An open letter to General Pasha
The writer was a Ford Scholar at the Programme in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security at UIUC (1997) and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Studies Programme
Dear General Pasha,
I write this letter to you in the wake of the gruesome and gratuitous murder of Syed Saleem Shahzad, friend to many, including myself.
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, the agency you head, is being accused of Saleem’s murder. You must also know that the ISI is widely reviled and dreaded at home. For an agency that was set up primarily for strategic intelligence, this is quite an achievement. It is accused of driving in its own lane, monitoring the media, kidnapping, torturing and sometimes killing dissenters, political and otherwise, determining, arbitrarily, what Pakistan’s national interest is and how best we should go about pursuing it.
You must also know that some former officers have not only admitted to electoral fraud, rigging, making and breaking of political alliances, buying people through a mix of carrots and sticks, and browbeating the media, but consider having done so as part of their remit and in the best national interest. Perish the thought that any one of them would say peccavi, since some actually boast about it.
Whispers there always have been. But now much is being said aloud. The ISI is not accountable to anyone; it is all-powerful; it can kill mercilessly and, in this case, it has killed Saleem, so go these whispers. What would you say to this? Shrug and move on, as if it makes no difference, that this is about a few flies buzzing around, a minor nuisance at worst? The man, who now lies buried after being tortured to death, leaves behind three children and a wife. To me this does not look like anything minor.
And what has the agency you head done so far? Nothing, beyond getting an unnamed official to say that while the “unfortunate and tragic death of Syed Saleem Shahzad is a source of concern for the entire nation”, “the incident should not be used to target and malign the country’s security agencies”. Well, sir, to me this is totally unacceptable. What makes the security agencies exempt from criticism or accountability, especially if they are considered enemies by the very people they are supposed to protect?
I believe in giving everyone a fair hearing but the ISI has to do much more than get an unnamed official to issue a feeble condolence and follow it up with a veiled threat to the media to deserve such a hearing. And as far as maligning the agency is concerned or knowing what national interest is, this being no time for mincing words, let me assure you that I understand the theoretical and practical dimensions of statecraft better and more deeply than your entire agency. And I am not the only one.
Now, for a moment, let’s assume that the ISI has not killed Saleem. Let’s also assume that much of what is being said about the ISI it is the product of a heat-oppressed civilian brain, not a reality. Perhaps you would still like to know why people think such things of the ISI. So, here goes.
Nation-states are not biological entities; they are, to use the cliché, ‘imagined communities’. This, as the starting point, should give you some idea about how easily the concept of the state and its interest can be problematised. Democratic states garner the loyalties of their people through a sense of sharing and participation, through constitutionalism. In comparison, totalitarian and oppressive states use fear to keep the flock together. History shows that the latter break up at some point. No amount of oppression can keep the people chained; it is only a matter of time. Instead, oppression begets violence and deep turmoil. The problem with oppression is thus that it attracts what it sets out to avoid. Therein lies both the irony and the paradox.
Allied with this point is the idea of civilian supremacy, the fact that while the state becomes overarching, those representing it at any point of time have to operate on the basis of accepted and acceptable rules of the game. They are all accountable through two levels of agency. The first and primary level of agency is granted by the people through elections to their representatives; the second, a much more restrictive level of agency, is accorded by the peoples’ representatives to bureaucratic institutions, including the military and its intelligence agencies.
You, sir, are therefore a servant twice over, as are all your officers and other personnel. You are answerable to our representatives and those representatives are answerable to us.
Obviously, theory does not match fact in Pakistan and it is this anomaly which has brought the country to the brink of disaster. I have said this before and I will say it again: The military-ISI combine has no business defining Pakistan’s interest. That is our job and we, the civilians, will do it through our representatives. Your job is to implement, not formulate, policies.
Since it is your job to identify threats, you must understand the deep fault lines developing in this state. Today’s disarray is the product of flawed policies and even more flawed attempts at nation-building. Strategic vision, like charity, begins at home. If the people of this country feel proud to be Pakistanis, you will have that strength at your back. If they don’t, that makes you very weak too. And you can’t beat people into submission; nor kill them and expect all will be hunky-dory.
It is all about the fundamentals. Unless you get the fundamentals right, no amount of cloak-and-dagger stuff will reduce the threats the country faces. In fact, given what the people think about the agency you head, one of the biggest evolving threats appears to emanate from an organisation whose very reason for existence is to identify and evaluate threats to this state. Could there be a deeper irony than this?
I met you the first time in November 2007 when you were director-general military operations. I know you to be a straight-talking soldier. I would expect that you would do everything to prove that Saleem was not murdered by the ISI. Conversely, if the spook is traced back to your agency, that you would ensure that whoever is responsible for it, no matter how highly placed, would face the law as a common murderer. That is the only honourable thing to do and nothing less would do, or be acceptable. That is also the only way you can save this country.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 8th, 2011.
For more on this issue follow: saleemshahzad
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
An open letter to General Pasha – The Express Tribune
New Statesman - Why the banks' threats of moving abroad are empty
Why the banks' threats of moving abroad are empty
These threats allow banks to run rings around the government -- but are of questionable credibility.
Talk to a banker about financial sector taxes and they'll have to call you back from their Blackberry en-route to the airport, the rest of the company in tow, quite prepared to never set foot in the country again to avoid your unnecessary meddling. The world is their oyster -- Frankfurt, Hong Kong, New York they'll tell you -- so stop the talk of Robin Hood Taxes, or capital reserve requirements, or you'll soon be seeing tumble weed clogging up the escalators at Canary Wharf.
From a lobbyist's perspective, you can see why we increasingly hear banks threaten to move their business overseas -- it has given them the excuse they need to run rings around the government. Cue the crescendo around Sir John Vicker's interim report into banking regulation a couple of weeks ago. Cue the government's frustration, when the terms it set as part of the Project Merlin deal for banks to lend more to businesses didn't work. And whilst Ed Balls' should be commended for calling for a banker bonus tax to help tackle youth unemployment, I suspect it is also one of the reasons he limited it to a rather modest £2billion.
But putting the bank lobbyist's view aside, this story just doesn't add up from from virtually any perspective. Firstly, you have to ask what exactly "relocating overseas" means. Leading the charge, Standard Chartered and HSBC have both said they may move abroad. Their threats create an image of packing up entire trading floors, wealth management divisions and investment arms, but in both cases they are only talking about their corporate HQs and a small number of head office staff.
As a Financial Times editorial recently said:
Such threats should be faced down, not just because they are unreasonable but because they are of questionable credibility.... Were a bank such as Barclays to shift its headquarters, the impact on the UK would surely be minimal as it would still do much of its business and pay taxes in the country.
Andrea Leadsom MP, a former senior executive at Barclays and Conservative member of the Treasury Select Committee, agrees:
One or two of them might change their corporate headquarters for tax purposes but if they do go we probably won't even notice. There won't be a great outflow of workers and Canary Wharf won't turn into a ghost town.
Distractions about corporate relocation aside, banks still argue that increasing taxes will make the City less competitive and would lead to a drip-drip loss of business. And they would have us believe the government's new bank levy is evidence of a worrying step in that direction. But let's be crystal clear: we are in no danger of overburdening the banks.
The costs of the new bank levy will be largely off-set by a decrease in corporation tax, which is on course to be the lowest rate in the G7 by 2014 at 23 per cent. Our rules on writing off future tax payment against previous losses are a major boon, as Barclays so clearly demonstrated by paying a shocking £113m of tax on £11.6b of profit. Other countries are not so generous, or perhaps foolhardy, as a special Reuters report explains: "Swiss tax losses can generally be carried forward for seven years, U.S. federal tax losses for 20 years, but in the UK or Jersey, there is no time limit."
But here is the mother of them all -- a multi-billion pound reason why banks would be mad to move away: credit rating agencies such as Standard & Poors know the UK government (read: taxpayer) will not let banks fail because they would bring the rest of the economy down with them. This means lending to banks is a one-way bet and so their credit rating improves, which in turn allows them to borrow money more cheaply. Sound trivial? Andrew Haldane, executive director of financial stability at the Bank of England, said last year: "The average annual subsidy for the top five banks over these years [2007-2009] was over £50 billion -- roughly equal to UK banks' annual profits prior to the crisis." At the height of the crisis, the subsidy was worth £100bn.
Most countries are simply not capable of offering this kind of support. Those who are capable may not be willing to risk having to fund a bail-out. If banks do choose to move from the City of London's safety net, they are likely to have to accept lower credit ratings making borrowing more expensive.
Besides the favourable tax environment and epically-proportioned credit card we offer to banks based in the UK, there are many other factors that give London the edge: stable financial infrastructure, lack of corruption, ease in raising capital, lawyers and crucially, our location. Banks could not afford to shift to New York and miss out on European clients, and business so conveniently located in a time zone half way between Manhattan and the other major markets in Asia. Nor could they afford to ignore our pool of highly skilled workers, who in turn are attracted by the culture, language, world class education and variety of things to spend their money on.
According to a recent Global Financial Sector Index, London didn't come near the top for its financial sector competitiveness, it was number one. So next time the City of London complain they are hard done by, show them this report -- which incidentally, they commissioned.
In fact, you could argue that it is the banks that are overburdening us. HSBC's balance sheet is already bigger than the entire GDP in the UK, Barclays' is roughly equal. The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, and others have questioned whether we really want to be carrying that weight on our shoulders -- a weight that could crush us next time things go wrong.
Neither the government or opposition should be held hostage to old arguments that banks are the powerhouse of our economy. Two years ago they lost this honour when their engine failed and we were forced to pump in more than a trillion pounds of public money to get it started again and we are still paying to keep it running today.
Nor should politicians shy away from ensuring banks pay to repair the damage they have caused, for example through a Robin Hood Tax, because of hollow threats that the financial sector will move their business overseas. By paying their fair share in taxes, banks can once again work in the interests of society. At the moment it's the other way round.
Simon Chouffot is a spokesperson for the Robin Hood Tax Campaign
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New Statesman - Economists ask: where is Osborne's Plan B?
Economists ask: where is Osborne's Plan B?
Signatories of a letter to the Observer include several academics who backed the scheme last year.
A group of leading economists has called for George Osborne to change course on his deficit reduction strategy, saying that it is "stalling".
A letter to the Observer signed by 47 academics and economists said:
Recent economic figures have shown that the government urgently needs to adopt a Plan B for the economy. As economists and academics, we know the breakneck deficit-reduction plan, based largely on spending cuts, is self-defeating even on its own terms. It will probably not manage to close the deficit in the planned time frame and the government's strategy is likely to result in a lot more pain and a lot less gain.
We believe a more effective strategy for sustainable growth would be achieved:
- through a green new deal and a focus on targeted industrial policy.
- by clamping down on tax avoidance and evasion, as well as by raising taxes on those best able to pay
- through real financial reform, job creation, "unsqueezing" the incomes of the majority, the empowerment of workers and a better work-life balance.
These are the foundation of a real alternative and it is time the government adopted it.
Damagingly, several people have signed who were signatories of a letter to the Sunday Times last year which supported the Conservatives' approach. This indicates worry across the board about the slow rate of growth. Britain's economy grew by a sluggish 0.5 per cent in the first three months of this year but inflation rose by more than expected to 4.5 per cent.
Another signatory is the former chief economist at the Cabinet Office Jonathan Portes. Now director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, he said: "You do not gain credibility by sticking to a strategy that is not working." Sadly, Osborne does not appear to see it that way.
New Statesman - The IMF has no credibility in forecasting the UK economy
The IMF has no credibility in forecasting the UK economy
George Osborne has effectively already resorted to Plan B, because his policies are not working.
The IMF yesterday cut its growth forecast for 2011 for the UK to 1.5 per cent but said the government's economic policy was going along swimmingly. The Chancellor seemed to be really pleased about their endorsement. But Slasher didn't seem to notice that the IMF argued that the risks to their forecasts were "significant".
Sadly, the UK economy did not grow at all over the last six months. Consumer confidence has collapsed; business confidence is weakening; employment growth has slowed sharply; house prices are falling and the number of mortgage approvals is falling; business lending is down and there remain real risks of deflation, which I guess John Lipsky, acting head of the IMF, hasn't spotted. Over the weekend, fifty economists did spot the problem and wrote to the Observer about it. The Cabinet Office's ex-chief economist Jonathan Portes and Vicky Price, ex-head of the Government Economic Service, warned that the economy was slowing, as did Tim Besley and John Muellbauer, who had previously signed a letter in the Times supporting the government's now failing strategy. The new economics Nobel laureate, Chris Pissarides, who was also a signatory to the Times letter also told me in an exclusive interview published in the New Statesman this week that his preferred action now is for a postponement of fiscal contraction. Growth is nowhere to be seen and the government has no plan to fix it.
The Chancellor's claim that his strategy was always flexible because of the use of automatic stabilisers actually amounted to an announcement of Plan B. As growth slows and unemployment rises, as it surely will, then the payments to unemployment benefits in particular start to rise. This is plainly an announcement that the speed at which the deficit is paid off will inevitably have to be slower than he had previously announced, because his policies are not working -- as I have frequently warned.
Plus, if, but more likely when, the economy starts declining further, they would have to cut taxes and do more quantitative easing. Hence Vince Cable, Osborne and now the IMF have endorsed Adam Posen's and my long-held views: that there is a possiblity of a slow, Japanese type recovery, hence the need for another round of asset purchases: ie. Plan C.
I was particularly interested to look back to the 6th August 2008 when the IMF also lowered its growth forecast for the UK economy.
The IMF predicted the UK would grow by 1.4 per cent in 2008 and 1.1 per cent in 2009, down from the 1.8 per cent for 2008 and 1.7 per cent for 2009 that it predicted in of 2008. It said inflation at 3.8 per cent was higher than expected, and inflation expectations were rising even as economic activity was slowing. That, the IMF said, meant the Bank of England had little room to cut rates. It didn't exactly turn out that way. In August 2008, the IMF didn't even spot that the UK economy had entered recession in April 2008. The IMF has no credibility in forecasting the UK economy.
Osborne has already turned, as the economy is slowing even before public spending cuts hit. The government's economic strategy is in disarray, no matter which of Osborne's pals he gets to say otherwise.
Broken System - Page 1 - News - Houston - Houston Press
Broken System
A lawsuit alleges that 12,000 kids trapped in foster care with little chance of getting out are being exposed to abuse and neglect, shuttled around the state and denied health services.
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |Twelve years ago, Texas Child Protective Services took 11-year-old Ashley Gallardo and her younger brothers from their home because workers believed they were not safe there.
Photo courtesy of ShaeShae says she moved 52 times in eight years of foster care.Details
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BLOG POST: Foster Care in Texas: A Broken System, Without Much Hope for ImprovementRelated Content
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The State of Texas was never able to find her a better home.
After a stint in an emergency shelter, Gallardo and her brothers were separated and sent to foster homes in different parts of the state.
Then, after three years of bouncing around foster homes, she was told she'd be moving to a foster home in Mullen, only about 20 minutes away from her brothers' home. She was ecstatic.
Today, the 23-year-old Gallardo still remembers what her new foster mother said to her, and how it was only a matter of time before she would be separated from her brothers again: "If you think that you're going to mess with my husband, you better think again."
Apparently, the woman had heard about what happened at Gallardo's last foster home, in Star, which was this: Gallardo told her caseworker that her foster father tried to rape her.
She didn't last long there. Then it was on to a foster home in Austin, where, she says, she and her foster siblings slept in a bedroom locked from the outside. They had to knock when they wanted to leave. There were cameras in the corners, but she was never sure if they were actually on.
After that, she moved to another emergency shelter and another home, where she just watched the clock until she turned 18 and aged out of the system.
Gallardo was trapped in a foster care system that's been broken for years, despite admonitions and warnings from state agencies. With each new investigation, the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which oversees Child Protective Services, promised change. It never came.
Which is why, last March, a New York-based child advocacy group called Children's Rights sued Governor Rick Perry and state foster care officials on behalf of the approximately 12,000 children in the system's Permanent Managing Conservatorship program.
Children's Rights is claiming what official reports have indicated for years: that CPS does little to find permanent placement for kids in PMC, and that once the department sticks a kid in PMC, he or she is virtually forgotten.
According to the suit, roughly 500 children had been in state custody for more than ten years as of May 2010. Children's Rights also points to a 2006 Texas Comptroller's report that, while these children have been removed from abusive and neglectful homes, a child in state care "was statistically four times more likely to die than a child in the state's general population."
The suit alleges that CPS harms children in PMC by:
• exposing them to abuse and neglect by substandard providers;
• separating them from siblings, significant family members and their communities;
• failing to provide them with necessary mental health services;
• inflicting emotional harm by moving them too often; and
• severe mismanagement and understaffing, leading to a lack of caseworker visitation.
These problems are even reflected in a 2010 state-commissioned study of how the courts treat kids in PMC. Judges interviewed for the report complained of CPS caseworkers, prosecutors and attorneys ad litem often being unprepared for six-month court hearings. The report also stated that due in large part to a high caseworker turnover rate, these children typically have more than one caseworker.
While these children are in CPS care, the state is required to ensure their safety and well-being by actively seeking permanent homes for them. By failing to do so, CPS has subjected them to "permanent harm on an ongoing basis, in violation of their legal rights."
Children's Rights calls for "special expert panels" to review all PMC kids who have been moved more than four times, and all those who've been in PMC for two years, to ensure their needs are being met. The organization is also demanding that children be placed only in nationally accredited homes and facilities.
Yet the suit doesn't state who should be on those expert panels, or how they should be appointed. And it's similarly vague on how the state is supposed to meet its demands of finding permanent placement in a timely manner.
The lawsuit comes on the heels of what officials and other players in the world of family services say is a complete redesign of the foster system, and that a lawsuit now will only impede the process. CPS officials say they have a plan — for real — this time. They say the lawsuit would only do more harm than good.
But in 2010, the state's Adoption Review Committee said the same thing — of the foster system itself.
"There is increasing evidence to show that our foster care system is sometimes doing more harm to our children than good," the committee reported.
To better understand just how broken the state foster care system is — and has been for ages — wrap your head around this: In November 2010, while DFPS was getting ready to roll out its redesign, which was going to show everyone how the system would no longer be deplorable, staff members at a residential treatment center called Daystar beat a 16-year-old boy, hogtied him and threw him in a closet to slowly asphyxiate to death.
Frustration with Texas’ “Broken System” of Foster Care is Spreading — Children’s Rights
Texas child welfare officials have long promised an overhaul of the state’s dangerous child welfare system. A new story, spurred by Children’s Rights’ reform campaign, indicates that empty plans won’t be tolerated any further.
As our campaign to reform the dysfunctional Texas child welfare system gathers steam, there is mounting evidence that the public is equally distressed by the long-running problems in state foster care. The latest example is a powerful, evocative story that ran in the Houston Press last week.
Framed by the harrowing experiences of two young women who each spent many years in Texas foster care, the piece chronicles the state’s continued failure to rid the system of dangerous, negligent providers and protect children who have been left stranded in “permanent managing conservatorship” — essentially a system of permanent foster care that fails to find loving, stable families for thousands of children.
The story pays particularly close attention to the stark contrast between the state’s words and its actions:
To better understand just how broken the foster care system is — and has been for ages — wrap your head around this: In November 2010, while DFPS [the Department of Family and Protective Services] was getting ready to roll out its redesign, which was going to show everyone how the system would no longer be deplorable, staff members at a residential treatment center called Daystar beat a 16-year-old boy, hogtied him and threw him in a closet to slowly asphyxiate to death.
The writer continues: “Although Daystar is perhaps an extreme example, it’s a good one for considering just how much DFPS will tolerate from the people it has caring for kids. And it’s been that way for years.”
This gripping piece comes on the heels of a major victory for the 12,000 kids languishing in Texas’ permanent foster care. Last week, the federal court overseeing a class action led by Children’s Rights and a team of Texas lawyers on behalf of the state’s forgotten children affirmed our position that the problems in permanent managing conservatorship in fact place children at risk of harm — giving us the green light to seek civil rights protection for the entire group and receive access to hundreds of child welfare cases.
Powered by that momentum, we will continue this court battle to ensure kids in Texas foster care have the safety and services that every child deserves. And for the 12,000 forgotten kids relegated to permanent foster care, we fight for kids so they can leave foster care with secure homes and loving families — rather than living out the rest of their young lives as wards of a deeply troubled state child welfare system.
Would You Pay $2.3 Million for Lunch with Warren Buffett? - Deal Journal - WSJ
By Shira Ovide
- Bloomberg News
The charity auction for a steak lunch with Warren Buffett is nearing record levels.
Bidding opened Sunday evening on eBay for a chance for you and seven friends to meet the Oracle of Omaha and talk shop over chops. Or sirloins. It’s the 12th year Buffett has auctioned off his time to benefit Glide, an anti-poverty charity.
The auction already has had seven bids, and the current high offer is more than $2.3 million. The record price paid last year by an anonymous party was $2.63 million. The auction closes on June 10.
Julian Assange: The Facebook Has You | Singularity Hub
With the increase and further development of communication technologies, everyone is concerned with the impact it will have on the individual’s privacy. Social networking and other internet services like geo-location, which we have covered before, have caused many personal boundaries to seep and bleed into each other, as well as force most of the developed world’s populace to reconsider their notions of personal privacy. In fact, some social networking users do not seem at all concerned about their privacy, viewing themselves as honest people with nothing to hide. Not so, says Julian Assange, founder of the controversial WikiLeaks portal. In a recent interview to RussiaToday, an English language resource devoted to illuminating events in Russia to the broader international community, Assange claimed Facebook, the prominent social network, to be “the most appalling spying machine ever invented.”
Among other things in the interview to RT, such as accusing the media of fueling every war for the past fifty years, Assange implicated Facebook and, more importantly, its users in doing free work for the various US intelligence agencies. He claims that the wealth of information stored on Facebook servers such as people’s conversations, photographs, videos, and contact information is freely available to be perused by government agencies at their convenience, and, given recent cases of social network monitoring, it is hard to accuse Assange of slander.
Perhaps, someone reading these words is thinking something along the lines of “Look who is talking!” Yes, indeed, Julian Assange gained his fame (or, rather, infamy) by blowing the whistle on many secret government communiqués, many pertaining to the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, earning him a rather unwelcome reputation in government-affiliated circles. However, in a way, the situation with Assange is only the posing of the age-old question: which is more important, the government or the individual’s right to information? Assange obviously sides with the latter.
His concerns about personal privacy are not without due cause, especially if one takes the time to consider the recent scandals around Apple and Pandora Radio, where their respective iPhone and Android applications were implicated in collecting personal user data and transmitting it to third parties. In fact, even the search engine giant Google was involved in a scandal about WiFi data collected for its StreetView service sometime last year, and as it is now penetrating inside various places of business, those to whom privacy is important should be extremely wary.
Fair warning!
Before someone starts yelling about a global conspiracy, however, two extremely important things have to be realized. First, the various services that have so many running around scared about Big Brother watching them were not invented for the purpose of spying, but rather for personal convenience. For example, another one of Google’s services, Art Project, is designed to let a person experience certain art exhibits, before (or without) actually visiting the museums, not to track down unsuspecting art connoisseurs. Facebook really was conceived as a way for students to connect and share information, not to be a central database of everyone’s psychological profiles and contact information. However, can these services be used in an invasive way? Absolutely, which ties in to the second important point: the vast majority of information out there on any given individual was put up by that very individual. Nobody put a gun to anyone’s head, forcing them to fill out their Facebook profile to completion, including phone numbers and home and work addresses, or update their status with their exact location every ten minutes.
Increasingly accurate and precise tracking methods are a completely natural, albeit unpleasant, side-effect of more effective communications and internet services. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite to clear landslides and avalanches, which did not stop those of a less scrupulous nature to use it in, say, bank robberies. People have to realize that they are also responsible for protecting their personal data, and while there is very little that can be done by the end user in cases like Pandora, where the data was collected surreptitiously, it is very possible to refrain from geo-tagging one’s every photo or posting the addresses of the all the houses a person has lived in for the past ten years if privacy is such a pressing concern for him or her.
On a larger scale, people need to get involved politically to protect their digital privacy. It may be a shocking concept for the 21st century homo sapiens that he or she can actually influence the government, especially one that positions itself as a democracy (who would have thought?), but those who do not want their country’s intelligence agencies’ staff to browse their Facebook profiles as part of their job, need to get up and start pushing their ideas into the ears of lawmakers. A proper digital privacy law may, for example, prevent companies such as Apple and Pandora from future fiascoes with user data because they will know that there will be real consequences in terms of large fines or prison sentences. Of course, sometimes the data garnered from someone’s Facebook account may be used to prevent a crime, but that only means that this hypothetical law needs to be carefully constructed to allow for full protection of the individual’s digital privacy barring probable cause. It is not a novel concept: after all, invasion of one’s physical home by law enforcement agents is illegal without properly substantiated probable cause. Why is this different?
Today’s world is radically different from the one twenty or even ten years ago. The internet is no longer something that only exists on the computer screen. It is not even some parallel digital world anymore. It is penetrating and interconnecting with the physical world on a regular basis, so that the information floating around the net can have very real and tangible consequences in the world outside one’s window. Those who choose to live in such a world have to be constantly vigilant of what sort of digital tracks they are leaving for possibly unwanted eyes, just like one has to be careful not to walk around a dangerous neighborhood in the middle of the night. However, the simple fact that there are dangerous neighborhoods and that it is dark at midnight is no reason to stop going outside for good.
[Source: The Guardian, RussiaToday, The Telegraph]
[Image Credit: Moe Espen]
Are the cuts really only wafer thin? | Ben Chu | Independent Eagle Eye Blogs
Are the cuts really only wafer thin?
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Eagle Eye
By Ben Chu
Are the cuts really only wafer thin?
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“Move along, nothing to see” says the Spectator editor, Fraser Nelson, with regard to George Osborne’s protestation of “flexibility” this morning on the Today programme.
I’m not so sure. I doubt Osborne would have talked about automatic stabilisers and hinted at the Bank of England’s ability to loosen monetary policy further a year ago when he was unveiling his proudly austere emergency Budget.
But there’s something else about Nelson’s post that I wanted to take issue with.
He argues:
“Departmental spending is set in stone… So in total: cuts of 3.7% spread over four years. The government’s refusal to mention this figure has allowed Labour to make out that the cuts are deep and fast when in fact they average less than 1 per cent a year.”
The idea that public spending is not really being cut by all that much is increasingly popular among some on the right. It has been pushed, at various times, not only by The Spectator, but by Allister Heath of City AM and John Redwood.
But what Nelson is doing in this particular post is conflating government departmental cuts with overall government spending cuts.
Overall government spending might be falling by what sounds like a relatively small degree, but because of rising debt interest, rising welfare bills etc, this translates into a genuinely severe squeeze on individual departmental budgets as this table (extracted from the Treasury by the FT) shows:
Look at the far right hand column titled “cumulative real growth” for the cuts faced by each department by 2015. It shows that education is being cut by 11%, defence by 7.5%, transport by 15%, local government by 27% etc. The average cut for each department is 11%. If you take out the protected departments of health and international development you get an average cut of 19%. And these are real cuts, i.e. adjusted for inflation. So Nelson’s figure of 3.7% cuts over four years in the context of talking about departmental spending is very misleading.
Now you can argue – as Redwood, Nelson and Heath do – that these departmental cuts are necessary, bearable, desirable, or indeed all three. But it’s bordering on dishonest to imply that they’re trivial in scale.
Water-fighting whilst being black; now illegal | Jody McIntyre | Independent Notebook Blogs
Water-fighting whilst being black; now illegal
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Notebook
By Jody McIntyre
Water-fighting whilst being black; now illegal
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It was late afternoon, and I decided to take a short walk back through the park before I made my way home. Parks can always bring people of all backgrounds and communities together; rich and poor, black and white, young and old, there is no-one who doesn’t enjoy a day in the park when the weather is beautiful. This was the thought that came into my mind. As I wandered along the bank of the Serpentine, I had found myself amongst a group of around one to two hundred, nearly all black, young people. Some sat on the ridiculously priced deck chairs, clearly rejecting the concept that anyone should be made to pay money to sit down in a park. Others were gathered on benches, and some walked in groups along the edge of the lake, or sat on the grass. They were boys and girls, all very young, and all having a fun day out in the sunshine. Some had water guns, and splashed each other playfully. It was the girls who usually came out on top.
But then, as I got a little further down the path, I noticed another presence in the area. Police officers lined the bank of the lake, and at the far end of the Serpentine, three officers stood mounted on horses. Had there been some kind of incident?
One of the police officers walked over towards me. “You might want to get out the way, because they’re going to charge through this area on the horses in a minute,” he said.
“Why is that?” I replied.
“Well, last time they had a water-fight like this, someone got stabbed.”
If I wasn’t so angered by the words I had just heard, I would have laughed. Looking around me, I wondered if me and the police officer who had just uttered the sentence had been born on the same planet. This was a group of young people having fun, coming together in numbers to enjoy a sense of community that is so lacking from our modern-day society. But I had forgotten the golden rule; if there are a lot of black people together, they are intimidating the public. They must be committing a crime. If they happen to be young people, then the evidence is confirmed.
Behind the grassy area everyone had gathered on, I could see a number of police vans and cars had parked up. I could not believe the size of response to a situation that was, essentially not a situation at all. Meanwhile, passers by and families also sitting by the grassy area went about the business as usual.
As time passed, the crowd got bigger. I saw people engaging in dance competitions, egging each other on to see who could pull off the best moves. It was heart-warming to see that the young people’s spirits were undeterred by the presence of the police, who were beginning to act with increasing hostility. At one point, the mounted police had trotted over to the far end of the grassy area. One of the mounted officers had taken a few steps forward, and started ordering people to “just go home”, and telling them that he had “half of the force of London behind me”, and that it “just isn’t worth it”. As you might expect, the aggressive rhetoric only elicited a couple of laughs from the few people who were standing anywhere near him.
But then I began to imagine how the scene would appear to an unsuspecting onlooker. A very large group of young people, surrounded by a large number of police. The predictable response would be; the young people must have done something wrong. Perhaps they were members of violent gangs? Perhaps some of them were carrying weapons? Indeed, this was the impression the police were giving. I went down to the far end of the lake, where most people were arriving from. Every time the police saw a young, black male, particularly if they had a water gun or plastic bottle, the police would casually pull them to one side, and the questioning would begin.
“What is your name? Have you ever been in trouble with the police before? Oh, [looking at water gun], so this is your weapon of choice is it?”
A presumption of suspicion, based purely on appearance. The racism and discrimination, which I consider to be a part of the police, in its most blatant form.
Later on, as the water fight got into flow, the police officers standing at the perimeter of the lake took on the role of snatch squads, dashing into the crowd after each person was sprayed or splashed, grabbing three young, black males at a time, and lining them up against the fence. Each one would have their water gun or plastic bottle emptied of water, their pockets and bags searched, and their personal details taken. Not once did I see the searches result in the discovery of any incriminating item. The three young boys would then be instructed to leave the park, and the snatch squads would get back to work, until another three were detained. As I watched them being lined up at the fence, over and over again, I found myself wishing that I had a camera to capture the moment. For fear of being accused of exaggeration, the image I was seeing was something you might expect to see in a movie about Apartheid South Africa. All black young people, all white police officers. This image was only compounded a couple of hours later, when the police brought out dogs to separate a crowd they claimed were ‘trying to attack each other’. From where I was sitting, it was quite obvious as to who was doing the attacking.
When I asked one of the police officers under which law they had the power to detain the boys in the manner they were, he explained to me that there was a by-law in operation for the “Royal Parks”, which allowed them to instruct any member of the public to leave the park if they were “disturbing the tranquility of others”. I suggested that it was the police that were disturbing the tranquility of these young people.
But, I guess in a sense, there is a partial truth in that point. Perhaps some people do feel uncomfortable or intimidated by the presence of a large gathering of young people who have darker skin than theirs. But it is that racist perception that needs to be challenged, not legitimised by heavily policing a group of people that have committed no crime whatsoever. I remembered the first justification I had heard that afternoon, that last time they had had a water fight in the park, someone had been stabbed. Well, I seem to remember that last time the police raided a person’s home someone was stabbed, so I wonder when the police will end their policy of house raids?
In conclusion, water fights in Hyde Park; fine if you are a well-to-do, white, middle-class family, but illegal if you are young, black people gathered in numbers. Of course.
How a cheap graphics card could crack your password in under a second | PC Pro blog
How a cheap graphics card could crack your password in under a second-->Posted on June 1st, 2011 by Jon Honeyball
Increase the password to 6 characters (pYDbL6), and the CPU takes 1 hour 30 minutes versus only four seconds on the GPU. Go further to 7 characters (fh0GH5h), and the CPU would grind along for 4 days, versus a frankly worrying 17 minutes 30 seconds for the GPU.
Is an IT manager really going to manage to get the CFO to log in using “fR4; $sYu 29 @QwmQz” without the combination ending up on a Post-it note in his wallet?
Now, I cannot imagine anyone managing to mandate a nine-character, mixed-case, random-character password on an organisation. But if you did, and you weren’t hanging from a tree by the end of the first working day, the CPU would take 43 years versus 48 days for the GPU.
He then went on to add in mixed symbols to create “F6&B is” (there is a space in there). CPU will take 75 days, GPU will take 7 hours.
What does this tell us? well, the stark reality is that even long and complex passwords are now toast. If you think you were being wise by forcing users to have randomisation in their passwords, then think again. It is utterly futile.
Yes, you can force your users to have a 15-character password consisting of random numbers and letters, and throw in punctuation as well. This is great as an idea, but we know that most users think that a password like “Barry1943Manilow” where 1943 was the year he was born, is complex and hard to remember. Is an IT manager really going to manage to get the CFO to log in using “fR4; $sYu 29 @QwmQz” without the combination ending up on a Post-it note in his wallet? Or stuck to the side of the screen? Because anything much less than this is going to be open to attack over the next few years.
A GPU of the type used by this chap is not unusual or high end. It is standard-issue stuff. Indeed, I have just sat through the AMD presentation here at Computex in Taiwan, and they made a big deal about putting GPU power into netbooks offering 500Gflops, without denting its 12-hour battery life. And that’s shipping within months.
All I can say is this: you have been warned. It is time to think long and hard about password security, and how you do your authentication. This has crept up on us in the background, and we really haven’t been paying attention. Nor has Microsoft, frankly, who should be having a whole raft of alternative, hardened solutions in place ready for its business customers to roll out.
What are the solutions? To be honest, I’m not sure. A combination of TPM, biometrics, passwords and maybe something else entirely new will be needed. But it’s clear that a complex password that users will actually accept for day-to-day authentication, and keep secret, might be history
Cheap GPUs are rendering strong passwords useless | ZDNet
Think that your eight-character password consisting of lowercase characters, uppercase characters and a sprinkling of numbers is strong enough to protect you from a brute force attack?
Think again!
Jon Honeyball writing for PC Pro has a sobering piece on how the modern GPU can be leveraged as a powerful tool against passwords once considered safe from bruteforce attack.
Take a cheap GPU (like the Radeon HD 5770) and the free GPU-powered password busting tool called ’ighashgpu‘ and you have yourself a lean, mean password busting machine. How lean and mean? Very:
The results are startling. Working against NTLM login passwords, a password of “fjR8n” can be broken on the CPU in 24 seconds, at a rate of 9.8 million password guesses per second. On the GPU, it takes less than a second at a rate of 3.3 billion passwords per second.
Increase the password to 6 characters (pYDbL6), and the CPU takes 1 hour 30 minutes versus only four seconds on the GPU. Go further to 7 characters (fh0GH5h), and the CPU would grind along for 4 days, versus a frankly worrying 17 minutes 30 seconds for the GPU.
It gets worse. Throw in a nine-character, mixed-case random password, and while a CPU would take a mind-numbing 43 years to crack this, the GPU would be done in 48 days.
Surely throwing symbols in there keeps you safe, right? Wrong! Take a password consisting of seven characters, mixed-case/symbols random password like ‘F6&B is’ (note the space), that’s gotta be tough for a bruteforce attack. Right? A CPU will take some 75 days to churn through the possibilities, while a GPU is done with it in 7 hours.
What’s the solution? Well, Honeyball doesn’t know, and neither do I to be perfectly honest. What I do know is that this is a warning, and one that we need to take seriously. Unless we’re willing to move onto 15-16 characters, mixed-case/symbols random password (which will end up on Post-It Notes), passwords will soon only offer protection against honest people.
[UPDATE: Take a look at this - whitepixel 2 running with 4 x HD 5970 cards (8 x GPUs) capable of 33.1 billion MD5 password hashes/sec.
Via: SimonZerafa of PC-Technical]
'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook | ZDNet
Zero Day
Ryan Naraine and Dancho Danchev'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
By Dancho Danchev | May 16, 2011, 4:46am PDT
Summary
Researchers from Sophos have spotted a currently circulating “Enable Dislike Button” Facebook scam.
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Ryan Naraine
Biography
Ryan Naraine
Ryan Naraine is a journalist and social media enthusiast specializing in Internet and computer security issues. He is currently security evangelist at Kaspersky Lab, an anti-malware company with operations around the globe. He is taking a leadership role in developing the company's online community initiative around secure content management technologies.Prior to joining Kaspersky Lab, Ryan was Editor-at-Large/Security at eWEEK, leading the magazine's and Web site's coverage of Internet and computer security issues and managing the popular SecurityWatch blog, covering the daily threats, vulnerabilities and IT security technologies. He also covered IT security, hacker attacks and secure content management topics for Jupiter Media's internetnetnews.com.
Ryan can be reached at naraine SHIFT 2 gmail.com. For daily updates on Ryan's activities, follow him on Twitter.
Dancho Danchev
Biography
Dancho Danchev
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, and cybercrime incident response. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog sharing real-time threats intelligence data with the rest of the community on a daily basis. More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile. You can also follow him on Twitter
Researchers from Sophos have spotted a currently circulating “Enable Dislike Button” Facebook scam.
Upon clicking on the what looks like a recently added genuine Facebook feature, users are exposed to a “Follow the steps below to get the Dislike button” instructions page similar to the one seen in the Osama Execution video scam.
Spamvertised as:
Facebook now has a dislike button! Click ‘Enable Dislike Button’ to turn on the new feature!
Once the users copy and paste the obfuscated javascript in their browsers, all of their friends will be spamvertised with a wall post about the non-existent Dislike feature. The campaigners appear to be monetizing the campaign through a survey scam.
For the time being, Facebook doesn’t offer a dislike button.
Kick off your day with ZDNet's daily e-mail newsletter. It's the freshest tech news and opinion, served hot. Get it.
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, malware and cybercrime incident response.
Disclosure
Dancho Danchev
More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile.Biography
Dancho Danchev
Dancho Danchev is an independent security consultant and cyber threats analyst, with extensive experience in open source intelligence gathering, and cybercrime incident response. He's been an active security blogger since 2007, and maintains a popular security blog sharing real-time threats intelligence data with the rest of the community on a daily basis. More details on Dancho Danchev's current and past professional affiliations, can be found in his LinkedIn profile. You can also follow him on TwitterMore from “Zero Day”
Talkback Most Recent of 18 Talkback(s)
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I noticed it last night
One of my FB friends had this on his profile. I did a mouseover on the link and saw that it had nothing to do with Facebook and warned my wife not to click it if she saw it.The question is: exactly what does it do? Does it plant code on your system? Considering that I use Linux, I didn't feel threatened.
RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@davidr69 You are an idiot if you think that you are safe because you use Linuxjkfan8705/17/2011 06:03 PM
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RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
I hope Facebook has a nice splash page that points this out to its users upon their logging into Facebook, or would that make too much sense?
RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@jayohem@... Facebook hardly ever posts warnings of any kind. If and when they do you have to be following their security page. LOL I belong to a few independent security groups on FB that passes warnings around about scams and such. With something like this all you have to remember is FB will just install it themselves before they will get you to do anything.Shows that it's a wanted feature, though . . .
Shows that it's a wanted feature, though, if the scammers are willing to put the effort into making something like this.Maybe Facebook should put the feature in.
RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@CobraA1They say they don't want to introduce a "culture of negativity" or some such idealistic, hippy crap. YouTube has thumbs down, so why not Facebook?
RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
Hey, ZDNet doesn't have a thumbs down feature either. Seems to me they used to; I wish they'd bring it back. (That's a general comment, not a complaint about this article.)LeonBA05/16/2011 02:11 PMRE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@CobraA1 It is simpole...Facebook has a lot of businesses. And they do not want a bunch of whining babies coordinating mass "dislike" campaigns simply because a company didn't bend over backwards to their unreasonable demands.RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
I can't understand why anyone on FB trusts 3rd party apps.
*I* don't understand...
...why anyone online trusts Facebook.RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@fairportfan TOTALLY agree with you.Imrhien05/16/2011 01:58 PMRE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@fairportfan Becuase they have never taken any information from me that I did not willingly give them. (Which is not much.) And what I did give them has not gone to anyone else in any way that actually identifies me. I culdn't care less if an advertiser lumps me together with other 30-somethings who play volleyball and is an avid cyclist. More power to them.By the way...Facebook does nothing that Google doesn't do many times worse.
jkfan8705/17/2011 06:06 PMRE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
@ejhonda
This new scam appears as a new facebook feature, not 3rd party app.RE: 'Enable Dislike Button' scam spreading on Facebook
I used to like Facebook but I have all my security buttoned up so tight now its almost just a storage file and news gathering place more then a friendly interactive place anymore. Last 6 months all these scams are really taking off on a viral level.
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