Lady Liberty

The Statue of Liberty is getting a facelift, though the changes aren’t only cosmetic. An upgraded "state of the art" security system will help keep Lady Liberty safe when it reopens soon. But what does the system entail, and could it involve a controversial new face-recognition technology that can detect visitors’ ethnicity from a distance? I tried to find out — and a New York surveillance company tried to stop me.

Face recognition was first implemented at the Statue of Liberty in 2002 as part of an attempt to spot suspected terrorists whose mug shots were stored on a federal database. At the time, the initiative was lambasted by the American Civil Liberties Union, which said it was so ineffective that “Osama Bin Laden himself” could easily dodge it.

But the technology has advanced since then: Late last year, trade magazine Police Product Insight reported that a trial of the latest face-recognition software was being planned at the Statue of Liberty for the end of 2012 to “help law enforcement and intelligence agencies spot suspicious activity.” New York surveillance camera contractor Total Recall Corp. was quoted as having told the magazine that it was set for trial at the famed tourist attraction software called FaceVACS, made by German firm Cognitec. FaceVACS, Cognitec boasts in marketing materials, can guess ethnicity based on a person’s skin color, flag suspects on watch lists, estimate the age of a person, detect gender, “track” faces in real time, and help identify suspects if they have tried to evade detection by putting on glasses, growing a beard, or changing their hairstyle. Some versions of face-recognition software used today remain ineffective, as investigators found in the aftermath of the Boston bombings. But Cognitec claims its latest technology has a far higher accuracy rating — and is certainly more advanced than the earlier versions of face-recognition software, like the kind used at the Statue of Liberty back in 2002. (It is not clear whether the face-recognition technology remained in use at the statue after 2002.)

Liberty Island took such a severe battering during Sandy that it has stayed closed to the public ever since — thwarting the prospect of a pilot of the new software. But the statue, which attracts more than 3 million visitors annually according to estimates, is finally due to open again on July 4. In March, Statue of Liberty superintendent Dave Luchsinger told me that plans were underway to install an upgraded surveillance system in time for the reopening. “We are moving forward with the proposal that Total Recall has come up with,” he said, adding that “[new] systems are going in, and I know they are state of the art.”

When it came to my questions about face recognition, though, things started to get murky. Was that particular project back on track? “We do work with Cognitec, but right now because of what happened with Sandy it put a lot of different pilots that we are doing on hold,” Peter Millius, Total Recall’s director of business development, said in a phone call. “It’s still months away, and the facial recognition right now is not going to be part of this phase.” Then, he put me on hold and came back a few minutes later with a different position — insisting that the face-recognition project had in fact been “vetoed” by the Park Police and adding that I was “not authorized” to write about it.

That was weird, but it soon got weirder. About an hour after I spoke with Total Recall, an email from Cognitec landed in my inbox. It was from the company’s marketing manager, Elke Oberg, who had just one day earlier told me in a phone interview that “yes, they are going to try out our technology there” in response to questions about a face-recognition pilot at the statue. Now, Oberg had sent a letter ordering me to “refrain from publishing any information about the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” It said that I had “false information,” that the project had been “cancelled,” and that if I wrote about it, there would be “legal action.” Total Recall then separately sent me an almost identical letter — warning me not to write “any information about Total Recall and the Statue of Liberty or the use of face recognition at the Statue of Liberty.” Both companies declined further requests for comment, and Millius at Total Recall even threatened to take legal action against me personally if I continued to “harass” him with additional questions. (You can read the full correspondence here.)

Linda Friar, a National Park Service spokeswoman, confirmed that the procurement process for security screening equipment is ongoing, but she refused to comment on whether the camera surveillance system inside the statue was being upgraded on the grounds that it was “sensitive information.” So will there be a trial of new face-recognition software — or did the Park Police “cancel” or “veto” this? It would probably be easier to squeeze blood from a stone than to obtain answers to those questions. “I’m not going to show my hand as far as what security technologies we have,” Greg Norman, Park Police captain at Liberty Island, said in a brief phone interview.

The great irony here, of course, is that this is a story about a statue that stands to represent freedom and democracy in the modern world. Yet at the heart of it are corporations issuing crude threats in an attempt to stifle legitimate journalism — and by extension dictate what citizens can and cannot know about the potential use of contentious surveillance tools used to monitor them as they visit that very statue. Whether Cognitec's ethnicity-detecting face recognition software will eventually be implemented at Lady Liberty remains to be seen. What is certain, however, is that the attempt to silence reporting on the mere prospect of it is part of an alarming wider trend to curtail discussion about new security technologies that are (re)shaping society.

This article first appeared at Slate.

Secret Justice

Alarming links between British spy agencies and torture, unlawful abductions and dealings with dictators have been exposed in recent years, prompting investigations and major court cases. But now, in a historic move that could erode centuries-old principles of open justice, the government wants to limit sensitive material being disclosed publicly – enabling complicity in human rights abuses to be kept secret.

The controversial plans are set to be included in the Justice and Security Bill, formally announced earlier this month in the Queen’s Speech. The Ministry of Justice says “common-sense” change is needed to protect national security and better equip courts to pass judgment in cases involving classified information. Because the new legislation would enable the government to present evidence to a judge without having to disclose it to the whole court, however, there are major concerns it could lead to cover-ups and put the government and other public bodies above the law.

“The simple fact is that closed courts are inherently unfair,” says Clare Algar, executive director of human rights group Reprieve. “What the government is proposing is a system in which they can use whatever evidence they like against the citizen, but the citizen is unable to challenge or even to see that evidence. This is unacceptable in any circumstances.

"Our current system is working well, and judges have always been extremely deferential to the government on matters of national security. Yet it appears that our security services are attempting to undermine our justice system because they are unwilling to be held accountable in a court of law."

Justice secretary Ken Clarke argues that the government will have to reveal “damaging” secret security information or settle out of court unless ministers can order some cases to be conducted behind closed doors. Clarke says that Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with America was dented after a ruling in 2010 forcing ministers to reveal a document showing British complicity in the torture of West London resident Binyam Mohamed, who was held at US-run prison Guantanamo Bay over alleged links to terror groups.

But last month the government’s claims that US authorities have withdrawn or reduced the amount of intelligence it shares with Britain were attacked by the joint parliamentary committee on human rights as being based on “spurious assertions”. And former officers from the US Central Intelligence Agency told the Daily Mail the US would “never hold back” information from British spies if it was “important to their domestic security.”

Prominent critics argue that the reform, far from being motivated by a desire to protect national security, has more to do with preventing politically damaging details from being made public.

“We should not sacrifice Britain’s open and transparent justice system simply to protect politicians and their officials from embarrassment,” said former director of public prosecutions Ken MacDonald in February. “After a decade in which we have seen our politicians and officials caught up in the woeful abuses of the War on Terror, the last thing the government should be seeking is to sweep all of this under the carpet. However, that is exactly what their disastrous secret justice proposals are likely to do.”

Macdonald’s scathing remarks took on added significance last month, when it emerged spy agency MI6 had tried to avoid having to appear in open court by offering a payment of £1 million to Abdelhakim Belhadj, a Libyan dissident it helped hand over to Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2004 as part of America’s extraordinary rendition programme. Belhadj and his pregnant wife were abducted by US authorities in Bangkok after a tip-off from MI6. They were forced on a plane to Libya where they were mistreated by Gaddafi’s secret police – and are now suing Sir Mark Allen, an ex-senior member of MI6, for “complicity in torture" and "misfeasance in public office."

If the Bill were to become law by the time Belhadj’s case makes it to a British courtroom, a government minister could sign off a “closed material procedure” (CMP) certificate vetoing sensitive information about MI6’s role being publicly disclosed. CMPs were first established by Labour in 1997 to be used mainly in a small number of immigration cases concerning the deportation of terror suspects. In 2010, for instance, alleged extremists based in Manchester and Liverpool were accused of having links to al-Qaida – but in subsequent deportation hearings CMPs were applied to keep evidence against them secret.

Crucially, aside from cases involving terror suspects and torture, the newly proposed Bill has far wider ramifications. It would apply across all civil court cases or inquests and could potentially be used not only to protect the security services – but also to halt sensitive information involving the police, the army and other public bodies from being revealed. (The definition of “sensitive” information is broad, encompassing the disclosure of anything deemed contrary to the interests of national security, the international relations of the United Kingdom, or the detection and prevention of crime.)

Inquest, a charity that provides support to bereaved people affected by contentious deaths, such as deaths in custody and police shootings, believes the government’s proposals “seriously undermine fundamental legal principles of natural justice and open justice.” The group, whose members number lawyers involved in high-profile cases including the Hillsborough disaster and the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, has warned that the Bill, if legislated, would “fuel fears that the state is attempting to deliberately prevent information about its own culpability in deaths becoming publicly known.”

“It is deeply regrettable that the government is pursuing proposals to extend the use of closed material procedures,” says Helen Shaw, Inquest’s co-director. “It is abundantly clear that there is no need for such sweeping changes to the law.”

But not all elements of the Bill have been subject to such intense criticism. While many argue it would be particularly detrimental to the accountability of the secret services in the courtroom, others point out that at the same time, in stark contrast, it also contains a proposal to enhance their accountability to parliament. Currently spy agencies MI6, MI5 and GCHQ are overseen by the intelligence and security committee (ISC), an executive-appointed group of nine parliamentarians, which reports directly to the prime minister. The government wants to improve the ISC by having it report formally to parliament for the first time.

“I see this as a measure of making them more accountable,” says Anthony Glees, an expert in security and counter-terrorism at the University of Buckingham. “There is a problem with accountability in our secret agencies; too much secrecy fuels speculation and it leads to a lack of responsible behaviour. But we can’t expect that they can’t have full accountability because then they wouldn’t be secret agencies.”

By enhancing parliamentary accountability while simultaneously planning to radically reduce judicial accountability, though, it is ultimately the overall impact that is of most significance, according to Hugh Bochel, professor of public policy at the University of Lincoln.

“The proposals give greater parliamentary oversight but they reduce the amount of judicial oversight and to some extent civil society and the media,” Bochel says, adding that this is a “negative step.”

“What you need is overlap between all those different forms of oversight and that should give you a good view as you can and accountability in all sorts of different ways.”

Campaigners point out that the Ministry of Justice’s own impact assessment of its plans for secret court proceedings warned of a “reduction in confidence in court processes” and a “higher risk of potential security breaches,” costing up to £11 million every year. This was compounded last month by condemnation from the joint parliamentary committee on human rights, chaired by Dr Hywel Francis, which said in a report that the court plans were a “radical departure from our longstanding traditions of open justice” and “inherently unfair.”

“The government has now tested the parliamentary waters and its proposal to expand secret evidence has been condemned as unfair and unjustified,” says Angela Patrick, director of human rights policy at campaign group Justice. “Proceeding in the face of these conclusions would undermine the coalition’s commitment to civil liberties and could damage public confidence in the justice system irreparably.”

Elected Mayors

It has been billed by some as the most significant constitutional change England has faced in generations. Next month, a referendum will be held in ten cities across the country to determine whether council leaders will replaced by elected mayors. It could mean that, rather than councils picking who is in charge, more people than ever before will have the chance to directly decide who their local leader is. Advocates of the reform say it will bring about greater democracy and more regional control – but not everyone is convinced.

Come 3 May voters in Leeds, Wakefield, Manchester, Sheffield and Bradford will be among those to go to the polls. Birmingham, Nottingham, Coventry, Bristol and Newcastle will also vote, while Liverpool and Leicester have already chosen to switch to the new system without holding a referendum. The government is keen for cities to adopt elected mayors, which it says will lead to more power devolved locally. However, critics claim they are being pressured into making a change that is not necessarily a good thing.

“I’m sceptical about mayors,” says professor Alan Harding, director of the University of Manchester’s Institute for Political and Economic Governance. “I think it would be a complete and utter waste of time for Manchester, which has been run perfectly effectively for donkey’s years.

“There are certain places in the world which have directly elected mayors, and I don’t think you could say hand on heart it makes a decisive difference to how those places function. At the end of the day it’s not the position that makes the difference – it’s the quality of the people who occupy the position and how they make use of the opportunities that they’ve got.”

Since the Local Government Act was introduced by New Labour in 2000, 16 English towns have adopted elected mayors, ranging from London to Bedford, Middlesbrough and Watford. But the current government, as part of its 2011 Localism Act, wants to expand the system across all of the country’s major cities, with May’s mandatory referendums an integral part of that process.

“I’m really enthusiastic about this because I profoundly believe we should be moving our country to having more directly elected mayors in our big cities,” prime minister David Cameron said in a speech at 10 Downing Street last week. “I know it is a big cultural change for Britain, it is a big move for us, and it is absolutely going to be up to the people of those cities to make that decision, but I very much hope we will get some yes votes across our country.”

Thinktank the Institute for Government (IFG) has also backed the push towards having more elected mayors. It believes the change will lead to more funding and independence handed over to cities, with increased stability and better leadership.

“Mayors are likely to bring significant benefits – in terms of visibility, stability and responsiveness to the electorate,” says Tom Gash, programme director at the IFG. “Mayors are elected every four years by tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of voters. Council leaders are chosen by other councillors and can be ousted at virtually any point if they can’t keep these councillors happy.”

Statistics produced by the IFG show that 38% of people questioned nationally want a directly elected mayor rather than a council leader. But a separate poll earlier in March revealed 62% were unaware of the May referendums, with 90% saying they had been given little or no information about it. As a likely result of this, during an elected mayors referendum in Salford in January, just 18.1% of the 171,000 eligible voters took part.

According to Steve Connor, chief executive of Manchester PR firm Creative Concern, there is little appetite for the change in his home city because it would not offer any tangible benefit. Connor recently authored a letter, published in the Manchester Evening News and signed by academics, artists and businessmen, calling elected mayors a “bad deal”.

“For Manchester it’s a really bad option,” Connor says, “because we’ve got ten local authorities, not one, and we’ve got Greater Manchester, which is the scale at which our city works.

“If it was one elected mayor for the whole of Manchester – that would be a different issue. But this referendum is about a mayor just for the Manchester city council area, and it’s crackers.”

In London Boris Johnson is mayor of Greater London, which puts him in charge of all 32 of the capital’s boroughs. But Manchester is being offered an elected mayor who would only be responsible for the City of Manchester (one borough), as opposed to Greater Manchester in its entirety (ten boroughs).

“Elected mayors should be for larger areas – like London – they shouldn’t be for smaller areas,” Connor says. “There’s no demand for it, we haven’t asked for it, and yet it’s been forced on us.”

Last week the BBC quoted an unnamed Downing Street adviser saying Manchester would be at a competitive disavantage if its citizens didn’t vote yes on 3 May. In Wakefield council leader Peter Box has accused central government of engaging in “Alice in Wonderland politics” for asking people to vote on something that they are not fully informed about. Meanwhile, an anti-mayors campaign group called “Vote No to a Power Freak” has been founded by politicians in Birmingham who claim elected mayors will lead to corruption and a form of dictatorship.

“Concentrating power into the hands of one individual makes it easy for them to do things that mean other people aren’t consulted – unless they are wealthy people or high up in the bureaucracy of the council,” says John Hemming MP, a Liberal Democrat involved with the Vote No to a Power Freak campaign. “It leads towards corruption, because power corrupts – the more power you give people the more corruption there is.

“If you think politics should be a celebrity contest once every four years and otherwise people do what they feel like, then great – vote for it. But if you think politics is about policies and trying to make a society where everybody is taken into account – then oppose it.”

In Liverpool the prevailing attitude is more positive. The city’s council decided to adopt an elected mayor without holding a referendum after being promised a £130m funding package from Whitehall in return, including a £75m economic development grant and a low tax enterprise zone in the north of the city.

“It’s time to embrace mayoral politics,” says Liam Fogarty, a former BBC journalist running as an independent candidate for Liverpool mayor. “It will be different to the sort of politics that we’re used to, I think and I hope. A mayoral figure provides clear visible leadership – there’s no hiding place for a mayor – and I think that makes for a stronger democracy.”

Among the other candidates who will be running for mayor of Liverpool are Herbert Howe, a celebrity hairdresser, and Tony Mulhearn, the former Militant leader who has pledged to reverse all council cuts should he get elected. Phil Redmond, the creator of TV series Brookside, Grange Hill and Hollyoaks, finally ruled himself out of the race last week, after much speculation that he would stand.

“At the moment we have this whole kind of alphabet soup of people taking important decisions that are not visible or held to account – quangos, joint boards, partnerships, multi agency agreements,” Fogarty says. “If the price of accountability is the odd eccentric, I think that’s a fair price to pay.”

Academies and Free Schools

At schools across England, there is a rising tide of anger and concern among parents and teachers. Amid accusations of government bullying, as a result of the 2010 Academies Act, hundreds of schools are being transformed into independent academies that operate outside the control of local authorities. The government says the change, a historic shift away from the comprehensive education system, is for the better. But critics argue it is more about creeping privatisation than improving standards.

Chorlton High School in Greater Manchester is one of many where there is active resistance to the process. Unlike some low ranking schools, which are being forced to become an academy by the Department for Education (DfE), the governors at high achieving Chorlton want to voluntarily convert. They believe that because of the current financial climate, becoming an academy would “best protect the nature and ethos” of the school.

However, parents and community activists have formed a campaign group to oppose the move, which they argue would leave the school unaccountable to local people and could open it up to for-profit providers in the future.

“We’ve got a very good school, why change it for the Tories?” says 55-year-old Mark Krantz, a former teacher whose son studied at Chorlton High. “Without having a ballot of the community which the school serves, they don’t have the right to give our school away and turn it into an academy forever. The school’s been there for over 50 years; how can it be right that a small group of governors decide that they believe this is what should happen?”

As part of its “education revolution”, the coalition wants all schools to have the chance to become academies. Of the 3127 maintained secondary schools in England, as of 1 February, around half – 1580 – had converted to academy status.

Receiving funding directly from central government and not local authorities like comprehensive schools, academies have greater freedom and control over their finances and do not have to follow the national curriculum. Some can be sponsored by charities or businesses, which can choose the headmaster of the school and have a say over what is taught.

Controversial so-called “free schools” can also be set up by groups of parents, teachers, charities, trusts or religious groups, which then become academies and receive central government funding. 24 free schools opened in 2011 and a further 72 are planned to open in September 2012 and beyond.

One, the Phoenix Free School, is set to be established in Oldham next year. Run entirely by ex-military servicemen and women, it will attempt to instil “martial values" in children, using a mix of unqualified and qualified teachers who the school’s ex-army cofounder says will be told to discard “every liberal idea taught in teacher-training courses.”

“Putting troops onto our streets may control the symptoms of social breakdown. But putting troops into our schools would do far more to address the underlying problems,” says Tim Knox, director of right-wing think-tank the Centre for Policy Studies, which is backing the Phoenix school. “In particular, ex-servicemen and women can provide the role models and sense of discipline that is so often lacking in inner city schools.”

But teachers groups are staunchly against the introduction of free schools and academies, questioning the merit of allowing untrained educators and companies with vested interests to exert influence over children.

“For a young person to develop fully, they need to have a really broad rounded curriculum – not something that’s narrow and aimed at one particular job or industry, which is what we’re seeing,” says Avis Gilmore, north west secretary of the National Union of Teachers. “We are opposed to the whole process because we see it is dismantling the state education system.”

There is widespread anxiety that the Academies Act is leading to what is in effect privatisation. Although the coalition has given assurances that it will not open up schools to for-profit companies, it refuses to rule out doing so in the future. Already, firms such as Barclays Bank have sponsored schools – raising questions about what they as businesses stand to benefit.

“It’s anything but privatisation through the back door – they’re parking the tanks on the lawn,” says Alasdair Smith, spokesman for the Anti-Academies Alliance. “They’re blowing local authorities away so lots of schools feel that they have no choice but to become self governing academies or to join chains.

“It’s exactly the same as what’s being done to the NHS. There’s no mandate for this. What you’re seeing are corporate raiders lining up to take over our schools – that’s the bottom line. If you want to improve schools you’ve got to focus on the quality of teaching and learning. It’s not about changing structures and governance.”

The rapid boom in school conversions has proved costly for some councils. In Yorkshire, at least 16 schools tied to private finance initiative deals are applying or have become academies, according to the Yorkshire Post. This could mean the region’s councils are forced to pay millions for schools they no longer run or own.

Last month, governors of Coleraine Park Primary in Tottenham, north London, became the latest in a line of schools forced to become an academy by the DfE following a poor Ofsted report. Coleraine was made to accept sponsorship by the Harris Federation, a charity chaired by Tory peer Lord Harris, which runs a chain of academy schools. The charity is not-for-profit, though notably one of its directors was paid over £240,000 in 2010.

“Coleraine’s governors feel that the Secretary of State has disempowered them without due regard for their role and has in fact bullied them into a decision in a way that nobody wants,” the governors wrote in a disgruntled statement. “We believe that handing it over to the Harris Federation will not necessarily improve standards more than they would have done on the current trajectory.”

Downhills Primary, also in Tottenham, is faced with a similar predicament. Because it has been placed in special measures by schools inspectorate Ofsted, which means it is underperforming, the DfE is able to compel it to become an academy under the powers granted by the Academies Act. The school’s head, Leslie Church, recently resigned after coming into conflict with education secretary Michael Gove – but parents are vowing to fight the conversion in his absence.

“At our school the children are happy, the children are learning and I don’t have concerns,” says Wendy Sugarman, 44, whose eight-year-old son attends Downhills. “There is some really good teaching going on. The Ofsted report was very, very harsh.

“I just think that the whole thing stinks. When you look into the academy chains, it’s all about money. As parents we chose to send our children to the school because it had certain qualities, and I worry that the ethos of the school will be destroyed by an academy chain. I feel that they have no grounding or experience working with Haringey, our borough.”

Fears about the degree to which academy status can improve schools were confounded in February after Birkdale High School in Southport was deemed “inadequate with special measures”, the lowest ranking, four months into its academy status.

“Progress is inadequate and students do not achieve as well as they should,” Ofsted wrote in its report. “The failure of senior leaders to improve teaching quality and tackle inappropriate behaviour has contributed to a far less favourable picture of provision and outcomes than at the time of the previous inspection.”

Inside LulzSec

It was a tight-knit and enigmatic group finding its feet in the febrile world of hacker collectives, where exposing and embarrassing your targets is just as important as protecting your own identity.

But leaked logs from LulzSec's private chatroom – seen, and published today, by the Guardian – provide for the first time a unique, fly-on-the-wall insight into a team of audacious young hackers whose inner workings have until now remained opaque.

LulzSec is not, despite its braggadocio, a large – or even coherent – organisation. The logs reveal how one hacker known as "Sabu", believed to be a 30-year-old security consultant, effectively controls the group of between six and eight people, keeping the others in line and warning them not to discuss what they have done with others; another, "Kayla", provides a large botnet – networks of infected computers controlled remotely – to bring down targeted websites with distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks; while a third, "Topiary", manages the public image, including the LulzSec Twitter feed.

They turn out to be obsessed with their coverage in the media, especially in physical newspapers, sharing pictures of coverage they have received in the Wall Street Journal and other papers. They also engineered a misinformation campaign to make people think they are a US-government sponsored team.

They also express their enmity towards a rival called The Jester – an ex-US military hacker who usually attacks jihadist sites, but has become embroiled in a dispute with Anonymous, WikiLeaks and LulzSec over the leaked diplomatic cables and, more recently, LulzSec's attacks on US government websites, including those of the CIA and the US Senate.

In a further sign that the spotlight is beginning to engulf LulzSec, a lone-wolf hacker managed to temporarily cripple the group's website on Friday morning. Originally thought to be the work of The Jester, an activist, known as Oneiroi, later claimed responsibility for the attack but did not provide an explanation.

The group's ambitions went too far for some of its members: when the group hit an FBI-affiliated site on 3 June, two lost their nerve and quit, fearing reprisals from the US government. After revealing that the two, "recursion" and "devrandom" have quit, saying they were "not up for the heat", Sabu tells the remaining members: "You realise we smacked the FBI today. This means everyone in here must remain extremely secure."

Another member, "storm", then asks worriedly: "Sabu, did you wipe the PBS bd [board] logs?", referring to an attack by LulzSec on PBS on 29 May, when they planted a fake story that the dead rapper Tupac Shakur was alive. If traces remained there of the hackers' identities, that could lead the FBI to them.

"Yes," Sabu says. "All PBS logs are clean." Storm replies: "Then I'm game for some more." Sabu says: "We're good. We got a good team here."

Documenting a crucial five-day period in the group's early development from 31 May to 4 June, the logs – whose authenticity has been separately confirmed through comments made online by LulzSec's members – are believed to have been posted online by a former affiliate named "m_nerva". They contain detailed conversations between the group, who have in recent weeks perpetrated a series of audacious attacks on a range of high-profile targets, including Sony, the CIA, the US Senate, and the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA).

LulzSec threatened m_nerva on Tuesday in a tweet saying "Remember this tweet, m_nerva, for I know you'll read it: your cold jail cell will be haunted with our endless laughter. Game over, child." As an explanation, they said: "They leaked logs, we owned them [took over their computer], one of them literally started crying for mercy". The leaked logs are the ones seen by the Guardian.

The conversations confirm that LulzSec has links with – but is distinct from – the notorious hacker group Anonymous. Sabu, a knowledgeable hacker, emerges as a commanding figure who issues orders to the small, tight-knit team with striking authority.

Despite directing the LulzSec operation, Sabu does not appear to engage in the group's public activity, and warns others to be careful who and how they talk outside their private chatroom. "The people on [popular hacker site] 2600 are not your friends," Sabu warns them on 2 June. "95% are there to social engineer [trick] you, to analyse how you talk. I am just reminding you. Don't go off and befriend any of them."

But the difficulty of keeping their exploits and identities secret proves difficult: Kayla is accused of giving some stolen Amazon voucher codes to someone outside the group, which could lead back to one of their hacks. "If he's talking publicly, Kayla will talk to him," Sabu comments, bluntly.

Topiary, who manages the public image of LulzSec – which centres around its popular Twitter feed, with almost 260,000 followers – also acted previously as a spokesman for Anonymous, once going head-to-head in a live video with Shirley Phelps-Roper of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church, during which he hacked into the church's website mid-interview.

His creative use of language and sharp sense of humour earns praise from his fellow hackers in the chat logs, who tell him he should "write a fucking book". On one occasion, after a successful DDoS attack brings down a targeted web server, Topiary responds in characteristic fashion to the hacker responsible, Storm: "You're like our resident sniper sitting in the crow's nest with a goddamn deck-shattering electricity blast," he writes. "Enemy ships being riddled with holes."

But while LulzSec has a jovial exterior, and proclaims that its purpose is to hack "for the lulz" (internet slang for laughs and giggles), Sabu is unremittingly serious. Domineering and at times almost parental, he frequently reminds the other hackers of the dangers of being tracked by the authorities, who the logs reveal are often hot on their heels.

During one exchange, a hacker named Neuron starts an IAmA (Q and A) session for LulzSec on the website Reddit for "funzies" and to engage with the public. This immediately raises the ire of Sabu, who puts an angry and abrupt halt to it.

"You guys started an IAmA on reddit?" Sabu asks in disbelief. "I will go to your homes and kill you. If you really started an IAmA bro, you really don't understand what we are about here. I thought all this stuff was common knowledge ... no more public apperances [sic] without us organizing it."

He adds: "If you are not familiar with these hostile environments, don't partake in it."

The logs also reveal that the group began a campaign of disinformation around LulzSec. Their goal was to convince – and confuse – internet users into believing a conspiracy theory: that LulzSec is in fact a crack team of CIA agents working to expose the insecurities of the web, headed by Adrian Lamo, the hacker who reported the alleged WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning to the authorities.

"You guys are claiming that LulzSec is a CIA op ... that Anonymous is working to uncover LulzSec ... that Adrian Lamo is at the head of it all ... and people actually BELIEVE this shit?" writes joepie91, another member. "You just tell some bullshit story and people fill in the rest for you."

"I know, it's brilliant," replies Topiary. The attempts did pay off, with some bloggers passing comments such as: "I hypothesize that this is a government 'red team' or 'red cell' operation, aimed at building support for government intervention into internet security from both the public and private sectors."

The group monitors news reports closely, and appears to enjoy – even thrive – on the publicity its actions bring. But the logs show that the members are frustrated by the efforts of a self-professed "patriot-hacker" known as the Jester (or th3j35t3r), whose name is pejoratively referenced throughout.

The Jester is purportedly an ex-US military hacker, and was responsible for high-profile attacks on WikiLeaks prior to the release of US diplomatic cables in November. In recent weeks he has made LulzSec his principal target, describing them as "common bullies". Topiary in turn dismisses The Jester as a "pompous elitism-fuelling blogger" – but the group is always worried that The Jester or his associates are trying to track them down.

The Jester claims LulzSec are motivated by money and points to allegations that the group tried to extort money from Unveillance, a data security company. Similar accusations against LulzSec by two other groups, "Web Ninjas" and "TeaMp0isoN_". Web Ninjas say they want to see LulzSec "behind bars" for committing "insane acts ... in the name of publicity or financial gain or anti-govt agenda".

The logs do not reveal any discussion of extortion between the LulzSec inner circle; nor do they indicate any underlying political motivations for the attacks. But amid the often tense atmosphere depicted in the logs the hackers do occasionally find time to talk politics.

"One of these days we will have tanks on our homes," writes trollpoll, shortly after it emerged the US government was reclassifying hacking as a possible act of war. "Yea, no shit," responds Storm.

"Corporations should realize the internet isn't theirs," adds joepie91. "And I don't mean the physical tubes, but the actual internet ... the community, idea, concept."

"Yes, the utopia is to create a new internet," says trollpoll. "Corporation free."

On Monday 20 June, Sabu's worst fears may have been confirmed when a 19-year-old named Ryan Cleary was arrested in Wickford, Essex and later charged with a cyber attack in connection with a joint Scotland Yard and FBI probe in to a hacking group believed to be LulzSec.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson described the arrest as "very significant", though LulzSec itself was quick to claim Cleary was not a member of the group and had only allowed it to host "legitimate chatrooms" on his server.

"Clearly the UK police are so desperate to catch us that they've gone and arrested someone who is, at best, mildly associated with us," the group tweeted.

An individual named "Ryan" is occasionally referenced by the hackers in the logs, though he himself does not feature and appears to have only a loose association with the group.

Scotland Yard confirmed on Thursday that it was continuing to work with "a range of agencies" as part of an "ongoing investigation into network intrusions and distributed denial of service attacks against a number of international business and intelligence agencies by what is believed to be the same hacking group".

In response to the leaked logs, LulzSec posted a statement on the website pastebin, claiming users named joepie91, Neuron, Storm and trollpoll were "not involved with LulzSec" and rather "just hang out with us".

They added: "Those logs are primarily from a channel called #pure-elite, which is /not/ the LulzSec core chatting channel. #pure-elite is where we gather potential backup/subcrew research and development battle fleet members – ie, we were using that channel only to recruit talent for side-operations."

The group has vowed to continue its actions undeterred. But they now face a determined pincer movement from the FBI, UK police, and other hackers – including The Jester, who has been relentless in his pursuit of them for more than a fortnight. If its members' real identities are revealed, LulzSec may vanish as quickly as it rose to prominence.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/24/inside-lulzsec-chatroom-logs-hackers

Read the full chat logs here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/24/lulzsec-irc-leak-the-full-record

Follow up coverage: New York Times, ZDNet, The Age, Yahoo, Maximum PC, Salon, Thinq, the Register, Washington Post, BGR.

Some Kind of Revolution

On the evening of May 15, a small group of Spanish protesters demonstrated in capital city Madrid against high unemployment and austerity measures across the country. Marching towards the city’s main square, Puerta del Sol, a number of the protesters were involved in a conflict with police officers who tried to prevent them from entering. 24 were arrested and taken to Madrid’s largest police station, where they were interrogated by members of a specialist police información unit and held for 48 hours.

While the activists were in custody, their friends continued to protest at Puerta del Sol, refusing to leave. They felt the arrests had been unjustified, and claimed the police had used heavy-handed tactics that sparked the initial conflict. They posted videos on the internet of the police allegedly 'ambushing' protesters from behind, and used social networks to encourage others to join them in the square.

Before long, the numbers were snowballing at an astonishing rate. Taking inspiration from the uprisings across the Arab world, within a matter of days tens of thousands were in Puerta del Sol. But the demonstration was no longer just about the arrest of the protesters – it was about unemployment, political corruption, the Spanish government’s multi-million Euro bailout of banks at the height of the economic crisis.

Dubbed 15-M by the Spanish media (named after May 15, the first day of the protests), the activists built makeshift tents with tarpaulin and wood, divided themselves up into various working committees, and started drafting proposals for change.

Now thirteen days since the conflict with police that sparked the demonstrations, Puerta del Sol continues to be occupied by thousands of protesters, some of whom say they will stay indefinitely. Below is a detailed account of the structure, organisation, ethos and goals of the camp, featuring insight from some of those behind the movement…

Inside the Camp

The camp at Puerta del Sol functions like a micro-society. Food and water is provided for free, donated by sympathetic local businesses; there are fully functioning kitchens; toilets; a media and communications tent; a children’s nursery; and even a library.

It is divided up into six key working committees, each tasked with a specific area: politics, economics, education and culture, social policy and migration, environment, and health. Every committee has a ballot box outside, into which people are encouraged to deposit suggestions for change. Every suggestion is looked at and discussed, with conclusions taken forward to a meeting with heads of each respective committee. After more long and gruelling discussion, the conclusions are then eventually brought before a general assembly – during which the entire camp (or anyone else for that matter) is able to vote on each commission’s suggested proposals.

There is no distinct leader or figurehead; all decisions are made by consensus, meaning every single person has to be in agreement. If one person does not agree, the group will simply keep discussing until they form a compromise and are able to move forward. The meetings often take hours, with the activists working through the night, debating, discussing and pouring over the hundreds – perhaps thousands – of suggestions they receive daily through the ballot boxes.

“The leadership is our assembly, where the decisions are taken by consensus,” said one of the activists, Juan, 22. “Many people think that this doesn’t work – the reality is we are where we are because of this consensus.”

Ethos

A key element to the success and growth of the camp seems to have stemmed from its rigorous organisation and serious ethos. The media-savvy organisers are keen to discourage alcohol consumption in the square, because they feel it could be used to negatively portray them as irresponsible young people, just looking for a good time and an excuse to get drunk and party.

In order to counter any negative perceptions, they keep the square meticulously clean and actively encourage pacifism and non-violence. Volunteers sweep the area almost constantly and remarkably most people adhere to the no-alcohol rule – at least until well after dark.

While most of the key activists in the square are young – between around 20-35 – there are also many older people spending time at the camp. Its rigorous organisation and serious ethos seems to have won the demonstrators the respect of many older members of the Madrid community.

One 66-year-old man, Manuel Ferreira, described how the scene reminded him of Paris in 1968 – though he said it was “more peaceful” due to less conflict with the authorities. Ferreira also said he believed the Madrid protests were of greater historical significance, something he attributed to the way internet technology today can propagate movements and make them global within such a short space of time. “I think I am living a new world order,” he said. “I am sure it will spread.”

Policing

The peaceful nature of the camp must to some degree be attributed to the police’s response, for they stay behind barriers to one side of the square. So long as Puerta del Sol is full of families, children and older people, the activists believe the authorities will be likely to stay away. Only a few days after the protests began, the police tried to block off the square – but this only encouraged more demonstrators to come out into the streets. As such, the authorities appear to have realised that their presence within the camp only antagonises protesters, and so have been forced to simply let them get on with it.

“They saw that they could not control this with police,” said Beatriz Pérez, a 29-year-old spokesperson for the movement. “So I think they took the opposite strategy: to let the movement be pacifistic, because we are a pacifistic, non-violent movement. They cannot move us out, so the police have no duty here.”

Political leanings

One of the most striking things about the camp at Puerta del Sol, aside from the size and scale of it, is the diverse array of political perspectives represented. There are people within the camp who would class themselves as radicals – anarchists, socialists and anti-capitalists – but the movement itself appears to be much broader. At its core, it is pro-democracy, united by a collective disdain for the current state of things. It is not driven by a desire to demolish the current political and economic system; rather, it aspires only to change and reform it. “We are not against the system,” said Juan. “We want to change the system – so that the people can be better represented.”

(N.B. There is no doubt that many within the movement want to see a shift away from the capitalist economic model, but that is something they do not want to talk about at this stage. They feel that they have to take one step at a time – and, for now, they simply want their voices to be heard.)

Goals and demands

The movement’s central demands are fairly modest. They want to have a referendum on electoral reform, and call for the dissolution of the Spanish parliament’s second chamber, which they believe is a waste of time and money. They also want to see an end to a policy of ‘salaries for life’ for Spanish politicians, and demand greater media freedom. The media in Spain, they say, is too heavily influenced by the political and religious right, with ownership of the most powerful broadcasters and newspapers concentrated in the hands of a few. The movement also believes that there is a major problem with corrupt politicians, and have produced a list of those they claim should be investigated for taking money in return for favours (in some cases, allegedly, from large Spanish corporations).

A key aim is simply to make the current system more representative. They feel that neither of Spain’s two main political parties – the Socialist Party or the Partido Popular (People's Party) – can offer that substantive change that is required. This feeling was summed up last Sunday, May 22, on the eve of local elections across the country – as people at the camp simply did not care about the outcome.

“In the end, no matter the colour of the party, they all end up doing exactly the same thing,” said Raul Bartolome, 38. “If you listen to politics here, all the time they are just yelling at each other about doing nothing at all and, in the end, they just keep on doing whatever they want to – no matter what you vote them in for.”

But in spite of the bleak cynicism about the current political system, people at the camp are intensely optimistic about the future. They believe that their model of organisation could spread across Spain and beyond, and the prospect of it happening does not look like a mere pipe dream. At the time of writing, in more than 60 Spanish cities there were similar protests taking place, with few of them showing signs that they were about to lose any steam.

Many of the demonstrators think this is the start of something that could even be global. When speaking to them you can sense their hope and see it in their eyes; there is an energy around the camp that almost defies description. They feel that they are part of some kind of epochal shift from something old to something new – and none of them is willing to let the prospect of change slip from their grasp. “We want to do the same thing in every neighbourhood in Madrid and across Spain,” said Bartolome. “I really think we’re living some kind of revolution.”

Prospects and staying power

For the organisers at Puerta del Sol, occupation of the square represents only the first step in what they foresee as a long and probably gruelling political battle. Given the degree to which the movement in Spain has taken off over the course of the last two weeks, it theoretically carries enough weight to transform Spanish politics. The crucial factor is whether the protesters will be able to maintain the momentum that has carried them this far. By forging formal organisational links with other groups across the country they will carry substantial clout, and the more unified they are the more likely they will be to force the Spanish political establishment to make concessions.

But in the coming days they will face their biggest challenge to date as pressure mounts to evict protesters in squares across the country – particularly in Madrid, the heart and soul of the movement. Yesterday Spanish newspapers reported that regional authorities were demanding the central government take action against the occupation, while in Barcelona police used brutal violence in a botched attempt to evict protesters from the city’s main square, Plaça Catalunya.

The Spanish government is also faced with a serious problem, in that it is dealing with no ordinary demonstration or protest. What is taking place within Spain at present is part of a wider narrative that police repression will simply not be able quell. A historic social and political shift appears to be taking place as an entire generation of young people attempt to take control of their own collective destiny – both in Europe and across the Arab world. And while there much to contrast between, for instance, the context of the uprisings in Egypt and what is happening in Spain, the fundamentals are the same. It is about a craving for greater democracy, for choice and, in essence, for a better, more equal and egalitarian society.

At this stage it is almost impossible to predict what the fate of the 15-M movement will be. But among demonstrators at Puerta del Sol there is little doubt who will prevail. “They do not represent us!” they cry in unison. “The people united will never be defeated!"

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/some-kind-of-revolution

"If I Stop, They Win"

While in Spain last week covering the protest that has been taking place in Madrid’s main square, Puerta del Sol, I spent a great deal of time speaking to some of the activists and demonstrators whose action has sparked a wave of similar protests in more than 60 cities across the country.

It all began on May 15, when police arrested 24 political activists who were marching through the city, as part of a protest against mass unemployment and austerity measures.

The arrests sparked more protest, and numbers snowballed. Within a few days a handful of around 100 protesters had become a mass demonstration of tens of thousands.

By chance, in Puerta del Sol I met one of the 24 activists who had been arrested on May 15. He was handing out pamphlets that detailed his and his fellow protesters’ ordeal while in police detention. Though he did not want to give his name for fear of police reprisal, he agreed to give me a short interview.

The activist, a 22-year-old sociology student at a Madrid university, spoke about the harsh treatment he faced while in police custody. He detailed what he believed could be next for the movement, and gave a fascinating insight in to the origins of a demonstration that has since sparked protest across Europe – in London, Italy and Greece.

Audio of the interview along with an edited transcript can be found below by clicking "read more".

Inside the Spanish Revolution

There are thousands of people in Spain right now who feel that they are on the cusp of something very important – a revolution, even. The streets of Madrid are thick with a sense of optimism and hope, crammed with protesters of all ages carrying placards and posters, many scrawled with slogans such as "They do not represent us!" and "In defence of our dreams!".

The city's main square has become a tent city, occupied by groups inspired by uprisings across the Arab world. Everywhere you look, there are banners demanding change and "real democracy".

No one had seen it coming, not even the activists. What started as a fringe protest against rising unemployment and the Spanish government's multibillion-euro bank bailout escalated after several activists were arrested by police and held for 48 hours.

A demonstration against the arrests was organised in the city's main square, Puerta del Sol, and numbers soon snowballed when word got out over the internet. What began as a group of fewer than a hundred activists reached an estimated 50,000 within less than six days.

The protesters whose arrests had sparked the initial demonstration were released and immediately returned to the square. By the time they arrived, the demonstration was no longer just about their treatment at the hands of the police. It was about government corruption, lack of media freedom, bank bailouts, unemployment, austerity measures and privatisation.

"We cannot find a job, we cannot find a house, we cannot find health from the state," says Alejandro Jalón, a 20-year-old student. "I am here because I think we can change something."

The young people's sense of optimism is sincere. The protesters at Puerta del Sol are interested only in action, not rhetoric. In the square, they built a makeshift campsite, including everything from a children's nursery and a library to a kitchen offering free food donated by local businesses.

In the space of a few days they had created separate working commissions to form proposals for change to current government policy. A social and migration commission would look at immigration policy, the health commission would focus on how to deprivatise health-care services. Other commissions were formed to handle politics, education, the economy and the environment.

Among the camp's immediate demands were calls for electoral reform, the dissolution of the Spanish parliament's second chamber, and an end to a much-despised policy of "salaries for life" for politicians.

The movement itself has no single leader or figurehead; all decisions are made by consensus at general assemblies, held twice daily. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, attend the meetings, and no decision is taken until every single person is in agreement.

The meetings are long and laborious – occasionally lasting more than four hours at a time – but seem so far to have been successful.

"The leadership is our assembly, where the decisions are taken by consensus," says Nadia Moreno, 29. "Many people think that this doesn't work – the reality is we are where we are after six days because of this consensus."

Although the movement is driven by highly political young people between the ages of roughly 20 and 35, a large cross-section of Spanish society appears to support the occupation of the square. There is a festive atmosphere, with families, music and workshops of every kind imaginable taking place throughout the day. Everyone who attends is encouraged to submit suggestions, using ballot boxes, to each of the commissions. All of these are later scrutinised, tabled and debated.

The organisers say that they think the huge success of the camp, which has since spread to more than 60 other Spanish cities, stems in part from what has taken place in Tunisia and Egypt.

"Egypt and Tunisia was a very important catalyst for the movement in Spain," says Beatriz Pérez, a 29-year-old spokeswoman for the movement who also acknowledges the influence of the recent UK student protests. "I think the people are in the street because they have hope – that's the most important thing."

The feeling of hope is such that many at the camp believe it could be the start of a social and political revolution. It is the first sign, they say, that the uprisings across the Arab world are about to spread across Europe.

Manuel Ferreira, a 66-year-old retired engineer, says the scenes at Puerta del Sol remind him of the student protests in France during the summer of 1968. "It's the same war against capital, against power, against politicians, against the establishment and so on," he explains. "It [the Puerta del Sol protest] is more significant, because through Facebook and the internet, this movement is worldwide . . . I think I am living a new world order."

The start of the demonstrations coincided with regional elections across the country, which the right-leaning Partido Popular (People's Party) won by a landslide.

At one point last week, an electoral committee assembled by the government declared the camp "illegal". But even though there were strong rumours of an impending police "clean-up" operation, and seven riot vans gathered at one side of the square, protesters have remained at all times in a defiant spirit.

"If they take us from the square tomorrow, the only thing that they will get is that they will make us stronger and we will come back stronger," says 22-year-old Juan Martín. "We want a new society. This one doesn't work any more."

This article originally appeared at: http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/05/puerto-square-spanish-work

Dr Thornton and the University of Nottingham Saga

A professor was suspended earlier this month after calling for a public enquiry into alleged serious malpractice perpetrated by senior management at the University of Nottingham. Dr Rod Thornton, a lecturer in international security and terrorism, presented an 112 page paper at the British International Studies Association Conference in Manchester last month detailing a series of failings and subsequent cover-ups he claims took place at the university three years ago, after the arrest of a postgraduate student and a member of university staff, both Muslim, on "terrorism related charges.”

In response to his suspension, a call for his immediate reinstatement was published in the Guardian by a significant list of influential academics from India to America, headed by Noam Chomsky and including Paul Gilroy, Dr Karma Nabulsi, Charles Tripp and Neera Chandhoke. Meanwhile yesterday around 100 demonstrators gathered in Nottingham to protest against the university's treatment of Thornton, with a campaign around the case now generating national interest.

The saga began in May 2008, when social sciences research student Rizwaan Sabir and his friend, Hicham Yezza, were arrested and detained for six days after a copy of an al-Qaeda Training Manual (AQTM) was found on Yezza’s office computer by a member of the University’s staff. The AQTM is recommended reading on most terrorism courses, and was also available through the University’s library. Sabir, who had obtained it as part of his research for an MA dissertation around the role of al-Qaeda in Iraq, sent the file along with two other articles (from the academic journals Foreign Affairs and the Middle East Policy Council Journal) to Yezza by email.

Yezza worked in the University’s modern languages department as the principal school administrator, and in order to avoid paying print costs Sabir had sent his friend the articles and asked if he would print them from his office for free. Several months later, a member of staff used Yezza’s computer and discovered the dubiously titled AQTM (which was incidentally given its name by the US Department of Justice; it was originally titled, Military Studies in the Jihad against the Tyrants). The concerned member of staff promptly reported the find to senior members within the department; the university’s Registrar, Dr Paul Greatrix, was informed, and the police were subsequently called in to investigate.

Greatrix was later quoted in a police statement as saying that there was no “valid reason whatsoever for the documents [found on Yezza’s computer] to exist” and that the AQTM was “illegal”. It was also apparent from a document given by police to Sabir’s lawyers that comments made by Bernard McGuirk, a Professor of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory at the university, were integral to the investigation. According to a police note released under the Freedom of Information Act, McGuirk had told police the AQTM was not a “legitimate document”. Thornton claims that on this basis alone police arrested both Yezza and Sabir, who were detained under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act on suspicion of being involved in the commission, preparation and instigation of an act of terrorism. During their six days of incarceration, the university did not contact the two men or offer them any support.

The day after the arrests, the university prepared an exclusion letter for Sabir which set out to ban him “from all parts of the university with immediate effect”. When Sabir was released without charge, however, the expulsion was never issued. Specialist counter terror police had conducted a meticulous search of Sabir’s family home, which involved all of his family – including his elderly grandmother – being forced to vacate for 24 hours. But after a "bag and tag" search, all that the police discovered was an array of academic texts including works on Nietzsche, postmodernism and educational research. They had failed to find any connection between Sabir and Yezza and terrorism.

Even two months after the arrest of the pair, though, Greatrix continued to reiterate that the AQTM was “illegal”. In one letter to Sabir, dated August 4th 2008, he conflated the downloading of the AQTM with the downloading of child pornography. Both, he said, were available on the internet but were “still nevertheless illegal”.

This clearly frustrated Thornton, an expert on terrorism studies. He knew that the AQTM was available through the university's own library and was considered “required reading” on any terrorism course; to compare it to child porn was “unconscionable” and “malevolent”, he wrote in his paper. Thorton also felt part of the problem stemmed from the fact that the AQTM was misleadingly titled – by the US government – as it contains no information about how to build bombs or other weapons. “The al-Qaeda Training Manual is a mainstream student source,” he wrote. “It is in no way illegal, illegitimate, seditious or extremist.”

But he was most disturbed at how quickly the university’s management had gone to the police. Despite what the university would later claim, Thornton alleges that the Registrar, Greatrix, did not carry out a "risk assessment" in accordance with university guidelines. Greatrix should have – but ostensibly did not – consult first with senior academic staff and with experts in the field of terrorism before going to the police.

Thornton also suggests that a culture of Islamophobia was a key factor in the arrests. At one point in his paper he recounts the comments of a police officer, made during one lengthy interview about the suspicions surrounding Sabir and Yezza. Thornton writes that, seemingly exasperated, the officer let out a sigh and said: “This would not be happening if the student had been blonde, Swedish and at Oxford University”.

In the aftermath of the incident, Thornton tried to raise the issues he had with the handling of the case internally. He claims that he “stopped stories running in the media” and that he “[gave] senior management at the University of Nottingham every chance to carry out their own investigations and to take the necessary actions.” He also says that he wrote to the government minister then responsible for universities; went to the English universities funding body, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE); and appealed to the Parliamentary Ombudsman, whose role it is to oversee the activities of public institutions. But all of this yielded no response. Unless universities are engaged in financial impropriety, he concluded, they are “allowed to be completely autonomous and accountable to no-one.”

With no other avenue to pursue, Thornton decided to “go public”. Shortly after he did so, by releasing his paper in late April, he was suspended from his post at the University of Nottingham with immediate effect. In the days following his suspension, Sabir, now a doctoral researcher at the University of Strathclyde, helped organise the open letter in support of his former lecturer, and is working actively with a campaign group to raise the profile of the case.

Sabir, speaking on the phone from Nottingham, described Thornton as "talented, brave and courageous" and said his suspension was "totally absurd".

He added: “Because the university has failed to investigate these matters internally over the last three years, no other option exists now but to have a public, independent enquiry through which the issues can be resolved. Until a public enquiry is undertaken we can’t ever bring closure to this.

“They have failed in their duty of care to me. They have failed in their duty of care to Hitcham [Yezza], and they are now failing in their duty of care to all other staff and students that have spoken up for justice to be done at this university.”

A spokesperson for the University of Nottingham refused on policy grounds to confirm or deny whether Thornton had been suspended, and stated that at all times the University has acted in an ethical, transparent and fair manner.

“The fact remains that the article produced by Dr Thornton is highly defamatory of a number of his colleagues," the spokesperson said. "Academic freedom is a cornerstone of this University, but it is not the freedom to defame your co-workers and attempt to destroy their reputations as honest, fair and reasonable individuals. The University rejects utterly the baseless accusations Dr Thornton makes about members of staff.

“It is important to remember that the original incident, almost three years ago, was triggered by the discovery of an al-Qaeda Training Manual on the computer of an individual who was neither an academic member of staff, nor a student, and in a School where one would not expect to find such material being used for research purposes. The individual concerned was an administrative member of staff with no academic reason to possess such a document. The University became concerned and decided, after a risk assessment, that those concerns should be conveyed to the police as the appropriate body to investigate.”

Abuse of process?

It seems clear that with each side accusing the other of wrongdoing, the only way forward can now be an independent public enquiry into Thornton's allegations. If the university believes it has conducted itself in an ethical, transparent and fair manner, then it should encourage a full and thorough investigation into not only its handling of the original Sabir and Yezza incident, but also its dismissal of Thornton, which in itself raises serious questions. What cannot be in dispute at this point is that two wholly innocent individuals were arrested three years ago on spurious grounds, and a highly regarded lecturer has now been suspended for citing numerous significant, evidence-based instances of alleged malpractice at the highest levels of the institution. If in either of these cases there has been a cover-up, or an abuse of process and power, it is paramount that we find out about it. No publicly funded institution should be permitted to function behind closed doors, and the University of Nottingham is no exception.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ryan-gallagher/two-arrests-suspension-accusations-of-islamophobia-nottingham-university-m

Bradley Manning and the Stench of US Hypocrisy

Earlier this week, the soldier accused of leaking thousands of confidential documents to WikiLeaks, Bradley Manning, was handed an additional 22 charges as part of his ongoing court martial process. The 23-year-old, who has been in solitary confinement for more than seven months, stands accused of computer fraud, theft of public records and willfully communicating classified information to a person not entitled to receive it. He now also finds himself faced with a rare charge known as "aiding the enemy" – a capital offence for which he could face the death penalty.

The revelation will no doubt have come as a blow to Manning, although given his ongoing treatment it is likely he already feared the worst. Made to endure strict conditions under a prevention of injury order against the advice of military psychiatrists, he is treated like no other prisoner at the 250-capacity Quantico Brig detention facility in Virginia. Despite that he is yet to be convicted of any crime, for the past 218 consecutive days he has been made to live in a cell 6ft wide and 12ft long, without contact with any other detainees. He is not allowed to exercise or have personal effects in his cell, and for the one hour each day he is allowed free he is taken to an empty room where he is allowed to walk, but not run.

One of the few people to have visited Manning, David House, spoke yesterday of how he had witnessed his friend go from a "bright-eyed intelligent young man" to someone who at times has appeared "catatonic" with "very high difficulty carrying on day to day conversation". House drew similarities with the case of Bobby Dellelo, an American prisoner who developed psychosis after a lengthy period in solitary confinement conditions similar to Manning's. "For me this has been like watching a really good friend succumb to an illness or something," he said. "I think that Bradley Manning is being punished this way because the US government wants him to crack ahead of his trial."

While there has been widespread and well publicised condemnation of issues surrounding Manning's detainment, his conditions have failed to improve. In fact, things may have got worse, not better, for the Oklahoma-born soldier who is incidentally entitled to UK citizenship through his Welsh mother. Just two days ago, for instance, only 24 hours after having been told he now faces a capital charge, Manning was made to strip naked in his cell for no apparent reason. According to David Coombs, Manning's lawyer, the soldier was then left without clothes for seven hours. When the wake-up call sounded for the detainees at 5am, in an act of forced humiliation, Manning was made to stand naked at the front of his cell.

The incident, described as "inexcusable and without justification" by Coombs, is symbolic of the entire twisted saga: a gross injustice on a nauseating scale. We must bear in mind, of course, that Manning allegedly leaked military files because he, according to unverified internet chat logs, saw wrongdoing and had no other course of action because his superiors told him they "didn't want to hear any of it". He did not want to be complicit in war crimes, and felt that by leaking the files he could prompt "worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms".

In recent days and weeks the US government has condemned human rights abuses and repression in almost every country across the Middle East – yet at a prison within its own borders it sanctions the persecution, alleged psychological torture and debasement of a young soldier who appears to have made a principled choice in the name of progress.

"Government whistleblowers are part of a healthy democracy and must be protected from reprisal," said Barack Obama in 2008. But the stench of his hypocrisy is no longer bearable. It is time, now more than ever, that Bradley Manning received the justice he so clearly deserves.

This article appeared originally at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2011/mar/04/bradley-manning-us-wikileaks-hypocrisy

Paypal and Bradley Manning

Yesterday the online payment company Paypal froze the account of an organisation raising money for Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of leaking confidential military documents to WikiLeaks. Since 2006 the San Francisco-based organisation, Courage to Resist, has been using Paypal to raise funds for “military objectors” who have refused to participate in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The group says there were no issues, however, until supporters were recently encouraged to donate to help fund a "Stand with Bradley Manning" campaign.

Late last year, Paypal made the news after they similarly froze the account of WikiLeaks. A short statement from the company at the time said that WikiLeaks had violated its Acceptable Use Policy, and pointed to a clause stating “our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity.”

This time, according to Courage to Resist, Paypal – whose annual revenue in 2010 was $3.4bn (£2.1bn) – made no reference to any clause in its terms of service. Instead, they restricted the group’s account pending “organisational verification.” Paypal executives then asked questions about “the intended use of the funds being solicited in support of Bradley Manning” and requested details of purchases made with funds received via Paypal. Eventually, the executives concluded that the appropriate course of action was to freeze the Courage to Resist account.

They were not legally obliged to do so. Rather, the decision was taken on the basis of an “internal policy” that they refused to divulge. As a private company, Paypal are of course entitled to shut down accounts as they see fit. But it is a problem when a company of such size and influence chooses to adopt an overtly political stance on an explosive, controversial issue like Bradley Manning with little explanation.

After Paypal’s decision was publicised yesterday morning, an internet backlash ensued. Within a few hours, 10,000 people had signed a petition calling for them to reinstate the Courage to Resist account. Likely realising they had a public relations disaster on their hands, Paypal promptly obliged. “This decision had nothing to do with WikiLeaks,” they said in a statement. “We have decided to lift the temporary restriction placed on their [Courage to Resist's] account.”

Yet the implications of their initial decision remain highly significant, and had there not been a huge backlash the Courage to Resist account would still be frozen. It is a serious matter of concern that by refusing to facilitate payments to a support fund raising finances for Bradley Manning’s legal aid – albeit temporarily – Paypal participated in what equates essentially to an act of political repression.

The question is: who next? If Bradley Manning is a policy problem for Paypal, technically every person accused of a crime is at risk of having their account frozen, especially if politics is involved. A quick Google search reveals prisoner support funds for animal rights activists, G20 protestors and even former Guantanamo Bay prisoners, all using Paypal to raise money. If the company is to take issue with Manning, then surely by extension of their own logic it is only a matter of time before they clamp down on others.

There is no going back for Paypal now. By adopting what appears to have been a political stance on an issue that should be far beyond their remit as an online payment provider, they have shown themselves to be cut from the same cloth as draconian forces at the highest echelons of American power. They have engaged in what it is difficult to conceive of as anything other than a kind of corporate McCarthyism, backpedalling only after thousands of voices boomed a chorus of discontent.

Ten days ago, US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton gave a speech in which she condemned political censorship in China, Iran, Burma, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, Tunisia and Syria. Though as this latest revelation in the Bradley Manning saga illustrates, Clinton could do worse than look closer to home for pertinent examples of repression. “Our commitment to internet freedom is a commitment to the rights of people,” she said at the time, “and we are matching that with our actions.” In the wake of their experiences with Paypal, it is very much doubtful the Stand with Bradley Manning campaign would agree.

This article originally appeared at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/paypal%E2%80%99s-corporate-mccarthyism

Obama and Wikileaks

It was more or less confirmed on Saturday that a secret grand jury has been assembled in America to consider espionage charges against Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange. Last month a subpoena was issued to Twitter by a court in the state of Virginia, under section 2703(d) of the Patriot Act, demanding the website hand over account details of individuals associated with the organisation. The court, it appears, is attempting to establish evidence that Assange colluded with the young man allegedly responsible for leaking thousands of classified U.S. government files, Bradley Manning.

The U.S. could not successfully prosecute Assange merely as the publisher of the documents (though some members of congress want to amend legislation so they can do so in the future). But if they can prove Assange – or others involved with Wikileaks – conspired with Manning to obtain and release them, then lawyers believe the prosecution could have a case.

The most striking thing about the U.S. attempt to prosecute Assange is the intense fervor with which the Obama administration is scheming to bring him down. They are exerting a serious, time consuming, money draining campaign to castigate him – and some of his colleagues – by any possible means. Only three years ago Obama was elected under the banner of ‘change’. Yet here he is, mobilising George W. Bush’s Patriot Act in an attempt to imprison a man who is merely practicing principles Obama has himself repeatedly preached.

At a speech delivered in September of last year, for instance, Obama puffed out his chest and said with great conviction:

The arc of human progress has been shaped by individuals with the freedom to assemble; by organizations outside of government that insisted upon democratic change; and by free media that held the powerful accountable.

[...] experience shows us that history is on the side of liberty – that the strongest foundation for human progress lies in open economies, open societies, and open governments. To put it simply: democracy, more than any other form of government, delivers for our citizens.

[...] Open society supports open government, but cannot substitute for it. There is no right more fundamental than the ability to choose your leaders and determine your destiny. Make no mistake: the ultimate success of democracy in the world won’t come because the United States dictates it; it will come because individual citizens demand a say in how they are governed.

The speech was a good one, full of fist-pumping, high-minded talk about the ‘free internet’, ‘open government’, 'liberty' and ‘democracy’. As it reached its conclusion, Obama gained a rapturous applause. Yet again he had illustrated his wonderful and emotive oratory skills.

But when the emotion of the moment subsided, when calm resumed, his words remained mere words. The uncomfortable truth is that three years since his election as the saviour of America, in many ways Obama has only talked the talk – he has not walked the walk.

If the president claims to be a true advocate of open government, liberty and democracy, then serious questions must be asked of his integrity. 23-year-old Bradley Manning has been in solitary confinement in a Virginia prison for five months without so much as a preliminary hearing, a secret grand jury appears to be meticulously gathering evidence in an attempt to prosecute Julian Assange . . . while it has now come to the stage that American journalists are hesitant to support Wikileaks for fear of a government reprimand. All of this has taken place on Obama’s watch. Certainly a strange picture of ‘liberty’.

With his Wikileaks response, Obama has proven himself – although not as the redeemer of the American Dream, or as a great proponent of ‘change’. Instead he has proven that power has eroded his values, and that he has allowed himself to become a victim of an American political system that appears to be both diseased and contagious. As Commander and Chief it may be unrealistic to expect Obama to have embraced the actions of Wikileaks with open arms; however, this does not mean the only option for him was to bring down the iron fist.

If only, somehow, Obama could be made to live up to all his grand rhetoric – rhetoric that made people around the world believe he really was different. Like on January 20th 2009, at the rousing conclusion of his inauguration speech in Washington, when he took a moment to look out towards the future. “Let it be said by our children's children,” he said, “that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter”.

Now almost two years to the day since that historic speech, Obama has both turned back and faltered. At this particular juncture, history will remember him as the man who had ideals – but then let them slip. Perhaps we are naive to have expected anything else . . . As the Obama administration’s handling of the Wikileaks saga has in recent months illustrated, ‘change we can believe in’ was just a slogan, after all.

This article appeared originally at: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ryan-gallagher/secret-grand-jury-against-assange-is-not-change-we-can-believe-in