National Security

Keep It Classy, Fox News

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Here we go again.

Slate.com, in their critical role monitoring Fox News 24/7 so that the rest of us don’t have to, picked up on the fact that everyone’s favourite Fair & Balanced (TM) news network decided to mock recently-convicted whistleblower Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning’s decision to live the rest of her life as a woman, via the surreptitious medium of their “let’s go to commercial” music.

 

They report:

Fox News wasted little time weighing in on the Great Chelsea Manning Pronoun Debate. “I don’t do what Bradley Manning wants me to do,” America’s Newsroom host Gregg Jarrett declared last week, explaining why he had just repeatedly used masculine pronouns to describe Manning. But as you can see in the clip above, Jarrett’s friends at Fox & Friends took that stance to the extreme this morning by mocking the Army private by playing Aerosmith’s “Dude (Looks Like a Lady).”

It should come as no surprise to readers that the incident took place on that most highbrow and intellectual segment of the FNC’s lineup, Fox  & Friends. But the slowness of the mainstream media in responding appropriately to Manning’s decision is not limited to Fox. As Slate points out:

Setting aside the absurdity of that clip for a second, it should be noted that Fox News isn’t the only major cable network to decide that it won’t respect Manning’s wish to live out the remainder of her life as a woman. CNN says that it won’t make the pronoun switch because Manning has “not yet taken any steps toward gender transition through surgery or hormone replacement therapy.” (It’s unclear why announcing her wish to “begin hormone therapy as soon as possible” doesn’t count as such a step.)

But who can expect anything more from a so-called news network (CNN) that considers the twerking abilities of Miley Cyrus more newsworthy than the unfolding crisis in Syria?

Sadly, this is not the first time that this blog has felt compelled to cover the inexplicable need for US news channels to make their broadcasts more palatable to a dumbed-down audience by injecting them with lively, and (almost always) inappropriate musical excerpts. As I wrote last time:

Since CNN has probably already haemmoraged most of it’s wavering audience to Fox or MSNBC, why not quit catering to that tiny remaining sliver of their viewers who need their news to be lubricated with frequent doses of perky music, and just…y’know…report the news?

The world doesn’t need another Fox & Friends.

So no real progress, then.

On Criminal NSA Overreach

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

Some very disturbing new findings about the extent to which the  US government uses the vast power of its surveillance apparatus to tackle suspected domestic crime. Of course, up until this point we had been reassured that the draconian collection of telecommunications metadata and the full-on tapping of telephone calls and online communications was used only to help prosecute the “War On Terror”. This has now been revealed to be a total sham.

Rachel Maddow breaks down the extent of this surreptitious, lawless activity on her show:

 

And Reuters reports:

Reuters has uncovered previously unreported details about a separate program, run by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, that extends well beyond intelligence gathering. Its use, legal experts say, raises fundamental questions about whether the government is concealing information used to investigate and help build criminal cases against American citizens.

The DEA program is run by a secretive unit called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Here is how NSA efforts exposed by Snowden differ from the activities of the SOD:

Purpose of the programs

NSA: To use electronic surveillance to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation catch terrorists, the U.S. military fight wars, and the Central Intelligence Agency collect intelligence about foreign governments.

SOD: To help the DEA and other law enforcement agents launch criminal investigations of drug dealers, money launderers and other common criminals, including Americans. The unit also handles global narco-terrorism cases.

So to be perfectly clear – the United States government has explicitly decided to allow this vast spying program to be turned inwards to aid local law enforcement in their daily mundane activities. According to the (already flimsy) assurances that we were given when Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA’s secret programmes, the spying apparatus was to be used only to seek out and intercept communications between non-US citizens that represented a terrorism threat. But it turns out that this is not the case. If an intelligence analyst happens to eavesdrop on your telephone call and finds out that you want to (hypothetically) buy some pot from your friendly local drug dealer, that information might then be surreptitiously passed on to the DEA, who could then come and raid your home. Based on intelligence which they have no right to be privy to.

But worst of all is this bombshell:

Disclosure to the accused

NSA: Collection of domestic data by the NSA and FBI for espionage and terrorism cases is regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. If prosecutors intend to use FISA or other classified evidence in court, they issue a public notice, and a judge determines whether the defense is entitled to review the evidence. In a court filing last week, prosecutors said they will now notify defendants whenever the NSA phone-records database is used during an investigation.

SOD: A document reviewed by Reuters shows that federal drug agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to conceal the SOD’s involvement. Defense attorneys, former prosecutors and judges say the practice prevents defendants from even knowing about evidence that might be exculpatory. They say it circumvents court procedures for weighing whether sensitive, classified or FISA evidence must be disclosed to a defendant.

Local and federal law enforcement officers are actually being trained – instructed – to cover up the fact that the evidence they use to come and arrest you was unlawfully shared by the folks at the NSA. Apparently the clinical, non-threatening term for this is “recreating the investigative trail”. So rather than going to court and admitting that your evidence against the accused came from an NSA tip-off based on illegal spying by the government, agents are encouraged to falsify the account of their investigations and potentially perjure themselves by stating on the record that it was their own brilliant deductive and crime-solving abilities which led to the arrest.

It is hard to adequately describe how foul, deceitful and criminal this behaviour really is.

There was no excuse for allowing the NSA to violate the fourth amendment protection against unreasonable or unwarranted searches when it pertained to potential terrorism. There is certainly no excuse for widening this harassment in aid of civilian law enforcement.

Semi-Partisan Sam says no. This oppressive “national security” apparatus must be rolled back, and those responsible for willfully violating the Constitution must face the legal consequences of their actions.

Law? What Law?

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

I have so much to say about the shocking NSA unconstitutional spying scandal blown wide  open by whistleblower Edward Snowden and journalist Glenn Greenwald that I barely know where to begin.

So I shall begin with a tangent – the repercussions of the case over in Britain, where scandal has erupted because it turns out that Britain’s intelligence-gathering departments have had access to the US PRISM system for a number of years, and have made use of it on occasions to eavesdrop on the conversations of British citizens.

This should be causing people to light flaming torches and take to the streets, but as it stands today in docile modern day Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron is just being made to squirm a bit. The Huffington Post reports:

The foreign secretary, who is due to make a statement on the allegations in the Commons later, has said the law-abiding British public had “nothing to fear” from the work of GCHQ.

However MPs are likely to press Hague on whether the intelligence service has always abided by the legal framework.

Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of the ISC, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that GCHQ would have needed to ask ministers before requesting information on British citizens’ internet activity from the United States.

How comforting. But worst of all were the comments from David Cameron himself, who thought that these flimsy, meaningless words would serve somehow to placate us:

David Cameron has said British intelligence agencies operate “within a legal framework”, as MPs prepare to grill William Hague on GCHQ’s involvement with the American Prism internet surveillance system.

“I think it is right that we have well-organised, well-funded intelligence services to help keep us safe,” the prime minister said on Monday morning.

“But let me be absolutely clear. They are intelligence services that operate within the law, within a law that we have laid down, and they are also subject to proper scrutiny by the intelligence and security committee (ISC) in the House of Commons.”

What the hell does this garbage even mean?

British intelligence agencies are operating within a legal framework. Okay, what legal framework?

He thinks that it’s right to have an intelligence service? Who on earth was saying that it wasn’t?

But the final line is the worst, where he says that the intelligence services are operating within “a law that we have laid down”. Oh, well that’s fine then, let’s all go home.

Does David Cameron at any point mention the particular law under which the intelligence services are operating? Or when this law that “we” laid down was written, voted on and approved? Of course he doesn’t! And I, for one, would rather like to know.

Do you see the difference between having a written constitution and not having one? Do you?

Even if (as in the United States), the President and his administration choose to brazenly flout it, the written constitution at least gives a frame of reference when it comes to determining whether an action is acceptable or unacceptable. Contrast this with Britain, where the most basic laws of the land can (and often are) changed on a whim by the elected dictatorship of a majority government. In Britain, if we are told that a government action that we disagree with is “lawful”, there is no end of Acts and Amendments and revisions and EU law and whatever else to sort through in order to work out whether or not it is so.

The result, of course, is that the British don’t even try. We might kick up a bit of a fuss if someone catches David Cameron devouring live puppies in the alley behind Downing Street one warm summer night, but once his spokesman assures us that he was acting “within the law, within a law that we have laid down”, we would all meekly nod, and let him get back to his puppy-butchering.

This is unacceptable. William Hague and David Cameron need to make crystal clear not only the laws currently on the statute books which allow for spying on the communications of a British citizen (with or without a warrant), but also the specific criteria that the intelligence services use, or at least the threshold of evidence that must be met, when selecting an individual for such a breach of their privacy.

Not that it much matters. David Cameron has lost my vote today.

The Cowardice Of The American Right

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

It was recently confirmed that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, has been presented with criminal charges for his actions.

Predictably, this has made many people on the American right wing very unhappy indeed.

Fox News had devoted hours of coverage post-capture to whether or not Tsarnaev should be read his miranda rights, and the talking heads are not pleased with this turn of events, which will see the suspect given access to legal advice and representation if he chooses to avail himself of it.

The ever-opportunistic Lindsey Graham has been vigorously agitating for Tsarnaev to be treated as an enemy combatant, despite being a United States citizen detained on US soil.

And Donald Trump – whom Republicans actually toyed with the idea of making their presidential nominee in 2012 – took to Twitter in high outrage, and was already dusting off his waterboard in order to torture the suspect before the criminal charges were filed.

All of these things happened, and were easily predictable, because the Republicans are the ones with the strong national security credentials, right? They are the ones that make the tough decisions required to keep us safe.

No. All of these things happened because the Republicans who espouse these views are cowards.

Cowards, cowards, cowards.

Of course, this form of cowardice has to masquerade as macho strength and firmness, but cowardice is what it is, and cowardice is what I will call it today.

There is no evidence as yet that the evil plot to kill and maim innocent civilians as they watched and ran in the Boston Marathon was part of a wider international conspiracy. It may be the case that the suspects acted under foreign direction, or received their radicalisation or training from abroad, but no evidence of this has yet been presented.

Neither is there any credible intelligence that these attacks were the first action of a broader wave of related strikes on the US mainland. Yes, there followed some suspicious mail packages in the following days, as happened after 9/11, but these are not thought to be related.

Nor does anyone yet know the motivations for the attack (not that this should matter – as with capriciously invented “hate crimes”, we should be punishing the act, not the motivation), whether it be jihadist in nature, domestic grievances or the alienation and evil act of specific individuals acting alone.

None of this is known.

And yet the Republican party – this group of people who routinely and unabashedly wrap themselves in the American flag and proclaim themselves the only real “patriots” and defenders of the constitution, would happily, eagerly, throw away some of the most fundamental rights granted to US citizens under the constitution.

It is absolutely astonishing that no one calls out the GOP for the rank hypocrisy which has emanated from the mouths of some of their members in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings.

That the same party who proclaimed “I Stand With Rand” when Senator Rand Paul mounted his laudable filibuster to register his objection to the idea of aerial drone strikes being used to kill US citizens on US soil denied those very same principles and agitated for the government to strip those same citizens of the right to a civilian trial.

These are the people, remember, who like to pump up their base with talk of second amendment remedies – because if you can’t beat Obama at the ballot box, the answer, of course, is to strap on your guns, rise up and overthrow his democratic mandate by force.

This is the party that says “you can pry my rifle from my cold dead hands” whenever anyone questions the modern applicability of, or limits to, the Second Amendment.

These are the people who take the fight to the enemy, who pre-emptively launch wars in order to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here”.

In other words, those on the neo-conservative right in America like to play the hard man, and strut around as though there were a very large, impressive appendage between their legs whenever they talk about foreign policy or national security. Right up until the moment that something happens to spook them close to their own back yard.

But when the nation suffers an attack such as that which took place last Monday in Boston, all of the tough talk disappears and these Republican armchair warriors rush to shelter behind the legs of the Big Government that they love to trash at all other times, and they urge that erstwhile-“tyrannical” government to use the full weight of its vast might, plus an added heap of unconstitutionally appropriated power, to hurt the Bad People and make them go away. Even if the Bad People are US citizens. It’s pathetic.

Weak, weak, weak.

Andrew Sullivan says it best today on his blog, and I quote in full:

The first US citizen, Jose Padilla, was captured on US soil, detained without formal charges, accused of plotting a dirty bomb, and then brutally tortured until he was a human wreck. Eventually, the dirty bomb charges were dropped in the legal process. And there was a serious question about whether, after such brutal torture and isolation, he had been psychologically brutalized by his own government to the point of insanity.

Tsarnaev, in contrast, was formally charged this morning, will be tried in a civilian court, go through due process, and face a weight of evidence against him.

This is why we elected Obama. To bring America back. To defend this country without betraying its core principles.

Hear, hear.

As Long As It Keeps Us Safe

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

CISPA - Congress

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Too often, the Republican Party’s already-tenuous commitment to civil liberties and privacy goes out the window at the first mention of national security

The late Ronald Reagan, now viewed as something close to a saint by many Republican minds, for deeds both real and imagined, once said this:

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help'”.

Engage a committed Republican or conservative voter in conversation for any length of time and you will hear all about their passionate belief in limited government, and the inherent dangers of an overactive, overbearing state. I believe in that ideal myself. And certainly the GOP believes in individual liberty and privacy, and the freedom to pursue happiness, right? Always has.

Well, now congressional Republicans seem to have settled on a new mantra, that goes something like this:

“The twelve most benign words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to protect you from terrorism'”.

Because, of course, the ideological compromises required to perch on the wobbly three-legged conservative stool (social conservatism, hawkish defense stance and very limited regulation of markets) mean that all those Republican platitudes about keeping government out of our lives are tossed out of the window as soon as it comes to “keeping our country safe”, “securing the homeland” or “stopping the terrorists”.

This is made clear once again as the Republican-controlled congress debates the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which is, of course, supported by the GOP. Apparently we were supposed to just smile and nod and ignore the cognitive dissonance caused by hearing Republicans rail against Obama’s supposed expansion of the federal government while simultaneously acting to expand the scope and power of the federal government.

As Juan Williams points out in his article on TheHill.com:

The Republican majority in the House is on the side of giving Internet service providers, private companies and the government a whole new box of tools to fight terrorism. That includes the right for the government and private business to share information on how to build protections against cyberthreats. Under the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, Internet service providers will be free of any legal restraint against disclosing any information to prevent a terror attack.

The big surprise here is that the support for the GOP position includes most of the Tea Party Caucus, including conservative rock stars Michele Bachmann and Allen West. They normally condemn any increase in government power.

Also in that camp is Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. He is co-sponsor of CISPA. In fact, about a quarter of House Democrats voted for the bill. Several big high-tech companies, from Microsoft to Facebook, have voiced their support for the GOP approach.

The bill enjoys a measure of bipartisan support, which makes it all the more dangerous, because if enough Democrats-who-don’t-know-any-better join enough Republicans-who-should-know-better, the thing could actually become law.

Williams concludes:

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security released a video of al Qaeda calling for electronic jihad.

But an essential part of the America being protected is our civil liberties, our constitutional freedoms.

“People Power” stopped the online piracy bill because it was too heavy-handed. Once again, it will be up to “People Power,” to make sure that when the House and Senate go into conference on this bill they do not emerge talking about good intentions while putting the nation on the path to George Orwell’s hell – Big Brother watching your every move.

Agreed. Enough is enough. Warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detentions, targeted killings of US citizens by unmanned drones, everything about the Patriot Act, long lines at the airport to go through intrusive, demeaning and pointless security checks designed to guard against the last clever terrorist ruse rather than anticipate the next one – and don’t even get me started on Britain, where there is no pesky written constitution to stop overzealous politicians from overreacting to every security incident with new draconian legislation – the list grows longer by the day.

Let’s hope that there are enough level heads remaining in congress to prevent CISPA from becoming law.

 

CISPA

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