Secure Liberties Newsletter

Hajar on March 17, 2022

TOP LINE

After Zelenskyy’s plea to Congress, Biden approves another $800mn in military assistance. After Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressed US Congress, using the imagery of 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and Mount Rushmore to ask for further sanctions on Russia and for the imposition of a no-fly zone (which could lead to some seriously bad consequences), Biden approved another $800mn in emergency military assistance, bringing this week’s total to $1 billion. Last week Congress passed a $13.6 billion aid package to Ukraine as part of the omnibus spending package, $3 billion of which is for weapons. While military support for Ukraine is quite popular in the media right now, we wanted to share some critiques of flooding more weapons into the conflict, and potential unintended consequences that you may have otherwise missed.

CIA black site detainee Ammar al-Baluchi “was repeatedly slammed against a wall while naked until all trainees received ‘certification,’” says The Guardian. Newly declassified documents via a court filing by his lawyers indicate that “[i]n the case of ‘walling’ in particular the [Office of the Inspector General] had difficulty determining whether the session was designed to elicit information from Ammar or to ensure that all interrogator trainees received their certification.” In 2018, MRI imaging found “abnormalities indicating moderate to severe brain damage” that were “consistent with traumatic brain injury.”

Mohammed al-Qahtani, another Guantánamo detainee, who “had been tortured so badly by U.S. interrogators that he was ruled ineligible for trial as the suspected would-be 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks” was repatriated to Saudi Arabia to receive mental health care.

We’re hosting a virtual panel on Monday, March 28 @ 1-2pm EST on current issues with US arms sales policy and proposals for reform. In particular, we will be exploring reform to the Arms Export Control Act (AECA) in order to ‘flip the script’ and require congressional approval for large weapons sales. Most recently, these reforms were introduced as part of the National Security Reforms and Accountability Act (NSRAA). RSVP here.

ABROAD

Quick note on Russia-Ukraine: Needless to say, there are A LOT of areas to cover regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and we are humble enough to know we definitely can’t cover it all. We will try to provide, to the best of our ability, insight into some areas of the conflict that implicate the US government and policymakers, while also trying to highlight analysis and views that readers may have missed in the current media storm (remember to check our RELEVANT, TOO section below!)

The largest US sanctions regime in history begins. What’s the end game? You probably know by now that the US has levied severe penalties against Russian business, banks, imports, and individuals. We won’t provide an exhaustive list here, but here’s a useful compilation and here’s a sanctions timeline. While it hasn’t seemed to have much impact on the Russian government’s military calculus right now (that we know of), it has begun to affect daily life in Russia (and it could get worse). However warranted, there doesn’t seem to be a clear endgame or diplomatic off-ramp for these sanctions. Peter Beinart writes on how that may be a problem, and undermine the purpose of the sanctions altogether. House Progressives have also come out in urging a link between sanctions and a clear diplomatic process for de-escalating the conflict. But there are still a lot of question marks regarding Biden’s plans for pushing or assisting negotiations. Marcus Stanley outlines some cautionary points in Responsible Statecraft on the blunt use of sanctions with no game plan. Adam Taylor shares some similar points in Wapo.

Energy crunch and competing international priorities causing geopolitical shake ups. After sanctions on Russian energy disrupted the global market, the Biden Administration has been looking for alternatives to boost supply. One source, of course, is Saudi Arabia. Last year there were already reports that the Saudi Crown Prince had been purposefully capping oil production, which added to inflation woes, in response to weak political support from Biden. Now as the US grows even more desperate, the WSJ reported last week that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE refused to pick up the phone for Biden, but did for Putin. Why? They may want more support from the White House, especially in their brutal war on Yemen. The Kingdom upped the ante further this week by flirting with the idea of selling oil to China in yuan, which may not have immediate impacts but could signal a future decline in the petrodollar system (which would have serious geopolitical implications down the line).

So where will more oil and gas come from? Biden looks to another current target of harsh economic sanctions. The UAE for its part now endorses increased production. We’ll know more after OPEC+ meets March 31. Significantly as well, the Biden Admin has been engaging with Venezuela both in an effort to pull them away from Russia’s influence and to secure that sweet, sweet black gold which has been under sanctions for years. After a surprise meeting between the Biden and Maduro admins, Venezuela released two prisoners and agreed to restart the halted negotiations with the Venezuela opposition in Mexico in an apparent goodwill gesture. This gained the applause of House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meeks (reading between the lines on possible tide turning in Congress: notice his statement calls Maduro president, with no mention of Juan Guaido?). US companies, like Chevron, said this week they are ready to expand ventures with Venezuela’s state-run oil company if sanctions are eased.

Russia complicates JCPOA return, but things seem back on track. We were preparing to finally report on the announcement of a return to the Iran nuclear deal, but last minute demands by Russia responding to concerns over UK, EU, and US sanctions, have put that on pause. However, after the Iranian FM met with his counterpart in Moscow this week, Russia said it’s satisfied with the guarantees it received from the West. It seems this latest, and maybe last, roadblock will be resolved soon, paving the way for a deal announcement. Iran’s release of two British citizens from prison yesterday is also a good sign diplomacy is moving forward. We’d also be remiss if we didn’t point to the link between the looming return to the Iran nuclear deal, which would open the spigot of Iranian oil, to the shifting geopolitical energy politics mentioned above.

As Saudi Arabia wants to trade oil for increased US support in their war on Yemen, bombing numbers for February significantly increased. The UN warns that millions more face hunger. The Yemen Data Project’s report showed a 4-year high in Saudi-UAE bombing campaigns during the month of February. UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths warned that increased military activity and lower wheat exports from Ukraine and Russia is threatening even more dire conditions for Yemenis, and that $4.3bn is needed in aid. Shuaib Almosawa’s piece in The Intercept details more. In more positive news for diplomacy, the Gulf Cooperation Council is considering inviting Houthi officials to join in on consultations in Riyadh.

Senators Murphy and Warren call on DoD to investigate civilian harm in Yemen from US military operations. Following recent efforts to reform civilian harm mitigation procedures and improve DOD transparency, the Senators sent a letter last Tuesday to Secretary Austin asking the Pentagon to take seriously and investigate well-documented reports by Mwatana for Human Rights and the Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic, which provided extensive evidence that more than 38 civilians died due to US military operations in Yemen between 2017 and 2019. CENTCOM previously responded to the reports but only acknowledged a small fraction of the deaths and operations in question and did not conduct a thorough follow-up investigation. The Senators’ letter also calls for improving the system of ex gratia payments to families of those killed by the US military.

As FY 2022 approps omnibus passes, 86 groups call on Biden to lower Pentagon topline for FY 2023 budget request. As we await Biden’s FY 2023 budget request, which should come out any day now, 86 organizations are criticizing the ease in which military spending increases are approved, but not spending on “pandemic relief, jobs, healthcare, and climate crisis solutions.” In their letter to Biden, the orgs call for a lower topline budget for the Pentagon. If you were wondering, defense spending under Biden and Trump is pretty much indistinguishable.

Congress mandates State Department report on 2019 Bolivian coup. A small section in the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package passed last week contained language which asked the State Department to consult independent experts to produce a report on Bolivia’s 2019 election. Allegations of fraud led to a coup, forcing former President Evo Morales to flee the country. Experts have produced previous research which doubt these claims of fraud. The report also will investigate political and human rights violations that occurred during the period. We thought this was pretty significant given the US government’s political support for the coup.

AT HOME

Sen. Wyden calls for a DHS IG investigation into a bulk surveillance program that “swept up millions of financial records about Americans” run by Homeland Security Investigations, a law enforcement component of DHS. “Under the program, Homeland Security Investigations used a form of subpoena power to order two companies to turn over every money transfer over $500, to and from California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Mexico. This data was shared with hundreds of federal, state and local government agencies, who can search it without any court oversight, through a non-profit created by the Arizona Attorney General,” per Sen. Wyden’s press release.

A 2019 audit reveals FBI agents violated agency rules 747 times over 18 months, resulting in the House Oversight Committee requesting GAO investigate FBI use of assessments. “A majority of the cases studied, 191, involved domestic public officials. Dozens of cases involved religious organizations or their prominent members, and dozens of cases involved domestic political organizations and individuals. Ten cases involved domestic political candidates, and 11 cases involved news media,” according to The Washington Times. The audit was uncovered by Patrick Eddington of the Cato Institute in litigation against the FBI.

Clearview AI’s latest pitch: collecting every person’s face until “almost everyone in the world [is] identifiable.” According to WashPost, “the company has based its ‘product expansion plan’ on boosting corporate sales, from financial services and the gig economy to commercial real estate… government and defense contracts are shown as a small fraction of potential revenue, with other possible sources including in banking, retail and e-commerce.” Investors were pitched on an “index of faces” that is currently on track to collect 100 billion faces within a year. “The trove of images collected by Clearview raises questions about cybersecurity and privacy. It could be a valuable target for hackers working for foreign governments or seeking a profit. And people can’t change faces like passwords if they’ve been stolen,” writes The Cybersecurity 202. More on this from Freddy Martinez here.

Sen. Wicker and Sen. Grassley demand answers from United States Marshals Service (USMS) regarding “potentially illicit methods the Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) office took to gain special deputy marshal status.” The “ITMS employees… regularly searched Department servers and employee email accounts to scan for evidence of foreign influence. This was in addition to an investigation that ITMS conducted on a classroom of elementary school children who petitioned the Secretary to include a certain type of whale on the list of protected marine wildlife, established by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972,” per the press release.

“China Initiative” is ending, according to NYT reporting. “The Justice Department will soon announce changes to the China Initiative, a Trump-era effort to combat Chinese national security threats, after civil rights proponents, business groups and universities told the Biden administration that the program had fostered suspicion of Asian professors working in the United States, chilled scientific research and contributed to a rising tide of anti-Asian sentiment, according to people briefed on the matter.” More from APA Justice here.

Three updates on NSO Group by The Cybersecurity 202: (1) Saudi women’s rights activist and associates of Polish opposition lawmaker were hacked; (2) Investigators contradict reporting by Israeli news outlet Calcalist stating there is “‘no indication’ that police illegally used Pegasus spyware;” (3) European lawmakers will investigate Pegasus usage by Hungary and Poland.

Firms will be required to disclose data breaches and other significant cybersecurity incidents within four days, under a new Securities and Exchange Commission proposal. “Companies have long been required to tell the market about risks and incidents they deem to be material to investors, and the SEC has reminded them in recent years to do so in a timely fashion with regards to cybersecurity. But agency officials say companies’ disclosure of such information has been inconsistent,” reports the WSJ.

Concerns re: robot dogs from members of Congress, but law enforcement efforts aren’t stopping there. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is using virtual reality for demonstrations at the Los Angeles/Long Beach Seaport and the SmartLink app is being utilized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to monitor immigrants. An investigation by The Guardian found that SmartLink “is overly broad and leaves unclear what data the company collects and what it does with that information.”

The newest target for targeted violence and terrorism efforts: high schools. This is the first year that high schools are allowed to participate in the effort, Invent2Prevent, sponsored by The McCain Institute for International Leadership, EdVenture Partners, and the Department of Homeland Security. Students are competing “to identify a vulnerable population of students, who might be prone to a hate crime or a terrorist attack. Risk factors could include a broken home, addiction, socially isolated, or bullied.” If this is setting off alarm bells, it should be. Apparently, seniors from Newburyport High School created an escape room where a “group of about 200 kids from [their] targeted population will work together to solve the clues and escape.” Yikes!

WHAT’S HAPPENING

If you missed our panel earlier this month on Reforming Emergency Powers, be sure to check it out here.

March 17 at 3pm ET: The End of the “China Initiative” – What This Means and Where We Go From Here

March 28 at 2pm ET: Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology’s Immigrant Surveillance: the American Dragnet

RELEVANT, TOO

The Intercept: Even After Acknowledging Abuses, the U.S. Continued to Employ Notorious Proxy Forces in Cameroon

Just Security: The Operational and Legal Risks of a No-Fly Zone Over Ukrainian Skies

Responsible Statecraft: The US’s hypocritical criticism of Russia for deploying ‘exceptional lethal weaponry’

Foreign Policy: Poll: Experts Oppose No-Fly Zone Over Ukraine

Yahoo! News: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion

Jacobin: Persecuting Ordinary Russians Won’t End Putin’s War

UNICEF: Sanctions and their impact on children