The NSA is Playing Tricks on Me

So today there was a ton of news out about the NSA sweeping up 75% of all the data in America.  

Here's the Article from the Washington Post

But what makes me curiouser and curiouser is this.  Netflix is about 25% of all US Internet traffic.

This is According to Sandvine According to the Atlantic

This is According to Bloomberg Businessweek

If this is the case doesn't this make the recent NSA release even more cynical.  If the NSA is sucking up 75% of all Internet traffic and Netflix counts for 25% perhaps the NSA is taking 100% of all the real information.

NSA to Telecom Providers:  "Yeah, leave the Netflix stuff.  We'll take the rest."  This story just gets stranger and sadder and stranger by the day. 

Cameraman Cops

Mayor Bloomberg was incensed when Judge Shira Scheinlein ruled against him in the Stop And Frisk case in New York City.  From a short Napoleonic billionare, what would you expect?  But the part that caught my eye in the interview is when a reporter asked about the judge's recommendation that cops wear cameras.

Don't take my word for it.  See for yourself.  Start at 17:30, end at 18:30:

But the Mayor is missing the point.  Cameras on cops is like a credit report on a person.  No one would doubt that everyone is better for having credit reports.  If you pay your bills on time you get more access to more money and a company gets to make more loans safely.  Everybody wins.  If you don't pay your bills on time and the credit card company loses money they tell everyone else what you did.  Until you clean up your act there's no more credit.  No one loses.

It's the same thing with cameras.  If the cops are behaving correctly and someone comes in claiming abuse of force the cops can pull up the footage and show what happened and what was said.  If the cops are misbehaving then all the evidence is right there.  Also, this technology is being used to convict criminals in court.  You can't say a cop planted a gun if the evidence is right there on camera as the cop is searching your person.  It protects police officers, it protects suspects, it protects the system.  It protects everybody.  Don't believe me.  Check out a town that actually did it.

According to the New York Times William A. Farrar, Chief of Police for the Rialto Police Police Department in Rialto, California did a test pilot in collaboration with Barak Ariel, a visiting fellow at the Institute of Criminology at the University of Cambridge.  The conclusion was surprising to say the least.

According to Randall Stross of the New York Times:

Rialto’s police officers also used force nearly 60 percent less often — in 25 instances, compared with 61. When force was used, it was twice as likely to have been applied by the officers who weren’t wearing cameras during that shift, the study found. And, lest skeptics think that the officers with cameras are selective about which encounters they record, Mr. Farrar noted that those officers who apply force while wearing a camera have always captured the incident on video.

Chief Farrar agrees saying, “When you put a camera on a police officer, they tend to behave a little better, follow the rules a little better,” Chief Farrar said. “And if a citizen knows the officer is wearing a camera, chances are the citizen will behave a little better.”

I think these cameras can solve the problem of misunderstandings and clarification between police officers and citizens in a much cleaner fashion.  Officers can do their jobs without fear of being besmirched by false accusations.  Citizens don't have to be fearful of not being believed when they complain of police misconduct.  The public can rest assured knowing that there is a public record of any events that transpire and can remain safe while know that the power of government officers is being recorded.  

This type of transparency breeds trust, respect, and good behavior on all sides of the equation.  And Left Right Down the Middle is all for it.

Whose the Next Casualty of the War on Drugs? You. Or at Least Your Money

"It can happen to you," is usually a nice statement that talks about love or winning the lottery or something to that effect.  Not this time. 

What if I told you that you can be pulled over, have cash (a couple grand) in your car, or valuables of any kind, or the car itself, on the side of the road by the police and they can voucher your car or cash or jewelry and sieze it with no arrest, charges, or due process at all?

Not in America, right?  Wrong.  Watch this.

The War on Drugs is winding down.  States are finding that it's basically filling their jails with non-violent offenders who are small time (virtually micro-time) offenders using or selling ten dollars or a hundred dollars of marijuana.  They're finding that it's not worth putting someone in jail for 25,000 dollars a year for a 20 dollar bag of drugs.  

Well you don't have to be Sam Walton to figure that out.

But the result is simple.  The War on Drugs has been going on for so long that now a lot of people are employed by it, particularly police.




But now that the War on Drugs is being rethought and reconcieved there's a problem.  Police departments still need money.  Police still need to be paid.  District Attorney's Offices still have to justify their use.  

For the full story see this article by Jen Stillman in the New Yorker (an example of excellent journalism).

What's happened is that now normal everyday people are being pulled over and their goods are being taken.  Now it's not the college educated well paid well heeled that are being abused by these civil forfeiture laws.  It's the poor.  It's the working class.  It's the barely surviving middle class who can't afford a lawyer from their flush bank accounts back at home, who don't know how to work the system. 

The result: working class and lower middle class people are being robbed by their local police departments with no charges, no claims, no due process, no convictions, no lawyers (because civil forfeiture does not require a lawyer to be provided to the indigent).  

The result:  The War on Drugs has a new victim which requires no due process at all.  That victim: Y.O.U.

Is Obama's Katrina Bush's Iraq?

President Barack Obama did a great thing when he first came into office (besides stabilizing the economy).  He ended the Iraq War. The Iraq War cost the US 4,487 lives of American soldiers and over $1,000,000,000,000 (1 Trillion dollars) very conservatively.  The War was widely unpopular and so when I heard this on Washington Week on PBS I nearly fell out of my seat.

(Watch the first two minutes)

Barack Obama's approval rating is at 42% right now.  That's where George W. Bush's approval rating was before Hurricane Katrina.  If the President even hints at getting back into Iraq under any circumstances, i.e. training and advisors (isn't that what they said at the beginning of Vietnam) or God forbid, US drone strikes and surveillance to basically help tribes go to war with one another Barack Obama will see his trust ratings plummet.

He'll virtually ensure a Republican President in 2016 and watch his approval rating hit 35% territory, lame duck status no matter where he goes.  He'll be excoriated by his own base and elected officials from his own party will avoid him like a cake made with Chinese milk.  

It's a pretty high price to pay for a bunch of people that weren't to sad to see the US Military go a couple years ago.  But if you want to be GWB for the next three years, barricaded in the White House, trying to ride out a long destructive storm, hey, to each his own.  

The Choice: 1.3 Billion Dollars or Our American Priciples

Today I was on Facebook and saw this infographic (nice job ABC) on Egypt.  It basically lays out the benefits of our giving 1.3 Billion US Dollars to Egypt.  But my question immediately was, 'Yeah, but what's the cost.'

Thomas Friedman said something that interested me.  Basically, he says we live in a flatter world, meaning because of technology everyone can pretty much see everyone else.  That means that the United States (or any country for that matter) can not afford to say one thing and do another.  That if we act one way in Turkey and another way in Indonesia everyone around the world can see it.  Google is only one click away.  The Internet has made everyone everywhere visible.

What does this have to do with Egypt?  It's simple.  If we pay off Egypt we get military access for ships, planes, and jobs for military contractors.   We also get peace with Israel.  

But the price for all of these goods isn't 1.3 billion dollars.  The price is our principles as a nation.  Our price is our global moral authority.  Our price is our position as a shining city on a hill.  

If we pay Egypt as they slaughter their people how can we possibly lecture Bashar Al-Asad about slaughtering his own people in Syria?

If we pay Egypt as they incarcerate their political opposition how can we with a straight face correct China when they lock up political prisoners for asking about freedom?


If we pay Egypt as they silence the opposition and enforce military law and silence freedom of speech how can we tell Vladimir Putin about human rights?  He'll call us hypocrites.  And you know what?  He'll be right.

President Obama and ABC News has failed to present a complete picture to the American people when it comes to our trade with Egypt.  The cost of all of these benefits is 1.3 Billion dollars plus our moral authority.   But unlike money, once you sell your moral authority, you can't get it back.

Are You on the Team?

I was wondering why I was watching Mark Lebovich's interview on C-SPAN twice today.  Maybe because there wasn't much on Morning Joe.  Maybe because there's really not much in the newspaper today. But I've heard conversations about his book This Town a number of times and I figured, why not get it straight from the horses mouth.  So I listened.





On my second listen I stopped the video.  This clip right here made me fully nauseous:

The Team.  I often wonder why when I watch the PBS Newshour I feel like a starving kid finally getting a meal.  I am a citizen finally getting the information I need.  Often I watch "the news" but feel I'm fed a diet of junk food, histrionics, opinion, and sometimes, more often than I care to really count, I feel that I'm purposefully mislead.  But like any sane person I sit and tell myself that's not true, it must be me.  Then Mr. Leibovich tells me that it's not just me.  And nausea sets in.  The press and the government seem to be the exact same source, a Janus coin, one being speaking with two mouths.

So I went back and looked at the Michael Hastings piece:

And to be fair I then looked at the Lara Logan piece on CNN:

For starters, I didn't know there was a club.  I didn't know there was an inside.  I didn't know as a reader that there was this preservation of relationships that goes on "Inside" Washington.  

To be honest I don't know really how to take this.  The idea behind the Constitution is that the press is given freedom in order to inform the people.  It's still happening but it seems, even according to Leibovich that those that do the best reporting aren't the reporters who are "inside" or on "the Team" but rather those reporters who are outside or were when they did their best work:

Woodward and Bernstein

Michael Hastings

Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras

It seems that it is the outsiders that are doing the best work.  These are the reporters who are the most trusted I believe precisely because they are outside.  They don't follow the rules because the rule should be to bring the American people the truth.

Here's another example of the insider versus the outsider.  Are you really a journalist if you're not on the Team?

Perhaps now I know why I don't watch the "news" much. I never seem to get much information from it.  Perhaps now I know why.

Reince Priebus, GOP Chair, on the Warpath to Victory

There are lots of slick talkers in the world.  Now not all slick talking people are shiftless and good for nothing.  Some are very talented and accomplished.  Some are leaders.  Reince Priebus is not one of these slick talking leaders.  But he's a leader nonetheless.  This guy has pulled the Republican Party back from the brink of being a laughingstock and has started setting up the Party for success.

How?
1.  Diversifying the Party.  Americas changing.  We don't have to look any farther than the White House or our own television set or our own neighborhoods (depending on where we live) to see that.  America is becoming the melting pot our forefathers always knew it would become.  Reince Preibus sees that and instead of screaming at the waves he's decided to build a bigger boat.  

Reince Preibus Introduces Diverse Selection of Rising Stars in GOP

If you can't watch the entire 40 minutes watch from 10:30 - 12:30 (2 minutes) and listen to T.W. Shannon, House Speaker of the State of Oklahoma.  He's an African American whose a bona fide Conservative.  Not a flavor of the month Conservative but your grandfather's conservative.  A type of Conservative that sees Conservativism as a path to success and a way forward to a good solid and better life.  To show this type of diversity says to the people of America "Welcome."  Reince Preibus is showing Americans that the GOP is not an antiquated party of old white guys but rather a more dynamic party than is being portrayed.  Will it get the Black Vote, the Womens Vote, the Latino Vote all by itself?  No.  But it does allow the conversation to happen and I believe people are more open to that conversation than the Democratic Party thinks.

2.  Standing up for the Party.  The saying is "Even a broken clock is right twice a day," and Reince Preibus is no broken clock.  Often the GOP has launched attacks on the 'liberal mainstream media' that were short on substance and long on rhetoric.  But not this time.  NBC and CNN really stepped in it when they said they would set up multi-night mini-series about Hilary Clinton (one a docu-drama and another a documentary respectively).  But the point is that these networks are planning what amounts to four days of advertising for the Clinton Campaign. Priebus said enough is enough.  I couldn't agree more.  Watch his exchange with Erin Burnett of CNN below:

Priebus has a point.  He's doing everything in his power make sure Republican candidates have a fair shot at the Presidency.  It's what a leader does.

3.  Technology.  The Republican Party was trounced in the last election.  But that doesn't mean it has to stay that way.  Preibus has hired a bona fide tech hitter from the Facebook management team.  Now, no, he's not Harper Reed, the technical whiz kid who managed to build an elegant flexible architecture that ran a nationwide campaign.  But he does have bona fide technical chops.  He managed dozens of engineers across different production platforms at Facebook.  He is a part of the Silicon Valley community and has worked at LiveScribe (as Senior Engineer), Nvidia and Google.  

Putting these three points together don't mean that the GOP is anywhere close to a victory come 2016.  But Preibus is serving very real notice: don't think about burying anything until you're sure it's dead.  And the GOP under Preibus is showing real signs of life.