Jim Patterson and Alex's Story Bay Area 2015

In 2015, Jim Patterson helped open a two day conference on the 25th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.
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Jim holds Alex's photograph.

Photo Courtesy UC Hastings

Alex Baker Patterson was born in 1989 at Georgetown University Hospital. She required immediate cardiac surgery and lived to be 17. She was awaiting a heart transplant.

The case, called family tree discrimination by the Wall Street Journal, was the first of its kind in the federal government. It was a case of associational discrimination based on disability. It was my parental association with Alex that led the US State Department to violate the ADA in 1993 when it attempted to remove me from the diplomatic corps due to the "insurance burden" they said Alex represented. When I told Justin W. Dart Jr. of this, he replied: "The goddamn bastards!" My tribute to Justin is published elsewhere.

Patterson updated Alex's story with Deanna Fei's experience, "Girl in Glass," at AOL in 2011 and the politician in Cornwall England who told citizens disabled kids, like disabled animals, should be "put down." In both cases, "distressed babies" were insurance burdens. A global problem and the remnant "mainstreaming" of  Eastern European institutionalization of disabled kids and adults.

The State Department experience, documented in several newspapers and magazines of the 1990s and in many interviews since, sent a horrible message to the nation that disabled children and their parents were without value. It also sent the message that if State diplomats would take such extreme actions against one of their own, counter to prevailing law, US diplomats might be expected to mistreat disabled people and children in other countries.  It further cast doubt on the compassion, sincerity and honesty, diplomats state they have in negotiating with counterparts abroad and in fairly implementing US programs to diverse international communities.

The ADA contained a provision that barred such discrimination. I knew this because I worked with disability leaders in the years before passage of the ADA. The provision was needed to protect family members with AIDS, it was a case of AIDS activism in the ADA, which "Uncle Jesse" Helms opposed, that protected working parents with disabled family members. In July 1994, Helms, in a long Senate speech broadcast over C-SPAN, attempted to have me fired for "promoting the gay agenda" in the federal workplace. To say those were trying times is to state it mildly.

The ADA became fully applicable to federal employees in late October 1993. The Neal Pike Institute said the government decision finding associational discrimination, in 1995, was consistent with the Federal  Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the direction to disability law.

Patterson's presentation included remembrances of Dart, Even Kemp Jr., Paul Hearn, Alan Reich, Yvonne Duffy (Detroit Free Press), Harold Russell, Helen Keller, George H,. W. Bush, and colleagues and childhood friends with disabilities. And many Miss Wheelchair Americas.

He also quoted some of his supporters including US Senator Charles Grassley, IA-R, Mary Johnson, editor of The Disability Rag, Bill Stothers of Mainstream magazine, Betty Garee of Special Living Magazine in Illinois, and many others.

Late in 2015 while attending a conference in Los Angeles, Jim knelt at Harold Russell's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a photo in memory of the 2-time Oscar winner. Patterson also posed at the star for the late Billy Barty, a giant of a man. Patterson met Barty at a Little People's Convention in Indianapolis. They were both were kind to me and shared invaluable personal and professional
insights.

Russell told me men were "uncomfortable" shaking hands with him. (He lost both forearms in WWII.) "I am not that kind of man," I told him, as I proudly shook his hand after a meeting in Washington.

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Jim Patterson Comment on Obama's Late Stage Iran Deal

A comment on the "historic" Iranian deal. Democrats support the deal despite Iran's continued support of terrorists in Syria and Hezbollah, etc. and aggression in other states like Saudi Arabia. Obama got no concessions Iran would cease any of this activity. Further, Obama got no concessions Iran would cease its internal and well documented human rights abuses.

A majority of Democrats oppose President Obama on the Trans Pacific Partnership with Asian nations due to the "likelihood" that US businesses will violate he human rights of workers in these Asian nations and violate the human rights, read union rights, of traditional US supporters of Democratic politicians, unions, Hollywood celebrities, academics who either do not believe in free trade or who seek lucrative government contracts to conduct research to prove the TPP would enrich US corporations at he expense of US and Asian human rights, read union rights.

This observation is based on meetings and rallies I attended in San Francisco and university  communities where the academics, already overpaid by taxpayers in their states, seek additional money, from unions, to prove TPP would economically damage unions.

There are advantages to eliminating Iran's nuclear ambitions and effectively verifying it. This is done through strong diplomacy, strong oversight of negotiated agreements, and real economic and political consequences if the agreement is violated.

The timing of the nuclear agreement with Iran is also suspect coming in the final days of the Obama administration. It fits Mr. Obama's "peace" brand for his presidency and after-presidency speaking fees,  political agenda, and other ambitions.

Jim Patterson
January 19, 2016.

Jim Patterson: No Such Thing as Security.

Edward Snowden rightfully warned us there was no such thing as an expectation of privacy anymore. Based on my experience, there is no such thing as security. Government spends billions on security systems and hostile sources, ranging from foreign governments to junior college types, find a way to defeat all security systems. President Obama cannot send secure emails to SecState Kerry or SecDef Carter. Congress does not understand the threat and citizens do not comprehend the costs to them for national, corporate, or personal security. Read on. 

Cybersecurity

Pentagon warns contractors of Juniper vulnerabilities

• By Sean Lyngaas
• Jan 06, 2016

The Pentagon has spelled out for defense contractors the ways in which they are susceptible to a backdoor in Juniper Networks products – vulnerabilities that reportedly have federal investigators worried about foreign espionage.
In a Dec. 22 notice to industry obtained by FCW, the Defense Security Service, the agency in charge of interfacing with cleared contractors, warns that one of the recently disclosed vulnerabilities in the networking giant's products could allow remote administrative access to a device over secure shell or telnet protocols, "which could result in a complete compromise of the affected system."
Juniper, whose firewalls are used extensively in both the public and private sectors, announced last month that it had discovered unauthorized code in its operating software that could allow a "knowledgeable attacker" to pierce its firewall and decrypt virtual private network connections.
The Department of Defense is among Juniper Networks' big federal customers; dozens of Juniper products are on the Defense Information Systems Agency's Unified Capabilities Approved Product List.
According to Juniper, the decryption of VPN connections can happen "without any means to detect if the vulnerability was exploited," the DSS "cyber alert" states.
The DSS notice passes on advice from an intelligence report that strongly "advises users to patch vulnerable versions as soon as possible beginning with Internet-facing firewalls." The publication Motherboard was first to report on the unclassified memo.
Juniper's disclosure set off a storm of speculation about who could be exploiting the backdoor. Federal investigators are concerned that foreign spies used the backdoor to access the encrypted communications of the U.S. government and private firms for the last three years, according to a CNN report.
Brendan Conlon, who worked computer network operations at the National Security Agency for a decade, described the Juniper backdoor as "quite an impressive operation" and probably the handiwork of a foreign intelligence organization.
"I'm sure there are some in the [U.S. government] that have a healthy respect for its execution" Conlon, who is now CEO of network security firm Vahna, told FCW in an email. "Break into one of the largest provider of firewalls in the world and insert a backdoor into their core intellectual property? While costly, it is impressive."
Other theories of the development of the vulnerability have been propounded. Johns Hopkins University computer scientist and cryptography expert Matthew Green suggests that the Juniper flaw potentially constitutes blowback from the deliberate weakening of a widely used cryptographic standard by the NSA. Green noted on his blog that the affected Juniper hardware utilized a random number generator that was potentially compromised by the NSA.
"To sum up, some hacker or group of hackers noticed an existing backdoor in the Juniper software, which may have been intentional or unintentional…then piggybacked on top of it to build a backdoor of their own," Green wrote.
No confirmed exploitations of the vulnerabilities have been reported yet, according to the DSS memo, which provides two security signatures to detect unauthorized access to Juniper products.
The Department of Homeland Security hub for sharing cyber intelligence "is aware of the report regarding Juniper's software," DHS spokesman S.Y. Lee said in a recent statement. "As we routinely do when such vulnerabilities are brought to light, we are assessing the potential impact, if any, on federal networks, and will take any appropriate mitigation measures in close coordination with interagency partners."
A Juniper spokesperson said the firm had no update on the investigation.
The DSS memo concludes by citing advice from the intelligence community that "highly recommends" contractors install the latest version of Juniper's operating systems "due to the severity of these vulnerabilities."

About the Author

Sean Lyngaas is an FCW staff writer covering defense, cybersecurity and intelligence issues. Follow him on Twitter: @snlyngaas.