There is no safe system

When people advocate a national ID system for the US, it’s worth keeping in mind that massive databases of personal information have some easily foreseeable vulnerabilities. Britain has just learned that lesson again:

[Several years ago, a] private company, VFS, [was] contracted by the Home Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to process the online visa applications of Indians wanting to visit Britain. It later won similar contracts in Russia and Nigera.

But in 2005 it became apparent that the system was chronically flawed. An applicant informed VFS and UK Visas, the government agency in charge of visa processing, that he was able to obtain confidential information – including passport numbers, criminal convictions, ethnic origin and travel details – about other users of the service. He also showed how he could amend other people’s visa applications online. But despite the warning, the system wasn’t shut down until May 2007.

Let’s recap: After the government and the contractor were told that people’s lives could be at risk^[1] due to compromised data, the system was left up and running for another 18 months.

The answer here is not “Whoops, we hired an incompetent contractor. Better luck next time.” The answer is “Good God, what a disaster. Given that predictable political and logistical pressures always affect these type of projects, we should reconsider them entirely.”

1. 
   Remember, if you’re an immigrant and someone obtains your personal details, it’s not like the minor hassle of a credit-card statement with $50 in fraudulent charges. In the US immigraton system, if there is even a hint of inconsistency (let alone criminal background!) in your application, it can be delayed for years or denied altogether, often without possibility of appeal. It is not an exaggeration to say that for someone on provisional status, as all non-citizens are, having someone hack into your official record and change it can literally send you back to your death in a home country torn by war or other violent social disorder.
   ↩

Do the right thing

What do we owe the Iraqis who have risked their lives serving as interpreters for the U.S. military?

Here’s Sebastian Holsclaw at Obsidian Wings:

When we withdraw, it seems there are no plans to give asylum to the Iraqis who have helped us. [...] It would be an incredibly stupid policy to just let those people loose to be the first hunted down and killed by both sides of the likely civil war aftermath. Even if for some reason we didn’t feel some sort of moral responsibility to them (which to be clear we should) it makes good practical sense. We’ve done all sorts of damage to any reputation for military competence, but that doesn’t mean we should go out of our way to show that if you directly help us, we are likely to abandon you to an ugly death when we leave.

And the British perspective from Daniel Davies at Crooked Timber:

Iraqi interpreters used by the British Army and CPA South have already been hunted down by death squads. [...] There really is no way of keeping these people safe while they are in Iraq, and they need to be kept safe. Quite apart from what one would call a “debt of honour” (the phrase is somewhat pompous, but accurately describes the situation), it never makes sense to get a reputation for abandoning one’s friends. Therefore, the Iraqi staff used by the British in Iraq need to be given asylum in the UK, along with their families.

This is not the current policy of the UK. The Home Office has simply suggested that Iraqis put at risk by their work for the British “register with the appropriate UN refugee agency”, joining the mountain of 2 million-plus refugees….

The title of this post is taken from the Spike Lee film of the same name. It’s often hard to figure out the right thing to do, and good intentions don’t protect you from unintended consequences. But evidence is overwhelming that Iraqis who have worked for the U.S. are and will continue to be singled out and slaughtered.

The U.S. has admitted a bare 133 Iraqi refugees so far this year. That’s not even close to the 7,000 that our government already promised to admit, let alone the thousands more who have worked for us. While there are no good reasons for the delay, one thing is guaranteed to end it: Public pressure. Talk to your friends, write to your local paper, and call your Congressperson.

(If you think this is premature, take a look at Gary Farber’s timeline of how fast the situation deteriorated in the last three and a half weeks of the Vietnam War. And while you’re at it, read his most recent post on this topic.)

No one person should have this much power

I wrote earlier about a judge in Pakistan who was standing up for the rule of law. Today he was reinstated:

Pakistan’s Supreme Court today reinstated the country’s Chief Justice unconditionally in a blow to the Pakistan President, General Pervez Musharraf, who had suspended him.

The historic ruling – the first a Pakistan court has ever made against a military ruler – comes after four months of unrest in Pakistan since Iftikhar Chaudhry’s suspension on allegations of misconduct and corruption.

Judge Chaudhry refused to quit, despite pressure from the president and his intelligence chiefs, and became a symbol of resistance to General Musharraf, lionised by supporters in rallies round the country.

In contrast, today the White House made a stunning declaration that our president has supreme rights over Congress.

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration’s stance “astonishing.”

“That’s a breathtakingly broad view of the president’s role in this system of separation of powers,” Rozell said. “What this statement is saying is the president’s claim of executive privilege trumps all.”

No one person should have this much power. The founders of our country knew that no president could ever be so perfect that he (or she) should have the rights of a king. But the current president is making wilder and wilder claims about the power to which he is entitled.

Let’s go back to Pakistan, a nation with which we have had profound differences:

“The president has said the judgement of the Supreme Court will be honoured, respected, and adhered to,” said retired Major General Rashid Qureshi, the president’s spokesman.

There’s a critical difference to note: The White House claims are being made anonymously. That means that our president isn’t quite sure enough to stand up and say in public that he has the right to overrule Congress like this. Letting his staff speak to the Washington Post is a way of testing to see if Americans will swallow this outrageous claim.

If you agree that nobody should have this much power, call your senators. Or better yet, write them.

Happy Independence Day

This seemed like the best way to celebrate:

More photos of me looking bewildered after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

“He’s my president, and I hope he does a good job”

Transcript and video of Keith Olbermann’s sharp and righteous July 4th commentary on the pardon of Scooter Libby.

When President Nixon ordered the firing of the Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the infamous “Saturday Night Massacre” on October 20th, 1973, Mr. Cox initially responded tersely, and ominously:

“Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men, is now for Congress, and ultimately, the American people.”

President Nixon did not understand how he had crystallized the issue of Watergate for the American people.

It had been about the obscure meaning behind an attempt to break in to a rival party’s headquarters; and the labyrinthine effort to cover-up that break-in and the related crimes.

But in one night, Nixon transformed it.

Watergate — instantaneously — became a simpler issue: a President overruling the inexorable march of the law. Of insisting — in a way that resonated viscerally with millions who had not previously understood — that he was the law.

Not the Constitution.

Not the Congress.

Not the Courts.

Just him.

Just – Mr. Bush – as you did, yesterday.

Brings to mind the unmatchable Representative Barbara Jordan during the Watergate hearings:

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States, “We, the people.” It is a very eloquent beginning. But when the document was completed on the seventeenth of September 1787 I was not included in that “We, the people.” I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision I have finally been included in “We, the people.”

Today, I am an inquisitor; I believe hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total. I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.

Transcript. It’s even better if you listen to her uniquely majestic voice.