Obama's State of the Union Speech: talk to the left, act to the right

Obama's State of The Union Speech(SOTU) was upbeat about the economy and in general about the US situation. He set out many progressive measures that he intends to include in a new budget.

The entire Obama speech text can be found here, and I have appended a YouTube video of the speech as well. The speech enjoyed lavish praise for the performance of the U.S. economy, which is doing better than most advanced capitalist economies. However, it is far from booming and wage increases have not risen in tandem with the economic improvement. A trend upward in wage rates noted in Obama's speech was reversed in December last year. The speech was replete with promises of liberal policies, such as free tuition at Community Colleges, that Obama knows the Republicans will not support. Since the Republicans now control both the Senate and the House of Representatives he must know that these policies can never become law under present circumstances.

 Obama also invented a new type of economics, dubbed "middle class economics," which has nothing to do with economics but everything to do with politics. The middle class is the largest group of politically active voters and the US has faced the so-called hollowing out of the middle class as many of them are seeing their standard of living drop. Politicians thus advance policies that will be seen as improving the conditions for this group of voters even though when elected the promises will not be fulfilled or only to a very limited degree. Even Texas Republican Ted Cruz in his response to the Obama speech makes reference to "middle class economics." He accuses Obama of actually supporting the rich and powerful, the one percent, and ignoring the plight of the middle class. It is the Republican Party who will present policies to help the middle class and American worker: Cruz also supports wage growth, which he claims has not happened because of Obama's failed policies. However he does not suggest a $15 dollar minimum wage as does Kshama Sawant, a Seattle city councilor, in her response to the Obama speech. Both she and Cruz agree that Obama supports the rich and powerful! The first part of the speech is all about advancing liberal populist policies that are going nowhere and also threats to veto Republican bills but later he talks of working together with the Republicans. As Republican Senator Cory Gardner put it: “It was like he had two different speechwriters. In the first part of his speech, the president put forward policies that he knows we won’t support. In the second part of the speech, he talked about the need to work together.”

There are areas that the Republicans and Democrats can work together to push for policies that will advance the interests of international capital and reduce democratic control over policies. Obama talks of international trade deals in the context of competition with China: China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region. That would put our workers and businesses at a disadvantage. Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules. We should level the playing field. That’s why I’m asking both parties to give me trade promotion authority to protect American workers, with strong new trade deals from Asia to Europe that aren’t just free, but fair. Note the arrogance: "We should write those rules." The TTP or Trans Pacific Partnership, which Obama refers to, involves 12 different countries as of 2014 but it is the U.S. that should write the rules. He also makes just passing reference to another huge deal that with Europe, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The TPP has been criticized by many Democrats:

The TPP has drawn the ire of Democrats including Elizabeth Warren who object it will destroy jobs, limit online freedom, increase outsourcing and derail climate agreements. Ironically, it has made allies of his GOP rivals

Obama can rely on Republican support. When Sen. Joni Ernst delivered the GOP's response to Obama's speech she called on Obama to "cooperate" with congressional leaders to advance new trade pacts. Obama will no doubt also get the cooperation of Republicans in passing cybersecurity legislation echoing CISPA. In his speech he notes: We are making sure our government integrates intelligence to combat cyber threats, just as we have done to combat terrorism. And tonight, I urge this Congress to finally pass the legislation we need to better meet the evolving threat of cyber-attacks, combat identity theft, and protect our children’s information. If we don’t act, we’ll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable. If we do, we can continue to protect the technologies that have unleashed untold opportunities for people around the globe. Obama's rhetoric promises progressive policies but he will act to pass reactionary bills that give more power to global corporations and to the national security state.

Some experts still doubt that North Korea was behind Sony hack

While FBI director James Comey presented new evidence to show that North Korea was responsible for the recent hacking of Sony Corporation many experts still doubt that North Korea is the culprit.

Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper even went so far as to say that North Korean General Kim Youn Choi was directly responsible for ordering the attack. Of course the evidence for this will not be made public. What is in the public domain however is clear evidence that Clapper lied to the American congress under oath. Nothing ever happened to him as a result. It is probably part of his job. Dianne Feinstein said that there is no more direct and honest person than Jim Clapper. Press Secretary Jay Carney said that president Obama believes that Clapper has been "aggressive in providing as much information as possible to the American people." The Snowden leaks show that the intelligence community was keeping information about what was going on from American citizens.

 The new evidence, presented by FBI director James Comey relies upon one believing that the Korean hackers are incredibly sloppy. The detailed evidence is as follows:" ".. a new detail from Comey that the attackers failed to use proxy servers through which to route some of their activity and mask their real IP addresses. As a result, Comey said, they unintentionally revealed that they were using addresses known to be “exclusively” used by North Korea. The new claim builds upon previous evidence cited by the FBI that components used in the Sony hack are similar or identical to components used in the so-called DarkSeoul attacks that struck South Korea last year and another claim that an IP address “associated with known North Korean infrastructure” contacted one of the command-and-control servers used in the Sony hack. " "

Of course there may be further intelligence that experts are not allowed to examine since it is classified, but even if that is so, the new explanations ignore features of the hack that are difficult to explain and are left unexplained. The initial communication between hackers and Sony made no mention of the film The Interview but asked only for money or they would release damaging information--which they did.

The new evidence claims that the hackers several times failed to use proxy servers including logging into a Facebook account and sending emails to Sony executives without masking their IP addresses. The time at which these mistakes were made is crucial but not revealed since they might support an alternative explanation of what happened. Within days of the hack, there were stories about North Korea's possible role. This provided a golden opportunity for the hackers to lead the FBI astray:" ".. if the hackers knew investigators were looking for North Korean links, they may have decided to provide them by using North Korean IP addresses. But that’s assuming the IP addresses the FBI cites are indeed North Korea IP addresses.""

 The new evidence actually raises more questions rather than actually giving any proof that the attack was launched from North Korea. There is no indication as to where the exact IP addresses are, or why officials were able to conclude that the addresses are used exclusively by North Korea. One FBI critic, Marc Rogers point out that IP addresses are quite fallible as proof of origin, and the claim that addresses are used exclusively by North Korea is also fallible. He also questions whether an experienced government hacker would make the mistake of not using a proxy server not just once but several times. Rogers said: " “These guys literally burnt Sony down to hide their tracks and they staged everything pretty methodically. It would surprise me that somebody like that would make such a huge mistake to forget to use a proxy.” "

The FBI has noted the similarity between the DarkSeoul attacks and the Sony attacks as a ground for pinning the blame on North Korea as noted by Jeffery Carr, a security consultant and CEO of Taia Global. Some of the same tools were used and there was also a revelation of an IP address. Carr also disputes the DarkSeoul attribution. Many critics of the FBI position note that the North Korean IP addresses they have identified could themselves be proxies, systems hijacked by the hackers to conduct their own activity and to throw investigators off track.

The FBI notes that the hackers "shut it off very quickly once they saw their mistake" and returned to using known proxies. However, Robert Graham, CEO of Errate Security says that this is just one of many possible interpretations of what happened and noted:" “It would surprise me that somebody like that would make such a huge mistake to forget to use a proxy.That can mean so many different things. It sounds like that’s the interpretation [the FBI] put on things, but not necessarily what happened.”. It could very well be a manufactured event with the hacker knowing exactly what interpretation would be taken of what they did. "

Marc Rogers says that if the FBI drew on NSA signals intelligence as evidence that North Korea was responsible for the hacking they should indicate that rather than relying upon the evidence they have presented so far. Robert Lee, a digital forensic specialist, also criticized the FBI for not revealing unclassified information used by Mandiant the cybersecurity firm hired by Sony to investigate the hack.

The NSA has now actually claimed a part in pointing to North Korea as the hacker. Admiral Michael Rogers NSA director said when asked of the agency's role in the investigation of the hack: "We partner with the Department of Homeland Security and FBI in various areas and this is one such area. We specifically did—we were asked to provide our technical expertise. We were asked to take a look at the malware, we were asked to take a look at not just the data that was being generated from Sony but also what data could we bring to the table—here’s other activity and patterns leading up to it, what is this act really about? We were part of a broad interagency effort, not in the lead role–the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the overall lead. Yes, we were part of a broad government attempt to understand exactly what happened.”"

 Just as all this is happening lo and behold an old zombie is arising and will come before US Congress again CISPA. The bill would give spy agencies such as NSA much more power and has long been opposed by privacy advocates. An editorial at antiwar.com draws connections between the renewed pressure to advance the powers of NSA and attributing the Sony attack to North Korea: "It is the eagerness for government agencies to get these new powers and access to information that is likely informing their decision to blame North Korea for the Sony hack, as a foreign attack would be a far better sell for granting them new powers than the likely facts, that Sony was attacked by a disgruntled former employee and a handful of other hackers. "

Mozilla opposes CISPA bill as violating privacy rights

Mozilla, located in Mountain View California, is the company that has produced the successful and popular browser Firefox. The company has issued a statement condemning the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). The company says the opposition is to protect the rights of its users.

The company statement said:“While we wholeheartedly support a more secure Internet, CISPA has a broad and alarming reach that goes far beyond Internet security,” “The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse. We hope the Senate takes the time to fully and openly consider these issues with stakeholder input before moving forward with this legislation.” Others have joined in opposition to the bill including several Democratic representatives. The U.S House of Representatives has already passed the bill and it has gone to the U.S. Senate.

Advisers to Obama have issued a statement saying that the administration will advise Obama to veto the bill if it does pass Senate. However a similar statement was issued about the National Defense Authorization Act but Obama eventually signed it on New Year's Eve..

Mozilla's opposition is a big plus for opponents of the bill. Other Silicon Valley big corporations such as IBM, Facebook and Microsoft support the bill. Microsoft was rumored to have changed it position but recently denied this.

Among others opposing the bill are The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Ron Paul, and the American Civil Liberties Union and Reddit. For more see this article.

New bill threatening U.S. privacy rights passes U.S. House

While the first attempt to violate privacy rights of Americans called SOPA was withdrawn, it has now come back as CISPA( Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). Opponents have already called it SOPA2. The new act was supposed to address concerns expressed by critics of the first bill.

Not only does the new bill not solve those concerns an amendment actually makes the new bill broader in its application. A large number of organizations and individuals oppose the bill. See this site and also here.

The bill passed in the house by a vote of 248 to 168, not even close. The bill will now go to the senate. There needs to be a lot more opposition before the bill will be withdrawn again. Although the bill strengthens information sharing it also encourages the intelligence community to collect more information on U.S. citizens whenever they think this could possibly enhance national security.Critics expected this new bill to reduce the authority to snoop and to make companies liable for illegally providing the government with information. An amendment did not do this but actually broadened grounds that government could use to collect information.

The EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) condemned passage of the bill and expects that by the time the bill reaches the Senate there will be more popular opposition. Although there is no date for the bill to be debated in Senate, some fear that the bill might be quickly introduced and debated to avoid scrutiny. For more see this article

Ron Paul on CISPA bill

Earlier attempts to pass two bills SOPA and PIPA that would have enabled the U.S. Justice Dept. to shut down websites and/or search engines were shelved after public protests. The sites could have been shut down if they did not cooperate sufficiently with the war on terror or were accused of copyright infringements.

However, the U.S. government has not given up trying to control the Internet. The government wants government controls and filters on the flow of information. While Paul is correct, corporations also want to control communication and data flow as well under the rubric of intellectual property rights. In fact the government bills serve corporations and their profits as much as the government itself.

A new bill has the acronym CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act). According to Paul it would allow both the government and private corporations to view supposedly private on line communications with no judicial oversight. Of course it must all be done for reasons of cybersecurity. The bill would allow the Department of Homeland Security access to an individuals' on line communications..The wording si so broad it could be used for purposes extending much beyond cyberterrorism.

As Paul points out the bill involves close collaboration between large corporations such as Google and Facebook and the government. The corporations will hand over information about you with no warrant or judicial review. Since the corporations may be breaking laws such as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act they are conveniently given immunity from lawsuits when they hand over the information. Obviously your rights can be violated by Google or Facebook but you have no recourse. It is just part of the price you pay for fighting terrorism or perhaps for living in a developing police state. For more see this article.