Statistics: Achilles’ Heel of Government

[This essay was published in Essays on Liberty, VIII (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: Foundation for Economic Education, 1961), pp.255–261, and in The Freeman, June 1961, pp. 40–44.) It was republished in The Logic of Action Two (Edward Elgar, 1997, pp. 180 184). Rothbard had developed a similar argument in “The Politics of Political Economists: Comment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 74, 4 (November 1960), pp. 659–665, a critique of some theses put forward by economist George Stigler.]

Ours is truly an Age of Statistics. In a country and an era that worships statistical data as super “scientific,” as offering us the keys to all knowledge, a vast supply of data of all shapes and sizes pours forth upon us. Mostly, it pours forth from government.

While private agencies and trade associations do gather and issue some statistics, they are limited to specific wants of specific industries. The vast bulk of statistics is gathered and disseminated by government. The overall statistics of the economy, the popular “gross national product” data that permits every economist to be a soothsayer of business conditions, come from government.

Furthermore, many statistics are by-products of other governmental activities: from the Internal Revenue bureau come tax data, from unemployment insurance departments come estimates of the unemployed, from customs offices come data on foreign trade, from the Federal Reserve flow statistics on banking, and so on. And as new statistical techniques are developed, new divisions of government departments are created to refine and use them.

The burgeoning of government statistics offers several obvious evils to the libertarian. In the first place, it is clear that too many resources are being channeled into statistics-gathering and statistics-production. Given a wholly free market, the amount of labor, land, and capital resources devoted to statistics would dwindle to a small fraction of the present total. It has been estimated that the federal government alone spends over $48,000,000 on statistics, and that statistical work employs the services of over 10,000 full-time civilian employees of the government.1

Hidden Costs of Reporting

Secondly, the great bulk of statistics is gathered by government coercion. This not only means that they are products of unwelcome activities; it also means that the true cost of these statistics to the American public is much greater than the mere amount of tax money spent by the government agencies. Private industry, and the private consumer, must bear the burdensome costs of record keeping, filing, and the like, that these statistics demand. Not only that; these fixed costs impose a relatively great burden on small business firms, which are ill equipped to handle the mountains of red tape. Hence, these seemingly innocent statistics cripple small business enterprise and help to rigidify the American business system. A Hoover Commission task force found, for example, that:

No one knows how much it costs American industry to compile the statistics that the Government demands. The chemical industry alone reports that each year it spends $8,850,000 to supply statistical reports demanded by three departments of the Government. The utility industry spends $32,000,000 a year in preparing reports for Government agencies…

All industrial users of peanuts must report their consumption to the Department of Agriculture… Upon the intervention of the Task Force, the Department of Agriculture agreed that henceforth only those that consume more than ten thousand pounds a year need report…

If small alterations are made in two reports, the Task Force says one industry alone can save $800,000 a year in statistical reporting.

Many employees of private industry are occupied with the collection of Government statistics. This is especially burdensome to small businesses. A small hardware store owner in Ohio estimated that 29 per cent of his time is absorbed in filling out such reports. Not infrequently people dealing with the Government have to keep several sets of books to fit the diverse and dissimilar requirements of Federal agencies.2

Other Objections

But there are other important, and not so obvious, reasons for the libertarian to regard government statistics with dismay. Not only do statistics gathering and producing go beyond the governmental function of defense of persons and property; not only are economic resources wasted and misallocated, and the taxpayers, industry, small business, and the consumer burdened. But, furthermore, statistics are, in a crucial sense, critical to all interventionist and socialist activities of government.

The individual consumer, in his daily rounds, has little need of statistics; through advertising, through the information of friends, and through his own experience, he finds out what is going on in the markets around him. The same is true of the business firm. The businessman must also size up his particular market, determine the prices he has to pay for what he buys and charge for what he sells, engage in cost accounting to estimate his costs, and so on. But none of this activity is really dependent upon the omnium gatherum of statistical facts about the economy ingested by the federal government. The businessman, like the consumer, knows and learns about his particular market through his daily experience.

A Substitute for Market Data

Bureaucrats as well as statist reformers, however, are in a completely different state of affairs. They are decidedly outside the market. Therefore, in order to get “into” the situation that they are trying to plan and reform, they must obtain knowledge that is not personal, day-to-day experience; the only form that such knowledge can take is statistics.3

Statistics are the eyes and ears of the bureaucrat, the politician, the socialistic reformer. Only by statistics can they know, or at least have any idea about, what is going on in the economy.4

Only by statistics can they find out how many old people have rickets, or how many young people have cavities, or how many Eskimos have defective sealskins — and therefore only by statistics can these interventionists discover who “needs” what throughout the economy, and how much federal money should be channeled in what directions.

The Master Plan

Certainly, only by statistics, can the federal government make even a fitful attempt to plan, regulate, control, or reform various industries — or impose central planning and socialization on the entire economic system. If the government received no railroad statistics, for example, how in the world could it even start to regulate railroad rates, finances, and other affairs? How could the government impose price controls if it didn’t even know what goods have been sold on the market, and what prices were prevailing? Statistics, to repeat, are the eyes and ears of the interventionists: of the intellectual reformer, the politician, and the government bureaucrat. Cut off those eyes and ears, destroy those crucial guidelines to knowledge, and the whole threat of government intervention is almost completely eliminated.5

It is true, of course, that even deprived of all statistical knowledge of the nation’s affairs, the government could still try to intervene, to tax and subsidize, to regulate and control. It could try to subsidize the aged even without having the slightest idea of how many aged there are and where they are located; it could try to regulate an industry without even knowing how many firms there are or any other basic facts of the industry; it could try to regulate the business cycle without even knowing whether prices or business activity are going up or down. It could try, but it would not get very far. The utter chaos would be too patent and too evident even for the bureaucracy, and certainly for the citizens.

And this is especially true since one of the major reasons put forth for government intervention is that it “corrects” the market, and makes the market and the economy more rational. Obviously, if the government were deprived of all knowledge whatever of economic affairs, there could not even be a pretense of rationality in government intervention.

Surely, the absence of statistics would absolutely and immediately wreck any attempt at socialistic planning. It is difficult to see what, for example, the central planners at the Kremlin could do to plan the lives of Soviet citizens if the planners were deprived of all information, of all statistical data, about these citizens. The government would not even know to whom to give orders, much less how to try to plan an intricate economy.

Thus, in all the host of measures that have been proposed over the years to check and limit government or to repeal its interventions, the simple and unspectacular abolition of government statistics would probably be the most thorough and most effective. Statistics, so vital to statism, its namesake, is also the State’s Achilles’ heel.

  • 1. Cf. Neil Macneil and Harold W. Metz, The Hoover Report, 1953–1955 (New York: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 90–91; Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, Task Force Report on Paperwork Management (Washington: June 1955); and idem, Report on Budgeting and Accounting(Washington: February 1949).
  • 2. Macneil and Metz, op. cit. pp. 90–91.
  • 3. On the deficiencies of statistics as compared to the personal knowledge of all participants utilized on the free market, see the illuminating discussion in F.A. Hayek, Individualism and the Economic Order (Chicago: University Press, 1948), Chapter 4. Also see Geoffrey Dobbs, On Planning the Earth (Liverpool: K.R.P. Pubs., 1951), pp. 77–86.
  • 4. As early as 1863, Samuel B. Ruggles, American delegate to the International Statistical Congress in Berlin, declared: “Statisitics are the very eyes of the statesmen, enabling him to survey and scan with clear and comprehensive vision the whole structure and economy of the body politic.” For more on the interrelation of statistics — and statisticians — and the government, see Murray N. Rothbard, “The Politics of Political Economists: Comment,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics (November 1960), pp. 659–65. Also see Dobbs, op. cit.
  • 5. “Government policy depends upon much detailed knowledge about the Nation’s employment, production, and purchasing power. The formulation of legislation and administrative progress… Supervision … regulation … and control … must be guided by knowledge of a wide range of relevant facts. Today as never before, statistical data play a major role in the supervision of Government activities. Administrators not only make plans in the light of known facts in their field of interest, but also they must have reports on the actual progress achieved in accomplishing their goals.”Reports on Budgeting and Accounting, op. cit., pp. 91–92.

Jordan Page Talks and Sings About the Persecution of Schaeffer Cox

Liberty musician Jordan Page discusses the plight of Schaeffer Cox, an Alaska liberty activist and militia leader who is being held by the federal authorities in a high-security prison. There were many irregularities in the case, with the original verdict having been vacated and the case sent to a lower court for re-sentencing. Cox’s supporters argue that he was targeted for his political views.

For more information, see BobMurphyShow.com. The Bob Murphy Show is also available on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and via RSS.

Hundreds of Millions of User Passwords Exposed to Facebook Employees

Security lapse the latest privacy issue for the social-media giant

The company identified the issue as part of a routine security review in January.

Source: Jeff Horwitz and Robert McMillan

Facebook Inc. for years stored hundreds of millions of user passwords in a format that was accessible to its employees, in yet another privacy snafu for the social-media giant.

The incident disclosed by the company Thursday involved a wide swath of its users, though Facebook said no passwords were exposed externally, and it hasn’t found evidence of the information being abused.

Facebook estimated it will notify “hundreds of millions of Facebook Lite users, tens of millions of other Facebook users, and tens of thousands of Instagram users,” the company’s vice president of engineering, security and privacy Pedro Canahuati said in a blog post Thursday.

Facebook Lite is a stripped-down version of the product for use by people without access to reliable internet service.

The security lapse appears similar to others that have occurred at tech companies, including Twitter Inc., which asked 331 million users to change their passwords in May after discovering that one of its internal systems logged users’ unencrypted passwords.

Because so many people reuse their passwords, they have emerged as a major security problem for tech companies. Password databases have become a prime target for cyber thieves, and hackers will often try a user’s stolen password to break into new sites. Most companies, including Facebook, monitor the internet for publicly released databases of passwords.

“Passwords are extremely sensitive data,” said Deirdre K. Mulligan, an associate professor at University of California Berkeley, who specializes on data privacy. “If passwords are being stored in the clear, accessible by thousands of employees, one can only imagine how poorly other data is being managed,” she said.

Facebook’s data-security lapse attracted more attention than similar stumbles elsewhere given persistent criticism of how the company collects, stores and deploys its users’ data.

It also contradicts at least some of the company’s previous assurances on the matter. In a 2014 post about password security, Facebook’s then-security engineer Chris Long wrote that “no one here has your plain text password.”

Facebook identified that it did log plain-text passwords as part of a security review in January, Mr. Canahuati said.

During the review, Facebook has been looking for ways it stores some information, such as access tokens, and have fixed problems as they were discovered, he said. While Facebook will notify users whose passwords were stored insecurely “as a precaution,” there is no current plan to require users to change their passwords.

Full Story

Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here

This article was originally published by Philip M. Giraldi at Strategic Culture Foundation

There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.

Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.

The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation.

Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as “white supremacists.” One critic puts it this way, “Let’s be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists — it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. It’s clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation… It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants.”

It’s the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour “white supremacists” is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging “counter-terrorism specialists” in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world.

Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as “Soviet era” in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as “hate speech” anything that is objected to by influential constituencies.

Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted.

And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute “incitement.” Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would “result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.” Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been “publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.” It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored.

And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate” by blocking “hate language,” which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration.

Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial.

Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Goodbye to the Internet: Interference by Governments Is Already Here

This article was originally published by Philip M. Giraldi at Strategic Culture Foundation

There is a saying attributed to the French banker Nathan Rothschild that “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes its laws.” Conservative opinion in the United States has long suspected that Rothschild was right and there have been frequent calls to audit the Federal Reserve Bank based on the presumption that it has not always acted in support of the actual interests of the American people. That such an assessment is almost certainly correct might be presumed based on the 2008 economic crash in which the government bailed out the banks, which had through their malfeasance caused the disaster, and left individual Americans who had lost everything to face the consequences.

Be that as it may, if there were a modern version of the Rothschild comment it might go something like this: “Give me control of the internet and no one will ever more know what is true.” The internet, which was originally conceived of as a platform for the free interchange of information and opinions, is instead inexorably becoming a managed medium that is increasingly controlled by corporate and government interests. Those interests are in no way answerable to the vast majority of the consumers who actually use the sites in a reasonable and non-threatening fashion to communicate and share different points of view.

The United States Congress started the regulation ball rolling when it summoned the chief executives of the leading social media sites in the wake of the 2016 election. It sought explanations regarding why and how the Russians had allegedly been able to interfere in the election through the use of fraudulent accounts to spread information that might have influenced some voters. In spite of the sound and fury, however, all Congress succeeded in doing was demonstrating that the case against Moscow was flimsy at best while at the same creating a rationale for an increased role in censoring the internet backed by the threat of government regulation.

Given that background, the recent shootings at a synagogue in Pittsburgh and at mosques in Christchurch New Zealand have inevitably produced strident demands that something must be done about the internet, with the presumption that the media both encouraged and enabled the attacks by the gunmen, demented individuals who were immediately labeled as “white supremacists.” One critic puts it this way, “Let’s be clear, social media is the lifeblood of the far-right. The fact that a terror attack was livestreamed should tell us that this is a unique form for violence made for the digital era. The infrastructure of social media giants is not merely ancillary to the operations of terrorists — it is central to it [and] social media giants assume a huge responsibility to prevent and stop hate speech proliferating on the internet. It’s clear the internet giants cannot manage this alone; we urgently need a renewed conversation on internet regulation… It is time for counter-terrorism specialists to move into the offices of social media giants.”

It’s the wrong thing to do, in part because intelligence and police services already spend a great deal of time monitoring chat on the internet. And the premise that most terrorists who use the social media can be characterized as the enemy du jour “white supremacists” is also patently untrue. Using the national security argument to place knuckle dragging “counter-terrorism specialists” in private sector offices would be the last thing that anyone would reasonably want to do. If one were to turn the internet into a government regulated service it would mean that what comes out at the other end would be something like propaganda intended to make the public think in ways that do not challenge the authority of the bureaucrats and politicians. In the US, it might amount to nothing less than exposure to commentary approved by Mike Pompeo and John Bolton if one wished to learn what is going on in the world.

Currently I and many other internet users appreciate and rely on the alternative media to provide viewpoints that are either suppressed by government or corporate interests or even contrary to prevailing fraudulent news accounts. And the fact is that the internet is already subject to heavy handed censorship by the service providers, which one friend has described as “Soviet era” in its intensity, who are themselves implementing their increasingly disruptive actions to find false personas and to ban as “hate speech” anything that is objected to by influential constituencies.

Blocking information is also already implemented by various countries through a cooperative arrangement whereby governments can ask search engines to remove material. Google actually documents the practice in an annual Transparency Report which reveals that government requests to remove information have increased from less than 1,000 per year in 2010 to nearly 30,000 per year currently. Not surprisingly, Israel and the United States lead the pack when it comes to requests for deletions. Since 2009 the US has asked for 7,964 deletions totaling 109,936 items while Israel has sought 1,436 deletions totally 10,648 items. Roughly two thirds of Israeli and US requests were granted.

And there is more happening behind the scenes. Since 2016, Facebook representatives have also been regularly meeting with the Israeli government to delete Facebook accounts of Palestinians that the Israelis claim constitute “incitement.” Israel had threatened Facebook that non-compliance with Israeli deletion orders would “result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.” Facebook chose compliance and, since that time, Israeli officials have been “publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders.” It should be noted that Facebook postings calling for the murder of Palestinians have not been censored.

And censorship also operates as well at other levels unseen, to include deletion of millions of old postings and videos to change the historical record and rewrite the past. To alter the current narrative, Microsoft, Google, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all have been pressured to cooperate with pro-Israel private groups in the United States, to include the powerful Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL is working with social media “to engineer new solutions to stop cyberhate” by blocking “hate language,” which includes any criticism of Israel that might be construed as anti-Semitism by the new expanded definition that is being widely promoted by the US Congress and the Trump Administration.

Censorship of information also increasingly operates in the publishing world. With the demise of actual bookstores, most readers buy their books from media online giant Amazon, which had a policy of offering every book in print. On February 19, 2019, it was revealed that Amazon would no longer sell books that it considered too controversial.

Government regulation combined with corporate social media self-censorship means that the user of the service will not know what he or she is missing because it will not be there. And once the freedom to share information without restraint is gone it will never return. On balance, free speech is intrinsically far more important than any satisfaction that might come from government intrusion to make the internet less an enabler of violence. If history teaches us anything, it is that the diminishment of one basic right will rapidly lead to the loss of others and there is no freedom more fundamental than the ability to say or write whatever one chooses, wherever and whenever one seeks to do so.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

‘Rank climate propaganda’ – ‘Associated Press touts ‘a clear sign of human-caused climate change’ – But scientists dismantle claims

Morano: ‘Americans who rely on the Associated Press for climate news and information are being misinformed. The AP is serving up nothing short of rank climate propaganda.’

Christopher Steele ADMITS To Using Unverified Internet Post To Create The Trump Dossier

The infamous dossier created by “master spy” Christopher Steele is what allegedly started the investigation into president Donald Trump’s relations with Russia and their alleged “election meddling.” However, the creator of the “Steele dossier” admitted that he used an unverified internet post as a source while compiling the dubious document.

Trust in Robert Mueller and his investigation into Trump has severely eroded. According to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt” which all began with the shoddy Steele dossier.

Congress Gives Clinton Operatives TWO WEEKS To Explain Russian Sourced Trump Disinformation Dossier

Steele, the ex-British spy who fueled Russiagate hysteria with his Democratic National Committee-commissioned opposition “research” on Donald Trump, admitted during a lawsuit deposition that he relied on unverified information contained in a report published by CNN iReport, which is a now-defunct “user-generated news site. Stories featured on iReport were submitted by citizen journalists and were not edited, fact-checked, or screened before being published.

According to RT, Steele acknowledged under questioning that he used an “assertation” or an opinion to come up with his dossier. “Do you understand that CNN iReports are or were nothing more than any random individuals’ assertions on the Internet?” Steele replied: “No, I, obviously, presume that if it is on a CNN site that it has some kind of CNN status. Albeit that it may be an independent person posting on the site.”

And of course, Trump took to mocking the spy on Twitter over his salacious dossier and admission.

Steele essentially used posts by random individuals to put together the document that spurred what now half of Americans believe to be a witch hunt.  As skepticism grows over the details in the dossier, and more turn from Mueller in the investigation, Trump comes out looking like the victim.

In December, Michael Isikoff, one of the first journalists to report on the document, conceded that Steele’s central claims were “likely false,” RT reported further. Coincidentally, Isikoff’s explosive report on alleged Trump-Russia links was cited extensively by the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page.

Christopher Steele ADMITS To Using Unverified Internet Post To Create The Trump Dossier

The infamous dossier created by “master spy” Christopher Steele is what allegedly started the investigation into president Donald Trump’s relations with Russia and their alleged “election meddling.” However, the creator of the “Steele dossier” admitted that he used an unverified internet post as a source while compiling the dubious document.

Trust in Robert Mueller and his investigation into Trump has severely eroded. According to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt” which all began with the shoddy Steele dossier.

Congress Gives Clinton Operatives TWO WEEKS To Explain Russian Sourced Trump Disinformation Dossier

Steele, the ex-British spy who fueled Russiagate hysteria with his Democratic National Committee-commissioned opposition “research” on Donald Trump, admitted during a lawsuit deposition that he relied on unverified information contained in a report published by CNN iReport, which is a now-defunct “user-generated news site. Stories featured on iReport were submitted by citizen journalists and were not edited, fact-checked, or screened before being published.

According to RT, Steele acknowledged under questioning that he used an “assertation” or an opinion to come up with his dossier. “Do you understand that CNN iReports are or were nothing more than any random individuals’ assertions on the Internet?” Steele replied: “No, I, obviously, presume that if it is on a CNN site that it has some kind of CNN status. Albeit that it may be an independent person posting on the site.”

And of course, Trump took to mocking the spy on Twitter over his salacious dossier and admission.

Steele essentially used posts by random individuals to put together the document that spurred what now half of Americans believe to be a witch hunt.  As skepticism grows over the details in the dossier, and more turn from Mueller in the investigation, Trump comes out looking like the victim.

In December, Michael Isikoff, one of the first journalists to report on the document, conceded that Steele’s central claims were “likely false,” RT reported further. Coincidentally, Isikoff’s explosive report on alleged Trump-Russia links was cited extensively by the FBI to secure a warrant to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page.

The Suspicious relationship between FACEBOOK And The CIA

¡Tené cuidado!, la CIA revisa tu Facebook y tu cuenta de ...

Source: Qronos 16 YouTube Channel

 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, began a total surveillance program in 2003 called LifeLog. Interestingly, the LifeLog project was terminated at approximately the same time that Facebook was founded. Coincidence? Sean Parker, Facebook’s first president, was recruited by the CIA in 2004 before heading the tech company. Shortly after, the CIA began investing in venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, which helped mine the user data of millions. As this information begins to surface, top executives are leaving Facebook. Now, Facebook is under investigation for potential privacy breaches.

Court Confirms McCain Pushed Fake Russia Dossier to FBI and Left-Wing Journalists

Court filings confirm John McCain leaked fake Russia dossier to FBI and several left-wing mainstream journalists

Newly released court records confirm that the late Senator John McCain pushed the fake Trump-Russia dossier to the FBI and to over a dozen left-wing journalists.

In December it was reported that McCain and his associate David Kramer pushed the phoney dossier to the FBI and Buzzfeed News:

A longtime associate of late Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain provided a copy of the infamous Steele dossier to BuzzFeed News, according to an explosive court filing released Wednesday.

David Kramer, a former State Department official who was an executive at the McCain Institute, provided BuzzFeed News reporter Ken Bensinger with a copy of the dossier Dec. 29, 2016, according to a filing submitted Wednesday by U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro.

Thegatewaypundit.com reports: Yesterday additional court filings were released that show that Kramer provided the fake dossier to multiple individuals in the media.

Newly unsealed court filings show how the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and an associate shared with the FBI and a host of media outlets the unverified dossier that alleged the Russians had compromising information on now-President Trump.

McCain had denied being the source for BuzzFeed after it published the dossier, which was funded by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, but had acknowledged giving it to the FBI.

In from September, former senior counterintelligence FBI agent Bill Priestap confirmed that the FBI received a copy of the first 33 pages of the dossier in December 2016 from McCain.

Not only did the deceased Senator McCain lie about providing the bogus dossier to the FBI, another filing on Friday reported by FOX News reports that Kramer provided the dossier to over 12 far-left journalists –

In another filing, David Kramer — a former State Department official and McCain associate — said in a Dec. 13, 2017, deposition that the dossier was given to him by author and former British spy Christopher Steele, which he then provided to more than a dozen journalists at outlets including CNN, BuzzFeed and The Washington Post. The details were first reported by The Daily Caller.

The report was also shared with State Department official Victoria Nuland, Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill.

The filings were unsealed as part of an ongoing libel case against BuzzFeed by a Russian businessman.

Jeff Carlson at the Epoch Times provided a list of journalists who were provided the dossier by Kramer –

Kramer, who is an affiliated senior fellow at the McCain Institute, revealed in his deposition that he had been in contact with 14 journalists and producers about the dossier. These contacts included:

  • ABC News: Brian Ross, Matt Mosk
  • BuzzFeed: Ken Bensinger
  • CNN: Carl Bernstein
  • The Guardian: Julian Borger
  • McClatchy: Peter Stone, Greg Gordon
  • Mother Jones: David Corn
  • NPR: Bob Little, Rachel Martin
  • The Washington Post: Tom Hamburger, Rosalind Helderman, Fred Hiatt
  • The Wall Street Journal: Allan Cullison

Kramer, who does not appear to have spoken with The New York Times, noted that both Simpson and Steele were speaking to the Times directly because “they felt it required investigation by a serious news outlet, and they seemed to have chosen The Times at that point.”

Note that Kramer provided the fake dossier to Bernstein from CNN.  The same individual who was praised as a hero by the far-left for bringing down President Nixon the Watergate scandal of the 1970’s.

The news Friday is devastating to the far-left media and Never-Trump politicians who attempted the coup on President Trump.  More damaging information is expected in the days ahead.

For Those Who Value Global Research: We Need Your Support!

We are – as a society – inundated and overwhelmed with a flood of information from a wide array of sources, but these sources of information, by and large, serve the powerful interests and individuals that own them with the aim of controlling public perception and justifying their agendas.

The post For Those Who Value Global Research: We Need Your Support! appeared first on Global Research.

Putin Signs ‘Fake News,’ ‘Internet Insults’ Bills Into Law

Source: The Moscow Times

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a controversial set of bills that make it a crime to “disrespect” the state and spread “fake news” online, Russian media reported on Monday.

The bills amending existing information laws overwhelmingly passed both chambers of Russian parliament in less than two months. Observers and some lawmakers have criticized the legislation for its vague language and potential to stifle free speech.

The legislation will establish punishments for spreading information that “exhibits blatant disrespect for the society, government, official government symbols, constitution or governmental bodies of Russia.”

Online news outlets and users that spread “fake news” will face fines of up to 1.5 million rubles ($22,900) for repeat offenses.

Insulting state symbols and the authorities, including Putin, will carry a fine of up to 300,000 rubles and 15 days in jail for repeat offenses.

As is the case with other Russian laws, the fines are calculated based on whether the offender is a citizen, an official or a legal entity.

More than 100 journalists and public figures, including human rights activist Zoya Svetova and popular writer Lyudmila Ulitskaya, signed a petition opposing the laws, which they labeled “direct censorship.”

The Kremlin, however, denied the legislation amounts to censorship.

“What’s more, this sphere of fake news, insulting and so on, is regulated fairly harshly in many countries of the world including Europe. It is therefore of course necessary to do it in our country too,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Tougher Internet laws introduced over the past five years require search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services and social networks to store users’ personal data on servers within the country.

Reuters contributed reporting to this article.

Christopher Steele’s Former MI6 Boss Calls Dossier “Overrated” 

In yet another stunning blow to the so-called “Steele Dossier” assembled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the former chief of the (MI6) said the hastily cobbled-together report by his former employee is “overrated” and its salacious claims against Donald Trump unlikely to be verified, as the Daily Wire‘s Ashe Schow reports. 

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Following an appearance at the Jamestown Foundation’s 12th annual terrorism conference in Washington D.C., Sir John Scarlett – who headed the British Secret Intelligence Service from 2004 to 2009, fielded a question from journalist Nicholas Ballasy, who asked Scarlett what he thought of the dossier and if he believed what was written in it. 

“Well, no,” said Scarlett, adding “I looked at it and I thought these are commercial intelligence reports; I don’t know about the sources — they might be right, they might be wrong and they’ll probably be overrated and they’ve been overrated.

When asked if the dossier could ever be verified, Steele’s former boss said “No.” 

Ballasy then asked Scarlett if he was surprised that Steele would produce the dossier using unverified information, to which the former MI6 head replied: 

“Well, they were commercial intelligence reports and they were visibly that so there’s a question of why they were there and where they came from and who commissioned them and so on,” adding” So, I’ve tended to see them in that context and never quite of political significance for obvious reasons and actually if you think about it, people have talked about them in a really big way a year or so ago and they haven’t really made that much of a difference.

“As I said, I suspect, all I can say, is they are overrated.

When asked about what Steele was like to work with, Scarlett replied: “I’m not going to comment,” before walking away. We’re guessing he’s probably tired of MI6 having been mentioned in the same breath as Steele for the last several years.

Listen:

CNN iReport Was Source for Unverified Claims in Russia ‘Dossier’: Report

by Joel B. Pollack, Breitbart: Christopher Steele, the former British spy who created the anti-Donald Trump Russia “dossier,” used unverified information he found on a CNN website where users generated their own content, he told a court last year. Fox News reported Saturday that Steele, testifying in a defamation lawsuit filed by Russian entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev last […]

The post CNN iReport Was Source for Unverified Claims in Russia ‘Dossier’: Report appeared first on SGT Report.

Endgame’ spoilers describe a heartbreaking superhero death

The Best Captain America Death Scenes in Comics | ScreenRant

Posted By: Wyatt T – Nworeport

A monster leak on Friday seemed to deliver believable Avengers: Endgame plot details until Redditors figured out that the post was being continuously updated through March. That’s why the post contained so much accurate information from Captain Marvel, including credits scenes that tie the film to Avengers 4, as well as details about Endgame footage that Disney showed a few days ago. Then, on Saturday, we found an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) thread on Reddit that a supposed former Endgame crew member started, which offered many details about the film’s plot.

The new Redditor was partially verified but seemed to be a bit confused about how to use Reddit, which made piecing together the information a rather daunting task. Once you dive into Reddit, however, there’s no turning back unless you’ve got a special Quantum Realm suit, and that’s how I found a much older Endgame plot spoiler that seems to match the newest leak. As was the case before, massive spoilers follow below, assuming the information is accurate. It’s too late for me, but you can still save yourself from ruining the surprise if you turn back now.

The new details

In case you haven’t read the first part of the story, make sure you check it at this link. Since then, the Redditor has returned to the original post to provide additional bits of information. For example, he confirmed that Hulk loses an arm at some point in the movie and that it grows back. He also said Gamora is somehow resurrected and all the Guardians survive Endgame.

Image Source: Marvel Studios

Thanos apparently doesn’t die as was initially hinted, but he does get “the crap beat out of him.” The Avengers will use the proton cannon against him in the final battle, likely the one we saw in Infinity War, to slow Thanos down, and it’s War Machine who wields it. “That’s why his new suit is bulky,” the Redditor said. Thanos is apparently impressed by Captain Marvel’s fighting, but the Avengers will need “brains, strength, and planning” to beat the Titan. “Spider-Man plays a big roll in the fight” as well, he said.

The leaker also said that time travel scenes are actually in the second trailer:

Ok, remember when Thor was floating in the air and looking at his hammer that was them resetting the Wakanda fight and when they showed the scene when a ship was flying over a lit up city skyline that also was a time travel scene with Cap, Tony, and Ant-Man while the other distract Thanos.

Finally, he posted a longer comment about the first half of the movie and made a new post where he says it’s actually the first quarter of the film he’s discussing. Here’s that comment, edited for clarity:

First half of the movie is the remaining Avengers and newcomers reuniting to discuss the situation at hand and to come up with a plan.

Ant-Man rants on about the Quantum Realm and quantum energy and how he wasn’t affected by the snap because of laws of quantum physics. He also tells them he ran into a guy in the quantum realm who helped him get home to the right time that guy being Doctor Strange.

Captain Marvel eager to get a piece of Thanos flashes her power startling the Avengers. Thor’s tells them they need more muscle. Stark has a plan to give everyone suits to survive in the Quantum Realm and outer space.

Stark, Ant-Man, and Captain America head into the Quantum Realm while the others seek help from remaining survivors of Wakanda, mainly Shuri, to seek help on repairing Vision. Banner also tags along going to Wakanda.

Rocket, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Nebula, and Thor head into space to look for Valkyrie and other Asgardians.


The older leak

This brings me to an older leak, one that was posted on 4chan at some point last May by the same person who posted accurate information about Infinity War well ahead of the film’s premiere. In case you want to check out the accuracy of that Infinity War leak, see the following image, which shows exactly what was posted on 4chan and when it happened. You’ll notice several inconsistencies, but the major Infinity War plotlines are still there. That means the person has had access to Marvel scripts in the past, even if they were dummy scripts that contained some fake info.

Image Source: Reddit

Fast-forward to May 2018, and someone saved all the new Endgame information and brought it over to Reddit, where it’s still available. Check it out in full below — we’ve emphasized all the parts that match the new theory we covered earlier in this post.

Iron Man reassembles the Avengers and decides to build his own Infinity Gauntlet to undo everything that Thanos did. They recruit Ant-Man to help them travel through time and space using the Quantum Real to retrieve the Infinity Stones from different time periods. Thanos finds out about their plans and becomes hellbent on stopping them.

The movie revolves around the relationship between Captain America and Iron Man.

At one point, Captain America and Thor fight Thanos. Timeline alterations have restored Mjolnir, and Cap wields it against Thanos to allow the others to escape and is killed holding Thanos off.

At one point, Hawkeye must protect the unfinished Stark Gauntlet from Thanos’ minions. He plays an ‘instrumental’ role in Thanos’ defeat.

Thor’s subplot centers on him assembling an army to challenge Thanos. Captain Marvel joins him.

Hulk’s subplot centers on Banner and Hulk finally merging to become Professor Hulk. He is the one that ultimately wields the Stark Gauntlet against Thanos, losing his arm in the process.

Nebula’s subplot centers on her efforts to redeem herself. At one point, she fights her murderous past self.

Several MCU movies are revisited and retconned (probably not permanently), such as the Avengers retrieving the Power Stone creating a timeline where the Guardians of the Galaxy never came together.

There’s a pivotal scene between Doctor Strange and a fully CGI character being shot on a secret location, with a skeleton crew, and which takes up a sizeable portion of the budget.

Only two of the original Avengers (Cap, Stark, Thor, Hulk, Hawkeye, and Black Widow) meant to survive the movie. Cap dies.

The title was AVENGERS: INFINITY GAUNTLET at one point, but it might be changed after Zoe Saldana accidentally leaked it.

As you can see above, there are plenty of similarities between these two leaks, which obviously increases the likelihood that they’re accurate. Of course nothing has been confirmed, but if any of this is indeed true, we’re about to see the heartbreaking death of Captain America in Endgame.

Chinese man indicted over theft of Boeing C-17 secrets

Su Bin is accused of working with two others to steal gigabytes of U.S. defense-related documents

 

Chinese man indicted over theft of Boeing C-17 secrets ...

Source: Billy M- Nworeport

 

A Chinese man has been indicted for allegedly directing two China-based hackers to infiltrate Boeing and other defense contractors to steal gigabytes of documents describing U.S. military aircraft.

Su Bin, a Chinese national in his late 40s, was indicted in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on charges of unauthorized computer access, conspiracy, conspiracy to commit theft of trade secrets and aiding and abetting. He was arrested in Canada in June.

Su allegedly worked with two unnamed and unindicted co-conspirators between 2009 and 2013 to obtain documents related to planes such as the C-17, a cargo aircraft, and the F-22 and F-35 fighter jets, according to the indictment.

Su, who ran a China-based aviation company called Lode Technology, is accused of trying to sell the information to state-owned companies in China and other entities.

Curiously, Su and the co-conspirators in part used free email accounts such as Gmail to communicate, which likely gave law enforcement a broad view into their alleged actions. U.S. prosecutors can obtain such communications with a court order.

Excerpts of the emails were included in an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Noel A. Neeman, which is contained in Su’s court file.

An August 2012 email from one of the China-based hackers to the other one describes a painstaking, year-long 439,000 effort that successfully stole 85 GB of information about the C-17, including electronic cable wiring documents and detailed schematics.

Boeing’s network is “extremely complex,” the hacker wrote, adding the company has layers of security equipment including firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention systems.

The emails also provided insight into general methods the hackers used. To avoid diplomatic and legal problems, stolen documents were sent to servers in other countries, such as South Korea and Singapore, before being moved to Hong Kong or Macao, according to another email sent from co-conspirator #1 to co-conspirator #2.

From those locales, “the intelligence is always picked up and transferred to China in person,” the email said.

Neeman’s affidavit said that while the “success and scope” of the operation could have been exaggerated, there was evidence that it was successful “to some degree.” His affidavit does not speculate if the co-conspirators are Chinese government employees.

The U.S. and China have traded sharp accusations over hacking in recent months, with each accusing the other of government-sanctioned intrusions.

In May, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a criminal indictment against five members of Chinese Army signal intelligence Unit 61398 with stealing nuclear, solar power and steel trade secrets from six U.S. organizations over eight years. China vehemently denied the accusations.

Send news tips and comments to [email protected]. Follow me on Twitter: @jeremy_kirk

Grand Jury Filing May Reveal Names of Who “Blew up” Twin Towers

Grand jury filing to name names of who was responsible for blowing up twin towers

Source:

A grand jury filing may have information about the identities of people accused of using explosives at the Twin Towers on 9/11. 

According to Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the 33-page “petition supplement” contains 15 different categories of persons who may have information material to the investigation, including contractors and security companies that had access to the WTC Towers before 9/11, persons and entities who benefited financially from the WTC demolitions, and persons arrested after being observed celebrating the WTC attacks.

A names-redacted version of the petition supplement, which was filed with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York on February 14, 2019, has been made available to the public. The un-redacted version filed with the U.S. Attorney today will remain undisclosed in the interest of maintaining the secrecy, security, and integrity of the grand jury proceeding.

Thefreethoughtproject.com reports: As TFTP reported in December, for the first time since 9/11 the federal government is taking steps to prosecute the the use of explosives to destroy the world trade centers.

The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry successfully submitted a petition to the federal government demanding that the U.S. Attorney present to a Special Grand Jury extensive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted federal crimes relating to the destruction of three World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 (WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7).

After waiting months for the reply, the U.S. Attorney responded in a letter, noting that they will comply with the law.

“We have received and reviewed The Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Inc.’s submissions of April 10 and July 30, 2018. We will comply with the provisions of 18 U.S.C. § 3332 as they relate to your submissions,” U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman stated.

According to the petition, dozens of exhibits were presented as evidence that explosives were, in fact, used to destroy all three world trade centers.

The Lawyers’ Committee’s April 10th 52-page original Petition was accompanied by 57 exhibits and presented extensive evidence that explosives were used to destroy three WTC Towers on 9/11. That evidence included independent scientific laboratory analysis of WTC dust samples showing the presence of high-tech explosives and/or incendiaries; numerous first-hand reports by First Responders of seeing and hearing explosions at the World Trade Center on 9/11; expert analysis of seismic evidence that explosions occurred at the WTC towers on 9/11 both prior to the airplane impacts and prior to the building collapses; and expert analysis and testimony by architects, engineers, and scientists concluding that the rapid onset symmetrical near-free-fall acceleration collapse of these three WTC high rise buildings on 9/11 exhibited the key characteristics of controlled demolition. The July 30th Amended Petition included the same evidence but also addressed several additional federal crimes beyond the federal bombing crime addressed in the original Petition.

The Lawyers’ Committee concluded in the petitions that explosive and incendiary devices that had been preplaced at the WTC were detonated causing the complete collapse of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7 on 9/11, and the resulting tragic loss of life, and that “the evidence permits no other conclusion — as a matter of science, as a matter of logic, and as a matter of law.”

“This Petition Supplement is intended to assist the Special Grand Jury by providing a roadmap for a meaningful investigation into the yet-to-be-prosecuted 9/11 WTC crimes that the Lawyers’ Committee has reported and documented in our Petitions,” Attorney David Meiswinkle, President of the Lawyers’ Committee’s Board of Directors, said.

Finally, after nearly two decades of ridicule, dismissal, and outright intolerance of information contrary to the “official story” of what happened on 9/11, the public may finally learn the truth of what happened and who was behind it.

Evidence Indicates Link Between North Korean Embassy Break-In And Christchurch Attacks

by William Craddick, Disobedient Media: As the world reels from the tragic terrorist attack against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, much attention has been given to sensational information about the single named suspect, Brenton Tarrant. However, the hyperfocus on Tarrant distracts from the fact that the Australian national was arrested along with other suspects. An […]

The post Evidence Indicates Link Between North Korean Embassy Break-In And Christchurch Attacks appeared first on SGT Report.

NZ Police Demand “Kiwi Farms” Message Board Preserve “IP Addresses” And “Email Addresses” Following Massacre

New Zealand police have sent notice to the owner of the Kiwi Farms internet message board demanding the preservation of IP addresses and email addresses associated with posts related to the Christchurch shootings, believed to have been committed by 28-year-old Australian Brenton Tarrant.  

Tarrant used Facebook Live to broadcast the first of two Friday attacks on local mosques that left 50 dead and 50 injured, which was rapidly disseminated across various file hosing platforms and websites, including Kiwi Farms – which received the preservation request on Saturday. 

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Al Noor Mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand

“At around the time of the shooting there were a number of posts and links posted on kiwifarms.net relating to the shooting and TARRANT,” reads the letter from Senior Sergeant New Zealand Police detective John Michael. “We would like to preserve any posts and technical data including IP addresses, email addresses etc linked to these posts pending a formal legal request.”

“Could you please advise what legal process you require for this request and also confirm preservation of the data requested pending legal process,” the letter concludes. 

The email was verified by journalist Nick Monroe

Responding to the preservation request, Kiwi Farms owner Joshua Moon – a US citizen living abroad, asked “Is this a joke? I’m not turning over information abouit my users. The person responsible for posting the video and manifesto PDF is myself.” 

Tell your superiors they’re going to make the entire country and its government look like clowns by trying to censor the Internet. You’re a small, irrelevant island nation barely more recognizable than any other nameless pacific sovereignty. You do not have the clout to eradicate a video from the Internet and you do not have the legal reach to imprison everyone whose posted it. If anyone turns over to you the information they’re asking for they’re not only cowards, but they’re fucking idiots.

If you’re wondering, no. Kiwi Farms has nothing to do with New Zealand. Our name is a pointed jab at some of the mushmouthed autistic people we make fun of. Absolutely nothing about our community is NZ oriented.

Prior to the attack, a message was posted 8chan /pol/ message board linking people to a 74-page manifesto and Tarrant’s Facebook Live stream. 8chan has agreed to cooperate in the investigation, while Zealand authorities have warned residents that the mere possession of the video could result in prison time.  

After the shooting, a person believed to be Moon said in a Saturday 4chan post that he was the operator of an “autistic shitposting forum,” and had recorded and uploaded footage of the shooting. After several takedown requests and a flood of users downloading the video leaving “not enough bandwidth to go around,” the users says they created peer-to-peer trackers for people to access the footage.

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Since receiving the letter, Moon has posted this warning to users at the top of Kiwi Farms: 

If you are from New Zealand, your government is hunting you. Read this letter from NZ Police, then change your email address if you’re using a personal account. Start using a VPN everywhere. I’m setting data retention to zero for the immediate future. Warrant canary is in the footer.

Good alter-ego email services not associated with me: CockliProtonMail
Logless VPNs: PrivateInternetAccessNordVPNProtonVPN

Given that there were three other people arrested in addition to Tarrant (although police now say they don’t think any of them are thought to have been involved in the shootings), perhaps authorities suspect there were online accomplices who distributed information to message boards in order to maximize its exposure. 

On the other hand, New Zealanders who had nothing to do with the attack and did not conceal their IP address via technical means (and/or used an identifying email address) could soon find themselves prosecuted for doing nothing more than accessing or exchanging information. 

Read the entire exchange here.

Manipulation In Bitcoin?

Authored by Omid Malekan via Medium.com,

Is the price of Bitcoin manipulated?

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That the answer to that question must be yes is one of the few things that most people, from crypto maximalists to blockchain skeptics, agree on. And not just the typical kinds of market irregularities that one expects from a young asset class, but manipulation that has a material impact on price for more than a fleeting second  –  and makes one question the integrity of the whole shebang. Here is famous crypto critic Nouriel Roubini:

As a general rule thumb, any declaration that something is the most [insert adjective] of all time is not very credible. Is crypto really more manipulated than 14th Century Wampum money? or 21st century Venezuelan? (The repeated use of ALL CAPS, by anyone other than a teenage Instagram influencer, is also suspect). Since Mr Roubini is a favorite foil of mine, I’m going to take up the opposite side of this argument, and attempt to show that once the digital asset trading ecosystem is built out a bit more, Bitcoin will be one of the highest integrity assets on the planet, for two reasons: fast-fungibility on a global basis, and the relative lack of insider information.

Here’s something fascinating: Bitcoin might be the first investable asset that you can quickly buy or sell the same distinct unit of almost anywhere. This ability doesn’t exist for assets like stocks or bonds, which often trade in a few (if not just one) siloed markets. Even things that seem to trade globally, like gold or fiat currency, are not easily fungible from one market to the next. You can buy dollars in New York and immediately sell dollars in Hong Kong, but not the same exact ones. With Bitcoin however you can buy or sell the same coin across the globe as quickly as the next few block confirmations.

Couple that unique feature with the growing list of global markets where BTC trades against different kinds of fiat money as well as other cryptocoins, not to mention the rapidly growing crypto derivative market. What you end up with is a market infrastructure that can absorb almost any localized attempt at price manipulation, because a pump and dump scheme in any jurisdiction is nothing more than an arbitrage opportunity at hundreds more, facilitated by the ease with which the asset can be moved on chain.

A skeptic might hear this argument and say “yeah but what if someone tries to buy lots of Bitcoin everywhere to manipulate the price?” To which I respond: “welcome to the year 2019.” In case you missed it, Central Banks all over the world have printed over $10T for the stated purpose of manipulating financial markets. The hypothetical manipulation scenario that has so many people in a tizzy about Bitcoin is actually true for almost everything else. There is a double standard against crypto, on account of its newness and the challenge it poses to traditional power structures. Every central bank out to peg its currency, or every public company buying back its own shares is practicing a form of manipulation, yet nary a tweet from Nouriel.

Which brings me to my second point. Markets that lack integrity are often ripe with insider abuse. Trading on material insider information has been the scourge of financial regulators for almost a century. Although most governments dedicate massive resources to fighting it — and Martha Stewart went to jail for it (while Bobby Axelrod, nee Stevie Cohen, did not) seldom is a major corporate event not accompanied by suspicious trading activity. Bitcoin has no insider trading, because there is no insider information.

Its decentralized governance and fixed production schedule mean that there is literally nothing to know. With stocks and bonds, every corporate action or earnings report is an opportunity for wrongdoing. Even commodity markets have some asymmetric information, because advance knowledge of a pipeline problem or cartel production cut provide an unfair edge. Bitcoin on the other hand produces 12.5 new coins every ten minutes or so, come hell or high volatility.

The only possibility of asymmetric information in Bitcoin is knowing the plans of a major investor, like Satoshi deciding to sell his coins, but that kind of asymmetry exists in every market. What doesn’t exist in any other market however is a transparent ledger that shows asset movements before the sale. The transparency of the Bitcoin blockchain gives us something akin to the opposite of material insider information.

I’ve made variations of these two arguments to some of the smartest people out there, including die hard believers in crypto, and the response I usually get is “yeah, but…” Most people seem to want to believe the manipulation angle, then go looking for a reason why. This knee-jerk tendency is why we as a community tolerate nonsensical academic research like this or government reports like this. If people regularly buying an asset whenever it’s down proves market manipulation — as argued by the UT researchers — then the historic “Buy The F’ing Dip” fueled equity rally of the past decade is also a scam. If the presence of trading Bots at popular exchanges proves shady behavior, all electronic trading is damned.

None of this means that there aren’t pump and dump schemes with illiquid shitcoins or that shady exchanges don’t allow wash trading. But given the factors discussed above, none of that has a material long-term impact on price. So why do so many insist on believing the manipulation angle? Probably because of the extreme volatility.

Fortunately, there is a much simpler explanation as to why crypto prices fluctuate so much, and it has to do with the most symmetric piece of info that there is: At the end of the day, nobody knows what a Bitcoin is worth, so the market jumps around violently in a self-reinforcing fashion to process the latest news flow or change in sentiment. As the old saying goes, let us not attribute to malice that which is adequately described by ignorance.

Congress at SXSW: Yes, we’re dumb about tech, and here’s what we should do

Representatives use SXSW to advocate for tech-research funding, Cyber National Guard.

The United States Capitol Building, the seat of Congress, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

Source:  

AUSTIN, Texas—Some legislators have an easier time attracting a sexy headline at an arts-and-tech conference like South By Southwest. Famous Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Elizabeth Warren did just that over the weekend with their respective, radical suggestions about government oversight.

Meanwhile, other members of Congress sat in poorly attended panels, and their low numbers weren’t helped with snooze-worthy names like “Politicians Yell at the Cloud” and “Politicians in Tech: When the Bubble Bursts.” But what these panels lacked in pizzazz, they made up for with fascinating context, direct from three House Representatives, on how starved our American Congress is in terms of staffing and support for understanding and tackling America’s biggest tech priorities.

The Senate is “woefully uninformed”

Conveniently for Congress’s most tech-fluent members, they had an easy reference point to use for their messaging. “There was a glaring lack of knowledge from Senators when they interviewed [Facebook CEO] Mark Zuckerberg,” Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said on Sunday, in reference to a 2018 Congressional hearing. “They were woefully uninformed.”

Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), seated at the far left, speaks with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (second from right) and O'Reilly Media founder Tim O'Reilly (far right) at SXSW 2019.
Enlarge / Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), seated at the far left, speaks with FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel (second from right) and O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Reilly (far right) at SXSW 2019.
Sam Machkovech

What could help a body as large and overwhelmed as Congress get its tech facts straight? Takano focused his SXSW speaking time on one possible answer: a call to re-fund the Office of Technology Assessment, whose budget was nuked by the Newt Gingrinch-led Congress of 1995.

Since the OTA’s funding fallout, Takano says, members of Congress have found themselves without access to federally funded, tech-specific research on whatever the OTA deems relevant, in terms of either current-tech expertise or trend forecasting. What’s a representative to do, then? Takano used his own office as an example. His office receives enough of a budget to pay only three legislative assistants to research and brief him on every topic relevant to his constituents. “One of those [assistants] might be staffed with science and technology issues,” he added.

For another angle about his lack of working tech information, Takano cited the FBI’s 2016 battle with Apple over encrypted data on a suspected terrorist’s iPhone—along with one thing that went less reported: Congress’s eventual surprise to learn the FBI had cracked the thing anyway. (That means Congress didn’t find out about the crack much earlier than the public did.) In addition to questioning both Apple’s judgment and the FBI’s, Takano and his colleagues wondered, “What can Congress do in terms of its interests? What judgment can we make in this case?”

The representative steered most of his questions back to the OTA, and his fellow panel member, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, was happy to echo this emphasis.

During the Zuckerberg hearing, “I watched 100 members of Congress ask questions about [topics like] encryption, autonomous cars, and modern advertising platforms,” Rosenworcel said. “I walked away from it thinking, ‘the only thing that was clear was that we need to build a common set of facts for the future.’” She explained that, without a pool of common-ground data for all of Congress to refer to on a regular basis, legislators will not be able to “figure out frameworks for this digital future.”

An alignment of stars

Rosenworcel recounted her time working in the early ’00s on legislation to open up access to airwaves that had been dedicated to analog broadcasts. It took a significant amount of work and lobbying to members of Congress, but she pointed to the bipartisan buy-in it received as a rare moment of “stars aligning.” Then she added, “We have to figure out how to help the stars align more often. A neutral body and office [like the OTA] would be a great way to do that.”

When asked by Ars Technica how feasible his OTA dream is in our current “starve-the-feds” administration, Rep. Takano expressed optimism about what he thought was a modest proposal: $2.5 million in the budget via appropriations process to reboot the organization, which technically still exists, and more traction on “engaging” Republican senators to sign on, which he insists is happening in terms of both the Freedom Caucus and a slew of “progressive” Republicans.

Join the Cyber National Guard… today?

Two members of Congress spoke at a SXSW panel on Sunday, March 10.
Enlarge / Two members of Congress spoke at a SXSW panel on Sunday, March 10.
Sam Machkovech

For Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.), Congress’s deficit of information isn’t just easy Zuckerberg-joke fodder (which he took advantage of for a few throwaway quips). It’s also a national-security issue.

“There are only eight of us with a technical degree, out of 535 members of the House and Senate,” Hurd said in a SXSW panel later that same day. Hurd, if you’re wondering, is one of those; his computer science background led him to a gig at the CIA, followed by cybersecurity advisory work before he was elected in 2014. Thus, he says colleagues often seek his advice on cybersecurity issues, and the drum he’s banging in that respect, in his own words, “rhymes with China.”

“The Chinese make it clear: they wanna be on newest edge of tech and define the future,” Hurd says. “They are, at best case, tied with us in that respect, worst case ahead. It’s truly a battle—an existential threat to our economy [and] our position in the world.” Hurd didn’t explicitly connect the dots of how China’s stature figures into a cybersecurity matter. (Other panels at SXSW revolved around China’s human-rights record in terms of monitoring its citizens and other online-related matters.)

Instead of advocating the re-funding of the OTA, however, Hurd suggested seeding the future of government. “The talent I want begins in fourth grade,” Rep. Hurd said. “We have to start preparing our kids for jobs that don’t exist today.”

Hurd didn’t use his SXSW time to propose funding or programs that begin at the primary school level, however. Instead, he advocated for college-level initiatives like the Cyber National Guard, which would pay college tuition in exchange for an equal number of years working for federal institutions like the Department of Commerce or Department of Health and Human Services.

“20 work days a year”

Hurd would also like for Cyber National Guard graduates to be loaned “20 work days a year” by their employers to return to federal departments, where they’d contribute to either digital infrastructure or national security initiatives. This regular assistance from grads, conceivably, could replicate what Takano seeks from a rejuvenated OTA. (Currently, nothing within the federal government is designated specifically as the “Cyber National Guard.” The closest we found in a cursory search was the National Guard’s existing “cyber careers” initiative.)

To this measure, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) added an intriguing point about why the federal government should assist computer science students with debt.

“China has hacked [companies like] Equifax,” Swalwell reminded the crowd. With that data, he said, “you can piece together who our intelligence community is and what their financial vulnerabilities are, then use that to compromise people.”

He further reminded the crowd that student debt is the third-largest debt sector in the United States. “We need to figure out how to provide relief as quickly as possible, both as recruiting tool and to double down on national security.”

To the point of a more robust educational pipeline for all ages, Swalwell reminded his panel’s members that Silicon Valley’s emphasis on H1B visas reads as out-of-touch by his constituents. He described a mother attending one of his regular town hall meetings and responding to the topic of those visas.

“‘[In some ways,] you’re telling me my kid in school right now can’t compete, that you’re giving up.’ That’s where we have to get this right. We need to invest in our own educational system so that every community, not just Silicon Valley, believes that we put enough into their kids’ education that they can compete. I don’t wanna see us lean too heavily on recruiting the ‘best and brightest’ and making parents in America think we’re giving up on their kid.”

“Did the GDPR destroy the world?”

Reps. Swalwell and Hurd didn’t advocate for exactly how they’d get the ball rolling on these “yay to education!” initiatives in terms of funding or Congressional process. And every government representative in the two panels confirmed that the federal government simply can’t compete with Silicon Valley’s ability to pay more money for top talent.

One of these panels included O’Reilly Media co-founder Tim O’Reilly , who said the solution, for now, is one of leveraging the government’s ability to call to service. (“Some folks are ‘post-economic’ in Silicon Valley,” he said, referring to successful engineers and data scientists who’ve become burnt out by bigger companies.) But he’s seen firsthand that city, state, and federal leaders often don’t recognize an opportunity to work with private contractors who want to build smarter digital systems.

O’Reilly offered an anecdote about a team from Code for America that had ideas for increasing the efficiency and accessibility of an online food-stamp application in California. The app suffered from being poorly designed for smartphones and having a one-hour time-out that forced applicants to refill its many pages all over again. Thus, anyone who tried to fill the application out on a library’s public terminal was often forced to start all over, since those terminals timed out after 30 minutes.

Code for America had to do the legwork to get a single municipality to sign onto the program, O’Reilly said. Only then did more cities—and later the entire state—pay attention to the system’s success. “Now we’ve built the front-end for all official California [food stamp] applications,” O’Reilly said. “The outside-in strategy gets adopted as people see that it works.”

Without a more official pipeline on city, state, or federal levels for this kind of public-private collaboration on public digital works, then, progress will likely be as slow-moving as the federal government. All attendees of both panels at least agreed that such slow movement has its benefits, particularly in terms of checks and balances.

And in terms of bipartisan agreement, Hurd—the most prominent Republican at these SXSW panels—confirmed that his party is waking up to digital-rights issues like data breaches and data ownership. He wants Congress to create and manage a “national breach standard” as opposed to juggling 27 different rules (his count) about how personal information leaks are managed. He went on to indicate that he’s changed his tune about data privacy standards in the past four years. After advocating for a stronger national standard about data privacy, he added, “Did the GDPR destroy the world? No!”

Boeing black box review begins in France, aviation world waits

March 15, 2019

By Richard Lough and Aaron Maasho

PARIS/ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Investigators in France on Friday examined the black boxes of a Boeing 737 MAX that crashed in Ethiopia as a spooked global airline industry waited to see if the cause was similar to a disaster in Indonesia months before.

Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crashed soon after take-off from Addis Ababa last weekend, killing 157 people, in the second such calamity involving Boeing’s flagship new model after a jet came down off Indonesia in October with 189 people on board.

(GRAPHIC: Ethiopian Airlines crash interactive – https://tmsnrt.rs/2ChBW5M)

Regulators have grounded the 737 MAX around the world, while the U.S. planemaker has halted next deliveries of the several thousand planes on order for a model intended to be the future industry workhorse.

Parallels between the twin disasters have frightened passengers worldwide and wiped more than $26 billion off Boeing’s share price.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has said information from the wreckage in Ethiopia plus newly-refined data about its flight path indicated some similarities.

According to two sources, investigators found a piece of a stabilizer in the wreckage of the Ethiopian jet set in an unusual position similar to that of the Lion Air plane in Indonesia. The stabilizer on the tail section pitches the nose up and down.

The FAA and Boeing declined to comment.

The Ethiopian pilot had reported internal problems and asked to return to Addis Ababa in his last communications.

Pilots worldwide were waiting anxiously for the outcome of the investigation, Paul Gichinga, former head of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association, told Reuters.

“Looking at the crash site photos, the aircraft appears to have nose-dived … It looks that they were not in control of the aircraft at impact,” he said.

“The pilot must have gotten some sort of indication that maybe the airspeed was unreliable or something and decided, instead of climbing and going to sort out the problem up there, the best thing was to return to have it sorted.”

Boeing, the world’s biggest planemaker, has said the 737 MAX is safe. It continued to produce at full speed at its factory near Seattle, but paused shipments.

France’s Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety (BEA) has possession of the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, though Ethiopia is formally leading the investigation and U.S. experts are in Paris and Addis Ababa too.

First conclusions could take several days.

FAMILIES “STUCK, EMOTIONAL”

U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday the 737 Max fleet would be grounded for weeks if not longer until a software upgrade could be tested and installed. Boeing has said it would roll out the improvement in the coming weeks.

The New York Times cited a person who reviewed air traffic communications as saying the Ethiopian captain had reported a “flight control” problem a minute after departure as the jet was well below the minimum safe height from the ground during a climb. Three minutes in, he requested permission to return as the plane accelerated to abnormal speed.

After being cleared by the control room to turn back, the jet climbed to an unusually high altitude and disappeared from the radar over a restricted military zone, the person cited by the newspaper added. Contact with air controllers was lost five minutes after take-off, it said.

In Ethiopia, grieving relatives have been visiting the charred and debris-strewn field where the jet came down to pay last respects. Only fragments remain, meaning it may take weeks or months to identify all the victims who came from 35 nations.

Some families stormed out of a meeting with Ethiopian Airlines on Thursday complaining about a lack of information.

Israeli national Ilan Matsliah flew to Ethiopia hours after confirming his older brother was a passenger, thinking it would not take beyond 24 hours to find any remains for burial in accordance with Jewish tradition.

“More than 24 hours is a problem for us. But I have been here for more than 96 hours,” the 46-year old told Reuters.

“We are now stuck in the same place, the same as Monday. We are very emotional.”

With heightened global scrutiny, the head of Indonesia’s transport safety committee said a report into the Lion Air crash would be speeded up so it could be released in July to August, months earlier than originally expected.

A software fix for the 737 MAX that Boeing has been working on since the Lion Air crash will take months to complete, the FAA said on Wednesday.

A November preliminary report, before the retrieval of the cockpit voice recorder, focused on maintenance and training and the response of a Boeing anti-stall system to a recently replaced sensor, but gave no reason for the crash.

(GRAPHIC: Boeing’s struggles – https://bit.ly/2TLi9FP)

(Reporting by Richard Lough, Tim Hepher in Paris; Duncan Miriri and Aaron Masho in Addis Ababa; Omar Mohammed and Maggie Fick in Nairobi; David Shephardson in Washington; Rishika Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Jamie Freed in Singapore; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by)

Zuckerberg Wants Facebook to Build a Mind-Reading Machine

 

Source:WIRED

For those of us who worry that Facebook may have serious boundary issues when it comes to the personal information of its users, Mark Zuckerberg’s recent comments at Harvard should get the heart racing.

Zuckerberg dropped by the university last month ostensibly as part of a year of conversations with experts about the role of technology in society, “the opportunities, the challenges, the hopes, and the anxieties.” His nearly two-hour interview with Harvard law school professor Jonathan Zittrain in front of Facebook cameras and a classroom of students centered on the company’s unprecedented position as a town square for perhaps 2 billion people. To hear the young CEO tell it, Facebook was taking shots from all sides—either it was indifferent to the ethnic hatred festering on its platforms or it was a heavy-handed censor deciding whether an idea was allowed to be expressed.

Zuckerberg confessed that he hadn’t sought out such an awesome responsibility. No one should, he said. “If I was a different person, what would I want the CEO of the company to be able to do?” he asked himself. “I would not want so many decisions about content to be concentrated with any individual.”

Instead, Facebook will establish its own Supreme Court, he told Zittrain, an outside panel entrusted to settle thorny questions about what appears on the platform. “I will not be able to make a decision that overturns what they say,” he promised, “which I think is good.”

All was going to plan. Zuckerberg had displayed a welcome humility about himself and his company. And then he described what really excited him about the future—and the familiar Silicon Valley hubris had returned. There was this promising new technology, he explained, a brain-computer interface, which Facebook has been researching.

The idea is to allow people to use their thoughts to navigate intuitively through augmented reality—the neuro-driven version of the world recently described by Kevin Kelly in these pages. No typing—no speaking, even—to distract you or slow you down as you interact with digital additions to the landscape: driving instructions superimposed over the freeway, short biographies floating next to attendees of a conference, 3D models of furniture you can move around your apartment.

The Harvard audience was a little taken aback by the conversation’s turn, and Zittrain made a law-professor joke about the constitutional right to remain silent in light of a technology that allows eavesdropping on thoughts. “Fifth amendment implications are staggering,” he said to laughter. Even this gentle pushback was met with the tried-and-true defense of big tech companies when criticized for trampling users’ privacy—users’ consent. “Presumably,” Zuckerberg said, “this would be something that someone would choose to use as a product.”

In short, he would not be diverted from his self-assigned mission to connect the people of the world for fun and profit. Not by the dystopian image of brain-probing police officers. Not by an extended apology tour. “I don’t know how we got onto that,” he said jovially. “But I think a little bit on future tech and research is interesting, too.”

Of course, Facebook already follows you around as you make your way through the world via the GPS in the smartphone in your pocket, and, likewise, follows you across the internet via code implanted in your browser. Would we really let Facebook inside those old noggins of ours just so we can order a pizza faster and with more toppings? Zuckerberg clearly is counting on it.

To be fair, Facebook doesn’t plan to actually enter our brains. For one thing, a surgical implant, Zuckerberg told Zittrain, wouldn’t scale well: “If you’re actually trying to build things that everyone is going to use, you’re going to want to focus on the noninvasive things.”

The technology that Zuckerberg described is a shower-cap-looking device that surrounds a brain and discovers connections between particular thoughts and particular blood flows or brain activity, presumably to assist the glasses or headsets manufactured by Oculus VR, which is part of Facebook. Already, Zuckerberg said, researchers can distinguish when a person is thinking of a giraffe or an elephant based on neural activity. Typing with your mind would work off of the same principles.

As with so many of Facebook’s innovations, Zuckerberg doesn’t see how brain-computer interface breaches an individual’s integrity, what Louis Brandeis famously defined as “the right to be left alone” in one’s thoughts, but instead sees a technology that empowers the individual. “The way that our phones work today, and all computing systems, organized around apps and tasks is fundamentally not how our brains work and how we approach the world,” he told Zittrain. “That’s one of the reasons why I’m just very excited longer term about especially things like augmented reality, because it’ll give us a platform that I think actually is how we think about stuff.”

Kelly, in his essay about AR, likewise sees a world that makes more sense when a “smart” version rests atop the quotidian one. “Watches will detect chairs,” he writes of this mirrorworld, “chairs will detect spreadsheets; glasses will detect watches, even under a sleeve; tablets will see the inside of a turbine; turbines will see workers around them.” Suddenly our environment, natural and artificial, will operate as an integrated whole. Except for humans with their bottled up thoughts and desires. Until, that is, they install BCI-enhanced glasses.

Zuckerberg explained the potential benefits of the technology this way when he announced Facebook’s research in 2017: “Our brains produce enough data to stream 4 HD movies every second. The problem is that the best way we have to get information out into the world—speech—can only transmit about the same amount of data as a 1980s modem. We’re working on a system that will let you type straight from your brain about 5x faster than you can type on your phone today. Eventually, we want to turn it into a wearable technology that can be manufactured at scale. Even a simple yes/no ‘brain click’ would help make things like augmented reality feel much more natural.”

Zuckerberg likes to quote Steve Jobs’ description of computers as “bicycles for the mind.” I can imagine him thinking, “What’s wrong with helping us pedal a little faster?”

And while I reflexively gag at Zuckerberg’s thinking, that isn’t meant to discount its potential to do great things or to think that holding it off will be easy or necessarily desirable. But at a minimum, we should demand a pause to ask hard questions about such barrier-breaking technologies—each quietly in our own heads, I should hasten to add, and then later as a society.

We need to pump the brakes on Silicon Valley, at least temporarily. For, if the Zuckerberg reflection tour has revealed anything, it is that even as he wrestles with the harms Facebook has wrought, he is busy dreaming up new ones.

U.S. prosecutors probing Facebook’s data deals: NYT

March 13, 2019

(Reuters) – U.S. prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into data deals Facebook Inc struck with some of the world’s largest technology companies, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

A grand jury in New York has subpoenaed records from at least two prominent makers of smartphones and other devices, the paper reported without naming them, citing two people familiar with the requests.

The two companies are among more than 150, including Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp, that have entered into partnerships with Facebook for access to the personal information of hundreds of millions of its users, according to the report.

(Reporting by Ismail Shakil in Bengaluru; Editing by Richard Chang)

Democrats Pass Bill Requiring President Trump to Disclose His Tax Returns

House Democrats pass bill requiring US presidents to disclose their tax returns

House Democrats passed legislation on Friday that will force President Trump to disclose his personal tax returns.

The tax return disclosure requirement was included in House Democrats’ wide-ranging election reform bill, known as H.R.1, which passed on a vote of 234-193.

Thehill.com reports: Under the legislation, presidents, vice presidents and major-party nominees for those positions would be required to disclose 10 years of tax returns to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). That agency would then make the returns publicly available.

If a candidate or office-holder fails to disclose their returns, the FEC chairman would send a request to the Treasury secretary to obtain copies of the documents.

An amendment was added to the bill this week so that under the legislation, office-holders and candidates would be required to disclose both their personal and business tax returns.

The tax return provisions are based on legislation offered by Reps. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.).

Pascrell said Friday that he and Eshoo “believe that we need to write it into the record that it is demanded of everybody who runs for the presidency.”

Democrats included the tax return provisions in H.R. 1 to highlight the fact that Trump is the first president in decades to refuse to voluntarily release his tax documents. Trump has said he won’t release his returns while under audit, but the IRS has said that audits don’t prevent people from disclosing their own tax information.

The vote also comes as House Democrats appear to be moving toward requesting Trump’s tax returns from Treasury. Democrats want to review Trump’s returns to learn about any potential conflicts of interest, especially any entanglements with foreign governments.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) has the authority under statute to request tax returns from the Treasury Department. The Ways and Means Committee could then review the returns privately and vote to send a report to the House that could make some or all of the information in the returns public.

Neal has not given a timeline for when he’ll request Trump’s tax returns, but others have predicted that it will be soon.

Pascrell earlier this week predicted that Neal would make the request within the next couple of weeks. When asked Friday if Neal has given him a timetable, Pascrell said Neal hasn’t made a final decision.

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