England's Far Right

In towns and cities across England, there are small pockets of men who are filled with seething rage. Threatening acts of violence, they pose for photographs holding guns and discuss potential targets on Internet forums. Despite what you might think, these men are not Islamic jihadists who sympathise with the terror group al-Qaida. They are “white nationalists” – extreme right-wing neo-Nazis who are growing increasingly bold and volatile.

Since 2010, far-right groups in the UK have become more and more fragmented. The British National Party (BNP) had enjoyed a small growth in popularity in the years prior to 2010. But the birth of the anti-Islamism organisation the English Defence League (EDL) in 2009 gradually drew many away from the BNP and towards grassroots street protest. Today, both the BNP and the EDL are in decline – though not because those on the extreme right have changed their views. The BNP now accepts black and Asian members, and the EDL has formed a “Jewish division.” For many on the hard right, who are devoutly racist and anti-Semitic, that is intolerable. As a result, small factions are choosing to take matters into their own hands.

“They are turning not to a popular Islamophobia so much as to real neo-Nazi extreme right wing,” says Dr Paul Jackson, director of the University of Northampton’s radicalism and new media unit. “Because the main EDL social movement itself has really lost its momentum, it has increasingly created the opportunity for these new groups to develop in localised pockets.”

Calling themselves names like the Infidels and the Combined Ex Forces, the splinter groups frequently exhibit hatred of anyone non-white – particularly Asians. Based across England, with hubs in Liverpool and Greater Manchester, some members have strong ties to the neo-Nazi National Front, which became notorious in the 1970s for demanding that all “coloured immigrants” be shipped out of Britain.

In previous decades other extreme far-right collectives, like the so-called Aryan Strike Force or Combat 18, have perpetrated and plotted acts of violence. However, the Internet has helped the latest incarnations of these far-right groups spread their ideas and build networks in new ways, according to Dr Jackson. “Disaffected people are vulnerable to it,” he says. “It’s so easily available online and can have quite a strong impact.”

One of the most active groups in England is the North West faction of the Infidels. The shadowy group says it is made up of “right-wing patriots, loyalists, and nationalists” who will “stand with anyone willing to fight the enemies of Britain and for the right of its indigenous people.” The Infidels say they are against “the Islamic takeover of parts of the UK,” multiculturalism, immigration and “the militant left.”

A Facebook page created by members of the Liverpool and Wirral branch of the Infidels displays a clear commitment to violence. The page, “liked” by more than 500 people, contains warnings about impending “civil unrest” alongside images of petrol bombs and men wielding rifles. Last month the group posted an image of the Houses of Parliament exploding in flames below the message “one day you lot will pay!” The group has also posted the home addresses of people apparently deemed legitimate targets for future vigilante attacks, such as, in one case, two Asian Rochdale councillors.

Last year, the government helped launch a campaign called Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks (MAMA), designed to encourage the reporting of hate crimes. Fiyaz Mughal, the campaign’s director, says he has recently witnessed an “unbelievable” increase in anti-Muslim sentiment.

“It’s shocking because we’ve started to see over the last six months in particular is people being more violent in their threats online,” Mughal says. “It’s moving towards a much more violent and extreme outcome.”

MAMA is receiving anything between ten and 25 reports of anti-Muslim extremism every day, with specific “cluster points” in Glasgow, West Yorkshire, West Midlands, Luton, Greater Manchester, and Derbyshire. The organisation says it has managed to get seven people convicted for spreading hatred online, with other cases involving EDL sympathisers in Luton ongoing. But according to Mughal, the police are still sometimes behind the curve when it comes to the far-right threat – with their resources focused more heavily on looking for potential terrorists among radical Islamist groups.

Despite that criticism, the government insists it is focused on tackling right-wing extremism. “The government condemns extremism in all its forms,” a Home Office spokesperson says. “There is no place for violence, criminality and disorder in our society and police have a range of powers to tackle it.”

The threat of serious far-right violence is certainly genuine. This was affirmed tragically in Norway on 22 July last year, when Anders Breivik launched a rampage that resulted in the deaths of 77 people. Breivik justified his massacre by blaming multiculturalism and politicians who had allowed high-levels of immigration. Among some members of the extreme-right in England, Breivik is seen as a hero – a soldier who performed an act of war they would like to see repeated elsewhere.

Last month, Walsall-based kickboxer Darren Clifft started a petition to free Breivik from prison, describing the convicted killer’s massacre as “self defence” and “inspirational.” 23-year-old Clifft, who is affiliated with the Infidels, posted pictures of himself doing a Nazi salute while wearing a Ku Klux Klan outfit (see image above). In May he wrote that he had been dreaming about becoming a suicide bomber, in one post on Facebook writing: “I've had these dreams about blowing people up for weeks.”

In other cases, EDL members have posed in photographs wielding guns and threatening bomb attacks. In April, Kenny Holden, a 30-year-old man from South Shields, warned that he was going to set off a “pipe bomb” in an Asian area of the city. He said that if he could obtain a gun, he was ready to go on a shooting spree “Olso style” – an apparent reference to Breivik. Holden was later arrested and charged with two counts of sending offensive or menacing messages.

The controversy, however, is not only consigned to a fringe element of the far right. Prominent EDL supporter Michael Wood, who last year co-founded the British Freedom Party in a bid to challenge the BNP, caused upset following comments made about Breivik. In the aftermath of the massacre, he wrote on Twitter: “Couldn't care less that #Breivik went radio rental on leftist youths. He knew they would grow up to betray Norway #EDL."

What did Wood mean exactly? “Breivik was a Frankenstein borne out of Scandinavian liberal attitudes towards mass immigration and the integration of Muslim migrants,” he says in an interview conducted by email. “What his attack has done, is forced Norwegians to rethink the course they're taking and to question whether Breivik has a point about immigration and the future that awaits Norway – in my view he is right on several points. So when I say that I don't care, I mean that it is not my responsibility to apologise for Anders Breivik, it is the EU and the Norwegian leftists who should apologise.”

The viewpoint held by Wood is one shared by many of those on the far right. The position is that Breivik was somehow forced into his act of mass violence by the multiculturalism espoused by liberal politicians. On the far-right Internet forum StormFront, UK-based users commented after Breivik’s attacks that his victims, some of whom were as young as 14, were “not innocent” because they were political activists who would eventually go on to “encourage more and more Islamists into their country.” One user, named NickGrifford, wrote: “Many will suffer before the end, but the many have brought it upon themselves.”

Given this level of sympathy for Breivik’s actions, the obvious question is whether a single “lone wolf” attack from a far-right fanaticist is possible on British shores. The heightening anti-Muslim sentiment, paired with the growth of a number of factions seemingly willing to perpetrate acts of violence, mean it is alarmingly difficult to rule out.

“Although we haven’t seen any major terrorist attacks from the far-right yet, part of the thing about social media is that it enables them to encourage and communicate with each other – to engineer things to happen,” says Matthew Collins, a researcher for Hope Not Hate, a campaign group that monitors far-right extremism. “Some of these groups – they’re little more than racist drug gangs. And that’s exactly what makes them so dangerous.”

Menwith Hill

Situated awkwardly in the heart of rolling green English countryside is the United States’ largest overseas intelligence station. Surrounded by farmland and sheep, hundreds of National Security Agency staff go to work every day at RAF Menwith Hill, where they eavesdrop on communications intercepted by satellite dishes contained in about 30 huge golf ball-like domes.

Used by the NSA since the 1960s, Menwith Hill is an important spy center. But there is growing disquiet in Britain over whether intelligence gathered at the base is being used to help with the CIA’s controversial clandestine drone strikes. And the government is keeping mum.

Earlier this month, Ken Macdonald, former chief prosecutor for England and Wales, spoke out on the subject in an interview with the London Times. He told the newspaper he believed there was compelling evidence that Britain was providing the United States with information subsequently used to help with drone attacks in countries like Pakistan. Because the United Nations says that the CIA’s covert drone campaign possibly violates international law, the allegation was politically explosive. The implication is that the British government could itself be complicit in unlawful drone bombings, which in Pakistan alone since 2004 have killed up to an estimated 3,337 people, among them hundreds of civilians.

Prior to Macdonald thrusting the issue into the spotlight, it had been simmering for some time. In May, a Pakistani student whose father was killed in a suspected U.S. drone attack launched legal action against the British government in a bid to expose whether it hands over intelligence for drone attacks on terrorist suspects. And a study published in March claimed the Menwith Hill base was being expanded to “support 'real-time' U.S. military actions, including drone attacks and those carried out by special operations forces.”

What goes on inside the Menwith station is impossible to know for sure. However, according to a 2001 European Parliament report, it is part of a surveillance network called ECHELON, situated to intercept communications routed over the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Former NSA employee Margaret Newsham, who worked at Menwith Hill 20 years ago, told CBS it monitored Russian and Chinese communications (but on one occasion spied on U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond). And the Federation of American Scientists has claimed it is capable of intercepting an astonishing two million communications an hour.

If these reported capabilities are correct, it seems highly plausible that the base’s satellites are today intercepting at least some communications from the Middle East — which could help how the CIA picks its targets for drone strikes in countries such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

It’s also plausible that any intercepts gathered at Menwith play a crucial — not just contributory — role. In April, the Washington Post revealed that the White House had approved drone strikes in Yemen based solely on intelligence signatures. These are defined, according to the Post, as patterns of behavior indicative of a plot against U.S. interests “detected through signals intercepts, human sources and aerial surveillance.”

This brand of intelligence-led warfare has already led Germany to limit information it shares with the United States. The British government, however, does not take the same position — and is contributing to the secrecy that surrounds drone operations.

Fabian Hamilton, a member of the British Parliament, asked the government earlier this month whether Menwith Hill plays a role in the planning and deployment of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The response? He was not permitted to know. “For operational and security reasons we do not comment on the specific activities carried out at RAF Menwith Hill,” said Andrew Robathan, minister of state for the armed forces.

The secrecy is a problem, for basic democratic reasons if nothing else. It’s obvious that the British government wants to protect Menwith Hill’s activities on national security grounds, which might be justifiable to some extent. But if a foreign military is using a base in the English countryside to help conduct covert wars in far-flung lands, that’s a different matter altogether — and surely the British public has a right to know about it.

This article first appeared at Slate.com

Anniversary of Occupy

It inspired people from Manchester to Moscow, led to thousands of arrests, and continues to generate debate. The Occupy protest movement, founded to oppose corporate greed and inequality, is this week celebrating its first anniversary. For many of those involved it has been an emotional and life-changing journey.

Occupy began in earnest on 17 September last year, when a group of protesters descended on New York’s Wall Street financial district. Angry over the banking industry’s role in the global financial crisis, the protesters wanted to come together to address what they called the “corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process.”

Inspired by the Arab Spring and a massive Spanish protest movement that had bloomed earlier in 2011, the Occupiers formed a make-shift tent-city a stone’s throw from Wall Street, where public assemblies and discussions were held. As the size of the camp quickly grew, international media attention soon followed. Before long, Occupy became a contagious phenomenon, spreading across America and across borders to more than 80 countries on almost every continent.

Ed Needham, 45, remembers the birth of Occupy well. The 45-year-old communications strategist was attending a conference for organisations working for progressive causes in Washington DC. He was approached by an activist who told him about a new protest called Occupy Wall Street in New York, which had begun a few days earlier. He decided to visit, was immediately impressed by what he saw, and joined in with the protest.

“For me Occupy represented a reaction to where we were as a society,” Needham says, recalling his first impressions. “I just thought that this was an extremely historical moment and that instead of some fly by night political party initiative or something, that this was the beginning of a social movement. And everything that has happened since has affirmed that.

“Rather than people coming together under the many different organisations or political entities, people were coming together under a much larger banner. It happened in a way that I think really captured the imagination of where we were – and still are – as a nation in terms of what has happened to us over the last 30 years.”

A crucial aspect of the Occupy movement was its cross-generational appeal. In the first few days it was characterised mainly as a youth movement, but as it grew that changed. Organised labour groups eventually got involved, as did senior citizens, war veterans, high-profile academics, musicians – even people who had worked within the financial sector. “At that point it just took off because people could no longer characterise the people down at the square as a bunch of hippie kids,” Needham says.

To date, there have been more than an estimated 7000 arrests of activists participating in Occupy protests across the US. The main camp in New York was evicted in November, but today the movement continues. The activists are currently collaborating on international actions to mark the one-year anniversary, and they still meet regularly and organise protests outside banks and run “teach-in” educational groups about economic issues.

Though some activists are pessimistic about the level of change they have managed to achieve, most believe that at the very least they have managed to shape mainstream political discussion by putting more focus on problems related to inequality. New splinter groups have also taken shape due to Occupy, with activists using different protest tactics to voice their discontent about the current status quo.

Los Angeles-based artist Alex Schaefer garnered media attention last year for expressing his indignation at the greed of the banking sector in a creative manner – by painting pictures of banks on fire. Schaefer is hugely frustrated at how little has been done in America to hold the financial sector to account for bringing the country’s economy to its knees, and he recently started a new trend that is beginning to catch on in various cities. He calls it “chalking” – a form of civil disobedience that involves drawing information about bank wrongdoing in chalk on pavements outside bank buildings.

“It needs to be a constant reminder,” Schaefer says. “It’s a different protest than a march. This is a way to just casually do it consistently. I wish every bank would wake up to this on this sidewalk every morning.”

So far Schaefer has been arrested once for vandalism, but the charges were eventually dropped. He says the tactic was in part borne out of a deep dissatisfaction that nothing was being done to address the issues raised by the Occupy movement.

“Nothing has changed, it’s ridiculous,” he says. “Occupy is an uphill battle. The problem is that Occupy was only a fraction of the population. There are so many more people out there that need to get upset before a change is going to happen.”

In England, activists speak of the same frustration. Occupy spread to London in October last year, with a large encampment established outside St Paul’s Cathedral near the city’s stock exchange. Small campsites eventually formed in a number of cities across Britain – from Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield in England. But most of the camps were either evicted or slowly disbanded as the cold bite of winter set in – and some protesters feel that they failed to agree on a coherent message across the different sites.

“Even from London to the regions there was a huge difference in scope and aims,” says Daniel, 34, an activist from Liverpool who spent time at Occupy protests in England and America. “I felt aspects I was experiencing at occupations abroad, particularly in the US, did not translate locally. What we saw regionally was more a kind of nebulous protest, and the camps ended up quite detached from the global movement.”

Daniel says that he found Occupy in London to be “quite brilliant” and well organised. An empty office block that was squatted by the activists in London’s financial district and turned into a giant makeshift community centre called the Bank of Ideas also impressed him. However, in Liverpool he says groups including the Socialist Workers’ Party “appeared intent on co-opting, while not overtly supporting the movement, which was predictable and divisive.” And at some Occupy camps he visited, the initial energy which had catalysed the movement became diluted.

Other protesters had similarly negative experiences of camps outside London. In Birmingham, activist Tom Holness said the camp had included people who believed in “Jewish banking conspiracies” and a member of the far-right English Defence League, which dissuaded new people from joining. “The Facebook pages were a mess of arguments and conspiracy theories and that put a lot of people off,” he says.

Yet despite its flaws, Occupy as a movement is likely to persist in some form at least for the foreseeable future. The issues driving it, such as rising unemployment and a growing disparity between rich and poor, have not been addressed. And many activists, though they are tired and frustrated, are still intent on pushing for change.

In Spain, the movement that preceded Occupy may offer a glimpse of what is to come. Thousands took to the streets across the country last summer to protest against austerity measures, corporate power and political corruption, camping out in public squares and holding lengthy debates in a bid to find solutions to economic problems. Calling themselves the Indignados (the indignant) they continue to organise demonstrations and political actions, weary but energised by groups in other parts of the world.

“It’s been absolutely inspiring to see how some other movements have been out in the States and in London and everywhere,” says Beatriz Pérez, a 31-year-old activist who has been involved with the Indignados movement since it began in May last year. “We share the sense of frustration and rage with a lot of other people.”

As a result of the Indignados movement, locally organised public assemblies are now held regularly in cities including Madrid and Barcelona for anyone to come and address grievances. Though unemployment is soaring in Spain and the protesting has not managed to achieve substantive political changes, it has brought people together in a way that has in itself had a positive and lasting impact.

“Life in Spain, in Madrid, has changed a little bit for everyone that has been in the movement,” says Pérez. “I feel like in my city there is a lot more love out there – it’s a romantic thing to say but that’s how I feel. It’s less individualistic here than it was. And I think that has got to be a very good thing for our lives.”

Drone Future

A perimeter fence protects something extraordinary at the end of a grey, plain-looking residential street in East Lancashire, England. Hidden under tight security inside a hangar at Warton aerodrome are prototypes that represent the next generation of unmanned aircraft, known more commonly as drones. The latest technology, being developed and tested at Warton by defence contractor BAE Systems, is considered the final step toward integrating military-style drones into civilian airspace across British skies. It is revolutionary and groundbreaking. But it is also deeply controversial.

For many, the mere mention of the word drones conjures up negative connotations. They have become potent, deadly weapons in the so-called War on Terror, deployed with increasing frequency by the United States under the Barack Obama administration.

Controlled by satellite navigation and flown remotely by pilots based in the US states of Nevada and Virginia, drones have killed up to an estimated 4,000 suspected militants and 1,000 civilians in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia since 2002. Human rights groups allege that America has violated international law in how it is using drones, committing war crimes in the process. Members of the unmanned aircraft industry in Britain, however, are keen to present the aircraft in a new light – distancing them from warfare in a bid to win over the public.

“The military determine how they use them in conflict zones and it does get bad press,” says John Moreland, general secretary of the Unmanned Aerial Systems Association, a trade group based in Middlesex. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that we condone the actions that governments use them for.

“As much as we deal with the military aspect of the vehicles that we get involved in, those are operated by the military under military rules and they’re nothing to do with civilians like ourselves that produce the equipment.”

Currently, small “mini-drones” – similar in size to radio-controlled model aircraft – can legally be flown under existing UK regulations. Most of these are under 20kg, carry small cameras, and can only be flown up to 400 ft in areas that are not densely populated.

In contrast, military-style drones are much larger, can soar at heights of more than 20,000 feet, and can only be flown in segregated military airspace for safety reasons. But technology being developed by BAE Systems in Warton is working on changing this, by integrating advanced “sense and avoid” technology so that the larger drones can be flown alongside manned aircraft in normal airspace.

“The primary reason they will be used is to collect data,” Moreland says. “You won’t see them, they will be at high altitude. They will be in controlled airspace, working within all the rules of the aviation authority, and for all intents and purposes they will appear to everybody else, to all the controllers, as just another aircraft.”

Not everyone shares Moreland’s relaxed attitude about drones. A concern for civil liberties campaigners is that police could use them to conduct secretive surveillance from an eye so high in the sky that it is invisible from the ground. Police forces across England have held meetings about introducing large drones, and the European Parliament is working on a plan to use the aircraft for border security purposes, tracking immigrants and smugglers attempting to enter countries on the continent illegally by boat. This follows the trend set in America, where drones known as “Predators” are deployed in states like Texas as part of border-security patrols.

“I think that there are civil liberties and privacy issues that simply aren’t being dealt with,” says Chris Cole, an Oxford-based campaigner who runs a popular website called Drone Wars UK. “The problem is nobody is taking these issues on board and yet we are pushing ahead with enabling unmanned aircraft to fly over our heads without addressing these questions. The big military companies are not doing this for our own good – they just see future profits in this area. So I think that there are real concerns.”

The sense and avoid technology being developed by BAE Systems is set to be tested in 2013, and experts working in the drone industry estimate that as early as 2015 they could be operational in civilian airspace alongside manned aircraft. Some are even predicting that, at some point in the not-so-distant-future, we will see unmanned aircraft flying passengers in the same way some trains today, like the Paris Metro, function without drivers.

But a more pressing concern, particularly for activists such as Cole, is Britain’s ongoing role conducting drone attacks in conflict zones. Last month it was revealed that British pilots had flown drones over Libya during the uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, contradicting previous government claims that the RAF had only flown them in Afghanistan. This has raised questions about whether the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has been candid about the full extent of its involvement in drone strikes.

“This is one of the most important ethical and legal questions of our time with regard to militarism and the armed forces – how drones are changing the nature of warfare,” Cole says. “The problem is they are not being very transparent about the use of drones. The public interest in this issue is so important, but the data about how drones are being used is not being disclosed by the MoD.”

Pressure on the government to release information about how it uses drones in warzones is likely to heighten in the months ahead. Pilots of a fleet of ten “Reaper” drones that the RAF uses to conduct attacks in Afghanistan are to be relocated to England for the first time later this year. The pilots, currently based in Nevada, will relocate to RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire, where they will pilot the drones using joystick-like controls from behind large monitor screens.

Already, anti-war activists have held demonstrations at the base to protest. 74-year-old veteran campaigner Helen John has set up a pre-emptive peace camp, vowing to stay indefinitely in “total defiance” over what she calls “murder by remote control.”

“Having lived through WWII, I witnessed the destruction of my grandmother’s house, cut in two by a V2 rocket,” John says. “I feel deeply ashamed that in the 21st century we are bringing in a new generation of murderous technology to blight the future.”

Since 2007 the MoD’s Reaper drones have fired more than 280 missiles and flown for 30,000 hours above Afghanistan, the equivalent of having flown from London to Sydney over 500 times. The government has been hesitant to release figures showing casualties inflicted by British drones. However, in December 2010 David Cameron said 124 insurgents had been killed in British drone strikes, while in April 2011 it emerged that four Afghan civilians were killed and two others injured in an attack by an RAF drone in Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

The MoD has accepted there is a wider debate to be had about issues around the deployment of drones. It is also keen to distance itself from the style of drone attacks perpetrated by the United States, which take place covertly in multiple countries outside established laws of war.

“I wouldn’t want you to confuse the way we operate drones with the way the Americans operate drones,” says Lex Oliver, an MoD spokesman. “They use them for wholly different missions.

“The UK’s rules of engagement for using a drone are exactly the same as for using a manned aircraft. They’re still operated by a pilot it’s just that they are operated by a pilot remotely as opposed to a pilot who’s sat in the aircraft.”

It is estimated that the MoD will have spent half a billion pounds sustaining its Reaper drones in Afghanistan by 2015. The government continues to fund and invest in developing more advanced unmanned technology, and has lent financial backing to an ambitious drone being developed by BAE Systems at its Warton base.

“Taranis,” named after the Celtic god of thunder, is a stealth unmanned aircraft that has been described as resembling a spaceship out of Star Wars. The aim of Taranis, according to BAE Systems, is to test whether it is possible to build a remote controlled stealth drone capable of “precisely striking targets at long range, even in another continent.” It will be the first of its kind and, if testing next year proves successful, could mark a major step towards a day when manned fighter jets are considered a remnant of the past. A dream or a nightmare, depending on where you stand.

Scandale (2).doc

An email claiming to reveal a political scandal will grab the attention of almost any journalist. But what if the email was just a ruse to make you download government-grade spyware designed to take total control of your computer? It could happen - as a team of award-winning Moroccan reporters recently found out.

Mamfakinch.com is a citizen media project that grew out of the Arab Spring in early 2011. The popular website is critical of Morocco’s frequently draconian government, and last month won an award from Google and the website Global Voices for its efforts “to defend and promote freedom of speech rights on the internet.” Eleven days after that recognition, however, Mamfakinch’s journalists received an email that was not exactly designed to congratulate them for their work.

The email, sent via the contact form on Mamfakinch.com, was titled “Dénonciation” (denunciation). It contained a link to what appeared to be a Microsoft Word document labeled “scandale (2).doc” alongside a single line of text in French, which translates as: “Please do not mention my name or anything else, I don't want any problems.” Some members of the website’s team, presumably thinking they’d just been sent a major scoop, tried to open the file. After they did so, however, they suspected their computers had become infected with something nasty. Mamfakinch co-founder Hisham Almiraat told me that they had to take “drastic measures” to clean their computers, before they passed on the file to security experts to analyze.

What the experts believe they found was, they said, “very advanced”—something out of the ordinary. The scandale (2).doc file was a fake, disguising a separate, hidden file that was designed to download a Trojan that could secretly take screenshots, intercept e-mail, record Skype chats, and covertly capture data using a computer’s microphone and webcam, all while bypassing virus detection. Christened a variety of names by researchers, like “Crisis,” and “Morcut,” the spy tool would first detect which operating system the targeted computer was running, before attempting to infect it with either a Mac or Windows version.

Once installed, the Trojan tried to connect to an IP address that was traced to a U.S. hosting company, Linode, which provides “virtual private servers” that host files but help mask their origin. Linode says using its servers for such purposes violate its terms of service, and confirmed the IP address in question was no longer active. The use of Linode was a clear attempt to make the Trojan hard to track, according to Lysa Myers, a malware researcher who analyzed it.

But there were a couple of clues. The Trojan’s code repeatedly referenced the acronym “RCS” alongside occasional mentions of the Italian name “Guido.” This pointed straight to an Italian company called Hacking Team, one of the leading providers of spyware-style tools to governments and law enforcement agencies worldwide.

Hacking Team’s flagship product is called “Remote Control Systems,” a Trojan it describes as “eavesdropping software which hides itself inside the target devices.” RCS can spy on Skype chats, log keystrokes, take webcam snapshots - identical to the Trojan used to target the Moroccans. It can also be tailored to infect a computer via “opening a document file,” according to marketing materials, and “can monitor from a few and up to hundreds of thousands of targets.”

Hacking Team did not respond to repeated requests by phone and email for comment. Notably, however, during an interview last October the company’s co-founder David Vincenzetti told me that RCS had since 2004 been sold “to approximately 50 clients in 30 countries on all five continents.” (Most people today consider there to be seven continents - Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America - but in parts of Europe it used to be taught that there were only five: Africa, America, Asia, Australia, and Europe.) So while it’s not possible to say for sure whether Moroccan authorities are using RCS, it’s certainly being deployed by countries in that region of the world, by Vincenzetti’s own admission.

The Moroccan case is not isolated, and it’s likely we’ll hear more about such attacks in the future. Last month, a number of Bahraini activists were targeted with a Trojan tool purportedly designed by a British spy tech company, Gamma Group, which is one of Hacking Team’s main competitors. Human rights organizations have been concerned for some time about Western companies selling high-tech surveillance equipment to countries in which it may be abused. Ever mounting evidence of the equipment being used to target pro-democracy activists and journalists could have repercussions for the companies involved and is likely to strengthen the case for stricter export controls.

Thanks to Jean-Marc Manach for help with the French translation.

This article first appeared at: Slate.com

Surveillance Proof

As government agencies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia push for increased surveillance powers, one pioneering American is pushing back.

New York-based entrepreneur Nicholas Merrill is making progress on a project he revealed in April: an encryption-based telecommunications provider designed to be “untappable.” After crowd-funding almost $70,000 in donations, Merrill says that he has held talks with a host of interested venture capitalists and a few “really big companies” apparently interested in partnering up or helping with financial support. Now the “surveillance-proof” software is in development, and he is on track to begin operating a limited service by the end of the year.

Merrill’s ultimate aim is to create a telecommunications infrastructure that inhibits mass surveillance. First, he is building an Internet provider that will use end-to-end encryption for Web browsing and email. Then he plans to roll out a mobile phone service that will enable users to encrypt calls, making them difficult to intercept. The key to decrypt the communications would be held by each individual customer, not Merrill’s company. Because the telecom firm would be unable to access the communications, law enforcement agencies that want to read or listen to communications would be forced to serve warrants or court orders on individuals directly. “This would make it impossible to do blanket, dragnet surveillance of all the customers of a telecommunications carrier,” Merrill says.

The idea for the project is not to help bad guys evade detection, though undoubtedly that’s how some critics will see it. Rather, Merrill is particularly keen to develop the technology to help journalists and human rights organizations—groups, he says, “whose right to confidentiality is more or less accepted under the law.”

Merrill has a strong record of defending user privacy. In 2004, he became the first ISP executive to successfully challenge a secret FBI “national security letter” demanding he hand over customer information. His willingness to question the constitutionality of the secret letter at the time put him at odds with most major telecoms providers, which have a poor track record when it comes to protecting customer privacy. In 2005 and 2006, a number of companies were revealed to have handed over troves of customer data and opened up wiretaps to the National Security Agency, sometimes without a warrant.

Today, Merrill admits prospective funders of his latest project have expressed concerns that it could lead to a confrontation with powerful actors (“It’s challenging to go up against some of the forces that are trying to open up all communications to wiretapping,” he says). But he is trying to address this by showing that government and law enforcement agencies could themselves benefit from his technology. Cybersecurity and privacy are part of the same problem but framed differently, he believes. Both could be addressed at once by ubiquitous encryption of communications and data transfer—protecting user privacy while also helping prevent malicious hackers from stealing information.

Some establishment figures have already been won over by Merrill’s argument. The advisory board of his nonprofit research institute, Calyx, which is developing the technology, includes a former NSA technical director and a former federal prosecutor who is also ex-CIA. Whether he can get the backing of current members of the U.S. law enforcement community, though, is another matter altogether. Merrill’s technology could be seen as creating extra barriers for law enforcement and the authorities would likely oppose it for that reason. Existing U.S. wiretapping law, called CALEA, states that telecom providers "shall not be responsible for decrypting" communications if they don't possess "the information necessary to decrypt.” But that may change under reforms proposed by the FBI, which is actively seeking more surveillance powers.

As governments increasingly move toward expanding their power to conduct electronic surveillance, it is inevitable that innovative technologists, software developers, and cryptographers will work to help people protect the privacy of their personal communications. Earlier this week the NSA’s chief tried to quell concerns over allegations that it is building a huge domestic surveillance center in Utah, dismissing whistle-blowers’ claims as “baloney.” Given the NSA’s recent history, however, it is likely many Americans will remain skeptical about the spy agency’s reassurances—and some will turn to encryption.

Merrill aims to launch his telecommunications firm first in the United States before tackling the international market, where there are also mounting concerns about government surveillance schemes. “We’re not trying to force people to use our service,” Merrill says. “What we’re trying to do is re-envision how the telecommunications industry could work if privacy and encryption technology was built in from the beginning.”

This article first appeared at Slate.com

Web of Deceit

Some were grabbed off the streets, blindfolded and bundled into the back of a car. Others were detained at airports and taken away by force on small private jets, often to secret locations in countries known for torture. Extraordinary rendition, a kind of state-sanctioned kidnapping that breaches international law, became a popular method used by US authorities to capture terror suspects in the years following the 2001 World Trade Centre attacks. But only now are full details about the practice, and the many corporations that have profited from it, beginning to emerge.

In recent weeks human rights group Reprieve has been publicising some of the private companies that helped organise the renditions, most carried out under the authority of the George W. Bush administration between 2001 and 2008. Among the firms are military contractors such as Virginia-based DynCorp, paid to organise the logistics of rendition flights to places like Thailand, Egypt, Syria and Morocco. But there are also less conspicuous firms that played a key role, some with strong UK connections. One is Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), an IT firm that has held contracts with the NHS and Transport for London.

“The role played by the prime contracting companies – DynCorp and CSC – was extremely significant,” says Crofton Black, a Reprieve investigator. “They basically ran a significant proportion of the entire project in terms of helping move people around between detention sites. The various operating companies that provided the airplanes and crews are significant too, because it’s unlikely these guys didn’t know what was happening in their planes.”

According to Reprieve, court documents show that CSC organised rendition flights on behalf of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to carry prisoners between a number of locations, including the notorious Guantánamo Bay detention camp and secret “black sites” in North Africa, South East Asia and Eastern Europe. It is alleged that the prisoners were held incommunicado and tortured during lengthy interrogations. CSC, which turned over £10.2 billion in 2011, has a string of British investors, including Barclays, Lloyds, HSBC and Prudential.

Earlier this year, Reprieve wrote and asked CSC to sign its “zero tolerance for torture” pledge promising that it would not be involved in rendition, secret detention and torture in the future. The company declined, saying that individual pledges on specific topics were “not within the framework” of its existing corporate responsibility programme. Reprieve is now writing to investors in the firm asking them to “confirm whether investing in companies implicated in torture is compatible with their ethical commitments.”

“CSC has explicitly refused to rule out taking on such missions in the future,” Black says. “It’s fine for the investors to say, with the benefit of hindsight, that ‘we didn’t know such missions were going on in 2005.’ But they can’t say that anymore. So they have to come to come to terms with the fact that they are investing in a company that has basically made a commitment not to honour international law, which is effectively what CSC refusing to sign the zero tolerance for torture pledge means.”

At the same time as details about private companies’ involvement in extraordinary rendition continue to emerge, new information about the scale of Britain’s role in the programme has also been revealed. In the wake of the civil war in Libya last year, documents were uncovered showing in 2004 MI6 had helped US authorities abduct Libyan dissident Abdelhakim Belhadj and his pregnant wife in Bangkok, where they were flown to Tripoli and abused by Muammar Gaddafi’s secret police.

Belhadj is now suing MI6 and then-foreign secretary Jack Straw, a serving Blackburn MP, for complicity in torture and misfeasance in public office. Government sources say MI6’s role in rendition was part of “ministerially authorised government policy" – but Straw has gone on record claiming that "no foreign secretary can know all the details of what its intelligence agencies are doing at any one time."

In other countries, too, the repercussions of extraordinary rendition continue to be felt. In March, Poland became the first EU country to indict one of its officials over CIA renditions, with the country’s prime minister promising an end to “under-the-table deals." It is alleged that a military garrison in the north-east of the Poland was used as a CIA black site where terror suspects were interrogated and subjected to waterboarding, a kind of torture that makes a person feel as if they are drowning.

Some details about the rendition programme, like the names of the terror suspects involved, are difficult to establish as they remain classified. But more revelations may soon emerge as part of a major new academic effort to pull together all of the information that has so far been published about extraordinary rendition. Launched by University of Kent academic Dr Ruth Blakeley in May, the Rendition Project is studying reams of court documents and flight logs, collating data about hundreds of victims of rendition and secret detention since 2001. It hopes to chronicle the 45 countries, 6500 flights and 140 aircraft allegedly connected to the CIA renditions programme.

“I don’t think the world is very well informed about the types of things that governments in the US and UK do,” Blakeley says, explaining her motivation for starting the project. “On both sides of the pond current governments don’t really want to carry out investigations [into rendition] because their own records are not that squeaky clean either.”

Prior to coming in to office in 2008, US president Barack Obama condemned many of his predecessor’s more aggressive counter-terror policies. He barred waterboarding and signed an executive order entitled "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations," designed to increase oversight. But he didn’t outlaw extraordinary renditions. Obama has also significantly heighted the use of unmanned military drones, remotely controlled aircraft that are used to bomb suspected militants in places such as Pakistan and Yemen. Some argue that, to avoid using the costly and controversial rendition method, Obama has favoured drone strikes – killing rather than capturing.

“It’s expensive to detain people in prison,” Blakeley says. “A lot of people say drone attacks are Obama’s preference because you just get rid of the people and you don’t have all the messy stuff afterwards to deal with... It avoids the public outcry around rendition.”

London-based human rights group Cage Prisoners, founded by Birmingham-born Moazzam Begg, a former Guantánamo detainee, believes rendition is still happening today but on a lesser scale. The group, which campaigns to raise awareness about individuals held extra-judicially as part of the so-called War on Terror, argues public inquiries into extraordinary rendition are the only way to redress the abuses of international law that became commonplace after 2001.

“There’s no way that we can adequately compensate those who had these things happen to them,” says Asim Qureshi, executive director at Cage Prisoners. “In the grand scheme of things, for those people inquiries mean nothing, because they’ve already had their lives ruined by renditions.

“But for the future they become important, because this is effectively the way the human rights industry can fight back – by bringing these legal cases, by having the process of accountability, and by really placing the emphasis back on due process and the rule of law.”