Turkey Arrests Journalists For Using Encryption

An anonymous reader sends news that three employees of Vice News were arrested in Turkey because one of them used an encryption system on his personal computer. That particular type of encryption has been used by the terrorist organization known as the Islamic State, so the men were charged with "engaging in terrorist activity." The head of a local lawyers association said, "I find it ridiculous that they were taken into custody. I don't believe there is any accuracy to what they are charged for. To me, it seems like an attempt by the government to get international journalists away from the area of conflict." The Turkish government denied these claims: "This is an unpleasant incident, but the judiciary is moving forward with the investigation independently and, contrary to claims, the government has no role in the proceedings."

Comments

Another technology to be avoided

[cartesius]

"the Casio F-91W digital watch was declared to be 'the sign of al-Qaeda' and a contributing factor to continued detention of prisoners by the analysts stationed at GuantÃnamo Bay." from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

That's British English, not US. Parliamentary syst

[raymorris]

That's the British sense of the word "government", not the US sense of the word. Turkey, like many nations, has a parliamentary system.

It goes something like this. The people elect parliament, who make laws much like the US Congress. The parliament then elects or nominates two heads. One handles foreign affairs. That's the head of state. In the US, the president is head of state. The other top person forms "a government" which handles internal affairs. The US is weird in that then president is both head of state and head of government. In parliamentary systems like Turkey and the UK, they are two seperate positions. (Though sometimes the head of state now has only nominal power, if the head of government and the parliament have slowly taken more and more power).

Seperate from "the government" and parliament is the judiciary. The head of government can't fire judges.

In this type of system, as in the early US system, the head of government doesn't have nearly as much power as the US president does. Other branches can and do act independently.

Re:having lived in Turkey

[Zontar The Mindless]

Turkey has a member of NATO since 1952. They joined before (West) Germany did.

Turkey is in both Asia and Europe. It can control entry to the Black Sea (which contains the Crimea).

NATO called the *North Atlantic* Treaty Organisation because the North Atlantic is what lies between Europe and North America.

Really, if you did too many 'shrooms at school, you can find out all this stuff now with about 10 minutes on Wikipedia.