The Changing World: China Considers Lifting Ban on Social Media

The world is a global village and the trend if not properly handled could consume a nation with the spread of social media. The precarious situation and vulnerability could 'destabilize' any nation who is not a member of the game being played by the powers who control the media; mainstream and social. The various revelations of Edward Snowden as well as Wikileaks have shown that nowhere is really fully safe from espionage activities.

An example of such fears in a country like China is the New York Times op-ed on Premier Wen Jiabao's family in 2012 which was greeted by massive ill-feelings from Chinese officials after the paper reported that several of Mr. Wen's close relatives had control over vast, secret assets worth at least $2.7bn. Beyond blocking websites Chinese authorities also monitor internet activity by individuals.

Investments and businesses are two formidable determinants of nations' behaviours as regards media freedom; mainstream or social. Investors want a relatively stable country with good records of press and people's freedom. Russia despite being known for its clampdown on dissenting voices is also dancing to the tune of change. Moscow is realising that the voice of the people is crucial in the scheme of things in a nation. Protests are now organised with little or no police intervention.

With the changes in the world, China seems to be considering lifting a ban on social media and major foreign news websites in a bid to provide comfortable living for western investors. The sites will be open only in the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ), covering 28 square kilometers of the Pudong district. It is set to open for business on September 29. It is hoped to attract foreign investment and business, increase economic activity and inflows into China, as well as to boost massive economic reform.

The rest of Mainland China will not be given such an access. In many places on Mainland China, access to Facebook and Twitter have been blocked and both banned since 2009 due to mass-scale riots in the western city of Urumqi in Xinjiang province. Dozens of major news websites are also inaccessible as China’s government censors and blocks websites it considers inappropriate or politically sensitive.

Earlier in September, China's top court adopted a judicial interpretation allowing any internet user engaged in disseminating "false information" or "slanderous comments" to face up to three years in prison. Those found guilty of using "false online information" to provoke "serious public disorder" could face a prison sentence of 10 years. More recently, prosecutors are now obliged to open investigations if "defamatory" comments were "viewed by at least 5,000 internet users or have a re-tweet up to 500 or more times."

With the continuous efforts to draw in business experts and investments, things might be changing gradually for the Chinese and in China. The need  to make living conducive and convenient and move in line with globalisation and global demands led to the opening up of China initially in the late 70s. The current trend could begin to have impacts on its political spectrum and outlook as more and more Chinese demand reforms at home.

Israel to Recruit Students to Serve as Undercover Agents to Monitor Social Media

It is becoming extremely precarious to air views on Social Media or in any other platform like the mainstream medium of mobile phones with the continuous espionage network hovering around the earth surface massively coming from Washington and Tel Aviv. First it was Julian Assange in collaboration with Bradley Manning that revealed our vulnerability. Later, Edward Snowden came. This was even closely followed by the action of the Israeli students against perceived 'anti-semitism' in France in which twitter was sued.

Israel is set to recruit students to work undercover in "covert units" at universities. The students will post messages on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on the Israeli government’s behalf – without identifying themselves as government agents. The students participating in the project will be part of the public diplomacy arm of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s office. Leaders of the “covert units” will receive full scholarships in return for their online public diplomacy (hasbara).

The Prime Minister’s Office is looking to invest up to 3 million shekels ($840,000) to recruit, organize and fund the activities of hundreds of university students, Haaretz reported. Sources in the Prime Minister’s Office told the newspaper that the main subjects that the campus-based units will deal with are diplomatic- and security-related issues, efforts to combat boycotts of Israel, anti-Semitism and the de-legitimization of Israel. The students will focus on Israel’s democratic values, freedom of religion, pluralism and “other subjects that give expression to the Israeli government’s public diplomacy policy.”

A member of the Israeli Knesset, Dov Lipman, and the Prime Minister’s Office’s director for interactive media, Danny Seaman, revealed the new initiative during a meeting of the Knesset’s Diaspora Affairs Committee last month.

The Prime Minister’s Office is planning to have Israel's student union recruit up to 550 students with knowledge of foreign languages from Israel’s seven universities. The student union is to publicize the project among tens of thousands of students, and is to provide computers and work space for a project headquarters at all university campuses. “With social media, you can’t wait,” an unnamed official involved in the effort told the Jerusalem Post.

“We will get authoritative information out and make sure it goes viral,” the official said. “We won’t leave negative stories out there online without a response, and we will spread positive messages. What we are doing is revolutionary. We are putting public diplomacy in the hands of the public. The covert units will be set up at each university and structured in a semi-military fashion. While groups will take directions from staff at the Prime Minister’s Office, the government says that officially they will be politically independent.

“The idea requires that the state’s role not be highlighted and therefore it is necessary to insist on major involvement by the students themselves without any political link [or] affiliation,” Seaman said. Leaders of covert units will receive full scholarships from the Prime Minister’s Office, which will fund a total of 2.78 million shekels ($780,000) in scholarships for the program in the upcoming academic year, Haaretz reported.

“The national public diplomacy unit in the PMO places an emphasis on social network activity,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement. “As part of this, a new pro-Israel public diplomacy infrastructure of students on Israeli campuses is being established that will assist in advancing and disseminating content on the social networks, particularly to international audiences.” According to details provided to Israeli media, a government liaison officer for Israel advocacy will oversee the dissemination of “rapid responses” from Israeli officials to respond to news events, and coordinate with other government bodies that deal with public diplomacy, including the Israeli Defense Force.

The IDF has recently asserted a stronger, at times controversial presence on social media with mixed results. The new program may well seek to address perceived deficiencies in the way that Israel communicates with the world online. "The perception dominating the online discourse was that the IDF had embarked on an unjustified attack,” said Tomer Simon, an Israeli researcher who studied social networking activity during the conflict.

Last year, during Israel’s eight-day Operation Pillar of Defense, an incursion launched into the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip in response to rocket attacks, the Palestinian group was widely seen as having won the war of words on online media. Haaretz reported that in the fallout of the military operation, the hashtag #GazaUnderAttack with 170,000 mentions easily surpassed Israel’s own #IsraelUnderFire, with a comparably meager 25,000 mentions.

RT

After Snowden; Americans worry less about Terrorism, more about being Caged

For the first time in almost a decade, the majority of Americans are more concerned about the government infringing on their civil liberties than about a potential terrorist attack, according to a new poll by Pew Research.

US citizens have traditionally responded to similar polls by saying the government has not yet gone far enough to protect the country from threats. But new results from Pew Research Center reveal that public opinion has drastically shifted - especially in the wake of NSA spying programmes leaked by Edward Snowden nearly two months ago.

Pew reported that “a majority of Americans – 56 per cent – say that federal courts fail to provide adequate limits on telephone and internet data [which] the government is collecting as part of its anti-terrorism efforts.” An even larger percentage – 70 per cent – believes the government uses the data for “purposes other than investigating terrorism.” Another 63 per cent believe “the government is also gathering information about the content of communications.”

“Overall, 47 per cent say their greater concern about government anti-terrorism policies is that they have gone too far in restricting the average person’s civil liberties, while 35 per cent say they are more concerned that the policies have not gone far enough to protect the country,” the authors of the poll wrote. “This is the first time in Pew research polling that more have expressed concern over civil liberties than protection from terrorism since the question was first asked in 2004.”

Prior to Snowden’s disclosures, a 2010 Pew poll found that 58 per cent of Americans felt the government had “not gone far enough to protect the country,” although the NSA surveillance was already underway at that time without the public’s knowledge.

The sea change was reflected in Congress last week when a bill to cut funding to the NSA surveillance programme failed to pass by a mere seven votes. Both Democrats and Republicans skirted US President Barack Obama and top leaders of both parties, in an attempt to use legislation as an oversight to the burgeoning intelligence gathering.

Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and an author of the original Patriot Act of 2001 which authorized the spying, has publicly advocated repealing the law. He was among those in Congress who voted for an amendment to defund NSA programmes.

“The time has come to stop it, and the way we stop it is to approve this amendment,” he said, adding days later that he had not planned on speaking. “I was able to say what needed to be said in a minute.”

While even lawmakers who are in favour of the NSA’s indiscriminate and warrantless surveillance might recognize that more oversight is inevitable, Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian has suggested that top Democrats and Republicans benefit financially from the unpopular laws.

“But with a few rare and noble exceptions, the Intelligence Committees in both house of Congress are filled with precisely those members who are most slavishly beholden to, completely captured by, the intelligence community over which they supposedly serve as watchdogs,” Greenwald wrote in a column on Monday.

“Many receive large sums of money from the defense and intelligence industries…in particular, the two chairs of those committees – Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House – are such absolute loyalists to the NSA and the national security state generally that it is usually impossible to distinguish their behavior, mindset and comments from those of NSA officials.”

RT

On Snowden: United States has no Functioning Democracy ~Jimmy Carter

Former US President Jimmy Carter lambasted the whitewashed US intelligence methods as undemocratic and described Edward Snowden’s NSA leak as “beneficial” for the country. Jimmy Carter was President of the United States from 1977 to 1981.

After leaving office, he founded the Carter Centre, an NGO advocating human rights. The ex-president’s human rights credentials won him Nobel Peace Prize in 2002. The Carter Centre or Foundation was very instrumental and active in assisting South Sudan when still under the grip and oppression of Sudan.

Carter lashed out at the US political system when the issue of the previously top-secret NSA surveillance program was touched upon at the Atlantic Bridge meeting on Tuesday in Atlanta, Georgia. "America has no functioning democracy at this moment," Carter said, according to Der Spiegel. Carter has also criticised America's use of drones heavily labelling it a notorious violation of rights.

He believes the spying-scandal is undermining democracy around the world, as people become increasingly suspicious of US internet platforms, such as Google and Facebook. While such mediums have normally been associated with freedom of speech and have recently become a major driving force behind emerging democratic movements, fallout from the NSA spying scandal has dented their credibility.

It’s not the first time Carter has criticized US intelligence policies. In a previous interview with CNN, he said the NSA leaks signified that “the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far." He added that although Snowden violated US law, he may have ultimately done good for the country.  

"I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial." Jimmy Carter also opined upon the election of Barack Obama that America's democratic standard is somehow intolerant. He said "the basic problem among whites in this country is that they can't just figure out why a black man should be President".

Latin American Countries to Recall Ambassadors from Selected European Countries

Leaders in Latin American took a very drastic decision in the wake of the mistreatment of one of their own by the symphatisers of the United States over the Snowden saga. The leaders are to summon the European ambassadors for countries who blocked their airspace to Bolivian President Evo Morales and demand an explanation. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Venezuela, on Friday decided to call their representatives in Spain, France, Italy and Portugal for consultations.

Bolivia demanded apologies from the four European nations for the July 2 dramatic airspace blockade and detour to Vienna, when Morales' plane was blocked from entering the airspace above several countries. The president was flying home from a meeting of natural gas producers in Moscow.

European governments are believed to have acted on suspicions that fugitive US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, who had been in diplomatic impasse in the Moscow airport, was on board the plane. The decision to take this stance was made during a summit of the Mercosur trade bloc. Bolivia is in the process of becoming a full member of Mercosur but is currently an associate.

"We emphatically reject the interception of telecommunications and espionage actions in our nations, as they constitute a violation of human rights, of the right of our citizens to privacy and information,'' Mercosur leaders said in the summit's final statement. "It's unacceptable behaviour that breaches our sovereignty and harms relations between nations."

The South American group also defended the right of asylum after Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua recently offered it to Snowden. Washington has put pressure on regional presidents to block Snowden from finding refuge in Latin America. "We repudiate any activity that could undermine the authority of States to grant and fully implement the right of asylum," the statement said.

"We reject any attempt in pressuring, harassment or criminalisation of a State over a country's sovereign right to grant asylum." Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro said the four Mercosur trace bloc nations will recall their own ambassadors in the European countries involved for consultations over the incident. The actions of the four European countries were "unfounded, discriminatory and arbitrary, in a flagrant violation of the precepts of international law," Almagro said.

He said the summit found that Morales was subjected to "neo-colonial practices." "It is an incredible, unfriendly and hostile action that violates human rights and affects the freedom of transit and movement and the immunity that every head of state enjoys," Mercosur leaders concluded, according to Almagro.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff said that the European actions were offensive to each of the leaders at the summit as Latin American presidents, and vowed "concrete and effective actions, be it with regard to the governments or the ambassadors of those countries." According to US National Security Agency (NSA) documents leaked by Snowden that the United States spied on many countries around the world including Mercosur members Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela.

Snowden was granted audience by Human Rights Watch in Moscow. He hinted that he would prefer to be in Russia where he is safe because of the hurdles of and dangers in flying to Latin America. He earlier wrote to 21 countries for asylum and has received no positive response. Wikileaks later revealed he wrote to additional six.

Reports from Moscow reveal Russia is yet to formally receive his asylum request. The Russian  President has expressed willingness in granting him asylum only to the extent that he stops the damaging act of revealing US secrets.

The White House, after Snowden's meeting with HRW, said Russia should not provide him with 'Propaganda Platform'. UN human rights chief, Navi Pillay in her first reaction on the Snowden imbroglio said the fiugitive NSA leaker is worth protecting and the world rejects US espionage act.

Israel runs the World: Twitter hands over confidential data of anti-Semitic users to French authorities

A legal battle started last year between Twitter and Jewish students in France when the French Union of Jewish Students sued Twitter for allowing hate speech. In a bid to end the legal fracas and dance to the tune of the students, twitter decided to hand over confidential account information to French authorities in order to track the anti-semitic users.

Twitter said in a statement that the disclosure of information “enables the identification of some authors" and  "puts an end to the dispute" with the French Union of Jewish Students (UEJF), AFP reported. The social network added that the two parties had "agreed to continue to work actively together in order to fight racism and anti-Semitism.”

In June, the court upheld a January  ruling that said the social media site must provide personal information on some users to the UEJF and four other organizations that filed a complaint against the company in November last year. On Thursday, Twitter lost its legal fight after the Paris Court of Appeal dismissed its objections against the original ruling.

The complaint came after a deluge of anti-Semitic messages tweeted under the hashtag  #unbonjuif (#agoodjew), with some users posting offensive tweets such as “#agoodjew is a dead Jew.” Some of the tweets were later removed by the social network.

Hate crimes are strictly punished in France. However, Twitter originally argued that it does not adhere to French law, and that only an American judge could force the company to release such information, Twitter’s lawyer, Alexandra Neri, said. While Twitter says it defends freedom of speech from anonymous users, French prosecutors say the social media site has “commercial interest.”

“Twitter is playing a commercial game by raising a number of legal hurdles to not having to comply with its legal obligations,” Stephane Lilti, counsel for the UJEF students, told the court.

Twitter also shut down the account of neo-Nazi group “Better Hannover,” following a request by German police last year, which was banned by the state for spreading nationalist socialist ideology and damaging to Israel who suffered greatly during Adolf Hitler's reign. It was the first time Twitter withheld content by request of a specific country.

Snowden: United States and Israel created the Stuxnet Virus that attacked Iran

The Stuxnet virus that decimated Iranian nuclear facilities was created by the NSA and co-written by Israel, Edward Snowden has confirmed. The whistleblower added the NSA has a web of foreign partners who pay “marginal attention to human rights.”

In an interview with Jacob Applebaum published in German daily Der Spiegel on Monday, Snowden stated that the US and Israel were behind the computer worm. Stuxnet infiltrated Iranian nuclear facility networks in 2009-2010 and was used to change the speed of thousands of gas-spinning centrifuges, sabotaging nuclear research.  

Washington and Tel Aviv were thought to have been behind the cyber-attack, however, this was never confirmed by either government. “The NSA and Israel wrote Stuxnet together,” Snowden told Applebaum in the interview that was carried out in May.

Snowden stressed that the National Security Agency (NSA) often cooperates with foreign partners through a special body known as the Foreign Affairs Directorate (FAD). Referring to Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, also known as the ‘Five Eye Partners,’ he said their practices often go further than those of the NSA.

In particular he flagged the system used by the UK’s General Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), TEMPORA as one of the worst offenders. “TEMPORA is the signals intelligence community's first ‘full-take’ internet buffer that doesn't care about content type and pays only marginal attention to the Human Rights Act,” said Snowden.

The UK buffer is able to hold a vast quantity of internet data for up to three days, said the whistleblower. “You should never send information over British lines or British servers. Even the Queen’s ‘selfies’ with her lifeguards would be recorded, if they existed.”

While Snowden conceded that monitoring abroad had its limits and the NSA has to prioritize the information it collects, he stressed that monitoring on its own territory was “practically limitless.” Private enterprise is also involved in the NSA’s mass collating of internet data, but proving their complicity is very difficult.

“The names of the cooperating telecom companies are the crown jewels of the NSA... Generally you can say that multinationals with headquarters in the USA should not be trusted until they prove otherwise,” Snowden pointed out.

When asked about how one could avoid falling into the traps of NSA surveillance, Snowden said anyone who had been targeted “was just owned.” The analyst charged with following an individual receives a report every day, meaning the “target's machine doesn't belong to them anymore, it belongs to the US government.”

Snowden’s interviewer, 30-year-old Jacob Applebaum, has also fallen foul of US law enforcement in the past. Applebaum co-wrote a book with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange detailing tips on how to evade cyber-surveillance while surfing the web.

The book called ‘Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the Internet’, was also co-written by Jeremie Zimmermann and Andy Muller-Maguhn. Assange invited his co-authors on to the Julian Assange show, which aired on RT last year in March, to discuss cyber resistance.

“Two of them, besides myself, have been targeted by law enforcement agencies as a result of their work to safeguard privacy and to keep governments accountable. Their words, and their stories, need to be heard,” Assange told the New York Times.

The members of the Cypherpunks movement shared their stories with Julian Assange whilst sitting down to discuss the problems of privacy, online communication and freedom on the internet.

US citizen Edward Snowden is believed to be eluding an extradition order to the US on charges of espionage in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Snowden has sent a number of applications for political asylum. Thus far Venezuela and Nicaragua have confirmed receipt of the applications, but are yet to grant asylum. However, Snowden is still unable to travel as his passport has been voided by the US authorities.

Russia Today

EU demands Clarification on US Espionage Acts on its Diplomats; Warns of Consequences

A new word ought to surface just as the United States got 'Romnesia' (a disease that makes you forget anything that makes you bad) during the Presidential debates and campaigns. Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, always did not usually remember anything he had said that contradicted him. There would probably be another cyber, internet and espionage coinage superior to Wikileaks; maybe termed 'Snowdenvirus' due to the recent leaks by Edward Snowden.

Snowden's new leak showed that the United States had been spying on European diplomats. Reacting to this, the president of the European parliament has demanded an explanation from US authorities over the latest revelation that EU diplomatic missions in Washington, New York and Brussels were under electronic surveillance from the NSA.

“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations.”

“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations," he added. Meanwhile, Germany's justice minister also called for an immediate explanation from the United States saying the news that Washington bugged European Union offices was "reminiscent of the Cold War."

"It must ultimately be immediately and extensively explained by the American side whether media reports about completely disproportionate tapping measures by the US in the EU are accurate or not," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.

Other EU diplomats also expressed shock concerning the latest batch of revelations in the NSA leak, reported by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday. "If these reports are true, it's disgusting,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel. "The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies,” Asselborn continued. “We must get a guarantee from the very highest level now that this stops immediately."

A spokesman for the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence had no comment on the Der Spiegel story, Reuters reported. Der Spiegel, quoting from a September 2010 "top secret" US National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, reported on Saturday the NSA was eavesdropping on the EU’s internal computer networks in Washington, as well as at the 28-member bloc UN office in New York.

The German magazine also reported that five years ago, the NSA also targeted telecommunications at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, home to the European Council, where all EU member states have their offices. Snowden, 30, fled the US for Hong Kong in May, just weeks before The Guardian and Washington Post published details he provided about a top-secret US government surveillance programme that accumulated internet and telephone traffic both at home and abroad.

The whistleblower is presently in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where it is believed he is attempting to gain political asylum in Ecuador. Lode Vanoost, former deputy speaker of the Belgian parliament, believes that the main purpose of the US surveillance programme was “economic spying” on the EU.

“At the moment, the EU is negotiating a new free trade agreement with the United States,” the former deputy speaker noted. “On the economic level, [the US] is losing ground everywhere,” he said. “Look at what the BRIC countries are doing. The EU is having stronger ties with Russia, with Africa, with Latin America. And the US doesn’t seem to get its economic priorities imposed as it used to. So what I see is a big risk for economic spying.”

He added that there is “too much at stake” for there to be a total breakdown in US-EU bilateral relations, however, “behind closed doors there will be some very tough words” exchanged between EU and American officials.

Ecuador has revealed that the choosing and the safe landing of Snowden in any destination is in the hand of Russia. Russia seems to be the love, the land currently romanced by anybody dissatisfied with the condition and system of the obtainable in any Western nation as noticed in the case of the French actor, Gerard Depardieu, who recently received Russian citizenship in protest against high taxes in France. This has also been the case with anybody not comfortable with/in Russia.

China Slams the US; Amnesty International says Snowden Commits no Crime

China has taken a swipe at the US over its allegations that Beijing allowed NSA leaker Edward Snowden to leave Hong Kong. The spokesperson for the Chinese Communist Party said  the US has gone from ‘model of human rights’ to manipulator of internet rights.

The damning article in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper, came in response to Washington’s accusations of the “deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant.”

Addressing Washington’s allegations, the People’s Daily wrote that China could not accept "this kind of dissatisfaction and opposition.”

"Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for handling things in accordance with the law,” wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also denounced the US accusations as "groundless and unacceptable.”

"It is unreasonable for the US to question Hong Kong's handling of affairs in accordance with law, and the accusation against the Chinese central government is groundless," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.

The Hong Kong government released an official statement on Sunday, saying that US fugitive Edward Snowden had left the Chinese territory for Moscow legally and voluntarily. The statement also mentioned that the extradition documents submitted by the US on charges of espionage were not sufficient to warrant Snowden’s arrest under Chinese law.

The column praises the former CIA contractor for “his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask."Snowden has been branded by the US as ‘traitor’ by US politicians for the leaking of classified documents to The Guardian newspaper that revealed the existence of the spy programme Prism.  

"In a sense, the United States has gone from a model of human rights to an eavesdropper on personal privacy, the manipulator of the centralised power over the international internet, and the mad invader of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said.

The case of Edward Snowden has captivated world media since he fled from the US in May. Although the fugitive’s whereabouts are unknown, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange confirmed to Russia Today that Snowden was en route to Ecuador via Moscow accompanied by WikiLeaks legal representative Sarah Harrison.

The whistleblower has applied for asylum in Ecuador and the country’s government confirmed that it is processing the application.

The US has called on all countries in the northern hemisphere to surrender Snowden to US jurisdiction and has resolved to seek cooperation from his destination country. However human rights organisation Amnesty International has launched an appeal, urging the US not to prosecute anyone who discloses data on US government human right violations.

"No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression," said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.

In addition, the organization also stressed that an individual who has an asylum bid underway cannot legally be extradited.

China discovered to be involved in a string of Cyber Espionage Activities -Kaspersky Lab

Kaspersky Lab has discovered a years-long cyber-espionage operation that victimized hundreds of high-profile targets in 40 countries. The malware, known as NetTraveler, was used for covert computer surveillance and appears to have originated in China.

The Kaspersky Global Research and Analysis Lab best known for exposing Flame and Stuxnet - sophisticated spywares launched by the US government - has uncovered a global cyber-espionage network targeting the world's diplomatic, government and military agencies.

In a report published on June 4 the malware that especially targeted Asian countries was identified as an “advanced persistent threat” similar to the Red October unveiled in January.

“Based on the collected intelligence, we estimate the [controlling] group side to about 50 individuals, most of which speak Chinese natively and have working knowledge of the English language,” the report said.

However, nowhere in the Kaspersky report is the Chinese government accused of any wrongdoing and only speculation links China to the infection software.

According to the report, NetTraveler was designed to "steal sensitive data as well as log keystrokes, and retrieve file system listings and various Office or PDF documents.”

The amount of stolen data discovered on the malware’s command-and-control servers exceeded 22 gigabytes, with that being a small fraction of the total data stolen since the rest of it was previously downloaded by the attackers and deleted from the servers.


The countries most frequently targeted by NetTraveler – Russia, India, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan – all border China. The first evidence of NetTraveler appeared in 2004, but the report said the most attacks came between 2010 and 2013.

Diplomats were targeted most often, followed by government workers, and high-level private officials then international military contractors. Tibetan/Uyghur activists and oil industry companies also ranked among the favourite targets.

The hackers did not use any advanced vulnerabilities and relied on phishing attacks, which often distribute infected links via email or social media.

“NetTraveler victims get infected through spear-phishing attacks using Office documents which exploit two publicly known vulnerabilities,” the report states with analysts surprised that such unsophisticated attacks can still be successful with high profile targets. “Although these vulnerabilities have been patched by Microsoft, they remain effective and are among the most exploited in targeted attacks.”

The researchers discovered that at least six NetTraveler targets – a Russian military contractor, a government organization in Tajikistan, and embassies in Belgium, Iran, Kazakhstan, and Belarus – were previously hacked by the Red October campaign that was likely launched from Eastern Europe. Kurt Baumgartner, a senior security researcher for the Americas on the Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky, told DarkReading.com the attempts from separate phishing schemes indicates those locations are highly valued.

“Threat actors infiltrate victims simultaneously and may or may not be concerned about victim overlap,” he said. “Most likely, with these two groups in particular, the operators have a specific set of tasks at the victim organizations. If they happen to see another piece of malware on the target network, and it doesn’t interrupt their operation, they just go back to completing their assignments.”

Courtesy: Russian Times

Cuba and the United States: Who is tired of Who?

                               

                                 Cuban President: Raul Castro

A seven-member delegation of US lawmakers arrived in Cuba in an effort to improve political relations that have been frozen since US government contractor Alan Gross was imprisoned there in 2009.

Democratic senator Patrick Leahy, who saw Gross and met with Cuban president Raul Castro and other high-ranking officials a year ago, led the group of five senators and two members of the House of Representatives on a three-day visit to communist Cuba.

"There are obvious problems between our two countries, but we are not here to negotiate. We are here to listen and then go home and talk about what we see," according to Patrick Leahy.

"We all want to see relations improve and both sides take steps in that direction," US Senator Patrick Leahy said.

The lawmakers, all Democrats except for Arizona senator Jeff Flake, include congressmen Chris Van Hollen, who represents Gross's district in Maryland, and Jim McGovern of Massachusetts; and senators Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.

Members of the group said they planned to meet with Gross, parliament president Ricardo Alarcon, foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez and perhaps Raul Castro.

Leahy said the delegation would like to take Gross with them when it leaves for Haiti on Wednesday, an occurrence that might not see the light of day.

"There are obvious problems between our two countries, but we are not here to negotiate. We are here to listen and then go back home and talk about what we see," he said.

Despite the tension between the US and Cuba, more people travelled between the two countries in 2012, cash remittances sent to the island also increased, as did food-for-cash sales under a 2000 amendment to US trade embargo.

President Castro has lifted most travel restrictions and freed Cubans to buy and sell homes and cars over the past year, even as he accelerates efforts to reform the Soviety-style economy in a more market-friendly direction. The Obama administration has said relations will not improve while Gross remains in custody.

In addition, under the 1996 'Helms-Burton' law, sanctions cannot be lifted until Cuba's one-party communist political system is changed, a demand rejected by the Cuban government. Gross, 63, was arrested in Havana in December 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison for installing Internet networks under a secretive US program the Cuban government considers subversive.

The case put the brakes on a brief warming in long-hostile US-Cuba relations during the first 11 months of Obama's first term in office. Raul Castro's mild reforms have helped in reducing tensions between Havana and Washington.

Cuba has linked Gross' fate to that of five agents imprisoned in the late 1990s for infiltrating Miami exile organisations and US military bases. The agents, known as the Cuban Five, were sentenced to long terms ranging from 15 years to life and are considered heroes in Cub.

When Fidel castro became ill, Obama extended an 'olive branch' to Cuba and Raul Castro to help bring about democratic change, a move many Cubans rejected. Now, it seems Cuba struck the US where it matters.

Google and France reach Agreement over News-Linking

Internet giant Google has agreed to set up a fund worth up to 60-million euros to facilitate adjustment to digital technology by the old media.

After two months of mediation with French news sites, the agreement signed with François Hollande will help French media develop online projects.

Previously, Paris threatened to introduce legislation if Google did not reach a settlement after France announced plans to charge Google for linking to French news content.

Becoming Wholly Self-Reliant?: Iran to Launch Three Space Satellites

Iran will launch three satellites to mark the country’s National Space Technology Day, Iranian Space Agency President Hamil Fazeli has announced. Fazeli explained that “due to inherent problems using international satellites,” Iran plans to put more of its own satellites into orbit over the next five years.

The Islamic Republic has also built her own National Internet Service to fully complement the restrictions on the usage of Twitter, Facebook and other Western-backed international social media. The country is advancing speedily steadily in technology and science especially military technology.