The Colossal Costs of Building UK’s Monster Surveillance Network
Sputnik – 22.03.2016
The UK will have to build a mammoth network of Internet surveillance centers if the government passes its Investigatory Powers Bill – dubbed the the Snoopers’ Charter – into law.
The proposal, which the Home Office wants to rush through the House of Commons just after Easter, will cost the country billions of pounds. The centers will be required to keep large databases of all the connections made by UK Internet users for one year — and to share them automatically with the UK’s government and intelligence agencies.
The government is bracing itself for the vote as the news arrives that the only other country in the world to have ever tried a similar approach — Denmark — has just decided to abandon the plan, for the second time in ten years.
The first Danish “session logging” system was put into place in 2007, but was abandoned in 2013 after the country’s police and security services found it to be practically useless — besides being very expensive for Internet providers to install and operate.
Another attempt to build an improved system, carried out by the Danish Ministry of Justice at the start of March 2016 also appears to have foundered.
Before the final decision was taken, the Danish government asked accounting firm Ernst & Young to ascertain how much the new surveillance network would cost.
The experts found that total expenses would be around one billion Danish Krone (US$150 million). The Danish government decided that the costs were too high for the country and its tech sector.
In the UK, the costs are likely to be much-much higher. If in Denmark — a country of 5.6 million people — the government estimated that each citizen would produce about 62,000 records every year, in Britain, whose population is about ten times the size of Denmark’s, the final annual database would have to include about four trillion a year.
Other estimates suggest that the sheer amount of records could even hit tens of trillions every year. That is because each of those records, as per the law, would have to contain: a customer account reference or device identifier; the date and time of the event; the duration; the source and destination IP and port number of each session; the domain name or linked URL; the volume of data; and the name of Internet service you connected to.
The UK will have to find a way to store an enormous amount of information every day — even if each record’s weight was brought down to 100 bytes, on a yearly level, we are talking exabytes (thousands of petabytes).
The only surefire way to deal with this information is by building new massive data centers, which will need at least US$140 million in equipment to handle each exabyte. Add the building, as well as cooling and electricity management and you have only started understanding the eventual costs of the UK’s new monster surveillance plans.
Saudi regime detains top Shia scholar in Eastern Province
Senior Saudi cleric Ayatollah Hussein al-Radhi
Press TV – March 22, 2016
The Saudi regime’s security forces have arrested a prominent Shia cleric over his anti-regime comments as Riyadh continues its crackdown on the minority sect.
Media reports said on Tuesday that security forces arrested Ayatollah Hussein al-Radhi shortly after he led prayers in the al-Ahsa oasis region of Eastern Province.
The detention came after the senior cleric wrote an article in which he criticized the House of Saud for jailing and executing critics and dissidents, including Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr who was beheaded in January.
Al-Radi had also infuriated the monarchy by denouncing the ongoing deadly Saudi airstrikes which have claimed lives of more than 8,000 civilians in Yemen.
Riyadh has been under fire from international organizations and rights groups over the rising number of civilian casualties in Yemen. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) has recently said that Saudi Arabia and its allies may be committing crimes against humanity due to their indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen.
The senior cleric had also strongly denounced a decision by the Saudi-led [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council to brand Lebanon’s resistance movement Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
Saudi Arabia has been denounced by rights groups for its grave human rights abuses and harsh crackdown on all forms of dissent.
The Shia-dominated Eastern Province has been the scene of peaceful demonstrations since February 2011.
Protesters have been demanding reforms, freedom of expression and the release of political prisoners. They want an end to economic and religious discrimination against the region.
Reports on protests in Qatif are scant, as Saudi authorities allow foreign news media to visit the region only if accompanied by government officials, claiming it is to ensure journalists’ safety.
Shia Muslims have long complained of entrenched discrimination in a country where the semi-official Wahhabi school condones violence against them. They face abuse from Wahhabi clerics, rarely get permits for places of worship and seldom get senior public sector jobs. Shia religious centers have also been target of a series of terror attacks across the region over the past few months.
Those basic complaints have over the years been aggravated by what residents across the Shia-majority call heavy-handed security measures against their community. They accuse the authorities of unfair detentions and punishments, shooting unarmed protesters and torturing suspects.
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UK Police pursue pensioner’s peace protest
By Peter Lazenby – Morning Star – March 17, 2016
A Weekly vigil outside a military base by a 74-year-old peace campaigner has been put under threat by a police dispersal order.
Lindis Percy, who stages a one-hour vigil at US communications base Menwith Hill in Yorkshire every Tuesday, told the Star yesterday that police turned up this week ordering activists to leave.
A fellow campaigner decided to leave but Ms Percy was arrested after refusing to budge. She has been ordered to appear in court on April 7.
The base is staffed by 1,450 US civilian and military personnel and is a key link in the US’s worldwide electronic intelligence-gathering operations via satellites.
Ms Percy, who is a retired nurse, midwife and health visitor, has been a leading peace campaigner for more than 30 years. She has been arrested hundreds of times.
She says North Yorkshire Police and the Ministry of Defence Police at the base have begun applying a dispersal order to stop her weekly vigils at the base.
“I very much want this in court as it is serious, if they get away with this. It stinks.”
Dispersal orders are part of the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill 2014.
According to government guidelines, dispersal orders give police powers “to disperse individuals or groups causing or likely to cause anti-social behaviour in public places.”
The guidelines also state that “police will be able to deal quickly with emerging trouble spots” and that there must be reason to suspect that “the person has contributed or is likely to contribute to members of the public in the locality being harassed, alarmed or distressed, or the occurrence of crime or disorder.”
Activist and Author Arrested by NYPD Following Book Launch Event
By Jean Casella and James Ridgeway | Solitary Watch | March 16, 2016
Five Mualimm-ak, an activist, survivor of solitary, and contributor to our book Hell Is a Very Small Place: Voices from Solitary Confinement, was arrested Tuesday night moments after leaving a book launch event where he was a speaker, held at the Open Society Foundations in Midtown Manhattan.
Mualimm-ak had read from his essay in Hell Is a Very Small Place to a packed house at OSF, and spoken about his five years in solitary confinement in New York State prisons. Released from prison in 2012, he has gone on to become an activist against solitary and mass incarceration and founder of the Incarcerated Nation Corporation, which aids and organizes formerly incarcerated individuals.
Eyewitnesses say that Mualimm-ak and veteran activist Joseph “Jazz” Hayden, who had attended the event, were leaving the OSF building on West 57th Street when they saw police officers confronting a homeless man. Hayden began filming the encounter and was arrested. Mualimm-ak protested Hayden’s arrest, and was arrested as well.
The two men were taken to the nearby Midtown North Precinct and placed in the cells. Five individuals who had attended the launch event walked to the precinct to inquire after their welfare. Shortly after arriving, they were arrested as well, handcuffed, detained, and finally released after being charged with “refusal to disperse.”
In the early hours of the morning, Mualimm-ak and Hayden were sent from the precinct to Central Booking in Lower Manhattan. They have been charged with Obstruction of Government Administration and are expected to be arraigned today at approximately 2 pm, in New York County Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street. They have legal representation.
More details will be provided as they emerge, here and on Solitary Watch’s social media feeds.
Idaho Lawmakers Consider Bill to Allow Bible in Science Classes
By Heather L. Weaver – ACLU – March 14, 2016
Idaho’s public school students may soon have an additional reference text in science class — the Bible.
Senate Bill 1342, which will be heard this week by the House Education Committee, would authorize the use of the Bible “for reference purposes” in any class where “an understanding of the Bible may be useful or relevant.” Of course, our courts have repeatedly made clear that instruction in the Bible and creationism is neither useful nor relevant nor constitutional in science class. But that didn’t stop the bill’s drafters from explicitly listing astronomy, biology, and geology among the courses into which teachers may incorporate the Bible.
The ACLU of Idaho opposed the bill in the Senate, pointing out that religious texts and beliefs about the origin of life have no place in science class. So, what was the “fix” offered by the Senate Education Committee? They deleted the bill’s references to astronomy, biology, and geology. They also amended the bill to provide that other religious texts could be used as well.
Neither of these cosmetic changes, however, fixes anything; they merely attempt to better mask the measure’s serious flaws. As amended, the bill still allows for teachers to use the Bible in “any topics of study” where a teacher personally believes it is “useful or relevant,” including science classes. And based on the bill’s original text and the current title of the relevant subsection, which remains — “USE OF THE BIBLE IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS” — we know that’s exactly what was intended all along.
Authorizing and encouraging teachers to incorporate the Bible into science classes not only shortchanges Idaho’s students, who deserve a sound science education that will prepare them for college, but it is also a violation of the separation of church and state.
Indeed, even in non-science classes, allowing teachers to incorporate the Bible or other religious texts into class on a whim — regardless of state educational standards and approved curricula — raises serious constitutional concerns. Without in-depth training from a non-religious source and appropriate teaching materials, such as those available for a comparative religion course, it is very likely that teachers will inject their personal beliefs into these lessons, resulting in the violation of students’ First Amendment rights and a real risk of costly litigation for schools.
Unfortunately, the Idaho Senate has already passed the amended bill. But hopefully, as members of the House Education Committee consider the bill this week, they will take a much closer look and conclude, as we have, that Senate Bill 1342 is no gem.
Snoopers’ charter ‘unfit for purpose,’ 200 legal experts say
RT | March 15, 2016
Home Secretary Theresa May’s Investigatory Powers Bill, dubbed the snoopers’ charter, breaches international surveillance standards and is “unfit for purpose,” more than 200 senior lawyers have warned.
In a letter to the Guardian, the lawyers, including numerous Queen’s Council representatives and academics, said the bill will destroy privacy.
MPs are due to vote on the bill for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, and it is expected they will pass the motion. The bill itself sets out a series of legal frameworks for the government’s interception of data by GCHQ and establishes the breadth of government surveillance operations.
Chair of the Bar Human Rights Committee Kirsty Brimelow QC has signed the letter, as well as academics from 40 British law schools.
“A law that gives public authorities generalized access to electronic communications contents compromises the essence of the fundamental right to privacy and may be illegal,” the letter reads.
“The investigatory powers bill does this with its ‘bulk interception warrants’ and ‘bulk equipment interference warrants.’”
A well as bulk interception, the letter warns against “targeted interception warrants” which could be taken out on groups, organizations, or premises. The letter also warns that there need only be “reasonable suspicion” to intercept data, not demonstrable proof of threat.
“These are international standards found in the recent opinion of the UN special rapporteur for the right to privacy, and in judgments of the EU court of justice and the European court of human rights,” it continues.
“At present, the bill fails to meet these standards – the law is unfit for purpose.”
The aim of the bill is to establish a legal framework for interception, but critics of the bill say any bulk interception is a breach of privacy. The bill will also make it obligatory for internet companies to keep track of sites accessed by users for one year.
Other critics say the new bill will also criminalize IT staff who fail to destroy security services on its customers’ software on demand, or fail to hack into its customers’ systems upon a Home Office request.
GCHQ says it only targets an individual’s data in the context of a threat to national security, and would only pursue terrorist or criminal activity. It also argues that bulk interception is a necessary step to monitor criminal activity and the majority of intercepted material is never read.
However, the United Nations special rapporteur on privacy, Joseph Cannataci, also warned that the IP bill would legitimize mass surveillance.
Texas cop ‘pepper sprays’ passing bikers on highway
RT | March 15, 2016
A police investigation has been launched after a video posted online appears to show an officer macing a group of bikers on a highway in Texas.
The video was posted Monday, a day after the incident took place on the US Highway 297 in Fort Worth.
The episode began when a police officer pulled over a red pickup truck which was traveling with the bikers and issued citations to the driver for not having a license, and to two others for standing in the bed of the truck.
As the bikers approach, the video shows the officer get out of his vehicle and spray them with what seems to be pepper spray.
During the big ride today we had a law enforcement officer, that looked as if he was pulling over a truck, stepped out…
Posted by Chase Stone on Monday, March 14, 2016
In a statement, Fort Worth officials named the policeman involved as Officer Figueroa, a “six-year veteran” who has been “removed from uniformed patrol duties and placed in an administrative capacity pending the investigation”.
Police say they had received a number of calls reporting reckless driving relating to the motorcyclists. However, the biker who shot the video disputes this claim.
Biker Jack Kinney said he did not see any reckless driving and accused the department of running a “propaganda campaign to try to mitigate the damage”, The Star Telegram reports.
“What’s in the video? The people at that time, they weren’t committing any crime,” Kinney told the local paper. “They were driving slower than the speed limit and they got pepper sprayed for it.”
Another biker called Chase Stone said the police action could have resulted in serious injury or death.
“If one or two or three of those riders had their face masks up and that would have hit them in the eyes, it would have more than likely sent them down,” Stone said.
Turkey’s Erdogan Looks to Expand Terrorist Definition to Include Civilians
Sputnik – March 14, 2016
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Monday that it is necessary to broaden the definition of terrorism to include supporters of terrorism — even people who are not directly involved in any kind of terror activity.
“It’s not only the person who pulls the trigger, but those who made that possible who should also be defined as terrorists, regardless of their title,” said Erdogan, following a bombing in Ankara which killed 37 people, the Daily Star reported. He added that this could be a journalist, an MP or a civil society actor.
Earlier President Erdogan said that Turkey’s “struggle against terrorism will for certain end in success and terrorism will be brought to its knees.”
The bombing was the fifth attack in Turkey in recent several months. The attacks took lives of total of 200 people.
Severe penalties for anyone backing Hezbollah: Saudi Arabia
Press TV – March 13, 2016
Saudi Arabia says those linked to the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah will be punished in accordance to anti-terrorism laws.
According to an Interior Ministry statement published by the state-run SPA news agency on Sunday, Saudi nationals and foreigners living in the kingdom will face “severe penalties” if they sympathize with, financially support, or harbor any of the group’s members.
“Any citizen or resident who supports, shows membership in the so-called Hezbollah, sympathizes with it or promotes it, makes donations to it or communicates with it or harbors anyone belonging to it will be subject to the stiff punishments provided by the rules and orders, including the terrorism crimes and its financing,” read the statement, adding that expatriates would also be deported.
Riyadh’s move appears to be part of the monarchy’s anti-Shia campaign, including a severe crackdown on nationals residing in Eastern Province. Last year, the kingdom executed prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, which drew widespread condemnation from rights groups and various states.
The Sunday announcement also follows recent decisions by pro-Saudi Arab factions, the Arab League and the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council, to brand Hezbollah as a “terrorist” group.
On Saturday, Hezbollah described such measures as a “declaration of aggression” by Riyadh, which is “putting pressure on others at the Arab foreign ministers meeting to do the same,” said Sheikh Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary general of the resistance movement.
France: Another Palestinian TV Station Shut Down
IMEMC News & Agencies – March 12, 2016
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his gratitude, on Saturday, to French President Francois Hollande, after the French government shut down a Hamas-affiliated television station that, according to the Israeli media, “aired content which constituted anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement.”
Netanyahu had earlier urged Hollande to end the transmission of Al Aksa television, the Hamas-run channel that was being broadcast on the French satellite service EUTELSAT — also associated with Palestine Today TV, which was shut down in the occupied West Bank, on Friday.
According to the PNN, Israel’s Shin Bet internal spy agency said in a statement, on Friday, that the Ramallah offices were raided overnight, in a joint operation with the military over allegations that the channel “broadcasts on behalf of the Islamic Jihad,” a Gaza-based Palestinian resistance movement.
“The channel served the Islamic Jihad as a central means to incite the West Bank population, calling for terror attacks against Israel and its citizens. Incitement was broadcast on the television station as well as the Internet,” Shin Bet added.
Palestinian officials have denounced Israel’s closure of the offices. Yousef al-Mahmoud, Palestinian Authority spokesman, described the Israeli raid on Palestine Today TV station in Ramallah as “part of the aggressive occupation policy towards Palestinian media.
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, member of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) executive committee, also denounced the Israeli raid, saying it contravenes free speech rules.
The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate made an official statement, as well.
“Incursions into areas under the Palestinian Authority’s control and attacking its sovereignty and media institution [are] a stark violation of basic human rights and international and humanitarian laws that have safeguarded freedom of speech,” she said.
Last November, Israeli soldiers broke into the headquarters of Al-Hurriyya Media Network, destroyed the offices, confiscated the tools and threatened to demolish the entire building if the network works again, accusing it of “inciting” Palestinians against the Israeli occupation.
The month previous, in October, Israeli soldiers raided the offices of the International Middle East Media Center and the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement.
Since the start of October 2015, almost 200 Palestinians have been killed, in addition to 30 Israelis, settlers and soldiers.
The current tension is ongoing since October, due to repetitive Israeli settler attacks on Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest place in Islam, and Israeli restrictions over Palestinian entrance, in addition to the Douma arson attack which killed a baby and his parents on July 31.
Israeli forces have been criticized internationally, over recent months, for its ‘preemptive shootings’ of Palestinians alleged to be holding knives.
In addition several of the incidents in which the military has claimed that they were ‘attacked’ have proven to be false.
Cruz Thinks That Egypt’s President El-Sisi is Doing a Great Job
teleSUR | March 11, 2016
If we were unclear what kind president Ted Cruz would be if he won the race to the White House, his recent comments on who he considers a good role model leave little room for doubt.
The Texas Senator expressed his admiration for the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who has imprisoned thousands of journalists and protesters and has unleashed a brutal police force, as an “example” of a Muslim ally.
“Let me give you an example of a Muslim, for example, we ought to be standing with,” Think Progress reports Cruz said at a campaign rally in Miami. “President el-Sisi of Egypt, a president of a Muslim country who is targeting radical Islamic terrorists,” he added.
But Cruz is no fair-weather friend to the blood-stained Egyptian president, he mentioned his admiration for el-Sisi last year.
“Why don’t we see the president of the United States demonstrating that same courage [as el-Sisi] just to speak the truth about the face of evil we’re facing right now?” Cruz asked during the first Republican presidential debate last year.
In February, charges were dropped against a four-year-old in Egypt. He had been sentenced to life for four counts of murder, eight counts of attempted murder, vandalizing state property during protests in January 2014, when the boy was 16-months-old.
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UK Researchers: Tax Food to Reduce Climate Change
I doubt these professors have anything to fear from a food tax
By Eric Worrall | Watts Up With That? | November 19, 2016
A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change. […]
This proposal, from a group of people who have probably never missed a meal in their lives, is totally obscene. High income countries often have a lot of poor people who would be hard hit by increases in the price of food.
Needlessly exacerbating the risk poor people don’t get enough to eat, especially children and pregnant mothers, who are especially vulnerable to adverse health impacts from lack of protein in their diet – if this ghastly proposal is ever implemented, future generations will look upon it as a crime against humanity. – Read full article
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