draft – Techdirt (original) (raw)
A Twitter Leak Scuttled An NBA Draft Day Trade This Year
from the the-power-of-tweet dept
It’s probably well known at this point that major professional sports leagues have a strange relationship with Twitter. On the one hand, many leagues use the social media site quite well when it comes to sharing highlights and getting their brands out there in front of people. Major League Baseball is particularly good at this, although the NBA is not terribly far behind. On the other hand, these leagues have been known to adopt quite restrictive policies when it comes to who can share what on Twitter. This is especially the case on league draft days. For instance, the NFL insists that its broadcast partners, such as ESPN and the NFL Network, not allow their journalists to tweet out draft picks on draft day before they are announced on television. The league obviously wants as many eyeballs tuned into the drama on television as it can muster and has theorized that making TV the first place to get draft picks announced will help with that.
For anyone that follows sports on Twitter, this is obviously a very, very stupid theory. Many sports journalists are not working for ESPN and NFL Network, and they quite happily inform followers of draft picks before they are announced based on their sources. This is how journalism works.
But it was probably a unique event at the NBA draft the other night that a Twitter scoop actually caused one NBA team to back out of an agreed-upon trade.
Atlanta Hawks GM Travis Schlenk told San Francisco radio station 95.7 The Game this morning that he had a deal in place with the Milwaukee Bucks to move up from the 19th pick to the 17th. The Hawks knew they wanted one of two players—including Maryland shooting guard Kevin Huerter—and were sufficiently convinced that the Bucks and the Spurs (at 18) would take the two guys. So they were prepared to part with future picks in order to move up two spots and get one of their guys.
However, Schlenk said that the deal became unnecessary because Shams Charania reported that the Bucks were going to take Donte DiVincenzo, who was, apparently, not one of the two they wanted. Pick tipping is not just helpful for fans, it turns out.
My first reaction is Schlenk is good at his job, having his team monitor Twitter for this kind of intel. If sources are willing to share another team’s intentions on draft night with a journalist who is all too happy to tweet that information out, it only makes sense for Schlenk to want to slurp that information up and let it inform his draft day choices.
But my second reaction is one of worry that the NBA will catch wind of this and absolutely freak the hell out. Leagues as big as the NBA almost can’t help themselves when it comes to this kind of thing. The idea that a trade was scuttled due to great reporting and the tipping of a pick almost certainly isn’t going to sit well with Commissioner Adam Silver and it feels quite impossible that no action over this will be taken by the league.
If the end result is the NBA trying to lock things down a la the NFL, that would be unfortunate and ultimately ineffective. If they take the much more likely action of trying to cut off access to sports journalists from teams on draft day, that would be worse for fans, for its teams, and for its own marketability. Here’s hoping Silver, who is relatively forward-thinking, keeps a cooler head than I fear.
Filed Under: basketball, draft, information, nba draft, travis schlenk, tweets
Companies: nba
The US Government Is Considering Drafting Middle-Aged Hackers To Fight The Cyberwar
from the could-not-have-found-a-worse-way-to-approach-its-personnel-problem dept
There’s no time like the near future to be conscripted into military service. Due to citizens’ declining interest in being personally involved in the government’s multiple Forever Wars, the Commission on Military, National and Public Service is exploring its options. And one of the options on the table is removing restrictions on certain draftees (or volunteers) headed for certain positions in the armed forces.
Got hacking skills? Uncle Sam may want you for the U.S. Army—even if you’re far past traditional draft age.
The National Commission on Military, National and Public Service is seeking public feedback on a slew of possible changes to the way the government handles its selective service requirements, including drafting people with cyber skills regardless of their age or gender.
The commission study was directed by Congress in the 2017 version of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual defense policy bill, and is due to Congress in 2020.
This expansion would net the government essential personnel needed to fight the still-undeclared Cyberwar. No matter your age or severity of bone spurs, the government might have a desk job for you. And you might not have a say in the matter. If the commission recommends a draft targeting key non-combat personnel, people in their thirties and forties might find themselves parachuting telecommuting into the war zone despite having careers in place elsewhere.
The key points of the Commission’s directive [PDF] can be found in this paragraph.
Congress has specifically directed the Commission to consider:
“(1) the need for a military selective service process, including the continuing need for a mechanism to draft large numbers of replacement combat troops;
(2) means by which to foster a greater attitude and ethos of service among United States youth, including an increased propensity for military service;
(3) the feasibility and advisability of modifying the military selective service process in order to obtain for military, national, and public service individuals with skills (such as medical, dental, and nursing skills, language skills, cyber skills, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) skills) for which the Nation has a critical need, without regard to age or sex; and
(4) the feasibility and advisability of including in the military selective service process, as so modified, an eligibility or entitlement for the receipt of one or more Federal benefits (such as educational benefits, subsidized or secured student loans, grants or hiring preferences) specified by the Commission for purposes of the review.”
Congress may be looking to reinstate the draft. It seems we wouldn’t need to “draft large numbers of replacement troops” if we weren’t continually sending them off to foreign lands to get shot at or blown up. Scaling back our military presence might nip the draft idea in the bud, but with few exceptions, things have only escalated since September 11, 2001, rather than cooled down.
Dropping the age and sex requirement for other positions is wise, but it quickly becomes foolhardy once it’s no longer voluntary. The reason the government can’t keep the military stocked is it’s done all it can over the past 50 years to destroy Americans’ faith in it. Things went south reputationally during the Vietnam War, which is the last time the draft was in place. A bungled “military action,” punctuated by atrocities, extended for purely political reasons, and ended with what one could generously call a “tie,” did little to warm the hearts of American citizens. The years since then have seen “wars on” various ideas declared, with no definitive enemy or endpoint. There’s not a lot of enthusiasm left for joining the world’s police force, especially when threats to American way of life shift with White House regime changes. The rebels we once sold arms to are now a terrorist organization in need of stomping out by boots on the ground.
That dovetails into the second task of the Commission: “fostering a greater attitude and ethos of service.” This is the government’s fault and the government needs to fix it. It won’t be able to do it overnight or even in time to rustle up a bunch of “replacement troops” to send to whatever area of the world is in need of gunpoint democracy. I’m sure the final report may have something to say about millennials failing to adopt the ethos and pro-American enthusiasm of their generational predecessors, but who could blame them? The Social Security safety net will have dried up before they have a chance to access it and their economic future is in the hands of malicious actors the government has never shown an interest in punishing. (See every administration ever vs. “too big to fail.”)
Knowing this ship won’t be righted easily may prompt the Commission to suggest something no one would imagine being enacted here. A few pages down, the Commission asks a bunch of questions of itself — one that would appear to answer another one, but with a “solution” most commonly found in totalitarian dictatorships.
(1) Is a military draft or draft contingency still a necessary component of U.S. national security?
(2) Are modifications to the selective service system needed?
(3) How can the United States increase participation in military, national, and public service by individuals with skills critical to address the national security and other public service needs of the nation?
(4) What are the barriers to participation in military, national, or public service?
(5) Does service have inherent value, and, if so, what is it?
(6) Is a mandatory service requirement for all Americans necessary, valuable, and feasible?
(7) How does the United States increase the propensity for Americans, particularly young Americans, to serve?
Yes, one sure way to “increase participation” is to mandate participation via a draft. Another way is to make it mandatory across the board for all citizens, making the draft redundant. Neither of these efforts will solve other problems like “fostering a greater attitude or ethos of service.” If either of these are enacted, the military will be full of people who don’t want to be there and who won’t have their eye on anything other than the calendar. This will only exacerbate the military’s current issues. The only thing it addresses is the need for periodic infusions of cannon fodder.
The cyberwar the government has been gearing up to fight for most the last decade will be another Forever War. Even if it’s a bloodless battle, it will be far from harmless. The government already makes policy decisions based on highly-speculative attribution. In the future, it will engage in both cyberwar and conventional war using the same information. There won’t be bodies to bury, but someone’s going to end up taking out the wrong critical infrastructure or targeting the wrong critical government entity based on political wind shifts. A steady infusion of keyboard warriors may sound like a good idea, but displacing people and uprooting their lives to act on political whims won’t restore faith in the US of A. No one’s going to be throwing parades for cyberveterans marching home with college money and participation ribbons. And if the tech side of the military industrial complex thinks it already has a problem with insider threats, just wait till it’s mostly composed of people who have been pressed into service against their will.
Filed Under: cyberwar, draft, hackers
Looking At The Details Of The Released Leaked ACTA Draft
from the still-doesn't-look-good dept
It’s been a few days now since the latest draft of ACTA leaked, and people are looking through it in detail. Michael Geist has a very detailed take on how the stumbling blocks appear to be a fight between the US and EU negotiators over how broad ACTA should be. Believe it or not, the US negotiators are the ones trying to limit it by taking out patents and limiting the scope to “just” trademark and copyrights. Of course, even that seems to go too far. If this is an anti-counterfeiting agreement, it should be limited to trademark, which is what counterfeiting is about. The European negotiators, however, are pushing to include all intellectual property.
Of course, the US has its own problems as well, in that it appears to be using the transparency issue as a negotiating ploy. That is, despite all the ridiculous claims from the USTR that it supports ACTA transparency, it appears to be telling negotiators it will only allow transparency if it gets what it wants. How very childish. Meanwhile, KEI is pointing out that (again, despite claims to the contrary), ACTA’s text (pushed by the US) on injunctions appears to contradict US law, by taking out the exceptions and limitations.
Over in the EU, some have pointed out that EU Commissioner De Gucht appears to have lied to the EU Parliament in his briefing on ACTA. During that briefing, he apparently claimed that there will not be a definition of “commercial scale” in ACTA. But, in the leaked text? There is, in fact, a definition. And, part of the language was contributed by EU members. Nice work.
Meanwhile, Glyn Moody points us to an analysis of the document that shows how the wording for sections on third party liability and on damages would almost certainly require a change to existing UK law (and, I would argue, would lock in certain aspects of US law). These are the same points that have been raised before, but are brushed off by ACTA defenders who insist that, technically, ACTA can’t force the US to change its law. This is weaseling out of the issue. That it can’t, by itself, require such changes, doesn’t mean that it won’t be used, forcefully, as the lever to force those changes. At the same time, it would lock in highly dynamic aspects of case law, such as third party liability, that haven’t actually been reviewed by Congress. That’s problematic because (in theory) Congress could decide to change the laws on third party liability. But with ACTA in place, we’ll immediately hear screaming about our “international obligations.”
Update: A few folks have sent over another detailed analysis of the new leak by Kim Weatherall, who compares it to the previous draft. Definitely worth reading.