Friday links! Intrusion of reality edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 2 Comments
Reality

Reality

What a cold bath is July 5th. (Except for Mom. Happy birthday, Mom!) I spent all day yesterday lounging about a lake and drinking Coronas, arguably the most American beer. Freedom seemed another word for nothing left to do, and America seemed poised in the catbird seat of history. Just one day later I am back to work, and the catbird seats seems more like a chair with an actual cat and a bird in it—in a word, discomfiting. Today is Friday, and reality intrudes. Won’t you pause to remember the fireworks, then return to packing your child’s finger in ice with me?

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Most Americans support NSA phone tracking

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized, War on Terror 3 Comments
Google image search: "most Americans"

Google image search: “most Americans”

Strangely, perhaps even depressingly, the big deal in last week’s revelation of massive domestic NSA surveillance is how not a big deal everyone thinks it is. According to a Washington Post/Pew poll, 56% of Americans consider secret court orders that allow the NSA to access millions of phone records “acceptable,” while only 42% consider it “unacceptable.” Forty-five percent say the government should be allowed even more leeway than it already has secretly gave itself, provided that power is used to fight terrorism. Even though half of Americans presumably do not regard themselves as terrorists, they believe their government should be able to arbitrarily investigate them, because terrorism. At the risk of pique, this is the same country that refused expanded background checks for gun purchases as an unconscionable infringement on the Second Amendment.

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NSA whistleblower comes forward

By Dan Brooks in Fascism 3 Comments
Whistleblower and former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, helpfully superimposed on Hong Kong by the internet

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, helpfully superimposed on Hong Kong by the internet

At his request, The Guardian has reported the identity of Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who revealed last week that, among other surveillance activities, the US government keeps phone logs of millions of Verizon customers. It also logs customers of AT&T, Sprint and Nextel, and collects “metadata” from Google, Apple, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and YouTube. As soon as a MetroPCS user successfully completes a call, the NSA will write that down, too. It’s kind of disturbing, but what is perhaps most disturbing is that, now that its secret domestic surveillance program has been revealed, the executive branch has no intention of shutting it down. In the context, Snowden’s decision to out himself is very interesting.

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Friday links! You did what? edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized 3 Comments

A rare photo of Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke not loaning half the GDP at .01%

I am willing to accept a modicum of secrecy in my US government. If the pillars of our democracy rest on a certain amount of secret alien dissection and Chinese cyberwar, I’ll go along. But one of those pillars is consent of the governed, and I cannot consent to stuff I don’t know about. A little-r republican system—in which people vote or don’t vote for various representatives based partly on what they do in office—does not work when we’re not sure what our government is doing. Call me Judy Garland, but I also believe that our elected leaders behave a little more scrupulously when they know the American people are watching. Secrecy protects Them from Us, and I personally am a longtime subscriber to the adage that government should fear the people and not the other way around. It’s Friday, as far as we know, and today’s link roundup is full of stories about things we should have known about earlier. Frankly, it’s harrowing. But before we get started, I think you need to watch this video.

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