U.S. STATEMENT ON SUPPORTING TRANSPARENCY AND P5 PROCESS

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Arms Control and International Security: U.S. Support for Transparency and the P5 Process
05/05/2015 12:29 PM EDT
U.S. Support for Transparency and the P5 Process

Transparency Visit

In 2015, the United States hosted a visit to the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories for representatives from NPT non-nuclear weapon States Parties and the UN. The visit included briefings, tours, and exchanges on U.S. stockpile stewardship and management activities, and the role played by the national laboratories in support of the President’s arms control and nonproliferation agenda.

P5 Conference Process

The United States is committed to engaging its P5 partners to advance all aspects of the NPT.

P5 engagement is a long-term investment in strengthening the NPT, building trust, and creating a stronger foundation for the work required to achieve a world without nuclear weapons.

The P5 are pursuing regular NPT-related dialogue to an extent unseen in prior years:

The United States and Russian Federation have briefed the other P5 states on their nuclear arms control verification and notification experience to foster greater familiarity with practical arrangements that promote the irreversibility, transparency, and verifiability of the disarmament process.

The P5 will release a first edition of the “Glossary of Definitions of Key Nuclear Terms” at the 2015 NPT Review Conference.

U.S. experts are working with P5 counterparts to review P5 collaboration on improving and maintaining the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty verification regime and to identify ways our unique experience can contribute to further strengthening the CTBT international monitoring regime.

The United States hosted a CTBT-related workshop, with participation by all P5 states, on data quality objectives for On-Site Inspection equipment.

The P5 released a statement in February 2015 encouraging states to undertake efforts to minimize the impact of xenon gas on the CTBT’s monitoring network.

ENHANCING TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY AT NSF

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION 

New Steps to Enhance Transparency and Accountability at the National Science Foundation

Important Notice No. 137

January 13, 2015

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO PRESIDENTS OF UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES AND HEADS OF OTHER NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION GRANTEE ORGANIZATIONS

Subject: New Steps to Enhance Transparency and Accountability at the National Science Foundation

Over the last year, the National Science Foundation has taken new steps to enhance transparency and accountability. This notice focuses on efforts to clarify NSF's award abstracts, which serve a different purpose than the project summary that is submitted as part of a proposal.

Effective December 26, 2014, NSF's updated Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide (PAPPG) (NSF 15-1) includes the following statement about award abstracts: "Should a proposal be recommended for award, the PI (Principal Investigator) may be contacted by the NSF Program Officer for assistance in preparation of the public award abstract and its title. An NSF award abstract, with its title, is an NSF document that describes the project and justifies the expenditure of Federal funds."

While our update to the PAPPG clarifies the possible role of the PI in helping NSF prepare award abstracts, NSF would like to share the Foundation's guidelines about NSF award abstracts with the science, engineering and education communities to help improve communication about the nature of the award to the public.

The NSF public award abstract consists of both a nontechnical and technical component. The nontechnical component of the NSF award abstract must:

explain the project's significance and importance; and
serve as a public justification for NSF funding by articulating how the project serves the national interest, as stated by NSF's mission: to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; or to secure the national defense.
By sharing these guidelines, NSF is clarifying the nature of requested assistance from PIs in this valuable effort in helping the agency adhere to its newly established guidelines. This collaborative effort also helps foster stronger public communication about the value of federal investments in fundamental research.

France A. Córdova
/s/
Director

WHITE HOUSE FACT SHEET: 'U.S.-CHINA ECONOMIC RELATIONS'

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 
November 12, 2014
FACT SHEET: U.S.-China Economic Relations

President Obama and President Xi recognize the importance of economic relations at the core of the U.S.-China bilateral relationship. The two Presidents commit to deepen bilateral economic ties. To this end, the United States and China commit to pursue policies that promote more open and market-driven bilateral and international trade and investment. This includes pursuing a high-standard and comprehensive bilateral investment treaty that embodies the principles of non-discrimination, fairness, openness, and transparency. The Presidents also commit to work together to address global economic challenges, to deepen the cooperation between the two sides under the framework of the G20, and improve and strengthen the rules-based international economic system.

The United States and China welcome the bilateral agreement reached in November 2014 on the expansion of the WTO Information Technology Agreement, and call for swift resumption and conclusion of plurilateral negotiations in Geneva.

The United States and China commit to continue to pursue Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) negotiations as a top priority in their economic relations, devoting all the resources necessary toward the achievement of a high-standard and comprehensive BIT that embodies the principles of non-discrimination, fairness, openness, and transparency. U.S. and Chinese leaders commit to actively work to advance the negotiations to ensure they are achieving these objectives. The two sides commit to periodically report to their respective leaders on the status of the negotiations to ensure that maximum and continual progress is being achieved, with a first report following the exchange of proposed “negative lists” early in 2015.

The United States and China reached consensus to intensify science-based agricultural innovation for food security. The United States and China commit to strengthen dialogue to enable the increased use of innovative technologies in agriculture.

As part of the reforms set out in the Third Plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee, China continues to implement its market-oriented exchange rate reform, reduce foreign exchange intervention as conditions permit, increase exchange flexibility, and enhance the transparency of its economic and financial data.

In 2012, the United States and China, the world’s two largest economies and exporters, demonstrated their joint leadership in the global trading system by making a historic commitment to launch multilateral negotiation of new international export credit guidelines in the International Working Group on Export Credits (IWG). Through six meetings, and based on numerous strong contributions from developed and emerging market country IWG members, the IWG has made significant progress and is now at a critical juncture as it works to develop guidelines that, taking into account varying national interests and situations, are consistent with international best practices.

The United States and China commit to take all steps necessary to advance the IWG initiative, including by starting negotiation of horizontal guidelines as soon as possible. The United States and China further reaffirm their support for IWG guideline coverage that includes official export credit support provided by or on behalf of a government.

The United States and China intend to discuss as soon as possible new areas for cooperation to build African energy capacity and to expand dramatically power generation and access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa consistent, with the vision of Africa’s leaders and people for the continent’s development.

SECRETARY KERRY'S REMARKS AT U.S.-AFRICA BUSINESS FORUM

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 

Remarks at the U.S.-Africa Business Forum Leaders Forum Session

Remarks

John Kerry

Secretary of State

"Game Plan: Shaping the Future of a Fast-Growing Continent"

Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Washington, DC

August 5, 2014

---

Good afternoon, everybody. I’ve had a chance to be able to say a few words to a number of you at a few different events in the course of yesterday and even today, but I appreciate this chance to be part of the business forum.

I want to thank, first of all, the Vice President, who’s been a friend of mine for 35 or 40 years now, 29 of them in the Senate. And I thank him for his contribution of conscience and of commitment to Africa that he has made for as long as he has been in public life. In the Senate, we worked hand-in-hand on Darfur, South Sudan, PEPFAR, and as the Vice President said, he has traveled far and wide, but especially as Vice President to Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, to help build transparent and accountable institutions and to help lift millions of people out of poverty.

I also want to especially thank Michael Bloomberg for – and everybody has, but it’s appropriate – the Bloomberg Philanthropies for sponsoring this event. Michael’s contribution to Africa comes not just in the form of this summit, but through his latest commitment of $10 million that he made just this February to African countries to build media capacity with a business focus and to promote reliability in reporting, educational opportunities, and the transparencies that the Vice President just talked about that markets need in order to give capital confidence and in order to grow.

And finally, I also want to thank Penny Pritzker, my partner, a fellow member of the President’s Cabinet, but a terrific partner in our endeavors to make certain that people understand that in this globalized world, in the transformative societies we’re living in today, that economics – excuse me – is not divorced from foreign policy; it is foreign policy. And foreign policy is economic policy. They absolutely go hand-in-hand, and we are working very, very closely to marry the efforts of the Commerce Department and the State Department in order to assist companies and to work for American business, but also to work for the countries that we represent in terms of their interests and their vision and their aspirations.
Penny, as you all know, spent 30 years building a business empire, literally. She understands that the investments in Africa are a two-way street, and when we help nations stand on their own two feet, we create opportunity elsewhere in the world, and that everybody benefits as a result of that.

Now, my singular responsibility and privilege is to represent the United States of America in our diplomacy. And I get to wear the hat of the top diplomat of the State Department, and it’s a privilege. But I want to say something to you today that is not just from the business perspective, but which comes from the wearing of that hat, which is a reflection of the people that I see in the countries I visit, the leaders I meet and talk with, the aspirations that I hear all of them express, and the firsthand opportunity I get to sink my teeth into other people’s culture, other people’s history and see the world as they see it, and see even America as they see it.
Everyone here understands that we are living in a very different world from two years ago, from five years ago, ten years ago, and certainly from the world that emerged with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War. Forces have been released everywhere that have changed everything because of their own ideology in many cases, or in some cases just outlook on the world, but also because other things have changed. A world – I sat with a number of young diplomats in the State Department not so long ago, and one of them recently minted from college and the Foreign Service School and this new world of technology made a very profound observation to me, which has had an impact on my thinking about power and how it works. He said that a world where power used to be defined exclusively in hierarchies is now a world where power is defined in networks.

And in much of Africa and across the networked world, it is evident. We heard the statistics earlier of the number of people who have cell phones in Africa today. Everybody shares everything with everybody all the time, and the fact is that that changes politics. It changes the cross currents of decision making. It changes how political leaders can or can’t build consensus in order to try to make decisions and bring their people along with them as they make those decisions. It also, obviously, profoundly changes business, something that Bloomberg has understood way ahead of the curve, which is why they’ve been so successful. It changes hopes and dreams and aspirations. And every political leader and every business needs to be tuned into that reality. No matter how hard some powerful leader of a country might desire, no one can put this genie back in the bottle and change what is happening.
So because of that, we face a very common challenge, all of us together. In Africa, there are some 700 million people under the age of 30, a staggering youth bulge unknown at any time on the face of this planet. And the fact is that all of them, or most of them – not all of them, but most of them – with their increasing awareness of this world we live in are desperate for opportunity, yes, but also for dignity and for respect.

On the other side, we all know too well there are extremists, too many radical religious extremists who distort theology, religion, and even ideology. And they are prepared to seduce these young people in a very calculated and disciplined way to lure them into what is nothing less than a dead end. And we’ve seen the instability that this creates, all of us, and what’s important is that none of them – none of those extremists, they don’t offer an education that helps a young person gain a skill. They don’t help anybody to be able to compete. They have not one idea about a health system. They don’t build infrastructure. They don’t tell you how to build a nation. And they don’t talk about how they will provide jobs or offer a vision for the future. They are stuck in the past. Their challenge is modernity, and because of it, it’s our challenge too.

So there’s something else about those extremists, and it reflects a little bit on what the Vice President just said to you. It’s not just the lack of jobs and opportunity that give them their opening and their recruitment tools. They’re just as content to see corruption and oligarchy and kleptocracy and resource exploitation fill the vacuum. Because it may look like economic growth on paper, but that’s another way that they can seize on the frustration and exploit the sense of lack of opportunity and violation that is the anger of so many people – to wit, a young fruit vendor in Tunisia who ignited so much of what followed. There’s another target that they can turn to. They are the swing voters, in a sense, in the struggle against extremism.
So my friends, that is our challenge. It’s not just to come here and do business. That’s important, obviously. It is the key, the economic key to the future, and we have to do business to grow the jobs, provide the skills, provide the tax base to be able to do the things we want to do. But we have to come together, all of us, with a unified vision and a purpose so that we can present this growing number of young people in Africa and across the world with a viable alternative: quality education with skills for the modern world and with jobs that allow them to build a life and have a family and have confidence in their countries.

All of us together have the greatest ability of any people on the planet to be able to provide this opportunity. And it’s not just economics that creates the sustainable growth and shared prosperity; it’s also this larger vision of what life is about and why there is a greater purpose than just living to work. You have to work to live and there has to be a living there that’s worth it. So we know beyond any doubt that the places – and this is a polite summary of an experience here in America where we do not profess to have all the answers, nor would we suggest to you that ours is the only track – but one thing that we have learned is that in the places where people are free not just to develop an idea, but to debate different ideas, to have not just a job but the promise of entrepreneurship and innovation to be able to transform the best ideas into reality and into a business and into a future – those are the societies that absolutely are the most successful and the most stable on our planet.

And this success is not a mystery. It’s not something that’s hard to achieve if you make the right choices. It’s possible for all of Africa, and that is how one can choose to have an Africa that is not defined any longer, as it has not been for these last 10 and 15 years as it goes through this transformation defined by conflict – less and less. But it becomes an Africa that is defined by rights and by capacity, by dignity, respect, and opportunity. And opportunity is something that Boko Haram and al-Shabaab and many other groups will never, ever provide.

So when the United States is home to some of the most innovative and well-known and respected companies in the world, and when Africa is already home to some of the fastest-growing economies in the world and new leadership that is anxious to grab the future, we have to do more together. We have to partner – which is a theme of this conference – to invest in the next generation, to create good jobs for young Africans, to build a stronger middle class, to provide families with clean power and clean water, to build societies where an open exchange of ideas and information are the defining hallmark.

Business is not just business for the sake of business, and I think all of you know that, at least not for most of the thoughtful businesspeople here and in our country. It is for providing the foundation for people to be able to live their lives with that opportunity, dignity, and respect. I don’t have to remind anybody here that Nelson Mandela, one of the greatest leaders the world has seen in all time, did not spend 27 years in jail so that he could get out and run a business, with no disrespect to anybody here. He did it so that people of his country would have an opportunity to live up to an ideal. He did it for rights – human rights – that are the foundation of any civilized society. And those rights across the continent are best lived out, best given meaning in strong countries with strong economies where prosperity is shared by a strong middle class.

So I close by just saying there is absolutely no question in my mind, from the excitement that we felt yesterday at the first meeting to the energy that we felt in all of your presence here and in the meetings and discussions thus far – all of this is not just possible; it is the future. But we have to make the right choices about skills and education and opportunities, and that will define the U.S.-Africa partnership. And if we work together, if everybody gets this right, this – this meeting and this moment and the days ahead of us can literally become a pivotal defining moment for our future history and for the world.
Thank you all very, very, much. (Applause.)

HHS HAS NEW DATA, TOOLS TO INCREASE HOSPITAL UTILIZATION TRANSPARENCY

FROM:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

HHS releases new data and tools to increase transparency on hospital utilization and other trends

Data can help improve care coordination and health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries

With more than 2,000 entrepreneurs, investors, data scientists, researchers, policy experts, government employees and more in attendance, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is releasing new data and launching new initiatives at the annual Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, D.C.

Today, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is releasing its first annual update to the Medicare hospital charge data, or information comparing the average amount a hospital bills for services that may be provided in connection with a similar inpatient stay or outpatient visit. CMS is also releasing a suite of other data products and tools aimed to increase transparency about Medicare payments. The data trove on CMS’s website now includes inpatient and outpatient hospital charge data for 2012, and new interactive dashboards for the CMS Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse and geographic variation data. Also today, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will launch a new open data initiative. And before the end of the conference, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) will announce the winners of two data challenges.

“The release of these data sets furthers the administration’s efforts to increase transparency and support data-driven decision making which is essential for health care transformation,” said HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

“These public data resources provide a better understanding of Medicare utilization, the burden of chronic conditions among beneficiaries and the implications for our health care system and how this varies by where beneficiaries are located,” said Bryan Sivak, HHS chief technology officer. “This information can be used to improve care coordination and health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries nationwide, and we are looking forward to seeing what the community will do with these releases. Additionally, the openFDA initiative being launched today will for the first time enable a new generation of consumer facing and research applications to embed relevant and timely data in machine-readable, API-based formats."

2012 Inpatient and Outpatient Hospital Charge Data

The data posted today on the CMS website provide the first annual update of the hospital inpatient and outpatient data released by the agency last spring. The data include information comparing the average charges for services that may be provided in connection with the 100 most common Medicare inpatient stays at over 3,000 hospitals in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. Hospitals determine what they will charge for items and services provided to patients and these “charges” are the amount the hospital generally bills for those items or services.

With two years of data now available, researchers can begin to look at trends in hospital charges. For example, average charges for medical back problems increased nine percent from $23,000 to $25,000, but the total number of discharges decreased by nearly 7,000 from 2011 to 2012.

In April, ONC launched a challenge – the Code-a-Palooza challenge – calling on developers to create tools that will help patients use the Medicare data to make health care choices. Fifty-six innovators submitted proposals and 10 finalists are presenting their applications during Datapalooza. The winning products will be announced before the end of the conference.

Chronic Conditions Warehouse and Dashboard

CMS recently released new and updated information on chronic conditions among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries, including:

Geographic data summarized to national, state, county, and hospital referral regions levels for the years 2008-2012;

Data for examining disparities among specific Medicare populations, such as beneficiaries with disabilities, dual-eligible beneficiaries, and race/ethnic groups;
Data on prevalence, utilization of select Medicare services, and Medicare spending;

Interactive dashboards that provide customizable information about Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions at state, county, and hospital referral regions levels for 2012; and Chartbooks and maps.

These public data resources support the HHS Initiative on Multiple Chronic Conditions by providing researchers and policymakers a better understanding of the burden of chronic conditions among beneficiaries and the implications for our health care system.

Geographic Variation Dashboard

The Geographic Variation Dashboards present Medicare fee-for-service per-capita spending at the state and county levels in interactive formats. CMS calculated the spending figures in these dashboards using standardized dollars that remove the effects of the geographic adjustments that Medicare makes for many of its payment rates. The dashboards include total standardized per capita spending, as well as standardized per capita spending by type of service. Users can select the indicator and year they want to display. Users can also compare data for a given state or county to the national average. All of the information presented in the dashboards is also available for download from the Geographic Variation Public Use File.

Research Cohort Estimate Tool

CMS also released a new tool that will help researchers and other stakeholders estimate the number of Medicare beneficiaries with certain demographic profiles or health conditions. This tool can assist a variety of stakeholders interested in specific figures on Medicare enrollment. Researchers can also use this tool to estimate the size of their proposed research cohort and the cost of requesting CMS data to support their study.

Digital Privacy Notice Challenge

ONC, with the HHS Office of Civil Rights, will be awarding the winner of the Digital Privacy Notice Challenge during the conference. The winning products will help consumers get notices of privacy practices from their health care providers or health plans directly in their personal health records or from their providers’ patient portals.

OpenFDA

The FDA’s new initiative, openFDA, is designed to facilitate easier access to large, important public health datasets collected by the agency. OpenFDA will make FDA’s publicly available data accessible in a structured, computer readable format that will make it possible for technology specialists, such as mobile application creators, web developers, data visualization artists and researchers to quickly search, query, or pull massive amounts of information on an as needed basis. The initiative is the result of extensive research to identify FDA’s publicly available datasets that are often in demand, but traditionally difficult to use. Based on this research, openFDA is beginning with a pilot program involving millions of reports of drug adverse events and medication errors submitted to the FDA from 2004 to 2013. The pilot will later be expanded to include the FDA’s databases on product recalls and product labeling.

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION SAYS DATA BROKERS NEED TO BE MORE TRANSPARENT

FROM:  U.S. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 

FTC Recommends Congress Require the Data Broker Industry to be More Transparent and Give Consumers Greater Control Over Their Personal Information

Agency Report Shows Data Brokers Collect and Store Billions of Data Elements Covering Nearly Every U.S. Consumer

In a report issued today on the data broker industry, the Federal Trade Commission finds that data brokers operate with a fundamental lack of transparency. The Commission recommends that Congress consider enacting legislation to make data broker practices more visible to consumers and to give consumers greater control over the immense amounts of personal information about them collected and shared by data brokers.

The report, “Data Brokers: A Call for Transparency and Accountability” is the result of a study of nine data brokers, representing a cross-section of the industry, undertaken by the FTC to shed light on the data broker industry. Data brokers obtain and share vast amounts of consumer information, typically behind the scenes, without consumer knowledge. Data brokers sell this information for marketing campaigns and fraud prevention, among other purposes. Although consumers benefit from data broker practices which, for example, help enable consumers to find and enjoy the products and services they prefer, data broker practices also raise privacy concerns.

“The extent of consumer profiling today means that data brokers often know as much – or even more – about us than our family and friends, including our online and in-store purchases, our political and religious affiliations, our income and socioeconomic status, and more,” said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. “It’s time to bring transparency and accountability to bear on this industry on behalf of consumers, many of whom are unaware that data brokers even exist.”

The report finds that data brokers collect and store billions of data elements covering nearly every U.S. consumer. Just one of the data brokers studied holds information on more than 1.4 billion consumer transactions and 700 billion data elements and another adds more than 3 billion new data points to its database each month.

Among the report’s findings:

Data brokers collect consumer data from extensive online and offline sources, largely without consumers’ knowledge, ranging from consumer purchase data, social media activity, warranty registrations, magazine subscriptions, religious and political affiliations, and other details of consumers’ everyday lives.
Consumer data often passes through multiple layers of data brokers sharing data with each other. In fact, seven of the nine data brokers in the Commission study had shared information with another data broker in the study.

Data brokers combine online and offline data to market to consumers online.
Data brokers combine and analyze data about consumers to make inferences about them, including potentially sensitive inferences such as those related to ethnicity, income, religion, political leanings, age, and health conditions. Potentially sensitive categories from the study are “Urban Scramble” and “Mobile Mixers,” both of which include a high concentration of Latinos and African-Americans with low incomes. The category “Rural Everlasting” includes single men and women over age 66 with “low educational attainment and low net worths.” Other potentially sensitive categories include health-related topics or conditions, such as pregnancy, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

Many of the purposes for which data brokers collect and use data pose risks to consumers, such as unanticipated uses of the data. For example, a category like “Biker Enthusiasts” could be used to offer discounts on motorcycles to a consumer, but could also be used by an insurance provider as a sign of risky behavior.

Some data brokers unnecessarily store data about consumers indefinitely, which may create security risks.

To the extent data brokers currently offer consumers choices about their data, the choices are largely invisible and incomplete.

To help rectify a lack of transparency about data broker industry practices, the Commission encourages Congress to consider enacting legislation that would enable consumers to learn of the existence and activities of data brokers and provide consumers with reasonable access to information about them held by these entities.

For data brokers that provide marketing products, Congress should consider legislation to:

Centralized Portal. Require the creation of a centralized mechanism, such as an Internet portal, where data brokers can identify themselves, describe their information collection and use practices, and provide links to access tools and opt- outs;

Access. Require data brokers to give consumers access to their data, including any sensitive data, at a reasonable level of detail;

Opt-Outs. Require opt-out tools, that is, a way for consumers to suppress the use of their data;

Inferences. Require data brokers to tell consumers that they derive certain inferences from from raw data;

Data Sources. Require data brokers to disclose the names and/or categories of their data sources, to enable consumers to correct wrong information with an original source;

Notice and Choice. Require consumer-facing entities – such as retailers – to provide prominent notice to consumers when they share information with data brokers, along with the ability to opt-out of such sharing; and Sensitive Data. Further protect sensitive information, including health information, by requiring retailers and other consumer-facing entities to obtain affirmative express consent from consumers before such information is collected and shared with data brokers.

For brokers that provide “risk mitigation” products, legislation should:

When a company uses a data broker’s risk mitigation product to limit a consumers’ ability to complete a transaction, require the consumer-facing company to tell consumers which data broker’s information the company relied on;
Require the data broker to allow consumer access to the information used and the ability to correct it, as appropriate.

For brokers that provide “people search” products, legislation should:

Require data brokers to allow consumers to access their own information, opt-out of having the information included in a people search product, disclose the original sources of the information so consumers can correct it, and disclose any limitations of an opt-out feature.    
           
The nine data brokers in the study are Acxiom, CoreLogic, Datalogix, eBureau, ID Analytics, Intelius, PeekYou, Rapleaf and Recorded Future. In December 2012, the Commission voted to issue orders requiring these data brokers to produce the information that was used in the study.

The Commission vote approving the issuance of the report was 4-0, with Commissioner McSweeny not participating.

READOUT: NSA ADVISER RICE'S MEETING WITH MALAYSIAN OPPOSITION LEADERS

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

April 28, 2014

Readout of National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice's Meeting with Malaysian Opposition Leaders

Today, National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice met with three top leaders of the Malaysian political opposition to hear their views on the situation in Malaysia and their efforts to press for greater democracy, transparency, and reform.  Ambassador Rice underscored that the President's historic visit to Malaysia has been an important opportunity to continue the transformation of the relationship between our two countries--but that even as we deepen our cooperation with the Malaysian government, we are looking to expand our engagement with all of Malaysia, including civil society, industry, students, and participants from across the political spectrum.

Ambassador Rice reiterated the President's message that countries that welcome the contributions, and uphold the human rights of all their citizens, regardless of their political affiliation, ethnicity, race or religion are ultimately more prosperous and more successful. She also shared the United States' view that it is critical for Malaysia to apply the rule of law fairly, transparently, and apolitically in order to promote confidence in Malaysia’s democracy and judiciary.

Ambassador Rice emphasized to Mr. Anwar that the United States has followed his case closely, and that the decision to prosecute him and the trial have raised a number of concerns regarding the rule of law and the independence of the courts.

Ambassador Rice told the opposition leaders  that the United States will continue to raise our concerns about issues of political freedom,  the basic universal rights of freedom of expression, freedom of association, and religious liberty--as well as the need to respect and protect the rights of all people, regardless of their ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.

Finally, Ambassador Rice conveyed deep condolences on the passing of democracy and civil rights activist Mr. Karpal Singh.

Participants:

Anwar Ibrahim (Mr. Anwar), Leader of the Opposition, chairman of the People’s Justice Party
Lim Guan Eng (Mr. Lim), Leader of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and opposition Member of Parliament
Mustafa Ali (Mr. Mustafa), Secretary General of the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party (PAS) and opposition Member of Parliament
Pictures of the meeting can be found HERE and HERE

HHS TOUTS NEW TRANSPARENCY ON MEDICAL SERVICES AND HOW PHYSICIANS ARE PAID

FROM:  DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 9, 2014

Historic release of data gives consumers unprecedented transparency on the medical services physicians provide and how much they are paid
Today, as part of the Obama administration’s work to make our health care system more transparent, affordable, and accountable, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the release of new, privacy-protected data on services and procedures provided to Medicare beneficiaries by physicians and other health care professionals. The new data also show payment and submitted charges, or bills, for those services and procedures by provider.

“Currently, consumers have limited information about how physicians and other health care professionals practice medicine,” said Secretary Sebelius “This data will help fill that gap by offering insight into the Medicare portion of a physician’s practice. The data released today afford researchers, policymakers and the public a new window into health care spending and physician practice patterns.”

The new data set has information for over 880,000 distinct health care providers who collectively received $77 billion in Medicare payments in 2012, under the Medicare Part B Fee-For-Service program. With this data, it will be possible to conduct a wide range of analyses that compare 6,000 different types of services and procedures provided, as well as payments received by individual health care providers.

The information also allows comparisons by physician, specialty, location, the types of medical service and procedures delivered, Medicare payment, and submitted charges. Physicians and other health care professionals determine what they will charge for services and procedures provided to patients and these “charges” are the amount the physician or health care professional generally bills for the service or procedure.

"Data transparency is a key aspect of transformation of the health care delivery system,” said CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner. “While there’s more work ahead, this data release will help beneficiaries and consumers better understand how care is delivered through the Medicare program.”

Last May, CMS released hospital charge data allowing consumers to compare what hospitals charge for common inpatient and outpatient services across the country.

IRS COMMISSIONER KOSKINEN'S REMARKS TO NATIONAL PRESS CLUB

FROM:  INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE 
Prepared Remarks of Commissioner of Internal Revenue Service John Koskinen before the National Press Club 

WASHINGTON – Thank you for that warm welcome. It’s an honor for me to be here today at the National Press Club for the first time as IRS Commissioner.

Now that we’ve turned the calendar to April, I know there are usually two things on peoples’ minds. The first is Spring and the second is taxes. Plus watching the Final Four this weekend. As a former Chairman of the Duke Board of Trustees, we had a moment of silence earlier in the tournament. But the loss to Mercer was part of a longer term-strategy to increase the Duke endowment in the hopes of a substantial contribution from an unnamed major investor in the United States, in recognition of the billion dollars we saved him by losing the game.

Moving on, if you came to this luncheon or tuned in expecting to hear about the state of affairs at the Internal Revenue Service, you’ve come to the right place.

I was sworn in as IRS Commissioner a little over three months ago, and I feel exactly the same way I did on Day One: Excited and proud to lead an agency that’s critical to the functioning of our government and one that touches virtually every American. These last three months I’ve traveled to 18 of the 25 largest IRS offices around the country. I have talked with and listened to about 8,000 employees so far and been delighted to see the professionalism, skills and dedication of our employees.

I am on this journey because, throughout my career, I have found that the people who know most about what’s going on in an organization are the front line employees. They have important insights into the opportunities and challenges an organization faces.

In light of all that has happened to Federal employees in the last four years, and IRS employees in particular – no pay raises for four years, government shutdowns, furloughs and the negative publicity about the IRS the last year – you might have expected that I would have heard a lot of grumbling from employees about not being paid enough or having to work too hard. Instead, the consistent response I have heard is a concern that we do not have enough employees to provide the level of taxpayer services our employees want to provide and feel taxpayers deserve.

I also have heard at every stop – even in the 18th city last Friday – interesting observations and suggestions about how we can improve the day-to-day operations of the agency. And I have explained in town halls with front line workers and meetings with managers at each office that one of my goals is to foster an environment where information flows easily from the bottom up in the agency as well as from the top down.

This is critical, not only for us to get the benefit of observations and suggestions from employees, but also to learn as quickly as possible about problems or challenges. I have noted that it is illusory to think that we’ll never have a problem or make a mistake.  We have 90,000 employees administering the world’s most complicated tax code and dealing with millions of taxpayers. Instead, my goal is for us to find problems quickly, fix them promptly, make sure they stay fixed, and be transparent about the entire process. I’ve told our employees that if there’s a problem anywhere in the organization, it’s my problem and we’ll fix it together. If an employee makes an honest mistake, it’s my mistake as well, and we’ll work together to remedy the situation. And if there’s a problem that I don’t know about, that’s my fault, because it would mean we haven’t built a culture that encourages information to flow up from the front lines through the organization.

As I tell the employees, my theory is that “bad news is good news,” since the only problem we can’t solve is one we don’t know about. And, as a corollary, employees need to know that we don’t shoot messengers, we thank them.

In moving the IRS forward, one of the most important things we have to do is restore public trust in the agency, which was shaken by the management problems that came to light last year with regard to the determination process used for applicants to become tax exempt social welfare organizations under section 501(c)(4) of the IRS code. Organizations that have 501(c)(4) status can be everything from garden clubs to homeowners associations, but the focus for the last year has been on advocacy groups that spend part of their time and money on political campaigns.

As a result of the inappropriate use of an organization’s name alone as the criterion for setting its application aside for special treatment, doubt has been cast by some on the independence of the IRS. This is an important issue that deserves our attention.  But it is also important to put this issue into the proper perspective.  The IRS has about 800 employees in its Exempt Organizations Division, and only a small subset of those folks work on processing applications for tax-exempt status for social welfare organizations. Meanwhile, there about 89,000 other IRS employees in offices all across the country who are also doing critical work for our tax system and for the nation in other areas.

Nonetheless, taxpayers need to be confident that the IRS will treat them fairly. It doesn’t make any difference who they are, what organizations they belong to, or whom they voted for in the last election. None of that matters to us at the IRS. We will do about one million audits of individual taxpayers this year. Some who get audited may be Democrats, some may be Republicans, and others may be something else altogether. But they will all have one thing in common: They’re being contacted by us because there was something on their tax returns that needed follow up. Perhaps we just need a clarification. Maybe there was a mathematical error. Or there could be something seriously wrong with the return. But the return alone is the reason for our inquiry. And anyone else with the same issue would receive the same treatment from the IRS.

To make sure that this problem does not recur, we’ve done a number of things. We have accepted all nine of the recommendations from the Inspector General for Tax Administration. It was his report last May that found applications for 501(c)(4) status were being screened using inappropriate criteria in the determinations process.

Since then, for the last several months the IRS has been cooperating with the investigations into this matter that were launched last summer. There are six ongoing investigations, four conducted by Congressional committees, one by the Department of Justice and one by the IG.

We were asked by members of Congress to quantify the work we’ve done and how much it has cost. The answer is that more than 250 IRS employees have spent over 100,000 hours working directly on complying with the investigations. This work has cost more than $14 million, which includes adding capacity for our computer systems to make sure we are protecting taxpayer information while processing and producing these materials.

In letters to Congressional Committees two weeks ago and in my testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, I was pleased to report that we now have provided all the documents we have identified as being related to the determinations process – which was the focus of the IG’s report last May. We have provided the tax writing committees, our primary oversight committees, with almost 700,000 pages of documents.  We are still redacting taxpayer information from the last of those documents before they can be shared with the Committees that do not have authority to see taxpayer information.

 As a result, my hope is that at least some of the six pending investigations will be concluded and reports issued in the near future. I have made it clear that we will respond appropriately to the facts and recommendations of those reports and move the agency forward.

Our production of materials has proceeded according to priorities set with all of the investigating committees and, as we have now completed our production of documents related to the determinations process, we are prepared to work with the committees on any new avenues they may want to pursue.

You may have noticed that, during my three-hour hearing last week before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, some members of the Committee expressed unhappiness with the rate at which we are producing redacted information for them. As I tried to make clear, we never indicated that we would not respond to the very broad subpoena for documents we received in mid-February. Indeed, we have produced documents responsive to each of the subpoena’s categories. In the private sector, a court would require these requests to be reduced to those relevant to the inquiry. Unfortunately, the subpoena contains no such limitations, so the volume of materials requested means we could be at this for a long time.

Another recommendation by the IG was that the Treasury Department and the IRS should provide clearer guidance on how to assess the permissibility of 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations’ activities. So last November, Treasury and the IRS issued proposed regulations that are designed to clarify the extent to which a 501(c)(4) organization can engage in political activity without endangering its tax-exempt status.

While I was not involved in the issuance of this draft proposal, because it happened before I was confirmed as Commissioner, I believe it is extremely important to make this area of regulation as clear as possible. Not only does that help the IRS properly enforce the law, but clearer regulations will also give a better roadmap to applicants, and will help those that already have 501(c)(4) status properly administer their organizations without unnecessary fears of losing their tax-exempt status.

During the comment period, which ended in February, we received more than 150,000 comments. That’s a record for an IRS rulemaking comment period. In fact, if you take all the comments on all Treasury and IRS draft proposals over the last seven years and double that number, you come close to the number of comments we are now beginning to review and analyze. It’s going to take us a while to sort through all those comments, hold a public hearing, possibly repropose a draft regulation and get more public comments. This means that it is unlikely we will be able to complete this process before the end of the year.

Before leaving this topic, I want to note one other thing. Last month, former IRS Commissioner Randolph Thrower passed away at the age of 100. Commissioner Thrower led the IRS from 1969 to 1971, during the early years of the Nixon Administration, which turned out to be a challenging time for the agency. Commissioner Thrower held firm against attempts being made at that time to politicize the agency. The White House eventually fired him for his principled stance.

I’m sure if Commissioner Thrower were here today, he would say he was only doing his job. But he was doing much more. His refusal to let politics compromise the IRS is an important reminder to all IRS Commissioners now and in the future of what our mission is. I intend to follow his example. I want to reassure everyone listening to me today that the IRS is an agency of career civil servants who are dedicated to serving the American taxpayer in a fair and impartial manner. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it will stay on my watch.

We have other important challenges to face. One example of this is insuring that the tax filing season goes smoothly. When I started in December, I told our employees that I wanted to help with the filing season and, as the new kid on the block, the best thing I could probably do was to stay out of the way. I’ve been very successful at that and, at least partially as a result, the filing season has gone very well thus far.  Through the end of March, we’ve received more than 90 million tax returns and issued more than 73 million refunds, for approximately $207 billion.

As we get closer to the April 15th deadline for filing returns, I think it’s important to realize what a tremendous accomplishment it is for the agency to process 150 million individual taxpayer returns every year. This doesn’t happen by accident and it doesn’t happen automatically. It happens because thousands of dedicated and experienced employees work for months planning for the next filing season and then administering it.

Another top priority of ours: taxpayer service. This filing season, as we do every year, the IRS provides services to taxpayers to help them fulfill their tax obligations.

Taxpayers want and need more online tax information and services, and we’re working to meet that demand by making improvements to our website, IRS.gov. Last year alone, taxpayers viewed IRS.gov web pages more than 450 million times, to get forms and publications, find answers to their tax questions and check the status of their refunds.

One of the most popular features on IRS.gov is the “Where’s My Refund?” electronic tracking tool, which taxpayers used more than 200 million times last year. Now that doesn’t mean, of course, that there are 200 million taxpayers. Some of them just can’t resist checking over and over to see how their refund is doing.

This year we have several new digital applications that will expand what taxpayers can do online. One of these applications is IRS Direct Pay, which provides taxpayers with a secure, free, quick and easy online option for making tax payments. Another innovation, Get Transcript, is a secure online system that allows taxpayers to view and print a record of their IRS account, also known as a transcript, in a matter of minutes. We are also in the final stages of revamping the IRS Online Payment Agreement, which allows taxpayers to apply for an installment agreement online.

To provide better service, the IRS is also expanding the methods it uses to communicate information to taxpayers. We have moved beyond traditional media, like newspapers and TV news to also take advantage of social media, such as YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr.

During my three months on the job, I have been surprised to learn how much time, effort and resources we provide trying to help taxpayers determine the amount they owe and how to pay it. As I have said, it may take me a while to convince the average taxpayer that “we’re from the IRS and we’re here to help you,” but we really do work hard to make it as easy as possible to file your taxes.

Along with taxpayer service, another high priority for the IRS is maintaining a robust tax compliance program and building on the work that’s been done to improve compliance in a number of areas. One of the most important of these is the battle against refund fraud, especially fraud caused by identity theft. I say “battle” because we really do have a fight on our hands against identity thieves who steal peoples’ information outside the tax system and use that information to file a tax return claiming a refund.

We’re doing a much better job of stopping suspicious returns before they can be processed compared to a couple of years ago, and our criminal investigators are making great progress in helping the Justice Department find these criminals and put them behind bars. Last year we protected $17.8 billion from refund fraud, we initiated 1,400 investigations, and we obtained over 1,000 indictments and 400 convictions. We’re also doing a lot better at helping identity theft victims clear up their IRS accounts after they have been victimized. The time for resolving a new case has been reduced from over 300 days to roughly 120 days. But there’s still room for improvement, and we intend to do even better.

Perhaps our most intense challenge is fulfilling the responsibility Congress has given us to implement tax-related provisions of enacted legislation, including the Affordable Care Act.  We have a lot of work to complete if we are going to be prepared for major ACA provisions that go into effect this year, including the premium tax credit and the individual shared responsibility provision. As I have told our employees, the significant challenge of implementing the Affordable Care Act provides us with a major opportunity to demonstrate the skill, dedication and competence of the IRS. After the difficulties experienced last fall with the rollout of ACA, if we can have a smooth filing season next year including the appropriate review of the returns of taxpayers who took or were eligible for the advanced premium tax credit, the public and the Congress will have to say, “That’s some organization with an amazing work force.”

Along with the ACA, another important piece of legislation we’re in the process of implementing is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, which is more commonly known as FATCA. This law is important because it requires foreign financial institutions to tell us about accounts owned by U.S. citizens. With this information, we can do a much better job of combatting offshore tax evasion. Our goal is to make it more and more difficult for Americans to hide their money in a tax haven to avoid paying taxes.

The importance of FATCA is not just that we’ll be collecting more money. It is also important because the average taxpayer has to be confident that, while they are paying their taxes, the very wealthy, with fancy lawyers and accountants, are no longer able to hide their money in foreign countries and avoid paying their fair share to support the operations of the government.

When I became Deputy Mayor of Washington, the city’s theory of snow removal had been that “the sun will come up tomorrow.” So, when I began, we had a “snow summit” and I told the leadership team that, whatever else we were going to do, we were going to get the snow off the streets. That’s my feeling today at the IRS. Whatever else we are going to do, we are going to implement the non-discretionary legislative mandates we have been given: the Affordable Care Act and FATCA.

This brings me to what I believe is the biggest challenge facing the IRS today, the substantial decline in our funding, which puts significant strain on our ability to provide adequate services to taxpayers and to maintain strong service and enforcement levels to ensure the integrity of our voluntary compliance system.

For the IRS to keep making progress in all the areas I’ve just mentioned, it is critical for us to receive adequate resources. The agency continues to be in a very difficult budget environment since we are the only major agency functioning basically at the
post-sequester level rather than having been moved back toward the pre-sequester level of funding. Since Fiscal 2010, IRS appropriations have been cut by about $900 million and we have 10,000 fewer employees even as our responsibilities continue to expand.

We recognize the need to become more efficient, no matter what happens to our funding level. Since 2010, the IRS has cut annual spending on professional and technical service contracts by $200 million. We generated $60 million in annual printing and postage savings by eliminating the printing and mailing of certain tax packages and publications, and by transitioning to paperless employee pay statements.

Real estate is another area where we have found major savings. In 2012 the IRS began a sweeping space-reduction initiative that is projected to reduce rent costs by more than $40 million and reduce total IRS office space by more than 1.3 million square feet by the end of this fiscal year. Taken together, we’re spending $300 million a year less in these areas.

We will continue our efforts to find savings and efficiencies wherever we can.  And we will continue to carry out our core responsibilities and work toward preserving the public’s faith in the essential fairness and integrity of our tax system. But these budgetary constraints will pose serious challenges to our efforts to enforce the tax laws and provide excellent customer service.

Essentially, the federal government is losing billions in revenue collection to achieve budget savings of a few hundred millions dollars, since the IRS estimates that, for every $1 invested in the IRS budget, it produces $4 in revenue.

As I said during my confirmation hearing, I didn’t find a single organization in my 20 years of private-sector experience that said, “Let’s take our revenue operation and starve it for funds and see how it does.”

So far this filing season, we have been fortunate that the volume of phone calls to our toll-free lines is actually down a bit compared to this time last year. One factor is the lack of major tax changes in 2013, which means fewer questions from taxpayers. Our improved website and its applications also have helped provide taxpayers with important support without requiring a phone call.

As a result, for now, we’re maintaining a level of phone service around 72 percent. That’s much better than last year’s overall average of 60.5 percent. But we expect that for the year we will drop well below 70 percent and end up closer to last year’s 60.5 percent. That would mean more than 30 percent of taxpayers trying to reach us on the phone couldn’t get through.  It wasn’t that long ago, with proper funding, that our level of service was 88 percent.

Along with phone service, we’re also concerned about the amount of time it takes for people to get help in person when they go to one of our Taxpayer Assistance Centers. We’ve had reports from field staff in offices across the country of taxpayers lining up outside our centers well before the centers open in the morning to make sure they receive service the same day, sometimes waiting up to three hours to be served after they enter the office. Expanding our online offerings can only go so far to ameliorate these problems. As Forbes magazine noted earlier this year, when you punish the IRS you punish taxpayers.

Our information technology operation is still another area that the IRS has always been focused on. Our use of IT helps us do a better job of stopping potentially fraudulent returns before they are processed and allows us to keep making improvements to our operations and our website.  Our 2014 budget had $330 million for IT work related to implementing ACA. None of that money was provided. Since we are mandated by statute to implement ACA, that has meant that other vital IT projects have had to be shelved.

The solution to the budget problem that we face starts with the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal, which was released last month. The Administration proposes a funding level of approximately $12.5 billion for the IRS for Fiscal 2015, which would reverse the erosion in our budget over the last several years.

I think it’s fair to ask what value the American taxpayer would get for that extra billion or so dollars that the Administration is proposing. It would help taxpayers get the service they need and strengthen compliance efforts in key areas, especially the two I mentioned earlier – refund fraud and offshore tax evasion. The budget proposal halts the declines in key enforcement personnel we’ve had and allows the IRS to again invest in necessary basic infrastructure.

Ultimately, it’s in everyone’s best interests to have an IRS that can do its job. We don’t believe that any member of Congress wants their constituents – be they taxpayers, tax preparers or financial advisors – to go through the aggravation of not getting the help they need from the IRS. They don’t want their constituents waiting in line for hours at a taxpayer assistance center or having trouble getting through on our toll free lines.

So my hope is that once we get beyond the issues surrounding the 501(c)(4) application process, and once the major tax-related provisions of the Affordable Care Act that I mentioned earlier are up and running, we can have a more normal discussion about our budget. I look forward to working with Congress to solve this budget problem. I hope that one of the legacies of my time as IRS Commissioner will be that we put the agency’s funding on a more solid and sustainable footing.

There’s another way in which Congress can help the IRS improve the work it does to assist taxpayers and ensure compliance with the tax laws, and that is to simplify the tax code. Congressman Dave Camp, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, put it well when he introduced his tax reform proposal a few weeks ago. He said that the tax code is ten times the size of the Bible, without the good news. The IRS Taxpayer Advocate has estimated that individuals and businesses spend about 6.1 billion hours a year complying with the filing requirements of the tax code. All in an effort to determine and pay the right amount of taxes.

We can do better than that. And, while tax policy is the domain of the Treasury Department, the Administration and the Congress, those of us involved in tax administration are anxious to do whatever we can to assist in the process.

Thank you very much for letting me spend this time with you. With that, I’d be happy to take some questions.

TRANSITIONAL PRESIDENT OF C.A.R. WELCOMED BY U.S.

FROM:  STATE DEPARTMENT 
U.S. Welcomes Selection of New Transitional President of the Central African Republic

Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
January 21, 2014

The United States welcomes the selection of Catherine Samba-Panza as Transitional President in the Central African Republic (C.A.R.). As C.A.R.'s first woman head of state since the country’s independence, and with her special background in human rights work and mediation, she has a unique opportunity to advance the political transition process, bring all the parties together to end the violence, and move her country toward elections not later than February 2015.

We also commend the Transitional National Council for conducting the selection process for the new C.A.R. Transitional President in a deliberate, open, and transparent manner that ensured the airing of a full range of views from C.A.R.’s civil society.

The United States has been deeply engaged in the work to help pull C.A.R. back from the brink, including the pivotal visits of Ambassador Power and Assistant Secretary Thomas-Greenfield less than a month ago. The United States, along with regional leaders of the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), the African Union, and other members of the international community, hopes to support President Samba-Panza and call on the people of C.A.R. to work constructively with her, participate in the political process, and avoid any resurgence in violence.

JUSTICE OFFICIALS TESTIFY BEFORE SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ABOUT FISA COURT

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT 
Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole, Director Keith B. Alexander and General Counsel Robert S. Litt Testify Before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee

Washington, D.C. ~ Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Thank you for inviting us to continue our discussions with this Committee on our efforts to enhance public confidence in the important intelligence collection programs that have been the subject of unauthorized disclosures since earlier this year: the collection of bulk telephony metadata under the business records provision found in Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, and the targeting of non-U.S. persons overseas under Section 702 of FISA. As we have emphasized in previous appearances before this and other Committees, we remain committed, as we review any modifications to these authorities, both to protecting privacy and civil liberties in the conduct of our intelligence activities, in a manner consistent with the Constitution, the law and our values, and to ensuring that we continue to have the authorities we need to collect important foreign intelligence to protect the country from terrorism and other threats to national security. We also remain committed to working closely with this Committee as any modifications to these activities are considered.

A key step in promoting greater public confidence in these intelligence activities is to provide greater transparency so that the American people, as well as ordinary citizens around the world, understand what the activities are, how they function, and how they are overseen. As you know, many of the reports appearing in the media concerning the scope of the Government’s intelligence collection efforts have been inaccurate, including with respect to the collection carried out under Sections 215 and 702. In response, the Administration has released substantial information since June to increase transparency and public understanding, while also working to ensure that these releases are consistent with national security. We welcome the opportunity to discuss ways to make more information about intelligence activities conducted under FISA available to the public in a meaningful and responsible way. At the same time, we are mindful of the need not to publicly disclose information that our adversaries could exploit to evade surveillance and harm our national security. There is no doubt that the recent unauthorized disclosures about our surveillance capabilities risk causing substantial damage to our national security, and it is essential that we not take steps that will increase that damage.

In keeping with this balance, in June the President directed the Intelligence Community to make as much information about the Section 215 and Section 702 programs available to the public as possible, consistent with the need to protect national security and sensitive sources and methods. Since then, the Director of National Intelligence has declassified and publicly released substantial information in order to facilitate informed public debate about these programs. Among other things, the Government has declassified and disclosed the primary and secondary orders from the FISA Court that describe in detail how the bulk telephony metadata collection program operates and the important restrictions on how the data collected under the program are accessed, retained, and disseminated. The Government has also released two recent FISA Court opinions, as well as an Administration white paper, that articulate in detail the legal authority and rationale for this program. We have also declassified and released to the public several other FISA Court opinions and orders concerning the two programs, including detailed discussions of compliance issues that have arisen during the programs’ history and the Government’s responses to these incidents. We have declassified and released extensive materials that were provided to the Congress in conjunction with its oversight and reauthorization of these authorities. Finally, just this week we have declassified and released additional materials, including FISA Court opinions relating to a separate program (no longer in operation) to collect certain internet metadata in bulk pursuant to court orders issued under the pen register/trap and trace provision of FISA (Section 402). Our efforts to promote greater transparency through declassification and public release of relevant documents are not yet complete. We will continue our efforts to promote greater transparency through declassification and public release of relevant documents, while carefully protecting information that we cannot responsibly release because of national  security concerns. These efforts are an important means of enhancing public confidence that the Intelligence Community is using its legal authorities appropriately, which has become increasingly important in the wake of confusion, concerns, and misunderstandings caused by the recent and continuing unauthorized disclosures of classified information.

As part of our ongoing efforts to increase transparency, the Director of National Intelligence has also committed to providing annual public reports that include nationwide statistical data on the Intelligence Community’s use of certain FISA authorities. Specifically, for each of the following categories of FISA and related authorities, beginning in January 2014 and on an annual basis thereafter, the Intelligence Community will release to the public the total number of orders issued during the prior twelve-month period and the number of targets affected by these orders:

FISA orders based on probable cause (Titles I and III and Sections 703 and 704 of FISA).
Directives under Section 702 of FISA.
FISA Business Records orders (Title V of FISA).
FISA Pen Register/Trap and Trace orders (Title IV of FISA).
National Security Letters issued pursuant to 12 U.S.C. § 3414(a)(5), 15 U.S.C.
This information will enable the public to understand how often the Intelligence Community uses these authorities nationwide, how many persons or entities are targeted by these efforts, and how these figures change over time. The Director of National Intelligence has concluded that providing this information on a nationwide basis is an acceptable course in light of the goal of public transparency, without unduly risking national security.

We also understand the concerns that specific companies have expressed as to their ability to inform their customers of how often data is provided to the Government in response to  legal process. In light of those concerns, we have authorized companies to report within certain ranges the total number of federal, state, and local law enforcement and national security legal demands they receive on a nationwide basis, and the number of user accounts affected by such orders. This allows companies to illustrate that those demands affect only a tiny percentage of their users, even taking all of the demands together, and thus to refute inaccurate reports that companies cooperate with the Government in dragnet surveillance of all of their customers. At the same time, this approach avoids the disclosure of information to our adversaries regarding the extent or existence of FISA coverage of services or communications platforms provided by particular companies

The scope of the voluntary disclosures by the Executive Branch concerning sensitive intelligence collection activities carried out under FISA is unprecedented. We hope that the information we have released, and will continue to release, will allow the public to understand better how our intelligence collection authorities are used. We also hope the public will appreciate the rigorous oversight conducted by all three branches of government over our intelligence activities, a whole of government approach that is unique and exacting in comparison to the many governments that conduct similar intercept programs with substantially less stringent oversight. The extensive oversight that we conduct helps to ensure that our activities protect national security, balance important privacy considerations, and operate lawfully.

In addition to the unprecedented steps we have taken to promote transparency, we are open to working with Congress on legislation designed to increase public confidence in these intelligence activities and enhance the protection of privacy and civil liberties. Regarding Section 215, we would consider statutory restrictions on querying the data that are compatible with operational needs, including perhaps greater limits on contact chaining than what the current FISA Court orders permit. We could also consider a different approach to retention periods for the data—consistent with operational needs—and enhanced statutory oversight and transparency measures, such as annual reporting on the number of identifiers used to query the data. To be clear, we believe the manner in which the bulk telephony metadata collection program has been carried out is lawful, and existing oversight mechanisms protect both privacy and security. However, there are some changes that we believe could be made that would enhance privacy and civil liberties as well as public confidence in the program, consistent with our national security needs.

On the issue of FISA Court reform, we believe that the ex parte nature of proceedings before the FISA Court is fundamentally sound and has worked well for decades in adjudicating the Government’s applications for authority to conduct electronic surveillance or physical searches in the national security context under FISA. However, we understand the concerns that have been raised about the lack of independent views in certain cases, such as cases involving bulk collection, that affect the privacy and civil liberties interests of the American people as a whole.

Therefore, we would be open to discussing legislation authorizing the FISA Court to appoint an amicus , at its discretion, in appropriate cases, such as those that present novel and significant questions of law and that involve the acquisition and retention of information concerning a substantial number of U.S. persons. Establishing a mechanism whereby the FISA Court could solicit independent views of an amicus in cases that raise broader privacy and civil liberties questions, but without compromising classified information, may further assist the Court in making informed and balanced decisions and may also serve to enhance public confidence in the FISA Court process.

While we remain open to working with Congress to effectuate meaningful reforms along the lines just described, we do not support legislation that would have the effect of ending the Section 215 program, which the Government continues to find valuable in protecting national security. And, while we support increased transparency, we do not support legislation that would require or permit public reporting of information concerning intelligence activities under FISA that could be used by our adversaries to evade surveillance, or which otherwise raises practical and operational concerns. The bill approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee includes a number of constructive provisions that we support and that we think will enhance protections for privacy and civil liberties without harming national security.

Finally, we want to address the Committee’s interest in the legal standard for collection of records under Section 215. As the Administration explained in a white paper that it published in August, the telephony metadata program satisfies the statutory requirement that there be “reasonable grounds to believe” that the records collected are “relevant to an authorized investigation . . . to obtain foreign intelligence information . . . or to protect against international terrorist or clandestine intelligence activities.” The text of Section 215, considered in light of the well-developed understanding of “relevance” in the context of civil discovery and criminal and administrative subpoenas, as well as the broader purposes of the statute, indicates that there are “reasonable grounds to believe” that the records at issue here are “relevant to an authorized investigation.” Specifically, in the circumstance where the Government has reason to believe  that conducting a search of a broad collection of telephony metadata records will produce counterterrorism information—and that it is necessary to collect a large volume of data in order to employ the analytic tools needed to identify that information—the standard of relevance under Section 215 is satisfied, particularly in light of the strict limitations on the use of the data collected and the extensive oversight of the program.

As noted above, two decisions of the FISA Court that have recently been declassified by the Government and released publicly by the Court explain why the collection of telephony metadata in bulk is constitutional and is authorized under the statute. These opinions reflect the independent conclusions of two federal judges serving on the FISA Court that the Government’s request for the production of call detail records under Section 215 meets the relevance standard and all other statutory requirements. Moreover, these opinions conclude that because the Government seeks only the production of telephony metadata, and not the content of communications, there are no Fourth Amendment impediments to the collection. Indeed, 15 separate judges of the FISA Court have held on 35 occasions that Section 215 authorizes the collection of telephony metadata in bulk in support of counterterrorism investigations. Last week, a district court in a criminal case in California also held that the collection of telephony metadata in bulk under Section 215 is consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

We appreciate that privacy concerns persist about the telephony metadata collection program, even considering the limited data the Government receives, the stringent constraints set by the FISA Court on how it is used, and the aforementioned legal rulings that have consistently upheld its legality. But we hope you will weigh those concerns against the increased risks to national security if this capability were terminated with no equivalent program that addresses what the 9/11 Commission pointed out as a critical gap in the ability of the intelligence community to detect and “connect the dots” for foreign terror plots against our homeland. This program fills a significant gap in our ability to identify terrorist communications and, together with other authorities, can help us identify and disrupt terrorist plots, thus fulfilling the vision of the 9/11 Commission, which implored the Government to undertake mechanisms and collaboration which would prevent the recurrence of another 9/11.

We look forward to answering any questions you might have about these important intelligence collection programs and related issues. We understand that there are a variety of views in the Congress and among the American people about these activities, and we look forward to discussing these issues with this Committee as new legislation concerning these activities is considered. We hope that, with the assistance of this Committee, we can ensure that these programs are on the strongest possible footing, from the perspective of both national security and privacy, so that they will continue to enjoy Congressional support in the future. Thank you.

CFTC CHAIRMAN GENSLER'S STATEMENT BEFORE FINANCIAL STABILITY OVERSIGHT COUNCIL

FROM:  COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION 
Statement of Chairman Gary Gensler before the Financial Stability Oversight Council

December 9, 2013

I want to thank Secretary Lew for his kind words.

Five years ago when President-elect Obama asked me to serve, the economy was in a free fall. Americans were paying for the crisis with their jobs, their pensions and their homes.

Our financial system and our financial regulatory system had failed the American public.

Since then, the dedicated staffs of the Financial Stability Oversight Council’s (FSOC) member agencies have been hard at work to ensure finance better serves the economy.

Finance is but one part of our interconnected economy. The vast majority of opportunity, growth and innovation are outside of finance. In fact, 94 percent of private sector jobs are not in finance.

Finance best serves the economy when markets operate under common-sense rules of the road.

President Roosevelt understood this when he, along with Congress, transformed markets. Their reforms – enhancing transparency, access, and competition in the futures and securities markets and overhauling the nation’s banking laws – established the foundation for the U.S. economic growth engine for decades.

Five years ago President Obama and Congress faced similar challenges in the aftermath of this era’s financial crisis – how to modernize finance’s rules of the road so they work best for the public.

Through Dodd-Frank reforms, many of which now have been implemented by FSOC member agencies, much progress has been made.

First, at the heart of reform is ensuring that the largest financial institutions in our free-market system have the freedom to fail. That was true for my dad’s small family business in Baltimore. Nobody would have bailed him out if he didn’t make payroll each Friday.

That’s why I was pleased last month when Moody’s removed the uplift in credit ratings of the largest bank holding companies that had come from perceived government support. This is a real testament to the work of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Federal Reserve, under the leadership of Chairmen Martin Gruenberg and Ben Bernanke and Governor Daniel Tarullo.

Second, due to the U.S. banking regulators working hand-in-hand with international regulators, tougher capital and liquidity standards are becoming a reality. Further, annual stress tests of large banks determine if capital levels are sufficient.

Third, we now have an agency – with the energetic leadership of Richard Cordray – whose key mission is ensuring consumers are protected from predatory lending practices and get a fair deal on financial products from mortgages to credit cards.

Fourth, thanks to the leadership of Chairs Mary Schapiro and Mary Jo White at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), we now have real transparency into the hedge fund world and are addressing the risks of potential runs on money market funds.

Fifth, the swaps market, which was at the heart of the crisis, has been completely transformed. Bright lights of transparency now are shining on the $380 trillion market. The public can see the price and volume of every transaction, like a modern-day tickertape. Regulated trading platforms are trading a quarter of a trillion dollars in swaps each day. And more than 70 percent of the interest rate swaps market is now in central clearing – lowering risk and bringing access to everyone wishing to compete.

Sixth, each of us has been vigorous cops on the beat going after bad actors in the markets. The CFTC, working with the Department of Justice and the SEC, exposed the pervasive rigging of interest rate benchmarks and changed the entire public debate regarding LIBOR and other benchmarks.

I particularly want to thank the members of this council for the strong public policy statements included in the FSOC annual report calling for international regulators and market participants to find and transition to a replacement for LIBOR.

Lastly, is the benefit of this council. Through the leadership of Secretaries Geithner and Lew, and the collaboration of everyone around this table, we have become a real deliberative body. We have enhanced the lines of communication between the agencies, whether it’s the day to day assessing of risks in our financial system or working through the reform agenda. This week, for example, the Volcker Rule will be finalized based on our collaborative work.

Taken as a whole, the Dodd-Frank common-sense rules of the road have been truly transformative. These reforms are helping finance better serve the rest of the economy.

Once again, I want to thank all of you. It has been a real honor to serve with each of you on this council. It’s also an honor to share my last FSOC meeting with my fellow outgoing council member and seatmate, Ben Bernanke.

SECRETARY OF STATE KERRY'S REMARKS ON WOMEN IN AFGHANISTAN

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT 
Remarks at the Georgetown University Symposium "Advancing Afghan Women"
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Georgetown University
Washington, DC
November 15, 2013

Thank you. Thank you, Hillary. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Hillary, for a very, very generous introduction. And thank you most of all for the remarkable work that you have done. I think you’re over here, Hillary. Here we go. (Laughter.) Get you over there. That’s my job, seat the former First Lady/Secretary. (Laughter.)

What a pleasure to be here, and distinguished members of the diplomatic corps, President DeGioia, thank you for this. Unbelievable, one of my favorite venues in the world. Madam Secretary/Senator/First Lady/everything – (laughter) – and former First Lady Bush, it’s great to be here with you, Laura. To our ambassadors and everybody else, I’m really happy to be here. For all the men studying here at Georgetown who sat in or sit in classrooms where Bill Clinton sat so many years ago, my advice to you is this: Study hard, go to Oxford, become governor of your state – (laughter) – and then maybe you can marry one of the country’s remarkable Secretaries of State. (Laughter and applause.)

I think everybody here knows that nobody has done more to advance the cause of women and the cause of Afghan women, together with Laura Bush, in our foreign policy directly than Secretary Clinton. And she took the helm of the State Department at a particularly challenging time, a critical moment in the history of the war, and she has worked tirelessly to remind all of us that this fight is not just waged on the battlefield. It’s a fight for the lives of Afghanistan’s people and their future, and it is a fight, above all, for universal values and aspirations, and I think we all owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for the work that she has done. Thank you, Hillary, appreciate it. (Applause.)

I want to thank Georgetown’s Institute for Women, Peace, and Security; I want to thank the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council; the George W. Bush Institute; and the Alliance in Support of the Afghan People for co-hosting and coming together to bring this remarkable event together here today. I particularly want to thank all of you. You are a remarkable group of women, absolutely extraordinary, and I was pleased to meet a couple of you in Afghanistan. Thank you for coming here, and I know people will really enjoy hearing the program later.

I want to express my gratitude also to former First Lady Laura Bush, as Hillary did in her comments and her introduction. She really helped lead the effort to advance opportunities for women in Afghanistan. And if you haven’t seen it yet today, she has a terrific op-ed in today’s Washington Post. And Madam First Lady, we thank you very much for your leadership also. (Applause.) And as Hillary did, I want to pay particular tribute and thanks to our nation’s first Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and her successor, Cathy Russell, who has just returned from Afghanistan. This is very special for me to be able to be here today, particularly with these extraordinary women who have lived their lives every single day to make sure that all women can pursue their potential and live free of violence.

And we all know that creating opportunities for women is not just the right thing to do. It’s also a strategic necessity. Societies where women are safe, where women are empowered to exercise their rights and to move their communities forward – these societies are more prosperous and more stable – not occasionally, but always. And nowhere is the pursuit of this vision more important, and in many ways more compelling and immediate and possible than in Afghanistan.

If I had to walk blind into a district in Afghanistan and I could only ask one question to determine how secure it was and how much progress it was making, I would ask, “What proportion of the girls here are able to go to school?” There’s no question in my mind that investing in Afghan women is the surest way to guarantee that Afghanistan will sustain the gains of the last decade and never again become a safe haven for international terrorists. On my many trips to Afghanistan as a senator and as Secretary of State, I have met with an array of Afghan Government officials. I’ve met with businesspeople, development experts, diplomats. I’ve met with our brave troops, as well as our brave -- shared responsibility, participation by the international community, the international troops who are there, our counterparts – all of whom have sacrificed for the promise of a safe and secure and a sovereign Afghanistan.

But I actually come back time and again to my very first trip to Kabul as Secretary of State, when I met a remarkable woman who is changing Afghanistan. Her name is Roya Mahboob. Now, Roya is chief executive of a software development firm called Citadel. And the local authorities did absolutely everything they could in order to stop her dead in her tracks. They even pressured her family to close her company. But she, like a lot of the women sitting here and like so many women across Afghanistan, absolutely refused to be intimidated. And the first time that she competed for an Afghan Government project, guess what? She went up against six businesses led by men and she won. And it’s a good thing she won because Roya has invested almost all of her profits to provide internet access to 35,000 girls in Herat. And believe me, she’s just getting started. Today, she has plans to help five times as many girls across Afghanistan.

Now I’m sure you’ll hear this in the discussion in a little while – it is hard enough to start your own business anywhere else in the world, but to start it in Afghanistan, to balance the books, build a revenue stream, fight against incredible outrage in the local community, is sheer guts and courage and determination. She never backed down. Instead, she’s using her talents and her money in order to connect Afghans of all ages – men and women, boys and girls – to a global community and a global economy where all of us are connected to each other. That’s the world we live in today, and that’s the world that women in Afghanistan want to share in too.

As Roya said to me, she doesn’t want to be the only woman who’s an entrepreneur in Afghanistan. She wants all women to have that opportunity. And she believes nothing should stop any of them. Now, I’m serious when I tell you that I think of Roya and the women like her that I’ve met in Afghanistan. Every time I hear the amazing numbers that illustrate how far this country has come since 2001 and that underscore what Secretary Clinton was saying a few minutes ago about how critical our choices are with respect to the future – in 2001, back then, there were only 900,000 Afghan children in school, and all of them were boys. Today, nearly 8 million students are in school, and more than a third of them are girls. Think about what that means for the future.

In 2001, maternal mortality was 1,600 per 100,000 births; today, it’s down by 80 percent. In 2001, life expectancy for the average Afghan was 42 years; today, it’s 62 years and rising. In 2001, 9 percent of Afghans had access to basic healthcare; today, 60 percent of Afghans live within an hour of basic health services. In 2001, there was only one television station and it was owned by the government; today, there are 75 stations and only two – and all of those but two are privately owned. And in 2001, there were virtually no cellphones in the country; today, there are 18 million covering about 90 percent of residential areas. 80 percent of Afghan women now have access to a cellphone, meaning that they are connected to their families, their friends, and most importantly, they’re connected to the world and to their futures.

Thanks to entrepreneurs like Roya, Afghan women will also now be connected to the internet too. Ten years ago, it just would have been unfathomable to imagine this. But because of so many individual acts of courage, this is the future that we are now watching Afghan women build. And as Secretary Clinton and Laura Bush and Ambassadors Verveer and Russell powerfully remind us, when Afghan women live longer and go to school in greater numbers, all Afghan families and their communities will grow stronger. When Afghan women run their own businesses, all Afghans profit from a more diverse, dynamic, and inclusive economy. And when Afghan women hold public office at the local and national levels, all Afghans gain a stronger voice in their communities.

That is the vision behind the United States National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, which President Obama directed to be implemented two years ago and which Hillary spoke about just a few minutes ago. And that’s why we are committed to bringing the perspectives of women and their full participation to bear on these opportunities and challenges in Afghanistan going forward.

Now what has moved me – and I mean moved me – in my meetings with an impressive group of Afghan women entrepreneurs is that when Afghan women move forward, believe me, they never want to go back. Not to the days when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan. Not to the days before the Taliban when the country was torn apart by violence. And that is why it is so important that we keep investing in and defending the progress that empowers Afghan women, as well as men, to be able to have their voices heard and to buy into their future and shape their future. What has been achieved is nothing less than remarkable, and it would have been more than a tragedy if the world ever allowed this progress to be threatened or, worse yet, to be abandoned.

So the question now is: Where do we go from here? Because as we think about the future, we are mindful of the challenges that Afghan women continue to face. This is a critical moment. Many of the women that I’ve met share very legitimate concerns that the gains of the past decade could be lost. All that I talked about could be wiped out. And the truth is their anxiety that I hear when I visit Afghanistan, or you’ll hear today, it’s palpable. Despite the significant achievements of Afghan women and girls, many challenges still remain. And we remember too well the difficulties, the difficult history that led to the decades of war in Afghanistan. We know the costs of walking away. Believe me, Afghan women know the costs because they have always paid the steepest price.

So I say to you today: As Afghanistan sees women standing up in Afghanistan to take control of their country’s future – not only for themselves, but for all Afghans – we have to be determined that they will not stand alone. America will stand up with them as they shape a strong and united Afghanistan that secures the rightful place in the community of nations. And that is why President Obama and President Karzai signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement last year that lays out our mutual commitments. And that’s why America’s relationship with Afghans is changing; it’s not ending.

There’s a lot to do, so much to do, and obviously the road ahead is not easy. The violence that has plagued Afghanistan for decades has left very deep wounds, and it is going to take time to heal. We also know that security is going to be a real challenge. We know that Afghans have to strengthen the rule of law. They have to improve access to justice. We also know that discrimination and violence against women continue to be major problems.

But I know every one of these women and the women in Afghanistan today will remain determined, and we have an obligation to remain determined and stand by them. We intend to make clear that securing the rights of Afghan women and girls is not just a challenge for this moment; it’s a generational challenge. In fact, we’ve already made a significant down payment, but make no mistake – finishing this job is going to take courage, and not just the courage of women in Afghanistan.

As a proud father of two daughters, I have many times been reinforced in the fact that this job will require the courage of men, too. In Afghanistan, it will take the courage of every man who defends his daughter’s right to an equal education; it will take the courage of every brother who challenges a law that keeps his sister from owning property or opening a business; and every husband who not only promises that the cycle of domestic violence can stop with him, but who actually proves it. We have spent a great blood and treasure in Afghanistan, and that makes even greater our obligation to get this right.

Yes, there are challenges ahead. For sure, the transition is going to be difficult. But without question, there’s a world of possibilities staring us in the face. In fact, the transition that we are talking about and now working on is really about three transitions: a political transition, a security transition, and an economic transition. And no surprise, Afghan women are playing an integral role in all of them.

Just look at the political transition. We all know that the single most important milestone over the next year is the peaceful transfer of power from President Karzai to a democratically elected successor. The elections have to be on time. They have to be accountable and transparent and free and fair and accessible. They have to be inclusive and result in an outcome that is perceived as legitimate by all segments of Afghan society above all, but also by the international community. Above all, though elections obviously always entail competition and debate, they’ve got to be a unifying moment for the country, not a divisive one.

As we speak, as we are here, Afghan women are leading the charge to ensure that the elections next year are credible, inclusive, and transparent. You have – Gulalay Achekzai is one of those women. Gulalay is a teacher by profession, but she’s always had this passion for public service. She used to work as a human rights commissioner in Kandahar. Today, she’s serving on the Independent Election Commission. She told President Karzai she has only one character flaw – that she fears no one. (Laughter.)

Now we are deeply encouraged by the Gulalays and others who are taking part in this, by the hundreds of women from all over the country, who are running for positions on provincial councils. And we are very pleased to lend our support, in partnership with the United Nations, to train female volunteers as they facilitate secure access for women at the polls. There is no question that lasting security and prosperity in a unified Afghanistan will take root only when women have as loud a voice as men – not just on election day, but every day.

The success of the political transition is essential. It’s the prerequisite to the future stability of Afghanistan. But make no mistake – it’s not enough, it’s not sufficient, it won’t do the job alone. That’s why the United States firmly supports and will continue to support an Afghan-led peace and reconciliation effort as the surest way to end the violence and bring lasting stability to Afghanistan and the region.

But peace is only possible if it respects the historic achievements that Afghanistan has made over the past decade, all those things I listed and talked about, including above all the protection of the rights of all Afghans – both men and women. And as part of the outcome of any process, the Taliban and other armed opposition groups have to end the violence, break ties with al-Qaida, accept Afghanistan’s constitution, including its provisions on women’s rights. Those are the standards which will lead us in this effort. There can be no compromise on these points. And there can be no peace without respecting the rights of all Afghans, and Afghan women have to have a seat at the table.

Afghan women are also at the forefront of the second part of the transition – the security transition. This is one of the most stunning things. You saw it in the video. These folks in uniform – unprecedented. They’re joining the army and the police, and they’re serving as judges, prosecutors in some of the most conservative parts of the country. It’s an extraordinary transformation. My team recently met with a female police officer from Kabul. For those of you who have been to Afghanistan, you’ll know there aren’t too many female police officers, and even fewer of them are willing to step forward and tell their story.

But on her way home from work one evening, this particular police officer heard another woman screaming inside a house. And when she heard the cries, she didn’t run away. She didn’t call someone else to come and do the job. She went right up to the house, knocked down the door in order to help. Police officer went inside and she saw a woman inside badly beaten on the ground and her husband was standing over her. Without any hesitation – she was not intimidated, not an ounce of fear – she pushed the husband aside and took the victim to her own house in order to record her statement and make a report. Believe me – believe me – that’s courage.

And it’s an example that all Afghans can be proud of and follow. They can be proud that their security and law enforcement forces are growing stronger by the day, more capable by the day. And of course, they can be proud that this past summer, the Afghan National Security Forces took over the lead responsibility in providing security all across the country.

Now, as you know, we have made a commitment along with our NATO partners to continue to advise, train, and support the Afghan forces beyond 2014, should Afghans approve in the next – within the next two weeks the Bilateral Security Agreement. And make no mistake – bringing women into the force and supporting their safe and meaningful participation is going to be a key part of this transition.

I’m pleased to report to you now that we are closer than ever to completing this task of defining our new partnership with Afghanistan, going well into the future. The Bilateral Security Agreement, when it is completed, will help both countries to fulfill the longstanding commitment that we made to a security partnership after 2014. But I want to underscore again that nothing – neither this agreement when completed, nor the assistance that we provide – will replace the role that the Afghan people themselves will play determining the future of their country.

Afghan women are also taking enormous risk to support Afghanistan’s third transition. That’s the economic transition. And women like Hassina Sayed are leading the charge.

I met Hassina in March. She started a trucking company, I think, about 10 years ago. She started it with $500. Now, she has 500 trucks. Of her 650 employees, 300 are women who not so long ago would absolutely never have had the opportunity they have today. She told me that she always knew she wanted to be a businesswoman when she grew up. And I asked why, and she said simply, “Because then I’ll get to be my own boss.” (Laughter.) Now, obviously, that’s not just an Afghan trait; that’s a universal aspiration. (Laughter.)

But Afghan women like Hassina are forming connections not just within Afghanistan, but all across the region. Actually, her trucking company is doing a great deal of work in “the ’Stans” and outside of Afghanistan in order to bring supplies and things, food and so forth, into the country. And what I found is that all of the Afghans understand they may be landlocked, but they’re not trapped, and they refuse to be trapped.

Afghanistan is linked everywhere by roads, railways, products, markets. And the reality is that Afghanistan’s fortunes are tied to the whole region, just as the future of the region is tied to the stability of Afghanistan. We call this the New Silk Road vision, which Secretary Clinton launched in July of 2011. It’s a vision we believe in, and it’s a vision we’re going to continue to work hard to implement.

Hassina knows that the benefits of investing in women and girls are not limited to one village, one province, or one country alone. They ripple out across the borders. You all remember that great quote of Robert Kennedy’s about rippling and creating a huge current that sweeps down the mightiest walls of oppression. That’s what’s happening. And that’s why investing in the training and mentoring of Afghan women entrepreneurs is so important. That’s why we launched the regional economic women’s initiative in Bishkek and in Dhaka in order to link female entrepreneurs to markets in South and Central Asia. And that strengthens those women to have those connections to those other parts of the region. That’s why we’re investing in the education of Afghan girls, so they can break the cycle of poverty and become community leaders and engaged citizens in ways that inspire and actually strengthen their neighbors’ willingness to join them.

That is the future that, even here in Gaston Hall today, we are all building together. And that’s the story that I want to leave you with today. As I was flying back from Kabul in March, my staff handed me a letter from a young Afghan girl who had earned a scholarship from the State Department to study at the American University of Afghanistan. And this young girl has exactly the same courage as women like Roya, Hassina, Gulalaya, who are marching forward to define this new future for Afghanistan. She has the same vision as leaders like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Laura Bush, who know that no country can succeed if it leaves half of its people behind. The phrase that Hillary and I both loved as we heard it about the bird with two wings can’t fly with one wing.

One line in that girl’s letter stood out to me. She wrote about the importance of education and how her goal is not just to help herself, but to lift her community, her society, and her country, just like Roya, Gulalay, and Hassina are doing today. You know what she wrote, very simply? She said, “I want to be one of them.” That’s the power of example. That’s the ripple fanning out to create the current. Think about that for a minute. She feels ownership over the future that she is creating in Afghanistan, and that’s not something that her sisters or her mother could say even a decade ago. But girls all over Afghanistan – believe me, I promise you – they are saying it today and they are living that dream thanks to the courage and the leadership of women themselves in Afghanistan.

Our responsibility is clear. We need to make sure that they succeed. Because this is one of those benchmark moments – not just for them, but for all of us – in what we care about, what we fight for, and who we are. As we move forward, just keep thinking about that young girl who wrote that letter and the inspiration that she draws from women like Roya, Gulalay, and Hassina. She just wants to be one of them. And making that happen is going to take every single one of us. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Now we get to the really exciting part of the program. I want to invite Secretary Clinton, Mrs. Bush, Anita Haidary, and her extraordinary colleagues to all come up on stage so we have an opportunity to listen to Anita for a moment, and then I think we’re going to go out and they’re going to set up the chairs and the program will continue. Can I invite all of you up here, please? (Applause.)