French ministry of interior presents controversial LOPPSI 2 draft law on internal security, focus on new technologies

After a year and a half of discussions, Minister of Interior Michèle Alliot-Marie finally presented the draft law for the “programming and performance of internal security” (Loppsi) to the Council of Ministers on the 27th of May.

In 2002 the government of Jean-Pierre Raffarin proposed LOPS (Law of Orientation and Programming for Internal Security), which formalized the use of police files such as ‘STIC’ and ‘Judex’, which were merged later into Ariane. Some of the provisions of the law were approved later in 2003 by the LSI (Internal Security Act), proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior. LOPPSI 2 is intended to update the policy for internal security in France for the period 2009-2013. Seven years after its previous edition, the new law focuses especially on the use of new technologies.

Article 4 foresees the blocking of internet sites that contain child pornography. The ministry of interior will transmit their blacklist of banned sites to ISP’s, which have to block the access to the “internet addresses”. The measure is controversial as it opens again the discussion in France on the potential of organized screening of the internet by the government through the ISP’s.

Article 10 allows for the creation of the ‘Pericles’ database which will bring together information from various existing French databases as STIC and Judex to create a “super-dossier” on people.

Article 17 would broaden the use of surveillance substantially. Untill now the use of videosurveillance was restricted to locations which could be exposed to acts of terrorism, but with the new proposal camera’s private entities would be able to establish a sort of CCTV mechanism in order to protect their premises against acts of agression or theft.

Consequently, the viewing of these images can now also be done by private entities.

Article 20 would better protect the identies of intelligence agents and police officials, as well as some of their informers by allowing them to use a false identities and even use this identity for testimonies in court. (Practically this would mean that if the Rainbow Warrior case happened today, the names of the two arrested agents would never have come out.)

Last but not least, the most controversial Article 23 is intended to bring wiretapping to the 21st century by authorizing the collection of data “from a distance”. If passed, investigators would be able to see and record in real time, from a distance, the data that appears on a computerscreen, even when the data are not stored. The law would allow the state to install keylogger software that can “observe, collect, record, save, and transmit” keystrokes from computers on which it is installed. In essence, it allows for government-installed Trojans for a period of four months; a judge can extend this period for four months more. (In the US, the FBI has used similar techniques for several years, installing a program called CIPAV on suspects’ computers to record and transmit “pen register” data back to investigators.)

The measure can only be done after authorization by the investigation magistrate, after consultation with the ‘procureur de la Republique’.

The bill will probably be discussed in Parliament next fall.

FBI Planning a Bigger Role in Terrorism Fight

According to the LA Times, the FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a US policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions. Under the “global justice” initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Though the initiative is a work in progress, some senior counter-terrorism officials and administration policy-makers envision it as key to the national security strategy President Obama laid out last week – one that presumes most accused terrorists have the right to contest the charges against them in a “legitimate” setting. The approach effectively reverses a mainstay of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism, in which global counter-terrorism was treated primarily as an intelligence and military problem, not a law enforcement one.

Interview with Boumediene

The interview is interesting to read because it confirms that certain activities of non Pakistani Arab men in Pakistan (working for an Islamic aid agency, renewing a passport at a foreign embassy inside Pakistan, engaging in dodgy domestic ‘reconciliation’ initiative) increased the interest of international security agencies.

• Boumediene was working for an aid agency and said that a stint in Pakistan in the early 1990s aroused the suspicions of U.S. investigators and may have landed his name on a watch list shared by Algerian security services with their U.S. counterparts.
• During his stay, he had his passport renewed at the Algerian Embassy in Islamabad. Because many Islamist Arab fighters were gathered in Pakistan, including Algerians, the passport renewal in Islamabad marked him for Algerian security services as a possible extremist. 
• As a result, when he traveled to Algeria in December 1999 to visit family, Boumediene recalled, he was stopped at the airport and told he was on a list of people wanted for questioning. Boumediene denied any connection to Algeria’s Islamist extremists, but Algerian investigators were intrigued by his time in Pakistan and confiscated his passport. As he sought to get the suspicions lifted and retrieve his passport, Boumediene said, he was told by an official in the prosecutor’s office that he could avoid further trouble with Algerian authorities if he registered for an amnesty being offered to Islamist activists by President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Reluctantly, and still denying any association with the Algerian extremists, he accepted the government’s amnesty and got his passport back.
• But a document listing him as a beneficiary of the amnesty was found in his home after his arrest in Bosnia and, Boumediene speculated, served to reinforce U.S. suspicions about his ties to al-Qaeda. 

Boumediene said he was interrogated more than 120 times during his stay in Guantanamo’s Camp Delta, mostly about Arabs and other foreign Muslims in Bosnia. The interrogators, some dressed in military uniforms and others in civilian clothes, were assisted by Arabic interpreters who seemed mostly to be from Egypt and Lebanon, he recalled, and later included a few Moroccans and Iraqis.

“They were dogs,” Boumediene said of the foreign interpreters, in his only show of anger. “They were dogs. They often started doing the interrogations themselves. They would tell the interrogators they could get more information.”

PKK leader offers Turkey peace offer

The Kurdish leader proposing to end a 25-year-long conflict with Turkey that has cost 30,000 lives believes his peace offer is a once in a generation opportunity that must be grasped by both sides. In a unilateral gesture that has prompted a re-examination of strategy in Ankara, Baghdad and Washington, the guerrilla leadership of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, has extended an olive branch, offering to drop its aim of an independent state in return for a negotiated settlement to end its war with Turkey.

“We are at a turning point,” said Murad Karayilan, acting head of the PKK, in an interview with The Times at a secret location in the mountains of northern Iraq.“Kurds do not want to continue the war. We believe we can solve the Kurdish question without spilling more blood. We are ready for a peaceful and democratic solution in Turkey – to be solved within Turkey’s borders.” The potential breakthrough in the conflict came this month when Mr Karayilan, 52, deputy to the PKK’s imprisoned supremo, Abdullah Ocalan, agreed to meet a Turkish journalist in northern Iraq. During the meeting he highlighted the PKK’s willingness to drop its central demand for an independent state for Turkey’s 12 million Kurds, and proposed key steps towards peace, including an immediate ceasefire and negotiations to end the war.

Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

(Scotus) In No. 08-640, Federal Insurance Co. v. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United States has filed a brief recommending that cert. be denied.  The case arises out of the September 11 attacks and alleges, inter alia, that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Saudi High Commission for Relief to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and four Saudi princes donated money to charitable organizations that they knew to be diverting funds to al Qaeda.  The petition asked the Court to review three questions relating to (1) the source of immunity from suit of foreign governmental officials; (2) the scope of the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act’s tort exception; and (3) personal jurisdiction.  In her brief, the SG acknowledged that the United States “disagrees in certain respects with the analyses of the court of appeals” but explains that “further review by this Court to determine the best legal basis” for the officials’ immunity is not warranted because – in any event – the “lower courts correctly concluded that Saudi Arabia and its officials are immune from suit for governmental acts outside the United States.”  Nor, the United States continues in its brief, “is review warranted” on the personal jurisdiction issue.

Iran Secretly Helped U.S. Bomb Taliban Units, Find Al Qaeda

Iran supplied U.S. diplomats with the location of Taliban military units in Afghanistan after the initial bombing campaign in the fall of 2001 failed to rout them, according to former officials in the George W. Bush administration.CQ’s Jef Stein has the story here.

The Islamic regime also gave the Bush administration “really substantive cooperation” on al Qaeda after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, at one point providing Washington with a list of 220 suspects and their whereabouts, said one official, former White House National Security Council Iran expert Hillary Mann Leverett.

“The foreign ministry took the evidence – passports, vital information – and gave us pages and even a chart showing the disposition or what they’d done with each person,” broken down by “those who had been turned away at the border, or been detained or deported,” she said.

Special Operations’ Oversight of Contractors Is Faulted

The U.S. Special Operations Command, which has Army Special Forces units worldwide, has been criticized by the Pentagon inspector general for not providing adequate oversight of $1.7 billion in logistic support contracts at 20 locations and for allowing contractors to perform what are considered “inherently government functions,” according to The Washington Post.

Tunisia prepared to accept 10 Guantanamo detainees

[JURIST] Tunisian Minister of Justice and Human Rights Bechir Tekkari announced Tuesday that the country is prepared to accept the return of 10 Tunisians currently detained at Guantanamo Bay . Tekkari said that Tunisia is capable of conducting fair trials and is “entirely happy to welcome [the detainees] and examine their penal situation according to legal procedures and under the principle of the presumption of innocence.” The US has asked Italy to consider taking custody of two Tunisians currently held at Guantanamo and charged in Italy with connection to the Salifist Group for Preaching and Combat rather than returning them to Tunisia. Italy has previously refused to accept any Guantanamo detainees.

U.S. opposes Uighurs’ plea in Kiyemba, et al., v. Obama

(Scotus) The Obama Administration urged the Supreme Court on Friday to turn away the plea by 17 Chinese Muslim Uighurs for release from Guantanamo Bay for settling temporarily inside the U.S.  The U.S. Solicitor General’s brief in opposition in Kiyemba, et al., v. Obama, et al. (08-1234) can be downloaded here.  

Although no longer considered enemies, their continued confinement at Guantanamo is constitutionally valid, the brief asserted. The Uighurs, Solicitor General Elena Kagan wrote, “have already obtained relief.  They are no longer detained as enemy combatants, they are free to leave Guantanamo Bay to any country that is willing to accept them, and in the meantime, they are housed in facilities separate from those for enemy combatants under the least restrictive conditions practicable.”

New NGO reports and academic articles of interest

Human Rights Watch has a new report on administrative detentions in Jordan. Read it here.The Open Society Initiative has a new report analyzing ethnic profiling both in ordinary policing and in counterterrorism, and finds that it is not just a violation of European laws and international human rights norms, but also an ineffective use of police resources that leaves the public less safe. Read the report here.

Center for Terrorism Research – Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K.: An Empirical Study of the Radicalization Process, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Laura Grossman.

Indonesia: Radicalisation of the “Palembang Group” – ICG report

ICRT – Using the Istanbul Protocol to document torture

Academic articles:

Anthony Dworkin – Beyond the “War on Terror”: Towards a New Transatlantic Framework for Counterterrorism’.

Mathew Waxman – United States Detention Operations in Afghanistan and the Law of Armed Conflict (Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, forthcoming).

David Cole – Out of the Shadows: Preventive detention, suspected terrorists, and war

Brookings Institute – Better Rules for Terrorism Trials

Brookings Institute – Refining American Interrogation Law

Benjamin Wittes – Legislationg the war on terror, an agenda for reform

Simon Chesterman – Intelligence Cooperation in International Operations: Peacekeeping, Weapons Inspections, and the Apprehension and Prosecution of War Criminals

Marko Milanović –  Extradition and Life Imprisonment on R (Wellington) v. Secretary of State for the Home Department [2008] UKHL 72, [2009] 2 W.L.R. 48 case decided by the House of Lords, dealing with the question whether the extradition of person to a foreign state where he or she is accused of a crime for which a sentence of life imprisonment can be imposed can potentially violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.