However, the role of the Pakistani and U.S. intelligence agencies in the deaths of Weinstein and his fellow captive, Giovanni Lo Porto, contains a serious lesson: The United States should stop conducting “signature” drone strikes, which run a higher risk of hitting innocents.

Weinstein and Lo Porto died in a signature strike. The attacks involve American drone operators firing missiles at a target based on the movements of military-aged males observed in suspicious activities on the ground below. The CIA officials ordering the attacks have no information about a specific, wanted person inside the target area.

The George W. Bush administration initially created the signature drone attack in 2008 to strike al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who hid in Pakistan’s tribal areas and carried out cross-border attacks on U.S. military forces in neighboring Afghanistan. Senior American officials argue that the signature strikes are particularly effective at killing al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders, who are difficult to identify in Pakistan’s tribal areas due to a lack of intelligence sources on the ground.

Yet the CIA signature strikes, which remain officially covert and shrouded in secrecy, are believed to have killed scores, if not hundreds, of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen.

With the strikes fueling anti-American sentiment, Obama promised, in a 2013 speech at the National Defense University, to make U.S. drone strikes more transparent and subject to stricter review. Senior members of his administration told Reuters that some drone strikes would be shifted from the CIA to the Pentagon, where longstanding U.S. law requires greater transparency and scrutiny of American air attacks.

Yet Obama issued a waiver that exempted strikes in Pakistan from the stricter requirement, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. The number of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan has fallen by four-fifths from a peak of 122 in 2010 to 22 in 2014. Yet the rules on approving strikes remain looser in Pakistan than in any other nation.

U.S. officials told the Journal that they used heat sensors to confirm the number of people inside the house where Weinstein and Lo Porto died. The sensors showed the presence of four suspected militants, they said, including one believed to be a senior commander based on his pattern of behavior. The senior militant was apparently Ahmed Farouq, an American citizen who had joined al-Qaeda and was on a list of wanted operatives. U.S. officials added that they believed Weinstein and Lo Porto may have been held in a basement or escape tunnel and were not identified by the heat sensors.

During my seven months in captivity, I saw both the accuracy and limits of drones. When drones flew overhead, my captors ordered me to go inside buildings so I would not be seen. My kidnappers seemed delusional, convinced both that I was an extraordinarily valuable captive and that the U.S. government was trying to kill me in a drone strike.