Month: August 2014

So,
last night’s episode of The
Independents began a familiar-sounding
countdown of the show’s slowly unveiling 25 Enemies of Freedom.
Numbers 23-25 were wholly appropriate:

On tonight’s live episode of the show (Fox Business Network, 9
p.m. ET, 6 p.m. PT, with re-airs three hours later), we’ll talk
about #s 20-22. In addition, there will be plenty of woe.

Party Panelists Michael Malice (impish
ex-Russkie ghostwriting funbag) and Thaddeus McCotter (laconic
former GOP congressman with a taste for electric guitar) are slated
to chatter about the
tentative end to the Israel-Gaza war, the trend of
doctors opting out of Obamacare, the latest
news (and
hysteria) about the Ebola outbreak, and California’s ban on electronic skateboards.
Speaking of which!

Russia is massing
troops on the border of Ukraine, so Michael
Weiss of The Interpreter will talk about that bit of
ominousness. The Free Market Institute’s Benjamin Powell (watch his
Reason TV interview
here) will have the temerity to suggest that crisis of illegal
alien children on the border is actually not
that big of a deal; Kmele Foster will channel some
Veronique de Rugy on the Ex-Im Bank, and the online-only
aftershow (http://ift.tt/QYHXdy
just after 10) will do what the online-aftershow does. Speaking of
which, here’s last night’s mess:

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for more video of past segments.

Members of Congress may want to
check if their staffers are actually hard at work on their
computers, because a few people (but mostly one prolific
individual) seem to spend their days trolling Wikipedia. Today, the
site has been edited at about 20 times by people with congressional
IP addresses.

And one person, who has made about
30 edits in the last 48 hours, has been focusing on some
politicized topics, like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, the Cato
Institute, and many others.

Under the IP address 143.231.249.138 (which has apparently been
blocked in the past for
“disruptive edits”), he (or she) today changed an entry about
Snowden,
calling him an “American traitor who defected to Russia.”
Regarding Manning, the user took to the talk page,
asking, “Why is this man referred to throughout the article by
his alias? He is much more well-known under his real name.” As far
the Cato Institute goes, the individual added the fact that the
policy institute is hosting a talk about
congressional staff editing Wikipedia.

Interestingly, the individual has gotten his fingers in the
pages of libertarian-leaning congressmen Justin Amash and Thomas
Massie. Arguably, he’s made their pages more neutral, albeit less
informative, changing a description of Amash from
“corporate lawyer” to simply “an attorney,” and
removing the fact that Massie supports the ending federal
gun-free zones in schools.

For what it’s worth, it seems this prolific John Doe may be
a Russian-speaker
and has a fixation on Russia Today anchor Abby Martin,
writing that she’s not a journalist but a “propagandist,” but
also
adding her name to a list of psychedelic artists (she really does dabble,
apparently). He makes other legitimate, if obscure, additions to
Wikipedia, like information on the congressional
chicken caucus and peanut caucus.

John Doe also recently rewrote Mediaite‘s page,

calling it a “sexist transphobic” media outlet for “that
automatically assum[ing] that someone is male without any
evidence.” Shortly thereafter, on July 24, Wikipedia began a 10-day
ban on edits from Congressional computers.

The site has been dealing with “vandalism” from congressional
computers
basically since the beginning.

Ed Summers, a software developer who started a Twitter account
called “@CongressEdits” that
automatically tweets all of the changes, has said,
“Imagine if our elected representatives and their
staffers logged in to Wikipedia…  and used
their knowledge of the issues and local history to help make
Wikipedia better?”

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has criticized CongressEdits,
saying
that “there is a belief from some of the [Wikipedia] community that
it only provoked someone—some prankster there in the office—to have
an audience now for the pranks, and actually encouraged them rather
than discouraged them.” To be fair, so did banning them and
creating media hype in the first place. 

One hundred years ago today a shot fired across
the bow of the SS Pfalz from the Point Nepean fort in Victoria,
Australia, became the first Allied shot of World War I.
It was a warning shot—news of the state of war between the British
Empire and Germany had just made its way down to Australia, and the
SS Pfalz wasn’t going to get away. The fate of the Pfalz, used by
the Australians throughout the war and then sold for a profit,
illustrates what happens in war—things get seized, even when
they’re only tangentially related to the war, and life becomes
subordinated to war and the war effort. As we enter the centennial
of the “war to end all wars,” writes Ed Krayewski, here are five
lessons that still remain relevant today.

View this article.

• Americans
  belatedly have a sad over the quality of congressional
  representation, with a record 51 percent saying they disapprove
  of the performance of their own federal lawmakers.
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX announce its
  first commercial launchpad will be located in the great state of
  Texas—after a few checks clear from the Bank of the
  Taxpayers.
• The Obama administration is considering ways it can bypass
  Congress to
  prevent American corporations from relocating overseas to lower
  their tax bills. Drones?
• A U.S. Army major general was
  killed at a training facility by a gunman dressed in an Afghan
  army uniform. More than a dozen others are injured, and the death
  toll is expected to rise.
• At cease-fire talks in Cairo, Israeli officials are
  focusing on demilitarizing the Gaza strip. Good luck.
• Vladimir Putin wants to return the favor
  with economic sanctions against western countries that seek to
  penalize Russia for meddling in Ukraine. And down the rabbit hole
  we go.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter,
and don’t forget to sign
up for Reason’s daily updates for more
content.

• Americans
  belatedly have a sad over the quality of congressional
  representation, with a record 51 percent saying they disapprove
  of the performance of their own federal lawmakers.
• Elon Musk’s SpaceX announce its
  first commercial launchpad will be located in the great state of
  Texas—after a few checks clear from the Bank of the
  Taxpayers.
• The Obama administration is considering ways it can bypass
  Congress to
  prevent American corporations from relocating overseas to lower
  their tax bills. Drones?
• A U.S. Army major general was
  killed at a training facility by a gunman dressed in an Afghan
  army uniform. More than a dozen others are injured, and the death
  toll is expected to rise.
• At cease-fire talks in Cairo, Israeli officials are
  focusing on demilitarizing the Gaza strip. Good luck.
• Vladimir Putin wants to return the favor
  with economic sanctions against western countries that seek to
  penalize Russia for meddling in Ukraine. And down the rabbit hole
  we go.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter,
and don’t forget to sign
up for Reason’s daily updates for more
content.

A student is suing the University of Cincinnati
for trampling his due process rights and discriminating against him
as part of an effort—deliberate, he claims—to convict him of a rape
he never committed.

Ethan Peloe’s suit paints the campus judiciary procedure as
nothing more than a “kangaroo court,” where fundamental rules of
justice—such as his right to legal representation,
cross-examination, and impartial judges—were blatantly ignored.
Furthermore, the suit makes a strong case that adjudicators lied to
the student about whether they had sought the testimony of campus
police officers (UC police investigated the case and decided not to
press charges). The suit ultimately concludes that administrators
were worried that the U.S. Department of Justice would retaliate
against UC if the student was found innocent, biasing the process
against him from the onset.

The accusation was this: Two female students said Peloe raped
them. He spent the night in their dorm room and tried to have sex
with them while they were sleeping, they alleged.

UC police and a grand jury declined to charge Peloe. According
to the lawsuit, “significant physical evidence,” as well as the
testimony of two other students who had also been in the room,
exonerated Peloe. The office of the UC General Counsel was
determined to punish Peloe, however, and even sent emails to
investigators asking them to use a different approach—presumably,
one that would reach a different conclusion.

The lawsuit is filled with evidence of the university’s
wrongdoing. Most notably, Peloe repeatedly asked the adjudicators
during the trial whether they had sought exonerating testimony from
the police. They told him that the Hearing Panel had reached out to
the officers, but this was untrue. The officers actually consulted
their union to ask whether they should attend the panel, since they
were concerned about suffering retaliation at the hands of the
university if they gave testimony aiding Peloe, according to the
suit, which also notes that one officer called in sick and another
took a vacation on the day of the hearing.

Campus Reform has more:

Peloe’s suit also claims that his ARC Hearing resembled a
“kangaroo court” and did not fairly evaluate the case. The lawsuit
alleges that key pieces of evidence, including the results of a
rape kit examination, security camera footage, and witnesses’
accounts, were dismissed from the hearing as “irrelevant.” In
addition, Peloe believes he was not given a fair amount of time to
prepare for the hearing.

Peloe is also accusing the university of violating his Title IX
rights and discriminating against him on the basis of his gender.
The suit goes so far as to name a dean at the university who Peloe
claims was biased against him.

Keep in mind that this is just one side of the story. A
university spokesperson
told WKRC that UC takes its students’ rights seriously:

“The University of Cincinnati takes seriously our obligations
under Title IX and makes every effort to ensure that our campus is
safe for all students, faculty and staff and our processes respect
the rights of all students,” said M.B. Reilly, director of Public
Relations for the University. 

The lawsuit can be found here.

Read more from Reason on the illiberal nature of campus
sexual assault trials here.

This will not come as a surprise to Reason regulars: More than
40 percent of the people on the United States federal government
terrorism watch lists have no discernable connection to any
terrorist group.

280,000 out of 680,000 people on the list of those whom
authorities are keeping their eyes on and pulling aside for further
examination at airports and border crossings have no actual
connection to terrorist groups. The analysis comes from journalists
Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Devereaux at The Intercept. They
just
recently exposed the complicated yet also terribly vague guide
the federal government uses to put people on the list. Now they’ve
gotten their hands on a classified document detailing the National
Counterterrorism Center’s (NCTC) list of accomplishments for 2013
and have crunched the numbers to provide the lovely graph
below:

Some of the other
interesting details:

• The number of people added to the no-fly list has skyrocketed
  under President Barack Obama by a factor of 10, to a high of
  47,000.
• The second-highest concentration of people within the United
  States suspected of potential terrorism and added to the watch list
  resides in Dearborn, Mich. (population: 96,000). Coincidentally,
  Dearborn has the highest concentration of Arab-American citizens in
  the country.
• The government adds either new names or new data about people
  already on the watch list at a rate of 900 records each day.

There are a lot of different numbers about the actual size of
the list. The Associated Press has reported the list has seen 1.5
million names added, but a source told The Intercept
there’s some confusion between new names being added and new data
about people already on the list being added.

But the first thing this report for 2013 (pdf) describes
as an “accomplishment” is adding its one millionth person to its
database:

On 28 June 2013, the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment
(TIDE) passed a milestone of one million persons in TIDE. While
NCTC’s Directorate of Terrorist Identities (DTI) seeks to create
only as many person records as are necessary for our nation’s
counterterrorism mission, this number is a testament to DTI’s hard
work and dedication over the past 2.5 years.

It’s a monument to the twisted incentives that drive
bureaucracies. Having a watch list of a million people is
considered an accomplishment even though it contains hundreds of
thousands of people with no known ties to terrorist groups.

Read the latest story
here. Below, Reason’s Nick Gillespie interviewed Devereaux
about their last report detailing the guiding document for the
watch lists:

Washington Post columnist
Eugene Robinson has a terrific column today, “Time
to tame the intelligence monster,” in which he calls for the
resignation of CIA Director John Brennan over his agency’s illegal
spying on Congress. From the column:

The CIA now admits that it spied on a Senate investigation into
the agency’s shameful program of secret detention and torture. Do
we need any more proof that the spooks are out of control?

An internal “accountability board” will look into the incident,
an agency statement said, and might recommend “potential
disciplinary measures” or even “steps to address systemic
issues.”

Somehow, I don’t feel reassured.

You will recall that when Senate Intelligence Committee
Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) alleged
in March that the CIA was rummaging through her panel’s computer
files without permission, CIA Director John Brennan scoffed at
the complaint with high-handed derision. “I think a lot of people
who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying
and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong,” he said.

Oops. An internal CIA probe discovered that, well, a good deal
of spying and monitoring and hacking
did take place. Brennan reportedly has apologized to Feinstein
and Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the
committee — both of whom have been among the CIA’s staunchest
supporters on Capitol Hill.

The White House has taken a la-de-dah attitude toward the
revelation that the agency charged with spying on the machinations
of our foreign enemies instead trained its focus on the official work of our
elected officials. Asked whether Brennan now has a credibility
problem, press secretary Josh Earnest said, “Not at all.”

Earnest is wrong on that score, but the problem is much bigger
than Brennan. At stake is the principle that our intelligence
agencies — like our military forces — must be subject to civilian
oversight and control. The spooks apparently have a different
arrangement in mind. …

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a member of the intelligence panel,
stated the obvious: “This grave misconduct not only is illegal, but
it violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of separation of
powers.” He called on Brennan to
resign.

As I said, however, this is bigger than Brennan. At issue is
whether a vastly expanded and empowered U.S. intelligence
establishment will be fully and properly brought under civilian
control and oversight…. Obama, in the time he has left in office,
had better tame it.

Robinson is absolutely right that the national security
surveillance state is out of control and must be reined in. He
properly calls on President Obama to “tame it.”

Somehow, I don’t feel reassured.

Washington Post columnist
Eugene Robinson has a terrific column today, “Time
to tame the intelligence monster,” in which he calls for the
resignation of CIA Director John Brennan over his agency’s illegal
spying on Congress. From the column:

The CIA now admits that it spied on a Senate investigation into
the agency’s shameful program of secret detention and torture. Do
we need any more proof that the spooks are out of control?

An internal “accountability board” will look into the incident,
an agency statement said, and might recommend “potential
disciplinary measures” or even “steps to address systemic
issues.”

Somehow, I don’t feel reassured.

You will recall that when Senate Intelligence Committee
Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) alleged
in March that the CIA was rummaging through her panel’s computer
files without permission, CIA Director John Brennan scoffed at
the complaint with high-handed derision. “I think a lot of people
who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying
and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong,” he said.

Oops. An internal CIA probe discovered that, well, a good deal
of spying and monitoring and hacking
did take place. Brennan reportedly has apologized to Feinstein
and Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the
committee — both of whom have been among the CIA’s staunchest
supporters on Capitol Hill.

The White House has taken a la-de-dah attitude toward the
revelation that the agency charged with spying on the machinations
of our foreign enemies instead trained its focus on the official work of our
elected officials. Asked whether Brennan now has a credibility
problem, press secretary Josh Earnest said, “Not at all.”

Earnest is wrong on that score, but the problem is much bigger
than Brennan. At stake is the principle that our intelligence
agencies — like our military forces — must be subject to civilian
oversight and control. The spooks apparently have a different
arrangement in mind. …

Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), a member of the intelligence panel,
stated the obvious: “This grave misconduct not only is illegal, but
it violates the U.S. Constitution’s requirement of separation of
powers.” He called on Brennan to
resign.

As I said, however, this is bigger than Brennan. At issue is
whether a vastly expanded and empowered U.S. intelligence
establishment will be fully and properly brought under civilian
control and oversight…. Obama, in the time he has left in office,
had better tame it.

Robinson is absolutely right that the national security
surveillance state is out of control and must be reined in. He
properly calls on President Obama to “tame it.”

Somehow, I don’t feel reassured.