Monday 29 July 2013

The European Union Times

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 05:43 AM PDT

NSA director General Keith B. Alexander met with lawmakers on Tuesday.

The Obama administration tried on Tuesday to slow Congressional lawmakers’ opposition to the National Security Agency’s spying operations in the United States.
Lawmakers in the House of Representatives have proposed amendment to a military appropriations bill that would stop the financing for NSA phone data collection program in the country, the New York Times reports.
NSA director General Keith B. Alexander met with lawmakers on Tuesday to lobby against the bill, sponsored by Republicans.
Recent revelations that the NSA is collecting phone call data of every American made the Congress to take action to curb the spy agency’s secret operations.
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked last month that the government is snooping phone calls and emails of American citizens and other nationals.
Later on Tuesday, the White House also issued a statement criticizing the House’s effort “to hastily dismantle” the call tracking program, and calling on lawmakers to vote down the legislation.
In response, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, a critic of the government’s spying operations, blasted national security officials, saying they have “actively” misled the American public about domestic surveillance.
He said that the NSA’s authority to launch surveillance programs should be curbed.
“As we have seen in recent days, the intelligence leadership is determined to hold on to this authority,” Mr. Wyden said, as reported by the Times. “Merging the ability to conduct surveillance that reveals every aspect of a person’s life with the ability to conjure up the legal authority to execute that surveillance, and finally, removing any accountable judicial oversight, creates the opportunity for unprecedented influence over our system of government.”
Years before Snowden’s leaks, Wyden had warned that the US government was secretly interpreting its powers under the Patriot Act in an alarming way.
Wyden has is now warning that the government’s theory of its power under the Patriot Act to collect records about people from third parties is “essentially limitless.”
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Police start using ‘black boxes’ in car crash investigations

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 05:38 AM PDT

Nearly every car being manufactured right now comes with a little added bonus by way of a tiny recording device nestled under the center console. And if you’re looking to keep your driving habits under wraps, you might want to start worrying.
As many as 96 percent of the cars mass-produced in 2013 include event data recorders, or EDRs, yet the existence of these small “black box” surveillance devices are rarely known among the automobile drivers whose data is being collected with every quick turn of the steering wheel.
Despite widespread ignorance of the EDRs, though, they could soon become mandatory. The US Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is asking that the installation of EDRs in light passenger vehicles be mandatory starting September 2014, and opponents are already attempting to raise awareness in order to make auto drivers aware that their sudden speed bursts and even seatbelt data is being collected and could be easily shared.
But with little safeguards in place, the still emerging technology is raising a lot of questions about what can legally be collected and who can access that information.
“These cars are equipped with computers that collect massive amounts of data,” Khaliah Barnes of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the New York Times for an article published on Sunday. “Without protections, it can lead to all kinds of abuse,” she said.
When Barnes caught up with CBS This Morning earlier this year, she said that only 13 states have so far implemented rules which make that data the property of the driver, preventing it from being picked at and put under analysis without proper consent. Barnes admitted that the majority of states don’t have these privacy safeguards, though, and the result is rearing the data of everyone else available to third-parties with little protection.
“There’s not so much privacy concerns as actual threats to privacy,” Barnes told CBS. “These machines collect lots of data, and right now there are no federal laws that safeguard this information. And so what happens is there is an increasing market for this information. Law enforcement wants to see this information. Insurance companies, as well as private citizens involved in litigation.”
But what kind of data is recorded exactly? Standard EDRs don’t log the identity or actions of specific persons in cars, per se, but they are able to provide investigators insight with what happened moments before a collision. When they were first rolled out, though, that wasn’t the plan.
“It was never designed for investigative purposes,” Dave Wells of the King County Sheriff’s Office in Washington state told National Public Radio. “It was designed for … motor vehicle safety and keeping people less injured and alive.”
Depending on the type of EDR, these black boxes can record the speed of a vehicle, the crash force at the moment of impact and an array of other information about the automobile’s inner workings.
“It really just takes a snapshot of the event,” John Giamalvo of Edmunds.com told CBS News.
Other information that can be collected and then shared includes whether or not the car’s brake was activated before the crash, the state of the engine and whether the vehicle seat belt was buckled before an incident.
“More often than not, the data from this is going to help them in an accident,” Giamalvo said. “It’s at least going to point out one thing, and that’s the facts.”
Those facts played an important role in the 2011 crash of the Ford Crown Victoria operated by Timothy Murray, who at the time was the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. He smashed his government-issued automobile and survived without serious injuries, but initially told police that he had been wearing his seatbelt and driving at a safe speed. Data removed from the black box later proved him inaccurate on both accounts. Murray later admitted to falling asleep at the wheel before his car crashed at a speed of over 100 miles an hour.
But because laws differ from state to state, Murray’s ability to keep investigators from collecting that data proved to be futile. Massachusetts is one of the many states that have failed to pass legislation outlining who can control and access that data, meaning millions of automobiles can be subjected to spontaneous analysis if the right paperwork is written up.
Under the proposal that the NHTSA hopes to have on the books by the end of next year, automobile manufacturers will be mandated to provide a commercially available tool for copying the data collected by EDRs.
Source

Italy to Ban Monsanto GMO Corn with 80% Public Support

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 05:24 AM PDT

First India gives Monsanto a run for their ill-gotten money by refusing their patent applications, and now Italy, with the help of three Italian ministries, will try to undo Monsanto. A decree has been signed which will ban Monsanto’s MON810 maize, one of the two genetically modified crops currently legally grown in Europe and sold commercially. The decree is not yet binding as it has to be published in the official gazette, but the public stands behind the three Italian ministers who put forth the document with a resounding 80% against GMO and Monsanto, as evidenced in a public survey.
The agricultural ministry rightfully addressed one of many problems with Monsanto’s GMO crops, stating that they have a ‘negative impact on biodiversity.’ The ban was also signed by the health and environment ministries. That makes three. The ministries stated:
“Our agriculture is based on biodiversity, on quality, and those we must continue to aim for, without games that even from an economic point of view would not make us competitive.”
The three ministries have also notified the European Commission and other states in the EU about this important precedent-setting move to oust Monsanto from the world food supply monopoly that the company is currently trying to browbeat the world with. The ministries have also requested a scientific basis for the final decision from the European Food and Safety Authority – Europe’s version of the FDA, the country’s food safety watch dog.
Individual governments in the EU are able to introduce safeguards and recommendations if they feel the food supply is threatened, or there are environmental risks, however, the Commission must verify them and put them into action. Just last year French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayraul announced that the nation would maintain a key ban on the only remaining GMO currently allowed in Europe – the MON810 maize specifically.
“The protection of Italian distinctiveness must be a policy priority since it determines the existence of ‘Made in Italy’, which is our engine, our future, our leverage to return to growth in the food industry,” Coldiretti’s president, Sergio Marini, said in a statement.
Only five members of the European Union grew Monsanto’s MON810 maize last year, according to the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. Hopefully with the Commission’s approval of this new ban, Italy will kick Monsanto and all GMO crops out of the country completely going forward.
Source

India court to issue first verdict in gang-rape case

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 04:55 AM PDT

An Indian schoolgirl holds a lighted candle and placard as she takes part in a rally in Ahmedabad, after the death of a gang-rape victim from the Indian capital New Delhi

A court in India will deliver the first verdict on one of the five suspects on trial for participating in the fatal gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student in the capital, New Delhi.
The juveniles’ court in the capital finished hearing the case of the suspect, who was 17 at the time of the assault on the young woman in a moving bus, reports said on Wednesday.
The verdict had been expected to be announced to a court on July 11, however, it was deferred to July 25.
If found guilty, the court can give him a maximum term of three years in a reform facility since the suspect was six months short of becoming an adult when the attack was carried out.
The victim was gang-raped and savagely beaten in the moving bus and thrown out on to the street of New Delhi. She succumbed to her injuries in a hospital in Singapore on December 29, 2012.
The victim’s family called on the court to try the teenager as an adult, alongside five other men initially arrested and put on trial following the assault.
“He committed the worst crime and even if he is a minor, the accused should not be allowed to walk free after three years,” the victim’s father said.
The five males and the juvenile were charged with murder, rape, kidnap, robbery and conspiracy. However, one of the adults died while in prison from a suspected suicide in March.
The four adults are being tried in a separate court which will wrap up in the next few months. The adult suspects face a maximum death penalty if convicted.
The horrific nature of the crime shocked Indians and sparked mass protests across the country.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one woman is raped every 20 minutes in the world’s second-most-populous country.
Source

Expansive New Zealand surveillance bill expected to pass through Parliament

Posted: 28 Jul 2013 04:34 AM PDT

New Zealand lawmakers say they now have enough votes to pass a controversial bill that will expand the government’s power, authorizing the interception of private communications in the name of national security.
Peter Dunne, leader of New Zealand’s United Future party, changed his position on the legislation and announced his support Tuesday after the bill adopted changes. But critics say the amendments simply aren’t good enough.
If passed into law, more power would be given to New Zealand’s domestic and foreign intelligence agencies – the Security Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB). Lawmakers have said that both spy agencies need more resources and less legal restrictions to protect national security, as well as New Zealand’s international relations and economy.
The bill is now expected to pass through Parliament with a majority of one, thanks to Peter Dunne’s newfound support for the legislation. Dunne told reporters he changed his mind after Prime Minister John Key agreed to subject the SIS and GCSB to an independent review every five years and force both to release transparency reports revealing the number of times the GCSB and SIS help police or the military.
“No matter how John Key tweaks the particular legislation in front of him, he won’t overcome the suspicion, not of a small group of paranoid people but a wide cross-section of New Zealanders who are asking justifiable questions about how the bodies work, how they should work and why they are needed,” former Foreign Minister Phil Goff told the New Zealand Herald.
Key has said he will outline in the bill a set of principles preventing the law from impeding New Zealanders from unreasonable search and seizure. He also said that a two-person panel would be designated to hear concerns from the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, an agency watchdog.
Concerns have also been raised over what, if anything, the GCSB plans to do with the trove of “private communications,” and how metadata will be treated under the legislation.
“New Zealanders can take comfort the GCSB and SIS will be operating under a far stricter and more proactive oversight regime as they undertake important activities to ensure the safety of this country,” Key said.
The “proactive oversight” missed at least 85 cases of illegal spying on New Zealand citizens earlier this year. Leaders across the political spectrum called for intense review policies and an investigation, along with reforms to prevent future problems.
Deputy Prime Minister Bill English told the New Zealand Herald at the time that the revelations shed light on “a number of longstanding issues the government has been looking at now for a couple of years and it highlights the fact that the legislation for GCSB was probably legally flawed right from the start.”
New Zealand’s Kim Dotcom, the founder of Megaupload who is sought by US copyright authorities, has been one of the most outspoken critics of the proposed law. Dotcom previously received a public apology from Prime Minister Key after proving his home was the target of illegal surveillance.
“Abuse of spying powers is not limited to national security matters,” Dotcom said during a heated parliamentary hearing earlier this month. “The GCSB was involved in the raid on my home to support an alleged breach of copyright; it has nothing to do with terrorism or national security.”
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