It’s saddening that we as Americans tolerate this kind of abuse from the department of “justice”, FBI, and NSA.
I hope any employees of the above that read my post understand that you’re working for the wrong side.
Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it doesn’t matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very existence is antithetical to a free and open society.
Edit: To expound upon this further, I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security. We can debate where those lines are all day, but the heuristic should always favor freedom/lack of control over totalitarian surveillance. This unfortunately means that some bad things are effectively “allowed” to happen, because the trade off required to eliminate them is too severe.
Edit 2: I can’t reply to any of you anymore due to the rate limit soft ban. I wish you all well. I’ll try and reply later.
ok but those agencies look for enemies, and you have just made yourself one, and anyone else that agrees with you essentially, by the conflict "us or them" language.
Real reform has many avenues, but none of those include becoming like your own enemy, and vilifying the job. I am not a fan and not making excuses, but the wording here is impossible to agree with, except to start some kind of riot?
> but the wording here is impossible to agree with
Why? You haven’t disagreed with my argument, only argued instead that winning against them is impossible so our only path is to submit and hope for incremental improvements by submitting extra hard.
These agencies only exist and operate (in theory) with the consent of the governed. In reality almost no one consents to this, so these agencies rely on mass apathy and ignorance. If we talk about what they’ve done wrong, and how they actively harm America a few things happen:
1) it becomes less socially acceptable to work for them, and they struggle to attract talent
2) it becomes more politically feasible to argue for their removal
The us-vs-them language is a feature, not a bug. People in large groups are (mostly) incapable of being both passionate and nuanced on the same subject. So sure, bringing up the children murdered by FBI and ATF at Waco doesn’t directly relate to ending mass illegal surveillance but it does help achieve the goal.
> I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security
Hmmm, I'm not convinced. I would have had no problem agreeing with that sentiment over two decades ago, but some extremely bad actors have made it clear that "allowing a few bad things to happen" can be orders of magnitude more brutal than I once thought possible.
I suppose I'm not even sure it is an American position. If it ever was, I don't think it is now, or has been for several generations. We're not farmers or fur traders anymore — we have complex and large societies.
Honestly I think trying to suggest anything is "an American viewpoint" dismisses too much nuance. We're neither all cut from the same cloth nor are our origins similar.
as a many-generation American, I believe that the great compromise here was to find some balance, where strong law-and-order can exist, and free-as-in-freedom can also exist.. There is no scenario, I think, where either side does not fail and suffer from their own excesses over time.. so the trick is to address that as the parade continues.. Yes, we do remember Watergate.
Or perhaps you’re just getting older, and your income level is rising, and you don’t operate near any edges of the bounds of the law. Due to your perspective, freedom may have become less important that security.
Of course there is always a balance to be found, and everyone’s perspective is different, but personally I’m a 1 or a 2 in the `freedom |—————| safety` scale.
I don't think I follow your point about income level. At first blush it sounds like you are suggesting the poor care more about freedom (or have more to fear from the FBI/CIA?).
I am personally not worried about my own safety at all. Or maybe it's more fair to say that I worry no more about my safety than anyone would living under the nuclear sword of Damocles (never mind an environment out of kilter) — or that I worry no more about my safety than I would about any other's safety.
If I am older I suspect it has given me the perspective to see that we live in a time when people can do horrendous things on a scale where thousands die in a single evil event and that we should not accept this as a society — we should not hold instead to some hard-line idealism of requiring everything to be free and open.
Again, I am not personally afraid of being the target of some sort of random act of terror, nor am I naive to think that a secretive government organization given a blank check could completely eliminate such a threat. But when something horrible happens again, if our leaders were asleep at the wheel and did nothing, we could be well expected to be also enraged with them, to have expected more from them.
I don't think I even agree with your continuum of "freedom <-> safety". We're never truly "safe". To allow for bad actors to do harm is more an affront to justice if you ask me.
“I don't think I follow your point about income level”
it makes sense when you consider that TLAs basic function is to preserve the status quo for wall street. we subvert democracy overseas to preserve corporate profits and have been doing so for many generations a la United Fruit Company, selling weapons to saudi arabia, etc.
Their point is you have a lot to lose by bucking the status quo, so consciously or not, why fight it? One could also argue that fitting in with society tends to produce better rewards than not, so those less likely to fight it do well?
Either way hard to not notice that cries to ‘f the man’ tend to die out as income and age rise.
The FBI has been an enemy of the people since its creation. Throughout its history it has wholesale spied on the public, collected dirt on political opponents and has been used to discredit dissidents. This agency is used solely to protect power. Their stated mission is ancillary to the true purpose.
With a history like that the whole agency should be disbanded. But, power will find another way to legally spy on opponents. Before the FBI it was secret service agents that were loaned out for that kind of work.
I generally agree with your statement, but there is an additional function of agencies like the FBI (no, it's not to do with their PR campaigns on catching serial killers and child abuse rings).
It's best explained by looking at the behavior of the US pharmaceutical corporations relative to outfits like Mexican and South American drug cartels. Both engage in the same business: selling drugs to consumers, but one is extremely violent, one is not. Most of the violence in the illegal drug trade is cartel-on-cartel violence, with a fair amount of innocent bystanders. Imagine if say, Purdue Pharma or Gilead were conducting armed raids on each other production lines, hijacking each others shipments, etc. Similarly, what if a mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson were to abscond with millions of dollars in product and set up a rival operation?
These corporations are all ultimately owned by Wall Street investors, by and large. This is who the FBI is there to serve and protect, a lot of people misunderstand that. They prevent such shenanigans as the drug cartels get up to (wholesale murder I mean) by investigating internal corporate crimes of that nature. Otherwise, the CEOs would be hiring private security (like cartel enforcers) to crack down on such things, in a extrajudicial process. The FBI also covers for the crimes of the mighty and powerful, too - HSBC laundering $2 billion in Sinaloa cartel drug money comes to mind, and then future FBI Director James Comey went to 'advise' them. No criminal charges were brought.
If we look at Wall Street as a kind of white-collar organized crime ring, the FBI is basically their enforcement arm. This is why so many top top-level FBI types 'retire' to lucrative positions in Wall Street firms, as Mueller did. It's a rather telling trend.
I suppose the kind of political operations they get up to are also in service of this general agenda, i.e. going after politicians who threaten Wall Street interests, covering up certain outrageous crimes that would reflect badly on the pillars of society, and so on. Overall, rather similar in function to the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo (and later, STASI), although not quite as powerful (they still can be embarrassed in legal proceedings, see the Steven Hatfill case, the Leonard Peltier case, etc.).
So, they serve a particular function for their Wall Street masters, but it's a pretty sleazy world they live in, and nobody should trust them anymore than you'd trust some STASI operative.
The government as a whole is the enemy of the people. It's why the founders put in place provisions to protect the people from the government (protections which the people over the centuries have kept removing).
What do you mean "tolerate". There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency.
> There was massive societal backlash against the NSA in the Snowden leak fallout but it's not like a bunch of angry people on the internet can unilaterally shut down a government agency.
Idk part of my is still convinced that the Chauvin decision was in part a way to placate the absolute destruction proceeding it. Particularly as much more cut and dry cases that don’t attract as much of a visocus response end with the cops getting away with gunning people down who we’re even criminals
Convicting an unpopular guy is easy. Shutting down a government institution is not. Even Obama failed to shut down Gitmo, despite being the most powerful person in the country for 10 years.
That looked to me like providing cover for not performing.
All the evidence suggests Obama was Their Man from the beginning.
(E.g. expanding "death from the sky" program -- even against a US citizen and his children, weaponizing Espionage Act against reporters & whistleblowers.) Most interesting to me is how They arranged to get him a Nobel Peace prize for nothing. (They got one for Kissinger, too!)
Every year Congress sends a defense appropriation bill to the president, and Gitmo's operation is always included in that. Any president who actually wanted to end Gitmo could simply veto the annual defense appropriation bill, and advise Congress to send a new version without the Gitmo crap.
I think if a well organized and coordinated initiative began where people talked about it in a skillful manner, and documented the outcomes of those conversations, something could come out of that.
Unorganized, uncoordinated complaining on various internet forums, it seems not much comes out of this.
We have the courts, the threat of which forced the government to make the only illegal program in Snowden's leaks legal. We have the ballot box, which elected Obama, who shut down email metadata surveillance even before it leaked.
Also that Second Amendment we all have to pay for with our childrens' blood in perpetuity. That's supposed to be the only thing keeping our government from slipping into tyranny. Despite all the tyranny our government has apparently slipped into.
It is crazy to think that such little progress was made after Snowden that it is not even slightly off to think that even Snowden didn’t depict the true vastness of the power of the NSA.
The stuff 3-letter agencies have gotten away with over the last century is insane. The NSA is a popular one to talk about now for good reasons but another one that always leaves me feeling angry is MKUltra and how the CIA basically tortured US citizens for science, Richard Helms destroyed evidence and died a free man. And we just seem to look back at it say “yeah these were bad people” and let it happen again.
In the end the only people being held responsible for anything seem to be the people who warn us and let us know.
It was a PSY-OP against the US public. The stories, about e.g. spying via ESP, were false. They are still believed by most who have heard of the code name and supposed investigation. So, a successful operation against us.
I hope stories like this open the eyes of folks who are die-hard Democrats or die-hard Republicans. They are not on your side. They are on their own side.
I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
I think deep down, many people in those camps realize it, but it's a very tough pill to swallow. Particularly if one is not equipped to mentally handle the hard emotions. These realizations amplify that feeling of helplessness.
Exactly, we aren't talking about the ways these parties are different, we're fully aware of that, we are talking about the ways these parties are the same. When we say "both sides" or "both sides are the same" we are talking about the ways in which they are the same, and that these ways are problematic and bothersome.
Its as valid of a stance, for an individual, as a different individual choosing to privilege a way in which one party is different.
Why else do you think career politicians from across the spectrum, from liberal Gavin Newsom to conservative Ron DeSantis, have worked hard to explicitly block ranked choice voting reforms? Not just voice their opinions against it, but proactively halt and override legislative reforms when they happen.
The duopoly doesn't benefit from making a more fair and inclusive system that allows for a greater diversity of political involvement.
"It's a big club, and you're not in it." -- George Carlin
Single-winner ranked ballots methods are reform theater; they aren't particularly “more fair and inclusive” that FPTP in general, and the particular method called “Ranked Choice Voting”, “Alternative Vote”, or “Instant Runoff Voting” in particular is only minimally different in structure and effect from majority-runoff.
Established elites make a show of opposing IRV/AV/RCV because centering the debate on that focusses attention there rather than on real reform, which requires systems that produce proportional results.
This statement seems to be in conflict with everything I've read about ranked choice voting. If I can put my preferred independent candidate as rank 1 and a safe choice at rank 2 then this is objectively better than just voting for the safe choice out of fear of stealing votes away and giving it to the opposition.
...That just degenerates to propping up the duopoly! That won't change anything.
I'm straight up against any methodology that blunts the sting of no confidence in the two big parties. They should absolutely have to react to shifting priorities. That means, no safety net. Otherwise, you're handing them the same election advantage they've always enjoyed and just handwaving the entire issue.
It sounds more to me like we need to start tracking negative votes (not this person) as well. It's bollocks that no confidence is treated as "I have no opinion".
> The practical consequences of the theorem are debatable: Arrow has said "Most systems are not going to work badly all of the time. All I proved is that all can work badly at times
Followed by:
> Although Arrow's theorem is a mathematical result, it is often expressed in a non-mathematical way with a statement such as no voting method is fair, every ranked voting method is flawed, or the only voting method that isn't flawed is a dictatorship.[11] These statements are simplifications of Arrow's result which are not universally considered to be true.
Bottom line - this seems interesting, but is hardly as simple as "all ranked voting systems can be gamed".
Approval voting is an unforced preference (i.e., allows ties) ranked voting system with only two ranks just like bullet voting systems (plurality and majority-runoff), differing in that it allows ties in both ranks and not just the second.
Arrow’s Theorem applies to unforced preference ranked voting systems (with or without limited numbers of preference ranks) the same way as it does to forced preference ranked systems.
Perhaps surprisingly, no, approval voting is actually a score voting system, which provides more information than a strict preference ranking.
This isn't necessarily intuitive, and our immediate impulse might be to object that 2^n-1 is less than n!, but as a quick informal illustration, note that the voting system where each voter assigns each candidate a score in [0,1] and selects the candidate who earns the highest sum from all voters fairly straightforwardly violates Arrow's theorem. Now, consider an approval vote where each voter rolls a single random number in the range [0,1) and vote for each candidate whose score exceeds their random number, and we get asymptotically the same result (but with some error bars). It turns out that scoring, even on a 2-point scale, is just a better primitive operation than ranking!
(Also, it helps that 2^n-1>n! for n=2,3, which covers a surprisingly large proportion of interesting elections.)
Single member districts are a disgusting thing for a society that claims to be a representative democracy. As a very simple example, rural liberals and urban conservatives effectively never get represented in our government, and that's still within the context of the false dichotomy of left/right.
But single winner ranked choice voting is still important for elected positions that necessarily must be one person, like executive seats.
> But single winner ranked choice voting is still important for elected positions that necessarily must be one person, like executive seats.
Executives are neither necessarily single seat nor necessarily directly elected. When indirectly elected, the electoral body that is itself directly elected need not be elected with single-winner methods. The US, in fact, uses multiwinner elections for electing the electoral college now, though mostly using the specific method (multiseat plurality winner-take-all) whose manifest unfairness and utility in excluding minority voices is the specific reason for the existing statutory ban on multiwinner elections for Congress.
We don't need anything so complicated, we just need to return to the house and electoral college being periodically resized according to census data rather than fixed at 435. Those reversions would solve most electoral problems without even needing to touch hard issues of engineering fair an trustworthy alternative voting systems.
The population, level of urbanization, and amount of information were all far less back then. It would be a lot harder for two parties to completely control an 8000 member congress or gerrymander that many districts.
> The population, level of urbanization, and amount of information were all far less back then.
To the extent those are relevant, they magnify the problems now (with or without more districts), rather than mitigating them.
> It would be a lot harder for two parties to completely control an 8000 member congress or gerrymander that many districts.
More districts make gerrymandering easier, not harder. As does more information.
Sure, there'd be more independents (absolute count), and at least one more often, in an 8000 member House, but proportionate to the total, there'd probably be fewer, on average, than there have been with the 435 member House.
Real reform is not palatable. The correct reforms include rotating appointments on the Supreme Court, abolishing the Senate, re-apportioning the House, and changing the presidency to have significantly less power. But something like this is not achievable with the current ossification of our dysfunctional political systems in the US.
Given that, I still believe ranked choice voting is the first baby step toward more representative politics.
I think ranked choice voting is too nerdy for much of the general public to understand; not the principle of it but the actual practice of how to tally votes and calculate the winner. Given the choice between a voting system the public demonstrably tolerates even though it isn't mathematically fair, and a voting system that is mathematically fair but is likely to cause confusion and distrust in elections, I prefer the former.
You could change my mind by showing that ranked choice voting systems can be taught to even the most common of midwits.
I personally slightly prefer approval voting (e.g. select all candidates you like, no ranking, most votes wins). It's simpler for voters and RCV is more likely that people will be lazy and only select one choice. But it does have the problem that many people will think it violates one person, one vote.
There are municipalities and states that have implemented both. Voters handle them fine.
More importantly, a large minority of people in the US who already believe the current voting system isn't fair, so why are you afraid RCV will make it worse? I think it will be the opposite, since it is likely to cool the political polarization and encourage the election of more moderate politicians that a larger majority are ok with.
> I personally slightly prefer approval voting (e.g. select all candidates you like, no ranking, most votes wins).
Yes, I like this one a lot more.
> There are municipalities and states that have implemented both.
I think for low-stake elections that most people don't vote in anyway, experimentation is relatively safe. But I wouldn't want to try anything new with fiery federal elections, particularly not the presidential election. The risk of confusion resulting in costly civil unrest is too high.
> More importantly, a large minority of people in the US who already believe the current voting system isn't fair
For the most part. Tens of millions of people voted, a few hundred (maybe a few thousand) people rioted, and the rest are mostly just complaining. All in all, I'd say the current system is working pretty well.
I think the most important distinction between the various scenarios is who was it that put these alternative approaches in place? Was it a consequence of public backlash and potentially against the will of the political class (which is what would be required in the US and Canada), or was it an initiative started by, or at least supported by, the political class?
Another important aspect: if the public isn't sufficiently intelligent, or isn't interested in such things, how did that state come about? Does the government play any role in setting educational curriculum? Does the media play in any role in what the public focuses on, considers important, etc?
> Do you think that Americans are unusually stupid?
A large minority of them are, yes. There's millions of people in this country that flunked their way through 12 years of math class and never retained anything more than basic arithmetic. 4% of Americans are classified as "functionally illiterate", that's 13 million people who effectively can't even read.
The point of democracy is to placate everybody, not just the smarter portion of society, so the mechanisms of democracy should be simple enough for somebody with a simple mind to understand. "Count votes and pick who got the most" is generally such a system.
I used to be a big proponent of ranked choice voting, but then I finally stepped back and realized that it doesn't seem to necessarily produce more "inclusive" or "unifying" outcomes. Change my mind.
It's a little presumptuous to come in and say "I don't believe this, change my mind." I don't think anybody is going to bother to, frankly. You ought to put in a slight amount of effort and give some modicum of evidence.
District-based elections, where each district had one winner, tend to lead to two-party systems. The counting mechanism doesn't meaningfully impact this. If you want to change this, you can expand current districts to cover multiple seats. That way, second-placed, third-placed, and so on, candidates also get seats. Depending on the #seats of the district. Parties could run multiple candidates, since there are multiple seats.
For the US, districts with e.g. 5 seats would be very interesting. The effect would be two-fold: first, more distinctiveness between candidates of the same party. Extreme example: a prolife Democrat, a gun-regulation Republican running alongside more traditional candidates. Secondly, at least some candidates outside the 2 major parties will get a seat. This probably means no more majority in House/Senate, but a need to form a coalition. That means talking with each other and reaching agreement would no longer be the newsworthy exception it is today, but would be part of the very fabric of the House/Senate.
I don't see how a different counting mechanism could lead to the same effects.
There are no politicians involved in this story at all. This is just the FBI doing police work (and then getting burned by their own informant). Like it or not, distribution of classified material is a crime, and the FBI's job is to enforce the law.
There's no "unchecked" power here. The details are complicated because the meeting was international (so presumably there was some coordination with local police), but there's no court in the nation that wouldn't immediately stamp a warrant based on the straightforward facts alleged here.
Exactly. They weren't there to arrest the reporter, who wasn't doing anything illegal, but to arrest the leaker, who was. It doesn't matter which politician you elect. The FBI will enforce the law.
The idea that because the courts will rubber stamp a warrant is not a valid rebuttal to unchecked power
Just like the saying that a "federal prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich" like wise the FBI could get a warrant for anything they desire at any time
The warrant requirement is a not a check on power, and has not been for decades, the courts and our legal system is no longer a protector of rights, or justice and has not been for a long long long time.
> The idea that because the courts will rubber stamp a warrant is not a valid rebuttal to unchecked power
But the crime is "release of classified material". That's not a rubber stamp, it's a clear allegation of criminal activity. I think your real feeling is that this material "shouldn't" have been classified (based on what you believe it contained -- the reporter never got it). And maybe that's true!
But the facts in this article are just OBVIOUSLY probable cause for a warrant, nonetheless.
My comment has no bearing on the facts of this case, or my opinions on state secrets
The fact of the matter is the warrant system, a non-adversarial system based on flimsy assertions and often out right lies by police and agents is not now, and likely never has been a check on government power
And I disagree, because virtually every successful resistance to police or prosecutorial misconduct (and there are many!) comes right down to a successfully argued fourth amendment violation. The fourth amendment is, quite frankly, the single most powerful check on law enforcement power in our society. And people who claim otherwise really need to spend some time resisting governments that don't have an equivalent.
But in this case, as I mentioned, the fourth amendment is silent. This arrest was totally OK (or would have been, had it not been spoiled) and doesn't represent any kind of government overreach at all.
And I disagree, because over the last 100+ years the 4th amendment has been hollowed out with exception, after exception so much so that anyone that believes the 4th amendment "single most powerful check on law enforcement power in our society" likely does not really support any checks on power at all.
Your belief that we have powerful checks on government power is clear you support a much larger and more intrusive government than I ever would, I see the government today as an unchecked dystopia novel, you think it is perfectly fine and balanced, that is more scary to me than government power. That we as a society have lost the very notion of what freedom actually is, that we has a society have come to accept the gilded cage as "freedom"
Beyond that, It comes down to the question of constitution interpretation as well. You believe the 4th amendment is silent here, you believe the FBI is operating under authorization of the 4th amendment because a law was violated, a law that seems to be protecting people that are violating the 4th amendment wholesale (the nsa), and ironic twist if I ever saw one.
You believe this because our Supreme Court has been derelict in the duty at uploading the plain and true meaning of the US Constitution for decades, you like many look to the Supreme Court for the meaning of the constitution, you have outsourced your thinking to this body, these people for whom we in society have placed on pedestal, and ironically in practice have given a title of nobility, something forbidden in the constitution.
“You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
> You believe the 4th amendment is silent here, you believe the FBI is operating under authorization of the 4th amendment because a law was violated
Uh... yes? If a law was violated, that's probable cause. It's sort of a definitional thing. What legal regime do you desire that manages to pre-decide on which laws are OK to violate before the collection of evidence occurs?
This sounds like an argument against the whole idea of law enforcement, I guess? You don't think that police should have the power to seize evidence or arrest people at all? (Because before they do that, we need to decide whether the laws they're trying to enforce are acceptable to the target of the investigation, right?) I mean, that's a position. Libertarians and anarchists occasionally say stuff like that. But it's absolutely not the legal framework we live under, and I doubt you'll find much support for it among the broader electorate.
If you don't like the laws we have, then the remedy available to you is to elect a government to change the laws. You don't get to demand that we enforce them differently for the laws you don't like.
> You don't get to demand that we enforce them differently for the laws you don't like.
This is a specious appeal to an abstract concept, that in this case justifies autocratic power. The entire run-amok surveillance industrial complex exists precisely due to such selective enforcement. If the FBI were actually interested in achieving justice, they would be going after the highly organized traitors systematically undermining our freedoms rather than small isolated cases of individuals committing a crime while trying to expose those larger crimes. Instead we see this exact "different enforcement", but with the opposite prioritization.
And yes, the people deciding en masse to elect different representatives would be one way to fix the problem. But there are many such ways, and general normative condemnation is the way to maintain and build support for any/all of them rather than getting focused on a specific approach which may or may not work.
Nice cherry pick of my comment, You need to read the entire section to understand what I was saying, which clearly you have no interest in commenting on. The Charge was the NSA is/was violating the 4th amendment wholesale (and other Laws that prevent them from targeting US Citizens), so in the over all context of this "investigation" the 4th amendment is in fact not "silent" as you claim, it very clearly prohibits what the NSA is doing, you then claiming the FBI is "following" the 4th amendment in pursuit of silencing whistleblower that is attempting to alert the public of 4th amendment violation is ironic to say the least.
Using "State Secrets" laws to cover up constitutional violations is also somewhat dubious so then one has to ask what law is more important, a Federal Statute of Secrecy or the Constitution, clearly you think Federal Statute over rides the Constitution, I dont.
>>You don't think that police should have the power to seize evidence or arrest people at all?
Seize Evidence... Sure
Pre-trial confinement should be exclusively reserved for cases where there is clear and convincing evidence of a danger the individual poses to the wider public, i.e a rapist or murder...
Innocent until proven guilty right? Or do you reject that fundamental provision of the law as well, I am not sure because you seem to have a very cozy relationship with structures of authority.
We're not talking about a jury trial here! It's an arrest (attempt). The ability to detain people suspected of crimes and search their papers and persons is a core part of law enforcement. So much so, in fact, that the fourth amendment specifically calls it out and places limits on the ability. And to say it again: it is abundantly clear that those limits were not crossed in this case.
If I'm reading the story correctly the villain is that lawyer who seemingly mislead everybody. The DOJ sought to prevent the loss of classified information which may or may not have ever existed related to spying programs that may or may not have ever existed. That's well within their responsibilities even if they were being overzealous.
I've never been one to put full trust in any politicians or bureaucracy but the balance of value is still overwhelmingly towards democrats. The odd botched investigation is a small price for supporting democracy, human rights and climate justice.
> The DOJ sought to prevent the loss of classified information which may or may not have ever existed related to spying programs that may or may not have ever existed. That's well within their responsibilities
Really? Wouldn’t most people think a Department of Justice should be actively hunting down and prosecuting those who illegally spy on US Citizens?
I mean they’re supposed to work for us, uphold our laws and constitution etc. If employees of executive branch agencies conspire to defraud citizens of the United States of their most basic rights (4th amendment?) isn’t that a crime they should be pursuing?
Instead they seem far more interested in suppressing evidence of the crime.
States, counties, for some - districts. Thirty years and I've met one representative.
America wasn't designed to operate at the current scale and it's causing considerable strife internally and externally. We're effectively the de facto world sovereign, and at the same time we the people and the collective will is so contrived as to be totally incomprehensible, largely, I would posit, as a product of federal overreach and inertia. We'd do well to refederate - California's America is not the same as Texas' nor is Florida's the same as Michigan's. It's kind of an absurdity to indicate we're a nation at this point, there are really no points of unity which bond us in this era, and that's what defines a nation. That is to say there are no more Americans.
I think we muddled along fine as long as we had 3 or 4 TV networks steering the national conversation and no social networking. Now we can self-select for our biases and realities.
> California's America is not the same as Texas' nor is Florida's the same as Michigan's. It's kind of an absurdity to indicate we're a nation at this point, there are really no points of unity which bond us in this era, and that's what defines a nation. That is to say there are no more Americans.
It's weird how this wasn't the case prior to 2016. Like, I distinctly recall there being a unified American culture and identity. Even between California and Texas, both considered themselves (and one another) Americans despite their differences.
There's a lot of parallel process going on that are hard to account for. Internet use, for example. According to Statista, 2011 is a trough in internet use, some ≈210mn users, by 2016 it plateaus at ≈290mn, meanwhile the platforms and accessibility are evolving alongside, in manifold ways. And there's old industries developing in new ways, TV supplanted by the modem, papers by the web, and it's all interactive. TV, I suspect, and the legacy boys, are pressing hard for turning their outlets up to 11, like have you watched Tucker Carlson? And that's got to be exacerbating the problem. And information is more accessible than ever, too: COINTELPRO or the Iran-Contra or the Mexican Revolution, or Banana Republic, or go go banking a la 1980's financial imperialism and there's the third world debt crisis for you.
Viola! Schismogenesis. Erstwhile we're competing inside of a relatively inert system with intractable inertia, and the pressure builds.
Of course the economics of the individual are poorer and poorer, as well, and at what appear to be increasing costs and that is a considerable portion of what the government ultimately does - enable commerce. And we're finding out, perhaps, that we're running on fumes.
Nationalism isn't the problem. The problem is political tribalism. Both parties have become extreme in their own right and now people don't feel they have much in common with one another because of this extreme rhetoric coming from both sides.
> [the lawyer] told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals. [...] The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence. [...] While the FBI knows who the lawyer is, I will not name him, even though he betrayed me.)
Why protect this asshole? Because he got cold feet and gave warning? This guy seems like 'quite a character' and the story unresolved without knowing who it was.
Because future sources need to trust you. Protecting sources needs to be absolute, or some of them will wonder what it takes to constitute “betrayal” in the future.
Not betraying a source that has wronged you is fantastic signalling to future sources.
You'd trust this guy?! He has spooks crawling all over him. This lawyer was informing the FBI on the journalist's source, and the journalist won't even name that lawyer. An NSA/TLA/etc leaker would need a death wish to approach this journalist now, having read this story.
The source coming from and trusting the lawyer doesn't change the fact that the lawyer was informing to the FBI and was an associate to this journalist.
> Eventually, he confessed to me that the FBI had been waiting in Bruges to trap my source. He said that the FBI knew about the meeting because he had told them about it, and that he had also told the FBI that the source wanted to provide me with NSA documents. He admitted that he had been informing on me.
The journalist has spooks all over him. Whatever you think of the journalist's intentions, you'd have to be a complete fool to get near him. At least he's been honest about this much, so future leakers will be forewarned.
Not sure what this is supposed to mean exactly. It's pretty much a given that if you're reporting on national security, the government has its eyes on you.
"In January 2014 — just as the FBI was planning its ambush operation — the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to hear arguments over my subpoena in the leak case involving the mismanaged CIA program. At the time, I was facing the possibility of going to prison for refusing to reveal my sources if the Supreme Court did not rule in my favor."
Makes sense in principle, but who would ever trust James Risen after his reporting on Wen Ho Lee?
I mean let’s see, Taiwanese person is going to spy for mainland China? Really? And the evidence for this is that blueprints not available to the suspect, generated well downstream from where the suspect works or has access, are leaked to China… Right, let’s sensationalize some bs theories in the NYT even though there is nothing there, at the expense of a man who, oh well, is Taiwanese, so who cares? Not James Risen.
The corruption is deep and wide within our government (deep state?) and it doesn't matter which political faction is in power. The attack on the dissemination of information and transparency seems to be accelerating every day. It's almost as if there is something to hide... as if the only way to maintain a position of power is to obfuscate, lie and and deflect at every point a question is asked.
It's surprising to see Risen write for The Intercept but honestly this piece would probably not get printed by NYT. It's definitely an incomplete story without any conclusive proof of who did what or why and is something of a personal narrative. I guess Risen just wanted this on the record somewhere since people were telling their side of the story elsewhere.
Risen said the NYT killed his story about the CIA, which was later published in his book and caused the Obama administration to subpoena him for his sources.
There doesn't seem to be any reason to credit any particular novel detail in this... whatever this is. The details already related in Schmidt's book could be believed, I guess, but basically just amount to "FBI boondoggle to Europe". Wow that's news. We're not told who the go-between was, who the various parties in Belgium were, anything at all about why anyone believed "the source" was worth thinking about or even existed.
It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is the only name mentioned. [EDIT: removed dumb question] At the time he may have been an FBI agent, though he also appears to be a documentary filmmaker and lawyer. DDG seems to believe he is associated with various IMDB entries, but that association has been deleted from IMDB. Risen's relationship with FBI is not as adversarial as portrayed here. No matter how he deflects, it seems unlikely to distract from the poor publicity FBI have recently. One suspects the real news, which if anything about this is true we'll learn years from now, is the identity of the go-between.
FBI tried to ambush a whistleblower. You can say that whistleblowing is a crime, but what if the whistleblower has evidence of even greater crimes being committed? That makes the ambush a cover-up.
Well, the reporter claims to have audio recordings of plans for the ambush (presumably, recordings reviewed by the reporter's editors at least), and the FBI apparently considered it important enough to send a whole big team to Belgium. Who knows if the source had anything, but it seems the FBI was very worried.
I agree with that – that it seemed to motivate the FBI. At the same time, we all know the FBI has been wrong before though, so I remain unconvinced that their urgency reflects the truthfulness of the claim.
I'm not really understanding what the newsworthy bits here are. There's an implication that this source had some kind of huge trove of data, but the reporter never got it and that's not what the story is about.
Instead, this story alleges: (1) the reporter planned to meet with a source to get a classified leak, (2) the FBI got wind of it, and (3) they planned what amounts to a sting operation (I guess, it's complicated because this was in France) to catch the leaker.
That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law.
Beyond that there's some juicy details about the lawyer who originally ratted on the source and then got cold feet and warned the reporter. And that's interesting.
But... there's no government abuse angle here, not without knowing the contents of that leak that didn't happen.
> That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law.
Ask yourself if the FBI is investigating the NSA. Did the FBI investigate the NSA before Snowden? You can enforce the law very selectively, prosecuting whistleblowers who are trying to reveal evidence of crimes committed by the government itself.
In theory a person who believes that the NSA is engaged in illegal activity can, rather than laking classified information to the press, take evidence of the wrongdoing to the FBI. Inspectors General are also a thing. They can also go to their congresspeople.
In theory.
That someone has to resort to leaking to the press to achieve accountability is a bug in the system, it's not how things are meant to work.
The press and government are two distinct powers. All that you listed, FBI, attorney, Congress, are all part of the government, which is the one which controls and directs what the NSA does.
Leaking to the press is not a bug. Seeking maximum distance from what you denounce is sane. You have the same problems in the private sector, where you are directed to voice your complain to HR.
There are legal avenues for whistleblowing through IGs and/or Congress.
You can't write a law that gives journalists special access to classified information and giving them arbitrary information is ok, how would that even work? (That's without getting in to the complications of defining 'journalist').
If you wanted to argue that leaking information of illegal government activity in certain circumstances is an affirmative defense I could possibly get behind that, the devil would be in the details.
if those legal avenues are implemented/neutered by the same people who implement the illegal programs for the purpose of mitigatingthe actions of whistleblowers can you really say that theyre legal avenues?
In this case the legal avenues were followed, yet the Director of National Intelligence decided not to inform Congress of the whistleblower report, despite being legally required. The administration could have squelched the report if Michael Atkinson hadn't informed Congress himself, and of course Atkinson was later fired by the President.
Why should a whistleblower trust the very administration they're ratting out?
My understanding is that the legal system figured out a compromise for this type of issue during the Nixon trials. A leaker who signed NDAs and clearance forms and doesn't go through the proper whistleblowing channels (possibly for good reasons) is still legally on the hook. However, the compromise is that the people they leak to are legally in the clear, which would (theoretically) prevent the government using security to silence the free press.
My word was "newsworthy", and that's a rather different standard than "interesting and worth reading". This article is a gossip piece about (mostly) a self-absorbed FBI informant who danced too close to the fire, may have fabricated evidence, seems to have gotten cold feet and burned an investigation, and made an enemy out of both the reporter and the FBI. And... sure, that's interesting!
If it happened. None of that stuff is substantiated, it's just the reporters guesswork based on circumstantial evidence.
It's a good story. It's an interesting story. It's not "news". And it's absolutely not something interesting or notable about the FBI (the entity that appears in the headline), which was just doing exactly the thing the FBI was created to do.
In Bruges is a fantastic film, one of my favorites as well, and makes for a poignant backdrop to this story, wherein the reporter unknowingly manifests its plot from his semi-ironic suggestion of meeting there. The imagery of the FBI guys waiting around in Bruges is just too perfect. Life imitates art.
As I prepared to travel to Bruges, I tried to take a few precautions to avoid detection. I planned to fly from Washington to Paris, then pay cash for a train ticket to Bruges. I hoped that would reduce the digital evidence of my travel.
I love that movie, too, but wouldn't it make more sense to fly into Schiphol with a Brompton and pedal up to Haarlem to meet the source? It seems like it'd be a lot harder for the FBI guys to track you, and it'd be a lot quicker, too, and you'd still get to see the canals and old cobble streets and buildings and all that.
Hopefully they got to see the swans. Like a fairytale, really.
More seriously, what appeals to me about films like that is how 'real life' crime (as far as I can know) is not like a glamourised action movie. It is more haphazard, and contingent on personal decisions and people's character flaws.
For me, the line 'I am sorry I called you an inanimate object. I was upset' is more real than any number of Godfather movies.
Still, I am not sure if it is a good sign that the story presented, if true, seems more intriguing than average "Blacklist" episode. I would normally default to blaming X ( in this case Holder, Pompeo and Trump as they are named in the story ), but the reality is those are just people, who just happened to use that power.
The issue is that unchecked power apparently will exist until a truly unscrupulous man uses it to his advantage ( if that did not happen already ).
As much as I enjoy blaming the Trump administration, this story didn't actually name Trump/Holder/Pompeo. This all happened under Obama's admin with Comey
It is possible that I was not sufficiently clear with the way I phrased it; I apologize for that. The story of this particular case technically does not involve Trump or Pompeo.
The linked article, however, does list the following paragraph:
"The Trump administration went to even greater extremes than its predecessor to target the press. In 2017, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo reportedly considered kidnapping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who at the time was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Yahoo News reported last September that former President Donald Trump even raised the possibility of assassinating Assange. Pompeo was reportedly obsessed with targeting Assange after a massive leak of CIA hacking tools, known as Vault 7. WikiLeaks published Vault 7 documents in 2017, revealing that the CIA had the ability to hack the computer systems built into a wide range of consumer products, including cars, televisions, and home appliances. In April 2017, Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.”"
The Intercept and James Risen have almost no credibility left with anyone who has payed attention to their devolution over the years, culminating in them forcing Glenn Greenwald's hand in resigning, funnily enough over the now known to be true Hunter Biden laptop story. [1]
Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he says. I wouldn't be surprised if this story is some strange cover for him designed to make him seem like a "real" journalist, but even in this story he admits he used this dubious lawyer frequently. He says he doesn't know when the lawyer started informing on him, but an educated guess would say he always was! Was the source ever even real, or a honeypot in the first place? (source didn't go to this meeting why?) Risen fails to do even fundamental reporting on how he got the information in this story (he obtained audio recordings... how?!)
Risen says this lawyer gave a masterful performance to the FBI. Risen could at least try to do the same when trying to blow smoke at the public. This story makes no sense and Risen should be considered useless as journalist.
For what it's worth, I've been reading The Intercept since it started and he was always raked across the coals in the now disabled-unless-logged-in comments for methods like this since he came over from the NYT. The Intercept itself is now barely even a shadow of it's former self.
Whistleblower POV : Reporter chose a strange meeting place in a strange town in a strange country in europe. When I got there it was full of FBI agents, so I walked away. Reporter set me up and then made up a story about a lawyer.
I doubt the source existed, the lawyer sounds like a fantasist and both the reporter and FBI fell for his stories. It pretty much says right there in the story that the lawyer was usually full of shit-- "I have concluded that the American lawyer loved to play games with everyone ... The lawyer told Ridd that he frequently lied to me and my colleagues at the Times ... 'I lie my ass off every day'".
From personal experience being targeted with harassment and vexatious litigation by a fantasist conman, many of his victims and enablers will sometimes admit he often lies or 'exaggerates', but the reality is that he virtually always lies, that his documents are either completely uninteresting but misrepresented or interesting but obvious forgeries. When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands. Risen's description-- including features like the corrupted USB stick-- resonate for me.
The question isn't whether the human exists, but whether the human had any information. Even if the source wasn't in on it, he could have been lead on by the lawyer.
> When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands.
People seem to do this with a lot of things. Their favorite pop stars, companies, countries, ideologies, etc.
I'm also confused how the lawyer was the person who introduced the source to the journo, but the FBI can't press the lawyer directly to find out who the source was? Is the idea that the lawyer just connected a completely random anonymous person with his journo friend?
Talking to a reporter isn't a crime, and having talked to a reporter isn't enough to get a search warrant.
The FBI could have known who the source was, confirmed that he would have access to the kind of data being discussed, but couldn't show he had taken classified information so needed to catch him in possession of illegal documents to arrest him.
> Later, he split his time between the United States and Europe; he told me that he was sometimes involved in international arms deals.
>The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence.
one can do it only while working on some US intelligence service.
>the then-attorney general denied the request and was furious that it had been put in writing
beautiful. Looks like somebody in FBI nicely covered their own bottom with the Attorney General himself - " ... as was previously discussed the USB drive containing data dump from the broken in computer of the journalist trying to report on the NSA illegal spying ..." or something like that :)
TLDR: the FBI was trying to catch some in the act of commiting a crime. This seems fine.
A separate issue mentioned, but was a completely separate event, was the DOJ trying to force the journalist into revealing a different source in a different leak. This does not seem fine, but it also failed
The story reads like a diversion tactic. What proof is there that there was an FBI team waiting around? A compromised source (the unnamed lawyer) introduces a juicy lead just a the peek of other litigation in the reporters life. But the juicy lead comes of nothing. Don’t have any way to know if there was anything real behind it. A confusing hall of mirrors emerged where the reporter was going to a meeting arranged by a source compromised by the FBI and then canceled in effect by the same person. Reads like diversion and playing psyops on the reporter.
To me it seems this whole story is based on the "adrenaline junky" lawyer who is also an established liar. He could have just made up the juicy leak and then chicken out when he would have to deliver. So he sent an anonymous mail and later made up the FBI story. Lots of smoke and mirrors but in the end all of it could be explained by one guy with nothing to show for trying to get some fame through the journalist.
163 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadI hope any employees of the above that read my post understand that you’re working for the wrong side.
Absolutely none of their justifications hold water, and it doesn’t matter that they catch a few bad guys. Their very existence is antithetical to a free and open society.
Edit: To expound upon this further, I believe it’s a fundamentally American viewpoint to prefer freedom over security. We can debate where those lines are all day, but the heuristic should always favor freedom/lack of control over totalitarian surveillance. This unfortunately means that some bad things are effectively “allowed” to happen, because the trade off required to eliminate them is too severe.
Edit 2: I can’t reply to any of you anymore due to the rate limit soft ban. I wish you all well. I’ll try and reply later.
Real reform has many avenues, but none of those include becoming like your own enemy, and vilifying the job. I am not a fan and not making excuses, but the wording here is impossible to agree with, except to start some kind of riot?
Why? You haven’t disagreed with my argument, only argued instead that winning against them is impossible so our only path is to submit and hope for incremental improvements by submitting extra hard.
These agencies only exist and operate (in theory) with the consent of the governed. In reality almost no one consents to this, so these agencies rely on mass apathy and ignorance. If we talk about what they’ve done wrong, and how they actively harm America a few things happen:
1) it becomes less socially acceptable to work for them, and they struggle to attract talent
2) it becomes more politically feasible to argue for their removal
The us-vs-them language is a feature, not a bug. People in large groups are (mostly) incapable of being both passionate and nuanced on the same subject. So sure, bringing up the children murdered by FBI and ATF at Waco doesn’t directly relate to ending mass illegal surveillance but it does help achieve the goal.
that is most definitely not what I said at all
Hmmm, I'm not convinced. I would have had no problem agreeing with that sentiment over two decades ago, but some extremely bad actors have made it clear that "allowing a few bad things to happen" can be orders of magnitude more brutal than I once thought possible.
You could argue you disagree with the concept, but I don’t think you could honestly argue it’s not a traditionally American position.
Honestly I think trying to suggest anything is "an American viewpoint" dismisses too much nuance. We're neither all cut from the same cloth nor are our origins similar.
Of course there is always a balance to be found, and everyone’s perspective is different, but personally I’m a 1 or a 2 in the `freedom |—————| safety` scale.
I am personally not worried about my own safety at all. Or maybe it's more fair to say that I worry no more about my safety than anyone would living under the nuclear sword of Damocles (never mind an environment out of kilter) — or that I worry no more about my safety than I would about any other's safety.
If I am older I suspect it has given me the perspective to see that we live in a time when people can do horrendous things on a scale where thousands die in a single evil event and that we should not accept this as a society — we should not hold instead to some hard-line idealism of requiring everything to be free and open.
Again, I am not personally afraid of being the target of some sort of random act of terror, nor am I naive to think that a secretive government organization given a blank check could completely eliminate such a threat. But when something horrible happens again, if our leaders were asleep at the wheel and did nothing, we could be well expected to be also enraged with them, to have expected more from them.
I don't think I even agree with your continuum of "freedom <-> safety". We're never truly "safe". To allow for bad actors to do harm is more an affront to justice if you ask me.
it makes sense when you consider that TLAs basic function is to preserve the status quo for wall street. we subvert democracy overseas to preserve corporate profits and have been doing so for many generations a la United Fruit Company, selling weapons to saudi arabia, etc.
Either way hard to not notice that cries to ‘f the man’ tend to die out as income and age rise.
With a history like that the whole agency should be disbanded. But, power will find another way to legally spy on opponents. Before the FBI it was secret service agents that were loaned out for that kind of work.
It's best explained by looking at the behavior of the US pharmaceutical corporations relative to outfits like Mexican and South American drug cartels. Both engage in the same business: selling drugs to consumers, but one is extremely violent, one is not. Most of the violence in the illegal drug trade is cartel-on-cartel violence, with a fair amount of innocent bystanders. Imagine if say, Purdue Pharma or Gilead were conducting armed raids on each other production lines, hijacking each others shipments, etc. Similarly, what if a mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson were to abscond with millions of dollars in product and set up a rival operation?
These corporations are all ultimately owned by Wall Street investors, by and large. This is who the FBI is there to serve and protect, a lot of people misunderstand that. They prevent such shenanigans as the drug cartels get up to (wholesale murder I mean) by investigating internal corporate crimes of that nature. Otherwise, the CEOs would be hiring private security (like cartel enforcers) to crack down on such things, in a extrajudicial process. The FBI also covers for the crimes of the mighty and powerful, too - HSBC laundering $2 billion in Sinaloa cartel drug money comes to mind, and then future FBI Director James Comey went to 'advise' them. No criminal charges were brought.
If we look at Wall Street as a kind of white-collar organized crime ring, the FBI is basically their enforcement arm. This is why so many top top-level FBI types 'retire' to lucrative positions in Wall Street firms, as Mueller did. It's a rather telling trend.
I suppose the kind of political operations they get up to are also in service of this general agenda, i.e. going after politicians who threaten Wall Street interests, covering up certain outrageous crimes that would reflect badly on the pillars of society, and so on. Overall, rather similar in function to the Soviet NKVD and the German Gestapo (and later, STASI), although not quite as powerful (they still can be embarrassed in legal proceedings, see the Steven Hatfill case, the Leonard Peltier case, etc.).
So, they serve a particular function for their Wall Street masters, but it's a pretty sleazy world they live in, and nobody should trust them anymore than you'd trust some STASI operative.
Idk part of my is still convinced that the Chauvin decision was in part a way to placate the absolute destruction proceeding it. Particularly as much more cut and dry cases that don’t attract as much of a visocus response end with the cops getting away with gunning people down who we’re even criminals
All the evidence suggests Obama was Their Man from the beginning. (E.g. expanding "death from the sky" program -- even against a US citizen and his children, weaponizing Espionage Act against reporters & whistleblowers.) Most interesting to me is how They arranged to get him a Nobel Peace prize for nothing. (They got one for Kissinger, too!)
what do you suggest we do about it? We have no meaningful recourse against the myriad of government abuses.
Unorganized, uncoordinated complaining on various internet forums, it seems not much comes out of this.
In the end the only people being held responsible for anything seem to be the people who warn us and let us know.
Second biggest is what it was about.
It was a PSY-OP against the US public. The stories, about e.g. spying via ESP, were false. They are still believed by most who have heard of the code name and supposed investigation. So, a successful operation against us.
I don't doubt that most folks at these agencies are hard-working Americans who believe they're doing what's best for our country. Having said that, this kind of unchecked power is dangerous.
Its as valid of a stance, for an individual, as a different individual choosing to privilege a way in which one party is different.
The duopoly doesn't benefit from making a more fair and inclusive system that allows for a greater diversity of political involvement.
"It's a big club, and you're not in it." -- George Carlin
Established elites make a show of opposing IRV/AV/RCV because centering the debate on that focusses attention there rather than on real reform, which requires systems that produce proportional results.
What systems would you prefer?
I'm straight up against any methodology that blunts the sting of no confidence in the two big parties. They should absolutely have to react to shifting priorities. That means, no safety net. Otherwise, you're handing them the same election advantage they've always enjoyed and just handwaving the entire issue.
It sounds more to me like we need to start tracking negative votes (not this person) as well. It's bollocks that no confidence is treated as "I have no opinion".
FTA:
> The practical consequences of the theorem are debatable: Arrow has said "Most systems are not going to work badly all of the time. All I proved is that all can work badly at times
Followed by:
> Although Arrow's theorem is a mathematical result, it is often expressed in a non-mathematical way with a statement such as no voting method is fair, every ranked voting method is flawed, or the only voting method that isn't flawed is a dictatorship.[11] These statements are simplifications of Arrow's result which are not universally considered to be true.
Bottom line - this seems interesting, but is hardly as simple as "all ranked voting systems can be gamed".
It is almost that simple. Every deviation from the unattainable ideal in Arrow’s theorem corresponds to one or more ways that the system:
(1) can be gamed, or
(2) is insensitive to voter preferences, or
(3) changes outcomes in the opposite direction of changes in expressed voter preferences.
(And usually several from multiple categories.)
There are whole catalogs of these and enumerations of which ones apply to each voting system.
Arrow’s Theorem applies to unforced preference ranked voting systems (with or without limited numbers of preference ranks) the same way as it does to forced preference ranked systems.
This isn't necessarily intuitive, and our immediate impulse might be to object that 2^n-1 is less than n!, but as a quick informal illustration, note that the voting system where each voter assigns each candidate a score in [0,1] and selects the candidate who earns the highest sum from all voters fairly straightforwardly violates Arrow's theorem. Now, consider an approval vote where each voter rolls a single random number in the range [0,1) and vote for each candidate whose score exceeds their random number, and we get asymptotically the same result (but with some error bars). It turns out that scoring, even on a 2-point scale, is just a better primitive operation than ranking!
(Also, it helps that 2^n-1>n! for n=2,3, which covers a surprisingly large proportion of interesting elections.)
Single member districts are a disgusting thing for a society that claims to be a representative democracy. As a very simple example, rural liberals and urban conservatives effectively never get represented in our government, and that's still within the context of the false dichotomy of left/right.
But single winner ranked choice voting is still important for elected positions that necessarily must be one person, like executive seats.
Executives are neither necessarily single seat nor necessarily directly elected. When indirectly elected, the electoral body that is itself directly elected need not be elected with single-winner methods. The US, in fact, uses multiwinner elections for electing the electoral college now, though mostly using the specific method (multiseat plurality winner-take-all) whose manifest unfairness and utility in excluding minority voices is the specific reason for the existing statutory ban on multiwinner elections for Congress.
No, they wouldn't, as the problems (including duopoly) predate the changes you would reverse.
To the extent those are relevant, they magnify the problems now (with or without more districts), rather than mitigating them.
> It would be a lot harder for two parties to completely control an 8000 member congress or gerrymander that many districts.
More districts make gerrymandering easier, not harder. As does more information.
Sure, there'd be more independents (absolute count), and at least one more often, in an 8000 member House, but proportionate to the total, there'd probably be fewer, on average, than there have been with the 435 member House.
Given that, I still believe ranked choice voting is the first baby step toward more representative politics.
You could change my mind by showing that ranked choice voting systems can be taught to even the most common of midwits.
There are municipalities and states that have implemented both. Voters handle them fine.
More importantly, a large minority of people in the US who already believe the current voting system isn't fair, so why are you afraid RCV will make it worse? I think it will be the opposite, since it is likely to cool the political polarization and encourage the election of more moderate politicians that a larger majority are ok with.
Yes, I like this one a lot more.
> There are municipalities and states that have implemented both.
I think for low-stake elections that most people don't vote in anyway, experimentation is relatively safe. But I wouldn't want to try anything new with fiery federal elections, particularly not the presidential election. The risk of confusion resulting in costly civil unrest is too high.
> More importantly, a large minority of people in the US who already believe the current voting system isn't fair
Yes, but they tolerate it for the most part.
Arguable after the 2020 election.
Another important aspect: if the public isn't sufficiently intelligent, or isn't interested in such things, how did that state come about? Does the government play any role in setting educational curriculum? Does the media play in any role in what the public focuses on, considers important, etc?
A large minority of them are, yes. There's millions of people in this country that flunked their way through 12 years of math class and never retained anything more than basic arithmetic. 4% of Americans are classified as "functionally illiterate", that's 13 million people who effectively can't even read.
The point of democracy is to placate everybody, not just the smarter portion of society, so the mechanisms of democracy should be simple enough for somebody with a simple mind to understand. "Count votes and pick who got the most" is generally such a system.
For the US, districts with e.g. 5 seats would be very interesting. The effect would be two-fold: first, more distinctiveness between candidates of the same party. Extreme example: a prolife Democrat, a gun-regulation Republican running alongside more traditional candidates. Secondly, at least some candidates outside the 2 major parties will get a seat. This probably means no more majority in House/Senate, but a need to form a coalition. That means talking with each other and reaching agreement would no longer be the newsworthy exception it is today, but would be part of the very fabric of the House/Senate.
I don't see how a different counting mechanism could lead to the same effects.
There's no "unchecked" power here. The details are complicated because the meeting was international (so presumably there was some coordination with local police), but there's no court in the nation that wouldn't immediately stamp a warrant based on the straightforward facts alleged here.
Just like the saying that a "federal prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich" like wise the FBI could get a warrant for anything they desire at any time
The warrant requirement is a not a check on power, and has not been for decades, the courts and our legal system is no longer a protector of rights, or justice and has not been for a long long long time.
But the crime is "release of classified material". That's not a rubber stamp, it's a clear allegation of criminal activity. I think your real feeling is that this material "shouldn't" have been classified (based on what you believe it contained -- the reporter never got it). And maybe that's true!
But the facts in this article are just OBVIOUSLY probable cause for a warrant, nonetheless.
The fact of the matter is the warrant system, a non-adversarial system based on flimsy assertions and often out right lies by police and agents is not now, and likely never has been a check on government power
But in this case, as I mentioned, the fourth amendment is silent. This arrest was totally OK (or would have been, had it not been spoiled) and doesn't represent any kind of government overreach at all.
Your belief that we have powerful checks on government power is clear you support a much larger and more intrusive government than I ever would, I see the government today as an unchecked dystopia novel, you think it is perfectly fine and balanced, that is more scary to me than government power. That we as a society have lost the very notion of what freedom actually is, that we has a society have come to accept the gilded cage as "freedom"
Beyond that, It comes down to the question of constitution interpretation as well. You believe the 4th amendment is silent here, you believe the FBI is operating under authorization of the 4th amendment because a law was violated, a law that seems to be protecting people that are violating the 4th amendment wholesale (the nsa), and ironic twist if I ever saw one.
You believe this because our Supreme Court has been derelict in the duty at uploading the plain and true meaning of the US Constitution for decades, you like many look to the Supreme Court for the meaning of the constitution, you have outsourced your thinking to this body, these people for whom we in society have placed on pedestal, and ironically in practice have given a title of nobility, something forbidden in the constitution.
“You seem to consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions; a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps.... Their power [is] the more dangerous as they are in office for life, and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves.”
― Thomas Jefferson
Uh... yes? If a law was violated, that's probable cause. It's sort of a definitional thing. What legal regime do you desire that manages to pre-decide on which laws are OK to violate before the collection of evidence occurs?
This sounds like an argument against the whole idea of law enforcement, I guess? You don't think that police should have the power to seize evidence or arrest people at all? (Because before they do that, we need to decide whether the laws they're trying to enforce are acceptable to the target of the investigation, right?) I mean, that's a position. Libertarians and anarchists occasionally say stuff like that. But it's absolutely not the legal framework we live under, and I doubt you'll find much support for it among the broader electorate.
If you don't like the laws we have, then the remedy available to you is to elect a government to change the laws. You don't get to demand that we enforce them differently for the laws you don't like.
This is a specious appeal to an abstract concept, that in this case justifies autocratic power. The entire run-amok surveillance industrial complex exists precisely due to such selective enforcement. If the FBI were actually interested in achieving justice, they would be going after the highly organized traitors systematically undermining our freedoms rather than small isolated cases of individuals committing a crime while trying to expose those larger crimes. Instead we see this exact "different enforcement", but with the opposite prioritization.
And yes, the people deciding en masse to elect different representatives would be one way to fix the problem. But there are many such ways, and general normative condemnation is the way to maintain and build support for any/all of them rather than getting focused on a specific approach which may or may not work.
Using "State Secrets" laws to cover up constitutional violations is also somewhat dubious so then one has to ask what law is more important, a Federal Statute of Secrecy or the Constitution, clearly you think Federal Statute over rides the Constitution, I dont.
>>You don't think that police should have the power to seize evidence or arrest people at all?
Seize Evidence... Sure
Pre-trial confinement should be exclusively reserved for cases where there is clear and convincing evidence of a danger the individual poses to the wider public, i.e a rapist or murder...
Innocent until proven guilty right? Or do you reject that fundamental provision of the law as well, I am not sure because you seem to have a very cozy relationship with structures of authority.
We're not talking about a jury trial here! It's an arrest (attempt). The ability to detain people suspected of crimes and search their papers and persons is a core part of law enforcement. So much so, in fact, that the fourth amendment specifically calls it out and places limits on the ability. And to say it again: it is abundantly clear that those limits were not crossed in this case.
I've never been one to put full trust in any politicians or bureaucracy but the balance of value is still overwhelmingly towards democrats. The odd botched investigation is a small price for supporting democracy, human rights and climate justice.
Really? Wouldn’t most people think a Department of Justice should be actively hunting down and prosecuting those who illegally spy on US Citizens?
I mean they’re supposed to work for us, uphold our laws and constitution etc. If employees of executive branch agencies conspire to defraud citizens of the United States of their most basic rights (4th amendment?) isn’t that a crime they should be pursuing?
Instead they seem far more interested in suppressing evidence of the crime.
States, counties, for some - districts. Thirty years and I've met one representative.
America wasn't designed to operate at the current scale and it's causing considerable strife internally and externally. We're effectively the de facto world sovereign, and at the same time we the people and the collective will is so contrived as to be totally incomprehensible, largely, I would posit, as a product of federal overreach and inertia. We'd do well to refederate - California's America is not the same as Texas' nor is Florida's the same as Michigan's. It's kind of an absurdity to indicate we're a nation at this point, there are really no points of unity which bond us in this era, and that's what defines a nation. That is to say there are no more Americans.
I think we’ll come through it intact. Hopefully.
It's weird how this wasn't the case prior to 2016. Like, I distinctly recall there being a unified American culture and identity. Even between California and Texas, both considered themselves (and one another) Americans despite their differences.
Viola! Schismogenesis. Erstwhile we're competing inside of a relatively inert system with intractable inertia, and the pressure builds.
Of course the economics of the individual are poorer and poorer, as well, and at what appear to be increasing costs and that is a considerable portion of what the government ultimately does - enable commerce. And we're finding out, perhaps, that we're running on fumes.
Why protect this asshole? Because he got cold feet and gave warning? This guy seems like 'quite a character' and the story unresolved without knowing who it was.
Because future sources need to trust you. Protecting sources needs to be absolute, or some of them will wonder what it takes to constitute “betrayal” in the future.
Not betraying a source that has wronged you is fantastic signalling to future sources.
The lawyer introduced the journalist to the source. So at the very least, the source seems to have trusted the lawyer too.
It also sounds like the lawyer provided the journalist with the audio recordings of phone calls about the ambush.
> Eventually, he confessed to me that the FBI had been waiting in Bruges to trap my source. He said that the FBI knew about the meeting because he had told them about it, and that he had also told the FBI that the source wanted to provide me with NSA documents. He admitted that he had been informing on me.
The journalist has spooks all over him. Whatever you think of the journalist's intentions, you'd have to be a complete fool to get near him. At least he's been honest about this much, so future leakers will be forewarned.
Not sure what this is supposed to mean exactly. It's pretty much a given that if you're reporting on national security, the government has its eyes on you.
"In January 2014 — just as the FBI was planning its ambush operation — the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to hear arguments over my subpoena in the leak case involving the mismanaged CIA program. At the time, I was facing the possibility of going to prison for refusing to reveal my sources if the Supreme Court did not rule in my favor."
Makes sense in principle, but who would ever trust James Risen after his reporting on Wen Ho Lee?
I mean let’s see, Taiwanese person is going to spy for mainland China? Really? And the evidence for this is that blueprints not available to the suspect, generated well downstream from where the suspect works or has access, are leaked to China… Right, let’s sensationalize some bs theories in the NYT even though there is nothing there, at the expense of a man who, oh well, is Taiwanese, so who cares? Not James Risen.
I don't think it reads as made up, but it really does seem like there's not really anything there.
A meeting that did not happen with someone that may or may not have had something....
There doesn't seem to be any reason to credit any particular novel detail in this... whatever this is. The details already related in Schmidt's book could be believed, I guess, but basically just amount to "FBI boondoggle to Europe". Wow that's news. We're not told who the go-between was, who the various parties in Belgium were, anything at all about why anyone believed "the source" was worth thinking about or even existed.
It almost seems intended to embarrass Grayden Ridd, since his is the only name mentioned. [EDIT: removed dumb question] At the time he may have been an FBI agent, though he also appears to be a documentary filmmaker and lawyer. DDG seems to believe he is associated with various IMDB entries, but that association has been deleted from IMDB. Risen's relationship with FBI is not as adversarial as portrayed here. No matter how he deflects, it seems unlikely to distract from the poor publicity FBI have recently. One suspects the real news, which if anything about this is true we'll learn years from now, is the identity of the go-between.
There's a reference to court testimony by FBI agent Grayden Ridd in this 2013 story about Robert McFarlane (of Iran-Contra infamy). https://www.cnn.com/2013/03/21/us/mcfarlane-sudan/index.html
(I somehow didn't see in the news that McFarlane died last month.)
I don't understand the controversy.
That's kind of the issue though. We don't in fact know what the source really had. Was it legal or illegal? Who knows?
Maybe they tried that already and the reporter was a last resort. That's still a criminal act and it's the FBI's job to go after these things.
I just don't see what the big deal is.
Instead, this story alleges: (1) the reporter planned to meet with a source to get a classified leak, (2) the FBI got wind of it, and (3) they planned what amounts to a sting operation (I guess, it's complicated because this was in France) to catch the leaker.
That's... I mean that's the FBI's job. That leak is clearly illegal, it's a crime. Their job is to enforce the law.
Beyond that there's some juicy details about the lawyer who originally ratted on the source and then got cold feet and warned the reporter. And that's interesting.
But... there's no government abuse angle here, not without knowing the contents of that leak that didn't happen.
Ask yourself if the FBI is investigating the NSA. Did the FBI investigate the NSA before Snowden? You can enforce the law very selectively, prosecuting whistleblowers who are trying to reveal evidence of crimes committed by the government itself.
I’m not sure this is true, considering the programs in the “leak” might themselves be illegal.
The problem with your position is it allows the following loop:
Government makes it illegal to report government crime, then government commits crime.
You can’t report the crime without breaking the law, so the government effectively is bound by no law. How do you break this cycle?
The only solution is to have it such that reporting a crime cannot itself be a crime, classification or otherwise.
In theory.
That someone has to resort to leaking to the press to achieve accountability is a bug in the system, it's not how things are meant to work.
Leaking to the press is not a bug. Seeking maximum distance from what you denounce is sane. You have the same problems in the private sector, where you are directed to voice your complain to HR.
Secrecy is a poison.
You can't write a law that gives journalists special access to classified information and giving them arbitrary information is ok, how would that even work? (That's without getting in to the complications of defining 'journalist').
If you wanted to argue that leaking information of illegal government activity in certain circumstances is an affirmative defense I could possibly get behind that, the devil would be in the details.
what would you do in this situation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump%E2%80%93Ukraine_scandal
In this case the legal avenues were followed, yet the Director of National Intelligence decided not to inform Congress of the whistleblower report, despite being legally required. The administration could have squelched the report if Michael Atkinson hadn't informed Congress himself, and of course Atkinson was later fired by the President.
Why should a whistleblower trust the very administration they're ratting out?
Do these ever work?
The people you are blowing the whistle to are the same ones doing the shady illegal stuff.
If it happened. None of that stuff is substantiated, it's just the reporters guesswork based on circumstantial evidence.
It's a good story. It's an interesting story. It's not "news". And it's absolutely not something interesting or notable about the FBI (the entity that appears in the headline), which was just doing exactly the thing the FBI was created to do.
I love that movie, too, but wouldn't it make more sense to fly into Schiphol with a Brompton and pedal up to Haarlem to meet the source? It seems like it'd be a lot harder for the FBI guys to track you, and it'd be a lot quicker, too, and you'd still get to see the canals and old cobble streets and buildings and all that.
> The FBI team in Bruges waited and waited, according to the lawyer, frustrated and in vain.
More seriously, what appeals to me about films like that is how 'real life' crime (as far as I can know) is not like a glamourised action movie. It is more haphazard, and contingent on personal decisions and people's character flaws.
For me, the line 'I am sorry I called you an inanimate object. I was upset' is more real than any number of Godfather movies.
Still, I am not sure if it is a good sign that the story presented, if true, seems more intriguing than average "Blacklist" episode. I would normally default to blaming X ( in this case Holder, Pompeo and Trump as they are named in the story ), but the reality is those are just people, who just happened to use that power.
The issue is that unchecked power apparently will exist until a truly unscrupulous man uses it to his advantage ( if that did not happen already ).
Your point still stands though regardless
The linked article, however, does list the following paragraph:
"The Trump administration went to even greater extremes than its predecessor to target the press. In 2017, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo reportedly considered kidnapping WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who at the time was living in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Yahoo News reported last September that former President Donald Trump even raised the possibility of assassinating Assange. Pompeo was reportedly obsessed with targeting Assange after a massive leak of CIA hacking tools, known as Vault 7. WikiLeaks published Vault 7 documents in 2017, revealing that the CIA had the ability to hack the computer systems built into a wide range of consumer products, including cars, televisions, and home appliances. In April 2017, Pompeo labeled WikiLeaks a “hostile intelligence service.”"
Risen has long been a mouthpiece for military industrial complex CIA-esque talking points, and nobody should trust anything he says. I wouldn't be surprised if this story is some strange cover for him designed to make him seem like a "real" journalist, but even in this story he admits he used this dubious lawyer frequently. He says he doesn't know when the lawyer started informing on him, but an educated guess would say he always was! Was the source ever even real, or a honeypot in the first place? (source didn't go to this meeting why?) Risen fails to do even fundamental reporting on how he got the information in this story (he obtained audio recordings... how?!)
Risen says this lawyer gave a masterful performance to the FBI. Risen could at least try to do the same when trying to blow smoke at the public. This story makes no sense and Risen should be considered useless as journalist.
For what it's worth, I've been reading The Intercept since it started and he was always raked across the coals in the now disabled-unless-logged-in comments for methods like this since he came over from the NYT. The Intercept itself is now barely even a shadow of it's former self.
1. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-nyt-now-admits-the-bide...
From personal experience being targeted with harassment and vexatious litigation by a fantasist conman, many of his victims and enablers will sometimes admit he often lies or 'exaggerates', but the reality is that he virtually always lies, that his documents are either completely uninteresting but misrepresented or interesting but obvious forgeries. When confronted with irrefutable proof of his deception his victims and enablers make excuses or treat it as a one or few time issue, failing to accept that it's just another example out of thousands. Risen's description-- including features like the corrupted USB stick-- resonate for me.
Except that Risen said he already met the source. The ambush was for their follow-up meeting.
If they'd met in person why were they traveling to a far off country?
People seem to do this with a lot of things. Their favorite pop stars, companies, countries, ideologies, etc.
The FBI could have known who the source was, confirmed that he would have access to the kind of data being discussed, but couldn't show he had taken classified information so needed to catch him in possession of illegal documents to arrest him.
>The lawyer seemed to be an adrenaline junkie, someone who had found a home on the dark side of international intelligence.
one can do it only while working on some US intelligence service.
>the then-attorney general denied the request and was furious that it had been put in writing
beautiful. Looks like somebody in FBI nicely covered their own bottom with the Attorney General himself - " ... as was previously discussed the USB drive containing data dump from the broken in computer of the journalist trying to report on the NSA illegal spying ..." or something like that :)
A separate issue mentioned, but was a completely separate event, was the DOJ trying to force the journalist into revealing a different source in a different leak. This does not seem fine, but it also failed