not particularly in favor of a blanket ban on firearm ownership. Handguns, yes, because they're easy to steal, easy to conceal, and ideal for criminal activity. Additional barriers to ensure that people who are mentally ill don't get access to weapons? That'd be nice, but a lot of these mass shootings come about when the crackpot steals weapons owned and insecurely stored by relatives. Going off of the FBI's numbers, out of all U.S. homicides in which firearms were used, 71% were committed with handguns. Even when you include every homicide recorded, handguns were still used in roughly 50% of them.