Tag Archives: ethics

Expanding Surveillance State

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Want a new phone in the People’s Republic of China? You have to give up an image of your face to the government.

The requirement, which came into effect Sunday, is aimed at minimizing telephone fraud and preventing the reselling and illegal transfer of mobile phone cards, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said in a notice in September.

Right. That’s believable.  Never mind that

…facial recognition becomes more and more prevalent in [the PRC], with authorities applying artificial intelligence to sift through reams of data collected in a bid to boost the economy and centralize oversight of the population.

These are the guys our Big Tech is so anxious to do business with—especially in facial recognition and artificial intelligence technology development.

Score One for Facebook

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Facebook had a post up, recently, that the government of Singapore didn’t like and of which that government disputed the truthfulness.

As a result, By Order Of the Singapore government, Facebook added a notice—a “label”—to the post:

Facebook is legally required to tell you that the Singapore government says this post has false information.

For a wonder, Facebook didn’t take the post down, nor did it make any effort to “correct” its content.  Instead, it posted the notice, letting readers decide for themselves…whether they should take seriously the post or the notice required by a mendacious government.

Of course, I am assuming a motive for Facebook’s action.

Smart Move

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Although, had it been me, I would have ignored it, not dignifying the thing with a response.

“It” is House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler’s (D, NY) pro forma invitation to President Donald Trump to send along his lawyer to be present at the Nadler Impeachment Inquisition, so long as Trump responded by Nadler’s deadline with the lawyer’s name and impeachment areas of interest.

The smart move was Trump’s refusal to accede to Nadler’s demand.

Note, too, that Nadler is beginning his hearings even before the House Intelligence Committee has prepared its report on its just concluded hearings and sent it along to Nadler.  Nadler will be starting his inquisition before he and his committee even know (at least officially) what the Intel Committee’s findings are.

The refusal letter included this in part of its explanation of Trump’s decision:

As for the hearing scheduled for December 4, we cannot fairly be expected to participate in a hearing while the witnesses are yet to be named and while it remains unclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process through additional hearings[.]

[U]nclear whether the Judiciary Committee will afford the president a fair process.  Pat Cipollone, White House Counsel and author of the letter, is being generous.  It’s actually crystalline that there is no fair process to be had in the Judiciary Committee proceeding.  This is what House Resolution 660, passed on strictly partisan lines by the House Progressive-Democrats, says:

SEC. 4. IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY PROCEDURES IN THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY.
(c)(1) The ranking minority member of the Committee on the Judiciary is authorized, with the concurrence of the chair of the Committee on the Judiciary, to require, as deemed necessary to the investigation—
(A) by subpoena or otherwise—
(i) the attendance and testimony of any person (including at a taking of a deposition); and
(ii) the production of books, records, correspondence, memoranda, papers, and documents; and
(B) by interrogatory, the furnishing of information.

Only with the permission of the Committee chairman can any Republican member of the Committee do anything. Of course, the Rules go on to say that the Chairman’s decision can be appealed to the committee as a whole—to the Progressive-Democrat majority membership. There’s nothing in this Progressive-Democrat-passed set of rules that even pretend to be a fair process.

There’s nothing going on in the House that warrants White House participation. There is a great deal going on in the House that warrants strong voter participation in the upcoming elections. We are, indeed, in a battle for the soul—and the safety—of our nation. The Progressive-Democratic Party is just too desperate to undo our choice in 2016 and to prevent us from exercising our choice in 2020.

The Left and Judging

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President Donald Trump has nominated Sarah Pitlyk for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, and the Senate is about to take up her nomination for the confirmation process.

The American Bar Association thinks highly of Pitlyk’s great intelligence, high character, and experience researching and writing briefs, but it says she’s not qualified to be a judge.  After all, this textualist judge nominee

worked for the Thomas More Society, a nonprofit organization, on cases involving contract, employment and tax disputes, as well as on religious liberty and pro-life matters.

The evil, conservative Thomas More Society. And Pitlyk worked those religious liberty and pro-life cases that the Left hates so much.

It’s telling when the ABA says it does not want great intelligence, high character, and experience on the bench.

Look for a strictly party line vote to pass her nomination out of committee with a favorable recommendation and an equally party line confirmation vote.  Because the Progressive-Democrats in the Senate also do not want great intelligence, high character, and experience on the bench. Smart judges, morally strong judges, experienced judges are in the way of their agenda.

Some Immigrants

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Mary Anne Marsh is a firm believer in the power of immigration into the US, and she’s right. However, the three examples she threw up to illustrate her position merely serve to deprecate it.

For background, she opened her op-ed with this:

[W]e are sorely tested by those who serve not the idea of America but an individual who acts like a tyrannical monarch and puts the wishes of Russian President Vladimir Putin before the best interests of this country.

Fortunately, though, that man no longer is in office. Ex-President Barack Obama (D) openly, nakedly promised “Vladimir” more flexibility once he—Obama—no longer had to worry about pesky, impertinent clingers-to-religion-and-gun American voters.

Then she named her three canonical immigrants: ex-Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, NSC staffer LtCol Alexander Vindman, and ex-NSC staffer Fiona Hill.  Marsh, while lionizing these three, chose to elide certain other pertinent information about them.

Yovanovitch testified under oath, in response to Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff’s (D, CA) readout of a Trumpian tweet and question about it, that she found the tweet “intimidating.” The tweet? It was nothing more than a bluntly put performance review. Yovanovitch’s confession to being frightened by rude words sends a dangerous, emboldening signal to our enemies that we can be pushed around easily.

Vindman testified to concern about a telecon between President Donald Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, a telecon about which both Zelenskiy and his Foreign Minister have averred not only no concerns but positively that the telecon was a good and friendly one. Marsh chose to omit from her paean to Vindman that he had been reprimanded for—during a joint exercise with Putin’s Russia, yet—yocking it up with his Russian exercise counterparts about how foolish the US was and is.

Marsh quoted from Hill’s testimony:

Some of you on this committee appear to believe that Russia and its security services did not conduct a campaign against our country—and that perhaps, somehow, for some reason, Ukraine did.  This is a fictional narrative….

The only fiction here, as was exposed during Republican questioning, was the bit about some on the committee believing Russia “did not conduct a campaign against our country.”  Examples were produced, and under oath Hill acknowledged their accuracy, of the Republicans on the committee having repeatedly sounded the alarm over Russian interference in our 2016 elections—especially with the complicity of the Democratic National Committee—and of their continued attempts to interfere with our 2018 and 2020 elections.

Hill also was exposed for her false dichotomy in her implication that because Russia had and was interfering, Ukraine must not be. A woman as intelligent and accomplished as Hill surely knew her dichotomy was false when she presented it, and her…error…was exposed, also, during Republican questioning.

The value of immigration to our great nation is vast, and it includes those who’ve fought in our defense from our beginnings down through today, serve in our Congress, and less glamorously “merely” work in our business enterprises, charity organizations, and governments at all levels.  Marsh’s three examples do not match these. At all.

Marsh’s keyboard is clacking. She might want to see to that.