Forbes | Alphabet's Project Shield And Eliminating DDOS Attacks On Free Speech Forbes Most of the world's Internet-connected netizens know of Google through its wildly popular consumer-facing products like its search engine and YouTube video hosting platform. Yet, Google's parent company Alphabet also operates a fascinating think/do ... |
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Alphabet's Project Shield And Eliminating DDOS Attacks On Free Speech - Forbes
WJHL | Tennessee lawmaker introduces campus free speech bill | WJHL WJHL NASHVILLE (WATE) State Rep. Martin Daniel filed Thursday what he calls the Tennessee Student Free Expression Act, which would require colleges to adopt ... |
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Tennessee lawmaker introduces campus free speech bill | WJHL - WJHL
Roshaunda Mclean and David Baughn register students in Columbia, Mo., Sept. 25, 2012. (KOMU News via Flickr)
On Friday, state Senate Democrats attempted to amend a campus free speech bill to include voter registration activity among the kinds of speech the bill marks out in particular for protection.
All 18 Senate Republicans voted down the amendment on the Senate floor. Democrats took turns speaking in favor of the amendment.
The bill now enumerates a students constitutional right to speak as speaking verbally, holding a sign, or distributing flyers or other material.
Sponsor Tim Neville, a Littleton Republican, argued that voter registration was already protected speech, but he didnt seem adamantly opposed to the idea of including with the other types of speech listed in the bill. He added that he welcomed House members to take up the discussion after the bill moved through the Senate.
Sen. Steve Fenberg, a Boulder Democrat and the founder of youth voter registration group New Era Colorado, led the effort to amend the bill. He said the act of registering to vote is protected but that acting to help or encourage others to register to vote may not be protected.
Lizzy Stephan, executive director at New Era, said campuses often restrict voter registration drives conducted by students and by New Era organizers and volunteers.
It happens in a variety of ways, she said. Where you can set up to register people, when you can register people, how far in advance you have to notify the campus that youre planning to register people. They restrict how loud you can be, what kind of equipment you can bring like tables, for example.
The restrictions Stephan described sounded much like the kind of uneven and sometimes unpredictable or adjusted-on-the-fly restrictions that also vary from campus to campus that witnesses in favor of the bill had listed during the Senate committee hearing last week in which Nevilles bill won bipartisan unanimous support.
If were talking about the right to free expression, its right to include voter registration activity, said Sen. Andy Kerr, a Lakewood Democrat, during floor debate. Its a cornerstone of our democracy that folks get out and vote, and you cant do that unless youre registered.
Why wait for the House to consider the idea, added Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail.
The sponsor acknowledged we should consider this in the House. We should fix it now, she said.
Fenberg said he would have voted for the bill Friday if it had included the amendment.
Unspoken in the debate was the fact young voters tend to vote for Democratic political candidates, a fact that matters in a swing state like Colorado, especially one where the youth voting bloc is a significant and reliable electoral demographic.
The Senate discussion points to possible bumps in the road for a bill that has enjoyed surprise bipartisan support.
Nevilles bill taps into national debate that has seen conservative cable news figures clash with university students and administrators. Conservatives in recent years have argued that campuses have gone too far in attempting to combat societal bias and abuse by encouraging communication that lifts up members of university communities, including members of persecuted or marginalized minority groups, and discouraging communication that offends or degrades or fosters division.
Nevilles bill passed Fridays second reading in the Senate. It will undergo one more reading in the upper chamber before it moves to the House.
The bills House sponsor, Rep. Steve Humphrey, told The Colorado Statesman on Wednesday that he was optimistic about the bills chances in the Democratic-controlled lower chamber.
I think once people heard what the bill was really about, they were like, Well, there are no bogey men in the bill. They found out its really about free speech and not restricting it to some postage stamp area in a corner of the campus, which I think we can all agree is a good idea.
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Colorado campus free speech bill hits bump over voter registration ... - The Colorado Statesman
Free expression seems to be top of mind in the Bay Area these days. Ive been thinking about it, too but not in the context of how one should respond to a decadent disrupter whos chosen to threaten vulnerable people as part of his personal brand.
No, Ive been thinking not about Berkeley but about a quieter case in San Jose.
Thats where the Rev. Jeff Moore, a counselor at Independence High School in San Jose and president of the San Jose/Silicon Valley branch of the NAACP, was putting together the annual Black History Month display for the district office of East Side Union High School District.
Moore had seen and liked the work of Mark Harris, 47, a San Francisco painter and mixed-media artist. So he asked Harris to pull together a small exhibit of his work. Harris agreed. He drove down to San Jose and installed the work in the districts display cases on Jan. 30.
On Jan. 31, Harris woke up to a two-line email from Moore, saying that his work had been taken down.
So began a local censorship controversy thats stretched into a third week. Multiple media outlets have covered the story, and the National Coalition Against Censorship has taken an interest.
I should mention that Harris was an acquaintance of mine before any of this happened.
"Immigration Theory," a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris
"Immigration Theory," a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris
But my hunch is that Id probably have the same response even if I didnt know him: oh, no.
Pretty much, Harris said, Ive never had this happen before. Its disappointing because we have to tackle these issues if were going to come together as a country. And what better place to start this conversation than a school district?
Moore said hed hung Black History Month displays at the district for several years in a row, with no problems. Previous displays had been portraits of civil rights leaders, libraries of slave narratives and other pieces from Moores home.
This year, I thought these paintings were educational and gave us a chance to be in a dialogue with what America is talking about, Moore said.
The paintings are definitely political, verging on agit-prop: They juxtapose wholesome, 1950s-era kitsch images of white America with images of slavery, the Confederate flag and anti-police-brutality protests. These are certainly ideas that are in the public conversation.
I called Chris Funk, the superintendent who removed the paintings. He described the incident as a big misunderstanding.
This was an unfortunate incident that had nothing to do with Mark Harris, Funk said. It was about an employee who didnt have permission to display that work.
Moore didnt receive district approval for the contents of the display before inviting Harris to install his work, Funk said. After Harris left, Funk said he was called out of a meeting because parents and staff members had complained about the works content.
So he took all of it down.
When the public comes into the district office, they have an expectation that they shouldnt be surprised by provocative or political artwork, Funk said. Our responsibility is to provide a safe place for discussion, not to push an agenda.
Den of Iniquity, a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris.
Den of Iniquity, a mixed-media piece by Mark Harris.
I didnt find this convincing, for a few reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that children watch adults in classrooms push agendas each and every day.
The idea of a neutral, idea-free education may be a comforting one for adults, but no child would be naive enough to believe it, and theyre right.
The second reason I found Funks argument unconvincing is the matter of providing the specific students at East Side Union High School District with a safe place for discussion. East Side Union is a majority-minority school district 46 percent of the students are Latino, 34 percent are Asian. Only 8 percent of students are white, as is Funk.
How in the world, I asked him, can you say youre providing those students with a safe place for discussion if the political viewpoints of people of color African Americans, in this case are considered to be too controversial to be admitted?
Funk returned to the idea of a process that hadnt been followed.
The good news is that all of the attention inspired Harris and Funk to sit down and hammer out a solution. At 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 15, the districts office will host a workshop with Harris, the students and their parents.
The workshop is open to all of the districts students, parents and with an RSVP the public. Harris plans to lead the students through a discussion of his work and ask them to talk about their own reactions.
Its a great moment to talk about these issues, and I want the kids to feel empowered to do so, Harris said. Weve been ingrained to not discuss this stuff, and its not healthy.
Tell me about it. If the district officials had been a little more comfortable talking about difficult issues, this entire mess could have been prevented.
Caille Millner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: cmillner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @caillemillner
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Censorship versus free speech at a very local level - San Francisco ... - San Francisco Chronicle
One of the reasons that Mary Katharine Ham and I wroteEnd of Discussion in 2015was our rising concern that Americans -- younger ones in particular -- are gradually adopting an increasingly hostile posture toward free speech and the open debate. One of the Left's most cynical ploys in stifling political discussions is to brand ideas they oppose as hateful and offensive, and therefore morally unworthy of further consideration. They seek to "win" debates, we wrote, by short-circuiting the process and preventing those debates from happening in the first place. Ours is largely a cultural critique, leaving detailedconstitutional analyses andjournalistic exposes of bureaucratic abuses to others. But citizens' views of what the constitution does, or should, protect can be heavily influenced by cultural pressures, which is why some key bits of thissurvey of American high school students conducted by the Knight Foundation are ratheralarming:
Yikes. Some of these results are open to interpretation becausethe question doesn't really drill down too far. If kids think that "bullying" is synonymous with "specific threats of physical violence," they'd be right that free speech protections wouldn't apply. But if they think that "you're fugly" tauntsor "gay people are degeneratesinners" assertionsrise to the level of speech that can be banned orcriminalized, we're in more serious trouble. One of the positive data points in this poll is that 91 percent majority atop the bar graph. Allahpundit notes that the percentage of students who believe that unpopular speech is aprotected right(to reiterate, so much of this comes back to the degree of under-exploredoverlap between "unpopular" and "offensive" or "bullying") has risen by eight points since this survey's 2004 installment. That's real, hearteningprogress, as is theslow but steady incline in the blue line onthis chart:
Students are less disposed than ever to believe that the First Amendment's safeguards of fundamental rights are too excessive. That's reassuring, but only to a point. AP mines another nuggetfrom the results: "Worse yet, when the Knight Foundation asked students whether free speech is more important than protecting someone from being offended, just 64 percent said yes a majority, sure, but not even a two-thirds majority." That top line result is dragged down by smaller majorities of high schoolers of color (Asians, Hispanics and especially blacks) who believe that the value of upholdingfree speech trumps the value of insulating somebody from taking offense. One of the more insidious tactics of the anti-discussion mob has been to conflate offensive speech with physical violence, rooted in a capacious definition of what constitutes "safety." To the extent that this trick successfully and lastingly manipulatesyounger generations may determine whether free speech and expression remains a core American value. Remember, it's unpopular/offensive/bullying speech that tests the principle. It's relativelyeasy to protect anodyne, civilly-expressed speech; it's the nasty stuff that is much harder, and thereforeespecially vital, to shield from the bipartisanauthoritarian impulse to ban and silence. All said,findings of this survey are enough of a mixed bag as to nurture some cautious optimism and stave off outright despair, but there are some red flags flying, too. Via the inimitableIowaHawk,I'll leave you with this simple but incisive insight that ought to giveanyone inclined toward the"let's ban offensive or bullying speech" position serious pause:
This point cuts both ways. Do conservatives want these terms and standards set by hysterical triggered snowflakes who value "protection" from ideas over free speech? And do liberals want those definitions determined and enforced by, say, a thin-skinned populist/conservative president with little tolerance for criticism of any sort? The uniting solution is to link arms andkeep free speech as free as possible -- and the (needed and appropriate) exceptions to that rule (excluding hate speech)as narrow as possible because the principle,and everyone's right to open expression,is potentiallyat stake. Politics are cyclical. Ideological pendulums swing. Values must endure. Can we count on our high school teachers to convey this truth and pass along this American torch to the next generation? I'd like to hope so, but again...yikes.
Trump Won't Appeal Ninth Circuit Ruling, Might Issue A New Executive Order Next Week; UPDATE: WH Says All Options Still Being Considered
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Poll of High Schoolers: No, Free Speech Shouldn't Protect 'Offensive ... - Townhall
Breitbart News | What Milo Yiannopoulos can teach us about the importance of campus free speech Quartz Recent events at the University of California, Berkeley reflect the enormous difficulties that campuses can face when trying to ensure freedom of speech while, at the same time, meeting their duty to ensure an inclusive learning environment and protect ... Free speech: Liberals are not the problem 'MILO Bill' Filed in Tennessee to Ensure Freedom of Speech on College Campuses Regressive Leftists Promote Milo Yiannopoulos by Attacking Free Speech |
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What Milo Yiannopoulos can teach us about the importance of campus free speech - Quartz
PROTESTERS AND SUPPORTERS of a Breaking the Silence exhibit face one another outside of Barbur Gallery in the Nahlaot neighborhood of Jerusalem last night. (photo credit:RHONA BURNS)
One day after Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat abruptly announced the eviction of the owner of the Barbur Art Gallery, which hosted a lecture by the left-wing NGO Breaking the Silence, the group said the mayor was unequivocally using punitive measures to stifle free speech.
Breaking the Silence is composed of veteran IDF soldiers who condemn an Israeli presence in occupied territories, as well as purported crimes against Arab residents there. Its executive director, Yuli Novak, spoke at the Nahlaot gallery Wednesday night.
While Barkat contended that the eviction was due to zoning violations, Breaking the Silence spokesman Dean Issacharoff said on Thursday that there was no question the right-wing mayor was abusing his authority to intimidate opposing views.
He obviously wants to stifle freedom of speech in order to stop us from talking about our experiences as soldiers in the occupied territories, Issacharoff said.
However, according to Issacharoff, right-wing politicians attempting to cancel the NGOs events is nothing new, and generally has a converse effect.
Every time they try to silence us, we get more requests from people who want to meet us and hear about the reality we experienced in the occupied territories, he said.
Asked what he would say to Barkat if given the chance, Issacharoff replied: You are silencing soldiers, and cynically handing over the city I grew up in to Lehava in order to further yourself in the next Likud primaries. Nonetheless, he emphasized that the NGO remains undeterred.
We will continue meeting thousands of people a year all across Israel, he said. There is only one way to stop Breaking the Silence: End the occupation.
Barkats edict followed heated statements denouncing the lecture by Culture and Sport Minister Miri Regev (Likud) and Deputy Mayor Dov Kalmanovich, both of whom demanded the mayor intercede, and called for the gallerys shuttering.
In a statement on Wednesday, Barkat claimed that the eviction notice followed a year-long deliberation by the municipal legal adviser, who determined that the owner of the gallery breached the citys legal protocols.
Moreover, Barkat said the building must be returned to the city for municipal use within 90 days.
According to the mayor, the eviction is unrelated to the lecture.
It has no connection to freedom of expression, he contended. The municipality needs the structure, and is actively consulting with representatives of the neighborhood about future use.
Meanwhile, the gallerys owner and curator, Masha Zuslam, expressed incredulity over the eviction, noting that she has not received any warnings or notices from City Hall.
We didnt get anything from the municipality, Zuslam said, adding that she has run the gallery for nearly 12 years without any previous warnings of wrongdoing. Everything we know is from the press.
The mayor is trying to punish us because we have different political views.
Despite a protest held by the extreme right-wing group Lehava, Zuslam said the lecture proceeded as planned, adding that far more demonstrators came to support the gallerys right to sponsor the talk and to condemn the mayor for intervening.
We had a very big demonstration of support, she noted.
While Zuslam said she is considering all her legal options, she lamented what she deemed to be an unjust and retaliatory response by the mayor for exercising the right of free speech.
Its a pity that the mayor of Jerusalem [has pitted] the artistic and cultural community against his political interests by preventing the basic right of freedom of speech, she said.
We have had this gallery for 11.5 years without any problems, and all of a sudden it is illegal. It remains unclear if the eviction will be enforced within the next 90 days.
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Flemming Rose isn't going to watch the decline of free speech without a fight. In 2005, while an editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Rose commissioned twelve cartoons about Muhammad to encourage artists to overcome self-censorship. Extremists responded to the cartoons with attacks on western embassies and riots, resulting in the deaths of over 200 people.
Now Rose has written The Tyranny of Silence, a defense of his decision to publish the cartoons and a guide to unfettered expression in the 21st century. "I'm not willing to sacrifice freedom of expression on the altar of cultural diversity," he says.
As politicians across the world respond to the challenge of multiculturalism with censorship, campus speech codes, and the persecution of journalists, Rose explains why openness is the proper political response to a globalized world.
Rose is no rogue provocateur. He is one of the planet's most committed defenders of free speech, the open society, and enlightenment values of tolerance and human rights.
Edited by Todd Krainin. Cameras by Josh Swain and Mark McDaniel.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Nick Gillespie: Today we're interviewing Flemming Rose at the Cato Institute and the author most recently of The Tyranny of Silence: How One Cartoon Ignited a Global Debate Over the Future of Free Speech. In 2005, while an editor at the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Rose commissioned a series of cartoons about the prophet Mohammed as an exercise to stop self-censorship. Eventually, terrorists and extremists responded to the cartoons with violence, attacks on western embassies and riots creating a death toll that reached at least 200 according to the New York Times. Rose is no rogue provocateur. He is one of the planet's most committed and articulate defenders of free speech, the open society and enlightenment values of tolerance and universal rights and that is why I'm particularly happy to have the opportunity to talk with him today. Flemming Rose, welcome.
Flemming Rose: Thank you for those nice words, Nick. It's wonderful to be here.
Nick Gillespie: Let's take the pulse of free speech in the decade since the Mohammed cartoons came out. Since then, we've seen any number of violent reprisals against free speech, probably most catastrophically the gunning down of a good part of the staff of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France, but we've also seen the continuing rise of hate speech laws in Europe and a stultifying climate rise on U.S. campuses and other college campuses. Are things good for free speech generally right now or not?
Flemming Rose: If we take the long-term historical view, yes, free speech is in better shape than in the 17th century or the 18th century or even the beginning of the 20th century. No doubt about that, but if we look in a shorter-term perspective, let's say the past 20, 30 years, I think free speech is in worse shape. Free speech is in bad standing. You can see it when you check out statistics. Freedom House puts out a report every year; Reporters Without Borders in Europe do the same thing in other institutions and the trend is the same all over. For the past approximately 10 years, freedom of the press and freedom of speech is in decline and I think that is the new thing. We know China. We know Cuba. We know North Korea, Russia, where things usually are in bad shape, but the new trend is the freedom of expression is in decline even in western Europe.
Nick Gillespie: What forms does it take, say, in Western Europe? Are reporters being, if not put in jail, are there legal actions against them or is it a chilled atmosphere where people just don't talk about certain things?
Flemming Rose: It's both. I mean, just to give you an indication, in the first half of 2015, France, of all countries in the world, was the most dangerous place to live for a journalist.
Nick Gillespie: Meaning that he would get arrested or you would get beaten up?
Flemming Rose: You would get beaten up or being gunned down. That's, of course, not the case anymore, but a couple of years ago, I interviewed the most famous French cartoonist Plantu, who works for Le Monde and I asked him, when was the last time a cartoonist was killed in Europe and he couldn't recall. The only name he came up with was a Palestinian cartoonist who was killed in London in 1987, either by the Mossad or the PLO, but even Honor Daumier, the most famous French cartoonist who worked in the 19th century, he was sent to jail several times but he came out and he continued mocking the king. He was not killed. He was not physically threatened.
Nick Gillespie: Where are the threats coming from? Are they exclusively coming out of religious intolerance? Is it Islamic Jihadists? It is broader than that?
Flemming Rose: It's far broader than that and I think fundamentally it has all to do with our ability to manage diversity in a world that is getting increasingly globalized and I think the debate of free speech is going on in a qualitatively new situation driven by migration, the fact that people move across borders in numbers at a speed never seen before in the history of mankind. The consequence being that almost every society in the world right now is getting more and more diverse in terms of culture and religion. That's one factor.
The second factor is the digital technology. The fact that what is being published somewhere is being published everywhere and people can react to speech across cultures, but in a situation where speech loses context and can be manipulated and exploited and political and so that's what happened to me.
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Flemming Rose Against the Worldwide Suppression of Speech - Reason
By Sonny Bunch By Sonny Bunch February 8
I was excited to see that one of my favorite writers, James Poulos, had a book coming out and doubly so when I saw that it was about the way Alexis de Tocqueville can help us understand our crazy, tumultuous time. So excited, in fact, that I emailed him to ask if he wanted to take part in a brief Q-and-A over email to discuss The Art of Being Free: How Alexis de Tocqueville Can Save Us From Ourselves. (The exchange below has been edited for style and clarity.)
Part self-help, part political philosophy, Poulos who is a contributing editor at American Affairs and was a doctoral fellow at the Tocqueville Forum at Georgetown University seamlessly weaves together references to Britney Spears and Plato, Marilyn Manson and Nietzsche. I dont think anyone has better mixed gifs and maxims. Its the perfect book for all of us who have been addled by Twitter and are looking to reorient our perspective on life and love.
Sonny Bunch:This feels like a book that is influenced by Los Angeles its sensibilities and its preoccupations almost as much as it is by Tocqueville. What do you think hed have made of La La Land? Or, as it were,La La Land? (If you havent seen the movie, you can just ignore that last part.)
James Poulos: The Art of Being Free is a very Californian book, and not of the NorCal variety. I think thats by necessity. Theres no talking about the American soul without talking about Los Angeles. What goes on here is, with varying degrees of self-awareness, a sort of terminal or ultimate Americanness. Tocqueville would have expected that. When I read his line about reading Shakespeares Henry V for the first timein an American log cabin, I looked at my half-finished Tocqueville in Los Angeles book and thought, I can do this. I have his blessing.
Plus,talking about L.A. is a great way to talk about myself without giving too much away. Thats also by necessity. Tocqueville saw that the American imagination only really sang for ourselves, our heroic exertions in being how we are. Neither polytheism, centered on permanently warring gods whocapture the reactionary imagination, nor pantheism, with its radical disappearance into natural harmony, could hold our attention for long. Yet heres Hollywood cranking out apocalypse fantasies with one hand and anti-speciesist fairy tales with the other. La La Land rejects both. Its a fantasy for the humans, by the humans, and of the humans. Of course its a hit.
Yet its not really make-believe. La La Land isa typically deeply personal American sales pitch for the earnest heroism of the commercial imagination. At its height, that heroism cant help but become, and produce, art. (Sing makes this point in a different key.) The reward for our crazy but disciplined effort to be marketable yet authentic is a reconciliation between our cash value, which we want ASAP, and the infinite, eternal longings we know we can never satisfy in our evanescent times on Earth.
SB: I love the fact that you can discuss La La Land and Sing or, say, Britney Spears and Marilyn Manson in the same breath as Tocqueville and the idea of America. Is this merely a rhetorical strategy to help connect with the audience, or do you think theres something fundamentally, well,Americanabout the democratic nature of our popular culture?
JP: Theres a reason America dominates popular culture wherever the equality of tastes, habits, mores, and conditions spreads. We got a head start on living into that equality in a place in the sun, outside the long shadow of history, devoid of ancient hang-ups. We didnt need or seek or suffer the kind of egalitarian revolution that had to rely on abstract ideas in the absence of any experience of equality. Despite our crazy dysfunction, we know nothing of the profound, crippling impasses plaguing the social psychology of the Old World.
I just dont think theres a way to talk about Tocqueville and the idea of America in a way that many people can care about without talking about what they docare about not necessarily Zoolander or Midnite Vultures, but contemporary stuff that lays bare how we are the way we are right this very instant. I knew from the beginning The Art of Being Free could never be the most learned book about Tocqueville. But it could end up being the only R-rated book ever written about Tocqueville, and that seemed important in a way the book could only really unpack by example, by going about things as it did.
SB: It is, perhaps, telling that one of the things we love reality TV has in many very real ways heightened the craziness that you write about by helping make President Trump a fact of life. Do you think that the Great Transition and the way it sorts winners and losers almost necessarily by finances meant that a Trump-like figure was more or less inevitable? Are we in for a run of fabulously famous and obscenely wealthy folks dominating national (if not necessarily state or local) politics?
JP: The paradox of reality TV needs attention, but, paradoxically, not too much. We love it, and hate it, because of how real it is, yet isnt. The same goes for reality stars, who are and arent stars famous for being famous, meaning loved yet hated for being famous. One definition of obsession is to be trapped at a single impasse with your love and your hate. What happens to the experience of freedom when obsession colors so much of life, individually and together? When were obsessed with obsession, as I put it in the book? Todaywere in danger of defining freedom as how little you have to care about how many haters you have, but, paradoxically, that also means we jealously admire those who have attracted the most haters. Nietzsche said society might reach such a consciousness of power that it could allow itself the noblest luxury possible to it letting those who harm it go unpunished. What are my parasites to me? it might say. May they live and prosper: I am strong enough for that! This self-overcoming of justice: one knows the beautiful name it has given itself mercy. Heres Trump wishing a Merry Christmas even to the losers and haters. But that attitude is hardly a Trump innovation. Its more a hallmark of ours than of his. The dominance of reality TV is inevitable in a culture centered around celebrating those who can put on the best performances despite because of being hagridden with parasites. Go listen to Queen by Perfume Genius, and you will understand, through experience and not abstract ideas, that to the degree money flows into decadence, decadence must eventually flow into power. The big question today is whether any super-rich people with low parasite counts are willing to put their superabundant but still precious life force into politics.
SB:Does the answer to todays big question come with the initials P.T.? Or perhaps M.Z.?What do you think Tocqueville would have made of our reliance on, reverence for, and distaste with our super-wealthy cyberspace overlords? Is there even really an equivalent in early American history to draw a comparison to?
JP: Tocqueville warned of an industrial aristocracy, but knew it could only be a fleeting climax in the great transition between aristocratic and democratic ages. But its a hallmark of our age that most of us get sucked into competitive conformity. Only a few have the talent, ambition, and timing to punch through the ceiling of collective interchangeable insignificance. And when they do, they often find there are almost no limits to how fast and how high they can advance, if only for a hot minute. Result: they pull up the ladders, acting like a species apart, and we resent them for it, no matter how much they try to buy favorability. On the flip side, Tocqueville notes, we love even the super-rich if they convince us they genuinely believe their similarity to the rest of us is even more important than their difference. Hi, Mark Zuckerberg. But technology now has a postindustrial problem. Our scramble to edge out those otherwise almost identical to us has exacerbated a deadly imbalance in our political economy toward bits and away from atoms, as Peter Thiel puts it. This is new. It urgently needs correction. And aside from the likes of Thiel and Elon Musk, I dont really see anyone with the economic, intellectual, and social heft to yank the rudder without capsizing the boat.
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How Alexis de Tocqueville can help us stay sane - The Washington ... - Washington Post
FEBRUARY 10 Humankind has been searching for the truth since time immemorial. Apart from looking for the best way to live and indeed what that way would constitute, they have also been asking what lies in The Great Beyond, past the threshold of death.
Various answers have emerged in the form of what we know as global religions. Each religion has its own postulation about what happens to us after we die.
And there are those who say nothing happens. When our bodies cease to function, so do our consciousness. It is then a total blackout forever.
That is what atheists postulate and this view is not something new. In The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, we find plenty of examples of atheism in history. However, they were very marginal back then, owing to the fact that Europe had a strong religious presence.
In recent times, however, atheism has exploded in terms of numbers.
What has brought about the rise in atheism? By some estimates, and I have noticed this on social media myself, even in the very conservative Saudi Arabia 15 per cent of its population are atheists.
This is possibly due to excessive religious authoritianism which has put many young people off religion. Not only that, the presence of social media has enabled the internet savvy to consolidate with one another and moreover, absorb ideas from abroad.
When the allegedly atheist Raif Badawi was jailed and sentenced to whipping, he received tremendous support from atheists all over the world, thanks to social media.
The question now is, can atheism become a world religion? For a start, it definitely has the rhetorical capacity to do so.
While some religions claim to be a personal relationship with God and others a complete way of life, atheisms slogan is that it is a non-belief.
In other words, it alleges that our primordial state, our psychological tabula rasa as it were, is one of non-belief. Atheists tell me that if one were to ask a baby if he or she believes in God, the answer would be no.
The problem is, if one were to ask a baby that, one would first have to explain the concept of God. In doing so, one would undoubtedly fertilise the babys mind with the idea of a deity.
Hence, the baby would no longer be able to retain the purity of innocence from that idea and lose his or her objectivity.
It is the same problem with the questions of ethics. In his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris sets forth a scientific methodology in determining ethics.
This is another one of atheisms proclivities, by the way, scientism. Scientism is not the same as being scientific. Being scientific is a methodology for deriving information.
Scientism is rather the ideology that science is a means of attaining truths. I am not saying that science cannot yield truths but that the truths it produces is subjective to the experiments it conducts.
This is why, there was a time when science was used to prove racial superiority! It all boils down on how an experiment is set up and more importantly, why it is set up to begin with.
Another issue which concerns me is New Atheism, a political movement which is very anti-theist and anti-religion. While I welcome their criticisms of the existence of God and religion, the language they employ is decidedly lacking in nuance.
The aforementioned Sam Harris, for example, called Islam the motherlode of bad ideas without deigning to acknowledge aspects of the religion which even the vilest of racists would find acceptable. This may appeal to his neo-colonialist masters but it is intellectually dishonest and moreover, only serves to deepen the conflicts between civilizations.
Can atheism be a world religion? Not yet, I surmise. Strong counter currents from religious movements will keep atheism on the side for the time being but maybe in the next generation, things will change. Atheism can perhaps stem the tide of religious fundamentalism.
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
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For the latest in the newish series, Small Studio Snapshots, Nicholas Korody chatted with Los Angeles-based studio MILLINS. Daniel Elmorefelt "these guys sound legit in their intentions and I'm looking forward to seeing what they produce in the future...The rest of the article is uncommonly decipherable for architects".
Plus, Stefano Colombo,Luca MarulloandEugenio Cosentino went "Looking for a picture that represents something related to the internet and ending up thinking about the desert."Max Headroom, F.AIA got excited "the phrase 'last existing encrypted space is genius on many many levels. exciting work!"
News In an interview with NPRs MarketPlace Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, explained how computers are superior (in some things) to human designers.JamesJoist got serious
"Spoken like true transhumanist scum; I often think AutoCAD was one of the worst things to happen to architecture. As you might expect the overall reception was poor."
Reacting to the all-female lineup for the Carnegie Mellon University School of Architecture's Spring '17 lecture series, b3tadine[sutures] quipped "Now I understand why SCI-Arc couldn't get any women to lecture, there aren't any left. Is SCI-Arc being run by former Jay Leno bookers?"
Steven Holl Architects released plansfor a, pair of white concrete buildings, new Cultural and Health Center in Shanghai.
With I am sure tongue firmly in cheek, archanonymous offered up Mr. Holl some advice "i love your work but if you don't do an emergency shelter and social housing in the next 5 years you're never going to get that Pritzker."tduds chimed in "Really, though, this is beautiful. Holl was a tough sell for me when I was younger but he's really won me over lately."
The AIA's Equity in Architecture Commission Releases Report, with its eleven priority recommendations for action, is required reading.
Mayfair House in London, UK by Squire and Partnersand Charles Street Car Park in Sheffield, UK by Allies and Morrison, are just two of the great projects from the latest Ten Top Images on Archinect's "Fancy Facades" Pinterest Board.
Firms/Work Updates Farzam Kharvaristarted Radio Architecture a new blog, and introduced himself.
Meanwhile, over at his blog Elemental Urbanism, James Pereirawrote about MaMuCre. Which led Max Headroom, F.AIAto note "David Ruy once said in my grad class Algorithms are recipes. The cooking analogy is great, always thought that was the best analogy and real portrayal of detailing in architecture."
For anyone looking for a new job and wanting to live in New Orleans,Eskew+Dumez+Rippleis looking to hire a Sustainability Enabler. Or the City and County of San Francisco needs an Urban Designer/Architect.
Anton Romashovbegan sharing photos of architecture (both modern and ancient) in Peru.
School/Blogs
Due to an unexpected surge in applications, the Free School of Architecture (FSA) will significantly increase its inaugural class size for 2017.
For a theory course at UIC, Jamie Evelyn Goldsboroughand her fellow students are researching an architectural typology that has been disrupted / effected by American capitalism. She selected Motels / Hotels. The project is heavily rooted in Eisenman's Frankfurt Rebstock Competition project of "the Fold." Jamie also posted a process drawing.
For those interested in a job in academia, University of Kentucky is accepting applications for either an Associate or Full Professor in Interior Design. Or an Associate or Full Professor, Director of Design Technology, with a focus on "developing, implementing and conducting courses that integrate technology within the curriculum."
UCLAAUD6 put out the call for POOL Issue No.2., submissions of communicative media surrounding the authorities that prescribe, the bodies that obey, and the administrators who implement rules. The deadline is February 20, 2017.
Discussions/Threads
johnshoe was looking for thoughts on the use of anADA Cheat Sheet. The earliest commenters recommended just learning ANSI A117.1 "Learn the code as it's written. You'll be more valuable to your firm, the profession, and the general public."senjohnblutarsky reminded folks of the Adobe "search function". As tintt sees it "Construction documents are supposed to be clear and concise and not have redundancies or conflicting information."
mbcube2 is in need of some career advice.Josh Mingsinitial response "I never would have taken such a pay cut. Volunteer is on point."gruen thought the story sounded familiar "Oh, is NBBJ still up to their old tricks? LOL, legendary."Contrary to manyshellarchitect counseled sticking it out "Having the local manager on your side is a great ally...I have a hard time believing that people would be purposely deceitful (wishful thinking?)...More likely the decision makers have changed."
Finally, daerquestioned how to structurally support his staircase, for a school project. Andrew.Circle expanded upon earlier suggestions from archanonymous and Non Sequitur. He also called attention to a deficient for the US guardrail, in the rendering. mightyaa answered the original question simply "Basic Physics" Later randomised posted an example from japan of a gorgeous staircase. (yet tduds nightmare) without a railing.
Additionally
ICYMI, back in November of last year, Keefer Dunn dove "into the failed thinking about the ways in which architecture creates change in order to unpack some of the lessons valuable to architects who are becoming activists and wondering what to do now."
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German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen attends a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia on Feb. 10. Mary F. Calvert / Reuters
Russia's deputy defense minister has called those NATO exercises a "threat."
But Von der Leyen disputed that characterization and deemed the NATO troop movements, which involve a U.S. Armored Combat Brigade, "appropriate."
"Russia knows that it is a reaction for the Russian annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine," she told NBC News. "Therefore it was important for us to make sure that our Baltic friends know their borders are secure"
Von der Leyen is the first defense minister hosted by Mattis at the Pentagon and their meeting lasted for about an hour, twice as long as scheduled.
Their conversation ranged from Syria to Ukraine, and also touched upon European defense spending levels. She said it was a "fair question" for President Trump to ask why so many NATO countries do not spend the targeted 2 percent of GDP on their military budgets.
"In an alliance there needs to be a fair share of the burden," she said. "We recognize that we need to raise the budget, because we need it in the Armed forces. We need to modernize the armed forces."
The German defense minister also suggested that Europe needs to consider establishing an EU army, to conduct missions that aren't core to NATO's mission.
"We need as Europeans to address problems where for example we do not see NATO," she said, "We have to bring over stability for example to Mali and Niger."
Ahead of Germany's planned election in September, she called on the press to help dismantle "fake news" stories, while suggesting that Russia may attempt to meddle in their democratic process.
"The Kremlin has no interest in having a too stable and too strong Europe, she said. "The free press is the strongest sword you have within these complex situations."
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Germany's Defense Minister: Trump is Committed to NATO - NBCNews.com
Wall Street Journal | Trump Moves Toward Backing NATO Candidate Over Russian Objections Wall Street Journal The Russian government has vehemently opposed Montenegro joining NATO, keeping with its longstanding opposition to the alliance's expansion. Montenegrin officials have publicly accused the Kremlin of trying to deter its membership by instigating an ... |
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Trump Moves Toward Backing NATO Candidate Over Russian Objections - Wall Street Journal
Baltic nations are increasingly worried that Russian war games set for this autumn will see President Vladimir Putin send as many as 100,000 troops to Belarus border with Lithuania and Poland -- the very edge of the Kremlins sphere of influence with eastern Europe.
At a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Russia, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, said hed met recently with Baltic ambassadors who said the planned Zapad exercises, set for September, could involve that many Russian troops, which would be a significant increase on the number that took part in previous drills under the same name in 2013 and 2009.
U.S. Gen. Phillip Breedlove, who was the Supreme Commander for NATO until May last year, said the name for the exercise -- the Russian word for west -- combined with the fact that hes heard it could involve at least 100,000 troops -- possibly twice that many -- is a bit alarming.
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Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been drawing down its military presence in Europe. But at the main docks in Bremerhaven in northern G...
Breedlove cautioned, however, that the Kremlin has not released figures of its own regarding how many troops will take part in the September exercises, and that Russian officials have been known in the past to spread misinformation to serve their interests.
The Russians have ordered 83 times... the rail cars that they ordered for Zapad (in 2013), Breedlove said at the Senate hearing, reports CBS Radio News correspondent Cami McCormick. So the size of this exercise will be demonstrably bigger.
Russia said 10,000 troops took part in the 2013 drills, which spanned across Russian territory and involved all branches of its military, but some Western defense analysts have said the actual number was likely closer to 70,000.
Nations have a right to exercise, Breedlove said on Thursday. Nations do not have a right, I think, to exercise irresponsibly on other borders and in configurations that represent offensive capability.
I think the problem with this exercise is size and scope, directly on the border, a name that orients it west, and the fact the unpredictability of it makes it very alarming, he said.
Europe and western Russia.
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His remarks came as Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told reporters after talks with her counterparts from neighboring Latvia and Estonia that they were all concerned, risks are increasing.
We are worried about the upcoming Zapad 2017 exercise, which will deploy a very large and aggressive force (on our borders) that will very demonstrably be preparing for a war with the West, Grybauskaite said in Riga, according to a transcript of her statements by the Reuters news agency.
This means that we will be talking with NATO about creating additional standing defence plans, about stationing additional military means and about creating a faster decision making process, she said.
Lithuanian Defence Minister Raimundas Karoblis told Reuters that the NATO alliance should be prepared to defuse any provocations during the Russian drills.
Presence of such an amount of troops (next to our borders), of course it creates some risks,Karoblis said. We will take also our countermeasures, including those with our allies, not to allow any provocations.
Its clear Russia really wants to re-establish its domination, and change defence system in all Europe. It is already threat for central Europe, particularly for Baltics, he added.
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Retired General James Mattis testifies on Capitol Hill as President-elect Donald Trump's pick for defense secretary. Watch his full opening state...
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are all expected to push U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis to at least maintain the current U.S. military commitment to its NATO allies in eastern Europe. About 4,000 American troops have been deployed to Poland and neighboring nations in recent months, under orders to President Obama, in response to Putins annexation of Crimea.
While President Trump rattled European leaders by calling NATO obsolete before taking office, Mattis defended the alliance during his confirmation hearings as the most successful military alliance probably in modern history, maybe ever.
During the hearing, Mattis also described Russia as a principal threat to the U.S., but agreed with Mr. Trumps view that hed like to see engagement with its government.
Im all for engagement but we also have to recognize reality and what Russia is up to and theres a decreasing number of areas where we can engage cooperatively and increasing number of areas where were going to have to confront Russia, Mattis said. I have very modest expectations about areas of cooperation with Mr. Putin.
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Putin planning to send 100K troops to Baltic border for drills? - CBS News
WASHINGTONThe point agency for buying software and technological capabilities for NATO wants to increase the number of small companies that support the allianceand is prepared to put its money where its mouth is.
Peter Scaruppe, director of acquisition for the NATO Communications and Information Agency, told Defense News in a Feb. 2 interview that his office does about a billion euros worth of business in a good yearthats a small number from the U.S., but for Europe that is a major player here.
But that number is set to grow in the next two and a half years, during which Scaruppe says his agency plans to spend around 3 billion (U.S. $3.2 billion) on contracts for requirement ranging across a number of areas, including cybersecurity and IT, but predominantly for command and control capabilities.
Command and control systems for missile defense, for example, and for air command and control systems we will have about 500 million in business in this area alone. We have a lot of communication systems in the pipeline, for example, in the maritime area, in the land command and control area.
The single biggest contract being worked is for satellite communications, which Scaruppe said could come out to about 1.5 billion over the next three years.
Software has been procured for NATO through common-funded financing; that means all 28 nations chip into a project, then the nation can use the software for a national purpose without having to buy it again because its been paid for by NATO already, he said.
In order to broaden the pool of suppliers, the agency is hosting its annual conference outside Europe for the first time. The event will be hosted April 24-26 in Ottawa, Canada, a strategic decision made in part because Canada has a lot of small and medium enterprises, and not the big-ticket industries that tend to appear at shows in the United States.
Roughly 80 percent of the agencies contracts are given to prime contractors, so the conference will feature a challenge where smaller companies can compete to tackle a specific technological problem, which Scaruppe hopes will result in new voices arising.
We need to make it easy on the smaller companies. A lot of them dont want to deal with us because of too much red tape and administration, and an intergovernmental installation like we are tends to have more red tape than a national government, Scaruppe said, adding that many smaller firms dont want to have to share intellectual property rights with the NATO governments.
If those concerns sound familiar, it's because they are echoes of long-running concerns from U.S. defense officialsmost notably former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, who made bringing technological innovation into the Pentagon a key part of his time in office. And just as Carter encouraged smaller companies to raise their concerns with the Pentagon, Scaruppe hopes to leave his conference with a handful of suggestions for improvement.
If we want the best, we need to address this. Were addressing this through the conference, were holding workshops where we want to address this, he said. We want to hear from industry, what are the challenges, and we will have our own experts here, including my own staff, to discuss how we can make it easier for industry to be a part of the successful bid.
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NATO looks to contract $3.2 billion over next three years on C4, IT - DefenseNews.com
13News Now Mike Gooding has the story
Mike Gooding, WVEC 6:44 PM. EST February 10, 2017
nato_logo_.jpg (Photo: WVEC)
NORFOLK, Va. (WVEC) -- Could NATO be on its way out of Norfolk after 65 years here? A column in the publication, 'Defense News' suggested moving the 28-nation command to Washington, D.C.
One way or another, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has ben a part of Norfolk since 1952. The facility at Naval Support Activity off Terminal boulevard is NATO's only permanent headquarters outside Europe
The organization's current iteration here, Allied Command Transformation, dates back to 2003. Its past commanders include current Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who served here from 2007 to 2009.
The 28 partner nations are responsible for promoting and overseeing the continuing transformation of Alliance forces and capabilities.
Hampton Roads citizens get a small glimpse of ACT every spring during the annual NATO festival downtown. But, if Defense News writers Magnus Nordenman and Henrick Breitenauch get their way, the five-decade-plus local partnership would come to an end.
They write that NATO should move to Washington "to be closer to American decision-makers."
Not everyone agrees with that assessment.
"This is the right place for NATO allied Command Transformation to be, period," said retired rear admiral Craig Quigley. He now serves as executive director of the Hampton Roads Military and Federal Facilities alliance. He says Norfolk and its many nearby military commands is the perfect place for NATO, and, it should stay put.
And as far as he know, Quigley says nobody in NATO thinks otherwise.
"I'm not aware that article by those two writers was anything more than an academic exercise," he said. "I have never, ever heard of substantive plans to move he headquarters away from where it is right now."
Such a move would be a blow to the Hampton Roads region, which in the last decade has lost United States Joint Forces Command, the Navy's Second Fleet, and the Army's For Monroe.
13News Now put in a call to Supreme Allied Command Transformation's public affairs office, for a comment.
So far, they have not called back.
( 2017 WVEC)
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Article calls for NATO to move HQ from Norfolk to DC - 13newsnow.com
Nato says viral news outlet is part of "Kremlin misinformation machine" BBC News In the world of viral news, it's a relative baby - but it's already become so controversial that a Nato spokesperson told BBC Trending that Sputnik is an agent of Russian misinformation. Sputnik was set up in 2014 and puts out podcasts, radio shows and ... |
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Nato says viral news outlet is part of "Kremlin misinformation machine" - BBC News
A former NSA contractor was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of stealing elite cyberweapons and sensitive government data over the course of 20 years.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) indictment, Harold Thomas Martin worked as a contractor for seven different companies during those 20 years. Each company, including Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp where former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden also worked, was tasked with projects through the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Agency (NSA).
"Martin held security clearances up to top secret and sensitive compartmented information at various times, and worked on a number of highly classified, specialized projects where he had access to government computer systems, programs and information, including classified information," federal prosecutors wrote in a statement. "Over his many years of holding a security clearance, Martin received training regarding classified information and his duty to protect classified materials from unauthorized disclosure."
Leo Taddeo, CSO for Cryptzone, said it shouldn't be surprising that an NSA contractor could steal data for 20 years without anyone knowing.
"One of the challenges of protecting digital assets is that the owner doesn't always know he wasrobbed.That's not the case with say, a TV or a car.If those items are stolen, the victim notices the empty parking space or blank spot on the wall pretty quickly and calls the police," Taddeo told SearchSecuirty via email."Digital evidence can be copied and 'stolen' without the owner ever knowing unless very specific safeguards are in place and regularly monitored."
Martin was arrested in October 2016 and law enforcement reportedly seized 50 TB of federal data from his home in Glen Burnie, Md. This data, which officials said could amount to the largest theft of classified federal information in history, included documents from U.S. Cyber Command, the CIA and cyberweapons from the NSA's elite hacking team -- the Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) -- all stolen while Martin was an NSA contractor.
The DoJ's indictment charged Martin on 20 criminal counts, each of which could carry a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Federal officials have not commented on what Martin did with the stolen data, but former TAO agents confirmed NSA-made cyberweapons were leaked in a dark web auction by a group called the Shadow Brokers. It is still unclear what, if any, connection there is between Martin, the Shadow Brokers and the advanced persistent threat group, the Equation Group, which has been associated with using TAO exploits in the wild.
Willy Leichter, vice president of marketing for CipherCloud, based in San Jose, Calif. said insider threats are an issue for all enterprises.
"This latest news reinforces an unfortunate truth -- security has traditionally focused on securing the perimeter, but internal controls are often sorely lacking," Leichter told SearchSecurity. "Now that network perimeters are disappearing with cloud and mobile technology, it's forcing many organizations to look more carefully at their internal controls to classify and protect sensitive data."
Taddeo noted that recent NIST guidelines put in place following the OPM breach, which was blamed on an attack that used credentials stolen from a federal contractor, could help mitigate future issues like this.
"The new NIST guidelines are intended to ensure federal contractors, like Martin's employer, Booz Allen, have the proper safeguards in place," Taddeo said. "These security controls will help, but not guarantee, that this type of theft does not happen in the future."
Learn more about why mitigating insider threats remains a major concern.
Find out why the Shadow Brokers cancelled the auction of NSA cyberweapons.
Get info on how to address the Equation Group vulnerabilities.
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NSA contractor indicted for stealing elite cyberweapons over 20 years - TechTarget
In 2010, Thomas Drake, a former senior employee at the National Security Agency, was charged with espionage for speaking to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun about a bloated, dysfunctional intelligence program he believed would violate Americans privacy. The case against him eventually fell apart, and he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, but his career in the NSA was over.
Though Drake was largely vindicated, the central question he raised about technology and privacy has never been resolved. Almost seven years have passed now, but Pat Eddington, a former CIA analyst, is still trying to prove that Drake was right.
While working for Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., Eddington had the unique opportunity to comb through still-classified documents that outline the history of two competing NSA programs known as ThinThread and Trailblazer. Hes seen an unredacted version of the Pentagon inspector generals 2004 audit of the NSAs failures during that time, and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests.
In January, Eddington decided to take those efforts a step further by suing the Department of Defense to obtain the material, he tells The Intercept. Those documents completely vindicate those who advocated for ThinThread at personal risk, says Eddington.
The controversy dates back to 1996, whenEd Loomis, then a computer systems designer for the NSA, along with his team worked to move the NSAs collection capabilities from the analog to the digital world. The shift would allow the NSA to scoop up internet packets, stringing them together into legible communications, and automating a process to instantly decide which communications were most interesting, while masking anything from Americans. The prototype, called GrandMaster, would need to ingest vast amounts of data, but only spit out what was most valuable, deleting or encrypting everything else.
Then in the fall of 2001,four passenger airliners were hijacked by terrorists as part of a suicide plot against Washington, D.C., and New York City. The U.S. intelligence community faced a disturbing wakeup call: its vast collection systems had failed to prevent the attacks.
Yet, in response, the NSA simply started collecting more data.
The NSA sent out a bid to multiple defense contractors, seeking a program that could collect and analyze communications from phones and the internet. Science Applications Internal Corporation, or SAIC, won the contract, known as Trailblazer. Meanwhile, internally, NSA employees were developing a similar, less costly alternative called ThinThread, a follow-on to GrandMaster. ThinThread would collect online communications, sort them, and mask data belonging to Americans.
Those involved in ThinThread argue that their approach was better than a collect-it-all approach taken by NSA.
Bulk collection kills people, says Bill Binney, a former NSA analyst, who rose to be a senior technical official with a dream of automating the agencys espionage. You collect everything, dump it on the analyst, and they cant see the threat coming, cant stop it, he says.
Binney built a back-end system a processor that would draw on data collected by ThinThread, analyze it, look at whether or not the traffic was involves American citizens, and pass on what was valuable for foreign intelligence.
Bulk acquisition doesnt work, agrees Kirk Wiebe, a former NSA senior analyst, who was trying to help convince NSA of ThinThreads value at the time.
The analysts are drowning in data, and Binney and Wiebe believe ThinThread would have solved the problem by helping the NSA sort through the deluge automatically while protecting privacy using encryption.
But Binney and Wiebe say advocates of ThinThread hit every possible bureaucratic roadblock on the way, sitting in dozens of meetings with lawyers and lawmakers. In the meantime, Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the NSA at the time, said he decided to fund an outside contract for a larger effort, focused on gathering all communications, not just those over the internet, as ThinThread was designed to do.
Additionally, while ThinThread masked American communications, Haydens legal and technical advisors were concerned the collection itself would be a problem. Some of Haydens senior officials at the NSA came from SAIC, the company that won contract to design a proof of concept for Trailblazer.
A tiny group of people at NSA had developed a capability for next to no money at all to give the government an unprecedented level of access to any number of foreign terrorists, Eddington says. Instead that system was shut down in favor of an SAIC boondoggle that cost taxpayers, by my last count, close to a billion dollars.
He argues the contract, and the incestuous relationship between the NSA chief and the contractor never received the scrutiny it deserved. It was clearly an ethical problem, Loomis said.
Ultimately, however, the NSA went with Trailblazer. Hayden rejected the ThinThread proposal because the intelligence communitys lawyers were concerned it wouldnt work on a global scale, and that it would vacuum up too much American data. Hayden has continued dismissing concerns years later as the grumblings of disgruntled employees. Hayden told PBS Frontline ThinThread was not the answer to the problems we were facing, with regard to the volume, variety and velocity of modern communications.
In 2002, Wiebe, Binney, Loomis, Drake, and Diane Roark, a Republican staffer on the House Intelligence Committee who had been advocating for ThinThread, united to complain to the Defense Departments inspector general, arguing that ThinThread, while still a prototype, would be the best surveillance system. The oversight body completed its report in 2004, which included major concerns about Trailblazer.
We talked about going for the nuclear option, Wiebe said, referring to discussions at the time about contacting the press.
But Drake went it alone, however, never telling his colleagues what he planned to do. Stories about the disagreements started showing up in news headlines based on leaks. The Bush administration in 2007 sent the FBI after the whistleblowers, raiding each of the whistleblowers homes who raised complaints to the Pentagon inspector general. Drake faced espionage charges after speaking to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun about the alleged mismanagement and waste in the NSA.
Though Drake wasnt sent to prison, he lost his career in government, and now works at an Apple store. The question of whether ThinThread would have provided a better capability than Trailblazer was never resolved.
While ThinThread never made it to production, some of the analytic elements, minus the privacy protections, made it into Fort Meade as part of a massive surveillance program now known as Stellar Wind.
But there may be a way to settle the debate. The watchdog agency tasked with oversight of the Department of Defense completed a full investigation into the battle between ThinThread and the Trailblazer. The Pentagon inspector general published a heavily redacted version of that investigation in 2011; that report is now the only public record available, aside from the account of the whistleblowers who exposed it.
Despite everything thats come out about its surveillance programs, the NSA still wont release the full ThinThread investigation. I dont really know what theyre trying to hide, said Loomis.
Loomis says he thinks those redactions were more for the sake of Haydens reputation than protecting real classified information. He eventually documented the saga in a self-published book called NSAs Transformation: An Executive Branch Black Eye.
Drake told The Intercept in an email that efforts to uncover the Pentagon inspector generals ThinThread investigation were a large part of his defense. Since then, the Office of Special Counsel concluded last March that the Department of Justice may have destroyed evidence that might have helped exonerate him.
In the meantime, however, hope is fading that the entire story of ThinThread will emerge from behind the government door of secrecy. Weve been trying for 15 or 16 years now to bring the U.S. government the technical solution to save lives, but they fight us left and right, said Wiebe.
Eddington says the ThinThread controversy demonstrates the lack of oversight of the intelligence community. The mentality that gave us this system is still in place, he says. We could see this become de facto permanent, he said.
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Former CIA Analyst Sues Defense Department to Vindicate NSA Whistleblowers - The Intercept
MSNBC | New Russia revelations pose new problems for Trump's NSA MSNBC Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's National Security Advisor, has maintained close ties to Moscow in recent years, even getting paid by the Kremlin's propaganda outlet. It therefore caused quite a stir a month ago, when the Washington Post noted that Flynn ... National security adviser Flynn discussed sanctions with Russian ambassador, despite denials, officials say Flynn Is Said to Have Talked to Russians About Sanctions Before Trump Took Office Face the Nation transcript January 15, 2017: Pence, Manchin, Gingrich |
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New Russia revelations pose new problems for Trump's NSA - MSNBC