U.S. Spy Panel Is Loaded With Insiders 330
schwit1 writes "After a public backlash to government spying, President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records.
The members of the review group are:
Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council for Clinton who later worked for Republican President George W. Bush
Michael Morell, Obama's former deputy CIA director
Geoffrey Stone, law professor who has raised money for Obama and spearheads a committee hoping to build Obama's presidential library in Chicago
Cass Sunstein, law professor and administrator of information and regulatory affairs for Obama
Peter Swire, a former Office of Management and Budget privacy director for Clinton
'At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying,' said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. The panel's meetings are closed after Clapper exempted it from the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would have required it to keep the public informed and hold open meetings, for 'reasons of national security,' according to a statement from the group sent from Clapper's office. 'While we are exempt from the FACA, we are conducting this review as openly and transparently as possible.'"
Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council for Clinton who later worked for Republican President George W. Bush
Michael Morell, Obama's former deputy CIA director
Geoffrey Stone, law professor who has raised money for Obama and spearheads a committee hoping to build Obama's presidential library in Chicago
Cass Sunstein, law professor and administrator of information and regulatory affairs for Obama
Peter Swire, a former Office of Management and Budget privacy director for Clinton
'At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying,' said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. The panel's meetings are closed after Clapper exempted it from the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would have required it to keep the public informed and hold open meetings, for 'reasons of national security,' according to a statement from the group sent from Clapper's office. 'While we are exempt from the FACA, we are conducting this review as openly and transparently as possible.'"
Checks and Balances, and NSF not NSA (Score:5, Interesting)
It just seems that no-one in the government is at odds with the NSA spying program. The idea was always to have checks and balances in the system so that if things spiraled out of control, there would always be counter-forces that would set it right.
However, the white house, senate, supreme courts etc doesn't seem to care. They're all acting like it is no big deal and we should forget about it (or maybe that is how the media is portraying it).
Though on the other hand, this kind of social interaction data is a goldmine for sociologists and social psychologists to industrial psychologists. It could really be the killer technology that drives the next generation of marketing and advertising. Social networking is the fusion of sociology and computer science.
This is especially a goldmine if election candidates can understand and measure how people are deciding to vote. Before it was just spend billions of dollars on a blanket advertising scheme. But, what if they can really get feedback and data on how people are deciding to cast their votes.
Why doesn't the NSF find ways to anonymize the data and use it for scientific research and make everything open.
After social networking, this could be next big thing. Non-survey based measurement and quantification of what people are doing and thinking and how ideas are spreading and problems they are facing.
Transparency, authoritarian style (Score:5, Interesting)
When I worked in support, the management began taking a drift towards the overly authoritarian side. I don't think they wanted to face up to it though. One particularly absurd thing they did was place a suggestion box next to the desk where all the managers sat. What was wrong with that? It was transparent. Yep. Anybody who put a suggestion in there would be seen putting it in, and the fold size or color of the paper would be matched up with the face, subconsciously or otherwise.
This panel is about as useful as that suggestion box. It's transparency, authoritarian style.
Morrell is not "Obama's" (Score:3, Interesting)
Mike Morrell is a former career CIA guy. He was responsible for the daily president briefings and I believe he was the one to inform President Bush of 9/11. Very experienced and definitely spooky. His secrets have secrets! He would probably be a very awesome guy to meet. Definitely not Obama's unless you hold presidential turnover against him.
Re:You can never get the BIG BROTHER to change its (Score:5, Interesting)
So you're advocating violent regime change then?
Re:Who watches the watchers? (Score:5, Interesting)
Suppose, in 2016, by freak chance, the vast majority of jurisdictions in the United States elected representatives from non-mainstream parties—Libertarians, Greens, whatever else you guys have these days. Enough variety to represent every likely perspective, of course.
What do you think would happen to the president when he or she tried to fix the intelligence community? Or the military? Or, heck, even something relatively compact like the FDA? Simple: just ask Jimmy Carter. (And, I would contend, Obama five years ago, just after his first election.) Nothing would get done. The agencies, the companies, and their collective lobbyists would do all they could to undermine the elected representatives, because they themselves are partisan, right down to the core—partisan to anyone who protects or could protect their paycheques and opportunities for advancement, that is.
You cannot vote them out. You cannot even try, but even if you succeeded in voting away the names you know about, the rest would remain and stage coups. Even appointed agency directors have been defeated by the momentum, culture, and job-security-fearing mobs in these places. The rot goes all the way through, and it doesn't want to leave.
Changing the US voting system (Score:5, Interesting)
I think a large part of the problem is the primary voting system. A would-be presidential candidate first has to appeal to the extremists in their own party before they have a chance to try to appeal to the general public.
I have a proposal to fix this.
Step 1: To be on the presidential ballot, you must have reached some threshold number of votes in the primaries. This threshold should be set so that there will be about 4 to 6 presidential candidates. (Primaries are not party-based. All presidential hopefuls appear on the one ballot.)
Step 2: Voters rank the presidential candidates in their order of preference. These preferences are processed by a Condorcet method [wikipedia.org]. This ensures that if one candidate would win a two candidate election against any other candidate, they are elected.
With 4 to 6 candidates, there is room for at least two from each main party, plus the occasional independent/minor party candidate. The Condorcet voting encourages moderates rather than extremists. (In turn, this will encourage the selection of moderates in the primaries.) It also gives independents a decent chance.
(Note: I am not a US citizen, nor am I living there.)
Re:Who watches the watchers? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think it's a matter of the general public being okay with it; rather they don't understand it and can't be bothered to find out why it's a bad thing. The vast majority of the voting public in this country range from the working poor to the middle class. These people are usually working two or more jobs per family (when it's not a broken family; even then the single parent often works two jobs) and simply don't have time to find out who is doing what in the government, much less do something about it. They vote along established party lines based on their upbringing, and probably hope that one asshole will screw the country over just a smidge less than the other one. Given that situation and attitude, it's no surprise that most Americans default to "I'm not doing anything wrong, why should I care if they listen to my phone calls and read my email."
I think if the curtain was truly pulled back by someone with a public face (i.e. not just one whistleblower that no one heard of before June), people would begin to realize what is really going on and why it's so wrong. But panels like the one in the article exist to make sure that never happens. Someone above referenced the fox guarding the hen house, and that's a great analogy.
Re:You can never get the BIG BROTHER to change its (Score:4, Interesting)
The winners make the rules, so any party that doesn't have a chance of winning is a waste of time and effort.
I disagree. Even if other parties have -- at first -- no real chance of winning, having them at all might still make clear just exactly how similar the current major parties are.
When Ds and Rs agree on something that's a sure sign it is against most peoples' interests. I think that developing a wider frame of reference would make that more obvious.
Re:You can never get the BIG BROTHER to change its (Score:5, Interesting)
You should look into that.
Re:You can never get the BIG BROTHER to change its (Score:5, Interesting)
Change does not come from within. Real change must be made from the outside.
Correct, and here's how to do it: WOLF-PAC [wolf-pac.com]. Launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections. Since Congress won't pass such an Amendment on its own, the plan is to instead have the State Legislators propose it via an Article Five Convention. At least 34 States need to cooperate for this to work, but already many have reacted with enthusiasm, most notably Texas. If successful, the real problem should be fixed within one or two election cycles.
Re:You can never get the BIG BROTHER to change its (Score:5, Interesting)
Australia has something called "double dissolution" where, to fit the US system, both the Senate and Congress would be dismissed in entirety and an election for all seats would take place.
You should look into that.
America used to use a quaint old system. It involved tar, feathers, and being run out of town on a rail.
Maybe we should revive it.
Re:Give us the option to vote against someone, the (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the message I try to put out as well. Too bad most people can't understand we don't actually have a "two party system".
As for myself, I voted for Jill Stein, even though I oppose most of the Green Party platform. She was willing to be arrested to uphold democracy, protesting the first debate between Romney and Obama for not including all national candidates. So even though I don't agree with the Green Party on much, some things are more important than my personal beliefs.