‘Most transparent administration’ violates federal transparency laws
RT | September 28, 2012
Nineteen out of 20 cabinet-level agencies under the Obama administration have failed to follow the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act, thereby disobeying the law that demands disclosure of public information.
White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew said in July that the Obama administration “has been the most transparent ever.” But an analysis of government requests filed by Bloomberg News has found an alarming number of transparency violations, particularly when it comes to the taxpayer-funded cost of travel by top officials.
“When it comes to implementation of Obama’s wonderful transparency policy goals, especially FOIA policy in particular, there has been far more ‘talk the talk’ rather than ‘walk the walk,’’ Daniel Metcalfe, director of the Department of Justice’s office monitoring the government’s compliance with FOIA requests, told the news agency.
In 2009, the newly sworn in President Obama promised a new standard of transparency that his administration has not upheld – even accepting awards for what he oversaw as “the most transparent administration in history.”
“I will hold myself as president to a new standard of openness… Let me say it as simply as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency,” he said while welcoming his senior staff and cabinet secretaries to his office. Two years later, the administration continued to boast about its supposed transparency.
“This president has demonstrated a commitment to transparency and openness that is greater than any administration has shown in the past, and he’s been committed to that since he ran for president and he’s taken a significant number of measures to demonstrate that,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in May 2011, before the president accepted an award for transparency.
But Bloomberg’s report highlights specific instances in which secrecy was a normal part of the regime. Under FOIA, the news agency requested documents from 57 federal agencies regarding taxpayer-funded travel. Only eight of 57 agencies responded within the 20-day time frame required by the Act. The other agencies are under violation of FOIA for failing to submit the documents on time.
And Eric Newtown, senior advisor at the Knight Foundation, said there should be no excuses.
“In a 24/7 world, it should take two days, it should take two hours,” he said. “If it’s public, it should be just there.”
Bloomberg eventually received documents disclosing fiscal year 2011 travel costs from about half of the agencies, although most came well past the legal deadline.
Travel costs by top Obama officials, including the transportation secretary, energy secretary, environmental protection agency administrator and homeland security chief, remain undisclosed.
The lack of public disclosure regarding travel costs of many cabinet-level top officials has become concerning since the General Services Administration’s inspector general spent $823,000 of taxpayer money on a one-day event in Las Vegas in 2010.
Another one of Bloomberg’s FOIA request also found that federal agencies have increased their use of exemptions to block the release of information under the Obama administration. Cabinet agencies employed exemptions 466,402 times during Obama’s first year in office, which is a 50 percent jump from the last year of George W. Bush’s presidency.
“I don’t think the administration has been very good at all on open-government issues,” said Katherine Meyer, a Washington attorney. “The Obama administration is as bad as any of them, and to some extent worse.”
Related articles
Americans already detained under NDAA?
RT | September 28, 2012
The plaintiffs that are suing US President Barack Obama over his insistence on keeping the National Defense Authorization Act on the books said Thursday that they fear Americans are already being held indefinitely and without trial under the NDAA.
US President Barack Obama refrained from even once commenting on his efforts to keep his power to indefinitely detain Americans without charge when he appeared on Reddit.com recently and urged users to “Ask Me Anything.” His opponents in the matter aren’t shying away from speaking up online, though.
The plaintiffs in the case to ban the White House from imprisoning Americans indefinitely without trial or due justice took to Reddit on Thursday to answer questions involving the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012, or the NDAA, and blamed corrupt media and a broken governmental establishment for letting the Obama administration maintain its [power] to book Americans in military prisons without charge.
On December 31, 2011, President Obama authorized the NDAA, and with it he approved a controversial provision that permits the government to indefinitely detain US citizens without trial for mere allegations of ties to suspected terrorists. Journalists and activists filed a lawsuit against the president earlier this year over the provision, Section 1021, which US Federal Judge Katherine Forrest in turn agreed was unconstitutional. Last month Judge Forrest decided that an earlier, temporary injunction on the clause should be made permanent, but the Obama Justice Department pleaded for an emergency stay only hours later. A lone federal appeals judge has since heard that plea and has momentarily blocked Judge Forrest’s injunction. Now pending the results of an appeals panel’s formal investigation, the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision remains on the books.
On Thursday, the plaintiffs in the case — journalist Chris Hedges, activist Tangerine Bolen, Pentagon Papers leaker Dan Ellsberg, their attorneys and others — told users of Reddit to ask them anything.
“The Obama DOJ has vigorously opposed these efforts, and immediately appealed her ruling and requested an emergency stay on the injunction – claiming the US would incur ‘irreparable harm’ if the president lost the power to use Section 1021 – and detain anyone, anywhere until the end of hostilities on a whim. This case will probably make its way to the Supreme Court,” the plaintiffs acknowledged in their introduction.
From there, President Obama’s opponents in federal court combed through hundreds of posts to answer questions regarding the NDAA over the course of several hours. And although the plaintiffs have not exactly been silent with the status of their fight since suing the White House earlier this year, the insight they offered on Reddit provided a fresh update on the case against the NDAA amid some of the government’s most unusual legal maneuvers yet.
Offering his take on the case, Hedges said that he even believes the NDAA’s indefinite detention clause is already being used to imprison Americans, “because they filed an emergency appeal.”
“If the Obama administration simply appealed it, as we expected, it would have raised this red flag,” Hedges added. “But since they were so aggressive it means that once Judge Forrest declared the law invalid, if they were using it, as we expect, they could be held in contempt of court. This was quite disturbing, for it means, I suspect, that US citizens, probably dual nationals, are being held in military detention facilities almost certainly overseas and maybe at home.”
“The signing statement is the most ridiculous part to this for me. He writes this statement saying he’s not happy about the power existing, but then his administration fights so hard to keep that specific power in place,” a Reddit user responded.
“If Obama didn’t want it to happen, he would not have signed it, especially after stating that he would veto it,” co-counsel Carl Mayer explained. Mayer has represented the plaintiffs in the case of Hedges v. Obama and said that he plans on continuing his pursuit to take indefinite detention off the books.
“We will do whatever it takes,” Mayers added. “We are prepared for a Supreme Court battle.”
Activist and journalist Tangerine Bolen is also insistent on prevailing over the Obama administration, but says “The biggest obstruction to our winning this case . . . is our broken systems.” Bolen blames a lack of media coverage, insufficient public awareness “and the government behaving very badly, even in court, on the record,” for the difficulties the plaintiffs have had to endure, adding that the Obama administration’s constant missteps have been noticed by no one except “seven plaintiffs, four attorneys, one federal judge and the activists who have been following this case.”
“Amazing,” she added.
Journalist Chris Hedges extrapolated on Bolen’s opinion, singling out “a corporate-owned system of information” for not informing Americans that they can be imprisoned without trial at this very moment.
“MSNBC, which is a propaganda arm of the Democratic establishment, just as Fox is a propaganda arm of the Republican establishment, is not going to raise this as Obama is as guilty as Romney. If we had a healthy press this would have gotten more coverage, although the print media, and in particular my old paper the NY Times, finally did good coverage,” Hedges wrote. […]
A three-judge appeals panel is expected to soon weigh in on the stay placed on Judge Forrest’s injunction, in the meantime keeping Section 1021 and the rest of the NDAA applicable to every American. – Full article
Related articles
- White House demands military prisons for Americans under NDAA (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Obama Administration Argues That Blocking the NDAA’s Indefinite Detainment Provision Will Harm the U.S. (reason.com)
Netanyahu Draws Red Line: Next Spring, Iran in Final Nuclear Stage
Moqawama | September 28, 2012
As part of his escalated rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, “Israeli” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Thursday that “the world has until next summer at the latest to stop Iran before it can build a nuclear bomb.”
Netanyahu flashed a diagram of a cartoon-like bomb before the UN General Assembly showing the progress Iran has made, saying “it has already completed the first stage of uranium enrichment.”
Then, he pulled out a red marker and drew a line across what he said was a threshold Iran was approaching and which “Israel” could not tolerate – the completion of the second stage and 90 percent of the way to the uranium enrichment needed to make an atomic bomb.
“By next spring, at most by next summer at current enrichment rates, they will have finished the medium enrichment and move on to the final stage,” he said. “From there, it’s only a few months, possibly a few weeks before they get enough enriched uranium for the first bomb.”
“The battle is between modernity and the medieval forces of radical Islam,” he said and noted that “deterrence would not work against Iran as it had with the Soviet Union.”
“Deterrence worked with the Soviets, because every time the Soviets faced a choice between their ideology and their survival, they chose survival,” he said. But “militant jihadists behave very differently from secular Marxists. There were no Soviet “suicide bombers”. Yet, Iran produces hordes of them.”
“I believe that faced with a clear red line, Iran will back down. This will give more time for sanctions and diplomacy to convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program altogether,” the “Israeli” top official said. “
“Red lines don’t lead to war, red lines prevent war,” he added.
In response, Iran’s deputy UN ambassador took the floor at the General Assembly to categorically reject “”Israel’s” entirely baseless allegations.”
Eshagh al-Habib accused Netanyahu of using “an unfounded and imaginary graph to justify a military threat against Iran.”
“Iran is strong enough to defend itself and reserves its full right to retaliate with full force against any attack,” he said.
Al-Habib urged the international community to exert pressure on “Israel” to end its irresponsible behavior and to join the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear weapon party and put all its nuclear facilities under US safeguards.”
Afghanistan: U.S. out, China surges in
By Barry Lando | September 27, 2012
There’s got to be some symbolism—if not irony–in the fact that just as the last of the 33,000 troops surged by Obama two years ago supposedly to pacify Afghanistan pulled out, the highest ranking Chinese official to visit Afghanistan in almost half a century pulled in—arriving in Kabul for a secret round of meetings with top Afghan officials.
Question: How will China deal with the country that proved such an expensive and bloody disaster for both the U.S., its NATO allies–and the U.S.S.R before them?
In a brief visit, unreported until he had left Kabul, Zhou Younkang, China’s chief of domestic security, met with Afghani leaders, including President Hamid Karzai. They talked about drugs, international crime, terrorism, and developing Afghanistan’s huge natural resources—just as visiting Americans have done for years.
The result, a cluster of agreements, among them an announcement that 300 Afghan police officers will be sent to China for training over the next four years.
Which is another irony of sorts—coming at the same time as news that the U.S. and its allies have been obliged to scale back joint operations with the Afghan military and police, because they can no longer trust the men they’ve trained. American troops in the field with their Afghan allies now keep weapons ready and wear body armor even when they’re eating goat meat and yoghurt.
So far this year 51 American and NATO troops have been gunned down by Afghan military or police: a startling 20% of all NATO casualties this year.
The off-the-wall video from California ridiculing the prophet Mohammed has only further fueled anti-American hatred.
As the New York Times quoted one 20 year old Afghan soldier, NATO casualties could even be higher.
“We would have killed many of them already,” he said, “but our commanders are cowards and don’t let us.”
There are still some 68,000 American troops based in Afghanistan, but the plans are for them all to be out by the end of 2014. Which means that China will be confronting serious security problems of its own in Afghanistan. They already have direct investments of more than $200 million in copper mining and oil exploration, and have promised to build a major railroad east to Pakistan or north to Turkestan.
But they could pour in billions more if Afghanistan were a secure, well-ordered country, free from the Taliban, free from kleptocratic war lords and venal government bureaucrats, patrolled by well-trained Afghan soldiers and police: in other words, exactly the kind of country the U.S. would like to have left behind—and didn’t.
Instead, of course, despite America’s huge sacrifice in men and treasure –more than half a trillion dollars since 2001–things haven’t worked out that way. [For a dramatic, running count of the enormous hemorrhage that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still represent to the U.S. economy check out costofwar.com.]
Meanwhile, corruption is rampant, and it’s by no means certain that Afghanistan has—or ever will have–a national army and police force worthy of the name.
The U.S. Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, peered into the Pentagon’ s 1.1 billion dollars fuel program to supply the Afghan Army, and concluded that there was no way to be ascertain how much if any of that fuel is really being used by Afghan security forces for their missions. There was also no way to know how much was stolen, lost or diverted to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Almost half a billion dollars worth of receipts detailing with fuel payments over the past four years have been shredded.
With the Americans heading for the exits, the challenge facing the Chinese—and anyone else, like India–interested in investing in the country–is how to navigate this imbroglio.
Indeed, the Chinese have apparently already run into problems in Afghanistan. Work at the Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar Province is already behind schedule, and no work has begun on the promised Chinese-built railroad yet. Various impediments have turned up, like recalcitrant bureaucrats, tensions provoked by the need to displace local populations, the discovery of Buddhist ruins, as well as ramshackle Soviet-era mines that first had to be cleared.
And then there’s the rival, rapacious warlords, who see the country’s resources as a way of fueling their own ambitions—like General Abdul Rashid Dotsum, who the government has accused of attempting to extort illegal payoffs from the Chinese oil company.
However, in their dealings throughout the developing world, from despots to democracies, the Chinese have shown themselves adept at navigating such quagmires. There’s no talk from Beijing of Chinese “exceptionalism”. They’ve been taking on the world as it is—not as someone in a Chinese think tank would want to remake it.
They’ve generally turned a blind eye to considerations of human rights, opted to pay off or work with the powers that be, and used offers of huge new infrastructure projects as bait, steadily increasing their share of the globe’s resources.
Many potential investors still shy away from Afghanistan. They have no idea what lies on the other side of the political abyss after 2014 when the U.S. completes its withdrawal.
China is also wary, but they’re also seriously planning their Afghan strategy for the post-American future.
As Wang Lian, a professor with the School of International Studies at the Paking University in Beijing, put it, ”Almost every great power in history, when they were rising, was deeply involved in Afghanistan, and China will not be an exception.”
Unmentioned, of course, was what an unmitigated disaster that involvement turned out to be for the USSR, the US–and Afghanistan.
We’ll see how China fares.
Related articles
- Did Afghanistan’s Surge Fail? (andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com)
- Is the Afghan Surge Really Over? (alethonews.wordpress.com)
- Afghanistan surge achieved its mission, Dempsey says (nation.com.pk)
Canadian Premier Harper skips UN General Assembly to get Jewish award
Press TV – September 28, 2012
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for skipping the 67th session of the UN General Assembly to attend a private ceremony where he received an award from a Jewish-sponsored organization.
Passing up the opportunity to address the General Assembly, Harper chose to receive the New York-based Appeal of Conscience Foundation (ACF) award from former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger on Thursday.
The Canadian official seized the opportunity to level criticism at the UN and accused its members of using the world body as a “forum to single out Israel for criticism.”
Harper further added that the policies of the Israeli regime are not to blame for “the pathologies present in that part of the world,” while reaffirming Canada’s support for Tel Aviv.
However, the Canadian prime minister’s decision not to speak at the opening of the General Assembly drew harsh criticism in Canada from opposition leaders, who called the move “absolutely ridiculous.”
“I think the message is that Canada, that the Harper government doesn’t care about the United Nations,” said Bob Rae, the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
This is the second consecutive year that Harper has shunned the UN event, preferring to send Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird in his place.
Many in Canada are concerned about Harper’s conservative policies as he is also accused of locking his government behind a wall of secrecy, defunding democratic institutions and giving away Canada’s sovereignty to the UK and the Israeli regime.
Apartheid leader lectures the UN
By Mazin Qumsiyeh | Popular Resistance | September 27, 2012
The Prime Minister of Apartheid Israel just lectured the United Nations General Assembly! He spent most of his time nagging those present as if they were school children about Iran. He even insulted their intelligence by showing them a diagram of a “bomb” and drawing a red line on it (yes literally with an actual red marker). He also went about insulting 1.6 billion Muslims and even had the “chutzpa” to claim Israel is helping people around the world!
Those in attendance were less numerically and qualitatively than those who attended the Iranian president’s speech. Netanyahu thus utterly failed to anticipate the transformed reality around him and acted as if Israel can still run the show and start wars that others fight for it. He must have not even been briefed on the Egyptian President’s speech. The first democratically elected leader of Egypt received significant applause when he said that the world community must stop the hypocrisy and charade of injustice beginning with “the number one” issue: justice for Palestine. Netanyahu merely dismissed Mahmoud Abbas’s speech with just one sentence “we won’t solve our conflict with libelous speeches at the UN or unilateral declarations of statehood.” [No we solve them via continuing colonization]. He dismissed all Palestinians and their rights by claiming they need to recognize a “Jewish state” then they could be allowed a vague but “dimiltarized state”.
The very moderate/accommodating PLO representative Mahmoud Abbas had said that he wanted to gain the overdue legitimacy for a Palestinian state at the UN and “not delegitimize Israel”. But Israel has done a very good job of delegitimizing itself. Israel in fact should be expelled from the United Nations because it failed to live up to its commitments to implement UN resolutions or to be a peace seeking nation. It also fulfils the requirement of being an apartheid state according to the relevant International Convention. Netanyahu’s war mongering and idiotic speech merely confirmed the obvious conclusion about this rogue state: it is run by lunatics. So on the bright side, perhaps putting the last few nails in the coffin of this apartheid system will come from lying racist idiots like Netanyahu.
The frustrated reaction from many world leaders and the shocked reaction by many others to Netanyahu’s “lecture” give us great hope for the future. Indeed the racist mentality and arrogant criminal actions of this man and other Zionists could be the best accelerator for the end of apartheid Israel. “The jig maybe up” as they say in English.
Israeli filmmaker: “But we gave back Lebanon”
Friends of Lebanon | September 27, 2012
“What do you imagine when you’re in a tank?” Israeli filmmaker Itamar Rose asks young Israeli kids. “I picture a dead Arab and that makes me happy,” responds one boy. (1:37; 1:54-1:57)
These words are quickly circulating amongst internet activists. Of course there is also a flurry of counter-finger-pointing, beginning with Rose’s own reference to a Palestinian society of “agitation and hate.” In this and other films, Rose seems to be saying that cyclical violence is a no-win situation.
As worrisome as the happy-to-kill mantra of the kids might be, equally disturbing are these political practicalities:
Q—Where do you want to do your army service? In the north? The occupied territories? Gaza? Judea and Samaria?
A—Lebanon. My first choice would be Lebanon. [. . . ]
Q—But we gave back Lebanon. We aren’t fighting in Lebanon.
A—That’s okay, we’ll be back.
Q—Do you hope that by the time you’re a soldier we’ll be at war with Lebanon again?
A—Yes.
(2:14—2:35. The original is in Hebrew. The English translation is provided in the original film posted by Itamar Rose, as is the French translation, which confirms the same precise meaning: “Mais on a déjà rendu le Liban, on n’est plus en guerre là-bas.” “ C’est pas grave, on les remettra de nouveau.”)
The boy, who I would guess to be about 11 years old, states that his father had served in the Israeli Givati Brigade. These are specialist forces for the Lebanon Border, Hebron and Gaza. The boy states he wants to do the same as his father. A normal sentiment—to follow in a father’s footsteps. But he doesn’t just want to be a soldier. He doesn’t say he wants to defend his country or his people. He says he wants to be part of the Israeli military that returns to Lebanon. He wants to wage war against Lebanon.
He might have said that he would stand ready in Israel in its defence. He might have said that he hoped there would be peaceful relations. But he echoed the aggression he had absorbed from his society: “We’ll be back.”
Was he just playing up to the camera? Caught up in the atmosphere of the Armored Corps Memorial they were visiting? Of course it is possible, but even in such a case he felt that this belligerent stance, even if not heartfelt, was appropriate to enact.
And then there is the filmmaker’s statement: “But we gave back Lebanon.” Itamar Rose uses satire in his films, so there is a remote possibility that this phrase was a tongue in cheek baiting of the interviewee. But given the fact that Rose was recently hosted for a London event by the Israel Connect program of the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, that possibility looks remote indeed. The Zionist Federation just doesn’t promote voices opposed to Zionism. And the 22-year occupation of Lebanon was Zionist at the core.
To say “we gave back Lebanon” necessitates the presumption of custodial possession. You can’t “give back” something you don’t hold claim to. Therein lies the rub. Zionism, a political ideology, presumes this entitlement. Israeli officials have, of course, frequently denied designs of territorial conquest. But the historical facts argue otherwise and the pervasive sense of entitlement is revealed time and again.
“But we gave back Lebanon,” says the older generation.
“That’s okay, we’ll be back,” says the new generation.
No, say those of the world with an eye on justice and international law. No, Lebanon wasn’t yours to take. It wasn’t yours to give back. And should you try to return, you will learn this very simple fact.
Cleansing the Internet of Terrorism: EU-Funded Project Seeks To Erode Civil Liberties
By Jillian C. York and Katitza Rodriguez | EFF | September 26, 2012
A new project aimed at “countering illegal use of the Internet” is making headlines this week. The project, dubbed CleanIT, is funded by the European Commission (EC) to the tune of more than $400,000 and, it would appear, aims to eradicate the Internet of terrorism.
European Digital Rights, a Brussels-based organization consisting of 32 NGOs throughout Europe (and of which EFF is a member), has recently published a leaked draft document from CleanIT.
On the project’s website, its stated goal is to reduce the impact of the use of the Internet for “terrorist purposes” but “without affecting our online freedom.” While the goal may seem noble enough, the project actually contains a number of controversial proposals that will compel Internet intermediaries to police the Internet and most certainly will affect our online freedom. Let’s take a look at a few of the most controversial elements of the project.
Privatization of Law Enforcement
Under the guise of fighting ‘terrorist use of the Internet,’ the “CleanIT project,” led by the Dutch police, has developed a set of ‘detailed recommendations’ that will compel Internet companies to act as arbiters of what is “illegal” or “terrorist” uses of the Internet.
Specifically, the proposal suggests that “legislation must make clear Internet companies are obliged to try and detect to a reasonable degree … terrorist use of the infrastructure” and, even more troubling, “can be held responsible for not removing (user generated) content they host/have users posted on their platforms if they do not make reasonable effort in detection.”
EFF has always expressed concerns about relying upon intermediaries to police the Internet. As an organization, we believe in strong legal protections for intermediaries and as such, have often upheld the United States’ Communications Decency Act, Section 230 (CDA 230) as a positive example of intermediary protection. While even CDA 230’s protections do not extend to truly criminal activities, the definition of “terrorist” is, in this context, vague enough to raise alarm (see conclusion for more details).
Erosion of Legal Safeguards
The recommendations call for the easy removal of content from the Internet without following “more labour intensive and formal” procedures. They suggest new obligations that would compel Internet companies to hand over all necessary customer information for investigation of “terrorist use of the Internet.” This amounts to a serious erosion of legal safeguards. Under this regime, an online company must assert some vague notion of “terrorist use of the Internet,” and they will have carte blanche to bypass hard-won civil liberties protections.
The recommendations also suggest that knowingly providing hyperlinks to a site that hosts “terrorist content” will be defined as illegal. This would negatively impact a number of different actors, from academic researchers to journalists, and is a slap in the face to the principles of free expression and the free flow of knowledge.
Data Retention
Internet companies under the CleanIT regime would not only be allowed, but in fact obligated to store communications containing “terrorist content,” even when it has been removed from their platform, in order to supply the information to law enforcement agencies.
Material Support and Sanctions
The project also offers guidelines to governments, including the recommendation that governments start a “full review of existing national legislation” on reducing terrorist use of the Internet. This includes a reminder of Council Regulation (EC) No. 881/2002 (art. 1.2), which prohibits Internet services from being provided to designated terrorist entities such as Al Qaeda. It is worth noting that similar legislation exists in the US (see: 18 U.S.C. § 2339B) and has been widely criticized as criminalizing speech in the form of political advocacy.
The guidelines spell out how governments should implement filtering systems to block civil servants from any “illegal use of the Internet.”
Furthermore, governments’ criteria for purchasing policies and public grants will be tied to Internet companies’ track record for reducing the “terrorist use of the Internet.”
Notice and Take Action
Notice and take action policies allow law enforcement agencies (LEAs) to notify and act against Internet companies, who must remove “offending” content as fast as possible. This obligates LEAs to determine the extent to which content can be considered “offensive.” An LEA must “contextualize content and describe how it breaches national law.”
The leaked document contains recommendations that would require LEAs to, in some cases, send notice that access to content must be blocked, followed by notice that the domain registration must be ended. In other cases, sites’ security certificates would be downgraded.
Real Identity Policies
Under the CleanIT provisions, all network users, whether in social or professional networks, will be obligated to supply their real identities to service providers (including social networks), effectively destroying online anonymity, which EFF believes is crucial for protecting the safety and well-being of activists, whistle-blowers, victims of domestic violence, and many others (for more on that, see this excellent article from Geek Feminism). The Constitutional Court of South Korea found an Internet “real name” policy to be unconstitutional.
Under the provisions, companies can even require users to provide proof of their identity, and can store the contact information of users in order to provide it to LEAs in the case of an investigation into potential terrorist use of the Internet. The provisions will even require individuals to utilize a real image of him or herself, destroying decades of Internet culture (in addition to, of course, infringing on user privacy).
Semi-Automated Detection
The plan also calls for semi-automated detection of “terrorist content.” While content would not automatically be removed, any searches for known terrorist organizations’ names, logos or other related content will be automatically detected. This will certainly inhibit research into anything remotely associated with what law enforcement might deem “terrorist content,” and would seriously hinder normal student inquiry into current events and history! In effect, all searches about terrorism might end up falling into an LEA’s view of terrorist propaganda.
LEA Access to User Content
The document recommends that, at the European level, browsers or operating systems should develop a reporting button of terrorist use of the Internet, and suggests governments draft legislation to make this reporting button compulsory for browser or operating systems.
Furthermore, the document recommends that judges, public prosecutors and (specialized) police officers be able to temporarily remove content that is being investigated.
Banning Languages
Frighteningly, one matter up for discussion within the CleanIT provisions is the banning of languages that have not been mastered by “abuse specialists or abuse systems.” The current recommendation contained in the document would make the use of such languages “unacceptable and preferably technically impossible.”
With more than 200 commonly-used languages and more than 6,000 languages spoken globally, it seems highly unlikely that the abuse specialists or systems will expand beyond a select few. For the sake of comparison, Google Translate only works with 65 languages.
At a time when new initiatives to preserve endangered languages are taking advantage of new technologies, it seems shortsighted and even chauvinistic to consider limiting what languages can be used online.
What Is Terrorism, Anyway?
While the document states that the first reference for determining terrorist content will be UN/EU/national terrorist sanctions list, it seems that the provisions allow for a broader interpretation of “terrorism.” This is incredibly problematic in a multicultural environment; as the old adage goes, “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.” Even a comparison of the US and EU lists of designated terrorist entities shows discrepancies, and the recent controversy in the US around the de-listing of an Iranian group shows how political such decisions can be.
Overall, we see the CleanIT project as a misguided effort to introduce potentially endless censorship and surveillance that would effectively turn Internet companies into Internet cops. We are also disappointed in the European Commission for funding the project: Given the strong legal protections for free expression and privacy contained in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union [PDF], it’s imperative that any efforts to track down and prosecute terrorism must also protect fundamental rights. The CleanIT regime, on the other hand, clearly erodes these rights.
Related articles
- EU proposal to stop terrorist sites even more ridiculous than it sounds (arstechnica.com)
- Leak shows EU’s plans for largescale surveillance of all communications (edri.org)
- Leaked Clean IT Document Is Frightening (webpronews.com)
- Police across Europe will “patrol” Facebook, Google and Twitter for postings supporting terrorism under an EU project says leaked report (familysurvivalprotocol.com)
Praising Obama’s Defense of Free Speech, NYT Leaves Much Unsaid
By Steve Rendall – FAIR – 09/27/2012
The New York Times’ September 26 coverage of Barack Obama’s UN address on Arab democracy, free speech and violence included a good sampling of the distortions, double standards and bigotry often present in U.S. corporate reporting on these issues.
Helene Cooper’s news report (9/26/12) explained that Obama’s speech was a “strong defense of America’s belief in freedom of speech,” challenging “fledgling Arab and North African democracies to ensure that right even in the face of violence.”
According to Cooper, Obama also “asserted that the flare-up of violence over a video that ridicules the Prophet Muhammad would not set off a retreat from his support of the Arab democracy movement,” adding that Americans “have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their view.”
A Times editorial the same day applauded Obama, explaining that “anti-American violence in the Muslim world demanded a firm pushback from President Obama, who finally delivered it on Tuesday in the last United Nations General Assembly speech of his term.” The editors were also pleased that Obama “gave a full-throated defense of the First Amendment right that, in this country, protects even hateful writings, films and speech.” The editors quoted Obama: “We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities.”
And they lauded the president again, this time with a bigoted putdown of Muslims: “Mr. Obama was right to deliver that message, however foreign it is in much of the Muslim world.” (According to Gallup Center for Muslim Studies director Dalia Mogahed– NPR, 9/21/12–Middle Easterners support constitutional free speech rights “in percentages above 90 percent.”)
Let’s begin with “anti-American violence in the Muslim world.” Does it even approach the level of violence visited on Muslim countries by the U.S.? No. Not even close. It would have been good for the Times to mention this.
It would also have been helpful if Cooper and the editors had explained that the U.S. actually has a horrendous record when it comes to supporting free-speech and democracy in the Muslim world.
The U.S. currently supports and arms autocratic and free-speech averse regimes in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Until recently, Tunisia and Egypt were U.S.-backed dictatorships. One might argue that the U.S. no longer overtly thwarts free speech and democracy in Tunisia, but that’s a harder case to make for Egypt, whose military the U.S. has continued to fund through decades of torture, detention and disappearances.
Not even military crackdowns after the 2011 Tahrir Square uprisings or the dissolving of Egypt’s democratically elected parliament by its military allied supreme court in June interrupted of the flow of money from Washington to the Egyptian generals. Indeed, following the Egyptian spring uprisings, Washington pushed Egypt’s former “vice president” Omar Suleiman, otherwise known as “the CIA’s man in Cairo” and Egypt’s “torturer-in-chief,” to head the Egypt’s supposed transition to democracy (Guardian, 2/5/11).
The Times might also have mentioned that the administration doesn’t have a pristine record on free speech at home either, where it has conducted a record number of prosecutions against government whistleblowers.
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Hands off ‘our hemisphere’ or Venezuela pays the price: US Senator warns Russia
RT | February 13, 2019
The US staked a claim on half the world, as Senate Armed Services Committee chair Jim Inhofe said Washington might have to intervene in Venezuela if Russia dares set up a military base not just there, but “in our hemisphere.”
“I think that it could happen,” Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) told a group of reporters on Tuesday. “You’ve got a guy down there that is killing everybody. You could have him put together a base that Russia would have on our hemisphere. And if those things happen, it may be to the point where we’ll have to intervene with troops and respond.”
Should Russia dare encroach on the US’ neck of the woods, Inhofe said: “we have to take whatever action necessary to stop them from doing that.” … continue
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