The Report, Scott Z. Burns film about the CIA Torture Report, makes slow-going research and paper pushing compelling, and it does it while maintaining an astonishingly high level of adherence to the literal truth of what happened to the men imprisoned by the American government at black sites like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, using dialogue usually taken verbatim from the record. Starring Adam Driver as (real person) Daniel Jones, who worked for California Senator Dianne Feinstein to compile an investigation into the CIAs so-called enhanced interrogation techniques post-9/11, The Report offers a vital condemnation not only of the Bush administrations trigger-happy cronies, but of the Obama administrations ultimately cynical post-partisan fantasies.

Heres a bit of living history: Both administrations supported and enabled the CIA in equipping and promoting war criminals, including CIA intelligence officers like Jose Rodriguez and Gina Haspel. The latter is now the director of the agency and was nominated by the Trump administration and confirmed by the majority Republican senate. The film notes that, to date, not one of the CIAs torturerstheir names still have not been releasedhas been held accountable.

The practice of enhanced interrogationan updated brand of torturewas developed by two barely credentialed psychologists, Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who had no experience in interrogation or criminal justice. Mainly, they were overconfident, blood-sucking mediocre white guys looking for vengeance; the CIA, which had already known for decades that torture doesnt even work (besides being immoral and itself criminal) welcomed the psychologists unscientific methods as long as the governments legal team could spin a defense for them. In the film, actor Pun Bandhu plays John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who, as the Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General under George Bush, authored the legal memos that provided that defense and became known as the Torture Memos. Fictional Yoo provides the exact justification the real Yoo came up with in the memos: As long as there is no organ failure or death, anything goes, from gouging eyes to pouring acid on a prisoners body.

As Adam Drivers Daniel Jones indignantly yells in explanation to Feinstein (played by a rigid yet convincing Annette Bening), the CIAs torture of prisonerssome of whom the FBI, not the CIA, had already gathered enough intel on to prosecuteensured that no one actually responsible for 9/11 could ever be brought to trial. And on top of that, torture didnt even work, contrary to the narrative of the Oscar-nominated Bin Laden assassination film Zero Dark Thirty. Despite Jones and his teams painstaking research into emails, memos, and even an internal CIA report that confirms the agencys own incompetence and corruption, no one seems to care much within the Obama administration, including the president himselftheres a re-election to be secured and drone strikes to carry out under the CIAs supervision.

Burns, who also penned Steven Soderberghs The Laundromat, originally planned to write and direct a dark comedy film that focused on Jessen and Mitchell. The Laundromat, which Soderbergh admits drew from the narrative style of Adam McKays The Big Short, didnt work precisely because of its overwrought machinations and confused tone (but not, its important to point out, because of its comedy). Im glad Burns opted to take on this story from Jones perspective rather than again borrowing from McKays playbook of unwittingly legitimizing tyrants and liars. It makes for a film that, rather than gawking at the gall of blood-thirsty cynics, soberly examines their horrible methods, revealing powerful alliances that span not only the halls of power but reach across the aisle as well. The Reportunlike McKays dramedies and the practice of tortureis effective, emphasizing humanity as it exposes evil.

The Report offers a vital condemnation not only of the Bush Administrations trigger-happy cronies, but of the Obama administrations ultimately cynical post-partisan fantasies.

Jones is a regular guy who, not unlike Jessen and Mitchell, wants to beat the bad guys. At the start of the film, he meets with Obamas chief of staff Denis McDonough, who encourages to him get experience in the FBI or on the Hill before trying to get a job with the executive branch. Jones, a bit of a boy scout, eventually finds himself under the direction of Feinstein, whom we later learn has been charged with creating the report only because Obama refuses to task his own branch with the investigation, not wanting to ruin his chances at post-partisan governmental bliss. Over the course of the investigation, Jones develops much of the integrity that evades Obama and his people. Jonesalong with a team that the film compresses to six and then three people, but was actually around 20refuses to turn away from the CIAs abuses. He fights to have the truth revealed without compromise, which takes the form of gratuitous redactions by the CIA which are sanctioned by Obama via McDonough.

The film ends up emphasizing the limits of Jones boy scout behavior, even though it is in service a righteous cause. Jones meets with a New York Times National Security reporter and considers pulling an Edward Snowden by leaking the full 6,000-page report to the press. Feinstein has already told Jones that she believes Snowden is a traitorwhistleblowers dont figure into her ideas of justice. Jones is not so sure, and during their meeting, the Times reporter reveals the extent of Obamas complicity in suppressing the investigation. This information isnt enough to sway Joneshe ultimately believes he has to take the legal, governmental recourse and doesnt leak the document. A 582-page summary is released by Congress instead (a recent New York Times story revealed how close even the summary was to being suppressed). None of the real names of those directly accountable are in it, and no onemuch like with Obamas big bank bailoutgoes to jail.

Ultimately, liberal ideologya belief in incremental reform and justice through institutions rather than peopleconvinces Jones that he shouldnt blow the whistle. But, to this day, Jones is enraged at the continued lack of accountability in the wake of the report. The summary was released to the public but what resulted was mostly strategically crafted speeches by statesmen like the late Republican senator John McCain and handwringing by concerned citizens; Obama, for his part, admitted, in an absurd turn of phrase, that we tortured some folks. CIA agents both complicit and directly involved in torturing detainees were not simply given a pass but promoted within the agency.

The liberalism of Obamas government and Feinsteins office did not rock the boat by design. If you watch closely, youll see that The Report is not a triumphant film, which is exactly why it has fallen under the radar. The movie not only testifies to the importance of exposing ugly truths, but suggests that self-sacrifice and rebellion may be required for justice to ever be served. Obama, who recently cautioned millennials against leftist revolution, is still preaching his credo of rule-following moderation. If he had gotten his way before, most media outlets would still be reporting that our government had delivered us to safety by way of torture. We would do well to learn from the former presidents example by rejecting it.

See the article here:
Amazon's 'The Report' Condemns Not Only Bush but Obama for Turning a Blind Eye to Torture - The Daily Beast

Eric Schoen

This too is Yonkers, by Eric W. Schoen

Whistleblower (also written as whistle-blower or whistle blower) is a personwho exposes any kind of information or activity that is deemed illegal,unethical, or not correct within an organization that is either private orpublic. Because of this, a number of laws exist to protect whistleblowers.Definition courtesy of WikiPedia.

We keep hearing that word and think that itis someone who has supernatural powers and information no one else knows. Weget the impression that the person is exposing information at such a high levelthat he or she needs Secret Service protection 24 hours a day, 7 days a week,365 days a year.

Well friends, I am hear to tell you that youtoo could become a whistleblower. It can be done completely anonymously fromthe comfort of your home. All you need is a computer, a phone, or a piece ofpaper and a stamp. Before we get into the details let me tell you about mywhistleblower experiences.

It happened over 30 years ago which proveswhistleblowing in not a new phenomena. All the participants in the scheme arelong gone from Yonkers. I knew of an agency that was getting funding for jobtraining and using the money to pay salaries and not doing any type of crediblejob training.

They got the money through a quid pro quo (afavor or advantage granted or expected in return for something). The agency andits supporters backed a political candidate and in return that candidate whowas chairperson of the organization with the money gave the agency what youwould call a no show contract. I was in a position to audit the agencyreceiving funds. You cant audit an agency that does no work. In this case theminimal work the agency was doing was limited to a specific group of people andnot open to the general public as it was supposed to be.

I started by calling the State InspectorGeneral of the agency where the money was coming from. It was federal money being channeled through thestate. I started at the state level but my whistleblower complaint quickly gotelevated to the federal level. I wanted to remain anonymous and they agreed toit. They knew I had the goods.

We chatted on the phone several times andagreed to meet in the parking lot of the old Parkside Diner on South Broadway.The agent, investigator whatever he was called told me the color and type ofhis car and I gave him my car details and where to meet me in the lot. I gavehim the information I had, documents that proved my claim, and we chatted in mycar for about an hour.

Fortunately my car did not blow up. Inretrospect the investigator should have at least brought me coffee andbreakfast.

Two other quick whistleblower stories. Iworked in a building where people were constantly getting sick from therecirculated air. I filed an anonymous complaint with the Federal EnvironmentalProtection Agency and they came out to test the air.

Another time I anonymously called the YonkersFire Department as the office I worked in had moved filing cabinets aroundmaking it unsafe to reach the exits in case of an emergency. Our wonderful YonkersFire Department came out (mind you within minutes after I made the call) andsaw that the filing cabinets were in an unsafe position blocking exits andpaths to the exits. They made the office move the filing cabinets so that theywere not a fire hazard.

Yes friends, if I can be a whistleblower youcan too. Most times you can remain anonymous. Visit whistleblowers.org for excellent information. That website will help you Know YourRights.

Whistleblowing takes preparation. Deciding which law youshould report under is in many ways the single most important decisionaffecting the outcome of a case. Give as much information as possible (i.e.,names of alleged offenders, victims, witnesses, etc., and leads on anyapplicable data, documentation or other evidence).

Lets start at the top. Want to file a complaint about somethingthe President did? Or one of his Advisors or Members of his Cabinet? It alldepend on the specific fraud committed. oversight.gov lets you report waste,Disclose wrongdoing about a federal government agency, program, contract orgrant. Most federal agencies have Inspector Generals that accept whistleblowercomplaints.

Senators or Congressman? The House and Senate Committee on Ethics(ethics.senate.govor

ethics.house.gov)can Investigate alleged violations of the Code of Official Conduct or of anyapplicable rules, laws, or regulations governing the performance of officialduties or the discharge of official responsibilities and Committeerules . Then if need be Report to appropriatefederal or state authorities substantial evidence of a violation of any lawapplicable to the performance of official duties that may have been disclosedin a Committee investigation.

State officials? Office of the New York State Comptroller has a confidential, toll free hotline.Call 1-888-672-4555 weekdays, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. to make youranonymous complaint. ag.ny.gov puts you in touch with the Attorney Generalsoffice.The Attorney General serves all New Yorkers in numerousmatters affecting their daily lives. Specifically, the statutory and common lawpowers to protect consumers and investors, charitable donors, the public healthand environment, civil rights, and the rights of wage-earners and businessesacross the State.

Authority also includesthe activities and investigations of the State Organized Crime Task Force andMedicaid Fraud Control Unit.

In Westchester County, theBoard of Ethics handles ethics complaints. According to the County Website,there is no phone number but they list an attorney as contact, Asst. CountyAttorney David Polizzi dppd@westchestergov.com .

Yonkers has an Office ofthe Inspector General, Brendan McGrath. Email Brendan.McGrath@yonkersny.gov , Call 914-377-6107 or Fax:914-377-6990. They also have a link on theirpage on the Yonkers website where you can make an anonymous complaint.

When in doubt you can also visit FBI.gov/tips or contact the NewYork FBI office

26 Federal Plaza, 23rd Floor New York, NY10278-0004 newyork.fbi.gov

(212) 384-1000 Regional corruption hotline.

Tips about criminal activity taking place in Yonkers? Text tip411and when prompted enter YPD. The Yonkers Police Internal Affairs Division has a24 hour a day hotline, 914-377-7331. For the Fire Department contact (914)377-7526 Monday through Friday. Obviously for a Police or Fire or MedicalEmergency DIAL 911.

Another important web address. For Internet complaints visit ic3.gov . Thats the Federal Internet CrimeBureau.

So there you have it. You, Too Can Be the next Edward Snowden.

Reach Eric Schoen at thistooisyonkers@aol.com. Follow him onTwitter @ericyonkers. Listen to Eric Schoen and Dan Murphy on the WestchesterRising Radio Show Thursdays from 10-11 a.m. On WVOX 1460 AM, go to WVOX.comand click the arrow to listen to the live stream or download the WVOX app fromthe App Store free of charge

The rest is here:
You, Too Can Be a Whistleblower - Yonkers Times

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Edward Snowden stole very sensitive classified information from the National Security Agency [NSA] while working for contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. He fled the country and divulged national security secrets. Here is why it did not have to happen.

There are specific actions which Booz Allen Hamilton and NSA could have taken to intercept Edward Snowden before he boarded an international flight at Honolulu International Airport. We are not going to look at why Snowden did what he did. Much has already been written about that. Rather we are going to consider what could have been done to prevent the Illegal disclosure.

In 2013, Edward Snowden and his thumb drive full of classified NSA documents boarded a plane and changed the world forever.

I first learned of this matter from an article published in the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on June 9, 2013 entitled, Hawaii man was source of National Security Agency leaks. He had left the country nearly three weeks earlier.

On June 24, 2013, South China Morning Post [SCMP] published an article entitled, Snowden sought Booz Allen job to gather evidence on NSA surveillance.

The following are excerpts from that SCMP article based on Snowdens admissions while he was in Hong Kong:

Fugitive whistle-blower reveals for first time he took job at US government contractor with the sole aim of collecting proof of spying activities

My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked, he told the Post on June 12. That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.

During a live global online chat last week, Snowden also stated he took pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. He said: Booz was not the most Ive been paid.

He spent the time collecting a cache of classified documents as a computer systems administrator at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: Correct on Booz.

The documents he divulged to the Post were obtained at Booz Allen Hamilton in April, he said.

Two days after Snowden broke cover in Hong Kong as the source of the NSA leaks, Booz Allen Hamilton sacked him.

An email request was sent three times over a five-day period to Booz Allen Hamilton Media Relations at their head office in McLean, Virginia. Voice mails were also left for two persons there. A third person was reached on his cellphone but said that he was on medical leave and could not assist.

Here is a copy of the request and the questions which were posed in a conscientious effort to allow the company to give their side of the issue:

Booz Allen Hamilton

Media Inquiries

My name is David Ware. I am a journalist with an online publication called NOQ Report.

https://noqreport.com/author/david-ware

I am researching an article about why Edward Snowden was not intercepted before he could leave the United States with classified information while he was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. I want to give you the opportunity to respond to the following questions before publication.

1 Do you confirm that Edward Snowden was employed by Booz Allen Hamilton in May-June 2013?

2 If so, at which NSA facility was he assigned and what was his official capacity there?

3 Did Snowden take leave in May 2013 and, if so, what was his stated purpose and destination?

4 What were the dates of his leave and on what date did you become concerned as to his whereabouts?

5 What were your actions and the dates to try to locate him?

6 What and when were your communications and coordination with NSA about Snowdens absence?

7 Did you learn that classified information was compromised and that Snowden could potentially have it in his possession, and if so, when and how did you become aware of that?

8 Did you know the nature of the medium on which that classified information was taken out of the NSA facility, and, if so, what medium was it?

9 Specifically, were there reasons to suspect that Snowden might have the classified information on a thumb drive in his possession?

10 Were any actions taken by Booz Allen Hamilton to intercept Edward Snowden and prevent him from divulging the classified information, and, if so, what and when were those actions?

11 If you are aware of NSA actions to intercept Snowden and the classified information, could you please describe those actions and their dates?

12 Did Booz Allen Hamilton or NSA have reason to believe that Edward Snowden may have committed a crime, and, if so, on what date did you become aware of that and what were your relevant actions and dates?

13 If you are unaware of NSA actions or are unable to discuss what you do know, could you please provide a name and contact at NSA who can do so?

14 Are there any other comments that you wish to provide about the issue of Edward Snowden?

This article will consider whether specific timely action could potentially have stopped Edward Snowden from boarding a flight at Honolulu International Airport with classified information in his possession. Your responses to these questions and additional comments will be included verbatim and in their entirety without being edited.

This story will be published on or after 11/23/2019 unless you request more time to supply the answers.

Mahalo,

David Ware

No response from Booz Allen Hamilton whatsoever was received.

Per Wikipedia:

On March 15, 2013 three days after what he later called his breaking point of seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress Snowden quit his job at Dell.

At the time of his departure from the U.S. in May 2013, he had been employed for 15 months inside the NSAs Hawaii regional operations center, which focuses on the electronic monitoring of China and North Korea, the last three of which were with consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton.

That being the case, it is absolutely incomprehensible that Booz Allen Hamilton hired him immediately and he began working for them at NSA. There could not have been an independent background security investigation conducted by Booz Allen Hamilton under those circumstances. As Snowden himself has admitted, he took the position specifically to obtain and divulge sensitive classified NSA data.

So, our first concern is that Booz Allen Hamilton did not apparently vet Snowden as to why he left Dell. NSA allowed him to change contractors and continue working at their super-secret facility in Kunia, Hawaii.

Snowden had been employed for no more than 6 weeks by this company, so he would not have had a significant amount of sick leave or annual leave accrued by May 1st. Yet he was absent until he departed the country on May 20th. He and his girlfriend moved out of their rented house in nearby Kunia at that time. It would be important to know how much leave he was authorized and whether any actions were taken by Booz Allen Hamilton or by NSA to locate him.

Did NSA realize that classified information had been compromised before Snowden divulged it publicly from outside the United States? If not, why not? If so, what actions were taken to intercept him and to recover / secure the data?

If the breach was known, did Booz Allen Hamilton or NSA suspect that Snowden might have it in his possession on a thumb drive?

Most importantly, was there reason to believe that Snowden may have committed a crime? If so, what action was taken to apprehend him?

The National Crime Information Center (NCIC) is a computerized index of missing persons and criminal information and is designed for the rapid exchange of information between criminal justice agencies. Users access the NCIC computer located at FBI headquarters through regional or State computer systems or with direct tie-ins to the NCIC computer. The data is stored in 12 files: article, boat, Canadian warrant, gun, interstate identification index, license plate, missing person, securities, U.S. Secret Service Protective, unidentified person, vehicle, and wanted person.

If a federal arrest warrant had been issued on Edward Snowden and entered into NCIC, he would have been identified and apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection at the boarding gate of any international flight from Honolulu or other city. A warrantless outbound border search could have been conducted and the stolen data would have been recovered and prevented from leaving the United States in his possession. A thumb drive or other electronic media could have been detained. CBP would have turned him over to the agency holding the warrant.

But, even if there was not enough for NSA to obtain an arrest warrant, NCIC is not the only way CBP could have been alerted. If CBP had known before Snowden left the USA, a nationwide alert could have been entered and he would still have been identified prior to boarding an international flight. He would have been questioned at the gate and a warrantless border search would still have found any stolen classified information in his possession.

So, there you have it. The problem is that CBP was not alerted about Snowden before he left the country.

If Booz Allen Hamilton and/or NSA did not suspect Edward Snowden of stealing sensitive classified information before he divulged it from Hong Kong, then there are serious deficiencies in the security posture of both.

If they did know and suspected Snowden, they did not take appropriate timely action to notify CBP before he could get out of the country.

Frankly, it is hard to believe that an agency as reputable as NSA and a contractor with such a long positive track record as Booz Allen Hamilton did not have reason to believe that Snowden was the culprit sooner rather than later.

Therefore, the only logical conclusion is that they failed to coordinate with CBP to stop him from taking the compromised classified information abroad and divulging it there.

This did not have to become the notorious international incident that it is today. Snowden could have had his day in court and faced justice here in the United States instead of lurking in Moscow.

The author of this article is a retired United States government employee with 42 years combined active duty military and civilian service who was the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Representative at the Hawaii High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area [HIDTA] and collocated Hawaii State Fusion Center at the time of the Snowden incident.

I became aware of this matter strictly through open sources after Snowden had already flown from Honolulu to Hong Kong. We cannot redo the past. Whats done is done and cannot be undone.

For the record, I have worked with Booz Allen Hamilton over the years and still have a very positive impression of the overall contribution they make to our national security as a contractor with various government agencies. I also respect the publicly misunderstood role of NSA. I was aware of their existence long before the Snowden affair.

For six and a half years now, I have wished that Booz Allen Hamilton or NSA would have made a timely notification to CBP about Snowden. But, they didnt. Life goes on.

The merger of Customs inspections with Immigration inspections into DHS/CBP on March 1, 2003 was a game-changer that merits a thorough analysis in an article all its own.

The relevance in this context is that the mission of the late, great U.S. Customs Service [USCS] was preempted and usurped by the focus on non-U.S. citizens. Customs, which was established in 1789, the same year the U.S. Constitution was ratified, was a Treasury Department agency tasked with protecting and collecting the revenue along with preventing the smuggling of contraband across our borders whether by U.S. citizens or otherwise.

I hope this assessment of what went wrong in the Snowden affair will:

In fairness, despite the passing of the deadline without response, if Booz Allen Hamilton wishes to provide answers to the questions which were posed to them, they will be duly considered and we will do a follow-up article. NSA is also welcome and invited to tell us your side of the story.

As for Edward Snowden, just hold that thought and tell it to the judge and jury. Besides, we dont speak Russian.

We are currently forming the American Conservative Movement. If you are interested in learning more, we will be sending out information in a few weeks.

Original post:
Conspiracy Theory4 days ago Why the Snowden incident didn't have to happen EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - NOQ Report

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Getting its world premiere at documentary festival IDFA in Amsterdam, Tonje Hessen Scheis gripping AI doc iHuman drew an audience of more than 700 to a 10 a.m. Sunday screening at the incongruously old-school Path Tuschinski cinema. Many had their curiosity piqued by the films timely subject matterthe erosion of privacy in the age of new media, and the terrifying leaps being made in the field of machine intelligencebut its fair to say that quite a few were drawn by the promise of a Skype Q&A with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who made headlines in 2013 by leaking confidential U.S. intelligence to the U.K.s Guardian newspaper.

Snowden doesnt feature in the film, but it couldnt exist without him: iHuman is an almost exhausting journey through all the issues that Snowden was trying to warn us about, starting with our civil liberties. Speaking after the filmwhich he very much enjoyedSnowden admitted that the subject was still raw for him, and that the writing of his autobiography (this years Permanent Record), had not been easy. It was actually quite a struggle, he revealed. I had tried to avoid writing that book for a very long time, but when I looked at what was happening in the world and [saw] the direction of developments since I came forward [in 2013], I was haunted by these developmentsso much so that I began to consider: what were the costs of silence? Which is [something] I understand very well, given my history. When you see the rise of authoritarianismeven in Western, open societiesand you see how closely it dovetails with the development of technology that create stable states rather than free states, I think that should alarm us, and that drove me quite strongly in my work.

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Snowden used the example of the changing nature of surveillance. Before 2013, he noted, there were specialists, there were insiders, there were intelligence officers, there were academics and researchers who understood all too well the possibility of mass surveillance. They understood how our technologies and our techniques could be applied to change the world of intelligence gathering from the traditional methodwhich was, you name a target and you monitor them specifically. You send officers into their homes. They plant a camera or a listening device. You have officers on the street who follow them to meetings, in cars and on foot. It was very expensive. And that created a natural constraint on how much surveillance was done. The rise of technology meant that, now, you could have individual officers who could now easily monitor teams of people and even populations of peopleentire movements, across borders, across languages, across culturesso cheaply that it would happen overnight.

At the NSA, he continued, I would come to my desk in the morning and all the information was already there. This was the burden of mass surveillance. Now, as I said, specialists knew this was possible, but the public was not aware, broadly [speaking], and those who claimed that it was happening, or even that it was likely to happen, were treated as conspiracy theorists. You were the crazy person [in] the tin foil hat. The unusual uncle at the dinner table. And what 2013 delivered, and what I see the continuation of today, is the transformation of what was once treated as speculationeven if it was informed speculationto fact.

Returning to the theme of whistleblowing, Snowden reaffirmed his belief that mostly it is a moral obligation. Its not about what you want, he said flatly. Its about what we must do. The invention of artificial general intelligence is opening Pandoras Boxand I believe that box will be opened. We cant prevent it from being opened. But what we can do is, we can slow the process of unlocking that box. We can do it by days. We can do it by decades, until the world is prepared to handle the evils that we know will be released into the world from that box. And the way that we do that, the way that we slow that process of opening the box, is by removing the greed from the process, which I believe is the primary driver for the development of so much of this technology today.

He continued: We should not, and we must not, ban research into machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques that have human impact. But we can, and we should, ban the commercial trade in these technologies at this stage. And what that will do is it means that academic researcherspublic interest organizations, the scientists and researchers who are driven by the public interest [and] the common goodwill continue their work. But all of the companies that are doing this now hold it from these that are pursuing these capabilities to amplify their own power and profits, they will be deterred, because they will have less incentive to do these things now.

Warming to his theme, Snowden reserved the full blast of his disdain for the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and companies such as Cambridge Analytica, that track our digital footprints and use algorithms to grab our attention. What is happening is that we are being made prisoner to ghosts, he said. We are being imprisoned by models of [our] past behavior that have been determined by machines. We are being used against the future. Our past actions and activities are being used to limit the potential of human behavior, because decisions are being formed based on past observations and these models of past lives.

[This kind of information] cant be misused, he stressed. It must not be misused to decide who gets a job, who gets an education, who gets a loan, who gets [medical] treatment. But if we dont change the direction that we see today, if we allow Facebook and Google and Amazon to pursue these models and to apply these models to every aspect of human decision-makingas they are very, very aggressively striving to [do] today. We will find [that] we have become prisoners of a past that no longer exists.

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Edward Snowden on the Dangers of Mass Surveillance and ...

Even if they were to peter out tomorrow, the protests that have brought parts of Hong Kong to a standstill since late summer would still be remembered as a watershed. Thats largely because of the demonstrators open demand for democracy, the scale of the leaderless movement they have formed and their unyielding resolve in the face of direct threats from a regime whose capacity for brutality in suppressing secessionist claims nobody could doubt. But the protests represent a shift in another important respect, one that marks them out as peculiarly modern. Watch the footage: the young people on the streets act in open defiance of the authorities, yet they do so while engaged in a constant effort at self-concealment. The umbrellas, the laser beams, the face masks, the no-photograph rule among the protesters all are designed not to repel the policemen who run at them with truncheons but to thwart the biggest, most sophisticated state surveillance system in the world.

China, the global leader in techno-authoritarianism, has assembled a vast apparatus parts of it visible, other parts unseen to monitor virtually every aspect of peoples lives. The Hong Kong protesters have used low-tech fixes to evade the ubiquitous cameras. They have also taken their own digital precautions; for example, by deleting all Chinese apps from their phones.

Across the world, those on-street cameras are still the stock image of choice to illustrate fears of a tech-driven dystopia. And when we consider how technology can endanger human rights, we think first of states and the ways they have found to deploy new digital tools to spy on or constrain their own citizens.

But what if were looking in the wrong place? What if the biggest threats to human rights in the digital world are not paranoid despots but rather the platforms we use every day in our online lives?

In an important new report, Amnesty International homes in on two of those platforms, Google and Facebook, and argues that their surveillance-based business models are predicated on a Faustian bargain: to access the vast resources of the internet, the individual must submit to a system that by definition denies his or her human rights.

The model relies on the mass accumulation of data on each user location, history, sex, ethnicity, age, mood, political views, vulnerabilities and so on. That data is used to make predictions about future behaviour the better the predictions, the more advertisers will pay for them. Privacy advocates have been raising the alarm about loss of privacy for years to limited effect, from campaigners point of view. But recently, as the broader implications of private mass data-harvesting have been clarified, the mainstream debate has taken on new dimensions. And it seems to be gaining traction.

In her groundbreaking The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff shows how the threats posed by the new market form invented by Google and Facebook go far beyond privacy. These companies are creating new forms of power and new ways of modifying individual behaviour, both online and in the real world. Remember that Facebook has carried out behavioural experiments nudging people to vote in elections or adjusting users moods by presenting them with different posts in their feed. And these companies are doing all of this, Zuboff argues, outside individual awareness or public accountability. They know everything about us; we know almost nothing about them, she writes.

Facebook denies that its model involves surveillance at all. Use of its products is voluntary, it argues, which distinguishes it from involuntary state surveillance. This is a shaky argument given that one-third of humans use a Facebook-owned service every day. It is virtually unavoidable. Using its services is voluntary only in the way that using public roads and paths is voluntary.

While the data-harvesting model was designed with advertisers in mind, the information the tech giants sweep up is of immense interest to state authorities, including intelligence agencies, police and immigration services. Edward Snowden gave us glimpses into how intelligence agencies found ways to access the tech companies data. No matter how aggressively these companies guard your information, the risks of it falling into the hands of state actors are clearly very real.

These algorithmic systems have a range of knock-on effects, in other words. Amnesty argues that many of these effects impinge on peoples rights to freedom of expression and freedom of thought, and the right to equality and non-discrimination. At the most basic level, by influencing peoples thoughts and modifying their moods or opinions, the firms can affect ones ability to make autonomous choices. By shrinking the private sphere and corralling people into personalised online zones, the algorithms hinder the free development and exchange of ideas. The sheer scale of the intrusion of Google and Facebooks business model into our private lives through ubiquitous and constant surveillance has massively shrunk the space necessary for us to define who we are, according to the report.

Zuboff calls for a social awakening to the ways in which technology giants are changing our lives and societies. This may be happening already. Governments are beginning to impose constraints on the regulatory Wild West in which the tech giants have been operating, and it no longer sounds far-fetched to imagine that one day Facebook or Google will be broken up. Slowly, a countermovement seems to be stirring.

Continue reading here:
Big techs bargain: if you want to be online, then give up your rights - The Irish Times

As a series of leaked cables reveal the extent of China's mass surveillance system, the country's British ambassador has claimed the documents are faked.

Concern has been rising for some time over the incarceration, indoctrination and maltreatment of hundreds of thousands of people, mostly from the Muslim Uighur community, in the western region of Xinjiang.

And yesterday, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) released the official 'manual' for running the camps holding hundreds of thousands of Muslim Uighurs and other minorities, along with briefings on the AI-based data collection and analysis system used to select Xinjiang residents for detention.

The briefings relate to China's Integrated Joint Operations Platform (IJOP), which identifies 'suspicious persons' using AI. Data sources for this, according to Human Rights Watch, include checkpoints, closed-circuit cameras with facial recognition, wifi sniffers and even spyware installed in individual homes.

The information is available to police and other authorities via a mobile app. One leaked bulletin from 2017 revealed that during the preceding six days, 24,412 'suspicious' persons were flagged - and the vast majority detained as a result.

However, in statements released by the Chinese Embassy in London, Ambassador Liu Xiaoming disputed the authenticity of the material, saying: "I'm telling you the documents, the so-called documents you are talking about, is pure fabrication."

And while he acknowledged the existence of the camps and associated surveillance, he claimed that this was justified by a terrorist threat, stating that thousands of terrorist incidents happened in Xinjiang between the 1990s and 2016.

"If the same thing happened in the United Kingdom, would you - let me ask you this: if a certain region has rampant terrorist extremist activities, and people suffer severely and call for actions from the UK government, what are you going to do? Sit back and watch?" he asked.

This may have been a deliberate dig. While no other nation on earth has anywhere near the level of surveillance that China does, the UK has rather more than most - to the extent that in September last year, it was ruled unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights.

It had been revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden that the UKs GCHQ intelligence agency was secretly intercepting and processing large quantities of private communications of ordinary citizens and sharing them with other countries' intelligence agencies, including the USs National Security Agency.

Read more from the original source:
China Rejects Claims Of Mass Surveillance And Mistreatment - Forbes

Malcolm Nance, a former naval intelligence officer and an MSNBC contributor, has become one of the most recognizable voices on Trump-related scandals. According to Brian Williams, MSNBCs chief anchor, Nance is a cross between Batman andFight Club. The weekend-morning host Joy Reid called Nance very rational, even though the things that hes telling you will completely freak you out. Hes super knowledgeable, but hes also that calming friend. Nance, however, has been frequently criticized by both the left and the right for promoting false or unproven claims, often having to do with Russia. In March, Nance tweeted that he was convinced that Carter Page was an F.B.I. double agent; he has written, of Trump, little comes from his mouth that was not put there by shaping actions and experiences with Russians, and was carefully planned to benefit the Russian Republic. This month, on Morning Joe, he claimed that the Russian government had been looking for ways to exploit Trump since the mid-eighties. Donald Trump sees the world only through Moscows point of view, he stated.

In 2016, Nance wrote the best-selling book The Plot to Hack America: How Putins Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election, which he followed up with another best-seller, The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin and His Spies Are Undermining America and Dismantling the West. He has written what could be considered the third part of a trilogy: The Plot to Betray America: How Team Trump Embraced Our Enemies, Compromised Our Security, and How We Can Fix It. I recently spoke by phone with Nance, whose intelligence work included stints in the Middle East and North Africa. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed his fears about the Trump Presidency, whether he believes Trump and members of his circle are foreign agents, and the danger of a public square full of conspiracy theories.

Amid all the lies we hear from the White House, how important is it for journalists and commentators to pursue the truth and speak truthfully?

Its critically important, and thats one of the reasons why Ive got three books now on the Trump Administration and their activities. One of the things that I try to make very clear is that I have to deeply, deeply source the information that Im using. I think that the lowest amount I had was four hundred references, and in this one there are over seven hundred references.

You have written and spoken a lot about Russian disinformation campaigns. How important is it to the Russian government to disseminate untruths and make sure the public square is full of speculation and misinformation?

What the American public has seen play out since 2016 is critical to their strategy, and it really started far, far before that, in a large way, in 2014. You are watching a strategic plan thats being executed by Russia. None of this is piecemeal; none of this is small-timeit is a long ball game. And they need to use disinformation because, you have to realize, their leader is an ex-K.G.B. officer who used extensive amounts of disinformation that was developed by the K.G.B. And then, when he trained to be the head of Russian Intelligence, he realized all of those old K.G.B. tactics and strategies and techniques were applicable in the real world. But now technology had caught up to where they could be effective, whereas they were never effective in the past. So a person with a laptop can be just as powerful as the New York Times, but with the old disinformation strategies and tactics, which would attack the fault lines of the American experiment. And so its very critical to the Russians. One third of the American public refuses to believe the U.S. news media, but well believe propaganda generated by the Russian Federation intelligence agencies.

They put a set of rose-colored glasses on his face, you recently stated about the Russian government. Donald Trump sees the world only through Moscows point of view. What did this mean?

Perception management is a technique in which you frame the information sphere around your opponent, whether its an individual or a nation, with so much information that is relatively credible to where your opponent adopts the framework that you are giving him, so that its sort of like a pair of rose-colored glasses, right? Only, instead of you needing them, they are created for you and customized around your personality, around how you see the world. And then that disinformation and propagandatruths, half-truths, and liesits been fitted around you slowly, like boiling the frog, to where you adopt a framework, which only benefits Russia.

Donald Trump got his glasses fitted, so to speak, at that secret meeting at the Nobu restaurant with the twelve richest oligarchs in Russia, including a representative from Putin. [In 2013, Trump met with Russian businessmen at Nobu restaurant in Moscow.] No one knows what was said in it, but we can tell the parameters of it because of how he behaves. And, from that point on, there was nothing negative he could ever say about Russia or Vladimir Putin. So now the reason his perspective constantly complements Russia is because his own education on Russia, Ukraine, and that world has been crafted by Moscow. So he sees it from their world view.

What about the idea, though, that he sees the world through the prism of his own self-interest, combined with a general preference for strongmen and autocracy, as we see when he talks about North Korea or Turkey?

This year, I went to Putins office when he [worked] in Dresden, and I learned quite a bit from the experts out there in Germany about how he behaved.

This was the office from when he was a K.G.B. guy in East Germany?

In Dresden, right. Putin learned his ground-game human-intelligence activities very well. It gave him a very, very unique perspective on East versus West and how money motivated virtually every person. We have this acronym, MICE, which you use to recruit spies. M is money, I is ideology, C is coercion or compromise, E is ego or excitement. And thats how you get a person to betray their nation. Putin would have seen when The Apprentice came to Russia as a TV showhe would have called back and said to his intelligence staff, Someone go get me the dossier on Donald Trump. And then they would have realized that they had been surveilling Donald Trump since 1977. He had an extensive K.G.B. folder. [No evidence has been found to substantiate this claim. According to the Guardian, the Czechoslovakian intelligence agency became interested in Trump as early as 1977. The article also notes that its unclear to what degree the KGB and StB shared or coordinated Trump material.]

Youre saying that because he married a woman from Czechoslovakia, which was behind the Iron Curtain?

Of course. Every intelligence agency does this when you have people who are noteworthy. However, back in the Communist days and the Cold War, every Westerner who went to the East was evaluated for an intelligence recruitment.

So, youre not saying he was a special agent going back forty years?

Oh, no, no, no, nono one has ever said that.

You called him a witting asset, correct?

Well, I called him a witting asset in [2016]. What I said was he was under surveillance. They had him on full coverage, where they collected all of his phone calls. When he visited Czechoslovakia, they had agents in place around him; they attempted to recruit him. They keep these records.

And then, he offers himself to Russia by wanting to go to Russia to build Trump Tower Moscow 1.0. Im not saying any of that happened; Im just saying this man has an extensive dossier, perhaps even a filing cabinet of information that is in the possession of Russian Federation intelligence today. The K.G.B. didnt just disappear.

Right, but when you say that we have subordinated our national security to Vladimir Putin, and its been said to be the most brilliant intelligence operation in the history of mankind, and add, If you are in this matrix they have constructed and you are witting, then you belong to them. All of your decisions are crafted and shaped to benefit them, even if its going to benefit you financially or personallydoesnt that imply more than what you are saying?

Let me explain this. First, you start off as a useful idiot, right? Next is unwitting assets, and an unwitting asset is a person who doesnt know that there was an intelligence operation around him. The next progression is a witting asset. I have never said the next step. I have never said Donald Trump was an agent of Russia. An agent is a term of art, which means you are actually recruited, you are briefed about who you work for, you sign a contract, and you get tasked to carry out certain acts. No ones ever considered that.

You tweeted that Glenn Greenwald shows his true colors as an agent of Trump and Moscow.

Well, Glennfirst off, I was speaking rhetorically on Twitter. And I was responding to the fact that Glenn Greenwald, who used to be a journalist in my estimationnow who knows what he is. I mean, he lives in Brazil; he throws firebombs; hes a Fox News contributor. [Greenwald has appeared on Fox but is not an official contributor.] And that was in relation to him being in Moscow with Edward Snowden, and having a sit-down with Edward Snowden. And he talked about it on Russia Today. All right, so, in my estimation, as a citizen, Glenn Greenwald has an affinity that he will have to explain himself. How many people get to sit down with Edward Snowden? I will tell you right noweveryone knows its a factEdward Snowden is under the control, and he lives in the residence thats provided by, the Russian state security service, the F.S.B. His lawyer, if Im not mistaken, is an F.S.B. representative of the Russian state. You cant get access to him unless the F.S.B. gives you access. [Snowden has said, I have my own apartment. I have my own income. I live a fully independent life. I have never and will never accept money or housing or any other assistance from the Russian government. His Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, has ties to the F.S.B.] Every word of what Ive put out there, besides the fact that it is heavily sourced, has been proven true by the Mueller report, Senate Intelligence reports, House reports, the National Directorate of Intelligence reports.

But when you write, as you did in your last book, When 45th President of the United States Donald J. Trump speaks, little comes from his mouth that was not put there by shaping actions and experiences with Russians, and was carefully planned to benefit the Russian Republic, its hard to say that has been proven true.

Exactly. Thats my opinion. Thats my analysis.

That is different than being proved true by the Mueller report.

Thats why it is called analysis. Can I just make another point? Journalists have a standard of reporting that they have to meet, right?

Yes.

O.K. Well, journalists should stick to that, right? We all agree.

Yep.

O.K. Well, what about former intelligence officers who arent journalists?

Well, I think that, when theyre writing books and theyre going on MSNBC, they should also be held to standards.

Let me tell you something. We are held to standards, and Im held to a very, very high standard. As the only African-American in national security in the United States right now (even Jeh Johnson is in domestic security), Im held to a pretty high standard. Im held to a much higher standard. In fact, when I made a negative comment about Edward Snowdenwho, by the way, compromised missions that I worked on at the National Security Agency that, literally, I swore my life to defend, right? When I do my writing, it is not only the most quantified writing out there; it is accurate to whatever source that I use. And, when I do an analysis of Donald Trump, that is based upon my experience, it is based upon the information that I see; it is based upon the things we can all see with our very eyes. But, you know, I am not the F.B.I. Counterintelligence Division. I dont have the dossier on Donald Trump.

You have an intelligence background, so I want to understand this.

I also have about four hundred thousand words written on this. Its more than just the occasional comment I make on TV.

Speaking of words, you write, In the words of the common person on the street, he is considered by many to be a traitor. Do you think he is a traitor?

Rhetorically. In my last book, in the last chapter, I described what a traitor is, according to law. According to the law, a traitor is a person who has aided and abetted a foreign entity in time of war, right? Even in this book, I go over it, and you have to talk about whether youre talking about legally or whether youre talking about rhetorically. Now, Donald Trump uses the word traitor often. Do I believe hes a traitor? No, I dont believe hes a traitor, because he doesnt meet the legal definition. You notice the title of my book is The Plot to Betray America, not The Plot to Commit Treason.

You write, little comes from his mouth that was not put there by shaping actions and experiences with the Russians, and was carefully planned to benefit the Russian Republic. So is

Its true. Its all true. I wrote an entire chapter on how they do it. They do it to a lot of people. Theyve done it to the entire Republican Party now.

Let me just ask you whether you think theres a danger in over-interpreting things as being part of Russian plots. After Joy Reid got in trouble for anti-gay blog posts, you tweeted, Clearly there is a Discredit & Humiliate campaign afoot. Apparently all progressives are secretly anti-gay bloggers. This has Wikileaks & AltRight written all over it. Expect more. Do you stand by this?

Did you hear the word Russian in that comment, because your question said that I associated that with a Russian plot.

Well, I assume you think WikiLeaks is a Russian front.

No, I think WikiLeaks is a Russian laundromat for the D.N.C. hacks, which was validated not only by the Mueller report but also by the arrest of Julian Assange. And so that had nothing to do with Russia.

O.K., so conspiracy theories.

That was just talking about disinformation. There are people who have an agenda on Joy Reid. Every time Joy Reid tweets on a Saturday morning or even comes on television, go through her timeline and see how many people come out who are from the alt-rightnot from the left, not from the libertarian left, not from the L.G.B.T.Q. community, but from the conservative rightwho come out and say, Joy Reid is a homophobe who just destroys her information, forges her information. What that tells me is there was a meta-narrative within their world which has decided that this is how Joy Reid is going to be seen within that alt-right world. Its essentially a hammering point they use to attack all of their critics. Its like Hillary Clinton and the e-mails. You understand how they craft their messages. I see those craftings, and I tend to see them a lot faster than the news media does.

So you stand by that?

Well, Im attuned to intelligence activities. You know, I wrote a whole book on ISIS information warfare as we studied it over multiple years. So that was about something that had nothing to do with the Russians, but it has to do with the alt-right and people who just didnt like Joy Reid. So, yeah, I stand by that.

But you dont think that there was any there there, so to speak?

You know what? Im going to tell you something that I tell everybody.

Please.

I am a former cryptologist from the National Security Agency. If there is anything that I personally can assure you as an American citizen, its that there is nothing in this world that is digital that cannot be manipulated.

She apologized for the posts.

I dont know. Thats up to hergo ask her. [After claiming there was a hack, Reid apologized when there was no evidence of one.] But, you know what? That was Joy Reid and her past. We all have digital footprints back there, but me talking about the alt-right attacking her, thats real.

You think the Podesta e-mails were forged in some way?

I never said the Podesta e-mails were forged, and I have tried to educate the country on it.

Official Warning, you tweeted. #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries and #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.

There were. There were. Black propaganda is when you have something that is a piece of disinformation or misinformation or even crafted and fabricated information that is inserted into a stream of real information. That is the definition of black propaganda. What I said was that the Podesta package has misinformation, disinformation, and black propaganda. This was what I got from Julian Assange, right? Who swears nothing that he put out came from the Russians. He swears nothing that was ever done had any black propaganda in it or was disinformation. On the first day, there was a piece of black propaganda that was inserted in there not by whoever sent that package but by an alt-righter in the United States who did a clumsy edit of one of those e-mails and then put it back into that data stream like it was real. [The black propaganda Nance referred to in his tweet was created by an Internet prankster, who posted a fake speech by Hillary Clinton that included references to bronies, male fans of the cartoon My Little Pony. The author said he never intended the post to be linked to WikiLeaks.]

So whats the big takeaway from this book for readers?

Its very simple. If the first book was the analysis that showed you that I had predicted that Russia had done it and how they did it and how WikiLeaks was their laundromat, the second book is about Russian strategy. I never, by the way, identified what it is that they have over Donald Trumps head. Nobody knows that yet. This one is strictly about Team Trump.

But you think its something?

Oh, absolutely. Something. Look, when youre in debt to your bookie, you dont insult him, and you do everything you can. You babysit his kids; you wash his car.

He was in debt to Russia, you are saying?

Of course, Trump is in some way, shape, or form. We dont know, because it was never investigated in the Mueller report and now were finding outI mean, even with the Ukraine operation, which is a component of that.

We have to speculate on it then, if we dont know what it is.

But its there. In the intelligence community, we have this thing called black holes. A black hole is where all of the information that we have in every direction around a spot of nothing shows us that there is something there pulling in all of this information, right? The only thing were missing is the event horizon where we verify whats going on. Donald Trumps actions, his behaviors, his very words, which come right out of the mouth of Vladimir Putin on many subjectswe all see this. Its documented. Its everywhere. The entirety of global media has seen all these things, and, unless you dont believe anything about the Russian operation against the United States, we all believe it. We all know it. We know theres something there.

Go here to see the original:
Malcolm Nance on the Danger of Conspiracy Theories - The New Yorker

Building on the opinion piece by Stephen Balkam (Who will keep kids safe in an AI world), we as parents, policymakers, and caretakers of the next generation should be asking ourselves whether were doing enough to protect our childrens personally identifiable information (PII), given the increasing use of vendor software and apps (cumulatively, Ed-Tech) in schools.

Consider the following: Summer is over, and the first day after school your high schooler tells you about a new electronic hall pass system that requires input of student PII to leave class, including to use the bathroom. Days later, your elementary schooler presents a form seeking parental consent for use of a gaggle of apps, a third of which are only appropriate for 13 and above (elementary school children are usually under 13). The following week, your middle-schooler tells you about a new college-prep tool he used at school; delving further, you find that the questions included the ethnic, geographic or socio-economic diversity desired of a college, interest in attending a denominational college, etc.

Yes, there are a variety of privacy laws to protect PII, especially that of children: COPPA; the upcoming California Consumer Privacy Act; state privacy laws, etc. Its also true that many Ed Tech vendors have privacy policies in place. But if you read the fine print, you find that many share student PII with third parties, and within their larger corporate conglomerates, creating growing dossiers about our children, starting in elementary school, through High School. Consider the recent Washington Post article about student data being aggregated and used by colleges when considering admission applications.

In short, what we have is a growing use of technology in schools, coupled with the collection of students PII and associated activity (such as browsing history), at a time when the new oil is personal data that can be sold, shared or otherwise monetized.

Thats not to say that Ed Tech in schools is bad. From the under-resourced public-school perspective, Ed Tech is a force-multiplier. From the parents perspective, exposing kids to technology that enriches their academic experience is important. And from the Ed Tech vendors perspective, using data to improve the software and customize learning, while turning a profit, are all fair.

So, the real question is: How to ensure that Ed Tech vendors are responsible stewards of our childrens data?

Fortunately, were at an inflection point when it comes to student PII. Parents are increasingly focused on protecting their childrens PII, and even the federal government is beginning to ask questions. The FTC is currently revisiting COPPA, and in August 2019, Sens. Dick DurbinRichard (Dick) Joseph DurbinOvernight Health Care: Crunch time for Congress on surprise medical bills | CDC confirms 47 vaping-related deaths | Massachusetts passes flavored tobacco, vaping products ban Trump, senators push for drug price disclosures despite setbacks Tensions rise in Senate's legislative 'graveyard' MORE (D-Ill.), Ed MarkeyEdward (Ed) John MarkeyKey Senate Democrats unveil sweeping online privacy bill On The Money: Supreme Court stays House subpoena for Trump financial records | Pelosi says trade deal is 'within range' | Dems target housing shortage amid talk of crisis Overnight Energy: Majority in poll believe US doing 'too little' on climate change | Supreme Court allows climate scientist's lawsuit to go forward | UN finds greenhouse gases hit record in 2018 | EPA weighs action on 'forever chemicals' MORE (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) sent a letter to a large group of Ed Tech companies inquiring about how they handle and protect student data.

Interestingly, the Ed Tech challenge is not dissimilar to one I faced as the Civil Liberties and Privacy Officer for the National Counterterrorism Center a part of the intelligence community when trying to convince the American public of our good data stewardship after the Edward Snowden leaks.

The answer was to implement proactive audits and spot checks, the results of which we made public, earning the praise of the Presidents Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board for finding a balance between the need for secrecy and the need to prove to the public that we were adhering to our promises with regard to protecting the data with which we were entrusted.

Arguably, had Facebook had a proactive audit and spot check program in place, it wouldnt have taken a Cambridge Analytica, and regulators on two continents to figure out what Facebook could have ascertained itself. Likewise, the recent news about undisclosed data sharing between Google and Ascension health systems (Project Nightingale) is just the latest example of tech company data sharing run amok.

Notably, the Future for Privacy Forum proposed a voluntary privacy pledge for Ed Tech vendors to protect student PII. To date, over 300 have signed. But theres no mechanism in place to validate compliance. And if theres two things Ive learned from my work in the intelligence community, its:

As parents and policymakers responsible for stewarding our childrens digital future, we must be able to trust that Ed Tech is handling student PII appropriately. And the best way to do that, to quote President Ronald Reagan, is Trust but verify.

Joel Schwarz is a senior principal at Global Cyber Risk, LLC and an adjunct professor at Albany Law School, teaching courses on cybercrime, cybersecurity and privacy. He previously served as the Civil Liberties and Privacy Officer (CLPO) for the National Counterterrorism Center.

See more here:
Protecting the future of student data privacy: The time to act is now | TheHill - The Hill

Getting its world premiere at documentary festival IDFA in Amsterdam, Tonje Hessen Scheis gripping AI doc iHuman drew an audience of more than 700 to a 10 a.m. Sunday screening at the incongruously old-school Path Tuschinski cinema. Many had their curiosity piqued by the films timely subject matterthe erosion of privacy in the age of new media, and the terrifying leaps being made in the field of machine intelligencebut its fair to say that quite a few were drawn by the promise of a Skype Q&A with National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who made headlines in 2013 by leaking confidential U.S. intelligence to the U.K.s Guardian newspaper.

Snowden doesnt feature in the film, but it couldnt exist without him: iHuman is an almost exhausting journey through all the issues that Snowden was trying to warn us about, starting with our civil liberties. Speaking after the filmwhich he very much enjoyedSnowden admitted that the subject was still raw for him, and that the writing of his autobiography (this years Permanent Record), had not been easy. It was actually quite a struggle, he revealed. I had tried to avoid writing that book for a very long time, but when I looked at what was happening in the world and [saw] the direction of developments since I came forward [in 2013], I was haunted by these developmentsso much so that I began to consider: what were the costs of silence? Which is [something] I understand very well, given my history. When you see the rise of authoritarianismeven in Western, open societiesand you see how closely it dovetails with the development of technology that create stable states rather than free states, I think that should alarm us, and that drove me quite strongly in my work.

Snowden used the example of the changing nature of surveillance. Before 2013, he noted, there were specialists, there were insiders, there were intelligence officers, there were academics and researchers who understood all too well the possibility of mass surveillance. They understood how our technologies and our techniques could be applied to change the world of intelligence gathering from the traditional methodwhich was, you name a target and you monitor them specifically. You send officers into their homes. They plant a camera or a listening device. You have officers on the street who follow them to meetings, in cars and on foot. It was very expensive. And that created a natural constraint on how much surveillance was done. The rise of technology meant that, now, you could have individual officers who could now easily monitor teams of people and even populations of peopleentire movements, across borders, across languages, across culturesso cheaply that it would happen overnight.

At the NSA, he continued, I would come to my desk in the morning and all the information was already there. This was the burden of mass surveillance. Now, as I said, specialists knew this was possible, but the public was not aware, broadly [speaking], and those who claimed that it was happening, or even that it was likely to happen, were treated as conspiracy theorists. You were the crazy person [in] the tin foil hat. The unusual uncle at the dinner table. And what 2013 delivered, and what I see the continuation of today, is the transformation of what was once treated as speculationeven if it was informed speculationto fact.

Returning to the theme of whistleblowing, Snowden reaffirmed his belief that mostly it is a moral obligation. Its not about what you want, he said flatly. Its about what we must do. The invention of artificial general intelligence is opening Pandoras Boxand I believe that box will be opened. We cant prevent it from being opened. But what we can do is, we can slow the process of unlocking that box. We can do it by days. We can do it by decades, until the world is prepared to handle the evils that we know will be released into the world from that box. And the way that we do that, the way that we slow that process of opening the box, is by removing the greed from the process, which I believe is the primary driver for the development of so much of this technology today.

He continued: We should not, and we must not, ban research into machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques that have human impact. But we can, and we should, ban the commercial trade in these technologies at this stage. And what that will do is it means that academic researcherspublic interest organizations, the scientists and researchers who are driven by the public interest [and] the common goodwill continue their work. But all of the companies that are doing this now hold it from these that are pursuing these capabilities to amplify their own power and profits, they will be deterred, because they will have less incentive to do these things now.

Warming to his theme, Snowden reserved the full blast of his disdain for the likes of Google, Amazon, Facebook and companies such as Cambridge Analytica, that track our digital footprints and use algorithms to grab our attention. What is happening is that we are being made prisoner to ghosts, he said. We are being imprisoned by models of [our] past behavior that have been determined by machines. We are being used against the future. Our past actions and activities are being used to limit the potential of human behavior, because decisions are being formed based on past observations and these models of past lives.

[This kind of information] cant be misused, he stressed. It must not be misused to decide who gets a job, who gets an education, who gets a loan, who gets [medical] treatment. But if we dont change the direction that we see today, if we allow Facebook and Google and Amazon to pursue these models and to apply these models to every aspect of human decision-makingas they are very, very aggressively striving to [do] today. We will find [that] we have become prisoners of a past that no longer exists.

The rest is here:
Edward Snowden on the Dangers of Mass Surveillance and Artificial General Intelligence - Variety

Scott Z. Burns The Report exposes CIA torture, then absolves the Democrats By Joanne Laurier 29 November 2019

The Report, written and directed by Scott Z. Burns and screened at this years Toronto International Film Festival, is a film dramatization of the events surrounding the US Senate Intelligence Committees investigation into and writing of a report on pervasive CIA torture under the Bush administration. The film has now opened in the US.

Burns previously produced An Inconvenient Truth (2006), featuring Al Gore, and has written several screenplays for Steven Soderbergh (The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects, The Laundromat).

The production of the CIA torture document, which involved working through millions of pages of reports, cables, etc., took more than three years. It was completed in July 2012. Another two years passed, thanks to CIA and other obstructions, before the Intelligence Committee in April 2014 voted to publish a version of the executive summary and findings. Eight months later, after further efforts to suppress or excise portions of the document, the revised executive summary, findings and recommendations, 525 pages long, with many redactions, were made public in December 2014.

The original 6,700-page report remains unpublished to this day, blocked by the CIA and the entire US political establishment on national security grounds. Even the fragmentary portions that emerged, however, revealed the fiendish and sadistic methods adopted by American imperialism in its drive to subjugate the world.

Burns film importantly points to some of this, but its fatal flaw is its essential attachment to the Democratic Party and, in particular, the reactionary figure of California Senator Dianne Feinstein. It refuses to face up to the reality that the use of Gestapo-like methods by the US military and their defense or cover-up by the ruling elite revealed, as the WSWS said at the time, that American democracy was in shambles. The CIA torture program itself was only an extreme expression of a break with bourgeois legality that characterizes every aspect of US policy, we wrote.

As the movie opens, still under the Bush administration, Dan Jones (Adam Driver), the principal author of the eventual report, has just come from the FBI to work for the Intelligence Committee. Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) tasks him with leading an investigation into the CIAs use of torture after the 9/11 attacks. That work, including the production of an initial report in early 2009, will last some six years.

Among many other things, Jones and his team discover that at least 119 individuals had been targeted by the CIA program involving the use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), contrary to the agencys claims that the number of individuals involved was less than a hundred. This was only one in a sea of CIA lies. The committee finds that at least 26 of those individuals (or 22 percent of the total) did not meet the standard for detentionthat is, they were entirely innocent victims.

The CIA retains two outside contractorsAir Force psychologists James Mitchell (Douglas Hodge) and Bruce Jessen (T. Ryder Smith), who had no field experience with respect to interrogation and had only prepared a research paper on how CIA agents could resist torture. Nevertheless, in 2006, the value of the CIAs base contract with the company formed by the psychologists with all options exercised was in excess of $180 million; the contractors had received $81 million by the time of the contracts termination in 2009.

Horrifyingly, these pseudo-scientists, along with various CIA operatives and officials, devise and oversee techniques, fully in the spirit and tradition of Nazi experimentation, such as sleep deprivation in which a detainee is forced to stand with his arms shackled above his head, nudity, dietary manipulation, exposure to cold temperatures, cold showers, rough takedowns, confinement in coffin-like boxes, rectal hydration and rectal feeding, and the use of mock executions. (One of the operatives, a sinister individual known only as Bernadette, played by Maura Tierney, seems to be a composite character largely based on now-CIA Director Gina Haspel.) Guards strip detainees naked, shackle them in the standing positions and douse them repeatedly with cold water. The movie shows one detainee succumbing fatally to the most vicious torture.

Some of The Reports most chilling and intense scenes depict the torture while dead-faced CIA personnel coldly evaluate the effectiveness of their methods.

This fascistic indifference extends to government figures such as John Yoo (Pun Bandhu), the attorney who pens the notorious torture memos that help legalize the EITs. Jones concludes that because the detainees looked a little different, spoke a different language, it made it easier for CIA agents to torture them.

Ted Levine plays the monstrous John Brennan, who oversees and wholeheartedly defends the CIAs actions. Barack Obama made Brennan his chief counterterrorism adviser during his first term and elevated him to the post of CIA director in his second. As noted, Brennan and the White House work together to attempt to suppress the Senate report, withholding documents from the committee and then sitting on the completed draft of the report for two years.

Under Brennan, the CIA spies on Jones and the other Senate staffers preparing the report, hacking into their computers, thus violating the constitutional separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment ban on arbitrary searches and seizures, and a number of US laws.

The film is relatively hard-hitting in certain ways, but pulls its punches at decisive moments. The depiction of Feinstein as an anti-torture crusader is especially false and even obscene. One of the wealthiest members of Congress and married to an investment banker, the California senator has been for a quarter century a reliable backer and ally of the US military-intelligence apparatus. She has defended the National Security Agency spying programs and denounced whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning as criminals and traitors. (The movie includes her denunciation of Snowden.)

After the release of the Intelligence Committee report in December 2014 was met with the unapologetic defense of torture by Brennan, along with Bush administration officials, Feinstein issued a groveling statement praising Brennan for showing that CIA leadership is prepared to prevent this from ever happening againwhich is all-important.

Since its opening in theaters in mid-November, Burns The Report has received generally favorable reviews. Unsurprisingly, none of the reviewers refer critically to the overall role of the Democratic Party and Feinstein in particular. Often, in fact, Benings performance as the California Senator has been singled out for praise. Variety, for example, writes: Nowhere is the balance of idealism and practicality, valor and hard-headedness, more exquisitely embodied than in Annette Benings superb performance as Dianne Feinstein. Ones stomach turns.

In a recent interview with the British Film Institute website, Burns expressed explicit support for the CIA, no doubt colored by the Democratic Partys ever-closer embrace of the military-intelligence apparatus in its conflict with the Trump administration: I think our story is about a few people at the CIA. Also there were a lot of people at the agency, then and now, who want to do the right thing, who uphold the law. The intelligence communities in our country and in all of the Five Eyes [intelligence alliance comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and US] are really important. So its not a condemnation of the CIA. Its a commentary on what happens in any government when we lose accountability. [Emphasis added.]

No one has been punished for the massive crimes carried out under the Bush administration, from an illegal war of aggression in Iraq that claimed over a million lives to the systematic torture of detainees. The inability to hold anyone accountable for the grisly torture program exposes the breakdown of constitutional forms of rule in the United States.

As the WSWS wrote: The United States is run by a gigantic military-intelligence apparatus that acts outside of any legal restraint. This apparatus works in close alliance with a financial aristocracy that is no less immune from accountability for its actions than the CIA torturers. The entire state is implicated in a criminal conspiracy against the social and democratic rights of the people, internationally and within the United States.

The Report would have the viewer believe that the criminal activity by the Bush administration and the Republicans was put a stop toperhaps haltingly and inadequatelyby Obama and the Democrats. In clichd Hollywood manner, Dan Jones is elevated to the stature of a solitary American hero who saved the day.

This flies in the face of social and political reality. The American war drive continued under Obama using somewhat different tactics and techniquesdrone strikes, kill lists and the prosecution of new wars in Libya and Syria. The daily headlines, of course, reveal that the eruption of imperialist violence continues under Donald Trump.

The Achilles heel of Hollywood liberal and left filmmaking continues to lie in its alliance with one of the parties fully complicit in the crimes and oppression carried out by the American capitalist social order.

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Scott Z. Burns' The Report exposes CIA torture, then absolves the Democrats - World Socialist Web Site