Drone Operator Exposes Errors

I worked on the US drone program. The public should know what really goes on

Few of the politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue how it actually works (and doesn't)

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An Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drone. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Whenever I read comments by politicians defending the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Predator and Reaper program – aka drones – I wish I could ask them a few questions. I'd start with: "How many women and children have you seen incinerated by a Hellfire missile?" And: "How many men have you seen crawl across a field, trying to make it to the nearest compound for help while bleeding out from severed legs?"

Or even more pointedly: "How many soldiers have you seen die on the side of a road in Afghanistan because our ever-so-accurate UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] were unable to detect an IED [improvised explosive device] that awaited their convoy?"

Few of these politicians who so brazenly proclaim the benefits of drones have a real clue of what actually goes on. I, on the other hand, have seen these awful sights first hand.

I knew the names of some of the young soldiers I saw bleed to death on the side of a road. I watched dozens of military-aged males die in Afghanistan, in empty fields, along riversides, and some right outside the compound where their family was waiting for them to return home from the mosque.
The US and British militaries insist that this is an expert program, but it's curious that they feel the need to deliver faulty information, few or no statistics about civilian deaths and twisted technology reports on the capabilities of our UAVs. These specific incidents are not isolated, and the civilian casualty rate has not changed, despite what our defense representatives might like to tell us.

What the public needs to understand is that the video provided by a drone is not usually clear enough to detect someone carrying a weapon, even on a crystal-clear day with limited cloud and perfect light. This makes it incredibly difficult for the best analysts to identify if someone has weapons for sure. One example comes to mind: "The feed is so pixelated, what if it's a shovel, and not a weapon?" I felt this confusion constantly, as did my fellow UAV analysts. We always wonder if we killed the right people, if we endangered the wrong people, if we destroyed an innocent civilian's life all because of a bad image or angle.

It's also important for the public to grasp that there are human beings operating and analysing intelligence these UAVs. I know because I was one of them, and nothing can prepare you for an almost daily routine of flying combat aerial surveillance missions over a war zone. UAV proponents claim that troops who do this kind of work are not affected by observing this combat because they are never directly in danger physically.

But here's the thing: I may not have been on the ground in Afghanistan, but I watched parts of the conflict in great detail on a screen for days on end. I know the feeling you experience when you see someone die. Horrifying barely covers it. And when you are exposed to it over and over again it becomes like a small video, embedded in your head, forever on repeat, causing psychological pain and suffering that many people will hopefully never experience. UAV troops are victim to not only the haunting memories of this work that they carry with them, but also the guilt of always being a little unsure of how accurate their confirmations of weapons or identification of hostile individuals were.

Of course, we are trained to not experience these feelings, and we fight it, and become bitter. Some troops seek help in mental health clinics provided by the military, but we are limited on who we can talk to and where, because of the secrecy of our missions. I find it interesting that the suicide statistics in this career field aren't reported, nor are the data on how many troops working in UAV positions are heavily medicated for depression, sleep disorders and anxiety.

Recently, the Guardian ran a commentary by Britain's secretary of state for defence, Philip Hammond. I wish I could talk to him about the two friends and colleagues I lost, within a year of leaving the military, to suicide. I am sure he has not been notified of that little bit of the secret UAV program, or he would surely take a closer look at the full scope of the program before defending it again.

The UAVs in the Middle East are used as a weapon, not as protection, and as long as our public remains ignorant to this, this serious threat to the sanctity of human life – at home and abroad – will continue.

• Editor's note: Heather Linebaugh does not possess any classified material and has honored her non-disclosure agreement since the time of her discharge. 

Article history

World news

• Drones ·
• US military ·
• United States ·
• Afghanistan ·
• Iraq ·
• Yemen ·
• Pakistan

• More on this story

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• 
  Suspected US drone strike kills 'three foreign militants'
  
• 
  Federal Aviation Administration reveals drone testing sites in six states
  
• 
  Oklahoma's drones – the next generation
  

• Opinion

• 
  
  President Obama's new normal: the drone strikes continue
  
  Amy Goodman: Americans abhor mass shootings in our communities, but why do we allow our government to kill so many innocents abroad?
  
• 
  Philip Hammond ignores the truth about drone atrocities
  

Wall Street Attacks Tea Party Candidates

Chamber of Commerce Promises $50 Million in Fight Against Tea Party

Friday, 27 Dec 2013 07:54 AM

By Cathy Burke

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The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is ready to take on the tea party in 2014 Senate primaries and elections with a deep-pocketed boost of establishment and business Republican candidates.

"Our No. 1 focus is to make sure, when it comes to the Senate, that we have no loser candidates," Chamber strategist Scott Reed told The Wall Street Journal. "That will be our mantra: '
No fools on our ticket."

The financial support, which The Hill reported would pour at least $50 million into the campaigns of centrist GOP candidates, is part of an aggressive approach toward tea party Republicans since the 16-day October government shutdown.

The Chamber has expressed its displeasure with tea party favorites Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who resisted passing a budget without a provision to defund Obamacare, triggering a stalemate.

Just a month later, the Chamber jumped into the intra-party GOP voting, backing establishment GOP candidate Bradley Byrne over tea party prospect Dean Young in an Alabama special House election.

Byrne beat Young, and went on to an easy victory in the Dec. 17 special election, defeating Democrat Burton LeFlore.

The Chamber — which hasn't usually gotten involved in GOP primaries — is airing ads for Rep. Mike Simpson in Idaho, where he faces a tea party-backed challenger in his race for a ninth House term.

Hard-right candidates' blunders are perceived to have cost the GOP five Senate seats in recent years, The Hill reported.

Republicans, for example, lost Senate elections in Indiana and Missouri after conservative candidates made controversial comments about abortion and rape that hurt their support, particularly among women.

The Chamber could also toss its influence into upcoming Senate races in Georgia,
Iowa, and North Carolina, where tea party candidates are challenging, The Hill reported.

Meanwhile, the head of Heritage Action is vowing to challenge GOP leaders on a number of fiscal issues — and to keep active with grassroots activists.

"Lawmakers do not have a monopoly on information, and we will continue to communicate directly with their constituents on important legislation as it moves through Congress," Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation think tank, told the Journal.

He said most lawmakers "will find it difficult to go back home and defend votes that increase spending, increase deficits and undermine the rule of law."

Fracking Unconstitutional in Pennsylvania

PA Supreme Court Rules Major Provisions of 

Fracking Law are Unconstitutional

by ericlewis0Follow

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court today declared unconstitutional major provisions of the state’s Marcellus Shale drilling law, Act 13, including one that allowed gas companies to drill anywhere, overriding local zoning laws. The court’s decision, on a 4-2 vote, also sent back to Commonwealth Court challenges by townships and individuals to the Act 13 provisions that would have prevented doctors from telling patients about health impacts related to shale gas development.
...
State Rep. Jesse White, D-Cecil, who has been an outspoken opponent of shale development, hailed the ruling as an affirmation of the state constitution’s guarantee of “clean air and clean water” and the self-governance rights of local communities.
He said “... a clear message has been sent to Governor Corbett and his friends in the energy industry: Our fundamental constitutional principles cannot be auctioned off to wealthy special interests in exchange for campaign dollars. On this day, David has defeated Goliath.”

Volker Rule Weakened by Bankster Lobbies

Volcker Rule Made Meaningless by Abundant Exemptions

AP/Bernd Kammerer

By Nomi Prins
The subject of heated debate in financial circles, the Volcker Rule, which was originally passed as part of the 2010 Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, was finally approved by regulators. It will begin taking effect in April 2014 with full compliance required by July 2015. They say the devil is in the details. Regarding the Volcker Rule, the devil is in the details of its abundant exemptions. These include a laundry list of practices and businesses that mega-banks have performed under one roof, since the 1999 repeal of Glass-Steagall, as well as the myriad perks they won along the way to that power-consolidating event.

The Volcker Rule in its current form ostensibly focuses on mitigating the “excessive” risk of proprietary trading at banks (which it doesn’t do well). Worse, it leaves all the other risky trading related activity that poses a far greater systemic threat untouched, such as:
1) Market making—the ability of banks to trade on behalf of clients or eventual clients, which is how they make the bulk of their trading profits, and thus create risk.
2) Underwriting—the creation of securities that can contain multiple layers of financial complexity, such as the toxic assets at the heart of the recent crisis.
3) Hedging—or the desire of banks to “protect” themselves through trading, which is virtually impossible to detect from any other kind of trading.
4) Trading government bonds. 5) Organizing or offering hedge and private equity funds, which involves trading and was theoretically to be prohibited under the original intent of the Volcker Rule.

Other exclusions (yes, there are more) relate to the ability of banks to trade—proprietary or otherwise—within their brokerage arms (which are supposedly, but not actually, distinct from their deposit-taking arms) and insurance company arms (which have historically been eager buyers and accumulators of toxic assets).

The real danger of the Volcker Rule, though, isn’t just that it leaves the structure of Wall Street’s deposit-insured, security-distributing and market-making services intact. The danger is that Wall Street critics believe it makes a meaningful difference, that it’s an obvious road on the way to the Glass-Steagall reinstatement highway, and are thus not ranting and raving for it to be made stronger, even as the bank lobbyists and lawyers are making every effort to further weaken it.

The Volcker Rule Exclusions Are the Rule
Between effectiveness and legalese, you can drive an 18-wheeler of financial wizardry. And that’s even accepting the notion that proprietary trading was a key culprit in causing any major financial crisis, relative to nearly any other risk producing bank practice, which it wasn’t.

Even so, the banks have been lobbying for exemptions in this minimal attempt at regulation and won’t stop. Thus the eventual implemented rule will entail more pages of exemptions, particularly if the public remains oblivious to its current impotence to deter risk.

The Big Six banks (JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley) that control the majority of domestic deposits (and nearly all of U.S. derivatives) dangle them as financial hostages before complicit regulators, legislators and presidents. Too big to fail is about power, not size. These banks that sit atop the U.S. financial hierarchy by virtue of their legacy leaders having attacked 1933 Glass-Steagall regulations since the 1950s—piece by piece—own insurance companies, asset management companies, and brokerage or trading houses.

They not only have access to an increasingly higher proportion of deposits, but also of pension and other funds, and insurance policies. That’s why one of the main things that banks did to weaken the possibility of broad restriction on any of their overall trading activities was to ensure these side financial service businesses would bear no restriction on trading, proprietary or otherwise, as per their exemptions in the Volcker Rule.

The Fed’s Language Game
The Volcker Rule won’t take full effect until July 15, 2015. Thus, the only thing that really happened on Dec. 10, 2013, was that the Fed announced that five federal agencies “issued final rules” to “implement section 619 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (the ‘Volcker Rule’).”

As Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke remarked with great fanfare from a media hailing the mere “adoption of final rules” as a deterrent to Wall Street’s most heinous behavior (December is a slow news month):

“This provision of the Dodd-Frank Act has the important objective of limiting excessive risk taking by depository institutions and their affiliates. Getting to this vote has taken longer than we would have liked, but five agencies have had to work together to grapple with a large number of difficult issues and respond to extensive public comments” (italics mine).

It’s true that the Volcker Rule has the ability to limit “excessive risk,” but only in the most literal sense. Even Bernanke’s choice of words indicated focus on a small portion of risk—not systemic risk and not the risk that these banks remain too powerful to fail.

A more misleading aspect of Bernanke’s statement was that he claimed it took so long to get to this point because of the need to address “public comments.” Given the comparative length of bank-supportive pages relative to public-protecting ones, “public comments” essentially means bank lobbyist demands.

Separately, the Fed’s press release underscored the elements of trading the rule would not touch as much, if not more so, than what it would. The release stated that insured-deposit-taking banks would be prohibited from “engaging in short-term proprietary trading of certain securities, derivatives, commodity futures and options on those instruments for their own account” plus be subject to “limits on investments in, or relations with hedge funds or private equity funds.” But it also stated that “the final rules provide exemptions for certain activities, including market making, underwriting, hedging, trading in government obligations, insurance company activities, and organizing and offering hedge funds or private equity funds.” In addition, it clarified that “certain activities are not prohibited.” That these exclusions were prominent in the Fed’s press release speaks volumes to the parties the Fed is trying to coddle.

CEOs must attest to the program’s integrity, under the eye of an outside regulator—who will have to take all this pious restraint at face value.


Breaking It Down
The proposed rules tally 892 pages, of which the beginning contains exposition and outlines the crux of the rule prohibiting certain proprietary trading and hedge and private equity fund activities.
The exclusions kick in on page 55. Through page 79, we get their general aspects, with more specific details following on page 80. We wander through Underwriting Exemptions from pages 80 to 139, followed by a long section on Market-Making Exemptions from pages 140 to 317.

Then, we get a bunch of permitted hedge fund related activities that nearly negate the idea of the Volcker Rule altering the relationship of big banks to big hedge funds from pages 317 to 361. From this point, we meander through permitted trading in certain government and municipal securities (including in foreign bonds). There are a few antiquated categories that seem open to more lobbying through page 388.

Permitted Trading on behalf of clients gets 10 pages, as does permitted trading by a regulated insurance company. Permitted trading activities of a foreign banking entity get 23 pages.
Then we come to a section that sounds sort of regulatory, but is too obtuse to tell from pages 433 to 447. After a few pages of definitions as to what constitutes “High-Risk Asset” and “High-Risk trading strategy,” we get one page—one page!—on trading that could “Pose a Threat to Safety and Soundness of the Banking Entity or the Financial Stability of the United States.”

Another section of loopholes begins with covered fund activities on page 463. This is the stuff that allows banks to trade almost anything anywhere as long as it’s named in such a way as to avoid suspicion. Section 10 begins with prohibitions on banks buying or having certain relationships with a “Covered Fund.”

Pages 500 to 637 provide lists of exemptions to the above such as foreign public funds, insurance company separate accounts, loan securitizations (which were central to the subprime crisis), derivatives on loan securitization (ditto), venture capital funds (another word for private equity funds) and credit funds (which can hold all sorts of AIG-type credit derivatives).

In Section 11, we get another laundry list of permitted activities in conjunction with organizing covered funds, including “permitted risk-mitigating hedging activities” (and aren’t they all?) from pages 638 to 766. These also include foreign funds and insurance companies. To cap it off, we get some obligatory legal jargon about how to comply with whatever weakened rules remain from pages 767 to 882. C’est tout.

Something Is Not Always Better Than Nothing
For those people who think the Volcker Rule is a swipe at the banks and will reduce risk in the system, I urge you to reconsider. The Volcker Rule (and Paul Volcker, for whom it’s named) might have had good intentions, but the form it has taken, and was destined to take as I’ve written before, is a placation. It is not substantive reform, or even the right path.

Only a resurrection of Glass-Steagall will truly reduce the risk mega-banks pose to our economic lives. The multiple decades of regulation assassination, the combining of financial services from insurance policies to our pension funds, the epic leverage in the banking system as part of the high-stakes game of global profit, the enabling of the derivatives market to reach many times the world’s GDP, disproportionally controlled by the Big Six U.S. banks—are all time bombs of financial devastation.

This immense power in the hands of the Big Six banks and their leaders is dangerous to all of us, whether we believe that something like the Volcker Rule or Dodd-Frank represents true reform or not. Without curtailing that power, through a full separation of deposits and loan taking services from any other kind of trading and security creation engine or other form of financial service—the intent of the original Glass-Steagall Act—we are not safe. There will be bigger and broader crises.

Our apathy is exactly what the banks, their CEOs, their lawyers and their lobbyists count on. They depend on citizens getting bored and glassy-eyed when a financial term is mentioned and turning to stories about Miley Cyrus twerking or Kim Kardashian’s bikini bod instead. They rely on journalists not reading between the lines or even tabulating the lines. They bet that most legislators (excluding Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) will focus anywhere else, because they can out-complicate the lingo. They are confident that the population will continue to furnish them chips on the global betting table. That is our current system. That is the system that must be abolished through the strict re-employment of Glass-Steagall. We—all of us—have too much at stake to be blindsided by anything else

$1 Billion Wind Turbines for Iowa

Tue Dec 17, 2013 at 05:32 AM PST

Wind power generation almost at par w Coal as Buffet spends $1 Billion on new Iowa wind generators

by Lefty CoasterFollow

Wind Power has arrived at a point where it is almost competitive with Coal for generation. Warren Buffet's electrical utility is poised to spend $1 Billion on new wind turbines in Iowa.

Wind Power Rivals Coal With $1 Billion Order From Buffett By Ehren Goossens

The decision by Warren Buffett’s utility company to order about $1 billion of wind turbines for projects in Iowa shows how a drop in equipment costs is making renewable energy more competitive with power from fossil fuels.

Turbine prices have fallen 26 percent worldwide since the first half of 2009, bringing wind power within 5.5 percent of the cost of electricity from coal, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. MidAmerican Energy Holdings Co., a unit of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., yesterday announced an order for 1,050 megawatts of Siemens AG wind turbines in the industry’s largest order to date for land-based gear.

5.5% is a relatively small premium to pay to buy sustainable green energy drove dirty coal power generation. Coal is the most destructive fuel available for generating electric energy of any fossil fuel. 

Coal now provides a large portion of the worlds electrical generation capacity, and that won't change overnight. But this shows how close how competitive greener alternatives are coming to conventional fossil fuels. That gives electric utilities all over the world a new cleaner alternative to dirty coal for a small price deferential. And that's very good news for all of us who want a future on this planet.

Wolff on Current Crisis

Capitalism and Democracy: Year-End Lessons

Wednesday, 18 December 2013 09:12 By Richard D Wolff, Truthout | News

**********

2013 drove home a basic lesson: US capitalism's economic leaders and their politicians now regularly ignore majority opinions and preferences.

For example, polls showed overwhelming popular support for higher taxes on the rich with lower taxes on the rest of us and for reversing the nation's deepening economic inequalities. Yet Republicans and Democrats, including President Obama, raised payroll taxes sharply on January 1, 2013. Those taxes are regressive; they take a smaller percentage of your income the higher your income is above $113,700 per year. Raising the payroll tax increased economic inequality across 2013.

For another example, many American cities and towns want to use eminent domain laws to help residents keep their homes and avoid foreclosure. Eminent domain is a hallmark democratic right as well as US law. It enables municipal governments to buy individual properties (at market prices) when doing so benefits the community as a whole. Using eminent domain, local leaders want to compel lenders (e.g., banks, etc.) to sell them homes whose market prices have fallen below the mortgage debts of their occupants. They would then resell those homes at their market prices to their occupants. With their mortgages thus reduced to their homes' actual prices, occupants could stay in them. They still suffer their homes' fallen values but avoid homelessness. Communities benefit because decreased homelessness reduces the fall of other property values, reduces the number of abandoned homes (and thus risks of fire, crime, etc.), reduces the number of customers lost to local stores, sustains property tax flows to local governments and so on.

Used this way, eminent domain forces lenders - chiefly banks - to share more of the pains produced by capitalism's crisis. Most Americans support that, believing it will help reverse income and wealth inequalities and also that banks bear major responsibility for the economic crisis.

Yet the country's biggest banks are using "their" money and laws (that they often wrote) to block municipalities' use of eminent domain. "Their" money includes the massive bailouts Washington provided to them since 2007. Big bank directors and major shareholders - a tiny minority - fund the politicians, parties and think-tanks that oppose municipalities' use of eminent domain. In these ways, capitalism systematically undermines democratic decision-making about economic affairs.

For yet another example, the recent bankruptcy court decision about Detroit allows the city to cut retired city workers' pensions. Those workers bargained and signed contracts with Detroit's leaders over many years. They accepted less in wages and benefits in exchange for their pensions as parts of their agreed compensation for work performed. Now that an economic crisis and the unemployment it generated have cut Detroit's tax revenues, this system's "solution" includes cutting retired workers' pensions. Other cities are expected to adopt this solution. Inequality worsens as the costs of this economic crisis shift from lenders to cities (usually rich) to retired city-worker pensioners (never rich).

In these and other ways, 2013 taught millions of Americans that capitalism repeatedly contradicts the democratic idea that majority decisions should govern society as a whole. The system's tendency toward deepening inequalities of income and wealth operated across 2013 in direct contradiction to the will of substantial American majorities.

The same happened in the decades before the 1930s Great Depression. However, in that Depression, a mass movement from below (organized by the Congress of Industrial Organizations - CIO - and socialist and communist parties) successfully reversed capitalism's tendencies toward inequality. Supported by majorities of Americans, it was strong enough to obtain Social Security, unemployment compensation and millions of federal jobs for the people whom private capitalists could not or would not employ. Those programs helped average people rather than bailing out banks and other large corporations. That movement also got the government to pay for those programs by taxing corporations and the rich at far higher rates than exist now. Capitalism's deepening inequality was partly reversed by and because of a massive democratic movement.

However, that movement stopped short of ending capitalism. Thus it only temporarily reversed capitalism's tendencies toward inequality. After World War II, business, the rich and conservatives mobilized a return to "capitalism as usual." They organized a massive government repression of the coalition (CIO, socialists and communists) that led the 1930s movement from below. By such means as the Taft-Hartley Act and McCarthyism, capitalism resumed its development of ever-greater economic inequalities, especially after 1970. In the Great Recession since 2007, the absence of a sustained movement from below has allowed inequality to worsen as our examples above illustrate.

The lessons of recent history include this: To secure democratic decision-making and the kind of society most Americans want requires moving beyond capitalism. Capitalism's difficulties (including its crises and inequalities) and its control of government responses to those difficulties keep teaching that lesson. The widening gap between democratic needs and impulses and the imperatives of capitalism is becoming clear to millions in the United States but also in other countries.

For example, the Rajoy government in Spain recently imposed new levels of repression on the strengthening protests against its austerity policies. Spain's unemployment rate today exceeds the US rate in the worst year of the Depression. Rajoy wants fines of up to $40,000 for offenses such as burning the national flag, insulting the state or causing serious disturbances outside Parliament. Indeed some fines go up to $800,000 for "demonstrations that interfere in electoral processes."

Contradictions between democratic rights and demands and the processes of capitalism are accelerating into clashes in legislatures and the streets. Informed by history's lessons about capitalism and democracy, today's movements more likely will recognize the need to confront and supersede capitalism to secure real democracies. Policies that achieve only temporary reversals of capitalist inequalities no longer suffice.

The system's imperatives to profit, compete and grow are now so costly to so many that its critics and opponents are multiplying fast. Once they confront and solve the problem of politically organizing themselves, social change will happen fast, too. (??? ed)

NSA Spying Ilegal

Federal Judge Rules Against N.S.A. Phone Data Program

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — A Federal District Court judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans’ phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, and he ordered the government to stop collecting data on two plaintiffs’ personal calls and destroy the records of their calling history.

• Document: Federal Judge’s Ruling on N.S.A. Lawsuit

In a 68-page ruling, Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia called the program’s technology “almost Orwellian” and suggested that James Madison, the author of the Constitution, would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty in such a way.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

Judge Leon stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal it, a matter that he said could take some six months.

Vanee Vines, a spokeswoman for the N.S.A., had no immediate comment on the ruling by Judge Leon, a 2002 appointee of President George W. Bush.

The ruling is the first successful legal challenge brought against the program since it was revealed in June after leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden. It was brought by several plaintiffs led by Larry Klayman, a conservative public-interest lawyer. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a similar lawsuit in the Southern District of New York.

In a statement distributed by the journalist Glenn Greenwald, who was a recipient of leaked documents from Mr. Snowden and who wrote the first article about the bulk data collection, Mr. Snowden hailed the ruling.

“I acted on my belief that the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts,” Mr. Snowden said. “Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”

Though long and detailed, the ruling is not a final judgment, but rather a preliminary injunction to stop the data collection while the plaintiffs pursued the case. It turned on whether there was a substantial likelihood that they would ultimately succeed and whether they would suffer substantial harm in the meantime.

But Judge Leon left little doubt about his view.

“The question that I will ultimately have to answer when I reach the merits of this case someday is whether people have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the government, without any basis whatsoever to suspect them of any wrongdoing, collects and stores for five years their telephony metadata for purposes of subjecting it to high-tech querying and analysis without any case-by-case judicial approval,” he wrote. “For the many reasons set forth above, it is significantly likely that on that day, I will answer that question in plaintiffs’ favor.”

In laying out his conclusion, Judge Leon rejected the Obama administration’s argument that a 1979 case, Smith v. Maryland, meant that there is no Fourth Amendment protections for call metadata — information like the numbers called and received and the date, time and duration of the call, but not the content.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which secretly approved the N.S.A. program after hearing arguments from only the Justice Department, has maintained that the 1979 decision is a controlling precedent that shields the program from Fourth Amendment review. But Judge Leon said the scope of the program and the way people use phones today distinguishes the N.S.A. data collection from the type at issue in that case.

“Put simply, people in 2013 have an entirely different relationship with phones than they did 34 years ago,” he wrote. “Records that once would have revealed a few scattered tiles of information about a person now reveal an entire mosaic — a vibrant and constantly updating picture of the person’s life.”

Judge Leon also emphasized that he was unpersuaded by the government’s claims that the program served the public interest, pointedly noting that it failed to cite “a single instance in which analysis of the N.S.A.'s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent attack, or otherwise aided the government in achieving any objective that was time-sensitive.” 

Progressives and Labor Together

PDA and Labor Come Together in New York for HR 676

Written by  Robert Score

 

Robert Score (IATSE Local One), Rep. John Conyers, Stephen Shaff, PDA

A truly historic meeting took place in New York City at a Labor Breakfast on December 6th, co-hosted by the Progressive Democrats of America and the New York City Central Labor Council in celebration of the endorsement of HR 676 - Expanded and Improved Medicare For All by the NYC CLC last May.

U.S. Congressman John Conyers, the author and lead sponsor of HR 676, was the honored guest and spoke of the energy that the endorsement by the NYC CLC, which represents over 1.3 million union members, brings to the movement of Healthcare for All.  NYC CLC President Vincent Alvarez spoke to the necessity for all working people, union and non-union, to have proper healthcare and that the forces within the industrial-insurance complex, although powerful, must be confronted before the working class families of our country are completely decimated by the ever increasing costs of health care.

Stephen Shaff, representing the PDA, addressed the group of labor leaders and healthcare advocates, noting the work being accomplished by the PDA and the importance of collaboration between the two distinct groups in achieving the common goal of healthcare for all.

Mark Dudzic, National Coordinator for the Labor Campaign For Single Payer Healthcare, Mark Hanny, Executive Director of Metro NY Healthcare For All, Laurie Wen and Katie Robbins from Physicians For National A National Health Plan (PNHP), Joe Benincasa, CEO of The Actors Fund, Scott Cool, IATSE Local One Trust Fund Administrator, Political Directors and rank and file members from several unions including the District Council of Carpenters, the IATSE, CWA and the TWU, were also in the house.

After all in attendance broke bread together, President Alvarez made the opening remarks.  We then shared a moment of silence in memory of world leader Nelson Mandela. It was my privilege to introduce Stephen Shaff and special guest and PDA supporter, television broadcaster Phil Donohue, who very eloquently spoke of his labor background and introduced The Honorable John Conyers.

Mr. Conyers held our attention with his strategic advice to advance the common cause of Single Payer Healthcare For All and his history of always standing for "Jobs, Justice and Peace."

The meeting concluded with our appetites satisfied and our activism energized. Thank you to PDA and the NYC CLC for a successful coming together of healthcare advocates, labor representatives and to Congressman John Conyers whose commitment to HR 676 is unwavering and inspirational.

Reining In the NSA

Amash-backed bill aimed to end NSA spying programs garners even bipartisan support

This Oct. 15, 2013, photo, shows a view of the U.S. Capitol building at dusk in Washington. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Andrew Krietz | akrietz@mlive.com
December 03, 2013

U.S. Rep. Justin Amash, R-Cascade TownshipMLive.com File Photo 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — An even split of Democratic and Republican legislators back a bill supported by Rep. Justin Amash, aiming to end the country's domestic surveillance programs.

The legislation, titled The USA Freedom Act, would, if signed into law, curb the National Security Agency's ability to conduct communications sweeps and close a "back door" to information by requiring a court order when performing searches of Americans in data already collected without warrants.

The Hill reported during the weekend that the bill has at least 102 cosponsors, including 51 Democrats and 51 Republicans. That number is up from what previously has been reported; at least 70 legislators, including Amash, R-Cascade Township, and House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Detroit, supported the bill in October.

Will Adams, Amash's spokesman, said given the surge of support, he expects bipartisan, "comprehensive legislation" on the floor of the House this spring coming off of the upcoming holidays and the fiscal deadline in January.

"We think the American people want to rein in the NSA," Adams said. "They want their rights protected, they want their privacy protected from government surveillance."

The congressman recently told a group of constituents at a town hall event he has been pleased to receive positive reception over an issue he's blasted for the past year.

"It's getting out of control," Amash told the crowd. "(Courts are issuing) general warrants without specific cause, ... and you have one agency that's essentially having superpowers to pass information onto others."

Critics argue the NSA's actions of collecting private citizens' phone records are covert, done under secret court order without explanation and proper transparency."

Supporters, including U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, contend the agency acts within the interest of the United States' safety and security.
According to The Hill, members of Congress are placing increased pressure on House Republican leaders to bring the bill up for a vote. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, defends the NSA's programs and voted against the "Amash Amendment" in July, which would have defunded the programs.

A House Democratic aide told The Hill that Republican leadership is "boxed in" on the issue.
"They're stuck. They would deal with this in the way they deal with a lot of things — by just not moving the legislation," they told the publication.

However, Adams credits Boehner for allowing a vote on the amendment this summer despite his own vote. He, too, sees continued movement toward a possible spring vote considering some legislators who first opposed the amendment now support the Freedom Act.

"Regardless of what his personal views are ... he has, so far, afforded us the procedure to start the NSA reform debate," Adams said.

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., coauthor of the 2001 USA Patriot Act, said the NSA has gone "far beyond" the original intent of the Patriot Act and overstepped its authority.

Eliz. Warren Progressives Choice

Warren, Liberal Faction Gaining Control Among Democrats

Monday, 02 Dec 2013 06:14 AM

By Elliot Jager

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A more liberal and populist movement is emerging within the Democratic Party that views President Barack Obama and the party's presumptive presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton as excessively centrist, according to the Washington Post.

This group is looking to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., as its 2016 presidential standard-bearer.

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In contrast to Obama, Warren favors increasing Social Security payments. In a recent Senate floor speech she said, "The absolute last thing we should do in 2013 – at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors – is to allow the program to begin to be dismantled inch by inch."

In addition to opposing any budget deal that would involve Social Security reductions, the more liberal faction favors stronger regulation of Wall Street; a $10.10-an-hour minimum wage, higher than the $9 favored by Obama; student loan debt relief; steps aimed at reducing economic inequality, and measures to protect workers from the aftershocks of globalization.

Clinton is seen by many on the left as being too close to Wall Street and to the devotees of Robert Rubin, her husband's Treasury secretary. Some also complain that Rubin's people have been running economic policy under Obama, according to the Post.

Warren, a former Harvard law professor, has also called for big banks to be broken up.

"Wall Street will fight us, but the American people are on our side," she told a union audience.

The Post reported that Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who calls himself a democratic socialist, said that though he is not keen to run for president he is willing to do so if a sufficiently liberal Democrat does not enter the raise.