By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 25 -- Amid wall-to-wall media coverage of the missing Malaysia MH370 plane, the two passengers said to have been traveling on lost or stolen passports have become a focus.
Jumping on the bandwagon -- or arguably using it as a "teachable moment" -- the director of the UN Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate Jean-Paul Laborde along with the ICAO chief Raymond Benjamin and INTERPOL's Ronald Noble held a press conference on April 25. Tweeted photo here.
Inner City Press asked about civil liberties, specifically about the recent lawsuit against the US Federal Bureau of Investigation for putting and keeping people on its No Fly List if they wouldn't agree to "spy against their communities."
This troubling case, directly in the ambit of the UN CTED and presumably of concern to INTERPOL, if only because doubts about security programs can undermine security, was not commented on by any of the three panelists, on their way to a meeting UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee. They deferred to INTERPOL's Noble, who said that since his organization's database is only of documents listed as lost or stolen, there is no civil liberties issue. Really?
Unaddressed so far is whether a government could falsely put a person's travel documents into the Interpol database to impose a de facto travel ban.
Both houses of the US Congress consider legislation to list and cut aid to countries which do not work with INTERPOL's Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database. Senator Ron Kirk (R-IL) has proposed that the US State Department be required to list countries which do not work with the Interpol database.
Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-NC) has gone further and proposed a Safe Skies Act of 2014, H.R. 4448, which would cut off US aid to countries not working with the Interpol database. (A waiver could be given "in cases of disaster relief, humanitarian aid, or national security" - how ever defined.
The concept or phrase "national security" was invoked this week behind closed doors in the UN Host Country Committee, after the US denied a visa to Iran's Ambassador nominee for his role in the 1979 hostage taking, which he says was as a translator. Meanwhile the US allowed in, and made a court filing in support of immunity for, Sri Lankan military figure Shavendra Silva, that country's Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN. Watch this site.
Footnote: Grabbing the first two questions, Pam Falk of CBS thanked the panel on behalf of the dubious UN Correspondents Association, whose Executive Board engaged in censorship; Noble perhaps misunderstanding thanked Falk for the "invitation." It's a press conference at the UN, not its Censorship Alliance. So the Free UN Coalition of Access offered counter-thanks for the ability to asked questions: about civil liberties. To be continued.
