Last month a US drone fired four Hellfire missiles into a building and car in Waziristan. The first media reports stated two to four people were killed. The next said seven people killed and two injured. Then the New York Times reported 16 people killed and five injured. Last count was at least 17 killed.

On the weekend there were drone strikes in Pakistan's Waziristan region; six were killed according to initial reports – these details will likely change in coming days. Facts are very slippery around this secretive program.

What we do know is that drone strikes have killed civilians in town meetings, in their homes, or at funerals. I interviewed relatives of victims from one strike on 17 March 2011 that killed over 40civilians in Pakistan.

Now the dirty business of the drone war has been linked to Australia. An exclusive report by Philip Dorling published last week in The Age described how Australia, through the joint defense facility at Pine Gap, plays a "key role" in locating targets by intercepting radio signals and then providing this information to the US for drone strikes.

It is unclear how many of the estimated 371 drone strikes in Pakistan have involved Australia. Also unknown is the number of civilians who have been killed on the basis of information provided from Pine Gap. The law used by Australian officials to justify this policy remains unrevealed. Do they rely on the CIA's much criticised and dubious interpretation of what constitutes an "imminent threat"? Has Australia contributed information used for so-called "double-tap" strikes, which target rescuers and those trying to administer first aid to victims?

These are serious questions. Yet they remain unanswered because even the most basic information on Pine Gap’s activities is not revealed to the public. It is not even provided to most Australian government representatives or members of the Australian parliament.

What is clear from these revelations is that Australia is complicit in the US drone killing program. An institution on Australian territory, employing Australians, is facilitating extrajudicial targeted killings. Not only is Australia playing a "key role" in a program that international legal consensus has declared illegal, it is also betraying an important ally. Pakistan's government has repeatedly called drone strikes "a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity", and has called for an "immediate end" to them.

The Australian government may face domestic legal challenges to this policy, on the basis that it is unlawful. And given that Australia is a signatory to the Rome Statute, liability could be pursued through the International Criminal Court. Australia’s role in supporting CIA drone strikes is also at odds with the "principled advocate for human rights for all" agenda Australia pitched as part of its United Nations Security Council bid.

But all the legal talk becomes less abstract if we place ourselves in the victims' position, and imagine what it might be like to experience their ordeal in our own Australian communities. It would mean anytime during the day or night, one or multiple Hellfire missiles suddenly rain down upon you or your family. Hellfire missiles were originally designed to destroy and burn through heavy armoured vehicles like tanks. The Hellfire missiles used today, against human beings, retain this capability.

On 24 October 2012, in North Waziristan, an apparent double-tap drone strike killed a 65 year-old grandmother in front of her eight grandchildren who were also injured. I asked her son, Rafiq-ur-Rehman, a school-teacher and father of the injured children, what he would do if someone gave him $68,000 – the cost of the Hellfire missile used to kill his mother. “If I am given this money even once,” he said, “I will be putting my children out of harm’s way from Waziristan to some school where there are no drones, and where they could get better education – including my daughters.”

It is hard to see how it is in Australia’s national security interests to play an active role in the US' lethal drone program. It is even harder to understand why this should be done in complete secrecy. Now is the time for an open and honest public debate.