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Update, 8:15 p.m. PST:

The first high official in the new administration has been forced to resign. CNN reports that Michael Flynn, national security adviser, is out. Flynn reportedly undercut U.S. policy in a meeting with the Russian Ambassador while Barack Obama was still president; he then is said to have lied to the White House about what he discussed in that meeting; intelligence officials allegedly advised the White House that Russia would be able to blackmail Flynn; Flynn was previously fired from the Obama administration for insubordination; and now he is gone from the current administration.

As I write these words, more bad news has just emanated from Washington, D.C. It doesn’t really matter which bad news, for present purposes; suffice it to say, friends are hitting the panic button, once again.
 
We’ve had some nasty defeats, to be sure, and more lie ahead. But let’s be careful not to react to each setback as if we’ve lost the whole conflict.
 
White House operatives are moving rapidly on a wide range of issues. There a couple of reasons why they need to. First, they hope overwhelming flood of bad news will demoralize us. Second, they need to move fast because they have a narrow winder of time before they get shut down again and again by a growing, visible, vocal, and widespread opposition that is still getting organized. Third, the rapid-fire release of outrageous statements and action is a method to control the national conversation.
 
Let’s start reframing it right now, by focusing on some significant good developments of the past several days.

Immigration Ban Pushback
 
The first action taken by the new White House that has immediately affected people’s lives is the executive order that attempted to prohibit certain persons from coming to the United States — the so-called “immigration ban” (actually a confused hodge-podge that even the administration seems to be struggling to understand). Two states, Washington and Minnesota, sued, and a federal judge (an appointee of G.W. Bush) suspended implementation of the order. That ruling was later unanimously upheld by a three-judge appeals panel, also including a G.W. Bush appointee.
 
Whatever the results in court, the executive order has sparked an unprecedented, monumental opposition movement that incorporates almost all sectors of society other than the inner circle of the White House. Consider:

• Briefs opposing the order were filed in court by more than 125 of the nation’s largest companies. Considering that the current occupant of the White House is a narcissistic sociopath who sees every opponent as an enemy, the level of political risk these companies were willing to take is huge. Among the businesses filing court statements against the White House action are Adobe, AirBnB, Amazon, Apple, Coursera, DocuSign, eBay, Evernote, Expedia, Google, HP, Indiegogo, Intel, Levi Strauss, LinkedIn, Lyft, Meetup, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix, Pandora, PayPal, Salesforce, SpaceX, Square, Squarespace, Tesla, Twitter, Uber, Wikimedia Foundation, Yelp, Zendesk, Zinga, and dozens more.

• Several usually conservative companies put their reputations (and big ad dollars) on the line in another way: In SuperBowl ads defending immigration to the U.S. A powerful ad from a lumber company (whose owner voted for Trump) is worth watching all the way through to the surprise ending. (The Fox network didn’t let the entire ad air, but it’s embedded here.) Budweiser aired a spot depicting how the company’s founder was shunned as an immigrant who wasn’t “wanted here.” Coca-Cola, AirBnB, Kia, and Tiffany are among companies promoting immigration, diversity, equality, and environmentalism in their ads. (For a bit of levity, note the hair-product company whose ad said, “America, we’re in for at least four years of awful hair.”) →

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Here are statements I’m encountering from some folks lately. Is this you?

• “I keep trying to call my Senator but the lines are full in the daytime and the voicemails are full at night. This is bull****!”
• “I’m obsessively checking the news. I go to the New York Times Web site hourly. I wake up in the middle of the night and check what new horror has befallen our country. I can’t stop!”
• “I’m getting more terrified every day. It’s the end of the world!”

Let’s unpack these a little bit, starting with the first point.
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Phones are busy. Yes, phone lines at Congressional offices are overwhelmed, and have been for weeks. But that’s not because your elected officials don’t want to hear from you. It’s because so many people are calling them, constantly. You can’t get through because others are getting through whenever you try. The phone lines and the people who staff them are thoroughly overwhelmed in a way that has never before happened, with thousands upon thousands of people mostly voicing the same views you also want to convey. I’ll offer a few suggestions for getting around this traffic jam later in this post, but for now, please realize the fact that you can’t get through is a good thing — it means your friends and neighbors are also activated.

Obsession with the news. Over the past few days, I’ve been quite busy with work from my clients, so out of necessity, I’ve had to ignore the news and concentrate on that work for hours at a time each day. I’ve checked headlines only twice a day, mid-morning and early evening, and checked Facebook only once, for about 20 minutes. Guess what: I haven’t missed anything crucial. Nothing has happened that required me to know about it immediately or to act today; tomorrow has been good enough. And, by the way, when I checked Facebook, I found that for every news headline and announcement, dozens of people I know had already taken action themselves. Gee, what a concept: The world really doesn’t rest on my shoulders alone. Other people (millions, in fact) have my back.

Moreover, there is a rapidly growing collection of positive news developing — the resistance is widespread, deep, powerful, growing rapidly, and winning some early skirmishes. In my own Facebook feed, I’m starting to post mainly positive developments. The next post on this blog will list several of them. Read these, and take heart. It’s not Pollyannaish to celebrate the achievements we are beginning to rack up, nor to be hopeful that these will eventually become an avalanche that buries the extremists’ plans to reverse the last several hundred years of human development.

But almost everything else we fear hasn’t actually happened yet. The pipelines haven’t been built yet. The environment hasn’t been polluted more yet. Wall Street hasn’t run rampant yet. Health care hasn’t been destroyed yet. Women’s reproductive rights haven’t been repealed yet.  →

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• The president has appointed Rudy Giuliani — yes, the guy who ignored advice not to house New York City’s emergency command center in the World Trade towers — to head U.S. cybersecurity efforts. The Web site of Giuliani’s security firm has been offline since shortly after the announcement, when independent experts found the site to be ridiculously insecure. Additionally, Giuliani’s own account password was hacked and published online. An incompetent White House cybersecurity effort will leave us all more vulnerable as hackers gain ever more sophistication and the government goes the opposite direction.
  
• Even conservatives are alarmed by the privacy views of Cabinet members selected by the new president. CIA director-designate Mike Pompeo favors lifting nearly all restrictions on government spying on the citizenry, favoring a Big Brother type of monitoring system. Conservative Review quotes Pompeo: “Congress should pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata [who we contact and when], and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database. Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.”
• The executive order regarding refugees that has sparked such an uproar contains a lesser-known provision that attempts to strip all privacy rights from people who aren’t U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents.
• The White House is considering requiring anyone visiting the United States to divulge Web sites they visit, including social media, as well as their contact lists. Experts point out that bad actors will simply lie or hide their tracks, while honest individuals will have their privacy destroyed. If this doesn’t persuade you of the administration’s utter contempt for Constitutional privacy rights, consider the next point:
• It’s disturbing enough — even to some leading Republicans — that the president appointed white nationalist Steve Bannon to the National Security Council (NSC). But less noticed: At the same time, he demoted the Director of National Intelligence and the Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — i.e., the nation’s top intelligence and military officials. Those two will attend meetings of the NSC Principals Committee only when "issues pertaining to their responsibilities and expertise are to be discussed," according to a memorandum issued by the president on January 28. So, how might one define “national security” in such a way that it may not “pertain to the responsibilities” of the top intelligence and military officials, but would require the president’s Alt-Right-hand man? Suppression of domestic opposition, perhaps?
• As the Center for Democracy and Technology points out, the new White House Web site violated the government’s own privacy policy and industry best practices, collecting visitors’ identifying information without providing access to a privacy policy. (The opening page that asks for visitor e-mail addresses and ZIP codes appears only when you first visit the new site.) 

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​We Can Secure Our Own Privacy
 
So, we cannot count on the federal government to protect our security or privacy online. To the contrary, the government may become an enemy of privacy, snooping on citizens in an unprecedented way. It is no a stretch that a government that has already branded the news media as “the opposition” and said it should “shut up” will also consider citizens enemies for exercising our Constitutional rights to oppose its policies. But that doesn’t leave us defenseless: There are ways we can “harden” our online presence to protect ourselves and those with whom we communicate.
 
Consider carefully that last phrase. Even if you feel you have nothing to hide and you aren’t concerned about government intrusion into your privacy, what about the people who communicate with you? Their texts and e-mails are on your smartphone, too.
 
Fortunately, there are ways we can secure our information, currently. This may not last into the far future, as new technologies make it easier to “crack” encryption (scrambling of data), but presently, most cybersecurity experts believe it’s quite possible for the average person to protect her/his data. →