CyberLaw Blog

Archive for October 17th, 2008

Britain Considers Database for Telephone and E-Mail Traffic: “The country’s independent reviewer of terrorism laws, Lord Carlile, said the government should not be allowed to set up a vast ‘data warehouse.’

(Via NYT > Technology.)

Court of Appeal orders men to disclose encryption keys: “Two men have been told that they cannot rely on their right to silence to refuse to give British police a computer password.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

Government gives more detail on communications surveillance plan: “The Government has postponed planned legislation which could create a giant central database containing records of every email, web session and phone call made in the UK.”

(Via OUT-LAW News.)

China watches over internet café customers in web crackdown: “All visitors to internet cafés in Beijing are to be required to have their
photographs taken in a stringent new control on the public use of
cyberspace.”

(Via Tech and Web from Times Online.)

Hoon: Not building überdatabase would be terrorist licence to kill: “

Fear? Hyperbole? He’s heard of them

Transport secretary Geoff Hoon said last night that if the government is not able to harvest details of all internet communications, society will have granted terrorists a licence to kill.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Oz watchdogs howl over ‘Cyber-Safety’ net filter: “

Can you opt-out?

Aussie civil liberties watchdogs are warning the country’s ‘Cyber-Safety’ internet filter plan won’t actually let adults choose to opt-out from web censorship.…

“

(Via The Register – Public Sector.)

Another article from the Times….

Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online – Times Online

October 17, 2008

Dangerous and depraved: paedophiles unite with terrorists online
Richard Kerbaj, Dominic Kennedy, Richard Owen and Graham Keeley

For some, the internet is merely a hiding place — a web of secret corridors where all manner of shameful deeds unfold. But the police never expected that it might become a strategic platform where two groups of society’s outcasts, terrorists and child sex abusers, could meet to exchange operational secrets.

The realisation that there might be something in common between violent Muslim fanatics known for their supposed piety and sexual deviants who prey on children has only slowly dawned on officers. Cracking the mystery of how these worlds overlap is expected to improve understanding of the mindsets of both types of criminals and has been hailed as a potentially vital intelligence tool to undermine future terrorist plots. ‘A way of finding who the extremists and terrorists are’, an anti-terror source said, ‘is to go through the child-porn sites.’

The link might have remained unknown but for the case of a Muslim preacher from the East End of London who in 2006 was being investigated by police over his suspected links to a jihadi terrorist gunrunner.

To Scotland Yard’s surprise, the 26-year-old Abdul Makim Khalisadar, a former primary school assistant, was discovered to be downloading considerable quantities of child pornography. A DNA test showed he was the wanted ‘Whitechapel Rapist’ who had violently attacked a woman in the street a year earlier. He was jailed for ten years for rape and perverting justice. Khalisadar, who has never been convicted of terrorist offences, and some friends concocted a false alibi that he was preaching at the East London Mosque when the attack happened. He was accused of possessing photographs of child sex abuse but these 11 charges were allowed to lie on file. “

(Via .)

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Sounds all unbelievable to me but interesting article from The Times. Why wouldn’t they hide their messages into normal boring photos considering the fact that websites carrying child pornography would be more likely to be under investigation?

Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids – Times Online

October 17, 2008
Link between child porn and Muslim terrorists discovered in police raids
Paedophile websites are being used to pass information between terrorists
Richard Kerbaj and Dominic Kennedy

A link between terrorism plots and hardcore child pornography is becoming clear after a string of police raids in Britain and across the Continent, an investigation by The Times has discovered. Images of child abuse have been found during Scotland Yard antiterrorism swoops and in big inquiries in Italy and Spain.

Secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists.

British security services are also aware of the trend and believe that it requires further investigation to improve understanding of terrorists’ methods and mindsets. Concerns within the Metropolitan Police led to a plan to run a pilot research project exploring the nature of the link. One source familiar with the proposal said that this could eventually lead to the training of child welfare experts to identify signs of terrorist involvement as they monitor pornographic sites.

Concerns have already been expressed at Cabinet minister level about the risk of vulnerable Muslim youths being exploited by older men. “

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The WIP Contributors: Turkey – Access Blocked: A Disturbing Trend in Freedom of Speech

Turkey – Access Blocked: A Disturbing Trend in Freedom of Speech
Handan T. Satiroglu, October 16, 2008

Surfing YouTube.com, a favorite global pastime, is anything but a predictable experience within the confines of the Turkish Republic. Before browsing, one has to wonder, ‘Is it blocked?’ ‘Unblocked?’ or ‘Is the entire site blocked or just a few select videos?’

Turkey first denied access to Youtube in March of 2007 because Greek nationalists had posted derogatory videos of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the much-revered founder of modern day Turkey. After a brief lifting of the ban, in September 2007, a series of anti-nationalist videos incurred the wrath of Turkish authorities once again, and led to Youtube’s subsequent banning. Although the site was intermittently available soon after, once videos defaming Ataturk and the Republic in general resurfaced, the block was promptly reinstituted in January 2008. On this autumn-tinged October morning, the site remains inaccessible from my temporary home in Turkey.

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Turkish newspaper website blocked after creationist’s complaint | World news | guardian.co.uk

Robert Tait in Istanbul, guardian.co.uk,Thursday October 16 2008 17.50 BST

The website of Turkey’s third largest-selling newspaper has been blocked following a complaint by an Islamic creationist.

The case will revive concerns about the country’s attitude towards internet censorship and press freedom.

A court ruled that Turkish web users should be denied access to the Vatan site after deciding it had insulted Adnan Oktar, a prolific writer who has disputed the theory of evolution.

It is thought to be the first time a major Turkish newspaper has been blocked online, although around 850 sites are currently filtered.

Oktar, who last month successfully applied to have the website of the
British evolutionist Richard Dawkins closed in Turkey, said he had been defamed in readers’ comments about stories on Vatan, a liberal publication which has often criticised him.

His media spokeswoman, Seda Aral, claimed the comments included obscenities and said the paper had ignored requests by his lawyers to remove them.

‘There were swear words and insults that no decent person could
repeat,’ she told guardian.co.uk. ‘This is not free speech. We are trying to protect ourselves.

‘Vatan newspaper is always propagating against Mr Oktar, and constantly publishes allegations about him. When people read these allegations, they are provoked into using these words and insults against him.’

Oktar, who writes under the pseudonym Harun Yahya, has a long track record of litigation.

Last year, he succeeded in blocking access to WorldPress.com, and in April sued Google Groups for libel, resulting in it being blocked for a time.

Another action last month led to the blocking of the Turkish Union of Scientific and Education Workers’ site.

The Vatan case came soon after the country’s restrictive internet policies were highlighted by the Nobel prize-winning Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

He complained that the blocking of YouTube – filtered because of videos allegedly insulting Ataturk – had deprived writers and artists of a valuable research source.

‘Oppression of this order does not reflect our ideas on the proper promotion of Turkish culture,’ he said in a Frankfurt book festival speech attended by the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul.

Critics say Turkey’s penal code makes it too easy to obtain blocking orders, although prohibitions are often easily overcome through proxy servers.

Encouraging suicide, libel, child pornography, peddling drugs and promoting prostitution are the most common reasons given for the filtering of sites.

Freedom of expression issues were brought into sharper fous this week when the army chief of staff, Ilker Basbug, told journalists to ‘be careful and stand in the right position’.

His comments came after the Taraf newspaper published leaked images it claimed showed the army had failed to act on prior intelligence of an attack by Kurdish militants in which 17 soldiers died two weeks ago.

Senior journalists denounced the remarks as a ‘threat’ to press freedom.