13 EU Countries launch coordinating body for national counterterrorism centres

13 National Terrorism Centres gathered in Paris last week to discuss further cooperation, Le Monde reports. At the meeting countries which have such a body, including Germany, Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, decide to launch a common structure: the Coordinating Committee of Counterrorism Centres. This network will monitor developments of the terroris threat. It should take place alongside the Club of Berne, which brings together European intelligence services, and the Atlas Group, which is formed by the intervention units in Europe. The meeting was headed by Frederick Péchenard, Director General of Police, a deputy of Gilles de Kerchhove, the European director of the center to evaluate the threat (SitCen), William Shapcott, and Director of the Center for African Studies and Research on Terrorism (ACSRT), Aboubar Gaoussou Diarra.

France hopes that the structure will improve its warning system. “This new rapid, non-bureaucratic system will permit us to easier exchange information with neighboring countries adnd to have a global vision,” Loïc Garnier, head of the French Coordinating Unit of the Counter-Terrorism (UCLAT) said.

The perception of the threat varied, but members of the new body shared priorities such as surveillance of radicalised online networks.

Canada’s terror financing detection, no-fly list come under commissioner’s scrutiny

Canada’s privacy watchdog will flag potential problems Tuesday with the system for zeroing in on cash linked to terrorism and other crimes. Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart plans to release an audit highlighting her concerns about practices of the little-known Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada.

She will also disclose findings of a close look at Transport Canada’s no-fly list – a controversial program she has cast a wary eye upon for years.

Audits of the two national security initiatives will be featured in Stoddart’s annual report to Parliament.

The reports analysis centre, or Fintrac, collects, analyzes and discloses personal financial information about suspected money laundering and terrorist financing. Two years ago the centre did an assessment of the impact of its activities on privacy.

Fintrac found that even though it put strong emphasis on privacy and security of information, steps could be taken to improve compliance with the Privacy Act and related policies.

The no-fly list, which came into effect in June 2007, is intended to prevent people considered a threat to aviation security from boarding a flight originating in or heading to Canada.

The privacy commissioner has previously expressed concerns that such a list could have serious implications for the travelling public.

Stoddart’s office said Transport Canada had not provided studies or evidence to show the effectiveness of no-fly lists.She worked with Transport Canada to reduce risks to people’s personal information but stopped short of endorsing the program.

Stoddart also posed a number of questions:

-Will the list be shared with foreign governments?

-How will passengers be advised that they are on the list? Will they be informed privately?

-Will the process for getting one’s name removed from the list be fair, transparent and open to individuals?

Overall, she said the identity-based screening used to administer the no-fly list relies on analysis of large amounts of personal information to assess an individual’s risk based on who they are.

“This kind of system is only as reliable as the identity information that feeds it, leading to pressure for the collection and use of greater amounts and more privacy-invasive types of information such as fingerprints and facial recognition.

“Some security experts suggest that beefing up physical screening – including more thorough screening of luggage and cargo – would be a more effective approach to enhancing aviation security.”

Tunisia: Human Rights Committee dissatisfied with government’s reply

In the follow-up to the recommendations of the Human Rights Committee’s periodic review of Tunisia, the government submitted, in March 2009, a reply to four of the recommendations. The Committee then wrote a follow-up letter in which it stated that such information was insufficient.

UK Intercept Modernisation Programme delayed until after next election

The Independent reports that plans to store information about every phone call, email and internet visit in the United Kingdom have in effect been abandoned by the Government.

The Home Office confirmed the “Big Brother” scheme had been delayed until after the election amid protests that it would be intrusive and open to abuse. Although ministers publicly insisted yesterday that they remained committed to the scheme, they have decided not to include the contentious measure in next week’s Queen’s Speech, the Government’s final legislative programme before the election.

Related: oral evidence on Home Office response to terrorism in the UK Home Affairs Committee: Some interesting evidence here, particularly from Sir Ken MacDonald QC, former Director of Public Prosecutions, and on the matter of intercept evidence in court. (esp. at 1 hour 2min in)

Simon Davies comments in The Guardian. More comments here.

Hillary Clinton on the fight against terrorism in Der Spiegel

Read the interview here.

SPIEGEL: President Karzai has already made clear that he refuses to tolerate interference.

Clinton : We do not think that is interference. The most common kind of formulation that I and others have learned from the Afghans themselves is: We need your help to get us in a position where we can defend ourselves against the threats of the Taliban and al-Qaida-terrorists – and then we need you to go. Well, that pretty much summarizes what we want to do as well. We have no intention of staying or occupying territory. But we want to leave a stable enough situation behind that the Afghans can defend themselves.

Brookings: Fighting Radicalism, Not Terrorism: root causes redefined

In the years since the September 11th attacks, Western policymakers, analysts and academics have debated the best approaches to confronting and ending terrorism. Brookings Fellow Omer Taspinar argues that the global fight against extremist violence must move beyond the “war on terror” to a broader strategy of fighting radicalism with human development – an approach that would address the political, economic and social conditions that foment violent radicalism.

New ACLU report: Building American Institutions to protect privacy in the face of new technology and government powers

Read it here.

More here.

Four EU countries oppose SWIFT bank data deal with US ahead of Lisbon Treaty

Opposition from four member states to a draft agreement between the EU and US allowing the use of banking data in anti-terrorist investigations is likely to delay a decision until after 1 December, drawing the European Parliament into the decision making process. Citing data privacy concerns, Germany, Austria, France and Finland are opposing the text negotiated by the Swedish EU presidency and the European Commission allowing American authorities access to information from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift) – the interbank transfer service.

Der Spiegel reports that the new German justice minister says Berlin is not comfortable with the EU measure and it seems likely that the Germans may scupper the deal, which is supposed to be pushed through at an EU meeting in Brussels at the end of November.

Germany is not the only country to have doubts. France, Austria and Finland have also expressed reservations, particularly regarding to the speed with which the new measure was being pushed through.

According to the draft proposal, the EU would allow Swift to share the “name, account number, address, national identification number, and other personal data” with US authorities, if there is a suspicion that the person is in any way involved with terrorist activity.

The requests for information “shall be tailored as narrowly as possible” to prevent too much customer data from being evaluated by police and intelligence officers.

However, if the provider of data “cannot identify the data that would respond to the request for technical reasons, all potentially relevant data shall be transmitted in bulk” to the state that requests it. Eurjust, the bloc’s judicial co-operation agency, is also set to be informed by the information request.

The transmitted data may be kept in the US for up to five years before being deleted.

Postponing a decision on the deal beyond 30 November will have other legal implications, as the European Parliament will have a bigger say in the decision-making process once the Lisbon Treaty enters into force on 1 December.

US opens new Bagram detention facility

By the end of the month, the U.S. military plans to begin moving the first of its approximately 700 detainees at Bagram air field to a new $60 million holding complex. By the end of the year all the detainees are expected to move from the current Bagram prison to the new facility. The new detention center eventually will be turned over to the Afghan government.

The detainees will not be given access to lawyers but will be assigned a U.S. military “personal representative.” They have to be told within 14 days in detention why they are being held and then after 60 days come before a three-member panel of officers for a review of their case, followed by subsequent periodic reviews. Military officials said witnesses could participate in the hearings and that detainee representatives would help find evidence that could exonerate them.

The new detention center, which has a capacity to hold 1,140 detainees in group cells plus 104 others in individual holding pens, is intended not only to provide more space for vocational classes, family visits, medical check-ups, and hearing rooms for military tribunals, but also to keep apart hard-core insurgents from others who might be reconcilable, military officials said.

During the course of the war, American military officials have kept the Bagram detention center hidden from the public, and its detainees — all but about 30 of whom are Afghans — live there without being charged. Reforming the country’s detention system, particularly in the Afghan-run detention centers that house about 15,000 people, has become a priority for the Obama administration

CIA agents reveal money flows to Pakistani ISI in Reward for Justice programme, say up 700 suspects were handed over

The CIA has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Pakistan’s intelligence service since the Sept. 11 attacks, accounting for as much as one-third of the foreign spy agency’s annual budget, current and former U.S. officials say to the LA Times. The Inter-Services Intelligence agency also has collected tens of millions of dollars through a classified CIA program that pays for the capture or killing of wanted militants, a clandestine counterpart to the rewards publicly offered by the State Department, officials said.

“They gave us 600 to 700 people captured or dead,” said one former senior CIA official who worked with the Pakistanis. “Getting these guys off the street was a good thing, and it was a big savings to [U.S.] taxpayers.”

The first check, for $10 million, was for the capture of Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda figure, the former official said. The ISI got $25 million more for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed’s capture.

But the CIA’s most-wanted list went beyond those widely known names.

“There were a lot of people I had never heard of, and they were good for $1 million or more,” said a former CIA official who served in Islamabad.

Former CIA Director George J. Tenet acknowledged the bounties in a little-noticed section in his 2007 memoir. Sometimes, payments were made with a dramatic flair.

“We would show up in someone’s office, offer our thanks, and we would leave behind a briefcase full of $100 bills, sometimes totaling more than a million in a single transaction,” Tenet wrote.

The payments have triggered intense debate within the U.S. government, officials said, because of long-standing suspicions that the ISI continues to help Taliban extremists who undermine U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and provide sanctuary to Al Qaeda members in Pakistan. But U.S. officials have continued the funding because the ISI’s assistance is considered crucial: Almost every major terrorist plot this decade has originated in Pakistan’s tribal belt, where ISI informant networks are a primary source of intelligence.

The payments to Pakistan are authorized under a covert program initially approved by then-President Bush and continued under President Obama. The CIA declined to comment on the agency’s financial ties to the ISI.