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White House Defends ‘Waterboarding’ Torture

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

The White House is defending the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding in certain, rare circumstances when suspects are believed to have knowledge of an imminent threat. VOA’s Paula Wolfson reports the Central Intelligence Agency now admits it used the technique roughly five years ago on three top terror suspects.

Tony Fratto, 04 Jan 2008

White House spokesman Tony Fratto says President Bush personally authorized the disclosure - breaking with the long-standing practice in the administration of refusing comment on specific interrogation techniques.

He says the decision to have Central Intelligence Agency chief Michael Hayden go before a Congressional committee and reveal the use of waterboarding in the past was difficult, because it could provide the enemy with information about the CIA’s program for questioning terror suspects.

“This decision to allow General Hayden to talk about the technique wasn’t taken lightly,” Fratto said. “There was discussion of great concern about starting to talk about something we don’t ordinarily do for reasons that we feel very strongly about.”

Fratto says so much misinformation has been disseminated about the interrogation program, that the White House felt it was time to set the record straight.

Fratto says waterboarding - which simulates drowning - was approved in a few specific instances and with certain safeguards in place.

The CIA banned the practice in 2006. Fratto says interrogators might be able to use it again, but emphasized they would need authorization from the president to do so.

He noted that any CIA request to use the technique would have to be declared legal by the Justice Department before consideration at the White House. He says approval depends on the circumstances, adding one important factor would be the belief that an attack might be imminent.

“Any change to the enhanced interrogation technique that may be used will follow the process that I outlined which includes a legal review and notification of Congress,” he said.

Critics have called waterboarding a form of torture. But Fratto says its use in the past under the conditions approved by the attorney general and the president was legal.

On Capitol Hill, a senior Democrat - Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois - denounced the use of waterboarding under any circumstances. He noted that in its annual human rights report, the U.S. State Department is quick to condemn other nations that use harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners.

“So once a year we stand in judgment of the world, and condemn them for engaging in waterboarding and torture techniques on their prisoners,” he said. “And yet it is clear from the testimony yesterday of General Hayden, that we have engaged in some of those own techniques.”

The U.N.’s torture investigator also responded to the CIA disclosure, calling on the Bush administration to give up its defense of enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding. Manfred Nowak told the Associated Press in Geneva that these techniques are totally unacceptable under international law.

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FBI to build $1Bn biometrics database

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

The FBI is expected to announce this week the awarding of a $1 billion, 10-year contract to develop the largest and most comprehensive government biometrics database in history — with information on the palm prints, eye scans, tattoos, and other identifying physical data of citizens and those who pass through.

First up (…) are palm prints [said Thomas Bush, the FBI official in charge of the Clarksburg, West Virginia, facility where the FBI houses its current fingerprint database.] The FBI has already begun collecting images and hopes to soon use these as an additional means of making identifications. Countries that are already using such images find 20 percent of their positive matches come from latent palm prints left at crime scenes, the FBI’s Bush said.The FBI has also started collecting mug shots and pictures of scars and tattoos. These images are being stored for now as the technology is fine-tuned. All of the FBI’s biometric data is stored on computers 30-feet underground in the Clarksburg facility.

In addition, the FBI could soon start comparing people’s eyes — specifically the iris, or the colored part of an eye — as part of its new biometrics program called Next Generation Identification.

Posted by Xeni Jardin,

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Was bugging carried out for the FBI?

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

Sean O’Neill

The inquiry into the bugging of a terrorist prisoner and his MP has been asked to examine whether the eavesdropping was carried out at the request of the FBI.

The Times has learnt that two weeks after the taped conversation with Sadiq Khan, MP, in June 2006, Babar Ahmad was visited in Woodhill jail by Metropolitan Police Special Branch detectives who told him: “We could help you if you will help us.”

Lawyers for Mr Ahmad, 33, who is fighting extradition to the United States, believe the approach was an attempt to persuade him to negotiate a plea-bargain deal before a trial in the US on terror charges.

Mr Ahmad was arrested in London in 2004 on a US extradition warrant over his alleged involvement with websites said to be recruiting for Taleban and Chechen Mujahidin groups.

Searches of his home and office at Imperial College London, where he was an IT technician, were carried out by the Metropolitan Police and material was passed to the US authorities. “Why were they scratching around when the decision had been made a long time ago that Babar Ahmad was not going to be prosecuted in Britain?” asked Gareth Peirce, Mr Ahmad’s solicitor. “Were they trying to exploit some perceived vulnerability in the bugged conversation?”

Ms Peirce said she has written to Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, and Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, raising issues she wants the inquiry into the bugging to look at. She said: “Very serious questions have to be asked about who this eavesdropping was being carried out for.”

Mark Kearney, a former police intelligence officer at the prison in Milton Keynes, has claimed he was put under pressure by the Met to carry out the bugging. Mr Kearney, 48, is being prosecuted for allegedly leaking unrelated information to a local newspaper journalist. The former officer wants to give evidence to the inquiry into the bugging incident but has yet to hear from Sir Christopher Rose, the Chief Surveillance Commissioner, who is conducting it.

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CIA Monitors YouTube For Intelligence

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

By Thomas Claburn

In keeping with its mandate to gather intelligence, the CIA is watching YouTube.

U.S. spies, now under the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), are looking increasingly online for intelligence; they have become major consumers of social media.

“We’re looking at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence,” said Doug Naquin, director of the remarks to the Central Intelligence Retirees’ Association last October. “We’re looking at chat rooms and things that didn’t exist five years ago, and trying to stay ahead. We have groups looking at what they call ‘Citizens Media’: people taking pictures with their cell phones and posting them on the Internet.”

In November 2005, the OSC subsumed the CIA’s Foreign Broadcast Information Service, which housed the agency’s foreign media analysts. The OSC is responsible for collecting and analyzing public information, including Internet content.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists project on government secrey, posted transcript of Naquin’s remarks on his blog. “I found the speech interesting and thoughtful,” he said in an e-mail. “I would not have thought of YouTube as an obvious source of intelligence, but I think it’s a good sign that the Open Source Center is looking at it, and at other new media.”

Not everyone in the intelligence community sees the value in open source intelligence. “[W]e still have an education problem on both ends, both with the folks who are proponents of open source but perhaps don’t know exactly why, and folks internally who are still wondering why I am sitting at the same table they are,” said Naquin.

But further acceptance of open source intelligence, of the Internet and social media, seems inevitable in the intelligence community if only because traditional media is becoming less relevant. “What we’re seeing [in] actuality is a decline, a relatively rapid decline, in the impact of the printed press — traditional media,” said Naquin. “A lot more is digital, and a lot more is online. It’s also a lot more social. Interaction is a much bigger part of media and news than it used to be.”

Despite its name the Open Source Center hasn’t proven to be particularly open with its findings. “One area where Mr. Naquin’s Center falls short, in my opinion, is in public access to its products, which is very limited,” said Aftergood. “I know that there are some copyright barriers to open publication of foreign media items. But there shouldn’t be any such barriers to release of the Center’s own analytical products. And yet they are hard to come by. I hope this is one aspect of the Center’s activities that will be reconsidered.”

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One in four against ID cards

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

By Nick Heath

Support for the UK’s national ID card programme continues to plummet as one quarter of people say they are strongly opposed to the scheme.

According to the ICM poll, 25 per cent of those surveyed thought it was a “very bad” idea - up from 17 per cent in September last year.

Opponents of the ID card scheme said the survey of just over 1,000 people, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, showed the government would be “unable to impose” the cards on the population.

But while 50 per cent said the cards were a bad idea in the ICM poll, 47 per cent of those questioned still thought they were a good idea. And 12 per cent of that group thought they were a ‘very good’ idea.

Phil Booth, national co-ordinator with pressure group NO2ID, said: “It shows that more people don’t want ID cards than do, as is clearly the case across the population.”

He said: “The number of people who look like they will refuse to have one has gone up massively, a quarter of the population are vehemently against them.”

The idea of the government taking data submitted for one use and sharing it between departments also made 52 per cent of respondents uncomfortable.

The poll found the majority support creating a separate database about every child in the UK, creating a central identity register and collecting personal travel details on everyone coming in and out of the UK.

The first ID cards will be introduced for foreign nationals by the end of this year.

The widespread rollout to UK citizens, known as ‘Borders phase II’, is now slated to begin in 2012 - two years later than indicated in an earlier government action plan.

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ID cards ‘in intensive care’

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

National identity cards will be given to British citizens two years later than planned, it has emerged.

Leaked Home Office documents given to the Conservatives show the planned rollout of ID cards to British citizens has been delayed until 2010.

It was originally planned British citizens should be given ID cards from 2010, with foreign nationals subject to the legislation later this year.

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the delay showed the planned ID card scheme was “in the intensive care ward”.

Gordon Brown is reportedly less enthusiastic about ID cards than his predecessor Tony Blair, who promised to include legislation for compulsory ID cards in Labour’s next election manifesto.

Earlier this month, Mr Brown appeared to show more tentative support for compulsory ID cards, describing it as simply “an option” and pointing out it would be subject to further parliamentary approval.

It is thought the delay has also been prompted by security concerns as ministers grapple with the logistics of gathering and safely storing vast amounts of data.

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green told the BBC: “It’s clear that there are enormous practical difficulties in putting 50 different pieces of personal information including addresses of 60 million British citizens plus lots of foreigners into a single database.

“I think the reality is just beginning to bite ministers on this, so this delay is the first sign of reality intruding, let’s hope there are more to come.”

The leaked Home Office documents show Borders Phase 1, where ID cards will be rolled out to foreign nationals, is set to begin this year. From 2009 cards will also be issued to people “in positions of trust”.

But Borders Phase 2, when the cards will be introduced to all British Citizens, is schedule to begin in 2012, two years later than previously thought.

An Identity and Passport Service spokesman said: “We have always said that the sheme will be rolled out incrementally.”

But Mr Davis said the delay was intended to stop ID cards becoming an issue at the next election, planned for 2009 or 2010.

http://www.politics.co.uk

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Hackers Steal Data From Former CU

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

By David Morrison

FORT WORTH, Texas – OmniAmerican Bank, an institution that started life as OmniAmerican Credit Union before converting to a bank charter in 2005, has suffered a date security breach that allowed some of the bank depositors to have money stolen, according to local press reports.

The local media quoted Tim Carter, president of the former CU bank, as saying that the scheme was “pretty sophisticated.” Carter is quoted in the Fort Worth Star Telegram as calling the amount stolen minimal and that the former CU had fewer than 100 accounts compromised.

Nevertheless the bank has placed limits on some ATM and debit card transactions, particularly those outside the state of Texas and had reported to have reissued 40,000 debit cards.

According to the bank, the criminals were able to hack into the bank records and obtain card numbers and personal identification numbers as well as create new PINs. They then fabricated debit cards and withdrew cash from ATMs across Eastern Europe, including Russia.

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New court can silence captives who tell secrets

Thursday, February 7th, 2008

A new court at Guantánamo would allow the U.S. military to keep its secrets by cutting off terror suspects’ testimony from the ears of observers at the flick of a switch.

BY CAROL ROSENBERG

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — On the eve of the resumption of its war crimes trials, the military on Sunday unveiled a new state-of-the-art court capable of trying six alleged terrorists simultaneously — and silencing them from the outside world, if they try to spill state secrets.

The military offered a comprehensive look at its new court, part of a $12 million razor-wire-ringed legal complex that arrived by cargo plane and barge in prefabricated parts. Unlike a more ambitious plan to build a $125 million compound on the site overlooking Guantánamo Bay, the new compound can be dismantled and shipped back stateside once trials are done.

”We got it up in six months at a fraction of the cost,” said Army Col. Wendy Kelly, director of operations at the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions.

Architecturally, the bunker-style building is a bland structure impenetrable to electronic eavesdropping.

Inside, it has an up-to 20-seat jury box for the U.S. military officers who will be assembled from around the world, case by case, to sit in judgment; typical judges and prosecution tables, plus a bank of defense tables where six captives can sit at computers on faux leather chairs, unshackled but guarded by soldiers.

KILLING THE SOUND

It also has a 30-seat adjacent room, behind a tempered-glass window, where observers can hear the proceedings on a broadcast basis — and a kill-switch where a security officer or the judge can cut the sound in case someone divulges a state secret.

There is no blackout capacity or curtain, meaning the media, legal observers, dignitaries and family members who might attend a trial could watch but not listen.

Such measures could be necessary if the Pentagon presses ahead with plans to try alleged 9/11 architect Khalid Sheik Mohammed or any of the other 14 high-value detainees who arrived at this base in September 2006 from three-plus years of secret CIA custody.

The agency has classified the interrogation techniques it used on the men — in secret sites, somewhere overseas — as national security secrets. Were one to blurt out his treatment at trial, the judge or security officer could simply stifle their voices.

It is inside razor wire along with five separate windowless cells where lawyers can meet clients who could some day include the alleged architects of the 9/11 attacks and other suspected senior al Qaeda leaders.

On Monday, lawyers return to the old court to argue, again, for dismissal of terror charges against Guantánamo’s youngest detainee, Toronto-born Omar Khadr, who was captured at age 15 in Afghanistan. Khadr’s Pentagon-appointed attorneys argue before an Army judge Monday that all war crimes charges should be dismissed against the Canadian man, now 21.

He is charged in the grenade killing of a U.S. Army medic, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M., who was part of a Special Forces unit that attacked a suspected al Qaeda compound in Khost, Afghanistan, in July 2002.

Khadr is from a fundamentalist Muslim family, which sometimes celebrated Muslim feasts with the bin Ladens in Afghanistan, and he is also accused of conspiring with and supporting al Qaeda, attempted murder of other members of Speer’s unit and spying by scouting on U.S. forces.

Conviction could carry life in prison because, in consideration of his youth, the Pentagon waived an option to seek the death penalty.

Khadr’s lawyers claim he should have been treated as a ”child soldier,” not equally responsible to an adult, in part because he was 15 at the time of his capture.

”If jurisdiction is exercised over Mr. Khadr, the military judge will be the first in Western history to preside over the trial of alleged war crimes committed by a child,” Navy Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler wrote in a 15-page motion.

Moreover, Kuebler argued that the United States failed his client — who has grown into beefy, bearded adulthood behind the razor wire here at Camp Delta.

But the chief prosecutor, Army Col. Larry Morris, disputes the defense characterization of the captive as a child soldier — saying Khadr did not meet the definition under international law.

”The conventions on child soldiers establish the minimum age for conscripting soldiers,” he said in a statement, adding, “They do not provide amnesty for war crime activities on the battlefield.”

DETAINED SINCE 16

Khadr arrived at this remote prison camp at age 16, saw his first attorneys two years later and has periodically fired the lawyers who have volunteered to work on his case.

He has spent long portions of detention in special segregation for war-court candidates but more recently was moved to a POW-style compound where about 60 of the 275 or so detainees live in communal bunkhouses.

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