Fresh riots at Australia's Christmas Island centre

Australian police have fired tear gas to subdue rioting asylum seekers at the Christmas Island detention centre following days of unrest.

Police reinforcements were flown to the island on Thursday after about 250 detainees set fire to buildings and attacked security staff.
Inmates say they are protesting against living conditions and the time it takes to process their asylum applications.
Some asylum seekers have been reportedly held for 18 months.
Christmas Island, off the north-west coast of Western Australia, is home to more than 2,500 asylum seekers.
The centre is overcrowded following a steady surge of asylum seekers arriving by boat in Australia's northern waters.
More than 6,500 arrived in Australia by boat last year, mostly from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Iraq.
'In crisis' Bricks and concrete blocks were thrown by protesters and they destroyed two compounds at the prison-like centre, police said.
The incident was the latest in almost a week of similar riots and break-outs at the facility.

Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd condemned the riots as "completely unacceptable".
"How can you expect our officials to process applications for asylum when that sort of thing is happening?" he said in a televised statement, adding that there would be no relaxation of the rules.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said police were firmly back in control at the centre.
"Last night buildings were damaged, fires were lit and there were violent approaches to the Australian Federal Police," he said.
The authorities used tear gas and "beanbag" bullets - which have been described as mini beanbags fired out of a gun-like weapon - to bring the protesters under control.
Mr Bowen said another 70 police were being sent the island to bolster the 118-strong force already there.
The Immigration Department announced this week it had transferred almost 100 asylum seekers from Christmas Island to Darwin, following the continued unrest.
Another 500 asylum seekers may be transferred to Darwin from the island in coming weeks, ABC reported.
Mr Bowen said overcrowding and long delays were contributing to a level of frustration which had contributed "significant and serious" incidents at Christmas Island.
Earlier this month, the government announced it would build a new immigration detention centre in the northern city of Darwin to relieve overcrowding on Christmas Island.
The conservative opposition believes harsher measures must be taken to deter more boats from arriving with more asylum-seekers.
Opposition leader Tony Abbott said the detention system was "in crisis".
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Birgitta Jonsdottir: My Twitter case and 'thoughtcrime'

All of who care for freedom of information, speech and expression should be thankful for the recent ruling in my Twitter case. Thankful because it exposes the reality in which we live. The judge’s ruling exposed the blatant truth: that users of the Internet and social media sites hosted in the USA do NOT have any rights as individuals to defend themselves against the tyranny of authorities wanting to use the information we share and often consider private. Emails, conversations, messaging and social networking are now fair game for the “thought police.” It is good that we know that this is how the court system in the land of the free views our rights, because now we can do something about regaining those rights!
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

Gen David Petraeus has previously said US online psychological operations are aimed at 'countering extremist ideology and propaganda'. Photograph: Cliff Owen/AP
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'

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