Obama Administration Asks Supreme Court to Allow Warrantless Cellphone Searches
August 20th, 2013Via: Washington Post:
If the police arrest you, do they need a warrant to rifle through your cellphone? Courts have been split on the question. Last week the Obama administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve the issue and rule that the Fourth Amendment allows warrantless cellphone searches.
Soda Consumption In Children Could Lead To Violent Behavior
August 19th, 2013Via: CBS:
Studies of young soda drinkers often focus on added risk for childhood obesity. But now, a new study suggests the sweet stuff could actually be making kids more violent.
Public health researchers looked at thousands of 5-year-olds, and found the more sugary soft drinks they consumed, the more likely they were to inflict damage and hurt others.
“We found a significant relation with soda consumption with the overall measure of aggression and with the three specific behaviors we felt were most indicative of aggression: destroying things belonging to others, getting into fights and physically attacking people,” wrote the authors, led by researcher Dr. Shakira Suglia, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City, said in a written statement.
For the study, researchers at Columbia University, Harvard and the University of Vermont analyzed about 3,000 kids — mostly black and Hispanic children — from 20 large U.S. cities. They had been enrolled in a study that followed them since birth, in which moms were given surveys about their child’s behavior.
More than 40 percent of the children had at least one soft drink per day, while only 4 percent consumed four or more.
But, the more soda kids drank, the more problems with attention, aggression and withdrawn behaviors were reported.
Even after ruling out other factors that could influence violent behavior — like family income, where kids lived, how much candy they ate, whether they grew up in a violent home or if mom was depressed, or dad was in jail — the researchers still linked soda consumption to increases in aggressive behavior.
Kids who drank four or more soft drinks per day were found to be twice as likely to destroy other people’s property, get into fights and physically hit others.
Cholera Strain Introduced to Haiti by UN Still Killing People
August 19th, 2013Via: The Atlantic:
Despite much evidence to the contrary, for nearly three years, the United Nations has categorically denied that it introduced cholera into Haiti after the country suffered a devastating earthquake in 2010. Since then, cholera has killed more than 8,000 people and infected more than 600,000, creating an ongoing epidemic. As new cases continue to emerge, and the UN’s legitimacy continues to erode, it is time for the organization to apologize and take responsibility for the consequences of its actions and its inaction.
In a new report, Peacekeeping Without Accountability, which was released Tuesday, members of the Transnational Development Clinic at Yale Law School (YLS) and the Global Health Justice Partnership, an initiative of YLS and the Yale School of Public Health, provide scientific evidence showing that the UN brought cholera to Haiti and argue that the organization’s refusal to hold itself accountable to the Haitian people is both immoral and illegal. As we detail, international law, including the UN Charter, human rights treaties, and status-of-forces agreements (SOFAs), requires that the UN provide individuals affected by its peacekeeping operations with mechanisms for bringing claims against the organization. The failure to provide remedies in Haiti is part of a recent pattern of the UN neglecting its legal and moral responsibilities in peacekeeping operations worldwide. A continued refusal would further undermine the organization’s claim to promote the rule of law and human well-being in its missions.
According to extensive documentation by scientists and journalists, including Armin Rosen at The Atlantic, peacekeeping troops belonging to the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) inadvertently but negligently brought cholera into the country several months after the January 2010 earthquake. That October, troops from Nepal carrying the disease were stationed at a military base near the town of Méyè. Because of inadequate water and sanitation facilities at the base, cholera-infected sewage contaminated the Artibonite River, the largest river in Haiti and one the country’s main water sources. As locals consumed the contaminated water, cholera spread across the country. Absent from Haiti for over a century, cholera is now projected to plague the country for at least another decade.
Related: UN Soldiers Brought Superbug Strain of Cholera to Western Hemisphere
CIA Admits It Was Behind Iran’s Coup
August 19th, 2013If there’s a bigger snoozer posted on Cryptogon, I don’t know what it is. What the casual reader may not know about, however, and what the piece below doesn’t mention, is SAVAK:
SAVAK (Persian: ?????, short for ?????? ??????? ? ????? ???? S?zem?n-e Ettel?’?t va Amniyat-e Keshvar, Organization of Intelligence and National Security) was the secret police, domestic security and intelligence service established by Iran’s Mohammad Reza Shah with the help of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA). SAVAK operated from 1957 to 1979, when the Pahlavi dynasty was overthrown. SAVAK has been described as Iran’s “most hated and feared institution” prior to the revolution of 1979 because of its practice of torturing and executing opponents of the Pahlavi regime.
Via: Foreign Policy:
Sixty years ago this Monday, on August 19, 1953, modern Iranian history took a critical turn when a U.S.- and British-backed coup overthrew the country’s prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. The event’s reverberations have haunted its orchestrators over the years, contributing to the anti-Americanism that accompanied the Shah’s ouster in early 1979, and even influencing the Iranians who seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran later that year.
But it has taken almost six decades for the U.S. intelligence community to acknowledge openly that it was behind the controversial overthrow. Published here today — and on the website of the National Security Archive, which obtained the document through the Freedom of Information Act — is a brief excerpt from The Battle for Iran, an internal report prepared in the mid-1970s by an in-house CIA historian.
The document was first released in 1981, but with most of it excised, including all of Section III, entitled “Covert Action” — the part that describes the coup itself. Most of that section remains under wraps, but this new version does formally make public, for the first time that we know of, the fact of the agency’s participation: “[T]he military coup that overthrew Mosadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy,” the history reads. The risk of leaving Iran “open to Soviet aggression,” it adds, “compelled the United States … in planning and executing TPAJAX.”
TPAJAX was the CIA’s codename for the overthrow plot, which relied on local collaborators at every stage. It consisted of several steps: using propaganda to undermine Mossadegh politically, inducing the Shah to cooperate, bribing members of parliament, organizing the security forces, and ginning up public demonstrations. The initial attempt actually failed, but after a mad scramble the coup forces pulled themselves together and came through on their second try, on August 19.
Why the CIA finally chose to own up to its role is as unclear as some of the reasons it has held onto this information for so long. CIA and British operatives have written books and articles on the operation — notably Kermit Roosevelt, the agency’s chief overseer of the coup. Scholars have produced many more books, including several just in the past few years. Moreover, two American presidents (Clinton and Obama) have publicly acknowledged the U.S. role in the coup.
Militants Execute at Least 25 Policemen in Northern Sinai
August 19th, 2013Via: Independent:
Bloody violence has continued today as Egyptian security officials say suspected militants have ambushed two police minibuses in northern Sinai, firing rocket-propelled grenades at the vehicles.
The attack is believed to have been carried out as the two vehicles were driving through a village near the border town of Rafah in the volatile Sinai Peninsula, located in the strategic region bordering the Gaza Strip and Israel.
The killings compound a day of loss for the country as 36 detainees, believed to be Muslim Brotherhood members, died in government custody on Sunday when police fired tear gas in an attempt to free a prison guard from rioting prisoners. The Brotherhood are calling the deaths murder, but the authorities argue it was the result of a thwarted jail-break.
In today’s attack in Sinai, militants allegedly forced the two vehicles to stop, ordered the policemen out and forced them to lie on the ground before shooting them to death, the officials said. The policemen were in civilian clothes speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the attack has also left three policemen wounded.
Egyptian Government Admits Killing Islamists in Custody
August 19th, 2013Via: Globe and Mail:
The Egyptian government acknowledged that its security forces killed 36 Islamists in its custody Sunday, as the military leaders and the country’s Islamists vowed to keep up their fight over Egypt’s future.
The news of the deaths came on a day in which there appeared to be a pause in the street battles that have claimed more than 1,000 lives in recent days, most of them Islamists and their supporters gunned down by security forces. The Islamists took measures Sunday to avoid confrontations, including canceling several protests over the ouster of a democratically elected Islamist-led government.
While confirming the killings of the detainees Sunday, the Ministry of the Interior said the deaths were the consequence of an escape attempt by Islamist prisoners. But officials of the main Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, described the deaths as “assassinations,” and said the victims, which it said numbered 52, had been shot and tear-gassed through the windows of the locked prison van.
Britain Tries to Intimidate Greenwald by Detaining His Partner
August 19th, 2013Via: Guardian:
At 6:30 am this morning my time – 5:30 am on the East Coast of the US – I received a telephone call from someone who identified himself as a “security official at Heathrow airport.” He told me that my partner, David Miranda, had been “detained” at the London airport “under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act of 2000.”
David had spent the last week in Berlin, where he stayed with Laura Poitras, the US filmmaker who has worked with me extensively on the NSA stories. A Brazilian citizen, he was returning to our home in Rio de Janeiro this morning on British Airways, flying first to London and then on to Rio. When he arrived in London this morning, he was detained.
At the time the “security official” called me, David had been detained for 3 hours. The security official told me that they had the right to detain him for up to 9 hours in order to question him, at which point they could either arrest and charge him or ask a court to extend the question time. The official – who refused to give his name but would only identify himself by his number: 203654 – said David was not allowed to have a lawyer present, nor would they allow me to talk to him.
I immediately contacted the Guardian, which sent lawyers to the airport, as well various Brazilian officials I know. Within the hour, several senior Brazilian officials were engaged and expressing indignation over what was being done. The Guardian has the full story here.
Despite all that, five more hours went by and neither the Guardian’s lawyers nor Brazilian officials, including the Ambassador to the UK in London, were able to obtain any information about David. We spent most of that time contemplating the charges he would likely face once the 9-hour period elapsed.
According to a document published by the UK government about Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act, “fewer than 3 people in every 10,000 are examined as they pass through UK borders” (David was not entering the UK but only transiting through to Rio). Moreover, “most examinations, over 97%, last under an hour.” An appendix to that document states that only .06% of all people detained are kept for more than 6 hours.
The stated purpose of this law, as the name suggests, is to question people about terrorism. The detention power, claims the UK government, is used “to determine whether that person is or has been involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop “the terrorists”, and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.
Worse, they kept David detained right up until the last minute: for the full 9 hours, something they very rarely do. Only at the last minute did they finally release him.
Texas Police Hit Organic Farm With Massive SWAT Raid
August 18th, 2013Via: Huffington Post:
A small organic farm in Arlington, Texas, was the target of a massive police action last week that included aerial surveillance, a SWAT raid and a 10-hour search.
Members of the local police raiding party had a search warrant for marijuana plants, which they failed to find at the Garden of Eden farm. But farm owners and residents who live on the property told a Dallas-Ft. Worth NBC station that the real reason for the law enforcement exercise appears to have been code enforcement. The police seized “17 blackberry bushes, 15 okra plants, 14 tomatillo plants … native grasses and sunflowers,” after holding residents inside at gunpoint for at least a half-hour, property owner Shellie Smith said in a statement. The raid lasted about 10 hours, she said.
Local authorities had cited the Garden of Eden in recent weeks for code violations, including “grass that was too tall, bushes growing too close to the street, a couch and piano in the yard, chopped wood that was not properly stacked, a piece of siding that was missing from the side of the house, and generally unclean premises,” Smith’s statement said. She said the police didn’t produce a warrant until two hours after the raid began, and officers shielded their name tags so they couldn’t be identified. According to ABC affiliate WFAA, resident Quinn Eaker was the only person arrested — for outstanding traffic violations.
Scotland Yard Examines Claims that Diana, Princess of Wales Was Murdered by a Member of the British Military
August 18th, 2013Via: Telegraph:
Scotland Yard has launched an investigation into new claims that Diana, Princess of Wales was murdered by a member of the British military.
It said that it had asked specialist detectives to examine new allegations and evidence passed to it “recently”. The move was approved by Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, its most senior officer.
The claims were given to the force by the Royal Military Police, after surfacing during the trial of Sgt Danny Nightingale, the SAS sniper convicted of illegal weapons possession.
The dossier is said to include a claim that the SAS “was behind Princess Diana’s death”. Scotland Yard declined to confirm the content or origin of the material.
Officers from the specialist crime and operations command will carry out a “scoping” exercise to assess if a full-scale investigation is justified into whether the Princess, her boyfriend Dodi Fayed and driver Henri Paul were murdered.
The disclosure comes in spite of the inquest into the death of the Princess and Mr Fayed dismissing any claims of murder made by Mohammed Fayed, Dodi’s father, and conspiracy theorists.
Since then murder claims have continued to be made but have never been looked into by British police – making last night’s move unprecedented.
The decision to examine the new claims suggests that officers believe they must be looked at by detectives to assess whether they have any weight.
However they come from the estranged parents-in-law of “Soldier N”, an SAS soldier who was a key witness in the successful prosecution of Sgt Nightingale. He was himself convicted of illegal weapons possession.
His estranged wife’s parents wrote to the SAS’s commanding officer claiming the soldier had told his wife that the unit had “arranged” the Princess’s death and that this had been “covered up”.
The source of the claims will inevitably raise questions over their credibility, and why Scotland Yard acted.
Apple Patents Kill Switch for Mobile Devices Because: “Covert Police or Government Operations May Require Complete ‘Blackout’ Conditions.”
August 18th, 2013
Via: United States Patent 8,254,902:
As wireless devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, personal media devices and smartphones become ubiquitous, more and more people are carrying these devices in various social and professional settings. The result is that these wireless devices can often annoy, frustrate, and even threaten people in sensitive venues.
…
Covert police or government operations may require complete “blackout” conditions.


