UN Contract Rules Required AT&T To Provide Notice to the UN Before Giving Any Info to US, UN Cuts Off Inner City Press Question

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 19 -- After the new revelations that AT&T gave access to the US government to mass volumes of communications, including from the United Nations, Inner City Press on August 17, 18 and 19 asked the UN if in doing so, AT&T would have violated its contracts with the UN. August 19 Vine here.

  Now on August 19 Inner City Press asked the UN about this rule, which makes it clear AT&T had to tell the UN before sharing any information. From the UN's "General Conditions of Contact" --

"12.3 The Contractor may disclose Information to the extent required by law, provided that, subject to and without any waiver of the privileges and immunities of the United Nations, the Contractor will give the United Nations sufficient prior notice of a request for the disclosure of Information in order to allow the United Nations to have a reasonable opportunity to take protective measures or such other action as may be appropriate before any such disclosure is made."

 First UN Associate Spokesperson Vannina Maestracci told Inner City Press, on camera on August 17, that the UN's contracts with AT&T -- with public money -- are not public and will not be disclosed. Pressed, she would not answer if spying would violate the provisions of the "confidential" UN contracts.

  On August 18, Inner City Press asked again. From the UN's August 18 transcript:

Inner City Press: I wanted to ask you again about this, you know, reported document that AT&T was providing all communications from the UN to the US.  Yesterday, one of the ambassadors at the Security Council said from now on he's not going to send any e-mail inside the building, just to set the stage.  But, you were quoted as saying and you did say that the UN will be contacting AT&T.  Can you say a little bit…?

Associate Spokesperson:  They did.

Inner City Press: Okay.  Has done so.  And what's the response?

Associate Spokesperson:  They did.  And they're… and I understand there's also going to be a meeting between AT&T and the UN.

Inner City Press: What, OLA [Office of Legal Affairs] or?  I mean, I guess what I want to know is, given that I sent you, you’d asked for an e-mail, so I sent you the contracts.

Associate Spokesperson:  I did see the contracts.  But, I mean, again, you've asked me to share specifically the details of the contracts, and we wouldn't do that.  Anyways, I don't want to get into it.  They've been in contact, and there will be a meeting very soon, and I'll keep you updated....

Inner City Press:  But, you'd think that Member States, that's why I brought up that quote.  You'd think the Member States that own the organization would have some ability or right to know if they're being spied on inside the building by the host country.  Right?  I'm just wondering, is that, does the UN believe that it should tell Member States that all their communications sent inside the building can be spied on by the host country if that's…

Associate Spokesperson:  I don't understand, your question makes it sound like we knew we were spied on and we were wire-tapped so I don’t understand…

Inner City Press:  Now that you have reason to know and you're going to speak to AT&T…?

Associate Spokesperson:  Okay.  I'll come back to you, Matthew. 

  On August 19, having seen the General Rules of Contract, Inner City Press asked Maestracci about them, until she cut off the questions by saying, It is not your briefing. Video here, Vine here. We'll have more on this.

  Inner City Press has since put the request in writing, to Maestracci and the lead spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

  I asked if AT&T providing access to the US government to UN email and communications would violate the terms of its procurements and contracts with the UN and was told the contracts would not be public, and no comment. This is a reiterated request, on deadline, with for your convenience in providing an answer some sample contracts:

AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Telecommunication Equipment & Services    Telecommunications    $122,745.00    PS-21137    13 February 2013    N/A
AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Maintenance & Repair Services    Office, computer and communication equipment maintenance and repair    $48,912.00    PS-21452    03 April 2013    N/A
AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Telecommunication Equipment & Services    Communications    $69,320.00    PS-21518    01 April 2013    N/A
AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Telecommunication Equipment & Services    Telecommunications    $122,735.00    PS-21561

  While Maestracci said, on camera, "You're so not interested in the answers," Inner City Press is quite interested in the answers, so far not given, and in the contracts between the UN and AT&T. Watch this site.

Back on October 23, 2014 when UN human rights rapporteur Ben Emmerson held a press conference on his report on mass surveillance on October 23, Inner City Press asked him to review the Obama administration's and its Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board's response to the spying revelations by Edward Snowden and others, and if any dangers are posed by the “foreign fighters” resolution adopted by the UN Security Council in September. (The latter question was not answered.)

  Emmerson began diplomatically, calling the PCLOB's reports “worth reading,” but then said that the debate and proposal legislation is confined to the “detailed fringes.” He said the key question is whether the right to privacy simply will not apply to the means of communications most in use today, given government's appetite for surveillance.Video here and embedded below.

  He said as long as governments -- like that of the United States -- won't disclose their surveillance programs, the debate is subject to “conceptual censorship.”

  The UN set aside the first question for the old UN Correspondents Association, which asked a softball question leading Emmerson to reply, “read the report.” (It has been online for some time, here.) 

 The new Free UN Coalition for Access objects to set-asides, and to UNCA's function as the UN's Censorship Alliance, having tried to order Inner City Press to remove factual articles from the Internet, and thengetting Google to block from its search leaked copies of anti-Press complaints filed with the UN, here. We'll have more on this.

First Look's "The Intercept" has revealed that the US National Security Agency and FBI spied on at least five Americans, all Muslims, and used place-holder code names like "Raghead," click here for that. 

   Those spied on included a Republican candidate for the Virginia legislature, Faisal Gill; Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor; lawyer Asim Ghafoor; Nihad Awad of CAIR; and "Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights."

 It's shameful, but who can stand up to the United States?

  The United Nations' Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has already said he thinks Snowden "misused" information, as Inner City Press reported here.

  Back on March 14 when the US delegation to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva took the floor, it was a full court press. Of the elephant in the room, NSA spying, the speaker from the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice used a single line: DOJ is "monitoring" a number of private actions. You don't say.

  The head of the US delegation, Mary McLeod, said but did not explain why the US Administration has "no current expectation to become a party to the optional protocol" to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights -- which the US says does not apply to its actions outside of its borders. 

The session closed with a slew of questions: Walter Kalin asked why the US deports people to Haiti even amid the cholera epidemic -- for which, Inner City Press notes, the US has said the UN should be immune. 

  The US repeated that argument on July 7, which Inner City Press has covered here. Watch this site. 

   

UN Tells Inner City Press Its Contracts With AT&T Are Secret, As AT&T Gives All Info to US

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 17 -- After the new revelations that AT&T gave access to the US government to mass volumes of communications, including from the United Nations, Inner City Press on August 17 asked the UN if in doing so, AT&T would have violated its contracts with the UN.

  UN Associate Spokesperson Vannina Maestracci told Inner City Press, on camera, that the UN's contracts with AT&T -- with public money -- are not public and will not be disclosed. Pressed, she would not answer if spying would violate the provisions of the "confidential" UN contracts.

  Inner City Press has since put the request in writing, to Maestracci and the lead spokesman for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon:

  I asked if AT&T providing access to the US government to UN email and communications would violate the terms of its procurements and contracts with the UN and was told the contracts would not be public, and no comment. This is a reiterated request, on deadline, with for your convenience in providing an answer some sample contracts:

AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Telecommunication Equipment & Services    Telecommunications    $122,745.00    PS-21137    13 February 2013    N/A
AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Maintenance & Repair Services    Office, computer and communication equipment maintenance and repair    $48,912.00    PS-21452    03 April 2013    N/A
AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Telecommunication Equipment & Services    Communications    $69,320.00    PS-21518    01 April 2013    N/A
AT&T CORP.    United States of America    Telecommunication Equipment & Services    Telecommunications    $122,735.00    PS-21561

  While Maestracci said, on camera, "You're so not interested in the answers," Inner City Press is quite interested in the answers, so far not given, and in the contracts between the UN and AT&T. Watch this site.

Back on October 23, 2014 when UN human rights rapporteur Ben Emmerson held a press conference on his report on mass surveillance on October 23, Inner City Press asked him to review the Obama administration's and its Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board's response to the spying revelations by Edward Snowden and others, and if any dangers are posed by the “foreign fighters” resolution adopted by the UN Security Council in September. (The latter question was not answered.)

  Emmerson began diplomatically, calling the PCLOB's reports “worth reading,” but then said that the debate and proposal legislation is confined to the “detailed fringes.” He said the key question is whether the right to privacy simply will not apply to the means of communications most in use today, given government's appetite for surveillance.Video here and embedded below.

  He said as long as governments -- like that of the United States -- won't disclose their surveillance programs, the debate is subject to “conceptual censorship.”

  The UN set aside the first question for the old UN Correspondents Association, which asked a softball question leading Emmerson to reply, “read the report.” (It has been online for some time, here.) 

 The new Free UN Coalition for Access objects to set-asides, and to UNCA's function as the UN's Censorship Alliance, having tried to order Inner City Press to remove factual articles from the Internet, and thengetting Google to block from its search leaked copies of anti-Press complaints filed with the UN, here. We'll have more on this.

First Look's "The Intercept" has revealed that the US National Security Agency and FBI spied on at least five Americans, all Muslims, and used place-holder code names like "Raghead," click here for that. 

   Those spied on included a Republican candidate for the Virginia legislature, Faisal Gill; Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor; lawyer Asim Ghafoor; Nihad Awad of CAIR; and "Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights."

 It's shameful, but who can stand up to the United States?

  The United Nations' Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has already said he thinks Snowden "misused" information, as Inner City Press reported here.

  Back on March 14 when the US delegation to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva took the floor, it was a full court press. Of the elephant in the room, NSA spying, the speaker from the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice used a single line: DOJ is "monitoring" a number of private actions. You don't say.

  The head of the US delegation, Mary McLeod, said but did not explain why the US Administration has "no current expectation to become a party to the optional protocol" to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights -- which the US says does not apply to its actions outside of its borders. 

The session closed with a slew of questions: Walter Kalin asked why the US deports people to Haiti even amid the cholera epidemic -- for which, Inner City Press notes, the US has said the UN should be immune. 

  The US repeated that argument on July 7, which Inner City Press has covered here. Watch this site. 

   

Ban Ki-moon Q&A Goes Soft on Yemen, No Haiti or US Issues, NPC Mug

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 16 -- For two days, the UN promoted Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's appearance at the National Press Club, telling reporters at the UN they could watch it on CSPAN. 

 It was ironic, because Ban Ki-moon has done only one question and answer session at UN Headquarters this year, with the questions clearly handpicked (on Yemen, only the Saudi / Gulf perspective, for example, as the new Free UN Coalition for Access has complained.)

   But at the National Press Club, the choosing of questions was more stealth: they were to be written out by hand - clearly - and passed forward on cards. 

   As selected, there were no questions about any problem in the United States, from police brutality to NSA spying. Nor about the UN, such as impunity for bringing cholera to Haiti, or cover up rapes in Darfur and the DR Congo. 

 In fact, the UN official responsible for those cover up, UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, was on the NPC podium with Ban. In New York, Ladsous refuses to answer any Press questions. Video here, Vine here.

   Ban's prepared speech mentioned his Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura -- trashed by guest of the UN Censorship Alliance on April 16, here -- but not Jamal Benomar, who resigned on April 15. 

 Inner City Press has reported that Saudi Arabia pushes for Benomar to go, and now want to hand pick his successor, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who had a weak record when in Yemen before and who's said to have links with a fishing business with Gulf funders. Click here for that - and Inner City Press' additional scoop on other names floated for the post in the UN: Martin Kobler and Lisa Buttenheim.

  The first question was a softball, Has diplomacy lived up to its promise? Ban seemed to answer yes. On Syria, he repeated word for word what was in his prepared speech. On climate change he grew animated, saying he'll go visit the Pope in Rome this month about the issue.

   Soon the soft Q&A was over; Ban was given a mug, and mugged for the (YouTube) camera while recounting his conversation with Daniel Craig (licensed to save, 008, saved you a click). 

 The lack of seriousness of the questions would at best appear to indicate that the attendees don't think the UN is a serious organization. Then Ban took his mug out into the Washington evening. Fade to black.

   

As Ukraine & Russia Cross Info Swords, UN Radio Reported Ukraine's Speech As Given A Day Before It Was

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, October 22 -- Ukraine was scheduled to speak at the UN about its “Committee on Information” on October 21, but as UN speeches usually go longer than allowed, its turn was postponed until October 22.

That didn't stop the “UN Radio” Russian service from reporting on the speech on October 21 as if it had in fact been given that day. As translated, UN Radio on October 21 reported

“The representative of Ukraine accused Russia of using the information strategy of the Cold War

“One of the main prerequisites of violence in Ukraine became a propaganda information. This was stated by the representative of the Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations, speaking at a meeting of the Fourth Committee of the UN General Assembly.”

  The UN's Fourth Committee did meet on October 21 - but Ukraine didn't speak. Instead it was the first speaker on the afternoon of October 22. Its speech, delivered in perfect French including the word “rigolo,” linked Russia to Joseph Goebbels.

  In reply, the Russian mission's spokesman brought up the recent Human Rights Watch report of the Ukrainian government using cluster bombs in and against Donetsk, and the lack of clarity on who called the snipers shots in Maidan Square.

  Later in the Fourth Committee meeting, Bolivia slammed “powers” who use information technology to intervene and violate privacy, bringing to mind USAID's “Cuban Twitter” and, of course, the NSA.

  Then Jordan said it was first among Arab nations to enact an Access to Information law, in 2007. The Free UN Coalition for Access has been pressing for a Freedom of Information Act at the UN, click here and here for that.

  FUNCA covers the Fourth Committee, including on Decolonization, and the Committee on Information, where at least theoretically the UN's descent into censorship could be raised and resolved. The old UN Correspondents Association, a part of this trend toward privatization of briefings and even censorship -- ordering Press articles off the Internet, getting leaked copies of their complaints to the UN's MALU banned from Google's search, here -- was nowhere to be seen. We'll have more on this.

   

As Spying Story by McClatchy Says Kofi Annan Was UN Secretary General in 2012, Ban Ki-moon Said Snowden "Misused" Digital Communications

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, August 18 -- The new McClatchy story about Germany tapping the phones of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton says that "Clinton’s communication was also a satellite call, in 2012, and was reportedly to then United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan."

   There's a (telling) problem: Kofi Annan wasn't Secretary General in 2012. In fact, he left in 2006; Ban Ki-moon has been SG since then, apparently not memorably.

   Here's a memory, from July 2013: Of the US surveillance exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said“surveillance regimes adopted by some states without adequate safeguards are... counterproductive."

  But UN Secretary General has been quoted, in a meeting with members of parliament in Iceland, as saying that "the Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse” and that the opening up of digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did.”

  In the UN on July 5, 2013, Inner City Press asked Ban's Associate Spokesperson Farhan Haq to explain Ban's comments. If the UN system views surveillance without safeguards as negative, how could its exposure be, as Ban said, a “misuse”?

  Haq twice refused to even confirm that is what Ban said, insisting it was said in a “private” meeting. Video here, from Minute 6:49.

  It was a meeting with multiple elected officials of a state which speaks much about transparency. Can Ban gag those he met with? According to the Guardian, the quote is in notes taken by two attendees and confirmed by a third.

  But this is Ban's UN -- he similarly stepped back from things said on Capitol Hill; UN system whistleblowers complain of retaliation and a lack of protections. 

 While Haq went on to read out statements on freedom of speech, in Ban's UN just this early summer, Inner City Press has been threatened with suspension or withdrawal of accreditation for hanging a single sign on its door for the Free UN Coalition for Access, which advocates on just these issues. 

  Accreditation officials have demanded “urgent” explanation of tweets, and have tried to tell Inner City Press how to cover Ban and his head of peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous.

  It is in this context that Inner City Press believes the Iceland parliamentarians. The ball would seem to be in Ban's court to explain what he meant that information should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did.” Really? Watch this site.

  

NSA Spied on Muslim-American Candidate, Lawyer & Professors, Snowden Shows - Now What?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 9 -- From the Edward Snowden leaks, the hits just keep on coming. Now First Look's "The Intercept" has revealed that the US National Security Agency and FBI spied on at least five Americans, all Muslims, and used place-holder code names like "Raghead." 

   Those spied on included a Republican candidate for the Virginia legislature, Faisal Gill; Hooshang Amirahmadi, an Iranian-American professor; lawyer Asim Ghafoor; Nihad Awad of CAIR; and "Agha Saeed, a former political science professor at California State University who champions Muslim civil liberties and Palestinian rights."

 It's shameful, but who can stand up to the United States?

  Back on March 14 when the US delegation to the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva took the floor, it was a full court press. Of the elephant in the room, NSA spying, the speaker from the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice used a single line: DOJ is "monitoring" a number of private actions. You don't say.

  The head of the US delegation, Mary McLeod, said but did not explain why the US Administration has "no current expectation to become a party to the optional protocol" to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights -- which the US says does not apply to its actions outside of its borders. 

The session closed with a slew of questions: Walter Kalin asked why the US deports people to Haiti even amid the cholera epidemic -- for which, Inner City Press notes, the US has said the UN should be immune. 

  The US repeated that argument on July 7, which Inner City Press has covered here. Watch this site. 

   

Virginia Rout of Eric Cantor Featured Dave Brat Calling to Jail Bankers, End NSA Spying

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 10 -- In US politics, the upset of Eric Cantor by Dave Brat on June 10 has pundits like bond rating agency downgrading the chanced of Marco Rubio and pumping up those of Hillary Clinton, whose book (event) Inner City Press reviewed on June 10, here.

   But there are other ways to view Brat's win. On the US' spying programs, Cantor defended them while Brat said, "the NSA’s indiscriminate collection of data on all Americans is a disturbing violation of our Fourth Amendment right to privacy." On his website, Brat said he favors "the end of bulk phone and email data collection by the NSA."

  Also on his campaign website, Brat bashed Cantor for supporting “Wall Street bailouts.” A review of Cantor's largest campaign contributors finds Goldman Sachs, Scoggin Capital Management and the Blackstone Group, now big in rental-backed securities. More on bad banks here.

   Brat said, “"All the investment banks up in DC, New York, those guys should've gone to jail" -- video here, at minute 7:02.

    So how to read the upset? And that it was missed by the ostensibly data-heavy scribes who focus on US politics? Watch this site.

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As US Shuts Syria Embassy in DC, Why Today, Why UN No Comment?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, March 18 -- When buzz began on March 18 of the US ordering Syria to close its embassy in Washington and consulates in Houston and Troy, Michigan, Inner City Press sought confirmation, and then explanation. 

  The first of these came, among with some comments, even before the State Department released a statement by new envoy on Syria Daniel Rubinstein.

  At the UN's March 18 noon briefing, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Stephane Dujarric for Ban's or the UN's view of this closing of diplomatic facilities.

  Dujarric said Ban stands behind his position.

  Inner City Press asked, how does that apply to today's closings. Really, what IS Ban's position.

  That's all I have, Dujarric said. It felt like a Samuel Beckett play.

  Back at the UN Security Council stakeout, Inner City Press asked Sylvie Lucas of Luxembourg, Council president for March, if the closings had come up in the Council's consultations on the Middle East. No, she said.

  In the afternoon in Washington at a State Department "Town Hall" by John Kerry, moderated by Mariam Elder of BuzzFeed, with the accompanying hashtag #StateWorksForUs, the topic arose. Kerry said the closures were ordered because Assad killed his own people. Some wondered: and didn't Sri Lanka, too?

  After Kerry left -- there were no questions on Kosovo, or apparently on NSA spying -- another participant asked, Why were the closures done today? Mr. Tillemann referred the question to someone else, who never answered, at least on-camera.

  So, one wag wondered, was it to give Robert Ford's replacement Daniel Rubinstein something to announce early on? Or because the Assad government was making gains militarily?  And again: why not Sri Lanka? 

  On March 14, the UN hyped up Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's Syria briefing to the General Assembly, and then didn't televise any of it, nor the reply by Syrian Ambassadar Bashar Ja'afari.

  Ja'afari came out to the stakeout and criticized the blackout, and Ban Ki-Moon and his envoy Lakhdar Brahimi for offering "no hint of terrorism."

  Soon some at the stakeout tried to cut in, as they wouldn't with Ban Ki-moon. Video here, from Minute 6:23. Ja'afari told them if they wanted to leave, they could. He denounced Saudi Arabia, perhaps pointedly at one of the interveners.

  Ironically, later on March 14 the Syrian Coalition was given a long, uninterrupted press conference not at a stakeout that any UN journalist could attend, but in the United Nations Correspondents Association clubhouse, a room the UN gives to Gulf and Western journalists. See this debate.

  Before the cut-off attempts, Ja'afari alleged that Qatar paid millions of dollars to Al Nusra for the released of the Ma'aloula nuns, in violations of a recent Security Council resolution on the topic. He spoke against unilateral sanctions, saying they are only supported by the US "and the Marshall Islands, or Kiribati."

  Previously, Ja'afari was cut off UNTV, when Stephane Dujarric was in charge of it. Click here for that. Now, Dujarric is Ban Ki-moon's spokesman, and suddenly the Syrian National Coalition, unlike in September, is back in the UNCA club. Meanwhile questions Inner City Press sent to Duarric, not only about Nigeria and UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous but also about the apparently disappearing of UN video, have gone unanswered. This is the new UN. Watch this site.