Category Archives: News

Richard Clarke warns that NSA could enable police surveillance state

n13-iconZDNet reports: The NSA is so good at collecting intelligence that it has the potential to create a police surveillance state that could never be shut off, counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke said during his keynote address at the Cloud Security Alliance Summit taking place Monday at the RSA Conference.

“We are not there yet, but the technology is,” said Clarke, the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism for the United States and advisor to presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan.

Since such technology is available around the world to many governments, “the task of controlling them is more important than it has ever been,” Clarke said.

He concluded his talk by saying, “I believe we can have both security and civil liberties, but we can only do that if we keep a very close eye on the government and demand transparency and oversight and tell them we are not willing to trade our civil liberties for greater security.” [Continue reading…]

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Egypt government resigns, paving way for Sisi to seek presidency

n13-iconReuters reports: Egypt’s government resigned on Monday, paving the way for army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to declare his candidacy for president of a strategic U.S. ally gripped by political strife.

After the July overthrow of elected Islamist President Mohamed Mursi and subsequent crackdown on Islamists and liberals with hundreds killed and thousands jailed, critics say Cairo’s military-backed authorities are turning the clock back to the era of autocrat Hosni Mubarak era, when the political elite ruled with an iron fist in alliance with top businessmen.

“(The outgoing government) made every effort to get Egypt out of the narrow tunnel in terms of security, economic pressures and political confusion,” Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi said in a live nationwide speech.

Beblawi, who was tasked by interim President Adly Mansour with running the government’s affairs until the election, did not give a clear reason for the decision.

But it effectively opened the way for Sisi to run for president since he would first have to leave his post as defense minister in any case. “This (government resignation) was done as a step that was needed ahead of Sisi’s announcement that he will run for president,” an Egyptian official said. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports: An Egyptian prosecutor on Sunday accused the ousted Islamist president of passing state secrets to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the first such explicit detail in an ongoing espionage trial.

If convicted, Mohammed Morsi could face capital punishment. He already stands accused of a string of other charges, some of which also carry the death penalty, levelled as part of a crackdown on his Muslim Brotherhood group after the military deposed him last summer.

At Sunday’s hearing, part of which was aired on state television, the prosecution accused Morsi and 35 other Brotherhood members of conspiring to destabilize the country and cooperating with foreign militant groups — including Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

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If it’s reported by Bild, is it worth repeating?

Reuters has a report which is really a repeat, which is to say, it elevates to the status of “news,” an item in the Sunday edition of Germany’s Bild — a newspaper which is not renowned for the quality of its reporting.

The National Security Agency (NSA) has stepped up its surveillance of senior German government officials since being ordered by Barack Obama to halt its spying on Chancellor Angela Merkel, Bild am Sonntag paper reported on Sunday.

Revelations last year about mass U.S. surveillance in Germany, in particular of Merkel’s mobile phone, shocked Germans and sparked the most serious dispute between the transatlantic allies in a decade.

Bild am Sonntag said its information stemmed from a high-ranking NSA employee in Germany and that those being spied on included Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a close confidant of Merkel.

“We have had the order not to miss out on any information now that we are no longer able to monitor the chancellor’s communication directly,” it quoted the NSA employee as saying.

This is silly.

Firstly, how likely is it that a “high-ranking NSA employee in Germany” is going to talk to Bild? Not likely.

Secondly, how likely is it that surveillance of Angela Merkel’s phone was occurring in isolation and thus, having been curtailed, now needs to be supplemented by broader surveillance?

Assuming that the NSA’s bugging efforts are designed for gathering intelligence as opposed to irritating the people being bugged, it’s hard to imagine that an interest in Merkel’s communications would overshadow an interest in the communications of the officials who brief her. Indeed, it’s reasonable to assume that an intelligence agency conducting surveillance on any head of state will actually be more interested in the communications going on around that individual than those that directly involve the individual her or himself. That being the case, what the NSA is doing in Germany now is probably very close to what it was doing before — except they are now more nervous about getting caught.

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Lawyers, judge hold secret Guantánamo hearing on CIA black sites

n13-iconCarol Rosenberg reports: A military judge held a secret war court session Saturday on defense lawyers’ efforts to uncover evidence of what the CIA did to the alleged USS Cole bomber across years in the agency’s clandestine overseas prison network.

Both the public and the alleged terrorist were excluded from the 111-minute hearing in the case that seeks the execution of Abd al Rahim al Nashiri as mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000 terror attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors off Aden, Yemen.

Only prosecutors and defense lawyers attended the hearing with the judge, Army Col. James L. Pohl, and a court recorder creating a classified transcript of the proceedings.

Nashiri, 49, spent four years in secret CIA prisons where, according to declassified reports, agents waterboarded him and interrogated him nude with a hood on his head and handcuffs on his wrists. One U.S. agent threatened to kill the Saudi with a power drill and handgun, and threatened to have his mother raped. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, AFP reports: Five former Guantanamo detainees are seeking damages for what they say were years of sexual, mental and physical abuse at the US detention center, where they were held without charge or trial.

The men from Turkey, Uzbekistan and Algeria, who are now settled in other countries, alleged Friday at a US appeals court that they were subjected to torture that included forced nudity, sexual harassment and beatings, first in Afghanistan and then at the military jail in Cuba.

Justices will make their ruling in several weeks, but one of them, Judge David Tatel, said military and civilian officials at the Pentagon had failed in their duty.

“Their job is to protect the detainees from abuse, they failed to do so,” he said.

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Canada denies secretly giving Israeli assassin a new identity after he helped kill Hamas leader

n13-iconNational Post reports: A week after a Montreal businessman claimed Canada had provided a new identity and passport to an Israeli Mossad agent involved in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai, the government denied the sensational story on Friday.

While Ottawa is usually reluctant to comment on national security matters, the allegation of Canadian involvement in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was apparently considered so damaging it required a response.

“There is no truth to these allegations that the government of Canada provided support to protect those wanted in the 2010 death of a Hamas leader,” said a government official with knowledge of the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The charge that the government had secretly resettled a member of the hit squad that drugged and suffocated Mr. Al-Mabhouh in a five star hotel room was made last weekend by Arian Azarbar, an Iranian-Canadian businessman.

He told the Ottawa Sun he learned about it from a Passport Canada employee with whom he had an affair. The passport officer, a member of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team, had been investigating Mr. Azarbar and has since been suspended. [Continue reading…]

A non-denial denial? It depends on whether the individual in question had been identified as one those “those wanted.”

The Montreal Gazette adds: [A] Montreal police detective was reportedly reassigned in January after allegations surfaced that he, too, leaked information to Azarbar. The businessman is identified in Montreal police documents of being a possible Iranian spy, according to Montreal media reports.

Azarbar said Tuesday he has known the police officer for years, but said he had nothing to do with the officer’s reassignment. He also categorically denied any involvement with his native Iran. He said he has lived in Montreal’s West Island community since the age of five.

“I’ve been to Iran once in my whole life for two weeks,” he said.

He said his troubles began when he received a government letter asking him to meet with federal agents.

There followed one or two initial meetings with Kennedy and a man he believes was from the Department of Foreign Affairs. He said they were most interested in learning about his business trips to Venezuela, where he sells housing construction products.

He said he also had spent time around Hugo Chavez, the country’s fiery socialist leader who died last year.

“Did I work for the Iranian government? No, never. Did I like Chavez? Absolutely. I thought he was one of the greatest men in the world.”

Azarbar blamed much of his situation on a federal customs official in Toronto. Azarbar believes the man was jealous of his relationship with Kennedy, who has been separated from her husband, he said.

“When he found out about my relationship with Trina, he went berserk. It’s him that made this whole story.”

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New Syrian chemical-arms removal plan slammed

n13-iconAl Jazeera reports: Syria has submitted a new 100-day plan for the removal of its chemical weapons after failing to meet a February 5 deadline, but the international mission overseeing the operation believes it can be done in a shorter timeframe, diplomats have said.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) executive committee met on Friday in The Hague to discuss the joint OPCW and UN mission amid growing international frustration at Damascus falling behind on its commitments, the Reuters news agency reported.

The Syrian government, locked in a three-year-old war with rebels seeking President Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow, failed to meet the February 5 OPCW deadline to move all of its declared chemical substances and precursors out of the country. [Continue reading…]

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Attorney General signs new rules to limit access to journalists’ records

n13-iconThe New York Times reports: Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who drew fire last spring over the Justice Department’s aggressive tactics for secretly obtaining reporters’ phone logs and emails as part of leak investigations, on Friday signed new guidelines narrowing the circumstances in which law enforcement officials may obtain journalists’ records.

The rules, which will be published in the Federal Register next week, carry out a set of changes that Mr. Holder announced last July and described in a six-page report at the time. A preamble described the revisions as intended to ensure that the department “strikes the proper balance among several vital interests,” like protecting national security and “safeguarding the essential role of the free press in fostering government accountability and an open society.”

Among other things, the rules create a presumption that prosecutors generally will provide advance notice to the news media when seeking to obtain their communications records. [Continue reading…]

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Judge tosses Muslim spying suit against NYPD, says any damage was caused by reporters who exposed it

n13-iconDan Froomkin reports: A federal judge in Newark has thrown out a lawsuit against the New York Police Department for spying on New Jersey Muslims, saying if anyone was at fault, it was the Associated Press for telling people about it.

In his ruling Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge William J. Martini simultaneously demonstrated the willingness of the judiciary to give law enforcement alarming latitude in the name of fighting terror, greenlighted the targeting of Muslims based solely on their religious beliefs, and blamed the media for upsetting people by telling them what their government was doing.

The NYPD’s clandestine spying on daily life in Muslim communities in the region — with no probable cause, and nothing to show for it — was exposed in a Pulitzer-Prize winning series of stories by the AP. The stories described infiltration and surveillance of at least 20 mosques, 14 restaurants, 11 retail stores, two grade schools, and two Muslim student associations in New Jersey alone.

In a cursory, 10-page ruling issued before even hearing oral arguments, Martini essentially said that what the targets didn’t know didn’t hurt them: [Continue reading…]

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U.S. plans to inch up role in Syria

n13-iconHoward Fineman reports: Kiev is burning, but Damascus, Homs and Aleppo are dying.

There’s little the U.S. can do about Ukraine — it’s literally Russia’s backyard. But the Obama administration is working quietly on a plan to inch up America’s role in dealing with the disaster that is Syria.

Wary of getting trapped in another war in another Muslim country, administration officials and President Barack Obama himself are moving cautiously ahead on a plan to augment and protect humanitarian aid to the millions of “internally displaced” and often starving citizens of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal regime.

At one White House meeting recently, the idea of using military resources to assure the flow of humanitarian aid was described as “the least-bad option,” according notes given to an official in a cabinet agency that would be involved in carrying out the proposal.

One option — quickly dismissed –- called for using American airpower to help secure land routes into Syria. It was deemed too risky and too unpalatable to Pentagon brass.

According to high-ranking administration officials, the plan at this point calls for the U.S. to use land-based military assets in Turkey and Jordan, and perhaps Navy ships in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf, as staging areas to facilitate the flow of food and medicine.

“We’d stay on the other side of the border,” one official told The Huffington Post, meaning that U.S. soldiers and airmen would not enter or fly over Syria. [Continue reading…]

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Iraq offers $17,200 reward for killing jihadists

n13-iconBBC News reports: Iraq’s government has offered a reward of $17,200 (£10,300) for each foreign militant killed from al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), a former affiliate.

A larger reward of $25,800 (£15,500) is being offered for the capture of militants belonging to the two groups.

The announcement was made on the website of the ministry of defence.

Al-Qaeda and ISIS have been blamed by the authorities for the surge in sectarian violence over the past year.

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Globally, January was the fourth warmest and fifth driest on record

n13-iconU.S. News and World Report: Believe it or not, last month was the warmest January since 2007 and the fourth warmest on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.

It also marked the driest month for the contiguous United States since 2003, and the fifth driest since records started being kept in 1880.

The global average temperature for both land and ocean surfaces was 54.8 degrees last month, about 1.17 degrees above the 20th-century global average.

Notably, while “below-normal” and “much-below-normal” freezing temperatures swept across the eastern half of the United States, warm temperatures “engulfed” much of west, as well as Australia, Argentina, Austria, China, France, Spain and Switzerland, NOAA said.

California, Nevada and Arizona, in particular, also saw temperatures “much-above-normal.”

Precipitation, meanwhile, was below normal for more than 30 states, and at record lows for New Mexico, which received just 5 percent of its average January rainfall. The drought, overall, expanded to 37.4 percent of the contiguous United States, up from 31 percent at the beginning of the month.

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Study: ‘Trolls’ online appear to be sadists in real life

n13-iconThe Register reports: A group of Canadian researchers has given the imprimatur of social-science recognition to a fact that many of us who spend time in internet comment forums have suspected: there’s a strong correlation between online trolling and sadism.

“Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun … and the Internet is their playground!” write Erin Buckels, Paul Trapnell, and Delroy Paulhus of the Universities of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and British Columbia, respectively, in a paper to be published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

The researchers define trolling as “the practice of behaving in a deceptive, destructive, or disruptive manner in a social setting on the Internet with no apparent instrumental purpose,” referring to trolls as “agents of chaos on the Internet, exploiting ‘hot-button issues’ to make users appear overly emotional or foolish in some manner. If an unfortunate person falls into their trap, trolling intensifies for further, merciless amusement.”

The Canadian psychologists’ paper is entitled “Trolls just want to have fun”, which is not merely a bit of boffinary humor at the expense of Cyndi Lauper, but rather a reference to one of the researchers’ findings. “We found clear evidence,” they write, “that sadists tend to troll because they enjoy it.” [Continue reading…]

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Saudi Arabia replaces key official in effort to arm Syria rebels

n13-iconThe Wall Street Journal reports: Saudi Arabia has sidelined its veteran intelligence chief, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, as leader of the kingdom’s efforts to arm and fund Syrian rebels, replacing him with another prince well-regarded by U.S. officials for his successes fighting al Qaeda, Saudi royal advisers said this week.

The change holds promise for a return to smoother relations with the U.S., and may augur a stronger Saudi effort against militants aligned with al Qaeda who have flocked to opposition-held Syrian territory during that country’s three-year war, current and former U.S. officials said.

Prince Bandar, an experienced but at times mercurial ex-diplomat and intelligence chief, presided over Saudi Arabia’s Syria operations for the past two years with little success, as a rift opened up with the U.S. over how much to back rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Interior Minister Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, who has won praise in Washington for his counterterror work against al Qaeda in Yemen and elsewhere, is now a main figure in carrying out Syria policy, a royal adviser and a security analyst briefed by Saudi officials said Tuesday. [Continue reading…]

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Iran, six big powers seek to agree basis for final nuclear accord

n13-iconReuters reports: Six world powers and Iran strived at a second day of talks in Vienna on Wednesday to map out a broad agenda for reaching a ambitious final settlement to the decade-old standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany want a long-term agreement on the permissible scope of Iran’s nuclear activities to lay to rest concerns that they could be put to developing atomic bombs. Tehran’s priority is a complete removal of damaging economic sanctions against it.

The negotiations will probably extend at least over several months, and could help defuse years of hostility between energy-exporting Iran and the West, ease the danger of a new war in the Middle East, transform the regional power balance and open up major business opportunities for Western firms.

“The talks are going surprisingly well. There haven’t been any real problems so far,” a senior Western diplomat said, dismissing rumors from the Iranian side that the discussions had run into snags already.

The opening session on Tuesday was “productive” and “substantive”, they said. “The focus was on the parameters and the process of negotiations, the timetable of what is going to be a medium- to long-term process,” one European diplomat said. [Continue reading…]

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NSA and DHS grant permission to be mocked

n13-iconThe Wall Street Journal reports: The National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security acknowledged in a settlement made public Tuesday that they were wrong to ban a leading custom-merchandise retailer from selling t-shirts, mugs, and posters that poked fun at the agencies.

The agreement puts to rest a First Amendment lawsuit against the federal government brought last year by a t-shirt designer, Dan McCall, who hawked merchandise on Zazzle.com that parodied the official seal of the NSA with jokes referencing the spy program disclosures. Another design imprinted on mugs featured a look-alike Homeland Security logo for a “Department of Homeland Stupidity.”

Mr. McCall’s lawsuit, which Law Blog wrote about earlier, came in response to cease-and-desist letters that the NSA and Homeland Security sent to Zazzle in 2011, ordering the retailer to remove the parody products from its site or face legal action.

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Obama plays water-guzzling desert golf courses amid California drought

n13-iconTime reports: President Barack Obama traveled to California on Friday to highlight the state’s drought emergency at two events near Fresno, calling for shared sacrifice to help manage the state’s worst water shortage in decades. He then spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the hospitality of some of the state’s top water hogs: desert golf courses.

Vacationing with DVDs of his favorite television shows and multiple golf outings with his buddies, the duffer in chief played at two of the most exclusive courses in the Palm Springs area. On Saturday, Obama played at the Sunnylands estate, built by the late billionaire Walter Annenberg, which features a nine-hole course that is played like 18 holes. The following day he golfed at billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison’s 19-hole Porcupine Creek. On Presidents’ Day, Obama hit the links at Sunnylands once again.

The 124 golf courses in the Coachella Valley consume roughly 17% of all water there, and one-quarter of the water pumped out of the region’s at-risk groundwater aquifer, according to the Coachella Valley Water District. [Continue reading…]

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Hezbollah leader Nasrallah vows to keep fighters in Syria

n13-iconBBC News reports: The leader of the Lebanese Shia militant Hezbollah movement, Hassan Nasrallah, says his members will continue to fight alongside government forces in Syria’s civil war.

In a televised address on Sunday, he called on “political forces in the Arab world” to “stop the war on Syria”.

He said if this happened, then “of course” his forces would also leave.

Hezbollah’s presence on the ground has fuelled sectarian tensions back home, with violence spilling over the border.

Hezbollah forces have been fighting in support of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, while Lebanese Sunni Muslims tend to back the Syrian opposition.

Dozens of people have been killed in a string of deadly suicide blasts in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, and the northern city of Tripoli in recent months, with both Sunni and Shia militants blamed for the attacks. [Continue reading…]

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Barrel bombings emerge as ‘new tactic’ in Syrian civil war

n13-iconThe Washington Post reports: The Syrians who reach this Turkish border town after escaping the northern city of Aleppo bring stories of horror about exploding barrels that fall from the sky.

The worst part is the terrifying anticipation as the barrel bombs are unleashed from warplanes roaring overhead, said one man who fled after three bombs demolished the street where he was living. The sight of rescuers scraping human remains from the sidewalk outside her home prompted another of the refugees to leave. A third Syrian, a grandmother, said she left simply because life had become unsustainable in the wrecked, rubble-strewn city, where entire neighborhoods have been almost completely depopulated.

“Aleppo is empty,” she said as she sat surrounded by luggage and children after arriving in Turkey this week. “There’s no one left — no shops, no markets, no life at all.”

As peace talks in Geneva ended in deadlock Saturday, with U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi setting no date for their resumption, the Syrian government’s barrel bombing campaign against the rebel-held half of Aleppo offers a glimpse of what may lie ahead for the country now that negotiations have failed.

The campaign, which began in December, intensified as the peace talks got underway last month, underlining one of the biggest impediments to a negotiated settlement, said Salman Shaikh of the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

“The regime feels it can win this on the battlefield and they feel they can win this politically,” giving it little incentive to compromise in the peace talks, he said. [Continue reading…]

It’s one thing to note an escalation in the use of barrel bombs but it’s misleading to describe their use as a “new tactic.”

The “barrel bombs” have emerged as an improvised weapon with the aim of causing maximum death and destruction, The Daily Telegraph can disclose, as the regime seeks to break rebel resistance in Syria’s second city, Aleppo.

That’s from a report published on August 31, 2012.

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