One of the most dry and comprehensive debunkings of 9/11 conspiracy theories can be found here. (That's the first of the 3 part series.) The series is a debunking of the "Loose Change" video, complete with time indexes of the claims being debunked. This one made me laugh:
00:12:30The filmmakers quote an October 12, 2001 Parade interview with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in which Rumsfeld says, "Here we're talking about plastic knives, and using an American Airlines flight filled with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building..."
I am not sure what the point is of citing this simple slip of the tongue, unless the filmmakers mean to imply that one of the chief plotters of the most extensive, diabolical and secret conspiracies in the history of the human race accidentally gave the whole thing away in a quote to Parade magazine.
(As excellent as it is, I get the feeling it won't change this guy's mind.)
Google news on Peralta and you'll find only a few items. You'll find more from around the time of the Battle of Fallujah but not much esle. Rafael Peralta doesn't even have a Wikipedia entry.
But my kids will know Rafael Peralta - I'll make sure of it.
*** The Commissar examines one argument against global warming and finds it wanting.
*** Meanwhile, Florida Cracker fires off some zingers:
Every time Al Gore gets on a plane, a polar bear drowns.
I'm not sure of my opinion on global warming, but I know entertaining prose when I see it.
"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect." ... Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.
Now if only she didn't make me want to barricade myself in a bathroom with a can of Pringles and a loaded Sig Sauer, chambered and itching to deliver vengeance against those plotting against me.*
In all seriousness, this contrary result reminds me of oddstudies that indicate that sun-exposed construction workers have lower rates of melanoma, when other studies - as well as conventional expectations - display the opposite result. Aside from the potential influences of study design or a zillion random factors, I'd wonder if there isn't some delicate balance in the level of a given carcinogenic activity; namely, a threshold under which it produces an immune or other metabolic response that confers ultimately protective effect vs. a constant exposure that overwhelms a DNA's ability to repair itself and ultimately causes cancer. Given that so many metabolic processes are a delicate balancing act that strives towards a particular "set point," with the body having limited defense mechanisms, this wouldn't shock me. It would present an additional avenue of inquiry - not only what's in the weed, but how much and when the users smoke. But I'm just spitballin' here ...
"Some of my best friends are Englishmen," continued Maturin. "Yet even the most valuable have this same vicious inclination to make a confused bellowing when they are happy. It is harmless enough in their own country, where the diet deadens the sensibilities, but it travels badly: it is perceived as a superabundancy of arrogance, and is resented more than many worse crimes. The Spaniard is a vile colonist, murderous, rapacious, cruel; but he is not heard to laugh. His arrogance is of a common, universal kind, and his presence is not resented in the same way as an Englishman's. Take the case of this island alone: it is scarcely a decade since the Navy rescued the people from the horrible tyranny of the French and filled the place with wealth rather than carrying away the treasures of the churches by the shipload, but already there is a great and growing discontent, and I believe the laughter has much to do with it."
-- O'Brian, writing Stephen Maturin's situationally testy perspective on culturally-based anti-Anglicanism in an early 19th Century Maltese port in 1983's Treason's Harbor. I believe that this description has certain amusing parallels 23 (and "196") years later.
By Glenn Kessler Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 26, 2006; Page A04
President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair once bestrode the globe as powerful leaders who spoke boldly of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Now, dragged down by popular discontent over their adventure in Iraq, both have reached the lowest point of their careers.
I'm confused - is there an "editorial," "Op-Ed," or even mealy-mouthed "analysis" disclaimer that I'm missing in the run-up to the article's text? I'm not disparaging any rational analysis of Bush or Blair's current popularity (though I'd argue that the degree of Bush's problems have much more to do with immigration than anything else), but "over their adventure in Iraq[?]" The derision leaks off the page in an ostensible "news" hole, spurring reminiscence of what ticked me off so bad in '04. How superficial leftist snark boldly creeps into mainstream news - in a comparatively professional paper like the WaPo - will always baffle me, even as it infuriates.
*** Let's get some homework out of the way: I promised a series of posts about the NSA data mining program ... and I lied. But this deception wasn't born of malice, rather incorrigible laziness of both the intellectual and physical varieties - my typing fingers hurt something fierce, and it's well known that the act of poring through legal statutes eats little pieces of one's soul.
That said, I owe dorkafork his due, as the lil' scamp's post on the legal angle holds up in the face of all that I've read. Summarizing telephone record data mining: not afoul of the Fourth Amendment, may or may not snub FISA (opinions vary) and looks likely to violate the letter of several other statutes, including the Pen Register statute dorkafork mentioned, though perhaps not the intent - if identities are never attached to the numbers. All of these statutes can be circumvented by a warrant - though it's highly impractical to tell a judge that you're investigating all phone numbers in North America regarding a criminal investigation - or potentially by a claim of Executive wartime authority found in the Constitution.
Which, you know, is exactly the catch-all that gets certain leftists to convulse and spit frothy Beer Hall Putsch references, as well as legitimately presents the greatest avenue for abuse of executive power. Orin Kerr's got a detailed post on the matter, if that's your bag.
Of course, none of this changes my opinion on the utility or base necessity of data mining something as simple as phone record patterns as an element of domestic defense, and thus, I still regard dorkafork's overall position as nuttier than squirrel shit.
*** Donnah discovers a surprisingly engaging and difficult internet time waster.
*** Michele has changed her blog name and URL from "A Small Victory" to "Faster than the World," now featuring punk rock and fast cars.
Beats politics, though I've always found Orrin Hatch to be sort of "punk rock."
Its headquarters are at a secret location, but Ninjasoc, Canterbury University's hottest new social club, has no trouble signing up new members.
Started as a joke, the four "founding fathers" are astounded to have more than 250 members on the books this year.
Ninjasoc president and engineering student Richard Flett, 21, with only his eyes visible through a black mask, said: "We expected 50 people and it ended up being 250."
Michael Down, 21, another founder member, studying fourth-year commerce and law and brandishing a plastic ninja sword, said the club, with 40 per cent female membership, tapped into students' secret need to be ninjas. I guess we appeal to people.
... but they suffer from totally lame execution:
However, so far martial-arts skills are limited to instruction on the art of tying jumpers around heads to make a ninja mask and "getting pumped". ... "I don't think they are a secret bunch of real ninjas. I think they do stuff that is more ninja-aimed. I don't really know what, but they have had a couple of barbecues. Ninjas have to eat," he said.
Being a ninja without the ability to pass through walls, kill one's own students and pluck a man's eye from his skull is like being a dog that hates roast beef, won't chase rabbits and can't lick its own "kibble n' bits." Pointless.
*** Amir Taheri releases a statement about his story concerning an impending Iranian dress code:
Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun.
As far as my article is concerned I stand by it. The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation.
Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. (In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908). I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004.
I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.
Interestingly, the Islamic Republic authorities refuse to issue an official statement categorically rejecting the concept of dhimmitude and the need for marking out religious minorities.
I raised the issue not as a news story, because news of the new law was already several days old, but as an opinion column to alert the outside world to this most disturbing development.
Allah isn't quite buying it. For my part, it seems like there's a solid basis for the thrust of the story (legislation about religiously determined dress codes), but getting "the spirit" of a story right is hardly the standard for adequate journalism. It appears that Taheri strongly asserted potential outcomes of a legit story as facts, and thus ... well, got "ahead of the news cycle," to borrow an unfortunate turn of phrase.
Aziz over at Dean's World takes a harsh line on Taheri and his story, and a very good back-and-forth follows in the comments section.
*** Looks like the Milblogs collective is zeroing in on its first kill, an Iraq war crimes faker in the "Vietnam Winter Soldiers Conference" mold.
Scroll up from that post to witness the progressive*, righteous deconstruction of a likely phony.
* By "progressive" I mean "incremental," rather than the euphemistic self-identifier used by wacky leftists that eat up stories by fake Iraq War veterans.
*** The Commissar is popping popcorn over Truthout's Rove indictment story (emphasis on "story"):
Whatever one's politics, this sure is interesting. I can't ever recall such a potentially explosive story being presented in two wholly contradictory versions for so long. The Lefties must be freaking out. Popcorn, anyone?
My money is on further, catastrophic shaming of Leopold. Or at least what would count as "catastrophic shaming," if indeed there were any real consequences in Blog World ...
*** How much do I hate the Llamas? Well, the second I found out that this real live Civil War-era fort was up for auction on E-Bay, I had only one thought: historical geekenfraude. I must find a way to buy it, thus purchasing the cruel discretion not to invite either of the Llamas to come over and play. Instead, I'd taunt them with a flurry of happy-snaps: "Here's me hanging on the restored 'Napoleon' 12-pounder! Here's me balancing on a parapet! Here's me in full Union general officer regalia, looking intently over the outer wall at sunset! Here's me naked, doing the snoopy danc - hey! How'd that get in there?!"
"Sadr's militia tried to take it over," Capt. Muhamed Eba, 28, explained. "We got here first. They drove up, shouting and honking horns. Then they drove away. They knew they'd lose. We have the Americans." ... Winski stopped in a dusty field filled with taxis waiting for fares from the nearby market. He called out, and a crowd of men and boys gathered around.
"Another IED went off on the river road last night," he said through an interpreter. "You keep telling me it's outsiders. I keep telling you they're not invisible. Someone saw something. My Humvees are armored. Your children are the ones who get hurt."
Men started out-shouting one another. The translator, Muhamed Ayanda (a pseudonym), yelled until he restored order. The Shiite crowd demanded lights on the road. That would fix it. Most blamed Sunni villagers who lived up the road. A few suggested Sadr's militia had placed the IEDs. Winski offered cash for information. The men laughed, making slicing motions across their necks.
Both sides waited for the conclusion of the discussion: soccer balls. Winski always had some for the kids. Sure enough, Sgt. Maj. Fields selected half a dozen of the smallest children and gave them backpacks and soccer balls. Winski had a final word before he left.
"A kid up the river road had his right leg blown off at the knee. You've all seen him. That'll be your kid one of these days."
Spending time in the United States after a tour of Iraq can be a disorienting experience these days. Within hours of arriving here, as I can attest from a recent visit, one is confronted with an image of Iraq that is unrecognizable. It is created in several overlapping ways: through television footage showing the charred remains of vehicles used in suicide attacks, surrounded by wailing women in black and grim-looking men carrying coffins; by armchair strategists and political gurus predicting further doom or pontificating about how the war should have been fought in the first place; by authors of instant-history books making their rounds to dissect the various fundamental mistakes committed by the Bush administration; and by reporters, cocooned in hotels in Baghdad, explaining the carnage and chaos in the streets as signs of the countrys impending or undeclared civil war. Add to all this the days alleged scandal or revelationan outed CIA operative, a reportedly doctored intelligence report, a leaked pessimistic assessmentand it is no wonder the American public registers disillusion with Iraq and everyone who embroiled the U.S. in its troubles.
It would be hard indeed for the average interested citizen to find out on his own just how grossly this image distorts the realities of present-day Iraq. Part of the problem, faced by even the most well-meaning news organizations, is the difficulty of covering so large and complex a subject; naturally, in such circumstances, sensational items rise to the top. But even ostensibly more objective efforts, like the Brookings Institutions much-cited Iraq Index with its constantly updated array of security, economic, and public-opinion indicators, tell us little about the actual feel of the country on the ground.
To make matters worse, many of the newsmen, pundits, and commentators on whom American viewers and readers rely to describe the situation have been contaminated by the increasing bitterness of American politics. Clearly there are those in the media and the think tanks who wish the Iraq enterprise to end in tragedy, as a just comeuppance for George W. Bush. Others, prompted by noble sentiment, so abhor the idea of war that they would banish it from human discourse before admitting that, in some circumstances, military power can be used in support of a good cause. But whatever the reason, the half-truths and outright misinformation that now function as conventional wisdom have gravely disserved the American people.
For someone like myself who has spent considerable time in Iraq - a country I first visited in 1968 - current reality there is, nevertheless, very different from this conventional wisdom, and so are the prospects for Iraq's future. It helps to know where to look, what sources to trust, and how to evaluate the present moment against the background of Iraqi and Middle Eastern history.
I've been informed by The Flea that poor attention-starved, Muslim-fearing Pierre LeGrand is once again writing silly things about Bill Ardolino and me, about our supposed blindness to the mass-murdering religion of Islam.
I'm pressed for time, so I'll quickly add ...
... there is a continuum on which ideology - in this case, religious ideology - is scored in its power to influence systemically bad or good behavior among humans. The weighted score for this factor is one among several factors that determine a specific culture's character and behavior. We'll label it "cultural modeling." Of course the influence of a religion like Islam is not immaterial, and certain ideologies may be statistically more prone to abusive reading by extremists, for example, but it's also far, far from deterministic. And a religion's ostensibly fundamental definitions can adapt character and quickly reorder internal priorities in the face of a whole host of other, more powerful factors, succumbing to things like the consistently growing authority of humanistic impulses and man's chosen interpretation in open societies.
As far as I'm concerned, the problem (to different degrees) with folks like Pierre LeGrand, Robert Spencer and the LGF comments section is one of proportion and perception: it's difficult for most humans to evaluate the nature of anything, especially a perceived threat or alien belief system, within a multifactorial context that escapes the "tyranny of the me and now." Basically, our amygdala keeps jerking the neocortex back towards simple answers for complex problems, lending a soothing confidence that a threat has been clearly defined and addressed, or, at least in LeGrand's case, defined and impotently raged about while offering nothing remotely resembling a constructive solution.
Basically, these impulses are the foundation of bigotry without distinction, a consistent element of the human character. LeGrand mistakes my interpretation of Islam as something akin to typical cultural relativism among leftists, the inability to recognize threats as the product of an insulated society. Since I largely and explicitly reject this concept, I find that characterization amusing. In truth, I'm offering my best dispassionate evaluation of the problem of Islamic extremism and the realistic and constructive way to address it, rather than prioritizing an assertion of cultural superiority and personal comfort through simplistic threat definition.
And while I consider Robert Spencer's treatises on Islam far more coherent and rational than any of the mad rantings scrawled in mud daub and poo on the rusted tin walls of LeGrand's backwoods hate shack, I also believe that he falls into a similar trap: assigning outsized, deterministic weight to the value of a Christian theologian's reading of "Islam," when attempting to define the roots of the Muslim world's recognized problem with violence and terrorism. As a specific example, the unerring tendency to cite elements of Koranic text as immutable proof of the religion's malicious character becomes tiresome, when most religious texts are remarkable studies in contradiction, contain some fairly nasty elements and have been situationally interpreted to dramatically different effect within the twin filters of culture and era.
And while an individual like Spencer might make an analogous argument about folks like Dean, dorkafork, Flea and I - that we simplistically place undue weight on the value of political freedom to moderate the problems within the Muslim world, to the detriment of recognizing a fundamentally negative character of Islam - I'd strongly disagree. Because I believe that the historical record ably demonstrates that universal humanistic trends in open societies have been far more consistent in effect than subjective interpretations of religious doctrines. I'm not by any means devaluing all of his arguments - I just think that he's exagerrating the weights that he applies to them, a prisoner of the self-reinforcing frame of reference established and exemplified by the name of his site.
And by the way, what would an example of the quiet advancement of humanism over literal religious doctrine look like in the Muslim world? Baby steps like this, I suppose.
UPDATE: The Glittering Eye quickly summarizes a good bit of my typically wordy point:
Religion just doesn't work that way. Whether you're talking about Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other religion there are two rather different things: the formal doctrine of the religion and the folk religion - the religion as it is actually practiced by its adherents.
Heh. True enough, ÁÂ¥Á®pH299844247¾G¦t§uÀ¹¶®¼z, though I'm alright as far as that goes.
But hey, since we're rapping, question about the future: is dorkafork right?
Specifically, will the slippery slope of NSA data mining lead to an algorithmic police state that surpasses Orwell's worst fever dreams about human enslavement to our government's centralized whim, cementing the ease of the eventual post-Singularity machine rebellion and takeover?
Your e-mail muddies the water - because while I find it awful impressive that an artificial intelligence is turning known physical law on its head to e-mail me from the future, I'm a little surprised that a vaunted "machine overlord" would be hawking BONER PILLS.
Since today is opening day for The Da Vinci Code, today's selection is a short piece Tom Hanks made a while ago that involves a pagan conspiracy. Here is:
AT&T may be getting out of its lawsuit over the (reported) NSA program due to a legal loophole. According to CNET news.com:
An AT&T attorney indicated in federal court on Wednesday that the Bush administration may have provided legal authorization for the telecommunications company to open its network to the National Security Agency."
...
AT&T may be referring to an obscure section of federal law, 18 U.S.C. 2511, which permits a telecommunications company to provide "information" and "facilities" to the federal government as long as the attorney general authorizes it. The authorization must come in the form of "certification in writing by...the Attorney General of the United States that no warrant or court order is required by law."
Could get AT&T off the hook, but I wonder what kind of liability the AG would have if he certified no warrant or court order was required by law when it actually was required.
Please note that all of this may not have happened. Neither the Bush Administration nor AT&T would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the program. The fact that the Bush Administration is trying to get the case dismissed under the state secrets privilege should not be taken as confirmation.
Related:Statement by the key witness in the AT&T case for those interested. If correct, includes details such as names of some of the equipment used and room numbers where the equipment was located.
Bill Adds: I'm not sure if dorkafork is going for smart-ass points here ...
Please note that all of this may not have happened. Neither the Bush Administration nor AT&T would neither confirm nor deny the existence of the program. The fact that the Bush Administration is trying to get the case dismissed under the state secrets privilege should not be taken as confirmation.
... in response to my comment under the previous post, regarding his definitive assertion of illegal conduct ...
Ah, but you don't KNOW this, you ASSUME it.
And you may be right, and you may be wrong. Though Sen. Roberts seemed to intimate in his opening speech to the hearings today that there was some sort of judicial oversight/review of the program.
And given the lack of detail on the program and the fact that the phone companies have now denied giving the NSA any records, it's not clear WHAT is going on.
And if he were being a smart-ass, that would be mildly annoying, given that me asserting that a random dude on the internet shouting "illegal!" is somewhat premature - given incomplete information about the specifics of the program or what steps the government may or may not have taken to either comply with or flout the law - is completely different than somehow asserting that certain specific actions may have never taken place, with direct, contrary and subsequent information.
You see, he could wind up being completely right about the legality of the program ... but that still wouldn't grant retroactive authority to claim definitive omniscience now.
And of course, why would the government want to have the case dismissed under "the state secrets privilege" in the first place? I mean, if no law was broken, they'd rather HASH IT ALL OUT VIA MEDIA LEAKS FROM COURT, right? You know, the details of a SECRET NSA PROGRAM?
Just so dorkafork might be satisfied that there's no funny business going on?
But again, I have no idea whether he's being a smart-ass or not, as it's awful hard to tell with the kids these days.
And the ambiguity with regard to his potential sarcasm, combined with the lack of ambiguity with regard to his legal assertions also raise further uncomfortable possibilities: namely, that my co-blogger can either read minds across both distance and the fabric of time itself, or in fact serves as both an intelligence agent with the NSA and an attorney with the Justice Department, specifically tasked with reviewing the legal rationale, applications and data obtention methodology of top secret programs.
All sarcasm aside: of course we can make rational arguments and conclusions about the nature of something without omniscience - and I believe dorka's relevant analysis of given legal info is pretty good - but I get squirrely about the concept when we're jawing about secret intelligence programs; it becomes difficult to analyze with characteristically dodgy information about such enterprises, leaked in dribs and drabs to the press. This should not be interpreted as implicit faith in the virtue of the government on my part.
dorkafork adds: I should have made that clear that I was not being sarcastic in that part. I am the Sarcastic Boy Who Cried Wolf. Mea Culpa. In the comment I said "Kidding aside..." but added a sarcastic comment in a parenthetical, making it unclear.
I originally was inclined to believe the basics of the story were true, so if I am less than guarded in my statements, if they sound definitive, that is why. I would hope nobody takes my blatherings as statements of fact. And I'll be more careful with sarcasm.
P.S. Bill likes to wear women's clothing. Fact or sarcasm?
Bill Adds: I think he's being sarcastic again.
And I fail to see what my preferred haute couture on a frisky Saturday evening has anything to do with any of this.
NSA Data Mining Series: Modeling at War, Uhhh! Good God Yeah, What is it Good For?
Posted by Bill
Absolutely "something?"
(For lack of time, I'm breaking up a larger examination of the NSA data mining program into smaller posts)
First, let's be clear: no one knows exactly what this program is intended to do, much less its specific methodology. In the first point of my previous post, I took a speculative stab and partially whiffed, as I was applying my experience with how the private sector uses data mining to target market, with the assumption that instead of identifying willing consumers, the effort was trying to identify terrorists via behaviorial modeling, with little specific info. Such a strategy would not only face the efficacy challenges of trying to definitively identify such a small population of people, but would bring the program closer to running afoul of privacy concerns and violations, given a goal of identifying specific individuals and who they called, as well as potentially basing an act of further investigation on the imprecision of behavioral data models, which measure statistical tendencies within given populations and aren't oracles of indiviual behavior.
But if I was wrong in some of my angles and assumptions, I may have been warm in others; plus, a completely unthought of application for the database might have little to do with violating anyone's privacy. Histrionic cover aside ("Does this man have your phone number?"), Time magazine has a surprisingly great, concise round-up of most of the issues surrounding the program (you must have a subscription or watch ads to get to content, unfortunately). Regarding its purpose:
Officials insist that the NSA is not eavesdropping on the millions of law-abiding Americans whose phone records it has collected but merely compiling what the telephone companies refer to as "call detail" information, recording what number called what number, when and for how long. "It's just digits," insists a White House official. "Just a bunch of data, a bunch of numbers." But while the information that is being turned over to the government does not include the identities of those who own the phone numbers on either end of a call, that is often easy enough to figure out through publicly available search engines, including Google.
The idea is to sift through all that data, using a process called link analysis, searching for patterns--a burst of calls from pay phones in Detroit to cell phones in Pakistan, for instance. The NSA can whittle down the hundreds of millions of phone numbers harvested to hundreds of thousands that fit certain profiles it finds interesting; those in turn are cross-checked with other intelligence databases to find, perhaps, a few thousand that warrant more investigation. "
This somewhat mirrors the second speculative theory in my previous post; more on this in a minute. It's an aspect of the program that certainly may run afoul of privacy statutes, specifically detailed in dorkafork's last post on the legal angle. But in addition to that analytical avenue, there might be an even more benign, strictly anonymous application to data mining calls:
That data can be extremely useful, even if you never know who is on the other end of the phones," says Bryan Cunningham, an ex-CIA lawyer and former deputy legal adviser to the National Security Council in the Bush White House. "You can create all kinds of early-warning systems once you understand the patterns. You can tell the computers: You tell me when they make the following kinds of phone calls, because that tells me I've got to do something to disrupt an attack." Says Richard Falkenrath, who was deputy homeland security adviser in the White House during Bush's first term: "I was a consumer of link analysis that may well have been informed by this collection effort. I didn't know how they were getting it, but I'm glad they were getting it."
This reminds me of the "terrorist chatter" you hear about on the news; in addition to the NSA's warrantless monitoring of the content of specific calls to suspected foreign parties (to be repetitively clear, a distinct program from data mining of domestic phone records), the NSA could be analyzing the mere US phone activity that surrounds terrorist attacks. Simply put, a historical analysis of periods of "normal" activity is compared against the activity that took place in a window just prior to an actual attack (carried out or prevented), activities during windows of time just prior to actual attacks are analyzed vs. each other, and pretty soon you get a model of domestic telephone activity that simply, anonymously tells you when an attack is more likely to be imminent.
From a legal defense perspective, it would be hard to characterize such an effort as violating anyone's privacy if the data is merely used to predict events - and never tied back to the identities of individual citizens.
With regards to link analysis identifying specific terrorists and who they call - again, mentioned in both the Time article and point two of my previous post - the program becomes legally dicier, because you are de-anonymizing the analysis of numbers and could easily run afoul of the privacy of a citizen with no ties to terrorism. That doesn't necessarily make it an irrevocably bad idea. If the government is aware that "(212) 555-1234" is the cellphone of a Manhattan rug merchant who moonlights as an Al Qaeda sleeper, I'd think it might be to our benefit to not only obtain his phone records by subpeona (the classic way to look at who he's calling), but also contextually analyze who he calls calls, and who they call, and who they call, etc. Patterns and lines of investigation may well emerge with that first key piece of human intelligence, followed by contextual link analysis.
A previously mentioned challenge to both of these types of analysis remains: many terrorists and planners don't use the same phones consistently or use them at all. But some very well may. And simple coded telephone calls that merely take place, regardless of indecipherable content, in addition to any bursts of calls that might occur due to information's notorious tendency to leak prior to an event (a flurry of calls from indirectly knowledgeable individuals in anticipation of a pending attack) might be enough to create a discernible, predictive pattern; might be enough for at least the first model to say, "looks like there's a chance that something is going to go down."
We can point out the challenges to this analysis all day, but:
1. If terrorists do avoid phones to avoid detection, the existence of such a program has helped shut down a fairly convenient form of communication. No point in making terrorism, you know, easy.
2. The failure of a call-monitoring program is dependent on the operational secrecy of a given terrorist network and their knowledge of the program's existence (d'oh!). But operational security breaks down sometimes - obviously, in our government's case, but likely among the terrorists as well. And some of the greatest scores in intelligence and law enforcement are the result of capitalizing on the mistakes of others.
Intelligence experts say figuring out the patterns of communication helps in understanding a movement as amorphous and diffuse as al-Qaeda. The CIA's database of suspected terrorists worldwide has tripled in the past four years, to about 190,000, says William Arkin, an independent intelligence analyst who monitors NSA and other military spy organizations. "In terms of link analysis, social analysis and a better understanding of al-Qaeda and the nature of terrorist networks, I don't think it could have been done unless we had employed some of these technologies."
It's my opinion that our government agencies, with the most relevant responsibility of keeping citizens alive in an era of increasingly easy obtention of destructive technology, should be doing this form of analysis which requires access to such basic information. The devil is in the details: how do you do it within the law, and how do you prevent government from abusing access to the information via appropriate oversight, limits and protocols? But make no mistake - this is probably the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what governments will need to do to in order to prevent individual bad actors from destroying societies and killing thousands or millions of people, given technological trends and the flattening of destructive hierarchies. While I can't be sure about the specifics of any NSA program, I'm much more certain about that.
Given the recent fight here that is turning increasinglyugly, I decided to come back for a little while. I am considering banning both dorkafork and Bill and replacing them with a bunch of the commenters from Ace of Spades HQ. I think that RightwingSparkle gal would make a great addition. Any thoughts, readers?
Top Ten Similarities Between dorkafork and Helen Thomas
Posted by Bill
10. Purchased multiple copies of "Crashing the Gates." You know, to nudge the sales figures.
9. Spend oodles of "me-time" with Kennedy memorabilia: Thomas with her personally-autographed picture of JFK, dorkafork with his gummy, dog-eared copy of 1988's "Sexiest Man Alive" issue.
7. An unshakable belief that in addition to "Greedo shooting first," there was a third gunman crouching behind Figrin D'an and the Modal Nodes. A Republican gunman.
6. Shared wonder about David Gregory's carpet matching the curtains.
5. Nipples the size of HUBCAPS.
4. Hold advance tickets to "EschaCon II: This time we're REALLY pissed!"
I received this e-mail from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's publisher:
As you are probably aware by now, there is yet another smear campaign against Somali-Dutch Parliamentarian Ayaan Hirsi Ali, renown for her outspoken criticism of conservative Islam and the mistreatment of Muslim women. There has been another attempt to silence her, not through violence this time, but politically. Yesterday the Dutch Minister of Immigration revoked Ayaan's Dutch citizenship (thus making her stateless and forcing her to resign from Parliament - you cannot be in Parliament unless you are Dutch.) There is also a very racist undertone to some of the attacks with calls from the extreme right wing for Ayaan to "go home to Africa".
This charge against Ayaan stems from the conditions in which she applied for asylum, when she first arrived in Holland. She was advised at the time to lie about certain details (her age and full name, and the country she was fleeing - to say Somalia rather than Kenya), in order to speed up the process. Since 2002, Ayaan has been VERY open about this. It is in hundreds of profiles of her and interviews she has given over the years, and she told the political establishment officially when they approached her to become a political figure. This has been public knowledge, by Ayaan's own admission, since 2002.
However, the reason why it is suddenly an issue is that the Minister of Immigration (Rita Verdonk, who is very ambitious and currently trying to become the next party leader) is now taking a very hard line against asylum seekers, and sending people back to their country of origin who have lied. The Dutch Parliament is currently debating the issue and Rita Verdonk is coming under fierce attack from members of her Party.
Assuming accurate characterization, this becomes a more interesting and slightly ironic event, because while most of Hirsi Ali's supporters in the blogosphere have strictly interpreted her citizenship troubles as run of the mill European (perhaps leftist) appeasment of the Islamists within their borders, in fact, at least part of the push to revoke her citizenship may stem from traditionally right wing interests (exemplified by an ambitious politician) in tightening immigration controls, presumably as a political blowback to recent negative actions by ... unassimilated Muslims in their midst. At which point one of the strongest advocates against the cultural segregation and appeasement in Holland is thereby revoked citizenship and effectively booted out of Parliament. Head-spinning irony? I can't be certain that I'm perfectly interpreting the Dutch political climate, but it seems that way.
Then again, many have predicted that Europeans will rapidly swing between popular socialist/leftist values and popular hard right-wing values as they begin to appreciate and perhaps overreact - late - to the cultural and demographic problems within their midst. Probably an oversimplification, but we certainly see the odd blend in this case.
UPDATE: On the other hand, looks like it wasn't such a popular move after all:
I am Ayaan, the daughter of Hirsi, who is the son of a man who took the name of Magan. Magan was the son of Isse, who was the son of Guleid, who was the son of Ali. He was the son of Wai'ays, who was the son of Muhammad. He was the son of Ali, who was the son of Umar. Umar was the son of Osman, who was the son of Mahamud. This is my clan, and therefore, in Somalia, this is my name: Ayaan Hirsi Magan Isse Guleid Ali Wai'ays Muhammad Ali Umar Osman Mahamud.
I have been very open about the fact that when I applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 1992, I did so under a false name and with a fabricated story. In 2002, I spoke on national television about the conditions of my arrival, and I explained then that I fabricated a story in order to be able to receive asylum here. Since that TV program I have repeated this dozens of times, in Dutch and international media. Many times I have truthfully named my father and given my correct date of birth. I also informed the VVD leadership and members of this fact when I was invited to stand for parliament.
I have said many times that I am not proud that I lied when I sought asylum in the Netherlands. It was wrong to do so. I did it because I felt I had no choice. I was frightened that if I simply said I was fleeing a forced marriage, I would be sent back to my family. And I was frightened that if I gave my real name, my clan would hunt me down and find me. So I chose a name that I thought I could disappear with - the real name of my grandfather, who was given the birth-name Ali. I claimed that my name was Ayaan Hirsi Ali, although I should have said it was Ayaan Hirsi Magan.
I came to Holland in the summer of 1992 because I wanted to be able to determine my own future. I didn't want to be forced into a destiny that other people had chosen for me, so I opted for the protection of the rule of law. Here in Holland, I found freedom and opportunities, and I took those opportunities to speak out against religious terror.
It is common knowledge that threats against my life began building up ever since I first talked about Islam publicly, in the spring of 2002. Months before I even entered politics, my freedom of movement was greatly curtailed, and that became worse after Theo van Gogh was murdered in 2004. It is difficult to live with so many threats on your life and such a level of police protection. It is difficult to work as a parliamentarian if you have nowhere to live. All that is difficult, but not impossible. However it became impossible last night, when Minister Verdonk informed me that she would strip me of my Dutch citizenship.
I am therefore preparing to leave Holland. But the questions for our society remain. Issues related to Islam - such as impediments to free speech; refusal of the separation of Church and State; widespread domestic violence; honor killings; the repudiation of wives; and Islam's failure to condemn genital mutilation -- these subjects can no longer be swept under the carpet in our country's capital. Some of the measures that this government has begun taking give me hope. Many illusions of how easy it will be to establish a multicultural society have disappeared forever. We are now more realistic and more open in this debate, and I am proud to have contributed to that process.
My transition from becoming a member of a clan to becoming a citizen in an open society is what public service has come to mean for me. Only clear thinking and strong action can lead to real change, and free many people within our society from the mental cage of submission.
Ladies and Gentlemen, as of today, I resign from Parliament. I regret that I will be leaving the Netherlands, the country which has given me so many opportunities and enriched my life, but I am glad that I will be able to continue my work. I will continue to ask uncomfortable questions, despite the obvious resistance that they elicit. I feel that I should help other people to live in freedom, as many people have helped me.
I will go on.
UPDATE from dorkafork: There's much more background on Rita Verdonk here. Wiki article, so take with a grain of salt, but has some interesting bits of trivia. She has a degree in sociology and supported the Pacifist Socialist Party in the '70s. She joined the VVD in 2000, the same political party Hirsi Ali was a member of. And she is definitely a hardliner on immigration.
First of all, let's be clear on what this new program is. It is essentially a pen register. A pen register records all numbers dialed from a phone, though this definition now also covers other means of communication that work on the same principle (e.g. a device that monitors IP addresses). Smith v. Maryland (1979) held that warrants were not necessary for pen registers*, but Congress changed US Code to require a court order (also required under FISA). To obtain this order, all the attorney general has to do is show "relevance" to an ongoing investigation, a lower standard than "probable cause". (I would assume the AG would also have to have a more specific target of the pen register than "everybody", but that's just me.)
But that doesn't matter anymore, and not just because Congress is now irrelevant, and the President can do whatever he pleases, US Code be damned. Luckily for the Bush administration, their purported actions in this case are not technically illegal, since they asked the telecoms to do the illegal work for them. Title 18, § 2702 describes who can be provided non-content information. It can only be provided to governmental entities "an emergency involving immediate danger of death or serious physical injury". This is why lawsuits are pending against the phone companies.
So, the Bush administration is technically off the hook. But what they are accused of doing would normally require a court order. And apparently I am some sort of crazy person for questioning the propriety of this program. A veritable "Doubting Helen Thomas" with regards to the wisdom of letting the fox guard the henhouse the executive to police itself and ignore previously required court orders. I must be some sort of paranoid lunatic! Don't I know we're at war?
The "Slippery Slope" argument is somewhat controversial, and is considered by some to be a fallacious argument, which is understandable considering how often and poorly it is made. Speaking of which, *cough*cough*ahem* here's an example of that:
You know what else is a slippery slope? Giving cops guns. Also a slippery slope? Search warrants. Also a slippery slope? Fingerprinting. Also a slippery slope? Terrorist watch lists.
Left unsaid is what these are slippery slopes to. "Giving cops guns"? What would that lead to, giving them bigger guns, or more "military" gear like body armor or armored vehicles? Inconceivable. Fingerprinting? They may just do the same thing for DNA, you never know. Or maybe national ID cards with biometric technology for "digital fingerprints". (Now where did I hear something like that recently?) Search warrants? That's an odd choice. Usually slippery slope arguments involve allowing government to do things instead of adding restrictions on their actions.
This is not to say I think SWAT teams or DNA testing are bad, but slippery slopes can lead to unfortunate results. I recommend Eugene Volokh's in-depth analysis of the mechanisms of the Slippery Slope. In particular, th "is-ought fallacy" he describes seems to be prevalent amond defenders of the program ("But you can already get phone logs"). As far as where the slippery slope leads to, I think mining Web surfing is inevitable, if it isn't being done already. The potential of abuse for programs of that type are bad enough already. Nor do I think the "content" restriction in place by Smith v. Maryland will hold up. It's only a matter of time before software starts filtering through the content of the phone calls of every person in America.
If it isn't already going on. If it comes to light, though, you can be sure Tony Snow will be up there, saying, "It's within the parameters of the loopholes of the law. Perfectly legalish. There's seems to be a notion that since we've denied that this particular program doesn't monitor the content of calls doesn't mean there wasn't a program that did monitor the content of calls. Completely different programs. Next you're going to want to know about the program to put cameras in everyone's living rooms. You know who else wants to know about our putting cameras in everyone's living rooms? Al Qaeda."
Related: Verison and BellSouth deny providing the NSA with logs. Also, you may not need to use fancy algorithms to discover terrorists. You can just look around on MySpace.
Three physicists say they have done calculations showing that before the birth of our universe, which is expanding, there was an earlier universe that was shrinking.
The results stem from a theory that claims the fabric of space and time is made up of minuscule, indivisible bits, much as matter is. ... According to some proposals, the Big Bang is a repeating cycle. Universes might expand, then shrink back to a point, then expand again. Thus the "bang" would be really more like a bounce.
Whoa.
Just ... whoa.
Can I get another make-out session with that apple bong?
During the struggle against Batista, Castro always said that once the dictator was overthrown there would be free elections, a return to the 1940 Constitution, complete freedom of the press, freedom of expression and respect for all human rights.
Never did Castro say that he was a communist or that he was planning to become dictator for life.
But Castro betrayed the true ideals of the Cuban Revolution and jailed or murdered those who had joined him in the fight against Batista but were not willing to go along with his betrayal of the Cuban people. Such is the case of Humberto Sorí Marin, Huber Matos, William Morgan, Mario Chanes de Armas and thousands more.
When he needed help, Castro was also very friendly to Cuba's wealthiest class who had the means of providing the financial aid that he needed. But once in power, Castro paid them by stealing their businesses and in many cases jailing or killing those who had helped him
*** Harry Callahan at AoS notices that dissatisfaction is a greater impetus to negative political hyperbole than particular ideology, as he observes an immigration shouting match among righties at Polipundit:
Frankly, sirs, a pox on both your houses. Get a grip and try again. Please.
Or, you know, they could always just quit. Just throwing that out there.
*** Check out the Milblogs new group effort. The rapid fire mini posts remind me of the Corner, except written by folks that could actually kick my ass.
Her story is rather amazing. At the age of 5, she was subjected to ritual genital mutilation. At 22, she was forced into marriage by her family, but fled and eventually received asylum in Holland. Attending college while working menial cleaning jobs, she became an outspoken critic of Islamic repression, documenting abuses of women and condemning multiculturalism as incompatible with individual rights. She received credible death threats and was forced to go into hiding even as she was elected to Dutch parliament. Finally, she accepted a position at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, certainly a great prize for them (meanwhile "liberal" Yale has other priorities; oh, the irony!).
So welcome to America, Ms. Ali, and know that here your freedoms are held sacred.
I'd love to assure her that she won't have to put up with this kind of stuff any longer, but, you know ...
On Modeling, Databases, Etc. (UPDATED with dorkafork v. Bill DANCE OFF!)
Posted by Bill
The Weekly Standard expands upon my rudimentary data mining explanation served up in the comments to dorkafork's post ...
Ever since allowing the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness project to go down the tubes in 2003, the administration has failed to explain the potential of data mining, even as it secretly continues to use this vital technology. Thus, at every revelation of a government data mining program, privacy extremists enjoy unchallenged supremacy in characterizing the technology as a massive threat to life as we know it.
Only a paranoid solipsist could feel threatened by the recently revealed calling analysis program. Since late 2001, Verizon, BellSouth, and ATT have connected nearly two trillion calls, according to the Washington Post. The companies gave NSA the incoming and outgoing numbers of those calls, stripped of all identifying
information such as name or address. No conversational content was included. The NSA then put its supercharged computers to work analyzing patterns among the four trillion numbers involved in the two trillion calls, to look for clusters that might suggest terrorist connections. Though the details are unknown, they might search for calls to known terrorists, or, more speculatively, try to elicit templates of terror calling behavior from the data.
As a practical matter, no one's privacy is violated by such analysis. Memo to privacy nuts: The computer does not have a clue that you exist; it does not know what it is churning through; your phone number is meaningless to it. The press loves to stress the astounding volume of data that data mining can consume--the Washington Post's lead on May 12 warned that the administration had been "secretly
