Britain’s Brave New World Just Got Braver

Sajid Javid: Backs dodgy software to spy on crowds. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

British Home Secretary Sajid Javid unveiled a new counter-terrorism initiative last week that he says targets an ever-metastasizing threat, yet it raises a raft of new questions about people’s rights.

The government is acting on the imperative that something needs to be done. But MI5 – officially known as Britain’s domestic Security Service and the lead organization combating terrorism within the UK – has already, since the start of the “war on terror,” doubled in size and has been promised yet more staff over the next two years.

Yet despite these boosted resources for MI5, as well as increased funding and surveillance powers for the entire UK intelligence community, virtually every terror attack carried out in the UK over the last few years has been committed by someone already known to the authorities. Indeed, the Manchester bomber, Salman Abedi, had been aggressively investigated but MI5 ignored vital intelligence and closed down the active investigation shortly before he carried out the attack.

This failure to target known threats is not just a UK problem. Attacks across Europe over the last few years have repeatedly been carried out by people already on the local security radar.

New approaches are needed. But this latest offering appears to be a medley of already failed initiatives and more worryingly, a potentially dangerous blueprint for a techno-Stasi state. Read More

China tortured Tibetan prisoner with pain-inducing injections

The Dharamshala, India based Tibetan rights group says the Chinese police and prison authorities brutally tortured a Tibetan political prisoner in detention, using pain-inducing injections.

Goshul Lobsang

"Goshul Lobsang, who recently died of torture injuries, might have received injections designed to cause and exacerbate his pain while he was being tortured in detention. The use of torture methods to increase pain is consistent with other Chinese torture tactics. For example, the Chinese adopted Soviet torture techniques to inflict pain faster," said Tsering Tsomo, director of the Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (TCHRD).

"Goshul Lobsang was arrested on 29 June 2010[ii] by Machu County Public Security Bureau (PSB) officers. For about 5 months he was subjected to severe torture including pain-inducing injections, and deprived of sleep and food by the interrogation officers in Machu County," the report said, citing with a source who hails from the same village as Goshul Lobsang.

"Chinese officers used sharp-pointed objects such as toothpicks to repeatedly pierce and penetrate into the tops of his finger nails and cuticles of Goshul Lobsang. This stabbing, applied with force and consistency, resulted in severe bleeding, swelling and pain making Goshul Lobsang unable to temporarily use his hands," another source told group.

Normally, the use of techniques to make torture more painful does not result in any further violations of international law. This is because the fundamental question under international law is whether a person was tortured, not how much the victim was tortured. However, in 1974 the UN General Assembly passed a resolution on Principles of Medical Ethics. While not legally binding on its own, the resolution recognized and emphasized a pre-existing rule of international law—that nobody is allowed to participate in torture. The resolution emphasized that medical professionals should not use their unique knowledge or position to facilitate torture.

The use of pain-inducing injections on Golshul Lobsang to facilitate and expedite his torture was not only a violation of international law but also an extreme violation of medical ethics. The widespread and systematic torture in Chinese prisons cannot exist without the active and implied consent of medical professionals. The medical professionals working in Chinese prisons should use Golshul Lobsang's death and the participation of medical professionals in his death as an opportunity to support medical ethics and oppose torture.

The group said they has also obtained a copy of a note written by Goshul Lobsang while he was imprisoned at Ding Xi (??) city in Gansu Province. Goshul Lobsang shared the note which he had written on 28 September 2012 with a select group of friends on 1 March 2014, just weeks before his death. In the note titled "Prisoner of Clear Conscience", Goshul Lobsang clearly challenges the official Chinese propaganda that Tibetan activists are criminals deserving to be imprisoned. Instead he asserts that his conscience is clear and that he has no regrets for defying authoritarian, oppressive policies. Below is a translation of the note:

Prisoner of Clear Conscience

"I have a family. I have siblings. I have a wife and children. For them, I have sincere love and affection, and for the sake of this love and affection, I am determined to sacrifice my life. But for the sake of our own people, even if I lose this love and affection, I will have no regrets. I am an ordinary nomad who loves his people, so I am willing to do anything for my people. I might lose this bony and haggard body that has suffered brutal pain and torture inflicted out of sheer hatred, I still will not have any regrets. I have the desire to follow in the footsteps of martyrs who expressed everything through flaming fire, but I lack courage [to do such a thing].

However, I don't have the desire to bow my head in surrender to an environment, which denies freedom to speak out against lies and to struggle for equality. [Therefore], I fell into such a situation [of torture and suffering], for which I, an ordinary nomad, have no regrets. What I desire is a free world wherein people can enjoy a life of harmony – I don't want an atmosphere of darkness, a society wherein life is subjected to oppression.

I have no regrets, although all of a sudden, I may be compelled to separate from the path of life that [I have been treading along] with my beloved mother, siblings, wife and children. I may have to depart with [feelings] of cold, heavy sadness, but I have no sense of guilt in my heart.

My clear conscience is my only asset in this world. I don't possess anything other than this, and I don't need anything other than this.

[But] my only regret that weighs heavily on my heart is the lack of profound sense of solidarity among our people, because of which we are unable to achieve a strong unified stand.

Fellow countrymen, we must have a far-sighted [political] vision and strong unity. We must have a strong sense of faith in our culture and tradition, and a sense of gratitude to those who have contributed so much to our nation.

Fellow countrymen of the Land of Snows, we must all uphold unity. May this unity be sustained for tens of thousands of years!"

Goshul Lobsang,28 September 2012,Dingxi, Gansu

According to sources in the region, Goshul Lobsang led a difficult life, harassed by the local authorities since his return from India in mid-1990s. He went to India in 1992 to study in a Tibetan school. He was first detained in late 1990s when many leaflets apparently calling for freedom appeared in Machu area. He never accepted the accusations and the Machu County PSB officers had to release him for lack of evidence. However, he continued to be under police surveillance making it difficult for him to lead a normal life. Thereafter, for some time, he left for Lhasa and other areas but later returned to teach English to fellow nomads and neighbourhood children.

During the 2008 uprising, Goshul Lobsang took part in the protests that rocked Machu area for three consecutive days beginning 17 March. He even hoisted a Tibetan flag outside his nomad tent in defiance of the Chinese authorities.

In January 2009, when leaflets calling on Tibetans not to celebrate ostentatious Losar (Tibetan New Year) and the local authorities to stop colluding with human traffickers appeared in Machu, Goshul Lobsang and others shared these incidents on the popular Chinese instant messaging site known as QQ. The authorities had one more reason for target Goshul Lobsang after this incident.

On 10 April 2009, fed up with the authorities' constant harassment of local Tibetans since the 2008 protests in Machu, Goshul Lobsang and some other Tibetans confronted the local officials in an attempt to clarify the matter. Instead of engaging in civil talks, the police officers started beating Goshul Lobsang and another Tibetan, Dakpa. The severe beatings prompted around 400 local Tibetans to directly confront the police, with some locals raising protest slogans and throwing stones. As the matter escalated, the police had no choice but to temporarily let go of Goshul Lobsang and Dakpa.

But the local authorities were firm in their resolve to arrest Goshul Lobsang as soon as possible but they did not want to antagonise the whole community. Therefore, on 12 April 2009, local authorities called a meeting of major village leaders in Bhelpan Township and served them an ultimatum to surrender the five ringleaders of the 2008 protests including Goshul Lobsang. It was around this time that Goshul Lobsang took to the mountains to escape arrest. He spent about a year in wilderness without any access to basic necessities including food and medication.

On 29 June 2010, Goshul Lobsang was arrested by the Machu County PSB who held him for about five months in Machu County. On 26 November 2010, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison by the Kanlho (Ch: Gannan) Intermediate People's Court and imprisoned at Ding Xi, about 100 km from Lanzhou.

He remained in prison for about three years in extreme health condition. By November 2013, the state of his health alarmed the prison officials who decided that Goshul Lobsang should not die in prison. Shortly after, Goshul Lobsang's family members were called to fetch him but on the condition that they signed a letter stating that Goshul Lobsang's medical condition was caused by natural causes. The family had no choice but to sign the letter because they knew Goshul Lobsang wouldn't survive long and they wanted him to spend his last moments at his home. He was released on 29 November 2013.

On 19 March 2014, at around 1 am, Goshul Lobsang died surrounded by his family members. He was cremeted on 26 March 2014. He is survived by his mother Tardon, 73, wife Tarpey, 39, son Sherab, 18, daughter Dolma, 14, and unidentified siblings. More

 

© 2014

It's About Blackmail, Not National Security

Spying has a history almost as ancient as humanity itself, but every now and then the rules of the game change. This post-9/11 moment of surveillance is one of those game-changers and the National Security Agency (NSA) has been the deal-breaker and rule-maker. The new rules it brought into existence are simple enough: you -- whoever you are and wherever you live on Planet Earth -- are a potential target. Get used to it. The most basic ground rule of the new system: no one is exempt from surveillance.

But then there’s human nature to take into account. There’s the feeling of invulnerability that the powerful often have. If you need an example, look no further than what key officials around New Jersey Governor Chris Christie were willing to commit to emails, even in this day and age, when it came to their scheme to tie up traffic on the George Washington Bridge. Something similar has been true of the system NSA officials set up. Its rules of the road were that no one was to be exempt from surveillance. (Call me Angela Merkel.) They then plunged their creation into the deepest secrecy, in part because they couldn’t imagine a world without at least one categorical exemption: themselves.

As it happens, Edward Snowden’s revelations fit the logic of the system the NSA created to a T. What the former agency contractor revealed, above all, was that the surveillance of anyone and everyone was the essence of our new world, and that not even the NSA would be exempt. He made that agency his own object of surveillance and so opened it up to the scrutiny of the rest of the planet. He gave its officials a dose of their own medicine.

Much of the ensuing outrage from the U.S. intelligence community, including the calls for his head, the cries of “treason,” the demands to bring him to “justice,” and so on, reflect outrage over the fact that the agency had gotten a full-scale dose of its own rules. It turns out that you don’t have to be an ordinary citizen or a world leader to feel terrible when someone appropriates the right to surveil your life. When it happened to agency honchos, they undoubtedly felt just like Merkel or Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff or so many other figures who discovered that their lives and communications weren’t private and weren’t their own. In a perfectly human manner, reality being far too ugly for their taste, they wanted payback.

There’s humor in the fact that the key figures involved in creating the foundations of a new, all-encompassing global security statesimply couldn’t imagine the obvious happening. Unfortunately, as TomDispatch regular and historian of U.S. surveillance practices Alfred McCoy points out, what the NSA set up, despite the blowback it's now causing, is irresistible to Washington. Not surprisingly, as new information about the agency's methods continues to ooze out, the president’s recent NSA speech makes itclear that genuine “change” or “reform” isn't on the agenda, thatlittle that matters will alter in the NSA’s methodology, and that nothing will be allowed to shake the system itself.

Surveillance and Scandal Time-Tested Weapons for U.S. Global Power
By Alfred McCoy

For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from theWashington Post, the New York Times, theGuardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line -- like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them.

For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. Not surprisingly, in a post-9/11 bipartisan exercise of executive power, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have presided over building the NSA step by secret step into a digital panopticon designed to monitor the communications of every American and foreign leaders worldwide.

What exactly was the aim of such an unprecedented program of massive domestic and planetary spying, which clearly carried the risk of controversy at home and abroad? Here, an awareness of the more than century-long historyof U.S. surveillance can guide us through the billions of bytes swept up by the NSA to the strategic significance of such a program for the planet’s last superpower. What the past reveals is a long-term relationship between American state surveillance and political scandal that helps illuminate the unacknowledged reason why the NSA monitors America’s closest allies. More

TomDispatch.Com

 

The Day We Fight Back Against Internet Surveillance

DEAR USERS OF THE INTERNET,

In January 2012 we defeated the SOPA and PIPA censorship legislation with the largest Internet protest in history. A year ago this month one of that movement's leaders, Aaron Swartz, tragically passed away.

Aaron Swartz

Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance.

If Aaron were alive, he'd be on the front lines, fighting against a world in which governments observe, collect, and analyze our every digital action.

Now, on the eve of the anniversary of Aaron's passing, and in celebration of the win against SOPA and PIPA that he helped make possible, we are announcing a day of protest against mass surveillance, to take place this February 11th. More

 

 

Our Fear of Al-Qaeda Hurts Us More Than Al-Qaeda DoesOur Fear of Al-Qaeda Hurts Us More Than Al-Qaeda Does

Three disclosures this week show that the United States is losing its way in the struggle against terrorism. Sweeping government efforts to stop attacks are backfiring abroad and infringing on basic rights at home.

CIA drone strikes are killing scores of civilians in Pakistan and Yemen. The National Security Agency is eavesdropping on tens of millions of phone calls worldwide — including those of 35 foreign leaders — in the name of U.S. security.

And the Department of Homeland Security is using algorithms to “prescreen” travelers before they board domestic flights, reviewing government and private databases that include Americans’ tax identification numbers, car registrations and property records.

Will we create a Minority Report-style Department of Precrime next?

Obama administration officials have a duty to protect Americans from terrorism. But out-of-control NSA surveillance, an ever-expanding culture of secrecy and still-classified rules for how and when foreigners and even Americans can be killed by drone strikes are excessive, unnecessary and destructive.

Twelve years after September 11, 2001, the United States’ obsession with al Qaeda is doing more damage to the nation than the terrorist group itself.

Two new reports issued this week by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watchdetailed dozens of civilian deaths caused by drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen.Classified documents obtained by the Washington Post suggest that CIA officials who carry out the strikes make little effort to track civilian deaths.

“There is a lot more pressure building” on President Barack Obama, Sarah Holewinski, head of the Center for Civilians in Conflict, a group pushing for greater transparency in drone strikes, told me this week. “He’s going to have to look at these legal questions.”

Documents leaked by whistleblower Edward J. Snowden emerged this week, revealing NSA phone monitoring of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, 35 unidentified heads of state, and 70 million calls in France.

The government's ever-expanding culture of secrecy is excessive, unnecessary, and destructive.

The extent of the surveillance is sparking widespread indignation and endangering joint counter-terrorism operations among Germany, France and the United States.

“The perception here is of a United States where security has trumped liberty,” New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote from Berlin on Thursday, “intelligence agencies run amok (vacuuming up data of friend and foe alike), and the once-admired ‘checks and balances’ built into American governance and studied by European schoolchildren have become, at best, secret reviews of secret activities where opposing arguments get no hearing.”

There is a serious terrorist threat to the United States. The administration is under enormous pressure to prevent attacks. But there are ways to safeguard the United States without sparking such a serious backlash abroad and at home.

Holewinski called on the Obama administration to implement its promise to move command of drone operations from the CIA to the American military. She said the shift, which Obama announced this spring, is going “very, very slowly.”

Military control is one step toward a key goal: greater transparency in countries where drone strikes are enormously unpopular. Keeping the drone strikes as a covert CIA-run program makes accountability and determining the true number of civilian deaths impossible, she said.

If strikes are commanded by the military and disclosed publicly, reports of civilian casualties could be investigated under military law and compensation paid to victims — as now happens in Afghanistan.

Holewinski also urged the administration to disclose targeting rules that it has refused to make public. How are civilians defined? And how are civilian casualties assessed? What is the legal definition of an individual who can be targeted?

She credited the administration for a decrease in drone strikes since Obama promised one in May. But, she insisted, the targeting process needs to be far more transparent.

Inside the United States, meanwhile, press reports emerged on Monday that the Transportation Security Administration is expanding its prescreening of airline passengers to include government and private databases that contain employment information, property records and physical characteristics.

Khaliah Barnes, a lawyer with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which opposes this prescreening, said many Americans do not grasp the current scale of domestic government data mining.

“The average person doesn’t understand how much intelligence-driven matching is going on and how this could be accessed for other purposes,” she said. “There’s no meaningful oversight, transparency or accountability.”

One critic called the new TSA program “a ‘pre-crime’ assessment every time you fly.”

A bipartisan proposal to rein in government surveillance unveiled last month by Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is a good start. The measure would end the bulk collection of American’s communications records; limit Washington’s ability to obtain information from Google and other online providers, and make the secret court that oversees U.S. surveillance operations far more transparent.

After months of promising change, Obama should back the senators’ proposal. He should also enact Holewinski’s recommendations for making drone strikes more transparent.

Terrorists already know that the United States monitors phone calls and emails worldwide. They already masquerade as civilians in areas where drones operate. Making drone strikes, NSA surveillance and TSA screening more transparent will build trust at home and solidify counter-terrorism cooperation abroad.

If there is one ideal that Obama needs to embrace, it’s transparency. It is a strength, not a weakness. More

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This article also appears at Reuters.com, an Atlantic partner site.

NSA’s vast new Utah data hub suffering from ‘meltdowns’ - report

Though the NSA’s vast data storage facility in Utah is now hardly a secret, new information has surfaced indicating widespread technical failures delaying its opening, including 10 “meltdowns” within the past 13 months.

NSA' Bluffdale Data Storage Facility

The Pentagon’s facility, located in Bluffdale, which lies south of Salt Lake City, is being built to house a gargantuan quantity of data harvested, presumably, by many of the NSA’s surveillance programs now made public by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.

Estimates of the facility’s capacity, which is classified, ranges from exabytes or zettabytes, reports the Wall Street Journal. An exabyte being equivalent to 100,000 times the size of printed material held by the Library of Congress, while a zettabyte is 1,000 times that amount.

A new report compiled through project documents and information provided to the WSJ by officials cite a number of electrical surges -- called “arc fault failures" -- which over the past 13 months have destroyed hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of equipment, and delayed the facility from going active for a year.

According to one official, such arc fault failures can resemble “a flash of lightning inside a 2-foot box” and can melt metal and destroy circuitry.

Speculation as to whether the NSA’s facility in Utah is already active has been rampant, and indications are that its equipment is being slowly brought online as it becomes available, rather than in one dramatic on-switch moment.

"We turn each machine on as it is installed, and the facility is ready for that installation to begin," NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines told the Salt Lake City Tribune in late September.

The $1.5 billion facility is estimated to be not only the NSA’s largest data center, but the largest in the world, with some 1 million square feet of space. Engineers have said the center will dwarf even Google’s largest data hub.

Special teams from the Army Corps of Engineers have been assigned to investigate the electrical issues at the Utah center. The most recent arc failure according to the WSJ seems to have occurred on September 25, causing $100,000 in damage. The first such reported failure is thought to have taken place on August 9 of last year.

So far the information available indicates that the reason for the technical failures remains in dispute. A statement issued by a consortium of private contractors currently working on site eluded to the sheer complexity of the data warehouse as the culprit.

"Problems were discovered with certain parts of the unique and highly complex electrical system. The causes of those problems have been determined and a permanent fix is being implemented,” said the firms.

According to various reports, including the latest by the WSJ, the Bluffdale site was chosen by the NSA owing to its affordable electricity. The data hub will consume some 65 megawatts of energy at a cost of $1 million per month.

Beyond its logistical hurdles, the NSA’s data hub will also open amidst heightened scrutiny. Lawmakers including Senator Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who recently questioned whether the NSA has also been harvesting geo-location data, have expressed a need to lay out just how the NSA will justify the collection of an increasingly dramatic amount of data.

"There is no question there is going to be increased scrutiny of these kinds of practices," said Wyden, "because Americans understand this is a dangerous time, but the government, if it’s going to collect [this information], ought to have to say here’s how it contributes to security of the American people. They have not made that case."

Only a week prior to Edward Snowden’s first batch of published leaks, the massive Utah center had been billed by the agency’s Deputy Director, John Inglis, as only one additional working part of the country’s national security apparatus.

"They shouldn’t be worried because, A, we’re Americans," Inglis said. "We understand what the principles are that govern the nation; [and] B, we take an oath to the Constitution, and we take that very seriously." More

If we are lucky it will self destruct! Editor