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Secret mass surveillance conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration is falling under renewed scrutiny after fresh revelations about the broad scope of the agency’s electronic spying. On Tuesday, USA Today reported that for more than two decades, dating back to 1992, the DEA and the Justice Department “amassed logs of virtually all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries linked to drug trafficking.” Citing anonymous current and former officials “involved with the operation,” USA Today reported that Americans’ calls were logged between the United States and targeted countries and regions including Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America.

The DEA’s data dragnet was apparently shut down by Attorney General Eric Holder in September 2013. But on Wednesday, following USA Today’s report, Human Rights Watch launched a lawsuit against the DEA over its bulk collection of phone records and is seeking a retrospective declaration that the surveillance was unlawful. The latest revelations shine more light on the broad scope of the DEA’s involvement in mass surveillance programs, which can be traced back to a secret program named “Project Crisscross” in the early 1990s, as The Intercept previously revealed. Documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, published by The Intercept in August last year, showed that the DEA was involved in collecting and sharing billions of phone records alongside agencies such as the NSA, the CIA and the FBI.

The vast program reported on by USA Today shares some of the same hallmarks of Project Crisscross: it began in the early 1990s, was ostensibly aimed at gathering intelligence about drug trafficking, and targeted countries worldwide, with focus on Central and South America. It is also reminiscent of the so-called Hemisphere Project, a DEA operation revealed in September 2013 by The New York Times, which dated as far back as 1987, and used subpoenas to collect vast amounts of international call records every day. There is crossover, too, with a DEA database called DICE, revealed by Reuters in August 2013, which reportedly contains phone and Internet communication records gathered by the DEA through subpoenas and search warrants nationwide. The precise relationship between Crisscross, DICE, Hemisphere and the surveillance program revealed by USA Today is unclear. Whether or not they were part of a single overarching operation, the phone records and other data collected by each were likely accessible to DEA agents through the same computer interfaces and search and analysis tools.

Unless you read Russian or monitor the free blogosphere, you might not have noticed this, but something big just happened in Russia: Kerry, Nuland and a large State Department delegation have traveled to Sochi were they met with Foreign Minister Lavrov and then with President Putin.  With the latter they spent over 4 hours.  Not only that, but Kerry made a few rather interesting remarks, saying that the Minsk-2 Agreement (M2A) was the only way forward and that he would strongly caution Poroshenko against the idea of renewing military operations.

Unless you read Russian or monitor the free blogosphere, you might not have noticed this, but something big just happened in Russia: Kerry, Nuland and a large State Department delegation have traveled to Sochi were they met with Foreign Minister Lavrov and then with President Putin.  With the latter they spent over 4 hours.  Not only that, but Kerry made a few rather interesting remarks, saying that the Minsk-2 Agreement (M2A) was the only way forward and that he would strongly caution Poroshenko against the idea of renewing military operations.

To say that this is a stunning development would be an understatement. For one thing, this means that the so-called “isolation of Russia” is now officially over, even for the “Indispensable Empire”. Second, this is, as far as I know, the first official US endorsement of M2A.  This is rather humiliating for the US considering that M2A was negotiated without the Americans. Third, for the very first time the US has actually warned the Ukronazi junta against a military attack.  This, at a time when the Ukronazis are in a state of bellicose frenzy and Poroshenko just promised to re-conqueor not only the Donetsk Airport, but all of the Donbass and even Crimea, show that for the very first time the US and Kiev are not on the same page.

One system builds profiles showing people’s web browsing histories. Another analyzes instant messenger communications, emails, Skype calls, text messages, cell phone locations, and social media interactions. Separate programs were built to keep tabs on “suspicious” Google searches and usage of Google Maps. The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens  all without a court order or judicial warrant.

The power of KARMA POLICE was illustrated in 2009, when GCHQ launched a top-secret operation to collect intelligence about people using the Internet to listen to radio shows. The agency used a sample of nearly 7 million metadata records, gathered over a period of three months, to observe the listening habits of more than 200,000 people across 185 countries, including the U.S., the U.K., Ireland, Canada, Mexico, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

GCHQ’s documents indicate that the plans for KARMA POLICE were drawn up between 2007 and 2008. The system was designed to provide the agency with “either (a) a web browsing profile for every visible user on the Internet, or (b) a user profile for every visible website on the Internet.” The origin of the surveillance system’s name is not discussed in the documents. But KARMA POLICE is also the name of a popular song released in 1997 by the Grammy Award-winning British band Radiohead, suggesting the spies may have been fans. A verse repeated throughout the hit song includes the lyric, “This is what you’ll get, when you mess with us.”

The Obama administration fought a legal battle against Google to secretly obtain the email records of a security researcher and journalist associated with WikiLeaks. Newly unsealed court documents obtained by The Intercept reveal the Justice Department won an order forcing Google to turn over more than one year’s worth of data from the Gmail account of Jacob Appelbaum (pictured above), a developer for the Tor online anonymity project who has worked with WikiLeaks as a volunteer. The order also gagged Google, preventing it from notifying Appelbaum that his records had been provided to the government. The surveillance of Appelbaum’s Gmail account was tied to the Justice Department’s long-running criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, which began in 2010 following the transparency group’s publication of a large cache of U.S. government diplomatic cables. According to the unsealed documents, the Justice Department first sought details from Google about a Gmail account operated by Appelbaum in January 2011, triggering a three-month dispute between the government and the tech giant. Government investigators demanded metadata records from the account showing email addresses of those with whom Appelbaum had corresponded between the period of November 2009 and early 2011; they also wanted to obtain information showing the unique IP addresses of the computers he had used to log in to the account.

The Justice Department argued in the case that Appelbaum had “no reasonable expectation of privacy” over his email records under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures. Rather than seeking a search warrant that would require it to show probable cause that he had committed a crime, the government instead sought and received an order to obtain the data under a lesser standard, requiring only “reasonable grounds” to believe that the records were “relevant and material” to an ongoing criminal investigation. Google repeatedly attempted to challenge the demand, and wanted to immediately notify Appelbaum that his records were being sought so he could have an opportunity to launch his own legal defense. Attorneys for the tech giant argued in a series of court filings that the government’s case raised “serious First Amendment concerns.” They noted that Appelbaum’s records “may implicate journalistic and academic freedom” because they could “reveal confidential sources or information about WikiLeaks’ purported journalistic or academic activities.” However, the Justice Department asserted that “journalists have no special privilege to resist compelled disclosure of their records, absent evidence that the government is acting in bad faith,” and refused to concede Appelbaum was in fact a journalist. It claimed it had acted in “good faith throughout this criminal investigation, and there is no evidence that either the investigation or the order is intended to harass the … subscriber or anyone else.” Google’s attempts to fight the surveillance gag order angered the government, with the Justice Department stating that the company’s “resistance to providing the records” had “frustrated the government’s ability to efficiently conduct a lawful criminal investigation.”

The Justice Department wanted to keep the surveillance secret largely because of an earlier public backlash over its WikiLeaks investigation. In January 2011, Appelbaum and other WikiLeaks volunteers’ – including Icelandic parlimentarian Birgitta Jonsdottir – were notified by Twitter that the Justice Department had obtained data about their accounts. This disclosure generated widepread news coverage and controversy; the government says in the unsealed court records that it “failed to anticipate the degree of  damage that would be caused” by the Twitter disclosure and did not want to “exacerbate this problem” when it went after Appelbaum’s Gmail data. The court documents show the Justice Department said the disclosure of its Twitter data grab “seriously jeopardized the [WikiLeaks] investigation” because it resulted in efforts to “conceal evidence” and put public pressure on other companies to resist similar surveillance orders. It also claimed that officials named in the subpeona ordering Twitter to turn over information were “harassed” after a copy was published by Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald at Salon in 2011. (The only specific evidence of the alleged harassment cited by the government is an email that was sent to an employee of the U.S. Attorney’s office that purportedly said: “You guys are fucking nazis trying to controll [sic] the whole fucking world. Well guess what. WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET. EXPECT US.”)

four prisons in Georgia remain in lockdown five days after prisoners went on strike

reports of widespread violence and brutality by the guards against the prisoners on strike

 Olmstead v. United States: The Constitutional Challenges of Prohibition Enforcement Historical Documents Dissenting opinion of Justice Louis D. Brandeis in Olmstead v. United States Justice Brandeis’s dissenting opinion is one of the more notable dissents in Supreme Court history. He attempted to define a general right of privacy based on the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Brandeis had long been interested in the problem of privacy in the modern age; years earlier he and his law partner, Samuel Warren, published what many consider the seminal article on the topic (Samuel Warren & Louis D. Brandeis, “The Right to Privacy,” 4 Harv. L. Rev. 193 (1890)). Brandeis’s opinion in Olmstead attempted to apply to the current era what he said were the principles of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Historians often overlook how much his approach draws on the dissenting opinion of Judge Rudkin in the circuit court, but Brandeis himself acknowledged his debt to Rudkin in the text. The quotation about “the form that evil had theretofore taken” referred to the Supreme Court decision in Weems v. United States, in which Justice Joseph McKenna wrote of the need for the Court to apply the general principles of the Constitution to new problems.

Moreover, “in the application of a constitution, our contemplation cannot be only of what has been but of what may be.” The progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wire-tapping. Ways may someday be developed by which the Government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences of the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. “That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer” was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these. To Lord Camden, a far slighter intrusion seemed “subversive of all the comforts of society.” Can it be that the Constitution affords no protection against such invasions of individual security? . . .

In Ex parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727, it was held that a sealed letter entrusted to the mail is protected by the Amendments. The mail is a public service furnished by the Government. The telephone is a public service furnished by its authority. There is, in essence, no difference between the sealed letter and the private telephone message. As Judge Rudkin said below: “True, the one is visible, the other invisible; the one is tangible, the other intangible; the one is sealed, and the other unsealed, but these are distinctions without a difference.” The evil incident to invasion of the privacy of the telephone is far greater than that involved in tampering with the mails. Whenever a telephone line is tapped, the privacy of the persons at both ends of the line is invaded and all conversations between them upon any subject, and, although proper, confidential and privileged, may be overheard. Moreover, the tapping of one man’s telephone line involves the tapping of the telephone of every other person whom he may call or who may call him. As a means of espionage, writs of assistance and general warrants are but puny instruments of tyranny and oppression when compared with wire-tapping.

Here are the emails. An article written by Umar Cheema is also on the Web, will post link once I am on my laptop. http://cirp.pk/e-mail.htm (edit: although some names have been blacked out, you can still view them by taking mouse over the links! e.g. First email is by Hassan Noor.. to Mike Novell, tkrift (??), Amanullah Khan.. CC is Afnan Aleem) These basically proves that everyone in the Abbotabad commission (except Mr Ashraf Qazi), including a very senior judge and general, were working under the influence of Save The Children NGO Retired General Nadeem was directly working under them! Afridi was NOT tortured by ISI. He did give ISI some false statements which the ISI didn't dig deeper because it suited them! (Example he was working for CIA since 2008, not 2009 as ISI was led to believe) Edit: Here is the article: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-Ne...s-Abbottabad-Commission-was-penetrated-by-CIA -- All these NGOs should be banned and thrashed! ISI should publically hang foreign agents! (Even if they are Generals)

The NGO has neither denied the email record and the contents it carried (when shown by The News for seeking version) nor offered specific comments but that: “Our assistance to the Abbottabad Commission and its members including Gen Nadeem was within the legal parameters and Abbottabad Commission mandate to find facts.” Nadeem was not available for comments, however, his close aide termed the allegations as utterly “rubbish and non-sense” when comments were sought after showing the email record A transcript of internal wrangling: Muhammad Hassan Noor Saadi, deputy country director of Save the Children, met Gen (R) Nadeem on November 20, 2012 that followed his email to four senior colleagues. The report was primarily compiled by ‘our friend’, his email reads, and was endorsed by the Chairman but one of the members, Ashraf Qazi, was not in agreement with them. He wrote a dissenting note criticising Chairman Justice (R) Javed Iqbal and Gen (R) Nadeem ‘for being soft on certain institutions (including Save the Children).’

Another member, Abbas Khan, was neither willing to sign the report in its current shape, discloses email record, nor wanted to put a dissenting note hence decided to prolong his stay in the US where he went on the ‘pretext of medical ground’. More alarmingly, the NGO was granted access to the Commission’s report well before it was sent to the prime minister. Save the Children had uninterrupted access to the four drafts prepared in June 2012 by the members including the chairman, email record available with The News indicates. All favours granted to Save the Children on behalf of the Commission were in clear breach of public trust raising question marks about the integrity of the members. The chairman of the NGO, Save the Children, was contacted by The News. He initially agreed to meet but later stopped taking calls and did not respond to messages sent to him.Nadeem also felt confident, the email record shows, that he would be able to convince the panel with the answers given by the NGO and urge his colleagues to go by the facts presented by Save the Children instead of believing on the contents of Afridi’s statement. Gen (R) Nadeem also advised the NGO, an email of the country director reads, to fight the expulsion of our expatriate as otherwise the ISI would move quickly to close down the country programme before the Commission report comes out.

When the incoming emails stopped arriving, it seemed innocuous at first. But it would eventually become clear that this was no routine technical problem. Inside a row of gray office buildings in Brussels, a major hacking attack was in progress. And the perpetrators were British government spies. It was in the summer of 2012 that the anomalies were initially detected by employees at Belgium’s largest telecommunications provider, Belgacom. But it wasn’t until a year later, in June 2013, that the company’s security experts were able to figure out what was going on. The computer systems of Belgacom had been infected with a highly sophisticated malware, and it was disguising itself as legitimate Microsoft software while quietly stealing data. Last year, documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that British surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters was behind the attack, codenamed Operation Socialist. And in November, The Intercept revealed that the malware found on Belgacom’s systems was one of the most advanced spy tools ever identified by security researchers, who named it “Regin.”

The full story about GCHQ’s infiltration of Belgacom, however, has never been told. Key details about the attack have remained shrouded in mystery—and the scope of the attack unclear. Now, in partnership with Dutch and Belgian newspapers NRC Handelsblad and De Standaard, The Intercept has pieced together the first full reconstruction of events that took place before, during, and after the secret GCHQ hacking operation. Based on new documents from the Snowden archive and interviews with sources familiar with the malware investigation at Belgacom, The Intercept and its partners have established that the attack on Belgacom was more aggressive and far-reaching than previously thought. It occurred in stages between 2010 and 2011, each time penetrating deeper into Belgacom’s systems, eventually compromising the very core of the company’s networks.

When the incoming emails stopped arriving, it seemed innocuous at first. But it would eventually become clear that this was no routine technical problem. Inside a row of gray office buildings in Brussels, a major hacking attack was in progress. And the perpetrators were British government spies. It was in the summer of 2012 that the anomalies were initially detected by employees at Belgium’s largest telecommunications provider, Belgacom. But it wasn’t until a year later, in June 2013, that the company’s security experts were able to figure out what was going on. The computer systems of Belgacom had been infected with a highly sophisticated malware, and it was disguising itself as legitimate Microsoft software while quietly stealing data. Last year, documents from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden confirmed that British surveillance agency Government Communications Headquarters was behind the attack, codenamed Operation Socialist. And in November, The Intercept revealed that the malware found on Belgacom’s systems was one of the most advanced spy tools ever identified by security researchers, who named it “Regin.”

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) has sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security and outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder to learn more about the use of “dirtboxes,” which collect phone data by masquerading as a nearby cell tower. The letter, which was co-signed by Democratic and Independent senators from Alaska, Vermont, and other states, argues that dirtboxes “potentially violate the Fourth Amendment and represent a significant intrusion into the private lives of thousands of Americans.” . The senators wrote the letter, which was sent on Wednesday, in response to a Wall Street Journal report about a US Marshals program that attaches these dirtboxes to planes flying across the United States. This reportedly allows law enforcement to collect information about “tens of thousands” of citizens under the planes’ flight path. It’s not clear how often these planes are flown. But it is clear that the devices  can determine someone’s location within a few meters, which could allow law enforcement to tell if that person is in a specific room inside a building, instead of merely knowing their general location. The devices are also thought to be able to snoop on phone calls, text messages, and other information transferred to affected cellphones.

Uber dra

The National Security Agency used the holiday lull to “minimise the impact” of a tranche of documents by releasing them on Christmas Eve, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said on Friday. The documents, which were released in response to a legal challenge by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, are heavily – in some places totally –redacted versions of reports by the NSA to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board dating back to 2007. A court ordered the documents released this past summer, and a 22 December deadline for that release was agreed upon, according to Patrick Toomey, a staff attorney at the ACLU’s national security project, because the NSA said it needed “six or seven months” to complete its review and redaction process. A spokesperson for the NSA said that the 22 December deadline, “which was agreed to by all parties,” was met.

But according to Toomey, the ACLU didn’t receive the documents until “late in the day on the 23rd” – the NSA sent them by FedEx late on the 22nd – and the NSA didn’t publicly release them until Christmas Eve. “I certainly think the NSA would prefer to have the documents released right ahead of the holidays in order to have less public attention on what they contain,” Toomey said. The redactions on the document are extreme, and their omissions tantalising. One entry, from the 4th quarter of 2008, reads: “On [redacted] [redacted] used the US SIGINT System (USSS) to locate [redacted] believed to be kidnapped [redacted] The selectors were tasked before authorization was obtained from NSA. After the NSA Office of General Counsel (OGC) denied the authorization request, [redacted] was found. He had not been kidnapped.” Another reads: “On [redacted] during an experimental collection and processing effort, NSA analysts collected [several lines of text redacted.] The messages were deleted [redacted] when the error was identified.”

Many entries are erased entirely, which means the documents reveal very little about how individuals who misuse the data were disciplined by the NSA, or how quickly errors were resolved. But, according to Toomey, they speak to a total picture of a “large number of different compliance violations. We don’t know how many.” He said the documents deepen the picture of the nature and extent of compliance violations by analysts working for the NSA.

“The civilian population in the Gaza Strip is under direct attack,” dozens of international law experts have warned in a statement laying out numerous Israeli violations of the laws of war, some amounting to war crimes.

“Most of the recent heavy bombings in Gaza lack an acceptable military justification and, instead, appear to be designed to terrorize the civilian population,” says the statement, signed by more than 140 international and criminal law scholars, human rights defenders, legal and other experts. Among them are John Dugard and Richard Falk, both former UN special rapporteurs on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories.

“Gaza’s civilian population has been victimized in the name of a falsely construed right to self-defense,” the statement adds. Israel’s illegal attacks include its assault on the Gaza City neighborhood of [Shujaiya], which the statement says “was one of the bloodiest and most aggressive operations ever conducted by Israel in the Gaza Strip, a form of urban violence constituting a total disrespect of civilian innocence.”

Prosecutors in Sweden pursuing Julian Assange over rape allegations have rejected a demand by his lawyers to hand over new evidence and withdraw the warrant for his arrest, setting the stage in two weeks' time for the first legal battle in the case since 2012.In a sharply worded rebuttal, prosecutors stated that Assange does not have the right to see copies of the case files.Lawyers for the WikiLeaks founder requested last week that text messages sent by his accusers be passed to the defence in an attempt to break the deadlock in the rape case brought four years ago against him."There is still probable cause to believe that Julian Assange is guilty of the offences that he was arrested for, and the basis for his detention, risk of flight, is undiminished," prosecutors Marianne Ny and Ingred Isgren said in a submission to Stockholm district court.

The court announced on Thursday that the two sides will present their arguments on 16 July in a public hearing – the first formal legal discussion of the case since Assange sought asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London two years ago.

A Washington state police department just south of Seattle has for years been quietly using controversial surveillance equipment that can collect records of all cellphone calls, text messages and data transfers within a half-mile radius, according to local media. The Stingray surveillance system, deployed by the Tacoma Police Department since 2009, “tricks cellphones into thinking it’s a cell tower and draws in their information,” local news website The Olympian reported Wednesday. The device is reportedly capable of indiscriminate data collection, which worries civil rights advocates. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said it has identified at least 43 police departments in 18 states that use Stingray equipment. The rights group said on its website that police use of such a device may violate the U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, and with taxpayers’ money.

"The result is that police gather the electronic serial numbers and other information about phones, as well as the direction and strength of each phone's signal, allowing precise location tracking,” the ACLU said. “Stingrays can also gather information about people's communications, such as which phone numbers they call. Because we carry our cellphones with us virtually everywhere we go, Stingrays can paint a precise picture of where we are and who we spend time with, including our location in a lover's house, in a psychologist's office or at a political protest." Tacoma Police Department’s Assistant Police Chief Kathy McAlpine said that officers only use Stingray with permission from a judge, and that they do not collect data. “It is used in felony-level crimes to locate suspects wanted for crimes such as homicide, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and narcotics trafficking,” McAlpine said. The department said the device has been used nearly 200 times since June.

The Tacoma City Council approved buying an updated version of the equipment in March 2013 on the grounds that it would be used to find improvised explosive devices. McAlpine said they have never used the Stingray to locate such a device. Civil rights groups said they are concerned about the possibility of indiscriminate data collection, and worry that police could store the data of innocent citizens. “They are essentially searching the homes of innocent Americans to find one phone used by one person,” said Christopher Soghoian, principal technologist with the ACLU in Washington, D.C. “It’s like they’re kicking down the doors of 50 homes and searching 50 homes because they don’t know where the bad guy is.” A similar controversy erupted in nearby Seattle last November, when  alternative news website The Stranger reported that a new apparatus capable of geo-locating and tracking the movement of any wireless device that passes it was quietly installed in a Seattle neighborhood.

Given Germany's high-profile attachment to privacy, it's always interesting to hear about ways in which its spies have been ignoring that tradition. Here, for example, is a story in the German newspaper Die Zeit about the country's foreign intelligence agency BND gathering metadata from millions of phone records every day: Zeit Online has learned from secret BND documents that five agency locations are involved in gathering huge amounts of metadata. Metadata vacuumed up across the world -- 220 million pieces of it every single day -- flows into BND branch offices in the German towns of Schöningen, Reinhausen, Bad Aibling and Gablingen. There, they are stored for between a week and six months and sorted according to still-unknown criteria. Exactly where the BND obtains the data remains unclear. The Bundestag [German parliament] committee investigating the NSA spying scandal has uncovered that the German intelligence agency intercepts communications traveling via both satellites and Internet cables. The 220 million metadata are only one part of what is amassed from these eavesdropping activities. It is certain that the metadata only come from "foreign dialed traffic," in other words, from telephone conversations and text messages that are held and sent via mobile telephony and satellites.

As in the US and UK, the German spies attempt to pull the "it's only metadata, so it's not surveillance" trick: Many people don't realize how much information can be derived from metadata -- and the BND is working hard to keep it that way. For example, during hearings before the Bundestag committee investigating the NSA affair, intelligence officials have consistently spoken about "routine traffic" whenever they have actually meant metadata. Given that the German word for "traffic" is the same as that for "intercourse," this has sounded more like bad sex and has aimed to obscure the fact that hidden behind it was comprehensive, groundless and massive surveillance. What's more, the officials have argued that they are permitted to vacuum up this kind of routine traffic all over the world without any restrictions and to use it as they see fit. However, Peter Schaar doesn't share this view at all. Instead, the German government's former commissioner for data protection and freedom of information believes that metadata should also be protected by the basic right of privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications guaranteed by Article 10 of Germany’s Basic Law.

This long and interesting report is important for the insight it gives us about what the BND is up to -- despite Germany's stringent laws -- as well as the news that the German intelligence service passes 500 million pieces of metadata to the NSA every month. General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and the CIA, famously said: "We kill people based on metadata." That means privacy-loving Germany could be implicated in some of those deaths. And there's another aspect to the story worth noting. Nowhere does Die Zeit say that this information comes from Edward Snowden. Once again, it looks as if his example is inspiring others to shine a little light on the murky world of surveillance.

The ISIL’s funding father is Erdogan’s personal friend The name of the Saudi businessman Yassin al-Qadi has been linked to organizations classified as terrorist internationally. In particular, the foreign press and the Turkish opposition media describe him as “al-Qaeda’s funding father”. After the events of September 11/2001, al-Qadi- along with other figures- has been included in the world’s list of terrorists, and his name was stereotyped as a terrorist man. This made several countries ban him from entering into their territories, Turkey was one of them. Earlier, the Turkish media documented a photo scandal: Erdogan’s meetings with Yassin al-Qadi as well as long meetings with his son Bilal Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The scandal that was leaked by Turkish security elements came in the context of the case of corruption of which the son of the former Turkish Prime Minister has been accused. Based upon this, a large number of elements of the security corps were arrested being accused of plotting a coup against the government.

Nevertheless, the French journalist Thierry Meyssan describes Yassin al-Qadi as a personal friend of both Dick Cheney (former U.S. Vice President) and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. According to him, al-Qadi visited Turkey four times during 2012, and “his plane used to land at the second airport of Istanbul, and was being welcomed by the Prime Minister personally, without going through the smart gate, and after cutting the security cameras’ power supply”. The Turkish Gmehoriet Newspaper intended to publish details about the investigations conducted by the Turkish judiciary on the same case, and mentioned that Recep Tayyip Erdogan introduced Yassine al-Qadi as a Saudi businessman visiting Turkey to invest and denied that he is a terrorist. It quoted him as saying: “I trust Mr. Al-Qadi just as I trust myself. He is an almsgiver”.

The Turkish newspaper, after publishing Erdogan’s utterances before the Turkish judiciary, revealed that the Turkish police monitored 12 visits made by the Saudi man to Turkey. Seven out of these visits have been made with the help of Erdogan, the period when he was banned from entering Turkey, because his name was added as one of the world wanted terrorists in the list of the American FBI. The newspaper commented saying: “When the Turkish police was looking for al-Qadi, he was holding meetings with the Prime Minister”. Also, it published a photograph that showed separately the aforesaid man, Erdogan, and the Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan, when they were going to a meeting that gathered them. The newspaper noted that Fidan himself met with al-Qadi 5 times when Al-Qadi has been banned from entering the Turkish territory.

As Saudi Arabia and its allies have begun the bombing campaign against Yemen, in the south, a separatist movement calling for a "State of South Arabia" is emerging. Fostered by the US, it will leave the Houthis with two hostile states at their borders and locked access to the sea, if it succeeds.

Welcome to phase two of US regime change operations. After Yemen's 2011 revolution failed and Houthi militias overthrew President Hadi, forces trained and sponsored by the US government are being activated as a separatist movement. The Southern People's Committees (SPC), founded around 2007 although USAID has been conducting political workshops as part of a $695,000 project and actively grooming leadership in Yemen since 2005. (Also in 2007, weekly protests began, organized by women's organizations, fostered by the workshops.) The SPC were similar to many color revolution movements such as Serbia's Otpor in that they did not have a central leadership, but rather an autonomous cell-based organization. In addition, they were very capable in the use of social media technologies, text messaging and the circumventing the government's internet censorship to organize protests.

Meanwhile, the Yemen Center for Human Rights Studies, which received $193,000 from the EU and US-funded Foundation for the Future in 2009, conducted a poll in January 2010, which found that 70 percent of southern Yemenis favored secession. Another USAID-funded project, the $43 million Responsive Governance Project (RGP), launched in May 2010, conducted "New Social Media training for Youth leaders to equip Yemeni youth groups in the use of media to enhance their participation in formulating public issues." The project focuses on establishing contacts with the Yemeni government and providing "leadership and civic education training to youth NGOs."

Amidst the wilderness of mirrors surrounding the Syrian tragedy, a diamond-shaped fact persists: Despite so many degrees of separation, the Saudis are still talking to the Russians. Why? A key reason is because a perennially paranoid House of Saud feels betrayed by their American protectors who, under the Obama administration, seem to have given up on isolating Iran.

From the House of Saud’s point of view, three factors are paramount. 1) A general sense of ‘red alert’ as they have been deprived from an exclusive relationship with Washington, thus becoming incapable of shaping US foreign policy in the Middle East; 2) They have been mightily impressed by Moscow’s swift counter-terrorism operation in Syria; 3) They fear like the plague the current Russia-Iran alliance if they have no means of influencing it.

That explains why King Salman’s advisers have pressed the point that the House of Saud has a much better chance of checking Iran on all matters - from “Syraq” to Yemen - if it forges a closer relationship with Moscow. In fact, King Salman may be visiting Putin before the end of the year.

“Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination,” reads UN General Assembly Resolution 3379. The measure was adopted 40 years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, and the majority of the international community backed it. 72 countries voted for the resolution, with just 35 opposed (and 32 abstentions). Although little-known in the US today (it is remarkable how effectively the US and its allies have rewritten history in their favor), UN GA Res. 3379, titled “Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination,” made an indelible imprint on history. The geographic distribution of the vote was telling. The countries that voted against the resolution were primarily colonial powers and/or their allies. The countries that voted for it were overwhelmingly formerly colonized and anti-imperialist nations.

The resolution also cited two other little-known measures passed by international organizations in the same year: the Assembly of the Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity’s resolution 77, which ruled “that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regimes in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure”; and the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, which called Zionism a “racist and imperialist ideology.” When the resolution was passed, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Chaim Herzog — who later became Israel’s sixth president, and the father of Isaac Herzog, the head of Israel’s opposition — famously tore up the text at the podium. Herzog claimed the measure was “based on hatred, falsehood, and arrogance,” insisting it was “devoid of any moral or legal value.” Still today, supporters of Israel argue UN GA Res. 3379 was an anomalous product of anti-Semitism. In reality, however, the resolution was the result of international condemnation of the illegal military occupation to which Palestinians had been subjected since 1967 and the apartheid-like conditions the indigenous Arab population had lived under as second-class citizens of an ethnocratic state since 1948.

In 1991, resolution 3379 was repealed for two primary reasons: One, the Soviet bloc, which helped pass the resolution, had collapsed; and two, Israel and the US demanded that it be revoked or they refused to participate in the Madrid Peace Conference. At the UN on Nov. 11, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Secretary of State John Kerry eulogized the late Herzog and forcefully condemned the resolution on its 40th anniversary. In his 2,500-word statement, Kerry mentioned Palestinians just once, and only then as an extension of Israelis. In her remarks, Power did not mention Palestinians at all.

Less than a week after the attacks in Paris — while the public and policymakers were still reeling, and the investigation had barely gotten off the ground — Cy Vance, Manhattan’s District Attorney, released a policy paper calling for legislation requiring companies to provide the government with backdoor access to their smartphones and other mobile devices. This is the first concrete proposal of this type since September 2014, when FBI Director James Comey reignited the “Crypto Wars” in response to Apple’s and Google’s decisions to use default encryption on their smartphones. Though Comey seized on Apple’s and Google’s decisions to encrypt their devices by default, his concerns are primarily related to end-to-end encryption, which protects communications that are in transit. Vance’s proposal, on the other hand, is only concerned with device encryption, which protects data stored on phones. It is still unclear whether encryption played any role in the Paris attacks, though we do know that the attackers were using unencrypted SMS text messages on the night of the attack, and that some of them were even known to intelligence agencies and had previously been under surveillance. But regardless of whether encryption was used at some point during the planning of the attacks, as I lay out below, prohibiting companies from selling encrypted devices would not prevent criminals or terrorists from being able to access unbreakable encryption. Vance’s primary complaint is that Apple’s and Google’s decisions to provide their customers with more secure devices through encryption interferes with criminal investigations. He claims encryption prevents law enforcement from accessing stored data like iMessages, photos and videos, Internet search histories, and third party app data. He makes several arguments to justify his proposal to build backdoors into encrypted smartphones, but none of them hold water.

Before addressing the major privacy, security, and implementation concerns that his proposal raises, it is worth noting that while an increase in use of fully encrypted devices could interfere with some law enforcement investigations, it will help prevent far more crimes — especially smartphone theft, and the consequent potential for identity theft. According to Consumer Reports, in 2014 there were more than two million victims of smartphone theft, and nearly two-thirds of all smartphone users either took no steps to secure their phones or their data or failed to implement passcode access for their phones. Default encryption could reduce instances of theft because perpetrators would no longer be able to break into the phone to steal the data.

Vance argues that creating a weakness in encryption to allow law enforcement to access data stored on devices does not raise serious concerns for security and privacy, since in order to exploit the vulnerability one would need access to the actual device. He considers this an acceptable risk, claiming it would not be the same as creating a widespread vulnerability in encryption protecting communications in transit (like emails), and that it would be cheap and easy for companies to implement. But Vance seems to be underestimating the risks involved with his plan. It is increasingly important that smartphones and other devices are protected by the strongest encryption possible. Our devices and the apps on them contain astonishing amounts of personal information, so much that an unprecedented level of harm could be caused if a smartphone or device with an exploitable vulnerability is stolen, not least in the forms of identity fraud and credit card theft. We bank on our phones, and have access to credit card payments with services like Apple Pay. Our contact lists are stored on our phones, including phone numbers, emails, social media accounts, and addresses. Passwords are often stored on people’s phones. And phones and apps are often full of personal details about their lives, from food diaries to logs of favorite places to personal photographs. Symantec conducted a study, where the company spread 50 “lost” phones in public to see what people who picked up the phones would do with them. The company found that 95 percent of those people tried to access the phone, and while nearly 90 percent tried to access private information stored on the phone or in other private accounts such as banking services and email, only 50 percent attempted contacting the owner.

This week the Center for Media Justice, ColorOfChange.org, and New America’s Open Technology Institute filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission alleging the Baltimore police are violating the federal Communications Act by using cell site simulators, also known as Stingrays, that disrupt cellphone calls and interfere with the cellular network—and are doing so in a way that has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. Stingrays operate by mimicking a cell tower and directing all cellphones in a given area to route communications through the Stingray instead of the nearby tower. They are especially pernicious surveillance tools because they collect information on every single phone in a given area—not just the suspect’s phone—this means they allow the police to conduct indiscriminate, dragnet searches. They are also able to locate people inside traditionally-protected private spaces like homes, doctors’ offices, or places of worship. Stingrays can also be configured to capture the content of communications. Because Stingrays operate on the same spectrum as cellular networks but are not actually transmitting communications the way a cell tower would, they interfere with cell phone communications within as much as a 500 meter radius of the device (Baltimore’s devices may be limited to 200 meters). This means that any important phone call placed or text message sent within that radius may not get through. As the complaint notes, “[d]epending on the nature of an emergency, it may be urgently necessary for a caller to reach, for example, a parent or child, doctor, psychiatrist, school, hospital, poison control center, or suicide prevention hotline.” But these and even 911 calls could be blocked.

The Baltimore Police Department could be among the most prolific users of cell site simulator technology in the country. A Baltimore detective testified last year that the BPD used Stingrays 4,300 times between 2007 and 2015. Like other law enforcement agencies, Baltimore has used its devices for major and minor crimes—everything from trying to locate a man who had kidnapped two small children to trying to find another man who took his wife’s cellphone during an argument (and later returned it). According to logs obtained by USA Today, the Baltimore PD also used its Stingrays to locate witnesses, to investigate unarmed robberies, and for mysterious “other” purposes. And like other law enforcement agencies, the Baltimore PD has regularly withheld information about Stingrays from defense attorneys, judges, and the public. Moreover, according to the FCC complaint, the Baltimore PD’s use of Stingrays disproportionately impacts African American communities. Coming on the heels of a scathing Department of Justice report finding “BPD engages in a pattern or practice of conduct that violates the Constitution or federal law,” this may not be surprising, but it still should be shocking. The DOJ’s investigation found that BPD not only regularly makes unconstitutional stops and arrests and uses excessive force within African-American communities but also retaliates against people for constitutionally protected expression, and uses enforcement strategies that produce “severe and unjustified disparities in the rates of stops, searches and arrests of African Americans.”

Adding Stingrays to this mix means that these same communities are subject to more surveillance that chills speech and are less able to make 911 and other emergency calls than communities where the police aren’t regularly using Stingrays. A map included in the FCC complaint shows exactly how this is impacting Baltimore’s African-American communities. It plots hundreds of addresses where USA Today discovered BPD was using Stingrays over a map of Baltimore’s black population based on 2010 Census data included in the DOJ’s recent report: