Today’s tales of the worlds of espionage, laws, and the current crop of Asian zonal, militarization, and security crises [plus more] opens with a question from the ACLU Blog of Rights:
Who Did the NSA’s Illegal Spying Put in Jail?
Last week, the ACLU joined a constitutional challenge to the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), the statute that allows the NSA to engage in dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international phone calls and emails. With the Federal Defenders Office, we filed a motion on behalf of Jamshid Muhtorov, the first criminal defendant to receive notice that he had been monitored under this controversial spying law. But Mr. Muhtorov received this notice only after the Department of Justice (DOJ) abandoned its previous policy of concealing FAA surveillance in criminal cases — a policy that violated both the statute itself and defendants’ due process rights.
For criminal defendants and for the country, it’s good news that the government is reviewing criminal cases in which FAA evidence has played a role. But the FAA is just one surveillance program among many. And given what we now know about the DOJ’s unlawful notice policy, we should be asking whether the government has concealed in criminal prosecutions its use of other mass surveillance programs.
VOA News offers a claim:
NSA Says Snowden Leaks Put US Soldiers at Risk
Top U.S. intelligence officials say leaks by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have put members of all branches of the U.S. military and other U.S. personnel abroad at risk, and that the Pentagon has had to make costly changes. The officials testified to a congressional panel about worldwide threats to U.S. national security.
Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Michael Flynn told the House Intelligence Committee that revelations by Edward Snowden, who is now living in Russia , have put the lives of U.S. service members in danger, and that the Pentagon is making adjustments.
‘Everything that he touched, we assume that he took, stole,’ he said. ‘So we assume the worst case in how we are reviewing all of the Defense Department’s actions, events, exercises around the world.’
Techdirt delivers a threat:
Congress Warns DOJ That If It Doesn’t Support NSA Reform Plan, It Won’t Renew Key Patriot Act Provision
from the get-your-act-together dept
While the USA Freedom Act isn’t perfect, it is one bill in Congress that has a lot of support and will fix many problems with the current NSA overreach. Much more needs to be done, but the USA Freedom Act is a good starting point. And yet, the Obama administration and his Justice Department have yet to take a public stand on the bill, and that seems to be annoying plenty of folks in Congress. At the recent Judiciary Committee hearings, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, the original author of the Patriot Act and Section 215, made it abundantly clear that the DOJ/NSA’s interpretation of his bill was simply incorrect and that they were abusing the system. As the sponsor of the USA Freedom Act to fix this misinterpretation, he pointed out that if the DOJ doesn’t agree to support it, there’s a good chance that Congress simply won’t renew the provisions in Section 215 at all. Section 215, of course, is the part that has been misinterpreted by the DOJ, the FISA court, the NSA and the FBI to pretend it authorizes the collection of every phone record. In short, the message from Congress is: work with us to reform things, or we’ll pull the authority altogether. Of course, some of us think that pulling the authority altogether might be a better long term solution.
McClatchy Washington Bureau resists:
Some in Congress see just one option for NSA spying: Scrap it
“Congress never intended to allow bulk collections,” said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., author of the 2001 Patriot Act.
Debate is intensifying in Congress over whether to scrap the massive data collection effort or to modify it. There’s widespread skepticism among both parties over President Barack Obama’s plans for the program’s future and a desire for Congress to curb the National Security Agency.
“In my district, and many others, NSA has become not a three-letter word but a four-letter word,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., said at a Tuesday hearing on the surveillance effort.
Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., said Congress needs to end the bulk collection.
“Consensus is growing that it is largely ineffective, inconsistent with our national values, and inconsistent with the statute as this committee wrote it,” said Conyers, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
BBC News has a hack attack:
Snowden leaks: GCHQ ‘attacked Anonymous’ hackers
GCHQ disrupted “hacktivist” communications by using one of their own techniques against them, according to the latest Edward Snowden leaks.
Documents from the whistle-blower published by NBC indicate UK cyberspies used a denial of service attack (DoS) in 2011 to force a chatroom used by the Anonymous collective offline.
A spokeswoman for GCHQ said all the agency’s activities were authorised and subject to rigorous oversight. But others say it raises concerns.
Dr Steven Murdoch, a security researcher at the University of Cambridge, said using a DoS attack to overwhelm a computer server with traffic would have risked disrupting other services.
Computerworld advocates:
NSA spy program hurting U.S. vendors
NSA reforms needed to help restore worldwide trust in U.S. tech industry, trade group says
The U.S. Congress needs to help restore global trust in the nation’s technology vendors by reining in surveillance programs at the National Security Agency, an industry representative told lawmakers Tuesday.
Recent revelations about NSA surveillance programs have created a “misimpression” about the U.S. technology industry and are eroding trust in those companies, said Dean Garfield, president and CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). The furor over the NSA surveillance programs could lead to lost income in the tens of billions of dollars for U.S. cloud providers, and many U.S. tech vendors are already hearing complaints, he said.
The U.S. needs a “public policy course correction” on NSA surveillance, Garfield told the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee.
“Made in the U.S.A. is no longer a badge of honor, but a basis for questioning the integrity and the independence of U.S.-made technology,” Garfield said. “Many countries are using the NSA’s disclosures as a basis for accelerating their policies around forced localization and protectionism.”
A case of outsourcing from DutchNews.nl:
The Netherlands, not USA, gathered info from 1.8 million phone calls
The Dutch security service was responsible for collecting information from about 1.8 million telephone calls and text messages at the end of 2012 and in early 2013, ministers have told parliament.
Home affairs minister Ronald Plasterk told MPs in October the Americans were behind the tapping, after the revelations were first published in German magazine Spiegel.
However, in a two paragraph briefing on Wednesday, Plasterk and defence minister Jeanine Hennis said the information had been gathered by the Netherlands itself.
‘The details were collected in the interest of counter-terrorism activities and military operations abroad,’ the briefing stated. The information was then ‘correctly shared with the US’.
RT seeks an end:
‘Assange won’t come’: Swedish MPs urge end to whistleblower case
Swedish MPs are calling on the prosecutors in the Julian Assange sexual assault case to travel to London and question the WikiLeaks founder at the Ecuadorian embassy, where he has been taking refuge since June 2012.
The members of the Swedish parliament say investigators should accept that Assange will not be leaving the embassy voluntarily.
“It is in the interest of everyone involved in this process that the prosecutor reaches a conclusion to either file charges or dismiss the case, and it is obvious that Assange will not come to Sweden,” Staffan Danielsson, from the Center Party, said, as quoted by the Times.
Anne Ramberg, the secretary-general of the Swedish Bar Association, said “You have to be a bit pragmatic to put an end to such a circus. They should have headed to London to interrogate him.”
However, Anders Perklev, the Swedish prosecutor-general, was convinced the lawmakers are interfering with the judicial matters.
A case of dilatory dronal deliberations from Medill News Service:
U.S. lags in putting drones to commercial use, FAA should move faster, advocates say
The U.S. is lagging on commercial use of drones, manufacturers and scientists told the Senate science committee, but several senators said they want to be sure the unmanned aerial vehicles won’t be used to spy on Americans.
“These 20th century eyes in the skies shouldn’t become spies in the skies,” said Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who held up an inexpensive drone equipped with two cameras at the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee meeting.
But privacy concerns aren’t a reason to limit the commercial use of drones in the U.S., Missy Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke University’s Institute for Brain Sciences, told the committee. She said unmanned aerial vehicles — UAVs — are only one type of technology that can be used for surveillance. There are small bug robots that can be slipped into bags, and ground technologies like cars will soon have cameras inside and outside, she said.
The real problem is the government is lacking experts with understanding of the technology, Cummings said.
Droning on some more with Deutsche Welle:
Drone usage on the rise, China drives Asia military spending increase says IISS report
Drones are becoming increasingly common in warfare as their operating costs go down, according to a new report by the IISS think tank. It added that China is driving an increase in military spending in Asia.
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, is expected to increase in the future, the military aerospace expert for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Doug Barrie, said on Wednesday.
According to the IISS’ annual Military Balance report, as drone usage increases, the legal and ethical questions they raise come to the fore. One key issue is whether attacks on people can be justified as self-defense.
The report said that lethal strikes will be carried out by humans piloting the drones because handing that power over to a machine “will remain a threshold legislatures and the public will likely be unwilling to cross.”
While drones have been almost exclusively a tool used by Western militaries, smaller and cheaper technology has opened up the market to private companies and emerging economies.
A a major dronal move from the Yomiuri Shimbun:
U.S. curbs drone strikes in Pakistan
The Obama administration has sharply curtailed drone strikes in Pakistan after a request from the government there for restraint as it pursues peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to U.S. officials.
“That’s what they asked for, and we didn’t tell them no,” one U.S. official said. The administration indicated that it will still carry out strikes against senior Al-Qaida targets, if they become available, and move to thwart any direct, imminent threat to U.S. persons.
Concern about Pakistani political sensitivities provides one explanation for the absence of strikes since December, the longest pause in the CIA’s drone campaign since a six-week lull in 2011, after an errant U.S. air assault killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at a border post, triggering a diplomatic crisis.
The current pause follows a November strike that killed Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud just days before an initial attempt at peace talks was scheduled to begin. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government accused the United States of trying to sabotage the talks, and the Taliban canceled the meeting.
And a dronal secret revealad from BBC News:
Top secret UK drone Taranis makes first flight
A top secret unmanned drone, said to be the most advanced aircraft ever built in Britain, has carried out its first successful test flights.
It looks like something out of a science fiction movie. But it is also a window into the future of warfare.
Some will view it as an amazing piece of engineering. But not everyone will like what they see.
Taranis – named after the Celtic god of thunder – was first unveiled BAE Systems in 2010.
On to more local Bib Brotherly incarnations, first from MintPress News:
Privacy Advocates Gearing Up To Sue Oakland Over City “Spy” Center
The city says the goal is to monitor 24/7 for crime and to improve emergency response times, but privacy advocates and residents have serious doubts about that claim.
The Oakland Privacy Working Group, a coalition of civil liberties advocates, announced on Monday it would file a taxpayer lawsuit against the city of Oakland, Calif., if city officials continued to construct the Department of Homeland Security-funded Domain Awareness Center, which it says violates the First and Fourth Amendment rights of Oakland residents.
Specifically, the group says it is prepared to file a lawsuit to prevent the City of Oakland from awarding a contract to a company to dismantle all of the work that was completed under Phase 1, which involved adding and connecting computers, TVs, monitors, etc. But most importantly, the group says it wants to prevent Phase 2 from being implemented, which is when the surveillance system goes live.
Oakland Privacy says two other groups are also working on the lawsuit, but their identities have not been made public yet. Brian Hofer, media contact for Oakland Privacy, says the groups will remain anonymous until a lawsuit is actually filed.
And across the Oakland city limits with East Bay Citizen:
Alameda Chief on License Plate Readers: ‘I’m not Trying to Spy on Anyone’
The often insular community of Alameda may soon have Automated License Plate Readers rapidly scanning automobiles passing through the island city. However, critics of the police department’s plan say a recently released draft policy is far too vague and leaves wide gaps for potential abuse by police on civil liberties. Others questioned the proposed usefulness of retaining information obtained from the readers for up to one year.
During a public forum on the issue Monday night in Alameda, Police Chief Paul Rolleri provided an often candid glimpse into his department’s mindset when it comes to utilizing the controversial and relatively new technology, which employs scanning devices attached to patrol cars that rapidly scan thousands of license plates on public streets. Rolleri says Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR) simply capture plate numbers without any corresponding information such as the name and address of the owner. Plate numbers are then matched against a “hot list” of vehicles that may have been recently stolen or involved in other crimes.
“I’m not trying to spy on anyone,” Rolleri said Monday night. “If we were, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.” Rolleri responded to some speakers who criticized the one-and-a-half page policy for its brevity and lack of specificity, saying the proposal is merely in the draft stage. There is also a lack of case law currently available on ALPRs, he said. In addition, Rolleri expressed uncertainty over how long the department should retain data, an topic of great concern among many privacy advocates. “We’re trying to find that sweet spot,” said Rolleri. “I’ll be honest, we don’t know. We’re still trying to figure it out.” He later called the one-year proposal a good starting point that could be reevaluated in another six months.
Across another Oakland border with Pueblo Lands:
Fortress Piedmont
The city of Piedmont has installed automated license plate reader stations at busy intersections ringing its borders. The ALPR system was proposed last year. Installation began in November of 2013 after Piedmont’s city council set aside $678,000 for the technology that uses computer analytics to instantly identify the plate numbers of every vehicle passing under the watchful eyes of precision digital video cameras.
Home to bankers, lawyers, corporate executives, and real estate tycoons, Piedmont, population 10,000, is one of the wealthiest municipalities in America. When it was founded in the early 1900s it was immediately given the nickname “City of Millionaires” due to the concentration of wealthy families within its borders.
Piedmont has always been very much defined by its borders. The city is completely surrounded by Oakland, a much larger municipality whose population includes 88,000 persons whose incomes fall below the federally defined poverty line. The median household income in Oakland is $51,000. In Piedmont it’s $206,000, over four times Oakland’s average. The median home price in Piedmont is $1.5 million, and the small city has virtually no rental housing, making it an expensive community to buy a membership in.
And some plain old militarism from Deutsche Welle:
Germany paves way for new engagement
Germany’s cabinet is discussing ramping up its military involvement in conflicts ranging from Afghanistan to Mali. Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has signaled a new engagement internationally.
While Reuters goes under in the Southern Hemisphere:
Insight: Brazil spies on protesters, hoping to protect World Cup
Brazilian security forces are using undercover agents, intercepting e-mails, and rigorously monitoring social media to try to ensure that violent anti-government protesters do not ruin soccer’s World Cup this year, officials told Reuters.
Demonstrations in recent months have been much smaller than those last June when Brazil hosted a dress rehearsal tournament for the World Cup, shaking President Dilma Rousseff’s government and contributing to an economic slowdown.
But they have still resulted in vandalism of banks and paralyzed parts of major cities as a hard core of perhaps a few thousand protesters nationwide, some of whom wear masks and call themselves “Black Blocs,” clash with police.
Rousseff’s government fears the protests, the most recent of which carried the slogan “There Will Be No World Cup,” could severely disrupt the tournament, which kicks off on June 12 in Sao Paulo and ends with the final on July 13 in Rio de Janeiro.
After the jump, the latest Asian crises of zones/history/rhetoric/alliances, classroom hackers, military/industrial fails, criminalized tweets, felonious Googling, and more. . .
We begin the Asian headlines with a Trans-Pacific reach by the Associated Press:
Clapper: Sense of destiny drives China aggression
The chief of U.S. intelligence said Tuesday China’s aggressive pursuit of territorial claims in the seas of East Asia is driven by a sense of historical destiny and is causing great concern among countries in the region.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said China has pursued a very impressive military modernization that is designed to address what it sees as America’s own military strengths.
Clapper was responding to a question on China’s recent actions in the East and South China Seas posed at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on worldwide threats.
NHK WORLD huddles:
SDF chief of staff meets US Pacific Command chief
The heads of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces’ Joint Staff and the US Pacific Command have agreed that their forces should further strengthen their ties.
The two officials met at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo on Monday morning.
The SDF’s head of the Joint Staff Shigeru Iwasaki said it’s an honor for him to discuss how the two countries should deepen trust between them.
Admiral Samuel Locklear said he appreciates the close relations between the 2 sides and that he looks forward to discussing how the two countries should maintain and strengthen their alliance.
The Japan Times gives us our first entry in a series on prime ministerial proclamations as seen through a wilderness of fun house media mirrors:
Amendment not needed for collective defense: Abe
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday reiterated his administration’s position that the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution on its own gives Japan the right to collective self-defense.
It’s not necessary to amend the Constitution for Japan to engage in collective self-defense, Abe told lawmakers at the Upper House Budget Committee.
The right to use the Self-Defense Forces to defend allies and friendly nations that come under attack is a central pillar of Abe’s “proactive pacifism.” The prime minister asserts that Japan is at a disadvantage if forbidden to exercise this right at a time when it is being asked to play a more active role in maintaining global security.
On this issue Abe is at odds with the previous government and constitutional experts who say the charter must be amended before Japan can militarily defend other nations.
A related take from Kyodo News:
Japan ruling bloc to start talks in April on SDF’s territorial defense
The Liberal Democratic Party and the coalition partner New Komeito party plan to start negotiations in April on a possible expansion of Self-Defense Forces operations and a new legal framework for defending territory even when the country is not under armed attack, a ruling party lawmaker said Wednesday.
A high legal hurdle stands in the way of the SDF using armed strength for defense. When Japan has not been under armed attack, the SDF can only conduct operations within the limits of policing, and the use of armed strength is banned.
The parties are seen as choosing to tackle the issue of whether to give the SDF new legal grounds for the use of armed strength, which would require revisions to the relevant laws specifying SDF operations, before taking up the more controversial agenda of collective self-defense.
South China Morning Post asserts:
Japan’s defence ban must be revised, says government panel
Rewriting constitution is too hard for now, so reinterpretation to let Tokyo help allies is vital to counter a resurgent China, advisers warn
A panel set up by the Japanese government is to recommend a reinterpretation of the section of the constitution that bans the nation from assisting allies at a time of military crisis – legally described as collective defence – until there is enough public support for rewriting the constitution.
The 14-strong panel held its latest round of discussions on Tuesday, examining the best ways in which Japan might enhance its defences given the growing threats to regional stability.
Those perceived threats were not specified, but the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made no secret of the fact that it sees a resurgent China as a challenge to peace in the Asia-Pacific region.
There also are fears over an unpredictable and nuclear-armed North Korea.
Jiji Press has the word:
Abe Reiterates Zeal to Change Constitutional Interpretation
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday reiterated his zeal to change the government’s interpretation of Japan’s constitution to lift the nation’s self-imposed ban on the exercise of its collective self-defense right.
“We are now facing the disadvantages” stemming from the nation’s inability to exercise the right, he said at a meeting of the House of Councillors Budget Committee.
“If the government adopts a new interpretation of the constitution, that would enable the use of the collective self-defense right,” he said, adding that there would be no need to revise the constitution itself.
“It’s not that the collective self-defense right should be exercised, but the point is that we should hold the option,” he underlined.
The Yomiuri Shimbun gets expansive:
Expanded SDF policing considered
The government plans to revise the Self-Defense Forces Law to enable the dispatch of SDF personnel during emergencies even if Japan may not be under attack.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe asked the relevant government panel on Tuesday to discuss the issue, considering possible emergencies around the Nansei Islands, including the Senkakus.
Panel members said that under the current law, stipulations are insufficient to allow the Self-Defense Forces to use weapons in a rational manner in the course of their duties. They subsequently agreed on the necessity of developing a legal framework based on Abe’s request.
The government will submit a bill to revise the law at an extraordinary Diet session in autumn at the earliest. The revision is expected to include the addition of such SDF tasks as territorial defense, expansion of the SDF’s authority to use weapons and speeding up dispatch procedures.
And Jiji Press gets revisionist:
Abe Upholds New Teaching Manuals on Territory
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday defended school teaching manuals that were recently revised to clearly state the country’s sovereignty over groups of islands in the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan.
The comment follows a backlash from China and South Korea against the revised teaching manuals for middle and high schools, which state that the Senkaku islands in the East China Sea and Takeshima in the Sea of Japan as Japanese territory.
The revisions are very important, Abe said at a meeting of the House of Councillors Budget Committee.
And now for a Trans-Pacific [in both senses of that latter noun] plea from JapanToday:
U.S. urges Japan, S Korea, China to overcome historical animosity
The United States called Tuesday for Japan, South Korea and China to find ways to work together, saying it was in the interest of all three to overcome historical animosity.
Danny Russel, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, said he held “candid” talks on growing tensions during recent stops in Beijing, Seoul and Tokyo.
“There are multiple perspectives, but one thing is certain—none of the problems, none of these tensions, can be solved by any one party alone,” Russel told reporters.
“Frankly, we look to each of our friends and partners in the Asia-Pacific region to make a contribution to good relations and to good neighborliness,” he said.
Xinhua rebukes:
China slams Japan’s NHK governor’s denial of Nanjing massacre
China on Wednesday slammed the remarks of an official of Japan’s public broadcaster, NHK, who denied the Nanjing massacre.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that such behavior is “a barefaced challenge to the international justice and human conscience.”
Naoki Hyakuta, a member of the NHK board of governors, said that the Nanjing massacre never happened in a speech just a few days after NHK’s new chief’s comments about “comfort women”, which sparked widespread anger.
“The Nanjing massacre is a brutal crime committed by the Japanese militarism during their invasion of China, which has irrefutable evidences. The international community already had a verdict about it,” Hong said.
And the Japan Times adds fuel to the flames:
NHK governors reveal rightist views
Praise of nationalist ‘martyr,’ denial of Nanjing Massacre roil broadcaster
A member of NHK’s board of governors wrote an essay praising a right-wing activist who committed suicide in the Asahi Shimbun building in 1993, raising questions about the public broadcaster’s political neutrality.
The memorial essay by Michiko Hasegawa, a philosopher and professor emeritus at Saitama University, was distributed in October to people attending a memorial ceremony for Shusuke Nomura, who shot himself to protest a cartoon printed in the Shukan Asahi that ridiculed his political activist group. The suicide was criticized by the media as a violent attack on freedom of the press.
Hasegawa’s essay is likely to raise questions about her political neutrality as a member of NHK’s board, which has the power to appoint and sack the network’s chairman, who holds the ultimate editorial control over all NHK programs.
The Asahi Shimbun delivers a blast:
NHK receives 7,200 public comments critical of chairman’s remarks
Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) said it received 12,300 comments from the public–more than half of them critical–about its chairman’s remarks that sparked outrage and raised doubts about his political neutrality.
An NHK managing director told the Lower House Committee on Internal Affairs and Communications Feb. 4 that 7,200 of the comments were negative and 3,500 were positive.
New NHK Chairman Katsuto Momii came under fire after his inaugural Jan. 25 news conference, in which he said he was puzzled by South Korea’s demands that Japan compensate former “comfort women” who provided sex for Japanese military personnel before and during World War II. He added that all nations at war had similar comfort women systems.
And South China Morning Post covers another historical hysteria:
Beijing slams Benigno Aquino for ‘ignorant’ Nazi Germany comparisons
Philippines president branded ‘amateurish’ and ‘ignorant’ over territorial dispute comparisons
Beijing launched a scathing attack on Benigno Aquino after the Philippine president compared China with Nazi Germany in staking claims to disputed territory in the South China Sea.
A commentary by Xinhua described his remarks on China’s handling of the territorial dispute as senseless and said it had “exposed his true colours as an amateurish politician who was ignorant both of history and reality”.
“Philippine President Benigno S. Aquino III, who has taken an inflammatory approach … has never been a great candidate for a wise statesman in the region,” it said.
While BBC News covers a rare easing:
Koreas agree to family reunions in February
North and South Korea have agreed to hold reunions for families separated after the Korean War, following calls from Pyongyang to improve ties.
The reunions are scheduled to take place in February. If held, they would be the first reunions since 2010.
In September, the North cancelled a planned reunion, blaming “hostility” from the South.
The move comes ahead of annual US-South Korea military drills later this month, which are expected to anger the North.
IDG News Service gives an Asian Big Brother a panoptic platform:
Osaka train station set for large face-recognition study
Japan’s Osaka Station could become another focal point in the global battle over personal privacy protection as a Japanese research center prepares for a long-term face-recognition study there.
The independent research group National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) plans to begin the experiment in April to study crowd movements in order to better plan for emergency procedures during disasters.
The train station is western Japan’s busiest, with an average of 413,000 passengers boarding trains there every day. Over a million people use it and neighboring Umeda Station daily.
NICT will deploy cameras in Osaka Station and the adjacent Osaka Station City, a multipurpose complex, that can track faces as they move around the premises. The cameras will be separate from any security cameras that are already installed by operator West Japan Railway (JR West), a spokesman for the railway said.
South China Morning Post digs into another historical wound:
New inquiry raises pressure on Sri Lanka over war crimes
Sri Lanka’s army led an orgy of indiscriminate killing, says Public Interest Advocacy Centre report
Sri Lanka’s army led an orgy of indiscriminate killing at the climax of the island’s civil war, and has since tried to destroy evidence of its crimes, a new investigation published on Wednesday by foreign experts claimed.
A report released by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) in Australia claimed that soldiers committed the “vast majority” of crimes in a final government offensive against Tamil Tiger separatists in May 2009.
The probe comes ahead of a session at the UN Human Rights Council next month at which the US is due to move a third resolution pressing Sri Lanka to investigate the conduct of its troops or face further international censure.
Sri Lanka has resisted repeated calls for an international inquiry into allegations that up to 40,000 civilians were killed by government forces during the bloody finale to a conflict that dragged on for 37 years.
BBC News discovers a plot worthy of a Hollywood treatment:
Pupils ‘hack teachers’ computers and change grades’
Eleven students have been expelled from a school in southern California for allegedly hacking teachers’ computers and changing their grades.
It is believed that keyloggers were installed on computers which helped pupils to gain remote access.
Newport Beach police are keen to interview a private tutor 28-year-old Timothy Lai.
Investigators allege that he “assisted the students in compromising school computers and manipulating grades”.
Nextgov has a security fail:
Failures Beset Navy’s New Aircraft Carrier and Patrol Planes
A number of problems in key systems of the Navy’s next generation aircraft carrier and patrol aircraft threaten their operational effectiveness, the Pentagon’s test organization said in its annual report to Congress.
J. Michael Gilmore, director of operational test and evaluation for the Defense Department, also highlighted software problems with an advanced submarine sonar system that made it difficult to detect surface ships. Gilmore deemed the USS San Antonio class of amphibious transport dock ships not “operationally suitable.”
The $12 billion USS Gerald Ford, built by Huntington Ingalls Industries and slated to join the fleet in 2016, will launch its aircraft with a new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System instead of the steam catapult used in previous carriers. EMALS experienced 201 failures during 1,967 launches at a Lakehurst, N.J., test site, a failure rate “five times higher than should be expected,” the test report said.
El País criminalizes outrage:
One-year prison sentence for 21-year-old Twitter user who glorified terrorists
Alba González Camacho posted “highly radicalized and violent” content
A 21-year-old who used her Twitter account to praise the communist armed group GRAPO has been slapped with a one-year jail sentence for glorifying terrorism.
But Alba González Camacho will not be going to prison unless she commits a new crime, under the terms of the settlement between her defense and the attorney’s office.
“The PP [governing Popular Party] taught me that there is still a great need for the GRAPO,” read one of González Camacho’s tweets, published on July 18, 2012.
The First of October Anti-Fascist Resistance Group [GRAPO] was a Maoist terrorist organization in the late 1970s and early 1980s that carried out over 80 assassinations. Although it never officially disbanded, it has been inactive for years after losing social support.
And for our final item, the London Telegraph creates digital age crime:
Jail terms for jurors who research cases on internet
Government publishes new proposals making internet research by jury a specific crime for the first time, along with other new plans to ban ‘rape porn’
Jurors who research cases on the internet will face up to two years in jail under new legislation published by the Government.
Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, said the new penalty will also apply to jury members who post comments about a case on social media sites such as Facebook, or carry out other conduct which has been prohibited by a judge.
Details of the new offences emerged in a new Bill which will also force convicted criminals to pay a new surcharge towards the cost of their court cases, as well as introducing a ban on pornography which depicts rape.
