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

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

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.

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Malcolm Nance on the Danger of Conspiracy Theories - The New Yorker

Barbara Banaian, Times Writers Group Published 5:00 p.m. CT Nov. 29, 2019

Barbara Banaian(Photo: Submitted photo)

The term "whistleblower" once evoked images of 19th-century British bobbiesblowing their whistles to alert the public or colleagues to danger from suspects running away.This was an important part of law enforcement.

Whistleblowers have a long history of reporting wrongdoing, including Benjamin Franklin, who, in 1773, disclosed confidential letters showing that the royally-appointed governor of Massachusetts was misleading Parliament.

At the center of the impeachment hearings in the House of Representatives is a whistleblowerwhose report is pivotal to the investigation.We want an investigation that is fair and transparent, and we want the law honored.

The law to be honored is both a federal statuteand the Sixth Amendment.And there appears to be a conflict.The statute is the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act of 1998 (ICWPA).

TheICWPA says that when filing a report with the Inspector General about an urgent concern, the whistleblower is protected against retaliation by the executive branch upon reporting wrongdoing.They cannot be fired, passed over for promotion, denied educational benefitsor otherwise prevented from career advancement.An act of retaliation leads to a separate whistleblower complaint and investigation and constitutes a separate felony.

But protection from retaliation does not lead to a requirement of anonymity.

The Sixth Amendment is about criminal prosecutions and says an accused person has the rightto be confronted with the witnesses against him and be able to compel testimony that demonstrates his innocence.

An impeachment hearing is a hearing, not a trial.Both Democrats and Republicans have been in attendanceand have been able to ask questions, but only of the witnesses that the chair of the committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, has permitted.And he does not want the whistleblower to testify, in order to maintain anonymity and protect them from retaliation.

To permit the hearing to proceed, Schiff has had others testify to confirm the statements in the whistleblower complaint, making that persons testimony unnecessary in his view.Because a hearing is not a trial, the Sixth Amendment does not apply here.

If articles of impeachment are voted out of the House of Representatives, the Senate sits as a trial court, and it may be here that the Sixth Amendment rights of the accused President Trump would be upheld.

Whistleblowing has a long history dating back to 7th-century England (in which a king offered to split the earnings of anyone who violated the Sabbath law).In 1778, the Continental Congress commended marines who turned in fellow marines who had mistreated British prisoners.

What is important about getting protection underICWPA is that the whistleblower follows the law.Mark Felt, an associate director of the FBIwho became the famous "Deep Throat" from the Watergate scandal, gave his information to a newspaper rather than report it up the chain of command, no doubt because the law at the time did not have whistleblower protections.He stayed anonymous until he was 91 years of age, almost 30 years later.

Had the whistleblower here gone to a newspaper like Edward Snowden, theywould not be entitled to protection.This whistleblower tried to follow the law.

But still there is a fine line to walk:The whistleblower has rights against retaliation, and President Trump has not been bashful about using his Twitter account to criticize those who speak against him.Just look at what happened to AmbassadorMarie Yovanovitch.

Would this be sufficient to constitute retaliation, however? It seems the Sixth Amendment right still exists (if only when this reaches the Senate), but that a separate article could be filed by the House if the whistleblowers rights against retaliation are violated.

Rooting out corruptionand other high crimes is a good thing especially in government.We value this.

The rights of the accuser will have to balance against the rights of the accused.Whistleblowers have an important function, and shouldn't be discouraged .

This is the opinion of Barbara Banaian, a professional pianist who lives in the St. Cloud area. Her column is published the first Sunday of the month.

Read or Share this story: https://www.sctimes.com/story/opinion/2019/11/29/whistleblowers-have-long-history-and-should-protected/4314452002/

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Whistleblowers have a long history - and should be protected - SC Times

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.

2019 has been a year of mass social upheaval. We need you to help the WSWS and ICFI make 2020 the year of international socialist revival. We must expand our work and our influence in the international working class. If you agree, donate today. Thank you.

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

The Beatles are the worlds most popular band from the 1960s. The band sold over 800 million albums. They had 20 Billboard number one hits. They changed the face of rock and roll and pop music and influenced music. The Fab Four each went on to have successful solo careers following their 1970 breakup. The Beatles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were all inducted for their successful solo careers.

Sixteen year old John Lennon and fifteen year old Paul McCartney met in Liverpool, England, in the summer of 1957 and began writing music together. McCartneys friend Harrison joined the duo and began playing lead guitar in 1958. The group played in local clubs, and Pete Best joined the group as a drummer in 1960, and Lennons school friend, Staurt Sutcliffe joined the group as bass player that year. The foursome hired manager Brian Epstein and Producer George Martin and began recording. Ringo Starr became the bands drummer in 1962 with the four remaining Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr sharing writing and performance skills, although Lennon and McCartney continued to be the main songwriters.

The Beatles music became a hit in the early 1960s. Beatlemania hit the world by 1964, and the group toured internationally. They began making films including A Hard Days Night and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in New York City. During their decade recording and touring together, The Beatles deeply influenced the music scene combining rock and roll, pop and counter cultural music. They experimented with psychedelic, Indian, hard rock and ballad styles. Each of the Fab Four went on to have successful solo careers. Lennon was shot and killed by a disgruntled fan in December 1980. Harrison died of lung cancer in November 2001. McCartney and Starr remain active in the music scene.

Here is how we would cast a biopic about The Beatles:

There are many great actors who could portray John Lennon. Joseph Gordon-Levitt would be perfect in the role. Gordon-Levitt is a good actor who has shown the ability to transform himself for a role. He could easily play a young John Lennon, through his successful Beatles years and his solo career through his tragic death in 1980. Gordon-Leavitt began his acting career as a child with roles in television and film including 1992s A River Runs through It. He went on to appear in the sitcom 3rd Rock From the Sun from 1996 through 2001. He studied acting at Columbia University. He won awards for his role in 2009s 500 Days of Summer. Hes also a singer. Gordon-Levitt recently starred as CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden in the 2016 biopic Snowden.

Jim Sturgess would be a great choice to play the iconic Paul McCartney in a Beatles biopic. Sturgess is an English actor and singer. His break out role was in 2007s Across the Universe. The Julie Taymor directed film used The Beatles music as a backdrop for the romantic musical drama that followed Jude (played by Sturgess) as he searched the world for love. Sturgess has appeared on many television shows and films including The Other Boleyn Girl Cross Over and The Way Back. Hes performed his own music since he was 15 years old and recently records and performs with his band Tragic Tears.

Who better to play George Harrison in a Beatles biopic than his own son, Dhani Harrison? Dhani not only looks like his father, he also inherited his dads musical gifts. Dhani was born in 1978 to Harrison and his wife Olivia. He was named after the sixth and seventh notes of the Indian music scale. Dhani grew up with his fathers music. He formed his own band thenewno2 and performed at musical festivals including Lollapalooza and Coachella. Dhani performed with his dad on his final album, Brainwashed and finished the album after his dads 2001 death from lung cancer. Harrison plays multiple instruments, writes, composes and sings his own material. He has produced scores fro television and film including 2013s Beautiful Creatures and Netflixs Dogs.

Tom Dunlea would make a great Ringo Starr in a Beatles biopic. Dunlea is a young British musician and actor who appears to be ready to catch a great break in film. He has the looks a young Ringo Starr and would be able to carry his charisma into the role. Dunlea can sing, play the keyboard and play the drums. He appeared in 2011s Actor Musicianship and 2013s Jimi: All Is By My Side about musician and rock legend Jimi Hendrix. In 2014 Dunlea appeared in Cilla and The Guvnors.

British actor, film producer and musician Tom Hiddleston would make a great George Martin in a Beatles biopic. Hiddleston studied at Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He began his career on stage in Londons West End, has appeared in television and in film. He has won several awards including a Lawrence Olivier Award and a Golden Globe Award. Hiddleston continues to appear in theater and television. He has played the role of Loki in Marvel Studios since 2011 in Thor and The Avengers series.

There would be several other roles to cast in a biopic about The Beatles including important characters who helped get the band where they were and after they became one of the most successful bands of all time. The band members found their rhythm and their sound, made it big at a young age, and disappointingly, broke up. However, they went on to have successful solo careers and influenced countless other bands at a time when rock music was taking many different paths. Some other important roles to cast in a biopic of The Beatles include Pete Best, Staurt Sutcliff and Brian Epstein as well as the women in the members of The Beatles lives including Cynthia Lennon, Yoko Ono and Patti Boyd.

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Casting a Biopic About The Beatles - TVOvermind