By Eric Lewis

October 04, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - Does the US Constitution allow President Donald Trump to order the assassination of innocent Americans in total secrecy? Such a question seems absurd; unfortunately, a US District judge has just answered in the affirmative.

Bilal Kareem is a US citizen of Syrian origin, who was living in Brooklyn and working as a stand-up comedian. Frustrated by the news coverage of the conflict in Syria and especially the failure of journalists to interview and try to understand the experience of the people actually involved in the conflict, Kareem moved to Aleppo and established the YouTube channel On the Ground News TV, which provided content to news outlets around the world.

Suddenly, drones started firing missiles at him. In the summer of 2016, he was nearly killed by Hellfire missiles fired by Predator drones five times.

Nobody but the US had weaponized drones in the region at the time. Based on publicly available information about how the US uses cellphone data to identify targets, it seemed likely that the US government had concluded, probably based upon its algorithms, that because Bilal Kareem was spending time interviewing rebels, he was a rebel himself. The result of using software to determine who to kill resulted in the US targeting one of its own, who was actually engaging in a deeply important First Amendment activity.