Glenn Greenwald has launched a new news site, The Intercept, "to aggressively report on the disclosures provided to us by our source, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden". its first major story? The NSA's secret participation in drone-murders:
The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
...which is why these drone murders turn out to be utterly indiscriminate and kill civilians: they pay no attention to who is nearby (or simply assume that they are "terrorists" too), and just target a phone rather than a person. Which is why the UN considers these strikes to be war crimes.
Meanwhile, the US government is currently considering murdering one of its citizens without charge or trial by drone strike. This is where their "war on terror" has taken them: back to a feudal power of a monarch to murder their subjects. So much for American being "a nation of laws, not men".
