(October 29, 2024)
Delays in the Palestine investigation trace back to 2015 when former ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda initiated a preliminary examination. Although the investigation met the necessary criteria in 2019, it was postponed due to jurisdiction debates over Palestinian territories. The formal investigation began in March 2021, yet no meaningful progress has been made, further delaying requests against Netanyahu and Gallant.
(May 28, 2024)
Thanks to their comprehensive access to Palestinian telecoms infrastructure, the sources said, intelligence operatives could capture the calls without installing spyware on the ICC official’s devices.
“If Fatou Bensouda spoke to any person in the West Bank or Gaza, then that phone call would enter [intercept] systems,” one source said. Another said there was no hesitation internally over spying on the prosecutor, adding: “With Bensouda, she’s black and African, so who cares?”
The surveillance system did not capture calls between ICC officials and anyone outside Palestine. However, multiple sources said the system required the active selection of the overseas phone numbers of ICC officials whose calls Israeli intelligence agencies decided to listen to.
According to one Israeli source, a large whiteboard in an Israeli intelligence department contained the names of about 60 people under surveillance – half of them Palestinians and half from other countries, including UN officials and ICC personnel.
In The Hague, Bensouda and her senior staff were alerted by security advisers and via diplomatic channels that Israel was monitoring their work.
(May 28, 2024)
Die Haftbefehle für Benjamin Netanyahu und Yoav Gallant, die der internationale Strafgerichtshof (IStGH) letzte Woche ausgeschrieben hatte, beziehen sich zwar auf Verbrechen, die die israelische Führung während des neuen Gaza-Krieges begangen haben soll, die Untersuchungen begannen aber bereits 2015.
Damals eröffnete die damalige Chefanklägerin des Internationalen Strafgerichtshofs, Fatou Bensouda, die Überprüfung von Vorwürfen gegen Einzelpersonen im Gazastreifen, im Westjordanland und in Ostjerusalem.
(May 28, 2024)
The former head of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, allegedly threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court in a series of secret meetings in which he tried to pressure her into abandoning a war crimes investigation, the Guardian can reveal.
Yossi Cohen’s covert contacts with the ICC’s then prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, took place in the years leading up to her decision to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in occupied Palestinian territories.
That investigation, launched in 2021, culminated last week when Bensouda’s successor, Karim Khan, announced that he was seeking an arrest warrant for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza.
(…)
After the surprise meeting with Kabila and Bensouda in New York, Cohen repeatedly phoned the chief prosecutor and sought meetings with her, three sources recalled. According to two people familiar with the situation, at one stage Bensouda asked Cohen how he had obtained her phone number, to which he replied: “Did you forget what I do for a living?”
Prior to merging it with the newly declared union, Organi led the Union of Sinai Tribes (UST), a pro-government paramilitary group set up in 2015 to support the Egyptian army in its battles against a local offshoot of the Islamic State (IS). The UST’s mission in Sinai has been unclear since the IS-affiliate group known as the Sinai Province was officially defeated in 2022.
The bloody, 10-year campaign in the Sinai has almost completely razed Rafah and uprooted thousands of members of the indigenous Bedouin population, leaving most towns and villages pulverised.
(04.04.2024)
Wednesday’s demonstration was held in front of the Journalists‘ Syndicate in Cairo, where dozens of journalists and activists gathered to protest against the ongoing Israeli onslaught on Gaza.
Activists shared videos of one of the protesters chanting against business tycoon and government ally Ibrahim al-Organi, whose companies have been charging Palestinians thousands of dollars to exit Gaza.
For now, Trump has called the recent protests “antisemitic” and “far worse” than the 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville. Biden has similarly condemned “the antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” (…)
Like their association of civil rights and peace demonstrators with communism throughout the Cold War, politicians on both sides of the aisle are now broadly hurling claims of antisemitism against anyone protesting Israel’s war in Gaza, many of whom are Jewish.
The purpose then, as it is now, is to intimidate administrators into a false political choice: Will they protect students’ right to demonstrate or be seen as acquiescent to antisemitism?
The unreleased report, a copy of which CNN obtained, is largely based on the testimony of Gazan detainees held in Israeli prisons and at military sites and released back into Gaza at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between mid-December and mid-February. An UNRWA spokesperson said that when the report was leaked, the agency had not yet decided whether to release it publicly.
The detainees cited in the report gave testimony of beatings, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse and threats of sexual violence against both men and women detained by the Israeli military. Some of the detainees are also reported to have died while in Israeli custody, at times allegedly as a result of the abuse they suffered in detention.
(01.03.2024)
2018 gehörte Wirecard zu den 30 wertvollsten deutschen Unternehmen, 125 Milliarden Euro an Geldtransaktionen fließen über den Dienstleister. Darunter sind auch Zahlungen deutscher Behörden, etwa Überweisungen an V-Leute. Sicherheitskreise äußern die Sorge, Wirecard-Finanzdaten könnten auch an ausländische Dienste geflossen sein. Ein riesiges Sicherheitsrisiko, das bislang nicht einmal ansatzweise behördlich aufgeklärt wurde.
(16.01.2024)
Am 16.11.2022 ist die Verordnung (EU) 2022/2065 des Europäischen Parlaments und des Rates vom 19.10.2022 über den Binnenmarkt für digitale Dienste (Digital Services Act – im Folgenden DSA genannt) in Kraft getreten.
Sie gilt spätestens ab dem 17.02.2024 unmittelbar in jedem EU-Mitgliedstaat in erster Linie für „sehr große Online-Plattformen und sehr große Online-Suchmaschinen“ (Art. 33 Abs. 4, Art. 92, 93 Abs. 2 DSA).
Diese werden unter Androhung empfindlicher finanzieller Sanktionen verpflichtet, alle ihre Inhalte zu kontrollieren und gegebenenfalls zu löschen. Und sie werden dabei kontrolliert von der EU-Kommission, von staatlichen Koordinatoren und von zivilgesellschaftlichen Hinweisgebern.
Trotz seiner unmittelbaren Geltung im deutschen Recht bedarf der DSA eines konkretisierenden nationalen Ausführungsgesetzes. Ein Entwurf dieses Digitale-Dienste-Gesetzes (DDG-Entwurf) wurde von der Bundesregierung am 20.12.2023 verabschiedet.
Beraten und beschlossen werden soll er im Bundestag vor dem 17.02.2024.
(…)
In Erwägungsgrund Nr. 5 wird schon zwischen der „Vermittlung und Verbreitung rechtswidriger oder anderweitig schädlicher Informationen und Tätigkeiten“ unterschieden (Hervorhebung d. Verf.). Auch Art. 34 Abs. 1 DSA spricht in Abs. 1 a von der „Verbreitung rechtswidriger Inhalte über ihre Dienste“, in Abs. 1 b-d allerdings nur noch von Informationen mit „nachteiligen Auswirkungen“, die nicht rechtswidrig sein müssen.
(…)
Im Zentrum, jedenfalls des nationalstaatlichen Geschehens, steht der von jedem Mitgliedstaat bis zum 17.02.2024 zu ernennende „Koordinator für digitale Dienste“ (KdD).
An international charity with extensive experience in providing emergency aid in wars, famines and earthquakes throughout the Middle East and in Afghanistan is being forced to pay $5,000 a truck to a company linked to Egypt’s General Intelligence Service (GIS) to get aid into Gaza.
The charity, which does not want to be named to avoid obstruction to its relief efforts in Gaza, spoke to Middle East Eye in outrage at having to pay what it openly describes as a bribe to a state-linked agent.
Trotz Forderungen teils auch aus den Ampelparteien will Bundeskanzler Olaf Scholz nach Informationen des ARD-Hauptstadtstudios derzeit keine „Taurus“-Raketen an die Ukraine liefern. Stattdessen wird zwischen Berlin und Kiew über die Verstärkung der Flugabwehr und eine mögliche weitere Lieferung von „Patriot“-Abwehrraketen aus Deutschland gesprochen.
(August 26, 2023)
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A Meta spokesperson said: „The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.
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„We don‘t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.“
Although friction from policymakers has clearly made the “pivot to privacy” which founder Mark Zuckerberg announced all the way back in 2019, when he said the company would universally apply E2EE on its services, slow going.
Finally, though, this August, Meta announced it would enable E2EE by default for Messenger by the end of the year.
(19.09.2023)
The bill could empower the government to undermine not just the privacy and security of U.K. residents, but internet users worldwide.
A clause of the bill allows Ofcom, the British telecom regulator, to serve a notice requiring tech companies to scan their users–all of them–for child abuse content.This would affect even messages and files that are end-to-end encrypted to protect user privacy. As enacted, the OSB allows the government to force companies to build technology that can scan regardless of encryption–in other words, build a backdoor.
(15.05.2023)
WIRED contacted nine of the UK’s internet service providers and telecom companies asking about their abilities to create and store people’s internet connection records. Eight did not respond to the request for comment. TalkTalk, the only one that did, said it will “meet its obligations” under UK law but couldn’t “confirm or deny” whether ICRs existed.
(23 December 2013)
Through secretive negotiations with ISPs, the coalition has divided the internet into ‚acceptable‘ and ‚unacceptable‘ categories and cut people off from huge swathes of it at the stroke of a key.
The plaintiffs in the case, led by the states of Missouri and Louisiana, eminent doctors, and others alleged that under guise of combating „mis-, dis-, and mal-information,“ the Biden White House and nearly a dozen federal agencies have, alongside private-sector cutouts, cajoled and colluded with Big Tech platforms to silence millions of Americans. The topics social media platforms have censored at the government‘s direction, measuring likely hundreds of millions of posts, range from the Hunter Biden laptop story, to matters of election integrity, to virtually every aspect of the coronavirus pandemic.
As national attention is on the High Court hearing on the reasonableness law, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial is continuing at the Jerusalem District Court.
Avi Alkalay, the former editor of the Walla news site, says that in 2015-2016, the outlet’s editorial staff underwent “very aggressive mental coercion regarding the content relating to the Netanyahu family.”
The bill would empower the U.K. government, in certain situations, to demand that online platforms use government-approved software to search through all users’ photos, files, and messages, scanning for illegal content. Online services that don’t comply can be subject to extreme penalties, including criminal penalties.
UC Global wurde ursprünglich von der ecuadorianischen Regierung unter Correa mit der Sicherheit in der Botschaft des Andenstaates in London betraut, in der Julian Assange 2012 Zuflucht suchte. Im Schatten ihres eigentlichen Auftrags belauschte die Firma damals mehrere Gespräche zwischen Assange und seinen Anwälten und Besuchern, kopierten die Daten ihrer elektronischen Geräte und gaben die erlangten Informationen an den US-Auslandsgeheimdienst CIA weiter. Im August 2022 verklagten deshalb Anwältinnen von Assange und zwei Journalisten den CIA, dessen Ex-Chef Mike Pompeo und UC Global.
Listing Russia’s conditions, Polyansky insisted that sanctions on the country’s grain and fertilizer exports to global markets should be lifted “in practical terms rather than just in words” while all obstacles to Russian financial institutions involved in the sector must also be removed, including their reconnection to the SWIFT payment system.
In another part of the article published by the Spanish newspaper it is stated that Morales allegedly spied on Correa’s two daughters through computer viruses installed on his phones in 2014 when he was still in government. The two iPhone 5s delivered by UC Global to Sofia and Anne had “Trojan horses” from the Tradesegur company installed. These Trojans allowed full control over their messages and conversations while the girls studied in France without their parents knowing.
David Morales, owner of the Spanish security company UC Global, S.L., which spied on Julian Assange during the Wikileaks founder’s time at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, also allegedly spied for the CIA on meetings held in 2018 by the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (2007-2017), with former presidents of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay – Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff and José Mujica – according to a new examination of his MacBook laptop ordered by Spanish Judge Santiago Pedraz, who has been investigating Morales for three years.
The Department of Justice and FBI are pressuring multiple British journalists to cooperate with the prosecution of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, using vague threats and pressure tactics in the process. I know because I am one of the British journalists being pressured to cooperate in the case against him, as someone who used to (briefly) work and live with him, and who went on to blow the whistle on WikiLeaks’ own ethical lapses.
‚The president and the prime minister will also discuss the joint US-UK leadership on critical emerging technologies as well as our work to strengthen our economic security.‘
Biden will then hold talks with current NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on Monday.
Ukraine is set to top the agenda for their talks which will take place one month out from the summit and will give other NATO countries an inkling of what to expect from Kyiv‘s most powerful western ally.
Rasmussen said: “If Nato cannot agree on a clear path forward for Ukraine, there is a clear possibility that some countries individually might take action. We know that Poland is very engaged in providing concrete assistance to Ukraine. And I wouldn’t exclude the possibility that Poland would engage even stronger in this context on a national basis and be followed by the Baltic states, maybe including the possibility of troops on the ground.
“I think the Poles would seriously consider going in and assemble a coalition of the willing if Ukraine doesn’t get anything in Vilnius.
(30.03.2014)
Eine verschlüsselte Festplatte war im November 2011 dem BKA ausgehändigt worden.
Die Excel-Dateien und Filmkopien enthielten unter anderem Edathys Schicksalsdaten: Ab der Spalte 5.311 unter dem Buchstaben „S“ wie Sebastian befanden sich seine Bestellungen für Bilder nackter Jungen. Aber bis zu diesem Eintrag kam die Beamtin nicht. Sie blieb bei der groben Durchsicht bei Spalte 1123 hängen: Und war wie elektrisiert: Denn dort stand, unter dem Buchstaben „D“, der Name ihres BKA-Gruppenleiters.
24.02.2014 – 00:01 Uhr
Ein böser Verdacht wabert durchs Berliner Regierungsviertel: Hat das Bundeskriminalamt (BKA) im Fall Edathy wichtige Hinweise über zwei Jahre hinweg bewusst ignoriert?
(24.02.2014)
19. Februar, Sitzung des Innenausschusses. Anhörung von Jörg Ziercke. Die Herren Abgeordneten – ich will diese honorigen Herrschaften jetzt lieber nicht namentlich erwähnen, sie müssten mittlerweile irgendwo in Grund und Boden versunken sein – kommen also aus dem Walhalla des Parlamentarismus heraus, pflanzen sich vor die Kameras und machen in Opposition. Reden tun sie dabei wie immer. Sagen tun sie nichts. Keine Information. Man habe auf Granit gebissen. Da könne man eben nichts machen. Aber man werde dranbleiben. Ganz bestimmt.
Enter Jörg Ziercke. Elvis has left the building, Ladies and Gentlemen. Und jetzt noch, vor lauter Güte, eine kleine Nachaufführung vor den KollegInnen der Presseschauspieler.
Nach dem Statement des seit 2004 amtierenden B.K.A.-Präsidenten warte ich ab. Vielleicht macht ja irgendjemand irgendwas. Vielleicht hat ja jemand zugehört. Jemand muss es doch gemerkt haben. Es kann hier doch nicht jeder entweder zu dumm oder gekauft sein.
Aber nein. Wieder nichts. Diesmal warte ich nicht bis zum nächsten Tag. (19.02.2014, Ziercke: Bundeskriminalamt saß zwei Jahre auf Edathys Namen)
Fünf Tage später. Ja, fünf. Die Mutigsten und Schlauesten sind ja bekanntlich Partei-Funktionäre in diesem Land, weil sie in der Lage sind sich ein “Bild” zu machen.
Wer auch immer irgendwann einmal über diese Zeit und diese Tage in dieser Republik erzählen wird – oder muss – er hat mein Mitgefühl.
Das war´s dann aber auch schon.
(28.03.2023)
Deal cut after national security minister reportedly threatened to quit coalition over decision to halt judicial legislation; critics slam move as handing Ben Gvir private militia
The deal also comes as Saudi Arabia is demanding certain security guarantees, a steady flow of arms shipments and assistance with its civilian nuclear program in order to normalize relations with Israel, a major U.S. ally, the White House confirmed on Friday.
Speaking to reporters, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said the U.S. was “informed” about the Saudi Arabia-Iran talks but played no role in them.
(09.03.2023)
Saudi Arabia is reportedly asking for US help to develop its civilian nuclear programme, raising fears that the kingdom may seek to develop a nuclear weapon and accelerate an arms race with Iran.
Saudi officials want US support to enrich uranium and develop their own fuel production system, while Washington is in return seeking a normalisation with another Middle East ally, Israel, according to a new report by The Wall Street Journal.
(March 9, 2023)
Saudi Arabia is seeking security guarantees from the United States, help with developing a civilian nuclear program and fewer restrictions on U.S. arms sales as its price for normalizing relations with Israel, people familiar with the exchanges say.(…)
A normalization deal would also fulfill one of the most cherished goals of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, capping what he considers a legacy of increasing Israel’s security against its archenemy, Iran.
A covert team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media have been exposed in a new investigation. The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym ‚Jorge‘. In more than six hours of secretly recorded meetings, Hanan and his team explained how they could gather intelligence on rivals, including by using hacking methods to access Gmail and Telegram accounts