Iran nuclear talks face US deadline - Thursday July 9th, 2015 at 1:15 PM
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Pressure is mounting on world powers and Iran to reach a deal on its nuclear programme and avoid the issue becoming bogged down in the US Congress.
If a final agreement is not reached by Friday, Congress will double the time it takes to review an accord. That will delay the lifting of US sanctions.
The pace at which sanctions are lifted is a major issue at talks in Vienna.
World powers and Iran are still locked in negotiations, despite missing a self-imposed 30 June deadline.
The so-called P5+1 (US, UN, Russia, UK, France and Germany) and Iran are still believed to differ in three key areas - international inspections of Iran's non-nuclear sites, sanctions, and how Iran's compliance will be verified.
Iran also wants a UN Security Council arms embargo to be scrapped - something the US has ruled out.
World powers want to be satisfied that Iran is neither trying to develop a nuclear bomb, nor has the capability to do so in under at least a year. Iran insists its nuclear programme is for purely peaceful purposes.
Presidential veto
If a deal is reached in Vienna, under US law Congress has 30 days in which to decide whether to accept or reject it, so long as it receives the text of the agreement by midnight Washington DC time (04:00 GMT on Friday).
Failing that, the review period will be extended to 60 days. During this time, US sanctions will remain in place.
If Congress rejects the deal, President Barack Obama can use his power of veto, but Congress can still overturn this. An extended review could help opposition to a deal build in the Republican-controlled legislature.
Under an interim accord, Iran and the P5+1 agreed that crippling sanctions would be eased in return for curbs on Iran's nuclear programme.
Both sides at the Vienna talks said they hoped for progress on Thursday, though there has been little concrete sign of a breakthrough.
"Hopefully today is the last day," Iranian nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi said, as he headed into a meeting with US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
Mr Moniz said they were "going to resolve the last issues, if we can".
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House lawmakers on Thursday issued a stern warning about the White House’s plans for a nuclear deal in Iran, as negotiators sprint towards a final deal half a globe away.
The U.S. and five other nations appear to be days away from the final terms of an agreement meant to limit Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for rolling back sanctions.
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But any deal would first have to go through Congress, and it’s clear that members of both parties aren’t going to let that happen quietly.
“That’s a bad deal for us: permanent concessions in exchange for temporary benefits — and that’s only if Iran doesn’t cheat like North Korea did,” Rep. Ed Royce (R-Calif.) the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said during a hearing on the negotiations on Thursday. “So Iran is left a few steps away from the bomb and more able to dominate the region — this is my take on this.”
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said that the early outline of the deal was “the equivalent of the entire World War II Luftwaffe sitting on the ground with the promise that although the fuel tanks are right next to the planes, they won’t fully load the planes and the bombs for 10 years.”
“That’s kind of where we are,” he said. “We’re letting them have all the weapons of war.”
Some Democrats also expressed their skepticism of the plan, with Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) saying he had “legitimate concerns” that the deal could needlessly bulk up the Iranian economy without giving international inspectors unfettered access to ensure Tehran is living up to its side of the bargain.
Unless negotiations wrapped up by the end of the day on Thursday — which seems unlikely — lawmakers will have 60 days to review any Iran deal and vote on whether congressionally imposed sanctions should be lifted.
If they vote to approve the deal, “then we have to the greatest extent possible locked ourselves into a deal in which in 12 years we have a nuclear Iran,” said Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.). “So we shouldn’t do that.”
Yet it remains unclear exactly how much power Congress will be able to wield.
Even if lawmakers vote to block the deal, President Obama could veto the resolution. It seems unlikely that there are the two-thirds majorities needed in both chambers to override him.
Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to deliver an update on the talks from Vienna later on Thursday, which should offer a clearer indication of how discussions are proceeding.
Outward appearances are that talks are moving forward.
While negotiators have been caught up on Iran’s demand for relief from a U.N arms embargo, the main text of the agreement is "around 96 percent complete," Iran's deputy foreign minister said, according to Reuters.
On Wednesday afternoon, Obama held a secure videoconference with negotiators in Vienna, which could be interpreted as a sign that talks are hitting their stride.
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- President Barack Obama met with Senate Democrats Tuesday.
- Saul Loeb/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
President Barack Obama huddled with Senate Democrats Tuesday night at the White House for a social get-together that also served as an opportunity to hit the reset button after parting ways on trade legislation.
With Iran nuclear negotiations nearing an end and time running short for the president’s domestic to-do list, Mr. Obama turned to Democrats on the Hill for help advancing his policy objectives. The most immediate White House priorities include marshaling lawmakers’ support for a possible deal to curb Iran’s nuclear program, reauthorizing the U.S. Export-Import bank and passing a highway funding measure.
Tuesday’s meeting came two weeks after the president partnered with Republican congressional leaders to pass a fast-track trade bill amid a messy battle that divided the Democratic Party. With the approval of the trade package, Mr. Obama notched his biggest win to date in this Republican-controlled Congress, but he clashed with many Democrats in the process.
Administration officials have dismissed suggestions of any lingering hard feelings, saying that the president and Democratic lawmakers would quickly return to work on shared goals. Still, the gathering in the State Dining Room signaled a concerted outreach effort aimed at ensuring that the president has Senate Democrats in his corner on several key issues.
Chief among them is a long-sought nuclear agreement with Iran. While the diplomatic process has extended into overtime and the outcome remains uncertain, any eventual deal will be vetted by Congress.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said lawmakers are closely following the nuclear talks, and “the administration is doing the best we can to try to be responsive to that interest and help them understand exactly where things stand.”
Mr. Obama is working to corral Democratic support for a potential deal as many Republicans express deep reservations about an accord with Iran and some urge the White House to suspend negotiations.
Mr. Earnest said the president also is looking to Democratic senators to push for the renewal of the Ex-Im Bank’s charter, which lapsed last month. And with the Highway Trust Fund set to expire at the end of July, Mr. Obama is seeking Democrats’ help forging a deal to fund an infrastructure package.
“Obviously, there is a deadline coming up at the end of this month and we’re hopeful that Congress can take action in bipartisan fashion that would reflect the need to make investments in our infrastructure in a way that would not just benefit our infrastructure but also benefit our broader economy in terms of creating jobs and stimulating economic growth,” Mr. Earnest said.
While Mr. Obama’s recent success working with Republican leaders on trade spurred speculation about whether that bipartisan coalition could be replicated when lawmakers tackle other issues, both parties appeared to be settling back into more familiar adversarial roles as they prepared for a busy legislative stretch before lawmakers’ August recess.
This week, the White House has focused on rallying Democratic backing while taking aim at Republicans on issues ranging from immigration to a stalled presidential nomination. Meantime, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) jabbed at the president and Senate Democrats on Twitter. Mr. Boehner dubbed the lawmakers “the shutdown caucus,” a reference to Democratic threats to block a defense policy measure – a move that could jeopardize other spending bills.
“Senate Democrats’ shutdown caucus strategizes at the White House,” Mr. Boehner wrote on TwitterTuesday night.
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It’s just a matter of time before sanctions on Iran are lifted. And when they are lifted, oil is likely to tumble further as the Persian Gulf country boosts production and battles swing-producer Saudi Arabia for market share.
Crude-oil for August delivery CLQ5, +2.73% has been walloped with a 12% fall so far in July on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Prices touched lows under $51 a barrel on Wednesday. They stand at their lowest levels since April.
August Brent crude traded on the ICE Futures exchange LCOQ5, +3.49% has seen a month-to-date loss of more than 11% and traded at $56.42 a barrel on Wednesday.
But oil prices are poised to fall further as a nuclear deal between Iran and the U.S., China, France, Russia, the U.K. and Germany appears likely. Such a deal would unleash a new supply of crude oil back on to the market.
If sanctions are removed ‘I’d expect Iran to quickly return to the OPEC fold, very much as Iraq has done, increasing supplies as they please in an effort to claw back market share.’
Assuming the sanctions are removed, Matt Parry, senior oil analyst at the International Energy Agency, said he expects Iran to “quickly return to the [Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries] fold—very much as Iraq has done, increasing supplies as they please in an effort to claw back market share.”
Talks between Iran and six world powers are extended beyond Tuesday’s deadline, but an agreement that would lift sanctions on Iran is expected to be reached eventually.
“Iran will not care much about the recent falls in oil prices,” said Fawad Razaqzada, technical analyst at <a href="http://FOREX.com" rel="nofollow">FOREX.com</a>. “They will try to sell as much of the stuff as possible like all the other OPEC members—for if they don’t, they will lose out.”
Crude-oil prices already are under stiff pressure from other major oil producers, with Monday’s trading highlighting the carnage. Saudi Arabia, OPEC’s largest producer, has made it very clear that it intends to keep production high so it won’t lose market share to non-OPEC producers, including U.S. shale producers. Read: As U.S. cuts, Saudi oil-rig counts hit record highs
$50.0$52.5$55.0$57.5$60.0$62.5
“The Saudis are producing well over any quota they ever had, and I expect them to continue to do so even if Iran re-enters the market,” said James Williams, energy economist at WTRG Economics.
OPEC output climbed in June to 31.28 million barrels a day, its highest monthly level since Aug. 2012, according to a Platts survey released Monday. Output from Saudi Arabia edged up to 10.35 million barrels a day, while Iran’s output has been stable at 2.85 million barrels a day.
OPEC-member Iran, meanwhile, has also expressed its willingness and ability to quickly ramp up oil production once sanctions are lifted, adding more oil to already oversupplied global market. Analysts have been debating about just how much oil it is capable of adding and how quickly.
Iran won’t be able to be anywhere “near as big a player as the Saudis,” Razaqzada said. But “the fact of the matter is that Iran will eventually contribute up to 1 million barrels of oil per day more to the already-saturated market. That should help to keep prices under pressure.”
There are also tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia to consider.
“If sanctions were lifted on Iranian oil, it would just give Iran the ability to fund more of the military operations it is behind today,” said Williams.
“Almost without exception, they are ventures which are at odds with the Saudis,” he said. “Support of Assad [regime in Syria] and [Lebanese] Hezbollah as well as the Houthis in Yemen are two examples.”
Williams said that one of the ways the Saudis can indirectly fight against that would be by “leaving production high and not backing down to accommodate new Iraqi oil.”
The lower oil prices that result will “counter some of the additional income Iraq would have from higher oil sales,” he said. The Saudis will “want to add economic stress to Iran.”
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It was a summer vacation she’ll always remember. At the age of seven, Nimco Ali flew back from Manchester, England, to her parents’ home country of Djibouti. Once there, a woman she recalls as veiled in black — “looking like one of those Dementors in Harry Potter, who suck the souls out of people” — made a cut in her genitals, the practice known as Female Genital Mutilation. When Ali returned to school in Manchester in the autumn she told her teacher what had happened to her in Djibouti, and asked why she thought it had been done. “That’s what happens to girls like you,” she recalls the teacher saying, implying that Ali’s African heritage was explanation enough. “I didn’t feel listened to,” recalls Ali, now 34. “Today, I know that girls in the same situation wouldn’t be dismissed like I was.”
That’s in part because of tough new laws due to be enacted on July 17 in Britain, where an estimated 20,000 girls under the age of 15 are at risk of FGM every year. Earlier this month, British Prime Minister David Cameron, calling FGM a “cruel, barbaric” practice, told his ministers to accelerate enhanced protection orders before the school summer holidays begin in July. The dangers for the girls peak in summer, when long vacations give girls’ wounds time to heal; it is during the six-week break from school that families often return to their countries of origin in Africa or Asia to have the procedure done, either by family members, local elders, barbers, or — in a recent trend toward the “medicalization” of the practice — by doctors or nurses.
Britain’s new Serious Crime Bill, which passed in March, creates a new offense of failing to protect a girl against the practice, and extends FGM-related laws, making it illegal for a UK national or resident to have the procedure done outside the UK. The law allows professionals working with children — teachers, doctors, and social workers — to apply straight to courts if they suspect a girl is in danger. Over the last couple of years, police and teachers have been trained to spot warning signs. Last year, Project Azure, the London Metropolitan Police’s FGM unit, launched Operation Limelight at U.K. airports, training staff to be vigilant about passengers on flights to the 29 African and Middle Eastern countries where FGM is most common. After officers were trained to engage passengers and do targeted baggage searches, Operation Limelight resulted in two arrests — and two girls being taken into protective custody. Schools that suspect a girl has undergone FGM will now have to report it to police. “We’re alert to things like girls taking a long time in the toilet, painful periods, bloated stomach,” says Marios Charalambous, head of physical and social welfare at Brentford School for Girls, a west London school. A sudden long “vacation” overseas, or other signs that a girl might be in imminent danger of the procedure, are also reported to the school’s student welfare counsellor.
Brentford is one of a number of schools that allow students — in some schools, as young as ten — to take part in an FGM awareness session. This winter, when the woman running the workshop, a trainer from Forward, a FGM awareness non-governmental organization, took four plastic models of female genitalia out of her bag, there was the occasional giggle from the Brentford girls. But the class quieted when she handed the models round, inviting the children to examine the examples of what the various forms of FGM look like, from the least invasive — scar tissue where a clitoris should be — to the most — sewing up the vaginal opening. “I found it quite interesting,” said one 12- year-old. “But it was really upsetting, and really shocking.”
In many communities, it’s not shocking, but the norm. In Egypt, Djibouti, Guinea and Somalia, at least 90 % of girls and women have undergone FGM according to a 2013 UNICEF report. The report found the practice was declining in the 29 African and Middle Eastern countries where it’s traditionally most prevalent, but migration patterns from these countries mean there has been an increase in cases in the West. A report from the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington-based non-profit focused on health and the environment, earlier this year stated that 507, 000 women and girls in the U.S. have either had it done, or were in danger of it — roughly three times as many as when FGM was outlawed in the U.S. in 1996. In February, Representative Joe Crowley and Representative Sheila Jackson Lee introduced the Zero Tolerance for FGM Act, which would see Washington following Britain by crafting a national anti-FGM strategy.
But changing mindsets takes time. The pressure to “cut,” as it’s referred to, is “everywhere,” says Forward’s Vanessa Diakides. Myths abound: cutting is claimed to keep women from smelling, or straying from their husbands. Some communities believe it boosts fertility and ease of delivering babies. Some Muslims believe — misguidedly — that the Quran endorses the practice. It takes bravery to resist, since the stigma for leaving your daughter uncut can be severe. Girls can find they’re suddenly shunned by friends in the playground. Families with uncut girls recount being spat at, ostracized at community weddings, and denounced as unclean. In some communities, people fear that the decision not to cut might harm marriage prospects not just for girls, but for their brothers, too. “The media loves to portray girls as victims, and the practice as ‘barbaric,'” says Diakides, who cautions that it’s important that teachers don’t alienate girls by judging their parents or grandparents. “It’s not going to help to tell them that their [mothers and grandmothers’] genitals look disgusting,” she says. “Some of the girls don’t even feel like victims. Some are angry; some aren’t.”
Even for parents who don’t want to cut, the pressures during a summer back in one’s ancestral home can be overwhelming. Deborah Hodes, a pediatrician at a newly-opened FGM clinic at University College London Hospital, recalls one woman who was so scared she’d be pressured into having her daughter cut on returning home, “she asked police to take her passport away.”
For parents under pressure to cut, pointing to legal bans can help — but much more if there’s precedent for prosecution in court. While the French have prosecuted 100 FGM cases, the UK has yet to have a single prosecution for it. In February, a high-profile case testing the 2003 FGM Act collapsed, with a jury acquitting a North London doctor of illegally stitching up a woman after she’d given birth. Pointing out the huge “chasm” between known cases and prosecutions, a British government report in March observed that “someone, somewhere is not doing their job effectively.”
Scotland Yard, which declined to be interviewed for this piece, is under pressure to prosecute those responsible for FGM but they say it’s tough to get evidence, since cases often rely “on individuals giving evidence against loved ones,” according to the Metropolitan Police’s note on FGM.
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As Syria's hideous civil war enters its fifth year, the conflict has now led to more than 4 million Syrians fleeing the country.That's according to new numbers published in a report Thursday by UNHCR, the U.N.'s refugee agency. It also estimates that an additional 7.6 million Syrians remain displaced within the country -- meaning that roughly half of all Syrians have been forced from their homes since the war broke out in 2011.Read full article >>
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MH17 crash one year on: blame game continues over who shot down plane by Shaun Walker in Petropavlovka
One year on, there is no conclusive proof of who was responsible for shooting down the plane, though most evidence points to Ukraine’s separatist forces
When she heard the bang, Natalia Voloshina rushed out of the small, one-storey house that passes for the village administration office in Petropavlovka, and looked up at the sky.
“I could see these tiny black dots high in the sky, which started getting closer and bigger, and then things started falling around us,” said the 43-year-old mayor of Petropavlovka, sitting at the same desk last week and recalling the afternoon of 17 July last year.
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Malaysia July 8 circulated a draft United Nations resolution establishing an international tribunal guaranteeing an independent trial for those behind the downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine.
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В Москве, по некоторым данным, задержан один из руководителей вооруженных сил ДНР Дмитрий Лысаковский
Радиостанция ЭХО МОСКВЫ Его обвиняют в попытке рейдерского захвата здания в центре столицы. Как передает «Интерфакс» со ссылкой на свои источники, Лысаковский, который ранее носил фамилию Коцубанов, последние 8 лет числился в розыске. Один из столичных судов тем временем поместил его под ... В Москве арестован начальник аэромобильной разведки ДНРLenta.ru Боевика "ДНР" арестовали в Москве за рейдерствоСЕГОДНЯ В Москве арестовали одного из командиров боевиков "ДНР" за рейдерство – ЪЗеркало недели Подробности -Главред -ДОНБАСС Все похожие статьи: 61 » |
Is Another Bi-National Republic About to Come Apart in the North Caucasus? by paul goble (noreply@blogger.com)
Paul Goble
Staunton, July 9 – One of the most cynical methods the Soviet government employed to divide and rule non-Russian nations was the establishment of republics with two titular nationalities because such arrangements guaranteed that the two were more likely to view the other as a problem and threat than to see Moscow as responsible.
At the end of Soviet times, there were three such republics, Chechen-Ingushetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, and Karachayevo-Cherkessia. The first broke up at that time, but the other two have survived because they are part of a larger concern that still animates Moscow’s policies in the region: keeping Circassian nations from coming together and forming a single republic.
Were either of those republics to fall apart, it would almost certainly trigger a broader reordering of the borders in the region as Circassians – including the Adygey, the Kabardins, and the Cherkess – would certainly view a separate Kabardin or Cherkess republic as the nucleus of a future state.
And because of that likelihood, at least some in Moscow are quite willing to play up fears of that happening to keep the Turkic Balkars and Karachays in line and to continue its campaign to divide the Circassian national movement, a campaign that shows no sign of ending especially because the Circassians are gaining more support abroad.
But if Moscow found it relatively easy to maintain bi-national republics in Soviet times – it could appoint officials to reflect the ethnic “balance” it wanted to ensure by using quotas – the task of the enter now is complicated by the fact that in winner-take-all elections, the local majority will win more than its share of seats and positions, freezing out the other.
That appears to be happening in Karachayevo-Cherkessia now, to judge from an article entitled “The Cherkess are Upset by the Election Policies of the Authorities” in today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta” (ng.ru/regions/2015-07-09/2_cherkesy.html).
Its author, Aleksandr Shapovalov, the Rostov correspondent of the Moscow paper, reports that yesterday, Mukhamed Cherkesov, the head of the Adyge Khase-Chekess Parliament, declared that “over the course of recent times, the situation of the Cherkess in the republic has significantly worsened.”
“Cherkess are practically not represented in the organs of power; their rights are violated in the formation of the government of Karachayevo-Cherkessia and of other organs of power,” Cherkesov said. As evidence of this, he pointed to the fact that only one Cherkess has been hired by the republic procuracy over the last five years.
Given this, the activist said, the Cherkess plan to convene an extraordinary congress of Adyge-Khase this fall. That meeting, according to the “Nezavisimaya gazeta” journalist, “in all probability” will raise the issue of restoring a separate Cherkess Autonomous Olbast as it had existed until 1957.
At present, the Cherkess are the third largest nationality in the republic, after the Karachays and the Russians. They number some 60,000 people with “the majority of them living compactly on the territories of Khabez and Adyge-Khabl districts, a settlement pattern that makes their situation both worse and better.
On the one hand, as activists complain, the Karachay-dominated government can and does direct funding to other districts where the Karachays or Russians are the more numerous, something that angers the Cherkess but about which they have been able to do little to change in recent times.
But on the other, this settlement pattern means that there is a territorial basis for the Cherkess challenge to Karachayevo-Cherkessia; and the very fact that it has now been mentioned in a central Russian newspaper is certain to set off alarm bells in Moscow, which will now have to come up with a new strategy to try to block the resurgent Circassians.
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Russia's archive service has published a secret memo by Stalin-era prosecutors arguing that legends credited with having heroically halted Nazi tanks headed for Moscow were in fact the product of shoddy news reporting.
Negotiators at the Vienna talks on Iran's nuclear program say they hope for progress on a deal but there is little concrete sign of a breakthrough.
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Suicide Attempts Are Most Common in Newer Soldiers, a Study Says by By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
War-time suicide attempts are most common in newer enlisted soldiers who have not been deployed, according to a study billed as the most comprehensive analysis of a problem that has plagued the United States military in recent years.
FBI Director James Comey has been on a public offensive of late, arguing against end-to-end encryption that prevents law enforcement access to communications even when authorities have appropriate legal process to capture those communications. The offensive began with a speech at Brookings some months ago. More recently, Comey made these comments on CNN, these comments in a private conversation with me, and wrote this piece for Lawfare.
Yesterday, he was on Capitol Hill, testifying both before the Senate Judiciary Committee (video at this link, prepared statement here) and before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (video below):
Comey made some news yesterday. For one thing, he stated very clearly to the Judiciary Committee—and with evident reluctance—that some of the encryption the bureau is now facing is beyond its capacity to crack:
[I]f we intercept data in motion between two encrypted devices or across an encrypted mobile messaging app and it's strongly encrypted, we can't break it.Now, this is sometimes—I hate that I'm here saying this, but I actually think the problem is severe enough that I need to let the bad guys know that. That's the risk in what we're talking about here. The bad—I'm just confirming something for the bad guys.Sometimes people watch TV and think, "Well, the FBI must have some way to break that strong encryption." We do not, which is why this is such an important issue.
At another point, he stated that while some companies have designed systems that they lack the capacity to decrypt, in other instances, some companies have simply declined to assist investigators in decrypting signal even where decryption was possible—a matter on which at least one senator fought further information. (See Comey's comments at 1:17:00 and his subsequent exchange with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse at 1:20:00 of the Judiciary Committee hearing.)
All in all, Comey's reception on the Hill was significantly warmer than I expected. The Bureau has clearly done a lot of quiet behind-the-scenes work with members to familiarize them with the problem as the FBI sees it, and many members yesterday seemed to require little persuasion.
But Comey has a very heavy lift ahead of him if he is to make progress on the "Going Dark" problem. For one thing, it's not entirely clear what constitutes progress from the Bureau's perspective. The administration is, at this stage, not asking for legislation, after all. It's merely describing an emergent problem.
But this is a bit of a feint. The core of that emergent problem, at least as Comey's joint statement with Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates frames it, is that CALEA—which mandates that telecommunications providers retain the capacity for law enforcement to get access to signal for lawful wiretapping—does not reach internet companies. So even if Apple and Google were to voluntarily retain encryption keys, some other actor would very likely not do so. Absent a legal requirement that companies refrain from making true end-to-end encrypted services available without a CALEA-like stop-gap, some entity will see a market hole and provide those services. And it's fair to assume that ISIS and the most sophisticated bad actors will gravitate in the direction of that service provider.
In other words, I think Comey and Yates inevitably are asking for legislation, at least in the longer term. The administration has decided not to seek it now, so the conversation is taking place at a somewhat higher level of abstraction than it would if there were a specific legislative proposal on the table. But the current discussion should be understood as an effort to begin building a legislative coalition for some sort of mandate that internet platform companies retain (or build) the ability to permit, with appropriate legal process, the capture and delivery to law enforcement and intelligence authorities of decrypted versions of the signals they carry.
This coalition does not exist yet, particularly not in the House of Representatives. But yesterday's hearings were striking in showing how successful Comey has been in the early phases of building it. A lot of members are clearly concerned already. That concern will likely grow if Comey is correct about the speed with which major investigative tools are weakening in their utility. And it could become a powerful force in the event an attack swings the pendulum away from civil libertarian orthodoxy.
In my next post, I'm going to turn to the very complicated merits of the question: How should we think about the Going Dark problem? Is Comey right to be building a coalition for legal changes that the civil liberties and tech communities so viscerally oppose? Or should investigators simply suck it up and accept the fact that some investigative tools don't last forever? And is there any middle ground here?
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