Top secret documents leaked by former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden are likely to reveal new details of Australia's support for deadly US drone strikes. Meanwhile, human rights lawyers have called for a UN investigation of the killing by drones of two Australian citizens in Yemen last year. The Centre has also sought an investigation of the role of the Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs in supporting US drone strikes.

Australian government “needs to come clean” about its support for US drone operations. “Thousands of civilians have been killed as a result of US drone strikes. We currently have no way of knowing whether our security forces are supporting unlawful killing of civilians.”

There is a tragedy hidden in the heart of Australia. On ancient, remote Aboriginal lands, a cluster of strangely shaped buildings squat in an extraordinarily remote area. For decades these buildings, and those who work within them, have silently been at the centre of a killing spree. people are being murdered at the press of a button. Drones are the weapons of choice. American military drone operators are the executioners. Military Officers sit in front of computers at Pine Gap in Australia, their rooms cool and air conditioned against the harsh desert heat, supporting the alliance which carries out dispassionate and clinical murders in the name of the “freedom” of the United States of America.

The Pine Gap spy facility is a key element in the US drone war on people that threaten its global empire.

United States intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has provided his first disclosure of Australian involvement in US global surveillance, identifying four facilities in the country that contribute to a key American intelligence collection program. Classified US National Security Agency maps leaked by Mr Snowden and published by US journalist Glenn Greenwald in the Brazilian O Globo newspaper reveal the locations of dozens of US and allied signals intelligence collection sites that contribute to interception of telecommunications and internet traffic worldwide. The US Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs and three Australian Signals Directorate facilities: the Shoal Bay Receiving Station near Darwin, the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Facility at Geraldton and the naval communications station HMAS Harman outside Canberra are among contributors to the NSA's collection program codenamed X-Keyscore.

X-Keyscore reportedly processes all signals before they are shunted off to various "production lines" that deal with specific issues and the exploitation of different data types for analysis - variously code-named Nucleon (voice), Pinwale (video), Mainway (call records) and Marina (internet records). US intelligence expert William Arkin describes X-Keyscore as a “national Intelligence collection mission system”.