Slashdot Mirror
Turkish Journalist Jailed For Terrorism Was Framed, Forensic Report Shows (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Turkish investigative journalist Baris Pehlivan spent 19 months in jail, accused of terrorism based on documents found on his work computer. But when digital forensics experts examined his PC, they discovered that those files were put there by someone who removed the hard drive from the case, copied the documents, and then reinstalled the hard drive. The attackers also attempted to control the journalist's machine remotely, trying to infect it using malicious email attachments and thumb drives. Among the viruses detected in his computer was an extremely rare trojan called Ahtapot, in one of the only times it's been seen in the wild. Pehlivan went to jail in February of 2011, along with six of his colleagues, after electronic evidence seized during a police raid in 2011 appeared to connect all of them to Ergenekon, an alleged armed group accused of terrorism in Turkey. A paper recently published by computer expert Mark Spencer in Digital Forensics Magazine sheds light into the case after several other reports have acknowledged the presence of malware. Spencer said no other forensics expert noticed the Ahtapot trojan in the OdaTV case, nor has determined accurately how those documents showed up on the journalist's computer. However, almost all the reports have concluded that the incriminating files were planted. "We are not guilty," Baris Pehlivan told Andrada Fiscutean via Motherboard. "The files were put into our computers by a virus and by [attackers] entering the OdaTV office secretly. None of us has seen those documents before the prosecutor showed them to us." (OdaTV is the website Pehlivan works for and "has been critical of the government and the Gulen Movement, which was accused by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan of orchestrating the recent attempted coup.") In regard to the report, senior security consultant at F-Secure, Taneli Kaivola, says, "Yes, [the report] takes an impressive level of conviction to locally attack a computer four times, and remotely attack it seven times [between January 1, 2011, and February 11, 2011], as well as a certain level of technical skill to set up the infrastructure for those attacks, which included document forgery and date and time manipulation."
Sick people!
In paranoid dictatorships like Turkey (yes, I know they have all the forms of democracy, but get serious), "terrorist" is a euphemism for "perceived opponent of the state."
The usual definition of the term -- i.e., a person or group who engages in violent acts for political effect, does not apply. Violence is not required, neither threatened nor carried out. Evidence is not required - it can either be manufactured, as apparently was the case here, or else the lack thereof is simply ignored. Actual opposition to the state is not even required - just fear by the state that the opposition might be there.
For a while it looked like Turkey would be the one exception to the rule that majority-Muslim states cannot have democracy. Apparently, that was only a brief and partial state, not a stable situation. So sad.
For the last century America has engaged in realpolitik, propping up and supporting reprehensible regimes and tyrants like in Turkey. It always backfires. Today Hillary seeks Kissinger's endorsement as a super-statesman but the long term damage he did to America's reputation and the millions killed as a result are a stain on America's reputation. http://www.alternet.org/world/... https://theintercept.com/2016/...
Please America, end the realpolitik. Spread American values. Americans are not the only people in the world who deserve rights.
Actually, democracy, as imposed by the EU, was what brought Turkey to this point. Under Kemal Mustafa Ataturk and his successors, Turkey was a military backed authoritarian regime that kept Islam on a leash. Then, when they wanted to enter the EU, Brussels told them that they had to become as democratic as the EU countries.
Problem w/ that was that while geographically, Turkey may be positioned to be a part of Europe, culturally, the Turks are not European at all: they are Islamic. Their democratic underpinnings are similar to that of their Arab and Iranian neighbors: it shows in their attitudes towards the Armenians and the Kurds. Also, under Erdogan, Turkey has been only too happy to rediscover not just its Ottoman, but also its greater Turkic past - be it Seljuk, Tatar, Khwarezmid, Timuride, Moghul... pasts. Which is fine, but it doesn't lay the groundwork of a democratic Turkey being a pluralistic society the way the EU would desire.
For a while it looked like Turkey would be the one exception to the rule that majority-Muslim states cannot have democracy.
So presumably you're not counting (post-Suharto) Indonesia as a democracy.
Previously, under its Kemalesque regimes, Turkey was not a democracy. It was a military backed authoritarian regime, which was benevolent enough in that it cared for the well being of its people, recognized Islam as a problem, and therefore did what it could to supplant the cult of Mohammed w/ the cult of Ataturk. But they never developed a pluralistic culture that embraced all their differences - religious (Armenian), cultural (Kurds) and the end result was that people either had to swear by Ataturk or by Islam.
Also, under Erdogan, Turkey has been busy rediscovering its Turkic roots, and celebrating Turkic empires of the past - be it the Ottomans, Seljuks, Khwarezmids, Tatars, Timurides, Moghuls... All of those were Islamic empires. The Ottomans were a caliphate, while all the others were major champions of Islamic Jihad against non-Muslims anywhere around them. So this revivalism of Turkic culture has also been accompanied by a revival of Islam. On top of that, there's been the Shia-Sunni clash b/w Iran/Iraq/Syria vs Saudi Arabia/Qatar, and Turkey has another opportunity to lead the Sunni world, which it's grabbed w/ both hands.
And as a Muslim country, Turkey would never describe a Jihad as terrorism. Terrorism is any opposition to Erdogan, be it by the Kurds (PKK), Fatehullah Gulen or anyone else in Turkey opposed to him
You mean "hackers" don't know how to use the "touch" command?
to keep turkish evil maids from planting files.
How did Mr Spencer got access to the evidence, that is, the PC?
The story suggests the journalist was framed, but by who? If it was by Turkish government, then why did it let a third party had the opportunity to review the fake evidences?
the rule that majority-Muslim states cannot have democracy.
Similarly to the Catholic fanaticism which prevents Spain to have a measure of rule of law even today as long as the fascists and their off-spring live and work in the politics?
I sure hope people recognize the sarcasm in your post and don't think it was real.
Err, that was sarcasm, right?
What? Are you against unhilded profits!?
Well neither do countries in EU now?
Politically, the whole fustercluck dates back to the end of the first World War. The Ottoman Empire was on the losing side, and ceased to exist after WWI. The European victors carved its territory up along arbitrary lines, without regard for the cultural and even lingual boundaries. Those lines became the modern country borders we know today. Most of the modern Middle-eastern conflicts trace their roots back to this. Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Israel/Palestine, and Turkey.
Culturally, it would've made a lot more sense to divide the territory up into Turkey, Kurdistan, and Arabia plus maybe a few other small countries, instead of the patchwork it is today.
The US propped up Stalin and the Soviet Union? Are you retarded? You're one of those special people aren't you? Stop listening to Alex Jones and RT conspiracy junk it will warp your fragile little mind.
Has it become Slashdot official policy to not mention Microsoft windows in relation to remote access trojan malware?
.. said he and his team .. examined BarıÅY Pehlivanâ(TM)s computer using a technique they developed to deal with sophisticated tampering of evidence."
"Spencer
'It's called "Anchors in Relative Time," which means putting events logged by computers such as startups and shutdowns in chronological order, regardless of any associated dates and times that might had been altered by attackers'. ref
What? Are you against unhilded profits!?
What in the hild are you talking about?
Nothing posted to
I'd toss in Israel, since the Jews didn't have a state of their own and were dhimmis in Palestine under everybody before the Brits - be it the sultanates of Egypt or Syria, the Ottomans and so on. And Lebanon, for the sake of the Maronites.
But you are right. Iraq was an artificial country, and the only thing defining it was British occupation. Like Syria and Lebanon w/ French occupation. Instead, a few countries - Turkey, Kurdestan, Azerbaijan, Greater Arabia, Israel/Palestine (in that time, the people who were called Palestinians were the Jews, not the Arabs. Such an arrangement would have prevented the Armenian genocide, as well as the Arab-Israeli wars.
Any evidence that Gen Franco and his supporters were inspired by the Inquisition and the Catholic zeal of Ferdinand & Isabella?
And war hawk Hitlery will see to it !
I know you were trying for a catchy, meme-worthy portmanteau, but all I can see is a half hour Home Shopping Network cooking demo where they're carving turkey with Hitler's cutlery. Replica war hawks on the pommels and everything!
Nothing posted to
I'd thought Franco was somewhat more modern in his zeal. I haven't heard any notion relating to a connection to so far into history, but then again, the Nazis were brought up in romance of the Teutonic atmosphere celebrating the German strength through the Roman defeat of 9CE. National romanticism were in fashion before the wars. Hence Franco's admiration of F&I wouldn't be a surprise.
The next step is, of course, to dispense with the need for forensic "evidence" on people's computers and do this fully with "intercepted" communications. And here is the real danger of a surveillance-state: They can send anybody, any time to prison for as long as they desire, and there is no possibility to defend yourself unless they screwed up massively (as they did in the case at hand).
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I was thinking of going in holidays in Turkey a few months ago...I think I will pass the opportunity.
And if the FBI doesn't prosecute you, it's because you're INNOCENT! (it's totally not because you're rich, well-connected, and running for POTUS on behalf of your globalist puppeteers)
So how exactly do you forensically determine files were copied onto a computer by someone after removing the HDD and then returning it? I am sure that could of happened but how the fuck would you ever tell?
while reading this article, it realized that it could be possible to create filesystem feature which would not encrypt but sign all files when password is provided during mounting, otherwise fs would work in read only mode, this feature could prove that files where created by owner of password and planting evidence like this would be impossible and this would not break any laws, the fs contents are always accessible in read-only mode without password. maybe something like this already exists?
He has no respect for the rule of law, except as he defines law. Yet he thinks he can shoehorn his country into the EU. If that's not delusional, then it's an awfully good imitation.
The recent coup attempt: given the speed with which he reacted, and the precision with which his government identified and arrested tens of thousands of people...is it just possible that the entire coup was a false flag operation? Perhaps it was planned and instigated by Erdogan, as a means to justify this massive cleanup operation?
Posting AC, because I live in one of the seven countries where calling Erdogan delusional is, quite literally, a crime.
No, what he probably said is it takes an impressive level of conviction to attack &c. The pattern is "it takes X to Y" where "it" stands for "to Y". Before expanding pronouns try to understand the sentence first.
There's plenty of people today that seem to believe that an accusation is proof.
Basically our entire world right now can be traced back to WW1 really. WW1 and WW2, which was directly caused by WW!, completely re-wrote the entirety of the world order.
I'd toss in Israel, since the Jews didn't have a state of their own...
That brings up a decent discussion point. Why do Jews need or deserve a specific country for their own? We don't do this for any other religion. Where is the country founded by, for, and exclusively run by Lutherans? What about Janists or Sikhs?
Why does one and only one religion get massive support to have their own country when no other religion gets that privilege?
Why should borders be drawn along ethnic lines? Anyway, first you'd have to do some ethnic cleansing because those old Vielvölkerstaaten (Austrohungarian, Ottoman, Soviet, Yugo) were a mess. The Young Turks did a lot of that to prepare for modern liberal statehood, but you'd probably say they didn't massacre enough Kurds.
clearly, the AC is talking about profit hilding. duh.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
I've got some Persians one the phone. They would like a word with you.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
More than 60 Yemeni civilians have been killed in at least five attacks on civilian areas since the new bombing campaign began. On August 13, the coalition bombed a school in Haydan, Yemen, killing at least 10 children and injuring 28 more. Lieu released a statement two days later, harshly condemning the attack. “The indiscriminate civilian killings by Saudi Arabia look like war crimes to me. In this case, children as young as 8 were killed by Saudi Arabian air strikes,” he wrote. “By assisting Saudi Arabia, the United States is aiding and abetting what appears to be war crimes in Yemen,” Lieu added. “The administration must stop enabling this madness now.” https://theintercept.com/2016/...
Iraq is a democracy too (now) -- an example of why democracy isn't necessarily a good thing for a developing country with deep internal tensions.
This space intentionally left blank
WWI my ass, the Middle East has been a cluster-f since forever. Read ancient history sometime, 6000 years ago the same groups that are pissing on each other back then are doing the same thing now. Any modern political theories are lost on the Mid-East, they have a tribal mindset that has resisted change for 6000 years. As long as they believe political power stems from gods, magic, whatever, they will never advance and be relegated to a backwater of human civilization, gnawing at each other and nursing centuries old slights.
Any group gaining power in the Middle East peacefully will not satisfy its adherents. In order to feel in control, the group must vanquish an enemy, any old strawman will do, just as long as they can claim a blood-soaked revenge. Erdogan is no different. He's a whore who will prostitute any and all civil liberties for his own ego...sort of a Turkish Trump.
oooo SJW ethics in gaming journalism bla bla bla bla bla zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
is what I'm curious about. How many people have been framed by having criminal material put on their computers and what not? And papers left in their file cabinets before the digital age? Photos of them manipulated, etc?
I've hear that the Soviet Union went to great lengths to divide territory along cultural lines, and failed. Point is, it doesn't matter what identity you have, it matters whether you identify with it. There's a stage in psychological development that's authoritarian, and then after that... a loong time after that, comes the individual, with individual rights and freedoms.
Jesus, oddly, managed to implant the seed of that into the authoritarian systems of his time, which took a thousand years or more to develop. Or maybe it was the Greeks.
Anyway, point is, things like the French Revolution, Western democracy, the individual who can think for him or herself, and is given rights, all born equal, is a massive cultural change, and without it, elections don't really work. Tribes will vote for their authoritarian leaders and so on, religion remains a control freak which keeps grabbing more and more power, and individual freedom of expression is crushed, along with original thinking and invention.
So if you are X and identify as X and are part of group X and are under the control of X's authoritarian power, well you're not modern. It makes no difference whether next door there's another group that's Y and slightly different yet also authoritarian. You're all as "bad" as each other (from a modern viewpoint).
The fact that the two groups are not having their own lands strictly in an, you know, segregated way, is besides the point really. Lots of segregated authoritarian groups living next to each other, trying not to step on each others' toes, can only last so long. Arguably that's what happened to Lebanon.
What makes a person modern is that they can think for themselves outside of their group, and know why individual rights matter. Which is a whole different thing to the Life of Bryan and the famous scene where the crowd blindly repeat everything the Messiah says.
So point is, dividing up territory is meaningless if the people themselves don't identify with their group and are blindly moved by that group. A modern nation contains many many groups, yet they don't fragment along sectarian lines at the first bit of friction, because they are not "white" or "black" or "muslim" or "christian" or "buddhist" or "atheist"... they are citizens first, and the other stuff is secondary.
Until the culture of the middle east moves to modern values and modern minds, they can't be citizens and their lands can't be modern nations in a democratic way.
Thing is, that's true for everyone and it is a historical accident that modernity appeared in some parts of the world first. And the authoritarian way worked ok more or less for thousands of years, so it isn't bad as such. Just, modernity makes certain things possible. But people have to grow to get there.
And the EU telling people to be democratic is, well, just doesn't realise what a huge change that is. If you take the Magna Carta, that started a gradual change over 800 years ago. How many countries today call themselves democratic when they obviously have fairly fascistic dictators? (Not counting the USA :-P )
> "Why does one and only one religion get massive support to have their own country when no other religion gets that privilege?"
Blackmail.
Mossad.
Look, I don't support the takeover of Palestine, nor the ethnic cleansing that went on there, but Jews are different than Lutherans, and most other religions, in that they're not simply a religion. If not for anti-Semitism, they'd likely be happily living in Europe, (and probably would have been fully assimilated a long time ago). No doubt you've heard of the Nazi genocide? While two wrongs don't make a right, it's understandable that they'd want to pick up and leave after that. Unfortunately, they let their choice of location be guided by religion. Not that there's really anyplace on Earth you can go without displacing the people already there. The history of the World is one of constant migration and genocide.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
It's historical. That Jews had been persecuted in most places in Europe, and there was no compelling reason for the few places that did not persecute them to take them all in e.g. no reason why the Netherlands would have had to take in Jews from Russia, Germany and other places in Europe. While there was a zionist movement after WWI, what gave it impetus was the holocaust. That, and also the not so minor fact that they lived as dhimmis when they were a part of Muslim entities, be it the Ottoman empire or the sultanate of Egypt.
Lutherans did in effect get countries of their own - Prussia, and then the Nordic countries. And England under Elizabeth I. Sikhs - while they were persecuted in the 17th & 18th centuries, they've been pretty well accommodated in independent India, except for the riots in 1984. Jains have morphed into an ultra vegetarian (but not vegan) sect of Hinduism.
Palestine was not 'taken over'. First of all, it had native Jews there even before the 7th century Arab/Muslim conquests. Then, in the late 19th & early 20th centuries, Jews, who were fleeing persecution from places like Tsarist Russia and even mainland Europe moved their and bought land from the Arabs at above market prices. (That's a sharp contrast from the way the Arabs settled in places like Syria, Egypt and much of North Africa.) And the original partition of that area was done, w/ Israel being far smaller than what it became. It was the Arabs who started the wars in 1949, and have tried terminating Israel on 5 or more occasions since then. And they encouraged Arabs to leave Israeli territory, not Israel who expelled Arabs. One more thing - there was no such thing as the 'Palestinian' people - that was a term used for Jews before the creation of Israel. It was just Arabs - from Aden to Raqqa, and Baghdad to the Mahgreb
Armenians
The very point of a liberal, democratic system is that it's supposed to be based on reason and able to self-correct and self-adjust, and NOT an emanation of some racial ethos. (Yes, your using of euphemisms like 'culture' for 'race' is not fooling anyone).
There's no 'culture' that is 'compatible' with a liberal democracy -- if left to its own devices, any society will degrade into oligarchy and tyranny.
And if democracy is absolutely impossible to achieve in Turkey, then it's impossible to achieve anywhere and not worth the trouble in the first place -- an authoritarian system where everyone 'knows his place' is much more efficient and easier to mold on people's prejudices and idiosincrasies (ie their culture).
Do you have something like this: http://www.okjailbirds.com/ in your state?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Basically our entire world right now can be traced back to WW1 really. WW1 and WW2, which was directly caused by WW!, completely re-wrote the entirety of the world order.
I just saw a documentary on Netflix about this very thing. It's called The Long Shadow by Professor David Reynolds. Quite fascinating.
Like our resident AmiMoJo. Every damn time something like this comes up.
faggots.
Persians? The correct term is 'Iranians'. Persia - as was historically understood - was what is today the Fars province of Iran. Includes Shiraz. The ancient Median and Achaemenid empires, which were centered around Persepolis/Pasargadae, et al were Persian. The Parthian empire was what's today Khorasan. The different Islamic dynasties that ruled Iran, none of them were Persian They were either based in Khorasan or Isfahan or Teheran. None of which are in 'Persia'.
I could ignore the AC, but what the heck!!!
I never said anything about a 'Clash of Civilizations'. For the simple reason that Islam is not a 'civilization'. I did say that Islamic countries can't have the things you describe - a liberal, democratic system that's capable of being self critical and thereby do all the things you mentioned. Reason? Islam itself!!!
To be capable of self-correcting and self-adjusting, the core values have to be capable of self-criticism. The reason it's not possible among the Arab and Turkic people is not their race/culture - it's the underlying kernel of all that - their religion - Islam!!! Islam declares itself to be perfect and above all criticism, and this is something very well laid out in Islamic texts.
First of all, nobody is allowed to be critical of anything that is considered as endorsed by Mohammed. As a result, no criticism of Islam is ever allowed. Once that is the baseline, there is nothing preventing other parameters from being above reproach - be it 'Turkishness' or 'Arabness'. Thereby, trying out any social reform that flies in the face of either Islamic supremacy, or even under that, Turkish supremacy (over Kurds or Armenians) e.g. any Turks condemning the Armenian genocide - would be considered treachery by the larger Turkish population, and even heresy, given that Armenian are Christians and Turks Muslims. This condemnation of self-criticism as treason is something first laid down in Islam, and then percolates to other aspects of Muslims, be it their ethnicity, culture and other attributes.
6000 years? I doubt that the world is that old. Christ alone is 2000+ years, and if one tosses in the various ancient peoples, then toss in another 1000 or so. What you describe really seriously started after the spread of Islam throughout the Middle East. Yeah, you had the usual conquest wars b/w the Byzantines and the Sassanids, but that was more of a border territorial grab, as opposed to a complete transformation of the type Islam pulled off once it took over.
The problem w/ that region is not so much the tribal mind set, as much as the Islamic mind set. First, they have to be Islamic, and then, within that, they have to fight for the 'true Islam', which translates into whatever edition they happen to follow. The ethnic sub-divisions that come from that follow - Arab vs Turk vs Kurd vs Iranian et al.
P.S. I'll avoid the temptation to drag Trump into this ;-)
The Soviet attempt at doing this was laughable. For instance, on the Amur River, which is their border w/ Manchuria, they have a JAR - Jewish Autonomous Republic, which they had created to be a homeland for Russian Jews. Most Russian Jews (who've not already migrated to Israel) live where most other Russians live - in Moscow, St Petersburg and other major cities, while the population of JAR is overwhelmingly Russian Orthodox. Hardly an Israel within Russia.
In fact, since the breakup of the USSR, there have been border disputes within the stans. Take one example - Uzbekistan vs Tajikistan. Both claim the cities of Samarqand and Buqhara, and both are right. Ethnically, about half the people of those cities are Tajik, and half are Uzbek. Historically, those cities were the capitals of the Samanid empire, which Tajikistan claims as its foundation, while they were also capitals of the Shaibonid empire, which was the foundation of the Uzbek nation. Oh, and then there was Khwarezm, which the Soviets defined as an autonomous republic within Uzbekistan, even though historically, it has more connections w/ Turkmenistan, with its former capital of Qonyeurgench, as well as major historical cities like Merw. In short, the Soviets made a mess of trying to divide them - they might as well have just kept a single Soviet Turkestan - the way it originally was, and make something like Alma Ata or Tashkent its capital. And make Tajikistan separate, and give them Samarqand, while leaving Buqhara in Turkestan.
Also, the Soviets forgot about ethnic identities when Nikita Krushchyev decided to gift Crimea to Ukraine - something that didn't go down well when the Soviet Union unravelled, and that difference now did matter.
That name of hers was given by Michael Savage, and adapted by other haters/critics of HRC
Ergenekon is not "an armed group", it's the Deep State - alliance between secret service, far-right politicians, some high-ranked officials, some big business representatives, and organized crime, all more or less under CIA control, in order to "fight communism".
It's standard procedure in all NATO, but pushed to unprecedented levels in Turkey (even more than in Italy), and fell under the spotlights with the Susurluk car crash in 1996.
So the Ergenekon trials were a very important step in the democratization of Turkey, as many AKP voters did vote for AKP not because of its islamist program but because they saw it as the only force able to tackle the Deep State.
Now that Erdogan is backing away from the democratization process and alleging that Ergenekon trials were misconducted by Gülen sympathizers in the Judicial branch, such revelations come at a very opportune moment...
It doesn't mean that this forensic expertise is false, but they need to bring proofs, not "we say so so it is so"...
Without auditable proofs, the whole story should be taken with a grain of salt.
Perhaps you miss some education. Pyramids of Egypt are over 4700 years old. At that time Egyptians had developed writing, architecture, agriculture, art of war and it obviously wasn't given by God in one day. The history of China was written since over 3500 years ago, and Mycenaean phase of Greek history started over 3200 years ago. The Stonehenge is over 5000 years old... I hope you know what it is and where it is located, and that people didn't appear there, but came from Africa.
Oh, and have you ever heard about hebrew years? Well, jews think it's year 5776 now.
...a certain level of technical skill to set up the infrastructure for those attacks, which included document forgery and date and time manipulation.
You think forgery and date-time manipulation is easy for a digital record? No. No. It's very very difficult and requires you to level up your skilz before you can do it.
I believe we do. I read a thing recently about how those places operate.
Well its $1.50 a issue twice a month so I would assume that they operate with fairly high margins.
Other than that I don't know much about them.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
A lot of them put you name and photo in prominent places on search results then blackmail you if you want it removed. Essentially the idea is that if a potential employer searches for your name they'll get a mugshot unless you pay exorbitant amounts of money.
From what I've been reading off an on, you can add another 100 years to it - Revolutionary Republics, Napoleon, Liberalism civil wars, the Holy Alliance, the scramble for Africa, the Unification of Italy and so on.