Category Archives: Opinion

British press freedom under threat

In an editorial, the New York Times says: Britain has a long tradition of a free, inquisitive press. That freedom, so essential to democratic accountability, is being challenged by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron.

Unlike the United States, Britain has no constitutional guarantee of press freedom. Parliamentary committees and the police are now exploiting that lack of protection to harass, intimidate and possibly prosecute The Guardian newspaper for its publication of information based on National Security Agency documents that were leaked by Edward Snowden. The New York Times has published similar material, believing that the public has a clear interest in learning about and debating the N.S.A.’s out-of-control spying on private communications. That interest is shared by the British public as well.

In the United States, some members of Congress have begun pushing for stronger privacy protections against unwarranted snooping. British parliamentarians have largely ducked their duty to ask tough questions of British intelligence agencies, which closely collaborate with the N.S.A., and have gone after The Guardian instead.

Alan Rusbridger, the newspaper’s editor, has been summoned to appear before a parliamentary committee next month to testify about The Guardian’s internal editorial decision-making regarding the Snowden information. Members of Parliament have also demanded information on the newspaper’s decision to make some of the leaked information available to other journalists, including those at The Times. That should be none of Parliament’s business. Meanwhile, Scotland Yard detectives are pursuing a criminal investigation into The Guardian’s actions surrounding the Snowden leaks.

These alarming developments threaten the ability of British journalists to do their jobs effectively. Britain’s press has long lacked the freedoms enjoyed by American newspapers. Now it appears they are less free from government interference than journalists in Germany, where Der Spiegel has published material from the Snowden leaks without incurring government bullying.

The global debate now taking place about intelligence agencies collecting information on the phone calls, emails and Internet use of private citizens owes much to The Guardian’s intrepid journalism. In a free society, the price for printing uncomfortable truths should not be parliamentary and criminal inquisition.

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Police tried to spy on Cambridge University students, secret footage shows

The Guardian reports: Police sought to launch a secret operation to spy on the political activities of students at Cambridge University, a covertly recorded film reveals.

An officer monitoring political campaigners attempted to persuade an activist in his 20s to become an informant and feed him information about students and other protesters in return for money.

But instead the activist wore a hidden camera to record a meeting with the officer and expose the surveillance of undergraduates and others at the 800-year-old institution.

The officer, who is part of a covert unit, is filmed saying the police need informants like him to collect information about student protests as it is “impossible” to infiltrate their own officers into the university.

The Guardian is not disclosing the name of the Cambridgeshire officer and will call him Peter Smith. He asks the man who he is trying to recruit to target “student-union type stuff” and says that would be of interest because “the things they discuss can have an impact on community issues”. [Continue reading…]

Hugh Muir writes: The specifics of the Cambridge case will shock, but there is a now familiar narrative of how the secret snoopy state seeks to monitor the legitimate activity of those who might ask questions of it. This appears to be activity undertaken with little or no public consent or oversight. How much of this is going on? What are the guidelines? Are they adhered to by forces up and down the country? Is there central control? Who controls the information and how long is it kept? No doubt the Association of Chief Police Officers has rules but what do you know of the legislative framework? Who keeps the practice honest and ensures that the objective is the maintenance of law and order rather than the policing of irksome ideology? This week we learned of Green party London Assembly member Jenny Jones being monitored by Scotland Yard for attending legitimate left-leaning protest events. Are others so targeted? We don’t know. We should.

But this is also another example of the attempt by those in power to enlist citizens as agents of the state. In universities up and down the country there has been a considerable effort to cultivate assets capable of monitoring young Muslim students considered at risk of radicalisation. The government’s Prevent programme, and its deradicalisation arm Channel, has drawn on the university establishments themselves: lecturers and bureaucrats as surveillance assets. The result is predictable. Yesterday Ratna Lachman, director of the human rights group Just West Yorkshire, told a Society for Educational Studies seminar of fears that some universities have become “Islamophobic spaces” for those who now regard them as “extensions of the security arm of the state”.

The government orders landlords to report illegal immigrants; property owners as surveillance assets. GPs to check the legal status of those they might treat; medical staff as surveillance assets. As the state shrinks in size, as the prime minister says it will, it needs an army of narks to engage in surveillance and policing in a different sphere. Maybe that’s part of his big society. [Continue reading…]

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The friendly ties between Egyptian intelligence and the CIA

David Ignatius writes: The U.S.-Egyptian relationship has been through some rocky months since the June 30 military coup that toppled President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood. But the strain doesn’t seem to have diminished cooperation between the two countries’ intelligence services.

Gen. Mohammed Farid el-Tohamy, the director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Service, said had been “no change” in his organization’s relationship with U.S. spy agencies, despite delay of some U.S. weapons deliveries to the Egyptian military and talk of new Egyptian military contacts with Russia.

“Cooperation between friendly services is in a completely different channel than the political channel,” Tohamy said. “I’m in constant contact with [Director] John Brennan at the CIA and the local station chief, more than with any other service worldwide.” [Continue reading…]

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America’s confused, half-hearted policy toward Egypt

Shadi Hamid writes: John Kerry felt more threatened by his own administration’s partial aid “cut” to Egypt than Egypt’s generals did. Or so it seemed. In a visit to Cairo on November 3, America’s top diplomat insisted that the “aid issue is a very small issue,” as if to tell Egyptians not to worry—that it was something the U.S. had to do against its will, and that this slap on the wrist, like all the previous ones, too, would pass.

What was more concerning, however, was that Kerry felt the need to heap an inordinate amount of praise on Egypt’s military rulers, suggesting either a great deal of cynicism or the possibility that he hadn’t been briefed on Egyptian politics for weeks on end. “The roadmap is being carried out to the best of our perception,” Kerry said, referring to the military’s timetable for drafting a constitution and holding elections. “The roadmap [is moving] in the direction that everybody has been hoping for,” he added. In reality, Egypt, on almost any conceivable political indicator, is more repressive today than it was under the Mubarak regime. The sheer ferocity of the post-coup crackdown continues, with a slate of repressive laws recently announced in the guise of Egypt’s “war on terrorism.”

Presumably, this is why U.S. officials — recognizing the dangerous path Egypt was traveling down — felt compelled to announce some sort of change in the aid relationship. But, even then, the aid “cut”—which is itself a misnomer since the aid was always likely to resume — was largely symbolic, with little meaningful impact on the military. An aid cut, to be effective, needs to change the calculus of Egypt’s generals. But, in this case, there was little at stake: all essential aid would continue to flow (and one of the army’s biggest perks—”cashflow financing” — would be unaffected).

In case there was any doubt, senior U.S. officials went out of their way to belittle the aid cut during the policy rollout, admitting it would have little impact, and perhaps wasn’t even designed to have an impact in the first place. [Continue reading…]

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Today is Guantánamo’s 12th anniversary, and there’s no end in sight

Morris Davis writes: Twelve years ago, on 13 November 2001, President George W Bush signed an order authorizing the detention of suspected al-Qaida members and supporters, and the creation of military commissions. To borrow a line from the Grateful Dead: “What a long, strange trip it’s been.”

The order was modeled on one issued by President Franklin D Roosevelt on 2 July 1942, authorizing a military commission to try eight Nazi saboteurs apprehended in the United States. The men were captured, convicted and six of the eight executed in a span of 43 days. Roosevelt’s military commission was swift, secret and severe, so some urged President Bush to dust it off and use it again.

A total of seven detainees out of the 779 men ever held at Guantánamo have been convicted and sentenced. Five of the seven are no longer at Guantánamo creating a paradox: you have to lose to win. Those lucky enough to get charged and convicted of a war crime have good odds of getting out of Guantánamo, but those who are never charged could spend the rest of their lives in prison. [Continue reading…]

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Twitter isn’t spreading democracy — democracy is spreading Twitter

Kentaro Toyama writes: Last month I wrote about Chinese Internet censors, who seem less concerned about eliminating criticism of the government, and more concerned with preventing grassroots collective action. What the Communist Party most fears is organized protests and activities, even when they’re not political in nature.

In America, the right to assembly is guaranteed, so there’s no censoring of tweeted incitements to mass action, political or otherwise. But thanks to Edward Snowden, we now see how far the government goes to spy on our digital communications in the name of national security. Arguably, what the U.S. government fears most is threats to its citizens’ physical safety.

Considering these revelations together allows us to see more clearly the relationship between the Internet and politics.

Until now the dominant story has been that the Internet democratizes. For many, any mention of the Arab Spring immediately calls to mind a “Facebook revolution.” For similar reasons, Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State promoted a foreign policy of Internet freedom. And, the mantra that the Internet democratizes everything is repeated over and over in the media. Just in the last few days, for example, here, here, and here.

But what both Chinese censorship and American surveillance show is that there is nothing inherently democratizing about digital networks, at least not in the political sense. Far-reaching communication tools only make it easier to impose constraints on the freedom of expression or the right to privacy. Never before have Chinese censors had it so easy in identifying subversive voices, and never before has the NSA been able to eavesdrop on the private communications of so many people. [Continue reading…]

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It’s business that really rules us now

George Monbiot writes: It’s the reason for the collapse of democratic choice. It’s the source of our growing disillusionment with politics. It’s the great unmentionable. Corporate power. The media will scarcely whisper its name. It is howlingly absent from parliamentary debates. Until we name it and confront it, politics is a waste of time.

The political role of business corporations is generally interpreted as that of lobbyists, seeking to influence government policy. In reality they belong on the inside. They are part of the nexus of power that creates policy. They face no significant resistance, from either government or opposition, as their interests have now been woven into the fabric of all three main political parties in Britain.

Most of the scandals that leave people in despair about politics arise from this source. On Monday, for instance, the Guardian revealed that the government’s subsidy system for gas-burning power stations is being designed by an executive from the Dublin-based company ESB International, who has been seconded into the Department of Energy. What does ESB do? Oh, it builds gas-burning power stations. [Continue reading…]

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Six reasons Iran deal was good for America

Trita Parsi writes: Diplomacy is never easy. Top diplomats of Iran, the United States and other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany, spent three days debating a first, interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program. And an agreement was found: After 34 years of estrangement, Iran and the U.S. were finally on the same page.

Still, the deal fell through. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius showed up in Geneva, Switzerland, a day into the talks and adopted a hawkish line that guaranteed the failure of the discussions.

And much to the dismay of the other diplomats involved, Fabius broke protocol and announced both details of the talks and the failure to reach a deal before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had a chance to address the media. Fabius, echoing the objections of hard-line Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, argued that Iran would get too much in the proposed deal. But in reality Iran was only offered modest sanctions relief in return for some significant suspension of aspects of its nuclear program.

Here’s why the deal the United States negotiated, and France scuttled, would have been good for America. [Continue reading…]

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Iran: don’t let the naysayers prevail

Jonathan Steele writes: France’s scuppering of the carefully negotiated interim nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers was reckless but not unexpected. As a brazen affront to the Obama administration’s desire to mend relations with Tehran after 35 years it needs to be linked to Saudi Arabia’s recent and similarly abrupt repudiation of US policy on Syria. A historic shift is under way in US strategy towards the Middle East. After decades of isolating or overthrowing regimes that profess independence, Washington has decided that its long-term interests are better served by stability than subversion.

The shift has been caused by several factors: the unforeseen popular uprisings which led to the Arab spring and are still bringing unpredictable consequences; the incomplete revolt in Syria which has led to a multiplication of al-Qaida and other jihadis rather than the fall of Bashar al-Assad; the increasing chaos in Iraq which ought to be a warning to the Gulf of the dangers of letting Sunni versus Shia tensions rip; and finally Washington’s declining need for the region’s oil.

Confused and not forewarned by their American ally, France, Israel and Saudi Arabia are lashing out in wild and undiplomatic terms. [Continue reading…]

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Iran negotiations vs. war

In an editorial, USA Today says: For foreign policy hard-liners, nothing is quite so unnerving as peace negotiations. The nearer an agreement seems, the more they fret that too much will be given away. Better, they think, to hang tough until the other side capitulates.

But the likeliest alternative to the suddenly promising negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program is not capitulation. It is war, which makes rising attempts to kill talks in the crib look particularly foolish.

The hard-liners’ anxiety has been ramping up to Xanax levels ever since top diplomats, including Secretary of State John Kerry, rushed to Geneva last week in hopes of wrapping up a six-month interim deal that would test Iran’s claim that it is willing to abandon its quest for nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, fresh off a Kerry briefing, started ripping into the negotiations, calling them “the deal of the century for Iran.” Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate, where Netanyahu enjoys more influence than any foreign leader should, key senators were threatening to move ahead with legislation that would tighten sanctions, an in-your-face response that almost certainly would kill the Iranian attempt at outreach before it can be explored. [Continue reading…]

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Typhoon Haiyan: we cannot afford to procrastinate on climate action

Naderev Saño writes: It was barely 11 months ago in Doha when my delegation appealed to the world to open our eyes to the stark reality that we face, as we confronted a catastrophic storm that resulted in the costliest disaster in Philippine history. Less than a year after, we could not imagine that a disaster much bigger would come.

With a cruel twist of fate, my country is being tested by this hellstorm called Super Typhoon Haiyan, which has been described by experts as the strongest typhoon that has ever made landfall in the course of recorded human history. It was so strong that if there was a category 6, it would have fallen squarely in that box.

We remain uncertain as to the full extent of the devastation, as information trickles in in an agonizingly slow manner because electricity lines and communication lines have been cut off. The initial assessment shows that Haiyan left a wake of massive devastation that is unprecedented, unthinkable and horrific, affecting two–thirds of the Philippines, with about half a million people now rendered homeless, and with scenes reminiscent of the aftermath of a tsunami, with a vast wasteland of mud and debris and dead bodies.

Despite the massive efforts that my country had exerted in preparing for the onslaught of this monster of a storm, it was just a force too powerful and, even as a nation familiar with storms, Haiyan was nothing we have ever experienced before, or perhaps nothing that any country has ever experienced before. [Continue reading…]

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Hello Warsaw, this is Haiyan calling

Walden Bello writes: It seems these days that whenever Mother Nature wants to send an urgent message to humankind, it sends it via the Philippines. This year the messenger was Haiyan, known in the Philippines as Yolanda.

For the second year in a row, the world’s strongest typhoon barreled through the Philippines, Yolanda following on the footsteps steps of Pablo, a k a Bopha, in 2012. And for the third year in a row, a destructive storm deviated from the usual path taken by typhoons, striking communities that had not learned to live with these fearsome weather events because they were seldom hit by them in the past. Sendong in December 2011 and Bopha last year sliced Mindanao horizontally, while Yolanda drove through the Visayas, also in a horizontal direction.

That it was climate change creating the super typhoons that were taking weird directions was a message from Nature not just to Filipinos but to the whole world, whose attention was transfixed on the televised digital images of a massive, angry cyclone bearing down, then sweeping across the central Philippines on its way to the Asian mainland. The message that Nature was sending via Yolanda–which packed winds stronger than Superstorm Sandy, which hit New Jersey and New York last October, and Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005–was especially meant for the governments of the world that are assembling in Warsaw for the annual global climate change negotiations (COP 19), beginning on November 11.

Is it a coincidence, ask some people who are not exactly religious, that both Pablo and Yolanda arrived at the time of the global climate negotiations? Pablo smashed into Mindanao during the last stages of the Conference of Parties (COP 18), in Doha last year.

To reinforce Haiyan’s message, Commissioner Naderev Sano, the top negotiator for the Philippines in Warsaw, went on a hunger strike when the talks began.

It is doubtful, however, that the governments assembling in Warsaw will rise to the occasion. For a time earlier this year, it appeared that Hurricane Sandy would bring climate change to the forefront of President Obama’s agenda. It did not. [Continue reading…]

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NSA: our analogue spying laws must catch up with the digital era

Kenneth Roth writes: News that US intelligence services tapped the phones of allied leaders has generated understandable outrage in Europe. But far more significant is the American government’s practice of monitoring the communications of millions of ordinary people, who have no legal redress in the United States because they are foreigners.

Electronic surveillance has become easy. Authorities can reconstruct someone’s life with a simple request to their mobile phone provider, while the costs of storing and processing massive amounts of data have declined dramatically. We already live much of our lives through digital communications, and the trend will only accelerate, so we need swift reform, or the problems will escalate. The issue is not just our emails and mobile phones but also our calendars, address books and medical and banking records. Governments and corporations are increasingly able to track people’s location, associations and communications.

Existing legal frameworks were devised in an analogue age, when cross-border communication was rare and online communication and social media were unheard of. In that pre-internet age, surveillance techniques were labour-intensive and time-consuming, which helped to constrain arbitrary and abusive practices. The law has to catch up. [Continue reading…]

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Why I believe Yasser Arafat was poisoned

David Barclay writes: Polonium 210 is so toxic that it is difficult to explain just how dangerous it is – a fatal dose is almost a million times less than is needed for cyanide, for example.

Its danger comes from its high radioactivity. It decays by giving out alpha radiation and once Po210 is absorbed and is circulating in the body, it silently and fatally damages each individual cell. Half of any amount of Po210 decays in this way every 138 days.

It is impossible to physically see what would be a fatal amount of solid polonium, making it impossible for anyone to detect that they have been given the poison. Obviously, this also makes it remarkably easy to give to someone in a drink or food.

Strangely though, it is completely safe to handle, because alpha radiation is stopped by even a sheet of paper or by human skin. It can be carried around in a test tube for years without harming anyone, until it gets into someone’s blood stream.

I believe it did get into Yasser Arafat’s bloodstream and here is why. [Continue reading…]

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A fraying of the public/private surveillance partnership

Bruce Schneier writes: The public/private surveillance partnership between the NSA and corporate data collectors is starting to fray. The reason is sunlight. The publicity resulting from the Snowden documents has made companies think twice before allowing the NSA access to their users’ and customers’ data.

Pre-Snowden, there was no downside to cooperating with the NSA. If the NSA asked you for copies of all your Internet traffic, or to put backdoors into your security software, you could assume that your cooperation would forever remain secret. To be fair, not every corporation cooperated willingly. Some fought in court. But it seems that a lot of them, telcos and backbone providers especially, were happy to give the NSA unfettered access to everything. Post-Snowden, this is changing. Now that many companies’ cooperation has become public, they’re facing a PR backlash from customers and users who are upset that their data is flowing to the NSA. And this is costing those companies business.

How much is unclear. In July, right after the PRISM revelations, the Cloud Security Alliance reported that US cloud companies could lose $35 billion over the next three years, mostly due to losses of foreign sales. Surely that number has increased as outrage over NSA spying continues to build in Europe and elsewhere. There is no similar report for software sales, although I have attended private meetings where several large US software companies complained about the loss of foreign sales. On the hardware side, IBM is losing business in China. The US telecom companies are also suffering: AT&T is losing business worldwide.

This is the new reality. The rules of secrecy are different, and companies have to assume that their responses to NSA data demands will become public. This means there is now a significant cost to cooperating, and a corresponding benefit to fighting. [Continue reading…]

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The U.S. Army discovers Africa

Andrew Bacevich writes: On the list of U.S. military priorities, Africa has always ranked right smack at the bottom. Now that appears to be changing. As Eric Schmitt recently reported in the New York Times, “thousands of soldiers once bound for Iraq or Afghanistan are now gearing up for missions in Africa.” Before the gearing up proceeds much further, Americans might want to ask a few questions. Chief among them are these: Why the sudden shift in priorities? What’s the aim? Who stands to benefit? What risks does the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa entail?

Among the various services, the U.S. Army in particular finds the prospect of an expanded Africa presence appealing. As Schmitt observed, with U.S. forces out of Iraq and soon scheduled to leave Afghanistan, “the Army is looking for new missions around the world.” For Army leaders, Africa spells opportunity, a chance to demonstrate continuing relevance at a time when the nation’s appetite for sending U.S. troops to invade and occupy countries has pretty much evaporated.

Thus, we have U.S. Army Africa, or USARAF, the latest in the Pentagon’s ever-growing roster of military headquarters. The mission of this command, which describes itself as “America’s premier Army team dedicated to positive change in Africa,” manages to be at once reassuringly bland and ominously ambitious. On the one hand, USARAF “strengthens the land force capabilities of African states and regional organizations.” On the other, it “conducts decisive action in order to establish a secure environment and protect the national security interests of the United States.”

One might hope that successfully accomplishing the first half of that mission — U.S. troops training and equipping African counterparts — will preclude the second. More likely, however, such efforts will pave the way for “decisive action,” a euphemism for war.

Let’s discard the euphemisms. Here is a classic example of bureaucratic interests displacing strategic calculation, not to mention common sense, as a basis for policy. For the Navy and Air Force, the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed “pivot” toward East Asia has come as something of a godsend. Addressing the putative threat posed by a rising China promises to keep those services busy (and flush with cash) for decades to come. Yet apart from a possible resumption of the long-dormant Korean War, Asian scenarios involving a large-scale commitment of Army forces are difficult to conjure up. So expanding the “global war on terrorism” into the heart of Africa allows the Army to make its own pivot. [Continue reading…]

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