Memo frenzy: sequel 1

The Nunes memo (text here) hammers on the Steele dossier, how biased Steele was against Trump, how the dossier was used to spy on an American whose rights were thus abridged, and, hey, the targeted individual worked on Trump's campaign.

The memo was heartily cheered by the Trump faithful. Their narrative is that the whole 'Russia thing' is fake news, stirred up by media, abetted by deep state leakers and a very biased FBI and Justice Department. Both of those departments should obviously be cleared out, with all these anti-Trump conspirators sent to jail.

The Nunes memo supported this narrative by positing the FBI used the perfidious Steele dossier to get a warrant to spy on a loyal American (Trump adviser Carter Page), violating his civil rights. Those who want to take that narrative even further into territory even Nunes can't go, they say that the FBI was spying on the Trump campaign and giving that information to Obama.

The Nunes is centered on the claim that the FISA court judge wasn't told that the dossier was opposition research. Dems dispute this. Am I going to believe Nunes? Not a chance. I'm looking forward to the actual verbiage that Dems points to as backing their claim that the judge was informed that the dossier had political origins.

The duplicity of Steele is a fair target. He didn't fully share his motives. His work was sloppy and uneven, and he broke faith with FBI by leaking to the press while he was very engaged with the FBI.
Did the FBI know the origin of the Steele dossier, paid for by Clinton and the DNC? Did they dig for the information? How did the FBI frame the information from the dossier? Were they clear on its origin at oppo research? Did the judge have full information? It is a reasonable question whether the court would have granted the FISA warrant if the judge had been fully informed.

The Nunes memo is also disputed because it ignores that the FBI was already investigating Russian hijinks prior to the creation of the Steele dossier. What other information had the FBI gathered? Nunes pretends there was none. Trump loyalists pretend there was none--as though there were no Russian hijinks at all. Dems claim there was other evidence.

If there was no evidence of hijinks, then there is no reason to spy on Carter Page. However, if there were Russian hijinks along with evidence that Carter Page was involved, then there's a good reason to spy on Page. Interestingly, Page hasn't been a big figure in the whole issue of Russian meddling. The current inquiry isn't centered around Page, but around multiple connection points between the Trump campaign and Russia. Also, Russian meddling -- can we take it as granted that there were a lot of Russian dirty tricks? Do we need a laundry list of them?

So the question of whether Russian meddling was real is paramount. If it was real, if there were sources showing Russian meddling, and not just the fervid, well-paid work of one biased spy, then the investigations appear to be justified.

If Russian meddling was real, then Russia deserves the sanctions put on it. And it would have been wrong to remove those sanctions, as it appears Trump was ready to do. In fact, the whole coziness of Trump, many of his advisers, and Russia appear to be frightening, as though rules and laws don't matter.

One other observation about the memo. Nunes claims twice that FBI and DOJ knew the Steele was being paid by DNC, but is actually vague on the point. It doesn't say who in the FBI and DOJ knew this. It is also vague on what was known, using the phrase "knew political actors..." This vagueness may indicate that there is no written evidence that the information was known at that time at the FBI and DOJ.

Is this applicable to the memo? To the strategy?

Image: smoosh.com

Extras. Reaction from the director of the FBI. Reaction from the New Yorker. Here's an interesting point. Carter Page was already on the radar of other news organizations before the leak from Steele: Huffpost early Aug 2016, ABC July 2016, and Slate July 2016.

Because of the memo frenzy, Congress didn't do the work they needed to in the run-up to the end of the most recent continuing resolution, so we're facing another shutdown. Way to go, boys!

Guess what! There was verbiage to the effect that the dossier was political. It was footnote, and Nunes knew about it. What a fucking liar he is.

More extras that I forgot. Conservative theories and reaction to them. Super-great wonderful interactive graphic about who is who in the Russia investigation. Gowdy splits the difference in conspiracies. An unofficial Dem rebuttal is rebutted. Scathing review of the memo because the critique is very sharp, not because the language is hyped. WaPo timeline I might want to refer to.

Finally, a much better memo from Senator Ron Johnson. Reasonable tone, reasonable questions. Download the memo and the internal FBI communications. This is what a decent congressman does. Nunes is a sideshow.

More and better extras. A long, detailed profile of Carter Page. Impressive unless it's full of Russian disinformation. Another more important memo, also about the Carter Page surveillance, but so much more solid.

November links

I lost a bunch of links, and had a bunch more before the two bombshells of the DNC paying for the Steele dossier and being totally under Clinton's control hit.

Since I'm hoping not to lose the links again, here they are.

The Steele dossier summarized. A great summary of the dossier, with each piece discussed separately. Must read to get a good background on it.

Changes at the Fed. This was a preview of what could happen due to end of the Federal Reserve chair's term. Trump could keep Yellen, could choose a current board member similar to her, or could choose a conservative with non-standard ideas. Luckily, Trump chose Powell, the current board member. By the way, Yellen stays on the Fed board.

Australian chaos. An Australian court threw a huge monkey wrench into government with a ruling about citizenship. They ruled that if you could be a dual citizen, you were, and therefore were ineligible to hold government office. Many officeholders with foreign-born parents were caught in the ruling. Bizarre and disruptive.

Who got indicted? A good backgrounder on Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, two advisers to the Trump campaign who had ties to Russia. Papadopoulos pled guilty to charges brought by Mueller in his Russia investigation. Other charges include the former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who is accused of laundering $75 million.

Fun with the indictments. This is such a great read in terms of humor. It feels like a classic joke--something that could be from the 'Who's on first' era. But I think it's original.

Socialism is defunct in Russia. All kinds of interesting factoids in the article and the discussion thread.

Peace dividend in Iraq? An article telling about greatly improved Shi'ite and Sunni relations in Iraq. I hope it's not just a puff piece.

Image: farmersalmanac.com

Security or freedom from surveillance

The exposure of NSA programs (the extent of which is not known) has chased the picayune scandals from most news pages. I don't know if blowhards on the right rue this or not, but I'm happy. Finally, a scandal that isn't primarily about scoring points, but has a very serious question at its core.

The big question, as I see it, is whether we in the US should allow wholesale collection of data by the US government. There are many issues to consider. Is the practice unconstitutional under the fourth amendment? (Probably, but open to interpretation. Here's a reminder of the fourth amendment.)

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Does the practice give the government the machinery to be totalitarian if it chooses to go that direction? (I'd bet money on that.) Does the practice help the government foil terrorist plots? (The director of the NSA says yes, about 50 of them.)

Oh drat--good arguments on both sides. How the hell can I decide whether constitutional rights protecting against warrantless searches are more important than stopping 9/11-like events?

You know, I really don't want more events like 9/11. I want potential terrorists to know that there's a high likelihood they'll be discovered if they try to plot something. If the government collects mountains of data to do that, it's a bit scary. But guess what? My grocery store chain already collects data on me (because I want those discounts, dammit!!!) and so does Google, which keeps offering me stuff I've already bought. The government isn't doing squat with my data that I can tell, probably because I don't trip any alarms with too many visits to jihadi sites coupled with airline tickets to Pakistan.

I am worried that I'm choosing comfort over principle. But maybe I'm choosing survival for thousands of my countrymen, which isn't the same as comfort. Maybe I'm letting my government fulfill its mission to protect  the security of the country, another highly important constitutional duty. 

Frankly, I suspect I can't reason my way through this issue. I might just be gathering data and arguments that support the conclusion I already have. That's a problem many people will have with this issue. 

NSA... No, NASA

Image: blogs.loc.gov

Extras. Overview of massive data collection.

My failed thought experiment: Massive data collection is like watching a school of fish. You don't really see the individuals and you don't know anything about an individual. However, you can pinpoint the one that breaks the pattern. But the analogy breaks down when it comes to telephone usage patterns and internet usage patterns because there must be millions of different patterns.So the government can't be looking for everything that deviates from "the pattern" because there are so many deviations. Probably, they filter for specific behaviors. It's only when there is suspicious behavior that the government wants to determine the individual involved. That might pass a fourth amendment test--maybe.

So the government doesn't have a dossier on each person, or even close to that. But do they still have too much information? Yes, if you don't want the government to have the ability to track you. But it's necessary if you want the government to have the ability to track potential terrorists. Not an easy choice.