Some thoughts on technology, trust and legitimacy:
Washington forgot the main lesson from the nuclear age: that the existence of such powerful weaponry can never be protected by secrecy or technology. Their only defense in possession lies in legitimacy.
Snowden’s torpedo, unleashed perhaps by himself or by some third party, struck at the government’s most vulnerable joint, the weld between Washington and the governed.
Snowden said what many were already prepared to believe — even Obama’s liberal supporters — that the administration is a lying, corrupt, power-mad collection of unscrupulous men. Like a jilted woman, people didn’t believe Snowden because they knew him; they believed in Snowden because they knew Obama. The sense of betrayal may have even been more acute on the Left. In Snowden’s words: “I believed in Obama’s promises.” And how many of those said to themselves, “So did I and chose poorly”?
The solution to the current crisis of privacy is not technical. It is political. It cannot be found in uninventing the computer; only in creating institutions the public can trust to control such power, in the same way it trusts certain governments to control nuclear weapons.
Once again, the wisdom of the Founders is revealed, even as we have turned our backs on it.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Related: The unmediated president.
I think that these are impeachable offenses. Whether or not he will be impeached is a function of whether or not a sufficient number of people in the general public come to agree.
It won’t happen in the current election cycle — the House won’t make the mistake of impeaching again without having the Senate on board (particularly given the inevitable race riots that might ensue). But if this becomes a major issue, perhaps the issue next fall, and results in either a huge Republican takeover of the Senate, or enough Democrats themselves calling for removal, it could happen after the next election. The big quandary would be whether or not we wanted to have a President Biden. If he’s found to have participated in the scandals, and there is a sufficiently strong Republican majority in the senate, then we may have a President Boehner. That doesn’t thrill me, but it would be a huge improvement over what we have today. And it will be a result of the people speaking, as ultimately, the Founders would have expected.
[Update a while later]
Is the US still the land of the free?
In a police state, to be sure, people like Drake and Swartz might simply disappear, and people like me wouldn’t be writing about them. So no, this isn’t the United Stasi of America. Nonetheless, one still ought to ask, how far can one trust the security and law-enforcement complexes to police themselves? My answer would be: You can’t.
Power often seems to infect the powerful with tyrannical instincts. Shroud their transactions in secrecy and the danger multiplies. The people involved aren’t necessarily bad. First and foremost, in fact, they are bureaucrats — as muddled and incompetent as everybody else, with banal bureaucratic interests to advance. The NSA disclosures should remind us of this by drawing attention to the sheer size of the interests involved. Are NSA contractors who specialize in data mining likely to highlight the ineffectiveness of that technique? Is America’s law-enforcement industry — with its professionalized, para-militarized and literally uncountable agencies — going to call a halt to its own growth or ask for its powers to be curbed?
No. We’re going to have to do it for them. And more importantly, for us.
As nice as impeachment sounds, it will not reverse the course of our current problems. The non-elected governmental entities that are supposed to allow for the operation of the functions are hopelessly corrupted, as are our elected officials in every branch.
We need a sea-change at the voter level demanding accountability and removing those responsible for our current state as well as promoting those who will retard and repeal the current state of affairs.
Luckily for the government, it is set up right now to completely block this sort of reform from happening. See – IRS scandals, census in control of White House, media taking talking points from the government, spying on private citizens on a giant scale, etc.
operations of the functions of government*, sorry.
Here’s my start:
1) Remove all police powers from the IRS. (Including ‘bear arms’)
2) Eliminate “Tax Court” – and the special rules. That is: Yes, you can have a jury trial, plead the fifth, and appeal to someone -not- in the IRS.
And that’s before you get to the big stuff like a flat tax, fair tax, or whatever.
Unfortunately, it goes beyond the IRS.
I’m not saying that it’s a sufficient condition, but it’s starting to look as though it may be a necessary one. Heads have to roll over this at all levels, or they’ll take it as permission to carry on as usual.
Impeachment will send a strong message.
Elimination of government bodies will send a stronger message.
ALL departments that have engaged in these illegal activities should be summarily shutdown and it should be decided that if the functions they were doing are in any way vital, new departments should be created with NONE of the old employees allowed to participate in the new department.
If goverment does not have a power or the ability to abuse it, it will not be abused.
If L’Affair Snowden is reason for Impeachment, I recommend holding fire for a bit longer. His story seemed odd to me from the beginning, and now more people are starting to question some of the “facts” that come from Snowden only.
Then, that is just one of many developing scandals, and it is only Wednesday.
I can only dream of a day when the Press treats Obama with the same degree of skepticism as they do with anyone who disagrees with him. I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, though.
In my more cynical moments, I believe that the Constitution only means whatever you can get 5 or more Supreme Court justices to agree on. Likewise, there are 537 elected federal politicians in Washington DC. At the same time, there are hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats that are unelected by anyone, unaccountable to anyone and almost impossible to fire regardless of what they do. Those bureaucrats write thousands of regulations every year that have the force of law. Not only do some bureaucracies have their own courts, they have their own heavily armed police departments. They’re the real government. The politicians are largely for show. Should an inconvenient (Republican) win office, the bureaucracy will either ignore or undermine him. Long after the politician has left office, the bureaucracy will remain and continue to expand.
I’m 56 years old and have spent almost my entire adult life either in the military or working for it as a contractor. There are legitmate reasons to classify things (e.g. capabilities and vulnerabilities of weapons systems, military operational tactics and upcoming military operations). The idea of another “Pearl Harbor” in a nuclear age has been a nightmare for over 60 years so there is a need for intelligence on those who would do us harm. Most of those intelligence gathering capabilities are and must remain classified.
The deep concern about the NSA program comes from the recent relevations of politically motivated abuses by the IRS, DHS, DOJ, DOS and EPA and likely many other agencies as well. When you combine phone call metadata with emails and credit card transactions, you can derive a great deal of information about people. There’s a book titled “Three Felonies A Day” that claims anyone can be prosecuted for breaking federal laws on any given day should a prosecutor take an interest in him. Given the politicallty motivated abuses at those other agencies, what’s to prevent similar abuses at the NSA? The short answer is “nothing.”
Larry, I accept and agree with your points and your rhetorical question. I’m just saying with Snowden; I’m not sure if he isn’t Lucy holding a football.
The solution to the current crisis of privacy is not technical. It is political. It cannot be found in uninventing the computer; only in creating institutions the public can trust to control such power, in the same way it trusts certain governments to control nuclear weapons.
Wrong. It’s not political either. It goes way beyond that. He touched upon it when he talked about taboos.
…disarmament … never relied on the control of arms. It has always relied on the control of men. And the control of men relied upon the acceptance of taboos
Character doesn’t just matter, it is all that matters. Not the character of a few or even Obama. It’s the character of all. We’ve abdicated our adult responsibilities when we’ve allowed the children, smart technically sophisticated win at all costs, children to take leadership control. We’ve allowed the media children to provide a covering smoke screen. We’ve allowed the children to take control using high information tech. on low information voters.
Until the remaining adults are shamed and do something we will continue to go from bad to worse regardless of any little bump in the right direction.
“Obviously,” Ellsberg writes, “the United States is not now a police state.”
That anybody can say this in public and not be ridiculed out of any position of responsibility is a serious problem. Police states of the past could only wish they had the power of America’s police today. They can make people disappear on a whim with almost no blowback. They can kill many children with a fire and kill a mother holding her child in her arms and get promoted doing it.
Shame on the remnant of adults that continue to allow this. Shame on me for not figuring out how to fix this beyond identifying those responsible… THE RESPONSIBLE.
And now you have this:
“Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.
The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops.
With the change, government actions that lead to cuts in emissions — anything from new mileage standards to clean-energy loans — will appear more valuable in its cost-benefit analyses. On the flip side, approvals that could lead to more carbon pollution, such as TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone pipeline or coal-mining by companies such as Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) on public lands, may be viewed as more costly.
………”
This will surely raise the trust level (/sarc). Let’s just slip a huge, mega-destructive change into a late Friday regulation on microwaves.
Nooooo the administration hides nothing. I’m sure they simply forgot to hold the debate this.
Every day, regulation by regulation the destruction continues.
Salt in the wound is this statement by a hack watermelon:
““As we learn that climate damage is worse and worse, there is no direction they could go but up,” Laurie Johnson, chief economist for climate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in an interview. Johnson says the administration should go further; she estimates the carbon cost could be as much as $266 a ton. ”
Never mind that AGW has been thoroughly debunked as so much lying and data manipulation. Just keep on pretending it’s true.
Later on the article talks about models run in 2010 and subject to “updating”….. yeah like we really believe models.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-12/tougher-regulations-seen-from-obama-change-in-carbon-cost.html
Powerline linked a recent climatology presentation that was really good. I recommend it. Very academic, with real equations backed up by real measurements.
Control means never having to play by anybody else’s rules.
Power requires money so they must keep the funnel going.
If you say anything, it’s shame on you. “Old news. You’re serious? Look that way!”
Why worry? It’s just metadata.
Why, indeed.
No one has pointed out the Star Trek TOS episode “Mirror, Mirror.” (I find there is a whole series of books and a two-part Enterprise episode based on this story.) No wonder why the NSA program is called PRISM.
When authority has the ability to target its enemies – named or unnamed – tyranny is the result.
How ironic that this is published at Bloomberg.com.
Impeach for what? This is ALL LEGAL. The FISA court has been around forever, and was strengthened by the PATRIOT Act and other laws. Linsday Graham and Peter King want to block reporters from discussing Snowden’s leaks.
Regarding the commentors complaining about the IRS – they’ve been around since 1913 and are by definition Constitutional and legal. (We passed an amendment to that effect.)
If you don’t like what your government is doing, go out and win an election.
Since it was created, the FISA court has approved 99.97% of all warrant requests. Even the votes in the old Soviet Union or Saddam’s Iraq weren’t that one sided. There can’t be much oversight is the warrant approval rate is that high.
Slavery was legal. Separate but equal was legal. The internment of the Japanese-Americans in WWII was perfectly legal. Just because something is legal, it doesn’t make it right.
Impeach for what? This is ALL LEGAL.
Serial and parallel abuse of power.
If you don’t like what your government is doing, go out and win an election.
That’s exactly what I proposed. Did you have trouble reading the post with comprehension, so great was your panty twisting?
Leading Republicans are currently calling, not to end the program, but to arrest reporters for talking about it. Why would putting more Republicans in office change that, or lead to impeachment of anybody? The people who are upset about the NSA programs are Democrats and liberals, not Republicans.
This isn’t about the NSA. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
What’s the iceberg? And how does electing Republicans do anything about the iceberg?
“And how does electing Republicans do anything about the iceberg?”
Nice straw man:
We need to elect *Conservatives* – no matter what letter they have after their name.
…I mean, we’ve only been saying that for years. Not that you’d listen.
*strikes a match and drops it on the worthless straw man”
Nice try.
“I will make it legal,” said the tyrant.
It was “illegal” under Bush, it will be “illegal” again when Obama leaves the White House and is replaced by someone who isn’t a Democrat. As simple as that.
Sad that the state of affairs is such that the 4th Amendment only works when Democrats are not in charge.
Regarding the commentors complaining about the IRS – they’ve been around since 1913 and are by definition Constitutional and legal. (We passed an amendment to that effect.)
The 16th Amendment did not repeal the 4th Amendment. So since your premise is nonsense, I’m not sure if you were trying to make a point or display your stupidity.
they’ve been around since 1913 and are by definition Constitutional and legal
What is this “definition” by which the IRS is constitutional and legal? I can’t wait to read more logic fail on the internets.
And I missed the clause of the Constitution where if you do something unconstitutional for long enough, it becomes constitutional.
16th Amendment of the US constitution: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. Congress has the power to levy taxes (Article 1, Section 8), making the IRS (or whatever other body Congress creates or tasks to collect taxes) legal and Constitutional.
Chris, that isn’t “by definition”.
Congress has the power to levy taxes (Article 1, Section 8), making the IRS (or whatever other body Congress creates or tasks to collect taxes) legal and Constitutional.
No, Congress has the power to levy certain types of taxes. The 16th Amendment widened that authority considerably, but there are still certain kinds of taxes that they can’t constitutionally levy, such as a property tax.
The IRS has certain powers above and beyond merely collecting taxes, such as a somewhat unconstitutional authority to gather evidence and prosecute people without proper reasonable cause.
I don’t see anything in the 16th Amendment about charging people different tax rates based on political views, or subjecting them to religious litmus tests, or taking their private information and giving it to political operatives.
It’s just the lefts version of “We win, you lose.” Reagan was talking about our enemies. To the left, everyone is the enemy (even their own if they don’t tow the line.) Rules are just meant to be interpreted in as biased a means as is possible when nobody gives them a serious challenge.
These days all I can wonder is, “What does Jim Clone think about this subject?”
Hey, whoever came up with “Jim Clone:” ever through about creating a “Gerrib Clone”? It should be as easy as coming up with a Jim Clone. You could start by clicking here
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
and then packing as many of these types of arguments into each of your posts as possible.
The solution to the current crisis of privacy is not technical. It is political. It cannot be found in uninventing the computer; only in creating institutions the public can trust to control such power, in the same way it trusts certain governments to control nuclear weapons.
I think this is well-intentioned, but false. Technology is crucial. The answer is not to uninvent the computer, but ubiquitous use of cryptography. Technology has advanced to a point where massive surveillance far beyond the wildest dreams of a Stasi agent is possible. Cryptography is what can protect the common citizen from this digital assault by the state.
Some have said that cryptography is a weapon, and that since people have the right to bear arms, the right of citizens to use cryptography should not be infringed. This argument is even stronger when you consider that it is mostly a defensive weapon. Citizens need this weapon to defend themselves against the state (and foreign states!) and against criminal groups, some of which overlap.
Another step is to decentralise many of the centralised systems we have. Phone and internet need to be partially replaced by meshnets run by individuals. We should have separation of money and state through something like Bitcoin, instead of central banks and the monopoly of government money.
We can’t even get companies to digitally sign emails, let alone enclose them in actual crypt. We’ve -had- the tech to do it easily and basically seamlessly since, what, 1995?
Every individual can take measures to protect himself. Tor, I2P, Bitmessage and GPG are good places to start.
It won’t happen in the current election cycle — the House won’t make the mistake of impeaching again without having the Senate on board (particularly given the inevitable race riots that might ensue).
Impeaching Obama would not be enough. Both he and Biden should be impeached or forced to resign, and the minority and majority leaders of both the House and Senate need to be expelled. The chair and ranking member of both intelligence committees would need to be expelled as well as well as the ex-officio members. None of these people should be allowed to be replaced by the second in line. General Alexander should be fired and tried for perjury.
This would amount to a decimation of the current Congress. But as you say, it’s not going to happen.
Ever read Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy? I’m thinking of a scene towards the end.
Unless the ones in power, pay a personal price nothing will change. If only the underlings end up under the bus and the ones making the decisions see no personal cost to them things will not change. You can march in the streets and protest and they just don’t care. The personal cost to those in power has to be more severe than loosing the next election and retireing to Hi… The most benign solution would be be government wide court trials where the senior people go to real jail for a very long time…. it could be something largely peaceful like the Czech velvet revolution…. it could get as bloody as the French revolution…(Guillotines would be too good for some of these people)
The fundamental problem is that the people abusing their power and trampling the constitution are the ones controlling the power of a very large, and powerful federal government. They will not just say ok we were wrong and walk away. They will use every single resource at their disposal to keep their power…
Unless the ones in power pay a personal price nothing will change.
Right. So how realistically can they be made to pay? Their isn’t going to be any implementation of any solution.
>Right. So how realistically can they be made to pay?
Until the populace is so fired up that they make them pay whatever the cost…. nothing changes… this sort of change does not just happen…. So it will have to get a lot worse and more oppressive before it changes…
Moving to elsewhere is starting to look like an option..
If there is no elsewhere? We have to be the shining city. No other country can do it.
Impeachment (if followed by conviction) would be good.
How about impeaching Lois Learner of the IRS first? Impeachment isn’t limited to Presidents… in fact, most of the 15 or so Congress has impeached have been judges, and they also impeached a cabinet secretary and a US senator. They can impeach any Federal official. I think they need to do so on a wholesale level; start with people like Lois Learner and work their way up.
+1
You can’t impeach Obamessiah! It is perfectly legal for His Majesty’s NSA to require anal probe microphones inserted in every American.
You see, it’s only bad if the racist rethuglicans are inserting those probes. ’cause they do it for corporationey things and make money. And that’s bad
This bit at ZH is right on …
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-12/guest-post-why-things-will-get-worse-much-worse
the US could become a second or third-world nation within a few decades
What’s chilling is this has been the plan for decades (I’ve been hearing it personally from some for at least 35 yrs.) and now we are actually seeing it happen.
Perhaps we should have listened to the Greeks thousands of years ago when they told us democracy always devolves into tyranny?
Starship troopers, anyone? What will the history books say?
It is legal and proper for NSA agents to listen to and record soldiers’ phone sex with their wives because army morale must be monitored. For our children’s sake and national security’s sake. After all, top republicans like John Boner support it.
Is it really necessary to clone a guy and make up shit about his positions? Geez, talk about a straw man…
It’s satire, which often (if not usually) the “reductio ad absurdum.” It’s only partially successful in this case, because the stuff Gerrib and Jim write seriously are pretty much already in “absurdum” territory to start, and what Jim Clone and Bizarro Chris Gerrib write are only one or two steps away from what the originals say.
I do have a cavil, however. Wouldn’t a Bizarro version of Chris Gerrib be logical, and PRO-freedom?
Wouldn’t a Bizarro version of Chris Gerrib be logical, and PRO-freedom?
I agree. The Clone would work, but the Bizarro would seem to be backwards and, for Gerrib, logical. What’s truly bizarre about Gerrib was how much he was against FISA and such when it was implemented to find the next Jose Padilla. It was legal, but he was against it.
Now, Gerrib just notes that it is legal, ignores any other implication about it happening under Obama, and then suggests it is ok for the IRS to be used in a manner, which when you work it out, is even worse than the NSA. At least the NSA is supposedly trying to stop terrorism. The IRS is collecting information and passing it to political partisans in order to squelch opposing speech and, where possible, disrupt freedom of association. Where one (such as the ACLU) can try to sue the NSA for collecting this data, Gerrib points to the 16th Amendment as protection from going after the IRS in a similar manner.