On the 23rd of June 2014, I opened Facebook and found news that two friends had been arrested after participating in protests on the other side of the world. Natalie Lowrey is an Australian environmental activist who was arrested in Malaysia on 22 June during a peaceful action against Australian-owned Lynas Corporation’s rare earth plant in Malaysia. Yara Sallam is an Egyptian feminist activist who was arrested in Egypt on 21 June during a peaceful demonstration against the country’s anti-protest law. These two women human rights defenders (WHRDs) and friends who I had met at different moments in my activist life were now in jail, and I was alarmed and worried. lees meer

As is widely warned, your social life can easily be mapped if you are active on Facebook. This article shows how it happens. It is translated from the original in Dutch posted at Bureau Jansen & Jansen. [https://www.burojansen.nl/artikelen_item.php?id=523]

You leave metadata traces when you communicate over the internet and telephone. These are mostly individualised tracks, information about yourself and the direct contacts that you maintain with other people. Of course the results can give a picture of your social world but for that, the data must be gathered for a long time.

Individual data is hard data about where, at what time and with whom you spoke. This data can be used by investigative agencies to profile you as a suspect, a witness or an unknown participant in an event. Whether you’ve been around when other people said stuff, you’ve called someone, you’ve sent a whatsapp message or you received an SMS you didn’t even respond to , everything gets collected for the investigation.

lees meer

In Amsterdam Oost vonden te weinig geweldsincidenten plaats om preventief fouilleren op straat toe te mogen passen. Het was de reden dat de gemeente het middel in 2014 niet langer inzette.

In 2009 concludeerde Buro Jansen & Janssen dat de overheid op zijn minst jongleert met cijfers als het gaat om preventief fouilleren in Amsterdam. Eigenlijk kun je stellen dat de onderbouwing van een zwaar ingrijpend middel als preventief fouilleren faalt en op zijn minst leugenachtig is. De Amsterdamse gemeenteraad heeft zelf als criterium gesteld dat er minimaal één incident per hectare moet plaatsvinden voordat de overheid over kan gaan tot preventief fouilleren.

lees meer

Twee jaar geleden werd het Veiligheidsarchief opgericht. Doel is het blootleggen van theorie, praktijk, effectiviteit en rechtmatigheid omtrent het functioneren van inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten in Nederland.
Op de officiële internetpagina van de archieven van de Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst (AIVD) worden op dit moment drie inzageverzoeken weer gegeven. Het gaat om het verzoek over het Interkerkelijk Vredesberaad (IKV) vanaf 1977 tot 1988 rond de ‘campagne tegen kernwapens’ (sinds maart 2015 online), de FNV in de jaren ’70 en ’80 (sinds juni 2014 online) en Stichting Opstand (sinds mei 2014 online).

lees meer

Het weblog justitieenveiligheid.nl is een initiatief van Buro Jansen & Janssen. Een blog met reacties op gedane uitingen van politie-, justitie- en inlichtingendiensten over het Nederlandse en Europese beleid en praktijk. Daarnaast wordt er bericht over de wijze waarop de media zich op dit terrein bezighouden.
lees meer

Al enkele jaren staat het politieoptreden in sommige buurten van Den Haag ter discussie. De overheid (gemeente, politie, openbaar ministerie en anderen) spreken van incidenten en niet van structureel buitenproportioneel optreden. Terwijl slachtoffers, verschillende organisaties en zelfs ex-agenten wel degelijk spreken van een structureel probleem, blijven burgemeester en politie dit ontkennen en bagatelliseren.
lees meer

Dit stuk zal gaan over benaderingen door de politie in Utrecht. Aanleiding voor ons om ons hier mee bezig te houden waren enkele benaderingen de laatste tijd van mensen in Utrecht in een nogal korte periode.

We vinden het van belang om het verhaal over de benaderingen naar buiten te brengen. Belangrijk voor zowel de benaderden als voor andere mensen in de axiescene. Belangrijk voor de benaderen omdat ze zo laten zien dat zij zich niet laten intimideren door de wouten. Dat zij, ondanks de schok en angst die vaak samengaan met deze benaderingen, met hun verhaal komen en daarmee een mogelijkheid geven om de werkwijze van de p.i.d. in de openbaarheid te brengen.

lees meer

Stel, je maakt gebruik van Gmail. Google, het bedrijf achter Gmail, kijkt met je mee zodra je aan het mailen bent. Gmail is weliswaar gratis, maar Google wil in ruil wel graag jouw data inzien waarmee het onder meer gericht en op persoonlijke maat adverteerders kan binnenhalen. Voor Google betekent gratis dus niet voor niets. Google heeft een betaalde versie van gmail waarbij het bedrijf zegt dat het de e-mails niet scant.
lees meer

Sympathie voor het werk van Buro Jansen & Janssen? Wordt dan nu donateur.
Wordt donateur of vraag familie, vrienden en bekenden donateur te worden. Bankrekening NL56 INGB 0000 6039 04 (ING 603904 BIC: INGBNL2A) ten name van Stichting Res Publica, Postbus 11556, 1001 GN Amsterdam. Res Publica is de stichting van Jansen & Janssen.
Buro Jansen & Janssen is aangemerkt als ANBI (Algemeen Nut Beogende Instellingen) instelling. Dit betekent voor mensen die ons willen steunen het volgende:
– Als een instelling door de Belastingdienst is aangewezen als een ANBI, kan een donateur giften van de inkomsten- of vennootschapsbelasting aftrekken (uiteraard binnen de daarvoor geldende regels).
Voor Buro Jansen & Janssen betekent dit:
– Een ANBI hoeft geen successierecht of schenkingsrecht te betalen over erfenissen en schenkingen die de ANBI ontvangt in het kader van het algemeen belang.
– Uitkeringen die een ANBI doet in het algemene belang zijn vrijgesteld voor het recht van schenking.

Overheid blijft verdienen aan ID-controles

Er zijn in tien jaar tijd maar liefst 277.726 ID-boetes uitgeschreven. Van alle boetes zijn er uiteindelijk 135.188 betaald hetgeen de overheid rond de 6 miljoen euro heeft opgeleverd.

In het najaar van 2007 publiceerde Buro Jansen & Janssen een informatiekrant over de toepassing van de Wet op de Uitgebreide Identificatieplicht (WUID) die 1 januari 2005 werd ingevoerd. In de publicatie kwamen uiteenlopende verhalen aan bod van burgers waaruit duidelijk werd dat de WUID op grove wijze door de politie wordt ingezet. Sommige dagbladen kopten naar aanleiding van de J&J-krant dat de overheid miljoenen binnensleept aan opgelegde boetes vanwege het niet dragen/tonen van de ID-kaart. Zo zou op basis van de cijfers over 2005 de overheid 1,3 miljoen euro hebben verdiend aan ID-boetes.

lees meer

Er zijn in tien jaar tijd maar liefst 277.726 ID-boetes uitgeschreven. Van alle boetes zijn er uiteindelijk 135.188 betaald hetgeen de overheid rond de 6 miljoen euro heeft opgeleverd.

artikel als pdf
Wob stukken en overzichten

Het is onmogelijk om 100 procent grip te hebben op je data en/of persoonsgegevens op het internet. Dagelijks gaan jouw persoonlijke gegevens honderden keren door databases van de overheid. Je kan er wel rationeler en doelbewuster mee omgaan. Dit houdt in dat je jezelf een aantal vragen stelt.

artikel als pdf

Het parkeren van data in de vorm van een website, e-mails of in de cloud is niet van risico’s gevrijwaard. Jouw data staat altijd ergens anders op een computer geparkeerd, of die nu in beheer is van een commercieel bedrijf of een kleine activistische provider.

artikel als pdf

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria.

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

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.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria
Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

Seumas Milne
Wednesday 3 June 2015 20.56 BST Last modified on Thursday 4 June 2015 11.37 BST

Find this story at 3 June 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited

Van nieuwsblog.burojansen.nl

Swedish national Bherlin Gildo’s lawyers argued British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was
A Free Syrian Army fighter fires his weapon during clashes in Aleppo. The Old Bailey was told by the crown that there was no longer a reasonable prospect of a prosecution.

The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian can reveal.

His lawyers argued that British intelligence agencies were supporting the same Syrian opposition groups as he was, and were party to a secret operation providing weapons and non-lethal help to the groups, including the Free Syrian Army.

Bherlin Gildo, 37, who was arrested last October on his way from Copenhagen to Manila, was accused of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training between 31 August 2012 and 1 March 2013 as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist.

Riel Karmy-Jones, for the crown, told the court on Monday that after reviewing the evidence it was decided there was no longer a reasonable prospect of a prosecution. “Many matters were raised we did not know at the outset,” she told the recorder of London, Nicholas Hilliard QC, who lifted all reporting restrictions and entered not guilty verdicts.

In earlier court hearings, Gildo’s defence lawyers argued he was helping the same rebel groups the British government was aiding before the emergence of the extreme Islamist group, Isis. His trial would have been an “affront to justice”, his lawyers said.

Henry Blaxland QC, the defence counsel, said: “If it is the case that HM government was actively involved in supporting armed resistance to the Assad regime at a time when the defendant was present in Syria and himself participating in such resistance it would be unconscionable to allow the prosecution to continue.”

Blaxland told the court: “If government agencies, of which the prosecution is a part, are themselves involved in the use of force, in whatever way, it is our submission that would be an affront to justice to allow the prosecution to continue.”

After Monday’s hearing, Gildo’s solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said his case had exposed a number of “contradictions” – not least that the matters on which he was charged were not offences in Sweden, and that the UK government had expressed support for the Syrian opposition.

“He has been detained in this country although he did not ever intend to enter this country. For him it’s as if he has been abducted by aliens from outer space,” she said.

“Given that there is a reasonable basis for believing that the British were themselves involved in the supply of arms, if that’s so, it would be an utter hypocrisy to prosecute someone who has been involved in the armed resistance.”

Gildo’s defence lawyers quoted a number of press articles referring to the supply of arms to Syrian rebels, including one from the Guardian on 8 March 2013, on the west’s training of Syrian rebels in Jordan. Articles on the New York Times from 24 March and 21 June 2013, gave further details and an article in the London Review of Books from 14 April 12014, implicated MI6 in a “rat line” for the transfer of arms from Libya.

Gildo was was flying to Manila to join his wife, a Filipina, when he was stopped under schedule 7 of the 2000 Terrorism Act, the same statute used to question David Miranda, partner of the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, in 2013.

The court heard that Gildo had sought the help of the Swedish secret service, Sapo, when he wanted to return to his home country.

It is not the first time a British prosecution relating to allegations of Syrian terrorism has collapsed. Last October Moazzem Begg was released after “new material” was said to have emerged.

The attorney general was consulted about Monday’s decision. Karmy-Jones told the court in pre-trial hearings that Gildo had worked with Jabhat al-Nusra, a “proscribed group considered to be al-Qaida in Syria”. He was photographed standing over dead bodies with his finger pointing to the sky.

The Press Association contributed to this report

Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday 1 June 2015 14.33 BST Last modified on Monday 1 June 2015 18.19 BST

Find this story at 1 June 2015

© 2015 Guardian News and Media Limited