Mark Hanis, 2006 Echoing Green Fellow and founder of the Genocide Intervention Network, has co-written an op-ed in the New York Times that asks if drone or UAV surveillance could help document state repression in Syria. He writes:

“This we know: the Syrian government isn’t just fighting rebels, as it claims; it is shooting unarmed protesters, and has been doing so for months. Despite a ban on news media, much of the violence is being caught on camera by ubiquitous cellphones. The footage is shaky and the images grainy, but still they make us YouTube witnesses.

Imagine if we could watch in high definition with a bird’s-eye view. A drone would let us count demonstrators, gun barrels and pools of blood. And the evidence could be broadcast for a global audience, including diplomats at the United Nations and prosecutors at the International Criminal Court.”

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