Tuesday, March 19, 2013
The Lies That Led A Fearful Nation To War:
The Guardian: New evidence: CIA and MI6 were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD
"Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was 'active', 'growing' and 'up and running'. A special BBC Panorama programme tonight will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries. It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had 'virtually nothing' in terms of WMD. Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was 'totally fabricated'. However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002. Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been. Butler says of the use of intelligence: 'There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.' When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: 'Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.' The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable. One unidentified MI6 officer has told the Chilcot inquiry that at one stage information was 'being torn off the teleprinter and rushed across to Number 10'. Another said it was 'wishful thinking… [that] promised the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow'. The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French. It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated. Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was 'too busy'."
On Privacy:
Bruce Schneier: The Internet is a surveillance state
"I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels -- and hers was the common name. The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period. Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell's identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources..."
The Guardian: New evidence: CIA and MI6 were told before invasion that Iraq had no active WMD
"Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction. Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was 'active', 'growing' and 'up and running'. A special BBC Panorama programme tonight will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries. It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had 'virtually nothing' in terms of WMD. Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was 'totally fabricated'. However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002. Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been. Butler says of the use of intelligence: 'There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.' When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: 'Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.' The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable. One unidentified MI6 officer has told the Chilcot inquiry that at one stage information was 'being torn off the teleprinter and rushed across to Number 10'. Another said it was 'wishful thinking… [that] promised the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow'. The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French. It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated. Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was 'too busy'."
On Privacy:
Bruce Schneier: The Internet is a surveillance state
"I'm going to start with three data points. One: Some of the Chinese military hackers who were implicated in a broad set of attacks against the U.S. government and corporations were identified because they accessed Facebook from the same network infrastructure they used to carry out their attacks. Two: Hector Monsegur, one of the leaders of the LulzSac hacker movement, was identified and arrested last year by the FBI. Although he practiced good computer security and used an anonymous relay service to protect his identity, he slipped up. And three: Paula Broadwell,who had an affair with CIA director David Petraeus, similarly took extensive precautions to hide her identity. She never logged in to her anonymous e-mail service from her home network. Instead, she used hotel and other public networks when she e-mailed him. The FBI correlated hotel registration data from several different hotels -- and hers was the common name. The Internet is a surveillance state. Whether we admit it to ourselves or not, and whether we like it or not, we're being tracked all the time. Google tracks us, both on its pages and on other pages it has access to. Facebook does the same; it even tracks non-Facebook users. Apple tracks us on our iPhones and iPads. One reporter used a tool called Collusion to track who was tracking him; 105 companies tracked his Internet use during one 36-hour period. Increasingly, what we do on the Internet is being combined with other data about us. Unmasking Broadwell's identity involved correlating her Internet activity with her hotel stays. Everything we do now involves computers, and computers produce data as a natural by-product. Everything is now being saved and correlated, and many big-data companies make money by building up intimate profiles of our lives from a variety of sources..."
Friday, March 15, 2013
Society:
Christopher Hayes: Why Elites Fail
"...While smartness is necessary for competent elites, it is far from sufficient: wisdom, judgment, empathy and ethical rigor are all as important, even if those traits are far less valued. Indeed, extreme intelligence without these qualities can be extremely destructive. But empathy does not impress the same way smartness does. Smartness dazzles and mesmerizes. More important, it intimidates. When a group of powerful people get together to make a group decision, conflict and argumentation ensue, and more often than not the decision that emerges is that which is articulated most forcefully by those parties perceived to be the 'smartest.' It is under these conditions that destructive intelligence flourishes. Behind many of the Bush administration’s most disastrous and destructive decisions was one man: David Addington, counsel and then chief of staff to Dick Cheney. Addington was called 'Cheney’s Cheney' and “the most powerful man you’ve never heard of.' A former Bush White House lawyer told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that the administration’s legal framework for the 'war on terror'—from indefinite detention, to torture, to rejection of the 1949 Geneva Accords, to denial of habeas corpus—was 'all Addington.' Addington’s defining trait, as portrayed in numerous profiles, is his hard-edged, ideologically focused intelligence. 'The boy seemed terribly, terribly bright,' Addington’s high school history teacher told Mayer. 'He was scornful of anyone who said anything that was naïve, or less than bright. His sneers were almost palpable.' A US News and World Report profile of Addington observed that 'his capacity to absorb complex information is legendary.' Co-workers referred to him as 'extremely smart' and 'sublimely brilliant.' What emerges in these accounts is a figure who used his dazzling recall, razor-sharp logical ability and copious knowledge to implacably push administration policy in a rogue direction. Because he knew the law so well, he was able to make legal arguments that, executed by anyone else, would have been regarded as insane. He would edit briefs so that they always reflected a maximalist interpretation of presidential power, and his sheer ferocity and analytic horsepower enabled him to steamroll anyone who raised objections. Pentagon lawyer Richard Schiffrin described Addington’s posture in a meeting just after 9/11 to Mayer this way: 'He’d sit, listen, and then say, ‘No, that’s not right.’… He didn’t recognize the wisdom of the other lawyers. He was always right. He didn’t listen. He knew the answers.' This is a potent articulation of the dark emotional roots of the Cult of Smartness: the desire to differentiate and dominate that the meritocracy encourages. Ironically, in seeking to stand apart, the Cult of Smartness can kill independent thought by subtly training people to defer to others whom one should 'take seriously,'..."
Consumer Information As A Good:
Lauren Lyster: ‘Big Data’ Generates Big Returns: Q&A With VC Roger Ehrenberg
"...Q: And for just the average person or consumer, is privacy essentially dead? And if so, is there any silver lining to make ordinary people feel better about that?
A: I believe consumer privacy is largely dead, and that there is an implicit pact between the consumer, retail providers and the government. It goes like this: 'Give me the best experience possible on whatever device I'm using, where I only see contextually relevant recommendations and receive appropriate offers. Also, please keep me safe by hunting down the bad guys who are hacking into my service providers' databases that hold my confidential data.' There is no easy answer, but I do believe that the privacy horse left the barn a long time ago..."
Christopher Hayes: Why Elites Fail
"...While smartness is necessary for competent elites, it is far from sufficient: wisdom, judgment, empathy and ethical rigor are all as important, even if those traits are far less valued. Indeed, extreme intelligence without these qualities can be extremely destructive. But empathy does not impress the same way smartness does. Smartness dazzles and mesmerizes. More important, it intimidates. When a group of powerful people get together to make a group decision, conflict and argumentation ensue, and more often than not the decision that emerges is that which is articulated most forcefully by those parties perceived to be the 'smartest.' It is under these conditions that destructive intelligence flourishes. Behind many of the Bush administration’s most disastrous and destructive decisions was one man: David Addington, counsel and then chief of staff to Dick Cheney. Addington was called 'Cheney’s Cheney' and “the most powerful man you’ve never heard of.' A former Bush White House lawyer told The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer that the administration’s legal framework for the 'war on terror'—from indefinite detention, to torture, to rejection of the 1949 Geneva Accords, to denial of habeas corpus—was 'all Addington.' Addington’s defining trait, as portrayed in numerous profiles, is his hard-edged, ideologically focused intelligence. 'The boy seemed terribly, terribly bright,' Addington’s high school history teacher told Mayer. 'He was scornful of anyone who said anything that was naïve, or less than bright. His sneers were almost palpable.' A US News and World Report profile of Addington observed that 'his capacity to absorb complex information is legendary.' Co-workers referred to him as 'extremely smart' and 'sublimely brilliant.' What emerges in these accounts is a figure who used his dazzling recall, razor-sharp logical ability and copious knowledge to implacably push administration policy in a rogue direction. Because he knew the law so well, he was able to make legal arguments that, executed by anyone else, would have been regarded as insane. He would edit briefs so that they always reflected a maximalist interpretation of presidential power, and his sheer ferocity and analytic horsepower enabled him to steamroll anyone who raised objections. Pentagon lawyer Richard Schiffrin described Addington’s posture in a meeting just after 9/11 to Mayer this way: 'He’d sit, listen, and then say, ‘No, that’s not right.’… He didn’t recognize the wisdom of the other lawyers. He was always right. He didn’t listen. He knew the answers.' This is a potent articulation of the dark emotional roots of the Cult of Smartness: the desire to differentiate and dominate that the meritocracy encourages. Ironically, in seeking to stand apart, the Cult of Smartness can kill independent thought by subtly training people to defer to others whom one should 'take seriously,'..."
Consumer Information As A Good:
Lauren Lyster: ‘Big Data’ Generates Big Returns: Q&A With VC Roger Ehrenberg
"...Q: And for just the average person or consumer, is privacy essentially dead? And if so, is there any silver lining to make ordinary people feel better about that?
A: I believe consumer privacy is largely dead, and that there is an implicit pact between the consumer, retail providers and the government. It goes like this: 'Give me the best experience possible on whatever device I'm using, where I only see contextually relevant recommendations and receive appropriate offers. Also, please keep me safe by hunting down the bad guys who are hacking into my service providers' databases that hold my confidential data.' There is no easy answer, but I do believe that the privacy horse left the barn a long time ago..."
Monday, March 04, 2013
Consumer Purchasing Power:
Car companies used to build cars and occasionally make loans to people buying them. Today, car companies tend to generate as much income, if not more, from their financing division than their manufacturing division. While debt allows the consumer to feed their ego with what they can afford to drive/lease, it does little to create market demand for 'basic transportation' offerings ($10k-15k) in volumes sufficient to keep car companies profitable. With fuel as inexpensive as it is, when you look at what Americans actually buy in the largest numbers (F150 & Silverado, Camry distant 3rd), it's pretty obvious why car makers have very little interest in building great small cars for this market. The top two are 16-18 combined MPG vehicles...
Autoblog: Households with median incomes can only afford average new car price in one of America's 25 largest cities
Car companies used to build cars and occasionally make loans to people buying them. Today, car companies tend to generate as much income, if not more, from their financing division than their manufacturing division. While debt allows the consumer to feed their ego with what they can afford to drive/lease, it does little to create market demand for 'basic transportation' offerings ($10k-15k) in volumes sufficient to keep car companies profitable. With fuel as inexpensive as it is, when you look at what Americans actually buy in the largest numbers (F150 & Silverado, Camry distant 3rd), it's pretty obvious why car makers have very little interest in building great small cars for this market. The top two are 16-18 combined MPG vehicles...
Autoblog: Households with median incomes can only afford average new car price in one of America's 25 largest cities
