Topic: Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

How the Media Undermined President Obama’s Debate Performance

By
Andrew J. Coulson

The media elites are surprised and disappointed by President Obama’s debate performance last night. They are partly to blame. If they had spent the past four years challenging the president as aggressively as they did his predecessors, he would have been far better prepared to defend his record and respond to criticism. But instead of pitching him curves and fastballs, they’ve mostly lobbed him Nerf balls. Even the Pew Charitable Trusts, hardly a Republican operation, found after his first 100 days in office that the media coverage of President Obama was twice as favorable as that received by President Bush and 50% more favorable than that received by President Clinton. Things haven’t changed much since, and the American people know it. This summer, a Rasmussen poll found that “likely voters, by a five-to-one margin, believe that America’s media is in President Obama’s pocket and will treat his candidacy better than challenger Mitt Romney.”

After tonight’s debate, perhaps the media will realize that the old adage applies to them: you only hurt the one you love.

Topics: 
Government and Politics, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Transparency: Obama Lags House Republicans

By
Jim Harper

Maybe President Obama made a mistake during the 2008 campaign, promising great strides in government transparency as he did. Because he hasn’t delivered them.

House Republicans, on the other hand, started from a better place than President Obama, made modest claims about how they would improve, and took some steps in the direction of improvement.

This makes it pretty easy to say that the president lags House Republicans in terms of transparency.

This afternoon, I presented at an Advisory Committee on Transparency panel about how well government data is published. You can see the grades I delivered to the right and below.

When the burst of transparency effort that began in 2008 started flagging, I figured we should probably come up with something measurable. Over the last couple of years, we’ve created models of what legislative processes would look like if they were published as really good data. We’ve done the same with budgeting and spending information.

Next, we’ve been assessing how well that data is currently published. See my previous reports here and here. Some of it is the responsibility of Congress. Some is the responsibility of the White House. And some of it is a divided responsibility. The little “Capitol” and “White House” icons tell you which.

How well is all this data published? Not well at all.

The worst of it is probably this: There is still no machine-readable federal government organization chart.

What that means is that there aren’t distinct identifiers computers could use to help us in organizing our oversight of the government. That makes it really, really hard to oversee the government. It makes it hard to gather what agencies, bureaus, projects, and programs are affected by the bills in Congress.

You know how easy it is to shop on Amazon or eBay? It should be that easy to keep track of what’s going in Congress. But the data isn’t there. That’s a failure of President Obama’s, who claimed he would deliver transparent government.

So here are the report cards we’ve produced, illustrating how Congress and the White House are doing on publishing data. None of the grades are very good, but where Congress has weak grades, the Obama Administration’s grades are horrible. The conclusion? Obama lags House Republicans on transparency.

Topics: 
General, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Called it! Eleven Years Ago

By
Jim Harper

What is this blog for, if not to let Cato scholars call out what smarty-pantses they are?

The Wall Street Journal reports on automobile license plates as the “new tracking frontier.”

For more than two years, the police in San Leandro, Calif., photographed Mike Katz-Lacabe’s Toyota Tercel almost weekly. They have shots of it cruising along Estudillo Avenue near the library, parked at his friend’s house and near a coffee shop he likes. In one case, they snapped a photo of him and his two daughters getting out of a car in his driveway. Mr. Katz-Lacabe isn’t charged with, or suspected of, any crime. Local police are tracking his vehicle automatically, using cameras mounted on a patrol car that record every nearby vehicle—license plate, time and location.

I didn’t have every detail, of course, but 11 years ago I noted the coming problem of license-plate tracking in testimony to a House Transportation subcommittee.

It was a little odd at the time, and still is, to talk about the privacy problem with license plates. But the emerging technology environment makes it essential to analyze and assess more carefully the information and identification demands that the government places on us.

[T]he requirement in all fifty states that cars must exhibit license plates linked to their owners is “anti-privacy” law, as would be a law requiring people to wear name tags in order to walk on public sidewalks. Mandatory license plates prevent citizens from exhibiting the expectation of privacy that Justice Harlan wrote about in Katz. Roughly speaking, they require people to expose their identities to police as a condition of driving on our roadways.

I expanded on “anti-privacy” law in my 2004 Cato Policy Analysis, “Understanding Privacy—and the Real Threats To It.”

We’re still grappling with the problem of privacy “in public.” The Supreme Court’s decision on GPS tracking in the Jones case is the most significant recent iteration of that. (Cato brief and related blog post; pre-decision posts: 1, 2, 3; post-decision posts: 4, 5, 6.) The latest Cato Supreme Court Review (also available digitally) includes an article of mine on the case. My latest thinking on Fourth Amendment privacy can by found in Cato’s brief in Florida v. Jardines.

It is possible to think systematically about privacy. Privacy is not just a morass of feelings about advancing technologies. Once one understands privacy (in its strongest sense) as the exercise of power to control information about oneself, one can see a decade ahead that license plates create privacy problems.

Pretty smart, huh? Yeah.

Topics: 
Cato Publications, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Slow and Steady Progress on TSA Strip-Search Policy

By
Jim Harper

Having pled before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that doing a notice-and-comment rulemaking on its strip-search machine policy is difficult and expensive, the Transportation Security Administration is dropping a cool quarter-billion dollars on new strip-search machines. That’s quite a fixation the TSA has, putting spending on new gadgets ahead of following the law.

But the writing is on the wall for the practice of putting travelers through strip-search machines and prison-style pat-downs at the government checkpoints in American airports.

On Tuesday, the D.C. Circuit ruled against a petition to have the court force TSA to move forward with taking public comments as required by law. The language of the order signals the court’s expectation, though, that the TSA will get this done, quoting the TSA’s language and, well, saying as much.

ORDERED that the petition for writ of mandamus be denied in light of the Government’s representation that “the process of finalizing the AIT Rulemaking documents so that the NPRM may be published is expected to be complete by or before the end of February 2013.” Accordingly, we expect that the NPRM will be published before the end of March 2013.

Generous court — it gave the TSA an extra month.

I imagine the folks at EPIC are preparing a filing for April 1st. No foolin’, there will be a public push to go along with it, as large or larger than the most recent.

The TSA knows it can only carry on so long in contempt of the law and the court. I expect the rulemaking documents will issue by midnight on March 31st, even if a special Sunday edition of the Federal Register has to be published to do it.

The court’s ruling is technically adverse to the petitioners, but it is better than a flat denial. The court was not going to cancel a policy that is arguably an important security measure. The best outcome was some kind of date certain with consequences for failure to act. The TSA delivered a date certain, which the court has adopted. Leaving the consequences unstated could embolden TSA to more contumacy, but I doubt it.

Once the rulemaking is in place, the strategy I laid out a year ago kicks in.

The TSA will have to exhibit how its risk management supports the installation and use of strip-search machines. How did the TSA do its asset characterization (summarizing the things it is protecting)? What are the vulnerabilities it assessed? How did it model threats and hazards (actors or things animated to do harm)? What are the likelihoods and consequences of various attacks? Risk assessment questions like these are all essential inputs into decisions about what to prioritize and how to respond.

When the insufficiency of its policymaking is shown, the policy will be ripe for review under the Administrative Procedure Act’s “arbitrary and capricious” standard and there will be a record sufficient to justify a Fourth Amendment challenge to the policy of prison-style searches of all American travelers.

Yes, the challenge to this policy is taking a long time, but pressing back on all fronts against the invasive, unneeded security state is a joy even when it requires patience.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

When ‘Free Speech’ as a Concept Vanishes

By
Julian Sanchez

A sign mentioned in the New York Times coverage of the ongoing protests in the Muslim world crystallized a question that had been nagging at the back of my head since the attacks on the American embassies in Libya and Egypt. The sign read: “Shut up America!” and “Obama is the president, so he should have to apologize!”

What a strange non-sequitur, to Western ears! What does the president—or the U.S. government in general—have to do with some crude, rinky-dink YouTube video produced by an apparent con man? Surely, like the overwhelming majority of Americans, Barack Obama would never even have been aware of the trailer for “Innocence of Muslims” if it hadn’t become the bizarre focus of controversy abroad. Even if the video was more catalyst than cause of the outrage, commenters all along have remarked how absurd, almost surreal, it seems that one shoddy YouTube—surely one of many containing harsh criticism of Islam or its prophet—could trigger such a massive reaction. If people hadn’t died, it would be comical.

But perhaps it makes a little more sense against the backdrop of regimes where the government exerts far more control over what citizens may read or publish online—and where whatever lip service might be paid to “free speech,” it’s understood to be within tightly constrained parameters. If information is allowed to circulate widely for any prolonged period, it is safe to assume that some government official—or at least, some private intermediary operating under threat of government sanction—has made an affirmative decision to permit that circulation. All public speech carries a kind of tacit government endorsement.

While, depressingly, even some in the West have seen the current violent protests as a demonstration of the dangers of unfettered free speech, there’s a sense in which it shows just the opposite: Free speech acts as a crucial guarantor of social peace by making us each individually responsible for our  opinions. When government presumes to censor some speech on the grounds that it’s too offensive or inflammatory, it implicitly renders a verdict on all the speech it doesn’t censor too—and at least in theory, it renders that verdict in the name of all its citizens collectively.  When a general principle of respecting free speech is observed, by contrast, there’s no implication that “we” find speech acceptable just because it’s permitted. In addition to all its other great benefits, free speech liberates us from symbolic responsibility for the misguided views of our fellow citizens. Perhaps instead of rushing to curtail our own, we should be working harder to explain that ideal to people for whom it’s sadly alien.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Law and Civil Liberties, Regulatory Studies, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Muslim Humor

By
Jim Harper

It is with delight this week that I see social media pouring derision on mainstream media’s depiction of the world. Specifically, the withering mockery given to Newsweek’s “Muslim Rage” cover.

Gawker helped catalyze things by publishing some early Twitter send-ups of the Muslim rage concept—“Wrestling is fake? #MuslimRage”—and its own spoof: “13 Powerful Images of Muslim Rage.”

My personal favorite came from hijab-wearing ‏@LibyaLiberty, who Tweeted:

I’m having such a good hair day. No one even knows. #MuslimRage

It is not automatic to recognize the personality of souls in other cultures and countries. In a Tweet posted September 12th (now apparently taken down) outgoing Village Voice editor-in-chief Tony Ortega said, “Islam needs to get a [expletive] sense of humor.” I don’t know what one means by anthropomorphizing a religion, but many individual Muslims demonstrably already have one.

AP Photo

On the Wall Street Journal Professional site, Bret Stephens writes about the derision U.S. culture can pour on minority religions other than Islam without eliciting much stir at all, official or otherwise. The unfairness is notable, and it’s worth talking about whether government-issued statements about the bizarre “Innocence of Muslims” video were called for and whether they struck the right notes.

But Stephens says something that has a quality similar to Ortega’s Tweet and Newsweek’s cover, dismissing the individuality of the one billion-plus Muslims around the world who are not rioting, attacking embassies, or doing anything of the sort.

“[T]o watch the images coming out of Benghazi, Cairo, Tunis and Sana’a,” Stephens writes, “is to witness some significant portion of a civilization being transformed into Travis Bickle.” (Travis Bickle was the misfit anti-hero in Martin Scorcese’s movie Taxi Driver, who delivered a young prostitute from New York City back to her mid-western family. Political people remember him as the inspiration for would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley.)

“Significant portion”? How many Muslims constitute a “significant portion” of the overall number? What infinitesimal percentage of a group so large is “significant”? Stephens might have said “tiny minority” and been more accurate. His implication—hopefully unintended—is that an entire culture is massing at the border of ours, preparing—oh, who knows what—our undoing.

I believe it’s received wisdom in libertarian circles to reject the collectivist mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Any believer in individual rights, liberties, and responsibilities should suffer sharp pangs of cognitive dissonance to think of group conflict along the lines I’m reading into Stephens.

So I’m enjoying seeing Muslims express themselves as individuals, putting the lie to their caricature in the mainstream media as a raging undifferentiated mass with spittle on their beards. Especially the women.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

Incoherent Politicians Lag Public Opinion on TSA

By
Jim Harper

If you needed proof of politicians’ sensitivity to, and encouragement of, persistent terrorism fears, look no further than today’s hearing in the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Transportation Security. It’s called “Eleven Years After 9/11 Can TSA Evolve To Meet the Next Terrorist Threat?” and it’s being used to feature—get this—a report arguing for a “smarter, leaner” Transportation Security Administration.

Could the signaling be more incoherent? The hearing suggests both that unknown horrors loom and that we should shrink the most visible federal security agency.

Lace up your shoes, America—we’re goin’ swimmin’!

Our federal politicians still can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that terrorism is a far smaller threat than we believed in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks, and that the threat has waned since then. (The risk of attack will never be zero, but terrorism is far down on the list of dangers Americans face.)

The good news is that the public’s loathing for the TSA is just as persistent as stated terrorism fears. This at least constrains congressional leaders to do make gestures toward controlling the TSA. Perhaps we’ll get a “smarter, leaner” overreaction to fear.

Public opprobrium is a constraint on the growth and intrusiveness of the TSA, so I was delighted to see a new project from the folks at We Won’t Fly. Their new project highlights the fact that the TSA has still failed to begin the process for taking public comments on the policy of using Advanced Imaging Technology (strip-search machines) at U.S. airports, even though the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered it more than a year ago.

The project is called TSAComment.com, and they’re collecting comments because the TSA won’t.

The purpose of TSAComment.com is to give a voice to everyone the TSA would like to silence. There are many legitimate health, privacy and security-related concerns with the TSA’s adoption of body scanning technology in US airports. The TSA deployed these expensive machines without holding a mandatory public review period. Even now they resist court orders to take public comments.

TSAComment.com has gotten nearly 100 comments since the site went up late yesterday, and they’re going to deliver those comments to TSA administrator John Pistole, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano, and the media.

The D.C. Circuit Court did require TSA to explain why it has not carried out a notice-and-comment rulemaking on the strip-search machine policy, and assumedly it will rule before too long.

Getting the TSA to act within the law is important not only because it is essential to have the rule of law, but because the legal procedures TSA is required to follow will require it to balance the costs and benefits of its security measures articulately and carefully. Which is to say that security policy will be removed somewhat from the political realm and our incoherent politicians and moved more toward the more rational, deliberative worlds of law and risk management.

Hope springs eternal, anyway…

There could be no better tribute to the victims of 9/11 than by continuing to live free in our great country. I won’t shrink from that goal. The people at TSAComment do not shrink from that goal. And hopefully you won’t either.

Topics: 
Foreign Policy and National Security, Telecom, Internet & Information Policy

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