Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

An Ethics Question

Posted on February 18, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Crooked Timber, You Can be The Ethicist:

Graduate Admissions Committee for the department in question is deciding whom to admit. For said discipline, as for several others, there is a website on which potential students gossip share information about the departments to which they are applying, and many do so anonymously. However, many such students say enough about themselves that if you are in possession of their file (as graduate admissions committee is) you can identify them with near, and in some cases absolute, certainty. One applicant to said department behaves on the website (under the supposed cloak of anonymity) like… well, very badly, saying malicious things about departments he has visited, raising doubts about whether he is honest and the kind of person it would be reasonable to want other students to deal with, and generally revealing himself to be utterly unpleasant.

Question: is it wrong for the GAC to take this information about the applicant into account when making a decision? Secondary question: does it make a difference to your answer that the department is in a private, not a public, university?

My knee-jerk reaction was that one better be pretty darn sure one has the right person before making a major decision about them based on something posted on a web site.

This reaction was reinforced by one of the many very interesting comments at Crooked Timber, which asks how the committee can be sure that this wasn't a joe-job. Indeed, if it became known that this sort of attack was possible, what a way to do down one's rivals and ex-inamoratas!

I can imagine a world in which a committee might ask for further information in light of something like this, but depending on what amounts to hearsay without some sort of confirmation is, I think, a dangerous road to tread. It might even be a denial of due process in a public process.

Here's a slightly different hypothetical that may serve to test my intuition: suppose instead of a web posting that seems to be by the applicant, the committee received an unsigned letter accusing the applicant of the same bad behavior. What result, and why?

Posted in Internet | 2 Comments

This Should Be Interesting

Posted on February 17, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Judge Orders Padilla Jail Personnel to Testify:

Officials at the Navy brig where terrorism suspect Jose Padilla was held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant were ordered Friday to testify at a hearing to determine his psychological competency, a ruling that allows the defense to press its claims that sensory deprivation and torture in confinement have rendered the alleged al-Qaeda operative unfit to stand trial.

The ruling marks one of the few times since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that officials responsible for the jail conditions and interrogations of terrorism suspects have been called to testify, and it is the first time in the Padilla case.

I gather the hearing is “next week” but don't know exactly when. Pity it is going to be such a busy week for me, for I'd like to go. [UPDATE: Why do I have to read the Guardian, based in London, to learn that the hearing will be on the 22nd.]

Meanwhile, Padilla's co-defendants are asking to have their trial severed from his on the grounds that the media attention given to Padilla's case will poison theirs. There's some irony there, given that at least on the face of the indictment, the tarnishment seems much more likely to work the other way around: the facts alleged against the other defendants are more damning and more detailed than the rather thin gruel served up about Padilla himself.

Posted in Padilla | Comments Off on This Should Be Interesting

Real Funny

Posted on February 17, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Or goes to hell in a hand basket, as the case may be.

Posted in The Media | Comments Off on Real Funny

The Mountain Has Labored and Brought Forward …

Posted on February 16, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I suppose I ought to be happy that the House has passed a non-binding Measure Opposing Troop Surge.

But. It seems clearer each day that there is no serious strategy for victory in Iran — however defined (and it usually isn't defined by those who shout for it most loudly). There is no serious plan for how we will staff the conflict other than extending the rotation of troops who have suffered enough. There is no serious plan even for equipping the troops on the ground, many of whom are being deployed without the armor that might protect their vehicles against IEDs and the like.

There is, at last, some sort of plan in the next budget for paying to replace the equipment this war is chewing up. The contractors will be OK; if only we had equally good plans for the soldiers and families being chewed up by this war. Not to mention the Iraqis.

Otherwise, what planning we find in the White House seems to be about rattling sabers at Iran and hoping they take the bait, allowing massive air strikes in retaliation. This is the sort of planning you expect from drug addicts scheming for a new fix.

In this atmosphere, the House of Representatives has labored hard. Members debated for 44 hours and 55 minutes. Over the past four days, a total of 393 Members spoke on the House Floor: 221 Democrats, and 172 Republicans. And then they voted. And now we have a totally precatory resolution aimed at the surge that doesn't even condemn the war, and doesn't address the Iran situation.

The radio said “Bush suffers a major political defeat.” Let me tell you how much that defeat matters: while the House was debating today, the Pentagon shipped off another 1,000 troops.

I understand the argument that this is a first step in a long campaign. Members who voted for this will see that they are not struck dead by lightening and this will embolden them.

Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie,
O, what a panic's in thy breastie!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,
Wi' bickering brattle!

And, yes, it could be even worse: the Senate tomorrow will vote on whether it can even vote on a similar, equally precatory, resolution. UPDATE: And may not even pass the resolution with the 60 votes needed to allow debate.

I'm so excited and heartened I can't hardly stand it.

Posted in Iraq | 4 Comments

Bush Iraq Plans Were ‘Delusional’

Posted on February 15, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

British people get told this via the BBC, but (unless you live in Alaska) will you see it in your daily paper?

Iraq invasion plan 'delusional': The US invasion plan for Iraq envisaged that only 5,000 US troops would remain in Iraq by December 2006, declassified Central Command documents show.

The material also shows that the US military projected a stable, pro-US and democratic Iraq by that time.

The August 2002 material was obtained by the National Security Archive (NSA). Its officials said the plans were based on delusional assumptions.

The US currently has some 132,000 troops in the violence-torn state.

Posted in Iraq | 6 Comments

Comments Are In Danger

Posted on February 14, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

For the past couple of days this blog has been under increasingly severe attack by sp**mers. Some are for notorious prescription drugs. Other are to garbage name sites (presumably in the hopes of creating a high search rank for later sale?) Still others are to hacked locations on message boards at institutions whose pages have been hacked.

I have wasted a lot of time deleting this stuff, and now am being driven to closing comments in the items that they most frequently target. I hope I can keep comments open — especially as one or two threads are quite active and interesting right now.

But there's a limit to how much whack-a-mole I can play here.

Posted in Discourse.net | 7 Comments