In releasing data on civilian casualties this summer, the Obama administration had an opportunity to make the case that its targeted killing program is proportionate. Instead, the data shows where the ideal moral case breaks down as it meets reality. Assuming the accuracy of the statistics the government released in July—which are low compared to other counts—473 strikes killed from 64 to 116 civilians and 2,372 to 2,581 “combatants,” or as many as 40 terrorists for each civilian. But that kind of calculus is morally meaningless. It would in principle be acceptable for all 116 civilians to have died in a single strike that killed only one terrorist, if that strike prevented an attack on the scale of September 11. On the other hand, even the low end of 64 civilian deaths may have all been unjustified, if those individuals were killed in the process of targeting someone who posed only a minor threat to other innocents. But the Obama administration has released only aggregate numbers, refusing to detail individual strikes. As a result, it’s impossible for the public to assess the morality of the program.

To be sure, the government claims it does the moral math. According to CIA Director John Brennan, any proposal to target an individual “will go through a careful review and, as appropriate, will be evaluated by the very most senior officials in our government for decision.” According to the policy framework made public this month, which sets out an elaborate structure for making targeting decisions, these officials include the president himself, who bears the ultimate responsibility for the strikes.

Yet the administration also reserves the right to conduct its targeted killing program in secret. The president and his advisers may know why they have accepted the deaths of certain civilians or risked killing the wrong person, but they do not share that knowledge with the public, relying instead an abstract ideal of national self-defense. “There’s this idea that people have that if we get the ethics of self-defense just right, then the context in which we make these decisions will work itself out,” says Sari Kisilevsky, a philosopher of law and ethics at Queens College, CUNY. The government can justifiably classify particular pieces of information if their release would do harm. The problem is with treating national security as a permanent structural factor that balances against individual rights and liberties—even the rights of suspected terrorists.

It doesn’t matter that attacks might emanate from other countries where law and order is weak. “Justice resides in upholding people’s legal rights,” says Kisilevsky. “You can’t balance that against security. That’s just what justice is there to protect against.”

There is good reason to worry about the government’s ability to proactively identify suspected terrorists. The FBI twice investigated the Orlando attacker, Omar Mateen, but was incapable of classifying him a threat within the law. The process for identifying individuals for targeted killing is inherently weaker; it operates entirely within one branch of government, in secret, without advocates for the opposition. When threatened attacks may not take place for months, the process of gathering and weighing evidence is vitally important. This, after all, is why courts exist. “People get it wrong all the time,” cautions McMahan. “And that’s a serious objection to the whole practice.”