Berto Jongman: Case for an International Tribunal for Cyber-Space

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Transnational Crime, IO Impotency
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

Peace and Justice in Cyberspace

Potential new global legal mechanisms against global cyberattacks and other global cybercrimes

An International Criminal Tribunal for Cyberspace (ICTC)
International cybercrime law
Prosecution for the Tribunal
Police investigation for the Tribunal

by

Judge Stein Schjolberg

PDF 40 Pages

EXTRACT:

Cyberspace, as the fifth common space, after land, sea, air and outer space, is in great need for coordination, cooperation and legal measures among all nations.

Francesca Musiani: Reinventing the Internet’s Phone Book?

GigaNet, IO Impotency
Francesca Musiani
Francesca Musiani

May 31, 2013

Dr. Francesca Musiani, ISD's Yahoo! Fellow, hosted an all-day conference on Internet governance and infrastructure on Friday, April 19, 2013 in collaboration with the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, the Yahoo! Fund on Communication Technology, International Values, and the Global Internet, American University's School of International Service, and the Global Internet Governance Academic Network (GigaNet).

The “invisible” infrastructures of the Internet’s lower layers – addresses, protocols, domain names – are increasingly used to serve political objectives different from the purpose they were initially designed for. Are we currently experiencing a “turn to infrastructure” for Internet governance?

This conference explored the political, social and technical implications of this recent tendency, by focusing on a particularly controversial aspect of Internet infrastructure: the Domain Name System, the Internet’s “phone book.”

A full conference report and summary is available here.

Chuck Spinney: Is John McCain Senile? Or Was this a Neo-Con/Zionist-Funded Exercise?

Government, Idiocy
Chuck Spinney
Chuck SpinneyWas

Imagine if a senior democratic senator pulled this kind of asinine stunt during the Reagan or Bush II presidencies —  Would not the neocons, with McCain in the lead, would howl about usurping the commander chief's prerogatives?

McCain’s Syria Photo-Op Included Rebel Kidnapper

Spokesman Says Incident ‘Regrettable,' McCain Didn't Know

by Jason Ditz

Anti-War.com, May 30, 2013

Sen. John McCain’s Monday decision to sneak into Syria for a photo-op with rebel commanders is quickly going from publicity stunt to embarrassment, with the revelation that one of the “commanders” in question is the head of a kidnapping ring.

According to freed kidnap victims, the photo shows Abu Ibrahim, the leader of the rebel Northern Storm brigade, which has been fighting in Aleppo and whose strategy has centered around kidnapping foreigners and Shi’ites and holding them for ransom.

McCain’s spokesmen have issued statements terming the incident “regrettable,” but insisting that McCain had no way of knowing who the rebel commanders he took pictures with were, adding that none introduced themselves as Abu Ibrahim.

Which of course underscores the problem with McCain’s visit. He was eager to endorse the rebels and rushed headlong into the country to give his imprimatur to the civil war, but he showed little interest in finding out who the rebels he was posing with were, or what they stood for. That they were on the side of a war that McCain is hoping to suck the US into was simply good enough for him.

Search: Development at Gunpoint – Why Civilians Must Reclaim Stabilization Aid

Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence

Development at Gunpoint – Why Civilians Must Reclaim Stabilization Aid

Michael Young

Foreign Affairs, December 19, 2010

The current multibillion-dollar campaign to counter transnational terrorism, defeat insurgencies, and stabilize fragile states blends diplomacy, defense, and development. A principal tool in this vast effort is humanitarian and development assistance — what has come to be known as militarized aid. Flows of aid to fragile states have grown significantly over the past decade and are increasingly concentrated on a few frontline countries. The rhetoric of foreign assistance policymakers is infused with terminology derived from national security and counterterrorism doctrine. Defense ministries now control vast aid budgets.

Militarized aid is delivered by soldiers or private contractors at the behest of a political-military leadership. In Afghanistan, for example, the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) weld military, aid agency, and contractor components to multiply force where, in the words of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, ”the U.S. military’s ability to kick down the door [must be] matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward.” Yet it is unclear whether militarized aid is effective. In research carried out for the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, Andrew Wilder dubbed militarized aid ”a ‘weapons system’ based on wishful thinking.” And it appears increasingly evident that such aid actually damages the greater stabilization effort in three ways: it erodes humanitarian principles, spreads risk, and is often of poor quality.

Humanitarian principles are derived from the laws of war. These principles include, among others, humanity (aid must save lives and alleviate suffering), impartiality (aid is based solely on need), and independence (aid is not suborned to political or military objectives). These are not abstract, do-good notions. They are born of conflict, and there are hardheaded reasons why they define a civilian space for aid.

Adhering to these tenets assures those in war-torn communities that the primary interest of aid workers is helping civilians survive with dignity. As a result, they grant humanitarian organizations access and protect aid workers’ safety. They may even mediate with armed opposition groups on the aid organizations’ behalf. This is how relief agencies continue to operate in violent places such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

Even given the best intentions, massive budgets and pressure to spend almost always translate into ineffective use of funds.

Continue reading “Search: Development at Gunpoint – Why Civilians Must Reclaim Stabilization Aid”

Stephen E. Arnold: Big Data Myths & Math

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Arnold in London: Big Data and Search

Stephen E Arnold appears in a two minute video. This program provides a summary of his main point in his lecture at the Enterprise Search Summit, May 15-16, 2013. What about Big Data magic? Watch the video here and find out. The two-minute video explains how costs for Big Data are likely to rise as the volume of information to be processed increases.  Precision and recall of search are marginal, while flows of digital information increased (and analog also increased but is not factored in at all).

See Also:

Steve Arnold: Government IT Professionals Not Ready for Big Data + Meta-RECAP

Stephen E. Arnold: Search and Business Intelligence “Merge” But Nothing New — with Comment by Robert Steele

Owl: Rendition Flights Database Updated & Persistent

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, Corruption, Government
Who?  Who?
Who? Who?

“Rendition Flights Database has been compiled in collaboration with Reprieve, and represents the world's largest set of public flight data relating to those aircraft suspected of involvement in the global network of renditions, secret detention and torture. The interactive here has been produced in collaboration with Craig Bloodworth from The Information Lab, and allows users to search for, and visualise, renditions flights from the underlying database…We hope that by bringing together the data into one place, researchers across the globe will be able to help build a clearer picture of the movements of aircraft associated with the renditions network. In particular, we hope to identify those flights which can be linked to known or suspected detainee transfers between secret detention sites, or which may have played a subsidiary role in servicing the global system of secret detention and interrogation.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

The Rendition Flights Database currently contains flight data on 122 US-registered civilian aircraft, as well as some military flights into Guantanamo Bay. In total, the current version of the database contains over 11,000 individual flights, many of which have been logged by more than one source of data. Of particular importance have been the results of a Freedom of Information project by Access Info Europe and Reprieve, that has unearthed significant new flight data on renditions aricraft. This has not been integrated before now, and sits in our Database alongside data from Eurocontrol, Council of Europe and European Parliament investigations, and a range of other sources. As the project develops, new data will be integrated as it is released into the public domain.”

Rendition Flights Database