Obama Tasks CDC With Study Of Video Games And 'Violent Media'

from the not-the-worst-idea-I've-ever-heard,-but-certainly-not-the-best-either dept

In the middle of a much larger speech introducing his "Gun Violence Reduction Executive Actions," Obama threw in a little something for the videogame crowd:

Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds.

While it may seem like a shot across the bow of videogames to score some cheap political points, what Obama actually has in mind is a bit more subtle. (Make no mistake, though: this subject wouldn't have been broached if not for the Newtown shooting.)

Conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, including links between video games, media images, and violence: The President is issuing a Presidential Memorandum directing the Centers for Disease Control and scientific agencies to conduct research into the causes and prevention of gun violence. It is based on legal analysis that concludes such research is not prohibited by any appropriations language. The CDC will start immediately by assessing existing strategies for preventing gun violence and identifying the most pressing research questions, with the greatest potential public health impact. And the Administration is calling on Congress to provide $10 million for the CDC to conduct further research, including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.

Two things worth noting in this paragraph:

The "Presidential Memorandum" lifts a moratorium on this sort of research by the CDC, something that has been in place for over 15 years. Kyle Orland at Ars Technica explains:

[T]he federal Centers for Disease Control have been prohibited from funding studies that "advocate or promote gun control" since 1996, when Congress cut the $2.6 million the organization had been using to fund gun injury research through its Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Further moves since then have prevented the CDC from even receiving federal crime data for gun research, and prohibited the National Institute of Health from doing gun violence research as well.

And why was this research prohibited? Depending on who you ask, it's either because the NRA didn't like guns being tied to injuries and death (Orland calls it a "chilling effect" brought on by Arthur Kellerman's study) or the study itself was severely flawed and skewed to fit the pre-existing bias of the director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which operated under the CDC's direction.

Secondly, the wording directs the CDC to focus on areas with the "greatest potential public health impact." The administration may namecheck current hot buttons like videogames and violent media, but as it's worded, the CDC has no instruction to start its work by assessing these areas. As Orland states, this one sentence is likely nothing more than a brief concession to the current political climate:

Making a brief mention of video game studies as a part of a $10 million funding request is a good way to pay lip service to these political concerns on both the left and the right without really making it a priority. If studying video game and media violence were actually a major focus of the president's gun control agenda, it would have a much more prominent place in both his remarks and his official funding requests. Instead, the real money the president is asking from Congress will go to more important things: $20 million for the National Violent Death Reporting System, $14 million for police and security training, $150 million for in-school mental health counselors, $30 million to develop school emergency management plans, and so on.

Overall, putting the CDC in charge is probably (in the parlance of government works) the "least worst" way to handle this. The CDC will have access to more mental health-related data than other existing entities, a factor that definitely needs to be considered. (But this factor also presents its own problems: it's entirely too easy to write off mass murderers as mentally defective. The idea of taking someone's life, much less multiple lives, is so repulsive to "normal" human beings that the kneejerk reaction is to blame it on mental illness. It's safe to say that normal people would never commit mass murder, but it's way too simplistic to assume that every perpetrator is mentally defective.) It should also have access to demographic and other environmental factors, which should give it a more rounded picture than the limited sample sizes and variables of smaller studies and surveys.

Another factor that makes the CDC a preferable choice is the fact that it's an existing agency. Turning this task over to a special committee would result in a room filled to capacity with appointees and their predispositions. (The argument can also be made that the CDC carries its own predispositions, but expecting a government directive, especially an executive order, to conjure up a completely impartial study is to show a level of faith the government simply doesn't deserve.)

Now, the downside.

Any conclusions the CDC comes to will be immediately suspect. No matter what it finds, the conclusions will be disputed. The presence or absence of a link between violent media and gun violence will only exacerbate the divide between both sides of the debate. To date, no link has been conclusively proven. This study's outcome will likely be more of the same. It's nearly impossible isolate people and "violent media" from the other factors that affect the equation. The CDC should be able to incorporate its existing knowledge in regards to risk factors, but the answers it comes up with will fail to satisfy everyone. Ultimately, it will change nothing, but it will have the power to inform government policy going forward and, depending on the political climate, it's likely that gossamer-thin correlation will be enough to justify legislation.

Then there's the tangled issue of gun control policy, something the CDC has waded into in the past. Again, any conclusions drawn will be contrasted against its history with the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control and its biased approach to the study of gun violence. (Particularly troublesome is a 1987 CDC report, in which the director of the NCIPC thought enough evidence existed to "confiscate all firearms from the general population" in order to prevent 8,600 homicides a year.) The administration has done a disservice to both groups (video game fans, gun owners) by making this study inseparable from a larger gun control proposal.

The best case scenario, like so much in government, is that nothing happens. The studies are proposed, the climate shifts and, like so much before it, it's discarded in favor of What's Ailing the Nation Now. While it would be interesting to see the CDC perform an in-depth study (especially if the data collected is made available to the public), the chance of a negative outcome (in terms of misguided legislation, etc.) is way too high.

On the whole, though, it is refreshing to see videogames treated as part of the media, rather than a wholly distinct scapegoat capable of destroying society on its own. Unfortunately, even with its rather brief appearance in the administration's set of proposals, it appears the government still wants to control media (as opposed to "the media") and this single paragraph could help rationalize unconstitutional measures.

Filed Under: cdc, media, obama, studies, video games, violence

The Obama Administration Briefly Considers Developing 'Explicit Rules' For Killer Drones, Abandons Process After Romney Loses Election

from the unfettered-power:-good-for-me,-not-so-much-for-thee dept

The US government's "targeted strike" drone program has been around since George W. Bush's first presidential term. Despite being nearly a decade old, the program has largely operated in a gray area of legality, with no codified set of rules governing drone strikes. So, what does it take to get some guidelines applied to the executive branch-controlled remote-control merchants of death? The threat of having to turn control over to the "other side," apparently.

Facing the possibility that President Obama might not win a second term, his administration accelerated work in the weeks before the election to develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones, so that a new president would inherit clear standards and procedures, according to two administration officials.

So, when the control is in your hands, it's ok to direct long distance killings without "clear standards and procedures." But, if the other guy is being handed the power, it's suddenly time to "develop explicit rules." This doesn't come across as genuine concern. It sounds more like a last-minute effort to hobble the program by throwing in a handful of cursory checks and balances. This quote from an anonymous administration official put its all in perspective:

“There was concern that the levers might no longer be in our hands,” said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity. With a continuing debate about the proper limits of drone strikes, Mr. Obama did not want to leave an “amorphous” program to his successor, the official said. The effort, which would have been rushed to completion by January had Mr. Romney won, will now be finished at a more leisurely pace, the official said.

Again, this sounds nothing like genuine concern about "doing the right thing" by implementing strict guidelines and otherwise easing the transition between presidents. It sounds more like "Well, if we have to give up this power, let's make it as limited as possible."

Now, maybe that's just the way I'm hearing it. But those sentences aren't very comforting, either. Rules -- explicit rules -- should already be in place. Now that Obama's safely back in office, the team's just going to ease off the gas pedal?

This isn't very surprising, considering the wall of secrecy surrounding the targeted strike program -- and how far away the program has drifted from its original purpose.

Despite public remarks by Mr. Obama and his aides on the legal basis for targeted killing, the program remains officially classified. In court, fighting lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times seeking secret legal opinions on targeted killings, the government has refused even to acknowledge the existence of the drone program in Pakistan.

But by many accounts, there has been a significant shift in the nature of the targets. In the early years, most strikes were aimed at ranking leaders of Al Qaeda thought to be plotting to attack the United States. That is the purpose Mr. Obama has emphasized, saying in a CNN interview in September that drones were used to prevent “an operational plot against the United States” and counter “terrorist networks that target the United States.”

No one's looking to declassify any information about this program anytime soon. The Defense Department and the CIA are pushing for "greater latitude" to carry out strikes. Other government officials have argued against the drone program, but to date, the administration seems willing to continue the program "as is," without returning it to its original focus. At this point, the targeted strike program has expanded to include strikes on militants not engaged directly with US forces. Acceptable targets also include individuals unknown to those requesting or clearing the strikes.

Then there's the matter of strikes against people whose identities are unknown. In an online video chat in January, Mr. Obama spoke of the strikes in Pakistan as “a targeted, focused effort at people who are on a list of active terrorists.” But for several years, first in Pakistan and later in Yemen, in addition to “personality strikes” against named terrorists, the C.I.A. and the military have carried out “signature strikes” against groups of suspected, unknown militants.

Originally that term was used to suggest the specific “signature” of a known high-level terrorist, such as his vehicle parked at a meeting place. But the word evolved to mean the “signature” of militants in general — for instance, young men toting arms in an area controlled by extremist groups. Such strikes have prompted the greatest conflict inside the Obama administration, with some officials questioning whether killing unidentified fighters is legally justified or worth the local backlash.

As the New York Times article points out, the US is setting the precedent for countries currently developing their own drone programs. And that precedent seems to be that these programs should be operated autonomously, secretly and unhampered by explicit rules and regulations. The same country that has decried targeted killings by other countries (namely, Israel) is now showing the rest of the world that all you really need to pull off long distance assassinations is the will and the way. 

Filed Under: drones, killing, obama, politics, rules

Obama's Tech Team Was Firing On All Cylinders While Romney's Was Still In Beta

from the wow dept

Obviously some of the following may be biased by the hindsight view of who won and who lost -- but it's fascinating to see two very, very different stories emerge about the technology/data teams involved in the two major party presidential campaigns. Right after the election, Time published an account of a massive and extremely sophisticated datacrunching team working to get President Obama re-elected.

The new megafile didn’t just tell the campaign how to find voters and get their attention; it also allowed the number crunchers to run tests predicting which types of people would be persuaded by certain kinds of appeals. Call lists in field offices, for instance, didn’t just list names and numbers; they also ranked names in order of their persuadability, with the campaign’s most important priorities first. About 75% of the determining factors were basics like age, sex, race, neighborhood and voting record. Consumer data about voters helped round out the picture. “We could [predict] people who were going to give online. We could model people who were going to give through mail. We could model volunteers,” said one of the senior advisers about the predictive profiles built by the data. “In the end, modeling became something way bigger for us in ’12 than in ’08 because it made our time more efficient.”

Early on, for example, the campaign discovered that people who had unsubscribed from the 2008 campaign e-mail lists were top targets, among the easiest to pull back into the fold with some personal attention. The strategists fashioned tests for specific demographic groups, trying out message scripts that they could then apply. They tested how much better a call from a local volunteer would do than a call from a volunteer from a non–swing state like California. As Messina had promised, assumptions were rarely left in place without numbers to back them up.

Compare that, then, to the data driven efforts on the Romney side. First, the campaign ignored all the public polls that turned out to be fairly accurate and plugged in a bunch of their own assumptions when looking at key variables, all of which made them believe they had a stronger position than it turned out they had. But, much more interesting are the stories coming out about ORCA, the Romney campaign's secret computerized weapon in the "get out the vote" effort. It's like the exact opposite of the description of the Obama campaign's data tool.

Romney campaign volunteer John Ekdahl's description of how poorly planned out ORCA was is a must-read. It really sounds like the team there didn't do much testing, and failed to consider how the system would work under load. From the explanations, it also sounds like they didn't do much usability testing, or even think through some basic use cases. It sounds as though either the Romney team didn't think ORCA was ready or they didn't want to "reveal" it until the last minute to avoid tipping their hand to Obama's campaign. The night before the election, they sent volunteers who were supposed to be poll watchers a huge PDF with instructions -- expecting them to print it out, which isn't so easy for everyone these days. They also forgot to tell them they needed to get and bring their "poll watcher certificate" to polling places. And they didn't release the actual app until 6am on election day, giving volunteers no time at all to learn how it worked (or to report bugs).

Now a note about the technology itself. For starters, this was billed as an "app" when it was actually a mobile-optimized website (or "web app"). For days I saw people on Twitter saying they couldn't find the app on the Android Market or iTunes and couldn't download it. Well, that's because it didn't exist. It was a website. This created a ton of confusion. Not to mention that they didn't even "turn it on" until 6AM in the morning, so people couldn't properly familiarize themselves with how it worked on their personal phone beforehand.

Next, and this part I find mind-boggingly absurd, the web address was located at "https://www.whateveritwas.com/orca". Notice the "s" after http. This denotes it's a secure connection, something that's used for e-commerce and web-based email. So far, so good. The problem is that they didn't auto-forward the regular "http" to "https" and as a result, many people got a blank page and thought the system was down. Setting up forwarding is the simplest thing in the world and only takes seconds, but they failed to do it. This is compounded by the fact that mobile browsers default to "http" when you just start with "www" (as 95% of the world does).

By 2PM, I had completely given up. I finally got ahold of someone at around 1PM and I never heard back. From what I understand, the entire system crashed at around 4PM. I'm not sure if that's true, but it wouldn't surprise me. I decided to wait for my wife to get home from work to vote, which meant going very late (around 6:15PM). Here's the kicker, I never got a call to go out and vote. So, who the hell knows if that end of it was working either.

A different report points to similarly massive problems with other aspects of ORCA, including handing out the wrong PINs, making the app useless in Colorado (and possibly elsewhere):

Then at 6PM they admitted they had issued the wrong PINs to every volunteer in Colorado, and reissued new PINs (which also didn't work). Meanwhile, counties where we had hundreds of volunteers, such as Denver Colorado, showed zero volunteers in the system all day, but we weren't allowed to add them. In one area, the head of the Republican Party plus 10 volunteers were all locked out. The system went down for a half hour during peak voting, but for hundreds or more, it never worked all day. Many of the poll watchers I spoke with were very discouraged. Many members of our phone bank got up and left.

Once again, I'm sure that the Obama system wasn't nearly as perfect and all-knowing as the Time article describes. Nor was the Romney system a total disaster as described in those links -- but it is fascinating to see these stories emerge following the election. Given the Obama win, along with these stories about that datacrunching effort and the worldwide reverence towards Nate Silver, you can bet that everyone gunning for the 2016 nomination is going to spend some time trying to build up a killer technical/data team.

Filed Under: data, election, obama, romney

Partisan Piracy: Conservative Filmmakers Accuse Obama Supporters Of Uploading Their Film To Youtube

from the believing-in-the-same-fallacy-unites-the-parties dept

Piracy is usually the scapegoat trotted out by various declining industries and pointed at angrily for supposedly single-handedly destroying them. Generally, it's content creators and various gatekeepers (mostly the latter) doing most of the pointing (and lobbying). In the normal scheme of things, the gatekeepers are all on the same side, united against filesharers. That's the status quo.

For the first time in memory, one entity has accused another in the same field (politics) of using piracy as a weapon. In this strange case, conservative filmmakers are accusing Obama supporters of uploading the full version of their documentary, "2016: Obama's America," to YouTube in order to harm box office sales.

The film, the second-highest-grossing political documentary in U.S. box-office history, has made $32 million domestically since opening in mid July but took in only $938,000 during the recent weekend for a per-screen average of $771, down 27 percent from $1,060 per screen in the previous weekend, according to BoxOfficeMojo. Overall, the movie's box-office dropped 53 percent in the most recent weekend compared with the previous one, its largest decline since opening 10 weeks ago.

While such a drop isn't unusual for a movie during the course of a week -- especially when the theater count dropped from 1,876 to 1,216 -- filmmakers nevertheless say box-office results were artificially depressed for two reasons: a disinformation campaign spreading the false rumor that Fox News Channel would be showing the movie in its entirety Sunday and a pirated version of the film showing up on YouTube this weekend.

The filmmakers contacted the FBI about the possible piracy and the user who uploaded the full film has taken it offline. In addition, mass emailings announced the (fake) news that Fox News would be showing the movie for free last Sunday. Many bloggers and websites ran with the story, but most have issued retractions.

The whole situation is a bit odd. Obama's official website issued a post criticizing the film and one of its creators, Dinesh D'Souza, saying he has a “long history of attempting to add a veneer of intellectual respectability to fringe theories, conspiratorial fear-mongering and flat-out falsehoods.” One wouldn't normally expect the President (or at least, a high-ranking spokesperson) to respond to a clearly political documentary. Perhaps the fact that "2016: Obama's America" is now the second-highest grossing political documentary added a bit of pressure.

However, while it's clear that some sort of misinformation campaign took place, it's a stretch to lay the dropoff in ticket sales on the "dirty tricks" of Obama supporters. It's fairly common for movies to experience large dropoffs in ticket sales from week-to-week. It's also fairly common for movies to get pirated. The other argument against a "concerted effort" to tank box office receipts is the timing. "2016:Obama's America" has been in the theaters 10 weeks and is due for a DVD release in October. As Zac Gille at Alt Film Guide asks: "Why now? Why not two months ago?"

“The reports of the movie appearing on Fox before the election are completely untrue," Dinesh D’Souza declared, "and we strongly suspect that they are the result of dirty tricks by our opponents who spread this rumor in order to confuse the general public and keep them from going to their local theaters."

If so, what an idiotic waste of time on the part of D’Souza’s and 2016 Obama’s America‘s "opponents." After all, the 2016 movie is fast on its way out.

So, why on earth would anyone in his/her right (or left, as the case may be) mind want to keep people "from going to their local theaters" to watch a movie that so few moviegoers care about at this stage? If an organized anti-2016 Obama’s America effort truly exists, then those guys have arrived on the scene a little too late. They should have acted five weeks ago, when the 2016 movie began its initially popular expansion.

Even if it turns out that a few Obama supporters did mount an effort to tank ticket sales, it would be tough to separate any possible impact from the misinformation campaign from the normal sales decline of any theatrical release. If anything, the piracy and misinformation plan backfired as the particularly loud response from the filmmakers can't help but draw more attention to the 10 week old film. Not only that, but uploading the movie to YouTube where it could be watched for free drives more viewers (and potential voters) to the film itself, a side effect the film's (alleged) opponents couldn't possibly have intended. However this turns out, we have a new tactic to add to the piracy pantheon -- piracy as political sabotage.

Filed Under: copyright, dinesh d'souza, documentary, obama, piracy, politics

Obama Talks Toxic Clouds And Runaway Trains, But The Real Cybersecurity Solution Is Still Simple And Obvious

from the and-what's-blocking-that-now? dept

Even as we're encouraged by the direction of the latest cybersecurity bill (with significant caveats), lots of folks have been asking from the beginning for two things: an end to "Hollywood-style" FUD claims of planes falling from the skies, and a clear statement on what existing laws make the kind of information sharing the government desires impossible today. President Barack Obama took to the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed pages today to explain why we need cybersecurity legislation... and unfortunately he failed on both accounts. The opening part is positively cinematic:

Last month I convened an emergency meeting of my cabinet and top homeland security, intelligence and defense officials. Across the country trains had derailed, including one carrying industrial chemicals that exploded into a toxic cloud. Water treatment plants in several states had shut down, contaminating drinking water and causing Americans to fall ill.

Our nation, it appeared, was under cyber attack. Unknown hackers, perhaps a world away, had inserted malicious software into the computer networks of private-sector companies that operate most of our transportation, water and other critical infrastructure systems.

He goes on to point out that some of the things mentioned have "already happened," except that's not quite true. It is true that some hackers accessed systems they shouldn't have had access to, but it's not clear if they were ever able to actually do any damage. Here's Obama's summary of the details:

Last year, a water plant in Texas disconnected its control system from the Internet after a hacker posted pictures of the facility's internal controls. More recently, hackers penetrated the networks of companies that operate our natural-gas pipelines

What's amusing is that the story in Texas came about because a hacker was trying to show that the feds were ignoring and downplaying threats to critical infrastructure. From the details, it looks like the system was vulnerable because of poor password choices, and the stupid decision to connect the system to the internet. So the fact is that "disconnect its control system from the Internet" is the solution. Not more laws. Meanwhile, the story about targeting natural-gas pipelines involved some basic social engineering (spear phishing) rather than any technical hackery. In both cases, the issue appears to be the same: critical infrastructure like that which controls the functioning of water treatment plants and gas pipelines shouldn't be connected to the internet.

But do we need a 211-page law to share information just to recognize that?

The bigger problem is that while the President's Op-Ed highlights how we want to avoid the cinematic story he tells at the beginning, where it fails is that it never explains why the kind of information sharing he's talking about is blocked today. Which rules and regulations are blocking that from happening? No one seems to want to say. Instead, we get legislation that just assumes there must be regulations blocking information sharing and wipes them all away.

We appreciate that Obama says that he'll veto any bill that doesn't include strong privacy and civil liberties protections, but we should never be passing legislation based on made up scary stories.

Filed Under: cybersecurity, internet, obama, privacy, regulations, risks, threats

US Invites Mexico, Canada To Join TPP Negotiations But With Less Power

from the take-it-or-leave-it dept

We've been talking about the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) that's being negotiated among a bunch of countries around the Pacific rim. Of course, we've been mostly focused on the intellectual property section, though it covers a lot more than that. Through leaks, we've already seen that the agreement really is an attempt to give special interest corporations extra benefits, rather than anything designed to actually help the public. That explains why only a few special interests have been able to see the documents (outside of leaks), but the public is left out. Of course, if you've been following the negotiations, you'll note that there are some major "gaps" in PacRim countries taking part in the agreement. China, Japan, Canada and Mexico are all pretty big countries that touch the Pacific... and have nothing to do with the negotiations.

Canada has been wanting to join, but the entertainment industry has been blocking those efforts. Japan has wanted to join, but automakers in Detroit have been saying no. China just has no interest in shackling itself to the interests of American companies.

Yesterday it was announced that Mexico has been "approved" to join the negotiations. President Obama announced at an event in Mexico that it could join the negotiations, leaving many people to note the fact that nothing at all was said about Japan or Canada. Well... today Canada has been added to the pack as well, though still no word on Japan.

Mexico presents an interesting participant on the intellectual property side. While its executive branch supported ACTA, the Mexican Senate was not happy -- voting to pull out of the negotiations earlier, and then rejecting ACTA directly. So it will be interesting to see how Mexico responds to the IP sections of TPP.

The situation with Canada may be even more troubling. There are reports that one of the conditions for Canada to join was that it had to accept the existing language in TPP and would not have veto rights to anything. Now, remember: the text of TPP is not public. So in order for Canada to agree, it needs to agree to abide by rules that it has not seen or approved. That's pretty crazy. Furthermore, as Michael Geist points out, seeing as Canada just approved its new copyright reform, much of which seems to conflict with the leaked IP proposals in TPP, Canada may have to dump much of the copyright law it just fought so hard to get passed.

Filed Under: canada, china, japan, mexico, obama, tpp, transparency, ustr

Politicians Grandstand About Leaks, But The Rest Of Us See The Prosecution Of Whistleblowers

from the priorities,-people dept

Early last week, we wrote about the oddity of how the White House didn't seem to much mind "leaks" that made the President look good in terms of being "tough" on our enemies, such as in the NY Times story confirming that the US was behind the Stuxnet malware, and that the President himself was very familiar with the program. This came at the same time as the White House continuing to vindictively prosecute people responsible for even very minor leaks, such as the Thomas Drake affair, in which some whistleblowing about out-of-control spending at the NSA tuned into a malicious prosecution.

Soon after that story came out, the issue of "good leaks" and "bad leaks" became a huge political football, as it gave the President's opponents an angle to attack him for leaking classified info. The President himself had to shoot back and insist that there were no such leaks happening from the White House -- which is clearly not true. Some of the information could have only come from administration officials.

And, of course, it wasn't just limited to Stuxnet, but other "leaks" of classified info, such as stories around the unmanned drone strike program, which lots of people have reported on, but which is still "classified." Of course, we've now seen grandstanding on both sides of the aisle decrying these leaks -- but not the actions that were exposed by them!

Instead, they all seem to be upset about the leaks themselves, rather than the fact that these questionable activities were secret in the first place. As John Cook recently wrote, these kinds of "leaks" are important because they let us know what our government is doing in our name. That's why these aren't leaks, so much as whistleblowing. And that's an important distinction. That's doubly true as we see to what ridiculous lengths the very same administration goes to in order to attack anyone who reveals information that makes it look bad.

One person's leak is another person's whistleblowing. To treat them all as "leaks" that must be punished (often severely) creates a significant chilling effect on reporting on key issues -- and (worse) gives the government a bubble in which it gets to abuse its power. Rather than condemning all these "leaks," we should be trying to (a) celebrate those who blew the whistle and (b) understand the details behind why such things were secret in the first place.

Filed Under: leak, nsa, obama, stuxnet, thomas drake, whistleblower, white house

Lawsuits Filed In Colombia To Challenge Local Version Of SOPA

from the bad-laws dept

You may remember that, a couple months ago, Colombia rushed through its own version of a SOPA-like copyright law. The details were particularly horrifying. Last fall, the US and Colombia signed a "free trade agreement" (FTA). Tragically, like many FTAs put together by the USTR these days, it included something that's the very opposite of "free trade": a requirement to put in place extraordinary protectionist measures in the form of expansive copyright laws. In order to be in compliance with the treaty, Colombia had to pass some really bad legislation. Its first attempt, a few months earlier, failed when the public spoke up. However, in April, President Obama came to visit Colombia on a very high-profile trip. In order to make him happy, the Colombia government rushed through a ridiculously bad copyright bill, making it law with almost no public discourse. Not surprisingly, the bill is terrible.

Thankfully, two Senators have now filed lawsuits challenging the law, saying that it violates privacy rights and limits freedom of access to information. Oh yeah, and it violates the Colombian constitution. The serious problems with the bill had been raised with the Colombian government prior to it passing, but in their rush to make Obama happy, apparently they didn't care.

Filed Under: access to information, colombia, fta, obama, privacy, sopa, ustr

Sen. Feinstein More Worried About Reaction To The Leak About Stuxnet, Rather Than Reaction To Stuxnet Itself

from the missing-the-point dept

Last week, we wrote about the NYTimes investigative report that revealed that the US government was behind Stuxnet, and that President Obama was very, very involved in the process. It was widely assumed that the US was involved, but this revealed a bunch of details. We were surprised that the White House appeared not to pressure the NYTs to kill the story (as it has with other leaks of classified info), but wondered if the fact that this made the White House look "tough" and showed a "success story" for the administration, caused them to let it go forward. Since then, however, reports have come out that the FBI is investigating the leak, and Senator Feinstein is similarly calling for hearings on the leak (though, the cynical might argue that this just keeps the "success story" in the news).

But, the most bizarre response to this also comes from Senator Feinstein, who publicly worried that the leak would lead to copycat attacks against the US. The leak. Not the actual attack:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said the leak about the attack on Iran’s nuclear program could “to some extent” provide justification for copycat attacks against the United States.

“This is like an avalanche. It is very detrimental and, candidly, I found it very concerning,” Feinstein said. “There’s no question that this kind of thing hurts our country.”

This is, to put it mildly, crazy. The argument appears to be that it's okay to do technological attacks... just as long as it's all done in secret and no one ever talks about it. Without the leak, the attack still happened, and that information became public quite some time ago. If anything was going to inspire copycat attacks it would have been that. Though, even then, the claim is questionable. Those who wish to do this country harm haven't been sitting around saying "gee, we can't do anything technological" until they saw Stuxnet come along.

What's really ridiculous about Feinstein's statement is the basic chilling effects that it puts forth. It suggests that the US government can do whatever it wants in attacking other countries, just so long as no one ever talks about it. The talking about factual information isn't the issue here. And Feinstein should know that, rather than suggesting that basic investigative reporting is the problem.

Filed Under: dianne feinstein, intelligence committee, leak, obama, stuxnet, white house

Would Bradley Manning Face The Same Charges If He Leaked Same Info To NYTimes Instead Of Wikileaks?

from the questions,-questions dept

Pre-trial hearings for Bradley Manning, the guy accused of leaking State Department cables (and other info) to Wikileaks, are kicking off this week, with many assuming that he's clearly guilty and will spend the rest of his life in jail. Of course, reports suggest that many thousands (and perhaps hundreds of thousands) of people had access to the exact same documents, and we're still waiting for any proof of any harm from the leaks. That said, the most interesting question about the Manning trial comes from Gautham Nagesh, who asks if Manning would even have been prosecuted if he'd leaked the exact same info to the NY Times, rather than Wikileaks (even though the eventual publishing of the documents went through the NYTimes and others).

And that brings up an interesting point. Is this really a trial of Manning... or a trial-by-proxy of Wikileaks itself?

That said, I'm not convinced it would have made a huge difference, but the overall attention level might have been different. If we went back a decade, perhaps it would have been an issue. However, starting under the Bush (the younger) administration and certainly ramping up under the Obama administration, the federal government has been pretty aggressive in going after whistleblowers -- even when they are going to the press (including some specific cases involving the NY Times).

Where I think it might have made a bigger difference is in how the case finally works out. There seems to be this presumption that Wikileaks is obviously "evil" and therefore anyone working with them must be trouble by association. The concern if the leaks had merely been to the NY Times perhaps wouldn't have been nearly as strong.

Filed Under: bradley manning, bush, obama, whistleblower, white house
Companies: new york times, wikileaks