Emily Schwartz Greco, “Book Review: Spies for Hire” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, October 6, 2008)
Book Review: Spies for Hire
If you think you’ve even got a vague notion of how the shadowy side of the U.S. government operates, do yourself a favor and read Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing (Simon &Schuster, 2008). This book is a wide-open window into the creepy new corporate world of spydom that may keep you awake at night.
Thanks to his dogged parsing of every single shred of documentation he could get his hands on, Shorrock discovered that about 70% of intelligence work is now outsourced to private companies, creating a nearly $50 billion market that gobbles our taxpayer dollars with insufficient oversight. “This book is an attempt to pierce that veil” of secrecy that shrouds all intelligence work, the author explains. He carries through on that promise, one frightening and shocking detail or anecdote at a time.
Investigative journalist (and Foreign Policy In Focus contributor) Tim Shorrock’s remarkable book paints such an alarming picture of the modern intelligence bureaucracy that I found myself pining for the “bad old days” when the federal employees of the CIA, FBI, and all the lesser-known alphabet-soup agencies from the NSA to the DDPO did all their own work.
How did we get here? As with other aspects of government services, the intelligence privatization frenzy happened initially because of the anti-government philosophy that reigned during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations but actually took off during the Clinton years. This trend ramped up during George W. Bush’s tenure, with a startling $400 billion in all forms of government contracts in place by 2007, twice the volume recorded in 2000. In theory, having the private sector do this work was supposed to save taxpayers money, but Shorrock’s book makes it clear that this isn’t necessarily so. After all, problems with the intelligence industry are so rife that there’s a lively blog he refers to several times called “The Spy Who Billed Me.”
Given the nature of this material, this can get tedious, but it’s always illuminating. Shorrock helps the reader understand the string of intelligence scandals for which the Bush administration will surely be remembered. For example, he chronicles the haphazard way that the company CACI obtained its ill-fated contract to conduct interrogations at Abu Ghraib. Then there’s the extreme degree to which telecommunications corporations facilitated illegal and warantless wiretapping. AT&T actually let the National Security Agency “connect a splitter cable [from its] circuits and divert a duplicate stream of [its] global Internet traffic to [a] secret room” that the NSA used on the seventh floor of the company’s San Francisco offices, Shorrock writes.
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In college in the 1980s, like many students across the United States, I took part in noisy, angry protests against campus-based CIA recruitment. Now, the spooks recruited despite those efforts are finding themselves greatly outnumbered by growing legions of private-sector contractors. These “Green Badgers,” named for their omnipresent ID tags rather than any critter-like qualities, are employees working for profit-driven companies. They “owe their allegiance to their company, and not the taxpayer,” Shorrock writes. Lots of these “badgers,” however, used to work for the government. Things have gotten so out of hand that the CIA had to ban private-sector recruiters from its cafeteria.
Emily Schwartz Greco is the Foreign Policy In Focus media director at the Institute for Policy Studies.
The question of oversight, along with corruption and cronyism, is central to the book. It’s also the reason why today’s excessive outsourcing of intelligence work threatens U.S. security. “Secrecy has come at a high political cost,” Shorrock writes. “The lack of transparency and the classified nature of most intelligence contracts makes Congress’s oversight job over contractors almost impossible.”
Tfvl Book publishers object to Kindle’s text-to-vo
Amazon’s technology enables a computer voice to read text aloud to owners of the Kindle 2, the next-gen version of reader.
Sheffner said it’s unclear whether the text-to-speech feature could be considered a public performance. Under copyright law, if someone profits from, say, a public reading of a copyright work without authorization, they are breaking the law. Someone could argue, said Sheffner, that the Kindle’s speech feature is a public performance because it enables scores of people to receive audio of a book. Sheffner added that the counter argument would be that the feature is only enabling lots of different private–and therefore legal–performances.
Wow. If a computer can’t lawfully read a book out loud, do human beings have the right? Amazon and Aitken could not be reached for comment.
That’s the question raised Tuesday by the Authors Guild, an advocacy group for writers. Paul Aitken, the group’s executive director objects to the text-to-speech feature on Amazon’s Kindle 2 digital-book reader. Aitken told The Wall Street Journal: “They don’t have the right to read a book out loud. That’s an audio right, which is derivative under copyright law.”
The debate could be academic. If the book publishers don’t like the feature, they can refuse to renew their licenses with Amazon in the future. And my colleague Ina Fried raised another point. Why would Kindle owners choose a computer voice when they can hear a recording of the author or a professional actor reading the book?
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Well, mothers of America, never fear. You most certainly do have the right to privately perform copyright work, says Ben Sheffner, a copyright attorney. Sheffner, a well-known copyright advocate, says the issue of whether Amazon’s Kindle infringes on intellectual property is not as cut and dry. Was your mother a lawbreaker when she read you The Little Prince or Green Eggs and Ham? Greg Sandoval covers media and digital entertainment for CNET News. He is a former reporter for The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. E-mail Greg, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sandoCNET. |
“The only right really that might be implicated is the so-called public performance,” Zittrain said. “But what I want the thing to do is to read to me in thecar. I don’t see a copy being made so I don’t see how this can be Amazon’s problem.”
Book publishers object to Kindle's text-to-voice feature
Update at 5:30 p.m. PST: Quotes added from copyright advocate Ben Sheffner.
Jonathan Zittrain, a professor at Harvard Law School, said he doesn’t see how the speech feature violates copyright law if no recorded copy of the book is created. Book publishers often license audio books separately than the text versions.
zkly Book Review-’The Rise and Fall of Fast Track
The power to regulate commerce and make trade agreements has been the exclusive privilege of Congress since the Constitution was created in 1787. Since the 1930s, this separation of powers weakened as successive presidential administrations have been granted the authority to negotiate trade agreements and modify tariff rates by proclamation rather than by congressional approval. In The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority, Todd Tucker and Lori Wallach chronicle this trend, focusing on fast track, a trade delegation mechanism established by President Richard Nixon in the mid-1970s.
From 1973 to 2008, successive administrations continuously renewed fast-track, though not without significant congressional wrangling. The mechanism enabled the passage of many contentious trade agreements such as the WTO, NAFTA, and CAFTA. Moreover, the renewal of fast track in 2002 was a major part of George W. Bush’s campaign platform.
Noor Iqbal, “Book Review:’The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority’” (Washington, DC: Foreign Policy In Focus, July 30, 2009)
The book illustrates how executive branch encroachment has oscillated back and forth over many administrations. Tucker and Wallach divide more than 200 hundred years of American history into five broad policy eras to demonstrate this shift. In the first phase, from 1789 to 1890, tariff legislation was under complete congressional control. It was during this time, they argue, that America industrialized and became a developed nation. In the next three periods, Congress went back and forth between delegating and reasserting control over trade policy. In 1934, for example, it passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (RTAA), which granted the executive branch the authority to unilaterally dictate tariff rates. As a result, Presidents Harry Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed dozens of bilateral trade agreements dealing with tariffs, quotas, and customs regulations, as well as the controversial GATT agreement.
In a revised, post-election edition, Tucker and Wallach write that the Obama administration has the opportunity to replace the fast track mechanism once and for all. Rather than renew an outdated policy suited for the realities of the 1970s, they argue, the administration should introduce a new delegation mechanism that addresses the complexities of international commercial agreements in a globalized world without compromising the founding principles of American democracy.
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Book Review:'The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority'
In any middle school civics class you’ll learn that the system of checks and balances is a central tenet of the U.S. Constitution. Over the last 100 years, however, it appears the government has been operating under different assumptions, particularly where trade policy is concerned.
Fast track, the most recent policy phase, expanded on previous delegation mechanisms by allowing the president to set U.S. policy on non-tariff and non-trade issues under the guise of trade negotiations. The Trade Reform Act of 1973 granted fast track powers to President Nixon for the first time even in the midst of the Watergate scandal. Fast track circumvented congressional approval processes, allowing the president to diplomatically legislate on issues that had nothing to do with trade. In short, it turned the system of checks and balances on its head by making the legislature answerable to the president.
Conversely, there was no delegation of trade authority during the late 1960s and early 1970s as concerns over executive branch unilateralism grew.
Noor Iqbal, a student at Harvard University, is an intern with Foreign Policy In Focus. Recommended Citation:
March 8, 2010
qqca Obama to target jobs, middle class in key add
Most of the speech is likely to be about the economy, but the talking points made clear Obama will review US progress against Al-Qaeda and will go onto some detail on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Wall Street Journal poll Wednesday found that 51 percent of Americans believe Obama has devoted too little attention to the economy, and 44 percent think he has spent too much time on health care.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told ABC News on Wednesday that Obama would seek to chart a more “hopeful” future for Americans, after a grim year of huge job losses, tight credit and sinking family savings.
He will encourage small businesses to invest in the work force, announce more stimulus money for job-rich infrastructure projects and tout his clean energy and green economy initiatives.
Asked by reporters what his message would be on health care, Obama smiled and said “it’s a good one.”
Obama will also call on Congress to pass his bill containing the most sweeping regulatory overhaul of Wall Street since the 1930s Great Depression and will also demand a bi-partisan effort to rein in the deficit.
One year into his presidency, Obama’s political brand seems to have lost its luster, as has the notion that a fresh face with new ideas could steer the US ship of state in a new direction.
Obama, a year into an administration dragged down economic gloom,Paul Smith Sweater, will try to ease pressure on working families by offering small businesses incentives to take on staff and by widening access to education and health care.
The president spent the day tinkering with his speech and practicing for the big political test, and lunched with top television anchors who will interpret his remarks for their viewers later.
“While the worst of the economic crisis has passed, for too many American families and businesses the wreckage remains,” said the document, sent to staffers on Capitol Hill ahead of the 9pm (0200 GMT) speech.
Obama’s ambitious reform agenda took a huge hit when Republicans seized a Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts last week, and the president is under intense pressure to show leadership and to restore his authority.
Obama also will send a signal to Americans worried about government debt being piled up for future generations, by promising a three-year freeze on non-discretionary spending.
Polls show that Obama remains popular among Americans — but confidence in his policies is fading: the president’s approval ratings are at 50 or below in most opinion surveys.
Haiti’s ambassador to the United States Raymond Joseph will be one of First Lady Michelle Obama’s guests in her box in the House,mbt short shoe, along with Kimberly Munley, the policewoman who took down Major Nidal Hasan, who is charged with the Fort Hood massacre last November.
Given the poisoned political climate in the run-up to mid-term congressional polls in November, and some panic in Obama’s Democratic Party,ghd hair products, prospects for Obama’s laundry list of initiatives look uncertain.
His promise to seek bipartisan solutions has foundered, partly due to a strategy of total opposition on behalf of Republicans.
“The President will talk to the American people about steps we need to take to build on the work we did this past year to bring the economy back from the brink of a depression,” said a set of White House talking points.
With unemployment at 10 percent, a bulging government deficit at 1.4 trillion US dollars, and his aspirations for a transformative administration threatened by Washington partisanship, Obama faces a political moment of truth.
Also expected are promises to improve US protections against bio-terror attacks, for tax breaks to ease the way to college or retirement for Americans, and for a framework for the US role in rebuilding earthquake-hit Haiti.
Obama to target jobs, middle class in key address
Barack Obama will Wednesday peddle hope to crisis-weary Americans, with promises to create jobs and rein in Wall Street as he seeks to revive his presidency in his debut State of the Union address.
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Aides have also signaled that Obama will not lower his sights and is determined to enact generational reforms, including his signature health care initiative, now in limbo in Congress. And the haunting political legacy that the president inherited from president George W. Bush — a collapsed economy, two wars and multiple security threats — has weakened the reforming zeal of his presidency. |
Obama has already failed to live up to one of his most prominent promises: closing the camp for terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within a year.
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Lance Whitney wears a few different technology hats–journalist, Web developer, and software trainer. He’s a contributing editor for Microsoft TechNet Magazine and writes for other computer publications and Web sites. You can follow Lance on Twitter at @lancewhit. Lance is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and he is not an employee of CNET.