Thursday, February 28, 2008

BAD JOURNALISM AND JUSTICE BBC: "Germany's highest court has restricted the right of the security services to spy on the computers of suspected criminals and terrorists. Under the technique, software sent in an email enables the authorities to spy on a suspect's computer hard drive. The Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe said cyber spying violated individuals' right to privacy and could be used only in exceptional cases. Civil liberties activists have warned of an unacceptable invasion of privacy. The ruling emphasised that cyber spying by the authorities would have to receive the permission of a judge." What is wrong with the above BBC article? Yes, indeed, the German court has NOT restricted the right of security services to spy on computers of suspected criminals or terrorists, but to spy on computers of any unsuspected citizen without proper authorization. It is clear the BBC is biased. The German court has made the right decision. Justice in the US is one of the worst world-wide. AlterNet: "Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the legal treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes - and seeking the death penalty for all of them. As the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials are rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal. Colonel Davis's criticism of the commissions has been escalating since he resigned this past October, telling the Washington Post that he had been pressured by politically appointed senior defense officials to pursue cases deemed 'sexy' and of 'high-interest' (such as the 9/11 cases now being pursued) in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Davis, once a staunch defender of the commissions process, elaborated on his reasons in a December 10, 2007, Los Angeles Times op-ed. 'I concluded that full, fair and open trials were not possible under the current system,' he wrote. 'I felt that the system had become deeply politicized and that I could no longer do my job effectively.' ... the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department, [Haynes] said 'we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions.'" The US is always first to demand retribution for trumped up offences from other nations like in the Lockerbie affair, but when it concerns real attributable crimes, like the use of Agent Orange in Vietnam, the US courts are biased. 11:39:32 AM

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