terorrism – Techdirt (original) (raw)
Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing (Once Again) Demonstrates Why Demanding Platforms Censor Bad Speech Creates Problems
from the happens-again-and-again dept
We keep pointing to examples like this, but the examples are getting starker and more depressing. Lots of people keep arguing that internet platforms (mainly Facebook) need to be more aggressive in taking down “bad” speech — often generalized under the term “hate speech.” But, as we’ve pointed out, that puts tremendous power into the hands of those who determine what is “hate speech.” And, while the calls for censorship often come from minority communities, it should be noted that those in power have a habit of claiming criticism of the powerful is “hate speech.” Witness the news from Burma that Rohingya activists have been trying to document ethnic cleansing, only to find Facebook deleting all their posts. When questioned about this, Facebook (after a few days) claimed that the issue was that these posts were coming from a group it had designated a “dangerous organization.”
So, is it a dangerous organization or a group of activists fighting against ethnic cleansing? Like many of these things, it depends on which side you stand on. As the saying goes, one person’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. And this just highlights the tricky position that Facebook has taken on — often at the urging of people who demand that it block certain content. Facebook shouldn’t be the ones determining who’s a terrorist v. who’s a freedom fighter and when we keep asking the site to be that final arbiter, we’re only inviting trouble.
The real issue is how we’ve built up these silos of centralized repositories of information — rather than actually taking advantage of the distributed web. In the early days of the web, everyone controlled their own web presence, for the most part. You created your own site and posted your own content. Yes, there were still middlemen and intermediaries, but there were lots of options. But centralizing all such content onto one giant platform and then demanding that platform regulate the content — these kinds of problems are going to happen again and again and again.
Filed Under: activism, burma, censorship, filters, free speech, freedom, platforms, rohingya, terorrism
Companies: facebook
FBI Arresting More Americans For Targeting Muslims, Than Muslims For Targeting Americans
from the lock-'em-up dept
We’ve been pretty damn clear that we think the Trump administration’s targeting of people from a few countries by banning them from entering the US is both inhumane and misguided. We were proud to sign on to an amicus brief opposing it and happy that the 9th Circuit agreed — though the case is far from over. As I’ve noted repeatedly, to me it’s an issue of basic humanity and decency, but some have insisted on making arguments about how certain people are somehow out to get us and we need to protect ourselves from them. I know that, these days, it’s considered silly to rely on things like facts for an argument, but it seemed worthwhile to actually explore some facts on this particular topic.
We’ll start with a post at Lawfare, by Nora Ellingsen. And we should start out by noting that Techdirt and Lawfare have a pretty long history of… well… not agreeing on much. The site is generally supportive of the intelligence community and supportive of actions taken to protect “national security.” We tend to be more skeptical. Ellingsen worked in the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division for five years, specifically working on international terrorism investigations inside the US. Since leaving the FBI to go to law school, she’s been tracking counterterrorism cases in the US, using DOJ data. And she’s gone through that data to try to determine if there’s any truth to the idea that people from those countries represent a big ongoing threat. And the answer is that it’s just not true. In fact, the real “terrorism” threat in America appears to be… from Americans.:
The Program on Extremism at George Washington University has routinely published statistics indicating that the ?vast majority? of individuals charged in the U.S. with offenses related to ISIL are U.S. citizens. When considering all terrorism offenses, that claim holds up?80 of the 97 suspects arrested in the past two years, or more than 82 percent, are American citizens.
Most of those, notably, are not naturalized citizens. Of the U.S. citizens, only six were naturalized. In other words, more than 76 percent of individuals arrested by the FBI over the past two years for terrorism-related offenses were U.S. citizens as a result of having been born in the United States.
The post goes through all of the individuals who were not born in the US and looks at what each was charged with (often just making false statements to the FBI) and how many of them (not many) actually came from the list of banned countries.
And, then, of course, the fact that the FBI these days tends to be arresting a lot more people for plotting violent attacks on Muslims, than Muslims plotting violent attacks on the US:
Since January 2015, the FBI has also arrested more anti-immigrant American citizens plotting violent attacks on Muslims within the U.S. than it has refugees, or former refugees, from any banned country. As we wrote about here, here and here, in October 2016, three white men from Kansas were charged with conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction. According to the graphic complaint, the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant men planned to attack a mosque in the area. The men progressed quickly with their plot, amassing firearms and explosives. The targets were people from Somalia, who ironically, would now be covered by Trump?s order.
Similarly, the post notes that there were more US citizens arrested en route to join ISIS in Syria than those arrested trying to plan attacks here.
Since we?re already on the topic, let?s talk about Americans traveling to join ISIL. Over the past two years, the FBI has arrested 34 Americans who aspired to leave, attempted to leave or actually left the United States to join a terrorist group overseas. In other words, although two refugees came into the U.S. and were charged with material support,
Seventeen times that number of U.S. citizens tried to leave the U.S. to conduct attacks and fight overseas. More Americans have snuck into Syria to join ISIL, than ISIL members have snuck into the United States. In September 2015, a congressional report indicated that 250 Americans have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight with ISIL. By comparison, as of December 2015, only 71 individuals in the United States had been charged with ISIL-related activities?the vast majority of whom were also U.S. citizens, according to George Washington University.
Meanwhile, over at Slate, William Saletan has pointed out that if the President really wants to ban travellers from regions that import multiple people aiming to harm Americans… it ought to ban travel from North & South Carolina. He goes through story after story of extremists who left North Carolina to conduct terrorist attacks elsewhere. The list is long, but here are just a few:
It began with Eric Rudolph, a Holocaust denier who grew up in the Christian Identity movement. In 1996, Rudolph traveled from North Carolina to Atlanta, where he detonated a bomb at the Olympics, killing one person and injuring more than 100 others. A year later, Rudolph bombed a lesbian bar in Atlanta, wounding five people. In 1998, he bombed a reproductive health clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, killing a security guard and injuring a nurse. The ?Army of God,? which hosts Rudolph?s writings, claimed credit for his attacks.
In 2001, Steve Anderson, another Christian Identity follower, was pulled over for a broken tail light on his way home from a white supremacist meeting in North Carolina. He pumped 20 bullets into the officer?s car and fled. Police found weapons, ammunition, and explosives in his truck and home. A year later, he was captured in the western part of the state.
In 2010, Justin Moose, an extremist from Concord, North Carolina, was arrested for plotting to blow up a Planned Parenthood clinic. Moose, who claimed to represent the Army of God, also opposed the construction of a mosque near ground zero in New York. He called himself the ?Christian counterpart of Osama Bin Laden.? Eventually, Moose pleaded guilty to disseminating information on how to make and use explosive devices.
Obviously, the Slate piece is tongue-in-cheek in arguing that the Carolinas are the real threat, but the larger point is completely valid. There seems to be no credible evidence for why people from the countries listed in the original executive order should be banned from the US other than outright bigotry. And, somewhat unfortunately, that same kind of ignorant bigotry (which the executive order is only helping to encourage and spread) is resulting in actual violent attacks from Americans who misguidedly think they’re stopping “evil.”
Filed Under: executive order, fbi, immigration ban, muslims, terorrism
Canadian Court Says Vice Magazine Must Hand Over Its Communications With A Suspected Terrorist
from the Canadian-journalists-expect-an-Arctic-Front-to-begin-moving-in... dept
A Canadian court — granting a request made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — is in the process of dismantling protections for Canadian journalists. The case involves a Skype interview by Vice Magazine with an alleged terrorist currently located in Syria. The interview, in which the self-avowed terrorist (Farad Mohamed Shirdon) claimed an attack in New York City was imminent, appeared back in October 2015 and led directly to his being charged in absentia with several terrorism-related offenses.
Since that point, Vice has been battling to protect itself from a production order by the RCMP, seeking communications between Vice reporter Ben Makuch and Shidron. It has argued that forcing a journalistic entity to turn over communications with a source would set a dangerous precedent that would adversely affect press freedom in that country.
The RCMP says the communications are evidence — or presumably are, since they haven’t been turned over yet. The court seems to agree.
[I]n a decision released this week, the court rejected VICE’s attempt to quash the order, ruling that the police’s ability to gather evidence trumps the rights of VICE and Makuch to protect their work product in this case. Specifically, the screen captures of the chats are “important evidence in relation to very serious allegations” and “The screen captures are a copy of the actual electronic messages that Shirdon placed on Mr. Makuch’s computer screen. They are highly reliable evidence that do not require a second hand interpretation,” Justice Ian MacDonell wrote in his decision.
Vice News is looking at appealing this order. As it points out, its reporting already led to the identifying and charging of Shidron, something that most likely would not have happened without its publication. It also claims nothing it has in its possession will provide any more insight on Shidron’s current location or future plans.
As Vice’s attorney points out, this sort of demand is a threat to journalism.
VICE’s lawyer, Iain MacKinnon, said similar production orders could become more common in Canada if police know they can easily obtain notes and recordings from journalists. “It could have a very real chilling effect on the willingness of people and witnesses speaking to journalists,” said MacKinnon. “If people realize that what they say to a journalist could easily be handed over to police and used as part of a criminal investigation, that may scare somebody off in speaking to a journalist.”
A large part of what makes journalism journalism is investigatory work and speaking to sources who wouldn’t feel comfortable speaking to someone if they couldn’t be assured anonymity or other protections. Journalists are not an extension of law enforcement or any other government body (or at least shouldn’t be), but that’s what an order like this does: makes Vice News a convenient source for law enforcement to obtain communications and documents from. I’m sure Vice has no desire to “harbor” a terrorist, but it also has no desire to see terrorism fears being leveraged to create a dangerous precedent.
Filed Under: ben makuch, canada, journalism, journalist shield, protected sources, rcmp, sources, terorrism
Companies: vice
France Responds To Paris Attacks By Rushing Through Internet Censorship Law
from the always-good-to-legislating-while-freaking-out,-huh? dept
The attacks in Paris were a horrible and tragic event — and you can understand why people are angry and scared about it. But, as always, when politicians are angry and scared following a high-profile tragedy, they tend to legislate in dangerous ways. It appears that France is no exception. It has pushed through some kneejerk legislation that includes a plan to censor the internet. Specifically the Minister of the Interior will be given the power to block any website that is deemed to be “promoting terrorism or inciting terrorist acts.” Of course, this seems ridiculous on many levels.
First, there are the basic concerns about free speech. Yes, I know this is France and it doesn’t value free speech in the same way as the US, but it’s still rather distressing just how quickly and easily the French government seems willing to adopt censorship measures. Second, what good does this actually do? If ISIS sympathizers are expressing their views publicly, doesn’t that make it easier to track them and to find out what they’re doing and saying? Isn’t that what law enforcement should want? Focusing on censorship rather than tracking simply drives those conversations and efforts underground where they can still be used to influence people, but where it’s much harder for government and law enforcement ot keep track of what’s being said. It also only confirms to ISIS supporters that what they’re saying must be so important and valuable if the government won’t even let them say it. It’s difficult to see how it does any good, and instead it opens up the possibility of widespread government censorship and the abuse of such a power.
Filed Under: censorship, france, free speech, internet, isis, paris attacks, terorrism
Insanity Rules: NSA Apologists Actually Think Apple Protecting You & Your Data Could Be 'Material Support' For ISIS
from the this-is-wrong dept
A few weeks ago, we pointed out that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse led the way with perhaps the most ridiculous statement of any Senator (and there were a lot of crazy statements) in the debate over encryption and the FBI’s exaggerated fear of “going dark.” He argued that if the police couldn’t find a missing girl (using a hypothetical that not only didn’t make any sense, but which also was entirely unlikely to ever happen), then perhaps Apple could face some civil liability for not allowing the government to spy on your data. Here’s what he said:
It strikes me that one of the balances that we have in these circumstances, where a company may wish to privatize value — by saying “gosh, we’re secure now, we got a really good product, you’re gonna love it” — that’s to their benefit. But for the family of the girl that disappeared in the van, that’s a pretty big cost. And, when we see corporations privatizing value and socializing costs, so that other people have to bear the cost, one of the ways that we get back to that and try to put some balance into it, is through the civil courts. Through the liability system. If you’re a polluter and you’re dumping poisonous waste into the water rather than treating it properly somebody downstream can bring an action and can get damages for the harm they sustained, can get an order telling you to knock it off.
You can read our longer analysis of how wrong this is, but in short: encryption is not pollution. Pollution is a negative externality. Encryption is the opposite of that. It’s a tool that better protects the public in the vast majority of cases. That’s why Apple is making it so standard.
The suggestion was so ridiculous and so wrong that we were surprised that famed NSA apologist Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institute found Whitehouse’s nonsensical rant “interesting” and worthy of consideration. While we disagree with Wittes on nearly everything, we thought at the very least common sense would have to eventually reach him, leading him to recognize that absolutely nothing Whitehouse said made any sense (then again, this is the same Wittes who seems to have joined the magic unicorn/golden key brigade — so I’m beginning to doubt my initial assessment that Wittes is well-informed but just comes to bad conclusions).
However, even with Wittes finding Whitehouse’s insane suggestion “interesting,” it’s still rather surprising to see him find it worthy of a multi-part detailed legal analysis for which he brought in a Harvard Law student, Zoe Bedell, to help. In the first analysis, they take a modified form of Whitehouse’s hypothetical (after even they admit that his version doesn’t actually make any sense), but still come to the conclusion that the company “could” face civil liability. Though, at least they admit plaintiffs would “not have an easy case.”
The first challenge for plaintiffs will be to establish that Apple even had a duty, or an obligation, to take steps to prevent their products from being used in an attack in the first place. Plaintiffs might first argue that Apple actually already has a statutory duty to provide communications to government under a variety of laws. While Apple has no express statutory obligation to maintain the ability to provide decrypted information to the FBI, plaintiffs could argue that legal obligations it clearly does have would be meaningless if the communications remained encrypted.
To make this possible, Bedell and Wittes try to read into various wiretapping and surveillance laws a non-existent duty to decrypt information from your mobile phone. But that’s clearly not true. If that actually existed, then we wouldn’t be having this debate right now in the first place, and FBI Director James Comey wouldn’t be talking to Congress about changing the law to require such things. But, still, they hope that maybe, just maybe, a court would create such a duty out of thin air based on things like “the foreseeability of the harm.” Except, that’s going to fall flat on its face, because the likelihood of harm here goes the other way. Not encrypting your information leads to a much, much, much greater probability of harm than encrypting your data and not allowing law enforcement to see it.
Going to even more ridiculous levels than the “pollution” argument, this article compares Apple encrypting your data to the potential liability of the guy who taught the Columbine shooters how to use their guns:
For example, after the Columbine shooting, the parents of a victim sued the retailer who sold the shooters one of their shotguns and even taught the shooters how to saw down the gun?s barrel. In refusing to dismiss the case, the court stated that ?[t]he intervening or superseding act of a third party, . . . including a third-party’s intentionally tortious or criminal conduct[,] does not absolve a defendant from responsibility if the third-party’s conduct is reasonably and generally foreseeable.? The facts were different here in some respects?the Columbine shooters were under-age, and notably, they bought their supplies in person, rather than online. But that does not explain how two federal district courts in Colorado ended up selecting and applying two different standards for evaluating the defendant’s duty.
But it’s even more different than that. Even with this standard — which many disagree with — there still needs to be “conduct” that is “reasonably and generally foreseeable.” And that’s not the case here that it is “reasonably and generally foreseeable” that because data is encrypted that people will be at more risk. In all these years, the FBI still can’t come up with a single example where such encryption was a real problem. It would be basically impossible to argue that this is a foreseeable “problem,” especially when weighed against the very real and very present problem of people trying to hack into your device and get your data.
In the second in the series, Bedell and Wittes go even further in looking at whether or not Apple could be found to have provided material support to terrorists thanks to encryption. If this sounds vaguely familiar, remember a similarly ridiculous claim not to long ago from a music industry lawyer and a DOJ official that YouTube and Twitter could be charged with material support for terrorism because ISIS used both platforms.
Bedell and Wittes concoct a scenario in which a court might argue that providing a phone that can encrypt a terrorist’s data, opens the company up to liability:
In our scenario, a plaintiff might argue that the material support was either the provision of the cell phone itself, or the provision of the encrypted messaging services that are native on it. Thus, if a jury could find that providing terrorists with encrypted communications services is just asking for trouble, then plaintiffs would have satisfied the first element of the definition of international terrorism in § 2331, a necessary step for making a case for liability under § 2333.
Of course, this is wiped out pretty quickly because that law requires intent. The authors note that this would “pose a challenge” to any plaintiff “as it would appear to be difficult, if not impossible, to prove that Apple intended to intimidate civilians or threaten governments by selling someone an iPhone…”
You think?
But, our intrepid NSA apologists still dig deeper to see if they can come up with a legal theory that will actually work:
But again, courts have handled this question in ways that make it feasible for a plaintiff to succeed on this point against Apple. For example, when the judge presiding over the Arab Bank case considered and denied the bank?s motion to dismiss, he shifted the analysis of intimidation and coercion (as well as the question of the violent act and the broken criminal law) from the defendant in the case to the group receiving the assistance. The question for the jury was thus whether the bank was secondarily, rather than primarily, liable for the injuries. The issue was not whether Arab Bank was trying to intimidate civilians or threaten governments. It was whether Hamas was trying to do this, and whether Arab Bank was knowingly helping Hamas.
Judge Posner?s opinion in Boim takes a different route to the same result. Instead of requiring a demonstration of actual intent to coerce or intimidate civilians or a government, Judge Posner essentially permits the inference that when terrorist attacks are a ?foreseeable consequence? of providing support, an organization or individual knowingly providing that support can be understood to have intended those consequences. Because Judge Posner concludes that Congress created an intentional tort, § 2333 in his reading requires the plaintiff to prove that the defendant knew it was supporting a terrorist or terrorist organization, or at least that it was deliberately indifferent to that fact. In other words, the terrorist attack must be a foreseeable consequence of the specific act of support, rather than just a general risk of providing a good or service.
But even under those standards, it’s hard to see how Apple could possibly be liable for material support. It’s just selling an iPhone and doing so in a way that — for the vast majority of its customers — is better protecting their privacy and data. It would take an extremely twisted mind and argument to turn that into somehow “knowingly” helping terrorists or creating a “foreseeable consequence.” At least the authors admit that much.
But why stop there? They then say that Apple could still be liable after the government asks them to decrypt messages. If Apple doesn’t magically stop the user in particular from encrypting messages, then, they claim, Apple could be shown to be “knowingly” supporting terrorism.
The trouble for Apple is that our story does not end with the sale of the phone to the person who turns out later to be an ISIS recruit. There is an intermediate step in the story, a step at which Apple?s knowledge dramatically increases, and its conduct arguably comes to look much more like that of someone who?as Posner explains?is recklessly indifferent to the consequences of his actions and thus carries liability for the foreseeable consequences of the aid he gives a bad guy.
That is the point at which the government serves Apple with a warrant?either a Title III warrant or a FISA warrant. In either case, the warrant is issued by a judge and puts Apple on notice that there is probable cause to believe the individual under investigation is engaged in criminal activity or activity of interest for national security reasons and is using Apple?s services and products to help further his aims. Apple, quite reasonably given its technical architecture, informs the FBI at this point that it cannot comply in any useful way with the warrant as to communications content. It can only provide the metadata associated with the communications. But it continues to provide service to the individual in question.
But all of this, once again, assumes an impossibility: that once out of its hands, Apple can somehow stop the end user from using the encryption on their phone.
This is the mother of all stretches in terms of legal theories. And, throughout it all, neither Bedell nor Wittes even seems to recognize that stronger encryption protects the end user. It’s like it doesn’t even enter their minds that there’s a reason why Apple is providing encryption that isn’t “to help people hide from the government.” It’s not about government snooping. It’s about anyone snooping. The other cases they cite are not like that at all. These arguments, even as thin as they are, only make sense if Apple’s move to encryption doesn’t really have widespread value for basically the entire population. You don’t sue Toyota for “material support for terrorism” just because a terrorist uses a Toyota to make a car bomb. Yet, Wittes and Bedell are somehow trying to make the argument that Apple is liable for better protecting you, just because in some instances it might also help “bad” people. That’s a ridiculous legal theory that barely deserves to be laughed at, let alone a multi-part analysis of how it “might work.”
Filed Under: ben wittes, encryption, isis, liability, material support, mobile encryption, pollution, sheldon whitehouse, terorrism, zoe bedell
Companies: apple
The Intercept Reveals The US Government's Guidebook For Declaring You're A Terrorist Or Putting You On The No Fly List
from the because-you-just-might-be-a-terrorist dept
Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Deveraux, over at The Intercept have a giant scoop: the full 166-page guidebook that US law enforcement uses to declare someone a terrorist who deserves to be on one of its various watchlists from the no-fly list to the “terrorist screening database.” We’ve had plenty of stories about the no fly list and the TSDB, and the ridiculous lengths that the US government has gone to to keep anyone from knowing if or why they’re in any of these databases — leading to a series of lawsuits from individuals who were put on that list under very questionable circumstances.
We were happy last month to see that the process for getting off of these watchlists was declared unconstitutional, but the lawsuits over these watchlists suggest that they are prone to abuse and error. We were particularly disturbed to find out in a recent lawsuit that the US government actually has a secret exception to reasonable suspicion for putting people on the list.
The document released by The Intercept is quite revealing, and shows that President Obama has massively expanded the criteria for getting people onto the list. In fact, as the report notes, the President “quietly approved” an expansion “authorizing a secret process that requires neither ?concrete facts? nor ?irrefutable evidence? to designate an American or foreigner as a terrorist.”
The new guidelines allow individuals to be designated as representatives of terror organizations without any evidence they are actually connected to such organizations, and it gives a single White House official the unilateral authority to place ?entire categories? of people the government is tracking onto the no fly and selectee lists. It broadens the authority of government officials to ?nominate? people to the watchlists based on what is vaguely described as ?fragmentary information.? It also allows for dead people to be watchlisted.
As you might imagine, given all the stories about people being put on various watchlists even though they’re clearly not terrorists, the guidelines are crazy expansive:
The document?s definition of ?terrorist? activity includes actions that fall far short of bombing or hijacking. In addition to expected crimes, such as assassination or hostage-taking, the guidelines also define destruction of government property and damaging computers used by financial institutions as activities meriting placement on a list. They also define as terrorism any act that is ?dangerous? to property and intended to influence government policy through intimidation.
And obviously this goes way beyond just boarding (or not boarding) airplanes. As the report notes, if you’re pulled over for speeding and the police run your name, if you’re on the watchlist, the police will get a notification, leading them to automatically think that you’re a suspected terrorist. The guidelines also contradict themselves directly. At first it says that:
To meet the REASONABLE SUSPICION standard, the NOMINATOR, based on the totality of the circumstances, must rely upon articulable intelligence or information which, taken together with rational inferences from those facts, reasonably warrants a determination that an individual is known or suspected to be or has been knowingly engaged in conduct constituting, in preparation for, in aid of, or related to TERRORISM and/or TERRORIST ACTIVITIES.
Okay. So you need to have a factual basis for reasonable suspicion, right? Wrong:
In determining whether a REASONABLE SUSPICION exists, due weight should be given to the specific reasonable inferences that a NOMINATOR is entitled to draw from the facts in light of his/her experience and not on unfounded suspicions or hunches. Although irrefutable evidence or concrete facts are not necessary, to be reasonable, suspicion should be as clear and as fully developed as circumstances permit.
So, it can’t just be a hunch. It has to be a really good hunch seems to be the lesson.
The report also likely reveals the “secret” exceptions to reasonable suspicion that the judge refused to reveal in the Rahinah Ibrahim case we wrote about. She was kept on the watchlist despite there being no reasonable suspicion. One of the exceptions is the “family member” loophole (which some had suggested was likely the issue in the comments to our story about Ibrahim). But it appears the exceptions are much broader:
There are a number of loopholes for putting people onto the watchlists even if reasonable suspicion cannot be met.
One is clearly defined: The immediate family of suspected terrorists?their spouses, children, parents, or siblings?may be watchlisted without any suspicion that they themselves are engaged in terrorist activity. But another loophole is quite broad??associates? who have a defined relationship with a suspected terrorist, but whose involvement in terrorist activity is not known. A third loophole is broader still?individuals with ?a possible nexus? to terrorism, but for whom there is not enough ?derogatory information? to meet the reasonable suspicion standard.
And then there’s the fact that the new “threat-based expedited upgrade” program, which was put in place following the US failing to notice that the famed “underwear bomber” got on his plane despite being on the watchlist. So, rather than recognize that the list was broken, the administration just added a new category, allowing a single White House official the unilateral power to elevate entire “categories of people” into a special list for extra scrutiny.
This extraordinary power for ?categorical watchlisting??otherwise known as profiling?is vested in the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, a position formerly held by CIA Director John Brennan that does not require Senate confirmation.
The rulebook does not indicate what ?categories of people? have been subjected to threat-based upgrades. It is not clear, for example, whether a category might be as broad as military-age males from Yemen. The guidelines do make clear that American citizens and green card holders are subject to such upgrades, though government officials are required to review their status in an ?expedited? procedure. Upgrades can remain in effect for 72 hours before being reviewed by a small committee of senior officials. If approved, they can remain in place for 30 days before a renewal is required, and can continue ?until the threat no longer exists.?
Basically, as most people suspected, it appears the government has broad and, until now, secret powers to effectively ruin someone’s life by placing them on one of these watchlists… with no legitimate way to get off.
Filed Under: dhs, doj, guidebook, no fly list, reasonable suspicion, terorrism, terrorist watchlist, tsdb, us government, watchlist
UK Officials Argue That David Miranda Was, In Fact, A Terrorist
from the oh-really-now? dept
You may recall the farce in the UK that is the story of the nine-hour detention of Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, while he was held over while flying through Heathrow to get from Berlin to Brazil. Miranda’s devices were seized under an anti-terrorism law, which can only be used to deal with terrorism. Even though many have admitted it was really just to send a message to Greenwald and other reporters, many UK officials have maintained that the detention was fully justified, despite no evidence to support that. Even the author of the law that was used to stop Miranda has argued that it was not intended for such uses.
However, last week in court, the UK laid out its case, as presented by Scotland Yard — and they actually are going to try to claim that Miranda’s actions — carrying some of Snowden’s encrypted documents — is a form of both espionage and terrorism.
Intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security,” according to the document.
“We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material the release of which would endanger people’s lives,” the document continued. “Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism…”
Read that again and let it sink in. UK officials are arguing that if you have any material which, if disclosed, might “influence a government,” you are, by definition, a terrorist. That makes a very large number of people terrorists. By this definition, basically any whistleblower is a terrorist. Anyone with embarrassing, but factual, information about a government official might be deemed a terrorist as well. Something is very broken if that’s considered the actual standard in the law.
Filed Under: david miranda, glenn greenwald, schedule 7, terorrism, uk
India Looks To Make Open WiFi Illegal
from the overreact-much? dept
In most of the discussions we’ve had over the years concerning the legalities of open WiFi networks, the issue was whether or not it was legal to access an open WiFi network. Over in India, they’re taking a different approach, apparently preparing rules that would outlaw offering an open WiFi network (via Slashdot). This is in response to the recent bombings in India, where officials believe the bombers used open WiFi networks to email each other. That seems like a pretty big overreaction. If it’s not open WiFi, the terrorists will come up with other ways to communicate — and in the meantime you inconvenience everyone else, and make it impossible for those who want to offer open WiFi to do so.