If the first official review of undercover policing is to set the tone for the next dozen or so evaluations to come, there is not much hope. Of all reviews, this is the only one focusing on the activities of Mark Kennedy specifically and the supervision of undercover officers by the National Public Order Intelligence Unit (NPOIU) more generally.
police units which provide intelligence on crimina
HMIC Report into domestic extremists units disgust
Etnisch profileren binnen het politie en justitie apparaat lijkt steeds meer aandacht te krijgen. Lijkt omdat in de jaren negentig ook al onderzoek werd gedaan naar het selectieve optreden van de politie. Hier een overzicht van de afstudeerscripties en rapporten uit binnen- en buitenland. Niet al het onderzoek is opgenomen. Veel theoretisch werk wordt niet gepresenteerd, alleen een overzichtsartikel en een literatuurstudie. De scripties en rapporten gaan over de praktijk van de politie.
Use of terrorism-related charges by police stem from infiltration, provocation according to defense attorneys
Chicago, IL – Three NATO protesters were brought before a bond judge today on charges of possession of explosives or incendiary devices, material support for terrorism, and conspiracy. For the first time since a Wednesday night raid on a Bridgeport home where activists were staying, the State’s Attorney’s Office read a laundry list of allegations and sought $5 million cash bonds for each of them. However, after hearing from National Lawyers Guild (NLG) attorneys defending the three Occupy activists, Cook County Judge Edward Harmening imposed a $1.5 million D-Bond.
During the Wednesday night house raid, police broke down the doors of multiple apartment units with guns drawn and searched residences without a warrant or consent. In addition to 9 arrests made that night, NLG attorneys believe that two undercover police or confidential informants were arrested with the others and were later released. Of the 9 activists arrested, 6 were released without any charges despite being shackled for at least 18 hours in solitary confinement and denied access to attorneys.
“These sensational accusations are unfounded and contradict the accounts of other detained witnesses and released arrestees,” said NLG attorney Michael Deutsch with the People’s Law Office. “This effort to vilify protesters smacks of entrapment based on manufactured crimes, and is a common tactic of law enforcement during National Special Security Events.” In the bond hearing, the State’s Attorney said that the defendants were self-described anarchists, yet no such political beliefs were expressed by any of them.
During the raid, police seized computers, cell phones and home brew-making equipment among other items. However, police have not yet disclosed the search warrant or the affidavit of probable cause. The 3 defendants, Jared Chase, Brent Betterly, and Brian Jacob Church, will appear again in Cook County Court, Branch 98 at 2600 South California on Tuesday at 11:30am to determine how the State’s Attorney will proceed with the criminal cases.
Just last week, all three defendants were surrounded by several police squad cars outside of a CVS, detained for no apparent reason and asked questions about why they were in Chicago and what they planned to do during the NATO summit. One of the defendants recorded the encounter and posted an edited version on YouTube. When Superintendent McCarthy questioned the validity of the footage in the media, the entire video was quickly posted.
More than two-dozen people have been arrested so far in the lead up to the NATO summit, which begins tomorrow. At least 7 arrestees in addition to the ones with terrorism-related charges are currently in custody. The NLG is staffing a 24-hour hotline, as well as dispatching dozens of Legal Observers to record police misconduct and representing anyone arrested during the demonstrations.
Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request
Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent
Revealing: A list of keywords used by government analysts to scour the internet for evidence of threats to the U.S. has been released under the Freedom of Information Act
The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.
The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.
Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.
The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder’ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.
Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.
However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.
As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.
The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.
In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.
Threat detection: Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats
They point out that it includes ‘vast amounts of First Amendment protected speech that is entirely unrelated to the Department of Homeland Security mission to protect the public against terrorism and disasters.’
…
By Daniel Miller
PUBLISHED: 09:32 GMT, 26 May 2012 | UPDATED: 17:46 GMT, 26 May 2012
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd
The Pentagon is expanding and making permanent a trial program that teams the government with Internet service providers to protect defense firms’ computer networks against data theft by foreign adversaries.
It is part of a larger effort to broaden the sharing of classified and unclassified cyberthreat data between the government and industry in what Defense Department officials say is a promising collaboration between the public and private sectors.
“The expansion of voluntary information sharing between the department and the defense industrial base represents an important step forward in our ability to stay current with emerging cyberthreats,” Ashton B. Carter, deputy secretary of defense, said in announcing the move Friday.
Carter said that industry’s increased reliance on the Internet for daily business has exposed large amounts of sensitive information held on network servers to the risk of digital theft. Corporate cyber-espionage has reached epidemic scale, experts and officials say, with much of the activity traced to China and Russia.
Begun a year ago, the Defense Industrial Base enhanced pilot program included 17 companies that volunteered to have commercial carriers such as Verizon and AT&T scan e-mail traffic entering their networks for malicious software. Outgoing traffic that shows signs of being redirected to illegitimate sites is blocked so that it does not fall into an adversary’s hands.
A study in November by Carnegie Mellon University said that the pilot program showed the public-private model could work but that initial results on the efficacy of the National Security Agency measures were mixed, with the most value going to companies with less mature network defenses.
The report also said companies reported large numbers of false positives in detecting traffic to illegitimate sites. That flaw largely has been fixed, officials said.
One telecom industry official familiar with the program said he thought the results were better than reflected in the report. “There are a lot of opportunities for improving,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on the record. For instance, the official said, “the longer it takes NSA to provide the data” to the carriers, the less useful the program will be. Overall, the official said, “we think it was a successful model.”
U.S. officials said that after initial difficulties, the program has become more effective, so much so that senior officials agreed at a White House meeting Thursday to expand it and make it permanent.
“It’s the best example of information sharing that helps in an operational way,” said Eric Rosenbach, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber-policy. “We haven’t heard of any other country that’s doing anything like this — a really collaborative relationship between government and private sector.”
Rosenbach acknowledged that the program was not perfect. “We’re definitely not claiming this is the silver bullet when it comes to cybersecurity for the defense firms,” he said. “It is an additional tool they can use to mitigate some of the risk of attacks.”
The carriers are using classified threat data or indicators provided by the NSA to screen the traffic, as well as unclassified threat data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. DHS reviews all the screening data before it goes to the carriers.
The companies may turn over results of the screening to the government. The data would go to DHS and could be shared with agencies such as the NSA and FBI, but with strict privacy protections, officials said.
Rosenbach said that although the NSA should get feedback on how effective its measures are, the agency does not deal directly with the carriers or companies. And, he said, no information that can identify a person is shared with the government.
Still, privacy concerns are high, especially as Congress considers legislation to foster a broader exchange of cyberthreat data between the government and industry.
“Having the NSA provide classified cyberattack signatures to network operators to help them protect their networks . . . is far preferable to having the NSA scan private networks for those signatures,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology. “However, the flow of information back to the government raises significant privacy concerns in the program and in the pending cybersecurity legislation.”
The cybersecurity program will remain voluntary, officials said. As of December, companies have had to pay their Internet carrier for the service. It is unclear how many of the roughly 8,000 eligible defense contractors will sign up.
…
By Ellen Nakashima, Published: May 11
© The Washington Post Company
For almost three decades after Fidel Castro took power, Cuba’s budding intelligence service fielded four dozen double agents in a world-class operation under the nose of the CIA, according to a new book by a veteran CIA analyst.
It was not until June 1987, when a Cuban spy defected to the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, blind-siding U.S. intelligence services, that the CIA learned how badly it had been duped, writes Brian Latell, a retired veteran CIA analyst and Cuba specialist.
‘Castro was a supreme, unchallenged spy master,’ Latell told an audience at a recent book reading.
The revelations in Latell’s book help explain how Castro survived several well-documented assassination attempts and the impoverished island of Cuba weathered the changes that toppled other communist regimes in the late 20th Century.
‘In the annals of modern spycraft it’s a pretty extraordinary accomplishment. It’s difficult to keep one double agent in play, and he managed them all … down to the minute details,’ added Latell, author of Castro’s Secrets, the CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine.
Latell began watching Cuba in the mid-1960s and served as U.S. National Intelligence Officer for Latin America before retiring from the CIA in 1998.
All four dozen double agents were recruited in Cuba and other parts of the world and personally run by Castro. He favored young, rough-hewn, impressionable teens without a university education.
‘Castro wanted them to be uncontaminated by the old Cuba. He wanted them to be malleable and enthusiastic,’ Latell says.
While Cuba has trumpeted its success with double agents in the past, Latell’s book shows the penetration was more extensive than previously known, and compromised U.S. intelligence sources and methods.
The defection in 1987 of Florentino Aspillaga finally alerted the CIA to the extent of Castro’s spy network. ‘They were in a state of shock. Nothing like this had ever happened to us before,’ said Latell.
Aspillaga was ‘the most informed and highly decorated officer ever to defect from Cuban intelligence’, Latell says, and his defection was a turning point in the CIA’s attitude toward Cuba.
‘Until that point we grossly underestimated the Cubans. We never imagined that little Cuba could run an intelligence service that was world class,’ he says.
Counter-intelligence operations were subsequently stepped up. After only four Cubans spies were arrested between 1959 and 1995, that number rose more than ten-fold between 1998 and 2011, Latell writes in his book.
Aspillaga was recruited as a spy at age 16 and spent 25 years in Cuban intelligence. His defection provided ‘some of the most precious secrets including the double agents,’ says Latell, who interviewed him over several days in 2007.
The interview was conducted at the request of Aspillaga, who said he simply wanted to tell his story.
Aspillaga also shared an unpublished memoir with Latell, asking for no payment or favor in return.
The former agent now lives with a new identity after surviving an assassination attempt in London in 1988.
Aspillaga is just one of a dozen defectors Latell interviewed in the book, which relies on thousands of pages of declassified CIA documents the author reviewed at the National Archives in Maryland, as well as interviews with several CIA officers.
In the book, Latell reveals that Cuban intelligence knew more about the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy than they admitted at the time, including information about the shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Aspillaga told the CIA that in his first year he was trained to do radio intercept work, listening for CIA transmissions to spies on the island and incursions by sea.
On November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination, he was ordered to stop all CIA tracking efforts and redirect his antennas away from Miami and direct them toward Texas.
Castro knew Kennedy was to be fired upon, Latell says Aspillaga told him.
The Warren Commission never attributed a motive to Oswald but Latell argues Oswald was fascinated with Castro and ‘his motive was to protect Fidel’.
It is well known Oswald met Cuban officials during visits to Cuba’s Mexican consulate in the summer of 1963, but there is no evidence he ever worked directly for Cuban intelligence.
Latell says that while Cuban agents had kept track of Oswald, his research found no evidence linking Castro to the assassination. Instead, Latell has his own more nuanced theory.
Castro and his intelligence officers ‘were complicit in Kennedy’s death’, Latell writes, ‘but … their involvement fell short of an organized assassination plot’.
Cuban intelligence officers ‘exhorted Oswald’ and ‘encouraged his feral militance’, he writes, ‘but it was his Oswald’s plan and his rifle, not theirs’.
Castro had plenty of reason to want Kennedy out of the way. A Senate Committee found in 1975 that the CIA had pursued assassination as an instrument of foreign policy, with Fidel Castro as one of its prime targets.
The Committee’s first documented plots against Castro began in 1960, when the CIA contacted organized crime figures eager to return to the good old days of gambling, extortion and corruption in Cuba.
Subsequent plots involved poison, an exploding seashell and marksmen with high-powered rifles.
…
Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group
© Associated Newspapers Ltd
de elektronische nieuwsbrief van Buro Jansen & Janssen
Mocht je een interessant artikel hebben over je confrontatie met politie en justitie, een nieuwe wetgeving, onderzoek of scriptie mail het dan ons, info@burojansen.nl.
01 Inhoudsopgave
02 Gaan jullie stenen gooien?
03 Duurzaam afwimpelen
04 Tilburgse fouilleer-polonaise
05 Tilburg en preventief fouilleren
06 Breivik’s misdaad staat niet op zichzelf
07 Spy Wars
08 Ethnic profiling in the Netherlands?
09 Waarborgen bij preventief fouilleren
10 Jansen & Janssen zoekt nieuwe donateurs
In deze nieuwsbrief aandacht voor studenten die in de gaten worden gehouden door de inlichtingendienst, het duurzaam inkoopbeleid van de overheid, fouilleren in Tilburg, Breivik, Spy Wars uit de jaren zestig, etnisch profileren in Nederland en allerhande andere zaken.
Ook voor 2012 zijn er veel plannen. Natuurlijk een serie nieuwsbrieven met eigen onderzoek, maar ook enkele websites. Een met headlines die dagelijks bij jansen binnenkomen, een website over de inlichtingendiensten en een project website waarbij wij de informatie achter de Wikileaks documenten boven tafel proberen te halen. Tot slot staat ook een magazine over preventief fouilleren op de agenda van 2012. Al die plannen kosten ook geld. Vandaar dat Jansen & Janssen 50 nieuwe donateurs zoekt die maandelijks met 10 euro ons werk ondersteunen. Wordt donateur of vraag familie, vrienden en bekenden donateur te worden. Giro 603904 ten name van Stichting Res Publica, de stichting van Jansen & Janssen.
Al 25 jaar diepgravend, kritisch en doortastend burgerrechten onderzoek. Buro Jansen & Janssen gewoon inhoud.
Inlichtingenoperatie rondom studentenprotest
Dat studenten actie voeren tegen aangekondigde bezuinigingen op het onderwijs is van alle tijden. Daar is niets staatsondermijnend aan. Des te meer opmerkelijk dat diverse actieve studenten gedurende de acties en betogingen door de Regionale Inlichtingendienst en geheime dienst AIVD benaderd zijn met de vraag informant te worden.
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Hoe duurzaam koopt de overheid in?
In nota’s stelt de overheid een actief inkoopbeleid voor te staan van duurzaam geproduceerde producten voor haar ambtenaren, alsmede de aanstelling van extern adhoc-personeel gebonden aan sociale voorwaarden. Mooie woorden, maar de praktijk is echter weerbarstig, zo blijkt.
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Preventief fouilleren werd in 2003 met veel tromgeroffel geïntroduceerd in Tilburg, maar de aftocht verliep in stilte, alsof de driehoek moest erkennen dat het middel volstrekt zinloos is geweest.
“Ultimum remedium, zwaar middel met verstrekkende gevolgen voor persoonlijke levenssfeer, niet lichtvaardig mee omgaan.” Grote woorden werden door bestuur en politiek gebruikt bij de introductie van preventief fouilleren in Tilburg. Een steekincident in de zomer van 2003 en een vechtpartij bleken voldoende om alle zorgvuldigheid met betrekking tot de verstrekkende gevolgen terzijde te schuiven. Een eerder schietincident op een vol terras in de stad zorgde echter niet voor een vergelijkbare reactie.
Preventief fouilleren werd in 2003 met veel tromgeroffel geïntroduceerd in Tilburg, maar de aftocht vier jaar later verliep in stilte, alsof de Driehoek moest erkennen dat het middel volstrekt zinloos is geweest.
Tilburg was niet de eerste gemeente die overging tot fouillering, maar wel een van de gemeenten die het middel lange tijd heeft ingezet. In totaal is er vier jaar gefouilleerd in drie verschillende gebieden.
Bij het onderzoek naar de maatregel is gebruik gemaakt van documenten van het college van burgemeester en wethouders van de stad, de politie Midden en West Brabant en het parket Breda. De stukken die beschikbaar zijn gesteld: aanwijzingsbesluiten, notities voor het driehoeksoverleg, evaluaties, incidentenoverzichten, uitdraaien uit het HKS, lasten tot fouilleren, losse documenten en andere overheidsstukken.
Zolang wij de oorlog tegen het terrorisme niet beëindigen, zullen er types als Anders Breivik op staan. Hij toonde aan waar een bipolaire wereld toe leidt, namelijk zelfmoord van een zichzelf superieur achtende cultuur. lees meer
Fictie en werkelijkheid in de wereld der spionnen
De voormalig CIA-agent Tennent B. Bagley presenteert zich in het fascinerende boek Spy Wars als de enige die het ware verhaal achter de Russische spion Yuri Nosenko weet te vertellen, zo lijkt het.
A reflection on expanding preventive powers, ethnic profiling and a changing social and political context
Over the past decades the Netherlands has developed into a culture of control in which criminals and immigrants are mainly seen as ‘dangerous others’. Tying in with this emergence of the culture of control is the development of a more preventive criminal justice system. By means of expanding preventive powers the criminal justice system is more and more aimed at detecting risky (groups of) persons as soon as possible. This so-called actuarial justice is accompanied by a great deal of discretionary power on the hands of those who have to enforce the law, bearing the risk that such powers may be carried out (in part) on the basis of generalisations relating to race, ethnicity, religion or nationality instead of on the basis of individual behaviour and/or objective evidence. The leading assumption in this article is that recent social, political and legal developments have increased the possibility for ethnic profiling in the Netherlands. Being a country of immigration, mostly immigrants tend to fall victim to these practices. Illustrated by the stop and search powers that have been introduced at municipal level in 2002 and in 2006 in the context of counterterrorism, the authors not only aim to provide insight into the complexity of actuarial justice in relation to ethnic profiling in the Netherlands but also aim to fuel the scientific debate on empirically researching ethnic profiling.
Policing & Society
Vol. 21, No. 4, December 2011, 444 455
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In 2002 is het preventief fouilleren ingevoerd omdat daar vanuit de politiek en de samenleving behoefte aan bestond. Vooral het grote aantal wapenincidenten in enkele grote-stadswijken was aanleiding om te zoeken naar een middel om het wapenbezit in die wijken terug te dringen en het preventief fouilleren werd gezien als een effectief instrument om dit doel te bereiken. De opsporingsbevoegdheden uit het Wetboek van Strafvordering en de Wet wapens en munitie boden onvoldoende mogelijkheden om preventief op te treden in gevallen waarin er geen concrete, individuele verdenking of aanwijzing bestaat van wapenbezit. Opvallend is dat sinds de invoering in sommige grote steden van de mogelijkheid tot preventief fouilleren intensief gebruik wordt gemaakt (Amsterdam, Rotterdam), terwijl in andere steden de gemeenteraad geen aanleiding heeft gezien preventief fouilleren mogelijk te maken (bv. Arnhem, Nijmegen). Ook zijn er grote steden waar besloten is, na een periode van gebruik van de mogelijkheid van preventief fouilleren, het middel niet langer in te zetten. (Den Haag, Eindhoven en Utrecht). lees meer