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Anti-G8 activist detained and beaten

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

German activist Martin Kramer, en route to Japan to prepare for the Hokkaido G8 summit protests, was arrested by police in the city of Vanino in the Habarovsk region of the Russian Far East March 3. He was turned over the FSB agents, in whose hands he was harshly interrogated and beaten.

Martin was accused of carrying “extremist” and “secret” documents. These included archival materials from the 1920s, long since made public, that Kramer had for research purposes. Also included was a copies of the Ukrainian anarchist paper Liva-Sprava and Udar, the paper of Autonomous Action of Vladivostok.

After a few hours, he was put in a car and thrown out in a strange part of the city. On March 10, arriving in Sapporo via ship from Sakhalin, he was denied entry by Japanese authorities. As of March 11, he remained on board the ship, while local activists appealed to Japanese authorities.

Via No-G8 Action Japan mailing list & World War 4 Report

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UK MEPs fined after EU treaty protest

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Four British MEPs have been fined hundreds of pounds for staging an EU treaty referendum protest in the European parliament.

The president of the European parliament, Hans-Gert Pöttering, has docked the allowances of MEPs involved in the disruption of the parliament last December.

Dozens of MEPs, many of them from the Conservative party and the UK Independence party, disrupted business in the parliament in Strasbourg by heckling at and protesting against EU leaders who signed the new EU charter of fundamental rights.

As Pöttering, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European commission, and the Portuguese prime minister, José Socrates, signed the charter - which Britain says will not apply in the UK - the British-led band of Europhobic MEPs unveiled banners and T-shirts demanding a referendum on the EU treaty.

Nine MEPs face sanctions as a result, including British Conservative MEP Roger Helmer, independent MEP Jim Allister and Ukip’s Roger Knapman, who will all lose three days’ allowance. The MEPs’ daily allowance is €287.
Ukip MEP Godfrey Bloom learned he will be fined two days’ allowance for his part in the fracas.

Gary Titley MEP, Labour’s leader in Europe, denounced the protest: “I hope we have seen the back of those bully-boy tactics. Democracy is about respecting each other.”

Bloom said: “A quarter of a million people voted for me to protest against the EU and I’m not going to stop doing that because a few Euro-nationalists decide to take away my pocket money.

“I was proud to stand shoulder to shoulder with MEPs from across Europe to protest at the repulsive behaviour of the European parliament.

“It’s probably hard for these chaps to understand because they’re a bit tight, but the people they have made suffer with these proposals are the small charities because that’s who I give my allowances to.”

Knapman said he was too long in the tooth to be told what to do by a German president.

Hélène Mulholland

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MoD requests ‘voluntary’ DNA samples

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is asking armed forces personnel to voluntarily submit DNA samples leading to fears that they are becoming part of a larger national DNA database.

Under secretary of state for defence Derek Twigg told the Commons that voluntary DNA submission has been a gradual process across the armed forces. In 1999 all aircrew pilots were asked to voluntarily submit samples. This year the ministry is extending the voluntary policy to all personnel and civilian staff deploying on operations according to Twigg and by next year all new recruits will be asked to voluntarily submit samples. Finally, all remaining personnel who do not fit into one of these categories will be asked to give DNA samples.

Twigg defended the voluntary samples, saying that if a member of the forces had died, getting a DNA sample from a member of family could be traumatic.

“DNA matching is a near-failsafe method of identifying a deceased individual but only if there is a reference sample with which to compare the bodily remains,” Twigg stated.

“The aim of our voluntary DNA sampling scheme is to…. enable deceased personnel to be identified quickly and with less intrusion on the family.”

All samples are currently taken through blood, but soon the MoD will begin using cheek swabs.

Once the samples are taken they are stored in secure filing cabinets in rooms that have very limited access according to Twigg. Unless the donator signs a waiver, the samples cannot be accessed by the police or other criminal investigative units, and they will not be placed in the national DNA database.

However this will not reassure critics of the plan because Twigg admitted that a court order could force the MoD to release the DNA samples to law enforcement officials.

Otherwise the samples are left alone for up to 45 years when they are destroyed. Armed forces personnel are allowed to ask for the samples to be destroyed when they leave the forces Twigg acknowledged.

Public Servant

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Experts wary over ID card plan

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Home Office slows ID card rollout as independent Treasury study recommends fast implementation

The government’s failure to take on board the recommendations of independent reports on the national identity card scheme may lead to faults and extra cost, warn experts.

Last week, home secretary Jacqui Smith announced plans for a slower rollout of the £5.4bn ID cards programme, with the government retaining control of the national identity register.

But in a Treasury-commissioned report, also released last week, former HBOS chief executive Sir James Crosby recommends a fundamentally different, consumer-led approach.

“Our identity belongs to us, no one else,” said Crosby.

“The potential of any mass ID system such as ID cards lies in the extent to which it is created, by consumers for consumers.”

There are many reasons why the government may have ignored the Crosby report which has been delayed by almost a year and was released through the Treasury web site said Eric Woods, analyst at Ovum.

“Crosby’s recommendations on reaching a critical mass of card users quickly were always going to be unlikely due to the political and technical realities of the scheme,” he said.

Smith has delayed compulsory adoption of ID cards when renewing passports amid widespread criticism of the plan.

Crosby’s other recommendations which were ignored by the government include:

- ID cards should be free.

- The scheme should be subject to review by the information commissioner.

- Information should not be passed on to the police from the national identity register.

The government denies any Whitehall disagreement over ID cards. “The home secretary has talked to Sir James Crosby on each point of his report there is no disagreement between the Home Office and the Treasury over the scheme,” said a home office spokesman.

The government previously ignored the recommendations of a London School of Economics (LSE) report in 2005, which said the scheme could cost £19.2bn, said Ian Angell, professor of information systems at LSE.

“The government only listens to what it wants to hear current proposals are technically unsound and do not have public confidence,” he said.

Tom Young

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Detainee’s Suit Says Abuse Was Videotaped

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Lawyers for a detainee held at the Navy brig in Charleston, S.C., allege in court papers to be filed today that their client was systematically abused and that he was told there were cabinets full of videotapes depicting his treatment at the hands of the FBI and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Ali al-Marri, who has been in U.S. custody since his arrest in 2003, is seeking to have the conditions of his detention reviewed by a federal court and wants to be removed from isolation, where he has remained without charge for years. His allegations of being videotaped while he was mistreated could add to an uproar over CIA admissions that the agency videotaped detainees who were waterboarded and then destroyed the tapes.

The Defense Department has been reviewing its videotaping efforts in detention facilities since the CIA’s revelations, and officials have been saying for months that there were few, if any, videotapes of interrogations that ever existed. Officials at the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, acknowledged inadvertently destroying years’ worth of video images of its operations as part of the routine overwriting of surveillance video but have not ruled out that interrogators kept at least some videotapes of interrogations.

The New York Times reported last night on its Web site that defense officials have turned up about 50 videotapes related to interrogations of Marri and Jose Padilla, another suspect held at the Navy brig. Donald Black, a spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said yesterday that one tape depicted Marri being gagged with duct tape. But he said the move was prompted by Marri’s disruptive behavior, adding that there was no evidence on the video of abuse.

“Marri was chanting very loudly and was being disruptive,” Black said. “It was determined that he should be quieted up, and if he didn’t they were going to put tape over his mouth. When Marri was told this he got even louder.”

Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney for Marri, said yesterday that his client has been forced to endure stress positions, sensory deprivation, and threats of violence or death.

“On several occasions, interrogators stuffed Mr. Almarri’s mouth with cloth and covered his mouth with heavy duct tape,” according to the legal filings to be presented to the U.S. District Court in South Carolina, which refer to the apparently videotaped incident. “The tape caused Mr. Almarri serious pain. One time, when Mr. Almarri managed to loosen the tape with his mouth, interrogators re-taped his mouth even more tightly. Mr. Almarri started to choke until a panicked agent from the FBI or Defense Intelligence Agency removed the tape.”

Black said the Marri interrogation involved defense officials and members of another agency. A U.S. source familiar with the tapes identified the other agency as the FBI.

The DIA official said the tapes were made in part to ensure that interrogations were being carried out according to Pentagon rules. Most of the tapes were routinely destroyed after transcripts of the interviews were made, Black said.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

By Josh White and Joby Warrick

Washington Post

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Khadr’s lawyers want names of U.S. interrogators

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Lawyers for Omar Khadr are asking a U.S. military judge for the names of interrogators who questioned the Canadian citizen in Afghanistan in an attempt to prove he was tortured.

Khadr’s lawyers were to appear at a pretrial hearing Thursday for the 21-year-old, who has been held at the Guantanamo Bay facility since his 2002 capture during a battle in Afghanistan.

He is accused of murder in the death of American medic Sgt. First Class Christopher J. Speer. Khadr is also charged with spying, conspiracy and supporting terrorism.

During questioning at a U.S.-run detention centre at the Bagram air base north of Kabul after his capture, Khadr was quoted as saying he wanted to kill a lot of American soldiers. According to the statement, Khadr said the Taliban were offering a $1,500 bounty for each U.S. soldier.

Court documents later revealed interrogators at the air base used attack dogs and hung prisoners by their wrists.

Khadr’s lawyers want the chance to cross-examine the interrogators during the military tribunal. If it is proven Khadr’s statement was extracted by torture, his lawyers argue it should be wiped from the record.

His trial, due to start on May 5, would likely be delayed until the summer if the judge grants Khadr’s lawyers’ request.

Khadr’s lawyers also argue their client should be freed because trying him for crimes he allegedly committed as a minor contravenes international law. He was 15 when he was captured.

The U.S. and Canada are signatories to a United Nations protocol that states fighters under age 18 are to be considered as child soldiers. Under those international obligations, child fighters must be released and helped to reintegrate into society.

Khadr’s U.S. military lawyer, Lt.-Cmdr. Bill Kuebler, alleges Khadr has been threatened with rendition to places where he would be raped. Kuebler also said he believes allegations Khadr has been beaten, has had dogs turned on him and is nearly blind. Earlier reports said Khadr is blind in one eye, with deteriorating sight in his other eye.

Last month, a trio of opposition MPs called for Ottawa to intervene in the case.

About 275 men are being held at the military base on suspicion they are linked to al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Thirteen of the prisoners have been charged.

The heavily criticized military tribunal system has yet to complete a trial.

Original rules allowed the military to exclude the defendant from his own trial, permitted statements made under torture, and forbade appeal to an independent court, but the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the system in 2006 and a revised procedure has included some additional rights.

CBC News
With files from the Associated Press

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Budget Falls A Long Way Short On Green Action

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Environmentalists are calling Alistair Darling’s first Budget as Chancellor a ‘green smokescreen’, accusing him of giving with one hand, but taking away with the other.

While Mr Darling announced plans for ‘green’ taxes on gas-guzzling cars, he removed the 20p per litre discount on the use of environmentally-friendly biofuels.

He presented several measures aimed at tackling climate change, but critics believe he could have done more, and that many of the green-orientated hikes in taxes will act more as revenues for the Government than aid for the environment.

Despite his efforts, Friends of the Earth director Tony Juniper believes his Budget “falls a long way short of what is required.” He said that “The Chancellor promised to put sustainability at the heart of today’s announcement, but he has merely tinkered in the margins.”

“Mr Darling should have used this Budget to tackle climate change - the biggest challenge the world faces - by making it cheaper and easier for people to go green, including tax breaks for greening the home, and grants for renewable energy.”

Mr Juniper offered that Friends of the Earth welcomes the green initiatives that were introduced, such as a car purchase tax, but that there is a lot more which could have been accomplished.

“Another freeze in fuel duty will further undermine the Government’s already weak green credentials.” he continued. “The cost of motoring has fallen over the past 10 years, and carbon emissions from road transport have risen. Raising fuel duty would encourage people to choose greener transport options. And the money raised could have been used to cut taxes on people and jobs, and helped to fund a range of green initiatives, including better sustainable transport options.”

The Chancellor said in his speech that there will be more funding for a Green Homes Service to “help people cut their carbon emissions and their fuel bills”, increasing funding for renewable energy so that it can triple by 2015.

He promised that next month will see the launch of an “ambitious household emissions reduction programme”, and while Communities Secretary Hazel Blears welcomes the Budget because it will “help us support peoples aspiration to own their own homes and ensure communities are built in a way that will protect the environment for future generations”, she is mindful that “we also need to look at what we should be doing to tackle carbon emissions from the rest of our buildings - our offices, shops and pubs.”

Emma Howard Boyd, Head of Socially Responsible Investment at Jupiter said that the Budget “shows how the Government continues to put weight behind targeted environmental issues through selected fiscal measures” but was disappointed that “the focus on voluntary action still remains. Actual measures were less aggressive than we had been led to expect from the build up.”

Meanwhile, Vicki Bakhshi, associate director of Governance and Sustainable Investments at F&C defended the Budget, recognising that “The Chancellor has obviously had to walk a fine-line between the long-term strategic imperative of tackling climate change and the shorter-term concerns about the weakening global economy.”

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George Bush lashes out at Hugo Chavez

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

George Bush has accused the Venezuelan president of “praising terrorists” and of squandering his country’s oil wealth to fuel a campaign against the US.

The US president criticised Hugo Chavez’s reaction to a recent Colombian raid on a Farc rebel base in Ecuador that sparked a week-long diplomatic crisis in Latin America.

“The president of Venezuela praised the terrorist leader as a good revolutionary and ordered his troops to the Colombian border,” Bush said.

The US leader said the move was “the latest step in a disturbing pattern of provocative behaviour by the regime in Caracas”.

Bush also reaffirmed his support for the Alavaro Uribe, the Colombian president, and warned that the region was facing a choice over its future.

“The region is facing an increasingly stark choice: to quietly accept the vision of the terrorists and the demagogues, or to actively support democratic leaders like President Uribe.

“I’ve made my choice. I’m standing with courageous leadership that believes in freedom and peace.”

‘Empty promises’

Bush’s sharp criticism of Chavez came as the White House tried to portray the passage of a US-Colombia free trade agreement as critical to stem Chavez’s influence across Latin America.

Wednesday’s speech was made at the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

“As it tries to expand its influence in Latin America, the regime claims to promote social justice.

“In truth its agenda amounts to little more than empty promises and a thirst for power,” Bush said.

“It has squandered its oil wealth in an effort to promote its hostile anti-American vision; it has left its own citizens to face food shortages while it threatens its neighbours,” he added.

Colombian apology

Bush spoke just days after Latin American leaders agreed an end to a week-long crisis sparked by the cross-border raid inside Ecuador that killed a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) commander.

Ecuador also sent troops to the Colombian border and cut diplomatic ties with Bogota over the incident.

Colombia apologised and promised never to carry out such a raid again.

The recent crisis reflected a sharp political divide in South America, where Uribe, who has strong US backing, is opposed by Chavez and his allies who fiercely reject what they call US “imperialism”.

Chavez, who has called for a socialist revolution in Latin America to counter US influence, regularly criticises Bush and once called him the “devil” in a speech to the UN General Assembly.

Agencies

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Israel to boycott Al-Jazeera

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Israel will boycott Al-Jazeera over what it calls the channel’s ‘biased coverage’ of the regime’s military operation in Gaza.

The regime’s foreign ministry has held discussions on the matter and decided to impose an official embargo on the Qatar-based station in the coming days, deputy foreign minister Majali Wahbe told Army Radio on Wednesday.

The ministry claimed that Al-Jazeera, in cooperation with Hamas, is inciting the Palestinian nation with broadcasting what Israel believed was a ’staged candlelight protest’ that followed the regime’s decision to cut electricity and gas supplies to the Gaza Strip.

“We have discussed this problem and I have decided that we will boycott this channel as its partial coverage is not credible and is damaging to us,” said the deputy foreign minister.

He announced the regime’s plan to launch an Arabic language channel which would reflect Israel’s viewpoints and said the regime’s officials will no longer give interviews to Al-Jazeera.

SB/MMN

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Ferraro Steps Down From Clinton Campaign

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

After making racially-charged comments about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., former vice presidential Democratic nominee Geraldine Ferraro stepped down Wednesday as a surrogate and member of the finance committee for the presidential campaign of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.

“She made the decision that she wants to continue talking about this and didn’t want to do this in a way that would cause the campaign problems,” a Clinton campaign source told ABC News.

The source insisted that the campaign did not ask Ferraro to leave.

That does not mean, however, that the Clinton campaign had not asked her to shut up.

Ferraro caused the Clinton campaign embarrassment and controversy after telling a California newspaper that if Clinton’s rival, Obama, “was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Read Ferraro’s newspaper interview here.

Instead of backing down, Ferraro took to the airwaves to insist there was nothing offensive or wrong about what she’d said, keeping a story alive that fed into a narrative in which quotes from various Clinton campaign surrogates were used to portray the Clinton campaign as race-baiting.

While refraining from calling the comments “racist,” Obama, Wednesday, accused Ferraro of conducting “slice and dice” politics.

“I think that her comments were ridiculous. I think they were wrong-headed,” he said. “The notion that it is a great advantage to me to be an African-American named Barack Obama and pursue the presidency, I think, is not a view that has been commonly shared by the general public.”

Obama’s campaign, however, called for the Clinton campaign to fire her.

After speaking to Ann Lewis, a senior adviser to the campaign, Ferraro, 72, Wednesday sent an e-mail to Clinton, saying:

“Dear Hillary —

“I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won’t let that happen. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren. You have my deep admiration and respect.

“Gerry”

Ferraro, the previous Honorary New York Leadership Council chair for the Clinton campaign, had pledged to continue raising money for Clinton, even if she were to leave the campaign.

Ferraro could not be immediately reached by ABC News for comment. Just this morning, she stood by her controversial comments suggesting Obama wouldn’t be succeeding in the Democratic nomination battle if he weren’t black.

“I am sorry that people think this was a racist comment,” Ferraro said in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer on “Good Morning America” Wednesday.

At the time, she declined to apologize directly for the firestorm she created with her comments.

Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, told Sawyer she was “absolutely not” sorry for what she’d said, suggesting she had tried to pay Obama a compliment.

Continue

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Spitzer’s Shame Is Wall Street’s Gain

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Tell me again: Why should we get all worked up over the revelation that the New York governor paid for sex? Will it bring back to life the eight U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq that same day in a war that makes no sense and has cost this nation trillions in future debt? Will it save those millions of homes that hardworking folks all over the country are losing because of financial industry shenanigans that Eliot Spitzer, as much as anyone, attempted to halt? Perhaps it provides some insight into why oil has risen to $108 a barrel, benefiting most of all the oil sheiks whom our taxpayer-supported military has kept in power?

Sure, the guy, by his own admission, is quite pathetic in all those small, squirrelly ways that have messed up the lives of other grand public figures before him, but why is an all-too-human sin, amply predicted in early Scripture, getting all this incredible media play as some sort of shocking event? The answer is that, while having precious little to do with serious corruption in public life, it does have a great deal to do with stoking flagging newspaper sales and television ratings.

The sad truth is that reporting on major corruption, say, the rationalizations of a president who has authorized torture, doesn’t cut it as a marketing bonanza. Just days before this grand exposé, the president vetoed a bill banning torture, and instead of being greeted with horrified disgust, the president’s deep denigration of this nation’s presumed ideals was met with a vast public yawn. Torture, unlike paid sex, doesn’t have legs as a news story.

Sex sells, and frankly it would seem far more exploitative for the news media to pimp this tale to the public than anything that VIP escort service did with the pitiable governor. His behavior was not really any more wretched than messing around with a young and vulnerable White House intern who didn’t even get paid for her efforts, yet Bill Clinton survived that one, whereas Spitzer was presumed dead on the arrival of this “news.” The New York Times, which editorially has supported the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, whose vast White House experience clearly did not include corralling her husband, now editorializes contemptuously about Spitzer’s betrayal of the public trust as well as about his exploitation of his “ashen-faced” wife, who, like Hillary, stood by her man.

The media consensus from the opening salvo was that Spitzer must resign and he will be thrown to the dogs, which is unfortunate because, like Clinton, he has done much valuable work in the public interest, and the outrage over this personal dereliction, tawdry in the extreme, is excessive. I certainly never wanted Clinton to resign, let alone be impeached, but why is Spitzer’s paying for sex more disgraceful than ripping it off? Yes, Spitzer allegedly broke a law that shouldn’t be on the books, and his resignation in disgrace is inevitable, but it bothers me that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney remain in office despite having violated enormously more serious laws.

Frankly, I don’t care what any of these politicians do in their personal lives as long as the practice is consensual, and the thousands of dollars that exchanged hands in this case would provide a presumption that the lady in question was indeed a willing partner in this commercial transaction. True, Spitzer is an outrageous hypocrite for having prosecuted others caught in what should not be considered criminal behavior, but since when is hypocrisy on the part of a politician, particularly as to sex, so shocking?

I wouldn’t have written this column had I not read The Wall Street Journal’s Page 1 news story headlined “Wall Street Cheers as Its Nemesis Plunges Into Crisis.” The article begins with the crowing statement “It’s Schadenfreude time on Wall Street” and goes on to quote those whom Spitzer went after over what should be considered the criminal greed that has predominated on Wall Street. It was Spitzer, as much as anyone, who sounded the alarm on the subprime mortgage crisis, the obscene payouts to CEOs who defrauded their shareholders and the other financial scandals that have brought the U.S. economy to its knees.

The best rule of thumb these days is that ordinary Americans should be mightily depressed over any news that Wall Street hustlers cheer, for they have been exposed as a dangerous pack of scoundrels quite willing to rob decent, hardworking people of their homes. And of course no one on Wall Street ever paid for sex.

Robert Scheer

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Faceless: Chasing the Data Shadow

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

Remote-controlled UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) scan the city for anti-social behaviour. Talking cameras scold people for littering the streets (in children’s voices). Biometric data is extracted from CCTV images to identify pedestrians by their face or gait. A housing project’s surveillance cameras stream images onto the local cable channel, enabling the community to monitor itself.

These are not projections of the science fiction film that this text discusses, but techniques that are used today in Merseyside¹, Middlesborough², Newham and Shoreditch³ in the UK. In terms of both density and sophistication, the UK leads the world in the deployment of surveillance technologies. With an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in place, its inhabitants are the most watched in the world.⁴ Many London buses have five or more cameras inside, plus several outside, including one recording cars that drive in bus lanes.

But CCTV images of our bodies are only one of many traces of data that we leave in our wake, voluntarily and involuntarily. Vehicles are tracked using Automated Number Plate Recognition systems, our movements revealed via location-aware devices (such as cell phones), the trails of our online activities recorded by Interent Service Providers, our conversations overheard by the international communications surveillance system Echelon, shopping habits monitored through store loyalty cards, individual purchases located using RFID (Radio-frequency identification) tags, and our meal preferences collected as part of PNR (flight passenger) data.⁵ Our digital selves are many dimensional, alert, unforgetting.

Increasingly, these data traces are arrayed and administered in networked structures of global reach. It is not necessary to posit a totalitarian conspiracy behind this accumulation – data mining is an exigency of both market efficiency and bureaucratic rationality. Much has been written on the surveillance society and the society of control, and it is not the object here to construct a general critique of data collection, retention and analysis. However it should be recognised that, in the name of efficiency and rationality – and, of course, “security” – an ever-increasing amount of data is being shared (also sold, lost and leaked⁶) between the keepers of such seemingly unconnected records as medical histories, shopping habits, and border crossings. Legal frameworks intended to safeguard a conception of privacy by limiting data transfers to appropriate parties exist. Such laws, and in particular the UK Data Protection Act (DPA, 1998)⁷, are the
subject of investigation of the film Faceless.

From Act to Manifesto
“I wish to apply, under the Data Protection Act, for any and all CCTV images
of my person held within your system. I was present at [place] from approximately
[time] onwards on [date].” (From the template for subject access requests used for Faceless)

For several years, ambientTV.NET⁸ conducted a series of exercises to visualise the data traces that we leave behind, to render them into experience and to dramatise them, to watch those who watch us. These experiments, scrutinising the boundary between public and private in post-9/11 daily life, were run under the title The Spy School. In 2002, the Spy School carried out an exercise to test the reach of the UK Data Protection Act as it applies to CCTV image data.

“The Data Protection Act 1998 seeks to strike a balance between the rights of individuals and the sometimes competing interests of those with legitimate reasons for using personal information. The DPA gives individuals certain rights regarding information held about them. It places obligations on those who process information (data controllers) while giving rights to those who are the subject of that data (data subjects). Personal information covers both facts and opinions about the individual.” ( Data Protection Act Factsheet available from the UK Information Commissioners Office, www.ico.gov.uk)

The original DPA (1984) was devised to ‘permit and regulate’ access to computerised personal data such as health and financial records. A later EU directive broadened the scope of data protection and the remit of the DPA (1998) extended to cover, amongst other data, CCTV recordings. In addition to the DPA, CCTV operators ‘must’ comply with other laws related to human rights, privacy, and procedures for criminal investigations, as specified in the CCTV Code of Practice (www.ico.gov.uk).

As the first subject access request letters were successful in delivering CCTV recordings for the Spy School, it then became pertinent to investigate how robust the legal framework was. The Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers was drawn up, permitting the use only of recordings obtained under the DPA. Art would be used to probe the law.

A legal readymade

“Vague spectres of menace caught on time-coded surveillance cameras justify an entire network of peeping vulture lenses. A web of indifferent watching devices, sweeping every street, every building, to eliminate the possibility of a past tense, the freedom to forget. There can be no highlights, no special moments:
a discreet tyranny of now has been established. Real time in its most pedantic form.” (Ian Sinclair: Lights out for the territory, Granta, London, 1998, p. 91)
Faceless is a CCTV science fiction fairy tale set in London, the city with the greatest density of surveillance cameras on earth. The film is made
under the constraints of the Manifesto – images are obtained from existing CCTV systems by the director/protagonist exercising her/his rights as a surveilled person under the DPA. Obviously the protagonist has to be present in every frame. To comply with privacy legislation, CCTV operators are obliged to render other people in the recordings unidentifiable – typically by erasing their faces, hence the faceless world depicted in the film. The scenario
of Faceless thus derives from the legal properties of CCTV images.

“RealTime orients the life of every citizen. Eating, resting, going to work, getting married – every act is tied to RealTime. And every act leaves a
trace of data – a footprint in the snow of noise… (Faceless, 2007)

The film plays in an eerily familiar city, where the reformed RealTime calendar has dispensed with the past and the future, freeing citizens from guilt and regret, anxiety and fear. Without memory or anticipation, faces have become vestigial – the population is literally faceless. Unimaginable happiness abounds – until a woman recovers her face…

There was no traditional shooting script: the plot evolved during the four-year long process of obtaining images. Scenes were planned in particular locations, but the CCTV recordings were not always obtainable, so the story had to be continually rewritten.

Faceless treats the CCTV image as an example of a legal readymade (objet trouvé). The medium, in the sense of raw materials that are transformed into artwork, is not adequately described as simply video or even captured light. More accurately, the medium comprises images that exist contingent on particular social and legal circumstances – essentially, images with a legal superstructure. Faceless interrogates the laws that govern the video surveillance of society and the codes of communication that articulate their operation, and in both its mode of coming into being and its plot, develops a specific critique.

Reclaiming the data body

Through putting the DPA into practice and observing the consequences over a long exposure, close-up, subtle developments of the law were made visible and its strengths and lacunae revealed.

“I can confirm there are no such recordings of yourself from that date, our recording system was not working at that time.” (11/2003)

Many data requests had negative outcomes because either the surveillance camera, or the recorder, or the entire CCTV system in question was not operational. Such a situation constitutes an illegal use of CCTV: the law demands that operators, “comply with the DPA by making sure [...] equipment works properly.” (CCTV Systems and the Data Protection Act 1998, available from www.ico.gov.uk)

In some instances, the non-functionality of the system was only revealed to its operators when a subject access request was made. In the case below, the CCTV system had been installed two years prior to the request.

“Upon receipt of your letter [...] enclosing the required £10 fee, I have been sourcing a company who would edit these tapes to preserve the privacy of other individuals who had not consented to disclosure. [...] I was informed [...] that all tapes on site were blank. [.. W]hen the engineer was called he confirmed that the machine had not been working since its installation.Unfortunately there is nothing further that can be done regarding the tapes, and I can only apologise for all the inconvenience you have been caused.” (11/2003)

Technical failures on this scale were common. Gross human errors were also readily admitted to:

“As I had advised you in my previous letter, a request was made to remove the tape and for it not to be destroyed. Unhappily this request was not carried out and the tape was wiped according with the standard tape retention policy employed by [deleted]. Please accept my apologies for this and assurance that steps have been taken to ensure a similar mistake does not happen again.” (10/2003)

Some responses, such as the following,were just mysterious (data request made after spending an hour below several cameras installed in a train carriage). “We have carried out a careful review of all relevant tapes and we confirm that we have no images of you in our control.” (06/2005) Could such a denial simply be an excuse not to comply with the costly demands of the DPA? “Many older cameras deliver image quality so poor that faces are unrecognisable. In such cases the operator fails in the obligation to run CCTV for the declared purposes.You will note that yourself and a colleague s faces look quite indistinct in the tape, but the picture you sent to us shows you wearing a similar fur coat, and our main identification had been made through this and your description of the location.” (07/2002)

To release data on the basis of such weak identification compounds the failure.

Much confusion is caused by the obligation to protect the privacy of third parties in the images. Several data controllers claimed that this relieved them of their duty to release images:

“[... W]e are not able to supply you with the images you requested because to do so would involve disclosure of information and images relating to other persons who can be identified from the tape and we are not in a position to obtain their consent to disclosure of the images. Further, it is simply not possible for us to eradicate the other images. I would refer you to section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998 and in particular Section 7 (4).” (11/2003)
Even though the section referred to states that it is:
“not to be construed as excusing a data controller from communicating so much of the information sought by the request as can be communicated without disclosing the identity of the other individual concerned, whether by the omission of names or other identifying particulars or otherwise.”

Where video is concerned, anonymisation of third parties is an expensive, labour-intensive procedure – one common technique is to occlude each head with a black oval. Data controllers may only charge the statutory maximum of £10 per request, though not all seemed to be aware of this:

“It was our understanding that a charge for production of the tape should be borne by the person making the enquiry, of course we will now be checking into that for clarification. Meanwhile please accept the enclosed video tape with compliments of [deleted], with no charge to yourself.” (07/2002)

Visually provocative and symbolically charged as the occluded heads are, they do not necessarily guarantee anonymity. The erasure of a face may be insufficient if the third party is known to the person requesting images. Only one data controller undeniably (and elegantly) met the demands of third party privacy, by masking everything but the data subject, who was framed in a keyhole. (This was an uncommented second offering; the first tape sent was unprocessed.) One CCTV operator discovered a useful loophole in the DPA:

“I should point out that we reserve the right, in accordance with Section 8(2) of the Data Protection Act, not to provide you with copies of the information requested if to do so would take disproportionate effort.” (12/2004)

What counts as disproportionate effort ? The gold standard was set by an institution whose approach was almost baroque – they delivered hard copies of each of the several hundred relevant frames from the timelapse camera, with third parties heads cut out, apparently with nail scissors.

Two documents had (accidentally?) slipped in between the printouts – one a letter from a junior employee tendering her resignation (was it connected with the beheading job?), and the other an ironic memo:

“And the good news – I enclose the £10 fee to be passed to the branch sundry income account.” (Head of Security, internal communication 09/2003)

From 2004, the process of obtaining images became much more difficult.

“It is clear from your letter that you are aware of the provisions of the Data Protection Act and that being the case I am sure you are aware of the principles in the recent Court of Appeal decision in the case of Durant vs. Financial Services Authority. It is my view that the footage you have requested is not personal data and therefore [deleted] will not be releasing to you the footage which you have requested.” (12/2004)

Under Common Law, judgements set precedents. The decision in the case Durant vs. Financial Service Authority (2003) redefined personal data ; since then, simply featuring in raw video data does not give a data subject the right to obtain copies of the recording. Only if something of a biographical nature is revealed does the subject retain the right.

“Having considered the matter carefully,we do not believe that the information we hold has the necessary relevance or proximity to you. Accordingly we do not believe that we are obligated to provide you with a copy pursuant to the Data Protection Act 1988. In particular, we would remark that the video is not biographical of you in any significant way.” (11/2004)

Further, with the introduction of cameras that pan and zoom, being filmed as part of a crowd by a static camera is no longer grounds for a data request.

“[T]he Information Commissioners office have indicated that this would not constitute your personal data as the system has been set up to monitor the area and not one individual.” (09/2005)

As awareness of the importance of data rights grows, so the actual provision of those rights diminishes:

“I draw your attention to CCTV systems and the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) Guidance Note on when the Act applies. Under the guidance notes our CCTV system is no longer covered by the DPA [because] we:

• only have a couple of cameras
• cannot move them remotely
• just record on video whatever the cameras pick up
• only give the recorded images to the police to investigate an incident on our premises” (05/2004)

Data retention periods (which data controllers define themselves) also constitute a hazard to the CCTV filmmaker:

“Thank you for your letter dated 9 November addressed to our Newcastle store, who have passed it to me for reply. Unfortunately, your letter was delayed in the post to me and only received this week. [...] There was nothing on the tapes that you requested that caused the store to retain the tape beyond the normal retention period and therefore CCTV footage from 28 October and 2 November is no longer available.” (12/2004)

Amidst this sorry litany of malfunctioning equipment, erased tapes, lost letters and sheer evasiveness, one CCTV operator did produce reasonable justification for not being able to deliver images:

“We are not in a position to advise whether or not we collected any images of you at [deleted]. The tapes for the requested period at [deleted] had been passed to the police before your request was received in order to assist their investigations into various activities at [deleted] during the carnival.” (10/2003)

In the shadow of the shadow

There is debate about the efficacy, value for money, quality of implementation, political legitimacy, and cultural impact of CCTV systems in the UK. While CCTV has been presented as being vital in solving some high profile cases (e.g. the 1999 London nail bomber, or the 1993 murder of James Bulger), at other times it has been strangely, publicly, impotent (e.g. the 2005 police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes). The prime promulgators of CCTV may have lost some faith: during the 1990s the Home Office spent 78% of it crime prevention budget on installing CCTV, but in 2005, an evaluation report by the same office concluded that, “the CCTV schemes that have been assessed had little overall effect on crime levels.”⁹

An earlier, 1992, evaluation reported CCTV’s broadly positive public reception due to its assumed effectiveness in crime control, acknowledging “public acceptance is based on limited, and partly inaccurate knowledge of the functions and capabilities of CCTV systems in public places.”¹⁰

By the 2005 assesment, support for CCTV still “remained high in the majority of cases” but public support was seen to decrease after implementation by as much as 20%. This “was found not to be the reflection of increased concern about privacy and civil liberties, as this remained at a low rate following the installation of the cameras,” but “that support for CCTV was reduced because the public became more realistic about its capabilities” to lower crime.

Concerns, however, have begun to be voiced about function creep and the rising costs of such systems, prompted, for example, by the disclosure that the cameras policing London’s Congestion Charge remain switched on outside charging hours and that the Metropolitan Police are to have live access to them, having been exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to do so.¹¹ As such realities of CCTV’s daily operation become more widely known, existing acceptance may be somewhat tempered.

Physical bodies leave data traces: shadows of presence, conversation, movement. Networked databases incorporate these traces into data bodies, whose behaviour and risk are priorities for analysis and commodification, by business and by government. The securing of a data body is supposedly necessary to secure the human body, either preventatively or as a forensic tool. But if the former cannot be assured, as is the case, what grounds are there for trust in the hollow promise of the latter? The all-seeing eye of the panopticon is not complete, yet. Regardless, could its one-way gaze ever assure an enabling conception of security?

There will be a screening of Faceless on Tuesday 6th May at Peacock Visual Art, Aberdeen. For details, see: www.peacockvisualarts.com

Notes
1. Police spy in the sky fuels ‘Big Brother’ fears, Philip Johnston, Telegraph, 23/05/2007, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/22/ndrone22.xmlThe Guardian has reported the MoD rents out an RAF-staffed spy plane for public surveillance, carrying reconnaissance equipment able to monitor telephone conversations on the ground. It can also be used for automatic number plate recognition: “Cheshire police recently revealed they were using the Islander [aircraft] to identify people speeding, driving when using mobile phones, overtaking on double white lines, or driving erratically.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2181393,00.html

2. ‘Talking’ CCTV scolds offenders, BBC News, 4 April 2007, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/6524495.stm

3. If the face fits, you’re nicked, Independent, Nick Huber, Monday, 1 April 2002, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/if-the-face-fits-youre-nicked-656092.html

Also see: “In 2001 the Newham system was linked to a central control room operated by the London Metropolitan Police Force. In April 2001 the existing CCTV system in Birmingham city centre was upgraded to smart CCTV. People are routinely scanned by both systems and have their faces checked against the police databases.” Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility: http://www.ccsr.cse.dmu.ac.uk/resources/general/ethicol/Ecv12no1.html

4. A Report on the Surveillance Society. For the Information Commissioner by the Surveillance Studies Network, September 2006, p.19. Available from www.ico.gov.uk

5. ‘e-Borders’ is a £1.2bn passenger-screening programme to be introduced in 2009 and complete by 2014. The single border agency, combining immigration, customs and visa checks, includes a £650m contract with consortia Trusted Borders for a passenger-screening IT system: anyone entering or leaving Britain are to give 53 pieces of information in advance of travel. This information, taken when a travel ticket is bought, will be shared among police, customs, immigration and the security services for at least 24 hours before a journey is due to take place. Ministers are also said to be considering the creation of a list of “disruptive” passengers. Trusted Borders consists of US military contractor Raytheon Systems who will work with Accenture, Detica, Serco, QinetiQ, Steria, Capgemini, and Daon. It is expected to cost travel companies £20million a year compiling the information. These costs will be passed on to customers via ticket prices, and the Government is considering introducing its own charge on travellers to recoup costs. A pilot of the e-borders technology, Project Semaphore, has already screened 29 million passengers. Similarly, Lockheed Martin, the biggest
defense contractor in the U.S, that undertakes intelligence work as well as contributing to the Trident programme in the UK, is bidding to run the UK 2011 census. New questions in the 2011 Census will include information about income and place of birth, as well as existing questions about languages spoken in the household and many other personal details. The Canadian Federal Government granted Lockheed Martin a $43.3 million deal to conduct its 2006 census. Public outcry resulted in only civil servants handling the actual data, and a new government task force being set up to monitor privacy during the Census. See: http://censusalert.org.uk/, http://www.vivelecanada.ca/staticpages/index.php/20060423184107361

6. Sales:“Personal details of all 44 million adults living in Britain could be sold to private companies as part of government attempts to arrest spiralling costs for the new national identity card scheme, set to get the go-ahead this week. [...] ministers have opened talks with private firms to pass on personal details of UK citizens for an initial cost of £750 each.”‘Ministers plan to sell your ID card details to raise cash’, Francis Elliott, Andy McSmith and Sophie Goodchild, Independent, Sunday 26 June 2005, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ministers-plan-to-sell-your-id-card-details-to-raise-cash-496602.htm

lLosses:In January 2008, hundreds of documents with passport photocopies, bank statements and benefit claims details from the Department of Work and Pensions were found on a road near Exeter airport, following their loss from a TNT courier vehicle. There were also documents relating to home loans and mortgage interest, and details of national insurance numbers, addresses and dates of birth.In November 2007, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) posted, unrecorded and unregistered via private courier TNT, computer discs containing personal information on 25 million people from families claiming child benefit, including the bank details of parents and the dates of birth and national insurance numbers of children. The discs were then lost. Also in November, HMRC admitted a CD containing the personal details of thousands of Standard Life pension holders has gone missing, leaving them at heightened risk of identity theft. The CD, which contained data relating to 15,000 Standard Life pensions customers including their names, National Insurance numbers and pension plan reference numbers was lost in transit from the Revenue office in Newcastle to the company’s headquarters in Edinburgh by ‘an external courier’.Thefts:In November 2007, MoD acknowledged the theft of a laptop computer containing the personal details of 600,000 Royal Navy, Royal Marines, and RAF recruits and of people who had expressed interest in joining, which contained, among other information, passport, and national insurance numbers and bank details.In October 2007, a laptop holding sensitive information was stolen from the boot of an HMRC car. A staff member had been using the PC for a routine audit of tax information from several investment firms. HMRC refused to comment on how many individuals may be at risk, or how many financial institutions have had their data stolen as well. BBC suggest the computer held data on around 400 customers with high value individual savings accounts (ISAs), at each of five different companies — including Standard Life and Liontrust. (In May, Standard Life sent around 300 policy documents to the wrong people.)

7. The full text of the DPA (1998) is at www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts1998/19980029.htm

8. ambientTV.NET : “a crucible led by Manu Luksch and Mukul Patel, conceives and produces interdisciplinary art projects, develops social and technical infrastructure, and promotes network architectures that allow explorations of alternatives to current socio-political and economic practice.”

9. Gill, M. and Spriggs, A.: Assessing the impact of CCTV. London: Home Office Research, Development and Statistics Directorate 2005, pp.60-61 www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hors292.pdf

10. www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/prgpdfs/fcpu35.pdf

11. Surveillance State Function Creep – London Congestion Charge “real-time bulk data” to be automatically handed over to the Metropolitan Police etc.

Manu Luksch and Mukul Patell

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China slams US human rights report

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

China on Wednesday voiced strong opposition to the US State Department’s 2007 Human Rights Report that criticizes China’s human rights conditions.

“China is willing to have dialogue and exchange of views with other countries on the human rights issue”, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang.

However, the spokesman stressed that the country sternly opposes to any intervention to the internal affairs of other countries in excuse of human rights concern.

Qin said, responding to the reporters’ question on the US “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2007″, that China respects and safeguards human rights and the Chinese government adheres to a policy that calls for “putting people first,” and has made great efforts to promote democracy and improve the human rights conditions under the rule of law.

“The efforts and remarkable achievement China has made on the issue have already been widely recognized by the international community”, the spokesman stressed.

Qin said the US annual report “again ignored basic facts”, and willfully distorted and groundlessly criticized China’s ethnic, religious and legal systems, which was “quite mistaken” and will never succeed in its attempt.

“We suggest the US government to stop depicting itself as a human rights watchdog and focus more on its own human rights problems”, Qin said, demanding the US to stop its wrongdoing such as issuing the so-called country reports on human rights practices, playing double standard on the human rights issue and interfere with the internal affairs of other countries.

Xinhua

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