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Man Hacks 911 System, Sends SWAT on Bogus Raid

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Washington man accused of faking emergency call that sent armed response to unsuspecting Lake Forest family’s home.

SWAT officers expected to find a victim shot to death, drugs and a belligerent armed suspect when they surrounded the home of an unsuspecting couple, but found they were only a part of a false emergency call caused by a teenager who hacked into the county’s emergency response system, authorities said.

As officers swarmed the home with assault rifles, dogs and a helicopter, a Lake Forest couple and their two toddlers inside their home slept unsuspectingly.

On March 29 at 11:30 p.m., authorities allege, Randall Ellis, a 19-year-old from Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into the county’s 911 system from his home and placed a false emergency call, prompting a fully armed response to the home of an unsuspecting couple that could have ended tragically.

Thinking that a prowler was roaming his back yard, a resident of the home, identified only as Doug B. in the district attorney’s complaint filed in court, walked outside with a kitchen knife as SWAT officers from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department waited with assault rifles.

“It was just a horrifying experience,” said Doug B., who requested not to be identified further. “You think you feel safe in your own home. We had no idea what was going on.”

Doug B. and his wife did not feel safe in their home for weeks after the incident and wondered why their home was the one selected.

Doug B. was not able to go back to sleep for hours that night, and he rigged the doors and windows before he was able to go to bed.

“I thought someone was in my back yard, and they were going to get my family,” he said. “It was terrifying for months afterward.”

Officers apprehended and cuffed the resident and his wife, identified as Stacy B. It was moments later they learned the call was false, said Lt. Mike McHenry of the South County Investigations Bureau.

“The danger is significant,” said Lt. Don Barnes, chief of police services for Lake Forest. “That (situation) played out OK, although it scared the victims significantly.”

Ellis is expected to appear in an Orange County courtroom Monday to face charges of computer access and fraud, false imprisonment by violence, falsely reporting a crime and assault with an assault weapon by proxy.

“It’s not a prank,” Emami said. “People’s lives were in danger.”

Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, said
Ellis selected the couple’s name and address at random and electronically transferred false information into the 911 system.

Authorities believe this is not the only time that Ellis has done this. As part of their investigation, authorities believe Ellis created similar false SWAT responses in Bullhead, Ariz.; Millcreek Township, Pa.; and in his hometown of Mukilteo, Wash.

False 911 calls are placed all the time, McHenry said, but he said this is the first time someone has hacked into Orange County’s system and created a false call in this way.

“We’ve seen nothing like this,” McHenry said. “This was unique. This was pretty serious.”

Other law enforcement agencies have seen similar breaches into their 911 systems as part of a trend picked up by computer hackers in the nation called “SWATting”, Barnes said.

The purpose is to create a false 911 call that appears to be coming from the residence in question and prompt a SWAT response from local law enforcement agencies, Barnes said.

Authorities would not divulge details on how Ellis hacked into the system, stating that doing so would jeopardize the investigation and possibly create copycats. But the call that prompted a full response to the Lake Forest home started as a call to the Orange County Fire Authority as a drug overdose and progressed into a possible murder, McHenry said.

A supposed teenager stated someone had overdosed on cocaine. The teenager then stated he had been shot in the shoulder and that attackers were going to go shoot and kill his sister, he said.

Canines, a helicopter and SWAT officers responded to the false call.

“It was a pretty large response,” McHenry said.

Through electronic forensics, investigators were able to link Ellis to the false call, Emami said.

Ellis does not appear to have a criminal record, Emami said, but it looks like he’s done this before. He was taken into custody by authorities in Mukilteo on Friday. He waived extradition Monday in court and is expected to appear in Orange County Superior Court on Oct. 22 for an arraignment hearing.

Now Doug B. said he is hoping that the upcoming court proceedings can shed some light into why this happened and why his family was targeted.

“My family is my life and to feel like its being threatened is horrifying,” he said.

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UN document confirms Israel hit Syrian nuclear reactor?

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Update: UN caught redacting document; Update: It was a translation error, claims UN

By Allahpundit

Via Dan Riehl, Fox News has picked up the scent of that bizarre story I linked in the Bush post this morning about the Syrian ambassador to the UN allegedly admitting during a UN committee meeting that Israel’s air raid on September 6 hit some sort of nuclear facility. And they’ve got a piece of paper to show for it:

A high-ranking Syrian official confirmed that Israel’s airstrike last month in northern Syria hit a nuclear facility, according to a document obtained Wednesday by FOX News.

“Israel was the fourth-largest exporter of weapons of mass destruction and a violator of other nations’ airspace, and it had taken action against nuclear facilities, including the 6 July attack in Syria,” Syrian representative Bassam Darwish is quoted in the document as saying.

Diplomats familiar with the document cannot explain why July 6 was invoked, instead of Sept. 6, the date both countries say an incident occurred. A State Department source tells FOX News the best explanation is that Darwish misspoke…

One U.S. delegate told colleagues he could not believe his ears when the Syrian diplomat made his statement and that the resulting document was close to verbatim, and another source told FOX News the document reinforces what people heard [the Syrian representative] say in the actual debate.

Note once again that quotation in the second paragraph of the blockquote. Now here’s the problem. The Fox article links to what it claims is the document in question at the UN website. Except … that quotation doesn’t appear in the UN document. Here’s what does; it’s a paraphrase of the Syrian ambassador’s remarks:

Moreover, the entity that was the fourth largest exporter of lethal weapons in the world, that which violated the airspace of sovereign States and carried out military aggression against them, as had happened on 6 September against Syria, such an entity, with all those characteristics and more, had no right to go on lying without shame.

No mention of July and certainly no mention of anything nuclear. Unless you believe the Foxies are just making things up wholesale — and at the risk of offending our three lefty readers, I don’t — then the UN document has obviously been redacted since Fox’s story went live. The question is, assuming the ambassador did say July instead of September, are we sure he misspoke? Remember, there was a notorious “accident” in Syria in July allegedly involving the installation of chemical warheads on Syrian missiles. The “accident” supposedly killed dozens of Iranian engineers and multiple Syrian soldiers; it was significant enough that a respected intel think tank reported on it at the time. Raw Story tried to connect that incident to the September 6 air raid a few weeks ago, albeit denying all the while that there was any nuclear facility involved in the latter attack. So now I’m wondering: was there more than meets the eye to the July incident, such that the ambassador might reference that month in the context of talking about an Israeli attack? No way to tell at the moment but worth flagging in the likely event that there’s more to come on this story.

Update: As suspected, the google cache proves that the UN document was indeed redacted. Follow the link and you’ll find the paragraph quoted by Fox verbatim. Thanks to the various people who tipped us on this.

Update: Another day, another Middle Eastern fascist helped out of a tough spot by a claim of translation error.

The United Nations on Wednesday backtracked on a report that had quoted a Syrian official as saying an Israeli airstrike hit a nuclear facility in Syria, blaming an interpreter’s error for the purported comment that made headlines across the Middle East…

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, SANA, quoted an unidentified Foreign Ministry official as saying the representative was misquoted.

After more than seven hours of investigation Wednesday, U.N. officials agreed that was the case.

“There was an interpretation error made yesterday when the First Committee was in session,” U.N. associate spokesman Farhan Haq said. “There was no use of the word nuclear.”

Do a word search in the UN document and see for yourself how many times the word “nuclear” was used during the meeting, including by Arabic-speaking diplomats from Kuwait and Lebanon. The interpreter got it right everywhere else in the document — but just happened to make a mistake at a fantastically sensitive part of the Syrian ambassador’s statement? The guy obviously let the genie out of the bottle inadvertently and now the UN is trying to put it back in before it sets people in the region even further on edge. Beyond pathetic.

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More evidence the CIA is a terrorist outfit

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Mistaken identity leads to abuses that Congress should investigate

In the 1985 film “Brazil,” anti-terrorist police in a grim industrialized society burst into a modest flat and cart off a hapless man named Buttle. His family never sees him again.

The fact that the real target of the raid was supposed to be someone named Tuttle is of no concern to anyone in power because there was no one else in power looking over their shoulder. That, of course, couldn’t happen in real life.

Yes, it could. Our government did something remarkably similar, except for the part about the wrong man never being seen again, and our judicial system has shamefully refused to do anything about it.

On New Year’s Eve 2003, one Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen of Lebanese descent, was pulled off a bus at the Serbian- Macedonian border for no reason that he was able to fathom, questioned for 23 days and then turned over to the CIA. His clothes were torn off. He was beaten, injected with drugs and chained spread-eagle to the floor. He spent four months in a CIA prison in Afghanistan. Then someone realized that the prisoner was Khaled el-Masri, not reputed terrorist mastermind Khalid al-Masri. Without apology or even explanation, el-Masri was flown to Albania and dumped along the side of the road. At least the agents didn’t kill him.

El-Masri sued the CIA. A federal appeals court threw out his case, accepting the government argument that allowing it to go to trial would expose secrets about how our government looks for terrorists. Last week the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, refused to take up the appeal.

Even if we don’t care about innocent people we’ve kidnapped and tortured, we darn well ought to care about an intelligence system that can be so horribly wrong about who it grabs. If it took five months of “aggressive interrogation” for our spies to figure out they were torturing someone who had nothing of value to tell them, then their usefulness to national security is less than nothing.

Not only had they further besmirched the reputation of the United States within the civilized world, they greatly increased the real Khalid al-Masri’s chances of moving about the world freely.

Congress, which has committees that can handle secrecy, won’t protect our national security if it ignores this case. It will damage it further.

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Russian Press Blasts Anglo-Saxon Terrorist Controllers

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Webster Griffin Tarpley
www.tarpley.net

In the wake of the terrorist atrocity at a school in Beslan, North Ossetia, in the Russian Federation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has made remarks to the western press which expose the key role of the US and British governments in backing Chechen terrorism. Whatever Putin’s previous role in events regarding Chechnya, his current political posture is one which sharply undercuts the legitimacy of the supposed Anglo-American “war on terror,” and which points up the hypocrisy of the Bush regime’s pledge that it will make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them — since Washington and London are currently harboring Chechens implicated in terrorism. All in all, Putin’s response to Chechen events has, with the third anniversary of 9/11, brought the collapse of the official 9/11 myth measurably closer. The hypocritical terror demagogy of Bush and Blair has now been undercut by the head of state of another permanent member of the UN Security Council.

On Monday September 6, Putin spoke for three and one half hours with a group of some 30 western correspondents and Russia experts at his dacha near Novo Ogarevo outside Moscow. There is no official transcript so far, but accounts have been published in The Guardian, The Independent, and Le Monde. The Washington Post waited until Friday, September 10 to publish an article, but left out the most significant remarks. There are now signs that the Anglo-American press is beginning a new campaign against Putin as a dictator, stressing the obvious in order to silence his attacks on the US-UK sponsorship of Chechen terror.

Putin, a KGB veteran who knows whereof he speaks, told the gathering that the school massacre showed that “certain western circles would like to weaken Russia, just as the Romans wanted to destroy Carthage.” He thus suggested that the US and UK, not content with having bested Russia in the Cold War, now wanted to proceed to the dismemberment and total destruction of Russia – a Carthaginian peace like the one the Romans finally imposed at the end of the Punic Wars in 146 BC, when they poured salt into the land of Carthage so nothing would ever grow there again. (Le Monde, September 8, 2004)

“There is no link between Russian policy in Chechnya and the hostage-taking in Beslan,” said Putin, meaning that the terrorists were using the Chechen situation as a pretext to attack Russia. According to a paraphrase in Le Monde: “The aim of that international terrorism, supported more or less openly by foreign states, whose names the Russian president didn’t want to name, is to weaken Russia from the inside, by criminalizing its economy, by provoking its disintegration through propagating separatism in the Caucasus and the transformation of the region into a staging ground for actions directed against the Russian Federation.”

“Mr. Putin,” continues Le Monde, “reiterated the accusation he had launched in a veiled form against western countries which appear to use double-talk. On the one side, their leaders assure the Russian President of their solidarity in the fight against terrorism. On the other hand, the intelligence services and the military – ‘who have not abandoned their Cold War prejudices,’ in Putin’s words — entertain contacts with those the international press calls the ‘rebels.’ ‘Why are those who emulate Bin Laden called terrorists and the people who kill children, rebels? Where is the logic?’ asked Vladimir Putin, and then gave the answer: ‘Because certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia just like the Romans wanted to destroy Carthage.’ ‘But, continued Putin, “we will not allow this scenario to come to pass.’”

Le Monde continues: “This is, according to Putin a bad calculation, because Russia is a factor of stability. By weakening it, the Cold War nostalgics are clearly acting against the interests of their own country.” In Putin’s words: “We are the sincere champions of this cooperation against terrorism, we are open and loyal partners. But if foreign services have contacts with the ‘rebels,’ they cannot be treated as reliable allies, as Russia is for them.” (Le Monde, September 8, 2004)

In Guardian correspondent Jonathan Steele’s account of the meeting with Putin, this is the Russian President’s response to the US and UK on the question of negotiating with the Chechen guerrillas of Aslan Maskhadov: “Why don’t you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House and engage in talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him so he leaves you in peace? You find it possible to set some limitations in your dealings with these bastards, so why should we talk to people who are child-killers?” (London Guardian, September 7, 2004)

As Michel Chossudovsky pointed out some years back, the Chechen leaders Basayev and Al Khattab were trained in the CIA-run camps for Islamic fighters in Afghanistan. In 1999, Putin rode to power on a backlash against Chechen terror which he had in all probability staged himself – thus judoing a long-standing US-UK capability. The key point is that the Russian press is now openly denouncing London and Washington as centers for terrorist control. This can blow the lid off the 9-11 hoax.

On Saturday, September 4, Putin had delivered a national television address to the Russian people on the Beslan tragedy, which had left more than 300 dead, over half of them children. The main thrust was that terrorism constitutes international proxy warfare against Russia. Among other things Putin said: “In general, we need to admit that we did not fully understand the complexity and the dangers of the processes at work in our own country and in the world. In any case, we proved unable to react adequately. We showed ourselves to be weak, and the weak get beaten.”

“Some people would like to tear from us a tasty morsel. Others are helping them. They are helping, reasoning that Russia still remains one of the world’s major nuclear powers, and as such still represents a threat to them. And so they reason that this threat should be removed. Terrorism, of course, is just an instrument to achieve these gains.”

“What we are dealing with, are not isolated acts intended to frighten us, not isolated terrorist attacks. What we are facing is direct intervention of international terror directed against Russia. This is a total, cruel and full-scale war that again and again is taking the lives of our fellow citizens.” (Kremlin.ru, September 6, 2004)

Around the time of 9/11, Putin had pointed to open recruitment of Chechen terrorists going on in London, telling a German interviewer: “In London, there is a recruitment station for people wanting to join combat in Chechnya. Today — not officially, but effectively in the open — they are talking there about recruiting volunteers to go to Afghanistan.” (Focus — German weekly newsmagazine, September 2001) In addition, it is generally known in well-informed European circles that the leaders of the Chechen rebels were trained by the CIA, and that the Chechens were backed by US-sponsored anti-Russian fighters from Afghanistan. In recent months, US-UK backed Chechens have destroyed two Russian airliners and attacked a Moscow subway station, in addition to the school atrocity.

Some aspects of Putin’s thinking were further explained by a press interview given by Aslambek Aslakhanov, the Chechen politician who is one of Putin’s official advisors. A dispatch from RIA Novosti reported Aslakhanov’s comments as follows: “The terrorists who seized the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, took their orders from abroad. ‘They were talking with people not from Russia, but from abroad. They were being directed,’ said Aslambek Aslakhanov, advisor to the President of the Russian Federation. ‘It is the desire of our “friends” – in quotation marks — who have probably for more than a decade been carrying out enormous, titanic work, aimed at dismembering Russia. These people have worked very hard, and the fact that the financing comes from there and that they are the puppet masters, is also clear.” Aslakhanov, who was named by the terrorists as one of the people they were going to hold talks with, also told RIA Novosti that the bid for such “talks” was completely phony. He said that the hostage-takers were not Chechens. When he talked to them, by phone, in Chechen, they demanded that he talk Russian, and the ones he spoke with had the accents of other North Caucasus ethnic groups. (RIA Novosti, September 6, 2004)

On September 7, RIA Novosti reported on the demand of the Russian Foreign Ministry that two leading Chechen figures be extradited from London and Washington to stand trial in Russia. A statement from the Russia Foreign Ministry’s Department of Information and Press indicated that Russia will put the United States and Britain on the spot about extraditing two top Chechen separatist officials, who have been given asylum in Washington and London, respectively. They are Akhmad Zakayev, known as a “special representative” of Aslan Maskhadov (currently enjoying asylum in London), and Ilyas Akhmadov, the “Foreign Minister” of the unrecognized “Chechen Republic-Ichkeria” (now residing in the USA). (RIA Novosti, September 7, 2004)

“SCHOOL SEIZURE WAS PLANNED IN WASHINGTON AND LONDON”

This was the headline of an even more explicit unsigned commentary by the Russian news agency KMNews.ru. This analysis blames the Beslan school massacre squarely on the U.S. and British intelligence agencies. The point of departure here is that Shamil Basayev, the brutal Chechen field commander, has been linked to the attack (something that Putin advisor Aslambek Aslakhanov yesterday said was known to the Russian FSB, successor of the KGB). The article highlights the recent rapprochement of London and Washington with key representatives of Aslan Maskhadov: Britain’s giving asylum to Akhmad Zakayev (December 2003) and the USA welcoming Ilyas Akhmadov (August 2004).

KMNews: CHECHEN TERROR BOSS ON US STATE DEPARTMENT PAYROLL

KMNews writes: “In early August, … ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Chechen Republic-Ichkeria’ Ilyas Akhmadov received political asylum in the USA. And for his ‘outstanding services,’ Akhmadov received a Reagan-Fascell grant,” including a monthly stipend, medical insurance, and a well-equipped office with all necessary support services, including the possibility of meetings with political circles and leading U.S. media….“What about our partners in the ‘anti-terrorist coalition,’ who provided asylum, offices and money to Maskhadov’s representatives?” asks the Russian press agency. Citing the official expressions of sympathy and offers of help from President Bush, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, KMNews warns: “But let’s not shed tears of gratitude just yet. First we should ask: were ‘Special Representative of the President of CRI’ Zakayev or ‘Minister of Foreign Affairs of the CRI’ Akhmadov, located in Great Britain and the USA, aware of the terrorist acts that were in preparation? Beyond a doubt…. And let’s also find out, how Akhmadov is spending the money provided by the Reagan-Fascell Foundation. We note: this Foundation is financed by the U.S. Congress through the budget of the State Department! “Thus, the conclusion is obvious. Willingly or not, Downing Street and the White House provoked the guerrillas to these latest attacks. Willingly or not, Great Britain and the USA have nurtured the separatists with material, information and diplomatic resources. Willingly or not, the policy of London and Washington fostered the current terrorist acts.” “As the ancients said, cui bono? Perhaps we are too hasty with such sweeping accusations against our ‘friends’ and ‘partners’? Is there a motive for the Anglo-American ‘anti-terrorist coalition’ to fan the fires of terror in the North Caucasus?” “Alas, there is a motive. It is no secret, that the West is vitally interested in maintaining instability in the Caucasus. That makes it easier to pump out the fossil fuels, extracted in the Caspian region, and it makes it easier to control Georgia and Azerbaijan, and to exert influence on Armenia. Finally, it makes it easier to drive Russia out of the Caspian and the Caucasus. Divide et impera! - the leaders of the Roman Empire already introduced this simple formula for subjugation.”

KMNews: TERROR SUPPORTERS “ON THE BANKS OF THE THAMES AND THE POTOMAC”

KMNews continues: “Alas, it must be recognized that the co-authors of the current tragic events are to be found not in the Arab countries of the Middle East, but on the banks of the Thames and the Potomac. Will the leadership of Russia be able to make decisions, in this situation?” “Yes - if there is the political will. The first thing is that black must be called black, and white, white. It is time to admit that no “antiterrorist coalition” exists, that the West is pursuing its egotistical interests (spreading its political influence, seizing fossil fuels deposits, etc.). Our own coalition needs to be formed, with nations that are genuinely interested in eliminating terror in the North Caucasus. Finally, it is time to change the entire tactics and strategy of counterterrorism measures. It is obvious that catching female suicide bombers on the streets of Moscow or carrying out operations to free children who are taken hostage, are, so to speak, the ‘last line of defense.’ It is time to learn to make preemptive strikes against the enemy, and it’s time to carry combat onto the territory of the enemy. Otherwise, we shall be defeated.” (Source: KMNews.ru, September 7, 2004)

Izvestia stresses the probable ethnic composition of the terrorist death squad, and its likely role in exacerbating tensions in the ethnic labyrinth of the Caucasus. Izvestia finds the targeting of North Ossetia in the Beslan incident “not accidental,” pointing to the danger of “irreversible consequences” for interethnic relations between Ossetians, Ingushis and Chechens. “Russia is now facing multi-vectored threats along the entire Caucasus,” the paper writes. (Izvestia, September 3, 2004)

In the wake of Putin’s speech, prominent Russian commentators discussed the recent terror campaign against Russia in terms of a possible “casus belli” for a new East-West conflict. Several commentaries have reaffirmed Putin’s key statement, that international terrorism has no independent existence, but functions only as “an instrument,” wielded by powerful international circles committed (in part) to the early destruction of Russia as a nuclear-armed power.

A commentary in the widely read Russian business news service RosBusinessConsult (RBC) was entitled “The West is unleashing Jihads against Russia.” In language seldom heard since the end of the Cold War, RBC charges that the recent wave of terror attacks against Russia, beginning with the sabotage of two airplanes and a terror bombing at a Moscow subway station, and culminating so far in the Beslan attack, was immediately preceded by what RBC calls “an ultimatum from the West,” for Russia to turn over the Caucasus region to “Anglo-Saxon control.”

ANGLO-SAXON TERROR ULTIMATUM TO RUSSIA FROM THE LONDON ECONOMIST

“Some days prior to the onset of the series of acts of terrorism in Russia, which has cost hundreds of lives, a number of extremely influential Western mass-media, expressing establishment positions, issued a personal warning to Vladimir Putin, that Russia should get out of the Caucasus, or else his political career would come to an end. Therefore, when the President on Saturday spoke of a declaration of war having been made against Russia, this was not just a matter of so-called ‘international terrorism’… One week prior to the first acts of terrorism, the authoritative British magazine, the Economist, which expresses the positions of Great Britain’s establishment, formulated the Western position concerning the Caucasus, and above all the policy of the Anglo-Saxon elite, in a very precise manner,” RBC writes.

CZECH NGO BLOWS UP RUSSIAN TANK; BRITISH EXPERTS TRAIN CHECHEN GANGS

The RBC commentary goes on to cite the Economist of August 19, which contained what RBC characterizes as a virtual ultimatum to Russia. RBC notes that “the carrying out of such a series of coordinated, highly professional terrorist attacks, would be impossible without the help of qualified ‘specialists’.” RBC notes that at the end of August one such “specialist,” working for an NGO based in the Czech republic, was arrested for blowing up a Russian armed personnel carrier. Also, British “experts” have been found instructing Chechen gangs in how to lay mines. “It cannot be excluded, that also in Beslan, the logistics of the operation were provided by just such ‘specialists’,” notes RBC.

The RBC editorial concludes: “Apparently, by having recourse to large-scale terrorist actions, the forces behind that terrorism, have now acted directly to force a ‘change’ in the political situation in the Caucasus, propagating interethnic wars into Russia. “The only way to resist this, would be for Moscow to make it known, that we are ready to fight a new war, according to new rules and new methods — not with mythical ‘international terrorists’, who do not and never existed, but with the controllers of the ‘insurgents and freedom fighters’; a war against the geopolitical puppet-masters, who are ready to destroy thousands of Russians for the sake of achieving their new division of the world.” (RBC, September 7, 2004)

In a related comment, the Chairman of the Duma Foreign Affairs Committee, Dmitri Rogozin, declared in an interview on Sunday September 5: “I think those behind the terrorism are those who would like to see Russia totally discredited as a power…. I think that the aim is to destabilize the political situation in the country and plunge Russia into total chaos.” (Ekho Moskvy, September 6, 2004)

Western press organs have responded to the school massacre with a campaign to blame, not the terrorists, but the Putin regime and Russian society. This disingenuous policy has further stoked Russian resentment. On September 6, Strana.ru headlined, “Western Press: The Tragedy Is Russia’s Own Fault,” commenting that “unlike official politicians, journalists do not want to admit that the bombings and hostage-takings in our country are acts of international terrorism.” Another example of this Putin-bashing was the article by Masha Lippman in the Washington Post of September 9.

A basic reason for the US-UK surrogate warfare against Russia is the great Anglo-Saxon fear of a continental bloc of the type which emerged during the run – up to Bush’s Iraq aggression. The centerpiece of the continental bloc is the German-Russian relationship. Washington and London fear that Russia will soon agree to accept euros in payment for its oil deliveries. This would not just prevent the Anglo-Americans from further skimming off oil transactions between Russia and Europe. It would represent the beginning of the end of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, a role which the battered greenback, weakened by Bush’s $500 billion yearly trade deficit and Bush’s $750 billion budget deficit, can no longer fulfill. If Russia moves to the euro, it is expected that the Eurasian giant may be quickly followed by Iran, Indonesia, Venezuela, and other countries. This could put an end to the ability of the US to run astronomical foreign trade deficits, and would place the question of a US return to a production-based economy on the agenda. The oil-euro question is expected to be discussed at the upcoming Russian-German economic summit.

RUSSIA TO PAY FOR OIL WITH EUROS?

In a half-page article published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and headlined “Realizing the Strategic Partnership,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted key progress in the energy sector. Lavrov said that numerous proposals by Moscow on how to expand cooperation in the sphere of future-shaping high-tech branches of the economy will be put on the agenda of the September 11-12 German-Russian economic summit in Hamburg. Russia calls for the development of “mutually beneficial cooperation in aerospace, information technology, telecom, biotechnology, development of new materials, laser technology, and nanotechnology. Lavrov wrote that Russia expects a breakthrough at the Hamburg talks — which will also deal with the energy sector. (Frankfurter Allgemeine, September 3, 2004)

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VIDEO: The war on Iran is on

Friday, October 19th, 2007

“This path was selected a long time ago”

Today, George Bush invoked the ideaof World War III in connection with Iran… after the Russian leader Vladimir Putin declared Iran has no nuclear weapons program.

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/171.html

Unfortunately, they can… Here is the problem:

A huge percentage of peace-loving Americans believe that Bush would never seriously consider attacking Iran.

They point to the lack of support Bush has at home, the fact that US military resources are stretched thin in Iraq and the over all insanity of the idea. Unfortunately, not only would Bush and Co.*consider* attacking Iran…they give every indication - to people with eyes that can see - that they are preparing to attack the country before the Bush administration ends its term. It is hard to protest a war you do not believecould ever happen.

Believe it.

And if you think attack Iran is a bad idea, start protesting now. There is probably no more important pro-peace and pro-Constitution action you can be involved in now.

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UK government accessing telephone records

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Indymedia

At the beginning of October, the Labour government “activated” part three of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) granting various branches of the state wide powers to access telephone records without recourse to a judge.

According to some reports, up to 800 state bodies and agencies can now seek access to telephone records, including all of Britain’s local authorities and even such quasi-non-governmental organisations as the Scottish Ambulance Service Board or the Food Standards Agency.

Security and Counter-terrorism Minister Tony McNulty told BBC Radio 4 that the data could provide three levels of information, with the simplest being about the phone’s owner. The second level of data is not merely about the subscriber, “but also the calls made by that phone.

“And the third level, which is purely for the security forces, police, etc., is not just the subscriber information and the calls made, but also the calls coming in and location data—where the calls are made from.”

Since telecom operators retain geographic data about the “cells” over which calls are routed, these provide sufficient information to locate a mobile phone. In urban areas, where the cell transmitters are very densely sited, this enables a phone’s position to be calculated to within a few feet.

Further powers include demanding encryption keys that may have been used to encrypt data and emails be handed over, with failure to comply attracting a possible prison sentence of from two to five years.

Under section 49 of RIPA, the police can serve a notice requiring encrypted data to be “put into an intelligible form”—i.e., decrypted. It can force people to hand over their encryption keys, which will then be held by the National Technical Assistance Centre (NTAC). According to the Home Office, this is a “twenty-four hour centre operated on behalf of all the law enforcement, security and intelligence agencies, providing a central facility for the complex processing needed to derive intelligible material from lawfully intercepted computer-to-computer communications and from lawfully seized computer data that are increasingly encrypted.”

The government has sought to justify this extension of state powers mainly by citing the “fight against terrorism,” but it has also admitted that the use of encryption has grown more rapidly than it had anticipated, and that this is also a reason why it has now “activated” the powers already contained in RIPA when it was placed on the statute books in 2000.

The new powers provide a quasi-judicial veneer for the fact that various state agencies were already seeking far wider access to private data, and this is set to expand even further. A commentary by the civil liberties organisation Statewatch in 2003 had already noted that “hundreds of thousands of requests for access to communication data are already being made by agencies even though there is no legal power to do so.”

According to a report this month by the civil and human rights group Liberty, there were “nearly 440,000 authorisations for communications data traffic between June 2005 and March 2006.”

This massive extension of the state’s powers to intrude into the life of the ordinary citizen was introduced without recourse to a debate in parliament but through the mechanism of a “parliamentary instrument” signed by the home secretary, Jacquie Smith, which one press report said was “quietly approved” in July.

The government claims to have held “full consultation” on the introduction of the new measures, but this is contested by those who follow civil liberties issues closely. Writing in the Observer newspaper, Henry Porter said, “Yeah, right. When? With whom? The Welsh Ambulance Service? The Postal Services Commission? Wychavon district council? All of them can now acquire your phone records. There was absolutely no debate about this, and it is nothing but a straight lie to claim otherwise.”

“We are not intruding into people’s private lives,” a Home Office spokesperson said, going on to claim that the exercise of the new powers was consistent with the European Convention on Human Rights and UK Human Rights Act, as long as the demand for decryption is “both necessary and proportionate.”

But who decides what is “necessary and proportionate”? And what public scrutiny is there to ensure that these powers are not being abused arbitrarily?

To require judicial approval for such a level of access requests would completely swamp the court system. So authorisation has been devolved to what Statewatch has called the office of the “toothless” Interception of Communications Commissioner, “which is hardly likely to engender public confidence.”

“The holders of this post, and the Tribunal to which members of the public can complain about surveillance, were created under the 1985 Interceptions of Communications Act (now replaced by RIPA 2000), have never in the eighteen years of their existence upheld a complaint,” according to Statewatch.

In a further Kafkaesque twist, those receiving a notice under section 49 of RIPA are legally prohibited from telling anyone apart from their lawyer about it.

Since 2004, telecom and Internet service providers have voluntarily provided data when requested; now, they will be required to retain such information for one year. However, since the provisions only apply to data within the UK, large corporations could easily avoid this by keeping their data and encryption keys offshore.

By 2009, the retention of data including Internet sites visited, emails sent and VOIP (Voice over IP or Internet telephony) will be mandatory.

This will put into UK law the highly contentious European Commission Directive on mandatory data retention, adopted in 2005, and will replace the current “voluntary” code introduced in the UK in 2003. This regulation does not just cover terrorism but all crime, however minor.

Not only in Britain but throughout Europe and internationally, the rights to free speech and personal privacy are being seriously eroded, with governments habitually citing the “fight against terrorism” to justify their mounting curtailment of long-standing democratic norms.

“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” is the false mantra repeated by ministers of every political stripe.

But the latest extension of state powers in Britain through RIPA means historically determined democratic rights such as the presumption of innocence and against arbitrary state actions are being further abrogated. Such laws, enabling almost routine trawling operations through mountains of personal data by the state, weight the balance of power overwhelming in favour of “state rights” against those of the individual citizen.

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This entry was posted on Friday, October 19th, 2007 at 3:28 am and is filed under Science & Technology News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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