Blair kidnapped disidents and shipped them to Libya for Gaddafi to torture

Tony Blair wrote to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi to thank him for the “excellent cooperation” between the two countries’ counter-terrorism agencies following a period during which the UK and Libya worked together to arrange for Libyan dissidents to be kidnapped and flown to Tripoli, along with their families.

The letter, written in 2007, followed a period in which the dictator’s intelligence officers were permitted to operate in the UK, approaching and intimidating Libyan refugees in an attempt to persuade them to work as informants for both countries’ agencies.

Addressed “Dear Mu’ammar” and signed “Best wishes yours ever, Tony”, the letter was among hundreds of pages of documents recovered from Libyan government offices following the 2011 revolution and pieced together by a team of London lawyers.

The lawyers are bringing damages claims on behalf of a dozen Gaddafi opponents who were targeted by the two countries’ agencies during the covert cooperation. The claimants were variously detained and allegedly mistreated in Saudi Arabia, rendered from Mali to Libya, or detained and subjected to control orders in the UK.

Full story at The Guardian

Turkey's spy agency granted expanded authorities by controversial new law

Turkey's parliament voted Thursday to increase the powers of the National Intelligence Agency (MIT). The controversial new law gives the MIT broader authorities to conduct eavesdropping and foreign operations, and grants immunity to senior operatives. It also sanctions prison terms as punishment for leaking classified information.

Critics claim the legislation is as attempt by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to enhance his powers. Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) wields significant influence in parliament and was able to push the legislation through after heated debate.

Opposition parties expressed concern that the empowered MIT would transform Turkey into a surveillance state. Rights group Freedom for Journalists Platform argued that Erdogan was attempting to privatize the intelligence agency for his own use. The expanded spy powers comes as Erdogan and his power have been under investigation in a far-reaching corruption probe that began in December 2013.

More on UPI.com

British intelligence agencies intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

The revelation comes as Britain prepares to host another summit on Monday – for the G8 nations, all of whom attended the 2009 meetings which were the object of the systematic spying. It is likely to lead to some tension among visiting delegates who will want the prime minister to explain whether they were targets in 2009 and whether the exercise is to be repeated this week.

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.

More on The Guardian

Would you dare to upload the truth?

Would you dare to upload the truth, if it costs you your freedom...? See what happens in this interactive video. Help her choose.
Pick your weapons for Internet freedom at http://www.deletecontrol.nl.

The Secrets of J. Edgar Hoover

Though never elected to any office, for 50 years he was more powerful than presidents. As head of the FBI he knew what everyone else wanted to keep hidden. But behind the public persona, his shocking private life nearly brought him down. What were the Secrets of J. Edgar Hoover?

More video here

The Secret Government

CIA Overthrow of Mossadeq

Secrets of the CIA

The hour-long show, Secrets of the CIA, produced by Princess Productions, takes the form of a chronological countdown of the 20 most unfortunate and embarrassing incidents in the US intelligence agency's history.

Wallace will pay particular attention to scenarios including the CIA's role in bringing the Taliban to power in Afghanistan and providing arms and specialist training to Osama Bin Laden.

Broadcast

UN: Syria death toll tops 2,700

Syrian security forces have killed 2,700 people since anti-government protesters started six months ago, the United Nations human rights office said. "As of today, 2,700 people, including at least 100 children, have been killed by military and security forces since mass protests erupted in mid-March," Kyung-wha Kang, deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Monday.

She said "the scale and nature of these acts may amount to crimes against humanity" and that her office was prepared to send its confidential list of 50 suspects linked to those crimes to the International Criminal Court, if the UN Security Council refers the situation in Syria to the Hague-based court.

She called on President Bashar al-Assad's government to co-operate with an international inquiry into the bloodshed so as to ensure accountability for all violations and to "break the culture of impunity in the country". Assad has repeatedly said Syria is facing a "foreign conspiracy" and has blamed most of the deaths on "armed criminals".

More on Al Jazeera English - Syria Live Blog

Death of Privacy

Personal data being gathered on the worldwide web means bigger profits for the private sector and is also being shared with the police, argues Steve Rambam, founder and CEO of Pallorium Inc., an international online investigative service. ­At a time when electronic gadgets and hi-tech innovations dominate our lives, violating privacy and mining people's personal data is easier than ever. The damage that this 24-hour surveillance could do to society and its freedoms is overwhelming.

RussiaToday

Political Repression 2.0

Agents of the East German Stasi could only have dreamed of the sophisticated electronic equipment that powered Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s extensive spying apparatus, which the Libyan transitional government uncovered earlier this week. The monitoring of text messages, e-mails and online chats — no communications seemed beyond the reach of the eccentric colonel.

What is even more surprising is where Colonel Qaddafi got his spying gear: software and technology companies from France, South Africa and other countries. Narus, an American company owned by Boeing, met with Colonel Qaddafi’s people just as the protests were getting under way, but shied away from striking a deal. As Narus had previously supplied similar technology to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, it was probably a matter of public relations, not business ethics.

Amid the cheerleading over recent events in the Middle East, it’s easy to forget the more repressive uses of technology. In addition to the rosy narrative celebrating how Facebook and Twitter have enabled freedom movements around the world, we need to confront a more sinister tale: how greedy companies, fostered by Western governments for domestic surveillance needs, have helped suppress them.

Libya is only the latest place where Western surveillance technology has turned up. Human rights activists arrested and later released in Bahrain report being presented with transcripts of their own text messages — a capacity their government acquired through equipment from Siemens, the German industrial giant, and maintained by Nokia Siemens Networks, based in Finland, and Trovicor, another German company.

More on NYTimes.com

Will NATO Resurrect Operation Gladio To Frame Gaddafi?

Given the fact that NATO itself was one of the pioneers of false flag terror to frame political enemies under Operation Gladio, a CIA-supported terror campaign that was responsible for a series of bloody attacks in Europe throughout the cold war years, we shouldn’t be surprised if NATO ressurects the legacy of Gladio in its desperation to justify a final decapitation strike to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi’s threat to attack Europe in retaliation for the NATO bombing campaign in Libya prompted the establishment media to react with contrived outrage, eliciting sharp intakes of breath at the mere thought that Gaddafi, whose country has been under constant bombardment for over three months, would dare to even speak about fighting back.

This is all based on the failure of the media to properly challenge the Obama administration’s ludicrous and Orwellian contention that more than 800 attack missions flown by U.S. warplanes over the last 13 weeks which have targeted Gaddafi’s command centers, not to mention universities, hospitals and apartment blocks, can be justifiably termed “kinetic military action” and does not amount to an act of war.

More on Infowars

“Towards the end of the investigation, I received a letter. It said: ‘You have come to the door of power. If you try to enter through that door, we do not know what may happen.’

I pushed that door ajar and saw what was inside,” Felice Casson says. Thus the famous Italian prosecutor first uncovered the illegal armed network, Gladio.

Conspiracy Archive

Death toll mounts on Syria's 'day of rage'

Dozens of people have been shot dead by Syrian security forces, activists claim, as tens of thousands took part in anti-government rallies dubbed a "day of rage". Activists said at least 50 protesters were killed across the country on Friday, although Al Jazeera cannot independently verify the death toll.

At least 15 people were reported killed near Deraa where security forces fired on thousands of protesters trying to enter the besieged southern city, sources told Al Jazeera's Rula Amin. Deraa has been the scene of regular demonstrations since protests against Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's rule began last month, but the city has also borne the brunt of weeks of government repression.

The government claims its forces are battling "extremist and terrorist groups in the town" and said two soldiers were killed on Friday.

"Deraa has been under siege since Monday morning. Residents from the surrounding villages were trying to break the siege as they tried to get supplies," our correspondent said. "They met with hostile security forces who fired at them and we know that at least 15 people were killed.

Al Jazeera

INDECT

INDECT aims at developing tools for enhancing security of citizens and protecting confidentiality of recorded and stored information. INDECT targets crimes both in virtual (e.g. Internet child pornography, promotion of totalitarian symbols, trafficking in human organs,spread of botnets, viruses, malware) and real environments (e.g. terrorism, hooliganism, thievery). Furthermore, INDECT targets also threat detection (e.g. fire, artificial crowd, abandoned luggage, and people on rails).

INDECT homepage

Use a search engine, walk near a bank, or purchase a magazine subscription and you’re going to be monitored. Private companies are data mining your online behavior, recording your actions near their property, and purchasing your marketable information every day. Where does all your junk mail come from? Why does my Yahoo search for ‘great holiday vacations’ yield a different result than your search? The truth is that the social concept of privacy is already decades out of date.

Singularity Hub

US Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda

It's recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn't like. It could then potentially have their "fake" people run smear campaigns against those "real" people. As disturbing as this is, it's not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors.

EFF previously warned that Big Brother wants to be your friend for social media surveillance. While the FBI Intelligence Information Report Handbook (PDF) mentioned using "covert accounts" to access protected information, other government agencies endorsed using security exploits to access protected information.

Full story on PCWorld

Syria: 'A kingdom of silence'

Despite a wave of protests spreading across the Middle East, so far the revolutionary spirit has failed to reach Syria.

Authoritarian rule, corruption and economic hardship are characteristics Syria share with both Egypt and Tunisia. However, analysts say that in addition to the repressive state apparatus, factors such as a relatively popular president and religious diversity make an uprising in the country unlikely.

Online activists have been urging Syrians to take to the streets but the calls for a "Syrian revolution" last weekend only resulted in some unconfirmed reports of small demonstrations in the mainly Kurdish northeast. "First of all, I'd argue that people in Syria are a lot more afraid of the government and the security forces than they were in Egypt," Nadim Houry, a Human Rights Watch researcher based in Lebanon, says.

"The groups who have mobilised in the past in Syria for any kind of popular protest have paid a very heavy price - Kurds back in 2004 when they had their uprising in Qamishli and Islamists in the early 1980s, notably in Hama." The so-called Hama massacre, in which the Syrian army bombarded the town of Hama in 1982 in order to quell a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood, is believed to have killed about 20,000 people.

Full article on Al Jazeera

America's Torturer, Israel's Friend

When the dictator of Egypt appointed Omar Suleiman as his apparent successor, the ruling regimes in Israel and America were clearly pleased. But the people of Egypt only increased their uprising because they know that Omar Suleiman has blood on his hands.

As the head of Egypt’s spy agency, Suleiman personally organized torture as part of the CIA’s illegal rendition program. Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen, has written a memoir of his experiences being tortured by Omar Suleiman on behalf of the CIA. In his book, Habib testifies that Suleiman personally directed a torture session where he was “repeatedly zapped with high-voltage electricity, immersed in water up to his nostrils, beaten, his fingers were broken and he was hung from metal hooks.” Later, “to loosen Habib’s tongue, Suleiman ordered a guard to murder a gruesomely shackled Turkistan prisoner in front of Habib – and he did, with a vicious karate kick.” Mamdouh Habib was later transferred to Guantanamo Bay where he was ultimately declared innocent and released.

In addition to his career as torturer, Suleiman has worked closely to protect Israeli interests. Haaretz reveals that during the 2002 invasion of Ramallah, “Arafat pleaded with Suleiman and asked that Egypt at the very least take some symbolic action that would express its displeasure. Suleiman did not respond and enabled Israel to strike at the Palestinian Authority at will until it nearly collapsed.”

Suleiman, a blood-thirsty would-be tyrant, is America’s ideal choice to rule Egypt because Suleiman is also Israel’s favored pick. But after thirty years of despotism, the people of Egypt are not easily fooled. Essam al-Erian, a leading opposition figure, summed up the defiant mood on the street when he recently declared, “even after Mubarak goes, we refuse to deal with Omar Suleiman.”

More on Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters

Wikileaks Is A “Cognitive Infiltration” Operation

Awareness is growing around the world that the Wikileaks-Julian Assange theater of the absurd is radically inauthentic – a psyop. Wikileaks and its impaired boss represent a classic form of limited hangout or self-exposure, a kind of lurid striptease in which the front organization releases doctored and pre-selected materials provided by the intelligence agency with the intent of harming, not the CIA, nor the UK, nor the Israelis, but rather such classic CIA enemies’ list figures as Putin, Berlusconi, Karzai, Qaddafi, Rodriguez de Kirchner, etc. In Tunisia, derogatory material about ex-President Ben Ali leaked by Wikileaks has already brought a windfall for Langley in the form of the rare ouster of an entrenched Arab government.

At Foggy Bottom and Langley, a manic fit has been building since the flight of Ben Ali. US imperialist planners now believe they can re-launch their shopworn model of the color revolution, CIA people-power coup, or postmodern putsch against a whole series of countries in the Arab world and far beyond, including Italy. The color revolutions had been looking tarnished lately, as a result of the failure of the Twitter Revolution in Iran back in June 2009. Previously, the Cedars Revolution of 2005 had failed in Lebanon. The Orange Revolution in Ukraine had been rolled back with the ouster of NATO-IMF kleptocrats Yushchenko and Timoshenko. In Georgia, the Roses Revolution was increasingly discredited by the repressive and warmongering regime of fascist madman Saakashvili.

More of this at TARPLEY.net

US tells Twitter to hand over WikiLeaks supporter's messages

A member of parliament in Iceland who is also a former WikiLeaks volunteer says the US justice department has ordered Twitter to hand over her private messages.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, an MP for the Movement in Iceland, said last night on Twitter that the "USA government wants to know about all my tweets and more since november 1st 2009. Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?"

She said she was starting a legal fight to stop the US getting hold of her messages, after being told by Twitter that a subpoena had been issued. She wrote: "department of justice are requesting twitter to provide the info – I got 10 days to stop it via legal process before twitter hands it over."

She said the justice department was "just sending a message and of course they are asking for a lot more than just my tweets."

More on The Guardian

They are also after Rop Gonggrijp:

Kessel, Jan-07 11:20 am (PST):
Dear Twitter User:

We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received legal process requesting information regarding your Twitter account, @rop_g. A copy of the legal process is attached. The legal process requires Twitter to produce documents related to your account.

Please be advised that Twitter will respond to this request in 10 days from the date of this notice unless we receive notice from you that a motion to quash the legal process has been filed or that this matter has been otherwise resolved.

To respond to this notice, please e-mail us at <removed>.

This notice is not legal advice. You may wish to consult legal counsel about this matter. If you need assistance seeking counsel, you may consider contacting the Electronic Frontier Foundation <contact info removed> or the ACLU <contact info removed>.

Sincerely,

Twitter Legal

More here

STASI: East Germany's Secret Police

About one in 50 adults in East Germany collaborated with the STASI - East Germany's Secret Police. Relative to population, it was the largest secret service in the history of mankind.
"Shield and Sword of the Party" is what the Stasi calls itself. the Party dictatorship never dares not to face its opponents.
Instead, the Stasi has to keep all dissenting opinions under control. The goal is a total surveillance society, everyone informing on everyone.
"STASI" takes a look at the extent of Stasi work: including the Ministry's enormous headquarters in Berlin, local offices, dentention facilities, disguised isolation camps, hidden bunkers, reconnaissance planes, eavesdropping stations and East Germany's secret execution site.