Lawfare

[EDIT:

I should have watched the interview and my comments further down are inaccurate.

But - oh wait - I didn't realize that Ratcliffe the guy that released dubious information about Hillary Clinton a few weeks before the election coming up.

https://www.businessinsider.com/dni-ratcliffe-declassifies-russian-intelligence-disinformation-clinton-election-2020-9

''Andrew Weiss, a Russia specialist who is the James Family chair and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment, described Ratcliffe's decision as "total national security malpractice,"''

Which totally violates the norms of the Intelligence Community and was done to help the President's re-election campaign:

https://www.lawfareblog.com/john-ratcliffes-dangerous-declassification-game

Why do people trust this guy? You shouldn't. Even if what he says turns out to be true, his actions reveal him as an un-trustworthy person on this issue.
]

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----- Please just ignore this stuff below :-) ---------

> the DNI says that they haven't passed any reports/briefings to Congress that say that.

While I didn't read/watch the interview/article in question, I just want to point out that the DNI statement, as you described it, is pretty carefully worded.

They "have not passed reports/briefings that say it's Russian disinformation". This leaves room for:

- Documents or meetings not officially considered reports/briefings.

- Documents or meetings with damning…

Critical take: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1572223690863149058.html

This is of low value, because (1) it is more about playing to prevailing Twitter threads (ooooh he dissed the founders as old white men!) rather than legal analysis; and (2) the legal analysis, such as it is, starts from the presumption that social media companies are press rather than another business ("The opinion reaches this conclusion by treating the owners of companies in the biz of speech as identical to the owners of other businesses."). I don't think that presumption is well-established.

Critical take: https://www.lawfareblog.com/fifth-circuits-social-media-decision-dangerous-example-first-amendment-absolutism

This one is much better. For example, it rightfully points out that the Fifth Circuit opinion does a poor job connecting its analysis of editorial discretion to First Amendment jurisprudence ("the court never explains why public acceptance of responsibility is necessary as a matter of constitutional law, for First Amendment protection"). In my gut, I still don't agree, but I may come around after digesting this more. This critical piece is of high quality.

Supportive take (summarized): https://reason.com/volokh/2022/09/23/another-commentary-on-the-fifth-circuits-texas-social-media-law-decision/

I can't find the original source, but the pulled quotes seem insightful. "The opinion's critics argue that the First Amendment protects the act of exercising 'editorial discretion': the…

>>> I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.

>> I don't see how this is a productive point. "Democracy is best" is 1) what the US government wants you to think, and 2) an idea that they can manipulate the information environment to promote.

> Can they? The US government has very limited "hard" control over what information is published, e.g. there are no banned books in the US and it would be impractical for the government to try to impose any such ban, in stark contrast to the PRC.

Yeah, the massive amount of information control in China has no parallel in the US:

1. Almost all media is state-owned, and those that aren't are required to follow state directives about what and what not to cover (https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/directives-from-the-ministry-of-truth/)

2. Huge numbers of people employed to implement social media censorship (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jun/29/the-great-firewall-of-china-xi-jinpings-internet-shutdown: "A considerable amount of censorship is conducted through the manual deletion of posts, and an estimated 100,000 people are employed by both the government and private companies to do just this.")

3. Ditto for books and other publications (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_censorship_in_China#Mainland_China: apropos quote "In 2021, the Ministry of Education of the People's…

Excellent reporting. We already knew that Jack Goldsmith, Jim Comey, and others saw John Yoo's legal analysis as flawed, which lead to the hospital room showdown -- see [1] for Comey's dramatic Senate testimony in 2007. Now it's revealed that the NSA was going beyond what was authorized, and collecting data on purely domestic calls.

Bush responded by saying this collection was authorized, and in fact had been all along. Reading between the lines, it may well have been this that led to the threat of a mass resignation that caused Bush to back down.

[Of course after a brief period of legal head-scratching they found theories to approve most if not all of the questionable activities. So while on the one hand the hospital confrontation was people dramatically standing up for the rule of law, on the other hand those same people are generally in favor of mass surveillance, just done in a lawful way. You can especially see this with Jim Comey, now running the FBI and spreading fear about how we need encryption back doors to keep intelligence agencies from "going dark".]

BTW Jack Goldsmith blogs about national security law at Lawfare [2]. I disagree with him on several core points but his analysis is very crisp and always worth reading.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051500864.html

[2] https://lawfareblog.com/

For those who aren't Munk members, it's also available on C-SPAN[1]. I thought it was an entertaining debate, but not as good as I hoped it would be (I watched it live when it was first broadcasted). My memory is a little foggy, but as I recall, Glenn Greenwald went off on his usual 'the NSA is the epitome of evil and exists solely to invade your privacy' rants; Michael Hayden spent most of his time backtracking and focusing on where Greenwald was factually wrong rather than making his own argument; I didn't think Alan Dershowitz made a particularly convincing argument; and Alexis Ohanian made some greats points but was completely ignored by everyone else.

I personally enjoyed watching Jameel Jaffer (ACLU) square off against Chris Inglis (former NSA Deputy Director) at the Brookings Institute last year[2] - both sides had good arguments. For that matter, Benjamin Wittes (the guy moderating the debate) has had some good interviews on his blog[3] and podcast[4] as well - you don't see many outlets that will have James Comey (FBI director) one week followed by Chris Soghoian (ACLU) the next week.

[1] http://www.c-span.org/video/?319161-1/munk-debate-state-surveillance

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3KKEh2AS6E

[3] http://www.lawfareblog.com/

[4] http://www.lawfareblog.com/category/podcasts/

> Do you see me as one of "the crowd obsessed with Hunter's laptop"?

Unfortunately, yes.

> What would capitulation look like to you?

To acknowledge the good/bad of each player based upon a reasonable understanding of their behavior.

> (re hate/spite): Not sure what you mean by that. How many? How do you know?

* I mean that people will act on emotion rather than rationale in a significant number of cases, and that hate can trump love.
* How many? That's a silly question. Enough to matter.

> But sure, walk me through.

Ok, first try (true/false):

a. Do you think Biden/Obama were materially moved by Hunter's participation with Burisma
b. Do you think that the kerfluffle about Hillary's emails aided in her losing the election?
c. Do you think that even that the laptop controversy itself hurt the Biden campaign?
d. Are you aware of the concept of an "October Surprise"?
e. If so, do you think they are real?
f. If so, do you think they work?

Essay question: This write-up about the affair aligns with my understandings; do you see any truth in this: https://www.lawfareblog.com/what-make-johnson-grassley-report-biden-and-burisma

Bonus points: are you religious?