As opposed to my previous post, BBC reports an instance where the FBI has made use of public information to predict a possible threat to St Aelred’s Catholic Technology College in England. The information was on Facebook, and was available probably because the defendant hadn’t protected his postings, perhaps due to FB’s confusing approach to privacy. Imagine, however, that FB didn’t confuse anyone, and this information were protected. Would the FBI have been prevented from warning St. Aelreds? If if they couldn’t, would Facebook? And if Facebook didn’t would the FBI insist on new powers? Watch this space.
Author: Eliot
American in exile with no due process
Imagine taking a vacation to some exotic place, perhaps even going to school abroad for a few months, and then being told that you can’t go home. The New York Times reports that such is the tragic situation of Yahya Wehelie, a young American who went to Yemen to study, at the insistence of his parents. He found himself on the No Fly List, for reasons we don’t know, and given no reasonable way to get home to Virginia.
Here we see the juxtaposition of many principles:
- The government responsibility to protect Americans on the ground and in the air from terrorism;
- The individual’s freedom to travel;
- Government responsibility to enforce trade other policies, such as that of importation of prohibited goods; and
- An individual’s right to freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
Americans have the fewest rights when flying back to the United States. You can expect to be searched, probed, and prodded. You don’t have the right to carry a bottle of water into an airport, and you can expect substantial inconvenience, especially if you are disabled, when traveling. You can expect your laptop to be confiscated.
The situation is changing, however. A recent decision by a federal judge limits rummaging through laptops of American citizens. Another decision is clearly needed: Americans deserve the right to face their accusers, to hear allegations, and to be able to respond to those charges so that they can receive justice. The basic premise of an airport search is to address threats that are not amenable to taking the time to have such a hearing. Several weeks should be more than plenty of time for a case to be heard by a competent judge. Having some random person stick your name on a list is what one should expect of Nineteen Eight-Four and Brazil, and of America.
What would you do if it were your son trying to get home?
Iran sending aid to Gaza? What else is new?
Yes, the headlines from Al Jazeera read, “Iran to send aid ships to Gaza”. Here’s the problem: they’ve probably been aid to Gaza all along, but not the type of aid that actually helps people. Their type of aid includes guns, ammunition, and perhaps not much that could even be considered “dual use”. In fact, given what Iran is in hot water for, themselves, perhaps the ”aid” might take an entirely new dimension.
It’s not that I’m in favor of blockading aid to Gaza, especially legitimate aid. But Iran is classically overplaying its hand against the court of world opinion, while its own citizens are in great need of such aid, with oil prices having been flat for quite a while.
We can always point at one side or the other in the conflict in Gaza and assign fault. It’s undeniably true that Hamas shot off rockets into Israel, and it is equally undeniably true that the conditions in Gaza itself are appalling. Iran won’t resolve this matter. Instead they are just playing to everyone’s emotions, and they’re not doing that good of job at it.
Yet more garbage out of Fox
As if to prove the point of my previous post, Fox News had this lovely story that Google’s aggregator caught about supposed increased costs due to immigration. But once again, we have to consider the source, and in this case, the source of their story is an advocacy group called FAIR (The Federation for American Immigration Reform). Their “researchers” are advocates. A hint that something is wrong with this story is already present in the article, when you read that the “research” was released exclusively to Fox. Oops! That’s not fair research. Real research is open to all to inspect and challenge.
People often say, “Oh the left is just as bad.” I find no such equivalence. A good right wing lightning rod, The New York Times, features today an expose on a Democrat Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, where he claims to have served in Vietnam, but didn’t. The Right does that same sort of investigation of the Right, right? Wrong.
And so I wonder, oh Conservative friends of mine, what value is Fox News when they lie to you?
Good News? Bad News?
A while back, I went on a tear about Fox News and just how bad they are at actually delivering news, and how people who listen to them need to hold themselves accountable. Since then, I think someone defriended me on FaceBook for the note. I suppose I had one too many friend. Fox is part of a right wing media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, where his goal is to control the message, and thereby have a strong say in our government. And he’s very successful through truly deceitful means. Even the name of the conglomerate is deceitful- News Corp. It’s not. It’s lies with a bit of truth sprinkled in to help people suspend disbelief about the lies. He’s not the first to do it, but seemingly he’s the most effective. Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to the master, however, William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate.
Is there a good honest news source? My preferred news sources these days are as follows:
This is perhaps the most popular news aggregator there is. Google doesn’t actually do any of the reporting but just groups together related stories, and I can compare points of view based on the source of the story. Say, Fox versus The Guardian.
NPR remains a strong source of news with stories that one can listen to on the radio that are more than just sound bites. They have in depth interviews with key political players as well as scientists. I have always found their business reporting to be somewhat limiting. This leads to a more controversial preference.
The Journal is the paper of record for business news, even though they are part of News Corp. It is rare that you read a retraction on a story that matters (I can’t remember one, actually). But they are a relatively recent addition to the conglomerate, and so the impact has been limited to what stories they choose to report, headlines, and their editorial staff. Hosting a shady character like Karl Rove immediately disqualifies what was already a colored view, even prior to the takeover.
Note that nowhere in my list are any of the major television networks. That’s largely due to several factors:
- I live outside the United States and so my access to network programming is somewhat limited;
- Their stories tend to be short and lack depth, except for news magazines, which I don’t have access to.
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