Skating on Stilts

More efforts to discredit international law

Wasn't that what they said after 9/11? 

"Now we are all Americans.  Or prosecutors of Americans.  Or whatever."

If you wondered whether the Bush Administration was being paranoid when it said that the ICC would be used against Americans, this ought to help with the answer.

Canadians say Chinese have hacked the Dalai Lama's computers

I guess we shouldn't be surprised.  Researchers: Cyber spies break into government computers.

Good listening

Tired of NPR?

Academic Earth provides a massive selection of college lectures (video and audio).

And www.spokenword.org crowdsources the best podcasts (with what I suspect is a bias for the sponsors').

But for pure daffy fascination, you can't beat In Our Time (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml), where Melvyn Bragg cracks the whip to get three academics to cover some random topic in history to his satisfaction.  It's like the New Yorker used to be.  You never know what you'll get when you open it, and you don't need to ask.  Just start listening; Melvyn knows what's good for you.

Is FEMA better today as part of DHS than it was under James Lee Witt?

James Lee Witt has insisted for years that putting FEMA into DHS was a bad idea.  After all, he says, we never had disasters like Katrina when FEMA was an independent agency with cabinet rank -- that is, when he was running it.  Well, the dirty little secret is exactly that.  We never had disasters like Katrina in those years.  In fact, according to Wikipedia, the worst disasters in those years were the 1993 midwest floods and the Northridge earthquake.  Both killed about 50 people.  Not one hurricane caused significant fatalities under President Clinton (Andrew, which did kill two dozen, was in 1992 and may have been the last straw for President Bush's reelection hopes). 

In contrast, FEMA under DHS has faced five hurricanes causing double-digit, triple-digit, and even quadruple-digit fatalities (Charley, Frances, Ivan, Rita, Katrina -- a total of more than 2000 dead).

Of course Witt looked good in comparison.  He was playing in Division III, while DHS  found itself playing the Celtics. 

But now we may have  a chance to see how FEMA and DHS look when they're playing in Witt's division. There is major flooding in the Midwest again.

It may not be quite as bad as 1993, since the water's going north on the Red instead of south on the Mississippi, but it's close enough.  Fargo is likely to go under. 

Witt has a lot to say about what a good job he did in responding to the 1993 floods.  Well, if FEMA does as well in 2009, maybe he'll have less to say about moving it out of the department.

Kindle 2

I had lunch with an actual reader of this blog. (It occurs to me that I could probably have lunch with all of the readers of this blog, maybe at a small table. So if you are reading this and call or send email or post a comment within 24 hours of this posting, we'll have lunch -- Dutch treat, of course, I'm still as cheap as ever.) At any rate, over lunch my reader asked if I really disliked the Kindle. And I realized that it's easy to leave the wrong impression.

So, for the record, the Kindle is a great way to read books. The instant access to Amazon is cool (Duelfer's book is now available), and the ability to read a few pages in odd places or parts of the day also allows me to read more. (It's cutting into my podcast listening a bit, but that's no big deal.) The problems have receded. I figured out how to keep the thing from losing its place, and a very good Amazon service call told me how to reboot/reset the thing to recover my lost subscription. I still worry about dropping it, but I'm planning to buy a cover. Reading the WSJ on it isn't ideal, but in fact I read more on the Kindle than I would on line. Amazon's lame DMCA view is annoying, but most readers won't care because they'll buy their books from Amazon at the fairly cheap price of $10.

In short, if you're thinking of getting something for a parent, I'm guessing that they'll have no problems. But I wouldn't start out by getting them a subscription to a newspaper. Pick some books instead.

DHS's role in securing identity

has a remarkably large role in identity documents.  It inspects more than 2 million a day, and it controls or heavily influences identity document standards across the US and around the world.  For a long riff on this issue, see the Stewart Baker video recorded for Secure Document World.  As an added bonus, Michael Chertoff and Kathy Kraninger videos are at the same site.

The Obama Administration's worst mistake

I can't believe the new team is seriously thinking about releasing Gitmo detainees inside the US.  Actually that's not the worst of it; they're apparently also thinking about giving the detainees welfare: "some sort of assistance for them to start a new life," according to DNI Blair.  Well, that will make the days of Ronald Reagan campaigning against "welfare queens" seem quaint.

No good deed ...

Every day, thousands of fliers are delayed because they have the same name  as a suspected terrorist.  That wouldn't happen if Congress and privacy advocates hadn't stalled Secure Flight, which would give DHS direct access to passengers' names and (gasp!) birthdates, so DHS could tell the difference between people on the list and people with similar names.  As a stopgap, TSA has cleared 80,000 fliers.

Now, the people who made the mess -- Congress and the ACLU -- are complaining  about it and acting as though TSA's action proves that the government's watchlists are out of control.  They aren't.  Congress is.

Sec. Chertoff breaks free from billable hours

Michael Chertoff is a superb lawyer, but DHS gave him a chance to spread his management wings, so it's no surprise that, while he'll be practicing law (at Covington), he's also forming a consulting firm to work with companies and governments.

Napolitano will fight over passports on Canadian border

This has been foreshadowed, but DHS and the Obama Administration are now publicly taking a difficult political stand for homeland security, essentially telling Louise Slaughter and other northern state reps that the deadline for passports on the Canadian land border will be enforced.

If you're looking for signs that the  Administration is willing to support homeland security even when inconvenient, this is it.  It was an early test, but the Administration didn't blink.

More on ACTA and laptop searches

Michael Geist responds to my last post by quoting from an EU submission to the ACTA talks: "Where a traveller's personal baggage contains goods of a non-commercial nature within the limits of the duty-free allowance and there are no material indications to suggest the goods are part of commercial traffic, each Party may consider to leave such goods, or part of such goods outside the scope of this section."

I read this as allowing parties to decide not to apply the terms of ACTA to personal baggage. Such an exemption seems fine from a national security point of view, since the Parties remain free to conduct electronic searches in accordance with their existing policy. They are also free to change that policy if they wish.

That's what ACTA should do. In fact, if the US negotiators are smart, they'll adopt something like the EU proposal just to make sure that people can't campaign against ACTA by suggesting it will mean a dragnet for downloaded music at the border.

And full props to Michael, who is not only well informed, he's got the texts to prove it. So why is EFF filing a FOIA claim with the US government to get ACTA docs? They can just ask Michael for them.

ACTA negotiations and homeland security

A fierce critic of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, Michael Geist, is blogging about the negotiations.  I nearly spit out my coffee when I read this passage:

The Border Measures proposals are also still subject to considerable disagreement. Some countries are seeking de minimum rules, the removal of certain clauses, and a specific provision to put to rest fears of iPod searching customs officials by excluding personal baggage that contains goods of a non-commercial nature.

(My emphasis.)  If this is so, USTR did a remarkably poor job of coordinating with DHS on the negotiation of the border measures sections of ACTA.  As far as I know, USTR never suggested that it was putting into play DHS's authority to conduct searches of electronic equipment. 

DHS doesn't bust people for carrying downloaded music or movies on a searched laptop.  It has more important things to worry about.  But  electronic searches have turned up plenty of child porn and jihadi snuff films, and DHS has kept dangerous people out of the country (or sent them to jail) as a result.  The ability to do those searches is a key to securing our borders.  We shouldn't be considering the surrender of effective counterterrorism measures in trade negotiations, for crying out loud (if that's really what's happening; Michael Geist is pretty far removed from what's actually being negotiated).

" How about starting our diet tomorrow? "

Rep. Louise Slaughter and other border state representatives really want to implement the passport requirement on the Canadian border, just like most of us want to go on a diet -- tomorrow.  Having postponed this 9/11 Commission recommendation until June 2009, they now want to postpone it until after the 2010 Olympics.

Because of all the people who will drive to Vancouver  for the Olympics by way of Detroit, Buffalo, and Vermont, I guess.

The Great Travel Reservation Data Battle

Nathan Sales and I tell the story of the battle over travel reservation data between DHS and the European Union.

Yes it's a law review article, with footnotes, but it's also a good read.  Here's the start:

It’s June 14, 2003 at Chicago’s O’Hare international airport. The U.S.-led war to topple Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime in Iraq was launched a little less than three months ago. Resurgent fears of terrorism have kept some would-be passengers from the skies, but O’Hare is still operating at a fairly brisk pace.

A Jordanian man named Ra’ed al-Banna is among the throng of passengers who have just arrived on KLM flight 611 from Amsterdam. After waiting in line, al-Banna presents his passport to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.

The CBP officers consult the computerized targeting system used to screen passengers who seek to enter the U.S. The information about al-Banna – drawn from his airline reservations and past travel – triggers a closer look. The officers examine al-Banna’s documents, and they begin asking him questions.

Something doesn’t add up. Al-Banna has a legitimate Jordanian passport; he holds a valid visa that allows him to work in the United States; and he had visited the U.S. before for a lengthy stay. But the officers aren’t satisfied that he’s being completely truthful with his answers, so they decide to refuse him admission. Al-Banna’s fingerprints are taken, and he is put on a plane back to Jordan. 

So far it sounds like a fairly routine day at the border. And it was, until events in Iraq nearly two years later gave it a new, and sinister, significance. 

On February 28, 2005, at about 8:30 in the morning, several hundred police recruits were lined up outside a clinic in Hilla, a city in the south of Iraq. With no warning, a car drove into the crowd and detonated a massive bomb. 132 people were killed, and about as many were wounded. At the time, it was the deadliest suicide bombing Iraq had seen.

The driver was Ra’ed al-Banna. We know that because when authorities found the steering wheel of his car, his forearm was still chained to it.

No one knows why al-Banna wanted to be in the U.S. in 2003, or what he would have done if he had gotten in. But we do know what kept him out – the government’s ability to quickly marshal the data that first triggered a closer look, and that the CBP officer later used to question al-Banna closely and to conclude that his answers weren’t satisfactory.

At the center of that system was airline reservation data, known as Passenger Name Records or “PNR.”

Cat:pigeons, haggis:fire

Obama:comprehensive immigration reform

You've got to admire the man's cojones, if not his political judgment.

Napolitano hangs tough on TPS for Haiti

A much faster way to provide relief would be for Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to exercise her power under the law and approve such status by executive order. But she has no such intention, said her spokesman, Sean Smith.

"There is no change in our policy on temporary protected status, and deportations to Haiti are continuing," he said Tuesday. "And let me be clear: No one living in Haiti right now should be attempting to come to the United States in hopes that they will be granted TPS."

Washington Times - Protected status sought for Haitians

First EU talks with US raise new barriers to closing Gitmo

US wants to send some Gitmo detainees to European nations, and they are willing to take them.  What's the problem?  The EU has stepped into the process and is imposing what look like new preconditions. The EU says they're not conditions, but reading the press, I think that can be translated as "They're not preconditions, but we want answers to our questions, assurances that you'll reject the legal basis for Gitmo detentions and agreement on a framework for talking to European governments before there'll be any progress."  Here's the excerpt -- see if you can read it differently:

The officials declined to enumerate the questions but said they went to the case against each detainee that Europe might be asked to accept. They also sought assurances that the policies underlying the system of detention in Guantanamo are a thing of the past.

"We have a list of questions, not conditions," said Ivan Langer, the Czech interior minister whose country currently holds the presidency of the European Union. He added at a news conference Monday in Washington, "There is one condition: maximum information."

Accompanying Langer was Jacques Barrot, a vice president of the European Commission. The visit was the first formal senior contact between the European Union and the Obama administration.

Langer said the decision of whether to accept detainees is one for individual states within the union, but because of open borders in continental Europe, officials there would like an agreed framework among the member states in advance of any transfers from Guantanamo.

Canada recycles old " preclearance " proposals

Canada's Public Safety minister is playing down the DHS border security review. 

And offering a shopworn proposal to customs preclearance in Canada:

As an example, Van Loan said Canada is interested on reopening talks with the Obama administration about opening U.S. customs pre-clearance facilities at Canadian land border crossings. The aim would be to allow trucks carrying goods to the U.S. to clear American customs before they arrive at the border, "the same way we pre-clear passengers at airports" in several Canadian cities. The idea went nowhere under the Bush administration.

It went nowhere because the US would have to give up its search authorities, be subject to Canadian court supervision, and generally submit to very different Canadian notions of what can and can't be done at a border. How is that improving security as well as facilitating commerce? 

Napolitano handles Der Spiegel

Mildly hostile reporter.  Self-confident, on-message Secretary.

Cybersecurity hearing roundup

Here's a good roundup of cybersecurity hearings.

Most ironic criticism was the claim that the initiative was flawed because it only dealt with government infrastructure.

Several witnesses at Tuesday's hearing echoed James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who argued that the "greatest failing" of the CNCI was that the initiative "despite its name, was not comprehensive." In part because it was launched under a veil of secrecy and without statutory support, the CNCI focused primarily on securing the dot-gov domain. But as a report sent to Congress last month by the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection stressed, 85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure is privately owned and operated.

We've had twenty years of industry telling government to butt out; suddenly the real problem is its unwillingness to butt in?  Well, critics have to criticize, and they had a choice of (a) "We're shocked at the government's failure to address security problems in the private sector" or (b) "We're shocked at the government's sneaky attempt to address security in the private sector while pretending not to.  The economy and your privacy are at risk!" 

All in all, I prefer (a)

Quick, call the European data protection police!

PNR and travel reservation data are being used to make long flights more enjoyable.

No guns for commercial pilots?

there are plenty of ways to get stupid with guns in the cockpit, and pilots found a lot of them, but I'm still uneasy at the idea of ending the program, which is where the Washington Times says the administration is heading.

Travel reservation data is key to arrest of Iranian weapons smuggler

CBP brings down an Iranian weapons smuggler.

Travel reservation data is what allowed CBP to catch the smuggler:

The arrest of Khoshnevisrad was an unexpected bonus in those efforts, U.S. officials said. After tracking the businessman and his import company, Ariasa, for months, investigators with U.S. Customs and Border Protection discovered that the entrepreneur was traveling from Iran to the United States for what was believed to be his first visit to this country.

Ouch!

Filed under "the outcrowd":  DHS Official Returns To Steptoe & Johnson

EU unites to help US resettle Gitmo prisoners

it sounds like the EU is planning to help us, doesn't it?

“We understand, you have a big problem,” said one European official.