To mark the birthday of novelist and essayist George Orwell, I will share with the reader a few news items which I feel honor his memory and his aspirations. His life's aim was to shock the reader to awareness of subtle encroachments on liberty, the brutal consequences that are felt once liberty has been supplanted, and the mischief that can occur if we are heedless to the meanings of words.
President Obama once declared, “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented
level of openness in Government. We will
work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of
transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen
our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”
News Brief: National intelligence personnel cannot comment to
journalists on security matters, even if asked to give an opinion on a specific
security issue that has been made public.
The Obama administration has barred officials at 17 agencies
from speaking to journalists about unclassified intelligence-related topics
without permission, according to a newly disclosed directive.
The directive, issued by James R. Clapper Jr., the director
of national intelligence, also requires the agencies’ employees to report any
unplanned contact with journalists. Officials who violate the directive may be
disciplined or fired, the directive says.
The directive prohibits unauthorized ‘contact with the media
about intelligence-related information, including intelligence sources,
methods, activities and judgments,’ without regard to whether it is
classified. It says that employees who violate the policy “may be subject
to administrative actions that may include revocation of security clearances or
termination of employment.
… any violation of the policy “will be handled in the same
manner as a security violation (source).”
This does not bode well for
whistleblowers.
News Brief: Federal
officials tell local law enforcement to lie to judges
“At the request of
the Marshals Service, the officers using so-called stingrays have been
routinely telling judges, in applications for warrants, that they obtained
knowledge of a suspect’s location from a ‘confidential source’ rather than
disclosing that the information was gleaned using a stingray (source).”
News Brief: the United
States vs. Daoud
Mr. Daoud’s attorneys have strong reason to suspect that
their client was investigated on the basis of illegally obtained evidence.
Usually, when there is concern about the legality of evidence, a Franks motion
is requested so that the lawyers and the judge may study the matter. At the
same time, FISA allows government agents to keep the means by which they obtain
evidence secret.
In order to make the case that the evidence is illegally
obtained, the attorney must know how the evidence was obtained. However, the
attorney is not allowed to see any information about how the evidence was obtained
(source).
News Brief: A New rule
restricting NSA
“House-approved
legislation would prohibit the NSA and the CIA from foisting
surveillance-facilitating product redesigns on tech companies and require a
warrant for access to American Internet records collected under Section 702 of
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(source).”
However, this is only a modest improvement in terms of the restoration of
Constitutional Liberties. The legislation simply bans one of the most blatantly
egregious violations of the Constitution, namely, the previously accepted
practice of intercepting computers as they roll off the assembly line to
install hardware to permit spying on the activities of the computer user, down
to capturing all of the user’s communications, writings, and whatever appears
on the computer screen.
U.S. Representative Thomas Mackie explained how it is that
this modest reform was allowed to pass: “It was to our benefit that [the
legislation] moved quickly without a lot of advance notice, because [opponents]
didn’t have time to mount a disinformation campaign … We had just enough time
to rally the outside groups and constituents, and they lacked just enough time
to counteract that (source).”
This is a very telling statement.
Representative Mackie is in essence saying, “This
legislation, which moves against the usurpation of the liberties of the
American people, only passed because a vast machinery of private interests did
not have sufficient time to mobilize.” This brings us to the final news brief
of the day:
News Brief: McCutcheon
v. FEC
Chief Justice [sic] Roberts declared in this decision that the
only permissible construction of “corruption” exists when a private party hands
a sum of money to a member of Congress with an explicit directive to vote a
certain way on an issue, and the member of Congress votes as he or she has been
directed. This construction of what is meant by “corruption” obviously excludes
consideration of the aforementioned vast machinery of private interests. Said
machinery can apparently launch nationwide disinformation campaigns and place
pressure on members of Congress.
Hence, the word “corruption” has been given a new meaning that is inimical to the public interest. If corruption only occurs when the person tendering the bribe and the recipient of the bribe decide to conduct their business in broad daylight, we shouldn’t expect to see too many instances of this prosecuted in court.
Roberts has also struck a blow to the very meaning of the
First Amendment. He wrote, “In assessing … First Amendment interests … the
proper focus is on an individual’s right to engage in political speech, not a
collective conception of the public good.” Now, if free speech is a right which
adheres only to an individual, then an individual can be secure in his or her
right to free speech provided that he or she is allowed to utter words aloud in
a small, sound-proof cell. And Chief Justice Roberts has clearly chosen to
ignore the preamble of the Bill of Rights,
which plainly states that their purpose is to extend “public confidence in the
Government” and best ensure the “beneficent aims” of Government.
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