The U.S. Government's Over-Classification Epidemic: Ratcliffe

Classified information is a mainstay in the news these days and rarely for positive reasons. On the one hand, classified documents seem to be leaking at an unprecedented rate, often revealing not only sensitive national security information but also government impropriety. While in office, I saw this firsthand in Crossfire Hurricane, the bogus counterintelligence investigation into non-existent links between President Trump and Russia. Much of that information should never have been classified and was only tightly controlled to obscure government wrongdoing. On the other hand, overclassification of information that does not meet appropriate classification thresholds is an epidemic inside the national security apparatus. As a result, it is estimated that some 50 million documents are classified each year across the federal government.

Overclassification—or unreasonable resistance to declassification—is sometimes a result of the desire to conceal embarrassing or inappropriate actions, but it’s more often done out of convenience, laziness or good old-fashioned CYA. After all, I'm not aware of any government employee getting in trouble for classifying something that didn't really need to be classified, but there are serious ramifications for not classifying something that should be.

In part because the executive branch has been so slow to address this issue, a bipartisan group of lawmakers in Congress has filed bills to address over-classification and declassification issues. Perhaps they are hoping to force the White House to take action, but any President should be wary of the legislative branch encroaching on their Constitutional authority to classify and control access to national security information.

However, if we are going to tackle the pervasive overclassification problem, we must also ensure that the government has a reasonable process for handling “controlled unclassified information” (CUI)—information that is not classified but is nonetheless not widely shared by the U.S. government. This is the gray area between highly sensitive national security information and widely available or non-sensitive information that’s suitable for public disclosure.

In a 2020 memo to the President’s National Security Advisor, I laid out how the current system came into effect:

For decades, agencies often employed ad hoc, agency-specific policies, procedures, and markings to handle unclassified information that requires safeguarding or dissemination controls. This patchwork approach apparently resulted in agencies' marking and handling information inconsistently, implementing allegedly unclear or unnecessarily restrictive dissemination policies, and creating potential obstacles to information sharing.”

This dynamic led to the Obama Administration in 2010 to issue an Executive order (EO 13556) retiring many of the various, inconsistent unclassified dissemination control markings used for this “gray area” information and replacing them all with a single marking: CUI.

This simplified approach sounded like a good idea at the time. But like many other well-intentioned government policies, it broke down in its implementation.

https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2023/05/27/the_us_governments_classification_epidemic_902066.html

The Sacklers Got A Fine And Govt Immunity For Killing Your Relatives. This Is America

The Sacklers, the billionaire family that owns Purdue Pharma, will receive government immunity for their role in sparking America’s opioid crisis. The immunity is part of an agreement approved by a federal appeals court Tuesday.

With its decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit paved the way toward finally putting an end to the Sackler family saga. In exchange for immunity from current and future civil suits, the Sacklers will pay out $6 billion from their personal fortune. The settlement will finalize Purdue’s bankruptcy filing that has been stalled since 2019, the Huffington Post reported.

While $6 billion might sound like an astronomical sum, it’s not. It is but a drop in the bucket of the damage that this family has done.

Purdue’s “highly aggressive” marketing campaign began in 1996 and helped convince doctors to prescribe OxyContin to non-terminal patients that otherwise would not have received addictive opiates.

A hearing in the House Oversight and Reform Committee summarized how and why the family instructed Purdue to target “high-volume prescribers,” ignore “safeguards” against opiate abuse, and “deflect blame” away from themselves onto those suffering from addiction.

“Purdue Pharma created false advertising documents to provide doctors and patients illustrating that time-released OxyContin was less addictive than other immediate release alternatives. Furthermore, they sought out doctors who were more likely to prescribe opioids and encouraged them to prescribe OxyContin because it was safer. They did this because OxyContin quickly became a cash cow for the company,” a Committee on Oversight and Accountability press release read.

In the 20 years since the campaign began, OxyContin brought in $35 billion in revenue for the company. Unsurprisingly, opioid overdose deaths increased by 850% between 1999 and 2020 — over half a million people in total. Fueled by the relatively recent introduction of fentanyl, the opioid epidemic started by the Sacklers is now worse than ever.

For all this, the Sacklers will pay out less than half their $14 billion net worth, according to a “conservative” 2015 estimate by Forbes. Given their $1 billion real estate portfolio and prolific art collection, it is likely the family has maintained assets far exceeding this estimate.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/05/31/sacklers-fine-govt-immunity-killing-relatives-america-opioid-crisis/

Randi Weingarten Has Zero Credibility

In March 2020, a little more than three years ago, state and local politicians across America halted in-person classes for K-12 government schools with the purported aim of slowing the spread of the COVID-19 virus. When the school shutdowns began, few ordinary citizens had any idea how long they would last. It ultimately turned out that many school districts would remain closed until well into 2021. It’s been estimated that roughly half of America’s public schoolchildren lost a year or more of full-time, face-to-face instruction in the classroom.

Not coincidentally, both parents’ willingness to make huge financial and other sacrifices to get their kids out of the government education system and public apprehensions about the viability of public schools as institutions have soared since early 2020.

Over the course of the first two years of the pandemic, nationwide enrollment in K-12 public schools plummeted by roughly 1.2 million. The enrollment decline was typically far more severe in states where government school employees are overwhelmingly unionized, and where union bosses’ monopoly-bargaining power over teachers’ compensation and work conditions is most extensive.

For example, 27.1% of the entire enrollment drop occurred in just two states, forced-unionism California and New York, that were home to only 17.7% of the nation’s school-aged population (that is, 5-17 year olds) in 2020. Meanwhile, a fall 2022 Gallup poll recently cited by Wall Street Journal columnist William McGurn found that nationwide public satisfaction with government schools “had dropped to 42%, a 20-year low.”

As parental and public confidence in Big Labor-dominated government schools falls, Randi Weingarten, the camera-hogging president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT/AFL-CIO) union, personifies the problem for many concerned citizens. In the words of former Congressman and Trump Cabinet member Mike Pompeo, a particularly harsh critic: “It’s not just about Ms. Weingarten, but she has become the most visible face of the destruction of American education.”

Many Americans understandably blame union bosses like Weingarten for the fact that most American school districts within jurisdictions where Big Labor is most powerful remained shuttered long after it had become apparent that they could operate safely. School children were suffering grave educational and psychological harm as a consequence of the lockdowns.

But Weingarten pleads not guilty. Brushing aside countless well-documented examples of her viciously attacking supporters of reopening schools in 2020 and 2021, such as her July 2020 denunciation of then-U.S. Education Sec. Betsy DeVos’s pro-in person instruction stance as “reckless,” “callous,” and “cruel,” the AFT czar insists she was never against reopening per se.

At an April 26 congressional hearing on the role top union bosses played in perpetuating school shutdowns, she repeated again and again that she had always wanted schools to reopen, as long as it could be done “safely.”

https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2023/05/30/randi_weingarten_has_zero_credibility_902245.html

Amazon fined $47 million for hoarding kids’ data, spying through cameras

Amazon has agreed to pay more than $US30 million ($47 million) in fines to US regulators following allegations of historical privacy abuses, including retaining data collected from children after being explicitly asked to delete it.

In one case, the US Federal Trade Commission had alleged that before mid-2019, the company failed to remove voice recordings, transcriptions and precise location data collected from children via the Alexa voice assistant even after parents requested their removal.

In another case, it said the company’s Ring video doorbells and security cameras had unreasonable privacy practices through January 2020. According to the FTC, Ring employees and contractors were given unrestricted access to view videos taken at users’ homes.

In both cases, the regulators specifically frame the breaches as designed to train Amazon AI and algorithms at the expense of users’ privacy, placing the fines within a trend of lawmakers around the world cracking down on unnecessary data collection and retention.

“Amazon’s history of misleading parents, keeping children’s recordings indefinitely, and flouting parents’ deletion requests violated the children’s online privacy law, and sacrificed privacy for profits. [The law] does not allow companies to keep children’s data forever for any reason, and certainly not to train their algorithms,” said the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection Samuel Levine, in a statement.

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“Machine learning is no excuse to break the law,” said commissioner Alvaro Bedoya in a separate statement.

“Claims from businesses that data must be indefinitely retained to improve algorithms do not override legal bans on indefinite retention of data.”

Amazon denies that its practices broke any law, and claims any issues had been addressed before these cases were even initiated.

“At Amazon, we take our responsibilities to our customers and their families very seriously,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

“Our devices and services are built to protect customers’ privacy, and to provide customers with control over their experience. While we disagree with the FTC’s claims regarding both Alexa and Ring and deny violating the law, these settlements put these matters behind us.”

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The fines given out in these cases — $US25 million for the Alexa data collection, and $US5.8 million for the Ring cameras — are arguably not significant measured against the $US514 billion Amazon made in revenue in 2022. But the FTC and other regulators are determined to send a message to big tech companies on data retention, especially when it comes to children.

In December, Fortnite-maker Epic Games agreed to pay $US520 million to settle accusations it illegally harvested data from pre-teen players, and tricked players into making purchases. In 2019, Google agreed to pay a $US170 million fine after allegations it had violated children’s privacy on YouTube.

In Australia, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission last year ordered Google to pay $60 million after alleging it collected data from Android phones without permission in 2017 and 2018.

Last year, the European Union fined Meta more than $660 million related to its data practices and children using Instagram, and this year it fined the company more than $2 billion for illegally transferring user data internationally.

https://www.smh.com.au/technology/amazon-fined-47-million-for-hoarding-kids-data-spying-through-cameras-20230601-p5dd2r.html

LGBTQ flag burned outside classroom of transgender teacher as parents protest against Pride event at Los Angeles grade school

An LGBTQ flag was burned outside of the classroom of a transgender teacher at a Los Angeles area elementary school during a feud between parents and officials over a planned Pride event.

A group of parents of students at the Saticoy Elementary School have banded together and expressed their anger over an LGBTQ event where students will be exposed to a reading of a book about non-traditional marriages.

On Monday, a full-time teacher at the school said an LGBTQ flag that had been displayed in a flower pot was burned, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Police are investigating the incident, and school officials claimed it was being investigated as a "hate-motivated incident."

The transgender teacher was also reportedly removed by the Los Angeles Unified School District as a safety measure.

The school district had previously responded to parents' outrage in a statement to the Times.

“As part of our engagement with school communities, our schools regularly discuss the diversity of the families that we serve and the importance of inclusion,” read the statement from the LAUSD. “This remains an active discussion with our school communities, and we remain committed to continuing to engage with families about this important topic.”

School officials pointed out that attendance at the event is voluntary.

One parent, George Dzhabroyan, explained his opposition to the bizarre event aimed at children so young.

“We respect everyone, but some things are appropriate for children that age, and some things are not,” Dzhabroyan said. “Hopefully the message gets across and people understand that parents should be the primary contact of what their children should be exposed to and shouldn’t be exposed to.”

Another father, Jack Satamian, told KABC-TV that he was keeping his children home on the day of the pride event.

"I didn't bring them into this world for a teacher to explain to them what is gay, or what two men or two women do, some certain things should be left to the parents to decide whether they want their kids to be exposed to it or not — at least at a certain age," said Satamian.

KCAL-TV reported that a larger flag had replaced the burnt flag outside of the classroom.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/lgbtq-flag-burned-saticoy-elementary

PetSmart faces backlash for LGBTQ themed products 'for your gender-fluid fish' and other pets

PetSmart became the latest company to face public backlash over its marketing in line with the LGBTQ agenda.

The company released a new line of LGBTQ-themed products, including dog bikinis, butterfly cat leashes, and costumes for reptiles with capes.

Some posted photographs of the LGBTQ marketing on social media.

Others pointed out that PetSmart has carried similar products since at least 2019.

The company said in its announcement for Pride Month that it was also making a $200,000 donation to GLSEN, an LGBTQ advocacy group. GLSEN has been criticized by many on the right for its extremist advocacy for radicalizing public school teachers and forcing sexualization into public school curricula. It has also been the source of many drag queen events at public school student clubs.

The current rash of boycotts appeared to begin with Bud Light's celebration of a transgender TikTok influencer's transitioning from a man to a woman. Sales in the U.S. have dropped precipitously and eroded billions from the company's stock valuation.

Next to be criticized was the decision by the Los Angeles Dodgers to award their "Community Heroes" honor to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a group that performs blasphemous events meant to mock and deride Christians and Catholics.

A KTLA-TV anchor made fun of the boycott on Wednesday while laughing at products "for your gender-fluid fish" at the store.

"Now some people say, you know, no dog is straight or gay, except for my labrador growing up named Max, who … loved all dogs regardless of gender, and people's legs, park benches, even a PowerWheels 4x4," said Andy Riesmeyer

"Good for you, Max! Live your best life!" responded co-host Pedro Rivera.

"Unfortunately, Max has since gone to the big Pride parade in the sky," Riesmeyer replied.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/petsmart-lgbtq-backlash-public

Oklahoma Supreme Court rules abortion laws unconstitutional

The concurring justices referred to a March ruling in a separate case that said women have a "limited right to abortion."

The Center Square) - The Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down two abortion laws Wednesday passed by state lawmakers in 2022, calling them "unconstitutional."

Senate Bill 4327 banned abortions except to save the mother's life and allowed abortion providers to be sued in civil court for up to $10,000 for violating the law.

State lawmakers also passed Senate Bill 1503 in 2022, known as the "Heartbeat Act." The bill banned abortions after a fetus' heartbeat was detected unless it would save the mother's life.

The concurring justices referred to a March ruling in a separate case that said women have a "limited right to abortion."

The justices also said the Heartbeat Act does not define a "medical emergency and has no severability clause."

House Speaker Charles McCall, R-Atoka, said he was disappointed with the ruling.

"Oklahoma is one of the most pro-life states in the nation," McCall said in a statement. "Today's ruling won't change that, and we will continue to be a voice for the voiceless as we strive to protect the right to life in the State of Oklahoma."

https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/oklahoma-supreme-court-rules-abortion-laws-unconstitutional

>>18932846

Too much pinned in the catalog, needs a trim

Classified documents discussed by Trump on leaked audio reveal Mark Milley had plan to attack Iran: report

The document detailed a plan drafted by General Mark Milley to attack Iran.

A new report out from CNN states that federal prosecutors for the DOJ possess a recording that shows former President Donald Trump speaking candidly about "a classified Pentagon document about a potential attack on Iran."

CNN is primarily interested in what the existence of this recording means in terms of the DOJ case against Trump.

Many past presidents, including Barack Obama, have retained classified documents for the purpose of writing books, as was done in this case. The book in question for which the materials were sourced was that of Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

In Meadows’ autobiography, it recalls the 2021 meeting at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf club, stating that Trump "recalls a four-page report typed up by (Trump’s former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) Mark Milley himself. It contained the general’s own plan to attack Iran, deploying massive numbers of troops, something he urged President Trump to do more than once during his presidency."

Sources told CNN that Meadows was not provided with the document referenced by Trump.

The meeting was held shortly after the New Yorker published a story stating that following the election in 2020, Milley repeatedly argued against carrying out a strike on Iran and was concerned that Trump "might set in motion a full-scale conflict that was not justified."

In the recording, Trump brought up the documents in response to the story, telling the room that if he could reveal the documents to others, it would undermine Milley’s statements, the sources said.

The recording of this conversation is now a focal point of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into classified documents held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

Sources told CNN that the recording was an "important" piece of evidence in the potential case against Trump, leading investigators to question Milley about the meeting.

https://thepostmillennial.com/classified-documents-discussed-by-trump-on-leaked-audio-reveal-mark-milley-had-plan-to-attack-iran-report

Russian Ambassador Claims Maidan-Style Coup Attempt Unfolding In Belgrade

Russian Ambassador to Serbia Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko has leveled some dramatic allegations against the West in relation to both the Ukraine war and ongoing tensions and clashes in northern Kosovo, which has been focus of international media attention.

The Russian ambassador claimed that Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic’s opponents are plotting and attempting to stage a "Maidan-style coup" in the Serbian capital of Belgrade. His word choice implied he things the West is involved on some level.

Using terminology which has been familiar in Kremlin descriptions of what NATO is doing in Ukraine, Amb. Botsan-Kharchenko said, "This is part of the hybrid war. I would like to stress that anti-Belgrade forces acted almost synchronously; they operate on two fronts - this is the situation in Kosovo and attempts at a Maidan coup here, in Belgrade."

The Russian official's words also referenced recent large-scale anti-government protests inside Serbia, some which gathered in front of the building of Serbia's national broadcaster in Belgrade on Sunday.

These have been billed as 'peace protests' but according to regional media have progressively taken on an anti-government character and anti-government slogans. Some of them have happened with slogans such as "Serbia Against Violence" - and have been focused on gun violence in the wake of recent mass casualty school shootings in Serbia - a rarity for the country's recent history.

The protests have been going strong since mid-May, and people are angry over what they see as government mishandling of recent crises:

Tens of thousands of people have marched through Belgrade, blocking a key bridge in the second large protest since two mass shootings that rattled Serbia and left 17 people dead, including many children.

Protesters gathered in front of the parliament building on Friday before filing by the government’s HQ and on to a highway bridge spanning the Sava River, where evening commuters had to turn their vehicles around to avoid getting stuck. At the head of the column was a black banner reading “Serbia against violence.”

As the demonstrators passed the government buildings, many chanted slogans decrying Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vučić, whom they blame for creating an atmosphere of hopelessness and division in the country that they say indirectly led to the mass shootings.

Additionally Russia's TASS has described the following of recent protests in Serbia:

The first rally was quite peaceful, with practically no anti-government slogans. People were simply congregating in silence in front of the parliamentary building. During the second rally, protesters blocked a bridge across the Sava River and chanted anti-government slogans. The third demonstration had an anti-government character too. According to the Serbian interior ministry, more than 11,000 people took part in these rallies.

Serbia has long been a staunch ally of Russia, however, there's been recent distance and tensions due to the war in Ukraine. Still, Belgrade is generally seen in the West as more oriented toward Russia. It remains that both Slavic countries have long condemned what they see as NATO aggression and expansion, particularly following the 1999 US-NATO bombing campaign over Belgrade.

The Serbian population itself also tends to engage in large demonstrations against NATO and US policies from time to time. In particular the Serb people reject US and international recognition of Kosovo as a sovereign nation, given it historically was an ethnic Serb and Orthodox Christian heartland. This week, President Vucic has ordered Serbian troops to the Kosovo border amid unrest and an unpredictable situation, also as he's condemned the Kosovo government for cracking down on the Serb minority there.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/russian-ambassador-claims-maidan-style-coup-attempt-unfolding-belgrade