Note: Words and phrases formatted in italics within quotes are used here with a specific meaning that are presented in the Technical Definitions section of this chapter.
With respect to the evidence and discussion presented in Part I about the direct role of US-led organizations and armed forces, in orchestrating genocides within the Middle East and in parts of Africa, especially using drone based warfare — the anticipated rebuttals which could eventually be posited by organizations involved with coalition forces, and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), from countries like the US, the UK, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Canada, and Australia, are most likely to be along the following lines and angles:
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The evidence and testimonial reports, prepared and presented by Sameer A. Khan, are fraudulent fabrications, or misrepresentations that are inaccurate, and are thereby misleading. The reports and materials labeled as documentations are a smear campaign that constitute a willful act of defamation, against US military agencies and their R&D suppliers. Such maliciousness is a criminal offense, punishable by law.
- The above type of a statement would be a typical denial and deflectionary tactic, that is likely to be used by the army of lawyers recruited by US-led agencies, for suppressing the materials presented in Part I. Such a tactic would only serve the purposes of orchestrating a cover-up of their war crimes. The facts presented here, about careless killings of allied personnel via drone technologies, war crimes, and genocides in the Middle East committed by US-led forces during the recent decades, can be scrutinized by independent agencies. Such evidence can also be corroborated by tomes of documents concerning safety records of military drones and automated systems, available in US military and DARPA archives. (Acts of wrongful killings covered up by recording them as "accidents" in investigative reports among those documents, are particularly challenging to revisit and re-investigate.)
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Entities like the US Department of Labor (US-DOL), could try to claim that, all of the work done by organizations like the University of Iowa (Iowa, USA); University of Urbana-Champaign (Illinois, USA); University of Toronto (Ontario, Canada); Defense Science and Technology Organization (Melbourne, Australia); and Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne, Australia), in the context of using "Abstraction Hierarchies" and "Work Domain Analysis", for creating, promoting and propagating: research into prior art, automation designs, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, user interface designs, usability training, as well as systems architectures for programmable systems — were only at the level of mere proposals, which were never utilized at any point in time, through any constructed, procured, sold, or deployed systems of US-led armed forces and contractors, within any region of the world.
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The above style of a statement would be a categorical lie, if it were put forth, because R&D files engineered by contractors, and subcontractors of US-DOD, indubitably, indisputably, and indispensably showcase how "Abstraction Hierarchies", "Work Domain Analysis", and novel concepts of "Ecological Interface Designs" from human factors engineering, have become essential and integral material components of modern warfare using AI, for computerized systems. The work done by researchers and engineers like myself, have directly contributed to the controllability, usability, and scalability of AI and automated systems like drones. Such computerized and automated systems have been, and continue to be used within tactical as well as strategic deployments of modern military units, in battlefields of the 21st Century. Moreover, the R&D work carried out for defining and legitimizing, the ethos and culture of US-led forces via subject matter like "Work Domain Analysis", was crucial for establishing the legal definitions of "military work," and of "accessible domains for military work." These definitions were necessary for the purposes of conforming to accepted international labor laws, military codes of conduct, and "laws governing warfare."
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The main challenge here is that coordinated units from US-led armed forces and R&D groups have continued to deliberately, and willfully circumvent those well-defined and accepted laws, codes of conduct, as well as international norms. They have continued to do so, repeatedly and belligerently, for conducting mass murders of civilians with disregard for safety of allied soldiers within numerous countries — for decades. Such overt and wretched acts of killings and mass murders, committed by US-led groups using industrial scale automation, have gone unchecked without any penalties, remedies, restorations, or restitution being put into effect, in order to redress and end such international-scale genocidal crimes.
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The claims being made on grounds of "moral rights" of workers, existing by virtue of their authored or edited R&D files and compositions, specifically related to aviation and defense systems, are not applicable, nor are they admissible in any administrating court of law, because of the nature of employment of those workers and elapsed time, that have caused any and all of such rights based claims pertaining to authorship and IP, to have already been assigned, attributed, appropriated, forfeited, misplaced, or disclaimed.
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My employment via CSL, CCAD at UIowa, as a graduate research assistant, was contractual in nature. However, the formal employment contract offered by CCAD, and accepted by me in October 2007, did not have any implicit or explicit connotations about me needing to assign my IP, labors, and compositions to any employer whatsoever. It must be emphasized and reiterated here that, I never entered into any verbal or written contract with any conceivable entity, to assign the moral rights within my work and IP to anyone, through my employment within UIowa.
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Agencies like US-ONR, which represented the US government, along with co-working private companies like Aptima Inc., collectively entered into a contractual engagement with UIowa via DARPA funded and authorized projects. However, The premise that the IP owned and created by employees of CSL, CCAD, UIowa were to be unconditionally assigned to contracting agencies, or to co-working groups of DARPA projects, was never stated in my employment contract with CCAD. But, the culture of cunningly taking the work and IP of an employee without consent, and without proper contractual agreements, was widely prevalent in graduate schools like UIowa. Such a treacherous regime of culturally normalized misappropriation of labors and IP, via exploitative cultural environs, is still prevalent in American graduate schools and colleges. The fact of the matter is that by no means could I, or any other employee of CCAD, UIowa have ever given away, assigned, ascribed, waived, forfeited, unclaimed, or disclaimed any personally or collaboratively created IP and moral rights, based on the type and verbiage of employment contracts administered by UIowa. This can be evidenced by inspecting UIowa's employment contracts with research students and faculty members. The original contract offered to me, and its verbiage are made available here for inspection: long-overdue-justice/reference/files.
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The laws concerning IP rights as well as labor and employment contracts are supposed to be clear, and unambiguous, in the US, the UK and the EU. So, the US government and its affiliates, cannot be allowed to evade or hide from the law, in these types of malpractices orchestrated via their universities and colleges. As such, the US government along with its conglomerated R&D units like UIowa, US-ONR, DARPA, as well as any other agents and agencies involved in the overall conglomerate — owe me and thousands of persons like myself an apology, apart from royalties, remedies, punitive damages, and restitution for continuing to violate our moral and IP rights.
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The type of example provided in Part I, Chapter 4, which showcases the so-called internal workings of the AI and software programs used for operating unmanned systems, was only a hypothetical design by academicians, and was not introduced into production phase of any manned or unmanned vehicles used by US-led organizations. Additionally, the US Government and its technology suppliers cannot disclose the proprietary designs and blueprints of existing technologies, to confirm that no such algorithmic methods that can result in civilian deaths have been incorporated into any systems, tools, or equipment used by any military, or security enforcement operators and contracted agencies. Furthermore, casualties of war and collateral damage are a normal, unavoidable, and accepted part of warfare. This issue is therefore a moot subject.
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The example of "Quantifying objective functions and performance shaping mechanisms," is a specific instance of a generalized AI programming technique, from a DARPA project involving CCAD, UIowa, and a company called "Aptima Inc." How the project were promoted into production stage technologies, and deployed in the field, is evident in the records of Aptima Inc. as well as in the records of its funding agencies like US-ONR and DARPA. Those records can be obtained via a subpoena. The complication that arises at this stage, has to do with the US-DOJ, or an international court of law, needing to issue such a subpoena for obtaining records from a private company like Aptima, that might be defunct, and from US-ONR or DARPA, which may refuse to provide the pertinent records. Arguments about the "futility of such an endeavor," and the potential conflict of interest where a wing of the US government, investigates another, only to upset the status quo among existing members of government agencies, is likely the simplest argument for blocking the given materials from being produced in any court of law. The justice owed to hundreds of killed, injured, and maimed soldiers, as well as to thousands of murdered civilians with bereaved survivors, would thus become lost to history.
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What's worse is that, even with years of lengthy investigations and court proceedings, a satisfactory resolution to such serious issues might not come about. Any judgment, or "an answer to a question involving legal disputes" provided by an international court, might not be binding and enforceable. However, the way in which improper employment contracts have been utilized by universities for decades, to supply illegitimately obtained work products to government agencies across North America and the UK, is the anchoring issue that cannot allow any of the adjoining issues chained to it, from floating away into obscurity.
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At least in the context of unscrupulously obtained work products, and IP from private individuals, by North American agencies: the stated issues cannot be labeled as hypothetical or "moot." This is because the unscrupulousness pertaining to the main conflict within the stated issues, arises due to improperly administered work agreements utilized by North American universities. The illegitimately obtained materials and IP, as a result of the evidenced unscrupulousness and impropriety, also happen to be an integral, verifiable, and consequential part of a set of international-scale problems, tied to ongoing US-led genocides.
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So, the US Government may claim that said employment contract, while admittedly lacking any viable terms or clauses pertaining to attribution and assignment, of an employee's IP and other private rights, to an employing or contracting agency, resulting in any legal issues, can be simply discounted, discouraged and then ignored — because the government's sovereign rights allow it to confiscate any materials that are already in its possession. The US government can further assert that such a case, even with its plainly obvious evidence of grievous harms and suffering inflicted upon civilians and soldiers resulting from professional misconduct of R&D groups affiliated to it, cannot be discussed further, nor can the case be opened to an investigation by any court of law or a legislative committee, without breaching the sovereignty of USA.
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Any congressional or legislative act that allows the theft of any individual's IP and labors, under any circumstances, via actions of entities from American, British, Canadian, Australian, or any Commonwealth Nations, is absolutely illegitimate. Any congressional or legislative statutes enacted by democratic countries that facilitate, permit, or allow the theft or misappropriation of private properties by the state, especially via the misuse and abuse of concepts like "eminent domain," or "sovereignty," would cause their legislature and statutory laws to become undemocratic and fascist.
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Here one needs to be cognizant that a sovereign state or a ruler, is required to demonstrate the virtues of impeccable decency and ethical conscientiousness, which would allow the state or ruler to retain their worth and value, of being sovereign, and of having sovereignty. The continued appreciation of sovereignty vested in a sovereign state or a person, by any other being, requires such virtues of the sovereign to be demonstrable at all times to all observing beings. However, the US government did not obtain proper consent for using the work outputs, labors, materials, and IP produced by persons like myself — in a legitimate and decent manner, for any type of a just cause. It sneakily stole vital pieces of work and IP, in an unscrupulous and habitual manner, on a longitudinal timeline from thousands of cheated workers. In doing so, the US government via its agencies such as the US-ONR and UIowa has depreciated, degraded, and defiled its own sovereignty, by its own wrongdoings. Such grievous thefts and wrongful acts that are associated with genocidal activities, have continued to be conducted against numerous graduate student employees and faculty of UIowa, and of other North American universities, via improper administration of employment contracts at a systemic and cultural level. This much is most certainly obvious, and cannot be diminished or invalidated as being meaningless statements, baseless claims, exaggerations, falsehoods, misconceptions, prejudiced or slanderous statements, or insignificant minutia.
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The US government and its allies like Canada, Australia, Japan, France, Germany, and the UK, can even claim that they have acted, and are currently acting in accordance with the powers they have had as sovereign entities, in taking any work outputs and properties without necessary consensual agreements. But then, the same argument could also be made to justify the actions of any rapist who sexually molests somebody using their power differential over the victim. The work products, labors, and IP of persons like myself, were similarly molested and extracted from us without our consent, in a predatory manner, by the power differential exercised by the US government and its allies, upon private individuals, via the involvement of their registered agencies and universities. The worse issue is that such willfully stolen work products and IP are still being actively sold, distributed, and used across international borders, in violation of our moral rights, for conducting targeted killings of civilians along with belligerent destruction of civilian properties in Middle Eastern and Northern African (MENA) countries. How can the international community turn a blind eye to such wide-spread violations and crimes, or simply let them continue?
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Even if a breach of contractual obligations by US based employers against persons like me have occurred, and additionally, ethical codes of conduct for maintaining the decency of informed consensual agreement were also violated, resulting in the infringement of any moral or private rights, the US government and its authorized agencies may claim that they are under no such obligation to review this matter without proof of damages resulting from said breach of trust, and compounding violations. Additionally, the US government may claim that the supposedly injured parties would be required to take up such matters with the responsible institutional employers, who had administered the improper employment contracts.
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It is arguable that a state-funded organization like UIowa is a state-actor, especially due to its large size that practically engulfs the city of Iowa City. UIowa, like other "Big Ten Universities" in the US, is a direct conduit and an end-effector of the US government. Therefore, UIowa's liabilities and culpability that exist on an international-scale, are indeed the responsibility of the state and its federal funding agencies.
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The injuries resulting from these issues directly caused me to become destitute, depressed and ill, upon being fired from UIowa for raising my objections. I was tortuously put down and then fired for protesting that my work was being taken in contravention to, and in violation of, my moral and IP rights. The undue physical burdens and stresses I had to suffer while my work was being misappropriated, had already made me weakened and morose. My supervisor in UIowa then saw to it that my spirit — and my will to protest or defend my rights — was thoroughly broken and subdued by overriding my freewill. When I tried to communicate these circumstances and issues to UIowa's ombudsperson, the university simply washed its hands off of the matter, and denied me sufficiently fair and equitable treatment. Despite my best efforts, the only thing I could do at that time was to gather my shattered life, and leave the university with the little dignity I had left in me.
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The more specific conflict here is due to the set of compounding wrongs, that have continuously impacted:
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My life and well being due to the traumatic experiences of having all that was vital to me taken in an unscrupulous, and predatory manner, via the overwhelming force of a power differential that destroyed my sense of hope.
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Thousands of civilians who have lost their lives, homesteads, livelihoods, and/or properties, directly or indirectly due to illicit drone based warfare conducted by US-led armed forces.
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The compounding magnitude of royalties and fines, yet to be duly paid by US-led R&D groups associated with defense and aviation industry sectors, for using and selling misappropriated components, and assemblies of unmanned systems.
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The entire life-cycle and process of researching, analyzing, designing, developing, and deploying unmanned systems utilizes Abstraction Hierarchies as a starting point, and as a quality control mechanism in their software and hardware architectures. As such, the software and hardware components along with designs, usages, and methods associated with the overall assembly of autonomous and semi-autonomous systems, have generalized as well as specific value in the form of merchantable IP, contributed via labors and work outputs of various, and several, international R&D workers such as myself.
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Representatives of the US Government can, and in all likelihood will, assert that the private and confidential defense R&D materials from a DARPA project, having been retained and then distributed to various entities by me, irrespective of any reasons that I may have had to retain or distribute them, constitutes treason against the US, and/or is a set of activities that is a violation of statutes like the American Federal Government's Espionage Act.
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Members of the US Government could gin up espionage, defamation, or any of their statutory laws, along with a "preferred" interpretation of those laws, to then shoehorn those ideas and interpretations into a narrative, for drawing attention away from the main issues brought to light in this exposé.
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However, I have never pledged my allegiance to the US constitution and to its flag, nor to the British constitution and to its flag. I was an employee of a subcontractor of a defense subcontractor, whereby, I was abused and exploited as a ghost writer from the very onset of having been tasked with various R&D related chores in a university environment. My role and employment as an international scholar, and as a graduate researcher from Fall-2007 to Summer-2009 at UIowa, did not constitute any type of a fiduciary duty as defined in a proper employment contract; nor did the particular type of my employment constitute a formal role within any regularized cadres of the US defense, security, or intelligence departments. Therefore, the concept of treason cannot be applied to me, nor to my work in producing this documentation that brings a set of issues related to the global aviation industry, to the international community's awareness and knowledge.
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By no means have I ever been a registered, or a non-registered agent of any conceivable nation-state or groups of any kind, at any point during my lifetime. However, by asserting and illegitimately applying the concepts of economic, or industrial, or military espionage against me, the US Government and its allied groups can attempt to criminalize me, in order to undermine my testimony about their ongoing violations. In this way, the US Government along with its allies, can try to misdirect focus and attention, away from the fact that: stolen, or misappropriated IP related to aerospace, defense, and security sectors, are still being used for intentionally orchestrated mass killings of civilians, particularly genocidal killings of ethnic peoples in MENA countries.
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It can be argued that industrially orchestrated genocidal mass killings of civilians using AI and programmable technologies, were, and are still being perpetrated by US-led forces, due to their ignorance, fear, hatred, and preconceived prejudices against particular ethnic groups and peoples of the world. Therefore, such violations and offenses constitute a series of unabated crimes against humanity. Allowing individuals and groups from the US and its allies, to be pardoned for their globally spread genocidal crimes, without proper remedies and restitution paid to survivors, and to somehow allow those perpetrators to continue their genocidal endeavors, is entirely inconceivable.
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Abbreviations:
AI - Artificial Intelligence
CCAD - Center for Computer Aided Design (University of Iowa, USA)
CSL - Cognitive Systems Library (University of Iowa, USA)
DARPA - Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (USA)
IP - Intellectual Property (or Intellectual Properties)
MENA - Middle Eastern and Northern African
R&D - Research and Development
UIowa - The University of Iowa
UK - United Kingdom
US - United States (of America)
US-DOD - US Department of Defense
US-DOJ - US Department of Justice
US-DOL - US Department of Labor
US-ONR - US Office of Naval Research