Media unload on Barr over spying: 'Trump's toady,' 'prejudices the conversation,' 'highly questionable'

Attorney General William Barr's bombshell statement before Congress that there was "spying" on the 2016 Trump campaign triggered a ferocious media reaction. “I am going to be reviewing both the genesis and the conduct of intelligence activities directed at the Trump campaign during 2016. I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr said during a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Wednesday.

That statement set off a media frenzy.

Tim O'Brien of Bloomberg compared Barr to Roy Cohn, the notorious chief counsel of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hearings into suspected communists in the 1950s and later Donald Trump's personal lawyer. Cohn was "a ruthless and sleazy attack dog who taught Trump how to weaponize the legal system," and Barr was "trying" to be like him, O'Brien said. He took issue with the use of the word "spying" by Barr, though the attorney general made it clear that he had made no judgment on whether it was legal or not. “Spying is cloak-and-daggerish and, when it doesn’t involve foreign governments trying to game and surveil one another, it feels untoward. It’s your neighbor looking into your bedroom window, … it’s all sort of dirty,” he wrote, adding: "Saying you’re looking into spying prejudices the perspective and prejudices the conversation."

The Washington Post also joined the pile-on. Aaron Blake wrote in an analysis article that Barr's testimony was "highly questionable" and cited fired FBI Director James Comey and Jim Clapper, former director of national intelligence — both outspoken Trump critics. Blake wrote that Comey had characterized FBI scrutiny of the Trump campaign as “simply an information-gathering effort.” He added that when asked whether the FBI had spied on the Trump’s campaign, Clapper had responded: “No, they were not.”

Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post called via Twitter for Barr to be impeached. She then elaborated in an article headlined "William Barr, Trump toady" that Barr was using “the language of a PR spinner, not the attorney general of the United States.” She lamented Barr's use of the “spying” as a “loaded phrase and a political accusation.” She quoted approvingly the judgment of Laurence Tribe, an outspoken liberal and former adviser to Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, that "Barr has been gravely abusing the powers of his office."

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/media-unloads-on-barr-over-spying-trumps-toady-prejudices-the-conversation-highly-questionable

Bill Barr Is Trying Hard to Be President Trump’s Roy Cohn

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-10/bill-barr-wants-to-be-trump-s-new-attack-dog

William Barr, Trump toady

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/04/10/william-barr-trump-toady/?utm_term=.2cdc275f9d66

William Barr’s highly questionable use of Trump’s ‘spying’ talking point

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/04/10/william-barrs-highly-questionable-use-trumps-spying-talking-point/?utm_term=.64da77fc1dbc

Trump says he is forced to ‘call up more military’ to US-Mexico border

President Trump said Wednesday he will need to send more troops to the southern border after an increase in illegal crossings into the U.S. “I’m going to have to call up more military,” Trump said at a Texas political fundraiser, referring to adding more troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. “I think the border is going to be an incredible issue,” Trump added.

Trump lamented what he said was a border crisis, claiming there were “many, many dead people” as a result of the migrants' attempts to come into the United States. Trump accused illegal immigrants of raiding houses near the border and creating a “very dangerous” environment.

Rodolfo Karisch, the U.S. Border Patrol chief of the Rio Grande Valley Sector, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday the conditions on the southwest border were the worst he has ever seen and there were “caravan-equivalent numbers of migrants” coming into the country every week. Trump declared a border emergency in February which would allow him to move government funds to build a wall along the southern border. The order prompted a swift legal challenge from 16 states. Trump dispatched 3,750 U.S. troops to the border in February, bringing the number of troops on the border to 6,000 in addition to Customs and Border Protection agents.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/trump-says-he-is-forced-to-call-up-more-military-to-us-mexico-border

I'm the boss! Trump politely puts sudden media sensation Stephen Miller back in line

There’s only one person running immigration policy in this administration, and it’s not Stephen Miller, said President Trump Wednesday as he left for a rally in Texas. “You know who that is? It's me,” he said, in case anyone was not clear.

In recent days, Trump’s senior aide has been named repeatedly as the mastermind behind a tougher stance on migrants trying to cross the southern border and as the architect of an overhaul of senior personnel at the Department of Homeland Security. Kirstjen Nielsen was ousted as head of the department on Sunday, prompting a round of briefings that Miller — who co-wrote Trump’s “American carnage” inauguration speech — had long been gunning for her. It came days after Trump wrongfooted Homeland Security officials by withdrawing his nomination of Ron Vitiello to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement, again reportedly at the urging of Miller.

Randolph Alles, the Secret Service director, and Claire Grady, the acting Homeland Security deputy secretary, have also both left, with reports of more departures to come. The result was a burgeoning narrative of a hidden puppetmaster leading a clean-out ahead of a major tightening of immigration policy. “Stephen is an excellent guy. He is a wonderful person. People don't know him,” said Trump when he was asked about his aide by reporters at the White House before going on to deliver a very public slap-down. “He has been with me from the beginning. He is a brilliant man … and frankly, there is only one person that is running it.” He pointed to his own head, in case anyone missed the point.

It is not the first time an adviser has been cut down to size after generating too many headlines. Former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon, the other author of the inauguration speech, drew Trump's ire in 2017 after a string of stories about his genius for political strategy that included in a Time front cover headlined “The Great Manipulator.”

In recent months Miller, who served as communications director for then-Sen. Jeff Sessions before joining the Trump campaign, has been seen as the new Trump whisperer. Sam Nunberg, an early hire by the Trump 2016 campaign, said it was a mistake to ever take too much credit for policy or personnel decisions. He added that briefings emphasizing Miller’s role in the Homeland Security shake-up may be designed to undermine his position. “Miller is going to have to be careful and not take too much credit,” he said. “People saying that this was Miller, instead of that this was Trump’s decision, is a way to get Miller back.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/im-the-boss-trump-politely-puts-sudden-media-sensation-stephen-miller-back-in-line

Busted: Thousands Of Amazon Employees Listening To Alexa Conversations

Amazon employs thousands of people to listen in on what people around the world are saying to their Alexa digital assistant, according to what is sure to be a Congressional hearing-inspiring report by Bloomberg, which cites seven people who have worked on the program.

While their job is to "help improve" NSAlexa - which powers the company's line of Echo speakers - the team "listens to voice recordings captured in Echo owners’ homes and offices," which are then transcribed, annotated and fed back into the software in order to try and improve Alexa's understanding of human speech for more successful interactions. In other words, humans are effectively helping to train Amazon's algorithm. ''In marketing materials Amazon says Alexa “lives in the cloud and is always getting smarter.” But like many software tools built to learn from experience, humans are doing some of the teaching. -Bloomberg''

The listening team is comprised of part-time contractors and full-time Amazon employees based all over the world; including India, Romania, Boston and Costa Rica. Listeners work nine hour shifts, with each reviewing as many as 1,000 audio clips per shift according to two employees from Amazon's Bucharest office - located in the top three floors of the Romanian capital's Globalworth building. The location "stands out amid the crumbling infrastructure" of the Pipera district and "bears no exterior sign advertising Amazon's presence." While much of the work is boring (one worker said his job was to mine for accumulated voice data for specific phrases such as "Taylor Swift" - letting the system know that the searcher was looking for the artist), reviewers are also listening on people's most personal moments. ''Occasionally the listeners pick up things Echo owners likely would rather stay private: a woman singing badly off key in the shower, say, or a child screaming for help. The teams use internal chat rooms to share files when they need help parsing a muddled word—or come across an amusing recording.'' -Bloomberg

Occasionally Amazon listeners come across upsetting or possibly criminal recordings - such as two workers who say they listened in on what sounded like a sexual assault. According to the report, when things like this happen the workers will mention it in the internal chat room to "relieve stress." And while Amazon says that it has procedures to follow when workers hear distressing things, two of the Romania-based employees say they were told "it wasn't Amazon's job to interfere" when they requested guidance for such instances. "We take the security and privacy of our customers’ personal information seriously," said an Amazon spokesman in a statement provided to Bloomberg. "We only annotate an extremely small sample of Alexa voice recordings in order improve the customer experience. For example, this information helps us train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems, so Alexa can better understand your requests, and ensure the service works well for everyone," the statement continues. "We have strict technical and operational safeguards, and have a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of our system. Employees do not have direct access to information that can identify the person or account as part of this workflow. All information is treated with high confidentiality and we use multi-factor authentication to restrict access, service encryption and audits of our control environment to protect it."

That said, Amazon does not mention the fact that humans are listening to recordings of some of the conversations picked up by Alexa. Instead, they have a generic disclaimer in their FAQ that says "We use your requests to Alexa to train our speech recognition and natural language understanding systems."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04-10/global-network-amazon-employees-listening-alexa-conversations

Trump Signs Executive Orders To Fast-Track Oil And Gas Pipelines

President Donald Trump signed two executive orders to speed up oil and gas pipeline projects.

Trump seeks to curtail the ability of states, like New York and Washington, to kill vital energy projects.

New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo blocked gas pipeline projects, triggering an energy crunch in the northeast.

President Donald Trump signed a pair of executive orders aimed at speeding up oil and gas pipeline permitting, including limiting the ability of activists and states to block key energy projects. Trump signed the orders Wednesday at an International Union of Operating Engineers’ training center near Houston. Some labor unions have pushed back against Democrats’ anti-fossil fuel agenda, including the recently introduced Green New Deal. Trump ordered federal agencies to speed up permitting for pipeline projects, including asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to curtail state authority to block projects under the Clean Water Act (CWA). The administration is responding to criticisms that some states have weaponized CWA permitting to block energy projects.

For example, New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has blocked a number of natural gas pipelines from running through his state, depriving the northeast of much needed energy supplies. The supply crunch hit hard during winter when the region was forced to import gas from Russia. New York City locals fear a moratorium on new gas hook-ups will stall commercial developments.

Across the country, Washington state, under Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee, a 2020 contender, has blocked coal and oil export terminals planned along the Pacific coast. The state’s actions relied on a wide-ranging permit review that included factors that had nothing to do with water quality. “President Trump is doing some spring cleaning on regulations used by no-growth advocates to stop infrastructure in its tracks and deny Americans the benefits our energy dominance promises,” Dan Kish, a distinguished senior fellow at the free market Institute for Energy Research, said in an email. “President [Barack] Obama lamented the lack of shovel-ready jobs; President Trump is going straight to the operating engineers who will build our infrastructure to show how he will clean out the stables and make America stronger,” Kish said.

However, Trump’s ability to curtail pipeline obstruction is rather limited without action from Congress. The order also directs the Transportation Department to update rules for shipping natural gas by rail. It also asked the Labor Department whether or not climate activist shareholder resolutions violate the fiduciary duty of retirement funds. Shareholders have approved resolutions at major companies, like ExxonMobil, to report on how global warming and climate regulations could impact future business operations. Likewise, some city and state pension systems have sought to divest themselves of fossil fuel assets over global warming concerns.

Environmentalists see shareholder resolutions and divestment as an effective way to keep fossil fuels in the ground in the absence of federal regulations. “I applaud the Trump administration for scrutinizing those who use and abuse the ‘socially responsible’ claim,” Steve Milloy told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Milloy, a former Trump transition team member, and former coal executive Fred Palmer founded the group Burn More Coal to challenge shareholder resolutions being pushed by climate activist investors. “In my view, socially responsible investing is an investor fraud,” said Milloy, who is also the publisher of JunkScience.com. Trump’s second order will clarify presidential authority for the approval of cross border pipeline permits, like the one he issued for the Keystone XL pipeline in 2017. Despite Trump’s approval of Keystone XL, the project has been further delayed by legal challenges. The Obama administration initially rejected Keystone XL over concerns it would tarnish the U.S.’s image as a leader in the fight against global warming.

https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/04/10/trump-executive-order-gas-pipelines/

Twitter’s Algorithm Goes Haywire, Inadvertently Gives New York Times A Trumpian Nickname

Twitter’s algorithm suffered a glitch Wednesday that directed users to the The New York Times’ account when they composed a tweet with the words “Enemy of the People.” “This is a bug in our search typeahead system limited to desktop that we are working to fix. The issue is that for some search queries the word ‘People’ is linked to @NYTimes,” Twitter spokeswoman Katie Rosborough told The Daily Caller News Foundation. Users got a similar response when they typed “Fake News Media” into their cue, which directed people to the Media Matters’ account.

The glitch occurred on the same day a Twitter executive was answering questions from senators about the supposed political bias in the company’s algorithms. Carlos Monje Jr., Twitter’s director of public policy and philanthropy, evaded questions Wednesday during a Senate Judicial Committee hearing about whether the social media company is willing to subject itself to an independent audit. Conservatives say Twitter is targeting them because of their politics. Recent reports have only worked to exacerbate those concerns. The Silicon Valley company said in March that it “mistakenly remove[d]” a tweet from The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis about Lisa Page’s congressional hearing.

Tech experts have long believed Twitter and Facebook’s algorithms are not up to the task of effectively moderating social media platforms. Both companies tend to ding legitimate forms of conservative content when trying to remove objectionable material from their platforms, experts say. “If Facebook came out and was transparent, that would be one thing, but a lot of people are arrogant and don’t want to admit their algorithms are imperfect,” Emily Williams, a data scientist and founder of Whole Systems Enterprises, told TheDCNF in March, referring to reports suggesting that Facebook is deboosting conservative content.

https://www.dailycaller.com/2019/04/10/twitter-trump-new-york-times/

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