;)
The Commentariat -- Dec. 17, 2013
Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "A Federal District Court judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans' phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, and he ordered the government to stop collecting data on two plaintiffs' personal calls and destroy the records of their calling history. In a 68-page ruling, Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia called the program's technology 'almost Orwellian' and suggested that James Madison, the author of the Constitution, would be 'aghast' to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty in such a way." The ruling is here. ...
... It's Not Over Til the Supremes Sing. Frederic Frommer of the AP: “'This is the opening salvo in a very long story, but it's important symbolically in dispelling the invincibility of the metadata program,' said Stephen Vladeck, a national security law expert at the American University law school.... Robert F. Turner, a professor at the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law, predicted Leon's decision was highly likely to be reversed on appeal. He said the collection of telephone metadata -- the issue in Monday's ruling -- already has been addressed and resolved by the Supreme Court." ...
... Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: "The National Security Agency went into Judge Richard Leon's courtroom with a powerful precedent on its side. In its 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court held that individuals do not have a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' in the numbers they dial on their phone.... The central insight of Judge Leon’s opinion is that technology has so transformed our world that it requires an entirely different constitutional privacy regime. Whatever the wisdom of Smith on the day that it was decided, its conception of what constitutes a 'reasonable expectation of privacy' imagined a world where government surveillance was relatively unusual and impossible to execute on a massive scale. New realities require new assumptions. And if the courts do not know the difference between science fiction and scientific fact, then we will forfeit our liberties as Americans." ...
... Scott Lemieux, in the American Prospect, analyzes Judge Leon's decision. ...
I acted on my belief that the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans' rights. It is the first of many. -- Edward Snowden, in a statement distributed by Glenn Greenwald
... CW: Steve M., in his commentary on the case, expresses views on Snowden, Greenwald, et al., jibe with mine. It's a good idea to remember that, particularly in ultra-controversial issues, there are not only at least two sides to the story, those on both/all sides might be shmucks. ...
... Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian refutes key points of the "60 Minutes" NSA story (see yesterday's Commentariat). ...
(... Dylan Byers of Politico: "Lara Logan and Max McClellan, the '60 Minutes' journalists who were put on a leave of absence following their now-retracted report on Benghazi, are set to return to the program early next year...." CW: Well, why the hell not?) ...
... AFP: " The White House Monday renewed its demand for Edward Snowden to return home to face trial, after a top spy official floated the idea of an amnesty deal to plug his damaging intelligence leaks." ...
... Paul Owen of the Guardian: "Edward Snowden has offered to help Brazil investigate US spying on its soil in exchange for political asylum, in an open letter from the NSA whistleblower to the Brazilian people published by the Folha de S Paulo newspaper." CW: Apparently Snowden would rather winter in Rio than in Moscow. Perfectly understandable. ...
... Andy Greenberg of Forbes: "... an NSA staffer who contacted me last month and asked not to be identified ... offered me a very different, firsthand portrait of how Snowden was seen by his colleagues in the agency's Hawaii office: A principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric employee, and one who earned the access used to pull off his leak by impressing superiors with sheer talent.... According to the source, Snowden didn't dupe coworkers into handing over their passwords, as one report has claimed. Nor did Snowden fabricate SSH keys to gain unauthorized access, he or she says. Instead, there's little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was given to him. 'That kid was a genius among geniuses,' says the NSA staffer." ...
... Oliver Knox of Yahoo! News: "Apple, Twitter, Netflix, Google, Facebook, Yahoo … a phalanx of top executives from leading tech companies meets Tuesday with President Barack Obama to discuss the impact that his controversial spying programs have had on online commerce. Obama will host the group in the Roosevelt Room of the White House one day after a federal judge decreed that NSA bulk collection of telephone data likely violates the Constitution." CW: Awwwkward.
Lori Montgomery & Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "Despite a concerted attack by conservative advocacy groups, a bipartisan deal to roll back sharp spending cuts known as the sequester appeared on track to clear the Senate after a growing number of Republicans declared their support for the measure. On Monday, Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (Utah) and Johnny Isakson (Ga.) added their names to a list that included Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Susan Collins (Maine) and Ronald H. Johnson (Wis.)." ...
... Washington Post UPDATE: "A bipartisan deal to roll back sharp spending cuts known as the sequester easily cleared a procedural hurdle in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday as enough Republicans joined Democrats to gain the votes needed to proceed to a final passage. Senators agreed 67 to 33 to end debate and proceed to final vote on the budget agreement. Twelve Republicans joined with the 55 members of the Senate Democratic caucus to proceed to a final vote, which could come as soon as Tuesday evening if Senate Republicans agree to speed things up. Otherwise, the chamber is likely to send the measure to the White House late Wednesday."
Obama 2.0. Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "The Senate confirmed Jeh C. Johnson on Monday as secretary of homeland security, the fourth person to lead the sprawling domestic safety agency since its inception after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Johnson, 56, the former general counsel for the Pentagon, won confirmation on an overwhelming vote, 78 to 16, as the Senate continued churning through an end-of-session batch of nominees to fill President Obama's Cabinet and the federal judiciary." ...
... MEANWHILE. Peter Schroeder & Bernie Becker of the Hill: "Stinging from Senate Democrats' gutting of the filibuster, Senate Republicans will use their private caucus lunch Tuesday to decide on their strategy for holding back a string of nominees."
Greg Sargent: "As of now, over two dozen states are not opting in to Obamacare's Medicaid expansion, thanks largely to hostility to the law among GOP governors who are turning down huge sums of federal money that could otherwise go towards expanding coverage to their own constituents. Result: untold numbers risk falling into a 'Medicaid gap,' making too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid, yet too little to qualify for subsidies on the exchanges. We now have a new look at the consequences of this: Millions will likely remain uninsured, and racial and geographic disparities in access to coverage will worsen. Two new studies released by the Kaiser Family Foundation today illustrate this in new detail."
Josh Barro of Business Insider: "Conservatives have no idea what to do about recessions.... Conservatives favor the same set of economic policies when the economy is weak and when it is strong.... The implication is that conservatives believe there is nothing in particular the government should do about economic cycles....As with health care and bank regulation, economic recessions are a policy question to which conservatives have not the wrong answer, but no answer." ...
... Paul Krugman has a most interesting follow-up/rejoinder to Barro's post.
Daniel Strauss of TPM: "In a new fundraising email, the Senate Conservatives Fund (SCF) said House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is targeting conservatives in the same way that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative organizations seeking tax-exempt status." CW: One little problem with the SCF analogy: the IRS was not targeting conservatives. But there never was a winger who let the facts get in the way of a good fundraising ploy. ...
... Alex Rogers of Time: “The Tea Party wants to avenge Paul Teller. Teller was fired last week from his post as executive director of the Republican Study Committee, a congressional group that steers the right-wing agenda, after allegedly leaking private conversations over the course of years to outside political groups.... A lawmaker in the RSC leadership ... told Time ... the RSC fired Teller after he leaked details of a December 5 meeting where [Paul] Ryan outlined aspects of the forthcoming budget deal.... The lawmaker stressed that it was not a first time offense. In 2011, during the debt-ceiling showdown, Teller reportedly was caught sending emails to outside groups in an attempt to tank a Boehner proposal. Members chanted 'Fire him, fire him!' when they found out, according to Politico."
Yahoo! News: "The federal government has spent nearly $1 million studying romance in popular culture, according to a new report [by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)] that targets government waste. The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded $914,000 to help fund the 'The Popular Romance Project' since 2010, an ongoing culture study that explores 'the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs, and internet fan fiction.'" CW: So maybe I need a New Rule on Reality Chex commentary: Literary fiction, no; bodice-rippers, yes.
Jim Yardley & Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "Pope Francis moved on Monday against a conservative American cardinal [Raymond Burke] who has been an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage, by replacing him on a powerful Vatican committee with another American who is less identified with the culture wars within the Roman Catholic Church." ...
... Philip Pullella of Reuters: "The oldest gay rights magazine in the United States named Pope Francis its 'Person of the Year' as the pontiff marked his 77th birthday on Tuesday by inviting homeless people to join him for breakfast in the Vatican." The Advocate story -- which explains how the editors made their choice -- is here.
Senate Race
Annie Linskey of Bloomberg News: "Former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown plans to move to New Hampshire, the latest sign that he's considering a U.S. Senate bid there, which would complicate Democrats' effort to hold their majority in the chamber." Brown has a buyer for his Wrentham, Massachusetts home, & he owns a vacation home in New Hampshire.
Local News
NEW. Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: In "the sudden closure, over four days, of a pair of access lanes from Fort Lee, N.J., onto the George Washington Bridge into New York ... Democrats see a potential scandal that could permanently harm Republican Gov. Chris Christie...." CW: Sounds like a long shot to me. Democrats &/or the press will have to come up with a smoking gun that proves Christie ordered the lane closings, then lied to cover up his involvement. So far, no smoke.
Emma Dumain of Roll Call: "The House Ethics Committee will launch a formal investigation into alleged misconduct by Rep. Trey Radel, the panel's top Republican and Democrat announced Monday.... Radel has been on leave since late last month, when news broke that he had been arrested in the District of Columbia for cocaine possession. He is now checked into a rehab clinic in Florida, where he says he is getting help for his addiction issues that will enable him to get back to work -- despite the many calls in and out of his home state for him to step down." The committee probably won't take any action against Radel.
News Ledes
Boston Globe: "A Harvard student trying to get out of a final exam admitted to the FBI that he sent a bomb threat that forced the university to evacuate multiple buildings and rattled the campus, federal officials said Tuesday. Instead of going home for winter break, 20-year-old Eldo Kim was arrested Tuesday and held overnight on federal bomb hoax charges. He is scheduled to appear in US District Court on Wednesday...."
New York Times: "Tunisia ... has once again broken new ground with a political deal between longtime enemies among the Islamists and the secular old guard. The deal, announced over the weekend, aims to put in place an independent caretaker government until new elections next year, marking the first time Islamists have agreed in the face of rising public anger to step back from power gained at the ballot box."
AFP: "British police on Monday said they had finished examining new information about the 1997 death of Diana, princess of Wales, but had found 'no credible evidence' she was murdered. Scotland Yard police headquarters announced in August it was checking the credibility of recently received information about the deaths of the princess and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed, including an allegation that she was murdered by a British military figure."
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Reader Comments (30)
Progress, IMO.
Did Mandela's passing force their hand? There's little wonder why Netanyahu didn't attend the commemoration in S. Africa: the comparisons to Apartheid are too evident and we all know how well that ended for the Afrikaners....
http://www.juancole.com/2013/12/american-association-institutions.html
@cowichan: "The idea of a "prospective employee" coming within a mile of the necessary password for access to the computer system was preposterous." -- cowichan
There are contractors & contractors. I like the personal experience stories that contributors write, but readers should recognize that they are anecdotal, not definitive. Just because you've had one experience in your job doesn't mean that's how other employer/contractor relationships work.
As Andy Greenberg writes in the post linked above, "According to the source, Snowden didn’t dupe coworkers into handing over their passwords, as one report has claimed. Nor did Snowden fabricate SSH keys to gain unauthorized access, he or she says. Instead, there’s little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was given to him." That is, despite being a contractor for Dell & Booz-Allen, Snowden's job responsibilities demanded that he have password access, so the NSA gave it to him.
One thing you have to bear in mind is that -- particularly under Republican leadership -- the federal government has gone private. At least in 2009, according to the WSJ, there were more contractors in Afghanistan than troops. You can bet those contractors were not all handing out MREs & doing laundry.
As Natasha Lennard of Salon noted in June, "As Tim Shorrock pointed out as long ago as 2007 (and reminded us in light of the NSA leaks) 'about 70 percent of our national intelligence budgets being spent on the private sector.' The AP reported Tuesday that nearly 500,000 contractors — employees like whistleblower Edward Snowden — have access to the government’s top secret programs."
It makes sense to be skeptical of everything that comes out of the mouths of NSA officials & staffers, but I don't think anybody disputes Shorrock's assertions or the AP's. That Snowden could have cheated on the test that got him the Hawaii gig seems indisputable. The only question is whether or not he actually did. Yesterday, Snowden spoke out about the court ruling, but he didn't say about whether or not he cheated. Unless he says he did cheat, we are left to make an educated guess. I'm guessing he did.
Marie
CW: I'm reposting this response I wrote late yesterday to JJG, as (1) my system went down shortly after I wrote it, (2) there seems to be a general misperception about what Ed Snowden's job(s) were. He wasn't a spy. Andy Greenberg's post above gives you a good idea of the kinds of assignments he had.
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@JJG: "What does one call someone who collects, manipulates, transfers or organizes massive bytes of information on others who are unaware of that person's actions?" -- JJG, arguing that Snowden was a spy
Maybe capital letters will make this easier to understand. THAT ISN'T WHAT SNOWDEN DID. It isn't what he was hired to do. It wasn't part of his job. That may be what some spies do, but it is not what Snowden did.
His job was to make sure the data which the "real spies" were collecting & interpreting was good. It's the difference between Danica Patrick & her crew. When Patrick wins a race, they don't give the trophy to the guy who changed her tire in the 9th lap, even tho she would have come in 9th had the tire-changer dawdled.
Snowden was the tire-changer. He didn't just dawdle; he stole the fucking spares.
When I was in college, I applied for a summer gummit job. The CIA practically begged me to come work for them. I thought it was because I did so well on the typing test -- a test on which I did not cheat, BTW. I learned years later it was because my uncle was a "real spy," & that gave me an advantage.
Had I taken the CIA job I would not have been a real spy like my uncle. And it would have been unethical for me to steal pencils, much less tell a seductive counterspy what I had typed that day. To pretend that people in & around the spying business aren't supposed to have ethics is ridiculous. Their bottom-line ethic is that they work for their own team. And broadly speaking, the spies' supervisors are supposed to know what they do in the course of that work. If they employ methods (waterboarding) that the supervisors decide is not ethical, the supervisors will tell them to cut that out. Unless there's a wink & a nod, the real spies are supposed to cut that out.
In every line of legitimate work, there are ethics & there are rules. Well-intentioned employees more-or-less know what those rules are & follow them. They do so because they have ethical standards, whether they're spies or grade-school teachers.
Edward Snowden is a rotten specimen of humanity & to assert that he should get a prize for cheating on a test is reprehensible.
Marie
@ Marie, my rebuttal; "Instead, there’s little mystery as to how Snowden gained his access: It was given to him. 'That kid was a genius among geniuses,' says the NSA staffer."
If he is as smart as people who actually know him say he is he could pass any test that is aimed at the mean.
"Unless he says he did cheat, we are left to make an educated guess. I'm guessing he did." I'm guessing he didn't. Genius among geniuses. But guesses make horse races; we don't really know, do we?
" ...His job was to make sure the data which the "real spies" were collecting & interpreting was good".
So "real spies" are cell phones, repeating towers and super computers? I'll add "filtering" to my above statement and still claim that anybody that works in data collection for the government is a "spy". Words change meanings over time.
"Edward Snowden is a rotten specimen of humanity..."
Maybe, could be what I opinion about him. But maybe not, could be he's exactly what he says he is.
Right now he has raised the level of awareness about our government's ability to peek into every corner of our lives. Is that a bad thing?
And Peace on Earth; Marie, my ignorance is no reflection on Realitychex. I agree with your thinking 9 times out of 10.
@JJG: You are choosing not to look at the evidence that doesn't support your position. No, cell towers are not spies. Spies are the people who look at the cell tower data & say, "Oh, look, Joe is meeting with terror suspect Mo. Let's see who else Joe meets/talks to." Snowden didn't do that. He didn't collect the cell tower data; he didn't analyze it; he didn't notify the CIA that Joe was suspect; he didn't draft a warrant to read Joe's e-mails; etc.
But even if Snowden did those things -- which he didn't -- he was subject to the law & to ethical standards, just as I said a CIA typist would be, too.
As for your premise that Snowden is a genius so he could ace a test without cheating, that ain't necessarily so, either. There are a lot of very smart people who don't do well in test situations, for any number of reasons. The fact that Snowden couldn't graduate from high school or from junior college suggests he might be one of those people. (I think maybe he got a GED -- you have to take a test for that, but it isn't a very difficult one.) Further, I have no idea whether or not Snowden is a genius compared to other NSA staffers. You are basing this premise on the opinion of one unidentified staffer. Maybe that person is right; maybe not. I linked to Greenberg's piece because I think readers should get more than "60 Minutes"' side of the story, not because I thought Greenberg's anonymous source was unimpeachable.
I have said all along that I thought some of Snowden's leaks were justified & that some were traitorous. Whatever Snowden's character & talents, the value of the leaks & the damage they caused are what they are.
I am grateful to reporters who analyzed & published reports based on those leaks that were in the national interest. I am not grateful to Snowden for leaking info about our foreign spying nor to the reporters who published them. However, some of those reporters were not U.S. nationals, & they published those reports in the interests of their own countries. I don't fault them at all for that, but I do fault Snowden for making those leaks available to those German, Brazilian, Hong Kong, etc., reporters. Moreover, I think any American who glorifies Snowden as some sort of First Amendment hero is way off base.
Marie
" I like the personal experience stories that contributors write, but readers should recognize that they are anecdotal, not definitive. Just because you've had one experience in your job doesn't mean that's how other employer/contractor relationships work." CW
At a party the other night I was in a discussion with a man who argued that the ACA was inept and would implode within a year. I asked for evidence to back up his assertions. He gave me personal anecdotes to which I countered: "The plural of anecdote is not evidence." He seemed surprised at my response and my guess is that he is not used to being questioned ––especially by a woman.
There she stood, breathlessly, waiting for the door to open, anticipating the ripping of her bodice, the heavy hands taking her garments off one by one until she stood before him in all her splendor but alas, no door opened, no bodice ripped for just hours before, unbeknownst to her, Rock Harden had been outed by some little weasel at the NSA for being a CIA operative responsible for illegal wiretapping the phone of the King of Siam whose wife was once the lover of R. Harden and was threatening to poison not only him, but the King himself.
The above example of such fun stories we can now tell on R.C. But watch your step! Such nonsense is short lived even if the guvment is putting out money to study this stuff.
First, a quick note about the concept of genius. Just my two cents.
There are some for whom that appellation is much more specific than others. Consider that Ken Jennings (Jeopardy super champ), referred to commonly as a genius, might not be much good at fixing internal combustion engines or playing Beethoven sonatas from memory. It doesn't mean he's not smart, it just means he's not necessarily good at everything. Einstein was not as bad a student as some stories suggest, but he did drop out of school at 15 and then failed the exam for the Polytechnic School in Zurich (he passed after another year of study). But even then he didn't do all that well. The fact that his mind was otherwise engaged probably accounted for him landing a plum job as a patent clerk rather than ascending to the ranks of academic superstardom after graduation. He found some small success later on however.
I work everyday with people who barely graduated high school but are absolute demons in the digital domain. Ask them about the Teapot Dome however or the Treaty of Versailles and you're likely to get a blank stare.
So it's not entirely a given that Snowden could have killed any test put in front of him because his skills were off the charts in one particular area. I've noticed that those are the people who often are terrified of looking stupid in tests that might include questions outside their chosen domain. Of course, I'm not familiar with the test he was given, but often questions are included that attempt to measure more than simple fluency with the subject at hand, in his case computer science.
In fact, when I sat down to take the genius test, I was horrified that I might be asked questions about medieval botanical research or 1920s ladies golf, so I bagged it and watched another episode of Jeopardy.
So the propeller hats want to "avenge" Paul Teller, an untrustworthy tea-sniffing mole, who routinely leaked information from the Republican congressional study group to outside private groups whose sole mission is to destroy government and to force the Party to do its bidding, something it's been amazingly successful at for many years.
The sudden movement of certain Republicans away from Teabagging Armageddon on one hand appears to be like someone waking up after a drunken weekend, noticing that they took a psycho home to bed with them and have been having a wild time of it for the last three days. The fact is that that's not the case. They went willingly and have offered their honor for years to psychos who have been screwing the country far worse than they've screwed the GOP. This, of course, will be the latest GOP prevarication. "Hey, we were forced into this. We never knew they were so nuts. But we kicked them out of bed the second we sobered up."
Anyway, that's beside the point. For now, it's funny (in all senses of that word) to read that Man of Honor and Upright Citizen Brent Bozell (see? told you it would be funny), is OUTRAGED that good buddy and Teabag spy Paul Teller has finally been kicked out of the Wingnut/GOP orgy room.
From Marie's Time Swampland link: “This is personal,” says Brent Bozell, a conservative commentator and chairman of For America. “They are making it personal by attacking people by personally besmirching their integrity. I’m just not going to stand for it. Paul Teller is a good man.”
First funny thing: Bozell is "For America" ! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. No comment needed there.
Second funny thing: Bozell is beside himself with the idea that the GOP is attacking Teller personally (they're not; they fired a rat bastard) and are "personally besmirching" his integrity. (funny thing 2a: a rat like Teller having "integrity" ha-ha-ha...etc.).
Why is the second thing so funny? The idea that Bozell, Mr. Personal Attack hisself, could be so upset at the concept of Personal Attacks. This is the guy, you may recall, who referred to the president as a "skinny ghetto crackhead". Yes, he did it in a cowardly and oblique way (sort of like a four year old who promises never to say "damned idiot" again, as in "Daddy, I know it's wrong to say "damned idiot" so I won't say "damned idiot" anymore") but he did say it. He's also referred to Paul Krugman as a "little worm" for daring to show up Paul Ryan's plan for killing medicare. He routinely screams about people referring to his beloved group as "Teabaggers" (tee-hee) but when Anderson Cooper came out he sneered that Cooper was now an expert at teabagging.
A more reprehensible reptile would be difficult to find under any rock.
Outraged bagger hypocrites are funny. And damned idiots too.
Thank you, Marie, for FINALLY making the topic of bodice rippers allowable on this forum!!!!!
E. Phillips Oppenheim wrote bodice rippers, 1903 style (there was a lot of fainting involved), for the average lady's entertainment. I was interested to follow his social commentary-woven into the plots- over the years leading up to WWI. EPO's clear expectation was that there would be war soon. It was in the air, so to speak. Last week the NYT had an Op-Ed on how the political atmosphere of today carries similarities to the atmosphere just before WWI.
So, see? Bodice rippers have relevance to politics.
I detect creative tension in the air at Realitychex. What I think is CW sees a simple yet mighty ethical failure on Snowden's part and JJG is addressing “the almost-Orwellian technology that enables the Government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States" (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-17/fighting-the-nsa-with-footnotes.html) and how the definition of a spy has changed.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
One thing I've discussed with my wife and teenager about why I like Realitychex is because it is an opportunity to hone how I write and think about things. Having been upbraided by both CW and JJG, I nonetheless subscribe to the theory that 85% agreement isn't negated by 15% disagreement. The question really is the content and value of the 15% disagreement. There is a reason the Socratic method hasn't been dispensed with in legal circles: 15% disagreement yields critical thinking skills necessary for better insight.
As comfortable as it is to be agreed with and thus appreciated, simple sycophancy doesn't lend itself to finer analysis or thought. Sometimes it is as simple as saying "I agree" to take the wind out out of the sails of an argument. I am not saying to give up your point of view, I'm saying determine you're analyzing the same thing. Then, disagree. And if the federal judge I quote above is any indication, the parameters and ramifications of your disagreement are far from yours alone. And far from concluded.
And speaking, I think, for more than just myself, we'll miss this model of consensual news sharing and discussion you've built up here, Marie. Please don't go away easily or in haste.
"And broadly speaking, the spies' supervisors are supposed to know what they do in the course of that work."
That's called the Nuremberg Defense, Marie, and quite frankly I'm rather astonished to hear that coming from someone as smart as you are.
We didn't stand for it in 1946 and we shouldn't stand for it now.
@ Akhilleus: Having an immense store of knowledge (a la Ken Jennings) is not the same thing as genius. Lots of people can memorize a whole bunch of facts. Genius is adding new knowledge to the immense store we already have.
Victoria,
Wait, Oppenheimer wrote bodice rippers? There must have been more going at Los Alamos than previously suspected. I guess the combination of isolation and plutonium made for more than one kind of fusion. I suppose this offers potential new meaning to the names Fat Man and Little Boy.
Noodge,
Quite right. I should have been more specific. I thought I had written that "some people" might consider Ken Jennings a genius. Thanks for point.
@Noodge: I must not be very smart as I have no idea what you mean. I see no connection between supervisors supervising (& in so doing reining in their staff) & the Nurnberg defense, which was essentially the opposite: underlinings "justifying" their crimes against humanity by arguing they were "just following orders."
Also, stealing pencils is not a crime against humanity (as much as taxpayers may be horrified by government waste).
Please explain. I'm mystified.
Marie
Marie may have eased off David Brooks, but Charlie Pierce and Driftglass haven’t.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/david-brooks-thought-leader-column-121713
Oppenheim, Akhilleus, Oppenheim (1866-1946).
He wrote a zillion bad novels, lived well, and died rich.
I was indirectly making the point that studying something like romance is interesting and important, especially in reflecting many cultural and political assumptions of the times. So the study is not a waste of time, contrary to republican scolds.
Re: Smart like a fox; I don't recall any disclosure of the actual test results of Snowden. Ledgett is quoted as follows; "of the NSA employee who was administering that test, and he took both the questions & the answers & used them to pass the test." -- Rick Ledgett, head of the Snowden task force"
"So it's not entirely a given that Snowden could have killed any test put in front of him because his skills were off the charts" Ak
"As for your premise that Snowden is a genius so he could ace a test without cheating, that ain't necessarily so, either." Marie
Both Marie and Ak assume he "aced" or "killed" the test or have info I did not notice.
Here's my question. If, just for the sake of the discussion, either one of you two were both very bright (for you two, a given) and you had a moral or ethical compass that had a bearing that read, "Don't get caught"; AND you stole the questions and answers to a test you were taking to get employment what percentage of the questions would you "get" right? Remember you have the answers.
100%? 98%?. I personally would get just the right number of questions right to get the job. If I gave myself a perfect score that could lead to uncovering my cheating. What grade would you give you?
Next question; What high school teacher would give the same test twice to a bunch of teenagers? Jez, the NSA could learn a bit about testing you'd think.
Nothing is impossible; there for nothing is to be trusted; except for Love, peace and forgiveness.
Victoria,
I got it. Just a little joke on my part. A very little joke.
And I agree entirely with your larger point. Understanding who we are and how we got here and why we do what we do is something thinking humans tend to want to know, unlike earlier primates of the prehensile tail variety (wingnuts).
JJG: One thing I've learned over the years is that in discussion there comes a point at which we are really arguing against the other's weltanschauugen and at that point no further progress can be expected so on the net I reply, at most, once and then hold my council. This site is Marie's and she always will, one way or another, have the last word. This site will not support a comments section large enough to allow 1500 comments on a subject. In this case she views Snowden as a traitor and we don't. No amount of discussion will ever change that.
Amy Davidson has an article on judge Leon's decision that concludes with 3 short sentences summarizing my view of the NSA wire-tapping.
"In other words, cynicism does not give the government a pass when it comes to its constitutional obligations. And neither should the courts. We are allowed to expect more."
More conservative judges will not concur.
@JJG: I assume Snowden did very well on the test -- and aimed to -- because that is what is necessary to get a government job; that is, not just pass but score better than other applicants. I don't know if it's true for the NSA, but for other agencies, the government gives (or used to give) an extra five points to veterans, the idea being of course to give preference to veterans. There probably is a pass/fail on most of these tests, but presumably more people pass the test than there are openings. The top scorers -- assuming other factors are equal -- get the jobs. Someone could do pretty well -- get a score well above a pass/fail cutoff -- & not get the job because others did better. Ergo, the odds are that Snowden did very well; i.e., "aced" or "killed." He had to beat out the competition, & to ensure that he beat them, he felt he had to cheat.
I don't know if I would purposely enter incorrect answers if I had stolen the test questions because that's a hypothetical I have never tried. Once I took a test in which I had to translate a graf from Italian to English, & getting my degree depended upon it. As luck would have it, I had read the English translation of the book from which the passage was taken. Of course I didn't remember the exact translation of that passage, but it helped a great deal that I knew on background what the passage said. I didn't think I was cheating; I just thought my life experience had given me a leg up. I did not go out of my way to write a clumsy translation, lest the grader might think I was cheating.
Organizations often give the same test more than once, maybe scrambling the order of the questions. One such organization is the U.S. of A. If you want to become a citizen, you have to pass the same test everybody else takes. If you flunk, you get to take the same exact test again.
I don't know if the NSA was giving a test it had given before. According to Ledgett, Snowden stole the Q&A from the systems administrator who was about to give that specific test he took. Whether it was a new test or old, Snowden knew what would be on the test & what answers the NSA wanted. Others who took the same test presumably did not know.
Marie
@ cowichan: I don't expect everybody to agree with me & I don't expect to agree with everybody. But I do expect people to base their opinions on facts, not on stuff they assumed or invented.
So when you earlier based your opinion on the premise that it was "preposterous" to suggest Snowden had access to the system administrator's password, I merely pointed out why it wasn't preposterous at all; in fact, it was likely he could get it.
That has nothing to do with the overarching question of whether or not Snowden's leaks are a great boon to society or the worst thing to happen to the U.S. since John C. Calhoun. We can disagree on that because it is a matter of opinion. Whether or not Snowden had the administrator's code is a presumably provable fact; although we can't prove it. Still, we can make a best guess, but we cannot make a sensible guess based on false premises. Your guess was based on the false premise that Snowden couldn't reasonably get hold of other people's passwords, so therefore Ledgett must have been lying. My guess was based on the premise that he could access the administrator's code, & my guess was based on numerous reports coming from various sources, among them both Snowden's supporters & detractors.
Marie
There's something nagging me in this prolonged "Snowden cheating" discussion. Maybe it's been covered; maybe I missed it. But if Snowden pinched the Q&A, how and when did he do it? Did NSA give him access to their doomsday machine before he took the test? Did some hapless NSA clerk post the Q&A on Facebook? I can't make sense out it.
@ CW: You wrote, "Their (the spies) bottom-line ethic is that they work for their own team. And broadly speaking, the spies' supervisors are supposed to know what they do in the course of that work. If they employ methods (waterboarding) that the supervisors decide is not ethical, the supervisors will tell them to cut that out....In every line of legitimate work, there are ethics & there are rules. Well-intentioned employees more-or-less know what those rules are & follow them."
The implication being that Edward Snowden should have followed the rules and not revealed what he knew, even if what he saw going on was against the law, because his supervisors had given it their approval, and the supervisors' approval made it unnecessary for Snowden to decide whether what he was doing was ethical.
Judging from your response I'm apparently reading too much into what you wrote. I am, however, very sensitive to this issue; we all must assume responsibility for what we do. We can disagree over whether Snowden was being unethical in leaking what he did, but if he truly felt that what he was doing at the NSA was illegal, unconstitutional, and/or unethical, he was honor-bound to tell someone about it. Since the people within his normal chain of command were the ones telling him to act unethically, his only options were to either go public with what he knew and face the consequences or cop the Nuremberg Defense (of course, if Snowden were 100% ethical, he'd be writing his own Letter From a Birmingham Jail right now, instead of hiding in Russia).
As for how Snowden could have gotten passwords, that is the easiest thing in the world to do. I once was commissioned to do a information systems security survey for a large hotel/casino in Las Vegas. First thing I did was call the front desk, tell the agent who answered the phone I was with the hotel's software service provider and I needed to log into the system to run a software update. I asked for the agent's user name and password, and he gave it to me, no questions asked. I then had access to the credit card information of every guest in the 3,000 - plus rooms. Later on I went to check into the hotel, and just by standing at the front desk and being able to read upside-down I was able to get a log-in name and password from the piece of paper taped to the desk. By asking for something special I was able to get a supervisor to attend to my problem and watched carefully while she typed in her user name and manager's password. All sorts of access.
Granted, NSA hirees are probably a little more "hip" to this kind of scam, and would probably never give out a password over the phone, but most of them would probably have their passwords written on a desk blotter someplace. Anyone already inside the facility would have a lot less trouble than you think acquiring access to systems if passwords were all that were required.
I have a hard time believing, however, that NSA computers only require a log-in name and a password to gain access to our most sensitive information. They should require some sort of biometric confirmation, or a card of some sort. If not, then shame on the NSA. They have nobody but themselves to blame for the leaks.
@James Singer: You're the second person in a week to make me read a David Brooks column. Contra PKMyers, I think the column is strictly autobiographical. Brooks is feeling sorry for himself because he just noticed he's a hollow man. He should have heeded his critics; he would have known this a lot sooner.
"Thought Leader"?? What a stupid term. What he means is "public intellectual," but of course most people -- like Brooks -- who pass for public intellectuals aren't all that intellectual. (I think they used to be more like Louis Auchincloss & Gore Vidal [aren't they related?], but now the hosts of public lectures are willing to -- with straight faces -- call people like Brooks & Tom Friedman public intellectuals.)
I have an acquaintance who is an actual public intellectual. He is quite accomplished, & at the events at which he agrees to speak (where I don't think he accepts huge honoraria, contra Brooks), the introducer person always knocks herself out lauding my acquaintance & his impressive resume'. He always looks pained through this ordeal. I think he actually winces. I have not, needless to say, ever attended a Brooks lecture. But I'll bet he grins from ear-to-ear thru his introduction. He believes that shit.
This column is a cry for help: "Please, if I've ever let you do me a favor, fix me up with an attractive, shallow heiress who photographs well at A-list shindigs. I want to be in "Town & Country," the ridiculous heiress or my arm, maybe a famous power couple beside us in the shot. It is a terrible thing to have to spend weekend nights with no one but Moral Hazard & my old best-sellers to keep me company."
Marie
Has everyone noticed the sudden enthusiasm in Right Wing World for ART? Hey, man, I'm not talkin' graffiti and stuff like that, that blah people and juvies from poor families use to desecrate buses and trains and buildings and such, thereby bringing down capitalist property values, I'm talkin' Picasso-Michelangelo-Rembrandty type stuff. Real Art.
First we have George Bush painting pictures of his naked feet in the bath (prob'ly had a robe on in the tub, you know, so as not to offend any delicate sensibilities or break any commandments), then we got the Ted Cruz Coloring Book Full of Heroic Pictures of Ted Kicking Liberal Ass, just the thing for aspiring wingnuts of the underage set, and now we have a painting by George (Killer of Blahs, Avenger of Wingers) Zimmerman with a patriotic painting of--what else--the flag. Painted with a snazzy a Picasso blue period palette (or rather copied from an online photograph). I read that this "original" masterpiece being auctioned off on E-Bay. Price so far is pushing $100K. Ol' George must running low on ammo.
Is there a chance, with all this interest in courting the muses, that wingers might call off their perennial war on art?
Nahh...I mean even Hitler thought he was a great painter. (Just a reference, just a reference...)
But now I'm wondering what might be next. I mean, Bill O'Reilly, fer crissakes, has written a novel, such as it is, about killing (I think it was called "The Loofah Murders" or some shit like that). Seems to be his favorite subject, killing people. He's also "penned" (along with another guy who purports to be an actual historian, ie, someone who has read a book NOT spit out by Regnery Publishing) a bunch of books with titles like Killing Kennedy, Killing Jesus, Killing Lincoln, Killing Big Bird, etc.
I'm waiting for a honest to holiness happening of the kind Yves Klein put on in the 60s, where he daubed naked women in blue paint named after him then had them roll around on white paper. Can't you just see Louie Gohmert painting his ass red and bouncing up and down on butcher paper?
Look out MOMA!
@James Singer: See my first response to cowichan above, which kinda explains it. Snowden had several NSA jobs with contractor Dell & the last job with Booz-Allen. The Dell jobs gave him password access. There's disagreement as to whether he came by the specific password legitimately or not, but according Ledgett, he got it. Remember, it was his job as a systems administrator to go in & "pretend" to be various other users to make sure those users' systems were working accurately.
You may have had the experience yourself of having another person take over your computer. At least twice I've called tech support & -- after giving permission -- I've let a technician control my laptop from afar. It's a little weird watching the cursor move around while you're sitting there doing nothing, but that's what happens. Once they've found & fixed the problem, they give you back your computer. Could they go in there again without my permission? I expect so.
Marie
Marie, thanks for the explanation. Not sure it passes my Occam's razor test, so I'll mull it for a bit.
Meanwhile, on Brooks: I imagine Thought Leader as a modern day Pied Piper, merrily dancing through the streets while draining the remaining intelligence out of the hoi pololi.
@CW: I'm with Marie on Snowden and the NSA's sloppy personnel practices. What Snowden did didn't take a genius. He abused a position of trust to get the stuff he did. System Administrators have administrator privileges on the network, which gives them access to things others don't. (which is why you shouldn't routinely use an administrator account to access the internet on your home computer; once hackers get into your machine, they can do a lot of damage.)
Whether he had the smarts to be an analyst is unknown. As anyone who has had experience with intelligence can tell you, raw data are NOT intelligence. Data must be analyzed before it's folded into intelligence. That's what analysts do, which wasn't Snowden's job. It looks as if he just roamed around the system and downloaded anything that looked like it might be of interest. If he did this over a period of months, he could collect a lot. As Marie pointed out, somebody whose job was to supervise him didn't. Whether or not that's what he did, we obviously don't know. Since he did get away with stuff, he's obviously clever enough to cover his tracks.
Did he tell us stuff we as citizens need to know? Yes. Did he tell us stuff we didn't need to know, such as spying on foreign nations? Yes. I'm sure Angela Merkel is going to shut down German's foreign intelligence network, now that Snowden's outed NSA. <snark>
NSA obviously (to me) needs reform. It looks out of control. I'm afraid that they've created something that has a mind of its own. "The NSA even conceded to Walton in 2009 that “from a technical standpoint, there was no single person who had a complete understanding” of the technical “architecture” of NSA’s phone data collection." Who knows how this has metastasized since then?
James,
I served, for a nearly a decade as a sysadmin for a large and very famous corporation. It wasn't my primary job but because I was part of a somewhat experimental group and because I had a pretty extensive background in the area, I was handed the keys to the kingdom. I could log on to any box in the group, even from home. My job was mostly to ensure that proprietary software I was helping to develop was working properly. Eventually I was asked to help troubleshoot networking problems. Anything I couldn't fix would get kicked upstairs to the IT gods in Asgard. Those dudes could go everywhere, and although this wasn't the NSA, security was enormously important. There were plenty of reasons it was necessary for admins to go in quickly without impedence to fix and investigate problems, reasons Occam would appreciate.
And Marie, techs logging onto your laptop remotely in a remote session or through something like TeamViewer can't slip in anytime they like and root around, largely because most of them are just that: techs. Most help desk people at Best Buy or AT&T are not hacker gods but that doesn't mean those people aren't out there.
Quinnipiac poll released today.
Who would you vote for president? Christie 45%, Clinton 40%
Do you think Christie would make a good president? yes 46%
Do you think Clinton would make a good president? yes 53%
WTF?