Informed Comment

Blair Hickman and Megha Rajagopalan write at ProPublica

Your cell phone tracks where you go and what you do, revealing details about your life that can prove quite valuable to the government and companies. Last week, we asked you to sound off on whether or not this smartphone surveillance bothers you – and what, if anything, we should do about it.

Here are some of our favorite responses, along with commentary from our reporter Megha Rajagopalan. (Some comments have been edited for length.)

Jim

My privacy is important enough to me that I do not have a smartphone. I only carry a cell phone (no data capability) for work, and then only when I am working. It stays home when I am out, otherwise.

Megha: Jim, after we published the article, lots of people made this same comment to me (including my mom, who chastised me for upgrading to a smartphone). But actually, it doesn’t help you that much to have a phone without a data plan. Cell phone companies collect location data from cell towers — which all cell phones use — and that data can be analyzed or turned over to police just like GPS data from a smartphone.

Plus, industry experts told us that location data from cell towers can be almost as precise as GPS, particularly in population dense urban areas. So really, the only way to be 100% sure you’re not being tracked is to throw that phone out or take out the battery.

John

I don’t have a cellphone (other than a prepaid someone insisted I “needed,” which sits in a cabinet), but it’s because it doesn’t fit into my lifestyle. I don’t really have an interest in “being connected,” and I don’t want to carry around a gadget that needs my attention.

However, I’m still dumbfounded and horrified at how the companies and governments ignore the rights of users to be largely left alone.  That concern isn’t limited to phones, of course, since (as mentioned) the same can be said about “reward cards,” ubiquitous security cameras, and so forth.

For those wondering what the big deal is, remember Cardinal Richelieu’s famous quote:  “If you give me six sentences written by the most innocent of men, I will find something in them with which to hang them.”  Also remember the man who learned his wife was pregnant before she did, because Target sent them a congratulatory message based on her recent purchases. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's the article on Target.]

Now imagine what crimes can be “found” with access to your GPS history, call log, text messages, app selection, and contact list, on top of those six sentences.  Would you believe someone was innocent after seeing that they went to an ATM, then parked their next to a known drug dealer for fifteen minutes?  What if the person received a brief call from an accused terrorist?  That can’t just be a wrong number…

Now imagine that the information lands in the hands of someone who might not be entirely trustworthy.  Friends and family on the police force, for example, have told me stories of officers who used police resources to check out their kids’ dates, gather information on spouses during a divorce, and (disturbingly) outright stalk some people.  They’re not the norm, of course, but they exist. 

And those are just people who are authorized (but shouldn’t be without a warrant).  How secure is the information?  Are you sure the police computers aren’t being hacked?  Identity thieves, blackmailers, extortionists, burglars, and other unpleasant folks can surely find something useful in all that data. That makes any collection a huge target.

Megha: This is an important point. If data isn’t held securely, there’s potential for abuse even if police have best of intentions.

Keep reading Your Telephone is Spying on You: Talk Amongst Yourselves (Hickman and Rajagopalan)

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As for the Romney campaign, you know things aren’t going well when Rachel Maddow finds old footage of you demanding that Ted Kennedy release his tax returns for the then senate race.

Romney demanded Kennedy release his tax returns, saying the veteran senator needed to “prove he [had] nothing to hide…” and adding, “It’s time the biggest-taxing senator in Washington shows the people of Massachusetts how much he pays in taxes…”

You know things aren’t going well when 52% of respondents in polls say that they just don’t like you personally.

You know things aren’t going well when your remarks about why Palestinians are poor are contradicted by a Palestinian billionaire.

You know things aren’t going well when your most visible billionaire superpatron is a casino mogul under investigation for alleged money-laundering.

You know things aren’t going well when economists look into your tax plan and find you are a reverse Robin Hood, taking money from the middle class and giving it to the billionaires.

You know things aren’t going well when your claims to have been a poor missionary in France are contradicted by old buddies who say you stayed in a mansion with a chef and servant.

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Chris Woods writes at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism:

One of Islamabad’s most senior diplomats has told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that ongoing CIA drone strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas are weakening democracy, and risk pushing people towards extremist groups.

He also claims that some factions of the US government still prefer to work with ‘just one man’ rather than a democratically-elected government, and accuses the US of ‘talking in miles’ when it comes to democracy but of ‘moving in inches.’

As High Commissioner to London, Wajid Shamsul Hasan is one of Pakistan’s top ambassadors. Now four years into his second stint in the post, he is no stranger to controversy. In an extended interview with the Bureau, Ambassador Hasan argues that US drone strikes risk significantly weakening Pakistan’s democratic institutions:

‘What has been the whole outcome of these drone attacks is, that you have rather directly or indirectly contributed to destabilizing or undermining the democratic government. Because people really make fun of the democratic government – when you pass a resolution against drone attacks in the parliament, and nothing happens. The Americans don’t listen to you, and they continue to violate your territory.’

The army too risks being seen as impotent, he warns the United States.

‘Please don’t embarrass us by violating our territory because people question why the hell we have such a huge standing army, where we spend so much on our national defence budget, when we can’t defend ourselves?’

But he accepts that Pakistan has little power to stop the strikes other than through public opinion: ‘We cannot take on the only superpower, which is all-powerful in the world at the moment. You can’t take them on. We are a small country, we are ill-equipped.’

‘I would have killed bin Laden myself’
The High Commissioner’s comments appear part of a major public relations offensive by a Pakistani government keen to see an end to the unpopular drone strikes.

On Friday Sherry Rehman, Islamabad’s ambassador to the United States, said that ‘We will seek an end to drone strikes and there will be no compromise on that.’ The heads of Pakistan’s army and ISI spy service are also lobbying Washington to allow Pakistani forces to carry out any actual strikes against terrorists based on US intelligence.

The reason, according to Ambassador Hasan, is that anti-US sentiment is reaching dangerously high levels in Pakistan because of the drones:

‘Even those who were supporting us in the border areas have now become our enemies. They say that we are partners in these crimes against the people. So they hate us as well. They hate the Americans more. If you look at the Pakistan-US relationship, we have received a lot of money from the Americans, and yet they’re the most hated country in Pakistan among the people. By and large you will hardly find anybody who will say a word in support for the United States, because of these drone attacks.’

Keep reading US Drone Strikes Undermining Pakistan Democracy (Woods)

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Since the Free Syrian Army is a guerrilla group, whether it can hold the northern metropolis of Aleppo is not absolutely central to its survival. Guerrillas can always fade away to fight another day.

But for the Baath regime of Bashar al-Assad, losing Aleppo would be fatal. The regime controls increasingly little of the country, mainly the capital of Damascus and whatever strips of land the army is actually standing on at any one time. Aleppo is the commercial nerve center of the country, and without it the government will gradually collapse.

The revolutionaries hold most of the east of the city whereas the regime still has the west. But within these enclaves, some support the other side or are on the fence.

Rebel forces said Saturday morning that they now control 60% of Aleppo.

In several days of fierce fighting, the regime still has not been able to reassert itself in Aleppo, despite the use of heavy artillery, tanks, helicopter gunships and even fighter jets. Admittedly, the Baath government has not mounted a really big tank assault a la Homs, suggesting it does not have enough tank battalions it trusts to risk sending them away from the capital.

On Saturday morning, the rebels in Aleppo made an attempt to take over the city’s television station (always the first sign of a change in government in a place). Although their attempt was initially repelled by sniper fire, that battle is ongoing. Regime broadcasts appear to have ceased. The regime continues to be on the defensive in Aleppo, which is not a good sign for it.

Heavy fighting is reported in neighborhoods such as Salahuddin. For the mood and the situation in Salahuddin see The Irish Times

Opposition sources say over 4000 persons were killed in the fighting in Syria in July. This monthly total is the highest since the revolt began.

In Damascus, the regime is still apparently battling for control of districts such as Tadamon. A regime mortar attack went astray on Friday and overshot, hitting a Palestinian refugee camp and killing 20. There are 450,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria, families ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces from their homes in Palestine, now Israel, in 1948, and stuck in Syria ever since. The Palestinians are only about 2% of the Syrian population, but they do have some armed groups and could be pushed by the regime into joining the rebels (they have been divided on the revolution, having an uncertain position in the country). The regime blamed the mortars on the rebels, but it is the Baath army that has been deploying mortar fire against civilian city quarters.

On Friday, the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly passed a resolution condemning the Syrian regime for using heavy weapons in civilian areas. Russia and China are increasingly isolated in the world community because of their support for al-Assad, and were angry that they lost that vote so decisively. The UNGA vote shows that opposition to al-Assad’s methods is hardly just “Western,” but is rather characteristic of most countries in the world– including many in Latin America, Africa and Asia.

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William Fitzgibbon writes at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism

When the government told the people of London that the eyes of the world would be on it during the Olympic Games, it failed to mention one particularly powerful watcher; a new software programme used for tracking potential troublemakers.

In the September edition of Wired Magazine, Shane Harris reports on the new American software company Palantir Technologies, new over here in the UK just in time for the Olympics.

Palantir has already won over intelligence agencies on both side of the Atlantic Ocean with its ability to assemble mountains of information and data for use in a cornucopia of causes.

‘The contradiction that we wanted to remove was between civil liberties and fighting terrorism,’ a Palantir co-founder said of his creation.

And what a creation it is. The software processes large quantities of information from an almost endless range of data, including surveillance images, drone footage, electronic communications and health records.

The CIA, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security are but a few of the software’s biggest fans. In the USA at least, Palantir is being touted as a powerful tool in tackling scourges from terrestrial terrorism, drug trafficking and cyber hacking.

While not certain, Wired’s Harris also suggests that UK’s MI6, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and domestic security organisations are also users.

Related articles: the Bureau’s analysis of the global surveillance industry

Beyond the shady sunglasses professions, Palantir is used by corporations such as banking giant JPMorgan Chase and has helped gather victims’ names in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake. It has even assisted detailed investigative journalism projects, such as last month’s series on human tissue trafficking by the International Consoritum of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).

Prodigal financial adviser Alex Karp and PayPal founder Peter Thiel were behind the idea. The duo worked with a coterie of Stanford tech-heads and together dreamed of Silicon Valley’s best brains uniting in a start-up for large organisations.

Launched in 2004, Palantir received early financial backing from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s technology investment branch. Contemporary estimates put Palantir’s worth at £2.5 bn.

Palantir UK is currently seeking to hire four new staff for its Covent Garden office in London. According to the online advertisements, each role requires the successful candidate to ‘loath the bureaucracy’ and ‘have a deeply held belief that a revolution in intelligence affairs is not only possible, it is imminent.’

An obsession for JRR Tolkein may be an additional criterion; a ‘palantir’ is a crystal ball-like stone appearing in Tolkein’s lore and the company’s London office is named after an elvish town.

Despite Palantir’s praiseworthy track record so far, Wired’s Shane Harris reminds us that the software’s power is likely to lie in the hands of its user.

In 2010, an adviser to Bank of America approached Palantir to help bring down WikiLeaks. While Palantir never approved the collaboration, emails from the adviser detail his desire to target Julian Assange’s company, use the software to help launch cyberattacks on WikiLeaks and close the net around WikiLeaks’ sources by obtaining data on who submits leaks and from where.

When hacking group Anonymous revealed the emails, Palantir stopped discussions dead in their tracks and took legal advice. Senior Palantir officers, such as Karp, claim to have had no knowledge of the discussions.

Related article: The Bureau and WikiLeaks’ Iraq war logs

There seems little doubt that Palantir in certain uses has already been a powerful force for good.

But with one enthusiastic Palantir employee on the record for having written to colleagues, “Damn it feels good to be a gangsta,” there may be room for wariness.

Joining the Dots, by Shane Harris, is in the September issue of Wired.

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John Sullivan writes in a guest column for Informed Comment:

A Cabinet nominee or a Supreme Court nominee produces decades of tax returns to the Senate for confirmation. Romney should meet that criteria.

The deduction for the horse included over $2,000 in medical expenses. Medical expenses are not deductible for taxpayers unless they exceed 7.5% of adjusted gross income. In Romney’s world, horses are more valuable than people.

Obviously, Romney will not produce his tax returns because he knows what’s in them is more damaging that the static he will take for not releasing them. At law, if a person is control of evidence refuses to produce the evidence, then the jury is instructed that there is a presumption that the evidence would be against the party failing to produce. It is called the “Missing Evidence” instruction.

What is silliest for Romney is that he and his aides continue to talk about Harry Reid. One aide compared Reid’s actions to McCarthyism. Reid has not accused Romney of any wrongdoing. McCarthy called Americans traitors and ruined their careers.

Romney’s failure to disclose on his tax returns is consistent with his lifelong secrecy. After a motor vehicle accident in France in which a passenger in Romney’s car is said to have been killed, he allegedly swore everyone to secrecy. No one knows why Mitt Romney got a rare missionary deferment during the Vietnam War– deferment in which he lived in a palace and converted no one.

The records from the Salt Lake City Olympics are unavailable. Mitt bought new computers at the end of his term as governor in Massachusetts. The computers and their memories of his term as governor are gone.

There is a pattern of secrecy. It is consistent with his fundamental intellectual dishonesty. He reminds me of Richard Nixon.

Absent some game changing VP selection or collapse of the economy, this race is over. I put little value in summer polls, but the recent CBS poll indicated that among likely voters in swing states that 90% of the voters have made up their minds and are unlikely to change it. Obama has stopped spending in Pennsylvania. States like NC, MO and IN are coming more into play. Romney is going to campaign in Indiana next week. If you are a Republican and you are campaigning in Indiana in August, you are in trouble.

_________

John Sullivan is an Indianapolis attorney who has been active in politics since 1968. He is a former Chairperson of the Indiana Recount Commission and Vice President of the Marion County Convention Center and Recreational Facilities Commission. He was the Democratic nominee for Mayor of Indianapolis and has run the Indiana presidential campaigns for a number of Democratic candidates. He has also been elected delegate to several Democratic National Conventions since 1984. He worked in Congress in the early 1970s for Rep. Michael Harrington (D-MA).

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Mitt Romney told notorious media bully and propagandist for the American Far Right, Sean Hannity, that it is time for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to ‘put up or shut up.’ Reid had pointed out that an investor with Bain capital, Romney’s former company, had alleged that Romney had not paid taxes for ten years (because of tax loopholes). Reid admitted that he did not know if the allegations were true.

Romney refuses to release more than one year of tax returns.

Romney, by using the phrase ‘put up or shut up,’ was attempting to push back at Reid, and he denied that the report was true.

But, since Romney could easily disprove what the investor said by just doing what all other candidates for president in modern history have done, which is to release many years worth of tax returns, his response is the opposite of macho.

It is obviously Romney who should put up or shut up. Reid doesn’t have Romney’s tax returns, Romney does.

It is sort of like if a bully kicked sand in Romney’s face at the beach, and Romney says, whining, “you put that sand back!”

It is tone deaf and wimpy, not macho.

Someone should advise Romney that when you are obviously hiding something, you shouldn’t draw attention to your duplicity by using a phrase like ‘put up or shut up.’

Romney’s style of politics is that of his dressage horse in the London competition, an elite ballet set to classical music during which the hoi polloi are not supposed to talk.

But American politics is more like Conan the Barbarian, where, famously, the horse gets punched out.

As for the dressage horse and taxes? Romney took $70,000 off his tax bill for it.

Put up or shut up, indeed.

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