Nadia Kayyali
There are some very disturbing videos circulating the Internet right now, depicting the deaths of unarmed civilians at the hands of trained, armed men. Many of these videos even show individuals being shot in the back, or as they try to flee.
These are videos of police officers in America killing unarmed black men like Oscar Grant and Eric Garner. And, as the most recent case shows, without these recordings, much of America might not have any idea exactly how much of a problem this is.
Citizen videos of law enforcement encounters are more valuable than ever. And for those who are wondering—it is legal to record the police.
Nadia Kayyali
Want to know if GCHQ spied on you? Now you can find out. Privacy International (PI) has just launched a website that lets anyone find out if their communications were intercepted by the NSA and then shared with GCHQ.
The website is the result of a February 6 ruling by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT). Similar to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in the US, the IPT is a special court in the UK established by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) that deals with issues of surveillance and human rights.
The February 6th ruling held that intelligence sharing between GCHQ and NSA done prior to December 2014 was unlawful. The decision, which applied to information collected by the NSA through Prism and Upstream, was based on the secrecy of the rules governing sharing of that information. This followed a December ruling in which the court held that information sharing between the NSA and GCHQ could continue because the oversight of the data-collection program had been made public, bringing it into compliance with European law. Privacy International disagreed with the decision made by the tribunal on this point and is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights.
Nadia Kayyali and Katitza Rodriguez
Riseup, a tech collective that provides security-minded communications to activists worldwide, sounded the alarm last month when a judge in Spain stated that the use of their email service is a practice, he believes, associated with terrorism.
Javier Gómez Bermúdez is a judge of Audiencia Nacional, a special high court in Spain that deals with serious crimes such as terrorism and genocide. According to press reports, he ordered arrest warrants that were carried out on December 16th against alleged members of an anarchist group. The arrests were part of Operation Pandora, a coordinated campaign against “anarchist activity” that has been called an attempt “to criminalize anarchist social movements.” The police seized books, cell phones, and computers, and arrested 11 activists. Few details are known about the situation, since the judge has declared the case secret.
At least one lawmaker, David Companyon, has speculated that the raids are a “stunt to garner support for Spain’s recently approved ‘gag law.’” The new law severely restricts demonstrations, setting huge fines for activities such as insulting police officers (€600), burning a national flag (up to €30,000), or demonstrating outside parliament buildings or key installations (up to €600,000). Considering the provisions of the law, it’s no surprise that many see the raid, conducted against a group with political ideas that the government appears to find threatening, as connected.
