TBR News March 8, 2016

Mar 08 2016

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., March 8 2016: “What is in actuality the biggest intelligence coup in history is the defection of Edward Snowden to Russia. With him when he left Hawaii was an enormous amount of the highest level intelligence data. The question is wether Snowden was aware that his Wikileals connection was controlled by the Russian SVR. In law, circuimstanatial evidence trumps direct evidence and in this matter, circumstaial evidence points to Snowden being well aware that he was working for the SVR and was not an innocent dupe. As a top CIA computer specialist, Snowden became aware of many actions of that agency that he disapproved of for moral resons. Morals and ethics are excellent norms but not effective techinques.”

Conversations with the Crow

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA’s Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer’s Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley’s widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley’s CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md. After Corson’s death, Trento and his Washington lawyer went to Corson’s bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled ‘Zipper.’ This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley’s involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever

After Crowley’s death and Trento’s raid on the Crowley files, huge gaps were subsequently discovered by horrified CIA officials and when Crowley’s friends mentioned Gregory Douglas, it was discovered that Crowley’s son had shipped two large boxes to Douglas. No one knew their contents but because Douglas was viewed as an uncontrollable loose cannon who had done considerable damage to the CIA’s reputation by his on-going publication of the history of Gestapo-Mueller, they bent every effort both to identify the missing files and make some effort to retrieve them before Douglas made any use of them.

Douglas had been in close contact with Crowley and had long phone conversatins with him. He found this so interesting and informative that he taped  and later transcribed them.

These conversations have been published in a book: ‘Conversations with the Crow” and this is an excerpt.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Crow-Gregory-Douglas-ebook/dp/B00GHMAQ5E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1450147193&sr=8-1&keywords=conversations+with+the+crow

Conversation No. 39

Date: Monday, September 30. 1996

Commenced: 12:23 PM CST

Concluded: 12:47 PM CST

RTC: Gregory?

GD: Yes, Robert. I am letting you know that I got a letter from Critchfield today.

RTC: Excellent! What did he say?

GD: If you know the score, a great deal and if you don’t, it’s still interesting. Shall I read it to you?

RTC: Not on the phone. Can you copy it and send it to me at home?

GD: He says that you spoke well of me and that you said I was a former intelligence employee, just as you said he would. He is very eager to get ahold of me to find out what I know about Mueller and who told me.

RTC: Oh, he’s a very alarmed person, Gregory. They all are.

GD: He did mention that his ex-CIA friends were all in a tizzy. Some believed me and other said that none of it could be true.

RTC: That’s typical, Gregory. We always had members who laughed at everything. You could tell them today was Monday and they would say, “Well, that remains to be seen.” How did he leave it?

GD: He is most insistent that I call him at home.

RTC: But be careful of that, Gregory. He’ll tape you. He wants to find out what you know about Mueller….have you mentioned Kronthal yet?

GD: I haven’t responded to the letter, Robert, but when we talk, I will.

RTC: He’ll ask you if Corson told you this. Say that he did not. Say that Mueller did. Also tell him that the Company terminated Kronthal because he was a faggot and was being blackmailed by the Russians. Got that?

GD: I do.

RTC: This might prove to be very interesting. Be sure you tape him. Do you have the equipment for that?

GD: I do indeed, Robert.

RTC: And be very accurate about Gehlen. No interesting stories.

GD: Robert, please give me some credit, won’t you? I’ve been doing this sort of crap for years now and I haven’t put my foot into it yet.

RTC: No, but I’ve never seen you in action.

GD: You will. I have had dealings with the CIA before. My God, what a bunch of idiots. They have two approaches, Robert and only two. They tell you that you’re in very serious trouble but they can help you or they say they want to be my friend. As far as the latter is concerned, I’d much rather try to fuck a rabid bulldog than trust one of them. They couldn’t talk a Mongoloid idiot out of a candy bar. Now, on the other hand, the Russians I know are far better. I’ve never had a bad word from any of them. I would say that the average Russian KGB person, but on a higher level, is far more intelligent and savvy than any CIA person I’ve ever met.

RTC: Ever been to Russia?

GD: Once. As a tourist, of course. I have a nice picture of myself sitting in their headquarters, reading a local paper under a picture of Lenin.

RTC: Are you serious?

GD: Certainly I am. I met one of their leaders when he and I were in Bern. He was a trade delegation person at their embassy of course. And they do know how to feed you. I got rather fond of smoked sturgeon and really good Beluga caviar, all washed down with a first class Crimean wine.

RTC: Who was your friend there?

GD: He’s in the First Directorate but somehow I seem to have forgotten his name. He was on the idiot tube during the Gorbachev problem a few years ago.

RTC: Stocky? Sandy hair? Thinning?

GD: I believe so.

RTC: My God. If I gave you a name would…

GD: No, I would not. Besides, I’m not a spy, Robert. Don’t forget, I’m an analyst, a scenario writer, not a spy. Besides the sturgeon, I enjoy dissecting a complex problem and arriving at a simple answer. It’s not popular with most people, Robert, but it’s almost always right.

RTC: Such vanity.

GD: I prefer to call it a realistic appraisal of facts, Robert.

RTC: Could I see the picture?

GD: I’ll show it to you in person but I would prefer not to send it to you by mail. It might get lost.

RTC: Yes, these things do happen.

GD: I will certainly speak with Critchfield and I will tape the conversation for you. Do you want a copy of the tape?

RTC: No, just play it for me so I can hear what the shit has to say. I’d like you to get him to talk about the Nazis who worked for him. You know Jim liked the Nazis and hired a fair number of them. Grombach made out a list after the war so they could track some of the war crimes boys who might be in POW cages. They called it the Crowcrass List. Jim got his hands on it and used it to recruit from. I told him once this could come back to haunt him if the Jews ever found out about it but Jim just said the Jews were loud-mouthed assholes, his exact words, and Hitler missed the boat when he left any alive.

GD: Do you want me to get him to say that?

RTC: Now that’s an interesting idea, Gregory. Would you?

GD: Why not? I really knew Gehlen, as I’ve said, in ’51. He told me once that his famous report that the Russians were planning to attack western Europe in ’48 was made up because the U.S. Army, who were paying him, wanted him to do this. He said he lied like a rug and that no German intelligence officer would ever believe a word of it. He said the Russians had torn up all the rail lines in their zone and they could no more move troops up to the border than crap sideways. He said that this was designed to scare the shit out of the politicians in Washington so the Army, which was being sharply reduced in size, would be able to rebuild. That meant more money from Congress and more Generals got to keep their jobs. He said it worked like a charm and even Truman was terrified. I assume that’s the real beginning of the Cold War, isn’t it?

RTC: That’s a very good and accurate assessment. Jim told me that Gehlen was a pompous ass whom Hitler had sacked for being a champion bullshit artist but he was very useful to our side in frightening everyone with the Russian boogeyman. It’s all business, isn’t it?

GD: Marx said that. The basis of all wars is economic.

RTC: Absolutely, Gregory, absolutely. But talk about the Nazi SS men he hired, if you can. My God, they say it was like a party rally up at Pullach. If we can get him to admit that he, and others, knew what they were hiring, I’ll have him over the proverbial barrel and then I can have some leverage over him. Why, you don’t need to know.

GD: I don’t care, Robert. From his letter, I would agree he is a gasbag with a bloated opinion of himself. He should never have written that letter because I can see right through it. He’s afraid I know too much and if I knew Mueller, he’s even more frightened Mueller might have said things about him. You know, Robert, if you dance to the tune, you have to pay the piper eventually.

RTC: Do keep the letter and try to get him to put more down on paper.

GD: I will try but I don’t think he’s that stupid. We’ll try the tape and see what I can pry out of him. Mueller got me a list of names working for Gehlen and some background on them. I agree that they hired some people who are going to haunt them if it ever gets out.

RTC: Well, you have a problem there. Your publisher is not big enough to reach too many people and a bigger one would be told right off not to talk to you. I also might suggest several things to you. If anyone tries to come to visit you, and they want to bring a friend, don’t go for it.

GD: Are they planning to shoot me?

RTC: No. The so-called friend would be a government expert. They would examine any documents you had and if there was the slightest hint that you were sitting on something you had no business having, they would go straight into federal court, testify that these papers were highly sensitive and classified and get a friendly judge to issue a replevin order. That means they would send the FBI crashing into your house and grab everything sight. If you had a Rolex it would vanish along with any loose cash and, naturally, all the papers. And one other thing, if you get a very nice offer from some publisher you never heard of, just begging you to let them publish, be warned that they would take the manuscript, send it to Langley and if Langley thought it was dangerous, give you a contract to publish it along with a token payment. Of course they would never publish it but since they paid you and had a contract to publish, you could never find another publisher. They’d get a court order in record time, blocking it. Just some advice.

GD: Thank you. But I never let these morons into my house. Oh, and I have had such invites but once you talk to these jokers, you can see in a few minutes that they know nothing about Mueller, the Gestapo or anything else. They read a book and think they are an expert but most post war books are bullshit written by the far left or by Jews and are completely worthless from a factual point of view. No, it takes me only a few minutes to figure them out and then, suddenly, my dog is tearing the throats out of the Seventh Day Adventists on the front porch and I have to ring off. I don’t know why these Mongoloids don’t find someone with an IQ larger than their neck size. That is a chronic disappointment. There’s no challenge there, Robert. It’s a little like reading Kant to a Mongoloid. Such a waste of my time and so unrewarding when you find they pissed on the rug.

RTC: That should do it for now, Gregory. Keep me posted.

GD: I’m going out of town for a few days but will get back with you next week.

(Concluded at 12:47 PM CST)

SECRECY NEWS

From the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2016, Issue No. 22

March 8, 2016

HELP WANTED TO OVERSEE THE CLASSIFICATION SYSTEM

The government is looking for a person to oversee, and perhaps sometimes to overrule, classification decisions made throughout the Executive Branch.

A job opening for the position of Director of the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) was announced in USA Jobs last week.

The ISOO director is appointed by the Archivist of the United States, since ISOO is housed at the National Archives. But ISOO takes policy direction from the National Security Council, and the director’s authority over classification and declassification policy extends throughout the executive branch.  The previous ISOO director, John P. Fitzpatrick, left for the National Security Council in January.

The ISOO director is endowed with some remarkable powers. “If the Director of the Information Security Oversight Office determines that information is classified in violation of this order, the Director may require the information to be declassified by the agency that originated the classification,” according to executive order 13526. Though this power has mostly been held in reserve, it is backed by presidential authority and retains its potency.

The ISOO director is also obliged by executive order to “consider and take action on complaints and suggestions from persons within or outside the Government with respect to the administration of the program established under this order.”

As a result, the ISOO directors have been the most publicly accessible agency heads anywhere in government. Each of them — Mr. Fitzpatrick (2011-15), Jay Bosanko (2008-2011), Bill Leonard (2002-2008), and Steve Garfinkel (1980-2002) — has in his own distinctive way been a dedicated public servant and has willingly engaged with critics, reporters and members of the general public. (The first ISOO director, former congressman Michael Blouin, did not leave much of a visible record in that position.)

But of course, classification policy remains in significant disarray, even within the government, and is a subject of almost daily public controversy. So the position of ISOO director is potentially even more important than ever before, and the next ISOO director could play a leading role in reconciling competing interests in secrecy and disclosure.

Applications for ISOO director are being accepted until March 28. A Top Secret/SCI clearance is needed. Senate confirmation is not.

ENCRYPTION: LEGAL ASPECTS, AND MORE FROM CRS

A new report from the Congressional Research Service considers legal aspects of encryption policy. It reviews the existing case law concerning efforts to compel disclosure of encrypted data. It also discusses related issues including the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, and the scope of the All Writs Act that is now the focus of a dispute between Apple and the FBI. See Encryption: Selected Legal Issues, March 3, 2016.

Other new and updated CRS reports that Congress has withheld from online public distribution include the following.

Nominations to the Supreme Court During Presidential Election Years (1900-Present), CRS Insight, March 3, 2016

Heroin Production in Mexico and U.S. Policy, CRS Insight, March 3, 2016

Expedited Removal Authority for VA Senior Executives (38 U.S.C. 713): Selected Legal Issues, updated March 4, 2016

House Committee Chairs: Considerations, Decisions, and Actions as One Congress Ends and a New Congress Begins, updated March 3, 2016

Health Care for Dependents and Survivors of Veterans, updated March 3, 2016

Libya: Transition and U.S. Policy, updated March 4, 2016

Implications of Iranian Elections, CRS Insight, March 4, 2016

Netanyahu turns down Obama meeting and cancels US trip

White House disputes reports that it could not find a suitable date for Israeli PM, in a sign of tensions between two leaders

March 8, 2016

by Peter Beaumont

The Guardian

Jerusalem-Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu turned down the offer of a meeting with president Barack Obama, prompting a sharp response from the White House, in the latest evidence of the tense relations between the two leaders.

The abrupt decision by Netanyahu to cancel a visit to Washington later this month surprised US officials, who said they learned of the cancellation via the media.

The White House additionally disputed reports in the Israeli media that said Netanyahu cancelled the trip after the White House had been unable to find a date for a meeting that worked with Obama’s schedule, saying those suggestions were “false”.

The latest friction between Netanyahu and Obama – who have had a tense relationship, not least over the issue of Iran – came ahead of a visit by vice-president Joe Biden to Israel, when the issue of US military aid to the country is expected to be on the agenda.

Netanyahu had been expected to visit the US in March on a trip coinciding with a major pro-Israeli group’s annual summit.

The White House said Israel had proposed two dates for a meeting between the leaders and the US had offered to meet on one of those days.

We were looking forward to hosting the bilateral meeting,” said Ned Price, a spokesman for the White House’s national security council.

We were surprised to first learn via media reports that the prime minister, rather than accept our invitation, opted to cancel his visit.”

The unusually pointed pushback from the White House was the latest signal of ongoing tensions between the US and its closest Middle Eastern ally, which have never fully recovered since Obama incensed Netanyahu’s government by pursuing and then enacting a nuclear deal with Iran.

A statement later issued by the prime minister’s office said that while Netanyahu “appreciated Obama’s willingness to meet him”, he decided “not to go to Washington at this time, at the height of the primary election campaigns in the United States”. Sources in Netanyahu’s office briefed that a continued disagreement over the size of a new US defence aid deal was also a factor.

The US is offering an increase in military aid to Israel of around $5bn over a decade, while Israel is seeking $10bn to $15bn more.

This was not the first time Obama had been caught off guard by Netanyahu’s travel plans. Last year, the White House accused him of a breach of longstanding diplomatic protocol when he announced plans to speak to a joint session of Congress without consulting or notifying the president.

Netanyahu used that speech to implore US lawmakers to reject the Iran nuclear deal, which Israel sees as emboldening its arch enemy.

Israel and the United States have been seeking to move past deep disagreement over the Iran nuclear accord and work out a new 10-year defence aid package.

The current deal gives Israel some $3.1bn annually, in addition to spending on other projects such as missile defence.

However, Israeli officials have made clear they had been hoping for a more generous deal than the one currently on offer, suggesting they would prefer to wait until a new president is elected to sign off on it.

Biden’s trip, due to begin on Tuesday, comes amid a five-month wave of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories that has killed 181 Palestinians and 28 Israelis.

Biden will meet Netanyahu and later in the day he will travel to Ramallah to meet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The White House said on Friday that Biden would not be pursuing any major new peace initiatives during his visit.

Obama has acknowledged that there will be no comprehensive agreement between Israelis and Palestinians before he leaves office in January 2017.

His administration’s tough criticism of Israeli settlement-building in the occupied West Bank has added to tensions between the two longstanding allies.

Dogs, booze and chaos. Is Airbnb renting worth it?

Homestay sites are a hugely popular way to make some extra cash. But it can quickly become a nightmare if you don’t protect yourself.

March 7. 2016

by Kate Ashford

BBC

Cary Carbonaro used to rent out her Florida home on Airbnb for a couple of weekends every year to earn a little extra cash. But after her experience in 2015, she’ll never do it again.

My house policy said ‘no pets,’ and they came with three dogs — my neighbour called me,” said Carbonaro, a certified financial planner and author who lives in both New York and Florida. “My husband is highly allergic.”

Carbonaro called the tenants and Airbnb, but she was unable to get the dogs removed from her home. When her guests departed two days later, they left rubbish everywhere, they had broken various items and there was dog hair on every surface. Carbonaro had to hire an industrial cleaning service to clean the pet hair so her husband could be in the house, and she estimates that she spent nearly $800 fixing the damage.

Nick Shapiro, a spokesperson at Airbnb said that experiences like this aren’t common. “More than 80 million people have had safe, positive experiences on Airbnb and negative incidents are extremely rare,” he said. “At the end of the day, we obviously can’t eliminate all the risk in traveling, but we work very hard to ensure that hosts and guests have the ability to make the most informed decisions they can.”

As unfortunate as Carbonaro’s experience was, some hosts on homeshare and homestay sites have seen far worse. Some have been evicted for renting out their apartments because they breached their lease agreements. Others have had their homes destroyed by wild parties, valuable heirlooms stolen or even found their property being used for illegal businesses.

Even with some negative stories out there, Airbnb has more than 600,000 hosts in more than 34,000 cities worldwide. There are still plenty of people happy to take the plunge and making a lot of money from their property.

Before you list your spare room or house on a home-sharing site, here’s what you should know:

What it will take: You’ll need an appetite for risk, because you’re inviting strangers into your space. And even if you’re present and being careful, bad things can happen. You’ll need good insurance, a strong safe for your valuables and the ability to take on the extra work involved in preparing your property for guests, who might not behave in a manner you find appealing.

This is the sharing economy,” said Galen Hayes, president of Hayes Insurance Agency in California, which means “if you’re not using your bedroom, rent it out to somebody.” He warned the problem with this is that people can “tend to be creepy and a little on the dishonest side.”

How long you need to prepare: You can list a property or room on a site quickly and easily, but allow enough time beforehand to cover your bases. Call your homeowners or renters insurance firm and see if your policy covers you during a short-term rental, and if it doesn’t, ask if you can purchase additional coverage. Some vacation rental sites offer host protection coverage, but reports vary on its effectiveness.

Airbnb’s Host Guarantee provides protection for up to £600,000 [$1 million] in damages — but this excludes cover for cash, pets, personal liability, shared or common areas while providing limited cover for valuables, collectibles and artworks,” said Ben Wilson, home insurance expert at UK site GoCompare.com. “Airbnb makes it clear that home-hosts shouldn’t consider its Host Guarantee as a replacement or stand-in for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance.”

Your insurer might tell you that you need to purchase a business or commercial insurance policy, but you may also be able to find what you need from your hosting company or a third party. Vacation rental site HomeAway, for instance, partners with an insurance company to offer Assure insurance, which acts like a commercial policy. And in the UK, Belong Safe just launched a new pay-per-day household insurance policy “for the sharing economy.”

Also consider securing a space for your valuables, such as a locked closet or safe, or even an off-site storage space.

Do it now: Understand the time commitment. If you plan to rent the odd weekend here and there, hosting isn’t a huge time suck. But if you intend to try to make a steady side income, be prepared. “It’s a huge amount of work to be competitive,” said Henry Parry-Okedon, co-founder of InvitedHome.com, a vacation rental site. From managing inquiries and guest screening to handling questions and maintenance issues, there’s plenty to keep you busy. And if you don’t do it well, your guests’ reviews will reflect that and impact future bookings.

Know your local restrictions. Are you renting? Make sure your landlord allows you to sub-let. Do you belong to a neighbourhood association, a common US arrangement in which a group of residents or property owners share a set of rules for a neighbourhood? Make sure they allow short-term rentals. Have you checked into your city’s ordinances? In San Francisco, short-term rental operators must be certified as a business and pay a 14% tax on short-term stays. Violating the terms of your housing agreements can have consequences ranging from fines to eviction.

It’s also worth noting that in some areas, once a tenant has stayed for a certain amount of time, sometimes as little as 30 consecutive days, they are granted tenant’s rights — and can be extremely difficult to evict. One case made headlines after a woman had to take legal action to evict two Airbnb guests who were squatting in her apartment and wouldn’t leave.

Investigate your guests. To the extent that you can, look into the people who will be staying in your home. Read their profiles and check for positive reviews. Google them and confirm they exist in real life. Be wary of guests who are uncommunicative or pushy early on, asking for exceptions to your house rules or being vague about the details of their stay, such as the number of guests or the reason they’re visiting.

Hosts should make sure to look at the reviews on the potential guest left by previous hosts to see if the guest exhibits the behavior you would like in your home,” Shapiro said. “Hosts should also use the secure messaging system to get to the know the potential guest beforehand and they should review their profile.”

Consider imposing your own guest restrictions. “We thoroughly vetted potential guests,” said Leo Biy, an Airbnb host in Massachusetts in the US. “We would not rent to anyone under 30. We would not rent to anyone without reviews. We also set a high per-night cost. I believe that when people pay more, they are much less likely to trash your place, or steal something. So our cost per night is $275 average, whereas you can rent a similar place nearby for $150 to $175.”

Stop your post arriving at your property. Go in to a post office and request that they hold mail delivery while you’re away — or ask a neighbour to collect it — to keep financial and other information out of harm’s way.

Install an electronic lock. An electronic lock removes keys — and the ability for guests to take them — from the equation. “Once a customer tried to sneak in an extra guest, to whom they gave the key,” said Bill Seavey, an Airbnb host in California. “We never got the key back and charged the reserving customer $25 to change the lock. She went ballistic on the review. Now we have an electronic lock.”

Do it smarter: Trust your gut. “My wife and I have a policy that if we get a weird feeling or something doesn’t seem quite right upon meeting the guest for the first time, we will pay for a room in a local hotel and take the loss,” said Aaron Hatch, an Airbnb host in California. “Luckily, we have never had to put someone up in a hotel.”

China exports fell more than a quarter in February

China’s export numbers fell sharply in February. Falling global demand combined with a business shutdown during the New Year holidays depressed sales.

March 8, 2016

DW

China’s exports plunged 25.4 percent to $126.1 billion (115 billion euros) year-on-year in February, as the country’s struggling manufacturing sector continued to drag down the world’s second-largest economy.

The fall was sharper than economists had forecast. Chinese firms have been battered now for eight months by weak demand from major world markets.

Data released on Tuesday also showed that imports were down 13.8 percent to $93.6 billion (85 billion euros). It is the 16th consecutive month of falls for imports.

End of the Chinese Dream?

The European Union was China’s top trade partner in the period while the US was its second-biggest market. However, exports to both regions fell by almost 11 percent. China’s trade surplus was measured at $32.6 billion (29.5 billion euros), marking a fall of 46.2 percent year-on-year according to previous data.

Authorities in China have pledged further fiscal measures to boost the flagging economy admitting there were “problems and challenges” to face, as growth in the country has slowed down to a 25-year low.

Grim toll mounts in Japanese detention centers as foreigners seek asylum

Niculas Fernando was in Tokyo to see his son and sit out potentially violent elections at home. The Sri Lankan’s death, in a cell monitored around the clock, reveals fatal flaws in a system stretched by record numbers of asylum seekers.

March 8, 2016,

by Thomas Wilson, Mari Saito, Minami Funakoshi and Ami Miyazaki

Reuters

TOKYO – Niculas Fernando died at a Tokyo immigration detention center sometime between 9:33 a.m. and 10:44 a.m. on November 22, 2014, according to the coroner.

But it wasn’t until shortly after 1 p.m. that day that guards realized something was badly wrong – even though Fernando had been moved to an observation cell monitored via closed-circuit television after complaining of sharp chest pain.

An inmate had to alert the guards before they rushed into Fernando’s cell and tried to revive him. They found him lying face down on a mattress stained with his urine. He was lifeless.

A devout Catholic from Sri Lanka, Fernando had come to visit his son, who lives in a Tokyo suburb where he works in a restaurant kitchen. He was the fourth person to die in Japan’s immigration detention system in 13 months. In total, 12 people have died in immigration detention since 2006, including four suicides. In 2015, 14 detainees tried to kill or harm themselves at the detention center where Fernando died, according to data from the facility.

A Reuters investigation into the circumstances surrounding Fernando’s death, including dozens of interviews with detainees, immigration officials and doctors, revealed serious deficiencies in the medical treatment and monitoring of Japan’s immigration detention centers. Guards with scant medical training make critical decisions about detainees’ health. Doctors visit some of the country’s main detention centers as infrequently as twice a week. And on weekends there are no medical professionals on duty at any of the immigration detention facilities, which held more than 13,600 people in 2014.

Three of the four deaths in detention between October 2013 and November 2014, including Fernando’s, occurred when there were no doctors on duty. Like Fernando, another one of the detainees died while in an observation cell.

Japan’s immigration system is under increasing strain. As a torrent of refugees pours into Europe, Japan also has record numbers of people landing on its shores in search of refuge. As of June last year, it had 10,830 asylum applications under review – small by Europe’s standards, but a new high for Japan, a nation that has long been reluctant to take in outsiders.

In February, more than 40 detainees went on hunger strike at a facility in Osaka to protest their conditions. Their main complaint: Poor medical care.

The system’s oversight, too, is limited. Members of the watchdog body tasked with monitoring Japan’s 17 detention centers are appointed by the justice minister, who oversees the detention system. The findings of the watchdog are edited by the Justice Ministry before being made public, and the ministry has failed to act on repeated recommendations for improving medical care, say its members.

I wanted to shout at them when I heard that guards left him alone for such a long time,” said Tooru Tsunoda, a doctor and vice chairman of the watchdog body that monitors the center where Fernando died. A report by the oversight group said guards “misjudged the seriousness” of Fernando’s condition. By not sending him to hospital immediately, the report found, they “missed opportunities to avoid his death.”

By not sending him to hospital immediately, they ‘missed opportunities to avoid his death.’”

Justice Minister Mitsuhide Iwaki said the reports he received showed that in all four deaths, “appropriate medical steps” had been taken. “I do not acknowledge there were problems in the responses or the medical care provided.”

Fernando, who ran a travel agency back in Sri Lanka specializing in pilgrimages, hadn’t seen his son George for eight months when he reached Japan. Before he left home, he visited the many churches in his coastal hometown of Chilaw and “prayed for 24 hours,” said his wife, Magret.

A framed picture of Fernando sits on a table in the home where he and Magret lived from the time they wed in 1983. They had fallen in love and married within a month, even though Fernando’s family had initially opposed the union because Magret was nine years his elder.

The day before he died, Fernando called Magret from a payphone for inmates in the detention center. “He was not ill,” she said.

Sitting on a sofa and weeping quietly, she recalled Fernando’s last words before boarding the plane for Japan: “I’ll come back. Look after the children.”

He never returned. In fact, Fernando never made it through immigration at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.

George and his wife waited in the arrival hall for Fernando after his plane landed at around 11 p.m. on Nov. 12. At 2 a.m. they learned Fernando had been detained by immigration officials who did not believe he was a genuine tourist.

We would have loved to hear our father’s voice, but they didn’t give him the chance to talk to us,” said George, 27, speaking in Sinhalese through an interpreter at his apartment.

Two days later, George got to see his father. They met in a small room at Haneda Airport, separated by a glass partition.

We couldn’t touch or hug,” said George.

George and his two brothers portray their father as a devoted family man who prayed daily, never drank and often took his family with him on work trips around Sri Lanka and India.

He’d pray for at least an hour every morning, bowing down,” said his eldest son, Jerad, standing outside the home of a relative in a village near Chilaw. “His knees were black from the marks made from praying.”

One family photo shows Fernando playing a guitar as Catholic pilgrims dance behind him during a 2012 tour of churches in the north of Sri Lanka. George recalls his father joining a peace mission to a Tamil Tiger-controlled area in the late 1990s led by Bishop Malcolm Ranjith during Sri Lanka’s civil war.

Fernando “voluntarily joined our group and went as part of our pilgrimage,” Ranjith, who is now archbishop of Colombo, told Reuters. He described Fernando as “a very pious person.”

Fernando also was active in one of Sri Lanka’s main political parties, and that background may be key to understanding a surprising decision he made during his detention – to ask for asylum.

George said his father was a supporter of the United National Party (UNP), which now heads the ruling coalition in Sri Lanka, and had been the target of political violence in the past. With speculation growing that national elections were imminent, Fernando timed his visit to Japan so he could sit out the vote and escape any potential violence, George said.

But facing deportation after his arrest at Haneda Airport, Fernando decided to seek asylum, which would have allowed him to stay in Japan while his request was processed. He was going to return home once any election-related violence had subsided, his son said.

Elections in Sri Lanka were formally announced on Nov. 20. Fernando died two days later, before he could file the asylum papers, George said.

George and his Sri Lankan wife have been seeking asylum themselves in Japan for almost two years. A copy of his application says George faced death threats from political rivals when he worked for the UNP, which was in opposition at the time he sought asylum.

Asylum applications have jumped more than six-fold since Japan altered its immigration rules in 2010. The change allowed asylum seekers to obtain six-month renewable work permits while their applications are reviewed. But Japan is sparing when it comes to granting asylum: Only 27 people were approved in 2015.

The rule change, combined with Japan’s chronic labor shortage and strict immigration policy, has spawned a system of backdoor immigration, as Reuters illustrated last year in an article detailing Subaru’s heavy reliance on asylum seekers who toil in the factories that supply it with car parts.

Five days after arriving, Fernando was transported from a lock-up at the airport to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau, a tower block overlooking the docks and a waste-incineration plant. A one-stop shop for visa renewals, asylum interviews and deportation orders, the complex also serves as a detention center for up to 800 people.

Fernando was placed in a cell in G-Block with two other detainees, from China and Peru. Fellow detainees described him as a serious man obsessed with cleanliness.

On the Saturday morning Fernando died, James Burke, a Canadian in the adjacent cell, was awakened by the Sri Lankan’s cries. It was around 7 a.m. Noise travels easily on the block and Fernando was in obvious pain, Burke said. “He was moaning and moaning and moaning.”

Fernando’s Peruvian cellmate called the guards and told them the Sri Lankan wanted to go to the hospital because his chest was hurting. The guards refused, saying the hospitals were closed on Saturdays, according to Burke and two other detainees who witnessed the events and asked not to be named.

At least two hospitals within a few miles of the detention center are open around the clock on weekends, including Saiseikai Central Hospital, where Fernando’s body would be taken later that day. Naoaki Torisu, a senior Justice Ministry official who oversees immigration detention, declined to comment on what specifically the guards told Fernando.

His symptoms didn’t seem that serious,” Torisu said. “If his condition had worsened, we would have called an ambulance or taken him to hospital without hesitation.”

At 7:30 a.m., guards measured Fernando’s pulse and blood pressure, according to an internal report by the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau that was reviewed by Reuters. They found no abnormality, Torisu said.

But Fernando soon called for the guards again, this time more loudly. “He’s in real discomfort,” recalled Burke, who was being held at the time for overstaying his visa and is now on provisional release from immigration detention. “He was begging them, ‘I’m a Christian and I wouldn’t lie. I need to go to hospital or I’m going to die.’”

Just before 8 a.m., guards led Fernando to a room to check his condition. A report by the national Immigration Bureau, which is part of the Justice Ministry, said the guards “could not grasp the seriousness” of the situation because another Sri Lankan detainee who was acting as an interpreter did not translate Fernando’s words accurately. But the Justice Ministry’s Torisu told Reuters the guards did understand what Fernando was saying.

When the Sri Lankan returned to his cell a short while later, he looked relieved, said Burke. He gathered his Bible and clothes. “You could see it in his face – he was getting his stuff, thinking he would get help.”

But Fernando wasn’t taken to hospital. At 8:16 a.m., guards moved him to an observation cell fitted with closed-circuit television for around-the-clock surveillance of detainees who are ill, unruly or have tried to harm themselves.

Around 9 a.m. Fernando again called the guards from the cell. They told him to wait until the morning roll call was over, said Burke and two other detainees.

At 9:22 a.m., Fernando washed his hands and appeared to vomit. He then lay face down on a futon, according to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau report on his death. At 9:33 a.m., he stopped moving.

A few minutes later, a guard brought a television to Fernando’s cell. He called out but Fernando didn’t respond. Thinking the Sri Lankan was asleep, the guard didn’t check to see if he was all right, the report said. For the same reason, guards did not check Fernando for the next several hours.

Immediately after cell doors opened at 1 p.m. to allow detainees out for the afternoon break, the Sri Lankan who had interpreted for Fernando hurried to the observation cell. Fernando’s breakfast – the standard white bread, jam and boiled egg – lay untouched. Fernando wasn’t moving. His body was cold.

Alerted by the detainees, guards rushed into the observation cell. It was 1:03 p.m. – three and a half hours since Fernando had last shown any signs of life.

Detainees described scenes of pandemonium as inmates crowded the corridor leading to Fernando’s cell. Anticipating unrest, some guards laid out helmets, shields and batons.

A guard performed CPR on Fernando, but it was too late.

An ambulance was called and his body was carried out of G-Block on a stretcher, his face uncovered, two detainees said. Two hours later, he was pronounced dead. He was 57 years old.

Koichi Uemura, a coroner asked by the national Immigration Bureau to write an in-depth autopsy report on Fernando’s death, told Reuters he was allowed to view the video footage of the Sri Lankan in the observation cell. He said it was possible to tell from the images that Fernando was struggling and moaning before he lay down in the cell.

Uemura said he was asked to compile a report after the Immigration Bureau had investigated Fernando’s death and found that “there was quite a high possibility that (the detention center) did not provide adequate medical care, and that his illness got worse because he was left unattended.” A doctor at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University who performs autopsies for the police and courts, Uemura stopped short of saying that Fernando’s death could have been avoided if guards had taken him to hospital.

The Justice Ministry rejected a public disclosure request by Reuters to view the video footage of the observation cell, citing privacy reasons.

Since 2010, the Immigration Detention Facilities Visiting Committee – the watchdog body – has repeatedly called for improvements to medical care at detention facilities. Six current and former members of the 20-person oversight body told Reuters that key recommendations have not been implemented.

Inmates voice a similar grievance. In two handwritten letters, the hunger strikers at the detention center in Osaka complained about limited access to doctors and said guards without medical training were making judgment calls about the health of detainees.

Their protest didn’t impress the authorities. Tomohisa Takayama, a spokesman for the Osaka Regional Immigration Bureau, said there was no “rational reason” for the complaints, and that the hunger strike ended after five days.

In May, a former member of the watchdog wrote to then-Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa calling for full-time doctors at detention facilities, better monitoring of detainees who are unwell and improved psychiatric care.

But the watchdog lacks teeth. It doesn’t perform surprise inspections. Its visits to detention centers are pre-arranged, and its members are escorted by immigration officials.

There has been little change since the deaths. Guards have been given “fresh instructions to call ambulances” in situations where they are having trouble “making judgments,” said the Justice Ministry’s Torisu. And two guards are being trained as assistant nurses in the entire detention system, which on Nov. 1 last year was holding 1,070 inmates.

It is “probably insufficient” that there are no doctors on duty at weekends, but that doesn’t mean medical care is lax, said Torisu.

On Nov. 22, the day Fernando died, George got a call from a family friend. “He asked me to calm down, to sit down,” George recalled, his eyes filling with tears. “He told us my father had passed away… I asked God why he took my father.”

The next day, George tracked Fernando’s body to a police station near the detention center. Officers there tried to stop him from opening the white body bag that contained his father’s body.

But I opened the bag,” he said. “I asked them if they were investigating my father’s death. They said they were, and when they had the report they’d tell me.”

George has never received any of the reports on his father’s death. On Dec. 19, almost a month after he lost his father, George received the death certificate. It didn’t contain the answer he’d been seeking: Cause “unknown,” it said.

That same day, Fernando was cremated about three miles from the detention center where he died. His family had hoped for a Catholic burial in Chilaw, but could not afford to fly his body home. His third son, Jude, who traveled to Japan for the funeral, is also now seeking asylum.

It would be another three months before Fernando’s family learned from Sri Lanka’s Foreign Ministry that he had died of a heart attack.

I can’t believe that I lost my father,” said George. “Japan’s immigration authorities must take responsibility for my father’s death.”

The Justice Ministry has not made public the findings of the investigation into the case nor released them to Fernando’s family.

In response to a public disclosure request, Reuters received a copy of the national Immigration Bureau’s report from March last year. It was heavily redacted. Under a section titled “Problems,” every line had been blacked out.

In the 13 months before Niculas Fernando died in a Japanese immigration detention center in 2014, three other men suffered the same fate.

• Anwar Hussin, 57, a Rohingya from Myanmar, died on Oct. 14, 2013, after suffering a stroke while being held at the same detention center as Fernando.

• Saeid Ghadimi, a 33-year-old Iranian, choked on food and died on March 29, 2014, at the East Japan Immigration Center in Ibaraki prefecture, a sprawling complex set among rice paddies northeast of Tokyo.

• Flaubert Lea Wandji, a 43-year-old Cameroonian, died at the same center the next day, most likely due to acute heart failure.

The names of Ghadimi and Wandji, and many of the details of their deaths, have not been previously reported.

Like Fernando, Wandji died after being moved to an observation cell so his condition could be monitored. But the guards failed to grasp the need to take Wandji to hospital, the watchdog committee that monitors Japan’s detention centers said in a report last March to the national Immigration Bureau, which is part of the Justice Ministry. The report was reviewed by Reuters.

The watchdog report drew attention to what it said was the heavy prescription of drugs to detainees. At the time he died, Ghadimi had been prescribed 15 different drugs, including four painkillers, five sedatives – one a Japanese version of the tranquilizer Xanax – and two kinds of sleeping pills, the report said. At one point during his incarceration, he was on a cocktail of 25 different pills.

“It is not an exaggeration to say he was in a so-called ‘drugged-up state,’” Teruichi Shimomitsu, a doctor and retired member of the watchdog body, wrote in a letter last May to then-Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa.

Naoaki Torisu, a senior Justice Ministry official responsible for overseeing immigration detention centers, said parts of the committee’s report were “unclear.”

“Detainees take pills prescribed according to their medical needs,” he told Reuters. “I cannot grasp the exact intent behind the committee’s statement.”

Two psychiatrists cited in a November 2014 national Immigration Bureau report said the Iranian’s medications did not cause him to choke.

The prescription of sedatives and antidepressants is common in Japan’s detention centers, say doctors and detainees. Some inmates told Reuters they were given sedatives after arguing with guards or other detainees. Others said they became dependent on the drugs as they faced indefinite detention.

Checks are needed to ensure doctors do not prescribe “massive amounts” of sedatives to keep “rebellious” detainees quiet, Shimomitsu wrote in his letter to then-Justice Minister Kamikawa.

The Justice Ministry’s Torisu disputed that sedatives were used to pacify troublesome detainees. “Psychiatrists prescribe them because they are deemed medically necessary,” he said.

Additional reporting by Shihar Aneez in Chilaw and Antoni Slodkowski in Tokyo.

Shooting of Oregon occupier LaVoy Finicum justified – prosecutor

March 8, 2016

RT

The Oregon State Trooper who shot and killed Robert ‘LaVoy’ Fincium, one of the leaders of the armed occupation of the Malheur Wildlife National Refuge, were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Finicum was killed January 26 when a convoy headed from the refuge to a community meeting was met by FBI and state troopers.

Two troopers shot Finicum in the back a total of three times, one of which pierced his heart, the Oregonian reported. A prosecutor ruled the shooting was legally justified, noting that Oregon state law allows the use of deadly force when officers believe that a person is likely to seriously injure or kill someone else.

Finicum had a loaded handgun in his pocket at the time of the encounter with law enforcement, and kept moving his hands towards that pocket. There was an Oregon trooper in front of the 54-year-old, the prosecutor said.

“All six shots fired by the Oregon State Police, the three into the truck and the three that struck Mr. Finicum, are justified,” said Malheur County District Attorney Dan Norris in a prepared statement. He noted that the shots were “in fact, necessary.”

However, the US Department of Justice is investigating an unnamed FBI agent who fired twice at the Arizona rancher, but didn’t report the shots. The four other members of the agent’s Hostage Rescue Team, an elite FBI unit, are also under criminal investigation for potentially helping the shooter cover up the shooting. Neither of the bullets struck Finicum.

The revelation was part of the release of the findings by a team of local investigators, according to the Oregonian.

In February, Finicum’s family said that he was “executed in cold blood,” and accused law enforcement of deliberately misleading the public about the events in late January. Three days after his death, the FBI released video of the shooting.

The Oregon State Police and the FBI planned the peaceful arrest of the occupiers for days, investigators said, adding that they plan to release police reports, interview transcripts, photographs, the autopsy report and new video to allow the public to evaluate their findings in Finicum’s death.

FBI quietly changes its privacy rules for accessing NSA data on Americans

Exclusive: Classified revisions accepted by secret Fisa court affect NSA data involving Americans’ international emails, texts and phone calls

March 8, 2016

by Spencer Ackerman

The Guardian

The FBI has quietly revised its privacy rules for searching data involving Americans’ international communications that was collected by the National Security Agency, US officials have confirmed to the Guardian.

The classified revisions were accepted by the secret US court that governs surveillance, during its annual recertification of the agencies’ broad surveillance powers. The new rules affect a set of powers colloquially known as Section 702, the portion of the law that authorizes the NSA’s sweeping “Prism” program to collect internet data. Section 702 falls under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (Fisa), and is a provision set to expire later this year.

A government civil liberties watchdog, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Group (PCLOB), alluded to the change in its recent overview of ongoing surveillance practices.

The watchdog confirmed in a 2014 report that the FBI is allowed direct access to the NSA’s massive collections of international emails, texts and phone calls – which often include Americans on one end of the conversation. The activists also expressed concern that the FBI’s “minimization” rules, for removing or limiting sensitive data that could identify Americans, did not reflect the bureau’s easy access to the NSA’s collected international communications.

FBI officials can search through the data, using Americans’ identifying information, for what PCLOB called “routine” queries unrelated to national security. The oversight group recommended more safeguards around “the FBI’s use and dissemination of Section 702 data in connection with non-foreign intelligence criminal matters”.

As of 2014, the FBI was not even required to make note of when it searched the metadata, which includes the “to” or “from” lines of an email. Nor does it record how many of its data searches involve Americans’ identifying details – a practice that apparently continued through 2015, based on documents released last February. The PCLOB called such searches “substantial”, since the FBI keeps NSA-collected data with the information it acquires through more traditional means, such as individualized warrants.

But the PCLOB’s new compliance report, released on Saturday, found that the administration has submitted “revised FBI minimization procedures” that address at least some of the group’s concerns about “many” FBI agents who use NSA-gathered data.

Changes have been implemented based on PCLOB recommendations, but we cannot comment further due to classification,” said Christopher Allen, a spokesman for the FBI.

Sharon Bradford Franklin, a spokesperson for the PCLOB, said the classification prevented her from describing the rule changes in detail, but she said they move to enhance privacy. She could not say when the rules actually changed – that, too, is classified.

They do apply additional limits” to the FBI, Franklin said.

Timothy Barrett, a spokesman for the office of the director of national intelligence, also confirmed the change to FBI minimization rules.

Barrett also suggested that the changes may not be hidden from public view permanently.

As we have done with the 2014 702 minimization procedures, we are considering releasing the 2015 procedures. Due to other ongoing reviews, we do not have a set date that review will be completed,” he said.

Until that hypothetical release, it remains unknown whether the FBI will now make note of when and what it queries in the NSA data. The PCLOB did not recommend greater record-keeping.

Last February, a compliance audit alluded to imminent changes to the FBI’s freedom to search the data for Americans’ identifying information.

FBI’s minimization procedures will be updated to more clearly reflect the FBI’s standard for conducting US person queries and to require additional supervisory approval to access query results in certain circumstances,” the review stated.

The reference to “supervisory approval” suggests the FBI may not require court approval for their searches – unlike the new system Congress enacted last year for NSA or FBI acquisition of US phone metadata in terrorism or espionage cases.

Privacy advocates say that this leeway for searches that NSA and FBI officials enjoy is a “backdoor” around warrants that the law should require. In 2013, documents leaked to the Guardian by Edward Snowden revealed an internal NSA rule that Senator Ron Wyden has called the “backdoor search provision”, for instance.

While the NSA performs warrantless collection, internal rules permit the FBI to nominate surveillance targets. Those targets are supposed to be non-Americans abroad, but Americans’ data is often swept up in the surveillance.

The legal underpinnings for the dragnet, a 2008 amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, are set to expire this year. A scheduled expiration of the Patriot Act last year gave critical leverage to legislators who wanted to rein in the bulk collection of domestic phone records, and intelligence officials last month implored Congress to reauthorize the measure wholesale.

Reasonable people could and did argue about how important the telephone metadata collection was,” FBI director James Comey told the House intelligence committee last month. “This is not even a close call. This is – if we lost this tool, it would be a very bad thing for us.”

Several civil-libertarian legislators have vowed to push for an expiration of Section 702, arguing that it represents a growing surveillance authority that has moved beyond terrorism and espionage, and into the hunt for general weaknesses in the internet. The chief lawyer for the intelligence community, Robert Litt, said in 2014 that the law provides surveillance authorities the powers are “not only about terrorism, but about a wide variety of threats to our nation”.

A representative for the Fisa court deferred comment to the administration.

The FBI vs. Apple Debate Just Got Less White

March 8, 20116

by Jenna McLaughlin

The Intercept

The court fight between Apple and the FBI prompted a slew of letters and legal briefs last week from outside parties, including many tech companies and privacy groups. But a particularly powerful letter came from a collection of racial justice activists, including Black Lives Matter.

The letter focused on potential civil rights abuses, should the FBI gain the power to conscript a technology company into undermining its own users’ security.

One need only look to the days of J. Edgar Hoover and wiretapping of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to recognize the FBI has not always respected the right to privacy for groups it did not agree with,” wrote the signatories, including arts and music nonprofit Beats, Rhymes & Relief, the Center for Media Justice, the Gathering for Justice, Justice League NYC, activist and writer Shaun King, and Black Lives Matter co-founder and Black Alliance for Just Immigration executive director Opal Tometi.

Those tactics haven’t ended, they argue. “Many of us, as civil rights advocates, have become targets of government surveillance for no reason beyond our advocacy or provision of social services for the underrepresented.”

In Washington and Silicon Valley, the debate over unbreakable encryption has an aura of elite, educated, mostly male whiteness — from the government representatives who condemn it to the experts who explain why it’s necessary.

But the main targets of law enforcement surveillance have historically been African-American and Muslim communities.

Malkia Cyril, co-founder of the Center for Media Justice, one of the letter’s signatories, gave a speech at one of several nationwide protests outside Apple stores two weeks ago, supporting the tech giant and pointing out the FBI’s history of surveilling black activists. “In the context of white supremacy and police violence, Black people need encryption,” she wrote in a tweet.

Others representing Black Lives Matter attended protests across the country, including in front of the FBI headquarters itself — the J. Edgar Hoover building — in downtown Washington, D.C.

I’ve been reviewing the Apple vs. FBI lawsuit and now realize how important it is that that Apple wins the lawsuit. #DontHackApple,” DeRay Mckesson, Baltimore mayoral candidate and prominent Black Lives Matter organizer, tweeted on February 22. “When I was arrested in protest, my iPhones were in police custody. They were secure. The police couldn’t access my info,” he added. “If Apple has to create an insecure iPhone iOS app, all of the private data that we store on our phones is at risk.”

The letter to California federal Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym, who will hear arguments March 22 on the case, is the start of more to come.

I think racial justice organizations have a clear stake in the fight for encryption,” the Center for Media Justice’s Cyril said. “It was really important to me that our voices were raised here … because they wouldn’t be [represented] by others.”

Cyril, a poet and grassroots organizer born to an editor of the Black Panther newspaper, wants the average person to understand how surveillance impacts low-income communities of color — where she argues that government spying was born.

The mundane surveillance of people of color is what gives rise to bulk surveillance at a federal level … not the other way around,” she said. “Whatever has been considered normal at a local level” — including systems of suspicious activity reports, predictive policing, and other tactics — “has now been considered normal at the federal level.”

Tometi, another signatory, wrote in an email to The Intercept that “one of the most alarming parts of that history has been the ways that surveillance has been misused against Black people who have been advocating for their justice. It’s been used to discredit, abuse, and incarcerate them. It’s important we speak out now before it’s too late.”

King said the Apple fight, and the phone security at risk if Apple loses, is “out of sight, out of mind for a lot of people.” But it ties into a greater problem, he said: the continuous monitoring that racial justice activists experience.

He said he is “concerned about how the government may abuse its opportunity to call us threats when we’re not,” and then use that assumption as justification for hacking into their cellphones or using other invasive spying techniques.

Over the summer, a cybersecurity firm, described Black Lives Matter organizers Mckesson and Johnetta Elzie as “threat actors” who needed “continuous monitoring” to maintain public safety. The company, ZeroFox, briefed members of an FBI intelligence partnership program in Maryland on its analysis of the Freddie Gray protests — which it later delivered to Baltimore City officials.

It’s only a matter of time until someone says, ‘We really need to access Shaun’s King’s cell phone,’” King said. “We’re not that many steps away from that.”

I have deep concerns about how various methods of surveillance are already being used against social justice and human rights defenders in the Black Lives Matter movement,” Tometi wrote.

Basically, what people need to understand is that to protect your First and Fourth Amendment rights in the digital age, we need to update the law to the digital age,” Cyril said. “Everything we do is online … encryption is necessary for a democracy.”

Cyril calls for a public debate, so that people can understand the real stakes. “Let’s be clear. Everybody has everything to hide. I want to hide my banking info from thieves — everything that is mine. I think the public needs to understand that.”

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