03.06.14

Privacy, Spying on Congress, Drones, Ukraine Intervention, and More

Posted in News Roundup at 1:14 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Privacy

• Careless.data

  The authorities must take the necessary time to remedy the slapdash introduction of a database containing the medical records of the entire population of England.

• Care.data is in chaos. It breaks my heart

  Medical data has huge power to do good, but it presents risks too. When leaked, it cannot be unleaked. When lost, public trust cannot be easily regained

• Why you should delete your Facebook account

  Facebook still gets a lot of press these days, and it supposedly has more than a billion users. But I’ve pretty much given up on it for business and personal use. Over the last couple of years I’ve found that Facebook just wasn’t worth the effort and time that I was putting into it.

  First I deleted the Facebook pages for my blogs, and then I eventually deleted my Facebook account altogether.

Illegal Surveillance on Surveillance Oversight

• CIA spied on Senate committee writing damning torture report and Obama knew about it

• C.I.A. Employees Face New Inquiry Amid Clashes on Detention Program

• CIA spied on Senate committee writing damning torture report and Obama knew about it

• Obama knew CIA secretly monitored intelligence committee, senator claims

• Mark Udall: ‘CIA Tried to Intimidate the Intelligence Committee’

• Brennan Letter to Wyden Acknowledges that CFAA Applies to the CIA

  U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) released the following letter from Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan acknowledging that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act applies to the CIA. The question was asked of Brennan by Wyden in a public hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on January 29, 2014. Wyden is a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

• Udall Challenges White House to Support ‘Fullest Possible Declassification’ of Intelligence Committee’s Torture Study

• Supreme Court Takes A Pass On Challenging Legality Of Government Surveillance Programs

  This refusal will give those who claim the programs are “legal” another notch on the rhetoric belt, as if not discussing the legality (or illegality) of the program was the equivalent to being found legal by the highest court in the land. If the courts are unwilling to entertain surveillance-related cases, either by refusal to grant standing or refusal to hear the case at all, the defenders can continue to claim the programs are legal.

Drones

• Karzai, Corruption, and CIA Bags of Cash

  You’ve got to hand it to Hamid Karzai. He is nothing if not brazen. Other world leaders might be embarrassed if caught accepting bags of cash from the CIA. Not Karzai. Instead, he is bragging to reporters that the CIA money was “an easy source of petty cash” and reassuring anyone who will listen that he will continue on the CIA payroll.

  The question is: What is the CIA getting for its (read: our) money? I am not opposed in principle to the CIA paying off the leaders of other countries; it has certainly done so before. If intelligently used, cash can be a valuable part of an influence operation; it can be a vital source of support for strong pro-American leaders such as Ramon Magsaysay, the president of the Philippines from 1953 to 1957.

• Karan Casey Concert to Support Anti-Drone Protests

  Have you heard about the Ithacans in Dewitt court battles, sentenced to jail for peaceful demonstrations against drone warfare at Hancock Field? And wondered if there was any way you could help?

• Civilian fatalities caused by US-drone attacks significantly higher than estimated

  Concretely, the figures did not include injured individuals that died after been transported as wounded to other localities, such as hospitals or camps. The demise occurring after, even long afterwards, and as consequence of injures received in the combats or air strikes. In other words, media reports on “war casualties”– in the context of the given combat or air-strike event which is the subject in the report – invariably refer as fatalities only to those who perished in situ and at that very occasion.

Civil Rights

• Attorneys for Barrett Brown want case on linking to hacked material dismissed

• Journalist Barrett Brown Wins a Victory in His Case as Government Dismisses Charges Related to Link-Sharing

• Ed: iophk commented on this saying that “The rationale for the arrest, the hyperlink, is interesting in the context of the EU consultation which ended today. Some of the questions pertained to possible changes to copyright law disallowing hyperlinking to external objects.”

• Feds Dismiss Charges Against Barrett Brown For Linking After Realizing They Had No Case

  Well, well, well. We were about to put up the post below, describing the arguments that Barrett Brown’s lawyers filed about why the criminal charges against him for sharing a link (which they claimed was trafficking in stolen credit card details) were completely bogus… and it appears that the DOJ itself was convinced. Just hours after Brown’s lawyers filed their comprehensive argument, the DOJ has filed a motion to dismiss the criminal charges that stem from the cutting and pasting of the link. The other charges, concerning threatening acts (described below) and “obstruction of justice” (for hiding his laptop in a cabinet) remain, meaning that he is still facing significant jail time. But the core charge, concerning cutting and pasting a link, is now being dismissed. Of course, it’s still a travesty that the DOJ ever included that in the indictment in the first place.

• A Few Surprises in the New Guantánamo Prisoner List

  This latter category, comprising 48 of the prisoners, was profoundly troubling to those of us who had looked closely at what purported to be the evidence against the prisoners, and had concluded, with good reason, that it was profoundly unreliable. This is because it consisted, to an alarming degree, of self-incriminating statements made by the prisoners themselves, often in circumstances in which coercion, or other forms of pressure were used, or of statements made by other prisoners, even though many of these prisoners had been identified as unreliable by personnel at Guantánamo, and also, in some cases, by judges reviewing the supposed evidence in the prisoners’ habeas corpus petitions.

NSA vs. Privacy

• Between the NSA and Patriot Act, is data privacy extinct?

• Telecoms Push Back on NSA Proposal

  The central pillar of Obama’s plan to overhaul the NSA surveillance programs calls for shifting storage of Americans’ phone data from the government to telecoms or an independent third party. But telecoms don’t want that job. Companies say they are wary of being forced to standardize their own data collection to conform to the NSA’s needs.

• Ex-NSA Official Inglis Warns Tech Firms: Be Transparent

• NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Intvw Transcript Part II: Obama, Secrecy, Corporate Espionage, 911, Star Trek and more

• NSA’s civil liberties impact to be measured by federal watchdog

  The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) is the federal agency within the executive branch that’s expected to independently review anti-terrorism efforts to see if they comply with established law and to ensure “liberty concerns” are addressed. Some think a privacy group so close to the President would only be a “rubber-stamp” operation. But the PCLOB surprised more than a few when its recent 238-page report bluntly condemned the NSA surveillance program collecting bulk telephony call records as illegal, saying it should be shut down. Now the PCLOB is turning its attention to “PRISM,” the purported NSA surveillance program that has come to light through leaks to the media from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

• NSA chief hints at ‘media-leak’ legislation

• Keith Alexander Supports Law To Gag Press So He Can Get His Preferred Online Surveillance Bill Passed

• Former NSA Official Claims Snowden Set Agency Back A Decade, Tells Putin To ‘Return’ Whistleblower

  Another former NSA official has offered his contribution to the “Snowden has destroyed the NSA” narrative. Jack Israel, former “technical director for NSA’s analysis & production directorate” has posted an op-ed at the Baltimore Sun that makes all the usual stops on the talking point circuit on its way to claiming the leaks have done “permanent damage” to the NSA.

  Sept. 11th? Referenced heavily. The bulk of Israel’s op-ed recounts the agency’s actions after the Sept. 11th attacks, including its newfound interest in the internet. Rather than acknowledging the failure to collaborate that allowed a known terrorist (and 9/11 participant) to reenter the country unnoticed, Israel blames this on another, older leak.

Nobel Peace Prize is a Joke

• Russia’s Vladimir Putin, NSA leaker Edward Snowden among Nobel Peace Prize nominees

  Vladimir Putin, the Russian strongman who faces international criticism for this week’s invasion of Ukraine, is among the 278 people nominated for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Putin was reportedly nominated for his work in defusing last year’s Syrian crisis.

• Pope, Putin, Snowden among this year’s Nobel Peace Prize nominees

  Pope Francis, Russian President Vladimir Putin and NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden are among a record 278 people nominated for the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize.

• Putin Reportedly Joins List Of Nobel Peace Prize Nominees

Ukraine

• US, NATO, CIA supporting nazis in Ukraine project

• Kiev snipers hired by new coalition, not Yanukovych – Estonian FM to Ashton

• Ukrainian ultra-rightists given major cabinet posts in government

  The ultra-right Svoboda Party has scored six major cabinet ministries in the government of Arseniy Yatsenyuk approved by the Ukrainian parliament on Thursday. Svoboda is an ultra-right, anti-Semitic, Russophobic party with its base of support in the Western Ukraine.

• Dennis Kucinich Blames US Meddling for Russian Invasion

  Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was spurred by U.S. behind-the-scenes actions, says former Ohio congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich.

  Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday accused Kucinich of being a pacifist because of his opposition to the Iraq war, and Kucinich countered that war is wrong but not all U.S. military action is so.

  O’Reilly then asked how Kucinich would have handled the Ukraine crisis had he been president.

Assange

• Nick Mutch talks journalism and Julian Assange with Chris Hedges

  Chris Hedges is among the last of a dying breed: the war correspondent that has spent his life with society’s outcasts and the faceless victims of conflcit. I ask how he came into journalism and what he thinks are the crucial attributes for a journalist. “I originally came to journalism through the priesthood actually. I was studying at Harvard Divinity school, originally intending to become a minister when I met a fantastic guy named Robert Cox. Robert had been editor of the Buenos Aires Herald during the dirty war in the late 70’s. He was a very brave man. The government at the time’s way of disposing of its enemies was ‘disappearing them’; they’d simply vanish into the night, usually never to be seen again. Bob used to print the names of those who had been disappeared the previous day above the fold in his newspaper.

  “Eventually, he himself was disappeared, although his life was saved by the intervention of the British and American governments. He really opened my eyes to the possibility of journalism, and what journalism can do.”

  He emphasises a balanced approach. “One of the most important things you can do as a journalist is have a strict sense of objectivity and wish to stick to the truth. Orwell is the absolute epitome of this aspect of our profession, particularly in books such as Homage to Catalonia. I’ll illustrate with an example from my own career. When I covered the war in Kosovo, I spent the vast majority of my time covering the atrocities of the Serbian security forces, who, if they hadn’t been stopped by a NATO intervention, would have committed murder, massacre and rape on a huge scale. But when they withdrew, their role was replaced by that of Albanian thugs who instead starting beating and murdering elderly Serb couples who had nothing whatsoever to do with Milosevic and his crimes

Police

• Senate rejects Obama nominee who defended cop killer

  Seven Democrats voted against moving forward with President Obama’s nomination of Adegbile, which the Fraternal Order of Police and other groups opposed because of his involvement in the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

• Video Shows Man Suffering Deliverance-Style Treatment by Small-town Texas Cops (Video)

  That’s when Electra police officers Matt Wood and Gary Ellis approached Nesin, setting off a series of actions that will leave your blood boiling. The pair engaged in unethical police behavior starting off with asking Nesin for his identification even though he had broken no laws, all the way to Electra city attorney Todd Greenwood admitting that they do not follow the Constitution in their town, with a lot of strong-armed bullying taking place in between.

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