Epstein Files - An Archeological Find That Will Be Dissected Forever

There are so many pages of documents in the Epstein files that have been released so far, that any kind of definitive conclusions are a long way off.  They have to be read, put into some kind of context, and links between documents have to be figured out.  Then links between the Epstein files and other data bases - court records, news articles, and other breaches like the Panama Papers.  Plus, many released files are still redacted and unredacted in ways they shouldn't be (hiding names other than victims, not hiding all the victim data.) 

What's public so far is about 50%. There are millions of files left,  which the administration seems to hope they won’t have to release.  People speculate these have more damning information in them.  That’s one logical train of thought.  Another is that the DOJ staff aren’t that organized that they can separate out the worst.  Another strategy would be to have them be nothing revealing as a way to tease, and then shut this all down.  That doesn’t seem too likely either.  

When I looked into one set of the Epstein files - court documents - there were hundreds of pages of routine court documents as lawyers made motions and set deadlines that seemed to be of little consequence, with a few more substantial documents about the specific court case (Epstein suing someone, Wexner?,  but nothing terribly revealing stood out to me at first glance.  Boring procedural motions and rulings mostly.  

Some online commentators are writing breathtaking headlines, overusing words like "BREAKING" and "BOMBSHELL" (all caps in originals) pointing to a newly revealed name, or evidence of the very sexual nature of Epstein and his clients/friends.  

Whether there is an important story or it's just more clickbait can be discerned by whether the 'punchline' is revealed in the social media post or whether you have to click to find out the allegedly important nugget.  Most of those nuggets will be micro level news.  

The meaning and context of everything will take a while to tease out.  After all, historians are still finding new twists to justify new biographies of people like Abraham Lincoln and there is far less actual information about Lincoln than there is, probably, about Epstein and his buddy Donald.  

The Bigger Picture

It’s clear to me that there is a bigger, complicated web of connections, influence, and crime.  Some sex trade related, some financial, some political, some national security related.  And while I write ‘some’ as

though these are all separate categories, I’m sure the Venn Diagrams will show a lot of overlap.  

I’ve seen several story lines that seem pretty likely and worth thinking about already:  The first is the idea that the culture of male power (sexual and otherwise) over young (and even older) females is not restricted to Epstein’s island and other properties or Mar-a-lago.  

1.  Rather it IS the culture of the US and probably most of the world.    

From Carole Cadwalladr's Substack, How to Survive the Broligarchy, We all live in Jeffrey Epstein's world , here are a couple of excerpts to give you a sense of her story (and which will come as no surprise to most women and the men they trust to talk to):

“Epstein has given us an extraordinary portal through which we can now see how hostile state influence, criminality and the impunity of the billionaire class are intimately enmeshed. That’s the piece I still want to write. But we can’t understand any of this until we realise that Epstein isn’t just a doorway, he’s also a mirror.  His culture is our culture.

The latest tranche of Epstein documents made it obvious. Consider all the “contrarians” and “anti-woke” warriors who show up in the latest dump: Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Larry Summers, Steve Bannon, and of course, Donald Trump. With apologies to George Carlin: It’s a big club, and the worst people are in it — because their interests are all aligned. Pushing back on social justice, it turns out, was coordinated.

Being able to see their emails makes something very clear: The “anti-woke” movement was not a genteel intellectual inquiry, made by disinterested parties who cared deeply about free speech. It is a social circle of powerful people who feel threatened by #MeToo. Reading through the emails, it’s possible to see that Epstein himself coordinated pushback against #MeToo. Looking back, it seems obvious that sinking #MeToo also led to where we are now: a place where laws simply don’t apply if you have enough money and power. The same players are involved.”  (Emphasis added)

2.  "kind of a super concierge"  In this one, Epstein is a fixer for powerful people, to the point that a lot of people owe him favors.  This one gets into financial issues (to an extreme with Wexner) and politics

Molly Jong Fast's New York Times opinion piece, says the Epstein files show that it's more than just sex, "Mr. Epstein won favor and friendships by acting as a kind of superconcierge."  Here's an excerpt:

"Many people stuck with him even after he had gone to jail in 2008 in Florida for sex crimes, and in some cases even after he landed in jail again in 2019 on sex-trafficking charges. Back then, the plight of the victims often seemed to be an afterthought. That’s most likely because whatever they received from him in the past — access to career-enhancing people, access to young girls and an endless supply of freebies — might still be on offer. This is the nature of the Epstein files: It’s the record of what a global class of very privileged, accomplished and self-important people want to get gifted.

Sometimes it was a Prada bag. Other times it was a flight on Mr. Epstein’s jet, or a weekend at his island. Sometimes it was a donation to a charity or school. Or a job for their kid working on a Woody Allen film, or a shortcut for Mr. Allen’s own kid to get into Bard. Sometimes it was a “tall, Swedish blonde.” Other times it was a young woman who might be a “a little freaked by the age difference.”

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In writing about an earlier tranche of emails, in The Times, Anand Giridharadas asked: “How did Mr. Epstein manage to pull so many strangers close? The emails reveal a barter economy of nonpublic information that was a big draw. This is not a world where you bring a bottle of wine to dinner.”

Inside dope wasn’t the only thing Mr. Epstein had on hand. The picture provided by the latest files shows how Mr. Epstein won favor and friendships by acting as a kind of superconcierge. Sometimes that meant sending the helicopter to pick up guests, as Mr. Epstein offered to do for Elon Musk in a 2012 email, writing, “How many people will you be for the heli to island?” On another occasion, Mr. Musk asks his concierge Epstein, “Do you have any parties planned?” Mr. Epstein provided private plane trips, internships, Apple Watches, Hermès bags, extra-large zipper sweatshirts (those went to Steve Bannon), nearly $10,000 worth of boxers and T-shirts (Woody Allen) and an XXL cashmere sweater (Noam Chomsky). And then there’s the resistance Substack star Michael Wolff, who is all over the Epstein files, who emails Mr. Epstein, 'Shoes are very nice. Thanks.'”

3.  Epstein's Russian connections  - This one takes us into national security and politics

From Phillips P. O'Brien's Substack, Phillips's Newsletter, we get: "Why Does A Narcissist Accept Humiliation? Epstein Might Be The Answer."

"... another batch of millions of documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files were released and they made a very strong case that Epstein was closely linked to elements in Russian intelligence. There were trips, emails, and other assorted hints that Epstein was associated with and even coordinated activities with members of the Russian intelligence service. The evidence was strong enough that Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a man not prone to histrionics or overstatement, said that the Poles were investigating whether Epstein had been a Russian agent. Tusk’s exact words in a government meeting were:"

Even if the next set of documents released by the Department of Justice includes a video tape with a naked Donald Trump humping a 14 year old, that won't be the end of the insights we learn about the United States, about the very rich, about male privilege, especially while male privilege, about the network of ultra rich, and even international links to nations that are not considered our friends that amount to serious breaches of national security.  

It's going to take many years to map out all the connections and how those connections set up a class of people who, for the most part, have been above the law, and have perverted democracy in many ways.  

Stay tuned.  But don't hold your breath.  This is not a television mystery that ends with a neat conclusion after 90 minutes.  This is more like an archeological dig that will take decades to tie up the many threads and loose ends.

Prep Phone For Protests And Anti-Racism Resources

Alaska is now surging on a second COVID-19 wave.  We hit 190 active cases today (19 more from yesterday- State says 20).  Our previous high was April 22 with 188 active cases.  The isolation measures got us down to 33, but now we're rising and likely to keep on going up.  See the Alaska COVID-19 tab above for more details.

Meanwhile here are a couple of useful links:

How Do I Prepare My Phone for a Protest?

Here are the basic recommendations:

1. Subdue Your Signals (and Download Signal)
2. Lockdown Location Tracking
3. Harden Your Hardware
4. Use a Passcode, Not a Fingerprint
5. Neutralize Notifications
6. Think Before You Share
7. Physicalize Your Phonebook

If these don't make a lot of sense to you, then that's all the more reason to go to the article to find out what it all means.  Our phones do lots of things for us in ways few people understand.  Not knowing means you don't have to worry, but knowing means you can take some basic steps to protect yourself.

These ideas apply to travel to police state countries where the authorities may just take your phone.




Anti Racism Resources

"This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work. If you haven’t engaged in anti-racism work in the past, start now. Feel free to circulate this document on social media and with your friends, family, and colleagues."

Here are the categories:

1. Resources for white parents to raise anti-racist children:
2. Articles to read:
3. Podcasts to subscribe to:
4. Books to read:
5. Films and TV series to watch:
6. Organizations to follow on social media:
7. More anti-racism resources to check out:

Homeland Security Supporting Book Industry By Banning Electronic Devices On Planes

The title, of course, is the glass half full interpretation.

Al Jazeera, among others, reports:

"The United States is barring passengers on flights originating in eight Muslim-majority countries from carrying any electronic device bigger than a mobile phone, the Department of Homeland Security said.  . .
Laptops, e-readers, cameras, tablets, printers, electronic games and portable DVD players are affected by the ban - which applies to direct flights to the US - but they may still be stowed in the hold in checked baggage."

But I'd also expect luggage is going to take much longer to be ready to be picked up on arrival in the US as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can now look at people's computers without having to take them directly from the owners.  I'm sure Homeland Security has ways to open and copy the contents of people's devices without knowing the passwords.

So people will need to find ways to detect if their computers have been played with while they are separated from them, just to know whether their data has been diddled while their devices were out of their grasp. Here's a four year old post talking about how 'pros' protect their laptops. (Not very well it seems.)

Will this spawn a new industry that provided secure lockboxes to put computers in that would make it a little harder for agents to open them?

This Guardian article questions the logic of the rules.  If they can be used as explosive devices, then they would still be dangerous in cargo areas.  If it's about hacking, well, the article points out that cell phones are computers.  It offers another possibility

"US airlines have been lobbying the Trump administration to intervene in the Persian Gulf, where they have contended for years that the investments in three rapidly expanding airlines in the area – Etihad Airways, Qatar, and Emirates – constitute unfair government subsidies with which Delta, American and United cannot compete. All three Middle Eastern airlines are among the carriers affected by the electronics ban."

I guess when you are as unpredictable as our president, people will believe he would meddle with anything in any way he pleases.

I'm sticking with the idea that DHS (or some other security agency) wants access to what's on people's computers.   Is anyone going to keep track of how long it takes for luggage to get through before and after this policy goes into effect?

Will the cloud enable people to take essentially empty computers through customs and other governmental checkpoints?  But then who's protecting the cloud?

When do we declare privacy officially extinct?

And here's a Washington Post article asking similar questions.

Extreme Vetting For Immigrants. Apparently None For Trump Appointees

Trump issued an executive order for extreme vetting. But at the same time, it appears that Trump cabinet and staff appointments get minimum vetting - think of Manafort and Flynn as the most obvious examples.

But there is a significant difference between these two types of vetting.

Immigrant and refugee vetting

This link takes you to a detailed State Department chart of the admissions process for refugees.

Immigrants and refugees already go through an extremely vigorous vetting process that takes 12-18 months.  CNN reports that no 'major fatal terrorist attacks' have been carried out by refugees since the Refugee Act was passed in 1980.  It then lists terrorist attacks by Muslims in the US and looks at their status.  The Atlantic, using the same study as CNN, reports:

"But after sifting through databases, media reports, court documents, and other sources, Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, has arrived at a striking finding: Nationals of the seven countries singled out by Trump have killed zero people in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015.
Zero."

The Pew Research Center reports

"About 3 million refugees have been resettled in the U.S. since Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980, which created the Federal Refugee Resettlement Program and the current national standard for the screening and admission of refugees into the country."

[Note:  in that same time period 1,526,864 people died in auto crashes in the US.  Numbers are based on a Wikipedia list through 2015 and the National Safety Council Report for 2016.  While these numbers are not rounded off and look very precise, one source suggested the 2016 number was an estimate.  I include this note to put the refugee threat in perspective.  If Trump were really concerned about saving American lives, he might be far more effective by focusing on traffic safety.]

The key points I want to make about delays in accepting refugees are that:

1. The US already does an excellent job
2. While trying to identify the one or two possible needles in the pool of refugees, many, many lives have been badly disrupted, to find, what seems to be a mythical bad apple.  I'm not denying that there are terrorists who would try to get into the US.  I'm just saying that the process we already have is working.  If it can be improved, Trump's edicts are unlikely to prevent any terrorists from entering the country.
3. This is all just political rhetoric, whether Trump knows the actual statistics or not, to pander to his base and raise fear of refugees.  All of which increases the likelihood that immigrant lives will be made harder. 

Vetting Cabinet Appointments and Trump Staff

The number of positions a new administration has to fill may seem like a lot, it's a small number compared to the refugees.  And vetting them affects only people who have agreed to be considered for a position.  Extreme vetting of cabinet appointees and White House staff, doesn't disrupt the lives of tens of thousands of others, the way Trump's actions on immigrants does.

The news we've had about Trump's appointee backgrounds and conflicts is very troubling and when Trump talks about vetting of refugees and immigrants, I cannot help but think about Trump's vetting process for his own team.

It appears that the Trump team did little or no serious vetting of the people he's chosen.  What sort of background check was there for Bannon or Flynn?  And if there were any serious checks, it seems the Trump folks just disregarded any of the red flags.  Flynn, for instance, was an agent for the Turkish government and got paid half a million dollars.

In Flynn's case, Pence and Trump are saying, now, they had no idea Flynn was working for the Turkish government.  The Chicago Tribune writes:

"Among those told of Flynn's lobbying work during the transition was Don McGahn, a campaign lawyer who has gone on to become White House counsel, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversations between Flynn's representatives and the transition team.
A White House official said McGahn and others were not aware of the details of Flynn's work. It's not clear why the Trump advisers did not seek additional information once Flynn's lawyers raised the potential filing.
According to the person with knowledge of the discussions, Flynn's representatives had a second conversation with Trump lawyers after the inauguration and made clear the national security adviser would indeed be registering with the Justice Department. The White House official said the counsel's office had no recollection of that second discussion."

It's hard to figure out when they knew what.  Rachel Maddow goes back and forth with clips of Pence and Trump denying knowledge and then shows they had to know, because others say they told them. You can watch Rachel Maddow go through the evidence,


As I write these posts, I'm fully aware that for many logic, numbers, and reason play only a small part of their decision making processes.  But the way I think and my skills, such that they are, fall in this area, so it's where I have to focus.

And there are many who are confused by the conflicting claims, so I hope these are useful to them.  Either so they can make better decisions and/or have better data when discussing these issues with people who decide without any data at all.

It's my experience that when you counter someone's argument well, there's a good chance they will not acknowledge that to your face.  But the accumulation of evidence of time, does matter.

Snowden - The Movie

I've avoided posts about Edward Snowden.  Yes, I've mentioned him now and then, but I've held off from writing about him in much detail.  My dissertation was on privacy.  I've studied whistle-blowing.  Daniel Ellsberg is one of my heroes.  I knew I was primed to be supportive of Snowden and wanted to hold off.  (And whether I say something about him or not isn't going to matter in the bigger scheme of things anyway.)

I wanted to know more.  Well, I really wanted to drop by and talk to him for a couple of days and see if he was the guy I wanted him to be or not.

I've watched some of his tapes and I've pretty much settled, for the time being, on the Snowden the whistleblower side.  He's the good guy who believed in the ideals of his country and was willing to risk his freedom, even his life, to keep his country honest.  That's the narrative that fits most comfortably with what I've seen and heard about Snowden.


So we went to the 12:50 pm showing of Oliver Stone's Snowden today.  I did read a New York Times review when I was checking last night about when the movie played here.  After seeing the movie I'd concur with the reviewer.

This may be the movie that Oliver Stone has been practicing for.  It's restrained and straightforward.  It goes back and forth between the 'right now' and flashbacks.  The 'right now' starts with his arrival in Hong Kong.  The film is totally consistent with my sense of who Snowden is and why he did what he did.

The surprises for me were:

• how conservative he was politically and personally
• how he voiced concerns to others he worked with and for while he was an employee or contractor with the various security agencies
• that he suffered from epileptic seizures

So, until others can present a more convincing narrative - along with supportive evidence - I'm more than willing to call on Obama and others to find a way to let Snowden come back to the US honorably.  Don't make this like the Cuba sanctions that go on forever or our marijuana phobia because we can't admit we're wrong.

There are more thoughts, but I need to do other things and this movie is worth seeing.  It's well made and is entertaining.  At the very least, it should further open the discussion how we keep spy agencies accountable.  And how we treat those who call them on it.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is great in the starring role. And I liked how the real Snowden's image replaces the actor's at the very end.

Articles of Interest - ISIS Recruits, Genes, Bias, Map Artist

There's way too much information for anyone to keep up with.  Here are some ideas worth considering.


Danes choose love over punishment to fight terrorists with some apparent success.

". . . France shut down mosques it suspected of harboring radicals. The U.K. declared citizens who had gone to help ISIS enemies of the state. . . But the Danish police officers took a different approach: They made it clear to citizens of Denmark who had traveled to Syria that they were welcome to come home, and when they did, they would receive help with going back to school, finding an apartment, meeting with a psychiatrist or a mentor, or whatever they needed to fully integrate back into society."

When a Person Is Neither XX nor XY: A Q&A with Geneticist Eric Vilain

People argue that the use of computers, human bias can be eliminated, but this piece shows that human bias can still be reflected in the programs they write.

"That has important applications. Any bias contained in word embeddings like those from Word2vec is automatically passed on in any application that exploits it. One example is the work using embeddings to improve Web search results. If the phrase “computer programmer” is more closely associated with men than women, then a search for the term “computer programmer CVs” might rank men more highly than women. “Word embeddings not only reflect stereotypes but can also amplify them,” say Bolukbasi and co."

Secrets are not a secret anymore if more than one person knows...

“A real secret is something which only one person knows.” ― Idries Shah, Reflections

There are no secrets that time does not reveal. Jean Racine If you reveal your secrets to the wind, you should not blame the wind for revealing them to the trees. Khalil Gibran

An argument against having backdoor keys to break into phones.



Rubric Memo  -  A spoof on academic memos and the use of rubrics.

"We refer to this rubric as Project 3.5.1, which you will recognize as a series of numbers. By entering data about your courses into this rubric, you help us to improve education for all our students, to whom we have also assigned numbers. We have also assigned you a number based on an Enigma-encrypted combination of the street address of your childhood home and your ATM PIN code, which we hacked (please see attachment 7)."

Map Maker Artist Perfectionist 

"These days, almost all the data cartographers use is provided by the government and is freely available in the public domain. Anybody can download databases of highways, airports, and cities, and then slap a crude map together with the aid of a plotter. What separates a great map from a terrible one is choosing which data to use and how best to present it."

Check That Suspicious Link

I had a bizarre comment on my latest post.  It was a url.  It was enough to get me to call my email provider and ask some questions that got me to the security folks.  We think it was harmless, but I changed passwords.  But it did lead to him pointing out a website that checks suspicious url's for malware, viruses, etc.

I thought that was a cool thing to know, so here it is:  https://virustotal.com.

Yeah, you have to think about checking that link I just gave you, don't you.  But you have to go there to check it.  Such dilemmas.  But I've got you covered.  I already did it and here's what it said:

I am working on Part 2 of The Uncanny Valley and Paris Museums post, but it's by warm and sunny in Anchorage and it's complicated, so this is a break.  In fact I may leave it for a couple of days before I get it up.

The Dark Side of the Internet: Anonymity After All?

 KCRW had an interesting discussion of Internet security.  In light of NSA's spying, they discussed the small minority of web surfers who use anonymous surfing software like Tor which is triple encrypted.  One of the panel members suggested NSA only reads email of ordinary folks because the people with something to hide, use Tor.  Tor was created by the US government to help out journalists and dissidents in countries that persecute dissenters.  But it seems it is also what makes black market websites possible too.

Here's their description:

Are 'Dark Networks' a Threat or a Haven Online? (1:08PM)

Revelations about the government’s electronic surveillance have raised alarms about privacy. Today's Wall Street Journal reports that the National Security Agency’s capacity is even broader than has reported before—enabling it to reach " roughly 75% of all US Internet traffic."Is there any way to use the Internet secretly? Yes, there is. It's the Darknet, available through software that allows anonymous browsing—and, increasingly—provides opportunities for organized crime. On Silk Road, for example, customers can find LSD, cocaine and heroin as if they were shopping on Amazon — anonymously. Why hasn't the government cracked down? Are there legitimate reasons for Internet users to conceal their identities?

Guests:

• Joseph Menn: Reuters, @josephmenn
• Andy Greenberg: Forbes magazine, @a_greenberg
• Karen Reilly: Tor Project, @torproject
• Nate Anderson: Ars Technica, @natexanderson

You can listen to it here:

The Dark Side of the Internet: Anonymity After All? - To the Point on KCRW