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Monday, March 24, 2014

China search plane spots "large objects" related to missing Flight MH370


 China search plane spots "large objects"



A Chinese search plane reports it has discovered floating debris that could be related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 in the southern Indian Ocean.

The crew says it spotted two "relatively large" objects and several smaller ones spread over several kilometers. China has diverted its icebreaker ship, Xuelong, toward the location where the debris was spotted. It's expected to arrive on early Tuesday.

China has also asked Australia to send its aircraft to the area. Ten planes are combing the southern Indian Ocean.

Australia said the search area was widened from 59,000 to 68,000 square kilometers.

The expansion came after French satellite revealed "floating debris" in an area north of pictures previously captured by Australian and Chinese satellites. It's the third set of satellite images in a week.

The Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss says the new lead is promising. He cautions that the search in the icy southern Indian Ocean remains difficult, as rain was expected today.

"We still don't even know for certain that the aircraft is even in this area. We're just, I guess, clutching at whatever little piece of information comes along to try and find a place where we might be able to concentrate the efforts," Truss said.

Malaysian authorities have said the black box is expected to run out of power in two weeks, and won't be able to send any signal thereafter.


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Investor treaties in trouble

Several countries are reviewing these agreements, prompted by the number of cases brought by foreign companies who claim that changes in government policies affect their future profits.

THE tide is turning against investment treaties that allow foreign investors to take up cases against host governments and claim compensation of up to billions of dollars.

Indonesia has given notice it will terminate its bilateral investment treaty (BIT) with the Netherlands, according to a statement issued by the Dutch embassy in Jakarta last week.

“The Indonesian Government has also mentioned it intends to terminate all of its 67 bilateral investment treaties,” according to the statement.

It has not been confirmed by Indonesia. But if this is correct, Indonesia joins South Africa, which last year announced it is ending all its BITS.

Several other countries are also reviewing their investment treaties.

This is prompted by increasing numbers of cases being brought against governments by foreign companies who claim that changes in government policies or contracts affect their future profits.

Many countries have been asked to pay large compensations to companies under the treaties.

The biggest claim was against Ecuador, which has to compensate an American oil company US$2.3bil (RM7.6bil) for cancelling a contract.

The system empowering investors to sue governments in an international tribunal, thus bypassing national laws and courts, is a subject of controversy in Malaysia because it is part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) which the country is negotiating with 11 other countries.

The investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system is contained in free trade agreements (especially those involving the United States) and also in BITS which countries sign among themselves to protect foreign investors’ rights.

When these treaties containing ISDS were signed, many countries did not know they were opening themselves to legal cases that foreign investors can take up under loosely worded provisions that allow them to win cases where they claim they have not been treated fairly or that their expected revenues have been expropriated.

Indonesia and South Africa are among many countries that faced such cases.

The Indonesian government has been taken to the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) tribunal based in Washington by a British company, Churchill Mining, which claimed the government violated the United Kingdom-Indonesia BIT when its contract with a local government in East Kalimantan was cancelled.

Reports indicate the company is claiming compensation of US$1bil to US$2bil (RM3.3bil to RM6.6bil) in losses.

This and other cases taken against Indonesia prompted the government to review whether it should retain its many BITS.

South Africa had also been sued by a British mining company which claimed losses after the government introduced policies to boost the economic capacity of the blacks to redress apartheid policies.

India is also reviewing its BITS, after many companies filed cases after the Supreme Court cancelled their 2G mobile communications licences in the wake of a high-profile corruption scandal linked to the granting of the licences.

But it is not only developing countries that are getting disillusioned by the ISDS. Europe is getting cold feet over the investor-state dispute mechanism in the Trans-Atlantic trade agreement (TTIP) it is negotiating with the United States, similar to the mechanism in the TPPA.

Two weeks ago, Germany told the European Commission that the TTIP must not have the investor-state dispute mechanism.

Brigitte Zypries, a junior economy minister, told the German parliament that Berlin was determined to exclude arbitration rights from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal, according to the Financial Times.

“From the perspective of the [German] federal government, US investors in the European Union have sufficient legal protection in the national courts,” she said.

The French trade minister had earlier voiced opposition to ISDS, while a report commissioned by the UK government also pointed out problems with the mechanism.

The European disillusionment has two causes.

ISDS cases are also affecting the countries. Germany has been taken to ICSID by a Swedish company Vattenfall which claimed it suffered over a billion euros in losses resulting from the government’s decision to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster.

And the European public is getting upset over the investment system. Two European organisations last year published a report showing how the international investment arbitration system is monopolised by a few big law firms, how the tribunals are riddled with conflicts of interest and the arbitrary nature of tribunal decisions.

That report caused shock waves not only in the civil society but also among European policy makers.

In January, the European Commission suspended negotiations with the United States on the ISDS provisions in the TTIP, and announced it would hold 90 days of consultations with the public over the issue.

In Australia, the previous government decided it would not have an ISDS clause in its future FTAs and BITS, following a case taken against it by Philip Morris International which claimed loss of profits because of laws requiring only plain packaging on cigarette boxes.

In Malaysia, the ISDS is one of the major controversial issues relating to the TPPA. Many business, professional and public-interest groups want the government to exclude the ISDS as a “red line” in the TPPA negotiations.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak had also mentioned investment policy and ISDS as one of the issues (the others being government procurement and state-owned enterprises) in the TTPA that may impinge on national sovereignty, when he was at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit and TPPA Summit in Indonesia last year.

So far, the United States has stuck to its position that ISDS has to be part of the TPPA and TTIP. However, if the emerging European opposition affects the TTIP negotiations, it could affect the TPPA as this would strengthen the position of those opposed to ISDS.

Meanwhile, we can also expect more countries to review their BITS. Developing countries seeking to end their bilateral agreements with European countries can point to the fact that more and more European countries are themselves having second thoughts about the ISDS.

Contributed by  Martin Khor Global Trends The Star/ANN
  • The views expressed are entirely the writer’s own.

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Sunday, March 23, 2014

Japan, reverting to its history’s infamy !

The ghosts of Japan’s imperial past have returned to haunt the nation, its government, and the other countries in this region.

IF anyone still doubts the controversies about Japan’s current nationalistic urges, news reports and media commentaries in the region clearly confirm they persist.

Nations sometimes have leaders who shoot themselves in both feet and then promptly stuff them in their mouths. Japan’s current leaders have lately outdone all these others before.

Opinion leaders in the region have recently noted the excesses of right-wing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, its various indiscretions, and the reactions to them.

Much in the simmering controversies, notably in South Korea and China, comes courtesy of Abe’s team in Tokyo’s establishment. He, his deputy Taro Aso and some of their appointees have actively stoked the embers of regional contention.

Abe, the nationalist grandson of imprisoned Nobosuke Kishi, a suspected “Class A” war criminal, had briefly served as prime minister before without much controversy.

But by courting contempt this time in trying to rewrite history and defiantly visiting Yasukuni War Shrine honouring war criminals to proclaim that Japan did nothing wrong in World War II, Abe got the trouble he risked getting.

Aso himself is a “veteran” in provoking controversy. As foreign minister before, he was even more defiant and unapologetic than Abe, and has lately called on Japan to learn from Nazi Germany.

Their appointees such as chairman Katsuto Momii and governor Naoki Hyakuta of public broadcaster NHK have likewise made outrageous comments about Imperial Japan’s atrocities.

Momii said the sex slaves that Japanese troops made of Korean women was a common occurrence of any country at war, earning a rebuke from the United States.

Hyakuta championed Imperial Japan, denying that the Nanjing Massacre ever happened.

Abe’s choice of other controversies at the same time included efforts to rewrite the post-war Constitution to make it less conciliatory, revising past apologies for the war, and hardening Japan’s claims to disputed maritime territories.

The result: aggravating relations with South Korea and China. Although China-Japan relations are often said to be fraught because of Japan’s horrific wartime incursions, Tokyo’s relations with Seoul are even worse.

Even at the height of activism against US imperialism decades ago, Japan remained the biggest sore point for Koreans.

Now Abe is even less popular among South Koreans than North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, with two successive Presidents – and conservative ones at that – underscoring this position.

In a Korean press commentary on Thursday, Abe was described as having “become by far the most hated Japanese head of government for Koreans in recent decades”.

With 82% of Koreans convinced that Japan has not atoned for its sordid past, others have called Abe by worse names.

But have Abe and his inner circle learned anything from all this? They have offered retractions and apologies when pressed, but remained firmly set in their views.

Yet it need not be so. It was not like that for many years before.

In the 1990s, NHK invited me to give a seminar to regional news correspondents at its headquarters in Tokyo.

I was then holding a fellowship at a Japanese policy research institute to examine the prospects for regional cooperation, which happened to be a time of some regional ferment.

I introduced South-East Asia’s history and cultures without mentioning the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan, because there was no need to. Yet a young newsman later approached me to say he knew of Japanese war crimes despite all the denials.

A senior NHK staff who shared the taxi with me later explained that the common image of a constantly apologetic Japanese people was a misleading stereotype. Wherever these NHK people have gone today, they do not seem to be represented in its board.

Around that time, “maverick” Japanese historian Saburo Ienaga was entangled with the Japanese government in several court cases over an accurate depiction of Japan’s role during the war.

In Tokyo’s clumsy attempts to whitewash its wartime atrocities, the Education Ministry rejected Ienaga’s school textbooks. As he arrived at the courthouse to take on the authorities, he was cheered by a supportive Japanese public.

The Japanese public has repeatedly been more enlightened and liberal than any nationalistic government or self-proclaimed “liberal” party.

Commentators put this difference down to a flawed and dysfunctional political system, despite a mantle of democracy.

A recent commentary excused Japan in otherwise unfavourable comparisons with a contrite Germany because of “cultural” differences. However, while Germany assists in the international pursuit and prosecution of Nazi war criminals, Japan has the Yasukuni Shrine glorifying such criminals instead.

The commentary added that Germany was different in being offered full membership of a European community.

Actually, Japan was offered both membership and leadership of an East Asian Economic Grouping, when its economy was stronger and China’s ascendancy was still in its infancy, but Tokyo rejected it outright.

It was further said that like Germany, full atonement is best done in groups. But very much unlike Germany, there are groups in Japan that continue to deny wartime atrocities and – like Hyakuta and his ilk – insist that Imperial Japan had done Asia a favour with invasion and occupation.

Hardly anyone who has suffered Japanese wartime occupation would believe that tale. Japanese forces had never invaded North-East or South-East Asia only to grant independence to the countries there.

Among these reactionary and revisionist groups was a far-right party that had organised an international conference in Tokyo to argue these points some two decades ago.

As I entered the hall as an observer, I was swiftly introduced to a war veteran who had proudly published a book to “prove” that the Nanjing Massacre was a myth.

When former Malaysian foreign minister Tun Ghazali Shafie spotted me in the hall, he came over to assure me that everything was under control and that the Malaysian embassy had a staff present to take notes.

I looked around and saw a young Malaysian diplomat trying to make sense of the proceedings.

The organisers had invited foreign speakers like Ghazali to endorse their views, to which he hastened to reply that all he meant was that the region should look to the future together rather than dwell on the problems of the past. They did not seem to take note of the nuances.

Such extremist groups remain active in Japan, and have become even more vocal and visible than before. Observers note that they have lately moved from the margins to the mainstream of Japan’s body politic.

What is the sum total of their impact on Japanese officialdom? How far has their influence strayed beyond Tokyo?

Earlier this month, a Japanese diplomat based in Kuala Lumpur reviewed some of these issues with me in a private discussion.

He was a youngish, liberal-minded officer about the same age as the NHK news correspondent who confided in me in the 1990s.

In the course of our discussion I mentioned that although South Korea and China are often cited as griping about Japan’s militarist past, people in South-East Asia who had also suffered Japanese imperialism feel the same without necessarily announcing it to the world.

He expressed surprise, not knowing before that anyone in this region had suffered anything under Japan during the war.

Tokyo’s history deniers and revisionists seem to have scored some success after all.

Contributed by Behind The Headlines Bunn Nagara, The Star/ANN
  • Bunn Nagara is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies (ISIS) Malaysia.
  • The views expressed are entirely the writer's own 

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Chinese satellite spots large new object could be related to missing MH370


The Chinese embassy here confirmed Saturday that Chinese satellite spotted a 22-meter-long and 13-meter-wide floating object along the southern corridor missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 might have taken. Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein, who placed the size of the object at 22 meters by 30 meters at a press conference, later corrected his statement. Photo: Xinhua / State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense

The Chinese embassy in Malaysia confirmed Saturday a Chinese satellite had spotted a floating object along the southern corridor missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 might have taken.



The satellite images, which China's State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense said were taken Tuesday, show that the 22-meter-long, 13-meter-wide object was about 120 km southwest of suspicious debris, one of which was of similar size, captured by an American satellite two days earlier and announced by Australian authorities Thursday.

Malaysian acting Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein put the size of the object at 22 meters by 30 meters at a press conference, but later corrected his statement.

Australia's acting prime minister Warren Truss said Saturday the suspicious objects remained "the best lead" in the massive search for the missing flight.

The objects might have either drifted or sunk, but "if there's something to be found, I'm confident this search will find it," Truss told a press conference.

The hunt would continue "indefinitely" until "we are absolutely satisfied that further searching would be futile," he said. "That day is not in sight."

In response to Xinhua queries, he said there were many explanations for the satellite images provided by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) but they remained "a very credible lead."

What Australia needed to do now was exert all possible efforts to search for the missing plane, he told Xinhua.

On Thursday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said the Australian satellite had spotted two objects, one 24 meters long, in the southern Indian Ocean possibly related to the Boeing 777 aircraft which disappeared early March 8 while carrying 239 people from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

The discovery led the multinational search forces to focus on a 36,000-square-km sea area about 2,500 km southwest of Perth, but so far there have been no findings of note.

Meanwhile, two Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft from the Chinese Air Force left Malaysia on Saturday for Australia to join the search in the southern Indian Ocean.

With Australian and New Zealand airforce P3 Orions limited by the vast distances and their dependence on infrared imaging, the Chinese IL-76 will be a welcome relief to the authorities here as the challenges of the task at hand begin to overwhelm available resources.

Commander Liu Dianjun told Xinhua he hoped the integration of Chinese military assets could precipitate a swift conclusion to the agonizing international search.

A Malaysian military official said the arrival of the Chinese aircraft beefed up the assets deployed for the search and rescue operation and boosted confidence of all the staff from different countries involved in the operation.

Truss also said the same day the arrival of Chinese military aircraft had provided a glimmer of hope.

A Chinese joint working group also paid two visits to family members of Chinese passengers on Saturday and Wednesday.

Guo Shaochun, head of the Chinese task force, said two weeks had passed since flight MH370 went missing and they were as anxious as the family members about what happened to the passengers.

Guo said the Chinese government attached great importance to coordinating support with Malaysia for the family members, and the Malaysian authorities said they would always be responsible.

"Please be at ease and take good care of yourselves, whether staying in Malaysia or leaving the country, your choice will be respected," he said.

Family members said their major concern was to find their loved ones, and they hoped Malaysia would keep them posted about any findings and intensify search and investigation efforts.

Meanwhile, the Indian government told Malaysian investigators it had found no evidence the missing jet flew through its airspace after checking its radar records, local media reported Saturday.

India's response is crucial, as any of their radar data could help identify whether the jet turned north or south after disappearing off radar, but the issue is also sensitive because of the presence of military radar. - Xinhua

Chinese vessels divert to southern Indian Ocean

More Chinese vessels are now en route to the search area and China’s Maritime Search and Rescue Cent...

Chinese satellite spots large floating object in Indian Ocean

The search for missing flight MH370 continues, and a Chinese satellite has reportedly spotted a new ...

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Saturday, March 22, 2014

DigitalGlobe: Large area slowing search, the satellite images found might not be related to the MH370


WASHINGTON: The sheer number of images covering a large swath of ocean contributed to a delay in revealing what could be debris from the Malaysia Airlines plane that has been missing for nearly two weeks, a satellite image company said.


DigitalGlobe Inc, a Colorado-based company that collects imagery for the US government and other countries, as well as private companies, confirmed on Thursday that it had collected satellite images on March 16 that appeared to show debris that may be related to the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370.

It said it provided the images to Australian authorities, which released them on Thursday.

DigitalGlobe said the Australian government had begun combing through the imagery of the current search area only in the last few days, after the massive international effort was expanded to the southern Indian Ocean region and waters near Australia.

Malaysian officials described the images as a credible sign of a possible wreckage from the flight, which left Kuala Lumpur on March 8 en route to Beijing with 239 people aboard and vanished after about an hour of flight.

Australian authorities, however, cautioned that the debris in the pictures might not be related to the missing plane.

“Given the extraordinary size of the current search area, the lengthy duration of the analysis effort was to be expected,” DigitalGlobe spokesman Turner Brinton said in a statement.

Brinton said the company’s five high-resolution satellites capture more than three million sq km of earth imagery each day.

“This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look,” he said.

The large objects that Australian officials said were spotted by satellite five days ago are the most promising find in days as searchers scour a vast area for the plane.

The larger of the objects four days ago measured up to 24m long and appeared to be floating in waters several thousand metres deep, Australian officials said. The second object was about five metres long.

Brinton declined comment on whether the debris was spotted by DigitalGlobe’s own analysts, government analysts or Internet users participating in a “crowdsourcing” effort launched by the company to help locate the plane.

Brinton said the images were captured on March 16 by the company’s Worldview-2 satellite at a resolution of about 50cm, and the company was continuing to collect imagery over the area where the possible debris had been spotted.

DigitalGlobe said it had been collecting images over a broader area than the official search area, while focusing the efforts of its crowdsourcing volunteers on the search areas identified by authorities.

“The efforts of millions of online volunteers around the world allowed us to rule out broad swaths of ocean with some certainty,” Brinton said. — Reuters

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Friday, March 21, 2014

DigitalGlobe Inc, a satellite company that provides the image of missing Flight MH370; Australian plane fails to locate debris

DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 satellite>

Meet WorldView-2, the satellite that provided Australian authorities with the images that appear to show two objects in the Indian Ocean 2500 kilometres south-west of Perth that may be related to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.

Launched on October 8, 2009, and owned by US satellite company DigitalGlobe, WorldView-2 provides imagery at a resolution of approximately 50 cm. It takes a new image of any place on earth every 1.1 days (1 day ,  2 hours and 24 minutes).

The satellite, among four others that DigitalGlobe owns, weighs 2800 kilograms, operates at an altitude of 770 kilometres, and is able to collect nearly 1 million square kilometres of imagery every single day, which is then distributed to those who pay for access to DigitalGlobe's imagery.

Satellite imagery provided to AMSA of possible debris from MH370. Satellite imagery provided to AMSA of possible debris from MH370.

DigitalGlobe confirmed on Friday that it was the one who provided the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) with the satellite images that were captured on March 16, showing the two objects in the Indian Ocean.

"We have been informed by an Australian government official that it was our imagery Prime Minister Abbott referred to in his recent comments," the company said in a statement.

"Working with our customers, DigitalGlobe continues to task our satellites to collect imagery of a wide area that includes the waters around where the possible debris was identified."

The satellite images released by the Department of Defence. The satellite images released by the Department of Defence.

A clue that DigitalGlobe's satellite was used lies in the imagery released on Thursday afternoon by AMSA to the media after its press conference, which said that DigitalGlobe owned the copyright of the images.

Despite this, when Australian Maritime Safety Authority's general manager John Young took to the podium on Thursday to explain to reporters the discovery of the images that might show pieces of MH370, he carefully omitted to tell them the source.

When asked about it, he avoided the question.

And when reporters phoned Australian defence officials to ask the same question, they were given a firm "no comment" or "we can't discuss".

This may seem odd, because the satellite's owners, DigitalGlobe, were only too happy to tell the media on Friday.

The contrast highlights a longstanding syndrome. Australian officialdom is hyper protective of US intelligence and its sources - even more protective than the Americans themselves.

It's a symptom of the Australian defence establishment's mentality as an anxious junior ally, afraid of giving its senior partner any reason to curtail the flow of intelligence.

A DigitalGlobe spokesmen declined to comment on whether the debris were spotted by DigitalGlobe's own analysts or analysts from governments that use its service, such as Australia and the US.

It couldn't have been discovered by internet users participating in a "crowdsourcing" effort launched by the company to help locate the plane though, as the Australian search area has not yet been uploaded to the site, operated by DigitalGlobe and called Tomnod.

The large objects that Australian officials said were spotted by satellite four days ago are the most promising find in days as searchers scour a vast area for the plane.

The larger of the objects taken four days ago measured up to 24 meters long and appeared to be floating in water several thousand metres deep, Australian officials said. The second object was about five meters long.

DigitalGlobe is the parent company of Tomnod, which has been progressively releasing select areas of satellite imagery to a crowd of more than three million to scour through.

The satellite company has not said if it will release imagery that encompasses the search area off the coast of Western Australia to the public on Tomnod.

"We're working to confirm further details," DigitalGlobe said.

"In the meantime, other customers including the US government and other governments have been receiving our imagery for their own search efforts."

DigitalGlobe said that the sheer number of images covering a large swath of ocean contributed to the delay in revealing what could be debris from the Malaysia Airlines jetliner that has been missing for nearly a week.

"Given the extraordinary size of the current search area, the lengthy duration of the analysis effort was to be expected," a DigitalGlobe spokesman said.

The company's five high-resolution satellites capture more than 3 million square kilometers of earth imagery each day.

"This volume of imagery is far too vast to search through in real time without an idea of where to look," the spokesman said.

A number of Australian government agencies pay DigitalGlobe for access to imagery generated by their satellites, including the Australian Antarctic Division and Geoscience Australia.

Tender documents show that Geoscience Australia alone has paid DigitalGlobe almost $1 million since July, 2012, for satellite imagery over Wide Bay in Queensland and of imagery over the Great Barrier Reef.

It's not clear though through tender documents if Australian intelligence agencies and Defence also pay for access to DigitalGlobe's imagery, as Fairfax was unable to find contracts between them and DigitalGlobe.

DigitalGlobe said no conclusions have been reached about the origins of the objects shown in the imagery near Australia, and it was not aware that any subsequent search missions that have been able to locate them.

"But the experience again demonstrates the unparalleled geographic reach and persistence that satellite imagery provides for critical government missions and emergency response situations," it said.

It's unclear if DigitalGlobe has any restrictions placed upon it by the US government concerning who it shares its satellite imagery with.

- The Sydney Morning Herald with Peter Hartcher and Reuters

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China mulls sending Xuelong to join search mission for MH370
The Chinese icebreaker Xuelong, or Snow Dragon, awaits orders for the search of missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 at the port of Perth, a southwestern port city of Australia, March 20, 2014. Xuelong will set off to the waters where suspected debris of the missing flight MH370 has been found, according to the State Oceanic Administration of China. (Xinhua/Tang Zhijian)

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Flight MH370: two satellite objects spotted in southern Indian Ocean

A satellite image shows possible debris from the missing Malaysian plane 



Australia's prime minister has announced that two objects possibly related to the missing Malaysia Airlines flight have been spotted on satellite imagery and an air force aircraft had been diverted to the area to try to locate them.

The Orion aircraft was expected to arrive in the area oon Thursday afternoon, Prime Minister Tony Abott told Parliament in Canberra. Three additional aircraft are expected to follow for a more intensive search, he said.

Royal Australian Air Force pilot, Flight Lieutenant Russell Adams from the tenth Squadron, piolts his AP-3C Orion over the Southern Indian Ocean
 
"New and credible information has come to light in relation to the search ... in the south Indian Ocean," he said. "The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) has received information based on satellite imagery of objects possibly related to the search."

"Following specialist analysis of this satellite imagery, two possible objects related to the search have been identified," he said.

Mr Abbott said he had already spoken with his Malaysian counterpart Najib Razak and cautioned that the objects had yet to be identified.

"The task of locating these objects will be extremely difficult and it may turn out they are not related to the search for MH370," he said.


An Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) graphic shows the search areas for the Malaysia Airlines (AP)
 
No confirmed wreckage from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 has been found since it vanished from air traffic control screens off Malaysia's east coast early on March 8, less than an hour after taking off.

The search for the plane was yesterday narrowed down to an area in the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of west Australia.


Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott tells parliament in Canberra that satellite imagery has found two objects possibly related to the search for missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370
 
Investigators believe that someone with detailed knowledge of both the Boeing 777-200ER and commercial aviation navigation switched off the plane's communications systems before diverting it thousands of miles off its scheduled course from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.

Exhaustive background checks of the passengers and crew aboard have not yielded anything that might explain why.

Relatives of passengers of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane are gathered at a television viewing room in Beijing, China (AFP/GETTY)

The FBI is helping Malaysian authorities analyse data from a flight simulator belonging to the captain of the missing plane, after initial examination showed some data logs had been deleted early last month.

- The Telegraph

Expert: Missing plane more likely found in southern corridor (Video)

An aviation expert believes there's a high possibility that the missing plane could be found in the southern search corridor. But he added, it’s unlikely that the plane would have found a runway to safely land on.


"Plane unlikely to avoid radar detection in Northern corridor...also zero possibility for the plane to land in a temporary airport, technically it works, but it’s very hard, requires geological conditions, and people on board will suffer heavy injuries." Armartya De, Sr. Aviation Consultant of Frost & Sullivan, said.

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NSA's secret MYSTIC system is capable recording 100% of foreign country's telephone calls



WASHINGTON, D.C. – The United States National Security Agency has built a surveillance system capable of recording “100 percent” of a foreign country’s telephone calls, enabling the agency to rewind and review conversations as long as a month after they take place, according to people with direct knowledge of the effort and documents supplied by former contractor Edward Snowden.

A senior manager for the program compares it to a time machine – one that can replay the voices from any call without requiring that a person be identified in advance for surveillance.

 http://wapo.st/1gyqVaz

The voice interception program, called MYSTIC, began in 2009. Its RETRO tool, short for “retrospective retrieval,” and related projects reached full capacity against the first target nation in 2011. Planning documents two years later anticipated similar operations elsewhere.

In the initial deployment, collection systems are recording “every single” conversation nationwide, storing billions of them in a 30-day rolling buffer that clears the oldest calls as new ones arrive, according to a classified summary.

The call buffer opens a door “into the past,” the summary says, enabling users to “retrieve audio of interest that was not tasked at the time of the original call.” Analysts listen to only a fraction of 1 percent of the calls, but the absolute numbers are high. Each month, they send millions of voice clippings, or “cuts,” for processing and long-term storage.

At the request of U.S. officials, The Washington Post is withholding details that could be used to identify the country where the system is being employed or other countries where its use was envisioned.

No other NSA program disclosed to date has swallowed a nation’s telephone network whole. Outside experts have sometimes described that prospect as disquieting but remote, with notable implications for a growing debate over the NSA’s practice of “bulk collection” abroad.

Bulk methods capture massive data flows “without the use of discriminants,” as President Barack Obama put it in January. By design, they vacuum up all the data they touch – meaning that most of the conversations collected by RETRO would be irrelevant to U.S. national security interests.

In the view of U.S. officials, however, the capability is highly valuable.

In a statement, Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to comment on “specific alleged intelligence activities.” Speaking generally, she said “new or emerging threats” are “often hidden within the large and complex system of modern global communications, and the United States must consequently collect signals intelligence in bulk in certain circumstances in order to identify these threats.”

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines, in an emailed statement, said that “continuous and selective reporting of specific techniques and tools used for legitimate U.S. foreign intelligence activities is highly detrimental to the national security of the United States and of our allies, and places at risk those we are sworn to protect.”

Some of the documents provided by Snowden suggest that high-volume eavesdropping may soon be extended to other countries, if it has not been already. The RETRO tool was built three years ago as a “unique one-off capability,” but last year’s secret intelligence budget named five more countries for which the MYSTIC program provides “comprehensive metadata access and content,” with a sixth expected to be in place by last October.

The budget did not say whether the NSA now records calls in quantity in those countries, or expects to do so. A separate document placed high priority on planning “for MYSTIC accesses against projected new mission requirements,” including “voice.”

Ubiquitous voice surveillance, even overseas, pulls in a great deal of content from U.S. citizens who telephone, visit and work in the target country. It may also be seen as inconsistent with Obama’s Jan. 17 pledge “that the United States is not spying on ordinary people who don’t threaten our national security,” regardless of nationality, “and that we take their privacy concerns into account.”

In a presidential policy directive, Obama instructed the NSA and other agencies that bulk acquisition may be used only to gather intelligence on one of six specified threats, including nuclear proliferation and terrorism. The directive, however, also noted that limits on bulk collection “do not apply to signals intelligence data that is temporarily acquired to facilitate targeted collection.”

The emblem of the MYSTIC program depicts a cartoon wizard with a telephone-headed staff. Among the agency’s bulk collection programs disclosed over the past year, its focus on the spoken word is unique. Most of the programs have involved the bulk collection of either metadata – which does not include content – or text, such as email address books.

Telephone calls are often thought to be more ephemeral and less suited than text for processing, storage and search. Indeed, there are indications that the call-recording program has been hindered by the NSA’s limited capacity to store and transmit bulky voice files.

In the first year of its deployment, a program officer wrote that the project “has long since reached the point where it was collecting and sending home far more than the bandwidth could handle.”

Because of similar capacity limits across a range of collection programs, the NSA is leaping forward with cloud-based collection systems and a gargantuan new “mission data repository” in Utah. According to its overview briefing, the Utah facility is designed “to cope with the vast increases in digital data that have accompanied the rise of the global network.”

Christopher Soghoian, the principal technologist for the American Civil Liberties Union, said history suggests that “over the next couple of years they will expand to more countries, retain data longer and expand the secondary uses.”

Spokesmen for the NSA and the Office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declined to confirm or deny expansion plans or discuss the criteria for any change.

Based on RETRO’s internal reviews, the NSA has strong motive to deploy it elsewhere. In the documents and interviews, U.S. officials said RETRO is uniquely valuable when an analyst first uncovers a new name or telephone number of interest.

With up to 30 days of recorded conversations in hand, the NSA can pull an instant history of the subject’s movements, associates and plans. Some other U.S. intelligence agencies also have access to RETRO.

Highly classified briefings cite examples in which the tool offered high-stakes intelligence that would not have existed under traditional surveillance programs in which subjects were identified for targeting in advance. Unlike most of the government’s public claims about the value of controversial programs, the briefings supply names, dates, locations and fragments of intercepted calls in convincing detail.

Present and former U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to provide context for a classified program, acknowledged that large numbers of conversations involving U.S. citizens would be gathered from the country where RETRO operates.

The NSA does not attempt to filter out their calls, defining them as communications “acquired incidentally as a result of collection directed against appropriate foreign intelligence targets.”

Until about 20 years ago, such incidental collection was unusual unless a U.S. citizen was communicating directly with a foreign intelligence target. In bulk collection systems, which are exponentially more capable than the ones in use throughout the Cold War, calls and other data from U.S. citizens and permanent residents are regularly ingested by the millions.

Under the NSA’s internal “minimization rules,” those intercepted communications “may be retained and processed” and included in intelligence reports. The agency generally removes the names of U.S. callers, but there are several broadly worded exceptions.

An independent group tasked by the White House to review U.S. surveillance policies recommended that incidentally collected U.S. calls and emails – including those obtained overseas – should nearly always “be purged upon detection.” Obama did not accept that recommendation.

Vines, in her statement, said the NSA’s work is “strictly conducted under the rule of law.”

RETRO and MYSTIC are carried out under Executive Order 12333, the traditional grant of presidential authority to intelligence agencies for operations outside the United States.

Since August, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and others on that panel have been working on plans to assert a greater oversight role for intelligence gathering abroad. Some legislators are now considering whether Congress should also draft new laws to govern those operations.

Experts say there is not much legislation that governs overseas intelligence work.

“Much of the U.S. government’s intelligence collection is not regulated by any statute passed by Congress,” said Timothy H. Edgar, the former director of privacy and civil liberties on Obama’s national security staff. “There’s a lot of focus on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is understandable, but that’s only a slice of what the intelligence community does.”

All surveillance must be properly authorized for a legitimate intelligence purpose, he said, but that “still leaves a gap for activities that otherwise basically aren’t regulated by law because they’re not covered by FISA.”

Beginning in 2007, Congress loosened 40-year-old restrictions on domestic surveillance because so much foreign data crossed U.S. territory. There were no comparable changes to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens and residents whose calls and emails now routinely cross international borders.

Vines noted that the NSA’s job is to “identify threats within the large and complex system of modern global communications,” where ordinary people share fiber-optic cables with legitimate intelligence targets.

For Peter Swire, a member of the president’s review group, the fact that U.S. citizens and foreigners use the same devices, software and networks calls for greater care to safeguard privacy.

“It’s important to have institutional protections so that advanced capabilities used overseas don’t get turned against our democracy at home,” he said.

© 2014, The Washington Post/http://www.ticotimes.net

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