Winds Of Change
February 21, 2011
This image has been posted with express written permission. This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Egypt’s Unborn Revolution: While a political transformation continues, an economic one has yet to begin
February 21, 2011
Many Westerners, watching the revolution in Egypt, are wondering whether the outcome will be true democracy. Less often asked but equally important is whether Egypt can reform its economy in ways that are necessary for democracy to thrive. As history has demonstrated in such places as Russia under Putin, Chile under Allende, and Iran under the mullahs, nations can be democracies at least in a technical sense—that is, they have elected leaders—but a democracy without a free economy has no future.
Begin with the political question: what kind of government will emerge in Egypt? A system of legitimate political representation could be reached if the military, which is currently in charge, understands the requirements of democracy and the rule of law. It is too early to guess if these officers are ready to talk with the opposition representatives and to understand the meaning of pluralist democracy. The odds are uncertain: the military seems to be seeking another strongman, more or less elected by the people, rather than a truly open society; the revolution’s leaders demand a pluralistic constitution similar to what Egypt had before the 1952 revolution.
It’s important to remember that before nationalism and socialism took over the Arab world, most of its nations had constitutions, political parties, a free press, and independent universities. Until the 1950s, the Arab world was a fairly free society, with a decent rule of law and a promising economy. This was disrupted by conflicts with Israel and various wars of decolonization, as Arab militaries took over in the name of socialism and nationalism in all former British and French colonies in the Arab world. New Arab leaders emerged—Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser was the most charismatic—who denounced the local (and often non-Arab) bourgeoisie as traitors, rejected Western values, and turned to the Soviet Union for support. So Egypt’s impoverishment, authoritarian regime, nationalized economy, and expulsion of non-Arab minorities were rooted, not in the ancient past or in Islamic tradition, but in the contemporary ideologies of nationalism and socialism, which Nasser helped import in the 1950s. This history being quite recent, many Egyptians remember a time when their society was freer. If a pluralistic constitution were revived in Egypt, the old political organizations—like the center-right Wafd—would probably reemerge, just as old political parties were reborn in Central Europe after the 1989 post-Soviet revolution.
Among these traditional parties, the Muslim Brotherhood would revive as well. It has always been a minority party and most probably would remain one, as Egypt is a rather secular nation. The Brotherhood played no significant role in the current revolution, which was led by educated and Westernized young leaders (many of them students at the American University in Cairo). The influence of the Muslim Brotherhood will depend on the moderate secular parties’ capacity to get organized and build a coalition.
The political revolution, then, is still incomplete, but the second necessary revolution—an economic one—has not even begun. This second revolution would open up the Arab economies in order to deliver growth and jobs to the now disgruntled youth. Such a revolution, from a statist economy to a free-market society, would not be easily achieved; for one thing, it would interfere with the self-interests of the military, the government bureaucracy, and ruling families all over the Arab world…
Hiding Details of Dubious Deal, U.S. Invokes National Security. Why? Computer Nerd
February 21, 2011
For eight years, government officials turned to Dennis Montgomery, a California computer programmer, for eye-popping technology that he said could catch terrorists. Now, federal officials want nothing to do with him and are going to extraordinary lengths to ensure that his dealings with Washington stay secret.
The Justice Department, which in the last few months has gotten protective orders from two federal judges keeping details of the technology out of court, says it is guarding state secrets that would threaten national security if disclosed. But others involved in the case say that what the government is trying to avoid is public embarrassment over evidence that Mr. Montgomery bamboozled federal officials.
A onetime biomedical technician with a penchant for gambling, Mr. Montgomery is at the center of a tale that features terrorism scares, secret White House briefings, backing from prominent Republicans, backdoor deal-making and fantastic-sounding computer technology.
Interviews with more than two dozen current and former officials and business associates and a review of documents show that Mr. Montgomery and his associates received more than $20 million in government contracts by claiming that software he had developed could help stop Al Qaeda’s next attack on the United States. But the technology appears to have been a hoax, and a series of government agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agencyand the Air Force, repeatedly missed the warning signs, the records and interviews show.
Mr. Montgomery’s former lawyer, Michael Flynn — who now describes Mr. Montgomery as a “con man” — says he believes that the administration has been shutting off scrutiny of Mr. Montgomery’s business for fear of revealing that the government has been duped.
“The Justice Department is trying to cover this up,” Mr. Flynn said. “If this unravels, all of the evidence, all of the phony terror alerts and all the embarrassment comes up publicly, too. The government knew this technology was bogus, but these guys got paid millions for it.”
Justice Department officials declined to discuss the government’s dealings with Mr. Montgomery, 57, who is in bankruptcy and living outside Palm Springs, Calif. Mr. Montgomery is about to go on trial in Las Vegas on unrelated charges of trying to pass $1.8 million in bad checks at casinos, but he has not been charged with wrongdoing in the federal contracts, nor has the government tried to get back any of the money it paid. He and his current lawyer declined to comment.
The software he patented — which he claimed, among other things, could find terrorist plots hidden in broadcasts of the Arab network Al Jazeera; identify terrorists from Predator drone videos; and detect noise from hostile submarines — prompted an international false alarm that led President George W. Bush to order airliners to turn around over the Atlantic Ocean in 2003.
The software led to dead ends in connection with a 2006 terrorism plot in Britain. And they were used by counterterrorism officials to respond to a bogus Somali terrorism plot on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, according to previously undisclosed documents.
‘It Wasn’t Real’
“Dennis would always say, ‘My technology is real, and it’s worth a fortune,’ ” recounted Steve Crisman, a filmmaker who oversaw business operations for Mr. Montgomery and a partner until a few years ago. “In the end, I’m convinced it wasn’t real.”
Government officials, with billions of dollars in new counterterrorism financing after Sept. 11, eagerly embraced the promise of new tools against militants.
C.I.A. officials, though, came to believe that Mr. Montgomery’s technology was fake in 2003, but their conclusions apparently were not relayed to the military’sSpecial Operations Command, which had contracted with his firm. In 2006, F.B.I.investigators were told by co-workers of Mr. Montgomery that he had repeatedly doctored test results at presentations for government officials. But Mr. Montgomery still landed more business.
In 2009, the Air Force approved a $3 million deal for his technology, even though a contracting officer acknowledged that other agencies were skeptical about the software, according to e-mails obtained by The New York Times.
Hints of fraud by Mr. Montgomery, previously raised by Bloomberg Markets and Playboy, provide a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of government contracting. A Pentagon study in January found that it had paid $285 billion in three years to more than 120 contractors accused of fraud or wrongdoing.
“We’ve seen so many folks with a really great idea, who truly believe their technology is a breakthrough, but it turns out not to be,” said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr. of the Air Force, who retired last year as the commander of the military’s Northern Command. Mr. Montgomery described himself a few years ago in a sworn court statement as a patriotic scientist who gave the government his software “to stop terrorist attacks and save American lives.” His alliance with the government, at least, would prove a boon to a small company,eTreppidTechnologies, that he helped found in 1998.
He and his partner — a Nevada investor, Warren Trepp, who had been a top trader for the junk-bond king Michael Milken — hoped to colorize movies by using a technology Mr. Montgomery claimed he had invented that identified patterns and isolated images. Hollywood had little interest, but in 2002, the company found other customers.
With the help of Representative Jim Gibbons, a Republican who would become Nevada’s governor and was a longtime friend of Mr. Trepp’s, the company won the attention of intelligence officials in Washington. It did so with a remarkable claim: Mr. Montgomery had found coded messages hidden in broadcasts by Al Jazeera, and his technology could decipher them to identify specific threats…
You will commit a crime in the future: Inside the new science of predicting violence
February 21, 2011
The ability to predict what someone will do in the future would be a seriously handy superpower. And it’s one that companies like Netflix and Amazon, by crunching the massive trails of data most of us leave behind these days, have come pretty close to acquiring. Surely, though, there is something more ambitious to be done with our dazzling modern technology than trying to guess what kind of microwave someone’s going to want next. Something like preventing murders.
It’s a seductive notion, that we could know who will and who won’t commit a crime in the future. And while it may call to mind the science-fiction world of “Minority Report,” making judgments about people’s potential to be dangerous is in fact an essential — and routine — part of how the American justice system works. It is what parole boards do, and what sentencing hearings are for. The consequences of getting such high-stakes decisions wrong can be devastating, as was made tragically plain last Christmas when police say a fellow officer from Woburn was shot and killed by 57-year-old Domenic Cinelli, a career criminal who had been paroled in 2008 while serving three concurrent life sentences for armed robbery.
What if we had a better method for reliably identifying threats like Cinelli? That has been a dream in criminal justice going back at least as far as the 19th century, when the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso claimed he could pick out delinquents from an early age based on physical defects and the shapes of their skulls.
Today, ideas like Lombroso’s, tinged with phrenology and eugenics, have largely been discarded. But over the past 40 years or so, the pursuit of mechanical crime prediction methods has taken off, and given rise to a competitive industry that involves not only specialists in criminology and psychology but also computer scientists and for-profit companies. Most of the tools that have come out of their research, known as actuarial risk assessment instruments, are essentially checklists that examine a range of character traits and biographical facts about an individual, crunch the answers, and use them to estimate that person’s likelihood of returning to crime. There are more than 120 such tools in existence now, some applicable to all kinds of offenders and others intended for specific populations, like juvenile delinquents or sex offenders.
“There has been a strong move toward the use of risk assessment instruments in the criminal justice system in recent years,” said John Monahan, a psychologist at the University of Virginia Law School who has been studying models of prediction since the 1970s. “The science of risk assessment is much better now than it was 20 years ago.” The instruments have gained traction not only as a public-safety measure, Monahan said, but because they allow for more efficient allocation of resources: When prison budgets are stretched thin, it makes sense to try to focus more funds on those inmates who pose a greater risk…
Cheeburger!! Cheeburger!!
February 21, 2011
This image has been posted with express written permission. This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
No Going Back
February 21, 2011
This image has been posted with express written permission. This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
