Why tough questions are good for everyone

I am not known to have many kind words for Condoleezza Rice's performance as National Security Advisor or Secretary of State. However, she does a very good job at explaining the US administration's position on the global war on terror and its resulting policies in the following interview with the BBC. I disagree with many things Ms. Rice says, but wanted to post this to show how challenging interviews actually help the debate and to highlight how sorely lacking tough questions are from interviews by US network news "journalists." Less punditry and more journalism would be a welcome change on this side of the pond.

Equally brilliant.

Brilliant.

Sarkozy wages war on the French (in secret)

Earlier this year, French President Sarkozy signed a secret decree to create a computer database to track and store details on "anyone active in politics or trade unions and or in a significant role in business, the media, entertainment or social or religious institutions." This includes children over the age of 13 who are "susceptible to breaching the public order." See here (London Times) and here (website of the French Data Protection Authority, in French).

The new database that Sarkozy wants to create will have information on millions of law abiding French people, and is appropriately named "Edvig." Edvig is the Italian form of "Hedwig" which is a combination of "hadu" meaning "contention" and "wig" meaning "war."

All this may sound familiar to those who have been following the Bush administration's attacks on civil liberties on this side of the Atlantic. A few years ago, the US military was creating a database that is eerily similar to Edvig. It, too, had an appropriate name: Total Information Awareness Program ("TIA"). As the ACLU explained in 2003:

Virtual dragnet programs like TIA ... are based on the premise that the best way to protect America against terrorism is for the government to collect as much information as it can about everyone - and these days, that is a LOT of information.

Here's the logo that TIA was using (notice the slogan: "knowledge is power") --


The libertarian Cato Institute described it as follows:

The TIA logo features an edited version of the Great Seal of the United States: The 13-block pyramid (think 13 original colonies) topped by the Eye of God. The original carries the phrase (translated from Latin) "A New Order of the Ages," reflecting a principled view of individual freedom quite alien to that of the Orwellian TIA office. The TIA's version perverts the proud seal that originally symbolized our freedom. The "eye" is no longer God's, but the federal government's, surveying the entire globe in a single glance. TIA's new slogan? "Knowledge is Power." But whose knowledge? And power to do what?

After a public outcry that TIA contravened basic American values, Congress shut down funding. However, as the Washington Times reported last year, not for long. The Department for Homeland Security revived the program in 2007.

Back in 2003, the ACLU pointed out a number of powerful objections to programs like TIA. For example, TIA kills privacy, harbors tremendous potential for abuse, and is based on virtual dragnets instead of individualized suspicion.

I would add another, overarching objection to these types of programs: "mission creep." Once given the power to collect data on any citizen, regardless of suspicion of wrongdoing, the state will never give it up. Rather, the state will provide endless new justifications why "we" are all better off not having control over basic information regarding our purchases and preferences, thereby hastening our slide into the National Surveillance State.

All of this is perhaps defensible if Edvig and TIA are implemented following widespread debate and in a democratic manner. But for decisive "men of action" like Sarkozy, Poindexter (TIA) and Chertoff (Homeland Security), democracy is too messy.

Must read election analysis

The website FiveThirtyEight.com contains a wealth of up to date polling data and analysis re. the upcoming election. Today's entry discusses the Republican National Convention and possible consequences here.

Taking the post-Democratic National Convention bump into account (and not yet the post-Republican National Convention bump, because it is still too soon after that convention), Obama currently has a wide lead in electoral votes -- 310 v. 228. Here's a graph from the website showing the current distribution of the electoral vote --

















And here is the current trend --


















The coming days should be interesting, and may give a better sense whether the argument that although McCain is a good tactician, Obama is the better strategist holds water (h/t Ochoro).

Yankah on Palin

My friend Ekow Yankah has a thoughtful post on the pregnancy of Palin's daughter here. The post includes the following:

As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin has, in keeping with her party, steadfastly denied support for comprehensive sex education. (She has publically said she refused to support “explicit” sex education.) . . . Now the world thrusts an example of a young woman from an educated family of faith who has an apparently unplanned pregnancy. Nor is this a case of my using anecdote as data; the current best evidence available shows that abstinence-based programs and the lack of comprehensive sex-education is an absolute failure, at best delaying sexual activity for a short period but greatly increasing unsafe sex practices. . . . It is fair enough for us to inspect Governor Palin’s record on this issue specifically as well as worry about the general disdain that Republicans have shown in recent years for using the best evidence available to guide our policies.

I would go even further: exposing the immediate results of Palin's failed policies is not only "fair", it is imperative. However, I disagree that the Obama campaign or anyone close to it should do that by using the pregnancy of Governor Palin's daughter. This girl is in many ways a victim (including of the machinations of her own mother) and to use her in these circumstances to make a perfectly valid point strikes me as inappropriate. Obviously, the same reticence should not apply to anything regarding Palin herself...

Sarah Palin: Against the US before she was for it

The title of this blog comes from one of the comments in a blog in which Jack Balkin asks some of the questions I have been asking in private as well:

- how would the infotainment industry have reacted if senator Obama had been a member of a political party that wanted Illinois to secede from the US?

- how would Fox news and the rest of the mindless infotainment industry have reacted to the news that senator Obama's teenager daughter was pregnant?

And, I would add:

- how would the infotainment industry have reacted if senator Obama had tried to pressure the police chief in some city in Illinois to fire Obama's brother in law because he was going through a nasty divorce with Obama's sister?

Hint: apoplectic, frothing and mouth would each appear in the sentence responding to these questions (although not necessarily in that order).