Category Archives: News

Neanderthals and the dead

The New York Times reports: Early in the 20th century, two brothers discovered a nearly complete Neanderthal skeleton in a pit inside a cave at La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in southwestern France. The discovery raised the possibility that these evolutionary relatives of ours intentionally buried their dead — at least 50,000 years ago, before the arrival of anatomically modern humans in Europe.

These and at least 40 subsequent discoveries, a few as far from Europe as Israel and Iraq, appeared to suggest that Neanderthals, long thought of as brutish cave dwellers, actually had complex funeral practices. Yet a significant number of researchers have since objected that the burials were misinterpreted, and might not represent any advance in cognitive and symbolic behavior.

Now an international team of scientists is reporting that a 13-year re-examination of the burials at La Chapelle-aux-Saints supports the earlier claims that the burials were intentional.

The researchers — archaeologists, geologists and paleoanthropologists — not only studied the skeleton from the original excavations, but found more Neanderthal remains, from two children and an adult. They also studied the bones of other animals in the cave, mainly bison and reindeer, and the geology of the burial pits.

The findings, in this week’s issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “buttress claims for complex symbolic behavior among Western European Neanderthals,” the scientists reported.

William Rendu, the paper’s lead author and a researcher at the Center for International Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences in New York, said in an interview that the geology of the burial pits “cannot be explained by natural events” and that “there is no sign of weathering and scavenging by animals,” which means the bodies were covered soon after death.

“While we cannot know if this practice was part of a ritual or merely pragmatic,” Dr. Rendu said in a statement issued by New York University, “the discovery reduces the behavioral distance between them and us.” [Continue reading…]

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Would Amazon prefer to employ robots instead of people?

David Streitfeld writes: Amazon warehouse employees in Germany walked off the job again Monday even as they tried to take their case directly to the e-commerce giant’s Seattle headquarters. The first action seemed more successful, involving more than a thousand workers. The second drew only about 50 people. “We are humans not robots,” one sign said.

The tech companies, including Amazon, are getting ever richer and more powerful, but there seems to be a bit of a backlash developing. In San Francisco last week, protesters briefly blocked a Google bus transporting workers to its Silicon Valley campus.

Amazon’s announcement two weeks ago on “60 Minutes” that it is pursuing delivery by drones inspired not admiration but widespread mockery. Amazon, critics said, was dwelling in fantasyland. (An Amazon spokesman disagreed with this assessment, saying the news “did inspire some admiration.”)

Perhaps Amazon brought up the subject of drones as a form of wish fulfillment. For the retailer, the moment when machines prepare and deliver packages could not come too soon. Humans are too much trouble. Germany is Amazon’s second largest market, and the labor turmoil there is increasing. [Continue reading…]

I’m not an economist, but I have to wonder whether Amazon’s goal of providing products as fast as possible might end up becoming a marketing strategy that benefits its competitors at the expense of the online giant itself. Shop online and pick up at the store may end up becoming the most successful business model — not only because it can work faster than Amazon, but also because people prefer to engage in transactions with people.

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U.S. open to engaging with the Islamic Front in Syria

The Cable reports: As the moderate faction of the Syrian rebellion implodes under the strain of vicious infighting and diminished resources, the United States is increasingly looking to hardline Islamists in its efforts to gain leverage in Syria’s civil war. The development has alarmed U.S. observers concerned that the radical Salafists do not share U.S. values and has dismayed supporters of the Free Syrian Army who believe the moderates were set up to fail.

On Monday, the State Department confirmed its openness to engaging with the Islamic Front following the group’s seizure of a Free Syrian Army headquarters last week containing U.S.-supplied small arms and food. “We wouldn’t rule out the possibility of meeting with the Islamic Front,” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Monday. “We can engage with the Islamic Front, of course, because they’re not designated terrorists … We’re always open to meeting with a wide range of opposition groups. Obviously, it may make sense to do so at some point soon, and if we have something to announce, we will.”

On Saturday Reuters reported that Syrian rebel commanders in the Islamic Front were due to meet U.S. officials in Turkey in the coming days to discuss U.S. support for the group. A Syrian opposition source speaking with The Cable said that efforts were in place to unite the Western-backed Free Syrian Army and the Islamic Front under the same coalition. “There are negotiations planned for very soon between the [Free Syrian Army’s] SMC and the Islamic Front to determine what the relationship will be,” said the source. America’s role in coordinating the talks remains unclear.

Though the Islamic Front is not a U.S.-designated terrorist group, many of its members hold intensely anti-American beliefs and have no intention of establishing a secular democracy in Syria. U.S. interest in the group reflects the bedraggled state of the Supreme Military Council and the desire to keep military pressure on President Bashar al-Assad ahead of next month’s planned peace conference in Geneva. “The SMC is being reduced to an exile group and the jihadists are taking over,” said a senior congressional aide.

The creation of the Islamic Front was announced on Nov. 22 with the purpose of uniting the strength of prominent Islamist militias across the country. Seven Islamist groups, with a total estimated strength of 45,000 to 60,000 fighters, signed on to the merger. [Continue reading…]

Before the anti-interventionists start squawking about the perils of engaging with extremists, don’t forget that the same argument has been used to support of policy of non-communication with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. The only predictable outcome of refusing to talk to any group or any nation is that you will understand less about what they think than you would, had you been willing to talk. Talking is good for everyone.

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The Snowden franchise

Reuters reports: A tale that could rival any spy novel is about to be told by three writers who are working on potentially rival books on the revelations and travails of former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Glenn Greenwald, a former columnist for Britain’s The Guardian, has a book likely to come out in March. Greenwald received classified spy documents from Snowden in clandestine meetings in Hong Kong after he fled the United States last spring.

The book is “about my time with Snowden in Hong Kong and reporting the story, but mostly about the surveillance state based on the documents I have (that The Guardian doesn’t) and my reasons why the surveillance state is menacing,” he said in an email.

His publisher is Metropolitan Books, a unit of Henry Holt and Co. Greenwald has also been discussing a movie deal.

The New York Times reported in October that 20th Century Fox , Sony Pictures Entertainment and cable TV network HBO had all considered an on-screen project. But Greenwald said that no movie deal had yet been struck.

Potential competitor books are being prepared by Barton Gellman, a blogger and former Washington Post reporter, and Luke Harding, a journalist for The Guardian.

Gellman, principal author of The Washington Post’s Snowden’s stories but no longer on the paper’s staff, said his project pre-dates the emergence of Snowden.

“I had already started work on a book about the surveillance industrial society when Edward Snowden came my way. He has certainly enriched my reporting, but I am not racing anyone to do a quick hit on current events. My narrative will cover a broader landscape and a wider cast of characters,” Gellman said in an email.

Neither Harding, author of The Guardian book (and co-author of an earlier Guardian book about WikiLeaks and its controversial founder, Julian Assange), nor a spokeswoman for The Guardian would comment on Harding’s book, which is being published under a joint imprint The Guardian set up with British publisher Faber and Faber.

A person familiar with the Guardian project, who asked to remain anonymous, said that at the time Greenwald left the newspaper, the two parties tentatively agreed that to ensure neither party would have a marketing advantage, the books would be published simultaneously. [Continue reading…]

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Federal judge questions legality of NSA phone records

The New York Times reports: A federal district judge ruled on Monday that the National Security Agency program that is systematically keeping records of all Americans’ phone calls most likely violates the Constitution, describing its technology as “almost Orwellian” and suggesting that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty in such a way.

Judge Richard J. Leon of the District of Columbia ordered the government to stop collecting data on the personal calls of the two plaintiffs in the case and to destroy the records of their calling history. But the judge, appointed to the bench in 2002 by President George W. Bush, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal it, a matter that he said could take at least six months. The case is the first in which a federal judge who is not on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorized the once-secret program, has examined the bulk data collection on behalf of someone who is not a criminal defendant.

The Justice Department has said that 15 separate judges on the surveillance court have held on 35 occasions that the calling data program is legal. It also marks the first successful legal challenge brought against the program since it was revealed in June after leaks by the former N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary’ invasion than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in a 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. [Continue reading…]

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Far right in Eastern Europe makes gains as Syrians arrive

The New York Times reports: After spreading turmoil and desperate refugees across the Middle East, Syria’s brutal civil war has now leaked misery into Europe’s eastern fringe — and put a spring in the step of Angel Bozhinov, a nationalist activist in this Bulgarian border town next to Turkey.

The local leader of Ataka, a pugnacious, far-right party, Mr. Bozhinov lost his seat in the town council at the last municipal elections in 2011 but now sees his fortunes rising thanks to public alarm over an influx of Syrian refugees across the nearby frontier.

Membership of the local branch of Ataka, he said, had surged in recent weeks as “people come up to me in the street and tell me that our party was right.” Ataka, which means attack, champions “Bulgaria for Bulgarians” and has denounced Syrian refugees as terrorists whom Bulgaria, the European Union’s poorest nation, must expel. An Ataka member of Parliament has reviled them as “terrible, despicable primates.”

With populist, anti-immigrant parties gathering momentum across much of Europe, Ataka stands out as a particularly shrill and, its critics say, sinister political force — an example of how easily opportunistic groups can stoke public fears while improving their own fortunes.

The influx of Syrian refugees has sown divisions across the European Union as the refugees add burdens on governments still struggling to emerge from years of recession. But Bulgaria is perhaps the most fragile of all the European Union’s 28 members. Modest as the numbers of refugees are here, the entry of nearly 6,500 Syrians this year has overwhelmed the deeply unpopular coalition government and added a volatile element to the nation’s already unstable politics.

The arrival of the refugees and public fury over the stabbing of a young Bulgarian woman by an Algerian asylum seeker “has opened the floodgates” for far-right nationalists, said Daniel Smilov of the Center for Liberal Strategies, a policy research group in Sofia, the capital. “They see this as their big chance.” [Continue reading…]

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Is the NSA trying to blackmail Snowden?

On 60 Minutes last night, CBS News was provided with an “unprecedented” view inside the NSA. This included an interview with Rick Ledgett, who is leading an NSA task force conducting damage assessment on the Snowden leaks.

John Miller: Of all the things he took is there anything in there that worries you or concerns you more than anything else?

Rick Ledgett: It’s an exhaustive list of the requirements that have been levied against– against the National Security Agency. And what that gives is, what topics we’re interested in, where our gaps are. But additional information about U.S. capabilities and U.S. gaps is provided as part of that.

John Miller: So, I’m going to assume that there’s one in there about China, and there’s one in there about Iran, and there’s another in there about Russia.

Rick Ledgett: Many more than one.

John Miller: Many more than one?

Rick Ledgett: Yes.

John Miller: How many of those are there?

Rick Ledgett: About 31,000.

John Miller: If those documents fell into their hands? What good would it do them?

Rick Ledgett: It would give them a roadmap of what we know, what we don’t know, and give them– implicitly, a way to– protect their information from the U.S. intelligence community’s view.

John Miller: For an adversary in the intelligence game, that’s a gold mine?

Rick Ledgett: It is the keys to the kingdom.

Note that in no point in this exchange does Ledgett assert that the NSA knows Snowden took this particular document collection, while Miller — who comes across more like a Hollywood parody of a journalist — fails to raise this question.

But suppose the NSA truly believes that Snowden took this collection of 31,000 documents. Not only would this be a cause of immense concern to the agency, but the belief itself would be a closely guarded secret.

What possible interest does the United States have in publicizing to its adversaries, that it has lost control of its most valuable intelligence assessments?

If Snowden’s life was not already in great danger, then now, thanks to the NSA (and CBS) he just became even more exposed. And maybe that’s the point.

The NSA wants Snowden to become more afraid of remaining outside the United States than afraid of returning.

Snowden clearly understood that the longer he retained possession of however many documents he took, the more vulnerable he would become, but he waited several months before revealing to the New York Times that he had handed over all the documents to Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras when they met him in Hong Kong in June.

The NSA — with CBS News’ help — however, wants to promote the view that Snowden has currently in his possession 1.7 million documents.

Even if Snowden follows up his earlier denial with another denial, he will remain under intense scrutiny by foreign intelligence services.

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Officials say U.S. may never know extent of Snowden’s leaks

The New York Times reports: American intelligence and law enforcement investigators have concluded that they may never know the entirety of what the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden extracted from classified government computers before leaving the United States, according to senior government officials.

Investigators remain in the dark about the extent of the data breach partly because the N.S.A. facility in Hawaii where Mr. Snowden worked — unlike other N.S.A. facilities — was not equipped with up-to-date software that allows the spy agency to monitor which corners of its vast computer landscape its employees are navigating at any given time.

Six months since the investigation began, officials said Mr. Snowden had further covered his tracks by logging into classified systems using the passwords of other security agency employees, as well as by hacking firewalls installed to limit access to certain parts of the system.

“They’ve spent hundreds and hundreds of man-hours trying to reconstruct everything he has gotten, and they still don’t know all of what he took,” a senior administration official said. “I know that seems crazy, but everything with this is crazy.”

That Mr. Snowden was so expertly able to exploit blind spots in the systems of America’s most secretive spy agency illustrates how far computer security still lagged years after President Obama ordered standards tightened after the WikiLeaks revelations of 2010. [Continue reading…]

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Lawsuit accuses IBM of hiding China risks amid NSA spy scandal

Reuters reports: IBM Corp has been sued by a shareholder who accused it of concealing how its ties to what became a major U.S. spying scandal reduced business in China and ultimately caused its market value to plunge more than $12 billion.

IBM lobbied Congress hard to pass a law letting it share personal data of customers in China and elsewhere with the U.S. National Security Agency, in a bid to protect its intellectual property rights, according to a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan.

The plaintiff in the complaint, Louisiana Sheriffs’ Pension & Relief Fund, said this threatened IBM hardware sales in China, particularly given a program known as Prism that let the NSA spy on that country through technology companies such as IBM.

The Baton Rouge pension fund said the revelation of Prism and related disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden caused Chinese businesses and China’s government to abruptly cut ties with the world’s largest technology services provider.

It said this led IBM on October 16 to post disappointing third-quarter results, including drops in China of 22 percent in sales and 40 percent in hardware sales.

While quarterly profit rose 6 percent, revenue dropped 4 percent and fell well below analyst forecasts.

IBM shares fell 6.4 percent on October 17, wiping out $12.9 billion of the Armonk, New York-based company’s market value. [Continue reading…]

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France broadens its surveillance power

The New York Times reports: For all their indignation last summer, when the scope of the United States’ mass data collection began to be made public, the French are hardly innocents in the realm of electronic surveillance. Within days of the reports about the National Security Agency’s activities, it was revealed that French intelligence services operated a similar system, with similarly minimal oversight.

And last week, with little public debate, the legislature approved a law that critics feared would markedly expand electronic surveillance of French residents and businesses.

The provision, quietly passed as part of a routine military spending bill, defines the conditions under which intelligence agencies may gain access to or record telephone conversations, emails, Internet activity, personal location data and other electronic communications.

The law provides for no judicial oversight and allows electronic surveillance for a broad range of purposes, including “national security,” the protection of France’s “scientific and economic potential” and prevention of “terrorism” or “criminality.”

In an unusual alliance, Internet and corporate groups, human rights organizations and a small number of lawmakers have opposed the law as a threat to business or an encroachment on individual rights. [Continue reading…]

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By cracking cellphone code, NSA has capacity for decoding private conversations

The Washington Post reports: The cellphone encryption technology used most widely across the world can be easily defeated by the National Security Agency, an internal document shows, giving the agency the means to decode most of the billions of calls and texts that travel over public airwaves every day.

While the military and law enforcement agencies long have been able to hack into individual cellphones, the NSA’s capability appears to be far more sweeping because of the agency’s global signals collection operation. The agency’s ability to crack encryption used by the majority of cellphones in the world offers it wide-ranging powers to listen in on private conversations.

U.S. law prohibits the NSA from collecting the content of conversations between Americans without a court order. But experts say that if the NSA has developed the capacity to easily decode encrypted cellphone conversations, then other nations likely can do the same through their own intelligence services, potentially to Americans’ calls, as well.

Encryption experts have complained for years that the most commonly used technology, known as A5/1, is vulnerable and have urged providers to upgrade to newer systems that are much harder to crack. Most companies worldwide have not done so, even as controversy has intensified in recent months over NSA collection of cellphone traffic, including of such world leaders as German Chancellor Angela Merkel. [Continue reading…]

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For Syrian refugees in Lebanon, winter storm brings snow, rain and new misery

The Washington Post reports: The United Nations said Wednesday that it is “extremely concerned” for Syria’s refugees as snow and freezing temperatures descended on the region.

Syria and the countries that border it have been bracing for what is expected to be the worst winter storm in years. Snow hit some areas of Lebanon, Turkey and northern Syria overnight Tuesday as sharp winds and cold, heavy rains battered others, causing misery for hundreds of thousands in camps and shanties.

In Lebanon, despite the wintry conditions, the flow of Syrians fleeing the war is unrelenting. Local officials in the border town of Arsal, where some of the heaviest snow fell overnight, on Wednesday reported the arrival of 200 men, women and children who had risked the treacherous journey across the mountains on foot. Many were from the town of Yabroud in the Qalamoun region, where a Syrian army offensive is underway.

Aid agencies, the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the Lebanese army rushed to distribute kits containing plastic sheeting and blankets to the newcomers, but poorly funded humanitarian groups are struggling to meet the overwhelming needs. Authorities remain reluctant to establish permanent refu­gee camps in Lebanon and have opened only one official, 100-tent “transit camp.” [Continue reading…]

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The collapse of the Free Syrian Army brand

Mike Giglio reports: On the afternoon of Nov. 26, near the border in southern Turkey, Mohamed al-Kadi got behind the wheel of a white Isuzu delivery truck and drove into Syria. In the back of the truck sat a shipment of advanced communications equipment, provided by the United States. Kadi’s mission was to bring it to the Free Syrian Army, or FSA, the U.S.-backed rebel coalition whose main base sat just a few miles into Syria.

Kadi, a deeply religious man partial to Muslim prayer beads and oddball humor, was a tech whiz with a degree in computer engineering. He’d been a young lieutenant in Damascus at the war’s outset but defected early to the rebel side, where his computer skills saw him pulled from the front lines. He worked as a senior technician for the FSA’s high command, based mainly inside Syria. But shortly after he crossed into Syria that afternoon, Kadi and the delivery truck disappeared. Days later, his body was found in a farm field, shot at point-blank range in the back of the head, hands tied behind his back.

The FSA blamed Kadi’s death on the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, which claims to be Al-Qaeda’s Syrian arm, saying the group had captured Kadi’s truck along a critical supply route and stolen the equipment inside.

The incident alarmed the U.S., which had long worried about the possibility of the supplies it sends the FSA falling into the hands of extremists. Some U.S. allies inside the rebellion shared those concerns. “We warned the U.S. government for over a year about ISIS gathering strength and spreading in the North,” said one opposition official involved in channeling U.S. assistance to the FSA.

Now many are questioning how much longer the FSA can survive, following news that fighters from a new, hardline coalition called the Islamic Front, which boasts an estimated 45,000 fighters in Syria, overtook its main bases and warehouses in Atimeh, a town near the Turkish border late last week. The powerful Islamist faction now stands poised to overtake the FSA as the country’s dominant rebel force. [Continue reading…]

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Former CIA chief Hayden hopes Assad will remain in power

AFP reports: The sectarian bloodbath in Syria is such a threat to regional security that a victory for Bashar al-Assad’s regime could be the best outcome to hope for, a former CIA chief said.

Washington condemned Assad’s conduct of the conflict, threatened air strikes after he was accused of targeting civilians with chemical weapons and has demanded he step down.

The United States is also supplying millions of dollars in “non-lethal” aid to some of the rebel groups fighting Assad’s rule.

But Michael Hayden, the retired US Air Force general who until 2009 was head of the Central Intelligence Agency, said a rebel win was not one of the three possible outcomes he foresees for the conflict.

“Option three is Assad wins,” Hayden told the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts.

“And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I’m kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes,” he said.

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NSA review to leave spying programs largely unchanged, reports say

The Guardian reports: A participant in a White House-sponsored review of surveillance activities described as “shameful” an apparent decision to leave most of the National Security Agency’s controversial bulk spying intact.

Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Institute, said Friday that the review panel he advised is at risk of missing an opportunity to restore confidence in US surveillance practices.

“The review group was searching for ways to make the most modest pivot necessary to continue business as usual,” Meinrath said.

Headed by the CIA’s former deputy director, Michael Morrell, the review is expected to deliver its report to President Barack Obama on Sunday, the White House confirmed, although it is less clear when and how substantially its report will be available to the public.

National security council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said she would have no further comment “on a report that is not yet final and hasn’t yet been submitted to the White House”.

Should the review group’s report resemble descriptions that leaked late Thursday, the report “does nothing to alter the lack of trust the global populace has for what the US is doing, and nothing to restore our reputation as an ethical internet steward,” said Meinrath, who met with the advisory panel and White House officials twice to discuss the bulk surveillance programs that have sparked international outrage.

Leaks about the review group’s expected recommendations to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal strengthened Meinrath and other participants’ long-standing suspicions that much of the NSA’s sweeping spy powers would survive. [Continue reading…]

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Iran nuclear talks hit snag after U.S. expands commercial ‘blacklists’

Reuters reports: A breakthrough agreement to end a standoff over Iran’s nuclear program appeared to face its first major difficulty on Friday with Russia warning that a U.S. sanctions move could “seriously” complicate its implementation.

Russia, which along with the United States is among the six world powers which negotiated the November 24 interim accord with Tehran, echoed Iran’s criticism by saying Washington’s sanctions decision violated the spirit of the deal.

Moscow’s statement came after diplomats said Iran had interrupted technical talks with the six nations in Vienna over how to implement the agreement, under which Tehran is to cap its nuclear program in return for limited sanctions easing.

The developments highlighted potential obstacles negotiators face in pressing ahead with efforts to resolve a decade-old dispute between the Islamic Republic and the West that has stirred fears of a new Middle East war.

Several Western diplomats insisted the inconclusive outcome of the December 9-12 expert-level discussions in Vienna should not be seen as a sign that the political deal hammered out nearly three weeks ago was in serious trouble.

But Russia made its concerns clear a day after the United States blacklisted additional companies and people under existing sanctions intended to prevent Iran from obtaining the capability to make nuclear weapons. Iran denies any such aims.

“The U.S. administration’s decision goes against the spirit of this document,” said Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, referring to the Geneva agreement between Iran and the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany.

“Widening American ‘blacklists’ could seriously complicate the fulfillment of the Geneva agreement, which proposes easing sanctions pressure.” [Continue reading…]

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Pope attacks mega-salaries and wealth gap in peace message

Reuters reports: Pope Francis said in the first peace message of his pontificate that huge salaries and bonuses are symptoms of an economy based on greed and inequality and called again for nations to narrow the wealth gap.

In his message for the Roman Catholic Church’s World Day of Peace, marked around the world on January 1, he also called for sharing of wealth and for nations to shrink the gap between rich and poor, more of whom are getting only “crumbs”.

“The grave financial and economic crises of the present time … have pushed man to seek satisfaction, happiness and security in consumption and earnings out of all proportion to the principles of a sound economy,” he said.

“The succession of economic crises should lead to a timely rethinking of our models of economic development and to a change in lifestyles,” he said.

Francis, who was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year on Wednesday, has urged his own Church to be more fair, frugal and less pompous and to be closer to the poor and suffering.

His message will be sent to national leaders, international organizations such as the United Nations, and NGO’s.

Titled “Fraternity, the Foundation and Pathway to Peace“, the message also attacked injustice, human trafficking, organized crime and the weapons trade as obstacles to peace.

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AT&T accused of violating privacy law with sale of phone records to CIA

Ars Technica: Consumer advocates have asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to declare that AT&T violated a privacy rule in the Communications Act by selling phone records to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

A report last month said that “AT&T has turned over international calling records to the CIA. The telecom charges the CIA more than $10 million per year in exchange for access to metadata about calls by suspected terrorists overseas.”

In response, a group of consumer advocacy groups led by Public Knowledge filed a petition today with the FCC.

Appealing to the FCC is a new tactic against government collection of calling records. Previously, privacy advocates have tried to shut down the phone collection by filing lawsuits, including one in the Supreme Court. [Continue reading…]

Meanwhile, Reuters reports: Verizon Communications Inc told activist investors on Wednesday that it might skip a vote on a shareholder proposal that seeks details on the company’s cooperation with government surveillance efforts.

Verizon’s law firm Jones Day said in a November 25 letter that the company would exclude the measure from its 2014 proxy statement unless the activists did more to verify their eligibility to file the proposal.

The company’s response appears to be more aggressive than the stance AT&T Inc took against a similar proposal, said Jonas Kron, senior vice president for Trillium Asset Management, a co-filer of the measures at both telecommunications companies.

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