industryterm:electronic communications

Harm Reduction in Immigration Detention

It seems to be an inexorable quality of immigration detention that it causes the individual to experience pain or injury. From a human rights perspective, is it possible to talk about “best practices”?

This Global Detention Project Special Report systematically compares conditions and operations at detention centres in five European countries—Norway, France, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland—to identify practices that may be used to develop “harm reducing” strategies in detention. Commissioned by the Norwegian Red Cross as part of its efforts to promote reforms of Norway’s detention practices, the report addresses several key questions:

In what ways has the Norwegian system met or exceeded internationally recognised standards? In what ways has it fallen short, especially when compared to detention practices of peer countries? And what are the key reform priorities going forward that may help reduce the harmful impact of detention?

In Norway’s Trandum Detention Centre, multiple reports have highlighted an overzealously punitive and restrictive detention regime where detainees consider themselves to be “treated as criminals” even though they are not serving criminal prison sentences. Despite repeated recommendations from relevant experts, including the country’s Parliamentary Ombudsman, many important reforms have not been implemented.

To complete the study, GDP researchers sought to assess Trandum in a comparative context that would highlight conditions and procedures in other European countries. The analysis of centres in Norway, France, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland reveals that Trandum has embraced a carceral model for immigration detention to a much greater extent than centres elsewhere in Europe, falling short of standards provided in international law and promoted by national and regional human rights bodies.

The report highlights several key areas for promoting reforms, both at Trandum and in other facilities across Europe, including: placing immigration detainees in the custody of social welfare institutions rather than public security agencies; reforming operating rules on everything from food preparation to electronic communications; and shedding detention centres of carceral elements, including the aspect of guards and staff members and the internal layout and regime of detention centres. Many of these suggestions have been highlighted by the Norwegian Red Cross in a statement urging the country’s authorities to reform its immigration detention system.

https://i.imgur.com/OPtcq8i.png https://i.imgur.com/aN1Edyf.png

▻https://www.globaldetentionproject.org/harm-reduction-immigration-detention
#détention_administrative #rétention #asile #migrations #réfugiés #Europe #rapport #Norvège #France #Suisse #Allemagne #Suède #Frambois #Trandum #Toulouse #Ingelheim #Märsta

Congress Is Debating Warrantless Surveillance in the Dark
▻https://www.wired.com/story/section-702-warrantless-surveillance-debate/%20

In 2013, former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden famously brought to light a series of classified US government spying programs. For the first time, the American people learned that the NSA was collecting millions of their phone calls and electronic communications—emails, Facebook messages, texts, browsing histories—all without a warrant. Several of the programs Snowden revealed are authorized under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act. The (...)

#NSA #Facebook #Upstream #écoutes #web #surveillance #FISA #Google #AT&T

##AT&T

Governments blew $2.4 billion in a year shutting off the internet—and WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger—to control their citizens — Quartz
▻http://qz.com/802340/governments-blew-2-4-billion-in-a-year-shutting-off-the-internet-and-whatsapp-an
▻https://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/india-internet-shutdown.jpg?w=1600

As governments around the world increasingly adopt the tactic of shutting down electronic communications to limit political disruption or simply control citizens, they are costing their economies dear.
Some 81 state-ordered shutdowns of some or all electronic communication in 19 countries over the past year led to $2.4 billion in lost economic production, according to a new estimate from Darrell West of the Brookings Institution.

(...) The countries most affected? India, accounting for $968 million in lost output; Saudi Arabia, with $465 million; and Morocco, with a loss of $320 million. Most of these shutdowns weren’t related to civil strife.

India joined a number of countries—including Uganda, Algeria, and Iraq—in shutting off internet service during school exam periods to deter cheating. To keep students honest, India imposed a ban from 9am to 1pm in certain areas.

In Saudi Arabia and Morocco, the shutdowns stem from crony capitalism.

#internet #réseau #censure

La justice estime que Microsoft n’a pas à transmettre aux Etats-Unis des données stockées en Europe
►http://www.lemonde.fr/pixels/article/2016/07/14/la-justice-estime-que-microsoft-n-a-pas-a-transmettre-aux-etats-unis-des-don

Les autorités américaines ne peuvent pas exiger que Microsoft leur transmette le contenu de courriels échangés par un de ses utilisateurs et stockés dans un serveur en Europe, a décidé jeudi 14 juillet une cour d’appel des Etats-Unis.

La législation américaine « n’autorise par les tribunaux à émettre et faire exécuter par des fournisseurs de services basés aux Etats-Unis des mandats destinés à faire saisir le contenu de courriels de consommateurs qui sont stockés exclusivement sur des serveurs à l’étranger », écrit cette cour de Manhattan, à New York, dans son arrêt.

Elle donne ainsi raison au groupe informatique américain, opposé au gouvernement américain depuis plusieurs années dans ce dossier. Microsoft refuse d’exécuter un mandat judiciaire américain exigeant qu’il transmette le contenu des messages échangés sur son service de messagerie par un utilisateur soupçonné de trafic de drogue.

J’imagine que c’est parti pour la Cour suprême…

Russian Ships Near Data Cables Are Too Close for U.S. Comfort - The New York Times
▻http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/26/world/europe/russian-presence-near-undersea-cables-concerns-us.html

Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

The issue goes beyond old worries during the Cold War that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.

While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the United States is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust, reminiscent of relations during the Cold War.
[…]
“I’m worried every day about what the Russians may be doing,” said Rear Adm. Frederick J. Roegge, commander of the Navy’s submarine fleet in the Pacific, who would not answer questions about possible Russian plans for cutting the undersea cables.
[…]
In private, however, commanders and intelligence officials are far more direct. They report that from the North Sea to Northeast Asia and even in waters closer to American shores, they are monitoring significantly increased Russian activity along the known routes of the cables, which carry the lifeblood of global electronic communications and commerce.

Just last month, the Russian spy ship Yantar, equipped with two self-propelled deep-sea submersible craft, cruised slowly off the East Coast of the United States on its way to Cuba — where one major cable lands near the American naval station at Guantánamo Bay. It was monitored constantly by American spy satellites, ships and planes. Navy officials said the Yantar and the submersible vehicles it can drop off its decks have the capability to cut cables miles down in the sea.

http://cdn.itar-tass.com/fit/816x458_7de8e174/tass/m2/en/uploads/i/20150726/1100866.jpg

#navire_océanographique !

Mari Bastashevski

▻http://maribastashevski.com

My work is spread across investigative research, journalism, and art and deliberately blurs these boundaries among them in an attempt to challenge existing information delivery modes and bridge between these practices.

My ongoing project “State Business”focuses on the international conflict participants, defence and cyber surveillance industries, and layers of state secrecy under which they operate.

In addition, I’m working on “It’s Nothing Personal” an ongoing project about the contrast between the corporate branding of western surveillance firms and what the testimonies of those affected by these products disclose.

In 2014 I worked in Ukraine on “Empty, with a whiff of blood and fumes” addressing the nexus of money, power, and organised crime in Ukraine in build up to the 2014 hybrid war.

And between 2007 and 2010, in the Russian North Caucasus on “File-126,” a project about the abductions of civilians under the guise of Russian counterterrorism regime.

Video of Mari speaking in the context of the Prix Elysée she received in 2014:

▻https://vimeo.com/118032488

Mari interviewing #Hacking_Team for Motherboard:

▻http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hacking-team-we-dont-do-business-with-north-korea

Aricle in Wired:

▻http://www.wired.com/2013/11/mari-bastashevski

#Mari_Bastashevski
_
Keyword food:

State Business

State Business is a project that sorts through the mundane routine of international conflict and state security commerce and the information vacuum preserved around it. In a series of specific case studies, it maps the sale of services or commodities from their point of origins to their final destinations. The installation consists of photographs, texts, and documents.

The photography is used to define the extent of access to those who form the supply-and-demand chain. Each photograph represents a concrete governmental entity, a broker, or a business. Each is made with the awareness of someone in position of power to grant or forbid access. When permission is summarily denied, usually due to security reasons, I continue the dialogue by asking to narrow down the distance from which the photograph cannot be made, allowing those involved to draw their own perimeter of power, be it assumed or defined by law.

The goal of this project is not only to identify the process by which conflict commerce is put in motion, but how information about the industry itself – be it in the form of shared testimonies, or permitted photographs – becomes a commodity in the hands of its sources, each with a political, economical, or personal agenda.

It’s Nothing Personal

The installation, It’s Nothing Personal, set in the space between what global surveillance firms promote in their self-representation, and what the testimonies of those directly affected by these technologies disclose.

In the past decade, the industry that satisfies governments’ demand for surveillance of mass communications has skyrocketed, and it is one of today’s most rapidly burgeoning markets.Five years from now, the lawful interception industry will earn five times the U.S. 1.5 million profit it generated in 2014. Most surveillance technologies will be produced by American, European, and Israeli companies and pitched to law enforcement or intelligence agencies across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, often to entities that don’t require an additional permit to intercept, and are answerable to no one.

A variety of products sold includes ready-to-use monitoring centers that are able to silently access, process, and store years of electronic communications of entire countries. Forged SSL certificates and HTTP aggregators allow state agents to stand between the server and the user, and collect user names, passwords, and trace movements across cyber space. And governments and companies can seamlessly and remotely insert eavesdropping viruses into mobile phones and computers.

While most of these products are undetectable by design, those who sell them have developed a strong corporate image. Branding concepts applied in promotional materials—brochures, videos, and websites—emphasize protection against vague but potent threats, technical capacities, and an ease of application. Access to intimate details of correspondence is presented as impersonal data, petabytes stored and packets inspected. This image further incorporated within the open to view, physical spaces in which the industry exists.

The detached technical jargon and sanitized clip-art aesthetic work to obscure a deep-rooted partiality. Communication surveillance is a fundamental part of law enforcement operations meant to benefit those it vows to protect, in as much as it is a weapon for preserving power by infringing on the privacy of those who oppose it.

The exhibition consists of photographs of the companies HQs and distribution venues, a cache of promotional material and documentation obtained through collaborating with the community of privacy advocates and technologists and a record of the correspondence between the companies and state entities that ensued during the making of this project.

Snowden : le monde lui doit un immense merci

UK-US surveillance regime was unlawful ‘for seven years’ | UK news | The Guardian

▻http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/06/gchq-mass-internet-surveillance-unlawful-court-nsa

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/2/6/1423216285813/Britains-Britains-GCHQ-009.jpg

The regime that governs the sharing between Britain and the US of electronic communications intercepted in bulk was unlawful until last year, a secretive UK tribunal has ruled.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) declared on Friday that regulations covering access by Britain’s GCHQ to emails and phone records intercepted by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached human rights law.

–—

▻http://www.nrk.no/verden/_-verden-skylder-ham-stor-takk-1.12194407

http://gfx.nrk.no/ipjML4TOwTMKKqJTaOcX5wJCIVsHgmtw0nHh5iF8FYLw.jpg

Verden skylder ham stor takk

l’agence de renseignement britannique et le renseignement américain (NSA) échangé des informations sensibles de la surveillance des e-mails et appels téléphoniques pendant des années. Ils ont suivi un système qui a enfreint la loi, fermèrent la Colombie Le Tribunal d’investigation Pouvoirs aujourd’hui fixe.

#snowden

Pharmaceutical firms paid to attend meetings of panel that advises FDA
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/pharmaceutical-firms-paid-to-attend-meetings-of-panel-that-advises-fda-e-mails-show/2013/10/06/a02a2548-2b80-11e3-b139-029811dbb57f_print.html

A scientific panel that shaped the federal government’s policy for testing the safety and effectiveness of painkillers was funded by major pharmaceutical companies that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for the chance to affect the thinking of the Food and Drug Administration, according to hundreds of e-mails obtained by a public records request.

The e-mails show that the companies paid as much as $25,000 to attend any given meeting of the panel, which had been set up by two academics to provide advice to the FDA on how to weigh the evidence from clinical trials. A leading FDA official later called the group “an essential collaborative effort.”

Patient advocacy groups said the electronic communications suggest that the regulators had become too close to the companies trying to crack into the $9 billion painkiller market in the United States. FDA officials who regulate painkillers sat on the steering committee of the panel, which met in private, and co-wrote papers with employees of pharmaceutical companies.

The FDA has been criticized for failing to take precautions that might have averted the epidemic of addiction to prescription drugs including Oxycontin and other opioids.

“These e-mails help explain the disastrous decisions the FDA’s analgesic division has made over the last 10 years,” said Craig Mayton, the Columbus, Ohio, attorney who made the public records request to the University of Washington. “Instead of protecting the public health, the FDA has been allowing the drug companies to pay for a seat at a small table where all the rules were written.”

Even as the meetings were taking place, the idea of FDA officials meeting with firms that had paid big money for an invitation raised eyebrows for some. In an e-mail to organizers, an official from the National Institutes of Health worried whether the arrangements made it look as if the private meetings were a “pay to play process.”

FDA officials did not benefit financially from their participation in the meetings, the agency said. But two later went on to work as pharmaceutical consultants and more than this, the critics said, the e-mails portray an agency that, by allowing itself to get caught up in a panel that seemed to promise influence for money, had blurred the line between the regulators and the regulated.

In a statement, the FDA said “we take these concerns very seriously.” But, it said, “we are unaware of any improprieties” associated with the group.

The group was organized by two medical professors, Robert Dworkin of the University of Rochester and Dennis Turk of the University of Washington, and the e-mails for the most part describe their efforts at financing and organizing the group’s meetings.

The two professors received as much as $50,000 apiece for a meeting, money that went to their academic research accounts and paid for research assistants and expenses “or to cover a small percentage of faculty effort,” they said. At one point in the e-mails, they proposed that they receive honoraria of $5,000 apiece for a four-hour meeting at a hotel near the FDA offices.

#pharma #big_pharma #corruption #porte_tournante #fda

Gmailers Beware: Google Says You Have No “Reasonable Expectation” of Privacy | Alternet
▻http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/gmailers-beware-google-says-you-have-no-reasonable-expectation-privacy?aki

In its motion to dismiss the case, Google said the plaintiffs were making “an attempt to criminalize ordinary business practices” that have been part of Gmail’s service since its introduction. Google said “all users of email must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing.”

According to Google: “Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient’s assistant opens the letter, people who use web-based email today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient’s ECS [electronic communications service] provider in the course of delivery.”