dan collier

Uncle Sam on the Line - Former Attorney General John Ashcroft wrote the preceding New York Times editorial in reference to the seemingly unconstitutional warrantless wiretapping that was first authorized by the Bush administration under his watch and the subsequent attempt to grant the teleco companies retroactive immunity for their suspected crimes. The resulting letters to the editor begin to explain why his logic and motive are suspect.

Senator Russ Feingold points out the most important, if obvious, fact:

Telecom companies that cooperate with a government wiretap request are already immune from lawsuits, as long as they get a court order or a certification from the attorney general that the wiretap follows all applicable statutes.

Bush’s wiretapping plan circumvents an established practice that had worked since being enacted in 1978. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) allows for retroactive warrants in the case of emergency, so the telecoms could have complied with emergency requests but still required warrants for on-going spying. If the president didn’t believe the FISA court would agree to the wiretaps his administration requested, it raises troubling questions about who he intended to target and why.

I regularly make and receive international phone calls so this issue is personal to me. But even assuming I’m not being bugged, wiretapping as a defensive measure is also a bad idea in practice. For those that require privacy it is very easy to run a telecommunications server in a location unavailable to the federal government’s spying. It would still be possible to intercept the raw voice streams, but it is the end-to-end connection data that is most important for raising the flags that lead to wiretapping. Anyone can walk into an internet cafe and make calls through private telecommunications servers and the FBI/CIA will be unable to determine who is calling whom, making it impossible to determine the nationality and location of callers as Bush’s new wiretapping rules require. The software and hardware required is cheap or free (I worked writing and implementing such software for a time). For that matter, terrorist plans could easily be rerouted through the US Post Office or as asynchronous recordings on obscure secure websites.

Are we really expecting terrorists to call on AT&T before they come? No, and that is why warrantless wiretapping is wrong. It is an ineffective spying technique against intelligent terrorism, but quite effective at diminishing our perceived right to privacy.

politics posted by: dan  @  07 Nov 2007 10:09 | Comments (0)

4 suicides - Interesting art on a delicate subject. Blublu.org has lots of great street art photos listed under “Walls“. Here are a few of my favorites(1, 2, 3).

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Joint Failure - I’ve posted before about Andrew Bacevich. In his recent “Ideas” piece for the Boston Globe, he questions the suitability of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as currently established. In this piece he reviews the problem, claiming that the problem started early in the history of JCS.

Although himself a five-star general, Eisenhower railed in private throughout his presidency about members of the Joint Chiefs conspiring to undermine his policies whenever they happened to collide with cherished interests of the military services. His Farewell Address, warning that the “military-industrial complex” could well “endanger our liberties or democratic processes,” amounted to a tacit admission that as commander-in-chief he had lost control of his generals.

The problem more recently is generals that were unable or unwilling to offer honest and forthright advice to policy makers. I heard Bacevich on NPR’s On Point this morning discussing possible alternatives to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Seemingly humble and wise, he appears to be more interested in starting the discussion than providing easy answers. In another recent editorial for the LA Times, he slams the ‘08 candidates offering the sound-bite solution of increasing the size of the military to fight fundamentalist terrorism.

art & politics posted by: dan  @  20 Jun 2007 0:26 | Comments (0)

The Semiwarriors - An essay by retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and current Boston University professor of international relations Andrew J. Bacevich was published in April. Mr. Bacevich’s son died this week in Iraq.

In this article, Mr Bacevich argues that a long-term movement toward constant conflict and the rise of an imperial American presidency go hand-in-hand. It is particularly heartening to read a complete rebuke of the Bush Doctrine from a conservative scholar.

The Big Lie propagated by the architects of the Iraq War is not that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction nor that he was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden; it is that they possessed a secret formula for keeping America safe, the essential ingredient in that formula being a mandate to engage in open-ended war. Although the semiwarriors advising Bush fancied that they had discovered something original, they were really peddling the same elixir concocted by James Forrestal some six decades ago. Having drunk deeply of that elixir, President Bush is now left holding the bag, with others–chiefly young soldiers and their families–picking up the tab.

After reading this article, I had to read Eisenhower’s farewell address again (with video).

Bill Moyers’ asks his readers if there is something in the DNA of foreign policy elites. When I saw that interview initially, I thought the question sounded like an excuse.

foreign affairs & politics posted by: dan  @  16 May 2007 23:20 | Comments (0)

A World Bank committee has reported that Paul Wolfowitz violated ethical and governance rules in arranging an unfairly compensated position for his lady-friend. The committee report summed up my previous thoughts more succinctly than I expected:

Mr Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply.

The report conclusion is not a surprise. And I’m not surprised that the Bush administration will ignore the findings and continue to praise Wolfowitz as a uniquely qualified leader. I think this analysis by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution addresses why the administration is tying itself to a sinking ship (emphasis added by me):

I take his continuing unwillingness to resign to be the biggest argument against his managerial abilities. He has lost the public relations battle and can no longer be effective. Why should he want the job any more? The obvious hypothesis is that he is emotionally committed to a losing battle, and is not placing much weight on the long-term interests of the institution he is running.

I have a feeling the final sentence will sum up the next 2 years of the Bush administration.

development & politics posted by: dan  @  15 May 2007 20:14 | Comments (0)

Brad DeLong, a professor of economics at UC Berkley, made an interesting post reviewing the Paul Wolfowitz scandal at the World Bank. The good professor speculates on both the actual series of events and what Wolfowitz has convinced himself is the true story.

While interesting and informative, I think Professor DeLong missed the key point regarding Wolfowitz’s reasoning. It seems clear that Wolfowitz is one of many neo-conservative powerbrokers that do not believe the rules apply to themselves as they do to others. “We” are uniquely good and self-empowered is the basic tenet of neo-conservative realism. The situation can be summed up quite well by Machiavellian philosophy: Petty rules are not intended for great men.

Wolfowitz is in good company in selectively obeying the rules. Alberto Gonzalez recently lied obviously and repeatedly during Congressional testimony. Bush’s response was effectively “Heck of a job, Al!”. In contrast to such blatant disregard for Congressional authority, promoting one’s girlfriend seems quaint.

Though clearly not the thought-leader, George W. Bush is the cheerleader and role model for this philosophy of moral relativism. Bush had no use for international legal approval before invading a sovereign country. Of course, Wolfowitz was a key member of the team that planned and delivered that unjustifiable war. Bush’s choice to ignore FISA and the Geneva Conventions are further examples of the real limitation of rules on men possessed by a supposed greater mission. Bush’s extraordinary use of signing statements, which reserve the right to ignore the just signed law, give a true insight into the governing philosophy of the most influential group of leaders in the current US administration.

development & politics posted by: dan  @  11 May 2007 13:34 | Comments (0)

art & politics posted by: dan  @  23 Jan 2007 6:53 | Comments (0)