#security theater

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Red-teaming the SCOTUS code of conduct

Tomorrow (November 18) at 1PM, I'll be in Concord, NH at Gibson's Books, presenting my new novel The Lost Cause, a preapocalyptic tale of hope in the climate emergency.

On Monday (November 20), I'm at the Simsbury, CT Public Library at 7PM

Last April, Propublica's Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski dropped a bombshell: Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had been showered in high-ticket "gifts" by billionaire ideologue Harlan Crow, who subsequently benefited from Thomas's rulings in the court:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-luxury-travel-gifts-crow

This was just the beginning: in the coming days and weeks, more and more of Thomas's corruption came to light, everything from the fact that his mother's home had been bought by Crow, to the fact that Thomas's adoptive son went to a fancy private school on Crow's dime:

https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-harlan-crow-private-school-tuition-scotus

The news was explosive and not merely because of the corruption it revealed in the country's highest court. The credibility of the court itself was at its lowest ebb in living memory, thanks to the two judges who occupied stolen seats – Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. One of those judges – Kavanaugh – is a credibly accused rapist. Thomas is also a credibly accused sexual abuser:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/01/30-years-after-her-testimony-anita-hill-still-wants-something-from-joe-biden-514884

Then, this illegitimate court went on to deliver a string of upsets to long-settled law, culminating in the Dobbs decision, which triggered state laws that force small children to bear their rapists' babies:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/health/abortion-bans-rape-incest.html

That was the context for the Thomas bribery scandal, which was swiftly joined by another bribery scandal, involving Samuel Alito's improper acceptance of valuable gifts from Paul Singer, another billionaire who brought business before the court:

https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court

This string of scandals and outrages naturally prompted public curiosity about the Supreme Court's ethical standards, and that triggered fresh waves of incredulous outrage when we all found out that the Supreme Court doesn't have any:

https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2023/why-doesnt-the-supreme-court-have-a-formal-code-of-ethics/

When Congress made tentative noises about providing minor checks and balances on the court, the justices erupted in outrage, telling Congress to go fuck itself:

https://int.nyt.com/data/documenttools/supreme-court-ethics-durbin/cf67ef8450ea024d/full.pdf

Chief Justice Roberts went on whatever the opposite of a charm-offensive is called (an "offense offensive?"), a media tour whose key message to the American people was "STFU, you're hurting our feelings":

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/roberts-defends-high-court-against-attacks-on-its-legitimacy

To the shock of no one except billionaires and Supreme Court justices inhabiting the splendid isolation from societal norms that is the privilege of life tenure, America didn't like this. The Supreme Court's credibility plummeted. A large supermajority of Americans – 79%! – now support age limits for Supreme Court justices:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/18/the-people-no/#tell-ya-what-i-want-what-i-really-really-want

Support for packing the Supreme Court is at an historic high and gaining ground, now sitting neck-and-neck with opposition at 46% in favor/51% opposed. Among under-30s, there's a healthy majority (58%) in favor of appointing more SCOTUS justices.

As Roberts' wounded bleats reveal, SCOTUS is very sensitive to its plummeting legitimacy. After all, the court doesn't have an army, nor does it have a police force. Supreme Court rulings only matter to the extent that the American people accept them as legitimate and obey them. Transformational presidents like Lincoln and FDR have waged successful wars against the Supreme Court, sidelining its authority and turning it into an unimportant rump institution for years afterward:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/26/mint-the-coin-etc-etc/#blitz-em

Now the Supremes are working their way through the (mythological but convenient) five stages of grief. Having passed through Denial and Anger, they've arrived at Bargaining, with the publication of the court's first "code" "of" "conduct":

https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/Code-of-Conduct-for-Justices_November_13_2023.pdf

It's…not good. As Max Moran writes for The American Prospect and The Revolving Door Project, the proposed code amounts to "security theater," a set of trivially bypassed strictures that would not have prevented any of the scandals to date and will permit far worse in the years to come:

https://prospect.org/justice/2023-11-17-supreme-court-objectivity-theater/

The security framing is a very useful tool for evaluating the Supremes' proposal. The purpose of a code of conduct isn't merely to prevent people from accidentally misstepping – it's to prevent malicious parties from corrupting the judicial process. To evaluate the code, we should red team it: imagine what harms a corrupt judge or a corrupting billionaire would be able to effect while staying within the bounds the code sets.

Seen in that light, the code is wildly defective and absolutely not fit for purpose. Its most glaring defect is found in the nature of its edicts – they are almost all optional. The word "should" appears 53 times in the document, while "must" appears just six times:

https://ballsandstrikes.org/ethics-accountability/supreme-court-code-of-conduct-hilariously-fake/

Of those six "musts," two are not pertinent to ethical questions (they pertain to the requirement for a justice to get prior approval before getting paid for teaching gigs).

When the code of conduct was rolled out, the court and its apologists pointed out that it was modeled on the ethical guidelines that bind lower courts. In the wake of the Thomas revelations, these guidelines were a useful benchmark to measure Thomas's conduct against. The fact that other federal judges would have been severely sanctioned or even fired if they had engaged in the same conduct as Thomas was a powerful argument that Thomas had overstepped the bounds of ethical conduct.

But as Bloomberg Law discovered when they compared the lower courts' codes to the Supremes' draft, the Supremes have gone through those lower court codes and systematically cut nearly every mention of "enforce" from their own draft. They also cut the requirement to "take appropriate action" if a violation is reported.

If you are a bad judge or a bad donor, all of this is good news. Nearly everything that it condemns is merely optional, which means that if a judge can be convinced to ignore a rule, they won't have violated the code. What's more, even widespread rulebreaking doesn't trigger an investigation. That's a very weak security measure indeed.

But it gets worse. The Supremes' code also omit key definitions found in the codes that bind the lower courts. The most important definition to be cut is for "political organization," which the lower courts define expansively as both parties and "entit[ies] whose principal purpose is to advocate for or against political candidates or parties." That definition captures "nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, trade associations, grassroots groups" – the whole panoply of organizations whom federal judges must maintain an arm's length distance from in order to preserve their objectivity. Federal judges may not lead, speak at or donate to these organizations.

By omitting this definition, the Supremes open the door to involvement with precisely the kinds of PACs, thinktanks and other influence organizations funded by the billionaires who have benefited so handsomely from the judges' rulings.

What's more, the Supremes carve out an explicit exemption for speaking to "nonprofits, think tanks, lobbying firms, trade associations, grassroots groups," and to serving as a director, trustee or officer of "a nonprofit organization devoted to the law, the legal system, or the administration of justice and may assist such an organization in the management and investment of funds."

As Moran points out, this exemption would cover – among other institutions – the far-right Federalist Society, which satisfies all those criteria. That means a Supreme Court justice could sit on the board and raise funds for the FedSoc without raising any issues with this code – not even one of those squishy "shoulds." Nothing in this code would stop Clarence Thomas or Thomas Alito from accepting lavish gifts, private jet rides, or luxury tour buses from billionaires with business before the court:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/justice-thomas-267000-loan-rv-forgiven-senate-democrats-104303972

As Moran writes, these definitional vacuums are a well-understood class of weaknesses in ethics codes. Congress gets a lot of mileage out of this ruse – for example, by narrowly defining "lobbying" to exclude things that most people understand that term to mean, Congress engage in improperly close relations with lobbyists while still maintaining that they hardly ever talk to a lobbyist at all:

https://www.politico.eu/article/jeff-hauser-opinion-watergate-european-union-qatargate/

The same ruse goes for campaign contributions – if you want to accept a lot of campaign contributions that would fall afoul of ethics rules, just narrow the definition of "campaign contribution" until all the money you're receiving no longer qualifies.

Moran closes by calling on Congress to formulate a real, meaningful code of conduct for the Supremes, one that orders Supreme Court judges not to accept corrupting gifts and to maintain the arm's length neutrality that the rest of the federal judiciary is required to keep. Rather than this new code of conduct constituting proof that SCOTUS can be its own oversight, its gross deficiencies should put to rest any question about whether the Supremes can be trusted to regulate themselves.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/17/red-team-black-robes/#security-theater

Image: Senate Democrats (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Supreme_Court_Building,_July_21,_2020.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

#pluralistic #security theater #scotus #supreme court #clarence thomas #red teaming #loopholes #cheap tricks #diff

[cherenkovs]

poll because im mad

**including country of residence in tags is interesting but not required**

#anarchism #grocery store #security culture #security theater #late stage capitalism #tumblr polls #poll

[shacklesburst]

security theater the 344th: the TSA doesn't fucking care one bit if your name was entered incorrectly by the airline as long as it kinda roughly matches your ID

which on the one hand is nice because they're apparently using judgement calls but on the other hand if I didn't look like I do, might lead to a different judgement call and subsequent bureaucracy hell and if they were at least being open about using judgement calls it'd save a lot of people a lot of stress

#security theater #mine

[gwydionmisha]

#TSA #Racism #Security Theater #News

[tiikerikani]

As a kid, flying before 9/11, the bag scans stressed me out and gave me nightmares.

As an adult, the f***ing security theatre dials my anxiety up to 11. I'm traveling this week and am already at 11+ for other reasons you already know about so I am currently dialed up to 13 or something.

#personal #anxiety #security theater

[gallium-spoon]

Does two factor authentication actually, like, work? Am I actually less likely to get hacked or have my info stolen? Because I find two factor authentication to be really annoying and if it's nothing but security theater I'm gonna be one step closer to just walking into the woods

#security theater #two factor authentication

[samueldays]

Some paperwork-for-brains doofus sent me an SMS with a 20-character symbol-soup password for use in the new project.

2FA, you know, they gotta send my username to the PC and my password to the phone in case one of them gets stolen!

The guy onboarding me to the project outright said “You should write that password in a file on your computer and copy-paste it”, lol.

#all #security theater

[sexytummyache]

So the TSA trays at O'Hare airport in Chicago have ads for this stupid Wednesday show.

Moments after seeing this I was patted down because the scanner detected my genitals. The woman patting me down realized I was trans after finishing the pat down and became uncomfortable and wanted someone else to do the pat down.

"I don't want to touch anyone's penis except for my husband's."

The TSA agent said this despite having taken the job where you pat down people's genitals...

The TSA agent kept saying her comfort was important too and I needed to pat down by a man.

The supervisor showed up and told me I needed to indicate my trans identity so they could set the scanner to male. I pointed out that when its set to male I end up getting my tits groped and when its set to female I get my dick groped. It's a false choice.

It was extremely upsetting and they pointed out I could pay for pre check and I was like fuck that I shouldn't have to pay to not get groped every time I fly

All of this is to say that I won't be watching that Wednesday show because everytime I see anything about it I remember this experience in full detail and have an anxiety attack.

I can't imagine what advertising idiot thought that was a smart place to put their ads.

(ps I don't care if you like the show. no ethical consumption and all that. I just won't be engaging the show in any way ever)

#wednesday #wednesday addams #tsa #security theater #transphobia #triggering #vent #acab

[biglisbonnews]

A comic book history of the Pinkerton Agency Over at The Nib, Sam Wallman has created an illustrated history of the Pinkerton Agency — the original "private eyes," a nearly 200-year-old American corporation that essentially pioneered the privatization of domestic military intelligent services, most often weaponized against the working class. — Read the rest https://boingboing.net/2023/01/16/a-comic-book-history-of-the-pinkerton-agency.html

#Post #intelligence operation #intelligence-industrial complex #Military Intelligence #pinkertons #private eyes #private military contractors you say #security economics #security theater #turning cops into intelligence agents #union-busting #Thom Dunn #Boing Boing

[cadyrocks]

Really fucking tired of security theater.

"Remember everyone, wear masks in the hallways. But we all have meals together in the indoor dining room without masks."

"You can't use this convenient door because we're keeping the wings separate, but also y'all can wander around outside however you want and nobody will stop you."

"Visitors have to get tested for Covid, but also if you want to go into town, visit a bunch of shops maskless, and come back, you do you!"

"We have to wear masks, but it's okay if you put them under your nose for this next exercise in this closed room where 8 people are working out."

That last one genuinely makes me angry. Like... Dude... Your nose is free. That mask ain't doing shit. Why bother pretending? Why demand we wear them at all? It's like saying "you have to wear a condom, but it's not a big deal if it has a hole in it". The fuck is the point?

Covid prevention measures are really important! It's important to lower community spread, to keep people healthy, to avoid outbreaks! I know this, and I'd much rather they be a lot more stringent about them.

But... Like... Either give a shit or don't.

Either these rules are important and we should be working to follow them, or they aren't and aren't. Half measures like these make even the sensible rules seem incredibly silly.

Probably not great for public opinions about important preventative measures, either, given how much of this security theater we have to deal with on a daily basis. Like, the constant message is "we want you to do this, it's very important, but we also don't really care that much about it". Even with the intellectual knowledge that prevention is important and that masks are effective, the subconscious message is that it isn't worth caring about.

It's especially dire when you're in a rehab center and the wing one floor up is having a covid outbreak. And your physical therapist is saying vaccines contain mercury and cause mental illness. 😬 Yeeeeesh.

#Covid #Security theater

[necarion]

Saw TSA waive a woman through who said that she had a water bottle, but the water was frozen. It really is just about removing "liquids larger than 3.4 oz", and not about what those liquids could possibly be.

#Tsa #Security theater

[unicorn-elvis]

In which Security Theater becomes Security Vaudeville

#tsa #security theater #security vaudeville

[ryan-e-martin]

I needed to go to the police HQ complex for work today, and they scan everyone's bags through an xray machine.

The scanning guy stops me with this baffled look on his face and goes "do you??? Have cameras in your bag???"

"Just the one camera"

"I need to see it"

I open the bag, and he takes the briefest look at it, and waves me through.

What was even the point, buddy. If it's a worry that I've got a very sophisticated camera shaped bomb you didn't do shit to make sure you were good.

And it's not like the camera itself is a security threat - phones are allowed in.

#security theater

[anniekoh]

The Department of Homeland Security was supposed to rally nearly two dozen agencies together in a modernized, streamlined approach to protecting the country. So what the hell happened?

...

There was only one problem: BioWatch never functioned as intended. The devices were unreliable, causing numerous false positives. “It was really only capable of detecting large-scale attacks,” Albright explained, because of “how big a plume would have to be” for the sensors to pick it up...

This same faulty biosurveillance program remains in place in 2022, sputtering along, costing $80 million a year. The Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense has repeatedly called for BioWatch to be terminated or replaced, issuing a report last year deeming it “legacy technology that has long outlived its utility.”

#war on terror #security theater #homeland security

[humanityforone]

Security Theater: Avoid It

Security Theater: Avoid It

Those of us in healthcare security leadership must do our best, based on best practices and industry standards (as well as our own innovative, forward-thinking, ideations) to create safer workplaces. We must both create safety AND help people feel safer. The two sometimes do not arrive together. We may do something very fundamental such as assess an area and then, for instance, based on the…

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#budgets #Healthcare #Healthcare Security #ignorance #Law Enforcement #police #Security #Security theater

[gwydionmisha]

#Juvenile Curfews #Police #News #Security Theater