A Look at the FBI Infiltration of the Anti-Vietnam War Movement (2/2)

Ethiopian refugee wants UK action over hacking - Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports

y RAPHAEL SATTER
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) - An Ethiopian refugee has urged police to investigate whether he had been hacked by his home government on British soil.

If taken up, Tadesse Kersmo's call could spark a diplomatically sensitive inquiry into whether Ethiopia's security services have been using high tech methods to attack their critics abroad - and whether a U.K. company has been equipping them for the task.

Speaking at a news conference organized by London-based Privacy International, Kersmo said Monday that he thought he was safe from snooping when he left Ethiopia for the United Kingdom in 2009.

"I was wrong," he said.

Kersmo said he realized something was amiss when confidential files kept on his computer began appearing online. When experts at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, an Internet watchdog group, checked his machine, they found evidence it had been infected by FinSpy, a powerful espionage program distributed by the Britain-based Gamma Group.

Kersmo is the latest expatriate Ethiopian to find himself at the receiving end of powerful cyberattacks. Last year, U.S.-based opposition figure Berhanu Nega told The Associated that he and his colleagues were purging their hard drives for fear that they had been compromised. Last week, Citizen Lab reported that two Ethiopian journalists, one based in Belgium, the other in Alexandria, Virginia, had been targeted in electronic attacks.

Dina Mufti, a spokesman for the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected any suggestion that his government was engaged in hacking, describing the claims as baseless.

In a formal complaint to Britain's National Crime Agency, Privacy International asked for an investigation into the cyberattack on Kersmo - and any involvement by Gamma.

The Crime Agency said Monday it was unable to confirm or deny whether an investigation had been opened into the attack. Gamma did not return a message seeking comment.

___

Elias Meseret in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia contributed to this report.

Ethiopian refugee wants UK action over hacking - Live5News.com | Charleston, SC | News, Weather, Sports

By RAPHAEL SATTER
Associated Press

LONDON (AP) - An Ethiopian refugee has urged police to investigate whether he had been hacked by his home government on British soil.

If taken up, Tadesse Kersmo's call could spark a diplomatically sensitive inquiry into whether Ethiopia's security services have been using high tech methods to attack their critics abroad - and whether a U.K. company has been equipping them for the task.

Speaking at a news conference organized by London-based Privacy International, Kersmo said Monday that he thought he was safe from snooping when he left Ethiopia for the United Kingdom in 2009.

"I was wrong," he said.

Kersmo said he realized something was amiss when confidential files kept on his computer began appearing online. When experts at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, an Internet watchdog group, checked his machine, they found evidence it had been infected by FinSpy, a powerful espionage program distributed by the Britain-based Gamma Group.

Kersmo is the latest expatriate Ethiopian to find himself at the receiving end of powerful cyberattacks. Last year, U.S.-based opposition figure Berhanu Nega told The Associated that he and his colleagues were purging their hard drives for fear that they had been compromised. Last week, Citizen Lab reported that two Ethiopian journalists, one based in Belgium, the other in Alexandria, Virginia, had been targeted in electronic attacks.

Dina Mufti, a spokesman for the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected any suggestion that his government was engaged in hacking, describing the claims as baseless.

In a formal complaint to Britain's National Crime Agency, Privacy International asked for an investigation into the cyberattack on Kersmo - and any involvement by Gamma.

The Crime Agency said Monday it was unable to confirm or deny whether an investigation had been opened into the attack. Gamma did not return a message seeking comment.

US man sues Ethiopia for cyber snooping - The West Australian

San Francisco (AFP) - A lawsuit filed on Tuesday accuses Ethiopia of infecting a US man's computer with "spyware" as part of a campaign to gather intelligence about those critical of the government.

"We have clear evidence of a foreign government secretly infiltrating an American's computer in America, listening to his calls and obtaining access to a wide swath of his private life," said attorney Nate Cardozo of Internet rights group Electronic Freedom Foundation.

"The current Ethiopian government has a well-documented history of human rights violations against anyone it sees as political opponents."

The computer of a US citizen living in the state of Maryland was targeted with malicious software that monitored use and snooped on calls made using Internet telephone service Skype, the suit charges.

The malware was slipped onto his machine when he opened an emailed document file booby-trapped with a program called FinSpy, according to the EFF.

Analysis of the computer showed that recordings of Skype calls and other data was sent to a server in Ethiopia controlled by the government there, the EFF charged.

The court was asked to let the plaintiff be identified by the pseudonym "Mr. Kidane" to protect members of his family here and abroad from reprisal.

"The problem of governments violating the privacy of their political opponents through digital surveillance is not isolated ?- it's already big and growing bigger," said EFF legal director Cindy Cohn.

The complaint filed in federal district court in the US capital of Washington calls for a jury trial along with damages to be paid for violations of US law.

Sergey Lavrov contributes to Russian-African friendship - News - Society - The Voice of Russia: News, Breaking news, Politics, Economics, Business, Russia, International current events, Expert opinion, podcasts, Video

Photo: EPA

Russia aims at playing the same role in Africa that the USSR used to play there. Sergey Lavrov’s African trip was meant to build up political and economic relations. Speaking with politicians in Algeria, South Africa, Mozambique and Guinea Lavrov kept stressing that Moscow shared their opinions on many international issues.

However, speaking frankly, China has made more progress in Africa so far.

Algeria was the first stop in Lavrov’s African trip. The meeting with President Abdelaziz Bouteflika was held in a very friendly atmosphere.

“The reception at the Algerian president’s confirmed complete coincidence of our positions on how to carry out the international system reform. Both our countries believe that we should rely on the supremacy of law, the main role of the UN and its Security Council and the need to settle conflicts only by political and diplomatic methods without interfering in sovereign countries’ internal affairs.”

Lavrov’s meetings with other African leaders were dedicated to similar problems with the exception of South Africa where emphasis was made on the forthcoming BRICS summit. Director of the Centre for the Investigation of Russian-African Relations and African Countries’ International Policy at the Institute of Africa Evgeny Korendiasov says:

“On the whole we agree with the South African government that we should step up joint activities of the BRICS countries and African countries relying on South Africa’s potential. We could do a lot for South Africa, just as South Africa could do a lot for us in such fields as exploration of natural resources, construction, banking infrastructure and deliveries of high-quality wines.”

However, one BRICS country already knows Africa very well. This country is China which is carrying out mass expansion in Africa. Investments in African countries give Beijing access to their mineral wealth, as well as an opportunity to pull the strings of local elites. Russia could not compete with China in Africa on equal terms, Viktor Zhuravlev from the Institute of Africa says.

“We could work very effectively in Africa if we had the same material resources as China. Huge financial resources help China to press forward and achieve good results because it invests enormous sums of money into projects that they are carrying out there.”

There is another circumstance promoting China’s expansion in Africa. Strategic issues are settled in China much faster than in Russia. One politician’s signature is enough, while in Russia decisions should be coordinated with numerous authorities. As a result, China gains an advantage. Incidentally, the US also loses the competition with China in Africa. Beijing does not bother about human rights, so it is willing to give loans even to the most repulsive African leaders, thus buying their loyalty . The US cannot act like this. As a result, China has left the US behind in the volume of trade turnover with Africa.

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