The Murder Matrix

The Disposition Matrix is a database that United States officials describe as a “next-generation capture/kill list”.

Developed by the Obama Administration beginning in 2010, the “Disposition Matrix” goes beyond existing kill lists, and creates a blueprint for tracking, capturing, rendering, or killing suspected enemies of the US government. It is intended to become a permanent fixture of American policy. The process determining criteria for killing is not public, but has been heavily shaped by presidential counterterrorism adviser and CIA director John Brennan.

8 out of 10 ‪drone‬ ‪murders‬ are children or women or innocent men not on “the list”. A list that is already illegal an constutes an international crime/ premedated murder in foreign sovereign countries. Some might even call it State Terrorism.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has condemned the database, writing in a press release that “anyone who thought U.S. targeted killing outside of armed conflict was a narrow, emergency-based exception to the requirement of due process before a death sentence is being proven conclusively wrong.” It has also filed freedom of information requests regarding the database and filed a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality.

Glenn Greenwald has written that “the central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed [is] rather odious… the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed”. ‪Greenwald‬ concludes that the Disposition ‪Matrix‬ has established “simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be “disposed” of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency”.