Secrets, they’ve got secrets. And spies, and drones, computer hackery — plus the latest chapters of the Game of Zones underway in Asia with transoceanic tentacles. . .
We open with the sad reality from GlobalPost:
Curious about the biggest trade deal in history? Sorry, it’s classified
Governments and big corporations can read the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but not you. Here are 6 ways it could change the world.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership sounds deadly boring.
It’s not.
The potential impact on humanity from this proposed mega-deal is impossible to measure. TPP could bankrupt families in Kansas and enrich them in Kuala Lumpur. Or make patented medicine wildly unaffordable for sick people in poor places. Or even imprison citizens of 12 countries for pirating Game of Thrones episodes.
Or maybe, as its proponents claim, TPP could plug the US into Asia’s rising markets and give the global economy a needed jolt. Either way, if secured, it will be a corporation-friendly game changer for 800 million people.
The thing is, average people are banned from seeing its inner workings.
A different attitude is shaping up in Germany over a parallel trade pact across another ocean, as EurActiv reports:
Schulz on TTIP: There will be no secret negotiations
Instead of trying to cripple negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, opponents should participate in talks, said German Economic Affairs Minister Sigmar Gabriel, while top European candidate Martin Schulz declared TTIP a top priority to “regain lost trust”. EurActiv Germany reports.
Ahead of the fifth round of EU-US trade talks on 19 May, Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s Federal Minister of Economic Affairs, warned globalisation critics and the German Left Party (Die Linke) against fighting the planned Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Instead, he called on them to play a greater role in the talks: Those who refuse to negotiate with the United States, the social democrat said, will not be able to have any influence over the progression of globalisation. Instead, civil society and NGOs, as well as national parliaments, should actively participate in the dialogue with their positions and help shape the agreement, Gabriel emphasised.
The Guardian pronounces, profitably:
Antivirus software is dead, says security expert at Symantec
Information chief at Norton developer says software in general misses 55% of attacks and its future lies in responding to hacks
Antivirus software only catches 45% of malware attacks and is “dead”, according to a senior manager at Symantec.
Remarks by Brian Dye, senior vice-president for information security at the company, which invented commercial antivirus software in the 1980s and now develops and sells Norton Antivirus, suggest that such software leaves users vulnerable.
Dye told the Wall Street Journal that hackers increasingly use novel methods and bugs in the software of computers to perform attacks, resulting in about 55% cyberattacks going unnoticed by commercial antivirus software.
From Al Jazeera America, well who’d’a thunk it?:
Exclusive: Emails reveal close Google relationship with NSA
National Security Agency head and Internet giant’s executives have coordinated through high-level policy discussions
Email exchanges between National Security Agency Director Gen. Keith Alexander and Google executives Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt suggest a far cozier working relationship between some tech firms and the U.S. government than was implied by Silicon Valley brass after last year’s revelations about NSA spying.
Disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency’s vast capability for spying on Americans’ electronic communications prompted a number of tech executives whose firms cooperated with the government to insist they had done so only when compelled by a court of law.
But Al Jazeera has obtained two sets of email communications dating from a year before Snowden became a household name that suggest not all cooperation was under pressure.
Crashed and burned with Nextgov:
Pentagon Police Agency Hit by ‘Catastrophic’ Network Outage
The agency that manages the Pentagon Police Department and also runs networks and computers for the Office of the Secretary of Defense experienced a “catastrophic network technological outage” on Jan. 3, and repairs may not be complete until January 2015, an obscure document on the Federal Business Opportunities website revealed.
A Defense Department spokesman attributed the outage to the failure of a legacy component.
The contracting document, posted on May 2, said the outage experienced by the Pentagon Life Safety System Network and Life Safety Backbone left the Pentagon Force Protection Agency “without access to the mission-critical systems needed to properly safeguard personnel and facilities, rendering the agency blind across the national capital region.”
The Hill opens today’s drone-a-palooza:
White House to give senators access to drone assassination memo
Facing a bipartisan revolt over a judicial nominee, the White House on Tuesday promised senators a chance to review a secret memo that provided the legal rationale for killing an American-born al Qaeda leader abroad.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle had called for the release of the secret memo written by David Barron outlining the legal justification for striking Anwar al-Awlaki, who was accused of planning and encouraging terrorist attacks against the United States.
President Obama nominated Barron, a former acting assistant attorney general and Harvard Law professor, to serve on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.
Stressing out with the Tribune Washington Bureau:
FAA under pressure to allow commercial drones
In a 2007 policy statement, the Federal Aviation Administration essentially declared a ban on operating drones for commercial purposes. The agency doubled down on that position in early April, appealing an administrative order that tossed out the legal foundation for its policy. The ruling came after a commercial drone user challenged an FAA fine levied against him.
The ongoing case and mounting pressure to tap into the potentially lucrative industry puts the FAA in a tough spot. The regulatory body, responsible for keeping U.S. airspace safe, plans to propose a rule for commercial drones by the end of the year. But regulations aren’t likely to be final until 2015 at the earliest, leaving some wondering whether the FAA can catch up to an industry already half past go.
“I don’t think there’s any question that market pressure is intense and the FAA is struggling on the regulatory side to keep up,” said James H. Burnley, a former U.S. transportation secretary and a Washington attorney.
The Verge weighs in:
News organizations say FAA ban on drones flies against free press
Over a dozen top news and media organizations have come out in opposition to the Federal Aviation Administration’s commercial drone ban, contesting that its broad restrictions violate First Amendment protections afforded to journalists. Though the ban was overturned by a National Transportation Safety Board judge in March, the FAA is currently appealing it. These news organizations — including the Associated Press, The New York Times Company, and the National Press Photographers Association — have filed a brief with the NTSB asking that it affirm the judge’s ruling and continue to block similar bans until the FAA makes an exception for the use of small drones.
“An impermissible chilling effect on the First Amendment newsgathering rights.” “This [current] overly broad policy … has an impermissible chilling effect on the First Amendment newsgathering rights of journalists,” the brief reads. The policies were put into effect — and also overturned — because they were not instated using the proper rule-making process, and the news organizations’ brief reiterates that this means that they and other citizens did not have the opportunity to provide input. “The federal government, through the FAA and with the NTSB’s encouragement, should move forward with the development of polices that protect, rather than hinder, freedom of speech and of the press,” they write.
And Homeland Security News Wire revs up:
Fairbanks, Alaska UAV test site conducts first flight test
The Pan-Pacific Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Range Complex at the University of Alaska Fairbanks was established last year to help the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) develop regulations and certifications for unmanned aircraft operators and equipment. The goal is to integrate them into the National Airspace System. On Monday, an Aeryon Scout mini quadcopter was the first UAV to be tested at the range. The range is the second of six UAV test sites to receive an FAA’s Certificate of Authorization.
The birds were noisier than the Aeryon Scout as the mini quadcopter whirred over the caribou lounging in the field at the Robert G. White Large Animal Research Station yesterday. The Scout climbed to 200 feet as a crowd of about fifty people silently watched its inaugural flight under the gray overcast sky at Fairbanks, Alaska.
The Atlantic Monthly takes wing, in California:
Eyes Over Compton: How Police Spied on a Whole City
A sergeant in the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department compared the experiment to Big Brother, even though he went ahead with it willingly. Is your city next?
In a secret test of mass surveillance technology, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department sent a civilian aircraft* over Compton, California, capturing high-resolution video of everything that happened inside that 10-square-mile municipality.
Compton residents weren’t told about the spying, which happened in 2012. “We literally watched all of Compton during the times that we were flying, so we could zoom in anywhere within the city of Compton and follow cars and see people,” Ross McNutt of Persistence Surveillance Systems told the Center for Investigative Reporting, which unearthed and did the first reporting on this important story. The technology he’s trying to sell to police departments all over America can stay aloft for up to six hours. Like Google Earth, it enables police to zoom in on certain areas. And like TiVo, it permits them to rewind, so that they can look back and see what happened anywhere they weren’t watching in real time.
If it’s adopted, Americans can be policed like Iraqis and Afghanis under occupation–and at bargain prices.
And a story to give one confidence, via Independent.ie:
Government drone mistakenly delivered to US college student
A US government drone worth $350,000 was accidentally delivered to a college student by delivery service UPS.
Parts of the drone, which was designed to monitor wildlife and environmental changes and can fly for around two hours at a time, were delivered on Monday.
The student uploaded pictures of the package to Reddit under username Seventy_Seven before ringing UPS for an explanation.
From RT, business as usual:
MI5 warns businesses foreign spies targeting their IT staff – report
MI5, the British intelligence agency, has reportedly warned that foreign agents are attempting to recruit IT corporate employees – even low-level contractors – to gain access to classified data.
In these post-Snowden times, when all electronic information and communication has been proven vulnerable to some form of spying, UK intelligence is warning corporate executives in “high-level conversations” on the importance of boosting their “digital defenses,” the Financial Times reported, quoting anonymous Whitehall officials.
The warning comes as the government works to beef up digital security at important institutions such as “banks, utility companies or energy providers,” some of which remain vulnerable to espionage.
Sky News hands over oral history:
Irish Republicans Offered Boston Tapes Return
Republicans interviewed for a project on the Northern Ireland Troubles are concerned about their safety or legal exposure.
A college which interviewed republicans actively involved in the Troubles in Northern Ireland has offered to return the interviews to those who provided them.
It comes after some expressed concerns about their safety or legal exposure following the arrest of Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams over the murder of widowed mother-of-10, Jean McConville.
His detention by police in Northern Ireland stemmed from allegations made by republicans in the interviews, which were part of a five-year Boston College oral history project, launched back in 2001.
Stupidity meets the draconian via TheLocal.de:
Bin Laden joker ends up on terror watchlist
A man from Munich who wrote “bin Laden” on a bank transfer form as a joke has been added to the German Central Bank’s terror blacklist for ten years.
The man was transferring €480 to his friend for a ski trip when he wrote bin Laden on the form under a section asking what the money was for. But his unfortunate joke was picked up by computer software put in place to detect transactions which could be funding terrorism, Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper reported.
The monitoring software is compulsory for all banks by EU law and screens all transactions for keywords and key phrases connected with terrorist groups and individuals.
Self-serving Irish leakage meets umbrage via Independent.ie:
Shatter faces fresh calls to resign after breaking the law
Justice Minister Alan Shatter will face fresh calls for his resignation after it was found that he broke the law by leaking sensitive data about Independent TD Mick Wallace.
The Data Protection Commissioner Billy Hawkes today concluded his report into Mr Shatter’s actions on RTE’s ‘Primetime’ during which he revealed that Mr Wallace had been cautioned by gardai for driving while using a mobile phone.
Mr Hawkes stated that the minister breached data protection laws by leaking the information during the live programme.
IntelNews links up:
Germans kidnapped in Ukraine had ‘intelligence connections’
Four German military observers, who were kidnapped in Ukraine by pro-Russian separatists, are members of a military agency that has intelligence contacts, but are not themselves spies, according to a leading German newspaper.
The German observers were abducted along with several other Western military officials on April 25, in the eastern Ukrainian city of Sloviansk. They were participating in a military verification mission organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
At the time of the abduction, one pro-Russian separatist leader, Vyacheslav Ponomarev, said his group had decided to detain the OSCE monitors due to “credible information” that they were spies for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
From BBC News, and who were they?:
Colombia raids office that ‘spied to undermine peace’
Colombian authorities say they have raided an office that illegally spied on rebel and government communication to try to undermine peace talks.
Colombia’s Attorney General Eduardo Montealegre said the office was run by a criminal organisation that had intercepted emails from a Farc rebel negotiator and the government.
He said President Juan Manuel Santos was also “probably” targeted.
From TheLocal.se, how Swede it wasn’t:
‘Honeytrap failed to snare Brezhnev’s son’
Despite Sweden’s pyjama-party heyday and an MI6 lure called “Ann” with a fail-free seduction record, the Swedish security service Säpo failed to honeytrap Leonid Brezhnev’s son during the Cold War thanks to a tattle-tale defector.
The revelations were published in a new book – Spionjägaren, del 2 (“The Spy Hunter, part two”) – penned by former Säpo head Olof Frånstedt. The book has revealed that Säpo tried to honeytrap the son of Leonid Brezhnev, who was the head of the Soviet Union at the time.
Jurij Brezhnev was stationed in Stockholm at the time and lived in the Lidingö building which until very recently housed the Russian trade mission.
The Swedes had planned to use the promise of sex to lure Brezhnev Jr to a small flat in Östermalm, rigged with cameras and microphones. The encounter, they hoped, would give the Swedes enough material to use as blackmail. And the culture was ripe for such liaisons. Frånstedt wrote that at the time, sexually loaded “pyjama parties” were in full swing among diplomats in Sweden and Säpo staff.
The Verge extends the panopticon read:
Police could use photographic fingerprints to track suspects across social networks
Photographs are turning into the digital equivalent of fingerprints, allowing law enforcement to search through a collection of images to help track down the identity of photo-taking criminals, such as smartphone thieves and child pornographers. Prior investigation has shown that a digital photo can be paired with the very camera that took it by examining the unique noise pattern that its sensor imprints onto photos, and now researchers have begun applying that to social networks, grabbing photos from Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr, Google+, and personal blogs to see whether one individual image could be matched to a specific user’s account.
In a paper published earlier this year, researchers say that they were able to match a photo with a specific person 56 percent of the time in their studied circumstance — examining 10 different people’s photos found on two separate websites each. The researchers, Riccardo Satta and Pasquale Stirparo from the European Commission’s Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen, acknowledge that this performance is far from perfect, but they argue that it’s still much better than random guess and could at the least help to pinpoint persons of interest in a criminal investigation. Analayzing photos by what’s known as their “sensor pattern noise” is still a relatively new field, however, so those figuers are likely to rise with more research.
From TheLocal.ch, action at a distance:
Hacker held in Bangkok over Swiss bank fraud???
Law enforcement officials in Thailand have detained a computer hacker suspected of stealing four to five million francs from Swiss online bank accounts.
The man, believed to be a 26-year-old Moroccan, was arrested in Bangkok after justice authorities in Bern issued an international warrant for his arrest, the federal prosecutor’s office confirmed on Monday.
The man is suspected of fraudulently obtaining bank card details and other prohibited economic information through the internet, the office informed the ATS news agency.
The daily newspaper 20 Minuten identified the man as a Moroccan citizen.
After the jump, the latest developments and absurd utterances in the ever-spiraling Game of Zones, with Japan, China, Paris, Washington, and more all piling on. . .
Global Times leads off with a blast:
China blasts Abe’s refusal to apologize
China on Tuesday criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his recent refusal to apologize to Japan’s neighbors for wartime atrocities.
“Abe’s words revealed the Japanese leader’s wrong conception of history and lack of sincerity in facing up to that history,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, in response to a question about Abe’s comments in Europe that Tokyo cannot follow in the footsteps of Germany in addressing its wartime atrocities.
“There is always a political force in Japan that attempts to deny or even glorify its wartime aggression and colonial rule, and deny the verdict of the Far East International Military Tribune,” she said.
Jiji Press fires back:
Abe Criticizes China’s Military Expansion
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe criticized China’s military expansion and provocations in East Asia as issues of concern for the international community.
“China’s foreign policy approach and its military developments have become issues of concern for the international community, including Japan,” Abe said.
Abe made the comments in a speech at the North Atlantic Council, the governing body of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, in Brussels.
From the Associated Press, hands across the Atlantic:
NATO, Japan agree to cooperate more
The U.S.-led NATO alliance and Japan, facing mounting security challenges in their respective neighborhoods, agreed Tuesday to cooperate more.
During a visit by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to NATO headquarters, the two sides signed an “individual partnership and cooperation program” that will serve as a roadmap for future joint activities, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said.
In a speech to ambassadors from the alliance’s 28 member states, Abe said: “NATO, which shares our fundamental values, is indeed our natural partner. Together, we triumphed in the Cold War.”
Rasmussen said the new program will affect joint activities like counter-piracy operations, disaster relief and humanitarian aid. He also lauded Japan for spending billions to support alliance operations in Afghanistan and for being NATO’s oldest partner from outside Europe or North America.
Jiji Press takes it up a notch:
Japan to Conduct Joint Antipiracy Drills with NATO
Japan Tuesday agreed to conduct joint drills with member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Operation Ocean Shield, the bloc’s counter-piracy mission.
The agreement was reached in a meeting between Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen in Brussels.
Abe and Rasmussen agreed that Japan and NATO are partners that share fundamental values including democracy and respect for the rule of law.
And from Global Times, ratcheting it up yet another notch:
US highlights importance of military engagement in Asia-Pacific
The United States needs to remain closely engaged militarily with its Asian and Pacific allies, especially at a time when the region is watching with concern Russia’s behavior toward neighboring Ukraine, the country’s top Air Force commander for the Asia-Pacific region said on Monday.
“The importance of the Asia-Pacific to the future of the United States I don’t think can be overstated,” US Air Force Gen. Herbert Carlisle told a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies here, more than two years after the United States announced its Asia-Pacific strategic rebalance, which includes plans to deploy 60 percent of its warships to the region by 2020 and an increase in American troop rotations there.
Carlisle noted that for Asian-Pacific nations dealing with territorial or internal disputes, Russia’s intervention in neighboring Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea are causing increasing concerns.
And from SINA English, out of the blue:
U.S.: Russian planes flew near California, Guam
The head of U.S. air forces in the Pacific said on Monday that Russia’s intervention in Ukraine had been accompanied by a significant increase in Russian air activity in the Asia-Pacific region in a show of strength and to gather intelligence.
General Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle said the activity had included Russian flights to the coast of California, and around the U.S. Pacific island of Guam.
Carlisle said the number of long-range Russian patrols around the Japanese islands and Korea had increased “drastically.” He said there had also been “a lot more ship activity as well.”
From People’s Daily, an angry declaration the the islands called the Senkaku Islands by Japan, remain an angry sore spot with Beijing:
Japan/U.S. double dealing on Diaoyu Islands is a betrayal of history
China and the U.S. fought side by side in the world anti-fascist war, and made great sacrifices to defeat Japanese militarism. If, in order to maintain the U.S.-Japan alliance, the U.S. betrays this history and profanes the dignity and the memory of its own war victims, its action will be intolerable. While Obama was in Japan, a large group of Japanese politicians paid visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, testimony to Japan’s denial of its history of aggression. The gesture was also an insult to Obama’s support for Japan.
In order to apply its so-called “Strategic Rebalancing in Asia”, the U.S. has fallen into the trap of trying to constrain China. It is trying to take advantage of the U.S.-Japan alliance to make Japan an accomplice to its rebalancing strategy, constrain China’s peaceful rise, and force concessions on China’s core interests. At the same time, Japan is taking advantage of American greed to cause trouble around the historical issue, setting aside the peace constitution on collective self-defense, provoking its neighbors over territorial disputes, and reinstating the principle of arms exports. Japan’s conduct has caused concern to its neighbors, including China.
China’s peaceful rise will not be constrained by any other country. The U.S. and Japan will taste bitter fruits if they continue their betrayal of history.
The Mainichi allies uneasily:
Opposition party realignment hinges on handling of collective self-defense
Opposition parties are facing a crucial test over whether they can form a united front regarding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s project to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense.
As long as the opposition parties remain divided over the collective self-defense issue, the situation could be exploited by the ruling bloc to deepen these divisions and shift opposition party alignments — the same state of affairs that hamstrung the opposition during last year’s debate over the special state secrets bill. While the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) dominates the Japanese political landscape, the two biggest opposition parties — the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the Japan Restoration Party (JRP) — have been trying to find common ground. But they remain far apart over key issues, including electoral cooperation.
“We will work out a proposal for policy consultations aimed at realigning opposition parties including the Unity Party, Your Party and the DPJ,” JRP co-leader Toru Hashimoto told reporters at the Osaka city hall on May 2. “Rather collective versus individual (self-defense), the dividing line is whether we feel the current right to self-defense is insufficient.”
Meanwhile, the Japan Daily Press reports on one new development, an apparent peace feeler:
Japanese delegation in China says Abe willing to hold summit with Xi in November
As Japan and China continue to look for ways to improve strained relations, it seemed that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is willing to hold a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, according to some senior lawmakers visiting China.
Vice President of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party Masahiko Komura was in China along with some other legislators from the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentarians’ Union. They met with the Politburo Standing Committee of China for the first time since Abe came into power in December 2012 and told Zhang Deijang, the third ranked highest official of the Communist Party of China about Abe’s readiness to meet with President Xi on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in November. According to Komura, Zhang agreed to communicate the message to Xi.
But China offer a counter, via the Asahi Shimbun:
China open to lawmaker-level talks, seeks to know Abe’s true intentions
In a positive sign toward mending relations, China indicated it was open to lawmaker-level talks with Japan to determine if the Abe administration views Beijing as a friend or foe.
During a meeting with a Japanese delegation in Beijing on May 5, Zhang Dejiang, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress and the No. 3 man in the Communist Party, showed his intention to resume exchanges between members of National People’s Congress, China’s equivalent of Japan’s Diet, and Japanese lawmakers.
However, Zhang told the Japanese group, which included Masahiko Komura, vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and other members of the Japan-China friendship parliamentarians’ union, that it is ultimately up to Tokyo to break the deadlock in relations.
And from the Asahi Shimbun, the latest twist in Abe’s road:
Abe administration seeks to allow use of force if ‘Japan’s existence’ at stake
The Abe administration has begun a review of one of the conditions that it believes is holding the nation back from exercising the right to collective self-defense, to change it to allow use of military force if “Japan’s existence” is deemed to be threatened.
The long-standing condition is a requirement to exercise the right to individual self-defense, which allows Japan to use force only when it comes under direct attack.
It currently stipulates that Japan cannot use force except in cases where another country launches an organized and planned armed attack on the nation, whether it is on Japanese territory, territorial waters or airspace.
China fumbles the regional wild card, via the Guardian:
China denies making preparations for collapse of North Korea regime
Experts say leaked contingency plans, which include the detention of leaders and establishment of refugee camps, may be valid but do not suggest that the alliance is weakening
China has angrily dismissed reports that it has drawn up contingency plans for the collapse of the regime in North Korea, including measures to contain an influx of refugees and prevent unrest from spilling over the countries’ porous border.
The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) devised the measures last summer, according to Kyodo news agency, which reported the leaked documents this week. But experts said they did not signal that Beijing was losing faith in North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
The documents, which Kyodo said it had obtained from unnamed Chinese military sources, include plans to detain North Korean leaders and set up refugee camps along the border, each able to accommodate up to 1,500 people.
And for our final item, a symbolic gesture from Channel NewsAsia Singapore:
Pakistan’s parliament votes to lift ban on YouTube
Pakistan’s parliament on Tuesday voted unanimously to lift a ban on YouTube, in a non-binding resolution that was nonetheless welcomed by free speech campaigners as an important symbolic move.
The video-sharing website has been blocked in Pakistan since September 2012 over its hosting of the “Innocence of Muslims” movie that sparked furious protests around the world.
A US appeals court in February ordered Google, which owns YouTube, to remove the film after a lawsuit brought by an actress who says she was tricked into appearing in it, but the Pakistani ban remains in place.
