AFP | Thursday, March 29, 2007

A South Korean presidential envoy held a secret meeting with a North Korean official just 11 days after the communist state’s nuclear test last October, officials said Thursday.

President Roh Moo-Hyun’s office confirmed newspaper reports of the meeting and said it was held in Beijing on October 20.

Roh sent a former aide, An Hee-Jong, to meet state councillor Lee Ho-Nam following intelligence reports that the North still wanted disarmament talks and was eager for a meeting with Seoul, according to Lee Ho-Chul, a presidential aide for information.

“President Roh and his chief of staff received the report and gave an instruction to verify its reliability and what North Korea was thinking of,” Lee told Yonhap news agency late Wednesday.

Lee said the North Koreans only wanted to discuss Seoul’s suspension of rice and fertiliser aid “and little progress was made” at the Beijing talks.

But in a surprise move, North Korea on October 31 agreed to return to six-party talks on scrapping its nuclear programme.

Last month it pledged to shut down and seal its plutonium-producing Yongbyon reactor and other plants by April 14 in exchange for energy aid.

Dong-A Ilbo newspaper, which broke the news of the Beijing meeting, on Thursday accused Roh of violating his government’s pledge to make its North Korea policy transparent.

It alleged that An had violated national security laws by meeting the North Korean without approval from the unification ministry.

Conservative media and political opponents suspect Roh is trying to arrange an inter-Korean summit this year, to improve the prospects of his preferred candidate in the December presidential election.

The government says the time is not yet ripe for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il.

Other news reports have suggested the Beijing meeting last October was to prepare the ground for a summit. Lee, the presidential aide, denied this.

“We were not in a state of proposing a summit at that time when tensions ran extremely high on the Korean peninsula right after North Korea’s October 9 test,” he said.

He said the main topic was whether North Korea was really willing to return to six-party talks and possible denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.

Associated Press | March 23, 2007
JIM KRANE

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - Iranian naval vessels on Friday seized 15 British sailors and marines who had boarded a merchant ship in Iraqi waters of the Persian Gulf, British and U.S. officials said. Britain immediately protested the detentions, which come at a time of high tension between the West and Iran.

In London, the British government summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Foreign Office: “He was left in no doubt that we want them back,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said after the meeting.

The U.S. Navy, which operates off the Iraqi coast along with British forces, said the British sailors appeared unharmed and that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard naval forces were responsible.

Britain’s Defense Ministry said the British Navy personnel were “engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters,” and had completed a ship inspection when they were accosted by the Iranian vessels. The British sailors were assigned to a task force which protects Iraqi oil terminals and maintains security in Iraqi waters under authority of the U.N. Security Council.

“We are urgently pursuing this matter with the Iranian authorities at the highest level,” the ministry said.

No one could be immediately reached for comment at either government offices in Iran or at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad. An Iranian official at the U.N. mission in New York said he was not aware of the report and could not immediately comment.

Iran is in the middle of its New Year holiday when almost all government offices close.

The U.S. Navy said the incident occurred just outside a long-disputed waterway called the Shatt al-Arab dividing Iraq and Iran. It came as the U.N. Security Council debates further sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program, and amid U.S. allegations that Iran is arming Shiite militias in Iraq.

U.S. officials had expressed concern that with so much military hardware concentrated in the Persian Gulf, just such a small incident could spiral out of control and trigger a major armed confrontation.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the Bush administration was monitoring the situation.

“The British government is demanding the immediate safe return of the people and equipment and we are keeping watch on the situation,” Snow said.

The United States, Britain’s chief ally, has built up its naval forces in the Gulf in a show of strength directed at Iran. Two American carriers, including the USS John C. Stennis — backed by a strike group with more than 6,500 sailors and Marines and with additional minesweeping ships — arrived in the region in recent months.

Rhetoric between Western nations and Iran has escalated in recent months.

Earlier this week, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said if Western countries “want to treat us with threats and enforcement of coercion and violence, undoubtedly they must know that the Iranian nation and authorities will use all their capacities to strike enemies that attack.”

In February, President Bush said: “The Iranian people are good, honest, decent people and they’ve got a government that is belligerent, loud, noisy, threatening — a government which is in defiance of the rest of the world and says, ‘We want a nuclear weapon.’”

The Britons were in two boats from the frigate H.M.S. Cornwall during a routine smuggling investigation, said the British Defense Ministry.

According to a statement from the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain and operates jointly with the British forces off the coast of Iraq, the British sailors had just finished inspecting the merchant ship about 10:30 a.m. “when they and their two boats were surrounded and escorted by Iranian vessels into Iranian territorial waters.”

Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl of the Fifth Fleet said the British crew members were intercepted by several larger patrol boats operated by Iranian sailors belonging to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, a radical force that operates separately from the country’s regular navy.

The Iranian boats normally carry bow-mounted machine guns, while the British boarding party carried only sidearms, Aandahl said. No shots were fired and there appeared to be no physical harm done to any personnel involved or their vessels, Aandahl said.

The seizure of the British vessels, a pair of rigid inflatable boats known as RIBs, took place in long-disputed waters just outside of the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway that divides Iraq from Iran, Aandahl said. A 1975 treaty gave the waters to Iraq and U.S. and British ships commonly operate there, but Aandahl said Iran disputes Iraq’s jurisdiction over the waters.

“It’s been in dispute for some time,” Aandahl said. “We’ve been operating there for a couple of years and we know the lines very well. This was a compliant boarding, this happens routinely. What’s out of the ordinary is the Iranian response.”

Aandahl said the U.S.-led task force has touchier relations with the Revolutionary Guard, which often ignores normal maritime operating traditions, than with the regular Iranian navy.

A fisherman who said he was with a group of Iraqis from the southern city of Basra fishing in Iraqi waters in the northern area of the Gulf said he saw the Iranian seizure. The fisherman, reached by telephone by an AP reporter in Basra, declined to be identified because of security concerns.

“Two boats, each with a crew of six to eight multinational forces, were searching Iraqi and Iranian boats Friday morning in Ras al-Beesha area in the northern entrance of the Arab Gulf, but big Iranian boats came and took the two boats with their crews to the Iranian waters.”

The Cornwall’s commander, Commodore Nick Lambert, said the frigate lost communication with the boarding party, but a helicopter crew saw the Iranian vessels approach.

“I’ve got 15 sailors and marines who have been arrested by the Iranians and my immediate concern is their safety,” Lambert told British Broadcasting Corp. television.

In June 2004, six British marines and two sailors were seized by Iran in the Shatt al-Arab. They were presented blindfolded on Iranian television and admitted entering Iranian waters illegally, then released unharmed after three days.

Vali Nasr, a senior fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested that the latest detentions may be Iranian retaliation for the arrest of five Iranians in a U.S.-led raid in northern Iraq in January. The U.S. said the five included a Revolutionary Guards general.

“I think Iran sees this as retaliation for the arrest of their own personnel. They have repeatedly said that they want their personnel released,” Nasr said. “So they are either signalling that they can do the same thing or they are trying to bring attention to it.”

New York Times | Wednesday, March 21, 2007
BRAD STONE

Some users of MySpace feel as if their space is being invaded.

MySpace, the Web’s largest social network, has gradually been imposing limits on the software tools that users can embed in their pages, like music and video players that also deliver advertising or enable transactions.

At stake is the ability of MySpace, which is owned by the News Corporation, to ensure that it alone can commercially capitalize on its 90 million visitors each month.

But to some formerly enthusiastic MySpace users, the new restrictions hamper their abilities to design their pages and promote new projects.

“The reason why I am so bummed out about MySpace now is because recently they have been cutting down our freedom and taking away our rights slowly,” wrote Tila Tequila, a singer who is one of MySpace’s most popular and visible users, in a blog posting over the weekend. “MySpace will now only allow you to use ‘MySpace’ things.”

Ms. Tequila, born Tila Nguyen, has attracted attention by linking to more than 1.7 million friends on her MySpace page. To promote her first album, she recently added to her MySpace page a new music player and music store, called the Hoooka, created by Indie911, a Los Angeles-based start-up company.

Users listened to her music and played the accompanying videos 20,000 times over the weekend. But the Hoooka disappeared on Sunday after a MySpace founder, Tom Anderson, personally contacted Ms. Tequila to object, according to someone with direct knowledge of the dispute. She then vented her thoughts on her personal blog.

MySpace says that it will block these pieces of third-party software — also called widgets — when they lend themselves to violations of its terms of service, like the spread of pornography or copyrighted material. But it also objects to widgets that enable users to sell items or advertise without authorization, or without entering into a direct partnership with the company.

A MySpace spokeswoman said yesterday that the service did not remove anything from Ms. Tequila’s page. “A MySpace representative contacted her and told her that she had violated our terms of service in regards to commercial activity,” the spokeswoman said. “She removed the material herself, after realizing it was not appropriate for MySpace.”

Ms. Tequila and her representatives would not comment.

But Justin Goldberg, chief executive of Indie911, said MySpace’s actions undercut the notion that the social networks’ users have complete creative freedom. “We find it incredibly ironic and frustrating that a company that has built its assets on the back of its users is turning around and telling people they can’t do anything that violates terms of service,” he said.

“Why shouldn’t they call it FoxSpace? Or RupertSpace?” Mr. Goldberg said, referring to the News Corporation’s chief, Rupert Murdoch.

The tussle between MySpace and Indie911 underscores tensions between established Internet companies and the latest generation of Web start-ups. Without a critical mass of visitors to their sites, many of these smaller companies are devising strategies that involve clamping on to sites like MySpace and Facebook and trying to make money off their traffic.

MySpace, meanwhile, is trying to show that it can generate stable revenue. Google will pay it at least $900 million over the next three years to serve ads to the site’s users. And last fall, MySpace announced a partnership with Snocap, a San Francisco-based company, to sell music.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this year, MySpace blocked widgets from Revver, a video-sharing site that embeds advertisements in its clips, and Imeem, a music buying service.

“Our users weren’t happy,” said Dalton Caldwell, Imeem’s chief executive, who was nevertheless ambivalent about the MySpace ban because he thought the move might encourage his users to visit his site directly. “If MySpace isn’t really ‘their space’ after all, maybe users will think about things differently.”

In the past, MySpace executives have said that the service failed to block companies like YouTube that began successful businesses from MySpace’s pages.

“We probably should have stopped YouTube,” Michael Barrett, chief revenue officer for Fox Interactive Media, a part of the News Corporation, said in an interview in late February. “YouTube wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for MySpace. We’ve created companies on our back.”

MySpace and its corporate parent say they want to find ways to support and exploit the growing widget economy. Last year, Fox Interactive Media introduced a service called Spring Widget. The service provides tools to help developers create widgets for use both on computer desktops and online networks like MySpace.

In a recent use of its technology, the studio behind the horror film “Dead Silence” used a Spring Widget tool on its promotional MySpace page to count down the minutes until the film’s release.

Fred Wilson, a New York-based venture capitalist who invests in social media companies, said the strategy showed that the News Corporation was trying to take advantage of growing interest in widgets while also trying to carefully control what made it onto MySpace.

But that could be a dangerous strategy, Mr. Wilson said.

“Every attempt everyone has ever made to try to dictate what a person’s Internet experience will be has ended up coming up empty,” he said. “You have to accept the fact that you are never going to be the be-all and end-all of everyone’s experience. They are one click away from everyone else on the Web.”

As for Ms. Tequila, who wrote on her blog that she was a personal friend of Mr. Anderson, the MySpace co-founder, she wrote that she felt bad about blasting the site but that she could not stay silent.

“You guys used to be so cool,” she wrote of MySpace. “Don’t turn into a corporate evil monster.”

Louise Story contributed reporting.

GLEN OWEN
UK Daily Mail
Sunday, March 11, 2007

A primary school headmaster has outraged parents after he tricked his pupils into recording their fingerprints by telling them they were playing spies.

Children were persuaded to give their prints after being told by Mark Woodburn that it was ‘just a game…so there’s no need to tell your parents’.

Privacy campaigners said the case, involving children as young as three, highlights the extent to which Britain is becoming a surveillance society.

It follows the leak of Home Office documents last week which revealed that from 2010, children aged 11 to 16 are to have their fingerprints taken and stored on a secret database when they apply for a passport.

Mr Woodburn, head teacher at Ghyllside Primary School in Kendal, Cumbria, devised the spies game when he introduced a new print-recognition library system at the school.

After being told it was not necessary to tell their parents, pupils were split up into groups of five or six before being photographed and fingerprinted. The ruse was revealed when one young boy did tell his parents, who then complained.

Mr Woodburn says he was unprepared for the strength of feeling among parents about the ‘Big Brother’ system - but admits ‘in hindsight’ at he should have consulted them first.

‘I suppose I was naive,’ he said. ‘I have now sent out letters to every parent, and at the moment only five out of 360 pupils do not use the system.’

One parent, Michael Dawson, described the spread of fingerprinting in schools as ’surveillance by the back door’.

More than 3,500 schools have purchased fingerprint technology, for use in anti-truancy measures or cashless canteens, as well as library systems.

Dudley Council has even published a guide to fingerprinting children on its website.

Last week, Malcolm Trobe, president of the Association of School and College Leaders, complained about the growing mass of ‘intrusive’ information held about pupils and said parents were becoming increasingly alarmed by the Big Brother-style initiatives.

Parents have no rights in law to prevent third-party agencies from accessing this information - schools merely have to tell them what is being held and how it will be used.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil rights group Liberty, said: ‘Authoritarian societies usually sacrifice the rights and freedoms of vulnerable minorities first. Sadly Blair’s Britain is taking the same path.’

Got a van? Use a phone, computer or a camera? Wow that’s suspicious…

Infowars.net
Monday, March 5, 2007

The newest London Metropolitan Police publicity campaign posters have been released today and, as usual, encourage the public to be scared of anyone who uses a phone, carries a bag, drives a van or takes pictures with a camera because they may be terrorists.

Click picture for enlargement.

The Met website datapage states:

“Trust your instincts: it could disrupt terrorist planning and save lives. That’s the call to Londoners today as the Met launches its new counter-terrorism ad campaign.

Unusual activity or behaviour which seems out of place may be terrorist-related, and everyone who works, lives in or visits the capital is being urged to pass on any information to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline.

Terrorists live within our communities, making their plans whilst doing everything they can to blend in, and trying not to raise suspicions about their activities. I would ask people to think about unusual behaviour they have witnessed, or things they have seen which seem to have no logical or obvious explanation.”

A related radio ad is being broadcast in the UK that encourages the public to report anyone who loiters around or films crowded areas. Listen to the ad here.

Transcript:

Radio script - Counter Terrorism campaign February 2007

‘Sure’
___________________________________________________________________

Female Voice over:
How d’you tell the difference between someone just video-ing crowded place and someone who’s checking it out for a terrorist attack?

How can you tell if someone’s buying unusual quantities of stuff for a good reason or if they’re planning to make a bomb?

What’s the difference between someone just hanging around and someone behaving suspiciously?

How can you tell if they’re a normal everyday person, or a terrorist?

Male voice over:
The answer is, you don’t have to.

If you call the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321, the specialist officers you speak to will analyse the information. They’ll decide if and how to follow it up.

You don’t have to be sure. If you suspect it, report it.

Call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321 in confidence.
___________________________________________________________________

If there were real terrorists planning to do anything then they’d be very thankful to the government for creating more noise in the system and tipping them off for what not to do ahead of time.

While “Muhammed Akbar” now ensures to buy his bomb components in small quantities from different shops to evade suspicion, Grandma Brown’s bulk shopping to save money lands her in the slammer.

Reports this weekend also highlighted the fact that MI5 is engaged in training supermarket checkout staff in terrorist profiling.

This publicity campaign follows in the path of a long line of Stasi UK campaigns that we have covered in the past, that do nothing to prevent terrorism and everything to encourage fear and suspicion amongst the British public.

Click here for a past report on such campaigns.

BBC | Monday, March 5, 2007

Fewer than a fifth of the people held in UK anti-terror inquiries since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 have been charged with terrorism-related crimes.

The Home Office figures - which exclude Northern Ireland - show that of 1,166 people detained, just 221 were charged.

Officials said the arrests were made with public protection in mind - 186 people faced non-terrorism charges.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission said “heavy handed and discriminatory” policies had ruined innocent lives.

The Home Office data shows there were 1,126 arrests under the Terrorism Acts of 2000 and 2006 in the period between 11 September 2001 and the end of 2006.

There were 40 arrests under laws other than the Terrorism Act, but as part of a terrorism investigation.

Among the other information that can be gleaned from the figures are that:

# The 1,166 arrests led to 40 convictions under anti-terrorism laws and 180 convictions under other legislation.

# 98 people are on, or are awaiting, trial.

# 652 of the those arrested were released without charge.

# 186 people were charged with non-terrorism offences including murder, firearms and explosives offences or fraud.

# 74 people were handed to the immigration authorities and two face extradition proceedings.

A Home Office spokeswoman said police had to make decisions over arrests based on “the circumstances presented to them”, and take into account the need to conduct an effective investigation and protect the public.

Intelligence led

The data did not specify the ethnic or religious background of those arrested but the Muslim community has contended it has been disproportionately targeted.

The IHRC called for a review of the laws.

Its chairman Massoud Shadjareh said: “It does not inspire confidence in those entrusted with our safety that less than 3.5% of those arrested under anti-terror laws are convicted in what are supposedly intelligence-led operations.”

Human rights group Liberty said the data showed why attempts to extend the length of time people can be held without charge should be resisted.

Director Shami Chakrabarti said: “Inevitably, more people are arrested than charged and more are charged than convicted, yet this is all the more reason to make sure that innocent people are not locked up for longer and longer periods in pre-charge detention.”

IFILM
Monday, March 5, 2007

Sen. Clinton offers a new dialect for her African American church supporters.

Associated Press | Monday, March 5, 2007
BRETT ZONGKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — An expert on Russian intelligence was critically injured in a shooting in front of his suburban Washington home, authorities said.

The shooting of Paul Joyal, 53, came days after he accused the Russian government of involvement in the poisoning of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko. The FBI was assisting in the investigation.

Joyal was shot Thursday by two men in his driveway, police said.

The shooting appeared to be a random robbery and street shooting, a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case told The Associated Press. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the person did not have authority to comment on the case.

In an interview broadcast last Sunday on “Dateline NBC,” Joyal also accused the Russian government of trying to silence its critics.

“A message has been communicated to anyone who wants to speak out against the Kremlin: If you do, no matter who you are, where you are, we will find you, and we will silence you - in the most horrible way possible,” Joyal said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian officials have repeatedly denied involvement in the Litvinenko case.

Joyal and Litvinenko were acquaintances, said Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB counterintelligence chief who is now a U.S. citizen and who met with Joyal several hours before he was shot.

Kalugin also said Joyal’s condition was improving.

Joyal works for National Strategies, a Washington-based government consulting firm.

BBC | Sunday, March 4, 2007

Proposals to fingerprint children aged 11 to 15 as part of new passport and ID card plans are being considered.

Immigration minister Liam Byrne told ITV1’s The Sunday Edition the proposals were being “looked at”.

Under existing plans every passport applicant over 16 will have details - including fingerprints - added to a National Identity register from 2008.

But there was concern youngsters could use passports without biometric details up to the age of 20, said Mr Byrne.

This could happen if they are issued a child passport between the ages of 11 and 15, which would be valid for five years.

Both the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties called the idea “sinister”.

Officials at the Identity and Passport Service (IPS) had proposed the fingerprint database, said Mr Byrne.

But he added that no final decision had yet been made on whether to go ahead with the idea.

“The challenge that officials have been asked to find an answer to, is how do you make sure that people who are 16 and over have got biometric details recorded in their passports?” he told the programme.

‘Arrogance’

Shadow home secretary David Davis said the proposal “borders on the sinister” and added it showed the government was trying to end the presumption of innocence.

“This government is clearly determined to enforce major changes in the relationship between the citizen and the state in a way never seen before.”

“The determination to build a surveillance state behind the backs of the British people is becoming increasingly sinister,” said Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg said.

“It is a measure of ministerial arrogance that plans are being laid to fingerprint children as young as 11 without having a public debate first.

“As millions of British citizens discover that they will have to pay through the nose for the privilege of being included in a range of government databases, ministers should not be surprised if public resistance becomes ever more vocal.”

Parental consent

Last month the opposition parties expressed anger that all fingerprints collected for ID cards would be cross-checked against prints from 900,000 unsolved crimes.

And campaigners have long battled fingerprinting of children in schools, a practice they estimate happens in about 3,500 establishments.

From this month guidelines from privacy watchdog the Information Commissioner will urge schools to get parental consent before taking biometric data.

But under the Data Protection Act schools do not have to seek parental consent, and calls to outlaw the controversial practice have been rejected by the government.

On Monday campaign group Leave Them Kids Alone will launch a list of 10 questions it recommends all parents ask of their child’s school, if biometric systems are being considered or introduced.

Campaigner David Clouter said they feared “normalising” the practice in schools would lessen resistance to pressure for the fingerprinting of younger and younger children.

“Whatever the reason, it is an infringement of a person’s civil liberties,” he said.

Faultline
The Register
Friday, March 2, 2007

The mainstream media has become tabloid journalism. If you want information that matters you must find it yourself.