Bill Moyers: Facts threaten us.

According to Truthout, Bill Moyers recently gave a talk at History Makers, and had this disturbing information: well documented facts often backfire:

As Joe Keohane reported last year in The Boston Globe, political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency "deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information." He was reporting on research at the University of Michigan, which found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts were not curing misinformation. "Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger." You can read the entire article online. I won't spoil it for you by a lengthy summary here. Suffice it to say that, while "most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence," the research found that actually "we often base our opinions on our beliefs ... and rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions."

Continue ReadingBill Moyers: Facts threaten us.

Not open government

I decided to see how hard it would be to determine what information Homeland Security has gathered about me. I went to the Homeland Security Website and wrote an email to Homeland Security (foia@dhs.gov). Here is my email request:

January 23, 2011 Catherine M. Papoi Deputy Chief FOIA Officer Director, Disclosure & FOIA The Privacy Office 245 Murray Drive, S.W. STOP-0550 Washington, DC 20528-0550 FOIA REQUEST Dear FOIA Officer: Pursuant to the federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request access to and copies of All records dated on or after January 1, 2006 concerning "Erich Vincent Vieth" in your possession. I would like to receive the information in electronic format. (CD-ROM.) I agree to pay reasonable duplication fees for the processing of this request in an amount not to exceed $150. However, please notify me prior to your incurring any expenses in excess of that amount. If my request is denied in whole or part, I ask that you justify all deletions by reference to specific exemptions of the act. I will also expect you to release all segregable portions of otherwise exempt material. I, of course, reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to deny a waiver of fees. As I am making this request as an author and this information is of timely value, I would appreciate your communicating with me by telephone, rather than by mail, if you have questions regarding this request. I look forward to your reply within 20 business days, as the statute requires.[caption id="attachment_16372" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image by Ssuaphoto at dreamstime (with permission)"][/caption] Thank you for your assistance. Sincerely, Erich Vieth
Now all I needed to do was sit back and wait for the federal government to disclose to me all of my emails that they've been reading and all of my phone calls that they've been listening to. We'll, actually, instead of getting information, I got a major league dose of bureaucratese. Here's the paper letter I received instead of real information. I've interspersed comments below in red and in brackets: [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingNot open government

Welcome back to the United States. Give me your laptop and your passwords.

Glenn Greenwald has written about the federal government's common practice of seizing laptops and smartphones of American citizens who are re-entering the United States and reviewing their private data. Amazingly, our government is seizing this personal data without probable cause and even without reasonable suspicion:

When you really think about it, it's simply inconceivable that the U.S. Government gets away with doing this. Seizing someone's laptop, digging through it, recording it all, storing the data somewhere, and then distributing it to various agencies is about the most invasive, privacy-destroying measure imaginable. A laptop and its equivalents reveal whom you talk to, what you say, what you read, what you write, what you view, what you think, and virtually everything else about your life. It can -- and often does -- contain not only the most private and intimate information about you, but also information which the government is legally barred from accessing (attorney/client or clergy/penitent communications, private medical and psychiatric information and the like). But these border seizures result in all of that being limitlessly invaded. This is infinitely more invasive than the TSA patdowns that caused so much controversy just two months ago.
But how often are these e-strip searches occurring?
[T]his is happening to far more than people associated with WikiLeaks. As a result of writing about this, I've spoken with several writers, filmmakers, and activists who are critics of the government and who have been subjected to similar seizures -- some every time they re-enter the country.
But this is the tip of the iceberg:
A FOIA request from the ACLU revealed that in the 18-month period beginning October 1, 2008, more than 6,600 people -- roughly half of whom are American citizens -- were subjected to electronic device searches at the border by DHS, all without a search warrant.
I highly recommend reading Greenwald's detailed article for the reaction to this practice by a smattering of members of Congress and by a few court decisions. The sad bottom line is that there is no political momentum to condemn and bar this practice, even in the context of ubiquitous rhetoric regarding the need to limit the power of the federal government.

Continue ReadingWelcome back to the United States. Give me your laptop and your passwords.

Taking Cues

In the last post, I opined about the atmosphere in the country generated by overheated rhetoric and the irrationality that has resulted from seemingly intransigent positions. Some of the responses I received to that were of the “well, both sides do it” variety (which is true to an extent, but I think beside the point) and the “you can’t legislate civility or impose censorship” stripe. As it is developing, the young man who attempted to murder Representative Gifford—and succeeded in killing six others—appears to be not of sound mind. We’re getting a picture of a loner who made no friends and indulged in a distorted worldview tending toward the paranoid. How much of his actions can be laid on politics and how much on his own obsessions is debatable. Many commentators very quickly tried to label him a right-winger, based largely on the political climate in Arizona and that he targeted a moderate, “blue dog” Democrat. This in the context of years of shrill right-wing political rhetoric that fully employs a take-no-prisoner ethic, including comments from some Tea Party candidates about so-called Second Amendment solutions. It’s looking like trying to label this man’s politics will be next to impossible and, as I say, if he is mentally unbalanced, what real difference does that make? (Although to see some people say “Look, he’s a Lefty, one of his favorite books is Mein Kampf ” is in itself bizarre—how does anyone figure Mein Kampf indicates leftist political leanings? Because the Nazis were “National Socialists”? Please.) Whatever the determination of Mr. Loughner’s motives may turn out to be, his actions have forced the topic of political stupidity and slipshod rhetoric to the forefront, at least until Gabrielle Gifford is out of danger of dying. Regardless of his influences, in this instance he has served as the trigger for a debate we have been needing to have for decades. This time, hopefully, it won’t be shoved aside after a few well-meaning sound-bites from politicians wanting to appear sensitive and concerned, only to have everyone go right back to beating each other bloody with nouns and verbs. But while it may be fair to say that Mr. Loughner is unbalanced and might have gone off and shot anyone, the fact is he shot a politician, one who had been targeted by the Right. Perhaps the heated rhetoric did not make Mr. Loughner prone to violence, but what about his choice of victims? [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingTaking Cues