Obama proposes online "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights"

If this is an actual consumer rights proposal, great, but after recent actions of the administration I remain skeptical. Will this be an actual consumer-driven program or will it be another attempt to suck up to the deepest pockets? We need to see more details but on the surface, this is a good thing. NPR:

Administration officials outlined a proposed "Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights" on Thursday and urged technology companies, consumer groups and others to jointly craft new protections. Such guidelines would initially be voluntary for companies, but those that agree to abide by them could be subject to sanctions for any violations. "As the Internet evolves, consumer trust is essential for the continued growth of the digital economy," President Barack Obama said in a statement. "That's why an online privacy Bill of Rights is so important. For businesses to succeed online, consumers must feel secure." The effort comes as companies have found more sophisticated ways to collect and combine data on your interests and habits. Beginning next week, for instance, Google will start merging data it collects from email, video, social-networking and other services when you're signed in with a Google account.

Read the rest of this post...

Female witness hits back at GOP: ‘I’m a woman who uses contraception, that makes me qualified’ to testify

Igor Volsky at ThinkProgress reports on today's Democratic hearing on birth control:

Democrats on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee held a special hearing Thursday morning in response to the GOP’s decision to prevent women from testifying in support of an Obama administration rule requiring employers to provide birth control without additional cost sharing. The committee invited just one witness, Sandra Fluke, the third year Georgetown Law student, who House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) dismissed as an “energized” “college student” who was not “appropriate and qualified” to testify before his committee.

Democrats received over 300,000 requests for women to testify on the issue, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said during today’s hearing, and the GOP’s male-only contraception hearing was widely spoofed in the press and on late-night comedy shows. Fluke herself responded to Issa’s snub in jest, noting, “Well, I will confirm that I was energized, yes” she said to laughter from the committee, “as you can see from the reaction behind me, many women in this country are energized about this issue.” “I’m an American woman who uses contraception, so let’s start right there. That makes me qualified to talk to my elected officials about my health care needs,” she added.

In her testimony, Fluke reiterated the story of her friend who was denied contraception coverage from Georgetown, despite technically qualifying for an exception that provided students who use birth control for health reasons with the benefit, and had to undergo invasive surgery.

Igor has more, including video. Read the rest of this post...

UN accuses Syrian leadership of crimes against humanity

There's a long way to go before this is over, but Assad and the Syrian leadership will eventually either die like Gaddafi or in a prison in The Hague. The Guardian:

The United Nations has drawn up a list of the most senior officials in the Syrian regime, including, it is claimed, President Bashar al-Assad himself, who it says should be investigated for ordering "crimes against humanity" and other gross human rights violations.

The sealed report prepared by the UN-appointed independent international commission of inquiry on Syria has been handed over to the UN high commissioner for human rights.

While it accuses both parties to the conflict of torture and extra-judicial executions, it says that the opposition's rights violations are in no way "comparable in scale and organisation" to the abuses being carried out by the Assad regime, which have led to thousands of deaths.

Read the rest of this post...

MD Senate committee passes gay marriage, sends it to full Senate as early as today

As I noted on AMERICAblog Gay, the President's wishy washiness on marriage equality poses a problem for his get out the vote effort this fall.

The President obviously wants us all to get out the vote in November.  But there are key constituencies with whom the President has great sway, and who are not terribly good on gay rights issues as compared to other Democrats. Why does that matter?  Well, take Maryland.  Maryland will likely see an effort on the November ballot to repeal the just-passed marriage equality legislation.  Nearly a third of Marylanders are African-American.  And black Democrats in Maryland are twice as opposed to same-sex marriage as white Democrats in the state.  The Washington Post:

The new poll found a sharp divide among Maryland Democrats based on race. Among whites, 71 percent support same-sex marriage, while 24 percent do not. Among blacks, 41 percent are supportive, while 53 percent are opposed. Maryland has the largest percentage of African Americans of any state outside of the Deep South.

The President needs to "evolve" now and come out (again) in support of marriage equality, at the same time the Democratic party helps us defeat these initiatives in the various states (MD, NC, ME, MN).  Otherwise the two efforts, to get out the vote for Barack Obama and Democrats generally, and to support the civil rights agenda, may be at odds in some key states, and that's not good news for anyone. Read the rest of this post...

"Anonymous" and the threat of war between Russia and China

According to reports, Gen. Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA recently briefed the President on a possible attack on the US power grid by the hacker collective 'Anonymous'.

These reports have been taken as an excuse for ridicule of purported 'fear-mongering'. Apparently on the basis that those Anonymous types must be good guys, they tell us so.

I don't work for the NSA but I have worked in the civil field for twenty years and I know quite a bit about the way the NSA works. The idea that Alexander would give a warning limited to attacks by anonymous is nonsense. Hactivism has been a factor in information security for decades. The real development in recent years has been the emergence of attacks by state actors and their proxies.

Iran believes (and not without cause) that the US was behind the Stuxnet attack on their uranium enrichment plant. It does not take much imagination to think that they might attempt retaliation. Nor is Anonymous the only hacktivist group in existence. There are hundreds, thousands of similar groups around the world.

The underlying problem here that nobody disputes is that the US power system is vulnerable to cyber attack. The network protocols used in process control systems have not changed since they were developed in the late 1970s and none of them have security controls built in. This is worrying enough if you want to use a PID controller to cook your dinner sous-vide: an attacker can now reprogram your set point temperature and give you botulism. But the exact same systems are in use in power plants round the country, including nuclear plants.

The possibility of a successful attack against the power grid is not in serious dispute, what is open for debate is the extent of the likely consequences.

According to one school of thought, an attack on the power system would lead to the collapse of civilization within three months. I have been in meetings where the argument has been made that the response to an attack on the power grid should be to suspend the constitution and declare martial law. My view is that like J. Edgar Hoover, such people are a greater threat to the republic than the enemies they purport to protect us against.

A more realistic assessment of the likely consequences would be that they are serious but the risk of over-reaction is even more so. The actual consequences of 9/11 were bad but the consequences of the Bush administration response were far worse. A cascade outage in the power system could kill hundreds of people but using the event as a pretext to declare martial law would lead to civil war.

Another view, one that I think is under-considered in US policy circles is the possibility that the real threat to the US might come from an attack on the power system in another country.

Take China for example. The possibility of a war between the US and China is very remote because the two countries are far apart and there is really no incentive for either to get into a territorial dispute with the other. China understands the US position on Taiwan just as the US understands the Chinese position on North Korea. The chance of either leading to war is as remote as the possibility of the UK going to war with Spain over Gibraltar.

The possibility of war between China and Russia is much less remote and such a war would be a global catastrophe. Part of the legacy of the collapse of the Soviet Union is the tangle of remnant states bordering the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea are largely unfamiliar to us. Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor under Carter, has called this region the Global Balkans. It is an apt name for an area that like the former Yugoslavia has yet to properly complete the transition from the Soviet system and where ethnic rivalries are stoked for political ends. Some of the ethnic groups are Russian, others are Han Chinese. There is a real risk that some crisis in the Global Balakans might lead to Russian or Chinese intervention and possibly war between Russia and China.

One possible scenario for such a conflict is that Russia (or China if you prefer) decides it must intervene and launches a 'digital Pearl Harbor' attack against China to ensure that it is otherwise occupied. Like the US power system, the Chinese power system uses 1970s control protocols such as MODBUS which lack security controls like authenticating the source of command signals. Unlike the US, China is in no position to fix this problem having relied on copied and stolen technology for decades.

Why is this a problem for the US? Well first a war between Russia and China would be a global catastrophe and could even lead to a world war. But also, if you are a Chinese strategist facing this particular problem your security options are rather limited. There is really no time to develop the necessary engineering design skills and then apply them to a new generation of control systems infrastructure which might be deployable in 2030 or so. If I was facing that particular problem I would take a completely different approach and seek to turn my problem into someone else's problem. For example, by hacking the US and Western countries power systems forcing them to come up with technology that I could then steal and apply to my own infrastructure.

In conclusion, this is precisely the type of security issue that I would want security advisors such as Alexander to be thinking about and discussing with the President because that reduces the risk of the type of panicked reaction that led to disaster under the Bush administration. Read the rest of this post...

Can Montana's Supreme Court decision be used to overturn Citizens United?

Overturning Citizens United seems like a stretch, but not so far a one that the New York Times didn't feature it just this week.

Background: You probably know about the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United — corps, using their free speech rights, can spend in an unlimited way on political campaigns. In explaining (defending) their ruling, Justice Kennedy wrote that corporate expenditures:

do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

But recently the Montana Supreme Court ruled that Citizens United didn't apply in Montana, since Montana's law banning corp contributions to politics is based on Montana's actual experience with just that kind of corruption, in a very big way.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick explains (my emphasis and paragraphing):

[B]y a 5-2 margin, Montana’s high court determined that the state law survived “strict scrutiny” because Montana’s unique context and history justified the ban in ways not contemplated by Citizens United.

In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Mike McGrath dove deep into that history, ranging back over the “tumultuous years … marked by rough contests for political and economic domination primarily in the mining center of Butte, between mining and industrial enterprises controlled by foreign trusts or corporations.”

Noting that, back in the last Gilded Age, Montana's wealthy "Copper Kings" bought judges and senators, picked the location of the capital, and owned the media, McGrath pointed to Montana’s vast size, sparse population, low-cost elections, and long history of having its resources plundered by foreign corporate interests to emphasize that the state has a compelling interest in maintaining its ban.

Gauntlet thrown; reason given.

The U.S. Supreme Court was asked to overturn the Montana ruling, and decided instead to issue a stay pending review.

That's where it gets interesting. The whole thing turns on three sentences added by Justices Ginsberg and Breyer to the SCOTUS ruling that placed a hold on the Montana ruling (pdf; my emphasis):

Statement of Justice Ginsburg, with whom Justice Breyer joins, respecting the grant of the application for stay.

Montana’s experience, and experience elsewhere since this Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n, 558 U. S. ___ (2010), make it exceedingly difficult to maintain that independent expenditures by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Id., at ___ (slip op., at 42). A petition for certiorari will give the Court an opportunity to consider whether, in light of the huge sums currently deployed to buy candidates’ allegiance, Citizens United should continue to hold sway. Because lower courts are bound to follow this Court’s decisions until they are withdrawn or modified, however, Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477, 484 (1989), I vote to grant the stay.

Linda Greenhouse in the NY Times writes:

In their separate statement, Justices Ginsburg and Breyer seemed not to buy the “Montana is different” rationale, instead viewing the state court’s ruling, despite its protestations to the contrary, as simple defiance of Citizens United. “Lower courts are bound to follow this court’s decisions until they are withdrawn or modified,” the two justices observed.

Their point, rather, was that the Supreme Court itself should use this case as a vehicle to reconsider Citizens United.

"Montana is different" is the heart of the state court ruling. So this is an interesting ploy by Ginsberg and Breyer, whom Greenhouse calls "savvy players."

She admits that overturning Citizens United would be "a huge leap for the Citizens United majority.". The world of the Court overturning previous rulings normally includes changes to the Court's composition — but not always. Her article is worth reading for those instances alone.

We're keeping a close eye on this. If there's indeed a review of Citizens United, we'll have a chance to see if Justice Kennedy sticks to his wrong-headed guns regarding corruption. (I know, "wrong-headed guns" — so sue me...)

GP Read the rest of this post...

Sasha vs. the iPad

What happens when you present your dog with a cat game for the iPad. (And it's not an actual iPad app, but rather an online game for the iPad - you can access it here.)

Read the rest of this post...

GOP Senator Marco Rubio raised, still technically, a Mormon

And Rubio was apparently quite excited for a while about being Mormon. From Buzzfeed:

In the compelling personal narrative that has helped propel Florida Senator Marco Rubio to national political stardom, one chapter has gone completely untold: Rubio spent his childhood as a faithful Mormon.

Rubio was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his family at around the age of eight, and remained active in the faith for a number of years during his early youth, family members told BuzzFeed.

Rubio apparently isn't happy that the story got out:

A sign that Rubio's aides see the story as potentially damaging: BuzzFeed's inquiries appear to have sent them into frantic damage-control mode, and after email inquiries from BuzzFeed — but minutes before Conant responded with a phone call this morning — a brief item appeared on the blog of the Miami Herald mentioning the Senator's religous past. Conant said Rubio planned to discuss his time as a Mormon in his forthcoming book.

And officially Rubio is still considered a Mormon by the Mormons themselves (then again, who don't the Mormons consider Mormon?)

Conant told BuzzFeed that Rubio never requested to have his name removed from the LDS Church's records, which means officially, the church is likely still counting him as a member.

Now, some in the media are already claiming that it's unfair to call Rubio a Mormon since he was just a kid at the time, it would be more accurate to say "his parents were Mormon."

Really? Have any of you guys ever been to church? You're not NOT a Christian until you're 18 years of age and can decide for yourself. That's just not the way it works. Not to mention, according to the Buzzfeed story, Rubio enthusiastically embraced his new Mormon faith.

And for a number of years during his early adolescence, that meant enthusiastically encouraging participation in his family's new church.

"He was totally into it," Michelle recalled. "He's always been into religion. Football and religion. Those were his things."

Over the years, he and his cousins frequented LDS youth groups, attended church most Sundays—often walking to the chapel because his mother didn't know how to drive—and latched on to the mainstream Mormon culture that was easily accessible in LDS-heavy Nevada.

Man, there is a lot about this man's background that just isn't adding up lately. First we find out that he lied about his family's background in Cuba, and now that he was raised, and technically still is, a Mormon.

This complicates things, to say the least, for Rubio's vice presidential chances. Is Mitt Romney seriously going to have a double Mormon ticket, while trying to convince the country that he's not the Mormon candidate?

So did Marco Rubio every participate in any baptisms for the dead? Read the rest of this post...

US jobless claims hold steady at four year low

Somewhere a Republican candidate just cried a little. Bloomberg:

The number of Americans filing first-time claims for jobless benefits last week held at a four- year low and consumers became more confident, indicating an improving labor market may boost household spending.

Applications (INJCJC) for unemployment insurance benefits were unchanged in the week ended Feb. 18 at 351,000, the fewest since March 2008, Labor Department figures showed today. The Bloomberg Consumer Comfort Index rose to minus 38.4 in the week to Feb. 19, the strongest reading since April 2008.

Read the rest of this post...

Santorum and the sadoerotic pleasures of Opus Dei

As we know, Rick Santorum is obsessed with sex. Specifically he believes that the sexual pleasures of other people are his business.

Where does this desire to control the sexual activities of others come from? Controlling the sex lives of others is itself a sexual thrill in itself for some people. Consider the following:

This is a cilice which can be yours for a mere $130. It is worn with the spikes inward to 'mortify the flesh'. The supplier has two pages of pictures of similar merchandise including hair shirts and 'the discipline':

You can even buy a book to keep all your toys in:

The style of photography used is essentially the same as you will see on this site or this one. Its the same sensuously narrow depth of field used for romantic portraits, pornography and erotic merchandise ranging from food to dildos. The photographer clearly understood the essential nature of the goods on offer.

Santorum denies being an actual member of Opus Dei, the Catholic cult whose members are required to use these devices every day. But he is a supporter and sent two of his boys to an Opus Dei school.

Now I am the last person to condemn a person for what they do in bed or in their basement. The members of Opus Dei are all consenting adults and if they want to flagellate themselves for Jesus that is their business. But they don't get to lecture the rest of us on sexual morality, nor does the church that sanctions this organization, nor does Rick Santorum.

In George Orwell's 1984, Julia sums up the party: "All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simpIy sex gone sour." The same can be said of the Catholic church.

Update: link is fixed. Read the rest of this post...

Taibbi on Iran: "Another March to War?"

I've written, with a great deal of trepidation, about an apparent run-up to war with Iran, and the steady beat of scary articles — first here, then here. There's an even later article in the New York Times (discussed below) with the same drum-beat sounds in it.

Is a "new product" being rolled out? Is the battlefield of public opinion being "prepared"?

(If you don't know, the phrase "preparing the battlefield" is mil-speak (heh) for carpet-bombing the enemy prior to sending in ground troops. That enemy, in this case, is U.S. public opinion.)

Now comes Taibbi fils (yes, there's a Taibbi père, also a journalist). Writing in his Rolling Stone blog, Matt has this to say (my emphasis and some reparagraphing throughout):

You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms.

CNN’s house blockhead, the Goldman-trained ex-finance professional Erin Burnett, came out with a doozie of a broadcast yesterday, a Rumsfeldian jeremiad against the Iranian threat would have fit beautifully in the Saddam’s-sending-drones-at-New-York halcyon days of late 2002.

Note: Erin's only a blockhead if she believes her own spill; if she doesn't, she's a media-based operative. Big difference.

Taibbi then quotes Glenn Greenwald on Erin Burnett's pronouncements:

It’s the sort of thing you would produce if you set out to create a mean-spirited parody of mindless, war-hungry, fear-mongering media stars, but you wouldn’t dare go this far because you’d want the parody to have a feel of realism to it, and this would be way too extreme to be believable.

She really hauled it all out: WMDs! Terrorist sleeper cells in the U.S. controlled by Tehran! Iran’s long-range nuclear missiles reaching our homeland!!!! She almost made the anti-Muslim war-mongering fanatic she brought on to interview, Rep. Peter King, appear sober and reasonable by comparison.

As Count Floyd would say, "Oooh, scary."

What's the proscribed Iranian threat?

When you get to the imagined Iranian threat, it comes down to two carefully fogged-up concepts.

■ Nuclear weapons (capability), as opposed to, well, actual weapons. Taibbi:

In other words, “If Iran were to decide to be capable of making nuclear weapons, it would be capable of making nuclear weapons.” Unless I'm missing something, that’s a statement that would be true of almost any industrialized country, wouldn't it?

The fog in this case is the word "capability." The U.S. position has gone from opposing "nukes" for Iran, to opposing "nuke capability."

Listen for it, or you'll miss it — the word "nukes" lays down the fog for the rubes to get lost in.

■ Iranian (counter-)strike, as opposed to striking first. Taibbi again:

The news “hook” in most all of these stories is that intelligence reports reveal Iran is “willing” to attack us or go to war – but then there’s usually an asterisk next to the headline, and when you follow the asterisk, it reads something like, “In the event that we attack Iran first.”

He quotes this NBC report as an example (Taibbi's emphasis): “Within just the past few days, Iranian leaders have threatened that if attacked, they would launch those missiles at U.S. targets.”

More fog, of course. You just have to listen hard for the "counter" in "counter-strike" (they whisper it).

But this is at the level of ideas and media analysis. Let's look at the only thing that matters — power.

Will we, the U.S. or Israel, pull the trigger on Iran?

Will the U.S. and/or its mannequin/master Israel actually first-strike Iran? Taibbi surprisingly fails to answer that question, given his headline. He gets in some nice reflections on the Tolstoy-inspired madness of the media, then closes.

So here's me. Based on my eleven-dimensional reading of this recent Iran article, another major one, this time by Dennis Ross in the New York Times, I believe it's now a two-handed game between Netanyahu and Obama, with Iran being the downer bull they're jointly punishing.

Netanyahu's position — "If you keep kicking Iran, I don't have to pull out this gun and make him really mad." Ross says it this way:

Israel worries that it could lose its military option, and it may be reluctant to wait for diplomacy to bear fruit. That said, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have consistently called for “crippling sanctions,” reflecting a belief that Iran’s behavior could be changed with sufficient pressure. The fact that crippling sanctions have finally been applied means that Israel is more likely to give these sanctions and the related diplomatic offensive a chance to work. And it should.

"Crippling sanctions" means just that; think I was joking with my "punishing the downer bull" metaphor?

Shorter Ross: "Bibi to Barack, don't make me do something stupid; it's all on you if I do."

Want proof? Who is Dennis Ross? From the article's bio line:

He is now a counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

And who is the Washington Institute for Near East Policy? An AIPAC think tank:

Martin Indyk, an Australian-trained academic and former deputy director of research for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), helped found WINEP in 1985. ... Because of his affiliation with AIPAC, Indyk felt his research wasn't being taken seriously and so started WINEP to convey an image that was "friendly to Israel but doing credible research on the Middle East in a realistic and balanced way." ...

WINEP is focused on influencing the media and U.S. executive branch; this is unlike AIPAC, which attempts to influence the U.S. Congress.

Don't forget that word "image" — it's the second-most important word in the description, after "AIPAC". It's always about manipulation of images, isn't it.

QED? It seems so to me. Your move, Mr. President. Just remember, one false move and this one comes home.

GP Read the rest of this post...

GOP debate audience boos CNN for daring to ask question about birth control

The Republicans on the Hill just held a hearing on birth control (all male, of course) and I believe I read they're planning a second. And the GOP presidential candidates had a field day going after President Obama for doing what Mitt Romney did in Massachusetts, requiring employer health insurance plans to cover birth control. So clearly the Republicans have made a huge issue out of birth control these past few weeks.

So then why did the GOP debate audience last night boo CNN for asking a question about birth control? The reaction suggested the crowd felt it was a "gotcha" topic. But how could it be? It's the GOP that made this a huge topic of debate the past few weeks. Or is the audience embarrassed by the issue, because they're losing badly on it in recent polls (even Catholics agree with President Obama over their own bishops)?

Well, if you're too embarrassed to be asked about social issues, then don't put them at the top of your agenda. I'd have liked to have seen John King fight back a little on that one.  He should have asked the candidates if they think it's fair to ask about birth control, then tripped them up with their own statements over the past two weeks about President Obama's contraceptive insurance plan.

More from the Daily Beast:

Earlier, moderator John King raised the question of birth control—eliciting boos from the audience. Meanwhile, the candidates were frothing at the mouth. Newt Gingrich immediately lashed out at King, demanding why moderators never asked President Obama about his vote as an Illinois senator for “infanticide.” He then called Obama a baby killer and said he was more of an extremist than any of the GOP candidates. Romney chimed in to say there’s never been an administration in America more opposed to religious freedom. Santorum argued that teen sexuality should be a reason why contraception shouldn’t be free, and then shifted his focus to defunding Planned Parenthood and fractured families.

What a surprise, Newt Gingrich angrily lashes out at the moderator. Can you imagine what it must be like to be married to this guy? Read the rest of this post...

Ratings agency forecasts default in Greece

The track record of the ratings agencies has been poor, but they are right on this call. It is obvious that a Greek default is “highly likely in the near term” as Fitch says.

“In Fitch's opinion, the exchange, if completed, would constitute a 'distressed debt exchange' (DDE) in line with its criteria and consequently yesterday's announcements set in motion the agency's process for reviewing Greece's issuer and debt securities ratings,” Fitch said in a statement.

Read the rest of this post...

French, British journalists killed during Syrian bombing of Homs

Another day, another bloodbath in Syria.

The veteran Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin and the French photographer Remi Ochlik have been killed in the Syrian city of Homs when an artillery shell hit the house in which they were staying. Two other foreign reporters as well as seven activists from the ravaged Bab al-Amr neighbourhood were also wounded on Wednesday in the deadliest attack on western media since the Syrian uprising began almost one year ago. At least three Syrian activists were also killed, all of whom had played prominent roles in chronicling the regime's assault Homs over the past four months. One of those killed was the video blogger, Rami al-Sayed, also known as Syria Pioneer, who had uploaded to the internet at least 200 videos of death and destruction in his neighbourhood.

Read the rest of this post...