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Trump Collapses From Exhaustion After Ninety Minutes of Faking Empathy |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>
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Wednesday, 31 January 2018 14:55 |
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Borowitz writes: "Donald J. Trump collapsed from exhaustion after approximately ninety minutes of pretending to be a human being with empathy, the White House doctor has confirmed."
Donald Trump. (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/Getty)
Trump Collapses From Exhaustion After Ninety Minutes of Faking Empathy
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
31 January 18
 The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report." 
 rump collapsed from exhaustion after approximately ninety minutes of pretending to be a human being with empathy, the White House doctor has confirmed.
“In all my years of practicing medicine, I have never met a patient as healthy and vigorous as President Trump,” Dr. Ronny Jackson said. “But the sustained effort of simulating compassion proved too much for someone who has never exercised that part of his brain before.”
Shortly after Trump spent a gruelling ninety minutes pretending to care about immigrants, the unemployed, and other people whom he normally dismisses as losers, aides noticed that he was turning from a bright orange to a slightly paler orange before crumpling to the ground in a giant heap.
“If you have never spent a moment thinking about a human being besides yourself, imagine trying to pretend you are doing that for a solid ninety minutes,” Jackson said. “It’s physically punishing.”
Immediately following his collapse, Trump was rushed to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where a brain scan showed that his brush with human feelings did no permanent damage.
“I just visited with him, and he was sitting up in his bed, trashing Jay-Z on Twitter,” Dr. Jackson said. “It was such a relief to see that.”
Vice-President Mike Pence, who reportedly reacted to Trump’s collapse by leaping to his feet and exclaiming, “Am I President now?,” was not available for comment.
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There Is No Good Reason for the Government to Scan People's Faces as They Leave the Country |
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Wednesday, 31 January 2018 14:36 |
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Rudolph writes: "Why are airport face scans necessary? Is DHS's technology accurate? When will DHS adopt public rules explaining what the program is, how it works, and how it will protect Americans' privacy?"
A women goes through airport security. (photo: Getty)
There Is No Good Reason for the Government to Scan People's Faces as They Leave the Country
By Harrison Rudolph, Slate
31 January 18
 ast week, the Department of Homeland Security briefed privacy advocates in San Francisco concerning its misguided plan to subject all international travelers to face scans at airports. Those at the briefing asked questions that should have been easy to answer: Why are airport face scans necessary? Is DHS’s technology accurate? When will DHS adopt public rules explaining what the program is, how it works, and how it will protect Americans’ privacy? But DHS had few responses—and that’s alarming.
Currently, DHS’s biometric exit program scans travelers at international departure gates at 11 U.S. airports and collects their biometric data (a fingerprint or face print). This includes both American citizens and foreign visitors, and DHS plans to expand the program to all of the country’s international airports within four years. In 2017, President Trump issued an executive order speeding up the implementation of biometrics at the border, and immigration reform legislation this year could include money to expand the current program.
Rather than bringing biometric exit to more airports, though, Congress should repeal the program altogether. It’s invasive, ineffective, and unnecessary. In short: It’s a billion-dollar boondoggle.
For one thing, biometric exit is a massive—and massively expensive—solution in search of a problem. In 2004, Congress told DHS to collect visitors’ biometric data at entry to detect criminals and terrorists before they set foot on American soil. But that rationale only works when visitors arrive. It’s less clear why DHS needs to do that as visitors leave. DHS officials say airport face scans are necessary to detect immigrants trying to cheat the visa overstay tracking system by using someone else’s ID when they leave. But DHS has failed to produce any evidence that that’s a serious problem. In fact, DHS’s own experts have questioned the program. According to the Government Accountability Office, “DHS reported in May 2012 that significant questions remained regarding … the additional value biometric air exit would provide compared with the current [nonbiometric] process, and … the overall value and cost of a biometric air exit capability.”
Furthermore, DHS hasn’t supplied any evidence that airport face scans will even accurately detect people attempting to leave the country using someone else’s credentials. If an impostor showed up at a departure gate bearing the passport of someone who looked a lot like him, the system might just give him a green light to get on the plane. When questioned about how often the system would let people through who aren’t supposed to be on a flight, a senior DHS official said in a September meeting that the department “wouldn’t know.” Asked again last week at the briefing for privacy advocates, officials declined to say whether DHS even tests its system’s ability to catch impostors, instead declaring that it’s “not fair to say what [DHS’s] vulnerabilities are.” If DHS does this testing, it should disclose the results so Congress, and the public, can assess whether the program is worthwhile. And if it doesn’t even know whether the system can catch imposters, then we’re talking about a bar hiring a billion-dollar bouncer without knowing whether he can spot a fake ID.
What’s more, it’s not clear whether its system will disproportionately reject people of a certain race or gender. A DHS official said in a September meeting with privacy advocates that the department doesn’t know because it only has “a small sample size so far.” Testing shows that face scans often struggle with race and gender bias. If a customs officer routinely stopped passengers for no reason other than because of the color of their skin he’d promptly be fired.
But when an agency uses a neutral-seeming algorithm to discriminate, it can be much harder to rein in.
DHS has said it will dispose of the data it collects within 14 days, restrict how that data is shared, and secure it from hackers. But this isn’t codified anywhere. In fact, DHS has failed to pass a single rule protecting Americans’ privacy and civil liberties when their faces are scanned. When pressed last week about the lack of rules, officials couldn’t provide any kind of timeline for when rules might come out. Without enforceable rules, Americans have no remedy if (or, let’s be honest, when) the government breaks its promises.
Given all the problems with biometric exit, some in Congress have started scrutinizing the program. Democratic Sen. Edward Markey and Republican Sen. Mike Lee have challenged DHS to explain the program’s legal authority, justification, and accuracy. The senators contend that Congress should not spend another dollar expanding DHS’s deeply flawed biometric exit system until they receive satisfactory answers to these basic questions. That’s common sense.
Trump wants Congress to push ahead anyway—and it might. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte’s immigration bill, supported by the Trump administration, would authorize the appropriation of another $1.25 billion over the next five years into biometric exit, in addition to the $1 billion Congress already appropriated. That would put the total for this program at more than what Congress is spending on the Cancer Moonshot, the National Cancer Institute’s initiative to accelerate cancer research. It’s hard to know exactly where Congress will land on immigration as it scrambles to negotiate before the next shutdown deadline Feb. 8. But it could include $1 billion or more for biometric exit.
Meanwhile, no one seems to have good answers to important questions about whether the program is justified, accurate, or clearly authorized. Not even DHS itself.
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FOCUS: Hawaiian Nuclear Alert Was Not Sent in Error |
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Wednesday, 31 January 2018 13:39 |
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Wamsley writes: "The top two civilian officials at Hawaii Emergency Management Agency announced their resignations Wednesday, Reuters reports, and the employee who issued the alert was fired. In addition, the agency's military director told the wire service, a midlevel manager is being suspended."
The FCC said Tuesday that the false alert of a ballistic missile sent in Hawaii on Jan. 13 occurred when the worker in charge of alerts confused a drill for a real missile emergency. A highway sign in Honolulu corrects the error. (photo: Cory Lum/AP)
Hawaiian Nuclear Alert Was Not Sent in Error
By Laurel Wamsley, NPR News
31 January 18
 false ballistic missile alert in Hawaii was sent on Jan. 13 because an emergency worker believed there really was a missile threat, according to a preliminary investigation by the Federal Communications Commission.
The report finds that the false alert was not the result of a worker choosing the wrong alert by accident from a drop-down menu, but rather because the worker misunderstood a drill as a true emergency. The drill incorrectly included the language "This is not a drill."
The top two civilian officials at Hawaii Emergency Management Agency announced their resignations Wednesday, Reuters reports, and the employee who issued the alert was fired. In addition, the agency's military director told the wire service, a midlevel manager is being suspended.
The Associated Press reports that the fired employee had "confused real-life events and drills in the past, the state said in a report. His poor performance has been documented for years, and other members of the team say they were not comfortable working with him in any role." The AP says the state's internal investigation found that the employee was told to cancel the alert, but he "just sat there and didn't respond." Another employee eventually made the correction, as the worker "seemed confused."
According to a presentation by the FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, this is what happened:
- At 8:05 a.m., the agency's midnight shift supervisor began a no-notice ballistic missile defense drill during a shift change by placing a call to the day shift warning officers, in which the shift supervisor pretended to be U.S. Pacific Command. The supervisor specifically decided to run a drill during a shift change to train officers for a challenging situation.
- The midnight shift supervisor played a recording over the phone that includes the correct drill language "EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE" — but also erroneously contained the text of an Emergency Alert System message for a live ballistic missile alert, including the language "THIS IS NOT A DRILL." The recording ended by saying "EXERCISE, EXERCISE, EXERCISE."
- The day shift warning officers received this recorded message on speakerphone. While other warning officers understood that this was a drill, the warning officer at the alert origination terminal said he believed that this was a real emergency. In a written statement, the officer said he had heard "this is not a drill" but not "exercise, exercise, exercise."
- At 8:07 a.m., the day shift warning officer responded, as trained for a real event, by transmitting a live incoming ballistic missile alert to the state of Hawaii.
- In doing so, the officer selected the template for a live alert from a drop-down menu and clicked "yes" in response to a prompt that reads: "Are you sure that you want to send this Alert?"
The day shift warning officer received the alert on a mobile device a minute later. That alert, sent to mobile phones and blared across television stations in the state, said: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL."
At 8:09 a.m., the agency alerted Hawaii Gov. David Ige that the false alert had been sent.
It took until 8:20 a.m. for the agency to post to its Twitter and Facebook accounts that there was no missile threat to Hawaii. The governor didn't retweet that notice of no threat until 8:24 a.m. — a delay Ige attributed to not knowing his Twitter password.
And it took even longer to issue a correction through the emergency alert system: That correction wasn't sent until 8:45, a full 38 minutes after it had sent the false alert.
In remarks at the FCC's open meeting on Tuesday about the false alert, FCC attorney adviser James Wiley said the worker who transmitted the alert has refused to speak with the commission. But Wiley said that the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency gave the commission information from a written statement by the worker made shortly after the incident, which has helped the FCC in its investigation of what went wrong.
"Because we've not been able to interview the day shift warning officer who transmitted the false alert," said Wiley, "we're not in a position to fully evaluate the credibility of their assertion that they believed there was an actual missile threat and intentionally sent the live alert (as opposed to believing that it was a drill and accidentally sending out the live alert). But it is worth noting that they accurately recalled after the event that the announcement did say 'This is not a drill.' "
The FCC public safety bureau attributed the false alert to a combination of human error and inadequate safeguards: There was no procedure in place to prevent a single person from mistakenly sending a missile alert to the state of Hawaii nor was there a procedure for recalling a false alert.
Since the debacle, the state emergency agency has implemented new safeguards. Two credentialed warning officers must validate every alert and test. Supervisors must receive advance notice of all drills. It has created a template for correcting false alerts.
And the agency has stopped running ballistic missile defense drills entirely, until its own investigation is complete.
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FOCUS: Devin Nunes Won't Say If He Worked With White House on Anti-FBI Memo |
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Wednesday, 31 January 2018 11:56 |
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Excerpt: "The House intel committee GOP leader refused to answer behind closed doors if he coordinated with the president's team on his report blasting Rosenstein, Comey, and McCabe."
House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. (photo: Getty Images )
Devin Nunes Won't Say If He Worked With White House on Anti-FBI Memo
By Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman, The Daily Beast
31 January 18
The House intel committee GOP leader refused to answer behind closed doors if he coordinated with the president’s team on his report blasting Rosenstein, Comey, and McCabe.
he Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee refused to answer when a colleague asked him if he had coordinated his incendiary surveillance memo with the White House, The Daily Beast has learned.
During Monday’s contentious closed-door committee meeting, Rep. Mike Quigley, a Democrat, asked Nunes point-blank if his staffers had been talking with the White House as they compiled a four-page memo alleging FBI and Justice Department abuses over surveillance of President Trump’s allies in the Russia probe.
According to sources familiar with the exchange, Nunes made a few comments that didn’t answer the question before finally responding, “I’m not answering.”
Spokespeople for Nunes and for the White House did not immediately respond.
Now that the committee Republicans voted to release the memo, it has been reportedly delivered to the White House. Under congressional rules, Trump has four more days to decide if he will assent to the memo’s public release.
Quigley’s question harkened back to Nunes’ history of surreptitiously working with the White House to deflect from the myriad inquiries into possible coordination between Trump’s associates and the Kremlin.
In March, a day after then-FBI Director James Comey confirmed the bureau was investigating that prospect, Nunes claimed he had seen alarming information indicating Trump advisers had been swept up in surveillance. Nunes said he had seen “dozens of reports” supporting his claim, which appeared to substantiate the president’s baseless claim that the Obama administration had wiretapped Trump Tower.
But Nunes did not reveal that senior White House officials had provided him with the information when he made a late-night trip to the White House. Nunes then lied to Bloomberg’s Eli Lake to conceal the White House’s role.
Backed by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Nunes withstood Democratic demands for him to recuse himself from the committee’s Russia probe. Instead, he formally placed the inquiry in the hands of fellow committee Republicans Mike Conaway and Trey Gowdy while he underwent a House ethics committee investigation.
But Nunes remained in an influential position within the committee, using his chairman’s prerogative to unilaterally subpoena to Trump targets like the Fusion GPS firm. And now that Nunes is out from under the ethics committee’s scrutiny, he has intensified his moves to deflect blame from Trump.
His four-page surveillance memo has now far overshadowed the committee’s Russia investigation. As The Daily Beast first reported, it names Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, former FBI Director James Comey, and retiring Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. Every Democrat on the House intelligence committee has said Nunes’ memo manipulates the intelligence behind the surveillance request in order to exculpate Trump.
“A misleading set of talking points attacking the FBI...yet another desperate and flailing attempt to undermine Special Counsel Mueller and the FBI,” Democrats characterized it in a Jan. 19 statement.
The New York Times reported this week that Rosenstein this spring signed off on renewing a surveillance warrant on Trump campaign aide Carter Page—who had previously passed documents to a Russian spy—indicating that even Trump appointees saw a sufficient basis for a counterintelligence investigation into Page.
But Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s circle and Russia, is specifically named in Nunes’ memo—and has become a right-wing target of opportunity. After Nunes won a vote on Monday to declassify his memo, the Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro said on Sean Hannity’s show that the alleged abuses in the memo merit a special prosecutor, “not Rod Rosenstein, who right now is in the middle of all this.”
Democrats are warning that Pirro’s sentiment reflect the true purpose of Nunes’ memo: to provide a pretext for firing Mueller or his allies in the Justice Department and the FBI; or to have a ready-made narrative to undermine any legal move Mueller ultimately makes against Trump. Mueller is reportedly now seeking to interview Trump personally but it is unclear if Trump’s lawyers will assent.
Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, tweeted Wednesday that Nunes’ memo is “a partisan sham cooked up to undermine the FBI, DOJ, and the Mueller probe. House Republicans are playing a very dangerous game.”
It is also unclear if the House intelligence committee’s Russia investigation will go anywhere. It has not held an open hearing since Nov. 1, and now Nunes has opened a murky investigation into the FBI and Justice Department itself—one that Nunes used on Monday to dismiss law enforcement concerns about releasing his memo.
Nunes’ Democratic counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, pledged Monday night that the Russia inquest would continue, and announced that Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, would testify on Wednesday. But since then, a Democratic staffer confirmed to The Daily Beast, Bannon’s appearance has been postponed.
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