November, 04 2022, 10:09am EDT
State Dep't Gave 25 Federal Agencies Access to 145M Americans' Passport Application Data w/o Legal Process or Oversight
WASHINGTON
The U.S. State Department is giving 25 "law enforcement and intelligence agencies unrestricted access to the personal data of more than 145 million Americans" without legal process or apparent oversight prior to access, according to Yahoo News.
Senator Wyden, whose letter reportedly contained these revelations, called on Secretary of State Blinken to provide detailed information on this sharing of information, which is not required by law, violates Americans' expectations of privacy, and is ripe for abuse. The database likely contains information including biometric data (such as facial images and photographs), email addresses, phone numbers, racial identification, and more.
"Sen. Wyden is right to raise the alarm regarding the State Department's mishandling of sensitive personal information of 145 million Americans. We have already seen passport information misused by federal agencies, including to gather detailed personal information on a congressional staffer, a journalist, and her family, and it is highly likely that an investigation will identify additional abuses," said Sean Vikta, Senior Policy Counsel at Demand Progress Education Fund. "Sharing information of this kind, especially in such an indiscriminate manner and without privacy protections or legally required procedures, allows untold federal agents to engage in problematic fishing expeditions and creates vulnerabilities like the one that allowed foreign adversaries to steal 22.1 million records concerning applications for security clearances."
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LATEST NEWS
'Unsettling New Milestone': Top 12 US Billionaires Now Control $2 Trillion in Wealth
"The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities," according to the author of a new analysis.
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Just 12 U.S. billionaires now have a collective net worth of over $2 trillion—a figure that amounts to a little less than a third of total federal spending in 2023—according to an analysis out Tuesday from Inequality.org, a project of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).
The $2 trillion number is also twice the amount of wealth that the top 12 US billionaires held in 2020, according to researchers at IPS, a progressive organization.
The full list of 12 billionaires includes Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Steve Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Jensen Huang.
"This is an unsettling new milestone for wealth concentration in the United States. The oligarchic dozen is richer than ever, and they are endowed with extreme material power that can be used to pursue narrow political interests at the expense of democratic majorities," wrote the author of the analysis, Omar Ocampo, a researcher at IPS.
New to the "oligarchic dozen" is Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of the tech company Nvidia. Nvidia, which became the most valuable publicly traded company this year, has seen its profits jump thanks to the world's ravenous appetite for the artificial intelligence chips that the firm produces. According to the analysis, Huang's personal wealth "has skyrocketed from $4.7 billion in 2020 to $122.4 billion—a mind-boggling 2,504 percent increase—over the last four years."
Each of the billionaires on the list "owns or is a controlling shareholder of a business that is investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence," according to Ocampo, which raises concerns about their respective carbon footprints.
Fueling AI is energy intensive, and AI data centers in the U.S. are largely powered by fossil fuels, meaning their proliferation poses a threat to the environment and a transition to a green economy.
Ocampo also discusses the political reach of the billionaires on the list. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, who respectively own X and The Washington Post, "have both purchased large media platforms, which has granted them the ability to set the terms of public debate with the hopes of influencing public opinion in their favor."
Musk specifically has established himself as a major power broker within the GOP. The billionaire spent hundreds of millions helping to re-elect Donald Trump and is now poised to play a major role in the president-elect's administration, helping oversee a new advisory committee tasked with slashing government spending.
As of early December, Trump had tapped an "unprecedented" total of seven reported billionaires for key positions in his administration, according to a separate piece of analysis by Inequality.org.
"We see the effects of this growing concentration of wealth and economic inequality everywhere—plutocratic influence on our politics, wealth transfers from the bottom to the top, and the acceleration of climate breakdown," Ocampo wrote on Tuesday.
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"The Yoon Suk Yeol regime has declared its own end of power," said the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.
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South Koreans took to the streets en masse Wednesday to protest conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol's brief imposition of martial law, a move that sparked an immediate political crisis and calls for his resignation or removal.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) led marches Wednesday and vowed that its 1.2-million-strong membership would strike until Yoon steps aside. Prior to Tuesday night, martial law was last imposed in South Korea more than four decades ago.
Yoon's decree prompted the resignation of his chief of staff, defense minister, and other officials.
"While the stated reason for declaring martial law is 'to eradicate pro-North Korean forces and maintain the constitutional order,' all citizens except Yoon Suk Yeol understand the true meaning of this martial law declaration," KCTU said in a statement. "Yoon Suk Yeol has chosen the irrational and anti-democratic method of martial law to extend his political life as he has been driven to the edge."
"The people will not forgive this," the labor organization added. "They remember the fate of regimes that declared martial law. The people clearly remember the end of regimes that deceived the citizens and damaged democracy. The people never forgave regimes that suppressed citizens and violated democracy. The Yoon Suk Yeol regime has declared its own end of power."
VIDEO: South Korean protesters call for President Yoon's arrest after martial law attempt.
South Koreans gather at Seoul's downtown Gwanghwamun in a protest to demand the resignation of President Yoon Suk Yeol after he abandoned a short-lived attempt at martial law that plunged… pic.twitter.com/6b2y2i8tUH
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) December 4, 2024
Just hours after issuing it, Yoon withdrew the martial law order in the face of large-scale backlash from the public and members of South Korea's Legislature, who are now looking to impeach the president after unanimously rejecting his ill-fated declaration.
The Financial Timesreported Wednesday that "about 190 lawmakers from six opposition parties submitted an impeachment motion, intending to discuss the bill in parliament on Thursday before a vote on Friday or Saturday." For impeachment to succeed, some members of Yoon's party would have to support the president's removal.
"As pressure built on members of Yoon's own party to support the impeachment bid, thousands of protesters against the president gathered in central Seoul," FT observed. "South Korea's main opposition, the Democratic Party, labeled the declaration of martial law 'a clear act of treason' and 'a perfect reason' to impeach the president."
Lee Jae-myung, the opposition party's leader, said Yoon "is likely to make another attempt" at imposing martial law if given the opportunity.
"But we face a bigger risk where he can provoke North Korea and run the risk of an armed clash with North Korea by destabilizing the divided border," he added.
Cho Kuk, leader of the Rebuilding Korea Party, said Yoon should face investigation for treason and warned the president "is someone who can press the button to start war or declare martial law again."
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President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly offered the number-two Pentagon job to a secretive billionaire investor with close ties to the military-industrial complex, potentially introducing additional conflicts of interest to an incoming administration that is set to be rife with corporate executives and lobbyists.
Stephen Feinberg is co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity behemoth Cerberus Capital Management, which owns a firm that provided paramilitary training to members of the elite team that murdered Saudi journalist and U.S. resident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.
Trump drew global outrage for publicly defending the Saudi regime in the wake of the assassination, even after U.S. intelligence agencies established that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman authorized Khashoggi's murder.
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It's not yet clear whether Feinberg intends to accept Trump's offer to serve as deputy defense secretary, but news of the choice prompted speculation that Feinberg could be elevated to the top Pentagon spot as Fox News host Pete Hegseth—the president-elect's nominee for the role—faces skepticism from senators amid new details of the sexual assault allegations against him. (Update: The Times reported Wednesday morning that Trump's support for Hegseth is "wobbling" and he is "openly discussing other people for the job, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.")
Citing an unnamed person familiar with his thinking,
Politicoreported that Feinberg is expected to accept the job offer for deputy defense secretary. Feinberg would also have to be confirmed by the Senate.
The Washington Post, which first reported Trump's offer on Tuesday, noted that the private equity billionaire is a major donor to the president-elect and has "investments in defense companies that maintain lucrative Pentagon contracts." The Post observed that Cerberus "has invested in hypersonic missiles" and "previously owned the private military contractor DynCorp."
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If he accepts the president-elect's offer, Feinberg would join a number of conflict-of-interest-ridden nominees for high-level positions in the incoming Trump administration.
Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, characterized Trump's Cabinet picks so far as "chaotic evil" and warned that their conflicts of interest could bring horrible consequences for the American public.
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