martes, 27 de julio de 2010

Decenas de funcionarios del Pentágono han consumido pornografía infantil

Decenas de funcionarios del Pentágono y empleados con autorización de seguridad de alto rango compraron y descargaron pornografía infantil en ocasiones en ordenadores del Gobierno, según una investigación de varios años que ha sido revelado por el Pentágono.
El informe señala que parte de esos empleados y contratistas trabajaban para algunas de las agencias que manejan los secretos más resguardados por el Gobierno, incluida la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional.
El informe señala que los trabajadores y contratistas pusieron al Departamento de Defensa, "al ejército y a la seguridad nacional en su conjunto en peligro al poner en riesgo sistemas informáticos, instalaciones militares y autorizaciones de seguridad".
Según el Pentágono, los sospechosos también pusieron al Departamento de Defensa en riesgo de sufrir chantaje, soborno y amenazas.
El periódico 'The Boston Globe' fue el primero en informar del caso, al recurrir a la Ley de Libertad de Información para solicitar el acceso a los documentos del Gobierno.
El Departamento de Defensa optó a continuación por publicar documentos sobre la citada investigación en los que se omiten la mayoría de nombres y detalles.
El informe menciona que algunos de los acusados han tenido que hacer frente a la ley, mientras que en otros casos se retiraron los cargos por falta de pruebas. Los documentos divulgados no especifican cuántas personas participaron en la descarga de pornografía infantil.
La compra de pornografía infantil es un delito en EEUU y el acceso a la misma en un ordenador del Gobierno supone también una violación de las leyes sobre el uso de propiedad pública.

http://www.elmundo.es/america/2010/07/24/estados_unidos/1279957368.html

miércoles, 7 de julio de 2010

Poland to extradite alleged Mossad agent tied to Dubai killing

Extradition on less serious forgery charges allows Israel to avoid embarrassment of high-profile espionage trial, Polish sources tell Haaretz.

A Polish court ruled on Wednesday that an alleged Mossad agent tied to the killing of a Hamas leaderin Dubai should be extradited to Germany.

Uri Brodsky, an Israeli citizen, is suspected of having helped to forge a German passport used in the January assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. He was detained in Poland in early June.

Brodsky showed no reaction when the ruling was announced and hid his face from reporters as he walked to the courtroom, escorted by seven anti-terrorist policemen. The proceedings were closed to the media.

Warsaw district court Judge Tomasz Calkiewicz ordered Brodsky extradition on charges of forgery.

"The ruling means that the court partially agreed with the German Federal Republic and decided that our client can be extradited to German authorities," said Brodsky's lawyer,
Krzysztof Stepinski.

Defense attorney Anna Mika-Kopec sid she did not yet know whether she would appeal the extradition before the written ruling is issued by the court next week.

Prosecutors said last month that they were not taking politics into consideration and were acting in accordance with procedure after Germany issued a European arrest warrant for Brodsky.

But Polish sources told Haaretz on Wednesday that the details of the extradition ruling represented an apparent compromise: Brodsky's extradition on charges of forgery will allow Israel to escape the embarrassment of a high-profile espionage trial and the potential damage to Israeli-German relations if Brodsky were convicted as a spy.

Israel has spoken out against the extradition, saying the suspect should stand before an Israeli court, and Poland had reportedly been reluctant to return Brodsky to Germany for fear of offending its close ally.

But once it became clear that Brodsky would face relatively minor charges, Polish authorities were persuaded that extraditing him would have limited diplomartic consequences, the officials said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said he hopes the case will not harm Polish-Israeli relations, but that European law left the court with few choices.

Germany applied for the suspect's extradition after he was arrested on June 4 in Warsaw's airport on an European arrest warrant.

Along with other western nations, Germany was angry that its passports were used by members of a suspected Mossad hit team that is believed to have murdered al-Mabhouh, a co-founder of Hamas' military wing, in a hotel room on January 19.

hxxp://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/poland-to-extradite-alleged-mossad-agent-tied-to-dubai-killing-1.300595

domingo, 4 de julio de 2010

Guess Who Wants to Kill the Internet?


Posted on 01. Jul, 2010 by Raja Mujtaba in Opinion
By Maidhc Ó Cathail

It would be hard to think of anyone who has done more to undermine American freedoms than Joseph Lieberman.
Since 9/11, the Independent senator from Connecticut has introduced a raft of legislation in the name of the “global war on terror” which has steadily eroded constitutional rights. If the United States looks increasingly like a police state, Senator Lieberman has to take much of the credit for it.


On October 11, 2001, exactly one month after 9/11, Lieberman introduced S. 1534, a bill to establish a Department of Homeland Security. Since then, he has been the main mover behind such draconian legislation as the Protect America Act of 2007, the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, and the proposed Terrorist Expatriation Act, which would revoke the citizenship of Americans suspected of terrorism. And now the senator from Connecticut wants to kill the Internet.

According to the bill he recently proposed in the Senate, the entire global internet is to be claimed as a “national asset” of the United States. If Congress passes the bill, the US President would be given the power to “kill” the internet in the event of a “national cyber-emergency.” Supporters of the legislation say this is necessary to prevent a “cyber 9/11” – yet another myth from the fear mongers who brought us tales of “Iraqi WMD” and “Iranian nukes.”


Lieberman’s concerns about the internet are not new. The United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, which Lieberman chairs, released a report in 2008 titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, The Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” The report claimed that groups like al-Qaeda use the internet to indoctrinate and recruit members, and to communicate with each other.


Immediately after the report was published, Lieberman asked Google, the parent company of You Tube, to “immediately remove content produced by Islamist terrorist organizations.” That might sound like a reasonable request. However, as far as Lieberman is concerned, Hamas, Hezbollah and even the Iranian Revolutionary Guard are terrorist organizations.
It’s hardly surprising that Lieberman’s views on what constitute terrorism parallel those of Tel Aviv. As Mark Vogel, chairman of the largest pro-Israel Political Action Committee (PAC) in the United States, once said: “Joe Lieberman, without exception, no conditions … is the No. 1 pro-Israel advocate and leader in Congress. There is nobody who does more on behalf of Israel than Joe Lieberman.”


Lieberman has been well-rewarded for his patriotism – to another country. In the past six years, he has been the Senate’s top recipient of political contributions from pro-Israel PACs with a staggering $1,226,956.

But what is it that bothers Lieberman so much about the internet? Could it be that it allows ordinary Americans access to facts which reveal exactly what kind of “friend” Israel has been to its overgenerous benefactor? Facts which they have been denied by the pro-Israel mainstream media.


How much faith would American voters have in the likes of Lieberman, who claims that the Jewish state is their greatest ally, if they knew that Israeli agents planted firebombs in American installations in Egypt in 1954 in an attempt to undermine relations between Nasser and the United States; that Israel murdered 34 American servicemen in a deliberate attack on the USS Liberty on June 8, 1967; that Israeli espionage, most notably Jonathan Pollard’s spying, has done tremendous damage to American interests; that five Mossad agents were filming and celebrating as the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11, 2001; that Tel Aviv and its accomplices in Washington were the source of the false pre-war intelligence on Iraq; and about countless other examples of treachery?


In his latest attempt to censor the internet, does Lieberman really want to protect the American people from imaginary cyber-terrorists? Or is he just trying to protect his treasonous cronies from the American people?


Maidhc Ó Cathail is a widely published writer based in Japan. To read more of his writing, go to Maidhc Ó Cathail: Writing and Analysis.


http://www.opinion-maker.org/2010/07/guess-who-wants-to-kill-the-internet/