Friday, 18 March 2011
Birgitta Jonsdottir: My Twitter case and 'thoughtcrime'
We are at critical point when it comes to freedom of information and speech. If we don’t act now it might be too late in a years’ time. Everything happens so fast in the realm of the Internet -- our rights are eroding every day at an alarming speed. I urgently suggest and call upon everyone who cares for their rights to their content online to join me in fighting for these rights.
I am calling for a joint action to demand that all social media sites that host our information in the USA will notify all of their users that they don’t have any rights to defend themselves except through these sites but not as individuals. I want to know if Facebook, Google and Twitter are willing battle for every one of us against unwarranted and sometimes secret demands to our information from the U.S. government. If they can’t make that pledge we will either leave them or ask them to change users’ terms or demand that authorities recognize our rights to defend ourselves.
Here are a few examples that I find unsettling:
Google hosts our entire history of searching and they create a profile of every one of us as consumers so that they can make us targeted costumers for individually directed ads. This is why Google can maintain their services for free.
If authorities get access to this profiling – do you feel comfortable that they do? Consider this scenario: You are doing research on terrorists or the drug culture for an article or essay – all of your searching is now part of your profile. It is easy to build a very damning and erroneous profile of you simply based on your innocent research.
Many users do not understand that they are giving away all control of their web usage statistics. Personal data can be used against you in secret! This is very dangerous to those, like me, who are activists, journalists and researchers. It equally endangers the merely curious.
All our emails can be exposed and handed over. Every email you write is an open postcard for authorities to read whenever they choose.Every move you make on Facebook can be used against you and as my case proved – we now know we have no right whatsoever to stop it even if we were to stop using these sites today. All our information is already stored there.
In George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, a “thoughtcrime” was an illegal type of thought.Have we finally reached the sad state of affairs where our written communication, indeed our very thoughts are seen by an increasingly surveillance-obsessed totalitarian state as “thoughtcrimes”? Is this the kind of world we would wish for our children?
In the next few days I will work to gather as many as supporters as possible to be part of this joint action for our rights as users of social media. It will be an effort to our privacy rights and the right to defend our personal content online. Drop me an email if you have ideas on how to take this further so we may make a shockwave of change.
Together we can stop this unjust development.
Birgitta Jonsdottir
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
The project has been likened by web experts to China's attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.
The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".
Centcom spokesman Commander Bill Speaks said: "The technology supports classified blogging activities on foreign-language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US."
He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed. The languages in which the interventions are conducted include Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto.
Once developed, the software could allow US service personnel, working around the clock in one location, to respond to emerging online conversations with any number of co-ordinated Facebook messages, blogposts, tweets, retweets, chatroom posts and other interventions. Details of the contract suggest this location would be MacDill air force base near Tampa, Florida, home of US Special Operations Command.
Centcom's contract requires for each controller the provision of one "virtual private server" located in the United States and others appearing to be outside the US to give the impression the fake personas are real people located in different parts of the world.
It also calls for "traffic mixing", blending the persona controllers' internet usage with the usage of people outside Centcom in a manner that must offer "excellent cover and powerful deniability".
The multiple persona contract is thought to have been awarded as part of a programme called Operation Earnest Voice (OEV), which was first developed in Iraq as a psychological warfare weapon against the online presence of al-Qaida supporters and others ranged against coalition forces. Since then, OEV is reported to have expanded into a $200m programme and is thought to have been used against jihadists across Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
OEV is seen by senior US commanders as a vital counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation programme. In evidence to the US Senate's armed services committee last year, General David Petraeus, then commander of Centcom, described the operation as an effort to "counter extremist ideology and propaganda and to ensure that credible voices in the region are heard". He said the US military's objective was to be "first with the truth".
This month Petraeus's successor, General James Mattis, told the same committee that OEV "supports all activities associated with degrading the enemy narrative, including web engagement and web-based product distribution capabilities".
Centcom confirmed that the $2.76m contract was awarded to Ntrepid, a newly formed corporation registered in Los Angeles. It would not disclose whether the multiple persona project is already in operation or discuss any related contracts.
Nobody was available for comment at Ntrepid.
In his evidence to the Senate committee, Gen Mattis said: "OEV seeks to disrupt recruitment and training of suicide bombers; deny safe havens for our adversaries; and counter extremist ideology and propaganda." He added that Centcom was working with "our coalition partners" to develop new techniques and tactics the US could use "to counter the adversary in the cyber domain".
According to a report by the inspector general of the US defence department in Iraq, OEV was managed by the multinational forces rather than Centcom.
Asked whether any UK military personnel had been involved in OEV, Britain's Ministry of Defence said it could find "no evidence". The MoD refused to say whether it had been involved in the development of persona management programmes, saying: "We don't comment on cyber capability."
OEV was discussed last year at a gathering of electronic warfare specialists in Washington DC, where a senior Centcom officer told delegates that its purpose was to "communicate critical messages and to counter the propaganda of our adversaries".
Persona management by the US military would face legal challenges if it were turned against citizens of the US, where a number of people engaged in sock puppetry have faced prosecution.
Last year a New York lawyer who impersonated a scholar was sentenced to jail after being convicted of "criminal impersonation" and identity theft.
It is unclear whether a persona management programme would contravene UK law. Legal experts say it could fall foul of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, which states that "a person is guilty of forgery if he makes a false instrument, with the intention that he or another shall use it to induce somebody to accept it as genuine, and by reason of so accepting it to do or not to do some act to his own or any other person's prejudice". However, this would apply only if a website or social network could be shown to have suffered "prejudice" as a result.
Nick Fielding and Ian Cobain @'The Guardian'
Thursday, 17 March 2011
Ruling Sunni minority slaughtering Shiite civilians in our client #Bahrain /w #Saudi help: http://aje.me/eBluM4
Sound - John Cage and Roland Kirk (1966)
Koch Industries accused of polluting Arkansas waterway
The complaint alleges that a Georgia-Pacific paper mill on the Coffee Creek in Arkansas - owned by the billionaire Koch Brothers -emits 45 million gallons of paper mill waste including hazardous materials like ammonia, chloride, and mercury each day
Coffee Creek then flows into Louisiana's Ouachita River where the pollutants have left the formerly pristine water speckled with odorous foam, slime and black pockets of water, said Jerry Johnson, who has been visiting the Ouachita River for 35 years.
"People used to swim in it," said Johnson, who now lives along the river. "In the summertime, it was the place to go."
But Johnson said the number of visitors has dwindled as the river conditions continued to grow worse, preventing the area from reaching its full economic potential as a vacation destination. The pollution is so bad it has kept Johnson from fishing in the river.
"If I did fish out of it, I don't know if I would eat it," Johnson said.
Barry Sulkin, a field office director for PEER, said Georgia-Pacific is blatantly breaking a provision of the Arkansas state permit that prohibits the discharge of "distinctly visible solids, scum or foam of a persistent nature."
Though the pollution problem with Coffee Creek started years ago, the issue was compounded by the state's refusal to correct water quality standards in 2010, said Sulkin, a former chief of environmental enforcement for the Tennessee Division of Water Pollution Control.
Environmental groups lobbied for stronger environmental standards but in September, the state issued the Georgia-Pacific mill a permit.
"It's obvious to me that the state is allowing this to continue for apparent economic reasons," Sulkin said.
Georgia-Pacific said in a statement that the water has been repeatedly analyzed by the EPA and the Arkansas and Louisiana regulatory agencies.
"We are in compliance with all water permits issued by these agencies, most recently, our updated water discharge permit, which was issued in 2010," Georgia-Pacific said in the statement.
"For decades, Georgia-Pacific has been a very active environmental steward in Ashley County and surrounding areas in Arkansas and Louisiana," the statement added. "Our employees live in this community and we are committed to operating a facility that is environmentally sound. We have a long-term interest in the Ouachita River's quality and habitat."
An EPA spokesperson for the South Central Regional Office said he could not comment on this specific complaint but said "we will review them and respond as appropriate."
Regardless of the outcome with the EPA, Cheryl Slavant, the designated Riverkeeper for the Ouachita River, said she knows the damage to the waterway can still be easily repaired.
"All the corporation has to do is spend some money-a lot of money-but they can clean this up," she said.
Chris Zawistowski @'CBS'
No non-violent political action please, we're Australian
'Civil rights, women's rights, gay rights... it's all wrong. Call in the cavalry to disrupt this perception of freedom gone wild. God damn it! First one wants freedom, then the whole damn world wants freedom.'
Gil Scott-Heron -'B Movie'
Over the long weekend just past, there were several breakouts from the Christmas Island detention centre. Also, a 300 strong protest that officials said was a riot and quelled with beanbag rounds. Labor’s Immigration Minister Chris Bowen accused some of the asylum seekers of waging an “orchestrated campaign.”Christmas Island Shire President Gordon Thompson, speaking on ABC radio, agreed. He said the detainees on Christmas Island had set out “to make a peaceful protest,” going “into the community to be seen and to be heard”. Their purpose? To “draw media attention to their plight.” A plight that, according to refugee advocates, includes severe overcrowding at the facility (built for 500 people, it now houses more than 2,500) and extended delays in visas, including those already deemed refugees.
The Shire President went on to say that having met with the asylum seekers, his impression was that “a fairly strategic approach was taken to protests.” He continued. “These people have come here with the purpose of getting a visa… They’re forging a path for their families to follow… The primary motivation of the protests is to get attention to their plight and to have their situation resolved one way or another.”
Like many Australians, I have been following the national debate about asylum–seekers arriving by boat since it became a partisan issue during the Howard years. I remember well the dead-fish tones of then Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock insinuating that all attempts by refugees to achieve a “desired migration outcome” were – and should rightly be viewed by the community - as manipulative of our emotions, Australian law, or both.
We saw this back in 2000 when senior government ministers including Ruddock and Prime Minister John Howard said that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard, claims that would later be shown to be false – and to have been known to be false by those making them...
Continue reading
Leslie Cannold @'ABC'
Evacuation Zone around Nuclear Plant
The American Embassy in Tokyo, on advice from the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told Americans to evacuate a radius of “approximately 50 miles” from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. The advice represents a graver assessment of the risk in the immediate vicinity than the warnings made by the Japanese, who have told everyone within 12 miles to evacuate and those between 12 and 19 miles to take shelter.
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