Kip, Bruce,

I got pulled away before I got to thank both of you for the spirited discussion.

And thanks to Bev to setting it up.

Beyond the fact that we’re ignoring the far more real emergency, climate change.

There’s no two sides here, thanks. Pistole used an FBI created plot as his reason to roll out new surveillance. That’s on the record, public, uncontested. It’s similar to the way the Admin ALWAYS uses the alleged assassination attempt on the Saudi Ambassador–the location and weapon for which (and therefore the outlines of the terrorist charges) were chosen by the government–in their efforts to drum up efforts against Iran.

There is only a question of WHY he did that. You tell me the threat is real, goes back years. OK. So the question I’m trying to ask–because the facts are not in dispute here–is why Pistole would use an FBI created plot RATHER THAN refer to the real dangers going back years. And so I’m wondering if it’s because of something about CONGRESS, or about the PUBLIC, in these new technologies?

In short, WHO needs to have a convenient, recent scary face–rather than a reference to classified evidence–to be convinced these new technologies are needed? Congress? Or the public?

So when pitching Congress on a new need to surveil, did you feel restricted by classification of other plots and therefore pick a convenient (if inapt) face?

I guess part of what I’m trying to understand is whether these things are being sold to Congress or the public in a certain way because of a perceived need to scare someone.

We know for a fact, for example, that the govt used the plots Abu Zubaydah “revealed” under torture for years, even though there were surely real plots that resembled the ones he “revealed” in the midterm. Why?

Isn’t part of the problem that our country treats Muslim terrorists very differently from white terrorists? Since we treat them so differently (maybe not at TSA, but certainly from a prosecutorial standpoint–FBI even brags about how much longer the sentences are for foreign terrorists), we prevent ourselves from assessing what makes someone embrace radical violence, regardless of the particular brand?

We won’t be able to afford that, though. So it won’t take another generation bc we’ll go broke first.

Failing to educate the next generation of engineers bc we had to pay for the latest Mike Chertoff technology is not sustainable even one more generation.

That’s impossible. Pistole said, “look at [I forget the name of the young Muslim arrested in a FBI-created sting.” We need to patrol mass transportation.

You may be saying, “there has been evidence people wanted to attack mass transport for years.” But that doesn’t explain why Pistole specifically cited an FBI-created sting, rather than that evidence (or even the Zazi plot) as justification to Congress.

So perhaps my question is better framed, what push is there to tie specific surveillance to specific attacks, even if the FBI created the plot laid out in the alleged attack? And is it done for Congress, or the public?

I noted you didn’t answer my question about the FBI stings using things they rolled out as TSA targets a few weeks later. Shall I assume that’s classified then? Which would suggest there’s something there.

It is crystal clear that FBI chose to “sting” a target w/a Metro attack just weeks before Pistole rolled out the effort to do random searches on public transport.

Kip

I fly out of GRR now–so a small airport, with lots of recognizable frequent fliers.

We recently got backscatters (or maybe got forced to use them because of the latest UndieBomb Saudi plot). It seemed like it took 3X the number of people to train people to use the machine, to get everything including boarding pass out of the pocket, to watch the bags piling up on the other side, and the communicate the clean scan. I feel like this was because it’s a small airport (that is, one person had to do the “training” for just one line). But I wonder–is this normal in the roll-out of backscatters? Is it a possible response to TSA’s discovery of problems with the backscatter scans?

What is that career path?

Bruce

I had read your earlier debate with Kip.

I’m wondering–in addition to the liquids explosive, what else did you learn in the book. Anything you’d say differently than you did in your earlier debate?

And did Kip’s explanation about the liquid explosives convince you?

Kip

I haven’t had a chance to read you book yet. But one thing I’ve seen is the FBI use an attack in a sting–such as an attack on the Metro–and then use that sting as an excuse to have TSA do random searches on Metro and other subways.

This was under Pistole, not you. BUt it really seemed to be Pistole’s former agency setting up stings so as to create teh need to police a resource.

What was the relationship between FBI and TSA–and do you have any idae whether it has changed under Pistole?

Thanks, that’s tremendously helpful.

WRT a comparison between us and Europe–how did the EU’s big investment in less developed areas compare (my husband is Irish and we always joke about the nice new freeways in Donegal, for example, but those weren’t precisely the freeways that really needed to get built.

In other words, Ireland did benefit from a ton of investment, thanks to the EU. Would it have worked if they hadn’t gotten so financialized? Or was something else necessary?

OK, now that I see I’m in good company in my opinion of their work, one thing their book at least DID get me thinking about is all the international “extraction” they conveniently ignore (their focus on Argentina, for example, doesn’t talk about Argentina’s ties to England).

You address how international relationships have a role in inequality most interestingly when you talk about what happened in the 1990s and 2000s, after the US had no one else to exploit and then turned inward to homeowners (that’s not a fair summary of your argument–sorry–I don’t have the book in front of me).

But my impression is that, because your data is necessarily national, you don’t go further than that to talk about inequality internationally (again, I’ve just read half the book so far). Is that all right?

Ah, sorry, I should have checked for that first.

Yeah, I guess the slightly surprising part (and one that I think presents the most trouble for Acemoglu and Robinson’s book–if their selective reading of history already didn’t do so) is in the democracies being slightly more unequal than some other forms of government. Americans like to think our democracy ensures capitalism works for all, but it doesn’t work out that way.

Jamie, Max, welcome

I’m about halfway through this book (skipping the math bits), and at the same time I’m listening to “How Nations Fail.” I find the latter to be really really historically sloppy, with a fetish on the nation-state that is both (at times) anachronistic and misleading.

I guess you can imagine that it’s an interesting comparison.

With that in mind, can you address, first, the data you got showing that non-socialist democracies actually are slightly more unequal than, say, Arab Republics and social democracies?

And while I realize you’re measuring inequality and they’re measuring growth, can you talk about how to resolve these books (I also realize you cite their earlier, more academic work).

Thanks Tim–As I said, I thought your book was very effective in the way it frames the current FBI through the past. I hope it is very successful.

Thanks for hosting, Mike.

And thanks for another great salon, Bev!

Doesn’t that go to the question of a tension bet national security and civil liberties?

We’ve gutted civil liberties so we can find every one of those aspirational terrorists, but that’s not making us safer.

Mueller just answered “no” in the last few weeks to explicit questions from congress about 1) whether he needed more funding for financial crimes and 2) whether he needed a law extending the Statute of Limitation on the financial fraud crimes.

Or maybe Holder–I’ll have to check. In any case, those SOLs are just about to expire so the banksters have gone free.