Tag Archives: government

Is "Fragrance" Making Us Sick?

by StacyBagshaw6 Posted on February 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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For Joyce Miller, a 57-year-old professor of library science in upstate New York, one sniff of scented laundry detergent can trigger an asthma attack. “I feel like someone is standing on my chest,” she says. “It’s almost like a choking feeling—pressure and choking. And then the coughing starts.”

Miller is just one of countless Americans who are sensitive to “fragrance,” a cryptic category of ingredients manufacturers add to products from cleaning supplies to toiletries. This generic term encompasses thousands of combinations of chemicals that give consumer goods their odors, but the identity of those chemicals is rarely disclosed.

For decades, fragrance makers have insisted on treating their recipes as trade secrets, even as complaints about negative health effects have proliferated. A 2009 study, for example, concluded that nearly one-third of Americans were irritated by the smell of scented products on others, and 19 percent experienced headaches or breathing difficulties when exposed to air fresheners or deodorizers.

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Is "Fragrance" Making Us Sick?

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EINSTEIN is Probably the Wrong Name for the Government’s Very Flawed Cybersecurity System

by LachlanBlocher Posted on January 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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The government relies on a system called EINSTEIN, or the National Cybersecurity Protection System, to detect and stop the rising numbers of cyberattacks on its computers. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office says EINSTEIN is falling far short of expectations.

The latest version of the $6-billion-dollar system, which rolled out in 2013, was designed to both detect suspicious cyber activity and prevent anything harmful from entering or leaving government computer networks. But the GAO says the system gives its users only “a limited ability to detect potentially malicious activity entering and exiting computer networks at federal agencies.” And when the GAO tested EINSTEIN, the system could only identify six percent of the common vulnerabilities in programs typically used on federal computers, including Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

The system is also falling short on helping agencies share information about cyber threats. The GAO found that only 5 of 23 federal agencies are actually using the “intrusion prevention” parts of the EINSTEIN system, which actively try to block malicious content. The information gained from those agencies helps recognize patterns that the system can use to improve and identify other similar attacks. The smaller the pool of data, the less effective the system can be. The information-sharing process itself also appears to be a mess. “DHS has yet to develop most of the planned functionality for NCPS’s information-sharing capability,” the report said. “Moreover, agencies and DHS did not always agree about whether notifications of potentially malicious activity had been sent or received, and agencies had mixed views about the usefulness of these notifications.”

A classified version of the report was released in November, but a declassified version was released on Thursday by the GAO. It came just days after the government announced the formation of a new agency to handle background checks after two massive hacks struck the Office of Personnel Management. The hacks, believed to be the work of the Chinese government, stole the highly sensitive background investigation forms of more than 20 million federal employees. After the attacks became public knowledge last year, the government’s cybersecurity defenses came under withering scrutiny from congressional overnight committees. This week’s report isn’t likely to help.

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EINSTEIN is Probably the Wrong Name for the Government’s Very Flawed Cybersecurity System

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It’s Time to Return to Market-Based Antitrust Law

by NormandDoolette Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Tim Lee makes an interesting argument today. He notes that cell phone plans have gotten a lot better lately:

Next time you go shopping for a new cellphone plan, you’re likely to find that the options are a lot better than they were a couple of years ago. Prices are lower. You don’t have to sign up for one of those annoying two-year contracts. You’ll probably get unlimited phone calls and text messages as a standard feature — and a lot more data than before.

Why has this happened? Because for the past couple of years T-Mobile has been competing ferociously with cheaper, more consumer-friendly plans, and the rest of the industry has had to keep up. But what prompted T-Mobile to become the UnCarrier in the first place?

Back in 2011, AT&T was on the verge of gobbling up T-Mobile, which would have turned the industry’s Big Four into the Big Three and eliminated the industry’s most unpredictable company….But then the Obama administration intervened to block the merger. With a merger off the table, T-Mobile decided to become a thorn in the side of its larger rivals, cutting prices and offering more attractive service plans. The result, says Mark Cooper, a researcher at the Consumer Federation of America, has been an “outbreak of competition” that’s resulted in tens of billions of dollars in consumer savings.

After the AT&T deal fell through, T-Mobile needed a new strategy….So T-Mobile and its new CEO, John Legere, started changing a lot of things. In 2013, the company dropped the much-hated two-year contracts that had become an industry standard. It introduced a new price structure that offered unlimited phone calls and text messages as a standard feature….In 2014, T-Mobile added more goodies, including more generous data caps and unlimited international texting. It boosted its data caps once again in 2015.

Antitrust law in America has been off track for decades, and it’s time to get back on. The government shouldn’t worry about trying to gauge price levels or consumer welfare or benefits to consumers. That’s like trying to centrally control the economy: we don’t know enough to do it well even if we want to. Instead, the feds should concentrate on one simple thing: making sure there’s real competition in every industry. Then let the market figure things out. There are exceptions here and there to this rule, but not many.

Competition is good. Corporations may not like it, and they’ll fight tooth and nail for their rents. But it’s good for everyone else.

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It’s Time to Return to Market-Based Antitrust Law

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The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

by Peggy Mason Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Bees are dying in record numbers—and now the government admits that an extremely common pesticide is at least partially to blame.

For more than a decade, the Environmental Protection Agency has been under pressure from environmentalists and beekeepers to reconsider its approval of a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids, based on a mounting body of research suggesting they harm bees and other pollinators at tiny doses. In a report released Wednesday, the EPA basically conceded the case.

Marketed by European chemical giants Syngenta and Bayer, neonics are the most widely used pesticides both in the United States and globally. In 2009, the agency commenced a long, slow process of reassessing them—not as a class, but rather one by one (there are five altogether). Meanwhile, tens of millions of acres of farmland are treated with neonics each year, and the health of US honeybee hives continues to be dismal.

The EPA’s long-awaited assessment focused on how one of the most prominent neonics—Bayer’s imidacloprid—affects bees. The report card was so dire that the EPA “could potentially take action” to “restrict or limit the use” of the chemical by the end of this year, an agency spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement.

Reviewing dozens of studies from independent and industry-funded researchers, the EPA’s risk-assessment team established that when bees encounter imidacloprid at levels above 25 parts per billion—a common level for neonics in farm fields—they suffer harm. “These effects include decreases in pollinators as well as less honey produced,” the EPA’s press release states.

The crops most likely to expose honeybees to harmful levels of imidacloprid are cotton and citrus, while “corn and leafy vegetables either do not produce nectar or have residues below the EPA identified level.” Note in the below USGS chart that a substantial amount of imidacloprid goes into the US cotton crop.

Imidacloprid use has surged in recent years. Uh-oh. US Geological Survey

Meanwhile, the fact that the EPA says imidacloprid-treated corn likely doesn’t harm bees sounds comforting, but as the same USGS chart shows, corn gets little or no imidacloprid. (It gets huge amounts of another neonic, clothianidin, whose EPA risk assessment hasn’t been released yet.)

The biggest imidacloprid-treated crop of all is soybeans, and soy remains an information black hole. The EPA assessment notes that soybeans are “attractive to bees via pollen and nectar,” meaning they could expose bees to dangerous levels of imidacloprid, but data on how much of the pesticide shows up in soybeans’ pollen and nectar are “unavailable,” both from Bayer and from independent researchers. Oops. Mind you, imidacloprid has been registered for use by the EPA since the 1990s.

The agency still has to consider public comments on the bee assessment it just released, and it also has to complete a risk assessment of imidacloprid’s effect on other species. In addition to their impact on bees, neonic pesticides may also harm birds, butterflies, and water-borne invertebrates, recent studies suggest. Then there are the assessments of the other four neonic products that need to be done. Frustrated at the glacial pace of the EPA’s deliberations, a coalition of beekeepers and environmental groups filed a lawsuit in federal court Wednesday demanding that the agency withdraw its approvals for the most-used neonic products.

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The EPA Finally Admitted That the World’s Most Popular Pesticide Kills Bees—20 Years Too Late

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How the Leader of the Oregon Armed Protest Benefited From a Federal Loan Program

by TerrieCUIy Posted on January 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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As one of the leaders of a band of armed, anti-government activists who have taken over a National Park Service building in Oregon, Ammon Bundy has denounced the “tyranny” of the federal government. And he has brought a new round of attention to the anti-government militia movement that in 2014 rallied behind his father, Cliven Bundy, when the elder Bundy and armed supporters confronted federal agents in Nevada. But not long ago, Ammon Bundy sought out help from the government he now decries and received a federal small-business loan guarantee.

Ammon Bundy runs a Phoenix-based company called Valet Fleet Services LLC, which specializes in repairing and maintaining fleets of semitrucks throughout Arizona. On April 15, 2010—Tax Day, as it happens—Bundy’s business borrowed $530,000 through a Small Business Administration loan guarantee program. The available public record does not indicate what the loan was used for or whether it was repaid. The SBA website notes that this loan guarantee was issued under a program “to aid small businesses which are unable to obtain financing in the private credit marketplace.” The government estimated that this subsidy could cost taxpayers $22,419. Bundy did not respond to an email request for comment about the SBA loan.

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How the Leader of the Oregon Armed Protest Benefited From a Federal Loan Program

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Hillary Clinton Pledges to "Get to the Bottom" of UFOs and Aliens

by AllenFlora Posted on January 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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The truth is out there for Hillary Clinton.

When Daymond Steer from the Conway Daily Sun recently asked her to weigh in on UFOs—a topic Steer says he broached with Clinton in 2007—the Democratic presidential candidate reportedly promised to “get to the bottom of it” if she were elected to the White House.

“I think we may have been visited already,” she added. “We don’t know for sure.”

Clinton’s comments are among the rare public statements she’s made on UFOs and possible government cover-ups—a familiar subject for both Hillary and Bill Clinton. As Mother Jones has reported, the couple’s interest in extraterrestrial activity reaches as far back as the 1990s, when Laurence Rockefeller began lobbying the Clinton administration for the release of government documents relating to UFOs—documents that many say reveal the extent of government research into the phenomena.

Additionally, Clinton’s current campaign chairman, John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and an X-Files fan, has long expressed interest in the topic.

But these statements are Clinton’s first remarks on the subject during this campaign. They will likely strengthen her support among voters who happen to be UFO enthusiasts and are not supporting any extraterrestrial candidates in the Republican field.

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Hillary Clinton Pledges to "Get to the Bottom" of UFOs and Aliens

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Congress Allows DC to Sled, But Not to Regulate the Sale of Marijuana

by ElmoDonohoe Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Residents of Washington, DC, have taken major issue with Congress on two big local priorities in the past year: legalizing marijuana and sledding on the slopes of the US Capitol. DC voters approved a ballot measure last November to legalize weed by a 65-27 percent margin, only to be told by Congress that the city couldn’t regulate or tax the sale of the drug. And residents flocked to the Capitol with their sleds after a heavy snow in March, only to be thwarted by Capitol police.

In its omnibus budget deal released Tuesday night, Congress tackled both of these issues, granting DC its wish on one but not the other. Sledding, the body determined, would be permitted; regulating the marijuana market would not.

The District of Columbia—home to more than 650,000 people, making it more populous than Vermont or Wyoming—lacks a voting representative in Congress, and its budget is subject to congressional approval, a unique carve-out that no other US city or state must contend with.

As part of a larger deal to keep the government funded for the next year, Congress is asking Capitol police to let kids from the surrounding neighborhoods bring their sleds to the slopes outside the building, among the best in the town. But while the kids can frolic, Congress still wants to prevent the adults in town from buying and selling a once-illegal substance.

The budget deal includes a rider first implemented last year that prohibits the city government from using any of its money to further legalize marijuana in the nation’s capital. After voters approved Initiative 71 last November—which legalized home growth and possession of small amounts of the drug—the city has been stuck in a gray area. Residents can now safely keep a small stash of weed at home without fear of being arrested by local cops, but there’s no legal way for them to buy the drug, unless they qualify for a medical marijuana prescription. The city council was on track to pass rules to allow for a marketplace and taxation system, like those in Colorado and Washington state, late last year before Congress intervened, much to the consternation of local officials. As I wrote earlier this summer:

There are a whole host of reasons the city government and voters would prefer a market where marijuana is sold in approved storefronts just like liquor. As Colorado has shown with its regulated system, bringing drug sales out of the black market can be a boon for tax revenue, with the state set to collect about $125 million this year from marijuana sales taxes. And before the ballot initiative last year legalized personal possession of small quantities of the drug, studies had shown that black residents of DC were 8.05 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than white residents, even though black people and white people smoke pot at equal levels nationally.

That rider barred the city from regulating marijuana sales until government funding ran out. Tuesday night’s deal extends the prohibition through next September—and effectively signals that stripping the District’s ability to regulate a drug it has legalized has become a de facto part of any deal to keep the government from shutting down.

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Congress Allows DC to Sled, But Not to Regulate the Sale of Marijuana

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Six Embarrassing Things Republicans Said About Cybersecurity Last Night

by Melodee5461 Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Huge hacks, Internet-savvy terrorists, and controversial legislation has made cybersecurity big news this year, but candidates from both parties barely mentioned the topic until Tuesday night’s Republican debate in Las Vegas. That’s when Republican candidates finally addressed cybersecurity and Internet privacy at length, but the results weren’t always pretty. Here are some of the lowlights:

1. Candidates demand encryption “backdoors.” Again: “There is a big problem. It’s called encryption,” said Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who delivered the night’s sharpest attack on encrypted Internet tools that allegedly help terrorists evade US law enforcement and intelligence services. Kasich, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) and former New York Gov. George Pataki, called for “backdoors,” or methods of decrypting message that would allow the government a way to read them. It was the latest episode in a debate that’s grown louder since the shootings in Paris and San Bernardino, California; there have been claims that both sets of attackers used encrypted messages to evade detection, though none of those claims have been proven. Nevertheless, key members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have said they’re working on a bill mandating backdoors in the wake of the attacks.

But encryption is also a vital part of the Internet’s basic infrastructure, and millions of people now use encrypted apps and programs to protect the privacy of their emails and messages. And giving the government access to encryption means allowing anyone else, including criminals, hackers, and foreign governments, access into those messages as well, according to cryptography experts.

2. Santorum thinks metadata isn’t personal information: Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was one of several candidates who wanted to undo the USA Freedom Act, the law passed in May that ended the National Security Agency’s ability to engage in a mass collection of the phone records of Americans. Santorum brushed the law aside, arguing the program didn’t impinge on people’s privacy. “This metadata collection is not collecting people’s phone calls, their voices, they’re not collecting information that’s personal,” he said at the undercard debate.

The first part is true, but the second isn’t even close. Metadata includes phone numbers, location data, call times, and other information that intelligence agencies use to create create extensive, detailed profiles of a target—or anyone else.

3. Donald Trump doesn’t understand how the Internet works: Trump again called for shutting down at least parts of the Internet to try and stop ISIS from using online tools to recruit and plan attacks. “I would certainly be open to closing areas where we are at war with somebody,” he said. Whether or not that’s possible—and it’s probably not, given that many people in Syria rely on satellite connections after years of war—it would likely be horrible for Syrians and Iraqis, whose countries’ communications’ infrastructures have been heavily damaged by war. Many Syrians rely on Internet connections to maintain contact with family and the outside world, and human rights activists rely on the web to document atrocities by the Assad regime and ISIS.

4. Fiorina comes up short on the tech test: Fiorina is trying to cast herself as the field’s technology expert thanks to her years leading Hewlett-Packard, one of the country’s biggest tech companies. “A lifetime of politics is not necessarily the right kind of experience anymore. It matters that you understand technology,” she told the conservative website Breitbart in a pre-debate interview on Tuesday. But her evidence of tech-savvy during the debate was nothing more than a story about helping the NSA in the days after 9/11 by sending them a large shipment of servers. Fiorina’s other big suggestion was to ask the private sector for help in improving cybersecurity, something that already routinely happens.

Fiorina also seemed clueless about the state of cybersecurity laws during the Breitbart interview. She claimed the Obama administration had ignored critical legislation that would let private companies share information on cyberattacks with the government. But at the same time the Republicans were debating on stage on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was wedging that same legislation, which Congress debated for months, into the trillion-dollar spending deal approved later that night.

5. Bush cheers China’s hacking of journalists: The Washington Post reported on Monday that when China stole millions of US government personnel records, it also got the information of journalists who had applied for government credentials—and Jeb Bush seemed pretty happy about it. “Maybe that’s the only part that’s good news, so you guys can get a feel for what it’s like now to see this type of attack,” said the former Florida governor, breaking briefly into an awkward half-smile.

6. Lindsay Graham says to get a flip phone: “This is why I own a flip phone, you don’t have to worry about all this stuff,” Graham quipped. Actually, your flip phone, in addition to being terrible, would still leave its records all over your cell carrier’s network for the government to access. Please do not listen to this awful advice. Also, Lindsey Graham now has an iPhone.

To be fair, cybersecurity also prompted the night’s most substantive exchange. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio attacked Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz along with others who voted for the USA Freedom Act, which prevents the NSA from accessing or collecting records in bulk without a ruling from a federal judge. It’s proponents say the Act protects Americans from unconstitutional surveillance while making intelligence more effective, because investigators must target specific data and not drown in huge amounts of records. Both men hit back hard supporting the case for NSA reform. Cruz defended the law—and its national security benefits—so well that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the Senate’s most outspoken privacy advocate, backed him up in a press release issued during the debate.

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Six Embarrassing Things Republicans Said About Cybersecurity Last Night

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Will the British Government Ban Donald Trump from the UK?

by Matt08Xxxvbjmtl Posted on December 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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These days Donald Trump has his eye on acquiring a certain high-end and unique property in Washington, DC. But should he want to take a break from the campaign trail for a quick jaunt across the pond to visit his luxury golf resort in the Aberdeen area of Scotland, he might encounter a problem. At least, that’s what one British anti-Trump activist is hoping to engineer.

Suzanne Kelly, an Aberdeen local who has opposed the development of Trump’s golf course (which was built atop environmentally sensitive dunes), recently cooked up a plan to tar the globe-trotting tycoon who now leads the GOP presidential race. She submitted a petition to the British government requesting that it block Trump from entering the UK due to his harsh campaign rhetoric—deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists, talking about tracking Muslims—which she equates with hate speech. Her petition reads:

The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry for his continued, unrepentant hate speech and unacceptable behaviour. His unacceptable behaviour is well documented, and we feel it foments racial, religious and nationalistic intolerance which should not be welcome in the UK.

The UK has banned entry to many individuals for hate speech. This same principle should apply to Donald J Trump. We cannot see how the United Kingdom can condone his entry to the country when many people have been barred for less.

Kelly may be more than tilting at Trump’s windmill, for under the British system of interactive government, any citizen or resident can go to the Parliament’s website and submit a petition. If five other people support a submitted petition, the government’s petitions committee will review the petition and decide whether to publish it. If the petition goes up and draws 10,000 signatures, the government will respond. If 100,000 people sign, the measure will be considered for debate in Parliament.

There are potential obstacles to the Trump petition.The Parliament’s petition committee can reject a petition at the start. The guidelines for that are spelled out on the government’s petitions website. Here’s a partial list of the reasons for saying no:

We’ll only reject your petition if it’s:

not clear what you’re asking for
about something that the UK Government or Parliament is not responsible for
about a purely personal issue
confidential, libellous, false or defamatory
contains language that may cause offence, or is provocative or extreme in its views deceptive or misleading
nonsensical, or a joke

Is this a joke? Kelly says, of course not. She certainly is clear on what she is requesting, and the British government has in the past blocked the entry of persons deemed purveyors of hate. For instance, in 2009, the UK barred an anti-Islamic Dutch lawmaker from entering the country to screen his film that called the Koran a “fascist book.” (This move was denounced by free speech advocates.) But there may be some wiggle room for the petitions committee to tell Kelly to take a hike, especially if the British government does not want to embarrass Trump.

If the petition goes forward, is it hard to imagine 10,000 or 100,000 signers? As of Tuesday afternoon, a petition calling for the UK to accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the country had 445,000 signatures. Another to stop all immigration and close the UK borders until ISIS is defeated had 440,000 signatures. Meanwhile, Kelly’s petition is now undergoing the committee’s review. She hopes it will be live within a few days.

At the same time, Kelly is pushing another petition calling on the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen to strip Trump of the honorary degree it granted him. This petition, which has only been posted on a site for activists, reads:

We feel that Donald Trump’s unrepentant, persistent verbal attacks on various groups of people based on nationality, religion, race and physical abilities are a huge detriment to RGU. Hate speech must not have a place in academia, in politics or on the world stage. We are confident RGU will agree with the petitioners, and act swiftly.

So far it has drawn 1,200 signatures.

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Will the British Government Ban Donald Trump from the UK?

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Today in State Secrets: The FBI Wants Both Your Day and Evening Phone Numbers

by MattieIAFiyce Posted on November 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in 2004, the FBI served Nicholas Merrill with a National Security Letter. Merrill owned Calyx Internet Access, and the FBI wanted him to turn over transactional records about his clients. As usual with NSLs, this was done without a subpoena or a court order. Merrill was forbidden from revealing the contents of the NSL or even publicly acknowledging that he had received an NSL.

Merrill went to court, and US District Judge Victor Marrero initially ruled against him. Merrill subsequently reached an agreement with the government that allowed him to discuss the NSL but not to reveal which records the FBI had requested. Merrill continued to fight, and today, in Merrill v. Lynch,1 Marrero finally ruled definitively in his favor. In cases like this, the government has to demonstrate that disclosure would cause specific harm, and Marrero found that they hadn’t done so. Among other things, he points out that the Department of Justice itself already publishes a manual that includes sample language for NSLs. It includes most of the transactional data the the FBI requested from Merrill, and the remaining items would hardly be difficult for a potential target to figure out.

Still, the FBI argued that there were some differences, and those should be kept secret. Marrero provides an example that he finds singularly unimpressive:

Many of the remaining redactions in the Attachment are even harder to justify than the categories discussed thus far. For example, the Government seeks to prevent Merrill from disclosing that the Attachment requested “Subscriber day/evening telephone numbers” even though the Government now concedes that the phrase “telephone number” can be disclosed. The Court is not persuaded that there is a “good reason” to believe that disclosure of the fact that the Government can use NSLs to seek both day and evening telephone numbers could result in an enumerated harm, especially if it is already publicly known that the Government can use NSLs to obtain a telephone number, more generally.

Thanks to Marcy Wheeler for pointing this out. You may consider it your entertainment for the day. That is, you could consider it in that light if it weren’t a pretty important subject. And unfortunately, the court’s ruling is quite narrow: the only reason Marrero changed his mind is because the investigation has been closed, the target has been revealed, and virtually everything else about the NSL is already public. In other words, this will have very little impact on the government’s future power to issue tens of thousands of NSLs with virtually no oversight. We now know what information the FBI wanted in 2004, but we’re no closer to knowing what they routinely ask for today.

Full details here.

1Yes, seriously. Nicholas Merrill vs. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

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Today in State Secrets: The FBI Wants Both Your Day and Evening Phone Numbers

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