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CIA Lashes Out at Senate Staffers it Says Mishandled Classified Info

by HollieHazon Posted on March 6, 2014

Mother Jones

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McClatchy has an update to yesterday’s story about the CIA monitoring Senate staffers who were investigating the CIA’s detention and torture practices. Apparently, long after their report was complete and the CIA had already responded, the Senate staffers were trawling through a CIA database and ran across an internal review ordered by former CIA Director Leon Panetta of previously released materials. The staffers concluded that the Panetta review confirmed their findings, even though the official CIA response had strongly disputed them:

The aides printed the material, walked out of CIA headquarters with it and took it to Capitol Hill, said the knowledgeable person.

….The CIA discovered the security breach and brought it to the committee’s attention in January, leading to a determination that the agency recorded the staffers’ use of the computers in the high-security research room, and then confirmed the breach by reviewing the usage data, said the knowledgeable person.

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the Intelligence Committee who has led calls for the release of the report, disclosed at a hearing in December the existence of the Panetta review without saying how the committee had learned of it. He contended that the review broadly corroborated the committee’s findings and questioned why it was dramatically different from the CIA’s official response.

Roughly speaking, Senate staffers say their actions were justified because they had evidence the CIA was lying to them. The CIA says its actions were justified because Senate staffers were removing top secret materials that weren’t supposed to leave the secure room they were working in.

In the meantime, the 6,300-page report itself is still in limbo, with the CIA fighting tooth and nail to prevent it from being released. But maybe it’s time for the report and the internal review and the CIA response and everything else to be published so the American public can decide for itself what it thinks of all this? We’re the ones paying the bills, after all.

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CIA Lashes Out at Senate Staffers it Says Mishandled Classified Info

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The NSA’s Problems Go Beyond Just Its Phone Records Program

by DwainOquinn Posted on February 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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Eli Lake talks with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper about the NSA’s massive collection of phone records:

In an exclusive interview with The Daily Beast, Clapper said the problems facing the U.S. intelligence community over its collection of phone records could have been avoided. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this from the outset right after 9/11—which is the genesis of the 215 program—and said both to the American people and to their elected representatives, we need to cover this gap, we need to make sure this never happens to us again, so here is what we are going to set up, here is how it’s going to work, and why we have to do it, and here are the safeguards… We wouldn’t have had the problem we had,” Clapper said.

“What did us in here, what worked against us was this shocking revelation,” he said, referring to the first disclosures from Snowden. If the program had been publicly introduced in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, most Americans would probably have supported it. “I don’t think it would be of any greater concern to most Americans than fingerprints. Well people kind of accept that because they know about it. But had we been transparent about it and say here’s one more thing we have to do as citizens for the common good, just like we have to go to airports two hours early and take our shoes off, all the other things we do for the common good, this is one more thing.”

Two things. First, Clapper is quite possibly right. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Congress might well have approved DNA testing of everybody in the country if George Bush had proposed it. Hell, they approved the invasion of Iraq.

Second, though, Clapper is also wrong. I think he is, anyway. It wasn’t Snowden’s “shocking revelation” about the phone records program that did so much damage to the NSA. After all, we’ve known about that in fuzzy terms since 2005 and in very specific terms since Leslie Cauley reported it in 2006:

“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA’s activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency’s goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation’s borders, this person added.

For the customers of these companies, it means that the government has detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, co-workers, business contacts and others.

This provoked a bit of controversy at the time, but it faded away pretty quickly. It’s true that Snowden provided documentary evidence that had been missing in the earlier reports, but he didn’t really change what we knew. The sad fact is that the mere knowledge that the NSA was collecting an enormous database of every call made in the United States simply didn’t bother people very much when it was first revealed.

No, what hurt the NSA was Snowden’s revelations about everything it was doing. If it had just been phone records, interest might have died out quickly, just as it did in 2006. But it was far more than that, and that’s what’s kept this alive. Clapper is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise.

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The NSA’s Problems Go Beyond Just Its Phone Records Program

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President Obama Finally Releases His Surveillance Reform Plan, and It’s Pretty Weak Tea

by DemetriusGallag Posted on January 17, 2014

Mother Jones

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President Obama gave his big surveillance speech today, and it was pretty limited. Aside from some fairly vague promises about new oversight and greater transparency, here were his most important concrete proposals:

  1. The Director of National Intelligence will conduct an annual review of FISA court opinions with the aim of declassifying opinions that have “broad privacy concerns.”
  2. Obama will ask Congress to create a “panel of advocates” that will represent the public’s privacy interests in FISA cases.
  3. New restrictions will be placed on the use of “incidental” collection of surveillance of US persons in criminal cases.
  4. National Security Letters will remain secret, but secrecy won’t be indefinite unless the government demonstrates a “real need” to a judge. Companies receiving NSLs will be allowed to release broad reports about the number of requests they get.
  5. Bulk telephone records will continue to be collected. However, in the future the database can be queried only after getting FISA approval. The NSA will be allowed to perform only 2-hop chaining rather than the current 3-hop standard. A new group will investigate alternative approaches to the government itself holding the telephone database.
  6. Within some unspecified limits, there will be no more bugging of foreign leaders.

This is fairly weak tea. Nonetheless, I’m pretty certain that we wouldn’t have gotten even this much if it weren’t for Edward Snowden. This is why I support Snowden’s disclosures despite the fact that I’m not happy about every last thing he’s disclosed. Obama’s attempt to suggest that he would have done all this stuff even without Snowden’s disclosures strikes me as laughable.

You can read a full copy of the presidential directive accompanying Obama’s speech here.

UPDATE: I should be a little clearer about why I think this is weak tea. Of these items, only the first five concern domestic surveillance. #1 and #2 are pretty hazy, with the DNI apparently having full control over this new declassification regime and the public being represented in FISA cases only by a “panel of advocates,” a phrase that somehow strikes me as a bit weaselly. But we’ll see.

#3 is very important if the new restrictions are pretty tight. But that’s not clear yet.

#4 is nice, but doesn’t go very far. At a minimum, I’d like to see much tighter standards for issuing secret NSLs in the first place.

#5, if it’s implemented well, could be a genuine improvement. Records retention per se is something the government often mandates, and as long as the records are truly kept away from the intelligence community, accessible only via court order with an advocate aggressively arguing the public’s case, this is a useful reform.

Julian Sanchez tweets: “Initial verdict: A decent start, better than I expected, but we really need legislation to cement this, & the details will matter a lot.” That’s a little more optimistic than my initial verdict, but it’s probably fair. We really won’t be able to fully evaluate all this until we see what the detailed rules look like. Good intentions aren’t enough.

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President Obama Finally Releases His Surveillance Reform Plan, and It’s Pretty Weak Tea

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One of the Films on This Year’s Black List is an Alternate History of Stanley Kubrick Faking the Moon Landing

by VirgilioWjd Posted on December 16, 2013

Mother Jones

On Monday, this year’s Black List—the annual list of the best unproduced scripts in Hollywood as voted on by over 250 studio executives—was announced via Twitter. This list features 72 titles, six fewer than last year’s. Previous Black Lists have included what would become three of the last five Best Picture Academy Award winners: Argo, The King’s Speech, and Slumdog Millionaire. Being on the list gives your script roughly a 120 percent higher chance of getting made into a feature film by a studio than if it were an average unproduced script.

One of the screenplays inducted onto this year’s Black List (check out the complete list here) is by self-described “newbie” Stephany Folsom, and is intriguingly titled, 1969: A Space Odyssey or How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon (an obvious reference to both the title of Stanley Kubrick’s classic black-comedy satire from 1964, and to the director’s 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968).

Folsom’s 108-page script (a drama) focuses on “Barbara,” a lone wolf working in the publicity department at NASA’s office in Washington, DC, in 1969. The story is an alternate history of how, as the Cold War rages, Barbara reaches out to and convinces acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick to work with NASA to fake the moon and one-up the Soviets.

“Hijinks ensue,” Folsom says.

Continue Reading »

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One of the Films on This Year’s Black List is an Alternate History of Stanley Kubrick Faking the Moon Landing

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Lara Logan Taking Leave of Absence From "60 Minutes"

by CecileJcy Posted on November 26, 2013

Mother Jones

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HuffPo’s Michael Calderone tweets: “Lara Logan and producer producer Max McClellan taking taking leave of absence from 60 Minutes, per Fager memo.” This comes shortly after Calderone reported that Logan “will no longer be hosting the annual press freedom awards dinner hosted by the Committee to Protect Journalists on Tuesday night, as she had long been scheduled to do.”

That’s not a big surprise. More to come on this, I’m sure.

UPDATE: Calderone has a full copy of the Fager memo here, along with a summary report of an investigation into Logan’s Benghazi segment from Al Ortiz, Executive Director of Standards and Practices at CBS News. It validates virtually every outside criticism made of Logan’s piece, which relied on the testimony of Dylan Davies, a security consultant who was in Benghazi on the night of the attacks and went on to write a book about it:

Logan’s report went to air without 60 Minutes knowing what Davies had told the FBI and the State Department about his own activities and location on the night of the attack….The wider reporting resources of CBS News were not employed in an effort to confirm his account….Davies’ admission that he had not told his employer the truth about his own actions should have been a red flag in the editorial vetting process.

….Logan’s assertions that Al Qaeda carried out the attack and controlled the hospital were not adequately attributed in her report…..In October of 2012, one month before starting work on the Benghazi story, Logan made a speech in which she took a strong public position arguing that the US Government was misrepresenting the threat from Al Qaeda, and urging actions that the US should take in response to the Benghazi attack. From a CBS News Standards perspective, there is a conflict in taking a public position on the government’s handling of Benghazi and Al Qaeda, while continuing to report on the story.

….The book, written by Davies and a co-author, was published by Threshold Editions, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, part of the CBS Corporation. 60 Minutes erred in not disclosing that connection in the segment.

That’s a whole lot of errors, all of which were preventable. Logan was just too anxious to tell this story in a particular way, and decided not to let reporting get in the way of it.

Also worth checking out: Jeff Stein’s Newsweek piece a few days ago suggesting that Logan’s husband may have played an instrumental behind-the-scenes role in shaping her Benghazi report.

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Lara Logan Taking Leave of Absence From "60 Minutes"

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Enviros give a thumbs-up to Obama’s new climate chief

by arielbangkok Posted on November 11, 2013

Enviros give a thumbs-up to Obama’s new climate chief

By

Georgetownclimate.org

President Obama has picked Dan Utech, an experienced environment and energy wonk, to replace outgoing White House climate adviser Heather Zichal. The role doesn’t require Senate confirmation, so Utech got right to work today.

His transition shouldn’t be too difficult. Up until now he has served as the deputy director for climate at the White House, where he’s worked since 2010. Before joining the Obama administration, Utech worked for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and served as energy and environment adviser to then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y).

Utech worked with Zichal to help the Obama administration craft its second-term climate strategy, which includes stringent limits on carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants as well as efforts to halt construction of new coal plants worldwide. In his new position, the L.A. Times explains, he “will also have to explain to the public the administration’s stand on often-contentious energy and environmental issues, such as the Keystone XL oil pipeline.”

Enviros seem to like the guy. Here’s praise from a couple of green leaders:

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune: “Dan Utech has been engaged in critically important debates on energy and environmental issues for years, bringing with him a unique blend of hill experience and technical knowledge of the energy industry. A seasoned hand in the energy world, he has also helped implement some of the Obama Administration’s most significant actions on our climate crisis and has the experience needed to ensure a smooth transition following Heather Zichal’s exceptional service.”

Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke: “Dan Utech is a leader, a seasoned expert, and the right person for this critical energy and climate post. He’s well-suited to carry forward the policies our country needs to expand clean energy, cut carbon pollution, address climate change and protect health. We are pleased the president has chosen him.”


Source
Obama appoints new energy and climate change advisor, L.A. Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Enviros give a thumbs-up to Obama’s new climate chief

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American company sues Canada over fracking moratorium

by Dave Max Posted on October 3, 2013

American company sues Canada over fracking moratorium

By

pollyalida

The St. Lawrence River.

Quebec isn’t entirely sure about this whole fracking thing. Amid reports from across the continent of groundwater pollution, air pollution, deforestation, and other environmental side effects of hydraulic fracturing, the Canadian province has placed a moratorium on the practice beneath the St. Lawrence River.

That doesn’t sit well with Lone Pine Resources, a Delaware-based company that has long eyed the gas and oil that’s locked up in the Utica shale beneath the grand waterway. The company claims it spent millions to get the appropriate permits to drill, and now that the fossil fuels seem out of reach, it says Canadians need to pony up more than $250 million in compensation.

The company last month submitted a claim [PDF] to an international arbitration system seeking damages because of “Quebec’s arbitrary, capricious, and illegal revocation” of its “valuable right to mine for oil and gas under the St. Lawrence River.” The claim is based on Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which allows private companies to sue governments when laws hurt their expected profits.

Needless to say, activists who want to protect the St. Lawrence River from reckless frackers are appalled by the legal action. From a Sierra Club press release:

“This egregious lawsuit — which Lone Pine Resources must drop — highlights just how vulnerable public interest policies are as a result of trade and investment pacts,” said Ilana Solomon, Sierra Club Responsible Trade Program Director. “Governments should learn from this and other similar cases and stop writing investment rules that empower corporations to attack environmental laws and policies.”

Meanwhile, Lone Pine Resources has been missing its loan repayments and desperately trying to work with its creditors in a bid to clamor out of a looming financial abyss. Coincidence much?


Source
Notice of arbitration under the arbitration rules of the United Nations Commission on International Trade law and Chapter Eleven of the North American Free Trade Agreement, Investment Treaty Arbitration
Lone Pine Resources files outrageous NAFTA lawsuit against fracking ban, The Sierra Club

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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American company sues Canada over fracking moratorium

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Wasted food is a huge climate problem

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on September 16, 2013

Wasted food is a huge climate problem

By

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Global warmer.

If wasted food became its own pungent country, it would be the world’s third biggest contributor to climate change.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization had previously determined that roughly one-third of food is wasted around the world. Now it has used those figures to calculate the environmental impacts of farming food that is never eaten, along with the climate-changing effects of the methane that escapes from food as it rots.

The results, published in a new report [PDF], were as nauseating as a grub-infested apple:

Without accounting for [greenhouse gas] emissions from land use change, the carbon footprint of food produced and not eaten is estimated to 3.3 Gtonnes of CO2 equivalent: as such, food wastage ranks as the third top emitter after USA and China. Globally, the blue water footprint (i.e. the consumption of surface and groundwater resources) of food wastage is about 250 km3, which is equivalent to the annual water discharge of the Volga River, or three times the volume of Lake Geneva. Finally, produced but uneaten food vainly occupies almost 1.4 billion hectares of land; this represents close to 30 percent of the world’s agricultural land area.

In the West, most of our food waste occurs because we toss out leftovers and unused ingredients — and because stores won’t sell ugly produce. The FAO found that some farmers dump 20 to 40 percent of their harvest because it “doesn’t meet retailer’s cosmetic specifications.” In developing countries, by contrast, most of the wasted food rots somewhere between the field and the market because of insufficient refrigeration and inefficient supply chains.

The FAO estimates that when we throw away more than 1 gigaton of food every year, we are throwing away $750 billion with it — an estimate that doesn’t include wasted seafood and bycatch.

“All of us — farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and national governments; individual consumers — must make changes at every link of the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place, and re-use or recycle it when we can’t,” FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva said in a statement. “We simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry every day.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Wasted food is a huge climate problem

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Oregon bans some insecticides following bee deaths

by elvys303 Posted on July 1, 2013

Oregon bans some insecticides following bee deaths

By John Upton

Forestry Distributing

Banned in Oregon.

Bees and other insects can breathe a little easier in Oregon — for now. The state has responded to the recent bumbleocalypse in a Target parking lot by temporarily banning use of the type of pesticide responsible for the high-profile pollinator die-off.

For the next six months, it will be illegal to spray Safari or other pesticides [PDF] containing dinotefuran neonicotinoids in the state.

Oregon’s ban comes after more than 50,000 bumblebees and other pollinators were killed when Safari was sprayed over blooming linden trees to control aphids in a Wilsonville, Ore., parking lot. A similar incident in Hillsboro, Ore., was also cited by the state’s agriculture department as a reason for the ban.

Oregon Department of Agriculture Director Katy Coba said in a statement [PDF] that she has directed her agency to impose the ban to help prevent further such “bee deaths connected to pesticide products with this active ingredient until such time as our investigation is completed. Conclusions from the investigation will help us and our partners evaluate whether additional steps need to be considered.”

Somewhat confusingly, retailers will still be allowed to sell the products. It will just be illegal for landscapers and gardeners to actually use them. From The Oregonian:

“We’re not trying to get it off the shelves, or trying to tell people to dispose of it, we’re just telling people not to use it,” said Bruce Pokarney, a spokesperson for the department of agriculture.

While Pokarney acknowledged it would be difficult to cite individual homeowners, he said licensed pesticide applicators would be violating Oregon regulations if they use dinotefuran-based insecticides on plants in the next 180 days.

The temporary ban only affects pesticide use that might harm pollinators, like bumblebees. Safari is one of the insecticides restricted by the Agriculture Department. Most of the restricted insecticides are used primarily for ornamental, not agricultural, pest control.

Dinotefuran use in flea collars, and ant and roach control will still be allowed.

The Xerces Society, a nonprofit insect conservation group that’s helping to investigate the pollinator die-offs, thinks the temporary ban is a good idea. But Executive Director Scott Black said it would be an even better idea if sales of the pesticides were suspended, lest consumers unwittingly use them in violation of the law. “At a minimum, all products on the shelf should have clear signage about the restriction on their use,” he told Grist.

Guess who thinks the ban is not such a good idea?

“We do not believe the scope of these measures is necessary with the information available,” Safari manufacturer Valent said in a statement, “and we will work to get the restrictions lifted as soon as possible.”

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Obama’s Ambitious Global Warming Action Plan

by Myrna Posted on June 25, 2013

The White House unveils a long-awaited plan to cut carbon pollution along with risks from unavoidable warming. Taken from: Obama’s Ambitious Global Warming Action Plan Related Articles Obama Previews an Upcoming Global Warming Speech ‘Pandora’s Promise’ Director and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Debate Nuclear Options Dot Earth Blog: Obama Previews an Upcoming Global Warming Speech

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Obama’s Ambitious Global Warming Action Plan

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