Category Archives: Security

History, Security

Libyans Flee to Egypt, Release Evidence of Crimes

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Al Masry Al Youm has posted an update from Libya delivered via Egypt, since Libya’s Internet access has been cut.

Suleiman Saghir, a Libyan who made it to Egypt’s Marsa Matrouh through Salloum, described the current events back home as “atrocious and unimaginable.” He said hunderds of Libyans have sought refuge in Egypt since the violence erupted.

Saghir added that some eyewitnesses of the developments in Libya fled to Egypt so their voices can reach Arab and world media outlets. Some photographs and video clips brought across the border show Libyan authorities committing crimes against unarmed women and the elderly, he said.

Several news outlets are reporting hundreds of Libyans dead from fighting with the government and hundreds more fleeing through Egypt’s Salloum border terminal, which recently was destabilized by violent protests.

On 28 January, now known as the “Day of Anger,” bloody clashes took place in the city that resulted in the burning of all police stations, the state security headquarters, and three buses.

The clashes led to the injury of 13 police officers.

Salloum is the north-west corner of Egypt, bordered by Libya and the Mediterranean coast, only 150 miles west of Marsa Matrouh on a modern highway. I suppose there is a touch of irony to these developments. Libya used to criticize Egypt for restriction of trade and movement from Egypt through Salloum and demanded the border be more open. Now that the government has lost its grip over the border post the Libyans not only can more easily escape to Marsa Matrouh and bring goods home but Egypt can increase its export of revolution to Libya.

In related news, the Libyan military seems to be making emergency flights to Malta, about 600 miles northwest.

Two Libyan fighter jets with four military personnel on board who said they had escaped Benghazi air base after it was taken over by protesters landed in Malta on Monday, military sources told AFP.

Two civilian helicopters also landed on the Mediterranean island around the same time, carrying seven people who said they were French nationals working on oil rigs near Benghazi, although only one had a passport, the sources said.

The helicopters were given permission to land in Malta but had not been given clearance to leave Libya, indicating that they had escaped, they added.

Malta has had friendly intelligence relations with Libya, so it is little surprise military pilots would head there. It reminds me that Maltese Prime Minister Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici (given prior notice by Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi) in 1986 sent advance warning to Libya to try and foil Ronald Reagan’s plan to assassinate Qaddafi. He sounded the alarm when some of the 100 US military aircraft used in Operation El Dorado Canyon flew over water towards Libya (France, Spain and Italy had refused airspace).

The warnings were of little help to stop the attack due to incompetence in the Libyan military and technology like the F-111F’s terrain-mapping radar and laser-guided weapons (Pave Tack) that allowed for high-speed low level standoff attacks even at night. However, Qaddafi was able to run and hide to survive, which is probably what he is doing again now.

Updated to add: Reuters and the BBC say the Libyan jet pilots, both colonels, defected after they were ordered to bomb civilians.

Security

Employee Use of Social Media

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A few of the tracks at RSA discussed employee use of social media, the security risks it may cause, and employees’ rights and advice for employers. A recent settlement highlights some of the issues.

A Connecticut American Medical Response (AMR) employee was fired for making negative comments on her Facebook account about her boss. According the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the complaint alleged that the discharge violated federal labor law because the employee was engaged in protected or concerted activity when she posted the comments about her supervisor, and responded to further comments from her co-workers. Additionally, the company maintained overly-broad rules in its employee handbook regarding blogging, Internet posting, and communications between employees.

Under the National Labor Relations Act, employees may discuss the terms and conditions of their employment with co-workers and others. “Concerted activity” includes any activity by individual employees united in pursuit of a common goal. The activity must be in concert with or on the authority of other employees, and not solely by and on behalf of the employee himself. (Meyers Industries, 281 NLRB 882 (1986)).

There are also potential First Amendment issues when an employer attempts to limit employees’ speech on social media. Consider including in any company policy a provision on the use of social media by employees. Social media can potentially mean huge security risks for employers. Any policy should be clear, concise and understood by employees. It is also highly recommended an attorney review any policy.

Security

Security and the Politics of Humanitarian Aid

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My undergraduate honors thesis was on the ethics of US humanitarian assistance to Somalia in 1992. It tried to examine the political influences that determined who to assist and how much in a conflict zone. I just noticed a warning by Oxfam about this exact issue in terms of today’s American international security interests:

If you look at allocations in the course of this past decade to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s much higher on a per capita basis than the aid given to the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is one of the worst places to live on Earth, and has been for a couple of decades. I think aid per capita at one point in Iraq was 18 times higher than the aid per capita in Congo, even though Iraq – despite the violence at the time – was considerably less badly off than the Congo.

The Deutsche Welle uses some highly charged language as an introduction to the issues:

Billions of dollars are being used for “unsustainable, expensive and sometimes dangerous aid projects” supporting short-term foreign policy and security objectives, while countries in desperate need are being overlooked, according to Oxfam.

Oxfam argues two points against letting security policy be tied to aid.

  1. Military-related assistance can be perceived as tainted and a target of resistance
  2. The military does a poor job identifying and managing assistance areas

They give an area just to the south of Somalia as an example:

If you look at the assistance that the US has given in northern Kenya, which is an area of security interest for the Americans, the US Army has built schools there and then forgotten about them or not ensured that there are teachers and materials for that school to be sustainable. We’ve seen that happen in many parts of Afghanistan as well. The assistance is badly done.

I recently wrote about a little-known US military project in a small African country, very likely to be related to security but portrayed as entirely humanitarian.

History, Poetry, Security

SMS protest language censored by phone companies in Uganda

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Reuters reveals an interesting African development related to protests in the Middle East and mobile communication:

Uganda has ordered phone companies to intercept text messages with words or phrases including “Egypt”, “bullet,” and “people power” ahead of Friday’s elections that some fear may turn violent.

“Messages containing such words, when encountered by the network or facility owner or operator, should be scrutinised and, if deemed to be controversial or advanced to incite the public, should be stopped or blocked,” he said.

[…]

The other English words or phrases on the list are: “Tunisia”, “Mubarak”, “dictator”, “teargas”, “army”, “police”, “gun”, “Ben Ali” and “UPDF”.

Bad idea. It will not work, not least of all because the black-list can be leaked; I see an impossible goal of staying abreast of slang and permutations already typical of SMS.

Who would type dictator when they can say tator, or tater, or tot? Who uses police when they can put cops, 5-0 or bobs? Wikipedia provides a list of euphemisms for police that covers every letter in the alphabet. I would use gas, or mace, or lach (short for lachrymatory), or pep(per), or RCA (riot control agent) instead of teargas.

I mean the obvious and historic defense is encoded language: the words gas and pepper have many meanings, and thus are hard to ban. This is a form of substitution. The key to decipher their correct (intended) meaning using message context or metadata. That easily defeats word-list censorship. How cool is that? Or should I say how radical? I’ve mentioned this before in terms of songs and poems like Kumbaya.