CIA Finishes Its Torture Report Redactions As Relations With Senate Intelligence Committee Have Become 'Strained'

from the shouldn't-they-always-be-that-way dept

As you may recall, back in April, the Senate finally voted to declassify parts of the executive summary of its $40 million, 6,300-page report on the disastrous CIA torture program. Of course, as part of that, the White House said it would let the CIA take a first crack at figuring out what to redact, with the expected answer being "a whole hell of a lot." The CIA has apparently now turned its first draft of redactions over to the White House, which is expected to further redact things, because the State Department is afraid that releasing the report might make people angry at US officials. While that may be true, it would seem that the proper response to that would have been to, you know, not torture people, rather than to hide the report under a bunch of black ink.

Of course, there's a separate meta-drama within all of this, which was the big fight between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee who wrote the report, after it came out that the CIA spied on the Senate staffers working on this report. That got even more messy, when the CIA then asked the DOJ to investigate those Senate staffers for possible crimes, while the Senate also asked the DOJ to investigate if the CIA had broken the law in spying on those staffers' computers. Needless to say, there's been something of a chill in "relations" between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In the Politico report about the CIA handing the report over to the White House, it includes a tidbit at the end, suggesting that the chilly relationship has not thawed at all:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a former Intelligence Committee chairman, said the declassification process has strained relations between the committee and the administration’s intelligence apparatus. The CIA has accused the committee of removing an internal interrogation review from its facilities — and Feinstein has charged that the CIA erred in removing that document from the committee’s computers.

“There’s a code of silence. And it stems from the redaction of this enhanced interrogation, torture report,” Rockefeller said of congressional relations with the CIA.

While the "code of silence" seems stupid and petty, frankly, it's probably a good thing that the sides aren't too chummy. The whole point of the Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress is supposed to be for oversight of the intelligence community. However, in recent years that's obviously changed into something entirely different, where those Committees seemed much more focused on being the intelligence community's cheerleaders and defenders, rather than overseers. The relationship here should be somewhat adversarial. No one's saying they need to hate each others' guts, but it's pretty clear that bad things happen when the relationship has become downright friendly.

Filed Under: cia, redactions, senate intelligence committee, state department, torture, torture report, white house

US Embassy In Berlin Offering Cold, Hard Cash For People To Create Pro-TAFTA/TTIP Propaganda

from the beats-transparency dept

We've been writing about the big US/EU "free trade" agreement negotiations (which aren't really about free trade at all), variously named TAFTA or TTIP (negotiators prefer TTIP, to avoid comparisons to NAFTA) for quite some time now. If it were really about free trade, there might be some interesting elements to it, but it's much more about the standard issues like providing corporate sovereignty over national sovereignty, and other things like ratcheting up copyright and patent laws in secret. All this "democracy" is all done very much behind closed doors that won't be opened until many years after the agreement is already reached.

The key negotiators have long been complaining about "misinformation" being spread about this and other agreements -- but it often appears that the misinformation is actually coming directly from the negotiators themselves. Besides, it's pretty rich to complain about misinformation on a deal that you're negotiating in secret. Want to end much of that supposed "misinformation"? Here's a simple suggestion: open up, show some transparency and release the negotiating positions you're taking, or even draft documents of the agreement to allow the public to comment.

But instead of transparency, it appears that the US State Department has settled on another option: paying for propaganda.

No joke, the US Embassy in Berlin has apparently been tweeting out offers to give out between $5,000 and $20,000 to organizations willing to produce pro-TAFTA/TTIP propaganda. The document doesn't ask for proposals for unbiased analysis on the impact of any potential agreement, instead it starts out by simply declaring:

T-TIP will be a fair deal for Europeans and Americans that will build on an already existing strong friendship.

Now that's an interesting claim, given that there is no agreement yet, and what's been negotiated so far is (and will remain) entirely secret. So, uh, how does anyone know if it will be "a fair deal." Wouldn't it be more reasonable and, dare I say, objective, to ask for an analysis of what kinds of things might be useful in an agreement, and what kinds of things might cause harm? Or, better yet, how about a study on the pros and cons of certain proposals, so as to better weigh the benefits and dangers? Instead, the State Department just insists that this secretive, and nowhere near concluded, agreement will definitely be fair... and is offering cold hard cash to anyone who will cook up some argument for why that must be. Anything will do:

The activities funded with a Federal Assistance Award (Grant) ranging from $5000 to $20,000 might include the following innovative ideas:

• short documentaries on T-TIP
• Expert Speaker Tour with proposed names(s) for travel (including per diem and honoraria)
• creation of a Twitterfall wall during a conference
• digital posters in German with QR codes to inform about T-TIP objectives
• a T-TIP conference with a broad swath of stakeholders that can be live-streamed
• online discussion forums on T-TIP
• website devoted to T-TIP

Hmm. We run a site that has online discussions around the agreement. Perhaps we should apply... Somehow, I don't think we'll pass the "screening" process.

Filed Under: berlin, embassy, grants, propaganda, state department, tafta, ttip, us dos, ustr

More Details Emerge Showing The US Government Has No Idea How To Solve A Problem Like Snowden

from the piling-futility-on-futility dept

For all of its surveillance and number-crunching powers, the NSA has had little success in dealing with its Snowden problem. It still seems the agency has no idea what Snowden took, with guesses varying wildly over the past several months. Some reports (not the NSA's) have put that number as low as 60,000. The NSA continues to claim the number is over one million, even with its most recent guess revising its first estimates downward.

But the number of documents is only part of the problem. Details of the government's inability to apprehend Snowden, as well as its uncertainty as to his current location or activities, continue to surface. Snowden seems to be able to operate in the all-seeing-eye's blind spots, according to officials quoted by Greg Miller at the Washington Post.

The first indication that the government was operating several steps behind Snowden surfaced during his move from Hong Kong to Russia. The plan, such as it were, was to rely on the benevolence of a country whose president often displays a casual antipathy towards the United States.

For weeks, senior officials from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department and other agencies assembled nearly every day in a desperate search for a way to apprehend the former intelligence contractor who had exposed the inner workings of American espionage then fled to Hong Kong before ending up in Moscow.

Convened by White House homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco, the meetings kept ending at the same impasse: Have everyone make yet another round of appeals to their Russian counterparts and hope that Snowden makes a misstep.

Snowden didn't misstep, but the US did, concentrating its efforts on a flight to Bolivia that the former NSA contractor never boarded. (It also scrambled a rendition jet on the off-chance that Snowden could be seized out in the open.) And even if he had decided to head that direction, there was actually very little the US could have done about it. Forcing the plane to land (as it did with the president of Bolivia's jet) wasn't the problem. This could be done in any allied airspace. The problem was that the country's jurisdiction ended where the plane's cabin began.

Even if Snowden had been a passenger, officials said, it is unclear how he could have been removed from a Bolivian air force jet whose cabin would ordinarily be regarded as that country’s sovereign domain — especially in Austria, a country that considers itself diplomatically neutral.

“We would have looked foolish if Snowden had been on that plane sitting there grinning,” said a senior Austrian official. “There would have been nothing we could have done.”

But what is probably more concerning is the fact that US intelligence seems to have little idea what Snowden's doing, where he's living or anything else. While some officials have made claims that Snowden is now working for Russian intelligence, any actual intelligence is sparse and nearly impossible to verify.

Snowden is facing espionage-related charges, and the FBI has power to conduct wiretaps and enlist the NSA and CIA in its investigative efforts overseas. But even with such help, officials said, the bureau’s reach in Moscow is limited.

“The FBI doesn’t have any capability to operate in Moscow without the collaboration of the FSB,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official who served in the Russian capital.

Further hampering its investigation is the lack of evidence that Snowden is working for a "foreign power" or actively aiding an enemy state. Russia, despite its problems, simply doesn't qualify as a direct opponent of our national security. And so far, nothing obtained has indicated Snowden is now an FSB operative. Without this crucial stipulation, the government can only go so far in its efforts.

Several U.S. officials cited a complication to gathering intelligence on Snowden that could be seen as ironic: the fact that there has been no determination that he is an “agent of a foreign power,” a legal distinction required to make an American citizen a target of espionage overseas.

For all the claims that Snowden has done irreparable harm to US security with his leaks, it's kind of surprising that the government can gather so little information on the current situation of its public enemy #1. This also shows that the surveillance state is severely limited without cooperative partners, something countries expressing outrage over expansive data/communication harvesting should take note of.

The government claims Snowden has harmed America, but can't even determine what he took, who he's working with or even where exactly he's currently living. It can't even provide enough evidence of its claims to build a case that would provide it more surveillance options. And yet, it wants to throw Snowden in jail for espionage. That doesn't add up.

Filed Under: bolivia, cia, ed snowden, fbi, lisa monaco, moscow, nsa, state department, surveillance, us government

US Admits It Secretly Built Similar Twitter-Like Services For Lots Of Countries

from the because-usaid dept

Following the revelations that the US had secretly attempted to build a Twitter-like service in Cuba, the US government has now admitted that it has tried to do the same thing in a bunch of different countries, some with more success than others. According to the NY Times:

The United States built Twitter-like social media programs in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like one in Cuba, that were aimed at encouraging open political discussion, Obama administration officials said Friday. But like the program in Cuba, which was widely ridiculed when it became public this month, the services in Pakistan and Afghanistan shut down after they ran out of money because the administration could not make them self-sustaining.

In all three cases, American officials appeared to lack a long-term strategy for the programs beyond providing money to start them.

Administration officials also said Friday that there had been similar programs in dozens of other countries, including a Yes Youth Can project in Kenya that was still active.

While you can see the appeal of better helping citizens in these countries communicate with each other, the secrecy concerning who is behind them is where it gets troubling. As the case in Cuba with ZunZuneo, we noted that this helps legitimize every crackpot theory about how various programs are really US government fronts.

In fact, as you read the details of these programs, many of them do appear to have been set up with perfectly noble intentions, to help people better communicate and share ideas. But having the US government behind them -- especially given all of the recent revelations about US surveillance -- completely undermines that intent. Furthermore, it really doesn't seem like any of these services have had much of an impact at all. Instead, in all of the cases where we've heard of social networking services having any impact, they're when citizens of a country adopt existing services, like Twitter and Facebook, rather than these specialized "local" services.

Filed Under: afghanistan, communications, cuba, kenya, pakistan, social media, state department, surveillance, usaid
Companies: yes youth can, zunzuneo

State Dept Launches 'Free the Press' Campaign Same Day DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Jail Reporter

from the just-not-the-press-we-hate dept

The US State Department announced the launch of its third annual "Free the Press" campaign today, which will purportedly highlight "journalists or media outlets that are censored, attacked, threatened, or otherwise oppressed because of their reporting." A noble mission for sure. But maybe they should kick off the campaign by criticizing their own Justice Department, which, on the very same day, has asked the Supreme Court to help them force Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times reporter James Risen into jail.

Politico's Josh Gerstein reports that the Justice Department filed a legal brief today urging the Supreme Court to reject Risen's petition to hear his reporter's privilege case, in which the Fourth Circuit ruled earlier this year that James Risen (and all journalists) can be forced to testify against their sources without any regard to the confidentiality required by their profession. This flies in the face of common law precedent all over the country, as well as the clear district court reasoning in Risen's case in 2012. (The government's Supreme Court brief can be read here.)

Associated Press reporter Matthew Lee commendably grilled the State Department spokesman about the contradiction of its press freedom campaign and the James Risen case at today's briefing on the State Department initiative, repeatedly asking if the government considers press freedom issues in the United States the same way it does aboard. The full transcript is below.

As Gerstein noted, "The Justice Department brief is unflinchingly hostile to the idea of the Supreme Court creating or finding protections for journalists," and if the Justice Department succeeds "it could place President Barack Obama in the awkward position of presiding over the jailing of a journalist in an administration the president has vowed to make the most transparent in history."

The government does mention it is working with Congress to craft a reporter's shield bill, which should give you some indication that the proposed bill is at best a watered-down, toothless version of what many courts have offered journalists for decades, and that would be no help to James Risen—the exact type of reporter that we should be attempting to protect the most. It's important to remember that in Risen's case, the government has previously analogized reporter's privilege to a criminal receiving drugs from someone and refusing to testify about it.

We'll have more on both the shield law and the Risen case soon, but it's clear that the US government still refuses to walk the walk when providing journalists the protections it says it believes in.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, maybe the State Department can use its "Free the Press" campaign to put pressure on one of its staunchest allies, the United Kingdom, which is using terrorism laws to suppress acts of journalism—something the State Department has condemned many times in the past.

Here's the full interaction between the AP's Matthew Lee and the State Department spokesperson Jennifer Psaki on James Risen and US press freedom at today's press briefing:

Reposted from Freedom of the Press Foundation

Filed Under: doj, free press, james risen, journalism, justice department, state department

US Promoting Mesh Networks; Reporters Misleadingly Think They Somehow Stop Digital Spying

from the not-the-same-thing dept

A recent article in the NY Times talked about how the US State Department is behind a project to build up mesh networks that can be used in countries with authoritarian governments, helping citizens of those places access an internet that is often greatly limited. This isn't actually new. In fact, three years ago we wrote about another NY Times article about the State Department funding these kinds of projects. Nor is the specific project in the latest NYT article new. A few months back, we had covered an important milestone with Commotion, the mesh networking project coming out of New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute (OTI).

But the latest NYT article is especially odd, not because it repeats old news, but because it tries to build a narrative that Commotion and other such projects funded by the State Department are somehow awkward because they could be used to fight back against government surveillance, such as those of the NSA. The problem is that the issues are unrelated, and nothing in mesh networking deals with stopping surveillance. As Ed Felten notes, the Times reporters appear to be confusing things greatly:

There’s only one problem: mesh networks don’t do much to protect you from surveillance. They’re useful, but not for that purpose.

A mesh network is constructed from a bunch of nodes that connect to each other opportunistically and figure out how to forward packets of data among themselves. This is in constrast to the hub-and-spoke model common on most networks.

The big advantage of mesh networks is availability: set up nodes wherever you can, and they’ll find other nearby nodes and self-organize to route data. It’s not always the most efficient way to move data, but it is resilient and can provide working connectivity in difficult places and conditions. This alone makes mesh networks worth pursing.

But what mesh networks don’t do is protect your privacy. As soon as an adversary connects to your network, or your network links up to the Internet, you’re dealing with the same security and privacy problems you would have had with an ordinary connection.

The whole point of Commotion and other mesh networks is availability, not privacy. The target use is for places where governments are seeking to shut down internet access, not surveil on them. Yes, there is a case where if you could set up a mesh network that then routed around government surveillance points you could circumvent some level of surveillance, but the networks themselves are not designed to be surveillance proof. In fact, back in January when we wrote about Commotion, we pointed out directly that the folks behind the project themselves are pretty explicit that Commotion is not about hiding your identity or preventing monitoring of internet traffic.

Could a mesh network also be combined with stronger privacy and security protections? Yes, but that's different than just assuming that mesh networking takes on that problem by itself. It doesn't -- and it's misleading for the NYT to suggest otherwise.

Filed Under: access, commotion, mesh networks, privacy, security, state department
Companies: new america foundation, oti

State Department Official Freaks Out That Declassifying CIA Torture Report Might Make The World Angry

from the it's-not-the-declassification... dept

While the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its $40 million, 6,300 page report detailing the CIA's torture regime -- including the facts that it went beyond what was authorized, produced no useful intelligence and then the CIA lied about it all -- three members of the Committee voted against it. Senators James Risch, Dan Coats (though, who knows if he had any idea what he was voting on) and Marco Rubio all voted against declassifying, with Risch and Rubio putting out a statement claiming that the State Department didn't want the report declassified.

The Senate Intelligence Committee today voted to send a one-sided, partisan report to the CIA and White House for declassification despite warnings from the State Department and our allies indicating that declassification of this report could endanger the lives of American diplomats and citizens overseas and jeopardize U.S. relations with other countries. Therefore, we could not support declassification of this product at this time.

This raised some eyebrows, since the Obama administration has consistently said it supported declassification, even as the CIA was fighting it. Still, it's rare that the State Department would actively contradict the White House. However, the Daily Beast now has more details on the State Department's desire to block the declassification:

A senior Senate aide told The Daily Beast that the Rubio-Risch statement referred to a June 2013 classified letter to senators signed by Philip Goldberg, who at the time served as the State Department’s top intelligence official. The warning was in reference to the fact that the report contains information about cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies and the existence of still-undisclosed CIA “black site” prisons in foreign countries where abuses may have occurred.

CIA facilities implicated in the report have allegedly been located in Thailand, Poland, Lithuania, and Romania, sparking public debate and resentment against the U.S. government in those countries. But officials and senate aides said the report contains information on several more locations.

Diplomats representing those countries, aware of their vulnerability to exposure, have been quietly meeting with administration officials and lawmakers urging them to protect the secrecy of those intelligence relationships. Many foreign governments are still angry about the disclosures of NSA spying by leaker Edward Snowden.

To be fair, the article notes that the letter from Goldberg was not cleared nor reviewed by State Department leadership. Thus, it may be seen less as "the State Department" making these comments, and more as the dude who has to deal with foreign spy agencies for the State Department. But, even so, the letter is ridiculous.

There is a semi-legitimate point that the eventual disclosure of what countries helped the CIA torture people will certainly create some troubling diplomatic situations for those countries. But that's not the fault of the disclosure process. It's because (1) the CIA tortured people and (2) those other countries went along with it. Don't like that that will be disclosed? Then maybe they shouldn't have done it in the first place.

The CIA's torture program was a dark moment in American history and we don't get past it by burying it -- and the story of those who helped -- under the rug. It needs to be out in the open. Even Vice President Joe Biden has said exactly that:

“I think the only way you excise the demons is you acknowledge, you acknowledge exactly what happened straightforward,” Biden said. “The single best thing that ever happened to Germany were the war crimes tribunals, because it forced Germany to come to its milk about what in fact has happened.”

To argue that the embarrassment of admitting that we partnered up with other countries in conducting illegal torture means we shouldn't reveal the details at all goes against everything that we're supposed to stand for, in being willing and able to admit our mistakes. It's shameful that anyone at the State Department -- with or without approval from leadership -- would send such a letter, giving cowardly Senators extra cover for not approving the declassification of the report.

Filed Under: cia, dan coats, embarrassment, james risch, marco rubio, philip goldberg, senate, state department, torture, torture report

State Dept. Now Trolling Twitter Terrorists

from the flame-war! dept

The US State Department's social media arms have been much busier over the past few months trolling terrorist sympathizers and radicalization groups online via Twitter and Facebook. "Trolling" probably isn't the most precise term for the injection of countering views into previously uninterrupted feeds, but it does sort of sum up the State Dept's end game, which is less set on converting would-be terrorists than simply preventing these accounts from running uninterrupted and unchallenged feeds.

Back in December of last year, Alberto Fernandez, who heads the State Dept.'s "Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications," put it his way.

Gauging the effort’s effectiveness will be challenging, but even interrupting Al Qaeda’s unimpeded English-language efforts would amount to a modest success, officials said.

“They were setting the narrative and had a free shot at the audience for radicalizing people,” Mr. Fernandez said in an interview. “Nobody was calling them” on it.

The State Dept. uses analysts familiar with the many terrorist factions currently operating around the world, including some fluent in Arabic, Urdu, Somali and Punjabi, to provide countering arguments to assertions made by Twitter accounts and Facebook pages loosely tied to terrorist organizations. The recent activities of State Dept.-sponsored Twitter accounts like Think Again Turn Away (whose avatar is the State Dept. insignia) have drawn some press, but the genesis of these efforts dates back much further than that.

This kind of thing isn't unusual for the State Department. The Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications was established in 2010 to coordinate messaging to target violent extremism on the internet, especially that of Al Qaeda and affiliates. CSCC (an interagency center that is housed at State) initially focused on non-English online forums where the State Department saw jihadists attempting to recruit and raise money (message boards, comments on Al Jazeera Talk, etc.) Late last year, CSCC made a move into English-language websites, with the small team of analysts and microbloggers expanding their fight on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and elsewhere, under the banner of the US State Department.

Back in 2012, Techdirt covered another State Dept. effort called "Viral Peace," which was aiming to "troll" extremists using big social media sites as well as smaller forums, hoping to neutralize the threat by undermining it. The Wired story covered was light on details on exactly what form this "trolling" would take, as the near-zero-budget program was still in development, with even the program leaders unsure of what the best methods would be. As Mike pointed out then, trolling extremists carried the potential for horrendous backlash, with clumsy efforts just as likely to craft more enemies of America than dissuade potential recruits.

What the State Dept. is doing now leaves no doubt that this is a government-controlled operation. No effort is being made to hide the department's involvement, which makes the counterpoints almost too easily dismissed and/or attacked to be considered truly effective. (A go-to counterargument to the State Dept.'s accusations of terrorist-related killings of women and children has been to point to the US's drone program, something that has killed a number of women and children as well.)

While there's no doubt the NSA and other agencies are operating undercover accounts aimed at tracking terrorist threats and subverting radicalization, the State Department's wholly above-board intercessions are less likely to provoke backlash. Those who want to believe it's nothing but a propaganda arm are free to discount anything issued from these accounts. Those who might be swayed by seeing a differing viewpoint will be less likely to feel they been somehow tricked, as they might be if an account is later revealed to be controlled by a government employee.

This is still a very difficult area to navigate without making the situation worse, but in a very short time, the State Dept.'s counterterrorism Twitter account has become comfortable enough in its engagement with extremists to deploy the sort of snark that clearly reveals a human being runs the account -- albeit one wearing its affiliation on its sleeve.

@Jabz_26 "shut up," he explained .. the truth hurts doesn't it? #thinkagainturnaway

— Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS) March 13, 2014

Success will still be measured by reactions rather than anything truly quantifiable, like attacks prevented or would-be terrorists dissuaded.

"If you're talking about would-be extremists reading a tweet and turning away from violence as a result, it's hard to tell how much that is happening," Will McCants [former counterterrorism advisor to the State Dept.] says. "So if you measure success that way, it's hard to know. But you can demonstrate that this kind of effort has gotten into the heads of senior leadership. With al-Shabaab, for instance, leaders issued a directive saying not to interact with the State Department accounts because they spread lies about the mujahideen. Things used to be the other way, with [US officials] talking about how jihadis were so good at messaging against the US. It's nice that we're starting to have this turnaround."

The State Department hasn't always had success in its social media forays, but there's not much to criticize about this so-called "trolling" effort. This effort seems to be exercising a great deal of restraint and the transparency of these accounts will hopefully prevent a few of the more noxious side effects -- like pushing even more would-be terrorists off the fence.

Filed Under: state department, terrorists, think again turn away, trolling

Will State Department Condemn The UK For Using Terror Laws To Stifle Journalism?

from the it's-done-so-with-others dept

We wrote earlier about the incredible situation in the UK, in which the government there is making the ridiculous argument that it was appropriate to detain Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda at Heathrow under an anti-terrorism law because his journalistic activities qualify as terrorism because they might "influence a government." It seems fairly obvious to most rational observers, that the UK is redefining anti-terrorism laws to stifle journalism it doesn't like.

Trevor Timm, over at the Freedom of the Press Foundation wonders if the US State Department will condemn the UK for this activity, noting a long history of the State Department condemning countries who use anti-terror laws to stifle journalism.

For example, in January 2012, in response to Ethiopia jailing award-winning journalist Eskinder Nega, the State Department expressed “concern that the application of anti-terrorism laws can sometimes undermine freedom of expression and independent media.” Again in June State Department released a statement saying the US “The Ethiopian government has used the Anti-Terrorism Proclamation to jail journalists and opposition party members for peacefully exercising their freedoms of expression and association.”

The 2012 State Department human rights report on Turkey criticizes the country for imprisoning “scores of journalists…most charged under antiterror laws or for connections to an illegal organization.”

In April 2013, the State Department cited Burundi for imprisoning radio journalist Hassan Ruvakuki and three of his colleagues for “acts of terrorism.”

Just last month, in response to respected Moroccan journalist Ali Anouzla being arrested under an anti-terror law for linking to a Youtube video, the State Department said, “We are concerned with the government of Morocco’s decision to charge Mr. Anouzla. We support freedom of expression and of the press, as we say all the time, universal rights that are an indispensable part of any society.”

So now when a close ally is doing exactly the same thing -- but it's in an effort to stifle journalism the US probably doesn't much like either -- will the State Department react the same way? A reporter for The Guardian, Dan Roberts, apparently asked the White House that question, and White House spokesperson Jay Carney gave one of those "I'll have to get back to you" kind of answers, which suggests no intention of actually answering the question. Hopefully Roberts and other reporters will continue asking the question until an actual answer is given.

Filed Under: david miranda, schedule 7, state department, terrorism, uk

Pirate Parties Blocked From WIPO After US & Other Countries Complained That They Don't Support WIPO's Mission

from the but-of-course dept

A little over a year ago, the Pirate Parties International (a group representing various different local Pirate Parties) asked for permission to have "observer" status at WIPO, the UN-based World Intellectual Property Organization, an operation somewhat renowned for its generally maximalist agenda. Last year, we noted that, after complaints from Swiss, French and US delegations to WIPO, the PPI request was delayed for an entire year. Well, that year is up... and WIPO has officially rejected the request while it approved all other requests except for the Pirates and Kenya Innovation Council.

Once again, US officials were among the folks trying to block PPI from becoming an observer, expressing concerns that the Pirate Parties "don't support the objectives" of WIPO. So who did get approved? Well, among others, there was the International Society for the Development of Intellectual Property (ADALPI). So it's not like WIPO rejected organizations that came into things with a clearly biased perspective. It just wanted to reject organizations whose position WIPO officials don't like. Ridiculously, as Jamie Love points out, the US State Department first talked about being able to discuss things "free from undue interference or censorship" and then went out and blocked the Pirate Parties from being able to join WIPO as observers. Hypocritical as always. And, if you're wondering, other political parties have been allowed into other UN organizations in the past, so it's not just because the Pirates are a political party.

Once again, we see that WIPO is not actually focused on determining the most effective intellectual property regime, but rather they'll push for protectionism and maximalism because a few countries benefit strongly from such positions. And they'll even go so far as to lock out organizations that have other viewpoints.

Filed Under: intellectual property, ngos, observers, pirate parties international, state department, wipo