France refuses to give Press TV team visas; no explanation offered
Press TV – April 16, 2012
The French Embassy in Tehran has refused to issue visas for a Press TV team that wanted to participate in the annual MIPTV and MIPDOC film festivals in Cannes, France, Press TV reports.
The Press TV team completed the application procedure on February 15 and was told by the visa section of French Embassy in Tehran that the initial response would come on March 7, 2012.
The embassy, however, gave no clear answer to the application until April 9 when a French Embassy employee contacted Press TV to announce that visa requests for the team had been rejected. No clear explanation was given for the rejection.
Press TV officials also wrote a letter to French Ambassador to Tehran Bruno Foucher asking him to provide them with a proper explanation. The French embassy, however, gave no answer to the letter.
MIPDOC and MIPTV festivals are purely cultural events which were held in the southern French port city of Cannes from March 30 to April 4, 2012.
Press TV has been regularly participating in both festivals since 2008.
In addition to Press TV crews, eyewitnesses said, it has become a habit for the French embassy to refrain from issuing visas to Iranian university professors and even physicians who want to participate in scientific events in France.
Experts believe that the measure is a clear sign that the incumbent French government is not willing to continue cultural and media cooperation with Iran.
This is not the first time that a major member of the European Union has taken hostile positions on Press TV and its staff.
In late January, the British Office of Communications (Ofcom) took a questionable measure and without offering a valid response to the Press TV CEO’s letters, revoked the channel’s broadcasting license and finally removed it from the Sky platform. Before revoking Press TV license, Ofcom had hit Press TV with a fine of 100 thousand pounds.
The British media regulator stepped up pressure on Press TV after the news channel covered British police crackdowns on anti-austerity protesters in London and other British cities.
Also, on April 3, under pressure from the German government, Munich media regulatory office (BLM) made an illegal decision to remove Press TV from the SES Astra satellite platform.
Vice President of the SES Platforms Services Stephane Goebel wrote in an e-mail to the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting officials that the BLM had asked Press TV be immediately removed from the platform claiming that the channel did not have a license for broadcast in Europe.
Experts believe that such moves are clearly part of a scheme orchestrated by the West to silence the voice of the Iranian English-language channel.
Related articles
- US, Israeli cyber attack on Press TV fails (disclose.tv)
- UK threatens to confiscate Press TV property in London (1oneday.wordpress.com)
The Disturbing Privacy Dangers in CISPA
By Trevor Timm | EFF | April 15, 2012
This week, EFF – along with a host of other civil liberties groups – are protesting the dangerous new cybersecurity bill known as CISPA that will be voted on in the House on April 23. Here is everything you need to know about the bill and why we are protesting:
What is “CISPA”?
CISPA stands for The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a cybersecurity bill written by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD) (H.R. 3523). The bill purports to allow companies and the federal government to share information to prevent or defend from cyberattacks. However, the bill expressly authorizes monitoring of our private communications, and is written so broadly that it allows companies to hand over large swaths of personal information to the government with no judicial oversight—effectively creating a “cybersecurity” loophole in all existing privacy laws. Because the bill is so hotly debated now, unofficial proposed amendments are also being circulated [link] and the actual bill language is in flux.
Under CISPA, can a private company read my emails?
Yes. Under CISPA, any company can “use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information to protect the rights and property” of the company. This phrase is being interpreted to mean monitoring your communications—including the contents of email or private messages on Facebook.
Right now, well-established laws, like the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, prevent companies from routinely monitoring your private communications. Communications service providers may only engage in reasonable monitoring that balances the providers’ needs to protect their rights and property with their subscribers’ right to privacy in their communications. And these laws expressly allow lawsuits against companies that go too far. CISPA destroys these protections by declaring that any provision in CISPA is effective “notwithstanding any other law” and by creating a broad immunity for companies against both civil and criminal liability. This means companies can bypass all existing laws, as long as they claim a vague “cybersecurity” purpose.
What would allow a company to read my emails?
CISPA has such an expansive definition of “cybersecurity threat information” that many ordinary activities could qualify. CISPA is not specific, but similar definitions in two Senate bills provide clues as to what these activities could be. Basic privacy practices that EFF recommends—like using an anonymizing service like Tor or even encrypting your emails—could be considered an indicator of a “threat” under the Senate bills. As we have stated previously, the bills’ definitions “implicate far more than what security experts would reasonably consider to be cybersecurity threat indicators—things like port scans, DDoS traffic, and the like.”
A more detailed explanation about what could constitute a “cybersecurity purpose” or “cyber security threat indicator” in the various cybersecurity bills can be read here.
Under CISPA, can a company hand my communications over to the government without a warrant?
Yes. After collecting your communications, companies can then voluntarily hand them over to the government with no warrant or judicial oversight whatsoever as long is the communications have what the companies interpret to be “cyber threat information” in them. Once the government has your communications, they can read them too.
Under CISPA, what can I do if a company improperly hands over private information to the government?
Almost nothing. CISPA would affirmatively prevent users from suing a company if they hand over their private information to the government in virtually all cases. A broad immunity provision in the proposed amendments gives companies complete protection from user lawsuits unless information was given to the government:
(I) intentionally to achieve a wrongful purpose;
(II) knowingly without legal or factual justification; and
(III) in disregard of a known or obvious risk that is so great as to make it highly probably that the harm of the act or omission will outweigh the benefit.
As Techdirt concluded, “no matter how you slice it, this is an insanely onerous definition of willful misconduct that makes it essentially impossible to ever sue a company for wrongly sharing data under CISPA.” This proposed immunity provision is actually worse than the prior version of the bill, under which companies could be sued if they acted in “bad faith.”
What government agencies can look at my private information?
Under CISPA, companies are directed to hand “cyber threat information” to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Once it’s in DHS’s hands, the bill says that DHS can then hand the information to other intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, at its discretion.
Can the government use my private information for other purposes besides “cybersecurity” once they have it?
Yes. When the bill was originally drafted, information could be used for all other law enforcement purposes besides “regulatory purposes.” A new amendment narrows this slightly. Now—even though the information was passed along to the government for only cybersecurity purposes—the government can use your personal information for either cybersecurity or national security investigations. And as long as it can be used for one of those purposes, it can be used for any other purpose as well.
Can the government use my private information to go after alleged copyright infringers and whistleblower websites?
Up until last Friday the answer was yes, and now it’s changed to maybe. In response to the overwhelming protest from the Internet community that this bill would become a backdoor for SOPA 2, the bill authors have proposed an amendment that rids the bill of any reference to “intellectual property.”
The bill previously defined “cyber threat intelligence” and “cybersecurity purpose” to include “theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.” Now the text reads:
(B) efforts to gain unauthorized access to a system or network, including efforts to gain such unauthorized access to steal or misappropriate private or government information
But it is important to remember that this proposed amendment is just that: proposed. The House has not voted it into the bill yet, so they still must follow through and remove it completely.
A more detailed explanation of how this provision could be used for copyright enforcement and censoring whistleblower sites like WikiLeaks can be read here.
What can I do to stop the government from misusing my private information?
CISPA does allow users to sue the government if they intentionally or willfully use their information for purposes other than what is described above. But any such lawsuit will be difficult to bring. For instance, the statute of limitations for such a lawsuit is two years from the date of the actual violation. It’s not at all clear how an individual would know of such misuse if it were kept inside the government.
Moreover, suing the government where classified information or the “state secrets privilege” is involved is difficult, expensive, and time consuming. EFF has been involved for years in a lawsuit over Fourth Amendment and statutory violations stemming from the warrantless wiretapping program run by the NSA—a likely recipient of “cyber threat information.” Despite six years of litigation, the government continues to maintain that the “state secrets” privilege prevents the lawsuit from being heard.
Given that DHS is notorious for classifying everything—even including their budget and number of employees—they may attempt to prevent users from finding out exactly how this information was ever used. And if the information is in the hands of the NSA and they claim “national security,” then it would get even harder.
In addition, while CISPA does mandate an Inspector General should issue a report to Congress over the government’s use of this information, its recommendations or remedies do not have to be followed.
Why are Facebook and other companies supporting this legislation?
Facebook and other companies have endorsed this legislation because they want to be able to receive information about network security threats from the government. This is a fine goal, but unfortunately CISPA would do far more than that—it would eviscerate existing privacy laws by allowing companies to voluntarily share users’ private information with the government.
Facebook released a statement Friday saying that they are concerned about users’ privacy rights and that the provision allowing them to hand user information to the government “is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place.” As we explained in our analysis of Facebook’s response: the “stated goal of Facebook—namely, for companies to receive data about cybersecurity threats from the government—does not necessitate any of the CISPA provisions that allow companies to routinely monitor private communications and share personal user data gleaned from those communications with the government.” Read more about why Facebook should withdraw support from CISPA until privacy safeguards are in place here.
What can I do to stop this bill?
It’s vital that concerned Internet users tell Congress to stop this bill. Use EFF’s action center to send an email to your Congress member urging them to oppose this bill.
Related articles
- Worse than SOPA? CISPA to censor Web in name of cybersecurity (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Facebook defends CISPA support, completely misses the point (digitaltrends.com)
- What You Need to Know About CISPA (readwriteweb.com)
- What Facebook Wants in Cybersecurity Doesn’t Require Trampling On Our Privacy Rights (eff.org)
- Say ‘hello’ to CISPA, it will remind you of SOPA (news.cnet.com)
Argentina to nationalize Spanish owned oil firm
Press TV – April 16, 2012
The Argentine government says it will present a bill to the country’s senate for the nationalization of the YPF oil company which is owned by Spanish firm Repsol.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez said on Monday that the bill would allow the government to expropriate 51 percent of YPF shares, while the country’s oil producing provinces would get 49 percent.
“This president is not going to answer any threat, is not going to respond to any sharp remark, is not going to echo the disrespectful or insolent things said,” Fernandez said.
YPF has been under heavy pressure from the Argentine government over the past two months for not investing enough in the country’s oil fields.
The move has already been criticized by the Spanish government. Spanish officials say Argentina risks becoming “an international pariah” if it takes control of the YPF, in which Repsol has a 57.4 percent stake.
Spain is Argentina’s largest foreign investor and YPF is Argentina’s biggest oil company.
Related articles
- Repsol YPF ups Argentine shale deposit potential (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Israeli military court sentences Palestinian journalist
Palestine Information Center – 16/04/2012
RAMALLAH — The Israeli military court in Ofer passed a four-month imprisonment term against Suhaib Al-Asa, 26, along with 3000 shekels fine.
Aziz, the father of Suhaib Asa, said that the sentence falls in line with the Israeli occupation authority’s constant attacks on the Palestinian people and journalists.
He said that the sentence also reflects the IOA fears of a free press that defends Palestinian rights.
Israeli occupation forces stormed the home of Asa, who works with Bethlehem 2000 radio station and a correspondent for a website, in Obaidiya to the east of Bethlehem on 5 February and took him away after searching his home and confiscating personal computers.
Related articles
- Detained journalist boycotts Israeli military court (alethonews.wordpress.com)