Inspector General For Intelligence Community Rejects Congress' Request To Investigate The NSA

Failures

from the oversight! dept

Remember, kids, how the NSA and its defenders keep talking about how much oversight there is? One part of that is the inspector general who is supposed to make sure that the NSA isn’t going rogue. Except… now that the Judiciary Committee asked the intelligence community Inspector General Charles McCullough to investigate the NSA’s dragnet data collections, he’s told them he just can’t do it, according to a recent report at Politico.

“At present, we are not resourced to conduct the requested review within the requested timeframe,” wrote McCullough, before adding he and other agency inspectors general are weighing now whether they can combine forces on a larger probe.

Not surprisingly, those who asked for the help, are not pleased. Senator Pat Leahy appears particularly angry about this:

That response didn’t sit well with Leahy, who raised the letter during a scathing speech on the Senate floor Wednesday that slammed the intelligence community for a “trust deficit.” Leahy also emphasized his belief that “the American people are rightly concerned that their private information could be swept up into a massive database, and then compromised.”

While it may be true that McCullough does not have significant resources to do this kind of investigation, that really just highlights the problem. There clearly is not sufficient oversight over the NSA’s activities. The fact that the very person in charge of this kind of investigation, when told to do it by Congress, says he can’t, should demonstrate just how little actual oversight there is. Perhaps instead of putting more money towards stopping the next Ed Snowden, the Senate should give that money to the inspector general to investigate the NSA and encourage the next Ed Snowden to come forward.

Filed Under: charles mccullough, inspector general, nsa, nsa surveillance, oversight, pat leahy, senate judiciary committee

TSA Security Theater Makes Unwilling Co-Star Out Of 3-Year-Old With Rare Medical Condition

Failures

from the learning-from-your-mistakes-not-permitted-by-governing-TSA-bylaws dept

It seems the TSA is unable to learn from its mistakes. When your entire operation is continually scrutinized and criticized by the public and policy makers, you’d think there would be a concerted effort to minimize these sorts of embarrassing incidents.

The TSA hasn’t met a medical condition it can’t treat as threat. Anything physically unusual is subjected to additional patdowns, harassment and detainment. Err on the side of caution, I suppose, but it’s doing itself no favors by refusing to up its level of understanding past “aggressively mystified.”

A disabled child was harassed by government agents and his family was caused to miss their flight, all because inept security screeners thought that his medical equipment may have been a bomb. Even children with debilitating medical conditions set off paranoiac ideations and inhumane treatment from the Transportation Security Administration.

3-year-old Apollo, who was born with a cardiovascular abnormality that affects his ability to eat, was suspected of harboring an explosive device after TSA employees believed they had detected residue on the medical supplies that help keep him alive.

Yes, Apollo’s condition is unusual and yes, for whatever reason, his very essential formula set off the explosive residue testing equipment, but the entire system leading up to this point is incredibly fallible. The TSA’s boilerplate response ignores a great many facts in its hurry to offload the blame on Apollo’s parents.

The TSA looked into Bergeron’s complaint for Yahoo Shine on Friday before issuing the following statement: “We regret that the family did not have a positive screening experience. We strongly encourage passengers with medical conditions to arrive at the checkpoint with ample time for screening. We are committed to maintaining the security of the traveling public and strive to treat all passengers with dignity and respect.”

Thanks for the “arrive early” tip, but Apollo’s mother (Renee Bergeron) did everything she could do to expedite this process and it still went wrong.

“I walked right up to the first agent and told her, ‘My son is tube-fed and this cooler has formula and medical supplies in it,’” Bergeron said, explaining that she had hoped that being direct would be a helpful approach and that it would have prompted a TSA agent to do a thorough search and swab of the items before sending them through to their gate.

No such luck. The responding (ha!) TSA agent told her to put it on the belt with the rest of luggage and made no attempt to inform the screeners up ahead that something unusual might be on the way. The formula cooler triggered the “bomb residue” alarm and Bergeron’s (and Apollo’s) day went from merely difficult to something much worse.

They were escorted to a restroom then, as Apollo had to go, but Bergeron was not allowed to take him alone. Then the two were ushered to a private room where agents gave Bergeron a thorough pat-down and where a nervous Apollo began to cry and beg his mom to hold him. Bergeron was told she couldn’t touch her son because she could “contaminate” him. “It was horribly traumatic for him,” she said.

“To make a long story short, the flight left without us,” she wrote in her blog. “As it turns out, they don’t hold flights for people suspected of carrying explosives onto the plane.”

Somewhat ironically, Bergeron and her son were on their way to an “Everybody Plays” event, which celebrates and encourages active lives for children with different health issues and disabilities. To be subjected to additional hassle and attention because of his condition isn’t going to help Apollo learn to live a fuller life.

Now, it may seem a bit churlish to criticize the agency for following its own policies regarding explosive residue, but it’s not as if Bergeron didn’t try to let agents know something unusual was headed their way, in terms of both luggage and human beings. But this was ignored and the usual panic ensued when the machine decided the formula was actually explosives. And it’s not as if the agency doesn’t have any previous experience with this exact flier.

Bergeron said she is considering filing a complaint with the TSA. It’s not the first time they have experienced harassment at the hands of the agency.

Last year they were mistreated on their way to Texas for Apollo’s medical treatment. In that instance, a TSA employee attempted to pour out all four of Apollo’s bottles of formula before he found it in himself to spare all but one. “It was so blown out of proportion and ridiculous” Bergeron said.

The policies constantly override any innate logic TSA agents might possess and continue unimpeded even when the agency itself admits it doesn’t think airplanes are terrorist targets. The underlying problem with these policies and the security theater they anchor is that they’re unable to be overridden by agents’ intuition or better judgement. Because of this, no one learns anything from these experiences. The TSA just copy-pastes another boilerplate “just policy” non-apology and moves on to the next debacle.

Even worse, the TSA itself provides absolutely no assistance for travelers in terms of prepping for unusual situations, other than tell them to “arrive early.” Arriving early is completely useless when agents are free to detain fliers for nearly any reason and for indefinite periods of time. A spokesperson spoke to Yahoo and pointed to this post on the TSA’s blog as “answering” questions about how bomb residue tests work. But what’s contained in that post doesn’t address Bergeron’s situation at all. Furthermore, it doesn’t really explain the system. It spends most of the post telling people TSA agents will be using swabs to detect bomb residue. No information is given as to what common (or uncommon) items/chemicals/household products might cause a false positive. There’s no info on failure rates or anything detailing the technology involved. It’s just “we’ll be using these so don’t be worried.” In terms of dealing with Bergeron’s multiple experiences with the TSA, it’s about as useless as a 404 page.

I understand that too much information might give someone an idea of how to bypass these tests, but when you’re dealing with the possibility of throwing out the only food a child with a rare medical condition can eat simply because of policies and faulty machinery, you need to be willing to disseminate more info than a canned response and a worthless “we’re the good guys” blog post.

Filed Under: children, medical conditions, search, tsa

UK Gov't Losing The Plot: Now Claiming Snowden Leaks Could Help Pedophiles

Overhype

from the wtf? dept

Having already gone down the crazy path to arguing that journalism can be terorrism if it’s “designed to influence a government,” in the David Miranda detention lawsuit, the UK government is also claiming that the Ed Snowden leaks may help pedophiles. This seems to be a dystopian updated version of copyright maximalists trying to use child porn to support their own arguments. The general thinking is “just make some sort of nonsensical connection to child porn, and that’ll show people how serious this is.” The reality is that since most people can think, they realize that there is no connection to child porn, and thus the claim makes no sense. Same thing here, but at an even more bizarre level of insanity.

Paedophiles may escape detection because highly-classified material about Britain’s surveillance capabilities have been published by the Guardian newspaper, the government has claimed.

A senior Whitehall official said data stolen by Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the US National Security Agency, could be exploited by child abusers and other cyber criminals.

How? Uh, don’t ask silly questions like that. The government has said “child abusers” so shut up and be scared. The Telegraph article, by David Barrett, admits that the government didn’t explain how it made this connection, but then attempts to connect the dots for you:

it is well known that many paedophiles use the internet to share child pornography and to groom potential victims. They also use “peer to peer” groups on the web to communicate with other child abusers.

Any clues about how to evade detection which have been provided by Mr Snowden’s leaks could help paedophiles to cover their tracks.

But, under that argument, any privacy or encryption could be lumped into that same camp. Does David Barrett or the UK government refuse to use SSL on webpages, since encryption can be used to cover the tracks of pedophiles? The argument shows just how painfully desperate the UK government is in this case — and also how petty and jealous it appears the Guardian’s UK competitors have become, in that this is reported as if Snowden’s efforts seriously would “help pedophiles.”

Filed Under: ed snowden, exaggeration, leaks, pedophiles, propaganda, surveillance, uk

School Threatens Child With Expulsion For Halloween Drawings

Failures

from the fear-itself dept

There is an epidemic coursing its way through our school systems that puts our children’s lives in danger. For some reason, this epidemic appears to be on the rise, resulting in fear, oppression, and a demoralizing experience for our kids in schools that almost certainly effects the educational experience, if not the psychological well-being of millions of young Americans. As I’m sure you have already guessed, I’m obviously talking about the stupid adults that run everything and have put in place a nearly-institutionalized overreaction to some very real but rare tragedies of recent note. That overreaction is how you get terrified kids during school shooting drills. It’s how you get seven year olds suspended for novelty pens, which I guess is mightier than the high-powered rifle.

And it’s how you end up with a grade school child being threatened with expulsion for drawing some pictures of what he’d like to dress as on Halloween.

The three images in question depict a soldier, a ninja and a Star Wars character – possibilities for the 8-year-old’s Halloween costume. Each of the drawings show the character holding either a gun or a knife.

“I think we really send our children the wrong message when we show that, as adults, we’re so afraid of our shadow that an innocent picture – that any 8-year-old might’ve drawn – is cause for this kind of concern.” [Comment from a local citizen]

The report also notes that the student engaged in creative writing which was likewise deemed to be dangerous, but which ultimately turned out to be a fictional story about the school being attacked by zombies, otherwise known as the kind of thing every single young boy thinks about at some point. For these crimes, the principal of the school informed the parents that they have a zero tolerance policy for images depicting guns and violence, that the child’s creativity resulted in every other child in the school being in danger, and that they were grounds for expulsion.

And, in case you haven’t decided yet, this is stupid. The images of school shootings in our media are powerful ones, but they don’t necessarily need to result in everyone over the age of eighteen completely losing their minds and institutionalizing a culture of fear of our own children. You want to create a mythos around violence and guns amongst children? Outlaw discussion about them. You want to ostricize children? Limit creativity. You want to make children trust adults even less than they already do? Try to put them in some iron-grip of zero tolerance during the very time when they are learning to be most expressive, curious, and creative.

Can we please just go back to trusting our children to be relatively decent again? Because each and every one of these stories is dumb.

Filed Under: costumes, drawing, halloween, overreaction, students