Rue89 rappelle que c’est le deuxième cas de censure à Direct Matin (cf: Bolloré trappe un article gênant pour la police dans Matin Plus).
Cette fois, pour Rue89: “cette censure est certainement liée au partenariat signé par Bolloré avec la RATP: les présentoirs de ses deux gratuits (Direct Matin et Direct Soir) ont le droit de trôner à l’intérieur du réseau, contrairement à ceux de ses concurrents, Metro et 20 Minutes.”

Erreur de communication: cette censure ne peut que faire plus de bruit autour des problématiques de vie privées soulevées par le déploiement des technologies RFID utilisées en particulier par le pass navigo.

Extraits:
Rue89: “Rappelons qu’à partir du 1er février, la carte Orange n’existe plus. Pass Navigo obligatoire pour tous les abonnés. Ce système crée la polémique, à tel point que même le ministre de la Défense, Hervé Morin, s’inquiète des atteintes aux libertés publiques qu’il implique. Pour avoir le droit de circuler dans l’anonymat, il faut payer 5 euros.”
Libération: “Dans le papier en question, l’auteur, Eric Nunès, relaie les critiques, notamment émises par la Cnil , sur le passe Navigo - ce mouchard numérique permettant de tracer les parcours des voyageurs et d’utiliser leurs données personnelles. Mais jeudi, couic, plus de papier.”

Mais ce qui se cache derrière cette affaire pourrait aussi tenir aux enjeux économiques liés au développement de l’internet des objets: Si Direct matin fait partie du groupe Bolloré, une lecture attentive de son rapport annuel 2007 indique que IER, et sa fililale Automatic Systems -du même groupe donc- sont spécialisées dans le transport, le contrôle d’accès et les technologies RFID:

Page 20 du rapport:

IER est le leader des grands réseaux de transport en terminaux de billetterie, de lecture et de contrôle d’embarquement permettant le traitement sécurisé des flux de passagers et de bagages. Il est également l’un des leaders mondiaux dans la fourniture d’équipements de contrôle d’accès et un acteur important des systèmes d’identification automatique par radiofréquence (RFID).

Equipement pour les grands réseaux de transport
IER est le leader mondial pour la conception, la fabrication et la commercialisation de bornes multicompagnie et de terminaux d’impression (billetteries électroniques et contrôle d’embarquement) des grands réseaux de transport aérien, ferroviaire, et maritime. De^puis plusieurs années, IER se développe dans les bornes libres-services pour les aéroports ou les gares, ainsi que dans des services à plus forte valeur ajoutée, comme la surveillance, la maintenance à distance des matériels et les activités de logiciels.

Contrôle d’accès sécurisé
Grâce à sa filiale Automatic Systems (AS), IER propose également une gamme complète d’aquipements d’accès payant (métro, péages) , d’accès sécurisé des piétons et des véhicules (contrôle d’immigration, contrôle d’embarquement…) et de protection des sites sensibles grâce à des sas et à des obstacles mobiles ou escamotables. AS est l’un des premiers fournisseurs mondiaux d’équipements de contrôle d’accès physique des grands intégrateurs dans le domaine de la sécurité. La société a développé une technologie et un logiciel spécialisés dans les contrôles de passages de piétons et participe aux grands appels d’offres pour l’équipement des métros de nombreuses grandes villes à travers le monde.

Bornes, traçabilité, et nouvelles technologies
IER produit des bornes pour les administrations, les collectivités locales et les entreprises permettant des transactions interactives automatisées (libre-service d’affranchissement à La Poste, certificats de non-gage dans les préfectures, CNAM). Il est également présent dans l’intégration de matériels, de progiciels et de consommables dans les domaines de l’informatique mobile, de la traçabilité par code-barres et de la distribution de produits d’identification automatique. Enfin, IER se développe dans le secteur de l’identification par radiofréquence, qui offre de nombreuses applications: traçabilité, logistique des biens industriels, sécurisation des documents officiels… IER conduit également des expériences importantes dans le domaine de l’identification des bagages dans le transport aérien. Au total, près de 110 millions d’étiquettes radiofréquence ont été livrées en 2007 dans les secteurs du transport et de la distribution.

Le scan d’un article paru dans le canard à propos de l’idée farfelue du Président de la cnil et néanmoins Détricoteur de la loi informatique et libertés:

La solution pour les “ONG”: pas de collaboration, mais un boycott direct.

Riposte graduée: Les élus s’apprêtent à voter sous la pression des lobbies un texte répressif et archaïque, marchandé dans l’ombre.

Odebi a constaté qu’à la veille de l’examen par le sénat du projet de loi Riposte Graduée, les emails envoyés par les internautes au sénat à partir du site Odebi subissaient des dénis d’accès:

Le fait est donc qu’aujourd’hui, le sénat ne laisse plus passer un pour cent de ce que les citoyens écrivaient à leurs sénateurs il y a quatre ans. Cette façon de faire fait écho aux appels au filtrage des mails envoyés par les citoyens à leurs eurodéputés que l’on a pu entendre il y a quelque semaines au parlement européen.

La Ligue Odebi condamne avec la plus grande fermeté toute tentative de filtrage ou de limitation des courriers que les citoyens envoient aux élus.

Les politiques qui pensent pouvoir s’abriter derrière de tels procédés pour continuer à fabriquer la loi dans l’ombre comme au siècle dernier confondent société de l’information, et société de la désinformation.

Depuis des mois, le gouvernement français marchande dans l’ombre ce projet de loi avec les industriels, sans jamais prendre en compte les citoyens. Ce même gouvernement va même jusqu’à tenter de profiter de la présidence française de l’Union Européenne pour tenter de faire supprimer un amendement fondamental voté à la quasi unanimité par le parlement européen: l’amendement 138, qui ne fait pourtant que rappeler que le juge est le gardien des libertés, et en particulier de la liberté d’expression.

En votant l’amendement 138, les députés élus par près d’un demi milliard de citoyens européens ont démontré qu’ils étaient capables de faire autre chose que de graver dans la loi la liste de souhaits des lobbies.

Odebi attend, sans trop d’illusion, que la majorité des sénateurs français démontrent la même considération pour les principes fondamentaux de la démocratie.

Pour l’heure, Odebi a modifié l’architecture d’envoi de mails au sénat, et appelle les internautes à reprendre leurs envois, et à rappeler aux sénateurs qui semblent l’avoir oublié que dans une démocratie, chacun a droit à un procès juste et équitable avant toute sanction, que le juge est le gardien des libertés, et en particulier de la liberté d’expression, et enfin qu’aucune démocratie ne peut accepter d’instaurer des punitions collectives comme la riposte graduée, qui vise en pratique, et quelles que soient les contorsions du gouvernement, à punir l’ensemble d’une famille.

ODEBI sent the following message to the french senators, and calls all internet users to ask the french senators to reject the graduated response:

French senators must realize that the graduated response is a repressive mechanism totally contrary to the most basic rights of citizens:

- Every citizen has the right to a fair trial before any penalty: it is the independent and impartial judge, and he alone, which is the guardian of freedoms.

- Freedom of expression and information is a fundamental right: it is scandalous that the Committee of Cultural Affairs of the Senate tries to deny it by saying that no european text says that Internet access is a fundamental right . The internet access allows to exercise this freedom of expression and information: terminating access is therefore a clear violation of this freedom. This punishment is completely disproportionate.

- The Committee of Cultural Affairs said that only the “home” access will be terminated: it is therefore a familial punisment. No democracy can accept the infliction of such collective punishment, which was recalled by the former french prime minister Michel Rocard on 22 April 2008: “For me, the possible cutoff of the Internet is a collective punishment prohibited by all our systems of law. The meaning of the laws is clear and there is no sophisticated problem to understand that. ”

French senators must ensure that:

- Only the judge can decide on a punishment.

- Terminating access of families, ie imposing a collective punishment, must be clearly prohibited.

Ce 11 octobre, des organisations d’une vingtaine de pays d’Europe, d’Amérique latine, et d’Amérique du Nord coordonnent des actions de défense de la vie privée et de la liberté d’expression, actuellement gravement menacées, à la fois par les politiques sécuritaristes post 11 septembre, et sous la pression d’intérêts économiques aussi puissants que peu respectueux des libertés fondamentales.

Ces atteintes aux droits fondamentaux menacent le fonctionnement des démocraties, particulièrement en France, où l’actualité illustre une dérive inquiétante:

- Le fichage policier, avec les systèmes Ardoise, Edvige, Cristina, et Fnaeg, dépasse les limites acceptables dans une démocratie: il n’est absolument pas acceptable que l’on fiche les enfants simplement coupables d’être suspects aux yeux de la police, ou que l’on fiche les homosexuels, ou les origines ethniques, ou la religion, ou les activités syndicales ou militantes. Le fichage génétique quant à lui est encore plus inquiétant lorsqu’on se souvient du rapport Benisti sur la prévention de la délinquance, ou de cette affirmation de Nicolas Sarkozy : “On nait pédophile”. [1]

- Le fichage scolaire: à l’heure actuelle, des directeurs d’école refusant de renseigner le fichier base élèves, pourtant reconnu comme liberticide, sont sanctionnés.

- La riposte graduée: au mépris d’un vote quasi unanime du parlement européen rappelant que nulle restriction à la liberté d’expression et d’information ne peut se faire sans l’intervention d’un juge indépendant et impartial, le gouvernement Sarkozy tente de manoeuvrer pour faire effacer ce vote des eurodéputés, en faisant pression sur José Barroso et sur la commission européenne. Face à la résistance des institutions européennes, le gouvernement français utilise la voie diplomatique, en faisant la promotion du projet français de désabonnement des internautes à l’ambassade de France, avec l’aide symptomatique de Vivendi. [2] Pour Nicolas Sarkozy, les intérêts économiques des industries culturelles priment donc sur les droits fondamentaux, pourtant rappelés par des députés élus par un demi-milliard de citoyens européens.

HmanRights21 appelle donc tous les citoyens et toutes les organisations attachés à la vie privée, et à la liberté d’expression et d’information, à participer aux différentes actions de ce 11 octobre contre le totalitarisme informationnel qui s’instaure progressivement:
Manifestations à Paris (14h République), à Bordeaux (14h Place F.Lafarge), et Soirées d’informations festives: conférences, ateliers, vidéoprojections, vidéoconférences, concerts… à Paris (18h à la CIP, et 19h à La suite) [3]

[1] http://www.humanite.fr/2007-04-04_Societe_Pour-le-candidat-de-la-droite-on-nait-pedophile
[2] http://www.odebi.org/docs/Einladung_Konferenz_15_10_2008.pdf
[3] toutes les informations sur :
http://www.humanrights21.org/?page_id=57

The Odebi Ligue denounces the opacity of a system which is similar to the one who exists in France, and where the government is negotiating in the dark a project of “Graduated Response” for many months with industry players.

Furthermore, the Ligue is afraid that, except for the Green and GUE groups, the votes would have been secretly negotiated before.

Odebi would like the public and deputies to pay attention to the following three amendments : 133, 138, 166. Those amendments simply reaffirm fundamental rights of the citizens in the European law like, they shall not suffer of mass surveillance or any attempts to their privacy, to their freedom of speech and information, or to their right to due process.

Let us be clear : either MEPs will vote these amendments guaranteeing the fundamental rights of European citizens, either they will vote against it. In the last case, they would fully illustrate the vision the vision of Europe that numerous citizens have : ie the vision of a kind of big supermarket where lobbies negotiate laws dedicated to defend their own economic interests in total violation of the fundamental rights of citizens, and with the complicity of number of politicians.

Such behavior of collaboration with the business lobbies are like a stop point to the European construction.

Odebi, co-organizer of the International Day of Action “Freedom not Fear” planed on October 11, calls on all participating organizations to pay particular attention to the vote of these amendments, and calls on all organizations of European countries who are not yet participating to “Freedom Not Fear” movement to join the international mobilization in order to get a better fight against attacks that the Internet and fundamental rights are suffering today.
–
La Ligue Odebi
http://www.odebi.org
[1]Freedom not fear France: http://www.HumanRights21.org
[2]Freedom not fear international: http://www.freedom-not-fear.eu

Amendment 133/rev
Eva-Britt Svensson
on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group
Report
Catherine Trautmann
Electronic communications networks and services
COM(2007)0697 – C6-0427/2007 – 2007/0247(COD)
Proposal for a directive – amending act
Article 1 – point (24a) new
Directive 2002/21/EC
Article 25a (new)

(24a) The following Article is inserted:
“Article 25a
Internet filtering
Member States shall ensure that no technology may be mandated by competent authorities which would facilitate surveillance of internet users, such as technologies that mirror or monitor the user´s actions and/or interfere with operations of the user’s network activity for the benefit of a third party (known as “filtering”).”.

Amendment 138
Guy Bono, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Zuzana Roithová and others

Report A6-0321/2008
Catherine Trautmann
Electronic communications networks and services
COM(2007)0697 – C6-0427/2007 – 2007/0247(COD)
Proposal for a directive – amending act
Article 1 - point 8 - point e a (new)
Directive 2002/21/EC

(ea) In paragraph 4, point (ga) is added:

Article 8 - paragraph 4 - point g a (new)
“(ga) applying the principle that no restriction may be imposed on the rights and freedoms of end-users, notably in accordance with Article 11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom of expression and information, without a prior ruling by the judicial authorities, except where dictated by force majeure or by the requirements of preserving network integrity and security, and subject to national provisions of criminal law imposed for reasons of public policy, public security or public morality.”.

Justification:
The judicial authority is the guardian of freedoms. Except where dictated by force majeure or by the requirements of preserving network integrity and security, and subject to national criminal law (particularly concerning the transmission of child pornography, racist content, etc.) any restriction on the rights and freedoms of end users may only be decided by the judicial authority.

Amendment 166
Eva-Britt Svensson, Marco Rizzo
on behalf of the GUE/NGL Group

A6-03181166
Report A6-0318/2008
Malcolm Harbour
Electronic communications networks and services, protection of privacy and consumer
protection
COM(2007)0698 - C6-042012007 - 2007/0248(COD)
Proposal for a directive - amending act
Article 1 - point 19 a (new)
Directive 2002/22/EC

Article 32 a (new)
Text proposed by the Commission Amendment
Thefollowing Article 32a shall be added:

“Article 32a
Access to content, services and applications

Member States shall ensure that any restrictions to users’ rights to access content, services and applications, if they are necessary, shall he implemented hy appropriate measures, in accordance with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness. These measures shall not have the effect of hindering the development of the information society, in compliance with Directive 2000/31/EC, and shall not conflict with citizens’ fundamental rights, including the right to privacy and the right to due process. ”

Justification:
Any general mandate to allow for the monitoring and/or filtering of electronic communications goes counter existing European legislation, which expressly excludes any general obligation to monitor the networks (Directive 2000/311EC on Electronic commerce, article 15). The pursuing of illegal activities, which could be brought as a justification to correct users access of content, shall be duly balanced with the principle of protection of privacy, and more particularly with the principle of protection of personal data (Directive 95/46/EC, Directive 2002/58/EC). Any procedure undertaken towards individuals suspected of illegal activity on the Internet should be subject to judicial scrutiny, so that the right of due process is duly respected. The respect of citizens fundamental rights and of the European law acquis on electronic commerce and on users e-privacy shall be considered as core elements to encourage the social, economic and technological growth and innovation within the information society. The development of the information society is profoundly rooted in the Internet’s end-to-end nature and architecture, which itself needs to be safe-guarded and recognised as the engine of innovation it has proven to be.

1 The spanish Toubon

Mail from Guardans.
****

Dear Colleagues,

I’m sorry to bother you with a collective email.

As it is happening more and more often when we have to decide on
anything related to the internet, you are receiving these days plenty of
emails regarding tomorrow’s vote on the telecomm package. I am convinced
you will reject that sort of pressure and threats, as you would do if
they were coming from fundamentalists of other sorts, or from some of
the business lobbies most of you critize so often. And vote whatever you
think is right, balanced and reasonable in the internet era. We may
disagree on some issues, but anybody lying about what the texts
submitted to vote really say, should not be taken into account.

In this context of serioussness, let me underline the importance of
rejecting Amendment 138, fwhich bears the signature of a long list of
very respectful colleagues, starting with Guy Bono.

There is a principle we should consider: Internet may require sometimes
different rules from those which apply to our squares and streets. But
what can be called the “internet world” cannot be a less safer place
than the phisical world we live in.

For whatever reasons, which is up to the signatories to explain, what
this amendment says is: no restriction whatsoever can exist in internet
to the “rights and freedoms” if it is not “previously” authorized by a
judge, with the only exception of criminal law, and this even in a
restrictive manner. If this was applied to our police forces in our
motorways and roads; to our school teachers and academic authorities at
schools and universities; to our urban planning authorities in our
cities and villages; to any of our state authorities in any field,and in
any level, what would the world look like? We would perhaps be under a
government by Judges, if that is possible. Judges are there to review
decisions, and to sanction unfair abuses of authority or power or
illegal acts. And, indeed, in certain cases, to suspend acts from the
competent authorities. But judges are NOT there to be permanentlyy
consulted by authorites before they do whatever the law allows them to
do!

There will be an oral Amendment, which will restrict this text to
“fundamental rights and freedoms”. If the oral amendment is accepted,
the text would make perhaps some sense. If that oral amendement is not
accepted or approved, please vote against ethe three parts of AM. 138.

Kindly, and respectfully yours

Ignasi Guardans, MEP

European Parliament
ASP 08G 152
60, rue Wiertz
B-1047 Brussels

2 The french Toubon

From: TOUBON Jacques
Sent: 23 September 2008 18:38
To: …
Cc: MEP-PPE-DE
Subject: In view of the group meeting: Telecom Package
Importance: High

Dear …

I would like to share with you my concern about the amendment 138 of
BONO and the oral amendment of Trautmann.

I consider that these amendments lead to:

* prevent effective sanctions against pedopornography online in
the name of the freedom of expression and information;
* introduce a distinction and a hierarchy between the different
categories of fundamental rights holders in privileging the ones of
end-users of electronic communications networks and services;
* Are contradictory with the directive 2000/31 on e-commerce.

I- Amendment BONO (138) and oral amendment of Mrs Trautmann and the
uses of pornography:

Applying the principle that end user should not be restricted on
behalf of his rights and freedom before a judicial authority, gives him
entire liberty to act as he wishes. This is the case if BONO “light” by
split vote in deleting reference to Article 11 – freedom of expression
and information and split vote deleting public policy, public security
or public morality will withdraw any restriction. Pedopornography, for
instance, will be allowed (no restriction on end user) and only the
judicial judge after a while would be authorized to prosecute the end
user. TRAUTMANN oral amendment is only replicating the same consequences.

For example, in France the judge gives a general mandate to
policemen to search for and punish pedopornographs. They do not wait
each time for “the prior ruling of the judicial authority”.

II- These amendments introduced an hierarchy between the different
fundamental rights holders:

In putting forward fundamental rights and freedoms of end-users
online, these amendments tend to make a hierarchy between the rights and
freedoms and to give the primacy to those of end-users. A directive
about electronic communications may not do that. International and
European legislations (Universal declaration of human rights, European
Charter of Human rights and European Convention on Human rights)
guarantee human rights to all citizens and not only to end-users. A
directive may not decrease the extent of the rights and freedoms of
other categories of fundamental rights holders.

Several articles of the European Charter of fundamental rights deal
with this matter:

* Article 20 (Everyone is equal before the law);
* Article 52 (on the extent of guaranteed rights);
* Article 53 on the level of protection;
* Article 54 on the Prohibition of abuse of rights [1] ;

Basically, they state that it is contrary to European conventions to
make a hierarchy between different categories of fundamental rights
holders. For instance the rights provided by article 17 have the same
value as the rights provided by article 11. Such amendments would lead
to jeopardize the implementation of certain rights in favour of others.

III- These amendments are in contradiction with the directive
2000/31 on e-commerce:

Indeed, this directive promotes out-of-court dispute settlement:

Article 14

Hosting

1. Where an information society service is provided that consists of
the storage of information provided by a recipient of the service,
Member States shall ensure that the service provider is not liable for
the information stored at the request of a recipient of the service, on
condition that:

(a) the provider does not have actual knowledge of illegal activity
or information and, as regards claims for damages, is not aware of facts
or circumstances from which the illegal activity or information is
apparent; or

(b) the provider, upon obtaining such knowledge or awareness, acts
expeditiously to remove or to disable access to the information.

2. Paragraph 1 shall not apply when the recipient of the service is
acting under the authority or the control of the provider.

3. This Article shall not affect the possibility for a court or
administrative authority, in accordance with Member States’ legal
systems, of requiring the service provider to terminate or prevent an
infringement, nor does it affect the possibility for Member States of
establishing procedures governing the removal or disabling of access to
information.

Article 17

Out-of-court dispute settlement

1. Member States shall ensure that, in the event of disagreement
between an information society service provider and the recipient of the
service, their legislation does not hamper the use of out-of-court
schemes, available under national law, for dispute settlement, including
appropriate electronic means.

2. Member States shall encourage bodies responsible for the
out-of-court settlement of, in particular, consumer disputes to operate
in a way which provides adequate procedural guarantees for the parties
concerned.

3. Member States shall encourage bodies responsible for out-of-court
dispute settlement to inform the Commission of the significant decisions
they take regarding information society services and to transmit any
other information on the practices, usages or customs relating to
electronic commerce.

Considering the elements above mentioned, I think that our group
should strongly oppose these amendments. I call you again to support the
amendments 132 (report Trautmann) and 179 (report Harbour) which are
based on the principle of peaceful dialogue instead of conflicts of rights.

Best regards,

Jacques Toubon

Annex:

Amendment Bono:

Proposal for a directive – amending act

Article 1 - point 8 - point e a (new)

Directive 2002/21/EC

Article 8 - paragraph 4 - point g a (new)

Text proposed by the Commission

Amendment

(ea) In paragraph 4, point (ga) is added:

“(ga) applying the principle that no restriction may be imposed on
the rights and freedoms of end-users, notably in accordance with Article
11 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union on freedom
of expression and information, without a prior ruling by the judicial
authorities, except where dictated by force majeure or by the
requirements of preserving network integrity and security, and subject
to national provisions of criminal law imposed for reasons of public
policy, public security or public morality.”.

Or. {EN}en

Justification

The judicial authority is the guardian of freedoms. Except where
dictated by force majeure or by the requirements of preserving network
integrity and security, and subject to national criminal law
(particularly concerning the transmission of child pornography, racist
content, etc.) any restriction on the rights and freedoms of end users
may only be decided by the judicial authority.

Amendment Trautmann:

The rapporteur will move the following oral amendment to amendment 138:

(ga) applying the principle that no restrictions may be imposed on
the FUNDAMENTAL rights and freedoms of end-users, without prior ruling
by the judicial authorities

Amendment 132 Toubon/Hieronymi:

Proposal for a directive – amending act

Article 1 - point 8 - point e a (new

Directive 2002/21/EC

Article 8 - paragraph 4 - point g a (new)

Text proposed by the Commission

Amendment

(ea) In paragraph 4, point (ga) is added:

“(ga) promoting dialogue between undertakings providing electronic
communications services and networks and creative content industries in
order to foster joint-industry solutions, including codes of conduct.”

Amendment 179 Toubon/Mavrommatis tabled by the EPP:

[Proposal for a directive]( – amending act)

Article 2, point -7c new

Directive 2002/58/EC

Article 15 paragraph 1

[Text proposed by the Commission]

Amendment

(-7a) In article 15, paragraph 1 shall be replaced by the following:

1.Member States may adopt legislative measures to restrict the scope
of the rights and obligations provided for in Article 5, Article 6,
Article 8(1), (2), (3) and (4), and Article 9 of this Directive when
such restriction constitutes a necessary, appropriate and proportionate
measure within a democratic society to safeguard national security (i.e.
State security), defence, public security, the prevention,
investigation, detection and prosecution of criminal offences, of
unauthorised use of the electronic communication system , or the
protection of rights and freedom of others , as referred to in Article
13(1) of Directive 95/46/EC. To this end, Member States may, inter alia,
adopt legislative measures providing for the retention of data for a
limited period justified on the grounds laid down in this paragraph. All
the measures referred to in this paragraph shall be in accordance with
the general principles of Community law, including those referred to in
Article 6(1) and (2) of the Treaty on European Union.

[1] Nothing in this Charter shall be interpreted as implying any
right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the
destruction of any of the rights and freedoms recognised in this Charter
or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for herein.

Extrait :

Art. 1er. - L’interdiction résultant du 1 de l’article 8 de la loi du 6 janvier 1978 susvisée de collecter ou de traiter des données à caractère personnel qui font apparaître, directement ou indirectement, les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques, philosophiques ou religieuses ou l’appartenance syndicale des personnes, ou qui sont relatives à la santé ou à la vie sexuelle de celles-ci est applicable aux services de la direction centrale de la sécurité publique en charge de la mission de renseignement et d’information mentionnée à l’article 12 du décret du 2 octobre 1985 susvisé ainsi qu’aux services de la préfecture de police assurant la même mission.

Art. 2. - Par dérogation, sont autorisés, pour les seules fins et dans le strict respect des conditions définies aux articles 3 à 9 du présent décret, la collecte, la conservation et le traitement par les services mentionnés au précédent article de données à caractère personnel de la nature de celles visées à l’article 1er et qui ne sont pas relatives à la santé ou à la vie sexuelle des personnes.

En conclusion, EDVIRSP permettra de ficher les données personnelles autres que celles relatives à la santé ou à la vie sexuelle , soit:

les origines raciales ou ethniques, les opinions politiques, philosophiques ou religieuses ou l’appartenance syndicale des personnes

Ce document permet de se faire une idée plus précise du contexte international, et des capacités française en matière de cyberguerre:

Le rapport commence par rappeler les cyberattaques dont a été victime l’Estonie, alors “qu’une vive tension diplomatique”¹l’opposait à la Russie.

Puis, en septembre 2007, c’est au tour de la France, des Etats-Unis, du Royaume-Uni, de l’Allemagne, et de la Nouvelle-Zélande de subir des attaques ciblées en provenance de la “Chine sans qu’il soit possible d’en établir précisément l’origine”².

Le rapport constate ensuite la faiblesse des moyens de défense de la France par rapport à la Grande Bretagne et à l’Allemagne: “les 110 agents de la DCSSI devant être comparés aux 450 agents du service britannique et aux 500 agents du service allemand, soit un rapport d’environ 1 à 5 entre la France et ses deux principaux partenaires européens.”

Un lien est fait entre cyberdéfense et le plan de lutte contre la cybercriminalité³ de la ministre de l’intérieur française, Michèle Alliot-Marie . Ce plan de lutte prévoit:

1. au niveau national: des adaptations législatives ou réglementaires permettant de mieux identifier les utilisateurs d’internet, notamment en matière de conservation des données de connexion, et la possibilité, sous le contrôle de l’autorité judiciaire, de capter à distance les données numériques se trouvant sur un ordinateur.
2. à l’échelle européenne: d’établir des accords permettant la perquisition informatique à distance sans qu’il soit nécessaire de demander au préalable l’autorisation du pays hôte du serveur.

Le Sénateur Ramoni préconise donc le développement des moyens français, défensifs, mais aussi offensifs : “En prévoyant la création d’une agence interministérielle chargée de la sécurité des systèmes d’information, l’acquisition d’une capacité centralisée et permanente de surveillance et de détection des attaques informatiques, ainsi que le développement de capacités de lutte informatique offensive, le Livre blanc pose les bases d’un indispensable renforcement des réponses, aujourd’hui très insuffisantes, que nous apportons à une réalité déjà inquiétante.”

Aux Etats-Unis, l’US Air Force avait déjà créé un cybercommandement en septembre 2007⁴ .

Le livre blanc 2008⁵ précisait déjà que ” la multiplication des tentatives d’attaques menées par des acteurs non étatiques dans les quinze ans à venir constitue une certitude, alors que « plusieurs pays ont déjà défini des stratégies de lutte informatique offensive et se dotent effectivement de capacités techniques relayées par des pirates informatiques ». Le Livre blanc juge que des tentatives d’attaques étatiques dissimulées sont hautement probables et que des actions massives menées ouvertement sont également plausibles.“

1. Au printemps 2007, alors qu’une vive tension diplomatique l’oppose
   à la Russie, l’Estonie est victime d’une attaque massive contre les sites internet du gouvernement, des banques et des opérateurs téléphoniques. Leur fonctionnement est altéré durant plusieurs semaines, provoquant d’importantes perturbations dans un pays où les communications électroniques
   sont particulièrement utilisées dans la vie courante.
2. en septembre 2007, les autorités françaises révèlent que des services de l’Etat ont fait l’objet d’attaques ciblées visant à s’introduire dans leurs systèmes d’information, vraisemblablement à des fins d’espionnage. Ces tentatives proviennent de Chine sans qu’il soit possible d’en établir précisément l’origine. Plusieurs autres pays – Etats-Unis, Royaume-Uni, Allemagne, Nouvelle-Zélande – font eux aussi état d’attaques analogues ayant touché leurs systèmes
   gouvernementaux sur la même période.
3. Le plan de lutte contre la cybercriminalité annoncé au mois de février 2008 par Mme Michèle Alliot-Marie, ministre de l’intérieur, qui en a fait l’une de ses priorités, comporte des dispositions pouvant intéresser les atteintes à la sécurité des systèmes d’information gouvernementaux ou sensibles, même s’il vise essentiellement la délinquance sur l’internet.
4. Enfin, on sait que l’armée américaine est dotée d’une doctrine intégrant la lutte informatique défensive comme la lutte informatique offensive. L’annonce par en septembre 2007 de la création d’un « cyber-commandement » en a fourni l’illustration, mais la coordination des capacités dispersées dans les différentes armées ne semble pas encore être
   optimale.
5. En présentant le Livre blanc le 17 juin dernier, le Président de la République a annoncé que face aux attaques informatiques, la France serait dotée « de capacités défensives et offensives, qui concernent aussi bien toutes les administrations que les services spécialisés et les armées ».
   On peut parler de capacités offensives dès lors qu’il ne s’agit plus de protéger le système attaqué, mais d’identifier l’adversaire, de mettre à jour son mode opératoire, de le neutraliser, voire de lui appliquer des mesures de rétorsion.
   En ce qui concerne la référence aux capacités offensives, il convient de distinguer la compétence générale qui revient aux services de renseignement et la mise en place de capacités spécifiquement militaires.
   S’agissant des services de renseignement, le Livre blanc prévoit un développement des capacités techniques consacrées au réseau internet, « devenu crucial pour notre sécurité ». Le renforcement des moyens techniques devrait s’accompagner d’une augmentation du nombre de techniciens et d’experts spécialisés dans ce domaine.
   Votre rapporteur estime également qu’un cadre juridique devra être défini pour autoriser des « perquisitions informatiques » facilitant les investigations sur les agresseurs.

Edit: voltairenet.org being online again, here are the links to the articles you could not read when the website was down:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article157407.html
http://www.voltairenet.org/article143460.html

10 June 2008

Political crackdown
A Voltaire Network collaborator jailed in Berlin
Repression against the Voltaire Network keeps on. Jürgen Cain Külbel has been jailed in Berlin. The weak legal pretexts used to condemn him cannot hide the political motive behind this decision: our collaborator had shown that the Commissioner of the UN International Independent Investigation Commission into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri had financial binds with the perpetrators, and that his main aide is a CIA agent involved in the ongoing wave of kidnappings in Europe.

Voltaire Network collaborator Jürgen Cain Külbel has been jailed in Berlin. He is charged for having breached an emergency proceedings court order when leaving an active link on his website, pointing to a voltairenet.org article [1]

This peculiar intrigue is yet another CIA plot aimed at intimidating Jürgen Cain Külbel and the Voltaire Network collaborators. The mechanisms of this operation are as follows:

A former Eastern Germany police investigator, Jürgen Cain Külbel has led, as a journalist, an independent inquiry into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He put out his conclusions in a book that was published in German and Arabic: The Hariri File [2]. There he tackles and elaborates elements already presented by the Voltaire Network [3]. Thierry Meyssan had shown that an association of exiled Lebanese members of the opposition, the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon (USCFL), had foreknowledge of the crime and had immediately launched a communication campaign aimed at directing suspicions towards Syria. [4]. The USCFL, asked by the CIA to set up a puppet regime for Lebanon in the event of a U.S. military intervention in that country, is therefore an accomplice – at least passively – in the crime. Talaat Ramih had shown that former German Public Prosecutor Detlev Mehlis, once appointed as U.N. Commissioner of the investigation, had been employed by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) [5]. By noting that the USCFL is a WINEP offspring, Jürgen Cain Külbel has shown that the UN commissioner was a former employee of people involved in the very murder he was asked to investigate. Following his lead, he shed the light on the role of Detlev Mehlis’ main aide, police chief Gerhard Lehmann, in the wave of CIA kidnappings in Europe that have taken place since 2001. Mr. Lehmann was indeed formally identified by one of his victims, Khaled al-Masri [6]. Several elements indicate that Mr. Lehmann may also be involved in the “disappearing” in Paris of the Hariri investigation’s key witness, Zuhair As-Siddik, on March 13, 2008 [7].

As soon as his book was published in German language, Jürgen Cain Külbel was approached by a Germany-based Palestinian militant, Said Dudin, who suggested he could undertake the publication in Arabic and promote it. However, when Mr. Külbel came to Damas to speak in a conference at the Syrian National Library, invited by Syria Alghad (Political research institute, member of the Voltaire Network), Mr. Dudin did his best to discredit the author. The publisher called for the audience to attack Western embassies and issued multiple incendiary statements to distract media attention.

Back in Germany, Jürgen Cain Külbel tried to know more about this botcher. He then found out that this so-called Palestinian cause advocator was the son of Mustafa Dudin, an Israeli secret agent receiving orders directly from general Ariel Sharon. Resuming his research, Jürgen Cain Külbel then unearthed, from the Stasi (Former East German political police) archives, documents certifying that Said Dudin himself was himself a long-time CIA agent infiltrated within the German radical left-wing movement. These documents were published on Voltairenet.org [8].

Filing an emergency court proceeding, Said Dudin obtained from the Berlin Court an order issued to Mr. Külbel that he would no longer mention, in any way whatsoever, the Damas incident, his father’s role within the Israeli services and his own within the CIA. Obeying the Raison d’Etat, the Court only retained testimony provided by Mr. Dudin and brushed aside that provided by Mr. Külbel, including that of prince Issa al-Ayubi, vice-president of the Voltaire Network and grand-nephew of the Arab Syrian Republic’s founder, who witnessed the Damas incident where he opposed Mr. Dudin. Besides, the Court neglected the Stasi documents according to a German amnesty law prohibiting any mention to them.

However, since Jürgen Cain Külbel had subsequently left on his personal website an active link to the Voltaire Network’s article containing the Stasi documents that were illegally made public, the Court sentenced him to 10 days imprisonment for the breaching of its order.

[1] The article referred to is “Investigativer Journalismus und die Bombenleger von Beirut”, an interview of Jürgen Cain Külbel with Silvia Cattori, Voltaire Network, July 30, 2007. No English translation available.

[2] Mordakte Hariri, Unterdrückte Spuren im Libanon by Jügen Cain Külbel, Zeitgeschichte Band 34 Publishings, 2006 (ISBN 3-89706-860-5).

[3] “The Assassination of Rafik Hariri: A Biased Investigation”, by Silvia Cattori, Voltaire Network, September 15, 2006.

[4] “The plans of the U.S. Committee for a Free Lebanon », by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, March 8, 2005.

[5] “The disgrace of the Mehlis Commission”, by Talaat Ramih,Voltaire Network, December 9, 2005.

[6] Allegations of secret detention and illegal prisoner renditions in Council of Europe member states, a report by Dick Marty to the European Council, June 12, 2006.

[7] “Kouchner has “lost” the key witness in Hariri investigation”, by Jürgen Cain Külbel, Voltaire Network, April 21, 2008. No English translation available.

[8] Ibid.

15 September 2006

Judicial Colonialism
The Assassination of Rafik Hariri: A Biased Investigation
by Silvia Cattori*
A former criminal investigator of the GDR, who became a journalist after the reunification of Germany, Jürgen Cain Külbel is the author of a counter-investigation on the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, which the Voltaire Network presented to the Arab public during a widely covered conference in Damascus, May 7, 2006. In this interview, he discusses the political role of the UN Commission and the unexploited leads pointing to Israeli responsibility.

Silvia Cattori: As an independent journalist working alone, it was quite an undertaking to investigate the assassination of Lebanese former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri while there was an investigation commission which was given enormous investigative means?!

Jürgen Cain Külbel: What use are a set of highly qualified investigators, almost inexhaustible logistical, forensic and other means supporting the examination, if in the examination of the crime, all the usual principles of an investigation are deliberately broken? During the investigation of a criminal offense by unknown parties, the investigators usually follow various scenarios in order to find the leads that will enable them to uncover the perpetrators. In the Hariri case, there should have been multiple parallel directions of investigation, from the start: Mossad, CIA, business partners [of Rafik Hariri] and exiled Lebanese. That never happened. So I was following and pursuing one of those “neglected”, and in my opinion important, paths in particular and did some investigation. That’s how my first work about the Hariri murder began.

Silvia Cattori: How did you come to the decision to tackle such a big subject?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Let me be frank: Right after the murder I had a bad gut feeling that it was less an investigative setback than that the UN investigators were — and continue to — vehemently follow only the Syrian lead, but above all I had the feeling that it was a premeditated and criminal act, just like the intentional and criminal and, as of today, unpunished act of faking and fabricating “proof” by the Americans and their lackeys – white collar criminals on the highest political level - that legitimized the international attack on Iraq - contrary to international law - in the spring of 2003. In both cases it is my opinion that they were initial deceptions by perpetrators who, although they pretend to represent the United Nations and to be modern harbingers of democracy, while, however, in truth, they only want to be would-be enslavers of our globe or are working towards this goal.
To finally answer your question about the Hariri case: The commission “with the enormous investigative means” seemed to me to be the means of deception, to perpetrate a fraud in the specific case of Hariri as well. It’s like a crime inside the criminal investigation. And that is what still makes hair on my neck stand up.

Silvia Cattori: Did you carry out your inquiry on the spot?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Yes, but I will discuss that in another book [1]. Let me make a remark about the material evidence the UN commission collected. Now the question arises whether the forensic element (still) has any value at all. What happened to this material during the July war in Lebanon? What did the Belgian Serge Brammertz take with him to Cyprus two days after outbreak of hostilities, when he fled from Israeli bombs? So many hands could have easily compromised it during the bombardment. Nothing of this can be reconstructed any more – it is not serious.

It is also unforgivable to forget the liaison between the impudent John Bolton, U.S. ambassador at the United Nations, and Serge Brammertz! Bolton, who once wanted the clone of Mr. Mehlis as his successor, and got it in Brammertz, has been up to now extremely pleased with the performance of the Belgian. The alarm bells should ring here because Bolton, one of the most important war criminals living, is someone who played a major role in faking the evidence for the Iraq war.

In addition, as can be read in all the reports produced so far, the UN commission couldn’t offer anything that would be useful in convicting the perpetrators. Mr. Mehlis failed miserably last year because he ignored clear warnings and, supported by the US and the United Nations, thought he could somehow force Damascus to its knees for the benefit of Bush and his cohorts. His “work”, one thinks of the rather strange examinations of the witnesses, should only find its place on top of the garbage heap of criminology or as a teaching example in seminars of prospective lawyers or criminologists of what not to do.

Silvia Cattori: On the main points, what conclusions did you reach, and on which points do your conclusions contradict those of Mr Mehlis?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Generally, my conclusions have nothing in common with the ones of Mr. Mehlis. It is a pity that my book The Hariri Murder Case [2] hasn’t been published in languages other than German and Arabic because this question just keeps popping up. I also never intended to refute the two reports of Mr. Mehlis with my work. Rather I intended to prove the absurdity of the investigations of the UN commission, which - in terms of criminological strategy – lead into a cul de sac, only by proving that there is another important lead that needs to be investigated using all possible means. It is usually out of the question for honorably working investigators to simply and completely ignore such leads as I have followed. But because of this ignorance, one can recognize that the UN commission work is very one-sided, biased so to say. Under normal circumstances, this is poison for an objective criminal investigation; however, it is the elixir of life for devoted “Chief-Investigators” who are only working to satisfy the political interests of their employers. However, that is something that all the Gentlemen concerned –obviously all dead fish that swim in the stream while keeping their mouths shut– servants of the system, have to address to their own consciences, as far as such exists.

Once again I demand the interrogation Richard Pearle or Daniel Pipes, a man who would (at least here in Germany under different circumstances) already be serving a sentence for running a hate campaign, or Abdelnour or Najjar or Kahl or the others who are mentioned in my book and who have skeletons in the closet, who had Hariri on the assassination list, who demanded a coup in Lebanon etc. They had already planned violence theoretically anyway; some had already killed Hariri with words or had put him in the cross hairs. Why it is that none of those daring, self-sacrificing Hero Chief Investigators, working in Lebanon under constant life-threatening conditions, have never even attempted to question any of those characters? At this point, the commission becomes a laughing stock because it prostituted oneself indirectly, whether it wanted to or not.

The respectable media landscape needs to put pressure on the UN commission. I am not talking about details, leads or the content of the interrogations. It is about questioning the objectivity of the investigation that is compromised as the commissioners intentionally close their eyes to important leads. Those responsible, including your President Chirac, can spit beautiful verbal husks as much as they want.

Silvia Cattori: Did you reach the conclusion that Syria was not behind Hariri’s assassination, as Mr Bush asserted?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Bush’s cohorts knew exactly what they started when they let their Fuehrer in Washington say - over the still warm corpse of Hariri - which the string-pullers of the crime sat in Damascus. The echo came instantly and was Druze’s and anti-Syrian Lebanese. The song that the first commissioner, the Irishman Peter Fitzgerald, then started in March 2005, about the sloppiness of the Lebanese authorities safeguarding the crime scene and the crime examination, was calculated and of an arrogant colonial style. The entire world knew that the Lebanese police, their secret services, lack -compared with our standards- specialized experts, technical equipment, forensic examination methods; as well as the logistics, they also lacked the criminal tactical know-how of how to handle such colossal capital crimes. How could they? Those responsible on the Potomac and in the intelligence services, which had cooked up the assassination of Hariri, precisely calculated that if the Lebanese led the first investigation, that in such a case it was one hundred per cent certain that such carelessness would happen. By the way, those kinds of mistakes and sloppiness are no rarity in criminal police investigations worldwide. And in this particular case, the assassination of Hariri, the “mistakes and sloppiness” where supposed to be used as a pretext to direct initial suspicions towards a Lebanese-Syrian conspiracy.

The fiction was first fed by the Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who drew an incorrect picture even before the publication of the Fitzgerald report in the British daily The Independent, affirming that the investigators were convinced that proof has been covered up “in the highest ranks” of the secret services, and that the UN report will be “devastating”. Fisk didn’t mention any sources, but nevertheless he predicted that U.S. president George W. Bush would soon declare that “Syrian and perhaps Lebanese officers of the army secret service” have been involved in the murder. At that time, the White House denied it, which however should be seen as hypocrisy.

Silvia Cattori: But what were the objectives of those who killed Mr Hariri?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: A ghost roams this blue marble. Within the global restoration of the relations that previously existed - before this world was divided into communist and capitalist camps - and propelled by the geo-strategic and economic interests of capital, the exponents of the western forms of power, mistakenly described as democracies, are now reaching for the cheap version of the coup d’état, the “democratic revolution”, when bringing down unfavorable governments.

In 2003 when the emperors from the other side of the Atlantic started the war against Iraq together with their Anglo-Saxon paladins, the war criminals soon noticed that they had overstretched themselves: Iraq’s pacification didn’t happen, the domino effect to liquidate pan-Arabism by toppling other autocracies and dictatorships alongside, which would have led to the balkanization of an Arabia that would have been more easily controllable, exploitable, and would then have permitted Israel to have hegemony, didn’t happen as well.

Exasperated the younger Bush reached into the political hamster box of potential cadre and dragged out the ice cold Afro-American Condoleeza Rice, making her the Secretary of State. Since then Rice supports and finances “resistance movements” openly or in secret - like war profiteer U.S. second-in-command Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, commander-in-chief of the U.S. terror force, servant of “Big Oil” - in the former states of the Soviet Union and the Middle East, to force America-friendly regime changes. Support is also flowing into regions that are located in strategic proximity to planned pipeline routes.

Financial and logistical help is also given by the Freedom House, led by the CIA’s ex-director James Woolsey, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Open Society Institute of George Soros, one of the richest parasites in the world, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (NED) and also Tony Blair’s government.

Since the arrival of Rice, the world audience has been able to “enjoy” itself on some short-lived, “democratic”, fruit and vegetable revolutions: Oranges in the Ukraine, velvet in Georgia, tulips in Kyrgyzstan, and in spring of 2005, the Cedar revolt, unleashed after the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister Rafik Hariri. This one was spear headed by the Druze king Walid Jumblat, mass-murderer in the Lebanese civil war.

Silvia Cattori: Wasn’t Hariri about to reach the end of his mandate?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Who cares, a figurehead of public and political life had to be slaughtered to attract the audience, to stir up the rage of the Lebanese soul. A dead Hariri, a massacred Mister Lebanon who ran the State like his personal property, was made to order to unleash the cedar revolution - a term from the neo-conservative storage room.

Silvia Cattori: Did you have any contact with the Mehlis Commission at the time of your inquiries?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: I regarded this as nonsensical because I had a completely different lead. Once you have forced yourself through hundreds of files, read the ten of thousands of pages that passed through the German’s hands, (Mehlis) you have the impression that Justice herself tears the bandage off of her eyes and wants to smash your skull with the scale. So one doesn’t expect to achieve anything with a contact. Nevertheless, I sought to contact Mr Mehlis on one specific point. It was about the jammers that were installed in Hariri’s car convoy and that were, according to anonymous sources, Israeli built. He referred to his pledge of secrecy at that time and forwarded my enquiry to Brammertz. But as soon as the German version of “The Hariri Murder Case” was on the market, he surprisingly broke his “oath of secrecy” -whether in agreement with Brammertz or as a private person is beyond my knowledge. He informed the Lebanese Daily Star on April 21, 2006: “The assertions made in the book, like the one that the system of the jammers used by Hariri was from an Israeli company, are completely wrongly and simply ridiculous. I and some members of the UN commission have scrutinized the matter, and the system which was used by Hariri was imported from a Western European country.” Well, imported doesn’t at all mean produced. That leads back to the key question that Gil Israeli, a former member of the secret service and chief of the Israeli company that built the jammers, never answered: “Are you saying that you cannot exclude the possibility that Hariri could have obtained a jammer, produced by your company, through detours?” Perhaps through a European dummy firm, by which, in “certain cases” and for “special customers”, the severe export regulations of the Israeli Ministry of Defense can be circumvented.

Be that as it may, one day after the statement by Mr Mehlis, I asked him in writing for clarification and precisions to resolve this discrepancy in the Arabian translation of the book. But by this point he had already sunken back into his sleep of Sleeping Beauty. An answer never came.

Silvia Cattori: On the whole, had there not been witnesses who withdrew their charges, Mr Bush would have had the pretext necessary for immediately implementing his projects for destabilizing Syria?

Jürgen Cain Külbel Sure. After Lebanon Bush clearly had the domino effect in mind and thought that Syria will become easy prey as well. A suitable man, a kind of Chalabi for Syria, was already on stand by: the US-based “Syrian Opposition Leader” Farid Ghadry. The Aleppo born businessman and president of the Reformation Party of Syria (RPS), founded quickly after September 11, is completely unknown to Syrians. At age eight he immigrated with his parents to Lebanon, later to the USA, where he studied economics and marketing, worked for the military industry and became wealthy. After September 11, 2001, he saw the time had come to help his far off homeland “with economic and political reforms in order to obtain democracy, prosperity and freedom”. That is why he joined the US-Committee on the Present Danger, with members like Newt Gingrich and the former CIA boss James Woolsey. Under the influence of the events in Lebanon, Ghadry wrote in a newspaper article in February 2005, “Democracy (in Syria) will remain an illusionary dream as long as the USA government is unwilling to publicly support and decently finance the reforms. A White House meeting with a democratic Syrian leader could send a clear message towards Damascus that changes are on their way.”

By the end of March his prayers had already been answered by Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the vice president and the person responsible for Near East affairs at the State Department. Together with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, she at once installed the “Middle East Partnership initiative” (MEPI), which under the mask of “economic, political and educational reforms” contributes monies to opposition forces in the Arabian world. In 2003 alone, 100 million dollars flowed. The 36-year old hardliner led an “unofficial” meeting in Washington, where Farid Ghadry took part with his “Syrian opposition”. Ghadry’s crew, all US-based dissidents and united back then under the umbrella organization the “Syrian Democratic Coalition” (SDC), discussed with officials from the vice president’s office, the Pentagon and the National Security Council, how the “regime in Damascus could be weakened” and how to “prove criminal conduct by Syrian officials”. After the talks, Ghadry, who was pushing for the US president to lean on Damascus personally, summed it up by saying that the call for democracy in Syria “is being taken very seriously at the highest level of the Bush administration”. He was going to “work closely with the US administration and the EU” from his end so that “Syria’s oppressive Baath-regime” could be toppled. However, Ghadry, who was closely cooperating with Abdelnour, disappeared from the scene after he lied to the European Parliament and was dispossessed by his own party for “dubious conduct”.

Everybody thought he was out of business, but then he popped up again. Between June 16 and 18, 2006, the Beaver Creek (Colorado) World Forum of the neo-conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) took place. As is commonly known, this was supposedly where the American-Israeli air strike on Iran was planned. Moreover, Cheney gave the green light to Israel’s former Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who was present there, for the latest war of aggression against Lebanon. Included among the 64 members of the AEI conference were Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and other members of the Bush administration. And at this conference Cheney also met with Farid Ghadry. That’s certainly not a good sign.

Silvia Cattori: What role did Saad Hariri, Rafik’s son, play in the development of that inquiry? Was he not on the side of those Lebanese who forced members of the secret services to charge Syria?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Let me just say this: Suleiman Franjieh, boss of the Lebanese Marada party, explained during an interview on television at the beginning of July 2006 that, when he was Secretary of the Interior, pressure had been exerted on him to say that the bomb which killed Hariri had been placed underground so that Hariri’s family could collect the insurance money. Hariri junior sued Franjieh for slander.

Silvia Cattori: What about the position of the socialist Mr Walid Jumblat and of Mr Marwan Hamadeh?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: I don’t want to talk about Jumblat, I am not a psychiatrist. Whether or not Hamadeh has thought about the possibility that he could have been a kind of test balloon for the Hariri murder? He wasn’t a suitable victim to provoke the kind of public dissent that one can then channel in a certain direction. But at least for Tel Aviv he was as an expendable living person. As Immigration Minister he once declared – when Elie Hobeika was the victim of a car bomb: “It is clear that Israel does not want to have witnesses during the historic trial in Belgium where Ariel Sharon will surely be sentenced for the massacres in the Palestine refugee camps in Sabra and Chatila. We already suffered under the crimes of Sharon in Beirut, and Palestine goes through the same today at his hand.” Strong words towards Israel. Hamadeh also felt victim to a car bomb in Beirut on October 1, 2004. He survived, but his driver died.

Silvia Cattori: What about the generals who have been arrested as a result of the Mr Mehlis inquiry?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Where are the human right organizations? Mr Brammertz drops from his report Mehlis’ summary that Hariri’s killing couldn’t have happened without the knowledge of high-profile Syrian and Lebanese secret service agents. While Mehlis was pulling “proofs” out of his hat, Brammertz displays an unusual “secretive” style and sells as new what we already know. He talks about a “highly complex terrorist action” and says that the participants acted “very professionally”, and that the crime was “planned with a high probability of success and was executed with a high level of individual and collective self-discipline”. “At least some of the participants must have had experience in such terrorist acts.”

Jumblat reassured us that everything was as usual: “Brammertz follows the work of Mehlis. The fact that the report (…) sees a connection between all the explosions which took place before and after the murder of Hariri is a clear accusation against the Syrian regime (…) that ruled Lebanon at the time of Hariri’s murder”, a “silent condemnation of the Syrian regime” so to speak, because - according to Jumblat - “Brammertz is handling things very professionally”. The future will show what’s being cooked up behind the scenes. Anyway, Brammertz didn’t have any objections to the further detention of the four high-profile Lebanese security chiefs, taken into custody in the summer of last year on the suggestion of Mehlis, even though the evidential case against the gentlemen totally fell apart in December. On the contrary, Lebanon is preparing for a tribunal together with the UN. It is naïve to think that Brammertz could steer a course on his own or even a “Syria friendly” one. The European “service axis” alone instructs against it: Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor against Milosevic, in the spring of 2005 suggested her brother of Hearts, Detlev Mehlis, for the position of chief investigator. He in turn recommends in December 2005 his friend Serge Brammertz as his successor. I mean, one doesn’t bite the hand that feeds you! It stills remains questionable if Syrian representative Mohammad Habash, who rejoiced that the Brammertz report “is bad news for the enemies of Syria”, will be proved correct. The hyenas have grabbed onto Bush’s perpetrator of choice, and they will not let go. Naji Boustani, one of the defense lawyers, said to me: “For months, every 10 days, I have been punctually addressing the examining magistrate, who followed Mehlis’ recommendation to lock up the four. He does not react. Our legal system does not provide for opposing any orders given by the examining magistrate. Mehlis knew that too. Once locked up, you stay locked up as long as it pleases the examining magistrate.”

Silvia Cattori: In your opinion, what did the suicide of the Syrian interior minister mean?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Apparently blackmail. The USA had frozen Ghazi Kanaan’s accounts in the summer of 2005. They croaked that he was involved in illegal business in Lebanon. Kanaan once had close ties to Hariri, even financial. Not only had the Lebanese media increased the psychological pressure on him after the venture of the Americans, he was considered as a “corrupt drug lord”. Then there was the talk about Mehlis questioning him. Let’s put it this way: Someone shows up, drops documents on the table without saying a word that indicate that you repeatedly took money from the victim, and then disappears for the time being. I don’t want to say more; rather let speak Walid Jumblat, that political chameleon of Lebanon, when he for once forgot to lie as he breathes: “If his pride would have suffered, due to the expectation of the UN report regarding the Hariri assassination, then that [the suicide] would have been a brave act of a brave man.”

Silvia Cattori: Mr Mehlis was quickly accused of having no professional ability to conduct such a sensitive investigation and of having relied on corrupt Lebanese politicians and on Israeli sources. Do you confirm that?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Some in Germany, who pretend to know Mr Mehlis or his methods of work, claim that he is technically incompetent, and, let’s say it in jargon, dimwitted. This was also the international opinion in December 2005. I don’t have that impression. Rather Mr Mehlis has, using the analogy of a criminal that develops his signature as to how commit the crime, developed his own prosecutorial style which runs provably through his practice like a red thread. That this style is not in sync with our ideas of righteousness and morals is a different story. I always compare this with a highly specialized top-class athlete. The “specialist” Mr Mehlis has apparently such performance features or “qualities” that permit others to describe to him a perpetrator of their choice whom he is then able to fabricate. This answers the second part of your question, as he is clearly forced to utilize such corrupt elements as you are referring to.

But let me make one remark about Israel: Ibrahim Gambari, Under Secretary General for Political Affairs at the UN, actually said at the end of August 2005 that Mr Mehlis had created “a good working relationship with Israel and Jordan”, not, however, with Syria. A real joke, given all those Mossad networks exposed this year in Lebanon, which for years had spread car bombings, murder, and terror. But nobody at the United Nations cares about this in the context of the Hariri matter. One has to ask oneself: what is this lot with headquarters in New York good for, anyway?

Silvia Cattori: From that, can we draw the conclusion that the commission of inquiry entrusted to Mr Mehlis was nothing but a tool in the hands of the neocons who wanted the assassination to be attributed to Syria?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Of course! Let’s take for example Serge Brammertz, John Bolton’s shyster lawyer. Even if the Belgian has so far avoided blaming Damascus for the murder, as those in Washington would like to have it, and has stressed that “the future cooperation of the Syrians is decisive for the examination”, the notoriously loutish Bolton was forced to translate this as follows: “Brammertz has made it clear, albeit diplomatically, that Syria still isn’t cooperating fully.” Which means one needs to “increase the pressure on the Syrians”, possibly through a “new resolution of the UN security council”.

At first glace it seems as if the Belgian is ironing out the sloppiness and manipulations that Mehlis left behind. Fifteen months after the assassination, he now thinks Hariri was killed by an underground and an aboveground explosion. That’s what witnesses say already. Mr Mehlis refused it because it didn’t fit in his conspiracy fabrication against the Syrians. He favored the aboveground bomb blast caused by a Mitsubishi Cancer loaded with 1000 kg of explosive. He attributed this to the Syrians, conjured various spirits out of the bottle, which he called witnesses, among them. Brammertz does not mention those “witnesses” anymore, obviously because they made their “testimony” under threat of torture or after bribery and have already taken them back. But he doesn’t remove the amateurish material of the German investigator because, due to suspect testimony, there are still the aforementioned four Lebanese ex-security officers in solitary confinement whom Mr Mehlis had attributed with the deed of collaboration with Syrian secret services.

These four men have a hard life because Bolton knows that “independent of the apparent differences, Brammertz is basing his investigation on the conclusions of his predecessor. It is clear; he will go in the same direction.” Brammertz wants to lead the tribunal in Cyprus in 2007 himself; the evaluation of the “statements” of those “crown witnesses”, which Mr Mehlis created, is then incumbent upon him and his judges. The German did the dirty work with much noise and press, which got him, besides snide remarks, the German Medal of Honor as well, and he then slipped dutifully away as the “bad cop” so that friend Brammertz could slip into the role of the good one: A playing of roles worthy of a dime novel and suitable for the neocons.

Silvia Cattori: Did Mr Mehlis used to work, as it was said, in research centers of the intelligence services in the United States?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: During the “La Belle” case, he was over there in 1996 to get something. Or on ski trips with members of the CIA, high up in Aspen, Colorado? Mehlis is obviously the tool of the secret services. Without them he might not or he could not botch up within these sensitive areas of dirty policy. That is as safe as the Amen in the church. Do you believe the great powers are so foolish as to waste their time with “honest” examiners, driven by a naive urge for the truth?

Back to his connections to Israeli Secret service: Mehlis started his “work” with UNIIIC (the Hariri commission) in May 2005. A few weeks later, on 20 July, the French newspaper Le Figaro asked him: “Why have you asked for assistance from Israel and Jordan?” Mehlis answered: “It is known that the Israelis possess good security equipment, especially technological. We have asked them to give us data related to the assassination. They gave us good information.”

Later, in his first report on October 19, 2005, he said in the preface, paragraph 19: “… it is to be regretted that no Member State did relay such useful information to the Commission”. Mehlis does not tell the truth. Even the Israeli press wrote that Israeli intelligence agents had met with his team in Europe.

Of course, none of them considers the idea of examining whether or not Mossad could be the wirepuller behind Hariri’s murder. It doesn’t belong to the order placed by their employers. They have to fulfil only the one demand: send Syria to the pillory. They are classical robots, who themselves create the civil system: one adapted, to get ahead, to down-and-dirty minds behind their clean masks, bitches of the system, which, as I always like to say, can be made amenable to all kinds of obscenities. Heinrich Mann, a German writer and the brother of the famous Thomas Mann, had already described this type of human in 1914 and inexorably in his successful novel The Subject. Today his statements no longer apply only to Germans.

Silvia Cattori: In your opinion, is Mr Serge Brammertz better?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Brammertz has obviously bluffed the world public with his first and second “technical reports”. It is said that in the last weeks he has “reheated” one of Mehlis’ “chief witnesses”: Mohammad Zuheir Siddiq.

Siddiq told Al Arabiyya on Saturday, September 9, 2006 that the “Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud gave orders to eliminate former Premier Rafik Hariri” and added that the “assassins are currently in prison and the rest are in Syria.” He means the four Lebanese former security chiefs who have been detained for more than one year on the basis of his “declaration” and on the recommendation of Mehlis. They are the former head of the General Security, Brigadier General Jamil Sayyed; the former head of the Army Intelligence, General Raymond Azar; the former head of the Presidential Guards, Brigadier Mustafa Hamdan; and the former head of the General Internal Security Forces, Ali Hajj. But the German political news-magazine Der Spiegel had already revealed on October 22, 2005 that Siddiq was a dubious person with a criminal record as a convicted felon and swindler. The alleged former officer of the Syrian secret services had in reality been convicted more than once for penal offences related to money subtraction. The magazine reported that the UN investigating Commission was well aware that it had been lied to by Siddiq, who at first had affirmed that he had left Beirut one month before the assault on Hariri, but then had to admit at the end of September 2005 his direct involvement in the implementation of the crime.

Siddiq declared to Mehlis that he had put his apartment in Beirut at the disposition of the conspirators to kill Hariri, among them the imprisoned Syrian intelligence officials. About himself, he declared that he had gathered intelligence for the Syrian services regarding Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. But weeks before the Syrian government had sent documentation about Siddiq to various Western governments, hoping that Mehlis would not get caught in the trap of a notorious impostor.

Later it became quite evident that Siddiq had received money for his depositions, considering that his siblings revealed that they had received a phone call from him from Paris, late in the summer, in which Siddiq announced “I have become a millionaire”. Doubts regarding the credibility of the man were further fuelled by the revelation that Siddiq had been recommended to Mehlis by the long-term Syrian renegade Rifaat al-Assad, an uncle of the Syrian President who more than once offered himself as “alternative President of Syria”.

Lebanon issued an arrest warrant against Siddiq, who was later named as a suspect by the UN probe investigating the case, but the French authorities refused to extradite Siddiq as capital punishment is still legal in Lebanon.

None of the four chiefs have faced formal accusations from the judiciary, and none of them have been confronted by Siddiq, as the law requires.

On Saturday, September 9, 2006 Siddiq repeated his allegations from Paris: “I saw the car [suspected of carrying the explosives] while it was being prepared in the Zabadani Syrian intelligence camp in the Bekaa, and I gave the former head of the UN probe investigating the case irrevocable pictures and documents, and I have the negatives with me, and there are many things that will be revealed later.”

This time Siddiq said the Syrian intelligence services had tried to “lure me back to Syria by offering large sums of money and the title of a local hero,” if he revoked the accusations he made. He claimed he has a “tape of a high-ranking Syrian officer” who asked [him] last month to accuse some of the March 14 Forces’ leaders of prompting him to accuse Syria of assassinating Hariri.

Normally, magistrates and prosecutors with a healthy mind know that this kind of witness obviously has problems with his affections, and they should ask the question: Who created this super-witness? But I’m sure that they will not ask this question and that Brammertz loves this Siddiq.

Silvia Cattori: So isn’t it disturbing that Mr Kofi Annan appointed this kind of persons to such a high assignment?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Kofi Annan is the third black person I do not want to cross paths with, right after O. J. Simpson and Condoleezza Rice.

Silvia Cattori: Was it innocent that Mme Carla del Ponte, the attorney who plays the same role as Mr Mehlis in the TPI (the tribunal that Mr Jacques Vergès considers as an illegal institution), recommended Mr Mehlis for that inquiry?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: All of them are cut from the same cloth. Carla del Ponte or Carlita “La pesta” recommended Mr Mehlis for the position, and Mr Mehlis afterward, as his successor, recommended the friend Brammertz.

Silvia Cattori: Had not Mr Mehlis already created a scandal for having concluded Libya was responsible for the bombing of the “La Belle” discotheque in Berlin in 1986, an accusation that allowed the United States to bomb Tripoli and Benghazi and to isolate Libya?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Mehlis did indeed lead the “La Belle” investigation. As a side note: Oddly enough the first thought that the Libyans could be behind this came from the target himself, the owner of the West Berlin discotheque “La Belle”, which was mostly visited by black U.S. soldiers, and where a young female Turk and two GI’s got ripped apart by a bomb and about two hundred guests got injured, some of them gravely. He said on April 6th, 1986, one day after the attack: “One hears so much about terrorist attacks lately with Ghaddafi as the manipulator and I feared that one day my discotheque could possibly be the target of such an attack.” How far this man was involved in the drug dealing trade or how much he was tangled up in the arms dealing business, as some witnesses claimed, and therefore could become the pinball for certain services, was never investigated.

The whole affair is full of malice, trickery, and intrigue, and is spun from the thread a typically bourgeois civil servant needs so that he can knit together some charges for the benefit of his employers. I will report on this extensively in my up-coming book, as I researched the case and the files in great detail.

Silvia Cattori: Radio messages sent by Mossad to frame Libya for the attack also played a role in the “La Belle” case. How the investigator and chief prosecutor Mehlis did handled this “game-material”, which can hardly be called evidence?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Immediately following the attack it was certain for the US president at the time, Ronald Reagan, that Libyan president Muammar Al Ghaddafi had staged the attack. A scapegoat radio message intercepted by the U.S. intelligence agency NSA, allegedly from the People’s Office of Libya [the embassy] in Berlin, capital of the DDR, had to serve as proof. It said: “At 1:30 am an operation was successfully executed, leaving no trace, the People’s Office, Berlin”.

In the Lockerbie trial, the former colonel of the Israeli secret service, Victor Ostrovsky, testified under oath that Special Forces of Mossad had installed a Trojan horse in Tripoli at that time, a transmitter sending fake messages about the success of the Berlin bomb. According to Ostrovsky the intercepted broadcast had been made up by Mossad.

Silvia Cattori: What do you know about these alleged radio messages?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Well, Mr Mehlis had consulted the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) in Pullach near Munich. Mr Mehlis knew about the messages and insisted on having them as evidence. Then on October 4, 1996, a meeting took place between Mr Mehlis and employees of the “Technical Acquisition” department of the BDN who promised to him to look into his request. A few days later, on October 8, 1996, he received a letter from the BND which contained the contents of the suspicious radio messages.

To be precise, it was about five alleged telex (radio teletype) communications, supposedly exchanged between Tripoli and the People’s Office of Libya in East Berlin in the time period between March 25th and April 5th 1986, and the BND got this information, as the gentlemen suggest, in the context of some foreign reconnaissance. The service explained that the messages at that time were picked up in encoded form by some “friendly service”, with great probability American, and were forwarded to the BND. This service wanted to remain secret and told the BND that under those conditions of anonymity they authorized the intercepted reports to be put at the disposal of the German prosecuting attorney’s office and of the court.

Two years later on October 6, 1998, when the BND provided official testimony for the court about the reports, it pointed out as a given that material exchanged in this way may be subjected to manipulation, although the BND had no indication to that effect in this particular case.

The German intelligence service claimed that they decoded the reports and then translated them from the original Arabic into German. And this is where it gets hot: The German Secret Service pointed out to the courts in writing that the original encoded version is no longer available with the BND; the same applies for the original text in Arabic. Both are not unusual, according to the gentlemen in Pullach, the head office of the German intelligence service, because it is in keeping with the procedures for working with such reports, where after the message is decoded and translated, that version supplants the “original.”

Not only are these radio messages - I don’t want them quote them one by one – the brain child of Mossad, as Ostrovsky testified under oath, no, quite obviously they even found a dubious way to enter the German courtrooms.

I mea, this is nothing but an intrigue of the cheapest type, and so transparent that people with healthy intellects tear out their hair at such kinds of manipulations.

Silvia Cattori: For having already covered up an action of Mossad in the Berlin case, can we draw the conclusion that Mr Mehlis was the man of Israel and of the United States?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Because of the above, I would agree for the most part with the analysis of the London political scientist Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed: “As a Berlin public prosecutor, Mehlis inadvertently but consistently hushed up the dubious interests the U.S., Israeli and German secret services in the terrorist attack of 1986, actively designed suspicious facts which were selective and politically motivated against the suspects, without any objective material body of evidence, while at the same time he ignored and protected a group of suspects with documented connections to western secret services.”

Silvia Cattori: Mr Brammertz asked for a one-year extension of the inquiry. Does that make sense?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Indeed, somehow the agents of the UN Inquisition are running out of steam, i.e. the evidence against Damascus and the four Lebanese former safety officers taken into custody, is as solid as a sock full of holes, although for their customers, the US administration, this seems to be good enough to keep the accusations against Syria on the fire - at least for one more year. One suspects that Bush has plans for some more warlike imperial projects during his second term.

Silvia Cattori: Is the “March 14 Movement” financed by the United States?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: You mean that lousy troop who stands in the service of murder-America since the cedar revolution?

Silvia Cattori: Does it serve the objectives of Mr Ziad Abdelnour, the man Tel Aviv and Washington are relying on to put into place a regime favorable to them? In your book you mention Ziad K. Abdelnour, president of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon, as a person who plays a prominent role promoting Bush administration plans!

Jürgen Cain Külbel: He is still one of the busiest armchair culprits, not letting any chance for propaganda and agitation to denounce Syria and the status quo in Lebanon pass by. He got it into his head to impose classical capitalist conditions upon Arabia. But I don’t think he will play any significant political role after the release of my book. However, it goes without saying that his economic interests and those of his clients will be satisfied by a puppet regime. After all, that is the real aim of Wall Street. An un-proselytized Arab country is simply an economic loss for people of his ilk. For example, between June 5th and 7th, 2006 in the Madinat Jumeirah Hotel in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, he debated on the topic of “Venture Capital Investing” in the Arabian region. Abdelnour was talking in his capacity as president & CEO of Blackhawk Partners, LLC, USA in front of some heavyweight buddies from big corporate groups and banks from Europe, the USA and the Near and Middle East, as well as in front of representatives of the International Monetary Fond.

Silvia Cattori: Did the destabilization of Lebanon favor the candidates financed by Israel and the United States, like Mr Nagi N. Najjar, a kind of Mr Chalabi Jr?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: No self-respecting Lebanese would put up with this longtime Israeli collaborator Najjar, even as a shoe salesman. This type of immoral person, the servant of two masters, only exists in the gray area between politics and the secret services; that is where they play their game - bringing themselves in - as aforementioned collaborators and string-pullers. The role of these “strategists” requires some more comprehensive investigation than I have done so far. At the end of February, Etienne Sakr, leader of the Guardians of the Cedars, a civil war militia organized on a fascist model, assembled a delegation of “Lebanese dissidents in exile” and members of the British parliament to discuss the “situation” in Lebanon and Syria. Najjar was, of course, one of the party. The exiles, who are under threat of prosecution in Lebanon because they collaborated with Israel during the civil war, called for the right to return and to take part in the political process in order to declare war on Islamic fundamentalism. Moreover, they criticized Beirut for not disarming Hizbullah. Sakr, sentenced to death in Lebanon, demanded that London and Washington should increase pressure on the government in Damascus, which is a trouble spot in the region because of its “support” of terror and Hizbullah. At the Officers Club in London both sides agreed to keep an eye on the matter and to coordinate with the French.

At almost the same time, on March 17th, as chance would have it, fourteen Syrian politicians in exile also met in Brussels and explained that “Syria also needs to be liberated from the autocratic regime that has weakened the country.” The opposition groups of Liberals, Communists, Kurds, and the Muslim Brotherhood plan, through a regime change, to disable the constitution, install a provisional government, organize elections, and then lift the crisis.

“One of our greatest challenges is to tear down the wall of the fear”, said Najib Ghadbian of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella organization of opposition groups in the USA. Moreover, Ghadbian, professor at the University of Arkansas, is a leading member of the Washington Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy (CSID), a dissident organization that cooperates closely with Cheney and Rice’s USAID. They are cooking up the “New Middle East” of the kind worshipped by tough-as-nails Rice.

Silvia Cattori: Does the arrest, in June 2006, of people belonging to a Mossad network in South Lebanon have any link with the Hariri case?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: On June 26th, I sent an open letter to Kofi Annan and Serge Brammertz, which also got published in certain Arabian dailies. In it I invited them not to waste any time to expand the investigation of the Hariri murder case in the direction of other suspects, including “Israel and Mossad” and their collaborators. Because such crimes by Mossad abroad, as in the recent case of Majzoub, are done exclusively with the authorization of the Israeli prime minister, I suggested to Annan to authorize the UNIIIC immediately, and if necessary by resolution of the UN security council, to interrogate the people responsible within the Israeli government, starting with prime minister Ehud Olmert and Mossad boss Meir Dagan. Because, as the investigations of the Lebanese army demonstrated, Israel possesses a vast experience and sophisticated know-how in the criminal and cowardly technique of car bombings. Moreover, under Serge Brammertz supported by his hard-working investigators, the UNIIIC has the unique chance to penetrate a terror structure operating logistically and technically on the highest levels, and thus has the possibility - if only to get a better understanding or for comparison purposes – of getting an answer for the many open questions raised by the investigation; including with what high tech means the attack on Hariri was undertaken.

Silvia Cattori: All impartial analysts agree that France is responsible for the disaster Lebanon is undergoing through her support for resolution 1559, beginning in 2004. Do you understand why France moved to a position that could only jeopardize her in the eyes of the Arab world?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: Of course France belongs to the main culprits of the catastrophe that has struck Lebanon since the murder of Hariri. Jacques Chirac isn’t just a hanger-on to the wheeling’s and dealings of the U.S. in the Levant, he has even tried actively to convince Bush to give today’s France a free hand in the areas of former French colonial influence. The text of UN resolution 1559, which asked for the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, was designed by an adviser of the Elysée together with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Neither UN Secretary General Kofi Annan nor the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs were informed about it. Events afterwards indicate that Chirac, Bush and Sharon had come to an agreement as to the distribution of roles in the conspiracy to topple Syria’s president Assad and to wipe out the Baath party.

Silvia Cattori: Do you think that this region is in the middle of a long war? Is Israeli carrying out this war to destroy not only Hizbullah, but also the people of these countries?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: For the time being, Israel has taken the community of nation’s hostage. The “democratic” royal courts in Europe and elsewhere are sending 15,000 of their young natives to the Holy Land with a “robust mandate” to provide for the safety of the Jewish state. Of course, the taxpayers of the respective countries will pick up the bill. Therefore, there is zero risk and no financial burden for Israel. For the corpses brought back, there are trumpet calls and 21 gun salutes. The courts’ cashiers usually show themselves quite generous in this department, as it doesn’t require much. However only the cuckoo from Kentucky knows whether this “robust mandate” will lend itself for preparations of an Israeli or American attack against Iran. It might be possible that the UN blue helmets will have to provide rear cover for part of the Arabic East at the exact moment when the imperial and Israel air-fighters attack Teheran. The USA has cooked the UN over the last years down to the size of a shrunken head incapable of acting and has threatened to toast it with financial dehydration if it doesn’t obey the emperors on the Potomac. Why shouldn’t the Americans now fry up military forces meant for peace missions for fighting purposes and for the welfare of the Bush and Cheney clique?

Silvia Cattori: Mossad or the CIA must consider you an enemy and have surveillance on all your exchanges and contacts. Aren’t you afraid that they might try to brutally silence you?

Jürgen Cain Külbel: It did cross my mind. While Mehlis was working on matters, people regularly died as well; either by accidents or depression. It’s the subject of my next book.
Silvia Cattori
Swiss journalist.

After Voltairenet.org [1], it is now the website of Reporters Without Borders which is hacked, while the organization is mobilized against the Chinese regime on the eve of the opening of the Olympic games.

Zataz.com found very quickly that the attack was launched Thursday, August 7 at 5:59, from Taiwan [2], and has made clear that the infested machines saw their svchost.exe connected to the IP address 61.149.230.112:80 [3].

Zataz highlighted that this address can be found on servers belonging to the Chinese government [4].

In France, authorities have banned Reporters Without Borders to demonstrate in front of the chinese embassy, while such events were allowed in seven countries in Europe and North America. “France makes fun of China, which delineates areas reserved for demonstrations in Beijing, but does exactly the same thing” replied the organization[5].

As Thierry Meyssan (VoltaireNet.org) [6] said after such attacks were launched by USA and Israel: “Nobody is immune:Do not rely on the french government to defend yourself if your website is attacked by these States. ”

RSF has therefore filed an action to the administrative court, who lifted the ban, despite the arguments of the police prefect Marcel Gaudin [8].

The police, however, have cordoned off the area to try to prevent demonstrators from reaching the chinese embassy… in vain. [9]

“This is the first time in my life that I see police officers refusing to comply with a court decision. This is unacceptable,” said Robert Menard.

[1]
http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=484
[2]
http://www.zataz.com/alerte-virus/17584/rsf–reporters-sans-frontiere–virus–site-officiel.html
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080807/tts-jo-france-chine-rsf-ca02f96.html
[3]
http://www.zataz.com/news/17597/piratage–RSF–reporters-sans-frontieres.html
[4]
http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=61.149.230.112&meta=
[5]
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080807/tts-jo-france-chine-esf-ca02f96.html

[6]
http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=484
[8]
La préfecture de Paris désavouée par la justice
[9]
http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/sports/jo2008/droits_de_l_homme/343845.FR.php

Operation Sarkozy : how the CIA placed one of its agents at the presidency of the French Republic

by Thierry Meyssan
26 July 2008 From Alma Ata (Kazakhstan)

One should judge Nicolas Sarkozy according to his actions, and not according to his personality. Yet when his doings surprise even his own constituents, it is legitimate to take a detailed look at his biography and question the bonds that brought him to power. Thierry Meyssan has decided to write the truth about the French Republic’s president background. All the information included in this article is provable, except for two assertions signalled by the author who alone takes full responsibility.

Tired of the overextended presidencies of François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac, the French elected Nicolas Sarkozy counting on his energy to revitalize their country. They were hoping for a break with years of no-change and ideologies of the past. What they got instead was a break with the very principles which founded the French nation, and have been shocked by this “hyper-president”, seizing every day a new dossier, attracting towards him the right and the left wing, and tearing apart all points of reference to the point of creating a total confusion.

Like children who have just made a boo-boo, the French are too busy trying to find excuses for themselves to admit the magnitude of the damages and of their naiveté, and they refuse all the more to see who Nicolas Sarkozy really is, that they realize they should have known since a long time who he was.

One must say the man has talents. Like a magician he tricked them. By offering them the spectacle of his private life and posing in People’s magazines, he got them to forget his political history.

The aim of this article must be clearly understood. It is not to reproach to M. Sarkozy his family, his friends or his professional ties, but the fact of having hidden those ties from the French who believed, wrongly, they were electing a free man.

To understand how a man whom all agree today to view as an agent of the United States and of Israel was able to become the head of the Gaullist party and the president of the French Republic, we must go back in time, very very far back. We must make a long digression in the course of which we will present the protagonists who are today taking their revenge.

The family secrets

At the end of Second World War, the United States secret services relied on Italo-US godfather, Lucky Luciano, to control the security of American ports and prepare their disembarking in Sicily. The main contacts of Luciano — held at that time at a New York luxury prison — to the US intelligence services went notably through Frank Wisner, Sr. Later, when the “godfather” was liberated and chose to exile in Italy, they operated through his Corsican “Ambassador”, Étienne Léandri.

In 1958, worried about a possible victory of the FLN in Algeria which could open the way to Soviet influence in Northern Africa, the United States decided to provoke a military coup d’Etat in France. The operation was jointly organized by the Cia’s Direction of Planning – theoretically lead by Frank Wisner, Sr. – and by NATO. But Wisner had already become senile by that time and it was his successor, Allan Dulles, who supervised the coup. Out of Algeria, French generals organized a Public Salvation Committee which pressured the Parisian civilian authorities to vote full powers to General de Gaulle without having had to use force.

Yet, Charles de Gaulle was not the pawn the Anglo-Saxons had believed they could manipulate. In a first phase, he attempted to deal with the colonial contradiction by granting to the overseas territories a large autonomy within the French Union. But it was already too late to save the French empire; the colonized people didn’t believe any longer in the promises of the Metropolitan France and demanded their independence. After victorious but fierce repression against those fighting for independence, de Gaulle decided to face reality, and in a rare show of political wisdom, he granted independence to each colony.

This turn about was perceived by most of those who brought him to power as a betrayal. The CIA and NATO supported then all kinds of plots to eliminate him, among which a missed coup and some 40 attempts to murder him. However, certain of his followers approved of his political evolution. Around Charles Pasqua, they created the SAC (Civic action services), a militia to protect him.

Pasqua was both a Corsican bandit and a former resistant. He married the daughter of a Canadian bootlegger who made fortune during the prohibition and he directed the Ricard company who, after commercialising absinthe, a forbidden alcohol, won respectability by converting to the sales of another alcohol based on liquorice (anisette). The company continued however to serve as a cover for all sorts of traffics connected to the New York Italian American family of the Genovese (and) that of Lucky Luciano. It is therefore not surprising that Pasqua called on Étienne Léandri (Ambassador of Luciano) to recruit the hands that constituted the Gaullist militia. A third man played an important role in the formation of the SAC, the former body guard of de Gaulle, Achille Peretti, also a Corsican.

Thus protected, de Gaulle designs an audacious national independence policy. Even though asserting his belonging to the Atlantic camp, he questions the Anglo-Saxon leadership. He opposes the entry of the United Kingdom into the European common market (1961 and 1967); refuses the deployment of UN helmets into Congo (1961); encourages the Latin American states to become free of US imperialism (speech of Mexico, 1964); kicks NATO out France and withdraws from the Atlantic Alliance’s integrated command (1966); he condemns Israeli expansionism during the Six Day war (1967); supports independence of Quebec (Speech of Montreal 1967), etc.

Simultaneously, de Gaulle consolidated the power of France by endowing it with a military industrial-complex including a nuclear deterrent and guarantying its energy provisions. He conveniently distanced the encumbering Corsicans of his entourage by entrusting them with foreign missions. Thus, Étienne Léandri became a leader of the ELF group (today Total), while Charles Pasqua the trusted man of the Francophone heads of State in Africa.

Conscious that he could not defy the Anglo-Saxons on all fronts at the same time, De Gaulle allied himself to the Rothschild family, choosing as Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, who was the fondé de pouvoir of the bank. The two men constituted an efficient tandem, the political audacity of the first never losing sight of the economic realism of the second.

When De Gaulle resigned in 1969, Georges Pompidou succeeded him briefly at the Presidency before being taken out by a cancer. The historical Gaullists did not admit his leadership, however, and worried about his anglophile proclivities. They howled treason when Pompidou, supported by the General Secretary of the Élysée, Edouard Balladur, had “perfidious Albion” join the European Common Market.

The making of Nicolas Sarkozy

That decorum having been put into place, we can now return to our main character, Nicolas Sarkozy. Born in 1955 he is son to a Hungarian catholic nobleman, Pal Sarkösy of Nagy-Bosca, who sought refuge in France after fleeing the Red Army, and to Andree Mallah, a Jewish commoner from Thessalonica. After having three children (Guillaume, Nicolas and François), the couple divorced. Pal Sarkösy of Nagy-Bocsa remarried with an aristocrat, Christine de Ganay, with whom he had two children (Pierre Olivier and Caroline). Nicolas will not be raised by his own parents alone, but will go back and forth within this recomposed family.

His mother became the secretary of De Gaulle’s bodyguard, Achille Peretti. The latter, after founding the SAC, pursued a brilliant political career. He was elected Deputy and Mayor of Neuilly sur Seine, the richest residential suburb of the capital, and later President of the National Assembly.

Unfortunately, in 1972, Achille Peretti comes under grave accusations. In the United States, Time Magazine reveals the existence of a secret criminal organization « the Corsican Union » which controls a large part of the drug trade between Europe and America, the famous « French connection » which Hollywood popularized on the large screen. Based on parliamentary auditions and on his own investigations, Time names the name of a mafia boss, Jean Venturi, arrested a few years earlier in Canada, who is none other than Charles Pasqua’s commercial delegate at the liquor society Ricard. The names of several families headed by the “Corsican Union” are cited, among which that of the Peretti. Achille denies, but is forced to renounce to the presidency of the National Assembly, and barely escapes a “suicide”…

In 1977, Pal Sarkösy of Nagy-Bocsa separates from his second wise, Christine de Ganay, who then gets together with the N°2 of the US State Department central administration. She marries him and settles in America with him. The world being very small, as everyone knows, her husband is none other than Frank Wisner, Jr, son of the previous. Junior’s responsibilities at the CIA are unknown, but it is clear that he plays an important role. Nicolas, who remains close to his mother in law, his half brother and his half sister, begins to turn towards the United States where he “benefits” from training programs of the State Department.

During that same period, Nicolas Sarkozy adheres to the Gaullist party coming into frequent contact with Charles Pasqua, who was not only a national leader then, but also the head of the party’s Haut de Seine department section.

Having finished Law School in 1982 and joined the Barr association, Nicolas Sarkozy married the niece of Achille Peretti. His best man was Charles Pasqua. As a lawyer, Sarkozy defended the interests of his mentors Corsican friends. He bought a property on the Island of Beauty, in Vico, and went as far as envisaging to make his name more “Corsican” by replacing the “y” by an “i”: Sarkozi.

The next year, he was elected Mayor of Neuilly sur Seine in replacement of his uncle in law, Achille Peretti, thundered by a heart attack. However, it was not long before Nicolas Sarkozy betrayed his wife, and since 1984, he had a secret liaison with Cecilia, the wife of the most famous entertainer of French television at that time, Jacques Martin, whom he had met while celebrating their marriage, a function he exerted being mayor of Neuilly. That double life lasted five years, before the lovers decided to quit their respective couples in order to build a new home.

In 1992, Nicolas was best man in the marriage of Jacques Chirac’s daughter, Claude, with an editorialist of Le Figaro. He couldn’t refrain himself from seducing Claude and having a short liaison with her, while officially living with Cecilia. The cuckold husband committed suicide by absorbing drugs. The break was brutal and without pardon between the Chirac’s and Nicolas Sarkozy.

In 1993, the left lost the legislative elections. President François Mitterrand refused to resign and entered into cohabitation with a right wing Prime Minister. Jacques Chirac who ambitioned the presidency, and was thinking at that point of constituting, with Edoaurd Balladur, a couple comparable to that of De Gaulle and Pompidou, refused to be Prime minister and left his post to his “30 year long friend”, Edouard Balladur. In spite of his sulphurous past, Charles Pasqua became Interior Minister. While keeping high hand over Moroccan marijuana trade, he took advantage of his situation to legalize his other activities taking control of casinos, gambling and horse races in francophone Africa. He wove ties with Saudi Arabia and Israel and became an officer of honour to the Mossad. Nicolas Sarkozy on his part, became minister of Budget and spokesman for the government.

In Washington, Frank Wisner, Jr. became the successor of Paul Wolfowitz as head of the Political Planning department of the Department of Defense. Nobody noticed at that time the ties to the spokesman of the French government.

It is then that tensions similar to those which rocked the Gaullist party 30 years earlier, broke out between the historical Gaullists and the financial right wing, incarnated by Balladur. The new element was that Charles Pasqua and along with him, the young Nicolas Sarkozy, betray Jacques Chirac in order to join the Rothschild current. Mayhem breaks out. The conflict will reach a climax in 1995 when Edouard Balladur ran for president, against his former friend, Jacques Chirac, and was beaten. Foremost, following instructions from London and Washington, the Balladur government opened negotiations for membership status to the European Union and NATO to States of Central and Eastern Europe who had freed from Soviet control.

Havoc reigns then in the Gaullist party where the friends of yesterday are ready to kill themselves today. To be able to finance his electoral campaign, Edouard Balladur attempts to grab the secret slush fund of the Gaullist party, hidden in the double deckered accounting of the books of the oil group ELF.

The ride through the desert

Through out his first mandate, Jacques Chirac keeps Nicolas Sarkozy at arms distance. The man was discrete during his ride through the desert. Discretely, however, he continued to weave ties to the financial circles.

In 1996, finally succeeding to bring to conclusion an endless divorce procedure, Nicolas Sarkozy marries Cecilia. Two billionaires were their best men, Martin Bouygues and Bernard Arnaud (the richest man of the country).

The final act

Way before the Iraqi crisis, Frank Wisner Jr. and his colleagues at the CIA plan the destruction of the Gaullist current and the coming to power of Nicolas Sarkozy. They move in three phases: first, the elimination of the leadership of the Gaullist party and the take over of the party apparatus, then the elimination of his main right wing rival and the securing the nomination to the presidential election for the Gaullist party; finally, the elimination of any serious challenger on the left to make sure that Nicolas would win the presidential election.

During years, posthumous revelations by a real estate dealer kept the media on their toes. Before dying from a terminal disease, for reasons which remain unknown, he decided to video tape his confessions and for reasons which are even more obscure, the “cassette” landed in the hands of a Socialist party leader, Dominique Strauss Kahn, who addressed it indirectly to the media.

While the confessions of the real estate dealer did not lead to any juridical sanctions, they opened up the Pandora’s Box. The main victim of the series of scandals was Prime Minister Alain Juppé. To protect Chirac, he assumed alone all the penal sanctions. The removal of Juppé from the front lodges opened the way for the take by Sarkozy of the leadership of the Gaullist party.

Sarkozy exploited then his position to force Jacques Chirac to take him into the government once again, in spite of their reciprocal hatred. In the end, he became Interior Minister. Mistake ! This post gave him control over the prefects and the internal intelligence apparatus which he used to gain positions of power over the large administrations.

He dealt also with Corsican affairs. Prefect Claude Érignac was murdered. Even though nobody claimed it, the murder was immediately interpreted as a challenge by the independentists to the Republic. Following a long hunt, the police managed to arrest a fleeing suspect, Yvan Colonna, son of a Socialist deputy. Caring little about the presumption of innocence, Nicolas Sarkozy announced the arrest, accusing the suspect of being the assassin. The news is too important, a mere two days away from the referendum the minister has organized in Corsica to modify the status of the island. Be as it may, the electors reject the Sarkozy project, who, according to some, favoured mafia interests. While Yvan Colonna was ultimately declared guilty, he always claimed his innocence and no material proof was ever found against him. Strangely, the man preferred to remain totally silent rather than reveal what he actually knew. We reveal here that prefect Érignac was not directly killed by the nationalists, but by a paid killer, immediately exfiltrated towards Angola where he was hired to the security of the Elf group. The mobile of the crime was precisely connected to the previous functions of Érignac, responsible for the African networks at Pasqua’s cooperation ministry. As for Yvan Colonna, he is a personal friend of Nicolas Sarkozy since decades and their children have entertained social relations.

A new scandal broke out then: phoney computer listings were circulating falsely accusing several personalities of hiding bank accounts in Luxembourg, at Clearstream. Among the defamed personalities: Nicolas Sarkozy, who filed a suit insinuating that he suspected his right wing rival to the presidency, Dominique de Villepin, to have organized this machination. Sarkozy didn’t hide his intention either to throw him in jail. In reality, the false listings were put in circulation by members of the French American Foundation, of which John Negroponte was the president and Frank Wisner Jr, the administrator. What the judges ignored and which we reveal here is that the listings were fabricated in London by a common office of the CIA and of MI6, Hakluyt and co, of which Frank Wisner is also an administrator.

Villepin denied the accusations, but was indicted, assigned to residence and, de facto, eliminated from political life temporarily. The road is thus free on the right wing for Nicolas Sarkozy. It remained for the opposition candidacies to be neutralized. The membership fees to the Socialist party were reduced to a symbolic level in order to attract new activists. Suddenly, thousands of youth take membership cards. Among them, there were at least 10 000 new members who are in reality militants from the “Lambertist” Trotskyite party, (named after its founder Pierre Lambert). This small extreme left group historically served the CIA against the Stalinist communists during the cold war (it is the equivalent of the Social democrats/USA of Max Schatchman, who trained the US neo-conservatives). It is not the first time the “Lambertists” infiltrate the Socialist party. They introduced there two notorious CIA agents : Lionel Jospin (who became Prime minister) and Jean Christophe Cambadelis, the main advisor to Dominique Strauss Kahn.

Primaries were organized inside the Socialist party to designate its candidate to the presidential election. Two personalities were competing: Laurent Fabius and Ségolène Royal. Only the first was a danger for Sarkozy. Dominique Strauss Kahn came into the race with the mission to eliminate Fabius at the last moment. Something he did with the help of the votes of the infiltrated “lambertists”, who voted not for him but for Royal.

The operation is possible because Strauss Kahn is since long on the pay roll of the United States. Frenchmen ignore that he teaches at Stanford, where he was hired by the prévot Dean of the University, Condoleeza Rice. From the beginning of his term, Nicolas Sarkozy and Condoleeza Rice will thank Strauss Kahn by having him elected to the leadership of the International Monetary fund.

First days at the Élysée

The evening of the second round of the presidential election, when polling agencies announced his probable victory, Nicolas Sarkozy gave a short speech to the nation from his general campaign quarters. Then, contrary to all custom, he didn’t celebrate with the militants of his party, but went to the Fouquet’s. The famous brasserie at the Champs-Élysées, formerly the place of rendez-vous of the “Corsican union” is today the property of Casino magnate, Dominique Desseigne. It was lent to the elected president to receive his friends and main campaign donors. Some hundred guests crowded there, the richest men of France hobnobbing with the casino bosses.

The elected president then offered himself some days of well merited rest. Transported to Malta by a private Falcon 900, he relaxed on the Paloma, a 65 m yacht of his friend Vincent Bollore, a billionaire trained at the Rothschild bank.

Finally, Nicolas Sarkozy was inaugurated president of the French Republic. The first decree he signed was not to enact an amnesty, but to authorize the casinos of his friends Desseigne and Partouche to multiply the money machines.

He composed his working team and his government. Without surprise, one finds there an ominous casino owner (the minister of Youth and Sports) and the lobbyist of the casinos of his friend Desseigne (who became a spokesman of the “Gaullist party”.)

Nicolas Sarkozy relies above all on 4 men :

- Claude Guéant, secretary general of the Elysée Palace, the former right hand of Charles Pasqua.
- François Pérol, under-secretary general of the Elysée, an associate manager of the Rothschild bank.
- Jean-David Lévitte, diplomatic advisor. Son of the former director of the Jewish Agency. French ambassador to the UN, he was removed by Chirac who judged him too close to George Bush.
- Alain Bauer, the man of the shadows. His name does not appear in the directories. He is in charge of the secret services. Former Grand Master of the French Great Orient (the most important Masonic organization in France) and former N°2 of the United States National Security Agency in Europe.

Frank Wisner Jr. who in the meantime was named “special envoy” to President Bush for the independence of Kosovo, insisted that Bernard Kouchner be named minister of Foreign affairs with a double mission priority: the independence of Kosovo and the elimination of France’s Arab policy.

Kouchner started his career by participating in the creation of a humanitarian NGO. Thanks to financial support from the National Endowment for Democracy, he took part in operations of Zbigniew Brzezinski in Afghanistan against the soviets, along sides with Oussama Ben Laden and the Karzai brothers. One finds him again in the 90’s working with Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia Herzegovina. From 1999 to 2001 he was high representatives of the UN to Kosovo.

Under the rule of the youngest brother of president Hamid Karzaï, Afghanistan became the first world producer of opium poppies transformed in heroin locally and transported by the US Air force to Camp Bondsteed (Kosovo). There, the men of Hacim Thaci take charge of the drug and distribute it mainly in Europe and accessorily in the United States. The benefits are used to finance the illegal operations of the CIA. Karzai and Thaci are longstanding personal friends of Bernard Kouchner who undoubtedly ignores their criminal activities in spite of all the international reports which have been dedicated to them.

To complete his government, Nicolas Sarkozy named Christine Lagarde, minister of the Economy and Finances. All her career was made in the United States where she directed the prestigious law firm Baker and McKenzie. At the Center for international and strategic studies of Dick Cheney, she copresided with Zbigniew Brzezinski a working group which supervised the privatisations in Poland. She organized also an intense lobbying effort for Lockheed Martin against French airplane producer Dassault.

New escapade during the summer. Nicolas, Cecilia, their common mistress and their children went on holidays to the United States at Wolfeboro, not far from the property of President Bush. The bill was paid this time by Robert F. Agostinelli, an Italian-New Yorker investment banker, Zionist and a pure brand of neo-conservative who writes in Commentary, the magazine of the American Jewish Committee.

The success of Nicolas had impact on his half brother, Pierre Olivier. Under the American name of Oliver, he was named by Frank Carlucci (formerly N°2 of the CIA after having been recruited by Frank Wisner, Sr.) Director of the new investment fund of the Carlyle Group (the common investment firm of the Bush family and Ben Laden). Having become the 5th largest business dealer in the world, he handles the main assets of the sovereign funds of Kuwait and Singapore.

The popularity of the President is in a free fall in the polls. One of his communications advisors, Jacques Seguela (also consultant for political communication at the NED where he is in charge of diverse CIA operations in Western Europe and Latin America), proposes to detract the public’s attention with new “people stories”. The announcement of the divorce with Cecilia was publicised by Libération, the paper of his friend Edouard de Rothschild, to cover up the slogans of demonstrators in a day of general strike. Stronger even, the communications agent organized a meeting between the president and the former top model, Carla Bruni. Some days later, her liaison with the president became official and the media hammering covered up once again political criticism. Some weeks later, the third marriage of Nicolas occurred. This time, he chose as best men Mathilde Agostinelle (the wife of Robert) and Nicolas Bazire, a former cabinet director of Edouard Balladur who became assistant manager at the Rothschilds.

When will the French use their eyes to see what they have to do ?

Thierry Meyssan

Odebi already reported the case of the Indymedia Lille WebSite, pursued by a company of CRS (french police) in its latest answer to the Besson consultation on the LCEN (French transposition of 2000/31CE).

This time, Thierry Meyssan (VoltaireNet.org), reveals that his WebSite Voltaire was attacked by the Israeli army in an interview with Jerome Bouteiller (Neteco):

Excerpt:

“Of course Internet facilitates the exercise of freedom of expression. From this viewpoint, the generalized develoment of internet is a political revolution that is shaking the institutions. But this freedom is relative. We must first confront our intellectual limitations. In modern societies, we have lost the ability to think by ourselves and have adopted the herd behaviour of mass-media consumers. When we release our prejudices, we face all kinds of pressures . And if the journalistic profession does not shine through his courage, there is no reason that the rest of society is better.

Historically, each new media is a bowl of fresh air. But with time, it is subject to regulatory and legislative frameworks which stifles. It will probably be the same for the Internet when control techniques are found.

Beyond censorship, which is a national phenomenon, the Internet is already a battleground in the military sense of the term. The USA have destroyed thousands of sites during the Kosovo war. Israel did the same during the 2006 war against Lebanon, -and on this occasion a special unit of Tsahal has succeeded in temporarily blocking our site yet hosted at this moment in the french territory -. In preparation for the next conflict, the U.S. Air Force has invested considerable sums to acquire equipment enabling it to destroy tens of thousands of sites within a few days. Nobody is immune: Do not rely on the french government to defend yourself if your website is attacked by those States! “

Paris, July 27, 2008

Noting a drift toward a surveillance society where freedom of expression and information is threatened, officials of many organizations throughout the world call for an action day on October 11, 2008.

Protest marches, festive events, workshops … Each country will participate in its own way to the action day “Freedom not Fear 2008″ [1]

In France, more and more organizations [2] prepare this day, and invites organizations defending privacy and freedom of expression and information to participate in this project [3]

Only a worlwide action can now fight against informational totalitarianism : More and more countries around the world are now joining this movement, which has yet to spread. We call all those who have contacts with activists of countries not yet participating to invite them to contact the Freedom not Fear coordination [4].

[1] https: / / wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008
[2] Odebi, Big Brother Awards, Marsnet, Globenet, the RAIDH Network, Artisnotdead, Propagande.org, Wireless Marseille, contre-conference.net
[3] email contactAThumanrights21.org or http://www.humanrights21.org/?page_id=21
[4] https://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008/HowTo

Joint call:

International Action Day “Freedom not fear - Stop the surveillance mania!” on 11 October 2008

A broad movement of campaigners and organizations is calling on everybody to join action against excessive surveillance by governments and businesses. On 11 October 2008, concerned people in many countries will take to the streets, the motto being “Freedom not fear 2008″. Peaceful and creative action, from protest marches to parties, will take place in many capital cities.

Surveillance mania is spreading. Governments and businesses register, monitor and control our behaviour ever more thoroughly. No matter what we do, who we phone and talk to, where we go, whom we are friends with, what our interests are, which groups we participate in - “big brother” government and “little brothers” in business know it more and more thoroughly.

The resulting lack of privacy and confidentiality is putting at risk the freedom of confession, the freedom of speech as well as the work of doctors, helplines, lawyers and journalists.

The manifold agenda of security sector reform encompasses the convergence of police, intelligence agencies and the military, threatening to melt down the division and balance of powers.

Using methods of mass surveillance, the borderless cooperation of the military, intelligence services and police authorities is leading towards new borders and walls, thus building true “Fortresses” in Europe and on other continents, directed against refugees and different-looking people but also affecting, for example, political activists, the poor and under-priviledged, and sports fans.

People who constantly feel watched and under surveillance cannot freely and courageously stand up for their rights and for a just society. Mass surveillance is thereby threatening the fabric of a democratic and open society.

Mass surveillance is also endangering the work and commitment of civil society organizations.

Surveillance, distrust and fear are gradually transforming our society into one of uncritical consumers who have “nothing to hide” and - in a vain attempt to achieve total security - are prepared to give up their freedoms. We do not want to live in such a society!

We believe the respect for our privacy to be an important part of our human dignity. A free and open society cannot exist without unconditionally private spaces and communications.

The increasing electronic registration and surveillance of the entire population does not make us any safer from crime, costs millions of Euros and puts the privacy of innocent citizens at risk. Under the reign of fear and blind actionism, targeted and sustained security measures fall by the wayside, as well as tackling peoples’ actual daily problems such as unemployment and poverty.

In order to protest against security mania and excessive surveillance we will take to the streets in capital cities all in many countries on 11 October 2008. We call on everybody to join our peaceful protest. Politicians are to see that we are willing to take to the streets for the protection of our liberties.

You can find the latest information on the protest marches and the list of participating cities at our website: http://wiki.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/Freedom_Not_Fear_2008.

Our demands

1. Cutback on surveillance

* abolish the blanket logging of our communications and locations (data retention)
* abolish the blanket collection of our biometric data as well as RFID passports
* abolish the blanket collection of genetic data
* abolish permanent CCTV camera surveillance and automatic detection techniques
* scrap funding for the development of new surveillance techniques
* no blanket registration of all air travellers (PNR data)
* no information exchange with the US and other states lacking effective data protection
* no secret searches of private computer systems, neither online nor offline
* no blanket surveillance and filtering of internet communications (EU Telecoms-Package)

2. Evaluation of existing surveillance powers

We call for an independent review of all existing surveillance powers as to their effectiveness and harmful side-effects.

3. Moratorium for new surveillance powers

After the homeland armament of the past few years we demand an immediate hold to new homeland security laws that further restrict civil liberties.

4. Guaranteeing freedom of expression, dialogue and information on the Internet

* Ban the installation of filtering infrastructure on ISP networks.
* Only independent and impartial judges may request the removal of Internet content.
* Create a full right to quote multimedia, today indispensable to public debate in democracies.
* Protect common internet places of expression (participatory sites, forums, comments on blogs) today threatened by inadequate laws encouraging self-censorship (chilling effect)

The Ministry of Economy, Industry and Employment and the Secretariat of State in charge of Foresight, the Evaluation of Public Policy and Development of the digital economy have opened a public consultation on the review of the law for confidence in the digital economy and its prospects.

Odebi today released its response to this consultation.

Faced with questions that leave nothing presaged good in terms of rights and freedoms, ODEBI presents, and will defend the following positions:

• ISPs must remain completely neutral.
• No filtering on ISP’s networks.
• VOD delay: 0 day.
• Only the judge can inform the hosting provider that a content is illicit and ask for its withdrawal.
• No obligation to designate a publishing director .
• links are neutral: no one can be prosecuted for having mentioned a link, whatever the content behind the link.
• parental filtering is done on the children’s computer, and only the parents decide to install this _software_ and its features.
• stop the data retention and the duty to identify any contributor.
• Prohibition of political spams sent to individuals, the mails sent to elected are not spam.
• No Ethics Committee, even hidden in another entity.
• stop financing co-regulation structures and other lobbying playgrounds.
• abandonment of “governmental press labels”.
• No obligation of content surveillance for intermediaries.
• Establishing a genuine right to quote multimedia.
• Repeal of the ban on broadcasting videos showing police violence.
  

  Read ODEBI response to french geovernment

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=480&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=478&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=478&langswitch_lang=en#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:49:50 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=478 Release Big Brother Awards/Souriez/Odebi

  “EDVIGE” : a complete outlawed file

  Paris, July 3, 2008 - Privacy International, the Big Brother Awards France (BBA), Souriez vous êtes filmés (Smile you are filmed) and the Odebi League join the releases issued on 1 July by the LDH (Human Rights League) and by the Syndicat de la Magistrature alerting on extreme danger of Edvige file.

  Without any public debate, this file, common to the General Informations (RG) and the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST) which now exist within a single intelligence agency - the Central Management of Public Security - just be “legalised” by decree [1]. “Legalise” is a great term because the identification of most personal information to be included in this file is strictly forbidden by the Data Protection Law, except… in case of “state security” [2]. It will include, indeed, identity information not only for “suspects” that could “disturb public order”, but also all the notes regarding intelligence at work as political opinions, religion, sex, ethnic origin, the trade union affiliations and associations. The young people are also concerned as Edvige will also target them starting at 13.

  We might wonder today if the state still makes any difference between “suspect” and “offender”, between “capable of the act” and “sentenced”. And if achieving the hypothetical “state security” - including acts such as helping children of people with no paper, to rebel against an excessive police authority, or does not want GMOs in his plate - may, in a democracy, serve as a pretext for the establishment of such a file. It can recall the files system of the Prime Minister Foucher which included informations, denunciations and slanders about any person suspected of not being a good patriot of the Empire.

  The BBA France deplored again the impotence of the CNIL [3] to prevent the constitution of Edvige. It is mainly due to changes in the Data Protection Law endorsed by its rapporteur and Chairman Alex Turk and to its financial dependence to the money of the state. They also denounced the lack of response from the Council of State, which has necessarily been consulted for such a text.

  The only democratic attitude is to oppose massively to this abusive and dangerous information filing, who denies their rights to a certain category of people, especially regarding privacy. Those proven or potential offenders and protest activists, as well as the criminals and terrorists are human beings which are due fundamental rights guaranteed to all people by the Constitution and Declarations of Human Rights. The BBA France will join all associations which work to enforce these rights and ask for the deletion of the Edvige file system.

  The team of BBA France, member of Privacy International, with Souriez, vous êtes filmés ! and the Odebi League.

  LINKS:
  - Release of the League of Human Rights, 1 July 2008.

  - “La Direction des Affaires Criminelles voit des terroristes partout”, Release of the Union of Magistrates, 1 July 2008.

  See also (LDH Toulon) :

  - “Fichage des bandes et vidéo-surveillance sont les mamelles du sécuritaire” (02/07/2008).

  - Edvige : “Fichez-moi tous ces mineurs…” (02/07/2008).

  - About the software “Ardoise” (”Ariane” interface), future common file of the french police and gendarmerie : “Ardoise”, nouveau fichier contesté (16/04/2008).

  NOTES:
  [1] Decree No. 2008-632 of 27 June 2008 “establishing an automated processing of personal data called “EDVIGE”.

  [2] Data Protection Law Chapter II, Section 2. Article 8:
  “It is forbidden to collect or process personal data reflecting, directly or indirectly, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, philosophical or religious affiliation or association of persons, or which are related to health or the sex life of them. ”

  [3] The “opinion” of the CNIL of June 16 and published on July 2.

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=478&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=474&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=474&langswitch_lang=en#comments Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:19:54 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=474 Le ministère de l’intérieur expérimente le logiciel Ardoise [1] permettant le fichage d’informations particulièrement surprenantes sur l’« Etat de la personne »: «Mineur en fugue », « handicapé », « personne âgée », « sans domicile fixe », « permanent syndical », « malade », « alcoolique », « usager de stupéfiant », « travesti », « homosexuel », « transsexuel », « personne se livrant à la prostitution », « personne atteinte de troubles psychologiques », ou encore « membre d’une secte »…

  L’appartenance à un syndicat, l’âge, la position sociale ou encore les préférences sexuelles, sont des informations qui n’ont rien à faire dans un fichier de police dans une démocratie.
  

  Ce logiciel dont le déploiement est prévu pour mai prochain, dans le cadre de la fusion des fichiers de police et gendarmerie nationales STIC et JUDEX grâce à l’application ARIANE (Application de Rapprochement, d’Identification et d’ANalyse pour les Enquêteurs) [2] est actuellement en cours de test au service central de la documentation criminelle de la police d’Ecully.

  Comme avec le FAR, le STIC et le JUDEX qui ont mis des années à être légalisés [3], l’Etat utilise ARDOISE de manière illégale; selon la CNIL, qui est chargée du contrôle de ces fichiers, « une telle application (…) ne peut être créée que par un décret en Conseil d’État pris après avis de la CNIL »,et pour l’instant ce décret n’existe pas [4]. Ces fichiers comportent près de 25% d’erreurs [5]. De plus, une personne constatant une erreur dans sa fiche n’aurait même pas la possibilité de demander des corrections à la CNIL puisque la fiche n’est pas légale, pas recensée. Or, les STIC et JUDEX peuvent servir pendant le processus de recrutement dans certains emplois ou fonctions publiques ou privés [6].

  Le Syndicat National des Officiers de Police (SNOP) a dénoncé les fichages abusifs et disproportionnés qui se pratiquent de plus en plus : « Nous sommes scandalisés par ce logiciel, dont l’utilisation -en l’état- va à l’encontre des valeurs républicaines » [7]. Et pour David BARRAS, délégué syndical du SNOP, « Cette affaire est une catastrophe ! Lors d’enquêtes à caractère sexuel, on peut demander à quelqu’un qui vient de se faire violer par exemple, si elle pratique la sodomie, pour faire des prélèvement de sperme dans son anus. Pourquoi poser la même question à une personne qui vient de se faire voler son scooter ! Dans le premier cas, la question est fondée. Dans le second, absolument pas ! » [8]

  Pour Louis SCHWEITZER, président de la HALDE, « ces données (…) seraient susceptibles de constituer des discriminations dans le fonctionnement de service public de la Police entrant dans le champ de compétence de la haute autorité, si elles devaient servir de fondement à des décisions administratives défavorables aux intéressés. »

  Le Collectif contre l’homophobie a saisi la HALDE [9], la CNCDH et la CNIL afin de s’opposer à la mise en œuvre de ce logiciel : “Nous n’accepterons pas que Michèle Alliot-Marie autorise son utilisation, car il peut donner lieu à des dérives de sinistre mémoire” [10]. De nombreuses organisations dénoncent ce projet : SOS Homophobie, l’Inter-LGBT, Les Oubliés de la Mémoire, l’Union des Familles Laïques, plusieurs associations et syndicats de policiers tels que la FLAG (association des policiers gay et lesbiens), l’Alliance ou encore l’UNSA-Police. Pour FO-Cheminots, ARDOISE « franchit une limite inacceptable eu égard aux libertés individuelles. Ainsi sur ce fichier des cases à cocher indiquent les responsabilités syndicales éventuelles (”permanent syndical”), la qualité domiciliaire (”SDF”) et l’orientation sexuelle (”homosexuel”). Cette affaire nous rappelle d’autres fichiers plus physiques qui ont servis à des crimes d’Etat. C’est pourquoi, devant ce risque contre les libertés fondamentales, il est absolument indispensable de mettre ce projet aux oubliettes. » [11]

  Michèle ALLIOT-MARIE vient de faire savoir qu’elle souhaitait “réfléchir à la pertinence des critères retenus pour ce logiciel au regard des besoins d’enquêtes” et qu’il s’agirait de “corréler les besoins de la police et de la gendarmerie avec le respect des libertés individuelles”, mais aussi prendre en compte “les besoins opérationnels”.

  Pour Odebi, l’annonce de la simple “suspension” [12] de la mise en oeuvre de ce type d’outils de fichage policier n’est pas suffisante dans une démocratie.

  [1] ARDOISE : Application de Recueil de la Documentation Opérationnelle et d’Informations Statistiques sur les Enquêtes

  [2] ARIANE : http://www.neteco.com/66524-ariane-mutualise-les-fichiers-de-police-et-de-gendarmerie.html

  [3] Les fichiers FAR, JUDEX, STIC illégaux : http://bigbrotherawards.eu.org/Gendarmerie-nationale.html

  [4] 15/04/2008, «Alex Türk, Président de la CNIL demande au ministère de l’Intérieur des précisions sur le logiciel Ardoise » :

  http://www.cnil.fr/index.php?id=2423&news[uid]=538&cHash=48b6de727b

  [5] « Fichage policier : 25% d’erreurs, mais que fait la police ? »http://www.bugbrother.com/article370.html

  [6] http://www.ldh-toulon.net/spip.php?article1604

  [7] http://www.metrofrance.com/x/metro/2008/04/14/K1Pea5HSh3m76/index.xml

  [8] http://www.lepost.fr/article/2008/04/15/1181479_un-officier-contre-le-nouveau-logiciel-de-fichage-c-est-une-catastrophe.html?xtor=RSS-30

  [9] communiqué du Collectif contre l’homophobie : http://www.france.qrd.org/actualites/article.php3?id_article=3364

  Haute de Lutte contre les Discriminations et pour l’Egalité :http://www.halde.fr

  [ 10 ] http://www.lepoint.fr/actualites-societe/ardoise-ce-logiciel-de-police-que-certains-voudraient-effacer/920/0/238230

  [ 11 ] 15/04/2008, FO-Cheminots : « Logiciel “ARDOISE” (police - sûreté - liberté) : un projet de fichage dangeureux pour les libertés citoyennes »

  http://www.fo-cheminots.com/federation/actualite/logiciel-ardoise-police-surete-liberte-un-projet-fichage-dangeureux-pour-libertes-citoyennes-3339.html

  [12] Alliot-Marie suspend l’expérimentation du fichier controversé Ardoise: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5ix6m_hxZ0MVZkJqouGPVHnk58B6A

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=474&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=473&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=473&langswitch_lang=en#comments Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:27:14 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=473 En votant l’amendement 22bis au rapport de la commission CULT sur les industries culturelles lors de la séance plénière du 10 avril dernier, les députés européens ont clairement rejeté l’idée du désabonnement des internautes soupçonnés de téléchargement.

  Odebi avait déjà dénoncé cette mesure disproportionnée, privant complètement d’accès à la société de l’information des familles entières, et ce, sans intervention d’un juge indépendant et impartial.

  En rejetant ce type de mesure, le Parlement européen a affirmé que la “lutte contre le piratage” ne peut pas se faire à n’importe quel prix dans une démocratie, d’une part.

  Mais il a aussi d’autre part protégé les créateurs, ainsi que tous les acteurs économiques de l’internet: une répression de masse basée sur le désabonnement ne peut que nuire aux intérêts économiques de ces acteurs, et encore plus aux industries culturelles qui n’auraient rien à y gagner, si ce n’est de perdre définitivement des clients.

  La Ligue Odebi invite le gouvernement français à ne pas s’isoler, et à suivre la position réaliste et équilibrée des eurodéputés. Le ministère de la culture doit retirer le projet de loi Olivennes qui devait être déposé le mois prochain: le coeur même de ce projet étant basé sur le désabonnement des internautes, la nécessaire prise en compte de la décision des représentants élus par un demi-milliard de citoyens européens ne peut que le vider de sa substance.

  Par ailleurs, l’amendement Heaton Harris à ce même rapport Bono ayant été rejeté, alors qu’il préconisait le désabonnement des internautes et le filtrage du réseau, le gouvernement doit aussi faire cesser les expérimentations de filtrage prévues par les accords Olivennes.

  Le déploiement à grande échelle de systèmes de filtrage sur le réseau français serait dangereux pour la démocratie, comme cela est clairement illustré par l’actualité sino-tibétaine.

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=473&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=472&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=472&langswitch_lang=en#comments Sun, 17 Feb 2008 23:14:07 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=472 According to Digital Majority, Nicole Zingaretti admitted that the ipred2 directive might send downloaders in jail:

  Europe to send downloaders in jail without any public attention?

  summary:
  The criminal sanctions directive might send internet downloaders in jail. The directive has passed the European Parliament in the complete ignorance of the majority of internet users. The rapporteur finally admits that this directive is all about sending filesharers to jail.

  Here is what the italian rapporteur on the criminal sanctions directive was saying last April 2007 when the directive was adopted by the European Parliament:

  “It is about punishing mafia-style criminals, not about jailing kids who download music from the Internet,” said Italian Socialist Nicole Zingaretti, who led the bill through the EU assembly.

  Now Mr Zingaretti seems to return his view on the aim of the directive with this question to the Council on the timetable to adopt this directive:

  Parliamentary questions
  5 February 2008
  P-0541/08
  WRITTEN QUESTION by Nicola Zingaretti (PSE) to the Council

  Subject: Criminal measures to enforce intellectual property rights

  On 25 April 2007 Parliament adopted the report on the amended proposal for a directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights (COM(2006)0168 — C6-0233/2005 — 2005/0127(COD)).

  On 23 October 2007 the Court of Justice published its ruling in Case C‑440/05, in which it found that the Community legislator may impose effective, proportional and dissuasive criminal penalties on Member States in order to guarantee the full effectiveness of the rules it lays down.

  Given the need for urgent action by the EU in response to the increasingly systematic violation of copyright by some Internet users, can the Council provide a time frame for discussion of the directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on criminal measures aimed at ensuring the enforcement of intellectual property rights?

  The criminal sanctions directive might send internet downloaders in jail. The directive has passed the European Parliament in the complete ignorance of the majority of internet users. The rapporteur finally admits that this directive is all about sending filesharers to jail.

  There is a need to alert the press about this masquerade. Most directives are adopted here in Brussels without even a press article. If a Minister would propose this in Belgium, everybody would know the day after. But the European press seems to be absent in the corridors of Brussels.

  source: zoobab/digital majority

  Article Digital Majority sous creative commons by sa
  

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=472&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=471&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=471&langswitch_lang=en#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:27:20 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=471 Le nouveau livre de Perline et Thierry Noisette, auteurs de “la bataille du logiciel libre”, vient de paraître aux éditions InLibroVeritas. A un mois des élections municipales il jete un pavé dans la mare et secoue les consicences, car il s’agit ni plus ni moins que de défendre le modéle d’usage de la démocratie, le vote. Un vote, pouvoir suprême du peuple, aujourd’hui mis à mal par les machines à voter, par le vote électronique.

  Le vote électronique a été imposé à un million et demi d’électeurs lors des scrutins de 2007, sans aucun débat, ni parlementaire ni avec la population.

  Et sans tenir compte des expériences passées, comme celle d’Irlande où le vote électronique a été abandonné, après 52 millions d’euros de dépenses.Cette intrusion technologique qui “rend opaque ce qui était visible”, selon la formule du Conseil constitutionnel, est lourde de risques : pannes, bugs, piratages, fraudes indétectables, sans oublier l’exclusion des citoyens du contrôle des urnes.

  Ce livre souligne, en le remettant dans son contexte historique et international, que le vote électronique n’est pas l’amélioration démocratique qu’ont vendue des docteurs Folamour de l’administration et des marchands de machines de vote. Les auteurs contribuent ainsi au débat dont ont été privés les citoyens de France.

  Comme à son habitude InLibroVeritas publie ce livre avec une licence de diffusion libre afin d’un assurer la plus grande circulation, la plus grande diffusion. Il est important que le public, les citoyens sachent -vraiment- jusqu’où peuvent se nicher les atteintes les plus flagrantes à nos libertés, à notre pouvoir d’électeur. Pour que, à jamais, reste et demeure “un Homme, un Vote”

  Page d’achat du livre
  Lien de téléchargement du livre
  Licence : Creative Commons by-nc-sa
  ISBN : 978-2-35209-113-4
  107 pages
  Date d’édition : 04/02/2008
  Format : 120×185mm
  Prix : 14 € TTC
  
  source:Boogieplayer

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=471&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=469&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=469&langswitch_lang=en#comments Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:41:52 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=469 Reporters Without Borders Press release 1st February 2008 :

  Reporters Without Borders and Chinese Human Rights Defenders have obtained a copy of a directive issued by the authorities responsible for Internet censorship in an attempt to prevent online circulation of the report “Journey to the Heart of Internet censorship (http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=23924),” which the two organisations issued on 10 October 2007.
  “We condemn the censorship of any information that aims to increase awareness of the real situation of the Internet in China,” the two organisations said. “The rights of Chinese Internet users are systematically violated by the government, although we are now only six months away from the Olympic Games.”

  Just hours after the report was issued, Yang Le, the head of the Beijing Information Office, which is in charge of Internet control, circulated an order to websites and ISPs asking them to update their lists of banned key-words. The new banned key-words, mostly relating to the Internet, were used throughout the Reporters Without Borders/Chinese Human Rights Defenders report.

  The name of the report’s author, a “Mr. Tao,” who is a Beijing website technician, was also included in the new banned word-strings, as were “Reporters Without Borders” and “Chinese Human Rights Defenders,” whose websites are inaccessible in China. This is the text of the directive issued by the Beijing Information Office:

  “Urgent: Search engines must abort searches for certain key-words. This must take effect at 10:30.” The directive listed these key-words:

  “render transparent the workings of the Chinese Internet control system”
  “render transparent the workings of the Internet control system”
  “the workings of the Chinese Internet control system”
  “Chinese Internet control”
  “Chinese Internet control system”
  “how the Internet control system works”
  “Tao Xici”
  “control of the Tao Xici network”
  “Tao Xici’s China”
  “Reporters Without Borders”
  “Chinese Human Rights Defender Network”
  “reinforcement of Beijing’s control bodies”
  “self-censorship” and “increase censorship”
  “Century China”
  “Aiqinhai website”
  “technological process of Internet control in mainland China”
  “network management bodies and online media”
  “eviction of Tang Yan and Liu Xianghui”
  “adoption / registering / Internet administration”
  “Internet network”
  “key-words”
  “define unauthorised media”
  “not reveal instructions”
  “infiltration of Internet users and banning of key-words”
  “control of the Chinese Internet network”
  “pursuit of procedures for purging the Internet”
  “searches aimed at suppressing website content”
  “not reveal instructions after purging the network”
  “disseminate instructions”

  Reporters Without Borders/Reporters sans frontières
  www.rsf-chinese.org
  Chinese Human Rights Defenders
  www.crd-net.org

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=469&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=468&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=468&langswitch_lang=en#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:41:54 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=468

  ne dites plus “Paris capitale du Libre” mais… Paris, capitulation numérique ?
  Sans concertation ni information de la population ou des élus parisiens, la Ville de Paris s’apprête à signer un
  partenariat cadre avec Microsoft[1], tournant le dos à plusieurs années d’efforts d’associations, d’élus et de citoyens pour
  ouvrir à Paris une alternative à l’éditeur hégémonique.

  S’inscrivant dans le décevant et bien lacunaire bilan de la mandature en matière de Technologies de l’Information et de
  la Communication, singulièrement dans son aspect d’ouverture aux Logiciels Libres, cette décision est une mauvaise
  nouvelle. Mauvaise nouvelle pour ceux qui tentent depuis sept ans d’initier la migration de la Ville vers des solutions
  ouvertes et interopérables, dont chacun sait aujourd’hui qu’ils sont une alternative de grande qualité, à très moindres
  couts et relocalisant l’emploi. Mais également mauvaise nouvelle pour tou-te-s les parisien-ne-s, qui n’ont rien à
  gagner dans la dépendance ainsi entretenue, ni dans leur vie quotidienne ni dans l’utilisation des finances publiques.

  En réalité ce partenariat est triplement néfaste :

  1. Il tourne le dos à l’innovation. Alors que des Villes (Munich, Rennes, Vienne, Vandoeuvre…) des
  administrations centrales françaises (Assemblée nationale, gendarmerie nationale, ministères…) et des pays
  entiers (Perou, Vénezuela, Italie, Chine, Bresil, Japon, Finlande, Suisse, Portugual…) font le choix du Libre,
  Paris donne une image enfermée et perméable aux lobbies. Pourtant Paris avait démontré, avec la mise sous
  licence Libre du logiciel de référence Lutece[2], qu’elle est capable d’utiliser et même de produire des logiciels
  libres de qualité. Seul le manque de volonté politique est un frein au déploiement d’une administration
  électronique utilisant les logiciels libres qui ont très largement démontré leur supériorité informatique et
  sociale dans de nombreux secteurs clés.

  2. Il entretient une dépendance artificielle des utilisateurs (citoyens et PME) vis-a-vis des choix non
  interopérables et inutilement onéreux de l’éditeur hégémonique. Pourtant des retours d’expérience comme
  l’Espace Public Numérique du XIIIe arrondissement[3], 100% Logiciels Libres, montrent que cette dépendance
  est inutile et contre productive : en trois ans, l’EPN Libre a accueilli 25.000 visiteurs, réalise 31.000 heures de
  formations par an à plus de 2.500 inscrits, en partenariat avec une dizaine de structures associatives ou
  institutionnelles locales, le tout sans besoin de partenariat autres que ceux passé avec les communautés du
  Logiciel Libre. Si l’on veut lutter réellement contre la fracture numérique, pourquoi entretenir l’illusion de la
  nécessité d’un cout supplémentaire artificiel de centaines d’euros par ordinateurs là où les Logiciels Libres
  font mieux et moins chers ?

  3. Il donne un signal prescripteur désastreux pour d’autres collectivités territoriales et gaspille
  l’argent public. L’effet d’exemple recherché par Microsoft entretient l’illusion marketing. Alors que de
  nombreux élus parisiens ont fait de l’utilisation et de la promotion des Logiciels Libres un exemple de mode
  de production alternatif aux monopoles du capitalisme informationnel, comme dans le XIIIe ou dans le IIe où
  certains postes ont commencé à migrer[4], la Ville poursuit dans la rente logicielle, dépensant inutilement. Car
  les quelques dizaines de milliers d’euros offerts ici seront vite repris là, dans les dizaine de millions utilisés
  pour entretenir le parc de 17.000 PC sous Windows de la Ville par exemple[5].

  Triste ironie politique, c’est sous la houlette d’un gouvernement plutôt critique à l’égard du Logiciel Libre (Lois DADVSI
  et LCEN, abandon du RGI, partenariat Microsoft-INRIA, mission Olivennes…) qu’un rapport vient d’être remis
  préconisant au contraire de “Promouvoir la concurrence entre les logiciels propriétaires et les logiciels libres dans les
  appels d’offres, notamment publics”[6]… et c’est dans une ville de gauche que Microsoft renforce sa présence.
  Pour trouver sa place de ville numérique parmi les grandes capitales européenne, en faisant la démonstration de sa
  compréhension des enjeux et des atouts des TICs, Paris doit non seulement prendre un temps d’avance mais rattraper
  sept ans de retard. En aucun cas, l’évolution technique, pratique et politique profonde que cela nécessite ne sera
  facilitée par l’inféodation aux éditeurs hégémoniques.
  Nous demandons au Maire de Paris de revenir sur ce partenariat, et invitons chacun-e à lui faire part de
  son soutien à la Liberté Logicielle, l’innovation, l’indépendance de Paris, la maitrise de l’argent public.

  Premiers signataires :

  Jérôme Relinger, adjoint (PCF) au Maire du 13e arrondissement chargé des TICs
  Jean-Christophe Frachet, conseiller d’arrondissement (MRC) du 2e arrondissement
  RAS – Réseau Associatif et syndical - Paris
  NetAktiv – Société de Services en Logiciels Libres – Paris
  Nexedi - éditeur de logiciels libres – Paris
  Pilto System - Société de Services en Logiciels Libres – Paris
  Toonux - Intégration de solutions Open Source & référencement – Paris

  [1] Bertrand Delanoë et Bill Gates signeront ce “partenariat très ambitieux” le mardi 29 janvier à 10h30
  [2] http://fr.lutece.paris.fr/fr/jsp/site/Portal.jsp
  [3] http://www.espaces-libres.net
  [4] http://www.journaldunet.com/solutions/0410/041027_3questions_mairie13.shtm
  [5]http://www.01net.com/editorial/285467/paris-prend-son-temps-pour-passer-au-logiciel-libre
  [6] Rapport de la Commission Attali, décision n°58

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=468&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=467&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=467&langswitch_lang=en#comments Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:30:08 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=467 According to Reporters without borders:

  Shock at beating death of executive who filmed police violence with mobile phone

  Reporters Without Borders is appalled by the way a construction company executive, Wei Wenhua, was beaten to death by municipal law enforcement officers known as “chengguan” in Tianmen, in the province of Hubei, on 7 January when he used his mobile phone camera to film them in a violent clash with protesters.

  “We are horrified by the readiness of the local authorities to trample on the freedom of information and expression,” the press freedom organisation said. “There was no justification for this behaviour. Wei is the first ‘citizen journalist’ to die in China because of what he was trying to film. He was beaten to death for doing something which is becoming more and more common and which was a way to expose law enforcement officers who keep on overstepping the limits.”

  Reporters Without Borders added: “This tragedy shows how the Chinese authority flout freedom of expression every day. They go after anyone who might be ready to report something that is newsworthy. We will ensure that this news item gets reported.”

  His family and the state news agency Xinhua said Wei, 43, filmed a group of about 50 “chengguan” in the process of dispersing demonstrators who were protesting against waste-dumping in their neighbourhood. When the “chengguan” realised they were being filmed, they attacked and beat Wei for several minutes before calling an ambulance. He died on the way to hospital. Witnesses said five other people were hospitalised.

  Tainmen deputy mayor Wang Faliang admitted at a news conference yesterday that the “chengguan” were responsible for Wei’s death and said 50 people had been assigned to investigate the case. Twenty-four “chengguan” were arrested and charged and four are still being held.

  According to an official report, the investigators recovered Wei’s mobile phone but the video he shot had been deleted.

  An attempt to redefine the role of the “chengguan” was already under way in measures that took effect on 1 January, as this was not the first time their violent behaviour has embarrassed the authorities. According to the US-based news website Boxun, they often inflict injuries when dispersing demonstrators and were responsible for three deaths in 2007.

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=467&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=465&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=465&langswitch_lang=en#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:16:34 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=465 La commission de la culture et de l’éducation du parlement européen s’apprête à voter un projet de rapport [1] sur les industries culturelles dans le cadre de la stratégie de Lisbonne.

  Des amendements [2] reprenant les mesures de la mission Olivennes [3] viennent d’être déposés.

  Nous avons donc transmis le message suivant aux députés européens de la commission culture [4] :
  
  Organisation française de défense des libertés civiles numériques, la Ligue Odebi, qui avait déjà exposé sa position à la mission Olivennes[5], attire l’attention des membres de la commission culture sur la nécessité de rejeter certains amendements au projet de rapport sur les industries culturelles:

  - Concernant l’extension des mesures Olivennes aux autres états membres : désabonnement et filtrage.
  (amendement 80)

  Désabonnement:

  L’accès à internet permet aujourd’hui l’accès à de nombreux services publics ou administratifs, de santé, ou d’éducation. Désabonner un citoyen revient par conséquent à le déchoir de son statut de citoyen numérique : cette sanction est disproportionnée.
  En pratique, un désabonnement concerne tout un foyer, et non pas une seule personne : Aucune démocratie ne sanctionne tous les membres d’une famille.
  Pour être efficace, le dispositif nécessite de créer un fichier national des désabonnés, donc en pratique un fichier national des familles présumées coupables de contrefaçon.
  En France, ces désabonnements pourront être décidés par une autorité parallèle à la justice: les citoyens seront donc sanctionnés sans avoir été jugés par un juge indépendant et impartial.

  Filtrage:

  Le déploiement à grande échelle de dispositifs de filtrage est couteux, ralentit le réseau, et est contournable. Le partage d’oeuvres est une pratique très largement répandue: il continuera sous d’autres formes. Par exemple, ce partage pourrait se faire par mail : est-il sérieusement envisageable qu’une démocratie surveille les correspondances privées?
  Une fois mis en place sur les réseaux, ces outils de filtrage pourraient très rapidement être utilisés à des fins de censure: le fait est que les lois de répression voient leur portée et leur durée s’élargir avec le temps, que ce soit pour des raisons politiques ou sécuritaires, ou sous la pression de certains lobbies. [6]
  A ce jour, seuls les pays insensibles aux droits de l’homme filtrent et censurent internet. Internet est sans doute l’un des derniers ‘médias’ libres: il est fondamentalement important pour nos démocraties qu’il le reste.
  Durant la campagne présidentielle, notre organisation a demandé [7] aux candidats de préciser ou exposer leurs programmes internet: Marie-George Buffet[8], François Bayrou[9], Jean-Marie Le Pen[10], José Bové[11], et Ségolène Royal [12] ont à cette occasion tous rejeté le filtrage.
  Enfin, le filtrage est promu par des intérêts multiples, dont certains sont inquiétants: en France, le ministère de l’éducation a ainsi signé un contrat avec Optenet, une société fournissant des dispositifs de filtrage, et qui est dirigée par un membre de l’Opus Dei. [13]

  - Concernant les campagnes “d’éducation” des plus jeunes à la propriété intellectuelle.
  (amendements 81 83 88)

  La volonté d’organiser de telles campagnes date du green paper [14] de l’administration Clinton. Ce point a été confirmé dans un white paper [15] à l’origine du DMCA, de la directive EUCD, et de la loi DADVSI en France. Les industries culturelles font pression sans relâche pour obtenir ces campagnes [16], en particulier dès le plus jeunes âge dans les établissements scolaires. De telles campagnes ont été organisées en France, et dénoncées par les associations, et au parlement. Aujourd’hui encore, le site du Forum des Droits sur Internet menace les enfants d’aller en prison dès l’âge de 13 ans s’ils téléchargent des oeuvres.[17]
  L’école n’est pas pas faite pour relayer les campagnes de défense des intérêts économiques des industries culturelles.

  - Concernant la suppression de cette partie du considérant 9 : “attire à ce sujet l’attention des États membres sur le fait que la criminalisation des consommateurs pour combattre le piratage numérique n’est pas la bonne solution;”
  (amendements 69 70 72 75 78 79)

  La répression massive des échanges n’est pas pertinente: aucune étude n’a réussi à démontrer que les échanges étaient la cause de la baisse des ventes de certaines oeuvres. Economiquement, cette répression pousserait de nombreux internautes à ne plus acheter d’oeuvres à des industries ayant demandé et obtenu la criminalisation des échanges alors que d’autres solutions sont possibles.
  Historiquement, le droit de diffuser des oeuvres s’est ouvert à des acteurs de plus en plus nombreux: empêcher que ce droit s’étende aux internautes ne servirait qu’à renforcer des monopoles de diffusion.

  [1]
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/pr/684/684266/684266en.pdf
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/pr/684/684266/684266fr.pdf

  [2]
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/am/696/696239/696239en.pdf
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/am/696/696239/696239fr.pdf

  [3]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460

  [4]
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/membersCom.do?language=EN&body=CULT
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/membersCom.do?language=FR&body=CULT

  [5]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=453
  http://www.agoravox.fr/article.php3?id_article=30433
  http://odebi.org/docs/CargoKult.pdf
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460

  [6]
  http://www.odebi.org/pe-hijack/CMBAletterITRE22Nov05.pdf
  http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com/index.php/The_recording_industry_calls_for_data_retention_for_infringers
  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39238832,00.htm?r=1
  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39238422,00.htm

  [7]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=244
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?page_id=240

  [8]
  “Inefficace, le filtrage par défaut est également cher. Le délégué général de l’Association des fournisseurs d’accès et de services Internet (AFA), qui parle d’un « sentiment illusoire de sécurité », note qu’imposer ces mesures aura un coût pour les fournisseurs d’accès, et mènerait inévitablement à une augmentation de 30 à 50 % du prix des abonnements. On ne voit pourtant pas pourquoi les internautes français devraient payer pour des contenus illicites publiés dans des pays étrangers. En réalité, derrière le faux nez de la protection des mineurs pointe surtout la gueule du marché des loisirs.”

  [9]
  “Le juge ne saurait en revanche, à mon avis, prescrire aux fournisseurs d’accès internet le filtrage de certains contenus ; serait-il raisonnable de réglementer dans ce sens, alors que certaines techniques de cryptage peuvent empêcher le fournisseur d’accès de connaître la nature du contenu auquel accède l’internaute ?”

  [10]
  “Pour conclure, les multiples mécanismes de défense que l’on vient de voir (de la labellisation au filtrage aux frontières, de la loi DADVSI à la mise en cause des hébergeurs), et qui sont autant d’atteintes à la liberté, traduisent la peur du « système » devant l’explosion d’Internet et la prise de parole des Français face aux grands médias ; nous, au contraire, nous nous en réjouissons.”

  [11]
  “Seuls des pays peu respectueux de la démocratie demandent le filtrage d’internet par les fournisseurs d’accès : il est incompréhensible que ce procédé puisse être utilisé en France. Il faudra modifier la loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique pour supprimer cette disposition téléguidée par des multinationales.”

  [12]
  “La majorité UMP a ajouté des mesures de filtrage qui ne figurent pas dans la directive.
  Le filtrage du contenu n’est ni souhaitable, ni réaliste. Sur l’Internet, les contenus peuvent être déplacés en quelques secondes d’une machine à l’autre, d’un point à l’autre du globe.”

  [13]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=418
  http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/medias/253766.FR.php
  http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/medias/253767.FR.php
  http://investigation.blog.lemonde.fr/2005/01/17/2005_01_lordre_moral_la/
  http://www.prevensectes.com/rev0007.htm#4
  http://aliquid.free.fr/spip.php?article3446

  [14]
  http://www.ifla.org/documents/infopol/copyright/intlprop.txt
  ” Effective education of the public about intellectual property rights is crucial to the successful development of the NII. [...]
  Perhaps the best places to start will be the schools, where millions of children will be connected to the NII.”
  http://www.odebi.org/dadvsi/LeDADvSIpourlesnuls.html

  [15]
  http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/ipnii.pdf

  [16]
  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/mpaa.html
  “The program presents a ‘tremendously one-sided view of copyright,’ says Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There’s no balance; it’s entirely corporate driven. If anything, it’s an exercise in how efficiently you can brainwash students.”

  http://p2pnet.net/story/3011
  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/05/uk_school_copyright_lessons/print.html
  http://www.emcaweb.net/about.html
  “EMCA is launching the European Copyright Awareness Week , an educational event targeted to students from elementary to middle schools that will be held in each European nation by developing a cohesive, concerted and coordinated copyright awareness didactic program to be used in the classrooms of all European countries.”

  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=61

  [17]
  http://www.odebi.org/docs/teenjail.gif (screenshot)
  http://www.foruminternet.org/particuliers/fiches-pratiques/juniors….html

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=465&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=464&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=464&langswitch_lang=en#comments Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:12:20 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=464 The Committee on Culture and Education of the European Parliament is preparing to vote on a draft report basis [1] about cultural industries in the context of the Lisbon strategy.

  Some amendments [2] taking again the main guidelines of the Olivennes mission [3] have just been registered.

  As a matter of fact, we have sent the following message to MEPs of the culture committee [4]:
  
  French organization of civil digital rights, Odebi League, which had already stated its position about the Olivennes mission [5], would like to draw the attention of the Culture Committee members regarding the need to reject some amendments of the draft report regarding the culture industries:

  - Concerning the extension of Olivennes measures to other state members : unsubscribing and filtering.
  (Amendment 80)

  Unsubscribing:

  Today, access to the internet allows an access to many public services or administrative, health and education. Unsubscribing a citizen is the same as cancelling his digital citizen rights: the punishment is disproportionated.
  In fact, unsubscribing concerns the entire family, and not only one person: There is no democracy that can punish all members of a family.
  In order to be efficient, this device needs to create a national register of unsubscribers, and in fact, a national register of every families guilty of infringement.
  In France, these cancellations will be decided by a parallel authority of justice: people will be punished without having been judged by an independent and impartial court.

  Filtering:

  The large-scale deployment of filtering technologies is expensive, it slows down the network, and can be hijacked. Sharing works is a very widespread practice: it will continue in other forms. For example, the sharing could be done by e-mail: Is it conceivable that a democracy could seriously monitor all private correspondence?
  Once implemented to the networks, these filtering tools could very quickly be used for censorship purposes: the fact is these laws of repression could see their scope and duration widening over time, whether for political or security reasons, or under the pressure of some lobbies. [6]
  At the moment, only countries insensitive to human rights filter and censor the Internet. The Internet is undoubtedly one of the last free ‘media’: it is fundamentally important that it remains free for our democracies.
  During the presidential campaign, our organization has asked [7] the candidates to clarify or explain their internet programs: Marie-George Buffet [8], Francois Bayrou, [9] Jean-Marie Le Pen [10], José Bové [11] , and Royal [12] and all have rejected this filtering.
  Finally, filtering is promoted by multiple interests, some of which are disturbing: in France, the Ministry of Education has signed a contract with Optenet, a company providing filtering devices, and which is headed by a member of the ‘Opus Dei. [13]

  - Regarding the campaigns of “education” for teenagers to the intellectual property.
  (Amendments 81 83 88)

  The desire to organize such campaigns dates from the “green paper” [14] of the Clinton administration. This point was confirmed in a “white paper” [15] at the origin of the DMCA, the EUCD directive, and the DADVSI law in France. Cultural industries are lobbying very hard in order to get these campaigns [16], especially concerning the teenagers in schools. Such campaigns were organized in France and denounced by associations and within the parliament. Today, the site “Forum des Droits sur Internet” threatens children of emprisonment from the age of 13 if they are downloading copyrighted files. [17]
  The aim of school is not to relay advocacy of economic interests of the culture industries.

  - Regarding the deletion of this part of the point 9 of the motion: “draws
  Member States’ attention on this point to the fact that criminalising consumers so as to combat digital piracy is not the right solution;”
  (Amendments 69 70 72 75 78 79)

  The massive repression of files sharing is irrelevant: no study succeeded to demonstrate that these exchanges were responsible for the decline in sales of certain artwork. Economically, this repression would lead many users to stop buying artwork to the industries which have asked for criminalization of sharing while other solutions are possible.
  Historically, the right to publish work is offered to more and more actors today: preventing the extension of this right to the Internet would only help to reinforce the diffusion monopoly.

  [1]
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/pr/684/684266/684266en.pdf
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/pr/684/684266/684266fr.pdf

  [2]
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/am/696/696239/696239en.pdf
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/am/696/696239/696239fr.pdf

  [3]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460

  [4]
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/membersCom.do?language=EN&body=CULT
  http://www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/committees/membersCom.do?language=FR&body=CULT

  [5]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=453
  http://www.agoravox.fr/article.php3?id_article=30433
  http://odebi.org/docs/CargoKult.pdf
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460

  [6]
  http://www.odebi.org/pe-hijack/CMBAletterITRE22Nov05.pdf
  http://wiki.dataretentionisnosolution.com/index.php/The_recording_industry_calls_for_data_retention_for_infringers
  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39238832,00.htm?r=1
  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/itmanagement/0,1000000308,39238422,00.htm

  [7]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=244
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?page_id=240

  [8]
  “Inefficace, le filtrage par défaut est également cher. Le délégué général de l’Association des fournisseurs d’accès et de services Internet (AFA), qui parle d’un « sentiment illusoire de sécurité », note qu’imposer ces mesures aura un coût pour les fournisseurs d’accès, et mènerait inévitablement à une augmentation de 30 à 50 % du prix des abonnements. On ne voit pourtant pas pourquoi les internautes français devraient payer pour des contenus illicites publiés dans des pays étrangers. En réalité, derrière le faux nez de la protection des mineurs pointe surtout la gueule du marché des loisirs.”

  [9]
  “Le juge ne saurait en revanche, à mon avis, prescrire aux fournisseurs d’accès internet le filtrage de certains contenus ; serait-il raisonnable de réglementer dans ce sens, alors que certaines techniques de cryptage peuvent empêcher le fournisseur d’accès de connaître la nature du contenu auquel accède l’internaute ?”

  [10]
  “Pour conclure, les multiples mécanismes de défense que l’on vient de voir (de la labellisation au filtrage aux frontières, de la loi DADVSI à la mise en cause des hébergeurs), et qui sont autant d’atteintes à la liberté, traduisent la peur du « système » devant l’explosion d’Internet et la prise de parole des Français face aux grands médias ; nous, au contraire, nous nous en réjouissons.”

  [11]
  “Seuls des pays peu respectueux de la démocratie demandent le filtrage d’internet par les fournisseurs d’accès : il est incompréhensible que ce procédé puisse être utilisé en France. Il faudra modifier la loi pour la confiance dans l’économie numérique pour supprimer cette disposition téléguidée par des multinationales.”

  [12]
  “La majorité UMP a ajouté des mesures de filtrage qui ne figurent pas dans la directive.
  Le filtrage du contenu n’est ni souhaitable, ni réaliste. Sur l’Internet, les contenus peuvent être déplacés en quelques secondes d’une machine à l’autre, d’un point à l’autre du globe.”

  [13]
  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=418
  http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/medias/253766.FR.php
  http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/medias/253767.FR.php
  http://investigation.blog.lemonde.fr/2005/01/17/2005_01_lordre_moral_la/
  http://www.prevensectes.com/rev0007.htm#4
  http://aliquid.free.fr/spip.php?article3446

  [14]
  http://www.ifla.org/documents/infopol/copyright/intlprop.txt
  ” Effective education of the public about intellectual property rights is crucial to the successful development of the NII. [...]
  Perhaps the best places to start will be the schools, where millions of children will be connected to the NII.”
  http://www.odebi.org/dadvsi/LeDADvSIpourlesnuls.html

  [15]
  http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/doc/ipnii/ipnii.pdf

  [16]
  http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/mpaa.html
  “The program presents a ‘tremendously one-sided view of copyright,’ says Wendy Seltzer, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “There’s no balance; it’s entirely corporate driven. If anything, it’s an exercise in how efficiently you can brainwash students.”

  http://p2pnet.net/story/3011
  http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/08/05/uk_school_copyright_lessons/print.html
  http://www.emcaweb.net/about.html
  “EMCA is launching the European Copyright Awareness Week , an educational event targeted to students from elementary to middle schools that will be held in each European nation by developing a cohesive, concerted and coordinated copyright awareness didactic program to be used in the classrooms of all European countries.”

  http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=61

  [17]
  http://www.odebi.org/docs/teenjail.gif (screenshot)
  http://www.foruminternet.org/particuliers/fiches-pratiques/juniors….html

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=464&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=463&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=463&langswitch_lang=en#comments Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:52:38 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=463 Reporters sans frontières vient de communiquer son bilan 2007.
  Concernant internet, RSF fournit des chiffres inquiétants pour la liberté d’expression:

  Plus de 2600 sites et blogs censurés

  Des gouvernements comme la Chine, la Birmanie ou la Syrie tentent de faire du Web un Intranet, un réseau limité aux seuls échanges à l’intérieur du pays, entre les personnes dûment autorisées. Au moins 2676 sites Internet ont été fermés ou suspendus dans le monde en 2007. La majorité de ces sites étaient des forums de discussion.

  La censure la plus forte a eu lieu avant et pendant le 17e Congrès du Parti communiste chinois. Quelque 2500 sites, blogs et forums ont été interdits en quelques semaines. La Syrie s’est également illustrée en bloquant plus d’une centaine de sites et de services Internet en fin d’année 2007. Le réseau social Facebook, le service d’e-mail Hotmail ainsi que le logiciel de téléphonie Skype, sont inaccessibles. Tous trois sont accusés par le gouvernement de Damas d’avoir été infiltrés par les services secrets israéliens.

  En octobre 2007, pendant les manifestations des moines birmans, la junte militaire de Rangoon a tenté de tarir le flot d’informations qui sortaient du pays via Internet, en coupant purement et simplement l’accès à la Toile. Des sites critiques envers le régime, la censure s’est étendue à tous les moyens de communication : caméras, appareils photo, téléphones portables, etc.

  La réaction de Reporters sans frontières :

  “Dans certains pays, Internet est désormais autant censuré que la presse traditionnelle. La Chine est le plus grand censeur du Web sur la planète. La cyberpolice fait preuve d’un zèle inquiétant avant chaque événement politique d’ampleur. En 2007, c’est au cours des mois qui ont précédé l’ouverture du Congrès du Parti communiste chinois que les censeurs ont été les plus actifs. Environ 2500 sites et blogs, dont un grand nombre étaient de nature politique, ont été rendus inaccessibles.”

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=463&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=461&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=461&langswitch_lang=en#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2007 08:59:52 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=461 Le communiqué du PCF:

  Tout pour les marchands de disque, des miettes pour les artistes, rien pour les internautes. Le tout sur fond de vide économique et d’écoutes intrusives.
  

  
  

  Mandater le PDG de la FNAC pour proposer des mesures destinées à réprimer les échanges PeerToPeer relevait déjà du choix assumé de faire du « marché » le juge et partie de l’intérêt collectif. Le gouvernement choisit la fuite en avant plutôt que d’assumer l’échec de DADVSI.

  Il est ainsi préconisé la création d’une police privée de l’internet, qui pourra saisir les fournisseurs d’accès à internet afin que ces derniers prennent des sanctions contre les internautes, allant jusqu’à la résiliation du contrat. Plus besoin de juge, d’avocat, de tribunaux, les intérêts privés diront le droit et appliqueront les sanctions, appuyés par la délation grâce à un vaste système d’écoute électronique. Pour cela, le filtrage de l’internet est envisagé à grande échelle. Par l’alliance du répressif et du marketing, la société de Nicolas Sarkozy enfante un monstre liberticide.

  Les artistes et les internautes, donc leur public, sont tous les deux perdants. Il est temps de dissiper l’amalgame entretenu par les industriels entre leur propre intérêt et celui de la création culturelle. L’intérêt des artistes est le dernier soucis des majors, qui se partagent à cinq 80% du marché de distribution de musique, et qui gonflent leurs marges avant tout par la diminution de la part reversée aux artistes : sur les 99 centimes du prix de vente d’un morceau sur une plate-forme commerciale en ligne, les ayants-droits en touchent moins de 3.

  Dans son dernier livre, M. Olivennes déclarait : « la culture est un objet de commerce ». Cette conception doit cesser de guider l’action publique. Il faut bouleverser les fonctionnements archaïques de l’industrie culturelle remis en cause par la dématérialisation des supports. On ne peut continuer à stigmatiser les internautes comme autant de délinquants numériques en puissance, on ne peut abandonner la rémunération juste des artistes aux lois du marché.

  Réaffirmons les biens culturels comme des biens communs et non des marchandises. Réaffirmons le rôle de la puissance publique comme vecteur décisif de la circulation des oeuvres culturelles et de la juste rémunération des artistes : créons une plate-forme publique du téléchargement !

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=461&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460&langswitch_lang=en#comments Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:50:49 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=460 La Ligue ODEBI appelle l’ensemble des internautes à prendre conscience des graves dangers que font peser les accords signés par les professionnels de l’internet et les industries culturelles sur les droits et libertés des français:

  En substance, les accords comportent les points suivants:
  Mise en place d’un système de riposte graduée à l’encontre des téléchargeurs, avec fermeture de leur accès à internet, soit une privation de droits civiques numériques, et qui plus est privation de ces droits pour toute une famille dans le cas d’un accès unique à internet pour un foyer donné, sanctionnant par là même des personnes innocentes.
  
  Cette sanction disproportionnée est d’autant plus inacceptable que ce pouvoir de sanction sera confié à une autorité parallèle à la justice. L’ajout de dernière minute au texte d’une mention indiquant l’intervention d’un juge prétendument pour “garantir les droits et libertés individuels” n’est que de la poudre aux yeux. En effet, l’accord prévoit explicitement que l’autorité pourra se passer du juge pour infliger des sanctions :”En cas de constatation d’un renouvellement du manquement, elle prendra, ou saisira le juge en vue de prendre, des sanctions à l’encontre du titulaire de l’abonnement, allant de l’interruption de l’accès à Internet à la résiliation du contrat Internet ;”

  C’est donc une véritable justice parallèle qui serait instaurée au profit des industries culturelles: non seulement cette autorité aurait le pouvoir de juger et sanctionner les internautes, mais en plus elle aurait le pouvoir de sanctionner les FAI qui n’appliqueraient pas avec diligence les désabonnements.

  De leur côté, les pouvoirs publics constitueront un fichier national des désabonnées, soit en pratique un véritable casier judiciaire familial.

  Toutes ces mesures nécessitent au préalable que le gouvernement propose un projet de loi destiné à déterminer quelle sera l’autorité en charge de cette riposte graduée, soit une loi DADVSI2: ODEBI appelle tous les internautes et l’opposition parlementaire à se mobiliser contre ces projets de mesures liberticides.

  En revanche, s’agissant du filtrage - qui pourrait porter atteinte au secret des correspondances privées (surveillance des courriels ou des messageries instantanées utilisés dans le cercle familial) - la Ligue dénonce avec la plus grande fermeté la modification de dernière minute apportée au texte des accords: le projet initial prévoyait que le début de l’expérimentation devait avoir lieu “dans un délai qui ne pourra pas excéder 24 mois à compter de la mise en place de l’autorité”, soit après l’examen par le parlement d’une loi DADVSI2. Or cette date butoir a été modifiée dans la version finale des accords qui prévoit que l’expérimentation du filtrage devra débuter “dans un délai qui ne pourra excéder 24 mois à compter de la signature du présent accord”. Cette façon d’évacuer le débat législatif est un véritable déni de démocratie.

  La Ligue appelle tous ceux pour qui compte la démocratie à prendre conscience du grave danger que constitue la mise en oeuvre d’une infrastructure de filtrage de l’internet français, en particulier dans un contexte de contrôle généralisé des médias. En ouvrant la boîte de Pandore du filtrage, la France vient d’envoyer un signal clair aux dictatures qui s’adonnent à la censure de l’internet, autant dire un blanc seing : pourquoi ces pays-là se gêneraient-ils pour filtrer internet si même le pays des droits de l’homme le fait?

  A lire: position présentée par Odebi à la mission Olivennes
  Communiqué 15-10-2007:Mission Olivennes : La Ligue ODEBI dément le consensus allégué par le ministère de la Culture, et publie l’intégralité de sa position.
  Communiqué 21-11-2007: Odebi met en garde Chantal Albanel et Denis Olivennes

  ]]> http://www.odebi.org/new2/?feed=rss2&p=460&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=459&langswitch_lang=en http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=459&langswitch_lang=en#comments Thu, 22 Nov 2007 18:53:00 +0000 Odebi http://www.odebi.org/new2/?p=459 Le parti pirate français vient de diffuser ce communiqué:

  

  France is about to filter internet content according to music and cinema majors’ request.
  We strongly oppose to the filtering of Internet content, either when the majors ask it, or when the european commissioner Frattini does.
  French government asked the CEO of FNAC, France biggest CD and DVD retail chain owned by the PPR* Group, to propose repressive measures against P2P file-sharing.
  By accepting this mission, FNAC’s CEO (Denis Olivennes) took a strong position against freedom of the internet users.
  We alert every Pirate Party around the globe about the measures that France is about to take and that could be taken as well in other european countries :
  - filtering of internet content.
  - creation of an independant authority, parallel to justice, able to terminate internet access of users, and to punish any ISP that wouldn’t comply.
  - creation of a national directory of such “terminated” users.
  We therefore call every internet user to boycott products from the majors and from any company attacking our freedom.

  La France est sur le point d’imposer un filtrage de l’internet à la demande des majors de la musique et du cinéma.
  Nous nous opposons au filtrage de l’internet, que ce soit à la demande des majors ou à la demande du commissaire européen Frattini.
  Le gouvernement français a demandé au PDG de la FNAC, une société du groupe PPR, qui vend des CD et DVD, de proposer des mesures destinées à réprimer les échanges P2P.
  En acceptant cette mission, le PDG de la FNAC (Denis Olivennes) a pris parti contre les libertés des internautes.
  Nous alertons l’ensemble des Partis Pirates à travers le monde sur les mesures que la France s’apprête à prendre, et qui pourraient être reprises dans d’autres pays européens:
  - filtrage de l’internet.
  - création d’une autorité parallèle à la justice qui aurait le pouvoir de faire désabonner les internautes, et de sanctionner les FAI qui ne lui obéiraient pas.
  - création d’un fichier national des internautes désabonnés.
  Nous appelons donc l’ensemble des internautes à boycotter les produits des majors, et de toute société qui porterait atteinte à nos libertés.

  ——
  * PPR= Pinault Printemps Redoute: FNAC, Puma, Gucci, Stella Mc Cartney, Yves Saint Laurent, Balenciaga, Boucheron, Sergio Rossi, Conforama, La Redoute

  lire l’article de pcinpact:
  La mission Olivennes fait renaître le Parti Pirate Français
  Une riposte non graduée

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