This Israeli Presentation on How to Make Drone Strikes More “Efficient” Disturbed Its Audience

/drone-strikes-israel-us-military-isvis


  • THIS ISRAELI PRESENTATION ON HOW TO MAKE DRONE STRIKES MORE “EFFICIENT” DISTURBED ITS AUDIENCE

    https://theintercept.com/2017/12/05/drone-strikes-israel-us-military-isvis

    RESEARCH BACKED BY the U.S. and Israeli military scandalized a conference near Tel Aviv earlier this year after a presentation showed how the findings would help drone operators more easily locate people — including targets — fleeing their strikes and better navigate areas rendered unrecognizable by prior destruction.

    The doctoral student who presented the research demonstrated how pioneering data visualization techniques could show a drone operator, using lines and arrows of varying thickness, which direction fast-moving people and vehicles were most likely to travel, for example, at an intersection or while fleeing a building. The presentation clearly angered at least some of the crowd, including the moderator, prompting hostile questions.

    “The guy’s talk (and its video documentation) revealed much of what’s very wrong about UAV warfare,” said Mushon Zer-Aviv, a web designer and activist and an organizer of the conference, the data visualization confab known as ISVIS.

    The incident at ISVIS underscores the extent to which drone warfare’s deeply technological basis and inhumanity has become a major part of global public debate around its use. Once viewed (and still promoted) as an efficient, safer way to target terrorists, the growing ubiquity of lethal drone strikes in global hotspots is increasingly seen as helping to create wastelands and fomenting the sort of terroristic support it’s designed to eradicate.

    • The presenter of the drone material, Yuval Zak, told the Intercept he was surprised by the audience reaction and hostile questioning after his presentation. “The conversation changed from dealing with visualization and improving information presentation on a … map to a discussion about the ethical issues of using drones,” he wrote in an email. “But the focus of the conference and my paper is entirely different.” The technology he presented could just as easily be used for policing and search and rescue as for drone strikes, he said — any time-critical scenario involving a map.

      #data_visualization #visualization
      #neutralité_de_la_technique

      Ben qu’est-ce qu’ils ont tous à m’engueuler ?

    • Bon, c’est vraiment une crapule, ce mec : sur la vidéo de sa conférence (1:29, je n’ai vu que ça…)

      Objectives
      • this study is part of a research collaboration between Ben-Gurion University, US Army RDECOM AMRDEC and the Israeli Minister of Defence.
      • main goal : improve efficiency of UAS-based mission preparation and execution.
      • the study focuses on urban warfare.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2mov9dBfSY

      EDIT : La discussion (à partir de 8:40) n’a pas l’air si houleuse que ça. Bon, c’est juste une impression parce que c’est de l’hébreu non sous-titré (l’une des questions parle de predictive policy pourrait être critique, mais l’ensemble est sur le ton de la question classique en fin de conf’)