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Presidential Shackling

In my 2017, I identified four species of high-level influence, which I described as “presidential maladministration.”

First, [Presidential Reversals] where an incoming administration reverses a previous administration’s interpretation of statute, simply because a new sheriff is in town, courts should verify if the statute bears such a fluid construction. Second, [Presidential Discovery] where an administration discovers a heretofore unknown power in a statute that allows it to confer substantive rights, courts should raise a red flag, especially when the authority exercised was one Congress withheld. Third [Presidential Nonenforcement], where an administration declines to enforce a statute that Congress refuses to repeal, under the guise of prosecutorial discretion, courts should view the action with skepticism. Fourth [Presidential Intrusion], where evidence exists that the White House attempted to exert its influence and intrude into the rule-making process of independent agencies, courts should revisit the doctrine concerning altered regulatory positions.

The transition from the Trump to the Biden administration has shined a light on a fifth species of presidential maladministration. I’ll call it Presidential Shackling.

Shortly before January 20, the executive branch signed different agreements that limited its discretion. The obvious import of these agreements was to handcuff to incoming Biden Administration. For example, the Department of Homeland Security signed an agreement with Texas. Under the terms of this provision, DHS must give advance notice to Texas before making any changes to immigration policy. And DHS must consider Texas’s views when making changes to immigration policies. The upshot is that the Biden Administration cannot change immigration policies without Texas’s consultation.

The New York Times reported that DHS signed a similar agreement with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Union.

One clause in the contract requires homeland security leaders to obtain “prior affirmative consent” in writing from the union on changes to policies and functions affecting agents. It also appears to allow the ICE union to argue that it can reject changes such as Mr. Biden’s recent order to focus on violent criminals and not prioritize other undocumented immigrants.

…

One of the agreements, for example, says: “No modifications whatsoever concerning the policies, hours, functions, alternate work schedules, resources, tools, compensation and the like of or afforded employees or contractors shall be implemented or occur without the prior affirmative consent” in writing by the union.

Health and Human Services signed a similar agreement with red states. Now, changes to Medicaid could trigger further litigation.

Soon enough, the courts will have to consider the validity of these agreements. In the abstract, the executive branch often reaches settlement agreements that limits its own discretion. But the intent here is to shackle the next administration.

What happens next? I can think of three options. First, the Biden Administration can treat these agreements as ultra vires. For example, Ken Cuccinelli lacked the authority to enter into these agreements. But the decision to ignore these agreements could trigger litigation over their validity, and Cuccinelli’s status. And that litigation can take time. Second, the Biden Administration could move to rescind these agreements. But the decision to terminate the agreement is a tacit recognition that the agreements are valid. And under Regents, the courts can scrutinize all changes in policy. Third, the Biden Administration can say these agreements interfere with his ability to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Therefore, they can be ignored.

My guess is the Biden Administration will choose a combination of the first two approaches.

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Don’t Let Biden Sink Troops Back Into the Afghanistan Quagmire

bidenafghanistan_1161x653

Will we ever get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, ever? ABC News reports that President Joe Biden’s administration is preparing for the likelihood that troops will remain in Afghanistan past a May deadline established in an agreement with the Taliban because of ongoing attacks and assassinations there.

During the Democratic primary debates, Biden said he wanted to end our wars in the Middle East and bring troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but he also made it clear he does want to keep some military presence within the country for antiterrorism and intelligence purposes.

As his presidential term ended, Donald Trump pushed for a faster withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which drew criticism even though it’s what Americans across the political spectrum actually want.

ABC points to this decision from Trump in an attempt to suggest that the drawdown is contributing to the challenge of actually leaving Afghanistan: “U.S. troops are at their lowest level in Afghanistan now, which the Pentagon said in a new report Monday has imposed ‘limitations’ on completing its mission.”

The report they reference is from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). And while the office’s quarterly report does say that the drawdown “introduces some limitations on force capacity and on the train, advise, and assist mission,” the very next sentence says that leaders of the U.S. forces have said that that the drawdown to 2,500 troops was not currently adversely affecting its work.

It’s slightly odd of ABC News to attempt to paint SIGAR as some sort of critic of Trump’s troop withdrawal because for years now SIGAR reports have been the primary way that Americans who were still paying attention would know that our continued involvement in Afghanistan has absolutely failed to stabilize the country and served primarily as a massive money pit for defense spending and a threat to the lives of our troops.

The latest report is no different, and ABC News does take note of that:

“There has been no cease-fire agreement and high levels of insurgent and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite repeated pleas from senior U.S. and international officials to reduce violence in an effort to advance the peace process,” John Sopko, the longtime special inspector general, wrote in the report’s introduction. “Nor is it evident, as SIGAR discusses in this report, that the Taliban has broken ties with the al-Qaeda terrorists who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on the United States.”

So the agreement that’s supposed to allow the U.S. to exit Afghanistan in May has not, in fact, led to peace.

What about political stability in Afghanistan? Have we at least given Afghan citizens a government to turn to? Today, SIGAR put out another report about the state of the country’s election system. One of the major findings:

Election fraud in Afghanistan is rampant and takes many forms: Political leaders exert influence over senior election officials and, through them, lower-level staff, and election commissioners and their senior staff sell their services for financial gain. Senior election officials thus play an ambiguous role, serving variously as protectors of the process, perpetrators of fraud, illicit collaborators with senior government officials, and victims of their abuses. Fraud is also perpetrated by local powerbrokers trying to curry favor with candidates in the anticipation of reward, in the form of government contracts, jobs, or payoffs. It is difficult to detect and prove fraud, and even harder to reduce it. Anti-fraud measures are often co-opted to perpetrate more fraud, and even successful fraud mitigation can end up suppressing legitimate votes, sometimes in ways that favor one group over another.

We are bringing neither peace nor democracy to Afghanistan, and a sober read-through of SIGAR’s reports makes it pretty clear that the country is likely to remain unstable for the near future.

After two decades of military intervention in Afghanistan, there is little reason to believe continued military participation, training of the country’s police forces, or oversight of the nation’s elections is going to work. Biden promised on the campaign trail to get the U.S. out of this quagmire. So did the prior two presidents. Trump did finally manage to get some troops out of there. Rather than treating this as some sort of reckless behavior—as through throwing billions of dollars away and losing thousands of U.S. troops there is not reckless—Biden needs to follow through on his promise.

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Don’t Let Biden Sink Troops Back Into the Afghanistan Quagmire

bidenafghanistan_1161x653

Will we ever get U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, ever? ABC News reports that President Joe Biden’s administration is preparing for the likelihood that troops will remain in Afghanistan past a May deadline established in an agreement with the Taliban because of ongoing attacks and assassinations there.

During the Democratic primary debates, Biden said he wanted to end our wars in the Middle East and bring troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, but he also made it clear he does want to keep some military presence within the country for antiterrorism and intelligence purposes.

As his presidential term ended, Donald Trump pushed for a faster withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which drew criticism even though it’s what Americans across the political spectrum actually want.

ABC points to this decision from Trump in an attempt to suggest that the drawdown is contributing to the challenge of actually leaving Afghanistan: “U.S. troops are at their lowest level in Afghanistan now, which the Pentagon said in a new report Monday has imposed ‘limitations’ on completing its mission.”

The report they reference is from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). And while the office’s quarterly report does say that the drawdown “introduces some limitations on force capacity and on the train, advise, and assist mission,” the very next sentence says that leaders of the U.S. forces have said that that the drawdown to 2,500 troops was not currently adversely affecting its work.

It’s slightly odd of ABC News to attempt to paint SIGAR as some sort of critic of Trump’s troop withdrawal because for years now SIGAR reports have been the primary way that Americans who were still paying attention would know that our continued involvement in Afghanistan has absolutely failed to stabilize the country and served primarily as a massive money pit for defense spending and a threat to the lives of our troops.

The latest report is no different, and ABC News does take note of that:

“There has been no cease-fire agreement and high levels of insurgent and extremist violence continued in Afghanistan this quarter despite repeated pleas from senior U.S. and international officials to reduce violence in an effort to advance the peace process,” John Sopko, the longtime special inspector general, wrote in the report’s introduction. “Nor is it evident, as SIGAR discusses in this report, that the Taliban has broken ties with the al-Qaeda terrorists who orchestrated the 9/11 attacks on the United States.”

So the agreement that’s supposed to allow the U.S. to exit Afghanistan in May has not, in fact, led to peace.

What about political stability in Afghanistan? Have we at least given Afghan citizens a government to turn to? Today, SIGAR put out another report about the state of the country’s election system. One of the major findings:

Election fraud in Afghanistan is rampant and takes many forms: Political leaders exert influence over senior election officials and, through them, lower-level staff, and election commissioners and their senior staff sell their services for financial gain. Senior election officials thus play an ambiguous role, serving variously as protectors of the process, perpetrators of fraud, illicit collaborators with senior government officials, and victims of their abuses. Fraud is also perpetrated by local powerbrokers trying to curry favor with candidates in the anticipation of reward, in the form of government contracts, jobs, or payoffs. It is difficult to detect and prove fraud, and even harder to reduce it. Anti-fraud measures are often co-opted to perpetrate more fraud, and even successful fraud mitigation can end up suppressing legitimate votes, sometimes in ways that favor one group over another.

We are bringing neither peace nor democracy to Afghanistan, and a sober read-through of SIGAR’s reports makes it pretty clear that the country is likely to remain unstable for the near future.

After two decades of military intervention in Afghanistan, there is little reason to believe continued military participation, training of the country’s police forces, or oversight of the nation’s elections is going to work. Biden promised on the campaign trail to get the U.S. out of this quagmire. So did the prior two presidents. Trump did finally manage to get some troops out of there. Rather than treating this as some sort of reckless behavior—as through throwing billions of dollars away and losing thousands of U.S. troops there is not reckless—Biden needs to follow through on his promise.

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The Little Things Is a Twisty Thriller About the Inner Lives of Bad Cops

the-little-things-lg

The Little Things is a comfortable film about an uncomfortable subject: bad cops and how they feel about their misdeeds. If anything, given its subject matter, it’s a little too comfortable. 

Ostensibly a throwback neo-noir crime thriller, the movie stars Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as a pair of mismatched police officers on the trail of a killer; the prime suspect is played with creepy affect by Jared Leto. But the movie is less interested in solving its central murder mystery than it is in plumbing the depths of darkness in police work. It’s an intriguing if not entirely successful riff on the cat-and-mouse cops-and-killers genre that was so prevalent in the 1990s. But it’s hard to say too much about it without spoiling the twisty, genre-fracturing ending. You’ve been warned. 

What makes this movie so comforting isn’t just the powerhouse trio of leads, or even the return of the “slow burn Denzel Washington R-rated thriller,” an actor-specific subgenre that has been paying dividends to viewers for decades now. It’s the broad familiarity of the package—the stars, the material, the moody photography and score, the carefully calibrated mix of pulpy premise and modestly elevated execution. 

It’s an ordinary studio movie, the kind that used to play year-round in multiplexes, even if only as a backdrop to the parade of superhero blockbusters, back when multiplexes were still a thing. It’s also a throwback to the ’90s, and films like Seven and Fallen (which also starred Washington). Not only is it set in that decade, conveniently omitting the possibility of cell phone conversations, but the script, by director John Lee Hancock, was written around that time too. At various points directors like Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg were attached to direct; it has the stripped-down, craftsmanlike feel of that era’s studio fare. Watching it on a big screen at home, from the comfort of your couch, on a chilly winter evening, is like bundling up with a mug of hot chocolate and a soft blanket. It’s cinematic hygge. 

Technically, you can still see it at a theater, provided theaters are open where you live; as with so many excursions these days, you’ll have to get permission from your local mayor or governor to watch Washington on the big screen. But for those, like me, who live in areas where theaters are still dark, you can also see it on HBO Max, as part of Warner Bros.’ novel plan to release its entire slate of 2021 films direct to streaming. 

As for the film itself, well, it’s a mixed bag. After a tense opening sequence in which a driver whose face we never see menaces a young woman, the story follows Joe “Deke” Deacon (Washington) as he teams up with Malek’s Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) Detective Jim Baxter to hunt down a serial killer—and perhaps solve an old case of his own. Leto enters the scene as the prime suspect, Albert Sparma, a creepazoid crime buff with grunge rocker hair and a snide way of teasing the cops. 

The three leads are predictably excellent: Malek brings a quirky, out-of-place precision to his young up-and-comer cop. Washington’s command of the screen is now so total that it’s easy to take for granted, even in a relatively underdeveloped role as a psychologically frail cop haunted by a mysterious dark past. But it’s Leto who gives the most interesting performance as an outsized oddball who is just weird enough to keep you guessing. He certainly knows a lot about the crimes, and late in the film he even offers to take Malek’s character to the body of a missing girl presumed to have been murdered by the same killer. 

Is Sparma, in the tradition of so many ’90s-era serial killer films, just messing with the detectives’ heads to make a point before revealing his master plan? Did he kill them all and bury their bodies in the desert? The answer is almost certainly not. 

Instead of a last-act standoff with a serial killer, The Little Things switches gears in its final act when Baxter kills Sparma in a fit of rage after Sparma takes the head games one step too far. Deke helps Baxter cover up his crime, and it’s revealed that Deke committed a deadly error himself, killing one of the victims he was investigating, then working with other cops to cover it up.

Near the end, Deke sends Baxter a red hair barrette, implying to Baxter that it was found in Sparma’s belongings, and signaling that Sparma was the killer, making Baxter’s murder in some sense just. Yet as it turns out, even this is a lie: In the movie’s final scene, we see that Deke has merely purchased a barrette and sent it to Baxter in order to set the detective’s mind at ease, sparing him the psychological torture that wrecked Deke’s life.  

Looked at one way, The Little Things is an exercise in upending genre expectations: The serial killer behind the string of murders is never revealed. The satisfaction of catching the bad guy that a genre film like this implicitly promises is never delivered. Indeed, it’s constructed as a kind of argument against that sort of unambiguous fictional justice and the catharsis it provides; Deke’s actions, in the end, are designed to provide the illusion of satisfaction, a convenient story to ease Baxter’s fears. 

Looked at another way, the movie does find its killers—but they’re not spooky mass murderers. They’re cops who make bad decisions in heated moments that result in innocent people dying. Understood this way, the detectives played by Washington and Malek aren’t the heroes, but the villains, the killers who got themselves off without any consequence beyond an overhang of guilt. Indeed, the movie makes subtle efforts to connect both of their characters to the killer who stalks the young woman in the opening scene, shooting their shoes and boots with the same sort of gloomy foreboding. 

The problem is the movie doesn’t quite know how or whether to fully commit to this view; it waffles on its nominal indictment of the cops, playing them in most ways as essentially sympathetic. It’s an intriguing choice, and one might argue that it’s justified by perspective; that is, after all, how these cops see themselves. 

But it’s also a bit of a cheat—a failed effort to have it both ways. One issue is that the detectives themselves are both relatively underdeveloped as characters; it’s hard to say the movie is an attempt to see things their way when it shows so little interest in who they are outside of the glum mechanics of their detective work. Perhaps some of that was cut; at a little over two hours, the movie already proceeds at a somewhat plodding pace.

Another issue is that Hancock’s script is only interested in its detectives, and not the broader social and personal consequences of their misdeeds. It wants to indict its bad cops without quite showing what happens to anyone else after they’ve done wrong. 

There’s an interesting idea or two lurking somewhere in the screenplay for The Little Things, and the trio of leading men added enough big-screen star power to hold my attention. The movie’s basic cinematic comforts are real enough. But I wish it had explored the darkness of its ideas about cops, killers, and thrillers more thoroughly. A movie like this shouldn’t be quite so comforting to watch.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3rkDQcZ
via IFTTT

The Little Things Is a Twisty Thriller About the Inner Lives of Bad Cops

the-little-things-lg

The Little Things is a comfortable film about an uncomfortable subject: bad cops and how they feel about their misdeeds. If anything, given its subject matter, it’s a little too comfortable. 

Ostensibly a throwback neo-noir crime thriller, the movie stars Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as a pair of mismatched police officers on the trail of a killer; the prime suspect is played with creepy affect by Jared Leto. But the movie is less interested in solving its central murder mystery than it is in plumbing the depths of darkness in police work. It’s an intriguing if not entirely successful riff on the cat-and-mouse cops-and-killers genre that was so prevalent in the 1990s. But it’s hard to say too much about it without spoiling the twisty, genre-fracturing ending. You’ve been warned. 

What makes this movie so comforting isn’t just the powerhouse trio of leads, or even the return of the “slow burn Denzel Washington R-rated thriller,” an actor-specific subgenre that has been paying dividends to viewers for decades now. It’s the broad familiarity of the package—the stars, the material, the moody photography and score, the carefully calibrated mix of pulpy premise and modestly elevated execution. 

It’s an ordinary studio movie, the kind that used to play year-round in multiplexes, even if only as a backdrop to the parade of superhero blockbusters, back when multiplexes were still a thing. It’s also a throwback to the ’90s, and films like Seven and Fallen (which also starred Washington). Not only is it set in that decade, conveniently omitting the possibility of cell phone conversations, but the script, by director John Lee Hancock, was written around that time too. At various points directors like Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg were attached to direct; it has the stripped-down, craftsmanlike feel of that era’s studio fare. Watching it on a big screen at home, from the comfort of your couch, on a chilly winter evening, is like bundling up with a mug of hot chocolate and a soft blanket. It’s cinematic hygge. 

Technically, you can still see it at a theater, provided theaters are open where you live; as with so many excursions these days, you’ll have to get permission from your local mayor or governor to watch Washington on the big screen. But for those, like me, who live in areas where theaters are still dark, you can also see it on HBO Max, as part of Warner Bros.’ novel plan to release its entire slate of 2021 films direct to streaming. 

As for the film itself, well, it’s a mixed bag. After a tense opening sequence in which a driver whose face we never see menaces a young woman, the story follows Joe “Deke” Deacon (Washington) as he teams up with Malek’s Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) Detective Jim Baxter to hunt down a serial killer—and perhaps solve an old case of his own. Leto enters the scene as the prime suspect, Albert Sparma, a creepazoid crime buff with grunge rocker hair and a snide way of teasing the cops. 

The three leads are predictably excellent: Malek brings a quirky, out-of-place precision to his young up-and-comer cop. Washington’s command of the screen is now so total that it’s easy to take for granted, even in a relatively underdeveloped role as a psychologically frail cop haunted by a mysterious dark past. But it’s Leto who gives the most interesting performance as an outsized oddball who is just weird enough to keep you guessing. He certainly knows a lot about the crimes, and late in the film he even offers to take Malek’s character to the body of a missing girl presumed to have been murdered by the same killer. 

Is Sparma, in the tradition of so many ’90s-era serial killer films, just messing with the detectives’ heads to make a point before revealing his master plan? Did he kill them all and bury their bodies in the desert? The answer is almost certainly not. 

Instead of a last-act standoff with a serial killer, The Little Things switches gears in its final act when Baxter kills Sparma in a fit of rage after Sparma takes the head games one step too far. Deke helps Baxter cover up his crime, and it’s revealed that Deke committed a deadly error himself, killing one of the victims he was investigating, then working with other cops to cover it up.

Near the end, Deke sends Baxter a red hair barrette, implying to Baxter that it was found in Sparma’s belongings, and signaling that Sparma was the killer, making Baxter’s murder in some sense just. Yet as it turns out, even this is a lie: In the movie’s final scene, we see that Deke has merely purchased a barrette and sent it to Baxter in order to set the detective’s mind at ease, sparing him the psychological torture that wrecked Deke’s life.  

Looked at one way, The Little Things is an exercise in upending genre expectations: The serial killer behind the string of murders is never revealed. The satisfaction of catching the bad guy that a genre film like this implicitly promises is never delivered. Indeed, it’s constructed as a kind of argument against that sort of unambiguous fictional justice and the catharsis it provides; Deke’s actions, in the end, are designed to provide the illusion of satisfaction, a convenient story to ease Baxter’s fears. 

Looked at another way, the movie does find its killers—but they’re not spooky mass murderers. They’re cops who make bad decisions in heated moments that result in innocent people dying. Understood this way, the detectives played by Washington and Malek aren’t the heroes, but the villains, the killers who got themselves off without any consequence beyond an overhang of guilt. Indeed, the movie makes subtle efforts to connect both of their characters to the killer who stalks the young woman in the opening scene, shooting their shoes and boots with the same sort of gloomy foreboding. 

The problem is the movie doesn’t quite know how or whether to fully commit to this view; it waffles on its nominal indictment of the cops, playing them in most ways as essentially sympathetic. It’s an intriguing choice, and one might argue that it’s justified by perspective; that is, after all, how these cops see themselves. 

But it’s also a bit of a cheat—a failed effort to have it both ways. One issue is that the detectives themselves are both relatively underdeveloped as characters; it’s hard to say the movie is an attempt to see things their way when it shows so little interest in who they are outside of the glum mechanics of their detective work. Perhaps some of that was cut; at a little over two hours, the movie already proceeds at a somewhat plodding pace.

Another issue is that Hancock’s script is only interested in its detectives, and not the broader social and personal consequences of their misdeeds. It wants to indict its bad cops without quite showing what happens to anyone else after they’ve done wrong. 

There’s an interesting idea or two lurking somewhere in the screenplay for The Little Things, and the trio of leading men added enough big-screen star power to hold my attention. The movie’s basic cinematic comforts are real enough. But I wish it had explored the darkness of its ideas about cops, killers, and thrillers more thoroughly. A movie like this shouldn’t be quite so comforting to watch.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3rkDQcZ
via IFTTT

Cybersecurity – A British Perspective

The US has never really had a “cyberczar.” Arguably, though, the U.K. has. The head of the National Cyber Security Center combines the security roles of NSA and DHS’s CISA. To find out how cybersecurity issues look from that perspective, we interview Ciaran Martin, the first director of the NCSC.

In the news roundup, Paul Rosenzweig sums up recent successes in taking down the NetWalker  and Emotet  hacking networks: It’s a win, and that’s good, but we will need more than this to change the overall security status of the country.

Jordan Schneider explains the remarkable trove of leaked Chinese police records and the extraordinary surveillance now being imposed on the Uyghur minority in China.

Enthusiasts for end-to-end encryption should be worried, Mark MacCarthy and I conclude. First, the EU – once a firm advocate of unbreakable encryption – is now touting “security through encryption and security despite encryption.” You can only get the second with some sort of lawful access, an idea that has now achieved respectability inside Brussels government circles, despite lobbying by e2e messaging firms based in Europe. On top of that, there’s a growing fifth column of encryption skeptics inside the firms, whose sentiments can be summarized as, “I’m all for cop-proof encryption as long as it isn’t used by lawbreakers who voted for Trump.”

Paul brings us up to speed on the Office 36 – I mean the SolarWinds – attack. Turns out lots of companies were compromised without any connection to SolarWinds. The episode shows that information sharing about exploits still has a ways to go. And if you’re a lawyer who’s been paying ten cents a page for downloads from the federal courts’ electronic filing system, whatever you’ve been paying for, it isn’t security. The attackers got in there, and as a result, we’ll be making sensitive filings on paper.  First voting, then suing – more and more of our lives are heading off line.

Does China want your DNA, and why? I have a truly scary suggestion, and Jordan tries to talk me down.

The Facebook Oversight Board has issued its first decisions. Paul and Mark touch on the highlights. I predict that the board will overrule Trump’s deplatforming, to surprisingly little dissent.

Jordan and I dig into two overviews of U.S. tech and military competition. It starts to feel a little incestuous when it turns out we all know the authors – and that Jordan has invited them all to be on his excellent podcast, ChinaTalk.

In short hits,

  • I predict that Beijing will fight CFIUS to the last dollar of TikTok revenue. And could easily win.
  • I question YouTube’s demonetization of the Epoch Times, but Jordan has less sympathy for the paper.
  • I’m less flexible about Google’s hard-to-justify decision to block the ads of a group that (like most Americans) opposes Democratic proposals to pack the Supreme Court.
  • And if you’re wondering how dumb stuff like this happens, the L.A.Times gives an object lesson. Faced with a campaign to recall California governor Newsom, the Times dug into the online organizations supporting recall.  Remarkably, it found that the groups included a lot of the same kinds of folks who came to Washington in January to protest President Biden’s victory. Shortly after that drive-by festival of guilt by association, Facebook banned ads supporting the recall movement. 

And more!

Download the 347th Episode (mp3)

Special announcement: We are thinking about hiring a part-time producer/sound engineer/intern for the Cyberlaw Podcast.  That decision hasn’t been made, but consider this a head start.  If you or someone you know would want such a position, send their resume to us at CyberlawPodcast@Steptoe.com.

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

The views expressed in this podcast are those of the speakers and do not reflect the opinions of their institutions, clients, friends, families, or pets.

 

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via IFTTT

Cybersecurity – A British Perspective

The US has never really had a “cyberczar.” Arguably, though, the U.K. has. The head of the National Cyber Security Center combines the security roles of NSA and DHS’s CISA. To find out how cybersecurity issues look from that perspective, we interview Ciaran Martin, the first director of the NCSC.

In the news roundup, Paul Rosenzweig sums up recent successes in taking down the NetWalker  and Emotet  hacking networks: It’s a win, and that’s good, but we will need more than this to change the overall security status of the country.

Jordan Schneider explains the remarkable trove of leaked Chinese police records and the extraordinary surveillance now being imposed on the Uyghur minority in China.

Enthusiasts for end-to-end encryption should be worried, Mark MacCarthy and I conclude. First, the EU – once a firm advocate of unbreakable encryption – is now touting “security through encryption and security despite encryption.” You can only get the second with some sort of lawful access, an idea that has now achieved respectability inside Brussels government circles, despite lobbying by e2e messaging firms based in Europe. On top of that, there’s a growing fifth column of encryption skeptics inside the firms, whose sentiments can be summarized as, “I’m all for cop-proof encryption as long as it isn’t used by lawbreakers who voted for Trump.”

Paul brings us up to speed on the Office 36 – I mean the SolarWinds – attack. Turns out lots of companies were compromised without any connection to SolarWinds. The episode shows that information sharing about exploits still has a ways to go. And if you’re a lawyer who’s been paying ten cents a page for downloads from the federal courts’ electronic filing system, whatever you’ve been paying for, it isn’t security. The attackers got in there, and as a result, we’ll be making sensitive filings on paper.  First voting, then suing – more and more of our lives are heading off line.

Does China want your DNA, and why? I have a truly scary suggestion, and Jordan tries to talk me down.

The Facebook Oversight Board has issued its first decisions. Paul and Mark touch on the highlights. I predict that the board will overrule Trump’s deplatforming, to surprisingly little dissent.

Jordan and I dig into two overviews of U.S. tech and military competition. It starts to feel a little incestuous when it turns out we all know the authors – and that Jordan has invited them all to be on his excellent podcast, ChinaTalk.

In short hits,

  • I predict that Beijing will fight CFIUS to the last dollar of TikTok revenue. And could easily win.
  • I question YouTube’s demonetization of the Epoch Times, but Jordan has less sympathy for the paper.
  • I’m less flexible about Google’s hard-to-justify decision to block the ads of a group that (like most Americans) opposes Democratic proposals to pack the Supreme Court.
  • And if you’re wondering how dumb stuff like this happens, the L.A.Times gives an object lesson. Faced with a campaign to recall California governor Newsom, the Times dug into the online organizations supporting recall.  Remarkably, it found that the groups included a lot of the same kinds of folks who came to Washington in January to protest President Biden’s victory. Shortly after that drive-by festival of guilt by association, Facebook banned ads supporting the recall movement. 

And more!

Download the 347th Episode (mp3)

You can subscribe to The Cyberlaw Podcast using iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Pocket Casts, or our RSS feed. As always, The Cyberlaw Podcast is open to feedback. Be sure to engage with @stewartbaker on Twitter. Send your questions, comments, and suggestions for topics or interviewees to CyberlawPodcast@steptoe.com. Remember: If your suggested guest appears on the show, we will send you a highly coveted Cyberlaw Podcast mug!

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Thousands Protest the Arrest of Putin Rival Alexei Navalny

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More than 5,000 people were arrested across Russia on Sunday during the second round of protests over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Video from the day depicts police, equipped with riot gear and batons, frequently beating protesters before dragging them away.

Despite the government’s strong warning against doing so, thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to Navalny’s continued detainment. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, was among those arrested. She was later released and fined 20,000 rubles ($263).

During the week leading up to Sunday’s protest, the Russian government placed several Navalny supporters under house arrest, claiming that their calls for protests which would violate COVID-19 restrictions are a threat.

Navalny has made his name as an anti-corruption crusader and adversary of President Vladimir Putin. He was arrested on January 17 for failing to meet with probation officials while recovering abroad from an August poisoning linked to the Russian government.

Demonstrators in Moscow had originally planned to rally in front of the offices of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the agency Navalny claims was responsible for poisoning him, but a heavy police presence forced them from the area.

In a press conference on Monday, the Kremlin called the demonstrations illegal and accused protesters of antagonizing police.

“There can be no conversation with hooligans and provocateurs,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary. “The law should be applied with the utmost severity.” 

Russia’s crackdown on demonstrators has sparked condemnation from international leaders.

“The U.S. condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities,” tweeted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We renew our call for Russia to release those detained for exercising their human rights, including Aleksey Navalny.”

Navalny appeared in court today for violating the terms of his probation for a 2014 embezzlement conviction that critics say was orchestrated to keep Navalny from running for office. If convicted, he faces up to 3 1/2 years in prison.

When asked why he had not provided documentation to prison service officials as to his whereabouts, Navalny responded angrily, CNN reported.

“Why are you sitting here and telling the court you didn’t know where I was?” he said. “I fell into a coma, then I was in the ICU, then in rehabilitation. I contacted my lawyer to send you a notice. You had the address, my contact details. What else could I have done to inform you?”

Navalny cited Putin’s announcement that the president personally allowed him to be flown out of the country for treatment: “The president of our country said live on air he let me go to get treatment in Germany and you didn’t know that, too?”

Prior to the proceedings, police blocked pedestrian traffic in the area with barricades and detained dozens of protesters. Navalny supporters have called for further demonstrations this weekend.

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Thousands Protest the Arrest of Putin Rival Alexei Navalny

dreamstime_xl_209187759

More than 5,000 people were arrested across Russia on Sunday during the second round of protests over the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Video from the day depicts police, equipped with riot gear and batons, frequently beating protesters before dragging them away.

Despite the government’s strong warning against doing so, thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to Navalny’s continued detainment. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, was among those arrested. She was later released and fined 20,000 rubles ($263).

During the week leading up to Sunday’s protest, the Russian government placed several Navalny supporters under house arrest, claiming that their calls for protests which would violate COVID-19 restrictions are a threat.

Navalny has made his name as an anti-corruption crusader and adversary of President Vladimir Putin. He was arrested on January 17 for failing to meet with probation officials while recovering abroad from an August poisoning linked to the Russian government.

Demonstrators in Moscow had originally planned to rally in front of the offices of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the agency Navalny claims was responsible for poisoning him, but a heavy police presence forced them from the area.

In a press conference on Monday, the Kremlin called the demonstrations illegal and accused protesters of antagonizing police.

“There can be no conversation with hooligans and provocateurs,” said Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary. “The law should be applied with the utmost severity.” 

Russia’s crackdown on demonstrators has sparked condemnation from international leaders.

“The U.S. condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities,” tweeted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We renew our call for Russia to release those detained for exercising their human rights, including Aleksey Navalny.”

Navalny appeared in court today for violating the terms of his probation for a 2014 embezzlement conviction that critics say was orchestrated to keep Navalny from running for office. If convicted, he faces up to 3 1/2 years in prison.

When asked why he had not provided documentation to prison service officials as to his whereabouts, Navalny responded angrily, CNN reported.

“Why are you sitting here and telling the court you didn’t know where I was?” he said. “I fell into a coma, then I was in the ICU, then in rehabilitation. I contacted my lawyer to send you a notice. You had the address, my contact details. What else could I have done to inform you?”

Navalny cited Putin’s announcement that the president personally allowed him to be flown out of the country for treatment: “The president of our country said live on air he let me go to get treatment in Germany and you didn’t know that, too?”

Prior to the proceedings, police blocked pedestrian traffic in the area with barricades and detained dozens of protesters. Navalny supporters have called for further demonstrations this weekend.

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San Francisco Schools Renamed the Arts Department Because Acronyms Are a Symptom of White Supremacy

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The San Francisco United School District isn’t quite finished with its renaming binge: The district’s arts department, previously titled VAPA (Visual and Performing Arts), will now be known as the SFUSD Arts Department.

This change has been made in accordance with “antiracist arts instruction,” according to ABC-7 News.

“It is a very simple step we can take to just be referred to as the SFUSD Arts Department for families to better understand who we are,” Sam Bass, director of the SFUSD Arts Department, explained in a memo obtained by the local news network.

Bass did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and the memo isn’t widely available. But ABC-7 reported that the decision was made to eliminate VAPA because the department realized acronyms are a symptom of “white supremacy culture.”

The New York Post reported that the memo cites a 1999 paper by Tema Okun. That paper does not specifically say that acronyms are racist, though it does label “worship of the written word” as an aspect of white supremacy. Other purported characteristics of white supremacy are “perfectionism,” a “sense of urgency,” “individualism,” and “objectivity.” (If this list sounds familiar, it’s because the National Museum of African American Arts and Culture got in trouble last year for promoting similar nonsense.) While some acronyms may be confusing to non-native English speakers, it’s quite a stretch to describe them as a function of white supremacy.

Ironically, Okun’s paper lists memos as characteristic of white supremacy, so the department should probably fire Bass for racism. And at risk of stating the obvious, the new name—SFUSD Arts Department—contains an acronym just as surely as the old one did. White supremacy is just that insidious; even an arts department dedicated to antiracism can’t seem to rid itself of the stain.

This development follows the controversial decision by San Francisco’s school board to formally rename 44 schools that currently honor George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and even Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.). As Reason‘s Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted earlier this week, the decision to prioritize this effort at a time when schools aren’t even open strikes many people as embarrassing. “[It’s] a caricature of what people think liberals in San Francisco do,” one parent, a self-described Elizabeth Warren Democrat, told The New York Times. 

San Francisco school officials sure seem to enjoy humiliation. When asked about the significant learning losses among students of color who have now been kept at home for nearly a year, School Board President Gabriela Lopez essentially shrugged.

“They’re just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure, and the loss is a comparison to a time when we were in a different space,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The arts department’s badly explained name change isn’t nearly as consequential, but it’s still emblematic of a school district caught in the throes of far-left orthodoxy. If VAPA was a confusing name, then the district was perfectly justified in changing it. There’s no need to cloak this mundane and reasonable decision in social justice gobbledygook.

In any case, San Francisco students won’t be doing any art—antiracist or otherwise—until officials bow to the scientific consensus and actually reopen the schools.

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