Bits & Pieces

If you have any doubts that waterboarding is torture, take a look at this article from Salon which summarizes the contents of internal CIA documents recently released.

The documents … lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding “session.” Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session – and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session – a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding – the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

***

One of the more interesting revelations in the documents is the use of a saline solution in waterboarding. Why? Because the CIA forced such massive quantities of water into the mouths and noses of detainees, prisoners inevitably swallowed huge amounts of liquid – enough to conceivably kill them from hyponatremia, a rare but deadly condition in which ingesting enormous quantities of water results in a dangerously low concentration of sodium in the blood. Generally a concern only for marathon runners , who on extremely rare occasions drink that much water, hyponatremia could set in during a prolonged waterboarding session. A waterlogged, sodium-deprived prisoner might become confused and lethargic, slip into convulsions, enter a coma and die.

Therefore, “based on advice of medical personnel,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury wrote in a May 10, 2005, memo authorizing continued use of waterboarding, “the CIA requires that saline solution be used instead of plain water to reduce the possibility of hyponatremia.”

The entire range of techniques used by the CIA and explicated in the article is beyond sickening and horrifying. I cannot comprehend how this country could have allowed this to have happened, and to have planned the torture sessions in a careful and systematic manner to enhance the discomfort and terror of the victim.

How can the Obama administration continue to take the position that a criminal investigation of these activities is not essential to restore our country to the rule of law, both domestic and international?

What can one say? The ethics review of the opinions issued by John Yoo and Jay Bybee conducted by the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the two should be referred to their state bar associations for possible discipline. However, that report was overruled by a career lawyer within the DOJ. As the New York Times notes:

Some of the brutal interrogation methods that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee approved for use on Qaeda prisoners, including wall-slamming and the near-drowning of waterboarding, had never before been authorized in American history, and the United States had condemned such treatment as torture and abuse when used by other countries.

History will be the ultimate judge of these two and the actions their opinions authorized.

Update: The full report (save for some shameful redactions by the government) is available here.

A school district in Pennsylvania handed out laptops to students. So far so good. But now the district is accused of remotely activating the built-in cameras to watch students and their families in their homes. Who ever could have approved such behavior? The idea of a school district, a governmental unit, remotely spying into the homes of students without even the decency of providing notice is anathema to the fourth amendment.  Perhaps the bureaucrats who implemented this scheme should be sent home with the same computers.

Update: The school district denies the allegations, and claims that the only technology they used was to track stolen or lost computers.

Update 2: Now the FBI is investigating, after the district apparently admitted that they used the laptop cameras 42 times.

Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, points out that if a government asserts that someone is a “terrorist” that does not mean that the accused in fact is a terrorist. The idea that if a claim of “terrorist” is made means anything can be done to the accused (torture, indefinite imprisonment, deportation, etc.) is what helps support the use of torture among a large number of Americans. This despite the fact that torture is both illegal and immoral. It is particularly galling that many on the right (but including a growing number on the left), who claim to be against government interference in the private sector because of alleged governmental incompetance, seem to be quite willing to believe that no claim of “terrorist” can ever be wrong.

The whole point of the Bush-era controversies was that — away from an actual battlefield and where the Constitution applies (on U.S. soil and/or towards American citizens wherever they are) — the Government should have to demonstrate someone’s guilt before it’s assumed (e.g., they should have to show probable cause to a court and obtain warrants before eavesdropping; they should have to offer evidence that a person engaged in Terrorism before locking them in a cage, etc.).  But to someone who equates unproven government accusations with proof, those processes are entirely unnecessary.  Even in the absence of those processes, they already know that these persons are Terrorists.  How do they know that?  Because the Government said so.  Even when it comes to their fellow citizens, that’s all the “proof” that is needed.

This despite repeated proof to the contrary.

Your Federal government continues to insist that ISPs should be required to keep records of internet usage by their customers for use in criminal investigations. Think of this a the equivalent of having your geographic location tracked and provided to the government at its request. Compare it to requiring your library to track books you check out, or your local video store being required to provide to the government the videos you rent. (I think that Robert Bork might have something to say about that.)

The FBI claims this merely allows them to continue to do traditional investigation. But that is not the case. It is a blatant invasion of privacy.

After months of delay the Office of Professional Responsibility report regarding the legal advice provided to the Bush administration is about to be released. Newsweek reports:

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

The Obama administration needs to conduct a full and open investigation of both the “legal” basis for Bush administration torture and the actual practice of torture. In order for change, there must be a full revelation of the way the country adopted clearly immoral behavior in response to terrorism.

More from the ABA Journal, and this from Andrew Sullivan:

The details of this critical report and the way it was handled at DOJ are little short of infuriating. Here is a critical report whose conclusions were already clear months ago: that Yoo, Bybee at al were guilty of flagrant incompetence in assessing the law in order to allow their political masters to torture at will. And yet, out of some sort of tradition, DOJ hands over the final version to a 70 year-old career Justice Department official who allowed former DOJ officials to dispute and review the report again and again, and then allowed its central conclusion to be watered down. It is one more sign – along with the blanket dismissal of the serious allegations of misconduct at Gitmo – that the Obama administration is circling the establishment wagons on defending Bush era torture and war crimes. They seem either a) incapable of understanding the gravity of what went on or b) deliberately refusing to tackle clear violations of the law out of the usual political cowardice.

Here is another depressing story, from the Washington Post, highlighting the misuse of emergency terrorism legislation to wrongfully request telephone records from 2002 to 2006.

The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.

* * *

A Justice Department inspector general’s report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.

When people argue that such powers do not bother them because they do nothing wrong, they have to understand that when governments are given the power to breach privacy rights without judicial review, wrongdoing almost always occurs. This behavior is inherent in governments and it is why our Constitution requires judicial approval of search warrants..

It appears that Google has decided to stop censoring search results in China. And they acknowledge that they might have to shut down google.cn, and close their offices in China. This is an excellent step which should be supported (and followed) worldwide. This follows an attack on Google that targeted information related to Chinese dissidents. Kudos.

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Update: The Electronic Frontier Foundation reacts positively to Google’s threatened action.

Our hope is that other tech companies will follow Google’s lead. Too many of them have been willing to comply with Chinese demands that they check their values at the border.

Of course, whatever the reaction from Chinese authorities, this doesn’t mean that Google will vanish from the Chinese Internet. There continue to be many ready means for circumventing China’s censorship schemes, and we hope Google will continue to provide an uncensored Chinese language search engine, from servers outside China if need be.

We recognize that there may be short-term economic and political consequences for the company: but if it stands firm in its commitment to provide Chinese citizens with an uncensored view of the Net, we feel sure there will be opportunities and benefits not just for Chinese citizens, but for Google and companies that follow its lead.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Campos joins the ranks of those who view our current response to threats of terrorism realistically and not emotionally. He notes the remote risk than any particular US citizen will be a victim of terrorism, and yet we persist in imposing upon ourselves a huge costs in loss in freedom and efficiency in our impossible quest to make any terrorist incident “unacceptable.” Politicians also try to increase irrational fear for their own political gain. All of this makes clear that under our current approach the terrorists in fact are winning.

Far worse events than terrorists attacks occur in great numbers every day in the United States without being declared “unacceptable.”

Consider that on this very day about 6,700 Americans will die. When confronted with this statistic almost everyone reverts to the mindset of the title character’s acquaintances in Tolstoy’s great novella “The Death of Ivan Ilyich,” and indulges in the complacent thought that “it is he who is dead and not I.”

Consider then that around 1,900 of the Americans who die today will be less than 65, and that indeed about 140 will be children. Approximately 50 Americans will be murdered today, including several women killed by their husbands or boyfriends, and several children who will die from abuse and neglect. Around 85 of us will commit suicide, and another 120 will die in traffic accidents.

No amount of statistical evidence, however, will make any difference to those who give themselves over to almost completely irrational fears. Such people, and there are apparently a lot of them in America right now, are in fact real victims of terrorism. They also make possible the current ascendancy of the politics of cowardice—the cynical exploitation of fear for political gain.

It is well beyond time that we, as a country, focus on the reality of terrorism and understand that no terrorist can bring down our country. But we collectively can do the damage ourselves if we play the terrorist’s game.

It’s a remarkable fact that a nation founded, fought for, built by, and transformed through the extraordinary courage of figures such as George Washington, Susan B. Anthony and Martin Luther King Jr. now often seems reduced to a pitiful whimpering giant by a handful of mostly incompetent criminals, whose main weapons consist of scary-sounding Web sites and shoe- and underwear-concealed bombs that fail to detonate.

I am generally no fan of David Brooks. But his essay today in the New York Times is pitch-perfect. Essentially, he argues that Americans cannot rationally expect that all terrorist attempts can be stopped. Such perfection doesn’t exist in the real world. Living is dangerous; risks are everywhere. Ranting and complaining that the risk of terrorism (low that it is) has not been eliminated is childish and irrational. In addition, all the actions taken in an effort to achieve such a result cost the country dearly, both in dollars and in the loss of individual liberty.

Much of the criticism has been contemptuous and hysterical. Various experts have gathered bits of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s biography. Since they can string the facts together to accurately predict the past, they thunder, the intelligence services should have been able to connect the dots to predict the future.

Dick Cheney argues that the error was caused by some ideological choice. Arlen Specter screams for more technology — full-body examining devices. “We thought that had been remedied,” said Senator Kit Bond, as if omniscience could be accomplished with legislation.

Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways.

Bruce Schneier, an aviation security expert, has an essay up on CNN that is even more frank.  It is also well worth a full reading. Here is a small excerpt:

It’s not security theater we need, it’s direct appeals to our feelings. The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we — and our leaders — need to react with indomitability, the kind of strength shown by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill during World War II.

By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant “bring ‘em on” rhetoric. There’s a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats.

We should treat terrorists like common criminals and give them all the benefits of true and open justice — not merely because it demonstrates our indomitability, but because it makes us all safer.

Once a society starts circumventing its own laws, the risks to its future stability are much greater than terrorism.

Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them.

A federal appeals court in California has denied immunity to a police officer who tasered a driver stopped for driving without a seatbelt. The driver posed no physical threat to the officer. From the New York Times:

In a vividly worded opinion issued by the court this week, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw described a “bad morning” for Carl Bryan, a 21-year-old Californian who drove over large stretches of Southern California to retrieve car keys mistakenly taken by a friend and ended up being Tasered by a Coronado, Calif., policeman and breaking four teeth when he fell to the ground.

The inappropriate use of tasers is widely known. It is about time that some sort of national standards are set.

Update: More details from Jonathan Turley, who’s blog I highly recommend.

Did anyone at Human Events notice what year it is? Salon thinks not.

For most people, the year ending now is 2009. That’s apparently not true at the right-wing magazine Human Events; reading it Monday, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Bush administration is still in office.

Update: And Wonkette adds its own take.

Eric Schmidt is the CEO of Google. Google is evil.

Exhibit A:

If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.

– Eric Schmidt, in answer to the following question asked of him on CNBC: “People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they?”

This sort of argument is the lamest that could be imagined to justify spying and invasion of personal privacy. This position would justify installing surveillance cameras in everyone’s home. This kind of arguement is made by totalitarian regimes every day.

Oh, and if you want to learn a little about the personal life of said Eric Schmidt, feel free to look here and see how he reacted back in 2005 when his private information was widely disseminated. At that link, you can also watch this d-bag make the case that can make him rich: trust Google and quit your nasty behaviors.

This kind of argument is bullshit.

And don’t get me started on Yahoo and their simple instructions to the government regarding how to ask for and get user information from Yahoo.  For a fee.

Q: How many times did Sprint provide its customers’ GPS location information to law enforcement in one year?

A: 8 million times for a company with 50 million customers.

A clear example of the erosion of basic privacy rights in this country. Inexcusable. Such sweeps indicate that it might be sensible to turn your mobile GPS-enabled devices off when not in use.

Andrew Sullivan makes an eloquent argument in favor of civil trials of terrorists. Read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt:

When you listen to the Fox News right speak about this, they reveal amazing levels of fear. They have been truly spooked by these men with long beards and chilling eyes. They are so scared of them they are willing to drop any and all legal principles that the West has historically used with respect to mass murderers. Their fear brought them to institute torture, and to engage in mass brutality against prisoners of war in every theater of combat in a manner that will tragically taint the honor of the US military for a very long time. It led them to establish Gitmo, to create for the world a reverse symbol of the Statue of Liberty, and imprint it on the minds and in the consciences of an entire generation of human beings, whose view of America will never be the same.

It made speedy prosecution of any of those who allegedly plotted and planned 9/11 impossible – and will make actual prosecution of any of them extremely hard. It turns out, then, that the primary (if not the only) thing we had to fear – was fear itself. It was our fear that gave al Qaeda so many propaganda victories.

And it is the refusal to be afraid that reflects the decision to bring this fanatic mass murderer back to the scene of the crime, to remind the world, all these years later, of why he is on trial, to restore a patriotic pride in the system we have, a system which it is al Qaeda’s goal to destroy.

I believe this is the best symbolic answer to 9/11: a trial, with due process, after tempers have calmed somewhat, that exposes this evil for all it truly was. And also reveals the tragedy of an American government that lost its nerve and has now, under a new president, regained it.