Exclusive : Washington Cuts Funds for Investigating Bashar al-Assad’s War Crimes
▻http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/11/03/exclusive_washington_cuts_funds_for_investigating_bashar_al_
Pour être très honnête, je l’ai d’abord lu sur Voltairenet !
The Islamic State Makes Electronic #Surveillance #Respectable Again
BY COLUM LYNCH SEPTEMBER 24, 2014 - 08:07 AM
▻http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/09/24/the_islamic_state_makes_electronic_surveillance_respectable_
What a difference a year makes.
Last September, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff captured the world’s mood when she opened the U.N. General Assembly with a withering rebuke of America’s massive electronic surveillance program.
On Wednesday, President Barack Obama, fresh from ordering up airstrikes against Islamic extremists in Syria, will strike a different tone, calling on the international community to ramp up surveillance of legions of foreign jihadists fighting alongside the self-styled Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
And he is likely to find a receptive audience.
The U.N. Security Council is poised to endorse a U.S.-drafted resolution that would require governments to grant law enforcement authorities wider scope to monitor and suppress the travel and other activities of suspected local jihadists.
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Human rights groups criticize the resolution pending before the U.N. and say Western governments are exaggerating ISIS’s threat, at least in the United States, and that the proposal could lead to racial profiling of Muslim communities.
“[T]here is still more chance of dying from a mis-hit golf shot than from an ISIS attack in the United States,” said Richard Barrett, a counterterrorism analyst at the New York-based Soufan Group who previously tracked Islamic terrorists for the U.N. Security Council. Barrett said the U.S. resolution comes close to “cutting across civil liberties and individual rights.... I think the freedom to travel is a basic freedom.”
He also predicted that the resolution’s warning to avoid racial profiling will be ignored.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if most people with long beards and skullcaps will be taken out of line before the guy with the polo shirt.”
Andrea Prasow, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said the proposal is “rampant” with potential due-process violations.
“Nowhere does it articulate by what process would [suspects] be denied of their right to travel,” she said. And some provisions “promote the idea that people can be prosecuted for their thoughts and their beliefs, but not their actions. It does not articulate any actual criminal conduct as a prerequisite for detention.”
Matthew Waxman, a Columbia University law professor, says the “huge debates” in Europe about excessive American espionage seem “to be muted now.” Whether that’s “because they were simply overtaken by the hotter issues of the day or whether internal discussion of the threat is actually suppressing some of the concerns about intelligence activities” is unclear.
Extensive Hamas Tunnel Network Points to Israeli Intelligence Failure
▻http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/31/extensive_hamas_tunnel_network_points_to_israeli_intelligenc
A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military has so far discovered far more tunnels — 40 and counting — than Israel had previously thought existed. The number came as a surprise, as did the sophistication of the tunnel network. Current and former officials said that Israeli intelligence and political leaders knew that the tunnels were fortified with concrete and had space to store weapons and food. But Israeli intelligence analysts and political leaders didn’t comprehend that the tunnels were wide enough to move several Hamas fighters into the country at a time, and they didn’t realize how many of the tunnels ended up in Israel, particularly near civilians.
Et si, dorénavant, l’armée israélienne démolit les stocks de nourriture, ce sera la faute du Hamas.
Hamas went to extraordinary lengths to hide construction of the tunnels from Israeli intelligence and military forces. In a scene straight out of the classic film The Great Escape, fighters emptied bags of flour — humanitarian food aid from the United Nations — and then used them to remove dirt from tunnel construction sites, Yakubovich said. Whenever Israeli air forces saw the bags on the surface, they assumed they were food deliveries, not evidence of Hamas secretly building an underground infrastructure. “This was a very clever way to make sure the IDF would not fire upon them,” Yakubovich said. “Hamas exploited international goodwill to hide terror activities.”
Ceci dit, si le Hamas recoure aux méthodes qui ont fait la gloire de La Grande Évasion, c’est peut-être parce que l’environnement commence à ressembler à un camp de prisonniers.
Questions Remain About U.S. Intel and Airline Warnings Before MH17 Downing
▻http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/07/24/questions_remain_about_us_intel_and_airline_warnings_before_
In the weeks before Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, U.S. intelligence agencies were tracking a steady buildup of heavy weapons in the region, including tanks and rocket launchers flowing across the border from Russia and into the hands of Moscow-backed separatists. But U.S. analysts didn’t confirm that a surface-to-air missile capable of striking a commercial airplane had made its way into the fighters’ hands until after the jet was destroyed on July 17, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials, who briefed reporters earlier this week.
That assessment was at odds, though, with public statements by the rebels themselves, who claimed in late June that they’d obtained a weapon that might bring down a commercial jet. In addition, Ukrainian officials said that they had spotted an SA-11 missile launcher, known as a Buk, in rebel hands at least three days before the downing of MH17.
The question of what U.S. and Ukrainian authorities knew about separatists’ weapons, and when, has taken on new urgency following the downing of MH17 and the death of all 298 people aboard.
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Neither Ukrainian security officials nor the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration had warned airlines prior to the shoot-down not to fly over eastern Ukraine, despite high-level discussions in both governments about the buildup of Russian heavy weaponry. Following the plane crash, the FAA banned all U.S. carriers from flying over the region. But questions remain about why authorities didn’t issue a warning sooner.
An FAA spokesperson didn’t respond to multiple emails and phone messages asking whether U.S. intelligence agencies had provided any warning about a threat against airliners prior to the strike. A White House spokesperson referred queries on the matter to the FAA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). And a spokesperson at the ODNI deferred to the White House on the question of what intelligence was shared about aviation threats.
The lack of clarity on whether airlines were warned to stay clear of eastern Ukraine is prompting scrutiny of the FAA and the intelligence community on Capitol Hill. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, wrote to President Barack Obama on Monday asking what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about SA-11 missiles in eastern Ukraine and why the FAA didn’t alert U.S. carriers in the area.
“It’s only right to assume that our intelligence collectors were fully aware of SA-11 missiles in eastern Ukraine, from day one,” Joe Kasper, Hunter’s spokesman, told Foreign Policy on Thursday. “So at some point, that information should have been shared, specifically with the FAA in this case,” Kasper said. He noted that after Russian forces invaded and occupied Crimea in February, the FAA issued a notice barring U.S. carriers from flying over the area. “But there’s no evidence whatsoever that the FAA was alerted of SA-11s in the area so the [notice] could be updated,” Kasper said, adding: “Either there’s no process in place for notifying the FAA or someone dropped the ball.”
Somali Remittances Still Flowing, for Now
▻http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/06/09/somali_remittances_still_flowing_for_now
Companies that send money back to East Africa from immigrants living in the United States may soon have to close up shop because they can’t find U.S. banks willing to wire the money for them. As Foreign Policy first reported last month, one the few remaining banks working with the small money transmitters, Merchants Bank of California, still plans to shut accounts, just not immediately. Instead of closing the accounts on June 20, they will be closed July 31.
Exclusive : U.S. Boycotts U.N. #Drone Talks
▻http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2014/03/19/exclusive_us_boycotts_un_drone_talks
Pakistan is trying to push a resolution through the United Nations Human Rights Council that would trigger greater scrutiny of whether U.S. drone strikes violate international human rights law. Washington, though, doesn’t want to talk about it.
The Pakistani draft, which was obtained by Foreign Policy, urges states to “ensure transparency” in record-keeping on drone strikes and to “conduct prompt, independent and impartial investigations whenever there are indications of any violations to human rights caused by their use.” It also calls for the convening of “an interactive panel discussion” on the use of drones.
The Geneva-based human rights council held its third round of discussions about the draft on Wednesday, but the Obama administration boycotted the talks.
The White House decision to sit out the negotiations is a departure from the collaborative approach the administration promised to take when it first announced plans to join the Human Rights Council in March 2009.