We begin with the Guardian:
Ferguson protesters and police clash as grand jury decision nears
Police charge at demonstrators in freezing temperatures as Ferguson awaits decision on whether officer will be charged
Police in riot gear clashed with a small group of protesters in a sub-freezing Ferguson, Missouri, on Wednesday night, as tensions grew over a coming announcement on whether a white officer will be charged for killing an unarmed black 18-year-old.
About 50 officers wearing riot helmets and carrying batons and shields repeatedly charged at demonstrators, who were gathered outside the Ferguson police headquarters to demand the indictment of officer Darren Wilson, who shot dead Michael Brown on 9 August.
In the most serious confrontation since a grand jury decision on Wilson became imminent in mid-November, protesters sounded sirens, shouted abuse at police and revived chants of “hands up – don’t shoot” from the nights of unrest in the St Louis suburb after Brown’s death.
And elsewhere, from the Washington Post:
Fear of deadly ‘religious war’ between Jews and Muslims raised after synagogue attack
Israelis and Palestinians expressed fear Wednesday that their decades-old conflict was moving beyond the traditional nationalist struggle between two peoples fighting for their homelands and spiraling into a raw and far-reaching religious confrontation between Jews and Muslims.
The threat — perhaps more accurately the dread — of an incipient but deadly “religious war” was expressed by Muslim clerics, Christian leaders and Jewish Israelis one day after a pair of Palestinian assailants, wielding meat cleavers and a gun, killed five Israelis, including a prominent American Israeli rabbi, in a Jerusalem synagogue.
“All of us are scared that there will be a religious war, that extremists from both sides will start fighting each other,” said Oded Wiener, an Israeli Jew from the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land.
More from the Associated Press:
Israeli mayor’s ban on Arab workers ignites uproar
The mayor of a southern Israeli city sparked a national uproar Thursday by barring Israeli Arab construction workers from jobs in local preschools, citing security concerns after a rash of attacks by Palestinian assailants elsewhere in the country.
The proposal was condemned as racist by Israeli leaders, but it reflected the tense mood in the country and deepened longstanding divisions between the nation’s Jewish majority and Arab minority. An opinion poll showed solid public support for the measure.
Israel has been on edge following a wave of Palestinian attacks that has killed 11 people over the past month, including five this week in a bloody assault on a Jerusalem synagogue. Most of the attacks have occurred in Jerusalem — whose population is roughly one-third Palestinian — with deadly stabbings in Tel Aviv and the West Bank as well.
From The Hill, a hint of things to come:
Pentagon, in reversal, won’t wait for Congress to deploy Iraq troops
The Pentagon said Thursday that it would begin deploying 1,500 new troops to Iraq “in the next weeks” without first securing funding from Congress, reversing previous comments.
“We can deploy troops to the theater, but — so that — that process can and will continue,” said Defense Department press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby.
Kirby also said Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, commander of U.S. Central Command, has also moved about 50 U.S. forces within Iraq to Anbar Province to get a “jump start” on expanding the advise-and-assist mission, as well as starting to train Iraqi forces in their fight against Islamic militants.
“But it doesn’t mean that we still don’t need the authorization in terms of the resources that will go with the much more robust program that we’re trying to get done,” Kirby said. “He can start it and he is.”
The origins of the specie, via the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
Islamic State reportedly buying silver, gold as it prepares to issue currency
The Islamic State is accumulating gold, silver and copper in markets throughout northern and western Iraq, dealers report, in an apparent effort to stockpile enough precious metal to follow through on a pledge to mint its own currency.
On Nov. 11, the Islamic State’s Beit al Mal, an ancient Islamic term akin to “Department of Treasury,” announced that the group would reintroduce the dinar currency of the Umayyad Caliphate, which ruled an empire that stretched from modern Iran to Spain for much of the seventh and eighth centuries. The announcement – which included images of three types of coins in gold, copper and silver – drew skepticism from experts, who doubted that the Islamic State could arrange a system to mint and issue a modern currency.
But interviews with dealers in precious metals indicate that the Islamic State has begun the complex process of issuing the currency, a reminder that as the best-financed non-state actor in history – with a revenue stream from oil sales and aggressive taxation – it’s been able to install bureaucratic controls over the large swath of territory it’s claimed in Iraq and Syria.
From the Guardian, commitment:
French Isis fighters filmed burning passports and calling for terror at home
Emergence of video showing four men comes as France reels from the identification of two of its nationals partaking in a mass beheading in Syria
A film released by Islamic State (Isis) shows jihadi fighters burning French passports and calling on others to bring terror to the streets of the European country.
Released by one of Isis’s main media outlets, Al Hayat, the video shows four men who purport to be from France, including three who deliver messages in French to camera.
Burning what appear to be several French passports in a campfire, a masked man can be heard saying: “We disbelieve in you and your passports, and if you come here we will fight you.”
The Guardian brings it on home:
Three men planned Isis-inspired public beheading, court hears
Nadir Ali Sayed, Yousaf Shah Syed and Haseeb Hamayoon charged over alleged plot to decapitate member of public with knives
Three men were preparing a terrorist plot to behead a member of the public, inspired by the propaganda of Islamic State militants, a court has heard .
The men were arrested a fortnight ago, shortly before Remembrance Sunday, and were preparing to carry out an imminent plan to decapitate a person with knives, Westminster magistrates court was told on Thursday.
Nadir Ali Sayed, 21, from Hounslow, west London, Yousaf Shah Syed, 19, from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and Haseeb Hamayoon, 27, from Hayes, west London, are accused of planning acts of terrorism.
And the McClatchy Washington Bureau covers death from afar:
Use of drones against Islamic State changes the meaning of warfare
In America’s war against the Islamic State, many of those fighting sit in a dark, cold room and stare at computer screens for 12 hours at a stretch.
There are dozens of them, men and women, each wearing camouflage, looking for suspected Iraqi and Syrian jihadists scurrying across the screen. If something changes on the screen – a group of dark figures crossing a street, a string of vehicles racing down a road – they pass the information to another pilot, who might decide to open fire with a Hellfire missile or an electronically guided bomb.
The greatest combat hazard they face is from the Red Bull and other sugary drinks they devour to stay awake; their unit has the worst rate of cavities in the Air Force.
“I would rather be deployed,” said Capt. Jennifer, a reservist and intelligence analyst whose full name the Air Force withheld for security reasons. “My daughter calls me because she is sick and I have to pick her up from school. When I am deployed forward I am deployed. I don’t have to worry about the day-to-day.”
Cyberwar, via the Washington Post:
Foreign powers steal data on critical U.S. infrastructure, NSA chief says
Several foreign countries, including China, have infiltrated the computers of critical industries in the United States to steal information that could be used in the planning of a destructive attack, the director of the National Security Agency said Thursday.
That was one of the cyberthreats outlined at a congressional hearing by Adm. Michael S. Rogers, who also said he expects criminal gangs may become proxies for nations carrying out attacks on other nations.
“There are multiple nation states that have the capability and have been on the [industrial] systems,” he said before the House Intelligence Committee.
From the New York Times, gee, what a surprise:
N.S.A. Phone Data Collection Could Go On, Even if a Law Expires
A little-known provision of the Patriot Act, overlooked by lawmakers and administration officials alike, appears to give President Obama a possible way to keep the National Security Agency’s bulk phone records program going indefinitely — even if Congress allows the law on which it is based to expire next year.
Senate Republicans on Tuesday night used a filibuster to block consideration of a bill to end and replace the N.S.A. phone records program. The debate about what may happen next has played out based on a widely held premise: that the legal basis for the program, Section 215 of the Patriot Act, will expire on June 1, so if Congress remains gridlocked, the program will automatically shut down.
“I believe that if we do not pass this bill, the metadata program is at risk because the 215 program sunsets next year,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, said in Tuesday night’s debate. But that premise may be incorrect. If the summer arrives and the program is facing a shutdown, Mr. Obama could invoke the provision to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to keep it going.
From the Associated Press via the Japan Times, notable:
Years before the Snowden revelations, senior NSA codebreaker objected to mass surveillance program
Years before Edward Snowden sparked a public outcry with the disclosure that the National Security Agency had been secretly collecting American telephone records, some NSA executives voiced strong objections to the program, current and former intelligence officials say. The program exceeded the agency’s mandate to focus on foreign spying and would do little to stop terror plots, the executives argued.
The 2009 dissent, led by a senior NSA official and embraced by others at the agency, prompted the Obama administration to consider, but ultimately abandon, a plan to stop gathering the records.
The secret internal debate has not been previously reported. The Senate on Tuesday rejected an administration proposal that would have curbed the program and left the records in the hands of telephone companies rather than the government. That would be an arrangement similar to the one the administration quietly rejected in 2009.
The now-retired NSA official, a longtime code-breaker who rose to top management, had just learned in 2009 about the top-secret program that was created shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks against the U.S. He says he argued to then-NSA Director Keith Alexander that storing the calling records of nearly every American fundamentally changed the character of the agency, which is supposed to eavesdrop on foreigners, not Americans.
From the Washington Post, piping down:
Utah legislature considers shutting off NSA’s water
A Utah state legislative committee will consider a bill that could eventually cut off millions of gallons of water for a major National Security Agency facility south of Salt Lake City as a protest against the mass collection of Americans’ data.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Marc Roberts (R), would prohibit any municipality from providing “material support or assistance in any form to any federal data collection and surveillance agency.”
That’s a barely veiled reference to the Utah Data Center, a massive collection facility operated by the NSA in Bluffdale, a small suburb of Salt Lake City. The facility, completed last year at a cost of about $1.7 billion, houses super computers that require 65 megawatts of power, enough to power about 33,000 homes, according to the Associated Press.
Homeland Security News Wire sounds an alarm:
NSA director: China and “one or two” other nations can damage U.S. critical infrastructure
Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency and head of U.S. Cyber Command, told lawmakers yesterday that China and “one or two” other countries are capable of mounting cyberattacks which would paralyze the U.S electric grid and other critical infrastructure systems across the country.
A cyberattacks of such scope has been discussed in the past – it was even dubbed a “cyber Pearl Harbor” – but Rogers was the first high official to confirm that such a crippling attack on the United States was not a mere speculation.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Rogers, speaking at a hearing of the House intelligence committee, said U.S. adversaries are conducting electronic “reconnaissance” on a regular basis so that they will be well-positioned to damage and disrupt the industrial control systems which run chemical facilities, nuclear power plants, water treatment facilities, dams, and much more.
On a similar note and interesting time, from Sky News:
NATO’s Cyber War Games Amid Surge In Attacks
NATO faces cyber attacks almost daily, data shows, as Sky News gains access to the organisation’s biggest ever security exercise
NATO’s computer servers are detecting 200 million suspicious cyber events every single day, the alliance has revealed.
On average the military organisation is the victim of five major cyber attacks each week and that has increased “significantly” since Russian aggression in Ukraine started. The figures were published as NATO carried out its biggest ever cyber security exercise involving hundreds of computer analysts.
The three-day event, taking in 28 nations, was held on a former Soviet base in the city of Tartu, close to the Russian border.
The Washington Post covers considerately:
CIA Director John Brennan considering sweeping organizational changes
CIA Director John Brennan is considering sweeping organizational changes that could include breaking up the separate spying and analysis divisions that have been in place for decades to create hybrid units focused on individual regions and threats to U.S. security, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.
The proposal would essentially replicate the structure of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and other similar entities in the agency — an idea that reflects the CTC’s expanded role and influence since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
U.S. officials emphasized that the proposal is in its preliminary stages, and could still be scaled back or even discarded. Already the idea has encountered opposition from current and former officials who have voiced concern that it would be too disruptive and might jeopardize critical capabilities and expertise.
And from the London Telegraph, an ominous development in Old Blighty:
Theresa May to give MI5 and police power to force terror suspects to move
Terror suspects will be forced to move towns and leave their associates behind under plans to revive relocation powers
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is to give police and the security services the power to force terror suspects to move to towns far away from their homes as she restores a key element of control orders.
The ability to relocate suspects to other areas was abandoned when control orders were replaced by the weaker terrorism prevention and investigation measures (Tpims) following a series of court rulings.
The Conservatives said that they wanted to re-introduce them earlier this year amid growing concerns about British jihadists returning from Syria and Iraq, but were met with opposition from the Liberal Democrats.
After the jump, British cops snooping on the press, a very curious California prosecution, curious customers of American spyware makers, allegations of security cam hacking by the Russians, Cuban slams cyberwar attacks, an Assange appeal denied, Gitmo detainees get gone, automotivation for cyberterror, a Colombian kidnap resolution mooted, Chilean justice long delayed, China and Russia strengthen military ties, signs of a split in the Hong Kong Occupy movement, a momentary Great Firewall loosening, Tokyo and Washington play war games, and a critical take on Greenwald’s technomyopia. . .
From the Japan Times, British cops doing what cops like to do:
Police face legal action for snooping on journalists
‘Domestic extremists’ unit kept a secret database of details on journalists including medical history of family members
A group of journalists has launched a legal action against Scotland Yard after discovering that the Metropolitan police has been recording their professional activities on a secret database designed to monitor so-called domestic extremists.
The six journalists have obtained official files that reveal how police logged details of their work as they reported on protests. One photographer discovered that the Met police had more than 130 entries detailing his movements, including what he was wearing, at demonstrations he attended as a member of the press.
They have started the legal action to expose what they say is a persistent pattern of journalists being assaulted, monitored and stopped and searched by police during their work, which often includes documenting police misconduct.
More from the Associated Press:
UK police spied on reporters for years, docs show
In January, freelance video journalist Jason Parkinson returned home from vacation to find a brown paper envelope in his mailbox. He opened it to find nine years of his life laid out in shocking detail.
Twelve pages of police intelligence logs noted which protests he covered, who he spoke to and what he wore — all the way down to the color of his boots. It was, he said, proof of something he’d long suspected: The police were watching him.
“Finally,” he thought as he leafed through documents over a strong black coffee, “we’ve got them.”
Parkinson’s documents, obtained through a public records request, are the basis of a lawsuit being filed by the National Union of Journalists against London’s Metropolitan Police and Britain’s Home Office. The lawsuit, announced late Thursday, along with a recent series of revelations about the seizure of reporters’ phone records, is pulling back the curtain on how British police have spent years tracking the movements of the country’s news media.
For United Press International, the Orwellian:
Rapper Tiny Doo faces life for ‘promoting’ gang shootings, despite no involvement
Brandon Duncan, a.k.a. Tiny Doo, has no criminal record, was not present for any of the crimes and faces a life sentence if convicted.
An aspiring rapper and documented gang member based in San Diego is charged with attempted murder for including lyrics promoting the gang that allegedly tried to kill nine people in 2013, although prosecutors admit the rapper was not present for any of the charged crimes. If convicted, he could be sentenced to life in prison.
Brandon Duncan, who performs under the name Tiny Doo, is charged along with 14 other gang members with multiple counts of attempted murder stemming from nine separate shootings in San Diego’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in April 2013.
Although he is a documented member of the unnamed gang stemming from dismissed 2008 pimping charges, prosecutors concede Duncan was neither present nor had anything to do with any of the shootings.
From The Intercept, curious customers of American spyware makers:
U.S. Firms Accused of Enabling Surveillance in Despotic Central Asian Regimes
U.S. and Israeli companies have been selling surveillance systems to Central Asian countries with records of political repression and human rights abuse, according to a new report by Privacy International. The U.K.-based watchdog charges that the American firms Verint and Netronome enable surveillance in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
Verint’s Israeli arm provides those countries with monitoring centers “capable of mass interception of telephone, mobile, and IP networks,” the report says, as does the Israeli company NICE systems. Verint also enlisted California-based Netronome to give Uzbek agents the ability to intercept encrypted communications, Privacy International says, though it’s not clear whether the program was carried out successfully.
The report provides a broad picture of surveillance in a region that is marked by repression. Kazakhstan has been condemned for laws restricting free speech and assembly, flawed trials, and torture. As for Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch bluntly characterizes the country’s human rights record as “atrocious.” Privacy International includes testimony from lawyers, journalists, and bloggers in Uzbekistan who had transcripts of private Skype calls used against them in trial, or had interactions with intelligence officers that made it clear the authorities had access to their private communications.
From SecurityWeek, here’s looking at you, kid:
Russia Hacking Site Spying Webcams Worldwide: Britain
Britain’s privacy watchdog on Thursday called on Russia to take down a site showing hacked live feeds from thousands of homes and businesses around the world and warned it was planning “regulatory action”.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said that hackers were taking advantage of devices like CCTV cameras and remote-access baby monitors without security protection and with weak passwords.
“I want the Russians to take this down straight away,” Christopher Graham, the information commissioner, told BBC Radio 4′s Today program.
More cyberwar from teleSUR:
Cuba Denounces Cyberattacks at World Internet Conference
At the first World Internet Conference today, Cuba reported cyberattacks against its communications and technology sector and called for the creation of measures to combat cyber attacks, protect its information infrastructure, and mitigate the effects of hacker activity.
Vice minister of Communications Wilfredo Gonzalez, in a speech cited in Prensa Latina, pointed out numerous examples that illustrate the need to regulate the use of the Internet.
“The colossal power of the Internet in terms of surveillance has been evidenced by the activities of the United States government, including the Zunzuneo project that was designed to destabilize Cuba to provoke a change of the political structure on the island,” said Gonzalez.
The vice minister added that this is an example of aggressive misuse of information and communications technology, and a flagrant violation of international law and state sovereignty.
An Assange appeal denied from the New York Times:
Swedish Court Rejects Appeal by Julian Assange
A Swedish court on Thursday upheld a four-year-old order for the detention of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, over accusations of sexual assault that inspired a lengthy legal battle before he took refuge in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
Lawyers for Mr. Assange, 43, had sought to have the order withdrawn on the grounds that it could not be enforced while he was in the embassy, and they also contended that it was restricting his civil rights.
But the Swedish court rejected the legal argument that it should “set aside the detention solely because Julian Assange is in an embassy and the detention order cannot be enforced at present for that reason,” Reuters reported.
Gitmo detainees get gone, via the Miami Herald:
U.S. sends 5 Guantánamo detainees to European resettlement
The Pentagon sent five long-held Arab detainees to resettlement in Europe on Thursday, three to Georgia and two to Slovakia.
The transfer, announced after a U.S. C-17 cargo plane cleared Georgian airspace in its two-nation mission, left 143 captives still at the prison camps in southeast Cuba.
More transfers are in the pipeline, including perhaps another six captives, who can’t go home to Middle East trouble spots, to resettlement in Uruguay in December.
Automotivation for cyberterror from the London Telegraph:
Driverless cars could be hacked by terrorists, warn transport experts
Driverless cars are likely to be on the road within 15 years, but they are vulnerable to hackers, transport experts have warned
Hugh Boyes, a cyber-security expert at the IET, said: “Sadly we’re not that good at writing software today. 98 per cent of applications have series defects.
“If we have the hacker community start to target vehicles in Central London we could imagine a fair amount of chaos on the roads.
“Terrorism is a real risk. So cyber-security of autonomous vehicles will be critical. And we’re going to have to consider having black boxes in vehicles in the event of an incident.”
A resolution hinted, from BBC News:
Colombia kidnap: Farc agrees conditions for release
Colombia’s Farc rebels have reached an agreement with the government over the conditions necessary for releasing an army general and four others.
Announcing the agreement in Havana, Cuban and Norwegian officials acting as mediators said the hostages would be released as soon as possible.
However, the details of the agreement were not released.
Peace talks between the two sides were suspended after the men were captured by the left-wing rebels at the weekend.
From BBC News again, Chilean justice long delayed:
Chile court compensates 30 former political prisoners
A Chilean court has ordered the state to pay around $7.5m (£4.8m) to 30 former political prisoners.
They were were held on a remote island in the extreme south of the country during the military rule of Augusto Pinochet.
The prisoners, who include political leaders and government ministers, were held for two years from 1973 on Dawson island in Tierra del Fuego.
The justice ministry said they endured “immeasurable moral injury”.
From Want China Times, China and Russia strengthen military ties:
Russia and China pledge to strengthen military cooperation
Chinese defense minister Chang Wanquan held talks with visiting Russian defense minister Sergei Shoigu on Tuesday to discuss practical bilateral military cooperation.
Chang, also a state councilor, said the bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership has sound development, with the two countries engaging in frequent high-level exchanges and continuing to deepen mutual political trust.
Chang said their two militaries have pragmatic cooperation in the fields of high-level visits, joint exercises and professional communication.
From South China Morning Post, signs of division:
Half of Occupy Central protesters ready to pack it in if asked by organisers
Survey shows a near-even split between those who would go home if asked by organisers, and those who want to stay until demands are met
Half of Occupy protesters said they would retreat if asked to do so by campaign leaders, according to a poll of more than 2,100 people taking part in the sit-ins.
The findings, compiled by students and analysed by the Post, came as tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying urged protesters to consider retreating.
Out of 2,183 protesters polled, 958 said they would retreat if the three groups leading the movement asked them to do so. The results also showed that 963 said they would ignore such a request and continue their protest, while 262 did not give a clear answer or were undecided.
A momentary Great Firewall loosening from Want China Times:
Wuzhen surfing beyond the Great Firewall during conference
After temporarily allowing access to many overseas websites during the APEC summit in Beijing, authorities in China have taken similar measures for the First World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. The next “uninstallment” welcomes a broadening the scope of websites permitted, reports Duowei News, a Chinese-language news web portal run by overseas Chinese.
From the morning of Nov. 19, guests and journalists at the conference in Wuzhen, as well as tourists in the city, have been able to access Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other overseas sites that are normally blocked in China, according to BBC’s Chinese-language news site.
According to the report, the wireless internet connection provided by the organizers allows internet users to access all overseas news websites that are normally blocked by the “Great Firewall,” including BBC Chinese, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, as well as the sites of international non-profits like Amnesty International and Reporters Sans Frontieres.
Tokyo and Washington play war games, via JapanToday:
Japan raises military profile in naval war games with U.S.
Japan stepped up its role in large-scale war games with the United States this week, with one of its admirals commanding air and sea maneuvers that the U.S. military described as the most complex ever overseen by the Japanese navy.
The Keen Sword exercises involving more than 30,000 Japanese troops and 11,000 U.S. personnel come as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks a higher profile for Japan in the security alliance.
At the same time, Washington has encouraged Tokyo to take a greater share of the defense burden, especially as China’s military modernises rapidly.
To close, some observations from Cryptome [PDF]:
Greenwald Blames the Hostage
Silicon Valley Sells the Illusion of Security
Yesterday the USA Freedom Act was blocked in the Senate as it failed to garner the 60 votes required to move forward. Presumably the bill would have imposed limits on NSA surveillance. Careful scrutiny of the bill’s text however reveals yet another mere gesture of reform, one that would codify and entrench existing surveillance capabilities rather than eliminate them.
Glenn Greenwald, commenting from his perch at the Intercept, opined:
“All of that illustrates what is, to me, the most important point from all of this: the last place one should look to impose limits on the powers of the U.S. government is . . . the U.S. government. Governments don’t walk around trying to figure out how to limit their own power, and that’s particularly true of empires.”
Anyone who followed the sweeping deregulation of the financial industry during the Clinton era, the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act of 1999 which effectively repealed Glass-Steagall and the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, immediately sees through Greenwald’s impromptu dogma. Let’s not forget the energy market deregulation in California and subsequent manipulation that resulted in blackouts throughout the state. Ditto that for the latest roll back of arms export controls that opened up markets for the defense industry. And never mind all those hi-tech companies that want to loosen H1-B restrictions.
The truth is that the government is more than happy to cede power and authority…just as long as doing so serves the corporate factions that have achieved state capture. The “empire” Greenwald speaks of is a corporate empire.
