“Journalists Shouldn’t Have To Face That Risk”

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The “risk” that Judith Miller, of the Manhattan Institute, faced was going to jail (temporarily realized for all of three months as she refused to give up the source who’d illegally passed her national security information. Miller wants a shield law that would place journalists above the law.

This is typical—demonstrative—of the intrinsically arrogant and dishonest “industry” of which she is a part.

By Miller’s own admission, she had been given a leak of national-security information. This was an obvious illegal transferal, and everywhere outside the journalism guild, receiving stolen property like this “leak” was would itself be a crime.

Further to Miller’s dishonesty, she chose to conflate her subpoena with the recent badly done subpoenas for New York Time news writers as though badly done subpoenas justify tossing correctly done ones like the one that sent her to jail for three months.

Further to Miller’s dishonesty, she noted that she was released only when her contempt of court was cured by her source giving her permission to reveal him. No permission was necessary and no permission is necessary today: journalists must be required to give up their sources of illegally transferred information whether or not they choose to publish those stolen goods.

Shield law: she already has one, as she noted:

…Justice Department guidelines call for issuing subpoenas to journalists only as a last resort and after a thorough investigation fails to determine the source of the leak….

Along with our court system, which deals appropriately with subpoenas to journalists that do not meet those guidelines, just as the court did with those NYT subpoenas.

There is no right of confidentiality for journalist-source relationships, as there is for lawyer-client or doctor-patient, nor should there be. Even with those latter two relationships, lawyers and doctors are required to notify law enforcement or other appropriate authority of the fact of an impending crime if not of which of their clients or patients may be the impending criminal.

Finally, Miller doesn’t even know what national security-related information is:

National security wasn’t compromised by the Qatari plane stories….

Of course it was. The President’s change of movement plans in response to a perceived security threat, as that NYT article itself acknowledged, certainly was national security related, compromising as it did the President’s movement changes, the fact that our government knew about a threat in advance of its realization, and compromised that threat’s goal before they could attempt their move and be intercepted and arrested.

Constitutionally protected newsgathering is vital to a democracy.

Certainly. But there is no constitutional protection for receiving stolen goods. Neither is that protection necessary for effective newsgathering.

In one respect, though, Miller is right about facing the risk of jail. Jail for concealing the sources of illegally transmitted information should be a certainty. Even if the source is later identified. The illegal reception crime would still exist and still want jail in response.

Of Course They’re Eager

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President Donald Trump (R) says Iran is anxious to negotiate regarding the US-Iran conflict.

We’ve pretty much destroyed their military. They want to meet, and we’re meeting.

Of course Iran is. Any time spent “negotiating” is time for Iran to rest, refit, and recoup from its losses. he month Trump gave them earlier, or a week, or even just a day or two is highly beneficial for the terrorists.

It’s time to put an end to the Iranian charade. Let the bombings resume, much harder than before, add in cyber attacks, and give safe passage to Iranian decision makers when they decide to talk seriously—but keep the attacks going full bore while the talks occur until they reach a successful for us conclusion.

Iran otherwise is simply stalling and “negotiating” in bad faith.

Wrong Answer

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The subheadline contains the wrong answer, for those astute enough to see it, especially those more so than this op-ed‘s opinion writer, Judd Rosenblatt, who is the CEO of AE Studio and president of the AI Alignment Foundation:

The key is “alignment,” which improves capability while cordoning off dangerous knowledge.

Rosenblatt expanded on that not too much later in his piece:

…build the world’s most capable open-weight model in America, with the dangerous capabilities stripped out before release

Because nothing says limiting innovation and truncating freedom like censoring knowledge and capability. Never mind that that will limit and truncate only American innovation and knowledge; it’ll have no effect on our enemies.

He went on:

Using GRAM [Gradient-Routed Auxiliary Modules] to train language models, we found that knowledge about bioweapons, offensive cyber, and nuclear capabilities, and even antisemitism, could be routed into compartments, then removed. The released model behaved as if it never learned that information.
…
What matters is a safety standard that causes a dangerous capability to stay absent under adversarial testing.

The bioweapons, offensive cyber, and nuclear capabilities bits are seemingly obvious targets for censorship, but that knowledge is too easily compiled via a variety of sources, including other AI models that aren’t restricted. The real kicker, though, is that last: who gets to define what is a dangerous capability? And who sets the threshold between random data to information to knowledge? Will these Know Better definers decide that identifying or not defining hate speech (whatever that is) is a dangerous capability and the thresholds for that? Providing arguments for, or against, human involvement in global warming? Men in girls’ sports and bath- and locker rooms? Defining “woman?” Criticizing government? This list is endless.

The blatant…foolishness…of Rosenblatt’s idea makes me wonder about trolls and moles.

DSA and Government Structure

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The Wall Street Journal editors are rightly worried about the ascendancy of the Democratic Socialists of America. The center of their concern rests on DSA intent to restructure our government:

…replace the President and Supreme Court with an executive and judiciary chosen by and subordinate to Congress.

Sure. Parliament, with its largely figurehead House of Lords, and Parliamentary Superiority vis-a-vis the British courts has worked so well for the UK.

Similarly, the Duma and the National People’s Congress have done so much for the people of Russia and the PRC.

The DSA isn’t about “radical change” for the sake of us average Americans; it’s about a naked grab for party political power–which is to say a naked grab for personal power for those persons atop the DSA. That the bulk of the Progressive-Democratic Party politicians are silent or openly supportive of DSA goals shows how thoroughly Party has chosen to absorb the DSA into its core (or, the other side of that coin: how thoroughly the DSA has coopted Party). The only Party members who are beginning to object to the DSA are on Party’s far right–that fringe group who are Establishment Democrats.

The contest for power within Party is one that legacy Party politicians—those Establishment Democrats—think they can win. They’re likely wrong on that. Keep in mind, in this intraparty power struggle the DSA leadership has made no bones about their candidates running on the Progressive-Democratic Party ticket. It’s a ballot line, and nothing more. DSA plans to supplant the Progressive-Democratic Party, whether by absorption or by replacement.

Denying Visas

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When a person, whether private or a government official, applies for a visa to come into the United States, the fact of his application clearly means he has not entered our nation; he’s still outside of it.

That brings up Chief Judge (DC District) James Boasberg’s ruling regarding the administration’s denial of visas to foreign officials and other foreign nationals considered responsible for or complicit in suppressing American free speech.

Boasberg ruled that the administration’s reason constituted viewpoint discrimination and so was a First Amendment violation of the applicants’ free speech rights. He dressed up his opinion with this:

The policy [to deny visas to those considered responsible for or complicit in suppressing American free speech], at its core, does not burden all speech about platforms, all research into content moderation, or all advocacy about online harms. It presses its enforcement thumb against one side of the scale: the view that platforms should do more to moderate content, label disinformation, restrict abuse, share data with researchers, or take responsibility for the harms their systems amplify.

The problem with Boasberg’s position is that those folks, being outside our nation, have no US constitutional (or any statutory) rights whatsoever. His argument is, thus, nothing more than a cynically offered non sequitur.

Boasberg’s rationalization is all too typical of the hysterically anti-Trump bias in his rulings.