Spotty internet access

My internet access was almost non-existant last night and is terribly spotty this morning so far. If you don't hear from me for awhile - that's why. We'll see how it goes.

President Obama responds to the "Bush light" crowd

One of the things I've been doing for over 5 years is watching President Obama closely - trying to get a feel for who he is and how he approaches his job. In other words, I listen carefully to what he says and does.

I'd suggest that a lot of people on both the left and right don't do that and - as I said the other day - simply project onto him their own expectation of politicians. Doing so means that many on the left would have missed what he said when Charlie Rose asked him how he responds to those who say he is simply "Bush light" on national security issues.

I think its fair to say that there are going to be folks on the left - and now what amuses me is folks on the right who were fine when it was a republican president but now Obama's coming in with the black helicopters - who are not yet going to be satisfied. I've got to tell you though Charlie, I think this is a healthy thing because its a sign of maturity that this debate would not have been taking place 5 years ago. And I welcome it. I really do because - contrary to what some people think - the longer I'm in this job the more I believe on the one hand, that most folks in government are trying to do the right thing. They work really hard, they're really dedicated...On the other hand, what I also believe is its useful to have a bunch of critics out there who are checking government power and who are making sure we are doing things right so that if we've triple-checked how we're operating any one of these programs, lets go quadruple-check it. I'm comfortable with that and I'm glad to see that we are starting to do that.

Frankly, given how hard many of us have worked to challenge those critics (albeit mostly for their distortions), this response came as a bit of a surprise to me. But it shouldn't have.

What he's doing here is offering the very same outstretched hand to his critics on the left that they have so vilified him for offering to the right. The question is whether or not they are any more prepared to take it. Is their aim simply to find the proof that he is a liar? Or do they want to have a discussion about these issues? If its the latter, President Obama is saying he welcomes that conversation.

He can do that because he is not being driven by his ego or his own personal agenda - he's not an ideologue. He is a pragmatist looking for solutions. In addition, he knows that when it comes to bad actors in a discussion like this, conciliatory rhetoric can be a ruthless strategy.

One way to deal with that kind of bad-faith opposition is to draw the person in, treat them as if they were operating in good faith, and draw them into a conversation about how they actually would solve the problem. If they have nothing, it shows. And that's not a tactic of bipartisan Washington idealists -- it's a hard-nosed tactic of community organizers, who are acutely aware of power and conflict.

Its fascinating to watch him take this approach - not just with the right - but now with his critics on the left. It makes one wonder whether or not the latter will respond with any more maturity than the former.

Snowden-chat

After all the accusations and hysteria, most of what Edward Snowden leaked turns out to be one big nothingburger. Over a week ago, I quoted the analogy used by Mark Ambinder to demonstrate what's actually going on.

One official likened the NSA's collection authority to a van full of sealed boxes that are delivered to the agency. A court order, similar to the one revealed by the Guardian, permits the transfer of custody of the "boxes." But the NSA needs something else, a specific purpose or investigation, in order to open a particular box...

In the government's eyes, the data is simply moving from one place to another. It does not become, in the government's eyes, relevant or protected in any way unless and until it is subject to analysis. Analysis requires that second order.

And the government insists that the rules allowing the NSA or the FBI to analyze anything relating to U.S. persons or corporations are strict, bright-line, and are regularly scrutinized to ensure that innocents don't get caught up in the mix.

Today in his on-line chat, Snowden basically said the same thing.

More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time.

So the restrictions that keep the government from listening to your private communication are policy based rather than technically based - DUH. I'm sure there are lots of things the government could "technically" do - but they are prohibited by policy.

If you want to freak out about what the government MIGHT do if the policies changed, you can go join Snowden in the crazy corner. Otherwise, lets call in the fat lady to sing...this one is OVER by Snowden's own admission.

Busy day today...late night

I'm going to be busy with other things today so I don't have time to write much. I'll just say that it was interesting being on Twitter the last couple of days and watching the firestorm that erupted over a CNET article claiming that the NSA could listen to American's telephone calls without a warrant. Like so much of what's been written/talked about in the press on this story...turns out it was false. If you're interested in the details, Bob Cesca (once again) has it all. As is my usual wont, I'm especially interested in the big picture conclusions - and I totally agree with Cesca.

Instead of focusing on how we can cut away any government abuses of power, the real story...has become the collapse of journalism. In addition to the sad state of digital journalism, the truly harrowing impact of this trend is the rapid unraveling of activist credibility when, in fact, it’s critical for any effort against government overreach to stand above reproach...That’s why articles like the ones published by Greenwald and McCullagh infuriate me so much. It’s counterproductive and embarrassing to the broader effort. There’s enough fuel without all of the hyperbole to achieve the necessary checks. But when the Cause becomes tainted with so many glaring falsehoods, it becomes too easy to cast the effort as being orchestrated by alarmist crackpots and bug-eyed conspiracy theorists who deal in misinformation to get what they want.

Hmmm...sounds like what I just said a few days ago is still happening. On something as important as this story, its sad to see the sensationalists mining it for clicks and hyping it for their own agenda rather than providing accurate information. I have a hunch that before this is over, some journalistic careers are going to tank spectacularly.

The really big news on all this is that I'm going to have a late night tonight.

Charlie sat down for an exclusive, 45 minute interview with President Obama on Sunday. Airs tonight on PBS at 11pm. pic.twitter.com/fov47MvVoG
— Charlie Rose Show (@CharlieRoseShow) June 17, 2013

It has been confirmed that the discussion was about NSA, etc. I'm glad to see that the President chose a journalist like Rose with such an impeccable reputation. So the big story will be the interpretation of this interview tomorrow...stay tuned.

The Wire: Colvin and Wee-Bay on fatherhood

When it comes to fatherhood, it sometimes comes down to very difficult choices. In this clip from The Wire, Colvin steps up on Namond's (Nay's) behalf. That's pretty righteous. And yet I can't help but think that the real test of fatherhood here is the one faced by Wee-Bay. Powerful stuff!!!

"The character called Barack Obama"

There are a lot of people who are trying to get in President Obama's head these days to interpret his motivation for deciding to supply the Syrian rebels with small arms and ammunitions. As is often the case, Maureen Dowd demonstrates the most noxious element of that genre. Of course she, like some others, thinks the "boy" Barry needed to be "schooled" by the man Clinton (yes, its just that obnoxious).

Folks who aren't into assuming these kinds of decisions resemble a sixth grade playground altercation know that when it comes to Syria - there are no good options. And so I began to think about what I knew about how the President tends to handle those kinds of decisions.

I immediately thought of the article by Michael Lewis published in Vanity Fair back in October 2012 titled Obama's Way. At one point in the article, President Obama comments on the kind of analysis people like Dowd are engaged in.

One of the things you realize fairly quickly in this job is that there is a character people see out there called Barack Obama. That’s not you. Whether it is good or bad, it is not you.

Lewis' article is also helpful in describing the President's decision-making process in a similar situation - whether or not to intervene in Libya. If you're interested in that, I'd suggest you go read page 6 of this rather lengthy article. To summarize, President Obama had a meeting with all "the principals" on his national security team. They presented him with a binary option of either a no-fly zone (which obviously wouldn't work) or doing nothing.

The idea was that the people in the meeting would debate the merits of each, but Obama surprised the room by rejecting the premise of the meeting. “He instantly went off the road map,” recalls one eyewitness. “He asked, ‘Would a no-fly zone do anything to stop the scenario we just heard?’” After it became clear that it would not, Obama said, “I want to hear from some of the other folks in the room.”

Obama then proceeded to call on every single person for his views, including the most junior people.

And then Lewis makes this fascinating observation:

His desire to hear out junior people is a warm personality trait as much as a cool tactic, of a piece with his desire to play golf with White House cooks rather than with C.E.O.’s and basketball with people who treat him as just another player on the court; to stay home and read a book rather than go to a Washington cocktail party; and to seek out, in any crowd, not the beautiful people but the old people. The man has his stat­us needs, but they are unusual. And he has a tendency, an unthinking first step, to subvert established stat­us structures. After all, he became president.

So if Dowd and others think that President Obama bent to the desires of his "daddy" Clinton on the issue of Syria, I'd suggest they're reacting out of their own projection onto a "character called Barack Obama." Reading Lewis will give you a small window into how the man actually operates.

Is it possible to talk about the inequities in our justice system without mentioning race?

I guess it is if you're two white guys.



I post this for two reasons. The first is that it is one of the most blatant examples of white privilege I've ever seen. Even a blue dog like former Senator Jim Webb made the racial inequities of our current criminal justice system the center piece of his attempts at reform. And if you're going to talk about our history, how about discussing the decades when - for all practical purposes - there actually was no justice system for African American...lynching via mob violence was adequate.

My second reason is that this is the backdrop from which many of us are viewing Glenn Greenwald's reporting these days. Its not just that he's blind to his own white privilege, he regularly ignores whole parts of a story in order to bend it to the agenda he wants to promote. Some of us have been watching him do that for years now. Little by little others are beginning to catch on.

My personal thoughts on privacy

All this hysteria about the NSA spying made me ponder my own personal thoughts about privacy. For me, the most annoying part of this technological era is the spam emails and phone calls I get due to the fact that my private contact information is so widely shared. I'm pretty vigilant about not giving that information out (yes, even if it means losing out on a discount at Target) and I unsubscribe regularly. But overall its an annoyance more than any real threat.

I'm pretty addicted to online shopping - mostly because I HATE the alternative of shopping by foot. So I can live with the fact that sites I've visited generate ads on blogs I read. I figure this kind of information has to be paid for somehow, doesn't it?

And like many of you, I live a supremely boring life. I can't even imagine anyone wanting information about that. And if they get it - they better have stocked up on coffee to keep them awake.

But there are two issues that remain for me in all this. We know that government (state and local even more than national) has a real penchant for profiling when they're looking for the "bad guys." When that gets attached to things like race or religion, I'll get missed. But a lot of innocent people won't. So the place it seems to me that we need to be vigilant is on the issue of what criteria law enforcement is using to profile.

The other issue - not directly related to privacy - is the one that could really scare me. Interestingly enough, its about the one Greenwald "scoop" that has gotten zero attention...cyber-attacks. The reason no one paid attention to it is that there was one giant "Duh" that reverberated around the world when he documented what the Obama administration is doing. As almost every part of our daily lives has become dependent on functioning computer internet activity, its clear that the civilized world would come to a halt if that was disrupted for a significant period of time. YIKES!

But the backdrop to all of this is really more about a HUGE cultural change on the issue of privacy. As we all know, the WWII folks are sometimes called the "silent generation." That's because there was an overall belief that you kept things to yourself and went about your own business. That is clearly no longer the norm. As I've posted before, Al Giordano nailed this one over 3 years ago. He called it the New Exhibitionism.

The democratization of public or semi-public exhibitionism has thrown traditional concerns about “personal privacy” out the window. Who needs the CIA anymore when everybody is out there blurting the kinds of secrets it used to take surveillance to discover? Privacy didn’t disappear because Big Brother took it away. We gave it away! Freely! It fell aside to a greater impulse: the need to expose ourselves in public, to have an audience, and to keep it...

The rest of us might yearn for days gone by when privacy existed, but the impulse to expose ourselves has simply proved a stronger human instinct. To every man and woman, a stage, and an audience: Welcome to the New Exhibitionism!

As someone who has claimed a tiny piece of that stage on the assumption that a couple of people might be interested in my political musings, I have to embrace the label of exhibitionist. There's no immunity for me on that one.

In the span of about 50 years, we've gone from a cultural expectation of silence to one of exhibitionism. Any discussion of privacy needs to take that huge shift into account.

Facebook news (updated)

Just to let you know, I finally bit the bullet and started a Smartypants Facebook page. Come visit ;)

While doing that I noticed something interesting. Check out the cover photo on the OFA Facebook page.

It makes me wonder how many of the people who are screaming about government surveillance are actually busy organizing people to try to do something about it. I constantly hear people saying that President Obama quoted that line from FDR about "make me do it." Its interesting that he has also given us a tool to do just that. So if you don't like what the Patriot Act has authorized the government to do - join OFA and start organizing to get it repealed.

Finally Facebook published some interesting information about their involvement in surveillance.

For the six months ending December 31, 2012, the total number of user-data requests Facebook received from any and all government entities in the U.S. (including local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests) – was between 9,000 and 10,000. These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat. The total number of Facebook user accounts for which data was requested pursuant to the entirety of those 9-10 thousand requests was between 18,000 and 19,000 accounts.

With more than 1.1 billion monthly active users worldwide, this means that a tiny fraction of one percent of our user accounts were the subject of any kind of U.S. state, local, or federal U.S. government request (including criminal and national security-related requests) in the past six months. We hope this helps put into perspective the numbers involved, and lays to rest some of the hyperbolic and false assertions in some recent press accounts about the frequency and scope of the data requests that we receive.

First of all, they've made clear that its not just the NSA getting access to Facebook accounts. This also seems to be pretty common practice among state and local law enforcement. But even with all that, it involves "a tiny fraction of one percent" of the user accounts. Whether or not we want that to happen is the question on the table right now. But I agree with them...lets get over these hyperbolic false assertions.

UPDATE: It appears that is not the official OFA site I linked to above. Sorry.

The United States of America

In case you missed the story behind this, you can read it here.

Have you ever wondered what life is like for a child whose parent is in jail?

If not, don't worry - you're not alone.

Because of the work I do in a nonprofit whose mission is "to redirect youth who are starting to get in trouble at home, at school or with the law," I think about it a lot since that is the experience of many of them. It's no surprise that children tend to follow in the footsteps of their parents. And our criminal justice system is filled with inequities that ensure that - as much as possible - the experience is one that affects "those" children rather than "ours."

• African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population 
• African Americans are incarcerated at nearly six times the rate of whites 
• Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population
• According to Unlocking America, if African American and Hispanics were incarcerated at the same rates of whites, today's prison and jail populations would decline by approximately 50%
• One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime 
• 1 in 100 African American women are in prison 
• Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).

If considering the impact of those inequities on children is something you're interested in learning about, please take a couple of minutes to watch this powerful performance by Daniel Beaty.

One thing we have to do to change all this is to fight the inequities that lead to this kind of experience for the little Daniel's of the world.
But for too many black and brown children, that change isn't coming fast enough. We also need to reach out to them to ensure that we hear their pain and are there to support them in making their own choices.   That's why its a BFD that Sesame Street is weighing in on something that so deeply affects "those" children. They have developed a tool kit called Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration. I must admit that I teared up a good bit as I looked around that web page and watched some of the videos. On behalf of lots of little ones who don't have much of a voice in our system, I want to say a gigantic THANK YOU to Sesame Street for this one.

How ideologues sabotage their own cause

Today's must-reads on the NSA story come to us from Extreme Liberal and (once again) Bob Cesca.

Extreme Liberal does a great job of breaking down The Top 5 Exaggerations by Glenn Greenwald on NSA. In order to get the level of hyperbole we're dealing with here, you need to read all 5 points, so its impossible to summarize. Just go read the whole thing.

Bob Cesca points out that - due to all this hyperbole - even The Nation and Mother Jones writers have recognized that what Greenwald reported is full of holes. But then Cesca gets to the heart of what is going on here.

Greenwald’s stubbornness and Snowden’s foolishness are actually self-destructive to what they’re attempting to achieve. As I’ve written from day one, credibility will make or break not only this story, but anyone who chooses to blindly latch their own credibility to it. If Greenwald was truly interested in the endurance of this story, he would’ve stowed his ego and done whatever was necessary to preserve its integrity as well as his own reputation...Instead, the widening holes in this story could indicate Peak Greenwald.

Those of us who have followed Greenwald in the past knew immediately when he "broke" this story to be wary and ask a lot of questions. And now slowly but surely, others in the media are catching on (with some fan boys/girls still not willing to question).

The pattern many of us have seen is that ideologues tend to lead with their agenda (ie, "people in power always lie") and then go looking for anything that supports that agenda.  This is what might be called an anti-scientific method. We've come to accept it as the approach of the lunatic right. But many are finding themselves a bit surprised that its alive and well on the other side of the continuum. Having questioned my way out of a right wing mindset only to find similar ideologues on the left means that I totally sympathized with this tweet from Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.

I didn't break away from the wingnut crowd just to join an equally absolutist movement on the left.
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) June 13, 2013

This is what makes me feel comfortable and secure as a pragmatist when the storms of hysteria rage. As long as there are people who are willing to ask questions and go where the facts lead them (rather than the opposite), the ideologues on both sides of the political continuum will ultimately burn out and fail.

Guardian poll reporter: Its working!

Harry Enten reports on polling for the US edition of the Guardian. Here's his headline today: Polls show Obama's real worry: NSA leaks erode trust in government. After summarizing some polling numbers, he says this:

When the IRS and Associated Press scandals first broke, I pointed out that the one factor that predicts election results better than consumer sentiment is trust in government.

I'm going to stop right there for a moment because Enten left out an important point. Of course we all know that "trust in government" predicts election results...in favor of Republicans! And so, he goes on to point out how these faux scandals are affecting that.

Trust in government after these scandals has been falling. In the recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 55% of Americans said the IRS targeting made them doubt the "overall honesty and integrity" of the Obama administration. Only 48% of voters in Fox News poll taken after the release of the NSA information said Obama was "honest and trustworthy" – the lowest level the poll ever recorded. More than a third (35%) of voters believe the administration has been less open than previous administrations – a record high.

In light of the public's negative reaction to the NSA leaks, trust in government could fall further.

So low information voters hear screaming headlines about the IRS targeting you and NSA spying on you. But as the details roll out to either discredit these headlines or suggest that things are more complex than that, major media gets bored and cable news spins. That's the reality into which Snowden dropped his leaks - complete with all the hysteria and obfuscation Greenwald could muster. Enten is suggesting that the outcome is a Libertarian/Republican dream come true.

Are we gonna sit back and let that happen?

NSA story demonstrates why the media is in trouble

Like many of you political junkies out there, I watched Chris Hayes interview Glenn Greenwald on his MSNBC show last night. I heard Greenwald continue to talk about a discrepancy between the government and the tech companies on how the PRISM program works.

Greenwald: Our story is that there is a discrepancy between the relationship that these, that the private sector and the government has, in terms of what the NSA claims and what the technology companies claim.

Greenwald says the slides he published demonstrate that the NSA has direct access to Facebook, Google, etc. company's servers and just goes in and grabs private data at will. The tech companies deny that happens. So we need to get to the bottom of who is lying.

Chris Hayes not only didn't challenge him, he ran with that characterization in other stories later in the show.

Trouble is - prior to that interview I had also been reading folks like Bob Cesca and Little Green Footballs. So not only did I know that the New York Times had debunked the whole idea that the NSA had "direct" or "backdoor" access to the servers of the tech companies, they:

...described a process whereby the various tech companies, after receiving a FISA court approved request from the NSA and vetting it through their legal departments, gather the information and post it in a virtual “mailbox” for the NSA to retrieve: “It is not sent automatically or in bulk, and the government does not have full access to company servers. Instead, they said, it is a more secure and efficient way to hand over the data.”

I also knew that even the Guardian - where Greenwald works - had walked back his claims about the NSA having direct access.

This is a great example of how the internet - despite all its issues with privacy - has broken down the hold commercial media has on what we know. As I watched Chris Hayes last night, I recognized that I knew more about this part of the story than he did. And that means his credibility is damaged.

The major networks have moved on from this story. They all had Greenwald on to make his outrageous claims and then got bored with the whole thing. Cable networks like Fox News and MSNBC are running with their spin on the story. But if you really want to inform yourself beyond the sensational headlines - the information is out there. And the more you get it - the less you trust what they're selling. That's one of the big reasons why they're in trouble.

Photo of the Day: Immigration is about families

In a protest, Renata Teodoro, right, and her mother, Gorete Borges Teodoro, who was deported in 2007, met at a Mexican border fence.

You can read more about Renata and Gorete's story here.