FBI Asks Congress To Permanently Reauthorize The Phone Record Collection The NSA Voluntarily Shut Down

from the IC's-make-a-wish-foundation dept

Earlier this year, the NSA -- after a few months of hedging -- finally mothballed its phone record collection program. The modified phone metadata collection had posed problems for the NSA since its remodeling with the enactment of the USA Freedom Act, which forced the NSA to ask telcos for specific records, rather than just demanding they hand over everything on a rolling 90-day basis.

Whatever benefits this program provided to the NSA was apparently outweighed by the technical problems it created. After hinting at its impending death on a podcast of all things, the NSA made it (sort of) official in May, saying it didn't see any reason to move forward with the collection, not after it had already been unofficially shut down for several months by that point.

The NSA may not need the phone records collection but it appears the FBI thinks it does. The easiest way for Congress to codify the program's shut down would be to let it expire at the end of this year. FBI Director Chris Wray is hoping to prevent a do-nothing Congress from doing nothing and letting the clock run out on the metadata collection.

Wray's testimony to the Senate Intelligence Community asks legislators to flip the switch back to "ON."

NSA’s decision to suspend the CDR program does not mean that Congress should allow the CDR authority to expire. Rather, that decision shows that the Executive Branch is a responsible steward of the authority Congress afforded it, and that the numerous constraints on the government imposed by the FREEDOM Act, including oversight by the FISC, are demanding and effective. As technology changes, our adversaries’ tradecraft and communications habits continue to evolve and adapt. In light of this dynamic environment, the administration supports reauthorization of the CDR provision so that the Government will retain this potentially valuable tool should it prove useful in the future.

Yeah, I know. He said the NSA is trustworthy. It isn't, of course. And neither is the FBI for that matter. But the FBI feels strongly that the program the NSA can't operate without violating the law might be useful at some point in the future for whatever reason. And the FBI wants this authorization to be permanent, so it doesn't have to come down to the SSCI and make this pitch every half-decade. But "just in case" isn't really a compelling reason to keep a questionable authority alive, much less forever.

It's not the only thing the FBI wants permanently authorized. It wants the rest of the business records collection -- the stuff that isn't phone records (but IS bank records, hotel records, car rental records, apartment lease records, etc.) -- permanently reauthorized. This gives the FBI and other members of the Intelligence Community (which now includes the CBP) warrantless access to a wealth of records our courts and Congresspeople haven't declared worthy of Fourth Amendment protections.

Then there are the roving wiretaps. The FBI wants those reauthorized forever, despite its history of abuse. And it wants to be able to target random people for almost no reason whatsoever with the "lone wolf" provision. Normally, it's only able to target individuals in terrorism-related investigations by showing they're tied to an international terrorist group. With this provision, it can target non-US persons based on the hunch they might be their own personal terrorist cell.

The FBI says it has never used this provision, which seems like a clear indication it's not really needed. Nevertheless, the FBI feels this -- like the phone metadata collection -- might become useful at some undetermined point in the future and wants to keep its options open.

This is why surveillance reform is an ongoing battle, not something that can be patched up here and there with legislation. Every reform effort contains sunset periods and when those appear on the horizon, IC members start petitioning Congress to not only reauthorize powers they're not even using, but to do so permanently so they don't have to ask for another renewal every half-decade or so. Every sunset contains the potential for a "forever" authorization of powers the IC doesn't like to discuss in public and have likely been abused periodically, if not frequently. At minimum, IC members should be forced to justify the continuance of expiring collections and authorizations. If they can't offer something better than the FBI's offering here, the programs should be allowed to fade from existence.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, congress, fbi, mass surveillance, metadata, nsa, phone metadata, section 215, surveillance

Mozilla: ISPs Are Lying About Encrypted DNS, Should Have Privacy Practices Investigated

from the ill-communication dept

In a bid to avoid losing access to the cash cow that is your daily browsing data, ISPs like Comcast have been lying about Google and Mozilla's quest to encrypt DNS data. The effort would effectively let Chrome and Mozilla users opt in to DNS encryption -- making your browser data more secure from spying and monetization -- assuming your DNS provider supports it. Needless to day, telecom giants that have made billions of dollars monetizing your every online behavior for decades now (and routinely lying about it) don't much like that.

As a result, Comcast, AT&T, and others have been trying to demonize the Google and Mozilla efforts any way they can, from insisting the move constitutes an antitrust violation on Google's part (it doesn't), to saying it's a threat to national security (it's not), to suggesting it even poses a risk to 5G deployments (nah).

Mozilla this week came out with a letter not only taking aim at those claims, but urging Congress to investigate telecom's long history of privacy problems:

"Our recent experience in rolling out DNS over HTTPs (DoH)—an important privacy and security protection for consumers—has raised questions about how ISPs collect and use sensitive user data in their gatekeeper role over internet usage," the letter, signed by Marshall Erwin, senior director of trust and security and Mozilla, reads. "With this in mind, a congressional examination of ISP practices may uncover valuable insights, educate the public, and help guide continuing efforts to draft consumer privacy legislation."

While there's obviously plenty of perfectly legitimate criticism of Silicon Valley giants like Facebook and Google, we've been noting how telecom lobbyists have been quietly co-opting this backlash to help the telecom sector. So far you'd have to view these efforts as successful; while the government hyperventilates about Facebook and whether it should be broken up and heavily regulated, telecom has convinced lawmakers to effectively obliterate all oversight of telecom, despite the sector having historically been every bit as terrible as Facebook on the subjects of privacy, consumer rights, and competition.

As a result there are a few lawmakers (Marsha Blackburn comes quickly to mind) who claim to be utterly incensed at Facebook's behavior, but have chosen to give telecom a free pass. Mozilla's letter urges Congress to, you know, stop doing that if they want to be taken seriously:

"We believe that more information regarding ISP practices could be useful to the Committee as it continues its deliberations on this front, and we encourage the Committee to publicly probe current ISP data collection and use policies."

As we look to craft what the privacy standards and guidelines of tomorrow look like, it's another reminder of how focusing too exclusively on the missteps of Silicon Valley giants obscures the fact that these problems aren't just exclusive to "big tech." Mozilla's spot on when it notes that privacy solutions that don't consider telecom aren't much of a solution in the first place.

Filed Under: congress, dns over https, doh, encrypted dns, privacy, security
Companies: at&t, comcast, google, mozilla, verizon

More Than 50 Federal Watchdogs Sign Letter Condemning OLC Decision That Allows White House Counsel To Unilaterally Block Whistleblower Reports

from the administration-consolidating-power dept

The whistleblower report implicating President Trump in a quid pro quo exchange of US military aid for promises to investigate a political rival has been very illustrative of the dangers of whistleblowing. Laws and policies mean next to nothing when the proper channels are willing to bury reports and possibly the reporter.

The president himself has called for the whistleblower to be unmasked. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence unilaterally decided this whistleblower report didn't need to go any further than its unfriendly confines. This decision was made despite the allegations containing matters of "urgent concern:" foreign interference in a US election.

The ODNI got the back up it needed from the White House. The Office of Legal Counsel sided with the administration and claimed the content of Trump's call with Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky wasn't "concerning" enough to be forwarded to Congressional oversight by the ODNI.

The Inspectors (plural) General disagree. A letter [PDF] sent to the Office of Legal Counsel -- signed by more than 50 IGs from dozens of federal agencies, including the DOJ, NSA, CIA, and State Department -- says the OLC's opinion is not only wrong but potentially seriously damaging.

We… share the ICIG’s concern that the OLC opinion could seriously impair whistleblowing and deter individuals in the intelligence community and throughout the government from reporting government waste, fraud, abuse, and misconduct. Whistleblowers play an essential public service in coming forward with such information, and they should never suffer reprisal or even the threat of reprisal for doing so.

How does the OLC's opinion make things more dangerous for whistleblowers? By taking away the IG's authority to independently review complaints containing "urgent concerns" and forward those to Congress if they involve members of the Executive Branch. The OLC wants to place itself between the IG and Congress, and to make the final call on whistleblower reports, which shifts all the power to the Executive Branch and makes it highly unlikely anything targeting White House officials will ever make its way into the hands of Congressional oversight.

It would be wholly inconsistent with the IG Act, and undermine IG independence, if the agency head – instead of forwarding the IG’s concerns to Congress as the law requires – sought OLC’s advice so that OLC could consider, and then potentially secondguess, the IG’s determination (a) that the problem, abuse, or deficiency was a “serious” or “flagrant” one, or (b) that it related to the administration of agency programs and operations.

The letter points out allowing the OLC's determination to stand creates a closed loop where the Executive Branch polices itself. This was undoubtedly the OLC's intention because it's highly unlikely it simply made a mistake of law.

In this matter, OLC did not find that production to Congress was limited due to a valid constitutional concern. Rather, OLC substituted its judgment and reversed a determination the statute specifically entrusted to the ICIG because of its independence, objectivity, and expertise to credibly assess the information. [...] Further, the opinion potentially creates space for agency heads across government to make their own determinations related to IG jurisdiction or reporting. Such a result would be contrary to IG independence and congressional intent in requiring IGs to maintain independent legal counsel and may impede the ability of Congress and taxpayers to obtain the objective and independent oversight they rely on from IGs.

When the most powerful part of the government becomes a law unto itself, everyone loses.

[T]his concern is not limited to the intelligence community but will have a chilling effect that extends to employees, contractors, and grantees in other parts of the government, who might not consider it worth the effort and potential impact on themselves to report suspected wrongdoing if they think that their efforts to disclose information will be for naught or, worse, that they risk adverse consequences for coming forward when they see something they think is wrong.

If this had only been signed by a couple of IGs who worked regularly with the ODNI, it might have been easy to write this off as the efforts of a few aggrieved watchdogs whose toes had been stepped on. But it's signed by IGs from all over the federal government, indicating that almost everyone this OLC opinion effects disagrees with it. If it stands, whistleblowing will become more difficult than it already is. When the power shifts in DC, it won't improve things for whistleblowers. It will only change the party affiliation of the administration benefiting from this decision.

Filed Under: congress, inspectors general, odni, olc, transparency, whistleblowers, whistleblowing

House Overwhelmingly Votes To Empower Copyright Trolls And To Bankrupt Americans For Sharing Photos

from the sad dept

Perhaps not a surprise, but Congress did what Congress does and voted overwhelmingly to approve the CASE Act, which is better described as the "we need more copyright trolling" act, and which is very likely unconstitutional. Only 6 Reps voted against the bill, with 410 voting for it (15 didn't vote -- including, Doug Collins who infamously laughed that anyone might be inconvenienced by a "small" $30,000 fine). I will say kudos to the six reps who voted against it: Amash, Davidson, Gianforte, Kelly, Massie, and Norman. Frankly, the most surprising "yes" vote here was Rep. Lofgren, who historically has been great on copyright (and other issues). I'm surprised to see her on the wrong side of this bill and helping to enable trolling like this.

Rep. Hakeen Jeffries, who was the sponsor of the bill -- and who (coincidentally, I'm sure) offered lobbyists the chance to join him at the recording industry's biggest party for just a $5,000 contribution -- made a bunch of utter nonsense statements in support of the bill:

“There is no gun that is being held to anyone’s head, because the small claims court like tribunal is voluntary in nature,” Jeffries told The Verge. “Any argument made to the contrary, represents a deliberate attempt to misrepresent what’s at stake as part of the effort to do away with the content copyright laws that have been part of the fabric of our democracy since the founding of the Republic and in fact the Constitution.”

“The internet doesn’t change the Constitution,” Jeffries continued.

Sure. The internet doesn't change the Constitution. But Congress sure has gone a looooooooong way in changing copyright law, away from its Constitutional roots, to the point that it is almost unrecognizable. Let's remember that the Constitution only provides for copyright law if it is used to "promote the progress of science," which at the time it was written meant "learning and education." What about the CASE Act promotes education? Can Jeffries answer that?

Also, the Constitution promised us that copyright should only be for "limited times." Yet, Congress has extended copyright over and over and over again such that no one can honestly claim that it matches up with the initial understanding under the Constitution.

So, sure, if you're going to cite the Constitution as the reason for your new copyright law, I'm going to point out that, as originally interpreted in the very first Copyright Act, it was believed that the Constitution only provided for 14 years of protection for "maps, books, and charts." What we have today is kinda different, don't you think? Congress has made a mockery of the Constitutional concept of copyright. Rather than 14 years, it's "life plus another 70 years." Instead of "maps, books, and charts" it's literally every newly created work. Instead of only applying to things that are registered, it now applies to everything. Instead of applying almost entirely to commercial operations, it applies to everyday sharing. If you're going to cite the constitution for favoring a massive expansion of copyright trolling, you might want to at least acknowledge how unlike the original concept of copyright the law has become today. Or did the lobbyists paying $5,000 a pop to party with you at the Grammies forget to tell you that part?

The bill still needs to go to the Senate, but given the overwhelming vote in the House, it's not encouraging. The only bright side is that we'll have plenty of new stories to cover as this law gets widely abused by trolls.

Filed Under: case act, congress, copyright, copyright office, copyright trolling, hakeem jeffries, hosue, jerry nadler, small claims

Congressional Reps Targeting Homegrown Terrorism Are Pushing A Bill That Would Allow Congress To Subpoena Citizens' Communications

from the hey-internet-rando,-the-government-wants-to-know-what-you've-been-talking-ab dept

In the name of securing the homeland, Congressional reps are tossing around the idea of regulating online speech. This isn't the first effort of its type. There's always someone on Capitol Hill who believes the nation would be safer if the First Amendment didn't cover quite so much speech. But this latest effort is coming directly from the Congressional committee that oversees homeland security efforts, as the Hill reports.

Civil liberties and technology groups have been sharply critical of a draft bill from House Homeland Security Committee Democrats on dealing with online extremism, saying it would violate First Amendment rights and could result in the surveillance of vulnerable communities.

The whole thing sounds a bit innocuous. At first. The bill would create a bipartisan commission to develop recommendations for Congress to address online extremism. The committee would have to balance these recommendations with existing speech protections. But it's easy to see how certain inalienable rights will become more alienable if this committee decides national security interests are more important than the rights of the people it's securing.

When you get into the details, you begin to see how this isn't really about making Congress do more to address the problem. It's about regulating online speech via Congressional action. The end result will be censorship. And self-censorship in response to the chilling effect.

The government-appointed body would be given the power to subpoena communications, a sticking point that raised red flags for First Amendment advocates concerned about government surveillance.

A source familiar with the legislation told The Hill they were immediately concerned that the subpoena power could be abused, questioning whether it would unintentionally create another avenue for the government to obtain private conversations on social media between Americans.

The draft bill would require companies to "make reasonable efforts" to remove any personally identifiable information from any communications they handed over. But that provision has not satisfied tech and privacy groups.

This isn't about moderating public posts on social media platforms. It will likely end up affecting those eventually, but the draft bill appears to allow the committee to target personal communications, which are usually private. Whether or not there are robust protections in place to strip identifying info doesn't really matter. A Congressional committee with the power to subpoena the communications of people not actually under investigation by the committee isn't the sort of thing anyone should be encouraging, no matter the rationale.

Social media platforms have been doing more to address concerns of online radicalization, but their efforts never seem to satisfy political leaders. The efforts have routinely resulted in collateral damage, not the least of which is the removal of evidence of criminal activity from the internet.

Moderation at scale is impossible. The imperfections of algorithms, combined with the human flaws of the thousands of moderators employed by social media platforms, has turned online moderation into a mess that satisfies no one and does harm to free speech protections. Any Congressional rep with the ability to perform a perfunctory social media search can find something to wave around in hearings about online radicalization and internet companies' unwillingness to clean up the web. It doesn't mean they're right. It just shows it's impossible to satisfy everyone.

In this case, the Congressional committee appears to be targeting white nationalist extremists. Just because the target has shifted to homegrown threats doesn't make the proposal any less dangerous. Even if it never results in the subpoenaed harvesting of communications, it could still encourage the federal government (and the local agencies that work with it) to expand existing social media monitoring programs. These also utilize imperfect AI and flawed humans. And they will also result in the over-policing of content. Unfortunately, these efforts will utilize actual police, so it's not just the First Amendment being threatened.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, communications, congress, moral panic, online extremism, privacy, subpoenas, terrorism

Top Myths About Content Moderation

from the so-many-myths-to-debunk dept

How Internet companies decide which user-submitted content to keep and which to remove—a process called “content moderation”—is getting lots of attention lately, for good reason. Under-moderation can lead to major social problems, like foreign agents manipulating our elections. Over-moderation can suppress socially beneficial content, like negative but true reviews by consumers.

Due to these high stakes, regulators across the globe increasingly seek to tell Internet companies how to moderate content. European regulators are requiring Internet services to remove extremist content within an hour and to install upload filters to prospectively block copyright infringement; and U.S. legislators have proposed to ban Internet services from moderating content at all.

Unfortunately, many of these regulatory efforts are predicated on myths about content moderation, such as:

Myth: Content moderation can be done perfectly.

Reality: Regulators routinely assume Internet services can remove all bad content without suppressing any good content. Unfortunately, they can’t. First, mistakes occur when the service lacks key contextual information about the content—such as details about the author’s identity, other online and offline activities, and cultural references. Second, any line-drawing exercise creates mistake-prone border cases because users routinely submit “edgy” content. Third, a high-volume service will make many mistakes, even if it’s highly accurate—1 billion submissions a day at 99.9% accuracy still yields a million mistakes a day.

Myth: Bad content is easy to find and remove.

Reality: Regulators often assume every item of bad content has an impossible-to-miss flashing neon sign saying “REMOVE THIS CONTENT,” but that’s rare. Content is often obviously bad only in hindsight or with context unavailable to the service. Regulators’ cherry-picked anecdotes don’t prove otherwise.

Myth: Technologists just need to “nerd harder.”

Reality: Filtering and artificial intelligence play important roles in content moderation. However, technology alone cannot magically solve the problem. “Edgy” and contextless content vexes the machines, too.

Myth: Internet services should hire more humans to review content.

Reality: Humans have biases and make mistakes too, so adding human reviewers won’t lead to perfection. Furthermore, human reviewers sometimes experience an unrelenting onslaught of horrible content to protect the rest of us.

Myth: Internet companies have no incentive to moderate content.

Reality: In 1996, Congress passed 47 U.S.C. 230, which says Internet services generally aren’t liable for third-party content. Due to this legal protection, critics often assume Internet services won’t invest in content moderation; and some companies have stoked that perception by publicly positioning themselves as “neutral” technology platforms. Yet, virtually every Internet service moderates content, and major services like Facebook and YouTube employ many thousands of content reviewers. Why? The services have their own reputation to manage, and they care about how content can affect their users (e.g., Pinterest combats content that promotes eating disorders). Furthermore, advertisers won’t let their ads appear on bad content, which provides additional financial incentives to moderate.

Myth: Content moderation, if done right, will make everyone happy.

Reality: By definition, content moderation is a zero-sum game. Someone gets their desired outcome, and someone else doesn’t—and those folks won’t be happy with the result.

Myth: There is a one-size-fits-all approach to content moderation.

Reality: Internet services cater to diverse audiences that have different moderation needs. For example, an online crowdsourced encyclopedia like Wikipedia, an open-source software repository like GitHub, and a payment service for content publishers like Patreon all solve different problems for their communities. These services shouldn’t have identical content moderation rules.

Myth: Imposing content moderation requirements will stick it to Google and Facebook.

Reality: Google and Facebook have enough money to handle virtually any requirement imposed by regulators. Startup enterprises do not. Increased content moderation burdens are more likely to block new entrants than to punish Google and Facebook.

Myth: Poor content moderation causes anti-social behavior.

Reality: Poorly executed content moderation can accelerate bad behavior, but often the Internet simply mirrors existing anti-social behavior or tendencies. Better content moderation can’t fix problems that are endemic in the human condition.

Regulators are right to identify content moderation as a critically important topic. However, until regulators overcome these myths, regulatory interventions will cause more problems than they solve.

Reposted from Eric Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

Filed Under: cda 230, congress, content moderation, section 230

Elizabeth Warren Wants Congress To Be Smarter About Tech... While Grossly Overstating Google & Facebook's Market Power

from the let's-start-at-home dept

So, this is good! Elizabeth Warren has announced that she supports bringing back the Office of Technology Assessment.

My anti-corruption plan reinstates and modernizes the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), strengthens congressional support agencies, and transitions congressional staffers to competitive salaries so that Congress can act based on the best expertise and information available.

[....]

Reinstate and modernize the Office of Technology Assessment. The OTA was originally led by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, with votes divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans. The new OTA should be led by a single, independent director to ensure that increased partisanship does not prevent members of Congress from receiving the information they need. The OTA should also have the authority to self-commission reports and be equipped to respond to short-term requests from Members, such as preparing for hearings, writing regulatory letters, and weighing in on agency rulemaking, rather than largely limiting its efforts to lengthy long-term reports. And the OTA should have in-house experts on interdisciplinary issue areas so that it can provide information and analysis on issues like climate change and technology consolidation that do not fit within a single issue area.

That all looks good. Indeed, we've been calling for Congress to reinstate and modernize the Office of Technology Assessment for many, many years, so it's good to see Warren apparently on board with this plan (though I'll note that she does not appear to be a co-sponsor of an existing bill to help modernize the OTA.

She frames it, somewhat accurately, as a way to get beyond Congress relying on lobbyists and those with dodgy information. And that would be a good thing. But it does seem a bit ironic that the same day she puts out this plan about no longer having tech policy driven by dodgy one-sided information, Alec Stapp gave a detailed explanation of how Warren, herself, was basing a key claim for why Google and Facebook should be broken up on very, very dodgy information.

A big part of Warren's argument was that Google and Facebook are so dominant on the internet today, that they basically control the flow of information. She claimed that 70% of all traffic went through those two companies.

More than 70% of all Internet traffic goes through sites owned or operated by Google or Facebook.

Stapp decided to dig into that number and found... that while the data is not clear, it's likely to actually be less than 20%. That's a pretty damn big difference. Like we've seen in other studies where "big" stats are extrapolated from a single report that doesn't cover what people pretend it covers and are limited by small sample sizes or not representative samples, the same thing seems to have happened here.

And, like those other studies, this one involves a game of telephone as well. The number appears to come from a study from a web analytics company, Parse.ly, from 2015, looking at traffic sent to just 400 news publishers. This is not a random sample. That study showed that Facebook sent 39% of the traffic to the publishers in the sample while Google sent 34%. That was picked up on by a freelance blogger who posted a story on his own website claiming "GOOG and FB now have direct influence over 70%+ of internet traffic" which is not at all what the Parse.ly study meant or implied. From there, bastion of fact checking, Newsweek, wrote a piece about who controls the internet and cites the freelancer's blog. And that brings us back around to Warren, who cites the Newsweek piece.

Voila. A fake statistic laundered through four sources.

Stapp then uses Sandvine's much more thorough research to suggest that perhaps Google and Facebook drive a bit less than 20% of internet traffic.

As for Google and Facebook? The report found that Google-operated sites receive 12.00 percent of total internet traffic while Facebook-controlled sites receive 7.79 percent. In other words, less than 20 percent of all Internet traffic goes through sites owned or operated by Google or Facebook. While this statistic may be less eye-popping than the one trumpeted by Warren and other antitrust activists, it does have the virtue of being true.

So, yes, it would be good if tech policy was based on more realistic information -- and bringing back the OTA would be great. Then, perhaps, Elizabeth Warren wouldn't also be relying on dodgy stats passed around through bad reporting.

Filed Under: congress, elizabeth warren, monopoly power, ota
Companies: facebook, google

House Joins The Senate In Moving Forward On Plan To Massively Increase Copyright Trolling

from the this-is-bad dept

For quite some time now we've been talking about why the CASE Act, which sets up a special copyright "court" with lower barriers to entry for copyright holders, is such a bad idea. There are all sorts of problems with it, starting with the fact that we already have a massive copyright trolling problem, and the CASE Act is deliberately designed to make it worse. While supporters like to pretend that the CASE Act is the equivalent of a "small claims" court, it actually can lead to damages awards up to $30,000, which is way higher than a standard small claims court.

That said, as with so many copyright bills before it, Congress ignores all the problems associated with the CASE Act, because a bunch of vested interests pretend that there's some real problems solved by this law. So, once again, the bill has moved forward, this time with the House passing the bill out of the Judiciary Committee, meaning that it can go to a full vote on the floor. The end result here would be really dangerous for free speech online, but no one in Congress seems to care about it. Yet.

EFF is asking people to contact their elected officials in Congress to let them know that theyshould not massively expand copyright in this manner, which will only lead to that much more extortion and shakedowns, while creating even more chilling effects for free expression online.

Filed Under: case act, congress, copyright, copyright trolling, small claims

House Intelligence Committee: Intelligence Community Is Burying A Whistleblower Complaint That May Involve Wrongdoing By The White House

from the fuck-us,-I-guess dept

Well. This is awkward. Congressional oversight of our intelligence agencies is actually being performed by the overseers. The House Intelligence Committee -- or at least Rep. Adam Schiff -- wants to know what's being withheld by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Something fucked up has happened and the ODNI doesn't want to talk about it. What "it" is remains unknown, but it's apparently damaging enough the Intelligence Community is blowing off its obligations to its oversight.

“A month ago, a whistleblower within the intelligence community lawfully filed a complaint regarding a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, violation of law, or deficiency within the responsibility or authority of the Director of National Intelligence. The Inspector General of the Intelligence Community found that complaint not only credible, but urgent. More than ten days since the Director was obligated to transmit the complaint to the intelligence committees, the Committee has still not received the disclosure from the Director, in violation of the law.

“A Director of National Intelligence has never prevented a properly submitted whistleblower complaint that the IC IG determined to be credible and urgent from being provided to the congressional intelligence committees. Never. This raises serious concerns about whether White House, Department of Justice or other executive branch officials are trying to prevent a legitimate whistleblower complaint from reaching its intended recipient, the Congress, in order to cover up serious misconduct."

Given the ONDI's refusal to cooperate and Schiff's angry letter, it's probably safe to assume this whistleblowing involves domestic surveillance and another abuse of the NSA's powers. If it was just some "inadvertent" collection of phone records or someone blowing tax dollars by pretending to telecommute, this would have been handed over to the HIC. But this one has been denoted as being of "urgent concern," which suggests an abuse of collection authorities.

Not for nothing do whistleblowers take the next flight to Hong Kong. Going through the proper channels just gets complaints buried and possibly separates the whistleblower from their source of income. This one went through the proper channels. And the proper channels extended a wordless middle finger to Congressional oversight in response.

The ODNI claims it has no obligations to its oversight.

On September 13, 2019, the Committee received a letter from the ODNI declining the Chairman’s request and stating that the DNI, contrary to an unambiguous statutory command, is withholding the complaint from the Committee because, in part, it involves confidentially and potentially privileged communications by persons outside the Intelligence Community.

Wrong! That's not how this works. Intelligence oversight committee members are "read in." They're allowed to check this stuff out. That's why they hold closed-door sessions and invoke national security concerns when pressed by the public to be a bit more forthcoming about the IC's activities. If the ODNI considers its work to be too "sensitive" for its oversight, we have a problem. I mean, we already have problems, but now the ODNI has placed itself outside the control of the government that created it. If it can reject this demand, it can reject any form of control at all. We don't need the ODNI to be a law unto itself.

Here's the kicker: given the ODNI's recalcitrance, the Intelligence Committee is drawing some very concerning conclusions about the nature of the withheld report.

The Committee can only conclude, based on this remarkable confluence of factors, that the serious misconduct at issue involves the President of the United States and/or other senior White House or Administration officials. This raises grave concerns that your office, together with the Department of Justice and possibly the White House, are engaged in an unlawful effort to protect the President and conceal from the Committee information related to his possible “serious or flagrant” misconduct, abuse of power, or violation of law.    

Fantastic. If true, the Administration is weaponizing the Intelligence Community. And someone on the inside is "urgently concerned." If it is the Administration, it can try to Executive Order its way out of this mess. But if it does, this branch is compromised. I mean, more so. That's bad news for America and Americans. And yet another reminder that, when it comes to whistleblowing, the "proper channels" are for silencing concerned employees rather than holding our public servants accountable.

Filed Under: adam schiff, congress, director of national intelligence, intelligence community, odni, oversight, whistleblower, white house

Rep. Ro Khanna To Introduce Bill To Study Impact Of FOSTA On Sex Workers

from the well,-look-at-that dept

FOSTA was sold to Congress and the public as a way to "protect women," who (we were told) were being sex trafficked because of a "loophole" in the law. As we warned over and over again at the time, FOSTA would actually put women at even greater risk, and that has been supported by nearly all of the evidence we've seen to date. Beyond the fact that the number of women who are actually victims of sex trafficking has been greatly exaggerated or completely made up to the point of ridiculousness, so far there have been multiple reports showing that the actual impact of FOSTA was to increase sex trafficking by putting sex workers at much greater risk, driving them into the greedy arms of traffickers who promise protection. This has resulted in more women dead and even police admitting that the law has made it more difficult for them to catch traffickers.

That's pretty much exactly what many of us predicted before the law was passed, but Congress likes to pass laws and then forget about ever bothering to check whether or not the law did what it promised. So it's interesting to note that Rep. Ro Khanna is apparently planning to introduce a bill to study the actual impact of FOSTA, specifically on sex workers. This was buried in an article about Kate D'Adamo, a lobbyist representing the interests of sex workers on Capitol Hill.

“She is one of the most vocal and effective advocates on this issue,” said Rep. Ro Khanna of California’s Silicon Valley, who plans to introduce the bill in the next several weeks to study SESTA-FOSTA’s impacts after being approached by D’Adamo and her fellow activists.

“She’s really, I think, driving the conversation about the humanity of sex workers and the vulnerability of sex workers,” he said.

The measure, which has yet to be finalized, would call on the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health to study the fallout of SESTA-FOSTA.

[....]

The extent to which SESTA-FOSTA succeeded in its stated goal of shutting down sex traffickers is unclear, but Khanna said anecdotes have flooded in that the measure has forced sex workers to walk strolls to meet clients, causing “more violence, more harm to the public.”

“It was a wrong vote,” said Khanna, who was one of just 12 Democrats to oppose SESTA-FOSTA. “We need to now study it and understand the consequences, which I don’t think Congress fully considered. I can’t see any reason for opposing the collection of data.

The article notes that, even as many in the public now support decriminalizing sex work, most politicians are scared of even revisiting FOSTA, afraid that it will be spun that they're interested in decrminalizing sex work -- even as FOSTA has often resulted in more sex workers on the streets in their districts.

In his meeting with D’Adamo, the aide explained that since SESTA-FOSTA passed, there’s been an uptick of sex work on the district’s streets, leading to more 911 calls from constituents. “That’s not to say that the Congress member wouldn’t vote in favor of this on the floor,” he explained. “The people in our district are just very religious. Because of the taboo behind sex work, the Congress member doesn’t want to scare away supporters.”

What really gets me about all of this is: where are all the vocal supporters of FOSTA who insisted it was necessary to protect women? Where are they now that so far the evidence suggests it's put more women at risk? Why have they all gone silent? Why aren't they vocally supporting Khanna's effort to study the impact of the law? It's almost as if (as we noted) this was never actually about protecting women at all.

Filed Under: congress, fosta, impact, intermediary liability, ro khanna, section 230, sex workers