We begin today’s walk on the dark side with a story everyone knew was coming, via the New York Times:
U.S. Weighs Direct Military Action Against ISIS in Syria
The Obama administration is debating a more robust intervention in Syria, including possible American airstrikes, in a significant escalation of its weeks-long military assault on the Islamic extremist group that has destabilized neighboring Iraq and killed an American journalist, officials said Friday.
While President Obama has long resisted being drawn into Syria’s bloody civil war, officials said recent advances by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have made clear that it represents a threat to the interests of the United States and its allies. The beheading of James Foley, the American journalist, has contributed to what officials called a “new context” for a challenge that has long divided the president’s team.
Officials said the options include speeding up and intensifying limited American efforts to train and arm moderate Syrian rebel forces that have been fighting ISIS as well as fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad. Another option would be to bolster other partners on the ground to take on ISIS, including the Syrian Kurds.
But as Deutsche Welle notes, some things remain unsayable:
Germany ‘regrets’ comments on Qatar support for ‘IS’
Germany has upset Qatar, with one of Angela Merkel’s ministers saying the Gulf monarchy was funding the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” terror group, and another attempting some sensitive World Cup wordplay
The German government said on Friday that it had no direct evidence of Qatar funding the so-called “Islamic State” (“IS”) group active in Iraq and Syria.
“If there were misunderstandings, we regret these,” foreign ministry spokesman Martin Schäfer told reporters in Berlin, after Development Minister Gerd Müller told public broadcaster ZDF earlier in the week that efforts to cut off “IS” funding had the “keyword Qatar.”
Schäfer on Friday said that Qatar had contacted the government in Berlin over the comments, and called the Gulf monarchy an important partner for Germany. However, he said that there were several issues, “where we are not always of the same opinion.”
While the Independent notes that America’s closest Arab ally is still killing people for witchcraft:
Saudi Arabia executes 19 during one half of August in ‘disturbing surge of beheadings’
Saudi Arabia has beheaded at least 19 people since the beginning of August in a surge of executions, the Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. The deaths relate to the period from 4 to 20 August and are included in the 34 deaths ordered since the beginning of January.
According to HRW, international standards require that capital punishment should only be reserved for the “most serious crimes” in countries that still use it.
Offences that resulted in the Saudi Arabian death penalties in August ranged from drug smuggling and sorcery.
And closer to home, the latest GOP cross-border xenophobia alert, via Mother Jones:
Iowa GOP Official Warns That Child Migrants Might Be Highly Trained “Warriors”
Iowa Republican National Committee member Tamara Scott has a special theory about the flood of child migrants entering the United States: What if they’re secretly ninjas?
Republican congressmen have previously argued that the 70,000 youths who will come across the border in 2014 are being brought over to bolster Democratic voter rolls at some point in the distant future, or that they are carrying a deadly disease that does not actually exist in their home countries. Scott, in a Thursday radio segment flagged by Right Wing Watch, sought to outdo them all:
For us just to open our borders it’s chaos we don’t know orderly who’s coming in, who’s not. When we see these kids, you and I think young kids, we think maybe 12-year-olds, maybe even…middle-schoolers. But we know back in our revolution, we had 12-year-olds fighting in our revolution. And for many of these kids, depending on where they’re coming from, they could be coming from other countries and be highly trained as warriors who will meet up with their group here and actually rise up against us as Americans. We have no idea what’s coming through our borders, but I would say biblically it’s not a Christian nation when you entice people to do wrong.
Wired threat level totes up another tab:
Personal Privacy Is Only One of the Costs of NSA Surveillance
There is no doubt the integrity of our communications and the privacy of our online activities have been the biggest casualty of the NSA’s unfettered surveillance of our digital lives. But the ongoing revelations of government eavesdropping have had a profound impact on the economy, the security of the internet and the credibility of the U.S. government’s leadership when it comes to online governance.
These are among the many serious costs and consequences the NSA and those who sanctioned its activities—including the White House, the Justice Department and lawmakers like Sen. Dianne Feinstein—apparently have not considered, or acknowledged, according to a report by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.
“Too often, we have discussed the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs through the distorting lens of a simplistic ‘security versus privacy’ narrative,” said Danielle Kehl, policy analyst at the Open Technology Institute and primary author of the report. “But if you look closer, the more accurate story is that in the name of security, we’re trading away not only privacy, but also the U.S. tech economy, internet openness, America’s foreign policy interests and cybersecurity.”
And the Guardian raises grounds for real domestic insecurity:
Ferguson: officer relieved of duty after ‘black little perverts’ video surfaces
Dan Page, among the police working at Ferguson protests, is relieved after video emerges of him saying ‘I’m into diversity, I kill everybody’
A police officer involved in the protests over Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri, has been relieved of his duty after video surfaced of him describing black people as “little perverts” and Barack Obama as an illegal immigrant.
Dan Page – who was seen live on CNN earlier this week threatening to arrest the network’s anchor Don Lemon – was recorded in April giving a speech in which he railed against Muslims and gay people, saying: “I’m into diversity – I kill everybody.”
Page is the second St Louis county officer to have been stood down in controversial circumstances surrounding the Ferguson protests. Lieutenant Ray Albers was suspended on Wednesday after video emerged of him pointing his assault weapon at protestors and threatening to kill them.
And closer to Casa esnl, more grounds for insecurity from the Fairfield, California, Daily Republic:
Fairfield cops under investigation for possible database checks on potential dates
A pair of veteran Fairfield police officers are under investigation for possible felony conduct relating to their trolling of personals dating websites while on duty and possibly using confidential law enforcement databases repeatedly to screen women they found appealing.
The officers, Sgt. Stephen Ruiz and Detective Jacob Glashoff, had their desktop computers, their laptop computers, their duty cellphones and a Fairfield police iPad seized by an internal affairs investigator in June, according to court documents filed Thursday. The equipment was turned over to the Northern California Computer Crimes Task Force, which was joined in the investigation of the two officers by a data analyst with the California Department of Justice, Bureau of Criminal Investigation and Analysis.
The investigation began in June when another detective reported to his superiors that some of his peers in the Investigations Bureau office at 1100 Texas St. were misusing the California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System database. It connects to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and state and federal law enforcement records.
The Miami Herald makes a point with which we agree:
Miami-Dade mayor: ‘I want a camera on every police officer’
In the wake of national outrage over alleged police misconduct in Ferguson, Mo., Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez on Thursday vowed to make “body cameras” mandatory for all county patrol officers.
His proposed budget calls for purchasing 500 of the mini cameras, enough to outfit about half of Miami-Dade’s patrol force. Made by Taser, they’re small enough to snap onto a pair of glasses or a hat in order to record everything an officer sees.
“I want a camera on every police officer,” Gimenez told the audience at a budget town hall meeting in Little Haiti.
From TechWeekEurope, friends in high places for a high-security service otherwise often decried by governments aplenty:
Tor Is Being Kept Safe By Dissenting GCHQ And NSA Agents, Claims Project Director
Apparently a few of the government spies want to keep Tor anonymous and secure
Employees of the UK and US intelligence services have been helping the Tor network maintain anonymity of its users, claims Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Project.
Lewman told the BBC that his development team regularly gets ‘tipped off’ when the National Security Agency (NSA) or Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) find a vulnerability that could compromise the security of the network.
“There are plenty of people in both organisations who can anonymously leak data to us to say – maybe you should look here, maybe you should look at this to fix this,” he said. “And they have.”
From the Guardian, a spooky blast from the past:
Botched Nazi spy mission was act of sabotage, says historian
German intelligence officials opposed to Hitler’s plans chose agents with poor English for Operation Lena, book suggests
Of the 12 spies who landed in Britain as part of Operation Lena in September 1940, most were arrested without having come closing to fulfilling their mission, and “because of their own stupidity”, as British official records put it. Why Germany sent such inept agents on one of the most important missions of the second world war has remained an enduring mystery.
A book published in Germany this summer comes up with a new explanation. In Operation Sealion: Resistance inside the Secret Service, the historian Monika Siedentopf argues that the botched spying mission was not the result of German incompetence, but a deliberate act of sabotage by a cadre of intelligence officials opposed to Hitler’s plans.
Siedentopf first became interested in the story of Operation Sealion – the German plan to invade Britain – while researching a book on the role of female spies during the war. For many other missions, German spies had been meticulously well-prepared, she noticed, so why not in 1940?
From Techdirt, censorship on campus:
University Bans Social Media, Political Content and Wikipedia Pages On Dorm WiFi
My understanding is that there was once a theory that America’s public universities were havens of free speech, political thought, and a center for the exchange of ideas. I must admit that this seems foreign to me. I’ve always experienced universities primarily as a group-think center mostly centered around college athletics. That said, if universities want to still claim to be at the forefront of idea and thought, they probably shouldn’t be censoring the hell out of what their students can access on the internet.
Yet, as btr1701 writes in about, that’s exactly what Northern Illinois University appears to be doing.
Northern Illinois University enacted an Acceptable Use Policy that goes further than banning torrents, also denying students access to social media sites and other content the university considers “unethical” or “obscene.” A discussion on the ban was brought to Reddit by user darkf who discovered the new policy while trying to access the Wikipedia page for the Westboro Baptist Church from his personal computer in his dorm room. The student received a filter message categorizing the page as “illegal or unethical.” It seems possible to continue to the webpage, but the message warns that all violations will be reviewed.
While DutchNews.nl resists a similar measure on a national scale:
Dutch minister opposes new law to criminalise ‘glorifying violence’
Justice minister Ivo Opstelten has rejected calls for the government to bring in a new law making it a crime to glorify terrorist violence.
Christian Democrat MPs have called for a change in the law following the murder of US journalist James Foley by the Islamic State. The government is currently not doing enough to tackle the problem, CDA leader Sybrand Buma said on Thursday.
Opstelten said in a reaction he is not in favour of the introduction of ‘thought police’. ‘There is freedom of expression,’ the minister is quoted as saying.
While the Mainichi covers a real domestic security threat:
Dominican Republic bans Miley Cyrus concert
The Dominican Republic government commission that oversees public performances is banning a Sept. 13 concert by Miley Cyrus on morality grounds.
The commission said in a statement Thursday that it took the action because Cyrus often “undertakes acts that go against morals and customs, which are punishable by Dominican law.”
Tickets ranging from $27 to $370 for the concert in the capital have been on sale since July.
PandoDaily covers a banner year:
Are the hackers winning? 2014 is shaping up as a record year in security breaches
Hackers have been busy in 2014. According to a Data Breach QuickView report by Risk Based Security (RBS), the first half of 2014 has already surpassed the record set across all of 2013 for the number of consumer records exposed.
The company writes, “Mid-year 2014 data breaches exposed over 502 million records far exceeding the mid-year point in 2013, the previous all-time record setting year… and the recently reported exposure of 1.2 billion email addresses and usernames has not been included.”
This news comes weeks after Target released an analysis of the cost of its 2013 breach which, at 110 million records exposed, was the seventh largest breach in history and and was surely among the most-widely publicized. The final tally: $148 million, plus an incalculable loss of consumer trust. The incident, and a confidence eroding response by management, also ended up cost the company its CEO and CIO.
More hackery news from RT:
User beware: Researchers have 92% success rate hacking into Gmail app
Your smartphone may be far less secure than you think. A group of computer scientists say they’ve found a way to hack into six out of seven popular apps like Gmail on Android, Windows and iOS platforms, with a success rate of up to 92 percent.
The weakness, which was discovered by researchers from the University of California Riverside, means they could get potentially sensitive information, such as looking at emails and changing passwords. Thankfully for unsuspecting citizens, the team says it has no interest in using any personal data, but will instead present its findings in a paper: “Peeking into Your App without Actually Seeing It: UI State Inference and Novel Android Attacks,” at the USENIX Security Symposium in San Diego on Friday.
The team believed they could find a fault in an app because so many are produced by so many different developers. Once a user downloads a number of apps to his or her smartphone they are all running on the same shared platform, or operating system. Therefore users leave themselves open to attacks as an Android phone allows itself to be hijacked or pre-empted.
Network World covers still more hackery:
US warns ‘significant number’ of major businesses hit by Backoff malware
Over a thousand major enterprise networks and small and medium businesses in the U.S. have been compromised by a recently discovered malware package called “Backoff” and are probably unaware of it, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a cybersecurity alert on Friday.
Backoff first appeared in October 2013 and is capable of scraping the memory contents of point of sales systems—industry speak for cash registers and other terminals used at store checkouts—for data swiped from credit cards, from monitoring the keyboard and logging keystrokes, from communicating with a remote server.
“Over the past year, the Secret Service has responded to network intrusions at numerous businesses throughout the United States that have been impacted by the “Backoff” malware,” the alert said. “Seven PoS system providers/vendors have confirmed that they have had multiple clients affected.”
Meanwhile, a privacy battle shapes up in Europe, via RT:
Facebook given deadline in ‘largest privacy class action in Europe’
Facebook has been given four weeks to respond to a class action, launched against it by an Austrian activist and supported by 60,000 users. The suit claims Facebook violated users’ privacy, by cooperating with the NSA’s PRISM program.
The class action initiated by Max Schrems, an Austrian lawyer, data privacy activist and founder of Europe vs. Facebook group has passed its first review in the Vienna Regional Court.
Facebook Ireland, which runs the social network’s activities outside the US and Canada, has been given four weeks to respond to the action.
BBC News covers a crackdown on aisle three:
Venezuela plans to introduce supermarket fingerprinting
President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela has announced a mandatory fingerprinting system in supermarkets to combat food shortages and smuggling.
He said the system would stop people from buying too much of a single item.
But the opposition in Venezuela rejected the plan, saying the policy treated all Venezuelans as thieves.
And Factor has Robocop, Mark I:
Bots on patrol: Mobile security robot to be mass produced
In a move that will rock the job security of night watchmen everywhere, the world’s first commercially available security robot is set for mass production in the US.
Designed by Denver-based Gamma 2 Robotics, the robot will now be manufactured entirely in the States, with a process that can be scaled up to full mass production as demand grows.
The robot, which is known as the Vigilant MCP (mobile camera platform), features a digital camera and an array of sensors to detect the presence of unauthorised intruders, and will activate the alarm and send out an alert should it find someone where they shouldn’t be.
After the jump, the latest from the Asian Game of Zones, including a call for a cyberwar treaty, talks in Karachi, a nautical seizure, a Chinese question, a Sino/American aerial close encounter, North Korean missiles ahead, tensions on the high seas, an Obama administration thumbs up for Japanese militarism, an anti-propaganda call in Japan, posturing by exercise, and still more turmoil over Japanese ethnic intolerance towards Koreans and that the ongoing crisis over Japanese reluctance to fully acknowledge World War II sex slavery. . .
The Diplomat calls for a truce on the digital front:
Triangulating Cyberespionage for Better US Diplomacy
Why the US should seek a meaningful trilateral treaty with China and Russia on cyberespionage.
The United States is under significant diplomatic pressure. International turmoil that began with destabilizing events in smaller nations, such as North African coups and Venezuelan protests, has grown into the testing of boundaries by two of the world’s most powerful nations, Russia and China. As Russia tests American resolve with its actions in Ukraine, and China tests America with its actions in the South China Sea, foreign policy experts have expressed their opinions on what the United States needs to do to stabilize international affairs. An article in Foreign Affairs suggested that the United States must reach a “grand bargain” with Russia to stabilize Europe. An article in The Diplomat suggested the United States must reach a “grand bargain” with China to stabilize Asia. These individual grand bargains with Russia and China are, however, the wrong efforts at the wrong time. Rather than pursuing grand bargains with each nation individually, the United States would secure a much-needed strategic diplomatic victory by triangulating the two nations and forming a trilateral treaty concerning cyberattacks.
American relations with both countries are failing, while relations between China and Russia are strengthening. China has reached an agreement with Russia to supply it with discounted energy at bargain prices, bolstering the economies of both nations going forward. The American government is too fractured to reach consensus on what a grand bargain with either nation should contemplate, and American diplomatic capital is too bankrupt to achieve the grand bargain even if the U.S. could frame it. Instead of negotiating separate grand bargains with each country, the United States should negotiate a small but important agreement between the three nations. By forming a trilateral agreement on cyber issues, specifically cybercrime, cyberespionage and cyberwarfare, American diplomats could resolve an important geopolitical issue, while strategically pulling Russia and China closer to America and further apart from each other. By opening diplomatic talks with a smaller issue, the cyberattack treaty would allow for a linkage of issues that could ultimately lead to stabilization.
Deutsche Welle covers a sitdown:
Pakistan’s opposition resumes talk with government
Opposition leader Imran Khan and his party have decided to resume talks with the government. The negotiations are aimed at ending several days of protests.
Pakistani opposition leader Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) has agreed to return to negotiations with the government in a bid to end protests that began earlier this week calling for Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s resignation.
The PTI’s vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi said, “We are resuming talks with the government.”
The announcement came shortly after parliament members of the PTI quit the parliament. The MPs quit the National Assembly as they believe “elections were not transparent,” said PTI member Arif Alvi, referring to the election of Nawaz Sharif in April last year.
NHK WORLD detains:
Russian officials admit ship probe
A prosecution official in Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East has confirmed that authorities are questioning the crew of the Japanese whaling survey ship in Magadan.
The official told NHK over the telephone on Friday that Russian border guards stopped the ship near the Shantar Islands in the western part of the Sea of Okhotsk.
A port official in Magadan said the Japanese ship entered the port on Monday night as instructed by the border guards. The official said the guards are questioning the crew and that no one has left the ship.
People’s Daily questions:
Does U.S. seriously want conflict with China?
Showboating aside, is the U.S. seriously thinking about confronting China? Probably not.
It is clear to the whole world that it will be a disaster if the U.S. and China become rivals, while cooperation between the two can contribute to both countries’ development. In 2013, bilateral trade between U.S. and China was worth 520 billion dollars, and investment on both sides was more than 100 billion dollars, which was a new historical high. China is now the second biggest trade partner, the third largest export market, and biggest source of imports to the United States.
Even though the U.S. will not confront China openly in public at the moment, Uncle Sam will not happily embrace a revitalizing China either. Although the U.S. Government denies it, Obama’s current policies on Chinaare aimed at constraining China’s development. It is time for Uncle Sam to realize that the U.S. Government should put an end to these tiresome “political shows” and underhand actions, and start to cooperate sincerely with China and build a new relationship.
Sky News covers a cose encounter:
Chinese Top Gun ‘Barrel Rolled’ Over US Plane
The jet exposed its undercarriage to show the US plane it was armed as they came within 20ft of each other, the Pentagon says.
The US has lodged a formal protest with Beijing after a Chinese fighter jet conducted a barrel roll “very, very close” over an American Navy plane this week, the Pentagon has said.
Rear Admiral John Kirby said the Chinese plane exposed its undercarriage to show that it was armed to the P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft during Monday’s incident in international airspace near Japan.
He said the Chinese aircraft came within 30ft (9 metres) of the American plane, while the wing tips of the two aircraft were just 20ft apart.
The New York Times sends up a rocket:
North Korea May Soon Have More Powerful Rocket
Satellite images indicate that North Korea is likely to have the ability to launch a longer-range rocket that can carry a heavier payload by the end of this year, according to an American research organization that monitors the North’s activities.
The research organization, the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Affairs, reported Thursday on its website, 38 North, that North Korea’s expansion of its Sohae Satellite Launching Station was on track to be completed by fall. The expansion, which began last year, will enable it to launch a rocket more powerful than the country’s Unha rocket, one of which was used in 2012 to put a satellite into orbit, the report said.
“As a result, the North will be able to conduct new launches from this site before the end of the year should it decide to do so,” the report said.
Want China Times covers more tensions on the high seas:
Beijing and Manila’s maritime dispute shows signs of escalation
Territorial disputes between China and the Philippines in the South China Sea have intensified since August, with Philippine officials and reporters traveling to Thitu Island, the second largest of the Spratly islands, and Chinese vessels spotted in the area of Reed Bank in the Philippines’s EEZ, reported our Chinese-language sister paper China Times on Aug. 22.
The Philippine Star reported a clash on Aug. 1 when a Philippine fishing boat carrying officials and reporters toward Thitu Island was harassed and chased away by a Chinese patrol. The Philippine boat was chased to Second Thomas Shoal, which is held by the Philippines, and finally forced to return to international waters.
The president of the Philippines, Benigno Aquino III, said on Aug. 21 that two Chinese maritime exploration vessels had been spotted in an area of the country’s exclusive economic zone which is rich in gas and oil, while the Philippine military reported two China vessels around Reed Bank.
The Japan Times cites an Abe militarism endorsement:
U.S. defense official praises Abe for bolstering military alliance
A high-ranking U.S. defense official visiting Tokyo said Friday that the U.S. appreciates recent actions taken by the Abe administration to bolster the Japan-U.S. military alliance.
In particular, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work mentioned the decision to reinterpret the Constitution to permit the use of collective self-defense, the easing of Japan’s long-held ban on weapons exports, and the progress being made on the Futenma base relocation plan in Okinawa Prefecture.
“We strongly welcome Japan’s Cabinet decision permitting collective self-defense,” Work said after meeting parliamentary vice minister Ryota Takeda.
The Asahi Shimbun challenges propaganda enhancement:
Retired NHK employees demand Momii’s resignation from top slot
More than 1,500 retired employees of Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) have demanded the resignation of NHK President Katsuto Momii, saying he is not suitable for leading the public broadcaster.
Representatives of the former employees visited NHK headquarters in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward on Aug. 21 and made the demand to the broadcaster’s Board of Governors, which has the power to appoint or dismiss the president. The group later held a news conference in Tokyo.
“NHK is heading straight toward nationalization under the Abe administration,” said 79-year-old Yasushi Kawasaki, a former NHK political reporter. “Criticism has not been voiced by the directors or the labor union of NHK.”
During his inaugural news conference in January, Momii made controversial remarks, such as, “It would not do for us to say ‘left’ when the government is saying ‘right.’ “
From Want China Times, military posturing:
US, South Korea conduct anti-nuclear drill with computer model
Over 8,000 troops from the United States and South Korea are taking part in the joint Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG-2014) military exercise that will last until Aug. 29. It is the first joint exercise to simulate a nuclear attack threat, adopting the strategy of tailored deterrence, China’s Global Times reported on Aug 20.
UFG chiefly includes two kinds of drills. The first is the Ulchi drill that will involve South Korean private institutions and police in addition to the military for anti-terror and evacuation drills. The second will be mainly conducted by computers that assess South Korea’s readiness to counter an invasion. The results of the computers’ calculations will then be applied by the US and South Korean militaries.
Following tradition, the computer drill will likely take place at US Army Garrison Yongsan, the base dubbed the heart of the US-South Korea alliance. Yongsan base has a comprehensive strategy simulation center that connects US forces in South Korea with South Korea’s web strategy center that can connect with military bases in South Korea and the US. Real-time data can be added to update and simulate invasion scenarios and response strategies.
From Kyodo News, the issue that will not die:
Ex-PM Murayama seeks Japan-S. Korea summit to resolve sex slavery issue
Former Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on Friday called on Japan and South Korea to hold summit talks to resolve the issue of wartime sex slavery that has deteriorated bilateral ties.
“There is no way to resolve the issue unless the leaders have candid talks based on the current situation,” Murayama told a meeting in Seoul hosted by the South Korean government-backed Northeast Asian History Foundation. Many women who were forced to work at wartime Japanese military brothels were from the Korean Peninsula.
Murayama, 90, who is best known for issuing a 1995 statement apologizing for Japan’s wartime colonial rule and aggression against its Asian neighbors, said the Japanese government should feel responsibility for the sexual servitude issue and settle the problem as a state.
The Asahi Shimbun covers more cause for Japanese discomfort:
U.N. committee calls on Tokyo to introduce anti-discrimination law to counter hate speech
A U.N. panel on racial discrimination has compiled a draft recommendation calling on Japan to introduce comprehensive anti-discrimination legislation to contain hate speech against ethnic Koreans in the country.
The draft was produced after the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination held a meeting here on Aug. 20-21 to discuss racial issues in Japan. The committee is expected to soon present its concluding remarks based on the draft recommendation.
At the opening of the meeting, a Japanese government representative said Tokyo needs to carefully consider freedom of expression, which is guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution, if it is to establish a new anti-discrimination law covering a wide range of issues.
And for our final item, more from the Mainichi:
Awareness gap about hate speech remains large at U.N. meeting
The committee is poised to issue an advisory to Japan as early as later this month. While Tokyo is moving toward considering measures to deal with hate speech in the face of harsh international opinion, there are still persistent calls for keeping reservations about such regulations.
U.S. delegate Carlos Manuel Vazquez on the committee lambasted hate speech campaigns in Japan during a committee meeting, saying such campaigns are not “speeches” but violent intimidation. He had watched video footage of hate speech staged in Japan during a preliminary meeting with a nongovernmental organization on Aug. 20. Other committee members also questioned why Japanese authorities withhold from cracking down on hate speech as a “crime” under the pretext of the Constitution and called on Japan to introduce legal restrictions on hate speech at an early date.
While Japan signed the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1995, it has withheld from accepting Article 4 of the treaty, which calls for implementation of legal regulations on hate speech, on the grounds of freedom of expression. The Japanese government has offered the view that hate speech in Japan has not gone so far as to disseminate and fuel racial discrimination, to the point of requiring legislative measures.
