Europe and Australia more worried about passport fraud than chasing Mossad murderers

While the much-publicised search continues in the Dubai fake passports affair, no European country has yet launched a manhunt for the killers of the Hamas man in the same city. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in Dubai on January 19 by Mossad operatives who fled to Europe. The men are believed to have flown to Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands but none of these countries have launched investigations. AP say this is because the hit was carried out by a friendly country and arresting Israeli agents or even digging up evidence Israel was involved could be politically costly. “It’s in the political interest of certain countries not to get proactive in this case,” said Victor Mauer, deputy director of the Centre for Security Studies at Zurich’s Federal Institute of Technology.

The countries have yet to receive a request for help from Dubai. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a senior Hamas commander who was a founder of the Qassam brigades responsible for the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit following Israel’s Gaza incursion in December 2008. Al-Mabhouh was born in Gaza in 1960 and has been known to Israeli authorities since 1989 when involved in the abduction and murder of two IDF members. He has been the target of two previous assassination attempts: a car bombing and a poisoning. The poisoning took place in Beirut six months ago and rendered him unconscious for 30 hours.

Al-Mabhouh was a key negotiator between Hamas and Iran. On 19 January he flew from Syria to Dubai on his way to Bangkok. He arrived in the early afternoon without bodyguards and booked into the Al Bustan Rotana hotel using a false identity. He left an hour later and returned around 8.25pm. It was likely he was being tailed. His wife rang a half hour later but there was no answer. Israeli news agency Inyan Merkazi reported a four-member squad of Shin Bet and Mossad agents interrogated al-Mabhouh before executing him. Dubai Police say he was dead by 9pm. Hotel footage show suspects following him to his room in the afternoon before checking into the room opposite.

Around 8pm they gained entry to his room and waited for his return.Al-Mahmoud’s body was found the following morning and taken for a police examination. Burns from a stun gun were found under his ear, in his groin and on his chest. Pathologists discovered his nose bled before death. They found blood on a pillow they believe was placed over his nose and mouth to suffocate him. Results from a preliminary forensic report found al-Mabhouh was first paralysed via electric shock to his ears, legs, heart and genitals and then suffocated.

Dubai police identified 11 people suspected of involvement in the murder. Five carried out the crime while the remaining six were lookouts. Another four were later added to the list and they all travelled on fake Western passports, six UK, five Irish, three Australian, one French and one German. Many of the passports share names with people living in Israel reinforcing suspicion about Mossad involvement.

Reaction in the west to al-Mahmoud’s killing was muted. The subtext was a known terrorist getting his just desserts. Reaction quickly changed once it became apparent Israeli agents used western passports. Foreign ministers of the countries involved complained to Israel about the identity theft. The EU called the nature of the killing “profoundly disturbing”. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was also uneasy criticising Israel but said it would not be considered the “act of a friend.”

UK Police are now in Israel investigating the passport theft. They will interview six British-Israeli nationals whose identities were stolen by the killers. Officers say they are being viewed as potential witnesses to a crime of fraudulent use of a passport, and will not be questioned or interviewed as suspects. British authorities said Mossad was involved which Israel has refused to confirm.

In New Matilda last week, Mark Steven said the West’s response to the assassination was the result of their shared interest in the expropriation of national identities rather than a horror of al-Mahmoud’s death.” While assassination is condemnable, it seems the requisition of a European or an Australian identity is utterly unforgivable,” he wrote. Stevens asked the question: “While life that coheres behind names printed on European passports is to be valued highly, what is the worth of life that only exists under collective labels, such as ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine’?”

Interrupted lives – A story of a Twitter Hack

Yesterday my Twitter account was hacked causing me to spam at least 100 followers with sexually suggestive Direct Messages. Apparently I was not alone in this phishing attack. There was also something similar recently in Facebook. In my case it was caused by stupidly clicking on a DM sent to me on Thursday night. I knew the person who sent it and had no immediate reason not to trust it. As Pete Cashmore said we’re less wary when a link appears to be from a trusted contact. The message read “Is this you?” and provided a link (via a deceptively meaningless short URL) which I clicked on without thinking.

I regretted clicking although nothing happened immediately. Minutes later I saw someone’s Facebook warning that the “is this you?” message was malware and you shouldn’t click on the attached link. I was annoyed at my stupidity and hoped nothing further would come of it. But when I checked on Friday morning it was obvious a lot more had come of it. What happens when you click on the link is your Twitter password is sent to the attackers, permitting them access to your account. According to Cashmore, your friends receive the same message shortly after, which will look like it was sent out by you. I didn’t send out the same message (as far as I can tell) but the one I did send was a classic in its own right.

Around 7am yesterday morning, about a hundred DMs were unleashed from my account. Twitter has now cleaned out all the messages from my sent folder however someone was kind enough to send me a screenshot of how it looked. In the message I was claiming to be “female/24/horny” and added “I have to get off here but message me on my windows live messenger name paris928love@hotmail.com” It is unlikely that any of the messages would have fooled their recipients. They were all sent out complete with my name and headshot avatar which makes it blatantly apparent I am neither female, 24, nor horny (unless by ‘horny’ they meant ‘scaly’).

I was unaware of this activity while munching my breakfast. When I logged on an hour later, I checked my emails and noticed a lot of Twitter DMs sent to me in return. These were all genuine DMs sent by friends who were either laughing at the absurdity of the message (if they knew me well) or warning me I was hacked (if they didn’t). When I logged on to Twitter there were many more messages.

“excuse me?”

“Just got a DM from @derekbarry that makes me think his account has been hacked.”

“Time to change your Twitter passwd. Ur sending our “interesting” DM spam. eg “..hi, i’m 24/female/horny…message me on my…”

“unless you are leading a secret double life someone is using your account for spam”.

“Derek, your account has been compromised. Unless you really ARE 24 and horny.”

“You don’t look like a 24yo horny female to me…. 🙂 I think you’ve been hacked!!”

“so u won’t hit any “is this you?” messages in future? 🙂 was caught by one back at Xmas. Mine sent out colonic irrigation tweets :P”

One person wrote to tell me he had received one of female/24/horny messages but he also had been hacked and was “going nuts” about how to solve the problem. While I was sympathetic, this was not my reaction. I was momentarily embarrassed so much spam had been sent out in my name but looking at how absurd it was, I found it funny. It was also unwittingly the cause of more real interaction with people than I would normally have had if I’d been left alone.

I sent out a few Tweets apologising for the spam, made jokes, and immediately changed my Twitter password. This got a lot of responses most of which saw the funny side of what had happened. I hope my reputation in Twitter allowed me to turn a potentially nasty situation into one which people could laugh at. And as far as I know, no one stopped following me thinking I was a spambot.

Within a half hour, I got an email from Twitter saying they believed my account was compromised. They forced me to change my password again and hopefully I’m now clean until the next time I accidentally click on a safe looking link. I say “next time” because despite increased wariness I’m convinced it will happen again. Spammers are becoming more adept at convincingly mimicking real behaviours – though they still leave a lot to be desired in matching physical attributes with the text!

Australian media opens new front in Facebook wars

The issue of policing Facebook was raised in Australia this week after the tribute sites to two murdered Queensland youths were defaced by pornography, bestiality and statements about one of the alleged killers prejudicial to a fair trial. It didn’t help that the crimes were extremely emotive. Twelve-year-old Brisbane student Elliott Fletcher was killed after being stabbed in a school playground brawl and a 13-year-old is charged with his murder. And 350km north in Bundaberg, 8-year-old Trinity Bates was found murdered near her home after being abducted from her bedroom.

With eight million Australians (a third of the population) now on Facebook, it was natural the social networking site would be a central point of communal grief over the murders. Thousands of sympathisers flocked to the tribute sites of both children. However it wasn’t long before they descended into grubbiness. On the page dedicated to Fletcher, photos and messages started appearing of murder, child porn, race-hate and bestiality forcing the removal of the page. A similar thing happened to the Bates tribute page where posters also called for the death of the man accused of Trinity’s murder.

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh wrote a letter to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg asking whether he could do anything to prevent a recurrence of these types of incidents. Bligh said the posting of pornography and illegal messages on tribute sites for Bates and Fletcher had compounded the grief over their deaths. “To have these things happen to Facebook pages set up for the sole purpose of helping these communities pay tribute to the young lives lost in the most horrible way adds to the grief already being experienced,” Bligh wrote. “And it is something no parent should have to deal with when coming to terms with the loss of their child.”

Facebook’s Director of Communications and Public Policy Debbie Frost said the site had rules to check content and reviewers were quick to respond to reports of hate or threats against an individual, pornography, or violent photos or videos, and would remove the content, and either warn or disable the accounts of those responsible. “Facebook is highly self-regulating, and users can and do report content that they find questionable or offensive,” Frost said. In the Fletcher case, the most Facebook could do was remove the groups and disable the accounts of those responsible. “It is simply not possible to prevent a person with a sinister agenda from undertaking offensive activity anywhere on the Internet where people can post content,” said Frost. “Nor is it really possible in real life.”

News Ltd’s The Punch pointed out inconsistencies in the calls for the death of the person charged for the murder. “If this happened in a newspaper or on a major news website,” The Punch’s editor Paul Colgan wrote, “the editor would be at risk of going to jail.” Colgan was alluding to the vexed issue whether social network entries are publications under the law. He also raised questions on “the ongoing safety of general Facebook users and what the company is doing to protect the public from being exposed to unsolicited pornographic or obscene material”.

Social networking maven Laurel Papworth said Facebook cannot be held responsible for the actions of people using the site. Papworth told the ABC she was “actually quite scared of Facebook starting to act as censors of our discussions.” She said other people created the pages and with 400 million members worldwide it is like asking Australia Post to be responsible for letters that they deliver or telcos to be responsible for dodgy SMS messages. “It’s not their responsibility to be the police of humanity,” she said. “We still get spam, but we have learnt now to put it into the spam folder and move on.

Attitudes and the law will adapt to the way people use new technologies. A moral panic against the technology will sell newspapers but it won’t solve the problem highlighted by the Fletcher and Bates cases. That’s not to say Facebook are blameless. Their tendency to treat privacy issues in cavalier fashion will haunt them as the worldwide user base rapidly approaches saturation point. Daniel Solove wrote about the issue in The Future of Reputation.

“Although the internet poses new and difficult issues, they are variations on some timeless problems: the tension between privacy and free speech, the nature of privacy, the virtues and vices of gossip and shaming, the effect of new technologies on the spread of information, and the ways in which law, technology and norms interact. New technologies do not just enhance freedom, but also alter the matrix of freedom and control in new and challenging ways”

US continues to dominate world military spending

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook of 2009 has a revealing pie chart of global distribution of military expenditure in 2008. It showed US spending was over two fifths of the entire total. China, France, the UK and Russia (the other permanent members of the UN Security Council) account for another fifth, as do the next 10 countries with the rest of the world accounting for the last fifth. It confirms the Eisenhower line the US remains under the influence of the military-technological complex. Its dominance of world affairs is not about to end any time soon – unless undone by Soviet-style budget woes.

US military spend continues to rise. This month President Obama sought congressional approval for $708b in defense spending. The request included a 3.4 percent boost in the Pentagon’s base budget and $159b for missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The president’s spending freeze on other parts of the budget, designed to rein in the massive deficit, did not apply to the military. The defense department said the funds are needed for everything from health care to nuclear missiles. Obama said the budget proposal included cuts of “unnecessary defence programs that do nothing to keep us safe”. Defence Secretary Robert Gates said the overall increase was due to “broader range of security challenges on the horizon.”

Chinese agency Xinhua asks Why Does US Defence Spending Keep Growing? At a time of economic uncertainty, a $1.6 trillion national deficit, and a scaled down presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon remains immune from cutbacks. Xinhua notes Obama sought congressional approval for $708b in defense spending so it could keep up its role of “global policeman”.

The Department of Defense said the funding increase allows them “to address its highest priorities, such as the president’s commitment to reform defense acquisition, develop a ballistic missile defense system that addresses modern threats, and continue to provide high quality healthcare to wounded service members.” There is increased funding for unmanned aircraft while the Pentagon strategy also moves away from the old focus on fighting two major wars simultaneously.

The other big reason for the increase is pay rises. In the 2010 budget, Congress authorised an increase of 3.4 percent, 0.5 percent more than requested. This year defence officials will ask Congress to keep the pay raise capped at 1.4 percent. The Army’s base budget request of $143.4 billion is designed to support a force of 547,400 active-duty soldiers, 358,200 National Guardsmen and 205,000 Army Reservists. There is also a 22,000-soldier expansion of the active component that could bring the service’s personnel strength to nearly 570,000 by the end of 2011.

Nearly all increased spending of the last decade is due to the impact of 9/11. The average Defense Department budgets has gone up by more than two thirds since the 1954-2001 era according to Carl Conetta at the Project on Defense Alternatives at the Commonwealth Institute in a report titled “An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the 2-trillion-dollar Surge in U.S. Defense Spending.” Fighting the bogey of terrorism has been good business for the Pentagon.

Sudan about to sign Darfur agreement with Jem

The Sudanese Government is about to sign a peace treaty with Darfur’s largest opposition group the Justice Equality Movement (Jem). Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir arrived in Doha, Qatar to sign a ceasefire and “framework” deal, listing agreements to be fleshed out in further negotiation, with Jem leader Khalil Ibrahim. The deal follows a preliminary framework agreement which both parties signed in Ndjamena in Chad. According to a French draft of the document seen by Reuters the deal involves Jem members taking positions in the Sudanese Government. It also includes humanitarian issues, Internally Displaced Persons, wealth and power sharing, and release of Darfuri war prisoners.

(photo of Jem fighter by Gallo/Getty)

If the deal holds it will be a major breakthrough in one of the world’s most intractable conflicts of the 21st century. Over 300,000 people have died in genocidal fighting and almost three million people displaced with both parties guilty of war crimes. The Sudanese Government has inflicted the most casualties with its superior firepower and its co-opting of Janjaweed militias. However the deal with Jem does not guarantee the bloodshed will stop.

There are two other major groups in Darfur not covered by the agreement: Abdelwahid Sudan Liberation Army (mainly composed of Fur tribespeople) and Minni Minnawi Sudan Liberation Army (Zahawa people). The Minnawi faction signed a separate deal with Khartoum in 2006 however the hardline Abdelwahid faction has yet to come to terms with al-Bashir’s administration.

Jem is by far the largest of the anti Khartoum forces in Darfur. Its leaders claim they have 35,000 well-armed fighters in the region. The group was founded in 2000 following the publication of The Black Book: Imbalance of Power and Wealth in the Sudan. Jem members say northern Sudanese Arabs are disproportionately represented within the Khartoum government and political elite, leaving southern Africans and western Arabs disenfranchised and impoverished.

Two years ago Jem fighters launched the first rebel attack on the Sudanese capital. They intended to topple the government and were only defeated on the outskirts of Omdurman, near Khartoum. Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president was sufficiently unnerved by the attack to instigate peace talks with Jem. On the weekend he cancelled death sentences handed out to more than 100 men accused of taking part in the Khartoum attack and promised to free 30 percent “immediately”.

He will be hoping an agreement will come in time for elections in April – the country’s first multiparty elections in 24 years. Al-Bashir is also facing a referendum next year on independence for South Sudan. The Sudan Tribune is reporting Egypt is asking the two major partners in Sudan’s national unity government to delay the elections and the referendum until the North-South disputed items are resolved and there is a peaceful settlement in Darfur. It is unlikely Khartoum will agree to these demands but the Tribune says Jem may make it a pre-condition of the Doha signing.

The other tricky issue for al-Bashir is how it will affect his status at the International Criminal Court. The ICC chief prosecutor issued a warrant for al-Bashir’s arrest in 2009 on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Thhe court ruled the Sudanese president could not be prosecuted for genocide, saying the prosecutor failed to reasonably prove al-Bashir had genocidal intent. Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo appealed the ruling and earlier this month the ICC’s appeals chamber ordered the court to reconsider its decision to omit genocide from al-Bashir’s list of charges, saying the initial ruling had been affected by “an error of law” for setting the threshold of evidence too high. This means the court’s pre-trial judges will have to rule again on the matter.

The Polyphonic Spree perform in Brisbane

My second visit to the Powerhouse on Friday was to see the American band the Polyphonic Spree. The Spree is a Texan outfit with 17 to 27 members on stage at any one time. Possibly due to the difficulties of playing in Australia (though this was their second visit in two years) they were down to the “bare bones” 17 performers that took the stage in New Farm. This included two percussionists, two guitarists, a bassist, three piece brass section, four piece Polyphonic Choir, a flautist, a keyboard player, two piece strings and front man and lead singer Tim DeLaughter. DeLaughter and fellow Polyphonics Pirro and Bryan Wakeland were in the band Tripping Daisy which disbanded in 1999 after the drug overdose death of guitarist Wes Berggren.

I always wondered how DeLaughter and co managed to make money out of touring given the number of band members and they went further in this tour handing out hundreds of free hats, Indian chief headgear, necklaces, masks and bracelets. It made for a colourful audience who expectantly waited for the Spree to emerge from behind the screen.

The foliage was dense.

Finally the band did emerge and put on a terrific show with their own music interspersed by such eclectic offerings as Paul McCartney’s Live and Let Die, Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline and Nirvana’s Lithium.

Went upstairs to get a better view. This was a restricted ticket area only but I mumbled something about being a journalist and was allowed to take a few photos before being booted out.

foliage heaven.

Cowboys entertaining Indians.

A clue to how the band pays for its expenses. Apparently DeLaughter also makes big money from UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s use of “Light and Day / Reach For the Sun” for its advertising.

Tim takes centre stage.

Tim takes side stage.

Stuck in the middle again with you.

Mad balloon time.

End of Act 1. Just Tim left on stage with half the Polyphonic Choir.

More balloons yet to fall.

The Interval shows the foliage in all its glory.

Back for Part 2 in traditional kafkan garb.

Now its paper time and the venue briefly resembles an Argentinian football game.

I loved the Polyphonic paraphernalia over the stage.

More paper lace.

Finally the white balloons are released.

As Tim takes the final encore.

Time for a victory salute.

Before bowing to the audience.

And lining up to say farewell. An enjoyable (and eventful) gig is over.

Walkley Photo award exhibition at the Powerhouse

On another enjoyably busy weekend in Brisbane I went to the New Farm Powerhouse twice on Friday for different events. The first was the Walkley Press Photo 2010 exhibition and the second was a gig by American band the Polyphonic Spree (which I’ll feature tomorrow night). Every year more than 1000 photographs are judged for selection in the Walkley Press Photo Awards. This exhibition showcases 100 works by Australia’s best photojournalists from the short list nomination for the Walkley Award. The photos chronicle the news, events, elation and tragedy of the year in media. Sorry about the glare in the photos of the photos. While I take photos as part of my job, I doubt if I’ll be worrying the Walkley panel on this evidence.

Renee Nowytarger of The Australian won the 2009 Nikon-Walkley Press Photographer of the Year. This was her photo called Tears of Stolen Love. The woman in the photo is 33-year-old Essina Sullivan, a member of the Stolen Generation. Essina was captured crying as she spoke of her removal from her family in Northern NSW aged just two. It was her last memory of her grandmother who was beating her hand on the boot of the car that removed Sullivan from her family.

This photo “Displaced Future” is by Sydney Morning Herald’s Kate Geraghty who was a finalist for best photographic essay in the 2009 Walkley Awards. Geraghty flew to the DRC where five million have died and another million displaced making it the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II. Geraghty visited the displacement camps near Goma in eastern DRC. Conditions inside the camps are dire, rows and rows of banana humpies housing entire families with nothing but volcanic rock to sleep on. Thousands queue for food and water and diseases such as dysentery and cholera spread throughout the camps filling the mass graves in near by banana plantations. Geraghty said “many I photographed had lost everything, were terrified, in shock and in mourning but I also encountered dignity and hope where one would expect to find anger and bitterness.”

“Bekasi Waste” by Kate Geraghty. This haunting image is of 91-year-old Muchitar walking down a mountain of rubbish as day breaks over the Bantar Gebang rubbish dump in the Jakarta suburb of Bakasi. Muchitar scavenges for rubbish, among 5000 people at the dump.

This was Brad Hunter’s Lin Family Funeral. The quiet Sydney suburb of Epping was shocked when an entire family was murdered last July. Newsagency owner Min Lin and his family were found bludgeoned to death in their beds. On 8 August over a thousand mourners from the local community paid their respects to the five Lin family members at the Badgery Pavilion in Homebush. Hunter is a photographer at the Northern District Times and he took this shot at the Pavilion.

This was the press photo of the year by Renee Nowytarger. Called “Party Blues” it captures then Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull at a retirement home the day after an unfavourable news poll. The photo epitomises Turnbull’s position (and self-pity) which was soon to become untenable. See a better version of the photo here.

This was one of many iconic photos from Black Saturday when 179 people died in bushfires in Victoria on 7 February 2009. The Age’s Jason South took this photo of an exhausted firefighter at an unknown location.

This was another Black Saturday moment captured by Alex Coppel of the Melbourne Herald-Sun as firefighters are forced to retreat as a giant wave of flame approaches. The photo was infamously used by a London tabloid (the Daily Mail if memory serves) with the odious headline “hey Bruce the fire is that way”.

Iceland aims to become the Caymans of journalism

A group of Icelandic MPs have launched an exiting new collaboration to turn the country into a haven of investigative journalism. The MPs are collaborating with Wikileaks to amend laws to grant protection for journalists, sources and whistleblowers. The plan would also provide data storage facilities as well as combating “libel tourism”, the practice of bringing defamation charges wherever the law is most attractive for the plaintiff. The intention is to provide a comprehensive Freedom of Information Act, whistleblower and source protections, limited prior restraint and protection for ISPs.

The proposal submitted to the Althing (Icelandic Parliament) yesterday asks the government to find ways to strengthen freedoms of expression and information freedom in Iceland, as well as providing protections for sources and whistleblowers. The proposal requests changes to law, and an examination of the legal environments of other countries to get a “best of breed” law in freedoms of expression and information. It also recommends an international prize to be called The Icelandic Freedom of Expression Award.

The aim is to turn the island nation of 350,000 people into the world’s first “offshore publishing centre.” According to Mother Jones, the proposals could turn Iceland into the Cayman Islands of journalism. It says the proposal is based on the business model of offshore financial centres like Switzerland, which attracts investors with an enticing combination of low taxes and strict bank secrecy laws. Iceland could be the equivalent for investigative journalists if, as expected, it passes what would be the strongest source protection and freedom of speech laws in the world.

The proposal is the brainchild of the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative which addresses freedom of expression in the digital age. The IMMI say Iceland is “at a unique crossroads”. The IMMI is feeding off the sense of change in the electorate as a result of the economic meltdown in the banking sector, to prevent it from taking place again. It also quotes Reporters Sans Frontiers who say Iceland dropped from first in the world for freedom of expression in 2007) to 9th last year. “It is time,” say IMMI’s founders, “this trend was rectified”.

The IMMI was drafted with help from Julian Assange and Daniel Schmitt, two of the founders of Wikileaks. Julian Assange has been in Iceland for the past two months, consulting parliamentarians on the project. Assange says Wikileaks has fought off more than 100 legal attacks over the past three years by spreading assets assets, encrypting everything, and moving telecommunications and people around the world. He says Iceland will adopt the strongest press and source protection laws from around the world.

Assange said the move was driven by Icelandic people who have suffered the largest economic meltdown of any country per capita in the GFC. He said Icelanders believe fundamental change was needed in order to prevent such events from taking place again including better bank regulation and better media oversight of dirty deals between banks and politicians. He quotes the “libel tourism” of Iceland’s largest bank Kaupthing which brought a successful suit against a Danish tabloid, Ekstra Bladet, in London where the costs of fighting libel is prohibitive. Iceland’s second largest bank Landsbanki also sued a Danish media outlet over its Russian mafia connections.

Icelandic writer and blogger Alda Sigmundsdottir says the proposed legislation would not allow people to publish freely any old rubbish and get away with it. “The point is not to make Iceland a haven for tabloids, paedophiles or similar low-level activities,” she said. Sigmundsdottir said the idea was to create a framework where investigative journalism and free speech can flourish. “Anything that is illegal will still be illegal,” she said. “The amendments will not change that.”

However the Citizen Media Law Project says while the laws are well-intentioned, they won’t achieve much because of the principle that publication happens at the point of download, not the point of upload. It quotes the famous case of Dow Jones v Gutnick where Melbourne tycoon Joe Gutnick sued Barron’s Online for publishing a supposedly defamatory article about him. Gutnick applied the writ in Victoria where only a handful of people read the article but the Australian High Court ruled this was where Gutnick’s reputation was and ruled against Barron’s.

For better or worse, says the CMLP, the poorly thought-out Australian ruling has set the precedent in similar cases around the world. While Iceland’s protections will suit Wikileaks they will not be useful for multi-national media companies. Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain believes it was unclear how broadly the laws could be applied should they pass. “Unless the executives behind a particular media company are themselves prepared to move to Iceland, I’m not sure how substantial the protections can be,” he said. “A state can still demand that someone on its territory answer questions or turn over information on pain of fines or imprisonment.”

Scammers use Haiti earthquake for online fraud

The Haiti earthquake had an unintended consequence of driving up phishing and scam attacks across the Internet in the first month of this year. In the days after the Haiti quake, scammers asked users to donate money to a charity however donations disappeared into an offshore bank account. Spammers began to send phishing messages, pretending to be from legitimate organisations like UNICEF. Hackers also took advantage of the tragedy to deliver malware. In one example, users download a Trojan when they click on the link to view a supposed video of the earthquake damage. The findings were in the monthly State of Spam and Phishing report from Symantec.

(photo by alex_lee2001)

The report found scam and phishing categories doubled in January 2010 compared to a month earlier. The total of scam and phishing messages came in at 21 percent of all spam, which is the highest level recorded since the inception of the report. As well as Haitian scams, the report found the well-known Nigerian 419 scam (named for the section of the Nigerian penal code which addresses fraud schemes) was on the rise again as was online pharmacy spam.

Symantec say spammers have changed their tactics regarding online pharmacy spam. They have now taken to using subject lines such as “Must-Know Rules of Better Shopping” and “You Must Know About This Promotion” which are vaguer than “RE: SALE 70% OFF on Pfizer.” Other misleading subject lines such as “Confirmation Mail” and “Special Ticket Receipt” were also used for online pharmacy spam messages.

They also say phishing attacks are more targeted and focused on attacking major brands rather than being mass attacks. Symantec observed a 25 percent decrease from the previous month in all phishing attacks. The decline was primarily due to a decrease in the volume of phishing toolkit attacks which have halved from the previous month. A 16 percent decrease was observed in non-English phishing sites as well. More than 95 web hosting services were used, which accounted for 13 percent of all phishing attacks, a decrease of 12 percent in total Web host URLs when compared to the previous month.

The US remains the most likely point of origin of spam. Approximately one in four of all spam is American-based with Brazil next most likely far behind in second place with just 6 percent. India, Germany and Netherlands are responsible for 5 percent each. The US is even more dominant in the categories of geo-location of phishing lures and hosts with 52 percent of the former category and 49 percent of the latter. Germany is second far behind with 6 percent in both categories.

Symantec notes that China has clamped down on spamming by suspending new overseas .cn domain registrations. The China Internet Network Information Center stated this suspension will allow them to implement a better procedure to verify registrant information from overseas registrations. This was a follow-up action to a related move in mid-December that required additional paperwork with registrations. As a result, spam messages with .cn domain URL dropped by more than half in January, compared to December with a steep drop towards end of January.

The report also found a new trend in adult oriented phishing. The phishing site tempts the unwary by promising free pornography after logging in or signing up. These scams affect users who enter their credentials to obtain pornography. Upon entering credentials, the site redirects to a pornographic website before leading to a fake antivirus site containing malicious code. An incredible 92 percent of adult phishing scams were on social networking sites. The phishing sites were created using free webhosting services.

The report offers advice so familiar it beggars belief so many people are still falling victims. It talks about unsubscribing from lists, keeping your mail address secret, deleting all spam, avoid clicking on suspicious links and email attachments or replying to spam, don’t fill in forms online that ask for personal information and finally don’t forward virus warnings which are usually hoaxes. Spamming is a multi-billion dollar industry that relies on the truth of the hoary phrase that “there’s a sucker born every minute”.

2010 election: Much ado about nothing

Sometime this year Australia will go to the polls to elect a federal government. Following precedents, the incumbent Labor administration will be returned to office with a similar majority it gained in 2007 or slightly less. Both sides of politics will portray this is a victory. For Kevin Rudd, there is the obvious success of being returned as Prime Minister a second time at an election – a feat only achieved by three Labor leaders (Andrew Fisher, Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke). The Coalition will paint a narrow defeat as success for their strategy of appealing to the right-wing base when it handed Tony Abbott the leadership in a three-way ballot on 1 December last year.

But first to Rudd, for whom the result will be the end product of three years of communications discipline. This is something he learned from his predecessor John Howard, an equally ruthless electioneerer. Nothing else – be it the GFC, climate change, or reform in education and industrial relations – has come remotely close in Rudd’s everyday calculations. Ever since 25 November 2007, Rudd’s Government has been devoted to one task: how to stay in office in 2010.

Rigid control of communications is the key and Rudd’s closest acolytes are in his PR machine and the kitchen cabinet (Gillard, Swan and Tanner). The downside is that it has left Rudd looking inflexible, remote, humourless and without charisma. Having seen Rudd in action at one of the community cabinets in 2008, I can confirm that he is flexible, engaging, and humorous though he is never quite charismatic. But Rudd has been willing to sacrifice these attributes when dealing with the medium that still most decides elections: television.

His Government deserves credit for mastering the strategy. With the possible exception of Peter Garrett (whose previous life allows him frequent gaffe points which he continues to spend at an inordinate rate), they have been a superbly efficient team that has managed to successfully communicate the message du jour. Rudd is an isolated figure and not attached to any of the factions, but the party has offered resolute and unquestioning support for his leadership.

Leadership has been the Achilles Heel of the Opposition and a direct consequence of Peter Costello’s refusal to go down with the ship in 2007. Brendan Nelson was a lightweight who offered only comic value as leader. Malcolm Turnbull was a brilliant mind but out of touch with the zeitgeist of the party and too arrogant to see the problem. Joe Hockey ruled himself out with his ETS conscience vote (though I agree with him voting on climate change ought to be a primary matter of conscience) and fell between the two precarious stools of the party room.

That left Tony Abbott as last man standing. Abbott has enjoyed a good run in the media keen to run with his pitch as a virile outdoorsy leader in stark contrast to the nerdy PM. It is a risky strategy that could alienate as much as it attracts but so far is working well. Each photo op of Abbott’s pre-dawn lycra excursions or weekend “budgie smuggling” exudes dynamism lacking in previous Liberal leadership teams. It also acts as a distraction to the fact the extreme right has taken over the party and he is surrounded by a bunch of has-beens that looked tired in the Howard era and don’t look any more inviting five years later.

Abbott is the same age as Rudd so will feel he has plenty of mileage ahead of him. It is unlikely he will want to stand aside as leader in defeat and if he manages to keep the majority of his comrades in office he will be regarded with affection by sitting MPs who thought they were heading to the slaughterhouse six months ago. The net result of Abbott retaining power is to make a Coalition victory in 2013 more unlikely. Though the 2010 political narrative has been about the success of Abbott’s aggressive “opposition to everything” approach, it cannot be sustained in the longer run and will make the party seem obstructionist and negative. No one will be listening to him in 2012 if he is still spouting on about a “great, big tax”.

On one level, Abbott is on the money: an Emissions Trading System is a “great, big tax”. But working properly, that is what it is designed to do. It is designed to make traditional means of creating power more expensive so we move to non-carbon alternatives. If he was really serious about tackling this problem, Abbott could go further and attack Labor’s hypocrisy over nuclear energy it is prepared to sell but not use. Abbott is a populist without the stomach for a campaign against the large NIMBY opposition it would attract.

If Australia is to have any chance of getting to 2050 with 80 percent emissions reductions it has to go nuclear – and soon, given the long lead times to build power stations. It may only be a temporary measure for 20 to 30 years while the technology to convert solar or wind energy for mass baseload is ironed out. But that doesn’t make it any less urgent. Or unfortunately any more likely. Rudd is aware of nuclear possibilities but his dedicated eye to election mechanics stops him from looking too closely at it. The Greens are blinded by their environmental purity to do anything concrete to solve the problem (witness how they dealt themselves out of the ETS debate last year). When scholars of the future look back on the 2010 election, all they will see is squandered opportunity and rank political hypocrisy across the spectrum. Happy voting.