A subsidiary of Kobe Steel Ltd. may have falsified test data on highly radioactive waste disposal, the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) announced on Feb. 14.
Kobelco Research Institute Inc. is suspected of tampering with data it gathered on behalf of the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), which is contracted to carry out tests by the NRA.
The aim of the tests is to help form a regulatory standard for final disposal sites for nuclear waste, but a report the NRA received from the JAEA said that figures in the original data and those in reports Kobelco submitted to it did not match. Furthermore, some original data could not be located.
The NRA has instructed the JAEA to confirm details about the possible data falsification in response to the report.
A Kobelco source said, “Why data inconsistencies occurred remains unknown at the moment,” but that the research institute “will examine the case with data falsification in mind.”
The tests are designed to examine what happens to metal cladding tubes that had previously contained spent nuclear fuel when they are disposed of deep underground, including possible corrosion and by-products of gas, according to the NRA.
The nuclear watchdog outsourced the testing to the JAEA in fiscal 2012 through fiscal 2014 at a cost of about 600 million yen ($5.59 million).
Kobelco was subcontracted to undertake some of the tests for about 50 million yen.
BBC 9th Feb 2018, Russian security officers have arrested several scientists working at a
top-secret Russian nuclear warhead facility for allegedly mining
crypto-currencies. The suspects had tried to use one of Russia’s most
powerful supercomputers to mine Bitcoins, media reports say.
The Federal Nuclear Centre in Sarov, western Russia, is a restricted area. The centre’s
press service said: “There has been an unsanctioned attempt to use computer
facilities for private purposes including so-called mining.” The
supercomputer was not supposed to be connected to the internet – to prevent
intrusion – and once the scientists attempted to do so, the nuclear
centre’s security department was alerted. They were handed over to the
Federal Security Service (FSB), the Russian news service Mash says. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-43003740
Seven states in Mexico were put on high alert for the theft of a nuclear densimeter from Guanajuato State on Thursday morning around 9 A.M.
The device was stolen out of the back of a truck owned by the local engineering firm Geogrupo del Centro.
Nuclear densimeters are devices used by engineers to measure soil density. They contain small amounts of the radioactive materials Americium-241, Beryllium, and Caesium-137, and are labeled as Category 4 dangerous.
The theft of nuclear densimeters in Mexico seems to occur with surprising frequency, with at least eight such incidents such 2013, as the AFP reported after a similar incident last year. There are fears that the materials could be used in a dirty bomb attack, especially given the drug violence that has wracked the country for years.
Julian Assange ‘has suffered enough’, his lawyers tell British judge, SMH, Nick Miller, 7 Feb 18, London: Julian Assange has suffered enough and shouldn’t face prison for absconding from justice, his lawyers have told a court.
The Wikileaks editor is depressed, in constant pain from an infected tooth, and has been stuck in the Ecuador Embassy in London’s Kensington far longer than the maximum 12-month jail penalty for breaching bail, his barrister said.
On Tuesday Assange lost a legal bid at Westminster Magistrates Court to quash the arrest warrant that has awaited him since he entered the Ecuador embassy in June 2012.
However his lawyers immediately launched a new push to end the UK government’s attempt to bring him to justice – arguing that it is against the public interest to punish him for refusing to leave the embassy.
It is a criminal offence for someone on bail to refuse to surrender to police without “reasonable cause” – and Assange refused to leave the embassy despite a court order for his arrest.
But Assange’s barrister Mark Summers QC told Judge Emma Arbuthnot that it was not in the interests of “justice and proportionality” to bring an action against Assange.
Assange went into the embassy after he exhausted his line of appeal against a decision to extradite him to Sweden to face rape allegations. Sweden last year ended its investigation into the allegations, and the European arrest warrant against Assange was cancelled. However the British warrant for his arrest still stood – and judge Arbuthnot said she was not persuaded it should be quashed simply because the underlying investigation had stopped.
Mr Summers said Assange was not “thumbing his nose” at justice and his five and a half years in the embassy were “adequate if not severe punishment for the actions that he took”.
Assange had genuine fears – later proved correct – that the US were keen to prosecute him over his work with Wikileaks, Summers said.
If arrested he would face rendition to the USA, treatment similar to that meted out against Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning – and possible “persecution, indefinite solitary confinement and the death penalty”, Summers said in a written submission……….
Judge Arbuthnot said it was a “very interesting” case.
She will rule on the public interest application on February 13.
Outside court, Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson said whether or not the warrant is quashed Assange would not leave the embassy until he had an assurance he wouldn’t be extradited to the US.
“Mr Assange remains willing to answer to British justice in relation to any argument about breaching bail, but not at the expense of facing injustice in America,” she said.
Europe1 5th Feb 2018, [Machine translation] French nuclear park: “What we saw is catastrophic and
very disturbing”. For Thierry Gadault, co-author of “Nucléaire Danger immédiat”, the authorities are silencing the reality of the state of the French nuclear fleet, most of whose reactors are about to exceed 40 years.
The French nuclear system has developed a culture of lies and concealment for more than 50 years. Thierry Gadault points out the worrying state according to him of the power stations of Fessenheim, Bugey, Saint-Laurent-of-Waters, Gravelines and Blayais, but also more recent structures.
“On the following generations of reactors, we see that there are problems in Civaux, Chouzé-sur-Loire and Flamanville”. For him, the Nuclear Safety Authority makes it harder to learn the true state of these structures. “It
is part of the French nuclear system that has developed a culture of lying and concealment for more than 50 years, which has resulted in information suppressed about what has happened around Chernobyl and about serious nuclear
accidents. which took place in Saint-Laurent-des Eaux We had serious nuclear accidents with the release of plutonium in the environment and in the Loire. http://www.europe1.fr/societe/parc-nucleaire-francais-ce-que-nous-avons-vu-est-catastrophique-et-tres-inquietant-356528
A factory processing radioactive materials in Perak gave the people living nearby leukemia.
Bukit Merah’s rare earth metal processing site cleanup had been thelargest radiation cleanup so far in the world’s rare earth industry. Dr. Yoshihiko Wada’s report revealed that Mitsubishi Chemical came up with ARE in Bukit Merah after being one of the main companies that caused severe asthma in Nagoya, Japan. Also, 100% of the rare earth products processed in Bukit Merah were exported back to Japan, so it’s not like we gained anything but money from the venture, which puts forth the question of whether it’s worth endangering the lives of local residents for rare earth metals.
Earlier this year, Lynas Corporation had been popping up in the news again. For those of who have no idea who or what Lynas is, a few years back there had been a hullabaloo when Lynas set up a rare-earth processing plant in Gebeng, Kuantan, called the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP). But what’s the big deal with that?
Fairfield County is weighing whether to sue utility SCE&G over the shutdown of a project to build to two nuclear reactors in Jenkinsville after the utility blocked county officials from assessing improvements at the site.
SCE&G shut down the nuclear project six months ago after the projected costs of building the two reactors soared from $11 billion to $14 billion to $20 billion. The shutdown put an estimated 5,000 people out of work.
Now, officials in the small rural county north of Columbia want to collect property taxes on the incomplete reactors and the land they sit on.
“They built a small city out there,” county administrator Jason Taylor said. “And that small city should be taxed.”
But that process got off to a rocky start when SCE&G last month allowed a county tax assessor access to the site on a tour bus, but didn’t let him and his team off to take measurements or other calculations needed.
INVESTIGATION: At Nigeria’s abandoned nuclear centre, failed projects, idle staff and ‘fraud’ [Part 2] Premium Times, Kemi BusariAwarded at over N400 million in 2009, what was supposed to be a radioactive waste management facility at Nigeria’s Nuclear Technology Centre never came to life.
Instead, a building overgrown with scrubs lies east of the gamma irradiation facility. Waste management plants and equipment comprise various devices and machines used for treating, converting, disposing and processing wastes from various sources.
The construction of low/medium radioactive waste management facility was awarded at the contract sum of N401.4 million to Commerce General Limited and so far, N312 million has been paid to the contractor, the Nigeria Atomic Energy Commission (NAEC) said in response to a Freedom of Information request made over a month ago.
The project, according to NAEC, was 78 percent complete and has “only suffered delays.”
“The project was not abandoned. It only suffered delays due to factors outside the control of the commission,” the agency said.
The delays, NAEC said, include; “inadequate funding of capital projects generally, over the years, modification of the original design, as recommended by IAEA experts, which has resulted into changes in the BOQ figures and this development is being discussed with the contractor,” and also, “no outstanding Interim Payment Certificate on the project.”
A staff of the NTC, who was privy to the contract and execution since 2009, said the project had been used to embezzle money from government since the time of award.
“It is true that they changed the plan of the plant but they’ve never done anything meaningful there since they mounted these blocks,” he said.
“The contractor is not qualified and along the line, he got stuck in the project and we’ve not seen or heard about him for many years now.”
PREMIUM TIMES’ efforts to reach the management of Commerce Nigeria Limited were unsuccessful as the company has no website or any visible record.
Its recorded address at Plot 3, Railway Avenue, Kachia Road, Kakuri, Kaduna South, Kaduna, does not exist, this paper found out during a visit there.
“We’ve never heard of that place,” several residents of Kachia told this reporter after attempts were made to locate the company.
In Nigeria, it is not uncommon for ‘brief case’ contractors, most times in connivance with the awarding entity, to register a company for the sole purpose of bidding for contracts and making quick money.
As alleged by staff of the centre, this may be the case as even the figures quoted in FOI response by NAEC are contradictory.
While the commission said the project was 78 percent complete, a visit to the facility told a different story: an expanse of land overgrown with weeds and a construction no way near half-way complete which, in no way, justified the commission’s claim of paying almost 80 percent of the total contract sum to the contractor.
If the contract was awarded at N401. 4 million and N312 million had been paid so far, the balance should be about N89 million. But NAEC quoted N329 million.
‘Abandoned’ nuclear instrumentation laboratory
One of the components of the masterplan of the centre is the nuclear instrumentation laboratory which is supposed to serve as workshop for students, researchers and others in the nuclear field.
The project was awarded at the cost of N829.6 million to Trois Associate Limited in 2012 and it is 68% complete, NAEC’s response to an FOI stated………….
Nigeria joined IAEA, an international body for cooperation in the nuclear field in promoting safe, secure and peaceful use of nuclear technologies, in 1964.
The IAEA safety standards, was enshrined to ensure protection of people and the environment against radiation risks, safety of facilities and activities that give rise to radiation risks. The world body recognised this to include, safety of nuclear installations, radiation safety, the safety of radioactive waste management and safety in the transport of radioactive material.
The world body listed some fundamentals which must be observed by member states in section 3.30 of the safety standard………
Times 26th Jan 2018, Communities will receive up to £42 million if they agree to consider
hosting an underground nuclear waste dump. They can keep the money even if
they ultimately decide against it, under government plans. The payments,
which will be spread over 20 years, are aimed at persuading communities to
engage in the process of selecting and testing a site that will store
enough radioactive waste to fill the Albert Hall six times.
The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said more than one community
could receive the funding, with each being given up to £42 million. The
proposals appear to weaken the power of county councils, making it harder
for them to prevent a community from agreeing to host the £19 billion
“geological disposal facility” (GDF).
A consultation document states
the final decision will be subject to a “test of public support”, which
could be a local referendum. The right to vote in the referendum could be
restricted to a small area around the proposed site.
Cumbria is still viewed as the most suitable location because of the ease of transporting
waste at Sellafield and the willingness of the community. However, other
areas with ageing or decommissioned nuclear plants have been suggested,
including Dungeness, Kent, and Hartlepool, in Co Durham. Doug Parr, of
Greenpeace, said: “Having failed to find a council willing to have
nuclear waste buried under their land, ministers are resorting to the
tactics from the fracking playbook — bribing communities and bypassing
local authorities.” https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/42m-offer-to-communities-that-take-radioactive-waste-svrjj29nb
UK Government Denies Failing To Protect Nuclear Scientist Stabbed To Death In Suspected Kremlin Hit
The British government has denied that it failed in its duty of care towards a state scientist who was found stabbed to death after his research helped connect the Kremlin to a high-profile assassination on British soil.Heidi Blake, BuzzFeed News Investigations Editor, Jim WatersonBuzzFeed UK Political Editor A top nuclear scientist found stabbed to death after returning from a research trip to Russia was given an official briefing before he travelled and was not judged to be in any danger, the British government has declared.
The body of Dr Matthew Puncher was found riddled with knife wounds in 2016, weeks after his nuclear research helped a judge determine that the KGB defector Alexander Litvinenko had been poisoned in London by Russia’s secret service – and shortly after he visited the country on separate government business.
The police and coroner declared Puncher’s death a suicide – concluding that he had managed to stab and slash himself repeatedly with two separate knives before succumbing to his wounds. But BuzzFeed News last year revealed that US intelligence agencies had passed MI6 evidence connecting Puncher’s death – and 13 others – to Russian state or mafia assassins, yet the police had treated every case as non-suspicious.
The government denied failing in its duty of care towards Puncher in a letter to Lord Rooker, a Labour peer who wrote to Theresa May in November asking why the scientist had been sent to Russia on state business in the immediate aftermath of the Litvinenko verdict. “It was known how explosive the issue was between the UK and Russia, so why was Dr Puncher not withdrawn?” he asked, noting that the prime minister had made public her commitment to “the population being kept safe” and yet “it appears the Government failed in respect of Dr Puncher”.
Lord Rooker received a response last week noting his concerns but insisting that the government had no reason to believe Puncher was at risk when he was assigned to visit the Mayak nuclear facility in Russia to study the effects of long-term radiation exposure on the local population…….
The discovery of the levels of polonium in Litvinenko’s system put the Kremlin squarely in the frame for his killing. Russia, which keeps the substance under rigorous state control, is the only country in the world that produces polonium in the amounts used to kill Litvinenko. On the basis of that evidence, the judge leading the public inquiry into Litvinenko’s death concluded in 2016 that the defector had been assassinated by hitmen sent by Russia’s secret service and the operation had “probably” been approved by President Vladimir Putin.
Weeks after that damning verdict – dismissed by the Kremlin as a “blatant provocation” by the British government – Puncher was sent to the same Mayak nuclear facility where polonium is manufactured to carry out state-funded research.
The investigation into Puncher’s death by BuzzFeed News uncovered suspicions that the scientist and his colleagues were being tailed by the Russian secret service during visits to the country in the months before he died. And though British police testified at the inquest into Puncher’s death that “no one in his family seemed particularly surprised he had taken his own life”, BuzzFeed News revealed that officers never interviewed several close relatives and colleagues, some of whom suspect foul play. One source close to the family said Puncher’s death was “highly suspicious” and likely connected to work he was doing in Russia that came to the attention of the FSB. “If that’s the case,” the relative said, “it could only have come from Putin.”
Lord Rooker’s letter also raised questions over why none of the 14 Russian-linked deaths exposed by BuzzFeed News have been treated as suspicious by the British police – which the government has still failed to answer. He used a speech in the chamber of the House of Lords last June to call for all 14 cases to be fully investigated.
In July last year, the man responsible for the debacle – incompetent former Group Chief Executive of Carillion Richard Howson – stood down and seemingly disappeared on the same day the company’s disastrous finances were revealed.
But only after paying himself £1.5 million in pay and tens of thousands in bonuses and perks and leaving the firm with a massive £800 million pension deficit and debts of £1.4 billion of course:
So where is Howson now?
Locked up in a monastery somewhere, contemplating his failures and atoning for his sins?
Surprise surprise.
Here he is, hidden away as a new director of engineering and technical services company Wood Group: Wood Group has just won a lucrative contract to carry out inspections at the UK government’s new Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant: Plus ça change …
170 MILLION IN U.S. DRINK RADIOACTIVE TAP WATER. TRUMP NOMINEE FAKED DATA TO HIDE CANCER RISK. https://www.ewg.org/research/170-million-us-drink-radioactive-tap-water-trump-nominee-faked-data-hide-cancer-risk#.WlvAYryWbGgBy Bill Walker, Editor in Chief, and Wicitra Mahotama, Environmental Analyst, 11 Jan 18, Drinking water for more than 170 million Americans contains radioactive elements at levels that may increase the risk of cancer, according to an EWG analysis of 2010 to 2015 test results from public water systems nationwide.
Radiation in tap water is a serious health threat, especially during pregnancy. But the Environmental Protection Agency’s legal limits for several types of radioactive elements in tap water are badly outdated. And President Trump’s nominee to be the White House environment czar rejects the need for water systems to comply even with those outdated and inadequate standards.
The nominee, Kathleen Hartnett White, former chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, admitted in a 2011 interview that the commission falsified data to make it appear that communities with excessive radiation levels were below the EPA’s limit. She said she did not “believe the science of health effects” to which the EPA subscribes, placing “far more trust” in the work of the TCEQ, which has a reputation of setting polluter-friendly state standards and casually enforcing federal standards.
Last month, after Hartnett White again admitted to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee she knew the TCEQ had ignored the EPA’s radiation regulations, her nomination was sent back to the White House. But on Jan. 8, the White House renominated her, setting up another confirmation vote before the committee, and then by the full Senate.
EWG’s Tap Water Database compiles results of water quality tests for almost 50,000 utilities nationwide. EWG also mapped the nationwide occurrence of radium, the most common radioactive element found in tap water. From 2010 to 2015, more than 22,000 utilities serving over 170 million people in all 50 states reported the presence of radium in their water.
Radioactive elements enter groundwater from natural deposits in the earth’s crust, and the levels can be higher when uranium mining or oil and gas drilling unearth these elements from the rock and soil. They produce radiation called “ionizing” because it can release electrons from atoms and molecules, and turn them into ions.
The EPA has classified all ionizing radiation as carcinogenic. There is clear evidence that high doses of radiation cause cancer in various organs. The probability of developing cancer decreases with lower doses of radiation, but it does not go away.
The developing fetus is especially sensitive to ionizing radiation. At doses higher than are typically found in drinking water, radiation has been shown to impair fetal growth, cause birth defects and damage brain development. But there is no evidence of a dose threshold below which a fetus would be safe from these effects.
Six radioactive contaminants were included in EWG’s Tap Water Database, including radium, radon and uranium. By far the most widespread are two isotopes of radium known as radium-226 and radium-228, which contaminate tap water in every state. The EPA does not have a separate legal limit for each isotope, only for the combined level of the two.
From 2010 to 2015, 158 public water systems serving 276,000 Americans in 27 states reported radium in amounts that exceeded the federal legal limit for combined radium-226 and radium-228.
But federal drinking water standards are based on the cost and feasibility of removing contaminants, not scientific determinations of what is necessary to fully protect human health. And like many EPA tap water standards, the radium limits are based on decades-old research rather than the latest science.
The EPA’s tap water limits on the combined level of the radium isotopes and the combined level of alpha and beta particles were set in 1976. They were retained in 2000, when the uranium standard was established.
To more accurately assess the current threat of radiation in U.S. tap water, we compared levels of the contaminants detected by local utilities not to the EPA’s 41-year-old legal limits, but to the public health goals set in 2006 by the respected and influential California Office of Environmental Hazard Assessment..
California public health goals are not legally enforceable limits, but guidelines for levels of contaminants that pose only a minimal risk – usually defined as no more than one expected case of cancer in every million people who drink the water for a lifetime.
California has separate public health goals for radium-226 and radium-228 that are hundreds of times more stringent than the EPA limit for the two isotopes combined. The EPA standard for radium-226 plus radium-228 is 5 picocuries per liter of water. The California public health goal for radium-226 is 0.05 picocuries per liter, and for radium-228 it is just 0.019 picocuries per liter. The lifetime increased cancer risk at the EPA’s level is 70 cases per 1 million people.
California has the most residents affected by radiation in drinking water. Almost 800 systems serving more than 25 million people – about 64 percent of the state’s population – reported detectable levels of radium-226 and radium-228 combined.
Texas has the most widespread contamination. More than 3,500 utilities serving more than 22 million people – about 80 percent of the state’s population – reported detectable levels of radium-226 and radium-228 combined.
But while Kathleen Hartnett White was chair of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality from 2003 to 2007, the state regularly and deliberately lowered the levels of radiation in tap water it reported to the EPA.
A 2011 investigation by KHOU-TV of Houston unearthed TCEQ emails documenting the deception. Instead of reporting the levels measured in laboratory tests, TCEQ would first subtract the test’s margin of error. Because TCEQ’s falsifying of data made it appear that the system met EPA standards, the system did not have to inform its customers that their tap water contained dangerous levels of radiation.
How dangerous?
In 2001, TCEQ reported to top state officials – including Hartnett White and then-Gov. Rick Perry, now Trump’s energy secretary – that some types of radiation in the tap water of some Texas communities posed an increased lifetime cancer risk of 1 in 400. The EPA’s increased lifetime cancer risk for five types of radioactive elements ranges from 2 to 7 in 100,000. But the practice continued until 2008, after an EPA audit caught the state cooking the books.
In a 2011 interview with KHOU-TV, Hartnett White defended the deception, saying the EPA’s standards were too protective and that it would cost small communities millions of dollars to comply. She said TCEQ continued its practice instead of challenging the federal rules in court because it would be “almost impossible” for the state to win:
As my memory serves me, [subtracting the margin of error] made incredibly good sense … We did not believe the science of health effects justified EPA setting the standard where they did … I have far more trust in the vigor of the science by which TCEQ assesses, than I do EPA.
KHOU investigative reporter Mark Greenblatt pressed Hartnett White: “But what if you’re wrong? What if you’re wrong and EPA’s right about there being a danger?”
“It would be . . . it would be regrettable,” she replied.
In November, in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, she characterized TCEQ’s falsification of data as “one of these technical issues” and declared: “I would never, ever tell staff to underreport health hazards.”
In her written responses to follow-up questions from the committee, Hartnett White said she was “aware of the EPA’s interpretation of its rule,” but that she did not “recall EPA telling TCEQ during my tenure there that TCEQ’s methodology was not legal.” But KHOU’s investigation documented that in June 2004 the EPA warned the TCEQ if it did not stop the falsification, the federal agency could take over regulation of the state’s water systems.
The Environment and Public Works Committee voted along party lines to send Hartnett White’s nomination to the full Senate. But on Dec. 21, Senate Democrats refused to vote on the nomination before the end of the 2017 legislative session. On Jan. 8 the White House renominated her without comment. She will now face a second confirmation vote before the committee before a vote by the full Senate.
Installing a head of the Council for Environmental Quality who deliberately falsified data to get around federal regulations is an egregious betrayal of public trust. The fact that her deception left people at a serious risk of cancer makes it even more alarming.
The Senate should reject Hartnett White’s nomination. The EPA must also tighten its legal limits for radioactive contaminants and require more extensive radiation testing and better disclosure – including making sure that rogue state regulators like Hartnett White don’t try to hide risks.
He says through its social media manipulation operations, spy agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) tried to influence online activists during the 2009 Iranian presidential election protests, and the 2011 uprisings widely known as the Arab Spring.
Al-Bassam told the Chaos Communication Congress in Germany last week that the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) – a unit in GCHQ – uses “dirty tricks” to target activists.
He says JTRIG has been tasked by the British government to “[use] online techniques to make something happen in the real or cyber world.” To fulfil this aim, a wide but basic array of technological tools and software are used, including ‘DEADPOOL,’ which is described as a “URL shortening service,” and ‘HUSK,’ a “secure one-to-one web based dead-drop messaging platform.”
He told the conference: “It’s basically a fancy name for sitting on Twitter and Facebook all day and trolling online. What they do, is they conduct what they call ‘human intelligence’ – which is like the act of interacting with humans online to try and make something happen in the real world.
“In their own words one of the things they do is to use ‘dirty tricks’ to ‘destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt’ enemies by ‘discrediting’ them.”
JTRIG has been involved in infiltrating hacktivist groups Anonymous and LulzSec, and protesters in Iran, Syria and Bahrain, he says.
As a “honey pot” to attract activists, GCHQ set up free URL shortening service lurl.me, which was used on Twitter and other social media platforms to spread revolutionary messages in the Middle East. These messages would attract people protesting against the government there, and British intelligence would collect information on them.
Al-Bassam said he discovered this information among the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. “In 2011, I was unknowingly messaged… by a covert agent from [GCHQ], who was investigating the hacktivist groups of Anonymous and Lulzsec. Later that year, I was arrested and banned from the internet for my involvement in Lulzsec.
Then, in 2014, I discovered through a new Snowden leak that GCHQ had targeted Anonymous and Lulzsec, and that the person that messaged me was a covert employee, pretending to be a hacktivist.”
He added: “Because I was myself targeted in the past, I was aware of a key detail – a honeypot URL shortening service set up by GCHQ, that was actually redacted in the Snowden documents published in 2014. This URL shortening service enabled GCHQ to deanonymize another hacktivist and discover his real name and Facebook account, according to the leaked document.
“Using this key detail, I was able to discover a network of sockpuppet Twitter accounts and websites set up by GCHQ, pretending to be activists during the Arab spring of 2011,” he said.
Times 1st Jan 2018,Consultancy firms working for the government on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station were advising the project’s Chinese investor and its French builder at the same time, an investigation by The Times has revealed.
KPMG, the professional services group, was paid £4.4 million between 2012 and 2017 as a financial adviser to the energy and business departments, despite telling officials that it was also acting for China General Nuclear Power
Corp on the project.
The apparent conflict of interest has been revealed after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened to press for
disclosure from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Previously, officials had redacted the information, claiming that it was commercially sensitive.
In a second potential conflict, Lazard, the financial advisory firm, was paid £2.6 million between 2012 and 2015 to
advise the business department on Hinkley Point. Details of its previously redacted tender documents reveal that it was an adviser to EDF, the French developer that is investing in Hinkley Point alongside the Chinese. A source said that Lazard’s advice to EDF was not related to the Somerset project.
Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee, said that Hinkley Point was crucial public infrastructure and therefore it was “vital that auditors get full sight” of the potential conflicts. It “looks cosy”, she said, adding that it was “not really appropriate” for firms to be advising both sides.
The details have been released more than a year and half after The Times complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office, which informally advised the business department to reconsider its position. The department previously had handed over heavily redacted documents in response to a Freedom of Information request.
The Information Commissioner’s Office said that there was a “significant and important public interest”, something that had been strengthened by a report from the National Audit Office in June, which found that the government’s deal had “locked consumers into a risky and expensive project with uncertain strategic and economic benefits”. The project has been riddled with delays and controversy over its spiralling costs.
The National Audit Office also criticised the business department for insufficiently managing the potential conflict of Leigh Fisher, another government adviser. The Times reported in November 2016 that Leigh Fisher, the management consultant, had been awarded contracts worth a combined £1.2 million despite telling officials that the British division of Jacobs Engineering Group, an American firm that owns Leigh Fisher, was working for EDF on Hinkley Point. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/advisers-on-hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-station-had-cosy-ties-to-both-sides-xftxcl9sz
FACEBOOK NOW SEEMS to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government.
the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list.
Facebook Says It Is Deleting Accounts at the Direction of the U.S. and Israeli Governments, The Intercept, Glenn Greenwald, December 31 2017, IN SEPTEMBER OF last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.
The predictable results of those meetings are now clear and well-documented. Ever since, Facebook has been on a censorship rampage against Palestinian activists who protest the decades-long, illegal Israeli occupation, all directed and determined by Israeli officials. Indeed, Israeli officials have been publicly boasting about how obedient Facebook is when it comes to Israeli censorship orders:
Shortly after news broke earlier this month of the agreement between the Israeli government and Facebook, Israeli Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said Tel Aviv had submitted 158 requests to the social media giant over the previous four months asking it to remove content it deemed “incitement.” She said Facebook had granted 95 percent of the requests.
She’s right. The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”
What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.
In the weeks following those Facebook-Israel meetings, reported The Independent, “the activist collective Palestinian Information Center reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages — followed by more than 2 million people — have been suspended, seven of them permanently, which they say is a result of new measures put in place in the wake of Facebook’s meeting with Israel.” Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”
A 2016 report from the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms detailed how extensive the Facebook censorship was:……….
Though some of the most inflammatory and explicit calls for murder are sometimes removed, Facebook continues to allow the most extremist calls for incitement against Palestinians to flourish. Indeed, Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, has often used social media to post what is clearly incitement to violence against Palestinians generally…….
FACEBOOK NOW SEEMS to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government. Earlier this week, the company deleted the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Ramzan Kadyrov, the repressive, brutal, and authoritarian leader of the Chechen Republic, who had a combined 4 million followers on those accounts. To put it mildly, Kadyrov — who is given free rein to rule the province in exchange for ultimate loyalty to Moscow — is the opposite of a sympathetic figure: He has been credibly accused of a wide range of horrific human rights violations, from the imprisonment and torture of LGBTs to the kidnapping and killing of dissidents.
But none of that dilutes how disturbing and dangerous Facebook’s rationale for its deletion of his accounts is…….
What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome? Does anyone trust the Trump administration — or any other government — to compel social media platforms to delete and block anyone it wants to be silenced? ……..
Does Facebook’s policy of blocking people from its platform who are sanctioned apply to all governments? Obviously not. It goes without saying that if, say, Iran decided to impose sanctions on Chuck Schumer for his support of Trump’s policy of recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, Facebook would never delete the accounts of the Democratic Party Senate minority leader — just as Facebook would never delete the accounts of Israeli officials who incite violence against Palestinians or who are sanctioned by Palestinian officials. Just last month, Russia announced retaliatory sanctions against various Canadian officials and executives, but needless to say, Facebook took no action to censor them or block their accounts.
7pm Central Time (8pm ET, 6pm MT, 5pm PT) UTC – 5 From NRC & DOE Deregulation to Techno-Fascist Billionaires Going Nuclear, Plus a Few Songs from Atomic Cabaret REGISTER
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