Snowden disclosures reveal NSA abuse

I had no knowledge of the NSA’s programs, but I’m not surprised by most of it. James Bamford articulated in The Puzzle Palace in 1980 what the NSA was capable of, and it has always been clear to me that they would establish whatever intelligence capabilities they could in order to carry out their mission. There are several areas that raise substantial concerns:

1. NSA’s own documents indicate that they intended to interfere with and degrade crypto standards. That on its own has caused the agency substantial harm to its reputation that will take decades to recover from. But they haven’t just sullied their own reputation but that of the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) who are a true braintrust. Furthermore, they’ve caused the discounting in the discourse of anyone who is technology knowledgeable who have either recently held or currently hold government posts. I will come back to this issue below.

2. It is clear that the FISA mechanism just broke down, and that its oversight entirely failed. Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court took its role seriously. They all gave so much deference to the executive because of that bugaboo word “terrorism” that they failed to safeguard our way of life. That to me is unforgivable and I blame both parties for it. In fact I wrote about this risk on September 12, 2001. I wrote then:

I am equally concerned about Congress or the President taking liberties with our liberties beyond what is called for. Already, millions of people are stranded away from their loved ones, and commerce has come to a halt. Let’s not do what the terrorists could not, by shrinking in fear in the face of aggression, nor should we surrender our freedom.

Sadly, here we are.

3. There are reports about law enforcement taking intelligence information and scrubbing the origin. Where I come from we call that tampering with evidence in an egregious attempt to get around those pesky 4th and 5th amendments.

4. The NSA’s activities have caused great harm to U.S. services industry because other nations and their citizens have no notion as to when their information will be shared. This is keenly true for companies such as Google and Microsoft who, it is reported, were ordered to reveal information. The great Tip O’Neill said that all politics is local. That may be true, but in a global market place, all sales are local.

It would be wrong to simply lay blame on the NSA. They were following their mission. Their oversight simply failed. Congress needs oversight. That is our responsibility.

Restore Morsi Now!

I am no fan of the Muslim Brotherhood, as many of their political positions are diametrically oppose to my own.

However.

I am a big fan of democracy. However imperfect his election and that of the parliament, President Mohammed Morsi deserves the world’s support. We in America often forget just how imperfect our democracy is. Putting aside hanging chads, they used to have a saying in Chicago: vote early, vote often.

Democracy takes time to get right. It takes commitment, and it takes patience. Could you imagine the United States Army going in and taking over CNN in Atlanta, and arresting the president, simply because of a large protest on the Mall? Those protests are meant to sway legislators and those who vote for them peacefully.

And it hasn’t always been so peaceful, even in America. Some people may remember Sheriff Bull Connor who set dogs and fire hoses on peaceful protestors. And we don’t even have to go back that far. But we got better at it.

So would Egypt, if they give it time and patience.

What was the strategy of the Allied Forces in WWII?

I’ve recently read two books relating to World War II. The first was Ike: An American Hero, a biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower by Michael Korda, which is a near idolizing tale of Ike, in which the man can seemingly do no wrong. The other is saga of Winston Churchill’s life, starting from the day he becomes Prime Minister in 1940. This is the third of The Last Lion trilogy by William Manchester. These are two very different perspectives on how WWII was won.

In the case of Churchill, Manchester describes his Mediterranean strategy as somewhere between nibbling around the edges, a war of opportunity, or an attempt to coax Turkey into the melée, while at the same time placing blame on Americans for delaying the end of the war, first by not entering it earlier, and second by not being more aggressive in the taking of Italy.

On the other side, Korda points out that Eisenhower took his strategy directly from Grant, which was to destroy the enemy’s ability to make war. That necessitated the destruction of all German armies the hard way, under the belief that so long as they had armies that could fight, they would fight.

What is stunning about the difference in points of view is that neither seems to acknowledge the others at all. As an American I found Manchester’s book helpful to understand the British perceptions of history, while at the same time having some understanding of the history of the Americans involved.

North Korean Nonsense:

In the last two weeks we’ve heard about how the North Koreans have, well, let’s see…

All of this stemmed from further sanctions the U.N. imposed after these nutcases conducted a nuclear test.

These people are, quite simply put, wackos with nuclear weapons, each dictator worse than the last. The people they least endanger is America, and the people they most endanger are themselves, and their brothers, sisters, and cousins to the south. Not far behind them are the Chinese to the north. Clearly basketball diplomacy hasn’t helped at all.

The United States has a tendency to clean up messes all around the world. We get yelled at for doing so, and then people privately thank their lucky stars we do. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone else did the dirty work for once? As it happens the Chinese have been flexing their muscles all over the region, from Japan to Malaysia. They’ve even breached South Korean waters. But the North they leave alone.

With lots to lose and the fact that the Chinese have been propping up this government for six decades, the Chinese will have to deal with the consequences far more so than we will. It is a problem that the United States cannot solve. Our having sent B-2s was a nice show, but if we end up in an armed conflict with North Korea, mostly South Koreans, Chinese, and maybe Japanese get hurt. That region must resolve the matter. B-2s shouldn’t do it.

You don’t get to be a leader by simply showing military might. You have to use that might to address real problems. The Chinese have feared above all that if they intervene in the affairs of others, some day it will be their turn to be on the receiving end of such interference. Their turn may come, but not because they’ve done the right thing with North Korea.

When is a Fine Excessive?

CNN has an interesting story about a Christian organization that is seeking to avoid fines for not providing coverage for the “Day After” pill or (I think) RU-486. Let us not argue about birth control or abortion. My issue here is the amount of the fine, which is $100 per day per employee for whom the employer refuses coverage. Why isn’t that fine excessive? To begin with, let’s look at the cost of such services. The cost of the drugs are relatively low. According the Planned Parenthood, the cost for the pharmaceuticals are between $10 and $70. For an insurance company this is really a non-issue, and that leaves the moral issue, because it’s not an ongoing expense. In fact, it may even be lower than some people’s co-payments or deductibles. Now we need to add this to an insurance risk pool cost, and the price for insurance probably drops to well less that $0.10 per year . After all, how often does anyone need such services? Maybe once in their lives? Maybe never.

If we break this down, then, to compensatory versus punitive damages, let’s postulate an government program that allows doctors and pharmacies to be reimbursed for the cost of the procedure. Let’s call the program, oh…. Medicaid. Let’s say that costs, from a risk perspective, $1.00 per year. The Supreme Court has already said that punitive damages in civil cases should not exceed a factor of 10. Why then, should the fine for this behavior not by $10 per employee per year instead of $100 per employee per day?

In fact, why not let employers opt out on conscience grounds and let them pay a slightly higher premium of $2.00 per employee? In this sense, the government would stand to profit from an employer who REALLY has qualms. Of course, one would also have to ask why that company would feel so comfortable paying the government twice what it would pay the insurance company, when at the end of the day the same service would be performed?

Put simply: what is the societal interest in penalizing a company 100,000 times the cost of a service in this case? Is this such an egregious omission? Are employees unsafe? Would the service otherwise be unavailable? What is the issue?