No, the people of the United States of America "own" it. The Executive branch (headed by POTUS) administers it. The only entity in that branch with the authority to unilaterally declassify fresh classified info on a whim is the POTUS.
Cricket so far, I note, but just to save you a bit of trouble scraping around for something -- anything -- to support the above nonsense, here's the controlling regulation from Part 3a of Chapter 18 of the Code of Federal Regulations (conveniently titled "NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION"):
3a.21 Authority to downgrade and declassify.
(a) The authority to downgrade and declassify information or material shall be exercised as follows:
(1) Information or material may be downgraded or declassified by the official authorizing the original classification, by a successor or by a supervisory official of either.
So the people from the FBI who originally classified the information (or their supervisors or successors) can declassify it.
The only entity in that branch with the authority to unilaterally declassify fresh classified info on a whim is the POTUS.
Andy McCarthy, former federal prosecutor who, among other things, led the trial against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, says otherwise:
In the column, I was addressing claims by committee Democrats, but these echo the complaint the FBI is making now. We pointed out that the simple way forward was for Democrats to propose the inclusion of any details necessary to correct any misimpressions, or to prepare their own memo that would reveal the hidden details and illustrate that Republicans were engaged in partisan spin. In fact, committee Democrats have prepared a memo, which is under review and should ultimately be released.
Obviously, the same option is available to the FBI. In fact, it is more available to the FBI: Unlike Congress, the bureau “owns” the classified information in the underlying documents. The Bureau is thus well positioned to publish a declassified summary that discloses any details it says Nunes has mendaciously hidden; or better yet, it could disclose the underlying documents (with any necessary redactions of classified information).
I think I'll rate his knowledge of the relevant law above that of some random internet jockey. If you have an authoritative source for your position, let's see it.
The FBI, I believe, has called it misleading. The FBI is not required to construct a counter-narrative involving an ongoing investigation.
1. There's nothing "ongoing" about that warrant or the circumstances surrounding how it was obtained. That warrant, like all FISA warrants, had a 90-day lifespan. 2. "Did not" is not an effective defense past preschool.
Had I only read the summary, I would have been left believing that the only reason anyone thinks Amazon is actually doing this is because someone was trolling through Amazon patents and concluded that because they got a patent on an idea they must be practicing it. Here's the real meat of TFA:
About a year ago, a Reddit user calling himself Asphyhackr did a little more legwork and concluded that Amazon was creatively employing this second technique. By running Alexa commercials through digital audio editing software, Asphyhackr discovered that Alexa ads transmit weakened levels of sound in an upper portion of the audio spectrum, between 3,000 and 6,000 hertz, outside the most sensitive range of human hearing.
Asphyhackr speculated that Amazon could be tipping Alexa off to ignore certain commands if it detects artificial gaps or bumps in the spectrum. To test his theory, he recorded someone saying “Alexa” and used a so-called band-stop filter that reduced frequencies just in this high region of the spectrum. When he played back the recording, “My echo would not wake, even sitting right next to the speakers!” he wrote.
Amazon just blogged about this topic and shed perhaps a bit more light on it. The company credited "acoustic fingerprinting technology that can distinguish between the ad and actual customer utterances" and said that its advertising, engineering and science teams prepare for major events like the Super Bowl commercial, in order to suppress Alexa devices from responding to it. When a major broadcast of the wake word "Alexa" is unanticipated -- for example, when it’s mentioned on the “Tonight Show” -- Amazon said its cloud servers can detect a match, create an audio fingerprint on the fly and can prevent 80 to 90 percent of devices from responding.
The "something" part being that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. I think we're past that charitable default.
And if you step back to think about it, these folks that have their hands on the levers that strip some of the most basic Constitutional rights from American citizens may think twice about arguing that they piled on a bunch of information they knew was rumor-mongering from a questionable source because they were just too stupid to understand the potential ramifications if the FISA court relied on that information in issuing the warrant.
The FISA application is classified so no one can dispute this memo without leaking classified information
Nonsense. The FBI owns the underlying information and is the one that classified it in the first place, and they can opt to declassify it if the facts are significantly different than reported in the memo. If they choose not to, we can safely conclude they don't have squat.
means and methods
Nope -- if the relevant information the FBI needs to disclose to set the record straight are the supposed other facts that would have caused the warrant to be approved anyway, whatever these "means and methods" are can be redacted as needed.
You're talking like every word in there is the God's honest truth.
The FBI owns all the underlying information and can freely declassify and reveal it if there truly are any material inaccuracies. They've known about this upcoming memo for plenty of time to put together a counter-narrative if they had one to tell. I think the fact they've opted not to do that speaks for itself.
That argument breaks down entirely given the fact that the first 2 or 3 FISA warrents on Carter Page, were initiated several months before the Steele dossier was even prepared.
That actually cuts the other way. As discussed in the memo, a FISA warrant is only good for 90 days, after which it must be renewed. Each renewal must have a separate finding of probable cause -- you can't just cut and paste the reasons from the prior warrant. It seems fairly apparent that the reason they lobbed the (known to them at the time to be toxic) memo into that application was because they had already used their other support in the prior ones and needed new grounds to keep the music playing.
I'm sure those other reasons will be disclosed/leaked soon enough if there really were any. But without even knowing those details, I think the FBI's own behavior at the time confirms those other reasons (whatever they were) would not have been enough. The dossier was a toxic source, and the FBI knew that at the time. By including it at all, they were taking the risk that things would later go sideways just as they now have. The only rational reason they would have taken that risk was if they thought that was the only way to get the warrant approved.
Torpedo what discussion, exactly? GP said the accounts were terminated due to violations of Facebook's TOS. Some of us actually choose to be concerned with the purported standards Facebook is using here (if any), or whether they're just taking action on this particular set of accounts due to the political stench surrounding them. Others may content themselves to cuddle up with their blankies and warm milk and beg for the next story of puppies and unicorns to grace their feeds (until their accounts are the next to be arbitrarily and capriciously terminated because they were determined post-hoc to be on the naughty list for some ill-defined reason). Which are you?
Clearly, that I look at the evidence myself, form my own opinions, and don't just swallow the party line. Sorry about that.
There are objective facts at play. Russians astroturf farms in the emply of the Russian state represented themselves as Americans. That is an objective fact.
There are at least three discrete things rolling around in that sentence that you would need to prove. Let's break it down: (1) The source was a Russian astorturf farm -- we're ultimately taking FB's (and the WaPo's, IIRC) word for this as far as I know, but let's take this one off the table so we can focus on the core of the debate. (2) The groups were representing themselves as Americans -- just because you and others may have believed they were Americans doesn't mean they said they were. (3) They were employed by the Russian state -- again, just because you and others want this to be true doesn't take it past the realm of pure speculation.
At bottom, you're simply connecting a set of dots into the constellation you want to see. Calling the result of that process "objective facts" may make you and your echo chamber buddies feel better, but doesn't change the reality of the situation one iota.
gaslighting pieces of shit like you
Pounding the table and slinging invective is generally an effort to distract from a weak position. Hardly a surprise given the above.
I'd say calling your group "Heart of Texas", or "United Muslims of America" is representing yourself as American. SO is calling your group "Being Patriotic" and using crossed American flags as your emblem. Calling yourself "Donald Trump America" is pretending to be American.
I know you'd say that. Others like myself read through your samples and would say it's crystal clear they never explicitly claimed to be American. The closest ones to the line appear to be the "X of America" set, which still doesn't speak to citizenship and is in the distinct minority in the group you sent me in any event. Generic groups like "Secured Borders," "Being Patriotic," "Don't Shoot," "Defend the 2nd," etc., don't come even close. If I were to create a FB group called "Tiananmen Square -- Never Again" that certainly would not constitute a claim to Chinese citizenship.
And that's the larger point here -- there are no objective "facts" at play. We both have subjective opinions about what the data says/doesn't say, and we're both entitled to those opinions. Which is why designating specific people/groups to decide which of those opinions will be deemed "fact" is (IMO:-) an exceptionally dangerous road to go down.
This is not very well written, so I've italicized the relevant bits.
So poorly written, apparently, that it doesn't say anything at all about the fake accounts pretending to be Americans. Apparently that's just your inference/desire/whatever, which is a bit ironic in a discussion about whether there's any such thing as facts.
As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
Sounds an awful lot like the religious authoritarianism that on balance we've finally gotten over after a few short millennia. Where's the limiting principle in your worldview to prevent reinstituting that as well?
Get your head out of your ass and stop arguing for the sake of arguing.
Says the person who continues to overstate numbers to try to make the problem sound more dramatic than it is, which is the issue I've quite openly expressed concern over from the beginning. There are not 8 pharmacies in the town of Williamson in the state of West Virginia. If you disagree, please post their names and addresses.
And try to chill out a bit. I'm intimately acquainted with this general area of the country, and I understand well the challenges it has had for decades. But overwrought stories like this that play statistical tricks to try to make the numbers look as ridiculous as possible are simply going to look... well, ridiculous.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the pills are being dispensed, and likewise the fact that a lot of people in a geographical area all have to go to the same handful of places matters not a whit. The bottom line issue, as I know you understand, is the doctors that are overprescribing the pills, not the pharmacies that are simply carrying out the doctors' orders. And those doctors are, as they have for decades, trying to help their patients in their own twisted way. Just like they try to help by getting huge percentages of the population signed up for SSDI. If the pills dry up, the symptoms will shift to something else just like they shifted to the pills in the first place. To the extent you're trying to fight a war on drugs, you'll miserably fail just as all past efforts have. You have to address the underlying problem that's driving the behavior. And that's a lot harder than picking a meaningless scapegoat to publicly flog. Happy trails, friend.
Ok, and I said that even if that's permissible, I don't think it would move the needle too terribly much given the general tendency of smaller communities to keep dollars in their community whenever possible.
If someone comes in and says "I live just across the border and you are the closest and/or the only one my insurance will pay for"
Look at the map of Williamson. It's physically impossible to live in WV and be closer to a KY pharmacy than one on the WV side. And I'd be surprised if you saw much variation in network coverage. An awful lot of people abusing pills are going to be on SSI Disability/Medicaid anyway, and there's no rational way a pharmacy in that sort of community wouldn't accept that.
My god -- it's all true! He's personally targeted you and limited your posts to 14 characters. That must be why this is just about the only thing you post anymore. But maybe we can still communicate nonetheless. Can you post it once for "yes" and twice in an row for "no"? Hope springs eternal....
“When disaster strikes, it’s essential that Americans in harm’s way get reliable information so that they can stay safe and protect their loved ones,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Tuesday.
There has to be a way to spin this one into a massive giveaway to the cellcos. Don't fail me, Slashdot crowd.
I'm in a much smaller town than Williamson and I can think of 3 pharmacies within 5 miles of my current location. If I expand that to 15 miles I can think of 10 off the top of my head and I'm on the outskirts of pill territory.
Right, just like a bunch of small towns are within 10-20 miles of Williamson and its pharmacies, which is exactly my point. And it's not clear what your unverifiable anecdote has to do with the issue at hand. If you know of any pharmacies in Mingo County other than the three in Williamson, feel free to point them out.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the people of the United States of America "own" it. The Executive branch (headed by POTUS) administers it. The only entity in that branch with the authority to unilaterally declassify fresh classified info on a whim is the POTUS.
Cricket so far, I note, but just to save you a bit of trouble scraping around for something -- anything -- to support the above nonsense, here's the controlling regulation from Part 3a of Chapter 18 of the Code of Federal Regulations (conveniently titled "NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION"):
3a.21 Authority to downgrade and declassify.
(a) The authority to downgrade and declassify information or material shall be exercised as follows:
(1) Information or material may be downgraded or declassified by the official authorizing the original classification, by a successor or by a supervisory official of either.
So the people from the FBI who originally classified the information (or their supervisors or successors) can declassify it.
TL;DR: You're full of shit.
The only entity in that branch with the authority to unilaterally declassify fresh classified info on a whim is the POTUS.
Andy McCarthy, former federal prosecutor who, among other things, led the trial against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, says otherwise:
In the column, I was addressing claims by committee Democrats, but these echo the complaint the FBI is making now. We pointed out that the simple way forward was for Democrats to propose the inclusion of any details necessary to correct any misimpressions, or to prepare their own memo that would reveal the hidden details and illustrate that Republicans were engaged in partisan spin. In fact, committee Democrats have prepared a memo, which is under review and should ultimately be released.
Obviously, the same option is available to the FBI. In fact, it is more available to the FBI: Unlike Congress, the bureau “owns” the classified information in the underlying documents . The Bureau is thus well positioned to publish a declassified summary that discloses any details it says Nunes has mendaciously hidden; or better yet, it could disclose the underlying documents (with any necessary redactions of classified information).
I think I'll rate his knowledge of the relevant law above that of some random internet jockey. If you have an authoritative source for your position, let's see it.
The FBI, I believe, has called it misleading. The FBI is not required to construct a counter-narrative involving an ongoing investigation.
1. There's nothing "ongoing" about that warrant or the circumstances surrounding how it was obtained. That warrant, like all FISA warrants, had a 90-day lifespan.
2. "Did not" is not an effective defense past preschool.
Had I only read the summary, I would have been left believing that the only reason anyone thinks Amazon is actually doing this is because someone was trolling through Amazon patents and concluded that because they got a patent on an idea they must be practicing it. Here's the real meat of TFA:
About a year ago, a Reddit user calling himself Asphyhackr did a little more legwork and concluded that Amazon was creatively employing this second technique. By running Alexa commercials through digital audio editing software, Asphyhackr discovered that Alexa ads transmit weakened levels of sound in an upper portion of the audio spectrum, between 3,000 and 6,000 hertz, outside the most sensitive range of human hearing.
Asphyhackr speculated that Amazon could be tipping Alexa off to ignore certain commands if it detects artificial gaps or bumps in the spectrum. To test his theory, he recorded someone saying “Alexa” and used a so-called band-stop filter that reduced frequencies just in this high region of the spectrum. When he played back the recording, “My echo would not wake, even sitting right next to the speakers!” he wrote.
Amazon just blogged about this topic and shed perhaps a bit more light on it. The company credited "acoustic fingerprinting technology that can distinguish between the ad and actual customer utterances" and said that its advertising, engineering and science teams prepare for major events like the Super Bowl commercial, in order to suppress Alexa devices from responding to it. When a major broadcast of the wake word "Alexa" is unanticipated -- for example, when it’s mentioned on the “Tonight Show” -- Amazon said its cloud servers can detect a match, create an audio fingerprint on the fly and can prevent 80 to 90 percent of devices from responding.
Something malice, something incompetence...
The "something" part being that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. I think we're past that charitable default.
And if you step back to think about it, these folks that have their hands on the levers that strip some of the most basic Constitutional rights from American citizens may think twice about arguing that they piled on a bunch of information they knew was rumor-mongering from a questionable source because they were just too stupid to understand the potential ramifications if the FISA court relied on that information in issuing the warrant.
The FISA application is classified so no one can dispute this memo without leaking classified information
Nonsense. The FBI owns the underlying information and is the one that classified it in the first place, and they can opt to declassify it if the facts are significantly different than reported in the memo. If they choose not to, we can safely conclude they don't have squat.
means and methods
Nope -- if the relevant information the FBI needs to disclose to set the record straight are the supposed other facts that would have caused the warrant to be approved anyway, whatever these "means and methods" are can be redacted as needed.
Try again.
You're talking like every word in there is the God's honest truth.
The FBI owns all the underlying information and can freely declassify and reveal it if there truly are any material inaccuracies. They've known about this upcoming memo for plenty of time to put together a counter-narrative if they had one to tell. I think the fact they've opted not to do that speaks for itself.
That argument breaks down entirely given the fact that the first 2 or 3 FISA warrents on Carter Page, were initiated several months before the Steele dossier was even prepared.
That actually cuts the other way. As discussed in the memo, a FISA warrant is only good for 90 days, after which it must be renewed. Each renewal must have a separate finding of probable cause -- you can't just cut and paste the reasons from the prior warrant. It seems fairly apparent that the reason they lobbed the (known to them at the time to be toxic) memo into that application was because they had already used their other support in the prior ones and needed new grounds to keep the music playing.
But it doesn't say what other reasons were cited.
I'm sure those other reasons will be disclosed/leaked soon enough if there really were any. But without even knowing those details, I think the FBI's own behavior at the time confirms those other reasons (whatever they were) would not have been enough. The dossier was a toxic source, and the FBI knew that at the time. By including it at all, they were taking the risk that things would later go sideways just as they now have. The only rational reason they would have taken that risk was if they thought that was the only way to get the warrant approved.
One says lifespan is the same. The other says quality of life suffers. These are not mutually exclusive.
The league is perhaps being a bit deliberately obtuse given that they're sitting on a potential liability powder keg.
Or is this part of the ongoing series "First World Problems: Maslow nailed it better than we ever could have imagined"?
Either Apple reversed itself within a couple of hours, or the authors didn't bother to check whether it was still unavailable before publishing.
Torpedo what discussion, exactly? GP said the accounts were terminated due to violations of Facebook's TOS. Some of us actually choose to be concerned with the purported standards Facebook is using here (if any), or whether they're just taking action on this particular set of accounts due to the political stench surrounding them. Others may content themselves to cuddle up with their blankies and warm milk and beg for the next story of puppies and unicorns to grace their feeds (until their accounts are the next to be arbitrarily and capriciously terminated because they were determined post-hoc to be on the naughty list for some ill-defined reason). Which are you?
And above all, let's pretend you've not been known for years to be a shameless Tesla shill and we need not view everything you post in that light.
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Clearly, that I look at the evidence myself, form my own opinions, and don't just swallow the party line. Sorry about that.
There are objective facts at play. Russians astroturf farms in the emply of the Russian state represented themselves as Americans. That is an objective fact.
There are at least three discrete things rolling around in that sentence that you would need to prove. Let's break it down:
(1) The source was a Russian astorturf farm -- we're ultimately taking FB's (and the WaPo's, IIRC) word for this as far as I know, but let's take this one off the table so we can focus on the core of the debate.
(2) The groups were representing themselves as Americans -- just because you and others may have believed they were Americans doesn't mean they said they were.
(3) They were employed by the Russian state -- again, just because you and others want this to be true doesn't take it past the realm of pure speculation.
At bottom, you're simply connecting a set of dots into the constellation you want to see. Calling the result of that process "objective facts" may make you and your echo chamber buddies feel better, but doesn't change the reality of the situation one iota.
gaslighting pieces of shit like you
Pounding the table and slinging invective is generally an effort to distract from a weak position. Hardly a surprise given the above.
I'd say calling your group "Heart of Texas", or "United Muslims of America" is representing yourself as American. SO is calling your group "Being Patriotic" and using crossed American flags as your emblem. Calling yourself "Donald Trump America" is pretending to be American.
I know you'd say that. Others like myself read through your samples and would say it's crystal clear they never explicitly claimed to be American. The closest ones to the line appear to be the "X of America" set, which still doesn't speak to citizenship and is in the distinct minority in the group you sent me in any event. Generic groups like "Secured Borders," "Being Patriotic," "Don't Shoot," "Defend the 2nd," etc., don't come even close. If I were to create a FB group called "Tiananmen Square -- Never Again" that certainly would not constitute a claim to Chinese citizenship.
And that's the larger point here -- there are no objective "facts" at play. We both have subjective opinions about what the data says/doesn't say, and we're both entitled to those opinions. Which is why designating specific people/groups to decide which of those opinions will be deemed "fact" is (IMO :-) an exceptionally dangerous road to go down.
This is not very well written, so I've italicized the relevant bits.
So poorly written, apparently, that it doesn't say anything at all about the fake accounts pretending to be Americans. Apparently that's just your inference/desire/whatever, which is a bit ironic in a discussion about whether there's any such thing as facts.
As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
Sounds an awful lot like the religious authoritarianism that on balance we've finally gotten over after a few short millennia. Where's the limiting principle in your worldview to prevent reinstituting that as well?
The Russians were free to say whatever they wanted to say about American politics, as long as they didn't pretend to be Americans.
Where did FB say they were pretending to be Americans?
This is what a post-truth world looks like. The truth is whatever you prefer it to be
IMO It's a bit naive to think it was ever otherwise.
Get your head out of your ass and stop arguing for the sake of arguing.
Says the person who continues to overstate numbers to try to make the problem sound more dramatic than it is, which is the issue I've quite openly expressed concern over from the beginning. There are not 8 pharmacies in the town of Williamson in the state of West Virginia. If you disagree, please post their names and addresses.
And try to chill out a bit. I'm intimately acquainted with this general area of the country, and I understand well the challenges it has had for decades. But overwrought stories like this that play statistical tricks to try to make the numbers look as ridiculous as possible are simply going to look... well, ridiculous.
At the end of the day, it doesn't matter where the pills are being dispensed, and likewise the fact that a lot of people in a geographical area all have to go to the same handful of places matters not a whit. The bottom line issue, as I know you understand, is the doctors that are overprescribing the pills, not the pharmacies that are simply carrying out the doctors' orders. And those doctors are, as they have for decades, trying to help their patients in their own twisted way. Just like they try to help by getting huge percentages of the population signed up for SSDI. If the pills dry up, the symptoms will shift to something else just like they shifted to the pills in the first place. To the extent you're trying to fight a war on drugs, you'll miserably fail just as all past efforts have. You have to address the underlying problem that's driving the behavior. And that's a lot harder than picking a meaningless scapegoat to publicly flog. Happy trails, friend.
Most states allow Rx to cross borders.
Ok, and I said that even if that's permissible, I don't think it would move the needle too terribly much given the general tendency of smaller communities to keep dollars in their community whenever possible.
If someone comes in and says "I live just across the border and you are the closest and/or the only one my insurance will pay for"
Look at the map of Williamson. It's physically impossible to live in WV and be closer to a KY pharmacy than one on the WV side. And I'd be surprised if you saw much variation in network coverage. An awful lot of people abusing pills are going to be on SSI Disability/Medicaid anyway, and there's no rational way a pharmacy in that sort of community wouldn't accept that.
My god -- it's all true! He's personally targeted you and limited your posts to 14 characters. That must be why this is just about the only thing you post anymore. But maybe we can still communicate nonetheless. Can you post it once for "yes" and twice in an row for "no"? Hope springs eternal....
“When disaster strikes, it’s essential that Americans in harm’s way get reliable information so that they can stay safe and protect their loved ones,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said Tuesday.
There has to be a way to spin this one into a massive giveaway to the cellcos. Don't fail me, Slashdot crowd.
I'm in a much smaller town than Williamson and I can think of 3 pharmacies within 5 miles of my current location. If I expand that to 15 miles I can think of 10 off the top of my head and I'm on the outskirts of pill territory.
Right, just like a bunch of small towns are within 10-20 miles of Williamson and its pharmacies, which is exactly my point. And it's not clear what your unverifiable anecdote has to do with the issue at hand. If you know of any pharmacies in Mingo County other than the three in Williamson, feel free to point them out.