Politics

Clearly Hiding Something: President Obama’s chance to recommend changes to the NSA

/ David Kailer / Leave a comment

Clearly Hiding Something: President Obama’s chance to recommend changes to the NSA
By
David Kailer
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2014/01/14/obama-ahs-room-to-maneuver-on-nsa-reforms/

Amidst the ongoing controversy surrounding the National Security Agency and the arguable constitutionality of its domestic and international surveillance programs, CNN has reported that President Obama is compiling a list of recommendations to be put to the agency in order to restore confidence in the National Security Agency in light of the leaks by Edward Snowden last year.

After an independent review board looked into the NSA’s practices, their formal recommendation was “that government do a better job of protecting civil liberties”. Whether the Obama administration follows that recommendation, and to what extent they will tighten protections depends on the specific official recommendations the President makes in the coming days and weeks.

Much of the article focused on reminding readers of Obama’s continual claim to improving administrative transparency, capturing the importance of these recommendations for the second-term President’s legacy, and discussing the tension between the need for competent intelligence work and the need to protect the fundamental values of citizen privacy enshrined in the Constitution.

One recommendation the article deemed likely was that the President might order private companies to maintain the data and metadata which the NSA currently collects, and to yield that information only pursuant to a [constitutional] request. Interestingly, the article makes no mention of the significant costs creating such an infrastructure might impose on private companies. There is also no discussion of how disclosure requirements might change where private companies are keeping the records pursuant to a government regulation.

Another potential recommendation discussed included creating an entity or appointing an individual to act in an adversarial role when the government requests such documents, the opposing entity essentially playing devil’s advocate in keeping the records out of government hands. If this is a government-appointed position, that may bring up issues of collaboration by both sides or lip service in performing adversarial functions.

While it is reassuring to see the Obama administration taking the nation’s concerns seriously, it is too early to consider this issue addressed. Personally, I would like to see a vigorous, bona fide adversarial process put in place. This would have the added benefit of protecting civil liberties while not imposing any additional burdens on the intelligence community if they are already complying with the Constitution. Additionally, the President might benefit from making the National Security Agency regularly accountable for their actions, as there have been reports of the NSA refusing to answer inquiries from Congressmen about the scope of the NSA’s intelligence activities.

Do the recommendations listed above solve this issue? What other recommendations would you like to see put in place when the President submits his formal requests?

Civic Engagement and Political Disillusionment

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Last Tuesday, I attended a talk hosted by the University Lecture series featuring Eric Liu.  Liu’s talk, which was titled “The True Meaning of Patriotism,” offered a progressive definition of patriotism and citizenship. He argued that since the 1960s the American Left has largely abandoned the concept of patriotism and allowed the Right seized it as part of its ideological lexicon.  Because the notion of patriotism has largely gone uncontested in the public arena, the idea has become impoverished, reduced to a jingoistic affirmation of American military and economic power.

However, Liu asserted that patriotism is a far richer concept than this.  Instead, patriotism, at bottom, is about putting country above self.  It is about public service and civic engagement—or as he put it “showing up” to one’s public obligations of being politically informed and part of the democratic process.

Underpinning Liu’s definition of patriotism is a commitment to the philosophical tradition of civic republicanism. As we all learn in our high school civics classes, the United States is not a democracy but a republic.  However, Republicanism (the classical political theory as opposed to the current political party) stands in contrast not only to Democracy as a form of government, but also Liberalism (classic philosophical liberalism as opposed to the current political ideology).  Where Liberalism is largely about rights and non-interference, Republicanism is rooted in civic obligations and engagement.  According to Republicanism, self-governance requires moral virtue and public spiritedness. Although Liberal and Republican thought can be seen throughout American history, the latter was more prevalent at the Founding than it is today.

Part of what Liu’s talk was about was reinvigorating our Republican tradition.  At one point during his lecture, Liu argued that the notion of “Rugged Individualism,” a very Liberal concept, was a “myth.”  According to Liu, self-governance cannot work if we think of our Nation merely as a conglomeration of egoistic individuals who use government only as a means of advancing and protecting our own interests. Rather, being part of a Republic requires some sacrifice, putting country above self.  It requires sacrificing some time and mental energy to being an effective citizen—keeping informed about social issues and engaging others about them.

There can be no doubt that our politics suffers when it focuses solely on individual rights to the exclusion of the common good.  However, where I was disappointed with Liu’s lecture is that he did not address what he considered to be the major barriers to civic engagement. Instead, Liu echoed Gandhi asserting essentially that the solution to our civic deficit problem was to “be the change you want to see in the world.”  This strikes me as a good first step but insufficient the face of systemic obstacles.

Hyper-partisanship, gerrymandered congressional districts, a broken campaign finance system, and parallel media universes (on the Left: MSNBC and liberal media outlets, and Fox News and conservative talk radio on the Right) all combine to prevent citizens from being engaged in their government.  As a result, to quote Yeats, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.”  Until we can empower the silent majority of reasonable people to enter the political fray—something that is understandably considered to be unsavory and pointless, we are destined to be politically disillusioned.

Why No Hate for Job-Killing Advertising?

/ Edward Thater / Leave a comment

As the various branches of the federal government continue to struggle to find ways to put the nation’s fiscal house in better order, a key component of these discussions is whether and how to make tax reforms. If you spend more than five minutes watching Sunday morning news, you know that some policymakers are pretty insistent that taxes cannot be raised because taxes “kill jobs.” My response to this is, “So what?” A lot of economic actions “kill jobs,” many to a larger degree than taxes do, but no policymakers are looking to ban those actions as bad for the economy.

Now, don’t misconstrue me here, dear readers. I am all in favor of tax reform. I think our federal taxation system is too complicated, has far too high a level of compliance costs, and is otherwise a pretty bad way to go about raising government revenue. However, unless and until there is a political consensus about where and how much to cut government spending, there is a legitimate case to be made (one that you don’t necessarily need to agree with) for increasing our current tax revenue to cover more of the costs of government so that we can borrow less. (As an aside, the debate around government spending is usually off base as well. The question should almost never be “how much should we spend?” but rather “are we spending the correct amount of money on the correct things?” But that is a topic for a different blog post.)

It is quite well established that taxes reduce production and reduce jobs. Let’s say the government imposes a $10 tax on widgets. Let’s also say that for the purpose of this example, the market conditions are such that the price of widgets rises by $5. This means that consumers bear half of the cost of the tax through higher prices, while producers bear half the cost of the tax through a hit to their bottom lines. (A fuller discussion of tax incidence and why producers can’t simply pass on 100% of the tax’s cost to their consumers is beyond the scope of this particular post.) However, this means some consumers will be priced out of the widget market, as they will be unwilling and/or unable to pay the new, higher price. Likewise, facing diminished demand and the hit to their bottom lines, producers will scale back production or leave the widget business entirely. That means fewer people employed making widgets. Economists call this loss of economic activity (fewer people buying widgets and fewer producers making widgets) deadweight loss, and it does translate to fewer jobs on an economy-wide scale.

However, lots of other things cause deadweight loss besides taxes. Take, for example, monopolies. The reason monopolies are generally considered bad is because they maximize their profits by creating artificial shortages. This in turn creates a rise in the price per unit (shortage of supply drives prices up), which increases the monopoly’s profits. The monopoly could create more units and sell them at a lower price to people who want the units while still turning a profit, but it wouldn’t be as big of a profit as the one it gets from its artificial shortage. Thus, unchecked market power, which is the ability to control the market price by controlling the quantity produced, creates deadweight loss.

While monopoly is one extreme example of market power, millions of firms in the U.S. economy enjoy some level of market power that allows them to withhold production in order to increase profits. And what causes these firms to have this market power they exercise? For most of them, it is simple advertising.

Companies advertise to build their “market share” by attracting new customers and by building brand loyalty. This, in turn, leads to those businesses commanding a portion of their markets, which allows them to withhold production and make more money. If you’ve ever known someone who rushed to the store to buy the latest Disney DVD release before it goes “back into the vault,” you’ve seen this technique in action. But it’s not just Disney. Firms of all sizes use similar techniques to make more money.

So why aren’t any politicians railing against job-killing advertising? After all, given the millions of firms with some level of market power, the number of lost jobs to advertising is at least as big, if not bigger, than the number of jobs lost to taxes. The obvious political answers are that (a) few policymakers in D.C. have had any sort of economics training, and (b) business hate taxes, which hurts their balance sheets, but love advertising, which pads their balance sheets at the expense of their competitors, so they tend to lobby against the one and not the other.

There are many good reasons to support a smarter tax system with lower rates and a broader base. Such a system would cause less deadweight loss and be better for the economy in the long run. But unless you’re willing to go the extra step to crusade against any economic activity that causes deadweight loss, you should find a better argument to lower taxes.

Germany Is Outraged That America Does What Every Country Does

/ David Kailer / Leave a comment

German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed outrage at reports that the American National Security Agency allegedly intercepted conversations to and from her mobile cell phone. This comes on the heels of a similar claim from France that the National Security Agency collected tens of thousands of French phone records between December 2012 and January 2013.

The Chancellor argued that such spying constitutes a breach of trust, and that the United States will need to rebuild that trust going forward. The revelation about National Security Agency surveillance is merely the latest in a string of similar stories since former U.S. analyst Edward Snowden leaked that the United States had a very wide-ranging intelligence and surveillance program.

In light of the incident, the German Chancellor suggested limiting the current data-sharing agreement in place between Washington and the nations of the European Union. The article points out that any additional limitations on the free flow of information between the United States and its European allies could have damaging repercussions in the American effort to combat terrorism.

This revelation might prompt the European Union to additionally tighten data privacy rules it is already in the process of drafting. Such new legislation might hinder companies collecting data in Europe and then disseminating that information to non-European nations. The legislation might also impose stiff financial penalties on any country caught violating the new rules.

Any new laws would also affect a program called Swift, based in Europe, which collects data on an international scale about electronic money transfers. Leaks by Edward Snowden indicate that the United States may bee repeatedly violating the agreement underlying the Swift program by retrieving more information than it is permitted to. The article does not indicate whether this suggests the United States pulls more data, or rather collects data about an impermissible range of subjects. The European Union has moved to suspend operation of the program until data sharing laws and policies can be put in place, while the United States has voiced concern that limiting access to the information collected by the program would greatly impede our ability to conduct effective counter-terrorism.

The article ends with a quote from the former head of France’s secret services, Bernard Squarcini, “I’m bewildered by such worrying naiveté. You’d think the politicians don’t read the reports they’re sent – there shouldn’t be any surprise, [t]he agencies know perfectly well that every country, even when they cooperate on anti-terrorism, spies on its allies. The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level like we spy on them, because it’s in the national interest to defend our businesses. No one is fooled.”

This article deals with the moral and legal gray area that is the use of intelligence directed against international allies. In the absence of any binding agreements prohibiting it, should the United States continue gathering secret information about its allies? Should international law reflect a belief that allies are prohibited from spying on each other? Despite the international backlash, are there policy reasons why it might be beneficial to allow allies to spy on each other without explicit knowledge or consent?

Sunday Funday: Colbert Shutdown Wedding

/ Matthew Clemente / Leave a comment

Sunday Funday: Colbert Shutdown Wedding 

The government shutdown is over; American did not default. Although experts estimate that the shutdown cost the American economy $24 billion dollars, the effects of the shutdown were not all bad. For instance, one couple who expected to be married at Jefferson Memorial, instead found themselves on the Colbert Report—with their wedding officiated on live-TV, by none other than one Mr. Stephen Colbert.

Part II of the video can be found here.

For more public policy related videos and podcast, be sure to check out the SLACE Archive.