Comey Did It to Himself and Us, by Gutting Privacy, Encryption, and 4th
Amendment
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
17 April 18
In former FBI director James Comey's interview with ABC News, he attempted
to position himself as an upholder of the rule of law, of the constitution,
and even of the truth.
Human beings are very good at forgetting their own misdeeds and building
narratives that justify themselves, which may even be desirable
evolutionarily. But the particular shape of Comey's amnesia is troubling
because of what it means for American democracy.
Comey has been a central figure in the gutting of the fourth amendment of
the Constitution and in attempts to make sure the FBI and the rest of the US
government can break your encryption and spy on you illegally. It is true
that Comey did not want to go as far in that direction as former vice
president Dick Cheney, but he wanted to go so far as nevertheless to make
the constitution meaningless and to make Americans vulnerable to hacking.
You see, the tech companies cannot create backdoors for the FBI without
creating backdoors for Russian troll farms in St Petersburg.
Am I saying Comey did it to himself? I am saying Comey did it to himself.
And to the rest of us.
Comey condemned Edward Snowden for his revelations about illegal
government collection of Americans' data from telephone calls. Even that was
misdirection because Snowden's more important revelation was that the NSA
has individual-level tools to monitor emails. But even the telephone
metadata issue is grave, since it would tell you to whom Warren Buffet is
speaking, potentially allowing manipulation of the stock market; it would
tell you if a politician is seeing a specialist in venereal diseases,
allowing you to blackmail him.
And apparently Comey and others corrupted the entire US judicial system by
illegally requisitioning telephone metadata to zero in on drug sellers, then
notifying local police to arrest them and lie to the judge about how the
police began their evidence trail. 100,000 of the inmates in our vast
penitentiary gulag are guilty of no more than selling some pot, which most
of us don't even think should be illegal, and many were put there by
unconstitutional government surveillance which then concealed itself from
the judiciary. Far from standing for the constitution or the truth, Comey
dramatically undermined both. Comey has bequeathed these unconstitutional
tactics to the weaselly and wholly unscrupulous Jeff Sessions, who is having
his minions use them against DACA dreamers and Black Lives Matter.
Comey watched James Clapper lie to Congress about mass warrantless
surveillance of the American people. Comey knew Clapper was lying. He did
not come after Clapper. He did not resign. His insistence on truth-telling
suddenly was abandoned. He was disappointed that Gen. Petraeus was not
prosecuted for lying to the FBI about his affair. Clapper's assassination of
the Fourth amendment and dissimulation was not an issue for him.
Comey doesn't like Trumpworld. Comey helped create Trumpworld.
Then there was his attempt to strongarm Apple into weakening (you might as
well say deleting) encryption on its smartphones. Comey saw an opening to
get rid of that pesky encryption by creating a legal precedent, and he lied
about his true motives, maintaining that there was no other way for the FBI
to investigate the San Bernardino shootings. (Let me help him with that; a
couple of mentally unstable people were allowed to buy an arsenal and went
postal). When the FBI did hack in, they found nothing useful. They did Apple
the favor of demonstrating that current encryption is too weak.
National Security elites like Comey are not our friends when it comes to
privacy. The NSA used tradecraft and bribery to get an encryption company to
adopt an NSA standard, which turned out to have backdoors for the NSA. And,
of couse, for everyone else.
American democracy was certainly hacked in 2016. You can argue about whether
Putin's patriots were decisive or not, but you cannot deny the attempt.
Comey has been so eager to get the bad guys that he has robbed the rest of
us of our 4th amendment rights and of our privacy, and gave Russian and UAE
hackers essential tools.
He still can't see it.
Comey doesn't like Trumpworld.
Comey helped create Trumpworld.
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