Year in Review

Well, 2014 turned out to be quite a year. For me, it was a really productive one, and I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to work on some great projects. Below are a few personal highlights that I've put together as a sort of 'year in review', along with a list of notable stories and developments in the realm of surveillance and national security, some 'ones to watch' for 2015, and a few awards that I've decided to hand out for dishonourable government conduct, just because there was so much of it over the last twelve months, and the worst offenders deserve some recognition...

(I meant to post this last week, but I've been on a remote Spanish island on holiday with no internet connection... so here it is, better late than never...)
 
January to March

In January I worked with Canadian broadcaster CBC to reveal details about domestic surveillance in the Canada. In February, The Intercept launched, and I contributed to a story that revealed some new details about US and UK government efforts to target WikiLeaks. In March, I had a report out shining a light on how the US National Security Agency has worked alongside its UK partner Government Communication Headquarters to infect large numbers of computers across the world with malware. I also worked on a story exposing the NSA's targeting of innocent system administrators as part of its covert attempts to hack into communication networks.

April to June

In March, I worked with German news magazine Der Spiegel on a story revealing new details about the NSA's surveillance of world leaders. In April, I reported on British spies' attempts to get broad unsupervised access into NSA troves of surveillance data. And in June, I worked with some great reporters at Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information to reveal new information showing how the NSA forms secret partnerships with countries across the world in order to help significantly expand its surveillance reach.

July to September

In August, the US military banned its personnel from reading The Intercept, and a few days later we published one of the most important stories I've worked on to date, exposing a vast US surveillance search system used to share huge troves of private data among dozens of US government agencies, including domestic law enforcement. The story revealed the decades-long history of US agencies' use of masses of metadata to monitor people's behaviour, and exposed how the CIA was using metadata to aid its efforts to secretly kidnap terror suspects (a practice that often resulted in the suspects — some of whom were totally innocent — being brutally tortured).

In September, we began reporting details at The Intercept about the scope of surveillance in New Zealand, and shined a light on deceptive statements made by the government there about its spying efforts; meanwhile, police raided and ransacked the home of the excellent investigative reporter that we were (and are) working with on Snowden revelations related to New Zealand.

October to December

In November, I worked on a story revealing how one of the most sophisticated pieces of malware ever discovered — dubbed "Regin" by security experts — was linked to cyberattacks perpetrated by British spies against Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom and European Union offices. This piece was an interesting one to work on in that it combined both news reportage with malware analysis — something that's never been done before in journalism, I think — and was published alongside downloadable samples of the Regin malware.

In December, I had a new report out revealing a secret NSA program that involves spying on emails sent among hundreds of mobile phone companies around the world, a practice that helps the agency hack into phone networks. The story exposed how the NSA targeted a London-headquartered trade group that represents tech giants like Microsoft and Facebook, and provided evidence that NSA had been working to insert security vulnerabilities into global telecommunications infrastructure so that they can be exploited for surveillance.

Also in December, I reported new details about the GCHQ hack of Belgian telecommunications company Belgacom as part of a reporting collaboration with newspapers in Belgium and the Netherlands. This particular story is one that I am especially proud of; it was the culmination of about six months of work, and took a huge amount of cooperation with different teams operating out of four separate countries simultaneously. We were able to tell the full story of the British hack on Belgacom, a hugely significant incident representing an unprecedented cyberattack by one EU member state on another. The story included new 'smoking gun' evidence showing that the Regin malware samples contained code-names that also appeared in secret GCHQ documents obtained from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Vital stories

Here a list of some reports and developments that stood out to me in 2014:

NSA collects millions of text messages daily in 'untargeted' global sweep, The Guardian, 16 January.

Snowden docs show UK spies attacked Anonymous, hackers, NBC News, 4 February.

The NSA’s secret role in the US assassination program, The Intercept, 10 February.

Optic Nerve: millions of Yahoo webcam images intercepted by GCHQ, The Guardian, 27 February.

NSA surveillance program reaches ‘into the past’ to retrieve, replay phone calls, Washington Post, 18 March.

Top EU court rejects EU-wide data retention law, BBC News, 8 April.

Death from above: how American drone strikes are devastating Yemen, Rolling Stone, 14 April.

Turkish president approves law widening secret service's powers, Reuters, 24 April.

The NSA is recording every cell phone call in the Bahamas, The Intercept, 19 May.

Germany arrests man suspected of spying for US, BBC News, 4 June.

NSA: Inside the five-eyed vampire squid of the Internet, The Register, 5 June.

Vodafone reveals existence of secret wires that allow state surveillance, The Guardian, 6 June.

US officials scrambled to nab Snowden, hoping he would take a wrong step. He didn’t, Washington Post, 14 June.

GCHQ sanctions spying on every Facebook, Google and Twitter user, The Telegraph, 17 June.

In NSA-intercepted data, those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are, Washington Post, 5 July.

Germany to spy on US for first time since 1945 after ‘double agent’ scandal, The Independent, 7 July.

Meet the Muslim-American leaders the FBI and NSA have been spying on, The Intercept, 9 July.

Hacking online polls and other ways British spies seek to control the Internet, The Intercept, 14 July.

The secret government rulebook for labeling you a terrorist, The Intercept, 23 July.

CIA Admits improperly hacked into Senate computers, Washington Times, 31 July.

Barack Obama’s secret terrorist-tracking system, by the numbers, The Intercept, 5 August.

The Islamic State (documentary), Vice, 7 August.

German spy company helped Bahrain hack Arab Spring protesters, The Intercept, 8 August.

Photos of alleged 9/11 '20th hijacker' can stay classified: court, Reuters, 2 September.

MRAPs and bayonets: what we know about the Pentagon's 1033 program, NPR, 2 September.

The NSA and GCHQ campaign against German satellite companies, The Intercept, 14 September.

Israel's NSA scandal, New York Times, 16 September.

Wikileaks releases FinFisher files to highlight government malware abuse, The Guardian, 16 September.

The NSA and me, The Intercept, 2 October.

Citizen Four (documentary), 10 October.

Why was the NSA chief playing the market? Foreign Policy, 22 October.

MI5 spied on leading British historians for decades, secret files reveal, The Guardian, 24 October.

In Cold War, US spy agencies used 1,000 Nazis, New York Times, 26 October.

Secret manuals show the spyware sold to despots and cops worldwide, The Intercept, 30 October.

Brazil is keeping its promise to avoid the US Internet, Gizmodo, 30 October.

Disguised as climate negotiators, Dagbladet Information, 1 November.

UK intelligence agencies spying on lawyers in sensitive security cases, The Guardian, 7 November.

FBI says it impersonated AP reporter in 2007 case, AP, 7 November.

Americans’ cellphones targeted in secret US spy program, Wall Street Journal, 14 November.

WhatsApp now provides end-to-end encryption for your messages, Gizmodo, 18 November.

Before Snowden, a debate inside NSA, AP, 19 November.

US firms accused of enabling surveillance in despotic Central Asian regimes, The Intercept, 20 November.

How Vodafone-subsidiary Cable & Wireless aided GCHQ’s spying efforts, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 25 November.

CIA torture report, 9 December.

WikiLeaks CIA leaks, 18 & 21 December.

Inside the NSA's war on internet security, Der Spiegel, 27 December.

The Sabu Files, Vice/Daily Dot.

Save our sources campaign, The Press Gazette.

Ones to watch in 2015

Some things worth keeping an eye on...

A new US cybersecurity unit that will advise agencies on surveillance operations.

Details about a secret database being used by federal agents in the US, the existence of which has become the subject of dispute in an ongoing court case.

Information about documents being shredded en masse in a UK police anti-corruption investigation.

Developments in the US government's ongoing criminal investigation into WikiLeaks, which may have involved the use of a prominent informant.

The long-overdue publication of a government-commissioned post-Snowden review of UK surveillance operations.

The US government using state secrecy powers to block the release of files from anti-Iran group.

Renewed 'crypto wars' as law enforcement agencies in the US push for more powers to combat privacy-protecting encryption technologies.

More details about the CIA's hacking of Senate computers.

A continuing government effort to introduce new laws bolstering surveillance powers in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

Many more stories from the Snowden documents related to secret spying conducted by the US, UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and other countries.

Now for a few awards...

Because I feel like handing out some dubious accolades:

Bullshit statement of the year

Winner: Recently retired GCHQ spy chief Sir Iain Lobban for his claim in October that the agency doesn't engage in "anything remotely resembling mass surveillance." A completely false statement that could not be further from the truth.

Runner-up: UK home secretary Theresa May for "collection of bulk data is not mass surveillance."

3rd prize: former US vice-president Dick Cheney for "we were very careful to stop short of torture."

Dishonourable mentions: former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden for "I didn’t do anything wrong"; New GCHQ spy chief Robert Hannigan for "GCHQ is happy to be part of a mature debate on privacy in the digital age."

Orwellian euphemism of the year

New Zealand's prime minister John Key tries and fails to make mass surveillance palatable to the public in September by re-branding it "mass protection."

Outrageous admission of the year

Former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden tells an audience at Johns Hopkins University in April: "We kill people based on metadata."

Understatement of the year

President Barack Obama, in August, on the CIA's brutal human rights abuses post 9/11: "We tortured some folks."

Gaffe of the year

UK foreign secretary Philip Hammond, who is responsible for signing off on GCHQ surveillance operations, illustrates that he doesn't have a clue what he's been approving during a parliamentary hearing in October.

Hypocrite of the year

Michael Hayden, the CIA chief who overseen the agency's secret extrajudicial kidnapping operations that involved imprisoning and torturing terrorism suspects, some of whom were entirely innocent,  complains in December that a Senate report criticising CIA torture methods was like being "tried and convicted in absentia. We were not given an opportunity to mount a defense."

Most bizarre mass surveillance justification of the year

UK prime minister David Cameron explains to British lawmakers in January that fictional TV crime dramas demonstrate the need for new dragnet spying powers.

Most absurd response to surveillance revelations of the year

A special joint award that goes to the Canadian prime minister's parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra, and John Key, New Zealand's prime minister. Instead of addressing the substance of revelations about secret government spying in 2014 (that I was involved in reporting), Calandra and Key both resorted to weird and childish petty insults, calling my colleague Glenn Greenwald a "porn spy" (Calandra) and a "loser" (Key).

Villain of the year

UK police and security agencies for establishing a precedent that means journalism — the mere publication of facts and opinions — can now be considered terrorism; for working to secretly identify journalists' confidential sources; and for eavesdropping on lawyers' privileged communications.

Extraordinary Rendition and the Secret Role of Metadata

On Monday, I had a new story out at The Intercept revealing a secret search engine that the National Security Agency built to share a massive amount of data with other US government agencies, including domestic law enforcement. There are many new and important details scattered through the piece. But there is one in particular I would like to take a minute to focus on here, because it is a fact that strikes at the heart of the debate about government surveillance and deserves some more attention.

In one of the classified documents that we published with the story, dated from 2005, the NSA outlined some of the "successes" of a data-sharing project called CRISSCROSS that was led by the Central Intelligence Agency. The document shows that metadata collected about communications was integral to the CIA's extraordinary rendition program during the Bush Administration, which involved kidnapping terror suspects and taking them to secret "black site" jails where they would be brutally interrogated and sometimes tortured. The NSA document says:

Since 9/11, the contributions to the GWOT [global war on terror] due to our increased collection of signaling metadata are innumerable and significant. It is safe to say that it has been a contribution to virtually every successful rendition of suspects and often, the deciding factor.

This is an incredible detail. Remember, metadata is not the audio content of a phone call or the words contained within the body of an email message. It is merely information showing who you have contacted and when. Governments have often sought to defend the mass-scale collection of metadata by insisting that it is not information that is sensitive or very private. In June last year, President Obama tried to dismiss concerns about metadata collection in the United States by claiming that "nobody is listening to your telephone calls." But, clearly, the government doesn't need to be listening to your calls to deem you a threat. That metadata has been the deciding factor in targeting people for extraordinary rendition is a profound illustration of that — and it shows that metadata collection has real-world ramifications: it is not just some benign activity.

You might think, "well, I'm not a terror suspect so what do I care?" But this is not only about the Bad Guys — there are much wider consequences at play here. During the height of the extraordinary rendition program, for instance, some of the people targeted were victims of what was called "erroneous rendition." In other words, the CIA would kidnap the wrong person. (Yes, seriously.) In 2005, it was reported by the Washington Post that the CIA's inspector general was investigating a "growing number" of erroneous renditions, with some anonymous government officials saying that they believed there were as many as 30 instances of it having taken place.

Much is still unknown about these cocked-up renditions because the information has been kept secret. But now that we know metadata played a key role in targeting people — in some cases even being the "deciding factor" — questions must surely be asked about whether this method was ever to blame. From a legal and human rights perspective, it is disturbing enough that the CIA was secretly kidnapping, imprisoning, and then torturing people. But the possibility of innocent individuals being targeted on the basis of their metadata trail clearly adds a chilling extra dimension. It is a policy of guilt by association that bears all the hallmarks of a kind of terrible and flawed style of totalitarian policing.

Today, the practice of extraordinary rendition appears to have been largely phased out by President Obama. But the concerns raised by the use of metadata to target people are still highly pertinent. Indeed, as The Intercept reported back in February, metadata is actively being used to target and kill terror suspects in drone strikes in countries like Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. One military source said that the method can result in the "wrong people" being bombed. And if you think that sounds far-fetched — that the US would not launch missiles at people because of their metadata — you don't need to take my word for it. Just go and listen to what former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden has to say. As he boasted in April: "We kill people based on metadata."

The Chenagai Madrassa Incident

On 30 October 2006, an Islamic school in Pakistan was targeted in a missile strike that killed up to 81 people, most of whom were reportedly children, some as young as seven.

At the time of the strike, which took place in the town of Chenagai in the tribal area of Bajaur, Pakistan's military claimed responsibility, saying it had targeted the school — known as a madrassa — because it was being used as a terrorist training facility. However, an anonymous former Pakistan official, described as an ex-"key aide" to then-President Pervez Musharraf, later reportedly claimed that the attack had been carried out by a US drone, according to the Sunday Times. The US denied any role, saying it was "completely done by the Pakistani military."

Now, a newly published report has raised fresh questions about exactly who was behind this horrific incident. A leaked Pakistan government document, published by London's Bureau of Investigative Journalism on Monday, lists the Bajaur case among a series of US Predator drone strikes and NATO-backed attacks in Pakistan between 2006 and 2009. The Bureau says that the document shows the attack was the result of "a single drone strike," though the document does not specify whether a drone or other aircraft was involved.

So who carried out this controversial attack?

At the time of the strike, Pakistan's army spokesman said that it had been carried out by Pakistan military helicopter gunships that fired four or five missiles into the madrassa. One local villager told the BBC he had "heard helicopters flying in and then heard bombs." An NBC news correspondent, who was reportedly about a mile away from the madrassa at the time of the incident, said that it "was dark and very early in the morning when the blast occurred. And then I heard helicopters over the village of Chenagai where the madrassa school is located."

Analysts speculated that Pakistan's military may have not had the skills required to conduct the helicopter strike, because it was apparently conducted at 5am while it was still dark and had the hallmarks of an elite operation. Hours after the attack, Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal suggested that a US special operations team may have been behind it. "Look for signs of Task Force 145 having carried out this raid," Roggio wrote, "with unmanned Predators firing Hellfire missiles, and possibly C-130 and helicopters following up."

Others had an alternative theory. On October 31, 2006, Syed Saleem Shahzad at the Asia Times wrote:

Recently, Islamabad agreed with NATO that it could conduct operations in Pakistan from across the border in Afghanistan... Significantly, Pakistan and Taliban authorities struck a peace deal in Bajour only two days ago and were scheduled to sign a document to that effect on Monday. This lends credence to the possibility that it was NATO and not Pakistani forces that made the raid.

Among those who died in the attack was the leader of the madrassa, a reportedly pro-Taliban radical cleric named Maulana Liaqat. Pakistan officials also claimed that Ayman al-Zawahiri — who was then Osama bin Laden's deputy — had used the madrassa to train suicide bombers. That would certainly have given both US and NATO forces a motive to want to target the building. And Pakistan has covered up for US drone strikes in the past.

But still, there is still no concrete information that has been presented confirming beyond doubt that a US drone or any other US or NATO military aircraft was involved.

Indeed, secret US diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010, four years after the strike, did not hint at any US or NATO role. US officials writing in classified cables dated from 2006 described the incident alternately as a "Pakistan military strike against a madrassa/militant training camp" and a "Pak-Mil attack on an extremist madrassa."

Even with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's publication of the leaked Pakistani document attributing the attack to NATO forces or a US drone, in my view, the facts remain murky and contentious. And that is perhaps one of the most shocking elements of this story — that seven years on there is still such a lack of clarity about the circumstances of this grave incident, involving the reported deaths of dozens of innocent children.

Without an answer to such a simple question — who pulled the trigger? — there can be no accountability, no closure, no recourse for justice for the families of those who lost a child on that day in Chenagai. It is an incident that seems to symbolise the bloody, faceless brutality of the ruthless covert warfare that has become a staple feature of the so-called War on Terror over the past decade, especially in the tribal regions of Pakistan. But just because there may be dangerous, high-level terror targets operating in these places, military forces, wherever they are from, should not get a pass to kill and maim with impunity. For that reason alone, the madrassa strike surely requires serious further scrutiny — perhaps from UN special rapporteur Ben Emmerson, who is currently investigating the issue of civilian drone deaths.

Saudi Drone Base Blackout

Yesterday it was widely reported that the United States has been operating "secret" drone base in Saudi Arabia since 2011. Not only that, but some American news organisations had known about the base for more than a year and chose not to disclose its existence because of a blackout agreement made with the government.

Here's a snippet from the Washington Post's report:

The Washington Post had refrained from disclosing the location at the request of the administration, which cited concern that exposing the facility would undermine operations against an al-Qaeda affiliate regarded as the network’s most potent threat to the United States, as well as potentially damage counterterrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.

The Post learned Tuesday night that another news organization was planning to reveal the location of the base, effectively ending an informal arrangement among several news organizations that had been aware of the location for more than a year.

But the logic here doesn't stack up. Why? Because on 26 July 2011 a story was published by the London Times titled "Secret drone bases mark latest shift in US attacks on al-Qaeda." This report revealed the existance of a CIA drone base in Saudi Arabia, and even went as far as to speculatively pinpoint its exact location:

The CIA has set up a network of secret drone bases in Arab states in a major escalation of its campaign against al-Qaeda militants in Yemen.

Sources in the Gulf say the agency is now massed along Yemen’s borders, launching daily missions with unmanned Predator aircraft from bases in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates. [...]

“Oman, Saudi and the UAE are being used as bases for drones. The operation against al-Qaeda has been stepped up in Yemen and in Somalia,” said a Gulf defence source. [...]

A senior Gulf intelligence source believes the most likely base in Saudi Arabia is at Khamis Mushayt in the southwest. The site has been used by Saudi forces for airstrikes against Houthi rebels in northern Yemen. A possible alternative is Sharurah in the kingdom’s Empty Quarter, close to the Yemeni border but considered less secure.

What this means is that the information the United States government was pressuring American reporters to keep secret was already in the public domain — it had already been "outed," as it were, and it hadn't damaged counter-terrorism operations or the relationship with Saudi Arabia. Anyone with an Internet connection — and yes, that includes members of al-Qaeda — could find out that the CIA had a "secret" drone base in Saudi Arabia simply by doing a quick Google search. (Even though the Times story is behind a paywall, the first few paragraphs, which include the Saudi detail, can still be viewed for free.)

Defending the decision not to publish this information after some criticism, Washington Post reporter Greg Miller posted a tweet today saying: "For the record, WaPo has reported CIA drone base on Arabian peninsula since 2011, w/out disclosing it was in Saudi." I asked him why not disclose the specific country when it had already been published elsewhere, and he responded: "Short answer: US govt concerned more about US press than British, and saying on Arabian peninsula puts readers pretty close."

I think this shows poor judgement. It seems flawed to make a distinction between the British and American press here, especially in the age of the Internet. All news stories published online are distributed instantly to an international audience. By disclosing the existence of an "Arabian peninsula" base while suppressing the exact country in question — even though it is already in the public domain — not only are you serving no substantive purpose but you are doing your readers a disservice.

In national security journalism, difficult decisions often have to be made under incredible pressures. Sometimes, there can be a legitimate need to keep a certain military operation undisclosed if, for example, lives are at stake. But in this case I think the American press got it wrong. Unfortunately, it comes off looking like another example of deference to power that will ultimately taint the reputations of the newspapers involved.

Yemen: Drones, Death And Secrecy

There have been a flurry of drone missile strikes conducted by the United States in Yemen over the the last week. Attacks on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday resulted in up to 18 fatalities, according to London's Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The attack on Wednesday in particular caught my eye. It was reported that a vehicle was targeted while travelling on an inner city road in Hadramawt, eastern Yemen, killing five "suspected militants," the country's military officials said.

However, Yemen's press were quick to report that among the dead were two civilians. One was a mosque caretaker and imam named Salim Ahmad Jaber, the other a police officer, Walid Abdullah bin Ali Jaber, according to details posted online by Yemini lawyer Haykal Bafana. Bafana wrote that the car was targeted as it was driving between houses, and the caretaker and policeman were in a house that was hit. Reuters reported local residents saying that "the car was struck by one of three missiles fired from a plane ... charred bodies were pulled from it afterwards." Pictures published by Yemeni news outlet Dammon purported to depict children playing in the mangled, burnt out and blackened remains of the car, a Suzuki Vitara.

This strike stands out as an acute example of why drone attacks can be deeply problematic. In the immediate aftermath of Wednesday's attack it was widely reported that a number of suspected militants had been obliterated in a new drone strike. Yet it later transpired that among the "suspected militants" there may have been two civilians. The concern is that, seemingly by default, unnamed "military sources" have a tendency to promptly announce that "suspected insurgents" or "militants" were the victims in any given strike - but how can we know for sure? We can't, as Wednesday's incident illustrates, and that's why scepticism about claims made by anonymous military sources is always necessary.

As is so often the case with drone strikes, it is almost impossible to confirm details for a number of reasons. 1) The bodies end up badly burnt and damaged, meaning identities of victims are hard to quickly establish; 2) the strikes can occur in dangerous and remote locations, in places where news outlets have a limited presence and facts are not forthcoming; and 3) the perpetrators of drone strikes in Yemen, the US CIA, conduct their actions and pick their targets behind a cloak of secrecy. (NB: Even the UK's Ministry of Defence has acknowledged there are "immense difficulty and risks" involved in verifying who has been hit in drone strikes. The MoD says it cannot tell exactly how many how many alleged insurgents it has killed using drones in Afghanistan.)

So the situation in Yemen is as follows: US forces are covertly bombing people in a country where no formal war has been declared. We do not know (with any certainty) who they are bombing or the justification for each bombing. We do not know exactly how many civilians have been killed in the process (the BFIJ estimates it could be up to 151), or how the pilots who remotely fly the drones from thousands of miles away are held accountable for their sometimes catastrophic errors. This can also be said in other countries that are being subjected the America's covert drone attacks, such as Pakistan and Somalia.

Drone attacks of this kind self-evidently raise profound legal, moral and ethical questions. Unfortunately, the US government presently appears to have very little interest in addressing them.

*****

Incidentally, I put up a short post here the other day about the psychological impact drone strikes conducted by the United States are apparently having on residents of Manzer Khel, a tribal village in North Waziristan, Pakistan. The same can be said of certain communities within Yemen. As a sheikh from Bayhan district in Shabwaare told the Economist in a piece out today: "People are afraid to go to weddings because, whenever large groups of men gather, they are afraid a drone will hit them." And Yemeni news outlet Dammon reported that prior to Wednesday's attack targeting the car in Hadramawt, US drones were spotted, instilling "panic among the citizens of the region."

There could well be blowback. While the strikes are intended to take out terror suspects, by spreading fear among villages and in some cases killing civilians, they may only be serving to recruit greater numbers of terrorists to fight and plot against America and its allies. As the Yemeni lawyer Haykal Bafana wrote on Twitter back in May: "Dear Obama, when a US drone missile kills a child in Yemen, the father will go to war with you, guaranteed. Nothing to do with Al Qaeda."

UPDATE 4.09.12: CNN is reporting that a fresh suspected US drone strike in Yemen has killed 13 civilians, including three women. A senior Yemeni Defense Ministry official is quoted as saying the target was "completely missed. It was a mistake". CNN says that families of the victims closed main roads and vowed to retaliate. Nasr Abdullah, an activist from the district where the attack took place, in the al-Baitha province, told CNN: "I would not be surprised if a hundred tribesmen joined the lines of al Qaeda as a result of the latest drone mistake."

Constant Fear In Manzer Khel

In the last few days I've been working on a piece about 'unmanned aerial vehicles', or 'drones' as most people call them. I was interested to discover that there is a company based in England that has manufactured technology sold and exported to the United States for use as part of drone systems. The US uses its drones for controversial covert attacks in places like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia - attacks that many believe are being conducted in violation of international law.

In a factory on a bland-looking industrial estate in Towcester, Northamptonshire, General Electrics Intelligence Platforms (GEIP) has produced single-board computers that it has acknowledged may be used on the ground stations that communicate with drones. The company says the parts are not used as part of "weapons systems" but are rather "used solely in connection with the operation of the aircraft itself." Nevertheless, human rights group Reprieve is demanding that the British government restrict exports of this technology for use in drones because it says it is "helping to kill, maim and terrify citizens."

What's particularly interesting is that lawyers acting on behalf of a Pakistani elder named Malik Jalal have sent a letter to the UK government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) regarding technology exported by GEIP. Jalal lives in Manzer Khel, North Waziristan, a tribal village that has been hit by repeated strikes by US drones as part of a 'targeted killing' programme which has operated covertly in Pakistan since 2004. Jalal's lawyers, Tuckers, are requesting that BIS officials provide a series of answers about approvals of GEIP exports. The exports, they allege, are helping to facilitate strikes that are a violation of international law on armed conflict and a breach of human rights.

Most striking about the letter is one passage that describes an aspect of drones I hadn't considered before: their psychological impact. It is hard imagine what it must be like to know that there are remote control aircraft soaring 20,000ft in the sky above your head every day, armed with deadly 'Hellfire' missiles and on the hunt for groups of suspected militants. But this particular paragraph goes some way to explaining the profound and alarming effect it is having on the people living in North Waziristan. It's something I think everyone should read:

As a result of the UAV strikes, Malik Jalal and others residing in the area live in constant fear. There are very often UAVs hovering overhead. Members of Malik Jalal's tribe cannot tell whether they are intending to fire missiles or simply for surveillance, and the knowledge that any one of them at any time could launch a missile is unbearable. Malik Jalal as the tribal elder feels particularly helpless that he is unable to stop the UAVs and he fears for the physical safety of his family as well as the psychological effects, especially on the young, of the UAVs' presence. Even young children are aware of the UAVs and can see them and hear their buzzing overhead. The UAVs also affect the economy and daily life. People are scared to be out together in large groups or to travel with others in case they are mistaken for militants and targeted, and many parents are reluctant to send their children to school in case they are hit during the journey.

You can read the full lawyers' letter here.

It is estimated that up to 3,303 people have been killed in US drone strikes on Pakistan since 2004, including as many as 880 civilians. The issue is causing huge tension in the country and politicians have repeatedly called for America to stop its attacks - to no avail.

The BIS told me that it "takes is export licensing responsibilities seriously" but said that "we do not comment on individual licence requests, the application or the end user." Of more interest was what a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) told me when I called to query how the Royal Air Force uses drones. In an apparent attempt to distance the MoD from the increasingly controversial US bombings in places like Pakistan, the spokesman said: "I wouldn’t want you to confuse the way we operate drones with the way the Americans operate drones. They use them for wholly different missions."