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Creating Chilling Effects On Speech Is A Feature, Not A Bug, Of The Surveillance State

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | August 23, 2013

We’ve discussed a few times how the pervasive surveillance efforts of the NSA and others have tremendous chilling effects on how people communicate and how they act. We’ve discussed how this is a “cost” to the program that not many, especially those who are backing these programs, seem interested in measuring or even thinking about. Of course, implicit in our assumption is that these “costs” are things that are negatives of the program. Others would point out that for those in power, that’s not so much a cost as a benefit. It’s not a bug or an unintended consequence, but a feature. Chilling speech and clamping down on communications? Why that’s a good thing for those in power.

Josh Levy, from Free Press, has a great guest post over at Boing Boing where he discusses how the NSA’s surveillance regime is a huge attack on free speech, and how this is both inevitable, and for some, the intent of the program:

The chilling of free speech isn’t just a consequence of surveillance. It’s also a motive. We adopt the art of self-censorship, closing down blogs, watching what we say on Facebook, forgoing “private” email for fear that any errant word may come back to haunt us in one, five or fifteen 15 years. “The mind’s tendency to still feel observed when alone… can be inhibiting,” writes Janna Malamud Smith. Indeed.

Peggy Noonan, describing a conversation with longtime civil liberties advocate Nat Hentoff, writes that “the inevitable end of surveillance is self-censorship.”

Hentoff stressed that privacy invasions of this magnitude are “attempts to try to change who we are as Americans.” In fact, they are attempts to define who we are as human beings.

Meanwhile, over at the Atlantic, Bruce Schneier has a post discussing the detainment of David Miranda, where he comes to similar conclusions, that these authoritarian police states clearly have no practical benefit, except to enable a powerful government to show off its power to invade your lives:

This leaves one last possible explanation — those in power were angry and impulsively acted on that anger. They’re lashing out: sending a message and demonstrating that they’re not to be messed with — that the normal rules of polite conduct don’t apply to people who screw with them. That’s probably the scariest explanation of all. Both the U.S. and U.K. intelligence apparatuses have enormous money and power, and they have already demonstrated that they are willing to ignore their own laws. Once they start wielding that power unthinkingly, it could get really bad for everyone.

Of course, Schneier sees some upside to this in the long run — which is that such blatantly ridiculous activity seems to only embolden others to push back on this trampling of our rights. Hopefully, that pushback works, because the alternative is horrifying to those who believe in a free and open society.

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August 24, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Israeli officers torture detained Palestinian children

Palestine Information Center – 23/08/2013

NAZARETH — B’Tselem organization published on Thursday a report that includes testimonies from children detained in Israeli jails, on charges of throwing stones at soldiers, saying they were subjected to torture during their interrogation.

B’Tselem said that since November 2009, it has received testimonies from dozens of Palestinian residents of the Bethlehem and al-Khalil, most of them minors, saying that they were subjected to threats and violence, sometimes amounting to torture, during their interrogation at the police station at Gush Etzion.

The testimonies describe interrogations in which the minors were forced to confess to alleged offenses, mostly stone-throwing.

The report included the testimony of a minor, aged 14 from Husan in Bethlehem. He said “The interrogator made me go into a room. He grabbed my head and started banging it against the wall. Then he punched me, slapped me and kicked my legs. The pain was immense, and I felt like I couldn’t stand any longer.”

“Then he started swearing at me. He said filthy things about me and about my mother. He threatened to rape me, or perform sexual acts on me, if I didn’t confess to throwing stones,” the child added.

He said: “His threats really scared me, because he was very cruel and it was just the two of us in the room. I remembered what I’d seen on the news, when British and American soldiers raped and took photos of naked Iraqis.”

B’Tselem reported that until July 2013 its field researchers collected 64 testimonies from residents of eight communities in the southern West Bank who reported such incidents. “Fifty-six of them were minors at the time of their interrogation.”

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August 23, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Illegal Occupation, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Terrifying World of Electronic Monitoring

By JAMES KILGORE | August 23, 2013

I spend a considerable part of my life doing research and writing about electronic monitors-those  black plastic ankle bracelets best known for landing on the legs of a number of the rich and notorious-Martha Stewart, Paris Hilton, Michael Vick, and Charley Sheen, just to name a few.  I hear stories about house arrest and the absurd sets of obstacles authorities put in peoples’ way as they try to wend their way back into life post-incarceration while being tracked by the latest technology.

I reflect a lot about little computer chips and spying and what some lawyers call the deprivation of liberty by technological means.  In essence, electronic monitoring is about tracking and marking. The GPS technology that is trending  in electronic monitors tracks people’s every movement with the purpose of marking them for punishment if they deviate from the program (or at least if the technology reports that they have deviated from the program.)

Though everyone keeps telling me that at least being on a monitor is better than being in prison, (which I agree with, having done both) I keep telling them they are missing the point. The point is that we need to have some control over this technology, some clear rules, guidelines and ideas about what it should and should not be allowed to do, that while it may be applied to those “guilty” of a crime today, we don’t actually know who is next.

Edward Snowden’s revelations have awakened people to this sort of reality since NSA surveillance is all about tracking and marking. Only the NSA is monitoring everyone-tracking and marking, though none of us are exactly sure who is being marked, why they are being marked or what the consequences of that marking will be. We are leaving the whole process to the security and technology experts to decide. They will determine what patterns of telecommunications amount to a threat or a violation warranting action by the authorities.

None of this comes as a big shock to me since I have seen how with the advance of GPS, people on parole who are minding their own business trying to do what normal people do-shop, get their laundry done, play with their child in the park, are constantly presented with the record of their movements.  If they stop at an address that is not on the approved list, if they go to a store that is not on the approved list they run the risk of being violated and either kept under lockdown (24 hour a day house arrest) or sent back to prison.

Not long ago I heard the story of a man who stopped for nine minutes at a house a block away from where he lived to ask about some things the owner was selling. Those nine minutes got sent to the parole office via his GPS tracker and he got a few days of lockdown in response.  The neighbor’s address was not on the approved list.

And then there are the dozen cases in Wisconsin unveiled by journalist Mario Koran where the GPS device falsely reported people  as out of the house when they were at home.  Aaron Hicks served 51 days in jail for what he claims was one of those false violations. You can’t argue with the facts. As one man on monitoring who chose to remain anonymous because he’s still on parole told me, “we are the guinea pigs.”

But this mark and track process hit a new low last week with the release of Gregory Johnsen’s Atlantic magazine story about an eight year old Yemeni boy named Barq al-Kulaybi.  Once an impoverished  street child in the village of Baty-al-Ahmar, al-Kulaybi had been taken in by an apparently kind man named Adnan al-Qadhi.  Unbeknownst to the little boy, Yemeni authorities (and likely the CIA)  suspected al-Qadhi of having links with Al Qaeda.  In a bizarre translated video, al-Kulaybi told the story of how last year his biological father, a member of the Yemeni  Republican Guard, and some fellow security personnel persuaded him to plant a computer chip on al-Qadhi.  Given precise instructions on how to activate the chip, the boy explained how he dropped it into the man’s coat pocket when al-Qadhi was out of the room.  The boy had kicked off a track and mark process with a tragic ending.  On November 7, 2012 a US drone strike killed al-Qadhi. Subsequently, Al Qaeda kidnapped the boy and his father and produced the video mentioned above.  According to a Johnsen interview on Democracy Now, Al-Qaeda has apparently executed the boy’s father.  Tracking and marking can be a deadly business.

The story of Barq al-Kulaybi is disturbing on many levels.  The use of an eight year old boy as an operative in this instance qualifies as one of the low points even in the murky amoral world of surveillance.  But the real problem is that like with the NSA monitors and with the parole agents who put people on lockdown at their own discretion, there is no process of accountability, not even any transparent guidelines of operation.  The technology experts (read: boys with toys) are in the driver’s seat and following a map that no one else can see, much less read. I wish the case of Barq al-Kulaybi would give people pause, would at least occasion a few  sighs of distress before we think about how small these chips are going to be in the future, all the new “apps” they will have, who will control them and whose pocket they may end up in. Who is next to be tracked and marked? By the way, have you switched off your cellphone?

James Kilgore is a research scholar at the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). He writes on issues of mass incarceration with a focus on electronic monitoring and labor. He is also the author of three novels, all of which he drafted during his six and a half years in prison, 2002-09.  He can be contacted at waazn1@gmail.com

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August 23, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

NSA Program Found Unconstitutional Went On For 3 Years; Started Right After Telcos Got Immunity

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | August 21, 2013

A further delve into the latest NSA surveillance bombshell from the WSJ highlights the ridiculousness of the claims that there were “no violations” by the NSA over the years. We’ve been aware for a while that the FISC ruled a certain NSA program unconstitutional, but the details had been kept secret. It only came out that something was found unconstitutional a year ago, through the efforts of Senator Ron Wyden. Since then, people have been digging for more. The DOJ finally has agreed to release a redacted version of the FISC ruling after fighting it for a while, but as we wait, some more details have been coming out. Last week’s Washington Post story about abuses claimed that this particular program wasn’t reported to the FISC for “many months.”

Yet, as we mentioned last night, the WSJ article claims that the program actually went on for three years:

For example, a recent Snowden document showed that the surveillance court ruled that the NSA had set up an unconstitutional collection effort. Officials say it was an unintentional mistake made in 2008 when it set filters on programs like these that monitor Internet traffic; NSA uncovered the inappropriate filtering in 2011 and reported it.

No biggie. The NSA just illegally collected information that clearly violated the 4th Amendment (even the rubberstamp FISC says so!) for three years. But there’s no abuse. No sir. No problems at all.

Marcy Wheeler, however, puts two and two together, and notes that the “start” of this admitted unconstitutional spying was in 2008 — which is exactly when the telcos received immunity from all such cases involving warrantless wiretapping. And, so, she points out the administration and various NSA defenders may actually be using an incredibly twisted level of reasoning to claim that this program that violated the 4th Amendment doesn’t count as a “violation” because since the telcos have immunity, there’s no one to “prosecute” for breaking the law. Under this twisted interpretation, the government grants telcos retroactive immunity on such surveillance, and can then use that immunity to pretend that everything it does is legal since the telcos can’t be prosecuted. If that turns out to be true, it’s downright evil.

And, you wonder why the key part of CISPA was to basically extend blanket immunity on privacy violations between not just telcos and the government, but basically all tech companies. The more immunity the government grants, the more “legal” all its actions become. It’s sickening.

August 22, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

South America: UNASUR To Build Fibre-Optic ‘Mega Ring’

By Chelsea Gray | The Argentina Independent | August 21, 2013

unasurThe Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has approved plans for an optic fibre mega-ring which will break its members’ “dependence on the US, and provide a safer and cheaper means of communication.”

The fibre optic ring will become part of a ten-year plan to physically integrate all 12 UNASUR member states. The line, which will reach up to 10,000 kilometres long and will be managed by state enterprises from each country it crosses, is expected to interconnect South America through higher coverage and cheaper internet connections.

Industrial Minister of Uruguay, Roberto Kreimerman, explained that “it is about having a connection with great capacity that allows us to unite our countries together with the developed world.”

He continued to say, “We are considering that, at most, in a couple of years we will have one of these rings finalised.” He also added that ”I think the economy, security, and integration are the three important things we need in countries where Internet use is advancing exponentially.”

At the moment, up to 80% of Latin America’s communications go through the US. However, plans for an independent communication line comes shortly after the US was discovered to have been spying on Latin American data. The National Security Agency (NSA) were revealed to have been monitoring emails and intercepting telephone logs, spying on energy, military, politics, and terror activity across the continent.

UNASUR is made up of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

August 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

NSA has ability to read 75% of all US internet traffic – report

RT | August 21, 2013

Newly unveiled National Security Agency programs detail how the US government has the ability to monitor approximately 75 per cent of American internet traffic, and further discloses how telecommunications companies are compelled to provide such data.

The programs – known as Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium, and Stormbrew – are able to monitor the writing of emails, not just a message’s metadata, according to The Wall Street Journal. The programs also affect digital phone calls placed inside the US.

Among other capabilities, the systems can “reach roughly 75 per cent of all US internet traffic, including a wide array of communications by foreigners and Americans.”

The NSA commands internet service providers (ISPs) to send “various stream internet traffic it believes most likely to contain foreign intelligence,” then copies that data and searches through it.

NSA officials have claimed in recent weeks that the intelligence agency “touches” a mere 1.6 percent of internet traffic, although TechCrunch speculated that rhetoric refers to information that has been sent to the NSA and “culled to their liking.”

Perhaps the most disturbing news is that the NSA worked in conjunction with the FBI to monitor all email and text messages for the six month period surrounding the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah.

One NSA official, who wished to remain anonymous, told The Wall Street Journal that the NSA is “not wallowing willy-nilly” through Americans’ communications. “We want high-grade ore.”

The WSJ report is based on interviews with current and former government officials familiar with the NSA’s tactics. They claim the filtering was designed to identify communications that either begin or end outside the US, although the “broad reach makes it more likely that purely domestic communications will be incidentally intercepted and collected,” not foreign ones.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said that oversight is in place in the event that domestic communication is inadvertently recorded, including “minimization procedures that are approved by the US attorney general and designed to protect the privacy of United States persons.”

While lawmakers have asserted that NSA surveillance is necessary to protect national security, Blarney is known to have been in use since before the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The program was operating near important fiber-optic landing points, including one in San Francisco, California and another in New Jersey, with the intention of intercepting foreign communications entering and exiting the US.

Such laws are permitted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was expanded in 2008. Section 702 grants the NSA and the FBI the ability to monitor people who are “reasonably believed” to be located outside the US. Before FISA was expanded, it allowed the government to track targets if there was “probable cause” that they were an “agent of a foreign power.”

The PRISM surveillance program is also permitted under Section 702. One of the first Edward Snowden leaks to be published, an internal NSA document described PRISM’s method of collecting stored internet communications as “the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports.”

Multiple telecommunications companies have denied that PRISM requests administered by the government require bulk data turnovers – an indication that they are more precise than the internet filtration systems under Barney and other newly disclosed programs.

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August 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Key Loophole Allows NSA To Avoid Telling Congress About Thousands Of Abuses

By Mike Masnick | Techdirt | August 19, 2013

As we’ve noted, one of the key claims by NSA surveillance defenders was that the program had strong oversight from Congress. However, with the revelations last week about thousands of abuses, it’s become quite clear that this isn’t true. Late on Friday, Rep. Jim Himes, who is on the House Intelligence Committee, claimed that he was unaware of those violations, was told that there were “no abuses” and that these kinds of abuses are unacceptable:

Remember, this isn’t just a Congressional Rep, but a member of the Intelligence Committee, who is in charge of overseeing the NSA surveillance program. Hell, he’s even on the oversight subcommittee, and no one told him about any abuses, despite thousands happening per year. That’s astounding, and highlights how the claims of Congressional oversight are clearly bogus. Furthermore, it makes a mockery of the statement that House Intelligence Committee chair Mike Rogers put out on Friday, claiming that “The Committee has been apprised of previous incidents.” Himes says that’s completely untrue.

How is this happening? Marc Ambinder explains the “loophole” that the NSA has used to avoid telling Congress about these abuses. It’s a bit convoluted, but basically, the NSA believes that Congressional oversight only covers spying done under FISA — the law that covers any spying done on Americans, for which a court order is needed. FISA doesn’t cover spying on non-US persons (i.e., foreigners who are outside the country at the time of surveillance). And that’s where some of the abuses came in, and the NSA believes that since those aren’t “FISA” related, and Congress is only overseeing “FISA,” they don’t have to report those mistakes.

Since the focus of oversight efforts has been on FISA compliance, NSA gives Congress detailed narratives of violations of the FISA-authorized data sets, like when metadata about American phone records was stored too long, when a wrong set of records was searched by an analyst or when names or “selectors” not previously cleared by FISA were used to acquire information from the databases. In these cases, the NSA’s compliance staff sends incident reports to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for each “significant” FISA violation, and those reports include “significant details,” the official said.

But privacy violations of this sort comprise just one third of those analyzed by the inspector general. Of the 2,776 violations reported by the NSA from May 2011 to May 2012, more than two-thirds were counted as E.O. 12333 incidents. And the agency doesn’t provide Congress detailed reports on E.O. 12333 violations.

Now, you can argue these are very different circumstances, but Ambinder points out that’s not really true in many cases:

In some ways, it’s a distinction without a difference: it does not matter to U.S. citizens whether their phone call was accidentally intercepted by an analyst focusing on U.S.-based activities or those involving a foreign country. But the difference is relevant as it keeps Congress uninformed and unable to perform its oversight duties because the NSA doesn’t provide the intelligence committees with a detailed narrative about the latter type of transgressions.

For example, if someone’s e-mails were inadvertently obtained by the NSA’s International Transit Switch Collection programs, it would count as 12333 error and not a FISA error, even though the data was taken from U.S. communication gateways, and NSA would not notify Congress.

So, basically, any “error” that involves spying on Americans doesn’t “count” as an abuse, as far as the NSA tells Congress (who keep claiming they’re in charge of oversight), because they “obtained” it outside the US, and the “error” is considered outside of FISA. That’s a pretty massive loophole through which the NSA can hide its abuse of programs from Congress.

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August 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , | Leave a comment

Guardian editor on Miranda detention: ‘Terror and journalism being aligned’

RT | August 21, 2013

The UK government created a “lawless bit of Britain” under the terror act which suspends all checks and balances, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said in an interview, adding that the paper is financing David Miranda’s lawsuit against the Home Office.

Rusbridger called ports and airport transit lounges a “stateless bit of Britain,” where a government can use the word “terror” to “suspend all the normal rules.”

The comment was made in reference to UK authorities detaining and questioning David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, for nine hours in London’s Heathrow airport on Sunday under Schedule 7 of the UK’s anti-terrorism law.

Miranda told the BBC in an interview that he felt threatened during his 9-hour detention and as if “he were naked in front of a crowd.”

Greewald’s partner said that he was “forced to give passwords” to email and social media accounts to his interrogators. Authorities allegedly threatened him with prison if he did not comply.

Inside Britain, journalists and anyone else carrying material have more opportunities to stand their ground. “You can go before a judge, you can argue about public interest and the public interest of that work,” Rusbridger said.

“The disturbing thing about the way they treated Miranda was the use of this terror act, and there is a little noticed section there, Schedule 7, which effectively suspends all the normal checks and balances that you would have if you were arrested in the Heathrow car park,” he added.

Rusbridger believes there are “confusions in law” when it comes to where you are when you’re in a transit lounge and “whose laws you apply to.”

The UK created this “lawless bit of Britain” over a decade ago, according to the editor. It is a place “where anybody can be questioned for up to nine hours without access to a solicitor and where all your belongings can be confiscated and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said.

Financing Miranda’s lawsuit

Rusbridger revealed that the Guardian is funding Miranda’s legal actions as he seeks a judicial review of the legal basis for his detention and assurances that the property seized from him by police will not be examined.

“The Guardian is supporting that action and we are supporting that in terms of financing it, because David Miranda was acting on behalf of Glenn Greenwald at the time that he was detained. I think it’s a good thing to challenge that law and see exactly why terror and journalism are being aligned in this disturbing way.”

“Miranda wasn’t really on assignment, he is Glenn Greenwald’s partner and Glenn Greenwald is a very busy man and he assists Glenn in his journalistic work. And he was acting as a messenger or intermediary in a way that is difficult for Glenn at the moment because he’s got a lot of work to be doing in Brazil and I think he’s also a bit nervous about traveling at the moment.”

‘The best choice was to destroy hard drives’

Rusbridger also explained that he chose to destroy the Guardian’s hard drives instead of complying with the government because he wanted to avoid a legal dead-end, where the paper would be prevented from publishing Snowden’s leaked documents.

“We were faced effectively with an ultimatum from the British government that if we didn’t hand back the material or destroy it then they would move to law,” he said. “That would mean prior restraint, a concept that is anathema in America and other parts of the world, in which the state can effectively prevent a publisher from publishing, and I didn’t want to get into that position.”

Rusbridger revealed in an article posted on the British newspaper’s website on Monday that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.

Rusbridger told security officials that the Guardian had other copies in America and Brazil, “so they wouldn’t be achieving anything.”

“But once it was obvious that they would be going to law, I would rather destroy the copy than hand it back to them or allow the courts to freeze our reporting.”

“I don’t think we had Snowden’s consent to hand it back and I didn’t want to help the UK authorities know what he had given us. So to me I was not going to hand it back to the government and I was happy to destroy it because it was not going to inhibit our reporting, we would simply do it from America and not from London.”

Rusbridger described the UK as being “genuinely torn” during negotiations.

“To begin with they were reasonable conversations, it was a reasonable dialogue and all I can say is that at some point something changed and that switched into a threat of legal action. I don’t know what changed or why they changed, I imagine there were different conversations going on within the security apparatus within Whitehall and within Downing Street and at some point a message came to me that we had had our fun and that the time had come to return the documents.” 

Revealing the destruction of hard drives

Rusbridger told The Huffington Post that the Guardian could not reveal the destruction of the hard drives earlier because of “operational reasons.”

“Having been through this and not written about it on the day for operational reasons, I was sort of waiting for a moment when the government’s attitude to journalism – when there was an issue that made this relevant,” Rusbridger said.

The editor believed that moment was Miranda’s detention.

“The fact that David Miranda had been detained under this slightly obscure schedule of the terrorism act seemed a useful moment to write about the background to the government’s attitude to this in general,” he said.

When asked why the Guardian did not devote a front-page article to the issue, Rusbridger said “it was a personal take really.”

“I felt this was a piece of background that readers ought to know about it, but I wanted to write about it in my voice instead of putting in a news story.”

“It wasn’t immediate news…it felt more natural to write about it in a more discursive way,” he added.

‘On a road to total surveillance’

The Guardian editor highlighted that in this age of “mass collection of millions of emails, details of phone calls, texts…the business of reporting securely and having confidential sources is becoming difficult.”

“Journalists should be aware of the difficulties they are going to face in the future because everybody in 2013 leaves a very big digital trail, which is very easily accessed.”

Snowden risked his own freedom to draw attention to the “degree to which we are on a road to total surveillance, we are not there yet, but in these documents there is the stated ambition to scoop up everything and save it all and to master the internet.”

Rusbridger argued that the UK faces the danger of being “complacent about what is being revealed.”

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August 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Egyptian army kills journalist, wounds another

Middle East Monitor | August 20, 2013

Security sources said that Egyptian security forces killed a senior editor in state Al-Ahram newspaper Tamer abdul-Ra’ouf at a military checkpoint near the city of Damanhour on Monday night.

The sources said that the security forces shot fire at Abdul-Ra’ouf and Hamid al-Barbari, the correspondent of Al-Jomhoriyya newspaper; state newspaper, too. Abdul-Ra’of immediately died and Al-Barbari sustained serious injuries.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the Egyptian army said that the journalists’ car casted doubts as the journalists were driving very fast during the night curfew. The statement said that the journalists did not respond to the army’s calls or warning shots to stop.

“There was no exaggerated use of fire shooting or intended killing,” the statement, which called for people to commit to the curfew, said.

Egyptian Interim government has imposed curfew in wake of bloody dispersal of two major sit-ins for pro-Morsi supporters in Cairo. More than one thousand Egyptians killed and couples of thousands injured.

Arab Organisation for Human Right in the UK said that “arbitrary” killings in Egypt against protesters calling for the end of the military coup in Egypt.


Egyptian journalist slapped with 4-day detention after surviving army shooting

Egyptian Journalist who was injured after army forces opened fired on him and killed his colleague is accused of possessing unlicensed weapons

Ahram Online | August 21, 2013

Damanhour prosecution ordered late Tuesday the detention of Al-Gomhoreya journalist Hamed El-Barbary, who had survived an army shooting a day earlier, for four days pending investigation after being charged with possessing weapons.

Tamer Abdel-Raouf, Bureau chief of Al-Ahram newspaper in Beheira, was shot dead on Monday evening while driving his car a few hours after the beginning of the state-imposed curfew at 7pm. El-Barbary, who was in the same car, got injured.

After he was hospitalised, El-Barbary testified that army forces at a checkpoint located south of Damanhour, northern Beheira governorate, fired at the car after ordering the driver, Abdel-Raouf, not to pass through. He said Abdel-Raouf complied but forces shot him anyway.

Earlier, Egyptian Armed Forces Spokesman Colonel Ahmed Ali said the forces did not intend to kill them.

In his statement, Ali said that the passengers “breached the curfew, drove quickly towards the security checkpoint and did not comply with calls to stop or warning shots fired in the air.”

He added that the car did not stop for the forces to know the identity of its passengers.

On 14 August, Egypt’s interim Cabinet re-introduced a state of emergency, which includes a daily curfew starting at 7pm until 6am in 14 governorates. This came amid recurrent clashes across the nation between security forces and supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi.

Journalists and media personnel are officially exempt from the curfew.

August 20, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Subjugation - Torture | , , | Leave a comment

Cellphone tracking cases highlight privacy concerns in digital age

Rt | August 20, 2013

In recent weeks, two cert petitions were filed seeking review of whether the Fourth Amendment covers police searches of cellphone records upon arrest.

From mobile phone and GPS tracking to license plate reading and domestic surveillance drones — not to mention recent revelations of widespread abuse of surveillance capabilities by the National Security Agency — these cases and many others highlight major questions that remain unanswered regarding how privacy rights of Americans can co-exist with the use of rapidly evolving technologies.

State and federal law enforcement agencies have wasted no time seizing on gaps and omissions in established legal precedent to justify vast, routine surveillance of the American public which tests Fourth Amendment rights.

On July 30, a petition was filed in Riley v. California challenging a previous ruling in a California appellate court that affirmed the petitioner’s convictions, which stemmed in part from a questionable search of his smartphone in 2009 following a traffic stop for expired license plates. And late last week, the US Department of Justice filed a petition in United States v. Wurie asking for review of a First Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that police needed a warrant to access a suspect’s phone records. Regarding Wurie, the government contends a cell phone is no different from any other item on a suspect at the time of arrest. The search pertaining to Wurie occurred in 2007.

On the surface, the two cases have much in common. But in Riley, the phone in question is a smartphone – a Samsung Instinct M800. In Wurie, the cellphone was a Verizon LG flip-phone incapable of maintaining the breadth of information – including internet searches, email, photos and other media – that a smartphone can store.

As of May, Pew Research Center found that 91 percent of Americans own cellphones, and 61 percent of those cellphones are smartphones.

GPS technology has received more scrutiny from courts than cellphones have in recent years. Last week, the Justice Department appeared before a federal court defending its right to shield legal memos that provide guidance to federal prosecutors and investigators for how to use GPS devices and other surveillance technologies from the public. In a sense, the memos were released upon a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil LIberties Union (ACLU), though their contents were heavily redacted.

The memos (read here and here) were legal interpretations of a January 2012 Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Jones in which the court ruled the use of GPS technology to track a car’s movements constitutes a “search” within the parameters of the Fourth Amendment. Upon release of the indecipherable legal memos, the ACLU filed a lawsuit seeking the full, uncensored guidelines.

“While we agree that executive branch lawyers should be able to freely discuss legal theories, once those opinions become official government policy the public has an absolute right to know what they are,” wrote Brian Hauss, legal fellow with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. “Otherwise, the government is operating under secret law that makes accountability to the people impossible.”

The ruling in United States v. Jones left many unanswered questions regarding the use of other location-monitoring technologies pertaining to, for example, the tracking of cellphones or the use of license-plate readers – not to mention the use of surveillance drones in the US. In addition, the Jones ruling fell short of even determining whether a warrant is necessary to use GPS devices.

Building on the Jones decision, New Jersey recently became a state ahead of the curve in defining rules for law enforcement and privacy rights in the digital age. The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled in July that state police must have a search warrant before obtaining tracking information from cellphone providers.

“Using a cellphone to determine the location of its owner can be far more revealing than acquiring toll billing, bank, or internet subscriber records,” Chief Justice Stuart Rabner wrote in the case’s opinion. “Details about the location of a cellphone can provide an intimate picture of one’s daily life and reveal not just where people go – which doctors, religious services and stores they visit – but also the people and groups they choose to affiliate with. That information cuts across a broad range of personal ties with family, friends, political groups, health care providers and others.”

In June, Montana became the first state to require police to obtain a warrant before tracking a suspect’s cellphone.

In March 2012, the ACLU reviewed records from over 200 local police departments, finding vast, aggressive use of cellphone tracking for emergency and nonemergency uses.

Another ACLU report, released in July of this year, queried around 600 local and state police departments (and other state and federal agencies) via public records requests to assess how these agencies use automatic license plate readers. The civil liberties organization found massive databases of innocent motorists’ location information gleaned through hundreds of millions of “plate reads” by the ubiquitous readers. Data is often stored for an indefinite period of time, revealing just how easy it is for law enforcement – as well as many private companies – to track any license plate with few legal restrictions in place to stop them.

For example, for every one million plates that were read in the state of Maryland in the first half of 2012, 2000 (0.2 percent) were hits, mostly regarding registration or emissions issues. Of those 2000 hits, less than 3 percent (47) were potentially connected to more serious crimes.

In addition, much of this network of readers throughout the nation is in place thanks to a large amount of federal funding – $50 million in the last five years.

Approval of licenses for domestic drones has begun, as RT has reported, even though solid rules for their eventual use in American skies have yet to materialize from either Congress or the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA expects as many as 30,000 drones in American airspace by 2020.

For now, many local law enforcement agencies are leading the quest for drone-use approval, though requests for commercial drones are mounting. As of February 15, 2013, there were 327 active drone certifications despite there being no regulatory framework in place. However, the FAA did get around to certifying two types of unmanned aircraft for civilian use in the US in late July.

In the meantime, federal government agencies have used drones domestically both out in the open and in secret. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has admitted to already using surveillance drones despite no established law or guidelines for their use. The US Department of Homeland Security has used surveillance-capable drones along the border for years, even allowing other federal agencies to use its fleet to the tune of 250 times in 2012 alone, The New York Times reported.

August 20, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

UK ordered Guardian to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations

RT | August 20, 2013

UK authorities reportedly raided the Guardian’s office in London to destroy hard drives in an effort to stop future publications of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The action is unlikely to prevent new materials coming out.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed in a Monday article posted on the British newspaper’s website that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.

After more talks, two “security experts” from GCHQ – the British version of the National Security Agency – visited the Guardian’s London offices.

Rusbridger wrote that the government officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements.

“We can call off the black helicopters,” Rusbridger said one of the officials joked.

Another source familiar with the event confirmed to Reuters that Guardian employees destroyed the computers as UK officials observed.

During negotiations with the government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfill its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.

But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough.

“You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.

In the article, Rusbridger explained that because of existing “international collaborations” between journalists, it was still possible to report the story and “take advantage of the most permissive legal environments.”

“I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations… Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that [reporter Glenn] Greenwald lived in Brazil?” wrote Rusbridger.

“The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents.”

Rusbridger pointed out that the whole incident felt like a “pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.”

The news comes after Sunday’s international incident during which David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was held at Heathrow airport under the UK Terrorism Act for the maximum time allowed before pressing charges. Greenwald was the reporter who exclusively broke the Snowden story.

The editor promised that the Guardian will “continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.”

Another US security source told Reuters that Miranda’s detention was meant to send a message to those who received Snowden’s classified documents, about how serious the UK is in closing all the leaks in relation to the whistleblower’s revelations.

Greenwald, who first published secrets leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, responded by promising to release more documents. He added that the UK would be “sorry” for detaining his partner for nine hours.

Snowden, who has been granted asylum by Russia, gave Greenwald up to 20,000 documents with details about the US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ surveillance operations.

‘US is the intellectual author behind detention of Miranda’

Lawyer Eva Golinger told RT that the UK has violated all concepts of freedom of the press. “We are talking about a media outlet. Journalists and their spouses and partners being detained and interrogated. So clearly there has been a decision made that everything related to Edward Snowden must be captured no matter what, violating anyone’s right under any country’s laws.”

Golinger believes that government’s pressure on journalists could inspire some to cover the topic of government surveillance even more, instead of discouraging them to do so.

“The more principled the people reporting are, the more they will continue to pursue that work in the face of threat. Such cheap threats and intimidation give people even more reasons to continue doing what they are doing because it shows that those in power are clearly frightened of the information that is being put out,” she explained.

“At the same time it could certainly intimidate other journalists and create the environment of self-censorship, where many would be unwilling to take the risks that are involved with national security reporting, particularly when it comes to the US.”

Golinger argued that US is the “intellectual author behind the detainment of Miranda.”

“We are talking about a search and capture that is going on for Edward Snowden and it is the US that is leading that effort. It is not the UK or other European nations, they are merely abiding by the wishes of the US…What I believe is that Washington has simply put out a request to all of its allies that anyone related to Edward Snowden must be detained if they come into your territory and the UK abided by that and did their duty.”

August 20, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

YouTube bans Press TV’s new page

Press TV – August 20, 2013

YouTube has disabled Press TV’s new account under pressure from the Israeli-American Anti-Defamation League (ADL) that ordered the video-sharing site to end the Iranian channel’s live broadcast.

“On August 20, YouTube’s parent company Google deactivated Press TV’s new account weeks after disabling the channel’s official page,” said Press TV Newsroom Director Hamid Reza Emadi.

“YouTube broadcasts a variety of obscene images and provides a platform for terrorists to propagate their dangerous ideologies, but it cannot tolerate the broadcast of an alternative media channel from Iran,” he said, adding that YouTube is doing what the ADL is ordering it to do.

“ADL has contacted YouTube regarding concerns about Press TV,” reads an article on ADL’s official website, further noting that the station’s “broadcast on Youtube comes at the a time when the United States, the European Union and others in the international community are seeking to isolate Iran.”

Since January 2012, Press TV has come under mounting pressure from European governments and satellite companies, which have taken the alternative channel off the air across the European Union.

In a statement published on the official website of the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the pro-Israeli lobby has lauded Spain’s efforts to ban Press TV, saying Madrid has pulled the plug on the Iranian channel following months of negotiations with the AJC.

Meanwhile, Press TV has created a third YouTube page.

“Viewers can now watch our videos at http://www.youtube.com/Presstvonair ,” he added, stressing that the channel will create more and more pages to counter the YouTube censorship.

August 20, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

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