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Making Orwell Blush: An Exclusive Q & A with Virginia Senator Mark Warner

Landon Shroder | August 19, 2020

Topics: Big Tech, china, Honest Ads Act, Intelligence, Justice In Policing Act, Mark Warner, national security, protests, Senator Mark Warner, Tech and Innovation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

With continued political turbulence in Virginia and throughout the US, RVA Mag reached out to Virginia Senator Mark Warner to catch the vibe in Congress on police violence, tech threats, and our role on the world stage.

Everyone should talk to Senator Mark Warner about something at least once. Because that something is going to branch into something else, and before long you will have covered everything from police violence in America to the global expansion of Chinese tech markets. With a casual demeanor and a conversationalist’s gift of persuasiveness, the Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is not only pragmatic about our current predicaments, but forward focused and at ease articulating the future challenges we will face at home and abroad.  

And in our age of perpetual political anxiety, this kind of clarity is needed now more than ever. 

Given ongoing political turbulence, RVA Mag wanted to catch up with Warner to chat about the state of play throughout the US. Over the course of two interviews, what soon became apparent is that the state of play for Warner is a vast interconnected system, which, with the right motivation, can be re-imagined into a new social contract: one that speaks to the challenges facing a new generation in political and economic transformation. Far from observing politics as a series of disparate events, Warner sees the modern policy landscape as a vehicle to develop new innovation and alliances, which can not only strengthen our individual rights, but bolster democracy globally.  

*This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

RVA Mag: I think we can start at the place that is most relevant right now — police violence. As a Senator that focuses on national security and intelligence, what’s it like to look around — not just in Virginia, but America, and see militarized police forces engaging civil society the way they have?

Warner: It is a little bit surreal. Especially when you see unmarked, unidentified federal officers in a city like Portland sweeping people into vans and having them disappear. When I was a kid, I was an exchange student in Argentina in the 1970s. The military there tried these same tactics. There was a group of grandmothers of these lost people who would show up every week in Buenos Aires to protest, and now, to have these pictures of moms linking arms in Portland with bicycle helmets trying to defend their children in the United States of America was maybe the most poignant thing of this. Obviously Black Lives Matter is an important movement, and the systemic racism that we’re seeing is why I am proud to be the original co-sponsor of the Justice In Policing Act. 

The notion that there are people in America who can be subject to that kind of unidentified policing is why Jeff Merkley’s proposed the legislation he has, which I and others support. If a governor, mayor, or local police chief needs federal assistance, let them ask for it, but let’s not impose this external activity when your local elected officials don’t want it — and in Portland, it has exacerbated the violence. 

RVA Mag: You cosigned a letter from “Intel Dems” demanding the answers to 26 questions from the Department of Homeland Security about the deployment of these federal officers. When you read the questions, it sounds like a list of requirements you would ask a CIA Station Chief. Are we at the point in this situation where this level of granularity is required?

Warner: That’s a great question. I hope we’re not at that point. But as we know in the intelligence world, there are protections put in place. We need to have those protections, god forbid, if we see these kinds of activities and use of these kinds of forces in the United States. I have been a little disappointed there has not been broader bipartisan support, because my Republican colleagues, for years, have been saying state and local government should have control and not be subjected to Washington over-reach. 

RVA Mag: One of the analogies which has been used is the idea of a “secret police.” Not actually secret, but a police force only accountable to the President. This does seem reminiscent of intelligence services from authoritarian countries. Is there precedent for this kind of police deployment? 

Warner: No, I don’t think there is. We had Director Wray from the FBI in the other day and we asked him if there was any FBI involvement. And he said no. So the idea that there are these federal protective services and other entities, who rightfully protect our federal buildings, but are not used in this kind of this context, is one more unprecedented area where this President knows no restrictions. 

RVA Mag: Where would the checks and balances against that level of authority and power come from?

Warner: The checks and balances usually come from career professionals at the Justice Department. They say no, but as we’ve seen, you’ve had 2,500 current and former justice department officials asking Bill Barr to resign. You have a president that has very little regard for rule of law, and unfortunately, an Attorney General who views his client not as the people of the United States but Donald Trump, so you’ve got a recipe for this kind of activity. Unless we can get the Majority Leader to let us vote on this bill — there are a number of more classically Libertarian Republican Senators: Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and the others; I would love to hear their reason for not voting for Merkley’s bill — I don’t know where they stand, but the chances are we’d get well over 51 votes. 

RVA Mag: When you listen to the concerns of younger people, myself included, there seems to be a growing fear that not only is our democracy under assault, but that the foundational core of the social contract is also at-risk. You don’t really have to look further than the president’s tweets about postponing the election or trying to invalidate mail-in ballots to see this. 

Warner: Luckily, you saw many Republicans push back when the president of the United States, in an effort to take people’s attention off of the fact that our economy contracted 36 percent, started saying he might try and delay the election. I think we have seen this president show a willingness use any tactic at all, which he thinks might deflect or remove people’s attention — so I was happy to see so many of my Republican colleagues step up after one of the great abuses of recent time, when military force cleared protestors out of Lafayette Square so that Trump could go hold a bible. That made me particularly angry, because I got married in that church 31 years ago! You saw [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] General [Mark] Milley being manipulated, but you saw very quickly Milley and [Secretary of Defense Mark] Esper very much pull back. Because this is not the way we operate in this country. 

I don’t want to give you my full spiel of the future of capitalism, but I would argue this concern about democracy and the breakdown of the social contract precedes Donald Trump. 

RVA Mag: That’s interesting.

Warner: We had a social contract that existed since the 1930s to roughly around the year 2000. It wasn’t perfect, a lot of women and people of color didn’t do well. But generally if you worked hard, paid your taxes, you got a chance to move up in our society. And for 50 years, post-WW2 capitalism created more wealth than any system in the world. But starting in the late 90s, short-term profits became the overriding principle of everything, and where that was demonstrated most was the break down of the social contract. One of the structural changes that has come out of COVID is the idea that we can finally cover gig workers, independent contractors, sole proprietors with unemployment. 

Before, only about 50 percent of workers were covered by unemployment. So this whole notion of the social contract has to be redone. If you have the social contract fraying on one end and then your institutions of democracy fraying on the other, that combination comes together and that’s an explosive mixture — Americans by nature are always a little leery of power. 

RVA Mag: Do you think the American economy is still accessible? Especially for young people who are invested in a particular kind of economy that didn’t exist even five years ago?

Warner: I’m a classic born-in-the-50s baby boomer. But I also failed a number of times in business. However, had I not been a white guy with the right education, I’m not sure I would have gotten the chances I had. But it is stunning to me that in the UK and Canada, your ability to move from one economic status to another is easier there — the UK used to be the epitome of class structure. 

I was an entrepreneur and then a venture capitalist. 50 percent of all new jobs in the last 30 years were from start-up companies. Yet angel and venture capital deals are down 40 percent since 2016. Because if you are talking especially about tech — if your only options are to sell to Google and Facebook, then you can’t get to scale. This is hard. When I hear people say “Oh, Facebook and Google are great and free,” I remind them that they’re not free at all. They’re giant suckers of information. 

RVA Mag: Can America compete with countries like China nowadays? They are leading in green energy hardware, advancements in biomedical technologies, and artificial intelligence. Those are the economics of the future — not, as Republicans like to flaunt, coal. 

Warner: What the Chinese have done is what America did from around 1920 -1980. But they have done it in a way that was even more slightly sophisticated than we did. I have changed my view completely on China. Ten years ago, I was part of the school that wanted to bring them into the World Trade Organization, the World Health Organization — the more you bring them in, the closer they’ll be. I think we were wrong. That was mostly revealed in the changes in the Communist Party under President Xi Jinping. My concern with China is not with the Chinese people; I stand with Hong Kong, and Chinese Americans. One of the things that Trump does is play on racial prejudice — so let me speak about the Chinese economic model, which is pretty wild. 

The Chinese allow massive competition in their domestic market for technology until a national champion emerges. And once that national champion emerges, they will end up getting about 70 percent of the Chinese market, which usually equates to about 25 percent of the world market. What we need is alliances that are technology-based, and I think we need a coalition of the willing. In the end, people still trust us to be the good guys, and what we’ve seen over the last three-and-a-half years is what happens when America exits the world stage. 

RVA Mag: I want to pick your brain about the place where tech, intelligence, and national security intersect, since this is something you have been super-focused on. How far along are we in our understanding of this intersection, given that bad actors both foreign and domestic are using media platforms to shape their own goals and objectives? 

Warner: In some sense, we have come a long way since 2016, when the Russians caught our intelligence community off guard. They generally caught the social media platforms off guard. They showed how vulnerable our whole society was to manipulation. The social media companies recognize this now. I don’t think they’ve gone far enough, but they recognize it. Our intelligence community literally has hundreds of professionals working to monitor this. So we are better aware. But on the other hand, Congress has made absolutely no progress. 

RVA Mag: Ah, there it is. Ok. 

Warner: We still have not passed basic privacy legislation. We have not done something when in any other time would have been a complete no-brainer — the Honest Ads Act, which had John McCain and Lindsay Graham on it. It’s basically saying, if there is a political ad on Facebook and YouTube, there would be the same disclosure requirements as an ad on TV or radio. I put out a white paper that had the theories of ideas on how we put guardrails around big-tech, and that legislation has basically gone nowhere. Almost all of this is bipartisan, so it is not broken down along those lines. It is almost to the point where big tech at first knee jerked reacted against any regulatory oversight, but now they realize this is in a global context. Even big tech realizes that having some national standards, rather than a patchwork of standards around the country and around the world, makes sense. 

We are seeing the big tech security issues moving from manipulation with social media to more nefarious contexts. When we look at the Chinese government combining facial recognition with their big tech companies to create a surveillance state, that might allow them to curtail COVID, but it allows them to spy on people [in ways] that would make Orwell blush. So there is the manipulation of social media, which has morphed into how big tech can be used as an agent of a surveillance state. 

RVA Mag: As the Vice-Chair of the Intelligence Committee, what do the threats look like in 2020? Have they evolved in the age of COVID?

Warner: I think technology is a positive force, but can be used as a mechanism of societal control. It goes back to the idea of alliances; what are the alliances of the future going to be? Post WW2, they were all military alliances, with a few economic trading blocs. But I think we are going to need these technology alliances amongst nations who have a basic fundamental belief in individual rights, democracy, and the rule of law. The asymmetric power that comes from technology with a ruthless CEO or ruthless government is daunting. Something that sneaks up on you can overcome your claims of investment in traditional defense technology. 

RVA Mag: Well, those are my questions Senator. Thank you for that great conversation.  

Warner: Thanks for letting me go on for so long! 

*Illustration by R. Anthony Harris

Real ID Deadline Extended Until 2021 Amid Coronavirus Outbreak

VCU CNS | March 27, 2020

Topics: birth certificates, coronavirus, covid 19, DMV, Real ID, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

This delay is good news in particular for LGBTQ people who might need to do some work to get their documentation in order, and are currently unable to leave the house in order to do so.

The deadline for Real IDs has been extended until October 2021. The move was prompted by widespread Department of Motor Vehicle customer service center closures during the coronavirus pandemic, the Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.

The deadline for the IDs was Oct. 1. After the deadline, the licenses will be required to access federal facilities, board domestic flights, and enter nuclear power plants.

The application process must be completed in person, but Virginia has closed DMV customer service centers until April 2 to help prevent the spread of the coronavirus. DMV closures and restricted access nationwide will prevent people from receiving Real IDs. Gov. Ralph Northam added a 60-day extension to any license or registration expiring before May 15.

“The federal, state, and local response to the spread of the Coronavirus here in the United States necessitates a delay in this deadline,” acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said in a news release. “Our state and local partners are working tirelessly with the Administration to flatten the curve and, therefore, we want to remove any impediments to response and recovery efforts.”

A regular driver’s license can still be used for driving, voting, and verifying identity. Real IDs are marked by a black or gold star symbol in the top-right corner of the license.

The Real ID application process requires multiple forms of identity, such as:

  • U.S. passport or birth certificate
  • Social security card or W-2 form displaying social security number
  • Two of the following: valid Virginia driver’s license, recent utility bills, mortgage statements or leasing agreements
  • Proof of name changes if applicable

Non-U.S. citizens must show proof of identification and legal presence, such as an unexpired passport and visa, permanent resident card or employment authorization document. Virginians who do not have a Real ID must have federally accepted identification, such as a passport, to board a domestic flight or enter a secured federal facility.

The DMV at 2300 W. Broad St. in Richmond has a sign regarding the statewide closures caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Photo by Hannah Eason

Farmville resident Ethan Bowman, who was left unemployed by the coronavirus outbreak when he was unable to start a new political marketing job, has not received a Real ID, but said an extension will help him.

“I don’t have a copy of my birth certificate,” Bowman said. “So I would have to get that somehow before the deadline.”

Right now, there are other things on Bowman’s mind. He said his two roommates are out of work due to the pandemic, and the two grocery stores in the town of 8,000 were low on food Wednesday.

“We sent my cousin out for food and he just sent a bunch of pictures back to our little group chat, and it was just empty shelves, everywhere,” Bowman said of the Walmart Supercenter in Farmville.

Casey Tharpe, a respiratory therapy major at Radford University Carilion, received a Real ID in January after an eight-hour day of computer issues at the DMV in South Boston.

“You just had to check this box for Real ID, but honestly I really have no use whatsoever for Real ID,” Tharpe said. “I’ve been on a plane once in my life.”

Wolf stated that extending the deadline would also allow the Department of Homeland Security to work with Congress and implement the “needed changes to expedite the issuance of Real IDs.”

Written by Hannah Eason, Capital News Service. Top Photo by Hannah Eason.

ICE activity in Virginia spikes under Trump

VCU CNS | May 4, 2017

Topics: community, ICE, immigrants, trump, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

RICHMOND – The Trump administration’s immigration policy has left a cloud hanging over the heads of many undocumented immigrants living in Virginia.

While the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency says it is enforcing existing laws, critics say the agents are doing so with a vengeance.

“Their mission is basically to separate families, and because of that, they are very easily antagonized,” said Camille Brenke, a member of ICE Out of RVA, a collective advocating for the rights of undocumented immigrants living in Richmond.

President Donald Trump has not dismantled legal protections such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allows certain groups of undocumented immigrants to stay in the country. But advocates for immigrant rights fear he eventually will eliminate DACA.


Even so, Trump has taken other actions that have made many people anxious because of the increased presence of ICE agents in communities where undocumented people live.

Shortly after taking office in January, Trump signed executive orders that greatly expanded ICE agents’ power to target and detain undocumented immigrants. While President Barack Obama’s administration insisted it targeted only convicted criminals, Trump gave ICE broader discretion to detain immigrants based on suspicion alone. This has led to the arrests of many people with no criminal record at all, even ICE officials acknowledge.

One of Trump’s executive orders allows ICE to arrest undocumented immigrants if they are suspected of having “committed acts that constitute a chargeable criminal offense.” In the weeks after the order was put into place, ICE carried out a series of raids across the United States and arrested at least 683 undocumented immigrants.

According to statistics released by U.S. Department of Homeland Security, from January through mid-March of this year, ICE arrested more than 21,000 undocumented immigrants, including more than 5,400 with no criminal records.

The Obama administration carried out more deportations than any previous president, removing more than 2.4 million undocumented immigrants from 2009 to 2014 and arresting thousands with no criminal record in the process. However, toward the end of his second term, Obama targeted undocumented immigrants with a proven criminal history. During the first three months of 2016, ICE detained about 14,500 undocumented immigrants, including more than 2,500 with no criminal records.

Number of Undocumented Immigrants Detained Between January to March, 2016 and 2017
Create column charts

Bottom-line comparison: Under Trump, overall detentions increased by about 32 percent – and detentions of undocumented immigrants without a criminal record doubled.

In Virginia, there have been reports of ICE agents stopping people for minor offenses and detaining people in and around churches, schools and hospitals. In the past, ICE has officially recognized such venues as “sensitive locations” and forbidden agents from arresting people there. Advocates for undocumented immigrants fear that policy has changed.

Their fears were heightened in February when seven men were stopped and arrested by ICE after leaving a hypothermia shelter located inside a church in Arlington.

Germaine Wright Sobral, a partner at Montagut & Sobral Law Office in Falls Church, has been working with undocumented immigrants in Virginia for more than 30 years. She says the recent spike in ICE activity is due to the new administration’s feeling emboldened to pursue immigrants for minor offenses.

“Under Obama, if you had an order of deportation but you weren’t committing any bad acts, they were basically not enforcing the order of removal,” Sobral said. “But now, with the direction of the new attorney general and President Trump, they are. They feel liberated to be able to do that.”

While Sobral has not heard reports of ICE conducting mass raids on homes or worksites in Virginia since Trump’s election, she said she has seen other ways in which agents have stepped up their activity over the past few months.

“This week, I have had three people come into the office who have been picked up on drunk-in-public charges, which is a Class 4 misdemeanor – it is punishable by a fine only,” Sobral said. “What they have done is, they have picked them up, taken them to the police station and had them processed by ICE with detainers, which is absurd because the offense doesn’t require the officer to take someone to jail; they could just ticket them and let them sleep it off.”

As a result of the increased ICE activity in the state, Gov. Terry McAuliffe met with Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly. McAuliffe said he came away from the meeting with positive results, stressing that Kelly assured him that only undocumented immigrants involved in “criminal enterprises” would be targeted.

Brenke, a member of ICE Out of RVA, questioned the assurances Kelly gave McAuliffe. She said the newfound freedom that ICE has been given under the executive order has left undocumented immigrants in Richmond reeling.

“Obama created this system of really targeting certain individuals and finding out, ‘OK, who has a criminal history? How can we find them?’” Brenke said. “But now, they’ll just go to a random place and see who’s undocumented and just take whoever’s around. So that way, it’s definitely more visible, and there’s definitely more fear in our communities.”

Both Sobral and Brenke also said ICE agents have misrepresented themselves as a means of attracting undocumented immigrants. They cited instances in which ICE agents presented themselves as local police rather than federal officers.

“They were saying that they were the police, and they’re not,” Sobral said. “That is a misrepresentation. They are not the police – they are ICE.”

In response to critics, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has cited criminal and public safety threats as their top priority in immigration enforcement efforts.

Sobral and Brenke suggest that undocumented immigrants know their rights if they find themselves in an encounter with ICE.

“People are more aware of the fact that they have to follow police instructions,” Sobral said. “But if an ICE officer stops me and asks me for ID, unless he has an articulable suspicion that I am an undocumented immigrant, there’s absolutely nothing that I need to do to answer him.

“You can remain silent,” Sobral said. “Whether or not you’re documented, you have these rights.”

Words By Rodrigo Arriaza via VCU Capital News Service.
Top image credit: Southerners on New Ground

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