Your Activist News Source

Activists protest education cuts at Capitol; about 70 arrested

2012-03-05T22:09:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times
Mar. 5, 2012
By Chris Megerian

Reporting from Sacramento - Thousands of students and activists marched on the state Capitol on Monday to protest cuts in higher education, and authorities arrested 68 of them who refused to leave the building after it closed in the evening.

Four had been arrested earlier in the day, one on suspicion of possessing a switchblade.

The demonstration, billed by some as an "occupy the Capitol" act and supported by a freewheeling coalition of student groups and labor unions, was the latest sign of simmering discontent over steady hikes in the cost of attending state universities and community colleges.

Tuition has tripled at the universities over the last decade. "We're getting pushed against a wall," said Carson Watts, 23, a sociology major at UC Santa Cruz.

Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed a budget last year that slashed funding for the University of California and Cal State systems by 23%, did not attend the rally. But he said through a spokeswoman: "The students today are reflecting the frustrations of millions of Californians who have seen their public schools and universities eroded year after year. That's why it's imperative that we get more tax revenue this November"— a reference to his proposed ballot initiative to raise taxes.

Democratic political leaders largely embraced the demonstrators, most of whom stayed outside. Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles), Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom addressed the rally on the west steps.

"We've cut billions of dollars, and I've hated every minute of it," Steinberg said.

The California Highway Patrol, in charge of security, declined to estimate the number of protesters.

Full Article Here - http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-protest-20120306,0,718441.story

Richest 1 Percent Account For Nearly All Of U.S. Recovery's Gains: Report

2012-03-05T21:29:00.000-08:00

Huffington Post
Mar. 5, 2012
By Alexander Eichler

Technically, the economy has been in recovery for two years. But it turns out the rich have been doing most of the recovering.

In 2010 -- the first full year since the end of the Great Recession -- virtually all of the income growth in America took place among the country's very wealthiest people, says an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. The top 1 percent of earners took in a full 93 percent of all the income gains that year, leaving the other 7 percent of gains to be sprinkled among the vast majority of society.

Those numbers come courtesy of Emmanuel Saez, the Berkeley economist who co-created a resource known as the World Top Incomes Database. Saez and his colleagues crunched the data on income growth from 2010, the most recent year available, and found that it was shockingly lopsided.

While much of the country is simply treading water, with a growing number of people either edging toward poverty or already there, the richest of the rich seem to be coping nicely.

Saez's findings suggest that even though the recession dealt a blow to the 1 percent, it did little to push the U.S. off the path it's been on for decades -- that of a vast and growing disparity between the richest and poorest citizens.

Income for most workers has barely risen in the last 30 years, but the top 1 percent of earners have seen their income almost triple in the same amount of time. Economists and other experts say that could be the result of any number of factors, including the decline of labor unions, the explosion in capital gains during the middle part of the aughts, and tax policies put in place in recent years that favor the wealthy.

Full Article Here - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/05/1-percent-income-inequality_n_1321008.html

'49 human rights workers killed in Colombia in 2011'

2012-03-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

Colombia Reports
Mar. 4, 2012
By Adriaan Alsema

Forty-nine human rights defenders were killed in Colombia last year while violence against these defenders went up by 36%, an NGO collective said Saturday.

Spanish press agency EFE was given a report by "Somos Defensores" (We are Defenders), in which the organization of NGOs denounced that 239 violent actions were taken against human rights defenders in 2011.

The violent actions consisted of assassinations, threats, forced disappearances, assassination attempts, arbitrary detentions, assaults and an irregular application of the justice system, said the organization.

The 239 violations constitute a 36% increase compared to 2010 when there were 174 violent acts against human rights defenders registered.

According to Somos Defensores, 25 of the 49 assassinations took place in the northwestern departments of Antioquia, Cordoba and Sucre and are committed by neo-paramilitary groups that are resisting the return of land stolen by paramilitary organization AUC, its successors and local elites.

"The fact that in 50% of the reported cases the presumed responsible are the paramilitaries is an indication that these [groups] continue to act uncontrollably," the report said.

Full Article Here - http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22599-49-human-rights-workers-killed-in-colombia-in-2011.html

Tibetan woman burns herself to death in Sichuan

2012-03-04T22:55:00.000-08:00

BBC News
Mar. 4, 2012

A Tibetan mother-of-four has died after setting herself on fire in south-west China, activists and exiles say.

The UK-based Free Tibet group said the woman set herself on fire near the Kirti Monastery in Aba prefecture in Sichuan province.

It is the latest in a spate of self-immolations by ethnic Tibetans in apparent protest against Chinese rule.

Security in Tibetan areas of China has been further tightened ahead of sensitive anniversaries.

The Kirti Monastery has been at the forefront of pro-Tibetan protests in recent months.

Reports said that the woman, with her body in flames, shouted for Tibetan freedom and the return of spiritual leader the Dalai Lama before she died.

Local officials have not commented on the incident.

More than 20 Tibetans have burned themselves to death in the past year, despairing at what they say is repressive Chinese rule and the erosion of their culture.

Full Article Here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-17254051

Vancouver robocall protesters demand public inquiry

2012-03-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

CBC
Mar. 3, 2012

Demonstrators marched through downtown Vancouver Saturday in protest of the robocall scandal.

Carrying placards and flags, chanting slogans and following police on motorcycles, a modest number of demonstrators that included members of Parliament, union leaders and average citizens marched to a prominent war memorial from the Vancouver Art Gallery.

"There isn't a more important issue than this in Canada right now," said rally organizer Sarah Beuhler, with OpenMedia.ca.

"We can fight on every issue but if we can't trust the ballot box this is going to turn into something very shortly that isn't Canada."

Representatives from the NDP and the Liberals urged whoever is responsible to come forward, as did Vancouver City Coun. Adriane Carr.

"This is the biggest fundamental disregard of democracy I have seen in this country," she said. "We are talking about illegal activity."

"This is something that is unheard of in this country, and I think what we should be most concerned about is that American dirty politics has now come to Canada," Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies said.

Protesters were also collecting signatures for a petition that calls for a public inquiry into the robocall scandal. As of Saturday morning, more than 37,000 signatures had been collected.

Full Article Here - http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2012/03/03/bc-robocall-rally.html?cmp=rss

Poisoned DoS tool infects Anonymous

2012-03-04T22:12:00.000-08:00

SC Magazine
Mar. 5, 2012

Symantec has seized on an alleged scam in which supporters of the Anonymous hacktivists may have been "tricked" into infecting their own machines with the Zeus trojan.

The security firm said it had tracked a change in a pastebin entry that instructed internet users on how to participate in a denial-of-service attack in the wake of the Megaupload raids.

A download link to the denial-of-service tool was replaced with a "trojanised" version that stole usernames, passwords, banking credentials and cookies, Symantec said.

"Not only will supporters be breaking the law by participating in DoS attacks on Anonymous hacktivism targets, but may also be at risk of having their online banking and email credentials stolen," the firm said.

"The joining of malicious financial and identity fraud malware, Anonymous hacktivism objectives, and Anonymous supporter deception is a dangerous development for the online world."

Full Article Here - http://www.scmagazine.com.au/News/292594,poisoned-dos-tool-infects-anonymous.aspx?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=SC+Magazine+All+Articles+feed

Police are linked to blacklist of construction workers

2012-03-04T22:05:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Mar. 3, 2012
By Daniel Boffey

The police or security services supplied information to a blacklist funded by the country's major construction firms that has kept thousands of people out of work over the past three decades.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has revealed that records that could only have come from the police or MI5 have been discovered in a vast database of files held on 3,200 victims who were deemed leftwing or troublesome.

The files were collected by the Consulting Association, a clandestine organisation funded by major names in the construction industry.

Its database was seized nearly three years ago, but the extraordinary nature of the information held has only now emerged, following an employment tribunal for one of the victims, Dave Smith, a 46-year-old engineer who had a 36-page file against his name and was victimised repeatedly for highlighting safety hazards on sites, including the presence of asbestos.

David Clancy, investigations manager at the ICO, told the central London tribunal adjudicating on Smith's claims against construction giant Carillion that "there is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services".

Speaking to the Observer, Clancy added: "The information was so specific and it contained in effect operational information that wouldn't have formed anything other than a police record."

The scandal will be thrown open to further public exposure in the coming months as a class action by 100 victims against at least 39 companies is set to be pursued in the high court by Hugh Tomlinson QC, currently counsel for several of the phone-hacking claimants. The revelations will inevitably raise fresh questions about the probity of the police in a week in which its relationship with major news corporations, and News International in particular, has come under sharp focus. Last week the Leveson inquiry heard that the police were investigating a "network of corrupt officials" as part of their inquiries into phone hacking and police corruption.

Clancy said he was unable further to trace the specific sources of the information held in the Consulting Association files because it touched on individuals living across the country and stretched over three decades.

He added that the relationship between the Consulting Association and the police and security services appeared to have been nurtured when the organisation went under an earlier guise as the Economic League, at a time when the state was keen to liaise with major building firms to discover as much as it could about Irish construction workers amid the threat of IRA terrorism.

John McDonnell MP, who first raised the issue of blacklisting a decade ago, said he would demand a debate in parliament on what he described as collusion. "I am outraged at the systematic abuse of people's rights. This has destroyed people's lives, broken up families, ensured that people have not been able to earn a living. It has devastated people year after year, and nobody has listened to us. No one has been willing to believe the extent to which there has been collusion between police, security services and companies. It is all about the ability of companies to exploit workers and destroy anybody who stands up against them."

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/03/police-blacklist-link-construction-workers

Judge rules Illinois eavesdropping law unconstitutional for second time in a year

2012-03-03T07:41:00.001-08:00

Associated Press
Mar. 2, 2012

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — An Illinois law against recording conversations was ruled unconstitutional Friday, the second time in the past year a judge has struck it down.

The eavesdropping law makes it a felony to record conversations without the consent of everyone involved. Even recording public officials in public places can be illegal.

Cook County Judge Stanley Sacks declared the law unconstitutional Friday, saying it went too far and could make “wholly innocent conduct” illegal.

The ruling comes in the case of Christopher Drew, an artist who was arrested in 2009 for selling his work on a downtown Chicago street without a permit. Police charged Drew with violating the eavesdropping law after learning he recorded conversations during his arrest.

Drew said Friday he was happy with Sacks’ decision. The law should let people gather information about police conduct in public, he said.

“Otherwise, you need to come out with a big camera rolling, and they’ve already pulled their pants up,” Drew said.

But Drew’s attorney, Joshua Kutnick, said Sacks rejected Drew’s claim that he had a First Amendment right to gather information on police. Instead, he said, the judge ruled the law’s restrictions were simply too broad.

The decision comes as state lawmakers consider legislation to revamp the eavesdropping statute and permit the recording of public officials on duty in public places.

Full Article Here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-rules-illinois-eavesdropping-law-unconstitutional-for-second-time-in-a-year/2012/03/02/gIQADbDCnR_story.html

BP settles Gulf spill suits, expects $7.8B payout

2012-03-02T23:49:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Mar. 3, 2012
By HARRY R. WEBER

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP agreed late Friday to settle lawsuits brought by more than 100,000 fishermen who lost work, cleanup workers who got sick and others who claimed harm from the oil giant's 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, the worst offshore oil spill in the nation's history.

The momentous settlement will have no cap to compensate the plaintiffs, though BP PLC estimated it would have to pay out about $7.8 billion, making it one of the largest class-action settlements ever. After the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, the company ultimately settled with the U.S. government for $1 billion, which would be about $1.8 billion today.

BP still has to resolve claims by the U.S. government, Gulf states and its partners in the doomed Deepwater Horizon project, in which pressure from a well a mile below the ocean's surface blew up a massive drilling rig, killing 11 men and spewing oil into the sea for nearly three months. Those claims from the government could add billions more to its tab, and BP has already paid out billions in cleanup costs and to compensate victims.

The U.S. Justice Department, in a statement, said Friday's settlement is not the end of the road, by far.

"The United States will continue to work closely with all five Gulf states to ensure that any resolution of the federal law enforcement and damage claims, including natural resources damages, arising out of this unprecedented environmental disaster is just, fair and restores the Gulf for the benefit of the people of the Gulf states," the agency said.

BP said it expects the money to come from the $20 billion compensation fund that it previously set up. According to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust, current total trust assets are approximately $9.5 billion.

BP's payout estimate includes what the company internally predicts legal fees for the numerous plaintiffs lawyers in the case will be, though the issue has not yet been discussed between both sides, according to a person with direct knowledge of the settlement terms who spoke on condition of anonymity because those details are confidential.

BP anticipates that the separate claims fund run by Ken Feinberg will cease at some point in the near future and that new vehicles will be set up and supervised by the court to pay claims as part of the settlement. People waiting for money from Feinberg's Gulf Coast Claims Facility can take what the settlement vehicles offer them or opt out and make a claim directly to a BP-run entity. If they don't like what they get from that entity, they can sue, the person said. Pending offers before the GCCF will be honored, the person said.

Full Article Here - http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i6jsgFr2yriBdHWaSadVZHGrDZTw?docId=cf0b386414c34aa9980ffefd8553d97d

Anonymous Hacked Into Monsanto's Database In Retaliation For Lawsuits Against Organic Farmers

2012-03-02T22:25:00.002-08:00

Business Insider
Mar. 3, 2012
By Sanya Khetani

In its latest strike on the biotech conglomerate Monsanto, hacking group Anonymous published an outdated database of the company’s information and emails, CNET reports.

"Your continued attack on the worlds [sic] food supply, as well as the health of those who eat it, has earned you our full attention," wrote Anonymous, under the banner ‘AntiSec’. "Your crimes against humanity are too many to name on one page," it added.

Anonymous says its onslaught was brought on by Monsanto’s lawsuits against 9,000 organic dairy farmers who stated on their labels that they didn’t use growth hormones.

The hackers went on to say that although they knew releasing old data was not going to harm Monsanto, they would continue to attack the company and “expose” its “bulls**t”, ending with the threat: “Expect Us”.

Anonymous' battle with Monsanto began in July 2011 when the suit against the farmers was filed. Anonymous hacked into the company's website and released data on about 2,500 individuals associated with the agriculture industry. About 10 percent of this information was related to current or former Monsanto employees.

Full Article Here - http://www.businessinsider.com/anonymous-monsanto-2012-3#ixzz1o240VceX

'Irish Sopa' legislation passed despite robust opposition

2012-03-01T22:29:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Mar. 1, 2012
By Henry McDonald

The Irish government has passed into law controversial copyright legislation that internet freedom groups have called a new form of censorship.

Seán Sherlock, the Labour minister for research and innovation, signed the legislation to amend copyright law in Ireland.

Opposition to the legislation – called by critics the "Irish Sopa" after the US Stop Online Piracy Act – has been robust. Ireland is a major global hub for companies such as Google and Facebook, which are among the biggest employers in Dublin, and some in the hi-tech industry believe the changes could curb the growth of online business in the Republic.

Sherlock said he "urged all interested parties to focus now on making Ireland a model of international best practice for innovation, and ensuring that our copyright laws facilitate the achievement of this goal".

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/01/irish-sopa-legislation-passed?newsfeed=true

Anonymous Hackers Claim They Were Infiltrated

2012-03-01T22:21:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Mar. 2, 2012

LIMA, Peru (AP) — People identifying themselves as activists in the Anonymous hacker movement said Wednesday it wasn't technical prowess but police infiltration that yielded 25 arrests in a sweep in Europe and South America.

In conversations in an online chat room where Spanish-speaking activists in the Americas and Spain regularly gather, they said nearly all of those arrested had been active on a single website used by the group.

Among those detained were a Spaniard known by the online nickname "Pacotron" or "Thunder," according to Spanish police and a communique issued by Anonymous Iberoamerica, which said he lives in Malaga.

The statement by the loosely organized collective's Spanish-language branch identified another of those arrested as a Spaniard known as "Troy" who it said owned computer servers in "such distant places as Slovakia and Romania."

Interpol, which announced the arrests Tuesday, did not say how it encountered the 25 suspects, who it says were involved in cyberattacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain that targeted sites including Colombia's defense ministry and presidency and Chile's Endesa electricity company and national library.

Activists encountered in the chat room said some of those arrested belonged to a group of hackers called Sector404 while others were unsophisticated activists who took part in denial-of-service attacks, which overwhelm websites with data requests.

"The GREAT majority of those implicated were people inhabiting the servers of anonworld.info, something that disconcerts us," said the activist "Skao," who identified herself as a law student.

In the communique released on its blog, Anonymous Iberoamerica said the 25 were snared not
through "inteligence work or informatics strategy" but rather through "the use of spies and informants within the movement."

The activists said many of those arrested had been careless, leaving digital tracks.

A spokeswoman for Chile's chief prosecutor, Marlis Pfeiffer, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that authorities had released the five people arrested there in the sweep, two of whom were 17-year-olds. Anonymous Iberoamerica said three of them were computer science students, one a programmer and one a Colombian.

Full Article Here - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=147695561

EU agencies say Google breaking law: commissioner

2012-03-01T22:07:00.001-08:00

Reuters
Mar. 1, 2012

Data protection agencies in European countries have concluded Google Inc's new privacy policy is in breach of European law, EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding said Thursday.

France's data protection watchdog, the CNIL, has also cast doubt on the legality of the policy and informed Google it would lead a European-wide investigation into this.

Reding told BBC Radio Four data control authorities in Europe asked French counterparts to analyze the new policy.

"And they have come to the conclusion that they are deeply concerned, and that the new rules are not in accordance with the European law, and that the transparency rules have not been applied," Reding said.

Google said in January it was simplifying its privacy policy, consolidating 60 guidelines into a single one that will apply to all its services including YouTube, Gmail and social network Google+.
Users cannot opt out of the new policy if they want to continue using Google's services.

Asked in what respects the policy could be breaking EU law, Reding said: "In numerous respects. One is that nobody had been consulted, it is not in accordance with the law on transparency and it utilizes the data of private persons in order to hand it over to third parties, which is not what the users have agreed to."

It would have been impossible for Google to instigate the policy under proposed legislation she laid out on January 25, Reding said.

"Protection of personal data is a basic rule of the European Union. It is inscribed in the treaties. It is not an if, it is a must," she said.

Full Article Here - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/01/us-google-privacy-eu-idUSTRE82011K20120301

Car plows through Occupy demonstrators at UC Santa Cruz campus

2012-03-01T14:51:00.002-08:00

Santa Cruz Sentinel
Mar. 1, 2012
By J.M. Brown

SANTA CRUZ -- About a hundred students blocked entrance to the UC Santa Cruz campus Thursday morning, not allowing vehicles to enter as part of an Occupy Education rally.

Just after 8:30 a.m. a man driving a Ford Mustang drove up High Street and tried to make a right turn onto campus. He revved his engine, but the crowd briefly stopped him from entering. The driver then revved his engine again and drove through the crowd of demonstrators at the High Street entrance, striking several people and a bike.

No one was seriously injured. UCSC Police Chief Nader Oweis, who was the only officer on scene when the incident happened, ordered the driver to back up the car, out of the crowded intersection.

The crowd chanted "arrest him, arrest him." The driver and his female passenger were detained and removed from the area, which was quickly swarming with police.

Abby Edwards, 20, said she was knocked to the ground by the car, hitting her head and her knee because of the impact.

"Suddenly I'm on the hood and then on the ground," she said.

Edwards said she was very close to being under the car before someone pulled her to safety.

Full Article Here - http://www.mercurynews.com/central-coast/ci_20079890

China steps up Internet controls in Tibet

2012-03-01T12:42:00.000-08:00

AFP
Mar. 1, 2012

China's top leader in Tibet has ordered increased controls over the Internet and mobile phones, state press said Thursday, ahead of upcoming sensitive anniversaries in the restive region.

Chen Quanguo, Communist Party head of Tibet, said maintaining stability in the Himalayan region was of utmost importance during the meeting of China's National People's Congress which opens its annual session on Monday, the Tibet Daily said.

"Mobile phones, Internet and other measures for the management of new media need to be fully implemented," the paper quoted Chen as telling a Thursday meeting.

"We must further spread throughout the region the the main idea that stability means everything. Unstable elements must be nipped in the bud and all work at maintaining stability must be deepened."

The controls on new media appeared to be aimed at stopping information of unrest and crackdowns in one area from spreading and inciting other areas.

Chen's comments follow a series of measures implemented by the government following a recent spate of self-immolations and violent protests against Chinese rule in the nation's Tibetan-inhabited areas.

At least 22 self-immolation attempts have occurred in China over the last year, with many being undertaken by Tibetan Buddhist monks or former monks, rights groups say.

Police have also opened fire on Tibetan protesters in recent weeks.

In his speech, Chen said security forces must "crush hostile forces" led by the Dalai Lama who are plotting to bring instability to Tibet and destroy the atmosphere for the congressional meeting.

Beijing has blamed the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader who fled to India in March 1959, for recent unrest in Tibet and nearby areas.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/china-steps-internet-controls-tibet-005953151.html

U.S. 'info ops' programs dubious, costly

2012-02-29T20:49:00.000-08:00

USA Today
Feb. 29, 2012
By Tom Vanden Brook and Ray Locker

WASHINGTON – As the Pentagon has sought to sell wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to often-hostile populations there, it has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on poorly tracked marketing and propaganda campaigns that military leaders like to call "information operations," the modern equivalent of psychological warfare.

From 2005 to 2009, such spending rose from $9 million to $580 million a year mostly in Iraq and Afghanistan, Pentagon and congressional records show. Last year, spending dropped to $202 million as the Iraq War wrapped up. A USA TODAY investigation, based on dozens of interviews and a series of internal military reports, shows that Pentagon officials have little proof the programs work and they won't make public where the money goes. In Iraq alone, more than $173 million was paid to what were identified only as "miscellaneous foreign contractors."

"What we do as I.O. is almost gimmicky," says Army Col. Paul Yingling, who served three tours in Iraq between 2003 and 2009, including as an information operations specialist. "Doing posters, fliers or radio ads. These things are unserious."

Indeed, information operations are no panacea in crises such as the current showdown in Afghanistan after revelations that U.S. forces burned copies of the Quran, the Islamic holy book. NATO and Afghan forces have had little success in calming the country after a week of riots, attacks on U.S. and NATO forces and even a suicide car bombing.

The Pentagon's counterinsurgency manual — the guide to U.S. military policy in Afghanistan — urges commanders to "aggressively use" information operations to win over local populations and to "admit mistakes (or actions perceived as mistakes) quickly."

President Obama has apologized to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called the Quran burning a mistake. While the riots have subsided, it's unclear whether even the best information operations program could have stopped the growing rage over this incident.

As to whether the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in Afghanistan and Iraq have been worth the U.S. investment, the USA TODAY investigation found:

Full Article Here - http://www.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-02-29/afghanistan-iraq-military-information-operations-usa-today-investigation/53295472/1

Goodbye, First Amendment: ‘Trespass Bill’ will make protest illegal

2012-02-29T19:45:00.000-08:00

RT News
Feb. 29, 2012

Just when you thought the government couldn’t ruin the First Amendment any further: The House of Representatives approved a bill on Monday that outlaws protests in instances where some government officials are nearby, whether or not you even know it.

The US House of Representatives voted 388-to-3 in favor of H.R. 347 late Monday, a bill which is being dubbed the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011. In the bill, Congress officially makes it illegal to trespass on the grounds of the White House, which, on the surface, seems not just harmless and necessary, but somewhat shocking that such a rule isn’t already on the books. The wording in the bill, however, extends to allow the government to go after much more than tourists that transverse the wrought iron White House fence.

Under the act, the government is also given the power to bring charges against Americans engaged in political protest anywhere in the country.

Under current law, White House trespassers are prosecuted under a local ordinance, a Washington, DC legislation that can bring misdemeanor charges for anyone trying to get close to the president without authorization. Under H.R. 347, a federal law will formally be applied to such instances, but will also allow the government to bring charges to protesters, demonstrators and activists at political events and other outings across America.

The new legislation allows prosecutors to charge anyone who enters a building without permission or with the intent to disrupt a government function with a federal offense if Secret Service is on the scene, but the law stretches to include not just the president’s palatial Pennsylvania Avenue home.
Under the law, any building or grounds where the president is visiting — even temporarily — is covered, as is any building or grounds “restricted in conjunction with an event designated as a special event of national significance."

It’s not just the president who would be spared from protesters, either.

Covered under the bill is any person protected by the Secret Service. Although such protection isn’t extended to just everybody, making it a federal offense to even accidently disrupt an event attended by a person with such status essentially crushes whatever currently remains of the right to assemble and peacefully protest.

Full Article Here - http://rt.com/usa/news/348-act-tresspass-buildings-437/

Exclusive: Homeland Security Kept Tabs on Occupy Wall Street

2012-02-29T15:27:00.002-08:00

Rolling Stone
Feb. 28, 2012
By Michael Hastings

As Occupy Wall Street spread across the nation last fall, sparking protests in more than 70 cities, the Department of Homeland Security began keeping tabs on the movement. An internal DHS report entitled “SPECIAL COVERAGE: Occupy Wall Street," dated October of last year, opens with the observation that "mass gatherings associated with public protest movements can have disruptive effects on transportation, commercial, and government services, especially when staged in major metropolitan areas." While acknowledging the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of OWS, the report notes darkly that "large scale demonstrations also carry the potential for violence, presenting a significant challenge for law enforcement."

The five-page report – contained in 5 million newly leaked documents examined by Rolling Stone in an investigative partnership with WikiLeaks – goes on to sum up the history of Occupy Wall Street and assess its "impact" on everything from financial services to government facilities. Many of the observations are benign, and appear to have been culled from publicly available sources. The report notes, for instance, that in Chicago "five women were arrested after dumping garbage taken from a foreclosed home owned by Bank of America in the lobby one of the bank's branches," and that "OWS in New York staged a 'Millionaires March,' from Zucotti Park to demonstrate outside the homes of some of the city’s richest residents."

But the DHS also appears to have scoured OWS-related Twitter feeds for much of their information. The report includes a special feature on what it calls Occupy's "social media and IT usage," and provides an interactive map of protests and gatherings nationwide – borrowed, improbably enough, from the lefty blog Daily Kos. "Social media and the organic emergence of online communities," the report notes, "have driven the rapid expansion of the OWS movement."

The most ominous aspect of the report, however, comes in its final paragraph:

"The growing support for the OWS movement has expanded the protests’ impact and increased the potential for violence. While the peaceful nature of the protests has served so far to mitigate their impact, larger numbers and support from groups such as Anonymous substantially increase the risk for potential incidents and enhance the potential security risk to critical infrastructure (CI). The continued expansion of these protests also places an increasingly heavy burden on law enforcement and movement organizers to control protesters. As the primary target of the demonstrations, financial services stands the sector most impacted by the OWS protests. Due to the location of the protests in major metropolitan areas, heightened and continuous situational awareness for security personnel across all CI sectors is encouraged."

Full Article Here - http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/exclusive-homeland-security-kept-tabs-on-occupy-wall-street-20120228#ixzz1nofgMF00

Interpol website suffers 'Anonymous cyber-attack'

2012-02-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Feb. 29, 2012
By Ben Quinn

Interpol's website appears to have been the victim of a cyber-attack after the international police agency announced the arrests of 25 suspected members of the hacking activist group Anonymous in Europe and South America.

The website went down briefly on Tuesday as supporters of Anonymous made online claims that it had been targeted following the arrests in Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain. It was quickly back up and running but was loading slowly.

Interpol announced that the arrests had been made under the umbrella of Operation Unmask, which it said was launched in mid-February in the wake of a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from the four countries against targets including the Colombian defence ministry and presidential websites, a Chilean electricity company and Chile's national library.

It added that the operation was carried out by authorities in the four countries under the aegis of Interpol's Latin American Working Group of Experts on Information Technology (IT) Crime, which facilitates the sharing of intelligence between the states involved.

Around 250 items of IT equipment and mobile phones were also seized during searches of 40 premises across 15 cities, Interpol said. Payment cards and cash had also been seized as part of the investigation into the funding of illegal activities carried out by the suspected hackers, aged 17 to 40.

Bernd Rossbach, Interpol's acting executive director of police services, said: "This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences for those involved, and that the internet cannot be seen as a safe haven for criminal activity, no matter where it originates or where it is targeted."

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/29/interpol-website-cyber-attack?newsfeed=true

Interpol arrests 25 suspected members of ‘Anonymous’ hackers group

2012-02-28T22:45:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 28 2012

Interpol has arrested 25 suspected members of the ‘Anonymous’ hackers group in a swoop on over a dozen cities in Europe and Latin America, the global police body said Tuesday.

“Operation Unmask was launched in mid-February following a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain,” said the world police body based in the French city of Lyon.

The statement cited attacks on the websites of the Colombian Ministry of Defense and the presidency, as well as on Chile’s Endesa electricity company and its National Library, among others.

The operation was carried out by police from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain, the statement said, with 250 items of computer equipment and mobile phones seized in raids on 40 premises in 15 cities.

Police also seized credit cards and cash from the suspects, aged 17 to 40.

“This operation shows that crime in the virtual world does have real consequences for those involved, and that the Internet cannot be seen as a safe haven for criminal activity,” said Interpol’s acting director of police services.

However, it was not clear what evidence there was to prove those arrested were part of Anonymous, an extremely loose-knit international movement of online activists, or “hacktivists.”

Spanish police said earlier they had arrested four suspected hackers accused of sabotaging websites and publishing confidential data on the Internet.

They were accused of hacking political parties’ and companies’ websites and adding fangs to the faces of leaders in photographs online, and publishing data identifying top officials’ security guards, Spanish police said.

The operation, carried out after trawling through computer logs in order to trace IP addresses, also netted 10 suspects in Argentina, six in Chile and five in Colombia, Spanish police said.

Full Article Here - http://www.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/02/28/197604.html

Over Last 10 Years, General Electric’s Effective Tax Rate Was 2.3 Percent

2012-02-27T16:34:00.000-08:00

Think Progress
Feb. 27, 2012
By Travis Waldron

The Obama administration unveiled its corporate tax reform plan last week, which would lower the top rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, billing it as an effort to help make the American corporate tax code more competitive. Republicans have long crowed for corporate tax reform, saying America’s high marginal rate stifles competition, but they have blocked efforts (including Obama’s) to close many of the loopholes and schemes corporations use to avoid paying taxes.

General Electric, one of the nation’s largest corporations, found itself at the center of the corporate tax debate last year when the New York Times discovered that it paid nothing in taxes, despite billions of dollars in profits. GE responded to the outcry by promising that its 2011 rate was “slated to return to more normal levels” because of the recovery of GE Capital, its financial arm. But according to an analysis from Citizens for Tax Justice, the company’s 2011 effective tax rate was just 11.3 percent.
Even worse, over a 10-year period from 2002-2011, the company paid $1.9 billion in taxes on $81.2 billion in profits, giving it an effective tax rate of just 2.3 percent for the decade:

Full Article Here - http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/02/27/433250/general-electric-tax-rate-decade/?mobile=nc

White House, NSA weigh cybersecurity, personal privacy

2012-02-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

Washington Post
Feb. 27, 2012
By Ellen Nakashima

The National Security Agency has pushed repeatedly over the past year to expand its role in protecting private-sector computer networks from cyberattacks but has been rebuffed by the White House, largely because of privacy concerns, according to administration officials and internal documents.

The most contentious issue was a legislative proposal last year that would have required hundreds of companies that provide critical services such as electricity generation to allow their Internet traffic be continuously scanned using computer threat data provided by the spy agency. The companies would have been expected to turn over evidence of potential cyberattacks to the government.

NSA officials portrayed these measures as unobtrusive ways to protect the nation’s vital infrastructure from what they say are increasingly dire threats of devastating cyberattacks.

But the White House and Justice Department argued that the proposal would permit unprecedented government monitoring of routine civilian Internet activity, according to documents and officials familiar with the debate. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe administration deliberations; internal documents reviewed by The Washington Post backed these descriptions.

White House officials cautioned the NSA that President Obama has opposed cybersecurity measures that weakened personal privacy protections. They also warned the head of the spy agency, Gen. Keith Alexander, to restrain his public comments after speeches in which he argued that more expansive legal authority was necessary to defend the nation against cyberattacks, according to several officials.

“We have had to remind him to at least be cognizant of what the administration’s policy positions are, so if he’s openly advocating for something beyond that, that is undermining the commander-in-chief,” said an administration official.

The debate, which is surfacing as Congress considers landmark cyber legislation, turns on what means are necessary and appropriate to protect vital private-sector systems from attack by China, Russia or other potential adversaries. Even some criminal gangs and hackers, such as the self-styled activist group Anonymous, increasingly may acquire the tools to mount major assaults on the nation’s computer systems, say U.S. officials.

Full Article Here - http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-nsa-weigh-cyber-security-personal-privacy/2012/02/07/gIQA8HmKeR_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop

FBI disabling GPS trackers to comply with Supreme Court ruling

2012-02-27T15:45:00.000-08:00

Digital Trends
Feb. 27, 2012
By Geoff Duncan

Speaking at the University of San Francisco last Friday, FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann said a recent Supreme Court ruling is ushering in a “sea change” within the U.S. Justice Department as the agency moves to disable some 3,000 GPS tracking devices installed underneath vehicles to track their movements—although, in some cases, the FBI has had to seek permission to turn the devices back on briefly so they can be located and removed.

Weissmann’s remarks were first reported in The Wall Street Journal (subscription required).

The FBI’s actions to disable the tracking devices comes in the wake of the Supreme Court’s January 23rd ruling (PDF) in a case against Antoine Jones. The case dates to 2004; Jones was suspected of drug trafficking, and the FBI obtained a warrant to install a GPS tracking device on a Jeep Cherokee registerred to his wife. However, the warrant expired a day before the FBI was able to install the device, and when the agency did manage to install the tracking device, it did so in Maryland rather than the District of Columbia, which was the only jurisdiction covered by the original warrant.

The Justice Department suppressed collection of GPS data while the car was parked at Jones’ residence, but argued that Jones had no reasonable expectation of privacy while driving on public streets. However, the Supreme Court disagreed, finding that the FBI’s use of the tracking device constituted a search under the Fourth Amendment, which guards against “unreasonable” searches and seizures. The Supreme Court even went a step further, ruling the Fourth Amendment still applies when law enforcement personnel trespass on a person’s property to gather information, even if that person has no reasonable expectation of privacy at the time.

As a result of the ruling, Weissmann says the FBI has disabled about 3,000 GPS tracking devices that were in use to track vehicle movements, although he acknowledged in some cases the agency has had to seek court orders to briefly reactivate the devices so they can be located, then removed.

Weissmann noted that the agency is now working on new guidelines and policies regarding deployment of GPS tracking devices, and is considering the implications of the trespass portion of the Supreme Court’s ruling. For instance, Weissman indicated the ruling calls into question whether agents would be committed trespass if they lifted the lid on a garbage can, since the Supreme Court opinion was based on the that attaching a GPS tracking device to a car constitutes trespass. Presumably, the ruling could also impact how the FBI manages devices: for instance, if a tracking device’s battery fails after a warrant expires or outside a jurisdiction, can the FBI change the battery without violating Fourth Amendment rights?

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/fbi-disabling-gps-trackers-comply-supreme-court-ruling-191802901.html

Homeland Security Dept. Pays General Dynamics to Scour Internet for Criticism of its Policies

2012-02-27T08:48:00.002-08:00

AllGov
Feb. 27, 2012
By Noel Brinkerhoff

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been paying a defense contractor $11.4 million to monitor social media websites and other Internet communications to find criticisms of the department’s policies and actions.

A government watchdog organization, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), obtained hundreds of documents from DHS through the Freedom of Information Act and found details of the arrangement with General Dynamics. The company was contracted to monitor the Web for “reports that reflect adversely on DHS,” including sub-agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Citizenship and Immigration Services, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In testimony submitted to the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, Ginger McCall, director of EPIC’s Open Government Project, stated that “the agency is monitoring constantly, under very broad search terms, and is not limiting that monitoring to events or activities related to natural disasters, acts of terrorism, or manmade disasters….The DHS has no legal authority to engage in this monitoring.”

Full Article Here - http://www.allgov.com/Controversies/ViewNews/Homeland_Security_Dept_Pays_General_Dynamics_to_Scour_Internet_for_Criticism_of_its_Policies_120227

Pressure builds for civilian drone flights at home

2012-02-27T08:44:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 26, 2012
By JOAN LOWY

Civilian cousins of the unmanned military aircraft that have tracked and killed terrorists in the Middle East and Asia are in demand by police departments, border patrols, power companies, news organizations and others wanting a bird's-eye view that's too impractical or dangerous for conventional planes or helicopters to get.

Along with the enthusiasm, there are qualms.

Drones overhead could invade people's privacy. The government worries they could collide with passenger planes or come crashing down to the ground, concerns that have slowed more widespread adoption of the technology.

Despite that, pressure is building to give drones the same access as manned aircraft to the sky at home.

"It's going to be the next big revolution in aviation. It's coming," says Dan Elwell, the Aerospace Industries Association's vice president for civil aviation.

Some impetus comes from the military, which will bring home drones from Afghanistan and wants room to test and use them. In December, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration six months to pick half a dozen sites around the country where the military and others can fly unmanned aircraft in the vicinity of regular air traffic, with the aim of demonstrating they're safe.

The Defense Department says the demand for drones and their expanding missions requires routine and unfettered access to domestic airspace, including around airports and cities. In a report last October, the Pentagon called for flights first by small drones both solo and in groups, day and night, expanding over several years. Flights by large and medium-sized drones would follow in the latter half of this decade.

Other government agencies want to fly drones, too, but they've been hobbled by an FAA ban unless they first receive case-by-case permission. Fewer than 300 waivers were in use at the end of 2011, and they often include restrictions that severely limit the usefulness of the flights. Businesses that want to put drones to work are out of luck; waivers are only for government agencies.

But that's changing.

Congress has told the FAA that the agency must allow civilian and military drones to fly in civilian airspace by September 2015. This spring, the FAA is set to take a first step by proposing rules that would allow limited commercial use of small drones for the first time.

Until recently, agency officials were saying there were too many unresolved safety issues to give drones greater access. Even now FAA officials are cautious about describing their plans and they avoid discussion of deadlines.

"The thing we care about is doing that in an orderly and safe way and finding the appropriate ... balance of all the users in the system," Michael Huerta, FAA's acting administrator, told a recent industry luncheon in Washington. "Let's develop these six sites — and we will be doing that — where we can develop further data, further testing and more history on how these things actually operate."

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/10113766

Occupy activists rally outside home of Wells CEO

2012-02-26T17:06:00.000-08:00

San Fransisco Chronicle
Feb. 26, 2012
By John King

Organized theater played Russian Hill on Saturday - 1960s street theater updated with 21st century themes.

The setting was the base of the 14-story tower where one of the residents is John Stumpf, chief executive officer of Wells Fargo. The cast included people who say they are in danger of losing their homes, veteran housing activists and younger protesters loosely aligned with the almost 6-month-old Occupy movement.

Some people wore black shrouds or held cut-out figures depicting Stumpf; two carried an enormous "notice of default" aimed at Stumpf because of Wells Fargo's alleged "record profits at the expense of low-income communities." In an era when protests are plentiful, one organizer explained, it doesn't hurt to shake up the repertoire every now and then.

"We're trying to be different," said Buck Bagot, a longtime Bernal Heights activist who has spent recent months assisting neighborhood residents whose homes have been foreclosed. "I've been to too many demonstrations where 30 people you know say the same thing 30 times."

The hour-long protest at Chestnut and Larkin streets brought out more than 50 people. A few were off-message, such as the pair displaying a banner critical of PG&E's SmartMeters. Most, though, homed in on the community turmoil caused by the loose lending policies of large banks in the years leading up to the recession's start in 2008 and the wave of foreclosures that has followed.

This being 2012, the organizing groups included Occupy Bernal and the OccupySF Housing Council. But one of Occupy Bernal's founders is Bagot, who has worked on housing issues dating to the 1970s; OccupySF Housing Council was represented at the rally by Ted Gullickson, a longtime leader of the San Francisco Tenants Union.

The Occupy protests that began last fall have brought fresh interest in tackling issues such as residential displacement, Bagot suggested. "It has changed the discourse in a way I haven't seen since the peace movement," he said.

Full Article Here - http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/25/BAGT1NCG3H.DTL#ixzz1nXWmBVGM

Wikileaks Reveals Private CIA’s Dirty Laundry

2012-02-26T16:57:00.000-08:00

Gizmodo
Feb. 26, 2012
By Jesus Diaz

Wikileaks is back with a vengeance. It just has published five million emails from Stratfor, an intelligence company based in Texas that, looking at their practices, appears to be America's very own privately run CIA.

Stratfor's clients are the US Government, other countries and military organizations, as well as private companies like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman or Raytheon. They have a global network of spies in governments and media companies, including "secret deals with dozens of media organisations and journalists, from Reuters to the Kiev Post." According to the emails, these spies get paid in Swiss bank accounts and pre-paid credit cards.

Here are some of the highlights:

Global network of informants

The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

How they control their sources

"[Y]ou have to take control of him. Control means financial, sexual or psychological control... This is intended to start our conversation on your next phase" – CEO George Friedman to Stratfor analyst Reva Bhalla on 6 December 2011, on how to exploit an Israeli intelligence informant providing information on the medical condition of the President of Venezuala, Hugo Chavez.

Updating live... [WikiLeaks]

The material contains privileged information about the US government's attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor's own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange. The emails also expose the revolving door that operates in private intelligence companies in the United States. Government and diplomatic sources from around the world give Stratfor advance knowledge of global politics and events in exchange for money. The Global Intelligence Files exposes how Stratfor has recruited a global network of informants who are paid via Swiss banks accounts and pre-paid credit cards. Stratfor has a mix of covert and overt informants, which includes government employees, embassy staff and journalists around the world.

The material shows how a private intelligence agency works, and how they target individuals for their corporate and government clients. For example, Stratfor monitored and analysed the online activities of Bhopal activists, including the "Yes Men", for the US chemical giant Dow Chemical. The activists seek redress for the 1984 Dow Chemical/Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. The disaster led to thousands of deaths, injuries in more than half a million people, and lasting environmental damage.

Full Article Here - http://gizmodo.com/5888440/wikileaks-reveals-us-international-intelligence-organizations-secrets

2nd New York state judge upholds fracking ban in towns

2012-02-25T22:09:00.003-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 25, 2012
By Dan Wiessner

A New York state judge on Friday upheld an upstate community's ban on gas drilling, marking the second victory this week for opponents of the drilling method known as fracking.

The authority vested in towns and cities in New York to regulate use of their land extends to prohibitions on drilling, acting state Supreme Court Justice Donald Cerio ruled on Friday, dismissing arguments by a landowner who had already sold leases on almost 400 acres.

"Municipalities are not preempted ... from enacting local zoning ordinances which may prohibit oil, gas and solution drilling or mining," Cerio wrote. "The state maintains control over the 'how' of (drilling) procedures while the municipalities maintain control over the 'where.'"

Jennifer Huntington, a dairy farmer, argued the town of Middlefield's ban was pre-empted by a state law designed to create a uniform regulatory scheme for the oil and gas industry. Cerio disagreed, holding that nothing in the legislative history of the law and its numerous amendments suggested state lawmakers intended to stop towns from barring heavy industry.

Middlefield is about 70 miles west of the state capital, Albany.

Cerio's ruling was similar to a decision released on Tuesday that dismissed a bid by gas company Anschutz Exploration Corp to overturn a drilling ban in the Ithaca, New York, suburb of Dryden.

In that decision, Supreme Court Justice Phillip Rumsey held state law was crafted to regulate industry in such a way that "protects the rights of all persons."

The rulings come as the state Department of Environmental Conservation prepares a final report on the safety of fracking, which is currently not allowed in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo is expected to make a final decision on the issue later this year.

Fracking is a process in which chemical-laced water and sand are blasted deep below ground to release oil and natural gas trapped within rock formations. It has allowed companies to tap a wealth of new natural gas reserves in other states, but critics say the procedure has polluted water and air.

Middlefield's attorney, David Clinton, was not immediately available to comment, but said earlier on Friday that victories in his case and in Dryden could have statewide implications.

"For the last year or so, the gas industry has been threatening (towns), 'you're going to lose in court, so don't even waste your money,'" said Clinton. "So (the Dryden decision) certainly emboldens other towns."

Full Article Here - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/26/us-usa-newyork-fracking-idUSTRE81P01820120226

Supreme Court to hear corporate human rights case

2012-02-25T00:16:00.001-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 25, 2012
By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court will weigh next week whether corporations can be sued in the United States for suspected complicity in human rights abuses abroad, in a case being closely watched by businesses concerned about long and costly litigation.

The high court on Tuesday will consider the reach of a 1789 U.S. law that had been largely dormant until 1980, when human rights lawyers started using it, at first to sue foreign government officials.

Then, over the next 20 years, the lawyers used the law to target multinational corporations.

The case before the court pits the Obama administration and human rights advocates against large companies and foreign governments over allegations that Royal Dutch Shell Plc helped Nigeria crush oil exploration protests in the 1990s.

Administration attorneys and lawyers for the plaintiffs contend corporations can be held accountable in U.S. courts for committing or assisting foreign governments in torture, executions or other human rights abuses.

Attorneys for corporations argue that only individuals, such as company employees or managers involved in the abuse, can be sued, a position adopted by a U.S. appeals court in New York. Other courts ruled corporations can be held liable.

The justices will hear an appeal by a group of Nigerians who argue they should be allowed to proceed with a lawsuit accusing Shell of aiding the Nigerian government in human rights violations between 1992 and 1995.

California attorney Paul Hoffman, who will argue on behalf of the plaintiffs, said corporations, under the 1789 law, were permissible defendants and that corporate civil liability was a general principle of international law.

"Businesses involved in genocide, crimes against humanity or other serious human rights violations deserve no exemption from tort liability," he said in a brief filed with the court.

NO EXEMPTION FOR GENOCIDE

The Obama administration supported the corporate liability argument, as did international human rights organizations and Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Representing Shell at the arguments, Kathleen Sullivan, a former dean of the Stanford Law School in California, said U.S. and international law do not allow corporate liability for the alleged offenses. She said the post-World War Two Nuremberg tribunals covered prosecutions of individuals, not corporations.

She warned of the consequences of allowing such lawsuits.

"Even a meritless ... suit against a corporation can take years to resolve," she said in a brief, adding that corporations may reduce their operations in less-developed nations where such abuses tend to arise.

The British, Dutch and German governments supported Shell and said it violates international law to apply a U.S. law from more than 200 years ago to acts that take place in other countries and have no connection to the United States.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-hear-corporate-human-rights-case-231247941.html

One billion slum dwellers

2012-02-24T23:56:00.000-08:00

Boston.com
Feb. 25, 2012

One billion people worldwide live in slums, a number that will likely double by 2030. The characteristics of slum life vary greatly between geographic regions, but they are generally inhabited by the very poor or socially disadvantaged. Slum buildings can be simple shacks or permanent and well-maintained structures but lack clean water, electricity, sanitation and other basic services. In this post, I've included images from several slums including Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, the second largest slum in Africa (and the third largest in the world); New Building slum in central Malabo, Equatorial Guinea; Pinheirinho slum - where residents recently resisted police efforts to forcibly evict them; and slum dwellers from Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, India. India has about 93 million slum dwellers and as much as 50% of New Delhi's population is thought to live in slums, 60% of Mumbai. -- Paula Nelson (55 photos total)

Full Article Here - http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/02/slum_life.html

NYPD disciplines officer after he's snapped sleeping on subway

2012-02-24T23:35:00.002-08:00

if you see something, say something

New York Post
Feb. 25, 2012
By LARRY CELONA

This decorated cop was photographed snoozing on the subway by a straphanger who saw something, and said something.

Martin Bisi used his cellphone to snap the alarming picture of Officer Matthew Sobota, 43, on an F train — with his holstered gun in plain view — at around 3 p.m. Feb. 16.

Bisi then e-mailed the photo to NYPD brass, who slapped Sobota with a “command discipline.”

“NYC cop sleeping on F train last Thurs w/weapon — i reported,” Bisi tweeted yesterday, as he posted several pictures of Sobota to his Twitter account.

“if you see something, say something!” Bisi wrote.

Full Article Here - http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/cop_on_zzzz_train_6QDeXXL6t74J3t1CNUDqzL#ixzz1nNPu3bhK

SEC Charges Three Oil Services Executives With Bribing Customs Officials in Nigeria

2012-02-24T23:03:00.001-08:00

SEC
Feb. 24, 2012

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

2012-32

Washington, D.C., Feb. 24, 2012 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged three oil services executives with violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by participating in a bribery scheme to obtain illicit permits for oil rigs in Nigeria in order to retain business under lucrative drilling contracts.

The SEC alleges that former Noble Corporation CEO Mark A. Jackson along with James J. Ruehlen, who is the current Director and Division Manager of Noble’s subsidiary in Nigeria, bribed customs officials to process false paperwork purporting to show the export and re-import of oil rigs, when in fact the rigs never moved. The scheme was designed to save Noble Corporation from losing business and incurring significant costs associated with exporting rigs from Nigeria and then re-importing them under new permits. Bribes were paid through a customs agent for Noble’s Nigerian subsidiary with Jackson and Ruehlen’s approval.

The SEC separately charged Thomas F. O’Rourke, who was a former controller and head of internal audit at Noble. The SEC alleges that O’Rourke helped approve the bribe payments and allowed the bribes to be booked improperly as legitimate operating expenses for the company. O’Rourke agreed to settle the SEC’s charges and pay a penalty.

“These executives knowingly authorized and paid foreign officials to process false documents, and they consciously concealed the scheme from Noble’s audit committee,” said Gerald Hodgkins, Associate Director in the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “When executives bribe government officials overseas, their misconduct puts their companies in legal peril and damages the integrity of foreign markets and the reputation of U.S. companies abroad.”

Full Statement Here - http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2012/2012-32.htm

SEC’s complaints below:

SEC Complaint against Mark A. Jackson and James J. Ruehlen

SEC Complaint against Thomas F. O'Rourke

'Anonymous' Hacks Into L.A. County Police and Sheriff Databases; Posts Contact Info, Nude Pics

2012-02-23T21:50:00.000-08:00

LA Weekly
Feb. 23, 2012
By Simone Wilson

Anonymous offshoot CabinCr3w has set its sights back on L.A. law enforcement.

The hackers first targeted the LAPD in the angry aftermath of the massive, allegedly violent raid of the Occupy L.A. encampment downtown.

And they're back for more Internet payback this week, getting revenge on the cops for "injustices they have allowed through ignorance or naivety" and/or "[failing] to protect the safety of those they took an oath to serve."

Not sure how the Los Angeles County Police Canine Association fits into all that -- except that the union-of-sorts hosts a wealth of information on all types of officers, all over L.A. County -- but yeah, the association is the unfortunate target of a massive new leak.

The hackers write in their opening statement that of all their recent police hacks, this was the most
"disturbing":

"In this venture we have obtained the names and addresses of over 1000 officers, over fifteen thousand police warrants, hundreds of thousands of court summons, over forty thousand social security numbers of citizens proving the police lack of care for the security of the citizens, anonymous tips of criminal informants pertaining to narcotics, criminal informant information and thousands of online police reports. In all of this information, the large amount we have seen none of it has been as disturbing as what we found in this most recent target."

Dozens of cops, at departments ranging from the LAPD to the LAX police to the LAUSD police, are listed next to their cellphone numbers and addresses on Pastebin.com.

Full Article Here - http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/02/anonymous_hacks_la_county_police_sheriff_contact_info_nude_pics.php

Report: London no safer for all its CCTV cameras

2012-02-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

Christian Science Monitor
Feb. 22, 2012
By Ian Evans

London is considered the most spied-on city in the world, courtesy of its ubiquitous CCTV cameras, purportedly there to reduce crime. But according to a recent report, there's been little or no change in London's crime rates since they were more widely installed in the mid 1980s.

Privacy activists are worried that Britain will become the bleak totalitarian society George Orwell painted in his classic novel “1984,” where citizens were spied on and personal freedom sacrificed for the benefit of an all-powerful state.

“We are sleepwalking into a surveillance society where we’re watched from control rooms by anonymous people, says Emma Carr of the BBW. “The worrying thing is that we don’t actually know how many CCTV cameras there are out there."

In the report released this week, civil rights group Big Brother Watch revealed that local councils spent £515 million (about $807 million) on new cameras over the past four years, the equivalent of 4,121 police officers. Birmingham, England’s second most populous city, has spent the most: £14.3 million ($22 million) over past four years, followed by Westminster at £11.8 million ($18.5 million), and Leeds at £8.7 million ($13.6 million).

BBW estimates there are now some 51,000 police-run cameras watching British citizens in urban areas, not including private cameras or cameras situated in other public buildings like train stations or bus depots.

A common figure cited is a total 4.2 million cameras across the Britain based on a working paper published in 2002, by academics Michael McCahill and Clive Norris but research last year by Cheshire Police puts the figure closer to 1.85 million.

But Ms. Carr says that without official registrations and research it is impossible to calculate.

The civil rights group Liberty estimates that the average Londoner is captured on camera around 300 times a day while BBW claims Britain has 20 percent of the world’s CCTV cameras and only 1 percent of the world’s population.

Full Article Here - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2012/0222/Report-London-no-safer-for-all-its-CCTV-cameras

Homeland Analysts Told to Monitor Policy Debates in Social Media

2012-02-23T18:24:00.000-08:00

New York Times
Feb. 22, 2012
By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Analysts for a Department of Homeland Security program that monitors social networks like Twitter and Facebook have been instructed to produce reports on policy debates related to the department, a newly disclosed manual shows.

The manual, a 2011 reference guide for analysts working with the department’s Media Monitoring Capability program, raises questions about recent claims by Homeland Security officials who portrayed the program as limited to gathering information that would help gain operational awareness about attacks, disasters or other emerging problems.

Last month, a previous disclosure of documents related to the program showed that in 2009, when it was being designed, officials contemplated having reports produced about “public reaction to major governmental proposals with homeland security implications.”

But the department said it never put that category into practice when the program began in 2010. Officials repeated that portrayal in testimony last week before an oversight hearing by a House Homeland Security subcommittee.

“I am not aware of any information we have gathered on government proposals,” testified Richard Chavez, the director of the office that oversees the National Operations Center, which runs the program.

Still, the 2011 manual, which was disclosed this week as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, lists a series of categories that constitute an “item of interest” warranting a report. One category is discussion on social media networks of “policy directives, debates and implementations related to DHS.”

It is not clear whether the department has produced such reports. Matthew Chandler, a department spokesman, said Wednesday that in practice the program had been limited to “social media monitoring for situational awareness only.”

He also said the department would review the reference guide and related materials to make sure they “clearly and accurately convey the parameters and intention of the program.”

Ginger McCall of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that filed the lawsuit and obtained the document, argued that the manual shows that the monitoring may have gone beyond its limited portrayal by department officials.

“The D.H.S. continues to monitor the Internet for criticism of the government,” she said. “This suspicionless, overbroad monitoring quells legitimate First Amendment activity and exceeds the agency’s legal authority."

A federal statute cited by officials last week as the legal basis for the program gives the National Operations Center the authority “to provide situational awareness” for officials “in the event of a natural disaster, act of terrorism or other man-made disaster” and to “ensure that critical terrorism and disaster-related information reaches government decision makers.”

Officials have stressed that the program does not collect personally identifying information, like the names or Twitter account handles of the people making comments, and that it does not monitor, review or collect First Amendment-protected speech.

Full Article Here - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/23/us/house-questions-homeland-security-program-on-social-media.html

Bradley Manning defers plea after being formally charged with aiding the enemy

2012-02-23T15:15:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Feb. 23, 2012
By Karen McVeigh

Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of being the source of the biggest leak of US state secrets in history, was on Thursday formally charged with aiding the enemy, during the first day of his court martial. If found guilty, he faces a maximum sentence of life in military custody with no chance of parole.

Manning, 24, deferred his plea to the 22 charges against him, and deferred a decision over whether he wanted a military judge or a jury to hear his case. A plea can be deferred right up until the beginning of his military trial, which is unlikely to take place before August.

The charges against the former army intelligence analyst include: aiding the enemy; wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the internet knowing that it is accessible to the enemy; theft of public property or records; transmitting defence information; and fraud and related activity in connection with computers.

The documents he is alleged to have dumped on Wikileaks, the whistleblowing website set up by Julian Assange, included Afghan and Iraqi war logs, more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from around the world, and a classified military video of a US helicopter attack on civilians in Iraq that killed 11 people, including two Reuters employees.

Wearing his green army dress uniform and heavy, dark-rimmed glasses, Manning sat though most of the 45-minute hearing at the Fort Meade military base in Maryland with his hands clasped. He was flanked by three lawyers, two military – Major Matthew Kemkes and Captain Paul Bouchard – and one civilian, David Coombs, his defence lawyer.

Manning spoke in a clear voice, to answer "Yes, your honour" when asked if he understood proceedings.

Coombs brought up his client's due process rights and told the military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, that he would object to any delay in the trial past June.

Coombs argued that the government had said it would be ready by April, but was now saying "it won't be until 3 August."

Coombs said his client, who has been in custody since his arrest on 25 May 2010, had been in solitary confinement for "635 days". He said: "If the government had its way, it would be over 800 days before the trial actually begins."

Manning was held at Quantico marine base in Virginia and then at Fort Leavenworth. He is currently being held locally.

Coombs said that, while the government had cited the complexity of the case and the difficulty in co-ordinating agencies, "the defence would argue that due process rights of my client" had not been satisfied.

Under the US constitution, a court martial must be brought within 120 days of charges being preferred.

Manning's 120 days, known as his "speedy trial clock", began in May 2010, when he was arrested in Iraq, according to the military.

The military insisted that the extra time taken to come to trial owed to requests by Manning's own defence team, and the period in which classified documents were being handled.

A military legal expert said that the delay of a plea and forum decision was usually a strategic one, while lawyers wait to see how the motions they have filed are dealt with.

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/23/bradley-manning-defer-plea-charges?newsfeed=true

'Occupy' to hold national conference in Philly

2012-02-22T18:54:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 22, 2012
By PATRICK WALTERS

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A group of protesters affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement plans to elect 876 "delegates" from around the country and hold a national "general assembly" in Philadelphia over the Fourth of July as part of ongoing protests over corporate excess and economic inequality.

The group, dubbed the 99% Declaration Working Group, said Wednesday delegates would be selected during a secure online election in early June from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories.

In a nod to their First Amendment rights, delegates will meet in Philadelphia to draft and ratify a "petition for a redress of grievances," convening during the week of July 2 and holding a news conference in front of Independence Hall on the Fourth of July.

Any U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident who is 18 years of age or older may run as a nonpartisan candidate for delegate, according to Michael S. Pollok, an attorney who advised Occupy Wall Street protesters arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge last year and co-founded the working group.

"We feel it's appropriate to go back to what our founding fathers did and have another petition congress," Pollok said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We feel that following the footsteps of our founding fathers is the right way to go."

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress in Philadelphia and cited King George III's failure to redress the grievances listed in colonial petitions as a reason to declare independence.

One man and one woman will be elected from each of the 435 congressional voting districts, according to Pollok, and they will meet in Philadelphia to deliberate, draft and ratify a "redress of grievances." One delegate will also be elected to represent each of the U.S. territories.

Organizers won't take a position on what grievances should be included, Pollok said, but they will likely include issues like getting money out of politics, dealing with the foreclosure crisis and helping students handle loan debt.

Details of the conference are still being worked out, Pollok said, but organizers have paid for a venue in Philadelphia. Pollok would not identify the venue, but said it was "a major state-of-the art facility." Pollok said the group planned to pay for the conference through donations.

Full Article Here - news.yahoo.com/occupy-hold-national-conference-philly-151936603.html

DOJ Urges Supreme Court to Halt Challenge to Warrantless Eavesdropping

2012-02-22T18:50:00.000-08:00

Wired
Feb. 22, 2012
By David Kravets

The Obama administration is urging the Supreme Court to halt a legal challenge weighing the constitutionality of a once-secret warrantless surveillance program targeting Americans’ communications that Congress eventually legalized in 2008.

The FISA Amendments Act (.pdf), the subject of the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and others, allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant so long as one of the parties to the communication is outside the United States. The communications may be intercepted “to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

The administration is asking the Supreme Court to review an appellate decision that said the nearly 4-year-old lawsuit could move forward. The government said the ACLU and a host of other groups don’t have the legal standing to bring the case because they have no evidence they or their overseas clients are being targeted.

The case arrives at the high court’s inbox after having two different outcomes in the lower courts. It marks the first time the Supreme Court has been asked to review the eavesdropping program that was secretly employed in the wake of 9/11 by the George W. Bush administration, and eventually largely codified into law four years ago.

A lower court had ruled the ACLU, Amnesty International, Global Fund for Women, Global Rights, Human Rights Watch, International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association, The Nation magazine, PEN American Center, Service Employees International Union and other plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the case, because they could not demonstrate that they were subject to the eavesdropping.

The groups appealed to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arguing that they often work with overseas dissidents who might be targets of the National Security Agency program. Instead of speaking with those people on the phone or through e-mails, the groups asserted that they have had to make expensive overseas trips in a bid to maintain attorney-client confidentiality.

The plaintiffs, some of them journalists, also claim the 2008 legislation chills their speech, and violates their Fourth Amendment privacy rights.

Full Article Here - http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/02/scotus-fisa-amendments/

‘Occupy’ London activists lose eviction fight

2012-02-22T18:44:00.000-08:00

The News International
Feb. 22, 2012

LONDON: Anti-capitalism activists lost a legal fight on Wednesday to stay camped outside St Paul’s Cathedral in London after three judges rejected their appeal application, heralding the end of their four-month protest.

Their defeat in the Court of Appeal is likely to see the City of London Corporation, on whose land the activists have been camping, call in the bailiffs to remove dozens of tents and evict protesters inspired by the Occupy Wall Street protest.

“It’s not a surprise,” Dan Ashman, one of the protesters, told Reuters after the ruling. “Authorities are untouchable.” He said important equipment such as computers would be removed from the camp of some 150-200 tents and it would be up to the protesters what they do next.

Authorities in some North American cities have used violence to forcibly remove similar camps. The City of London Corporation had said it would wait until the application for an appeal had been heard before moving in. London Occupy, part of an international movement, has been protesting against bankers’ bonuses and what they say is corporate greed.

The Corporation says it wants the camp removed for safety and hygiene reasons and planning control and because it interferes with a public right of way and the rights of those who wished to worship in the Cathedral.

It won a case in the High Court last month for the tents to be taken away, but the protesters went to the Court of Appeal arguing that their case had unique and global significance. But in a packed but hushed court the Master of the Rolls, David Neuberger, one of the most senior judges in England and Wales, dismissed their arguments.

“Far from it not being open to the judge to make the orders that he made, it seems to us that there is a very powerful case indeed for saying that, if he had refused to make any order in the city’s favour, this court would have reversed them,” he said in his judgment.

Full Article Here - http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=94236&Cat=1

Acta approval stalled by European commission

2012-02-22T18:05:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Feb. 22, 2012
By Charles Arthur

Approval of the controversial international anti-counterfeiting treaty Acta has been stalled by the European commission, which is to ask Europe's highest court whether implementing it would violate any fundamental EU rights.

The decision comes as the treaty faces growing opposition in parliaments, city streets and the internet, with some countries including Germany, the Netherlands and Poland declaring they would not approve the agreement in its current form – a stance that would make it impossible to ratify, because it requires every European country to sign up and approve it.

EU trade commissioner Karel De Gucht said on Wednesday that an opinion from the European court of justice would clear what he called the "fog of misinformation" surrounding the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement.

"This debate must be based upon facts and not upon the misinformation or rumour that has dominated social media sites and blogs in recent weeks," De Gucht told reporters in Brussels. "Acta will not censor websites or shut them down; Acta will not hinder freedom of the internet or freedom of speech." The ECJ will assess Acta's compatibility with the EU's fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression and information or that of protection, he said.

The decision to refer the treaty to the ECJ appears to reflect recognition by EU officials of the political obstacles Acta faces. Earlier this month protesters marched against the agreement in several European capitals including London, Berlin, Helsinki, Paris and Vienna. Internet lobbyists and health campaigners have rallied against it, saying that overly strict controls of copyright would exclude people from the internet and prevent developing countries from accessing generic medicines. The agreement asks internet providers to co-operate with national authorities to crack down on online piracy, for example by cutting off internet access to users who illegally download music or films if that is part of the legal framework in that country.

"Intellectual property is Europe's main raw material, but the problem is that we currently struggle to protect it outside the EU. This hurts our companies, destroys jobs and harms our economies," De Gucht said.

At the same time MPs in a number of countries have said they will not sign it. Although the EU and 22 EU member states signed the treaty on 26 January 2012 in Tokyo, and the European council unanimously approved Acta in December, all 27 member countries have to formally ratify it for the EU to be a party to the treaty.

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/22/acta-stalled-european-commission?newsfeed=true

Elderly poverty rates 200% higher for blacks and Latinos: report

2012-02-22T17:45:00.000-08:00

Raw Story
Feb. 22, 2012
By David Edwards

A new report finds that black and Latino Americans are significantly more likely to be have difficulty retiring than white Americans on average.

University of California, Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education examined statistics from 2008 to 2010 and determined that black and Latino retirees were more likely to be in the lowest income group. According to their report (PDF), 32 percent blacks and 47 percent of Latinos are in the bottom 25 percent of earners, while only 22 percent of whites were in the bottom 25 percent.

Senior poverty rates among people of color were even more staggering, with 19.3 percent of black seniors and 19 percent of Latino seniors in poverty. Among whites, however, only 7.4 percent of seniors were below the poverty line.

Statistics showed that blacks and Latinos were also far less likely have retirement plans or health insurance offered by their employers, factors that make saving for retirement even harder.

Full Article Here - http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/02/22/elderly-poverty-rates-200-higher-for-blacks-and-latinos-report/

Cop Identified in Scott Olsen Incident?

2012-02-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

East Bay Express
Feb. 22, 2012
By Ali Winston

Video and police records indicate that Oakland Police Officer Robert Roche threw a stun grenade at protesters trying to help the injured Iraq War vet.

One of the most indelible images of the Occupy movement to date is that of Marine veteran Scott Olsen being carried away from a skirmish line of riot police at 14th Street and Broadway on October 25 in Oakland. Stunned and bleeding from an ugly gash on his forehead, the 24-year-old Wisconsin native had been struck in the head by an unknown projectile during the first salvo of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, and less-than-lethal munitions fired at hundreds of Occupy Oakland supporters facing off against Oakland police and several other Bay Area law enforcement agencies called in on mutual aid.

Video from the tear gas-soaked night of the 25th shows a prone Olsen lying in front of metal barricades and police in riot gear. As several protesters ran to Olsen's aid, someone from the cluster of police appears to lob a flash-bang grenade into the crowd gathered around the young veteran. The stun grenade explodes amid a cloud of tear gas and deafening noise, scattering Olsen's rescuers.

The footage of the flash-bang grenade exploding practically on top of Olsen and his rescuers, as well as dramatic video of a stunned and bloody Olsen being carried away from the intersection, went viral within hours, propelling Occupy Oakland to international attention and setting the stage for the November 2nd General Strike.

In the weeks and months afterward, rumors and accusations flew about the identity of the officer who fired the projectile that wounded Olsen, and the one who threw the concussion grenade on top of him. Rumors circulated on the Internet that either a San Francisco sheriff's deputy or an officer from the Palo Alto Police Department was responsible. Members of Anonymous even went so far as to publish pictures and the personal information of a San Francisco sheriff's deputy they believe tossed the stun grenade at Olsen.

But an extensive review of video footage and Oakland Police Department records by this reporter indicates that Robert Roche, an acting sergeant in the Oakland Police Department and member of OPD's "Tango Teams," threw the flash-bang at Olsen and his rescuers. It's also not the first time that Roche's actions have come under scrutiny. Police records show that Roche had previously killed three people in the line of duty.

Full Article Here - http://www.eastbayexpress.com/ebx/cop-identified-in-scott-olsen-incident/Content?oid=3131933

Egypt: Recent security force policing 'reminiscent of Mubarak' era

2012-02-21T22:16:00.000-08:00

Amnesty International
Feb. 22, 2012

*Over 100 protesters killed in last five months

*Recently-imported US tear gas played a key role in excessive response

A year after the uprising, Egypt's security forces continue to kill protestors with the same brutal tactics used in Hosni Mubarak’s last days in power, Amnesty International said after concluding that riot police used excessive force in policing recent protests in Cairo and Suez.

The protests earlier this month followed the Port Said tragedy in which more than 70 supporters from Al-Ahly club were killed after a football match on 1 February. In Amnesty’s view, between 2 and 6 February the Ministry of Interior’s Central Security Forces (riot police) used excessive force as they dispersed the protests, killing at least 16 people and injuring hundreds of others in the process.

Amnesty International Middle East and North Africa Deputy Director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said:

“The behaviour of the security forces in dealing with these protests is unfortunately very reminiscent of a time many Egyptians thought they had left behind after the ‘25 January Revolution’.

“Promises of reform of the security forces continue to ring hollow in the face of the killing of more than a hundred protesters in the last five months.

“Not only have the authorities not reformed the security forces, but evidence of the use of rubber bullets and live ammunition is met with denial and accusation of foreign interference by Egyptian officials.

“Police should not use firearms against persons except in self-defence or defence of others against the imminent threat of death or serious injury. Intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.

“Security forces have a duty to restore law and order, however, the recent use of excessive force by the security forces show a complete disrespect for human life.

“It is now very clear that the newly-elected parliamentary assembly must urgently tackle the long overdue reforms to the way security forces have been policing demonstrations.

“Unless the Egyptian security apparatus is reformed with the aim of providing security and upholding the right to peaceful protest, we fear more bloodshed will follow.”

Previous calls for reform of the security sector only led to piecemeal changes while the authorities continued to inappropriately use teargas and live ammunitions.

The Egyptian authorities ostensibly announced investigations into incidents leading to the killing or severe injury of protesters. Yet no lessons were learnt and no clear instructions seem to have been given to the security forces, including military personnel, to uphold the right to peaceful assembly and to police demonstrations in line with international standards.

Lethal force was used without prior warning to disperse protesters in Cairo and Suez who were, for the most part, peacefully demonstrating and chanting. Some protestors were, however, throwing stones at the security forces and Amnesty heard occasional reports of protesters throwing Molotov cocktails at the riot police. In rare incidents, shotgun ammunition and fireworks were also fired at riot police.

Casualties

The Cairo University Hospitals alone received some 269 injured people during the protests as well as seven of the 11 deaths that took place in the capital. Most of those injured were suffering from tear gas inhalation or injuries from shotgun pellets, which, in some cases, caused rupture to the eye globe. In one case, a protester died from shotgun ammunition after a pellet reached his brain. Two others died from gunshots to the head and one from a gunshot to the stomach.

Full Article Here - http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=19958&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=newsfeed&utm_source=social

Nigerians too poor to sue over corporate abuse: jurists

2012-02-21T20:25:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 21, 2012

Victims of environmental disasters or other abuses inflicted by corporations in Nigeria are being denied justice as they are too poor or do not know how to seek legal recourse, jurists said Wednesday.

"Poor rural victims of corporate human rights abuse are usually unaware of their legal rights and don't have the financial resources to file court process, gather information and evidence, and afford legal services," said Carlos Lopez, the International Commission of Jurists' senior legal advisor in a report.

Even though a legal aid scheme exists, it "suffers from chronic underfunding."

"As a result, it fails to help those most in need to access judicial remedies," added Lopez.

The problem is illustrated by the small numbers of litigations against corporations, despite several instances of serious pollution generated over the decades of oil or mineral extraction.

Of the few that make it to court, even fewer manage to obtain rulings in favour of victims, noted the report.

In October, a Nigerian tribal king filed a lawsuit in a US court on behalf of his people against oil giant Shell, seeking $1 billion in compensation for extensive pollution that sickened the population and damaged their lands.

The plaintiffs said they decided to file the suit in a US court because of Shell's history of a "culture of impunity" and "disregard" for the Nigerian judicial process.

Full Article Here - http://ca.news.yahoo.com/nigerians-too-poor-sue-over-corporate-abuse-jurists-002016746.html

Occupy Movement Targets Corporate Interest Group with Ties to Legislators

2012-02-21T20:20:00.000-08:00

Common Dreams
Feb. 21, 2012

A coalition of Occupy groups, led by Occupy Portland in Oregon, is calling on people "to target corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)" with direct actions and public events later this month. The Occupy groups, organizing under the banner Shut Down the Corporations, sees ALEC as the "prime example of the way corporations buy off legislators and craft legislation that serves the interests of corporations and not people." ALEC was instrumental in creating the anti-labor legislation in Wisconsin last year and the racist bill SB 1070 in Arizona, among many other measures pushed or passed in state houses across the country. ALEC uses its large coffers and wealthy membership to spread free-market, corporate-friendly laws around the country.

The day of action is slated for Leap Day, February 29th.

According to their call to action:

Occupy Portland calls for a national day of non-violent direct action to reclaim our voices and challenge our society’s obsession with profit and greed by shutting down the corporations. We are rejecting a society that does not allow us control of our future. We will reclaim our ability to shape our world in a democratic, cooperative, just and sustainable direction.

We call on the Occupy Movement and everyone seeking freedom and justice to join us in this day of action.

There has been a theft by the 1% of our democratic ability to shape and form the society in which we live and our society is steered toward the destructive pursuit of consumption, profit and greed at the expense of all else.

What is ALEC?

ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. The Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), which studies and tracks the group at its ALEC Exposed website, agrees. They say that ALEC should not be considered a lobbyist group or a corporate front group, but something altogether worse. "It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted," ALEC Exposed explains on their website, "yet corporations had pushed the people out the door."

Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law.

Full Article Here - http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/02/21

The U.N. Threat to Internet Freedom

2012-02-21T20:16:00.000-08:00

Wall Street Journal
Feb. 21, 2012
By ROBERT M. MCDOWELL

On Feb. 27, a diplomatic process will begin in Geneva that could result in a new treaty giving the United Nations unprecedented powers over the Internet. Dozens of countries, including Russia and China, are pushing hard to reach this goal by year's end. As Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said last June, his goal and that of his allies is to establish "international control over the Internet" through the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a treaty-based organization under U.N. auspices.

If successful, these new regulatory proposals would upend the Internet's flourishing regime, which has been in place since 1988. That year, delegates from 114 countries gathered in Australia to agree to a treaty that set the stage for dramatic liberalization of international telecommunications. This insulated the Internet from economic and technical regulation and quickly became the greatest deregulatory success story of all time.

Since the Net's inception, engineers, academics, user groups and others have convened in bottom-up nongovernmental organizations to keep it operating and thriving through what is known as a "multi-stakeholder" governance model. This consensus-driven private-sector approach has been the key to the Net's phenomenal success.

In 1995, shortly after it was privatized, only 16 million people used the Internet world-wide. By 2011, more than two billion were online—and that number is growing by as much as half a million every day. This explosive growth is the direct result of governments generally keeping their hands off the Internet sphere.

Net access, especially through mobile devices, is improving the human condition more quickly—and more fundamentally—than any other technology in history. Nowhere is this more true than in the developing world, where unfettered Internet technologies are expanding economies and raising living standards.

Full Article Here - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204792404577229074023195322.html

Court: Rights don't have to be read to prisoners

2012-02-21T20:09:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 21, 2012
By JESSE J. HOLLAND

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Tuesday investigators don't have to read Miranda rights to inmates during jailhouse interrogations about crimes unrelated to their current incarceration.

The high court, on a 6-3 vote, overturned a federal appeals court decision throwing out prison inmate Randall Lee Fields' conviction, saying Fields was not in "custody" as defined by Miranda and therefore did not have to have his rights read to him.

"Imprisonment alone is not enough to create a custodial situation within the meaning of Miranda," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court's majority opinion.

Three justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, dissented and said the court's decision would limit the rights of prisoners.

"Today, for people already in prison, the court finds it adequate for the police to say: 'You are free to terminate this interrogation and return to your cell,'" Ginsburg said in her dissent. "Such a statement is no substitute for one ensuring that an individual is aware of his rights."

Miranda rights come from a 1966 decision that involved police questioning of Ernesto Miranda in a rape and kidnapping case in Phoenix. It required officers to tell suspects they have the right to remain silent and to have a lawyer represent them, even if they can't afford one.

Previous court rulings have required Miranda warnings before police interrogations for people who are in custody, which is defined as when a reasonable person would think he cannot end the questioning and leave.

Fields was serving a 45-day sentence in prison on disorderly conduct charges when a jail guard and sheriff's deputies from Lenawee County, Mich., removed him from his cell and took him to a conference room. The deputies, after telling him several times he was free to leave at any time, then questioned him for seven hours about allegations that he had sexually assaulted a minor. Fields eventually confessed and was charged and convicted of criminal sexual assault.

Fields was then sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison but appealed the use of his confession, saying that he was never given his Miranda rights on the sexual assault charges.

On appeal, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati threw out his confession and conviction, ruling that it is required that police read inmates their Miranda rights anytime they are isolated from the rest of the inmates in situations where they would be likely to incriminate themselves.

Full Article Here - http://www.chron.com/news/article/Court-Rights-don-t-have-to-be-read-to-prisoners-3346291.php

Rami Al-Sayed, Syrian Citizen Journalist, Is Killed During Attack On Homs

2012-02-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

NPR
Feb. 21, 2012
By Ahmed Al Omran

Early this morning the bombardment of Homs was streamed live to the web by a citizen journalist. But as the forces loyal to Bashar Assad continued their attack on restive city, the stream went quiet and never came back again.

Rami al-Sayed, the man who kept that live stream, was injured during the shelling on Bab Amr today. After bleeding for hours, he succumbed to his wounds. The last video on his YouTube channel, uploaded by his brother, shows al-Sayed's body in a makeshift hospital:

Dr. Mohammad al-Mohammd, who appears speaking in the video above, described al-Sayed as one of the best videographers and journalists they had in Bab Amr.

"Rami was killed because he was broadcasting real footage from Bab Amr," al-Mohammad said as he showed the wounds that killed al-Sayed. "Rami was killed because he was recording the truth."

Full Article Here - http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/02/21/147224200/rami-al-sayed-syrian-citizen-journalist-is-killed-in-attack-on-homs

Anti-Wall Street protesters rally against prison conditions

2012-02-20T21:50:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 20, 2012
By Laird Harrison

(Reuters) - Hundreds of anti-Wall Street demonstrators and prison reform activists joined forces outside the gates of a prison in San Quentin, California on Monday to protest high incarceration rates and harsh living conditions.

Speakers rallying at the San Quentin State Prison said the state's sentencing laws are too strict. They called for an end to solitary confinement and the death penalty and said children should not be tried as adults.

"I myself experienced more than 14 months of solitary confinement," said Sarah Shourd, 33, an American who was imprisoned in Iran after being arrested while hiking near the Iraq border in 2009.

"And after only two months my mind began to slip," she said.

She was joined at the peaceful protest by Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who spent more than two years in prison in Iran after being arrested with Shourd, and by former Black Panthers who spoke of a history of problems at the San Quentin prison.

The prison is California's oldest correctional facility and houses the state's only gas chamber and all male inmates on death row, according to the state's prison website.

Activist Barbara Becnel said prisoners were drawing inspiration from the Occupy movement, which spread throughout the nation last fall with calls for greater economic equality. The movement has lost some ground as many U.S. cities evicted protesters from their tent camps.

"We have merged the prison rights movement with the Occupy movement," Becnel said, quoting a message she said came from San Quentin death row prisoner Kevin Cooper. "The 99 percent has to be concerned about the bottom 1 percent."

Marin County Sheriff's Office Sergeant Keith Boyd estimated the crowd numbered 600 to 700 people at its height.

Demonstrators held a moment of silence for Christian Alexander Gomez, 27, who died February 2 while on a hunger strike in California's Corcoran State Prison.

Gomez was among thousands of California prisoners who have staged hunger strikes in waves since July, starting with protests against isolation units at Pelican Bay State Prison and rippling throughout the rest of the state corrections system.

The strikes began after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in May that California prison overcrowding was causing "needless suffering and death" and ordered the state to reduce the number of prisoners to 110,000, still well over the maximum capacity, from 140,000.

Watched over by at least a dozen heavily armed prison guards, former prisoners on Monday told stories of their incarceration and sang Native American and civil rights protest songs during the hours-long demonstration.

Full Article Here -http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/21/us-california-prison-protest-idUSTRE81K01U20120221

Riot police beat students in Spain protest: witnesses

2012-02-20T21:17:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 20, 2012

VALENCIA, Spain — Baton-wielding riot police charged, beat and arrested several demonstrators at a student protest against spending cuts in the Spanish city of Valencia on Monday, reporters at the scene said.

The clashes broke out in the mid-afternoon after students protesting against education budget cuts, which they say have left classrooms without heating, demonstrated outside a school and came up against police barricades.

Photographs and videos from the scene showed youths with bleeding faces and baton-wielding police in helmets and body armour chasing, beating and dragging people along the ground as the clashes continued after nightfall.

El Pais newspaper said on its website that police fired rubber bullets, and media reported numerous injuries.

Valencia regional police chief Antonio Moreno said police used "proportionate physical force" in comments to reporters broadcast on Spanish radio.

"Greater aggression requires a proportionate response," he said.

A Valencia police spokesman confirmed to AFP that arrests had been made, but could not confirm how many.

"There were demonstrators acting aggressively and so there were arrests," the spokesman said, adding
that police had acted to "restore order".

Spanish media reported between 14 and 21 arrests, including several minors.

Valencia police spokesmen were not available late Monday to confirm details of the arrests and injuries.

Similar skirmishes broke out in Valencia last week during student protests, part of a series of demonstrations across Spain against government measures including spending cuts that are hitting public services.

Full Article Here - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gw7fikf8Oy8ad3qTkjdiDW8qd-HQ?docId=CNG.71c6e70b5ec5a29582d4fe4754d3ec65.bb1

Greek teen arrested over ministry cyber attack

2012-02-20T16:18:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 20, 2012

ATHENS — Greek police said Monday they had arrested an 18-year-old suspected of hacking into the justice ministry's website earlier this month, an attack claimed on behalf of online hackers group Anonymous.

Two other boys aged 16 and 17 were also being sought over the case, police said.

In the February 2 cyber attack, the hackers posted a statement on the ministry website in response to Greece's tough fiscal reforms and the country's decision to join a controversial international anti-piracy pact.

"You have introduced a new dictatorship upon your people's shoulders and allowed the bankers and the monarchs of the EU to enslave them both economically and politically," the statement said.

"Democracy was given birth in your country but you have now killed it."

The hackers had also threatened to "deface" media and ministry sites unless Athens withdraws from the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), which was signed on January 26 to create international standards for intellectual property protection.

Greece was one of the 22 signatories among European Union states.

Critics of ACTA say it could significantly curtail online freedom and a number of European countries have said they will now freeze their ratification of the accord.

"Next target will be all the media in Greece," the hackers said, warning: "We have most of the media websites admin passwords."

Full Article Here - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gTWow-4_Jphso_gGMjJ12ZzcdItg?docId=CNG.d5e48e910f1bc7e45824855c44596f20.4f1

Hacker group Anonymous threatens Vic Toews

2012-02-20T15:59:00.000-08:00

CTV
Feb. 20, 2012

The hacker group Anonymous is demanding Public Safety Minister Vic Toews kill the Internet surveillance bill and resign or it will release "information" during what it calls "Operation White North."

Two videos posted to YouTube feature a masked man and voice-overs that condemn the proposed Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act (Bill C-30).

"All this legislation does is give your corrupted government more power to control its citizens," a synthesized voice says in one of the videos still posted to the site Monday.

"We know all about you, Mr. Toews, and during Operation White North we will release what we have unless you scrap this bill," it states.

The RCMP has been called in to investigate apparent death threats against Toews as controversy swirls around the legislation.

In an open letter to his Manitoba constituents distributed over the weekend, Toews said the threats have been "referred to the police for investigation."

The "personal attacks, criminal acts and threats of future criminal acts against me" won't prevent him from carrying out his parliamentary duties, the minister wrote.

"Any further criminal activity or threats of criminal activity against me or my family will also be referred to the police," Toews said in the statement.

Although CTV reporter Mercedes Stephenson said the RCMP has yet to respond to her inquiries concerning criminal threats against Toews, she did speak with a source close to the minister about the YouTube videos.

"They told me that he's not that concerned about the Anonymous video. He considers it to be a political video and it's a political threat and Anonymous makes a lot of political threats against a lot of different politicians," she told CTV News Channel Monday.

He's far more concerned by the potential security threats, Stephenson said.

In its current form, the bill would force Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to allow access to private data without a warrant. It would also permit the duplication of that data without oversight or appeal.

Full Article Here - http://winnipeg.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20120220/hackers-anonymous-toews-20120220/20120220/?hub=WinnipegHome

Data collection arms race feeds privacy fears

2012-02-19T23:07:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 20, 2012
By Joseph Menn

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - This week's revelations that Google Inc, Twitter and other popular Internet companies have been taking liberties with customer data have prompted criticism from privacy advocates and lawmakers, along with apologies from the companies.

They are the latest in a long line of missteps by large Internet companies that have faced little punishment for pushing privacy boundaries, which are already more expansive than most consumers understand.

Despite all the chatter about online privacy and the regular introductions of proposed data protection laws in Congress, Silicon Valley is in the midst of a veritable arms race of personal data collection that is intensifying.

Many innovative companies, most prominently Facebook, base virtually all of their services on the ability to personalize, which requires them to know their users well. Their business models likewise depend to an increasing degree on the ability to target a banner advertisement or other marketing pitch to an individual. Millions of times each day, the right to advertise to a specific user is auctioned off in a fraction of a second by computers talking to one another.

For both the buyers and the sellers of the advertising, the business advantage goes to the participant with the most knowledge, and that race is driving companies like Google to learn as much about its users as Facebook does.

Few U.S. laws prevent those companies and others from collecting all manner of information - ranging from credit cards numbers and real names and addresses to buying patterns and Web surfing habits - then selling the data to advertisers and other third parties.

"Companies are feeling along in the dark, trying to figure out how to serve consumers with cool new toys and while protecting consumer interests," said Jim Harper, a privacy policy specialist at the libertarian Cato Institute. "More often than not, they fall in love with their cool new toys and forget the privacy interests."

Aside from special protections for credit report information, medical records and a few other narrow categories, virtually anything is fair game.

Companies generally face legal threats or a user backlash only after violating their own published privacy policies or being discovered subverting consumer wishes.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/data-collection-arms-race-feeds-privacy-fears-140608839.html

'Hundreds gather' in China after self-immolation

2012-02-19T22:56:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 19, 2012

Hundreds of Tibetans gathered in China's southwest to hold a vigil for a young Buddhist monk who set himself on fire, a rights group said, in the latest self-immolation to hit the country.

The 18-year-old monk, identified as Nangdrol, set himself alight Sunday in Sichuan province's Rangtang county, where one Tibetan was reportedly shot dead by security forces last month, the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) said on Monday.

Citing exiled Tibetan sources with contacts in the area, ICT said Nangdrol had died and his body was taken back to a local monastery. The information was confirmed by the London-based Free Tibet.

Monks did not comply with police orders to hand over the body and more than 1,000 people gathered to hold a vigil on Sunday evening, ICT said.

The group said the young Buddhist monk shouted "May HH (His Holiness) Dalai Lama live 10,000 years" and "Freedom for Tibet" when he set himself on fire.

An official surnamed Huang, who works for the finance department of the Rangtang government, denied the self-immolation and gathering had taken place.

"Everything is fine. The order is normal," he told AFP, adding there was a strong security presence.

"We have police and armed police on duty 24 hours a day. All government offices have staff on duty
24 hours a day," he said.

At least 22 people have set themselves on fire in Tibetan-inhabited areas of China over the past year -- mostly in Sichuan -- in what is seen as a desperate act by Tibetans protesting against perceived repressive Chinese rule.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/hundreds-gather-china-self-immolation-034118574.html

Government spy programme will monitor every phone call, text and email... and details will be kept for up to a year

2012-02-19T19:33:00.000-08:00

Daily Mail
Feb. 19, 2012
By Pamela Owen

Details about text messages, phone calls, emails and every website visited by members of the public will be kept on record in a bid to combat terrorism.

The Government will order broadband providers, landline and mobile phone companies to save the information for up to a year under a new security scheme.

What is said in the texts, emails or phone calls will not be kept but information on the senders, recipients and their geographical whereabouts will be saved.

Direct messages to users of social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter will also be saved and so will information exchanged between players in online video games.

The information will be stored by individual companies rather than the government.

The news has sparked huge concerns about the risk of hacking and fears that the sensitive information could be used to send spam emails and texts.

Nick Pickles, director of privacy and civil liberties campaign group Big Brother Watch, said: 'Britain is already one of the most spied on countries off-line and this is a shameful attempt to watch everything we do online in the same way.

'The vast quantities of data that would be collected would arguably make it harder for the security services to find threats before a crime is committed, and involve a wholesale invasion of all our privacy online that is hugely disproportionate and wholly unnecessary.

'The data would be a honey pot for hackers and foreign governments, not to mention at huge risk of abuse by those responsible for maintaining the databases.It would be the end of privacy online.

'The Home Secretary may have changed but it seems the Home Office’s desire to spy on every citizen’s web use and phone calls remains the same as it was under Labour.

'At a time when the internet is empowering people across the world to embrace democracy, it is shameful for one of the world’s oldest democracies to be pursuing the kind same kind of monitoring that has a stranglehold on civil society in China and Iran.'

It is believed the Home Office started talks with communication companies a few months ago and could officially be announced in May.

The plans have been drawn up by home security service MI5, MI6 which operates abroad, and the GCHQ, the governments communication headquarters which looks after the country's Signal Intelligence.

Full Article Here - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2103314/Government-spy-programme-monitor-phone-text-email.html#ixzz1mtCYNNMm

Thousands protest Spain's new labor reforms

2012-02-19T17:11:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 19, 2012

(AP) MADRID — Hundreds of thousands of protesters were marching throughout Spain on Sunday in the first large-scale show of anger over new labor reforms that make it easier for companies to fire workers and pull out of collective bargaining agreements.

The country's main trade unions organized marches in 57 cities, beginning midmorning in Cordoba in the south and expected to end with evening marches in Toledo and Valencia, with a very large demonstration planned in Madrid from midday.

Union organizers said around a million people had marched by mid-afternoon, but official figures were not released.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government passed the package of reforms nine days ago in an effort to shake up a labor market seen as one of Europe most rigid and to encourage hiring in a country battling the highest unemployment rate in the eurozone, at nearly 23 percent. Rajoy was overheard saying that the reform will "cost me a general strike."

"If we want Spain to grow and create employment, we had to do what we've done," Rajoy said at his Popular Party's annual congress in southwestern Seville on Sunday.

Full Article Here - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57381020/thousands-protest-spains-new-labor-reforms/

Groups report another Tibetan self-immolation

2012-02-19T00:06:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 19, 2012

BEIJING (AP) — Another Tibetan Buddhist monk set himself on fire in western China amid a wave of such protests against China's handling of the vast Tibetan areas it rules, overseas groups said Saturday.

Tamchoe Sangpo set himself alight Friday during a prayer ceremony at Bongtak monastery in a remote region of Qinghai province, the advocacy group Free Tibet said. It gave no details about his current condition, although U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia said he had died.

The reports said Sangpo was around 40 years old and had been one of the monastery's leaders after returning from three years of study during the 1990s in India, where the exiled Dalai Lama resides. The reports said Sangpo had strongly objected to the presence of Chinese security agents who took up positions in the monastery last month, warning them of extreme acts if they did not leave.

A police officer in the county of Tianjun, where the monastery is located, and an official at the surrounding Haixi prefectural government said Saturday that they had no information about the case. Calls to Tianjun county government offices rang unanswered. The monastery's phone number was unlisted.

As many as 21 monks, nuns and ordinary Tibetans have set themselves on fire over the past year, and Free Tibet says at least 13 died from their injuries.

Such acts show no signs of abating, even as China ratchets up security and seals off Tibetan areas to outsiders, making it impossible to know what is actually happening inside.

China blames supporters of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader the Dalai Lama for encouraging the self-immolations and anti-government protests that have led to the deaths of an unknown number of Tibetans at the hands of police. Authorities have reportedly detained and forced into re-education classes hundreds of Tibetans who went to India to receive religious instruction from the Dalai Lama, whom is accused by China of campaigning to split Tibet from the rest of China. The Dalai Lama says he is seeking only increased autonomy for Tibet.

A statement from the self-declared Tibetan government-in-exile in the Indian town of Dharmsala said it was "deeply concerned and shocked" over the latest self-immolation.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/groups-report-another-tibetan-self-immolation-053532652.html

Anonymous Hacks FTC Sites, Again

2012-02-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

PC Magazine
Feb. 17, 2012
By Mark Hachman

Websites owned by the Federal Trade Commission and the Bureau of Consumer Protection were hacked on Thursday night and have taken down, the FTC confirmed Friday.

Members of the Anonymous group originally announced the hack on Thursday night, and a log of the attacks was posted to the Pastebin site. The Pastebin post was authored by "Anonymous AntiSec";
AntiSec is usually considered to be a joint effort on the part of Anonymous and the LulzSec hacker group.

An FTC spokeswoman confirmed the hack on Friday morning.

"The Bureau of Consumer Protection's Business Center website and the partnership site NCPW run by the Federal Trade Commission were hacked earlier today," the agency said in a statement. "The FTC takes these malicious acts seriously. The sites have been taken down and will be brought back up when we're satisfied that any vulnerability has been addressed."

The groups said that they had taken down servers belonging to at least seven domains, which apparently are used for internal use, including business.ftc.gov, consumer.gov, and consumer.ftc.gov.
The Bureau of Consumer Protection, which uses the www.ftc.gov/bcp/consumer.shtm address, was accessible Friday morning.

The groups also claimed that they currently owned hundreds of rooted servers, even "child pr0n [porn] and mail spools," along with passwords, email addresses, and online dating materials.

The attack is the second on an FTC-owned site within a month. On Jan. 24, Anonymous hacked OnguardOnline.com, which is owned by the FTC. The site is officially down, although the FTC resources the site previously hosted are now again publicly available.

Anonymous recently took down the CIA website, as well.

Full Article Here - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2400435,00.asp

Indian police detain Tibetans outside China embassy

2012-02-17T14:40:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 17, 2012

Indian police detained 35 Tibetan students on Thursday at a protest outside the Chinese embassy in New Delhi against Beijing's rule over Tibet.

Several young protesters from India's large Tibetan exile community climbed onto police vans before officers dragged them into the vehicles.

At least 20 Tibetans in China have set fire to themselves in the past year to protest against what they call religious and cultural repression by Beijing.

"Tibetans are burning in Tibet. We were protesting to highlight that our monks and nuns have set themselves on fire this year against Chinese repression," activist Palden Sonam told AFP.

"China has intensified the military crackdown and India chooses to detain us but Tibetans will continue the fight for freedom," Sonam, president of the Delhi chapter of the Tibetan Youth Congress group, said.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/indian-police-detain-tibetans-outside-china-embassy-170239728.html

FBI internal documents reveal anti-Muslim bias

2012-02-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

RT News
Feb. 17, 2012

Following calls from Muslim advocacy groups for an investigation into training materials, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has revealed around 1,000 documents that an internal probe has described as inappropriate.

Some of the papers are filled with “factual errors.” Others, says the FBI, were created in “poor taste.” After digging through around 160,000 pieces of training material, the FBI says they’ve identified a plethora of questionable content that was used within the agency that could be considered offensive to Arabs or Muslims.

Among those papers were charts that insisted that the more devout a Muslim one, the more likely he or she was likely to commit a violent act. Some even linked “mainstream” Muslims as terrorist sympathizers. The FBI had to group an entire cache of questionable training materials as ones that employed “stereotypes” and another included information that “lacked precision.”

The FBI says they are retiring the materials, but for one of America’s largest religious groups, that might be too little too late.

“It is a travesty that the Muslim-American community has lost trust with an agency that is here to protect us,” Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, tells the Washington Post. Along with the Islamic Society of North America, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund,the Interfaith Alliance and the Shoulder-to-Shoulder campaign, al-Marayati’s group was in the audience for a recent discussion with FBI Director Robert Mueller in which the agency discussed the inappropriate materials.

Al-Marayati adds that the material is doing damage outside of the Muslim American community, too. While the groups write in a joint statement of “the negative impact of these training materials on the Muslim-American community,” outside of the US there could be repercussions as well.

“People will report criminal activity to the authorities, that’s been proven time and again,” Marayati tells Wired.com’s Danger Room. “But if we are giving propaganda to al-Qaeda, resuscitating this dying ideology that al-Qaeda is promoting, by continually exposing anti-Muslim propaganda published by the government, that undermines our pluralism, which is the best defense against any transnational ideological threat.”

Full Article Here - http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-documents-investigation-muslim-539/

'Tell Vic Everything' tweets protest online surveillance

2012-02-16T21:53:00.000-08:00

CBC
Feb. 16, 2012
By Laura Payton

Canadians worried about a potential loss of privacy due to a bill tabled this week in the House of Commons have decided to go the opposite route and tell Public Safety Minister Vic Toews everything about their lives, flooding his Twitter feed.

Toews is the sponsor of a lawful access bill, known as C-30, meant to update Canadian law to give police stronger powers in dealing with criminals who operate on the internet. The bill would require internet service providers to turn over customer information upon request by police, leading critics of the bill and its previous incarnations to label it the "warrantless wiretap" bill.

Rather than writing letters or emails about the possible privacy invasion, Twitter users have decided to flood Toews' account with tweets about the inane details of their lives, tagging the tweets with a hashtag, or label, #TellVicEverything.

"I don't like you," Scott Feschuk, a humour writer and former Liberal speechwriter, tweeted to Toews.

"I lost an email from my work account yesterday. Can I get your copy?" Kevin Harding, a student and blogger, wrote from his account.

"I used soy milk in my cereal today. Still on the fence about it," tweeted CBC Television's This Hour Has 22 Minutes.

Full Article Here - http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2012/02/16/pol-twitter-tell-vic-everything.html

Syrian media activist, famous blogger arrested, activists say

2012-02-16T20:39:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 16, 2012
By Emily Alpert

Syrian opposition activists say government forces Thursday arrested a prominent activist and journalist along with a well-known blogger and more than a dozen other journalists and activists.

The arrests of Mazen Darwish, who heads the Syrian Center for Media and Free Expression in Damascus, and blogger Razan Ghazzawi alarmed press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders, which called for their immediate release.

Darwish and Ghazzawi have been detained by police before. No information was immediately available about the reasons for their arrests.

"Anyone giving information to international media or international NGOs may be targeted," said Soazig Dollet, Middle East and North Africa researcher for Reporters Without Borders. She said in the past, arrested Syrian journalists have been interrogated, tortured and kept in solitary confinement.

Darwish and his organization track the detention and injuries of journalists in Syria. In November, Darwish received an award for his work from the Munich, Germany-based Roland Berger Foundation.

The group praised him as "an undaunted champion of human rights for many years," saying he had a reputation as one of the few credible sources on developments in Syria.

Last year, Darwish complained to the magazine Syria Today that despite claims of reform, the country lacked truly independent media because the government controlled operating licenses.

"Only the executive authority has the competence to produce media, and consequently it controls the first threshold of media freedom of expression," Darwish said.

Full Article Here - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/02/syria-media-activist-blogger-arrest.html

Online surveillance bill teaches Tories tough social-media lesson

2012-02-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Press
Feb. 15, 2012
By Stephanie Levitz

OTTAWA - In their tough-on-crime approach to legislation, the Conservatives are learning a tough lesson.

Mess with the Internet and it's going to mess with you.

Social-media networks and comment pages exploded Wednesday in opposition to the Harper government's introduction of Bill C-30, which would give police and spies easier access to information about Internet users.

And the centrepiece of the campaign was an anonymous Twitter account purporting to leak details of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews' divorce records.

"Vic wants to know about you. Let's get to know about Vic," wrote @vikileaks before beginning an information dump that also juxtaposed details about the minister's home life with his public comments on family values.

Within hours, the account had over 3,000 followers and inspired hundreds of comments, photo collages and jokes.

Toews was quick to condemn the posts.

"I won't get involved in this kind of gutter politics," he said on his own Twitter account, which has a fraction of the followers of his anonymous attacker.

"Engaging in or responding to this kind of discussion leads nowhere."

Public court records of Toews' divorce have been available for several years, but no major news organizations have pursued the story.

Online campaigns against legislation have been successful in the past, albeit not one that tackled a minister's personal life.

Last year, the Conservatives ordered the CRTC to review a decision on usage-based billing on the Internet after then-Industry Minister Tony Clement's email and Twitter account were flooded with complaints.

In the United States, a massive online campaign against what was known as the Stop Online Piracy Act saw legislators back down and make changes.

The Conservatives are styling Bill C-30 as a law to protect children from online predators, but privacy advocates and opposition MPs say it's far too broad.

Among other provisions, it would allow authorities access to Internet subscriber information — including name, address, telephone number and email address — without first getting a court's go-ahead.

Full Article Here - http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/online-surveillance-bill-teaches-tories-tough-social-media-lesson-139400538.html

Acta loses more support in Europe

2012-02-15T20:49:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 15, 2012

Support for Acta in Europe is waning as both Bulgaria and the Netherlands refuse to ratify the international anti-piracy agreement.

Bulgaria will not ratify the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement over fears it will curb freedom to download movies and music for free and encourage internet surveillance, economy minister Traicho Traikov said on Tuesday.

More than 4,000 people marched in the capital Sofia last Saturday calling on parliament not to ratify the act. Similar rallies drew thousands of protesters across eastern Europe, as well as in Germany, France and Ireland.

"I will table a proposal to the Council of Ministers to stop the procedure of Bulgaria's signing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement," Traikov said.

The decision means Bulgaria will not take any action concerning Acta before European Union member states come up with a unified position.

Meanwhile, the Dutch Lower House has backed a motion from the Green Left party which says the Netherlands should, for the time being, refrain from signing Acta, according to a report at Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

The RNW report says that the parliament is seeking clarity about whether the treaty threatens the rights and the privacy of internet users.

Acta aims to cut trademark theft and tackle other online piracy but the accord has raised concerns, especially in eastern Europe, over online censorship and increased surveillance. Some protesters have compared it to that used by former communist regimes.

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/15/acta-loses-more-support-europe?newsfeed=true

WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO after WikiLeaks banned from UNESCO conference on WikiLeaks

2012-02-15T20:37:00.000-08:00

Wikileaks
Feb. 15, 2012

WIKILEAKS PRESS RELEASE. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wed Feb 15 17:00:00 2012 GMT

"#OccupyUNESCO"

WikiLeaks denounces UNESCO for banning WikiLeaks from conference about WikiLeaks (February 16-17, UNESCO Headquarters, Paris).

WikiLeaks denounced UNESCO for banning WikiLeaks from tomorrow’s international conference about WikiLeaks. The large two-day conference, which has 37 speakers listed, is to be held UNESCO Headquarters in Paris. US organizers have stacked the conference with WikiLeaks opponents and blocked all speakers from WikiLeaks, stating that the decision to censor WikiLeaks representation was an exercise in ’freedom of expression... our right to give voice to speakers of our choice’.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange denounced the conference: ’UNESCO has made itself an international human rights joke. To use "freedom of expression" to censor WikiLeaks from a conference about WikiLeaks is an Orwellian absurdity beyond words. This is an intolerable abuse of UNESCO’s Constitution. It’s time to occupy UNESCO.’

WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson expressed consternation in a letter to UNESCO about the exclusion: ’UNESCO has a duty to assure that fairness and balance is secured in important discussions carried out under the banner of the organization. It is obvious that this will hardly be the case, given the selection of speakers. This is both a disgrace to UNESCO and potentially harmful to WikiLeaks.’

Full Article Here - http://wikileaks.org/WikiLeaks-denounces-UNESCO-after.html

Hackers take aim at Nasdaq, Bats websites

2012-02-14T22:51:00.000-08:00

AFP
Feb. 15, 2012

AFP - Hackers have targeted the public websites of the operators of the Nasdaq and Bats stock exchanges over the past two days with cyberattacks that disrupted the sites but had no impact on trading.

The Nasdaq.com website was briefly inaccessible at times on Tuesday although it was back online and functioning normally late in the day.

Nasdaq did not immediately reply to an inquiry from AFP but The Wall Street Journal quoted a spokesman as saying that "during the past 24 hours, Nasdaq OMX has experienced intermittent service disruptions on our corporate websites."

The Kansas-based Bats, which operates the BZX and BYX exchanges, said the Bats public website, "along with other securities industry websites," was hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Monday.

"Our trading systems were not affected and there were no Exchange customer disruptions associated with the incident," a Bats spokeswoman told AFP.

Full Article Here - http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iwrbtcGoc5uAovZY7YMKY0_n8huw?docId=CNG.3857041cbe5bc4267b095d487378e348.1a1

Heavy police presence blocks Bahrain protests

2012-02-14T22:39:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera
Feb. 15, 2012

A massive police presence in the Bahraini capital kept protesters from gathering in Pearl Roundabout to mark the one-year anniversary of widespread pro-democracy protests in the island kingdom.

Armoured vehicles lined major highways leading into the capital on Tuesday and sealed off the entrances to villages, some of which became the site of violent clashes between protesters and police that continued overnight.

The village of Sanabis became a focal point, activists said, with police raiding homes and arresting numerous people.

Small groups of protesters did manage to reach the capital, where they were quickly dispersed by riot police wielding tear gas and shotguns.

One of those groups was led by Nabeel Rajab, the head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, who was briefly detained by police. Witnesses said that officers fired tear-gas canisters directly at the protesters.

At least 30 people were arrested during Tuesday's protests, activists said, including several American activists working with an organisation called Witness Bahrain.

Two other members of the group were arrested and deported after a protest on Sunday.

'People keep coming back'

The uprising in Bahrain was crushed last March, when Bahraini security forces - backed by soldiers from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf countries - cleared protesters from Pearl Roundabout and destroyed the iconic statue at its centre.

Full Article Here - http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/201221415146400277.html

Group: China cops beat Tibet monk as he burns

2012-02-14T20:56:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 14, 2012

BEIJING - A Tibetan monk set himself on fire in western China and was beaten by security forces as they put out the flames, a rights group said, marking the latest in a series of dramatic protests against China's handling of its vast Tibetan areas.

Responding to spiraling unrest in Tibetan areas, Premier Wen Jiabao on Tuesday defended China's policies on Tibet, saying the government respects traditional culture and freedom of religious belief. He said China has invested heavily in Tibet and will continue to do so.

He also said attempts to undermine stability by inciting monks was counter to the interests of Tibetans.

Activist groups say the self-immolations are a protest against China's policies and a call for the return of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetans' exiled spiritual leader.

Group: Tibetan sets herself on fire in protest

The Chinese government has condemned the self-immolations and says an upsurge in violence in Tibetan areas, including some deadly clashes between Tibetan protesters and security forces, are being instigated by forces outside the country wanting to separate Tibet from China.

"Any attempt to incite a small number of monks to take radical moves to undermine stability in the Tibet Autonomous Region is not in the interest of development in Tibet or the interests of the people living in Tibet,"
Wen told reporters at a joint press conference with visiting leaders from the European Union. "Such attempts can have no popular support."

Full Article Here - http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57377173/china-cops-beat-tibet-monk-as-he-burns/?tag=re1.latest

Bulgaria Withdraws From ACTA

2012-02-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

Forbes
Feb. 14, 2012
By Dave Thier

Is the tide starting to turn on the European Union’s controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement? First Germany said that they were going to back off ratifying ACTA, following the position taken by Poland earlier.
Now Bulgaria is doing the same thing, and won’t be taking any steps toward ratifying the treaty any time soon.

Like Germany, Bulgaria is waiting for a clearer stance from the EU, but Economy and Energy Minister Traicho Traikov also had some interesting things to say on the very premise of what some have argued is an overly harsh application of copyright laws.

“I’m a pessimist when it comes to regulating an industry, which hasn’t adapted to the digital age, through sanctions rather than market means,” he told reporters in Sofia today, according to Bloomberg. “Authors’ copyrights should not be placed above human rights.”

The move seems to be a response to massive protests against ACTA on Feb. 11, in Bulgaria and other European cities. Previously, many had complained that ACTA was being ratified behind closed doors and without public involvement, but it seems like no country is going to be able to deal with the legislation out of the public eye any more.

Full Article Here - http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/02/14/bulgaria-withdraws-from-acta/

Two Occupy Wall St. protesters sue the cop who pepper-sprayed them

2012-02-13T21:21:00.000-08:00

New York Daily News
Feb. 13, 2012
By Robert Gearty

A high-ranking cop who pepper-sprayed penned-in Occupy Wall Street protesters has been zapped with a lawsuit by two women who were in the line of fire.

Chelsea Elliott and Jeanne Mansfield are suing Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna in Manhattan Federal Court for blasting them in the face with pepper-spray during a protest last Sept. 24 near Union Square.

The incident was caught on video, and 1.5 million people watched it on YouTube, prompting outrage and drawing attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Bologna was docked 10 days of vacation for violating NYPD regulations.

In an interview Monday, Mansfield, 24, a Boston writer, said she was suing because she wanted to put the NYPD on notice that what Bologna did was wrong.

"I was attending a peaceful demonstration when I was met with what I feel was an undue amount of force," she said.

Mansfield said she is sympathetic to police in general but said she didn't deserve to be pepper-sprayed.

"I think he allowed his emotions to get the best of him," she said of Bologna.

Full Article Here - http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/occupy-wall-st-protesters-sue-pepper-sprayed-article-1.1021923#ixzz1mKYHZjNe

OccupyKXL: The 99 Percent Takes A Stand With 24 Hours Against Keystone

2012-02-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

Think Progress
Feb. 13, 2012
By Brad Johnson

A broad coalition of the grassroots progressive movement is launching a 24-hour effort to mobilize 500,000 people opposing Republican efforts to approve the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. GOP senators “plan to file an amendment mandating the project to the Senate transportation package Monday,” the Hill reports. In a Daily Kos diary, 350.org founder Bill McKibben — who led thousands of Americans who got arrested last summer in front of the White House in opposition to the pipeline — explains the “powerful, unified fight” to “keep this pipeline dead“:

We’re going to war at noon eastern today–non-violent war, but a powerful, unified fight against the heart of right-wing power, the fossil fuel industry. We’re out to collect half a million emails in 24 hours telling the Senate: back up the president and keep this pipeline dead. It’s going to be the most concentrated burst of environmental activism this millennium–and it needs you.

This effort includes a diverse coalition of the national environmental movement — including the Environmental Defense Fund, Rainforest Action Network, the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation and Green For All. As McKibben said, it’s “everyone else who’s ever tried to save a whale, clean a lake, build a park, find a solar job.”

The 24-hour push isn’t just a “green” cause, but one of the American progressive movement. Other organizations participating in the petition drive include MoveOn, Credo, Democracy for America, Public Citizen, Change.org, the Labor Network for Sustainability, and businesses like Patagonia.

Bill McKibben will be on the Colbert Report tonight to discuss the effort to prevent the destruction of our climate for the profit of foreign oil companies.

Full Article Here - http://thinkprogress.org/green/2012/02/13/423901/occupykxl-the-99-percent-takes-a-stand-with-24-hours-against-keystone/?mobile=nc

Bahrain police fire tear gas at protesters

2012-02-13T11:07:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 13, 2012
By BARBARA SURK and REEM KHALIFA

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — Security forces in Bahrain fired tear gas and stun grenades at protesters trying to occupy a landmark square in the nation's capital on Monday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Gulf kingdom's Shiite-led uprising.

Thousands of opposition supporters marched through Manama's streets in the largest attempt in months to retake Pearl Square, the central roundabout that served as the epicenter of weeks of protests last year by Bahrain's Shiite majority against the ruling Sunni dynasty.

Thousands of riot police and other security forces have staked out positions around the square and across the Gulf island nation to prevent the opposition from staging a mass rally in or near the plaza to mark Tuesday's one-year anniversary of the revolt.

Opposition supporters were undeterred by the authorities' warnings of zero tolerance for anti-government activities around the strategic island that is the home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet.

"We will not back down," said Nader Abdulimam, who had taken refuge in a house just outside of Manama with other protesters overcome by tear gas. "This has gone on for one year and it will go for another year or more."

Some protesters hurled firebombs and rocks after the security forces fired tear gas. In an area about six miles (10 kilometers) west of central Manama, some demonstrators stood atop Bahrain's ancient burial mounds — some more than 5,000 years old — waving flags featuring the image of Pearl Square's six-pronged monument.

More than 50 police vehicles filled a site that protesters have dubbed "Freedom Square," which hosted several government-sanctioned opposition gatherings last week.

After the government imposed martial law last March in response to the demonstrations, security forces stormed the protesters' encampment at the landmark square in a bid to crush the uprising. The authorities then razed the towering white monument that stood in the center of the plaza.

The now heavily guarded square holds great symbolic value for Bahrain's opposition movement, and protesters have repeatedly tried to reoccupy it. But authorities have effectively locked off the capital to demonstrations since March.

Emergency rule was lifted in June, but street battles between security forces and protesters still flare up almost every day in the predominantly Shiite villages around the capital.

At least 40 people have been killed during months of unprecedented political unrest in Bahrain, the Gulf country hardest hit by upheaval during last year's Arab Spring protests. Neighboring Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-ruled Gulf states dispatched troops to Bahrain in March to help crush the protests.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/bahrain-police-fire-tear-gas-protesters-141027194.html

Amazon defenders face death or exile

2012-02-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Feb. 13, 2012
By Tom Phillips

A single shot to the temple was Mouth Organ John's reward for spilling the beans. His friend, Junior José Guerra, fared only marginally better.

Guerra's prize for speaking out against the illegal loggers laying waste to the greatest tropical rainforest on Earth? A broken home, two petrified children and an uncertain exile from a life he had spent years building in the Brazilian Amazon.

"I can't go back," said Guerra, one of the Amazon's newest environmental refugees, three months after his friend's brutal murder forced him, his wife and his two children into hiding. "We've been told that they are trying to find out where I am. The situation is very complicated."

Mouth Organ John, 55, and Guerra, 38, lived along the BR-163, a remote and treacherous highway that cuts from north to south through the Amazon state of Para. They were migrants from Brazil's south who came in search of a better life.

Neither man was a card-carrying environmentalist and both had reportedly been previously involved with environmental crimes. Still, they opted to commit something widely considered a cardinal sin in this isolated corner of Brazil – they informed on criminals allegedly making millions from the illegal harvesting of ipê trees from conservation units in a corner of the Amazon known as the Terra do Meio, or Middle Land.

In a region often compared to the Wild West, betraying those pillaging the rainforest all too often leads to a coffin or to exile.

Mouth Organ John, an amateur musician and mechanic whose real name was João Chupel Primo, met his fate first.

Last October, he and Guerra handed the authorities a dossier outlining the alleged activities of illegal loggers and land-grabbers in the region. Within days two men appeared at Primo's workshop in the city of Itaituba and shot him dead. A bloody photograph of his corpse, laid out on a mortician's slab, made a local tabloid. "There are signs this was an execution," the local police chief, José Dias, told the paper.

Guerra escaped death, but he too lost his life. Told of his friend's murder, he locked himself indoors, clutching a shotgun to ward off the gunmen. The next day, he was spirited out of town by federal police. Since then Guerra has embarked on a lonely pilgrimage across Brazil, journeying thousands of miles in search of support and safety. He became the latest Amazonian exile – people forced into self-imposed hiding or police protection because of their stance against those destroying the environment.

"They will order the murder of anyone who reports them [to authorities]," Guerra said this week over a crackly phone line from his latest hideout. "We thought that … if we reported these crimes they [the government] would do something … But actually João was murdered as a result."

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/12/brazil-amazon-rainforest-activists-murder

Monsanto guilty of chemical poisoning in France

2012-02-13T08:54:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 13, 2012
By Marion Douet

A French court on Monday declared U.S. biotech giant Monsanto(MON.N) guilty of chemical poisoning of a French farmer, a judgment that could lend weight to other health claims against pesticides.

In the first such case heard in court in France, grain grower Paul Francois says he suffered neurological problems including memory loss, headaches and stammering after inhaling Monsanto's (MON.N) Lasso weedkiller in 2004.

He blames the agri-business giant for not providing adequate warnings on the product label.

The ruling was given by a court in Lyon, southeast France, which ordered an expert opinion of Francois's losses to establish the sum of damages.

Lawyers for Monsanto could not immediately be reached for comment.

Previous health claims from farmers have foundered because of the difficulty of establishing clear links between illnesses and exposure to pesticides.

"I am alive today, but part of the farming population is going to be sacrificed and is going to die because of this," Francois, 47, told Reuters.

He and other farmers suffering from illness set up an association last year to make a case that their health problems should be linked to their use of crop protection products.

The agricultural branch of the French social security system says that since 1996, it has gathered farmers' reports of sickness potentially related to pesticides, with about 200 alerts a year.

Full Article Here - http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/france-pesticides-monsanto-idINDEE81C0FQ20120213

NATO says found Afghan children dead after air strike

2012-02-13T08:48:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 13, 2012
By Rob Taylor and Mirwais Harooni

NATO-led forces in Afghanistan said on Monday they found the bodies of dead children after a coalition air strike that has enraged the Afghan government, and said their deaths may have been linked to an anti-insurgent operation in the area.

The air strike took place last Wednesday near the village of Giawa, in eastern Kapisa province, and followed similar bombings that have stoked tension between the government and NATO over a civilian death toll that has risen annually for five years.

NATO aircraft and ground forces attacked insurgents on open ground in the Najrab district of Kapisa, said Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, a spokesman for NATO's 130,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

"Following the engagement additional casualties were discovered and these casualties were young Afghans of varying ages," Jacobson told reporters.

"At this point in our assessment we can neither confirm nor deny, with reasonable assurance, a direct link to the engagement. Nonetheless, any death of innocents not associated with armed conflict is a tragedy," he said.

Afghan government officials showed gruesome photographs of eight dead boys, and said seven of them had been aged between six and 14, while one had been around 18 years old. They were bombed twice while herding sheep in heavy snow and lighting a fire to keep warm, they said.

"Where were the rights for these children who have been violated? Did they have rights or not? Did they have rights to live as part of the world community?" said Mohammad Tahir Safi, a member of parliament sent by President Hamid Karzai to investigate the air strike.

French soldiers in the area were denied permission to call in air support for an attack north of an area called Ahmad Bik hill, Safi said, citing Afghan security officials in Kapisa, northeast of Kabul.

Despite that, the air strike was launched, Safi said.

Jacobson said the anti-insurgent operation had been carried out according to NATO rules on air strikes, which have been tightened and reviewed under pressure from Karzai and the government.

Karzai's popularity is damaged by civilian deaths and he has repeatedly urged NATO forces to stop killing villagers.

The Afghan government said the Kapisa attack, and a recent air strike in the eastern province of Kunar that killed seven civilians, had people in both provinces demanding curbs on NATO operations ahead of the planned departure of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

CIVILIAN DEATHS RISE AGAIN

The United Nations said this month the number of civilians killed and wounded in the Afghan war had risen for the fifth year in a row, from 2,790 civilian deaths in 2010 to 3,021 in 2011.

Most deaths were caused by insurgents, the United Nations said, but civilian deaths due to NATO air strikes also rose nine percent to 187. Air strikes were the main reason behind civilian deaths caused by NATO.

Full Article Here - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-afghanistan-airstrike-idUSTRE81C0MU20120213

Greek protesters, police clash as MPs pass austerity plan

2012-02-12T18:59:00.000-08:00

Sydney Morning Herald
Feb. 12, 2012

Greek police used tear gas on petrol bomb-throwing protesters outside parliament where lawmakers were debating a new austerity plan aimed at staving off bankruptcy.

Despite the protests, the Greek parliament voted to pass the austerity bill needed for the bailout by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Police said some 80,000 protesters were massed outside the building and at nearby Omonia Square, with some 3000 police deployed and more protesters arriving. Another 15,000 were gathered in Greece's second city Thessaloniki.

"The situation is very clear. Tonight at midnight before the markets open the Greek parliament must send the message that our nation can and will (support the debt deal)," Venizelos said.

"Today we must understand, and persuade Greek citizens, that when you have to choose between bad and worse, you will choose the bad to avoid the worst," he added.

On the eve of the vote, Prime Minister Lucas Papademos warned the country that "we are a breath away from Ground Zero."

He urged deputies to grasp their "historic responsibility" to secure the country's financial future and warned of "economic and social catastrophe" if parliament failed to agree to the deeply unpopular cuts needed to secure the international rescue.

Sunday's protesters included trade unionists, youths with shaven heads waving Greek flags, communist activists and left-wing sympathisers, many of them equipped with gas masks.

Full Article Here - http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/greek-protesters-police-clash-as-mps-pass-austerity-plan-20120213-1t065.html#ixzz1mE7WoYvI

Bahrain police break up peaceful protest

2012-02-11T22:20:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera
Feb. 12, 2012
By Gregg Carlstrom

Police used force to break up an anti-government march in the Bahraini capital, using tear gas and stun grenades to disperse hundreds of peaceful protesters.

Around 200 people gathered on Saturday at the Standard Chartered bank near Bahrain's diplomatic district and set off toward Pearl Roundabout, the centre of last year's uprising. Many chanted "to the roundabout" as they marched, but they were quickly met by riot police, who warned them the rally was unauthorised.

"We gathered in Manama, and we went out and the riot police came, and [they] told us this was an illegal gathering," said one activist. "Then they stopped talking and shot us with tear gas."

It is unclear whether anyone was injured. Witnesses said at least one protester was detained and driven away in a police van. The march was organised by Nabeel Rajab, the head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights.

Roads blocked

Tensions in Bahrain have been rising ahead of Tuesday's one-year anniversary of the first large-scale protests in the island kingdom.

Last year's uprising was brutally crushed in March, when security forces cleared Pearl Roundabout, and troops from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Gulf countries were deployed to Bahrain.

Scattered protests have continued, most of them confined to the predominantly Shia villages outside the capital. Security forces used tear gas to break up several of these protests on Friday night.

Soldiers and police also conducted early-morning raids in more than a half-dozen villages on Saturday, according to activists. An unknown number of people were arrested.

Police reportedly fired tear gas canisters into the home of Ali Salman, the leader of the opposition Al-Wefaq party, whose house was also targeted by police in August.

Police have blocked off many of the major roads leading into the capital, as well as the entrances to restive villages.

"[The protest on Saturday] wasn't more than a few hundred people, because many people had a hard time reaching the meeting point," another activist said. "The roads leading into the centre of Manama were all blocked by police."

Arrests

Al Jazeera is one of many international news organisations that was not allowed to enter the country to cover the anniversary. Details of Saturday's rally were confirmed through activists and human rights organisations inside Bahrain.

Full Article Here - http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/02/2012211144559680830.html

Human rights abuses could be covered up under new justice bill proposals

2012-02-11T22:09:00.000-08:00

Guardian
Feb. 12, 2012
By Toby Helm

Ministers and the intelligence services will be able to cover up sensitive information relating to the state's complicity in torture and secret rendition, under controversial plans likely to be included in the Queen's Speech in May.

Sources at the Ministry of Justice say the plans, first outlined in a green paper in October last year, are likely to be included in a justice bill in the next session of parliament in a move that critics say will fundamentally undermine Britain's tradition of open justice.

The plan could mean that so-called closed material procedures – in which secret evidence is withheld from the claimant and the press in a closed court – would be introduced more widely into civil law. This would allow the government or its agencies to defend serious allegations knowing that damaging information would never emerge.

Examples of cases which opponents say could be held under such procedures include those where torture victims sue the government, where inquests are held relating to soldiers killed by friendly fire, or where actions are lodged alleging police negligence.

The claimants would be represented by special advocates who would be barred from discussing the evidence with them. The government is pushing ahead despite the fact that out of 69 currently appointed special advocates, 57 have signed a response hitting out at the proposal – saying there is no reason to justify such sweeping changes.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, which will launch a campaign against the plans on Tuesday, said: "What bitter irony if the government's answer to the worst excesses of the 'war on terror' were an even bigger, darker cloak over the secret state. If these proposals represent the agencies' response to concerns about complicity in torture, they are surely either unnecessary or dangerous.

"If flirtation with extraordinary rendition was an aberration after 9/11, why wreck the whole civil justice?"

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/feb/11/human-rights-justice-courts

Massive Street Protests Wage War On ACTA Anti-Piracy Treaty

2012-02-11T19:59:00.000-08:00

Torrent Freak
Feb. 11, 2012

The world is witnessing the largest offline protest against copyright legislation today. Massive demonstrations against the draconian anti-piracy treaty ACTA are spanning four continents, with protests in more than 200 European cities alone. Hundreds of thousands of people are taking to the streets to prevent their countries and the European Parliament from putting the free Internet at risk by ratifying ACTA,

Last month the European Union officially signed the controversial “anti-piracy” trade agreement ACTA.

The EU followed in the footsteps of Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and the United States, who already signed it last October. This brings ACTA a step closer to passing, but individual EU member states and the European Parliament still have to ratify the treaty later this year.

To prevent this from happening, hundreds of thousands of people across the world are taking to the streets today, and millions more are expected to do their part online. In Europe demonstrations are being held in more than 200 cities, the largest in Sofia, Bulgaria, with more than 50,000 participants.

These staggering numbers amount to the greatest offline protest against any type of copyright legislation, ever.

Full Article Here - https://torrentfreak.com/massive-street-protests-wage-war-on-acta-anti-piracy-treaty-120211/

Anonymous took down cia.gov

2012-02-10T16:35:00.000-08:00

RT
Feb. 10, 201

Traditionally known as FuckFBIFriday, this weekend's eve turned into FuckCIAFriday, as hacktivists downed the official website for the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States cia.gov.

At approximately 3:10 p.m. Eastern time one of twitter accounts related to the hackers' group announced "cia.gov DOWN. #UMAD?#Anonymous."

The CIA website became the latest victim in a series of attacks conducted by the elusive group of hackers against US law enforcement agencies and copyright holders. As RT reported earlier,
Anonymous took credit for crashing the websites of the US Department of Homeland Security, which was quickly revived, and the FBI.

The CIA seems to be less prepared for fighting Anonymous than other agencies. If the work of dhs.gov was revived in mere minutes, the CIA's site was still down even hours after the attack. One of the twitter accounts affiliated with Anonymous explained the reasons of the attack: "We do it for the lulz," referring to the popular online abbreviation "for laughs."

In previous occasions Anonymous has orchestrated humiliating assaults with massive distributed denial of services attacks.

The technique also known as a DDoS, is a concentrated effort by multiple individuals to make a network busy to its intended users. The end results in a server overload

Even though DDoS attacks are a violation of the Internet Architecture Boards’s proper use policy, it has become an effective tool for Anonymous to spread online mayhem.

Two weeks ago, the online group also released the audio of a conference call between the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Britain’s Scotland Yard counterpart targeting members of the largely untraceable group. It was done as part of the FuckFBIFriday campaign.

Along with the secret audio leak, numerous sites fell prey to Anonymous’ crippling assault including several entertainment industry giants and government sites.

The websites for the US Department of Justice and Universal Music Group were among the first to go, with the sites for US Copyright Office, Warner Music, BMI, and RIAA following suit shortly after.

Full Article Here - http://rt.com/usa/news/anonymous-hacked-cia-hackers-049/

Farmers advance in their suit against Monsanto

2012-02-10T16:01:00.000-08:00

Grist
Feb. 10, 2012
By Jenny An

Monsanto is getting a taste of its own medicine; the company is being taken to court.

In this corner, we have a corporate biotech giant with a tighter grasp on the agricultural Monopoly board than your over-enthusiastic little sister on game night. (Their patented genes are in more than 80 percent of the soybeans, corn, cotton, sugar beets, and canola seeds grown in the U.S.) And in this corner, 83 scrappy plaintiffs representing non-GMO seed producers, farmers, and agricultural organizations who say they want the biotech company to stop suing and threatening them. While most are organic, not all of them are.

The latter group — led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association and referred to in the lawsuit as OSGATA et al. — has turned to a strategy Monsanto has been using for a while now: the courts. Although they certainly aren’t the first sustainability-minded folks to take their struggle to the courts, their suit, filed last March, has a sweet sense of irony.

As we reported last March, when the lawsuit was first announced, OSGATA et al. is fighting an old battle against Monsanto’s so-called “seed police” and their practice of suing farmers for patent infringement because pollen or seeds from a farm growing GMO plants nearby drifts onto their land.

That’s right. It’s a lawsuit to prevent future lawsuits.

OSGATA and company finally got their day in court on Jan. 31. Approximately 200 farmers and supporters showed up in front of the Federal District Court in Manhattan for opening arguments.
Occupy Wall Street’s food justice working group helped organize the rally, though they are not plaintiffs in the suit. “We’re part of OWS, which is all about corporate consolidation, and you can’t discuss that without addressing agriculture,” says Corbin Laedlein, a member of the working group.

“We want nothing to do with Monsanto. We don’t want their seed. We don’t want their technology. We don’t want their contamination,” says Jim Gerritsen, an organic farmer from Maine and president of OSGATA. The organization originally brought the idea of a suit to the Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), a group that wants to change how patent law works in the U.S., and PUBPAT took on the case pro bono. In Gerritsen’s estimation, about 300,000 individuals are involved in the case by proxy of organizations they’re a part of, including most certified organic farmers in the country. Gerritsen calls the dustings of GMO-crop pollen and the occasional seed carried wayward by the wind — a natural atmospheric occurrence found in what is known as the “outdoors” — contamination which not only is unwelcome, but can also could potentially lower the quality and value of organic and other non-GMO crops.

“They are probably the most aggressive patent holder in the U.S.,” Gerritsen adds. According to PUBPAT, between 1997 and April 2010, Monsanto filed 144 lawsuits against farmers for patent infringement, and more than 500 farms are investigated each year.

“The seed that Monsanto doesn’t control, they will control through contamination,” Gerritsen says. “Monsanto wants ultimate and absolute control over everything.” Cue the menacing Hollywood music.

Full Article Here - http://grist.org/industrial-agriculture/farmers-advance-in-their-suit-against-monsanto/

Hose streets? Our streets! Belgian firefighters soak police in protest

2012-02-10T15:56:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 10, 2012

Several hundred Belgian firefighters have broken through police lines in Brussels and hosed down the prime minister's office in protest at the government's tougher retirement plans.

The firefighters want to keep their early retirement age at 58, arguing their arduous job does not allow them to work into their 60s.

Such demands run counter to government plans to have the overwhelming majority of people work two years beyond 65 so it can afford an ever-increasing pension bill as Belgium's population ages.

Full Article Here - http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/10/hose-belgian-firefighters-soak-police

Acta: Germany delays signing anti-piracy agreement

2012-02-10T10:49:00.000-08:00

BBC News
Feb. 10, 2012

Germany has halted signing a controversial anti-piracy accord, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Acta), after the justice ministry voiced concerns.

A foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP that the delay was to "give us time to carry out further discussions".

Latvia also put off signing on Friday. Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have already delayed ratification.

International protests against the agreement are expected on Saturday.

Measures within Acta to tackle online piracy have proven particularly controversial.

"Hacktivists" claiming to act on behalf of Anonymous have attacked official websites supporting the international agreement.

Full Article Here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16980451

Bahrain protests seek new 'Freedom Square'

2012-02-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

Associated Press
Feb. 10, 2012

MANANA, Bahrain (AP) — Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters in Bahrain are streaming toward a site they seek to occupy for the one-year anniversary of their uprising in the Gulf kingdom.

Riot police did not immediately intervene as crowds headed to an empty lot dubbed 'Freedom Square' in the village of Miqsha outside the capital Manama. Miqsha has been a site of ongoing clashes between Shiite-led protesters and police.

Bahrain's Sunni monarchy permitted limited sit-ins ahead of the Feb. 14 anniversary.

But Friday's march appears aimed at creating a new round-the-clock hub of the protest movement similar to Manana's Pearl Square, which was stormed by security forces last year.

Full Article Here - http://news.yahoo.com/bahrain-protests-seek-freedom-square-141418672.html

Occupy Wall Street Claims the City Ruined Its Library

2012-02-09T18:13:00.000-08:00

New York Times
Feb. 9, 2012
By COLIN MOYNIHAN

A member of the Occupy Wall Street movement filed a claim on behalf of the group Thursday that the city had damaged or destroyed $47,000 worth of books and other property while clearing its protest site at Zuccotti Park last fall. The notice of claim, filed with the comptroller’s office, is a preliminary step toward lodging a civil lawsuit.

When the Occupy Wall Street encampment was evicted from the park on Nov. 15, police officers and sanitation workers dismantled and removed belongings and furnishings that had been kept in the park, tossing them onto sidewalks, into metal containers and into a dump truck. Many of those items ended up at a Sanitation Department facility in Midtown, where they were made available for pickup by their owners, some of whom found them damaged beyond repair. Other property, some of the Occupy protesters say, never resurfaced.

The lawyers who filed the claim, Alan Levine, Michael L. Spiegel and the law firm Siegel Teitelbaum & Evans, wrote that the city “unreasonably seized and took possession” of about 3,600 books, four computers, WiFi equipment, shelves, wooden chairs and the large tent that covered the area that the protesters called the People’s Library. The man who is named in the claim, Peter Dutro, is described in the notice as the “de facto treasurer” of the group.

When the librarians went to the sanitation facility, the claim said, only 1,003 of their books could be found and 201 of them were so damaged as to be unusable. The four computers were also damaged beyond repair, the claim said, and protesters said at the time that hard drives were missing from those machines that were retrieved and that the casings of the computers had been twisted and bent.

Full Article Here - http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/09/occupy-wall-street-charges-city-ruined-its-library/

Two Occupy L.A. protesters arrested at foreclosure event

2012-02-09T17:34:00.000-08:00

Los Angeles Times
Feb. 9, 2012
By Abby Sewell

Two Occupy L.A. protesters were arrested Thursday outside a state building where California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris held a news conference to celebrate the state's share of a settlement with banks involved in the foreclosure crisis.

Harris touted the "historic commitment to California of up to $18 billion that will benefit hundreds of thousands of homeowners in the state hardest hit by the mortgage crisis."

Protesters, however, said the banks were let off the hook, calling the settlement a "sell-out."

California Highway Patrol Officer Vince Ramirez said about 100 protesters gathered outside the Ronald Reagan Building on Spring Street about 11:30 a.m. Some of the protesters were "unruly" and tried to get into the building, he said. Two were arrested.

Full Article Here - http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/02/occupy-la-protesters-arrested-kamala-harris.html

In cyber era, militaries scramble for new skills

2012-02-09T17:19:00.000-08:00

Reuters
Feb. 9, 2012
By Peter Apps

LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - With growing worries about the threat of "cyber warfare", militaries around the world are racing to recruit the computer specialists they believe may be central to the conflicts of the 21st century.

But whilst money is plentiful for new forces of "cyber warriors", attracting often individualistic technical specialists and hackers into military hierarchies is another matter.

Finding the people to command them is also tough. After a decade of messy and relatively low-tech ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, some senior western officers are if anything less confident with technology such as smartphones and tablet computers than their civilian contemporaries.

But with the Pentagon saying its computers are being attacked millions of times every day, time is short.

"We are busy and we are getting busier every day," Lt Gen Rhett Hernandez, a former artillery officer who now heads U.S. Cyber Command, told a cyber security conference in London last month organised by British firm Defence IQ.

"Cyberspace requires a world-class cyber warrior ... we must develop, recruit and retain in a different way to today."

Even in an era of shrinking western military budgets, funding for cyber security is ratcheting up fast. The Pentagon's 2012 budget allocated $2.5 million to improve cyber capabilities.

In December, the U.S. Army announced its first "cyber brigade" was operational, whilst the U.S. Navy and Air Force have their own cyber "fleets" and "wings".

Not only are they tasked with protecting key U.S. military systems and networks, but they are also working to build offensive skills that U.S. commanders hope will give them an edge in any future conflict.

These, insiders say, include developing the ability to hack and destroy industrial and military systems such as traffic and electricity controls.

"For better or worse, it is American military thought that is leading American societal thought (in) how to think about things cyber," former CIA director and Air Force Gen Michael Hayden told a security conference in Munich this month.

Full Article Here - http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/09/defence-cyber-idUSL5E8D75TY20120209

Silent State: Washington’s Campaign Against Whistle-Blowers

2012-02-09T16:38:00.000-08:00

Truthdig
Feb. 9, 2012
By Peter Van Buren/ TomDispatch

On January 23rd, the Obama administration charged former CIA officer John Kiriakou under the Espionage Act for disclosing classified information to journalists about the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects. His is just the latest prosecution in an unprecedented assault on government whistleblowers and leakers of every sort.

Kiriakou’s plight will clearly be but one more battle in a broader war to ensure that government actions and sunshine policies don’t go together. By now, there can be little doubt that government retaliation against whistleblowers is not an isolated event, nor even an agency-by-agency practice. The number of cases in play suggests an organized strategy to deprive Americans of knowledge of the more disreputable things that their government does. How it plays out in court and elsewhere will significantly affect our democracy.

Punish the Whistleblowers

The Obama administration has already charged more people—six—under the Espionage Act for alleged mishandling of classified information than all past presidencies combined. (Prior to Obama, there were only three such cases in American history.)

Kiriakou, in particular, is accused of giving information about the CIA’s torture programs to reporters two years ago. Like the other five whistleblowers, he has been charged under the draconian World War I-era Espionage Act.

That Act has a sordid history, having once been used against the government’s political opponents. Targets included labor leaders and radicals like Eugene V. Debs, Bill Haywood, Philip Randolph, Victor Berger, John Reed, Max Eastman, and Emma Goldman. Debs, a union leader and socialist candidate for the presidency, was, in fact, sentenced to 10 years in jail for a speech attacking the Espionage Act itself. The Nixon administration infamously (and unsuccessfully) invoked the Act to bar the New York Times from continuing to publish the classified Pentagon Papers.

Yet, extreme as use of the Espionage Act against government insiders and whistleblowers may be, it’s only one part of the Obama administration’s attempt to sideline, if not always put away, those it wants to silence. Increasingly, federal agencies or departments intent on punishing a whistleblower are also resorting to extra-legal means. They are, for instance, manipulating personnel rules that cannot be easily challenged and do not require the production of evidence. And sometimes, they are moving beyond traditional notions of “punishment” and simply seeking to destroy the lives of those who dissent.

The well-reported case of Thomas Drake is an example. As an employee, Drake revealed to the press that the National Security Agency (NSA) spent $1.2 billion on a contract for a data collection program called Trailblazer when the work could have been done in-house for $3 million. The NSA’s response? Drake’s home was raided at gunpoint and the agency forced him out of his job.

“The government convinced themselves I was a bad guy, an enemy of the state, and went after me with everything they had seeking to destroy my life, my livelihood, and my person—the politics of personal destruction, while also engaging in abject, cutthroat character assassination, and complete fabrication and frame up,” Drake told Antiwar.com. “Marriages are strained, and spouses’ professional lives suffer as much as their personal lives. Too often, whistleblowers end up broken, blacklisted, and bankrupted,” said the attorney who represents Drake.

In Kiriakou’s case, the CIA found an excuse to fire his wife, also employed by the Agency, while she was on maternity leave. Whistleblower Bradley Manning, accused of leaking Army and State Department documents to the website WikiLeaks, spent more than a year in the worst of punitive conditions in a U.S. Marine prison and was denied the chance even to appear in court to defend himself until almost two years after his arrest. Former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Morris Davis lost his career as a researcher at the Library of Congress for writing a critical op-ed for the Wall Street Journal and a letter to the editor at the Washington Post on double standards at the infamous prison, as did Robert MacClean for blowing the whistle on the Transportation Security Administration.

Full Article Here - http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/silent_state_washingtons_campaign_against_whistleblowers_20120209/

Nokia publishes policy on African conflict minerals

2012-02-09T16:01:00.000-08:00

Christian Science Monitor
Feb. 9, 2012
By Curt Hopkins

"Conflict minerals," those mined to support groups conducting armed conflict or engaging in human rights abuses, have been an issue since long before ReadWriteWeb first wrote about it in July of 2010. The mineral equivalent of blood diamonds, they include tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold, all of which are used to manufacture our electronics.

Nokia, the world's largest manufacturers of mobile phones, today published its policy on conflict minerals.

In a post on Nokia's "Conversations" blog, Ian Delaney lays out the company's public policy (PDF), which augments their supplier requirements.

Delaney boils the policy down to these four elements.

We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals.
We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain.
We have no tolerance with regard to corruption, money-laundering and bribery.
We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles.

The policy delves at some length into Nokia's commitment to human rights "in accordance with accepted international conventions and practices, such as those of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, ILO Core Conventions on Labor Standards, UN Global Compact, and OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises."

Under the sub-heading, "Implementation of the Policy with Regards to Conflict Minerals," the document reads:

"We prohibit human rights abuses associated with the extraction, transport or trade of minerals. We also prohibit any direct or indirect support to non-state armed groups or security forces that illegally control or tax mine sites, transport routes, trade points, or any upstream actors in the supply chain. Similarly, Nokia has a no tolerance policy with respect to corruption, money-laundering and bribery. We require the parties in our supply chain to agree to follow the same principles."

The document outlines some of the company's process for oversight of suppliers, including the EICC-GeSI Conflict Minerals Reporting Template. It would be interesting to know how the suppliers will be reviewed, how often and what will happen to errant suppliers who use conflict minerals. We have asked Mr. Delaney exactly that and will update should we receive a response.

Full Article Here - http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/Africa-Monitor/2012/0209/Nokia-publishes-policy-on-African-conflict-minerals

Apple supplier Foxconn hit by hackers

2012-02-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

CNET
Feb. 9, 2012
By Lance Whitney

A group of hackers known as Swagg Security is taking credit for a breach of Foxconn network security, resulting in the theft of usernames, passwords, and other private information.

In a series of Twitter posts yesterday, the group boasted that it publicly released the information on the Pirate Bay Web site as well as on Pastebin. The attack grabbed the credentials of every Foxconn employee, according to 9to5Mac, including Terry Gou, CEO of parent Hon Hai Industries.

Beyond damaging Foxconn internally, the stolen information could also create trouble for some of the company's technology partners.

"The passwords inside these files could allow individuals to make fraudulent orders under big companies like Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Intel, and Dell," Swagg Security said on its Pastebin page. Be careful ; )"

In response, Foxconn has taken down a Web site (Google cached version) explaining the services it provides to some of its key partners, including Apple, HP, Cisco, and Acer.

The group apparently was able to sneak past Foxconn's security by taking advantage of vulnerabilites in an outdated version of Internet Explorer used by one of the company's workers. Swagg Security even warned its intended victim on January 26 to make sure its browsers were up-to-date though it didn't name Foxconn as that victim.

Accessing some of the log-in information, 9to5Mac confirmed that the usernames and passwords did provide access to several Foxconn servers, most of them hosting intranet sites for company clients.

Full Article Here - http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-57373821-83/apple-supplier-foxconn-hit-by-hackers/

LAPD Pioneers High-Tech Crime-Fighting ‘War Room’

2012-02-09T15:27:00.000-08:00

CBS News
Feb. 8, 2012

The LAPD is fighting crime from a high-tech war room that gives it eyes all over the city. The surveillance hub is now a model for police forces around the world and KCAL9 got an exclusive tour inside from Chief Charlie Beck.

“We are targets on our own soil,” says Beck. “We have to be ready.”

What began as a grass roots idea following the 9/11 terrorist attacks is now a state-of-the-art real-time analysis critical response center. It’s called RACR, and it’s located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.

“This is a system that cuts through the red tape, that gets information to the people that need it,” says Chief Beck. He calls it “the brains of the department, twenty-four/seven.”

Police in the activity center monitor live feeds of city and traffic cameras, counter-terrorism information, and real-time crime mapping, with cutting edge software.

“If we didn’t have that we would be operating blind,” says Capt. Sean Malinowski, the Commanding Officer at RACR. “Essentially we’re always activated here.”

RACR is a critical crime-fighting tool at the center of every high profile incident in the City of Los Angeles.

“We have some real-time tools that help us analyze crime as it’s happening,” says Malinowski. “And then we feed that information out to the geographic areas and to patrol divisions.”

RACR is relied upon during events like dignitary visits from the Royals and President Obama, as well as the recent Occupy LA showdown and arrests.

“We had eyes on that, both through video cameras that the city owns, and also through video streams that were provided by the actual Occupy LA protesters,” says Malinowski.

Full Article Here - http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/02/08/lapd-pioneers-high-tech-crime-fighting-war-room/