German Government Blocks Ed Snowden From Testifying Before Parliament So As Not To Upset The US

Politics

from the we-delicate-flowers dept

A month ago, we wrote about how the German Parliament was opening hearings in the NSA’s surveillance of German citizens (including Chancellor Angela Merkel) and that some of the lawmakers wanted Ed Snowden to testify (either in person, or providing evidence remotely). At the time, it was noted that “analysts believe Merkel’s government will find a way to sidestep such a move.” And, indeed, that’s exactly what’s happened. The German government has blocked any such testimony for fear of upsetting the American government.

In a letter to members of a parliamentary committee obtained by Süddeutsche Zeitung, government officials say a personal invitation for the US whistleblower would “run counter to the political interests of the Federal Republic”, and “put a grave and permanent strain” on US-German relations.

Because the American government is apparently so insecure that it can’t handle Ed Snowden testifying to the German Parliament? Really? Sometimes, when you look at world diplomacy, it looks like a bunch of elementary school kids. What happened to mature adults who can disagree about things without it causing an international incident?

Apparently, the Green Party is looking to challenge this decision, but it seems unlikely to change.

Filed Under: angela merkel, diplomacy, ed snowden, germany, nsa, surveillance

'Bay Of Tweets Invasion' Legitimizes Nearly Every Crackpot Anti-US Claim From Dictators Around The Globe

Politics

from the a-complete-disaster dept

Last week, we wrote about the Associated Press’s Hollywood script-like story of how USAID, who is not supposed to be engaged in intelligence activities, apparently set up a Cuban version of Twitter, called ZunZuneo, designed to give more Cubans a way to communicate with each other — but also to foment a pro-democracy movement and spy on certain Cubans. While the concept of encouraging democracy and open communications may be good, the fact that it was done via a series of secretive shell companies and that it was used for spying and subversive anti-government efforts is just incredibly stupid. As we noted in our original piece on it, this would likely create huge headaches around the globe for legitimate US humanitarian efforts, because foreign governments will now point to this story as a reason to distrust USAID and pretty much any other US activities.

In fact, the impact is being seen already. Remember how we’d just been discussing Turkey’s latest attempt to ban Twitter? Zeynep Tufecki explains how this latest news has played right into the hands of Turkey’s Prime Minister, noting that the Twitter ban was actually a calculated strategy to appeal to the fears of lower- and middle-class Turks that Twitter was part of an American plot to foment unrest. To have the ZunZuneo story come out days later simply serves to better confirm that plot:

Until now, though, in trying to paint their online critics as “foreign agents,” these governments were grasping at straws. For example, lacking a better model, Ankara’s AKP mayor, Melih Gokcek, who became the Turkish government’s most vocal spokesperson during the Gezi protests, kept referring to OTPOR — the small, insignificant and defunct Serbian activist organization that received USAID funding in the 1990s — as supposedly the power behind all global protests, including Gezi.

I suspect there will be no more grasping at straws after ZunZeneo. Secretly funded by the U.S. government? Check. Aimed for regime change? Check. Collected information from unsuspecting users for political purposes? Check. Tried clumsily to hide its tracks? Check. The “Cuban Twitter” was a dictator’s fever dream made real.

Meanwhile, what seemed like wacky conspiracy theories a month ago concerning USAID’s efforts in Ukraine to overthrow the government there, suddenly seem more legitimate. In fact, most of the claims do appear to be nothing more than crazy conspiracy theories, but prior to the ZunZuneo story coming out, most people would have assumed that that, too, was a crazy conspiracy theory. And that’s the huge problem here. Even if most of what USAID does is really important and valuable work for truly noble purposes, the ZunZuneo story undermines all of that, by making any conspiracy story seem legit. Last year, people thought Bolivian President Evo Morales was crazy for expelling USAID, claiming that it was seeking to “conspire against” the Bolivian government. Suddenly it’s tough to assume that his claims weren’t accurate. Similarly, with this story, there are suddenly additional stories coming out of highly questionable activities by USAID, which often look quite a lot like intelligence activities to undermine foreign governments.

In fact, Glenn Greenwald is reporting that the ZunZuneo story is just a drop in the bucket of US propaganda efforts around the globe.

These ideas–discussions of how to exploit the internet, specifically social media, to surreptitiously disseminate viewpoints friendly to western interests and spread false or damaging information about targets–appear repeatedly throughout the archive of materials provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. Documents prepared by NSA and its British counterpart GCHQ–and previously published by The Intercept as well as some by NBC News–detailed several of those programs, including a unit devoted in part to “discrediting” the agency’s enemies with false information spread online.

And, once again, even if the actual impact of these programs is limited, the mere perception that the US government is engaged in these kinds of practices helps push along pretty much any conspiracy theory about US government involvement, no matter how wacky or ridiculous. So, in a bumbling effort to spread a pro-US, pro-democracy message, USAID appears to have done the exact opposite, and handed crackpot authoritarian dictators ever more ammunition to crack down on actual American humanitarian aid and tools for communication.

Filed Under: conspiracy, development, diplomacy, usaid

NSA Tapping UN Isn't A Huge Surprise — But Ability To Crack Video Conferencing Encryption Raises Questions

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the yay! dept

Over the weekend, Der Spiegel broke the somewhat unsurprising news that the NSA had bugged the UN and various EU embassies in the US and had hacked into the UN’s videoconferencing software to be able to get access to such calls. On a first pass, this isn’t all that surprising. As we noted with some earlier leaks, spying on foreign diplomats is just something that countries do. Spying on foreign government officials is very different than spying on the public. Of course, since the NSA insists that it does everything to avoid intercepting communications of people inside the US, I wondered how they could make that claim while directly tapping conference calls from the UN in NY. The answer is likely to be yet another classic NSA twisting of the words to find a loophole. While the UN headquarters are in NYC, “technically” the headquarters are outside of the US and in the control of the UN itself, but with an agreement that it abides by all local laws. This is similar to embassies, which are often treated as if they are the territory of the country that uses them. I’m wondering if the NSA is using that to argue these are fair game, since they’re “outside” the US.

There’s also the issue, as noted in the article, that President Obama has insisted that the spying on people was only done to prevent terrorism — and spying on EU diplomats seems unlikely to have anything to do with terrorism prevention. But, again, spying between government officials is kind of expected, and not quite a huge deal, even if it may present a diplomatic problem for the US.

Much more interesting to me, however, is the snippet claiming that the NSA had figured out how to hack into the UN’s video conferencing software, allowing them to record internal video conferences. In fact, after this was cracked just a year ago, a document was sent around, “celebrating” this:

Furthermore, NSA technicians working for the Blarney program have managed to decrypt the UN’s internal video teleconferencing (VTC) system. The combination of this new access to the UN and the cracked encryption code have led to “a dramatic improvement in VTC data quality and (the) ability to decrypt the VTC traffic,” the NSA agents noted with great satisfaction: “This traffic is getting us internal UN VTCs (yay!).” Within just under three weeks, the number of decrypted communications increased from 12 to 458.

Yay! We can spy on more things! Yay! Either way, I’m curious if anyone knows who provides the UN’s video conferencing technology, because that’s now a much more interesting issue. The suggestion being made that the NSA “cracked” the encryption that was being used could have much wider implications if true — so it would be nice to know what kind of encryption, and what sort of system is being used. Either way, I’m guessing that many in the UN will be seeking out alternative communication methods shortly.

Filed Under: diplomacy, encryption, espionage, eu, nsa, nsa surveillance, spying, un, video conferencing

Obama Cancels Putin Meeting Because Of Snowden, Because Diplomacy Is Like Kindergarten

Politics

from the petty-disputes dept

The White House had hinted at this earlier, but now it’s been confirmed that President Obama has cancelled a planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin because of Russia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to Ed Snowden. This seems petty in the extreme. No one honestly thought that Putin would simply hand over Snowden. And, really, of all the things to cancel a meeting about, this is the one that pushes him over the edge? He could have cancelled it over Putin’s recent homophobic remarks or Russia’s latest focus on censoring the internet or putting activists in jail or any number of other things that generally should offend American sensibilities. But using the Snowden asylum as the reason just seems like the federal government is really losing perspective in this whole NSA surveillance debate — the one Obama claimed he “welcomed.”

Honestly, this whole thing feels like kindergarten-style diplomacy. The Russians took “our ball” and so now we’re mad at them and won’t talk to them. In an adult world, cancelling a meeting over something like this just looks incredibly immature and petty. It’s all for show, rather than any legitimate purpose. I’d rather we had a government that didn’t do things for show, but for legitimate reasons. Unfortunately, it seems we’re well past having that kind of government.

Filed Under: barack obama, diplomacy, ed snowden, vladimir putin

Brazilian Politicians Want To Offer Snowden Asylum After Learning Of US Spying On Brazilians

Politics

from the making-friends-around-the-globe dept

You may have heard that one of the latest revelations from Ed Snowden’s whistleblowing efforts concerned the NSA’s spying on Brazilians with a rather extensive program.

As the headline suggests, the crux of the main article details how the NSA has, for years, systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunication network and indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the email and telephone records of millions of Brazilians.

Of course, as each new country learns more and more about US spying on their citizens, the outrage against the US seems to grow. The Brazilian government has now kicked off an investigation, but perhaps more interesting is the fact that some Brazilian Senators are using this story to suggest that the country offer asylum to Snowden. Frankly, the spying on people outside the US by the NSA is hardly a surprise at all, since it’s long been known that the NSA doesn’t need any warrants concerning the spying on foreigners. However, from a diplomatic standpoint, this is (once again) making things tricky for the US government. But not just because more and more countries are “demanding answers,” but also because this seems to be leading more countries to considering more strongly whether or not to grant Snowden asylum. Perhaps if the US didn’t treat so-called “allies” as enemies, it wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place.

Filed Under: asylum, brazil, diplomacy, ed snowden, nsa, nsa surveillance

US Denies That It's Ready To Dump The ITU Over Internet Regulations

Politics

from the get-a-backbone dept

Last week, we covered the key fight at the ITU’s World Conference on Telecommunications (WCIT) and it was all over just one word: would any new international telecom regulations apply to “recognized operating agencies” or just “operating agencies.” The difference may sound minor, but it could mean a world of difference. If it’s just recognized operating agencies, then the rules are limited to giant national telcos. If it’s all “operating agencies” then the rules could apply to, well, just about everyone who runs any kind of internet service. This is a huge difference. As the debate rages on — and even as the worst proposal from Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and others is now off the table — reports started circulating that the US had announced that it was prepared to walk away from WCIT entirely if there was continued movement towards significant changes in internet governance. That was seen as a pretty big threat, because a US rejection of the overall process might doom it from any sort of acceptance. However, in an emailed statement, US ambassador Terry Kramer is claiming that the reports that he’s made such a threat are simply untrue (and not particularly helpful):

In the past few days, a small number of media reports have characterized the United States as “threatening” to withdraw from the WCIT negotiations. These speculative reports are inaccurate and unhelpful to the Conference. The United States has made no such threat, and it remains fully committed to achieving a successful conclusion to the WCIT.

To be honest, whether or not it’s “helpful,” it seems like it might actually be a lot more effective. As some are beginning to point out, almost everything about the ITU is a mess, and it’s time that the US stood up and told it to stop messing where it doesn’t belong. That article quotes former White House CTO Andrew McLaughlin describing why the ITU has no business regulating the internet.

“What is so bad about the ITU?” Mr. McLaughlin asked in a speech to the New America Foundation in Washington on Nov. 29. “It’s just simple things like the nature, structure, culture, values and processes of the ITU. They are all inimical to a free and open Internet, and they are all inconsistent with the nature of the technical infrastructure that now characterizes our communications networks.” Voting rules let repressive governments “engage in horse trading that has nothing to do with the technical merits of the decisions under consideration.”

Indeed. So why are we even playing the game?

Filed Under: diplomacy, internet governance, itu, negotiations, terry kramer, wcit

US: India, Stop Censoring Websites! India: Wikileaks, Hello? US: That's Different!

Free Speech

from the hypocrisy dept

We’ve argued for a while that the US’s effort to censor websites at home while talking about internet freedom is hypocritical and takes away any moral high ground the US might have had with other countries concerning their efforts to censor the internet. What’s stunning, unfortunately, is how rarely US officials seem to recognize this problem. When confronted on it — they always revert to a “but that’s different!” claim, missing that this is exactly the excuse that other countries use to justify their own censorship efforts.

Case in point: there’s been significant concern in India, as the government has been censoring Twitter accounts of certain journalists and political groups, as well as blocking certain websites (sometimes just blog posts, other times, full websites). As that last link explains, the content targeted for censorship tends to have to do with content around “communal issues and rioting,” and thus there’s an argument to be made that the censorship is for the benefit of the public, to prevent riots. Even so, of course, one can question whether or not such censorship is even effective, let alone the rather obvious temptation for those in power to overblock for their own benefit. Indeed, that last link explains that there have been “egregious mistakes” in how the blocks have been carried out.

And what about the US? With plenty of attention being paid to the debate over this Indian censorship, the US State Department spokesperson, Victoria Nuland, was asked her thoughts about what was happening, and trotted out the standard line about internet freedom:

“On the larger question of Internet freedom, you know where we are on that issue, and we are always on the side of full freedom of the Internet,” she said.

Which sounds great, of course, but if Nuland thought that such a blanket statement would let her off, she was mistaken. Reporters immediately hit back, pointing to examples of the US fighting against internet freedom in its own back yard. And Nuland apparently wasn’t happy, and pulled out the “but that’s different!” excuse:

But when she was probed on the issue of WikiLeaks, Nuland snapped: “WikiLeaks didn’t have to do with freedom of the Internet. It had to do with the compromise of US government classified information.”

To be fair the US government has not “blocked” Wikileaks. It has blocked it on certain government computers and has used public pressure to have its hosting and payment processors cut it off. Whether or not that’s to the same level as to what’s happening in other countries may be debatable, but it certainly opens up the US to criticism on that point. And that’s the real issue here. Even if you argue “but that’s different,” just the fact that the US has opened itself up to such an easy retort any time it argues for internet freedom in countries that espouse censorship, it makes it that much harder for the US to seriously push an internet freedom agenda abroad.

Filed Under: censorship, diplomacy, hypocrisy, india, us
Companies: wikileaks

The Same Day Russia Sentences Pussy Riot, It Condemns The UK Over Julian Assange

Politics

from the there-is-no-consistency-in-national-politics dept

Someone suggested to me recently that Pussy Riot is to Russia what Julian Assange is to the US. The parallels are not exact — especially given the accusations that were leveled in Sweden against Assange are not, on their face, political (and those who insist they know what happened between Assange and the two accusers should admit they have no idea what really happened, because only those three individuals truly do). That said, it does seem clear that there is a separate factor at work in the Assange mess, and it involves significant political pressure from the US, who it has been claimed have a sealed indictment ready for Assange, who for a variety of reasons they feel will be easier to get from the Swedes than the Brits.

So it seems positively bizarre that on the very same day that Pussy Riot was sentenced to jail, Russia warned the UK against “violating fundamental diplomatic principles” in its pursuit of Assange to ship him off to Sweden. Honestly, if you had to pick one of those two cases to be sympathetic to, it seems that the Pussy Riot case is a much more clear-cut one of absolutely egregious behavior on the part of a prosecution. For Russia to complain about the treatment of Assange — on the very day that Pussy Riot was found guilty and sentenced — seems especially rich.

Both cases may involve significant levels of political tinkering against those who have embarrassed certain governments, but it’s also pretty clearly taken away any moral high ground for the countries involved in speaking out against one another.

Filed Under: diplomacy, extradition, free speech, julian assange, pussy riot, russia, uk, us

Estonia Next In Line To Receive US 'Encouragement' To Adopt Harsher Anti-Piracy Laws

Copyright

from the nice-little-country-you've-got-here dept

Numerous Wikileaks cables have highlighted the pressure that the US has brought to bear on several foreign governments behind closed doors in an attempt to get the latter to pass maximalist copyright laws. But it’s worth noting that plenty of arm twisting takes place openly. Here, for example, is a letter (pdf) from the American Chamber of Commerce in Estonia addressed to the Minister of Justice, and the Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications of that country:

In other words, Estonia really ought fall into line like the other countries. Because if it doesn’t:

Although the letter touches on trademarks and other areas, its central concern is copyright infringement, especially on the Internet. Its list of demands — sorry, suggestions — is depressingly familiar: stronger protection; more criminal prosecutions; intermediary liability for ISPs and website owners; and an “effective mechanism of damage compensation, without having to go through lengthy, complicated or costly procedures for achieving redress through the courts.”

However, as an excellent post on the Estonian Public Broadcasting site explains, the letter’s underlying assumptions about lack of enforcement are simply wrong:

The article goes on to point out one of the likely casualties of any harsher approach to copyright enforcement in Estonia:

That’s an important point: copyright legislation does not exist in isolation, but can have serious knock-on effects on the digital life of a country — in this case, jeopardizing Estonia’s place in the vanguard of open wireless Internet coverage. Let’s hope the Estonian ministers bear that in mind when their visitors from the US Embassy come calling.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, diplomacy, estonia, pressure, us

Isn't It Time To Drop The Laughable 'Special 301' Report?

Politics

from the dump-it dept

We’ve written about the USTR’s “Special 301” report many times. It’s a report that the USTR puts out each year which names which countries have been “naughty” when it comes to intellectual property laws — and then tries to shame/coerce them into putting in place much stricter copyright and patent laws. In the recent State Department cable leaks about copyright laws in other countries, what quickly became clear is that diplomats frequently use this list to put pressure on countries that have perfectly reasonable copyright laws to create copyright laws that will almost certainly harm citizens and local culture. The “process” for putting together the report involves nothing objective at all. Instead, the USTR basically asks a bunch of lobbyists to name the countries they hate the most, and voila, there’s the basis for the list. Last year, I filed my own comments, pointing to various research and evidence that suggested the entire 301 process was flawed. It didn’t make a difference, of course. The report still came out and it was more of the same: a lobbyist’s wishlist.

This year, I didn’t even bother, because it’s pretty clear that the USTR has no interest in actually doing its job in improving overall trade, but is clearly going to continue to carry out its role as a lobbyist mouthpiece. Still, some groups, including Public Knowledge and Knowledge Ecology International made filings this year, pointing out how screwed up the whole Special 301 process is, and suggesting it’s about time the USTR changed the overall process.

What I want to know is why we bother at all any more? Isn’t it time to just drop the whole thing? It’s widely considered to be a joke among those who understand how the list works. Each year Canada is named, and Canadian officials laugh and repeat the same claim about how they don’t recognize a list like the Special 301 that is clearly nothing more than an attempt by US companies to influence Canadian policy in their own favor. Even people at the Copyright Office — who normally are closely aligned with the USTR — have spoken out in public about how the Special 301 is a joke, not to be taken seriously.

When so many people consider the list to be a total joke, isn’t it reasonable to question why we still have it at all? The list has nothing to do with improving trade or improving economic conditions. It’s a simple protectionism process that allows a small group of big companies to get the US government to act as their mouthpiece. It’s an embarrassment, and it’s time to dump it.

Filed Under: diplomacy, intellectual property, lobbying, special 301, ustr