And that Asian Game of Zones is heating up again.
We begin with the not-so-idiot box from the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law:
I’m Terrified of My New TV: Why I’m Scared to Turn This Thing On — And You’d Be, Too
I just bought a new TV. The old one had a good run, but after the volume got stuck on 63, I decided it was time to replace it. I am now the owner of a new “smart” TV, which promises to deliver streaming multimedia content, games, apps, social media, and Internet browsing. Oh, and TV too.
The only problem is that I’m now afraid to use it. You would be too — if you read through the 46-page privacy policy.
The amount of data this thing collects is staggering. It logs where, when, how, and for how long you use the TV. It sets tracking cookies and beacons designed to detect “when you have viewed particular content or a particular email message.” It records “the apps you use, the websites you visit, and how you interact with content.” It ignores “do-not-track” requests as a considered matter of policy.
It also has a built-in camera — with facial recognition. The purpose is to provide “gesture control” for the TV and enable you to log in to a personalized account using your face. On the upside, the images are saved on the TV instead of uploaded to a corporate server. On the downside, the Internet connection makes the whole TV vulnerable to hackers who have demonstrated the ability to take complete control of the machine.
More troubling is the microphone. The TV boasts a “voice recognition” feature that allows viewers to control the screen with voice commands. But the service comes with a rather ominous warning: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.” Got that? Don’t say personal or sensitive stuff in front of the TV.
You may not be watching, but the telescreen is listening.
And on to the mounting tensions in familiar place, via BBC News:
Pakistan bomb kills 50 at Wagah border with India
More than 50 people have been killed and at least 100 injured in a suicide bombing close to Pakistan’s only border crossing with India. The blast hit near the checkpoint at the Wagah border crossing, near Lahore.
The Pakistani Taliban told the BBC that it had carried out the attack, although another militant group, Jundullah, also said it was responsible.
At least 15 people were badly injured, and officials said three members of the Pakistani border force had died.
The Wagah crossing is a high-profile target, with large crowds gathering every day to watch an elaborate flag-lowering ceremony as the border closes.
Negotiating with Reuters:
Qaeda’s Nusra lays out conditions to release captured Lebanese soldiers
The Syrian Nusra Front has offered to free Lebanese soldiers it has captured in exchange for Islamist prisoners held in Syria and Lebanon, the SITE Intelligence Group reported on Sunday.
The al Qaeda-linked front said in a statement monitored by SITE that it had presented a Qatari negotiator with three proposals for the release of the soldiers, taken when its fighters and militants from the Islamic State, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria, briefly seized the border town of Arsal in August.
According to the statement, which SITE said was posted on Twitter on Saturday, Nusra asked for the release of 10 “brothers” held in Lebanon, or seven prisoners in Lebanon and 30 female prisoners held in Syria, or six prisoners and 50 female prisoners for each captive soldiers.
And the McClatchy Foreign Staff covers a defeat:
US-backed forces in Syria suffer big setback
Al Qaida-backed militants Saturday stormed the base of the most prominent civilian commander in the U.S.-backed Syrian rebel force, forcing him and his fighters to flee into hiding in the Jebal al Zawiya mountains of northern Syria.
Jamal Maarouf, a contractor in private life, became internationally known for leading the successful offensive in January that forced the Islamic State from most of two northern provinces. His ouster from his own village was an enormous setback for him, the rebel forces and his international backers.
Even more ominous was that that the Islamic State, now far stronger and claiming to run a Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, reportedly had joined Jabhat al Nusra in the attack on the village of Deir Sinbul.
More from the Guardian:
US plan for proxy army to fight Isis in Syria suffers attack
Syrian opposition leader blames Washington for rout as air strikes on Isis seen as aiding Assad crackdown
The US plan to rally proxy ground forces to complement its air strikes against Isis militants in Syria is in tatters after jihadis ousted Washington’s main ally from its stronghold in the north over the weekend.
The attack on the Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) by the al-Qaida-aligned Jabhat al-Nusra came after weeks of clashes between the two groups around the city of Idlib, which has remained one of the last bastions of regime control in northern Syria throughout the civil war.
Militants overran the command centre of the SRF’s leader, Jamal Maarouf, in Deir Sonbol in a humiliating rout that came as US and Arab air forces continued to attack Isis in the Kurdish town of Kobani, 300 miles east, in an effort to prevent the town from falling.
From Techdirt, a spooky lobotomy:
Senator Wyden Attacks CIA Redaction Demands As ‘Unprecedented’
from the unprecedented-problems-may-need-unprecedented-solutions dept
It’s well known that CIA’s been stalling over the release of the officially declassified 480 page “executive summary” of the 6,300 page CIA torture report, put together by staffers of the Senate Intelligence Committee over many years at a cost of $40 million. It’s known that the report is somewhat devastating to the CIA and the CIA isn’t happy about it (at all). Originally, the CIA suggested redactions that made the report incomprehensible, even as James Clapper said it was “just 15%” that was redacted. Recent reports have focused on the fight over redacting pseudonyms. Apparently the CIA wants all names, including pseudonyms redacted, while the Senate Intelligence Committee thinks that pseudonyms (but not real names) should be left in so that the report accurately reflects if the actions were done by a large number of diverse individuals, or by some particular individuals again and again and again. The CIA, likely employing some sort of “mosaic theory” claim, say that they’re worried that even with pseudonyms, identifying the same person in a few different situations will make it easier for some to figure out who they are.
In response, Senator Ron Wyden has attacked the CIA’s position and noted that it’s “unprecedented” and that plenty of other, similar, reports have made use of pseudonyms, without a problem.
Spooks in court, via The Hill:
NSA phone program faces key court test
The National Security Agency (NSA) is getting its day in court.
On Tuesday, a closely watched case over the spy agency’s most controversial program heads to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered the second most powerful federal bench in the country.
Along with other high-profile court cases challenging the constitutionality of the NSA’s spying, civil liberties advocates are sensing that the wind is at their backs, even as Congress has failed to push legislation past the finish line.
“We want [the court] to reach the constitutional issues because it has to be decided now, for the sake of the future,” said Larry Klayman, the conservative lawyer whose case against the Obama administration is before the Circuit court. “And all we’re really asking is that the NSA adhere to the law.”
Klayman’s case challenges the constitutionality of the NSA’s bulk collection of Americans’ phone records, a program revealed by Edward Snowden last summer.
And a blow to privacy Down Under from The Register:
Oz gov lets slip: telco metadata might be available to civil courts
Quite by accident, truth leaks out
A series of slips by the nation’s top cop followed by communications minister Malcolm Turnbull has made Australia’s data retention bill even more of a potential horror than it seemed when it was introduced last week.
It started with the Australian Federal Police commissioner Andrew Colvin saying that stored telecommunications metadata could be used to go after people who infringe copyright online. That statement, made on October 30, was unequivocal – he used the word “absolutely”.
It’s always a bad idea for police to rashly tell the world what they really think.
And from the Washington Post, the European memory hole reaches across the Atlantic:
Pianist asks The Washington Post to remove a concert review under the E.U.’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling
The pianist Dejan Lazic, like many artists and performers, is occasionally the subject of bad reviews. Also like other artists, he reads those reviews. And disagrees with them. And gripes over them, sometimes.
But because Lazic lives in Europe, where in May the European Union ruled that individuals have a “right to be forgotten” online, he decided to take the griping one step further: On Oct. 30, he sent The Washington Post a request to remove a 2010 review by Post classical music critic Anne Midgette that – he claims — has marred the first page of his Google results for years.
It’s the first request The Post has received under the E.U. ruling. It’s also a truly fascinating, troubling demonstration of how the ruling could work.
From TheLocal.at, an Austrian internal security problem:
Armed youths attack Tyrol refugee centre
Police in Tyrol are investigating an attack on the Bürglkopf refugee centre near the market town of Fieberbrunn on Wednesday evening.
Five youths were heard shouting xenophobic slogans at around half past midnight, 35 metres away from the remote property.
They then shot a gun in the air and reportedly threw fireworks at the centre’s windows.
The youths were dressed in black hooded jackets and shouted things like “foreigners out” and “we’re going to kill you, pigs”, according to an anonymous witness quoted in profil magazine.
The Associated Press covers a political exclusion zone:
AP Exclusive: Ferguson no-fly zone aimed at media
The U.S. government agreed to a police request to restrict more than 37 square miles of airspace surrounding Ferguson, Missouri, for 12 days in August for safety, but audio recordings show that local authorities privately acknowledged the purpose was to keep away news helicopters during violent street protests.
On Aug. 12, the morning after the Federal Aviation Administration imposed the first flight restriction, FAA air traffic managers struggled to redefine the flight ban to let commercial flights operate at nearby Lambert-St. Louis International Airport and police helicopters fly through the area — but ban others.
“They finally admitted it really was to keep the media out,” said one FAA manager about the St. Louis County Police in a series of recorded telephone conversations obtained by The Associated Press. “But they were a little concerned of, obviously, anything else that could be going on.
At another point, a manager at the FAA’s Kansas City center said police “did not care if you ran commercial traffic through this TFR (temporary flight restriction) all day long. They didn’t want media in there.”
As in Ferguson, so in France from TheLocal.fr:
Violent protests erupt in France over alleged police brutality
Violent protests broke out on Saturday in two French cities against alleged police brutality, leaving several people injured.
Officers fired rubber bullets and tear gas as demonstrators hurled bottles of acid and stones in the northwestern city of Nantes, injuring at least five protesters and three police officers. Police made 21 arrests in Nantes, while in the southwestern city of Toulouse, where clashes also erupted, 13 people were detained.
The protests were held over the death of environmental activist Remi Fraisse, 21, who was killed last Sunday during clashes between security forces and demonstrators at the site of a contested dam in southwestern France.
Initial investigations showed traces of TNT on his clothes and skin, suggesting he may have been killed by a police stun grenade.
After the jump, global urban insecurity, Mexican police as murder suspects, cartel killers’ Twitter terrorism, Spanish sins of the past threatened with Argentine trials, Egyptian press control tightens, next to China and tightened controls on foreign TV and film, drone-enhanced war games and a triumphant claim, Indian umbrage at a Chinese submarine visit next door, American angst over Chinese fly-bys, North Korea launches a ballistic missile sub, A Japanese ghost form the past pays a visit as the government refines its remilitarization drive, and the curious cost of Hong Kong domestic security. . .
Pressure cookers, via the Guardian:
Murder capitals of the world: how runaway urban growth fuels violence
San Pedro Sula, Honduras, is the most dangerous city on the planet – and experts say it is a sign of a global epidemic
Now research by security and development groups suggests that the violence plaguing San Pedro Sula – a city of just over a million, and Honduras’s second largest – and many other Latin American and African cities may be linked not just to the drug trade, extortion and illegal migration, but to the breakneck speed at which urban areas have grown in the last 20 years.
The faster cities grow, the more likely it is that the civic authorities will lose control and armed gangs will take over urban organisation, says Robert Muggah, research director at the Igarapé Institute in Brazil.
“Like the fragile state, the fragile city has arrived. The speed and acceleration of unregulated urbanisation is now the major factor in urban violence. A rapid influx of people overwhelms the public response,” he adds. “Urbanisation has a disorganising effect and creates spaces for violence to flourish,” he writes in a new essay in the journal Environment and Urbanization.
Muggah predicts that similar violence will inevitably spread to hundreds of other “fragile” cities now burgeoning in the developing world. Some, he argues, are already experiencing epidemic rates of violence. “Runaway growth makes them suffer levels of civic violence on a par with war-torn [cities such as] Juba, Mogadishu and Damascus,” he writes. “Places like Ciudad Juárez, Medellín and Port au Prince … are becoming synonymous with a new kind of fragility with severe humanitarian implications.”
Mexican police as murder suspects, from Reuters:
Mexico questions police over killing of three U.S. siblings
Mexico has questioned local police over the disappearance and killing of three U.S. siblings in the troubled northeastern state of Tamaulipas, the state attorney general said on Saturday.
Erica, 26, Alex, 22, and Jose Angel Alvarado, 21, went missing on October 13 from the cartel-riddled border city of Matamoros.
Their decaying bodies were found on Oct. 29 along with that of Jose Guadalupe Castaneda, a Mexican citizen, the Tamaulipas state attorney general’s office said in a statement.
Terror by the Tweet from Vice News:
Cartel Kidnapping Spreads Terror on Twitter
Dr. Maria del Rosario Fuentes always had her phone in her hand. Many of her friends, colleagues, and relatives had no idea it was her portal into a parallel life.
To many people who knew her, Fuentes was a 36-year-old general practitioner and mother in the Mexican border city of Reynosa. But on Twitter she was “Felina,” a citizen reporter who hid behind a Catwoman avatar and used the handle @Miut3 to post information about cartel shootouts in her violence-plagued city, located just across the Rio Grande from Hidalgo, Texas.
The warnings — intended to help her fellow citizens avoid stray bullets and risky situations — were mixed with romantic quotes and greetings to her favorite followers. Then, suddenly, she fell silent.
On October 15, Fuentes was kidnapped by a group of armed men outside her workplace. She was unmasked as Felina early the next day. The last tweet published from her account contained two photos. In the first, she gazes into the camera with a sad and heavy look, her usual eye makeup washed away by tears. In the second, she is lying in a pool of blood with vacant, open eyes.
With these images came a warning: “Close your account. Don’t risk your families as I have. I ask for forgiveness.”
Security sins of the past from BBC News:
Argentina asks Spain to arrest 20 Franco-era officials
An Argentine judge has asked Spain to arrest and extradite 20 former officials accused of abuses during the military rule of General Franco.
They cannot be tried in Spain because of an amnesty law but the officials could be prosecuted in Argentina.
The families of alleged victims asked Argentina for help because it has an extradition treaty with Spain.
In April, Spain’s high court refused to extradite to Argentina a former policemen accused of torture.
A Russian medium lands in Old Blighty from the Guardian:
Russia Today launches UK version in new soft power onslaught
International Kremlin-backed 24-hour news channel already faces six investigations by media regulator Ofcom
The battle for hearts and minds of the global television news audience has entered a new phase with the launch of a dedicated UK version of the Kremlin-backed 24-hour news channel, RT.
It is the first time an overseas news operator has launched a service specifically targeted at British viewers. Last week’s launch will be followed on Wednesday by the unveiling of Qatar-funded al-Jazeera’s glittering new studios in the Shard in central London.
These are the latest salvos in a soft power onslaught in which RT, al-Jazeera, China’s state-funded CCTV and the BBC World Service and its commercially-funded sister TV channel BBC World News, are among the most prominent players.
Egyptian press control tightens, via the Guardian:
Egyptian journalists oppose editors over freedom of expression
Hundreds of journalists reject declaration pledging support to government and banning criticism of police and army
Several hundred Egyptian journalists have rejected a recent declaration by newspaper editors pledging near-blind support to the state and banning criticism of the police, army and judiciary in their publications, arguing that the move was designed to create a one-voiced media.
In a statement posted on Sunday on social media networks, the journalists said fighting terrorism was both a duty and an honour but has nothing to do with the “voluntary surrender” of the freedom of expression as outlined in the editors’ 26 October declaration.
“Standing up to terrorism with a shackled media and sealed lips means offering the nation to extremism as an easy prey and turning public opinion into a blind creature unaware of the direction from which it is being hit or how to deal with it,” said the statement.
China tightens controls on foreign TV and film, from SINA English:
Foreign TV shows online will need permits
China’s TV watchdog released tougher regulations for foreign TV shows available on online streaming sites, raising concerns among Chinese fans and the online video industry.
The regulations, released by the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, said all foreign TV shows and movies must have permits and be reviewed by TV watchdogs before being made available for viewing online, which means that Chinese audiences will have to wait to watch the shows and will not be able to follow them simultaneously with fans overseas.
The discussion hit the top 10 hot topics on Sina Weibo.
Drones deployed from Want China Times:
Drones used in PLA air defense unit dril
During an exercise in central China’s Hubei province, unmanned aerial vehicles played the role of hostile forces — the “blue team” — against the Chinese reserve anti-artillery division, according to the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of China’s armed forces.
The paper said that the drones will allow China’s anti-artillery forces to gain experience in combating aerial attacks. A huge amount of money has been spent by the division to purchase the equipment it needs for the drill. Experts in unmanned aerial vehicles were invited to the division along with officers and enlisted men from the unit and other units to gain experience in operating drones.
Wang Hongshan, the division commander said that the blue team must be tough enough for the anti-artillery unit to fight in an environment similar to real combat. He said that this will enhance the combat capability of the division. He also suggested this kind of training be carried out routinely by the air defense units of the PLA to prepare them for operations in all weather conditions.
A triumphal claim from Reuters:
China successfully develops drone defense system: Xinhua
China has successfully tested a self-developed laser defense system against small-scale low-altitude drones, state media said on Sunday.
The laser defense system is capable of shooting down small aircraft within a two-km (1.2-mile) radius and can do so within five seconds of locating its target, the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting a statement by the China Academy of Engineering Physics.
The academy is one of the drone defense system’s co-developers, Xinhua said.
Indian umbrage at a Chinese submarine visit next door, via Reuters:
Chinese submarine docks in Sri Lanka despite Indian concerns
Sri Lanka has allowed a Chinese submarine and a warship to dock at its port in the capital Colombo, officials said on Sunday, despite concerns raised by India about China’s warming relations with the Indian Ocean island nation.
Submarine Changzheng-2 and warship Chang Xing Dao arrived at the port on Friday, seven weeks after another Chinese submarine, a long-range deployment patrol, had called at the same port ahead of a visit to South Asia by Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“A submarine and a warship have docked at Colombo harbor. They called on Oct. 31 and will be here for five days for refueling and crew refreshment,” Sri Lankan navy spokesman Kosala Warnakulasuriya said.
And American angst over Chinese fly-bys, from Bloomberg:
Pacific Air Force Chief Says Wary of Risky Flying by China Jets
The U.S. is concerned Chinese jets may engage in further risky intercepts of its military aircraft, even after starting talks aimed at avoiding such encounters, the new commander of U.S. air forces in the Pacific said.
A Chinese fighter jet flew within 20 feet of a U.S. P-8 Poseidon aircraft flying at more than 400 miles an hour near Hainan Island — China’s gateway to the contested South China Sea — on Aug. 19, an encounter that the Pentagon described as “unsafe and unprofessional.”
“I never say never,” General Lori Robinson, 55, said when asked if talks meant such behavior would cease. “What’s important is that we do start the dialogue and that we do come to an understanding of what a traditional intercept is.”
A significant development from Kyodo News:
N. Korea launches ballistic missile submarine: reports
North Korea has launched a new submarine capable of firing ballistic missiles, South Korean media reported Sunday, quoting South Korean government sources.
According to Yonhap News Agency, North Korean engineers used a Soviet-era Golf-class diesel submarine as reverse-engineering blueprint to build the submarine, believed to have a displacement of 2,000 to 2,500 tons.
North Korea acquired the Soviet sub, which was built in 1958, in the early 1990s, and North Korean engineers broke up the vessel to learn missile-firing submarine designs.
A Japanese ghost form the past, from the Mainichi:
Rarely seen Japanese film on Hiroshima bombing to be screened in Tokyo suburbs
A film on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that has rarely been seen in Japan but is an award-winner abroad will be screened in two Tokyo suburbs in early November.
“Hiroshima,” a film adaption of the book, “Genbaku no ko: Hiroshima no shonen shojo no uttae” (“Children of the A-Bomb: Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima”), was completed in 1953 with the cooperation of some 90,000 Hiroshima residents in various capacities, including as extras. It won the award for best feature-length movie at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1955, but has only been screened in Japan through independent distribution channels.
Ippei Kobayashi, a movie producer who organized the upcoming screenings, said, “I want as many people as possible to see the film and think about the nuclear issue.”
The film was directed by Hideo Sekigawa, who also directed the 1950 anti-war film “Nippon senbotsu gakusei no shuki: Kike wadatsumi no koe” (“Listen to the Voices of the Sea”), and features actors Eiji Okada, Yumeji Tsukioka and Isuzu Yamada. Hiroshima residents supplied the production team with some 4,000 items — clothes, gas masks and steel helmets — that were actually used during the war as props for the film. The crew also used two railway cars from Hiroshima Electric Railway Co. and recreated the cityscape on set.
As the government refines its remilitarization drive, Kyodo News:
Gov’t starts work toward participation in collective security actions
The Japanese government has embarked on work to enable the Self-Defense Forces to take part in collective security actions in the absence of a cease-fire, such as minesweeping operations in the Middle East, an official said Sunday.
The government is likely to present a plan on how to prepare the necessary legal framework to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner the Komeito party later this month, the official said on condition of anonymity.
The move came after the government judged that the SDF could participate in collective security actions if the three conditions set for the exercise of the right to collective self-defense were met.
And, to close, the curious cost of Hong Kong domestic security from South China Morning Post:
Call for transparency in paying villagers for fung shui rituals
Decades-old policy that compensates New Territories residents disrupted by public works is steeped in tradition – but also ambiguity
The government practice of paying indigenous New Territories villagers damages to rectify their fung shui is unfair to other Hongkongers and should at least be made more transparent, observers have said in a debate on whether to retain the colonial-era claims system.
One academic, however, says he appreciates the use of money to pacify villagers who have to make way for public works, as this respects the traditional beliefs of Taoism and geomancy.
Some HK$10 million has been paid out of the city’s coffers as “ tun fu allowance” – money for performing rituals – over the past 10 fiscal years since 2004/05, involving 79 public works projects, Lands Department data compiled by the South China Morning Post shows. The compensation forms part of the government’s public works spending.
