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Iraq seeks changes to U.S. troops pact

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq demanded changes to a draft security pact with the United States Tuesday after it failed to win the support of its political leaders despite months of painstaking negotiations with Washington.

The announcement effectively reopens negotiations which had led last week to the unveiling of a draft that would require U.S. forces to leave Iraq by the end of 2011. The objections appear to be about details rather than the broad thrust of the pact.

“The cabinet has agreed that necessary amendments to the pact could make it nationally accepted,” government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters after a cabinet meeting.

“The cabinet will continue its meetings (in coming days), in which ministers will give their opinions and consult and provide the amendments suggested. Then this will be given to the American negotiating team.”

The announcement was an apparent reversal for Baghdad, which had previously described last week’s draft as a final text and said as recently as Saturday that it was unlikely to be renegotiated. Political leaders from most parties withheld their support for the text at a meeting Sunday.

The draft would require U.S. troops to leave Iraq after 2011 unless Baghdad asks them to stay. It also allows Iraqi courts try U.S. service members accused of serious crimes while off duty.

It would mean that the foreign troops, which now operate under a U.N. Security Council mandate, would function for the first time under the authority of the elected government in Baghdad. Both sides call it a milestone for Iraqi sovereignty.

But some Iraqi politicians have expressed reservations over details such as the mechanism for holding trials of U.S. troops.

Only Kurdish groups have so far given the text full support.

Humam Hamoudi, a leading member of parliament from the Shi’ite alliance, said that among those voicing doubts in recent days was Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who has yet to speak about the pact in public.

“The prime minister said: what (the Americans) have given with the right hand they have taken away with the left hand,” Hamoudi told a news conference. “For example, they said the U.S. forces will withdraw from towns by June 2009 if the security situation permits that. But who will decide that?”

Maliki’s Shi’ite rivals — followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr — strongly oppose the pact, as does the leadership of mainly Shi’ite Iran, which has influence among Iraqi Shi’ites and says the pact would give U.S. forces a long-term foothold in the region.

A senior, non-Shi’ite government source said the delay was prompted by Shi’ite politicians under Iranian pressure.

“It seems there was a (Shi’ite) alliance decision to reject it,” he said. “I can only explain these Shi’ite delaying tactics by Iranian pressure. There’s no other explanation, especially as it’s the Shi’ites who negotiated it in the first place.”

U.S. officials say they are happy with the current draft and have not said whether they would be willing to renegotiate it.

“(The Iraqis) are looking at the text, they are having discussions about it and that is part of the process,” said U.S. embassy spokeswoman Susan Ziadeh.

Officials in the administration of President George W. Bush briefed members of Congress — including the two main presidential candidates — about the contents of the draft on Friday. The pact does not require congressional approval, but the administration is seeking broad political support for it.

Iraq’s Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari, a member of one of the Kurdish groups that backs the draft, acknowledged its troubled reception Monday and said the pact was now unlikely to pass before the U.S. presidential election on November 4.

(Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim; writing by Peter Graff; editing by Keith Weir)

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Documents Show Tobacco Industry Conspired Against Airline Smoking Ban

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

PR Watch | An analysis of tobacco industry documents published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) tells how the German cigarette industry worked to stop Lufthansa, the flagship airline of Germany, from banning smoking on its domestic flights in the early 1990s.

Documents also reveal that German tobacco companies worked to keep cigarette vending machines accessible to children, stop higher taxes on cigarettes, block a ban on tobacco advertising and recruit doctors and scientists to serve as “expert witnesses” to testify against the health dangers of tobacco.

One of the paper’s authors, Martina Pötschke-Langer, who heads the World Health Organization’s Collaboration Centre for Tobacco Control at the German Cancer Research Centre in Heidelberg, said “The campaign against Lufthansa’s non-smoking flights appears to be especially vicious, since pressure was applied to the government as well as to public opinion via the mass media.” Lufthansa started working to ban smoking on German domestic flights in 1989, but wasn’t successful until 1996.

See British Medical Journal (sub req’d), October 1, 2008

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Powell Lies About Iraq War after Endorsing Obama

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

By Matthew Rothschild |

Save your praise of Colin Powell.

Because while he was endorsing Barack Obama, he was busy rewriting the history of the Iraq War and perpetuating blatant lies about his role and George Bush’s role in the lead-up.

At a press conference after his appearance on Meet the Press Sunday, Powell responded to a question about his involvement in the decisions around the Iraq War.
http://www.cnn.com (starts at about 2:48)

Here was his answer: “My role has been very, very straightforward,” he said. “I wanted to avoid a war. The President agreed with me. We tried to do that and couldn’t get it to the U.N.”

There are at least four falsehoods in that little passage.

First, Powell’s role wasn’t very straightforward. While he did initially oppose the war, his deceitful testimony at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, prepared the battlefield for war.

Second, Bush never agreed with Powell about the need to avoid the war but was always fast peddling toward war.

Third, Bush and Powell did not go to the U.N. to try to avoid war. They went there to get the Security Council to greenlight the war.

And finally, what they couldn’t get through the U.N. Security Council was not an effort to avoid the war. A majority on the Security Council was begging for more time for the weapons inspectors, who had found nothing, to continue to do their work.

It was the U.N. that wanted to avoid war. It was Bush and Powell who were in a hurry to start the war.

Powell may be getting heaps of praise from the liberal punditocracy for breaking with his party on Obama. But he has not broken with his party on the Iraq War. In fact, he’s still trying to cover up Bush’s and his own shameful acts that precipitated the war.

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More than 16.5 million people were placed at risk of identity theft

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

More than 16.5 million people were placed at risk of identity theft, after their details were lost or stolen from financial services firms, Computer Weekly has learned.

The figures, obtained by Computer Weekly under the Freedom of Information Act, show more than one in four UK consumers have been placed at risk by financial firms last year.

The disclosure has sparked calls from opposition MPs for legislation to force financial services companies to report incidents to the Financial Services Authority.

Financial services companies reported 56 incidents of lost or stolen data to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) last year, Computer Weekly has learned.

Investigations by the watchdog revealed the firms had lost 16.57 million customer records in a total of 39 security breaches.

But the number of customers affected may be even greater. The FSA identified another 14 incidents where it was unable to determine the number of compromised records. And experts warned there is no guarantee firms always come clean to the regulator.

“If consumers find their banking information or identity is lost then the costs are high,” said security consutant Graham Cluley of Sophos. “If identity thieves get hold of the information then consumers’ financial circumstances could be in a state of crisis.”

Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Brokenshire called for greater controls on the security of personal data.

“With more and more people becoming the victims of identity fraud and other scams using personal information, we need to raise the bar on data security risk management,” he said.

The data protection watchdog, the Office of the Information Commissioner, said it was disappointing some firms were still failing to adequately protect their data.

“It is disappointing that some organisations are still failing to take their data protection responsibilities seriously,” said a spokesman.

“We have repeatedly called on chief executives to ensure that the security of individuals’ details is taken very seriously.”

An FSA spokeswoman said: “We expect firms to tell us about significant data loss and would take a dim view if we found out later that a firm had failed to notify us. We said in our data security report that it is possible that some data losses go unreported.”

The regulator refused to name the companies involved but has advised them to notify customers.

Security consultant Matthew Pemble, a former incident response manager at a major high street bank, said: “This figure is startling but we need to concentrate, not necessarily on the number, but on whether this is a high risk. A lot of high-scale losses of data occur when data has just gone missing rather than ending up in the hands of fraudsters.”

Fifty six data loss cases were investigated by the Financial Crime Operations team at the FSA in 2007, according to FOI statistics obtained by Computer Weekly.

Incident Number of occurences

Lost or stolen laptops containing customer data 19

External attack on computer system or database containing customer data 2

Customer data sent to wrong recipient 7

Lost CD/other media (USB stick, microfiche, back-up tapes etc) containing customer data 14

Multiple customers’ statements or credit cards lost or stolen in the post 4

Stolen briefcase containing customer data 1

Stolen filing cabinet containing customer data 1

Multiple customer data stolen or removed from firm without authorisation by an employee or contractor 4

Hardware disposed of without being adequately cleaned of customer data 1

Stolen server containing customer data 1

Investigation of general data security systems and controls weakness 1

Insecure disposal of confidential paper 1

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Porn protest at Westminster against new ‘thought crime’

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Models wearing chains, stockings and gags have been led around Westminster in protest at laws to make owning “extreme pornography” illegal.

From next year, possession of images such as those showing a threat to life or serious injury to a person’s genitals will be banned.

Demonstrators opposite Parliament described this as the government interfering with people’s sex lives.

Ministers argue the law is needed to cope with more use of internet images.

Traffic hold-up

The demonstration, organised by the Consenting Adult Action Network, was led by photographer Ben Westwood, son of fashion designer Dame Vivienne Westwood.

He paraded two “slaves” - models called Jade and Dolly Blowup - across the road from Westminster underground station and around Parliament Square, with police having to hold up the traffic.

A group of about 20 marchers carried placards with messages including “No to thought crime”, “Penalise crime, not sex” and “Depiction harms no-one”.

Mr Westwood said to the BBC: “Why are the government doing this? I think they are just mucking about.

“They want to seem as though they are doing something to help society, that they must seem strong on law and order.

“Coming from a government that lied about going into war in Iraq, that seems strange.

“There are more important issues to be debated than this.”

‘Worrying’

Tourists, drivers and workers in suits looked bemused as the models were led around Parliament Square, passing by statues of Nelson Mandela and several past British prime ministers.

Mr Westwood said: “I think that people might be worrying that what they have got in their video collection might be breaking the law. People are going to get a bit nervous.

“I hope our demonstration does change some minds.”

The Criminal Justice Act, which was passed earlier this year, shifts criminal responsibility from the producers “of violent and extreme pornography” to consumers.

This, the government says, is necessary to deal with material obtained via the internet from websites based abroad.

‘Unfair’

The maximum sentence for possession will be three years in prison.

Campaigners say the new law risks criminalising thousands of people who use violent pornographic images as part of consensual sexual relationships.

Bruce Argue, of the group Esinem, said: “We want to draw attention to what is an unfair and ill-thought-out law.”

The Ministry of Justice spokeswoman says: “Pornographic material which depicts necrophilia, bestiality or violence that is life threatening or likely to result in serious injury to the anus, breasts or genitals has no place in a modern society and should not be tolerated.”

The act comes into force on 1 January.

BBC

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Microsoft to ban freedom of speech?

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

By James Sherwood

Microsoft has come over all PC - gedddit?!?!? - by filing a patent application for technology that’ll stop you from swearing online.

In its “Automatic censorship of audio data for broadcast” patent application, the firm describes how a real-time or batch-mode automatic censor could be employed to filter out “undesired words or phrases”.

MS’ PC filter at work?

Exactly which products could make use of Microsoft’s PC-tech hasn’t been mentioned, but it’s reasonable to assume that Xbox Live could be one of the software giant’s primary targets.

Microsoft stated that if, say, a gamer’s words are likely to match those listed in its library of undesirable speech, the input audio data stream will be altered so that the offending word or phrase is made “unintelligible or inaudible”. The application also mentions automatic replacement of undesired words with acceptable words or phrases.

Based on the description, it sounds like the technology will either change your portrayal of a rival gamer as a ‘d**k-faced, motherf***er’ to a ‘Richard, who was nice to his mum’, or just bleep it out altogether.

Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn’t listed a top ten of its most offensive words. But ‘red’, ‘ring’, ‘of’ and ‘death’ must be quite high up the list.

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VIDEO: Centuries of British freedoms being ‘broken’ by security state

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

Centuries of British civil liberties risk being broken by the relentless pressure from the ‘security state’, the country’s top prosecutor has warned.

By Christopher Hope

Outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Ken Macdonald warned that the expansion of technology by the state into everyday life could create a world future generations “can’t bear”.

In his wide-ranging speech, Sir Ken appeared to condemn a series of key Government policies, attacking terrorism proposals - including 42 day detention - identity card plans and the “paraphernalia of paranoia”.

Instead, he said, the Government should insist that “our rights are priceless” and that: “The best way to face down those threats is to strengthen our institutions rather than to degrade them.”

The intervention will be seen as a significant setback to Home Secretary Jacqui Smith who last week saw her plans to lock up terror suspects for 42 days before being charged thrown out by the House of Lords.

It is also a blow to Miss Smith’s plans for a super-database to record the details of millions of people’s online presence, including emails, SMS messages and Facebook profiles as well as the controversial identity card programme.

Sir Ken chose to issue his tough warning about the perils of the “Big Brother” state in his final speech as DPP, days before he leaves his post at the end of this month.

He warned that MPs should “take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can’t bear”.

Sir Ken, who has held the post for the past five years, said: “We need to take very great care not to fall into a way of life in which freedom’s back is broken by the relentless pressure of a security State.

“Technology gives the State enormous powers of access to knowledge and information about each of us, and the ability to collect and store it at will.”

At the last estimate, there were 4,285,000 cctv cameras in Britain.

Last week Miss Smith said the Government was examining ways to “collect and store’’ records of phone calls, emails and internet traffic.

Plans for the new snooper databases, which will be held by the Government or by phone companies, will be included in a draft Communications Data Bill, which will go out for consultation in the new year.

The new law was necessary to allow officials to keep track of potential terrorists who use social networks, such as Facebook, to plot attacks free from detection, she said.

But Sir Ken warned that increasing the powers of the state in law meant that any new powers would be “with us forever”.

He said: “It is in the nature of State power that decisions taken in the next few months and years about how the State may use these powers, and to what extent, are likely to be irreversible.

“They will be with us forever. And they in turn will be built upon. So we should take very great care to imagine the world we are creating before we build it. We might end up living with something we can’t bear.”

Sir Ken warned Parliament to resist “special courts, vetted judges and all the other paraphernalia of paranoia” in the fight against terrorism.

That risked copying “the Guantanamo model…. which says that we cannot afford to give people their rights, that rights are too expensive because of the nature of the threats we are facing”.

He added: “It is difficult to see who will maintain a cool head if governments do not. Or who will protect our Constitution if governments unwittingly disarm it.”

Britain was right to tackle terrorism and other “medieval delusions” through the courts, he said. This was “in accordance with our constitution”.

Miss Smith is facing a major battle to force through plans for the legislation, which could also force people who use pay as you go mobile phones to register their identities with phone companies.

Last week, Lord Carlisle of Berriew, the Government’s independent review of anti-terrorism laws, said the “raw idea’’ of the database was “awful’’ and called for controls to stop government agencies from abusing it.

There has been criticism after councils have used powers which were designed to tackled terrorism to spy on local people.

It is thought that staunch opposition from within Whitehall to the plan forced Miss Smith to abandon hopes to unveil a bill in the Queen’s Speech next month.

The Tories’ shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve, said: “Sir Ken has been at the forefront of our counter-terrorism effort for several years, so he knows the security challenges we face.

“This Government’s approach has all too often proved cavalier - unjustified powers, sprawling databases and excessive use of surveillance powers risk undermining both our security and our way of life.”

Sir Ken’s replacement from the end of this month is Keir Starmer, QC, 45, who comes from the Doughty Street chambers, and who made his name for his ground-breaking human rights work.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, said; “Sir Ken has sounded a clarion call for freedom. He is absolutely right to highlight the dangers of a Leviathan state that wants to know all and control all about the citizens it should serve and not master.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The Government agrees with the Director of Public Prosecution that technology and Communications Data is critically important in tackling all forms of serious crime as well as in the fight against terrorism.

“The Government also agrees that care is needed to agree what safeguards are needed, in addition to the many we have in place already, to provide a solid legal framework which protects civil liberties.

“That is why the Home Secretary made it very clear last week that the Government will consult widely with the public and all interested parties to set out emerging problems with technology, the important capability gaps that we need to address in collecting data and to look at the possible solutions.”

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Bush Decides to Keep Guantánamo Open

Tuesday, October 21st, 2008

By STEVEN LEE MYERS

WASHINGTON — Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to senior administration officials.

Mr. Bush’s top advisers held a series of meetings at the White House this summer after a Supreme Court ruling in June cast doubt on the future of the American detention center. But Mr. Bush adopted the view of his most hawkish advisers that closing Guantánamo would involve too many legal and political risks to be acceptable, now or any time soon, the officials said.

The administration is proceeding on the assumption that Guantánamo will remain open not only for the rest of Mr. Bush’s presidency but also well beyond, the officials said, as the site for military tribunals of those facing terrorism-related charges and for the long prison sentences that could follow convictions.

The effect of Mr. Bush’s stance is to leave in place a prison that has become a reviled symbol of the administration’s fight against terrorism, and to leave another contentious foreign policy decision for the next president.

Both presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama, have called for closing Guantánamo and could reverse Mr. Bush’s policy, though probably not quickly since neither has spelled out precisely how to deal with some of the thorniest legal consequences of shutting the prison.

Mr. Bush’s aides insist that the president’s desire is still to close Guantánamo when conditions permit, and the White House has not announced any decision. But administration officials say that even Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the most powerful advocates for closing the prison, have quietly acquiesced to the arguments of more hawkish advisers, including Vice President Dick Cheney.

A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s internal deliberations said it would be much harder to fulfill a campaign promise to close the prison than either candidate has stated. “This may not be the ideal answer, but what we are trying to do is work with the system we’ve got,” the official said.

Mr. Bush’s decision followed a review of the implications of the Supreme Court’s ruling in June that the 250 detainees at Guantánamo have the right to make habeas corpus appeals.

The ruling, Boumediene v. Bush, undercut a core rationale for keeping the prison off American soil, raising expectations that Mr. Bush might at last move to close it, a prospect he first raised in June 2006, when he said, “I’d like to close Guantánamo, but I also recognize that we’re holding some people that are darn dangerous, and that we better have a plan to deal with them in our courts.”

In August 2007, Mr. Bush said “it should be a goal of the nation to shut down Guantánamo,” adding, “But it is not as easy a subject as some may think on the surface.”

Mr. Bush has harshly criticized the ruling, including at least twice in fund-raising speeches for Republicans. When he met with his senior security advisers, no options for closing the prison were on the agenda, the administration officials said.

“This is an administration that believes very, very strongly in certain things it has done,” said Matthew Waxman, a professor at Columbia Law School who served in the Department of Defense overseeing detainee polices, “and Guantánamo is one that some administration officials at high levels believe was right all along.”

Mr. Cheney and his chief of staff, David S. Addington, have made it clear in the internal discussions this year that keeping Guantánamo open under a new president would validate the administration’s decisions dealing with terrorists, the officials said.

Closing Guantánamo would most likely mean abandoning prosecutions against some detainees and risking the release of others who still pose a threat to the United States and its allies.

An administration official who favors closing the prison suggested that the next president might reconsider after having access to the classified evidence that the Bush administration believes justifies the indefinite detention of dozens of detainees.

“The new president will gnash his teeth and beat his head against the wall when he realizes how complicated it is to close Guantánamo,” the official said.

Mr. McCain has suggested moving the detainees to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., home of the Army’s prison. His remarks prompted a letter in June from the two Republican senators from Kansas, Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts, objecting to the idea on a variety of grounds.

Mr. McCain’s campaign did not respond to requests for comments about Guantánamo. The Obama campaign declined to comment specifically, but in his platform, Mr. Obama promises to abolish military tribunals and conduct a review to determine which prisoners to prosecute, which to hold under the laws of war and which to release. His proposal does not specify where detainees would be held.

Other sites that have been mentioned include the United States Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C., and the United States Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility, known as supermax, in Florence, Colo.

Beyond political opposition in those regions, the officials involved in the administration’s discussions said that bringing the detainees to American soil would allow additional legal challenges beyond habeas corpus and raise the prospect that judges could free them in the United States.

The prospect of that became more acute on Oct. 7, when a federal judge ordered the release of 17 Uighurs from China who were swept up in 2002 and held in Guantánamo. The administration had already dropped efforts to declare the men as enemy combatants, but refused to return them to China because of concerns about the treatment they would receive there, trying unsuccessfully to find a third country to accept them.

The judge, Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court, ordered the detainees brought to his court in Washington to free them, but the Justice Department appealed and won a stay.

One official said that the Justice Department’s arguments — that the 17 men remained dangerous — complicated diplomatic efforts to find a country other than China willing to accept them.

The government’s lawyers filed the arguments for a continued stay on Thursday, and on Monday a federal appeals court refused to allow the Uighurs’ immediate release into the United States to give it time to hear the government’s full appeal.

Since the Supreme Court decision in June, Mr. Bush and his aides have remained focused on legal strategies for coping with the wave of habeas corpus appeals now flooding the federal court system and seeking new legislation that would allow the government to continue to hold foreign terrorists without charge.

A version of that legislation was introduced by Senators Lindsay Graham, Republican of South Carolina, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, two of Mr. McCain’s closest friends and advisers. But the legislation stalled and appears unlikely to be adopted during the current session of Congress.

The senior administration official involved in the deliberations said that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not grant judges the authority to release detainees in the United States, comparing it to allowing an illegal immigrant to live in the country legally without legal standing.

That official and others said that officials from the Department of Homeland Security, along with the Justice Department, have argued most vigorously for keeping Guantánamo open, largely because a ruling like the Uighur case could result in foreign fighters being freed into American communities.

“The federal courts have an absolute right to release these people, but the court didn’t say where, and what does that mean, to release them,” the senior official said.

“And in our view, the Supreme Court didn’t say, and the district courts don’t have the power, to order the United States to bring somebody from a foreign country — a foreigner — into the United States in complete disregard for our immigration law.”

Advocates for closing Guantánamo argued that Mr. Bush is still following the same flawed logic that has made it a reviled symbol, especially abroad.

Mr. Waxman, the former defense official, acknowledged the difficulties of closing the prison and the risks involved, but he argued that after seven years, a radical change was required.

“Whatever consequence they’re worried about,” he said of the administration’s concerns, “has to be weighed against the damage we continue to incur by keeping the status quo.”

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