03.09.14

Weekend News: Surveillance, Drones, Torture, and More

Posted in News Roundup at 3:35 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: News about power and abuse thereof, including — for the most part — surveillance

Ukraine

• American Unlimited Imperialism:Now Ukraine

  By shamelessly exploiting the terrible tragedy of 11 September 2001, the Bush Jr. administration set forth to steal a hydrocarbon empire from the Muslim states and peoples living in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf and Africa under the bogus pretexts of (1) fighting a war against international terrorism; and/or (2) eliminating weapons of mass destruction; and/or (3) the promotion of democracy; and/or (4) self-styled “humanitarian intervention”/responsibility to protect. Only this time the geopolitical stakes are infinitely greater than they were a century ago: control and domination of two-thirds of the world’s hydrocarbon resources and thus the very fundament and energizer of the global economic system – oil and gas. The Bush Jr./ Obama administrations have already targeted the remaining hydrocarbon reserves of Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia for further conquest or domination, together with the strategic choke-points at sea and on land required for their transportation. In this regard, the Bush Jr. administration announced the establishment of the U.S. Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in order to better control, dominate, and exploit both the natural resources and the variegated peoples of the continent of Africa, the very cradle of our human species. Libya and the Libyans became the first victims to succumb to AFRICOM under the Obama administration. They will not be the last.

• The Looting Of Ukraine Has Begun

  According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. http://www.kommersant.ua/doc/2424454 It is Greece all over again.

• As the Ukraine debate rages, both sides are getting it wrong

  It’s possible to condemn Vladimir Putin’s invasion – and to believe that Kiev’s new government is no place for fascists

• Ukraine A Carefully Orchestrated CIA Coup d’état

• Stating the Obvious

  One of the ironies of the Ukraine situation which has drawn no comment I can find is that the Ukrainians have been lectured on democracy by Baroness Ashton, who heads EU foreign policy despite never having been elected to anything.

Law

• Judge says prosecutors should follow the law. Prosecutors revolt.

• Senate Democrats Reject Justice Department Nominee Over Abu-Jamal Case

  The seven Democrats rejected the nomination because Adegbile served as the litigation director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund when the organization legally represented political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal in a 2011 appeal from the death penalty.

NSA

• Administration And NSA Continue To Avoid The Privacy Vs. Security ‘Discussion’

  This “discussion” about the whole “security vs. privacy” thing the administration claims it has “welcomed” since the Snowden leaks began? Yeah. Still not happening. As Cal Borchers at BetaBoston reports, government reps at an MIT event focused on “big data and privacy” couldn’t have appeared less interested in discussing any of the implications of widespread domestic surveillance.

• Shhh! Don’t tell IT how we send documents around here

  Ignoring easier ways to share data, a tech-challenged boss and manager devise an expensive and unnecessary workaround

• The NSA Has An Advice Columnist. Seriously.

  Surveillance tends to sow suspicion and unease among the people who are being surveilled. Is anyone listening? Who might be the spy among us? What trouble might I get into with the things I say? These questions can eat away at the core of human relations – trust. And this is true even at the agency that is conducting the surveillance.

• NEW ATTACKS ON HTTPS TRAFFIC REVEAL PLENTY ABOUT YOUR WEB SURFING

  The paper points out a number of privacy consequences as well beyond government surveillance. For example, enhanced SSL traffic analysis by an ISP can lead to be enhanced customer data mining and intrusive targeted advertising. Employers can also more effectively monitor employees’ traffic and the techniques can also improve the censorship efforts by oppressive regimes, putting the liberties of privacy advocates at risk.

• Julian Assange tells SXSW audience: ‘NSA has grown to be a rogue agency’

• WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange: NSA critics got lucky because agency had no PR strategy

• Meet ‘Ask Zelda,’ the Advice Column for NSA Workers

• ACLU asks US appeals court to outlaw NSA mass collection of phone data

  A federal appeals court should outlaw the National Security Agency’s collection of millions of Americans’ telephone records, concentrating searches instead on terror suspects, civil liberties lawyers said in papers filed seeking a reversal of a lower-court judge who ruled the program was legal and necessary to fight terrorism.

• Weirdest Snowden leak yet: The NSA has an advice columnist

• How to solve the problem of NSA surveillance

• Eric Schmidt Claims Google’s Data is Safe From NSA’s Prying Eyes

• The NSA Cannot Keep Phone Records for Longer than Five Years, Says Court

  The NSA cannot keep American phone records for longer than five years, according to a ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court responsible for keeping the agency’s actions in check.

• Court: Government can’t hold NSA data longer

• WikiLeaks head doesn’t believe Obama is serious about NSA reform

  Julian Assange doesn’t think you should hold your breath for Barack Obama to deliver meaningful NSA reform. The WikiLeaks founder said during a talk at SXSW Interactive that he believes the president is beholden to the American spy agencies and not the public. According to the self-anointed guardian of the world’s conscience Obama has proven that he does not take concerns about the NSA’s over reaching seriously by failing to fire or prosecute people at the agency.

• SXSW 2014: Julian Assange Speaks Out On NSA, Journalism, and the Internet

• Assange for SXSW: NSA, GCHQ’s ability to spy on everyone ‘almost here’

  The NSA and GCHQ will soon have the ability to spy on the entire planet, as their capabilities double every 18 months, Julian Assange told the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference on Saturday.

• WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange talks NSA, hints at more leaks

  He also hinted that new leaks are coming from WikiLeaks, though he gave no specifics on what these might be.

• Julian Assange rails against NSA surveillance as he plans an “important” new WikiLeaks release

  At SXSW today, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange Skyped in from the Ecuadorian embassy in London to take part in an hour-long Q&A session. While the main topic of the discussion – government surveillance of the Internet – and his opposition to it, was unsurprising, Assange had some interesting points worth sharing.

• Julian Assange talks NSA, hints at coming leaks in remote video appearance at tech festival

  Speaking over Skype from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fugitive WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his living situation is a bit like prison — with a more lenient visitor policy.

• Assange at SXSW: ‘Who really wears the pants in the administration?’

• ‘What does ISP mean?’ – how government officials are flunking security challenges

  Policy on national security and protection is in the hands of people without critical technological understanding, warns cybersecurity expert

• Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange claims complete worldwide surveillance only ‘a few years’ away

  The place to be today until Tuesday is at the South by Southwest Conference at the Austin Conference Center in Austin, Texas along with 30,000 other people. This year, NSA leaker Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks founder and secret spiller Julian Assange are topping the speakers’ list.

  Yesterday Google’s chief executive, Eric Schmidt, spoke to an energetic audience and announced that the company has completed its efforts to secure user data against unauthorized access.

• Julian Assange Asks Obama to Wear Pants

  This announcement shares the same nature of secrecy with the collection of data Assange has declared that he is about to reveal. He has chosen to neither disclose a time frame nor reveal anything about the content of this new information. This is so that the concerned individuals, the “perpetrators,” do not have the chance to prepare themselves or “get a heads up.” To his credit, there is no credible speculation as to what this disclosure contains. With all his bravado in hiding, Assange was pulling the strings about getting the word out about Wikileaks. However, he is hardly the star attraction of this years SXSW conference. That distinction goes to Edward Snowden who shall also be participating through a live online feed on Monday from Russia where he seeks temporary asylum.

• Julian Assange warns about new totalitarianism at South by Southwest

  Are we in danger of entering a new age of global totalitarianism?

  So pondered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in an unnerving address to the brainy hordes at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin on Saturday afternoon, just one of the many talks and discussion sessions at this year’s event concerned with the intrusion of authoritarian eyes into the former Wild, Wild West of the Internet.

Privacy

• Why flying ‘Internet drones’ over Africa is a dumb, libertarian fantasy

  Despite what the foolish #firstworldproblems hashtag on Twitter would have you believe, my phone was probably the most out of date there. Everyone else in this Ghanaian newsroom was using Android smartphones from Samsung and HTC. A few people had cheaper Nokia Asha smartphones. There were a couple of iPhones and when the Samsung S4 came out a few months later at least one popped up. That’s not to say everyone had a smartphone, or that there wasn’t hardship. But mobile Internet connectivity – with the exception of our unstable WiFi – was not the issue. Indeed, everyone was constantly connected with the now Facebook-owned WhatsApp – to the extent that journalists would update their editors with it.

• Africa, you will have Facebook [by CIA Post]

  TechCrunch recently reported that Facebook is in talks to acquire Titan Aerospace, a drone-production company that has just started taking orders for its Solara 50. The drone is designed to fly at 65,000 feet, remaining above terrestrial weather. A typical launch sequence is initiated just after midnight, and the aircraft climbs under its own battery power. The Solara reaches altitude as the sun crests over the horizon and enters its standard day-night cycle. When the sun sets, the Solara shifts its propulsion, payload and systems to its battery banks. A battery-management system ensures voltage is maintained in the subzero atmosphere. It is designed to stay aloft for five years with a range or 2.5 million miles. Read related article.

Snowden

• Snowden still wants EU asylum, but it almost certainly won’t happen

  Next week, the European Parliament will consider an unlikely, last-ditch effort to grant Edward Snowden protection against criminal prosecution and/or extradition to the United States.

• Monday, March 10: Edward Snowden to Speak at SXSW Interactive Via Videoconference

• SXSW bring Snowden, Assange and security issues to the main event

• Snowden raised concerns within the NSA before blowing the whistle

  Edward Snowden says he reported policy or legal issues related to NSA spying to more than 10 officials before blowing the whistle

Drones

• US aviation agency to appeal drone ruling

  The US aviation agency said Friday it will appeal the dismissal of a $10,000 fine it imposed on a Swiss entrepreneur who flew a drone over a college campus to make a commercial.

• Drones used to track fighters in Mali

  As many as 12 fighters from the Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) group have been killed in a counter-terrorism operation by French forces in Mali who used drones to track down the jihadists, France’s defence minister said on Thursday.

• ​Abby calls out CNN on CNN, Oscars & drones strikes, AIPAC 2014, free Barrett Brown

  Abby Martin remarks on the ongoing media craze surrounding her remarks on RT regarding the crisis in Ukraine and features a clip of her appearance on CNN, where she took the opportunity to call out the corporate media.

• Are we ready for a taser drone capable of jolting us with 80,000 volts?

  Just as America is beginning to wake up to poor discipline and order in the nation’s police forces, those same forces are becoming even more militarized. They have weapons that can fire a massive number of bullets without control or even any accuracy. Now, they, and anyone else with the money can have a new toy: A drone that can fire taser darts and shock a person with 80,000 volts. According to a March 7 Engadget article, the weapon is called the “Chaotic Unmanned Personal Intercept Drone, or “stun copter.”

• What goes around, comes around

  Today, Uncle Sam continues to preen as the globe’s big sheriff on the side of international law even while functioning as the world’s biggest outlaw.

• A synoptic view of drones

  Technological progress in the West at the cost of human life elsewhere

• Geneva casino: Winners and losers

  However, I thought it was quite ironical — and sad — that a drone attack killed five Afghan soldiers while the Afghan President was in Sri Lanka. And guess who had launched the attack? It was NATO forces led by the Americans and the British!

CIA

• Bitter dispute pits CIA, Congress

  Democratic staffers of the Senate Intelligence Committee obtained classified documents at the center of a bitter struggle with the CIA some three years before the agency determined that the materials had been spirited out of a secret facility and demanded their return, according to U.S. officials.

• Letter of the Day: CIA spying

  The spies get caught spying on their bosses; what else could one expect? Give the spy agencies trillions of dollars and all the rope it needed to hang themselves. The over-caffeinated frat boys get bored killing innocent people with drones and tied themselves up in a knot.

• I got 30 months in prison. Why does Leon Panetta get a pass?

  The confirmation in December that former CIA Director Leon Panetta let classified information slip to “Zero Dark Thirty” screenwriter Mark Boal during a speech at the agency headquarters should result in a criminal espionage charge if there is any truth to Obama administration claims that it isn’t enforcing the Espionage Act only against political opponents.

• The Washington Post: Declassify the torture report

  …the misguided program of interrogation and torture carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.

• What’s Inside CIA’s ‘Black Site’ Database? And Were Senate Staffers Allowed to See?

  The CIA and the Senators overseeing the agency are nearly at war. And it all revolves around the contents of a secret database documenting the CIA’s clandestine prisons.

• Former FBI Agent Approaches 7 Years in Captivity

  The family of American Robert Levinson is preparing Sunday to mark seven years since the former FBI agent disappeared from Iran’s Kish Island while on a mission for the CIA. Levinson turns 66 years old Monday.

• Reassessing Us Israel Relations Mar 2014

Canada and the Crown

• “We Were Just Children Undergoing Torture…Nothing Has Changed”

  Imagine what would happen if the Crown suppressed thousands of pages of police evidence from an important trial? It wouldn’t take a legal expert to tell you there would be an immediate mistrial — especially if the Crown also prepared a false evidence sheet that mislead the judges. And yet, this was done to the survivors of St. Anne’s Residential School. Despite a damning ruling against this abuse of process in Ontario Superior Court, nothing has been done to remediate this situation.

• Julian Assange at SXSW (live from UK)

• Julian Assange on Civil Courage, Internet, Ukraine, NSA. Quotes from his direct sending at SXSW

• The world we want and how we get there (UK)

  Today we’ve published on our about page a new definition of the world we want to see, explaining how we are working to achieve our aims.

• ‘Independent’ court scrutinising MI5 is located inside Home Office

• LibDems and Labour – Nothing to Offer on Mass Surveillance (British Perspective)

  Setting the background, both Cooper and Clegg bring up the state of the debate about the capabilities of the intelligence agencies. The shadow Home secretary claims that debate has “barely begun”. She should not mistake the unwillingness of MPs to hold the state to account for a lack of debate or concern in the wider public. There have been endless column inches, each new detail in the Guardian minutely examined in social media, a Pirate Party petition with 10s of 1000s of signatures, demonstrations, public meetings, a law case launched with crowd funding, an Edward Snowden mural in Manchester in the vein of what you expect to see in Belfast for heaven’s sake…

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