How To Survive America's Kill List

There exists a list of people the US government has marked for death. Drawn from metadata and artificial intelligence, the list contains the names of those people who US intelligence agencies have decided are threats. As the modern-day equivalent of the ‘black spot’, once on the list, missiles occasionally fall from the sky, striking the places you were and killing those around you.

Until, eventually, you too are killed.

The US drone program and its associated ‘kill list’ is highly controversial, and legally dubious, especially in the cases when American citizens are added to the list. But in one such case, an American who suspects he is on the list hasn’t died yet, and is doing his best to have his constitutional rights protected.

Bilal Abdul Kareem is a journalist with what some might call a dubiously close relationship with, and ideological sympathies for, Islamist movements. Nonetheless, there is no evidence that exists that he is explicitly a terrorist. For several years, however, a series of brushes with death have left him convinced that he on the ‘kill list’ and being targeted by US drones. Fighting back with the help of legal organization Reprieve, he is attempting to get his case heard by the US government.

While his story alone is compelling, the greater issue at play is the legal precedent this case could create. One decision of a judge could either legalize extrajudicial assassination without oversight, while another could reverse at least some of the erosion of constitutional rights since 9/11.