Monthly Archives: July 2016

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Snowden and Media Friends: L’etat, C’est Nous

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Louis XIV (seated) and family. (Image credit: Wikipedia)

“[T]he return of this information to the public marks my end,” Edward Snowden told the Washington Post‘s Barton Gellman prior to telling that public — under the auspices of several journalists and publications — about the NSA’s PRISM program and other horrors of the modern American surveillance state.

Snowden did indeed suffer for his good deeds:  These days he lives in exile in Russia, awaiting a day when he might return home to some fate other than life in a prison cell at the hands of the criminals whose misdeeds he exposed.

It’s a shame to see Snowden picking a public fight with Wikileaks, an organization dedicated to a similar mission whose leader, Julian Assange, himself suffers a form of exile in Ecuador’s London embassy (one of his sources, American political prisoner Chelsea Manning, has it worse: She’s serving a 35-year sentence in Leavenworth for her heroism in exposing US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan).

On July 28, Snowden took Wikileaks to task via Twitter: “Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped,” he wrote. “But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.”

Presumably Snowden’s ire applies to previous Wikileaks operations such as “Collateral Murder” and “Cablegate,” not just to this last week’s uncensored dumps of emails exposing the internal workings of Turkey’s government and of the US Democratic National Commitee.

The Wikileaks response (presumably tweeted by Assange) dripped vinegar: “Opportunism won’t earn you a pardon from Clinton & curation is not censorship of ruling party cash flows.”

I hesitate to criticize Snowden, or to impute to him the motives implied in the Wikileaks response. The sacrifices he’s made command a great deal of respect from those of us who value truth and transparency.

Nonetheless, Wikileaks is right and Snowden is wrong here.

Good and honest motives or not, Snowden and the journalists who help him disseminate “curated” selections from the information in his possession have set themselves up as little governments. They’re not “return[ing] this information to the public” which theoretically owns it. They’re merely parceling out the information THEY’VE decided it’s OK for the public to have. But the the NSA and the US State Department do the same thing. Snowden and friends differ from those organizations merely on content selection criteria, not on the principles involved.

Snowden and Assange both serve the public. But only one of them seems to actually trust that public.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Election 2016: Think Three’s a Crowd? Try 2,000

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RGBStock.com Vote Pencil

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says Libertarian presidential nominee Gary Johnson is a “fringe candidate.” I’m not sure what definition of “fringe” Trump is using. Johnson is a former governor, elected twice as a Republican in a Democrat-leaning state. Trump’s main presidential qualification seems to be his legendary skill at trolling his opponents on Twitter.

Democratic presidential  nominee Hillary Clinton hasn’t deigned to notice likely Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Instead she’s dispatched proxies like runner-up Bernie Sanders (“We have got to defeat Donald Trump. And we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. … this is the real world that we live in”) to heap scorn on the practicality of a post-Philadelphia campaign from Clinton’s left.

OK, I admit it: History and money say the odds are with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton — that one of them will be the next president of the United States. The last time a third party or independent candidate really threatened to win the White House was 1992, when Ross Perot knocked down nearly 20% of the popular vote, having at one time polled ahead of both Republican incumbent George HW Bush and the eventual winner, Democratic nominee Bill Clinton.

But it’s strange year. It feels like almost anything could happen. And while Clinton and Trump are the frontrunners, the field is, well, YUGE.

As of July 27, the Federal Elections Commission lists 1,814 candidates for president on its web site.

It’s true that some of them have dropped out, or have been eliminated in party nomination processes, or haven’t done anything EXCEPT file an FEC “statement of candidacy.” Most of them won’t appear on any state ballots, or even register themselves with election authorities as write-in options.

On the other hand, some candidates who haven’t submitted FEC statements may show up on your ballot this November. Candidates are only required to file an FEC  Form 2 once they’ve raised or spent $5,000. In some states, ballot access doesn’t cost that much.

If you’re an American voter, you have options. Republicans and Democrats will tell you that you’re “wasting your vote” if you don’t pick one of the two leading brands. I don’t think they’re right — what’s the point of voting if you’re not voting for who or what you actually support? — but even if they’re right, well, it’s your vote to waste, isn’t it?

For once I agree with Ted Cruz: If you vote, vote your conscience.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Unicorns, Mermaids, Politicians, and “Free”

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Free Kittens (photo from RGBStock)

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler wants telephone companies to make robocall-blocking technology available to their customers. And he wants them to do so “at no charge.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, riffing on primary opponent Bernie Sanders’s campaign platform (and on a less ambitious proposal from sitting president Barack Obama), now supports “tuition-free” college for the children of families with annual incomes of less than $125,000.

“Free” may be the most popular word in the English language. It’s at least as popular as “unicorn” and “mermaid” (two other words for things that don’t exist in real life).

Everything that’s real costs something.  When we talk about making something “free,” what we’re really talking about is shifting those costs, either to other payers or to some different method of pricing or payment.

In the Internet age, we’ve become used to the idea of “free” online services. But, as I am far from the first to point out, those services aren’t “free.” They’re paid for by advertisers. What are the advertisers buying? They’re buying us: Our information, our eyeballs, our attention. They’re willing to provide us with email, search services, games, the works … in exchange for the opportunity to sell things to us. And their costs for providing those services are built into the prices of the things we buy from them. So really, we’re the ones who are paying after all.

The technology that Tom Wheeler wants the phone companies to offer to all of us “at no charge” costs money to develop. It costs money to deploy. It costs money to maintain. Who’s going to pay those costs? Tom Wheeler? No. The phone companies. And their customers. Even if it’s not broken out as a listed charge on your phone bill, either your bill will go up or the service you’re paying for will be cut back somewhere else.

Ditto “free” college education. Campuses don’t build or maintain themselves. Contractors and staff build and maintain them. Professors don’t lecture at their own expense and out of the goodness of their hearts. They must be paid. As must the phone bills, the electric bills, the water bills, etc.

Clinton’s plan isn’t a plan for free college. It’s a plan to make college 100% taxpayer-subsidized. There’s a difference. Words mean things, and we should be very clear on just who’s going to pay for Hillary Clinton’s plan. Hint: It won’t be Hillary Clinton.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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