This is Silly: Pelosi Says Facebook Is A 'Willing Enabler' Of Russian Election Meddling. It Is Not

from the don't-be-ridiculous dept

I know that it's fun and easy to attack Facebook these days -- and the company certainly deserves all sorts of criticism. But the criticism should be within the realm of reality. And the latest, from Nancy Pelosi, is not that. As you may have heard, there's all sorts of controversy over the past week or so concerning Facebook's decisions on how to moderate purposefully doctored videos of Pelosi, that are either edited or just slowed down to make it appear (falsely) that she is stumbling over words or slurring them. As we pointed out, there are good arguments from a variety of different perspectives on how Facebook should handle this. Currently, it is limiting the ability for the video to spread algorithmically, and when people try to share it manually, it pops up a warning about how the video has issues and you might want to think twice about sharing it.

That said, it wasn't even the video that was making the rounds on Facebook that got all the attention. Instead, Fox News ran a similar video, and that's the one that President Trump himself tweeted. And yet, oddly, everyone seems to be rushing to blame Facebook. The latest to step up to the plate is Nancy Pelosi herself, who is now saying that Facebook choosing not to pull down the video means the company is a "willing enabler" of Russian election interference:

"We have said all along, poor Facebook, they were unwittingly exploited by the Russians. I think wittingly, because right now they are putting up something that they know is false. I think it's wrong," she said. "I can take it. ... But [Facebook is] lying to the public."

She added: "I think they have proven — by not taking down something they know is false — that they were willing enablers of the Russian interference in our election."

This is such nonsense on so many levels. Of course, this is the same Nancy Pelosi who recently attacked Section 230 of the CDA and misrepresented what it does, so perhaps she can team up with all the Republicans in Congress making similar attacks on CDA 230 and kill the internet.

It is totally reasonable to say that Facebook was incompetent in dealing with Russian interference on its platform (it appears it was). It's totally reasonable to argue that Facebook drastically underestimated the ability of such interference, and neglected to be concerned about it for way too long. However, the company has made a lot of changes in the last couple years, and you're simply not paying attention if you don't think the company now cares quite a bit about the issue. But it's still going to face the same problem we've been discussing for years: content moderation at scale is impossible to do well, and some people are always going to disagree with certain decisions.

I completely understand the views of many that Facebook should have pulled down this video. But it is not an easy question and it is not one where the decision not to pull the video means that the company is "willingly enabling" propaganda (Russian or otherwise). As we pointed out just recently about this, how do you write rules that would make it obvious and clear for Facebook to remove a distorted video like that, that doesn't also force it to remove satire, humor, political speech, etc. This was the point raised by the UN's expert on free expression David Kaye:

And, even more to the point, how do you write a standard for Facebook to remove "false" information, "disinformation" or even "propaganda" that doesn't also lead to the removal of religious texts and proselytizing.

Point is: this is not easy. And many of these cases involve careful judgment calls where there is a tremendous gray area, rather than "black" and "white" decisions. It's one thing to say that you disagree with Facebook's decision, and argue for why you would have come down differently. There are ways to do that that would be compelling, certainly. But that's not what Pelosi is doing,. Instead, she's smearing all of Facebook in claiming that because it came down differently on this particular issue, that it means they're in bed with Russian election meddling. That's Louis Gohmert-level crazy.

Meanwhile, it really is amazing that nearly everyone is so focused on Facebook over this video when it was the Fox News version that the President retweeted. Yesterday, we highlighted how an opinion piece in the NY Times by Kara Swisher claimed that no network would air such a thing... ignoring that Fox News did exactly that. At least now, there's another opinion piece in the NY Times by Farhad Manjoo pointing out how weird it is that everyone's focused on Facebook instead of Fox:

In going after Facebook, many observers forgot about Rupert Murdoch’s empire, whose Fox Business spinoff aired a similarly misleading Pelosi hit job on “Lou Dobbs Tonight.” This was upside down. While newfangled digital manipulations should raise some concern, they are still emerging, long-range threats, and social networks are at least experimenting with ways to mitigate their negative impact on society. But we don’t have much hope nor many good ideas for limiting the lies of old-media outlets like Fox News, which still commands the complete and slavish attention of tens of millions of Americans every night, polluting the public square with big and small lies that often ricochet across every platform, from cable to YouTube to Facebook to Google, drowning us all in a never-ending flood of fakery.

Indeed, what was remarkable about Fox’s Pelosi video was its very ordinariness. Instead of slowing down Pelosi’s speech, Fox Business misleadingly spliced together lots of small sections of a recent news conference to make it look as if Pelosi stammered worse than Porky Pig.

As Manjoo notes, it actually appears that Facebook's response to the Pelosi video was perfectly reasonable:

But what the company did do — label the clip as misinformation and limit its virality so that very few people got to see it — struck me as a reasonable effort to quash the lie, especially since I worry about Facebook’s overreach. Demanding that Facebook remove posts that cross some hard-to-define line may end up dragooning lots of legitimate political speech into its memory hole. Such a policy would also enrich Mark Zuckerberg with the last thing we should want him to have: more power over what we read, watch, listen to and think about.

Fox News, on the other hand, wasn't just a platform where any nut job troll could post a video. It's a huge media outlet, watched by millions of devoted fans who take everything on it as gospel. And its employees were literally the ones who decided to post this video.

As we noted earlier this year, a recent book from Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, shows (with lots and lots and lots of data to back it up) that the real "propaganda" effect during and after the 2016 election was heavily driven by Fox News, and not by Facebook. For all the fretting about Facebook, it seems that those concerns are totally mistargeted.

And yet, of course, no one (least of all Pelosi) seems willing to attack Fox News, or to call it a "willing enabler" of Russian election interference. Indeed, doing so would lead to widespread attacks, and even (somewhat questionable) claims of 1st Amendment concerns of a politician meddling with the press. Yet few seem to blink an eye when she mistargets Facebook with the same criticism.

I'll repeat it again: it is perfectly reasonable to dislike Facebook. To dislike it's practices. To dislike it's decision on the Pelosi video. But to conclude that this makes it a "willing enabler" of Russian election interference is disconnected from reality.

Filed Under: content moderation, election meddling, nancy pelosi, russian interference
Companies: facebook

Dear Kara Swisher: Don't Let Your Hatred Of Facebook Destroy Free Speech Online

from the bad-takes dept

I'll start this post off with a brief story about famed tech reporter Kara Swisher. Many, many years ago, she reached out to me and suggested we meet up for some reason or another (I honestly don't remember why). I went to her house in San Francisco and we walked to a fancy nearby coffee shop where she insisted on telling me exactly what type of coffee I should get.

Here's the thing: I don't drink coffee. I can't stand the stuff.

However, Swisher is such an incredible force of nature that I felt like I literally had no choice but to order the coffee that she recommended. I ordered it and drank (a bit of) it. And I'm not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to expressing my own opinions on things.

That is to say, Swisher is not just strongly opinionated, she has a way of convincing lots of other people that her opinions should be theirs as well. And that's a really powerful ability, and one that Swisher has wielded well over the past few decades -- especially in calling bullshit on dumb tech ideas and policies. We need someone like Swisher holding tech companies accountable.

However, what happens when Swisher's opinion is a bad one? She recently has become so focused on attacking Facebook (in some cases for good reasons) that her thinking on the company is going to cause an awful lot of harm to not just other reporters, but to free speech and the open internet. Last month I was shocked to find Swisher proactively cheering on government censorship in Sri Lanka, after the country blocked Facebook following the terrorist attacks in that country. We pointed out how shortsighted this was, and Trevor Timm from the Freedom of the Press Foundation was even more direct in his criticism, noting how it smacked of Western paternalism, in which "we" can handle free speech, but poor people "over there" somehow can't.

Arguments like Swisher’s smack of “otherism” and paternalism — ordinary Sri Lankans aren’t sophisticated enough to deal with these problems, we know better than they do, and we must trust their political leaders. It’s akin to the tired arguments made by many in the U.S. national security community that people in the Middle East “can’t handle” democracy. It’s insulting.

Unfortunately, it appears that Swisher is continuing to argue for more and more censorship-by-Facebook -- a company that she herself admits we cannot and should not trust. Her latest opinion piece at the NY Times, bizarrely, goes beyond just attacking Facebook to mistakenly attacking Section 230 of the CDA as well.

The story involves the latest "big controversy" on Facebook, in which some trolls have been posting slightly doctored videos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, slowed down and (sometimes) edited, to make her appear to be slurring and stumbling over words. The videos have been getting passed around among Trump supporters -- and Trump himself retweeted one of those doctored videos when it was featured on Fox News. There are plenty of reasons to decry the whole mess, as it's a form of disiniformation and propaganda. After people called out Facebook about the video, the company proceeded to include a flag on the video, noting that it had been doctored, and downgrading the ability of the video to be spread more widely, but refusing to take it down entirely.

Many, many people (including Swisher) still disagree with this choice, arguing that since the video is being used for blatant propaganda and disinformation, it should be removed from Facebook entirely. Where you come down on this question may differ depending on where you sit. But Swisher goes beyond that, bizarrely (and ridiculously -- and incorrectly) blaming Section 230 for this situation:

Would a broadcast network air this? Never. Would a newspaper publish it? Not without serious repercussions. Would a marketing campaign like this ever pass muster? False advertising.

No other media could get away with spreading anything like this because they lack the immunity protection that Facebook and other tech companies enjoy under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 was intended to spur innovation and encourage start-ups. Now it’s a shield to protect behemoths from any sensible rules.

This is wrong on so many levels that it makes me wonder where Swisher is getting her information from. Section 230 is what allows Facebook to flag and "demote" this video in the first place. Without it, the company would be held liable for any of the moderation choices it made (see: Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy, the law that inspired CDA 230 and which CDA 230 explicitly overrules).

Without a CDA 230, platforms are incentvized to do one of two things: either look the other way and ignore basically all content, so as not to be held liable (which would make the situation Swisher is complaining about even worse), or to basically block almost everything that might possibly be controversial, meaning tons of perfectly legal and important speech would get blocked. This is not a good solution -- and certainly not one that a reporter should be advocating for.

Also, her analysis is simply incorrect. First of all, the claim that "no media could get away" with this is proven incorrect by the fact that Fox News did, in fact, spread one of these videos. And if anyone sued Fox over this, it would win on 1st Amendment grounds. And there have not been "serious repercussions." Unless you count whatever the fuck this tweet from Rudy Giuliani was supposed to say:

Second, the point of CDA 230 is that the internet does not work like a news publication. There is no "editor" who reviews what goes up, because it's a communications medium, like the telephone. We don't expect AT&T to monitor everything everyone says on the telephone (I mean, the NSA may expect it, but most people are rightfully horrified by this concept), so why should we expect the same here?

Some, including Swisher probably, would argue that they're not asking for just ditching CDA 230, but amending it to require some sort of "responsibility". But that also opens up massive questions -- ones that Swisher seems unprepared to deal with. As the UN's expert on free expression, David Kaye, suggested, just try to come up with rules that would force Facebook to remove the Pelosi video but wouldn't then end up being used against dissent, humor, satire or other forms of protected speech:

Or, to be even more to the point, the EFF's Jillian York noted that if you're going to require that Facebook face responsibility for "disinformation" -- or even disinformation that leads to harm -- how exactly is Facebook expected to deal with religious information:

For quite some time now, we've been talking about the "impossibility" of doing content moderation at scale well. There are always going to be disagreements. But Section 230 is what allows for experimentation. People can (and should) criticize Facebook when they think the company made the wrong call, but to blithely toss Section 230 under the bus as the reason for Facebook failing to meet her own exacting standards, Swisher is actually throwing the open internet and free speech under the bus instead. It's a horrifically bad take, and one that Swisher should know better about.

And, if Swisher, wants, I'm happy to discuss this with her in more detail. Perhaps over a cup of tea.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, cda 230, content moderation, free speech, gatekeepers, kara swisher, nancy pelosi, section 230, social media
Companies: facebook

Stop Saying That Section 230 Was A 'Gift To Internet Companies'

from the it's-a-gift-to-the-public dept

Saying that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230) is a "gift" to internet companies that should be taken away because some people use the internet badly is like saying the interstate highway system is a "gift" to the big shipping companies, and should be destroyed because some people send illegal things via UPS or Fedex.

As Section 230 is increasingly under attack, one of the most common lines we hear about it is that it was somehow a "gift to internet companies." I heard something along those lines at least three times last week, not even counting Nancy Pelosi's misguided characterization of 230, in which she said:

“230 is a gift to them, and I don’t think they are treating it with the respect that they should,” she said. “And so I think that that could be a question mark and in jeopardy. ... For the privilege of 230, there has to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it, and it is not out of the question that that could be removed.”

Except, as we noted last week, this gets the entire story backwards. The point of Section 230 is not to benefit the big internet companies. It is to benefit the public. It has enabled them to speak freely on the internet, because Section 230 has freed up the ability of platforms to host user-generated content without fear of being held liable for it. Do some people post awful (or even illegal) things? Absolutely. But just as we don't demand smashing up the interstate highway just because some drug dealers ship drugs via Fedex, we shouldn't demand the government rip up Section 230.

The overwhelming beneficiaries of Section 230 are the public. It has -- incidentally -- helped some internet companies stay out of some misguided and often vexatious legal threats by simply stating that any legal action should be directed at those actually responsible. That's not a "gift" -- it's a protection against frivolous, misguided lawsuits.

So the next time you see people claiming that Section 230 was gift to the internet companies, please remind them it's not at all true -- but rather that Section 230 was a gift to the public, enabling more freedom of expression online, and enabling the internet to take root. Ripping up 230 because of a few examples of bad content online would be like ripping out the interstate highway system to prevent anyone from shipping drugs. It is both a massive overreaction and a totally misdirected one.

Filed Under: cda 230, free speech, intermediary liability, nancy pelosi, section 230

Nancy Pelosi Joins Ted Cruz And Louis Gohmert In Attacking CDA 230

from the not-great dept

Well, it appears that the attacks on Section 230 of the CDA are now officially bi-partisan. Following the path of Republicans Rep. Louis Gohmert and Senator Ted Cruz, now we have Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi deciding it's time to attack Section 230 of the CDA, by completely misrepresenting what it does, why it does that, and what it means to the internet. In a podcast with Kara Swisher, Pelosi said the following:

“230 is a gift to them, and I don’t think they are treating it with the respect that they should,” she said. “And so I think that that could be a question mark and in jeopardy. ... For the privilege of 230, there has to be a bigger sense of responsibility on it, and it is not out of the question that that could be removed.”

This is wrong on so many levels. Section 230 is not a "gift" to the tech companies. It's a gift to the public and their ability to speak freely on the internet. Section 230 is what enables all of these websites out there that allow us to speak out without having to get what we want to say approved.

And to argue that companies don't "respect" Section 230 is weird, given that internet companies have spent basically the past 20 years fighting for Section 230 and explaining why it was so important, while almost everyone else downplayed it, didn't care about it, or didn't understand it. The only internet company right now that doesn't seem to "respect" Section 230 would be Facebook, which caved in and supported chipping away at Section 230's important protections.

Look, it is completely fair to argue that the big internet companies have lots of very real problems -- including questions about how they treat their users, and about privacy. But the focus on Section 230 is bizarre and misguided. And attacking it in this way will literally do the opposite of what Pelosi seems to think it will. Removing Section 230 won't help bring about more competition. It won't help make the companies "act better." Rather, stripping 230 protections means that you won't get smaller companies building competing services to Facebook and Google, because it will be way too risky on the liability side. Facebook and Google can afford the fight. Others cannot.

Stripping 230 protections won't encourage companies to act better. It will encourage them to either not accept any user-generated content (removing the key communications function of the internet) or to stop moderating entirely, meaning that you end up with just the worst parts of the internet -- spam-filled, troll-filled garbage. Anyone who knows the first thing about Section 230, and why it was put in place, understands this. Unfortunately, there's the idea out there that Section 230 was a "gift" to the internet companies. It is not. It's a gift to the internet itself, meaning to all of us as users of the internet.

But, given that it's now a bi-partisan thing to misrepresent and attack CDA 230, perhaps we're reaching the end of the open internet experiment.

Filed Under: cda 230, free speech, intermediary liability, internet, nancy pelosi, responsibility, section 230

A Bunch Of Politicians Who Complain About Trump's Authoritarian Tendencies Just Gave Him 6 Years To Warrantlessly Spy On Americans

from the because-reasons dept

As was widely expected after Tuesday's close vote on cloture, the Senate officially voted to renew (in a somewhat expanded way) Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act by a vote of 65 to 34. That also means a few of those who voted against cloture switched over and voted for the program, including Senators Ted Cruz and Chuck Schumer. President Trump will almost certainly sign the bill shortly, despite confusing basically everyone last week by tweeting out complaints about the program, despite his White House vehemently supporting it.

Trump's confusion isn't all that surprising. What is surprising is just how many people who have been complaining and warning about Trump made this possible. In the House, vocal Trump critics including Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell were among those who voted for this bill which, again, gives the FBI the power to spy on Americans without warrants via the collection of content (not metadata) swept up by the NSA. While defenders of the program keep insisting the program cannot be used to "target" Americans, they leave out that a ridiculous amount of American content is swept up into this collection, which can then be sifted through without a warrant, including a huge amount of communications of Americans.

Over on the Senate side, things were even more ridiculous. Senator Jeff Flake voted for cloture, helping to end (the already non-existing) debate on such surveillance, and blocking any amendments. And then, the very next morning, went on the Senate floor to slam the President, compare him to Stalin, and warn that our democracy may not survive. Again, this was mere hours after Senator Flake voted to give more surveillance powers to the President he was about to compare to Stalin.

Or how about Dianne Feinstein? It may be no surprise that Feinstein voted to continue and expand surveillance -- she has a long history of doing exactly that. But just about an hour before voting for cloture, Feinstein herself introduced an amendment that would have required a warrant to search the corpus of data collected under 702. And then she voted to block that amendment from even being voted on. Let me repeat that, because it's just that insane: Feinstein introduced an amendment to the 702 renewal, that would have required a warrant to sniff through the data... and then voted against allowing that amendment to be heard and voted on. Within an hour or so. And, since cloture needed 60 votes and just squeezed through with those 60 votes... Feinstein could have changed the debate herself. But chose not to.

Or how about Senator Claire McCaskill. She was the final vote for cloture and took over an hour after the vote was called to actually reach the floor. She was the actual deciding vote, as, if she voted against it, the cloture vote would have had only 59 yaes, and the debate would have continued, and amendments proposed. Trump has been loudly denouncing McCaskill for months as she's facing a tough reelection campaign. And her response was to deny any further debate or amendments and to vote to give Trump more surveillance powers.

These are not the only ones. Many vocal critics of the President just handed him much greater power to warrantlessly spy on Americans -- something the President (in a confused way) complained about concerning what he believed (incorrectly) was illegal spying on his own campaign.

Zack Whittaker at ZDnet has also compiled a list of elected officials who had put out earlier statements promising to reform surveillance... only to then vote for this program. It includes both Swalwell and Feinstein mentioned above, but many others as well.

Over at Lawfare, a site that has long defended basically every aspect of the surveillance state, reliable surveillance defenders Jack Goldsmith and Susan Hennessey tried to defend the paradox of not trusting Trump, but giving him the ability to warrantlessly spy on Americans. The crux of it is basically... "we don't trust Trump, but there are good people in the intelligence and law enforcement communities and they'd never abuse these powers."

More broadly, one of the underappreciated developments in the post-Snowden-revelations era is the absence of credible allegations of political or venal use of 702 authorities. In essence, the public evidence confirms that the problems that used to bedevil secret electronic surveillance through the Hoover/Nixon era—namely, senior political figures deploying intelligence agencies and tools for inappropriate, abusive political purposes—have been resolved by a robust legal regime of oversight and reporting. When Sen. Elizabeth Warren points to the surveillance abuses directed at Martin Luther King Jr. to argue against 702, she actually highlights the opposite point: the massive transparency, both voluntary and involuntary, over the past few years about how Section 702 operates shows that it has not been abused for domestic political spying and implies that the 40 years of post-Hoover legal reforms are largely a success (though not without hiccups). The fact that President Trump has not focused his abusive energies on intelligence collection is a testament to the efficacy of the legal and cultural constraints on electronic surveillance.

Not surprisingly, Marcy Wheeler rips these claims to shreds in a response on her own blog, noting that beyond factual errors in the piece, it more or less ignores the FBI's role in all of this. Even if we grant the (incorrect) claim that the NSA doesn't abuse this data, that's not at all clear on the FBI side -- especially when the FBI refuses to provide any details at all:

You can’t pass a bill that effectively blesses FBI’s use of back door searches on Americans about whom it has no evidence of any wrongdoing, while admitting you don’t know how FBI conducts those back door searches, and make any claim to conduct adequate oversight. Rather, the bill permits FBI to continue practices it has stubbornly refused to brief Congress on, rather than demanding that FBI brief Congress first, so Congress can impose any restrictions that might be necessary to adequately protect Americans.

Furthermore, Wheeler notes that Hennessey and Goldsmith completely ignore how this gives Attorney General Jeff Sessions incredible unreviewable power to make use of this warrantless data for criminal prosecutions, hiding where he got the information from.

But it’s the unreviewable authority for Jeff Sessions bit that is the real problem.

We know, for example, that painting Black Lives Matter as a national security threat is key to the Trump-Sessions effort to criminalize race. We also know that Trump has accused his opponents of treason, all for making critical comments about Trump.

This bill gives Sessions unreviewable authority to decide that a BLM protest organized using or whistleblowing relying on Tor, discovered by collection done in the name of hunting Russian spies, can be referred for prosecution. The fact that the underlying data predicating any prosecution was obtained without a warrant under 702 would — in part because this bill doesn’t add teeth to FISA notice — ensure that courts would never learn the genesis of the prosecution. Even if a court somehow managed to do so, however, it could never deem the domestic surveillance unlawful because the bill gives Jeff Sessions the unreviewable authority to treat dissent as a national security threat.

This is such an obviously bad idea, and it is being supported by people who talk incessantly about the threat that Trump and Sessions present. Yet, rather than addressing the issue head on (which I doubt Hennessey could legally do in any case), they simply remain silent about what is the biggest complaint from privacy activists, that this gives a racist, vindictive Attorney General far more authority than he should have, and does so without fixing the inadequate protections for criminal defendants along the way.

And, now, it appears that (unless Fox News somehow intervenes again) the President will sign this bill. EFF has put out an open letter about how awful this is, and how it intends to fight this in court. But, this was a major missed opportunity, and what's most incredible and disappointing is how many people who complain about Trump's authoritarian tendencies were central to making it possible.

Filed Under: adam schiff, backdoor searches, dianne feinstein, eric swalwell, fbi, fisa, jeff sessions, nancy pelosi, nsa, section 702, surveillance

Trump Doesn't Understand Surveillance Powers; House Votes To Give Him More Of It

from the surveillance-madness dept

As discussed this morning, the House voted a few hours ago on a bill to reauthorize Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act that did not reform the widely abused surveillance rules -- other than to codify some of the power allowing them to continue to abuse it for warrantless surveillance on Americans. There was a vote on an important Amendment from Reps. Justin Amash and Zoe Lofgren that would have allowed the reauthorization of the underlying program, but (importantly) required a warrant (as per the 4th Amendment) for spying on Americans. And, unfortunately, the amendment was voted down (183-233) and the awful reauthorization passed, 256 to 164.

The fight over this bill was... weird in so many ways. There was the expected bullshit: politicians outright lying to the public, arguing that the Amash/Lofgren amendment (which again, just said that the program had to be conducted in accordance with the 4th Amendment) would somehow stop the intelligence and law enforcement community from finding terrorists (it wouldn't). Again: everyone expected that. What was weird was (1) having some of Donald Trump's loudest detractors in Congress... then argue against the Amash amendment and in favor of giving the Trump administration more power to warrantlessly spy on Americans and share that data widely among law enforcement. And (2) having President Trump tweet a series of confused tweets this morning that demonstrated that he clearly didn't know what the debate is actually about... and suggesting he was against the reauthorization, despite the fact that the White House (his White House) had issued a statement strongly supporting the reauthorization.

So despite the White House (which, last I checked is supposed to represent the views of the President) tweeted in support of Section 702, here's what the President himself tweeted early this morning:

Not surprisingly, this came just minutes after Trump's besties at Fox & Friends had complained about Section 702, and even directly said "Mr. President, this is not the way to go."

That resulted in Trump's tweet which freaked out supporters of the bill, and even had a few members of Congress suggesting delaying the vote. Of course, while Trump later when on to tweet about some other topic, hours later, he added another tweet to the original tweet above, suggesting that he was now in favor of the reauthorization:

You will be unsurprised, of course, to learn that in the hours between those tweets, Rep. Paul Ryan (who was soon to go on the floor and completely misrepresent the bill) had spoken to the President.

It's worth pointing out, of course, that both of Trump's tweets totally misrepresent the 702 program and the vote today. While there are many, many examples of abuse of Section 702 surveillance powers, there has yet to be any evidence that it was abused to do surveillance on the Trump campaign. But the second tweet is also wrong. The issue was not "foreign bad guys on foreign land" but the fact that the new bill authorizes surveillance of totally innocent people -- including American citizens at home in America -- without a warrant.

As for the other oddity: some of Trump's biggest critics in Congress -- Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi -- just helped to give Trump much greater surveillance powers on Americans without a warrant... despite regularly complaining that he has abused his powers.

...the most powerful member of the Democratic Caucus, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, was notably silent on the bill. If Pelosi had whipped Democrats to vote against the bill and supported the USA RIGHTS Act instead, there’s a good chance that Trump and Ryan would have failed to get their full extension. Yet, just before the floor vote today she said she would not support the USA Rights Act and shamefully voted to hand Trump exactly what he wanted.

Almost worse than Pelosi's willingness to go along with the NSA was Rep. Adam Schiff's, D-Calif., who has seen his star rise over the last year being the Democrat’s go-to voice on the Russia investigation. On CNN with Jake Tapper this weekend, Schiff talked at length how he thought Trump was abusing his power and misusing the Justice Department to go after his political enemies.

Nonetheless, Schiff was a leading driver in the House to extend the NSA's surveillance powers, and has been undercutting the more robust reforms proposed by other Democrats, like longtime Senate Intelligence Committee member Sen. Ron Wyden, for months.

So, in summary: this bill that effectively expands the power of US intelligence and law enforcement communities to spy on Americans without warrants... was supported, then opposed, then supported again by the President while demonstrating he had no idea what was in the bill... then supported by Democrats who keep warning that the President will abuse the wider surveillance powers that they are voting to give him... and then the bill passed just as expected.

This is all kinds of fucked up.

Either way, this now moves on to the Senate. And while there are some Senators who are speaking out against the reautorhization -- mainly Senators Ron Wyden, Rand Paul and Mike Lee -- it's widely believed that there's not enough 4th Amendment supporters in the Senate to stop the bad bill from getting passed as well. And, at that point, it's quite likely that the President will sign the bill, despite his own tweet complaining about the program this morning.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, adam schiff, domestic surveillance, donald trump, fisa, fisa amendments act, nancy pelosi, section 702, warrants

As TPP Supporters Whine About Failure Of Fast Track, Why Is No One Suggesting Increased Transparency?

from the time-to-get-it-right dept

As we just mentioned, it looks like there aren't enough votes in Congress to give the President and the US Trade Rep the "fast track" authority they want to cram massive trade agreements down the throats of the American public. Nancy Pelosi, whose statement last week helped signal that it was a real possibility that support for fast track would no longer be likely, has now penned an op-ed for USA Today claiming that fast track is on its last legs, highlighting that Congress (not the executive branch) has the power to regulate commerce with foreign countries. Meanwhile, supporters of trade have put into motion an attempt to salvage fast track, which may lead to a vote as soon as tomorrow -- but seems like a risky gambit that may not succeed.

Meanwhile, the NY Times presents the argument that with the failure of fast track, and very likely TPP with it, it could greatly diminish the US's influence in Asia. This argument has been made for a long time, and it's... questionable at best. The article dutifully quotes the "40% of the global economy" line that supporters of the TPP throw out every other hour or so, but that's really overstating the impact of the TPP. Still, there is a legitimate argument that stronger trade relations between the US and these Asian countries is good for the global economy. But -- and this is the important part that isn't mentioned -- you don't need the TPP to do that.

Furthermore, this ignores the real reasons why the TPP failed. Rather than being about further opening up trading relations, the USTR ramped up the process that has been popular among lobbyists over the past couple of decades: using supposedly "free trade" deals to sneak in all sorts of regulatory schemes that will strongly pressure countries (including the US) to either change laws in certain ways, or block changing laws in other ways. That is, rather than free trade, these deals are actually the opposite. They're backdoor protectionism in the name of lobbyist-driven regulation.

And here's the thing that's amazing. In all of this, no one is talking about how to actually fix this. Pelosi talks about getting a "better deal" for the American middle class. And, sure, that would be great. But the real problem here is that these trade agreements became the playthings of giant corporate lobbyists, rather than democratically driven ideas.

If the TPP and other agreements like TTIP and TISA are really so vital to America's interests, and the interests of the "global economy," then let's have the negotiations and the debate out in public. Other international bodies, like WIPO, have long allowed such negotiations to happen publicly. It may not be how the USTR and its counterparts have negotiated such agreements in the past, but there's no reason they can't change now. Rather than continuing down this path of loading a ton of crap on the TPP tree, just to force through a few simpler free trading principles, why not conduct the negotiations openly, so that the public in all of those countries know what's going on and can see the reasoning behind these deals?

The only reason not to do this is to argue that the public is simply too dumb to understand why these deals are supposedly so important. And if that's your argument, then you're arguing against democracy. If the USTR believes it's representing democracy, then, at the very least, it should lead the way in saying that these trade negotiations will be conducted publicly and in a much more transparent way.

Filed Under: congress, fast track, nancy pelosi, taa, tpa, tpp, trade promotion authority, transparency, ttip, ustr

Nancy Pelosi Admits That Congress Is Scared Of The CIA

from the well-that's-revealing dept

Over the past few months, one thing we keep hearing over and over again from defenders of the intelligence community is that everything is under control and "legal" because Congress has powerful oversight. We've shown, repeatedly, how that's something of a joke. The intelligence community has lied repeatedly, has withheld documents and is generally nonresponsive to oversight attempts by Congress. And, with the reports that the CIA spied on the Senate Intelligence Committee, we also find out that for all the bluster and talk of oversight, folks in Congress are actually scared by the intelligence community.

In response to Senator Dianne Feinstein's speech last week calling out the CIA for spying on her staffers, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was asked to comment and gave what might be the most revealing comments to date as to why Congress is so scared of the CIA:

“I salute Sen. Feinstein,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference of the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’ll tell you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth.”

Pelosi added that she has always fought for checks and balances on CIA activity and its interactions with Congress: “You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth.

A few months back, the ACLU had posted something questioning whether or not the intelligence community might be blackmailing Congress. And, quite frequently when we write about the intelligence community, we see suggestions in the comments that certain politicians probably cover for the NSA and CIA because they know what those agencies "have on them." I've always dismissed those kinds of claims as being a bit far-fetched, even if they have plenty of historical precedent. So far, there's certainly been no direct evidence of that happening.

And yet... Pelosi's comments certainly seem to hint at even more nefarious activity by the intelligence community against politicians who dare to actually do the job of oversight. The point of that ACLU post linked above is that, even if it's not happening, the fact that we can't definitively rule it out is a serious problem for democracy. And just the fact that some of the most powerful members of Congress, who are theoretically in charge of oversight, are now publicly admitting that they're scared of how the CIA fights back when they take them on, suggests that the intelligence community really is rotten to the core. And Congressional oversight, as it stands today, is clearly not able to deal with the issue by itself.

Filed Under: cia, congress, dianne feinstein, john brennan, nancy pelosi, oversight, senate, spying scandal

Many In Congress Opposed To Fast Track Authority: An Obsolete Concept For An Obsolete Trade Negotiation

from the get-modern dept

We just noted how Congress had introduced a bill to give up its own Constitutional powers, abdicating them to the administration and the USTR to give it the full power to commit the US to massive trade agreements like the TPP and TAFTA/TTIP, and blocking Congress' ability to oversee the process and make sure all interests are represented. Instead, if fast track authority is granted, Congress will only be able to give a "yes or no" vote on the agreements, and once the USTR comes back with an agreement, the pressure will be immense to vote yes. Thankfully, many in Congress are already signalling that they're not at all comfortable with abdicating their responsibilities. On the House side, Reps. Rosa Delauro, Louise Slaughter and George Miller put out a statement decrying the inevitable end result of this process, specifically highlighting the fact that these modern trade agreements cover a hell of a lot more than "trade."

Fast Track procedures would allow the President to sign a potential Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and other free trade agreements before Congress votes to approve them even though the Constitution gives Congress exclusive authority over trade. The process would also guarantee the pacts could come to the floor without giving Members of Congress the opportunity to amend them despite the fact these agreements will include binding obligations that touch upon a wide swath of non-trade policy matters under the authority of Congress.

“For too long, bad trade deals have allowed corporations to ship good American jobs overseas, and wages, benefits, workplace protections and quality of life have all declined as a result,” DeLauro, Miller and Slaughter said in a joint statement. “That is why there is strong bipartisan opposition to enabling the Executive Branch to ram through far-reaching, secretly negotiated trade deals like the TPP that extend well beyond traditional trade matters.

As their statement also notes, "Our constituents did not send us to Washington to ship their jobs overseas, and Congress will not be a rubber stamp for another flawed trade deal that will hang the middle class out to dry."

They're not the only ones in the House to be concerned. A number of other powerful House members are not at all happy about the proposal and looking to kill it or change it -- including Nancy Pelosi. Then there's also Rep. Sander Levin who has spoken out against fast track. As that article notes, without Levin's support, Fast Track may be in trouble.

An even stronger condemnation of the attempt comes from the Senate side, where Rep. Levin's younger brother, Senator Carl Levin debunks the talking point we've already been hearing from copyright maximalist lobbyists, that "fast track authority has been used for decades and it's no big deal." As Levin points out, in the past, fast track was used for very different kinds of trade agreements. Narrow ones that were actually about trade, not the kind of monstrosity like the TPP which has little to do with trade, and plenty to do with changing laws around the globe.

The 2002 TPA became utilized mostly in negotiating single nation trade agreements affecting a relatively small portion of our economy. What the U.S is now engaged in is negotiating major multi-party agreements, including with 11 Pacific nations and with the entire European Union, affecting a huge percentage of the U.S. and the global economy.

Levin further points out that without real transparency, any fast track authority should be a nonstarter:

USTR must make available to all Members of Congress and all staff with the necessary security clearance the text of the negotiations, including the proposals of our trading partners. We must also have a much more effective stakeholder advisory committee process than we do today so that the sectoral and functional advisory committees are representative of all industry, labor, agricultural, or services interests (including small business interests) in the sector or functional areas concerned. These private sector advisory committees must have access to the negotiating text. Finally, a new TPA will require USTR to publicly release summaries of its negotiating proposals and to provide opportunities for public comment.

As we noted in our original post, not a single Democrat was willing to co-sponsor the House version of the bill that their own President wants. And reports are suggesting that this may scuttle the whole thing, as Republicans begin to wonder why they're out there not only helping President Obama against his own party, but relinquishing Congress's own Constitutional authority in the process. It's good to see a large number of folks in Congress suddenly wondering why they should be giving up their oversight over international trade on an agreement so big.

Filed Under: carl levin, congress, fast track, fast track authority, george miller, louise slaughter, nancy pelosi, rosa delauro, sander levin, tpp, trade promotion authority, ustr

Twitter Diplomacy? New Iranian Officials Use Twitter To Make Surprising Moves To Cool Tensions Over Israel And Nukes

from the kind-of-amazing-when-you-think-about-it dept

Here's a fairly incredible story. The Iranian government is quite well known for stifling dissent and trying to limit the internet. However, we noted recently that the new President of Iran had made some surprisingly progressive statements about ending internet censorship and filtering, and supporting human rights. Obviously, it's easy to say things, while actually doing things is quite different. Even so, it's still surprising to see two recent tweets out of the Iranian government that suggest that perhaps they're really looking to ease certain tensions and move towards more peaceful relationships. The Back Channel blog has the details of the two key tweets, starting with surprising tweets from both the new President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif wishing Jews a Happy Rosh Hashanah.

As the sun is about to set here in #Tehran I wish all Jews, especially Iranian Jews, a blessed Rosh Hashanah. pic.twitter.com/tmaf84x7UR

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) September 4, 2013

Happy Rosh Hashanah

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) September 5, 2013

As you probably know, Iran doesn't exactly have the best reputation with Jews, and its former President regularly threatened to go to war with Israel. Knowing a few Persian Jews who fled that country years ago, even any suggestion of a conciliation towards Jews is a stunning point. And, it went even further. Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Christine Pelosi, responded to Zarif's tweet, stating that it would be better if Iran stopped denying the Holocaust:

Thanks. The New Year would be even sweeter if you would end Iran's Holocaust denial, sir. “@JZarif: Happy Rosh Hashanah”

— sfpelosi (@sfpelosi) September 5, 2013

Amazingly, she got back a response, in which Zarif said that Iran does not deny the Holocaust, and that "the man who is perceived to be denying it is gone now," obviously referring to Ahmadinejad.

@sfpelosi Iran never denied it. The man who was perceived to be denying it is now gone. Happy New Year.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) September 5, 2013

Zarif later confirmed to reporters that it was really him who was tweeting those messages and also that he recognized he was tweeting with Nancy Pelosi's daughter.

The other interesting tweet came from President Rouhani, noting a change in who controlled Iran's nuclear efforts, and also signalling a greater willingness to have a "constructive interaction" with the world on this:

Foreign Ministry will be in charge of Iran's #Nuclear Negotiations.Ready for constructive interaction with the world http://t.co/sCrQ0Qhh5K

— Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) September 5, 2013

This, also, is a pretty big deal, and while I'm sure many will (rightfully) view the whole thing with skepticism, one can also be hopeful that this is a sign of a real shift in policies from Iran.

But perhaps even more interesting is the fact that this is all happening over Twitter. The fact that Zarif and Pelosi could have an exchange like that is fairly astounding once you think about it. That sort of thing was basically impossible just a few years ago. The ability to do diplomacy via social media is quite amazing. It really was just a year and a half ago that we were somewhat amazed (and also hopeful) that various citizens of both Israel and Iran were reaching out to each other via Facebook, to try to build direct connections and a hopeful sense of peace between citizens, but we wondered if the same sort of thing would ever extend up to the politicians and those in power. While we're not there yet, it's at least nice to see some sort of encouraging sign.

The ability to actually communicate and relate to one another as human beings rather than as caricatures is incredibly powerful. It can (and will) be abused at times, but we can still hope for good results and be encouraged when we see potential signs of it happening.

Filed Under: christine pelosi, hassan rouhani, holocaust, iran, israel, javad zarif, nancy pelosi, rosh hashana, social media
Companies: twitter