We begin with a rational conclusion, via the Guardian:
Mass surveillance is fundamental threat to human rights, says European report
Europe’s top rights body says scale of NSA spying is ‘stunning’ and suggests UK powers may be at odds with rights convention
Europe’s top rights body has said mass surveillance practices are a fundamental threat to human rights and violate the right to privacy enshrined in European law.
The parliamentary assembly of the Council of Europe says in a report that it is “deeply concerned” by the “far-reaching, technologically advanced systems” used by the US and UK to collect, store and analyse the data of private citizens. It describes the scale of spying by the US National Security Agency, revealed by Edward Snowden, as “stunning”.
The report also suggests that British laws that give the monitoring agency GCHQ wide-ranging powers are incompatible with the European convention on human rights. It argues that British surveillance may be at odds with article 8, the right to privacy, as well as article 10, which guarantees freedom of expression, and article 6, the right to a fair trial.
“These rights are cornerstones of democracy. Their infringement without adequate judicial control jeopardises the rule of law,” it says.
Spooky advice, via SecurityWeek:
NSA Releases Defensive Strategies for Fighting Malware Targeting Corporate Data
The NSA’s Information Assurance Directorate (IAD) issued a report this month laying out best practices for combating malware designed to steal or destroy corporate data.
The report, entitled ‘Defensive Best Practices for Destructive Malware’, seems in part aimed at dealing with the type of data-wiping malware at the center of the recent attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment. Much of the advice, the document notes, is also contained in the guidance in the previously published ‘Information Assurance Mitigation Strategies’.
Among the key pieces of advice: segregate network systems, limit workstation-to-workstation communication and protect and restrict administrative privileges for high-level administrator accounts. Organizations are also advised to deploy, configure and monitor application whitelisting to prevent unauthorized or malicious software from executing.
From, courage and a conviction, via Al Jazeera America:
Former CIA officer convicted of leaking secrets to journalist
Jeffrey Sterling convicted in federal court of leaking details of a classified Iran mission to a NYT reporter
A former CIA officer was convicted Monday of leaking classified details of an operation to thwart Iran’s nuclear ambitions to a New York Times reporter.
Jurors convicted 47-year-old Jeffrey Sterling of O’Fallon, Missouri, of all nine counts he faced in federal court. On the third day of deliberations, the jurors told the judge that they could not reach a unanimous verdict. However, they delivered guilty verdicts later in the afternoon after the judge urged them to keep talking.
At issue in the two-week trial: Who told journalist James Risen about the secret mission, one that former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice testified was one of the government’s most closely held secrets as well as one of its best chances to thwart Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions?
The Washington Post covers spooky mediation:
Ex-spies infiltrate Hollywood as espionage TV shows and movies multiply
Weisberg, who left the CIA in 1994, is hardly the only ex-agency guy trying to cash in on the spy show craze. (Spy shows, one executive at a major Hollywood talent agency observed, have become as ubiquitous as cop shows.) Former senior CIA officials Rodney Faraon and Henry “Hank” Crumpton are the executive producers of NBC’s “State of Affairs,” which stars Katherine Heigl as a CIA analyst and member of the agency’s presidential daily briefing team — one of Faraon’s old jobs.
(In the show, Heigl is technically a briefer to the president; in real life, Faraon was a briefer to an agency director, George Tenet.)
Faraon and Crumpton aren’t stopping with “State of Affairs.” They are actually developing a dozen other CIA-themed dramas, either for television or movies, all part of their work at an Arlington-based firm they co-own called Aardwolf Creative. (CIA buffs and insiders know that “Aardwolf” is the code name for special, very candid cables to headquarters sent by agency station chiefs.)
From PandoDaily, Google “discontent”:
WikiLeaks wants to know why Google handed its staffers’ emails over to the government
WikiLeaks has complained about Google’s decision not to inform three of its journalists their personal Gmail accounts had been compromised by a Justice Department warrant until December 23, 2014, nearly three years after the warrant was issued in March 2012.
The warrant required Google to hand over information about the contents and metadata — information about a message’s recipients, the date it was sent, etc. — to the FBI. It’s not clear how much data was provided to the government after the warrant was issued.
Google told WikiLeaks it couldn’t discuss the warrant when it was issued because of a now-expired gag order. In a letter, WikiLeaks and the Center for Constitutional Rights asked if Google fought the warrant, or at least for the right to discuss it with its subjects.
From Deutsche Welle, a step in the right direction:
Tens of thousands at anti-xenophobia concert in Dresden
Huge crowds have gathered in Dresden for a free concert promoting tolerance and diversity. The event seeks to provide a counternarrative to the anti-Islamization PEGIDA group.
So many thousands of people gathered in front of Dresden’s Frauenkirche, the city’s famous baroque church, for a concert promoting tolerance and diversity on Monday evening that police and event organizers were forced to close the square and direct would-be concert goers to the nearby Schlossplatz.
The event – “Open and Colorful – Dresden for Everyone” – was set up to counter the idea of Dresden as the city of PEGIDA (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West). The right-wing umbrella group which has been holding weekly marches since October 2014 to protest what they see as the increasing influence of Islam in Germany and lax immigration policies from the government.
Choosing Monday night was strategic: PEGIDA normally holds their rallies on Mondays, and had to switch to Sunday this week because of the concert. “We want to show that Dresden is cosmopolitan, tolerant and diverse, and we endeavor to be warm, chiefly in our hearts,” said Gerhard Ehninger, a member of Dresden – Place to be.
From The Local.se, bigotry in the North:
UN slams Sweden over increasing hate crimes
Sweden faced sharp criticism for the way it is tackling discrimination and violence against minority groups, at a key UN meeting in Geneva on Monday.
As part of the second UN review of human rights practices in Sweden, the Nordic nation’s recent experiences linked to Islamaphobia, anti-semitism and prejudice against Roma migrants were highlighted. The review also noted an increase in sexual violence against women.
Annika Söder, State Secretary at Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Sweden’s representative in Geneva in connection with the hearing of the United Nations Human Rights Council, told the TT newswire that she welcomed the “feedback and criticism” from other UN member states.
And bigotry in the Hexagon, via France 24:
French mayor ‘evicts’ first black Marianne statue
The small town of Frémainville is one of the few in France where a black-skinned Marianne statue adorns city hall. But the city’s new mayor is replacing the minority Marianne, claiming she does not represent the French republic.
Mayor Marcel Allègre, who won local elections in March, has removed the city’s emblematic black Marianne from the main hall where civil marriages are performed, and has placed an order for a new statue.
“That black sculpture was a Marianne of liberty, but not a Marianne of the French Republic. She undoubtedly represented something, but not the French Republic,” Allègre, who has no party affiliation, told Le Parisien daily.
From USA Today, they’re grounded:
Jetliners examined over security concerns
Security concerns prompted the diversion of one commercial flight and evacuation of at least two others Sunday.
A Delta Air Lines flight from Los Angeles to Orlando was diverted Sunday to Dallas after what reports say was a bomb threat made via Twitter.
Separately, in Seattle, airport spokesman Perry Cooper said a JetBlue flight from Long Beach, Calif., and a regional SkyWest jet from Phoenix were evacuated amid security concerns. The planes landed safely as scheduled.
BuzzFeed News covers allegations of gumshoe spookery:
Three Russian Citizens Charged With Espionage In New York
The FBI charged three Russian citizens on suspicion of engaging in economic espionage. One of them has been arrested, two of them remain at large.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Monday it charged three Russian citizens with spying on the United States.
Evgeny “Zhenya” Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev, and Vicotr Podobnyy are accused of conspiring to work as unauthorized intelligence agents for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service between 2012 and the present, according to a criminal complaint filed in Manhattan U.S. District Court.
Buryakov, who was arrested on Monday in the Bronx, allegedly entered the country as a private citizen, working as a spy under deep cover while pretending to be a banker at an unnamed Russian financial institution, according to the complaint. A LinkedIn profile under his name lists him as a Deputy Representative at Vnesheconombank.
The other two defendants, who remain at large, served as diplomats at the Russian consulate in New York City and at the United Nations.
After the jump, spy eyes in the sky proliferate, Predactors fatally drone in Yemen, Obama’s pad droned, WikiLeaks slams Google for handing the feds their emails, Turkey orders a ban on Mohammed Facebook imagery, Underground Wi Fi blooms in Cuba, criminal phone hacking in China, a Facebook campaign for Japan’s ISIS hostage, North Korea seeks a Cambodia Interview DVD ban, China slams Japanese flybys, A Chinese contested island buildup continues, Japan’s military buildup legislation to come in May, and another Japanese Comfort Women controversy. . .
Look, up in the sky! From Aviation Week & Space Technology:
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Eyes Role for Small Satellites
NGA is exploring ways to work with burgeoning imagery service providers
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is in the early stages of crafting a strategy to leverage the influx of imagery available from what agency director Robert Cardillo calls an “explosion” of new information services providers.
The strategy will include money, but how much is not yet known.
U.S. policymakers are pondering how to take advantage of this new market, which intends to field many small Earth-observation satellites. Though not offering the high-resolution products provided by the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) secret satellites or DigitalGlobe’s commercial fleet, the types of spacecraft being developed by providers such as Skybox, UrtheCast and Planet Labs are intended to “darken” the skies with sensors. Their advantage is the ability to revisit a target multiple times a day, offering more intelligence on the patterns of life and activities taking place there.
From the New York Times, death from above:
C.I.A. Strike, First Since Yemen Upheaval, Kills 3 Qaeda Fighters, Officials Say
A C.I.A. drone strike on Monday on a car in eastern Yemen, the first since the resignation of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, killed three suspected Qaeda fighters, American officials said, in a signal that the United States will continue its targeted killing operations in the country despite the apparent takeover by Houthi fighters.
The strike took place in the central province of Marib, where a missile hit a vehicle carrying three men near the boundary with the province of Shabwa, which is believed to be a stronghold of Al Qaeda. The Central Intelligence Agency operates a drone base in southern Saudi Arabia, which borders Yemen.
The Saudi government is a strong supporter of American strikes against the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
An inevitable drone story from the Associated Press:
Man takes responsibility for drone over White House
A small drone flying low to the ground crashed onto the White House grounds before dawn Monday, triggering a major emergency response and raising fresh questions about security at the presidential mansion. A man later came forward to say he was responsible and didn’t mean to fly it over the complex.
The man contacted the Secret Service after reports of the crash spread in the media, a U.S. official said. The man told the agency that he had been flying the drone recreationally. The man is a Washington resident and is cooperating with investigators.
Secret Service agents are now interviewing other people to corroborate the man’s story, and they don’t currently have any reason to doubt the man’s story, the official said.
WikiLeaks slams Google for handing the feds their emails, via Deutsche Welle:
‘A very real violation of privacy,’ WikiLeaks editor says of Google email release
WikiLeaks has accused Internet giant Google of handing over emails of the whistleblowing website’s senior staff to the US authorities – and keeping the release silent. DW talked to one of those staff about the release.
The warrants for the release, issued by the US Department of Justice, concerned the Google accounts of WikiLeaks section editor Joseph Farrell, spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, and Sarah Harrison, investigations editor.
DW: What kind of information has been passed by Google to the US government?
Sarah Harrison: All we know is that the US government asked for everything to do with any and all Google accounts that we hold. That would include all emails, including deleted emails, contact lists, IP addresses that we logged on from. This really shows a blanket, organizationwide attempt to gather any and all information on us. And what’s interesting about our email accounts is that – for all of us there – these were our personal accounts that we had before joining Wikileaks. I think it really does show the US government trying to even go to the stage of mapping out personal contacts in our personal lives in just a hope to get anything on WikiLeaks as an organization.
You have already experienced something similar with Twitter. Is there a difference between what’s happened now with Google?
There was a similar situation with Twitter, yes. There were warrants and subpoenas from the US government to Twitter, asking for information on accounts of various people associated with the organization. What was interesting there was that Twitter, when it first found about the warrants, actually fought the gag order! And they were actually successful in doing so. So that is the precedent that was set. In the case of Google, however, there is no indication that they did this at all. They just rolled over and did exactly what the US government said and haven’t told us for two and a half years.
From PandoDaily, Turkey orders a ban on Mohammed Facebook imagery, more:
Turkey orders Facebook to block pages depicting or criticizing Muhammad
Facebook has been ordered to block pages depicting the Prophet Muhammad, including those featuring the cover of French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo’s latest issue, with a warning that its service could be banned from Turkey if it doesn’t enforce the blockade.
The ban comes after protests against the Charlie Hebdo cover in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Indian-controlled region of Kashmir became violent. (The cover, released after an attack on the magazine, shows Muhammad holding a sign reading “Je Suis Charlie.”)
This isn’t the first time Turkey has censored the controversial cover. It also forced news portals not to display the image on their websites, and stopped trucks carrying issues of a secular newspaper within the country to make sure it hadn’t reprinted the cover.
Underground Wi Fi blooms in Cuba, via the Associated Press:
Cuban youth build secret computer network despite Wi-Fi ban
Cut off from the Internet, young Cubans have quietly linked thousands of computers into a hidden network that stretches miles across Havana, letting them chat with friends, play games and download hit movies in a mini-replica of the online world that most can’t access.
Home Internet connections are banned for all but a handful of Cubans, and the government charges nearly a quarter of a month’s salary for an hour online in government-run hotels and Internet centers. As a result, most people on the island live offline, complaining about their lack of access to information and contact with friends and family abroad.
A small minority have covertly engineered a partial solution by pooling funds to create a private network of more than 9,000 computers with small, inexpensive but powerful hidden Wi-Fi antennas and Ethernet cables strung over streets and rooftops spanning the entire city. Disconnected from the real Internet, the network is limited, local and built with equipment commercially available around the world, with no help from any outside government, organizers say.
Criminal phone hacking in China, via Want China Times:
Crimes involving mobile phone hacking on the rise in China
An average of 540,000 mobile phones in China were infected by viruses every day last year, marking the increasing organization and industrialization of cyber criminals, according to a report on cybercrimes published by internet giant Tencent.
In 2014, nearly 200 million handsets were affected by virtual viruses worldwide. This number was 1.8 times higher than figures in 2013, as cyber criminals evidently turned their focus to mobile phones, said the report.
“Following over a decade of developments, black internet industries have infiltrated new business models built on the internet, such as social media, online storage and electronic payment,” said Wang Tao, founder of online security group Intelligence Defense Friends Laboratory.
A Facebook campaign for Japan’s ISIS hostage, via the Japan Times:
Friend wages ‘I am Kenji’ campaign to free held journalist
With the plight of hostage Kenji Goto still unknown, and his fellow captive apparently executed, friends of the journalist have taken to social media to work for his release, creating an “I am Kenji” Facebook page and collecting signatures online.
Film producer Taku Nishimae, who has been a friend of Goto’s for more than 10 years, began the page with a simple picture of himself holding a placard with the words “I am Kenji” written on it.
Accompanying the picture, Nishimae asks readers to post selfies to show unity with Goto and ask for his release.
North Korea seeks a Cambodia Interview DVD ban, via Want China Times:
Bootleg Interview DVDs are hostile conspiracy, DPRK tells Cambodia
North Korea has asked Cambodia to prevent the sales and screening of The Interview, the controversial comedy about an assassination plot against the country’s leader Kim Jong-un, saying that the movie insults Kim.
In a letter to the Cambodian information minister, Khieu Kanharith, early this week and released to the media on Sunday, Cambodia’s foreign secretary, Long Visalo, said the DPRK embassy to Phnom Penh sent a diplomatic note on Jan. 8 saying that The Interview has been downloaded from the internet and sold in some markets in Cambodia.
“The DPRK considers this action as a conspiracy by a hostile force which may lead to the damage of traditional ties between the two countries,” Visalo said.
Flybys slammed, via Want China Times:
Sina objects to Japanese surveillance of Chinese aircraft
Japan should immediately stop its surveillance of Chinese aircraft near disputed waters in the East China Sea to avoid tensions from escalating, though the chances of a military conflict between the two countries remains extremely slim, says the Beijing-based Sina Military Network.
The Jan. 21 commentary comes amid a new report from the Joint Staff Office of Japan’s Ministry of Defense which reported that fighter jets of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force scrambled 164 times in the last quarter of 2014, breaking the previous record of 146 in the first quarter of 2013. Moreover, the total number of Japanese scrambles involving Chinese aircraft between April and December 2014 reached 371.
The numbers are believed to have spiked because more than 10 Chinese battleships and 20 large aircraft, including six strategic bombers, reportedly traveled back and forth along the Miyako Strait in southern Japan’s Okinawa prefecture numerous times in December, prompting Japan to deploy fighters and surveillance aircraft in response.
A Chinese contested island buildup continues, via Want China Times:
Satellite image shows heliport on Zhejiang’s Nanji islands
A satellite image of a new helicopter base on the Nanji islands off China’s eastern coast 300 kilometers from the disputed Diaoyutai islands (Senkaku to Japan, Diaoyu to China) was examined by the UK-based IHS Jane’s Defence Weekly on Jan. 22.
Captured by Airbus Defence and Space’s Pleaides satellite on Oct. 13 2014, the satellite image shows China has 10 landing pads for helicopters on the Nanji islands off Zhejiang province. A photo taken a year earlier showed no such helipads, suggesting that they had been built in the past year as tensions remain high over the disputed Diaoyutai (as they are known in Taiwan) and after China announced an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) over the East China Sea that includes the airspace of the islands.
Those helipads sit alongside wind turbines along a ridge on the islands’ southeast peninsula, Jane’s reported. The construction of military facilities on the Nanji islands was reported for the first time by Japan’s Kyodo News based on Dec. 22, which cited an unnamed source from the Chinese government as saying that a runway would also be built.
Japan’s military buildup legislation to come in May, via Jiji Press:
Japan Govt to Introduce Security Bills in May
The government will introduce national security legislation shortly after the Golden Week holiday period through early May, Japan’s top government spokesman said Monday.
The government will hold discussions with the Liberal Democratic Party-led ruling coalition so that it can submit the package of security-related bills soon after the period is over, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.
In July last year, the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to change the Japanese government’s long-held interpretation of the war-renouncing constitution in order to enable the country to exercise the right to collective self-defense.
And a complication, via the Asahi Shimbun:
Abe to resume debate on expanding national security laws mindful of hostages
With the Japanese hostages being held by the Islamic State in mind, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be seeking to bolster the capabilities of the Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of Japanese overseas and in support of multinational forces.
Abe expressed intentions of resuming talks as early as February between the ruling coalition parties on legislating broader national security laws during the ordinary Diet session convening on Jan. 26.
“We will defend the lives and the happiness of our citizens by establishing a seamless national security law structure,” the prime minister said in a Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) program on Jan. 25.
And from the Japan Times, another Japanese Comfort Women controversy:
8,700 sue Asahi Shimbun over retracted sex slave articles
A group of more than 8,700 people filed a lawsuit Monday against The Asahi Shimbun newspaper over articles it published in the 1980s and 1990s about the contentious “comfort women” issue.
The 18 articles were formally retracted last year.
According to the suit filed with the Tokyo District Court, the plaintiffs, including researchers, journalists and lawmakers, demanded that ¥10,000 in compensation be paid to each person, arguing the major daily “damaged Japanese people’s personal rights and honor.”
It also demands the paper run an ad to apologize for “spreading erroneous facts to international society.”
