JU's Public Policy Institute Hosts Panel on Drone Tech
Jacksonville University's newly formed, and soon to be ubiquitous, Public Policy Institute, is holding a panel discussion this Thursday, October 24 at the Gooding Auditorium on 'Military and Private Drone Usage'.
Jacksonville University's newly formed, and soon to be ubiquitous, Public Policy Institute is holding a panel discussion this Thursday, October 24 at the Gooding Auditorium on "Military and Private Drone Usage". See Flyer Here
They've invited some impressive people including Ambassador Nancy Soderberg and Stephen Dare, publishing partner at MetroJacksonville.com - see the full panel and their bios.
Why does this matter and why is the Public Policy Institute opening this very important discussion?
Military Drones, it's just the beginning. Seriously, it's a little scary.
The term "killer robots" may sound like a b-rated movie followed by a dedicated cohort of dystopian-loving film nerds but it's actually a present reality and policy decisions about its use in warfare (and civil society) are eminent. Well, let's hope positive policy decisions are made by debate and discussion and not by military procurement - which is where are now.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drones are just one element of a broader movement towards automated/robotic military technology. For now, military UAV’s are directly controlled by human operators and decisions to engage a target is one that still requires a human decision. This is a changing proposition. Technology already exists, though not explicitly used, to launch attacks based on predetermined algorithms. This is referred to as “Lethal Autonomy,” which essentially means, “ when robots kill independent of direct human decision making.”
This is not just about drones which will eventually log millions of hours of unmanned surveillance videos and will eventually be programmed to operate independently of direct human control. It is arguably about every type of robot you can imagine being programmed for specific military combat needs. This technology is incredibly tempting especially because it is cheap, at least it will be, when compared to the cost of empowering and training, you know, a human. What are those, again?
There is a growing movement, lead by groups like the International Committee for Robot Arms Control and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, calling for the development of an International Robotic Arms Treaty that specifically denies the ability to weaponize unmanned robotic technology and is compared to other weapons treaties that dealt with laser blinding weapons, mine usage and, of course, nuclear weapons
"Automating warfare is like [making] a clean factory of killing. A sort of slaughter. Where we send in weapons to do all of our killing for us. They Choose the targets. They decide what to do...and it just seems to me morally outrageous to even consider this..." - Prof. Noel Sharkey, International Committee on Robot Arms Control
Policing. Privacy. Constitutional Dilemmas. Supreme Court? Probably.
Police aerial surveillance is naturally restrained by the costs associated with manned air flights. UAV technology dramatically reduces the costs of aerial surveillance but also has the potential to save substantial sums of money as it will, most likely, replace patrol units.
We are facing a ground swell of drone purchasing and deployment by police departments across the country. The UAV industry is expected to be in the multiples of billions in a few years. The only thing holding the tide is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which has an informal-ish hold on its use across the country.
One of the biggest concerns regarding aerial surveillance is privacy and the potential to become more of a "persistent surveillance" society, where each person has the virtual equivalent of a police officer that follows them everywhere they go and watches everything they do. Again, this includes more than drones but drone technology opens the door to multiple forms of surveillance from many different types of automated robotic tools.
At the moment the FAA has become the arbitrator of privacy issues, as well. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee issued a report on its transportation appropriations bill (HR 2610) for the 2014 fiscal year that includes a measure directing the FAA “to collaborate with other Federal agencies in evaluating the impact that broader use of UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems - so many acronyms!) in the national airspace could have on individual privacy. "
Without effective policy we are facing another form of policy making by procurement instead of by legislation. In the same way that there is a potential for automated warfare there is a potential for automated law enforcement. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade association, argues that policy decisions regarding UAVs should be “technology neutral”. In that, legislating towards one technology will only create future legal ambiguities as new technologies are developed.
The Challenge: How Much Should You Tip a Drone for Delivering Your Pizza?
The incredible use of this technology cannot be overstated. Robotic technologies are mapping parts of the earth that humans simply cannot explore without aide. Emergency personnel can (and do) use the existing technology for search and rescue. Automated transportation? You think cruise control is awesome. How about Knight Rider? And, Yes, Dominos, is literally testing drone delivery of pizza.
The challenge is how to allow these technologies to flourish for world wide use without finding ourselves in a position where domestic freedom and wartime behavior are misaligned by misappropriated technology.
These are some of the topics that will be discussed during the panel. Opinions will vary and discussions will be insightful and challenging.
Panel Bios on the Next Page
The Moderator
Rick Mullaney: Rick Mullaney received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and first in the College of Arts and Sciences, and his Juris Doctor from the University of Florida, serving as Executive Editor of the Law Review. Mr. Mullaney worked as a prosecutor for the State Attorney's Office in the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida in Jacksonville. He served as a Director in the office and was subsequently named Prosecutor of the Year for the state of Florida. Mr. Mullaney subsequently worked for nearly 20 years on diverse public policy issues, including economic development, municipal finance, healthcare, education, infrastructure development, collective bargaining, and public safety as a public policy advisor and legal counsel to the City of Jacksonville and former mayors Ed Austin, John Delaney and John Peyton. He served as Chief of Staff to former Mayor John Delaney and subsequently as General Counsel for the City of Jacksonville. Mr. Mullaney has lectured on public policy, governmental, and legal issues in more than 20 states around the country.
Mr. Mullaney became the Founding Director of the JU Public Policy Institute at Jacksonville University in 2012.
The Panel
Ambassador Nancy Soderberg:Ambassador Soderberg is a foreign policy expert, author, professor, and international business consultant. With over twenty-five years of experience in foreign policy, she has served in the White House, at the United Nations, in the United States Senate, and on four presidential advisory boards. Ambassador Soderberg has a deep understanding of policy-making and negotiations at the highest levels of government. Ambassador Soderberg is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of North Florida and President and CEO of Soderberg Global Solutions, an international consulting firm. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s of Science Degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
She was interviewed on The Daily Show in 2005.
Dr. Erich Freiberger: Dr. Erich Freiberger teaches history of Philosophy at Jacksonville University as well as Ethics and Public Policy in the University’s Masters of Public Policy Program. While his specialization is in Modern and Contemporary Continental thought, he has also published on ethics, political philosophy, Plato and psychoanalysis, and Plato and Shakespeare. He is currently working on a book on Shakespeare and Plato’s political philosophy. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. from Boston College.
Read Dr. Freiberger's short paper on Just War Theory and the Ethics of Drone Warfare
Stephen Dare: Stephen Dare is a publishing partner at MetroJacksonville.com. He is an entrepreneur, journalist, restaurateur, playwright, and chef who has written about, studied, and travelled in the pursuit of the DNA of modern cities since 1987. He has published three magazines: Spiff (mid 80s), Dare Tabloid (late 80s) and Babble, the Big City Magazine (early 1990s). Along the way, he opened several bistros, coffeehouses, cafes, nightclubs, and two dinner theatres in locations as diverse as Jacksonville, Florida; Seattle Washington; Atlanta Georgia; San Francisco, California; and Muncie Indiana. Additionally he ran a successful bankruptcy practice in Indiana, served on numerous cultural and historic preservation boards, wrote for independent magazines across the country, participated in district revitalization projects in a number of locations, served as a telecommunications consultant for Fondas Karapas, the former National Security Advisor of Greece prior to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, and served as an on-air chef for Channel 12 in Jacksonville, Florida. He participates in rediscovering the historical heritage of Jacksonville, and has devoted his life to understanding the processes whereby cities and neighborhoods develop, succeed, fail, and transform.
Brian Foley, Esq: Brian Foley earned his Bachelors of Arts degree in English, graduating cum laude from Dartmouth College A.B. in 1987. He received his Juris Doctorate from the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley in 1993 where he was also Associate Editor for the California Law Review. His expertise is in criminal law, criminal and civil procedure, evidence, and sentencing. Brian has authored several scholarships, published books, and penned numerous law review articles. He is currently employed at Florida Coastal School of Law here in Jacksonville as an Associate Professor of Law.
Brent Klavon: Brent Klavon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his Bachelors of Science degree in Business Logistics from Pennsylvania State University. He was commissioned as a Naval Officer and served for 20 years in various capacities before retiring in 2009. Brent is currently employed with Aviation Systems Engineering Company (ASEC) here in Jacksonville. He is a regional advocate in the unmanned systems industry and is the Florida Peninsula Chapter Vice President of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
This piece by Arash Kamiar
They've invited some impressive people including Ambassador Nancy Soderberg and Stephen Dare, publishing partner at MetroJacksonville.com - see the full panel and their bios.
Why does this matter and why is the Public Policy Institute opening this very important discussion?
Military Drones, it's just the beginning. Seriously, it's a little scary.
The term "killer robots" may sound like a b-rated movie followed by a dedicated cohort of dystopian-loving film nerds but it's actually a present reality and policy decisions about its use in warfare (and civil society) are eminent. Well, let's hope positive policy decisions are made by debate and discussion and not by military procurement - which is where are now.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) or drones are just one element of a broader movement towards automated/robotic military technology. For now, military UAV’s are directly controlled by human operators and decisions to engage a target is one that still requires a human decision. This is a changing proposition. Technology already exists, though not explicitly used, to launch attacks based on predetermined algorithms. This is referred to as “Lethal Autonomy,” which essentially means, “ when robots kill independent of direct human decision making.”
This is not just about drones which will eventually log millions of hours of unmanned surveillance videos and will eventually be programmed to operate independently of direct human control. It is arguably about every type of robot you can imagine being programmed for specific military combat needs. This technology is incredibly tempting especially because it is cheap, at least it will be, when compared to the cost of empowering and training, you know, a human. What are those, again?
There is a growing movement, lead by groups like the International Committee for Robot Arms Control and the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, calling for the development of an International Robotic Arms Treaty that specifically denies the ability to weaponize unmanned robotic technology and is compared to other weapons treaties that dealt with laser blinding weapons, mine usage and, of course, nuclear weapons
"Automating warfare is like [making] a clean factory of killing. A sort of slaughter. Where we send in weapons to do all of our killing for us. They Choose the targets. They decide what to do...and it just seems to me morally outrageous to even consider this..." - Prof. Noel Sharkey, International Committee on Robot Arms Control
Policing. Privacy. Constitutional Dilemmas. Supreme Court? Probably.
Police aerial surveillance is naturally restrained by the costs associated with manned air flights. UAV technology dramatically reduces the costs of aerial surveillance but also has the potential to save substantial sums of money as it will, most likely, replace patrol units.
We are facing a ground swell of drone purchasing and deployment by police departments across the country. The UAV industry is expected to be in the multiples of billions in a few years. The only thing holding the tide is the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which has an informal-ish hold on its use across the country.
One of the biggest concerns regarding aerial surveillance is privacy and the potential to become more of a "persistent surveillance" society, where each person has the virtual equivalent of a police officer that follows them everywhere they go and watches everything they do. Again, this includes more than drones but drone technology opens the door to multiple forms of surveillance from many different types of automated robotic tools.
At the moment the FAA has become the arbitrator of privacy issues, as well. The U.S. House Appropriations Committee issued a report on its transportation appropriations bill (HR 2610) for the 2014 fiscal year that includes a measure directing the FAA “to collaborate with other Federal agencies in evaluating the impact that broader use of UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems - so many acronyms!) in the national airspace could have on individual privacy. "
Without effective policy we are facing another form of policy making by procurement instead of by legislation. In the same way that there is a potential for automated warfare there is a potential for automated law enforcement. The Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade association, argues that policy decisions regarding UAVs should be “technology neutral”. In that, legislating towards one technology will only create future legal ambiguities as new technologies are developed.
The Challenge: How Much Should You Tip a Drone for Delivering Your Pizza?
The incredible use of this technology cannot be overstated. Robotic technologies are mapping parts of the earth that humans simply cannot explore without aide. Emergency personnel can (and do) use the existing technology for search and rescue. Automated transportation? You think cruise control is awesome. How about Knight Rider? And, Yes, Dominos, is literally testing drone delivery of pizza.
The challenge is how to allow these technologies to flourish for world wide use without finding ourselves in a position where domestic freedom and wartime behavior are misaligned by misappropriated technology.
These are some of the topics that will be discussed during the panel. Opinions will vary and discussions will be insightful and challenging.
Panel Bios on the Next Page
The Moderator
Rick Mullaney: Rick Mullaney received his B.A. in Political Science from the University of Florida, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and first in the College of Arts and Sciences, and his Juris Doctor from the University of Florida, serving as Executive Editor of the Law Review. Mr. Mullaney worked as a prosecutor for the State Attorney's Office in the Fourth Judicial Circuit of Florida in Jacksonville. He served as a Director in the office and was subsequently named Prosecutor of the Year for the state of Florida. Mr. Mullaney subsequently worked for nearly 20 years on diverse public policy issues, including economic development, municipal finance, healthcare, education, infrastructure development, collective bargaining, and public safety as a public policy advisor and legal counsel to the City of Jacksonville and former mayors Ed Austin, John Delaney and John Peyton. He served as Chief of Staff to former Mayor John Delaney and subsequently as General Counsel for the City of Jacksonville. Mr. Mullaney has lectured on public policy, governmental, and legal issues in more than 20 states around the country.
Mr. Mullaney became the Founding Director of the JU Public Policy Institute at Jacksonville University in 2012.
The Panel
Ambassador Nancy Soderberg:Ambassador Soderberg is a foreign policy expert, author, professor, and international business consultant. With over twenty-five years of experience in foreign policy, she has served in the White House, at the United Nations, in the United States Senate, and on four presidential advisory boards. Ambassador Soderberg has a deep understanding of policy-making and negotiations at the highest levels of government. Ambassador Soderberg is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of North Florida and President and CEO of Soderberg Global Solutions, an international consulting firm. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vanderbilt University and a Master’s of Science Degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.
She was interviewed on The Daily Show in 2005.
Dr. Erich Freiberger: Dr. Erich Freiberger teaches history of Philosophy at Jacksonville University as well as Ethics and Public Policy in the University’s Masters of Public Policy Program. While his specialization is in Modern and Contemporary Continental thought, he has also published on ethics, political philosophy, Plato and psychoanalysis, and Plato and Shakespeare. He is currently working on a book on Shakespeare and Plato’s political philosophy. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University and his Ph.D. from Boston College.
Read Dr. Freiberger's short paper on Just War Theory and the Ethics of Drone Warfare
Stephen Dare: Stephen Dare is a publishing partner at MetroJacksonville.com. He is an entrepreneur, journalist, restaurateur, playwright, and chef who has written about, studied, and travelled in the pursuit of the DNA of modern cities since 1987. He has published three magazines: Spiff (mid 80s), Dare Tabloid (late 80s) and Babble, the Big City Magazine (early 1990s). Along the way, he opened several bistros, coffeehouses, cafes, nightclubs, and two dinner theatres in locations as diverse as Jacksonville, Florida; Seattle Washington; Atlanta Georgia; San Francisco, California; and Muncie Indiana. Additionally he ran a successful bankruptcy practice in Indiana, served on numerous cultural and historic preservation boards, wrote for independent magazines across the country, participated in district revitalization projects in a number of locations, served as a telecommunications consultant for Fondas Karapas, the former National Security Advisor of Greece prior to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, and served as an on-air chef for Channel 12 in Jacksonville, Florida. He participates in rediscovering the historical heritage of Jacksonville, and has devoted his life to understanding the processes whereby cities and neighborhoods develop, succeed, fail, and transform.
Brian Foley, Esq: Brian Foley earned his Bachelors of Arts degree in English, graduating cum laude from Dartmouth College A.B. in 1987. He received his Juris Doctorate from the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley in 1993 where he was also Associate Editor for the California Law Review. His expertise is in criminal law, criminal and civil procedure, evidence, and sentencing. Brian has authored several scholarships, published books, and penned numerous law review articles. He is currently employed at Florida Coastal School of Law here in Jacksonville as an Associate Professor of Law.
Brent Klavon: Brent Klavon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and received his Bachelors of Science degree in Business Logistics from Pennsylvania State University. He was commissioned as a Naval Officer and served for 20 years in various capacities before retiring in 2009. Brent is currently employed with Aviation Systems Engineering Company (ASEC) here in Jacksonville. He is a regional advocate in the unmanned systems industry and is the Florida Peninsula Chapter Vice President of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
This piece by Arash Kamiar