Open Letter to President Ahtisaari Re Jim Murphy 1317


Dear President Ahtisaari,

I had the pleasure of meeting you on a number of occasions over the years, including when I was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and I recall your genuine concern for democracy and human rights in a region where they are sadly neglected.

Like a great many people in Scotland I was shocked that CMI is employing Jim Murphy. Of course, in a democracy there are always losers as well as winners in elections, and both are genuine and valid participants in public life. It is not the fact that CMI employs a politician who has been so recently, comprehensively and humiliatingly rejected by his national electorate that will do any damage to CMI. In a sense I think it does you credit.

What shocks many people here is that Mr Murphy is by any standards a dedicated warmonger. He was a major and important proponent of the invasion of Iraq, and is the strongest of supporters of the massive increase of Britain’s nuclear arsenal, in breach of the Non Proliferation Treaty.

Mr Murphy is a member of the Henry Jackson Society, which as you know is a body which exists to promote United States neo-conservative foreign policy in its most aggressive sense, and openly and actively supports and condones extraordinary rendition and the use of torture by the CIA. It has supported every single military action by the USA since its formation, and defends United States exceptionalism in international law, including US non-membership of the International Criminal Court.

Mr Murphy’s belief set is therefore fundamentally at odds with the stated aims of CMI. Indeed, his employment by you can only lead to the suspicion that CMI’s stated objectives are not its real objectives, and that like Mr Murphy and the Henry Jackson Society your overriding goal in the regions where you operate is to promote the interests of the United States.

As you are funded by charitable donations and by governments, I think some explanation of your employment of Mr Murphy is in order, particularly when you have employed him as a conflict resolution expert in the Caucasus and Central Asia when he has no relevant experience of conflict resolution at all, virtually none of the Caucasus, and absolutely none of Central Asia.

I was the Head of the UK Delegation that negotiated the Sierra Leone Peace Treaty, and certainly under no circumstances would I let Jim Murphy anywhere near that kind of negotiation.

With All Best Wishes,

Amb (rtd.) Craig Murray


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1,317 thoughts on “Open Letter to President Ahtisaari Re Jim Murphy

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  • BrianFujisan

    “Imagine,” the UN Assistant Secretary General, Hans Von Sponeck, told me, “setting that pittance against the lack of clean water, and the fact that the majority of sick people cannot afford treatment, and the sheer trauma of getting from day to day, and you have a glimpse of the nightmare. And make no mistake, this is deliberate. I have not in the past wanted to use the word genocide, but now it is unavoidable.”

    Disgusted, Von Sponeck resigned as UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator in Iraq. His predecessor, Denis Halliday, an equally distinguished senior UN official, had also resigned. “I was instructed,” Halliday said, “to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide: a deliberate policy that has effectively killed well over a million individuals, children and adults.”

    A study by the United Nations Children’s Fund, Unicef, found that between 1991 and 1998, the height of the blockade, there were 500,000 “excess” deaths of Iraqi infants under the age of five. An American TV reporter put this to Madeleine Albright, US Ambassador to the United Nations, asking her, “Is the price worth it?” Albright replied, “We think the price is worth it.”

    http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news/john-pilger-the-root-causes-of-terrorism-and-what-we-can-do-about-it

  • Ben-Outraged by the Cannabigots

    That’s the net result of sanctions, Brian. Imagine if you had children you were responsible for in this environment.

    If only this could be remembered.

  • Mary

    Demand France be removed from UN Human Rights Committee
    Thursday, November 12, 2015

    URGENT APPEAL: Ref: UA 10/15

    NAME: Government of France

    VIOLATIONS: Civil Rights Violations against BDS Human Rights Defenders

    Please urge the Human Rights Committee to remove France from its membership for its violation of the Rules of the Committee to uphold the International Convention of Civil and Political Rights.

    France, in addition to Israel, is the only country to criminalise peaceful BDS appeals not to buy Israeli goods under the machination of combating antisemitism.

    Under pressure from the French Government, in turn pressured by the French Israel lobby, CRIF and Israel, the French Supreme Court (Court of Cassation),on 20th October 2015, absurdly and shamefully ruled that the non-violent action of Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) is “inciting hate or discrimination’ leading to the conviction of 12 French activists.

    Please press the TAKE ACTION BOX to send letter to DR FABIAN SALVIOLE, Chair UN Human Rights Committee, H.E. MICHEL FORST, UN Special Representative on Human Rights Defenders, H.E. RIYAD H. MANSOUR, Ambassador, Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine, H.E. DANNY DANON, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations, H.E. NILS MUIZNIEKS, European Commissioner for Human Rights and BDS FRANCE

    http://www.palestinematters.com/Demand-France-be-removed–from-UN-Human-Rights-Committee_Appeal_3143.aspx

  • fredi

    Paris Attacks: Suicide Bomber Was Blocked From Entering Stade de France
    A suicide bomber had a ticket to the France-Germany soccer game, but his explosive vest was found during a security check at the gate

    PARIS—At least one of the attackers outside France’s national soccer stadium had a ticket to the game and attempted to enter the 80,000-person venue, according to a Stade de France security guard who was on duty and French police.

    The guard—who asked to be identified only by his first name, Zouheir—said the attacker was discovered wearing an explosives vest when he was frisked at the entrance to the stadium about 15 minutes into the game. France was playing an exhibition against Germany inside.

    While attempting to back away from security, Zouheir said, the attacker detonated the vest, which was loaded with explosives and bolts, according to Paris prosecutor François Molins. Zouheir, who was stationed by the players’ tunnel, said he was briefed on the sequence by the security frisking team at the gate.

    A police officer confirmed the sequence, adding that police suspect the attacker aimed to detonate his vest inside the stadium in order to provoke a deadly stampede.

    Around three minutes later, a second person also blew himself up outside the stadium. A third suicide attacker detonated explosives at a nearby McDonald’s, police said. One civilian died in the attacks, police said.

    The account sheds light on why the suicide attacks on Stade de France failed to cause the carnage that occurred at the Bataclan concert hall and restaurants across Paris. At least 129 people died in the string of attacks Friday.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/attacker-tried-to-enter-paris-stadium-but-was-turned-away-1447520571

  • RobG

    The Guardian has slightly misreported this:

    “A day after French jets pounded Isis targets in the terror group’s Syrian stronghold of Raqqa, Hollande said the aerial campaign would be stepped up, announcing a tripling of France’s strike capacity in the region with the departure of the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle for the eastern Mediterranean.”

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/16/france-intensify-airstrikes-isis-syria-francois-hollande

    Prior to Hollande’s speech, there were many news reports of the French aircraft carrier being dispatched before the Paris terror attacks happened:

    http://news.kuwaittimes.net/website/france-to-deploy-aircraft-carrier-in-gulf-syrian-rebels-seize-town-in-west-in-blow-to-regime/

    This included a report by RT, which said that the aircraft carrier set sail on Wednesday, two days before the Paris attacks. RT have since amended their report to reflect Hollande’s speech.

  • Mary

    Brian The same essay by John Pilger appears on Dissident Voice but with a different title.

    Only When We See the War Criminals In Our Midst Will the Blood Begin to Dry
    by John Pilger / November 16th, 2015
    http://dissidentvoice.org/2015/11/only-when-we-see-the-war-criminals-in-our-midst-will-the-blood-begin-to-dry/

    He has a good go at Hain, Lord Richards (both calling for war on Syria) and Kissinger of course whose new book (‘World Order’ – no irony) is published. Wicked war mongers.

  • Resident Dissident

    @Mary

    “Wicked war mongers.”

    Not of course a label that Mary will apply to the terrorists who attacked Paris and elsewhere.

    “Demand France be removed from UN Human Rights Committee”

    Perhaps you could join Rob G at his local café to start the campaign?

    Solidarity with the French people!

  • Resident Dissident

    @Mevermind

    “How can one not abhor these brutal cowardly actions of inhumane terrorists,”

    Absolutely, but some here are doing pretty well.

  • Resident Dissident

    I wondered how long it would be before we heard from Pukeup – only Chumpsky is now required and then we have the full set.

  • RobG

    Resident Dissident, anyone who swallows hook, line and sinker the bullshit peddled by governments and the media are at best total egits, or at worst are suffering from dementia.

  • fwl

    Guardian article alludes to IS somehow appearing cool to dissatisfied youth. Reuters record off record diplomat noting that at least IS serve to rid country of fanatics most of whom have a v short life expectancy though with blow back downside if they survive and return here.

    I did ask if anyone could explain link between 1) IS run by ex Iraqi Bathist generals and 2) IS and Saudi wahani funding? Why would Daudi wahabists find common cause with relatively secular Iraqi military elite?

  • BrianFujisan

    Mary cheers

    Ben… indeed Imagine .. and the sheer evil Deliberateness of it, My heart breaks for these people

    Check out this Baby being plucked from the sea

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxtwR4DuhUA

    British writer Harold Pinter declared in his 2005 Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

    “We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it ‘bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East’. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice”

  • Herbie

    “Why would Saudi wahabists find common cause with relatively secular Iraqi military elite?”

    Well, they’re no longer Iraqi military elite, merely mercenaries with a much more useful than average military and strategic skillset.

    Anyway, Wahabism is a means of control. Its authors and leaders and so on don’t actually believe in it as such.

    It’s also the broader Sunni coalition against what was once looking like Shia domination of the region.

  • Mark Golding

    Hello Mary – Listening to President Obama at the G20 I was somewhat surprised that he cited “while he was away [from home] the suggestion was ‘popping up’ that Syrian refugees who have fled their homes and struggled out of danger should be approved or tested for their faith” before allowed entry to another country in an attempt to “somehow equate the issue of refugees to the issue of terrorism.”

    My God! It was affirmed by the G20 in Turkey we do not close our hearts to these victims.

    Firstly may I remind Obama that according to the website of the Antiochian Archdiocese the majority of refugees entering the US from Syria are Orthodox Christian.

    Secondly America’s closest friend and ally, Israel, exposes separation of faith to the extent where holding out means you die, remaining firm means torture, you starve, you are rationed water, your house is possessed, your land is taken, your crops are destroyed -i.e. the ‘Greater Israel Project’ rules folks.

    Lastly take another look at Iraq; Britain and America invaded ,that country, destroyed it, created millions of orphans, million of refugees, tortured, killed, raped and mutilated innocent.

    Why aren’t puppet prostitutes for the elite, Blair and George W Bush rotting in a prison cell for the rest of their lives? Because the law is not being applied. These are war criminals whose own rules are not enforced.

    Obama himself should be convicted for aiding and supporting terrorism in Syria and eternalizing chaos and war.

    But hey peeps, sit on your back-sides with your heads in the box watching X-factor and American idol, it’s all someone else’s problem.

  • fwl

    Thanks Herbie, so a pro Sunni alliance of convenience. That seems to make sense. I see that Putin has said that IS gets funding from sources in 40 countries, but I am not sure what that might mean as money could just be routed around about and all over the place, but actually originate from a narrow source (though obviously I don’t know).

    How likely is it

    a) that the essential funding is Wahabi and

    b) that the key or majority of the IS military commanders are ex Iraqi generals (now mercenaries)?

  • Mark Golding

    “A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.”

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq

  • Hieroglyph

    Apparently our idiot PM is telling us that 7 ISIS plots have been foiled in the UK this year. Let us take him at his word. Do you think it occurs to anyone in the establishment that so many attacks might suggest there is an issue with our foreign policy? That rather than repeating previous mistakes, we might take a longer view, and reconsider our aims and objectives?

    Nope. We just bomb the shit out of something, and hope it all works out swell. It never does.

    I too am mystified as to what crime Assad has committed. We generally like regional strongmen, even if current Assad isn’t quite the sadist and lunatic his father was. There are all sorts of reasons to want Assad out, but they all mean shit to the Nato elite. No, perhaps they have some other, un-stated reason, and I’ve no idea what it might be. Hey, aliens, why not? Makes as much sense as anything else.

  • Tony M

    Well what are all the US particularly based private ‘security’ contractors such as Blackwater, Eric Prince and all those other outfits up to right now. Not to mention UK-based mercenary outfits and recruiters, some run from a back door of the House of Lords. Contractors, privatisation of military functions, purveyors of death are said in number now to be near parity with the regular US military. ISIS its core, its field leadership is as American as Kermit the Frog and apple-pie. Money flows, and there can be no doubt the funding and the profits (there are huge black market crude oil and refined product sales) leave definite well-worn tracks, which banks strive to erase, and this information and its analysis could have far wider circulation than at present.

  • Jives

    Habbabkuk,Jemamnd,Anon1,Kempe et al…

    Surprised your line manager hasnt priority-managed your blog attention and guff of late,given the horrific events in Paris.

    You may find some ‘contrary’ thoughts on this blog but in a million years you wont find a TUrr$t herein.

    Why is your line manager so dumb that they’d waste your resources on a wee blog such as this?

    Revealing enough in its own mode too though,i suppose…

  • glenn_uk

    One thing’s for sure, Jives. Nobody’s managing (less still editing) your posts! They have a mind of their own, and nobody’s in charge! 😉

  • Mary

    RD 10.33pm last night.

    I do not respond to bullying from trolls like you and Anon. I take no orders from the likes of you and him.

    Ref the insult to John Pilger as ‘Pukeup’. He is a fine human being and says it like it is and how he has seen it, literally over many decades. You should study his words and learn truths from them.

  • Mary

    Mark. Fine comment last night. Cameron must wake up and wonder which country he’s in the style of BLiar. Yesterday morning in Antalya and last night back in the City speaking to the rich and powerful. He was dressed up as a Bullingdon Boy.
    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/16/22/2E82755000000578-3321157-image-m-118_1447711527795.jpg

    He miraculously finds £2bn.

    British special forces will get an extra £2BILLION funding in wake of Paris atrocity Cameron reveals, as he calls for return to ‘Blitz spirit’ to defeat jihadists
    Money will fund new weapons and vehicles, including helicopters, protective equipment and night-fighting kit
    Prime Minister said the rising military budget would mean more money for unmanned drones and cyber-defences
    He said the new National Security Strategy will give Britain the resources to boost its influence in the world
    Speech came immediately after he flew home from a G20 summit in the wake of the slaughter of 129 people in Paris
    16 November 2015

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3321157/Cameron-s-Blitz-spirit-call-battle-against-terrorism-PM-uses-Lord-Mayor-s-speech-tell-Britain-resolve-announce-2bn-funding-SAS-special-forces.html

    Gideon is off to GCHQ today – ‘Osborne to seek £1.9bn cybersecurity budget to tackle Isis threats’ (IB Times) and Theresa promises – ‘UK security to be intensified’ (BBC).

    Anyone else thinking our liberties are going out of the window and that we are being screwed down? All stemming from Paris within a couple of days.

  • Resident Dissident

    Mary

    There was no bullying – just comments on your vile one sided posts. It is quite clear who you take your orders from.

    The name twister doesn’t like it when her heroes receive the same treatment.

  • YouKnowMyName

    France’s President Hollande has announced yesterday a major (and effective) anti-terrorism approach

    THE CREATION OF TEN THOUSAND NEW POLICE

    5000 within the next two years, 10k in total including Customs officers, penitentiary police etc within 5 years. This adds a touch of reality to the ‘useless?’ 14 increasingly restrictive anti-terror laws voted by parliament in France since 1986. Meanwhile UK is about to vote for a new pair of headphones for GCHQ, whilst crashing the UK police force numbers. . . methinks there is a lot of made-up-ness about the UK threat from idiots. UK has a deep defensive moat, it’s called the North Sea/ the Channel, and hence day-terrrists from Molenbeek will find it much harder to pop-one off in Wembley than in Paris.

    François Hollande a annoncé la création de 8 500 nouveaux emplois, affectés aux ministère de la Justice, de la Défense, et de l’Interieur. “5 000 emplois de policiers et de gendarmes seront créés d’ici deux ans” a-t-il annoncé, “le ministère de la justice disposera de 2500 postes supplémentaires pour l’administration pénitentiaire et pour les services judiciaires”. Et d’ajouter : “l’administration des douanes devra être renforcée de 1000 postes”.

    tho’ to be fair, this is partly due to the revolt of the BAC (brigades anticriminalité) who revolted a bit (ok, a lot!) in October after one of theirs was offed by a wasted migrant that hadn’t been imprisoned correctly – so he’s being a bit electiony
    http://www.lemonde.fr/police-justice/article/2015/10/13/le-gouvernement-face-a-la-colere-des-policiers_4788241_1653578.html
    http://www.rfi.fr/france/20151022-france-police-hollande-francois-revendications-delegation-ministere-justice-vendome-

  • Why be ordinary?

    RD

    “take orders” is a bit unfair. Mary is simply desperate for approval. It is why she constantly returns here with tit bits from around the web and posts them whether or not they have anything to do with Craig’s post or the immediate discussion on the thread.

    Being flamed by you and others counts to her as approval (on the “enemy’s enemy principle). Have you noticed how worried she gets when certain people don’t post for some time?

  • YouKnowMyName

    Meanwhile, as you all know, the new 1900 headphones for UK spooks was first announced – on November the 9th –

    https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/george-osborne-sets-out-his-priorities-for-the-spending-review

    in a world where extremism is poisoning minds not just abroad, but at home; where ISIL has run rampage in the Middle East; where Russian aggression is threatening Eastern Europe; and our enemies are using technology to plot, harm and threaten us…

    …now is not a time to scale down our commitments to our national security.

    It’s a time to enhance them.

  • YouKnowMyName

    and beware of spies, New York Times

    [the] spy, a 32-year-old man identified only as Markus R. because of German privacy laws, made the confession at the opening of his trial in Munich’s state court. The defendant, who worked for Germany’s foreign intelligence agency, BND, is accused of passing material to the C.I.A. between 2008 and 2014. Prosecutors say he was paid $102,000 for the documents, which were reported to include lists of current and former German agents working internationally, along with their aliases

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/17/world/europe/germany-former-spy-acknowledges-giving-classified-information-to-cia.html?partner=gchq

  • YouKnowMyName

    Spies are lying

    [at a] Center for Strategic & International Studies talk today, CIA director John Brennan renewed one of the government’s favorite lies about spying: that mass surveillance has been successful in stopping a bunch of mysterious threats while it is simultaneously too ineffective to stop real attacks, because of privacy advocates and whistleblowers

    https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/16/9745932/paris-attack-terrorism-surveillance-cia-brennan

    and

    The New York Times and Yahoo reported on vague claims that the terrorists’ use of encryption stymied investigators who might have thwarted their plans. CIA Director John Brennan made equally vague comments Monday morning, warning that thanks to the privacy protections of the post-Snowden era, it is now “much more challenging” for intelligence agencies to find terrorists. Jeb Bush piled on, saying that the United States needs to restore its program collecting metadata on U.S. phone calls, even though that program won’t be shut down until the end of this month.

    Following a terrorism incident as shocking as the Paris attacks, it is no surprise that politicians and the intelligence establishment would want to widen American spying capabilities. But their arguments are conflating the forest—bulk metadata collection—and the trees: access to individual communications about the attack. To understand why that’s the case, start with this tweet from former NSA and DHS official Stewart Baker: “NSA’s 215 program”—and by association the far larger metadata dragnet of which the domestically focused phone-metadata program is just a small part—“was designed to detect a Mumbai/Paris-style attack.”

    Only it didn’t.

    http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2015/11/the_paris_attacks_weren_t_stopped_by_metadata_surveillance_that_hasn_t_stopped.html

    interesting article by Marcy Wheeler in Slate, which criticises NSA/GCHQ 5-eyes as not being able to detect the things that they claim to be able to detect from not very sophisticated terrrists, she thinks they already HAD the Nov12 attackers metadata but didn’t do anything with it

    The United States and United Kingdom’s metadata collection that focuses on the Middle East and Europe is far more extensive than the phone dragnet being shut down later this month, and its use has far more permissive rules. This dragnet is mostly limited by technology, not law. And France—which rewrote its surveillance laws after the Charlie Hebdo attack earlier this year—has its own surveillance system. Both are in place, yet neither detected the Nov. 13 plot. This means they failed to alert authorities to the people they should more closely target via both electronic and physical surveillance. In significant part, this system appears to have failed before it even got to the stage at which investigators would need to worry about terrorists’ use of encryption.

    and

    CIA Director John Brennan said Monday that the coordinated shootings were “fairly sophisticated.” His view echoed statements over the weekend by French intelligence officials. Some analysts, however, have pushed back against the notion that the attacks required particularly advanced levels of planning, coordination, or training.

    (note that one of the analysts who said it wasn’t a sophisticated attack was Prez Obama himself, at the G.20)

    http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2015/1116/How-sophisticated-were-the-Paris-terror-attacks-video

  • YouKnowMyName

    Legal spying? not according to Larry Layman, attorney & former federal prosecutor

    “Never before in American history have people been subjected to such egregious violations of their constitutional rights,” he said. “Thank God that there are judges like Leon [U.S. District Judge Richard Leon] who will stand up for the American people. Without this, revolution is almost assured if more judges do not start to do their job, like Leon, and protect the citizenry from government tyranny.”

    Klayman originally sued the NSA, Barack Obama, then-Attorney General Eric Holder and a number of other federal officials. Other defendants include NSA chief Keith Alexander, U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court Judge Roger Vinson, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, CIA chief John Brennan, FBI chief James Comey, the Department of Justice, the CIA and the FBI.

    Plaintiffs in the case include Klayman, Charles and Mary Ann Strange, Michael Ferrari, Matt Garrison and J.J. Little.

    Two of America’s influential civil-rights groups, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have sided with Klayman.

    The data that the NSA collects, they explained in a brief, “reveals political affiliation, religious practices and peoples’ most intimate associations.”

    “It reveals who calls a suicide prevention line and who calls their elected official; who calls the local tea-party office and who calls Planned Parenthood.”

    The groups’ brief said “the relevant fact for whether an expectation of privacy exists is that the comprehensive telephone records the government collects – not just the records of a few calls over a few days but all of a person’s calls over many years – reveals highly personal information about the person and her life.”

    This is from the ‘largest Christian website in the world’ http://www.wnd.com/2015/11/new-protection-for-nsa-cell-phone-spying/

  • YouKnowMyName

    Dead Children?

    last month, the government seemed to concede that forced decryption wasn’t the way to go for now, primarily because the public wasn’t convinced yet that encryption is a problem. But US officials had also noted that something could happen to suddenly sway the public in their favor.

    Robert S. Litt, general counsel in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, predicted as much in an email sent to colleagues three months ago. In that missive obtained by the Washington Post, Litt argued that although “the legislative environment is very hostile today, it could turn in the event of a terrorist attack or criminal event where strong encryption can be shown to have hindered law enforcement.”

    With more than 120 people killed in Paris, government officials are already touting the City of Light as the case against encryption.

    In the story about that email, another US official explained to the Post that the government had not yet succeeded in persuading the public that encryption is a problem because “[w]e do not have the perfect example where you have the dead child or a terrorist act to point to, and that’s what people seem to claim you have to have.”

    http://www.wired.com/2015/11/paris-attacks-cia-director-john-brennan-what-he-gets-wrong-about-encryption-backdoors/

    Title: AFTER PARIS ATTACKS, HERE’S WHAT THE CIA DIRECTOR GETS WRONG ABOUT ENCRYPTION

    Over and over again, analysis of terrorist attacks after the fact has shown that the problem in tracking the perpetrators in advance was usually not that authorities didn’t have the technical means to identify suspects and monitor their communications. Often the problem was that they had failed to focus on the right individuals or share information in a timely manner with the proper intelligence partners. Turkish authorities have already revealed that they had contacted French authorities twice to warn them about one of the attackers, but that French authorities never got back to them until after the massacre in Paris on Friday.

    Officials in France indicated that they had thwarted at least six other attack plots in recent months, but that the sheer number of suspects makes it difficult to track everyone. French intelligence maintains a database of suspected individuals that currently has more than 11,000 names on it, but tracking individuals and analyzing data in a timely manner to uncover who poses the greatest threat is more than the security services can manage, experts there have said. It’s a familiar refrain that seems to come up after every terrorist attack.

    “If Snowden has taught us anything, it’s that the intel agencies are drowning in data,” Cardozo says. “They have this ‘collect it all mentality’ and that has led to a ridiculous amount of data in their possession. It’s not about having enough data; it’s a matter of not knowing what to do with the data they already have.

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