US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7771

On June 07 2017 02:28 BigFan wrote:

Qatar and Iran as friends? Could happen but highly unlikely to say the least.

On June 07 2017 02:36 LegalLord wrote:
We've gotten this far from our allies in just 4.5 months. Who knows how far we can get before Trump leaves office?

"When reporters at The Intercept approached the National Security Agency on June 1 to confirm a document that had been anonymously leaked to the publication in May, they handed over a copy of the document to the NSA to verify its authenticity. When they did so, the Intercept team inadvertently exposed its source because the copy showed fold marks that indicated it had been printed—and it included encoded watermarking that revealed exactly when it had been printed and on what printer."

Bring On the Controversy: Trump Picks Notorious Waterboarding Apologist for Cabinet

I’ve got to hand it to the Trump administration. They’re holding fast to the reality TV rule of packing its cast with as many colorful personalities and controversial figures as the budget can accommodate. Just in time for May sweeps, the administration has tapped Steven Bradbury for the role of Transportation Secretary. This time, Trump is changing it up a little, and not picking someone who has already shown a penchant for destroying the entire concept of transportation. So there’s that. But this guy is guaranteed to inject some drama into the second half of cabinet season. Bradbury can be filed either under “already hated by Democrats,” or the potentially the simpler, “loose cannon.” Steven Bradbury, you see, is already something of a star. No, not that Steven Bradbury. This guy (unfortunately) isn’t the frosted-tipped Aussie speed-skater. This is Steven G. Bradbury, of waterboarding and torture fame.

This Bradbury was a former George W. Bush lawyer who held a number of high-ranking legal jobs in the early 2000s. But that’s not where he gets his star power. Bradbury authored a bunch of classified opinions that legally authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” following the September 11 terror attacks. In the opinions, Bradbury said that waterboarding, food and sleep deprivation, and physical striking weren’t really torture, and the U.S. was good to go for using them in the “war on terror.” Forcing detainees to remain in a standing position for four days was also cool with Bradbury. When Bradbury was called out before a House Judiciary subcommittee, he explained that these techniques weren’t “torture” because the pain they inflicted wasn’t severe or long-lasting enough. On cue, human rights groups, the ACLU, Democrats, and anyone uneasy with the U.S. deeming Guantanamo a legally-sanctioned Pit of Despair freaked the hell out.

Bush ‘43 nominated Bradbury as assistant attorney general back in 2008, but Senate Dems weren’t keen on having an eager waterboarder in such a prominent position. Politico reported that Dems had been so fiercely opposed to Bradbury that in December 2008, Senate majority leader Harry Reid offered to confirm 84 pending nominees in exchange for a withdrawal of Bradbury’s nomination. Reid’s offer was one the Bush White House could apparently refuse, and Bradbury served a short stint as Assistant Attorney General. When President Obama entered the scene, Bradbury was shown the door. Later, in a 2009 report, the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility said it had “serious concerns about some of his analysis,” but stopped short of accusing Bradbury of official professional misconduct.

For the last decade, Bradbury has distanced himself from the infamous Bradbury Memo, and returned to private practice as a partner with Dechert LLP in Washington, D.C. Bradbury gets out of the office now and again to do things like advise Mitt Romney and defend the NSA’s collection of metadata. An appointment to the Trump cabinet would be a fitting coda to Bradbury’s controversial career.

On June 07 2017 02:47 Tachion wrote:
Trump is no doubt pissing off the military and statesmen, but does his base even care? I get the impression that they think the US is a strong independent country who don't need no allies.

On June 07 2017 02:46 Wulfey_LA wrote:
So the Intercept intentionally burned their source.



There are two possible interpretations for those actions.
(1) Rank incompetence
(2) Intentional burning

However, (1) is not possible. The Intercept actually has professional and knowledgeable staff on hand to deal with leaked information. All it would take to defeat this kind of watermarking would be taking a picture of the leaked document, PDFing it, and slightly downgrading the quality, then sending a black and white print out of that downgraded document for confirmation. The Intercept sent a high quality copy (or possibly the original?) directly to the government for confirmation. That is straight up (2) Intentional burning. A plea of incompetence cannot be sustained here.

https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/06/how-a-few-yellow-dots-burned-the-intercepts-nsa-leaker/

EDIT: here are the guys the Intercept have on staff. No possible plea of incompetence with actual experts on the payroll.

https://twitter.com/bartongellman/status/872105756698521600

On June 07 2017 02:48 On_Slaught wrote:
Nothing would make me happier than Trump live tweeting the Comey hearing. Please don't let your politically correct lawyers and aides try and stop you Trump!

On June 07 2017 02:53 xDaunt wrote:

I highly doubt that the Intercept intentionally burned a source. There's nothing to be gained by doing that. No, this is pure incompetence. As someone who litigates a lot of complicated negligence cases, I can tell you that people ignore and break internal rules, policies, and procedures all of the time. And sometimes they do it knowingly, which is often considered "willful and wanton" conduct.

On June 07 2017 03:05 Wulfey_LA wrote:


Have you read a post by Glenn Greenwald in the last year? Greenwald is denier-in-chief of the existence of Russian Active measures and puts his best effort in playing the epistemological spin game. Any evidence of Russian Active measures goes against his day to day spin. This would be like FOX news putting out a definitive report on how their reporters fed Rod Wheeler the Seth Rich conspiracies.

Here is the Intercept's sorry comment on the matter. Until they explicitly plead that they are OpSec morons who have zero knowledge of how printers work, this was intentional.

https://theintercept.com/2017/06/06/statement-on-justice-department-allegations/?comments=1#comments

Here is a guy that works at the Intercept. No ignorance. All intent.
https://twitter.com/micahflee

On June 07 2017 03:02 xDaunt wrote:
Also, in case anyone missed this, Reality Winners seems like a real piece of work. Who the hell thought it would be a good idea to give this person any kind of security clearance?

EDIT: "Being white is terrorism" hahahaha