Hillary Clinton To Silicon Valley: To Silence Terrorists, Nerd Harder, Nerds!

from the that's-not-how-this-works dept

With the explosive devices in NY and NJ from this past weekend, Hillary Clinton has decided, once again, that it's time to blame Silicon Valley for not doing more to magically stop terrorists from terroristing.

“The recruitment and radicalization that goes on online has to be much more vigorously intercepted and prevented. I have been saying this for quite some time,” the Democratic presidential candidate said at a news conference Monday during which she responded to the bombings in New York and New Jersey over the weekend.

“The government cannot do this without the close participation of tech companies and experts online who can give us the tools and lead us to those who are attempting to promote attacks like we’ve seen.”

Let's leave aside, first of all, the fact that (as of this writing) there hasn't been any evidence that the individual arrested and charged with this was recruited and radicalized online. Instead, let's focus on what's being asked here: to "intercept and prevent" certain forms of speech online. Not only does this seem... to go completely against American values around freedom of expression, it's also impossible. Sure, you can kick people off of services, but anyone with an ounce of understanding of how the internet works will recognize how ineffective that is.

Not only would such a system fail to stop people who wish to plan attacks from communicating, such a plan would, inevitably, also block perfectly normal and protected speech. Even worse, it would likely block important counterspeech in which people are able to respond to calls for violence and terrorism with arguments as to why that approach is a bad idea.

It remains amazingly troubling that both of the major party candidates for President seem to think that a good response to attacks in this country is to silence people online. Putting the onus on Silicon Valley to magically "fix" this by "preventing" bad people from talking to one another online is not a credible, reasonable or workable strategy for dealing with those who wish to attack the US.

Filed Under: censorship, free speech, hillary clinton, nerd harder, terrorism

Colin Powell's Email To Clinton About Personal Devices Shows Routing Around FOIA Is Business As Usual

from the the-public:-worst-thing-to-happen-to-gov't-since-ever dept

Briefly noted in an earlier article about the FBI's investigation into Hillary Clinton's personal email server was the existence of communications that pointed towards FOIA-dodging as a possible factor in her decision to set this up.

Emails released earlier had hinted at this. The FBI's investigation documents contained part of an email from Colin Powell warning her that if it became public Clinton was using a personal BlackBerry, any communications on that device could become subject to FOIA requests. Powell also pointed out that he had routed around this during his years at the State Department by "not saying much" and "not using systems that captured the data."

So, it's not as though government officials need much help from people like Matt Yglesias in keeping more communications related to government work hidden from the public. They've always had plenty of options and appear to be keenly aware of which systems feed into FOIA-able areas.

The full email has now been released (h/t Rebecca Shabad and Steve Ragan) and the contents make it clear Powell had ways of routing around FOIA requirements while heading up the State Department. This appears to be the information Clinton was seeking -- how to avoid having to use the systems the State Department already had or being blocked from using her personal BlackBerry while in office.

Clinton had noticed Powell used a personal BlackBerry and wanted to know what restrictions he ran into and whether he was allowed to use it while "on site" during his tenure as Secretary of State. She added that she was trying to "bring along" the State Department, presumably towards the private email server/personal device future Clinton envisioned.

Powell's response begins with him pointing out he didn't use a Blackberry for stuff he wanted to keep off the FOIA radar. He used his own computer.

I didn't have a BlackBerry. What I did do was have a personal computer that was hooked up to a private phone line (sounds ancient.) So I could communicate with a wide range of friends directly without it going through the State Department servers. I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts.

On one hand, Powell wanted to keep some communications (those with "friends") private, which is understandable. On the other, he clearly states he conducted official business with his private device -- including communications with other State Department officials, who were using their own personal email accounts.

It's not just a Powell thing or a Clinton thing. It's a government thing. Many government officials utilize personal devices and accounts. Many of them get away with it. Many government officials say nice things about transparency, too -- all the while creating a stockpile of "public" documents the public never gets a chance to see, much less know exists.

The full statement -- which was partially quoted in the FBI investigation documents -- shows routing around FOIA requirements, record preservation policies, and government accountability ideals comes as naturally to government officials as board of directors' positions at favored corporations following retirement from the public sector. After discussing the issues he had with State Department security, the NSA, CIA, etc. about the supposed threat personal devices posed to government security, Powell notes the real threat is… the public.

However, there is a real danger. If it is public that you have a BlackBerry and it it government and you are using it, government or not, to do business, it may become an official record and subject to the law. Reading about the President's BB rules this morning, it sounds like it won't be as useful as it used to be. Be very careful. I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.

Powell has since defended this email by saying he wasn't attempting to influence her on how to handle potentially FOIA-able communications while running the State Department. Powell backs up this assertion by pointing out Hillary Clinton said his email didn't influence her decision to use private email accounts, private devices, and a private server to handle State Department communications. So, I guess that's all wrapped up and nothing more to see here. [eyeroll]

It's impossible to tell if this conversation was supposed to evade FOIA requirements as well. Powell's email address is redacted, but Clinton's is still exposed. As of the date this was sent (February 2009), Clinton had been a Senator for nearly a decade. The email account used, however, was an AT&T address linked to her personal BlackBerry -- which would suggest personal devices/email accounts had been standard operating procedure for quite some time.

Also of note is this fact -- pointed out by one-man FOIA wrecking crew Jason Leopold: this "new" revelation of Powell's "How To Beat the State Department and the Public at Their Own Transparency Game" advice is actually about three years old. Apparently, Powell detailed his accountability-skirting measures in his 2012 book titled (no shit) "It Worked for Me."

Filed Under: colin powell, email, foia, hillary clinton, security

Hillary Clinton Thinks Real-World Military Responses To Hacking Attacks Are A Nifty Idea

from the bombing-for-the-lulz dept

While hacking and "cybersecurity" threats have long been used to justify awful government policy, the entire concept is clearly about to be turbocharged. With the rise in hacking attacks on the DNC, many were quick to call for renewed cyberattacks on Russia despite the fact that hard, transparent proof of Russian nation state involvement remains hard to come by (the idea being unsound either way). But in a speech last week, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton took things one step further by suggesting that she'll make it an administration goal to respond to cyberattacks with real-world military force:

"As President, I will make it clear that the United States will treat cyberattacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic, and military responses," she told the attendees, largely made up of veterans and their supporters. "We are going to invest in protecting our governmental networks and our national infrastructure," she continued. "I want us to lead the world in setting the rules in cyberspace. If America doesn't, others will."

There are several things wrong with this narrative. The US government and Western media seem to frequently go out of their way to imply that the United States is an innocent little hacking daisy, nobly defending itself from a wide variety of evil international threats. But as we saw with Stuxnet, the United States is very often the country doing the attacking, often with major negative impact on countries, companies and civilians worldwide. That the US has the moral high ground on cybersecurity is little more than a stale meme, and it needs to be put out of its misery.

And granted, while Clinton was clearly trying to appeal to her veteran audience at the American Legion National Conference (most of whom likely can't tell a terabyte from T-Mobile), America's moral cybersecurity superiority was on proud display all the same:

"We need to respond to evolving threats from states like Russia, China, Iran and North Korea," Clinton said in the speech. "We need a military that is ready and agile so it can meet the full range of threats and operate on short notice across every domain – not just land, sea, air and space but also cyberspace. "You've seen reports. Russia's hacked into a lot of things, China has hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So we have got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us."

Again, you'll note that the United States is portrayed as an innocent and noble defender of cybersecurity freedom, when it's the one often engaging in frequently-unprovoked attacks the world over. Of course, Clinton and friends are well aware that the vast majority of the time it's impossible to know where an attack came from, and any hacker worth his or her salt simply doesn't leave footprints. That makes a real-world military or economic response to a nebulous, usually-unprovable threat simply idiotic. You'd assume Clinton knows this and was just doing some light pandering to the audience.

But this rhetoric alone is still dangerous in that it opens the door wide to using hacking -- much like communism and Islamic extremism and numerous "isms" before them -- as a nebulous, endlessly mutable justification for a litany of bad US behavior. You could, for example, covertly hack a government, publicize its hacking response to your hack, using the press to help you justify military action. Given the US and global media's historical complicity in helping governments begin wars with jack shit for evidence, it shouldn't be hard to see how hacking is going to be a useful bad policy bogeyman du jour for decades to come.

Despite some repeated, painful lessons on this front stretching back generations, forcing the government to show its math before it resorts to violence is simply not the US media's strong suit. And with hacking and cybersecurity being subjects the press and public are extra-violently ignorant about, we've created the opportunity for some incredible new sleight of hand when it comes to framing and justifying US domestic and international policy. If history is any indication, by next time this year we'll be blaming everything under the sun on Russian hackers because after all, two anonymous senior government officials said so.

Healthy skepticism will be our ally as we stumble down the rabbit hole. While it's no surprise that Russia, like the United States is deeply-involved in nation state hacking, you'll note that actual evidence linking the Putin Administration to the recent rise in US hacking attacks remains fleeting. Most reports simply cite a single anonymous US government source, or security firms with a vested interest in selling services and products. That's not to say Putin and friends aren't busy hacking the US, but whether a country is responding to similar attacks by the United States (pdf) -- or is actually involved at all -- is rather important to transparently document before you begin trotting out awful new policies or worse, real world bombs.

Filed Under: attack, cyber war, cybersecurity, hacking, hillary clinton, military

FBI Publishes Clinton Email Investigation Documents; More Bad News On Documents Mishandling, FOIA Compliance

from the nothing-in-here-says-I-should-be-trusted-with-MORE-classified-info dept

The FBI generally likes to keep as much information as possible out of the public's hands, so its decision to release its files on the Hillary Clinton email investigation are probably best viewed as a one-off, rather than the leading edge of a new era of transparency.

The agency certainly couldn't pretend there isn't significant public interest in the content of the investigative files. The outcome of a presidential election could very well hinge on the voting public's interpretation of the documents' content.

And the FBI certainly has an interest in clearing the air of any hints of politically-motivated favoritism. That the investigation occurred at all does some damage to Clinton's credibility, while the decision not to pursue prosecution doesn't do much for the FBI's.

A closer look at the investigative documents simply gives more credence to the FBI's assertion that it found evidence of stupidity, but not criminal intent. At worst, the private email server allowed Hillary Clinton to better avoid FOIA requests (an effect now nullified by the State Department's ongoing release of nearly every email it's been able to recover) -- something that's a civil violation, rather than a criminal one. From the Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky and Rosalind Helderman's dive into the FBI's docs: [PDF vol. 1, PDF vol. 2]

Clinton told the FBI that she used the private server for convenience, not to evade public record laws. But the documents show that former secretary of state Colin Powell appeared to advise her early in her term that private email could give her more control over her communications in the face of public inquiries.

In January 2009, according to the FBI, Clinton contacted Powell, who also used a personal email account during his time in office, to ask about his use of a BlackBerry. According to the FBI, Powell “warned Clinton that if it became ‘public’ that Clinton had a BlackBerry, and she used it to ‘do business,’ her e-mails could become ‘official record[s] and subject to the law.’”

“Be very careful,” Powell advised Clinton, according to the FBI. “I got around it all by not saying much and not using systems that captured the data.”

Clinton's defense of her private email server was that she was using it for convenience and figured any public records requirements were being met by third-party recipients using official government email accounts. Supposedly, this indicates she wasn't trying to duck FOIA requests. However, this explanation doesn't really mesh with her decision to give staffers email addresses on her private server. Once that happened, there were no third parties preserving records. It was all left up to Clinton. Plenty of efforts were made -- deletion, destruction of devices, etc. -- to purge emails that possibly should have been preserved as public records.

The only criminal issue would have been the mishandling of sensitive information, something Clinton did regularly. But the FBI found no evidence of maliciousness. Just a surprising amount of stupidity from someone who should have known better.

Clinton told FBI agents that she did not know much about how the government classified information. For instance, she said she did not pay attention to the difference between levels of classification, like “top secret” and “secret,” indicating she took “all classified information seriously.” When shown an email she received in which a paragraph had been marked with a “C,” a standard way of indicating it included “confidential” information, Clinton at first speculated to agents that the marking was indicating that email contained bullet points in alphabetical order.

Clinton may have pled ignorance when questioned by the FBI, but these statements directly contradict assertions she made to reporters on Monday:

“I went into the State Department understanding classification. I’ve been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for years before I was Secretary of State. I take classification seriously. The fact I couldn’t remember certain meetings, whether or not they had occurred, doesn’t in any way affect the treatment I had and still have of classified material.”

Clinton says she "understands" classification -- certainly a much different self-assessment than she presented to FBI interviewers. She then says nothing "affects the treatment" of sensitive material. She always handled it "seriously." I certainly hope that word isn't meant to define actions like these:

The FBI’s report traced the history of Clinton’s private server use, detailing ad hoc efforts to backup data and respond to requests for records. In one instance, after Clinton left office, someone created a personal Gmail account to move an archive of Clinton’s email on a laptop to a server run by Platte River Networks, a company Clinton had hired. The person then attempted to ship the laptop back to another person connected to Clinton.

According the FBI report, the laptop, which had not been wiped, got lost in transit. And the FBI would come to find on the Gmail account dozens of classified emails.

While Hillary Clinton may not be directly responsible for a laptop full of email (some of them sensitive) being lost in transit, it was her decision to cobble together a personal email server that led to this mishap. Additionally, while the FBI may not have found any evidence of breach by malicious entities, the private server undoubtedly made an attractive target. With Clinton in sole control of her end of official communications, any breach may have either gone unnoticed or undisclosed for far longer than a similar attack on government-owned servers. This is just another way Clinton sacrificed accountability for "simplicity" by setting up her own server.

The denials contained in the FBI report are expected. No one in a similar position is going to admit they set up a personal server to route around FOIA requests and/or more restrictive official government policies. Even if that's not criminal activity, it's still a bad look for a presidential candidate. More concerning is Clinton's blase attitude towards handling sensitive information, something she'll be seeing even more of if elected.

Filed Under: email, foia, hillary clinton

Clinton Campaign Happily Using Strong End-To-End Encryption To Communicate; Will They Let The Rest Of Us Use It Too?

from the good-for-the-goose dept

Hillary Clinton has been somewhat hard to pin down on the encryption debate -- because she's done what she's done with plenty of issues, generally spoken in broad platitudes without ever making a statement that allows her position to actually be clear. But she's certainly said some pretty concerning stuff. Last fall she said:

Encryption of mobile communications presents a particularly tough problem. We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack.

Of course, she then did a "on the other hand" and noted the concerns of security folks. Since then, she's called for a sort of Manhattan Project on encryption, believing that if Silicon Valley people could just nerd harder, they could make encryption that could only be broken by law enforcement. That's not how it works. She's also complained that Silicon Valley treats the government "as its adversary."

So it seems rather noteworthy that, following questions about how well she secured her own emails, combined with email leaks from the DNC and reports that the campaign itself has been hacked, the Clinton campaign has now started using Signal, the popular encrypted messaging system from Open Whisper Systems (which made the protocol that is generally considered the best around for end-to-end encrypted messaging).

In the intervening weeks, staffers were told, according to a person who works with the committee, that if anyone was going to communicate about Donald Trump over e-mail or text message, especially if those missives were even remotely contentious or disparaging, it was imperative that they do so using an application called Signal....

Signal, staffers in the meeting were told, was “Snowden-approved.” A week after the meeting at the campaign headquarters, according to two people who have worked with the D.N.C. and the Clinton campaign, an e-mail was sent out instructing staffers where to download the app and how to use it.

So, you'd think that, maybe (just maybe) the Clinton campaign might come out and say that it's not planning to support bills that would outlaw Signal after they're elected, right?

Perhaps it'll take another lesson. Because, apparently, the Clinton campaign staffers didn't pay much attention to the briefing:

While the D.N.C. hack sent tremors down the spines of virtually everyone in Washington, it didn’t take long for people to take the easy route, once again e-mailing sensitive information that could easily hamper the campaign if it ever became public. Or, as one Washington insider told me: “No one really learned.”

So, there's that.

The other oddity in this story is that Hillary Clinton has called for Snowden to be put in jail, and yet now her campaign is telling everyone to use Snowden-approved encryption? The irony did not go unnoticed by one person in particular:

Filed Under: clinton campaign, ed snowden, encryption, going dark, hillary clinton, signal

With Both Presidential Candidates Claiming To Be Against The TPP, President Obama Kicks Off Campaign To Ratify It

from the so-that'll-be-interesting dept

Even as the candidate that President Obama is supporting, Hillary Clinton, has been increasingly insisting that she really (no, really) is against the TPP (despite being for it prior to this campaign) -- and even as Donald Trump has been vehemently against it, despite trade agreements usually getting strong support from the GOP -- President Obama is making a big push to get the TPP ratified by Congress. It needs a majority vote in both houses of Congress to be ratified in the US. Last week, we noted the weird situation where everyone's position on the agreement appeared to be wishy-washy, though mostly for all the wrong reasons.

But that's not stopping Obama from having his cabinet make a big push to get it approved by Congress:

Among those who will hit the road will be Secretary of State John F. Kerry; Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter; retired Admiral Michael G. Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Presidents George W. Bush and Obama; Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr., commander of the United States Pacific Command; and William Cohen, a former Republican senator and defense secretary under President Bill Clinton.

Of course, everyone knows that it won't be voted on until after the election.

Although the administration’s push will begin in September, no vote on the accord will occur before the election. Just as the White House and congressional Republican leaders mostly agree on the economic benefits of trade, they have parallel political interests in delaying debate.

Republicans do not want to provoke attacks from their presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, who called the trade accord “a rape of our country,” or hurt other Republican candidates. Mr. Obama does not want to make trouble for the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, who has struggled to persuade voters of her sincerity in switching from support of the pact to opposition. This month, during an economic address in Michigan, she declared, “I oppose it now, I’ll oppose it after the election and I’ll oppose it as president.”

But, of course, that seems like it could also make a so-called "lame duck" vote pretty damn awkward as well. Yes, after the charade of the election is over, perhaps politicians will revert to their previous positions supporting the deal, but even at their most cynical, it seems a bit crass to do so right after the election. It would just underscore how absolutely full of shit they were during the campaign season. Maybe that doesn't have political consequences... but it should.

Filed Under: barack obama, congress, donald trump, hillary clinton, tpp, trade agreements

Donald Trump Has Freed Up Journalists' Ability To Call Bullshit; But It Won't Last, Nor Extend To Others

from the that's-too-bad dept

If you've been watching the political press at all this election season, you may notice something interesting that's different: the press is now calling bullshit on Donald Trump pretty regularly. Perhaps nothing has made this quite as clear as whoever handles the chyron text for CNN, who seems to take a bit of delight in real time fact checking of Donald Trump in a manner never really seen before: Of course, there are different ways to look at this. If you're Michael Goodwin at the NY Post, you argue that it's yet another example of the horrible biased liberal media, but even worse because now it's dropped all pretenses:

It’s pure bias, which the Times fancies itself an expert in detecting in others, but is blissfully tolerant of its own. And with the top political editor quoted in the story as ­approving the one-sided coverage as necessary and deserving, the prejudice is now official policy.

It’s a historic mistake and a complete break with the paper’s own traditions. Instead of dropping its standards, the Times should bend over backwards to enforce them, even while acknowledging that Trump is a rare breed. That’s the whole point of standards — they are designed to guide decisions not just in easy cases, but in all cases, to preserve trust.

That makes for a neat media narrative, but it doesn't really make much sense. If it were the case, then we'd see this kind of bullshit calling on lots of conservative politicians. But that's rarely the case. It seems to me that Ezra Klein's take on the same issue, at Vox, is much more accurate. That the media feels freed of its awkward "objective" standpoint by the fact that Trump is just so blatant in his lies. This is not to say other politicians aren't frequently dishonest or wrong. But Trump takes lying to a new level.

"The things Trump says are demonstrably false in a way that’s abnormal for politicians," says the Atlantic’s James Fallows, who wrote the book Why Americans Hate the Media. "When he says he got a letter from the NFL on the debates and then the NFL says, ‘No, he didn’t,’ it emboldens the media to treat him in a different way."

Politicians are not fully truthful. Everyone knows that. But they make a basic effort at being, as Stephen Colbert put it, truthy. The statistics they cite are usually in the neighborhood of correct. The falsehoods they offer are crafted through the careful omission of fact rather than the inclusion of falsehood. They may say things journalists know are wrong — climate change denial is a constant among Republican officeholders — but they protect themselves by wrapping their arguments in well-constructed controversy or appealing to hand-selected experts.

This is part of how political reporting operates. Politicians are allowed to be wrong, but they can’t lie. Trump just lies.

This is a big difference, but one that many people often confuse. Getting things wrong -- because you're misinformed, because you just really want to believe something is true, or because you just made a mistake -- is one thing. But pure fabrication is something different. And it's the outright fabrications that the press feels comfortable calling out.

The question is what does this actually mean for journalism? Goodwin, at the Post, sees this as the downfall of journalism. The fact that the media will actually call someone out on their lies is seen as "bias" because it's not done equally to other candidates. Klein sees this as a temporary state of being -- because most other candidates will return to their truthy wrongness with the press happy to eat that up, with nothing more than a "he said/she said" type of false equivalency when there's some question about the facts.

Another writer, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, more or less agrees with Goodwin that this is somehow freeing the press up to be biased, after noting how much he disagrees with Trump -- but worries about the press feeling emboldened.

I hate Trump, and I hope he loses. But I fear one consequence of his candidacy will be an even more biased press in the future.

Then there's Klein, who thinks that Trump's uniqueness means that this is a unique scenario for the press as well, and one that has many of them uncomfortable:

Covering Trump this way isn’t freeing. It’s uncomfortable, both for individual journalists and for the broader institutions they serve. I think, if anything, the likely reaction will be overcorrection: The press would be so happy to have a semi-normal Republican candidate it could cover respectfully that whoever follows Trump is likely to benefit from a bit of halo effect just by comparison.

Like so much else in this election, what defines the press’s coverage of Trump isn’t that he’s a Republican but that there is something abnormal about him, about his campaign, and about the dynamics surrounding it. Assuming more normal politicians succeed him, more normal forms of coverage will reassert themselves.

I think Klein is probably right here, and this is an unfortunate thing. Because we should want our press to be calling bullshit. It's not bias to call out someone when they lie. It's not bias to point out someone said something that's wrong. We should get over this lame "he said/she said" concept behind the stupidly fake idea of "objective" reporting, and do what reporters should be doing: calling bullshit when there's actual bullshit.

If there's any bias in the media, it's not because they're calling bullshit, but because they're not doing it enough. They should be more aggressive in pointing out not just what's an outright lie, but when a politician says something that's wrong (though they should distinguish between what's just wrong and what's a deliberate lie). Klein is probably right that reporters will go back to their old ways after this election, and Goodwin and Gobry will breathe a sigh of relief, but the reality is that we'll be losing out on a real opportunity to move the media from compliant stenographers to actual journalists.

Filed Under: bias, bullshit, donald trump, hillary clinton, journalism, political reporting, reporting

With Republicans Backing Away From TPP, Does It Still Have Any Chance?

from the what-a-weird-year dept

We've pointed out before how topsy turvy things have become with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement lately, and it seems to be getting even more weird, but not for any good reason. As we've pointed out dozens of times now, actual free trade is a good thing for the world -- but the TPP agreement has very, very little to do with free trade. There are certainly some good things in the TPP when it comes to trade, including some stuff on helping protect the free flow of information on the internet, but it is significantly outweighed by numerous problems with the agreement that seem to have little to do with actual free trade and plenty to do with certain industries putting in place protectionist/mercantilist programs that are, in many ways, the opposite of free trade. The two areas that we've discussed at great length are the intellectual property section, which will force countries to ratchet up their laws (which runs against free trade) and the problematic corporate sovereignty provisions, that allow foreign companies to effectively block regulations that may make perfect sense for certain countries.

Historically, the way political support for trade deals in the US works breaks down as follows: Republicans support the deals strongly, with a simplistic mantra of "free trade is good, any free trade agreement must be good." They don't care much about the details (other than if a big company in their region wants some protectionist nugget in the agreement). Meanwhile, the majority of Democrats oppose the agreements, but again, often for simplistic and protectionist reasons. But, there are always a few "moderate" Democrats (i.e., Democrats who recognize free trade is actually a good thing overall) who support free trade and that's enough to get the deals passed. That's mostly how the TPP situation played out for the past few years.

Then the insanity of the 2016 Presidential election hit and everything went sideways.

On the Republican side, you've got Donald Trump, who is opposed to the TPP, but mainly because he doesn't understand international trade at all, and ridiculously seems to believe that everything is a zero sum game, and any trade agreement that helps other countries means we're "losing." The TPP is bad, but not for the reasons Trump thinks. And then you have Hillary Clinton, who had always been in the Democratic clump that supported free trade agreements, and who has always supported the TPP, despite now pretending not to. That's because Bernie Sanders was very much against it (also for mostly the wrong reasons!) and feeling pressure from the success of his campaign, she felt the need to come out against the TPP to avoid losing to Bernie.

So, you have both candidates claiming to be against TPP, but for weird reasons, and no one believing the Dem candidate, while no one quite understanding the GOP candidate. Meanwhile, the sitting President continues to push for the TPP even as the only two people likely to have his job in a few months insist they won't support it.

Now, throw into this mix the fact that Trump's railing against the TPP (again, for dumb reasons) is suddenly getting Republican voters to hate the TPP, and down ticket Republicans who have long supported the TPP are suddenly changing their tune. Senator Pat Toomey, a long time supporter of the TPP has now announced it's a bad deal and he's opposed to it. Of course, he actually spends most of his opinion piece (correctly!) lauding the benefits of free trade, but then says he's opposing it for a few reasons. His reasons are silly, though. It's mainly because the pharma industry has convinced him that the IP provisions in the TPP are too lax. Pharma pushed heavily for more ability to basically lock up their data and discoveries for a very long time, and thanks to Australia pushing back, there was a compromise here. So Toomey insists that's why he's now opposing:

About 46,000 Pennsylvanians have jobs in the life science and pharmaceutical sector, making it one of our state’s largest industries. TPP will make it too easy for other countries to steal innovations that we create in Pennsylvania and take the jobs tied to those innovations.

That's not true at all. What the TPP will do is actually mean that pharma will have an exclusive monopoly on certain things for not quite as long as they'd like. It won't make "stealing innovations" any easier.

Of course, the real reason for Toomey's about-face may have more to do with his re-election campaign:

Toomey's remarks arrive as public polls show him falling behind Democratic challenger Katie McGinty in one of the country's most crucial Senate races. They also come after months of rage against international trade fueled support for Trump and Bernie Sanders, and forced Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to reverse course on the pending deal. McGinty has opposed the TPP and blasted Toomey over his stand on it.

"Pat Toomey has spent his entire career pushing bad trade deals and policies that ship Americans jobs overseas, so nobody is buying this ridiculous flip flop," McGinty said in a statement.

So, this topsy turvy election year, it's becoming increasingly clear that the TPP might not actually have the support it needs to get ratified in the US. If Republicans are bailing on it (and the top of the ticket screaming about how horrible it is), it's difficult to see how it can gain enough support. There is the popular theory that no matter what happens, in the lame duck session after the election, everyone will revert to their earlier positions and push the damn thing through, but if trade continues to be an issue in the election, doing so will create a huge amount of public anger.

So, in the end, there are a lot of reasons why the TPP may die on the vine... even if all of the reasons for it doing so will be pretty bad.

Filed Under: corporate sovereignty, donald trump, free trade, gop, hillary clinton, intellectual property, isds, pat toomey, politics, tpp, trade agreements

Awesome Stuff: Don't Miss Our New Vote2016() T-Shirt

from the syntax-politics dept

Limited time offer: Support Techdirt and get a Vote2016() t-shirt or hoodie!

Yesterday, we launched our latest t-shirt/hoodie on Teespring: a common sentiment about the 2016 election expressed in code:

It's only available until Monday, August 15th so be sure to order yours soon! T-shirts are $20, hoodies are only $35, and this time we've also added a sticker option for $4. Support Techdirt and get your Vote2016() gear today!

Filed Under: awesome stuff, donald trump, election, hillary clinton, t-shirt, vote

Techdirt's New T-Shirt: The 2016 Election Choice... In Code

from the e-voting? dept

Limited time offer: Support Techdirt and get a Vote2016() t-shirt or hoodie!

Techdirt tends to care about policy a lot -- and politics very, very little. But you have to admit that the 2016 Presidential election is fascinating on many different levels -- in part because the unfavorability ratings of both major party candidates is at record breaking levels, and perhaps for good reason. Since you guys seem to have really appreciated our first few t-shirts/hoodies, we decided to create a new one that reflected a more techie perspective on this election, and the recognition of how many people may be voting... expressed in code. Buying one not only gives you a chance to express your opinion (and geek-cred) on the election, but it also helps support Techdirt.

Once again, we're using Teespring for this campaign, which means if you want in on the initial run, it's only available until Monday, August 15th, so order yours today. The t-shirts are only $20 and the hoodies are also a steal at $35 — and this time, it's also available as a sticker!

Filed Under: 2016 election, code, donald trump, election, hillary clinton, lesser of two evils, t-shirt