Privacy International Lodges Legal Challenge To Official Secrecy Surrounding GCHQ Spying

Privacy International Lodges Legal Challenge To Official Secrecy Surrounding GCHQ Spying Although the scale of the surveillance being carried out by the NSA and GCHQ is daunting, digital rights groups are starting to fight back using the various legal options available to them. That's particularly the case for the UK, where activists are trying to penetrate the obsessive secrecy that surrounds GCHQ's spying activities. Back in December, we wrote about three groups bringing an action against GCHQ in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and how Amnesty International is using the UK's Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) to challenge the spying. Another organization that filed a complaint against the UK government at the IPT is Privacy International. But not content with that, it has now taken further legal action, this time in order to obtain information about GCHQ's role in the "Five Eyes" system, the global surveillance club made up of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand: In order to shed light on this secret intelligence-sharing agreement, which effectively binds the Five Eyes as one intelligence agency, Privacy International, represented by Leigh Day & Co solicitors, filed a legal challenge against the British Government in the European Court of Human Rights. Europe's highest human rights court is the most appropriate venue for such an international agreement, and has a strong history of ensuring intelligence agencies are compliant with human rights law. This follows repeated unsuccessful attempts to obtain this information using traditional channels: The challenge comes after Privacy International filed Freedom of Information requests in all Five Eyes countries compelling them to release the details of the agreement, which has a profound impact on the enjoyment and fulfilment of human rights around the world. Governments in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand denied to publish the secret agreement. In the United Kingdom, GCHQ invoked a blanket exemption that excuses it from any obligation to be transparent about its activities. The same exemption was also invoked by the agency when Privacy International asked for mundane information such as GCHQ's cafeteria menu. Privacy International obviously hopes that the ECHR will issue a judgment that the UK government is wrong to withhold the information about how GCHQ operates within the Five Eyes system. The trouble is, even if the ECHR does rule in favor of Privacy International, it's extremely unlikely that the UK government will take much notice. But as a way of ensuring that the spotlight remains on the disproportionate and unconstrained way that GCHQ is spying on citizens in the UK and around the world, it's as good as any. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140909/08452028462/privacy-international-lodges-legal-challenge-to-official-secrecy-surrounding-gchq-spying.shtml

Thought this was interesting.

But it looks like the outcome isn't much to look forward to, if the decision of the court can be ignored.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has once more appealed the Swedish warrant for his arrest

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has once more appealed the Swedish warrant for his arrest. Published kl 11:02 Assange's Swedish lawyer, Thomas Olssen, claimed the Swedish court is not handling the case correctly and should be pressing on faster. The Stockholm District Court reviewed Assange’s case on July 16th, saying that he remained suspected “on probable cause” for rape, less serious crime, unlawful coercion and two cases of sexual molestation. Assange's legal team wants Swedish police to question him in London, where he has been holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for two years. Ecuador has also granted Assange asylum since he fears being seized by US authorities. http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=5962913

Exciting news.

Maybe it will finally be over & he'll head for Ecuador.

Ferrada de Noli VS. Pinochet

PART I. That morning of September 11, 1973. A personal testimony http://professorsblogg.com/2014/09/11/september-11-1973/ Love this guy's blog. Spent so long on the computer that I can barely keep my eyes open, so this is a link for later.

RUSSIA - US & EU Sanctions - Foreign Oil Companies Affected

FACTBOX-EU, U.S. players in Russian energy sector MOSCOW, Sept 11 Thu Sep 11, 2014 3:54pm IST (Reuters) - The United States and European Union may stop billions of dollars in oil exploration in Russia by the world's largest energy companies in a new round of sanctions, U.S. government sources said. Following is a factbox on key projects in Russia in which energy firms from the European Union and the United States are involved or plan involvement: BP - BP obtained a 19.75 percent stake in state-controlled Rosneft as part of a deal that saw the British firm sell Rosneft its stake in the Anglo-Russian oil producer TNK-BP for $55 billion last year. - The companies agreed to explore Russia's hard-to-recover oil deposits. BP's head, Robert Dudley, a U.S. citizen, sits on Rosneft's board. EXXONMOBIL - Is involved in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project off the Russian Pacific island of Sakhalin, which produces more than 100,000 barrels of oil per day. ExxonMobil owns 30 percent in the project, while Rosneft has a 20 percent stake. Other stakeholders are Japan's Sodeco and India's ONGC. - Rosneft and Exxon agreed to develop West Siberia's hard-to-recover oil, where resources are estimated to be bigger than those in the Bakken formation in North America. ExxonMobil pledged to provide financing worth up to $300 million. - Rosneft and Exxon will tap the offshore reaches of the Russian Arctic. The acreage in the Chukchi Sea, Laptev Sea and Kara Sea spans approximately 600,000 square km (150 million acres). Exploration drilling in the Kara Sea began in August. - Both companies have agreed to tap Black Sea reserves. STATOIL - Rosneft and Norway's Statoil are due to develop the Domanik shale formation in the Volga region. - Rosneft and Statoil will jointly work on the Norwegian continental shelf in the Barents Sea, where Rosneft was awarded a 20 percent stake in the license PL713. - Both companies will also work in Russia's Perseevsky area in the Barents Sea and the Kashevarovsky, Lisyansky and Magadan 1 areas in the Sea of Okhotsk. - Statoil owns 30 percent stake in Kharyaga oil project in northern Russia. ENI, CONOCOPHILLIPS - Along with Rosneft, Italy's Eni will develop the Fedynsky, Central Barents blocks in the Barents Sea and the Western Chernomorsky block in the Black Sea. - Rosneft has the Polar Light project with ConocoPhillips in the Russian Arctic. ROYAL DUTCH SHELL - Royal Dutch Shell works with Gazprom Neft, the oil unit of state gas company Gazprom, via Salym Petroleum, which produces 140,000 barrels of oil per day. - Salym Petroleum is also exploring for unconventional oil at the Bazhenov formation in West Siberia. - Gazprom Neft and Shell created another joint venture last year to explore for shale oil at three deposits in West Siberia. - Shell owns 27.5 percent at the Sakhalin-2 project, which produces over 100,000 barrels of oil per day and around 10 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas. Gazprom has 50 percent stake, Japan's Mitsui - 12.5 percent, Mitsubishi - 10 percent. TOTAL - Total holds a 40 percent stake and leads Kharyaga oil project with production of around 30,000 barrels per day. - Total agreed with Lukoil to explore the Bazhenov formation. Seismic acquisition should start this year and exploration drilling is due to follow in 2015. (Reporting by Vladimir Soldatkin and Katya Golubkova, editing by Elizabeth Piper/Jeremy Gaunt) http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/09/11/ukraine-crisis-russia-energy-idINL5N0RC1B320140911

Nice list of foreign interests in oil exploration in Russia.

Thought I'd set it aside here for an easy find when wanted.

check it out.

Round Up

Round Up Had a protected period without sleep yesterday and got to the point where I found EVERYTHING funny. Got to thinking along the lines of: if nobody’s really who they say they are (I’m talking in politics, in media representation and in terms of on-line identities, who are all the players *really*. Finding out that Carl Bildt was involved in Gazprom and some other Russian company really threw a bucket of cold water on my recent Russia hero worship. The severed head blunder's also put me off war and politics to a degree. I’ve seen photos and video of the horrific civilian deaths through exposure on-line. But because I don’t go out of my way to find gruesome photos and videos, I’ve probably been buffered from the rest of the horrors -- and certainly when it comes to defender casualties. Saw a video of an independence supporter burying what was left of his commander.  Looked like a rocket fire direct hit.  All that was left was a charred thigh bone. Right now I'm in major downer mode.  Same old crap.  It's like Groundhog Day in this house.  It's like I've died and gone to hell. Found the "John McCain's Angry Song" on YouTube.  Amused me briefly.  One of the strong Novoroissya supporters on-line just messaged that the source of the severed heads image is difficult to ascertain, so maybe my challenge about the source wasn't so crazy and out of line.  Philip Hammond was quoted as saying the British executioner is 'nominally British' but 'sharing none of our values'.  Struck me as a rather undiplomatic remark, simply because I perceive the British population as inhomogeneous.  Many would be 'nominally British' but it's debateable how 'British' or 'shared' the values may be.  Jumped in with a remark along those lines, only to find myself stepping on an 'undiplomatic' kind of banana peel.  Waiting for followers to jump ship or for trolls to abuse me for seeing things that way. The severed head debate continues (third parties, I'm staying out of it):  better safe than sorry was the verdict.  Fair enough, if the source cannot be established without doubt.  One of the more interesting things that cropped up: G/Trans: "Bildt is corrupt, says Georgi Chaindrava, ex-minister of 'Saakasjvili regeringen'" [ Wikipedia - ie. Saakashvili's government - Mikheil Saakashvili, 2008-2013 Pres. Georgia, UNP - centre right> Bloodless Rose Revolution] [Related to Bildt's role as then President of KREAB, Swedish communication consultancy. Sounds like a PR or lobbying organisation(?) - large] G/Trans: "the regime's "story would be told in the media in a way that was good" [would perhaps indicate a PR firm] G/Trans: "Bildt has also extensively supported Mikhail Saakashvili. After the Swedish ambassador Hans-Gunnar Adén reported suspected vote-rigging in 2008, he was sent home. Bildt blogged "The result of the election can not be put in question." Later reported international election observers in consensus with Aden, that irregularities occurred during the election." Source: http://goo.gl/efM7cc - Aftobladet article - #carlbildt #Georgia I think the article's in Swedish and it's been Google translated.  To read it in full, follow the link and copy into Google Translate field. Article goes on to allege political corruption and bribery that I couldn't quite follow.  An interesting little morsel nonetheless. France: #France - PM Manuel Valls's govt - resignation: Thomas Thévenoud minister foreign trade/tourism >> http://goo.gl/Yy5RCv  >Matthias Fekl [new appointment] Matthias Fekl - French-German ancestry. Lawyer. Wikipedia trans - http://goo.gl/0Oy6F9  - CBC, Citiz. Socialst Group Pursuing my politics interest under a bit of pressure right now, so I'm not fully focused. Got an 'every time you touch that computer, I hate your guts".  Not exactly conductive to focusing and thinking clearly.  LOL. Been hours now and the same drunken crap continues sporadically.  Stomach hurts.  Now it's evolved to an attack on my wrinkles.  Followed by an attack on foreign countries, my 'hypocrisy' -- and assertions I should move to where they have no freedoms. Finally, I get a:  "I'm going to switch the internet off."  Good.  Move out while you're at it.  Offer declined. Strung out.  Not likely to get much news watching covered.

BOOK - LIBYA - Mitchell Zuckoff - 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened In Benghazi

Reliving Benghazi’s 13 Hours Five survivors of the attacks of Sept. 11-12, 2012, speak out. By Ross Kaminsky – 9.9.14 http://spectator.org/articles/60385/reliving-benghazis-13-hours #Libya > "like every other Third World country I’d been in… kind of a piece of crap. It was a lawless city" Geist >> Interesting article - Libya / Benghazi  -  worth a read.

Oh, dear ...

Oh, dear ... Noticed a Twitter post that struck me as out of place. It was an image of severed heads in individual, small pine boxes.  I'd seen the image earlier and had taken it to be from the Middle East conflict.  As it's such a graphic image, I wasn't at ease on-forwarding it to others, even in link form.  Also, I'm clueless about the politics of the region, so even if the brutality was on a lower scale, I would still have been cautious sending along something that I know close to nothing about. In the first post, there wasn't a specific reference to a conflict. Yes, it referred to NATO and to Rasmussen.  But NATO's all over the shop -- it's not confined to Europe. Anyway, this image pops up again (independently sent by a different party), and this time the post indicates it's the Ukraine side severing heads to send home to the victims' mothers. Without a source or anything else, what am I supposed to think?  It just doesn't compute as something that would happen anywhere but the Middle East. So, I ask if there's a source for the assertion that the image is related to Donbass. Was told it was in the timeline:  Anna News and a link to VK. Checked and re-checked.  But no matching tweet.  Sure, it's possible I could have missed it in the timeline  -- ie, if it was part of a conversation maybe and not unfurled (or whatever the term is). Anyway, I then located the tweet that was first on my feed (from another other party) -- because I was curious and wanted to check again on location. Peering at the 'original' tweet, I see a reference to USG and I'm thinking what is that?  Yes, how dumb can a person be.  But this terminology is new to me, and it meant nothing to me.  I'm thinking it's an organisation of some kind.  And because of the Middle East mental association with severing of heads, I didn't look beyond USG + the Middle East.  So "USG Humanitarian Aid Syria" on the Google search seemed perfectly rational to accept as the likely location.  Had I been more cautious and had I fully read the document, I would hopefully have twigged it's a reference to the 'US Government', as opposed to some other organisation.  Unaware that the Syria trail was erroneous, I subsequently respond along the lines of sending a link to the 'original' tweet and I ask if the image could be related to Syria. A fair enough question if you seriously believe that the image isn't matched to the conflict. Got a response with a link to a site.  The site link wasn't to Anna News or to the VK site, so it was yet another source in play  --  as far as I could see. Tried opening the link.  Nothing.  'Server not found'.  Try again.  Nothing. Now I wish I'd let it go at that -- but why would I just let it go if it doesn't make sense?  It didn't make sense at all.   To my mind, I've been hunting a source high and low and the source I was later given wasn't even opening a page.  So, of course, I'm going to make it known that the page isn't opening. When the guy came back with "Bullshit, I'm looking at it ... ", I shot back "Bullshit, it's Syria".   In my defence, I wasn't getting a page up on the link given to me and I hadn't found anything in the timeline like suggested, so I certainly wasn't convinced by the assertion that he was looking at a page my computer refused to upload. Even though the person had followers I recognised in the little pop-up thingy that's immediately visible (which ought to have told me it is most likely a reliable source), I queried the tweet because I simply could not believe that anyone -- apart from the rare homicidal maniac -- is severing heads anywhere but in the Middle East. Pretty stupid in hindsight, but there you go.  What happens next is mortifying. Determined to find out what's going on, I keep messing with the link (with no luck), but eventually it dawns on me to go in through the cache. Anyway, I scroll ... and scroll ... and, to my horror, I find the severed heads in boxes image.  Turns out it's ... not Syria.  Oops. Now I'm wondering if I'd been on that page before and if I'd overlooked the heads in the box because I didn't scroll down far enough.  The photo of the funeral looks familiar, so I might have.  Or I might have seen the photo elsewhere. Right then and there, all I wanted to do was slink faaaaaaar away.   Thought I'd do the right think and apologise, noting I got in through the cache page after all.  Slink ... slink ... slink.  I feel really rotten.  I've insulted the dead -- of the people I've taken sides with. On par with that:  I realise once again that their war isn't real to me.   It's a mental acceptance that there's violence and death - but it's not on a really deep level. Without even realising, I revert once more to a default position where this war is like being on-side of a team ... but this isn't sport.  That makes me feel like crap.  Seriously crap.  Why is there something within me that's remote, even when it comes to things I support or perhaps identify with?   The imagery in my mind is of the Novorossiya guys who look strong and brave, taking on the might of the government, while larking about and laughing about it like they do in the videos.  The guys look so chilled out and in control, that you almost want to be one of one of the crew with the fearlessness and massive guns.  No idea where this desire comes from.  It's irrational.  What I think appeals is the perceived strength of the men who have the guts to do what they do. Even though I know there have been Novorossiya fatalities, it doesn't properly sink in. It seems as if death is a rare thing; something that happens if you're unlucky and a bullet happens to strike.  In this fantasy war scenario, it's a clean shot, death is quick and it's all very civilised. How could I think something like that even after seeing horrific images?   Well, that would be because the images I've seen are of the enemy forces and -- .  And what?  I don't know.    Not many violent images really shock me in any lasting way.  Yes, when I see something particularly confronting, I'll feel the shock of it.  Some particularly violent images, I prefer not to see at all because the aversion level is quite high.  But with most things, after an initial jolt, everything reverts back to feeling remote.  I can't cry even if I feel I want to.  It's really rare for me to have a cry.  And when I do it's not much of a cry.  Maybe crying is something you grow out of.   Moving along to another subject, I think I've got some problem with the computer. Several links failed to open on a 'server down' basis and the last couple of days I had trouble signing onto services.  Even though it's not consistent, there's got to be a fault somewhere that needs fixing.  Hoping it's not malware or some Chinese hacker hanging about. Everything was fine, until I got that effing ad.fly shit annoying me .. and then I wound up doing what?  Resetting my browser, I think it was.  It's all been crap since.