http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=123359&sectionid=3510203

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates

The US secretary of defense has blasted the release of a video footage by the Internet group WikiLeaks showing the killing of Iraqi civilians by a US helicopter fire.

Robert Gates said on Tuesday that the WikiLeaks video footage is out of context and depicts an incomplete picture of the battlefield.

"You have no context or perspective," he said, The Los Angeles Times reported.

He accused the website of seeing the war "through a soda straw."

"These people can put out anything they want, and they're never held accountable for it. There's no before and there's no after," Gates said.

The WikiLeaks video shows the killing of two journalists and over a dozen civilians in a strike conducted by a US military Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007.

An editor of the WikiLeaks earlier told Press TV that US military officers gave him the footage on the killing of Iraqi civilians.

"We have a lot of supporters, including within the US military… They know that we're after the bad guys and we don't want to expose the good intelligence operations that are happening," Julian Assange told Press TV.
 
 

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-13-nuke-plans_N.htm

President Obama holds a news conference
at the Nuclear Security Summit on
April 13, 2010 in Washington, D.C.

By Steve Sternberg, USA TODAY

The White House has warned state and local governments not to expect a "significant federal response" at the scene of a terrorist nuclear attack for 24 to 72 hours after the blast, according to a planning guide.

President Obama told delegates from 47 nations at the Nuclear Security Summit on Tuesday that it would be a "catastrophe for the world" if al-Qaeda or another terrorist group got a nuclear device, because so many lives would be lost and it would be so hard to mitigate damage from the blast.

A 10-kiloton nuclear explosion would level buildings within half a mile of ground zero, generate 900-mph winds, bathe the landscape with radiation and produce a plume of fallout that would drift for hundreds of miles, the guide says. It was posted on the Internet and sent to local officials.

The document is designed to help local officials craft plans for responding to a nuclear blast. The prospect is anything but far-fetched, says Rick Nelson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Do I think in my lifetime I'll see the detonation of a nuclear device? I do."

One challenge he says, will be to persuade survivors to stay indoors, shielded from dangerous radiation until they're given the all-clear or told to evacuate. "In all likelihood, families will be separated," he says. "It's going to be scary to sit tight, though it's the right thing to do."

The government's planning scenarios envision a terrorist strike in an urban area with a 10-kiloton device, slightly smaller than the roughly 15-kiloton Hiroshima bomb. A 10-kiloton device packs the punch of 10,000 tons of TNT.

The chaos that would inevitably follow such a blast would make it difficult for the federal government to react quickly. "Emergency response is principally a local function," the document says, though "federal assistance will be mobilized as rapidly as possible."

The "Planning Guidance for Response to a Nuclear Detonation" was developed by a task force headed by the White House Homeland Security Council. It was circulated to state and local government officials and first responders in January 2009.

The report has never been formally released to the public, White House spokesman Nick Shapiro says.

It offers practical guidance to first responders and advice on radiation measurement and decontamination.

Disaster experts say local governments aren't prepared for a nuclear attack. "There isn't a single American city, in my estimation, that has sufficient plans for a nuclear terrorist event," says Irwin Redlener of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.

The message for families is simple, he says: Stay put. Wait for instructions. If you've been outside, dust off, change, shower. "What citizens need to know fits on a wallet-sized card," Redlener says. "A limited amount of information would save tens of thousands of people."
 
 

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20002423-38.html

by Declan McCullagh

Google and an alliance of privacy groups have come to Yahoo's aid by helping the Web portal fend off a broad request from the U.S. Department of Justice for e-mail messages, CNET has learned.

In a brief filed Tuesday afternoon, the coalition says a search warrant signed by a judge is necessary before the FBI or other police agencies can read the contents of Yahoo Mail messages--a position that puts those companies directly at odds with the Obama administration.

Yahoo has been quietly fighting prosecutors' requests in front of a federal judge in Colorado, with many documents filed under seal. Tuesday's brief from Google and the other groups aims to buttress Yahoo's position by saying users who store their e-mail in the cloud enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy that is protected by the U.S. Constitution.

"Society expects and relies on the privacy of e-mail messages just as it relies on the privacy of the telephone system," the friend-of-the-court brief says. "Indeed, the largest e-mail services are popular precisely because they offer users huge amounts of computer disk space in the Internet 'cloud' within which users can warehouse their e-mails for perpetual storage."

The coalition also includes the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Progress and Freedom Foundation, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and TRUSTe.

For its part, the Justice Department has taken a legalistic approach: a 17-page brief it filed last month acknowledges that federal law requires search warrants for messages in "electronic storage" that are less than 181 days old. But, Assistant U.S. Attorney Pegeen Rhyne writes in a government brief, the Yahoo Mail messages don't meet that definition.

"Previously opened e-mail is not in 'electronic storage,'" Rhyne wrote in a motion filed last month. "This court should therefore require Yahoo to comply with the order and produce the specified communications in the targeted accounts." (The Justice Department's position is that what's known as a 2703(d) order--not as privacy-protective as the rules for search warrants--should let police read e-mail.)

On December 3, 2009, U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Shaffer ordered Yahoo to hand to prosecutors certain records including the contents of e-mail messages. Yahoo divulged some of the data but refused to turn over e-mail that had been previously viewed, accessed, or downloaded and was less than 181 days old.

A Yahoo representative declined to comment.

"This case is about protecting the privacy rights of all Internet users," a Google representative said in a statement provided to CNET on Tuesday. "E-mail stored in the cloud should have the same level of protection as the same information stored by a person at home."

That is, in fact, the broader goal of the groups filing Tuesday's brief. They're also behind the new Digital Due Process Coalition, which wants police to be able to obtain private communications (and the location of Americans' cell phones) only when armed with a search warrant.

Under a 1986 law written in the pre-Internet era, Internet users enjoy more privacy rights if they store data locally, a legal hiccup that these companies fear could slow the shift to cloud-based services unless it's changed.

The judge should "reject the government's attempted end-run around the Fourth Amendment and require it to obtain a search warrant based on probable cause before searching and seizing e-mails without prior notice to the account holder," the coalition brief filed Tuesday says. The Bill of Rights' Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches and, in general, has been interpreted to mean warrantless searches are unreasonable.

The legal push in Colorado federal court, and a parallel legislative effort in Congress to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is likely to put the coalition at odds with the Obama administration.

A few weeks ago, for instance, Justice Department prosecutors told a federal appeals court that Americans enjoy no reasonable expectation of privacy in their mobile device's location and that no search warrant should be required to access location logs.

The U.S. Attorney's office in Colorado did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Update 8:15 p.m. PDT Tuesday: I've heard back from a Justice Department representative who says he'll be able to answer questions on Wednesday after he talks to the cybercrime section.

Update 9 a.m. PDT Wednesday: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has posted a statement on the case, with EFF attorney Kevin Bankston saying: "The government is trying to evade federal privacy law and the Constitution." Yahoo's brief is also worth noting. Like the coalition's filing, it argues that "users have a reasonable expectation of privacy in their e-mails" and says the Fourth Amendment requires police to obtain a warrant to peruse stored messages. And it confirms that prosecutors want "all e-mail" in the targeted Yahoo Mail accounts, even if it's not relevant to the investigation or could include documents protected by the attorney-client privilege.

Update 9:30 a.m. PDT Wednesday: Yahoo has sent over a statement saying: "Yahoo values our trusted relationships with our users and works to protect their privacy while at the same time fulfilling our legal responsibilities. Yahoo's filing in this matter is a public document. Beyond what is contained in that document, Yahoo has no comment on the specifics of the case."

Excerpt from U.S. Department of Justice's brief filed in March 2010, which argues
that no search warrant is required to read the correspondence of a Yahoo Mail user.
(Credit: U.S. Department of Justice)

Disclosure: The author is married to a Google employee who is not involved in this case.
 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1266001/Police-need-powerful-weapons-combat-Mumbai-style-terror-attacks-says-police-chief.html

By Daily Mail Reporter

Police officers must be armed with even more powerful weapons to deal with a Mumbai-style terrorist attack in the UK, a top officer said last night.

Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner John Yates said officers needed a huge boost to their firepower to combat an atrocity where the aim is to kill as many innocents as possible in a matter of minutes.

His comments reflect grave concerns that Britain may not be able to cope with a copy-cat attack and suggest moves toward the greater use of 'heavy ballistic weapons' including rapid-fire assault rifles and C9 Minimi machine guns, as used by the SAS, as well as more powerful bullets.
One of the Mumbai gunmen

Deadly: One of the Mumbai gunmen. There are fears a copy-cat attack could be launched in Britain

Security sources have also told the Home Office that, unless police are backed, summoning the Army to take on fanatics could be the only alternative option in the event of an attack.

A security source said: 'If two terrorists go on the rampage with machine guns, we have got a massive problem.

'The question is whether there should be a policing or military response. There needs to be a debate and John Yates is right to put the issue in the public arena.'

Islamic-extremist terrorists killed 173 people over three days in Mumbai in coordinated shootings and bombings in November 2008.
John Yates
 

Gunmen armed with AK-47 assault rifles and backpacks filled with ammunition and grenades arrived by dinghy and fanned out to the city's railway station, a popular cafe and the Oberoi Trident hotel and Taj Mahal Hotel. In extraordinary scenes, commandos fought room-to-room battles with the terrorists who had taken hostages in the hotels. But special forces took ten hours to arrive and many policemen were left fighting the heavily-armed terrorists with only bolt-action rifles. In the aftermath of the bloodbath, senior British police officers and counter-terrorism officials have held talks with the Home Office on how to prepare for a similar atrocity. They have spelled out the nature of the threat and told mandarins that unless police are given the 'tools for the job' the only alternative may be to call in the troops. The stark warning echoes the decision to send tanks and soldiers to Heathrow Airport in 2003 amid fears terrorists planned to shoot down a jet with a rocket launcher. Speaking at an anti-terror conference in central London yesterday, Mr Yates chose his words carefully when addressing the possibility of a Mumbai-inspired attack.

Warning: Scotland Yard assistant commissioner  John Yates said officers are currently ill-equipped

He said: 'Most deaths in these type of cases occur in the first hour, the first 30-40 minutes. What does that mean to the style of policing?

'The risk to the unarmed bobby in the street does mean upping to a higher ballistic weaponry and ammunition. It's going to mean heavy ballistic weapons, heavier ballistic ammunition.'

He went on: 'Some of my colleagues from across the country see that as a fundamental change, yet we will be the first people there, the first in the line of fire.

'There has to be an understanding that in the first hour that there will be a lot of challenges, a lot of dead people.'

Most of the hostages taken in the Mumbai attacks died within 30 minutes of capture.

Some 2,856 officers are authorized to use firearms throughout the Met.

That includes the Specialist Firearms Command (CO19), 350 of whom are trained on the Heckler and Koch G36 assault rifle.

The 5.56mm weapon has recently been issued to all armed response vehicles for use in 'extreme situations' only.