Though it’s a Saturday here in ol’ Berzerkeley, the news from the dark side continues to flow unabated.
We open with the disingenuous, via the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
Germans say they accidentally tapped Clinton, Kerry calls
The German Foreign Intelligence Agency has admitted tapping “at least one” phone call each by current Secretary of State John Kerry and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while they were aboard United States government jets, according to German media reports.
The reports claim Kerry’s intercepted communication was a satellite phone call from the Middle East in 2013. Clinton’s communication was also a satellite call, in 2012, and was reportedly to then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan. Both calls were reported to have been intercepted accidentally while German intelligence was targeting terror suspects in the Middle East and northern Africa.
The intelligence agency (the Bundesnachrichtendienst or BND) told German media that terror groups often use the same frequencies that the secretaries phone calls were made over, so the calls were picked up. The calls were among what the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung said intelligence sources described as several cases of U.S. official phone calls being picked up accidentally during anti-terror communications monitoring.
From the Guardian, more buggery deprecated:
Tony Abbott says phone hack did not compromise talks with Julie Bishop
The prime minister responds to a report the foreign minister’s phone was hacked saying sensitive discussions were secure
Following reports the foreign minister’s phone was hacked, the prime minister, Tony Abbott, has said sensitive discussions were conducted over secure phone lines and were not monitored.
The Herald Sun reported that Julie Bishop’s mobile phone was compromised while she was overseas. The newspaper said Australian intelligence officials seized the phone when she returned from a trip negotiating access to the MH17 crash site in the Ukraine.
Australian intelligence agencies know which country those responsible for compromising the phone were from, the report said. The phone was not used to discuss sensitive communications and was replaced.
And Network World goes for the vulnerable:
British spy agency scanned for vulnerable systems in 32 countries, German paper reveals
British intelligence agency GCHQ used port scanning as part of the “Hacienda” program to find vulnerable systems it and other agencies could compromise across at least 27 countries, German news site Heise Online has revealed.
The use of so-called port scanning has long been a trusty tool used by hackers to find systems they can potentially access. In top-secret documents published by Heise on Friday, it is revealed that in 2009, GCHQ started using the technology against entire nations.
One of the documents states that full scans of network ports of 27 countries and partial scans of another five countries had been carried out. Targets included ports using protocols such as SSH (Secure Shell) and SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), which are used for remote access and network administration.
The results were then shared with other spy agencies in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand. “Mailorder” is described in the documents as a secure way for them to exchange collected data.
From the McClatchy Washington Bureau, they’d tell us, but then they’d have to kill us:
(REDACTED) memo released on killing (REDACTED) American overseas
The government on Friday made public a heavily redacted memo that was used to legally justify the killing of an American overseas.
Acting under pressure from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and the New York Times, the Justice Department turned over the long-sought Feb. 19, 2010 Office of Legal Counsel memo relating to the killing of Anwar al-Aulaqi.
Characterized as “egregiously over-redacted” by ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer, the seven page memo is signed by then-Acting Assistant Attorney General David J. Barron. Barron is now a judge on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
The only words that survive the redacting knife on pages 2 and 3 are “top secret.” Snippets that survive include the ominous sounding word play “killings in self-defense are not assassination.” More elaborately, the memo declares that “the use of lethal force would not violate the Fourth Amendment” if certain conditions prevail, including a “capture operation ts infeasible and the targeted person is part of a dangerous enemy force and poses a continued and imminent threat to U.S. persons or interests.”
Ars Technica covers the action:
Five American Muslims sue FBI, attorney general over travel watch list
Plaintiffs decry “invisible web of consequences that are imposed indefinitely.”
A group of five Muslims (four of whom are United States citizens) have sued top American government officials, alleging that their constitutional rights have been violated for having been put on a federal watch list.
The plaintiffs’ lawsuit, which was filed on Thursday in federal court in Detroit, accuses numerous leaders—including the attorney general, the directors of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, and others—of violating their constitutional rights to due process and the right to be free from religious discrimination.
In the complaint, each person outlines a similar story: being detained at the border, often having digital devices seized, and being subject to prolonged physical searches. One was told that he was on the no-fly list and was later offered a chance to work on behalf of federal law enforcement in exchange for removal. He seems to have declined.
Next up, with all the talk about militarized police in the U.S., just how well has Uncle Sam armed them. A Los Angeles Times graphic has the numbers:
From International Business Times, context for Missouri misery:
Mike Brown Shooting: What It’s Like To Grow Up Black In A Town Where 94% Of Cops Are White
When Gregory Carr was growing up in the suburbs of St. Louis, his father gave him and his four brothers advice about dealing with the police.
“He’d say ‘let me tell you something, when you’re black and you get stopped by the man you just say, yes sir, no sir, and cooperate. Because that man will crack your head.’”
A generation later, Carr, 49, who teaches speech and theater at Harris-Stowe State University in St. Louis, said that he tells his own son the same thing.
“I’m very concerned, he’s only six years younger than Mike Brown,” he said, referring to the shooting of Brown, 18, who was unarmed when he was killed by police Saturday in this St. Louis suburb, an incident that sparked six days of protests, a violent police backlash, sympathetic protests across the country and a national discussion about race and segregation in America.
From the Independent, hooded bigotry gone bananas:
Michael Brown shooting: Ku Klux Klan raises ‘reward’ for officer who shot unarmed teen in Ferguson, Missouri
The Missouri chapter of a faction of the Ku Klux Klan is allegedly raising money as a reward for the white police officer who fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson a week ago.
On its website, the South Carolina-based New Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) has published a series of racist posts describing Brown as “a black punk” and “not a good kid”, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hate Watch (SCPLCHW) blog has reported.
The group has also advertised a fundraiser asking for donations of $10 (£6) and above, with all proceeds going to “the cop who did his job against the negro criminal”.
And from Boing Boing, a note about a podcast for the modern journalist:
Essential gadgets while reporting on civil unrest
In this episode, we talk to journalist Quinn Norton, who writes about digital rights, hacker culture, copyright, and the strangeness of the world and the complexity of the people who inhabit it for Medium and other outlets. She has covered the Occupy Wall Street movement and civil unrest around the world for Wired and other publications.
News Corp Australia covers aquatic hack attacks:
Sharks eat the internet but Google fights back
A NEW food craze is sweeping the underwater world with sharks taking a fancy to Google’s undersea data cables.
Vision has emerged showing sharks munching away on the cables, mistaking them for dinner.
Google has been forced to take action, reinforcing parts of the trans-Pacific fibre-optic cables and wrapping them in material to keep the sharks at bay.
From TheLocal.dk, information control in the name of IP. [And if you do want to see a picture, Wikipedia has ‘e here]:
Denmark’s icon… that we can’t show you
The Little Mermaid is perhaps the most photographed attraction in the entire country, but Danish media outlets are extremely hesitant to publish a photo of the sculpture.
Earlier this week, The Local reported that Seoul’s mayor wants a miniature version of Copenhagen’s famous Little Mermaid statue for his own city.
Rather than illustrate the photo with a beautiful picture of the sculpture – thousands of which can be found all over the internet – we chose a photo in which the famous landmark was surrounded by tourists and thus not the main focus of the image.
There was a reason for that. The family of sculptor Edvard Eriksen is known for being very aggressive about the sculpture’s copyright and numerous Danish media outlets have received a large bill in the mail for using a photo of the Little Mermaid – even though it is arguably the most recognisable image in all of Denmark.
The newspapers Politiken, Berlingske and the now-closed Nyhedsavisen have all been fined for using an image of the Little Mermaid. Berlingske had to pay 10,000 kroner ($1,800) for using a photo of the statue in connection with a 2005 story on Denmark’s tourism industry.
From Ars Technica, check your grocery bills:
Grocery shoppers nationwide probably had credit card data stolen
Coast-to-coast: Albertsons, Acme Markets, Jewel-Osco and more were hit
Two major supermarket chains announced that their customers’ credit card information may have been stolen during a network intrusion.
SuperValu, the Minnesota parent company of Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher’s, Shop ‘n Save, and Shoppers Food and Pharmacy, announced that 180 stores in North Carolina, Maryland, Virginia, Illinois, Missouri, North Dakota, and Minnesota were affected.
“The Company has not determined that any such cardholder data was in fact stolen by the intruder, and it has no evidence of any misuse of any such data, but is making this announcement out of an abundance of caution,” SuperValu said in a statement Friday.
Consortiumnews.com covers a sin of MSM omission:
The Hushed-Up Hitler Factor in Ukraine
Behind the Ukraine crisis is a revision of World War II history that seeks to honor eastern European collaborators with Hitler and the Holocaust by repackaging these rightists as anti-Soviet heroes, a reality shielded from the U.S. public, as Dovid Katz explains.
Would America support any type of Hitlerism in the course of the State Department’s effort to turn the anti-Russian political classes of Eastern Europe into paragons of PR perfection that may not be criticized, howsoever mildly?
It was frankly disconcerting to see Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, embracing the leader of Ukraine’s far right, anti-Semitic, pro-fascist Svoboda party last December. It was disturbing to learn of the neo-Nazi elements that provided the “muscle” for the actual Maidan takeover last February (BBC’s Newsnight was among the few major Western outlets to dare cover that openly).
Most disturbing of all has been the mainstream Western media’s almost Soviet-grade wall somehow erected against critical mention of the far-right component of Ukraine’s 2014 history, rendering any such thought as worthy of ridicule on New York Times opinion pages last spring.
And the Associated Press covers an offer:
EU Offers to Take Charge of Gaza Border, Says Status Quo ‘Is Not an Option’
The European Union offered Friday to take charge of Gaza’s border crossings and work to prevent illegal arms flows, insisting on a durable truce and saying a return to the status quo for the region “is not an option.”
As EU foreign ministers held an urgent meeting in Brussels about global conflicts, Hamas negotiators met with the Islamic militant group’s leadership in Qatar to discuss a proposal for a long-term truce with Israel. An official said the group was inclined to accept the Egyptian-mediated offer.
The Gaza blockade remains the main stumbling block. It has greatly limited the movement of Palestinians in and out of the territory of 1.8 million people, restricted the flow of goods into Gaza and blocked virtually all exports.
After the jump, the last from Asia, where the Game of Zones continue to boil. There’s turmoil in Pakistan, Indian assertiveness, bellicose rhetoric, avowals and disavowals, dubious ploys, and data protectionism — plus a flatulent tale from up north and an apology that’s not nearly enough. . .
From Channel NewsAsia Singapore, a warning from New Delhi:
India must build defences so none dares cast ‘evil eye’: PM
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday (Aug 16) said India must build up its military might to the point that no other country “dare cast an evil eye” on the South Asian nation.
Modi made the statement at a ceremony in Mumbai for the commissioning of the country’s biggest locally built warship. “Our aim is to achieve such prowess in our defence capabilities that no country dare cast an evil eye on India,” Modi told naval officers and other dignitaries.
India, the second most populous nation in the world, is in the midst of a US$100-billion defence upgrade programme. Modi’s new government has raised the foreign investment cap on India’s defence industries to speed up modernisation of the military.
New America Media came the influence game:
U.S. Plays Catch-up in Africa, After China Gains New Ground
As the 49 African heads of state return to their respective cities – after a three-day U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington D.C., the breaking news across Africa should to be the $14-billion trade and investment pledge by private U.S. corporations.
Concluding the three-day summit, Pres. Barack Obama said, “Tens of thousands of American jobs are supported every time we expand trade with Africa.”
So, is the United States playing catch up in a region where China is gaining ground?
Some commentators from Africa agree, arguing that the summit is a belated attempt by the United States to respond to growing Chinese influence in Africa. Arthur Larok, director of Action-Aid Uganda – an organization that works to end poverty and injustice – believes that the presence of China in Africa gives Africa an opportunity to negotiate the best deal.
Want China Times disavows:
Australia won’t be forced into US war with China: Russel
Daniel R Russel, US Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, has refuted the former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser and said Australia will not be forced to join an American war against China, reports Huanqiu, the website of China’s nationalistic tabloid Global Times.
Russel’s words come after the US and Australia held a ministry-level meeting which aims to integrate the two counties’ ballistic missile defense system, increase US ships’ visits to Perth and opening a bombing range in the Northern Territory to US forces.
Fraser in his new book dangerous Allies urges Australia to abandon its alliance with the US to avoid conflict with China. He claimed Australia is stuck in America’s system and the alliance denies Australia the choice to remain neutral if war should ever break out.
Want China Times again, reassuring Washington:
PLA Navy is 30 years behind US, says retired ROC officer
The People’s Liberation Army Navy will expand the area denial range of its DF-21 ballistic missile to reach 2,500 km and operate three aircraft carriers by year 2020. However, China is still 30 years behind the US Navy, said Lan Ning-li, a retired Taiwanese vice admiral, our sister paper Want Daily reported on Aug. 16.
Lan was speaking at a forum in Taipei on Aug. 15 on the rise of China’s naval power held by the Institute for National Policy Research, where he said that China is extending its effective force projection area further offshore.
PLA warships equipped with equivalents of the Aegis Combat System now outnumber those of the US Seventh Fleet. The Type 055C destroyer, which Lan believes will be the main escort in a PLA carrier group, has similar missile capabilities to US Aegis vessels. The 18 frigates carrying supersonic anti-ship missiles China managed to build within three years are capable of precise attacks with guided missiles.
From the New York Times, another play, another player:
In China’s Shadow, U.S. Courts Old Foe Vietnam
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, courted Vietnam over the past several days, the first chairman in more than 40 years to visit the old enemy, now envisioned as a new partner that will acquire American weapons and help offset the power of China.
General Dempsey, who graduated from West Point as the Vietnam War was winding down, never served here, but his visit capped a vibrant effort by the United States and Vietnam to reconnect. A longstanding embargo on lethal weapons sales by the United States was likely to be eased, he said, and Washington would then begin discussions on what equipment Vietnam would buy, most likely in the field of maritime surveillance.
Vietnam has suddenly become more important to Washington as the United States and China are increasingly at loggerheads. Vietnam is key because of its strategic position bordering China, its large population of nearly 100 million and its long coastline on the South China Sea, one of the world’s most vital trading routes.
Want China Times provokes:
Philippines proposes South China Sea cruise tours
Gregorio Pio Catapang, the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, says the military authority is going to develop tourism and run cruises around six islets west of the country in the disputed South China Sea, China’s Global Times reports.
Catapang, who took office a month ago, made the announcement on Aug. 16 while visiting the Armed Forces Western Command in the western Philippine province of Palawan. The proposed cruises will go around six islets occupied by the country’s military, including Thitu or Pagasa Island and Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly archipelago, claimed by China and Taiwan as Zhongye Island and Ren’ai Shoal respectively.
Catapang said the proposal was inspired by countries which have made similar moves concerning islets they control — a possible reference to China’s actions in the Paracel islands. The development plan could be carried out through a public-private partnership that he believes will be a win-win situation, he said.
The Associated Press calls a halt:
China wraps anti-Japan propaganda campaign
China has wrapped up its latest anti-Japanese propaganda campaign amid continuing sharp disputes over territorial claims and history.
State media on Saturday published the last of 45 confessions of convicted Japanese World War II criminals. The campaign was launched this summer in response to statements by Japanese politicians and public figures minimizing Japan’s brutal eight-year invasion and occupation of much of China in the 1930s and 1940s.
Along with the controversial statements, China was outraged by Japan’s nationalization of East China Sea islands claimed by Beijing two years ago, as well as a visit by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to a Tokyo shrine for the war dead in December.
But JapanToday casts doubt:
China orders ‘patriotic’ TV series targeting Japan
China has ordered the country’s television broadcasters to air “patriotic” or anti-fascist series for two months from September, reports said, stepping up its propaganda efforts amid disputes with Japan and ahead of national holidays.
Such programs are already a staple of Chinese television, but news portal Netease, citing unnamed industry insiders, said satellite channels—which are all controlled by provincial governments—had been ordered to broadcast them in prime time until the end of October.
The National Day holiday, which marks the founding of Communist China in 1949, falls on October 1.
And then there’s this from China’s Global Times Saturday:
Yasukuni Shrine center stage of Japan’s rightist freak show
On the day that marked the 69th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II, the notorius Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo turned into a center stage for a freak show of Japan’s unrepentant right-wing extremists.
Among the thousands of visitors to the shrine on Friday, some familiar faces attracted attention.
Early that morning, Chairman of National Public Safety Commission Keiji Furuya walked into the main shrine and paid homage to the place that honors 14 convicted Class-A war criminals and glorifies Japan’s history of aggression.
Later, Yoshitaka Shindo, the internal affairs minister, and Tomomi Inada, the administrative reform minister, followed suit.
In fact, the three cabinet members have been the shrine’s most frequent visitors since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government was formed in late 2012, and they have long ignored the fact such visits repeatedly anger neighboring countries which suffered from Japan’s wartime aggression and atrocities.
SINA English confines:
Apple storing personal data on mainland
APPLE Inc has begun keeping the personal data of some Chinese users on servers in China’s mainland, marking the first time the tech giant has stored user data on mainland soil.
The data will be kept on servers provided by China Telecom Corp Ltd, the country’s third-largest wireless carrier, Apple said in a statement yesterday.
Apple attributed the move to an effort to improve the speed and reliability of its iCloud service, which lets users store pictures, e-mail and other data.
Want China Times also confines:
‘Golden riot fence’ to be introduced throughout China
China North Vehicle Research Institute displayed more than 150 kinds of riot control equipment for the first time on Aug. 6, including the “golden fence” which has gained a prominent role in Beijing and will be introduced nationwide, reports the Beijing Youth Daily.
Developed by China North Industries Group Corporation, the golden fence is made from high-density stainless steel with hinges inside to absorb external force. The design makes the golden fence highly flexible and protective. It has been implemented in key sites in Beijing such as Tiananmen Square, Tiananmen City Gate Tower, Golden Water Bridge, Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, Great Hall of the People and Chang’an Avenue, and will be implemented nationwide soon.
A set of comprehensive hooked batons have also attracted attention. Also developed by China North Industries Group Corporation, it has semi-circular hook attached to a long handle that can grab limbs to subdue people. A trap catch is non-aggressive and is mainly adopted against drunkards and knife-holders.
Kyodo News gets base:
Pentagon submits to Congress plan of Okinawa-Guam transfer of Marines
The U.S. Defense Department has submitted a master plan to Congress that features details of a plan to transfer Marines to Guam from Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture, a Pentagon official said Friday.
The move came as the Senate has frozen part of the budget earmarked for the transfer of Marines to Guam from Okinawa, citing a lack of information about the overall picture of realigning Marine forces in the Asia-Pacific region.
Details of the master plan have yet to be disclosed.
Jiji Press cautions:
U.S. Report Warns against Heavy-Handed Actions over Futenma
A U.S. congressional think tank report warned Friday against heavy-handed actions by the Japanese and U.S. governments over the planned transfer of a U.S. Marine base in the southern Japan prefecture of Okinawa.
The Congressional Research Service noted that local opposition may grow further in the future regarding the plan to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps’ Futenma air station in the Okinawa city of Ginowan to the Henoko coastal district in Nago in the same prefecture.
“Any heavy-handed actions by Tokyo or Washington could lead to stridently antibase politicians making gains in Okinawa, particularly in the gubernatorial election scheduled for November 2014,” the report said.
The Mainichi joins in:
Japan universities to join DARPA robotics contest; future military use possible
Japanese universities are set to make their first appearance at a United States Department of Defense (DoD) robotics competition in June 2015, though worries linger that some of the technology on display will find its way into military applications.
The DoD says the goal of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s “DARPA Robotics Challenge” (DRC) is to develop “robots capable of assisting humans in responding to natural and man-made disasters,” but also indicates that the technology could be adapted for military purposes. With the lines between military and civilian use at the cutting edge of technology blurring and the memories of war fading, researchers find themselves in a difficult situation.
The June 2015 event will be the third in the DRC’s history — the first two coming in June and December 2013. The first place prize is $2 million U.S. The contest was originally conceived in the wake of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant meltdowns to develop technology with applications in nuclear and other disaster relief.
And back to North America for our semi-final item, via Canada’s National Post:
Wikipedia edits on everything from the Stanley Cup to Scooby-Doo traced to Parliament Hill computers
Unknown people with access to House of Commons and federal government computers have been using their time — and taxpayer resources — to make anonymous changes to Wikipedia pages on everything from the Stanley Cup, to soft drinks and flatulence. Even Scooby-Doo is involved.
On Friday, someone using Parliament Hill computers made changes to a Wikipedia page about beans to explain that they can cause lots of gas, according to an Internet bot that tweets anonymous entries to Wikipedia pages from federal government Internet addresses.
The entry on beans initially explained that they have been an important source of protein throughout history. Then, someone on a House of Commons computer address added his or her own touch.
“And still today, they will make you fart like there is no tomorrow,” says the edit, according to the “Gov. of Canada edits” Twitter account.
From RT, our final item, and we think apology isn’t adequate retribution:
Creator of pop-up ads apologizes for inventing ‘internet’s original sin’
Pop-up advertisements seem to have been irritating users online since the dawn of the World Wide Web. Now the man responsible for creating the code that ushered in an age of internet whack-a-mole is apologizing for the lack of privacy he brought about.
“I wrote the code to launch the window and run an ad in it. I’m sorry. Our intentions were good,” Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT and principal research scientist at MIT’s Media Lab, wrote in an essay for The Atlantic.
“Not only did I deploy what was probably the first popup, I wrote the javascript and the server-side Perl to launch it,” Zuckerman told the magazine’s Adrienne LaFrance in a follow-up. “I’m old.”
