The New Deal

“We need to see this for what it is. It is an attack on our very democracy. It’s an attack on who we are as a people. A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11. It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.” Former acting CIA director Michael Morrell, who briefed President George W. Bush on 9/11, speaking to the Cipher Brief about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

“People of tech, now is the time to choose. The sidelines have vanished. Neutrality is not an option. You face a question not that different from the one Steve Jobs posed to a CEO long ago, when he asked, ‘Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to change the world?’ Today the question is: Do you want to sell racism, sexism, oil, climate disaster, surveillance, fear, and hate? Or do you want to help save an endangered world? This is for real. This is now. There are no pivots or reboots. Which side are you on?” Scott Rosenberg, “When Tech Has to Choose Between Its President and Its Customers — Who Wins?

Yesterday, Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had expressed support for a bipartisan investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, offering vocal support for the work of people in the Central Intelligence Agency: “I have the highest confidence in the intelligence community and especially the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is filled with selfless patriots, many of whom anonymously risk their lives for the American people.”

One might think that McConnell had decided to side with saner heads in the CIA vs Trump, who trashed the agency this weekend. But one should never take McConnell’s words at face value. When he says that the Senate Intelligence Committee “is more than capable of conducting a complete review of this matter,” that should be understood as forestalling any more far-ranging investigative effort, as Austin Wright explains in Politico.

A group of ten presidential electors, mostly Democrats led by Christine Pelosi of California (daughter of House minority leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi), have written to the director of national intelligence James Clapper asking for a briefing into “whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations.”

Trump’s decision to postpone a planned December 15 press conference on how he was supposedly divesting himself of his businesses means that the Electoral College will vote December 19 without knowing all the ways that he will likely be in violation of the Constitution’s Emoluments Clause when he takes office, as Norman Eisen and Richard Painter, respectively the ethics counsels for Presidents Obama and Bush, explain in The Atlantic.

Notably, Trump’s view of the Constitutional prohibition on receiving foreign gifts or payments while in office is this: “Even though I am not mandated by law to do so, I will be leaving my businesses before January 20th so that I can focus on my presidency. Two of my children, Don and Eric, plus executives, will manage them. No new deals will be done during my term(s) in office.”

Channeling her inner Donald voice, Recode’s Kara Swisher writes that “the leaders of tech should be ashamed of themselves for lining up like sheeple after all the numskull attacks Trump has made on what is pretty much the United States’ most important, innovative and future-forward business sector.” She shares a bit of her background conversations with a tech leader about tomorrow’s “summit”:

Like one tech leader who suddenly stopped mid-sentence about how to really make deals, Kara, because the truth just had to be out. “Trump is just awful, isn’t he? It makes me sick to my stomach,” the leader agonized, as a real thinking person would. “What are we going to do?” Well, to start, realize again that you have the smarts and invention and the innovative spirit to do whatever you like. Realize you have untold money and power and influence and massive platforms to do what you think is right. Realize that you are inventing the frigging future. Instead, you’re opting to sit in that gilded room at Trump Tower to be told fake news is a matter of opinion and that smart people aren’t so smart and that you need to sit still and do what they say and take that giant pile of repatriated income with a smile. Or you can say no — loudly and in public.

Tech investor Chris Sacca, who wasn’t invited and isn’t attending, didn’t mince words to Swisher: “It’s funny, in every tech deal I’ve ever done, the photo op comes after you’ve signed the papers,” he said. “If Trump publicly commits to embrace science, stops threatening censorship of the internet, rejects fake news and denounces hate against our diverse employees, only then it would make sense for tech leaders to visit Trump Tower.” He added: “Short of that, they are being used to legitimize a fascist.”

Dave Pell of NextDraft (an excellent newsletter) offers a word of sympathy for the tech execs meeting with Trump: “they feel they have a responsibility to maintain shareholder value,” and the president-elect has shown that he will punish companies that don’t heed his wishes.

Related: Net neutrality will soon be on the chopping block, as April Glaser explains in Recode.

And Wharton professor and longtime FCC hand Kevin Werbach explains exactly how Congress will wield the axe.

Civil rights groups led by Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) and MoveOn delivered 200,000 petition signatures to the Justice Department yesterday asking President Obama to cancel the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which was created after 9/11 to register foreigners from mostly Muslim countries. The program has been shelved since 2011, but the groups want it ended before Trump takes office to make it harder for him to re-activate it.

Author Amy Webb writes in Politico that the government needs a “Department of the Future.” She wants it to “be charged not only with futures research and advising, but also with educating our newly elected leaders, the vast majority of whom do not have any background in science or technology. More than almost any president before him, Trump is in need of such an education.” File this under Nice Idea In Some Other Universe.

This is civic tech: Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and a longtime friend (and benefactor) of Civic Hall, has donated $1 million to Poynter to fund a five-year chair in journalism ethics focused on verification, fact-checking and accountability in journalism. Kudos Craig!

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey (who isn’t attending the Trump tech summit) will be streaming live with Edward Snowden at 12:05pm ET tomorrow.

1776 NYC is still accepting applications for its first cohort of startup fellows, through December 16.

What sharing economy? Uber is indeed a sharing company—five former Uber security professionals tell Will Evans of the Center for Investigative Reporting that even after it supposedly instituted strict policies preventing employees from accessing users’ trip information “the company continues to allow broad access….Thousands of employees throughout the company, they said, could get details of where and when each customer travels. Those revelations could be especially relevant now that Uber has begun collecting location information even after a trip ends.” Evans also reports that “internal Uber employees helped ex-boyfriends stalk their ex-girlfriends and searched for the trip information of celebrities such as Beyoncé, according to the company’s former forensic investigator.”

Your moment of zen: Radio.garden, an interactive map of the Earth showing all the live radio streams available.