DHS defends suspicionless searches of laptops and cell phones
RT | June 6, 2013
The United States government doesn’t need a reason to seize and search the cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices of Americans entering the country, according to a Department of Homeland Security document provided to the press this week.
The DHS has long insisted that border agents and immigration officers are allowed to collect the electronics of US citizens crossing into the country without reason or cause, but a December 2011 document made public this week once and for all shines a light on a sparsely discussed security-measure that has attracted the attention of privacy advocates and others who’ve equated the practice as a constitutional violation.
The American Civil Liberties Union and the Associated Press jointly filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the document earlier this year after the DHS published a two-page executive summary briefly explaining the results of an audit conducted by the department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. In that statement, the DHS auditor concluded that Customs and Border Protection agents and officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not violating either the First or Fourth Amendments to the US Constitution by seizing the electronics of Americans without clear suspicion of a crime.
“We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment,” Tamara Kessler wrote for the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in the summary. “We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits.”
Now with the full 23-page paper in their possession — albeit a version that’s seen a fair share of redactions — the AP and ACLU have published the document in order to expose a post-9/11 policy that has remained intact under President Barack Obama, but to little discussion.
“This is striking,” ACLU fellow Brian Hauss wrote Wednesday, “because it is the first time, as far as we know, that the government has explained why purely suspicionless searches supposedly enhance security.”
The government’s reasoning, according to the document, is that the blanketing ability to collect and assess the devices of anyone thought to be entering the country is crucial to thwart high crimes. That being said, the government attests that requiring actual probable cause before seizing a device would, in the eyes of the DHS, hinder their ability to counter terrorism.
“[A]dding a heightened [suspicion-based] threshold requirement could be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefit,” the document found. “First, commonplace decisions to search electronic devices might be opened to litigation challenging the reasons for the search. In addition to interfering with a carefully constructed border security system, the litigation could directly undermine national security by requiring the government to produce sensitive investigative and national security information to justify some of the most critical searches.”
“Even a policy change entirely unenforceable by courts might be problematic,” it continued. “Under a reasonable suspicion requirement, officers might hesitate to search an individual’s device without the presence of articulable factors capable of being formally defended, despite having an intuition or hunch based on experience that justified a search.”
Speaking to AP, ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump said the government’s reasoning is “just not good enough” and demonstrates purely inadequate reasoning.
“A purely suspicionless search opens the door to ethnic profiling,” Crump said.
Hauss, the legal fellow for the group’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, said the government’s line of thought in defending the policy is faulty for a few different reasons. “DHS claims that giving Americans the opportunity to challenge laptop searches in court would lead to the divulgence of national security secrets, but this is obviously wrong,” he wrote. “The government has numerous resources at its disposal to prevent the disclosure of sensitive information. The ‘state secrets privilege,’ to take just one example that is used in court cases, has been criticized on many grounds, but no one has ever seriously suggested that its protections are too anemic. Although DHS might fear the prospect of being called into open court to explain its actions, executive accountability before the law is the bedrock on which our system of constitutional self-government is built.”
Last year, the US Supreme Court upheld an earlier ruling that legally permitted the use of suspicionless roadblocks anywhere within 100 miles of an international border, subjecting nearly 200 million Americans around the country to spontaneous and sporadic inspections of vehicles and their possessions.
On Tuesday, ACLU spokesperson Peter Boogaard told Bloomberg News that a 2009 policy change restricted how long the DHS can hold on to seized electronics. Earlier this week, though, it was suggested that the department did not necessarily see any problems with duplicating that information to be held on to indefinitely.
David House, a founding member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, sued the DHS in 2011 after his computer and cell phone were seized after an international flight he was on landed at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. On behalf of the ACLU, House sued DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano on the accusation that his belongings were searched solely on the basis of his association with the Support Network, an organization that has paid in full the legal bills for the 25-year-old Army private accused of committing espionage and aiding terrorists by sharing sensitive files with the website WikiLeaks. House’s devices were held for 49 days by ICE — longer than the 30 days allowed legally — and the contents of those electronics were copied by investigations. House dropped his lawsuit last after the DHS agreed to delete its copy of the data.
“They’re giving us exactly what we wanted,” House told Wired.
Oh, And One More Thing: NSA Directly Accessing Information From Google, Facebook, Skype, Apple And More
By Mike Masnick | TechDirt | June 6th 2013
Obviously, the Verizon/NSA situation was merely a small view into just how much spying the NSA is doing on everyone. And it seems to be spurring further leaks and disclosures. The latest, from the Washington Post, is that the NSA has direct data mining capabilities into the data held by nine of the biggest internet/tech companies:
The technology companies, which participate knowingly in PRISM operations, include most of the dominant global players of Silicon Valley. They are listed on a roster that bears their logos in order of entry into the program: “Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, Apple.” PalTalk, although much smaller, has hosted significant traffic during the Arab Spring and in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Dropbox , the cloud storage and synchronization service, is described as “coming soon.”
This program, like the constant surveillance of phone records, began in 2007, though other programs predated it. They claim that they’re not collecting all data, but it’s not clear that makes a real difference:
The PRISM program is not a dragnet, exactly. From inside a company’s data stream the NSA is capable of pulling out anything it likes, but under current rules the agency does not try to collect it all.
Analysts who use the system from a Web portal at Fort Meade key in “selectors,” or search terms, that are designed to produce at least 51 percent confidence in a target’s “foreignness.” That is not a very stringent test. Training materials obtained by the Post instruct new analysts to submit accidentally collected U.S. content for a quarterly report, “but it’s nothing to worry about.”
Even when the system works just as advertised, with no American singled out for targeting, the NSA routinely collects a great deal of American content.
I expect we’ll be seeing more such revelations before long.
Related article
Britain pays £20m to Mau Mau victims
Morning Star | June 6, 2013
Foreign Secretary William Hague stopped short of issuing an apology today to the elderly Kenyans tortured by British colonial forces during the Mau Mau uprising.
The Mau Mau movement emerged in central Kenya during the 1950s to get back seized land and push for an end to colonial rule. Supporters were detained in camps and thousands were tortured, maimed or executed.
Mr Hague told the House of Commons that the government had reached a full and final settlement with solicitors of 5,228 claimants totalling £19.9 million.
The government would also support the construction of a memorial in Kenya’s capital Nairobi to the victims of torture and ill-treatment during the colonial era.
But he said the British government continued to deny liability for what happened during the uprising.
Shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander said Labour supported the government.
However left Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn said it was strange of the government to offer compensation but to deny any formal responsibility.
“I’m a bit surprised,” he said, adding: “This is a very strange result, to offer compensation and a settlement for Leigh Day and at the same time deny liability,” he said.
Mr Corbyn pointed out that many MPs in the 1950s raised the issue in Parliament at the time, praising the Kenyans for their “tenacity” in seeking justice.
“When we deny rights and justice, when we deny democracy, when we practise concentration camps, it reduces our ability to criticise anybody else for that fundamental denial of human rights, and I think this is a lesson that needs to be learnt not just in Kenya but in other colonial wars as well where equal brutality was used by British forces,” he said.
Mr Hague said there was no inconsistency in recognising the suffering endured by many of the victims while continuing to deny liability.
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G4s annual meeting stormed by human rights activists
Press TV – June 7, 2013
Pro-Palestine campaigners have staged a protest at the annual meeting of shareholders of disgraced security firm G4S in London, calling for an end to the firm’s Israeli prison contracts.
G4S meeting on June 6 was twice disrupted by protesters, who voiced their anger against the private company’s provision of expertise and security systems to Israeli prisons, and its complicity in the detention and torture of Palestinian children.
The demonstration was organized by the Innovative Minds (inminds) and Islamic Human Right Commission (IHRC) campaign groups.
“G4S cannot expect to do business as usual whilst it equips Israeli prisons which hold Palestinians in breach of the Geneva Convention,” said Sarah Colborne, director of Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
G4S faces criticism for its cooperation with the Israeli regime, including providing equipment and services to Israeli checkpoints, illegal settlements, the apartheid wall and jails where Palestinian political prisoners are subjected to mistreatment and torture.
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- Pro Palestine Activists Interrupt Ehud Olmert [MUST SEE VIDEO] (intifada-palestine.com)
South African bodies call for Israel to be excluded from diamond processing over ‘war crimes’
RT | June 6, 2013
South African human rights groups, trade unions and major civil society organisations are calling for the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme* to exclude Israel from diamond processing.
The certification scheme is designed to stop ‘conflict diamonds’ from entering the mainstream diamond market and was set up in 2003. The organisation which runs the scheme is currently meeting in South Africa.
The coalition of organisations such as South Africa’s National Union of Mineworkers, the country’s largest trade union federation COSATU; South African Students Congress; the Coalition for a Free Palestine and BDS South Africa say that “billions of dollars’ worth of diamonds exported via Israel are a major source of revenue for the Israeli military, which stands accused of war crimes.”
The coalition is calling for Israel to be excluded from the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme due to its human rights record against Palestinians, and to end all exports of rough diamonds to Israel immediately.
The organizations also wants to ban diamond polishing and cutting in Israel. They claim excluding Israel from the diamond processing would be a great chance for the South African authorities to display “moral vision and political leadership”.
“The Kimberley Process has played an important role over the past decade in resolving conflicts linked to the diamond trade but there is no doubt that it has to be reformed… [by] expanding the definition of conflict to include human rights abuses linked to diamond extraction perpetrated by governments and companies; and expanding downstream monitoring so that the process covers not just the rough diamond trade but also the international movement and polishing of diamonds,” Southern Africa Resource Watch director Claude Kabemba told the Business Day newspaper.
The coalition also pointed to the local benefits of such a move, claiming it could bring more diamond processing jobs back to South Africa. “Consumers will have a clear conscience that their diamonds are not funding, assisting or in any way involved with the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine, and more jobs will be created locally for our people by bringing this diamond processing back home instead of it being done in Israel,” South African activist Mbuyiseni Ndlozi is quoted by the Middle East Monitor as saying.
The Kimberley Process, established a decade ago to help resolve international diamond trade conflicts and to ensure that the diamond trade is not used as an instrument to fund military rebellions and other violence interfering with human rights. The organization includes 54 participants representing 90 countries while its members account for about 99.8 percent of the global production of rough diamonds, the Middle East Monitor reports.
* The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) is the process to prevent “conflict diamonds” from entering the mainstream rough diamond market. Established by UN GA Resolution 55/56 in 2003, the process is aimed “to ensure that diamond purchases were not financing violence by rebel movements and their allies seeking to undermine legitimate governments.” In order for a country to be a participant, it must ensure that any diamond originating from the country does not finance a rebel group or other entity seeking to overthrow a UN-recognized government, that every diamond export be accompanied by a Kimberley Process certificate and that no diamond is imported from, or exported to, a non-member of the scheme. As of 30 November 2012, there were 54 participants in the KPCS representing 80 countries, with the European Union counting as a single participant.
Nicaragua: New Plans to Build Canal are Announced
By Kari Paul | The Argentina Independent | June 6, 2013
Rene Nuñez, president of Nicaragua’s national assembly, announced today that a Chinese investment firm will fund construction of a channel through Nicaragua, an alternative trade route to the Panama Canal.
The new channel will link the Pacific Ocean with the Caribbean Sea, and will be built by a “consortium of investors combined into one firm,” Nuñez, who declined to give more information on the group, said.
The government of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega has introduced two bills to streamline the environmental impact study on the new works, so that the channel can be constructed as soon as possible.
“This is a project that is very important to the country, so we are pursuing it with urgency,” Nuñez said.
President Ortega said that the channel will serve as an alternative to the overcrowded Panama Canal, which is currently undergoing a US$5.2bn expansion project. He also stressed that the Nicaragua Canal will bring jobs to the impoverished in Nicaragua and other Central American countries.
Others oppose the canal, saying the government is pursuing it recklessly.
“I don’t know what is the rush, especially with such a sensitive topic,” said congressman Luis Callejas. “There should be a full consultation with the people, I do not understand why they are rushing the decision.”
Originally the channel was planned to go through the San Juan River, but now Ortega announced it would be built further north, through the waters of Lake Nicaragua.
“Lake Nicaragua should be a source of drinking water for Nicaragua and South America,” argued Environmental Affairs Chair Jaime Incer. He said the lake is currently protected as a “potable water reserve” by a law that Ortega himself passed.
The Nicaraguan National Assembly will debate the two bills on the project, taking into account the environmental impact, on Friday.
Brazil: Soldiers Sent to Indigenous Occupied Land
By Emily Tarbuck | The Argentina Independent | June 6, 2013
The Brazilian government has announced that it will send around 200 soldiers to land occupied by indigenous groups in Mato Grosso do Sul.
The move comes after a member of the Terena indigenous group was killed whilst police attempted to evict the occupiers last week. The groups believe the land belongs to their indigenous ancestral territory, which is currently recognised as the property of local politician, Ricardo Bacha, and have occupied the land for over two weeks.
The announcement from the government detailed how the soldiers were being sent to the farm in order to prevent the problem from escalating. Brazil’s Justice minister Jose Cardozo said: “We’re not going to put out the flames by pouring alcohol on the bonfire…we must avoid radicalising a situation that goes back a long way in Brazilian history.”
Cardozo also announced that he would be travelling to Mato Grosso do Sul in order to oversee the deployment of soldiers, and that the soldiers from the National Force were being sent in order to support the local police force.
It was revealed that the call for soldier interception came from the governor of Mato Grosso do Sol, André Puccinelli, and that soldiers have been steadily deployed by land and air to the area since Tuesday.
Dozens of other indigenous groups have marched around Mato Grosso do Sul in the Sidronlandia region in support of the Terena people. A date has not been set for the withdrawal of the soldiers.
Philadelphia adopting ‘doomsday’ school-slashing plan despite $400 million prison project
RT | June 6, 2013
Days after Philadelphia officials pushed the city one step closer to a so-called “doomsday” education plan that would see two dozen schools close, construction began on a $400-million prison said to be the second-most expensive state project ever.
Pennsylvania’s School Reform Commission voted on June 1 to approve a $2.4 billion budget, ignoring hours of pleas from students, parents, educators and community members who warned the budget would cripple city schools.
The plan would close 23 public schools, roughly 10 per cent of the city’s total. Commissioners rejected a proposal that would have only closed four of the 27 schools that were on the block for closure.
Without the means to cover a $304 million debt, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, students can expect to go back to school in September without new books, paper, counselors, clubs, librarians, assistant principals or secretaries. All athletics, art and music programs would be eliminated and as many as 3,000 people could lose their jobs.
Only one of five state commissioners voted against the proposal, warning that Republican Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett’s administration had not looked hard enough elsewhere for proper funds.
That $304 million windfall is unlikely to be filled because the Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House of Representatives recently passed a tax break for corporations that will cost Pennsylvania residents an estimated $600 million to $800 million annually.
Newly unemployed teachers might consider submitting their resumes to the Department of Corrections, though, with the news that the supposedly cash-strapped government is digging deep to spend $400 million for the construction of State Correctional Institutions Phoenix I and II.
The penitentiary, which is technically two facilities, will supplement at least two existing jails, the Western Penitentiary at Pittsburgh and Fayette County Jail. Pittsburgh’s Western Penitentiary was built in 2003 with the original intention of replacing Fayette County Jail, but the prison has struggled with lawsuits claiming widespread physical and sexual abuse of prisoners.
Scheduled to be completed in 2015, the new prison’s cell blocks and classroom will be capable of housing almost 5,000 inmates. Officials said there will be buildings for female inmates, the mentally ill and a death row population.
Journalist Rhania Khalek noted that the racial disparities in the education system and prison complex, where 60 per cent of all people are of color, have created a literal “school-to-prison-pipeline.”
“In Philadelphia, black students comprise 81 per cent of those who will be impacted by the closings despite accounting for just 58 per cent of the overall student population,” she wrote. “In stark contrast, just 4 per cent of those affected are white kids who make up 14 per cent of Philly students. And though they make up 81 per cent of Philadelphia students, 93 per cent of kids affected by the closings are low-income.”
Communication surveillance undermines privacy, freedom of expression – UN report
RT | June 6, 2013
The widespread use of surveillance technologies to monitor peoples’ communications violates the human rights to privacy and freedom of expression, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression and Opinion stated in his report.
Rapporteur, Frank La Rue, presented his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday.
The document underlined that there’s no way to ensure freedom of expression without respect of privacy in communications and called for global attention towards the increased use of surveillance technologies by many governments.
“The right to privacy is often understood as an essential requirement for the realization of the right to freedom of expression. Undue interference with individuals’ privacy can both directly and indirectly limit the free development and exchange of ideas,” the report stated.
La Rue praised the technological innovations, which promote fast, anonymous, cross-cultural dialogues around the world, but warned that the same technologies can backfire as concerns about national security and criminal activity may lead to previously unseen scale of state surveillance intrusions.
“The Internet has facilitated the development of large amounts of transactional data by and about individuals. This information, known as communications data or metadata, includes personal information on individuals, their location and online activities, and logs and related information about the e-mails and messages they send or receive.”
The rapporteur stressed that this communications data is “storable, accessible and searchable” and when it’s combined and used by the state it can be “both highly revelatory and invasive”.
According to La Rue, governments are in possession of multiple instruments to breach communication privacy as access to the stored content of an individual’s e-mails and messages can be obtained through Internet companies and service providers.
Secret services can easily track the movements of mobile phones, identify all individuals with a mobile phone within a designated area and intercept calls and text messages.
The majority of digital communication information flows through fiber-optic cables, so by placing taps on them and applying word, voice and speech recognition, the governments can achieve almost complete control of communications, the report warns.
The document mentions Egypt and other governments confronted with the Arab Spring as one of the most recent examples of such technologies being used.
The report also noted that the surveillance of human rights defenders or journalists has been “well documented” by the governments of many countries.
“On these occasions, human rights defenders and political activists report having their phone calls and e-mails monitored, and their movements tracked. Journalists are also particularly vulnerable to becoming targets of communications surveillance because of their reliance on online communication. In order to receive and pursue information from confidential sources, including whistleblowers, journalists must be able to rely on the privacy, security and anonymity of their communications.”
La Rue urged governments worldwide to review their national laws regulating surveillance as they are often inadequate or simply don’t exist – to ensuring privacy in communication is protected.
“Communications surveillance should be regarded as a highly intrusive act that potentially interferes with the rights to freedom of expression and privacy and threatens the foundations of a democratic society. Legislation must stipulate that State surveillance of communications must only occur under the most exceptional circumstances and exclusively under the supervision of an independent judicial authority.”
The document stressed that individuals should be allowed all technological means to secure their communications and governments “should not interfere with the use of encryption technologies, nor compel the provision of encryption keys”.
Related articles
- Electronic Snooping Threatens Free Speech, Says U.N. Report (reason.com)
- Internet Surveillance and Free Speech: the United Nations Makes the Connection (eff.org)
- Anonymity, Encryption, and Free Speech: What Nations Need to Do (eff.org)
- Top-secret court order reveals NSA’s daily data collection on millions of Americans (Aletho News)
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