"The first 4 months of the year in Oklahoma were the second driest start to the year on record for the state ... The only drier year was 1936, during the Dust Bowl."
El Niño's hoped-for arrival in the summer would alleviate the worst of the drought in California by fall, but it's now a virtual certainty that California is in for a very bad summer.
What follows is Scientific American's May 18 report, 100 Percent of California Now in Highest Stages of Drought, written by Andrea Thompson and co-authored by Climate Central. See the Scientific American website for the Drought Monitor images and source links. The U.S Drought Monitor, which produced the data on which the report is based, is not the only drought monitor and it's the story told by other monitor that I find most troubling. See the next Pundita post.
[START REPORT]
It might not seem possible, but California's drought just got worse. According to Thursday’s release of the U.S. Drought Monitor, 100 percent of the state is now in one of the three worst stages of drought.
The latest report, which indicated that rain had improved conditions in parts of Texas and the Plains states, revealed that California got no relief. In fact, a heat wave likely worsened the impacts of the drought in the state, including the wildfires that flared up this week.
The drought in California, which has been building for the past few years, really took hold this winter. December-March is supposed to be the region’s wet season, but this year turned out to be a bust. At the beginning of April, nearly all of the state was in a drought — nearly 70 percent was in “extreme” or “exceptional” drought, the two highest stages. By the end of the month, the entire state was experiencing at least some form of drought in what has been the driest start to a year in California on record.
“Things are not trending in the right direction,” Mark Svoboda, a scientist at the National Drought Mitigation Center, told Climate Central.
This week, the situation became worse, with 100 percent of the state now in the three worst stages of drought. It's the first time that has occurred since the inception of the Drought Monitor in 2000.
Exceptional drought, the highest stage, runs from Los Angeles to San Francisco and inland to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.
A heat wave that descended on the state this week, sending temperatures into the triple digits and setting records in some places, is likely to only make matters worse.
“The heat will exacerbate and accelerate the impact concerns that come with higher demand (for water) and increased fire risk during such heat waves,” Svoboda said in an email.
Since Wednesday, seven fires have broken out between San Diego and San Clemente, their smoke plumes visible by satellite and radar. The risk of wildfires increases because the hot, dry conditions help dry vegetation that can act as fuel for the fires. Gusty winds can, in turn, increase the odds that those fires spread.
The situation in California is unlikely to improve or change much over the summer, which is the dry season for most of the state. Officials are hoping that an El Niño that is expected to develop this summer will bring the return of rains in the cooler season and alleviate water woes.
California isn't the only dry part of the U.S. Another major drought spanning the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma, as well as parts of Kansas, Colorado, and New Mexico is also still firmly in place.
“Drought is really intensifying pretty rapidly in the Southern Plains,” Jake Crouch, a climate scientist with NOAA's National Climatic Data Center, told Climate Central.
The first 4 months of the year in Oklahoma were the second driest start to the year on record for the state, Crouch said. The only drier year was 1936, during the Dust Bowl.
Rains that fell earlier in the week did beat back the drought in the eastern portions of Texas, but the drought was not nearly as intense there as it is in the western and central portions of the state.
“East Texas is an interesting case as it has been the area that has literally been ‘sitting on the fence’ each of the past two falls,” Svoboda said.
He said the region has been going through cycles of rainy fall and winter weather that have kept the more severe drought seen in the Panhandle and West Texas at bay. The recent rains will only bolster its defenses.
Heavy rain also fell in Nebraska and parts of Kansas, with some improvements seen in both of those states as well.
[END REPORT]
*********
Monday, May 19
Still fine-tuning your brilliant new method for predicting wildfire behavior? If so, please speed it up.
November 15, 2013, Scientific American, Finally, a Way to Predict a Wildfire's Behavior in Real Time :
But right now there is great urgency to put the new model into practice, although I'm sure the scientists don't need to be told this. (See the next Pundita post.)
********
Scientists help firefighters battle changing conditions by combining computer fire models and infrared satellite dataBetween those ellipses is a well-written description of some truly brilliant reasoning. Modeling the behavior of wildfire modeling isn't new, but all attempts to predict how wildfires act over a period of more than a few hours have been up against seeming insurmountable obstacles -- until Schroeder's brainstorm.
[...]
The Suomi NPP, a weather satellite operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, carries a special infrared sensor capable of capturing high-resolution images anywhere on the globe. Called the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), this small device can observe the Earth's surface at a much finer scale than the average satellite sensor.
Shifting through the troves of data sent back from the VIIRS [satellite], University of Maryland professor of geography Wilfred Schroeder identified a signature pattern that denotes wildfire activity. By feeding the resulting fire image data into [Janice] Coen's model every 12 hours, the two scientists were able to essentially "reboot" the system, depicting the outlines of a fire with a high degree of accuracy, even when it lasted for several weeks."
[...]
Coen and Schroeder are currently working with national firefighting agencies to adapt their technique to the on-the-ground needs of firefighters. They hope to begin introducing a practicable model next year.
But right now there is great urgency to put the new model into practice, although I'm sure the scientists don't need to be told this. (See the next Pundita post.)
********
Sunday, May 18
Exasperated Pundita scrapes together latest news on San Diego fires
I've moved around some paragraphs and sentences in this annoying May 18 Reuters report so that it tells the story instead of wandering all over the place. I'm using the report only because it's the most recent news summary on the San Diego fires I can find at the moment on the Internet.
(Reuters) - Diminished winds and cooling temperatures over the weekend helped crews completely or mostly encircle nearly a dozen fires by Sunday that have charred at least 26,000 acres of drought-parched brush in San Diego County since the middle of last week. [The fires] gutted dozens of homes and forced evacuations of thousands of dwellings in and around San Diego.
By Sunday, firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around 85 percent of the so-called Cocos fire, which last week destroyed 39 houses in the town of San Marcos, north of San Diego, according to Cal Fire spokesman Kendal Bortisser.
A smaller fire that raged in Carlsbad was 100 percent contained on Sunday after causing property losses estimated at up to $15 million, including eight houses and an 18-unit apartment building destroyed.
Firefighters also were gaining an upper hand against three large blazes that burned across more than 20,000 acres of the sprawling Camp Pendleton Marine Base north of San Diego.
As many as 125,000 people living in and around San Diego, California's second-largest city, had been forced to flee their homes last week, but most evacuations had been lifted by Sunday.
No serious injuries have been reported, though officials were trying to determine whether a burned human corpse found on Thursday at a homeless encampment in the coastal town of Carlsbad had died in the fire.
The origins of the blazes remained unknown. While arson investigators were looking for possible links between them, none of the fires has been ruled suspicious, fire officials said.
[Pundita note: Earlier reports from other news sources say that at least one man was arrested in connection with one of the fires and pleaded not guilty. And this report, from a Las Vegas radio station on the 17th quoting news 'wire' feeds from Fox News, reports "sources" as saying that all but one of the fires had a "suspicious ignition point." The one fire definitely determined to be accidental was started by a "machinery incident," according to the radio report.]
Stoked by an unseasonable mix of triple-digit temperatures, extremely low humidity and hot, dry Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert, the blazes highlighted what was already shaping up as one of the earliest and fiercest starts to California's wildfire season in decades.
Even before last week's conflagrations in San Diego County, more than 1,350 wildfires had erupted statewide since January, double the number tallied during the same period in 2013, said Mike Mohler, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Governor Jerry Brown said on Sunday the state was still bracing for its toughest fire season yet. Appearing on ABC News, he said a prolonged drought and the surge in wildfire activity were ominous signs of a changing climate that will compel California "to make very expensive investments and adjust."
"We're in a very serious fire season, more serious than we've seen before," Brown said. "Humanity is on a collision course with nature, and we're going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can."
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bernard Orr [and Pundita] )
********
(Reuters) - Diminished winds and cooling temperatures over the weekend helped crews completely or mostly encircle nearly a dozen fires by Sunday that have charred at least 26,000 acres of drought-parched brush in San Diego County since the middle of last week. [The fires] gutted dozens of homes and forced evacuations of thousands of dwellings in and around San Diego.
By Sunday, firefighters had managed to carve containment lines around 85 percent of the so-called Cocos fire, which last week destroyed 39 houses in the town of San Marcos, north of San Diego, according to Cal Fire spokesman Kendal Bortisser.
A smaller fire that raged in Carlsbad was 100 percent contained on Sunday after causing property losses estimated at up to $15 million, including eight houses and an 18-unit apartment building destroyed.
Firefighters also were gaining an upper hand against three large blazes that burned across more than 20,000 acres of the sprawling Camp Pendleton Marine Base north of San Diego.
As many as 125,000 people living in and around San Diego, California's second-largest city, had been forced to flee their homes last week, but most evacuations had been lifted by Sunday.
No serious injuries have been reported, though officials were trying to determine whether a burned human corpse found on Thursday at a homeless encampment in the coastal town of Carlsbad had died in the fire.
The origins of the blazes remained unknown. While arson investigators were looking for possible links between them, none of the fires has been ruled suspicious, fire officials said.
[Pundita note: Earlier reports from other news sources say that at least one man was arrested in connection with one of the fires and pleaded not guilty. And this report, from a Las Vegas radio station on the 17th quoting news 'wire' feeds from Fox News, reports "sources" as saying that all but one of the fires had a "suspicious ignition point." The one fire definitely determined to be accidental was started by a "machinery incident," according to the radio report.]
Stoked by an unseasonable mix of triple-digit temperatures, extremely low humidity and hot, dry Santa Ana winds blowing in from the desert, the blazes highlighted what was already shaping up as one of the earliest and fiercest starts to California's wildfire season in decades.
Even before last week's conflagrations in San Diego County, more than 1,350 wildfires had erupted statewide since January, double the number tallied during the same period in 2013, said Mike Mohler, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Governor Jerry Brown said on Sunday the state was still bracing for its toughest fire season yet. Appearing on ABC News, he said a prolonged drought and the surge in wildfire activity were ominous signs of a changing climate that will compel California "to make very expensive investments and adjust."
"We're in a very serious fire season, more serious than we've seen before," Brown said. "Humanity is on a collision course with nature, and we're going to have to adapt to it in the best way we can."
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Bernard Orr [and Pundita] )
********
What happened when The Marlboro Man met Silvopastoralists
What happened is not exactly the Hanging Gardens of Babylon but close enough to the Promised Land. Can we get there fast enough to prevent a "Dune" world? How many miles to Babylon?
The plants provide his 90 head of cattle with vertical layers of grazing, leading to twice the milk and meat production per acre while reducing the amount of land needed to raise them
In Colombia's Cauca Valley, cattle first eat leucaena leaves, then tropical grasses. Beneath the leucaena are three types of tropical grasses and groundcover such as peanuts.
The fires are getting hotter. As the air gets warmer it sucks moisture from the trees and the soil in which they're rooted. The forests burn like lint as fires hot as hell rage across thousands of acres, fires so hot they sterilize the soil, stopping tree seeds from growing. The thinner the forest, the more the cycle intensifies, and even without the wildfires the moisture drawn from the trees and soil is a forest killer.
All over the world, forest management experts are studying the death of forests in the American southwest and seeing the future, the world's future. There is a point of no return, a point where Nature can't repair itself. From Caroline Fraser's June 2013 analysis for Yale's e360, Megadrought in U.S. Southwest: A Bad Omen for Forests Globally:
Close your eyes for a minute, recall cattle-herding scenes from John Ford's Western movies. See cattle, grazing their way through thousands of acres of range brush. There weren't many trees on those ranges, were there?
So one day, in a conference room in a Las Vegas hotel at one of those World Is Ending global warming summits, a bunch of farmers, cattlemen, agricultural scientists, environmentalists, botanists, forest experts and a group of ladies from a quilt-making club in Wisconsin who wandered in by mistake, listened as the speaker went to the podium, cleared his throat, and said, "It's possible we've been doing this wrong. Instead of trying to lower the water we should think about raising the bridge."
After a moment of confused silence someone called out from the back of the room, "Let's do this!" and everyone broke into cheers then pulled out legal pads and #2 pencils. There was a lot of doodling on the notepads at first. But eventually, over a period of decades, from ideas taken from the four quarters of the world and cutting edge science and age-old farming practices, the Promised Land took shape.....
(See this Wikipedia article for an introduction to silvopasture, which is "the practice of combining forestry and grazing of domesticated animals in a mutually beneficial way." See the Yale e360 website for links to the numerous sources quoted in the following report. Although I tend to view private-public partnerships with caution, the instances discussed in the report seem to be working well.)
In the Pastures of Colombia, Cows, Crops and Timber Coexist
13 Mar 2014: Analysis
By Lisa Palmer *
Environment360 (Yale University)
As an ambitious program in Colombia demonstrates, combining grazing and agriculture with tree cultivation can coax more food from each acre, boost farmers’ incomes, restore degraded landscapes, and make farmland more resilient to climate change.
Over the last two decades, cattle rancher Carlos Hernando Molina has replaced 220 acres of open pastureland with trees, shrubs, and bushy vegetation. But he hasn’t eliminated the cows. Today, his land in southwestern Colombia more closely resembles a perennial nursery at a garden center than a grazing area. Native, high-value timber like mahogany and samanea grow close together along the perimeter of the pasture. The trees are strung with electric wire and act as live fences. In the middle of the pen grow leucaena trees, a protein-packed forage tree, and beneath the leucaena are three types of tropical grasses and groundcover such as peanuts. The plants provide his 90 head of cattle with vertical layers of grazing, leading to twice the milk and meat production per acre while reducing the amount of land needed to raise them.
His operation is part of a trend globally to sustainably coax more food from each acre — without chemicals and fertilizers — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing biodiversity, and enhancing the land’s ability to withstand the effects of climate change.
Livestock and their food needs take up 30 percent of land globally, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In Colombia, where cattle occupy 80 percent of agricultural area, pastures have contributed to soil degradation and deforestation and, in dry areas, have hastened desertification, according to Julián Chará, a researcher at the Center for Research in Sustainable Systems of Agriculture, CIPAV, in Cali, Colombia. But a new paradigm is emerging. Land conservation is happening alongside livestock production.
In Colombia, Molina’s brand of so-called "sustainable intensification" is the favored agroforestry practice for livestock production. Agroforestry cultivates trees with food crops or livestock, while farmers make use of the trees’ ecological benefits. Plantains grow above shade-loving coffee. Valuable hardwoods like oak grow in alleys next to corn and wheat.
"People don’t think of ranching when they think of agroforestry," says David Cleary, strategy director for agriculture at The Nature Conservancy. "But what is happening in Colombia is a reminder that you have to have a broader definition of agroforestry and make it work with any number of agricultural systems. In Colombia, silvopastoral systems are favored because they can work for both smallholder farms as well as large, private-sector-style ranching."
In addition to the economic benefits of raising more food and timber products per acre, agroforestry is praised for its ability to help farmers, ecosystems, and animals contend with the effects of climate change, according to the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya. Although the advantages of agroforestry are well proven, the cost and technical complexities are among the factors holding back the movement, says Enrique Murgueitio, executive director of CIPAV.
Like many in the tropics, Colombia’s farmers want to increase their productivity and income while reducing their vulnerability to weather extremes and degraded pastures, which have had devastating effects during periods of drought, Murgueitio explained.
With silvopastoral systems, cattle ranchers can produce the same amount of dairy, meat, and timber products in half the land area, according to research at CIPAV.
Public-private partnerships have emerged to support the conversion to silvopastoral systems. CIPAV — along with Colombia’s Cattle Ranching Federation (FEDEGAN), The Nature Conservancy and the UN’s Global Environment Facility — have invested $42 million in a five-year project to boost sustainable agricultural production in Colombia, according to The World Bank. The money will help 2,000 ranchers with financing and technical assistance to raise cattle using agroforestry practices. Among the goals of the project are to increase incomes from milk and beef production and decrease the use of fertilizers and herbicides by 30 percent.
The government of the United Kingdom also is providing an additional $25 million to support the growth of silvopastoral systems in Colombia and climate programs in Africa.
Using intensive silvopastoral systems, Colombia’s National Development Plan for cattle ranching seeks to reduce pasture land from 38 million hectares (94 million acres) to 28 million hectares (70 million acres), while increasing cattle numbers from 23 million head to 40 million, according to CIPAV. Some ranchers have planted trees and shrubs on grazing land, while others use a "cut and carry" method in which farmers grow fields of trees and shrubs, such as the Mexican sunflower, and distribute the fresh cuttings to cows in pastures.
On his family’s 700-acre El Hatico farm in the Cauca Valley of Colombia, Molina, 55, has reforested two-thirds of his pastures for silvopastoral grazing with the help of his brother, Enrique; his son, Juan José, 28; and farm hands. Some 110 acres remain conventional grassland with large canopy trees scattered throughout.
Molina has trained cattle producers from other parts of Colombia, as well as Mexico and Costa Rica. Additionally, producers in Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil, and Rwanda, as well as more developed countries like New Zealand and Australia, are using intensive silvopastoral practices to increase livestock production and conserve land.
At the heart of Colombia’s silvopastoral system is the leucaena plant, a legume tree whose shoots, leaves, and seed pods pack protein. It also grows like a weed. The plant’s leaves are feathery and allow sunlight to reach grass growing below, but its sturdy branches can withstand hefty browsing by cattle.
Bacteria in the nodes of the leucaena roots also "fix" nitrogen up to three feet deep, which helps to fertilize the soil naturally. While conventional pastures require expensive applications of fertilizer and herbicides, silvopastoral systems thrive with little or no chemical additives or irrigation, says Murgueitio. Dense vegetation reduces weed growth and retains soil moisture.
In Colombia, planting a silvopastoral system costs between $1,000 and $2,000 per hectare, depending on the combination of trees and shrubs used — 7,000 shrubs, or 5,000 shrubs and 500 trees. For farmers seeking an economic return, one of the immediate benefits of silvopastoral grazing is increased milk production.
Within four months of establishing plants and fodder shrubs in her fields, Estella Dominguez said her cows were able to be milked twice a day for the first time ever. And with fewer fertilizers and weed killers to buy, she has made more money. Like Dominguez, most farmers earn a return on their investment in two years.
With so many environmental, ecological, and economic benefits, why haven’t more farmers adopted the practice?
"The biggest barrier is the Marlboro man image," says Julián Chará, a researcher at CIPAV. Cattle ranching has a five-century history in Colombia. Historically, it’s been a low-cost activity involving one main ingredient: grass.
"Ranchers have this belief that trees and pastures are not compatible," said Chará. "Usually, a farmer will have a large tree in a pasture that provides heavy shade, and under it nothing grows because that’s where all the cattle gather when it’s hot."
The planting of trees and shrubs requires livestock producers to shift their thinking about the value of trees and think more about soil as a living organism that can grow layers of food for cattle, he explained.
With evenly shaded pastures, dairy cattle stay cooler and eat throughout the day. Shade and dense brush retains soil moisture and nutrients and leads to evenly distributed deposits of manure, rather than all in one spot, Chará says.
Until now, neither banks nor ranchers have wanted to invest in planting trees and shrubs in pastureland. High up-front costs have posed a barrier, in addition to the expertise needed to plant and maintain the trees. Amy Lerner, a researcher at Princeton University who has been studying agroforestry in Colombia, cited another issue. Most land ownership in Colombia is informal, she said. Because titles are not recorded by smallholders, banks cannot grant loans for planting trees and improving pastures.
Nevertheless, investment in agroforestry systems is increasing, thanks to new incentives, real gains with sustainable grazing systems, and the risks associated with maintaining the status quo in an era of climate change.
Fabiola Vega stumbled onto the idea of raising livestock with agroforestry methods in 2012 when she heard a presentation at a community meeting on how to sustainably raise cattle. Right then she decided to intensify her cattle production. Her farm, La Cabaña, is located in the Andean foothills of the northern Cauca Valley in Colombia. Previously the region was primarily known for its coffee plantations, but weather extremes and climate change have taken a toll, she said.
"I was hardly getting a return on my coffee investment, so I bought a herd of cows to diversify," she says.
Then, with a $20,000 loan backed by the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank, she bought trees and shrubs and replaced barren hillsides — once planted with coffee — with Mexican sunflower bushes, leucaena trees, and guinea and star grasses.
Her cattle thrived. The landscape now provides environmental benefits such as water conservation and forest cover, and her loan was discounted 40 percent by the GEF/World Bank fund.
Vega, who bought La Cabaña 22 years ago with coffee profits, will only need to pay back $12,000. More importantly, she said her farm are now economically stable. The calving rate of her cows was 100 percent this year. The average for conventional cattle ranches is 52 percent, according to CIPAV.
Enrique Murgueitio of CIPAV says that science-based solutions like silvopastoral systems are only now beginning to fulfill their potential as climate risks are becoming clearer.
"Agriculture and livestock producers in tropical regions are most affected by climate change," said Murgueitio.
"Erratic weather and periods of extreme events such as the La Niña of 2010 and 2011 meant huge losses and steep drops in yields in Latin America. Those using silvopastoral systems were insulated from the effects."
Since cows have shade as well as food in agroforestry systems, many using silvopastoral techniques didn’t need irrigation during the La Niña drought.
Murgueitio says that some people may scoff at the sustainability innovations in cattle production because emissions from ruminants are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases. Yet cattle raised using silvopastoral techniques can digest the forage more easily and reduce their methane emissions by 20 percent, according to researcher Michael Peters of the International Center or Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Colombia.
The systems also enhance carbon sequestration in both trees and soils and reduce the need to use fire for pasture management.
"Cattle ranching is seen as eco-bad no matter what," says Lerner of Princeton University. "But there is a huge portion of global land area in pasture. Is there a way we can make these pastures better?"
[END REPORT]
From the e360 website:
* ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Palmer is a freelance journalist and writer based in Maryland. She reports on energy, climate change, the environment, and sustainable business for publications such as Slate, Scientific American, and The Guardian. Travel funding for this story was provided by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. Previously for e360, Palmer reported on Peabody Energy's expansion into an uncertain overseas coal market.
MORE ON A RELATED TOPIC FROM YALE e360
Controlling the Ranching Boom in the Amazon
Clearing land for cattle is responsible for 80 percent of rainforest loss in the Brazilian Amazon. But with Amazon ranching now a multi-billion dollar business, corporate buyers of beef and leather, including Wal-Mart, are starting to demand that the destruction of the forest be halted. [...]
********
The plants provide his 90 head of cattle with vertical layers of grazing, leading to twice the milk and meat production per acre while reducing the amount of land needed to raise them
In Colombia's Cauca Valley, cattle first eat leucaena leaves, then tropical grasses. Beneath the leucaena are three types of tropical grasses and groundcover such as peanuts.
The fires are getting hotter. As the air gets warmer it sucks moisture from the trees and the soil in which they're rooted. The forests burn like lint as fires hot as hell rage across thousands of acres, fires so hot they sterilize the soil, stopping tree seeds from growing. The thinner the forest, the more the cycle intensifies, and even without the wildfires the moisture drawn from the trees and soil is a forest killer.
All over the world, forest management experts are studying the death of forests in the American southwest and seeing the future, the world's future. There is a point of no return, a point where Nature can't repair itself. From Caroline Fraser's June 2013 analysis for Yale's e360, Megadrought in U.S. Southwest: A Bad Omen for Forests Globally:
:[In 2013] NASA published a study on megadrought in the Amazon, where severe drought in 2005 caused a dieback of old-growth canopy across an area the size of California, covering 30 percent of the Amazon. Rainfall gradually recovered, but to the researchers’ surprise, satellite images revealed that the damage has been lasting. Caused by the same warming of Atlantic sea surface temperatures that empowered Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, that once-in-a-century drought was quickly followed by another in 2010, affecting almost half the Amazon. The forest canopy loss appears related to prolonged drought stress.It's not only the Amazon. There are "well-documented recent forest die-offs in Spain, Greece, Russia, Australia, and, of course, North America, all places that have seen recent severe wildfires." The increasing concern:
... is that the planet could see widespread and abrupt forest collapse caused by droughts, that rainforests could begin producing more carbon than they sequester (which the Amazon experienced in 2005 and 2010), and that drought could push the expansion of the dry subtropics into critically important agricultural areas, with devastating consequences for world food production.What's wrong with the above picture?
Close your eyes for a minute, recall cattle-herding scenes from John Ford's Western movies. See cattle, grazing their way through thousands of acres of range brush. There weren't many trees on those ranges, were there?
So one day, in a conference room in a Las Vegas hotel at one of those World Is Ending global warming summits, a bunch of farmers, cattlemen, agricultural scientists, environmentalists, botanists, forest experts and a group of ladies from a quilt-making club in Wisconsin who wandered in by mistake, listened as the speaker went to the podium, cleared his throat, and said, "It's possible we've been doing this wrong. Instead of trying to lower the water we should think about raising the bridge."
After a moment of confused silence someone called out from the back of the room, "Let's do this!" and everyone broke into cheers then pulled out legal pads and #2 pencils. There was a lot of doodling on the notepads at first. But eventually, over a period of decades, from ideas taken from the four quarters of the world and cutting edge science and age-old farming practices, the Promised Land took shape.....
(See this Wikipedia article for an introduction to silvopasture, which is "the practice of combining forestry and grazing of domesticated animals in a mutually beneficial way." See the Yale e360 website for links to the numerous sources quoted in the following report. Although I tend to view private-public partnerships with caution, the instances discussed in the report seem to be working well.)
In the Pastures of Colombia, Cows, Crops and Timber Coexist
13 Mar 2014: Analysis
By Lisa Palmer *
Environment360 (Yale University)
As an ambitious program in Colombia demonstrates, combining grazing and agriculture with tree cultivation can coax more food from each acre, boost farmers’ incomes, restore degraded landscapes, and make farmland more resilient to climate change.
Over the last two decades, cattle rancher Carlos Hernando Molina has replaced 220 acres of open pastureland with trees, shrubs, and bushy vegetation. But he hasn’t eliminated the cows. Today, his land in southwestern Colombia more closely resembles a perennial nursery at a garden center than a grazing area. Native, high-value timber like mahogany and samanea grow close together along the perimeter of the pasture. The trees are strung with electric wire and act as live fences. In the middle of the pen grow leucaena trees, a protein-packed forage tree, and beneath the leucaena are three types of tropical grasses and groundcover such as peanuts. The plants provide his 90 head of cattle with vertical layers of grazing, leading to twice the milk and meat production per acre while reducing the amount of land needed to raise them.
His operation is part of a trend globally to sustainably coax more food from each acre — without chemicals and fertilizers — while reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing biodiversity, and enhancing the land’s ability to withstand the effects of climate change.
Livestock and their food needs take up 30 percent of land globally, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. In Colombia, where cattle occupy 80 percent of agricultural area, pastures have contributed to soil degradation and deforestation and, in dry areas, have hastened desertification, according to Julián Chará, a researcher at the Center for Research in Sustainable Systems of Agriculture, CIPAV, in Cali, Colombia. But a new paradigm is emerging. Land conservation is happening alongside livestock production.
In Colombia, Molina’s brand of so-called "sustainable intensification" is the favored agroforestry practice for livestock production. Agroforestry cultivates trees with food crops or livestock, while farmers make use of the trees’ ecological benefits. Plantains grow above shade-loving coffee. Valuable hardwoods like oak grow in alleys next to corn and wheat.
"People don’t think of ranching when they think of agroforestry," says David Cleary, strategy director for agriculture at The Nature Conservancy. "But what is happening in Colombia is a reminder that you have to have a broader definition of agroforestry and make it work with any number of agricultural systems. In Colombia, silvopastoral systems are favored because they can work for both smallholder farms as well as large, private-sector-style ranching."
In addition to the economic benefits of raising more food and timber products per acre, agroforestry is praised for its ability to help farmers, ecosystems, and animals contend with the effects of climate change, according to the World Agroforestry Center in Kenya. Although the advantages of agroforestry are well proven, the cost and technical complexities are among the factors holding back the movement, says Enrique Murgueitio, executive director of CIPAV.
Like many in the tropics, Colombia’s farmers want to increase their productivity and income while reducing their vulnerability to weather extremes and degraded pastures, which have had devastating effects during periods of drought, Murgueitio explained.
With silvopastoral systems, cattle ranchers can produce the same amount of dairy, meat, and timber products in half the land area, according to research at CIPAV.
Public-private partnerships have emerged to support the conversion to silvopastoral systems. CIPAV — along with Colombia’s Cattle Ranching Federation (FEDEGAN), The Nature Conservancy and the UN’s Global Environment Facility — have invested $42 million in a five-year project to boost sustainable agricultural production in Colombia, according to The World Bank. The money will help 2,000 ranchers with financing and technical assistance to raise cattle using agroforestry practices. Among the goals of the project are to increase incomes from milk and beef production and decrease the use of fertilizers and herbicides by 30 percent.
The government of the United Kingdom also is providing an additional $25 million to support the growth of silvopastoral systems in Colombia and climate programs in Africa.
Using intensive silvopastoral systems, Colombia’s National Development Plan for cattle ranching seeks to reduce pasture land from 38 million hectares (94 million acres) to 28 million hectares (70 million acres), while increasing cattle numbers from 23 million head to 40 million, according to CIPAV. Some ranchers have planted trees and shrubs on grazing land, while others use a "cut and carry" method in which farmers grow fields of trees and shrubs, such as the Mexican sunflower, and distribute the fresh cuttings to cows in pastures.
On his family’s 700-acre El Hatico farm in the Cauca Valley of Colombia, Molina, 55, has reforested two-thirds of his pastures for silvopastoral grazing with the help of his brother, Enrique; his son, Juan José, 28; and farm hands. Some 110 acres remain conventional grassland with large canopy trees scattered throughout.
Molina has trained cattle producers from other parts of Colombia, as well as Mexico and Costa Rica. Additionally, producers in Nicaragua, Panama, Brazil, and Rwanda, as well as more developed countries like New Zealand and Australia, are using intensive silvopastoral practices to increase livestock production and conserve land.
At the heart of Colombia’s silvopastoral system is the leucaena plant, a legume tree whose shoots, leaves, and seed pods pack protein. It also grows like a weed. The plant’s leaves are feathery and allow sunlight to reach grass growing below, but its sturdy branches can withstand hefty browsing by cattle.
Bacteria in the nodes of the leucaena roots also "fix" nitrogen up to three feet deep, which helps to fertilize the soil naturally. While conventional pastures require expensive applications of fertilizer and herbicides, silvopastoral systems thrive with little or no chemical additives or irrigation, says Murgueitio. Dense vegetation reduces weed growth and retains soil moisture.
In Colombia, planting a silvopastoral system costs between $1,000 and $2,000 per hectare, depending on the combination of trees and shrubs used — 7,000 shrubs, or 5,000 shrubs and 500 trees. For farmers seeking an economic return, one of the immediate benefits of silvopastoral grazing is increased milk production.
Within four months of establishing plants and fodder shrubs in her fields, Estella Dominguez said her cows were able to be milked twice a day for the first time ever. And with fewer fertilizers and weed killers to buy, she has made more money. Like Dominguez, most farmers earn a return on their investment in two years.
With so many environmental, ecological, and economic benefits, why haven’t more farmers adopted the practice?
"The biggest barrier is the Marlboro man image," says Julián Chará, a researcher at CIPAV. Cattle ranching has a five-century history in Colombia. Historically, it’s been a low-cost activity involving one main ingredient: grass.
"Ranchers have this belief that trees and pastures are not compatible," said Chará. "Usually, a farmer will have a large tree in a pasture that provides heavy shade, and under it nothing grows because that’s where all the cattle gather when it’s hot."
The planting of trees and shrubs requires livestock producers to shift their thinking about the value of trees and think more about soil as a living organism that can grow layers of food for cattle, he explained.
With evenly shaded pastures, dairy cattle stay cooler and eat throughout the day. Shade and dense brush retains soil moisture and nutrients and leads to evenly distributed deposits of manure, rather than all in one spot, Chará says.
Until now, neither banks nor ranchers have wanted to invest in planting trees and shrubs in pastureland. High up-front costs have posed a barrier, in addition to the expertise needed to plant and maintain the trees. Amy Lerner, a researcher at Princeton University who has been studying agroforestry in Colombia, cited another issue. Most land ownership in Colombia is informal, she said. Because titles are not recorded by smallholders, banks cannot grant loans for planting trees and improving pastures.
Nevertheless, investment in agroforestry systems is increasing, thanks to new incentives, real gains with sustainable grazing systems, and the risks associated with maintaining the status quo in an era of climate change.
Fabiola Vega stumbled onto the idea of raising livestock with agroforestry methods in 2012 when she heard a presentation at a community meeting on how to sustainably raise cattle. Right then she decided to intensify her cattle production. Her farm, La Cabaña, is located in the Andean foothills of the northern Cauca Valley in Colombia. Previously the region was primarily known for its coffee plantations, but weather extremes and climate change have taken a toll, she said.
"I was hardly getting a return on my coffee investment, so I bought a herd of cows to diversify," she says.
Then, with a $20,000 loan backed by the Global Environment Facility and the World Bank, she bought trees and shrubs and replaced barren hillsides — once planted with coffee — with Mexican sunflower bushes, leucaena trees, and guinea and star grasses.
Her cattle thrived. The landscape now provides environmental benefits such as water conservation and forest cover, and her loan was discounted 40 percent by the GEF/World Bank fund.
Vega, who bought La Cabaña 22 years ago with coffee profits, will only need to pay back $12,000. More importantly, she said her farm are now economically stable. The calving rate of her cows was 100 percent this year. The average for conventional cattle ranches is 52 percent, according to CIPAV.
Enrique Murgueitio of CIPAV says that science-based solutions like silvopastoral systems are only now beginning to fulfill their potential as climate risks are becoming clearer.
"Agriculture and livestock producers in tropical regions are most affected by climate change," said Murgueitio.
"Erratic weather and periods of extreme events such as the La Niña of 2010 and 2011 meant huge losses and steep drops in yields in Latin America. Those using silvopastoral systems were insulated from the effects."
Since cows have shade as well as food in agroforestry systems, many using silvopastoral techniques didn’t need irrigation during the La Niña drought.
Murgueitio says that some people may scoff at the sustainability innovations in cattle production because emissions from ruminants are one of the largest sources of greenhouse gases. Yet cattle raised using silvopastoral techniques can digest the forage more easily and reduce their methane emissions by 20 percent, according to researcher Michael Peters of the International Center or Tropical Agriculture in Cali, Colombia.
The systems also enhance carbon sequestration in both trees and soils and reduce the need to use fire for pasture management.
"Cattle ranching is seen as eco-bad no matter what," says Lerner of Princeton University. "But there is a huge portion of global land area in pasture. Is there a way we can make these pastures better?"
[END REPORT]
From the e360 website:
* ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lisa Palmer is a freelance journalist and writer based in Maryland. She reports on energy, climate change, the environment, and sustainable business for publications such as Slate, Scientific American, and The Guardian. Travel funding for this story was provided by a grant from the Solutions Journalism Network. Previously for e360, Palmer reported on Peabody Energy's expansion into an uncertain overseas coal market.
MORE ON A RELATED TOPIC FROM YALE e360
Controlling the Ranching Boom in the Amazon
Clearing land for cattle is responsible for 80 percent of rainforest loss in the Brazilian Amazon. But with Amazon ranching now a multi-billion dollar business, corporate buyers of beef and leather, including Wal-Mart, are starting to demand that the destruction of the forest be halted. [...]
********
Saturday, May 17
USA's Expanding, Intensifying Drought. Also note use of what is now the most popular mantra in USA: "However, they did not anticipate"
See the Mashable website for links to sources mentioned in the following report. The title is misleading because the report isn't only about California's drought; it's also a helpful overview of where the 2014 drought is in the USA:
"Mashable is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 34 million unique visitors worldwide and 15 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco."
********
California Suffers Astonishingly Fast Snowpack Melt as Drought IntensifiesAnd now a few words about Mashable, from their website:
by Andrew Freedman
April 17, 2014
Mashable
The severe drought that threatens water supplies and a potentially devastating wildfire season is deepening and locking into place across much of the far West, Southwest and Southern Plains, according to new climate data released Thursday.
In California's Sierra Nevada Mountains, where runoff from the spring snowpack provides much-needed water supplies during the dry season, half of the snowpack's liquid water equivalent melted in just the past week in some areas, due to temperatures that soared as high as 12 degrees Fahrenheit above average of early April, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
To make matters worse, the sudden snow melt in California barely boosted reservoir supplies, which remain well below average across the state. See also: "Snow Survey Reveals Depth of California's Water Woes"
Officials already knew that the snowpack was unusually thin and would provide below average amounts of water when it melted, considering that the state had its third-driest winter on record, following its driest calendar year in 2013. However, they did not anticipate it would melt so quickly.
The California state snow survey on April 1 found that the snowpack contained just 32% of the average water content at that time of year, when snowpack typically reaches its annual peak. This placed 2014 as among the lowest water-content years on record since such data [collection] began in 1930.
The California drought is part of a broader regional drought that encompasses parts of Oregon, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, among other areas.
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said the California drought is likely to persist throughout the summer, after average precipitation fell during March. This precipitation failed to make up for the deep precipitation deficits the state had been running.
Southern Plains Drought
According to NOAA, drought has expanded and intensified in the Southern Plains as well, where parts of Oklahoma and Texas have been stuck in devastatingly arid conditions since 2010.
The geographic extent of extreme and exceptional drought has increased nearly four-fold in Texas, more than five-fold in Oklahoma, and nearly six-fold in New Mexico since the beginning of winter, according to David Brown, a NOAA climate specialist.
New Mexico has had its third-driest start to the year, and Oklahoma and Texas have each had their sixth-driest starts to the year, Brown says.
Nearly two million Southern Plains residents are currently living in areas with "extreme" or "exceptional" drought conditions, which are the two worst categories on the Drought Monitor's scale.
The number of affected residents more than doubled since the start of winter, according to Brown. Most of these people are in west Texas and the Texas panhandle, including the cities of Lubbock, Amarillo and Wichita Falls.
Texas Drought Monitor [see website for visual]
[...]
In Wichita Falls, city officials are preparing to raise their water restrictions to an unprecedented "Stage 5" emergency, which would trigger dramatic restrictions on water use.
[...]
Since the start of the drought in October 2010, Wichita Falls has had about 58 inches of rain (and melted snow and ice), Brown said. The typical amount for that period of time is 100 inches. This means that the city needs to make up about a year and a half's worth of precipitation. Alleviating the drought this spring and summer, Brown says, "would really take an unprecedented amount of spring rainfall."
Victor Murphy, a NOAA meteorologist, gave Mashable further details on Wichita Falls' plight. He said data shows that the past 42 months have been the driest such consecutive period on record in that city, eclipsing any of the drought years in the 1950s and the 1930s "Dust Bowl" era.
For water planning purposes, the early 1950s drought is considered to be the drought of record, meaning that the current drought is worse than what policymakers may have prepared for.
The drought is raising concerns about wildfires and massive dust storms this summer, and has already caused an agricultural disaster in the Southern Plains.
[...]
Although May and June are Texas and Oklahoma's wettest months on average, there is such a big rainfall deficit in parts of these states that the drought will almost certainly not be fully eliminated.
If an El Niño event develops as expected by the fall, it could lead to unusually wet conditions from California to Texas next winter, but that is neither guaranteed to happen, nor would it be of any help in the short term.
[...]
"Mashable is a leading source for news, information and resources for the Connected Generation. Mashable reports on the importance of digital innovation and how it empowers and inspires people around the world. Mashable's record 34 million unique visitors worldwide and 15 million social media followers are one of the most influential and engaged online communities. Founded in 2005, Mashable is headquartered in New York City with an office in San Francisco."
********
Friday, May 16
Wildfire Smoke Carries Dire Health Impact Far: Nearly 22 states "had no wildfires within their borders ... but eight of them still had at least one week of medium to high-intensity smoky air."
San Diego wildfires send smoky air across southern California reads the headline from the Los Angeles Times, datelined today. Nearly 20,000 acres from 10 "brushfires" had gone up in smoke by today. And it's not as if the wildfire season is just getting underway: because of historic drought conditions in California, wildfire season is now all year long.
Whether or not the climate change is "human induced," as a study quoted in the following report terms it, and whether or not the climate change is simply part of a cycle, the situation with wildfires in combination with droughts is becoming dire in California. But here, a suprising report from last year on smoke from wildfires throughout the USA:
Wildfire smoke becoming a serious health hazard
Wendy Koch, USA TODAY October 25, 2013
Study: Two-thirds of of Americans lived in areas with smoky air in 2011 as wildfire risks spread hundreds of miles downwind from burning acreage.
Texas was hit hardest in 2011, when medium to high-density smoke lingered at least a week in areas that are home to 25 million people, according to the analysis based on smoke data from federal weather satellites. Knowlton say most of the smoke came from wildfires, but the data don't tease out which ones were intentional for forest management. ["controlled" burns]
Illinois, which recorded no wildfires within its borders, ranked second with nearly 12 million residents affected by smoke that drifted in from elsewhere. The other eight states with the most residents exposed to smoky air were, in descending order: Florida, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Alabama, Oklahoma and Iowa.
Nearly two dozen, or 22, states had no wildfires within their borders in 2011, but eight of them still had at least one week of medium to high-intensity smoky air: Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Wisconsin and Ohio.
Only 18 states and the District of Columbia had no residents exposed to at least a week of smoke that year, although five of them -- Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah -- had acreage burn from wildfires.
The problem will only get worse, Knowlton says, citing scientific research that shows human-induced climate change is causing higher temperatures and, in some areas, more drought.
"Our landscapes are becoming more of a tinderbox," she says.
During 2011, the most recent year for which NRDC could get extensive government data, heat waves and drought made many areas vulnerable to wildfire. That year, 8.7 million acres burned nationwide -- the fourth highest since 1985, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, a federal agency. Even more acres, 9.3 million, burned last year.
"Heat waves are very likely to occur more frequently and last longer," Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Working Group 1, said last month in announcing the findings of the Fifth Assessment Report. He said the panel, created by the United Nations, generally expects to see "currently wet regions receiving more rainfall, and dry regions receiving less.
"The nation's Western forests will be "increasingly affected by large and intense fires that occur more frequently," concludes the draft of the third National Climate Assessment, compiled by hundreds of scientists and released earlier this year.
That report says eastern forests are less likely to see immediate increases in wildfires, except if unusual conditions coalesce such as those that have occurred recently in Florida.
The health impacts can be dire. The 2003 wildfire season in southern California resulted in 69 premature deaths, 778 hospitalizations, 1,431 emergency room visits and 47,605 outpatient visits, according to a study led by Ralph Delfino of the University of California, Irvine.
The NRDC report says that while more states are trying to warn residents of the health risks posed by wildfires, more monitoring stations are needed. If air quality reports are poor or it looks smoky outside, the group recommends people stay indoors, keep windows closed and avoid using fireplaces or other items that create smoke.
[END REPORT]
********
Whether or not the climate change is "human induced," as a study quoted in the following report terms it, and whether or not the climate change is simply part of a cycle, the situation with wildfires in combination with droughts is becoming dire in California. But here, a suprising report from last year on smoke from wildfires throughout the USA:
Wildfire smoke becoming a serious health hazard
Wendy Koch, USA TODAY October 25, 2013
Study: Two-thirds of of Americans lived in areas with smoky air in 2011 as wildfire risks spread hundreds of miles downwind from burning acreage.
Texas was hit hardest in 2011, when medium to high-density smoke lingered at least a week in areas that are home to 25 million people, according to the analysis based on smoke data from federal weather satellites. Knowlton say most of the smoke came from wildfires, but the data don't tease out which ones were intentional for forest management. ["controlled" burns]
Illinois, which recorded no wildfires within its borders, ranked second with nearly 12 million residents affected by smoke that drifted in from elsewhere. The other eight states with the most residents exposed to smoky air were, in descending order: Florida, Missouri, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Alabama, Oklahoma and Iowa.
Nearly two dozen, or 22, states had no wildfires within their borders in 2011, but eight of them still had at least one week of medium to high-intensity smoky air: Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, Indiana, Wisconsin and Ohio.
Only 18 states and the District of Columbia had no residents exposed to at least a week of smoke that year, although five of them -- Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada and Utah -- had acreage burn from wildfires.
The problem will only get worse, Knowlton says, citing scientific research that shows human-induced climate change is causing higher temperatures and, in some areas, more drought.
"Our landscapes are becoming more of a tinderbox," she says.
During 2011, the most recent year for which NRDC could get extensive government data, heat waves and drought made many areas vulnerable to wildfire. That year, 8.7 million acres burned nationwide -- the fourth highest since 1985, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, a federal agency. Even more acres, 9.3 million, burned last year.
"Heat waves are very likely to occur more frequently and last longer," Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Working Group 1, said last month in announcing the findings of the Fifth Assessment Report. He said the panel, created by the United Nations, generally expects to see "currently wet regions receiving more rainfall, and dry regions receiving less.
"The nation's Western forests will be "increasingly affected by large and intense fires that occur more frequently," concludes the draft of the third National Climate Assessment, compiled by hundreds of scientists and released earlier this year.
That report says eastern forests are less likely to see immediate increases in wildfires, except if unusual conditions coalesce such as those that have occurred recently in Florida.
The health impacts can be dire. The 2003 wildfire season in southern California resulted in 69 premature deaths, 778 hospitalizations, 1,431 emergency room visits and 47,605 outpatient visits, according to a study led by Ralph Delfino of the University of California, Irvine.
The NRDC report says that while more states are trying to warn residents of the health risks posed by wildfires, more monitoring stations are needed. If air quality reports are poor or it looks smoky outside, the group recommends people stay indoors, keep windows closed and avoid using fireplaces or other items that create smoke.
[END REPORT]
********
"The Minority Report" Revisited: Pre-criminalizing the governed in the era of unrestricted surveillance
Introduction
Readers who saw former NSA Chief Keith Alexander's interview with PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff on Tuesday, and who are knowledgeable about the issues connected with the release of classified NSA files, would know that he was selling the Brooklyn Bridge. (Here is the interview transcript.)
Not only did he lie, he lied in the best tradition of the disinformation specialist, which is that if you make the lies big enough people will assume that at least some part of what they're told must be true. Keith Alexander lied from beginning to end, from the soup to the dessert course.
As to why Woodruff sat there like a stump on a log and returned only cream puff questions: perhaps because PBS, which premiered FRONTLINE's United States of Secrets that same night, followed the "equal time" rule to allow Alexander a rebuttal to FRONTLINE. If so, PBS confused a matter of gravest and most urgent national importance with legislation up for a Senate vote, whereby TV news gives Democrats and Republicans equal air time to promote their respective positions.
Yet it could be that Woodruff doesn't fully understand the issues involved, allowing Alexander to talk rings around her. If that's the case, her lapses in knowledge would put her in large company. The complexity and large number of the classified NSA programs being released to the public have meant a daunting task for those in the public trying to get a handle on what the programs add up to.
To convey the extent to which Alexander lied, the key NSA program to understand is something called XKeyscore. I think the best discussion of the program for the general public is still the Guardian's original July 31 report on XKeyscore, which "allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals ..."
It's also important to get an idea of the extent to which Alexander lied to Woodruff about NSA's ability to foil terrorist plots. This analysis by a national security expert named Teun van Dongen is the clearest deconstruction I've found of NSA's wildly overstated claims. (Hat Tip: Truth Out)
The rest of this writing is my response to remarks made by "Colonel Bunny" in the Pundita comment section about my post on Stratfor Chief George Friedman's analysis of the NSA. I've also published Bunny's comments at the end of this post.
I think his main defense of NSA rests in the high priority he's given to the issue of protecting America against terrorist attacks; I've specifically addressed this starting in paragraph 18 of my reply.
This writing also addresses, briefly, the issue of SIGINT (signals or 'machine' intelligence gathering) versus HUMINT (using humans for intelligence gathering). The issue is the most underreported aspect of the NSA Affair, yet it's one of the most important. NSA apologists have studiously overlooked the issue in their claims that Edward Snowden has done great harm to America's intelligence-gathering capabilities. Actually his revelations have been an Eleventh Hour wake-up call that SIGINT has been overly applied and with awfully dangerous results.
********
1. NSA's scorched-earth approach to data collection "pre-criminalizes" the American populace. The approach was mounted at the behest of the U.S. Executive and Congressional branches of government and received full cooperation from the U.S. military and all the nation's security agencies.
2. Pre-criminalizing people holds them responsible for a crime that hasn't been conceived, plotted or committed and might never be conceived, plotted or committed.
3. I know of only one other instance in which a government has pre-criminalized ("pre-crimed" for short) the governed. This was a Canadian law known as Section 13, recently stricken down by an act of the Canadian Parliament.
4. The concept of pre-criming is so alien to any rational and humane concept of justice, so alien to any Western judicial system, that in 2008 when I set out to explain Section 13 to Pundita readers I had to turn to dystopian fiction, to Philip K. Dick's The Minority Report, to find a rough analogy that would help illustrate the meaning of pre-criming.
5. Yet at least targets of Section 13 got a warning. They were notified by the Canadian Human Rights Commission or its provincial versions that they were being investigated by the state for an alleged violation. No such warning is attached to the NSA's electronic metadata collection, which is as silent as carbon monoxide.
6. Because the concept of pre-crime is unknown outside science fiction and that one instance in Canada, criticism of the NSA metadata collection program has been framed in terms such as "privacy invasion," "suspicionless surveillance," "preemptive surveillance," and so on.
7. These characterizations are true as far as they go but don't convey the scope of the issue. What NSA has been doing goes beyond even the surveillance that is characteristic of a totalitarian police state, which only criminalizes the governed; i.e., puts them under suspicion for crimes against the state. Again, NSA surveillance holds the governed responsible for crimes that may never be conceived.
8. This is not only subversion of the First and Fourth Constitutional Amendments. This is the stuff of Franz Kafka's worst nightmares. A rational and humane system of justice cannot survive if a person is in effect guilty of crimes yet unconceived and uncommitted because of the mere fact of his existence. Yet this is just what NSA's approach to surveillance presumes.
9. That Michael Hayden is saying the NSA's "collect it all" approach doesn't actually mean collecting it all -- he is saying that now (as he did at the Toronto debate), after NSA was caught red-handed collecting it all. And Hayden's words are no assurance that the U.S. government will apply any more than a Band-Aid to its totalitarian approach to surveillance.
10. Anyone who assumes that the technology doesn't exist to store it all -- "all" meaning absolutely everything that occurs as a digital or electronic communication -- is misinformed. That's what the NSA's Utah facility was built to do eventually. See this Forbes July 2013 report, Blueprints Of NSA's Ridiculously Expensive Data Center In Utah Suggest Its Storage Capacity is Less Impressive Than Thought. Read the entire report to understand that the headline is somewhat misleading. That the facility doesn't seem as yet to have the capacity to store it all, the capacity can be readily expanded.
11. I'm not sure what Colonel Bunny means by privacy. But the U.S. government has a growing ability and willingness to pinpoint and project the physical location of any citizen at any time and also his reason for being at any one physical location, and do this within a matter of moments and without the citizen's knowledge. This goes far beyond a privacy issue. It is the attempt to render an entire society into a prison. Electronic metadata collection in combination with other digital technologies can do just that.
12. The point was brought home by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman during his talk at the SXSW conference in March:
Yes. Until Snowden began his teaching mission the vast majority of Americans, even ones who considered themselves tech savvy, had no idea that the world depicted in the film The Matrix, in which there is no place to hide from agents of the state, was imminent in the United States -- the vaunted bastion of freedom.
13. There's no valid comparison between physician's records and NSA's collection of data on law-abiding citizens. So I don't understand why Colonel Bunny invoked the analogy. The patient is aware of his record, aware of what's in the record, and has a legal right to examine the record and point out errors and demand they be corrected. And by law the physician can't share information in the record with third parties without receiving written permission from the patient.
14. None of these considerations apply to NSA collection of data on private citizens. Moreover, by the simple fact of the NSA's collection and storage, the records become classified -- thereby making it impossible for a citizen without a security clearance to review the data that's been collected on him. Even if the citizen could obtain through FOIA his data record once it was declassified, the state reserves the right to heavily redact the record.
15. Moreover, because the data is collected in secret, it was not until Snowden revealed the classified NSA programs that American citizens had any idea that such information on them was being collected by the state. (Beyond certain persons in phone and Internet service provider companies who were forced to turn over records to NSA without the customers' knowledge.)
16. So to answer Bunny's rhetorical question, "Don't we already tolerate a certain amount of information in the hands of third persons?" -- yes we do, but we tolerate what we know about the collection of our personal information. And our tolerance is based on certain assumptions; e.g., that personal information we provide to, say, the Census Bureau or IRS won't be shared with parties that have no business with the information. It's the same with the facial recognition technologies that Bunny mentioned: we are aware of their existence and how they are used, and we consent to their use.
17. In short, Bunny's argument fails to make a distinction between "secrecy" and "secrecy that is kept secret." Americans understand the need for their government to carry out certain duties in secret and we consent to this. Yet without the consent of the governed there is no such thing as a democratic republic. There is only a Potemkin democracy, a democracy of the voting booth -- a ritual made empty by the fact that voters are only allowed to consent to changes in personnel but have no real control over what the personnel do in their capacities in government.
18. Regarding the security issue as it pertains to terrorism, Bunny wrote:
20. Alexander's remark studiously ignored the fact that it's well established that the NSA can collect data on suspected terrorists without doing the kind of blanket collection that violates the privacy of citizens who have no connection with terrorism.
21. An earlier NSA director, Michael Hayden, rejected a surveillance program called ThinThread in favor of one called Trailblazer, even after ThinThread was shown to work. ThinThread is a minimally invasive method of electronically gathering data on just those people who could reasonably have a connection with a terrorist suspect.
22. As to why on earth Hayden rejected ThinThread, it's never been made clear to the public, to my knowledge, or at least the answers don't hold water. However, cynics point out that the alternative he settled on is wildly expensive; i.e., it greatly increased NSA's budget and capacity to add a great many additional departments and employees to NSA.
23. There is a large amount of information available on the Internet about ThinThread, for anyone interested in learning the details on how it works. And I note the FRONTLINE documentary includes a discussion of ThinThread. Here's my post from last year on the topic and here's the Wikipedia article on ThinThread.
To wrap up the point, it's absolutely not true that we must choose between the current NSA approach and no approach.
24. The topper is that the current NSA approach hasn't worked: NSA's anti-terrorism surveillance program has been a catastrophic failure. I think this is one of the most surprising revelations to emerge from the NSA Affair.
25. That it doesn't work has been so well documented by independent investigations during this past year -- one launched by President Obama himself -- that it's not open to argument. Again, read van Dongen's discussion for details. And here are summaries of just two of the investigation findings, which I've taken from Wikipedia's article on Edward Snowden. (See the article for the sources; here I've only provided the source numbers):
27. The military's passion for SIGINT, as with its short-lived craze for POPCOIN (population-centric counterinsurgency tactics) in Afghanistan, is misapplied to uncovering terrorist plotting, much of which is the lone wolf variety. Moreover, it is laying waste to America's HUMINT capacities and making the U.S. far too dependent on the HUMINT operations of foreign governments -- several of which are Janus-faced.
28. If the NSA scandal teaches the military and Congress nothing else, I would hope it's that they must confront the limitations of SIGINT.
29. To return to Bunny's remark about Muslims, I don't know whether he's aware of a 2012 study that was partly funded by the Department of Homeland Security. It found that "extreme right-wing terrorism," not Islamic terrorism, is the biggest threat to American national security. A right-wing extremist to include a person "reverent of individual liberty" and one "suspicious of centralized federal authority."
30. The majority of the American population would probably fall in the category of a right-wing extremist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I venture Colonel Bunny needs to go back to the drawing board if he believes that NSA is only surveilling Muslim extremists.
31. In conclusion, there is no question that when Ed Snowden stood up to warn, America was already headed down a road that is the stuff of dystopian fiction and the nightmarish system of justice envisioned in Kafka's The Trial. Yet I end on a hopeful note. There has been steadily growing acknowledgment at the highest levels of the British government, which more than any other foreign government has been involved with NSA programs, of the great danger in unrestricted government surveillance of populations.
32. The acknowledgment is now being translated into action, as a May 9 Guardian report details. This could have far-reaching effects, not only among British Commonwealth governments that are part of the "Five Eyes" surveillance programs, but also in the United States.
33. It is a perversion of the concept of justice to criminalize people for acts they have not even conceived. This must be stopped. It would be fitting, I think, that the land that gave humanity the Magna Carta would lead us to a reiteration of its principles of justice.
********
Colonel Bunny's Remarks
The exclusionary rule was a salutary, practical disincentive for the state to violate the rights of citizens AND try to impose a sanction on the citizen based on what info was obtained by the violation.
One might be uncomfortable about the content of one's emails and phone conversations being stored in NSA computers but might that be compared to what information about oneself is contained in a physician's files? Don't we already tolerate a certain amount of information in the hands of third persons? Warranted or unwarranted invasion of privacy may be an irritant but it's a minor one by any measure compared to being a guest of the sheriff.
The Fourth Amendment speaks to "unreasonable" searches and in the context of PRISM-like activities directed at al Qaida it's not stupid or deceptive to argue that such searches are "reasonable."
Included in any debate should be a discussion of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine that appropriately elaborates on the exclusionary rule. Courts that are willing to declare such nonsense as that one has a lessened expectation of privacy in one's automobile or that "inventory" searches are not gross police end runs around the Fourth Amendment (or state equivalents) are well equipped to bless evidence of crime uncovered (as a result of the poisonous tree) if the police are willing to get creative about finding "independent" pointers that brought a miscreant to their attention.
Like any area in the criminal law, we have to take reality into account. Where the activities of Muslims are concerned, I'm willing to have NSA violate my privacy (without possibility of criminal penalty to me) in order to get at real scum. The alternative is no NSA collection at all and surely we can agree that that's not an option that we can afford.
Facial and license plate recognition technology is a related problem for the citizen. One argument in favor of such tools is that we have become such an anonymous and mobile people that we are far removed from the world of 1789. Then I would have been far more subject to "surveillance" of my neighbors and I would not have moved in a sea of faces, bodies, and closed vehicles. A horse thief could maybe make 50 miles a day. Today, a car thief can make 1,000 miles a day. Does recognition technology restore more of the realities of community life that existed without debate or worry in 1789?
[END REMARKS]
********
Readers who saw former NSA Chief Keith Alexander's interview with PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff on Tuesday, and who are knowledgeable about the issues connected with the release of classified NSA files, would know that he was selling the Brooklyn Bridge. (Here is the interview transcript.)
Not only did he lie, he lied in the best tradition of the disinformation specialist, which is that if you make the lies big enough people will assume that at least some part of what they're told must be true. Keith Alexander lied from beginning to end, from the soup to the dessert course.
As to why Woodruff sat there like a stump on a log and returned only cream puff questions: perhaps because PBS, which premiered FRONTLINE's United States of Secrets that same night, followed the "equal time" rule to allow Alexander a rebuttal to FRONTLINE. If so, PBS confused a matter of gravest and most urgent national importance with legislation up for a Senate vote, whereby TV news gives Democrats and Republicans equal air time to promote their respective positions.
Yet it could be that Woodruff doesn't fully understand the issues involved, allowing Alexander to talk rings around her. If that's the case, her lapses in knowledge would put her in large company. The complexity and large number of the classified NSA programs being released to the public have meant a daunting task for those in the public trying to get a handle on what the programs add up to.
To convey the extent to which Alexander lied, the key NSA program to understand is something called XKeyscore. I think the best discussion of the program for the general public is still the Guardian's original July 31 report on XKeyscore, which "allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals ..."
It's also important to get an idea of the extent to which Alexander lied to Woodruff about NSA's ability to foil terrorist plots. This analysis by a national security expert named Teun van Dongen is the clearest deconstruction I've found of NSA's wildly overstated claims. (Hat Tip: Truth Out)
The rest of this writing is my response to remarks made by "Colonel Bunny" in the Pundita comment section about my post on Stratfor Chief George Friedman's analysis of the NSA. I've also published Bunny's comments at the end of this post.
I think his main defense of NSA rests in the high priority he's given to the issue of protecting America against terrorist attacks; I've specifically addressed this starting in paragraph 18 of my reply.
This writing also addresses, briefly, the issue of SIGINT (signals or 'machine' intelligence gathering) versus HUMINT (using humans for intelligence gathering). The issue is the most underreported aspect of the NSA Affair, yet it's one of the most important. NSA apologists have studiously overlooked the issue in their claims that Edward Snowden has done great harm to America's intelligence-gathering capabilities. Actually his revelations have been an Eleventh Hour wake-up call that SIGINT has been overly applied and with awfully dangerous results.
********
1. NSA's scorched-earth approach to data collection "pre-criminalizes" the American populace. The approach was mounted at the behest of the U.S. Executive and Congressional branches of government and received full cooperation from the U.S. military and all the nation's security agencies.
2. Pre-criminalizing people holds them responsible for a crime that hasn't been conceived, plotted or committed and might never be conceived, plotted or committed.
3. I know of only one other instance in which a government has pre-criminalized ("pre-crimed" for short) the governed. This was a Canadian law known as Section 13, recently stricken down by an act of the Canadian Parliament.
4. The concept of pre-criming is so alien to any rational and humane concept of justice, so alien to any Western judicial system, that in 2008 when I set out to explain Section 13 to Pundita readers I had to turn to dystopian fiction, to Philip K. Dick's The Minority Report, to find a rough analogy that would help illustrate the meaning of pre-criming.
5. Yet at least targets of Section 13 got a warning. They were notified by the Canadian Human Rights Commission or its provincial versions that they were being investigated by the state for an alleged violation. No such warning is attached to the NSA's electronic metadata collection, which is as silent as carbon monoxide.
6. Because the concept of pre-crime is unknown outside science fiction and that one instance in Canada, criticism of the NSA metadata collection program has been framed in terms such as "privacy invasion," "suspicionless surveillance," "preemptive surveillance," and so on.
7. These characterizations are true as far as they go but don't convey the scope of the issue. What NSA has been doing goes beyond even the surveillance that is characteristic of a totalitarian police state, which only criminalizes the governed; i.e., puts them under suspicion for crimes against the state. Again, NSA surveillance holds the governed responsible for crimes that may never be conceived.
8. This is not only subversion of the First and Fourth Constitutional Amendments. This is the stuff of Franz Kafka's worst nightmares. A rational and humane system of justice cannot survive if a person is in effect guilty of crimes yet unconceived and uncommitted because of the mere fact of his existence. Yet this is just what NSA's approach to surveillance presumes.
9. That Michael Hayden is saying the NSA's "collect it all" approach doesn't actually mean collecting it all -- he is saying that now (as he did at the Toronto debate), after NSA was caught red-handed collecting it all. And Hayden's words are no assurance that the U.S. government will apply any more than a Band-Aid to its totalitarian approach to surveillance.
10. Anyone who assumes that the technology doesn't exist to store it all -- "all" meaning absolutely everything that occurs as a digital or electronic communication -- is misinformed. That's what the NSA's Utah facility was built to do eventually. See this Forbes July 2013 report, Blueprints Of NSA's Ridiculously Expensive Data Center In Utah Suggest Its Storage Capacity is Less Impressive Than Thought. Read the entire report to understand that the headline is somewhat misleading. That the facility doesn't seem as yet to have the capacity to store it all, the capacity can be readily expanded.
11. I'm not sure what Colonel Bunny means by privacy. But the U.S. government has a growing ability and willingness to pinpoint and project the physical location of any citizen at any time and also his reason for being at any one physical location, and do this within a matter of moments and without the citizen's knowledge. This goes far beyond a privacy issue. It is the attempt to render an entire society into a prison. Electronic metadata collection in combination with other digital technologies can do just that.
12. The point was brought home by Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalist Barton Gellman during his talk at the SXSW conference in March:
Gellman told of a colleague who said he wasn’t concerned about metadata and his privacy. The colleague used Twitter heavily and with location stamps. So Gellman downloaded three months worth of the colleague's Twitter location stamps and plotted them on a Google map, [revealing] the times, frequency and significance of each location. His horrified colleague consequently changed much of his behavior online.Gellman also observed, “One of the great gifts of Snowden is that he has shown what surveillance can do."
“I would rather someone listened in to all my phone calls than accessed my metadata. You can learn much more about me from the metadata," explained Gellman.
Yes. Until Snowden began his teaching mission the vast majority of Americans, even ones who considered themselves tech savvy, had no idea that the world depicted in the film The Matrix, in which there is no place to hide from agents of the state, was imminent in the United States -- the vaunted bastion of freedom.
13. There's no valid comparison between physician's records and NSA's collection of data on law-abiding citizens. So I don't understand why Colonel Bunny invoked the analogy. The patient is aware of his record, aware of what's in the record, and has a legal right to examine the record and point out errors and demand they be corrected. And by law the physician can't share information in the record with third parties without receiving written permission from the patient.
14. None of these considerations apply to NSA collection of data on private citizens. Moreover, by the simple fact of the NSA's collection and storage, the records become classified -- thereby making it impossible for a citizen without a security clearance to review the data that's been collected on him. Even if the citizen could obtain through FOIA his data record once it was declassified, the state reserves the right to heavily redact the record.
15. Moreover, because the data is collected in secret, it was not until Snowden revealed the classified NSA programs that American citizens had any idea that such information on them was being collected by the state. (Beyond certain persons in phone and Internet service provider companies who were forced to turn over records to NSA without the customers' knowledge.)
16. So to answer Bunny's rhetorical question, "Don't we already tolerate a certain amount of information in the hands of third persons?" -- yes we do, but we tolerate what we know about the collection of our personal information. And our tolerance is based on certain assumptions; e.g., that personal information we provide to, say, the Census Bureau or IRS won't be shared with parties that have no business with the information. It's the same with the facial recognition technologies that Bunny mentioned: we are aware of their existence and how they are used, and we consent to their use.
17. In short, Bunny's argument fails to make a distinction between "secrecy" and "secrecy that is kept secret." Americans understand the need for their government to carry out certain duties in secret and we consent to this. Yet without the consent of the governed there is no such thing as a democratic republic. There is only a Potemkin democracy, a democracy of the voting booth -- a ritual made empty by the fact that voters are only allowed to consent to changes in personnel but have no real control over what the personnel do in their capacities in government.
18. Regarding the security issue as it pertains to terrorism, Bunny wrote:
Like any area in the criminal law, we have to take reality into account. Where the activities of Muslims are concerned, I'm willing to have NSA violate my privacy (without possibility of criminal penalty to me) in order to get at real scum. The alternative is no NSA collection at all and surely we can agree that that's not an option that we can afford.19. Firstly, the alternative Bunny proposes is a false dilemma -- the same false dilemma that was famously invoked last year by then-NSA chief Keith Alexander in testimony before Congress, when he said that if the NSA programs weren't allowed to continue, people would die. By this he meant Americans would die in terrorist attacks.
20. Alexander's remark studiously ignored the fact that it's well established that the NSA can collect data on suspected terrorists without doing the kind of blanket collection that violates the privacy of citizens who have no connection with terrorism.
21. An earlier NSA director, Michael Hayden, rejected a surveillance program called ThinThread in favor of one called Trailblazer, even after ThinThread was shown to work. ThinThread is a minimally invasive method of electronically gathering data on just those people who could reasonably have a connection with a terrorist suspect.
22. As to why on earth Hayden rejected ThinThread, it's never been made clear to the public, to my knowledge, or at least the answers don't hold water. However, cynics point out that the alternative he settled on is wildly expensive; i.e., it greatly increased NSA's budget and capacity to add a great many additional departments and employees to NSA.
23. There is a large amount of information available on the Internet about ThinThread, for anyone interested in learning the details on how it works. And I note the FRONTLINE documentary includes a discussion of ThinThread. Here's my post from last year on the topic and here's the Wikipedia article on ThinThread.
To wrap up the point, it's absolutely not true that we must choose between the current NSA approach and no approach.
24. The topper is that the current NSA approach hasn't worked: NSA's anti-terrorism surveillance program has been a catastrophic failure. I think this is one of the most surprising revelations to emerge from the NSA Affair.
25. That it doesn't work has been so well documented by independent investigations during this past year -- one launched by President Obama himself -- that it's not open to argument. Again, read van Dongen's discussion for details. And here are summaries of just two of the investigation findings, which I've taken from Wikipedia's article on Edward Snowden. (See the article for the sources; here I've only provided the source numbers):
An analysis released by the New America Foundation in January 2014 reviewed 225 terrorism cases since the September 11 attacks found that the NSA's bulk collection of phone records "has had no discernible impact on preventing acts of terrorism", and that US governments' claims of the program's usefulness were "overblown".(349, 350) Officials maintained that the program was a good "insurance policy".(351)26. The NSA's failure at anti-terrorism surveillance is not the half of it. The extreme reliance on SIGINT for anti-terrorism intelligence gathering has siphoned critically needed funding from HUMINT programs, of the kind fielded by the CIA.
Another review in January 2014, this from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB), found the NSA's phone metadata program to be illegal and of "only limited value." The board, chosen by Obama, said it "implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments."
The board was unable to find "a single instance" that the program "made a concrete difference in the outcome of a terrorism investigation" or "directly contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown terrorist plot or the disruption of a terrorist attack."(352) The White House rejected the findings, saying "We simply disagree with the board's analysis on the legality of the program".(353)
27. The military's passion for SIGINT, as with its short-lived craze for POPCOIN (population-centric counterinsurgency tactics) in Afghanistan, is misapplied to uncovering terrorist plotting, much of which is the lone wolf variety. Moreover, it is laying waste to America's HUMINT capacities and making the U.S. far too dependent on the HUMINT operations of foreign governments -- several of which are Janus-faced.
28. If the NSA scandal teaches the military and Congress nothing else, I would hope it's that they must confront the limitations of SIGINT.
29. To return to Bunny's remark about Muslims, I don't know whether he's aware of a 2012 study that was partly funded by the Department of Homeland Security. It found that "extreme right-wing terrorism," not Islamic terrorism, is the biggest threat to American national security. A right-wing extremist to include a person "reverent of individual liberty" and one "suspicious of centralized federal authority."
30. The majority of the American population would probably fall in the category of a right-wing extremist. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I venture Colonel Bunny needs to go back to the drawing board if he believes that NSA is only surveilling Muslim extremists.
31. In conclusion, there is no question that when Ed Snowden stood up to warn, America was already headed down a road that is the stuff of dystopian fiction and the nightmarish system of justice envisioned in Kafka's The Trial. Yet I end on a hopeful note. There has been steadily growing acknowledgment at the highest levels of the British government, which more than any other foreign government has been involved with NSA programs, of the great danger in unrestricted government surveillance of populations.
32. The acknowledgment is now being translated into action, as a May 9 Guardian report details. This could have far-reaching effects, not only among British Commonwealth governments that are part of the "Five Eyes" surveillance programs, but also in the United States.
33. It is a perversion of the concept of justice to criminalize people for acts they have not even conceived. This must be stopped. It would be fitting, I think, that the land that gave humanity the Magna Carta would lead us to a reiteration of its principles of justice.
********
Colonel Bunny's Remarks
The exclusionary rule was a salutary, practical disincentive for the state to violate the rights of citizens AND try to impose a sanction on the citizen based on what info was obtained by the violation.
One might be uncomfortable about the content of one's emails and phone conversations being stored in NSA computers but might that be compared to what information about oneself is contained in a physician's files? Don't we already tolerate a certain amount of information in the hands of third persons? Warranted or unwarranted invasion of privacy may be an irritant but it's a minor one by any measure compared to being a guest of the sheriff.
The Fourth Amendment speaks to "unreasonable" searches and in the context of PRISM-like activities directed at al Qaida it's not stupid or deceptive to argue that such searches are "reasonable."
Included in any debate should be a discussion of the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine that appropriately elaborates on the exclusionary rule. Courts that are willing to declare such nonsense as that one has a lessened expectation of privacy in one's automobile or that "inventory" searches are not gross police end runs around the Fourth Amendment (or state equivalents) are well equipped to bless evidence of crime uncovered (as a result of the poisonous tree) if the police are willing to get creative about finding "independent" pointers that brought a miscreant to their attention.
Like any area in the criminal law, we have to take reality into account. Where the activities of Muslims are concerned, I'm willing to have NSA violate my privacy (without possibility of criminal penalty to me) in order to get at real scum. The alternative is no NSA collection at all and surely we can agree that that's not an option that we can afford.
Facial and license plate recognition technology is a related problem for the citizen. One argument in favor of such tools is that we have become such an anonymous and mobile people that we are far removed from the world of 1789. Then I would have been far more subject to "surveillance" of my neighbors and I would not have moved in a sea of faces, bodies, and closed vehicles. A horse thief could maybe make 50 miles a day. Today, a car thief can make 1,000 miles a day. Does recognition technology restore more of the realities of community life that existed without debate or worry in 1789?
[END REMARKS]
********
Thursday, May 15
Hillary Clinton may have screwed up with Benghazi for the same reason she misunderstood Edward Snowden's options
"And I don’t understand why he couldn’t have been part of the debate here at home. He could have quit. He could have taken whistleblower protection. He could have said you know there’s some things going on that I am concerned about and I want to talk about it…"
-- Hillary Clinton
No, he couldn't taken whistleblower protection because the protection does not apply to disclosure of U.S. classified information. The manual for Standard Form 312, the agreement not to disclose classified information, makes this point very clear. Anyone who wants to check this can read the manual, which is freely available on the Internet.
There would have been no way Snowden could have brought his allegations to Congress or anyone else without violating the terms of SF-312, which he had signed even before he became an NSA contractor. He only would have been able to speak in the vaguest terms about the situation he uncovered -- not enough to convey what he'd learned. He would have had to reveal classified information to explain the situation.
There are no exceptions -- I repeat NO EXCEPTIONS -- made for people who violate the agreement, not even for whistleblowers.
Signing SF 312 is just like jumping out of a plane while you're wearing a parachute. Once you've jumped, you can't change your mind. This is why the manual gets down on its tummy to explain to the reader that if he thinks that at some point after signing the agreement that his conscience might dictate that he violate it, DO NOT SIGN THE FORM.
This is why Members of Congress and others with positions prescribed in the U.S. Constitution are the only people handling U.S. classified information who are exempt from signing SF-312. See Question 4 in the Q&A section of the 312 manual. But for Snowden to have revealed classified information to Congress would have put him in violation of SF-312.
Why, then did Clinton claim that Snowden could have had whistleblower protection? One explnation would be that she simply lied and hoped no one would check her statement.
Another explanation would be that she didn't read the manual for SF-312 closely before she signed the form, which was when she became U.S. Secretary of State. That would raise the question of how many and what kind of other manuals Clinton didn't read or read closely when she went to work at State. Such as the manual on exactly what to do if staff in a foreign country alert you that their facility is under armed attack.
There is a third explanation, and this one worries me most. It could be that Clinton doesn't believe that rules, and the realities they represent, apply to her.
I heard yesterday that The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington said on Queen Latifah's TV talk show that there is "special place in hell for women who don't support other women."
I assume this was Huffington's way of reminding American women to vote Hillary Clinton for President. But there is an even more special place in hell. This is reserved for U.S. government employees who don't bother to read government-issue manuals closely or think the manual isn't talking to them.
***************
-- Hillary Clinton
No, he couldn't taken whistleblower protection because the protection does not apply to disclosure of U.S. classified information. The manual for Standard Form 312, the agreement not to disclose classified information, makes this point very clear. Anyone who wants to check this can read the manual, which is freely available on the Internet.
There would have been no way Snowden could have brought his allegations to Congress or anyone else without violating the terms of SF-312, which he had signed even before he became an NSA contractor. He only would have been able to speak in the vaguest terms about the situation he uncovered -- not enough to convey what he'd learned. He would have had to reveal classified information to explain the situation.
There are no exceptions -- I repeat NO EXCEPTIONS -- made for people who violate the agreement, not even for whistleblowers.
Signing SF 312 is just like jumping out of a plane while you're wearing a parachute. Once you've jumped, you can't change your mind. This is why the manual gets down on its tummy to explain to the reader that if he thinks that at some point after signing the agreement that his conscience might dictate that he violate it, DO NOT SIGN THE FORM.
This is why Members of Congress and others with positions prescribed in the U.S. Constitution are the only people handling U.S. classified information who are exempt from signing SF-312. See Question 4 in the Q&A section of the 312 manual. But for Snowden to have revealed classified information to Congress would have put him in violation of SF-312.
Why, then did Clinton claim that Snowden could have had whistleblower protection? One explnation would be that she simply lied and hoped no one would check her statement.
Another explanation would be that she didn't read the manual for SF-312 closely before she signed the form, which was when she became U.S. Secretary of State. That would raise the question of how many and what kind of other manuals Clinton didn't read or read closely when she went to work at State. Such as the manual on exactly what to do if staff in a foreign country alert you that their facility is under armed attack.
There is a third explanation, and this one worries me most. It could be that Clinton doesn't believe that rules, and the realities they represent, apply to her.
I heard yesterday that The Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington said on Queen Latifah's TV talk show that there is "special place in hell for women who don't support other women."
I assume this was Huffington's way of reminding American women to vote Hillary Clinton for President. But there is an even more special place in hell. This is reserved for U.S. government employees who don't bother to read government-issue manuals closely or think the manual isn't talking to them.
***************
Putin boxed Snowden's ears on Russian national TV. U.S. media didn't notice.
Go back over the transcript of Vladimir Putin's exchange with Edward Snowden. Note how he characterizes Snowden. He was saying that Snowden was nothing more than an ex-CIA spy and so all his yippity-yap about freedom and privacy was hot air. And even before that exchange Putin had gone on record to as much say that in his view Snowden had a screw loose.
Now what does this mean? It means that the entire American news media establishment has great difficulty interpreting events that occur anywhere east of the hazy line in Europe that separates "West" from "East."
It also means it's unlikely that the Russian government put Snowden up to asking that question of Putin. It would be more likely that Snowden did it as his way of thanking Russian activists who'd supported his taking refuge in Russia, in the same way he mustered a few kind words about Bradley Manning to thank Julian Assange for Assange's help.
Although Russia's human rights activists had always supported Russian asylum for Snowden, many Russians hadn't. Many were initially against giving Snowden asylum, for pretty much the same reason they were against allowing NATO supply planes bound for Afghanistan to land on Russian soil. They didn't want to give help to any American for any reason, they were that angry at the USA -- still are.
So the Kremlin practically had to put Snowden in a folk costume and have him sing Bolshevik revolutionary songs on TV before it could get his poll numbers up to the point where granting him asylum became acceptable to the majority.
That's why Snowden had to cool his heels in an airport transit lounge for more than a month; it took time for Russia's government to sell him. And that's why I fell all over myself on my blog thanking the Russian people for giving Snowden asylum.
Did Snowden realize he was getting his ears boxed? Well, he is a very typical Westerner in his thinking, so a great many things east of somewhere around Poland would go over his head. But I'll assume he realized he was being insulted to his face.
Yet again, he was playing the cards he'd been dealt. To have refused a request that he speak up to Putin on behalf of Russians who were very concerned about their own government's surveillance measures would have put him in an even worse position than his question to Putin landed him in. And of course it gave Putin the opportunity to score off the Russian activists.
***************
Now what does this mean? It means that the entire American news media establishment has great difficulty interpreting events that occur anywhere east of the hazy line in Europe that separates "West" from "East."
It also means it's unlikely that the Russian government put Snowden up to asking that question of Putin. It would be more likely that Snowden did it as his way of thanking Russian activists who'd supported his taking refuge in Russia, in the same way he mustered a few kind words about Bradley Manning to thank Julian Assange for Assange's help.
Although Russia's human rights activists had always supported Russian asylum for Snowden, many Russians hadn't. Many were initially against giving Snowden asylum, for pretty much the same reason they were against allowing NATO supply planes bound for Afghanistan to land on Russian soil. They didn't want to give help to any American for any reason, they were that angry at the USA -- still are.
So the Kremlin practically had to put Snowden in a folk costume and have him sing Bolshevik revolutionary songs on TV before it could get his poll numbers up to the point where granting him asylum became acceptable to the majority.
That's why Snowden had to cool his heels in an airport transit lounge for more than a month; it took time for Russia's government to sell him. And that's why I fell all over myself on my blog thanking the Russian people for giving Snowden asylum.
Did Snowden realize he was getting his ears boxed? Well, he is a very typical Westerner in his thinking, so a great many things east of somewhere around Poland would go over his head. But I'll assume he realized he was being insulted to his face.
Yet again, he was playing the cards he'd been dealt. To have refused a request that he speak up to Putin on behalf of Russians who were very concerned about their own government's surveillance measures would have put him in an even worse position than his question to Putin landed him in. And of course it gave Putin the opportunity to score off the Russian activists.
***************
Tuesday, May 13
A trio of auspicious signs for American democracy: The Washington Monument reopens, Glenn Greenwald's book is released and FRONTLINE's "United States of Secrets" premieres tonight
The first part of FRONTLINE's two-hour documentary examining how the U.S. government came to spy on millions of Americans premieres tonight on PBS at 10 PM EDT. The second part will air on May 20. Here is a link to a video trailer of the film, and one on the background on the film, both from the PBS website. Earlier this evening, on the PBS NewsHour, Judy Woodruff interviewed former NSA Chief General Keith Alexander, which allowed him to present the NSA side of the story. You can watch the interview at the NewsHour website.
The premiere of "United States of Secrets" might not have been coincidental to the release today of Glenn Greenwald's book, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State," but then again there have been so many unplanned convergences of events associated with the NSA leaks that it's possible the air date for the FRONTLINE offering was indeed coincidental.
Either way, the two events coming the day after the reopening of the Washington National Monument are an auspicious sign. Edward Snowden and the Fellowship of the Light, as I term the people who helped him reveal the NSA's overweening surveillance programs, have given the American people a fighting chance to save our republic.
That it can be saved -- I think the restoration of the Monument, which had suffered extensive damage in an earthquake in 2011, suggests that it can, for those of us who put stock in Signs and Portents. The Monument is the iconic symbol of American democracy. Despite the bad shaking it got from the earthquake, which put more than 150 cracks in the structure, it withstood the shock and is now made whole again.
Also, the fact that a private citizen, David Rubenstein, made the restoration possible by contributing half the $15 billion needed to repair the earthquake damage, is itself an auspicious sign in that underscores the importance of individual effort in saving our republic.
The metaphorical cracks in the American democracy took many years to manifest; repairing them will take longer than restoring a monument to democracy, but in three events this week I find hope the repairs can be made.
For those of us who believe in Signs and Portents, the damage done to the Washington National Monument was a bad omen for American freedom. With God on our side, and with the Fellowship to light our path, we who love freedom move forward now into an uncertain future. Yet that the Fellowship has grown in the space of less than a year from a small band of newspaper owners, editorial boards and journalists to include many thousands of Americans from all walks of life is an auspicious sign.
****************
The premiere of "United States of Secrets" might not have been coincidental to the release today of Glenn Greenwald's book, "No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State," but then again there have been so many unplanned convergences of events associated with the NSA leaks that it's possible the air date for the FRONTLINE offering was indeed coincidental.
Either way, the two events coming the day after the reopening of the Washington National Monument are an auspicious sign. Edward Snowden and the Fellowship of the Light, as I term the people who helped him reveal the NSA's overweening surveillance programs, have given the American people a fighting chance to save our republic.
That it can be saved -- I think the restoration of the Monument, which had suffered extensive damage in an earthquake in 2011, suggests that it can, for those of us who put stock in Signs and Portents. The Monument is the iconic symbol of American democracy. Despite the bad shaking it got from the earthquake, which put more than 150 cracks in the structure, it withstood the shock and is now made whole again.
Also, the fact that a private citizen, David Rubenstein, made the restoration possible by contributing half the $15 billion needed to repair the earthquake damage, is itself an auspicious sign in that underscores the importance of individual effort in saving our republic.
The metaphorical cracks in the American democracy took many years to manifest; repairing them will take longer than restoring a monument to democracy, but in three events this week I find hope the repairs can be made.
For those of us who believe in Signs and Portents, the damage done to the Washington National Monument was a bad omen for American freedom. With God on our side, and with the Fellowship to light our path, we who love freedom move forward now into an uncertain future. Yet that the Fellowship has grown in the space of less than a year from a small band of newspaper owners, editorial boards and journalists to include many thousands of Americans from all walks of life is an auspicious sign.
****************
Sunday, May 11
No, you morons, you can't save Americans by destroying their freedoms: Pundita's plain-language summary of Stratfor chief George Friedman's magnificent deconstruction of where the war on terrorism has led Americans and their premier spy agency, NSA
I missed the first publication of Friedman's analysis, which was made in July 2013 in the wake of Snowden's first revelations. Stratfor republished the writing this April in response to the awarding of the Pulitzer Prize to the Washington Post and Guardian for their reporting on NSA's mass surveillance programs.
Given Stratfor's famous problems with hacktivists and the allegations that the private intelligence company is much too involved with the U.S. government, I'd have thought that George Friedman would have come out swinging in defense of the NSA. But while his historical review of the agency and its original purpose are evenhanded, he provides the best critique of the American government's current approach to national defense that I've read. It's so good it brought tears to my eyes, although Friedman makes no attempt to appeal to emotion. His analysis is almost mercilessly objective, but that is its power.
I had to recall what's publicly known about Friedman's past, his childhood as a refugee from Soviet oppression, to understand why he is one security hawk who sees where the line is -- or maybe it was Snowden's revelations that shocked him into remembering its coordinates.
I'm tempted to republish the entire analysis, which is quite long, because it deserves as wide a readership as possible. For now, I'm going to start around the middle with an apology to Friedman for interfering with the flow of his writing. Before turning the floor over to him I'll mention something that perhaps many Americans have forgotten or never knew:
It was Friedman who broke the news, on John Batchelor's radio show (based in New York City), that al Qaeda had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the USA. Since then, Stratfor has been on the forefront of providing intelligence warnings about terrorist activity directed against Americans.
Which is a way of saying that this not a security wimp who's warning Americans about the threat to their freedoms from a war that has no end. When someone like George Friedman sounds the alarm, it's time to pay attention.
Keeping the NSA in Perspective
[...]
As we have written, al Qaeda was a global, sparse and dispersed network. It appeared to be tied together by burying itself in a vast new communications network: the Internet. At one point, al Qaeda had communicated by embedding messages in pictures transmitted via the Internet. They appeared to be using free and anonymous Hotmail accounts. To find Japanese communications [during World War Two], you looked in the electronic ether. To find al Qaeda's message, you looked on the Internet.
But with a global, sparse and dispersed network you are looking for at most a few hundred men in the midst of billions of people, and a few dozen messages among hundreds of billions. And given the architecture of the Internet, the messages did not have to originate where the sender was located or be read where the reader was located. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The needle can be found only if you are willing to sift the entire haystack. That led to PRISM and other NSA programs.
The mission was to stop any further al Qaeda attacks. The means was to break into their communications and read their plans and orders. To find their plans and orders, it was necessary to examine all communications. The anonymity of the Internet and the uncertainties built into its system meant that any message could be one of a tiny handful of messages. Nothing could be ruled out. Everything was suspect. This was reality, not paranoia.
It also meant that the NSA could not exclude the communications of American citizens because some al Qaeda members were citizens. This was an attack on the civil rights of Americans, but it was not an unprecedented attack. During World War II, the United States imposed postal censorship on military personnel, and the FBI intercepted selected letters sent in the United States and from overseas. The government created a system of voluntary media censorship that was less than voluntary in many ways.
Most famously, the United States abrogated the civil rights of citizens of Japanese origin by seizing property and transporting them to other locations. Members of pro-German organizations were harassed and arrested even prior to Pearl Harbor. Decades earlier, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, effectively allowing the arrest and isolation of citizens without due process.
There are two major differences between the war on terror and the aforementioned wars. First, there was a declaration of war in World War II. Second, there is a provision in the Constitution that allows the president to suspend habeas corpus in the event of a rebellion. The declaration of war imbues the president with certain powers as commander in chief -- as does rebellion. Neither of these conditions was put in place to justify NSA programs such as PRISM.
Moreover, partly because of the constitutional basis of the actions and partly because of the nature of the conflicts, World War II and the Civil War had a clear end, a point at which civil rights had to be restored or a process had to be created for their restoration.
No such terminal point exists for the war on terror. As was witnessed at the Boston Marathon -- and in many instances over the past several centuries -- the ease with which improvised explosive devices can be assembled makes it possible for simple terrorist acts to be carried out cheaply and effectively. Some plots might be detectable by intercepting all communications, but obviously the Boston Marathon attack could not be predicted.
The problem with the war on terror is that it has no criteria of success that is potentially obtainable. It defines no level of terrorism that is tolerable but has as its goal the elimination of all terrorism, not just from Islamic sources but from all sources. That is simply never going to happen and therefore, PRISM and its attendant programs will never end. These intrusions, unlike all prior ones, have set a condition for success that is unattainable, and therefore the suspension of civil rights is permanent.
Without a constitutional amendment, formal declaration of war or declaration of a state of emergency, the executive branch has overridden fundamental limits on its powers and protections for citizens.
Since World War II, the constitutional requirements for waging war have fallen by the wayside. President Harry S. Truman used a U.N resolution to justify the Korean War. President Lyndon Johnson justified an extended large-scale war with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, equating it to a declaration of war.
The conceptual chaos of the war on terror left out any declaration, and it also included North Korea in the axis of evil the United States was fighting against. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is charged with aiding an enemy that has never been legally designated. Anyone who might contemplate terrorism is therefore an enemy.
The enemy in this case was clear. It was the organization of al Qaeda but since that was not a rigid nation but an evolving group, the definition spread well beyond them to include any person contemplating an infinite number of actions. After all, how do you define terrorism, and how do you distinguish it from crime?
Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attacks, and we know that al Qaeda wished to kill more because it has said that it intended to do so. Al Qaeda and other jihadist movements -- and indeed those unaffiliated with Islamic movements -- pose threats. Some of their members are American citizens, others are citizens of foreign nations. Preventing these attacks, rather than prosecuting in the aftermath, is important.
I do not know enough about PRISM to even try to guess how useful it is. At the same time, the threat that PRISM is fighting must be kept in perspective. Some terrorist threats are dangerous, but you simply cannot stop every nut who wants to pop off a pipe bomb for a political cause.
So the critical question is whether the danger posed by terrorism is sufficient to justify indifference to the spirit of the Constitution, despite the current state of the law. If it is, then formally declare war or declare a state of emergency.
The danger of PRISM and other programs is that the decision to build it was not made after the Congress and the president were required to make a clear finding on war and peace. That was the point where they undermined the Constitution, and the American public is responsible for allowing them to do so.
Defensible Origins, Dangerous Futures
The emergence of programs such as PRISM was not the result of despots seeking to control the world. It had a much more clear, logical and defensible origin in our experiences of war and in legitimate fears of real dangers. The NSA was charged with stopping terrorism, and it devised a plan that was not nearly as secret as some claim. Obviously it was not as effective as hoped, or the Boston Marathon attack wouldn't have happened. If the program was meant to suppress dissent it has certainly failed, as the polls and the media of the past weeks show.
The revelations about PRISM are far from new or interesting in themselves. The NSA was created with a charter to do these things, and given the state of technology it was inevitable that the NSA would be capturing communications around the world. Many leaks prior to Snowden's showed that the NSA was doing this. It would have been more newsworthy if the leak revealed the NSA had not been capturing all communications. But this does give us an opportunity to consider what has happened and to consider whether it is tolerable.
The threat posed by PRISM and other programs is not what has been done with them but rather what could happen if they are permitted to survive. But this is not simply about the United States ending this program. The United States certainly is not the only country with such a program. But a reasonable start is for the country that claims to be most dedicated to its Constitution to adhere to it meticulously above and beyond the narrowest interpretation. This is not a path without danger. However, as Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
[END]
************
Given Stratfor's famous problems with hacktivists and the allegations that the private intelligence company is much too involved with the U.S. government, I'd have thought that George Friedman would have come out swinging in defense of the NSA. But while his historical review of the agency and its original purpose are evenhanded, he provides the best critique of the American government's current approach to national defense that I've read. It's so good it brought tears to my eyes, although Friedman makes no attempt to appeal to emotion. His analysis is almost mercilessly objective, but that is its power.
I had to recall what's publicly known about Friedman's past, his childhood as a refugee from Soviet oppression, to understand why he is one security hawk who sees where the line is -- or maybe it was Snowden's revelations that shocked him into remembering its coordinates.
I'm tempted to republish the entire analysis, which is quite long, because it deserves as wide a readership as possible. For now, I'm going to start around the middle with an apology to Friedman for interfering with the flow of his writing. Before turning the floor over to him I'll mention something that perhaps many Americans have forgotten or never knew:
It was Friedman who broke the news, on John Batchelor's radio show (based in New York City), that al Qaeda had been responsible for the 9/11 attacks on the USA. Since then, Stratfor has been on the forefront of providing intelligence warnings about terrorist activity directed against Americans.
Which is a way of saying that this not a security wimp who's warning Americans about the threat to their freedoms from a war that has no end. When someone like George Friedman sounds the alarm, it's time to pay attention.
Keeping the NSA in Perspective
[...]
As we have written, al Qaeda was a global, sparse and dispersed network. It appeared to be tied together by burying itself in a vast new communications network: the Internet. At one point, al Qaeda had communicated by embedding messages in pictures transmitted via the Internet. They appeared to be using free and anonymous Hotmail accounts. To find Japanese communications [during World War Two], you looked in the electronic ether. To find al Qaeda's message, you looked on the Internet.
But with a global, sparse and dispersed network you are looking for at most a few hundred men in the midst of billions of people, and a few dozen messages among hundreds of billions. And given the architecture of the Internet, the messages did not have to originate where the sender was located or be read where the reader was located. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. The needle can be found only if you are willing to sift the entire haystack. That led to PRISM and other NSA programs.
The mission was to stop any further al Qaeda attacks. The means was to break into their communications and read their plans and orders. To find their plans and orders, it was necessary to examine all communications. The anonymity of the Internet and the uncertainties built into its system meant that any message could be one of a tiny handful of messages. Nothing could be ruled out. Everything was suspect. This was reality, not paranoia.
It also meant that the NSA could not exclude the communications of American citizens because some al Qaeda members were citizens. This was an attack on the civil rights of Americans, but it was not an unprecedented attack. During World War II, the United States imposed postal censorship on military personnel, and the FBI intercepted selected letters sent in the United States and from overseas. The government created a system of voluntary media censorship that was less than voluntary in many ways.
Most famously, the United States abrogated the civil rights of citizens of Japanese origin by seizing property and transporting them to other locations. Members of pro-German organizations were harassed and arrested even prior to Pearl Harbor. Decades earlier, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War, effectively allowing the arrest and isolation of citizens without due process.
There are two major differences between the war on terror and the aforementioned wars. First, there was a declaration of war in World War II. Second, there is a provision in the Constitution that allows the president to suspend habeas corpus in the event of a rebellion. The declaration of war imbues the president with certain powers as commander in chief -- as does rebellion. Neither of these conditions was put in place to justify NSA programs such as PRISM.
Moreover, partly because of the constitutional basis of the actions and partly because of the nature of the conflicts, World War II and the Civil War had a clear end, a point at which civil rights had to be restored or a process had to be created for their restoration.
No such terminal point exists for the war on terror. As was witnessed at the Boston Marathon -- and in many instances over the past several centuries -- the ease with which improvised explosive devices can be assembled makes it possible for simple terrorist acts to be carried out cheaply and effectively. Some plots might be detectable by intercepting all communications, but obviously the Boston Marathon attack could not be predicted.
The problem with the war on terror is that it has no criteria of success that is potentially obtainable. It defines no level of terrorism that is tolerable but has as its goal the elimination of all terrorism, not just from Islamic sources but from all sources. That is simply never going to happen and therefore, PRISM and its attendant programs will never end. These intrusions, unlike all prior ones, have set a condition for success that is unattainable, and therefore the suspension of civil rights is permanent.
Without a constitutional amendment, formal declaration of war or declaration of a state of emergency, the executive branch has overridden fundamental limits on its powers and protections for citizens.
Since World War II, the constitutional requirements for waging war have fallen by the wayside. President Harry S. Truman used a U.N resolution to justify the Korean War. President Lyndon Johnson justified an extended large-scale war with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, equating it to a declaration of war.
The conceptual chaos of the war on terror left out any declaration, and it also included North Korea in the axis of evil the United States was fighting against. Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is charged with aiding an enemy that has never been legally designated. Anyone who might contemplate terrorism is therefore an enemy.
The enemy in this case was clear. It was the organization of al Qaeda but since that was not a rigid nation but an evolving group, the definition spread well beyond them to include any person contemplating an infinite number of actions. After all, how do you define terrorism, and how do you distinguish it from crime?
Three thousand people died in the 9/11 attacks, and we know that al Qaeda wished to kill more because it has said that it intended to do so. Al Qaeda and other jihadist movements -- and indeed those unaffiliated with Islamic movements -- pose threats. Some of their members are American citizens, others are citizens of foreign nations. Preventing these attacks, rather than prosecuting in the aftermath, is important.
I do not know enough about PRISM to even try to guess how useful it is. At the same time, the threat that PRISM is fighting must be kept in perspective. Some terrorist threats are dangerous, but you simply cannot stop every nut who wants to pop off a pipe bomb for a political cause.
So the critical question is whether the danger posed by terrorism is sufficient to justify indifference to the spirit of the Constitution, despite the current state of the law. If it is, then formally declare war or declare a state of emergency.
The danger of PRISM and other programs is that the decision to build it was not made after the Congress and the president were required to make a clear finding on war and peace. That was the point where they undermined the Constitution, and the American public is responsible for allowing them to do so.
Defensible Origins, Dangerous Futures
The emergence of programs such as PRISM was not the result of despots seeking to control the world. It had a much more clear, logical and defensible origin in our experiences of war and in legitimate fears of real dangers. The NSA was charged with stopping terrorism, and it devised a plan that was not nearly as secret as some claim. Obviously it was not as effective as hoped, or the Boston Marathon attack wouldn't have happened. If the program was meant to suppress dissent it has certainly failed, as the polls and the media of the past weeks show.
The revelations about PRISM are far from new or interesting in themselves. The NSA was created with a charter to do these things, and given the state of technology it was inevitable that the NSA would be capturing communications around the world. Many leaks prior to Snowden's showed that the NSA was doing this. It would have been more newsworthy if the leak revealed the NSA had not been capturing all communications. But this does give us an opportunity to consider what has happened and to consider whether it is tolerable.
The threat posed by PRISM and other programs is not what has been done with them but rather what could happen if they are permitted to survive. But this is not simply about the United States ending this program. The United States certainly is not the only country with such a program. But a reasonable start is for the country that claims to be most dedicated to its Constitution to adhere to it meticulously above and beyond the narrowest interpretation. This is not a path without danger. However, as Benjamin Franklin said, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
[END]
************
Take a Memo
How It All Began
A reader who saw the last installment of my Devil and Departmentalization series wanted to know why, if ad hoc volunteer government administration worked so well for most of history, we exchanged it for permanent career bureaucracies. I think government administration pretty much followed the pattern of the treasury and professional banking. As I explained in The Road to Sanity husbands used to drape their wives with their accumulated wealth to signify their level of wisdom. Wives were literal walking banks, and they were the first loan officers. Making loans in those days was a simple matter of peeling off a clamshell necklace or copper bangle.
But as wealth increased so did its weight and bulk. Thus, the invention of the treasury -- a central storage facility for the tribe's wealth. After that it was straight downhill for common sense, but at least the sled ride was comfortable and convenient.
I'd say professional government got off the ground on the day someone said, "Let's put that decision in writing."
Surely there were dissenters at first: Why do you have to write something down when you've already said it?
But I suppose the lure of memorializing one's utterances beat out common sense. The problem being that once you know someone will sit there and write down your utterances, the utterances will get longer and longer. This is how hot air was invented.
|||^^8
Hot air was quickly followed by the establishment of scribe castes, which led to the invention of shorthand -- although that last isn't recognized as such by archeologists and authorities on ancient writings, who term every type of script that doesn't make sense to them "proto-writing." But it was either summarize or live with carpal tunnel syndrome. The authorities should try using a stylus to commit all the following to papyrus:
Take a memo. Amonhep told me this morning that he was walking by the granary last night after dinner. He'd had a fight with his wife so he was taking a walk to cool off. Then he heard a strange sound coming from the granary. At first he thought it was a thief but as he crept closer he heard what sounded to him like loud chewing noises. Then he saw it -- are you getting this part down? -- He told me, quote, "There it was, sitting up and looking at me with its beady eyes, bold as brass. It was huge. At least as big as my fist. Then I saw more beady eyes. It was maybe five of them. All them staring at me very boldly. I went and got the wife to look at them. She told me she counted seven. But she said it was more like a challenging look than a bold one, unquote." Where is that memo I dictated last week? Didn't I specifically recommend that we double the cat patrol at the granary? But let's try and triple the cat detail. If it doesn't work we might have to think about importing weasels.
Now put yourself in the scribe's place. Do think you might figure a way to boil it down to, "Triple cat detail at granary?" For a long time writing and reading were secrets known only to the scribe caste but it's easy to see why this was a secret. The scribes worked for government, so it was eight hours a day of transcribing hot air. Of course they boiled it down, and because their bosses couldn't read what they wrote the bosses were none the wiser. Moving along --
Birth of the Memorandum Storage Facility
When it got to the point where the memos were too numerous to be carried around in sacks, then it became necessary to build a facility to store them.
Once you have the building and the shelves, you need to add ladders as the shelves get higher. Then stools or mats, so you can sit comfortably while you're making sure you've retrieved the right memo. Then you might as well add writing benches and potted plants.
At that point you have a literal seat of government records, where you sit and process the utterances of decision makers.
Birth of the Bureaus
After several desks were added then came the problem of navigating the seating arrangements. Thus, the creation of the bureau. This was quickly followed by the introduction of the bureau supervisor a.k.a. department head.
As I emphasized in the first installment in the Devil and Departmentalization, as soon as you get a bunch of department heads gathered in one place, then begins jockeying for more turf.
Soon, one room in the storage facility wasn't enough.
From Seat of Government Records to Seat of Government
At some point, surely, complaints arose: My crops are suffering, I'm spending all day climbing up and down ladders at the seat of government records; I need to get paid for the work I'm doing there.
Paid, how? Here it doesn't take much imagination to deduce what happened next. Some genius came up with the idea of everyone in the community chipping in a small payment, or what came to be known as a tax, to support the by-then vital work of writing down, storing and organizing utterances related to government business.
At some point "records" was dropped from "the seat of government records." This probably happened when scribes for contractors who built extensions for the storage facilities decided it was easier to write "Gov Seat" on the invoice.
(I said years ago on this blog and I'll say it again: The most illuminating history of the human race will be written by a building materials procurement specialist.)
Thus, the seat of government was born and with that government administration became a career.
Not to get into the weeds but notice the pattern of human progress. As we accumulate a lot of stuff then comes the central storage facility. From there trouble follows on the wings of comfort and convenience.
Fast forward to the year 1900. The U.S. government began ordering 10,000 new typewriters every year. Several of the orders were probably replacements after civil servants climbed on their desks, picked up the contraptions, then dropped them on the floor from a height of about nine feet. But what did any government in the 1900s need with 10,000 additional typewriters a year, unless it had fallen prey to bureau mania? Imagine, legions of clerks who didn't need to be trained in shorthand banging out hot air onto paper at the rate of 40 words per minute.
No statistics are available to me on how many typewriters the British and German governments were ordering around the same time. But notice -- notice -- that a mere 14 years after the typewriter became all the rage in government, World War One broke out.
Just an observation.
********
A reader who saw the last installment of my Devil and Departmentalization series wanted to know why, if ad hoc volunteer government administration worked so well for most of history, we exchanged it for permanent career bureaucracies. I think government administration pretty much followed the pattern of the treasury and professional banking. As I explained in The Road to Sanity husbands used to drape their wives with their accumulated wealth to signify their level of wisdom. Wives were literal walking banks, and they were the first loan officers. Making loans in those days was a simple matter of peeling off a clamshell necklace or copper bangle.
But as wealth increased so did its weight and bulk. Thus, the invention of the treasury -- a central storage facility for the tribe's wealth. After that it was straight downhill for common sense, but at least the sled ride was comfortable and convenient.
I'd say professional government got off the ground on the day someone said, "Let's put that decision in writing."
Surely there were dissenters at first: Why do you have to write something down when you've already said it?
But I suppose the lure of memorializing one's utterances beat out common sense. The problem being that once you know someone will sit there and write down your utterances, the utterances will get longer and longer. This is how hot air was invented.
|||^^8
Hot air was quickly followed by the establishment of scribe castes, which led to the invention of shorthand -- although that last isn't recognized as such by archeologists and authorities on ancient writings, who term every type of script that doesn't make sense to them "proto-writing." But it was either summarize or live with carpal tunnel syndrome. The authorities should try using a stylus to commit all the following to papyrus:
Take a memo. Amonhep told me this morning that he was walking by the granary last night after dinner. He'd had a fight with his wife so he was taking a walk to cool off. Then he heard a strange sound coming from the granary. At first he thought it was a thief but as he crept closer he heard what sounded to him like loud chewing noises. Then he saw it -- are you getting this part down? -- He told me, quote, "There it was, sitting up and looking at me with its beady eyes, bold as brass. It was huge. At least as big as my fist. Then I saw more beady eyes. It was maybe five of them. All them staring at me very boldly. I went and got the wife to look at them. She told me she counted seven. But she said it was more like a challenging look than a bold one, unquote." Where is that memo I dictated last week? Didn't I specifically recommend that we double the cat patrol at the granary? But let's try and triple the cat detail. If it doesn't work we might have to think about importing weasels.
Now put yourself in the scribe's place. Do think you might figure a way to boil it down to, "Triple cat detail at granary?" For a long time writing and reading were secrets known only to the scribe caste but it's easy to see why this was a secret. The scribes worked for government, so it was eight hours a day of transcribing hot air. Of course they boiled it down, and because their bosses couldn't read what they wrote the bosses were none the wiser. Moving along --
Birth of the Memorandum Storage Facility
When it got to the point where the memos were too numerous to be carried around in sacks, then it became necessary to build a facility to store them.
Once you have the building and the shelves, you need to add ladders as the shelves get higher. Then stools or mats, so you can sit comfortably while you're making sure you've retrieved the right memo. Then you might as well add writing benches and potted plants.
At that point you have a literal seat of government records, where you sit and process the utterances of decision makers.
Birth of the Bureaus
After several desks were added then came the problem of navigating the seating arrangements. Thus, the creation of the bureau. This was quickly followed by the introduction of the bureau supervisor a.k.a. department head.
As I emphasized in the first installment in the Devil and Departmentalization, as soon as you get a bunch of department heads gathered in one place, then begins jockeying for more turf.
Soon, one room in the storage facility wasn't enough.
From Seat of Government Records to Seat of Government
At some point, surely, complaints arose: My crops are suffering, I'm spending all day climbing up and down ladders at the seat of government records; I need to get paid for the work I'm doing there.
Paid, how? Here it doesn't take much imagination to deduce what happened next. Some genius came up with the idea of everyone in the community chipping in a small payment, or what came to be known as a tax, to support the by-then vital work of writing down, storing and organizing utterances related to government business.
At some point "records" was dropped from "the seat of government records." This probably happened when scribes for contractors who built extensions for the storage facilities decided it was easier to write "Gov Seat" on the invoice.
(I said years ago on this blog and I'll say it again: The most illuminating history of the human race will be written by a building materials procurement specialist.)
Thus, the seat of government was born and with that government administration became a career.
Not to get into the weeds but notice the pattern of human progress. As we accumulate a lot of stuff then comes the central storage facility. From there trouble follows on the wings of comfort and convenience.
Fast forward to the year 1900. The U.S. government began ordering 10,000 new typewriters every year. Several of the orders were probably replacements after civil servants climbed on their desks, picked up the contraptions, then dropped them on the floor from a height of about nine feet. But what did any government in the 1900s need with 10,000 additional typewriters a year, unless it had fallen prey to bureau mania? Imagine, legions of clerks who didn't need to be trained in shorthand banging out hot air onto paper at the rate of 40 words per minute.
No statistics are available to me on how many typewriters the British and German governments were ordering around the same time. But notice -- notice -- that a mere 14 years after the typewriter became all the rage in government, World War One broke out.
Just an observation.
********
Friday, May 9
The Vaughn Index
Those watchdogs over at Judicial Watch are sure keeping the Obama Administration busy, what with all their FOIAs. From Oren Dorell's May 8 report for USA TODAY Watchdog: White House hiding more Benghazi documents:
**********
[...]Looks as if Judicial Watch is treating this as a criminal matter and so they want to see even the doodles in the margins.
[Department of Justice trial attorney Robert] Prince's letter includes a 17-page Vaughn Index, which federal agencies use to justify their reasons for withholding material from public disclosure.
Prince's letter describes the 35 pages of documents as various drafts and responses that constitute "internal strategy discussions relating to the drafting of an official response letter" from Rice to various congressional inquiries regarding the Benghazi attack. Prince says the documents are protected from release under Exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act.
That exemption covers "inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters which would not be available by law to a party other than an agency in litigation with the agency," according to a general DOJ description of FOIA exemptions. Records covered by Exemption 5 "are good candidates for discretionary release" and facts generally not protected, the DOJ description says.
The withheld documents include:
• A seven-page e-mail exchange consisting of 16 messages between State and other administration officials [Rhodes, Brennan, McDonough . . .] on Sept. 27 and Sept. 28, 2012, with an original subject line "FOX News: US officials knew Libya attack was terrorism within 24 hours, sources confirm."
• Originally designated "sensitive but unclassified," the document was withheld to protect the formulation of a media strategy with respect to an ongoing sensitive matter under a FOIA exemption that protects the deliberative process, Prince wrote.
• A one-page e-mail exchange, consisting of three messages, dated Sept. 11, 2012, with the subject line "UPDATE: Clashes at U.S. consulate in eastern Libyan city (Reuters)."
• A three-page e-mail exchange between State and other U.S. officials, dated Sept. 28, 2012 and originally designated "unclassified." The subject line of the first five messages is "Statement by the Director of Public Affairs for National Intelligence Shawn Turner on the intelligence related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya."
[...]
**********
YIKES!! Glenn Greenwald to release avalanche of NSA documents on the same day his book is published!
Luckily the people at Engadget read stuff all the way down to the last words:
***********
Scroll to the bottom of Glenn Greenwald's blistering response to recent remarks by just-retired NSA chief Keith Alexander, and you'll find some very interesting news indeed.[fanning herself] So much excitement. I think I need a thimbleful of sherry to steady my nerves. Maybe two thimblefuls [sloshing sherry into a margarita glass] Well, at least we now know almost for certain that the book is actually being published on the 13th. I notice that the publisher has sat on advance copies, so unless some are released this week, I think that would mean reviewers can't 'spin' the book to the public before it's published. Heh.
Greenwald ... says he plans to publish previously unpublished NSA documents online next Tuesday, May 13th, with free access. The timing, it should be known, is not a coincidence: Greenwald's book, No Place to Hide, comes out that day. In fact, the documents that going online next week are ones he mentions in the book, but which weren't previously reported in the press.
[...]
***********
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)