{"id":61932,"date":"2015-08-03T12:00:35","date_gmt":"2015-08-03T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=61932"},"modified":"2015-08-03T08:44:16","modified_gmt":"2015-08-03T07:44:16","slug":"revealed-the-private-firms-tracking-terror-targets-at-heart-of-us-drone-warfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/08\/revealed-the-private-firms-tracking-terror-targets-at-heart-of-us-drone-warfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: The Private Firms Tracking Terror Targets at Heart of US Drone Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"

Corporate staff are reviewing top-secret data and helping uniformed colleagues decide whether people under surveillance are enemies or civilians.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Military<\/a>

Military personnel in the Air Force Distributed Common Ground System (US Air Force photo)<\/p><\/div>\n

30 Jul 2015 – <\/em>The overstretched US military has hired hundreds of private sector contractors in the heart of its drone operations to analyse top secret video feeds and help track high value terror targets, an investigation has found.<\/p>\n

Contracts unearthed<\/a> by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reveal a secretive industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars, placing a corporate workforce alongside uniformed personnel, analysing battlefield intelligence.<\/p>\n

While it has long been known that US defence firms supply billions of dollars\u2019 worth of equipment for drone operations, the role of the private sector in providing\u00a0analysts to comb through military surveillance video\u00a0has remained almost entirely unknown until now.<\/p>\n

Approximately one in 10 people involved in the effort to process data captured by drones and spy planes is estimated to be non-military. And as the rise of Islamic State fuels\u00a0what military commanders describe as an\u00a0\u201cinsatiable demand\u201d for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), the Air Force is considering a further expansion of its contractor workforce, a spokeswoman confirmed.<\/p>\n

Companies that stand to reap the benefits include BAE Systems and Edward Snowden\u2019s former employer Booz Allen Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Some individual analysts even publicly advertise their skills on sites such as LinkedIn, with one boasting of helping with the \u201ckill\/capture of high-value targets\u201d.<\/p>\n

The US dependence on armed contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan has attracted close scrutiny, partly because of the notorious 2007 incident in which employees of the company then known as Blackwater killed 14 civilians in Baghdad. But the use of private companies to analyse military surveillance video has so far happened largely under the radar.<\/p>\n

The contractors review live footage gathered by drones and spy planes hovering above battlefields, and help uniformed colleagues decide whether people they spot are potential enemies or civilians.<\/p>\n

Though private contractors don\u2019t formally take life and death decisions \u2013 only military personnel pilot\u00a0armed drones and take final targeting decisions \u2013 there is concern they could effectively creep in to this function without more robust oversight.<\/p>\n

Even now, contractors are aware that any errors of analysis they make could lead to the wrong people being killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cA misidentification of an enemy combatant with a weapon, and a female carrying a broom can have dire consequences,\u201d one told the Bureau.<\/p>\n

The ability to transmit live footage from above the villages and towns its enemies move through has become central to the US war machine, and the Air Force has struggled to keep up with demand for it. Each day, armed and unarmed drones and surveillance planes gather 1,100 hours of video data \u2013 all of which needs to be analysed.<\/p>\n

Most of the time the imagery analysts are conducting long-term surveillance \u2013 establishing what constitutes \u2018normal\u2019 in a particular place. Some analysts monitor images as they unfold in near-real time, while others scrutinise individual shots more closely to make sense of them.<\/p>\n

In so-called \u201ckinetic\u201d situations \u2013 those that entail lethal force \u2013 the assessments passed on by the analysts can affect whether or not someone on the ground is seen as a threat.<\/p>\n

Missions include long-term surveillance of suspected militants and their resources \u2013 known in military jargon as \u201chigh-value targets\u201d \u2013 and gathering intelligence for special forces or standard military operations on the ground.<\/p>\n

Almost exclusively ex-military, contractors say they are more experienced in what they are looking at\u00a0than their uniformed counterparts, who are frequently moved between different posts.<\/p>\n

One contractor suggested to the Bureau that at times their skills place them effectively within the military chain of command.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will always be military bodies or civilian government bodies as the overall in charge of the missions\u2026however you will have experienced contractors act as a \u2018right-hand man\u2019 many times because typically contractors are the ones with subject matter expertise, so the military\/government leadership lean on those people to make better mission related decisions,\u201d the analyst said.<\/p>\n

Through analysing and cross-referencing millions of federal spending records, military contracts, interviews with current and former contractors and online job ads, the Bureau has identified 10 companies that have supplied the US government with imagery analysts in the past five years.<\/p>\n

The contracts identified relate only to operations of the conventional military and special forces. CIA contracts, which cover the agency\u2019s controversial operations in Pakistan and Yemen, remain classified, so any role of the private sector in that sphere remains unknown.<\/p>\n

The companies involved are a mixture of large defence contractors and smaller tech and intelligence-focused firms, and offer imagery analysis alongside other services ranging from logistics to translation.<\/p>\n

Among the largest known users of imagery analysis contractors are branches of the Special Operations Command, which conducts drone operations and supports commando raids on the ground. The May 16 swoop on Islamic State commander Abu Sayyaf, in which Sayyaf was killed and his wife captured, was supported by Predator surveillance, according to media reports.<\/p>\n

\"Airmen<\/a>

Airmen with 11th Intelligence Squadron review drone data at Hurlburt Field base, June 2015 (by US Air Force\/Airman Kai White)<\/p><\/div>\n

Federal transaction records show that a company called Zel Technologies is currently supplying imagery analysts to Air Force Special Operations Command (Afsoc) in a contract worth $12m in its first year.<\/p>\n

According to a copy of the contract obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Zel is providing over 100 imagery analysts. The contract also required Zel to provide experts \u201cin the areas of the Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Somalia, Syria, Iran, North Africa, Trans-Sahel region, Levant region, Gulf states, and territorial waters\u201d.<\/p>\n

A further Afsoc contract detailed how an Ohio-based firm called MacAulay-Brown was tasked to \u201csupport targeting, information operations, deliberate and crisis action planning, and 24\/7\/365 operations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile L-3 Communications won an imagery analysis contract with Special Operations Command (Socom) in 2010 which was to earn it $155m over five years.<\/p>\n

Booz Allen Hamilton, which has been given a contract for supporting special operations, posted a job advert calling for personnel \u201cproviding direct intelligence support to the Global War on Terror\u201d. British defence company BAE Systems has advertised for video analysts to be \u201cpart of a high ops tempo team\u201d.<\/p>\n

Laura Dickinson, a specialist in military contracting at George Washington University Law School, called for the Pentagon to make more information available about the role and scope of private contractors in drone operations.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe urgently need more transparency,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue is not that some contractors may be doing imagery analysis.\u00a0 The problem is the ratio of contractors to government personnel.\u00a0 If that ratio balloons,\u00a0oversight could easily break down, and the current prohibition on contractors making targeting decisions could become meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism contacted all contractors named in this story with a series of questions. None provided a statement, though several directed queries to the US military.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon and the Air Force were also contacted for comment with a series of questions about transparency and oversight for contractors involved in ISR.<\/p>\n

A spokeswoman for the Air Force said ISR was \u201cvital to the national security of the United States and its allies\u201d, and that it was in \u201cinsatiable demand\u201d from combatant commanders. She said this demand was the reason for increasing use of contractors, which she said was a \u201cnormal process within military operations\u201d.<\/p>\n

On the issue of whether private contractors\u2019 assessments risk pre-empting the military\u2019s official decisions, she said the service had thorough oversight and followed all appropriate rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrent AF Judge Advocate rulings define the approved roles for contractors in the AF IRS\u2019s processing, exploitation and dissemination capability,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAir Force DCGS [Distributed Common Ground System] works closely with the Judge Advocate\u2019s office to ensure a full, complete, and accurate understanding and implementation of those roles. Oversight is accomplished by Air Force active duty and civilian personnel in real time and on continual basis with personnel trained on the implementation of procedural checks and balances.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Pentagon declined to comment.<\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Click Here for the Bureau\u2019s Full Feature Long Read of This Investigation<\/a><\/p>\n

How Bureau Identified the Private Sector\u2019s Involvement: Our Methods<\/a><\/p>\n

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism is an independent not-for-profit organisation. Established in April 2010, the Bureau is the first of its kind in the UK, where philanthropically funded journalism is rare. Our\u00a0team of journalists<\/a>\u00a0bolsters original news by producing high-quality investigations for press and broadcast media with the aim of educating the public and the media on both the realities of today\u2019s world and the value of honest reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

Please support our work \u2013 share this article.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 thebureauinvestigates.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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