Saturday, August 16, 2003

Who's Minding Your Data? Thus far, the government appears unconcerned about regulating its sources of personal data. The FBI's use of commercial databases has grown 9,600 percent over the last decade, according to EPIC. The bureau uses credit records, property records, professional licenses, driver's licenses and other data purchased from companies such as ChoicePoint Inc., of Alpharetta, Ga., and LexisNexis, of Dayton, Ohio, as well as credit reporting agencies such as Atlanta-based Equifax Inc., Experian Information Solutions Inc., of Costa Mesa, Calif., and Trans Union LLC, of Chicago. But none of these companies is held accountable for the truth or accuracy of the information it sells. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1219661,00.asp

Thursday, August 14, 2003

U.S. May Fine Some Who Shielded Iraq Sites yan Clancy arrived in Iraq in February in a double-decker bus filled with opponents of the war, after a rocky journey in it all the way from Milan. He had used frequent flier miles to get to Italy from Wisconsin. "There weren't a lot of Milwaukee-Baghdad flights," he explained. Mr. Clancy is 26 and owns a record store. He went to Iraq, he said, to observe, to learn and "to protect the civilian infrastructure." He spent weeks as a human shield at a grain silo that he feared would be the target of American bombing. The government is not happy with Mr. Clancy and several others like him. Not long after they returned home this spring, they received letters from the Treasury Department seeking information about their activities in Iraq and noting that spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000. Mr. Clancy and other opponents of the war say the inquiries are part of an effort to suppress dissent, but the government says they are a routine enforcement of regulations. And a Treasury spokesman bristled at the notion that the inquiries were politically motivated. "Of course not," the spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said. "Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein � where dissent was met with imprisonment or worse � the freedom to protest and disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy. However, the right to free speech is not a license to violate U.S. or international sanctions. While free expression is a right enjoyed by all Americans, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone." Several hundred people calling themselves human shields camped at oil refineries, water treatment plants, electricity generating stations and similar sites during the war. Many were from Europe; about 20 were American. Several people involved in the effort said that none of the sites were attacked while human shields were present. "That tells me we were successful," said Judith Karpova, a 58-year-old writer in Hoboken, N.J., who placed herself at an oil refinery near Baghdad. "We went there to protect innocent civilians, and I went there to protect my own country against further crimes against humanity and war crimes." The government seeks to punish Ms. Karpova and others not for hurting the war effort but for financial transactions in Iraq. The transactions were not large. Mr. Clancy said he took $1,500 with him, gave much of it away and spent the rest on necessities. Ms. Karpova said her expenses were paid by her hosts. She did admit, in a recent letter to the Treasury Department, to importing "eight sets of coloring books and eight sets of color markers, which I left at the children's hospital in Baghdad." Faith Fippinger, a 62-year-old retired schoolteacher in Sarasota, Fla., wrote to the government that she bought rice, eggs and dates in Iraq. "I purchased an occasional glass of delicious, sweet Iraqi tea at tea stalls and tasty kebobs or chicken at food stalls," Ms. Fippinger added. "I have no receipts." Others said the travel restrictions had been misused in the past. "The main problem has been selective prosecution," said Harold Hongju Koh, a law professor at Yale and a State Department official in the Clinton administration. "Presumably others went to Iraq who did not disapprove of the war, and that gets into tricky constitutional ground." Mr. Griffin, the Treasury spokesman, rejected the premise of Professor Koh's comment. "We're going to enforce U.S. law without regard to the person's motivation for breaking it," he said. Mr. Clancy said the main point was a simple one. "I'm being prosecuted for dissenting and for going to meet the people we were supposedly going to liberate," he said. In July, the government sued Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago group that has delivered medicine to Iraq since 1996 in violation of the regulations, which allow humanitarian aid but only by those granted a license. The suit was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia. The government seeks to collect $20,000 in fines, which were imposed last year for conduct in 1998. "The timing of it is very questionable," said the group's lawyer, William P. Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans. "If it's not just bureaucratic, it's a very serious effort by the government to punish people for following their convictions." I'll believe the government position when they fine reporters for spending money on hotels in Baghdad. A.I. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/politics/14SHIE.html

"There has been a dissipation of the huge budget surplus," he said, "and all we have to show for that is the city of Baghdad."

The pattern is as depressing as it is familiar: the savings run out, the rent doesn't get paid, the eviction notice arrives.
No Work, No Homes President Bush and his clueless team of economic advisers held a summit at the president's ranch in Crawford, Tex., yesterday. This is the ferociously irresponsible crowd that has turned its back on simple arithmetic and thinks the answer to every economic question is a gigantic tax cut for the rich. Their voodoo fantasies were safe in Crawford. There was no one at the ranch to chastise them for bequeathing backbreaking budget deficits to generations yet unborn. And no one was there to confront them with evidence of the intense suffering that so many poor, working-class and middle-class families are experiencing right now because of job losses on Mr. Bush's watch. After the meeting, Mr. Bush said, "This administration is optimistic about job creation." It's too bad George Akerlof wasn't at the meeting. Mr. Akerlof, a 2001 Nobel laureate in economics, bluntly declared on Tuesday that "the Bush fiscal policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years." Speaking at a press conference arranged by the Economic Policy Institute, Mr. Akerlof, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said, "Within 10 years, we're going to pay a serious price for such irresponsibility." Also participating in the institute's press conference was Robert Solow, an economist and professor emeritus at M.I.T. who is also a Nobel laureate. He assailed the Bush tax cuts as "redistributive in intent and redistributive in effect." "There has been a dissipation of the huge budget surplus," he said, "and all we have to show for that is the city of Baghdad." The president and his advisers could have learned something about the real world if, instead of hanging out at the ranch, they had visited a city like Los Angeles (or almost any other hard-hit American venue) and spent time talking to folks who have been thrown out of work and, in some cases, out of their homes in this treacherous Bush economy. The job market in California worsened in July. More than a million people are out of work statewide, and there are few signs of the optimism that Mr. Bush is feeling. Officials at homeless shelters in Los Angeles, as in other large American cities, are seeing big increases in the number of families seeking shelter because of extended periods of joblessness. The pattern is as depressing as it is familiar: the savings run out, the rent doesn't get paid, the eviction notice arrives. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/14/opinion/14HERB.html

Wednesday, August 13, 2003

U.S. Soldier Killed in Iraq and Occupation Is Defended An American soldier was killed today and one was wounded, compounding one of the worst weeks of the four-month-long occupation of Iraq and after an impassioned defense of the occupation by the top American administrator here, L. Paul Bremer III. In his remarks on Tuesday, however, Mr. Bremer acknowledged that "mistakes" had led to the deaths of innocent civilians and that finding the money to repair Iraq's crumbling infrastructure was a "substantial problem."� Paradoxically, one of the biggest challenges facing the American-led civilian authority is proving to be providing fuel for citizens of a country that boasts the world's second-largest oil reserves. Two days of riots in Basra, spurred by miles-long gasoline lines and electricity failures, were quelled Monday after British troops distributed gasoline from their own reserves. But fuel shortages may prove common, according to estimates by United Nations officials. They say the country is almost certain to endure shortages this winter of kerosene, a critical fuel for heating homes in northern Iraq, and liquefied petroleum gas, a common cooking fuel that has already seen a sixteen-fold price spike in some regions. In addition to the killings over the weekend of the two Iraqi policemen, Baghdad residents have been angered by recent American attacks that killed members of two families riding in their cars. "Look, it's a regrettable thing anytime there is the loss of innocent life," Mr. Bremer said in response to a question about civilian deaths. "There are, in combat operations, always going to be mistakes." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/worldspecial/13CND-IRAQ.html

How Ben-Gurion Did It: Is Everyone Listening? The official offered his prisoners a deal: he might let them go if they agreed to halt their "terrorist activities" and to use only political means to pursue their dream of statehood. It was a proposal similar to the one Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian prime minister, is making now to Hamas and other Palestinian factions that advocate terrorism. But this particular offer was made by a British officer to a group of Jews, at the time that the British uneasily governed Palestine, before the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Among those who heard the proposal out, and rejected it, was a young extremist who went by a nom de guerre, Michael. Michael later escaped and returned to the underground, to a campaign of assassination, bombing and arms smuggling, with bank robbery thrown in to finance the effort. "Nothing would be permitted to stand in the way of Jewish independence in the Land of Israel," Michael wrote 50 years later in his autobiography. "Nothing and No One." By then, Michael was himself testimony to Israel's success at integrating militants into mainstream society. His violent life in the pre-state period had become the stuff of romantic national narrative and broad political appeal, and under a different name, Yitzhak Shamir, he had been one of Israel's longest-serving prime ministers, one who cracked down on Jewish terrorism in the West Bank. In the view of many historians, it was in no small part the leadership of one man, David Ben-Gurion, that transformed Zionist militants into Israeli politicians and even peacemakers. "Ben-Gurion was a state-builder," said Shmuel Sandler, the Lainer Professsor of Democracy and Civility at Bar Ilan University. "State-building means that at one point you understand there can't be any more violence or illegal operations in your camp." Times, terrorist tactics and international realities change; historical comparisons between the Zionist and Palestinian national movements can be easily strained. Yet there are echoes in Mr. Abbas's oratory now of the message of Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister. "On this land and for this people, there is only one authority, one law, and one democratic and national decision that applies to us all," Mr. Abbas said on assuming his post this spring. His meaning was that Hamas and other groups could no longer, in effect, conduct their own wars with Israel. In 1944, a representative of Ben-Gurion delivered a similar message to a militant leader: "There must be one Jewish military force in Eretz Israel," that is, in the land of Israel. The militant leader, Menachem Begin, recalled the episode in his account of those years, "The Revolt." Unlike Mr. Abbas, Hamas, which took responsibility for a suicide bombing in the West Bank today, officially rejects any two-state solution with Israel. Unlike the pragmatic Ben-Gurion, Begin in those days rejected any partition. His printed declaration in 1944 of "war to the end" against the British appeared under a map of Palestine that extended to the border of Iraq, enclosing the image of a rifle by the words "Only Thus." Eventually, of course, Prime Minister Begin would give up the Sinai Peninsula. Although Mr. Abbas has said Hamas must give up its illegal weapons, he has also repeatedly said he will not risk civil conflict to enforce his national vision, and the governing Palestinian Authority has yet to take action against terrorists. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/13/international/middleeast/13LETT.html

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

If you're into political video see On Lisa Rein's Radar http://onlisareinsradar.com/

Signs Grow of Innocent People Being Executed, Judge Says A federal judge in Boston said yesterday that there was mounting evidence innocent people were being executed. But he declined to rule the death penalty unconstitutional. "In the past decade, substantial evidence has emerged to demonstrate that innocent individuals are sentenced to death, and undoubtedly executed, much more often than previously understood," the judge, Mark L. Wolf of Federal District Court in Boston, wrote in a decision allowing a capital case to proceed to trial. He cited the exonerations of more than 100 people on death row based on DNA and other evidence. "The day may come," the judge said, "when a court properly can and should declare the ultimate sanction to be unconstitutional in all cases. However, that day has not yet come." Judge Wolf wrote that the crucial question for courts was "how large a fraction of the executed must be innocent to offend contemporary standards of decency." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/12/national/12DEAT.html

Monday, August 11, 2003

The Art of the False Impression In the superamplified media din created by the likes of Arnold and Kobe and Ben and Jen, it's very difficult for the former vice president, a certified square, to break into the national conversation. That says a lot about us and the direction we're headed in as a nation. You can agree with Mr. Gore's politics or not, but some of the points he's raising, especially with regard to President Bush's credibility on such crucial issues as war and terror and the troubled economy, deserve much closer attention. "Millions of Americans now share a feeling that something pretty basic has gone wrong in our country, and that some important American values are being placed at risk," said Mr. Gore. Keeping his language polite, the former vice president asserted that the Bush administration had allowed "false impressions" to somehow make their way into the public's mind. Enormous numbers of Americans thus came to believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks and was actively supporting Al Qaeda; that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat, and Iraq was on the verge of building nuclear weapons; that U.S. troops would be welcomed with open arms, and there was little danger of continued casualties in a prolonged guerrilla war. The essence of Mr. Gore's speech was that these corrosive false impressions were part of a strategic pattern of distortion that the Bush administration used to create support not just for the war, but for an entire ideologically driven agenda that overwhelmingly favors the president's wealthy supporters and is driving the federal government toward a long-term fiscal catastrophe. What if Mr. Gore is right? There's something at least a little crazy about an environment in which people are literally stumbling over one another to hear what Arnold Schwarzenegger has to say about the budget crisis in California (short answer: nothing), while ignoring what a thoughtful former vice president has to say about the budget and the economy of the U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/11/opinion/11HERB.html

Sunday, August 10, 2003

Bush Misuses Science Data, Report Says The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, a report by the minority staff of the House Committee on Government Reform says. The 40-page report, which was prepared for Representative Henry A. Waxman, the committee's ranking Democrat, accused the administration of compromising the scientific integrity of federal institutions that monitor food and medicine, conduct health research, control disease and protect the environment. On many topics, including global warming and sex education, the administration "has manipulated the scientific process and distorted or suppressed scientific findings," the report said. "The administration's political interference with science has led to misleading statements by the president, inaccurate responses to Congress, altered Web sites, suppressed agency reports, erroneous international communications and the gagging of scientists," the report added. Some of the examples from the report's 21 subject areas have already been reported in the media. They include the Environmental Protection Agency's decision last year to delete a section on global warming in its comprehensive report on the state of the environment and President Bush's overstatement of the number of stem cell lines available for research under controls imposed by the administration. The report's authors say federal agencies have jeopardized scientific integrity in many ways, including stacking scientific advisory committees with unqualified officials or industry representatives, blocking publication of findings that could harm corporate interests and defending controversial decisions with misleading information. With respect to sex education, the report said, the Bush administration has advanced what the report described as an unproven "abstinence only" agenda and abolished an initiative at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that listed scientifically validated safe-sex techniques that included using condoms. On agricultural pollution, the Agriculture Department has issued tight controls on government scientists seeking to publish information that could have an adverse impact on industry, the report said. It cited the case of a microbiologist, James Zahn, who was denied permission to publish findings on the dangers of antibiotic-resistant bacteria near hog farms in the Midwest. On the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the report said that Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton, a firm advocate of drilling for oil in the region, misrepresented to Congress her agency's scientific opinion on how drilling would affect the region's caribou population. She told lawmakers most of the caribou calving occurred outside the refuge; her scientists said the opposite was true. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/08/politics/08REPO.html