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This NYT editorial lists ways in which the NSA violated the law- the internal auditor's report showing NSA broke federal privacy laws, breaking into the communication links of Google, Apple and other data centers, James Clapper Jr., director of national intelligence testifying in March that the NSA was not collecing data on millions of Americans which was "a lie" says NYT, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court saying one of the practices violated the Constitution, and federal judge Leon's ruling saying the magnitude of phone records collection violated the U.S. Constitution calling it Orwellian. It calls on the Obama administration to end the vilification of Snowden and provide Snowden with incentive to return to the U.S.

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The balloons detected over US airspace at 40,000 feet that stirred up tension are now seen as intended for surveillance over Guam and Hawaii and blown off course by winds into Alaska and then Montana. This report in the NYT says US State department officials told Chinese diplomats on Feb. 1 about the balloon - 24 hours later China's Foreign ministry officials told US diplomats at the US embassy privately that the balloon a harmless civilian machine had gone off course. On Friday Feb. 3 China issued a public statement expressing regret. What happened after wards showed a series of poor decisions by Chinese officials and the balloon's civilian run balloon company under contract with the PLA says the NYT.  At that point the balloon's operators tried to accelerate it out of American airspace before it was shot down over South Carolina. On Saturday NYT says China told the US this acceleration was intended to get it out of American airspace.This story may not be widely read or covered so that most of the people in the US may already believe that China had intentionally flown surveillance equipment over Montana and the continental US. The US flies hundreds of reconnaissance flights near the coast of China says one defense expert.  This NYT correction of the original story on the spy balloons did not get any front page coverage in the WSJ, BBC, The Guardian, DW.com, FR24, and the NYT story itself got only 5 comments, showing how important it is for governments and information communicators to get each story right. A similar situation of a lack of communication with poor decisions may have delayed a unified response to the covid pandemic in its earliest stages. It shows how gaps in perception and information can gradually affect a relationship which the US had once nurtured into a critical part of its supply chain manufacturing following wartime cooperation against the Japanese invasion, the civil war in China, and later the Korean,  Vietnam Wars during the Cold War.    ...

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The World Vaccine Summit raises about $7 billion to immunize about 300 million children for polio, diphtheria and measles, over 5 years. Prime minister Boris Johnson who opened the summit called it "the greatest shared endeavour of our times." Bill Gates donated $1.6 billion and Britain pledged 1.65 billion pounds over 5 years, making Britain the largest donor. Mr. Trump also addressed the summit in virtual manner- "we will work hard, we will work strong... good luck, let's get the answer." Mr. Johnson called for renewing "the collective resolve."  Specifically he stated: " Just as we have great military alliances like NATO.... where countries collaborate on building their collective military defence, so we now need that sam spirit of collaboration and collective defense agains the common enemy of disease." Referring to failure of early warning systems for coronavirus with crucial weeks between Jan 6 to Feb 16 lost for the West with lack of international cooperation- "It will require a new international effort to cooperate on the surveillance and sharing of information- data is king- that can underpin a global alert system, so we can rapidly identify any future outbreak. And that will mean a rapid scale-up of our global capacity to respond."  ...

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The Philippines president Aquino visits Washington and requests military aid, especially surveillance military aircraft and land based radar. This comes as relations between China and the Philippines are strained by disputes over territory in the South China Sea. Aquino meets with editors of the Washington Post and describes his concerns.

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Former U.S. president Geroge W. Bush in retirement years spends time in Dallas, with time spent on his passions for painting, golf, and mountain biking. He stays out of the discussion of current issues even though many of these issues relating to fairness in economic policy, immigration, security surveillance and the Middle East go back to the time when he was president. Friends say he has simply left behind concern about legacy and moved on focussing on living. Privately he has expressed concern about the Tea Party and America's isolationist tendencies in world affairs. He is also skeptical about the new Iranian government's offer of negotiations on nuclear policy.

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Larry Klayman, lawyer and activist, who filed the case heard by Judge Leon challenging the NSA phone record data security surveillance program.

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After public opinion comes out against it, the Obama administration decides to end the NSA's bulk collection of phone data program in March 2014. Under the decision the phone companies will not be required to keep the data for longer than 18 months, as it was determined that older data was not as useful. And the specific phone records can now be obtained ony after permission from a judge with a new kind of court order. The bulk collection of phone data program was justified by Section 215 of the Patriot Act, passed under the Bush administration to tackle terrorist threats following the 9/11 attacks. That program was outside any judical oversight. In 2006 the Bush administration Justice Department had the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorize the program. Under Section 215 the FBI is able to get court orders for records relevant to an investigation and this authority was broadly interpreted as allowing NSA collection of bulk phone data.

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Greece prime minister Mitsotakis in this interview tells Reuters on May 15, that he hope the next four years will be years of rapid growth for Greece, but also one that will limit inequalities and make sure that Greece supports its most vulnerable. Greece was hit hard with higher energy costs after the war in Ukraine. It was not long ago in 2010 that Greece was daily in the news with reports of the eurozone debt crisis that affected Greece, Ireland, Spain. That crisis wiped out more than 25% of its GDP. He is credited with having managed the economy through the period after Syriza a rival party almost put Greece out of the eurozone. Lack of eurozone controls on debt of its members, lack of transparency in Greece's financial affairs were severe handicaps.  Today after a decade of austerity that it took to get its financial affairs in order including tackling over hiring in the government burreaucracy, lax financial controls, ordinary Greeks face high inflation and low incomes. Mitsotakis has raised the pensions and raised the minimum wage by 20% to 780 euros to help Greeks with the cost of living crisis. He has spent $50 billion euros in relief measures since 2020. Economic growth after reaching 5.9% in 2022 will slow to 2.3% in 2023. Mitsotakis addressed both Houses of the US Congress last year when Speaker Pelosi was in office. His image is dimmed somewhat by a surveillance of the Opposition ranks that was discovered recently and is covered in an accompanying article in the WSJ on May 19, 2023 shown on this page. The elections in 2023 are expected to bring Mitsotakis back in government with his party getting about 31% of the vote but lacking a majority in parliament. ...

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Mike Clancy of The Prospect writes in The Times of London that he has found that two thirds of remote workers working from home would like to have the right to unplug from work and not be expected to connect with the office at some point in the day, and that this would have a hugely beneficial impact on mental health.   The biggest problem that workers working from home have found during this pandemic for one year now is that it blurs the line between work and life outside of work having a negative impact on one's mental health. Surveys have found that about half of remote workers like the idea of working from home, having time from commute and being able to be have more freedom from being tied down to the office space. Companies are looking at cutting about 25 to 50% of office space but have not looked at the problems workers have and not set new rules about when the line for work is set and workers can cut off from work and not be expected to be reachable by the office. Clancy even goes on to say that companies have looked at the problems of the last century not this one and largely stayed away from tackling the real problems of workplace- stress, burnout and surveillance. Lyrarc recommends readers look at the way Germans approach this idea of blurred distinctions between work and life outside of work in the idea of "Feierabend" that literally means breaking away from work at some point say 4.00 pm or 5.00 pm to take a bike ride or walk or do something else. ...

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Alison Smale describes a perception of German preference for "order" and "peace and quiet" in its response to the Ukraine crisis. He describes how Germans responded first to the news of NSA surveillance of Angela Merkel's phone, and then to the crisis in Ukraine. German public opinion has preferred a policy of diplomacy and engagement with Russia- letting Russia vent its feelings about NATO enlargement to its borders something American respected diplomat Kennan suggested avoiding- to resolve the crisis without disturbing the economic relationships built up over many decades and different administrations, from the time of Willy Brandt and Kohl to the present day.

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Richard Barrett, former head of overseas counter terrorism operations of Britain and now head of the UN AlQuaeda and Taliban monitoring group, in aspeech to the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, says Al Quaeda is a diminishing threat because a new generation of Muslims who have little recollection of the events and are less interested in religion. And CIA officials say they are having greater success penetrating Al Quaeda, because of vastly improved intelligence capabilities. In terms of intelligence and capabilities, the technical colllection, intercepts are much better, and overhead surveillance is much better. The human intelligence is much better and they have fewer competent people.

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Kerala state of 35 million people who speak the language Malayalam, is one of the rare places today that has only 4 deaths from coronavirus, 524 cases confirmed and no community transmission. Here the Guardian looks at the reasons why. The Health minister KK Shailaja started very early on January 23, with a meeting of her rapid response team when the virus was still in China.  She setup a control room and instructed Kerala's 14 districts to do this on Jan. 24. When the first case arrived on Jan. 27 on a plane from Wuhan, Kerala had already adopted the WHO  protocol of test, trace, isolate and support. These passengers were checked for temperature, tested and quarantined. With some at a nearby hospital and others in home isolation. This is all the more amazing considering that Kerala is a state in southern India on the west coast that has a large number of people living and working overseas. Many are in the Gulf countries and the arrival of these refugees could have triggered a second outbreak. This was prevented by careful testing, and contact tracing of clusters.  When one group was evasive and concealed information from an airport surveillance team -arriving from Venice, Italy,  in late Feb- a case was detected back to them.  Contact tracers tracked down all of the hundreds whom they had been in contact with and quarantined them.  By 23 March all flights to 4 Kerala airports from overseas were stopped, including Cochin and Trivandrum. On March 25 India went into lockdown.  Some of the achievements in Kerala include quarantining 170,000 people early. with strict surveillance, which is now down to 21,000. Accomodating and feeding 150,000 migrant workers from other states, before returning them on charter trains to their home areas. A big reason for the success is the high literacy rate in the state. A big emphasis on education and healthcare is a part of the Kerala model. Shailaja is a secondary school teacher, and Health minister. From the days since independence of India in 1947 the state has a strong socialist tradition of taking care of the basics- health, education and public services. It also generates a part of its GDP with income from workers who are overseas.  Another reason for the success in dealing with coronavirus is experience. The state had a virus epidemic called Nipah in 2018 which has become the story for a movie called Virus in Malayalam. There is decentralized public health system in the state and people value their health care facilities, understand and trust the health care authorites. There are hospitals at every level of administration and 10 medical colleges. But trust and education, experience tackling the virus before, are key. Kerala is showing that poor countries can deal effectively with the virus, and create a better life by adopting the right model of creating good societies that value education, healthcare services, better economic structures and distribution of wealth, and  a degree of trust and responsibility found in a state that values public spiritedness. ...

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India's Supreme Court rules on Aadhaar, India's biometric identification program, saying privacy is a fundamental right. Aadhar was started in 2009 as a way to help the poorest citizens and prevent leakage of fuel and food subsidies, and to fight corruption. Using biometric technology the government of prime minister Modi has extended the program as a way to build a database of digital fingerprints, iris scans of most of India's 1.2 billion people as part of a way to extend this into a national id card system for driver licenses, bank accounts, travel on Indian railways, making financial transactions. The government contends that privacy is not a fundamental right in a poor country where most citizens suffer from corruption and leakage of services and subsidies, given that basic safeguards against abuse are introduced. The Court's decision says privacy rights should be taken into account against surveillance by the state and for protection of data, and that it was part of the intrinsic rights of citizens to life and liberty. ...

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This article in The Lancet published in February 2018 throws much light on how the ban on gain of function research on virus was lifted -research that carries with it the danger of increasing transmission of virus if something unexpected happens in the manipulation of a virus. It was lifted in 2018 in the US by officials in the US Health Ministry, NIH and HHS. The Cambridge group of scientists and experts opposed lifting the ban on such dangerous research that could make the virus more contagious through manipulation. Epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch of Harvard School of Public Health wrote at the time that the lab research to create a more lethal strain of virus could lead to "an accidental pandemic" yet he was ignored. The public in America and in the world is unaware of how this created serious risks for public health in the world through the coronavirus.  Did US health officials lift the ban on such research without consulting other countries such as India, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and the EU on its ramifications. Were public health experts and the publics themselves in the US and around the world not drawn into the discussion of public health and the dangers that existed. Not only did officials in HHS and NIH restart the research by lifting the ban but also sent funds overseas for such research- was this a proper or thoughtful action considering the risks involved.  Is enhanced surveillance of virus- a dubious benefit from manipulation of a virus- something a few health officials can decide for the whole world in addition to the US. How are health officials in one or two countries responsible to the people in India, Brazil, Europe and the poorest populations in the world in the world in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, people who have suffered devastating consequences from transmissibility of the virus, including children and older people with health problems. India, Brazil, Italy, Spain, France, UK, and other countries worst hit by the coronavirus must ask serious questions about how they can protect their people if institutions in the US and international institutions are seen as failing to protect world public health. ...

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The new Rapid Response Force with a spearhead of 5000 troops deployable in 48 hours is intended to counter Russia's new aggressive position in Eastern Europe. Command centers will be established in the Baltic states Lithuania, Estonia, Lativia, and in Poland. Romania, Bulgaria. Leadership will rotate for this force between Spain in 2016, Britain in 2017, followed by Italy, France and Poland. Germany currently leads a temporary version of the new force. It is designed to give each nation time to prepare for further action. Within weeks an additional 25,000 troops could be deployed alongside the 5000 troops. U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, is NATO's top military commander. He says the U.S. will have officers in each of the 6 command centers, and in larger bases located in Poland and Romania. The U.S. will provide support for surveillance, intelligence, logistics and airlifts. Retiring Defense Secretary Hagel had called for the Rapid Deployment Force to be ready for action in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe....

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 South Korea has run about 300,000 coronavirus tests, double that in Italy and ten times that in the U.S., says this report in the WSJ. This report shows how the South Korean testing works and the workday of Lee Hyuk-min, a clinical microbiologist at a testing lab of Yonsei University Health System Severance Hospital in Seoul, who is working from 4.45 am to 11 pm. South Korea's effectiveness in controlling the spread is based on a strategy of efficient testing that enables isolating quickly people and areas. South Korea's testing network is a legacy of the MERS coronavirus outbreak in 2015, and the government failure at that time to control it.  It brings together doctors, medical staff, labs, and political leaders in roles following the protocols established since then. Dr Lee and others are the final checkpoint in the system which coordinates a diagnostic operation that combines together 633 test sites and 100 labs. The protocol includes a uniform setup- same testing equipment, same training, same decision making process. At 8 am each day all labs upload results to a shared database, which allows public and private hospitals to monitor patient results and report them to Korea Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. Hospitals upload testing details to an online directory. This surveillance allows South Korea to predict where to concentrate its efforts for controlling spread, says Dr Lee who advises the South Korean government on lab testing issues. Action plan took 2 years for the new rules to be implemented following MERS in 2015. The plan included accelerated bio testing company approval for tests. The first company got approval on Feb 4, followed by 4 other firms. Dr Lee says testing is only part of the equation as labs are needed to process and confirm results. Another key is innovation. South Korea setup testing in drive thru locations, that limit contact and speed up testing, which the U.S. is adopting. Dr Lee says early identification is key, and identifying the first coronavirus patient which was done in South Korea on January 20. Other countries including the U.S. took too long to identify the first patient, says Dr. Lee. ...

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India has learned lessons from past health epidemics- the plague Gujarat 1994, avian flu H5N1 in 2005-2006 Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, swine flu H1N1 Pune, and more recently MERS. The Indian Express looks at past epidemics, how they were tackled and what India learned from them. Major improvements in sanitation and hygiene since then and advances in medicine, public health.  Experience was gained. The municipal commissioner of Thane near Mumbai was district collector of Jalgaon during the avian flu epidemic. He used quarantine to restrict transmission of infected material. He shifted bus stands, closed weekly markets, and had health workers check symptoms in a 3 kilometre radius area. His message for today- have a contingency plan, track, test and treat people, stay focused, not panic, and know exactly what has to be done. Moving migrant crisis today was also seen in Surat, 1994, with the plague epidemic when migrant workers left the city. The government had to use paramilitary units in 1994 to quarantine the entire area. During these earlier epidemics the Indian Council of Medical Research and other medical organizations played a significant role. One of the lessons learned from the H1N1 epidemic that originated in Mexico was the need for effective surveillance and real time reporting so that the pathogen can be recognized in real time and tests done at labs to determine what it is, followed by effective response through isolation of region and patients. Dr. Pradeep Awate, Maharashtra's surveillance officer, says robust surveillance systems are important to understand the magnitude of the problem and strategically place resources. The strategies put in place for the Nipah virus in Kerala state by its Health Department in 2019 are the same ones now being used for cornonavirus - contact tracing and management of persons under quarantine. ...