Today’s walk on the dark side begins with the latest in provoked [by Edward Snowden] political posturing from the New York Times:
Obama Calls for Overhaul of N.S.A.’s Phone Data Collection Program
President Obama, declaring that advances in technology had made it harder “to both defend our nation and uphold our civil liberties,” announced carefully calculated changes to surveillance policies on Friday, saying he would restrict the ability of intelligence agencies to gain access to telephone data, and would ultimately move that data out of the hands of the government.
But Mr. Obama left in place significant elements of the broad surveillance net assembled by the National Security Agency, and left the implementation of many of his changes up to Congress and the intelligence agencies themselves.
Another take, from The Guardian:
Obama presents NSA reforms with plan to end government storage of call data
President stops short of ending controversial bulk collection
Obama assures allied foreign leaders on NSA surveillance
Reforms also include added Fisa court safeguards
US president Barack Obama forcefully defended the embattled National Security Agency on Friday in a speech that outlined a series of surveillance reforms but stopped well short of demanding an end to the bulk collection of American phone data.
In his widely anticipated address at the Justice Department on the future course of US surveillance policy, Obama said the government should no longer hold databases of every call record made in the United States, citing the “potential for abuse”.
But Obama did not say what should replace the databases and made it clear the intelligence agencies should still be able to access call records information in some unspecified way, signalling a new round in the battle between privacy advocates and the NSA’s allies.
Still another take, also from The Guardian:
Obama’s NSA ‘reforms’ are little more than a PR attempt to mollify the public
Obama is draping the banner of change over the NSA status quo. Bulk surveillance that caused such outrage will remain in place
In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington repeatedly uses the same well-worn tactic. It is the one that has been hauled out over decades in response to many of America’s most significant political scandals. Predictably, it is the same one that shaped President Obama’s much-heralded Friday speech to announce his proposals for “reforming” the National Security Agency in the wake of seven months of intense worldwide controversy.
The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are “serious questions that have been raised”. They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic “reforms” so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge.
And seen from Germany by TheLocal.de:
Obama: We won’t tap allies’ phones
US president Barack Obama announced on Friday in a speech that he would restrict the NSA’s powers. It will no longer be allowed to monitor phones of allied country leaders, including Germany.
The National Security Agency (NSA) will have to get the permission of a special court to view mass telephone data, Obama said from Washington, in a hotly anticipated speech following Edward Snowden’s revealing of the country’s mass spying programmes.
Mass data will also no longer be stored by the NSA, making it harder to access, he said. This curbing should “protect the privacy and civil liberties, no matter their nationality or where they are.”
A laconic techie take from The Register:
Obama reveals tiny NSA reforms … aka reforming your view of the NSA
Prez announces tweaks here and there for ordinary American citizens
From TheHill, a critical take:
Critics: Obama spy plan keeps status quo for NSA
Privacy rights advocates and tech companies on Friday dismissed President Obama’s proposed overhaul of government surveillance as preserving the status quo.
CNN parses semantics:
Despite Obama’s NSA changes, phone records still collected
After the firestorm over Edward Snowden’s disclosure of U.S. surveillance programs, the most contentious aspect revealed by last year’s classified leaks will continue under reforms announced Friday by President Barack Obama.
Someone will still collect records of the numbers and times of phone calls by every American.
While access to the those records will be tightened and they may be shifted from the National Security Agency to elsewhere, the storage of the phone metadata goes on.
The Guardian gets itchy:
US telecoms giants express unease about proposed NSA metadata reforms
AT&T concerned US may force company to retain data
Tech firms hail ‘positive progress’ on privacy protections
Privately, telecoms executives have expressed concern that they will be forced to retain customers’ metadata – information about call duration, recipients and location. Speaking anonymously, one executive said the firms were concerned about how long they would have to keep data, which government agencies would have access to it and what protections they would have should there be legal challenges to their retention or distribution of the information.
The Verge has the predictable praise:
Intelligence and defense leaders offer support for Obama’s NSA reforms
President Obama today announced his approach to reforming some government surveillance practices, and at least for right now, the US intelligence and defense communities are supportive of those ideas. Both Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper have issued statements vouching for the changes outlined in Obama’s speech. “These programs must always balance the need to defend our national security with the responsibility to preserve America’s individual liberties, and the President’s decisions and recommendations will do that,” said Hagel in a statement.
Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers, who lead the Senate Intelligence Committee and House Intelligence Committee respectively, also seemed happy with Obama’s speech. According to a joint statement, they “look forward to working with the president to increase confidence in these programs.” Not everyone was impressed with Obama’s remarks. Senator Rand Paul said the new strategy basically amounts to “the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration.”
Roseate musing from The Guardian:
NSA critics in Congress sense reform momentum after Obama speech
Three new co-sponsors for USA Freedom Act
Sensenbrenner: ‘Reform cannot be done by presidential fiat’
Critics of National Security Agency surveillance are hoping President Barack Obama’s call to stop government collection of telephone data will give fresh momentum to legislation aimed at banning the practice entirely.
On Friday, three new co-sponsors joined the 120 congressmen who have already backed the so-called USA Freedom Act, but their reform bill faces tough competition from rival lawmakers who claim the president’s broad support for the NSA favours separate efforts to protect its powers.
Reviews from abroad via The Guardian:
Obama NSA reforms receive mixed response in Europe and Brazil
EU commissioner says speech is a step in right direction, but German ex-minister says changes fail to tackle root problem
Europeans were largely underwhelmed by Barack Obama’s speech on limited reform of US espionage practices, saying the measures did not go far enough to address concerns over American snooping on its European allies.
A compendium of the eurocommentariat from the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
European commentators see little to praise in Obama’s NSA changes
President Barack Obama’s highly anticipated revisions to the National Security Agency international spying program didn’t come close to satisfying European commentators.
The French newspaper Le Monde called them “timid and partial.” The British newspaper The Guardian referred to them as “sleight of hand.” The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel called them “Refoermchen,” meaning less than a real reform, or a “tiny reform.” The Russian news agency Novosti reminded its audience that “neither the reform nor the statement would have happened without the leaks from Edward Snowden,” a former NSA contract worker who began leaking secret files back in June. The German newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau simply noted in a headline: “Obama disappoints the world.”
The reason? The speech made it clear to Europeans that the Obama administration intends to continue to collect almost as much data as it always has, but has promised not to use it unless necessary. To Europeans, who since last summer have grown increasingly distrustful of the intentions of the American spy program, such words are of little comfort.
Wired wonders:
So what did the tech companies get?
As expected, they will have more freedom to disclose the number and the nature of requests from the government for data related to national-security concerns. So we can expect more detailed transparency reports from the companies showing that they only provide a fraction of their information to the government.
Additionally, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will add members with expertise in civil liberties and technology and will declassify more of its decisions.
BuzzFeed gets to the bottom of it:
America’s Spies Want Edward Snowden Dead
“I would love to put a bullet in his head,” one Pentagon official told BuzzFeed.
The NSA leaker is enemy No. 1 among those inside the intelligence world.
Edward Snowden has made some dangerous enemies. As the American intelligence community struggles to contain the public damage done by the former National Security Agency contractor’s revelations of mass domestic spying, intelligence operators have continued to seethe in very personal terms against the 30-year-old whistle-blower.
“In a world where I would not be restricted from killing an American, I personally would go and kill him myself,” a current NSA analyst told BuzzFeed. “A lot of people share this sentiment.”
Also drawing considerable attention was the latest Snowden leak from The Guardian:
NSA collects millions of text messages daily in ‘untargeted’ global sweep
NSA extracts location, contacts and financial transactions
‘Dishfire’ program sweeps up ‘pretty much everything it can’
GCHQ using database to search metadata from UK numbers
The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.
The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.
The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets.
The Wire sums up:
NSA on Text Messages: ‘A Goldmine to Exploit’
If you were curious: Yes, the National Security Agency is collecting and filtering text messages to the tune of 194 million a day. It’s a collection of data that one agency slide, obtained by The Guardian from leaker Edward Snowden, called “a goldmine to exploit.”
The Guardian details the NSA’s text message collection infrastructure in a new report, including its massive scale.
The agencies collect 194 million messages a day.
They include 76,000 geocoordinates for users, thanks to people seeking directions or setting up meetings.
The agencies track 1.6 million border crossings and 5,000-plus occurrences in which someone is traveling.
They’re able to link hundreds of thousands of financial transactions.
They collect over 5 million missed call alerts, which then get pushed into the “contact-chaining” system, building out the NSA’s ad hoc social network.
More from The Guardian:
NSA leaks: Dishfire revelations expose the flaws in British laws on surveillance
How can we have a meaningful debate about excessive snooping when so much information is a state secret?
What we have no words for we cannot discuss except crudely. The latest revelation about the security services brings a new word to our growing vocabulary: Dishfire. This week’s exposé reveals the NSA collecting and extracting personal information from hundreds of millions of text messages a day. While messages from US phone numbers are removed from the database, documents show GCHQ used it to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to British citizens.
We are not so much free citizens, innocent until proven guilty, but rather, as one of the Dishfire slides says, a “rich data set awaiting exploitation”. Prism, Tempora, Upstream, Bullrun – as our language grows we begin to speak with greater clarity. We move from James Bond fantasies to a greater understanding of what the intelligence services actually do in our name and with our money. Is indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance the best way to protect democracy?
NSA Dishfire presentation on text message collection – key extracts
A pre-Obamacast declaration from The Hill:
Sen. Leahy on NSA claim: ‘Baloney’
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said Thursday the National Security Agency’s claim that they’re “very protective” of Americans’ information is “baloney.”
Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown” that the NSA’s bulk metadata collection program has not thwarted a single terrorist attack.
President Obama, NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander, and lawmakers, such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), have said the program has helped stop at least 50 terrorist plots.
“The other thing that keeps striking me is that [the NSA says] ‘we’re very protective of this information.’ Baloney,” Leahy said. “They weren’t protective enough that they could stop a sub-contractor, Mr. Snowden, from stealing millions of their biggest secrets. To this day, they still don’t know all of what he’s stolen.”
Leahy has introduced several bills that would change the NSA’s operations. One bill, the USA Freedom Act, would end the NSA’s metadata program.
After the jump, European blowback, German inquiries, NSA-tech-enabled hackers, compliant corporations, direct action claims, lethal attack on the press, another Mideast causus belli debunked, Asian crises hit the textbooks, claims, zones, corporate espionage, a Google setback, and more. . .
A parallel strand from EUobserver:
UK rejects German ‘no spy’ pact, report says
The UK is reportedly opposed to a no-spy pact being crafted by EU states, despite months of German-led negotiations.
German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung on Wednesday (15 January) reported that the pact is designed to committ member states “to refrain from mutual espionage” in both the political and economic areas.
The newspaper, citing an internal government report, adds that the accord would allow “surveillance only for previously agreed purposes such as combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”
It would also bar a member state’s intelligence service from asking a sister service to obtain data on its citizens if this not allowed under the querants’ national law.
The Irish Times adds context:
US-German ties ‘worse now’ than during Iraq war due to spying
Merkel ally says anger in Berlin over US spying tactics has placed strain on relationship
Relations between Germany and the United States are worse now than during the US-led invasion of Iraq a decade ago, a leading ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel said today, in a sign of mounting anger in Berlin over American spying tactics.
Philipp Missfelder, foreign policy spokesman for Dr Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) in parliament, said Berlin should bar US access to a database of international financial transactions unless Washington promises to stop spying in Germany.
The politician is expected to be confirmed soon as the government co-ordinator for US ties. Reports this week have suggested talks on a “no spying” deal, launched after revelations last year that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had monitored Dr Merkel’s mobile phone, are near collapse because Washington refuses to rule out eavesdropping on one of its closest post-war allies.
Deutsche Welle acts locally:
Germany probes intel agencies
Germany’s Parliamentary Control Panel (PKGr) meets to determine who will oversee the country’s three intelligence agencies. Left party politician Andre Hahn hopes the panel’s influence will grow.
All good things come in threes, as they say. Maybe that’s why the German government allows itself three intelligence services. Opinions are divided over whether that’s a good thing, but if you were to grade the performance of these agencies in the recent past they would most likely not come out well.
Since the German Intelligence Agency (BND) claims it wasn’t aware of the global interception activities of its US-counterpart, the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the country’s domestic security agency, somehow missed the string of murders carried out by the far-right terrorist group the National Socialist Underground (NSU), they only deserve a “fail.” The only German intelligence service that didn’t make negative headlines recently is the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD).
And from Network World, a reminder of the inevitable:
NSA hacking tools will find their way to criminals eventually
The U.S. National Security Agency has reportedly developed technology to commandeer computers even when they are off the Internet, and security experts warn it’s only a matter of time before similar tools become part of cybercriminals’ toolbox.
Since 2008, the NSA has used radio technology to send and receive data to compromise nearly 100,000 systems in a number of overseas targets, the New York Times reported Wednesday. While based on technology that has been around for decades, the level of sophistication of the tools developed by the NSA is impressive, experts say.
A disclosure demand from TechWeekEurope:
Vodafone Demands Right To Publish Government Surveillance Requests
Vodafone writes to 24 governments to ask for more freedom to be open
Vodafone wants to be able to publish the number and type of surveillance requests it receives from all governments, similar to how US companies such as AT&T, Verizon and Google are able to do so in their bi-annual transparency reports.
The UK operator has written to home secretary Teresa May and justice secretary Chris Grayling, as well as government ministers in the 24 other countries in which it operates, demanding the right to be more transparent, according to The Guardian.
British law prevents the operator from sharing even general information about wiretapping, and the only statistics on government requests for information are published by the government itself through the Communications Commissioner, who oversees the process and ensures that such warrants are issued lawfully.
Delivering the goods with GlobalPost:
Microsoft is prepared to hand over Skype users’ data to Russia
As Moscow introduces legislation to boost counterterrorism before the Winter Olympics.
Microsoft said on Thursday that it’s prepared to share information about Skype users with the Russian authorities if required by law.
The tech company “confirmed its commitment to work in full compliance with the Russian law,” according to Voice of Russia.
Russian lawmakers introduced amendments to a package of counterterrorism bills that would require online communication service providers like Microsoft to store “information about the reception, transferring, delivery and processing of voice information, written texts, images, sounds and any activities made by the users” for up to six months.
And from RT, due recognition:
Chelsea Manning awarded 2014 Sam Adams Prize for Integrity in Intelligence
The former US Army intelligence analyst who was found guilty of releasing the largest set of classified documents in US history will be honored in absentia for her role in exposing the dark nature of civilian casualties in Iraq.
Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning), currently incarcerated at Leavenworth Prison, will be recognized at a ceremony in absentia at Oxford University’s prestigious Oxford Union Society “for casting much-needed daylight on the true toll and cause of civilian casualties in Iraq; human rights abuses by U.S. and “coalition” forces, mercenaries, and contractors; and the roles that spying and bribery play in international diplomacy,” according to the press release, published by activist and author David Swanson.
The award ceremony will be held on February 19, 2014, according to the statement.
Direct action denial from RFI:
Turkey spy agency denies role in Paris Kurds murder, launches probe
Turkey’s spy agency has denied any role in the killings of three female Kurdish rebels in Paris in January last year but has launched an internal probe into the case.
A Turkish national has been charged in France over the triple murder but the motive remains unknown.
Turkey has suggested the killings were the result of an internal feud in the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) over the peace process.
Turkey’s National Intelligence Organisation (MIT) took the unusual step of issuing a statement after voice recordings and documents published in the media claimed it had paid around 6,000 euros to the suspect, Omer Guney.
And war on the press, covered by the target, the Express News in Karachi:
3 staffers killed in attack on Express
Gunmen riding on motorcycles shot dead three Express News workers on Friday after ambushing a stationary DSNG van in a busy neighbourhood of Karachi.
This was the third and most lethal strike on Express Media Group and its staff in the space of five months. In two previous attacks, the main offices of Express Media Group, were targeted.
Friday’s ambush took the lives of a technician, security guard and a driver, all of whom were seated in the front of the van.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the latest attack in a live telephone call from Afghanistan to Express News anchor Javed Chaudhry.
Gutting the claim Obama hawks cited as a causus belli via the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
New analysis of rocket used in Syria chemical attack undercuts U.S. claims
A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for retaliatory military action was flawed.
A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated.
Separately, international weapons experts are puzzling over why the rocket in question – an improvised 330mm to 350mm rocket equipped with a large receptacle on its nose to hold chemicals – reportedly did not appear in the Syrian government’s declaration of its arsenal to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and apparently was not uncovered by OPCW inspectors who believe they’ve destroyed Syria’s ability to deliver a chemical attack.
Here’s a video report from RT:
Chemical Claims: MIT study finds Syrian regime not behind rocket attacks
Program notes:
The U.S. conclusion that a chemical attack near Damascus in August was carried out by the government has been challenged by a team of highly respected experts. Washington immediately blamed President Assad, but a new report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found the rocket couldn’t have been fired from government-controlled areas. RT’s Alexey Yaroshevsky looked into the MIT study, let’s get more details from him.
On to the Asian zonal and cultural clashes, first with a textbook example from the Japan Daily Press:
Japanese ambassador worries as Virginia enters ‘Sea of Japan’ naming dispute
A move to use both “East Sea” and “Sea of Japan” in school books in the United States brought fresh concerns to Japanese Ambassador Kenichiro Sasae. A current debate among lawmakers in Virginia is centered on using both names on the body of water located between Japan and the Korean Peninsula.
Maintaining that the “Sea of Japan” is the internationally recognized name for that area, the Japanese ambassador wants to retain that name instead of using “East Sea.” South Korea calls the area “East Sea” to differentiate it from the name given by Japan. Speaking to reporters in Washington, Sasae questioned the legitimacy of using such names wondering, “if it is fair in primary and secondary education to (only) back one side over a matter of international dispute.”
Sasae’s concern stems from the fact that Virginia’s population includes a lot of Korean Americans. Most of them reside in the northern part, near Washington DC. He said that he’s “concerned about this kind of move” and plans to exert more efforts “to make sure the move (in Virginia) does not spill over” to other states. The Japanese government already protested the use by some towns near Virginia, with both names in their textbooks.
The Japan Times ups the cultural ante:
Chinese group mulls suing Japanese firms over wartime forced labor
A group of Chinese lawyers and experts are considering filing lawsuits against Japanese companies to seek compensation for victims of wartime forced labor, people involved in the plan said Wednesday.
The plan, if carried out, could further complicate efforts by the two countries to repair relations fraught with tension over territorial and historical issues.
Last year South Korean courts ordered several Japanese firms to pay damages over wartime forced labor. Tokyo maintains that all compensation issues were settled by a 1965 agreement normalizing bilateral ties.
The Chinese government is also stepping up its campaign at home and abroad to warn of supposed resurgent Japanese militarism following Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in late December.
Dis-honoring from Jiji Press:
Japanese Politicians Want U.S. “Comfort Women” Statue Removed
A group of Japanese local assembly members visited Glendale, California, Thursday, pressing for the removal of a statue of a girl symbolizing Korean “comfort women.”
The 13 Japanese assembly members visited the city hall and submitted a letter protesting the statue set up in a city park last July by a South Korean group in the United States.
The letter, signed by about 320 incumbent and former Japanese local assembly members, lashes out at words inscribed on the statue that read “I was a sex slave of the Japanese military.”
There is no historical fact that proves that South Korean women were forced to work as prostitutes for the Japanese military, the letter said.
The Japan Daily Press offers another textbook example:
Japanese government to include disputed isles in official teachers’ manuals
The Japanese government is set to show how serious they are about the sovereignty of two island groups that are currently being disputed. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration is now considering putting descriptive information about the Senkakus, a chain of uninhabited islets controlled and administered by Japan in the East China Sea, and the Takeshima islets, another group of islands in the Sea of Japan, in teachers’ manuals. Japan is set to educate its people about the claims they have on both sets of islands, even though they are currently being disputed with the country’s neighbors.
Education minister Hakubun Shimomura said that this information is set to be included in the instruction manuals for school curriculum guidelines. Shimomura revealed the information at a news conference on Tuesday, saying that it is extremely important for children, “who are the future of Japan,” to know their country’s sovereign territory. The Senkakus, while controlled by Tokyo, is being disputed by China – calling them the Diaoyu Islands – and to a lesser extent, Taiwan, who refer to it as Diaoyutai. The Takeshima isles are controlled and administered by South Korea, which calls them the Dokdo Islands. South Korea also maintains a small police force in the islands.
North Korea goes apocalyptic via the Los Angeles Times:
North Korea to South: Stop slander and war games or face ‘holocaust’
As the Lunar New Year and annual U.S.-South Korea war games approach, North Korea’s erratic leader has issued both an appeal for a moratorium on “slander” between the Korean governments and a warning that the military exercises could provoke “unimaginable holocaust.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un last year threatened to wage nuclear war against the South and its U.S. backers over theexercises, sharpening tensions in the region with a declaration that Pyongyang was no longer bound by the 60-year-old truce that ended fighting in the Korean War.
The Japan Daily Press hits the road:
US Deputy Secretary of State to visit Japan, China, S Korea to discuss regional tensions
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns will visit Asia next week. The trip will include Japan, China and South Korea and the main objective is to discuss regional tensions and issues relating to North Korea.
The five-day official diplomatic trip will begin in Seoul on the first day, Beijing the next, and will end in Tokyo. The Deputy Secretary of State will stay in Tokyo for two days, Thursday and Friday, according to sources privy about the trip. Calls for improving bilateral relations between Japan, China, and South Korea, are expected from Burns. He is also scheduled to meet with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida to confer about U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Japan in April.
Th African version of Abe Road via the Japan Daily Press:
China tells African Union PM Abe is a ‘troublemaker’
It seems the diplomatic row between China and Japan is spanning continents, as the past few days have seen ambassadors from both countries “diplomatically” battling it out in countries like the United Kingdom and the United States. The latest to join the fray is the Chinese ambassador to the African Union and Ethiopia, who warned them that Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a “troublemaker.”
China’s Xie Xiaoyan said in a press conference on Wednesday, the day after Abe wrapped up a tour of the Middle East and Africa, that Japan is on the verge of resurrecting their militarism and that the prime minister is turning into “the biggest troublemaker in Asia.” He accused Abe of trying to vilify China and raise tensions in the region in order to justify Japan turning away from its Pacifist state, which has been the status quo since the end of World War II. The ambassador even showed graphic photos of those who died during the war at the hand of the Japanese military might.
Kyodo News cooks the radioactive books:
Japanese bureaucrats manipulated plutonium info in 1990s: documents
Japanese bureaucrats manipulated information on shipments of plutonium to Japan from France between 1992 and 1993 “to protect the element often used to make nuclear weapons from terrorism,” long-kept secret documents showed Friday.
The documents are expected to draw a great deal of attention amid fears that bureaucrats can create secrets in an arbitrary manner under Japan’s controversial new state secrecy law enacted last month.
A portion of the documents will be featured in a two-day exhibition from Saturday in Tokyo on the history of harassment of anti-nuclear movements.
The Asahi Shimbun profiles:
Court: Police can gather personal information on Muslims
The Tokyo District Court on Jan. 15 awarded damages in a lawsuit over leaked personal data but said police are allowed to collect such information on individuals if they are Muslim.
“The ruling allowed the gathering of information just because an individual happened to be a Muslim,” said Toshiro Ueyanagi, a lawyer for the 17 plaintiffs, who were seeking about 187 million yen ($1.8 million) in compensation from the central and Tokyo metropolitan governments. “There was a total lack of consideration for human rights.”
The plaintiffs’ personal information, including nationalities, portraits, place of employment, family composition and places frequented, was leaked in 2010 when the contents of 114 documents related to international terrorism were posted on the Internet.
Ironic apology from South China Morning Post:
Australia apologises to Indonesia for naval breaches of territory
Efforts to stop boats in Jakarta’s territory likely to further strain relations
Jakarta yesterday demanded Australia suspend its military-led operation to halt the flow of asylum seekers in a furious response after Canberra apologised for intrusions by its navy into Indonesian waters.
Jakarta also pledged to step up navy patrols in its southern maritime borders, saying it “deplores and rejects the violation of its sovereignty” caused by the Australian incursions.
The response came after Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison expressed regret after revealing that navy vessels had “inadvertently” violated Indonesian waters during border security operations. However, he pledged Canberra would pursue its hardline policies to halt asylum-seeker boats.
Secrets for thee but not for we from Techdirt:
Major Political Donors Have Access to TPP Documents. Everyone Else? Not So Much
from the shockingly-unshocking dept
The good folks over at MapLight have taken a look at the members of the Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Intellectual Property Rights (ITAC-15). As we’ve discussed in the past ITAC 15 is a committee of high powered corporate representatives who are basically the only ones with full access to the text of the intellectual property chapter of the TPP. Those on ITAC 15 are allowed to see the latest text by logging into a system from the comfort of their desks. If Congress wants to see it? No luck. Members of Congress are allowed only to visit the USTR offices, where they’ll be shown a copy of the document in a sealed room. They’re not allowed to bring staff (such as the experts who would understand this stuff). They’re not allowed to take notes or make any copies. Basically, the corporate interests have a lot more oversight over the whole process than Congress does.
PR and lobbyist facilitation from Reuters:
U.S. companies allowed to delay disclosure of data breaches
A decade of lawmaking by U.S. states to ensure consumers are told when their data has been hacked still lets companies such as Target Corp wait weeks or even months to disclose security breaches.
Forty-six of 50 U.S. states have passed laws requiring disclosure, starting with California in 2002, but the laws vary in terms of when and how notice must be given, and most states allow for delays to investigate the intrusion.
Calls for federal action, including by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, have gone unheeded by Congress. And guidelines to safeguard investors in public companies also do not give clear guidance on timing and do not require disclosures that would compromise a company’s cyber security.
Business Insider makes a necessary point:
Mark Zuckerberg Runs A Giant Spy Machine In Palo Alto, California
Mark Zuckerberg runs a giant spy machine in Palo Alto*, California. He wasn’t the first to build one, but his was the best, and every day hundreds of thousands of people upload the most intimate details of their lives to the Internet. The real coup wasn’t hoodwinking the public into revealing their thoughts, closest associates, and exact geographic coordinates at any given time. Rather, it was getting the public to volunteer that information. Then he turned off** the privacy settings.
[**Editor’s note: Facebook disputes the notion that it has “turned off” its privacy settings. We have provided a statement from the company, and a response from one of the authors, at the bottom of this post.]
“People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people,” said Zuckerberg after moving 350 million people into a glass privacy ghetto. “That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.”
If the state had organized such an information drive, protestors would have burned down the White House. But the state is the natural beneficiary of this new “social norm.” Today, that information is regularly used in court proceedings and law enforcement. There is no need for warrants or subpoenas. Judges need not be consulted. The Fourth Amendment does not come into play. Intelligence agencies don’t have to worry about violating laws protecting citizenry from wiretapping and information gathering. Sharing information “more openly” and with “more people” is a step backward in civil liberties. And spies, whether foreign or domestic, are “more people,” too.
A cloudy forecast from The Guardian:
Amazon hosting most of the net’s malware, says security firm
Report says net’s large cloud providers, including Google and GoDaddy, are unknowingly harbouring ‘on-demand’ malware
Amazon web services are the biggest malware server in the world along with GoDaddy and Google, as malware producers take advantage of the cloud, according to a new report.
The report from security firm Solutionary claims that malware writers are using the big cloud hosting platforms to quickly and effectively serve malware to oblivious internet users, allowing them to bypass detection and geographic blacklisting by serving from a trusted provider like Amazon.
“Malware and, more specifically, its distributors are utilising the technologies and services that make processes, application deployment and website creation easier. Now we have to maintain our focus not only on the most dangerous parts of the Web but also on the parts we expect to be more trustworthy,” said Rob Kraus, Solutionary’s director of research for the security engineering research team.
For our final item, via TechWeekEurope, Goggles “venue”:
High Court Rules Google Safari Privacy Case Must Be Heard In UK
Google fails to get its case moved to California
The UK High Court has ruled that legal action brought by more than 100 people against search giant Google must be heard in this country, over-ruling Google’s bid to move it to the US.
The group, which calls itself Safari Users Against Google’s Secret Tracking, is accusing Google of invading their privacy by over-riding security settings on Apple’s Safari browser in order to track their online activity and use this information to target them with personalised advertisements, despite their opting out of such tracking.
The group claims that Google ‘hacked’ their devices to install advertising cookies, which allowed users to see messages indicating if people from their “Circles” on their Google+ accounts had clicked on ads. However, despite saying that users’ data would be protected, these cookies allowed Google and other advertisers using the company’s DoubleClick ad service to see which websites people accessed.
