Category Archives: Russia

Remembering Some Facts on the Iran Nuclear Deal

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There are at least two side deals, which Susan Rice admitted to. One dealing with the IAEA and the other of the PMD’s (possible military dimension) sites with particular emphasis on Parchin and Fordow.

Fordow is protected by Russian-made, S-300 advanced air defense system at the Fordow underground uranium enrichment facility. dordow s300

So, what is going on now?

 

  • Europe Works to Save the JCPOA | The P5+1 and Iran Nuclear Deal Alert, April 25, 2018
    April 25, 2018
    As time winds down to the May 12 deadline President Trump set for negotiating a “fix” to the nuclear deal with Iran, Washington’s P5+1 partners are warning Washington of the consequences if the deal collapses.
  • The P5+1 and Iran Nuclear Deal Alert, March 22, 2018
    March 22, 2018
    The JCPOA Joint Commission met for its first full meeting since Trump’s threat to pull out of the deal unless so-called “flaws” are corrected. Director General Yukiya Amano reports that the IAEA has access to all needed locations. Russia vetoed a resolution condemning Iran for failing to implement an arms embargo on Yemen, and more in this issue.

 

For some historical context on the deal…..

When the Obama administration decided to launch this effort, he even called on the Catholic Bishops? Are we to assume there was some confab at the Vatican? Yup!

Back in March 2014, a delegation of US bishops made a historic visit to Qom, Iran and held a meeting with Iranian religious leaders. On November 17, an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC will have the chance to hear firsthand what they discussed in Qom, and during a subsequent meeting in Rome in June of this year.

The first meeting focused on the need for a world free of nuclear weapons. Following up on opportunities presented by this visit, in July 2014, Ploughshares Fund provided a $50,000 grant to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to build a sustainable and effective channel of communication between US and Iranian religious leaders. Supporting such ‘Track II’ dialogues can indirectly aid official negotiations around tough issues, in this case, talks around Western sanctions and Iran’s nuclear program.

Although purely a people to people moral dialogue, the sensitive political situation made it difficult for a reciprocal delegation of Muslim clerics from Iran to visit the US, so the two parties met in Rome. The June 5-10 encounter focused on the moral tenets of each faith, especially as they relate to human rights, weapons of mass destruction, and terrorism. Keeping this constructive dialogue open remains important – even though the Iran nuclear agreement has entered into effect and is working, relationships between Iranians and Americans remain fragile.

Ayatollah Mahdi Hadavi Moghaddam Tehrani and Ayatollah Abolghasem Alidoost headed the five-member Iranian delegation. Representatives from the USCCB participating in the dialogue included Bishop Oscar Cantú of Las Cruces, New Mexico, chair of the bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace; Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, archbishop emeritus of Washington; Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa; and Bishop Denis Madden, auxiliary bishop of Baltimore. Bishops Cantú, Madden and Pates will report out on the Qom and Rome meetings during the November 17th Washington, DC event.

Following the dialogue, a joint declaration was issued by US Catholic bishops and Iranian religious leaders calling for developing a culture of encounter, tolerance, dialogue and peace that respects the religious traditions of others. The leaders emphasized that they regard the development and use of weapons of mass destruction and acts of terrorism as “immoral.”

“Together,” Bishop Cantú said on the occasion, “we commit ourselves to continued dialogue on the most pressing issues facing the human family, such as poverty, injustice, intolerance, terrorism, and war.” He called the joint declaration “the fruit of sincere dialogue between two religions that are united in their concern for the life and dignity of the human person.”

Ploughshares Fund is proud to support these extraordinary dialogues, which aid in fostering cross-border understanding around the thorniest problem we face today: the risks associated with nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons proliferation.

*** Who is Ploughshares? It was founded by Sally Lilienthal.

Instead of getting ready for a quiet life of retirement, the 62-year-old sculptor, human rights activist and mother decided to take on nuclear weapons.

“I thought that if a lot of people felt the same way I did but didn’t know what to do about it, we might get together and search for new ways together to get rid of nuclear weapons that were threatening us all,” she later told the San Francisco Chronicle.

With a little help from her friends and a lot of grit and determination, Sally founded Ploughshares Fund in her San Francisco living room in 1981, the same year IBM announced its first Personal Computer.

Sally was ahead of her time in many ways. After college, she moved to Washington, DC during World War II to work in the Office of War Information when few women held office jobs. Later, she co-founded the California chapter of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, served on the regional ACLU board and was national vice chairwoman of Amnesty International.

*** Where did the 35-year-old organization get its war chest to support a major media organization’s coverage of the negotiations and contribute so generously to one of the most prominent campaigns championing the deal?

Mostly through other large-scale grant-making foundations and philanthropic organizations, some of the largest in the world, such as The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Hewlett Foundation, Open Society Foundations and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, each of which gave more than $100,000 to Ploughshares in 2015, according to its latest financial report. The craigslist Charitable Fund, of the classified advertisement website company, chipped in with between $25,000 and $99,000.

Ploughshares also received its share of support from members of the Hollywood community, particularly Jewish ones. It received a donation of between $10,000 and $24,999 from actor Michael Douglas, and between $5,000 and $9,999 from the Streisand Foundation, which was established by the Jewish singer-actress Barbra Streisand.

Through the rest of its donors, Ploughshares received $6,980,384 last year, much of which went toward pushing the nuclear accord, which was struck between the P5+1 world powers and Iran last July and then defeated congressional scrutiny. In September, a bill to reject the deal ultimately failed to receive the required backing to override President Obama’s veto power.

Trump Approves Release of 2nd Set of JFK Files, Still not All

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So, who was Valeriy Kostikov? It is said he was Lee Harvey Oswald’s KGB handler. The 'Kostin' letter

In part from McClatchy: In 1975, just three years after the nearly 50-year reign of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover came to an end, the bureau looked into rumors that Oswald had penned a threatening note to the FBI office in Dallas shortly before the assassination. No records were found, but Dallas agents said that Oswald had indeed left a threatening handwritten message.

Congressional investigators established that Hosty’s boss, Gordon Shanklin, demanded that he rip up the letter and flush it down the toilet — reportedly under orders from Hoover, who was incensed that the Dallas office had embarrassed the agency by not seeing Oswald as a threat. The former Marine had defected to the Soviet Union, but returned a few years later.

The report by Hosty to headquarters, with little held from public view on Thursday, makes clear that Hosty did tell FBI bosses that Oswald was violent and had been living and working as a maintenance man in New Orleans before moving to Dallas in the spring of 1963. And it confirms Oswald was under surveillance at the time of the assassination.

Another Hosty document, which also had been partially released earlier, has Hoover gushing praise for Hosty in 1971 for work he did as a field agent in Kansas City.

“Your performance relative to a matter of considerable importance to the Bureau in the security field is worthy of praise and warrants commendation,” Hoover wrote.

Thursday’s new documents offer nothing more on Earle Cabell, the mayor of Dallas at the time of assassination. A single document among the roughly 35,000 released last year showed that he’d been listed in CIA files as an asset, an explosive revelation. Cabell’s brother Charles had been a top CIA leader until a year before the killing.

The documents do, however, fill in some blanks about a Soviet Embassy official in Mexico City who met with Oswald weeks before the assassination. Over the decades Oswald’s meetings in Mexico City with the Cuban and Soviet embassies, purportedly to get a visa to Cuba in hopes of returning to the Soviet Union, have gradually been revealed.

One of the Soviets he had contact with was Valeriy Vladimirovich Kostikov. Little was known about his role, but the CIA confirmed to the original assassination investigators that Kostikov was likely part of the feared Department 13 assassination unit of the Soviet spy agency, the KGB.

It is now known that, at minimum, Oswald had phone conversations while in Mexico with Kostikov. Among the further-released documents Thursday were references to Kostikov being “Oswald’s KGB handler.”

That’s found in a May 1982 memo from what appears to be an unidentified foreign intelligence agency or U.S. asset in the Middle East asking longtime CIA Soviet Division leader David Blee about Kostikov. The questioner notes that the Soviets were behind increased harassment of foreign embassies in Beirut — less than a year before a truck bomb leveled the U.S. embassy there, killing 241 U.S. marines and military personnel.

“The reason for our interest in KOSTIKOV will be obvious,” writes the official to Blee. That document was one of more than 15,000 that Thursday were left with some form of partial redaction.

A number of documents relating to the Miami-based anti-Castro group Alpha 66 were included in Thursday’s release, as well. One curious one, dated February 1971, documents how the group outsmarted the FBI a year earlier. The FBI had raided its Miami offices and taken files.

“Apparently Alpha 66 had duplicates hidden because today duplicates of the files which the FBI removed are in their filing cabinets,” the memo from the CIA noted.

Alpha 66 had been headed by Antonio Veciana, who still resides in Miami and is elderly and in frail health. In an interview with McClatchy last year he reasserted that a top CIA Latin America official, David Atlee Phillips, had been working with Oswald to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro. His implication was that Oswald was trained to take out Castro but turned on Kennedy.

Another Miami-related document quotes an American journalist who had been imprisoned in Cuba in 1963 as hearing from a fellow prisoner that Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald just days after the Kennedy assassination, had frequented Cuba and had mafia ties on the island.

*** As an aside, Jack Ruby was a close friend of Santo Trafficante, a mafia mob boss based in Tampa with substantial investments in Cuba. The mob was called upon by Joe Kennedy to help deliver votes for JFK and that request was granted and successful. When President Kennedy named his brother, Robert as the Attorney General, Bobby took up the mission to destroy the mob and this infuriated Trafficante and other mob bosses. Prior to this, the mafia was brought in by the CIA to plot the overthrow or assassination of Fidel Castro. West Tampa Center For The Arts Blog  photo

***

New Group of JFK Assassination Documents Available to the Public
Press Release · Thursday, April 26, 2018

WASHINGTON —

In accordance with President Trump’s direction on October 26, 2017, the National Archives today posted 19,045 documents subject to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 (JFK Act).   Released documents are available for download.  The versions released today were processed by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction that agency heads be extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection, established by the National Archives in November 1992, consists of approximately five million pages.  The vast majority of the collection has been publicly available without any restrictions since the late 1990s.  As permitted by the JFK Act, agencies appealed to the President to continue postponement of certain information beyond October 26, 2017.  The President provided agencies with a temporary certification until April 26, 2018 to allow for a re-review of all documents withheld in full or in part under section 5 of the JFK Act and directed agencies to “identify as much as possible that may be publicly disclosed” and to be “extremely circumspect in recommending any further postponement.”

Based on reviews conducted by agencies in accordance with the President’s direction, the National Archives released 3,539 documents on Dec. 15, 10,744 documents on Nov. 17, 13,213 documents on Nov. 9, and 676 documents on Nov. 3 of last year.  The 19,045 documents released today represent the final release of documents in accordance with the President’s direction on October 26, 2017.

All documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act have been released in full or in part.  No documents subject to section 5 of the JFK Act remain withheld in full.  The President has determined that all information that remains withheld under section 5 must be reviewed again before October 26, 2021 to determine whether continued withholding from disclosure is necessary.

 

Online Resources:
The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
Documenting the Death of a President
JFK Assassination Records Review Board
The work of the Kennedy Assassination Records Collection
JFK Assassination Records FAQs
Warren Commission Report

N Korea Shut Down Nuclear site Because it Collapsed

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And not because of some talks going on with South Korea. Much has been televised and written with regard to the talks going on with North Korea, the nuclear and missile program, normalizing relations with the South and introducing a peace agreement. Further, as we learned Mike Pompeo, the CIA Director met with the North Korean regime over Easter in an effort to determine some real truths and to gauge Kim Jung un with just how real all the reports are.

So, while we are told that missile tests and nuclear tests have been suspended, perhaps we know the reason why. Nuclear fallout.

About 200 people are feared dead in North Korea after underground tunnels at a nuclear test site that was feared to be unstable reportedly collapsed, crushing 100 people in the initial cave-in and 100 others when the tunnels again gave way on top of rescuers.

The collapse at the Punggye-ri test site on Oct. 10 occurred while people were doing construction on the underground tunnel, Japan’s Asahi TV reported, citing a source in North Korea. The television station also said North Korea’s sixth nuclear test on Sept. 3 most likely caused the tunnel to crumble and created serious damage in the region.

Mike Pompeo is a master with his poker face and his classified report on the meeting must be a doozy.

North Korea’s mountain nuclear test site has collapsed, putting China and other nearby nations at unprecedented risk of radioactive exposure, two separate groups of Chinese scientists studying the issue have confirmed.

The collapse after five nuclear blasts may be why North Korean leader Kim Jong-un declared on Friday that he would freeze the hermit state’s nuclear and missile tests and shut down the site, one researcher said.

The last five of Pyongyang’s six nuclear tests have all been carried out under Mount Mantap at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Korea’s northwest.

Chinese scientists warn North Korea about disaster threat at nuclear test site

One group of researchers found that the most recent blast tore open a hole in the mountain, which then collapsed upon itself. A second group concluded that the breakdown created a “chimney” that could allow radioactive fallout from the blast zone below to rise into the air.

A research team led by Wen Lianxing, a geologist with the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, concluded that the collapse occurred following the detonation last autumn of North Korea’s most powerful thermal nuclear warhead in a tunnel about 700 metres (2,296 feet) below the mountain’s peak.

The test turned the mountain into fragile fragments, the researchers found.

The mountain’s collapse, and the prospect of radioactive exposure in the aftermath, confirms a series of exclusive reports by the South China Morning Post on China’s fears that Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test had caused a fallout leak.

Radioactive dust could escape through holes or cracks in the damaged mountain, the scientists said.

“It is necessary to continue monitoring possible leaks of radioactive materials caused by the collapse incident,” Wen’s team said in the statement.

The findings will be published on the website of the peer-reviewed journal, Geophysical Research Letters, likely next month.

North Korea saw the mountain as an ideal location for underground nuclear experiments because of its elevation – it stood more than 2,100 metres (6,888 feet) above sea level – and its terrain of thick, gentle slopes that seemed capable of resisting structural damage.

North Korea suspends nuclear and missile tests

The mountain’s surface had shown no visible damage after four underground nuclear tests before 2017.

But the 100-kilotonne bomb that went off on September 3 vaporised surrounding rocks with unprecedented heat and opened a space that was up to 200 metres (656 feet) in diameter, according to a statement posted on the Wen team’s website on Monday.

As shock waves tore through and loosened more rocks, a large section of the mountain’s ridge, less than half a kilometre (0.3 mile) from the peak, slipped down into the empty pocket created by the blast, leaving a scar visible in satellite images.

Wen concluded that the mountain had collapsed after analysing data collected from nearly 2,000 seismic stations.

Three small earthquakes that hit nearby regions in the wake of the collapse added credence to his conclusion, suggesting the test site had lost its geological stability.

Another research team led by Liu Junqing at the Jilin Earthquake Agency with the China Earthquake Administration in Changchun reached similar conclusions to the Wen team.

The “rock collapse … was for the first time documented in North Korea’s test site,” Liu’s team wrote in a paper published last month in Geophysical Research Letters.

The breakdown not only took off part of the mountain’s summit but also created a “chimney” that could allow fallout to rise from the blast centre into the air, they said.

North Korea nuclear test site has signs of ‘Tired Mountain Syndrome’ after five blasts

Zhao Lianfeng, a researcher with the Institute of Earth Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, said the two studies supported a consensus among scientists that “the site was wrecked” beyond repair.

“Their findings are in agreement to our observations,” he said.

“Different teams using different data have come up with similar conclusions,” Zhao said. “The only difference was in some technical details. This is the best guess that can be made by the world outside.”

Speculation grew that North Korea’s site was in trouble when Lee Doh-sik, the top North Korean geologist, visited Zhao’s institute about two weeks after the test and met privately with senior Chinese government geologists.

US reveals how its forces would secure North Korea’s nuclear sites

Although the purpose of Lee’s visit was not disclosed, two days later Pyongyang announced it would no longer conduct land-based nuclear tests.

Hu Xingdou, a Beijing-based scholar who follows North Korea’s nuclear programme, said it was highly likely that Pyongyang had received a stark warning from Beijing.

Are North Korean quakes signs of instability at nuclear test site?

“The test was not only destabilising the site but increasing the risk of eruption of the Changbai Mountain,” a large, active volcano at China-Korean border, said Hu, who asked that his university affiliation not be disclosed for this article because of the topic’s sensitivity.

The mountain’s collapse has likely dealt a huge blow to North Korea’s nuclear programme, Hu said.

Hit by crippling international economic sanctions over its nuclear ambitions, the country might lack sufficient resources to soon resume testing at a new site, he said.

North Korea told its people Kim Jong-un visited China, but didn’t mention denuclearisation

“But there are other sites suitable for testing,” Hu said. “They must be closely monitored.”

Guo Qiuju, a Peking University professor who has belonged to a panel that has advised the Chinese government on emergency responses to radioactive hazards, said that if fallout escaped through cracks, it could be carried by wind over the Chinese border.

“So far we have not detected an abnormal increase of radioactivity levels,” Guo said. “But we will continue to monitor the surrounding region with a large [amount] of highly sensitive equipment and analyse the data in state-of-the-art laboratories.” More details here.

 

So After Congressional Hearings, Facebook Changes the Rules

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The rules eh? Yeah those where employees are free to remove content with no explanation or often an appeals process. What is missing from the new rules, which Facebook states can change from time to time is the whole censorship issue especially when it comes to conservatives.

It was an internal secret on how Facebook controlled and managed content, in fact it still appears to be a secret. That means lawyers are involved, lots of them.In this day and time, definition of words and terms has become slippery and subjective and that continues to be the case at Facebook. So what are ‘community standards’ and exactly who decided those standards? Well 8000 words later describing community standards, that is IF anyone takes the time to read the text, we still don’t know.

How to control your data on Facebook like Mark Zuckerberg ... photo

Oh yeah, one other item….that fake news thing…..crickets….further Mark Zuckerberg himself is quite naive about the ugliness around the world…connecting people to talk about rainbows and bunnies will make it all better?

Facebook Terms and Policies

Facebook Terms of Service, still from 2015

MENLO PARK, Calif. (Reuters) – Facebook Inc (FB.O) on Tuesday released a rule book for the types of posts it allows on its social network, giving far more detail than ever before on what is permitted on subjects ranging from drug use and sex work to bullying, hate speech and inciting violence.

Facebook for years has had “community standards” for what people can post. But only a relatively brief and general version was publicly available, while it had a far more detailed internal document to decide when individual posts or accounts should be removed.

Now, the company is providing the longer document on its website to clear up confusion and be more open about its operations, said Monika Bickert, Facebook’s vice president of product policy and counter-terrorism.

“You should, when you come to Facebook, understand where we draw these lines and what’s OK and what’s not OK,” Bickert told reporters in a briefing at Facebook’s headquarters.

Facebook has faced fierce criticism from governments and rights groups in many countries for failing to do enough to stem hate speech and prevent the service from being used to promote terrorism, stir sectarian violence and broadcast acts including murder and suicide.

At the same time, the company has also been accused of doing the bidding of repressive regimes by aggressively removing content that crosses governments and providing too little information on why certain posts and accounts are removed.

New policies will, for the first time, allow people to appeal a decision to take down an individual piece of content. Previously, only the removal of accounts, Groups and Pages could be appealed.

Facebook is also beginning to provide the specific reason why content is being taken down for a wider variety of situations.

Facebook, the world’s largest social network, has become a dominant source of information in many countries around the world. It uses both automated software and an army of moderators that now numbers 7,500 to take down text, pictures and videos that violate its rules. Under pressure from several governments, it has been beefing up its moderator ranks since last year.

Bickert told Reuters in an interview that the standards are constantly evolving, based in part on feedback from more than 100 outside organizations and experts in areas such as counter-terrorism and child exploitation.

“Everybody should expect that these will be updated frequently,” she said.

The company considers changes to its content policy every two weeks at a meeting called the “Content Standards Forum,” led by Bickert. A small group of reporters was allowed to observe the meeting last week on the condition that they could describe process, but not substance.

At the April 17 meeting, about 25 employees sat around a conference table while others joined by video from New York, Dublin, Mexico City, Washington and elsewhere.

Attendees included people who specialize in public policy, legal matters, product development, communication and other areas. They heard reports from smaller working groups, relayed feedback they had gotten from civil rights groups and other outsiders and suggested ways that a policy or product could go wrong in the future. There was little mention of what competitors such as Alphabet Inc’s Google (GOOGL.O) do in similar situations.

Bickert, a former U.S. federal prosecutor, posed questions, provided background and kept the discussion moving. The meeting lasted about an hour.

Facebook is planning a series of public forums in May and June in different countries to get more feedback on its rules, said Mary deBree, Facebook’s head of content policy.

FROM CURSING TO MURDER

The longer version of the community standards document, some 8,000 words long, covers a wide array of words and images that Facebook sometimes censors, with detailed discussion of each category.

Videos of people wounded by cannibalism are not permitted, for instance, but such imagery is allowed with a warning screen if it is “in a medical setting.”

Facebook has long made clear that it does not allow people to buy and sell prescription drugs, marijuana or firearms on the social network, but the newly published document details what other speech on those subjects is permitted.

Content in which someone “admits to personal use of non-medical drugs” should not be posted on Facebook, the rule book says.

The document elaborates on harassment and bullying, barring for example “cursing at a minor.” It also prohibits content that comes from a hacked source, “except in limited cases of newsworthiness.”

The new community standards do not incorporate separate procedures under which governments can demand the removal of content that violates local law.

In those cases, Bickert said, formal written requests are required and are reviewed by Facebook’s legal team and outside attorneys. Content deemed to be permissible under community standards but in violation of local law – such as a prohibition in Thailand on disparaging the royal family – are then blocked in that country, but not globally.

The community standards also do not address false information – Facebook does not prohibit it but it does try to reduce its distribution – or other contentious issues such as use of personal data.

 

The DNC Sues, Counter Suits in the Making

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Tom Perez, Chairman of the Democrat National Committee has filed a lawsuit against 15 entities/people including John Does (which could be 10 or more people). The question is who is funding this lawsuit as the DNC is at least $6.1 million in debt. Oh wait, the DNC is also fundraising off this lawsuit….okay…moving on. The DNC has also requested a jury trial.

Levin: 'The Democrat Party just made a massive mistake' photo

Lawsuits require something called discovery which would be a long process and you can bet the Russian Federation will not even bother with any kind of compliance. Ah yes, we cannot overlook that Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame is also funding raising to file a counter suit against the DNC. Will any of this go anywhere even if a judge accepts the case? Likely no….it is a collective fundraising gesture and a matter of dragging out the hacking scandals for years to come.

Meanwhile, TechDirt has an interesting summary of this legal warfare.

Most of the time when we see these laws used, they’re indications of pretty weak lawsuits, and going through this one, that definitely seems to be the case here. Indeed, some of the claims made by the DNC here are so outrageous that they would effectively make some fairly basic reporting illegal. One would have hoped that the DNC wouldn’t seek to set a precedent that reporting on leaked documents is against the law — especially given how reliant the DNC now is on leaks being reported on in their effort to bring down the existing president. I’m not going to go through the whole lawsuit, but let’s touch on a few of the more nutty claims here.

The crux of the complaint is that these groups / individuals worked together in a conspiracy to leak DNC emails and documents. And, there’s little doubt at this point that the Russians were behind the hack and leak of the documents, and that Wikileaks published them. Similarly there’s little doubt that the Trump campaign was happy about these things, and that a few Trump-connected people had some contacts with some Russians. Does that add up to a conspiracy? My gut reaction is to always rely on Ken “Popehat” White’s IT’S NOT RICO, DAMMIT line, but I’ll leave that analysis to folks who are more familiar with RICO.

But let’s look at parts we are familiar with, starting with the DMCA claim, since that’s the one that caught my eye first. A DMCA claim? What the hell does copyright have to do with any of this? Well…

Plaintiff’s computer networks and files contained information subject to protection under the copyright laws of the United States, including campaign strategy documents and opposition research that were illegally accessed without authorization by Russia and the GRU.

Access to copyrighted material contained on Plaintiff’s computer networks and email was controlled by technological measures, including measures restricting remote access, firewalls, and measures restricting acess to users with valid credentials and passwords.

In violation of 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a), Russia, the GRU, and GRU Operative #1 circumvented these technological protection measures by stealing credentials from authorized users, condcting a “password dump” to unlawfully obtain passwords to the system controlling access to the DNC’s domain, and installing malware on Plaintiff’s computer systems.

Holy shit. This is the DNC trying to use DMCA 1201 as a mini-CFAA. They’re not supposed to do that. 1201 is the anti-circumvention part of the DMCA and is supposed to be about stopping people from hacking around DRM to free copyright-covered material. Of course, 1201 has been used in all sorts of other ways — like trying to stop the sale of printer cartridges and garage door openers — but this seems like a real stretch. Russia hacking into the DNC had literally nothing to do with copyright or DRM. Squeezing a copyright claim in here is just silly and could set an awful precedent about using 1201 as an alternate CFAA (we’ll get to the CFAA claims in a moment). If this holds, nearly any computer break-in to copy content would also lead to DMCA claims. That’s just silly.

Onto the CFAA part. As we’ve noted over the years, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is quite frequently abused. Written in response to the movie War Games to target “hacking,” the law has been used for basically any “this person did something we dislike on a computer” type issues. It’s been dubbed “the law that sticks” because in absence of any other claims that one always sticks because of how broad it is.

At least this case does involve actual hacking. I mean, someone hacked into the DNC’s network, so it actually feels (amazingly) that this may be one case where the CFAA claims are legit. Those claims are just targeting the Russians, who were the only ones who actually hacked the DNC. So, I’m actually fine with those claims. Other than the fact that they’re useless. It’s not like the Russian Federation or the GRU is going to show up in court to defend this. And they’re certainly not going to agree to discovery. I doubt they’ll acknowledge the lawsuit at all, frankly. So… reasonable claims, impossible target.

Then there’s the Stored Communications Act (SCA), which is a part of ECPA, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which we’ve written about a ton and it does have lots of its own problems. These claims are also just against Russia, the GRU and Guccifer 2.0, and like the DMCA claims appear to be highly repetitive with the CFAA claims. Instead of just unauthorized access, it’s now unauthorized access… to communications.

It’s then when we get into the trade secrets part where things get… much more problematic. These claims are brought against not just the Russians, but also Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Even if you absolutely hate and / or distrust Assange, these claims are incredibly problematic against Wikileaks.

Defendants Russia, the GRU, GRU Operative #1, WikiLeaks, and Assange disclosed Plaintiff’s trade secrets without consent, on multiple dates, discussed herein, knowing or having reason to know that trade secrets were acquired by improper means.

If that violates the law, then the law is unconstitutional. The press regularly publishes trade secrets that may have been acquired by improper means by others and handed to the press (as is the case with this content being handed to Wikileaks). Saying that merely disclosing the information is a violation of the law raises serious First Amendment issues for the press.

I mean, what’s to stop President Trump from using the very same argument against the press for revealing, say, his tax returns? Or reports about business deals gone bad, or the details of secretive contracts? These could all be considered “trade secrets” and if the press can’t publish them that would be a huge, huge problem.

In a later claim (under DC’s specific trade secrets laws), the claims are extended to all defendants, which again raises serious First Amendment issues. Donald Trump Jr. may be a jerk, but it’s not a violation of trade secrets if someone handed him secret DNC docs and he tweeted them or emailed them around.

There are also claims under Virginia’s version of the CFAA. The claims against the Russians may make sense, but the complaint also makes claims against everyone else by claiming they “knowingly aided, abetted, encouraged, induced, instigated, contributed to and assisted Russia.” Those seem like fairly extreme claims for many of the defendants, and again feel like the DNC very, very broadly interpreting a law to go way beyond what it should cover.

As noted above, there are some potentially legit claims in here around Russia hacking into the DNC’s network (though, again, it’s a useless defendant). But some of these other claims seem like incredible stretches, twisting laws like the DMCA for ridiculous purposes. And the trade secret claims against the non-Russians is highly suspect and almost certainly not a reasonable interpretation of the law under the First Amendment.

 

DNC Lawsuit by Zerohedge on Scribd