Iain Lobban the director of GCHQ (Reuters/UK Parliament via REUTERS TV)
The head of GCHQ, Britain’s electronic intelligence agency, will step down by year’s end, the Foreign Office said. Officials denied his departure was linked to public outrage over mass surveillance revelations by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Iain Lobban, 53, has served as GCHQ’s director since June 2008. His departure was officially described as a long-considered move, but comes just a few weeks after he was summoned to answer MPs’ questions about surveillance operations in an unprecedented televised open session of the UK parliament’s intelligence and security committee, along with the heads of MI5 and MI6.
“Iain Lobban is doing an outstanding job as director of GCHQ,” a spokesperson said. “Today is simply about starting the process of ensuring we have a suitable successor in place before he moves on, planned at the end of the year.”
Officials dismissed suggestions his decision was influenced by revelations made by Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, whose leaks revealed details of a massive global surveillance network run by the NSA and other members of the so-called Five Eyes alliance – the US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
Despite accounting for the bulk of Britain’s three intelligence agencies’ combined budget of £2 billion, GCHQ had previously attracted far less public attention than MI5 or MI6.
It was damaging media revelations regarding wide-scale collaboration between GCHQ and the NSA that resulted in Lobban being called to appear before the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee alongside the heads of MI5 and MI6 in November.
At the hearing, Lobban accused Snowden’s disclosures of seriously damaging Britain’s counter-terrorism efforts, saying extremists had discussed changing their communication methods following the revelations.
Critics, however, have accused GCHQ of working hand-in-hand with the NSA in massively intruding on the private communications of millions of citizens.
In June, the Guardian reported the NSA had secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic, and, by 2010, was able to boast the “biggest internet access” of any member of the Five Eyes alliance.
According to media reports, the NSA and GCHQ had a particularly close relationship, sharing troves of data in what Snowden called “the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”
Around 850,000 NSA employees and contractors with top secret clearance had access to the GCHQ databases, allowing them to view and analyze information garnered from such subtly titled programs as ‘Mastering the Internet (MTI)’ and ‘Global Telecoms Exploitation (GTE).’
Lobban, who first joined GCHQ in 1983, insisted in November that GCHQ did not spend its time “listening to the telephone calls or reading the e-mails of the majority” of British citizens.
Sir Iain’s counterpart at the NSA, General Keith Alexander, alongside his deputy, John Inglis, are also stepping down later this year.
There is also an ongoing campaign pushing for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to resign for lying under oath by telling Congress the NSA did “not wittingly” collect data on hundreds of millions of Americans.
According to AFP, Russia on Monday imposed a ban on Australian beef byproducts such as offal over the use of a growth stimulant allowed in some nations but that Moscow considers unsafe.
The temporary restrictions also affect Belarus and Kazakhstan — two ex-Soviet nations that are part of a Moscow-led Customs Union.
Australia Beef
Australia is the world’s third-largest exporter of beef after the United States and Brazil. It reported shipping 30,000 tonnes of beef to Russia in 2013.
The Interfax news agency said Australia had sent 13,000 tonnes of beef byproducts to ex-Soviet countries in the first 10 months of last year — most of them to Russia — worth $21.3 million.
Russia’s agriculture watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said the ban was imposed after the discovery of the growth stimulant trenbolone “in several shipments” of Australian beef byproducts.
Rosselkhoznadzor chief Sergei Dankvert told Interfax that the ban applied to beef byproducts because they accumulate the steroid in greater quantities than regular meat.
Russia has frequently imposed temporary bans on meat products over the use of hormones that are allowed in nations such as the United States but restricted by Moscow’s more stringent regulations.
Tony Abbott repeats his statement of regret Wednesday evening, as Indonesia orders an end to bilateral co-operation.Labor continues to backs the government in ‘a team Australia moment’.
Australia’s asylum-seeker measures in Indonesia have been thrown into disarray with Jakarta pulling the plug on all military co-operation in retaliation for the Abbott government’s refusal to explain the phone tapping of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
Dr Yudhoyono: “It is no longer the Cold War era.” Photo: Achmad Ibrahim era.
God willing, tonight I will send a letter to Tony Abbott demanding Australia’s official stance and explanation … and then we will see what we can do in the future
According to Karuni Rompies and AAPRelations between Canberra and Jakarta have descended to their lowest level since the East Timor crisis as the Indonesian President ordered his country’s troops to stop joint exercises with Australians in Darwin, and the navy to halt any joint patrols to combat people smuggling.
n the latest development, the Australian embassy in Indonesia is bracing for protests outside its offices on Thursday. It is understood that the government will take precautions to ensure the safety of staff at the embassy.
And in the US, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop, visiting Washington for Ausmin talks, refused on Thursday to discuss intelligence matters. US Secretary of State John Kerry also said that the US did not talk about intelligence matters in public and it wasn’t going to start now.
But opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek accused the Coalition of making ”some injudicious” comments before the September 7 election on asylum seeker policy.
Ms Plibersek said the government could not allow the diplomatic row with Indonesia, over spying claims during Labor’s time in government, to fester, insisting the opposition was committed to helping the government restore the relationship.
But she would not say whether she thought Prime Minister Abbott should pick up the phone and talk to Mr Yudhoyono, a move suggested by Labor leader Bill Shorten.
Cabinet minister Christopher Pyne said that he was confused by Labor’s position.
On the one hand, he said, the opposition was saying it supported everything the government was doing to repair the relationship. ”On the other hand, they’re still trying to play politics on foreign policy,” Mr Pyne said.
Indonesia’s President on Wednesday said: “How can we do all this if we are not sure that there is no tapping of our military, which is working for the interests of the two countries?”
The sudden deterioration in ties sent the Abbott government into crisis talks, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott requesting time to address the House of Representatives at short notice to emphasise his respect for the relationship and his desire to see it repaired.
”I want to express here in this chamber my deep and sincere regret about the embarrassment to the President and to Indonesia that’s been caused by recent media reporting,” he said for the second time that day.
“The President indicated that he would shortly be writing to me. I would like to reassure the House that I will be responding to the President’s letter swiftly, fully and courteously. As always, I am absolutely committed to building the closest possible relationship with Indonesia, because that is overwhelmingly in the interests of both our countries.”
In response, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten described it as a shared problem.
”This is indeed a team Australia moment. This is something that has happened to both Indonesia and Australia. We need to walk this road together. Other nations have resolved these similar issues, we can too,” he said.
Only last month Indonesian defence minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro agreed to deploy his navy’s maritime patrol aircraft to monitor people-smuggling activity along southern coastal areas, and to beef up naval patrols.
An Indonesian navy spokesman confirmed on Wednesday night that these patrols had been suspended, but said the moves would not affect the police force, which provides most of Indonesia’s assistance to Australia on people smuggling.
Dr Yudhoyono said after a crisis meeting at the presidential palace with his foreign minister, co-ordinating minister for security and intelligence chief that the suspension of military co-operation would remain in place until he had obtained “a clear explanation [from Australia] and for Australia to take responsibility”.
“God willing, tonight I will send a letter to Tony Abbott demanding Australia’s official stance and explanation … and then we will see what we can do in the future,” he said.
The explanation should “not be given through the Australian domestic setting”, he added.
The President spoke warmly of the relationship with Australia, but said he had ordered the suspension or review of several areas of co-operation, particularly on information sharing and the exchange of intelligence.
“I have also asked my military to temporarily stop the joint army and navy exercises and also to temporarily stop any co-ordinated military operations, the joint patrols,” he said.
“As you know, the people-smuggling issue has troubled both Indonesia and Australia, so we have co-ordinated military operations or co-ordinated patrols in the ocean, but until this issue is all clear it will be stopped.”
Dr Yudhoyono also called for a binding code of conduct between Australia and Indonesia on co-operation on military, intelligence and people-smuggling issues.
He said the decision by Australia to tap his mobile phone and those of his wife and their inner circle was ”difficult to digest”.
”It is no longer the Cold War era. It was a common thing then to spy on countries of different blocs, but today it is not like that any more. Hostile countries can tap each other, but between Indonesia and Australia we are not of different blocs, let alone hostile each other … why tap a friend, not foe?”
Position expressed via Twitter
Indonesian president Yudhoyono again took to twitter overnight to summarise his position, telling his 4.023 million followers via @SBYudhoyono that he would take three steps “while waiting for an official statement from the Australian Government”.
The first was to wait for “an explanation and for Australia to take responsibility”.
The second was: “A number of agendas for cooperation will be re-examined: the exchange of information, intelligence and training between the Republic of Indonesia and Australia, and the issue of people smuggling”.
The third was to demand a “Necessary protocol, or code of ethics, and guiding principles relating to cooperation in various fields to sustain the relationship the two countries”.
At the same time, there has been an outpouring of anger towards Australia on Twitter. The hashtag #GanyangAustralia , which means “Crush Australia”, has become a popular rallying point for Indonesians to respond to the spy allegations and Australia’s response so far.
Neslihan Kurosawa, a Turkish woman who had lived in Australia for 35 years, is calling on the Turkish authorities, particularly the Prime Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, for help in her fight against mistreatment and discrimination, which she says she was subjected to for several years in Australia, seeking protection from Turkey.
According to Kurosawa, 50, she and her daughter were discriminated against on the grounds that they were of a different ethnic background. Kurosawa, who has been is Turkey for the last 10 months, contacted the Turkish authorities, including the President’s Office, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Human Rights Commission in Parliament, when she came to Turkey, asking for support for her cause. Kurosawa received an immediate response from the President’s Office, which said her petition had been sent to the Foreign Ministry and that officials from the ministry would deal with the matter, but there is still no development in response to her complaints, she said.
“I want the Turkish Foreign Ministry to contact the authorities in Australia over my case. Why are they covering this up? There is negligence here. I contacted the Turkish embassy and consulate in Australia several times when I was there. However, there has as of yet been no word from the Turkish authorities over my complaints,” Kurosawa told Today’s Zaman.
Meanwhile, a senior diplomat from the Foreign Ministry commented to Today’s Zaman that Kurosawa’s case was on their agenda, adding, however, that ministry officials had tried to reach her on several occasions, but failed to do so.
“We have been aware of her situation since 2007. We have also received the petition sent to us from the President’s Office. We will follow the issue. The consulate in Sydney told us that it was not possible to reach her at her address,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“I am fighting for my daughter and myself. My daughter was born and raised in Australia. My family is there. I want the Turkish authorities to help me. I want the court cases I had filed to be reopened so that the judicial bodies will see we were right in our complaints that we had been mistreated and discriminated against,” says Kurosawa.
Today’s Zaman also asked the Australian Embassy in Ankara about Kurosawa’s complaints, and the ambassador, Ian Biggs, said the embassy has no new information since the issue was raised in February 2013. “These are serious allegations and I understand that they have been referred to the relevant legal authorities in Australia,” said the ambassador.
Kurosawa’s family moved to Australia in 1970 and settled there when she was 15 years old. She worked as an accredited translator, got married and was later divorced. Kurosawa currently holds an Australian passport.
“I have a 19-year-old daughter. In Australia I had a house and a good job. My daughter and I were the only Turks in the neighborhood,” Kurosawa said.
According to Kurosawa, her daughter was often insulted at school by her classmates for being a Turk. “They used to call my daughter ‘barbarian Turk’ or say ‘go back to your country.’ I spoke about the issue with the school administrators but they were unwilling to take action.”
But a bigger problem arose in 2004 when she began receiving phone calls from unknown persons. The callers insulted her and used vulgar language. “I was weary of those phone calls and changed my number several times. But they again found my new number. Then I appealed to the police, asking for help. But they did not help me, so I turned to the courts. The laws in Australia are based on the principle of protecting women and children, but those laws were not applied in our case. Instead of helping me, the [security and legal] authorities remained ineffectual and just referred me to other authorities,” Kurosawa said.
Kurosawa says there is a security risk for her should she and her daughter return to Australia.
“I want Turkey to take me and my daughter under protection. All my life is in Australia. If my life and property were secure, I would not have left Australia after 35 years. They failed to take my daughter from me but they totally turned my life upside down,” said Kurosawa.
In 2006, a case was filed against Kurosawa by the state to take custody of her daughter. “Psychological pressure was placed on my daughter. They took my daughter into a room and asked her bizarre questions such as was I putting pressure on her to cover her head with a headscarf, do I allow her to wear a bikini or if I let her have a boyfriend. That was a very difficult time, but I came out victorious even though that cost me both financially and emotionally,” Kurosawa stated.
The Kurosawa family later relocated to another neighborhood home to immigrants from different ethnic backgrounds. “This did not solve our problems and we decided to move back to Turkey. I cannot believe that I experienced all that trouble. I was an immigrant but a successful woman in Australia. I do not want to place blame on anyone but I think we were discriminated against due to our identity as Turks. The aim was to harass us so that we would leave Australia,” she said.
Mr Yudhoyono and several senior ministers were said to be targeted
Indonesia is recalling its ambassador to Australia over allegations that Canberra spied on phone calls of the Indonesian president.
According to BBC, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the first lady and Vice-President Boediono were reportedly amongst those targeted.
The allegations came from documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden which were published by broadcaster ABC and the Guardian newspaper.
Indonesia said the ambassador was being called to Jakarta for “consultations”.
It is the latest in a series of spying allegations that have strained relations between the two allies.
On 1 November Indonesia summoned Australia’s ambassador amid reports that Australia’s Jakarta embassy was used as part of a US-led spying network in Asia.
The latest leaked document showed that Australia spy agencies named Mr Yudhoyono, the first lady, Vice-President Boediono and other senior ministers as targets for monitoring, the reports said.
The presentation from Australian spy agency the Defence Signals Directorate (now known as the Australian Signals Directorate) showed that agencies attempted to listen to Mr Yudhoyono’s calls at least once, and tracked calls made to and from his mobile phone, in August 2009, theAustralian Broadcasting Corporation and the Guardian added.
The news organisations published slides from the presentation, which appeared to show a list of Indonesian “leadership targets” and the handset models used by each target, as well as a diagram of “voice events” of the Indonesian president in August 2009.
One slide entitled “Indonesian President voice intercept (August ’09)” appeared to show an attempt to listen to the content of a phone call to Mr Yudhoyono.
‘Research’
On Monday, Indonesian Finance Minister Marty Natalegawa said: “This is an unfriendly, unbecoming act between strategic partners.”
“This hasn’t been a good day in the relationship between Indonesia and Australia.”
Indonesia was reviewing all of its agreements related to information exchange with Australia, Mr Natalegawa added.
Djoko Suyanto, Indonesia’s Co-ordinating Minister for Politics, Legal and Security Affairs, told the BBC that Jakarta would summon the Australian ambassador for questioning.
However, Sofyan Djalil, the former minister for state-owned enterprises whose name was also on the list of targets, told AFP news agency: “Diplomatic relations always have their ups and downs. This has caused anger in the short-term, but in the long-term we are still neighbours and I think we will overcome this.”
Earlier on Monday, responding to questions in parliament, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said: “The Australian government never comments on specific intelligence matters.”
He added: “I will never say or do anything that might damage the strong relationship and the close co-operation that we have with Indonesia, which is all in all, our most important relationship.”
Last week, commenting on the earlier claims, Mr Abbott had described the term spying as “kind of loaded language” and suggested that “researching” would be more appropriate.
Indonesia has publicly voiced anger over previous allegations of Australian spying.
Vice-President Boediono, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name, said last week that the Indonesian public were “concerned” about the spying allegations.
“I think we must look forward to come to some arrangement which guarantees that intelligence information from each side is not used against the other,” he said.
Australia and Indonesia are key allies and trading partners.
Australia requires Indonesia’s co-operation on the asylum issue, as many asylum seekers travel via Indonesia to Australia by boat, but there are tensions on the issue.
Earlier this month, Indonesia declined an Australian request to receive a boat of asylum seekers whose vessel, bound for Australia’s Christmas Island, had got into trouble after it departed from Indonesia.
The reports are amongst the series of documents leaked by ex-US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia and is wanted in the US in connection with the unauthorized disclosures.
TURKEY has rejected an Australian request to increase the number of Australians and New Zealanders visiting Gallipoli for the 100th anniversary of the Anzac landings.
The Turks insist that for safety reasons no more than 10,500 Australians and New Zealanders may attend the commemoration on April 25, 2015. And the Abbott government will press on with the plan for a national ballot to allocate those places to those who want to attend.
When the ballot plan was announced by the Labor government last year, battlefield tour operators and some of those who had booked places reacted angrily to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ plan to limit the number able to attend the dawn service. The Coalition undertook to review the planning for the centenary if it won government.
The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac, Michael Ronaldson, said he had discussed the numbers with the Turkish government. “It’s been made very clear to me . . . that they view 10,500 as the maximum figure. They are our hosts. They are very generous hosts and if that’s the figure they believe is appropriate then that’s the figure we will work on.”
He said he would make announcements about the ballot process in the next month. The previous government’s estimates of the numbers of people eligible for the various categories in the ballot were reasonable.
But large numbers of Australians wanted to make the journey and there had to be a way to ensure that those who entered the ballot actually intended to go, Senator Ronaldson said.
“It’s important that people have thought long and hard about whether they want to go, whether they can go and whether they will go,” he said.
To take some of the pressure off the anniversary of the Anzac landing, Senator Ronaldson is considering a proposal for commemoration ceremonies marking other key dates.
“I’m looking at how we might be able to have some smaller, but no less important for the families involved, commemorative activities through the campaign.”
In April, former defence force chief Angus Houston told The Australian that being at Gallipoli in August for the anniversaries of the battles such as Lone Pine and The Nek or the evacuation would give visitors the space to contemplate the Anzac sacrifice without battling the crowds expected to mark the 100th anniversary of the landing.
Mr Houston, who headed the inquiry into how the Gallipoli centenary should be commemorated, said it could be dangerous to allow unlimited numbers to visit. “I think if you just have a free-for-all, it will be a shambles. The simple fact is that the site will not take more than 10,500 people,” he said.
He said it might be possible to have a small team including a chaplain and a bugler at Gallipoli to carry out services daily during the anniversary period.
Senator Ronaldson said a key priority for him as minister would be caring for those who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and other conflicts.
He said he wanted the next generation of Australians to come out of the Anzac commemorative period with a clear understanding of a century of sacrifice, from World War I to Afghanistan, knowing where their forebears fought, when they fought and the values they were fighting to defend, as well as what 102,000 names on the Australian War Memorial meant.
via Turkey rejects more for Gallipoli 100th | The Australian.
