Today’s look at the latest in spies, geopolitics, invasions of privacy, and the rest opens with the latest rhetorical ramp-up from California’s plutocratic senator and the spouse of the guy who’s not only a University of California regent but a looter of the commons currently profiteering from the privatization of the nation’s post office buildings. From The Hill:
Feinstein: ISIS is ‘major threat’ to US in future
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a “major threat” to the U.S., and praised President Obama for going on the offense.
“In my, view, too ISIS is a major threat to this country in the future and right now to entirety of Syria and Iraq,” Feinstein said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
She congratulated Obama on the administration’s new offensive, which Obama is expected to share with the public on Wednesday.
“His people are in different regional countries as we speak consulting and are trying to bring in other countries in the region,” Feinstein said. “I think this is major change in how ISIS is approached.”
From the London Telegraph, the latest revelation about the sociopathy of America’s spooks:
CIA ‘tortured al-Qaeda suspects close to the point of death by drowning them in water-filled baths’
Exclusive: As the US Senate prepares to release a report documenting US torture programme after 9/11, Telegraph reveals new details about the scope of CIA excesses
The CIA brought top al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” by drowning them in water-filled baths during interrogation sessions in the years that followed the September 11 attacks, a security source has told The Telegraph.
The description of the torture meted out to at least two leading al-Qaeda suspects, including the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, far exceeds the conventional understanding of waterboarding, or “simulated drowning” so far admitted by the CIA.
“They weren’t just pouring water over their heads or over a cloth,” said the source who has first-hand knowledge of the period. “They were holding them under water until the point of death, with a doctor present to make sure they did not go too far. This was real torture.”
From The Wire, echoes of American televangelism:
Putin’s Possessed by Satan, Says Ukrainian Clergyman
The head of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church said Russian President Vladimir Putin is under Satan’s control, placing blame for the months of bloodshed on the leader and predicting his “eternal damnation in hell.”
Patriarch Filaret heads the Kiev Patriarchate, a branch of the Orthodox Church that split from Moscow in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union, and the rival of the Putin-linked Moscow Patriarchate.
Although Filaret never mentioned Putin by name, he likened the Russian president to Cain, the Biblical figure who killed his brother, Abel.
From the Washington Post, parasitic policing:
Stop and seize
Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes
After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways.
Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training.
The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back.
Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms that teach the techniques of “highway interdiction” to departments across the country.
One of those firms created a private intelligence network known as Black Asphalt Electronic Networking & Notification System that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop.
More from the Guardian:
A safer Detroit means big fines and racial profiling for black residents
Detroit’s gentrified makeover means more policing of nuisance crimes – but the fines fall disproportionately on black residents
What’s the cost of more police crackdowns in Detroit for “quality of life” issues?
For Xavier Johnson, a young black businessman in the city, it’s $1,500 in fines that he can’t afford.
Call it the price of gentrification. Johnson, a rising star in Detroit’s startup community, is one of many residents paying the price for an aggressive style of policing that has overtaken the city as it cleans up its reputation. Current Detroit residents – mostly African-American – face an added cost of living as the city police pile on nuisance fines to crack down on smaller crimes. The effect is to make the city more appealing to successful, and mostly white, middle class professionals – while burdening the city’s poorest with more bills to pay.
The hotly contested police strategy is called “broken windows”, and Detroit police chief James “Hollywood” Craig has embraced it with fervour.
But some things aren’t allowed, as the Latin American Herald Tribune reports:
Puerto Rico Cops Fired for Sex Video
The chief of the Puerto Rico Police Department, Jose Caldero, announced on Friday the dismissal of two officers for making a sex video at La Fortaleza, seat of the island’s government.
Caldero said in a communique that the cops who were dismissed are Jose Melendez Melendez and Tatiana Pratts Morales, who made a video last February featuring a sexual act.
Besides acts of insubordination and indiscipline, they have been charged with harmful, immoral and disorderly conduct to the detriment of the police force.
They are also accused of using government property to perform unofficial activities, among other transgressions.
And from The Hill, real or placebo politics?:
Congress mulls response to Ferguson with sense of urgency
The violent stand-offs that followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer set off a firestorm of congressional criticism over the police response to public protest. Although the saga has largely faded from the headlines, a number of lawmakers will resuscitate it in coming days in order to highlight various proposals designed to prevent another similar incident.
Senate Democrats will hold a hearing Tuesday to examine the “militarization” of police departments; a House Democrat will introduce legislation to rein in a federal program providing military equipment to local law enforcers; a leading Senate Republican is mulling his own legislative approach to the police crack-down in Ferguson; and members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) plan to use the high-profile event to promote existing bills addressing a range of race-based issues, including police brutality, profiling, youth development and criminal justice reform.
Legislation on such thorny issues has little chance of moving through a highly-polarized Congress, especially given September’s short legislative calendar and the political hurdles posed by the looming midterm elections. But that’s not stopping the loudest critics of the police activity in Ferguson, who are hoping the chaos and publicity surrounding the tragic episode marks a watershed moment in how law enforcement is conducted across the country.
From the New York Times, a story in which the word “Israel” does not appear:
Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks
More than a dozen prominent Washington research groups have received tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments in recent years while pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
The money is increasingly transforming the once-staid think-tank world into a muscular arm of foreign governments’ lobbying in Washington. And it has set off troubling questions about intellectual freedom: Some scholars say they have been pressured to reach conclusions friendly to the government financing the research.
The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law, according to several legal specialists who examined the agreements at the request of The Times.
And a very curious tale indeed from TheLocal.at:
Diplomat investigated for money laundering
A recent leak of court documents shows that US authorities suspect one of their own highest-ranking former diplomats, Zalmay Khalilzad, of money laundering through the Austrian bank accounts of his wife, Cheryl Benard.
Khalilzad, who is is a counselor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an independent businessman, is married to US-Austrian citizen and social scientist Cheryl Benard, who completed her university studies in Vienna.
From 2003-2009, Khalilzad was U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Iraq and the United Nations, and was responsible for advising Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezaa Rice on near-eastern regional affairs.
From his bio at the ational Endowment for Democracy website:
Under President George W. Bush, Khalilzad served as US Ambassador to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the United Nations. Ambassador Khalilzad was born and raised in Afghanistan, and studied at the American University of Beirut, where he received his BA and MA. Later he received his PhD from the University of Chicago.
From 1979-1984, Khalilzad was Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Khalilzad served on the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff and as Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs from 1985-1989. He was Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning from 1990 to 1992. In November 2003, President Bush appointed Khalilzad Ambassador to Afghanistan, a position he held until 2005, when he became US Ambassador to Iraq. In 2007, he was confirmed unanimously to serve as US Ambassador to the United Nations, a post he held until January 2009.
From BBC News, something to make anyone insecure:
French far-right ‘at gates of power’ – PM Manuel Valls
France’s far-right National Front (FN) party is “at the gates of power”, Prime Minister Manuel Valls has warned.
He said his Socialist government had to act and speak “differently” to counter the threat from FN.
His comments came after opinion polls suggested that FN leader Marine Le Pen could beat incumbent Francois Hollande in the 2017 presidential election.
More cause for European insecurity, via the Guardian:
Greek laws ‘fall short’ as racist and homophobic violence surges
Opposition says limited anti-discrimination bill offers no protection, as rightwing campaigners resist call for civil unions
Nearly three years after it was first brought to parliament, Greek MPs are poised to pass an anti-discrimination bill which human rights groups say still falls far short of dealing with an epidemic of racist and homophobic violence in the country.
Before this week’s vote, gay rights protesters have taken to the streets to denounce the conservative-dominated government’s refusal to extend protective rights, including domestic partnerships, to same-sex couples.
Rightwing MPs have resisted introducing legal protection for gay people despite an alarming rise in homophobic attacks in Athens, claiming that such measures could take Greece down a dangerous path.
Ars Technica hacks extortionately:
Ransomware going strong, despite takedown of Gameover Zeus
The botnet takedown nearly quashed Cryptolocker, yet other ransomware continues.
In late May, an international law enforcement effort disrupted the Gameover Zeus (GoZ) botnet, a network of compromised computers used for banking fraud.
The operation also hobbled a secondary, but equally important cyber-criminal operation: the Cryptolocker ransomware campaign, which used a program distributed by the GoZ botnet to encrypt victims’ sensitive files, holding them hostage until the victim paid a fee, typically hundreds of dollars. The crackdown, and the subsequent discovery by security firms of the digital keys needed to decrypt affected data, effectively eliminated the threat from Cryptolocker.
Yet, ransomware is not dead, two recent analyses have found. Within a week of the takedown of Gameover Zeus and Cryptolocker, a surge of spam with links to a Cryptolocker copycat, known as Cryptowall, resulted in a jump in ransomware infections, states a report released last week by security-services firm Dell Secureworks. Cryptowall first appeared in November 2013, and spread slowly, but the group behind the program were ready to take advantage of the vacuum left by the downfall of its predecessor.
Network World covers another source of online insecurity:
Just five gangs in Nigeria are behind most Craigslist buyer scams
Five Nigerian criminal gangs are behind most scams targeting sellers on Craigslist, and they’ve taken new measures to make their swindles appear legitimate, according to a new study.
In a new innovation, they’re using professional check-writing equipment plus U.S.-based accomplices to not raise suspicions among their victims.
“I think the most surprising thing was the number of people in the U.S. participating in this scam,” said Damon McCoy, an assistant professor in the computer science department at George Mason University, in a phone interview.
From Wired, ray gun realization:
Army’s New Laser Cannon Blasts Drones Out of the Sky, Even in Fog
Boeing is building a laser cannon for the U.S. Army, and the new weapon has now proved it will be as capable at sea as on land. The High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD)—basically a high-energy laser mounted on top of a big truck—was successfully used to blast some UAV drones and 60mm mortars out of the Florida sky earlier this year, Boeing announced Thursday.
This test was done in a windy and foggy environment, an essential step to proving the technology is useful for naval deployment. The HEL MD used a 10-kilowatt laser—a much less powerful version of what it will eventually fire—to “successfully engage” more than 150 targets at Eglin Air Force Base, a Department of Defense weapons testing facility on the Florida Panhandle. In other words, it disabled or destroyed them.
In simple terms, the laser makes an incredibly powerful, highly focused beam of light and aims it at a moving target. Light equals heat, and, after enough heat has been transferred, the target is compromised and crashes or blows up. The Army and Boeing (which landed a $36 million contract for the project) have been working on this for the better part of a decade, par for the course for a next-generation weapons platform.
From the London Daily Mail, tagging the sheeple:
Australian man who’s had a microchip inserted into his hand so that he can do more with the iPhone 6…maybe
Adverting director Ben Slater had the microchip inserted two weeks ago
It was implanted in the webbing of his hand at a Melbourne tattoo parlour
Mr Slater hopes the new generation iPhone will be able to read the chip
He is able to open doors and switch on lights without touching anything
The iPhone 6 will be launched by Apple in two days on September 9
A Brisbane man is living the life of the future after having a microchip implanted under his skin so he can control electronic devices with just a wave of a hand.
Ben Slater had a radio-frequency identification microchip – which has similar measurements to a grain of rice – injected into his left hand through a syringe two weeks ago at a Melbourne tattoo parlour.
The advertising director’s move comes as technology enthusiasts eagerly await the unveiling of the iPhone 6 in two days time.
After the jump, Pakistani polarization on the streets and in the media, a Pak hack, a curious collaboration, line-crossing, a Japanese realignment, Sino/Aussie semantics, spooky Korean hackery, and an American on trial in the North. . .
The Express Tribune hits the bricks:
Sit-ins paralyse Islamabad, slow down progress
There is not a shred of doubt that the recent developments in Islamabad have affected the country’s economic progress, causing direct and indirect, measurable and immeasurable losses.
The sit-ins, organised by Imran Khan’s PTI and Tahirul Qadri-led PAT, have forced the cancellation of a visit by Sri Lankan president before casting doubt on the planned arrival of the Chinese head of state.
The nature of the Chinese president’s visit is as high-profile as it gets and the slightest of reshuffling in plans would strengthen hands of those international forces that do not want to see close ties between Pakistan and China. Furthermore, Chinese president is set to visit India, which could be interpreted as further isolation for Pakistan.
Al Jazeera English divides:
Pakistan’s polarised media
Amid Pakistan’s latest political power struggle, the country’s news channels are fighting a proxy war of their own.
At the beginning of the week, when we scan the news media around the globe to decide what media story to go with, wires started dropping about protesters occupying Pakistan’s state broadcaster PTV.
The story is part of a new political power struggle in which the country’s top news channels are fighting a proxy war of their own. For three weeks now, street demonstrators led by cricket-player-turned politician, Imran Khan, have been demanding the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose election last year the protestors insist was rigged. Sharif says he is not going anywhere. The way the unrest is being reported in Pakistan’s media lays bare the political divisions in the country and exacerbates them.
Backing the government are Geo TV, the most watched network in Pakistan and the state-owned broadcaster, PTV. Both had their offices targeted by protestors, and, in PTV’s case, occupied. ARY, the number two news channel, backs the protest movement, and has been going at it – on the airwaves – with Geo TV.
Nextgov spills the beans:
Hacktivists release banking information of Pakistani officials
Attackers calling themselves the ASOR Hack Team dumped what they claim is a list of banking data belonging to about 23,000 residents and officials in Pakistan.
“Thousands of protesters have been camped outside of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s house for weeks, demanding he quit as they believe last year’s election results were rigged,” Motherboard reports. “It is not clear how this [leak] could benefit the anti-Sharif protesters. (A cynic might point out that it does raise the profile of the ASOR Hack Team, however.)”
In online documents, the team stressed it is not affiliated with the Anonymous hacking collective but that the attackers “support their actions.”
From China Daily, a curious collaboration:
Tsinghua, Berkeley prepare joint institute
Grad school, research center to be set up
Tsinghua University and the University of California, Berkeley, signed an agreement on Sunday to establish a joint institute in the economically pivotal city of Shenzhen in South China to promote research collaboration and graduate student education.
The two universities aim to integrate their research programs to address social needs and global challenges through the partnership, said UC Berkeley’s Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks at the signing ceremony.
Under the agreement, the Tsinghua-UC Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, to be located on Tsinghua’s Shenzhen campus, will be launched by the end of the year.
The institute will start with research centers in three areas: nanotechnology and nanomedicine, low-carbon and new energy technologies, and data science and next-generation Internet.
Jiji Press crosses the line:
China Govt Ship Enters Japan’s EEZ
A Chinese coast guard ship entered Japan’s exclusive economic zone off the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture on Sunday, the Japan Coast Guard said.
An aircraft of the Japanese coast guard spotted the Haijing 2149 in Japan’s EEZ off Kubajima, one of the Japanese-administered islands. The ship was dropping what appeared to be six wires into the sea, and the Japanese coast guard demanded the ship stop the activity.
China claims the East China Sea islands as its own.
From Kyodo News, alignment:
Japan, Sri Lanka leaders agree on maritime security cooperation
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa agreed Sunday to strengthen cooperation on maritime security at a time when China is expanding its influence in the Indian Ocean country.
According to a joint statement issued after their meeting in Colombo, the two leaders agreed to launch intergovernmental talks on marine pollution and environmental protection, while Abe announced that Japan will study the provision of patrol ships to Sri Lanka so that the island country can boost its security capabilities.
Sri Lanka has geographical importance for Japan as imports of oil from the Middle East are transported via the Indian Ocean. Abe’s visit to the country is the first by an incumbent Japanese prime minister in 24 years.
Making nice with Channel NewsAsia Singapore:
Australia, China hail “strong” ties ahead of talks
Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop welcomed her Chinese counterpart to Sydney on Sunday (Sep 7), saying the two nations were “on track” to sign a free-trade agreement this year strengthening their relationship.
Australia is hosting Foreign Minister Wang Yi for the second annual Australia-China Foreign and Strategic Dialogue, which comes ahead of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit in November for the G20 summit in Brisbane.
“The Australia-China relationship is strong, it is mature, it is growing,” Bishop said at a media conference with Wang. “China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner. We are on track to sign a free-trade agreement with China later this year which will further strengthen this relationship.”
Nextgov hacks spookily
Journalists covering South Korean military are targeted by spies
At least one defense reporter’s computer was infected by a virus that steals information, after the writer opened an email with an infected attachment.
Chinese hackers are suspected to be behind the malicious email campaign.
Reporters who cover South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense use notebooks that are connected to the ministry’s Internet network.
“We’ve confirmed that a handful of reporters covering the ministry have received an e-mail which carries the malicious code this week,” a ministry official said, explaining that once the email is opened, it automatically imbeds the virus code into the computer.
And for our final item, SINA English makes a provocative date:
North Korea announces trial date for detained American
Matthew Miller, one of three detained Americans in North Korea, will face trial next week, a short statement carried by state media said on Sunday, without elaborating any further on what charges the U.S. citizen faced.
Miller, of Bakersfield, California, will go to trial in North Korea on Sept. 14, the short statement said. The 26-year old was arrested in April for tearing up his visa upon his arrival in the country, state media said at the time.
The statement did not mention fellow U.S. citizen Jeffrey Fowle, 56, who was arrested in May after he left a Bible in the toilet of a sailor’s club in the port town of Chongjin.
