Author: Andrew Sullivan

Stacey May Fowles pushes back against a Tom Maloney article making light of a surge in female fandom at Blue Jays games. From Maloney’s piece:

The percentage of women within the Gen-Y group at Rogers Centre jumped to an astounding 50 per cent from 30 per cent over a two-year span. … “It’s fun, like a concert,” says [game attendee Emily] King, 29, who works in advertising and lives within an easy stroll of the stadium. “I’m not sure we’re actually watching the game, to be clear. … It’s the best patio in the city, the best people-watching in the city.”

“It’s outside, it’s social,” says [Olivia] Polak, 30, in ophthalmology and living 30 minutes away. “We’re here with like eight other girls for a bachelorette party instead of just sitting in a bar. It’s not expensive and we can ‘watch’ the game – in quotations.”

Fowles counters:

I certainly don’t deny that these kinds of fans exist—but I cannot agree that they’re a problem. … The actual problem lies in consistently putting this very limited depiction of women’s relationship to sports into the world. It does real exclusionary damage in terms of attracting new fans, a project that both makes good economic sense and goes far in improving the overall experience for everyone.

This idea that women don’t really watch permeates sports.

Last year, The Score Blog’s Ellen Etchingham brilliantly summed up our severely limited viewpoint of female sports fandom in her reaction to While the Men Watch, CBC’s abhorrent hockey feed for women. In it, she describes the dominant stereotype as follows: “Women don’t understand sports. Women don’t care about sports. If women watch sports, they only do so because a man pushes it on them. Women are interested in fashion, cleaning, shopping, and men.”

She further articulates how offensive it is for female fans to have this heteronormative femininity constantly pushed on us by the media, as many use sports to actually escape that very thing. For Etchingham, hockey has acted as a haven, a break from strict societal norms. “For many of the so-called serious female fans, watching the game is one of the best social avenues for meeting people and hanging out in a relatively ungendered way,” she explains. “Being into sports allows us to be guys, not in the sense of men, but in the sense of participants in a laid-back, friendly, easygoing social milieu that doesn’t feel defined by gender lines. Many female fans explicitly resist the category ‘female fans,’ because for us part of what is great about being a fan is the sense that female or male doesn’t matter so much.”

Greenwald reports new details on a surveillance system known as XKeyscore, which, according to NSA PowerPoint slides, allows an analyst to search a user’s emails, chats, and browser history after obtaining an email, IP address, or enough metadata:

[T]raining materials for XKeyscore detail how analysts can use it and other systems to mine enormous agency databases by filling in a simple on-screen form giving only a broad justification for the search. The request is not reviewed by a court or any NSA personnel before it is processed. XKeyscore, the documents boast, is the NSA’s “widest reaching” system developing intelligence from computer networks – what the agency calls Digital Network Intelligence (DNI). One presentation claims the program covers “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”, including the content of emails, websites visited and searches, as well as their metadata.

As usual, Ambers provides a thorough walkthrough:

XKEYSCORE is not a thing that DOES collecting; it’s a series of user interfaces, back end databases, servers and software that selects certain types of metadata that the NSA has ALREADY collected using other methods. XKEYSCORE, as D.B. Grady and I reported in our book, is the worldwide base level database for such metadata. XKEYSCORE is useful because it gets the “front end full take feeds” from the various NSA collection points around the world and importantly, knows what to do with it to make it responsive to search queries. As the [NSA’s PowerPoint] presentation says, the stuff itself is collected by some entity called F6 and something else called FORNSAT and then something with the acronym SSO. …

I should probably refrain from being more specific. FORNSAT simply means “foreign satellite collection,” which refers to NSA tapping into satellites that process data used by other countries. And SSO — Special Source Operations — refers to the branch of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Division that taps cables, finds microwave paths, and otherwise collects data not generated by F6 or foreign satellites. Basically, everything else. The presentation suggests that the NSA collects internet traffic from 150 sites — specific facilities — worldwide.

Drum considers its implications for domestic surveillance “murky” so far:

Greenwald suggests that this validates Snowden’s statement in an earlier interview that “I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.” But that’s not clear at all.

X-KEYSCORE appears to be a database search tool, not a real-time surveillance tool, nor does it appear to give anyone “authority” to wiretap a U.S. citizen. Rather, it hoovers up tremendous volumes of foreign communications, which can then be searched by NSA analysts. As Greenwald points out, there are known “compliance problems” with NSA’s surveillance programs, since communications by U.S. persons with foreign targets end up in the same database and can therefore end up on an analyst’s desktop. The NSA’s minimization procedures are supposed to prevent such “inadvertent” targeting of U.S. persons, but as Greenwald reported earlier, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule.

Charles Johnson is also skeptical of Glenn’s portrayal of the system:

Greenwald, searching for “warrant” immediately brings up the most important point, buried in the tenth paragraph under tons of exaggeration and hyperbole:

Under US law, the NSA is required to obtain an individualized Fisa warrant only if the target of their surveillance is a ‘US person’, though no such warrant is required for intercepting the communications of Americans with foreign targets. But XKeyscore provides the technological capability, if not the legal authority, to target even US persons for extensive electronic surveillance without a warrant provided that some identifying information, such as their email or IP address, is known to the analyst.

That’s right — once again, Greenwald is not documenting any actual wrongdoing. It’s a very deliberate rhetorical trick he uses over and over — conflating the ability to do something with actually doing it, and glossing over the fact that there are very serious legal consequences in store for anyone who actually does abuse these systems.

Shane Harris wonders if the PowerPoint obtained by Snowden – which was created in 2008 – is overselling the capabilities of the actual system:

The proponents of a particular tool or program frequently create promotional materials like the XKeyscore presentation to encourage analysts to use their technology, and to promote interest among lawmakers who control the NSA’s budget. This was true of a slide presentation describing the PRISM system revealed earlier by the Guardian and the Washington Post, the official told Foreign Policy. It had “made the rounds” of intelligence agencies and offered exaggerated claims about PRISM’s capabilities, such that it was the biggest contributor of information to the president’s daily intelligence briefing. This official strongly disputed that PRISM was so extraordinary.

The XKeyscore presentation claims that “over 300 terrorists [were] captured using intelligence generated from” the tool. It also claims to be able to search more deeply in different data sets than other NSA data miners. But if there is more to be said about how precisely XKeyscore can do this, it’s either not in the document or is contained on the handful of slides that have been blacked out.

Derek Mead notes that at the very least, “the existence of the program contradicts claims by government officials that the NSA doesn’t have the capability to tap emails in real time”:

It’s not clear if the system is still in use, but the system’s scalability is yet another reason the NSA’s Utah data center is of concern. Also not clear is what legal checks the system has. The materials boast that an analyst can easily do a thorough search of an individual’s online history with a lone piece of identification—say an email, or an IP address. As Glenn Greenwald notes, the NSA is required to get a court order from the secret FISA court to spy on Americans, but regardless, XKeyscore appears to offer (or have offered) an incredible ability to access user data with little difficulty.

Kevin Poulsen narrates the fantastic tale of a talented, successful manufacturer of fake IDs who – as his customers and competitors eventually discovered – happened to work for the Secret Service:

Buying the cards from “Celtic” was simple. You’d give him the name you want on the card, the state, date of birth, height, and weight, and a headshot. Celtic would then whip up a digital proof of what the card would look like – sometimes watermarked with a big CELTIC across the front, more often not. If you were satisfied with the proof, then, and only then, would you send your payment by Western Union. Then Celtic would manufacture the physical card in his plant (whether it was at the Secret Service field office, or at an undercover offsite is unclear), pop it in the mail, and send you the tracking number. For U.S. customers, it was three days from order to delivery. …

From the Secret Service’s standpoint, selling fake IDs – “novelties,” in the parlance of the underground – would have held a number of advantages. Unlike intangible commodities like credit card numbers or passwords, fake IDs must be shipped physically, which gives the agency an address to check out for every customer. And, being photo IDs, the customer had to provide their photos. It’s a rare law enforcement operation that lets the cops collect mug shots before they’ve made a single arrest.

The first and third parts of the “pink boys” thread are here and here. The second post featured a straight female reader who grew up butch. Several readers continue that theme:

What about blue girls? I remember wishing I was a boy quite often when I was in elementary and junior high school, mostly because I realized from a very young age that being a boy would afford me more freedom and more access to things I wanted to do, like play baseball instead of softball and real basketball instead of that crappy 6-on-6 version. I dressed like a boy as often as I did like a girl. I played sports like a boy my whole life, lived independently, took care of myself, pursued what/who I wanted and even as late as my early thirties was still “manly” enough that people questioned my sexuality, which I always found odd, but people are nosy that way.

My most frustrating moment was in 5th grade. Boys at that age could be altar servers at my Catholic grade school and I engaged in a three-year battle with the nuns, and our parish priests, because I desperately wanted to serve.

I even wanted to be a priest a one point, but when one of the sisters found out, she tried to talk me into the “next best thing” – the sisterhood. Even at eleven, I wasn’t fool enough to equate the power of the priesthood with the submissive servitude of the sisters.

One of most vivid memories as a child is hearing one of my uncles remark to my father about what a great little ballplayer I was but “why would God have wasted talent like that on a girl?” I never wanted to be a boy to “be a boy”, but rather to have what they had – freedom and power. Life is easier for men in so many ways. I knew this when I was six and I still know it.

Another female reader:

I tell people I was a boy growing up. That’s because somewhere between 3 and 5, I began to hate wearing girl things and playing with girls’ toys. Because I was a sickly child, my mother gave into my demands that I wear slacks, a tie and a shirt when I wasn’t in school uniform. I remember steeling myself before walking into ladies’ restrooms just for the inevitable responses of “Aren’t you in the wrong bathroom little boy?” My voice always convinced the women that I was female, but oh my, the looks I got!

Because of how I dressed, and because my childhood illnesses kept me from school, I felt like an “other.” Because both occurred simultaneously, my feelings of being an “other” weren’t restricted to gender issues. As an adult woman, I’ve never felt the compulsion to be a man, though I will cop to still feeling boyish after all these years. And because my mother let me be a “boy” in almost every sense of the word, I don’t feel any unresolved gender issues.

Oh, I also had a boy name: David. A few of my friends knew and some thought it weird. I wonder if some of these “trans” kids are more like me than truly trans.

On the above trailer:

Tomboy is a 2011 French drama film written and directed by Céline Sciamma. The story follows a 10-year-old girl named Laure who, after moving with her family to a new neighborhood, dresses as a boy and introduces herself to her new friends as Mickäel. A neighborhood girl named Lisa instantly assumes that Mickäel/Laure is a boy and falls in love with him.  The film is supposed to explore themes of ambiguous sexuality. Writer/director Céline Sciamma said of Tomboy “The movie is ambiguous about Mikael’s feelings for Lisa. It plays with the confusion. I wanted it to be that way.”

Another reader:

I was not quite a tomboy, but I hated dresses and loved trucks and building things and science. To their credit, my parents never tired to encourage me to be more girly (except for forcing me to wear dresses when going somewhere fancy). I’m 24, so you’d think people wouldn’t have been surprised when I said pink wasn’t my favorite color and I didn’t care about growing up to be a “mommy,” but of course I got all sorts of crap. When I was 7, I told my grandmother my favorite sport to play was hockey. She said “You don’t want people to think you’re a dyke, do you? Pick a girl’s sport.”

In school, there was the usual teasing, from being told having hair on my arms made me a boy to rumors that I had a penis. The science teachers informed me that girls didn’t blow things up, so experiments that were interesting were limited to the boys. It culminated in middle school with students asking my (female) best friend if we were a couple and a contest among the boys to see who could “make her straight.” Yup, the students in my middle school had a campaign to rape me until I fit their idea of a girl. Luckily, being un-feminine, I wasn’t afraid to fight back and fight dirty.

Flash forward to today, where I have worked as a reporter covering the military, I still hate pink, and I’m happily straight. We forget just how pervasive our gender roles are assumed to be, and the ways our society has to try to enforce them. My life would have been easier if I’d chosen to live as a man, but I don’t think I ever really needed to; a man can love glitter and still be a man, and a woman can prefer discussing airplanes to soap operas.

Big education news out of Indiana, where the state’s former schools chief – now Florida’s Commissioner of Education – apparently gamed his own school-rating system:

[Tony Bennett] built his national star by promising to hold “failing” schools accountable. But when it appeared an Indianapolis charter school run by a prominent Republican donor might receive a poor grade, Bennett’s education team frantically overhauled his signature “A-F” school grading system to improve the school’s marks [from an “C” to an “A”].

Bennett, an “Education Reform Idol” winner, has denied any wrongdoing, and Michael Petrilli, who hosted the contest, urges people not to jump to conclusions:

[Bennett] had spent months (and much political capital) building an A–F accountability system for Indiana’s schools. These systems are as much art as science (more akin to baking cookies than designing a computer), and when they tried out the recipe the first time, it flopped. One of Indiana’s brightest stars, a charter school known to be super high performing, ended up with a C. Clearly, the recipe needed fine tuning.

Ed Kilgore rolls his eyes:

The whole point of a “charter” public school is strict accountability for results. A “charter” is nothing other than a performance contract. If, as Bennett now claims, the bad grade for his pet school illustrated problems with the scoring system, it should have been discussed publicly after the results were released. I’m a long-time supporter of public school choice (and a bitter, last-ditch opponent of vouchers). But it’s getting to the point where you have to put “charter” in quotations when you are talking about some of these schools, particularly in states where the underlying commitment to public education is lacking.

Mark Kleiman is even harsher:

Look: I believe in outcomes measurement. I believe in accountability. I even believe in school choice. (After all, I live in the jurisdiction of the LA Mummified School District.) What I don’t believe is that the current testing/accountability/choice con artists and racketeering enterprises are going to make things better rather than worse. The cheating is so pervasive that I now see no basis for believing any claimed good result. That’s why Diane Ravitch has switched sides.

You’d have thought that charter schools, like private prisons, could hardly have done worse than their big, clumsy, bureaucratic, union-dominated public competition. But you would have been wrong, twice.

Andrew Ujifusa says the scandal could reverberate nationwide:

Bennett, in his new role as Florida’s education commissioner, the job he landed after losing his 2012 re-election bid in Indiana, recommended a dramatic change to Florida’s A-F accountability system so that no school’s A-F grade will drop by more than one letter in one year for both the 2013-14 and 2014-15 academic years. That move encountered some resistance, but won the approval of the state board of education earlier this month. The AP story may create a more difficult political environment for A-F school-grading systems in general and provide ammunition for those who believe the whole concept is flawed.