Core values

The National Security Agency website includes a section on its core values, and this provides a hint of what’s gone amiss in recent weeks after a young contract worker revealed the extent and names of secret surveillance programs.

The NSA approach detailing core values is unusual, largely relying on an interview with an individual to detail an organization's core values. The interviewer is anonymous, presumably posing questions that typically would come from the public. Anyone familiar with procedures of US government offices knows that the interview was not spontaneous. Questions were carefully selected, the webpage and the interview drafted, then reviewed by dozens of employees besides Deputy Director John C. Inglis, the lead senior civilian NSA employee, and revised numerous times. So readers should bear this in mind in reading the quotations attributed to Inglis.

At any rate, the interview lists NSA's core values – law, honesty, integrity and transparency – in text and video. Inglis' responses on core values emphasize "law," and this may explain the tension  between the NSA and privacy advocates, between NSA and congressional critics like Ron Wyden of Oregon, between the NSA and former contract employee Edward Snowden.

Strict adherence to the law is by no means a guarantee of morality. "Moral integrity and responsible citizenship, understood merely as “good heartedness”, are themselves susceptible to manipulation by propaganda," explains an abstract of an essay by R. Paul posted by the Critical Thinking Community. "The human mind, whatever its conscious good will, is subject to powerful, self-deceptive, unconscious egocentricity of mind. The full development of each characteristic - critical thought, moral integrity, and responsible citizenship - in its strong sense requires and develops the others, in a parallel strong sense. The three are developed together only in an atmosphere, which encourages the intellectual virtues: intellectual courage, intellectual empathy, intellectual good faith or integrity, intellectual perseverance, intellectual fair-mindedness, and faith in reason. The intellectual virtues themselves are interdependent." 

The Inglis interview includes several references to law and adherence: 


“The word compliance has many meanings, but at the National Security Agency, we try to effect that the following way: we first hire people who understand that lawfulness is a fundamental attribute. We ensure that the people that we bring enjoy the values that we hold near and dear. We then understand what the rules are that pertain to our business, and we try to master the spirit and the mechanics of those rules, in all of the procedures that we bring to bear.”
 
“Respect for the law at NSA means that we understand both the spirit and mechanics of the law, and that we fully embody in our actions a respect for both.”
 
“….from the moment we design our systems, to employing those systems, to sorting through, sifting through what we might get from those systems, ensure that at every step of the process we worry not simply about what we've obtained, but whether we had the authority to obtain it and whether we've treated it in exactly the right way.”
 
“The oversight that's in place to make sure that the Agency does not cross the line, that it is entirely lawful in the conduct of its activities, is multifaceted and overlapping. First we ensure that we hire employees that have a respect for the law. We don't hire just anyone; we're not simply after people who have technical competence; we want to make sure we hire people who enjoy our values, who will support fully the Constitution.”
 
To his credit, Inglis touts respect for "both spirit and mechanics of the law."  But can NSA activities meet the letter of the law if most citizens, and even most legislators, are kept ignorant of what the law entails? If most employees, let alone contract workers, do not understand the exact nature of their duties before entering these positions and there is no clear, non-punitive path for discussing the most troubling aspects? Can the activities satisfy the law if attorneys and administrators search for loopholes, twisting policy interpretations in ways that weaken or circumvent original intentions?

As we know, many laws – especially those that once mandated discrimination and criminalized the people who battled that discrimination, and this history is relevant to NSA policies and profiling methods – do not stand the test of time.  In the span of less than fifty years, Martin Luther King went from being a target of FBI investigations to having the honor of a national holiday.  The government has not learned that ignorance and stubborn pushback will only spur more activism, investigative reporting and debate.

NSA officials should take note and move carefully and deliberately with their investigations, avoiding sweeping collections. In a democracy, the targets can emerge as heroes.

~~~

Information is essential for democracy. "Poor public access to information feeds corruption," suggests Laura Neuman in "Access to Information: Key to Democracy," for the Carter Center:  "Secrecy allows back-room deals to determine public spending in the interests of the few rather than the many. Lack of information impedes citizens’ ability to assess the decisions of their leaders, and even to make informed choices about the individuals they elect to serve as their representatives." Of course, security is an area where access to information is limited, but citizens have the right to set the parameters to the actions undertaken in their name and expect those parameters to be respected and enforced.

The essay goes on to suggest that "blanket exemptions – that is to say, an exemption that covers, automatically, a category or type of information – are unwelcome, often unnecessary, and risks serious abuse."

Abuse is inevitable in surveillance systems, especially when "low-level NSA workers can initiate the collection of any U.S. citizen's electronic communications on a whim." Just as one man accessed documents inappropriately and released them to the world, another employee could just as easily have used surveillance equipment to target a personal enemy or listen to conversations about secret business deals and then make investments based on the inside information. We simply do not know. But imaginations are running wild among novelists and screenwriters. 

~~~

Strict adherence to law does not necessarily coincide with morality. Morality is not blind adherence to some dogma, but rather the lifelong acquisition of a conscience, the ability to sense right from wrong and understand the nuances of intention. Often the most skilled investigators are those who decline to simply accept orders and have the ability to analyze laws, policies, cases and context. Independent judgment is required in every task of high-level security employees, as they collect data, decide which connections warrant further scrutiny, examine intentions and context, and follow up.  

Both law and morality channel individual behavior, explains Steven Shavell in his 2002 essay “Law Versus Morality as Regulators as Conduct” in American Law and Economic Review. In several sections, he addresses how information influences the application of moral versus legal rules: 

“In the application of legal rules, certain information is needed. But information can be difficult to acquire or verify, such as that concerning whether a person committed a crime and, if so, what exactly the circumstances were. The difficulty associated with substantiation of information has two disadvantageous implications. One is that errors may be made…. The other is that legal rules are sometimes designed ina less refined manner than would be desirable if more information were available…. In summary, it seems that the informational burdens associated with the application of legal rules may constitute a significant disadvantage, leading to error and to use of simpler-than-otherwise-desirable rules. Application of moral rules with internal moral sanctions does not suffer from these problems, as individuals cannot hide from what they know about themselves.”
 
“Law may enjoy advantages over morality due to the ease with which legal rules can be established, the flexible character of law, and the plausibly greater magnitude of legal sanctions over moral sanctions. Also,the presence of amoral individuals can be a factor of significance favoring law, as can be the presence of firms, for whom moral forces are likely to be relatively weak. However, morality may possess advantages over law,because moral sanctions are often applied with higher likelihood than legal ones (notably, internal moral sanctions apply with certainty), may reflect superior and more accurate information about conduct, and may involve lower costs of enforcement and of imposition.”
 

Shavell also points out that, internally or externally, "moral incentives may be diluted" within firms and organizations:

"Internal moral incentives may be less effective in the setting of the firm because decisions within firms are often made jointly by groups, or influenced by orders from above, or acted upon and influenced by subsequent decisions made below. This may serve to attenuate the sense of personal responsibility for one's acts and may reduce the sharpness of moral incentives." An organization's employees can follow orders and trust assurances from superiors that the law is being followed.

"external moral incentives have unclear force in relation to employees of firm. [Again,] responsibility within a firm is often diffused, so that there often will not be specific individuals within firms whom outsiders to firms will want to punish for wrongful behavior. Also, a firm may have an incentive to conceal the identity of responsible individuals within just so they can escape external social sanctions."


We know little about the chain of authority for Snowden, his employer Booz Allen Hamilton or the NSA. Arrangements with contractors only muddy procedures and dilute responsibility. So far, no one in power has offered a detailed, appropriate path that someone like Snowden could have taken when troubled by agency processes. He could have approached Senator Ron Wyden's office, but the most likely scenario is that Snowden would have been ignored. The public release of the surveillance programs have instigated review and revived debate over the value of contractors for public service and morality of the Patriot Act and NSA surveillance.  

Someday we might learn if Snowden even tried to approach a supervisor or government official. Of course, contracting firms are notoriously keen on ignoring individual concerns and preserving the flow of federal dollars that come their way. And while some government administrators are superb in accepting criticism, too many others are selfish, ambitious, fearful bureaucrats who take any question or criticism as a direct attack on their own judgment. Employees who dare suggest improvements or raise questions quickly learn to expect an ugly backlash.

So many whistleblowing cases might be avoided if the US Government Accountability Office conducted serious study of employee morale in federal offices, applying special scrutiny to offices and programs with high turnover rates. Emerging moral dilemmas would be identified more quickly with regular employee evaluations of office procedures and supervisors, preventing retaliation from supervisors. The US Office of Personnel Management should end immediately the irresponsible, unethical practice of supervisors conducting exit interviews for employees.

~~~

Later in NSA core-values interview, Inglis is asked, “What are the rules for retaining data on a US person?”  He focuses on “what are the rules that allow me to get that data in the first place?” He goes on to compare explicit authority with implied authority, the need for individual judgment, and the obligation to purge data that did not meet the rules around authorization: 

“Those rules are very carefully constructed; we have to have explicit authority, not implied authority, but explicit authority to go after anything in cyberspace, and therefore, if I was to target communications, I need to make sure that I can trace that authority back to an explicit law or court warrant. At that point, I have to make a decision as to whether this in fact was responsive to the explicit authority that I had; I may collect information that's incidental to that. It may have seemed to me up front that I would get information responsive to my authority, but I didn't. I have an obligation to purge that data, I have an obligation to not retain that data. So that at the end of the day, those things that I've gone after I simply didn't have the authority for, but it's the authority plus… it played out just the way I had imagined, I got exactly what I was authorized to get, and I retain only that data.”

It appears the agency retains non-content data for much longer periods than indicated in this interview, and that should end, at least according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which describes data being "dumped into something called the 'corporate store,'" for later access. In the least, Congress must ensure a firm end date on data storage. No one should be judged or investigated based on comments they made years or even months earlier if no illegal activity ensued. Citizens have a constitutional right to free speech (first amendment), and they also have a right to change their mind (fourth amendment).   

~~~

Among the more troubling aspects of the NSA debacle is a prevailing US attitude on human rights – with suggestions by even the president that expectations for privacy are reserved for US citizens. Inglis is more specific on this point than the president:  “The intelligence that we are authorized to collect, and that we report on, is intelligence that bears on foreign adversaries, foreign threats, more often than not, located therefore in foreign domains.”

Human rights are universal, and the US legislators and courts will debate and decide if privacy of ordinary phone calls and emails is such a right.

The United States stood as a beacon to the world, regarded as exceptional by global citizens, not because of its military capability or the ability to keep secrets, but because of economic opportunity, innovation, respect for openness, individualism and freedom. US citizens or foreign visitors suddenly feel the need to engage in self-censorship. Until political leaders can assure global citizens that the NSA has ended the intrusive data collection and storage efforts, internet users should click with caution.   

The Inglis interview was posted on the NSA website in 2009 and last modified in January 2013, before Edward Snowden exposed NSA programs. Photo of empty computer lab, courtesy of Shirley Ku and Wikimedia Commons.

Meaning of success?

It's sensible and rewarding to study and reflect on how to live one's life. Mark Edmundson, author of Why Teach, suggests that the humanities can offer insights in his beautiful Washington Post essay:

"But the humanities are not about success. They’re about questioning success - and every important social value. Socrates taught us this, and we shouldn’t forget it. Sure, someone who studies literature or philosophy is learning to think clearly and write well. But those skills are means to an end. That end, as Plato said, is learning how to live one’s life. “This discussion is not about any chance question,” Plato’s Socrates says in The Republic, “but about the way one should live.”

"That’s what’s at the heart of the humanities - informed, thoughtful dialogue about the way we ought to conduct life."

People so often work, live and act by rote. They follow orders, routines and social convention - and can handily recite dogma. Yet their actions take demonstrate the opposite stance - and without reflection, few in society may take notice. It's the renegades among us who step off these paths and suggest more deliberate choices are available.

Edmundson questions a movement emerging within the humanities that such studies are ideal for the writing skills, analysis, the ability to argue and careers in law, business or medicine.  While that may be true, the humanities, schools and parents must encourage individuals to continue using these skills to test rather than reinforce tradition and convention. Relentless testing is the best hope for enduring traditions and values.

And in Fear of Beauty, that's what Sofi can't help do - question her community and its values - after the death of her oldest son. 

Photo of Socrates sculpture in the Louvre, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and CherryX.

 

Abandoned

Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer won the Medal of Honor for his service in Afghanistan. All along Meyer has insisted the honor associated with that medal - when US troops were ambushed by Taliban fighters in September 2009 - should be shared by many. "Four years ago, an Afghan translator known as 'Hafez' charged into enemy fire to help Marine Corporal Dakota Meyer rescue wounded American soldiers during one of the most famous battles in the Afghanistan war," reports Alana Goodman for The Washington Free Beacon.

Goodman reports the translator applied for US visas for him and his family three years ago and is still waiting.

The US State Department refuses to discuss the case, The Beacon notes, as “Section 222 (f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) prohibits us from disclosing details from individual visa cases.” State Department website notes in bold: "You should NOT make any travel arrangements, sell property, or give up employment until and unless you are issued a U.S. visa."

The commander of US forces in Afghanistan has approved the visa application, but the list of requirements from the US State Department is long.

"Meyer said he will not stop working to help his friend, who he said never stopped working to help U.S. troops," Goodman concludes.

The role of Afghan translators, support staff and many citizens goes forgotten by many in the US media and government offices of Washington, DC, and no one understands this better than members of the US Armed Services, like the fictional Army Ranger Major Joey Pearson in Fear of Beauty.

Photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, ISAF and Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Duran, US Army: British Sgt. Rab McEwan is assisted by a translator and Afghan National Army soldier during a patrol north of the Kajaki Dam in 2008.

Age discrimination

Afghanistan's success hinges on success for its citizens - all citizens. That is the rationale behind directing foreign aid toward women, as suggested by the July 18 announcement from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on a new $200 million program.

Yet there's a catch to the Promoting Gender Equality in National Priority Programs: "The five-year plan, called Promote, is expected to increase economic, social, and political participation of women between the ages of 18 and 30 through education, job training, microfinance and credit for female entrepreneurs, and training for policymaking."

The purpose of an age limit for the USAID program is unclear and could contribute to uneven development in a country where resentment already runs high.

Meanwhile, US laws protect USAID employees and contract employees from age or gender discrimination, as outlined in Promote's request for proposals. Likewise, assessment criteria for funding programs, such as those of the United Nations, often encourage inclusiveness. Despite laws and protections, discrimination, particularly age discrimination, can go unchecked and unreported even in the United States because of lack of awareness about laws or embarrassment.

Age discrimination is linked with gender discrimination, suggests the UN Women Coordination Division in its report Between Gender and Aging:

"Inequalities in income, education, and employment across the life cycle expose many women to poverty in old age," the executive summary notes. "As the status of women in many societies is linked to having a husband, widows are particularly vulnerable to poverty." The UN report goes on to report that "older women have not benefited equally from the progress that has made in tackling violence and abuse, often failing to be accounted for in both gender and ageing research and policies" – and suggests that "concerns over the situation of older women have largely been ignored."

To counter the challenges for older women, the UN Women Coordination Division recommends a lifelong approach to education, support for empowerment and priority for "the needs of rural older women in public policy."

The design of USAID's Promote program focused on young, urban women counters these recommendations from the UN Women Coordination Division and could add to Afghan divisions. Granted, 68 percent of the Afghan population is under the age of 25, yet 77 percent live in rural areas. The 365-page request for proposals from USAID vaguely connects youth with education by explaining that the Promote program will "invest in opportunities that enable educated women (i.e, women between 18 and 30 years of age who have at least a secondary education) to enter and advance into decision-making positions in Afghanistan's public, private and civil society sectors."

The request stresses an expectation that selected participants will "work towards ensuring the welfare, rights and opportunities for all Afghan women." To its credit, the USAID request for proposals suggests a program risk is failure to garner support of male family and community members and it seeks to ensure that "skills and knowledge imparted to beneficiary organizations and their staff are sustained and replicated/ disseminated to others."

That is not enough. USAID coordinators should know that many applicants already self-select in not pursuing jobs and other opportunities. Coordinators could have emphasized diversity, eliminating age, gender and urban requirements – and ensured welfare, rights and opportunities for all Afghans. The criteria could have been left at attainment of a secondary education – thus targeting men and women of all ages who support fair policies and women’s rights.

Donors should be commended for targeting vulnerable groups that have been historically neglected, yet program exclusions should be crafted with great care based on sound research and good reasons. World Bank research in Afghanistan suggests that development programs mandating female participation can increase mobility and income for women, but may “not change female roles in family decision-making or attitudes toward the general role of women in society.” And a study cited in the USAID request for proposals notes that “the Afghan culture places a considerable emphasis on respecting elders because of their knowledge, wisdom, and experience, which explains why older transformational leaders are usually more successful in influencing the Afghan population.”

Expanding the pool of applications can add to an organization’s workload and costs, yet exclusion without good reason can neglect individuals of great talent, including the Afghan men who support women's rights and are also essential for the national stability. To ensure social cohesion, USAID should revise the conditions and open the program to more applicants.

Photo of entrepreneur at women's bazaar, arranged to allow women to sell handicrafts to NATO troops, courtesy of Maj. Meritt Phillips, US Army, and Wikimedia Commons. The woman's age is unknown, but if she's under 30 she's out of luck for the new USAID program.

Authenticity

Another controversy has emerged over authenticity and which writers have the proper background to write and speak out on certain topics.

Critics, including Daniel Politi of Slate, are blasting an interviewer who questioned scholar Reza Aslan about why, as a Muslim, he set out to write a book about Jesus. Critics on the opposite side have suggested that Aslan and some interviewers were devious in hiding his faith. Aslan responded firmly and masterfully on that point and others:  He mentions his Muslim faith on page 2 of the book, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, and he is an academic and historian. Being a practicing Muslim and historian are not exclusive.

Likewise a woman who was raised by Catholics can write about a Muslim woman in rural Afghanistan. 

Demanding that authors segregate their writing toward their own countries, their own beliefs, their own politics or experiences - denying human capability for research, analysis, and imagination in making connections - is an insidious form of censorship and control.

The most pointed analysis can come from commenters, and one, fingersfly, responded to the Erik Wemple blog in The Washington Post: 

Aslan is seen as a threat because he writes about "Jesus the man" and points out the contradictions between him and the "Jesus of myth" created by the Roman Church. Jesus the man and his socialist message would not serve the masters' agenda so they co-opted and changed him from socialist revolutionary to peaceful obey-er of all things secular. Religions are invisible chains to enslave believers into living lives in fear .... It's a hideously twisted way to control people, but sadly it works.  

Writing is judgment, from the very moment one picks up a pen and selects a topic. And yes, authors can and should write about other countries and time periods.
  
Aslan can't complain though. Controversy helps a book, and this morning his book ranks first on Amazon.    

Need to share

In war, what you don't know can hurt you. 

Yet "The US military has blocked access to the Guardian’s website for troops in the Middle East and south Asia, after disclosures about widespread US surveillance," reports the Guardian. The message that comes up instead of the newspaper suggests that the newspaper's recent reports on US National Security Agency surveillance activities include classified information, some of which may be inaccurate, and the block could assist troops from inadvertently releasing classified information.

But the troops on the front lines should probably not be censored. Richard A. Best, Jr.,  analyzed "Intelligence Information: Need-to-Know vs. Need-to-Share" for the Congressional Research Service in June 2011:

"It is possible to limit dissemination of especially sensitive information, whether it is sensitive because of the nature of its contents or because it was acquired from an especially sensitive It is also possible to prevent the downloading and reproduction of large masses of information. It is possible to trace the identities of those who had access to particular pieces of information. Ultimately, however, security depends on the loyalty of cleared officials at all levels."

Readers around the globe are poring over the Guardian reports about the US surveillance, especially since the president suggested that privacy protections may not apply to non-citizens. The latest NSA statement reframes that sentiment more elegantly: "Not all countries have equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy." Of course, the blocks on the Guardian are not thorough, with other news outlets repeating the reports. NSA secrets have been exposed, and US troops have as much right as anyone else to debate the merits of these programs.

Best went on to conclude: "For the U.S. Intelligence Community, the policy decision of whether the emphasis should be on“need-to-know” or the “need-to-share” can be viewed as a false choice. Information must always be shared with those with a genuine need to know even if this potential universe is a large one....Intelligence efforts are never risk-free.... Government officials must also accept the enduring reality of a media culture that is prepared to publish official secrets and considers such disclosure a patriotic contribution to democratic discourse. That individual civil servants or service members can be very harshly punished for their role in releasing information while editors and reporters are honored and celebrated seems to some as paradoxical."

Censorship puts a spotlight on the withheld information. "Even though people may want to withhold information, they will give us more information than what they realize," explains Mark McClish, retired deputy US marshal.

Philosophers have long debated if withholding information is lying, and Thomas L. Carson has suggested "withholding information can constitute deception if there is a clear expectation, promise, and/or professional obligation that such information will be provided."So, no, there is no clear expectation that the US would provide its troops with access to surveillance secrets or articles in the Guardian. Most members of the US service would not have heard of the Guardian, based in Great Britain, if not for news about the block.

Troops overseas must prepare for encounters with would-be terrorists and that entails understanding what an enemy combatant might know and how he or she might use the new reports to their advantage, possibly a sudden avoidance of Skype. Of course, federal employees, and probably members of the US armed service, too, in the course of their duties can request special authorization to visit blocked sites.

The Army Ranger Handbook ends with Standing Orders for Roger's Rangers, guidelines created in 1757 by Robert Rogers during the French and Indian War. Number four notes: "tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is a[n] Army depending on us for correct information."

So much trust, loyalty, democracy and more rely on correct information.

Note: A main character in Fear of Beauty relies for guidance on a 1992 copy of the Ranger Handbook as much as an Afghan counterpart relies on the Koran.

Illustration of Robert Rogers, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Iris Farm

Every farm has a certain time of year when it offers pure delight. And early June is that time for the Iris Farm in Michigan.The farm small, at six acres, was once a cherry farm, but the soil, weather and birds pose constant challenges for fruit farmers in in northern Michigan. "Seventeen years ago, this fifth generation Leelanau farmer decided to no longer fight against the elements, and instead choose to embrace the offerings of his land," reports the Leelanau.com Blog about the farming family of William Black. "The family noticed that the iris plants blooming around the farm thrived."

Smart farmers don't fight nature, and instead they study and appreciate its many whims. Today, the farm has more than 700 hybrids of Iris and several hundred of day lilies. The farm doesn't seem to have a website. Teh family doesn't do much advertising, but the two brothers are obviously delighted by the attention their new crop attracts. Passersby on Route M-72 recognize something special and slam on the brakes.

The genus Iris has about 250 species - and the name comes from the Greek word for rainbow. 

So of course, I strolled along the rows of colorful irises, searching for Iris afghanica or some variation, but of course, those are not well suited for Michigan weather. "Iris afghanica is a striking species," report Malin Rivers and Richard Wilford, science editors of  Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. "The slender, bluish-green leaves can be up to 30 cm long, though are often shorter, and the outer ones are sickle-shaped.... At higher altitudes the plants are more strongly coloured and only about 10 cm tall. At lower altitudes the flowers are larger and more softly coloured, and the plants can reach 25 or 30 cm tall."

The plant was noticed by an iris collector in 1964 and named in 1972.And it grows among boulders and on steep rocky slopes at altitudes from 1,500 to 3,300 meters - and likely might be found in the mountains overlooking the imaginary village of Laashekoh in the novel Fear of Beauty. 

Iris afghanica has been cultivated, Kew reports, but is rare. It thrives in hot dry summers and freezing winters - with little rain and the Kew species is in Kew House. Kew Gardens in London has 300 acres of wonder and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site - with shopping is available online.   


So, Iris Farm has no Iris afghanica, but some other purple varieties will soon join my garden and offer memories well into the future, and I look forward to returning to Traverse City later this summer and retrieving my rhizomes.

Photos of the Iris Farm, courtesy of Douglas Olsen. Thumbnail photo of Iris afghanica, courtesy of Kew Gardens and Richard Wilford.

Empty promises

Negotiating with the Taliban is likely a futile endeavor - unless they are prepared to ensure equal rights for Afghanistan's women. They must be required to "frankly state their position on the status of women, particularly with regard to health, education, access to justice and above all political representation," writes Orzala Ashraf Nemat, an activist from Afghanistan, for The Guardian. 

Firm conditions must be set before any negotiations begin. And the negotiators in this case should be required to post a bond of some sort, held in escrow, to prevent walking walking back on promises.  

Some members of the Taliban may be prepared to renounce extremism and be prepared to compromise and live with decisions that are not exactly to their liking.  And they should prove this by walking away from the organization.The Taliban are few in number. And the opinion of a minority group that does not respect majority rights should not be over-weighted in global or regional circles.

But negotiators can't even be sure that the Taliban gathering in Qatar are representative of the region's Taliban.  The BBC reports that the group of 20 men includes no Taliban of Pakistan. "For years, the Afghan government and its Western backers have been trying to contact the Taliban, but they did not have a known address," reports the BBC News. "As a confidence-building measure, providing protection to those Taliban leaders participating in peace talks and finding them a permanent address became a priority for the US and the Afghan High Peace Council." The Taliban chose Qatar and the United States and Afghanistan went along. The Afghan government is rightly worried about the Taliban using the new base for promotion, recruitment or fundraising.

A few members of the Taliban are in a new locale, enjoying luxuries not available to them in Afghanistan. There are no guarantees they speak for other so-called Taliban in Afghanistan or have control over putting a top to extremism - convincing others to abide by political process.

The Qatar office could be nothing more than a scam.  


NATO troops are withdrawing, and Afghans must choose the type of society they want. Most in the country probably do not want to go backward. 

Photo of Afghan man beating a woman for removing her burqa in 2001, courtesy of RAWA and Wikimedia Commons.

Bias?

As the author of a mystery novel set in Afghanistan, I have often wondered if my internet wanderings have triggered alarms among analysts at the National Security Agency. And as reports emerged abut PRISM, I filed a request with the NSA’s convenient online form – inquiring about any files with my name or the title of my fourth book. 

I would not be surprised if the months of research for the novel, Fear of Beauty, set in Afghanistan, didn’t hit some nerves. The story is told from conflicting points of view of a rural and illiterate Afghan woman and an Army Ranger, with a plot focusing on extremism, varying interpretations of the Koran, weapons and war, conflict among members of a provincial reconstructions team, surveillance and more. So I headed to the National Security Agency’s web page on the Freedom of Information Act and found: “If you are seeking personal records on yourself (i.e., security, medical, personnel, applicant, etc.) or the reason why you were denied a position with this Agency, you will need to submit a PRIVACY ACT (PA) request instead of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.”

After filing a request, I stumbled on the advice from the National Security Archive for filing a FOIA request – and that advice could be a model for the National Security Agency as they go about the business of collecting and storing vast amounts of our personal phone and internet data.

The archive warns the public seeking FOIA requests that obtaining records can take a long time and be costly.   Many documents are already public available – and alternative sources should be checked first. “Overly broad requests are wasteful in time (yours, and the government’s),” the site notes. Appeals can be filed, and the public is advised to check in occasionally, but not harass the FOIA officers.  

Long delays can be expected and the site notes that “agencies that handle national security information have delays ranging from a few months to several years…. Delays are exacerbated by the fact that, for most agencies, FOIA is not an agency priority -- budget or otherwise.”

Finally, the archive advises:  "Don’t send frivolous letters or file pointless appeals; they will delay the processing of yours –and others’ – requests."  My request was not frivolous, and the NSA and our political leaders need to know that a huge range of Americans, of all ages and backgrounds, are concerned.

A response arrived in less than two weeks, notifying me the request was denied.  I won't appeal, but Congress must review these programs, and eventually much of the methods and data collections will be declassified to truly determine what works and what doesn’t. Transparency could contribute to ongoing public support of the widespread surveillance while eliminating the many questions and concerns. 

To conduct blanket sweeps on internet and phone conversations or not?  Blanket sweeps are time consuming and may not be helpful and the analysts have many alternative avenues to investigate. Opponents of gun control in the United States insist that blanket applications of background checks are ineffective – and that’s for actual weapons.  And perhaps that justifies outlawing the most lethal weapons, military-style assault rifles, just as government prohibits bombs, tanks and other military armaments. 

Of course, blanket searches of any type may eliminate some bias of targeted searches and profiling, but not the labeling and stereotyping that may go on among thousands of analysts with minimal education and training who have access to our data.

And that’s the most troubling aspect of these programs. Hundreds of thousands of contractors with questionable backgrounds seem to have access to data, with so much potential for misuse and a lack of accountability among the managers who devised this unwieldy system.

Congress needs to get straight answers on the operations of the National Security Agency – determining what kind of data should be collected, the appropriate number of analysts who need access, and the proper level of training. The House of Representatives hearing on NSA surveillance was a start.

NSA headquarters at night courtesy of the NSA and Wikimedia Commons. 

Facial recognition

Survivalists suggest that "A human face is a dead giveaway to the trained eye against a heavily forested background."

Actually, the face of any creature attracts attention, particularly a big creature like a bear. Leaving a state park on one of Michigan's rural peninsulas, I noticed a face peering at me over a road sign, and my brain immediately registered curiosity and bear. Ducking, the bear moved out of sight and I thought I must have seen a stump.

Then the bear crossed the road.

Perhaps it was not the face, but the eyes - and the reason I initially registered an emotion over the creature  itself. Another survivalist page advises carrying sunglasses: "Being able to look into someone's eyes gives you a lot of insight into what they are feeling and thinking."

Human eyes do still out more than others because of the ample white color surrounding the iris and pupil - which allows others to determine what our eyes are staring at even if our head is not pointed n that direction. " Knowing what another person is looking at provides valuable information about what she is thinking and feeling, and what she might do next," wrote Michael Tomasello, co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, for the New York Times. "If I am, in effect, advertising the direction of my eyes, I must be in a social environment full of others who are not often inclined to take advantage of this to my detriment — by, say, beating me to the food or escaping aggression before me. Indeed, I must be in a cooperative social environment in which others following the direction of my eyes somehow benefits me."

The cooperative eye hypothesis might explain why in some societies women don veils, covering the entire face, even the eyes, and why veils in other societies expose the eyes.   

Photo by D. Olsen

NSA - a hiring scandal

Employers routinely dismiss applicants who are older than 50 years or even 40 years. Political and industry leaders alike repeatedly suggest that the young are automatically better at handling technology than the old. It's not true. It doesn't have to be true.

I might prefer putting my research questions - and yes, my personal and national security - into the hands of a skilled librarian of any age than into the hands of a so-called systems administrator, in his or her twenties and lacking in formal training. I wrote about reorganization of the FBI post-9/11, and the same argument applies to the National Security Agency post-Snowden leaks.

"Reorganization of the FBI requires fundamental change and not just a reshuffle of administrators and agents," noted the opinion essay for The New Haven Register in July 2002.  "In truth, the director must consider hiring a new sort of intelligence agent. Avid readers with meticulous indexing and organizing skills offer potential for uncovering terrorist plots on domestic soil - and no one fits that career profile better than librarians."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the position: "May perform in-depth, strategic research, and synthesize, analyze, edit, and filter information. May set up or work with databases and information systems to catalogue and access information." Yet the numbers hired by the federal government and industry, as reported by BLS, are dismal.

Modern library science requires mastery over a wide range of technology, and it's one of the many ironies of innovation that this same technology is reducing the number of librarians in the community setting and beyond. "Library Science has the fourth highest unemployment rate at 15% and the fifth worst median salary at $36,000," wrote the Annoyed Librarian in 2011 for Library Journal.

Brett Bonfield wrote about the quandary over whether the US is educating too many or too few librarians for In the Library with the Lead Pipe (quite the title - reminds me of Team Crowbar, whose creator insists there is no crowbar except by way of metaphor): "Library science is part humanities, part social science, and, at times in the past, and perhaps in the near future as well, part information science, and even computer science. Figuring out how these tensions might be balanced has everything to do not only with the producing an appropriate supply of new librarians, but also ensuring these new librarians have the requisite skills to meet the demands of the marketplace."

As I wrote back in 2002, government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as the National Security Agency and Homeland Security could immediately improve intelligence gathering by hiring librarians with technology backgrounds as analysts. Journalists who are adept with technology might come in second place.

Time and time again, industry and political leaders are fooled by the fast talkers and new, shiny toys. Too many tech administrators create a false aura of complex secrecy to bill for unnecessary hours while librarians are eager to train and educate others regardless of their skill level. Cross-training is essential for efficiency.

Bias against these skilled librarians lingers, compounded by bias against women and older workers.

Jennifer Bushong, president of the Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Roundtable, wrote about my Register essay in Fall 2002 for the Federal Librarian and offered a theory:   "For some reason modern managers and organizational developers don't like the title "Librarian". They know what we can do and they know that today's world needs our skills and services, but they can't bring themselves to call us what we are. So they give us titles such as knowledge managers and information specialists, avoiding the world librarian."

Again, I'd prefer a librarian monitoring intelligence-gathering, all the while expected to respect civil rights and privacy, over Edward Snowden and other technicians who share his background. The most alarming aspect of these leaks is NSA hiring policies and strange reliance on contractors and uneducated workers, and fortunately, a few in Congress may pursue these questions.

Another hiring scandal that threatened our economic security: Financial analysts and ratings agency officers who issued reports knowing their analysis is bogus.  Mike Taibbi writes about "The Last Mystery of the Financial Crisis" for Rolling Stone, and quotes one Standard & Poor's analyst: "[T]his has to be the stupidest place I have worked at. As you know, I had difficulties explaining 'HOW' we got to those numbers since there is no science behind it."

People employed in positions lacking in productive tasks, with hours and procedures designed to mislead clients and the public, should speak up or quit.    

Photo courtesy of Raysonho and Wikimedia Commons.

Complicity?

Can it be that giving funding to the wrong folks is far more destructive than no funding at all?

Anna Badkhen argues that the iniquities in Afghanistan are grotesque, particularly for women. She urges the international community "look squarely at our own complicity in the shameful circumstances of Afghanistan's women, billions of international aid dollars and 12 years after U.S. warplanes first bombed their ill-starred land." She is the author of The World Is a Carpet, a book that describes a year spent in a remote Afghan village and the dreams of women and children who work at weaving carpets.

Many schools have opened over the past decade, but progress in the country of 31 million is uneven with threats coming from all directions. Many girls eventually stop attending school. 

Aid flows to those in power rather than vulnerable women. Badkhen calls for an end to violence, but also questions the withdrawal of NATO troops. Those troops remain targets for extremists. More than 195,000 Afghans have been trained, along with 5,000 special forces and thousands of police and security officers. More money will not help. The time has come for Afghans to resist bullying and stand up for the society they want.

Photo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and USAID, "Widows in the Adraskan District of western Afghanistan voted to form an association to produce and market traditional wool carpets in a USAID funded project."

Risk

Afghanistan has taken the top spot in the world in risk for money laundering, reports the Basel Institute on Governance and Samuel Rubenfeld in his blog for The Wall Street Journal.

The ability to transfer money - making it appear to come from legitimate sources - allows crime to flourish.  "The launderer might choose to invest the funds into real estate, luxury assets, or business ventures," notes the inter-governmental Financial Action Task Force. Without money-laundering outlets, "international organized crime would not be able to function," explains Investopedia.


The non-profit Basel Institute on Governance is based in Switzerland and focuses on prevention of corruption in public and corporate governance, prevention of money laundering and the recovery of stolen assets.


The Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index is not a crime report: "As the Basel AML Index is designed to assess the risk of money laundering, the fact that any of these countries received a high ranking does not necessarily mean that they experience the most money laundering or terrorism financing.... It is indeed important to note that money laundering and terrorist financing cannot be quantitatively measured since most of it occurs, due to its illegal nature, in absolute secrecy."

The index assessed 149 countries, assigning scores from 1 to 10. Afghanistan is rated 8.55, Pakistan at 6.53, the United States at 5.24 and Norway poses least risk at 3.17.  The index excludes countries lacking in data so a few like North Korea are not on the list. Afghanistan is new to the list.

Basel AML indicators cover adherence to financial and accounting standards, transparency, rule of law, judicial strength and more. A possible sign of erosion in the availability of public data is a reduction of index indicators, from 15 to 14: "Euromoney’s sub-indicator on political risk has been removed as it is not publicly available anymore." That indicator represented less than 2 percent of the overall index. Compiling and presenting data require money and time, and such public reports could be targets as indebted nations search for cost reductions.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has estimated that proceeds from money laundering at $1.6 trillion, or 3.6 percent of global GDP. The estimates may run low.

"Launderers are continuously looking for new routes for laundering their funds," the task force warns. "Economies with growing or developing financial centres, but inadequate controls are particularly vulnerable as established financial centre countries implement comprehensive anti-money laundering regimes."

Curious?

I just filed my Privacy Act request with the National Security Agency. The NSA makes filing such requests very convenient - you can do so online, fax or mail.

Of course, filling out the form probably means that I'm connecting new dots for NSA analysts regarding my many old emails, addresses and phone numbers.

After researching a novel like Fear of Beauty - set in Afghanistan, told from conflicting points of view of a rural and illiterate Afghan woman and an Army Ranger, with a plot focusing on religious extremism, weapons and war, conflict among members of a provincial reconstructions team, surveillance and more - I'd be surprised to have not hit some nerve. The same goes with writing and researching material for YaleGlobal Online,  a job that entails reading reports of all types from around the globe, including the offerings of WikiLeaks, and posting a full range of opinions on numerous topics, with equal measure of praise and criticism for US and other country's methods in their global dealings.

And then there is today's Facebook posting that suggests the leadership of NSA should be held responsible for devising a system that extends access to so much personal data to hundreds of thousands of contract employees, at excessive wages, including a young man who dropped out of high school. The NSA's leaders have lost control of this system as was predicted back in 2006 when details first emerged. All responsible should be fired.

With luck, I'd also expect the analysts to quickly spot my long background in mystery writing and shelve specific concerns about me as a security risk.

One can only hope.

June 13: The Des Moines Register reiterates my reaction of two days ago that more than one person is responsible for this leak.  "It seems the leak is the result of the government’s slipshod management of classified national secrets.... the true scandal is inside the NSA and the CIA: Based on Snowden’s telling, the United States government entrusted a high school dropout who began his career at the National Security Agency as a security guard with some of the most sensitive national security secrets with potentially explosive international repercussions."