In a bit of fortuitous timing, this week we had asked former deputy chief of staff for Ron Wyden, Jennifer Hoelzer, to do our weekly “Techdirt Favorites of the Week” post, in which we have someone from the wider Techdirt community tell us what their favorite posts on the site were. As you’ll see below, Hoelzer has a unique and important perspective on this whole debate concerning NSA surveillance, and given the stories that came out late Friday, she chose to ditch her original post on favorites and rewrite the whole thing from scratch last night (and into this morning). Given that, it’s much, much more than a typical “favorites of the week” post, and thus we’ve adjusted the title appropriately. I hope you’ll read through this in its entirety for a perspective on what’s happening that not many have.
Tim Cushing made one of my favorite points of the week in his Tuesday post “Former NSA Boss Calls Snowden’s Supporters Internet Shut-ins; Equates Transparency Activists With Al-Qaeda,” when he explained that “some of the most ardent defenders of our nation’s surveillance programs” — much like proponents of overreaching cyber-legislation, like SOPA — have a habit of “belittling” their opponents as a loose confederation of basement-dwelling loners.” I think it’s worth pointing out that General Hayden’s actual rhetoric is even more inflammatory than Cushing’s. Not only did the former NSA director call us “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years,” he equates transparency groups like the ACLU with al Qaeda.
I appreciated this post for two reasons:
First of all, it does a great job of illustrating a point that I’ve long made when asked for advice on communicating tech issues, which is that the online community is as diverse and varied as the larger world we live in. Of course, we are more likely to come across the marginal opinions of twenty-somethings with social anxiety online because, unlike the larger world, the Internet gives those twenty-somethings just as much of an opportunity to be heard as a Harvard scholar, a dissident protesting for democracy or General Hayden himself.
Sure, it can be infuriating to read scathingly hostile comments written by troubled individuals who clearly didn’t take the time to read the post you spent countless hours carefully writing (not that that has ever happened to me) but isn’t one of the things that makes the Internet so darn special its unwavering reminder that free speech includes speech we don’t appreciate? Of course, that’s a point that tends to get lost on folks — like General Hayden — who don’t seem to understand that equating the entirety of the online world with terrorists is a lot like posting a scathing comment to a story without reading it. You can’t expect someone to treat you or your opinion with respect — online or anywhere else — when you’re being disrespectful. And I can imagine no greater disrespect for the concepts of transparency and oversight than to equate them with the threats posed by terrorist groups like al Qaeda.
But my main reason for singling out Tim’s post this week is that Hayden’s remark goes to the heart of what I continue to find most offensive about the Administration’s handling of the NSA surveillance programs, which is their repeated insinuation that anyone who raises concerns about national security programs doesn’t care about national security. As Tim explains this “attitude fosters the “us vs. them” antagonism so prevalent in these agencies dealings with the public. The NSA (along with the FBI, DEA and CIA) continually declares the law is on its side and portrays its opponents as ridiculous dreamers who believe safety doesn’t come with a price.”
To understand why I find this remark so offensive, I should probably tell you a little about myself. While the most identifying aspect of my resume is probably the six years I spent as U.S. Senator Ron Wyden’s communications director and later deputy chief of staff, I started college at the U.S. Naval Academy and spent two years interning for the National Security Council. I had a Top Secret SCI clearance when I was 21 years old and had it not been for an unusual confluence of events nearly 15 years ago — including a chance conversation with a patron of the bar I tended in college — I might be working for the NSA today. I care very deeply about national security. Moreover — and this is what the Obama Administration and other proponents of these programs fail to understand — I was angry at the Administration for its handling of these programs long before I knew what the NSA was doing. That had a lot to do with the other thing you should probably know about me: during my tenure in Wyden’s office, I probably spent in upwards of 1,000 hours trying to help my boss raise concerns about programs that he couldn’t even tell me about.
Which brings me to my next favorite Techdirt post of the week, Mike’s Friday post entitled “Don’t Insult Our Intelligence, Mr. President: This Debate Wouldn’t Be Happening Without Ed Snowden,” which is a much less profane way of summing up my feelings about the President’s “claim that he had already started this process prior to the Ed Snowden leaks and that it’s likely we would [have] ended up in the same place” without Snowden’s disclosure.
“What makes us different from other countries is not simply our ability to secure our nation,” Obama said. “It’s the way we do it, with open debate and democratic process.”
I hope you won’t mind if I take a moment to respond to that.
Really, Mr. President? Do you really expect me to believe that you give a damn about open debate and the democratic process? Because it seems to me if your Administration was really committed to those things, your Administration wouldn’t have blocked every effort to have an open debate on these issues each time the laws that your Administration claims authorizes these programs came up for reauthorization, which — correct me if I am wrong — is when the democratic process recommends as the ideal time for these debates.
For example, in June 2009, six months before Congress would have to vote to reauthorize Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which the Obama Administration claims gives the NSA the authority to collect records on basically every American citizen — whether they have ever or will ever come in contact with a terrorist — Senators Wyden, Feingold and Durbin sent Attorney General Eric Holder a classified letter “requesting the declassification of information which [they] argued was critical for a productive debate on reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT Act.”
In November 2009, they sent an unclassified letter reiterating the request, stating:
“The PATRIOT Act was passed in a rush after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Sunsets were attached to the Act’s most controversial provisions, to permit better-informed, more deliberative consideration of them at a later time. Now is the time for that deliberative consideration, but informed discussion is not possible when most members of Congress – and nearly all of the American public – lack important information about the issue.”
Did President Obama jump at the opportunity to embrace the democratic process and have an open debate then? No. Congress voted the following month to reauthorize the Patriot Act without debate.
In May 2011, before the Senate was — again — scheduled to vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act, Senators Wyden and Udall — again — called for the declassification of the Administration’s secret interpretation of Section 215. This time, in a Huffington Post Op-Ed entitled “How Can Congress Debate a Secret Law?” they wrote:
Members of Congress are about to vote to extend the most controversial provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act for four more years, even though few of them understand how those provisions are being interpreted and applied.
As members of the Senate Intelligence Committee we have been provided with the executive branch’s classified interpretation of those provisions and can tell you that we believe there is a significant discrepancy between what most people — including many Members of Congress — think the Patriot Act allows the government to do and what government officials secretly believe the Patriot Act allows them to do.
Legal scholars, law professors, advocacy groups, and the Congressional Research Service have all written interpretations of the Patriot Act and Americans can read any of these interpretations and decide whether they support or agree with them. But by far the most important interpretation of what the law means is the official interpretation used by the U.S. government and this interpretation is — stunningly –classified.
What does this mean? It means that Congress and the public are prevented from having an informed, open debate on the Patriot Act because the official meaning of the law itself is secret. Most members of Congress have not even seen the secret legal interpretations that the executive branch is currently relying on and do not have any staff who are cleared to read them. Even if these members come down to the Intelligence Committee and read these interpretations themselves, they cannot openly debate them on the floor without violating classification rules.
During the debate itself, Wyden and Udall offered an amendment to declassify the Administration’s legal interpretation of its Patriot Act surveillance authorities and, in a twenty minute speech on the Senate floor, Wyden warned that the American people would one day be outraged to learn that the government was engaged in surveillance activities that many Americans would assume were illegal, just as they were every other time the national security committee has tried to hide its questionable activities from the American people.
Fun aside: As you can see in the video, to underscore the point that hiding programs from the American people rarely goes well for the Administration, I had my staff make a poster of the famous image of Oliver North testifying before Congress during the Iran-Contra hearing. I really wanted to replace North’s face with the words “insert your photo here,” but we didn’t have the time.
Did President Obama welcome an open debate at that time?
No. Congress voted to reauthorize the Patriot Act for four more years and the only point we — as critics — could raise that might be confused with debate was a hypothetical argument illustrated with a twenty-year-old picture of Oliver North. And, again, Senator Wyden couldn’t even tell me what he was so concerned about. In strategy meetings with me and his Intelligence Committee staffer, I had to repeatedly leave the room when the conversation strayed towards details they couldn’t share with me because I no longer had an active security clearance. “You know, it would be a lot easier if you could just tell me what I can’t say?” I’d vent in frustration. They agreed, but still asked me to leave the room.
And that was just the Patriot Act. Did the President — who now claims to welcome open debate of his Administration’s surveillance authorities — jump at the opportunity to have such a debate when the FISA Amendments Act came up for reauthorization?
No. Not only did the Administration repeatedly decline Senator Wyden’s request for a “ballpark figure” of the number of Americans whose information was being collected by the NSA last year, just a month after the Patriot Act reauthorization, the Senate Intelligence Committee attempted to quietly pass a four year reauthorization of the controversial surveillance law by spinning it as an effort to: “Synchronize the various sunset dates included in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to June 1, 2015;” So, I guess if this was part of the Administration’s plan to publicly debate the NSA’s surveillance authorities, the plan was for the debate to take place in 2015?
And, as I explained in an interview with Brian Beutler earlier this summer, that is just a fraction of the ways the Obama Administration and the Intelligence Communities ignored and even thwarted our attempts to consult the public on these surveillance programs before they were reauthorized. In fact, after the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing in which Wyden attempted to close the FAA’s Section 702 loophole, which another important Techdirt post this week explains, “gives the NSA ‘authority’ to run searches on Americans without any kind of warrant,” I — as Wyden’s spokesperson — was specifically barred from explaining the Senator’s opposition to the legislation to the reporters. In fact, the exact response I was allowed to give reporters was:
“We’ve been told by Senator Feinstein’s staff that under the SSCI’s Committee Rule 9.3, members and staff are prohibited from discussing the markup or describing the contents of the bill until the official committee report is released. The fact that they’ve already put out a press release does not lift this prohibition.”
That’s right, supporters of a full scale reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act put out a press release explaining why this was a good thing, while explicitly barring the Senator who voted against the legislation from explaining his concerns.
Months later, the FISA Amendments Act, which the Administration contends authorizes its PRISM program, passed without the open debate that the President now contends he wanted all along. And, again, I’m only touching on a fraction of the efforts just Senator Wyden made to compel the administration to engage the American people in a democratic debate. I, obviously, haven’t mentioned the Director of National Intelligence’s decision to lie when Wyden “asked whether the NSA had collected ‘any type of data at all on millions of Americans.'” (Btw: Given that Wyden shared his question with the ODNI the day before the hearing, I am highly skeptical that Clapper’s decision to lie was made unilaterally.) Or the fact that the Obama Administration repeatedly fought lawsuits and FOIA requests for, again — not sources and methods — but the Section 215 legal interpretation that the Administration claims authorizes its surveillance authorities.
The below is an excerpt from a March 2012 letter that Wyden and Udall sent the Obama Administration urging them to respect the democratic process:
The Justice Department’s motion to dismiss these Freedom of Information Act lawsuits argues that it is the responsibility of the executive branch to determine the best way to protect the secrecy of intelligence sources and methods. While this is indeed a determination for the executive branch to make, we are concerned that the executive branch has developed a practice of bypassing traditional checks and balances and treating these determinations as dispositive in all cases. In other words, when intelligence officials argue that something should stay secret, policy makers often seem to defer to them without carefully considering the issue themselves. We have great respect for our nation’s intelligence officers, the vast majority of whom are hard-working and dedicated professionals. But intelligence officials are specialists — it is their job to determine how to collect as much information as possible, but it is not their job to balance the need for secrecy with the public’s right to know how the law is being interpreted. That responsibility rests with policy makers, and we believe that responsibility should not be delegated lightly.
But, as Mike’s last post on Friday explains, “President Obama flat out admitted that this was about appeasing a public that doesn’t trust the administration, not about reducing the surveillance.” Mike’s insight continues:
Even more to the point, his comments represent a fundamental misunderstanding of why the public doesn’t trust the government. That’s because he keeps insisting that the program isn’t being abused and that all of this collection is legal. But, really, that’s not what the concern is about. Even though we actually know that the NSA has a history of abuse (and other parts of the intelligence community before that), a major concern is that scooping up so much data is considered legal in the first place.
I’d go even further than that and argue that a big part of the reason the American people are having a hard time trusting their government is that the public’s trust in government is harmed every time the American people learn that their government is secretly doing something they not only assumed was illegal but that government officials specifically told them they weren’t doing. Hint: When the American people learn that you lied to them, they trust you less.
I think it’s hard for the American people to trust their President when he says he respects democratic principles, when his actions over the course of nearly five years demonstrate very little respect for democratic principles.
I think the American people would be more likely to trust the President when he says these programs include safeguards that protect their privacy, if he — or anyone else in his administration — seemed to care about privacy rights or demonstrated an understanding of how the information being collected could be abused. Seriously, how are we supposed to trust safeguards devised by people who don’t believe there is anything to safeguard against?
I think it’s understandably hard for the American people to trust the President when he says his Administration has the legal authority to conduct these surveillance programs when one of the few things that remains classified about these programs is the legal argument that the administration says gives the NSA the authority to conduct these programs. This is the document that explains why the Administration believes the word “relevant” gives them the authority to collect everything. It’s also the document I’d most like to see since it’s the document my former boss has been requesting be declassified for more than half a decade. (A reporter recently asked me why I think the Administration
won’t just declassify the legal opinion given that the sources and methods it relates to have already been made public. “I think that’s pretty obvious,” I said. “I believe it will be much harder for the Administration to claim that these programs are legal, if people can see their legal argument.”)
I think it’s hard for the American people to trust the President when his administration has repeatedly gone out of its way to silence critics and — again — treat oversight as a threat on par with al Qaeda. As another great Techdirt post this week — US Releases Redacted Document Twice… With Different Redactions — illustrates, many of the Intelligence Community’s classification decisions seem to be based more on a desire to avoid criticism than clear national security interests. And as Senator Wyden said back in 2007, when then CIA Director Hayden (yes, the same guy who thinks we’re all losers who can’t get laid) attempted to undermine oversight over his agency by launching an investigation into the CIA’s inspector general, “people who know that they’re doing the right thing aren’t afraid of oversight.”
Which reminds me of the Techdirt post this week that probably haunted me the most. Ed Snowden’s Email Provider, Lavabit, Shuts Down To Fight US Gov’t Intrusion. Mike uses the post to explain that Ladar Levison, the owner and operator of Labavit — the secure email service that provided Edward Snowden’s email account — decided to shut down his email service this week.
Not much more information is given, other than announced plans to fight against the government in court. Reading between the lines, it seems rather obvious that Lavabit has been ordered to either disclose private information or grant access to its secure email accounts, and the company is taking a stand and shutting down the service while continuing the legal fight. It’s also clear that the court has a gag order on Levison, limiting what can be said.
The part that haunted me, though, was a line Levon included in his email informing customers of his decision:
“I feel you deserve to know what’s going on,” he wrote. “The first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this.”
He’s right, isn’t he? If these aren’t the moments the First Amendment was meant for, what are? Moreover, if the Administration is so convinced that its requests of Labavit are just, why are they afraid to hold them up to public scrutiny?
In his book, Secrecy: The American Experience, former Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan included a quote from a 1960 report issued by the House Committee on Operations which I believe provides a far better response than anything I could write on my own:
Secrecy — the first refuge of incompetents — must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society for a fully informed public is the basis of self government. Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than its people.
Which brings me to my final point (at least for now) I think it’s awfully hard for the American people to trust the President and his administration when their best response to the concerns Americans are raising is to denigrate the Americans raising those concerns. Because, you see, I have a hard time understanding why my wanting to stand up for democratic principles makes me unpatriotic, while the ones calling themselves patriots seem to think so little of the people and the principles that comprise the country they purport to love.
Re: Re: Re:
A smart person once told me that people express cynicism to make themselves sound smart on a subject. The idea being that you've got to know an awful lot about a subject to say something positive about it, but you don't need to know very much to express cynicism.
That said, I know there is a lot to be angry and cynical about here, but as someone who's been working on these issues for years, let me tell you: This report is a very important step w/out which none of the things you want would be possible.
Leaving aside the fact that producing this "small step" required a team of people to spend tens of thousands of hours combing through more than 6 million documents, not to mention what it takes to write a several thousand page report...and then a year, plus a head-on confrontation with the CIA and the White House to get it made public, prior to the release of this report, those of us in government and out who wanted to push for any sort of change or steps to be taken against these guys had zero ammunition. We could talk about feelings and hunches, but there were no hard facts to point to, nothing we could hold up to say Cheney and Hayden are lying. Hell, we didn't even have enough facts on our side (at least that we could point to) to discredit Zero Dark Thirty, let alone prosecute anyone.
The reason Cheney et al have gotten away with this for as long as they have is that they've controlled the facts. They knew that it's next to impossible for anyone outside of the intelligence community to get something they've stamped classified unclassified. (Look at the legal rulings w/ re: to our attempts to force the declassification of FISC rulings pertaining to NSA data collection - the administration fought our argument that it's a misuse of the classification system to classify legal documents by arguing that since the intelligence community determines what is and is not a proper use of the classification system, then anything the IC classifies must be properly classified....and the court, of course, agreed.)
Anyway, the torture debate we've had the last 13+ years is the torture debate you get when the only facts anyone could publicly point to were the ones put out by those defending torture at the CIA. So, instead of throwing in the towel or simply moving on to other things (as basically everyone else did), the staff of the senate intelligence committee spent five years putting together an airtight, fact-based report discrediting anyone who dares to claim this program did anything but harm our nation's national security. I'm not saying anyone will get prosecuted, but this report is the thing that makes prosecution possible. More importantly, though, in my mind, this report is what gets held up the next time someone suggests we should torture someone. It's also what gets held up the next time the CIA says "just trust us."
I'm sorry that the response hasn't been fast or big enough for you, trust me, I know how frustrating it can be, but if you care about this issue as much as you say you do, stop whining about the people who've been killing themselves to do something about it, take the report they wrote and demand change. Write your members of congress, write the justice department, write the president tell them you want/expect action. You may not think they'll pay attention, but i promise you they're a lot more likely to pay attention to a letter you send them than your comments on Techdirt. Beyond that, use your voice. When you see people like Cheney and Hayden lying call them out on it, post links to the report in your comments, organize a boycott of Meet the Press sponsors the next time they book Mike Hayden or write the ombudsman at the New York Times the next time you see Cheney's comments published as fact....
Again, if you want action to be taken here stop complaining that the people on your side aren't working to your satisfaction and HELP them. An elected official is only as powerful as the army he/she has behind him. Either get on board and be part of that army or thank the folks who are out there working for the change you'd like to see, but aren't trying to bring about yourself.
As I said, thank you letters can be addressed to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 211 Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20510
Re: Re: Re: Re: Uhm, no, It's not.
Thank you.
I think "not torturing' people is one of those principles, but free speech would probably be the best example. It's such a ubiquitous part of our identity as Americans that we pretty much take it for granted, but - to my point - when an action is proposed or taken that would limit free speech, we tend to refer to it as "un-American." Regardless, I stand by my statement that the United States is more than a geographically defined landmass.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Uhm, no, It's not.
Thank you.
I think "not torturing' people is one of those principles, but free speech would probably be the best example. It's such a ubiquitous part of our identity as Americans that we pretty much take it for granted, but - to my point - when an action is proposed or taken that would limit free speech, we tend to refer to it as "un-American." Regardless, I stand by my statement that the United States is more than a geographically defined landmass.
Re:
I was talking about the IC's direct attempts to control the message/understanding of their activities: whether it was giving half truths/only sharing one side of the story with Congress & the White House to convincing the creators of Zero Dark Thirty that torture led to the capture of UBL to ultimately shaping how the American people understand what their government is doing. I didn't order them that way as a hierarchy. (As a literary device, I actually tend to put the most important last, because the last gets word in a sentence gets the most attention/focus.) But here, I was thinking more about the sequence of attention the CIA gave each of these groups and while they were trying to shape public perceptions, they didn't really talk directly to the American people (unless they were talking through the media or Hollywood.) But really, I included Hollywood in there because i'm still ticked about Zero Dark Thirty.... (yes, i know this is a ridiculously ramblely answer, but I don't have time this AM to edit. Have a great day.)
Re:
So, when i first heard that only the exec summary of the report was going to be made public, i was more than a little disappointed. But now seeing what the committee staff did, I'm kind of blown away by how smart and strategic they were. First off, you'e got to remember that whatever they wrote they needed the exec branch to declassify it (only the exec branch has classification authorities) and they had to assume they were only going to get the admin to agree to a partial declassification to start. So, what did they do? They wrote a 500+ page exec summary, laying out all of their findings, with evidence and very minimal references to information that would need to be redacted. (In other words this exec summary was written to be made public and back the admin into a corner to do it. Brilliant.)
Yes, I think the rest of the report will likely - someday - be made public, but I think Sen Feinstein makes a good argument in her introduction that they knew it would be such a fight to get this declassified (and it was) that they decided to start with this and push for the declassification of the rest at a later day. But again, what they forced the CIA to declassify is very solid and very informative.
Drones will obviously be a much harder sell. Again, the exec branch are the only ones with the power to declassify, and unlike the detention and interrogation programs, the drone program is ongoing. That said, though, the more it becomes clear that the CIA's abuse of its power to keep things secret is leading to a lack of public trust, the more pressure they'll face to be forthcoming. (I think the last 2 years have been a seachange for the intel community in terms of the ability to hide behind secrecy and it will be interested to see where this leads. Would be nice if it was someplace good.)
Re: Re: Re: Do people actually pay attention to TLDs in this way?
Yes, I would argue that the folks who will be most vulnerable to this will most likely be senior citizens, who are the least tech savvy and the biggest consumers of health care. I mean, these scam sites wouldn't invest in this stuff if they weren't making money off of them, so I think it's pretty safe to assume that someone's getting scammed.
I'd also argue that the threat here isn't just scam sites looking for ways to cheat your grandparents out of their life savings (although those folks definitely exist), you're also dealing with a multi-billion health care industry that is already out there paying doctors millions to recommend their treatments over others. This is just an educated guess, but I'll bet good money that you're going to see major pharmaceutical companies and/or medical device company's buying up the TLDs associated with the diseases they treat. e.g. juvenilediabetes.health and then they'll invest a million (which is no skin off their nose) to make it the best resource for the disease out there. It won't just be informative, it will be useful. You'll be able to chat online with a doctor and find support on message boards, read inspirational stories and learn strategies for educating your kid on the disease. It will be so great that it will become the go-to site for any family fighting the disease. The only problem with the site will be their treatment recommendations. They're not dumb, they won't recommend their products for everyone, just almost everyone. They also won't publish the downsides of their medications or any adverse effects of their medication, which yes, parents can find on other sites, but they won't look for that information until/unless something goes wrong. Yes, ideally, doctors wouldn't prescribe medication just because a patient asks for it, but if that was the case, why do pharmaceuticals advertise so extensively? (Also these companies market to doctors so these would just be an extension of those efforts.)
I'm not saying my #2 (which I thought up in 30 seconds as I typed that response) is the answer. Although I do think a health wiki that you accessed simply by typing diseasename.health (vs. having to go through an entire wiki site would be helpful) but I do think its worth thinking through what the opportunity cost is here of not taking this opportunity to set up incentives to populate the Internet with useful, unbiased health information for patients versus giving for-profit health interests an unending stream of avenues to market themselves. Again, I'm not suggesting that I have the answer or that the answer is easy, only that it's a problem that we should be looking for ways to address.
Re: Do people actually pay attention to TLDs in this way?
The issue is that the policies shaping the future of the Internet are increasingly being made by for profit corporations & interests while the rest of us get shut out of the process (and might not even know there was a process if not for Techdirt.)
You're saying this shouldn't be an issue because it doesn't personally impact you is a little like my saying, I don't see why I should care about Net Neutrality since I only use the Internet for Facebook (I don't) or I don't care if the government is collecting my geolocation records because I don't go anywhere interesting.
Every time corporate or special interests co-opt a piece of the Internet's future for their own purposes, the Internet takes another step towards becoming an instrument for the few versus a platform for the many. And I think that's reason enough to oppose it.
Beyond that, there are reasons you should care:
1. Not everyone who uses the Internet is as savvy as you and the more for profit health providers are able to control the flow of information to (at least some) patients -- recommending pricey treatments and medications that patients might not need -- the more health care costs go up. Sky rocketing health care costs hurt everyone in the form of increased taxes and/or loss of government services, the availability of treatments and your employer's ability to raise your wages among many other things.
2. Opportunity Cost. Yes, you have a way to avoid the negative consequences of .health being purchased by a for profit spammer, but might you have benefitted from .health being used for a different purpose? Like...what if -- for example -- instead of selling .health to the highest bidder, ICANN granted it to a non-profit to turn it into a global health care wiki that would gather the collective wisdom and experience of doctors and health care experts around the world. Thus giving you immediate access to unbiased information and making it harder for pharma and other for profit actors in the health care sphere to control the flow of information re: their products, hide adverse effects, studies, etc....
ICANN is shaping the future of the Internet and steps like this not only take the Internet in the wrong direction, they mean we're forgoing an opportunity to take the Internet in a positive direction.
Don't Let These Idiots Defame All Public Servants
My friends who had FOIA-able federal government jobs knew -- and were always very careful -- not to send anything work related to or from their personal email accounts. They'd even set up separate work-only gmail accounts if they needed to send themselves documents to work on from home. (It's easier to work from gmail at home than remotely access your government email.) Because they knew that the second a work-related email touched their personal email account, the whole thing would become FOIA-able. I was basically put on notice that unless I wanted our long history of emails about happy hours and Lebron on the public record all work-related emails needed to be directed to their government account.
If those people really thought they were going to get away with this, they're idiots.
Re: Lobbyists are necessary
With all due respect, sir, I worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years, the White House for 2 and I have a masters degree in public policy from Harvard. I've been subjected to so much spin in my life that I can spot it at 100 paces blindfolded. I wouldn't be a very good communications strategist if I only read/considered issues from one perspective. Unlike some who's strategy for winning debates is to silence their opposition, I actually work to understand the opposition's side, so I can understand their thinking, address their concerns and counter their arguments (and maybe change their minds.)
Maybe it's not the textbook definition, but I define "public advocate" as someone who advocates for interests beyond their own. I'm not saying those people won't benefit from their advocacy (most public interest advocates got involved because of a personal experience) but that they're thinking of others, the future, etc. not just how to protect/grow themselves financially at the expense of the interests of others.. Techdirt continued its SOPA/PIPA advocacy even when it hurt them financially. And -- as I said -- that's the problem with public advocacy. While a special interest lobbyists could be making high six figures to devote themselves to making sure members of Congress understand their client's interests, most people who advocate for the public interest do it on their own time, for free. I don't know about you, but I think if we want to fix society/congress, etc. we need to find a way to make doing good just as profitable as screwing people. (Or at least a little profitable.)
Also - for the record - as I tried to explain in my post, Members of Congress and their staff are more likely to take a stand on an issue when they are confident in their knowledge of an issue. I might know that a lobbyist is spinning me, but I'm probably not going to pick a fight with them publicly unless I know enough about the issue to debate them. And - as I tried to explain -- there is so much going on that, you, as a staffer, might say to yourself. "When I get some time, I'm going to research that issue," but then you get so busy that 6 months later, you're like "shoot, I really wanted to learn about that, but now the debates over." I loved Techdirt because it gave me the user perspective on tech issues, that wasn't being represented in Washington, in an easily digestible and understood way. Understanding the issue made it possible for me to jump on communication opportunities in real time vs. backburnering them until I could learn more.
Again, that's why I'm giving to Techdirt and I hope others will too.
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I don't take it personally. (Heck, I no longer work in Congress.) But there are a lot of people like me who work there, including pretty much everyone in Senator Wyden's office. The problem is the system does nothing to keep them those people there. The quality of life is pretty awful. The work isn't exactly fulfilling -- the bills you slave to write/negotiate get blown up to score political points -- and the media don't think you're worth covering. For years, I made it my personal mission to get the media to cover smart, bipartisan policy ideas (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2011-10-20/ron-wyden-senator-from-planet-where-congress-works-ezra-klein) but the spotlight almost always goes to those who are doing the opposite of being constructive.
I don't know how to fix it, other than we have to find a way to fix the incentives.
Re:
The pay sucks, the hours are brutal, (you basically eat, sleep and breath work) and everyone hates you. And you're right, the only people who really benefit when you start cutting Congressional staff pay are the lobbyists. It's a lot easier for them to convince a fresh faced staffer who makes $40K a year that they're right than someone who's been working on the issue for a decade or two.
Re: Re:
Two days before the Jan. 2012 Internet protest, I had a reporter ask me why our office was fighting SOPA/PIPA so hard because "Won't it be embarrassing when you guys lose."
As Ron Wyden once told me, "the right thing to do may not have much of a chance, but it has zero chance if no one fights for it."
You know, we've long been afraid that computers would rise to dominance by growing smarter than humans, but I'm starting to wonder if the computers' real plan is simply to best humans by making us dumber.
i.e. Could the growing obsession with clicks and nonfactual clickbait stories (about things like "super computers" passing the Turing test) just be evidence that their trojan horse is working on us? A few more years of this and a TI-81 could take over the planet.
Re:
I know the man brings up strong feelings. As I said, there are a lot of reasons to be mad at him/disagree with him. Trust me, I'm there.
But if we want things to change, making the Intel community out to be the enemy isn't going to work. It just confirms their opinion of their critics and convinces them they are right about everything including shutting the public out of these debates. (Which is why I'm trying to keep my commentary fact-based.) I mean, at the end of the day, Congress and the White House can mandate legislative reforms, but nothing changes if we can't get the Intel Community to buy in.
These guys think they are patriots trying to keep us safe. We need to get them to see that there are better ways to be patriotic and keep the country safe. That good intentions don't necessarily lead to good decisions.
Re: Re: Re: Wowsa!
I think President Obama's proposed reforms are a huge step in the right direction. I deserves credit for taking those steps and I commend him for doing it. Although I am troubled that they don't include closing the section 702 loophole, which is is a big enough subject for its own post.
I think one of the challenges with this debate is that it encompasses so many issues. i.e. most folks in this debate are actually debating different things. For example, I think each of the following are separate issues:
1.The programs themselves: Are these surveillance programs making our country safer/less safe and/or are there better ways to keep our country safe? So they strike the proper balance between national security and privacy? are they working as well as they could -- i.e. is information being shared, etc.
2. Legality: Does the administration - in fact - have the authority to conduct these programs. They obviously think they do, but do they and is their argument constitutional? How is this data collection not represent the kind of general warrants the founders deliberately wanted to prohibit?
3. Democracy - In a democratic society, the people are supposed to have a say in the laws that govern them, were they given a say here? Why not? Did the Administration have a good national security reason for denying the American people the information they needed to judge their leaders' actions on this issue or were they just afraid if the public found out what it was doing, they would take away some of their authority? Is the latter a good reason to classify information.
4. Classification/Leaks - Is our classification system working? Is information only being classified for national security reasons or is some of the information being declassified for reasons such as -- avoiding oversight and potential embarrassment? Is given the executive branch the sole authority to determine what is/is not classified working? Is cracking down on leakers the best way to protect national secrets?
5. Edward Snowden - Did he do the right thing? Is he a whistleblower or something else? Could we be having the debate we are currently having without him? Is the administration's treating him unfairly?
There are obviously other questions, but I laid these out to give you an idea just how diverse this topic is and that just because folks have an opinion on one aspect of the debate doesn't mean that they are on one side or the other because there are many, many sides. In other words, you can have concerns about the lack of oversight and still care about national security. You can have concerns about these programs and also have concerns about the way the information was disclosed. etc . etc. etc.
Anyway, I am VERY glad the President is taking this issue seriously and putting some excellent reform proposals on the table. Having worked for many of those reforms for many years, I commend him for taking those actions. But that doesn't mean I'm not still concerned about his administration's commitment to oversight and democracy and what I see as an irresponsible classification system that I would argue makes our country less safe by fostering disrespect for the classification system. Based on this Administration's previous actions and statements on those fronts, I have no reason to believe that they will continue to circumvent the democratic process when it is most convenient for them,
Re: Filibuster?
He did filibuster the reauthorizations. He forced the Patriot Act to the floor for a vote and put a "hold" on both efforts to reauthorize FAA. You can find his hold announcement here: http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-places-hold-on-fisa-amendments-act-extension
In fact he was such a pain-in-the neck, that the Senate had to reconvene 2 days after Christmas this past year to override his hold on FAA. You can find video of his hour+ speech here: http://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/video-and-audio/view/wyden-floor-statement-on-fisa-reauthorization-act-and-proposed-amendments
But given that Wyden's ability to explain his objections were limited to vague hypotheticals, there were well over 60 votes to override his holds and end his filibuster.
Re: Re: Re: No free speech here on TD
Just my two cents on this as someone who occasionally writes for online publications that allow comments.
Negative -- or extremely hostile -- comments don't violate free speech, but I do think it acts as a disincentive. Let me explain:
I can only speak for myself here, but when I take time to write posts like this one or ones I've done for my Huffington Post blog or even columns I wrote with Senator Wyden, I do it with the hope that I can help readers see the world differently or at least gain a better understanding of my point of view. I don't normally get paid for what I write and my writing has yet to drive any consulting clients my way. In fact, the above post probably ended my career in government communication consulting.
Now, while I admittedly wrote the above post in a five hour blur of coffee and prosecco (between midnight and 5 AM), I have often spent days if not weeks trying to formulate an argument that I hope will resonate with readers. And, when you put that kind of work into a post, it's really hard to read eviscerating comments written by people who clearly didn't read what you wrote and just what to tear into you for the headline or what they assume to know about you based on whatever they think they know about you.
If you don't believe me, check out the comments currently being written about my Techdirt post over at the Huffington Post. I could only read a few before I had to stop. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/11/jennifer-hoelzer-obama-nsa_n_3739639.html?utm_hp_ref=tw
Anyway, when I read comments like those, I start to ask myself why I bothered to write the piece in the first place, which makes me less eager to write again in the future. As I said in the above piece, I respect -- and even cherish -- the right folks have to write whatever they want online. And -- having worked in positions where I couldn't use my name without it reflecting on my boss or job etc -- I respect the right to post anonymously or under psydonyms. But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt to have such words directed at me or something I've written and it has definitely discouraged me from participating in discussions.
Anyway, I wish more folks would ask themselves -- before posting those comments -- whether what they are writing is something they would be proud to put their name on. But I think the system that Mike has set up here at Techdirt is brilliant. In that it not only allows the Techdirt community to set the tone for its discussions, it offers incentives for folks to provide insight and even humor. It's -- obviously -- a conversation that I am much more eager to engage in.
(Btw. some sites -- even legitimate newspaper sites -- refuse to limit comments because they feel that giving crazy ranters a forum to rant, just drives traffic to their site. The fact that Techdirt cares more about driving constructive conversation to its site, versus a sheer volume of crazy is to be commended.)
Again, just my two cents.
Re: Wowsa!
Thank you for your kind words and encouragement, they mean a lot. And it was a real honor to work for Ron. He's the real deal.
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Wow! Edward R.Murrow? Best complement I have gotten in awhile. Thank you.
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There are repercussions. Note members of congress who have done this in the past did it as they were leaving Congress. Ron -- hopefully -- has many years ahead of him If he had revealed the classified data, he could have stayed in Congress, but would have lost his seat on the Intelligence Committee. And would no longer be in a position to raise objections/conduct oversight on future programs. Also, Wyden's staffer on the committee, who deserves a medal for the heroic work he has done on this issue over the last 7+ years, would have lost his job/clearance/career, etc. Anyway, I'd argue we need more folks like the two of them conducting oversight over intelligence programs not less.