Frank Church NOT 'The Last Honest Man'

The Last Honest Man: The CIA, the FBI, the Mafia, and the Kennedys―and One Senator's Fight to Save Democracy by James Risen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book when I saw it on the library shelf, being old enough to remember Frank Church, definitely old enough to remember the multifaceted 1976 Democratic presidential primary battle, and also having read a lot of Risen's reporting in various outlets.

From the Prologue, I figured this would probably be a good four-star, but not a five-star.

First, I’ve long held, from what I’ve read, that the Pike Committee did more than the Church Committee. So said Mark Ames. Risen disagrees. I've read other material elsehwere to that effect.

That said, he doesn’t even mention the House Government Information Subcommittee of Bella Abzug. In fact, Risen doesn’t mention Abzug, period. James Bamford does mention her extensively in Puzzle Palace, calling it, vis-à-vis BOTH Church and Pike Comms, “like an ammunition-laden cargo plane out of control,” from the spooks point of view. Bamford of course talks about both full commissions.

Second, he, and he’s not alone, talk about the Church Committee “reining in” the intelligence state. Well, that was a low bar to hurdle and was also relatively temporary. And, the battle was halfway lost at the time and Church signed off on the final version of the Church Committee report, establishing the Intelligence Committees in House and Senate. The final version of the report refused to require the CIA to give the Intell folks advance notice of covert operations. It also had other loopholes, and per that link, many staffers excoriated the committee. Oh, the vote was unanimous, so that includes Church. (The Senate Government Operations Committee, or more precisely, the Senate Committee on Government Operations, was the Church Committee. That said, as it had 11 members, I'm not sure where a 12-0 vote comes from, nor am I sure what the name of Charles Percy, who was never on the committee, is doing there.)  In other words, per his own committee staffers, at least metaphorically, he wasn't all that honest of a man.

The claims of Church and others that this would tread on the sacrosanct Constitutional separation of powers and involve one branch of the Trinity interfering with another was and is laughable. Congresses regularly set restrictions on presidential power, as do courts. In fact, just a couple of years prior, the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon's "impoundment" of Congressional appropriations was unconstitutional.

The real issue, as I see it, is that senators didn't really want to reign in the CIA that much, and didn't want to be called bad guys for allegedly putting handcuffs on the CIA. This, in fact, is a charge that Steve Symms raised against Church in his successful 1980 run to unseat him. Even beyond that, I think these, and most senators, wanted "plausible deniability" vis a vis the CIA.

So, with that, we've fallen out of the four-star range on just how much Church really did, as well as, metaphorically, just how honest he was or was not. And, with that, like one other three-star reviewer, I thought the title stood out like a sore thumb and was off-putting, whether Risen chose that, or his editor.

Beyond that, per "The Last Great Senate," there were other senators in 1980 who, overall, were in the same general range of honesty as Church. So, again, why the title?

Related to that? Yeah, Church may have in private been an early opponent of Vietnam, but for some time after voting for the Tonkin Gulf resolution, those concerns stayed private. As for the two who voted against LBJ? Ernest Gruening got lied out of the Senate in 1968 by Mike Gravel and his campaign (and lie Gravel did, about that and many other things) and Wayne Morse was the type of independent minded person beyond Church's idol, William Borah, let alone Church himself.  I mean, the vote split has even 10 "not voting" senators, nine of them Democrats. Church couldn't even do that. And, where was Church after Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1967 Riverside sermon?

And, why the subject? Yes, I know Risen is big in intelligence community reporting. But, per Ames' link, why not a bio of Pike?

With Church (and this would be far more true with Pike), I think Risen got his ass in a crack. There's not that much on which to hang one's hat for a Church bio other than the Church Committee. Well, then, in that case, don't make it a bio. Focus on the Church and Pike committees.

As for the 1976 campaign? I disagree with Risen's implication that Church likely would have won California had Brown not have made his late entry into the race. Mo Udall was the most union-favored remaining candidate at this point, and from the neighboring state of Arizona. Plus, Carter would have campaigned harder in California without Brown there, and without Brown having won Maryland, probably would have been in a position to win the nomination right there, without George Wallace and Scoop Jackson ceding their delegates.

One other error?

Page 243, the Sacheen Littlefeather who stood in for Marlon Brando at the 1972 Oscars is a pretendian, not an American Indian, and has been suspected long before Risen wrote. The NY Times even had a news story .

That said, ignore wingnut 3-star and lower reviews like this MAGAts one. Surprised she gave it 3 stars rather than lower.


View all my reviews

Gellman and Snowden

Barton Gellman's new book about Snowden is finally coming out. The Atlantic has an excerpt. The excerpt is about Gellman's own history of being surveilled, and is scary as shit.

Wired has another excerpt, with Gellman talking about what questions talking to Snowden led him to next. The idea of contact chaining, even if not abused to the degree the NSA could have abused it, is insidious indeed.

Given that Snowden's own book raised more questions than it answered, per my review, I'm interested.

Update, Sept. 21, 2023: Bruce Schneier talks about his experience of working with Greenwald, how both Greenwald and Barton Gellman held back files from their initial reporting and more.

Ladies and gents, I present the brilliant US national security establishment

Reality Winner, ex-NSA noob

In the wake of the recently announced documents leak arrest, these initial observations about "Reality Winner" and in turn, reflections on the state of the American establishment in general.

1. The National Security Agency, due to both sides of the duopoly and their hypercapitalist fetish for privatization, has to use ever more private contractors. (Remember, Snowden was one.)
2. These contractors, in their own idiocy, hire ever more younger employees, and in turn give ever more of them Top Secret clearances (remember Snowden) on the thinnest of grounds and at pre-30 ages when they can’t have earned them.
3. In this case, the idiot, with the charming name of Reality Winner, was dumb enough to email the Intercept from a work email. She was also dumb enough not to realize the document she sent really wasn’t worth all the trouble to which she went.
4. Sidebar — If the NSA itself weren’t that dumb, I’d almost believe it wrote a fake document to see what “Putin Did It” noob would bite. (FYI, the actual document doesn’t move any actual “Putin Did It” findings one iota forward. Allegedly penetrating 100 election officials out of 3,000-plus county, parish and independent cities that conduct elections? Nothingburger. Plus, the piece is caveated beyond that from here to Sunday.)  Don't believe me? Here's the Intercept's story. Yes, the NSA unequivocally claims the GRU was hacking, but, within that, it's caveated all to hell. Beyond that, the hacking, to the degree it did happen, was after early voting was done in most states that have it. And a bigger derp? The piece quotes Alex Halderman, the Michigan prof who gulled Jill Stein into her recount.
5. Top this all off by one of Glenn Greenwald’s minions at the Intercept, Winner’s media target, sending a photocopy of the document itself back to the NSA when asking for comment. The folds on the doc are what helped lead to Winner’s arrest. Worse? Glenn's staff numnuts also asked another NSA contractor about the doc, Justice says. And, per the Washington Post, that contact burned them; I'm assuming the contact's claim the docs were fake was itself a ruse. Of course, the Intercept ain't alone in being stupid in this way. I present The New York Times outing a CIA officer. Meanwhile, some wagon-circlers on Twitter are claiming this couldn't have been handled any other way. Tosh. Snowden himself might have pointed out some of the mistakes, if he'd been asked, and had wanted to. And an ooops that this isn't a first-time deal:

   .@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

   — John Kiriakou (@JohnKiriakou) June 6, 2017

   Speaking of Snowden ...
6. Regional readers of this blog should remember that I’m not 100 percent convinced of Snowden’s bona fides, anyway. Likewise, I wasn't convinced of Glenn's brilliance on all matters related to this, either. Look up some stuff online from Mark Ames and / or Yasha Levine for more. None of the four bylined reporters are fly-by-night newbies. This is a fuck-up, pure and simple. I mean, I've never heard of sending back a physical copy of an actually leaked document like that. NEVER. Smartly, Greenwald himself is pretty much keeping his yap shut.
7. Does all of this add up to a suggestion for more skepticism? I think not. This is a 20-something Dem voter who surely bought lock, stock and barrel into DNC claims that "Putin Did It." Snowden had more brains than that, though more deviousness as well. Glenn's staff, beyond the dumb shit above, should have read the document more carefully and vetted her background better. Any NSA leaker who normally post to "public" on Facebook is an idiot anyway. But, like Snowden, she's at least a small-l libertarian; at a minimum, she doesn't recognize that Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders aren't that close politically (and neither are Sanders and Ted Cruz; always suspect people with incoherent political beliefs), that Bill Mahar is a racist as well as an idiot, and other things.
8. Sadly, the fact that one of the Intercept's advisers on the story was Halderman now has Stein doubling down on "yes, my recounts." And the Green Party retweeting, just as party staffers had Bob Fitrakis write an uncritical account of the recounts a month ago, about which I blogged. I swear, I get ever closer to moving my official third-party allegiance to the Socialist Party USA.

Ding, dong, the wicked NSA witch is ...

Nowhere near dead, but scrambling and resetting a bit after some of its phone metadata snooping powers were not renewed by midnight Sunday night.

The New York Times reports the Senate will start at it again later today. It notes both the effort of Rand Paul and the miscalculation of Mitch The Turtle McConnell as major factors.

As noted, this isn't that big of a hit. The Justice Department will likely get current investigations grandfathered, and find other workarounds. How much limitations a new bill put on the NSA will be of interest, as will how much McConnell tries to get the House bill largely neutered.

Meanwhile, Dear Leader's team, under "oxymoron," has engaged in mass grandstanding to decry grandstanding on this issue.

We'll probably wind up with something halfway between the current Patriot Act and what the House wanted to cut out, along with NSA cheating.

===

And, in a sidebar note, Huckleberry J. Butchmeup, D-SC, is going to make official his presidential bid. Perry, as I knew he would, has more.

Obama: Cyberwarmonger against North Korea?

In the early days after the Sony data hack and breach was first announced, after giving some, but not full, credence to the originally proposed idea that North Korea was behind the hack, I backed off, and instead attributed it, as did some guesstimate reporting, to one or more disgruntled current or former Sony employees.

First, nobody connected to North Korea mentioned "The Interview" in the first few days, or even first couple of weeks, after the breach became public knowledge. Wired has also addressed this. And, the type of information that was being leaked seemed to fuel the angle of disgruntlement.

But now, the FBI says Kim Jong Un's minions, or minions by extension, did it.

And yet, I'm still not sure.

And I'm not alone. Here's an in-depth analysis refuting the FBI.

Points 1-2 there address the idea that it seems made to look like it came from North Korea by someone who didn't quite know the right imitation.

Points 3-4 cover the revenge factor.

Points 7-8 cover why Obama would want to blame North Korea, at least in part.

But I think this needs to be taken further.

First, let's say the US, specifically the NSA, has in the past 12 months created some shiny new cyberwarfare weaponry. It's been itching for a chance to try it out.

So, instead of "weapons of mass destruction" and "mushroom clouds," we drum up other slanted or false claims and voila!

Second, let's say Dear Leader ... OUR Dear Leader, not Kim Jong Un's dead daddy ... I gave OUR Dear Leader that name ... let's say our Dear Leader is actually playing, if not 10-dimensional chess (at which he sucks) but bank shot pool. Or bow shot diplomacy.

As in, "Hey, Beijing, watch us do this to Pyongyang."

So, while lives may not be lost, cyberwarmongering against North Korea leaves me about as ill at ease as warmongering against Iraq. That said, Democrats right-or-wrong types still refuse to recognize the foreign policy continuities between Dear Leader and Shrub Bush.

Update, Dec. 30: And, the private sector continues to reject our government's claim that North Korea was behind the Sony hack. Assuming that our government was behind NK's Internet shutdown, this makes Obama a cyberwarmonger, does it not?

Well, boo hoo for Sen. Betty Crocker on CIA snooping

Sen. Dianne Feinstein/Mother Jones file photo

I love how, now that it's her and other Congresscritters that have their balls in a vice and tits in a wringer, depending on sex, on federal agencies snooping on them, that Dianne Feinstein, as chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is in high dudgeon. (As for the nickname? Long-standing joke of mine, based on older photos of her.)

Perhaps the CIA is doing stuff that's illegal. Perhaps not. 

On the actual Patriot Act, at least, I highly suspect that, in their rush to be "patriotic" 12-plus years ago, Members of Congress failed to exempt themselves from its provisions, although I'm not at high enough of a pay grade to wade through the whole damned thing right now to prove or disprove that.  Ditto on whether the CIA did anything criminal in the current snooping.

Second, Congresscritters, if you're dumb enough to presume that the CIA, on CIA computers, wouldn't snoop your computer usage? I have beachfront property in Langley, Va., to sell you.

Third, note to David Corn. We're not British, with a "traditional" unwritten constitution evolving over centuries. Given that courts in general and the Supreme Court in particular, as far as matters of precedent, which DO govern constitutional interpretation here in the USofA, whether or not there's a constitutional issue is arguable at best.

Fourth, I also "love" how Betty Crocker is also so worried about leaking. Hey, that's the national sport inside the Beltway, and you know it, because you've done your own fair share.

Fifth, given that Betty Crocker and other Congresscritters, any time some portion of our snooping has come under question from civil libertarians, have simply expanded the law, this is even "richer":

Feinstein said that the CIA appeared to have violated the Fourth Amendment barring unreasonable searches and seizures—and perhaps other federal laws and a presidential executive order prohibiting the CIA from domestic searches and surveillance.

Sorry, Betty, but that falls under the Patriot Act, too, I'm sure. The CIA is simply making sure you're safe.

Speaking of "expanding the law," remember that Dear Leader himself voted to do that in 2008, when he was still Senator Dear Leader. That would be our President Dear Leader, who's not helping Sen. Betty Crocker much.

Look, if you actually cared about anything beyond Congressional prerogatives, you'd have spoken out about illegal snooping, and spirit-of-illegal snooping, long ago. Ditto on the issue of torture, or, as you probably call it, "enhanced interrogation techniques" that are in the report the CIA won't green-light that lies behind all this.

So, don't worry, folks; Congress will soon exempt itself from all this that it hasn't already, and the outrage will die back down.

Hell, Corn, who knows all this himself, halfway admits it:

Overall, the system of congressional oversight has hardly (as far as the public can tell) been stellar.

As far as I'm concerned, if the NSA, at least, and possibly the CIA, are spying on the rest of us, they can spy on you too, Betty Crocker. 

If you really gave a damn, Sen. Betty Crocker, you'd care about the latest in Edward Snowden's ongoing revelations. But, since you called his leaking "an act of treason," we know you don't. So, yes, per him as well as per me, you're a big effing hypocrite. You're a hypocrite about the snooping and leaking both.

Dammit, California Democrats, get somebody to primary her. If not, Greens, get a credible challenger. Sadly, she was last re-elected in 2012, so, unless she dies off, we're stuck with four-plus years of her to remain.

And, as far as Corn? He's not hugely overrated, but I've found him moderately overrated for years as an investigative reporter on issues like these. (I Tweeted Corn to ask if he, too, has asked Snowden for comment.)

It's the #NSA Santa Tracker, far better than the NORAD Santa Tracker

From the site of Willie Colon, www.williecolon.com

The NORAD Santa Tracker is a lot of fun for parents to play with, whether with their children or on their own. But, in the spirit of remembering that NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command, we can do better.

In that spirit, I introduce the NSA Santa Tracker, run by our beloved National Security Agency.

So, parents and kids, use your National Security Agency Santa Tracker to see if (not "when") Santa's going to visit your house. See, by spying on your, your teachers, and your parents' cell phone, Internet and cable TV habits, Gen. Keith Alexander-Claus really knows that a lot of you have been naughty.

1. Yes, Charlie Smith, that was YOU cheating on that second-grade spelling test last week.

2. Yes, Destiny Jones, that was YOU texting your friends that evil gossip from BuzzFeed - Room 222.

3. Yes, Rodney Drucker, that was YOU staying up late trying to see nudity on Showtime.

4. Yes, Nathan Berg, that was YOU plagiarizing your Duke pre-pre-pre-SAT Talent Search essay from Jonah Lehrer off the Internet.


5. Yes, Violet Hernandez, that was YOU coloring outside the lines on your kindergarten picture.

No presents for YOU!

Of course, the NSA Santa Tracker knows when adults have been been bad, too. And since adults like to let their children believe in Santa in part for the second childhood fun of adults, they need to be part of this too. And President Dear Leader-Claus can punish them, too.

1. Rick Perry, you and George W. Bush just might, both of you two, might have been bad together in the Governor's Mansion in Austin in 1999 or so.  I mean, both of you were male cheerleaders. And, Gen. Keith has the goods. Your punishment? The state of Texas' quasi-official float in next year's Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco will be manned by the two of you. Enjoy the Castro!

2. Speaking of, don't Louie Gohmert and Ted Cruz protest about gays too much? Gen. Keith knows JUST what's behind that word "dominionism." Your presents? An hour-long black Jesus Christmas greetings video from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

3. Dallas County DA Craig Watkins? Gen. Keith knows it's not nice to get some people off death row while at the same time you're still leading the state in executions. So, in the spirit of "Get Off My Lawn" blogger Jim Schutze at the Dallas Observer, you get a whole set of Jim Schutze lawn jockeys, all with motion sensors triggering recordings of him reading all his columns about you.

4. Jerry Jones? Gen. Keith knows you've been very, very, very bad as Dallas Cowboys' "general manager" for about 15 years or so. About as bad as your fellow owner, Dan Snyder of the Washington Redskins, or Daceys, as Bill Simmons calls them. So? You and Danny Boy get to change franchises for a year. Whether your respective fan bases will like that or loathe it remains to be seen. Oh, and as your first acts, you can fire Jason Garrett and Mike Shanahan at your new teams and have them hired at your old ones.

5. Wendy Davis? Gen. Keith not only has the record of you pandering to moderates, with a chaser of Texas exceptionalism, in Waxahachie, he's got the goods from your campaign office on what was behind that decision, and how it could play out in the rest of your campaign. So, Gen. Keith got you Brandon Parmer as your Green Party gubernatorial opponent, and nada from a certain blogger in your attempt to pair a campaign donation request with a survey.

Judge slaps down NSA phone snooping — will Obama listen?

Calling it "almost Orwellian," Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia has given an official slapdown to the National Security Agency's snooping on domestic phone calls.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

Take that, Barack Obama, Keith Alexander, James Clapper et al.

Judge Leon stayed his injunction ordering the NSA to stop the snooping at issue in the case for six months, allowing time for appeal. Which will certainly happen.

Now, let's hope it holds up through the appeals process. And that, if it does, Obama actually responds in the appropriate way. Because, like Andy Jackson vs. John Marshall over the Cherokee Removal, I'm seriously not sure he will.

No, that's not hyperbole. Should Judge Leon's ruling hold up all the way through the Supreme Court, I'm not sure President Obama will fully obey it.

And, given the bipartisan War on Terra establishment, I'm not sure a majority of Congress will challenge him on that.

That said, this is just an injunction. But, it's the first time that the spying-industrial complex has lost in court. Here's more from Judge Leon:

“The question that I will ultimately have to answer when I reach the merits of this case someday is whether people have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the government, without any basis whatsoever to suspect them of any wrongdoing, collects and stores for five years their telephony metadata for purposes of subjecting it to high-tech querying and analysis without any case-by-case judicial approval,” he wrote. “For the many reasons set forth above, it is significantly likely that on that day, I will answer that question in plaintiffs’ favor.”

Bingo.

That said, given that this just an injunction, the full process might not wind down until near the time Dear Leader leaves office.

Here's Leon's reasoning, which, as the Times notes, rejects previous claims of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as to what the NSA can "vacuum":

In laying out his conclusion, Judge Leon rejected the Obama administration’s argument that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, meant that there is no Fourth Amendment protections for call metadata — information like the numbers called and received and the date, time and duration of the call, but not the content.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which secretly approved the N.S.A. program after hearing arguments from only the Justice Department, has maintained that the 1979 decision is a controlling precedent that shields the program from Fourth Amendment review. But Judge Leon said the scope of the program and the way people use phones today distinguishes the N.S.A. data collection from the type at issue in that case.

It's going to be tough sledding to have Leon's reasoning stand up, per what Smith v Maryland says. But, it's just possible. A pen register recorded much less than today's phone metadata. And, that doesn't even touch on things like using GPS tracking to tie phone calls, duration, etc., to caller location.

At least we have "some hope." And, Leon's ruling will force SCOTUS, eventually, to consider modernizing its thought and rulings in this area in general.

NSA in Dutch with Dianne Feinstein

Sen. Dianne Feinstein/Guardian photo

Sen. Betty Crocker has been probably the most ardent blank-check defender of any and every National Security Agency spying program since 9/11. So, it's a surprising twist indeed when Feinstein says she strongly opposes spying on foreign leaders.

And, as I blogged yesterday, the White House's original non-denial denials eventually morphed into semi-explicit admissions of guilt about spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others.

Meanwhile, the super-snoopers have come up with a new denial, which may actually be true, yet a non-denial denial at the same time.

In France and Spain, the agency says those countries' intelligence agencies were the spies of record.

This may well be true. In Britain, we know that General Communications Headquarters has a formal agreement with the NSA; something at least halfway similar also exists with Canada, Australia and New Zealand. That said, without going into details, Anglo-American sharing of intelligence gathering has long been known, and has been suspected of being pretty deep.

So, a few takeaways.

First, if true, this is like some European countries, in other instances, hiding behind the skirts of NATO, or in France's case, hiding behind the US's Security Council vetos at the UN.

Second, if this is, per the claims of NSA head Keith Alexander, based on misinterpretation of one of those magic slides of Edward Snowden, I'm sure we'll hear more from Snowden soon enough.

Third, this is still only France and Spain. Alexander's latest claim doesn't govern Germany. And therefore, doesn't fully address Sen. Betty Crocker's pique.

Fourth, we still have no indication that in France or Spain, even, national intelligence agencies would have spied on their own heads of state.

Fifth, there's no indication, even if Alexander has some truth, as to how much of this spying would have been done anyway, and how much was on some sort of contract to the NSA.

Sixth, everybody's linking to the Wall Street Journal, whose news page has become more and more politicized under the Reign of Murdoch. Let's hold off on assigning too high of truth value to the story, eh?

Seventh, to the degree this is true, per my first takeaway, this is as ugly as European countries bitching about extraordinary renditions by the CIA a decade ago, until it became clear that some of them (et tu, Sweden of Julian Assange charges) were willing participants in enabling this.

Eighth, and last for now: This is going to get uglier yet, if there's an ounce of truth in the WSJ story.

===

Per a friend on Facebook, though, don't expect Dianne Feinstein's touching concern for Angela Merkel being in the NSA's gunsights to extend to We the People, though.

A UK-EU showdown may be shaping up over cybersnooping

And, it won't be about the Euro, or a Tobin tax, or other financial measures that get the City of London and the Conservative Party up in arms.

Rather, the UK-US special relationship vs. UK membership in the European Union may be at risk over the National Security Agency's cybersnooping, and the active participation in that of Britian's Government Communications Headquarters, which Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian know all about.

The "push"?

A new EU law specifically designed (and carefully designed, one hopes) to fight such cybersnooping when it intrudes on personal privacy.

European Union lawmakers on Monday were set to approve sweeping new data protection rules to strengthen online privacy, and sought to outlaw most data transfers to other countries' authorities to prevent spying.

The legislation was widely expected to pass a committee vote late Monday. Still, it is likely to be amended later since it also requires approval by Parliament's plenary and the EU's 28 member states. Lawmakers hope to conclude the process before the end of their term in May.

And, those last two sentences are where Merrie Olde England comes into play.

More of the details:

In response to the revelations of the National Security Agency's online spying activities, lawmakers also toughened the initial draft regulation, prepared by the European Commission, to make sure companies no longer share European citizens' data with authorities of a third country, unless explicitly allowed by EU law or an international treaty.

That means a U.S. tech company handing over data to U.S. authorities, including information on its European customers, might be violating EU law.

That said, the law was originally targeted at for-profit companies gathering too much data, and using it for too many hypercapitalist reasons. The toughening in this area comes to the 500 million residents of the EU courtesy Edward Snowden.

That said, could this be a coalition breaker in Britain? Would Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg actually find a spine, or cojones? What about some backbencher Conservatives? Will British in general, at least in the posh class, resent Brussels trying to force it to have elements of a written constitution? Stay tuned.

That said, as I noted, this was originally written to be a consumer protection law. And, with updating, even just there, it's a damn skippy bit of legislation. Also, even there, it's something that America's posh political class will never let see the light of day. Here's the consumer protection details:

The legislation, among other things, aims at enabling users to ask companies to fully erase their personal data, handing them a so-called right to be forgotten. It would also limit user profiling, require companies to explain their use of personal data in detail to customers, and mandate that companies seek prior consent. In addition, most businesses would have to designate or hire data protection officers to ensure the regulation is properly applied.

Grave compliance failures could be subject to a fine worth up to 5 percent of a company's annual turnover (revenue in European financial lingo) — which could be hundreds of millions of dollars, or even a few billion dollars for Internet giants such as Google.

Boom. And, revenue, not profit.

There's also this:

Consumers, in turn, would be able to file complaints with their national authority, regardless of where the targeted service provider is based. For example that would make it easier for an Austrian consumer to complain about a social media site such as Facebook, which has its EU headquarters in Ireland.

Picture if I could file a complaint about Google, or Facebook, here in Texas. (Of course, that provision would also never see the light of day in the US.)

Oh, the EU has its flaws. It's susceptible to lobbyists itself at times. (That's why, with even more Big Pharma companies headquartered in the EU + Switzerland, its pharmaceutical regulation, as is the UK's as a member state, is even more toothless than here in the US. And, while it's talked tough with Google in the last couple of years, both it and member states such as Germany haven't acted a lot tougher than the US.)

But, overall, it has a stronger regulatory environment than the US, and the financial muscle to make it mean something.

Well, except for even laxer controls on lobbyists, it has a stronger regulatory environment.

Is the #Apple goose cooked? #iPhone5s AND #iPhone5c? What?

To all the Apple folks: Is Steve Jobs turning over in his grave at the marketing idea of introducing a new iPhone and a cut-rate model of said phone at the same time?

I just don't get this idea, which seems totally true.

I'm not Jobs (or I'd be dead and unable to write this, even from my iCoffin) and I'm not current Apple CEO Tim Cook, Jobs' anointed heir. And, while I don't totally hate Apple smugness, or the smugness of at least some latte-sipping, Volvo-driving, iPhone-using, Meyer-lemon-squeezing neoliberals, I do dislike stereotyped versions of all that enough to bust Apple in the chops when the chance comes along.

And, I know Apple doesn't normally do something like this. Most tech companies don't. Imagine Jeff Bezos introducing a new version of the Kindle Fire, then at the same techie meeting, also saying, "Hey, we also have this cut-rate Kindle Smoulder." Nope, nope, nope.

I'm not a financial analyst, but, given that many have been bearish on Apple in general and Cook in particular recently,  I'd call this a black mark —bet-hedging worries usually don't play well with Wall Street, I think.

That said, given that Apple fanboys and fangirls easily can be punked, I suppose they'll find a way to spin this news. That includes even alleged skeptics who have done similarly before. Right, Chris Mooney?

Meanwhile, per blog posts I've written involving Apple's background in online infowars and the dark side of the Internet, things like a fingerprint log-in code? First, Apple's not read the science that fingerprints aren't quite so unique. Second, I wouldn't trust that Apple wouldn't save that biometric information elsewhere, no matter what it claims. Third, I wouldn't trust at all that the NSA wouldn't then try to get it.

Sadly, other "mobile device" companies will probably pick up on this horrible idea.

The Dark Side of the Internet — military astroturf bots

In part 2 of this ongoing series, I called out Clay Shirkey (and boy extension, Michael Shermer, Jeff Jarvis and other Internet utopians) for their failure to wrestle with the idea that Western democracies, especially now that we are in a "War on Terror" will have little compunction about Internet-spying and games-playing on their own people. Beyond the history of 19th-century Europe, the First Red Scare and the War on Drugs in the U.S. would have provided enough food and information on those lines for thought.

In current times, I mentioned the HBGary Federal e-mail promoting its ability to set up cyberbots, or astroturfing bots, to "game" liberal blogs and other sites on the Internet.

Well, now it's happening.

The U.S. Army is devising software to do just that. Now, the Pentagon says it will be used only overseas.

Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.

Centcom said it was not targeting any US-based web sites, in English or any other language, and specifically said it was not targeting Facebook or Twitter.

Right. Remember the quaint idea that the CIA would only operate overseas? That one was shredded 40 years ago. And, we saw how the NSA shredded that overseas-local distinction with its warrantless domestic wiretapping.

Remember also this is the same Army that recently got busted for having brainwashed U.S. Senators about Afghanistan.

Notify Clay Shirky, Michael Shermer and other Internet utopians ASAP.

(Hat tip Discover magazine.)

Be doubly scared of NSA

Oh, and thanks again, Obama and other Democratic FISA 45 percenters

If James Bamford, the man who has written the books three books on the secret dealings of the National Security Agency, was caught off guard by last week’s news of spying on Americans overseas by the NSA, you should be scared indeed:

Wired’s Noah Shachtman: It sounds like there were lots of people in the NSA that were spying on Americans.

Bamford: Well, I assume that they were. I mean, I don't think I managed to find the only two in the whole U.S. government that were doing it. No, I think I found two that were outraged enough to speak publicly about it. And I did actually interview other people, too — but they wouldn't go on the record or anything.

Shorter takes from Bamford:
• NSA director Michael Hayden has no backbone against Cheney et al;
• Hayden has compartmentalized the NSA to an extreme;
• TSP is just an umbrella name for a whole range of spy programs.

Here’s more about Operation Highlander, the illegal NSA spying on Americans run out of Fort Gordon, Ga.

NSA revised TIA program, Carnivore

The National Security Agency has been ignoring the shreds of surveillance law that still exist, including essentially running the Total Information Awareness Program, a successor to the FBI’s Carnivore and more.

Now, the NSA supposedly, on e-mail, can’t read the e-mail itself. But, it can collect all the data from the e-mail, such as time sent, source, destination, and keep that on file, and do who knows what. If it sees a pattern, then, via Terrorist Surveillance Program, it can eavesdrop.

So word on this from Silvestre Reyes, still pushing for a telco immunity deal.

Remember, NSA illegal snooping started from a Bill Clinton background

If it’s correct that the National Security Agency started warrantless telecom snooping on Americans less than a month after Bush took office, remember this one thing:

Those were still Bill Clinton appointees at the top of the NSA at that time.

True, the Bush Administration may have been seen by the NSA as offering a greener light than the Clinton Administration, but it seems to me like this was primarily NSA initiative involved. And that’s NSA initiative by people appointed by Bill Clinton. Remember, FISA requests and other things were ramped up greatly in the last two years of Big Bill’s administration, basically from the time he fired cruise missiles at a Sudanese milk factory on.

True, the attack on the USS Cole may have ramped up urgency even more, but a Bill Clinton NSA coming up with the original warrantless snooping makes it no more legitimate than a George W. Bush NSA initiative.

And that, my friends, is why Congressional Democrats probably won’t push too, too hard for NSA documents from this period as a trade off for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act renewal.

Your friendly, next door NSA

Who could oppose giving these folks a little bit more, or a whole lot more, FISA powers?