And more. . .
We begin with the Skynet warning, via the London Daily Mail:
Bill Gates says we SHOULD fear a robot uprising: Microsoft co-founder says he ‘agrees with Elon Musk’ on dangers of AI
Bill Gates has joined Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking in warning that AI poses a threat to humanity
In an AMA on Reddit he said he is ‘concerned about super intelligence’
And he said he doesn’t understand why some people are not concerned
He also revealed Microsoft was working on a virtual ‘Personal Agent’
And he said if Microsoft hadn’t worked, he would have gone into AI
In the past year experts including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking have said the rise of ‘super-intelligent’ robots poses a threat to humanity.
And now Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, too, has joined the voices calling for caution.
He said the rise of AI should be a concern, and he doesn’t understand why people are not taking the threat seriously.
From the Guardian, an outrageous arrest:
Lawyers rail against ‘unlawful’ jailing of public defender for shielding client
Jami Tillotson was arrested for intervening between plainclothes police and her client in an incident decried by fellow public defenders as ‘outrageous’
A public defender in San Francisco was placed under arrest and handcuffed by police as she attempted to stop her client from being questioned and photographed outside a courtroom on Tuesday. The action has been branded “outrageous” and unlawful by fellow San Francisco public defender Jeff Adachi, who is demanding the police apologise.
Video released by the San Francisco public defender’s office shows lawyer Jami Tillotson, who remains calm throughout the event, standing in the way of a plainclothes officer with a camera, who threatens her with arrest as he attempts to photograph two men.
Tillotson, an 18-year veteran of the profession, was subsequently detained for about an hour at the Southern Station in San Francisco before being released. At a press conference on Wednesday a spokesman for the police said the officer had the right to arrest anyone obstructing him from doing his work and that a criminal investigation into the event was ongoing.
From the Guardian, an order certain to be ignored:
Obama must finally end NSA phone record collection, says privacy board
White House could take action ‘at any time’, says Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board chair as key Patriot Act measure is poised to expire
The US government’s privacy board is calling out President Barack Obama for continuing to collect Americans’ phone data in bulk, a year after it urged an end to the controversial National Security Agency program.
The Obama administration could cease the mass acquisition of US phone records “at any time”, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) said in an assessment it issued on Thursday.
The PCLOB’s assessment comes amid uncertainty over the fate of legislation to cease that collection. An effort intended to stop it, known as the USA Freedom Act, failed in the Senate in November. While the administration said after its defeat that Obama would push for a new bill, it has yet to do so in the new Congress, and the president has thus far pledged in his State of the Union address only to update the public on how the bulk-surveillance program now works in practice.
Meanwhile, across the border in Canada, a terror-linked spooky power grab, via CBC News:
New anti-terror bill could put chill on freedom of speech
‘It’s really more political posturing than sound counterterrorism policy,’ says legal expert
Justice Minister Peter MacKay suggested that the measures would, among a host of other consequences, allow authorities to target materials that may be contributing to the radicalization of Canadians, particularly online.
The new bill, however, is largely a knee-jerk response to October’s attacks and Canada already has the necessary laws on the books to pursue and prosecute people promoting hatred or inciting violence, says Kent Roach, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in constitutional and terrorism law.
“The government has the burden before they introduce new laws to demonstrate why it’s not possible to prosecute these kinds of offences under existing Canadian law,” he says.
“There’s a real danger when we make laws in reaction to events with the assumption that those laws will help prevent tragedies from happening again.”
On to the war and an atrocity claimed, via the New York Times:
Government Allies Are Said to Have Killed Dozens of Sunnis in Iraq
At least 72 people from a mostly Sunni village in eastern Iraq were methodically singled out for slaughter this week, witnesses and local Sunni leaders say, killed by Shiite militiamen who were supporting Iraqi security forces.
The Iraqi government said Thursday that it was investigating the claims, after days of denials from security officials in Diyala Province that the killings were sectarian executions committed by pro-government Shiites.
But witness accounts suggest that is what happened in the village of Barwanah starting on Monday. Several survivors described seeing a column of militia fighters and accompanying troops drive into the village that afternoon.
The men started calling out specific names of people they were seeking, then immediately began killing: Some of the victims were shot on their doorsteps, and others were lined up and led to a field to be gunned down, witnesses said.
From the Thomson Reuters Foundation, outside the media lens:
Under-reported conflicts seen affecting millions in 2015
While wars in Syria, Iraq and Ukraine make headlines in the West, around 30 other conflicts receive little press coverage, and the resulting lack of pressure for change could have serious implications for millions of people, experts say.
Civil wars in Sudan’s western Darfur region and its southern states have almost disappeared from the media despite affecting huge numbers and displacing 2.4 million people in Darfur alone.
Neighbouring South Sudan is also an overlooked crisis that urgently needs attention, said Jean-Marie Guehenno, president of Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group, which is currently tracking more than 30 conflicts globally.
South Sudan ranked alongside Afghanistan and Syria last year as the three least peaceful countries in the world in an annual index compiled by the Institute for Economics and Peace.
From the Washington Post, intolerance plus a flagging enthusiasm:
Texas representative to staff: Ask Muslim visitors to pledge allegiance
Freshman state Rep. Molly White, R-Belton, is not in Austin today to celebrate Texas Muslim Capitol Day. But she left instructions for the staff in her Capitol office on how to handle visitors who are, including asking them to declare allegiance to the United States.
“I did leave an Israeli flag on the reception desk in my office with instructions to staff to ask representatives from the Muslim community to renounce Islamic terrorist groups and publicly announce allegiance to America and our laws,” she posted on Facebook. “We will see how long they stay in my office.”
Texas Muslim Capitol Day is organized by the Texas chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. On its website, the day-long event is described as “an opportunity for community members to learn about the democratic political process and how to be an advocate for important issues.” The agenda calls for sessions about political activism and visits to the offices of state representatives.
From the New York Times, taking Islamophobia to extremes in the Hexagon:
French Police Question Boy, 8, Over Remarks on Paris Terror Attacks
Police officials in the southern French city of Nice questioned an 8-year-old boy who is believed to have made comments in school defending the gunmen who killed 17 people in terrorist attacks in and near Paris this month, a senior regional police official confirmed on Thursday.
The questioning of the boy, which occurred Wednesday, grabbed headlines across the country and spurred a debate on social media and elsewhere about whether France’s desire to combat terrorism was tipping over into hysteria. Since the attacks, France has moved to enforce tough new laws against the incitement of terrorism, fueling tensions between free speech and public order.
The boy was identified as a Muslim by the French National Observatory Against Islamophobia. His name was not released because he is a minor. The authorities said he first aroused notice at his school after he refused to observe the minute of silence honoring the victims of the Paris attacks, according to Fabienne Lewandowski, the deputy director of security in the Alpes-Maritimes department. She said the boy later lashed out at the journalists of Charlie Hebdo, the satirical newspaper that was targeted in the attacks, and defended the terrorists, who were killed by the police on Jan. 9.
Likewise, in Austria, via TheLocal.at:
Man jailed for far-right Facebook comments
A 36-year-old man from Lower Austria has received an 18 month conditional prison sentence and been ordered to pay a €500 fine for making far-right statements on Facebook.
The judge was told that the man, a father of three from Wiener Neustadt, had become a skinhead at the age of 12, and had his first Nazi-inspired tattoos at the age of 14.
“This stupid ideology has been inside me since I was a teenager – I can’t deny it. But I never intended to do anything radical or even incite people,” the man said in his defence.
He admitted to posting a number of xenophobic and Nazi-inspired comments on the internet in 2012 and 2013. He said that on one occasion he wrote “Happy Birthday Papa Adolf” on Facebook when he was drunk, and that he would often write inflammatory statements after having too many beers. “Sometimes I couldn’t even remember doing it the next day, until friends would call me and tell me I was an idiot,” he said.
And back to France with TheLocal.fr:
France: What you can’t say post-terror attacks
France’s Humans Rights League has criticised the government and the courts for jailing those who spoke out often “rashly”.
“Now judges are sending people to prison for rash things they said, either when they were drunk or something they uttered just to be provocative,” the organisation’s Agnes Tricoire told The Local.
“But who are these people they are jailing? Drunks, people with mental health problems. It’s ridiculous. This is not the way to deal with ‘glorifying terrorism’.
“It’s not by sending them to prison that we’ll stop young people from wanting to be provocative.”
While Reuters looks at causes:
In France’s suburbs, state neglect breeds resentment
Soul-searching in France in the weeks since Islamist gunmen killed 17 people has centred on battling radical Islam and reinforcing the country’s secular tradition. In the “cités”, housing estates like those in which the gunmen grew up, this seems to many like seeking a scapegoat for decades of neglect.
“We’re not all drug dealers, bank robbers and even less so jihadis,” said 28-year-old Yamine Ouassini, whose grandparents emigrated to France from North Africa.
A decade ago he joined riots in Aulnay-Sous-Bois, about 30 minutes’ drive northeast of Paris, in protest at the hopelessness of life in France’s poorest suburbs. Now a qualified technician, he is looking for work and says nothing has changed.
“The problem in France is not secularism or Islam, it’s unemployment. That’s the real subject and we shouldn’t hide behind other issues.”
From Deutsche Welle English, an opposing force:
Germany: Taking a stand against xenophobia
Program notes:
In recent months, a group that calls itself PEGIDA, an acronym that translates as “Patriotic Europeans against the Islamization of the West”, has been holding near-weekly rallies in Dresden. At the rallies, marchers wave German flags and chant xenophobic, anti-refugee, and anti-Muslim slogans. But a counter-movement is gaining ground.
After the jump, a would-be nuclear spy jailed, another form of religious extremism in Israel, Chilean coup killers imprisoned, indigestion from spooky cybergluttony, Panamanian presidential sleazy eavesdropping, the latest “skeletal” malware attack, China ramps up its Internet crackdown and consequences ensue, Tokyo and Washington hang out the South China Sea Chinese unwelcome mat, Japan mulls ISIS hostage rescue military options while Shinzo Abe hints at a World War II apology. . .
From the Guardian, the culmination of a nuclear sting:
US nuclear scientist secretly taped by FBI claiming he could bomb New York
Los Alamos scientist Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni jailed for five years after also offering to build nuclear weapons for Venezuela
A disgruntled, former Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist promised to build 40 nuclear weapons for Venezuela and design a bomb targeted for New York City in exchange for “money and power,” according to secret FBI recordings released Wednesday.
In the recordings, Pedro Leonardo Mascheroni tells an agent posing as a Venezuelan official that the bombs would prevent the United States from invading the oil-rich nation and brags to his wife that the passing of secrets would make him wealthy.
“I’m going to be the boss with money and power,” the naturalized US citizen from Argentina is heard saying. “I’m not an American anymore. This is it.”
The Guardian covers another form of religious extremism:
Israeli city told to pay women damages after failing to remove ‘modesty signs’
Billboards in ultra-orthodox community bar women from certain buildings and pavements and warn against ‘slutty clothing worn in a religious style’
Four female campaigners have been awarded damages in a groundbreaking case in an Israeli court, after their local municipality refused to remove illegal and threatening signs demanding women wear “modest” clothing in public.
The case marks the first time that campaigners against gender segregation in Israel’s ultra-orthodox Jewish communities have persuaded a court to rule against the so-called “modesty signs” – despite the fact that they were deemed unlawful by the attorney general two years ago.
Judge David Gidoni found that the failure of the local authority in the city of Beit Shemesh to take down the signs violated the women’s civil rights. He ruled that the “hurtful, degrading and discriminatory” signs put up by ultra-orthodox radicals “delivered a mortal blow to the rights of women in the city” and instructed Beit Shemesh to compensate the women for their “mental anguish”. The municipality must now pay each of the women 15,000 shekels (£2,530) in compensation.
The signs include “warnings” excluding women from certain buildings and pavements in the city of 80,000, which is about 20 miles south-west of Jerusalem. Another billboard, signed “residents of the neighbourhood”, declares: “Dire warning: It is forbidden to walk on our streets in immodest dress, including slutty clothing worn in a religious style.” Another sign – posted near a synagogue – instructs women to walk on the opposite pavement.
Chilean coup killers imprisoned, via the New York Times:
2 Sentenced in Murders in Chile Coup
Two former Chilean intelligence officials have been sentenced in the murders of two American citizens shortly after the 1973 coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet.
Pedro Espinoza, a retired army intelligence officer, was sentenced to seven years in the killings of the Americans, Frank Teruggi and Charles Horman, while Rafael González, who worked for Chilean Air Force intelligence, was sentenced to two years of police supervision as an accomplice in the Horman murder. The 276-page ruling was issued on Jan. 9 but was not made public until Wednesday, after all parties had been notified.
When he was killed, Mr. Horman, 31, a filmmaker and journalist, had been living in Chile with his wife, Joyce, researching a political murder and writing scripts for the state-run Chile Films. Mr. Teruggi, 24, a graduate of the California Institute of Technology, was studying economics and collaborated in a weekly news digest. The Horman case inspired the award-winning 1982 Costa-Gavras film “Missing.”
From CBC News, indigestion from spooky cybergluttony:
CSE’s Levitation project: Expert says spy agencies ‘drowning in data’ and unable to follow leads
U.S. reports question effectiveness of bulk collection in hunt for terrorists
Mass trawling of internet data — as done by Canada’s electronic spy agency in a project dubbed Levitation — can impede cyber spies in the hunt for extremists more than it helps, some security experts argue.
“We’ve focused too much on bulk collection just because there’s a capacity to survey broad swaths of digital communication and collect it and store it, potentially indefinitely,” says Adam Molnar, a Canadian security expert teaching at an Australian university.
But that collection may not only be harmful to privacy and civil liberties concerns, but ineffective as well, the Deakin University lecturer argues.
“Even in instances where we see an attack occur, these agencies are drowning in data and they’re not even able to follow up on specific leads.”
Panamanian presidential sleazy eavesdropping, via the McClatchy Foreign Staff:
Panama’s ex-president’s hunger for gossip at center of wiretap probe
When the United States rejected former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s request for spying equipment to eavesdrop, U.S. diplomats feared, on his political enemies, the former supermarket baron turned to another source: Israel.
Now scores of Panama’s political and social elite are learning that the eavesdropping program that Martinelli’s security team set in place sprawled into the most private aspects of their lives – including their bedrooms. Rather than national security, what appears to have driven the wiretapping was a surfeit of the seven deadly sins, particularly greed, pride, lust and envy.
Nearly every day, targets of the wiretapping march to the prosecutors’ office to see what their dossiers contain, often emerging in distress. Martinelli, who left office in July, is facing a rising tide of outrage not only over the wiretapping, but also over reports of vast corruption. His personal secretary has left the country. The eavesdropping equipment has vanished.
“Martinelli was obsessed with knowing what everybody was gossiping or saying about him,” said Álvaro Alemán Healy, the Cabinet chief for the current president, Juan Carlos Varela. “He used to brag that he had a file or dossier on everybody who is important here in Panama.”
SecurityWeek covers the latest skeletal malware attack:
Skeleton Key Malware Linked to Backdoor Trojan: Symantec
Researchers at Symantec say a recently discovered piece of malware aimed at Active Directory may be linked to a separate malware family used in attacks against targets in the U.S. and Vietnam.
Earlier this month, researchers from Dell SecureWorks identified malware they called ‘Skeleton Key.’ The malware was discovered on a client network that used single-factor authentication for access to webmail and VPN – giving the threat actor total access to remote access services. According to Dell SecureWorks, the malware is deployed as an in-memory patch on a victim’s Active Directory domain controllers. In the cases they found, the attackers used the PsExec tool to run the Skeleton Key DLL remotely on the target domain controllers using the rundll32 command.
“Symantec has analyzed Trojan.Skelky (Skeleton Key) and found that it may be linked to the Backdoor.Winnti malware family,” blogged Symantec researcher Gavin O’Gorman. “The attackers behind the Trojan.Skelky campaign appear to have been using the malware in conjunction with this back door threat. It’s unclear if the malware family Backdoor.Winnti is used by one attack group or many groups.”
From the New York Times, China ramps up its Internet crackdown:
China Clamps Down Still Harder on Internet Access
Jing Yuechen, the founder of an Internet start-up here in the Chinese capital, has no interest in overthrowing the Communist Party. But these days she finds herself cursing the nation’s smothering cyberpolice as she tries — and fails — to browse photo-sharing websites like Flickr and struggles to stay in touch with the Facebook friends she has made during trips to France, India and Singapore.
Gmail has become almost impossible to use here, and in recent weeks the authorities have gummed up Astrill, the software Ms. Jing and countless others depended on to circumvent the Internet restrictions that Western security analysts refer to as the Great Firewall.
By interfering with Astrill and several other popular virtual private networks, or V.P.N.s, the government has complicated the lives of Chinese astronomers seeking the latest scientific data from abroad, graphic designers shopping for clip art on Shutterstock and students submitting online applications to American universities.
And consequences ensue, via RT:
US business groups alarmed over China’s new ‘intrusive’ cybersecurity regulations
US business groups have sounded the alarm over China’s new cybersecurity rules, adopted amid Snowden leaks. They say the rules are intrusive, require tech companies to disclose sensitive intellectual property, and create backdoors for Chinese authorities.
The American Chamber of Commerce in China and 17 other US business lobbies addressed a letter to the Central Leading Small Group for Cyberspace Affairs, led by Chinese President Xi Jinping, on Wednesday. In the letter, the business groups called on the Chinese government to take part in “urgent discussion and dialogue” over the new cybersecurity regulations.
The new Chinese rules impose tight security checks that would force tech companies to disclose sensitive intellectual property, the US lobby groups said.
Tokyo and Washington hang out the South China Sea Chinese unwelcome mat, via People’s Daily:
Japan forces unwelcome in S.China Sea
Robert Thomas, commander of the Seventh Fleet, said on Thursday that the US would welcome a Japanese extension of air patrols over the South China Sea, because “the Chinese fishing fleet, the Chinese coastguard and the [navy] overmatch their neighbors.” It is rare that a top US navy officer openly called for Japan to counterbalance China in the South China Sea. By press time, there had not been an official response from either China or Japan. But, it’s certain that China would be firmly against any extension of Japanese air patrols over the South China Sea. If Japan takes the plunge, it will have to face countermeasures from China.
Japan has expressed its interest in playing a role in the South China Sea, but we hope Tokyo could curb its appetite. Even if the South China Sea is of great significance to Japan as the sea passage for the island nation to the Middle East and Europe, this can’t alter the fact that as an extra-regional country, Japan is not supposed to interfere in South China Sea disputes.
China has reiterated its support for free South China Sea navigation. There is no reason for Japan to expand air patrols into the region, altering the geopolitical landscape and acting like a protagonist.
From Jiji Press, Japan mulls ISIS hostage rescue military options:
SDF’s Role Limited in Rescue of Japanese Overseas
The Japanese government hopes to pass legislation that would allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to launch missions to rescue Japanese nationals overseas.
However, such operations will prove extremely problematic if they require the use of force against terrorist groups such as Islamic State.
“It is the responsibility of the government to use the SDF capabilities to rescue Japanese nationals abroad, upon consent from sovereign states involved,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a meeting of the House of Representatives Budget Committee Thursday.
While Shinzo Abe hints at a World War II apology, via Jiji Press:
Japan Caused Enormous Trouble to Asian Countries: Abe
Japan caused a lot of trouble to other Asian countries in the wartime, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Thursday.
“A number of Japanese people lost their lives and enormous trouble was caused to other Asian peoples,” Abe told a House of Representative Budget Committee meeting.
“We must not repeat the calamity of war ever again. This is the biggest lesson we’ve learned,” Abe also said in response to questions from Democratic Party of Japan Acting President Akira Nagatsuma.
Abe plans to release a statement in August to mark the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II. In connection with this, Nagatsuma asked what Abe thinks about the “mistaken national policy” mentioned in a similar statement issued in 1995 by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama.
