Feinstein Publicly Accuses C.I.A. of Spying on Congress
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Feinstein has been one of the biggest apologists[0] for violations of civil liberties, government surveillance, and (both) executive and judicial overreach. Suddenly, the tables are turned on her (however briefly) and she's not so happy with the way it feels.
Call me a cynic, but I'll wait to feel sorry for her until she actually backtracks on all of these despicable practices.
[0] Actually, I don't think it's even fair to say that - she's been a downright advocate of a whole number of nasty practices.
Same thing with Angela Merkel, she didn't even address the Snowden documents until they showed that her phone had been tapped, every German except her? No problem!
The fact that they would go this far with one of their biggest allies only goes to show how little respect they have for any kind of legal constraints on their mission.
I wouldn't be surprised if she was targeted because she was a conniving blocker who was using the position to her own personal advantage and the intel community wanted leverage over her position.
It makes total sense!you may be close to the truth here.
Well, she'd like to give us all a pretty liberal helping of surveillance...
"I will not vote for her again. Anyone but her."
This is an odd time to have reached that point; I don't see anything objectionable about her complaint here, or even its relationship with what her earlier positions (which I oppose).
I decided there was someone worse based on her HP record...
That said, even among politicians there is a sense of borders. And that the Senator has found that they are interpreted differently by others isn't a huge surprise. I still hope to get her out of the Senate at her next election cycle.
FWIW, it was proposed and supported by Abel Maldonado, who is a GOP politician, and it was opposed by the state Democratic party.
The notion being "this wasn't forced through by the majority party", and it might therefore be more "fair"?
I voted no on that one, for whatever it's worth.
Basically, most offices (but not Presidential elections) in California now have what is really the general election as the "primary", with a potential runoff as the "general election" if needed.
In anything actually contested, I wouldn't think it common. Feinstein had almost four times the votes of any challenger in the primary, and still did not have a majority.
I expect it would be more common for more local and/or more obscure offices, but I don't know at all just how common.
Its early enough that the political strategies and funding streams haven't really adapted to it yet, so I'd be cautious in generalizing either way from the experience so far with the new system.
That being said, AFAIK, there have been very few, if any, first round majorities so far in the offices that used to have party primaries.
An important point, to be sure.
Obviously, if ballot access or funds are still apportioned based on general election results, that's inappropriate.
No, since there is a big difference between reducing a person enough in a general to lose versus keeping them from being one of the top two.
"Obviously, if ballot access or funds are still apportioned based on general election results, that's inappropriate."
Which they would be. Plus, party collusion that happens (see federal election commission) pretty much locks a third party out of the general.
In 2012, keeping Emken from being in the top two in the primary would have required removing 278,800 votes. Giving Emken the victory in the primary would have required removing 3,098,000 votes.
To the degree that this is typical, I would say that there is a big difference but it favors spoilers.
"Which they would be."
What do you mean "would be"? This isn't hypothetical - is that the case in CA or isn't it? If it is, then it's a strong objection. If it isn't then it's an objection to a system that doesn't exist.
"Plus, party collusion that happens (see federal election commission) pretty much locks a third party out of the general."
Agreed, I just don't think this is a strong example of that.
I believe the math favors the two parties on primaries because they can pay to mobilize.
I'm not a lawyer, but I do believe CA has election considerations (and laws) based on how folks do in the general.
It sounds very much like the Democrats feared a Nader and the Republicans feared a Perot or Tea Party challenger. It solidifies the people who own the machines.
1) how that 5% was wasted in the next general is not really much of a debate
Actually, its, at least superficially, the reverse -- California replaced traditional partisan primaries with non-partisan "open primaries". Under the old partisan primary system, the general election featured the winners of the partisan primaries plus qualified non-party candidates, under the new non-partisan primary system the "primary" is a poorly-named open general election run using majority/runoff, if no candidate wins a majority in the "primary", a so-called "general election" is held which is actually a runoff election between the top two vote winners from the "primary".
Now, if you said the general elections held in the spring (they aren't "primaries" in the usual sense and shouldn't be called that) should use ranked ballots voting and select the Condorcet winner with tie-breaker elections held in the fall, where necessary, as FPTP elections between the members of the Smith set of the spring elections, I'd agree that might be a worthwhile improvement.
I recognize that ranked methods have some substantial benefits over approval voting, but there are drawbacks. Considering just the theoretical benefits and drawbacks in this context, I would agree with a preference for ranked methods. However, when we consider the complexity (and resulting decrease in transparency) I've come to prefer approval. Even so, I wouldn't strongly object to a ranked method.
It is because "approval", unlike relative preference, doesn't have a consistent meaning across different ballots (which is why it isn't a poor choice in open-ballots where it has a defined meaning, like a commitment to opt-in to the result where otherwise there is an option to opt-out.)
> I particularly reject any implication (if present) that plurality should be preferred to it.
Plurality is also a bad choice for most political elections. Or, for that matter, most elections of any kind. But if you are changing from plurality, approval is about the worst change you could make other than ones that could only be deliberately malicious (e.g., modifying plurality to elect the candidate with the lowest number of first place preference votes.)
> Considering just the theoretical benefits and drawbacks in this context, I would agree with a preference for ranked methods. However, when we consider the complexity (and resulting decrease in transparency) I've come to prefer approval.
I personally have no problem with democracy requiring expecting citizens to deal with concepts more complex than approval voting, since, actually, most of the things they are voting on are things more complex than approval voting.
There is a technical sense in which that's correct, but you're reading more into it than is there. Both approval and ranked choice methods have consistent meaning across ballots when the meaning is taken to be the impact on the election. Neither method expresses how much one candidate is preferred to another.
"Plurality is also a bad choice for most political elections. Or, for that matter, most elections of any kind. But if you are changing from plurality, approval is about the worst change you could make[.]"
I'm not sure I strongly disagree with this, when considering only the act of voting and the theoretical results. I do see the gap between plurality and approval, here, as far larger than the gap between approval and ranked choice (plurality is both a scoring method and a ranked method and so has all the theoretical problems of both). And I do think that other practical concerns are tremendously significant and favor approval (as I mentioned in the previous comment and elaborate on below) over ranked methods.
"I personally have no problem with democracy requiring expecting citizens to deal with concepts more complex than approval voting, since, actually, most of the things they are voting on are things more complex than approval voting."
First and most trivially: otherwise accepting your argument here, your comparison shouldn't be to the complexity of approval voting, but to the complexity of the proposed alternative.
Second (most significantly), I don't mean, mostly, "O NOES VOTERS WILL GET CONFUSED". I mean that counting ranked choice ballots is tremendously ugly compared to counting approval ballots. You have 10 candidates? You're tallying instances of 3.6 million possible ballots! The number that will actually be represented will surely be a fraction of that, but even so this is going to involve more (and uglier) mistakes and more opportunities for fraud (and appearance of fraud) because the system is so much more complicated. Further, running statistical analysis of IRV elections is, in practice, significantly harder than doing the same of other methods (say my connections in opinion research) though this could arguably be a feature.
Third, just because we're hoping they're able to deal with more complex issues doesn't mean adding complexity is a good thing. Complexity typically stacks. If there is a maximum complexity people can deal with, adding more in one place is going to reduce the amount they deal effectively with elsewhere.
Given that its California, "primary challenge" is a meaningless phrase for anything but a Presidential race.
If you mean something else, please elaborate.
It means "primary challenge" (which refers to an intra-party run in a partisan primary with a segregated pool of cnadidates) is a meaningless distinction when running against someone, since any time you run for an office, it means running in the general, non-partisan pool of candidates in the "primary" election.
edit: i grew up as a republican, but i hate where the party is now. i'm not sure which party would make the most sense, because i like some of the republican rhetoric - limited govt, lower taxes - but their implementation of it is terrible. in my experiences both parties support huge companies with different reasons.
i worked at microsoft and google, twilio and uber. i did electronic trading for two years before joining the startup scene, and was cto of a small gaming startup that was acquired.
i think my personal story is compelling, and i'd campaign on a platform of honesty. if you look me up online, you'd find all this "incriminating" shit on me, and i'd just say "yes that's because i'm human". i went from serious student with no social skills, to struggling drug addict with serious mental health issues, to solidly turning my life around after learning people skills, as a result of an obsession with P vs NP.
i think it's extremely unlikely that anyone will be electable in 50 years if there _aren't_ pictures of them doing ridiculous things online. nobody will trust you otherwise. i'm hoping to get that party started now.
Its like watching a horrific massive car crash at national scale.
In any event, though, it's not the best way of fighting this issue since it can't make any difference for more than 4 years.
To do those things (recruit volunteers, bring in donations, get attention) you need to start in advance by networking, building contacts and gathering favors. You should get involved now in the local House race or a county/statehouse race to start that process or at least to get familiar with the political process or how people commonly run campaigns. A lot of people sort of subscribe to the notion that politics is or should be simple, but the reality is that you have to know what you're doing to be effective. Charisma and ideas only get you so far.
The novelty/outsider schtick, alone, rarely does much for a candidate unless they are also a well-known non-political celebrity, and youth isn't all that powerful a selling point. You need a message, and you don't yet seem to have a compelling one.
> i'm not sure which party would make the most sense
Which suggests that you're currently pretty far from the level of political sophistication that it would require to function effectively as a Senator. That's not an insurmountable barrier.
> i think my personal story is compelling, and i'd campaign on a platform of honesty. if you look me up online, you'd find all this "incriminating" shit on me, and i'd just say "yes that's because i'm human".
That's perhaps a nice way to deflect potential attacks, but its far from even the beginning of a platform. "I don't lie about my past" doesn't tell anyone anything about what you'd do as Senator.
- add two new brackets to capital gains taxes. positions held for more than 5 years pay 5% capital gains taxes, to encourage long term investment. positions held for less than a week pay 50% capital gains taxes, to reduce churn.
- use a shortest splitline algorithm to make congressional districts fair
- lower the voting age to 16.
--
1a. Of course the Silicon Valley tech elite want to cut capital gains tax - they already offshore American jobs and American incomes through tax loopholes. This is just the latest in a long line of attempts to escape contributing their fair share to our state and cities. And the candidates suggestion of a week-long tax bracket has no bearing on reality, it will simply increase the complexity for already strained small businesses and make it harder for them to hire and expand our economy.
1b. The candidate has proposed a radical restructuring of our tax system to include time worked at a company - something already accounted for by raises due to hard work - making it expensive for California's workforce to move to better jobs. That sounds un-American to me. The candidate has yet to show a single shred of solid independent evidence that this is even a problem, let alone that he has a solution for it.
2. Here we have a first-time candidate suggesting that we simply redraw the political map of California - again. I'm sure that he and his party won't personally benefit of course. Let's not forget, the Citizens Redistricting Commission just finished their work a couple of years ago on the taxpayer's dollar, and California now has some of the most competitive districts in the nation. We should focus on real issues facing our state, not tweaking lines on a map.
3. America is a great democracy, the greatest the world has seen. We have to make sure we take care of that, and steward it for the future. Lowering the voting age might seem noble, but it opens the floodgates to coercion, to intimidation in schools and homes. We should focus instead on engaging our young people with civic duty and the political process.
I'd read the proposal as "[short/long] positions", not "[job] positions". I'm curious to know which the parent intended.
Note that the argument that someone younger doesn't really understand the consequences of their actions etc. - whether right or wrong - is severely diminished by a representative system where the candidates must be older, combined with a system where, if, say, the voting age is lowered to 16, the 16 and 17 year olds are extremely unlikely to skew the results so much that the candidates elected end up being someone that isn't also believed to be suitable by a large percentage of 18+ voters. So the potential "damage" if 16 and 17 year olds all decide to vote completely and utterly irrationally is quite limited.
But unless there is concrete evidence that 16 and 17 year olds objectively will make substantially less informed choices in an election than other groups we let vote, why is it any more acceptable to disenfranchise a 16 year old than it was to disenfranchise 18 year olds? Or blacks? Or people who didn't own land?
The burden of proof should be on those who wants the limit set higher to justify, with evidence, why specific groups needs to be/remain disenfranchised.
All countries have constraints based on mental competency. The point is that a typical 16 year old (and yes, probably 15 year olds too) are well above the mental capacity where we still allow adults to vote.
The current age limits are not justified with any evidence of that the group is substantially less competent to make the relevant choices than many other subsets of the population that we don't hesitate to allow to vote. If someone for example started arguing for iq tests, or a test on knowledge of current affairs, it would be exceedingly hard to put the barrier low enough to not exclude any enfranchised adults, and you'd almost certainly end up including children well below the age of 16 (e.g. political youth parties in many countries have a lower age of 14, some even lower, and you'll find people in those organisations that are schooled in political science beyond what most adults ever will be).
This would not extend to 1 day old babies because a 1 day old baby lack the ability to make any kind of informed choice. In fact, a 1 day old baby lack the physical ability to observe the alternatives and indicate a choice. They would be excluded by any kind of mental competency standard.
Where exactly to draw the line would be hard, but expect it to drop substantially over time, as it already has.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Voting_ages.png shows that the vast majority of countries have settled on 18 with a handful for 16, 17, 19, 20, 21.
The major source of political pressure behind the 26th amendment (and, yes, nationally lowering the voting age for all elections takes a Constitutional amendment) was that 18 was the age of conscription and, well, Vietnam.
Here in the UK, politicians often take money from students and young people, while leaving older people untouched or better off - because older people are allowed to vote, and have high voter turnout. I could run with a policy of "I will double university prices to cut taxpayer subsidy... taking effect in three years" and nobody who bore the costs of the policy would be able to vote against it.
Of course, given that the main beneficiaries are people who can't currently vote, the policy might not be a vote-winner.
What I would do on capital gains is end the favored treatment of carried interest; that's income, and should be taxed as such.
Ending jerrymandering, sure. (I'm not sure of the technically best way to do that, but you could make an argument based on territory or some deterministic population metric. The problem is there enough plausible fair deterministic methods which turn out in various ways that the question of which one we use could be a debate. I'd actually like to see an evaluation of sortition instead of election for many roles.
The voting age issue is kind of irrelevant IMO, but in general a push to mail-in ballots (to improve voter turnout) would be good.
So, reward the megacapitalists that are most able to hold long term positions, but penalize people who get equity-based compensation (like stock options) that can't afford to hold it long term by taxing it far heavier than even the top rate for regular income?
> use a shortest splitline algorithm to make congressional districts fair
Blind, perhaps, but fair? And, as a federal mandate, replacing the judgements of the citizens of many states --including California, which might be important to consider if you are running to represent California in the Senate -- that have already adopted non-partisan commissions to solve the threat of partisan districting? That's a good way to hurt your chances of getting elected with a proposal that would go over like a lead brick even if you did get elected.
> lower the voting age to 16.
What's the argument for this? Politically, you'd better have a good one, because without it its a good way to threaten to reduce the voting power of the people you are asking to vote for you in order to appeal to people that won't be able to vote for you until after you win, at best.
To be elected Senator from California over an insanely powerful incumbent? No.
Put your energy into helping someone with better chances.
Indeed, the tech concept of "startup cred" is essentially meaningless. It means you know how to launch a company and perhaps sell the company but says nothing about your ability to make it profitable or to maintain its profitability. When you're running a government, you can't just sell it or bail--you have to keep going. In this regard, many voters could even view serial startup experience as a negative.
The idea that you can get elected just by direct influence of the citizens is not well founded. :-). So when I was doing this and got more serious (I had permission from Google for a 2 year leave of absence if elected) I talked with some political consultants, and their input was that like jobs, politicians have a resume and a 'trail' which is to say they do simpler, smaller, roles and the people around them develop a notion of what it is like to work with them. It is that credibility that allows people to believe you can serve them if you are elected. So if you want to run for congress, you should ideally get a job that exposes you to the politicos in your area so they are at least somewhat aware of your existence. That also shows that you can do the scut work of being a politician, and for any job above a certain level of influence (city supervisor, county supervisor) it will inform on how you can be influenced.
Easier to launch a run for the Senate as the former Mayor of San Francisco for example, than it is to launch it as "Oh hey, I can do this! Vote for me." guy with no name recognition. Not that the latter is impossible, but Meg Whitman shows that someone with a ton of money can be beat by a better political record.
Heh, for me the defining moment of that campaign was Whitman waxing rhapsodic about how she wanted to bring California back to how wonderful it was when she first got here. And someone pointed out that, when she first got here, her opponent was Governor.
Can you find those locations on an unlabeled map?
California is a big state, with lots of constituents with lots of different needs. You'd represent them all.Do you know what those needs are?
Most of them couldn't care less about youth or startup experience.
Open your mind!
Every one should run for office at least once. How politicians behave is obvious once you've campaigned.
I will support (contribute) to any young, progressive candidate, with bonus points for female and minority, provided that candidate has:
taken training (e.g. Camp Wellstone, Institute for a Democratic Future)
has worked on policy (lobbied) or campaigns
does not use one of the bottom feeder campaign consultants
I don't even care of the candidates I support has a chance of winning. I'm motivated by increasing participation and building the farm team of future leaders.
Running for office is not a light decision. It's a marathon that will wear you down.
Challenging a US Senator out of the gate is ambitious. On the positive side, the loyal opposition will champion you. And as a vanity candidate (sorry), you'll be able to say whatever you want (ala "Bulworth").
That's a long wait. She is not up for re-election until 2018.
Monticore never turned on Roy.
[0] http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20742412,00.html
"There was a lot more going on in the Foreign Intelligence Committee case than the news would talk about. The intelligence community had no intention of harming them or even implicating them (if the community had they would have been dead), Senator Feinstein herself says that the NSA, the intelligence community, tried to protect her. And I've read other articles that say the intelligence community was stressed because of the situation and in particular the way the public was acting. I've als read articles that said if the public hadn't reacted to the NSA's actions, that Senator Feinstein would be much better off. The committee around her panicked and the intelligence community went into defend the Senator mode, unfortunately trouncing the constitution in the process."
Anyone who thinks that this is the equivalent of the NSA sweeping up all of the "metadata" don't know enough about technology to be making policy decisions IMO.
People like the President and senior Senators get daily briefings from the intelligence community. Part of that is to keep these folks apprised about what is up. Another part is to keep the paranoia level up so that these people see threats everywhere.
The "intelligence community" is a modern analog to the Guardians in Plato's republic. The natural question to ask is "Who watches the watchmen?" Feinstein's reaction answers that question.
nobody,so much for checks and b... (I'm tempted to say b like bullsh_t)
There is nothing like that on the planet now, and nothing like it on any medium or even long-range trend. And yet our military spending in constant dollars is within a whisker of the Cold War peak when we were throwing money at SDI.
A good first step would be to cut budgets in these areas very deeply. That would simplify watching many fewer watchers.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NKVD
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_...
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KGB
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_the_Sovi...
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Pact_invasion_of_Czechos...
We declared the Russians to be the main enemy during the cold war, and devoted considerable resources to spying on them. We recorded personal phone calls, leveraged any information to get more info, etc. We probably spied on undesirables who were suspected "communists" in the US as well. If you were in the bubble of the "intelligence community", you had no problem with that.
Fast forward to 2014. The enemy isn't a nation but an activity -- "terrorism" (maybe "drugs" as well). Because that activity can happen anywhere, the scope of the "enemy" changed from hostile nations to ANYONE. Someone like Feinstein, who is a patriot, is deeply affected when she realizes that she, too is the enemy.
In a decade all these spy programs will primarily be used for government tracking and business/corporate espionage, strange they thought Congress would be excluded. Either that or she is taking a lead on this to squash it as a false enemy of it.
You haven't been around the block enough yet.
None of this is surprising, because Feinstein falls under a psychopath narcissism profile altogether with scumbags like Bloomberg ("we need to ban guns" [while I will have 15 armed body guards walking with me everywhere]), Turner ("we need a China policy of one child" [while I have five]), Gore ("our carbon footprint will kill us [while I fly my personal jet that generates as much green gases as all the air trips of one human being combined over the span of his life]), and many many others. Its been hidden in plain sight that those people wants all those rules BUT for other people, not for them.
So while Feinstein fails to realize blanked over 300,000,000 cellphones is as clear violation of constitution as it gets, she will assume every citizen is a terrorist.... except Majesty herself!
I only wish CIA would join the game. They should have used Feinstein own words and first admit they been spying on her, however this is #1) for citizens safety (you know everyone can be a terrorist, INCLUDING Feinstein), #2 tell her like she did tell us that if you dig enough you would find that CIA property IS CIA property and they deem to do with it whatever they desire (like she told us she is surprise anyone is angry, since mass survilence was all nicely written in public bills), and #3 (my favorite): that she shouldn't be worry about it at all, because you know, they have their own Internal Quality Board Committee to oversight survilence and there IS not a smidgen of abuse. I would love to hear that!! After all, what on Earth you think that old hag, her political party, or President himself can do to the most evil but yet most legal Government organisation in the USA.
While I disagree with her point of view on intelligence services, there's nothing hypocritical if she holds the view that their wide remits are important and necessary while still believing that explicitly violating the legal remit of their spying (CIA is explicitly forbidden from engaging in most domestic spying) and spying on the group tasked with the oversight of their spying is one step too far.
If she genuinely believes the intelligence committee is exercising real and important oversight, but that the agencies generally do the right thing, then her reaction makes total sense: Her trust has been utterly betrayed. That's what her speech sounds like - someone like Feinstein openly accusing the CIA of committing crimes is pretty spectacular.
Most of us probably just didn't expect to find out where she'd draw the line. And presumably the CIA didn't either. In that respect this might prove to be a massive misstep for them unless they do masterful damage control, since you're right - she's been one of their staunchest advocates.
She's also powerful, and a hard nail; if she's not satisfied with the way they respond to this, they might very well find they've found a foe they really don't need, as she's one of very few legislators who has a realistic shot of clipping their wings if she decides she needs to.
I don't expect her to fully see the light, but she could make a huge difference even if she gets disillusioned enough with the agencies to simply stop putting spanners in the wheels when other lawmakers tries to make the intelligence agencies more accountable.
Keep in mind that the NSA's surveillance has already been ruled unlawful by both courts and committees appointed by the government that supervises the NSA.
So in both cases, "legal remit" was violated. She only feels this violation when it comes to herself.
We call this hypocrisy.
She can consider the intelligence committee to be in a special position on the basis of its oversight responsibility: Even if every other person on the planet is fair game, she can still hold that the CIA has gone to far when conducting surveillance against the intelligence committee without being hypocritical just on the basis of a belief that it violates the ability of Congress to carry out its mandated oversight role. The arguments she has made about separation of powers etc. are all in line with a line of thinking that makes this a special case.
> She can consider herself (the intelligence committee) to be in a special position on the basis of her own (its) oversight responsibility ..
I.e. you're not really saying much of anything.
Here's what I think is going on: by being the first to take a position on the CIA's violation of the law, she has become the point person; so now she can do damage control and limit the blowback. She got caught unawares with the Snowden episode, so this time she wants to make sure she's at the front. She is, and always will be, an ardent supporter of NSA/CIA and all the violations they do of our rights.
[0] http://www.politico.com/story/2013/06/dianne-feinstein-on-ns...
by saying "the executive spys on the public generally in a way that acquires only metadata", he's sticking to the facts as admitted so far by these liars.
however, given that the people who are telling us they only acquire metadata, having previously denied it, also tell us they are not performing mass surveillance, use weasel language such as "under this program", redefine words that have sensible meanings such as "collect", it's worth taking the time to criticize someone for repeating their party line.
That somebody has said something may be a fact, but the substance of the content of that speech is not a fact. We have as much evidence that what they say is true as we have evidence that idle speculations that don't contradict the known facts are true. None. None other than what Snowden hands us, rather, which tells us that they are not only willing to lie to us, but excited to come up with new ways to do it.
>If we're willing to speculate without any concern for concrete facts
To be clearer: I don't think that the government is particularly interested in my genome, therefore I don't believe that the government has analyzed my genome. There's no evidence that precognition exists, so I don't believe that there are psychics analyzing me for future crimes. The government is clearly interested in the content of all of my conversations and everything that I read. Let's talk about the possibilities of that, instead.
There are things that the NSA are doing and have done that will never be able to be verified. There are things that I am doing and have done that will never be able to be corroborated, and will leave no evidence. Operating as if that's not a possibility is a denial of reality. Allow the facts to remain indeterminate, rather than relying on the testimony of the accused because you're starving for facts.
Subject lines are clearly not needed for routing.
There's feature creep (a.k.a. slippery slope) at work even for metadata.
The set of metadata used in routing, aka the 'envelope', also contains a return path, which is (normally) used for things like submitting delivery failure reports.
As we've seen in recent commercial data breaches, the collection of a huge amount of data makes a tempting target. The potential abusers of that data, in this case, is not only identity thieves, but foreign governments and "rogue" US employees. Although I'm finding it hard to remember what "rogue" means anymore.
This I actually expected, and I think Feinstein did too; she seems really upset at her staff being threatened.
It just so happens that the current Outside General Counsel for the CIA, Robert Eatinger, is the lawyer who approved the torture tape destruction, and apparently his name is mentioned in the Torture Report 1,600 times for things such as referring SSCI torture investigators to the DOJ for investigation as a method of intimidation.
(Even if this is what happened, it's still very bad; I don't understand how CIA gets to mess with its oversight committee in any way.)
I thought it was an internal CIA report ordered by Panetta while he ran the CIA. The oversight committee became interested in it because it supposedly confirmed transgressions that the CIA was simultaneously denying to the committee.
Somehow the committee came in possession of the report. The CIA is arguing that while viewing computer documents at the CIA,committee investigators hacked the CIA network and obtained the Panetta report.
That sounds overblown to me. The SSCI committee hires from the same general pool as the rest of the Hill -- ambitious PoliSci grads, lawyers, and the like. They pay the same crappy wages too. They aren't getting Kevin Mitnick.
My guess is that some incompetent windows admin didn't set the permissions right and they were able to click on network neighborhood and access the files in question.
So my guess is they applied little care to the oversight committee and handed them a sheet of what not to do, such as attempt to browse external web sites. The staffers did so anyway, and now are "penetrating" the firewall that didn't even exist except on paper. The agency now has a reason to restrain activities of oversight staffers that they didn't have before (for violating policy).
That sounds likely, but that also sounds like incompetence on the CIA's part. It also seems absurd for the CIA to decide what the CIA overseers can see.
Such as setting up file-access auditing on sensitive files, like what they (or Booz Allen Hamilton, their contractor) didn't do? Hard to believe basic Microsoft sysadmin training concepts evade their competency filter.
A tit for tat escalation then followed.
As the article ([1]) puts it:
> All of which is to say the SSCI busted the CIA for lying in their official response to the Committee. And as a result, CIA decided to start accusing the Committee of breaking the law. And now everyone is being called into the Principal’s office for spankings.
There's some other interesting reading at the same site[2] about acting General Counsel of the CIA, Robert Eatinger, who referred the Senate Intelligence Committee investigators for investigation by the DoJ and helped provide legal advice on the destruction of the 'torture tapes'.
Even given this pretty lamentable story, it's still hard to understand Feinstein's new stance on privacy. Perhaps, as some have commented, it's all about getting the committee's report released in time for the elections?
[1] http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/05/operation-stall/
[2] http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/11/robert-eatinger-lawyer-...
That said, I'm impressed the CIA hired outside contractors to sift the millions of documents being reviewed. The oversight committee's access had to be finely constrained, but some it's okay for some Joes and Janes to do the clerical work? Weird.
I know I should be outraged but really all I have is WTF. The head of the Senate oversight committee knew that the CIA had violated multiple laws and did absolutely nothing about it for 4 years. This is oversight? This is what we're all depending on to protect us from an out of control set of military / intelligence / industrial dicks?
Spy on me (Rich Senator who is becoming richer) - it is an OUTRAGE!
These congress critters really need to be a bit more nuanced in their double standards. This is the same person that publicly accused Ed Snowden of Treason [1].
So when we got to know about Large scale spying on the entire American Public for NO Reason - the person who told us about it is a traitor. When they learned about a SPECIFIC case of spying on their staffers there is sudden (manufactured) outrage?
I think she senses the public mood & is trying to use this issue to slink back into "of the people by the people" mode. Real Slimy.
[1] http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/policy-and-strategy/304...
Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America:
"The Senators and Representatives...shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony, and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same...."
Of course, it's a flawed premise from the start, even if Feinstein were earnest. When she effectively shat all over the Fourth and bade Congress take on the role of a secret judiciary in interpreting the Constitution, she opened the door to exactly this type of behavior.
It's pretty amazing to watch someone play with snakes then complain so loudly once bitten.
This being "more wrong" doesn't make the other stuff "not wrong", though.
A scorpion and a frog meet on the bank of a stream and the scorpion asks the frog to carry him across on its back. The frog asks, "How do I know you won't sting me?" The scorpion says, "Because if I do, I will die too."
The frog is satisfied, and they set out, but in midstream, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog feels the onset of paralysis and starts to sink, knowing they both will drown, but has just enough time to gasp "Why?"
Replies the scorpion: "It's my nature..."
From Saturday's NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/us/politics/behind-clash-b...
The room designated for the staff, called the “electronic
reading room,” was a spartan office with tables and
computers set against the walls and a large conference
table in the middle.
...
According to a recent court filing in a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit, the C.I.A. created a “network
share drive” segregated from the main agency network, a
provision intended to allow the committee to work in
private.
...
It is unclear how or when committee investigators
obtained parts of the Panetta review. One official said
that they had penetrated a firewall inside the C.I.A.
computer system that had been set up to separate the
committee’s work area from other agency digital files,
but exactly what happened will not be known until the
Justice Department completes its inquiry.
...
By then, C.I.A. officials had come to suspect that
committee investigators working at the Virginia facility
had seen at least a version of the internal review.
Senior officials at the agency ordered a search of
several years’ worth of digital audit logs that the
C.I.A. uses to monitor its computer systems.
But never let a good disaster go to waste, right?
One wonders what "Dilbert" would have been like if Scott Adams had worked for the government instead of a private company.
The Intelligence committee is just doing a review of the CIA's torture practices, no big deal, largely for purposes of whitewashing the whole thing and sweeping it under the rug.
But then the CIA did something unconscionable and lashed out at the committee, threatening them with being reported to the Justice Department. That's when a red line was crossed and they had no choice but to bring the CIA's horriffic moral crime (not torture, but fucking with the Senate) public.
This is on par with what a child would get disciplined with for cutting in the lunch line. If a civilian would have done this they would have been prosecuted with a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to 30 years in jail.
The way this works is:
1) The CIA violated the law under Bush II by torturing, but was allowed to get away with it because, politics.
2) The people in Congress who want to nail them on this spend the next 5-10 years searching through 5 million records while the CIA spends as much time as they can stalling them.
3) They finally hit the mother load in a document that shows the people running the CIA know about these legal issues 5 years ahead of the committee.
4) People in the CIA freak, try to hide the documents, and then try and get to the DOJ ahead of the committee. Because, as soon as the DOJ is involved, the game is over since they either have to plead the 5th or get caught up in Obstruction of Justice charges.
This is all separate from the NSA spying stuff, which Feinstein is wrong on. But it's not even hypocritical for her to say "spying is okay, but torture is bad news for Democracy." Given a choice between the two, I'd still rather be spied on for no reason, than tortured for no reason.
For those missing the reference, this is from the movie "Casablanca" It's an English idiom used when an official becomes conveniently outraged or overly surprised at something they had known was going on all along. The outrage expressed is a pro forma statement meant for public consumption -- it doesn't necessarily make sense if you examine it closely, and in fact can be quite funny given the context.
There is a generic problem here: the legislature in the United States has decided that instead of overseeing the government, it was going to grant huge swaths of power to various agencies, then swoop in for various high-profile investigations when anything went wrong. That way they get to play the hero without actually having to do a lot of work.
Well, the problem with this theory of separation of powers is that pretty soon you have dozens or hundreds of agencies, all without much adult supervision, all wanting to do more and more to "help". Without oversight, they turn to the next best thing: in-house legal advice, which tells them what is legal or not.
So now we have multiple intelligence agencies doing things their lawyers say are legal, but the majority of the American people are pretty pissed about (or getting that way).
The way to fix this is NOT to single out CIA or NSA or become outraged or not at any one incident. Geesh, there are dozens of agencies just like them that could be doing the same thing, and it's playing whack-a-mole. We need a reform of Congressional oversight, along with clear criminal laws about what can be gathered or not gathered. These agencies need guidance and oversight, not political posturing and outrage. (Although I'm never one to turn down politicians bloviating on issues I care about).
Right?
What could the Justice Department do in the event that they found wrongdoing on the part of the Senate staff? Don't members of the Senate had immunity from this type of prosecution exactly to prevent this type of interference and intimidation?
Though the committee could counter that because the information could cross outside of the USA that it's really foreign information anyway and thus doesn't require a warrant.
One day, the dog bit off the tip of the owner's finger, unprovoked. He was put down shortly thereafter.
Is there a big split between CIA and NSA in her mind? There really isn't in reality -- one of the biggest post-9/11 changes is that the "intelligence community" actually acts like a community; even the FBI CT guys aren't viewed too badly by NSA/CIA/JSOC IME.
The transcript:
http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-relea...
Very good written, worth reading or watching.
So, she's shocked that some files were moved. Did it occur to her that she wouldn't have known something was being withheld if the CIA had never provided them in the first place? For that matter, does she ever wonder if perhaps massive amounts of information are routinely withheld?
Strong whistleblower laws are quite possibly the only true means of effective oversight. Yet, she seems to be too busy calling Snowden a traitor to consider that salient point.
This sounds like an elderly person that does not understand computers. A staffer probably misplaced a file and cried "CIA". Although I revel in the fact that ubiquitous spying bothers her when she is the target I'm not convinced she knows what she is talking about.
Also note this happened in 2010 so it just sounds like an excuse for her to make a political about face in the face of pressure about the NSA.
There is no incongruity in attacking CIA while protecting NSA.
Movie land of course, not 'real' life.