A Dynamic Approach to Federal Cybersecurity
(By Howard Schmidt, The White House Blog, September 29, 2011)
At the 2010 RSA Conference, I issued a rallying call for the cybersecurity community to collectively evolve from previous static, compliance-based metrics programs to a more dynamic approach that utilizes continuous monitoring. Since then, we’ve seen the public and private sector respond with innovative approaches to this challenge.
In line with that call, recently the Office of Management and Budget released its reporting instructions for agencies under FISMA. In that memorandum, the federal government takes a significant step forward in our efforts to use continuous monitoring to more effectively and efficiently ensure the security of federal systems and networks: "Rather than enforcing a static, three-year reauthorization process, agencies are expected to conduct ongoing authorizations of information systems through the implementation of continuous monitoring programs. Continuous monitoring programs thus fulfill the three year security reauthorization requirement, so a separate re-authorization process is not necessary."
Agencies can now use continuous monitoring to better ensure that their systems are secure, freeing resources that were previously spent on static compliance efforts and can now be devoted to improving security.
Along those lines, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday (September 26, 2011) that the American business community is proactively seeking out the Department of State for its security scanning dashboard software – a solution that gives letter grades to senior decision makers and actionable information to security specialists – both of whom are provided updated information with a frequency that more appropriately matches the dynamic cyber landscape. More than 300 businesses and local, state and federal organizations across the country have contacted the State Department for information on starting their own continuous monitoring program.
Gone are the days when cyber security is the sole preserve of specialists. Protecting sensitive information impacts our society from Main Street to Middle America – from people shopping in a store downtown or on the web, to the doctor utilizing digital devices to diagnose a patient, or to the collaboration occurring with an overseas colleague on a research and development project. We must all work together, in both the public and the private sector, to ensure that our computers and networks are secure against cyber threats.
My main complaint in all of this is the disruption of diplomacy.
Iraq war logs: Apache attack's child victims speak out
Cockpit video of gunship attack that killed 19 and gravely injured two children was first major leak of Iraq war material
On a hot July day in 2007, taxi driver Salah Mutasher Toman swept his two young children into the passenger seat of his white minivan. He bade his brother, Sabah Toman, farewell and started making his way home, a short drive across the neighbourhood, through militia-held territory.
The area had echoed with explosions that morning. A fight had been brewing. But that was nothing new in Baghdad during that particular bloody summer. Salah planned on bunkering down with his family for the day to ride out the routine of heat and violence. He didn't get further than 400 metres before his van was blown apart by a hovering American helicopter. Salah died, along with six other people in his van. His son Sajad and daughter Duah were gravely wounded.
The events were all filmed by the helicopter that shot at them. The footage was among the first significant leaks from classified military materials in nearly eight years of war in Iraq. It was seen as lifting the lid on an iron-clad secrecy surrounding the US military campaign that had pitched the fighting as a black and white clash between liberators and insurgents. The civilian toll had been difficult to document and until then, impossible to film, let alone broadcast.
As the attack helicopter circled, with its cameras rolling, Salah's van entered the aftermath of an attack launched minutes earlier by the same hovering pilots. They asked for and received permission to fire, then the helicopter's guns pulverised Salah's van. Minutes later, an American patrol arrived on the scene. They approached the wrecked van and found the two children alive. They carried them straight to medics, who drove them to a nearby hospital.
"I remember them carrying me," said Duah, who was aged 4 that day and is now 7. "I was very scared and my stomach hurt a lot."
Her brother Sajad, 12, lifted up his shirt to reveal his scars. "They carried me away as well. I was terrified to be in the arms of an American soldier. But I didn't know what had just happened. And I didn't know where my sister was."
A total of 19 people, their father among them, had just been killed by the helicopter's heavy gun. Eleven had been loitering on a corner, including a Reuters cameraman. The helicopter had been circling in support of a US military operation taking place below. US troops were about to confront a militia they believed was active in the area. The helicopter pilots believed they saw some of the men armed with Kalashnikovs and another with a rocket-propelled grenades.
As rounds from the heavy guns thundered into the bitumen, the unsuspecting men standing below seemed to disintegrate. One survived and attempted to crawl until he was finished off with a second burst. Salah's minivan was on the scene around two minutes later.
His brother, Sabah Saleh Toman, had heard the first series of explosions just as has brother had pulled away from his house. "Then I heard the second [explosions]," he said. "I knew it involved him.
"My brother was only trying to help and they shot at him. They killed him. His children are almost orphans to this day, because their mother is still too [traumatised] to care for them. All day she is either in her room, or in the hospital."
Audio from the helicopter suggests the pilots had mistaken Salah's minivan for reinforcements rushing to the battle. After their initial attack on the van, a mortally wounded man was seen crawling away.
"Come on buddy, all you gotta do is reach for a weapon," one of the pilots said. Sabah and his brother's two children, whom he now cares for, have seen the footage of the attack. Parts of the footage received saturation coverage on Iraqi television channels in June.
"It was shocking to see," says Sabah. "Shocking to see how violent they were and the lack of understanding they showed. My brother arrived to help them. Anyone in this culture would have done the same."
Asked whether there were militias operating in the area that day, Sabah said simply: "Yes." He would not elaborate, but replied with another "yes" when asked whether the militia was the Mehdi Army, a key Shia lslamic player in the sectarian war that was ravaging Baghdad at the time.
In the days following the attack, Sabah looked through all hospitals in east Baghdad for his brother, niece and nephew. He quickly found his brother at the morgue, but could not locate the children. They were in a hospital in the fortified Green Zone. Duah had at least 12 bullet or shrapnel wounds al over her body. She faces more surgery and still complains of stomach pain. Sajad was just as badly wounded. When Sabah had picked up the ruins of his family, he approached the nearby US base. A colonel agreed to see him. "He took me inside and apologised," he said. "They gave me $5,000 and said that is all they could do."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/oct/25/wikileaks-apache-attack-iraqi-civilians
Wikileaks Reprisal: Samuel Eyasu Arrested
(Gedab News, Eritrea, October 1, 2011)
Mr. Samuel Eyasu, the World Bank’s Acting Country Director for Eritrea, has been arrested.
Since the Eritrean regime never charges those it detains (unless they are foreign) of any crimes and does not disclose why it is detaining people to family members, his family does not why he is arrested.
Samuel is married to Ms. Askalu Menkerios, who is the ruling regime’s Minister of Labor and Human Welfare, and one of its strongest apologists.
It is likely that his arrest is related to the un-redacted wikileaks that were released in early September.
According to a February 22, 2010 confidential cable originating from the US Embassy in Eritrea, Samuel Eyasu explains that Eritrea stands to lose $76 million in World Bank funding because it is not likely to sign off on a requisite IMF stipulation to liberalize the market and foreign exchange rates. The cable states that Eritrea’s Finance Minister had been out of the country for a year and the World Bank’s regional director wanted to pay a visit to Eritrea’s “true decision makers” and has, therefore, scheduled a meeting with Yemane Gebreab, the political director of the ruling party PFDJ; and Yemane Gebremeskel, the director of the President’s office.
According the website of the World Bank, the majority of its projects in Eritrea “have now closed and as of September 2010, the Bank’s portfolio of lending in Eritrea consisted of two active projects in education and transport with a total commitment of US$75.3 million.”
Meanwhile, Askalu Menkerios herself, along with “Justice Minister” Fawzia Hashim, makes an appearance in another wikileaks cable, dated but they are in no danger of being arrested given their reaction to the American ambassador’s information that Isaias Afwerki was not accepting calls from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
“When the Secretary (then FLOTUS) visited Eritrea in 1997, she lunched at the CMR with the current Eritrean ministers of justice and tourism. At a dinner July 1, the ambassador got Justice Minister Fawzia Hashim and Tourism Minister Askalu Menkerios to share warm reminisces about the visit. Askalu recalled planting a tree in the grounds of a rural clinic, and Fawzia said the luncheon with Eritrean women leaders was very special. When the ambassador mentioned that we have been trying for ten days to get a call through from the Secretary to President Isaias, both ministers stopped smiling and looked down at their plates. ‘Well, he has been traveling a lot lately,’ one of the ministers lamely offered. They appeared to be surprised and uncomfortable with the news of their president’s obstreperousness.
The US cables included instructions to protect or “strictly protect” sources speaking in confidence. When wikileaks first disclosed the cables in November of last year, it partnered with the media and human rights organizations who combed the data to ensure that the cables remained redacted. In September of this year, the British newspaper The Guardian and wikileaks began been blaming each other for losing the primary password, and tens of thousands of the cables have been released, disclosing the names of the sources.
The arrest of Samuel Eyasu is the only one we have been able to confirm, but there are likely to be many others including officials in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, members of the Eritrean Defense Forces and tortured-then-released members of Eritrea’s banned churches.
Book about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange tells why so many have turned against him
(Jon Ungoed-Thomas, The Australian, October 02, 2011)
ONE day in July, Julian Assange held a 40th birthday party at the Georgian mansion where he has been under house arrest. The invitation read: "Come celebrate with 'the most dangerous man in the world'." Among those willing to risk such peril were Jemima Khan and the designer Vivienne Westwood. Assange bathed in the admiration of some of the liberal elite.
In recent months, however, the adulation has gone into reverse, especially among some of those who have worked closely with the mercurial founder of WikiLeaks, the website that has published thousands of secret documents.
Assange has fallen out with his lawyers, collaborators, staff and some former supporters, who complain of his monstrous ego, chauvinism towards women and meagre gratitude to those who worked hard for WikiLeaks' success. Perhaps most damaging of all, Assange now looks like a hypocrite.
The advocate of the free flow of information has complained bitterly about the publication of a book about him. He was furious to find his "Unauthorised Autobiography" on sale in bookshops. The arch-leaker has had his life leaked.
Assange, who remains in Britain while fighting extradition to Sweden on charges of sexual assault, signed a lucrative book deal late last year. He spent hours talking to a ghost writer -- only to change his mind about publication when he saw the first draft.
The publisher, Canongate, facing huge losses on the project, decided to proceed without his approval.
It is not hard to see why the WikiLeaker turned so coy. The book, written from interviews with him, reveals an extraordinary character, both inspiring and deeply flawed, who turns on those who fail to see things his way.
He calls one of his key aides "tremendously obnoxious" and describes the former editor of The New York Times, which collaborated with WikiLeaks in publishing the secret government documents, as a "moral pygmy".
Staff at Britain's The Guardian, which also helped WikiLeaks, are lambasted as "lily-livered gits hiding in their glass offices".
His supporters say the book records a campaigner for openness who has had an impact on world affairs. His detractors say his flaws are so damaging that they have virtually destroyed the site he built.
Just how odd Assange can be is illustrated by a disturbing incident in his childhood. Born in Australia in 1971, he led an itinerant early life, attending more than 30 schools, according to the book. At one of them, he fell out with "an obnoxious young girl" who "wouldn't share" a scooter. How did Assange react? He hit her over the head with a hammer. The book, written in the first person, continues: "This caused a giant fuss and I had to leave, although the girl was fine."
He was undoubtedly bright. He studied maths at Melbourne University and started to apply theories of quantum physics to the flow of information. "I began to think of information as matter, and started to examine how it flows through people and through society."
He almost seems to have had more connection to computers than to people, describing how, by the time he was 16, his computer had "become my consciousness . . . the beginning of a new life".
Soon after WikiLeaks was established, documents, videos and classified information started to flow in. They came to include footage of helicopter airstrikes in Baghdad in which civilians were killed in July 2007, American military logs from the Afghan and Iraq conflicts, and 250,000 leaked embassy cables.
For freedom of Information advocates, it should have been a triumph. However, Assange's handling of WikiLeaks provoked festering resentment among some aides and former admirers.
In the book, Assange is aware of the resentments, but merely admits: "I am often called arrogant, and I suppose I must be."
Heather Brooke, the FOI campaigner and author of The Revolution Will Be Digitised, is one of those to have fallen out with Assange. Last week, she said: "He is initially inspirational, but is an impossible human being. He can't sustain a relationship for any period of time. And people realise that what is practised is almost the opposite of what is preached.
"He has driven so many people away that he doesn't have anyone sensible advising him any more and he's making these terrible decisions. He hasn't learnt that lesson from childhood that the world is not there solely for your benefit."
She, too, found his approach to women deeply uncomfortable. When Assange was accused of rape and molestation in Sweden in August last year, there was some sympathy for his position among WikiLeaks staff. Many, however, felt he should step aside from the organisation while he fought the allegations.
Assange refused and even wanted some of the WikiLeaks donations to fund his campaign. Some WikiLeaks activists, including one of the key members of the organisation, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, claimed Assange used to boast about how many children he had fathered across the world. Domscheit-Berg left in disgust.
Even journalists with whom Assange chose to collaborate in publishing secret documents fell foul of his ego if they voiced any criticism of him. The book reveals how enraged he became when The New York Times, which had published documents from WikiLeaks, subsequently printed an unflattering article about him, written by then editor Bill Keller.
The article was less than generous about Assange's achievements and questioned his personal hygiene. Keller said one of his correspondents who had met Assange in London had described him as looking like a "bag lady walking in off the street" and smelling "as if he hadn't bathed in days".
Keller described Assange as "elusive, manipulative and volatile", and said he came to view him as a character from a Stieg Larsson thriller who used sex as both recreation and violation.
Assange, according to the book, was furious. "I was a bag lady and smelly old nutcase, while he was Bill Keller, the weakest and most self-protecting man ever to edit The New York Times. This man is a moral pygmy with a self-justifying streak the size of the San Andreas fault." He describes Keller's comment about his sex life as malicious and actionable.
He also vilifies reporters at The Guardian as "self-serving" and "weaklings", criticising them for betraying his trust and potentially compromising his security.
"The Guardian people couldn't stop themselves from yakking at their dinner parties, and (a) senior reporter, especially, couldn't keep his mouth shut."
Not that Assange is the soul of tact and discretion. He goes on: "They were looking to themselves, their positions, their later careers, and while this is all very human, it got in the way of our work."
He was incensed that The Guardian had provided a copy of the leaked diplomatic cables to The New York Times without his permission. In an angry meeting at the Guardian offices, Assange confronted editor Alan Rusbridger. "My respect for the man plummeted to nothing," he says in the book.
Yet Assange seems to have just as many contradictions as those about whom he complains so bitterly.
Earlier this year, it emerged that Assange wanted WikiLeaks activists to sign a confidentiality agreement because of his fear of leaks. Those who breached the agreement could face damages of $19 million for passing on unauthorised information, according to the document. As one disillusioned activist pointed out, WikiLeaks was created to combat such draconian agreements gagging ordinary individuals.
Assange seems not to have been bothered by the irony.
Some of Assange's erstwhile supporters are also dismayed at his choice of associates, including Israel Shamir, who has been accused of being anti-Semitic, which he denies.
When the magazine Private Eye ran an article on WikiLeaks and Shamir earlier this year, Assange rang Ian Hislop, the editor, to complain of an international conspiracy to smear WikiLeaks.
He claimed there was a conspiracy by some journalists -- all of whom "are Jewish".
Assange alleged Hislop had distorted the conversation, claiming that WikiLeaks treasured Jewish support and staff, as well as support from pan-Arab democracy activists.
Assange now faces a watershed moment.
In about a week, a judge will decide whether he should be extradited to Sweden on the sexual assault charges. Legal experts say the decision is likely to go against Assange, although he could be given leave to appeal to the Supreme Court.
In the US, a grand jury in Virginia is discussing if Assange should face a charge of espionage. If he is extradited to Sweden, he faces a greater risk of being extradited to the US.
He is keen to reinvigorate WikiLeaks, but the desertions of Domscheit-Berg and others have badly damaged the organisation.
Brooke, the FOI campaigner, said: "It's now effectively a shell company, just for Julian Assange's ego. You can't even send WikiLeaks documents at the moment. That secure submission system was built by other people in WikiLeaks and they took their code with them when they left."
Would-be whistleblowers are also unlikely to be encouraged by the fact that his best ever source, the American soldier Bradley Manning, is in jail awaiting a court martial.
Vaughan Smith, owner of the country house on the Norfolk-Suffolk border where Assange is staying, insists he enjoys having him as a guest.
"He has promoted an incredibly important debate about what should and should not be secret," Smith said.
"Some of what he has done has been deeply admirable but, like everyone else, he has his failings. Some think of him as a Bond villain with a cat, but others think of him as Robin Hood."
Perhaps most damaging of all, Assange now looks like a hypocrite
Wikileaks Reprisal: Samuel Eyasu Arrested
WikiLeaks 'Architect' threatens site's future
(Andrew Fowler and staff, Australian Broadcasting Company, October 4, 2011)
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange finds himself isolated, fighting extradition and deserted by many of his former partners and friends. His organisation is damaged and cannot receive the leaks that are its lifeblood. Can WikiLeaks survive?
WikiLeaks is effectively closed for new business after a computer mastermind nicknamed The Architect walked out of the organisation last year.
Assange himself is appealing against a decision that he be sent to Sweden to answer questions about sex allegations involving two women last year. The High Court in London is expected to decide within days whether Assange should be extradited.
In Tuesday night's Foreign Correspondent on ABC TV, Assange denies the site he founded is in crisis.
“There is no problem in the hundreds of relationships that this organisation has signed partnerships with, on every continent except Antarctica," he said.
"None of those have failed. They are all strong."
But the evidence of former friends and partners suggests otherwise.
The Architect walked when Assange's former deputy, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, also fled the operation after a falling out with the Australian founder.
The Architect took with him the all-important submission system that allows whistleblowers to lodge sensitive information and keep their identities secret.
Since then Assange and WikiLeaks have been unable to accept online submissions.
Mr Domscheit-Berg says the WikiLeaks drop box is all The Architect's creation.
"Not a single line of code ever was made by Julian. He has no role in creating the submission system and neither have I. And neither did I or he ever have access to that system," Mr Domscheit-Berg said.
Mr Domscheit-Berg has been building a WikiLeaks rival that, despite great fanfare, has so far failed to launch.
He and other former operatives have told Foreign Correspondent of the bad blood that pervaded the WikiLeaks operation and has accused Assange of making serious threats.
"He became very paranoid about the way he was dealing with me, dealing with others as well. He threatened me that he would hunt me down and kill me," Mr Domscheit-Berg said.
In the meantime, Assange is under virtual house arrest at the stately home of a supporter in rural Norfolk, north-east of London.
If the High Court decides Assange has to be extradited to Sweden to face sex allegations, his lawyers, including Australian human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, are worried the Swedish authorities will hand him over to the United States.
"Under the US Espionage Act there are sections that do carry the death penalty," Mr Robertson said.
"For that reason I suspect he wouldn't be extradited on those charges, but there are lesser charges that carry up to 10 years imprisonment. And that is what he would face, 10 years in a maximum-security prison."
Happy Birthday Wikileaks – Where is the knowledge in your information?
(By Tristan Stewart-Robertson, Firstpost.com--Mumbai, India, October 5, 2011)
As my dad once said, nothing is secret anymore. We may be able to land some of the blame, or thanks, for that, at the doorstep of Wikileaks.
Marking its fifth anniversary on Tuesday with the blunt line of “5 years of crushing bastards”, according to its Twitter feed, the non-profit agency has certainly made a name for itself.
Wikileaks has released millions of files into the public domain, sent to them anonymously from around the world from inside governments and businesses. It has exposed the lies, half truths, manipulations and diplomatic dances of embassies, the deaths of civilians in warzones and much more.
Far from the slight arrogance of “crushing bastards”, and the bizarre world inside the head of Wikileaks director Julian Assange, it is worth looking at base fundamentals for the site.
Wikileaks cites in its founding principles Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
This is a human right, and should be championed. But the interpretation of “impart information” is where people disagree with Wikileaks. News organisations have a duty to “impart information” in the public interest, but that sometimes has caveats.
If a local town council was planning a women’s shelter, a newspaper could not publicise the location because it might put the safety of the women at risk. The diplomatic cables released last year certainly bruised some reputations, but the bigger dispute was whether it put lives at risk.
Sometimes harm to an individual is unavoidable in the pursuit of news in the public interest, but the public impression after the past year is not that Wikileaks is looking out for the little guy; it’s looking to bring down the big guys.
Wikileaks says it is a news organisation. Certainly, it picked up the torch of journalism in many ways. As the traditional print news industry shrank in the last two decades against the expanding bubble of digital and TV, investigative journalism was squeezed. It takes money and time to investigate any subject, and ever fewer businesses are willing to do anything other than speculate endlessly on Amanda Knox or judge whatever was worn by whichever celebrity while taking out the trash.
But on a more fundamental level, as journalism got more high tech, we forgot about how to protect our sources from all the information they accidentally send us anytime they get in touch through email addresses or GPS tags or metadata. And we did nothing to maintain or build up trust with the public, who ultimately decide whether we are worthy of telling their stories.
So along came Wikileaks, with self-described “military-grade encryption” and a high-tech “drop box” to offer maximum anonymity for whistleblowers. It was not a traditional news outlet with the baggage of scandals or inaccuracies or even made-up news. And because it was all anonymous, the whistleblowers could send anything without consequences.
As the website states: “Wikileaks does not record any source-identifying information and there are a number of mechanisms in place to protect even the most sensitive submitted documents from being sourced. We do not keep any logs. We can not comply with requests for information on sources because we simply do not have the information to begin with. Similarly we can not see your real identity in any anonymised chat sessions with us.”
No mainstream news organisation, often with very public office buildings, can offer such protection.
Some, such as the Wall Street Journal and Al-Jazeera, have tried to create their own secure methods of inviting submissions directly, rather than having to wait for Wikileaks to deem them worthy of a partnership.
But the Electronic Frontier Foundation earlier this year found both to be offering “false promises of anonymity“.
It concluded: “These websites are misleading and based on our review of the fine print, use of them by people who risk prosecution or retaliation for bringing sunshine to corruption, illegal behaviour, or other topics worthy of whistleblowing, is risky at best and dangerous at worst.”
That’s a serious indictment of news bodies that TRIED to be like Wikileaks, never mind the ones that haven’t even tried to implement such protections.
So certainly, the theory behind Wikileaks have given traditional and future news organisations a model for protecting sources for whistleblowing, which remains a core source of news stories.
But if Wikileaks is indeed a news organisation as it says, then it too is not above scrutiny and accountability. But in the world of the anonymous web, nobody is accountable for words or actions anymore.
Exposure of any and all information makes the world more free and open in theory, but the question is always who applies the limits to that flow, and why. Big name news bodies such as the New York Times and Guardian put the Cablegate releases through procedures of verification and redacting to protect individuals, without damaging the overall benefits of exposing the knowledge. And that’s a key distinction: names of individuals that might put someone at risk, that’s information; the lessons we learned about how diplomacy operates between nations, that’s knowledge.
Wikileaks might definitely have followed Article 19 over the past five years. There is no doubt they “impart information”. Article 12, however, points out that, “No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation”.
Many news organisations need to remind themselves of both of those Articles. And Wikileaks, if it continues for another five years, will likely face ever more scrutiny about whether their flow of information is trampling on the very correspondence they put such high-tech protections upon.
WikiTargeted
(By Kapil Komireddi, Tablet Magazine, October 4, 2011)
“If I am not arrested tomorrow, we can talk,” Sergey told me from his home in Minsk via Skype. We agreed to meet the next morning at Yakub Kolas Square, named for the famous Belarusian poet, where a protest against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus’ president, was planned for 11 a.m. Public assembly is a crime in Belarus, Europe’s last dictatorship, and challenging Lukashenko, who has ruled the former Soviet state since 1994, can result in anything from detention in the country’s fetid prison cells to torture at the hands of its secret police, which still goes by its old Soviet name: the KGB.
Despite these risks, Belarusians gather regularly to protest their dictator. Sergey, a 22-year-old student at the Belarusian State University, is one of the members of this opposition movement. Using closed Internet networks, he and his friends—young, educated, and technologically savvy—post details for protests, which they try to hold every Wednesday in a different part of Minsk. When they pull it off, landmarks like October Square and Independence Avenue, near Lukashenko’s office, transform into theaters of political dissidence.
Embarrassed by its failure to prevent the opposition from gathering, the KGB is vicious in its handling of the protesters. At these protests, tracksuited thugs often tackle the protesters to the ground and drag them by their necks to waiting buses. The crowd winnows as others run away. Those that remain are left screaming, like farm animals being transported to the abattoir.
Yakub Kolas Square was empty when I arrived that July morning. Plain-clothed KGB officers stood in the corners of the square and on the steps of the subway station, peering at passersby and whispering into black handsets. The Internet empowers, but it does not discriminate. It’s vital for the opposition, but the regime, at least sometimes, is able to harness it for its own purposes. On this particular morning, the government had some success: The protest never materialized. Men and women, most in their 20s, emerged from the subway, looked around furtively, and then walked away. Two hours later, Sergey approached me at a kiosk close to the square.
The KGB had cleared out by then, but we decided to walk toward the older quarter of Minsk. Over a lunch of vegetables and rice at a restaurant on the banks of the Svisloch River, Sergey was despondent. The regime had just proven that it could corner him at his own game—the Internet, the opposition’s only refuge—and he was still absorbing the full implications of what that meant. “For 17 years, Lukashenko is the only president our country has known. Why does Europe ignore us? **** realpolitik,” he told me. This is a familiar reproach. Virtually everyone in the opposition—from the members of Belarus Free Theatre to graffiti artists in Minsk—openly scorns the West for not intervening in Belarus.
Sergey’s parents are academics, but in Lukashenko’s artificial economy the value of their earnings drops every day. Things worsened dramatically over the summer. A number of people Sergey knew, including his parents and some members of the university faculty, were receiving regular threats from the KGB. They were told that the regime had plans to expose them as foreign agents and parade them on live television.
“This is my country, I want to stay here, but I don’t want to die,” Sergey said as he explained that his parents were now looking for work in Ukraine and Poland. “I really hate WikiLeaks. How can they do this?” What did WikiLeaks have to do with the situation, I asked. Sergey replied: “The KGB is telling these people, ‘Your name is in the American cables and you are a traitor, an American agent, and you will be treated like an enemy of the country.’ ”
*******************************************************************
Later, Sergey and his professor dropped me off at Yama, an immense pit in the middle of Minsk. It was dug up in March 1942 by Jewish workers acting on the orders of occupying Nazi forces. On the Jewish holiday of Purim that year, 5,000 Jews were brought to the pit and shot dead.
Today, Yama stands as a memorial to evil. But the prejudices that culminated there have clearly not abated. An organization sustained and celebrated by many in the West dispatches a Holocaust-denying bigot to arm a dictatorship that extols Adolf Hitler. An American journal that claims to be progressive offers its pages to a fascist shilling for a dictator. And an anarchist named Julian Assange cheerfully peddles theories of “Jewish conspiracy” as he leaks documents that endanger other peoples’ lives.
I wanted to ask Sergey if he had a message for WikiLeaks and its Western supporters before I left Belarus. But I couldn’t reach him. A diplomatic source suggested that he might have been detained, and it seemed plausible. Every Wednesday, the day of the protest, hundreds of parents queue up outside the city’s prisons, searching through registries and pleading for information about their children. The extent to which WikiLeaks and Israel Shamir have endangered the lives of pro-democracy activists in Belarus will become chillingly clear as innocent men and women continue to disappear.
The extent to which WikiLeaks and Israel Shamir have endangered the lives of pro-democracy activists in Belarus ...
Brazil, circa 1965. Death squads formed to bolster Brazil's national intelligence service and counterinsurgency efforts. Many death squad members were merely off-duty police officers. U.S. AID (and presumably the CIA) knew of and supported police participation in death squad activity. Counterspy 5/6 1979, p. 10
Brazil. Death squads began appear after 1964 coup. Langguth, A.J. (1978). Hidden Terrors, p. 121
Brazilian and Uruguayan death squads closely linked and have shared training. CIA on at least two occasions co-ordinated meetings between countries' death squads. Counterspy 5/6 1979, p. 11
Brazil, torture. After CIA-backed coup, military used death squads and torture. Blum, W. (1986). The CIA A Forgotten History, p. 190
Cambodia: Watch List
Cambodia, 1970. Aided by CIA, Cambodian secret police fed blacklists of targeted Vietnamese to Khmer Serai and Khmer Kampuchea Krom. Mass killings of Vietnamese. Valentine, D. (1990). The Phoenix Program, p. 328
Cambodia: Death Squads
Cambodia, 1980-90. U.S. indirect support for Khmer Rouge — U.S. comforting mass murderers. Washington Post, 5/7/1990, A10 editorial
Central America: Death Squads
Central America, circa 1979-87. According to Americas Watch, civilian non combatant deaths attributable to government forces in Nicaragua might reach 300, most Miskito Indians in comparison 40-50,000 Salvadoran citizens killed by death squads and government forces during same years, along with similar number during last year of Somoza and still higher numbers in Guatemala. Chomsky, N. (1988). The Culture of Terrorism, p. 101
http://www.serendipity.li/cia/death_squads1.htm
Case sought against Pakistan doctor who helped CIA
By CHRIS BRUMMITT - Associated Press | AP – 3 hrs ago
ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Pakistani doctor accused of running a vaccination program for the CIA to help track down Osama bin Laden should be put on trial for high treason, a government commission said Thursday, a move likely to anger U.S. officials pushing for his release.
Dr. Shakil Afridi has been in the custody of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency since soon after the May 2 American raid that killed bin Laden. The agency was humiliated and outraged by the covert American operation and is aggressively investigating the circumstances surrounding it.
Afridi's fate is a complicating issue in relations between the CIA and the ISI that were strained to the breaking point by the bin Laden raid.
U.S. and Pakistani officials have said Arifdi ran a vaccination program in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad where the al-Qaida leader hid in an effort to obtain a DNA sample from him. Afridi was detained in the days after the U.S. operation. He has no lawyer.
A Pakistani government commission investigating the raid on bin Laden said in a statement that it was of the view that "a case of conspiracy against the state of Pakistan and high treason" should be registered against Afridi on the basis of the evidence it had gathered. It did not elaborate.
Such a charge carries the death penalty.
The commission, which interviewed Afridi and the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha this week, has been tasked with investigating how bin Laden managed to hide in the army town of Abbottabad for up to five years, and the circumstances surrounding the U.S. operation. It is headed by a Supreme Court justice, and its members include a retired general, a former diplomat, a former police chief and a civil servant.
http://news.yahoo.com/case-sought-against-pakistan-doctor-helped-cia-155702643.html
Wikileaks does a News of the World job on Steve Jobs
(Daniel Piotrowski, The Punch, October 6, 2011)
After 30 years of making the world a happier place, Apple co-founder and chairman Steve Jobs died yesterday, age 56. The world mourns the man some have called the Edison of our time.
People around the world took to social networks yesterday to express their condolences. Bill Gates tweeted: “I will miss Steve immensely”. Tony Hawk said: “Steve Jobs was the man”. Barack Obama’s statement, “There may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented,” got retweet after retweet.
While this was happening, Wikileaks was also tweeting about Steve Jobs. Except in doing so, the organisation was committing a journalistic crime taken straight from the playbook of the News of the World. You wouldn’t even read what they published on TMZ.
Wikileaks tweeted a link that contained what they said was “purported” to be “Steve Jobs medical records”. (After a torrent of criticism, Wikileaks denied they had published Jobs’ medical records yesterday - which is just semantics). The records they placed on their website made allegations about Jobs’ medical condition, even though the Wikileaks website said there was a strong chance they were fabricated and shouldn’t be taken at face value.
There are two issues with this. First, Wikileaks published - to all intents and purposes - the private medical records of a man who had just died. A man who would have wanted his records kept private, whatever they contained.
The public had no real need to know why he was sick. We didn’t and don’t need to know the specific details.
Second, the allegations in the documents were extremely likely to be totally inaccurate. I’m not going to publish what the documents alleged. It was an inaccurate smear of a dead man that could cause distress to Jobs’ family. It had all the credibility of a chain email. And they were published by an organisation that refers to themselves as “journalists”.
This raises a bunch of questions. Like: How is this any different to what some newspapers in the UK did when they threatened to publish the medical records of former PM Gordon Brown’s ill four-month-old boy? Are the basics much different to what News of the World journalists did when they were hacking away at the phone of a murdered schoolgirl?
I posed these questions yesterday to someone who’s studied the media ethics debate extensively: Dr Richard Phillipps, a research fellow with the School of Communication and Media at Bond University.
“I think in some ways this is worse, because in the [schoolgirl] case they were damaging what was a police investigation,” Dr Phillipps says, “But in this case there really isn’t a justifiable interest in the public knowing about this.”
Dr Phillipps says there are sometimes circumstances where medical records should be published. John F. Kennedy concealed from the public that he was suffering from a litany of serious health problems – something Americans might have liked to know about the man who stared down the Cuban Missile Crisis. But Steve Jobs wasn’t JFK. He was a private citizen.
“There might be the occasional very rare circumstance this might be justified but in my mind medical records should be between the doctor and the hospital,” says Dr Phillipps.
“I don’t see how they can get any credibility out of this. Most people would be sick of this sort of behaviour.”
Sure, Wikileaks has done some good things for journalism. They blew the lid on the US military murdering innocent cameramen in Iraq. Newspapers, from The New York Times to The Guardian to The Sydney Morning Herald have used Wikileaks’ release of State Department cables to break stories about what our governments haven’t been telling us.
Dr Phillipps says: “Some of the stuff they publish has had some good benefits. Governments have been trying to conceal some certain information and it’s important they come out eventually.”
But as well as doing some horrific things, even the News of the World did some good things for journalism – like blowing the lid on an international cricketing betting scandal. That doesn’t absolve it from its sins, though.
People care when reporters forget their humanity for the sake of a scoop. That poisons the well between readers and journalists. That’s why the News of the World no longer exists.
Late last year, Julian Assange published an op-ed in The Australian. Assange said Wikileaks was responsible for “scientific journalism”.
“Scientific journalism allows you to read a news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on,” he writes. “Then you can judge yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist report it accurately?”
But why aren’t Wikileaks asking themselves the question: “Is this the right thing to do?”
Some News of the World reporters forgot about what was right and wrong. But it seems strange that Wikileaks – a group of people who never fail to lecture others from atop their moral high horse – forgot about it too.
Obama to Issue 'Wikileaks Order'
(By Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic, October 7, 2011)
By executive order, President Obama will instruct federal agencies today to better safeguard their classified secrets, to set up internal audit systems, and to make sure that reluctance to share critical intelligence in the aftermath of the WikiLeaks exposure does not hamper collaboration across agencies.
The so-called "WikiLeaks" executive order has been long awaited by the national security establishment and by the privacy and civil liberties communities. It was provided by the White House to National Journal. The order creates a government-wide steering committee to create and assess information sharing policies across the government, as well as a mechanism to determine whether internal auditing procedures work properly.
PFC. Bradley Manning, who the government believes provided WikiLeaks with most of the classified cables and reports it released, was able to access State Department cables that were not germane to his work as a forward-deployed intelligence analyst in Iraq without being detected.
A new Insider Threat Task Force led by the Attorney General will develop a government-wide strategy to see whether agencies that handle classified information can weed out the malcontents and people whose behavior suggests they cannot handle sensitive information appropriately.
The result will be a beefing up of federal counter-intelligence programs.
The intelligence community has worried about an over-reaction, reasoning that analysts who want more access to classified information to solve a problem will second-guess their own efforts because they don't want to trigger an investigation. The order does not specify how agencies ought to strike this balance, but suggests that each agency should establish policies that incorporate their own internal cultures, bearing in mind that the larger goal is to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.
Obama's executive order makes agencies primarily responsible for the information they obtain and share.
It also creates a Classified Information Sharing and Safeguarding Office to develop institutional knowledge about best practices across the government. This office will provide staff for the inter-agency steering committee, according to a White House fact sheet.
The executive order is the result of several months worth of a deliberation by a high-level task force formed after of the WikiLeaks disclosure. The government has taken several steps to prevent WikiLeaks-like incidents from happening again, including limiting the number of people with access to removable flash drives in classified environments and commencing a government-wide survey of existing internal auditing procedures.
WikiLeaks shakes security of Iraq's tiny Jewish community
(Roy Gutman, McClatchy Newspapers, October 7, 2011)
BAGHDAD — An Anglican priest here says he's working with the U.S. Embassy to persuade the handful of Jews who still live in Baghdad to leave because their names have appeared in cables published last month by WikiLeaks.
The Rev. Canon Andrew White said he first approached members of the Jewish community about what he felt was the danger they faced after a news story was published last month that made reference to the cables.
"The U.S. Embassy is desperately trying to get them out," White said. So far, however, only one, a regular confidante of the U.S. Embassy, according to the cables, had expressed interest in emigrating to the United States.
"Most want to stay," White said. "The older ones are refusing to leave. They say: 'We're Iraqis. Why should we go? If they kill us, we will die here.'"
The U.S. Embassy said it would take steps to protect the individuals whose names appear in the cables and suggested in a statement that should any wish to leave, the U.S. would help relocate them.
"Protecting individuals whose safety is at risk because of the release of the purported cables remains a priority. We are working actively to ensure that they remain safe," the embassy said.
It slammed WikiLeaks for releasing the cables. "Releasing the names of individuals cited in conversations that took place in confidence potentially puts their lives or careers at risk," the statement said.
A furious White also hit the website for publishing the cables. "How could they do something as stupid as that?" he said. "Do they not realize this is a life and death issue?"
WikiLeaks did not respond to a request for comment. Previously, WikiLeaks has said that it had no choice but to make its copies of the cables public after the publication in a book of a password that opened an encrypted version of the cables already available on the Internet.
"We had to warn them of the danger and tell them that we want them all to leave," White said. "I never wanted the Jews to leave Iraq. They belong here."
If White persuades Baghdad's remaining Jews to leave it will mark the end of a 2,700-year presence that dates to the Assyrian conquest of the Judean Kingdom.
By the time U.S. forces invaded Iraq in March 2003, Baghdad's Jewish community, which had numbered about 130,000 in the 1950s before most fled to Israel, was down to about 35 members.
Now there are so few Jews here that their sole remaining place of worship, the Taweig synagogue, is shuttered, even during the Jewish High Holidays that conclude with Yom Kippur on Saturday.
Emad Levi, who served as lay rabbi, kosher slaughterer, undertaker and community spokesman, recently emigrated to Israel.
One of the cables, some of 251,287 made public by the WikiLeaks website, recounts the deteriorating conditions one member of the community said Jews faced after U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003, primarily because of the rise of al Qaida in Iraq.
Another was poignant in its assessment of the future:
"The Jews of Iraq do not appear likely to share in Iraq's future as a nation," the writer said. "They have no children, and cannot contribute culturally or even materially while unable to participate freely in Iraq's public life. They remain in Iraq, but not of it, hiding at the center of a country whose majority may, one day, welcome them again, but does not accept them at present."
The cable provides biographical sketches of each of nine Jews that the cable writer said then made up the entire complement of the Baghdad Jewish community. They ranged in age at the time from 40 to 82. One of them was Levi, the recent emigre to Israel. Another has since died, bringing the total number of Jews in Baghdad to seven.
Jews first arrived in the land now called Iraq in 721 B.C., exiled here after the Assyrian conquest of the Judean Kingdom. In 586 B.C., Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar attacked Jerusalem and destroyed King Solomon's temple, then led tens of thousands of Jews into captivity, where they built the hanging gardens of Babylon.
The population survived repeated conquests of Iraq, by Alexander the Great, the Persians, the Arabs, the Shiite Muslims and the Turks, but over the centuries it flourished, producing the Babylonian Talmud, the Rabbinic work of law that supplements and interprets the Old Testament, the Five Books of Moses.
By the early 20th century, Iraqi Jews constituted one of the wealthiest communities in the country, serving as bankers, importers, retailers and academics. But Iraqi nationalists fighting British rule seized on Nazi ideology in the 1930s, giving rise to rabid anti-Judaic views.
The beginning of the end of a community then numbering some 130,000, was the Nazi-inspired pogrom in 1941, known as the Farhud, or violent dispossession, in which hundreds of Jews died at the hands of armed Iraqi Muslims. The creation of the State of Israel in 1948, followed by the declaration of war by Arab states including Iraq, brought more severe repression here.
The Iraqi government first made it a capital crime to be a Zionist, then reversed policy in 1950, after which more than 100,000 Jews emigrated to Israel. There was more repression in the 1950s and 1960s, and most of the remaining Jewish population emigrated to Israel in the early 1970s.
What will become of Iraq's handful of remaining Jews seems a foregone conclusion.
One is a prominent surgeon, but most of the others rarely leave their dwellings, and many conceal their Jewish identity, according to the cables, one of which discusses the conversion to Islam of some members of the community.
"A 50-year old woman ... reportedly converted to Islam after the fall of Saddam, as did a family of five," the cable said. It quoted another member of the Jewish community as saying that "the members of this family will no longer speak to Jews in Baghdad."
With Levi's departure, the community lost its only public voice.
Reached in Israel Friday, Levi said the Jews who remain here are "afraid" and "don't like to talk to anyone."
Canon White, the Anglican priest at Baghdad's St. George's church, agreed.
"I can guarantee you that you cannot meet any of them," he told McClatchy. "There's not a chance in the world."
