A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

The full essay is at "A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground." 

The U.S. Government Spying on Americans: Was It Ethical?

In early June, 2013, while Barak Obama was still the U.S. president, Americans learned of the U.S. Government’s domestic surveillance program, under which the Verizon Business Network Services subsidiary had been turning over call logs “on an ongoing daily basis” to the National Security Agency[1] The order, signed by a judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in April of that year, was "lawful,” U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein contended.[2] The program analyzed time and number logs that did not include the calls’ content. According to U.S. Senator Chambliss, “All of these numbers are basically ferreted out by a computer, but if there’s a number that matches a [suspicious] number that has been dialed . . . , then that may be flagged. And they may or may not seek a court order to go further on that particular instance. But that’s the only time that this information is ever used in any kind of substantive way.”[3] Harry Reid, Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate at the time, added that the phone-data program had “worked to prevent” terrorist attacks.[4] Does it make any difference. ethically speaking, that the program had helped stop a domestic attack? Shortly after The Guardian broke the story on Verizon’s subsidiary serving corporate customers, The Wall Street Journal reported, “[T]he initiative also encompasses phone-call data” from AT&T and Sprint, as well as from Verizon itself (i.e., beyond its business subsidiary).[5] Does this revelation on the vast scale of the program make any difference ethically? Moreover, does a positive collective consequence--or the lack of a negative harm to the public good--justify forays into the privacy of a vast number of individuals? 

Not surprisingly, privacy advocates were alarmed at the sheer scope of the program. Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties advocacy group, said that “absent some explanation I haven’t thought of, this looks like the largest assault on privacy since the N.S.A. wiretapped Americans in clear violation of the law” under the Bush administration.[6] Her statement raises the question of whether the fact that the Obama administration had confined itself to court orders makes the program ethical.

Whereas the content of the phone conversations, including the parties’ names, were said to be not included in the trove of data turned over to the government, internet companies had been providing the contents of emails, online chats, Facebook accounts, Skype video calls, and web searches to the government as per court orders (i.e., not through direct access).[7] Does the inclusion of content make any difference, ethically speaking? Applying a few ethical theories may get us closer to some answers.

The analysis of the ethical theories is at "The U.S. Government Spying on Americans."

1. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls,” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.

2. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Maintains Vast Database of Phone Calls, Lawmakers Say,” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.

3. Ibid.

4. Siobhan Gorman, Evan Perez, and Janet Hook, “U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove,” The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2013.

5. Ibid.

6. Charlie Savage and Edward Wyatt, “U.S. Is Secretly Collecting Records of Verizon Calls,” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.

7. Siobhan Gorman, Evan Perez, and Janet Hook, “U.S. Collects Vast Data Trove,” The Wall Street Journal, June 7, 2013.

The BP Oil-Rig Explosion: Did the U.S. Government Over-Reach?

A month into the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, some commentators began to wonder out loud whether the US Government ought to take over for BP in stemming the leak. As frustrated as those commentators were at BP–after all, the oil company had shirked safety procedures and lied about having the technology to manage such a spill–they had to admit that the US Government did not have the technical expertise to divert or shut off the oil.  For better or worse, we had to rely on BP in capping the leaks.

The full essay is at "BP Explosion: On the Government's Response."