Network news

Taxpayers’ money is being used to help private companies sell arms to repressive regimes and conflict zones. Long standing GreenNet member CAAT is campaigning to end government support for this deadly work. The ExCeL centre in East London and Clarion Events have invited arms dealers from all over the world to another ARMS FAIR

There is still time, with your help, to get this evil event cancelled.

Next Musical Protests
more supporters (musical and non-musical) welcome and needed!

• Saturday 1st August 2009, 2pm-5pm, at The ExCeL Exhibition Centre (Custom House DLR Station) This is the Triathlon swimming, running and cycling event. Some of the participants will be sponsored for charities working for victims orphaned or disabled by the arms trade.
• Saturday 5th September 2009, 2pm-5pm, at The ExCeL Exhibition Centre (Custom House DLR Station)

As protests continue in Iran, details are emerging of the technology used to monitor its citizens. Iran is well known for filtering the net, but the government has moved to do the same for mobile phones. Nokia Siemens Network has confirmed it supplied Iran with the technology needed to monitor, control, and read local telephone calls.

It told the BBC that it sold a product called the Monitoring Centre to Iran Telecom in the second half of 2008.

Data inspection

Nokia Siemens, a joint venture between the Finnish and German companies, supplied the system to Iran through its Intelligent Solutions business, which was sold in March 2009 to Perusa Partners Fund 1LP, a German investment firm.

The product allows authorities to monitor any communications across a network, including voice calls, text messaging, instant messages, and web traffic.

But Nokia Siemens says the product is only being used, in Iran, for the monitoring of local telephone calls on fixed and mobile lines.

Rather than just block traffic, it is understood that the monitoring system can also interrogate data to see what information is being passed back and forth.

A spokesman described the system as “a standard architecture that the world’s governments use for lawful intercept”.

June 19th was Aung San Suu Kyi’s birthday, it is her 14th birthday in detention. As you know we set up 64ForSuu.org to allow people from all over the world to leave message of support for Burma’s democracy leader. Today Paul McCartney, Bono and Yoko Ono have all submitted message to the site. We’ve received over 12k message from over 100 countries from politicians, actors, Prime Ministers, presidents. The site is being used to promote events all over the world.

The site has become the centre of the global call for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi with 900+ news articles being written about it. Aung San Suu Kyi is currently trending as the 2nd most popular phrase on Twitter right now. We’ve also seen her Facebook page (www.facebook.com/aungsansuukyi) explode in popularity with nearly 100k supporters now.

64forsuu.org was setup by GreenNet members Burma Campaign UK in collaboration with other charities, NGOs and activsts from around the world.

Al-Haq is pleased to announce that on 18 and 19 June 2009, the UK Divisional Court in London will be hearing the preliminary motions of the case brought by Al-Haq, in cooperation with solicitor Phil Shiner of Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), challenging the UK government over its failure to fulfil its obligations under international law with respect to Israel’s activities in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

On 1 April 2009, Sir Andrew Collins of the High Court of Justice in London requested a preliminary hearing by the Divisional Court to address Al-Haq’s ability to judicially review UK’s foreign policy towards the State of Israel, particularly in light of Operation Cast Lead. The hearing will address the issue of justiciability, as the UK Government has argued that the UK courts should not rule on matters of foreign policy. The Court will be asked to reject this argument as outdated and accept that the case is seeking adjudication on the legality of the UK Government’s actions, and inaction, in the relation to egregious and established breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law committed by the State of Israel.

Dismay and sadness around the world as stories about a huge turnout and the greatest challenge to the status quo for years turn to reports of fraud. Iran’s protesters are being beaten in the streets, and communications have been blocked.

People have never been more aware of incursions into their privacy than they are today. From the growth of CCTV cameras on Britain’s streets, to the numerous accounts of mislaid personal data or hacks into central databases, the security of our personal information is a growing concern.

EU rules obliging ISPs to store transaction data for two years could have significant cost and privacy implications, reports Manek Dubash.

Now there is a measure on the statute books that helps cement the government’s surveillance capabilities: the EU’s Data Retention Directive (DRD), which the government must implement.

The directive mandates ISPs to keep records for two years of every transaction that passes though their hands. The directive’s purpose is not to force ISPs to retain data — the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa) kick-started that process in 2000 — but to harmonise the retention period across the EU.

Note that ISPs must retain not content but connections: the fact you sent me an email, or I called you, for example, rather than the actual email or recording of a call.

No big deal?
So what does the directive mean for ISPs, and how much will cost them to comply — and does it mean your broadband bills will go up? We contacted a number of ISPs and, while all said their customers’ privacy was important, they confirmed they would be abiding by the law of the land. Most also said that the directive was no big deal, as much of this information is kept by ISPs anyway, for billing purposes.

While Obama proclaims the 21st century, the government of Israel is returning to the 19th.

One man spoke to the world, and the world listened.

He walked onto the stage in Cairo, alone, without hosts and without aides, and delivered a sermon to an audience of billions. Egyptians and Americans, Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs, Sunnis and Shiites, Copts and Maronites – and they all listened attentively.

He unfolded before them the map of a new world, a different world, whose values and laws he spelled out in simple and clear language – a mixture of idealism and practical politics, vision and pragmatism.

Barack Hussein Obama – as he took pains to call himself – is the most powerful man on earth. Every word he utters is a political fact.

“A HISTORIC SPEECH”, pronounced commentators in a hundred languages. I prefer another adjective:

The speech was right.

Every word was in its place, every sentence precise, every tone in harmony. The masterpiece of a man bringing a new message to the world.

From the very first word, every listener in the hall and in the world felt the honesty of the man, that his heart and his tongue were in harmony, that this is not a politician of the old familiar sort – hypocritical, sanctimonious, calculating. His body language was speaking, and so were his facial expressions

About three million homes in the UK have broadband speeds of less than two megabits per second (2Mbps) according to research commissioned by the BBC. The government has promised to provide all homes in the UK with speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012.

The research revealed that so-called notspots are not limited to rural communities, with many in suburban areas and even streets in major towns.

The government has pledged a range of technologies to fill the gaps.

“We had assumed that these notspots were in remote parts of the countryside. That may be where the most vocal campaigners are but there is a high incidence of them in commuter belts,” said Alex Salter, co-founder of broadband website SamKnows.

No Twittering

The SamKnows map offers an insight into where the homes are that the government needs to reach out to and connect to faster broadband.

It was created by comparing a sample of UK postcodes with a database of information about which providers offered services in the 5,500 telephone exchanges around the UK.

By working out how far properties were from a particular exchange, a picture of the speed of services can be determined as line length is a crucial factor in determining how fast broadband services will operate.

To get speeds of 2Mbps or more homes need to be 4km or less from an exchange.

A coalition of celebrities, NGOs and trade unions have launched a new website http://www.64ForSuu.org calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, and all of Burma’s political prisoners.

64forSuu.org allows anyone to upload video, text, image or twitter messages of support to Burma’s imprisoned democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. We want to gather thousands of messages by her 64th birthday on June 19th 2009.

The campaign has the backing of major celebrities, including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Vaclav Havel, David Beckham, Daniel Craig, Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard, Kevin Spacey and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.

Show your support and add your message today Just go to http://www.64ForSuu.org to add a video, text, image or twitter.

If you’re using Twitter, please tweet your 64 with the hashtag #assk64

The launch on 27th May coincides with the day that, according to the Burmese regime, Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest expires. The UN has already ruled that her detention is illegal. More than 2,100 political prisoners are being held in Burma’s jails.

On 18th May Aung San Suu Kyi was put on trial, charged with breaching the terms of her house arrest after an American man, John Yettaw, swam to her house and refused to leave. The dictatorship is using the visit as an opportunity to extend her detention. Her trial is ongoing and she could face a further five years in detention.

64forSuu.org aims to demonstrate the scale of outrage over her continued detention by encouraging high profile individuals and the public around the world to write a 64 word message for Aung San Suu Kyi’s 64th birthday on June 19th.

Organisations supporting the website include; Burma Campaign UK, Amnesty International, the Trades Union Congress, Not On Our Watch, Human Rights Watch, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, Open Society Institute, Avaaz, English Pen and US Campaign For Burma. The site has messages from high-profile supporters including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Vaclav Havel, David Beckham, Daniel Craig, and the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Stephen Fry, Eddie Izzard, Kevin Spacey and Sarah Brown are twittering on the site.

Please add your message at http://www.64ForSuu.org

Thank you for your support

Anna Roberts
Director
Burma Campaign UK

President Barack Obama has nominated a lawyer for the nation’s largest toxic polluters to run the enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws. On Tuesday, Obama “announced his intent to nominate” Ignacia S. Moreno to be Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division in the Department of Justice. Moreno, general counsel for that department during the Clinton administration, is now the corporate environmental counsel for General Electric, “America’s #1 Superfund Polluter“:

Number five in the Fortune 500 with revenues of $89.3 billion and earnings of $8.2 billion in 1997, General Electric has been a leader in the effort to roll back the Superfund law and stave off any requirements for full cleanup and restoration of sites they helped create.

This February, General Electric lost an eight-year battle to “prove that parts of the Superfund law are unconstitutional.” One of the 600-person DOJ environmental division’s “primary responsibilities is to enforce federal civil and criminal environmental laws such as” the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Superfund.