Suddenly, NYPD Doesn't Love Surveillance Anymore

By David Sirota, Salon

02 April 13

Law enforcement agencies monitor our most basic acts. But try assigning them a watchdog and they resist with fury

he Big Brother theory of surveillance goes something like this: pervasive snooping and monitoring shouldn't frighten innocent people, it should only make lawbreakers nervous because they are the only ones with something to hide. Those who subscribe to this theory additionally argue that the widespread awareness of such surveillance creates a permanent preemptive deterrent to such lawbreaking ever happening in the first place.

I don't personally agree that this logic is a convincing justification for the American Police State, and when I hear such arguments, I inevitably find myself confused by the contradiction of police-state proponents proposing to curtail freedom in order to protect it. But whether or not you subscribe to the police-state tautology, you have to admit there is more than a bit of hypocrisy at work when those who forward the Big Brother logic simultaneously insist such logic shouldn't apply to them or the governmental agencies they oversee.

This contradiction is now taking center stage in New York City, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly wage a scorched-earth campaign to prevent the public from being able to monitor its own police force. And in that crusade comes the frightening assumption about how the terms "safety" and "security" are now defined.

To appreciate the rank hypocrisy of Bloomberg and Kelly opposing the creation of an independent police monitor, remember that they are two of the faces of the modern American Police State - and two of the biggest proponents of 24/7 monitoring of citizens.

That is not an overstatement. Bloomberg and Kelly are the proud autocrats who brag of "hav(ing) my own army in the NYPD" and who used that army to spy on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors. They are the unapologetic masterminds of a surveillance program aimed at Muslim students. They are the unrepentant overseers of the city's so-called stop-and-frisk policy, which seems to presume guilt, clearly violates civil liberties and disproportionately targets minorities. They are the champions of a Minority Report-esque system to integrate all the city's cameras for ubiquitous real-time surveillance. They are the happy proponents of intensifying a drug war, again disproportionately against people of color. And they are now floating the idea of using drones to surveil the Big Apple.

As a justification for all of this, Bloomberg and Kelly typically cite New York's declining crime rates as ends-justifies-the-means proof that their methods work. In this, they are extrapolating William Bratton's old "broken windows" theory of crime, insinuating that because New Yorkers know they are under such intense and brutal police scrutiny, they are more prone to avoid breaking the law.

Yet, in now opposing the creation of an independent monitor to surveil, analyze and assess lawbreaking by police and municipal agencies after a wave of complaints about alleged crimes, Bloomberg and Kelly are crying foul. Somehow, they argue that their own Big Brother theory about surveillance supposedly stopping current crime and deterring future crime should not apply to municipal officials themselves.

This is where an Orwellian definition of "safety" comes in, for that's at the heart of the Bloomberg/Kelly argument about oversight. Bloomberg insists that following other cities that have successfully created independent monitors "would be disastrous for public safety" in New York City. Likewise, the New York Daily News reports that "Kelly blasted the plan as a threat to public safety," alleging that "another layer of so-called supervision or monitoring can ultimately make this city less safe."

If this pabulum sounds familiar, that's because you've been hearing this tired cliché ad nauseam since the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Whether pushed by proponents of the Patriot Act, supporters of warrantless wiretapping, or backers of other laws that reduce governmental accountability, the idea is that any oversight of the state's security apparatus undermines that apparatus' ability to keep us safe because such oversight supposedly causes dangerous second-guessing. In "24 terms, the theory is that oversight will make Jack Bauer overthink or hesitate during a crisis that requires split-second decisions - and hence, security will be compromised.

This, indeed, was precisely the argument of the spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police when in 2011 he articulated the Big Brother case against allowing citizens to even record police actions on their own property. Police officers, he said, "need to move quickly, in split seconds, without giving a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences for them might be." He added that "anything that's going to have a chilling effect on an officer moving - an apprehension that he's being videotaped and may be made to look bad - could cost him or some citizen their life."

As I wrote during that controversy, nobody wants to stop police officers from doing their much-needed job. In fact, civil liberties organizations have been pushing for oversight to make sure police are doing all of their job - including protecting individuals' civil liberties. With police brutality a persistent and intensifying problem, we should want more officers feeling "apprehension" about breaking civil liberties laws, we should hope more of them "give a lot of thought to what the adverse consequences" will be if they trample someone's rights and we should crave an immediate "chilling effect" on such violations.

But, then, that suggests terms like "safety" and "security" are apolitical, which they most certainly are not.

As Bloomberg and Kelly imply, those terms don't seem to apply to those being targeted by police actions, however unwarranted or violent those actions are. They don't seem to apply to the thousands of people of color stopped, frisked, harassed and jailed, nor do they seem to apply to peaceful protesters. Evidently, the Big Brother theory posits that those populations are safety and security threats - and declares that those populations are not themselves entitled to safety and security from Big Brother itself.

If that sounds right out of Orwell's Eurasia, that's because it is. But as Bloomberg and Kelly most recently prove, it is right out of 21st century America, too.

FOCUS | How The Dems Pushed Ashley Judd Out of the Race

By Jonathan Miller, The Daily Beast

01 April 13

Judd adviser Jonathan Miller on the small coterie of state Democrats who duped the national press and helped nudge her out of the Senate race.

e'd like to have you join us this afternoon for a discussion on the Ashley Judd campaign," the young, national-talk-show producer chirped into my phone. "We understand that she will be announcing her candidacy within the next 24 hours."

"I'd love to join you," I responded. A recovering politician never turns down 15 minutes.) "But, uh, I'm pretty sure, uh, she's not announcing."

I looked over to the left side of my desk, at the draft exploratory committee papers that Ashley had asked me to prepare, still missing several items that I had requested from her.

"Oh, no," the producer responded. "Our reporter has it on good authority from Ashley's people that an announcement is imminent."

I thought I was one of "Ashley's people."

Before I appeared on the show, I asked another of Ashley's volunteer advisers, whom I knew had spoken to her that morning.

"Not true. Just another fabrication."

Another fabrication.

The past several weeks had seemed like a dizzying blur of false testimony, as the national media seized any morsel of news or gossip to sate its ravenous appetite for Ashley Judd stories. As the actress contemplated whether to move back to Kentucky and challenge Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, I was alternating with Congressman John Yarmuth as witness for the defense against a steady stream of salacious recriminations.

The prosecution was assisted in nearly every article by the same handful of Democratic professionals railing against the prospects of a Judd candidacy, promoting instead the potential Senate candidacy of Kentucky's young Secretary of State, Alison Lundergan Grimes. While many may legitimately believe that Grimes is the better candidate, many of those who have been quoted impugning Judd, or have done so on background, also have personal motives: some stand to profit from a Grimes campaign, some may have been trying to redress perceived "disses" by the actress, and some may be aiming to keep Grimes out of the 2015 gubernatorial race, where she could undermine their preferred candidates.

But at least this cast of characters gave their identities, if not their agendas. The most egregious disinformation came from entirely anonymous sources.

Such was the charge that Judd told a group of supporters at a private dinner in Louisville, "I have been raped twice, so I think I can handle Mitch McConnell." The actress' apparent flippant comparison of a political campaign to sexual assault spread like Ebola across the Internet, leading some to classify Judd as the Democratic version of Todd Akin.

The problem is, it never happened.

I was at that dinner and never heard her say anything remotely like that. What's more, such a statement would have been completely inconsistent with the way I've heard Ashley discuss her horrifying experiences as the youthful victim of sexual assault-how they defined her in adulthood; how they propelled her to champion women's empowerment across the globe.

The second Big Lie involved the Big Dog. The national media began to press the narrative that former President Bill Clinton was trying to force Judd out of the race in favor of a Grimes candidacy because Grimes's father, Jerry Lundergan, had been a longtime Clinton supporter and had helped Clinton win Kentucky twice in the '90s.

There's no doubt that the whole Lundergan family had developed a deep bond with the Clintons ever since Jerry emerged as Hillary's loudest Kentucky supporter in her 2008 presidential bid. And just because, as a Clinton campaign staffer in 1992 and an administration official in 1996, I don't remember Lundergan's involvement, it doesn't mean he didn't help the former president win Kentucky on those occasions.

But I can personally attest to one prominent Kentucky supporter of the Clinton/Gore reelection campaign: Ashley Judd. Indeed, that's where we first met. And Judd's close relationship with both Clintons continued through Hillary's 2008 bid, when the actress campaigned with Bill in Texas. He later returned the favor by providing the cover squib for Judd's 2011 memoir, All That Is Bitter and Sweet. So it's not surprising that Ashley informed our Louisville dinner group that the former president had privately urged her to run against McConnell, offering his complete support for her prospective campaign.

ABC News ultimately cleared up the record, but by then the narrative was set-the most popular national figure for Kentucky Democrats was opposed to a Judd candidacy, providing further oxygen to the anti-Ashley conflagration.

Now, I don't pretend that Ashley Judd was a perfect candidate, or that there weren't a significant number of Democratic insiders who opposed her candidacy. But in her early calls, she was winning over many skeptics, including the incumbent governor and the House speaker, the latter being the most prominent politician from Appalachia, the region purportedly most hostile to the actress because of her public opposition toward a controversial coal-mining technique.

Nor do I believe that the negative press was the primary force behind Judd's decision not to run. The actress religiously avoided reading news coverage as she engaged in her studious, deliberate decision-making process.

But pity Alison Lundergan Grimes, the primary beneficiary of the anti-Ashley putsch. Like most Judd supporters, I hope Grimes runs, defeats McConnell, and enjoys a long and successful career in Washington. But there are two other equally plausible, if not more probable, scenarios. One, Grimes gets drubbed by McConnell, whose ruthless, take-no-prisoners campaigns have ended the political careers of four of his last five opponents. Or two, Grimes opts out of the race for another campaign, leaving McConnell with no serious opponent.

All the while, I imagine McConnell sitting back, watching the antics with his sly, tight grin, enjoying how a small group of Democrats duped the so-called liberal media into creating the false narrative of a Democratic civil war. Only a master politician could get so damn lucky.