Newswires: Surveillance / CCTV

Israel Seals Off West Bank as Tensions Rise

By Matthew Kalman - Daily Telegraph [Israeli] Defence Minister Ehud Barak ordered the army to cut off the [West Bank] until midnight on Saturday, citing a heightened risk of attacks...Israel also limited access to Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Only worshippers with Israeli identity cards and aged over 50 were permitted. read more more >>

Netflix cancels recommendation contest over privacy

Not as anonymous as you think Netflix has canceled a contest designed to improve its movie recommendation system out of concern it might compromise the privacy of its customers.…What is your recession sales strategy? more >>

(en) Canada, Vancouver, Media, During the Olympics, two young activists learn the finer points of militant action, , Printer-Friendly Version

In monumental buildings in Vancouver, people gathered to bear witness to the strength of the human body and the spectacle of the recent Olympic games. On the streets, thousands gathered to mourn and protest to its current and future cost: the mountains and trees removed to build lodges and ski trails on un-ceded indigenous territory; the eviction of low-income people from homes designated for Olympics inspired renovation and demolition; the homelessness beyond “Project Civil City,” an initiative that criminalized aggressive panhandling and sleeping outdoors. ---- Beneath the surveillance cameras recently installed on public streets, two Seattle residents, Michelle Woo and Stephen Clark, raised their voices in protest. ---- When did you decide to go and why? ---- Michelle: We decided a month or two before the Olympics, but I had been thinking about it for a long ... more >>

Pushed by the Violence of Our Desires: A Statement Regarding March 4

Over the past few days, dozens of communiqués, letters, and statements have been circulating regarding issues of race, gender, and disrespect on M4. We have no intentions of addressing or disputing particular accusations or narratives regarding M4 in this statement; these things will inevitably be argued about elsewhere. Here, we attempt to discuss the language and politics that have been used in framing these issues. As queer women of color, we feel as if we are trapped in the middle of all of this talk about identities. We have had, for some time, our own frustrations with and critiques of a number of white men with whom we have worked. At the same time, we are uncomfortable with the way in which the identities of "people of color" and "women" are being used to critique and condemn the events of M4, because we – as queer women of color – don’t agree with how these critiques and condemnations are being framed. In fact, we're not just uncomfortable; we’re actually really angry about the way a small group of people, purporting to speak for the entire population of CUNY, has hijacked this rhetoric of talking about privilege and identity and deployed it in a fashion entirely too simplistic, generalized, and essentialist. Issues of privilege and identity are incredibly important to us and we wholeheartedly agree that they should be talked about. But as it stands now, identities like "person of color" and "woman" are being invoked in order to mask reactionary politics, and furthermore, are being employed in ways that contribute to the erasure of our identities as active participants in militant struggle. read more more >>

The Beginning of the End of Data Retention

Last week, the German Constitutional Court issued a much-anticipated decision, striking down its data retention law as violating human rights. It was an important victory for Europe’s Freedom Not Fear movement, which was formed to oppose the EU Data Retention Directive. But it was also a reminder of the political work which remains to be done to defeat it. When the European Union first passed the Data Retention Directive in 2006, despite a hard-fought campaign by European activists, it seemed like the beginning of the end for Internet privacy. The directive sought to require telecommunications service providers operating in Europe to retain a detailed history of each of their customers' activity for up to 2 years for possible use by law enforcement; including phone calls made and emails sent and received. The response from European citizens was swift and outraged. Under the banner of Freedom Not Fear, mass protests were held in cities all across Europe and beyond. The charge was led by the German Working Group on Data Retention (AK Vorrat), which in 2007 filed a class-action lawsuit of nearly 35,000 people challenging the German law. The suit's complaints were mostly upheld by last week's German Constitutional Court decision. The court held that the blanket data retention mandated by the EU directive violated Article 10 of the German Constitution, which guarantees the basic right to private life and correspondence. The Court said that an infrastructure of exploratory surveillance results in an exceptional intensity of interference with human rights, which must be proportionately protected with appropriate safeguards. It also significantly narrowed the options for similar EU retention laws on other types of data. The court ordered the immediate deletion of all the data stored since the law went into effect in 2008 and ordered the suspension of data collection until a revised national law is proposed. However, the court did choose to leave many important questions about the EU directive unanswered. In highlighting the need for increased safeguards, the court failed to recognize that the storage of data itself is what violates human rights. For instance, a survey of German citizens in 2008 found that 1 in 2 people would not have conversations with counselors or therapists by phone or email because of their concern about data retention. A bolder stance was taken in October 2009 by the Romanian Constitutional Court, which ruled that the EU directive fundamentally violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to respect for private life and correspondence. Data retention itself, the court wrote, is "likely to overturn the presumption of innocence and to transform a priori all users of electronic communication services or public communication networks into people suspected of committing terrorism crimes or other serious crimes." As a result, all citizens would become "permanent subjects to this intrusion into their exercise of their private rights to correspondence and freedom of expression." The rulings in Romania and now Germany set the stage for an imminent series of decisions on the status of national data retention laws across Europe. The recent Bulgarian vote on data retention legislation met with sharp criticism and protests. Petitions against the Belgian data retention law are available in both French and Flemish. The constitutional challenge against the Retention of Data Bill brought by Digital Rights Ireland may be referred to the European Court of Human Rights. In the meantime, despite the fact that the European Commission won its lawsuit against the government of Sweden for failing to implement the directive, the minimal penalty turns out to be worth the political risk. In order to overturn a directive, the European Commission, Parliament, and Council have to agree. Viviane Reding, the incoming European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, declared at her confirmation hearings her dedication to defending the right to privacy. The members of the European Parliament, inaugurating their new term, flexed their political muscle when they recently rejected assenting to the SWIFT agreement that would have enabled the wholesale transfer of Europeans' financial data to the US. The European Council, representing the ministries of the individual Member States, will respond to the political climate in their home countries. All in all, the threats to privacy and free speech posed by the Data Retention Directive are on their way to being nullified. In Germany, AK Vorrat launched its campaign against the new law being devised and set its sights on ending data retention on the European level. They will need the help of citizens across Europe to raise awareness and speak out for their rights on national levels. Freedom Not Fear is planning another series of protests later this year – stay tuned to Deeplinks or sign up for FNF's mailing list to find out what is being planned near you. more >>

Teach-In about Points Based Immigration at Goldsmiths

Plenaries, Workshops, Music, Food RHB 141, Main building, Goldsmiths University, Lewisham Way, New Cross, March 18, 5 p.m. till late. We stand united, as students and staff, in opposition to the new points-based immigration rules.... They frame students as suspects and turn staff into border agents. Join us, meet others, and help spread the campaign! With Frances Webber (Human Rights Lawyer), Phil Booth (NO2ID), Valerie Hartwich (Manifesto Club), Sandy Nicoll (SOAS Living Wage Campaign/Justice for Cleaners), speakers from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, No Borders, and more. Hosted by Goldsmiths Student Union and Goldsmiths UCU Register at studentsnotsuspects@gmail.com More details about the campaign at: http://studentsnotsuspects.blogspot.com/ Join us on Facebook (Students Not Suspects) more >>

Better U.S. Net Rules for Iran, Cuba and Syria

The Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced on Monday key amendments to the regulation of United States sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan. The new provisions give a blanket license for the export of "certain services and software incident to the exchange of personal communications over the Internet, such as instant messaging, chat and email, social networking, sharing of photos and movies, web browsing, and blogging, provided that such services are publicly available at no cost to the user." This clarification is just what EFF called for last June, and will go a long way to allay concerns that online service providers based in the U.S. cannot offer their services in those countries. Previously, despite the well-known freedom-enhancing capabilities of services like Twitter and Facebook in repressive regimes like Iran, it was unclear whether those companies could even offer their services there without falling foul of the United State's broad prohibition on the export of goods and services to these regimes. This was not a hypothetical concern: other services that were useful for dissidents to communicate and organize, like Microsoft, and Google's instant messaging clients had previously been blocked from being used in these very countries -- not by the repressive states, but by companies themselves, cautious of violating sanctions. While the change in the letter of the law is clearly positive, perhaps just as important is the signal this sends about the administration's new guiding policy on global Internet freedom. Previously, cautious companies, afraid of running afoul of OFAC, have frequently forbidden or blocked all use in sanctioned countries, even when the letter of the law did not require such draconian steps. You can see this institutionally paranoid language, and its inevitable results, in Bluehost's terms of service, which pre-emptively prohibits all citizens of sanctioned countries from even applying to use their hosting facilities (a policy which lead them to shamefully throwing innocent Zimbabwean activists off their service last year). Now we are moving (slowly) to a new, and better default, where technologists and their lawyers might assume that free Internet services that facilitate free expression and association need not be blocked pre-emptively for anyone, anywhere. The Obama administration has shown with these changes that it would prefer to move toward that end. Have we got there yet? Is it what export law now says? While we wait for export regulation experts to sweat the details, the answer is still far too hazy for comfort.  While the State and Treasury departments have fixed much that was wrong with Iranian, Cuban and Sudanese sanctions, there are still regulations on, for instance, Zimbabwe, Syria and North Korea for techies and their lawyers to worry about, and those sanctions still inhibit making software generally available. We also would like to see more clarity about collaborative software development locations, like Sourceforge. We hope that this administration backs up these first steps with a continuing review of export rules, and pro-actively works to reassure Internet companies that they are free to build an open Internet for everyone, without expecting a knock on the door from their own government. more >>

NHS Database coming to your GP

The Department of Health is trying to roll out the Summary Care Record to millions of patients before the next election. Doctors’ leaders are alarmed. Patients are being misinformed, and opt-out is being made difficult. In the pilot areas, seven out of ten patients are unaware that an SCR was created for them. The patient information packs don’t contain an opt-out form; you’re supposed to phone the call centre for one. more >>

Call Out for Submissions to Fire to the Prisons Issue #9

Fire to the Prisons is a quarterly magazine distributed across the world. It focuses on resistance by different discontent groups around the world, and connecting them to a broader struggle or a common enemy. Every issue includes reports on different types of resistance globally: prisoner uprisings and revolts (in North America), native conflicts, looting and working class discontent, anti-fascism, immigrant struggles, anti-political social disturbances, student uprisings, animal or ecological defense, and more. We also include in-depth analysis of this content, with the intention of connecting these occurrences and seeking ideas on how they can spread. Every issue also includes multiple accounts of individuals or groups experiencing repression by the state. By repression we mean police surveillance or harassment, draining trials, grand juries, or incarceration. We hope with this to help raise an awareness of these cases and prevent them from becoming isolated. We also hope that by reporting on this, it will help others to learn from the mistakes or courage of those currently dealing with the state's justice system, and help strengthen a more powerful revolutionary community before a more powerful repressive system. read more more >>

Great White Dopes

BNP: Join us but don’t dare to fuck us The BNP's new membership rules "indirectly" discriminate against black and Asian people, the UK equalities watchdog has told a court hearing today. The BNP has voted to admit non-white members but still requires them to sign up to its duty to oppose the promotion of any form of "integration or assimilation" that impacted on the "indigenous British", and a requirement to support the "maintenance and existence of the unity and integrity of the indigenous British". The principles obviously oppose mixed relationships and force people to deny their own identity. Forbid any more children with dual heritage! Or more seriously, accepting that we are all already from mixed heritage!!! Judge Paul Collins said he would issue his judgement on the issue on Friday. We’ll give yours NOW! They are a bunch of fucking WANKERS. The BNP is not a valid alternative. Mainstream politicians, including the BNP, are using every opportunity to manipulate, control and exploit YOU! For a real alternative, join your local class struggle group, be it CLASS WAR, any other anarchist group in your area, or any community based action group that offer a real solution to the problems in YOUR community. If there is not one, or you can’t find it, START it! ONLY YOU have the power to change the state. Not the BNP, Not the Conservatives, Not Labour and Not the Liberal Democrats. No justice, just us. MAKE IT HAPPEN! JOIN THE REVOLUTION  more >>

Street Stall, March 2010

Date:  Sat, 13/03/2010 - 2:00pm - 4:00pm Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=346562696111&ref=mf The Home Office is trying to trick people into being Guinea Pigs for the ID Card Con. Many people have fallen for spin that the National Identity Scheme has been cancelled, that it isn't a threat or is voluntary. It's more important than ever to get the word out about the Database State. Manchester NO2ID will be running a public information stall in St. Ann's Square in Manchester City Centre (down near the big Marks and Spencer), to raise awareness among the public and engage people in discussion about the National Identity Register. We'll be collecting signatures for the NO2ID petition to keep people in touch with the campaign. We'll meet in the square itself at 2pm to set up shop; feel free to join us to lend a hand or just chat. You don't need any experience or equipment, just a bit of time to spare and a friendly smile! more >>

Monthly meeting, March 2010

Date:  Wed, 10/03/2010 - 7:00pm - 8:00pm Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=350722232037&ref=mf Manchester NO2ID will be holding our monthly meeting in the Salmon Rooms at the Lass O'Gowrie pub. Unfortunately, this room is on the first floor; we will attempt to secure stair-free access for future meetings. We're also getting the room at a discount, so please show your gratitude at the bar with the excellent selection of real ales and tasty pies. At our monthly meetings we discuss the state of the NO2ID campaign, what we've been up to recently and where we're going in future. Everyone is welcome, newcomer or not, curious or committed. See minutes of our previous meetings. We will be in the bar before hand, enjoying the food (and maybe drink) of Manchester's best pub (Food & Drink Festival '09) so look out for us if you arrive early. If you arrive after the start, just ask the bar staff to direct you upstairs. more >>

How just 0.3% of solved crimes are due to DNA database

James Slack writes in the Daily Mail: TV crime shows may have created the myth that DNA can solve almost every grisly crime – but the reality is very different. As few as one in every 1,300 crimes reported to the police is solved by the national DNA database, according to a report released by MPs yesterday. The [...] more >>

Israeli Passports, is there a genuine Irish connection

Some people have commented that the Passport debacle that Albert Reynolds was involved in nearly two decades ago  more >>

NHS database raises privacy fears, say doctors

James Sturcke and Denis Campbell write in the Guardian: Doctors’ leaders are warning government ministers that the NHS is jeopardising its relationship of trust with patients by creating a vast atabase of personal medical records. GPs say they fear patients’ rights are being overlooked, that “scaremongering” is being used to get people’s agreement for the [...] more >>

NHS in confidential data blunder in Cambridgeshire

According to the BBC: Letters sent out to patients about the national NHS records database contained confidential data about other people, the BBC has learned. A review has taken place after letters containing personal information were sent to the wrong patients in Cambridgeshire, BBC Look East found. The letters contain details about which surgery the person attends and [...] more >>

Pushing the boundaries of identity: an interview with Jennifer Jajeh

Jennifer Jajeh's critically acclaimed one-woman show, I Heart Hamas and Other Things I am Afraid to Tell You, pulls no punches. From a Ramallah Convention in San Francisco in the 1980s, to casting lines in contemporary Los Angeles, to the front lines of the Israeli occupation and back, Jajeh navigates the complicated and often conflicted terrain of Palestinian identity. The Electronic Intifada contributor Uda Olabarria Walker interviews Jajeh about her work.  more >>

Against Education - in Solidarity with Alfredo Bonanno - Communique from New York City

from: Comrades 10:36μμ, 26 Friday February 2010We attacked Marathon bank, a subsidiary of the same Piraeus bank that Alfredo Bonanno and Christos Stratigopoulos are accused of expropriating.Capitalism is a system of relationships, which goes from inside to out, from outside to in, from above to below, and from below to above. Everything is relative, everything is in chains. Capitalism is a condition both of the world and of the soul.-Franz KafkaThere is nothing left; nothing that hasn’t been molded, molested, or completely crushed; nothing that has managed to escape the network of power as it scours every inch of the earth, lodging itself into every crevice. Crowding each moment, the omnipresent asphyxiation provides ample evidence to this all-encompassing totalization. Heads bowed, backs bent, we bear the weight of the day in our beleaguered entrails.Now taking on increasingly monstrous qualities, a vampire-likeness of achieved full nocturnality, even the sleeper finds his dreams inhabited. Robbing us of expectations, snatching away our latent potential, Capital has acquired the speculative capability to recuperate futures and integrate things before their invention. After colonizing the entire world, the enemy now works to conquer the collective realm of our imaginations where we once plotted and, consequently, envisioned its very demise.The cooption of creativity signaled the predetermined defeat, which led the Marxists to surrender to the British Museum before they realized an 1848. The only pseudo-victory to their credit consists in pushing Negri out of the spotlight by ushering “communization” and “insurrection” into the academy’s discursive field. Both trends can be written off as failed experiments because each has neglected to activate the only concept capable of giving jargon any significance. The Struggle.“To fight, to be defeated, to fight again, to be defeated again, to fight anew until the final victory.”- An old Italian adageIn practice, the clashes and occupations have divorced the leftist baggage and chosen everyday life as the terrain for conflict, yet unfortunately expression still continues to abide by the activist calendar. A day of action is paled by a year of misery. Like long fits of depression, extended bouts of downtime undermine each subversive act, resulting in the production of militant event planners: blinded to the past and merely anticipating the next unsuccessful Bastille storming. They strike at the same tempo ordinary citizens attend birthday parties, riot at the same rate of wedding crashers and surely, at this pace, they will never RSVP the bourgeoisie funeral.Detached theory and relegated practice present themselves as nothing other than the comorbid symptoms of statified ideology. Now we can confidently diagnose that the much prophesized “coming” can only amount to a passing fad.We notice the relentless internalized repression masquerading as patience and so we refuse to wait for March 4th, the ides of March or, for that matter, any date to come. We expressed our distaste for the veiled technological prison of surveillance and electronic monitoring by sabotaging several of the soon to be installed ID-card scanners at the Hunter College campus. Against education as such, we then struck Brooklyn College’s administrative building. Lastly, we attacked Marathon bank, a subsidiary of the same Piraeus bank that Alfredo Bonanno and Christos Stratigopoulos are accused of expropriating. We extend our solidarity to the two imprisoned comrades and, as Bonanno’s health deteriorates in a prison cell, we adhere to the following principle.“For an eye, two eyes. For a tooth, the whole face.” more >>

Déjà vu: the frame up against Alfredo Bonanno has begun

ANSA, 25 février 2010translated from: cette semaineGREECE: ANARCHIST BONANNO SUSPECTED OF SECOND ROBBERYAthens, 25 feb. - Alfredo Bonanno, the Italian anarchist over 70 years old imprisoned last October following an accusation of concourse in robbery of a bank in Trikala, is suspected of being the author of another robbery carried out last July at Argostoli, on the island of Cefalonia. Bonanno's lawyers contest this accusation. According to police sources cited by the media, Bonanno, with a false beard and wig, would have been recognised by one of the witnesses on the basis of a cctv video, while he robbed the Bank of Cyprus, pistol in hand, 6 July in Argostoli. The information has been partially confirmed to Ansa by a spokesman of the central police station, according to which "an old Italian is considered author of the robbery at Argostoli, which rendered 26 000 euros". The spokesman did not give Bonanno's name directly but implied that it was him.Joanna Kurtovic, the Greek lawyer of the old Italian imprisoned in Korydallos (Athens), has expressed her doubts concerning the identification on the basis of a video and a critique of the way this accusation was made public. Bonanno, who suffers from diabetes and has cardio-respiratory problems, is one of the main theoreticians of anarcho-insurrectionnalism (sic). He was arrested at the beginning of October with the Greek anarchist Christos Stratigopoulos following the robbery of a bank in Trikala, for 47 000 euros. The Italian was later arrested in an hotel where the police found the proceeds of the robbery. Bonanno's defence is that he received the bag from Stratigopoulos, without knowing what it contained. His version, the lawyer points out, has been confirmed by Stratigopoulos, who has taken full responsibility for the robbery. The judge, apparently due to Bonanno's previous record, already having been sentenced in Italy, did not believe him and sent him to prison awaiting trial. more >>

09/25/08 PRESS RELEASE: Rise in Federal Policing, Surveillance and Immigration Enforcement Signals Growth and Adaptation of U.S. Criminal Justice System

US: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America

The Bush administration’s wiretapping program has come under new scrutiny. Two influential congressional committees have opened probes into allegations US intelligence spied on the phone calls of U.S. military personnel, journalists and aid workers in Iraq. James Bamford discusses the NSA’s domestic sprying, the agency’s failings pre-9/11 and the ties between NSA and the nation’s telecommunications companies. more >>

US: Translator Who Faked Identity Pleads Guilty To Having Secret Data

An Arabic translator who used an assumed identity to get work as a contractor for the U.S. Army in Iraq pleaded guilty yesterday to federal charges of possessing classified national defense documents, including sensitive material about the insurgency that he took from an 82nd Airborne Division intelligence group in 2004. more >>