Month: June 2012

When a bad idea meets a functional tool, nothing good comes of it

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Last weekend I was having a conversation with a friend and the topic of the recent expansion of government surveilance via drones came up.  There is genuine concern over how the information will be used, and, considering the manuverability of some of the drones being employed, where they go, and what they will be able to see is of extreme concern.

I aruged that the drones will be used, but they will be fairly restricted, and the government is going to find out very, very quickly that they are not the best tools for the job when it comes to law enforcement.  As if on queue The University of Texas, challenged by the Department of Homeland Security, downed a drone in mid flight.

Not to take some shine off of the University of Texas’ achievement, but this is old hat.  Iran dropped a stealth drone, piloted by the best and brightest, and slapped together by DARPA and operated by the DoD.  In terms of intellectual firepower, I imagine that the DHS has quite a few brilliant minds, but the military has an entire organization devoted to development everything from quantum encryption to weapons systems that fire 1.2million rounds a minute.  I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the Stealth drone was harder to drop, but when it was released that they went through the GPS system to bring it down, I fell over laughing.

A paper I wrote in my last year at the Old Dominion University was on robotics on the battlefield, and the number one issue with these devices have is the communication and GPS systems.  Avionic systems have some play, but the real bugs were in terrestrial based sword bots, so named because they have monikers like ‘claymore’ and ‘saber’.  These battle bots were failing remote tests because they could not respond fast enough, did not respond at all, or did things like firing off around 45 seconds after being issued the command to do so.  You could strip away the electronic protection on them, and give the operator faster reaction time, but then there is nothing to stop a local Al Qaeda operative, trained by a technician from a relatively unfriendly state, with a wireless connection and few tools of the electronic warfare trade, to hack in and either disable the robot on the field, or, in the worst case scenario, take remote control of these electronic weapons platforms and turn them on the soldiers standing right next to them.  Granted, that scenario is half a world away, but imagine small drones with live video feed hovering about, each one supposed protected by encryption on par with, say, any of the banks that have recently been hacked, or the police departments that have had their records compromised (and I can guarantee that the LAPD servers are not going to have the same encryption as government security contractor companies, or  international banking systems).

Lastly, the drones offer an odd stretch of police power reaching into the personal domain.  Currently police can fly over your house and if they see pot being grown in the back yard, they can get a warrant and conduct a raid.  It’s legal, there was a supreme court case on it, and it flew.  Drones will be able to do the same, but there is a twist regarding that maneuverability issue. Smaller drones means that they can go places helicopters and larger drones cannot.  So we can’t see anything in your yard, but what about that shed at the corner of your property.  We’re still flying, technically we’re not trespassing (you wait, this will be one of the first legal arguments), and we happened to peek in this window and saw that you had a shotgun.  We checked the state gun registration and you don’t have a shotgun on record with us.  That’s a bust.

Is it a silly scenario, absolutely, but it is completely plausible. Why put a GPS tracker on a criminal’s car when you can just tail him incessantly with a drone?  Easy way to get around that pesky warrant problem:

“no your honor, the drone was not following the individual in question.  It just happened to be everywhere he was going.”

You can see where this is going.

I am all for the thin blue line doing its thing and bringing in the bad guys, but with great power comes great responsibility, and this is another example of military tech rolling down to police departments that don’t need more military tech.  For the price of a drone operation system and related drones you could probably hire another dozen cops.  Humans that need jobs, can form intellectual and emotional bonds with the community, grown and learn, become leaders of the community, and, best of all, can’t be hacked to dive bomb cars on the I-95.

Stop frothing at the mouth for a moment and realize the long game moments

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My stomach fell out when the decision on Thursday rolled down.  I was a staunch believer that any variation of the individual mandate was a legal faux pa and had to be struck down.  Then I read the Roberts decision and was illuminated to an entirely new way of operating in the government.  I was seeing, for the first time, not a decision based on party politics or personal interest.  No, I saw a straight out of myth ruling based on pure constitutional reasoning. Okay, there may have been some political wranglings in there, and I am thrilled that other pundits and writers like Michael Medved and Paul Begala were quick to point out the true victory for Republicans in the bill.

At the root of the Roberts decisions, aside from defining the mandate as a tax and throwing the life of the bill back into the hands of Congress which may very well fall into Republican hands in November, there was this little gem:

2. CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS concluded in Part III–A that the individual mandate is not a valid exercise of Congress’s power under the
Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. Pp. 16–30.
(a) The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. This Court’s precedent reflects this understanding: As expansive as this Court’s cases construing the scope of the commerce power have been, they uniformly describe the power as reaching “activity.” E.g., United States v. Lopez, 514 U. S. 549, 560. The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in commerce by
purchasing a product, on the ground that their failure to do so affects interstate commerce. (link)

Roberts effectively stopped the government from mandating that a lack of participation in a specific filed of commerce amounted to having a direct impact on interstate commerce.  In writing the decision this way he took the congressional, and largely Democratic, insistence to tell Americans what to do with their money, even when they are not spending it, and locked it away in that nasty little box known as ‘unconstitutional’.

Labeling the mandate as a tax was something the President was specific about avoiding during the creation and vote on the bill.  Even after it was enacted they President and Democratic members of congress were adamant that it was not a tax, but when they went to the line the only legal way to argue it, and to save any resemblance of the mandate, was to label it just that. However, in doing so it lost that shiny aspect of a social program that could be administered by an Executive Branch organization, and was put back in the hands of Congress.

Lastly, there is the matter of the tax itself.  I’ve seen the posts on social websites and heard my conservative friends gnash their teeth and scream to the heavens about how individual liberty is dead, how freedom is no longer found in the United States, and I chuckle.  The issue will be revised. CNN pointed out, not 30 minutes after the decision was made, that the tax can only be challenged, by law, after it has gone into effect.  That means in January of 2014, the first year the penalties, excuse me, Taxes are in place, there will be another lawsuit, another challenge, and another Supreme Court decision,

Chief Justice Roberts looked to the future on this decision, and he ruled, not as a conservative or a liberal, but as any judge should.  He put the balls back in their respective courts, taking the power to create taxes away from the executive and giving it back to the legislative, and told the nation that the President would not be playing with that ball anymore.  At least, not in that capacity.

UPDATE: A site I frequently visit (www.neveryetmelted.com) has a fantastic article on this and links to several other articles.  I’d strongly recommend bookmarking it if you get a chance.

Well, a decisive and reflexive response to an action by the press…for exactly the wrong reasons

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Today the President rolled out another executive order to circumvent existing laws and moved to grant amnesty to roughly 800,000 illegal immigrants.  During one of his ‘hit-and-run’ speeches the president was interrupted by an overeager reporter.  The president responded succinctly, as he should have considering the crass failure of the offending action, and the press conference (which to be frank is more of an announcement that could be done via text message or twitter for all the validity it held) and the slavering dogs that compose the larger swath of the fourth pillar were loosed like the hounds of war and the word ‘question’ became ‘heckle’, the afternoon topic became, yet again, whether the fictitious boogeyman of ‘inherent racism’ that has so far plagued this President every day of his career had now infiltrated the pure core of the press.

This wasn’t some malicious act.  It was an overeager reporter trying to get the question in before everyone else does.  If you watch the video, the assumption that the speech was over is an obvious one.  And, those of us who have heard the delightful little ditty that “to assume makes an ass of you and me”.  In this case, the President was right in chiding the reporter for speaking before the speech was over, but the press should be analyzing why the President does these little hit-and-run speeches, why there are no questions allowed on topics of national interest.  Why these actions are more dictum from our leader rather than policies to be touted out before the American people

No, we get the sad reflexive gagging media, stunned into stupor that anyone would interrupt, let alone dare ask a question of, and they insist on adding this to the mix, the first black President.  I’d call him a fall guy if I were paranoid. Posit the argument that He interrupted at that specific moment, and made a scene for everyone to jump on so we, and by we I mean the people that need to fill a 24 hour news cycle, could focus on that rather than the announcement that just rolled out of the White House.  Again, not paranoid, but look at Drudge, MSNBC, CNN, etc.  It’s not the announcement they’re talking about, but whether the President is struggling, not because of wildly irrational and short-sighted policies, but because of all those nasty ‘racists’ out there.  The dealer keeps doling out the same card every time, and wonders why we are getting tired of seeing it.

Doth mother know you weareth her drapes?

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I thought the quote from the Avengers was appropriate here.

Two sides in Wisconsin, genuinely believing they are working for the greater good but coming from wildly different directions, engaged in a full scale brouhaha to make their point known.  I’m still not certain as to who would wear the tights, but I call dibs on the Iron Man suit.

Fashion jokes aside, the fight was largely pointless, and  the essence of american voters, played by Captain America in this little production, stopped the fight between two petulant powerhouses.  In the end vox populi spoke loud and clear, and Gov. Walker remains in place for two more years, but has lost his majority in the State Senate.

The day-after recovery is over, the analysis is done, and we found out that 38% of voters who supported Walker came from homes that have at least one member in a union.  We found out that while roughly $75 million was spent on this campaign, walker trudging up $30 million of that on his own through Super PAC donors, the real story remains that the turnout, percentage-wise, was almost identical to the election two years prior, even with a higher voter turnout.

I’m tired of the Citizens United decision being touted as the evil grandaddy and reason everyone is winning.  I call BS.  You can throw millions at a campaign and if the message sucks, or the candidate is less than stellar, looking at you Gingrich and Santorum, you will accomplish next to nothing except transferring wealth from donors to local businesses.

The issue with the Walker recall was that he did exactly what he said he was going to do.  The politically connected unions and loyal opposition were taken aback when an elected official decides to follow through on campaign promises.  Were those promises heavy handed?  Some can argue as much, but these are desperate times, and the voters selected desperate measures, and thus they were delivered after much bally who and childish shenanigans by the State Senators unhappy with the legislation.

So, in response to a governor who did what he swore he would do, despite some of the blatantly childish political behavior I have seen in my life, and the result was a nationally supported recall.  I don’t mean that the entire nation supported the recall, but that interests well outside the borders of Wisconsin became involved.  It was no longer about just about a losing side’s dissatisfaction with being thrown out of office and then having to suffer the political fallout that comes from failing to represent the people rather than representing the interests that fill the campaign coffers.