Tag Archives: ethics

An Ego Move

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…by a flake.  Senator Jeff Flake (D R, AZ) says he’s going to block any and all judicial nominees until he gets his way.

Myself and a number of senators, at least a few of us, will stand up and say let’s not move any more judges until we get a vote, for example, on tariffs[.]

This is just another ego move by a flake Senator.  Were Jeff Flake serious about this, he would have moved before he rendered himself a lame duck Senator; there were plenty of questions on which he could have done this sort of thing besides tariffs.  He chose to wait, though, until there would be no consequences for his ego trip.

Now he’s ready to destroy the judiciary, to let it get populated by a later administration with activist judges and Justices for whom the law and the Constitution are mere suggestions, to be disregarded when they become inconvenient to those activists’ personal agendas.

Ransomware and Government Entities

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The Wall Street Journal, in an article about ransomware being used to hack city (and other) computer systems, asked the question Should Cities Pay?

Not only no, cities (and others) should not pay, but no2.

Aside from paying the ransom being an act of cowardice, it aids and abets the criminals—which is amoral, if not yet a felony.

Sure, it costs more in the moment to refuse and rebuild, but what costs are saved by not telling the hacker world that the city will gladly pay the ransom and so be hacked repeatedly?  What’s the cost to other, similarly situated, cities and towns (and public libraries) when one gladly aids and abets?

What’s the excuse, today, with ransomware so well known, for cities not hardening their systems against this hack (and other hacks) before the hack occurs?

Privacy!?

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You ain’t got no privacy.  You don’t need any stinking privacy!

Using facial recognition software in combination with image storage houses like drivers license databases can be highly useful in tracking down criminal suspects.

But the combination can be highly dangerous, too, as this attitude by Joseph Michael, Washington County Deputy State’s Attorney in Maryland, demonstrates:

the expectation of privacy ends when you sit down and smile at the government desk.

Pinellas County (FL) Sheriff Bob Gualtieri argued

This is no different than if I laid out all those photos in front of me…and said “No, that doesn’t look like him, that doesn’t look like him, here we go, that’s him[.]”  The only thing is I am doing it in a different way, a more automated way, a more efficient way.

Sometimes that faster, more automated—human-removed—way is less efficient, though, as it removes thought and care and consideration of individual liberty from the process, favoring as it does getting a conviction over getting a just outcome.

Michael’s attitude illustrates the conundrum.  His attitude, the attitude of a Government Man, is precisely why we have a Bill of Rights in our Constitution.  His attitude is just an extension of “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you should let Government snoop if it wants to.”  Folks like Gualtieri can be better trained.  Folks like Michael are unfit for office in a free country.

Reform at the FBI?

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FBI Director Christopher Wray said he takes the DoJ IG report castigating the FBI’s performance on the Clinton email scandal seriously.

He [Wray] ordered training for senior executives on the report’s lessons….

Really? These guys are senior executives–they already knew what they were doing, and they knew at the time that what they were doing was wrong. They should be fired for cause.

So far, it looks like Wray is just engaged in the emptiness of sound and fury.

Cynical Union

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Recall President Donald Trump’s Executive Order limiting the amount of time public union employees can spend doing union business during their work day.

The American Federation of Government Employees has demurred and gone into court to seek an injunction blocking enforcement of the EO.  AFGE General Counsel David Borer insisted

We will not allow this or any other administration to trample on the Constitutional rights of federal workers[.]

This cynical claim is based on Borer’s insistence that his members’ freedom of association right is violated by the EO.

This, of course, is nonsense.

There is no constitutional violation here. No association right is violated by requiring union member employees of a government institution to do the work of the institution when they’re on institution time and the taxpayer payroll.  Union members remain free to associate with a union or with each other in a union.  They remain free to conduct union business.  There is no constitutional obligation, though, for taxpayers to pay anyone for associating or for doing non-work related tasks.

This is a case that should result in a declaratory judgment that the law—the supreme Law in this case—is on the side of the government.  Alternatively, it should be tossed on its face and Borer and such of his staff as are participating in bringing this case, as well as the AFGE, strongly sanctioned for wasting the court’s time with such a blatantly frivolous case.