Monday, June 10, 2013

Current Events - June 10, 2013


Why the Public Questions the Recovery

While economists and politicians celebrate economic recovery, the American people refuse to accept the good news. Only a third of the public sees the nation headed in “the right direction” – a figure that’s dropped ten points since President Obama’s re-election.

Improved unemployment numbers hide the fact that millions have dropped out of the work force. The percentage of the working age population that’s employed is only 58.6% – much worse than 2007, and virtually unchanged since the recession’s darkest days.

New claims that US households have, overall, regained the wealth they lost, concentrate on improved circumstances for the top third, while most families still face hard times and dim prospects.
As Republicans focus on Obama scandals they must remember that ordinary citizens still care most about the struggling economy and the difficulty of finding jobs.

http://townhall.com/columnists/michaelmedved/2013/06/10/why-the-public-questions-the-recovery-n1616695

CBS News: State Department covered up misconduct, interfered with IG probes

 CBS News reports that the State Department has interfered in internal investigations into criminal conduct and wrongdoing by high-ranking officials, including one ambassador who prowled public parks for prostitutes.  A very familiar name appears in this exposé, too:

CBS News has uncovered documents that show the State Department may have covered up allegations of illegal and inappropriate behavior within their ranks.
The Diplomatic Security Service, or the DSS, is the State Department’s security force, charged with protecting the secretary of state and U.S. ambassadors overseas and with investigating any cases of misconduct on the part of the 70,000 State Department employees worldwide.
CBS News’ John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”
And here’s a good way to exercise diplomacy in a critical theater — allow your personnel to get strung out on drugs:
The memo also reveals details about an “underground drug ring” was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.
What did Foggy Botton do when the allegations came to light?  The case of the prostitute-patronizing ambassador ends up involving Patrick Kennedy, a familiar name from the Benghazi scandal and cover-up:
In one specific and striking cover-up, State Department agents told the Inspector General they were told to stop investigating the case of a U.S. Ambassador who held a sensitive diplomatic post and was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park.
The State Department Inspector General’s memo refers to the 2011 investigation into an ambassador who “routinely ditched … his protective security detai” and inspectors suspect this was in order to “solicit sexual favors from prostitutes.”
Sources told CBS News that after the allegations surfaced, the ambassador was called to Washington, D.C. to meet with Undersecretary of State for Management Patrick Kennedy, but was permitted to return to his post.
Remember that State Department whistleblower Eric Nordstrom publicly rejected the Accountability Review Board on Benghazi, claiming that it purposefully pushed responsibility onto lower-level careerists, and specifically charged that the ARB was trying to protect Kennedy at a minimum.  It seems a little coincidental that Kennedy’s name pops up in another cover-up at State now. What did Kennedy do about the oversexed ambassador, especially considering the risk this created for security and for potential espionage penetration of the State Department?

Congress needs to find out who ordered the cover-ups on these investigations — and how much else might be going on at State now.

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/10/cbs-news-state-department-covered-up-misconduct-interfered-with-ig-probes/

Elementary School Beginning Toy Gun Turn-In Program

Strobridge Elementary Principal Charles Hill has a brilliant idea: he’s holding a toy gun exchange next Saturday in which students of the Hayward, CA school can turn in a toy gun to receive a book and a raffle ticket to win one of four bicycles.

Really.

Hill believes that children who play with toy guns may not think real guns are dangerous. “Playing with toy guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun,” he claims. 

Hill was inspired by a school photographer, Horace Gibson, who was upset about the number of police shootings of young people in Oakland.

At Strobridge Elementary Safety Day, a local policeman will demonstrate bicycle and gun safety, (does he get to use a real gun?), while the Alameda County Fire Department will speak about fire safety. Just to show that local governments can do surveillance too, there will be opportunities for the children to be fingerprinted and photographed, with that information transferred to CD’s if it is ever needed for a missing child case.
Hill, defending his take-away program, asserted that police are justifiably afraid when they face armed suspects, and toy guns have been mistaken for real ones. 

But Yih-Chau Chang, spokesman for Responsible Citizens of California, said, ”Having a group of children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians is a normal part of growing up.”

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/10/Elementary-School-Urges-Students-To-Turn-In-Toy-Guns

The All-Seeing State

The inevitable corruption of the permanent bureaucracy 

 By Mark Steyn
A few years ago, after one corruption scandal too many, the then Liberal government in Canada announced that, to prevent further outbreaks of malfeasance, it would be hiring 300 new federal auditors plus a bunch of ethics czars, and mandating “integrity provisions” in government contracts, including “prohibitions against paying, offering, demanding or accepting bribes.” There were already plenty of laws against bribery, but one small additional sign on the desk should do the trick: “Please do not attempt to bribe the Minister of the Crown as a refusal may offend. Also: He’s not allowed to bribe you, whatever he says.” A government that requires “integrity provisions” is by definition past the stage where they will do any good.

I thought of those Canadian Liberal “integrity provisions” passing a TV screen the other day and catching hack bureaucrats from the IRS Small Business/Self-Employed Division reassuring Congress that systems had now been put in place to prevent them succumbing to the urge to put on Spock ears and moob-hugging blue polyester for the purposes of starring in a Star Trek government training video. The Small Business/Self-Employed Division had boldly gone where no IRS man had gone before — to a conference in Anaheim, where they were put up in $3,500-a-night hotel rooms and entertained by a man who was paid $27,500 to fly in and paint on stage a portrait of Bono. Bono is the veteran Irish rocker knighted by the Queen for his tireless campaign on behalf of debt forgiveness, which doesn’t sound the IRS’s bag at all. But don’t worry, debt forgiveness-wise Bono has Africa in mind, not New Jersey. And, as Matthew Cowart tweeted me the other day, he did have a big hit with “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” which I believe is now the official anthem of the IRS Cincinnati office.

It took Congressman Trey Gowdy of South Carolina to get to the heart of the matter: “With all due respect, this is not a training issue,” he said. “This cannot be solved with another webinar. . . . We can adopt all the recommendations you can possibly conceive of. I just say it strikes me — and maybe it’s just me — but it strikes me as a cultural, systemic, character, moral issue.”

He’s right. If you don’t instinctively know it’s wrong to stay in $3,500-a-night hotel rooms at public expense, a revised conference-accommodations-guidelines manual isn’t going to fix the real problem.

So we know the IRS is corrupt. What happens then when an ambitious government understands it can yoke that corruption to its political needs? What’s striking as the revelations multiply and metastasize is that at no point does any IRS official appear to have raised objections. If any of them understood that what they were doing was wrong, they kept it to themselves. When Nixon tried to sic the IRS on a few powerful political enemies, the IRS told him to take a hike. When Obama’s courtiers tried to sic the IRS on thousands of ordinary American citizens, the agency went along, and very enthusiastically. This is a scale of depravity hitherto unknown to the tax authorities of the United States, and for that reason alone they should be disarmed and disbanded — and rebuilt from scratch with far more circumscribed powers.

Here’s another congressional-subcommittee transcript highlight of the week. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois asks the attorney general if he’s spying on members of Congress and thereby giving the executive branch leverage over the legislative branch. Eric Holder answers:

“With all due respect, senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue.”

Senator Kirk responded that “the correct answer would be, ‘No, we stayed within our lane and I’m assuring you we did not spy on members of Congress.’” For some reason, the attorney general felt unable to say that. So I think we all know what the answer to the original question really is.

Holder had another great contribution to the epitaph of the Republic this week. He went on TV to explain that he didn’t really regard Fox News’s James Rosen as a “co-conspirator” but had to pretend he did to the judge in order to get the judge to cough up the warrant. So rest easy, America! Your chief law officer was telling the truth when he said he hadn’t lied to Congress because in fact he’d been lying when he said he told the truth to the judge.

If you lie to one of Holder’s minions, you go to jail: They tossed Martha Stewart in the slammer for being insufficiently truthful to a low-level employee of the attorney general’s. But the attorney general can apparently lie willy-nilly to judges and/or Congress.

This, incidentally, is at the heart of the revelation (in a non-U.S. newspaper, naturally) that hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records have been subpoenaed by the United States government. In 2011, Eric Holder’s assistant attorney general Todd Hinen testified to the House Judiciary Committee that “on average, we seek and obtain Section 215 orders less than 40 times per year.” Forty times per year doesn’t sound very high, does it? What is that — the cell phones of a few Massachusetts Chechens and some Yemeni pen-pals? No. The Verizon order will eventually be included as just another individual Section 215 order, even though it covers over a hundred million Americans. Ongoing universal monitoring of mass populations is being passed off to Congress and the public as a few dozen narrowly targeted surveillance operations. Mr. Hinen chose his words more carefully than his boss, but both men are in the business of deceiving the citizenry, their elected representatives, and maybe the judges, too.

Perhaps this is just the way it is in the panopticon state. Tocqueville foresaw this, as he did most things. Although absolute monarchy “clothed kings with a power almost without limits” in practice “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to bring “the details of social life and of individual existence” within the King’s oversight? Eric Holder and Lois Lerner now have that power. My comrade John Podhoretz, doughty warrior of the New York Post, says relax, there’s nothing to worry about. But how do I know he’s not just saying that because Eric Holder’s monitoring his OnStar account and knows that when he lost his car keys last Tuesday he was in the parking lot of Madam Whiplash’s Bondage Dungeon?

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and “shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like “tea party,” “patriot,” and “constitution.”

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/350537/all-seeing-state-mark-steyn 

Above the Law: Government Officials Engaged in Insider Trading With Medicare Stocks

If you haven't read Peter Schweizer's Throw Them All Out, I highly suggest you do. His book is all about how politicians in Washington D.C. engage in insider trading with zero consequences, something that is illegal for the rest of America.
One of the biggest scandals in American politics is waiting to explode: the full story of the inside game in Washington shows how the permanent political class enriches itself at the expense of the rest of us. Insider trading is illegal on Wall Street, yet it is routine among members of Congress. Normal individuals cannot get in on IPOs at the asking price, but politicians do so routinely. The Obama administration has been able to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to its supporters, ensuring yet more campaign donations. An entire class of investors now makes all of its profits based on influence and access in Washington. Peter Schweizer has doggedly researched through mountains of financial records, tracking complicated deals and stock trades back to the timing of briefings, votes on bills, and every other point of leverage for politicians in Washington. The result is a manifesto for revolution: the Permanent Political Class must go
Why is this relevant? Because the Washington Post is out with a story today about Health and Human Services employees engaging in insider trading with stocks involved in Medicare.
Hundreds of federal employees were given advance word of a Medicare decision worth billions of dollars to private insurers in the weeks before the official announcement, a period when trading in the shares of those firms spiked.
The surge of trading in Humana’s and other private health insurers’ stock before the April 1 announcement already has prompted the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate whether Wall Street investors had advance access to inside information about the then-confidential Medicare funding plan.

Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) told The Washington Post late last week that his office reviewed the e-mail records of employees at the Department of Health and Human Services and found that 436 of them had early access to the Medicare decision as much as two weeks before it was made public.

The number of federal employees with advance knowledge is surely higher; the figures Grassley’s staff compiled did not include people at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget who also saw the information. The e-mail records of those employees have not been made available to Grassley.
More from Allahpundit on why this is a big deal:
There are two potential scandals here. One is HHS tossing around what was supposed to be sensitive information to a huge swath of employees in-house. The other scandal is who actually leaked it, assuming anyone did. It might not have come from HHS at all but rather from some old-fashioned Beltway congressional/lobbyist incest. As with most of the other Obama scandals, this story is less about O himself than about the foreseeable abuses that result as the federal whale grows. You can have bigger government or you can have more accountable government. The guy who signed ObamaCare into law has made his choice
Big government equals big problems, people. Scandalpalooza is an understatement. Lets not forget about Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius practically extorting funds from private companies HHS regulates in order to fund ObamaCare. 

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2013/06/10/terrific-government-officials-engage-in-insider-trading-with-medicare-n1616817

White House knew about Lisa Jackson’s secret email account

Email records show that the White House knew about the secret email account used by former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lisa Jackson since at least February 2010.

In a 2010 email exchange between Jackson and Gary Guzy, the Deputy Director and General Counsel at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, after some initial confusion, Jackson reveals to the White House staffer that “Richard Windsor” is her “private” email account.

“Thanks kindly Richard for this information,” Guzy writes in response to a February 16, 2010 email from Jackson’s alias account.

“It’s Lisa Jackson and that’s my private email,” Jackson responded, to which Guzy than responds: “Even better! Thanks Lisa.”

Last week the Associated Press reported that top administration officials have been using secret email accounts to conduct official business. The AP investigated the issue after it was revealed that former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson had been conducting official business under the Windsor alias.

The Daily Caller News Foundation later reported that  the Windsor account had also been used to correspond with Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack — who was using a secret account of his own — and outside environmental groups.

The White House acknowledged the use of secret email accounts by administration officials, but argued that it made sense for high-level officials to use alternate email accounts to keep their inboxes from being filled with unwanted messages.

“There’s nothing secret,” Carney told reporters, adding that all emails are subject to government records requests and congressional oversight. Critics counter that such email practices allow federal officials to skirt public disclosure laws.

“The release of the infamous ‘Richard Windsor’ email alias documents has led to the discovery of even more, widespread inappropriate record-keeping practices within the EPA and multiple other Agencies,” said Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter.

Richard Windsor was ironically honored for three years in a row as a “scholar of ethical behavior” for three years in a row, and completed various training programs at the EPA.

“I’m unclear how grown men and women could think that it’s acceptable to have a nonexistent employee sign in as the test-taker [or to have an] administrator take required certification training in the name of a false identity,” said Chris Horner, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, who was behind the lawsuit that forced the EPA to release the Richard Windsor emails.

GINNI THOMAS: Six big problems with the immigration bill from someone who has actually read it

Former New York lieutenant governor Betsy McCaughey bets “you can’t find five members of Congress who have read” the Senate “Gang of Eight” immigration bill.

The former Democrat is experienced at reading large bills the Congress seems inclined to pass without reading, such as Obamacare. She tabs them, underlines them and tries to see the big picture of what will happen if the provisions of the bill are implemented.

In an interview with The Daily Caller’s Ginni Thomas, McCaughey brought her dog-eared immigration bill with her and pointed to it repeatedly.

“There are many interest groups involved in this bill,” she said. “In fact, many, many, many — except one. I didn’t find anything for Joe Q. Citizen in this bill. I didn’t find anything for the average tax-paying citizen in this bill.”

“Somebody forgot to tell him about the meeting, so he or she is not represented in this bill,” she added.
McCaughey, author of “Beating Obamacare,” laid out six criticisms and unexamined problems of the bill beyond what she sees as the problematic pathway to citizenship and lax border security provisions of the bill.

According to McCaughey, the bill imperils national security by weakening rules for asylum seekers; outsources government jobs to community organizers, like happened in Obamacare; doubles the numbers of legal immigrants with green cards; contradicts Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s ads that promise new citizens will be self-supporting; costs too much; and impedes border agents from doing their basic enforcement job.

The Administration: Scarier Than You Could Imagine


If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound?  If the Obama administration breaks the law at will, lies to the American people, uses every government agency at its disposal to punish its conservative/Republican enemies and no one does anything about it, does the administration make a sound?  Yes it does -- resulting in devastating consequences for the American people.


Despite a trifecta of scandals, Obama and company continue to stonewall, lie, or refuse to answer questions -- in essence, giving Congress and the American people the finger.  Pundits are shocked and taken aback by the unprecedented arrogance of the Obama administration.


Such pundits are a bit late coming to the dance, as we in the Tea Party have been well aware for years of the lawlessness and arrogance of this bunch of thugs from Chicago.  Have these surprised pundits forgotten Obama's unprecedented overreaches into the private sector -- nationalizing General Motors, bullying banks, ignoring the ruling of federal judges, trashing the Constitution, and more?


Still, pundits are missing the much greater horrifying picture.  My fellow Americans, we are in deep, deep trouble.  The cold reality is that until someone steps forward in real opposition to Obama governing according to his will while ignoring all the laws, checks, and balances, we are defenseless, expendable supplicants of a tyrannical dictator.


Remarkably, the mainstream media is complaisant with Obama acting like our king rather than our president because he is liberal, he is black, and his presidency is historic.  Obama's agenda fits neatly with the mainstream media's socialist/progressive agenda.  So they are elated to have a Teflon liberal black guy in the White House furthering their cause.


Speaking of expendable supplicants, let us not forget Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, and Sean Smith, who lost their lives -- left to die in our consulate in Benghazi.


The people in the Obama administration are emboldened to do whatever they please: bully conservative groups and individuals, secretly invade our privacy, target reporters, and thumb their noses when they get caught -- all without any real political push-back or consequences.  We the American people are in deep excrement.


Ponder that, folks.  As long as the mainstream media provides cover for Obama and keeps his poll numbers high by making sure no bad news is linked to Obama (Limbaugh Theorem), our president is empowered to function as a supreme ruler, free to do whatever he pleases to us.  Dear God, help us!


Obama is the first black president.  Okay, I get it.  But neither Obama's black skin nor the mainstream media's rabid desire to protect his legacy should award him imperial dictator status, trumping the best interest of the American people.


The Republican party desperately needs leadership -- someone willing not just to say "no" to Obama's tyranny.  We need someone who will walk tall and passionately proclaim, "H*** no!"


America needs a politician with backbone and fortitude willing to endure being called racist by Obama's subservient mainstream media; someone unafraid of being targeted by the IRS; someone willing to be hated by clueless poll participants; someone willing to endure EPA persecution if he is a business owner; someone willing to endure his phone and e-mail privacy illegally violated; and someone willing to endure attempts to criminalize their opposition to Obama's agenda.


Under Obama's IRS-controlled health care, any politician daring to oppose Obama's agenda will more than likely suffer delays and denial of medical care for his family and himself.  Suddenly, his conservative Republican mom finds herself at the bottom of the list for that kidney.


Yes, it is going to take a politician with incredible stones to challenge the great all-powerful beast, the Obama administration.


I am confident that such a hero will step forward.  Between you and me, I am keeping an eye on Rep. Trey Gowdy, House Oversight & Government Reform Committee.


Most people caught lying or with their pants down back off.  When caught red-handed, Obama pokes his finger in our eye.


It has been exposed that the administration sent Susan Rice out to lie about Benghazi on five national TV shows.  In response to getting caught, Obama promoted Rice.  Lois Lerner was caught using the IRS to bully, intimidate, and suppress the conservative vote in the 2012 presidential election.  Obama promoted Lerner.  The latest in his growing list of offenses and scandals, Eric Holder was caught lying about targeting reporter James Rosen.


Naïve pundits say, "Eric Holder is toast.  He has to go."  My reply is, "Holder ain't goin' nowhere.  You guys still do not get it.  Holder is black and liberal, and Obama is arrogant beyond belief, with the media in his back pocket."  Obama recently stated that he is behind Holder 100 percent.


Folks, do you see the horror of what we are dealing with in America today?  We have an administration free to rule as it pleases, with no one -- I repeat: no one -- really holding its feet to the fire.  Will someone please throw this out-of-control administration across their knee, spank its butt, and say no?


Meanwhile, I heard someone say on TV in response to Holder's stonewalling and lying, "Holder risks another contempt of Congress filed against him."  I am sure Holder is quaking in his boots.

A Billion Bucks in Bullets

U.S. government has given Afghan National Army more than $1 billion in ammo

The U.S. government has given the embattled Afghan National Army (ANA) more than $1 billion in taxpayer-funded ammunition, according to the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction’s (SIGAR) latest oversight report.

This is in addition to $288 million that has been spent on ammunition for the troubled Afghan National Police (ANP), which has been cited by SIGAR for its widespread corruption.

The United States has spent more than $54 billion in total to arm, train, and sustain Afghanistan’s security forces, which continue to underperform and suffer low enlistment rates, according to SIGAR’s quarterly progress reports.

It is unclear just how much ammunition the $1.03 billion translates to and just how much of this ammo has been used.

In addition to the billion-dollar ammo purchase, the United States has spent more than $878 million on weapons for the ANA and another $5.6 billion on military vehicles.

However, a large amount of this money has been wasted on vehicles that either do not work or that have been destroyed beyond repair, according to SIGAR.

The issue of arming Afghan security forces continues to cause controversy, as Afghan security personnel engage in so-called “insider attacks” on the remaining U.S. forces in the country.

A man wearing an ANA uniform murdered three Americans over the weekend, according to NBC News.
The purported ANA soldier “turned his weapon against” U.S. forces, killing two soldiers and a civilian, the International Security Assistance Force was quoted as saying in a statement.

“Insider attacks accounted for one in every five combat deaths suffered by NATO-led forces in Afghanistan and 16 percent of all American combat casualties according to 2012 data,” NBC said in its report.

There were 12 such attacks in 2011 and 34 in the first half of 2012, according to the New America Foundation.

The final accounting of U.S. ammo purchases in Afghanistan also comes as lawmakers on Capitol Hill hotly debate domestic ammunitions purchases at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other related agencies.

DHS has said that it reserves the right to purchase nearly a billion round of ammunition, prompting accusation from lawmakers that it is hoarding bullets and wasting money.

House lawmakers voted last week to block DHS ammo purchases until it provides greater transparency on how the bullets are used.

Meanwhile, the ANA continues to receive shipments of large-scale military equipment from the United States.

The Afghan Air Force’s inventory now consists of 113 aircraft, including attack helicopters and transport planes, according to SIGAR’s latest report. At least 32 various helicopters have yet to be delivered.

The Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) continuously failed to hit recruiting numbers despite the U.S.-funded equipment and weapons.

“We are very concerned because the ANSF were supposed to achieve an end-strength of 352 thousand troops by last October,” SIGAR lead inspector John Sopko said in May.

“The ANSF has fallen short of its staffing goals by 20,000 troops,” Sopko said. “The number of troops ready for duty is even lower when you consider AWOL employees, desertions, and ghost employees.”
Sopko also said the White House has tried to silence him due to his oversight work, which has detailed massive waste and abuse of U.S. taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan.

“Over the last 10 months, I have been criticized by some bureaucrats for not pre-clearing my press releases with them, for not letting them edit the titles of my audits, for talking too much to Congress, for talking too much to the press, and, basically, for not being a ‘team player’ and undermining ‘our country’s mission in Afghanistan,’” Sopko said in his speech.

The top commander of U.S. Special Operations forces has also expressed frustration over his inability to speak honestly about the harm massive defense cuts are causing to the military.

http://freebeacon.com/a-billion-bucks-in-bullets/

Guess Who's Coming to... Everything

The world is presently inundated with revelations or reminders of the U.S. federal government's various means of collecting information about everyone's private correspondence, of how bureaucratic offices sympathetic to the current administration are using private information to target political opponents, and of how federal officials are using legitimate national security concerns to build support for increasing public surveillance and private "data-mining" so ominous that a "career intelligence officer" felt compelled to reveal the secret data-mining system, explaining that "They quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type." I dare anyone to say "So what?" in answer to that claim. 

Conservative response to the data-mining and phone record collecting stories has been mixed. While many are sounding alarm bells, and citing the IRS "scandal" as evidence of the danger of allowing the government indiscriminate access to private communications data, others are offering legalistic arguments to quell irrational fears, telling us that these procedures are all quite justifiable, and merely a reasonable extension of traditional information-gathering methods.

As for the people casually dismissing all concerns by noting that the programs in question are "legal," I'm sure I'm not the only person who can think of another recent program of the U.S. federal government that is "legal" in exactly the same sense: supported and funded by Congress, upheld by the courts. Indeed, that other program has even been declared "the law of the land" by John Boehner himself; and yet it is properly regarded by many conservatives as the heights of authoritarian overreach.

Perhaps the most intellectually serious effort at a reasonable "calm down, everyone" case is offered by the indispensable Andrew McCarthy, a man certainly well-versed in the law, and not at all dismissive of U.S. constitutional concerns. His argument is that the data collected through the government's electronic surveillance systems is equivalent to the names and addresses available in every phone book, or to the information on the outside of a posted envelope -- information which is, for legal purposes, public in nature.

[T]he Constitution expressly protects the American people only in their "persons, houses, papers, and effects." Modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has expanded this ambit to include matters or items in which there is an "expectation of privacy" judicially deemed "objectively reasonable." Notwithstanding the caterwauling of privacy activists, though, the courts have forcefully rejected the notion that telephone metadata qualifies. The content of conversations? Yes. The numbers dialed, the duration, the fact that the conversation took place? No.

First of all, it appears that the newly-revealed PRISM program may reach far beyond the outside of the envelope. For example,

According to a separate "User's Guide for PRISM Skype Collection," that service can be monitored for audio when one end of the call is a conventional telephone and for any combination of "audio, video, chat, and file transfers" when Skype users connect by computer alone. Google's offerings include Gmail, voice and video chat, Google Drive files, photo libraries, and live surveillance of search terms.

Of course, digging for such details would, in theory, only take place if there were a suspicion that the participants in a given communication were engaged in wrongdoing. But how would this suspicion be arrived at? And what would constitute "wrongdoing," in the eyes of a U.S. administration that has countenanced IRS targeting of private individuals and organizations expressing views opposed to the administration's policies?

But I think there are grounds for a more basic concern, even apart from the case of "monitoring for audio" or "live surveillance of search terms." In short, is the government's collection of data regarding, in effect, any and all electronic communications, anywhere, by anyone, really analogous to having a phone directory on one's desk, or having access to the address information on the outside of an envelope?

Consider this difference: Knowing your phone number and home address tells us nothing about where you are and what you are doing right now, or where you were and what you were doing last Wednesday at 3:20 p.m. Knowing fixed, permanent identification-type information about you is not the same as keeping a real time record of your daily activities. Knowing where you live is several removes from knowing the identities of all your regular contacts, and when and how often you interact with each of them. Legal analogies and court precedent are not satisfactory arguments here, because they do not address the primary issues, as follows.

Why is it acceptable for the government to know whom you spoke with today? There is a difference between the government knowing my phone number and the government knowing whose names and numbers are in my personal address book. And even if you should reply that the government has only "generic" knowledge of such information unless and until they choose to isolate me for investigation, is it not unseemly, not to say spooky, that everyone in the world should have to become inured to the fact that the U.S. federal government is keeping a log of their activities, and has standing legal authority to consult that log whenever it deems necessary? Does this not reduce freedom of speech and assembly to "freedom to speak or assemble, as long as a government monitor is present"? But wasn't the purpose of that old-fashioned "natural rights" talk precisely to mark out the area upon which government may not encroach without just cause?

Why is it acceptable for the government to know which websites you visit, anymore than it is legitimate for them to know which stores you have entered, or which television programs you watch? And please don't get mired in sophistical answers such as, "Does that mean a policeman walking the beat has to avert his eyes before you enter a shop on his block?" No -- and the case is not similar. It would become similar, however, if that policeman started following you around the neighborhood, taking notes on which shops you entered and how long you stayed in each shop. For then the officer would no longer be keeping an eye on the neighborhood, but rather conducting an unwarranted and intrusive surveillance of an individual who is not suspected of any wrongdoing. Would you, faced with such police behavior, be satisfied if the officer said, "We just want to have a complete report on your movements in case we should ever find the information useful"?

Some may wish to argue that electronic communication is more public by definition, and hence while you may gather with anyone you please in the privacy of your own home, without government monitoring, you tacitly agree to give up such privacy when you choose to engage in a "virtual gathering," such as by phone or on the internet.

Perhaps this takes us into a deeper philosophical question which cannot be answered fully here. Nevertheless the question must be asked: What is the relationship between technological developments and a free society? Do we not properly view technology as an extension of our natural purposes and pursuits? Is it not a means of facilitating activities we would have pursued anyway, albeit less efficiently, before the technology was available? Is not the telephone, in its defining purpose, a means of conducting private conversations at distance -- conversations which we would have wished to pursue, though much less conveniently, before the invention of the telephone? In other words, is the telephone to be seen as essentially a means of facilitating and enhancing our pursuit of our natural right to speak and associate freely, or is it to be seen as essentially opening up a new realm of governmental authority? That is, does genuine freedom of association end where the lines of telecommunication begin? 
Does the "reasonable expectation of privacy" end when we sign in to our personal e-mail accounts? Do we tacitly waive our natural freedom merely by availing ourselves of technological aids?

If so, why? On what principle has it been determined that the technological realm is inherently public -- that is, open to unwarranted and indiscriminate state monitoring? How has the belief evolved that government has the legitimate authority to keep track of our electronic comings and goings in ways men would never have thought legitimate with regard to their physical comings and goings? (As for my use of the past conditional form, "would never have," see below.)

If the very fact of using a telephone or the internet means sacrificing your claims against unwarranted government intrusion, this raises a very profound issue. For it suggests that as modern life becomes increasingly entwined with our technology, it becomes unavoidably less free. That is, the very conditions of individual liberty that made these technological advances possible are necessarily undermined by the advances themselves. If so, then this would seem to lend credence to the Marxist historicist hypothesis, as it implies that individual liberty really is a transitional phase of history, inexorably bound to create the conditions of its own undoing, and the rise of the socialist state. This, I propose, follows from the premise that private action becomes government property when it is pursued through technology.

Where is all this tending? That is the question which the best detached legal argument is intrinsically unable to address. Once we accept the premise that government should be permitted to keep a record of all your "public" activity -- including such activity as would never have been regarded as public in the past (private communication), when such activity happens to be conducted through technological means -- it is difficult to see where real lines can be drawn to determine where the state cannot go without properly established grounds for suspicion. Already, the British government, the world leader in public video surveillance, has experimented with the idea of installing cameras in "high risk" private homes to monitor the parents' methods of raising their children. In America, the current administration is on the record, through official white papers and in public statements from the president and his subordinates, as regarding people who revere their Constitution or worry about the loss of their liberty as extremists and potential terror risks.

Furthermore, if the defenders of big government can make the case for keeping records of exactly where you were, what computer you were using, and with whom you were corresponding, last Wednesday at 3:20 p.m., on the grounds that electronic communication is somehow "different" from the private speech and association this technology was invented to facilitate, then might they not, having achieved complete acquiescence to this fuzzy principle, turn the argument around? That is, once it has been accepted as a truism, including through legal precedent, that the presence of a technological component overrides normal considerations of free association and private speech, how great a step will it be to make the reverse case for putting cameras and microphones in every home, or conducting random police searches?

After all, your government may argue, we already collect data on all your private telephone and e-mail correspondence, and monitor your web searches, in the name of maintaining public safety. The problem is that there is still a dangerous loophole in our data, namely your offline communications. And since it has already been established that online communications ought to be accessible to the government at all times, it is only a matter of consistency that government should have equal access to your offline interactions. In principle, the only difference between the face to face conversations you have with your guests in your living room and the e-mail correspondence you engage in online is the physical distance, so the court has ruled that there is nothing to bar us from monitoring your home and workplace for the same kind of information we routinely collect from your e-mail and telephone providers, namely whom you are meeting, at what times, how often, and where?

But don't concern yourself; it's for the security of the community, and if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

Let me state, for the record, that I know Islamic terrorism is a real threat, and that all means consistent with a free society ought to be used to prevent it, including the targeted use of electronic records with just cause. Universal data-mining of all electronic communication, however, which is able, in principle, to reveal anyone's patterns of behavior, whereabouts, and particular associations, without even looking at content, is qualitatively different from such legitimate use of state power. Some will focus narrowly on the risk of granting such overwhelming authority to the Obama administration, with its subversive motives and its history of abuse of authority. I am with those who question such authority more broadly. After all, it is precisely the purpose of the concept of limited government to establish permanent political conditions which militate against the abuse of scoundrels.

Rush Limbaugh recently called the Obama administration's activity on this front a "coup d'état." Doesn't French make everything sound more polite? At any rate, as this surveillance program encompasses global communications, and not just those among American citizens, we might amend the description to "coup d'états."

"The national security of the United States" is, as Andrew McCarthy says, the nation's "highest societal purpose." Certainly, at least, it is the highest purpose of the Executive Branch of the federal government. However, on this issue, as on many others, this non-American finds himself standing behind Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Or, if you prefer, "Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/06/guess_whos_coming_to_everything.html#ixzz2Vq3nRYle

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