EA's Canuckistan in The Guardian: State-sanctioned Snitching

Canuckistan, aka Steve Hewitt, has become the second Enduring America in the past few days to be featured in The Guardian's Comment Is Free with this piece on how the UK government is encouraging its citizens to become stake-holders in counter-terrorism. If you weren't feeling inspired about Bruce Schneier's contest, this might help:

State-sanctioned snitching

The UK's new counter-terrorism strategy of neighbour spying on neighbour echoes proposals that caused outrage in the US

Steve Hewitt

Whether similar controversy as in the US will appear in the UK remains to be seen. Past experience with CCTV would suggest not. Nevertheless, there remains a fine line between encouraging a well-informed public to be vigilant about terrorism and promoting paranoia that will lead to neighbour spying on neighbour.

With much fanfare, the government of Gordon Brown unveiled Contest 2, its sequel to the UK's previous counter-terrorism strategy. In the lead-up to its emergence, bits of the programme were leaked to the media, including that approximately 60,000 people such as security guards and shop clerks would receive training on what to watch for in terms of suspicious behaviour and how to react in the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

That aspect of the strategy was preceded by a new anti-terrorist campaign launched by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and the Metropolitan police involving advertisements appearing at tube stations, on billboards in London and elsewhere, and even on the radio. These ads raise the spectre of terrorism and the reward for action by diligent citizens who in the tube and billboard ads notice suspicious behaviour, such as chemical containers in a skip or an individual studying CCTV cameras, and report the incidents via a confidential anti-terrorism hotline. The radio commercial provides the alternative to citizens failing to act with the sound of a devastating explosion.

In a UK context these campaigns represent an effort to widen public participation in counter-terrorism, essentially turning citizens into stakeholders in the effort. They also reflect a continued government concern about the risk of terrorism, particularly through low-level attacks carried out by so-called "self starters" who exist outside those groups and individuals already known to the police and security service.

Encouraging suspicion through counter-terrorism training of ordinary citizens or public advertising campaigns is not, however, without its own risks. There is the potential for certain citizens to be demonised and stigmatised when their activities receive excessive scrutiny and, through calls to the hotline, to unwarranted attention from the police. Indeed, this point plus the wider implications for civil liberties of state-sanctioned snitching were the issues that emerged when a similar effort was proposed in the US in 2002.

In January 2002, the Bush administration introduced the Terrorism Information and Prevention System (Tips) with the goal of increasing public participation in domestic counter-terrorism. The goal of Tips was to "enable millions of America transportation workers, postal workers, and public utility employees to identify and report suspicious activities linked to terrorism and crime". It was to do so by setting up a special hotline, similar to the one in the British advertising, that these workers could call to report suspicious behaviour. The US deputy attorney general hailed the programme as providing "millions of American truckers, letter carriers, train conductors, ship captains, utility employees, and others, whose routines allow them to be the 'eyes and ears' of police, a formal way to report suspicious or potential terrorist activity".

The programme largely escaped wider public attention until a story in an Australian newspaper compared it to something that could have emerged from the former German Democratic Republic. Very quickly a maelstrom of criticism erupted that ran across the American political spectrum from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Village Voice on the left to the New York Times in the centre to Republican congressmen Dick Armey and Bob Barr on the right, the latter who called it a "snitch system", that appeared to typify "the very type of fascist or communist government we fought so hard to eradicate in other countries in decades past". The New York Times ran interviews with some workers who potentially might be called upon to report information. A delivery driver remarked on the increased number of satellite dishes he had delivered to "Arabs" after 11 September while another driver complained that "[i]mmigrants stare more than anybody else". In an editorial the paper decried the new version of the programme: "Even if it is limited to public places, the programme is offensive. The idea of citizens spying on citizens, and the government collecting data on everyone who is accused, is a staple of totalitarian regimes."

By then, Tips had made a host of enemies, including Armey, the then Republican majority leader in the House of Representatives. With little fanfare, Armey inserted a clause into the Homeland Security Act that prohibited any efforts to implement Tips. The programme died when Bush signed the act into law in November 2002.

Whether similar controversy as in the US will appear in the UK remains to be seen. Past experience with CCTV would suggest not. Nevertheless, there remains a fine line between encouraging a well-informed public to be vigilant about terrorism and promoting paranoia that will lead to neighbour spying on neighbour.

Bruce Schneier's Fourth Annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest

Something to keep you out of trouble (you hope!) this weekend:

Let's face it, the War on Terror is a tired brand. There just isn't enough action out there to scare people. If this keeps up, people will forget to be scared. And then both the terrorists and the terror-industrial complex lose. We can't have that.

We're going to help revive the fear. There's plenty to be scared about, if only people would just think about it in the right way. In this Fourth Movie-Plot Threat Contest, the object is to find an existing event somewhere in the industrialized world—Third World events are just too easy—and provide a conspiracy theory to explain how the terrorists were really responsible.

The goal here is to be outlandish but plausible, ridiculous but possible, and—if it were only true—terrifying. (An example from The Onion: Fowl Qaeda.) Entries should be formatted as a news story, and are limited to 150 words (I'm going to check this time) because fear needs to be instilled in a population with short attention spans. Submit your entry, by the end of the month, in comments.

If you send Schneier an entry, be sure to let us know!

UPDATE: Miss Universe Disappears in Guantanamo Bay!

Or rather her blog has....

We revealed yesterday that Miss Universe 2008, Dayana Mendoza, had written a loving blog about her visit to Guantanamo Bay: "I didn’t want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful." After we posted, other media such as the New York Times and Fox News picked up on the story.

Surprisingly, given the eloquence of Mendoza's observations, "We also met the Military dogs, and they did a very nice demonstration of their skills....We visited the Detainees camps and we saw the jails, where they shower, how the recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books," the Miss Universe organization has become very shy about the episode.

The blog is gone, replaced with that statement from "Paula M. Shugart, President of the Miss Universe Organization":

The Miss Universe Organization has had a longstanding relationship with the USO (United Service Organizations). All three titleholders (Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA) have participated in many USO goodwill tours to visit the men and women in uniform who serve our country around the world.

As part of the USO’s entertainment program, which boosts the morale of U.S. troops, they have traveled to many locations and many bases around the globe including Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, Korea and most recently, Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, where the U.S. has maintained a naval base since 1898.

Dayana Mendoza’s comments on her blog were in reference to the hospitality she received while meeting the members of the U.S. military and their families who are stationed in Guantánamo.

The Miss Universe Organization echoes the mission of the USO, which is to lift the spirits of U.S.troops and their families wherever they serve. We will continue to show our appreciation and express our gratitude to the military personnel who serve our nation.

Unfortunately, Shugart offers no insight into the reaction of Guantanamo's recreating detainees to their entertainment by Mendoza.

Israeli Strike on Sudan: Hamas Wins, Darfur Loses

Related Post: ICC Seeks Arrest of Bashir, Sudan Expels Aid Agencies

Sometime in January, several Israeli F-15s and F-16s entered Sudanese airspace and attacked a convoy of 17 trucks, supposedly filled with weapons bound for Hamas in Gaza. The attack killed 39 people, all Eritrean, Sudanese, and Ethiopian nationals, as well as injuring an unknown number of bystanders. The official reasoning was that this was a deterrent to Iran's smuggling of weapons to Hamas, as well as a display of Israel's capability to strike, as Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said, “everywhere there is terror".

However, this attack may have had catastrophic consequences, not only for Israel's battle against Hamas, but for the US War on Terror, and on a much greater scale, those suffering from the horrible human rights crisis in Darfur. To understand how, we must examine in detail the events leading up to the Israeli attack, the attack itself, and the fallout from the government in Khartoum.

In mid January, the US Ambassador to Liberia, Linda Thomas Greenfield traveled to Khartoum for discussions with Sudan's Foreign Minister Deng Alor. Mrs. Greenfield was there to discuss US-Sudan relations, specifically in the wake of the New Year's assassination of John Granville, a US diplomat working with USAID, as well as disagreements with Sudan over the construction of a new US embassy in Khartoum.

But that may not be all she was there to discuss. According to a report in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, “a senior American official transferred a message to a Sudanese government official and asked him to make sure that the message makes its way to Sudan's leaders in Khartoum so that immediate steps can be taken to put a stop to [Hamas weapon smuggling via Sudan]”. Since Mrs. Greenfield is the only “senior American official” that we know of in Sudan at the time, we can be reasonably sure the message was passed through her or through someone in her entourage.

(If you're feeling really cavalier about circumstantial evidence, it should also be mentioned that Mrs. Greenfield has previously worked for the US in Pakistan and was also a major cheerleader for the creation of AFRICOM, the US military command focusing on Africa.)

How did the US know about weapon smuggling through Sudan? According to Time magazine, “In early January, at the height of Israel's assault on Gaza, Israel's foreign intelligence agency Mossad was told by an informant that Iran was planning a major delivery of 120 tons of arms and explosives to Gaza, including anti-tank rockets and Fajir rockets with a 25 mile range and a 45 kg warhead." The New York Times also cited two anonymous American intelligence sources who reported that an operative from Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had also recently traveled to Sudan, possibly in connection to the shipment.

This information likely passed from Mossad to the Americans, and from there to the leadership in Khartoum. However, the warnings apparently stalled when they passed to Sudanese intelligence officials, who decided to “investigate” the matter further. That's when the Israeli air strike occurred. In fact, the air strike happened so quickly after the American warning that the Sudanese originally accused the Americans of carrying out the strike. With Mrs. Greenfield's meeting on January 13, that means the air strikes likely occurred sometime between January 14 and January 20, when the Israeli campaign against Hamas officially ended.

So the US and Israel are sharing intelligence on Iran, which is news to no one, and the US tried to warn Sudan about Hamas weapons smuggling, which is also unremarkable given the long history of US-Sudan intelligence sharing in the Global War on Terror.

The Israeli jets supposedly flew south down the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea. However, to leave Israel's airspace and fly the coast, the Israeli fighters would have to pass through the high-power beams of French-built Saudi radars at the air force base in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. The Saudi radars are capable of spotting US stealth bombers at a range of 10 miles, which says a lot for its capability at seeing non-stealth Israeli F-15s and F-16s a few hundred miles away.

The Israelis would also have to worry about any one of the Saudi fleet of five E-3 Sentry AWACS, two of which are regularly kept in the air to monitor precious oil installations along the Saudi coast. With a war raging in Gaza and Israeli planes swarming the skies, it is highly unlikely the Saudis chose that time to ground their AWACS for maintenance.

We could ignore these radars if the Israelis had flown fast and low to the ground to avoid detection, but they didn't. When the jets reached the Red Sea, they actually stopped for a mid-air refueling. Israeli fuel tankers are customized Boeing 707s, gigantic planes that are not known for flying either fast or low. At some point during the operation, there were three to six Israeli fighter aircraft hovering over the Red Sea at 35,000 feet attached to a massive, slow-flying tetliner for 30 minutes to an hour.

(This is assuming the Israelis used their indigenous refueling capabilities, as opposed to American tankers, which were reportedly used in the August 2007 strike against Syrian rocket production facilities. The US has denied any American aircraft were involved in this current incident.)

At the point of refueling over the Red Sea, the Israeli jets would have been in the air for roughly two to four hours, which is two to four hours longer than it would have taken the Saudis to scramble jets and intercept. But the Saudis aren't the only ones around with radar. Further south, just past the American military bases in Djibouti and Ethiopia, the Red Sea feeds into the Gulf of Aden.

As of January 2009, some 15 countries were participating in CTF-151, a multinational effort at combating piracy operations around Somalia, Yemen, and the Gulf of Aden. Almost the entire Horn of Africa was being covered with sophisticated naval radars from countries like South Korea, Japan, China, Russia, Turkey, and Germany. It would not be unimaginable for some of these countries, China or Russia for instance, to wander off course and turn their radars on more valuable American and Israeli equipment operating further north. Multiple unknown aircraft idling over the Red Sea would almost certainly draw attention, even from allies of the US and Israel.

So now we have a rather large group of countries who might have seen the Israeli planes on their way to sneak attack Sudan. Saudi Arabia, certainly Egypt, several layers of American commands in Egypt, Djibouti, and Ethiopia, not to mention any countries from CTF-151 who may have been looking north at the time. All of this occurred before the jets even dropped one bomb.

The incident is extremely humiliating for Sudan. However, being a cooperative player in the Global War on Terror, Sudan chose not to retaliate against Israel or the international community who enabled the attack. That is, they did not retaliate until the international community, seemingly with strong US backing, issued an arrest warrant for the President of Sudan via the International Criminal Court. Sudan responded by expelling 10 NGO aid agencies from the relief effort in Sudan's troubled Darfur region.

Is this a conflation of two completely unrelated issues, the ICC warrant and the Israeli air strike? Not at all. In fact, the ICC warrant was almost a coincidence. To understand the connection, we have to go back to the original US-Israeli warning that Hamas was smuggling weapons.

While Israel may have had an informant with information on Iranian weapons shipments, it is unlikely this person would have any specific information on the shipment, such as when it would arrive in Sudan and what route it would take up the coast. Without this information like this, Israel would be unable to intercept the shipment, at least until it was deep into Egypt, and it would be extremely difficult for the Israelis to justify an attack on Egyptian soil. Therefore, we can be reasonably certain that Israel and the Americans have intelligence assets on the ground inside Sudan.

With assets on the ground, information on the time and placement of the weapons shipments would be much easier to discern, especially since Israel seemed to have specific details on the nature of the Iranian weapons (amount, weight, etc). A quick SMS or e-mail from an agent observer to the local Mossad/CIA station chief would be all the notice needed for Israel to launch its air strike.

So how do you position western intelligence assets in a country split between an Arab and African population? Simple, you hide them in relief agencies. And if you want information on smuggling activities, you hide them in relief agencies near the ports.

When Sudan expelled the 10 NGO's, it did not cite the ICC as its reason but rather that these NGO's were in effect breaking Sudanese law by being infiltrated by “western governments and diplomats.” Furthermore, Sudan specifically selected aid agencies working not inside Darfur, but rather those working with refugees from Darfur displaced along the eastern coast of Sudan, particularly those based around Port Sudan.

And there's the connection: Where was the air strike? Port Sudan. Where were the western intelligence assets? Port Sudan. From where were the NGO's expelled? Port Sudan.

The consequences of this are dire. First of all, the suffering of the Sudanese people displaced from Darfur, some 3 million people along the coast, is needlessly and gruesomely exacerbated by the lack of aid coming from the expelled NGOs. Beyond the 39+ deaths from the air strike, there's no telling how many refugee deaths will be caused by the lack adequate care and relief. Second, the US and Israel have lost the ability to infiltrate eastern Sudan through the camouflage of hundreds of faceless western relief workers. Now what was once a rather clever spy operation monitoring Hamas and Iranian smuggling activities has been completely blacked out.

Remember those Saudi radars and the odd visual of aircraft copulating over the Red Sea? This may help explain why  leaders of the Arab world, not normally in a rush to be pictured with war criminals, greeted Sudan's president as a hero at this week's Arab League Summit. Better to shower Sudan with praise and support than risk spiteful damaging revelations from Sudan of Arab complicity in an Israeli attack against another Arab nation. Injustice breeds injustice, and while the Arab world wasn't especially supportive of the ICC to begin with, there is now zero chance its jurisdiction will ever be honored in Sudan, much less the wider Middle East.

There are very good reasons why clandestine, unilateral military attacks are illegal under international law, and with one single air strike, Israel has illustrated those reasons perfectly. Your enemies gain sympathy, your allies stop helping you, and in the case of Darfur, genocide is enabled.