The budget request for the fiscal year beginning October 1 has called for $79 million for detention operations, the same as the current year. An additional $20.5 million has been requested for the office of military commissions, the military tribunals set up in 2006 for prosecuting detainees. The current price tag on the Guantanamo military commission is $12.6 million. A further $40 million is needed for a fiber optic cable and $99 million for operation and maintenance of the facilities.The Pentagon is also mulling over a request from the Southern Command to spend about $200 million for renovating the camp, which will include the construction of a new prison building for “high value” detainees, as well as a new dining hall, barracks for prison guards, a hospital, a “legal meeting complex” and a “communications network facility” to store data.The increased budget request comes in stark contrast to President Obama’s recent push to shutter the facility, where 103 out of the camp’s 166 detainees have been carrying out an unprecedented hunger strike for more than 100 days. Human rights advocates have placed the number of hunger strikers as high as 130.Thirty of the hunger strikers are being force-fed through a nasal tube – a practice which the UN human rights office condemned as “torture” and a breach of international law. Three have been sent to the detainee hospital for observation. Lawyers for Guantanamo inmates have also claimed that prisoners who wish to talk to their legal representatives are being subjected to humiliating new cavity searches.The 166 prisoners have been detained for eleven and a half years, the vast majority of them have not been charged with a crime, and 86 of them have been cleared for release.The detention facility already ranks as one of the most expensive in the world, costing over $900,000 annually per prisoner. With 166 detainees, Gitmo consumes over $150 million each year.Obama moves to shutter Guantanamo?Obama is expected to make a major speech on Thursday at National Defense University, where he will outline his latest plan to close the detention facility, as well as his administration’s drone policy, targeted killing and the war against al Qaeda.The president’s new push to shut down Guantanamo comes after Congress blocked attempts to close Guantanamo during his first term in office, when Obama signed a 2009 executive order calling for the camp’s closure.”Guantanamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” the president said at a White House news conference last month. “It is expensive. It is inefficient. It hurts us in terms of our international standing. It lessens cooperation with our allies on counterterrorism efforts. It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”However, the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013, the law that Congress passed and Obama signed in March to stem the possibility of a federal government shutdown, prohibits any additional funds for the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the United States or its territories. It further blocks any expenditures on the renovation of any US facility on American soil to house detainees, effectively making it illegal for the government to transfer the men it plans to continue holding.It also remains unclear how Obama will win over both Republicans and members of his own party who remain staunchly opposed to transferring terror suspects to the US.While lawmakers have cited recidivism of released terror suspects as a reason to keep the camp open, in 2009 the Pentagon was only able to “confirm” that 18 former detainees – 4 percent of the camp’s population – had participated in attacks. A spokesman at the time said evidence of someone being “confirmed” could have included fingerprints, a conclusive photograph or “well-corroborated intelligence reporting.”Another issue involves the camp’s 86 detainees who have never been charged with a crime and have already been cleared for release.Earlier this month, Democratic Senator Carl Levin wrote a letter to the White House requesting that the White House appoint an official who will be tasked with relocating the dozens of detainees who were being held without charge.Levin, the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, said that although the defense authorization bill has restricted the administration’s ability to transfer detainees, a national security waiver provided a “clear route” to moving detainees to some third countries. Levin further urged Obama to find a way to close the camp without Congress’ blessing.“Congress has blocked it, so he’s going to have to find a way to remove the blockages of Congress, and hopefully he’ll let us know how he’ll do that,” Levin told reporters Tuesday.Levin told The Hill on Tuesday that he has yet to receive a response to his letter.Democratic representative Adam Smith (D-Wash.) questioned in an interview if the growing international outcry surrounding the hunger strike was enough to persuade resistant lawmakers to change their position on keeping the camp open.“It’s getting uglier and uglier at Gitmo…The level of embarrassment is growing and the cost is growing, so is that enough to persuade them that it’s time to change positions?” Smith asked.“We’re going to have that debate.” … Read More
UK Independence Party Draws Attention To Bilderberg 2013
Member of the European parliament Gerard Batten has raised the alarm on Bilderberg, stating he has written all major mainstream media outlets in the UK as well as submitting a freedom of information request for the Hertfordshire police commissioner asking who is paying for the expenses of all this policing. … Read More
UK watchdog admits losing nuclear materials dozens of times
Radioactive materials have gone missing from businesses, hospitals and even schools more than 30 times over the last decade, a freedom of information request to the UK’s health and safety authorities has revealed. Nuclear experts have warned that some of the lost material could be used by…
Court denies parole to Pussy Riot punk
A Russian court ruled to keep Pussy Riot punk Nadezhda Tolokonnikova in jail on Friday, denying her request for parole from her two-year sentence for the band’s performance against President Vladimir Putin last year. Judge Lidiya Yakovleva sided with prison officials, who said that…
Obama administration bypasses CISPA by secretly allowing Internet surveillance
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has obtained over 1,000 pages of documents pertaining to the United States government’s use of a cybersecurity program after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, and CNET reporter Declan McCullagh says those pages show how the Pentagon has secretly helped push for increased Internet surveillance.“Senior Obama administration officials have secretly authorized the interception of communications carried on portions of networks operated by AT&T and other Internet service providers, a practice that might otherwise be illegal under federal wiretapping laws,” McCullagh writes.That practice, McCullagh recalls, was first revealed when Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn disclosed the existence of the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) Cyber Pilot in June 2011. At the time, the Pentagon said the program would allow the government to help the defense industry safeguard the information on their computer systems by sharing classified threat information between the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security and the Internet service providers (ISP) that keep government contractors online.“Our defense industrial base is critical to our military effectiveness. Their networks hold valuable information about our weapons systems and their capabilities,” Lynn said. “The theft of design data and engineering information from within these networks greatly undermines the technological edge we hold over potential adversaries.”Just last week the US House of Representatives voted in favor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA — a legislation that would allow ISPs and private Internet companies across the country like Facebook and Google to share similar threat data with the federal government without being held liable for violating their customers’ privacy. As it turns out, however, the DIB Cyber Pilot has expanded exponentially in recent months, suggesting that a significant chunk of Internet traffic is already subjected to governmental monitoring.In May 2012 less than a year after the pilot was first unveiled, the Defense Department announced the expansion of the DIB program. Then this past January, McCullagh says it was renamed the Enhanced Cybersecurity Services (ECS) and opened up to a larger number of companies — not just DoD contractors. An executive order signed by US President Barack Obama earlier this year will let all critical infrastructure companies to sign-on to ECS this June, likely in turn bringing on board entities in energy, healthcare, communication and finance.Although the 1,000-plus pages obtained in the FOIA request haven’t been posted in full on the Web just yet, a sampling of that trove published by EPIC on Wednesday starts to show just exactly how severe the Pentagon’s efforts to eavesdrop on Web traffic has been.In one document, a December 2011 slideshow on the legal policies and practices regarding the monitoring of Web traffic on DIB-linked systems, the Pentagon instructs the administrators of those third-party computer networks on how to implement the program and, as a result, erode their customers’ expectation of privacy.In one slide, the Pentagon explains to ISPs and other system administrators how to be clear in letting their customers know that their traffic was being fed to the government. Key elements to keep in mind, wrote the Defense Department, was that DIB “expressly covers monitoring of data and communications in transit rather than just accessing data at rest.”“[T]hat information transiting or stored on the system may be disclosed for any purpose, including to the government,” it continued. Companies participating in the pilot program were told to let users know that monitoring would exist “for any purpose,” and that users have no expectation of privacy regarding communications or data stored on the system.According to the 2011 press released on the DIB Cyber Pilot, “the government will not monitor, intercept or store any private-sector communications through the program.” In a privacy impact assessment of the ECS program that was published in January by the DHS though, it’s revealed that not only is information monitored, but among the data collected by investigators could be personally identifiable information, including the header info from suspicious emails. That would mean the government sees and stores who you communicate with and what kind of subject lines are used during correspondence.The DHS says that personally identifiable information could be retained if “analytically relevant to understanding the cyber threat” in question.Meanwhile, the lawmakers in Congress that overwhelmingly approved CISPA just last week could arguably use a refresher in what constitutes a cyberthreat. Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told his colleagues on the Hill that “Recent events in Boston demonstrate that we have to come together as Republicans and Democrats to get this done,” and Rep. Dan Maffei (D-New York) made unfounded claims during Thursday’s debate that the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks is pursuing efforts to “hack into our nation’s power grid.”Should CISPA be signed into law, telecommunication companies will be encouraged to share Internet data with the DHS and Department of Justice for so-called national security purposes. But even if the president pursues a veto as his advisers have suggested, McCullagh says few will be safe from this secretive cybersecurity operation already in place.The tome of FOIA pages, McCullagh says, shows that the Justice Department has actively assisted telecoms as of late by letting them off the hook for Wiretap Act violations. Since the sharing of data between ISPs and the government under the DIB program and now ECS violates federal statute, the Justice Department has reportedly issued an undeterminable number of “2511 letters” to telecoms: essentially written approval to ignore provisions of the Wiretap Act in exchange for immunity.”The Justice Department is helping private companies evade federal wiretap laws,” EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg tells CNET. “Alarm bells should be going off.”In an internal Justice Department email cited by McCullagh, Associate Deputy Attorney General James Baker is alleged to write that ISPs will likely request 2511 letters and the ECS-participating companies “would be required to change their banners to reference government monitoring.””These agencies are clearly seeking authority to receive a large amount of information, including personal information, from private Internet networks,” EPIC staff attorney Amie Stepanovich adds to CNET. “If this program was broadly deployed, it would raise serious questions about government cybersecurity practices.” … Read More
Boston bombing outage rumors shed light on mobile and Internet ‘kill switch’
While the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has in the past denied the existence of Standard Operating Procedure 303, as Ars Technica recently pointed out, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) challenged the secrecy of such documents in 2012 by filing a Freedom of Information Act request.What EPIC found via its lawsuit was that a 2007 report stated that the network shutdown policy was adopted in March of 2006. According to that report, the National Coordinating Center, a part of the DHS, was to be the main player in “any actions leading up to and following the termination of private wireless network connections, both within a localized area, such as a tunnel or bridge, and within an entire metropolitan area.”There has been particular focus on government possession of any sort of ‘kill switch’ over cell networks and internet service since the embattled government of Hosni Mubarak shut down both in Egypt at the height of protests in 2011.That same year, when San Francisco’s transit authority made the decision to shut off cell phone networks within its metro service in anticipation of protests, critics were quick to point out the draconian implications.Somewhat ironically, following the BART incident the Federal Communications Commission launched an investigation into the cell network shutdown that resulted in the government’s so-called SOP 303 rule for that sort of activity. In their response to a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) query, wireless carriers such as AT&T stated that there was, in fact, no need for an inquiry, as government policy on shutting down private cell networks was already established.”Federal and State authorities, the [FCC], wireless providers and other private stakeholders, have previously considered these issues in a cooperative process that resulted in the National Communications System’s Standard Operating Procedure 303,” AT&T responded. “SOP 303 resolves the questions posed by the Commission in the Notice and eliminates the need for the Commission to reconsider those issues in this docket.”In plain English, what AT&T responded with in the case of the San Francisco cell network shutdown is that a little-known rule, which the DHS initially denied even existed, was already in effect – and that wireless carriers simply obliged with city government in its request.In its initial FOIA filing, EPIC requested further information as well as justification for the secrecy behind SOP 303, which is officially understood as “a shutdown and restoration process for use by commercial and private wireless networks during national crises.”At question is just what might constitute a national crisis, and by which government stakeholders. As Ars Technica, an IT news site reports, the DHS has yet to fully respond to EPIC, though it has already abandoned the idea that no such rule regarding government enactment of a cell network ‘off switch’ exists.This means that the US government has procedures set in place to shut off private cell phone access across an entire metropolitan region, though it is not publicly understood by what criteria, or what precise process such a rule was anointed to homeland security. … Read More
Top admiral worries North Korea crisis could escalate ‘pretty quickly’
US Navy Adm. Samuel Locklear waits to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the US Pacific Command and US Forces Korea in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 2014 in Washington Tuesday. (Gary Cameron/Reuters) North Korea is… ;
