The UN asks for Control over the World’s Internet

Members of the United Nation’s International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have agreed to work towards implementing a standard for the Internet that would allow for eavesdropping on a worldwide scale.

At a conference in Dubai this week, the ITU members decided to adopt the Y.2770 standard for deep packet inspection, a top-secret proposal by way of China that will allow telecom companies across the world to more easily dig through data passed across the Web.

According to the UN, implementing deep-packet inspection, or DPI, on such a global scale will allow authorities to more easily detect the transferring and sharing of copyrighted materials and other protected files by finding a way for administrators to analyze the payload of online transmissions, not just the header data that is normally identified and interpreted.

“It is standard procedure to route packets based on their headers, after all it is the part of the packet that contains information on the packet's intended destination,” writes The Inquirer’s Lawrence Lati, “but by inspecting the contents of each packet ISPs, governments and anyone else can look at sensitive data. While users can mitigate risks by encrypting data, given enough resources encryption can be foiled.”

Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist widely regarded as the ‘Father of the Internet,’ spoke out against proposed DPI implementation on such a grandiose scale during an address earlier this year at the World Wide Web Consortium.

Somebody clamps a deep packet inspection thing on your cable which reads every packet and reassembles the web pages, cataloguing them against your name, address and telephone number either to be given to the government when they ask for it or to be sold to the highest bidder – that's a really serious breach of privacy,” he said.

Blogger Arthur Herman writes this week for Fox News online that the goal of the delegates at the ITU “is to grab control of the World Wide Web away from the United States, and hand it to a UN body of bureaucrats.”

“It’ll be the biggest power grab in the UN’s history, as well as a perversion of its power,” he warns.

The ITU’s secretary general, Dr. Hamadoun I. Toure, has dismissed critics who have called the proposed DPI model invasive, penning an op-ed this week where he insists his organization’s meeting in Dubai poses “no threat to free speech.”

“It is our chance to chart a globally-agreed roadmap to connect the unconnected, while ensuring there is investment to create the infrastructure needed for the exponential growth in voice, video and data traffic,” Dr. Toure claims of the conference, adding that it presents the UN with “a golden opportunity to provide affordable connectivity for all, including the billions of people worldwide who cannot yet go online.”

Despite his explanation, though, some nation-states and big-name businesses remain opposed to the proposal. The ITU’s conference this week has been held behind closed doors, and representatives with online service providers Google, Facebook and Twitter have been barred from attending.

In a report published this week by CNet, tech journalist Declan McCullagh cites a Korean document that describes the confidential Y.2770 standard as being able to identify "embedded digital watermarks in MP3 data," discover"copyright protected audio content," find "Jabber messages with Spanish text," or "identify uploading BitTorrent users."

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed a Senate resolution that asks for the American government to oppose any efforts by the United Nations to control the Internet.

US military facing fresh questions over targeting of children in Afghanistan

Outrage grows after senior officer claimed troops in Afghanistan were on the lookout for 'children with potential hostile intent'

Karen McVeigh

The US military is facing fresh questions over its targeting policy in Afghanistan after a senior army officer suggested that troops were on the lookout for "children with potential hostile intent".

In comments which legal experts and campaigners described as "deeply troubling", army Lt Col Marion Carrington told the Marine Corp Times that children, as well as "military-age males", had been identified as a potential threat because some were being used by the Taliban to assist in attacks against Afghan and coalition forces.

"It kind of opens our aperture," said Carrington, whose unit, 1st Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, was assisting the Afghan police. "In addition to looking for military-age males, it's looking for children with potential hostile intent."

In the article, headlined "Some Afghan kids aren't bystanders", Carrington referred to a case this year in which the Afghan national police in Kandahar province said they found children helping insurgents by carrying soda bottles full of potassium chlorate.

The piece also quoted an unnamed marine corps official who questioned the "innocence" of Afghan children, particularly three who were killed in a US rocket strike in October. Last month, the New York Times quoted local officials who said Borjan, 12, Sardar Wali, 10, and Khan Bibi, eight, from Helmand's Nawa district had been killed while gathering dung for fuel.

However, the US official claimed that, before they called for the strike on suspected insurgents planting improvised explosive devices, marines had seen the children digging a hole in a dirt road and that "the Taliban may have recruited the children to carry out the mission".

Last year, Human Rights Watch reported a sharp increase in the Taliban's deployment of children in suicide bombings, some as young as seven.

But the apparent widening of the US military's already controversial targeting policy has alarmed human rights lawyers and campaigners.

Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah specialising in counter-terrorism, said Carrington's remarks reflected the shifting definitions of legitimate military targets within the Obama administration.

Guiora, who spent years in the Israel Defence Forces, including time as a legal adviser in the Gaza Strip, said: "I have great respect for people who put themselves in harm's way. Carrington is probably a great guy, but he is articulating a deeply troubling policy adopted by the Obama administration.

"The decision about who you consider a legitimate target is less defined by your conduct than the conduct of the people or category of people which you are assigned to belong to ... That is beyond troubling. It is also illegal and immoral."

Guiora added: "If you are looking to create a paradigm where you increase the 'aperture' – that scares me. It doesn't work, operationally, morally or practically."

Guiora cited comments made by John Brennan, the White House counter-terrorism chief, in April, in which he "talked about flexible definitions of imminent threat."

Pardiss Kebriaei, senior attorney of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a specialist in targeted killings, said she was concerned over what seemed to be an attempt to justify the killing of children.

Kebriaei said: "This is one official quoted. I don't know if that standard is what they are using but the standard itself is troubling."

The US is already facing criticism for using the term term "military-aged male" to justify targeted killings where the identities of individuals are not known. Under the US definition, all fighting-age males killed in drone strikes are regarded as combatants and not civilians, unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary. This has the effect of significantly reducing the official tally of civilian deaths.

Kebriael said the definition was reportedly being used in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. "Under the rules of law you can only target civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities. So, here, this standard of presuming any military aged males in the vicinity of a war zone are militants, already goes beyond what the law allows.

"When you get to the suggestion that children with potentially hostile intent may be perceived to be legitimate targets is deeply troubling and unlawful."

Children in conflict zones have additional protections under the law.

Kebriael, who is counsel for CCR in a lawsuit which seeks accountability for the killing of three American citizens – including a 16 year old boy – in US drone strikes in Yemen last year, said that the piece also raised questions over how those killed in that incident were counted. "Were they counted as military-aged males or were they counted as children with potentially hostile intent or were they counted as the innocent bystanders they were?"

In a speech in April setting out the context for the US programme of targeted killings, White House counter-terrorism chief John Brennan spoke about a threshold of "significant threat', which was widely seen as introducing a lower criteria than "imminent threat".

Brennan said: "Even if it is lawful to pursue a specific member of al-Qaida, we ask ourselves whether that individual's activities rise to a certain threshold for action, and whether taking action will, in fact, enhance our security. For example, when considering lethal force we ask ourselves whether the individual poses a significant threat to US interests. This is absolutely critical, and it goes to the very essence of why we take this kind of exceptional action."

An Isaf spokesman, Lt Col Jimmie Cummings, told the Marine Corp Times that insurgents continue to use children as suicide bombers and IED emplacers, even though Taliban leader Mullah Omar has ordered them to stop harming civilians.

There have been more than 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

3,000 US troops secretly return to Iraq via Kuwait

Over 3,000 US troops have secretly returned to Iraq via Kuwait for missions pertaining to the recent developments in Syria and northern Iraq, Press TV reports.

According to our correspondent, the US troops have secretly entered Iraq in multiple stages and are mostly stationed at Balad military garrison in Salahuddin province and al-Asad air base in al-Anbar province.

Reports say the troops include US Army officers and almost 17,000 more are set to secretlyreturn to Iraq via the same route.

All US troops left Iraq by the end of 2011, after nine years of occupation, as required by a 2008 bilateral security agreement between the two countries. The troops left Iraq for the neighboring Kuwait.

Washington decided to pull out all its troops from Iraq after Baghdad refused to grant legal immunity to the remaining US soldiers.

Washington claims that the only US military presence left in Iraq now is 157 soldiers responsible for training at the US Embassy, as well as a small contingent of marines protecting the diplomatic mission.

US-led forces attacked Iraq in 2003 and toppled Saddam Hussein on the pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction. But no WMD was ever discovered in Iraq. At the peak of the US-led military operation in Iraq, there were 170,000 US troops and more than 500 bases in Iraq.

More than one million Iraqis were killed as the result of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

Vulture spying for Israel’ caught in Sudan

Officials in Sudan say they have captured an electronically-tagged vulture suspected of being dispatched by Israel on a spying mission.

The avian discovery was made in Kereinek, a town in the Darfur region of western Sudan, Israeli media have reported.

Sudanese officials are said to have concluded that the bird was a secret agent after discovering it was fitted with GPS and solar-powered equipment capable of broadcasting images via satellite, according to Haaretz newspaper, which cited an Egyptian website, El Balad.

The vulture also had a tag attached to its leg with "Israel Nature Service" and "Hebrew University, Jerusalem", leading to accusations that it was on an Israeli surveillance mission.

The reports follow allegations by Sudan that Israel carried out the bombing of a munitions depot near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, in October, after jamming the country's radar defences.

Israel has made no comment on the raid, which left two people dead. The arms depot was said to be supplying weapons to the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Israeli officials have acknowledged that the bird, which can fly up to 375 miles a day, had been tagged with Israeli equipment but insisted it was being used to study migration patterns.

Ohad Hazofe, an ecologist with the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, told the website, Ynet, that it was one of 100 vultures fitted in October with a GPS system equipped to take distance and altitude readings but not surveillance images.

"That's the only way we knew something had happened to the bird – all of a sudden it stopped flying and started travelling on the ground," he said.

A similar discovery in Saudi Arabia last year prompted local media to report that a bird, later identified as a Griffon, had been "arrested" under suspicion of spying as part of a suspected "Zionist plot".

Saudi officials later dismissed the speculation and criticised journalists for jumping to conclusions after accepting Israeli explanations that the bird was part of a migration study.

Palestine non-member observer status – a cause of celebration?

Unable to secure full membership Abbas petitioned the UN for non-member observer state status

On the 65^th Anniversary of the UN declaration that led to the creation of the state of Israel, the UN General Assembly has voted in favour of changing the Palestinian status from observer entity to non-member observer state. The semantics describing the extent of non-statehood for the Palestinians could not get more ludicrous yet the move is being presented has an improvement in the status of the Palestinians.

The vote for non-member observer status came a year after the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas applied to the UN for full membership which was rejected by the Security Council.

Abbas and the PLO are seeking UN recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967. Unable to secure full membership for a Palestinian state they petitioned the UN for non-member observer state status.

However, this is a false choice for the Muslims and is the politics of weakness and defeatism. The PLO started out vowing to end the Israeli occupation but following compromise after compromise and concession after concession is now celebrating the non-effectual “non-member observer status” of the UN.

In effect what we have seen is a “race to the bottom” in the status of the Palestinians not in their elevation.

Most importantly, it has forced compromise on issues that are not up for negotiation for Muslims.

Narrated Said bin Zaid:
Allah’s Apostle said, “Whoever usurps the land of somebody unjustly, his neck will be encircled with it down the seven earths (on the Day of Resurrection). ” [Bukhari Volume 3, Book 43]

Where is the justice for those whose lands have been usurped not only since 1967 but from 1948? What of the rights of those forced out of Palestine as permanent refugees in Syria, Egypt and Jordan. All sense of what’s right or just has been subject to waiver. Over time this devalues justice and principle until all sense of what’s right is lost and what is blatantly wrong appears fair seeming.

However, Allah (swt) says:

“Stand out firmly for justice, as witnesses to Allah, even as against yourselves, or your parents, or your kin, and whether it be (against) rich or poor: for Allah can best protect both” (Translated meaning of Quran 4:135)

Leveson Report: Can its recommendation work?

The press provides an essential check on all aspects of public life. That is why any failure within the media affects all of us. At the heart of this Inquiry, therefore, may be one simple question: who guards the guardians?”
Lord Justice Leveson

Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry into press standards has provided weeks worth of scandalous headlines and opinion columns. Regardless of the standards by which the press conform, they certainly know how to run with a story and keep the British public interested. Scandals, corruption and gossip sell newspapers. Balanced objective analysis sells fewer newspapers. The press cater for the tastes of their customers and that is the driving force behind the “unethical” practices which have been highlighted in the inquiry.

There is great public interest in the close relationship that has been found between the owners and editors of large media organisations and the government. We have learned about police willing to accept money from journalists for information and the lengths to which journalists might go to get a scoop, outrageously hacking the voicemail box of a missing child’s mobile phone! The unacceptable and illegal invasion of privacy and corruption in the press had many people campaigning for reform of the media in the United Kingdom.

But now that media regulation is on the cards, there is a significant campaign against it. Those white collar libertarians are terrified that any form of government regulation of the press would inevitably lead to some sort of totalitarianism from which we would never escape. Isn’t it bad enough, they might argue, that the media incessantly interferes in politics without politicians interfering back! Leveson might ask “who guards the guardians?” The next question becomes “who guards the guards of the guardians?”… and so continues the conundrum.

Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are nice slogans but inherently carry with them contradictions. A free media is seen as the vehicle in a civil society that informs the public as to the activities of government and allows appropriate accountability and political participation. But what if the media is in fact monopolised by a handful of multimillionaire capitalists who are able to colour the opinion of the masses to serve their opinion or their interests? Clearly defamation and libel must carry with them penalties as such publications genuinely harm some individuals. Lines do need to be drawn and the only question is where the line should be.  Placing some media regulations does not inevitably lead to totalitarianism as the hysterical supposed libertarians might fear. The lines must be clearly defined and strike the correct balance.

It should be recognised that the majority of media in the Western world is of no particular value to society anyway. Much consists of tabloid gossip, magazines with more gossip and dieting tips, reality TV and other frivolous subjects. A small but important subsection of the media deals with scientific and technological research, economy and politics and these are the boring parts of the media that few people pay much attention to. Many of the unsavoury practices which have been made public through this inquiry, have not been related to reporting of matters of vital public concern. Those defending freedom of speech are expending excessive effort defending the right to insult, and invade privacy for the purpose of coffee time amusement. What needs to be defended is the ability of the press to accurately scrutinise and report on the actions of government independently and without censorship or interference. This does not require slogans about freedom with limitations but rather clear cut protections for the press in their role as public servants and protection for the public from the press either invading their privacy or unduly influencing politicians and policy.

In this regard, concepts of freedom of speech and the press inhibit effective regulation while the press caters to the whims of a public who enjoy distracting themselves with irrelevancies.

The Islamic Shariah strongly protects the independence of the press and forbids any interference or censorship in reporting by government. Similarly, there are strong protections for privacy, defamation and against frivolous gossip. The press has an important role in informing the public and accounting the government in Islam. Islam also emphasises the importance of accounting the tyrant ruler even if it led to death.

Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) said: “The master of martyrs is Hamza bin AbdulMuttalib and a man who stood to an oppressor ruler where he ordered him and forbade him so he (the ruler) killed him.” [Abu Dawud]

With the amount of online media sources through social media, blogs, YouTube and news websites, the idea of totalitarian restrictions on speech are unattractive and probably near impossible. Rather the Shariah lays down clear cut red lines, for which crossing will invite a criminal prosecution and which observing will ensure the producers protection. Goalposts should not move.

The root of this problem is the West’s perpetual commitment and blind faith in freedom of speech. There is no absolute moral or ethical justification for its adoption yet it becomes the basis of their thinking. As it is demonstrably impossible to have absolute freedom of speech, restrictions must be imposed resulting in immediate contradiction. The quagmire simply deepens when the limited freedoms lead to increasingly malicious actions inviting further limitations and regulations. So the argument continues without any logically consistent conclusion possible due to the failure of the fundamental premise, freedom of speech itself.

This illogical contradictory position leads to the absurd situation where proponents will endlessly defend practices that have no tangible benefit to this country and actually confer a great deal of harm for the sake of freedom of speech itself. All this, while those rich enough continue to get injunction orders to prevent the press from reporting their misdemeanours. All in the fear that government regulation would end with a dysfunctional press cow-towing to their governmental masters.

The Leveson inquiry simply demonstrates that a free press in liberal democracies cannot regulate themselves and the root cause of the problem is the irrational belief in freedom of speech. In Islam, speech cannot be restricted unless it contravenes laws that arise from the Shariah and this necessarily includes the accounting of political institutions. Political leaders are not allowed to restrict speech or the press for their own political ends and likewise the press cannot cross clear ethical lines established by the Shariah.

Countdown to the end of the world? ?What a joke

The world will end in 16 days, we've been told. That's when the Mayan calendar "runs out," causing us all to cease to exist, the story goes.

It's hoopla, of course. I guarantee we will still be here on December 22nd, and if I'm wrong and the universe really does come to an end, then, well, you can shoot me or something.

Sure, there may be some strange things happening on or around December 21st. Many people are using the Mayan calendar transition to engage in meditation marathons in order to focus on universal peace and similar vibrations. That's all fine and good. No harm in some healthy meditation...


Other people suspect that governments might actually use the day to stage something nefarious, thereby preying on the uncertainty and fear that already exists as the day approaches. This is a legitimate possibility, so if anything does happen on December 21st or 22nd, the first question to ask is: "Did the government stage this?"

The danger of investing your intention in false prophecy

There's always some prophecy, it seems, warning that the end of the world is arriving on a specific date. Last year I remember a few people posting on Facebook, frantically begging me to write about an approaching comet (or secret planet, I don't remember which) that was going to collide with the Earth and destroy us all.

I never covered the topic, of course. And here we still are, amazingly.

But some people really, seriously believe in the latest prophecy fad and as a result they plan their lives around the belief that nothing will exist beyond December 21st. This does not resonate well with life tasks such as financial planning. Some people are spending away all their credit cards right now under the assumption that they won't have to pay anything back since we will all be destroyed on the magical Mayan calendar day.

That approach to debt spending is really going to suck on December 23rd or whenever the bill comes due. In fact, it may feel a lot like the end of the world when you realize you prematurely quit your job and spent away a whole lot of money you didn't even have (and now have to pay it back without the benefit of a trillion-dollar government bailout).

There are legitimate threats to our world, but the Mayan calendar isn't one of them

Doomsday is actually approaching, by the way, and there are lots of ways in which our current human civilization is utterly unsustainable.

There are legitimate threats to our civilization from GMOs (genetic pollution), the pillaging of natural resources, loss of top soils, the polluting of the oceans, rampant infertility caused by synthetic chemicals, and even threats from hare-brained scientific experiments that could theoretically create black holes which consume the entire planet.

None of those are fiction; they're very real. And on top of that, there's also the coming debt collapse which won't actually destroy the world but will make you wish it had been destroyed due to the rampant poverty and starvation it will likely unleash.

But even with these real, legitimate threats, that's no reason to live your life as if it's all coming to an end, because in truth nobody knows the timetables on these things. The economic collapse, for example, could happen tonight or maybe in ten years. It's hard to tell exactly when things will reach a point of collapse. So while it's smart to be prepared for the unexpected, it's not prudent to allow your entire existence to be dominated by the thought that it's all coming to an end on a specific calendar date.

Unless God himself broadcasts a multilingual message from the heavens that announces a specific time and date that he's going to "end the simulation" and close the cosmos, you would be wise to stay on course with your life and not bet all your cards on a prophecy dreamed up by ancient humans who hadn't even developed an alphabet yet.