Category: politics

While eating lunch, my mind kept going back to a post I saw yesterday at lunch from Wil Wheaton titled “How to Turn a Democracy into a STASI Authoritarian State in 10 Steps“. It got me infuriated, because neither the US nor the UK is anywhere near the STASI political apparatus. So I decided to write something up… and then let it sit until the evening were I could review it over dinner. In general, these statements come about because people really don’t know what they are talking about, at least in the detail. So although I don’t know what I’m talking about either, let’s correct what misconceptions I can:

• Information is not arbitrarily classified for convenience, as Wil’s link implies. Classification requires the original owner of the information to make a determination that release of the information will cause some level of damage to the nation (the level of damage determines the classification). Given that there is a large cost to handling classified information, there is often a push not to classify. However, some cultures and organizations tend to exist in a classified bubble, and routinely classify information when it might not really need it. Often, this is an artifact of poor information technology — if you are working at System High, it is easier to deal with everything classified. Give us true multilevel systems (i.e., systems that can reliably separate data of different levels with appropriate assurance and at reasonable cost), and you’ll likely see stuff float to realistic classifications. But the important takeaway is that information is not classified just to hide it from the public.
• Understanding classification demonstrates why what Snowden and Manning did was so problematic. It wasn’t per-se the “whistle-blowing” — it was how they did it. If something wrong is being done — where “wrong” is defined as either morally or legally — it should be reported.*  However, the way they did it was a problem. They were not in a position to have the visibility or enterprise view to truly determine the damage the information release could do. They were both low-level. This is not to say that they had to run it up their reporting chain (where it might be suppressed)… but going to the media was the wrong way to do it. They should have gone to their elected representative — House or Senate — to discuss what they were seeing. The representatives are cleared, they have the larger view, and they have the legal and moral obligation to both defend the constitution and defend the nation. Further, there is always someone in Congress just itching to start an investigation of government wrongdoing. Even if you believe in a grand government conspiracy, it is hard to believe all 535 elected congresscritters are equally brainwashed. [ETA: This post shows why what Snowden did was such a problem.]
• [*: As for whether what has been reported is “wrong”: It may have been legal under some readings of the law. It may even have been in the interest of defending the nation. But at least based on the information disclosed to date, it gives the appearance of being a privacy concern, which is an American issue. Any congresscritter should know that the appearance of wrong can often be worse than anything.]
• As for the detention of David Miranda — that was the UK’s doing, not the US. The White House had denied it was involved. Of course, Wil doesn’t believe that denial. [ETA: This post (same as above) also shows why Miranda’s detention was not what it appeared to be — that is, the detention of an innocent] This goes to another pet peeve — when did we stop believing our government? There seems to be a belief that all government workers are lazy and inefficient, that all the government does is a lie, that all of government is a waste. This may be an artifact of Vietnam; it may be an artifact of Nixon… but at one point we trusted government, and that trust has been lost and (just like cheating in a relationship) will never return. Part of this problem is Obama’s: Like him or not, he was swept into office on the belief that he was different… that the nation could trust him… and the reality of the position is making him break that trust. He needs to figure out how to regain the high moral ground — and that likely means exerting some moral authority (such as suspending all investigations for a short period except for those revalidated in a normal, non-Secret court, while new privacy protections are put into place).
• On the other hand, we seem to implicitly trust the motives of big business. I’d be more suspicious of big business (after all, their motive is just to raise the profits for their executives) and less suspicious of government (whose ultimate motive, except for a few bad apples, is protection of the nation — I’ve never seen anyone claim the government is trying to weaken the nation).
• There seems to be an expectation that government will get it right the first time. Guess what folks… it won’t. Government — as with any bureaucracy — always overreacts. The overreaction is detected, and then overcorrected, and the pendulum swings back and forth, eventually getting closer to right. This happens with everything. In the next year (because government never does anything fast — think about turning a battleship), Congress will work to get privacy restored (although, surprisingly, this will come from the President’s party). Keep up the pressure on your congresscritters.
• For all the claims that the government has a surveillance state — we don’t (the UK is different, and operates under different rules). Most of the cameras that follow you… are operated by private businesses.  All the tracking of every purchase with a credit card is done by… the banks. All those records of your phone calls… are made by the phone companies. All those requests you make on the internet… by your service providers or Google. The government, if it wants any of that information, must get a request approved (leaving a paper trail) and formally request it. The government, except for the occasional traffic camera, is not watching you. Big Business is (and government is requesting only a small portion of that data). [However… that said, there likely is traffic being monitored directly by the government legally… foreign calls on the international trunk lines… wireless transmissions you are sending unencrypted… and things you do on government websites. [ETA: There are also reports that NSA can supposedly monitor up to 75% of Internet traffic, although it is unlikely to be looking for anything and everything, only specific terms and traffic involving foreign parties — remember, the NSA cannot legally target purely domestic communications by law.]]

There. Now I feel better.

As usual, while I ate lunch today I skimmed the news. Sigh. The Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot again.

Let me start over. If you know me at all, you know I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Humphrey-ite Democrat. No, that’s not the same thing as being a socialist :-). Still, I think it is important to have a healthy multi-party system in this country — debate on issues is important, and working to find compromise between parties can prevent abuses and find better solutions.

As I result, I’d like to see a healthy, functional, Republican party. Alas, (shakes his head) I read articles such as this: “Obama Proposes Surveillance-Policy Overhaul“, and… sigh… This whole NSA kurfluffle is one place where the Republicans can gain votes. They can jump on their long-time bandwagon of smaller government, and get the government out of this area. They can argue this is unnecessary government intrusion (hell, you know they would complain if it is was being used against conservative groups). Instead, what do we get? Quoting from the article:

In an early indication of the difficulty ahead, some Republicans who have been defending the NSA surveillance program lambasted the president. Rep. Pete King (R., N.Y.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, called the president’s announcement “a monumental failure” of wartime leadership.

“We need a president who defends our intelligence programs, explains them appropriately to the American people, and uses every legal capability in his arsenal to defeat al Qaeda,” Mr. King said.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) criticized Mr. Obama for inadequately defending the programs. “Transparency is important, but we expect the White House to insist that no reform will compromise the operational integrity of the program,” said spokesman Brendan Buck.

So here is the President arguing for more transparency in the process, for a privacy advocate (yes, it’s not everything, but, c’mon, the guy’s not superman). What do we get from the Republicans? An argument to keep up the spying.

This is yet another example of how the Republican party can’t seem to get their act together — they are being torn apart by various internal factions that is destroying their former effectiveness. They only thing they seem to be able to do is vote to repeal Obamacare.  Further, all the attention they get is from overreaction on social issues from a few individuals and states that opens the entire party to ridicule by connection. My advice — get ahead of the game. Show that you can solve problems and lead — the Republican way. Figure out how to propose solutions that are palatable to enough of congress to get it through both houses, and convince the President that your way is acceptable. Lead the way on immigration reform. Lead the way on restoring civil liberties. Lead the way on creating a health-care system that works (that that means fixing, not repealing, Obamacare).

Now, personally, I’d be happy if a strong Democratic candidate won in 2016, and if the Republican partisianship led to Democrats retaking the house in 2014. But for the country’s sake, we Democrats can’t do it alone. Republicans — please — get your act together and learn to lead.

Late last week, I wrote an article about the NSA in which I noted that we are dealing with a Congress that doesn’t understand technology, and laws that were made for a different time and different technology (at least when understanding what search and seizure mean). Today there was an article in Slashdot that made an even more important point:

John Naughton writes in the Guardian that the insight that seems to have escaped most of the world’s mainstream media regarding the revelations from Edward Snowden is how the US has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users’ data proving that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. ‘The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system,’ writes Naughton. ‘Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their “cloud” services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA.’ This spells the end of the internet as a truly global network. ‘It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.’

The point made here is the statement that the Internet is a truly global network. What’s the problem? Let me tell you.

America’s laws… and America’s security structures and organizations… are based essentially in the period immediately after WWII. 1947 is when the NSA was created. Back then, communication was primarily domestic — there were clear international paths for the NSA to monitor to protect the country. Fast forward to today. We’re dealing with multinational communications companies located who knows where, governed by who knows what laws, handling data from all across the globe. Any Internet traffic stream may contain not only packets traversing from a domestic computer to a domestic computer, but international to international and international to domestic. Further, transportation has made the world smaller, and there are more and more foreign (i.e., non-US) visitors and workers in the US (both legally and illegally). Now imagine you are an agency (such as the NSA) charged with monitoring International traffic — what do you do? Yup. Supposed you are the FBI monitoring international traffic to fight against illegally trafficed material? There is no longer an easy way to just get the data you want from the information stream. You end up collecting it all, and attempting to find that needle in the haystack later.

Understanding this is key to solving the problem. We can see how we got into the legal boat we are in — it is easy to see the arguments that were made to Congress, and how they misunderstood what they were authorizing. Instead of complaining that we are in a “big brother” state and the government is out to get us (which is a lot of what I see), what we need to do is simple.

1. Educate our representatives and leaders about the technology so they understand that which about they are writing laws.

2. Vote for people who understand and agree to work to move the pendulum back to protecting privacy in the new global society. The pendulum swings between being overly secure and not. We just have to keep working to get it right.

3. Stop electing the lawyers and partisans. Let’s get some people who actually understand technology and know how to think critically elected.

The problems we are dealing with here took many years to get to this point. We’re not going to fix them overnight. Slow and steady education… and, as I’ve said before, understanding that we are not dealing with evil, we’re dealing with stupidity and bureaurcracy. If you want evil, look at those multinational corporations.