But at least there's a process

The TSA is NOT listening to your complaint. [Link]

Today I begin a series of posts that will use documents obtained from the TSA following a FOIA request. I asked for, and got, complaints sent to the agency in the last year by active duty military personnel or combat-wounded military veterans. To the TSA’s credit, I filed my request in August, and – very much to my surprise – got 216 pages of documents in early October. While the agency has fiercely resisted transparency, they got this one right. And the documents I received are pretty revealing.

First thing the documents tell us: when you complain to the TSA, you aren’t complaining to the TSA. Whether you call or use their website to write to them, your complaint is processed and answered by an employee of K4 Solutions, the TSA’s call center contractor. This form does not send information directly to the TSA. If you use it, you’re writing to a corporation. To be sure, the forms often indicate that the complaints have been sent on to TSA officials at the appropriate airport, but K4 Solutions is a layer of insulation. It is not TSA headquarters, and your complaints don’t go directly to TSA headquarters. The contractor controls the messages, and decides where and if to route them.

Second, news stories about TSA outrages always contain the obligatory statement from the TSA press office, and it’s always a meaningless jumble of lines read from a script: the TSA takes passenger safety very seriously and has multiple layers of security. The responses to TSA complaints are exactly the same. The K4 employee who reads or hears your complaint has a scripted set of available responses, and cuts and pastes a set of paragraphs to answer your call or letter. The amount of thought that goes into that cutting and pasting is, let’s put this charitably, negligible.

FBI Director upset they can't break into your phone as easily

Perhaps if you (the government), hadn't spent all your credibility to snoop on people who are not suspected of a crime. Also, trying to play the terror card and the child card doesn't fool anyone anymore. [Link]

Apple said last week that it would no longer be technically feasible to unlock encrypted iPhones and iPads for law enforcement because the devices would no longer allow user passcodes to be bypassed. The move comes as tech companies struggle to manage public concerns in the aftermath of last year's leak of classified National Security Agency documents about government access to private user data.

On a privacy site for its new mobile operating system, iOS 8, Apple outlined new features and tips for users on how to manage their privacy. It also included an explanation of how Apple will respond to government information requests in the future.

"Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data," the company said. "So it's not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8."

Comey said that while he understood the need for privacy, government access to mobile devices may be needed in extreme circumstances, such as in the event of a terror attack.

"I like and believe very much that we should have to obtain a warrant from an independent judge to be able to take the content of anyone's closet or their smart phone," he said. "The notion that someone would market a closet that could never be opened -- even if it involves a case involving a child kidnapper and a court order -- to me does not make any sense."

Comey said FBI officials have had conversations with both Apple and Google about the marketing of their devices.

"Google is marketing their Android the same way: Buy our phone and law-enforcement, even with legal process, can never get access to it," he said.

"There will come a day -- well it comes every day in this business -- when it will matter a great, great deal to the lives of people of all kinds that we be able to with judicial authorization gain access to a kidnapper's or a terrorist or a criminal's device. I just want to make sure we have a good conversation in this country before that day comes. I'd hate to have people look at me and say, 'Well how come you can't save this kid,' 'how come you can't do this thing.'"

The director further expressed concern that public outcry over privacy in the wake of the NSA scandal may lead to unforeseen consequences.

"I get that the post-Snowden world has started an understandable pendulum swing," he said. "What I'm worried about is, this is an indication to us as a country and as a people that, boy, maybe that pendulum swung too far."

No, no it hasn't.

They really do not like this. Chicago Chief of Detectives claims the iPhone will now be the choice for pedophiles. [Link]

Now, the chief of detectives for Chicago's police department has issued an alarming statement on the effects of Apple's heightened encryption.

Speaking to the Washington Post, John J. Escalante said, "Apple will become the phone of choice for the pedophile. The average pedophile at this point is probably thinking, I’ve got to get an Apple phone."

Big Brother parenting in Scotland

Talk about nanny state. [Link]

Imagine the very worst home a child could grow up in: No food in the fridge, parents strung out on drugs, the children covered with scabs and beaten regularly. You would want someone to step in and save the kids.

And then there's Scotland.

Scotland wants to treat all families as potentially abusive and appoint a "named person" (that is, a guardian) as soon as the child is born and up through age 18 to oversee the parenting. This "shadow parent" would be empowered by the government under the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, which will take effect in 2016.

As Josie Appleton, founder of the U.K.'s Manifesto Club, writes in SpikedOnline:

It is based on the idea that a person who has been named by the state, touched on the shoulder, has a superior authority and insight to others. Those who have been ‘named’ are seen as better qualified to ‘safeguard’ the wellbeing of a whole nation’s children. Therefore, concern for children’s wellbeing becomes a state-appointed position.

...This is a new kind of parenting-by-surveillance.

The day-to-day role of a named person is to follow ‘reports’ about a child, to keep an eye on their files. They will have rights to see private medical reports, and to request information about that child from other agencies (there is a legal ‘duty to help named person’).... The other aspect of a named person’s role is to propose ‘interventions’. They will have a role in drawing up a ‘child’s plan’ if a child is found to have a ‘wellbeing need’: this plan will outline the ‘targeted intervention which requires to be provided… in relation to the child’.

Red Cross Sandy spending 'Trade Secret'

Trade secret or embarrassment? I'll go with embarrassment. [Link]

The Red Cross raised more than $300 million for Superstorm Sandy disaster relief, but it is refusing to say how it raised or spent the cash. After ProPublica filed a public records request for the information, the Red Cross hired a law firm to block the release of some documents. The lawyers argued that the information is a "trade secret" and if it was disclosed, "the American Red Cross would suffer competitive harm because its competitors would be able to mimic the American Red Cross's business model for an increased competitive advantage."

The Red Cross is a public charity with a federal charter to provide disaster relief, so it's not clear who its "competitors" are, ProPublica notes. The Red Cross says it wants "proprietary information important to maintaining our ability to raise funds and fulfill our mission" to remain confidential, but the use of the "trade secret" exemption is not "something you would expect from an organization that purports to be 'transparent and accountable,'" says a spokesman for the Disaster Accountability Project watchdog group. "Donors have a right to know" what is being done with the money, writes Laura Northrup atConsumerist, "but the Red Cross refuses to even separate out how much money budgeted for certain expenses was spent during the disaster, and how much allocated for future efforts." (As of last spring, the Red Cross was still sitting on more than a third of Sandy donations.)

UK secretary of state: "There is no surveillance state"

Britain once again mistakes 1984 as a manual to implement rather than a cautionary tale. [Link]

UK Secretary of State Theresa May -- part of a regime that presides over a spy service thatclaims the right to intercept all webmail, search and clicks; that spends hundreds of millions sabotaging Internet security; that dirty-tricks and psy-opses peaceful protest groups; thatlaunched illegal denial of service attacks; that slurps up 200M SMS messages a day; thatuses Google cookies to follow people around the Web; that targets NGOs and charities for deep surveillance; that sent spies into World of Warcraft hunting jihadis; that hacked a Belgian Internet exchange; knowingly participated in illegal surveillance at the telcos' data-centers; attacked Tor; detained a journalist's boyfriend under anti-terror laws; accepted£100M from foreign spies for help in spying on Britons; tapped into undersea cables; andmore -- insists that Britain is not a "surveillance state."

But, she says, there's all kinds of scary, scary terrorists out there. And she's foiling lots of terrorist plans. But she can't tell you about it, because that would be "cavalier and reckless." But we should trust her. And give her more powers to spy on us without a warrant.

As unbelievably stupid as this is, it at least beats last time, when the prime minister said TV crime dramas demonstrated the need for mass surveillance.

Anatomy of scandals

There is a pattern. [Link]

First, a scandal has to erupt. Often, it arises when the narrative pushed by the president and administration officials reaches the point where it's impossible to reconcile with known truths. For example, the Obama administration considered the Affordable Care Act, passed through Congress divisively in 2010—and which cost Democrats control of the lower chamber in elections later that year—a landmark piece of legislation, a "big fucking deal" in the words of Vice President Joe Biden. It took a lot of promises to get Obamacare passed, promises to legislators and to the public. The president's most famous promise, that if you liked your insurance plan you could keep it, ended up a lie.It could be no other way. The structure of Obamacare relied on restricting the kind of insurance plans individuals could purchase for themselves; the Obamacare website, moreover, may have been destined for failure from the beginning, possessed as administration officials were with the idea that it would succeed through will alone.

Similarly, the fact that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was targeting Tea Party-like 501(c)4 groups for extra scrutiny shouldn't have come as a surprise. The Obama campaign spent the run-up to the 2012 election demonizing the Tea Party as well as demonizing both 501(c)4s specifically and campaign spending in general despite, of course, making use of both. Democrats pushed for extra scrutiny for Tea Party groups, so why should it be a surprise when that scrutiny happened?

In Benghazi, meanwhile, the 2012 attack on the U.S. mission, which came less than two months before the election, flew in the face of President Obama's campaign trail assertions that Al Qaeda was on the run. So the president and his underlings instead blamed the terrorist act on a movie clip found on YouTube. The administration's efforts to twist the truth to fit a preferred political agenda is also sometimes abetted by the media. During one of the 2012 presidential debates, for example, CNN's Candice Crowley helped President Obama get away with spinning the specifics of the Benghazi reaction by backing him in a "fact check" while later admitting that debate opponent Mitt Romney was indeed "right in the main."

Government Efficiency

Wow. [Link]

“The main thing is that the data entry side does not have hardly any work to do. They’re told to sit at their computers and hit the refresh button every ten minutes. No more than every ten minutes. They’re monitored. To hopefully look for an application. They’re [sic] goals are set to process two applications per month and some people are not even able to do that.”

Two. Applications. Per. Month.

At. Most.

Did you catch the best part? Not only are your tax dollars going toward paying somebody not to work too hard, but you’re also paying somebody to monitor that those employees don’t work too hard.

And that’s how Big Government works, America. Please enjoy the rest of your lives.

Cooking the books on Obamacare

Malice or incompetence? Why can't it be both? [Link]

For several months now, whenever the topic of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act came up, I’ve been saying that it was too soon to tell its ultimate effects. We don’t know how many people have paid for their new insurance policies, or how many of those who bought policies were previously uninsured. For that, I said, we will have to wait for Census Bureau data, which offer the best assessment of the insurance status of the whole population. Other surveys are available, but the samples are smaller, so they’re not as good; the census is the gold standard. Unfortunately, as I invariably noted, these data won’t be available until 2015.

I stand corrected: These data won’t be available at all. Ever.

No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was. The New York Times reports that the Barack Obama administration has changed the survey so that we cannot directly compare the numbers on the uninsured over time.

The changes are intended to improve the accuracy of the survey, being conducted this month in interviews with tens of thousands of households around the country. But the new questions are so different that the findings will not be comparable, the officials said.

An internal Census Bureau document said that the new questionnaire included a “total revision to health insurance questions” and, in a test last year, produced lower estimates of the uninsured. Thus, officials said, it will be difficult to say how much of any change is attributable to the Affordable Care Act and how much to the use of a new survey instrument.

“We are expecting much lower numbers just because of the questions and how they are asked,” said Brett J. O’Hara, chief of the health statistics branch at the Census Bureau.

I’m speechless. Shocked. Stunned. Horrified. Befuddled. Aghast, appalled, thunderstruck, perplexed, baffled, bewildered and dumbfounded. It’s not that I am opposed to the changes: Everyone understands that the census reports probably overstate the true number of the uninsured, because the number they report is supposed to be “people who lacked insurance for the entire previous year,” but people tend to answer with their insurance status right now.

But why, dear God, oh, why, would you change it in the one year in the entire history of the republic that it is most important for policy makers, researchers and voters to be able to compare the number of uninsured to those in prior years? The answers would seem to range from “total incompetence on the part of every level of this administration” to something worse.

Yes, that’s right, I said “every level.” Because guess who was involved in this decision, besides the wonks at Census?

The White House is always looking for evidence to show the benefits of the health law, which is an issue in many of this year’s midterm elections. The Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Council of Economic Advisers requested several of the new questions, and the White House Office of Management and Budget approved the new questionnaire. But the decision to make fundamental changes in the survey was driven by technical experts at the Census Bureau, and members of Congress have not focused on it or suggested political motives.

Sarah Kliff of Vox says we shouldn’t freak out, because these are the numbers that the census collects for 2013, so the change is actually giving us a good baseline. But I’m afraid I’m not so sanguine. AsAaron Carroll says: “It’s actually helpful to have a trend to measure, not a pre-post 2013/2014. This still sucks.”

The new numbers will suffer, to some extent, from the same bias that the old questions suffered from: People are better at remembering recent events than later ones. Quick: On what day did you last get your oil changed? What month was the wedding you attended last summer? If it was in the last few months, you probably know. If it was someone you’re not that close to … well, the summer months kind of blend into each other now that you’re a grownup, don’t they?

And what has been happening in the most recent months? A whole lot of change! Policies were canceled, benefits changed, people shifted around their coverage in anticipation of the new law. That doesn’t make for a very good baseline. It will be a very good measure of who has insurance right now, in 2014, but it’s not where I’d want to start my 2013 baseline for our new law. That’s why they should have done this for 2012 -- or waited until 2016 -- to give us actual comparable data for the transition period. So by your leave, I think I’ll continue to freak out for a bit.

I find it completely and totally impossible to believe that this problem didn’t occur to anyone at Census, or in the White House. It would be like arguing that the George W. Bush administration might have inadvertently overlooked the possibility that when the U.S. invaded Iraq, there would be shooting. This is the biggest policy debate of the last 10 years, and these data are at the heart of that debate. It is implausible that everyone involved somehow failed to notice that they were making it much harder to know the effect of this law on the population it was supposed to serve. Especially because the administration seems to have had a ready excuse as soon as people reacted to the news.

Even if the administration genuinely believes this is defensible, why would they give anyone reason to believe that it is cooking the books? Because those charges are being made, and they’re a lot harder to dismiss than the complaints about birth certificates or dark intimations that the administration has simply made up its enrollment figures out of whole cloth.

I just don’t get it.

I mean, I can certainly think of explanations, but I can’t quite bring myself to believe the worst of them. Which leaves me with the only slightly-less-utterly-appalling conclusion: At some point, very early on in the process, folks noticed that asking the new questions would make it difficult to compare Obamacare’s implementation year to prior years, and decided that assessing the effects of the transition wasn’t nearly as important as making urgent changes to … questions we’ve been asking basically the same way for a decade and a half.

No, wait, that doesn’t make any sense, either. Let’s go back to inexplicable, shall we?

If the administration is really serious about transparency and data-driven policy, as I’ve been told for a year now, then it will immediately rectify this appalling mistake and put the old questions back into circulation double-quick. But we’re more likely going to hear the most transparent and data-driven administration in history citing these data -- without an asterisk -- to tout the amazing impact of its policies.

Social Security to stop shaking down children for their parent's debts

With enough bad press, even the government can make the right decision sometimes. [Link]

The Social Security Administration announced Monday that it will immediately cease efforts to collect on taxpayers’ debts to the government that are more than 10 years old.
The action comes after The Washington Post reported that the government was seizing state and federal tax refunds that were on their way to about 400,000 Americans who had relatives who owed money to the Social Security agency. In many cases, the people whose refunds were intercepted had never heard of any debt, and the debts dated as far back as the middle of the past century.
“I have directed an immediate halt to further referrals under the Treasury Offset Program to recover debts owed to the agency that are 10 years old and older pending a thorough review of our responsibility and discretion under the current law,” the acting Social Security commissioner, Carolyn Colvin, said in a statement.
Colvin said anyone who has received Social Security or Supplemental Security Income benefits and “believes they have been incorrectly assessed with an overpayment” should contact the agency and “seek options to resolve the overpayment.”
The effort to collect on old debts began with a single line in the 2008 farm bill that lifted the statute of limitations on debts to the government that are more than 10 years old. The Treasury Department then set up rules that allowed the government to settle such debts by intercepting taxpayers’ refunds. The department has collected about $2 billion in intercepted tax refunds this year, $75 million of that on debts delinquent for more than 10 years.
Mary Grice, a federal worker who lives in Takoma Park, Md., never got the refunds she was expecting to see in her mailbox this year. The government seized her checks because of a $2,996 debt that was supposedly incurred under her father’s Social Security number. Her father died in 1960, when she was 4, and her mother received survivors’ benefits thereafter.
But 37 years passed between when the Social Security agency says it overpaid someone in the Grice family and when Mary Grice’s refund was taken. She was unable to find out from the agency exactly who received the overpayment — her mother or perhaps her father’s first wife, both of whom are no longer living.
The suspension of the collection effort is “the right thing to do,” said Grice’s attorney, Robert Vogel. “It’s a first step. The next thing they have to do is stop collecting debts from children under any circumstances.”
Vogel filed suit in federal court in Greenbelt, Md., last week, alleging that the government denied Grice due process by failing to give her notice of the debt and by taking the money from her, even though she was not receiving government benefits at the time the debt was incurred.
Vogel and several members of Congress argued that the government should not be holding children accountable for the financial acts of their parents. The Federal Trade Commission,on its Web site, advises Americans that “family members typically are not obligated to pay the debts of a deceased relative from their own assets.”
After The Post’s article was published late last week, many hundreds of taxpayers whose refunds had been intercepted came forward and complained to members of Congress that they had been given no notice of the debts and that the government had not explained why they were being held responsible for debts that their deceased parents may have incurred.
In a note Social Security officials sent to several members of Congress on Monday, the agency said, “We will be reexamining our responsibilities under current law for such referrals and will be notifying you of our conclusions upon completion of the thorough review.”
In a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew on Monday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said that government agencies were apparently “not properly notifying individuals or allowing them to inspect records of the debt they supposedly owe, which are violations of the law.”

Detroit to raise parking meter fines

The reason: it costs more to process the fine than the money collected from it. This could be one of those things that keeps them bankrupt. [Link]

The recommendations, which would bump the current parking fines of $20, $30 and $100 per ticket to a two-tiered structure of $45 and $150, are among the revenue-generating strategies recommended by Detroit’s restructuring consultants.

The proposed reforms come as Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr awaits an analysis of the city’s parking assets and contemplates spinning off Municipal Parking, a department that generally breaks even or fails to bring in enough revenue to cover its expenses.

The city is paying $32 to issue and process a $30 parking violation, and it hasn’t adjusted rates since 2001. On top of that, about half of Detroit’s 3,404 parking meters are not operating properly at any given time, says Orr’s spokesman, Bill Nowling.

“It’s another example of the old, antiquated system and processes the city has that creates impediments for anyone trying to do their job,” Nowling said.

Detroit Chief Operating Officer Gary Brown is advocating for the changes, which he says would bring in an additional $6 million per year and $60 million over the 10-year plan of adjustment Orr is proposing for the bankrupt city.

“That’s real money,” Brown said. “If the asset is truly an asset and making money, no one is going to want to do anything with it.”

Brown said the ticket increases would not unduly burden Detroit residents, since 70 percent of the fines are written to nonresident offenders. The city also expects to offer a one-time amnesty program that’s commensurate with any increase.

Brown said it’s unclear how much is currently owed to the city in unpaid parking fines. Some fines are more than 10 years old, he said, surpassing the statute of limitations and “should be written off.”

A loss of trust

Once lost, it will be difficult to regain. [Link]

What distinguishes democracies from tinhorn dictatorships and totalitarian monstrosities are our permanent meritocratic government bureaus that remain nonpartisan and honestly report the truth.

The Benghazi, Associated Press, and National Security Agency scandals are scary, but not as disturbing as growing doubts about the honesty of permanent government itself.

It is no longer crackpot to doubt the once impeccable and nonpartisan IRS. When it assured the public that it was not making decisions about tax-exempt status based on politics, it lied. One of its top commissioners, Lois Lerner, resigned and invoked the Fifth Amendment.

A system of voluntary tax reporting rests on trust. If the IRS itself is untruthful, will it be able to expect truthful compliance from taxpayers?

Many doubt the officially reported government unemployment rates. That statistic is vital in assessing economic growth and is of enormous political importance in the way citizens vote.

It was reported in November that the Census Bureau may have fabricated survey results during the 2012 presidential campaign, sending false data to the Labor Department that could have altered official employment statistics.

In the 1990s, the method of assessing the official unemployment rate was massaged to make it seem lower than it actually was. Rules were changed to ignore millions who had been out of work longer than 52 weeks. They were suddenly classified as permanent dropouts and not part of the idled workforce.

Does the government release an accurate report on quarterly Gross Domestic Product growth — another vital barometer of how the economy is doing? Maybe not. Last year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis for the first time factored research and development costs of businesses into statistics on investment growth.

Suddenly, a cost became proof of business output and thus was added into the business-investment contribution to GDP. That new accounting gimmick may have added hundreds of billions of dollars into the equation of figuring GDP growth last year alone. Not surprisingly, the government reported unexpectedly high 2.8 percent GDP growth after the changes.

Is inflation really as low as the government insists? In recent times the government has not just counted the increase in the prices of goods, but also factored into its calculus theories about changing consumer-buying habits when prices increase. The changes have resulted in officially lowered inflation rates.

No one knows how many Americans have now bought and paid for Affordable Care Act health-insurance policies. There is no accurate information about how many young people have enrolled — critical to the success of Obamacare. Nor do Americans know how many enrollees were previously uninsured. Nor does the public know how many enrollees simply switched insurance from Medicaid to the Affordable Care Act. There is no information about how many actually have paid their premiums.

No one knows how many foreign citizens who entered the U.S. illegally were apprehended inside the United States and returned to their country of origin last year — a figure vital for any compromise on passing comprehensive immigration reform.

The Obama administration claims near-record numbers of deportations. In fact, once again a government agency – in this case the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — has mysteriously changed the way it compiles statistics. The ICE now counts as deportations those foreign nationals whom the Border Patrol immediately stops or turns away at the border. Such detentions were not previously counted as deportations.

The result is that bureaucrats can report near-record numbers of deportations, while privately assuring the administration that immigration enforcement has been greatly relaxed.

Sending the wrong message

Don't help others. Keep your head down and don't get involved. Don't go to authority figures and tell the truth. [Link]

Note to American tweens: Don't be a Good Samaritan on the state's watch. A sixth grader at a Virginia Beach public school was suspended this week for having a razor blade. She took the blade from another student who was cutting himself with it. Bad move, apparently. 

The Bayside Middle School student, Adrionna Harris, said she took a razor blade away from another student because he was using it to cut himself. She threw the blade away and told school officials. Then she was suspended for 10 days, with a recommendation for expulsion, according to Virginia Beach news station WAVY. 

Note that Harris didn't even have the razor blade in her possession when she went to school administrators. The only evidence this razor blade existed is Harris' own admission of it, when she told school officials what had happened and that she had already thrown it away.

Theory vs Practice

In our criminal justice system. [Link]

Here's how it's supposed to work: Upon evidence that a crime has been committed — Professor Plum, found dead in the conservatory with a lead pipe on the floor next to him, say — the police commence an investigation. When they have probable cause to believe that someone is guilty, the case is taken to a prosecutor, who (in the federal system, and many states) puts it before a grand jury. If the grand jury agrees that there's probable cause, it indicts. The case goes to trial, where a jury of 12 ordinary citizens hears the evidence. If they judge the accused guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, they convict. If they think the accused not guilty — or even simply believe that a conviction would be unjust — they acquit.

Here's how things all-too-often work today: Law enforcement decides that a person is suspicious (or, possibly, just a political enemy). Upon investigation into every aspect of his/her life, they find possible violations of the law, often involving obscure, technical statutes that no one really knows. They then file a "kitchen-sink" indictment involving dozens, or even hundreds of charges, which the grand jury rubber stamps. The accused then must choose between a plea bargain, or the risk of a trial in which a jury might convict on one or two felony counts simply on a "where there's smoke there must be fire" theory even if the evidence seems less than compelling.

This is why, in our current system, the vast majority of cases never go to trial, but end in plea bargains. And if being charged with a crime ultimately leads to a plea bargain, then it follows that the real action in the criminal justice system doesn't happen at trial, as it does in most legal TV shows, but way before, at the time when prosecutors decide to bring charges. Because usually, once charges are brought, the defendant will wind up doing time for something.

Who watches the ... oh forget it

Nancy Pelosi admits that Congress is scared of the CIA. Or at least what the CIA can pin on them. [Link]

In response to Senator Dianne Feinstein's speech last week calling out the CIA for spying on her staffers, Rep. Nancy Pelosi was asked to comment and gave what might be the most revealing comments to date as to why Congress is so scared of the CIA:

“I salute Sen. Feinstein,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference of the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I’ll tell you, you take on the intelligence community, you’re a person of courage, and she does not do that lightly. Not without evidence, and when I say evidence, documentation of what it is that she is putting forth.”

Pelosi added that she has always fought for checks and balances on CIA activity and its interactions with Congress: “You don’t fight it without a price because they come after you and they don’t always tell the truth.

A few months back, the ACLU had posted something questioning whether or not the intelligence community might be blackmailing Congress. And, quite frequently when we write about the intelligence community, we see suggestions in the comments that certain politicians probably cover for the NSA and CIA because they know what those agencies "have on them." I've always dismissed those kinds of claims as being a bit far-fetched, even if they have plenty of historical precedent. So far, there's certainly been no direct evidence of that happening. 

And yet... Pelosi's comments certainly seem to hint at even more nefarious activity by the intelligence community against politicians who dare to actually do the job of oversight. The point of that ACLU post linked above is that, even if it's not happening, the fact that we can't definitively rule it out is a serious problem for democracy. And just the fact that some of the most powerful members of Congress, who are theoretically in charge of oversight, are now publicly admitting that they're scared of how the CIA fights back when they take them on, suggests that the intelligence community really is rotten to the core. And Congressional oversight, as it stands today, is clearly not able to deal with the issue by itself.

Chutzpah!

CIA: We Only Spied On Senate Intelligence Committee Because They Took Classified Documents That Prove We're Liars. [Link]

Earlier this week, we wrote about the accusations that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers on the Senate Intelligence Committee as they were working on a massive $40 million, 6,300-page report condemning the CIA's torture program. The DOJ is apparently already investigating if the CIA violated computer hacking laws in spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee computers. The issue revolved around a draft of an internal review by the CIA, which apparently corroborates many of the Senate report's findings -- but which the CIA did not hand over to the Senate. This internal report not only supports the Senate report's findings, but also shows that the CIA has been lying in response to questions about the terror program. 

In response to all of this, it appears that the CIA is attempting, weakly, to spin this as being the Senate staffers' fault, arguing that the real breach was the fact that the Senate staffers somehow broke the rules in obtaining that internal review. CIA boss John Brennan's statement hints at the fact that he thinks the real problem was with the way the staffers acted, suggesting that an investigation would fault "the legislative" branch (the Senate) rather than the executive (the CIA).

In his statement on Wednesday Brennan hit back in unusually strong terms. “I am deeply dismayed that some members of the Senate have decided to make spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts,” Brennan said.

“I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the executive branch or legislative branch,” Brennan continued, raising a suggestion that the Senate committee itself might have acted improperly.

A further report detailed what he's talking about. Reporters at McClatchy have revealed that the Senate staffers working on this came across the document, printed it out, and simply walked out of the CIA and over to the Senate with it, and the CIA is furious about that. Then, in a moment of pure stupidity, the CIA appears to have confronted the Senate Intelligence Committee about all of this... directly revealing that they were spying on the Committee staffers.

Several months after the CIA submitted its official response to the committee report, aides discovered in the database of top-secret documents at CIA headquarters a draft of an internal review ordered by former CIA Director Leon Panetta of the materials released to the panel, said the knowledgeable person.

They determined that it showed that the CIA leadership disputed report findings that they knew were corroborated by the so-called Panetta review, said the knowledgeable person.

The aides printed the material, walked out of CIA headquarters with it and took it to Capitol Hill, said the knowledgeable person.

“All this goes back to what is the technical structure here,” said the U.S. official who confirmed the unauthorized removal. “If I was a Senate staffer and I was given access to documents on the system, I would have a laptop that’s cleared. I would be allowed to look at these documents. But with these sorts of things, there’s generally an agreement that you can’t download or take them.”

The CIA discovered the security breach and brought it to the committee’s attention in January, leading to a determination that the agency recorded the staffers’ use of the computers in the high-security research room, and then confirmed the breach by reviewing the usage data, said the knowledgeable person.

There are many more details in the McClatchy report, which I highly recommend reading. And, yes, perhaps there's an argument that Senate staffers weren't supposed to take such documents, but the CIA trying to spin this by saying it was those staffers who were engaged in "wrongdoing" is almost certainly going to fall flat with Congress. After all, the intelligence committee is charged with oversight of the CIA, not the other way around. "You stole the documents we were hiding from you which proved we were lying, so we spied on you to find out how you did that" is not, exactly, the kind of argument that too many people are going to find compelling. 

Still, the latest is that the CIA has successfully convinced the DOJ to have the FBI kick off an investigation of the Senate staffers, rather than of the CIA breaking the law and spying on their overseers. 

Obamacare not reaching the uninsured

Wasn't that the entire point of this slow motion train wreck? [Link]

ObamaCare isn’t achieving its primary goal of extending coverage to the uninsured, according to a new study.

The survey released Thursday by the McKinsey & Co. consulting firm found that only 27 percent of people who have selected a plan on the new exchanges didn’t previously have coverage.

The Obama administration says 4 million people have selected a plan since the exchanges launched on Oct. 1, but has not said how many of them already had an insurance plan.

At a healthcare industry conference on Thursday, Gary Cohen, a top official at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said it’s not something the administration has the ability to track.

“That's not a data point that we are really collecting in any sort of systematic way," Cohen said, according to The National Journal.

A CMS official told The Hill that it’s an important measurement that the agency hopes to be able to report on in the future.

“We are a looking at a range of data sources to determine how many marketplace enrollees previously had coverage,” the official said. “The marketplace application asks applicants only if they are looking to apply for coverage, not whether the consumer currently has coverage. Previous insurance coverage is an important metric, and we hope to have additional information in the future.”

Still, the 4 million ObamaCare enrollees are a small fraction of those who may have obtained coverage for the first time. 

The administration said earlier this month that almost 9 million people had signed up for Medicaid since Oct. 1, but it's also unclear there how many of them are newly insured.

A recent analysis by Avalere Health, a Washington-based healthcare consulting firm, estimated that 2.4 million to 3.5 million of the enrollees may be receiving Medicaid.

Figures released by the administration have often painted incomplete picture of the healthcare law's progress. It reported enrollment figures that included people who have selected a plan but not completed the process by making their first premium payment.

 Critics have warned that the administration’s numbers are inflated because not everyone who selects a plan will complete the final step to obtain coverage.

I'm pretty sure that they aren't capturing that information because they don't want to know how bad the enrollments are.

Not enough Canadians in Canadian pr0n

Canadian adult channels are not airing enough local made content. [Link]

For failing to broadcast sufficient levels of Canadian-made pornography — and failing to close-caption said pornography properly — a trio of Toronto-based erotica channels has earned a reprimand from the Canadian Radio-television & Telecommunications Commission.

Wednesday, the CRTC issued a broadcast notice saying AOV Adult Movie Channel, XXX Action Clips and the gay-oriented Maleflixxx were all failing to reach the required 35% threshold for Canadian content.

Based on a 24-hour broadcast schedule, that translates to about 8.5 hours of Canadian erotica a day.

The notice was issued as a result of Channel Zero’s efforts to renew licences for all three erotica channels. The regulator will review the “instances of apparent non-compliance” at an April 28 hearing in Gatineau, Que.

The channels’ parent company, Toronto-based Channel Zero, did not respond toNational Post requests for comment.

In previous filings to the CRTC, however, the company has claimed its deficit of Canadian erotica was simply a clerical error.

In a 2012 note to regulators, Jennifer Chen, a Channel Zero vice-president, wrote, “The non-compliance is a result of an error, on our part.”

Admittedly, Channel Zero had only been missing the CanCon threshold by minutes of erotica a day.

“The programming strategy has been adjusted accordingly in light of this information,” wrote Ms. Chen.

CRTC regulators also reprimanded Channel Zero for failing to provide sufficient close-captioning.

In 2012, Channel Zero replied, “We appreciate and respect the importance of providing closed captioning for our viewers, as a means of making our programming accessible to the hearing impaired.”

Under standard CRTC policy, Canadian channels must also cater to the blind by offering “Audio Description,” a service in which narrators describe “graphics that appear on the screen.”

When previously pressed on this point by regulators, Channel Zero replied, “We currently do not air any programming that would require Audio Description.”

Following the policy is more important than using common sense

No one is allowed to have judgement anymore, no matter how stupid it is. [Link]

A ninth-grader says she has frostbite after standing outside for 10 minutes in a wet bathing suit during a fire alarm.

It happened around 8:30 a.m. Wednesday at Como Park High School in St. Paul. Fourteen-year-old Kayona Hagen-Tietz says she was in the school’s pool when the fire alarm went off.

While other students had gotten out earlier and were able to put on dry clothes, Hagen-Tietz said she was rushed out with just her towel.

On Wednesday morning, the temperature was 5 below, and the wind chill was 25 below.

“So the alarm went off, and I thought it was like just a drill, like: Do I  have to go outside?” Hagen-Tietz said. “And then he was like no, we usually don’t have fake ones in the winter.”

Hagen-Tietz says she and the another student were rushed out by the teacher. Her classmate had clothes by the pool, hers were in her locker. So she grabber her towel and went outside.

“As soon as they’d seen her outside in her swimsuit, soaking wet and barefoot, they should have done something,” said Eva Tietz, Hagen-Tietz’s mother.

A teacher eventually gave Hagen-Tietz a jacket, and one of her friends gave her a sweatshirt to wrap around her feet.

But due to school policy, she wasn’t allowed to sit in a faculty-member’s car.

“We kind of huddled up and made a circle around me, and the other kids who were cold,” Hagen-Tietz said.

Eventually, a teacher did get permission to allow Hagen-Tietz and her classmate to sit inside her car.

But by that time Hagen-Tietz had already stood barefoot and wet for 10 minutes in some of the coldest conditions of the year.

Hagen-Tietz mom then picked her up and took her to the doctor, who determined she has frostbite on her feet.

Missing the point

Keith Alexander Supports Law To Gag Press So He Can Get His Preferred Online Surveillance Bill Passed. [Link]

He's flat out admitting -- as many have noted -- that his pet cybersecurity bills are dead right now because of all of the Snowden leaks, showing just how abusive the NSA has been. And his answer to that is not to fix the NSA, but to pass bills to stifle the free press from reporting on NSA efforts, which he then thinks will allow the government to pass legislation like CISPA. 

As the report in the Guardian notes, no one seems to have any idea what this "media leaks legislation" is going to entail, as nothing has yet been proposed, and there haven't even been any real rumors of anything until now. However, with James Clapper recently referring to reporters asaccomplices, and Rep. Mike Rogers making the out-of-left-field argument that reporters who are covering Snowden are thieves who traffic in stolen government property, you can connect a few dots and guess at what's coming down the pike. 

Alexander's own comments seem to similarly suggest that reporters "have no standing" to report on these issues, because they're not insiders, using the Miranda detention as a launching pad:

“Recently, what came out with the justices in the United Kingdom … they looked at what happened on Miranda and other things, and they said it’s interesting: journalists have no standing when it comes to national security issues. They don’t know how to weigh the fact of what they’re giving out and saying, is it in the nation’s interest to divulge this,”

Still, a bill to stifle investigative reporting is going to face stiff opposition, and even bringing up such a concept suggests that Alexander still has no clue what current public perception is like concerning the NSA's surveillance activities. Just the fact that he's suggesting a bill to silence a free press, and he specifically admits he wants to do so in order to get his troubling surveillance bill approved, shows the depths of Alexander's thinking on these issues. A free press? Not important. More power for the NSA to spy on everyone? That's the priority.

Tar and feathers are too good for him.

Why going through the 'proper channels' as a whistle blower is a fool's game

Listen to the NSA's Inspector General. [Link]

What's more troubling is how Ellard views the press. Ellard calls the journalists Snowden gave documents to "agents," showing that he (and other national security insiders) view the world through espionage-tinted glasses. Journalists are now "agents," supposedly acting at the behest of their "handler," Edward Snowden. It's a smear thinly disguised as SIGINT shop talk -- a small-minded attempt to portray reporting leaks as a dark and nasty business. 

What makes all of this more remarkable than the normal NSA defensive efforts is the fact that Ellard was Snowden's "proper channel." 

Ellard has been the NSA’s inspector general since 2007. In this capacity he has not spoken in a public forum before so that made what he said additionally significant. Had Snowden made the decision to report his concerns through approved NSA channels it would have been through Ellard’s office. 

The route Snowden supposedly should have taken runs right through Ellard's office. And what Ellard would have given him in exchange for his concerns was a recitation of the NSA's talking points.

Ellard was asked what he would have done if Snowden had come to him with complaints. Had this happened, Ellard says would have said something like, “Hey, listen, fifteen federal judges have certified this program is okay.” (He was referring to the NSA phone records collection program.)

This offer to explain the (alleged) constitutionality of the program may have meant something if Ellard had made this statement at any point before June 2013. Delivering it now -- with all the inside information that's been uncovered since then -- is remarkably tone deaf. It shows that NSA officials still have no idea how to approach potential whistleblowers. Those in that position actually still think delivering stale talking points will somehow dissuade someone who's truly shocked by the vast power and reach of the agency. 

If you think this statement indicates Ellard's incredibly out of touch with the reality of the situation, the next assurance effort he offers removes all doubt.

“Perhaps it’s the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do. If not, I would have made the Senate and House Intelligence Committees open to him. Given the reaction of by some members of that committee, he would have found a welcome audience."

Really? Mike Rogers? Dutch Ruppersberger? Dianne Feinstein? This is the "welcome audience" Snowden would have faced. They, like Ellard, would have rubbed his boyish head and told him not to worry about all these lawful programs he simply didn't "understand." And then they would have sent him on his way. (And, most likely, reported him to his superiors and redundantly suggested Ellard open an internal investigation.) 

The "proper channels" wouldn't have given Snowden anything other than a swift ride to the "EXIT" door and some threats about just how much of a living hell the NSA would make his life if he passed any of his knowledge on to the general public. Ellard's attitude towards Snowden shows how much hostility awaits those who find themselves unable to be good NSA company men/women. Following proper channels means being greeted with condescension, cliches and a lifetime of suspicion.