Mediaboss Marketing

Former bureaucrat turned Jammu and Kashmir politician Shah Faesal is likely to be released after spending close to 10 months in detention since August 14, following the Union Territorys decision to revoke the Public Safety Act (PSA) slapped on him and two other senior politicians from the Peoples Democractic Party (PDP)- Sartaj Madani and Peer Mansoorleaving former chief minister of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti among the few prominent leaders from the region who continue to be in detention after the abrogation of Article 370 and bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union Territories in August last.

NC general secretary Ali Mohammad Sager and former J&K ministers, Nayeem Akthar and Hilal Akbar Lone also continue to be in detention. Former J&K chief ministers and National Conference leaders Omar Abdullah and his father Farooq Abdullah were released from detention earlier this year.

Shah Faesal was detained under the stringent for his anti-government social media posts and an alliance with former J&K legislator, engineer Shiekh Abdul Rashid, who was arrested in a terror funding case and is currently lodged in Tihar jail, according to a government dossier on the matter. Faesal had allied with Rashid for J&K assembly polls in June last year.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

Faesal was given a copy of the dossier carrying 27 pages of his social media posts, made in the last few years on February 15 this year by the authorities. Shah Faesal had a good following on social media and used it even to mobilise funds for his party-- the J&K Political Movement (JKPM).

Shah Faesal was first detained at the Delhi airport on August 14, 2019, after he reached the Capital from Srinagar and was sent back to Kashmir. In Srinagar, he was detained at the Centaur Hotel and later at the MLA hostel.

Read more here:
Shah Faesal and two other senior J&K politicians detentions under NSA revoked - Hindustan Times

Text Size:A- A+

New Delhi: Chinese foreign policy is set to become more assertive in the future, but it might still be premature to see the current muscle flexing by the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) in the Himalayas as an indication of Chinas new assertive policy, said M.K. Narayanan, former national security advisor of India.

The most important thing is not to view every skirmish as the beginning of a new war, he said.

Former foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale also argued that the two informal summits between President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a communication line between the two leaders, and talking often will help prevent mishaps.

China doesnt want to overthrow the US-led global order, it just wants to capture the existing one and rule over it, said Gokhale.

The two were speaking at an online seminar Friday on COVID-19 & India-China Global Dynamics, organised by the Chennai International Centre, and were joined by Tanvi Madan of Brookings Institution, James Crabtree of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and Ashwani Mahajan of Delhi University and national co-convener of Swadeshi Jagaran Manch.

Other than the India-China stand-off, the discussion covered the change in US global role in a post-Covid era, the underlying currents of Indo-Chinese relations, and the possible opportunities and challenges for India going ahead.

Talking about the ongoing stand-off, Crabtree remarked that it is a good metaphor for the general India-China relationship.

If you look at the past few years, you have two sides building infrastructure next to each other. They are testing each others boundaries. And such stand-offs are becoming a pattern in their relations now, said Crabtree.

Also read: China believes India wants Aksai Chin back. PLA has likely secured 40-60 sq km in Ladakh

Narayanan urged caution when looking at the current Indo-Chinese stand-off. What I say is a reflection of past history the most important thing is not to view every skirmish as the beginning of a new war, he said.

I was there in 1959, 60, 61, 62 the two sides try to play chess at the border but to use the term military stand-off is too much. As someone who has seen this situation developing over the past 50-60 years, we should see issue firmly and coolly, said Narayanan, who had also served as the chief of the Intelligence Bureau and Joint Intelligence Committee.

According to the former national security adviser (NSA) the key problem with the India-China border is that it is un-demarcated and undefined. It happens that we have our perception and China has their own. Every dynasty in China has drawn their own version of the maps, he said.

He also said that during his discussions with his Chinese counterparts, Narayanan did not sense that the Chinese are anxious about their border conflict with India. According to the former NSA, what makes China really anxious is Indias soft power.

China is worried that India has many civilisational advantages over them. They are unable to comprehend Indian soft power. China wants to dominate the Asian order but not through firing guns across the border, said Narayanan.

Also read: Chinese aggression in Ladakh also a message for domestic and external audience: Experts

Prime Minister Modi had come under sharp criticism for promoting a China reset following his informal summits with the Chinese President Xi Jinping at Wuhan and Mamallapuram. Critics note that China has continued with its border aggression despite those summits.

Crabtree said this clearly indicates a breakdown of the Wuhan consensus.

Former foreign secretary Gokhale, however, did not agree with the criticism, who argued that the informal summits created an important channel of communication between the two leaders.

The two summits might prevent a mishap from happening. They cant really resolve all long-standing problems, but they have helped manage them, said Gokhale.

Also read: Doklam to Galwan: Have Modi-Xi informal summits been more about optics than border peace?

Commenting on how the US might conceptualise its global role in the post-Covid era, Madan said a lot will depend on when and how US emerges from the pandemic.

It would take a while before we can see pandemics political and geopolitical impact on the US, according to Madan. The speed on recovery would have an effect on US economic choices also the resources it would have available for its foreign policy. This would determine what kind of regional or global role it wants to play, she added.

Most of the speakers agreed that China stands to gain in the post-Covid era.

The Chinese economy has a lot of structural problems, but as a place to do manufacturing in, China is still very hard to beat, said Crabtree.

Given that China has been able to recover from the pandemic faster than others, it will likely gain from its inclusion in Asian travel bubbles and increased trade, he added. Moreover, the backlash against China as we see in the West, doesnt really exist in the West, he said.

When talking about Chinas long-term ambitions, Gokhale dismissed the notion of China wanting to build a new world order what they refer to as the community of shared future of the mankind.

It has no central point, no theory, its a wooly idea, remarked Gokhale. We need to move away from the idea of Chinese wanting a new world order. They just want to take over the existing one and rule over it. Thats why they want their initiatives such as Belt and Road to be approved by the United Nations.

Also read: Why India wont take sides on US-China spat over Covid, despite skirmishes in Sikkim-Ladakh

Similar to the US, how India is able to leverage the opportunities in the post-Covid era will depend on what its recovery from the pandemic looks like, said Madan. And in terms of global supply chains moving to India, the speakers felt that a lot would depend on Indias ability to conduct a series of domestic reforms.

If they were a part of RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), they could have taken relatively more advantage of the current situation, said Crabtree. Closing yourself doesnt help. Nobody thought that joining RCEP would be cost free for India, but neither was joining WTO for China.

Also read: Indias bargaining power with China and US will grow in post-Covid world

ThePrint is now on Telegram. For the best reports & opinion on politics, governance and more, subscribe to ThePrint on Telegram.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel.

View post:
Chinas muscle-flexing in Ladakh doesnt mean theres a war coming, says former NSA - ThePrint

A former NSA foreign surveillance agent tells The Sociablehow censorship destroys the very diversity of thought it was meant to protect just beforeUS President Trump signs an Executive Order to prevent online censorship.

Jim Penrose is a former NSA foreign surveillance agent and the current Chief Operating Officer at the cybersecurity firm, BlueVoyant, which works with global industries around the world to help them understand how nation-state adversaries think and what cultural norms push them to act the way they do in cyber warfare.

Fundamentally, the scourge of censorship as we know it today is that its forcing an orthodoxy which actually destroys the very diversity its meant to protect

During his 17 years of service in the NSA and beyond, Penrose has seen first-hand how misinformation campaigns have been launched to influence elections, and how censorship has impacted societies from Russia, China, and the Middle East, and all the way back to the United States.

At the heart of the censorship debate is, as always, the issue of free speech.

Censorship creates a scenario where assumptions dont get the proper questioning that they need, and we need to have ideas tried in the crucible of public debate, and free speech is fundamental to that, Penrose told The Sociable.

Free speech is complicated by the fact that big social platforms like Facebook and Twitter have billions of users from just about every country on the planet, and these countries dont all have the same levels of protection for free speech in their laws, so regulating free speech on social is a slippery slope.

Censorship creates a scenario where assumptions dont get the proper questioning that they need, and we need to have ideas tried in the crucible of public debate, and free speech is fundamental to that Jim Penrose

However, at the time of writing, US President Donald Trump had just signed an Executive Order to Prevent Online Censorship, which stated, Online platforms are engaging in selective censorship that is harming our national discourse, and that It is the policy of the United States that large online platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, as the critical means of promoting the free flow of speech and ideas today, should not restrict protected speech.

Today, Im signing an Executive Order to protect and uphold the free speech and rights of the American people, Trump said at the time of signing.

My Executive Order calls for new regulations under Section 230 of the Communications and Decency Act to make it that social media companies that engage in censoring or any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield, he added.

Further elaborating on the subject of free speech vs censorship, Penrose said that people can say things we dont like, or they may say things that are abhorrent, but at the end of the day, arguments should be won with the force of ideas and the proof to back up those statements.

Instead of having that respectful conversation that we used to have, and we would have had if we were face-to-face, we ended up going into a mode where were just not going to talk Jim Penrose

When ideas are censored; however, their arguments, too are censored. The right to question information becomes censored as well.

For example, in the name of public health and safety, massive amounts of content are removed on a daily basis while more orthodox narratives become the accepted truth without question.

Right now, YouTube is censoring content that goes against recommendations by the World Health Organization (WHO), but in hindsight, the WHO hasnt always given the best information, especially with regards to Chinas transparency in the handling of the coronavirus.

Nevertheless, the WHO narrative has become the orthodox ideology on world health policies, and saying anything against that orthodoxy on social media is met with censorship.

Fundamentally, the scourge of censorship as we know it today is that its forcing an orthodoxy which actually destroys the very diversity its meant to protect, said Penrose.

Big tech platforms are aggressively trying to stamp out misinformation, which is a very real problem when it comes to massive influence campaigns, but in stamping out misinformation, they are also stamping out real concerns from real people whose real voices have been silenced to censorship.

As citizens, we get pulled into this weird position where do I really want to debate this person on topic X do I really want to have that argument? Jim Penrose

Penrose explained that there are many motives and tactics behind spreading misinformation and how those activities influence the way we behave online.

If you think about the Russians and what they did during the election in 2016, their primary tactic was the noise in the channel tactic you create so much noise in the channel that people start to have overall doubts on all information thats available in the media, social media, and other places, he said.

Some people turn off and disengage. They stop debating and they stop talking. Then theres other groups that go full into what I would say vehement, strident, vitriolic mode where they themselves become internet trolls and attack the living daylights out of anybody who they disagree with and report them as abusive or objectionable content in trying to get everybody removed from a platform like Twitter, Penrose added.

Coincidentally, as Penrose was speaking, #TakeTrumpOffTwitter was trending on Twitter, highlighting those who call for censorship through efforts to deplatform certain individuals.

Some people turn off and disengage. They stop debating and they stop talking. Then theres other groups that go full into vehement, strident, vitriolic mode where they themselves become internet trolls and attack the living daylights out of anybody who they disagree with Jim Penrose

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal recently published a story called Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive, in which it says that Facebook internally studied how it polarizes users, then largely shelved the research.

Social media companies bank on divisiveness in order to keep users on their platforms. In fact, the Center for Humane Technology president Tristan Harris went before Congress earlier this year and testified that tech products and culture were designed intentionally for mass deception, which furthers the division.

Tech products, culture are designed intentionally for mass deception: Ex-google ethicist testifies https://t.co/ewkeWBBvxF via @thesociable

Joe Rogan (@joerogan) January 17, 2020

Penrose said that this divisiveness on social media makes us turn on one another online, whereas if we had met in person, we would probably be having civilized discussions instead.

As citizens, we get pulled into this weird position where do I really want to debate this person on topic X do I really want to have that argument? said Penrose.

As a result, the divisiveness has led many to self-censor or fear the wrath of a thousand trolls calling for them to be censored.

It rips at the fabric of who we are and how we can still be friends and patriotic colleagues with each other, even when we disagree about topics Jim Penrose

I think what happens is we have actually estranged ourselves from each other, Penrose continued.

Instead of having that respectful conversation that we used to have and we would have if we were face-to-face, we ended up going into a mode where were just not going to talk, he added.

And weve actually grown farther apart from each other, which I think ultimately was one of the major goals of the Russians during their influence campaign.

It rips at the fabric of who we are and how we can still be friends and patriotic colleagues with each other, even when we disagree about topics X, Y, and Z, Penrose concluded.

No matter the intention, online censorship eliminates the possibility to have a free and open exchange of ideas if they are not in line with the ideologies of social media platforms.

Online censorship creates a herd mentality where there is no gray area; only black and white.

Its us vs them, and it looks like the truth lies somewhere between those who scream the loudest, and those who have disengaged and dont want to hear about it.

Big tech COVID-19 surveillance data & censorship threaten privacy & free speech: op-ed

Businesses are turning to more secure communication tools to avoid govt overreach: encryption platform report

We must not let coronavirus response be a cover to restrict our human rights: Committee to Protect Journalists advocacy director

Here is the original post:
Censorship destroys the very diversity it was meant to protect: former NSA foreign surveillance agent - The Sociable

Donald Trump railed against "warrantless surveillance" of US citizens this week as Democrats and Republicans headed back to the drawing board on negotiations to reauthorise key elements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that lapsed in March.

"WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE OF AMERICANS IS WRONG!" the president tweeted in all caps on Wednesday.

But Mr Trump himself reauthorised such intelligence tools in January 2018 when he signed into law a bill re-upping the National Security Agencys (NSA) warrantless internet surveillance programme.

Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

At the time, Mr Trump said the NSA programme was a "critically important national security tool" to foil terrorist plots, illicit weapons sales, and other malign actors.

The NSA's warrantless surveillance programme, extended for six years by Congress and Mr Trump in 2018 as part of a FISA reauthorisation that year, collects information and intercepts communications from foreigners without their knowledge. But sometimes intelligence operatives end up trawling US citizens' communications in the process.

"In order to detect and prevent attacks before they happen, we must be able to intercept the communications of foreign targets who are reasonably believed to possess foreign intelligence information," Mr Trump said .

The covert NSA surveillance programme "has proven to be among the Nations most effective foreign intelligence tools," he said, adding that it has "enabled our Intelligence Community to disrupt numerous plots against our citizens at home and our warfighters abroad" and "unquestionably saved American lives."

Since signing the 2018 FISA reauthoristion, Mr Trump has grown increasingly wary of the intelligence community's wide-ranging surveillance authorities.

The president and congressional Republicans have seized on a 2019 report by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz that found the FBI committed multiple errors in 2016 on their applications for FISA warrants to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

While Mr Page no longer worked for the Trump campaign by the time the courts approved the warrant to monitor his communications, Republicans have argued that such abuse of the FISA system warrants considerable reform.

The Republican chairmen of three Senate committees are investigating the so-far unsubstantiated claims that Obama administration officials intentionally abused surveillance laws to politically undermine Mr Trump's 2016 campaign and beset his incoming administration with lengthy investigations into possible ties between Mr Trump's aides and Russia.

The president's key allies in the House on intelligence matters ex-House Judiciary ranking member Doug Collins, current House Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan, and others reached a deal with Democrats months ago on a package to reauthorise lapsing FISA elements with certain reforms, civil protections, and legal reviews. The Senate kicked it back to the House last week along with an amendment from Senators Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, and Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, that offered more civil and legal protections for those subject to surveillance.

Mr Trump effectively scuttled that deal this week by threatening to veto it.

The House and Senate will go to conference to settle their differences and craft legislation the president will sign or that is veto-proof, Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to Democrats on Thursday.

View original post here:
FISA: Trump rails against 'warrantless surveillance' that he himself reauthorised in 2018 - The Independent

The coming of widespread 5G technology promises more than just faster everything, enhanced capacity and greater reliability. Leading proponents of the wonders of 5G, such as the theoretical physicist and author Michio Kaku, paint a picture of a true technological paradigm shift, a game-changer.

The self-described futurist invites us to imagine a lightning-fast global communications network that will fuel dramatic advancements in societys productivity and ultimately enrich and empower our lives.

Every once in a while there is this technology which changes the entire landscape, he says in a video produced by wireless network operator T-Mobile. Much like the arrival of the Gutenberg printing press in the mid-1400s triggered a Renaissance of knowledge, he explains that 5G hold the promise to bring connectedness to the rest of the world for millions of people who currently lack easy access to broadband technology.

Lets hope he is correct. Because there is also no shortage of bright minds waving red flags about potential risks to health and online security. Many are warning that 5G also holds the power to enrich and empower high-speed malicious hackers, supercharging their ability to wreak untold havoc in the global cybercrime epidemic.

One of the fundamental challenges of 5G involves balancing its far-reaching potential for human progress against the significant new security risks presented by this extraordinary technological breakthrough, said cybersecurity expert Chuck Bane, academic director for the University of San Diegos online Master of Science in Cyber Security Engineering program and retired naval officer whose experience includes collaboration on cybersecurity projects with the Department of Homeland Security, the NSA and the DoD.

Remember when 4G promised to revolutionize data-based communication across the globe? That was so 2010. The G, of course, stands for generation meaning that 5G is the next (Read more...)

Follow this link:
The Cybersecurity Implications of 5G Technology - Security Boulevard