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U.S. Spy Panel Is Loaded With Insiders
schwit1 writes "After a public backlash to government spying, President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records.
The members of the review group are:
Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council for Clinton who later worked for Republican President George W. Bush
Michael Morell, Obama's former deputy CIA director
Geoffrey Stone, law professor who has raised money for Obama and spearheads a committee hoping to build Obama's presidential library in Chicago
Cass Sunstein, law professor and administrator of information and regulatory affairs for Obama
Peter Swire, a former Office of Management and Budget privacy director for Clinton
'At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying,' said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. The panel's meetings are closed after Clapper exempted it from the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would have required it to keep the public informed and hold open meetings, for 'reasons of national security,' according to a statement from the group sent from Clapper's office. 'While we are exempt from the FACA, we are conducting this review as openly and transparently as possible.'"
Richard Clarke, the chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council for Clinton who later worked for Republican President George W. Bush
Michael Morell, Obama's former deputy CIA director
Geoffrey Stone, law professor who has raised money for Obama and spearheads a committee hoping to build Obama's presidential library in Chicago
Cass Sunstein, law professor and administrator of information and regulatory affairs for Obama
Peter Swire, a former Office of Management and Budget privacy director for Clinton
'At the end of the day, a task force led by Gen. Clapper full of insiders – and not directed to look at the extensive abuse – will never get at the bottom of the unconstitutional spying,' said Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocacy group. The panel's meetings are closed after Clapper exempted it from the U.S. Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would have required it to keep the public informed and hold open meetings, for 'reasons of national security,' according to a statement from the group sent from Clapper's office. 'While we are exempt from the FACA, we are conducting this review as openly and transparently as possible.'"
“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
BIG BROTHERS will never change it self.
Change does not come from within.
Real change must be made from the outside.
All the insiders - the careered politicians, the careered bureaucrats, the careered leeches who bled the public dry - will not change their ways.
If we are to have a REAL CHANGE we must make sure that NONE OF THEM remain inside the government.
Any less than that will be hot air, as usual.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Now that the government is shut down, does that mean the domestic spying program is also?
And while I'm at it, would it be unpatriotic of me to suggest that the government shutdown may be a tactful diversion from the domestic spying program? Snowden's Sunday leak was largely ignored Sunday by the major news networks in favor of the impeding shutdown.
President Barack Obama called for an independent group to review the vast surveillance programs that allow the collections of phone and email records. The members of the review group are:
... Doesn't matter. You're asking the foxes to guard the hen house. If you work for the government, you can't really be expected to provide an impartial audit of government activities. The end. The only time Congress appoints actual outsiders is when the majority party is able to excert enough power to get them appointed. Of course, this is heavily politicalized as well -- they don't appoint people without knowing what their answer will be.
This is dinner theatre for one.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
There's no difference between the two parties that run America. The last election was between the rich white right-wing religious crazy guy and the rich black right-wing religious crazy guy, each of them representing their rich right-wing religious crazy organizations.
There's no difference between the two parties that run America. The last election was between the rich white right-wing religious crazy guy and the rich black right-wing religious crazy guy, each of them representing their rich right-wing religious crazy organizations.
Hey, at least neither one of them were christians.
Br'er Fox done got hisself on the jury to find out what's happenin' in that darn chicken coop.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
It just seems that no-one in the government is at odds with the NSA spying program. The idea was always to have checks and balances in the system so that if things spiraled out of control, there would always be counter-forces that would set it right.
However, the white house, senate, supreme courts etc doesn't seem to care. They're all acting like it is no big deal and we should forget about it (or maybe that is how the media is portraying it).
Though on the other hand, this kind of social interaction data is a goldmine for sociologists and social psychologists to industrial psychologists. It could really be the killer technology that drives the next generation of marketing and advertising. Social networking is the fusion of sociology and computer science.
This is especially a goldmine if election candidates can understand and measure how people are deciding to vote. Before it was just spend billions of dollars on a blanket advertising scheme. But, what if they can really get feedback and data on how people are deciding to cast their votes.
Why doesn't the NSF find ways to anonymize the data and use it for scientific research and make everything open.
After social networking, this could be next big thing. Non-survey based measurement and quantification of what people are doing and thinking and how ideas are spreading and problems they are facing.
The problem being that 50+% of Americans actually believe Obummer's bullshit about "Hope and Change"
Except that wasn't the case at all. Most of the people I know who voted for Obummer the second time around were quite sick of his bullshit.
The Republicans simply had to run anyone electable, anyone fucking at all to win.
Instead, we had fifty shades of religious insanity, a man confusing the White House with a pizza joint, and the very icon of "that sort of evil capitalist the Democrats are always going on about - holy shit, they do exist!".
Even with the stupidity of the Republican party - Romney had a chance. But he couldn't stop running his fucking mouth, spewing shit that should not be spoken by any politician seeking election.
Magic fucking underpants aren't going to save you when you directly insult massive fucking swaths of the voting public.
When I worked in support, the management began taking a drift towards the overly authoritarian side. I don't think they wanted to face up to it though. One particularly absurd thing they did was place a suggestion box next to the desk where all the managers sat. What was wrong with that? It was transparent. Yep. Anybody who put a suggestion in there would be seen putting it in, and the fold size or color of the paper would be matched up with the face, subconsciously or otherwise.
This panel is about as useful as that suggestion box. It's transparency, authoritarian style.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
So you're advocating violent regime change then?
Suppose, in 2016, by freak chance, the vast majority of jurisdictions in the United States elected representatives from non-mainstream parties—Libertarians, Greens, whatever else you guys have these days. Enough variety to represent every likely perspective, of course.
What do you think would happen to the president when he or she tried to fix the intelligence community? Or the military? Or, heck, even something relatively compact like the FDA? Simple: just ask Jimmy Carter. (And, I would contend, Obama five years ago, just after his first election.) Nothing would get done. The agencies, the companies, and their collective lobbyists would do all they could to undermine the elected representatives, because they themselves are partisan, right down to the core—partisan to anyone who protects or could protect their paycheques and opportunities for advancement, that is.
You cannot vote them out. You cannot even try, but even if you succeeded in voting away the names you know about, the rest would remain and stage coups. Even appointed agency directors have been defeated by the momentum, culture, and job-security-fearing mobs in these places. The rot goes all the way through, and it doesn't want to leave.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Well, the Republicans did themselves no favors. The economy had just been destroyed by Wall Street fraud, and the culprits brazenly waved their fistfuls of bailout cash at the public.
Who do the Republicans put up for their Presidential candidate? Mr. Wall Street
Had they presented a down-to-earth, moderate candidate for the election, the Republicans would have won it by a landslide.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Yes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO version 2.0 would be unleashed on any of the non-mainstream parties talking to each other.
The last time labor, anti war, law reform, minority and indigenous groups tried to work together they where shattered.
Left, right, poor, faith, wealth, city, race, suburban groups would be played off against each other against a setting of scandal.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think a large part of the problem is the primary voting system. A would-be presidential candidate first has to appeal to the extremists in their own party before they have a chance to try to appeal to the general public.
I have a proposal to fix this.
Step 1: To be on the presidential ballot, you must have reached some threshold number of votes in the primaries. This threshold should be set so that there will be about 4 to 6 presidential candidates. (Primaries are not party-based. All presidential hopefuls appear on the one ballot.)
Step 2: Voters rank the presidential candidates in their order of preference. These preferences are processed by a Condorcet method. This ensures that if one candidate would win a two candidate election against any other candidate, they are elected.
With 4 to 6 candidates, there is room for at least two from each main party, plus the occasional independent/minor party candidate. The Condorcet voting encourages moderates rather than extremists. (In turn, this will encourage the selection of moderates in the primaries.) It also gives independents a decent chance.
(Note: I am not a US citizen, nor am I living there.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
So you're advocating violent regime change then?
So you're saying violence is the only way to effect change from the outside? I don't know about that, certainly not clear to me that's what GP was getting at. Seems to me what you guys need is a third, fourth, fifth major political party with half a chance of, if not winning any election, at least offset the current status quo.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Or else, who the fuck are we supposed to vote for ?? Most of us already know that those appearing on our ballot tickets are scumbags.
Please explain why you consider either Gary Johnson or Jill Stein to be "scumbags". Both seem to me to be people of high integrity. Gary got my vote last year, and Jill got my respect. If neither of them got your vote, maybe you should consider that people like you are the root of the problem.
the problem is that not everyone can afford health care
You do realise that in Australia a 1.5% levy on income tax covers the cost of a "free" health system for all Australians (taxpayer or otherwise), our system also has significantly better medical outcomes than the US system. For a family of four that works out to close to 1/10th of what an American pays for similar cover. In fact you guys already pay a similar per-capita amount on health through your taxes. With the better economies of scale you have in the US that should easily be enough to ensure nobody goes bankrupt due to medical expenses (which is the real point of any health insurance scheme). Why the hell do you (or your employer) then need to go and pay another 9X that amount to a private middle man?
Oh, and lets not blame it on the doctor's hourly rates, our home grown doctors still drive around in nice cars and live in the "leafy avenue" part of town.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Australia has something called "double dissolution" where, to fit the US system, both the Senate and Congress would be dismissed in entirety and an election for all seats would take place.
You should look into that.
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Change does not come from within. Real change must be made from the outside.
Correct, and here's how to do it: WOLF-PAC. Launched in October 2011 for the purpose of passing a 28th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will end corporate personhood and publicly finance all elections. Since Congress won't pass such an Amendment on its own, the plan is to instead have the State Legislators propose it via an Article Five Convention. At least 34 States need to cooperate for this to work, but already many have reacted with enthusiasm, most notably Texas. If successful, the real problem should be fixed within one or two election cycles.
Australia has something called "double dissolution" where, to fit the US system, both the Senate and Congress would be dismissed in entirety and an election for all seats would take place.
You should look into that.
America used to use a quaint old system. It involved tar, feathers, and being run out of town on a rail.
Maybe we should revive it.
That's the message I try to put out as well. Too bad most people can't understand we don't actually have a "two party system".
As for myself, I voted for Jill Stein, even though I oppose most of the Green Party platform. She was willing to be arrested to uphold democracy, protesting the first debate between Romney and Obama for not including all national candidates. So even though I don't agree with the Green Party on much, some things are more important than my personal beliefs.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.