. . . When experts or agencies deliver information to the public that they consider possibly or definitively false to further a larger, often well-meaning agenda, they are telling what is called a noble lie. Although the teller’s intentions may be pure—for example, a feeling of urgency that behavioral change is needed among the lay public—the consequences can undermine not only those intentions but also public trust in experts and science. . . .

. . . Even though his [Anthony Fauci’s] comments were made to influence public actions to get more people vaccinated (a noble effort), the central dilemma remains: Do we want public health officials to report facts and uncertainties transparently? Or do we want them to shape information, via nudges, to influence the public to take specific actions? The former fosters an open and honest dialogue with the public to facilitate democratic policymaking. The second subverts the very idea of a democracy and implies that those who set the rules or shape the media narrative are justified in depriving the public of information that they may consider or value differently.

Aside from whether it’s right to tell noble lies in the service of eliciting socially beneficial behavior, there is also the question of efficacy. Experts on infectious diseases are not necessarily experts on social behavior. Even if we accept Fauci’s claim that he downplayed the importance of wearing masks because he didn’t want to unleash a run on masks, we might wonder how he knew that his noble lie would be more effective than simply being honest and explaining to people why it was important to assure an adequate supply of masks for medical workers. . . .

— Kerrington Powell and Vinay Prasad, The Noble Lies of COVID-19
Slate, 28 Quintilis 2021

Shared Article from Slate Magazine

The U.S. Government’s Noble Lies About COVID-19

When Fauci said in March 2020 that Americans didn’t need to wear masks, it was a noble lie—and a destructive one.

slate.com

You’re only as old as you feel.

Born on this day, July 27, 1987.

The Red Sea

Lulled in a nook of North West Bay,
The water swells against the sand,
Hardly more liquid than Venetian glass,
In which clear surface, just a little way
From shore, some four or five petite yachts pass
With languid ease, apparently unmanned,
Adrift along the day,

Imagining a breeze to fan
Their motion, though there’s none. Siobhan
Reaches a giant hand down from the sky
And nudges with insouciant élan
The nearest hull, her bended waist mast-high.
That hand is just as magically withdrawn.
So moves the catamaran.

And through the Lilliputian fleet
She, Beatrice and Gabrielle
Wade in the shallows, knee-deep, spaceman-slow,
To fashion their maneuvers and compete
Among the stationed hours to and fro,
While watching through the viscid slide and swell
Of water their white feet,

Made curiously whiter by
That cool light-bending element.
Doubled by shadows on the sand they glimpse
Pipefish and darting fingerlings they try
Impossibly to grab, translucent shrimps
Among the laceweed, seahorses intent
To flee the peopled sky.

Hard to conceive that they should be
Precisely who they are and here,
Lost in the idle luxury of play.
And hard to credit that the selfsame sea
That joins them in their idleness today,
Careless of latitude and hemisphere,
Blind with ubiquity,

Churns elsewhere with a white uproar,
Or wipes the Slave Coast clean of trees,
Or sucks among the scum and floating drums
Of some forgotten outpost founded for
The advent of an age that never comes,
Or bobs the remnants of atrocities
Limply against the shore.

What luck they have. And what good sense
To leave the water with their toys
When called, before their fortunes are deranged.
And still the day hangs in its late suspense
For hours without them, virtually unchanged,
Until the bay’s impregnable turquoise
Relaxes its defense

And sunset’s dye begins to spread
In flood across it to the sand
They stood on, as though, hoping to disown
The blood of all the innocents he’d shed,
Macbeth incarnate or his grisly clone
Had stooped on some far shore to rinse his hand,
Making the green one red.

— Stephen Edgar
From Poetry (January 2008)

What the Fusion Center hath wrought: sure, why not bring the U.S. Postal Service in on the domestic surveillance game?

The Postal Service is running a ‘covert operations program’ that monitors Americans’ social media posts

Jana Winter, Contributor / April 21, 2021

The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.

Analysts with the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) monitored significant activity regarding planned protests occurring internationally and domestically on March 20, 2021, says the March 16 government bulletin, marked as “law enforcement sensitive” and distributed through the Department of Homeland Security’s fusion centers. Locations and times have been identified for these protests, which are being distributed online across multiple social media platforms, to include right-wing leaning Parler and Telegram accounts.

A number of groups were expected to gather in cities around the globe on March 20 as part of a World Wide Rally for Freedom and Democracy, to protest everything from lockdown measures to 5G. Parler users have commented about their intent to use the rallies to engage in violence. Image 3 on the right is a screenshot from Parler indicating two users discussing the event as an opportunity to engage in a fight and to do serious damage, says the bulletin.

No intelligence is available to suggest the legitimacy of these threats, it adds.

. . . The government’s monitoring of Americans’ social media is the subject of ongoing debate inside and outside government, particularly in recent months, following a rise in domestic unrest. While posts on platforms such as Facebook and Parler have allowed law enforcement to track down and arrest rioters who assaulted the Capitol on Jan. 6, such data collection has also sparked concerns about the government surveilling peaceful protesters or those engaged in protected First Amendment activities.

— The Postal Service is running a ‘covert operations program’ that monitors Americans’ social media posts
Jana Winter, Yahoo! News (April 21, 2021) (Wayback Link)

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a federal law enforcement agency in possession of good appropriations, must be in want of expansive surveillance programs, and there’s no mission they won’t creep beyond. But this is, in a word, bananas, and it should not be placidly accepted.

Meanwhile, in another Federal Bureau, the FISA court notes that the FBI has repeatedly, knowingly, systematically abused warrantless surveillance systems to violate the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Over and over again for years. And yet…

Federal court approved FBI’s continued use of warrantless surveillance power despite repeated violations of privacy rules

By Ellen Nakashima / April 26, 2021 at 4:22 p.m. CDT

A secretive federal court approved the FBI’s use of a powerful warrantless surveillance authority in November despite finding that the bureau had repeatedly violated rules meant to protect Americans’ privacy.

Between mid-2019 and early 2020, FBI personnel conducted queries of data troves containing Americans’ emails and other communications, seeking information without proper justification, according to a redacted ruling by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court made public Monday.

But James E. Boasberg, the court’s presiding judge, said the violations occurred before the FBI improved its querying system and training program, and that the coronavirus pandemic has limited the government’s ability to monitor compliance.

While the Court is concerned about the apparent widespread violations … it lacks sufficient information at this time to assess the adequacy of FBI system changes and training, he said.

Therefore, he wrote, “the Court is willing to again conclude that the … [FBI’s] procedures meet statutory and Fourth Amendment requirements.”

The findings mark at least the third set of FBI rule breaches in the past several years, often involving large numbers of Americans’ communications.

— Federal court approved FBI’s continued use of warrantless surveillance power despite repeated violations of privacy rules<br/>Ellen Nakashima, the Washington Post (April 26, 2021)

(Via Mad Dogs & Englishmen ep. 309 and Jesse Walker’s Twitter.)