New Sanctions To Target Syrian and Iranian Tech Capacity

vivIsel writes "This morning, President Obama is set to unveil a new executive order that will allow the U.S. to specifically target sanctions against individuals, companies or countries who use technology to enable human rights abuse. Especially as repressive regimes more effectively monitor their dissidents online (rather than simply blocking access), the sanctions focus on companies that help them do that."

Comments

TSA

[Anonymous Coward]

Now if only they'd use that on the TSA

Re:TSA

[durrr]

you mean the USA

Pot, kettle

[Anonymous Coward]

So when do the sanctions roll out against ourselves? I'd say "repressive regime" that "monitors dissidents" applies directly to the US, no?

Re:Pot, kettle

[evanism]

Bingo. The USA is the bad guys in too many peoples eyes. Time for a little self reflection.

Re:Pot, kettle

[i kan reed]

So, do you oppose the sanctions on the grounds that they're hypocritical, then? Or are you just happy that you can point out the hypocrisy?

Re:Pot, kettle

[ArcherB]

Bingo. The USA is the bad guys in too many peoples eyes. Time for a little self reflection.

Says the guy openly criticizing the USA with absolutely no fear for his safety or the safety of his family as a result.

Re:Pot, kettle

[evanism]

Sorry, i dont understand your points. Are you suggesting that mearly commenting on a chat board implies freedom? Or are you suggesting that the NSA has ONLY harvested this information and added my dissidence to its profile on me, and not used it against me YET, is a form of freedom?

Freedom is freedom FROM government, not freedom OF government.

Critisism of ones government does not imply freedom, nor necessarily its ability to act against you... Yet.

The worm is turning in the USA. Facism is half a goosestep away, my friend.

Re:Pot, kettle

[ScentCone]

In the 1990s sanctions against Iraq caused 1 million people to starve to death

No, Saddam Hussein caused every single one of those people to starve to death. Not least by diverting the aid meant for them, but in general by never honoring the commitments he made when he was being pushed back from his invasion of Kuwait. His regime was sanctioned because of its conduct. His people were offered food and other support, but he prevented that from being used well or at all. His continued actions in that regard were part of what motivated his final ouster from power, as eventually even the deliberately obtuse UN couldn't pretend that he wasn't starving his own people.

Re:Pot, kettle

[Uberbah]

Says the guy willfully ignorant of the fact that the U.S. has had innocent people kidnapped, tortured, or killed:

The prime minister of Canada apologized Friday to Maher Arar and agreed to give $9 million in compensation to the Canadian Arab, who was spirited by U.S. agents to Syria and tortured there after being falsely named as a terrorism suspect.

Arar, 36, a former computer engineer who was detained while changing planes at a New York airport in 2002 and imprisoned in a Syrian dungeon for 10 months, said after the announcement that he âoefeels proud as a Canadianâ

Or subjecting alleged whistleblowers to psychological torture while letting actual torturers skate.

Or singling out a documentary filmmaker for dozens of searches and seizures. A filmmaker accused of no crime, which means the harassment is purely political intimidation.

Re:Pot, kettle

[tqk]

it's not democracy, or republic, and far away from fascism yet.

Spit it out. It's (so far, dependant upon who you are) a "benevolent dictatorship", with *a lot* of the stink of fascism. They just haven't bothered to come for you yet. That "benevolent" bit can change in a heart beat however. Keep watching.

This is turning out to be a very interesting century (as in the Chinese curse - "May you live in interesting times").

Physician, heal thyself

[crazyjj]

Is this the same administration that has been falling all over itself giving retroactive immunity to telcos and other companies violating the civil rights of American citizens?

Re:Physician, heal thyself

[Anonymous Coward]

Just playing devil's advocate here:

What would the US government's response be if a small (or a significant) portion of the population resisted/rebelled against the government?

Well, the Whiskey Rebellion was put down with violence. If you say that that doesn't count because the US is democratic, well, especially early on, the US was not very democratic, and that was a feature, not a bug. In fact, it was sort of like Syria, or Iran today, with elections, but also with features designed to perpetuate an existing ruling establishment.

Second, take the Civil War, put down with hundreds of thousands of deaths, and then probable war crimes. Is Syria's war not a war between two factions in the same country, i.e., a civil war? Would Washington have taken kindly to London helping the Confederate States of America?

Finally, take the Occupy Wall Street movement, also put down violently. If Egypt had cleared out Tahrir Square claiming "health code violations", most international media would have laughed. But, in New York, it was done with a straight face.

The message just seems to it's OK if we do it, bad if they do it.

Re:Physician, heal thyself

[omfgnosis]

What would the US government's response be if a small (or a significant) portion of the population resisted/rebelled against the government?

Depends what form the resistance takes. There's a fairly large portion of the population actively resisting US policy of one kind or another, and there's a small bug significant portion of the population preparing for revolution of one kind or another. Since these are mostly impotent threats to the status quo, they're largely ignored, but with some repression to remind the resisters what the state is capable of.

Well, the Whiskey Rebellion [wikipedia.org] was put down with violence. If you say that that doesn't count because the US is democratic, well, especially early on, the US was not very democratic, and that was a feature, not a bug. [snip]

Second, take the Civil War, put down with hundreds of thousands of deaths, and then probable war crimes [wikipedia.org].

You'll note that in neither of these cases was the US a "modern megastate" which employed "technocratic repression". The US is a different beast today than it was then. I'm not saying that the US isn't capable of the kind of brutality that was employed in its history (and it certainly engages in that sort of behavior abroad), but that it's not actively engaged in that sort of brutality today. It does a disservice to the argument against hypocrisy to blur these lines.

Finally, take the Occupy Wall Street movement, also put down violently.

In some cases yes. And while a lot of that repression was awful, I still don't think it rises to the level of shelling cities which house resistance.

If Egypt had cleared out Tahrir Square claiming "health code violations", most international media would have laughed. But, in New York, it was done with a straight face.

Right. This is what I'm talking about. We have to form a better argument, because the argument that the US is like Syria isn't going to pass the laugh test. The US is certainly hypocritical here, and brutal in a lot of ways, but that doesn't mean we can be lazy with our arguments.

The message just seems to it's OK if we do it, bad if they do it.

No. My point is that if we want to undermine the spirit of hypocrisy in US foreign policy, we need to be really fucking clear about the connections we draw.

We have a much more powerful argument in saying that:

1. While the US is internally much less brutal today than it has been in the past, and than Syria is today, it always reserves the opportunity to drop the other boot, and it will if rebellion rises to the level it has in any segment of the Arab Spring.

2. While the US has often championed human rights when convenient, it has ignored them at best and fostered brutal regimes at worst, also when convenient. We should be asking questions about, for instance, Bahrain right now.

3. We know the difference between shelling cities and domestic wiretapping.

One more point of correction...

Is Syria's war not a war between two factions in the same country, i.e., a civil war?

I don't think any of the parties have described it as such. The Syrian state describes the rebellion as outside meddling in internal affairs—essentially an attempted coup. The rebels largely describe themselves as seeking regime change and democratic reform. It isn't a war at all. It's a revolution. They have some similar characteristics, but it's dangerous to say that they're the same thing.

Re:Physician, heal thyself

[jbolden]

Waco was an example of a group that had shot 4 federal agents trying to administer a court order and then refused to surrender. You don't have the right to violently resist police enforcement. You comply and after the fact sue if there were civil rights violations.

Abuses, eh?

[Khyber]

"a new executive order that will allow the U.S. to specifically target sanctions against individuals, companies or countries who use technology to enable human rights abuse"

Good, start directly with yourselves, US Gov't. You're one of the worst offenders on this fucking planet.

Governing By Executive Order

[SuperCharlie]

It is far more dangerous that we are seeing an increase in executive order being the rule of law than the content of those orders whether justifiable or not. What little influence we have as voters is nullified by this side-stepping of congress and our system of government, however flawed it may be.

Re:Governing By Executive Order

[Ihmhi]

We'll know they're serious when the President repeals the National State of Emergency that we have been in since September 2001. It has to be renewed every year and it has been renewed every year. The SoE grants the Executive Branch several hundred additional powers reserved for a state of emergency.

Which companies?

[chill]

Is that the U.S. or European company that manufactures the products? Oh, no. They don't sell to customers in embargoed countries! Hold on a sec. I see a large order of "corporate internet filtering" products for shipment to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain that needs attention. Amazing how much tech stuff those guys use!

Where was I? Oh, yes. Those nasty gray-market distributors. You know, the shell companies incorporated a couple of months ago? Yeah. Those guys are ruining it for everyone!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a large order of CALEA equipment for delivery to U.S. telecom firms to ship out. Between that and the systems on order by the U.K. and China the bonuses should be fat again this quarter!

Start at home first?

[mspohr]

They should start with the good old USA.
The NSA is currently building a huge data center to capture email, phone, sms, etc. data.
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/4/23/more_secrets_on_growing_state_surveillance
This includes an interview with hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who has volunteered for WikiLeaks and now works with Tor Project and others.

what's new?

[Tastecicles]

Since WWII the US Government has sanctioned entire economies and betold woes on those who would deal with them.

What, you want a list?

(note: this is by no means exhaustive. Just the ones that actually made the news. Source: own research)

China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Belgian Congo 1964
Guatemala 1964
Dominican Republic 1965-66
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Lebanon 1982-84
Grenada 1983-84
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1981-92
Nicaragua 1981-90
Iran 1987-88
Libya 1989
Panama 1989-90
Iraq 1991
Kuwait 1991
Somalia 1992-94
Bosnia 1995
Iran 1998
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia - Serbia 1999
Afghanistan 2001
Libya 2011

beating the drum for war against Iran

[Medievalist]

We're already sanctioning Iran because they will take Euros or Yen for oil.

This is another straw for the camel; the American public is tired of invading Middle Eastern countries to keep the price of Texas oil high, so we need them to attack us.

Blood is already in the water, the sharks are circling.

Hewlett-Packard - Israel/Palestine

[LanMan04]

Can we start with HP?

In Palestine, HP is deeply involved with the Israeli occupation. HP develops and profits from population-control systems that assist the Israeli government in the restriction of Palestinian movement, ethnic-based discrimination and segregation, and human rights violations.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/703/t/0/blastContent.jsp?email_blast_KEY=1232244
-----------------

"Through its subsidiary EDS Israel, HP is the prime contractor of the Basel system, an automated biometric access control system installed and maintained by HP in checkpoints in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt).

Another control mechanism HP is involved in is Israel's ID card system, which reflects and reinforces its political and economic asymmetries and tiered citizenship structure. HP will manufacture biometric ID cards for the citizens and residents of Israel (Jewish and Palestinians) for the Israeli Ministry of Interior. In addition, HP also provides services and technologies to the Israeli army.

Furthermore, two of HP's technological services providers in Israel are Matrix and its subsidiary, Tact Testware, which are located in the illegal West Bank settlement of Modi'in Illit. HP is also taking part in the "Smart city" project in the illegal West Bank settlement of Ariel, providing a storage system for the settlement's municipality."

Double Standards everywhere I'm afraid...

[dryriver]

When the Saudi, Bahraini or Qatari governments buy "mass-surveillance technology" by the million-load, that lets them spy on all of their citizens, its perfectly "OK". After all, the Saudis provide the U.S. with cheap oil, Bahrain is another important oil-producer, and the Qataris provide military bases from which the U.S. can launch convenient wars against "rogue states" like Iraq. But when Iran & Syria do the exact same thing - buying snooping gear from the free market to keep their population in check - they are suddenly "evil", and "decisive sanctions" have to be imposed on them, and the companies. ------ Obama, either be fair and impose those sanctions on ALL surveillance tech vendors and ALL of their middle eastern clients (and perhaps the U.S. too?), or give your Nobel Peace Prize back, and let someone take office who isn't such a "double standards wielding" hypocrit. ------- The best solution to all of this would be to ban the creation, marketing and selling of mass-surveillance systems across the entire world. But where is the leader-class that could pull this off? Nowhere. The politicians who currently lead the "free world" seem to be far too fascinated by being able to "listen to" and "track" everybody within their state borders, to ever think about abolishing this practice in the first place.

Re:Double Standards everywhere I'm afraid...

[cold fjord]

But when Iran & Syria do the exact same thing - buying snooping gear from the free market to keep their population in check - they are suddenly "evil"

No, I'm afraid you are quite wrong there, Syria and Iran have been evil regimes for quite some time. The 1982 Hama massacre is a good taste of what the Syrian regime is capable of. It also serves as an example of what the Arab & Muslim world will tolerate in silence, but when an Israeli soldier kills one Palestinian Arab suicide bomber it is decried as a massacre and war crime. Iran has long practiced state sponsored terrorism.

Israel/Palestine

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans will never see the Palestinians as victims.

Never.

The reason is simple too. They aren't. They have played the role of terrorist for so long now Americans find it difficult to separate the words Palestinian and terrorist. To be honest, the Palestinians have never given the world any reason to separate the two words either. No reasonable person believes that they want to be anything more than terrorists. If it walks, quacks and shits like a duck ... it's a duck.

Re:Hypocritical

[betterunixthanunix]

We're doing it for the right reasons, and they are doing it for the wrong reasons. See, when we do it, it is to catch people who do not support our government or who might try to start a revolution, or to track and arrest people who do things the government declares to be immoral. When they do it, it is to stay in power and promote state sponsored religion.

The difference is as clear as day.

Re:Sancations are useless

[Qzukk]

Can anyone name an international issue or conflict that was resolved by sanctions?

Any day now, Fidel Castro will see the light!

Aaaaaaaany day now.