RT: It’s thought that American investigators were looking for a potentially dangerous government leak – so wasn’t this justified in terms of national security?Tony Gosling: Due to the timing of these two months of telephone information that they’ve taken [from] over twenty phone lines, [it looks as if it was connected with] what is effectively war crimes by the CIA over in Yemen. The CIA’s view and the American military’s view is that there are all sorts of crimes going on by the Yemenis and the Associated Press had been exposing them. Actually, what’s been going on here in reality is that the Associated Press were exposing war crimes by people in their own country.What we’ve got here squaring up is the American military industrial complex, led in this case by the US attorney general Eric Holder. He is some kind of devil’s advocate; if you remember the film, he is that kind of a lawyer. He’s the first ever in American history to be held in contempt of Congress, so he has certainly not got his hands clean. On the other side is the tradition of a free press, and the effect of this massive trawl, effectively a fishing operation of months of AP telephone lines, is it has a horrific chilling effect on journalism. It also means that individuals, whistleblowers and people with stories can no longer trust the journalists. If they go with confidential information to those journalists and have confidential phone conversations, they are no longer guaranteed that those journalists can keep those conversations secret because the Justice Department is coming in with a massive trawl over a two-month period. One can understand if it’s a small investigation over a couple of days or a particular phone line possibly, but this is a fishing operation and an appalling attack on the freedom of the press in America by a government that is out of control.RT: Can journalists really be trusted – doesn’t the phone hacking scandal in the UK suggest otherwise?TG: I don’t think that the situation in Britain is quiet as difficult as it is over in the US at the moment. They are going to the line it seems with operations like this. What is effectively going on is that Eric Holder, who is a puppy-dog; he’s not really sticking up for the American people, he’s not doing his job. What he is doing is the job of the American military industrial complex, which is very frightened about actually being exposed by people like the Associated Press for the things that they are doing. We do have problems here in Britain, but it’s not quite as bad as in the US. Journalists and lawyers have to really watch out for governments that snoop on their information and have to stop it, stone dead.RT: AP has managed to put the Obama administration in a very embarrassing situation by exposing this surveillance web – so is this case ultimately a victory for the press?TG: Of course this does have to be exposed, but like I say, there is nothing that is going to stop this chilling effect, which is making it very difficult for journalists to keep their sources private. In this kind of situation, where the Justice Departments gets its hands on all those phone calls, that’s almost impossible. And of course, this is all is driven by the military industrial complex who have their eyes on the Middle East oil and the Yemini oil. This has nothing to do with trying to stop terrorism or anything like that. These are just those that are trying to stop the US from taking over oil deposits in the Middle East and effectively covering up for what is actually illegal activity.RT: If governments are worried about information being leaked by journalists, shouldn’t they be focusing on finding the source of that leak within their own ranks – rather than targeting the messenger?TG: You should never be targeting the messenger. The messengers are coming up with bad news and those in authority in the US don’t like it. It’s a similar situation in the UK. We have secret courts being brought in here in Britain. And ultimately this is the rise of a kind of police state where government thinks it can do what it wants. What we’re seeing is the erosion of some of the basic civil liberties that we’ve said for the last 30-40 years: ‘this is what we hold dear.’ We’re saying that ‘oh, these terrible Al-Qaeda and etc. are trying to take those civil liberties away’. But Al-Qaeda aren’t taking them away, our own governments are taking them away. Christopher Chambers, journalism professor from Georgetown University in the US, believes the reason behind the Justice Department investigation of AP is the government’s desire to have control over the flow of information covering it up by public safety concerns.“Especially when they perceive, rightly or wrongly that they are protecting the public from terrorism or some external threat or perhaps some internal threat. The problem is that that threat has not been articulated, has not been put out there as something that overrides this unprecedented intrusion,” he told RT.“The attorney general will have to explain a lot in the coming weeks. Otherwise it is further erosion of the trust that people have in their government, not only to protect them from outside threats but to protect them from the government itself.”The active intrusion into the press is unprecedented, Chamber maintains. “It’s an extension of some of the intrusions into the civil liberties that we saw after 9/11 attacks. The hypocrisy is that Barack Obama came into office decrying and attacking the abuses of the Bush administration, but is continuing them. That will be rather a political then a legal problem for him… Individuals and groups that supported him in the past are abandoning him right now.” … Read More
A Way to Make Phone Records Not So Easy to Track
Silent Circle provides a novel means to protect confidential phone records, even when the government comes calling. … Read More
Breaking: Justice Department Admits to Spying on Over 100 Individual Associated Press Journalists Over Two Month Period
In what could become one of the biggest scandals of the Obama Administration, the Justice Department has admitted to unconstitutional wide ranging spying on over 100 individual Associated Press reporters. … Read More
Government-operated spyware on the rise around the world – report
Citizen Lab, a digital research unit at the University of Toronto, says that servers running notorious FinFisher software have been found in eleven new countries over the past year, bringing the total number of states where servers have been detected to 36.FinFisher is an “IT intrusion and remote monitoring solution” that is “solely offered to law enforcement and intelligence agencies”, according to its makers Gamma International. Behind the euphemisms is a toolkit of malware which can infect a user’s computer or phone and then track his movements, record his conversations, and steal his confidential documents and passwords.It is produced by Gamma International, an Anglo-German company registered in the British Virgin Islands. It first rose to prominence two years ago when documents published on whistleblower website Wikileaks revealed that the Egyprian security services during the regime of Hosni Mubarak paid over $350,000 to use the software.Citizen Lab says ‘permissive’ standards are used by Gamma International and other publicity-shy companies in the largely unregulated spyware market. They also argue that the term ‘lawful intercept’ – which allows the companies to sell hacking software without being arrested – is just a fig leaf.“There is nothing inherently lawful about the capabilities of these tools. They are simply trojans sold to states, not individuals,” declares the report.The newest detection scan by Citizen Lab, which was aided by sympathetic anti-malware producers (whose software Finfisher successfully evades) showed that fresh servers have appeared in Hungary, Turkey, Romania, Panama, Lithuania, Macedonia, South Africa, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bulgaria and Austria.Citizen Lab says the location of the servers does not necessarily mean they are being operated by governments in those countries, but they also point out that the true number of clients may be much higher than the scan has revealed, as Gamma International constantly tries to conceal the signature of its servers.In any case, recent examples of Finfisher being used unethically, and possibly illegally are plentiful.In Morocco Mamfakinch, a website critical of the government, was infiltrated through software posing as popular browser Mozilla Firefox.Somewhat ironically, anti-government activists in Bahrain were targeted with a fake email attachment that alleged to shed the latest information on state-sanctioned torture.In Malaysia, politically active internet users were monitored after they clicked on a list of candidates in the upcoming presidential election.“The 20th century is rife with politically motivated abuse of electronic surveillance that runs contrary to legal and constitutional protections. There is no reason to suspect that remote intrusion and surveillance software isn’t subject to the same temptations,” say the reports authors.Instead, of lofty words, the Mozilla Foundation, which produces Firefox, has sent a cease-and-desist order to Gamma International. On its blog it said the company “uses our brand and trademarks to lie and mislead as one of its methods for avoiding detection and deletion” while its software is “used by Gamma’s customers to violate citizens’ human rights and online privacy”.But Citizen Lab has called not for piecemeal defensive legal moves, but a new level of supervision for the shadowy commercial surveillance industry, estimated to be worth $5 billion. It hopes its attempt at a comprehensive study, reveals the scale of the problem.“The proliferation of increasingly powerful commercial surveillance tools has serious implications not just for dissidents and activists, but for all of us, no matter our citizenship,” the report summarizes. … Read More
Aurora judge delays decision on whether Fox News reporter who kept source secret will face time
The Colorado judge presiding over the Aurora, Colorado shooting case has delayed the decision on whether to subpoena a Fox News reporter until August. Jana Winter could face six months in jail if she refuses to divulge a confidential source.In the days following the July 20, 2012 shooting, Winter reported that James Holmes, the alleged gunman, mailed a notebook outlining his plans to a psychiatrist at the University of Colorado at Denver before the massacre. Holmes’ defense team has said that the police officer who revealed that information to Winter violated a court gag order and could damage the credibility of other law enforcement officials if called to testify.Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. ruled Monday that he would delay his ruling on Winter until after the court decided whether to include the notebook as evidence, the Denver Post reports. Holmes’ attorneys have asserted that the notebook is not permissible because it falls under doctor-patient privilege and can only be introduced if Holmes uses a mental health defense.Winter has argued that revealing her source would ruin her credibility as a member of the media and potentially make it possible for the anonymous law enforcement official to sue her. Her attorney, Dori Ann Hanswirth, said Judge Samour’s initial decision to delay the ruling was “a very positive step” for the reporter.“The Court is not comfortable proceeding on an incomplete record,” Samour wrote on April 8. “If the notebook is not privileged and is ruled admissible, it may well prove to be a critical piece of evidence in the case. On the other hand, if the Court concludes that the notebook is privileged and inadmissible, it is difficult to discern why the credibility of one or more of the … witnesses would be of importance.”Samour also said he would have to investigate whether any of the officers who swore they were not the source of the leak perjured themselves on the witness stand. Holmes’ attorneys were scheduled to spend Wednesday’s hearing re-questioning at least one detective of whom, they admitted, they failed to ask everything they needed.“I’m going to make sure the seeking party jumps through all the legal hoops that are required,” Samour said.Colorado is one of 40 states that have laws protecting journalists from revealing their sources, although state law stipulates that the rule, RCFP 40, can be ignored if the information in question is “directly relevant to a substantial issue involved in the proceedings.”Reporters in Colorado are more often subpoenaed to testify about what a source told them instead of being threatened with jail time. While journalists have been sentenced in recent high profile cases, none are currently behind bars in the United States.Journalism advocates have rallied around Winter, with a statement from the Society of Professional Journalists describing the threat as “nothing more than a witch hunt designed to silence the media on this case.”“Taking information from a confidential source, especially for a case like this, is serious business,” Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member at The Poynter Institute, told CBS News. “There is great peril in reporting around stories that have gag orders. If you’ve granted anonymity it’s a binding legal contract. You can’t just break that.” … Read More
LulzSec hackers plead guilty to attacking CIA, NHS and Sony websites
At Southwark crown court hearing in London, Ryan Ackroyd, one of the members of LulzSec, short for Lulz Security, pleaded guilty to computer hacking-related charges.Ackroyd, 26, known in LulzSec as Kayla, the persona of a 16-year-old girl, admitted to being a member of the group acting as a “hacker” to access websites for Sony, 20th Century Fox, the NHS, Nintendo, the Arizona State Police, and News International as part of a campaign between February and September 2011.There he obtained confidential data and redirected legitimate website visitors to sites hosted by the hackers, prosecutors said.In June 2012 Ackroyd pleaded not guilty to the same charges. While confessing to carrying out an unauthorized act to impair the operation of a computer, contrary to the Criminal Law Act 1977, the hacker still denies a separate allegation of taking part in ‘distributed denial of service attacks’ (DDoS) earlier that year. Prosecutors are not planning to pursue other charges against him. His fellow hackers Jake Davis, 20, and 18-year-old Mustafa al-Bassam, also admitted guilt. Their charges related to an eight-month period in 2011. Davis, known by the alias ‘Topiary’, and Bassam, who used the name “Tflow”, confessed conspiring to bring down the websites of the CIA and the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) in the US along with law enforcement authorities in Britain between February and September in 2011. They also pleaded guilty to attempting to break into computers run by the NHS, media giants Sony, 20th Century Fox and News International.All the three hacker are to be sentenced on May 14 along with a fourth hacker, Ryan Cleary, a 21-year-old from Wickford in Essex, who earlier pleaded guilty to six connected charges.Ackroyd, Davis and Bassam were arrested during the summer of 2011 after the group’s apparent leader, Hector Monsegur – known online as “Sabu” – was caught by the FBI and persuaded to turn informant.The group, an offshoot of the Anonymous hacktivists, made headlines as they coordinated high profile attacks against some of the world’s biggest companies and intelligence agencies in 2011.To carry out the attacks the group used a system, which allowed them to infect and, thus, take control of other people’s computers, called a botnet.Lulz is internet slang that can be interpreted as “laughs”, “humor” or “amusement”, and Sec refers to “security”. … Read More
Fox News reporter could face jail for protecting Aurora sources
Fox News reporter Jana Winter was subpoenaed in January 2013 following a story she wrote last year about a notebook Aurora shooter James Holmes sent his University of Colorado psychiatrist. According to Fox News, the new judge in Holmes’ capital murder case, Carlos Samour Jr., said the journalist faced a “Hobson’s Choice” — Winter must either reveal her confidential sources, jeopardizing her journalistic intergrity, or face six months in jail.In her story, Winter cited unnamed law enforcement sources and quoted one source as saying the notebook was “full of details about how he was going to kill people.” Holmes’ lawyers were given the okay to subpoena the reporter over these unattributed comments.Winter’s attorney has stated in court that if she is put on the witness stand, the veteran reporter will not answer questions related to the identification of her sources.Fox News gives details on Winter’s situation:Continue Reading… … Read More
