Ethical and Legal Considerations

Invisibility inevitably allows invasion of privacy, if this technology is commercialized, many ethical issues might be created, which would require the modification and changes in the legal system. New laws would need to be put in place to limit the types of activities in which commercial stealth products such as invisibility cloaks can be used and enforce fines or punishment on people who might use it for malicious purposes. However, that said, the law enforcement team would likely be hard-pressed to monitor and enforce laws on ‘invisible’ people. Hence, while there is great potential for stealth technology, one must evaluate if the benefits inherent in its development is worth its various costs.



We contend that militaries allegedly circumvent legislative oversights by using dated wartime legal provisions to avoid public scrutiny, e.g., “Classified information”, a state of categorisation used in the United States on documents and information that Washington claims is sensitive.

​

Governments around the world claims that an exposure of classified information to the public is likely to reduce the level of security of the state. The 3 highest levels of classification: “top secret”, “secret”, and “confidential” usually prohibit public scrutiny of the documents in any means, allowing the militaries to maintain the highest secrecy, which also offer them an unprecedented power to be shielded from public scrutiny - allowing them to do whatever they fancy.

​

Technological immunity

Most of the technologies used by militaries around the world to operate the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) are strictly classified.

​

Operation of UAV in extrajudicial territories

The four branches of the United States Armed Forces are known to operate UAVs capable of committing assassination on specific human targets in territories beyond the immediate jurisdiction of the American civil judiciary.

​

- Use of drones to assassinate specific human targets in non-sovereign territories of the United States is a violation of prevailing international law.

​

- State-sponsored assassination in non-US territories such as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan is an outright violation of the Pakistani sovereignty. The use of force on foreign soil that is technically not at war with the United States is also an outright violation of international law.

 

- Matter is further compounded by alleged wrongful civilian killing by the American-operated drones.

​

- Tacit agreement between the United States and Pakistani governments to allow the American-operated drones to conduct assassination in Pakistani airspace can be considered as state collusion, where the state surrenders sovereignty and lingering the safety of the Pakistani civilians at the whims and fancy of American military campaign to weed out state enemies of the United States.

​

- The Pakistani citizenry nonetheless has the right to safety even if the United States and Pakistani governments came to an agreement to permit the operation of the drones in Pakistani airspace, and to protest any wrongful civilian death caused by the operation of American drones in Pakistani airspace.

​

- There is no effective international efforts to regulate the operation of potentially lethal UAVs in non-sovereign territories, military assets that can commit extrajudicial killings at the whims of the operating armed forces.

​

- There is no effective international efforts to control and curtail the development of potentially lethal UAVs, and the trend has it that most modern militaries are looking to acquire the capacity to operate such killing machines.

 

- There are obvious benefits to military strategies to operate UAVs, but there is a need for concerted efforts to regulate and to restrain militaries from operating such machines to peddle state-sponsored extrajudicial killing.

- The experience with UAVs has a direct legal precedence to the development and the use of stealth technologies.

​

- UAVs have the ability circumvent established physical limits of a conventional aircraft, especially when used for espionage. Militaries operating UAVs will inevitably benefit from stealth technologies, which extends the capabilities of the UAVs to perform extrajudicial operations, which potentially violate national sovereignty.

​

Ethical Challenges (Military)

 

- The proliferation of UAVs gave rise to the ethical dilemma of how human beings ethically conduct the warfare that humanity are embroiled in.

​

- Will the proliferation of UAVs, and in the future, stealth military technologies erode the accepted code of conduct and ethical practices currently institutionalised in the military?

 

- If the militaries are capable to undermine the accepted code of ethical conducts in order to fulfill militaristic aspirations, this clear violation of ethics is the thin end of the wedge, which may portend a slippery slope towards military lawlessness, where militaries may employ stealth technologies to commit extrajudicial activities that are legally sanctioned against at present.

​​

Global regulatory framework

- Ethically responsible use of such force must be carefully regulated, and there should be an international organ with authority to contain and regulate national militaries, perhaps operated under the aegis of the United Nations.

​

- While the use of stealth technologies remained a sovereign choice that national governments may make, it must be recognised that if such choice undermine the expression of sovereignty of other national governments, such choice must be circumscribed and discouraged.

​

Extrajudicial power penetration

- National military should not be permitted to commit extrajudicial state-sponsored murder in non-sovereign territories in the name of any endeavour. International conception of sovereignty, and international laws appended to the maintenance of sovereignty must be preserved and upheld.

​

- Recognising the potential disastrous misuse of technologies, national sovereignties should acknowledge that the need to circumscribe the use of stealth technologies will inevitably protect the peace between sovereignties, through the respect of established international norms and laws.

​

- While military may pursue the development and adoption of such technologies, it should only be permitted to use such technologies on other sovereignties under strictly defined conditions, such as after a state of warfare have been declared.

 

​Questions​

Should the military be allowed to use stealth technologies to safeguard its interest in an event when its sovereignty is being threatened by another sovereignty? What is the limit of such use, and under what specific conditions should militaries be legally permitted to use stealth technologies against another sovereignty? Must war be formally declared?

​

Legal Implications (Military)

 

- Can data acquired by stealth military assets be admitted as evidence in the court of law, both military and civil?

​

- Stealth military assets can potentially intrude into foreign controlled territories or airspace (controlled airspace = airspace that are controlled by an executive authority, usually sanctioned by an internationally recognised sovereignty) without approval from the designated air traffic controller or military authority superintending the territory or airspace.

​

- Stealth military assets that intrude controlled airspace and capture data are technically violating international airspace norms, and are violating the sovereignty of the intruded state.

​

- Can the data captured then be used in international arbitration courts as evidence? Should such courts accept the illegally acquired data as evidence?

​

Problems

​

- If such data is rejected, should stealth military assets be regulated by an international authority to prevent the intrusion of UAVs into foreign airspace?

​

- If such data are accepted, where does the international law begin and end for privacy protection of a sovereignty? If violation of sovereignty is legally sanctioned, what is the point of proclaiming and preserving national sovereignty?

​

Case study of problem

- Operation of UAVs in Pakistan

​

- Deployment of experimental weaponry beyond the territorial jurisdiction of the sovereignty. When harm have been rendered to the local population, the local authority are unlikely to be able to hold the foreign armed forces responsible. While the local authority or sovereignty may lodge a case against the foreign armed forces at international arbitration courts, the judging process is lengthy, and does not address the problem of sovereignty violation.

​

- Monetary reparations may be made, but the question is: How to hold intruding military responsible for their actions?

 

- Is the United States military allowed to act on its whim and fancy, just because it has the power and capacity to superintend and intimidate the world?