Sunday, 11 December 2016

The Burr in our side: Keeping torture a secret

We can read your phone, but you can't read our reports:

Many people do not realize that the roughly 500-page summary of the Senate report that was declassified and made public at the end of 2014 is only a small part of the story. The full report remains classified. It is one of the largest reports in Senate history, and it is by far the most thorough account of what happened during a dark period when waterboarding and other brutal techniques were used and given legal cover — a decision by the George W. Bush administration that President Obama wisely reversed.

However, after Republicans took control of the Senate, the new chairman, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, took the unusual step of trying to recall the full report that Senator Feinstein had distributed — to prevent it from ever being widely read or declassified.

Burr is definitely a piece of work. And he makes a mockery of the GOP's constant refrain/rhetoric of, "The Federal government is out of control, and shouldn't have so much power!" Burr is trying to force a private company to develop a code that will unlock all our smart phones, and he intends to allow law enforcement entities nationwide to use that code as they see fit. Which (of course) means that hackers will have that code by noon the next day, but Dick Burr doesn't care about that.


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