Trump Tops Obama, Hands Over Full Torture Report To Court Previous Administration Refused To
from the still-a-lot-of-marks-in-the-'L'-column-tho dept
Credit where credit is due: Trump has done more to preserve the full CIA Torture Report than Obama ever did. On his way out the door, the DOJ fought on his behalf in federal court, arguing against an order to deposit the full report with the court clerk for preservation in the ongoing trial of Abd al-Rahim Al-Nashiri, who has alleged he was waterboarded while detained by the CIA.
Barack Obama did stuff one copy of the full report in his presidential archives before Trump took over, perhaps in response to fears that the incoming president might make the whole thing vanish. Trump did mention his support for the use of torture on more than one occasion, and it would have been somewhat inconvenient to have an official document laying around saying torture is bad and the US shouldn't do it.
Maybe it's oneupmanship or maybe the Trump's legal counsel feels it has too much on its plate already, but as the New York Times' Charlie Savage reports, Team Trump is handing over a full copy of the Torture Report to the court as requested.
[A]s the Obama era came to an end, two Federal District Court judges for the District of Columbia ordered the executive branch to provide a copy of the report to the court’s security officer, and today, on the deadline set by one of them, the Trump administration complied rather than appeal.
A one-page notice of compliance [PDF] was issued by the White House on February 10th.
Respondents are filing this notice to advise the Court that, in accordance with the orders entered in the above captioned cases on December 28, 2016, and January 23, 2017,2 on February 6, 2017, the Government deposited for the Court Information Security Officers (CISOs) for secure storage a complete and unredacted electronic copy of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program (2014). Specifically, the Government deposited the electronic copy that had been previously delivered to the Department of Justice Office of Legislative Affairs.
The last sentence of the notice kills me. The government apparently carried the electronic copy from the DOJ's Office of Legislative Affairs to the court clerk. The clunky wording suggests this copy no longer resides at the DOJ and that the court has this particular copy of an electronic document in its hands -- one that could be copied infinitely with no discernible loss in quality or content.
Considering the full report is still classified, there are definitely plenty of dissemination control procedures in place. But without any further information to go on, the notice gives the appearance that the DOJ Office of Legislative Affairs no longer has a copy of the full report. So, that can be put on the scorecard of places the document no longer can be found, even though it could be distributed anywhere with minimal effort, cost, or replication of anything more than 1s and 0s.
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Filed Under: barack obama, cia, doj, donald trump, foia, senate, torture report
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Motivation
I am glad to see the Trump administration complying with court orders, something that had me somewhat worried for a bit.
On the other hand, Trump's apparent willingness to continue torture (something that doesn't work all that well) tells us that since he knows it doesn't work all that well, that his interest is in punishment for people who have not been convicted of anything. Punishment that would not be allowed within the confines of the USofA, at least not to the degree alleged to be in the report.
How do we know that he knows? Because no one has as of yet been able to point to anything learned from torture that made anyone 'safer'.
What psychology explains that?
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Re: Motivation
What psychology explains that?
Humans will take great mental leaps in order to avoid being wrong, particularly when them being wrong includes them doing things that they know are highly immoral. Taken in this context, governments do not torture in order to obtain information from, or to punish, those undergoing the torture, but rather to ensure the loyalty of the torturer (and by extension, those who knew of the torture). The fact that torture is both immoral and ineffective means that the torturer cannot allow themselves to stop believing in and following "The Cause" (the person or institution for whom they did the torturing), as that would mean they did said terrible thing without justification.
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Re: Re: Motivation
Should be...
"Humans will take great mental leaps in order to avoid 'admitting' being wrong,"
There is a reason people hate having to face their own iniquities.
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Re: Re: Motivation
As twisted as your analysis is, it does make some sense. Though I suppose it would also force most reasonable people to toss out the idea of integrity any time the word Government (Hi, we're from the Government, were here to help) comes up in discussion.
I would prefer my Government obtain loyalty from integrity, rather than loyalty from a lack of integrity.
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Re: Re: Motivation
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Re: Motivation
If your goal is to terrorize a population.
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Re: Motivation
If it weren't spectacularly successful, there wouldn't be a debate around its use.
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Re: Motivation
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Re:
Mr. Trump is a successful business man, who believes in capitalism, and has become president.
https://postimg.org/image/w0b24zott/
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Re:
I've seen comments in the media to the effect that Trump’s plan to privatize infrastructure development through the use of tax credits wouldn't help in the Oroville case. Armoring the Oroville Dam’s emergency spillway wouldn't lead to profit, so it wouldn't attract investors.
But blaming Trump for it? Citation?
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The Snark is strong in this one...
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Re:
Oh God, are we having the Katrina argument again?
A President who fails to respond to a governor's request for a state of emergency in a timely fashion deserves to be criticized for it, even if he is not personally responsible for the emergency. This is not rocket science.
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Re: Re:
He didn't merely fail to respond, he was directly responsible for putting incompetents in charge, while pretending at the same time that they were doing good work. Given the parade of fools that Trump has been putting in charge of each government department, there's going to be a lot of similar criticisms of him, all perfectly justified.
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Re: Oroville
I'm afraid that Trump's infrastructure
investment program won't make it all
the way to the West Coast, where CA's
deferred maintenance & incompetence
will have to be covered by CA's own
taxes.
CA will now be busy building their own
multi-billion dollar wall -- to hold
onto water.
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Credit where credit is due
Mr. Trump, If you chose to do this and signed it, then a sincere thank you! Thanks!
If you signed this without reading it, because you are unable to read what you sign, then also my thanks to whoever got a signature on this!
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Re: Credit where credit is due
How many billions you got?
And do you recognize the stupidity of your statement?
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Re: Re: Credit where credit is due
Apparently you can't.
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Reading too much into "deposited"
Of course, you could be right that there are some extraordinary copy protections oin place, but even that seems unlikely.
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Re: Reading too much into "deposited"
It is possible that the DoJ retained a copy by copying it off the CD but if the rest of the Federal Government is so anal over writing data to a removable device (including a CD) then I could easily see the DoJ not having another physically portable copy of the report. And given the attention surrounding the report, I could also see that the DoJ never pulled a copy from the CD onto a server for archival or just general access.
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Re: Reading too much into "deposited"
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Re: Reading too much into "deposited"
Specifically, the Government deposited the electronic copy that had been previously delivered to the Department of Justice Office of Legislative Affairs.
It's a messy sentence, but saying they deposited the electronic copy rather than a copy could be read as 'the previous department had a copy, we took that one, and now they don't have a copy.'
Or it could mean that they made a copy and took that to the court, because yeesh is that a mess of a sentence.
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Trump
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Re: Trump
Nobody would have seen these things as particularly positive when Bush reigned, but compared to the abysmal garbage he keeps tweeting, these things are at least somewhat reasonable and any level of reasoning is good in this circumstance.
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Re: Trump
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Transfer of physical storage
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Regarding transfer as opposed to copy
Notuce I said "true and permanent" copies; this is to distinguish from temporal copies like those made when reading into RAM or displaying on a screen (which would have its own legal restrictions).
Again, I am speculating, but it makes sense under my own understanding of the relevant security principles.
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Thank you Trump
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Re: Thank you Trump
I applaud him for releasing the document but I'm betting it has more to do with getting his administration out of the courts quickly as opposed to doing the right thing.
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Re: Re: Thank you Trump
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Re:
If Trump gets a giggle out of it, go Trump. At last I've got a reason to say something nice about him; I've been ragging on him since he got involved in the Birther thing.
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Re:
Be aware that this is not sensitive materials to him and his administration. That is why he doesn't mind doing this. If people in his inner circle was involved, I would bet you that he would see it in a different light.
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Isnt this a Tech Blog? Lol
I suppose that's only when the article is critical of Trump though. ;)
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Re: Isnt this a Tech Blog? Lol
Next up: complaining when StackOverflow has a question about a NullReferenceException, since that isn't a stack overflow.
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Re: Isnt this a Tech Blog? Lol
To be fair tho, this particular topic (torture report) and general theme (gov't transparency) IS somewhat of a staple here...
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Re: Re: Isnt this a Tech Blog? Lol
Plus, articles *on this exact issue* were critical of Obama, Clinton, etc., but partisan idiots only seem to have noticed when their hero is the one being questioned. This site itself is actually pretty consistent.
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Re: Re: Re: Isnt this a Tech Blog? Lol
While I'd happily slap him around the room for a multitude of things I'll pat him nicely on the back for this. The man got a thing right. I don't care why and if he did it for a laugh at the CIA's expense, I say "Go ahead, Mr. President. You can have this one, sir."
I'll be ragging on him next time he does something to annoy me but today he's "The president," and well done that man for releasing the report.
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They made that statement to sound like they dont have a copy. They just dont have an electronic copy.
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It's great that it was handed over though so he does get a little credit for actually doing it.
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The primary summary written by Feinstein et al. is here:
[link]https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/sscistudy1.pdf[/link]
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On top of handing over their only copy though, keeping backups of data at more than one location is sort of the minimum standard for important data, what if a fire happened and you lost your CD? Submit a new request for information?
Not saying I'm surprised...
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I think I can explain this
even though it could be distributed anywhere with minimal effort, cost, or replication of anything more than 1s and 0s.
Classified documents (even in electronic form) are serialized and are not to be copied under most circumstances. For instance, most NOFORN, all Secret, Top Secret, SCI, and OPLAN (formerly SIOP), are such documents as are any with operational security implication. At this point, those documents are still classified until they are declassified. Even if the court releases them, it's still considered classified and persons "read in" to secure materials are to avoid reading them absent need to know. This is why people with a clearance are not supposed to read wikileaks.
I know it's crazy but it doesn't have to make sense; it's government policy.
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Re: I think I can explain this
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Wake me up when he's asked to release documents regarding his own conduct in office and actually agrees to release them. Bearing in mind that he openly supported the use of torture during his campaign.
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Re:
I'm all for using his pettiness to get wrongs righted. We can slap him around for his own conduct later, let's see how we can use his thin skin to our advantage.
Heck, we might even get mass surveillance scaled back to the effective targeted form + warrant requirement that we ought to have in place right now. It's just a matter of pointing out to him how bad he can make Obama look if he sorts this out for us. A girl can dream...
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Re: Re:
Unlikely. I'm actually of the opinion that there's only so much random crap he can say or do before he gets ousted in some way. Once that happens, Pence will be free to push as much draconian crap as he can get away with, and he will get away with it because he looks positively sane and moderate compared to the orange shitgibbon.
My only hope is that the current sideshow gets people motivated enough to vote out enough Republicans in 2 years to get some form of balance in Congress so he has to fight for the worse stuff.
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Citation needed for that.
Either way, yes I definitely do. The Republicans at present can push through a lot of negative things without much opposition, as they both support a lot of negative things and have shown willingness to march in lockstep even when they secretly disagree with each other on an issue. There needs to be an effective opposition to keep them in check, and the only choice the US system offers for that is Democrats. Until a viable 3rd party appears, they're the only other choice.
It's sad that the 2 party system works like that, but it only really works when you have a real opposition and both parties are willing to negotiate and compromise. Given that Republicans have openly made it their mission to oppose everything the Democrats do while in office, compromise is probably not on the table so there needs to be numbers to block some of the truly despicable things that are being proposed.
Not that I'm saying everything is despicable, by the way - it's just that things like removing equal rights for gay people and removing healthcare from people who cannot otherwise get insured without a solid replacement are things that are on the table now.
"Neither republicans or democrats like Trump much"
Again, you might note that I was referring mostly to Pence, not to Trump. I doubt he'll finish his first term at the current rate, whether he jumps or is pushed.
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> years to get some form of balance in Congress so he has to fight for the worse stuff.
My understanding is that this is extremely unlikely, regardless of what level of voter activism there is at that point, simply because of which Congressional districts are up for re-election in that cycle; IIRC (from a source I no longer recall), there is at most exactly one such district which is neither held by a Democrat nor a near-100%-"safe" district for the Republican incumbent.
It really looks as if the "permanent Republican majority" strategy/initiative, from a decade or two back, of focusing heavily on gerrymandering "safe" districts on a per-state basis may be paying off...
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Secrets
The point is to know where the copies are. *They* really don't want multiple copies - the fact they are trivial to make is a minus not a plus.
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