William K. Black — Prosecutors for the Petrocrats Try to Imprison the Media

Sheriff Bill is on North Dakota's case.

New Economic Perspectives
Prosecutors for the Petrocrats Try to Imprison the Media
William K. Black | Associate Professor of Economics and Law, UMKC
See also

Doug Krejci’s effort to use the University of Iowa’s 2008 flood footage for an upcoming documentary is being blocked by state officials who say copyright overrides public records.
The rare argument, if successful, could not only impede Krejci’s effort to raise public awareness of the disaster but also dismantle the state’s public records law, government transparency experts claim.

“It’s just bizarre,” said Adam Marshall, an attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a First Amendment advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. “It can’t be the case that copyright law enables every state entity to withhold every single record they generate. That would totally eviscerate the public records laws.”

DesMoines Register
University of Iowa claims copyright law to block use of flood video
Jason Claywort

Robert Mackey — Ecuador Cuts Internet Access for Julian Assange to Preserve Neutrality in U.S. Election

Correa is not neutral himself. "I want Hillary to win."

The Intercept
Ecuador Cuts Internet Access for Julian Assange to Preserve Neutrality in U.S. Election
Robert Mackey

Zero Hedge
Ecuador Admits Censoring Assange Over "U.S. Election"; Denies "Yielding To Pressure From Other States"

John Nichols — Defend Journalism That Speaks Truth to Power: From Ferguson to Washington

“A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or perhaps both,” declared James Madison, the author and champion of the Bill of Rights. “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

This is still the essential truth of an American experiment that can only be advanced toward the equal and inclusive justice that did not exist in Madison’s time by a broadly informed and broadly engaged citizenry. When journalists are harassed, intimidated, threatened and detained, the basic premise of democracy — that the great mass of people, armed with information and perspective, and empowered to act upon it, will set right that which is made wrong by oligarchs — is assaulted.

Where assaults on the gatherers and purveyors of popular information occur, those assaults must be challenged immediately. Social media and then mainstream media did just that after Washington Post writer Wesley Lowery and Huffington Post writer Ryan Reilly were arrested, detained and then released without charges or an explanation by police in Ferguson, Missouri, as they were reporting on the tensions that developed after 18-year-old Michael Brown was killed in a police shooting. The detention of reporters is merely one illustration of the seriousness of the broader battering of civil liberties and civil rights in Ferguson, a battering so severe that Amnesty International has made the unprecedented move of deploying human rights observers to the city.

Moyers & Company
Defend Journalism That Speaks Truth to Power: From Ferguson to Washington
John Nichols

See also Katherine Fung, James Risen: Obama Is 'Greatest Enemy To Press Freedom In A Generation' at Huffington Post.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd spoke to Risen for her Sunday column"Where’s the Justice at Justice?"


"How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who 'tortured some folks,' and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?" Dowd wrote.

Risen had one word to describe Obama's actions: "hypocritical."

"A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin," he told Dowd. "They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."

"How can he [Obama] use the Espionage Act to throw reporters and whistle-blowers in jail even as he defends the intelligence operatives who 'tortured some folks,' and coddles his C.I.A. chief, John Brennan, who spied on the Senate and then lied to the senators he spied on about it?" Dowd wrote.
Risen had one word to describe Obama's actions: "hypocritical."
"A lot of people still think this is some kind of game or signal or spin," he told Dowd. "They don’t want to believe that Obama wants to crack down on the press and whistle-blowers. But he does. He’s the greatest enemy to press freedom in a generation."

John Napier Tye — Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans

Even after all the reforms President Obama has announced, some intelligence practices remain so secret, even from members of Congress, that there is no opportunity for our democracy to change them….

The Washington Post
Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans
John Napier Tye

(h/t Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism)

John Napier Tye served as section chief for Internet freedom in the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor from January 2011 to April 2014. He is now a legal director of Avaaz, a global advocacy organization.

David Cay Johnston — Thanks to WikiLeaks, public can debate alarming new trade deal

WikiLeaks last week again pierced the veil of official secrecy that surrounds global trade negotiations. The peek it gave us should alarm everyone.

Big Business and national governments wanted to conceal the terms of the proposed Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) while keeping consumers, unions, environmentalists and the vast majority of businesses in the dark. Thanks to WikiLeaks, they failed.

The draft agreement WikiLeaks released on June 19 is fresh, written in May. It is a model of secret law, blatant in its disregard for transparency, democratic process and history. Its opening page says the terms are to remain secret for five years after negotiations formally end or the proposed new rules take effect. Talks to refine that agreement were to resume Monday in Geneva.

Even the secrecy-shrouded Trans Pacific Partnership that President Barack Obama and his Big Business allies want to ram through Congress without changes and only perfunctory debate does not include a five-year veil of secrecy after adoption. WikiLeaks has released a portion of TPP draft documents to the public.

It is impossible to obey a law or know how it affects you when the law is secret. And that is what this agreement would be, a new rulebook for trade in services — principally banking, insurance and trusts.

The 18-page draft agreement involves 50 nations, which produce more than two-thirds of officially measured global economic activity. That means the consequences of the new rules would be enormous, especially for those living in the more than 140 countries not taking part in the talks. Whether people can get loans or buy insurance and at what prices as well as what jobs may be available will be affected by any new trade rules.

Al Jazeera America
Thanks to WikiLeaks, public can debate alarming new trade deal
David Cay Johnston

Philip Dorling — Secret deal: bank free-for-all

Leaked WikiLeaks documents reveal the Abbott government is pressing ahead with secret trade negotiations aimed at bringing about radical deregulation of Australia's banking and finance sector. 

Highly sensitive details of the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) negotiations, obtained by The Age, show Australian trade negotiators are working on a financial services agenda that could end the Australian government's ''four pillars'' banking policy and allow foreign banks much greater freedom to operate in Australia. It could also see Australians' bank account and financial data freely transferred overseas, and allow an influx of foreign financial and information technology workers. 

Experts warn the proposed changes could undermine Australia's capacity to independently respond to and weather any future global financial crisis.

But Trade Minister Andrew Robb says the TiSA negotiations are a ''key focus'' in his policy to ''open as many doors as possible'' for Australian financial services exports.

Read on. This is actually even worse than I had imagined.

The kicker.

Dr Ranald pointed out that the TiSA negotiations are taking place outside of the World Trade Organisation and are not subject to WTO transparency practice in which draft texts have been released for public discussion. ''This document moves in the opposite direction, stating on the front page that it must remain secret for five years,'' Dr Ranald said.

This is tyranny, not democratic governance. It is global corporate statism aka fascism, which is soft until it is hard. It's the mob in legitimized power.

Sunday Morning Herald (AU)
Secret deal: bank free-for-all
Philip Dorling
(h/t Dan Lynch)

The Guardian — Alan Grayson's requests for NSA information – read the correspondence

Emails show how Democratic congressman Alan Grayson repeatedly asked to meet John C Inglis, the deputy director of the NSA, but was continually rebuffed

The Guardian (UK)
Alan Grayson's requests for NSA information – read the correspondence

Makes one wonder what else the US government is hiding behind the wall of national security and the surveillance state.

Max Blumenthal — Shocking 'Extermination' Fantasies By the People Running America's Empire on Full Display at Aspen Summit

A close up look at the scary people in charge. Well-intentioned but severely misguided about civil rights, human rights, the US Constitution and Bill of Rights, law, and democracy.

The military mind at work in the context of empire — the end justifies all means regardless of unintended and unforeseen consequences that the CIA calls "blowback." Frighteningly short-sighted and crass.

This is a big reason that there is civilian control of the military and separation of military and domestic security forces. The lines are now extremely blurred, and the wall of secrecy is so thick that it is difficult for the public to know what is going on or what their fate is.

AlterNet
Shocking 'Extermination' Fantasies By the People Running America's Empire on Full Display at Aspen Summit

Max Blumenthal

Glenn Greenwald — Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

GG: I’ve been writing for years about the fact that civil liberties abuses and excessive government invasions are really the issue that can bridge the ideological gap and create these transpartisan, transideological coalitions more than probably any other. And then you’ve seen this over the past 10 years. The ACLU has long partnered with right-wing groups like the Christian Coalition to challenge the PATRIOT Act. And I think what you’re seeing is lots of support for Mr. Snowden and for our NSA reporting on the left, groups like Amnesty International and the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, lots of liberals and progressives who have been outspoken in their support of these disclosures, but you also see a lot of support for it on the right, as well, from people who take seriously their rhetoric about limited government and the rights of individuals and the need for safeguarding individual privacy.

Democracy Now
Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden
Interview with Juan González

Gaius Publius — Rep. Holt to introduce bill to repeal Patriot Act & 2008 FISA Act

While the rest of the country was celebrating our independence, House Dem. Rush Holt (NJ-12) was doing something about it — drafting legislation to repeal both thePatriot Act of 2001 and the FISA Amendments Act of 2008.

America Blog
Rep. Holt to introduce bill to repeal Patriot Act & 2008 FISA Act
Gaius Publius

(h/t Kevin Fathi)

Angela Patrick — The rules of secret justice in Britain

To deploy 'Secret Justice' in the UK the government has to table the rules that will deliver its legislation. It is rushing them through the House of Commons and has announced they will be debated and decided... tomorrow

Open Democracy
The rules of secret justice in Britain
Angela Patrick | Our Kingdom — Power and Liberty in Britain

William Pfaff — Secret Intelligence Court a Precursor to Tyranny

The justification for this secret court—as is usual in the development of 20th century secret police states—is national security. The American case differs from the prominent earlier examples of such states in Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany, in that this American secret court operates behind a screen of what seem to be guilty obfuscations, which their authors know will not stand up to serious examination. Such obfuscations simply provide the rationales for concealment of this legal mechanism from public, press, and all but a certain number of congressmen and senators, all willing to provide the simulacrum of oversight because of their personal commitment to the belief that the United States makes itself secure by walking on what former Vice President Richard Cheney melodramatically described as “the dark side.”

It is the public who gets left in the dark about this, so as to protect the system.

The “dark side” of international combat or security operations, such as political assassinations, kidnappings, use of torture, or secret and illegal sequestrations or imprisonments, has on the whole seemed to have produced more American national humiliation, disrepute,and political blowback than advantage. It also is not entirely new; it is a characteristic of bureaucracies.

Truthdig
Secret Intelligence Court a Precursor to Tyranny
William Pfaff

Thomas Hedges — Imprisoned CIA Whistle-Blower: “Everyone Is Corrupt, I’ve Come to Learn”

Rotten to the core.

It's especially concerning that people like John Kiriakou are being used as warnings to intimidate other potential whistleblowers. This is the Obama version of "transparency" — Orwellian double-speak.

AlterNet

Imprisoned CIA Whistle-Blower: “Everyone Is Corrupt, I’ve Come to Learn”
Thomas Hedges | Salon

Washington's Blog Everything You Wanted to Know about Spying … But Were Afraid to Ask

Spying, the big picture

Link roundup

Washington's Blog
Everything You Wanted to Know about Spying … But Were Afraid to Ask

David Edwards — NC health secretary on privatizing Medicare: Transparency is ‘pretty dangerous’

More secrecy in planning. "Transparency can get pretty dangerous"?

The Republican North Carolina Department Health and Human Services (DHHS) secretary this week told reporters asking for information about the state’s plan to privatize Medicaid that “transparency can get pretty dangerous.”

“Already we’re not seeing transparency,” North Carolina Health News reporter Rose Hoban pointed out to DHHS Secretary Aldona Wos at a press conference on Wednesday.

“I think the word transparency can get pretty dangerous,” Wos explained. “Because what does transparency mean? If transparency means that we’re in a planning process and you’re asking us, ‘Tell us all the things you’re planning,’ well, my goodness, allow us to work, and then we’ll give you everything that you want. But allow us the intellectual capacity just to do our job.”According to the News & Observer‘s Under the Dome blog, Wos “did not address why the responses were being kept secret, or why the development of health policy contained elements of danger.”

The Raw Story

NC health secretary on privatizing Medicare: Transparency is ‘pretty dangerous’

David Edwards

Steve Randy Waldman — "Why is finance so complex?"

Finance has always been complex. More precisely it has always been opaque, and complexity is a means of rationalizing opacity in societies that pretend to transparency. Opacity is absolutely essential to modern finance. It is a feature not a bug until we radically change the way we mobilize economic risk-bearing. The core purpose of status quo finance is to coax people into accepting risks that they would not, if fully informed, consent to bear. [emphasis added]

Interfluidity
Why is finance so complex?
by Steve Randy Waldman

The clear case was recently in the lead up to the financial crisis when complex products of "innovation in financial engineering" were given stamps of AAA approval by complicit rating agencies and foisted off as "reducing risk by spreading it" when in fact they were magnifying system risk. Private communication such as emails reveal that the originators knew of the actual situation when they were doing this. See the voluminous work of Prof. William K. Black on operation of financial institutions as "control frauds by their CEOs

We see much the same attitude and practice at the Federal Reserve. Powerful insiders in the financial sector are often not only informed in advance about policy decisions but also permitted to shape them behind the veil. Is this in the public interest. Should it be opaque even to Congress? Is this necessary for "political independence." When does "political independence" conflict with democratic principles. When does "political independence" serve privilege?

I think that we can compare opacity in finance with secrecy in government. As the release of the material collected by Wikileaks, including that provided by Bradley Manning, goes to show, much government opacity and secrecy are simply covers for what is illegal or would be embarrassing, rather than being vital not national security. Would the country be willing to bear the risks and costs of domestic and foreign policy if they knew the underlying truth? Secrecy and opacity are often simply a means of control.

SRW brings up some excellent points. I think he has put his finger on an essential issue that needs to be addressed. Here is my comment over at Interfluidity.

What I am chiefly concerned about in lack of transparency is not only implications fo risk and risk-taking, but also lack of trust in institutions. The “need” for lack of transparency, ranging from opacity resulting from complexification and to mandated secrecy, betray lack of trust in the basic institutions underlying the great themes our this era, liberal democracy and free market capitalism, neither of which can exist without transparency. So is “progress” a justifiable tradeoff, or do we have to admit that “liberal democracy” and “free market capitalism” are empty slogans and the stuff of children’s stories, which do not reflect reality? It seems to me that this is close to the basis of the upheaval of the developed world is now undergoing as its principle institutions are being called into question, not only the financial sector and the Federal Reserve, but “democratic” governments subject to elite capture, and, indeed, capitalism itself as the preferred life-support system. Indeed, the revelations subsequent to the invasion of Iraq on “fixed intelligence” and the more recently the Wikileaks material shows that a great of the lack of transparency in government was for expediency rather than national security requirements. It does not seem to me that Jesuitical argument really works in any of these cases, due to unintended consequences. While such consequences may be unintended, they are not unexpected. Once truth is suppressed, illusion and hypocrisy grow. Little while lies sprout into the Big Lie. (link)