Smartypants

Spotty internet access

2013-06-19T07:00:00.005-05:00

My internet access was almost non-existant last night and is terribly spotty this morning so far. If you don't hear from me for awhile - that's why. We'll see how it goes.

President Obama responds to the "Bush light" crowd

2013-06-18T09:19:00.001-05:00

One of the things I've been doing for over 5 years is watching President Obama closely - trying to get a feel for who he is and how he approaches his job. In other words, I listen carefully to what he says and does.

I'd suggest that a lot of people on both the left and right don't do that and - as I said the other day - simply project onto him their own expectation of politicians. Doing so means that many on the left would have missed what he said when Charlie Rose asked him how he responds to those who say he is simply "Bush light" on national security issues.

I think its fair to say that there are going to be folks on the left - and now what amuses me is folks on the right who were fine when it was a republican president but now Obama's coming in with the black helicopters - who are not yet going to be satisfied. I've got to tell you though Charlie, I think this is a healthy thing because its a sign of maturity that this debate would not have been taking place 5 years ago. And I welcome it. I really do because - contrary to what some people think - the longer I'm in this job the more I believe on the one hand, that most folks in government are trying to do the right thing. They work really hard, they're really dedicated...On the other hand, what I also believe is its useful to have a bunch of critics out there who are checking government power and who are making sure we are doing things right so that if we've triple-checked how we're operating any one of these programs, lets go quadruple-check it. I'm comfortable with that and I'm glad to see that we are starting to do that.

Frankly, given how hard many of us have worked to challenge those critics (albeit mostly for their distortions), this response came as a bit of a surprise to me. But it shouldn't have.

What he's doing here is offering the very same outstretched hand to his critics on the left that they have so vilified him for offering to the right. The question is whether or not they are any more prepared to take it. Is their aim simply to find the proof that he is a liar? Or do they want to have a discussion about these issues? If its the latter, President Obama is saying he welcomes that conversation.

He can do that because he is not being driven by his ego or his own personal agenda - he's not an ideologue. He is a pragmatist looking for solutions. In addition, he knows that when it comes to bad actors in a discussion like this, conciliatory rhetoric can be a ruthless strategy.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Its fascinating to watch him take this approach - not just with the right - but now with his critics on the left. It makes one wonder whether or not the latter will respond with any more maturity than the former.

Snowden-chat

2013-06-17T19:57:00.000-05:00

After all the accusations and hysteria, most of what Edward Snowden leaked turns out to be one big nothingburger. Over a week ago, I quoted the analogy used by Mark Ambinder to demonstrate what's actually going on.

One official likened the NSA's collection authority to a van full of sealed boxes that are delivered to the agency. A court order, similar to the one revealed by the Guardian, permits the transfer of custody of the "boxes." But the NSA needs something else, a specific purpose or investigation, in order to open a particular box...

In the government's eyes, the data is simply moving from one place to another. It does not become, in the government's eyes, relevant or protected in any way unless and until it is subject to analysis. Analysis requires that second order.

And the government insists that the rules allowing the NSA or the FBI to analyze anything relating to U.S. persons or corporations are strict, bright-line, and are regularly scrutinized to ensure that innocents don't get caught up in the mix.

Today in his on-line chat, Snowden basically said the same thing.

More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time.

So the restrictions that keep the government from listening to your private communication are policy based rather than technically based - DUH. I'm sure there are lots of things the government could "technically" do - but they are prohibited by policy.

If you want to freak out about what the government MIGHT do if the policies changed, you can go join Snowden in the crazy corner. Otherwise, lets call in the fat lady to sing...this one is OVER by Snowden's own admission.

Busy day today...late night

2013-06-17T07:50:00.003-05:00

I'm going to be busy with other things today so I don't have time to write much. I'll just say that it was interesting being on Twitter the last couple of days and watching the firestorm that erupted over a CNET article claiming that the NSA could listen to American's telephone calls without a warrant. Like so much of what's been written/talked about in the press on this story...turns out it was false. If you're interested in the details, Bob Cesca (once again) has it all. As is my usual wont, I'm especially interested in the big picture conclusions - and I totally agree with Cesca.

Instead of focusing on how we can cut away any government abuses of power, the real story...has become the collapse of journalism. In addition to the sad state of digital journalism, the truly harrowing impact of this trend is the rapid unraveling of activist credibility when, in fact, it’s critical for any effort against government overreach to stand above reproach...That’s why articles like the ones published by Greenwald and McCullagh infuriate me so much. It’s counterproductive and embarrassing to the broader effort. There’s enough fuel without all of the hyperbole to achieve the necessary checks. But when the Cause becomes tainted with so many glaring falsehoods, it becomes too easy to cast the effort as being orchestrated by alarmist crackpots and bug-eyed conspiracy theorists who deal in misinformation to get what they want.

Hmmm...sounds like what I just said a few days ago is still happening. On something as important as this story, its sad to see the sensationalists mining it for clicks and hyping it for their own agenda rather than providing accurate information. I have a hunch that before this is over, some journalistic careers are going to tank spectacularly.

The really big news on all this is that I'm going to have a late night tonight.

Charlie sat down for an exclusive, 45 minute interview with President Obama on Sunday. Airs tonight on PBS at 11pm. pic.twitter.com/fov47MvVoG
— Charlie Rose Show (@CharlieRoseShow) June 17, 2013

It has been confirmed that the discussion was about NSA, etc. I'm glad to see that the President chose a journalist like Rose with such an impeccable reputation. So the big story will be the interpretation of this interview tomorrow...stay tuned.

The Wire: Colvin and Wee-Bay on fatherhood

2013-06-16T14:05:00.000-05:00

When it comes to fatherhood, it sometimes comes down to very difficult choices. In this clip from The Wire, Colvin steps up on Namond's (Nay's) behalf. That's pretty righteous. And yet I can't help but think that the real test of fatherhood here is the one faced by Wee-Bay. Powerful stuff!!!

"The character called Barack Obama"

2013-06-16T11:28:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of people who are trying to get in President Obama's head these days to interpret his motivation for deciding to supply the Syrian rebels with small arms and ammunitions. As is often the case, Maureen Dowd demonstrates the most noxious element of that genre. Of course she, like some others, thinks the "boy" Barry needed to be "schooled" by the man Clinton (yes, its just that obnoxious).

Folks who aren't into assuming these kinds of decisions resemble a sixth grade playground altercation know that when it comes to Syria - there are no good options. And so I began to think about what I knew about how the President tends to handle those kinds of decisions.

I immediately thought of the article by Michael Lewis published in Vanity Fair back in October 2012 titled Obama's Way. At one point in the article, President Obama comments on the kind of analysis people like Dowd are engaged in.

One of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That’s not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you.

Lewis' article is also helpful in describing the President's decision-making process in a similar situation - whether or not to intervene in Libya. If you're interested in that, I'd suggest you go read page 6 of this rather lengthy article. To summarize, President Obama had a meeting with all "the principals" on his national security team. They presented him with a binary option of either a no-fly zone (which obviously wouldn't work) or doing nothing.

The idea was that the people in the meeting would debate the merits of each, but Obama surprised the room by rejecting the premise of the meeting. “He instantly went off the road map,” recalls one eyewitness. “He asked, ‘Would a no-fly zone do anything to stop the scenario we just heard?’” After it became clear that it would not, Obama said, “I want to hear from some of the other folks in the room.”

Obama then proceeded to call on every single person for his views, including the most junior people.

And then Lewis makes this fascinating observation:

His desire to hear out junior people is a warm personality trait as much as a cool tactic, of a piece with his desire to play golf with White House cooks rather than with C.E.O.’s and basketball with people who treat him as just another player on the court; to stay home and read a book rather than go to a Washington cocktail party; and to seek out, in any crowd, not the beautiful people but the old people. The man has his status needs, but they are unusual. And he has a tendency, an unthinking first step, to subvert established status structures. After all, he became president.

So if Dowd and others think that President Obama bent to the desires of his "daddy" Clinton on the issue of Syria, I'd suggest they're reacting out of their own projection onto a "character called Barack Obama." Reading Lewis will give you a small window into how the man actually operates.

Is it possible to talk about the inequities in our justice system without mentioning race?

2013-06-15T13:38:00.000-05:00

I guess it is if you're two white guys.

I post this for two reasons. The first is that it is one of the most blatant examples of white privilege I've ever seen. Even a blue dog like former Senator Jim Webb made the racial inequities of our current criminal justice system the center piece of his attempts at reform. And if you're going to talk about our history, how about discussing the decades when - for all practical purposes - there actually was no justice system for African American...lynching via mob violence was adequate.

My second reason is that this is the backdrop from which many of us are viewing Glenn Greenwald's reporting these days. Its not just that he's blind to his own white privilege, he regularly ignores whole parts of a story in order to bend it to the agenda he wants to promote. Some of us have been watching him do that for years now. Little by little others are beginning to catch on.

My personal thoughts on privacy

2013-06-15T11:21:00.000-05:00

All this hysteria about the NSA spying made me ponder my own personal thoughts about privacy. For me, the most annoying part of this technological era is the spam emails and phone calls I get due to the fact that my private contact information is so widely shared. I'm pretty vigilant about not giving that information out (yes, even if it means losing out on a discount at Target) and I unsubscribe regularly. But overall its an annoyance more than any real threat.

I'm pretty addicted to online shopping - mostly because I HATE the alternative of shopping by foot. So I can live with the fact that sites I've visited generate ads on blogs I read. I figure this kind of information has to be paid for somehow, doesn't it?

And like many of you, I live a supremely boring life. I can't even imagine anyone wanting information about that. And if they get it - they better have stocked up on coffee to keep them awake.

But there are two issues that remain for me in all this. We know that government (state and local even more than national) has a real penchant for profiling when they're looking for the "bad guys." When that gets attached to things like race or religion, I'll get missed. But a lot of innocent people won't. So the place it seems to me that we need to be vigilant is on the issue of what criteria law enforcement is using to profile.

The other issue - not directly related to privacy - is the one that could really scare me. Interestingly enough, its about the one Greenwald "scoop" that has gotten zero attention...cyber-attacks. The reason no one paid attention to it is that there was one giant "Duh" that reverberated around the world when he documented what the Obama administration is doing. As almost every part of our daily lives has become dependent on functioning computer internet activity, its clear that the civilized world would come to a halt if that was disrupted for a significant period of time. YIKES!

But the backdrop to all of this is really more about a HUGE cultural change on the issue of privacy. As we all know, the WWII folks are sometimes called the "silent generation." That's because there was an overall belief that you kept things to yourself and went about your own business. That is clearly no longer the norm. As I've posted before, Al Giordano nailed this one over 3 years ago. He called it the New Exhibitionism.

The democratization of public or semi-public exhibitionism has thrown traditional concerns about “personal privacy” out the window. Who needs the CIA anymore when everybody is out there blurting the kinds of secrets it used to take surveillance to discover? Privacy didn’t disappear because Big Brother took it away. We gave it away! Freely! It fell aside to a greater impulse: the need to expose ourselves in public, to have an audience, and to keep it...

The rest of us might yearn for days gone by when privacy existed, but the impulse to expose ourselves has simply proved a stronger human instinct. To every man and woman, a stage, and an audience: Welcome to the New Exhibitionism!

As someone who has claimed a tiny piece of that stage on the assumption that a couple of people might be interested in my political musings, I have to embrace the label of exhibitionist. There's no immunity for me on that one.

In the span of about 50 years, we've gone from a cultural expectation of silence to one of exhibitionism. Any discussion of privacy needs to take that huge shift into account.

Facebook news (updated)

2013-06-15T08:35:00.000-05:00

Just to let you know, I finally bit the bullet and started a Smartypants Facebook page. Come visit ;)

While doing that I noticed something interesting. Check out the cover photo on the OFA Facebook page.

It makes me wonder how many of the people who are screaming about government surveillance are actually busy organizing people to try to do something about it. I constantly hear people saying that President Obama quoted that line from FDR about "make me do it." Its interesting that he has also given us a tool to do just that. So if you don't like what the Patriot Act has authorized the government to do - join OFA and start organizing to get it repealed.

Finally Facebook published some interesting information about their involvement in surveillance.

For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.

With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.

First of all, they've made clear that its not just the NSA getting access to Facebook accounts. This also seems to be pretty common practice among state and local law enforcement. But even with all that, it involves "a tiny fraction of one percent" of the user accounts. Whether or not we want that to happen is the question on the table right now. But I agree with them...lets get over these hyperbolic false assertions.

UPDATE: It appears that is not the official OFA site I linked to above. Sorry.

The United States of America

2013-06-14T18:43:00.002-05:00

In case you missed the story behind this, you can read it here.

Have you ever wondered what life is like for a child whose parent is in jail?

2013-06-14T12:50:00.001-05:00

If not, don't worry - you're not alone.

Because of the work I do in a nonprofit whose mission is "to redirect youth who are starting to get in trouble at home, at school or with the law," I think about it a lot since that is the experience of many of them. It's no surprise that children tend to follow in the footsteps of their parents. And our criminal justice system is filled with inequities that ensure that - as much as possible - the experience is one that affects "those" children rather than "ours."

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population
African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites
Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population
According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%
One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime
1 in 100 African American women are in prison
Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).

If considering the impact of those inequities on children is something you're interested in learning about, please take a couple of minutes to watch this powerful performance by Daniel Beaty.

One thing we have to do to change all this is to fight the inequities that lead to this kind of experience for the little Daniel's of the world.
But for too many black and brown children, that change isn't coming fast enough. We also need to reach out to them to ensure that we hear their pain and are there to support them in making their own choices. That's why its a BFD that Sesame Street is weighing in on something that so deeply affects "those" children. They have developed a tool kit called Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration. I must admit that I teared up a good bit as I looked around that web page and watched some of the videos. On behalf of lots of little ones who don't have much of a voice in our system, I want to say a gigantic THANK YOU to Sesame Street for this one.

How ideologues sabotage their own cause

2013-06-14T09:16:00.001-05:00

Today's must-reads on the NSA story come to us from Extreme Liberal and (once again) Bob Cesca.

Extreme Liberal does a great job of breaking down The Top 5 Exaggerations by Glenn Greenwald on NSA. In order to get the level of hyperbole we're dealing with here, you need to read all 5 points, so its impossible to summarize. Just go read the whole thing.

Bob Cesca points out that - due to all this hyperbole - even The Nation and Mother Jones writers have recognized that what Greenwald reported is full of holes. But then Cesca gets to the heart of what is going on here.

Greenwald’s stubbornness and Snowden’s foolishness are actually self-destructive to what they’re attempting to achieve. As I’ve written from day one, credibility will make or break not only this story, but anyone who chooses to blindly latch their own credibility to it. If Greenwald was truly interested in the endurance of this story, he would’ve stowed his ego and done whatever was necessary to preserve its integrity as well as his own reputation...Instead, the widening holes in this story could indicate Peak Greenwald.

Those of us who have followed Greenwald in the past knew immediately when he "broke" this story to be wary and ask a lot of questions. And now slowly but surely, others in the media are catching on (with some fan boys/girls still not willing to question).

The pattern many of us have seen is that ideologues tend to lead with their agenda (ie, "people in power always lie") and then go looking for anything that supports that agenda. This is what might be called an anti-scientific method. We've come to accept it as the approach of the lunatic right. But many are finding themselves a bit surprised that its alive and well on the other side of the continuum. Having questioned my way out of a right wing mindset only to find similar ideologues on the left means that I totally sympathized with this tweet from Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.

I didn't break away from the wingnut crowd just to join an equally absolutist movement on the left.
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) June 13, 2013

This is what makes me feel comfortable and secure as a pragmatist when the storms of hysteria rage. As long as there are people who are willing to ask questions and go where the facts lead them (rather than the opposite), the ideologues on both sides of the political continuum will ultimately burn out and fail.

Guardian poll reporter: Its working!

2013-06-13T10:04:00.002-05:00

Harry Enten reports on polling for the US edition of the Guardian. Here's his headline today: Polls show Obama's real worry: NSA leaks erode trust in government. After summarizing some polling numbers, he says this:

When the IRS and Associated Press scandals first broke, I pointed out that the one factor that predicts election results better than consumer sentiment is trust in government.

I'm going to stop right there for a moment because Enten left out an important point. Of course we all know that "trust in government" predicts election results...in favor of Republicans! And so, he goes on to point out how these faux scandals are affecting that.

Trust in government after these scandals has been falling. In the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 55% of Americans said the IRS targeting made them doubt the "overall honesty and integrity" of the Obama administration. Only 48% of voters in Fox News poll taken after the release of the NSA information said Obama was "honest and trustworthy" – the lowest level the poll ever recorded. More than a third (35%) of voters believe the administration has been less open than previous administrations – a record high.

In light of the public's negative reaction to the NSA leaks, trust in government could fall further.

So low information voters hear screaming headlines about the IRS targeting you and NSA spying on you. But as the details roll out to either discredit these headlines or suggest that things are more complex than that, major media gets bored and cable news spins. That's the reality into which Snowden dropped his leaks - complete with all the hysteria and obfuscation Greenwald could muster. Enten is suggesting that the outcome is a Libertarian/Republican dream come true.

Are we gonna sit back and let that happen?

NSA story demonstrates why the media is in trouble

2013-06-13T08:24:00.002-05:00

Like many of you political junkies out there, I watched Chris Hayes interview Glenn Greenwald on his MSNBC show last night. I heard Greenwald continue to talk about a discrepancy between the government and the tech companies on how the PRISM program works.

Greenwald: Our story is that there is a discrepancy between the relationship that these, that the private sector and the government has, in terms of what the NSA claims and what the technology companies claim.

Greenwald says the slides he published demonstrate that the NSA has direct access to Facebook, Google, etc. company's servers and just goes in and grabs private data at will. The tech companies deny that happens. So we need to get to the bottom of who is lying.

Chris Hayes not only didn't challenge him, he ran with that characterization in other stories later in the show.

Trouble is - prior to that interview I had also been reading folks like Bob Cesca and Little Green Footballs. So not only did I know that the New York Times had debunked the whole idea that the NSA had "direct" or "backdoor" access to the servers of the tech companies, they:

...described a process whereby the various tech companies, after receiving a FISA court approved request from the NSA and vetting it through their legal departments, gather the information and post it in a virtual “mailbox” for the NSA to retrieve: “It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.”

I also knew that even the Guardian - where Greenwald works - had walked back his claims about the NSA having direct access.

This is a great example of how the internet - despite all its issues with privacy - has broken down the hold commercial media has on what we know. As I watched Chris Hayes last night, I recognized that I knew more about this part of the story than he did. And that means his credibility is damaged.

The major networks have moved on from this story. They all had Greenwald on to make his outrageous claims and then got bored with the whole thing. Cable networks like Fox News and MSNBC are running with their spin on the story. But if you really want to inform yourself beyond the sensational headlines - the information is out there. And the more you get it - the less you trust what they're selling. That's one of the big reasons why they're in trouble.

Photo of the Day: Immigration is about families

2013-06-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

In a protest, Renata Teodoro, right, and her mother, Gorete Borges Teodoro, who was deported in 2007, met at a Mexican border fence.

"Trading credibility for the advancement of an agenda"

2013-06-12T08:45:00.000-05:00

Today I ran across two articles that are must-reads on the NSA surveillance leak story.

The first is from Bob Cesca. He does a great job of summarizing the questions that remain to be answered on this story (please go read the whole article - these are critical questions). He makes an important point about how Greenwald says that his goal was to spur a public debate about surveillance, but then he refuses to answer the questions and blocks people like Cesca on Twitter. In the post, Cesca theorizes that its because Greenwald has an agenda and is approaching this as an activist instead of a journalist. For a guy who talks constantly about "transparency," Greenwald isn't handling his moment in the sun very well.

As Chez Pazienza so brilliantly wrote on Monday, “Being a good journalist is a little like being a scientist: You should constantly be testing your theory and findings for signs of confirmation bias or an agenda that’s getting the better of your commitment to the truth.” In the absence of this kind of professional integrity — integrity, by the way, which led the Washington Post to revise its initial story — the only conclusion to draw here is that Greenwald doesn’t want anyone to see the agenda behind the curtain. In that regard, he’s no better than Fox News Channel, passing off cleverly hand-picked stories and coded words...as hard news. Consequently, he’s drawing other activists and voices on the left into a story that’s full of potential traps. If Snowden turns out to be a hacker nihilist who’s feeding Greenwald bad information, or if Greenwald’s reporting continues to be strewn with holes, it could seriously damage not only the effort to roll back post-9/11 overreach and opacity, but also the broader liberal movement — not to mention the credibility of future whistleblowers/leakers. You deserve to know whether your outrage is founded upon the full knowledge of the facts or if it’s been deliberately manipulated by Greenwald’s personal whimsy and cleverness.

To repeat: I’m interested in ending the war on terrorism and all of the awfulness that’s accompanied it. But I’m not interested in a counterproductive slash-and-burn approach, and I’m not interested in trading credibility for the advancement of an agenda. So I’m trying to get to the bottom of some of these rather shaky gaps in the story.

The second is an important post by Josh Marshall that focuses on his reaction to Edward Snowden. Like Cesca, he talks about the importance of understanding Snowden's agenda.

If you see the state as essentially malevolent or a bad actor then really anything you can do to put a stick in its spokes is a good thing...

From that perspective, there’s no really no balancing to be done. All disclosure is good. Either from the perspective of transparency in principle or upending something you believe must be radically changed.

On the other hand, if you basically identify with the country and the state, then indiscriminate leaks like this [he's referring to Bradley Manning here] are purely destructive. They’re attacks on something you fundamentally believe in, identify with, think is working on your behalf.

Now, in practice, there are a million shades of grey. You can support your government but see its various shortcomings and even evil things it does. And as I said at the outset, this is where leaks play a critical, though ambiguous role, as a safety valve. But it comes down to this essential thing: is the aim and/or effect of the leak to correct an abuse or simply to blow the whole thing up?...

The Snowden case is less clear to me. At least to date, the revelations seem more surgical. And the public definitely has an interest in knowing just how we’re using surveillance technology and how we’re balancing risks versus privacy...

But it’s more than that. Snowden is doing more than triggering a debate. I think it’s clear he’s trying to upend, damage - choose your verb - the US intelligence apparatus and policieis he opposes...He’s taking it upon himself to make certain things no longer possible, or much harder to do. To me that’s a betrayal. I think it’s easy to exaggerate how much damage these disclosures cause. But I don’t buy that there are no consequences. And it goes to the point I was making in an earlier post. Who gets to decide? The totality of the officeholders who’ve been elected democratically - for better or worse - to make these decisions? Or Edward Snowden, some young guy I’ve never heard of before who espouses a political philosophy I don’t agree with and is now seeking refuge abroad for breaking the law?

I don’t have a lot of problem answering that question.

Marshall's point about the agenda being one that sees the state as essentially malevolent is the important distinction here. Its why many of us are concerned about this libertarian philosophy creeping in to the thinking of too many liberals. Grover Norquist's goal of shrinking government down to the size where it can be drowned in the bathtub gets a boost from those who want to simply blow the whole thing up.

I know there are a lot of people who just want to have a discussion about the proper role of government in these areas and - as President Obama said - that is a conversation we should be having. But it has to be based on facts. And I have no desire to join a movement that wants to sensationalize and obscure in order to upend or destroy.

All the True Vows

2013-06-11T21:03:00.000-05:00

Given the topic of conversation here the last few days, this one seemed pertinent. There really is one person in your life that it is critically important for you to trust.

All the True Vows
are secret vows,
the ones we speak out loud
are the ones we break.

There is only one life
you can call your own
and a thousand others
you can call by any name you want.

Hold to the truth you make
every day with your own body,
don’t turn your face away.

Hold to the truth
at the center of the image
you were born with,
don’t turn your face away.

…Remember,
in this place
no one can hear you

and out of the silence
you can make a new promise
it will kill you to break,

that way you’ll find out
what it is real and what is not.

- David Whyte

What South Park gets that Greenwald doesn't

2013-06-11T11:25:00.000-05:00

Last night Glenn Greenwald was interviewed again on Last Word. When O'Donnell asked him about corporations having access to all the metadata that is being culled by NSA, Glenn completely dismissed the concern.

Ahhhh...but South Park noticed.

Anyone who can prove to me that they've read even one of the hundreds of "terms of agreement" you've probably signed off on gets a gold star.

The latest libertarian craze and the death of normal

2013-06-11T08:37:00.000-05:00

I wrote the other day about how all of the recent so-called "scandals" are providing a platform for people who used to call themselves liberals to join up with right wing libertarians. It comes as no surprise that Edward Snowden supported Ron Paul's presidential campaign and Glenn Greenwald was a major force in the #StandWithRand movement recently. They are surely kindred spirits.

But take a look at similar statements made recently by rightwing radio talk-jock Rush Limbaugh and one of Daily Kos' favorite diarists One Pissed Off Liberal.

First, here's Rush:

This government’s already too big, it’s too damn powerful, and it’s too unforgiving — and this doesn’t have anything to do with competent intelligence gathering.

And now OPOL:

I'm saying our particular government, dominated and owned as it is by the 1%, is bad to the bone, lies through its teeth and supports all the wrong people doing all the wrong things.

OPOL then goes on to sound positively Glenn Beckian:

Dissent, which has been called the highest form of patriotism, may well be on its last legs in this country. It is now impossible to organize any kind of opposition, no matter how innocent or righteous, without government spooks breathing down your neck. Surveillance quashes dissent...all dissent. Just remember who the government thinks is a threat: peace activists, dissidents, kids who dare object to the raw deal being crammed down their throats.

In talking like that OPOL demonstrates his white-priviliged thinking. He is - of course - mostly referring to the white-dominated OWS efforts. There are reasons why that movement failed that have nothing to do with surveillance. We know that because a much more organized group of young people - the Dreamers - have faced even bigger obstacles and yet have been amazingly successful while they fight on. Here's what Tom Hayden - someone who knows a thing or two about protests and movements - said about them recently:

The Dreamers remind me of the Freedom Riders fifty years ago who, deciding they wouldn’t settle for life under Jim Crow, risked jail and racist violence until the Kennedy administration was won to their side, and a political party realignment began. The Dreamers have petitioned, engaged in civil disobedience, lobbied for legislation at state and federal levels, and refused to accept defeats along the way.

I don't know where all this is going. But I'm beginning to sense a potential realignment in our political culture. I've been talking for a while now about the beast in its death throes. Mostly I've seen that related to the white male dominance in the Republican Party. But perhaps some of the screaming we're hearing from the left these days indicates that there is a dying beast in our ranks as well.

We are living in a time of massive underground change in this country. Just after the 2012 election, David Simon called it the death of normal.

...the country is changing. And this may be the last election in which anyone but a fool tries to play — on a national level, at least — the cards of racial exclusion, of immigrant fear, of the patronization of women and hegemony over their bodies, of self-righteous discrimination against homosexuals...

America will soon belong to the men and women — white and black and Latino and Asian, Christian and Jew and Muslim and atheist, gay and straight — who can walk into a room and accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference, that there are no real majorities, only pluralities and coalitions. The America in which it was otherwise is dying, thank god, and those who relied on entitlement and division to command power will either be obliged to accept the changes, or retreat to the gated communities from which they wish to wax nostalgic and brood on political irrelevance.

Hard times are still to come for all of us. Rear guard actions will be fought at every political crossroad. But make no mistake: Change is a motherfucker when you run from it...A man of color is president for the second time, and this happened despite a struggling economic climate and a national spirit of general discontent. He has been returned to office over the specific objections of the mass of white men. He has instead been re-elected by women, by people of color, by homosexuals, by people of varying religions or no religion whatsoever. Behold the New Jerusalem...

Regardless of what happens with his second term, Barack Obama’s great victory has already been won: We are all the other now, in some sense. Special interests? That term has no more meaning in the New America. We are all — all of us, every last American, even the whitest of white guys — special interests. And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian. There is no normal. That word, too, means less with every moment. And those who continue to argue for such retrograde notions as a political reality will become less germane and more ridiculous with every passing year.

It would be naive to deny that we're ALL struggling with this kind of momentous change on some level. That a rear guard action showing up as "libertarian" has emerged should come as no surprise. And no, I'm not saying all this is directed at President Obama simply because he's black (although its hard to deny that's part of it). This is about the bigger picture of the general changing face of America - and white people struggling with what that means to their sense of entitlement.

What us white people need to do is get over our pity parties and do what Simon suggests...learn what it means to "accept with real comfort the sensation that they are in a world of certain difference."

Photo of the Day: Obama is checking your email

2013-06-10T22:24:00.000-05:00

Go check out more of the hilarity here.

Senator Al Franken on NSA surveillance

2013-06-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

I wish I could embed this video, but I can't. Its Senator Al Franken talking about the NSA surveillance program. I don't always agree with my Senator. And he has certainly never shied away from challenging President Obama. But when it comes to trust - this guy is pretty close to the top of my list.

To summarize, he points out that as a member of the Judiciary Committee - he has availed himself of the briefings about NSA and nothing that was made public lately surprised him. He said, "There's certain things that its appropriate for me to know that its not appropriate for the 'bad guys' to know...So anything the American people know, the 'bad guys' know...I can assure you that this isn't about spying on the American people. This is about having the data available so that if there are suspicions about foreign persons or persons that have connections with terrorist organizations that we can connect the dots."

Thank you Senator. As I continue to weigh my own thoughts on all this, your view is one that is especially important to me.

Before we anoint him "hero" status, there are a few questions I have about Edward Snowden (updated)

2013-06-10T08:08:00.001-05:00

Now that we know that the guy who leaked the information about NSA is 29 year-old Edward Snowden and we've heard what Glenn Greenwald wants us to know about him, there are a few questions that real journalists should pursue about this story. On twitter I ran across a potential candidate: Jan Crawford with CBS News.

Re Snowden: why does a guy who purports to be disgusted by the motives for the Iraq war pursue a career in the natl security establishment?
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) June 10, 2013

Re Snowden: How a guy with 3 months on the job for Booz Allen have that kind of access?
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) June 10, 2013

Re Snowden: In his three mos at BAH, he tried to talk to whom about the program? He learned about it when?
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) June 10, 2013

Re Snowden: Why go to Hong Kong If you're thinking about seeking asylum in Iceland?cc: @mattapuzzo
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) June 10, 2013

This too---> RT @chucklane1: @jancbs I'm curious about his "Army spec forces" training that ended with two broken legs, and a discharge.
— Jan Crawford (@JanCBS) June 10, 2013

I would add to that things like wondering if it is a coincidence that this information was leaked just prior to President Obama's meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and the leaker chose Hong Kong as his hiding place.

We also know that Snowden made some outlandish claims - like the idea that he personally could wiretap the president and that he chose Hong Kong because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent."

And we know that he supported Ron Paul's presidential candidacy but enlisted in the U.S. Army in 2003 because, as he said, "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression."

So there's a lot to this story that doesn't add up. Most of that is related to the fact that Snowden chose Glenn Greenwald as the person to tell it. Bob Cesca explains:

In the context of this story, Greenwald ought to be serving in the capacity of a hard news reporter. But what sets off a red flag in my head is how his reporting and his tweets totally blur the line between an agenda-driven opinion blogger and reporter. I know this isn’t exclusive to Greenwald, but it’s a problem that’s getting worse. If you’re going to be an opinion/agenda journalist, be that, and be clear about it. If you’re going to be a hard news reporter, be that, and be clear about.

In other words, Glenn is approaching this as a litigator rather than a reporter. He's got a position and he's presenting evidence to prove it. To be fair - that's how a lot of journalism is done these days and its why we have a Crossfire-like atmosphere amongst most news outlets.

But in a story this important - we need better than that. I'm hoping that a few more like Jan Crawford emerge to help us get some answers.

UPDATE: We also know that Glenn Greenwald ~~lies~~ exaggerates. From the transcript of his appearance on ABC:

[T]hat is for the American people, at least to learn about what this massive spying apparatus is, and what the capabilities are, so that we can have an open, honest debate about whether that's the kind of country that we want to live in. And if the people decide that they--yes, they do want the government knowing everything about them, intervening in all of their communications, monitoring them, keeping dossiers on them, then so be it. But at least we should have that debate openly and democratically.

FFS - the government doesn't know everything about us and isn't intervening in all of our communication. People have legitimate concerns about the privacy issues involved in this NSA story - but Greenwald regularly takes it to Glenn Beck fear mongering tin foil hat territory. Shame on him!

The NSA story and the role of government

2013-06-09T12:05:00.003-05:00

For my own benefit as much as anyone else's, I'd like to recap where we are right now on this whole story about what the NSA is doing. I feel overwhelmed with noise these days and would like to think that its possible to deal with the facts we have now in order to have a rational discussion about the issues at hand - silly me ;-)

First of all, we know that NSA is collecting metadata on phone calls. It seems to me that what David Simon said about that rings true - its analogous to what law enforcement has always done, but bigger in scope due to advances in technology.

I found this description by Mark Ambinder about what's happening to be really helpful for us non-techies.

One official likened the NSA's collection authority to a van full of sealed boxes that are delivered to the agency. A court order, similar to the one revealed by the Guardian, permits the transfer of custody of the "boxes." But the NSA needs something else, a specific purpose or investigation, in order to open a particular box. The chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said the standard was "a reasonable, articulatable" suspicion, but did not go into details.

Legally, the government can ask companies for some of these records under a provision of the PATRIOT Act called the "business records provision." Initially, it did so without court cognizance. Now, the FISC signs off on every request.

Armed with what amounts to a rubber stamp court order, however, the NSA can collect and store trillions of bytes of electromagnetic detritus shaken off by American citizens. In the government's eyes, the data is simply moving from one place to another. It does not become, in the government's eyes, relevant or protected in any way unless and until it is subject to analysis. Analysis requires that second order.

And the government insists that the rules allowing the NSA or the FBI to analyze anything relating to U.S. persons or corporations are strict, bright-line, and are regularly scrutinized to ensure that innocents don't get caught up in the mix. The specifics, however, remain classified, as do the oversight mechanisms in place.

So the first question we have to ask ourselves is whether or not we're comfortable with that van full of sealed boxes being delivered to the government. Beyond how commonplace this kind of thing is with law enforcement, what Simon was pointing out in his article is that the real issue is the rules/oversight that govern whether or not they can open up one of those boxes. Basically the FBI has to present the FISA court with a justification for that and the Intelligence Committee in the Senate is briefed on when/why they do so. This is one of the main ways that President Obama's implementation of all this differs from what Bush wanted to do.

The question here is whether or not that is enough oversight; does the public at large need to be involved? Answering that question means knowing whether or not providing the public with more information about it would neutralize the effectiveness of the program by broadcasting its workings to the people its targeted to catch.

I'll admit that I don't know the answer to that question. If there is more we can learn without jeopardizing the effort - then we should demand that information. But if opening it up to public scrutiny would pose a problem, then we have to grapple with the question the President posed about the balance between transparency and security.

As you know, I've been writing a lot here about trust. Beyond these questions I'm posing, I think this issue of transparency vs security raises a critical question about the very structure of our government. The other day I put that question in a tweet:

If you don't trust Congress' oversight AND you don't trust the FISA court, then we have MUCH bigger problems that NSA surveillance.
— Smartypants (@Smartypants32) June 8, 2013

(Of course that should be "than NSA surveillance," but there's no editing on twitter)

I'm not suggesting that we should trust congress or the courts. I'm merely saying that if we don't - we have MUCH bigger problems. As I've pointed out recently, our government was designed to be a "representative democracy," - not a majority rule. By setting things up that way, our founders entrusted certain decisions to those we elected to represent us. That needs to be balanced with an informed public that doesn't simply depend on blind trust.

I believe that a lot of the questions being raised these days are pushing at that balance. Overall the tone of many of the recent so-called "scandals" boils down to an attempt to suggest that the government is over-reaching. While the Republicans have joined on the bandwagon in order to discredit President Obama, it is the libertarian wing of our political spectrum that is gaining a foothold here. In a venomous screed today about President Obama, Maureen Dowd (who used to be counted among those who call themselves liberals) demonstrates how she's joining that bandwagon.

The president insists that his trellis of surveillance programs is “under very strict supervision by all three branches of government.” That is not particularly comforting given that the federal government so rarely does anything properly.

As I've said before, I understand the mindset that recognizes that there are those who have abused their power as representatives of the people. We need to be vigilant in carrying out our duties as citizens. But one of the main tenants of liberalism is a belief in the idea that robust government is necessary to reign in the overreach of capitalism. At least that's one of the main reasons I'm a liberal in the first place. The last thing I want to do is join in with Republican-based libertarianism in trashing the role of government. As a matter of fact, I'd say that advancing the role of good government is the most potent way liberals have of making progress on our goals.

Glenn Greenwald is deciding what's in our national security interests

2013-06-08T17:41:00.001-05:00

I just read this from Glenn Greenwald at Buzzfeed and it seemed pertinent.

“We’re applying the standard judgment test that journalists apply every day: first, is it newsworthy and relevant, ie, is there public interest in knowing this?” Greenwald told BuzzFeed. “If so: is there genuine harm that comes from publication? And if there is harm, does the public value outweigh/justify the harm?”

He said he didn’t think there was “even a conceivable argument that anything we’ve published thus far causes any harm.”

I appreciate very much that Glenn is owning responsibility. I think that is important. But once again, the question comes back to trust. What he's suggesting is that we should trust him to calibrate the potential for harm from this information being leaked. He evaluates that and then decides on the balance between public value and harm.

I think that's why this story has grabbed me so strongly. The level of harm this particular leak might/might not have caused is not self-evident to me. But of all people on the planet I want to see making decisions about something like that, Glenn Greenwald is near the bottom of my list. I fear this is dangerous territory we've entered when ideologues like Greenwald and Rosen are the arbiters of our national security.

If you wonder why the Obama administration is so aggressively pursuing leakers - perhaps there's your answer.

Should we trust the leakers?

2013-06-08T16:35:00.000-05:00

I've been writing about trust lately. A lot of that was spurred by this statement from Glenn Greenwald:

“I approach my journalism as a litigator,” he said. “People say things, you assume they are lying, and dig for documents to prove it.”

There wasn't any context provided to that, so I have no idea how broadly he means "people." Based on his record though, I think we can safely assume that he includes politicians in that category. But it doesn't seem as if he makes the same assumption about leakers.

They did not act with any self-interest in mind. The opposite is true: they undertook great personal risk and sacrifice for one overarching reason: to make their fellow citizens aware of what their government is doing in the dark. Their objective is to educate, to democratize, to create accountability for those in power.

The people who do this are heroes. They are the embodiment of heroism.

Now perhaps Glenn thoroughly vetted the people who are leaking to him and knows that they have no self-interest or nefarious reason for breaking the law...he trusts them. But if so, all we have to go on is his word on that...we're supposed to trust him.

That quote from Glenn about the heroics of leakers was not specifically about those who are leaking to him though. It was a statement about leakers in general. Glenn calls them "whistleblowers" because this is what he believes about them. I would agree - genuine whistleblowers are heroic.

But the truth is - not all leakers are whistleblowers. Most of us are old enough to remember that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby also leaked information to the press about Valerie Plame's covert status at the CIA. And Cheney's office leaked a lot of false information about WMDs in Iraq to NYT reporter Judith Miller. I would call those leakers the opposite of whistleblowers.

To be fair, because of Glenn's assumption that all politicians are liars, he views anyone who leaks information that damages them to be whistleblowers and anyone who provides information that supports them to be leakers. But I'm afraid the truth is a bit more complex. The person who leaked the information to AP about the thwarting of a bomb threat was providing information that both helped the administration (see: we're preventing terrorism) and hurt them (they had just maintained that there were no serious threats since bin Laden's death). But the real outcome of that leak wasn't its political ramifications, it was the outing of our infiltration of AQAP. Hardly whistleblower material.

All this takes me back to the issue of trust. I think it is no more wise to trust all leakers than it is to distrust all politicians. Real investigative reporting should be about doing the hard work of sorting out the complexities. As we watch reporters do that over time - we build trust in what they tell us. Those that rely of preconceived formulas - like Glenn - are going to be wrong at least as often as they are right.