Barack Obama

In Andy Greenberg’s Wired article on February 9, 2017, “Trump Cybersecurity Chief Could Be a ‘Voice of Reason," he writes: But when Trump’s draft executive order on cybersecurity emerged last week, it surprised the cybersecurity world by hewing closely to the recommendations of bipartisan experts—including one commission assembled by the Obama administration. The described timing and the link both refer to the original draft cybersecurity executive order, which does not at all resemble the recommendations of Obama's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity or the recommendations of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Cyber Policy Task Force, which both included input from large numbers of security experts. Contrary to what Greenberg says, the executive order he refers to was widely criticized on a number of grounds, including that it is incredibly vague and high level, specifies an extremely short time frame for its reviews, and that it seemed to think it was a good idea to collect information about major U.S. vulnerabilities and defenses into one place and put it into the hands of then-National Security Advisor Michael T. Flynn. That original version of the executive order resembled the Trump campaign's website policy proposal on cybersecurity. The positive remarks, instead, were for a revised version of the cybersecurity executive order which was verbally described to reporters on the morning of January 31, the day that the signing of the order was expected to happen at 3 p.m., after Trump met for a listening session with security experts. The signing was cancelled, and the order has not yet been issued, but a draft subsequently got some circulation later in the week and was made public at the Lawfare blog on February 9. This executive order contains recommendations consistent with both the Cybersecurity Commission report and the CSIS Cyber Policy Task Force report, mandating the use of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework by federal agencies, putting the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in charge of enterprise risk assessment across agencies, promoting IT modernization and the promotion of cloud and shared services infrastructure, and directing DHS and other agency heads to work with private sector critical infrastructure owners on defenses. One key thing it does not do, which was recommended by both reports, is elevate the White House cybersecurity coordinator role (a role which the Trump administration has not yet filled, which was held by Michael Daniel in the Obama administration) to an Assistant to the President, reflecting the importance of cybersecurity. Greenberg's piece seems to assume that Thomas Bossert is in the lead cybersecurity coordinator role, but his role is Homeland Security Advisor (the role previously held by Lisa Monaco in the Obama administration), with broad responsibility for homeland security and counterterrorism, not cybersecurity-specific. Despite Greenberg's error confusing the two executive orders being pointed out to him on Twitter on February 9, the article hasn't been corrected as of February 16. Anonymous (2017-03-06): Dear Mr. Lippard, I apologize for contacting you in this odd way, but as your email does not seem to be publicly available, I found it my only recourse. ...

Yesterday I received an email that contained yet another argument that Obama’s birth certificate (the PDF’d scan of the “long form” certificate) was a fake, based on erroneous claims about the name of Kenya in 1961 and the name of the hospital which were already debunked at Snopes.com four months ago. But this prompted me to see if there were any more advocates of wild claims about the birth certificate, and I came across Douglas Vogt’s alleged analysis of the birth certificate and, more importantly, a very well-done, detailed debunking of that analysis by Kevin Davidson (known on his blog as “Dr. Conspiracy”), who has done a great job of responding to numerous Obama conspiracy claims. Check out his “The Debunker’s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories." Vogt, the author of the analysis which Dr. Conspiracy debunks, is also an example of “crank magnetism”–he is the author of Reality Revealed: The Theory of Multidimensional Reality, a 1978 book which looks like a classic work of crackpottery. Vogt bills himself as a “geologist and science philosopher” who: ...

Radley Balko summarizes PolitiFact’s report card on Obama’s promises, as: 31 promises kept, of which 20 expand government power and 6 of which make it smaller, more transparent, or more accountable, and 5 are neutral. 6 promises broken, 5 of which would have limited presidential power, provided tax breaks, or more transparency or accountability to federal government, and one of which was symbolic (recognizing the Armenian genocide). No promises broken which expand government power. ...

A nice visual depiction of what it amounts to. (Via The Agitator.) Historical Comments Ktisophilos (2009-05-03): Good one!

Remember how the press was all over the story of the 29-year-old millionaire white supremacist and fan of Adolf Hitler in Maine who was building a dirty bomb that he planned to set off at Obama’s inauguration, but it didn’t happen because his wife shot and killed him? Me neither, but James G. Cummings of Belfast, Maine, had (quoting Wikileaks) “four lots of one gallon containers of bomb-grade hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium (also radioactive), lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium (radiation booster), boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon” which he somehow planned to set off at the inauguration. Personally, I don’t think that volume of material could have been easily smuggled in anywhere near the inauguration activities without raising suspicion. Why no press coverage of this story, apart from the Bangor Daily News? Wikileaks has a summary; Wonkette has summarized that; the Washington D.C. Regional Threat and Analysis Center report (PDF) is here. ...

The U.S. government is negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a treaty which imposes new controls over copyright, but refuses to let the general public know its specific content. In response to a Freedom of Information Act Request from Knowledge Ecology International, the Obama administration responded that the content is classified for national security reasons pursuant to Executive Order 12958, a Clinton order from 1995. As Declan McCullagh points out, the executive order “allows material to be classified only if disclosure would do ‘damage to the national security and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage.’” He also points out that one of Obama’s first acts as president was to sign a memo that said that FOIA “should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure." The claim that this treaty cannot be disclosed for national security reasons sounds bogus, but if it’s so, what’s the purported damage being prevented? In the absence of a clear rationale, this treaty should be openly discussed and available to the general public.

So much for change. ABC News: The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. The case involves five men who claim to have been victims of extraordinary rendition — including current Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed, another plaintiff in jail in Egypt, one in jail in Morocco, and two now free. They sued a San Jose Boeing subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, accusing the flight-planning company of aiding the CIA in flying them to other countries and secret CIA camps where they were tortured. ...

Obama’s inauguration speech was censored in China. They didn’t like these two sentences: “Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions.” The words “and communism” were removed from the Chinese translation by the state-run Xinhua news agency. “To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history.” That whole sentence was removed from the Chinese translation. Rick Warren’s invocation speech was the low point in the career of a U.S. Army officer who gave in to pressure to conform when his commanding officer expected everyone to applaud, saying “God Bless him for having the courage to pray for all of the lost souls in the name of our Savior Jesus Christ!" On Obama’s first day in office, he issued executive orders to suspend military commissions for 120 days, close Guantanamo Bay in the next year, require all government agency interrogations to comply with the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation, freeze salaries for the 100 top executive branch officials, reverse George W. Bush’s executive order allowing former presidents and their relatives to keep presidential materials out of the National Archives beyond the 12-year statutory limit, close all CIA secret prisons, and call for a review of all U.S. government detention procedures. The Obameter is tracking Obama’s campaign promises. So far he’s kept five, compromised on one, stalled on one, taken no action on 488, and broken none. He will need to delay, if not break, some of his spending promises… UPDATE (February 17, 2009): So far, it appears that Obama has no intention of keeping his promise to post all bills to the web for five days of public comment prior to signing them. He’s broken that promise repeatedly already.

Last Sunday, Rick Warren recorded a video for his congregation in which he denies ever comparing gay marriages to incest or pedophilia: I have been accused of equating gay partnerships with incest and pedophila. Now, of course as members of Saddleback Church, you know I believe no such thing, I never have. You’ve never once heard me in thirty years talk that way about that.But Rachel Maddow shows that he made exactly that comparison: I’m opposed to having a brother and sister be together and call that marriage. I’m opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that a marriage. I’m opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage. Q. Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married? Oh, I do!Rick Warren has been caught lying, in addition to being anti-gay and anti-evolution. He should ask to be taken off the agenda for the inauguration, and if he doesn’t, Barack Obama should just withdraw his invitation to speak. ...

The case of Philip J. Berg v. Barack Hussein Obama, filed in the eastern district of Pennsylvania in an attempt to argue that Obama cannot become president because he is not a U.S. citizen, has been joined by Paul Andrew Mitchell, a “private attorney general” and 9/11 truther known for filing nonsensical papers with the courts. The character of Mitchell’s filing can be seen on p. 5, where he writes that “I, Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris, hereby verify, under penalty of perjury, under the laws of the United States of America, without the ‘United States’ (federal government), that the above statement of facts and laws is true and correct …” The italics and bolding are as in the filing. Mitchell is one of the crackpots who argues that the United States of America is distinct from the United States and that he’s not subject to the laws of the latter, including the income tax, because he’s a “sovereign citizen." Mitchell used to be a customer of Primenet, an Internet Service Provider based in Phoenix, that was my employer. He named us in one of his lawsuits, along with numerous other ISPs, on the grounds that one of our users had the temerity to put a link on his web page to a copy of Mitchell’s “The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue.” Mitchell insisted that he didn’t authorize that copy of his work, and that our user’s link constituted contributory infringement of his copyright. When I pointed out that the link was actually a dead link and didn’t point to anything at all, this did not persuade him that Primenet shouldn’t be sued. He never bothered to properly serve Primenet with papers, and the case was thrown out of court. Mitchell is or was also a member of the “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” organization; I’ve previously written more about Mitchell and that organization on this blog. ...