ABSTRACT
Technological advances in remote or autonomous surveillance, identification, and delivery of lethal force inspire considerable debate over their uses by law enforcement and the military, especially in drone warfare. Correctly identifying a person is essential for equitable policing, and that extends to the even more potentially destructive use of drone warfare, in which the United States (U. S.) military finds and kills enemy combatants with armed semiautonomous drones. Director Alex Rivera’s near-future film Sleep Dealer follows Memo, whose father, a Mexican farmer, is killed by a drone strike for protesting a corporation’s dam, built to sell water for profit. British Army Colonel Katherine Powell plans to observe and capture terrorists in Nairobi, Kenya, using drones controlled from the U. S. When a facial recognition algorithm identifies suicide bomber terrorists who could kill civilians, she changes the drone’s goal to “kill.”
