You remember that story, don’t you? Was all over the press in July 2012? Oh, wait, that hasn’t happened yet. Still to come, so to say. Let me get my thoughts arranged.

It was in 2009 that airport security added the new full-body x-ray scanners to their arsenal of devices to humiliate and traumatise travellers. Sarah Barrett, head of customer experience at Manchester airport, says, “This scanner completely takes away the hassle of needing to undress.” Because we’ll do it for you.

Now, before you tell me that the images could hardly be described as pornographic, let me direct you to Two Girls One Cup. If this is sufficient to cause some people to immediately discombobulate themselves in their trousers, I’m fairly sure that security camera images will be hot-stuff. Plus, imagine the job advert:

“Wanted: mature individuals to look at images of naked strangers of all shapes, sizes and ages for hours at a time while alone in a secluded booth; don’t worry, it’s not child porn if you do it for security reasons.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I fully appreciate the security difficulties faced by the world’s major transit authorities. There really are people out there who are out to kill us. But there are lots of ways to cause mayhem in a public place without resorting to actually getting on a plane.

And, we live in the information age. If the image exists then the image is public. Telling us, as Sarah Barrett does, that, “The images are not erotic or pornographic and they cannot be stored or captured in any way,” is just so much bullshit. Give that security guard a camera-phone; oh, wait, he has one already.

Yes, the technology is possible. No, this is not an acceptable use of that technology. Find another way.

If beating terrorists involves giving away all the privacy, confidentiality, liberty and respect for the individual that we are supposedly fighting so hard for, then we’re not really beating the terrorists.

Maybe it’s just that this technology is lazy. These images should be digitised, processed and then only random bits shown to security for final analysis. There are ways to ensure that this is entirely depersonalised. Otherwise profiling is likely; age, gender, even cultural origin are likely to be visible in these images.

Leave the embarrassing personal pictures to teenagers posting on Facebook. The rest of us are just travelling, nothing to see. And nothing we want you to see.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I can assemble with others to complain about the government. I can petition the government for redress of grievances. I can practice a religion free of government interference. Most importantly, I have the right to speak my mind. I can say whatever I want about the government short of advocating violence against it. I am free to speak or write critically about the actions or inactions of my government.

I can be a critic of my government because for hundreds of years, hundreds of thousands of Americans before me fought and died for my right to do that.

In this young century, however, Americans have suffered increased assaults on their rights — especially privacy — by their own government, all in the name of the proclaimed need for “national security.” Because of fear, government continues to attempt to foreclose on constitutional protections.

Government may erode constitutional guarantees in the absence of the watchful eye of the governed. Rights not exercised may become rights lost. It is an obligation of citizenship for Americans that they continually critique and comment on the actions of their government. That is how we shape our government. Failure to do so allows government to shape us and our rights instead.

At the moment, America has a slew of problems confronting it — record unemployment, a shrinking economy, two foreign wars, a two-party system run amok, and an enormous fiscal deficit, just to name a few.

As we toss the steak on the barbecue and watch the fireworks today, let’s keep in mind the rights and riches we do have, the historical cost of attaining them, and the future risk of losing them if we fail to speak up when government displeases us.

In a June 1st, 2003 article by Catherine O’Mahony, published by The Sunday Business Post Online, Joey Mason, founder and managing director of Eumom is quoted as saying,

“This is really going to make us a player. For advertisers, we want to get higher quality interaction with the women they are targeting. We want them to be able to choose when and how they speak to their target customers.” He further says, “We know we are a new kid on the block and that we need to prove ourselves.” (emphasis added)

Where will Mr. Mason’s firm be a player? In 2003 Eumom was awarded a three year contract worth at least €2.4 million to provide promotional materials to Dublin’s three maternity hospitals. Eumom replaced the 25 year veteran Bounty Euro RSCG.

Speed ahead to February 2, 2009 when Michael Brennan of The Independent reports that the largest maternity hospital in Dublin now allows marketing representative from Eumom access to the maternity ward. Coombe Women’s Hospital has entered into a financial agreement that accepts a per-child fee for every mother and child signed up by Eumom’s marketing representatives. The actual figure is in dispute, but the total fees collected by Coombe Women’s Hospital could be €245,000 during 2003-2008 based on the average 7,500 births per year at the hospital.

Is this clever marketing, creative financing or a horrible violation of trust?

Let’s look at Eumom’s own words and practices. The Independent also provided a story outlining the guidelines for conversations with new mothers. Never mind the overall layer of sleaze associated with the disingenuous comments like “oh look at all this pink – it must be a girl…” look at the last dot:

V important to reassure mom that: a) Eumom is custodian of her details; b) Eumom uses it in collaboration with partner companies; c) Eumom’s collection and usage of data complies with data protection office guidelines.

Should the Mom still say NO – one final question: Do you have private health insurance? If so, VHI/Quinn/Hibernian? If asked why we need to know — we are conducting a survey. (emphasis added)

Survey, I bet. Whose next at those hospital room visits…

So with hospital maternity stays in most of the west as short as 12 to 24 hours, why would any woman want to spend any of that time answering your marketing questions? As a curious exercise I asked some women I know to respond to this policy. Comments included the words: abhorrent, invasion of privacy, pissed off, crosses the line and gross. One woman speculated on the effect to hospital security by having non-family members present in the maternity ward. I’m guessing these aren’t the answers Eumom or Coombe Women’s Hospital would hope for in a focus group.

Having a child myself I can attest to the value of information from reliable suppliers. There is a time and a place. Give me that bag of information after the Lamaze class and I’ll welcome it.

Talk to me after labor and childbirth and I’ll remember you for all the reasons you don’t want… and I have a very long memory.

How DARE you stand on that stage, on the shoulders of generations of women who have struggled and sacrificed to allow a woman to achieve what you have, and spit in their faces the way you have done over the past few weeks? For a serious candidate for vice president to turn in such a poor performance in interview after interview that the fact that you managed not to pee on the stage meant that you exceeded many people’s expectations is a crying shame. In the month since you were named as candidate for VP, you have embodied every single negative stereotype ever put forward as a “reason” why women are not fit to lead a nation. You have been shallow, superficial, disorganized, and clearly uninformed on a wide range of issues that the president MUST understand. That is absolutely disgraceful. You are no longer Miss Wasilla – this is not a beauty contest that you can win by chirping “World peace!” into a microphone and waiting for someone to show up with your tiara and sash – it is deadly serious. How do you propose to take over the presidency, should that be necessary, when it takes you weeks of preparation and drilling and rehearsal in seclusion to get through a 90 minute debate? You are so afraid of the press after your three disastrous interviews that you have decided to avoid them completely – don’t think that we can’t see through your attempt to spin the situation to cast yourself as a victim of the evil, mean, press corps. Do you seriously believe that that would be an option for you, should you ever become president? What will you do then?

How DARE you stand up there and criticize other nations’ lack of women’s rights, when you have systematically worked to strip women of their rights since you have had power of any sort? Your city led the fight in Alaska to charge women for the rape kits used to gather forensic evidence after a woman has been sexually assaulted. Your state leads the nation in number of forcible rapes per capita, but you’ve done nothing to stem the tide. You speak out against socialized health care – you don’t want the government involved in what you believe are private decisions – but you’re more than happy to take away a woman’s right to choose whether to continue an unwanted pregnancy, even if that pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

How DARE you stand in front of us as a nation and claim that you are prepared to lead us in finding a way to improve education, when you have demonstrated over and over again your own lack of understanding of basic principles of science, history, and civics? Any high school freshman should be able to name at least one or two other Supreme Court cases. Finding ones you disagreed with might be a bit harder, although for me, Bush v. Gore, Plessy v. Ferguson, and District of Columbia v. Heller come to mind pretty quickly. One would hope that you would also disagree with the verdict of at least the second case in that list. How is it that you propose to lead our nation in its interactions with other countries, yet you can’t be bothered to do some studying to find out what the Bush Doctrine might be? You don’t seem to grasp the concept that if you do not understand what is causing climate change, you will not be able to do anything to stop it. Yes, the climate has warmed and cooled in the past without it being caused by human activity – but the difference is those climate changes happened over centuries and millennia — not decades. They also tended to be accompanied by mass extinctions. It seems to me that, even if you don’t believe that humans are to blame, it’s worth taking action to make absolutely sure that we’re not part of the problem. Your position in opposition to comprehensive sexual education is fatally flawed. As the gap between puberty and marriage widens for more and more young people, abstinence becomes more and more unlikely. Young people will have sex, and nothing that we say or do will ever stop that. Sex is a basic drive for humans. We can either accept this fact and make sure that these young people have comprehensive sex ed – including a thorough understanding of how to prevent pregnancy and disease – and access to condoms and other forms of birth control to prevent unwanted pregnancies and the spread of STIs, or we can continue to see young people’s options in life severely limited by disease and unplanned pregnancies. I have been unable to definitively substantiate reports that you are a young-earth creationist who believes that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, but if that is true, it is one more proof that you are unfit to lead this nation. Science and technology are the US’s only hope for maintaining its position in the global economy. We cannot move forward as a nation and maintain our position in the vanguard of science and technology behind a leader who rejects even the most basic scientific understanding in favor of myths and legends.

How DARE you claim to be part of a middle-class family? The AP reports that your family income is approximately $230,000 per year, with assets in excess of $1 million. That’s almost 4 times the average income in Alaska, and over 5 times the average income in the entire US. That’s approximately 3 times the net worth of Joe Biden. The folksy, aw-shucks routine is a calculated fake with which you hope to lie your way into national-level power – what other reason could there be for you refusing to release your financial information before the VP debate, other than your hope that no one would bother to fact-check your claim to be in the middle class? God help us if you actually succeed at this. You are nothing more than a conniving, grasping politician who favors style over substance. You talk of your status as an “outsider”, but your true colors showed tonight as you talked of your hopes of expanding the power you would wield as vice president, were the American people crazy enough to elect you. Dick Cheney has already had his crack at running the country into the ground by wielding powers to which he had absolutely no right, from a Constitutional standpoint. The LAST thing we want to do now is expand those powers further for the likes of you.

We’ve been lied to for eight years already. We’ve dealt with cronyism and abuse of power. We’ve watched the government stonewall inquiries into even its most blatantly illegal and unethical actions. (We’ve already seen evidence of how you’re more than happy to do these things as well, in your less than two years as Alaska governor. Why is it that you are no longer asking us to “hold you accountable” in your ethics inquiry? Why are your people now refusing to answer subpoenas so that the inquiry can proceed?) We’ve seen our homes and jobs and money stolen, and watched wealth concentrated in the hands of the rich while the poor and the middle class suffered. We’ve watched oil company profits shoot up, and no-bid contracts handed out unapologetically to companies with undeniable ties to the Bush/Cheney regime. We’ve watched scientists routinely manipulated or squelched if their findings were inconvenient to the administration’s political objectives. We’ve seen ally after ally throughout the world alienated. We’ve watched thousands of young men and women die in a preemptive war which the government lied to us to start, yet we’ve continued to fail to catch the people who were actually the ones that attacked us on 9/11. We’ve watched the economy tank, and the deficit skyrocket. You talk about “change”, but spout the same old policies we’ve seen over and over and over and over. You are nothing more than 4 more years of Bush.

And it’s time we said “Enough.”

As for you, the best thing you could do for the nation is to take your family, and go back to Wasilla. Spend time in that lovely house you own – the one by the lake. Or maybe in one of your vacation cottages. Relax. Maybe read a book. You can use your private plane to get there. But leave the rest of us alone. We’ve had enough of your type.

Sincerely,

Nan Rhyner

Nan Rhyner is an aspiring teacher, an animal lover, and a flaming liberal. Nan lives in the Midwest with far too many rescued dogs, cats, and guinea pigs, and an extremely tolerant roommate. She rants about politics in her spare time.

The actions of the current Congress have given new meaning to Pete Townshend’s song, “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” I keep thinking, “Meet the new Boss, same as the old Boss,” as that song says.

Does Congress normally write laws to “restore” old laws that have not been repealed? When a criminal violates existing law, does Congress pass a new law to immunize him from prosecution? Does new technology require surveillance without warrants? Does telecom guilt in past crimes require immunity to ensure their future cooperation in government surveillance operations? There is no logical, or legal, affirmative answer to any of those questions. Once that point is established, the question begs asking: Why is Congress debating this FISA bill? That question is not a small one; its significance is deceptively simple.

The argument that retroactive immunity is necessary to ensure future telecom cooperation in surveillance operations is perhaps the main argument by proponents of immunity. This argument has no foundation; FISA court warrants provide legal protection for telecoms cooperating with government surveillance operations. Beyond that point is the fact that telecoms should be reluctant to freely cooperate illegally; that is the proper order of things; that is the reason warrants exist.

Obama’s response to passage of the new FISA bill includes this passage (which inspired the title of this essay):

“It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.” [Emphases added]

When were “FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes” abolished as the “exclusive means to conduct surveillance”? They never were; they have always been in effect. The Washington Post says:

“Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), the most prominent Republican opponent of the compromise bill, issued a statement today calling that exclusivity provision “meaningless because that specific provision is now in [the] 1978 act.” Specter said Bush just ignored existing law in starting the warrantless surveillance program.” [Emphasis added]

So why do we need a new bill to “restore FISA and existing wiretap statutes”, and what prevents Bush, or any president, from simply ignoring new statutes, as well? The main issue being debated is whether this new FISA bill should include retroactive (ex post facto) immunity for Bush and the telecoms for breaking firmly established laws; there is no debate about whether or not laws were broken.

Bush officials’ rationale for warrantless surveillance has been that it was a necessary response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, which necessarily means the warrantless surveillance began after September 11, 2001. However, in October 2007, the New York Times reported, “Former chief executive [of Qwest] Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks…” in February, 2001. Qwest refused to cooperate citing the program’s illegality. That first contact, nearly seven months prior to the attacks, creates a chronological problem for this particular mythological rationale (read as lie) from the Bush White House. Further chronological problems also exist. According to the New York Times, one of the lawsuits that will be negated by retroactive immunity states:

“…seven months before the Sept. 11 attacks, at about the time of Mr. Nacchio’s meeting at the N.S.A., another phone company, AT&T, ‘began development of a center for monitoring long distance calls and Internet transmissions and other digital information for the exclusive use of the N.S.A.’” [Emphasis added]

On April 20, 2004, Bush said:

“Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.”

As Bush spoke those words the warrantless wiretapping was occurring simultaneously with his approval. He and the telecoms knew the warrantless wiretapping was illegal, thus the need for lies then, and for immunity now.

Now Congress seeks to provide protection for these criminals with passage of the new FISA bill. It could, and should, be argued that the retroactive immunity clause in this bill is unconstitutional, via the “ex post facto law” restrictions in the U.S. Constitution’s Article 1, section 9. The court ruling (Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall. 386 1798) that established general consensus regarding the ex post facto provisions in Article 1, appears erroneous, not on point, and must be revisited. “The Calder majority’s argument is easily refuted with the reasoning that there is nothing inconsistent with interpreting the ex post facto prohibition as applying to all laws, including civil laws.” That ruling enumerated examples of ex post facto laws:

“…a law that destroys, or impairs, the lawful private contracts of citizens…”

“…a law that takes property from A. and gives it to B.” [Contradicting his own ruling]

“But I do not consider any law ex post facto, within the prohibition, that mollifies the rigor of the criminal law […] There is a great and apparent difference between making an UNLAWFUL act LAWFUL; and the making an innocent action criminal, and punishing it as a CRIME.” (source)

There are a number of problems with Chase’s opinion.

Chase’s opinion engages self-denial. The Calder case dealt with a “law that takes property from A. and gives it to B”, retrospectively, ex post facto, retroactively. “The issue in the case, which arose from the Supreme Court of Connecticut, was whether the act of the Connecticut legislature to set aside a decree of a probate court (which had the effect of divesting the appellants of certain property) was an ex post facto law.” Chase specified exactly this situation as being an ex post facto law (see above), yet did not support that finding in the Calder case.

Another problem with Chase’s opinion is that it does not appear to distinguish between section 9, which deals with congressional legislative restrictions, and section 10, which deals with state legislatures:

“It is thus problematic to base an argument against the application of the ex post facto clause to civil law [or all laws] on the existence of the contract and legal tender clauses (as the Calder Court does), because those clauses do not even appear in the section of the Constitution restricting laws that Congress can make.” (source)

Chase’s opinion is imprecise, and appears based upon section 10, not section 9, which leaves open the possibility of applying the ex post facto prohibition to the current FISA debate.

Ex post facto restrictions exist as a check against tyrannical oppression and manipulation of laws to governmental self-benefit. Justice Chase’s distinction between oppressive “retrospective” laws and “ex post facto” laws appears shortsighted at best. Construing the prohibition on ex post facto laws so narrowly that it allows for excusing governmental infringement on constitutionally protected rights defeats the purpose of the prohibition. The “great and apparent difference” Justice Chase saw between the two actions to which he alluded would appear not to have such a “great and apparent difference” in their end results.

As granting telecoms immunity for past law-breaking deprives individual citizens of their legally sanctioned rights to redress wrongs committed against them, this bill clearly violates the spirit – the intent – of the ex post facto restrictions put forth in the U.S. Constitution. As James Madison said in Federalist Number 44, 1788:

“Bills of attainder, ex post facto laws, and laws impairing the obligations of contracts, are contrary to the first principles of the social compact, and to every principle of sound legislation. … The sober people of America are weary of the fluctuating policy which has directed the public councils. They have seen with regret and indignation that sudden changes and legislative interferences, in cases affecting personal rights, become jobs in the hands of enterprising and influential speculators, and snares to the more-industrious and less-informed part of the community.” (Emphases added)

Telecom immunity in this case fits the definition of “fluctuating policy” directing “the public councils”, and violates the Constitutional restriction, upheld in Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), from passing any “law impairing the obligation of contracts” (Article 1, section 10), as private citizens entered into contracts with these telecoms, and disclosure of their personal information to other parties without legal warrants was legally prohibited, making that prohibition against warrantless disclosure an element of those contracts (“rights vested, agreeably to existing laws”). As part of the crime committed by this president and these telecoms, citizens’ legally upheld and protected right to privacy was violated. Granting immunity for this violation interferes with individual citizens’ legal recourse for having that right violated, in effect becoming a “law impairing the obligation of contracts”.

It seems reasonable that the Founders understood, and sought to prevent, the possibility of governments decriminalizing previous criminality, either of their own or of their accomplices, in order to protect themselves from investigation and prosecution, which would seemingly explain the omission of any exceptions to the ex post facto prohibition clause in section 9 of the Constitution. President Bush’s unequivocal vow to veto any FISA bill not granting telecom immunity leaves one hard pressed to conclude his motives are any other than to insulate himself from investigation. With the passage of this bill, one can only hope that there will be litigation of the constitutionality of this bill, seeking to have it repealed.

Given the lawlessness of the George W. Bush administration, it is reasonable to conclude it is time for the courts to revisit Justice Chase’s opinion, and expand the meaning and usage of the ex post facto provisions. A nation ruled by laws cannot survive if Congress passes retroactive legislation that forgoes the judicial process, also a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment’s “due process” guarantees and other protections, in order to excuse illegalities committed by those in power; such legislation violates the separation of powers and undermines the intent of the ex post facto prohibition. Obama has stated one clear fact in his position on the FISA bill: “This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses.” Surely this reveals the contradiction between this bill and the intent of the Founding Fathers’ ex post facto prohibition. This bill clearly, retroactively, favors the interests of one group over the rights of private citizens, amounting to a judicial action, for which congress has no authority.

The Bush Administration and the telecoms, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, knowingly conspired and engaged in an illegal act. In excusing them via the passage of this bill, an act from which Congress is expressly restricted by the Constitution, despite Justice Chase’s mystifying opinion, Congress is conspiring to commit further crimes against the Constitution and our nation. A “nation of laws” cannot tolerate such blatant lawbreaking from all levels of its government. Terrorists present no threat to core American values, but Bush and this congress are undermining the principles Americans cherish by ignoring the rule of law that the Founding Fathers knew to be the only foundation for a democratic and free society.

Now, Judge Louis Stanton has decided to force Google/YouTube to disclose a complete set of data on all YouTube users. As TechCrunch reports: “That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely “speculative.””

TechCrunch goes on to express concern that this throws open the opportunity for copyright holders to sue individuals for watching their materials on YouTube. That, if you’ll pardon my language, is the fucking least of anyone’s concerns.

Over the past few years democrats and other “subversives” in places like Iran, Morocco, Egypt, Zimbabwe, China and other hell-holes of civil liberties have used their camera-phones to send broadcasts directly from the front-line of vicious conflicts.

Like this one:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video may not appear subversive, but it clearly shows empty polling stations, empty streets and V signs all over spray-painted by protestors against Robert Mugabe’s tyranny in Zimbabwe. Mugabe was inaugurated on Sunday after claiming 85% of a massive turnout voted for him.

Now imagine that Zimbabwe’s secret police get their hands on the person who posted this video… he, or she, will get more than just a lawyer’s letter. They’ll get killed.

Internet companies are more than just custodians of US civil liberties. They are now also custodians of people’s freedom all over the world. And especially in places where it is most at risk.

Dear Sam:

Thank you for letting me know your views on H.R. 6304, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments of 2008. I appreciate hearing from you.

This bill is designed to update FISA while putting an end to abusive domestic spying, and I voted for it in order to prevent a future program of warrantless surveillance by the executive branch. The bill is explicit that complying with FISA is the only way for the government to conduct surveillance. At the same time, it updates FISA, which was originally passed in 1978, to give us important capabilities to discover and stop terrorist activities. I fully understand why there is confusion and even anger that the legislation does not do more to require some telecommunications companies to respond to lawsuits for alleged privacy abuses in their actions to implement the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance after 9-11. But it does require a comprehensive review of that surveillance program by the Inspectors General of the Justice Department, the Directorate of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Department, including a report to the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of Congress. This will mean that past abuses by the Bush Administration will not go uninvestigated. Also, the bill does not provide absolute or criminal immunity for these companies, and no government official will receive civil or criminal immunity for past abuses.

The bill – like any compromise – is not perfect, but I decided voting for it was the best way to protect both our national security and the civil liberties that make our nation worth defending. A fact sheet and other materials about this bill and the issues raised by its passage are available at my website.

Thanks again for contacting me. For more information, please visit www.house.gov/markudall.

Warm Regards,

Mark Udall
Member of Congress

At this point it should be noted that I’m not a lawyer, and even if I were the corpus of the bill sounds like a meticulously crafted Machiavellian gauntlet aimed at flummoxing even the most gifted of analysts (Howard Dean called it a “114 page monster”). So I won’t be presenting myself as someone with a nuanced grasp of what we can and can’t and will and won’t do about the telecoms that knowingly violated our civil liberties. It seems evident enough that we probably had very little chance on that front anyway, and that the “compromise” provides further procedural smoke-and-mirrors covering the getaway.

That said, I do have some problems with Udall’s letter. Let’s take this piece by piece.

This bill is designed to update FISA while putting an end to abusive domestic spying, and I voted for it in order to prevent a future program of warrantless surveillance by the executive branch.

That’s nice, but the need to prevent future bank robberies and the need to do something about the people robbing the bank right now are not mutually exclusive goals.

I fully understand why there is confusion and even anger that the legislation does not do more to require some telecommunications companies to respond to lawsuits for alleged privacy abuses in their actions to implement the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance after 9-11.

The problem here isn’t that we’re confused, Rep. Udall. The problem is your reliance on weasel words and near-Rovian rhetorical misdirection. For instance, “alleged”? Please. Second, it’s not that the bill doesn’t force telecoms to respond, it’s that it guarantees that they won’t have to. Third – and I’m really disappointed in you on this one – is the “after 9-11″ ruse. Because we pretty much know that the spying was happening well before 9/11, don’t we?

But it does require a comprehensive review of that surveillance program by the Inspectors General of the Justice Department, the Directorate of National Intelligence, the National Security Agency, and the Defense Department, including a report to the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of Congress.

“Review” – what a great word. It wants us to hear that something is being done, but in actuality it says no such thing. The bill doesn’t require the administration to do anything. What value would a criminal trial be if the judge had no authority to impose sanctions? In short, the IG thing is a ruse designed to allow Vichy Democrats like you claim that you’re doing something when, in fact, all you’re doing is insulating a criminal administration and enabling its corporate co-conspirators.

This will mean that past abuses by the Bush Administration will not go uninvestigated.

You’d use words like “punished” here if you could. Your failure to do so makes clear the sleight-of-hand game you’re playing.

Also, the bill does not provide absolute or criminal immunity for these companies…

The bill does protect corporate individuals, if I’m reading correctly, and I can’t help smelling a weasel with that word “absolute.” In the end, though, it’s hard to imagine how, precisely, a successful prosecution – either criminal or civil – might be conducted once this bill becomes law. It may have been impossible anyway, but your actions have helped seal the door even more tightly.

Now we get to the part that bothers me the most:

The bill – like any compromise – is not perfect, but I decided voting for it was the best way to protect both our national security and the civil liberties that make our nation worth defending.

First, I’m all in favor of national security. I think we all are, so you can stop pandering and playing into the GOP’s “Dems are weak on defense” frame. The issue, though, is the way you present the twin goals – national security and civil liberties. There’s a balancing act here, and it’s being played out in a way that suggests that somehow there’s an either/or dynamic at work. I’m not 100% sure I buy that, but the more you say it that way, the easier it makes life for those who wish the rabble were a little more under control.

In essence, you’re explaining how you “compromised” between security and liberty. If you’ll recall, that word has a couple definitions. First: “settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions b: something intermediate between or blending qualities of two different things.” This is what happens when I want something and you want another – we wind up with something that splits the difference.

The other definition is a little more sinister, though: “a concession to something derogatory or prejudicial.” In this sense of the word compromise signals a breach, a failing, a loss of position or stature or well-being. We can have our security compromised. We can have our principles compromised. We can have our democracy compromised.

I’m beginning to think that Rep. Udall and his collaborationist fellow Dems are using this sense of compromise instead of the first. I know the Republicans want and need us scared, and sadly the Democrats have been all too willing to help. But there are still a few of us who don’t want our liberty compromised. We don’t want the word compromise anywhere near the 4th Amendment.

We want representatives who understand, as we do, that if we undermine our freedoms, al Qaeda can go ahead and declare victory, pack up and go home to their families. I’m not going to be so extreme as to suggest that if telecom immunity passes then the terrorists have won the war, but I’d be a fool not to acknowledge that they’ve won a meaningful skirmish.

Congressman Udall, you’ve compromised on the Constitution. And while I’m not so stupid as to invest a lot of faith in elected politicians of any party – even if that pol is a “Boulder librul” – there’s no getting around a sad fact: you’ve compromised my trust.

Time will tell if, in doing so, you’ve also compromised your chances of victory in November.

Part 1

In a post titled “Why Johnny Can’t Google,” Rafe Colbun blogs about John McCain’s indifference to computers: “It’s tempting to. . . assume that. . . old guys just aren’t computer users. [But] in 1997 I worked for an IT consulting firm [among whose] clients was the George [H.W.] Bush Presidential library. [Part of our job was] setting up email accounts for President Bush and his friends (folks like Brent Scowcroft), generating PGP keys, and teaching them how to use them. President Bush has a good 12 years on John McCain, and he had his own laptop, email account, and PGP key ten years ago.”

As for blogging in general, Rob Peters at Vancouver’s the Tyee asks “Is Personal Blogging Fast-Fading?” Regarding “musing fatigue,” he writes: “Perhaps we’ve realized that blogging every day isn’t as fun as it sounds. . . . it actually takes work to develop new material on a regular basis. [But] there does appear to be a more realistic version of the blog coming down the fibre optic trunk line. If filling an entire blank page is a little daunting, how does a 200-character text box sound? Enter the microblog. Twitter and Jaiku are the front-runners in this arena.”

When Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington was subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee writes Dana Milbank says in a Washington Post column, “When Anonymity Fails, Be Nasty, Brutish and Short,” he answered questions with “unbridled hostility.” As Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) questioned him, “he put his chin in his hand, stroked his beard and cut off the congresswoman with an offer of advice ‘that may be helpful to you in asking your questions.’”

In a post titled “The Real State of Iraq” at Informed Comment, Juan Cole writes: “By now, summer of 2008, excess deaths from violence in Iraq since March of 2003 must be at least a million. . . . There is not much controversy about it in the scientific community. Some 310,000 of those were probably killed by US troops or by the US Air Force, with the bulk dying in bombing raids. [It's comparable to] bombing to death everyone in Pittsburgh, Pa. Or Cincinnati, Oh.” 310,000? Would that Juan Cole weren’t so credible.

In his New York Times column, “Why Obama Should Visit a Mosque,” Roger Cohen writes: “Fear-mongering about Islam is a global industry. It thrives on ignorance. Obama has a unique power to break the cycle, not least by emboldening moderate Muslims to denounce terror. Nothing would do more in the long run for the security of the world.”

From “Torture a Big Problem Worldwide, UN Expert Says” in Deutsche Welle: “Manfred Nowak. . . the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Torture, sees reasons for both optimism and concern. A landmark UN anti-torture convention has been signed by 145 countries. Yet despite the official ban [it's] very rare for him to travel to a country where there aren’t substantial allegations of torture.” Except in Denmark, where “I have no allegations of torture,” Nowak said. “That is really an exception.”

In “New Treaty for Iran and Israel,” Marc Gopin at Common Ground News Service writes: “But most experts agree that an Israeli strike will only delay a nuclear Iran while setting in motion a horrific downward spiral in regional violence and in the global economy. There is only one way to forestall this emerging train wreck, and that is new thinking [in the form of] the “No First Introduction Treaty”. Israel has never agreed to “no first use” of nuclear weapons [but it has] reiterated that it will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into the Middle East conflict. . . . It would be wise right now for the Supreme Leader of Iran, Khamenei, to draft an Iranian-Israeli treaty of ‘No First Introduction.”

In “Gazillions,” a review in the London Review of Books of McMafia: Crime without Frontiers by Misha Glenny, Neal Ascherson quotes an expert: “Prohibiting a market [like drugs or prostitution] means giving the criminal corporations opportunities and resources for exerting a guiding and controlling influence over whole societies and nations. [The world] has yet to grasp the challenge to. . . civilisation posed by it.”

In a Wired article, “I’ve Seen the Future, and It Has a Kill Switch,” Bruce Schneier writes: “It used to be that just the entertainment industries wanted to control your computers. . . to ensure that you didn’t violate any copyright rules. But now everyone else wants to get their hooks into your gear. OnStar will soon include the ability for the police to shut off your engine remotely. [But this] is really about media companies wanting to. . . control what you do and when you do it, and to charge you repeatedly for the privilege whenever possible.”

Part 2
 

Read the rest at Black Dog.

“The Government Accountability Office has been warning about this problem for a decade. And it seems to me in this administration, there’s been pretty much a culture of disregard for privacy, and that’s part of the problem,” he said.

Wyden may have been referring to a 2006 report from the GAO documenting the lack of oversight in sharing Social Security Numbers with contractors working for various federal agencies, including the IRS and the FBI, as well as within the private sector. It is but one of many reports the investigative agency has issued documenting the serious vulnerabilities our government’s mad drive to outsource its functions to the private sector has wrought–but it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Natasha Chart begins by asking the right questions:

Who did the passport data contractors work for? On top of that, my question, why the **** are contractors getting access to sensitive public data? Have we privatized the government so much that there aren’t any federal employees left to handle this stuff?

Brilliant at Breakfast’s Jill gets some answers by untangling the web of allegiances involved in the passport breach and discovers a number of disturbing conclusions, including the fact that new employees at State may have been trained using “live” personal data:

Is Mr. McCormack saying that when they’re training new employees, they’re giving them access to production data? Even if they’re taking a copy of the production database and putting it on a test server, this is still sensitive data about individuals, some of them high-profile, that they’re using for TRAINING NEW EMPLOYEES? And if a trainee immediately decides to look up information for Hillary Clinton, shouldn’t that have set off a red flag as to what this new employee was likely to do?

The question then becomes, why did low-level non-Federal employees have access to such sensitive data, and why weren’t better safeguards in place?

This excellent International Herald-Tribune article from February 2007 has the answer–the mad dash to turn government service into a pig’s trough of profitability has made contracting the virtual fourth arm of the government:

Without a public debate or formal policy decision, contractors have become a virtual fourth branch of government. On the rise for decades, spending on federal contracts has soared during the Bush administration, to about $400 billion in 2006 from $207 billion in 2000, fueled by the war in Iraq, domestic security and Hurricane Katrina, but also by a philosophy that encourages outsourcing almost everything government does. Contractors still build ships and satellites, but they also collect income taxes and work up agency budgets, fly pilotless spy aircraft and take the minutes at policy meetings on the war. They sit next to federal employees at nearly every agency; far more people work under contracts than are directly employed by the government.

Outgoing GAO head David Walker added an emotional note to the phenomenon: “There’s something civil servants have that the private sector doesn’t,” he said in an interview. “And that is the duty of loyalty to the greater good — the duty of loyalty to the collective best interest of all.” He added, “Companies have duties of loyalty to their shareholders, not to the country.

That’s absolutely right, and I can vet it from my personal experience. The government claims they need to outsource all of these functions to contractors in order to take advantage of younger, technologically-adept workers with specialized skillsets, rather than expanding the federal bureaucracy. If that were actually true, I’d understand it. But it’s not.

See, your average government contractor is very much a fly-by-night, seat-of-the-pants operation. Unless you’re one of the established big boys like Lockheed Martin, SAIC, CACI, etc., in order to even get your foot in the door, you have to qualify for “8a/disadvantaged status,” which is gov-speak for “woman or minority-owned business.” I’ve lost count of the number of operations I’ve run across that were only getting contracts as the result of having a woman or black CEO, which adds a very ugly racist and sexist dimension to the business–it makes others resentful of them and less willing to trust that they can actually do the job. And, to be blunt, many times they cannot–the ease with which you can obtain these contracts often means many of these contractor and subcontractor agencies have virtually no experience as a business, no idea how to handle basic issues like payroll, accounting, getting benefits for employees, etc. When you have money literally being thrown at you because you’re the lowest (or ONLY) bidder in a contracting announcement, who needs to know how to run a business?

Now, once you’re in the mix as a government contractor, in order to make any kind of profit, you have to charge the agency you work for enormous markups, which can cost the government billions–and this doesn’t stop even if you’re a giant like Boeing:

The Army’s shady approach to its $200 billion makeover has been such a disaster, Congress has ordered the entire military to stop using the arrangement, forever…The outcome has been less than impressive. In 2003, when the LSI contract officially kicked off, Future Combat was meant to be a $92 billion effort; today, that figures stands at $200 billion, minimum — and maybe more than $230. An operating system that was supposed to require 33.7 million lines of code is now estimated to be 63.8 million lines big. “They’re getting to the point they should’ve been in 2003,” Francis noted.

But here’s the thing–many contractors and subcontractors who win bids for government service don’t have nearly enough employees available to do the jobs they claim they can do. So they put out a mad rush of job announcements on Craigslist, Monster, CareerBuilder, etc. and rush to get people in as soon as they can. Often this happens without any kind of background check or even vetting of the prospective’s qualifications or experience–and when the background check DOES happen, it’s often incredibly invasive and touches on every aspect of the prospective’s life. It’s an all-or-nothing approach in this culture.

The best part? Those obscene markups I mentioned earlier do not always trickle down to the employee in the form of higher wages. You often hear about longtime Feds leaving to make more money in the private sector, and that’s absolutely true–but it’s often true for those at the GS-13 level or higher, those with many years of institutionalized experience and knowledge that can be put to use for a company looking to get government gigs. At the lower levels, the salaries contracting agencies pay their prospectives are ridiculously low, many of which don’t even meet the standard of living in an expensive area like the Metropolitan D.C. region. (Trust me, I know.)

So you get people at low pay, which generally means either fresh-faced kids who need a serious boost on their resume, immigrants looking for a quick route to citizenship or on hold with their H-1B status, or people who just need any kind of job and are willing to say, and do, anything to keep it. They often don’t have the training or smarts necessary to handle all the pitfalls and complexities of working for a Federal agency, and once they see that there’s no promotional opportunities in it for them and nowhere to go, they start looking for better work–and they not only take their skills with them, they can cause all kinds of untold damage. To wit:

* A contractor who won a no-bid contract to design a Web site for the TSA to enable flyers to remove their names from terrorist watch lists created such a hole-riddled, poorly-designed piece of trash that it had to be shut down, leading to an investigation by Henry Waxman’s Government Reform Committee.

* 40 percent of Medicare/Medicaid agencies and health insurance contractors experienced breaches of sensitive medical and personal data between 2004 and 2006, driven by the vast interchange of data among contractors, subcontractors, and third parties across the world.

* A contractor upgrading the Department of Education’s online student loan service operations accidentally exposed the personal data of 21,000 students briefly in 2006.

* Unisys, a big-time government contractor hired by the Veterans’ Administration (yes, that Veterans’ Administration) to help process veterans’ health insurance claims had a desktop computer containing data on 38,000 veterans stolen from its home office in Reston,Virginia. (Note the quote from Larry “Wide Stance” Craig himself on privacy problems.)
All of these breaches could have been prevented by locking the data down, keeping it in-house, and most of all, by ensuring only federal employees had access to it. But the current contracting culture is determined to pare government down to the absolute brittle bones in order to build portals of profitability in the private sector. Contractors, as both Walker and a colleague of mine said, have no loyalty to the government–they know flat-out they may never get hired into the agency they work for. Nor do they have loyalty to their agency, really–they’re easily replaceable in ways that Federal employees are not. Their first loyalty is to themselves and their own survival. They are, in effect, outsourced mercenaries, paid to do the work of public service as a private commodity.

Hmm…mercenaries working for the government. I’ve heard of this somewhere before.

The study, to be released Thursday, comes as privacy and security groups report that an increasing number of personal records are being compromised because of data breaches at online retailers, banks, government agencies and corporations.

The Identity Theft Resource Center, for instance, listed more than 125 million records reported compromised in the United States last year. That’s a sixfold increase from the nearly 20 million records reported in 2006.

About “two-thirds of adult Internet users shop online,” so their privacy fears aren’t acting as a deterrent, it seems.

Or are they? A new Pew Internet Project survey suggests that online shopping numbers would be even higher if people felt more secure.

More specifically, the report says:

• If the three-quarters of internet users who agree that they don’t like sending personal or credit card information online felt more confident about doing this, the share of the internet population shopping online would be 7 percentage points higher than the current average of 66%, or 73%.
• If those who disagree that online shopping is convenient felt otherwise, the share of the internet population shopping online would be 3 percentage points higher than the current average (or 69% instead of 66%).

Interesting. Most Internet users are concerned about privacy issues, although not all of them act on those concerns in the same way.

Item: Facebook’s attempts to push the envelope on marketing within social networks have sparked considerable user backlash. Clearly Facebook sees all those subscribers as consumers, but it’s not apparent that the users see themselves as commodities to be monetized.

The Beacon debacle was Facebook’s first big misstep (and Om Malik called it in advance, by the way). Company execs have evidently convinced themselves that it was just an implementation misunderstanding, but is that a conclusion they should be comfortable with?

In just two or three years Facebook has evolved from a site that people were dying to get on into one where people are actively trying to figure out how the hell to get off. Recently the company has had to endure major publicity over the difficulty of getting your data deleted from the site once you 86 your account – a problem that led to the creation of the How to permanently delete your Facebook account group, which currently has 14, 407 members. Yeah, that’s the kind of PR you’re looking for.

Item: We’re now starting to see pushes for legislative action restricting the ability of companies to mine and use consumer data.

After reading about how Internet companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo collect information about people online and use it for targeted advertising, one New York assemblyman said there ought to be a law.

So he drafted a bill, now gathering support in Albany, that would make it a crime — punishable by a fine to be determined — for certain Web companies to use personal information about consumers for advertising without their consent.

And because it would be extraordinarily difficult for the companies that collect such data to adhere to stricter rules for people in New York alone, these companies would probably have to adjust their rules everywhere, effectively turning the New York legislation into national law.

“Should these companies be able to sell or use what’s essentially private data without permission? The easy answer is absolutely not,” said the assemblyman who sponsored the bill, Richard L. Brodsky, a Democrat who has represented part of Westchester County since 1982. (Source)

There’s a similar, albeit more restricted, bill before the Connecticut legislature, as well. The implications could be dramatic:

If [the NY law] passed, computer users could request that companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, which routinely keep track of searches and surfing conducted on their own properties, not follow them around. Users would also have to give explicit permission before these companies could link the anonymous searching and surfing data from around the Web to information like their name, address or phone number.

Of course, a lot can happen here. Lobbyists working for any number of affected companies *cough*Google*cough* can probably be expected to wade in with suitcasefuls full of cash thoughtful, reasoned explanations for why this is a bad idea, and it’s not likely that a state law would be allowed to hijack commerce nationwide – which means we can expect this issue to be taken up in Washington, which my Google Maps search indicates is significantly closer to K Street than is Albany.

In any event, we can probably expect to see more conversation on this issue over the next couple of years, not less.

Item: Citizens can expect their privacy to be challenged on more and more fronts in the future. For instance, the real social networking boom isn’t about the Internet at all – it’s about mobile.

The prize, as these start-ups see it, is the 3.3 billion cellphone subscribers, a number that far surpasses the total of Internet users. The advantage over computer-based communities, they believe, is the ability to know where a cellphone is, thanks to global positioning satellites and related technologies.

The market research company Informa Telecoms said in a report last month that about 50 million people, or about 2.3 percent of all mobile users, already use the cellphone for social networking, from chat services to multimedia sharing. The company forecast that the penetration rate would mushroom to at least 12.5 percent in five years.

Mobile has a number of advantages over the Net. For one thing, you don’t have to be sitting at your desktop – you don’t go to your network, it goes with you.

This also opens the door to a world of location-based marketing. As GPS and RFID technologies continue to build out, it will be increasingly easy to target a customer not just according to his or her past shopping habits, but according to where he or she happens to be at a given moment.

Imagine: my wife’s birthday is tomorrow. There’s a well-established profile on both of us, and perhaps my wife bought some diamond earrings six months ago. As I walk down the urban mall in my fair city, my phone buzzes. I pull it out and have a look. The jewelry story that I’m approaching is offering me a micro-targeted 15% mobile coupon on diamond necklaces that would look great with my wife’s earrings.

Minority Report, anyone? For what it’s worth, the scenario I just described isn’t an if, it’s a when.

To this, let’s add in the depth and complexity of Web 3.0 – the “semantic Web.” And all apologies to those of you who are still trying to catch up to Web 2.0. In 2006 Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with more or less inventing the Web, described Web 3.0 this way:

“People keep asking what Web 3.0 is. I think maybe when you’ve got an overlay of scalable vector graphics – everything rippling and folding and looking misty – on Web 2.0 and access to a semantic Web integrated across a huge space of data, you’ll have access to an unbelievable data resource.”

If that’s a little thick, maybe this helps:

In contrast, the Holy Grail for developers of the semantic Web is to build a system that can give a reasonable and complete response to a simple question like: “I’m looking for a warm place to vacation and I have a budget of $3,000. Oh, and I have an 11-year-old child.”

If you’re tracking along here, you realize that getting to this point requires The Machine to have a good amount of data on you and a massive ability to think about it.

As is always the case with new technologies – always – the early vision is breathtaking:

Referred to as Web 3.0, the effort is in its infancy, and the very idea has given rise to skeptics who have called it an unobtainable vision. But the underlying technologies are rapidly gaining adherents, at big companies like I.B.M. and Google as well as small ones. Their projects often center on simple, practical uses, from producing vacation recommendations to predicting the next hit song.

But in the future, more powerful systems could act as personal advisers in areas as diverse as financial planning, with an intelligent system mapping out a retirement plan for a couple, for instance, or educational consulting, with the Web helping a high school student identify the right college.

It’s easy to see how such a Web – especially one that’s deployed via mobile – could be of tremendous value. Berners-Lee elaborates on the coolness:

“Using the semantic web, you can build applications that are much more powerful than anything on the regular web,” Mr Berners-Lee said. “Imagine if two completely separate things — your bank statements and your calendar — spoke the same language and could share information with one another. You could drag one on top of the other and a whole bunch of dots would appear showing you when you spent your money.

“If you still weren’t sure of where you were when you made a particular transaction, you could then drag your photo album on top of the calendar, and be reminded that you used your credit card at the same time you were taking pictures of your kids at a theme park. So you wouldd know not to claim it as a tax deduction.

“It’s about creating a seamless web of all the data in your life.”

One example frequently given is of typing a street address which, if it had “semantic data” built into it, would link directly to a map showing its location, dispensing with the need to go to a site like Google `maps, type in the address, get the link and paste it into a document or e-mail.

Still, if existing technologies (and associated practices) pose a significant enough threat to individual privacy that some lawmakers are already looking at how to shut the capability off, imagine if you can the potential for intrusion of an artificial intelligence-driven “World Wide Database” engine.

And note, if you will, that we’re only considering commercial intrusions at this point. If you’re the sort who also harbors some paranoia about the trustworthiness of governmental institutions, then the Web 3.0 future is perhaps even more chilling.

Berners-Lee actually envsions the semantic Web as a hedge against certain kinds of security threats:

He also spoke about what he described as one of the key challenges of the web today — confronting the security risks associated with large databases of information that were attractive to criminals and identity fraudsters.

“There are definitely better ways of managing that threat. I think we’re soon going to see a new tipping point where different types of crimes become possible and lucrative, and it’s something we constantly have to be aware of.

“One option is to build systems which more effectively track what information you’ve used to perform a particular task, and make sure people aren’t using their authority to do things that they shouldn’t be doing.”

Would the tech would be used in these ways? Sure. But for every tool it generated to address intrusions it would – as did the Internet – generate several more that could be used maliciously. This is a time-tested dynamic that accompanies innovation, and there’s no reason to suspect that this leap ahead would be different from all the others.

I’m not here to tell a Frankenstein tale, though. Heck, social media is how I make my living.

Instead, it seems important to acknowledge where we’re heading (and how fast) and to suggest that we begin talking about the implications sooner rather than later. Perhaps innovation and individual liberties aren’t inherently opposed, but a thoughtful glance around our existing landscape suggests the difficulty in investing more deeply in the bounty of tech-enabled consumerism without sacrificing our personal privacy.

Thousands of Facebook users and millions of online shoppers say they’re worried already. If so, the next decade promises to be absolutely terrifying.

Because that’s what this is, folks. We’re living in a surveillance society now, our every move tracked, our emails catalogued, our phone calls traced, our Web sites marked for future reference. It doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad, they know when you’re sleeping and awake. And they know who your friends are, who you speak to, where you go, what you buy, and what you do with all of it.

The National Security Agency has rebuilt the dreaded “Total Information Awareness” mandate, culling data from dozens of disparate databases and hundreds of sources and using targeted leads to build a mosaic pattern of information on a particular “person of interest.” Like a concentric circle (a target?) radiating outward, each ring grows to expand more and more of that person’s social network–their friends, their coworkers, their relatives, their family, and so on. Even if you accede to the idea that immediate surveillance of a target is useful, how much useful data can really be gleaned with this big a trawl? It’s like those awful fishing nets that rope in dolphins as they rake the seas, capturing the unneeded and the wanted alike in their wake.

And the idea that we could trust even the most upstanding and ethically spotless iteration of our government with this kind of unchecked, unmonitored, and uncontrolled “data dumpster diving” is weak, but when you fathom the idea of trusting it to the Bush administration–where lawbreaking is Job #1–it’s almost laughable. Yet this is exactly what our so-called “legislative branch” has been doing, and all our efforts to preserve the rule of law and stymie these spy programs are meeting with baby-steps on the Hill at best.

It’s far from the government that’s engaging in this type of profiling. Your every search, query, and Web site is tracked by the big players in the game–creating massive troves of data detailing what you want to visit and how long you stay there, all in the hopes of devising ever-more targeted advertising to hit you with. That the majority of online advertising we see is barely relevant to the site in question at best is a cold comfort, as it speaks more to the weakness of the execution rather than the failure of intent. At least AOL is doing the smart thing and breaking out the cute penguins to explain how its ad-tracking system works, but who still uses AOL?

A common response to the sheer helplessness one can feel at being part of the surveillance society is to create a “transparent society,” wherein everyone has data and dirt on everyone else, and we can use the power of the information at our hands to balance the scales. There’s a lot of truth to this–many a random news item has blossomed into a major scandal with lasting consequences due to the hard work of ordinary citizens trawling through endless documents, Web pages, and transcripts to make sense of seemingly unconnected bits of information. Just ask the wonderful folks at POGO, or the Sunlight Foundation, or TPM Muckraker.

But this philosophy doesn’t fully account for what security wizard Bruce Schneier has analysed as asymmetric power relationships–where the control is high and the liberty is low. When the cop, or the Federal agent, or the lawyer, has all the documents and you in a locked room, where is the ability to fight back?

And even if we exercise incredible naivete and claim that all of this surveillance is useful and necessary, what safeguards do we have in place when employees–humans, the eternal weak link–misuse their access to this information for petty purposes? All it takes is one disgruntled employee and you’ve got a data breach, security leak, or other information catastrophe on your hands.

We need to exercise more control over the everyday use of our data. We need to delete our cookies from any Web browser we use, shred unwanted junk mail, and freeze access to our credit unless we need it. We need stronger oversight of any company, agency, or entity that is in the information trade, whether it’s a data reseller like ChoicePoint or a social network like Facebook. We need stronger laws governing data breaches and harsher penalties for any entity that doesn’t secure access to data. We need greater transparency of every surveillance operation taking place in the United States that enables us to know what’s going on without compromising the ability to gather intelligence. Most of all, we need an end to unchecked, uncontrolled data mining and warrantless wiretapping that makes a mockery of our country’s founding principles and reduces us all to potential criminals–or worse, “data shadows,” entities defined solely as amalgamations of information that can be collected, sold, resold, and bartered as a potential terrorist threat or shopping goldmine.

When all you are becomes defined as the amount of information traceable to you, what are we then? What have we become, in a world where there is no separation, no door, no filter beyond which we can say, “No. This is my personal space. Not yours. Here I am alone with my thoughts and free of any outside influence or control. This, you cannot have.”

I don’t know, but I don’t want to find out.

Today, however, after seeing a travesty such as this, I am glad that I don’t have a Senator to speak for me, for that means I’d be spared the morbid embarrassment of someone I voted for doing their part to eradicate the fundamental right to privacy and justify egregious corporate lawbreaking.

The battle now shifts to the House, and it looks like (contrary to my earlier concerns) the will to fight is much greater. At the risk of being dramatic, this is where we draw the line in the sand–where we stand up and say “No more abuses of power. No more spying. No more breaking the law. No More.”

We’ve lost a major battle, but the greater struggle is still ahead. And we can win it.

Well, the answer is that the so-called “Democratic” Congress doesn’t give a damn what we think, as they’ve voted down virtually all amendments to the FISA reauthorization bill that would have granted oversight and accountability–including blocking immunity for telecoms. As Glenn Greenwald eloquently notes, this day we’ve seen a so-called “bipartisan” Congress justify lawbreaking and illegality on a level that even the previous Republican majority couldn’t pull off.

As Glenn notes:

A total of 18 Democrats joined all Republicans in voting for immunity: Bayh, Inouye, Johnson, Landrieu, McCaskill, Ben Nelson, Bill Nelson, Stabenow, Feinstein, Kohl, Pryor, Rockefeller, Salazar, Carper, Mikulski, Conrad, Webb, and Lincoln. Obama voted against immunity, and Hillary Clinton was the only Senator not voting. Thus, the breakdown on the vote was similar to what it always is:

Democrats — 31-18

Republicans — 0-49

As always, when it comes to the most radical Bush policies, the GOP lines up lock-step behind them, and the Democrats split, always with more than enough to join the Republicans to ensure passage. That’s the process that is called “bipartisanship” in the Beltway.

If you want one distinct difference between Obama and Clinton, this will serve as well as any. On the day of primaries right in the Capitol, she didn’t even show up for the vote. I could’ve respected her more for voting “Yes,” because that would have been an accountable stand, at least. But she wasn’t there at all, ensuring she can have it both ways when the time comes to demand justice.

And what about that people-powered netroots hero, Jim Webb? The kind of guy that Kos wrote about so lovingly:

Webb exists as our country’s newest political phenomenon in large part because of us. He represents (along with Jon Tester) who we are. The kind of leader we crave. The sort of person who represents the future of our party and country. (Emphasis added.)

Well, not so much:

Mr. Webb is a great representative for Virginia, but Americans need an administration that will roll back the encroachment on our civil liberties rather than support them. If we are to have a progressive (dare I say liberal) President we need to insist on a progressive VP, Secretary of State, Attorney General, etc. We cannot compromise on our principles because someone would help us get elected in the south or help us among “National Security Voters.” As much as I respect Jim Webb I hope he stays in the United States Senate for a long long time.

Actually, given how Webb and other netroots-supported Dems like Claire McCaskill and (to a lesser extent) Jon Tester have folded on this issue and the Iraq war several times, I’d be happy to see them return to private life. As a friend pointed out to me, Webb was very hot to take Bush down for ignoring the law not long ago, but as he said, “some laws are more ignorable than others.” With friends like these, I’d rather have enemies.

On the other hand, I would be remiss if I did not point out that Webb and Tester teamed up with Feingold on several different amendments designed to strengthen oversight and emphasize the surveillance limits, and Tester, at least, voted the right way this time. I’m still sorely disappointed in Webb, however.

So what happens now? Well, the Senate Intelligence bill (complete with immunity) will move to the House, and the battle will start up again. I have no odds on how the issues will play out this time, but I have progressively (so to speak) less confidence in the ability of the current crop of Democrats to stand firm on anything that matters to their constituencies, the public, or the laws they claim to uphold. We lost a big one today, folks, and the momentum is no longer on our side.

More than that, the Constitution and the rule of law lost a great deal as well, and I don’t know that we’ll get it back any time soon.

Until now, the government’s efforts to protect itself from cyber-attacks — which run the gamut from hackers to organized crime to foreign governments trying to steal sensitive data — have been piecemeal. Under the new initiative, a task force headed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will coordinate efforts to identify the source of cyber-attacks against government computer systems. As part of that effort, the Department of Homeland Security will work to protect the systems and the Pentagon will devise strategies for counterattacks against the intruders.

As Brian has said recently, the U.S. is absolutely not ready to handle cyberwar on almost any front. I’m all in favor of redirecting tax money towards protecting and strengthening our Internet infrastructure against any one of the millions of crippling threats it can face, rather than expensive, crappy weapons systems that have little measurable effect except fattening defense contractors’ coffers.

But in an expansive profile of Mike McConnell, the New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright touches on the myriad obstacles our intelligence community faces towards handling a real threat, and why they get it wrong so often:

To call the disparate intelligence bureaucracies a community suggests that they share a collegial spirit, but throughout their history these organizations have been brutally competitive, undermining one another and even hoarding vital information. Since the establishment of the C.I.A., in 1947, the fractious intelligence community has botched many of the major tasks assigned to it. Its failures include the Bay of Pigs invasion, the unforeseen collapse of the Soviet Union, the inability to prevent the September 11th attacks, and the catastrophic assessment that Iraq, under Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The intelligence culture, like any other corporatized, hierarchical, top-down system, is hobbled by its own evolution. Territorial turf wars, emphasis on CYA over doing the job, antiquated technology and lack of resources to pay for it, and a thick blanket of paranoia and mistrust that suffuses the field at every level not only prevents agencies from being able to do their jobs effectively, but often redirects them into much more malignant and sinister ends–like the NSA’s illegal wiretapping program. From Wright’s article:

The changes to FISA that McConnell proposed were minor, in his view. “Three things we wanted,” he told me, in characteristic bulletin language. “First, we had to have a situation where it doesn’t require us to get a warrant for a foreign person in a foreign country. Second point, we need the coöperation of the private sector. The private sector is being sued for allegedly coöperating with the government.” He was referring to reports that, even before 9/11, many of America’s major telecommunications companies had diverted virtually all records of telephone and e-mail traffic from their routers into N.S.A. data banks, where it could be stored and examined. McConnell wanted liability protection not only for the companies’ future coöperation but for their past actions as well; however, he agreed to take the issue of retroactive immunity off the table if Congress would reconsider the matter after its recess.

Of course, this didn’t happen, and we’re now in a brutal Congressional stalemate between the White House, who wants permanent immunity for the telecoms and expansive new surveillance powers, and the Dems in Congress who refuse to let lawbreaking companies get away with it.

McConnell, as I’ve said before, is a big fan of private-sector cooperation on surveillance matters. He acknowledges in Wright’s article that the massive, bureaucratic intelligence community can’t move or innovate fast enough to perform the kind of vast tracking he wants for the Internet. So, how will he accomplish this?

Here’s a hint.

The battle over telecom immunity isn’t just important for what these companies and their pals in government have done, but for what they will do. No matter how vital the need for a stronger policing of the Internet against cyberterrorism is–and it is vital–that can’t come at the hands of an Administration and its operatives who have repeatedly and willfully disregarded the law and civil rights to achieve their objectives, and rapacious private interests who want to use these technologies as stepping stones to their goal of a much more controlled Internet–with their hands on the dial.

That’s why nothing like this can happen under Bush’s reign without the most stringent accountability and strong oversight. He simply cannot be trusted, and those who work for him and want to enact these goals have to be viewed with extreme skepticism. Otherwise we may find that our innocuous e-mails and blog posts are getting swept up in a vast vacuum of data mining, while real terrorist threats go unnoticed until it’s too late.

(Special thanks to Ars Technica.)

In a rare and welcome example of showing steel in the collective spine, Senate Democrats have voted down an attempt to shut off debate and block amendments on the FISA reauthorization bill. By refusing cloture, the bill will continue to be debated, with the next step being discussion of a 30-day authorization of the odious “Protect America Act.” If that vote fails, the Act will expire on Friday (February 1st), and (despite what you may have heard), the current FISA law will revert to being the de facto standard for surveillance guidance.

Here’s how twisted and ludicrous the Bush position on this is–everyone from Mitch (and Mike) McConnell to Dick Cheney has come out loudly braying that failure to permanently pass this law and grant telecom amnesty would instantly result in terrorists being able act without fear of being spied upon. Yet Bush has promised to veto any extension of the bill. If Bush doesn’t get what he wants–permanent and full authorization of PAA, including immunity from prosecution for lawbreaking telecoms–he’d rather expose us to risk of terrorist activity. It is to laugh.

When you factor in how many of these oh-so-precious wiretaps and surveillance gambits have ended because the Feds didn’t pay their bills on time, it really makes you wonder if the deadly earnestness of the White House push for this bill to become law is grounded in anything more than ensuring that those stalwart allies of theirs–AT&T and Verizon–don’t end up on the hook for spying on Americans illegally.

But you can prevent that. Do your part to contact your Senator and Representatives, and tell them to stand up for the rights of the American people to live in a world free of constant, illegal surveillance, and to not let rapacious, lawbreaking corporations off the hook.

UPDATE: The vote did indeed fail–OH NOES! We’re at the mercy of The Terrorists IN LESS THAN FIVE DAYS!!!!! ZOMG!!11111

This represents yet another example of this administration’s expansive view of Presidential power, and it needs to be the one that breaks Congress’, and the public’s, back.

President Bush is a True Believer™ in the imperial presidency, a perspective that the Constitution of the United States grants the President almost unchecked power with regard to pretty much everything. First popularized by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, the imperial presidency dates back to FDR, if not further, and supposedly reached its zenith under Richard Nixon. In the post-Watergate days and months, Congress forced new restrictions on the Presidency that presidents have been pushing back on ever since – the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA), limitations on information sharing between the FBI, IRS, CIA, et al, and restrictions on the CIA’s ability to operate on U.S. soil.

But in many ways it wasn’t until President Bush that supporters of the imperial presidency, aka expansive Presidential powers, made significant headway. And most of that so-called progress has been made as a direct result of the September 11 attacks.

On September 18, 2001, Congress approved the “Authorization for Use of Military Force”, Public Law 107-40 [S. J. RES. 23], and in so doing granted President Bush the Congressional authority he needed to prosecute the so-called “war on terror.” Specifically, the President was:

…authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Based on the authority of this not-quite-a-declaration-of-war, President Bush invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban who were, then, harboring the organization responsible for 9/11 – Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

But this authorization of force has been used to justify extraordinary rendition, the process of sending accused terrorists to foreign nations where they can be tortured for information in direct contravention of U.S. law. President Bush and former Attorney General John Ashcroft have acted directly against FISA by ordering warrantless NSA wiretaps, claiming that the Authorization for Use of Military Force, combined with his Constitutional authority as President, granted him all the authority he required to ignore prior federal laws and spy on U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. Similarly, President Bush and his various underlings have claimed that waterboarding is not torture and that only by threatening death or causing severe organ damage may an “interrogation technique” be called torture. Similarly, President Bush authorized secret CIA prisons abroad specifically to bypass U.S. law and developed the entire concept of illegal or unlawful combatants in order to avoid granting international POW status to suspected Al Qaeda members.

In the name of the “War on Terror,” our very own President implemented policies that amount to human right abuses that the U.S. doesn’t tolerate in other nations – like Russia and China.

But it hasn’t stopped there. Following the successful invasion of Afghanistan (and thus far unsuccessful reconstruction), President Bush sought to make a case for invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein, something that his father and former President, George H. W. Bush had wisely refused to do in 1991 (or possibly, in President Bush’s mind, failed to accomplish). In the process, he, Vice President Dick Cheney, and many of his highest advisors chose to lie repeatedly to Congress, the American people, and our international allies. The result was the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (aka the Iraq War Resolution) and, ultimately, the invasion and subsequent ongoing occupation of Iraq.

President Bush wasn’t happy with everything that the Iraq War Resolution had in it, and as a True Believer™ in “expansive” Presidential power, he issued a signing statement that said, in part:

[M]y signing this resolution does not, constitute any change in the long-standing positions of the executive branch on either the President’s constitutional authority to use force to deter, prevent, or respond to aggression or other threats to U.S. interests or on the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution.

Which basically meant that President Bush refused to acknowledge that Congress had any authority to limit his military activities as Commander in Chief.

Since then, President Bush has ignored repeated calls by Congress to limit the scope and duration of the ongoing occupation of Iraq. For example, he’s rejected, again through the use of a signing statement, restrictions on his ability to move money around within the Executive Branch, especially between the Department of Defense and the CIA, and even within the DoD itself. His argument is essentially that the President gets to run the Executive as he sees fit, but if this is true, then Congress’ only recourse (as defined by their Constitutional authority to control government funding) is to defund the entire Executive branch. And President Bush’ wide use of signing statements has thrown the entire Executive branch into a legal limbo regarding which laws, and which parts of laws, they have to follow. If you believe President Bush, though, neither he nor his underlings face any restrictions on their activities as imposed by federal law. In essence, the entire Administration is an extralegal and unaccountable entity. In other words, President Bush isn’t a President accountable to Congress and the judiciary – he’s a dictator.

And now President Bush is trying to do an end-run around Congress’ treaty ratification authority while at the same time trying to bypass three separate federal laws that limit his ability to construct permanent military bases in Iraq. All in the name of the very “status of forces” agreement that Guy Raz reported on. According to Mr. Raz, there are legal (if unethical) ways around those annoying federal laws, like using “adjectives like ‘enduring’ or ‘continuing’ instead of the word ‘permanent’”. Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst for the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, goes so far as to wonder whether “keeping the elected Iraqi government in power against internal threats” qualifies legally as a treaty or not. I wonder if the agreement will go so far as to define the Iraqi Parliament, of which nearly half have voted to have the U.S. end their occupation within two years, as an organization that could qualify as an “internal threat.”

Ultimately I agree with Mr. Raz’s conclusion – if the imperial presidency of George W. Bush ignores all these laws, as well as a new one that the Senate is considering, this issue will rapidly come before the Supreme Court. And then we’ll see if the President is allowed to ignore the very Constitution he’s sworn, and utterly failed, to serve and protect.

Meanwhile, AT&T announced that it plans to extend its initiative to examine packets of information on its network for illegally traded content, becoming, in effect, the Internet’s traffic cop.

Let’s see…the world’s largest telecom company states it’s in negotiations with major entertainment conglomerate to police the Internet on their behalf, on the same day the DNI announces the government wants more eyes on Internet traffic?

Mike McConnell is an old friend to the major telecom companies, having most recently stumped on their behalf to grant them retroactive immunity from prosecution in the NSA’s illegal surveillance program. He’s also a big fan of privatizing national security functions, favoring everything from outsourcing background checks to enlisting credit bureaus to handle the work of verifying identities. I find it not at all unfeasible that even as AT&T is offering its services to Big Content, Big Government is waiting expectantly in the visitors’ room for its turn at the till.

There are no coincidences.

CNet’s Declan McCullagh and Anne Broache sent 10 technology-oriented questions to the candidates, discussing net neutrality, Internet taxation, REAL ID, wiretapping, and other issues, and CNet has published the answers as part of their Technology Voter’s Guide. After the jump, we’ll take a closer look at who answered (and who didn’t), and what they said.

So far, the guide has answers from Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Ron Paul and John McCain, with John Edwards and Chris Dodd’s answers still to come. It’s worth noting that none of the frontrunner Republican candidates answered this questionnaire–not Romney, Giuliani, or Huckabee. On the Dem side, Neither Biden nor Richardson have a realistic chance of winning the nomination at this point, nor have either of them made technology innovation a primary focus of their campaigns, so their failing to answer is understandable, if regrettable. (Note that CNet apparently didn’t bother to include Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel.)

I urge everyone interested to read each questionnaire in depth, but here’re brief summaries:

John McCain favors a very hands-off, pro-market approach to technology issues. He opposes net neutrality laws and government actions to increase broadband development. He claims to oppose illegal wiretapping, but defers the question of retroactive immunity for telecom companies to following the “process” of investigating what they did. He supports REAL ID, opposes Internet taxation, is a strong proponent of greater regulation of social networking sites against sexual predators, and would favor expansion of H1-B visas for skilled immigrants according to “market conditions.”

Ron Paul, as you might expect, is pretty much anti-everything that would increase government activity with regard to technology. He’s against net neutrality legislation, and opposes REAL ID, warrantless wiretapping, regulation of social networking sites, governmental retention of data records from ISPs, and supports a permanent Internet tax ban and expansion of the H1-B program.

Hillary Clinton sees a much more central role for government in spurring broadband development and adoption, including offering tax incentives for building new connections in rural areas and improving the FCC’s data collection efforts on broadband penetration. She evinces strong support for net neutrality, tends to favor stronger laws against copyright infringement and tracking sex offenders, and supports expanding the H1-B visa program and extending the moratorium on Internet taxation.

Barack Obama supports full broadband availability for all Americans, and wants reformation of the Universal Service Fund as well as tax incentives and grants in order to spur development and ensure the money is spent right. In his words, he will “take a backseat to no one in his support of net neutrality,” and opposes warrantless wiretapping and retroactive immunity, as well as REAL ID. Obama advocates a stronger look at privacy policies and legislation for companies that trade in the sharing of information, prefers shifting a focus towards funding law enforcement over targeting social networking sites for sex offenders, and wants America to turn out more skilled workers with IT abilities (especially among minorities) in order to compete with H1-B holders.

As a thumbnail analysis, all of the candidates have responded in manners consistent with their positions, even if their positions aren’t always consistent.

McCain’s “hands off” attitude toward the Internet seems grounded in his very cushy relationship with certain telecom lobbyists, and is at odds with his “Protect the children!” attitude about social networking sites and willingness to support governmental intrusions into American lives in the name of “security.”

Paul’s answers are consistent with his Libertarian leanings–if it’s from the government, he wants it gone. I respect his cohesive policy framework, even if his attitude about net neutrality and broadband development is dead wrong.

Clinton’s answers are a frustrating mix of progressive innovation and regressive corporatism to me. While I think she’s on point with providing incentives towards broadband development, her support of expanding the H1-B visa program strikes a sour note when you consider how many American IT professionals are out of work, having been outsourced or replaced by foreign nationals working at lower pay.

Obama’s answers are the most forward-thinking for me, especially when he makes a point of addressing how our education system is not only failing minorities in general, but specifically in technology and tech-related areas, and that we can’t rely on foreign workers to fill that gap forever. And to this date, no candidate has eclipsed him on the net neutrality issue that I can see.

Overall, I’m unsurprised at these answers, but glad to have them in concrete to refer to for the future. I’ll publish a follow-up post next week once Edwards’ and Dodd’s positions are live. This is a welcome and necessary look at how our potential leaders have (or don’t have) a handle on some extremely relevant issues of technology that affect us all.

No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.

How about adding the following clause after “United States”: “and who has not passed a lie detector examination consisting of the following questions:”

• Have you used a statistic out of context or selectively to exaggerate your record?
• Have you ever used a statistic out of context or selectively to denigrate your opponents or their positions?
• While an appointed or elected official, have you improperly accepted money from lobbyists?
• Have you extolled the number of times you cut taxes while failing to say the number of times you raised taxes?
• To make a political point, have you exaggerated a claim about you or your record?
• Have you misrepresented your service (or lack thereof) in the armed forces?
• Have you directed that an action be taken on your behalf but in such a way as to provide you with plausible deniability should it fail?
• Have you commissioned a push poll?
• Have you placed a friend or relative on the public payroll?
• Have you placed an unqualified friend or relative on the public payroll?
• Has a relative or friend placed you on the public payroll?
• Have you personally profited from a publicly funded expenditure?
• Do you have a criminal record?
• Do you have a history of substance abuse?
• Are you physically, psychologically and emotionally healthy?
• Have you cheated on your spouse?
• Have you lied to your spouse or children?
• Are your IRS tax returns for the past 20 years a true accounting of taxes owed and paid?
• Have you knowingly misrepresented yourself in a résumé or curriculum vita?
• Have you plagiarized?
• Have you been sued?
• Have you been fired?
• Have you lied to protect your public image or political position?
• Have you paid anyone to lie on your behalf?
• Would you appoint corporate executives and business leaders who have contributed to your political campaigns to public policy positions, including ambassadorships?
• Do you support more stringent reporting rules for campaign contributions?
• Do you support more stringent freedom of information, sunshine, sunset and journalist shield laws?
• Have you undertaken or ordered an illegal action to enhance a business or corporate interest in this or another nation?
• Have you legally accepted money or favors to promote a business or corporate interest in this or another nation?
• Have you illegally accepted money or favors to promote a business or corporate interest?
• Do you support “fast-track” presidential power on trade legislation?
• Do you support current treaties and pacts regarding “fair trade”?
• Should private, charitable, faith-based organizations be provided public funding?
• Do you believe in a Supreme Being?
• Will your religious beliefs take precedence in deciding matters of public interest?
• Will poll results take precedence in your decisions on matters of public interest?
• Do you believe the president can commit American troops to combat on foreign soil without the consent of Congress?
• Do you believe control of primary and secondary education curricula should rest with local governing school boards, including standards for evaluation and assessment?
• Do you believe that any mandate imposed by the federal government or Congress on state or local governments should be fully funded by the federal government?
• Do you support radical overhaul of the American system of regressive taxation?
• Do you believe the needs of people should always take precedence over considerations of environmental impacts?
• Do you believe human progress should always be measured with concepts stressing growth?
• Do you believe all human beings — regardless of race, creed, sexual preference or gender — are equal?
• Do you believe the First Amendment should be altered?
• Do you believe the Second Amendment should be altered?
• Do you believe the Fourth Amendment should be altered?

No doubt other questions could and should be added to this list. This is just a beginning.

But while we’re at it, let’s amend Article I, Sections 2 and 3, to put the same questions to those who would represent us in Congress, too.