August 2018

The Daily Caller

CRONYISM AT THE DEFENSE DEPARTMENT PUTS NATIONAL SECURITY AT RISK

6:46 PM 08/02/2018

Bob Barr | Former Congressman (R-GA)

The famous adage admonishing us not to “put all your eggs in one basket,” may seem childish and outdated to 21st-century brainiacs at the Department of Defense, but it is in fact as relevant today as when it was authored anonymously in the mid-17th Century. And yet, such a mistake is precisely what Defense Secretary James Mattis appears hell-bent to make, as he moves to award a sole-source, multi-year, and multi-billion-dollar contract to Amazon for the Department’s cloud computing needs for at least the next decade.

In the view of many knowledgeable observers, the move appears predicated on an overly cozy, some might say “crony,” relationship between Defense Department leaders and one of the world’s richest men, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

Amazon has the largest share of the entire cloud computing infrastructure market – more than 44 percent, as noted recently by Bloomberg – and already enjoys a multi-hundred million dollar contract with the CIA for that agency’s cloud computing. Whether the “fix” is in for Amazon to now secure the lucrative, 10-year Defense Department-wide contract remains to be seen; but the prospect that it will be so awarded is raising bright red flags on Capitol Hill and within the intelligence community.

A prime reason for such concern is the price Amazon had to pay just last year in order to ink a deal with China for cloud computing in that communist-run country. Amazon Web Services (AWS), the same Amazon entity vying for our country’s Department of Defense cloud computing contract, was forced to hand over to a Chinese company with close links to that country’s government (Beijing Sinnet Technology) the keys to the Seattle-based company’s relevant cloud computing technology. As noted by the Wall Street Journal last November when word of that deal became known, the move by Amazon to transfer a portion of its cloud computing technology to a Chinese company, fits with Beijing’s “desire to control cyberspace.” At a minimum, it raises a red flag regarding the overall security of Amazon’s cloud computing technology.

While the Pentagon’s planned IT system overhaul project has been given the clever acronym “JEDI” (short for the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure project), there is little humor to be found in the manner by which Amazon has worked its way into the highest levels of decision-making throughout America’s defense and foreign intelligence sectors. Bezos and his company have succeeded in this strategy despite being publicly pilloried by President Trump for the company’s cozy relationship with the Obama Administration and liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill, and for its ability to evade tax liabilities. But, with one of the largest and most costly lobbying efforts in the nation’s capital, Amazon appears at this juncture to have weathered Trump’s criticism.

Close relationships between individuals of great wealth and government leaders are nothing new, of course. Jacob Fugger, a 16th-century German financier, labeled “The Richest Man Who Ever Lived” by Greg Steinmetz in his 2015 book by the same name, bankrolled and essentially controlled the Austrian Habsburg dynasty for years, because of his vast wealth and his willingness to use it for political influence. Fugger, perhaps the first true “crony capitalist” in the modern sense, appears to be bested now by Bezos; who, by some calculations is the new “richest man who ever lived.”

The problem in this current saga is not so much Amazon or Amazon Web Services per se. The company clearly is a leader in developing and maintaining cloud computing systems. But it is by no means the only company able to provide such services. Microsoft, Google, Oracle, and IBM all provide hard technology and services that meet the needs of the Defense Department, the CIA, and other components of our national defense community.

These companies claim, quite accurately, that giving a single company (Amazon) what would amount to a long-term monopoly on cloud computing technology for the entire U.S. defense establishment, diminishes, rather than enhances, the overall security of that system. They, along with other voices on Capitol Hill and within the Trump Administration, argue strongly for a multi-source contract as a hedge against relying on a single purveyor; especially when that company already is in bed with one of America’s major global adversaries.

The stakes in this technology battle are massive. According to Bloomberg, for the Department of Defense alone, there are some four million computer devices and 3.4 million users, along with 1,700 data centers and some 500 different cloud initiatives that would be subject to the JEDI program’s overhaul of the Pentagon’s cloud computing system.

The real problem here goes beyond the money alone, and even beyond questions of cronyism. The path down which Mattis and his supporters appear to be travelling would present a clear and present danger to the security of America’s most vital national defense data. There is no room for error; and the door to transparency and robust competition must be opened far wider than at present.

Bob Barr represented Georgia’s Seventh District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

A Jittery Adam’s Apple May Land You on a TSA Watch List

Townhall.com

8/1/2018 12:01:00 AM – Bob Barr

Next time you board a commercial airliner, be careful not to sweat too much, glance out the window nervously, visit the bathroom more than once, or [if you are a male passenger] permit your Adam’s apple to bob excessively.  Failure to control such movements may land you on a secret government watch list as a suspected terrorist.

The above factors are not lifted from a screenplay for an upcoming episode of Sacha Baron Cohen’s “Who is America.”  They are part of an actual list of characteristics included in a previously secret federal government program, code named “Quiet Skies,” administered by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) and the federal Air Marshal Service, in cahoots with airline personnel.

As noted in recent news reports, the program was launched in 2010 and has steadily evolved into an expanded version of the TSA’s earlier and much-maligned SPOT program (“Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques”). Like SPOT, a Boston Globe report of the Quiet Skies program confirms that passengers are flagged for all manner of “suspicious” behavior, including but not limited to those noted above.

In a testament to the program’s faulty premises, and as noted also in the Boston Globe analysis, previous targets of this surveillance include a flight attendant and a federal law enforcement officer. “[J]eez we need to have an easy way to document this nonsense,” one Air Marshal texted his colleague; concluding that, “Congress needs to know that it’s gone from bad to worse.”

The program detailed in this latest revelation is not the first time federal agents or agencies have engaged in profiling people as an easy way to identify lawbreakers.  In the late 1970s and into the early ‘80s at the height of the War on Drugs, “drug courier profiling” was all the rage.  Atlanta’s international airport became Ground Zero for the practice of identifying suspects who were believed to be hiding illegal drugs in their bags or on their persons.

This was back in the pre-cell phone era, remember; and making a call from a public phone at an airport right after deplaning was one of several characteristics on which federal drug agents relied in deciding whether a person fit the “drug courier profile” and would be further surveilled, interrogated, arrested, and eventually charged. While some courts allowed drugs thus seized to be admitted into evidence, the practice of subjectively profiling individuals as the basis for prosecution, was deemed by many federal judges to run afoul of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures.

Law enforcement’s interest in profiling criminal suspects as a shorthand way to nab lawbreakers, however, remains alive and well; especially in the post-9/11 world.  While such methodology may in many respects be sound, the key to constitutionally permissible profiling is to incorporate articulable characteristics in such way as is consistent with the Fourth Amendment, and without injecting factors touching on racial, religious, or other protected criteria.

The goal of TSA’s most recent profiling gambit does not appear to be so much the arrest of individual passengers based on observed behavior (although that could happen), as was the goal in the earlier “drug courier profile” program. However, there remain inherent and insidious problems with surveillance programs like “Quiet Skies.”

When passengers are “watched” surreptitiously by government agents, or by airline employees at the behest of those agents, what information is noted, in what form is it collected, where is it maintained, and for how long?  Might a law-abiding, but excessively nervous passenger find himself unwittingly on a watch list; a list that becomes part of a vast database of information subject to algorithmic manipulation that might show up in the future as a flag identifying the individual as untrustworthy, or perhaps even unfit to purchase a firearm or engage in other endeavors?

These are not crazy, hypothetical questions; and citizens have a right to know whether, how, why and to what extent, their movements are being surveilled and cataloged by government agents simply because they have decided to travel by air.

In addition to asking these important questions of TSA and other federal agencies, the Congress should demand to know why such programs are even considered necessary at all.  After all, haven’t all passengers on commercial air carriers already been subject to background checks and physical screening procedures to ensure they do not possess the tools that would be needed in order to endanger the security of the plane they already have boarded?

Flying aboard commercial airlines already is fraught with discomfort and tension.  Must we now also have to be concerned that an overactive sweat gland, a jittery Adam’s apple, or a second trip to the lilliputian restroom might land us on a secret watch list?