BT Openzone and other hotspots can be easily mimicked leaving consumers vulnerable, Guardian investigation finds Millions of smartphone users and BT customers who use Wi-Fi wireless internet “hotspot” connections in public are vulnerable to fraud and identity theft, a Guardian investigation has established. In tests conducted with volunteers – to avoid breaching telecommunications and computer misuse laws – security experts were able to gather usernames, passwords and messages from phones using Wi-Fi in public places. In the case of the best-selling Apple iPhone 4 and other smartphone handsets, the information could be harvested without the users’ knowledge and even when they were not actively surfing the web if the phone was turned on. BT, the UK’s biggest provider of such hotspots with five million of its “Openzone” connections in the UK in train stations, hotels and airports, admitted that it has known of the weakness for “years” and that it is working on a permanent fix. But it has no timetable for when it might be implemented. Using a £49 piece of communications equipment and software freely available for download from the internet, the investigation established that crooks could set up bogus Wi-Fi “gateways” to which the latest generation of mobile phones would automatically connect. Once a connection is established, all the information passing through the gateway can be either be read directly or decrypted using software that will run on a laptop. In another test, a fake Wi-Fi hotspot invited people to “pay” for internet access with their credit card – but required them to click a box to accept terms and conditions which clearly stated “you agree we can do anything we like with your credit card details and personal logins”. A number of people entered their details. The Guardian did not retain any users’ details in the experiment. Not only could the information be used to steal identities, hijack email accounts and commit fraud but also to gather information about individuals and company employees. With the information gained in our investigation, fraudsters could have bought goods online or sent multiple e-gift vouchers worth as much as £1,000 each to pre-set email addresses. It is believed that such vouchers are already being traded by crooks over the internet. The attack works because public Wi-Fi hotspots have no form of identification except their name, which an off-the-shelf device can mimic. Many smartphones are sold with automatic connectivity to BT’s Openzone Wi-Fi hotspots to enhance the contract and reduce the load on the mobile carrier’s data network from the phones, while offering faster connectivity. Jason Hart, chief executive of the security company Cryptocard in Europe, said: “An O2 iPhone will automatically connect, because BT Openzone connectivity is usually part of the package for free internet access. It will pass over its credentials and because it can see the internet through the hotspot, it will start sending and receiving data.” BT, which boasts of having 2.5 million Wi-Fi hotspots available to its 5 million broadband customers said: “This hack is known as ‘Evil Twin’ and has been known to the industry and others for some years.” The company is working with the Wireless Broadband Alliance, an industry group which aims to help hotspot providers deliver a “reliable and trustworthy” service, to introduce a security system known as 802.1x, which forces detailed authorisation when devices connect. But it is not clear whether the devices themselves will be able to detect fake hotspots. Apple, manufacturer of the top-selling iPhone series, declined to comment. O2 did not respond to requests for comment. BT broadband customers who agree to allow a part of their Wi-Fi bandwidth to be used publicly are, in turn, allowed to use the Wi-Fi of other subscribers. The resultant Wi-Fi community is called BT Fon and utilises wireless routers – boxes which broadcast the Wi-Fi signals – in people’s homes. BT Openzone users have to provide usernames and passwords. Subscribers may use both services through their smartphones. On the first use anywhere, they must give a username and password – but after that, their phones forever hunt out hotspots with the names “BT Fon” and “BT Openzone” hotspots automatically, and will join them. Stuart Hyde, the Association of Chief Police Officers’ lead on e-crime prevention, said: “We became aware of the potential for criminals to use Wi-Fi in this way last year and have become increasingly concerned. All they need is to set themselves up in a public place with a laptop and a mobile router called ‘BTOpenzone’ or ‘Free Wifi’ and unsuspecting members of the public come along and connect to them. “Once that happens, there is software out there that enables them to gather usernames and passwords for each site a user signs in to while surfing the net. And once criminals have access to your email accounts, Facebook account, Amazon history and so on, the potential for fraud and identity theft is very serious indeed. “Until there are improvements in security, I would advise people to be very wary indeed when using insecure Wi-Fi in public places.” Professor Peter Sommer, a cyber-security expert at the London School of Economics, said: “This is all very alarming. It means that literally millions of people who use Wi-Fi in public could be at risk. If criminals are able to harvest the usernames and passwords of all the websites you visit, they could do significant damage in terms of identity theft and fraud. “The safest route for existing users of mobile phones, particularly if they use BT Fon or Openzone, is to switch off their Wi-Fi when they leave home and only use it on systems they know to be secure – such as at home or at work. Everywhere else you use Wi-Fi – whether in a coffee shop, an airport, a railway station and especially out in the street – you are taking a calculated risk.” The experiment: how we set up ‘evil twin’ Experts commissioned by the Guardian conducted two exploits to demonstrate how crooks could cash in on bogus Wi-Fi gateways. In the first, Jason Hart set up his mobile Wi-Fi router, the size of a cigar packet, at St Pancras International station in London and soon saw half a dozen smartphones try to connect to it. Only the phones of our volunteers were allowed to connect. Because modern smartphones regularly “push” email and other updates automatically, they sent the owners’ usernames, passwords and messages through the bogus BT Wi-Fi gateway, in one case while the phone was in a volunteer’s pocket. Free software downloaded from the internet was then used to decrypt and display the information on a computer attached to the router. The Guardian is withholding details of this software, but was shown details of its workings, which uses the power of modern graphics chips to decode encrypted data. For the second exploit, Adam Laurie, director of Aperture Labs Ltd, demonstrated how bogus Wi-Fi gateways can be used to harvest credit card numbers. He established a fake paid-for gateway with its own website at Waterloo station. Users are allowed on to a gateway web page but must pay to use it to access the internet. First they must provide their name and credit card details – including the CCV security code on the back and the expiry date – and agree to a terms and conditions policy. Our usage policy warned potential subscribers that it provided no protection for their private information. Incredibly, during a 30-minute period in the station, three people agreed to the terms and conditions and tried to log on and provide credit card details. To avoid breaching the law, Laurie rejected all these approaches. Wi-Fi Mobile phones Telecoms Apple Internet iPhone Identity fraud Scams Internet, phones & broadband Consumer affairs BT Telecommunications industry Charles Arthur guardian.co.uk
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Sony says it is working to get internet-based retail service back online quickly after an ‘external intrusion’ Hackers have kept Sony’s lucrative PlayStation Network offline for a fifth day while engineers scramble to overhaul the system and make it more secure. Sony’s equivalent of Apple’s iTunes Store, PlayStation Network is the internet-based retail service that allows users of its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable devices to buy games, films, music and game add-ons, and to chat with one another. Sony confirmed on Friday that the service had been attacked by hackers, describing it on the official PlayStation blog as an “external intrusion”. Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications, wrote that Sony planned “a thorough investigation … to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services”. In an update on Monday , Seybold wrote: “This is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly.” Staff have not been given any details about the problem, which first resulted in PSN going offline last Wednesday. A weekly internal progress email mentioned the “external intrusion” but did not give any indication how long the service would remain offline. Sony’s troubles began when it removed the “Other OS” option from all PS3 consoles in March last year, which meant users could no longer choose to install and run the Linux operating system. Sony cited security concerns, but the move triggered some users to hack the PS3 so that they could still run Linux. Sony then moved to sue a group of hackers that included 21-year-old George Hotz – who had already earned a reputation after jailbreaking the iPhone – who had allegedly published a root key for the PS3 that meant any content, such as films and music, could be played on a jailbroken device. The high-profile Hotz case, which was settled out of court this month, attracted attention from the Anonymous hacking network, which pledged to target Sony. A post on the Anonymous blog on 4 April said the action against Hotz and fellow hacker Graf_Chokolo was “wholly unforgivable”. “You have victimised your own customers for merely possessing and sharing information … Your corrupt business practices are indicative of a corporate philosophy that would deny consumers the right to use products they have paid for, and rightfully own, in the manner of their choosing,” it said. Despite the threats, a later post on the blog stated “for once we didn’t do it” and said Sony could be “taking advantage of Anonymous’ previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact the outage is actually an internal problem with the company’s servers”. Patrick Garrett, on the games industry blog VG24/7 , said the PSN crisis could have dire consequence for Sony if it did not adopt a more sophisticated strategy for dealing with hackers. “PlayStation’s entire 2011 so far has been marred by a single issue: hacking,” he wrote. “Sony has now allowed the issue to affect its entire audience: it has been forced to deny millions of PSN users a key PlayStation feature over a global holiday.” Garrett referred to speculation that hackers might have compromised personal information for Sony to have taken the serious step of closing PSN for five days. PSN has an estimated 75 million users worldwide, many of whom have credit card information registered with the service. “Sony’s escalation of its war on hacking could potentially threaten not only Sony’s ability to cut content deals, but, in a nightmare scenario, may compromise personal information of its millions of users. Sony must demonstrate it is capable of dealing with this situation right now. If these episodes become regular in any way, PSN’s users, core or not, will lose faith in its brand and gravitate elsewhere.” PlayStation Sony Games Hacking Internet Jemima Kiss guardian.co.uk
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Sony says it is working to get internet-based retail service back online quickly after an ‘external intrusion’ Hackers have kept Sony’s lucrative PlayStation Network offline for a fifth day while engineers scramble to overhaul the system and make it more secure. Sony’s equivalent of Apple’s iTunes Store, PlayStation Network is the internet-based retail service that allows users of its PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable devices to buy games, films, music and game add-ons, and to chat with one another. Sony confirmed on Friday that the service had been attacked by hackers, describing it on the official PlayStation blog as an “external intrusion”. Patrick Seybold, senior director of corporate communications, wrote that Sony planned “a thorough investigation … to verify the smooth and secure operation of our network services”. In an update on Monday , Seybold wrote: “This is a time intensive process and we’re working to get them back online quickly.” Staff have not been given any details about the problem, which first resulted in PSN going offline last Wednesday. A weekly internal progress email mentioned the “external intrusion” but did not give any indication how long the service would remain offline. Sony’s troubles began when it removed the “Other OS” option from all PS3 consoles in March last year, which meant users could no longer choose to install and run the Linux operating system. Sony cited security concerns, but the move triggered some users to hack the PS3 so that they could still run Linux. Sony then moved to sue a group of hackers that included 21-year-old George Hotz – who had already earned a reputation after jailbreaking the iPhone – who had allegedly published a root key for the PS3 that meant any content, such as films and music, could be played on a jailbroken device. The high-profile Hotz case, which was settled out of court this month, attracted attention from the Anonymous hacking network, which pledged to target Sony. A post on the Anonymous blog on 4 April said the action against Hotz and fellow hacker Graf_Chokolo was “wholly unforgivable”. “You have victimised your own customers for merely possessing and sharing information … Your corrupt business practices are indicative of a corporate philosophy that would deny consumers the right to use products they have paid for, and rightfully own, in the manner of their choosing,” it said. Despite the threats, a later post on the blog stated “for once we didn’t do it” and said Sony could be “taking advantage of Anonymous’ previous ill-will towards the company to distract users from the fact the outage is actually an internal problem with the company’s servers”. Patrick Garrett, on the games industry blog VG24/7 , said the PSN crisis could have dire consequence for Sony if it did not adopt a more sophisticated strategy for dealing with hackers. “PlayStation’s entire 2011 so far has been marred by a single issue: hacking,” he wrote. “Sony has now allowed the issue to affect its entire audience: it has been forced to deny millions of PSN users a key PlayStation feature over a global holiday.” Garrett referred to speculation that hackers might have compromised personal information for Sony to have taken the serious step of closing PSN for five days. PSN has an estimated 75 million users worldwide, many of whom have credit card information registered with the service. “Sony’s escalation of its war on hacking could potentially threaten not only Sony’s ability to cut content deals, but, in a nightmare scenario, may compromise personal information of its millions of users. Sony must demonstrate it is capable of dealing with this situation right now. If these episodes become regular in any way, PSN’s users, core or not, will lose faith in its brand and gravitate elsewhere.” PlayStation Sony Games Hacking Internet Jemima Kiss guardian.co.uk
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• Leaked Guantánamo papers link UK to Algerian militant • At least 123 prisoners incriminated by one informer An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili , an Algerian citizen described as a “facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida”, was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay. But according to Hamlili’s Guantánamo “assessment” file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence. After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous “custodial interviews” with CIA personnel. They found him “to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The Guardian and the New York Times published a series of reports based on the leaked cache of documents which exposed the flimsy grounds on which many detainees were transferred to the camp and portrayed a system focused overwhelmingly on extracting intelligence from prisoners. A further series of reports based on the files reveal: • A single star informer at the base won his freedom by incriminating at least 123 other prisoners there. The US military source described Mohammed Basardah as an “invaluable” source who had shown “exceptional co-operation”, but lawyers for other inmates claim his evidence is unreliable. • US interrogators frequently clashed over the handling of detainees, with members of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO) in several cases overruling recommendations by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) that prisoners should be released. CITF investigators also disapproved of methods adopted by the JTF’s military interrogators. • New light on how Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora as American and British special forces closed in on his mountain refuge in December 2001, including intelligence claiming that a local Pakistani warlord provided fighters to guide him to safety in the north-east of Afghanistan. The Obama administration on Monday condemned the release of documents which it claimed had been “obtained illegally by WikiLeaks”. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said in many cases the documents, so-called Detainee Assessment Briefs, had been superseded by the decisions of a taskforce established by President Barack Obama in 2009. “Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by WikiLeaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee,” he said. According to the files, Hamlili told his American interrogators at Bagram that he had been running a carpet business from Peshawar, exporting as far afield as Dubai following the 9/11 attacks. But his CIA captors knew the Algerian had been an informant for MI6 and Canada’s Secret Intelligence Service for over three years – and suspected he had been double-crossing handlers. According to US intelligence the two spy agencies recruited Hamlili as a “humint” – human intelligence – source in December 2000 “because of his connections to members of various al-Qaida linked terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The files do not specify what information Hamlili withheld. But they do contain intelligence reports, albeit flawed ones, that link the Algerian to three major terrorist attacks in Pakistan during this time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of the 9/11 attacks, told interrogators an “Abu Adil” – an alias allegedly used by Hamlili – had orchestrated the March 2002 grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave that killed five people, including a US diplomat and his daughter. He said Abu Adil was also responsible for an attack that killed three girls in a rural Punjabi church the following December, and that he had given him 300,000 rupees (about $5,250) to fund the attacks. The church attacks have previously been blamed on Lashkar I Jhangvi, a Pakistani sectarian outfit that has developed ties with al-Qaida in recent years. Separately, US intelligence reports said that Hamlili was “possibly involved” in a bombing outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel in May 2002 that killed 11 French submarine engineers and two Pakistanis. But the intelligence against the 35-year-old Algerian, who was sent home last January, appears deeply flawed, like many of the accusations in the Guantánamo files. Some of the information may have been obtained through torture. US officials waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times at a CIA “black site” in Thailand during his first month of captivity. And little evidence is presented to link Hamlili to the Karachi hotel bombing, other than that he ran a carpet business – the same cover that was used by the alleged assassins to escape. What is clear, however, is that Hamlili was a decades-long veteran of the violent jihadi underground that extends from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan into north Africa. From the Algerian town of Oran, he left with his father in 1986, at the age of 11, to join the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Later he fell into extremist “takfir” groups, recruited militants to fight in the Algerian civil war, and gained a reputation for violence. Under the Taliban the Algerian worked as a translator for the foreign ministry and later for the Taliban intelligence services, shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the runup to 9/11. Last January Hamlili and another inmate, Hasan Zemiri, were transferred to Algerian government custody. It was not clear whether they would be freed or made to stand trial. Clive Stafford Smith, whose legal charity, Reprieve, represents many current and former inmates, said the files revealed the “sheer bureaucratic incompetence” of the US military’s intelligence gathering. “When you gather intelligence in such an unintelligent way; if for example you sweep people up who you know are innocent, and it is in these documents; and then mistreat them horribly, you are not going to get reliable intelligence. You are going to make yourself a lot of enemies.” The Guantánamo files are one of a series of secret US government databases allegedly leaked by US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. The New York Times, which shared the files with the Guardian and US National Public Radio, said it did not obtain them from WikiLeaks. A number of other news organisations yesterday published reports based on files they had received from WikiLeaks. The Guantánamo files Guantánamo Bay United States Ian Cobain Declan Walsh Jason Burke David Leigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …• Leaked Guantánamo papers link UK to Algerian militant • At least 123 prisoners incriminated by one informer An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili , an Algerian citizen described as a “facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida”, was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay. But according to Hamlili’s Guantánamo “assessment” file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence. After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous “custodial interviews” with CIA personnel. They found him “to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The Guardian and the New York Times published a series of reports based on the leaked cache of documents which exposed the flimsy grounds on which many detainees were transferred to the camp and portrayed a system focused overwhelmingly on extracting intelligence from prisoners. A further series of reports based on the files reveal: • A single star informer at the base won his freedom by incriminating at least 123 other prisoners there. The US military source described Mohammed Basardah as an “invaluable” source who had shown “exceptional co-operation”, but lawyers for other inmates claim his evidence is unreliable. • US interrogators frequently clashed over the handling of detainees, with members of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO) in several cases overruling recommendations by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) that prisoners should be released. CITF investigators also disapproved of methods adopted by the JTF’s military interrogators. • New light on how Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora as American and British special forces closed in on his mountain refuge in December 2001, including intelligence claiming that a local Pakistani warlord provided fighters to guide him to safety in the north-east of Afghanistan. The Obama administration on Monday condemned the release of documents which it claimed had been “obtained illegally by WikiLeaks”. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said in many cases the documents, so-called Detainee Assessment Briefs, had been superseded by the decisions of a taskforce established by President Barack Obama in 2009. “Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by WikiLeaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee,” he said. According to the files, Hamlili told his American interrogators at Bagram that he had been running a carpet business from Peshawar, exporting as far afield as Dubai following the 9/11 attacks. But his CIA captors knew the Algerian had been an informant for MI6 and Canada’s Secret Intelligence Service for over three years – and suspected he had been double-crossing handlers. According to US intelligence the two spy agencies recruited Hamlili as a “humint” – human intelligence – source in December 2000 “because of his connections to members of various al-Qaida linked terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The files do not specify what information Hamlili withheld. But they do contain intelligence reports, albeit flawed ones, that link the Algerian to three major terrorist attacks in Pakistan during this time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of the 9/11 attacks, told interrogators an “Abu Adil” – an alias allegedly used by Hamlili – had orchestrated the March 2002 grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave that killed five people, including a US diplomat and his daughter. He said Abu Adil was also responsible for an attack that killed three girls in a rural Punjabi church the following December, and that he had given him 300,000 rupees (about $5,250) to fund the attacks. The church attacks have previously been blamed on Lashkar I Jhangvi, a Pakistani sectarian outfit that has developed ties with al-Qaida in recent years. Separately, US intelligence reports said that Hamlili was “possibly involved” in a bombing outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel in May 2002 that killed 11 French submarine engineers and two Pakistanis. But the intelligence against the 35-year-old Algerian, who was sent home last January, appears deeply flawed, like many of the accusations in the Guantánamo files. Some of the information may have been obtained through torture. US officials waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times at a CIA “black site” in Thailand during his first month of captivity. And little evidence is presented to link Hamlili to the Karachi hotel bombing, other than that he ran a carpet business – the same cover that was used by the alleged assassins to escape. What is clear, however, is that Hamlili was a decades-long veteran of the violent jihadi underground that extends from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan into north Africa. From the Algerian town of Oran, he left with his father in 1986, at the age of 11, to join the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Later he fell into extremist “takfir” groups, recruited militants to fight in the Algerian civil war, and gained a reputation for violence. Under the Taliban the Algerian worked as a translator for the foreign ministry and later for the Taliban intelligence services, shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the runup to 9/11. Last January Hamlili and another inmate, Hasan Zemiri, were transferred to Algerian government custody. It was not clear whether they would be freed or made to stand trial. Clive Stafford Smith, whose legal charity, Reprieve, represents many current and former inmates, said the files revealed the “sheer bureaucratic incompetence” of the US military’s intelligence gathering. “When you gather intelligence in such an unintelligent way; if for example you sweep people up who you know are innocent, and it is in these documents; and then mistreat them horribly, you are not going to get reliable intelligence. You are going to make yourself a lot of enemies.” The Guantánamo files are one of a series of secret US government databases allegedly leaked by US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. The New York Times, which shared the files with the Guardian and US National Public Radio, said it did not obtain them from WikiLeaks. A number of other news organisations yesterday published reports based on files they had received from WikiLeaks. The Guantánamo files Guantánamo Bay United States Ian Cobain Declan Walsh Jason Burke David Leigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …• Leaked Guantánamo papers link UK to Algerian militant • At least 123 prisoners incriminated by one informer An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili , an Algerian citizen described as a “facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida”, was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay. But according to Hamlili’s Guantánamo “assessment” file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence. After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous “custodial interviews” with CIA personnel. They found him “to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The Guardian and the New York Times published a series of reports based on the leaked cache of documents which exposed the flimsy grounds on which many detainees were transferred to the camp and portrayed a system focused overwhelmingly on extracting intelligence from prisoners. A further series of reports based on the files reveal: • A single star informer at the base won his freedom by incriminating at least 123 other prisoners there. The US military source described Mohammed Basardah as an “invaluable” source who had shown “exceptional co-operation”, but lawyers for other inmates claim his evidence is unreliable. • US interrogators frequently clashed over the handling of detainees, with members of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO) in several cases overruling recommendations by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) that prisoners should be released. CITF investigators also disapproved of methods adopted by the JTF’s military interrogators. • New light on how Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora as American and British special forces closed in on his mountain refuge in December 2001, including intelligence claiming that a local Pakistani warlord provided fighters to guide him to safety in the north-east of Afghanistan. The Obama administration on Monday condemned the release of documents which it claimed had been “obtained illegally by WikiLeaks”. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said in many cases the documents, so-called Detainee Assessment Briefs, had been superseded by the decisions of a taskforce established by President Barack Obama in 2009. “Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by WikiLeaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee,” he said. According to the files, Hamlili told his American interrogators at Bagram that he had been running a carpet business from Peshawar, exporting as far afield as Dubai following the 9/11 attacks. But his CIA captors knew the Algerian had been an informant for MI6 and Canada’s Secret Intelligence Service for over three years – and suspected he had been double-crossing handlers. According to US intelligence the two spy agencies recruited Hamlili as a “humint” – human intelligence – source in December 2000 “because of his connections to members of various al-Qaida linked terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The files do not specify what information Hamlili withheld. But they do contain intelligence reports, albeit flawed ones, that link the Algerian to three major terrorist attacks in Pakistan during this time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of the 9/11 attacks, told interrogators an “Abu Adil” – an alias allegedly used by Hamlili – had orchestrated the March 2002 grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave that killed five people, including a US diplomat and his daughter. He said Abu Adil was also responsible for an attack that killed three girls in a rural Punjabi church the following December, and that he had given him 300,000 rupees (about $5,250) to fund the attacks. The church attacks have previously been blamed on Lashkar I Jhangvi, a Pakistani sectarian outfit that has developed ties with al-Qaida in recent years. Separately, US intelligence reports said that Hamlili was “possibly involved” in a bombing outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel in May 2002 that killed 11 French submarine engineers and two Pakistanis. But the intelligence against the 35-year-old Algerian, who was sent home last January, appears deeply flawed, like many of the accusations in the Guantánamo files. Some of the information may have been obtained through torture. US officials waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times at a CIA “black site” in Thailand during his first month of captivity. And little evidence is presented to link Hamlili to the Karachi hotel bombing, other than that he ran a carpet business – the same cover that was used by the alleged assassins to escape. What is clear, however, is that Hamlili was a decades-long veteran of the violent jihadi underground that extends from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan into north Africa. From the Algerian town of Oran, he left with his father in 1986, at the age of 11, to join the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Later he fell into extremist “takfir” groups, recruited militants to fight in the Algerian civil war, and gained a reputation for violence. Under the Taliban the Algerian worked as a translator for the foreign ministry and later for the Taliban intelligence services, shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the runup to 9/11. Last January Hamlili and another inmate, Hasan Zemiri, were transferred to Algerian government custody. It was not clear whether they would be freed or made to stand trial. Clive Stafford Smith, whose legal charity, Reprieve, represents many current and former inmates, said the files revealed the “sheer bureaucratic incompetence” of the US military’s intelligence gathering. “When you gather intelligence in such an unintelligent way; if for example you sweep people up who you know are innocent, and it is in these documents; and then mistreat them horribly, you are not going to get reliable intelligence. You are going to make yourself a lot of enemies.” The Guantánamo files are one of a series of secret US government databases allegedly leaked by US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. The New York Times, which shared the files with the Guardian and US National Public Radio, said it did not obtain them from WikiLeaks. A number of other news organisations yesterday published reports based on files they had received from WikiLeaks. The Guantánamo files Guantánamo Bay United States Ian Cobain Declan Walsh Jason Burke David Leigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …• Leaked Guantánamo papers link UK to Algerian militant • At least 123 prisoners incriminated by one informer An al-Qaida operative accused of bombing two Christian churches and a luxury hotel in Pakistan in 2002 was at the same time working for British intelligence, according to secret files on detainees who were shipped to the US military’s Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili , an Algerian citizen described as a “facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida”, was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay. But according to Hamlili’s Guantánamo “assessment” file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence. After his capture in June 2003 Hamlili was transferred to Bagram detention centre, north of Kabul, where he underwent numerous “custodial interviews” with CIA personnel. They found him “to have withheld important information from the Canadian Secret Intelligence Service and British Secret Intelligence Service … and to be a threat to US and allied personnel in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The Guardian and the New York Times published a series of reports based on the leaked cache of documents which exposed the flimsy grounds on which many detainees were transferred to the camp and portrayed a system focused overwhelmingly on extracting intelligence from prisoners. A further series of reports based on the files reveal: • A single star informer at the base won his freedom by incriminating at least 123 other prisoners there. The US military source described Mohammed Basardah as an “invaluable” source who had shown “exceptional co-operation”, but lawyers for other inmates claim his evidence is unreliable. • US interrogators frequently clashed over the handling of detainees, with members of the Joint Task Force Guantánamo (JTF GTMO) in several cases overruling recommendations by the Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) that prisoners should be released. CITF investigators also disapproved of methods adopted by the JTF’s military interrogators. • New light on how Osama bin Laden escaped from Tora Bora as American and British special forces closed in on his mountain refuge in December 2001, including intelligence claiming that a local Pakistani warlord provided fighters to guide him to safety in the north-east of Afghanistan. The Obama administration on Monday condemned the release of documents which it claimed had been “obtained illegally by WikiLeaks”. The Pentagon’s press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said in many cases the documents, so-called Detainee Assessment Briefs, had been superseded by the decisions of a taskforce established by President Barack Obama in 2009. “Any given DAB illegally obtained and released by WikiLeaks may or may not represent the current view of a given detainee,” he said. According to the files, Hamlili told his American interrogators at Bagram that he had been running a carpet business from Peshawar, exporting as far afield as Dubai following the 9/11 attacks. But his CIA captors knew the Algerian had been an informant for MI6 and Canada’s Secret Intelligence Service for over three years – and suspected he had been double-crossing handlers. According to US intelligence the two spy agencies recruited Hamlili as a “humint” – human intelligence – source in December 2000 “because of his connections to members of various al-Qaida linked terrorist groups that operated in Afghanistan and Pakistan”. The files do not specify what information Hamlili withheld. But they do contain intelligence reports, albeit flawed ones, that link the Algerian to three major terrorist attacks in Pakistan during this time. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed architect of the 9/11 attacks, told interrogators an “Abu Adil” – an alias allegedly used by Hamlili – had orchestrated the March 2002 grenade attack on a Protestant church in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave that killed five people, including a US diplomat and his daughter. He said Abu Adil was also responsible for an attack that killed three girls in a rural Punjabi church the following December, and that he had given him 300,000 rupees (about $5,250) to fund the attacks. The church attacks have previously been blamed on Lashkar I Jhangvi, a Pakistani sectarian outfit that has developed ties with al-Qaida in recent years. Separately, US intelligence reports said that Hamlili was “possibly involved” in a bombing outside Karachi’s Sheraton hotel in May 2002 that killed 11 French submarine engineers and two Pakistanis. But the intelligence against the 35-year-old Algerian, who was sent home last January, appears deeply flawed, like many of the accusations in the Guantánamo files. Some of the information may have been obtained through torture. US officials waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times at a CIA “black site” in Thailand during his first month of captivity. And little evidence is presented to link Hamlili to the Karachi hotel bombing, other than that he ran a carpet business – the same cover that was used by the alleged assassins to escape. What is clear, however, is that Hamlili was a decades-long veteran of the violent jihadi underground that extends from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan into north Africa. From the Algerian town of Oran, he left with his father in 1986, at the age of 11, to join the fight against Soviet forces in Afghanistan. Later he fell into extremist “takfir” groups, recruited militants to fight in the Algerian civil war, and gained a reputation for violence. Under the Taliban the Algerian worked as a translator for the foreign ministry and later for the Taliban intelligence services, shuttling between Pakistan and Afghanistan in the runup to 9/11. Last January Hamlili and another inmate, Hasan Zemiri, were transferred to Algerian government custody. It was not clear whether they would be freed or made to stand trial. Clive Stafford Smith, whose legal charity, Reprieve, represents many current and former inmates, said the files revealed the “sheer bureaucratic incompetence” of the US military’s intelligence gathering. “When you gather intelligence in such an unintelligent way; if for example you sweep people up who you know are innocent, and it is in these documents; and then mistreat them horribly, you are not going to get reliable intelligence. You are going to make yourself a lot of enemies.” The Guantánamo files are one of a series of secret US government databases allegedly leaked by US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning to WikiLeaks. The New York Times, which shared the files with the Guardian and US National Public Radio, said it did not obtain them from WikiLeaks. A number of other news organisations yesterday published reports based on files they had received from WikiLeaks. The Guantánamo files Guantánamo Bay United States Ian Cobain Declan Walsh Jason Burke David Leigh guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Was SB1070 a success for Arizona? Pearce claims U-Haul rentals prove it was. Problem is, he’s lying.
April 25, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Russell Pearce is getting increasingly desperate to claim that Arizona’s police-state immigration law, SB1070, has been a big success for the state. So much so that now he’s just making shit up : State Senator Russell Pearce claimed this week he has proof that the controversial illegal immigration legislation is doing its job in Arizona. Pearce, who authored SB 1070, points to a rise in U-Haul rentals as evidence that Arizona’s tough immigration law is forcing illegal immigrants to leave the state. But does Pearce’s claim hold true? … Now that SB 1070 is approaching its one year anniversary, Senator Pearce has claimed that illegal immigrants are leaving Arizona “in caravans” and that U-Haul is busier than ever with one-way trips leaving the state. 9 On Your Side called U-Haul to check on Pearce’s claim. However, the truck rental company confirmed to KGUN9 News, since SB 1070 became law, it’s helped 0.5% more people move into than out of Arizona in 2010. These same numbers spiked to double digits, 13.2% to be exact, during the first three months of 2011. Therefore, according to U-Haul, its numbers prove Pearce’s claim may not be entirely accurate after all. Or you could just call it a lie. Because that’s what it is. Especially because we already know that SB1070 has been an unmitigated economic disaster for Arizona : “I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.” The tourism and image-related business losses were only the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to the damage inflicted on the state by SB1070 and its related anti-immigration measures. As we’ve explained previously, simply deporting and/or driving out all the state’s undocumented immigrants would have disastrous economic consequences on a broad basis for the state — some of which are already being felt. A new study from the Center for American Progress, “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona” lays it all out in great detail: The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession. Conversely, our analysis shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants in Arizona would yield a significant positive economic impact. Based on the historical results of the last legalization program under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, our analysis shows a similar program would increase wages not only for immigrants but also for their native-born co-workers. This would generate more tax revenue and more consumer and business spending, supporting additional jobs throughout the economy. Public debate over the wisdom of laws such as S.B. 1070 is heated but generally lacking in substance. The proponents of S.B. 1070 and related legislation now under debate in other cities and states claim to be acting in the best economic interests of native-born Americans, but as this report demonstrates, their claim is wholly unsubstantiated.
Continue reading …Was SB1070 a success for Arizona? Pearce claims U-Haul rentals prove it was. Problem is, he’s lying.
April 25, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Russell Pearce is getting increasingly desperate to claim that Arizona’s police-state immigration law, SB1070, has been a big success for the state. So much so that now he’s just making shit up : State Senator Russell Pearce claimed this week he has proof that the controversial illegal immigration legislation is doing its job in Arizona. Pearce, who authored SB 1070, points to a rise in U-Haul rentals as evidence that Arizona’s tough immigration law is forcing illegal immigrants to leave the state. But does Pearce’s claim hold true? … Now that SB 1070 is approaching its one year anniversary, Senator Pearce has claimed that illegal immigrants are leaving Arizona “in caravans” and that U-Haul is busier than ever with one-way trips leaving the state. 9 On Your Side called U-Haul to check on Pearce’s claim. However, the truck rental company confirmed to KGUN9 News, since SB 1070 became law, it’s helped 0.5% more people move into than out of Arizona in 2010. These same numbers spiked to double digits, 13.2% to be exact, during the first three months of 2011. Therefore, according to U-Haul, its numbers prove Pearce’s claim may not be entirely accurate after all. Or you could just call it a lie. Because that’s what it is. Especially because we already know that SB1070 has been an unmitigated economic disaster for Arizona : “I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.” The tourism and image-related business losses were only the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to the damage inflicted on the state by SB1070 and its related anti-immigration measures. As we’ve explained previously, simply deporting and/or driving out all the state’s undocumented immigrants would have disastrous economic consequences on a broad basis for the state — some of which are already being felt. A new study from the Center for American Progress, “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona” lays it all out in great detail: The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession. Conversely, our analysis shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants in Arizona would yield a significant positive economic impact. Based on the historical results of the last legalization program under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, our analysis shows a similar program would increase wages not only for immigrants but also for their native-born co-workers. This would generate more tax revenue and more consumer and business spending, supporting additional jobs throughout the economy. Public debate over the wisdom of laws such as S.B. 1070 is heated but generally lacking in substance. The proponents of S.B. 1070 and related legislation now under debate in other cities and states claim to be acting in the best economic interests of native-born Americans, but as this report demonstrates, their claim is wholly unsubstantiated.
Continue reading …Was SB1070 a success for Arizona? Pearce claims U-Haul rentals prove it was. Problem is, he’s lying.
April 25, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Russell Pearce is getting increasingly desperate to claim that Arizona’s police-state immigration law, SB1070, has been a big success for the state. So much so that now he’s just making shit up : State Senator Russell Pearce claimed this week he has proof that the controversial illegal immigration legislation is doing its job in Arizona. Pearce, who authored SB 1070, points to a rise in U-Haul rentals as evidence that Arizona’s tough immigration law is forcing illegal immigrants to leave the state. But does Pearce’s claim hold true? … Now that SB 1070 is approaching its one year anniversary, Senator Pearce has claimed that illegal immigrants are leaving Arizona “in caravans” and that U-Haul is busier than ever with one-way trips leaving the state. 9 On Your Side called U-Haul to check on Pearce’s claim. However, the truck rental company confirmed to KGUN9 News, since SB 1070 became law, it’s helped 0.5% more people move into than out of Arizona in 2010. These same numbers spiked to double digits, 13.2% to be exact, during the first three months of 2011. Therefore, according to U-Haul, its numbers prove Pearce’s claim may not be entirely accurate after all. Or you could just call it a lie. Because that’s what it is. Especially because we already know that SB1070 has been an unmitigated economic disaster for Arizona : “I don’t believe that anyone, including myself, foresaw the national and international reaction” to April’s bill, said Glenn Hamer, chief executive of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry, who said estimates of lost tourism business ranged from $15 million to $150 million. “Now we have that experience under our belts. We know these measures can cause economic damage; it’s just a matter of degree.” The tourism and image-related business losses were only the tip of the iceberg, though, when it comes to the damage inflicted on the state by SB1070 and its related anti-immigration measures. As we’ve explained previously, simply deporting and/or driving out all the state’s undocumented immigrants would have disastrous economic consequences on a broad basis for the state — some of which are already being felt. A new study from the Center for American Progress, “A Rising Tide or a Shrinking Pie: The Economic Impact of Legalization Versus Deportation in Arizona” lays it all out in great detail: The economic analysis in this report shows the S.B. 1070 approach would have devastating economic consequences if its goals were accomplished. When undocumented workers are taken out of the economy, the jobs they support through their labor, consumption, and tax payments disappear as well. Particularly during a time of profound economic uncertainty, the type of economic dislocation envisioned by S.B. 1070-type policies runs directly counter to the interests of our nation as we continue to struggle to distance ourselves from the ravages of the Great Recession. Conversely, our analysis shows that legalizing undocumented immigrants in Arizona would yield a significant positive economic impact. Based on the historical results of the last legalization program under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, our analysis shows a similar program would increase wages not only for immigrants but also for their native-born co-workers. This would generate more tax revenue and more consumer and business spending, supporting additional jobs throughout the economy. Public debate over the wisdom of laws such as S.B. 1070 is heated but generally lacking in substance. The proponents of S.B. 1070 and related legislation now under debate in other cities and states claim to be acting in the best economic interests of native-born Americans, but as this report demonstrates, their claim is wholly unsubstantiated.
Continue reading …