Comment on Wait a minute, we've been going about this all the wrong way!
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 days agotargeting one specific guy through the most broad means possible seems, weird.
Not that weird, in the history of espionage. As another example, the CIA used a vaccine drive in Pakistan to target Osama bin Laden’s hideout.
Regardless, i doubt they solely intended to target that one guy.
When your government believes neighboring ethnicities are “bug people” who need to be exterminated, collateral damage is viewed as a perk.
KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 days ago
“The program was ultimately unsuccessful. It led to the arrest of a participating physician, Shakil Afridi, and was widely ridiculed as undermining public health.”
hmm. Also it seems this was to check DNA from blood samples. So not really a good comparison here.
i mean that’s a potential reason, but these are also pagers meant for military communications purposes right? Why wouldn’t you want to target military personnel if you’re already gunning for one person. Besides these are probably more dangerous left unexploded than what currently happened. Imagine what would happen in 20 years when these make their way onto the second hand markets. You could very well accidentally kill innocent people then. You can still do it now, but since they’ve presumably all been deactivated, it’s probably not a huge concern.
There are definitely concerns over war crimes and shit, but unfortunately i’m not the ICC or ICJ so i can’t comment on that with authority.