Government Executive - Authors - David Yanofsky

An Inside Look At How Trump’s Infamous Jobs Day Tweet Roiled Some Government Economists

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Fri, 03 Aug 2018 10:32:50 -0400

On the morning of June 1, Donald Trump tweeted about national employment figures an hour before their release, and a number of staffers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) weren’t pleased. The subject lines of their internal emails to each other capture their surprise and concern: “Interesting,” “Holy moley,” “ummm….,” “Breach by POTUS.” (“POTUS” is a common shorthand for “president of the United States.”)

Looking forward to seeing the employment numbers at 8:30 this morning.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 1, 2018

Many people inside and outside of the U.S. government saw that presidential tweet as a breach in protocol. A long-standing rule (pdf) says officials in the executive branch with access to official statistics must wait an hour after publication before publicly commenting on the data. The chair of the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) typically receives the jobs data the day before a scheduled release, and briefs the president and a select group of officials about the market-moving numbers.

Most market watchers interpreted Trump’s “looking forward” comment as a not-so-subtle hint that the numbers were going to be good. And, indeed, the data beat analysts’ expectations and markets moved higher that day.

Emails from BLS workers after Trump’s June tweet—roughly 200 of which were reviewed by Quartz—suggest the possibility of government investigations, reference apologetic White House staffers, and express frustration and concern about the impact on confidence in public markets. The emails show in stark, uncensored terms how the president’s norm-breaking behavior upends the day-to-day operations of civil servants.

“I’m guessing there won’t be any repercussions for him,” one BLS staff member wrote. “Consequences are for the little people, not bigshots with little hands,” said an economist.

“What an ass,” one staffer wrote, when sharing a Washington Post article about the tweet with a colleague.

“I don’t know why anyone tells Trump anything,” said another in a different email thread.

The emails were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that Quartz filed with the US Department of Labor. Similar emails were previously reported on by Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed News.

“RE: So now what?”

Many of the BLS emails collected by Quartz were sent by low-level civil servants, and resemble the types of messages routinely exchanged between coworkers in the private sector when management takes unpopular actions. Sent to or from a few dozen staffers, they represent only a tiny fraction of the communication among BLS’s more than 2,000 employees.

Still, those who wrote critically of the administration could face repercussions for their messages. The White House has already targeted employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, FBI, and State Department who expressed disapproval of the administration in emails and texts. While the emails are part of the public record, because the BLS senders have little power over agency operations or government at large, Quartz is not publishing their names here.

According to a spokesperson from the Office of Inspector General, the Department of Labor’s internal watchdog is currently reviewing the BLS’s policies and procedures relating to the release of economic data. “This review does not and would not involve the president,” he said in an emailed statement. “It is solely focused on BLS processes.”

William Wiatrowski, the BLS’s acting commissioner, wrote to a group of Department of Labor colleagues six hours after Trump sent the tweet, saying that employees at the CEA—members of the Trump White House staff—apologized to him for the lapse, and that those staffers were discussing ways to avoid similar situations in the future. “For example,” Wiatrowski wrote in one of the emails obtained by Quartz, they might send a “reminder of [the quiet-period] rule with each briefing.”

Wiatrowski said he spoke with Nancy Potok, the US’s chief statistician, and that Potok was going to talk “to her bosses and CEA to emphasize rules.” He noted that he had received a request from the Department of Labor’s Inspector General “regarding our procedures.”

An email sent by William Wiatrowski

Neither Wiatrowski nor his agency’s press office responded to requests for comment.

Internal strife

Frustration with the president was evident in emails between the agency’s rank-and-file workers.

Some noted that Trump seemed to be tacitly acknowledging the trustworthiness of BLS figures—in contrast to his previous statements that the figures were fake. “At least the numbers aren’t fake anymore,” one wrote.

One employee looked for a way to use the incident as a teaching moment. “There’s probably some way in which this incident could be incorporated into our annual confidentiality training” wrote a state-employed economist who contributes to a BLS program.

In the emails reviewed by Quartz, one supervisory economist was indifferent, saying, “Surprisingly, this did not impact our day at all.”

Another seemed indignant about the uproar. “Blah, blah, blah,” he wrote. “Kinda reminds me of the late 90s when the Clinton administration released the actual employment numbers Thursday evening right before the official Friday release date. People on the left need to get over it: Trump won the election and he’s the president.” A search of news articles published in the US during the Clinton administration found no mentions of the press taking notice of an early release. The economist did not respond to Quartz’s request to clarify.

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Judge Rules Commerce Cannot Charge Exorbitant Fees to Access Immigration Data

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Tue, 03 Apr 2018 09:34:19 -0400

Above the forwarded email I sent to my editor in March 2015 were the following remarks: “FYI, FOIAing two databases because they charge $13,000 a piece per year to access them.” Three years later, a federal district court judge says I’m entitled to that data—the only near-comprehensive records of people coming to the United States—for the same fees afforded any other Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Between these two moments, the government missed administrative and court deadlines, and even changed its reason for denying my request. We’ve learned that there are few, if any, buyers of the data I’m seeking, yet staffers of the office who maintain the data say it generates revenue essential to their operation, and that governments officials couldn’t understand why a media company would want it. In that time, three more years of data have also been released, with the most recent year’s priced at $16,770.

The databases I seek are maintained by the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration (ITA). They don’t just tally U.S. visitors by their origin, but also by age, residency, port of entry, visa type, and initial destination.

In a new ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia filed on March 30, judge Ketanji Brown Jackson agreed with my lawyers from the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Commerce had no legal basis to charge me exorbitant fees to access government data. My lawyers are representing me in this case pro bono.

Commerce argued that the Mutual Educational and Cultural Exchange Act of 1961 and the Appropriations Act of 2016 taken together constitute a statute that can preempt the FOIA. At its core, Jackson says, the laws that Commerce points to “cannot plausibly be read” to contain the two requirements needed to supersede FOIA rules on charging for government records. They do not contain language about setting fees or mention the specific data I requested.

The case is not without a silver lining for the agency and the government. In a more technical part of the decision, Jackson ruled that what I and my lawyers characterized as an unallowable change of reasoning by the government between the administrative and judicial stages is—in fact—allowable.

“There is a world of difference between providing new reasons for the agency’s decision at the district court stage and merely refining the same legal arguments that the parties advanced,” she wrote, noting that the latter is what happened here: Commerce was keeping the same argument, just citing a different legal basis for it.

The judge has sent my request back to the agency to reevaluate the fees that I should be charged for my request. The data which I was, in essence, told would cost $174,000, will likely cost me less than $30—possibly even nothing at all.

Of course, the government could appeal the decision—or worse, find new ways to resist my unfettered access to the data.

In a reply to that 2015 email about my initial request, my editor wrote: “Cool. Here’s hoping you don’t get a pile of PDFs…”

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Laptops and Tablets Have Been Banned from Being Used on 56 Routes to the U.S.

David Yanofsky and Leslie Josephs, Quartz — Tue, 21 Mar 2017 10:08:49 -0400

The United States will prohibit passengers traveling on several routes to the US from the Middle East and North Africa from bringing electronics larger than a smartphone on board with them.

The Department of Homeland Security will publicly announce the rule as early as today (March 21), according to senior administration officials who briefed journalists ahead of its roll out. Those officials said the measure is necessary because of the threat of terror attacks on commercial air travel, including through the use of explosives smuggled in consumer products.

“We have reason to be concerned about attempts by terrorist groups to circumvent aviation security and terrorist groups continue to target aviation interests,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a release.

Which flights does it cover?

The ban applies to flights to the US from the airports for Cairo, Kuwait City, Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi, Casablanca, Jeddah, Amman, Riyadh and Istanbul. It affects the following airlines: Royal Jordanian, Egypt Air, Turkish Airlines, Saudia, Kuwait Airways, Emirates, Etihad Airways, and Royal Air Maroc. Some passengers may not realize their flights are affected since they could be ticketed on a codeshare with these carriers.

There are 19,619 flights that are scheduled on the routes covered by the ban, with the capacity to carry up to 6.75 million passengers over the next 12 months according to OAG schedule data compiled by PlaneStats.com. That amounts to 2.25% of all international arrivals and 4.45% of all inbound-US capacity.

What devices does it prohibit?

US-bound passengers will be required to pack their larger electronics, such as laptop computers, tablets, and digital cameras, into their checked luggage, while they can still bring smartphones and cell phones on board with them. Medical devices are exempt from the ban.

When does it go into effect?

Airlines will have 96 hours to comply with the measure, and the clock has already started ticking. A directive was sent out to the airlines today (March 21) at 3am ET. It has no expiration date. The ban was first brought to light by a tweet from Royal Jordanian that informed passengers about the new restriction.

The new rule is the latest travel restriction Donald Trump’s administration has handed the airline industry. The first travel ban announced in January left airlines scrambling to comply.

Who will enforce the ban?

Airlines and local security agents will be responsible for enforcing the ban. There are no specific criteria for which devices are prohibited, which could lead to confusion over devices that are phone-like. It is up to an airline employee to determine whether a big phone constitutes a tablet or a small tablet constitutes a phone. The restrictions do not apply to crew members.

Why these devices?

Officials also declined to say why they suspect individuals may use devices such as laptops and tablets for an attack, but they cited recent terror attacks on the airports of Istanbul and Brussels, though those did not involve passengers with devices on board. The ban also did not address the threat to unprotected areas of an airport, such as baggage claim or departure halls that the general public can access.

Is this really about security?

A senior administration official flatly denied that the edict was in any way an end run at making devices likes laptops more accessible to customs agents for scanning, copying, or searching upon arrival into the United States or a punitive measure against Gulf carriers that US airlines say are unfairly subsidized by their home governments. The measure applies to carriers that have direct flights between those airports and the United States, and thus captures Qatar, Etihad, and Emirates—three airlines that catch the ire of their US counterparts. (The only destination in the Middle East served by US carriers is Tel Aviv, Israel; if you’re flying commercially between the US and an Arab nation, it’s not on an American airline.)

Passengers originating at one of the listed airports but transiting another airport before traveling to the US will not face the restriction. Administration officials said that the security threat did not warrant such a measure (but nonetheless it likely would not have the authority to unilaterally implement one) and that there are other “seen and unseen measures” in place that mitigate those risks.

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Trump’s Immigration Order Doesn’t Affect Citizenship Applications

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Wed, 01 Feb 2017 09:44:13 -0500

Citizenship and Immigration Services has confirmed to Quartz that president Donald Trump’s 90-day suspension on providing “immigration benefits” to nationals of Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen as part of his executive order on immigration does not preclude those nationals from gaining citizenship through naturalization.

“USCIS will continue to adjudicate N-400 applications for naturalization and administer the oath of citizenship consistent with prior practices,” a spokesman for the agency wrote in an email to Quartz referencing the form used to apply for U.S. citizenship.

The order, which also prevents nationals of those countries from entering the U.S., puts no restrictions on travel by U.S. citizens irrespective of an additional citizenship. Thus gaining U.S. citizenship would be a way to avoid these new impediments to travel, while also gaining complete protection against deportation.

An initial interpretation of the order barred green-card holders—U.S. non-citizen long-term permanent residents—of those countries from entering the US as well, but was later changed to remove that restriction. Typically U.S. residents must be green-card holders to become citizens.

While there could always be future changes in law or policy that affect the ability of green-card holders to become citizens, the present order is not one of them.

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The Transportation Department's Fix For Airlines’ Tech Problems is to Do Nothing

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Fri, 19 Aug 2016 10:42:21 -0400

From the US to UK to India and elsewhere, technical failures have been plaguing the commercial aviation industry in recent years. We’ve counted 24 major disruptions in the US since 2015. Yet, the US Department of Transportation has no plans to try to regulate the industry into technical resiliency.

A spokesperson for the DOT told Quartz that the agency is of the opinion that the high cost of glitches is the only needed deterrent to prevent future outages. “Airlines are already highly motivated to avoid situations like Delta is experiencing” the agency said in a emailed statement to Quartz, referring to Delta’s problems stemming from a technical outage on Aug. 8. According to the DOT, the combined incentives to avoid losing revenue, keep performance metrics high and have happy customers are “likely a more effective incentive than detailed regulations concerning the carriers’ IT systems.”

Nationwide, technical failures have struck all of the largest US airlines at least once in the last two years.

Other than systems that are directly related to aviation safety the department “does not inspect or regulate airlines’ IT systems,” according to the DOT’s statement.

Nonetheless, the issues have attracted the attention of members of the US Congress. Two Senators, Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), have sent letters to US airlines requesting information about what the carriers are doing to prevent future outages and how it deals with them when they do. The letter says that the glitches “can harm our economy, which relies on a safe and efficient aviation industry to stay competitive.”

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The Government is Finding Few Buyers For Its Paywalled Immigration Data

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Mon, 08 Aug 2016 10:00:12 -0400

The US government says it doesn’t want to release data about who’s entering the country because it charges for that information. But no one has purchased access to the databases in more than two years, records reveal.

I’m suing for the data in question, which include anonymous immigration records and statistics about international air travelers. The databases would add a lot of information to the debate over US immigration policy at a time when it’s being hotly debated. For instance, how many people from Muslim-majority countries actually enter the country each year? Where are they going? What visas are they using? How old are they? These data would tell us.

In denying my request for free access, the government offered to sell me five year’s worth of data, instead, for $173,775. That would have been nearly as much money as the government appears to have made selling the data over more than a decade, according to records maintained by the commerce department’s International Trade Administration (ITA).

To get a sense of how much revenue these data generate, I made two public records requests. The ITA ended up giving me seven invoices (pdf) totaling $221,315 that were processed by the ITA since 2003. It’s impossible to tell if those invoices cover all purchases of the data or only some of them. It also indicated that it has no completed order forms (pdf) for the data on file. The ITA declined to comment or provide more information, citing my lawsuit.

Inside the agency, officials expressed concern that giving me the data would disrupt their revenue stream. “If this data is provided for free, we would have to terminate it as we do not receive sufficient funds from ITA to administer each of the programs we manage and provide to the government and industry,” Ron Erdmann, the director of research in the office that manages the data, wrote in an email on May 6, 2016 to his ITA colleagues.

In a later email, he indicated that his office collects $500,000, presumably per year, through the sale of data and reports associated with the data that I seek. The ITA offers for sale not just the full data files that my lawsuit centers around, but also monthly, quarterly, and custom designed reports derived from that base data. Those reports are less expensive than the full data files.

You can read more of the emails, which were part of my records request, here.

The demographic information of the people entering and leaving the US could be of great value to businesses looking to market and attract to tourists. It could let a sightseeing operator know when the highest number of older tourists visit, a hotel know when the most people on temporary business visas are in the country, or a museum know when translators of certain languages are most needed.

The names and address of the billable parties were redacted on the invoices, so it is unclear who is paying and how many different people are using this data. After taking into account similar repeating requests and segregating overlapping requests, the invoices seem to indicate that there have only been four paying customers of this data since 2003. With seven invoices, there could have been at most seven different purchasers represented by these invoices.

All the invoices on record

Regardless of the exact amount, the revenue generated by these data pales in comparison to the ITA’s total budget, which was $483 million for 2016, with $56.3 million going towards the statistical and analytical offices.

To be sure, Erdmann’s email indicates that the ITA may have been more concerned about protecting the revenue created by the reports derived from this data. “They too could create their own information and sell to the industry,” he wrote to colleagues. The released invoices and the response letter did not contain information about these reports.

In a conspicuously timed twist, the US Department of Commerce, which oversees the ITA, published a notice in the Federal Register on June 20, 2016, that enumerated the fees for the data I seek and included a legal basis for charging for them. It was the first such notice ever published by the ITA.

The timing is conspicuous because, two days later, the governmentasked for more time to respond to my lawsuit after it said it had discovered that the rationale used to deny my request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was used “in error.” The initial rationale for denying my access to the data cited would have benefitted from this fee schedule being on the books at that time. Documents covered by statutes “specifically providing for setting the level of fees” are exempt from release under FOIA.

When the government finally filed its complete response with the court, it used the same justification for withholding the records as used in the Federal Register to justify the fees.

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The DHS Proposal to Shorten Security Lines Asks Airlines to Give Up Over $1 Billion

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Thu, 19 May 2016 15:54:36 -0400

The Department of Homeland Security has asked airlines to waive checked baggage fees as a temporary solution to alleviate long lines at airport security checkpoints. That’s a billion dollar ask.

US airlines collected $3.8 billion in bag fees in 2015, according to the Department of Transportation, with over a $1 billion of that in the third quarter, the summer travel season. With passenger volume at all time highs, this summer is likely to result again in a billion-dollar-baggage-fee quarter.

The cost to the Transportation Security Administration to add additional screeners to checkpoints is around $44,000 per screener, extrapolating from the recent announcement that 768 new screeners would cost $34 million. The TSA has 4,622 fewer screeners now than it did in 2013. So adding screeners to get back to the 2013 staffing levels would cost around $200 million.

TSA believes one reason security lines are jammed is people aren’t checking bags, and bringing them on board instead. But encouraging people to check bags by eliminating baggage fees may just shift the wait time from TSA lines to the airline check-in counters.

Some airlines are more dependent on bag fees than others. Carriers like Frontier and Spirit who primarily sell “basic” fares offering little more than a seat on the plane, charge for every next incremental service, including carry-on bags.

The airlines have no intention on acquiescing. However, if they did those fees wouldn’t be entirely eliminated because they would still charge for over-sized, heavy, and odd-shaped items. Southwest Airlines, a carrier that proudly advertises that “bags fly free” collected $43 million in bag fees in 2015.

(Top image via Flickr user Melissa Gutierrez)

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The TSA's Airport Security Line Problem, In a Single Chart

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Wed, 18 May 2016 10:10:37 -0400

The limits of America’s aviation security apparatus are quickly being exposed as the country’s peak travel season begins. Lines at Transportation Safety Administration checkpoints have been reported to take hours, while in prior years it took mere minutes to pass through security.

The reasons for the seemingly endless lines in US airports are varied:

The number of passenger and baggage screeners has been cut year after year, while air travel has grown
To avoid paying fees, more travelers are bringing hand luggage through checkpoints instead of checking bags
Following the terror attacks in Paris and Brussels, checkpoint employees have been instructed to be more thorough in security examinations

Earlier this month, Congress approved the TSA’s proposal to hire 768 additional screeners and pay more overtime to existing workers. However, those hires will not make up for the cuts to budgeted staffing from last year.

The American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA employees, has proposed that the agency hire 6,000 additional screeners, which would to bring staffing back to 2011 levels.

In the meantime, Jeh Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security, said last week that travelers need to come to the airport with “appropriate expectations” for screening.

(Image via Flickr user Quinn Dombrowski)

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Trump May Be the Military’s Least-Liked GOP Presidential Candidate in a Long Time

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Wed, 11 May 2016 10:20:22 -0400

Active-duty career military personnel would vastly prefer Donald Trump as president over Hillary Clinton. To even a casual observer of US politics that should be unsurprising; the military has for years preferred candidates from the political right.

A new survey conducted by Military Times find that 54% would vote for Trump, the likely Republican nominee, as against 25% for Clinton, the all-but-presumptive Democratic one, in a head-to-head matchup. However, though large, that’s a much smaller margin than the military has shown in the past for the Republican candidate.

In the last three presidential elections the Republican candidate has garnered at least 66% support in Military Times surveys. In October 2004, the month before his re-election, George W. Bush was the choice of 72% of career military service members. (This was 18 months after the US invaded Iraq.)

Military Times cautioned Quartz that each year’s survey has different methodologies and phrasing of questions, making them not directly comparable. For instance, in 2012, when the choice was between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, the survey also included the options “decline to answer” and “other.” The most recent survey gave only “would not vote” as an alternative to the candidates.

Morever, the surveys from previous years were all conducted in October, a month before the election; this year’s was conducted in May, six months ahead, and before running mates have been chosen. The survey was also conducted before Ted Cruz suspended his campaign, so it included questions about a match-up between him and Clinton.

Finally, Military Times notes that this is not a scientific poll but a survey of its readership, which the publication says is biased towards officers and noncommissioned officers and against junior enlisted personnel. It says it “is representative of the more senior and career-oriented members of the force who run the military’s day-to-day operations and carry out its policies.”

Be that as it may, and although Republican support has diminished slightly in each consecutive presidential election-year survey, the 12-percentage-point drop in Trump’s support is striking. However, those voters aren’t going to be supporting Hillary Clinton either. Her support is one percentage point lower than Barack Obama’s was in 2012.

(Top image via Flickr user ed ouimette)

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TSA Airport Security Lines Are Getting Longer, Causing Passengers to Miss Flights

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 10:07:15 -0400

The peak summer travel season in the US is months away, but the lines at airport security already are getting unbearable.

The Chicago Tribune reports that 1,000 American Airlines passengers missed flights at O’Hare International Airport in March because of long security lines:

Since it started monitoring TSA wait times in late February, American Airlines has seen typical waits of 30 minutes to 60 minutes — with a high of 90 minutes. Mornings tend to be worst, but long waits are seen throughout the day.

“TSA is our No. 1 problem right now, and it’s only going to get worse,” an American Airlines spokeswoman told the Tribune.

United Airlines has concerns, too. Spokesman Charles Hobart tells Quartz that the carrier has been working with the TSA to address “longer than normal wait times at some security checkpoints.”

The TSA has reduced its screening staff in recent years, from 47,630 workers in 2011 to an estimated 41,928 in 2016, according to US Department of Homeland Security budget documents. Meanwhile, an alternative screening option offered to passengers, known as TSA Precheck, has not been as popular as planned. The program costs $85 to enroll and gives approved passengers an expedited screening process.

The TSA, for its part, says “the number one problem” right now for any airline is the threat of global terrorism. The agency says it has a “robust plan” to deal with the increasing level of travel “including more canine use, encouraging pre-check enrollment, overtime, accelerated hiring and more.”

If it’s only April and the airlines already are worried about the lines at security, it’s a bad omen for what’s to come. As I pointed out in November, US airports are at their busiest during the summer months, which means the busiest travel days of 2016 are still ahead of us.

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Relax, Your Driver’s License Will Still Be Accepted at Airport Security

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Mon, 28 Dec 2015 10:58:37 -0500

On Dec. 22, the Department of Homeland Security alerted state officials in Illinois and Missouri that their exemptions to a federal identification standard will end. In practice, this means that driver’s licenses from those states wont be valid to pass through security at various federally operated or regulated facilities—such as nuclear power plants, federal buildings, and courthouses—beginning on Jan. 10, 2016.

Does that mean that holders of those documents can’t use them to proceed through airport security checks? Absolutely not.

While, the Department of Homeland Security is supposed to eventuallyrequire that the TSA agents manning airport checkpoints only accept IDs that meet the federal standard, known as Real ID, the date of implementing that requirement is yet to be determined.

DHS says on its website that it “will ensure the public has ample advanced notice” before changing the requirements for airport security identification requirements.

Regardless, you don’t actually need a driver’s license or any identification to fly domestically in the US. The TSA has procedures in place to accommodate people who don’t have proper ID, and doesn’t require it from anyone younger than 18.

Readers of the travel blog The Points Guy have highlighted all sorts of alternative documents they have used to transit a TSA checkpoint in lieu of an ID. Gizmodo has detailed the process in full. Of course, having approved identification makes airport security significantly faster and more convenient.

The number of Americans who have driver’s licenses from states that are not compliant with Real ID rules is huge. Only 22 states and Washington DC are certified compliant with the Real ID requirements according to the Department of Homeland Security website.

Currently 27 states have Real ID exemptions, and Minnesota is considered noncompliant. Those 28 states had 134.4 million drivers in 2013 accounting for 63% of all US drivers according to the US Department of Transportation’s most recently published figures.

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The FBI and Secret Service are Investigating Reports That The CIA Director's Email Was Hacked

David Yanofsky and Hanna Kozlowska, Quartz — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 10:25:27 -0400

The FBI and the Secret Service are investigating a report that a hacker broke into the personal email accounts of CIA director John Brennan and secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, CNN reports.

The alleged hacker—a teenager interviewed by The New York Post over the weekend—tweeted on Monday, Oct. 19 an image of a spreadsheet containing what appears to be personal information about Brennan, Johnson, and other government officials, including their Social Security numbers.

Social Security numbers issued before 2011 can be decoded to reveal the date and location of issuance. The number attributed by the hacker to Brennan (which Quartz is not publishing) fits the pattern of an identification code issued in New Jersey in 1966. Brennan was born in 1955 in New Jersey, but because social security numbers are not automatically issued at birth, that does not disqualify the purported hack.

The hacker told the Post that he accessed Brennan’s AOL account and stole documents that were attached to some 40 emails. He also said he broke into Johnson’s Comcast account, and even listened to some of his voicemails.

The user has now been suspended by Twitter.

The FBI would not comment in response to questions from Quartz. The Secret Service was not immediately available to comment.

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Don’t Hate Mondays — They’re the Best Day to Apply For a Job

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 14:00:00 -0400

The next time you find yourself with “ a case of the Mondays ” act fast and apply for a job—it’s the best odds you’ll get all week. In the US at least, 30% of Monday job applicants make it to the next stage in the hiring process, according to Bright.com. The least successful application day is Saturday—when only 14% of applicants advance.

Bright.com aggregates job listings and analyzes resumes to automate job recruitment. It analyzed more than 500,000 job applications and more than 15 million views of job postings on the site by US job seekers since January 2012. It measured an application’s initial “success” by whether it advanced in the hiring firm’s internal process (e.g., by having an interview scheduled).

It found that job applications are highest on Tuesday—when only 20% of applicants succeed—and lowest on Saturday. Job seekers browse job listings on a mostly even basis throughout the work week, then peruse fewer on the weekends.

Bright.com’s listings cover a representative sample of 70% to 80% of jobs in the US, according to Jacob Bollinger, a senior data scientist at the company, though it doesn’t have postings for jobs that don’t require resumes, like those in construction, food service, and agriculture.

The median income for a job listed on Bright is $58,000. In 2012 the national median income was $51,017 according to the US Census Bureau.

Why Monday applicants do better isn’t clear, but it could be that the kind of person who applies for jobs on a Monday is intrinsically more hirable. But Bollinger says getting your application early gives a hiring manager time to discuss it with colleagues and arrange meetings in the same week. Applications that come in later may have a higher chance of falling between the cracks or getting pushed aside.

( Image via nanD_Phanuwat / Shutterstock.com )

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NASA’s First Image of The Whole Earth Since 1972 is Breathtaking

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Tue, 21 Jul 2015 10:07:54 -0400

If you think you’ve seen a new photograph of the full Earth taken by NASA in the last few decades, you’ve been tricked. It hasn’t taken a full Earth snapshot in 43 years—until now. Today (July 20) NASA released an image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR), marking the first full-disk Earth image released by the space agency since the Apollo era.

NASA

According to NASA’s website, the bluish tint is a result of sunlight scattered by air molecules.

Below is the famous image taken when the US last sent people to the moon, in 1972 on Apollo 17. (All three astronauts on the voyage claim to have taken it.)

NASA

The technology has changed quite a bit since 1972. Where those astronauts were using Hasselblad medium format and Nikon 35mm cameras loaded with specially made Kodak film, the DSCOVR satellite’s imaging instrument has a 4-megapixel CCD sensor that captures 10 bands of light, including invisible ultraviolet and near-infrared wavelengths.

The orbit of the Terra satellite(NASA)

While there are many satellite sconstantly capturing their views of the earth, most do so at low Earth orbit, a distance too close to see the whole earth at one time. Taking a photograph of the earth from low Earth orbit is like trying to take a selfie with your phone an inch in front of your nose.

Most images of Earth in recent years have been renderings made using the thousands of closeups taken by observation satellites in low Earth orbit. For instance, the image below, which was once the default background on new iPhones, is a rendering of multiple images stitched together (plus some photoshopped clouds) rather than a snapshot.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center / Reto Stöckli and Robert Simmon

Of course NASA isn’t the only player in the space-imaging game. Other space agencies have taken full-disk images of the Earth since the Apollo missions. The Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft captured a full image of the earth in 2004 during its mission collecting samples from an asteroid. In January 2015, another Japanese craft, the Himawari-8 weather satellite, began recording full-disk images at 10 minute intervals. Even the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration GOES satellites capture full-disk images of the earth, but these weather satellites are in geostationary orbits, meaning they capture the same view of the earth over and over.

DSCOVR can capture a full-disk image at any point in the Earth’s rotation.

The images captured during DSCOVR’s mission are an ancillary function for the satellite. Its primary function: to remain between the Earth and the sun to detect solar wind, for scientific and safety purposes. (The safety issue stems from concerns that a geomagnetic storm caused by solar wind could disrupt everything from power grids to the GPS system.) This vantage point gives it a view of an always-fully-lit Earth as the planet spins in front of it. The satellite, launched earlier this year, is expected to take a full earth image at least once a day and transmit it home.

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The Justice Department is Investigating Airfare Price Collusion

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Thu, 02 Jul 2015 12:00:00 -0400

The Department of Justice is investigating the pricing practices of airlines as part of an antitrust investigation, the Associated Press (AP) reports.

The AP learned of the inquiry through a document it obtained, which it says indicates the investigation is trying to determine whether airlines have colluded to slow their rate of expansion as part of a scheme to keep airfares high. “A letter received Tuesday by major U.S. carriers demands copies of all communications the airlines had with each other, Wall Street analysts and major shareholders about their plans for passenger-carrying capacity,” says the AP report.

The Department of Justice as well as Airlines For America—the industry’s trade group—did not immediately return Quartz’s requests for comment. (Update, July 1, 3:30pm: Airlines for America tells Quartz in an email “We are confident that the Justice Department will find what we know to be true: our members compete vigorously every day, and the traveling public has been the beneficiary”)

Consolidation in the airline industry has concentrated the majority of domestic flights amongst just four carriers—American, Delta, United, and Southwest—which account for 61% of all domestic revenue passenger miles flown in the 12 months ending March 2015, the most recently available data.

Since the most recent period of consolidation began in 2008, airfares have mostly outstripped inflation. At one point last year they were up 22%, as against an overall rise in consumer prices of 12%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The increase in airfares is now down to 14%, thanks at least in part to the collapse in oil prices. According to Airlines For America, fuel accounted for 27.6% of operating costs in the last quarter of 2014.

( Top image via Kevin Tavares / Shutterstock.com )

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Workers Are Taking World Cup Breaks, and We Have the Data to Prove It

David Yanofsky, Quartz — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 13:57:16 -0400

The US Mens National Soccer team plays Belgium in the World Cup tomorrow—July 1—at 4pm. If the team captivates Americans as it did during its last match, you can expect business to slow significantly on Tuesday afternoon.

Using conference calls as a proxy for productivity, the impact of a World Cup match on US business is clear.

Call volume (as in the aggregate duration of them, not their loudness) on US-based conference calls provided by InterCall was down 7% during last week’s US-Germany match, compared to the seven days before, according to data provided by the company. In the last moments of the game, call volume was 11% less than the previous week—a sizable drop in calls, considering InterCall averaged 1.2 million hours of conference calls a day in 2013.

The draw of the soccer field is not just affecting the private sector. It’s delaying the work of the US government too. President Barack Obama implied as much to George Stephanopoulos while they watched the US lose to Germany aboard Air Force One: “We had elements — which I won’t detail — of our foreign policy that have been shaped around the World Cup,” he told the ABC news host. “Phone calls, meetings, initiatives we had to think about.”

Reprinted with permission from Quartz . The original story can be found here .

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A Brief History of the US Government’s Awful Graphic Design

David Yanofsky and Ritchie King, Quartz — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:30:00 -0400

The revelation that major US technology companies are participating in a National Security Administration surveillance program was shocking enough. And that was before we saw the top-secret slides used by the government to describe the spying operation. They are, to put it mildly, heinously ugly…

The slides immediately attracted scorn on Twitter, even inspiring graphics luminary Edward Tufte to weigh in:

List of spy-PRISM collected information includes nearly everything, except PPT decks. No useful information at all? twitter.com/EdwardTufte/st…
— Edward Tufte (@EdwardTufte) June 7, 2013

The US government, though, is no stranger to bad graphic design. The Department of Defense is a particularly egregious offender, with its hopelessly complex network diagrams…