Former Air Force intelligence analyst and NSA contractor Daniel Everette Hale was sentenced to 45 months in federal prison for leaking classified documents that exposed the devastating civilian toll of the U.S. drone warfare program. His disclosures revealed that nearly 90 percent of people killed …
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On February 20, 2020, Axon announced the launch of Axon Air, an end-to-end drone surveillance platform that livestreams aerial footage directly into the company’s Evidence.com cloud storage system. The system integrated with DJI Mavic 2 Enterprise and Matrice 200 series drones, enabling law …
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A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship launches sustained airstrikes against a Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, killing 42 people including 14 staff members, 24 patients, and 4 caretakers. The attacks continue for more than an hour despite frantic phone …
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The Bureau of Investigative Journalism publishes comprehensive evidence that the CIA conducts “double-tap” drone strikes—following an initial strike with a second strike targeting rescuers, medical personnel, and civilians who rush to help victims. The investigation documents at least …
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The New York Times publishes an explosive investigation revealing that President Obama personally approves every name on a secret “kill list” for drone strikes during regular Tuesday National Security Council meetings dubbed “Terror Tuesdays.” The article exposes how the …
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The New York Times reveals that the Obama administration has adopted a secret policy counting “all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.” This Orwellian methodology allows the administration to …
A CIA drone strike in Yemen kills Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen and Islamic cleric, without charges, trial, or judicial process. Al-Awlaki becomes the first American citizen to be deliberately assassinated by his own government since the Civil War era. President Obama personally approved placing …
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A CIA drone strike on a tribal jirga (council meeting) in Datta Khel, North Waziristan kills at least 42 people, the vast majority of them civilians including tribal elders gathered to resolve a local mining dispute. The massacre represents one of the deadliest single drone strikes of Obama’s …
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President Obama secretly authorizes the CIA to conduct “signature strikes”—drone attacks that target groups of people based on patterns of suspicious behavior rather than confirmed identification of specific individuals. This policy shift enables the CIA to strike gatherings of …
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President Barack Obama dramatically expands the CIA’s drone strike program in his first year in office, authorizing more strikes than George W. Bush conducted during his entire presidency. The expansion transforms armed drones from a limited counterterrorism tool into a systematic …
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