UT Documents: February 2011

About Me

I was previously a constitutional law and civil rights litigator and am now a journalist. I am the author of three New York Times bestselling books -- "How Would a Patriot Act" (a critique of Bush executive power theories), "Tragic Legacy" (documenting the Bush legacy), and With Liberty and Justice for Some (critiquing America's two-tiered justice system and the collapse of the rule of law for its political and financial elites). My fifth book - No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the US Surveillance State - will be released on April 29, 2014 by Holt/Metropolitan.

Thursday, February 24, 2011

DOMA email

Good morning

I saw you on Democracy Now! this morning and was very interested to hear you report that Obama is no longer supporting DOMA.

I am in a situation very similar to your own -- I am an American national living with my partner in his country of Costa Rica, where I am unable to marry him and be granted any immigration rights here.

Likewise, he has been repeatedly denied any visa to visit the United States, despite the fact that I have shown US Immigration interviewers evidence that he has been my partner for the past 5 years. Their response to our attempts has been to deny him residency and even a
tourist visa to visit the USA on the grounds that we cannot prove our relationship legally in Costa Rica nor the USA.

Obviously the situation is very frustrating to the both of us. Now that I have seen your report about Obama no longer supporting the Defense of Marriage Act, I have hope and expectation again that I may be able to bring my partner to the US. I'd be very interested in any
more information you have on the issue or any information on the next step for the immigration process, if you know it.

Thanks very much for making me aware of this issue. Good luck to you and your family.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Email from Stanford student re: Palantir

Palantir is very well connected to the computer science community at Stanford; no one majoring in computer science here is more than two steps removed from Palantir. Everyone knows someone who works there or has tried to get a job there himself. I think that most CS students who know about Palantir's work in datamining surveillance data for the
Defense Department think it's a little sketchy but are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

They also are known for employing only the best of the best, and their exclusivity has made them a desirable employer. My friends who work there are some of the brightest programmers I know of at Stanford, which made their slide deck about attacking WikiLeaks (and you) a lot more
credible and worrying that it would otherwise have been.