US President Barack Obama used his speech at the UN General Assembly to demand the world take action on the crisis in Syria. Syria and renewed talks on Iran’s nuclear program are set to dominate the annual meeting.

President Obama defended his threat of force against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime at the annual UN General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, saying Damascus must face consequences after the use of chemical weapons.

"There must be a strong Security Council resolution to verify that the Assad regime is keeping its commitments, and there must be consequences if they fail to do so," Obama said to the world leaders.

His remarks come as the US and Russia negotiate a UN Security Council resolution in connection with an agreement by Damascus to give up its chemical weapons.

The US-Russia brokered deal was struck following a push by Obama for a military strike on Syria.

Obama denounced critics who questioned whether Assad carried out the August 21 chemical attack outside Damascus, which the US says killed more than 1,400 people.

"It is an insult to human reason - and to the legitimacy of this institution - to suggest that anyone other than the regime carried out this attack," he said.

"Nevertheless, a leader who slaughtered his citizens and gassed children to death cannot regain the legitimacy to lead a badly fractured country," he said of Assad.

Obama cautioned, however, that military action would not achieve lasting peace and that any nation, including the US, should not determine who will lead Syria.

Renewed talks on Iran

Obama also used his time in front of the Assembly to welcome the new Iranian government's pursuit of what he called a "more moderate course," in relation to stalled negotiations over its nuclear program.

"The roadblocks may prove to be too great, but I firmly believe the diplomatic path must be tested," Obama said.

On Monday, the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, announced that Iran's foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, would join talks with six key nations due to "energy and determination" shown by Tehran for fresh talks.

The foreign ministers of the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany are set to meet on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Thursday.

The meeting between the six powers and Iran will be the first since April, when discussions on how to reduce fears that Tehran might use its nuclear technology to create weapons stalled at a meeting in Almaty, Kazakhstan.

The UN Security Council has imposed several rounds of sanctions against Iran over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment and sanctions from the US and its allies have had a crippling effect on Iran's economy.

Obama did not say whether he will meet with Iran's new moderate conservative President Hasan Rouhani. Even a handshake would mark the first such encounter between US and Iranian leaders in over 30 years.

Obama faces criticism over NSA

Despite the focus on Syria and Iran, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff used her opening speech at the General Assembly to criticize Obama and the US National Security Agency (NSA) over reports it had spied on Brazilian government communications.

She announced Brazil would adopt legislation and technology to protect it from illegal interception of communications.

Last week, Rousseff called off a high-profile state visit to Washington scheduled for October over the reports.

"Meddling in such a manner in the lives and affairs of other countries is a breach of international law and, as such, it is an affront to the principles that should otherwise govern relations among countries, especially among friendly nations," Rousseff said to the gathering of world leaders.

President Obama was en route to the UN during her speech and therefore not present.

hc/kms (Reuters, AFP, AP)

US President Barack Obama has visited Nelson Mandela’s Robben Island prison cell during the Cape Town leg of a three-day trip to South Africa. Obama’s visit has been overshadowed by the health of the anti-apartheid hero.

Obama paid tribute to South Africa's first black president, Nelson Mandela, by taking his family on a tour of the island prison where the ailing anti-apartheid leader spent 18 of his 27 years imprisoned.  

The Obama family visited Mandela's Robben Island prison cell as well as the lime quarry where Mandela was forced to work during his incarceration and where the lung problems afflicting him today first developed. 

The Obamas' tour guide, 83-year-old politician Ahmed Kathrada, who had been detained in the prison for two decades, told the family of his experiences of being forced to work every day.

Prior to the visit, Obama had said he was paying tribute to a man who inspired his political activism.

"The struggle here against apartheid, for freedom, Madiba's moral courage, his country's historic transition to a free and democratic nation, has been a personal inspiration to me," said Obama using Mandela's clan name.

It was a privilege, he added, to be able to show his children the place where Mandela spent many years as a political prisoner. "For me to be able to bring my daughters there and teach them the history of that place and this country…that's a great privilege and a great honor," Obama added.

Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, is critically ill with a recurrent lung disease in a Pretoria hospital, where he was admitted three weeks ago.

Obama and First Lady Michelle met privately late Saturday with Mandela's relatives. A White House statement said Obama would not be meeting the critically ill anti-apartheid leader in hospital.

"Out of deference to Nelson Mandela's peace and comfort and the family's wishes, they will not be visiting the hospital," the unnamed official told the news agency AFP.

Signature speech

Later on Sunday, Obama is set to deliver what the White House called the signature speech of his weeklong trip to the continent at the University of Cape Town.

During the speech, Obama will announce plans to unveil a 7-billion-euro ($9.1 billion) initiative to upgrade African electricity networks, in an attempt to end power outages that deter business investment.

Meanwhile, Obama is set to host a landmark meeting of sub-Saharan Africa leaders next year, the White House announced on Sunday.

The announcements comes as Obama dismisses talk of a tussle with China for influence on the continent.

On Saturday, Obama met with South African President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria. The two leaders held talks focusing on trade, boosting economic ties and regional security in Africa.

Obama's three-country tour concludes next week in Tanzania.

jlw/kms (AFP, dpa, AP)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Inspired by Nelson Mandela's struggles in South Africa, a young Barack Obama joined campus protests in the U.S. against the racist rule that kept Mandela locked away in prison for nearly three decades.

Now a historic, barrier-breaking figure himself, President Obama arrived in South Africa Friday to find a country drastically transformed by Mandela's influence — and grappling with the beloved 94-year-old's mortality.

It was unclear whether Mandela's deteriorating health would allow Obama to make a hospital visit. The former South African leader is battling a recurring lung infection and is said to be in critical condition at a hospital in the South African capital of Pretoria.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One as he made his way to Johannesburg, Obama said he would gauge the situation after he arrived.

"I don't need a photo-op," he said. "And the last thing I want to do is to be in any way obtrusive at a time when the family is concerned about Nelson Mandela's condition."

Obama's visit to South Africa is seen as something of a tribute to the man who helped inspire his own political activism. The president will pay homage to Mandela at Robben Island, the prison where he spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. And with South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, facing questions about its effectiveness, Obama will urge the government and the South African people to live up to the democratic example set by their first black president.

"He's a personal hero, but I don't think I'm unique in that regard," Obama said during a news conference Thursday in Senegal, the first stop on his weeklong Africa trip. "I think he's a hero for the world. And if and when he passes from this place, one thing I think we'll all know is that his legacy is one that will linger on throughout the ages."

Obama and Mandela have met just once, a hastily arranged meeting in a Washington hotel room in 2005 when Obama was a U.S. senator. A photo of the meeting hangs in Obama's personal office at the White House, showing a smiling Mandela sitting on a chair, his legs outstretched, as the young senator reaches down to shake his hand. A copy of the photo also hangs in Mandela's office in Johannesburg.

Since then, the two have spoken occasionally by telephone, including after the 2008 election, when Mandela called Obama to congratulate him on his victory. The U.S. president called Mandela in 2010 after the South African leader's young granddaughter was killed in a car accident. Obama also wrote the introduction to Mandela's memoir, "Conversations With Myself."

Despite the two men's infrequent contact, people close to Obama say his one-on-one meeting with Mandela left a lasting impression.

"He is one of the few people who the president has respected and admired from afar who, when he met him, exceeded his expectations," said Valerie Jarrett, Obama's senior adviser and close friend.

Obama's own political rise has drawn inevitable comparisons to the South African leader. Both are Nobel Peace Prize winners and the first black men elected to lead their countries.

But their paths to power have been vastly different. While Mandela fought to end an oppressive government from the confines of a prison cell, Obama attended elite schools and rose through the U.S. political system before running for president.

"President Obama would believe that the challenges he has faced pale in comparison to those faced by President Mandela," Jarrett said.

Mandela had already shaped Obama's political beliefs well before their first encounter. As a student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama joined protests against the school's investments during South Africa's apartheid era. In 1981, Obama focused his first public political speech on the topic.

"It's happening an ocean away," Obama said, according to a retelling of the story in his memoir "Dreams From My Father." ''But it's a struggle that touches each and every one of us. Whether we know it or not. Whether we want it or not."

More than 30 years later, as he traveled through the African continent, Obama recalled the influence Mandela had had on him during that period of his life.

"I think at that time I didn't necessarily imagine that Nelson Mandela might be released," Obama said Thursday. But the president said he had read Mandela's writings and speeches and understood him to be a man who believed in "treating people equally and was willing to sacrifice his life for that belief."

Following his release from prison, Mandela was elected president in 1994 during South Africa's first all-races elections. He served just one term, focusing in large part on racial reconciliation in the post-apartheid era, and retreated from public life several years ago.

The most recent images of him depict a frail man apparently approaching the end of his life. While South Africans have long been loath to talk about Mandela's inevitable death, there is now a growing sense in the country that the time is near. Well-wishers have delivered flowers and messages of support to the Pretoria hospital where he is being treated, and prayer sessions have been held around the country.

By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - How deep is the divide separating Russia and the United States on Syria? A photo from the recent G8 summit in Northern Ireland says it all - two grim-faced leaders slouched in their chairs, Barack Obama biting his lip and Vladimir Putin staring at the floor.
The awkward photo opportunity, which went viral on the Internet, highlights the increasingly tense relationship between the former Cold War foes who find it difficult to agree on a series of high-profile issues, including Syria and a fugitive U.S. intelligence contractor whom Putin refuses to extradite.
Washington and Moscow have been trying since May to organize an international peace conference to bring an end to the violence. But hopes that such a conference will take place anytime soon - if at all - are fading quickly.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov originally announced that they would try to hold the conference, which is intended to bring rebels and representatives of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government to the negotiating table, by the end of May.
But the date keeps slipping. First it was bumped to June, then July. Earlier this week U.N.-Arab League peace mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who held talks with senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva, ruled out a peace conference before August.
Diplomats at the United Nations in New York say it is unclear whether the peace conference will take place at all.
"It's not looking too good," a senior Western diplomat said.
The point of the conference was to revive a plan adopted last year in Geneva. At that time, Washington and Moscow agreed on the need for a transitional Syrian government, but left open the question of whether Assad could participate in the process.
The United States, like the Syrian rebels, says Assad and his family should play no role in a transitional government, though Russia says there should be no conditions on the talks.
Kerry and Lavrov will discuss Syria again next week on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations conference in Brunei, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
ASSAD WON'T HAND OVER POWER
There are other sticking points in discussions on how to make what U.N. diplomats have been calling "Geneva 2" take place at all - who will represent Assad's government and the Syrian opposition at the negotiating table. There is still no agreement on the lineup of potential negotiators. Then there is the issue of whether Assad's other key ally Iran should participate, as Russia wants but Western governments dislike.
Recently, Assad's forces have enjoyed some military successes. They recaptured two towns near the Lebanese border, while rebels complain about insufficient arms and ammunition.
This, diplomats say, makes both Assad's government and the opposition more reluctant to seek a compromise and diplomacy in Geneva - Assad because he thinks he can win the war militarily, and the opposition because it does not want to negotiate from a position of weakness and is holding out for more weapons.
Assad's foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, told a news conference earlier this week that authorities were ready to form a broad-based government of national unity. But he made clear that they were not planning to give up control of Syria.
"We head to Geneva not to hand over power to another side," he said. "Whoever on the other side imagines this, I advise them not to go to Geneva."
Some diplomats say the ebbing hopes for a serious peace conference highlights the impotence of the United Nations and Brahimi, who for months has threatened to quit the post like his predecessor, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Annan quit the job last year out of frustration at the way the dispute between Russia, Assad's main arms supplier, and the United States, which supports the rebels and recently announced it would begin providing them with arms, has left the Security Council in a state of paralysis on the Syrian issue.
Russia and China long ago ruled out sanctioning Syria and have vetoed three Western and Gulf Arab-backed resolutions condemning Assad's government for an increasingly sectarian war that the United Nations says has killed more than 90,000.
GRIM PROSPECTS FOR DIPLOMACY
Richard Gowan of New York University predicted that a collapse of Kerry's peace conference plan will increase pressure on Obama to send more and heavier weapons to the Syrian rebels.
"If the Geneva proposal fails, there will be pressure on the U.S. to move beyond its current offer of light weapons to the rebels, especially if Assad's forces score more victories," Gowan said.
"Kerry's bet on Geneva may backfire by demonstrating that diplomacy is really a lost cause, but perhaps Kerry, who has reportedly argued for air strikes, is fine with that," he said.
Washington's cautious move to begin arming moderate Syrian rebels - not Islamist militants who are increasingly present in the conflict - came after it said Assad's forces had crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons.
The Syrian government denies the charge and says the rebels have used chemical arms. It also accuses Western and Gulf Arab governments of arming the opposition.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, now in his second and final term, is increasingly worried that he may be remembered as the man who failed in Syria, U.N. diplomats told Reuters. He has even considered stepping in himself to try to broker a peace deal if Brahimi throws in the towel, the envoys added.
Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice, who will soon take up the post of Obama's national security adviser, said earlier this week that the council's failure to take decisive action on Syria was a "moral and strategic disgrace."
"The repeated failure of the Security Council to unify on the crucial issue of Syria I think is a stain on this body and something that I will forever regret - even though I don't believe that outcome is the product of the action of the United States," Rice said.
British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant echoed Rice's unusually strong words, which were clearly aimed at Russia and China. He also defended the United Nations against suggestions that the organization itself was somehow responsible for the Security Council's failure to act on Syria.
"People talk about it being a stain on the United Nations but you can't blame the United Nations," he said, adding that the responsibility lies with its member states.
"We have tried very hard over the last two years to secure some leverage for the Security Council in this crisis as it's unfolded," he said. "Unfortunately we've had three resolutions vetoed by Russia and China ... Events on the ground might have unfolded very differently had those resolutions been adopted."
A March 2011 council resolution authorized military intervention in Libya and gave a green light for NATO to mount an operation to protect civilians that led to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's ouster and death at the hands of rebel forces.
No Western nations have called for something similar in Syria, and Russia has vowed to prevent a similar move in Syria.
There may be no swift end to the war. And even if the opposition were to prevail, it is unlikely to bring stability.
"The Syrian civil war is likely to go on for years," said Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
"It is not just that it is proving harder and taking longer to oust the Assad regime than many expected," he told Reuters. "It is also that even if the regime were to be removed, what would follow would be a prolonged round of fighting among opposition forces who disagree on just about everything except their opposition to the current regime."

(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Additional reporting by Dominic Evans in Beirut; Editing by Alistair Bell and Eric Beech)

President Barack Obama and his attorney general said they were "deeply disappointed" by the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a key part of the Voting Rights Act, a cornerstone of the civil rights movement that helped dismantle decades of discriminatory voting restrictions in the South when it passed 60 years ago. The vote was split 5-4, with the court's liberal justices dissenting.

The decision drastically scales back the federal government's power to reject state laws it believes discriminate against minority voters, which include some efforts to tighten identification requirements and limit early voting hours at the ballot box. A wave of such laws swept 30 states over the past few years, and the Obama administration has aggressively fought them in court.

The president said he was "deeply disappointed" by the decision in a statement on Tuesday. "While today’s decision is a setback, it doesn’t represent the end of our efforts to end voting discrimination," Obama said. "I am calling on Congress to pass legislation to ensure every American has equal access to the polls."

Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act—reauthorized by Congress for an additional 25 years in 2006—gives the federal government the ability to pre-emptively reject changes to election law in states and counties that have a history of discriminating against minority voters. The law covers nine states and portions of seven more, most of them in the South. The formula used to decide which states are subject to this special scrutiny (set out in Section 4 of the law) is based on decades-old voter turnout and registration data, the justices ruled, which is unfair to the states covered under it. States that had a discriminatory poll test in the 1960s and low turnout among minority voters must seek special permission from the federal government to change their election laws, even though many of these states now have near-equal voter turnout rates between minorities and whites.

"The coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion. "Our country has changed, and while any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions."

The Justice Department used Section 5 of the law to block voter ID laws in Texas and South Carolina last year, and it also struck down early voting restrictions in five counties in Florida. (Minority voters are more likely than white voters to vote early in person, and they are less likely than whites to have a government-issued photo ID.) Some Democrats argued that these laws were intentionally trying to suppress minority turnout in order to benefit Republicans. Texas is already beginning to implement its voter ID law given the court's decision Tuesday.

The court has effectively now put the ball back in Congress' court, writing in its decision that it is up to Congress to write a new formula that is based on current data. States or counties that fit the new formula could still be subject to federal "preclearance" of changes to their elections procedures. It remains to be seen whether Congress, which is now more partisanly divided than in 2006, would tackle the challenge of creating a new rubric to find and eradicate racial discrimination at the polls. The president called on Congress to pass legislation addressing the ruling in a statement on Tuesday.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg writes the "sad irony" of Roberts' decision is that it strikes down the key part of the Voting Rights Act because it has been so successful at preventing racial discrimination. "Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet," she writes. Ginsburg also slams the court's majority for relying on turnout and registration rates "as if that were the whole story" and ignoring so-called second-generation laws and regulations designed to make it harder for minorities to vote. (One such Mississippi regulation sought to cancel a local election in 2001 because black candidates announced their intention to run.)

Civil rights groups warned that the decision will negatively affect minority voters who live in the covered jurisdictions. "This is a sad day for democracy," said Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Brennan Center for Justice advocacy center. "The Voting Rights Act is a needed and instrumental tool in our fight to eradicate racial discrimination, and the Supreme Court's decision today has made it much harder to utilize this tool effectively." Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement that Congress should act to draft another coverage formula. "We urge Congress to act with urgency and on a bipartisan basis to protect voting rights for minorities," Henderson said. Brennan Center for Justice President Michael Waldman said Congress had a "duty" to update the formula. It's unclear what factors would go into a new formula, however, since voter registration and turnout data would not work.

"This decision represents a serious setback for voting rights—and has the potential to negatively affect millions of Americans across the country," Attorney General Eric Holder said on Tuesday afternoon. "I am hopeful that new protections can and will pass in this session of Congress."

Sen. Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, said in a statement that "as long as Republicans have a majority in the House and Democrats don't have 60 votes in the Senate, there will be no preclearance."

Discriminating against minority voters is still illegal under the act, but those who hope to challenge discriminatory actions would have to do so through the regular court process, which takes longer than the special preclearance pathway set up under the law.

Court watchers predicted the decision, given the conservative justices' comments on the law during oral arguments and in other cases. Justices in the conservative wing of the Supreme Court, including Roberts, expressed reservations that the nine Southern states covered by the law still required the same degree of federal oversight that they did 60 years ago. "Voter turnout and registration rates [between blacks and whites] now approach parity," Roberts wrote in a decision in 2009. "Blatantly discriminatory evasions of federal decrees are rare. And minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels."

Another argument against Section 4's constitutionality was that it's unclear whether minority voters in Southern states are more likely to face discrimination at the polls than they are in other states. Voter ID laws, for example, have passed in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Indiana. Because those states do not have a history of voter discrimination—and are not covered by the act—their voter ID laws did not have to first pass federal inspection. That said, Southern states covered under the act were much more likely to pass a voter ID law than other states. Seven of the nine states covered in full under the act adopted such a law, compared with 12 noncovered states. Also, the law allowed counties to remove themselves from the preclearance list if they demonstrated they had not discriminated against minority voters in recent years.

Revelations that Britain has been expansively spying on German and European data has deepened a public debate over mass privacy violations. German editorialists argue that London and Washington have some explaining to do.

In Germany, a country with a long, troubled history of state surveillance, the revelation that British and American intelligence agencies have been spying en masse on European data communications has not gone over easily.

Last Friday, London'sGuardian newspaper published the contents of leaked documents confirming that Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and the American National Security Agency (NSA) have been tapping directly into fiber-optic cables to collect vast stores of information that they can then access as needed. Among these cables was the TAT-14, which carries a large share of data communication in and out of Germany, the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung and public radio station NDR reported on Tuesday after viewing documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

According to media reports, neither the German government nor the country's foreign intelligence service, the BND, was apparently aware of the British surveillance operation, dubbed "Tempora," which was reportedly made possible with the cooperation of two telecommunications companies: Vodafone and British telecoms giant BT. Vodafone released a statement saying it abides by the laws of the countries in which it operates, but it declined to give further information, citing "national security." BT has refused to comment.

The ongoing surveillance controversy, which began last month following the disclosure of the NSA's Prism program, has been a heated topic in Germany, where the massive state surveillance of Communist East Germany is still present in the memories of many citizens.

The disclosures have spurred public debate about data protection,terrorism and changing notions of privacy in the Internet era. Concerns over the revelations about the NSA's activities threatened to overshadow US President Obama's visit to Berlin last week. And Snowden, the former NSA contractor who is now wanted by the American government on charges of espionage, is viewed almost uniformly here as a hero.

On Tuesday, German commentators reacted to the newest disclosures about the extent of surveillance on German communications. While some acknowledged the need for a degree of secrecy and surveillance, most insisted that the American and British intelligence agencies had overstepped their boundaries and were infringing on the civil liberties of German citizens.

Conservative daily Die Welt writes:

"Those in power -- not just for moral and ethical reasons, but also for reasons of efficiency -- must step in and do that which they find most difficult: They must exercise moderation and self-discipline. Since Sept. 11, 2001, standards have vanished in the US even as they have been strengthened elsewhere, such as in Germany. ... Such standards have to be reintroduced first and foremost via strict laws that are strong enough to win back trust, but also through parliamentary and public control and a reasonable analysis of costs and benefits."

"What may the state do and where does it need to control itself? And to what extent is it justifiable and democratically legitimate to ask citizens to abandon digital self-determination? The technical possibilities reach much further than do our moral capabilities."

Left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"The hero in this drama is undoubtedly Edward Snowden, this eloquent 30-year-old who is obviously equipped with a fine moral compass, as he has risked his entire future to uncover the activities of these intelligence agencies. ... The scale of the revelation is to some extent still unclear. First, there is the shocking invasion into the private spheres of billions of people and the abuse of the civil rights of large swaths of the global population. ... But the question remains under what rules a world is functioning, if every communication can be quite legally monitored on the basis of stricter terrorism laws."

Center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"The citizens of a democratic state must have confidence that certain agreed to rules are also adhered to. These days, 'data protection' is treated more like a bureaucratic chore, and not something that pertains to human dignity. But there is also an internationally guaranteed right to privacy and to the protection of the core area of our private lives against arbitrary interference by the state. ... This applies in particular to Continental Europe and especially Germany, which has had extensive experience with totalitarian regimes and where the East German Stasi on any given day opened more than 100,000 letters and packages."

"The German government has done well to begin by asking for an explanation from the involved parties, which now includes the British, who are, after all, bound by European law. It would certainly be naïve to expect complete openness. And the fact, pointed out by Obama, that attacks have been thwarted by the surveillance programs, even here in Germany, is certainly in some cases a good justification. But when the fundamental rights of German and European citizens are being comprehensively infringed on, it is a matter of course to ask that certain standards be adhered to."

Business daily Handelsblatt writes:

"US politicians are furious. They say that the revelations damage their country. And that is true. Just not quite in the way they claim. The conduct of their secret service agencies hurts the US much more than does Snowden. The surveillance regime destroys that which is referred to as America's 'soft power:' the magnetism of the ideals that the country embodies. America's superpower status is not based solely on its military might and the power of economic sanctions. Rather, it is also based on the allure of freedom and civil rights."

"The Bush era left behind deep cracks in this pillar of power. Obama wanted to repair the damage, but his efforts are rendered moot by the data siphoning system. Instead of expending so much energy on trying to drag Snowden into a court of law, America should focus on this simple question: Do the costs of the way it hunts terrorists exceed the benefits?"

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Sept. 11, 2001, deeply changed the United States. The fear of new terrorist acts still haunts most people and virtually all of those responsible in Washington. In their view, the NSA's boundless spying is necessary. The people are prepared to forfeit some of their beloved freedom in exchange for the feeling of greater security."

"But governments do not have the right to conceal broad lines of policy. President Obama is operating according to an odd maxim: I am doing a lot of the same things that George W. Bush did, but you can trust me because I am the one doing it. Not even Obama is deserving of that much trust."

"There are three lessons that can be drawn from the Snowden case. America, but also some of its allies, are keeping too much under surveillance, keeping too much secret and they haven't found an appropriate means for dealing with those who expose such excesses. There is something deeply wrong when a whistleblower has to rely on the goodwill of China or Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa to find safe haven."

Source: spiegel.de

WASHINGTON (AP) — For President Barack Obama, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden's globe-trotting evasion of U.S. authorities has dealt a startling setback to efforts to strengthen ties with China and raised the prospect of worsening tensions with Russia.

Indeed, Russia's foreign minister on Tuesday called U.S. demands for Snowden's extradition "ungrounded and unacceptable."

Relations with both China and Russia have been at the forefront of Obama's foreign policy agenda this month, underscoring the intertwined interests among these uneasy partners. Obama met just last week with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the Group of Eight summit in Northern Ireland and held an unusual two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in California earlier this month.

Obama has made no known phone calls to Xi since Snowden surfaced in Hong Kong earlier this month, nor has he talked to Putin since Snowden arrived in Russia.

Former Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said it wasn't clear that Obama's "charm offensive" with Xi and Putin would matter much on this issue. The U.S. has "very little leverage," she said, given the broad array of issues on which the Obama administration needs Chinese and Russian cooperation.

"This isn't happening in a vacuum, and obviously China and Russia know that," said Harman, who now runs the Woodrow Wilson International Center.

Both the U.S. and China had hailed the Obama-Xi summit as a fresh start to a complex relationship, with the leaders building personal bonds during an hour-long walk through the grounds of the Sunnylands estate. But any easing of tensions appeared to vanish Monday following China's apparent flouting of U.S. demands that Snowden be returned from semi-autonomous Hong Kong to face espionage charges.

White House spokesman Jay Carney, in unusually harsh language, said China had "unquestionably" damaged its relationship with Washington.

"The Chinese have emphasized the importance of building mutual trust," Carney said. "We think that they have dealt that effort a serious setback. If we cannot count on them to honor their legal extradition obligations, then there is a problem."

A similar problem may be looming with Russia, where Snowden arrived Sunday. He had been expected to leave Moscow for a third country, but the White House said Monday it believed the former government contractor was still in Russia.

While the U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, the White House publicly prodded the Kremlin to send Snowden back to the U.S., while officials privately negotiated with their Russian counterparts.

"We are expecting the Russians to examine the options available to them to expel Mr. Snowden for his return to the United States," Carney said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday bluntly rejected the U.S. request, saying Snowden hasn't crossed the Russian border. He angrily lashed out at the U.S. for warnings of negative consequences if Moscow fails to comply.

"We consider the attempts to accuse Russia of violation of U.S. laws and even some sort of conspiracy, which on top of all that are accompanied by threats, as absolutely ungrounded and unacceptable," Lavrov said.

During a stop in Saudi Arabia, Secretary of State John Kerry responded by saying the United States is not looking for a confrontation with Russia.

Speaking at a news conference in Jiddah, Kerry said that while it's true the United States does not have an extradition treaty with Russia, Moscow should comply with common law practices between countries concerning fugitives. "I would simply appeal for calm and reasonableness," Kerry said. "We would hope that Russia would not side with someone who is 'a fugitive' from justice.' "

The U.S. has deep economic ties with China and needs the Asian power's help in persuading North Korea to end its nuclear provocations. The Obama administration also needs Russia's cooperation in ending the bloodshed in Syria and reducing nuclear stockpiles held by the former Cold War foes.

Members of Congress so far have focused their anger on China and Russia, not on Obama's inability to get either country to abide by U.S. demands. However, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said in an interview with CNN on Monday that he was starting to wonder why the president hasn't been "more forceful in dealing with foreign leaders."

Sen. John McCain, who lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election, echoed that concern on Tuesday, telling CNN that "we've got to start dealing with Vladimir Putin for what he is."

The Arizona Republican called Putin "an old KGB colonel apparatchik" who disdains democracy and said that Putin "continues to stick his thumb in our eye."

"When you show the world you're leading from behind, these are the consequences," McCain said.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton echoed the White House's frustration with China. "That kind of action is not only detrimental to the U.S.-China relationship but it sets a bad precedent that could unravel the intricate international agreements about how countries respect the laws — and particularly the extradition treaties," the possible 2016 presidential contender told an audience in Los Angeles.

Snowden fled to Hong Kong after seizing highly classified documents disclosing U.S. surveillance programs that collect vast amounts of U.S. phone and Internet records. He shared the information with The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers. He also told the South China Morning Post that "the NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data." SMS, or short messaging service, generally means text messaging.

Snowden still has perhaps more than 200 sensitive documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend.

Hong Kong, a former British colony with a degree of autonomy from mainland China, has an extradition treaty with the U.S. Officials in Hong Kong said a formal U.S. extradition request did not fully comply with its laws, a claim the Justice Department disputes.

The White House made clear it believes the final decision to let Snowden leave for Russia was made by Chinese officials in Beijing.

Russia's ultimate response to U.S. pressure remains unclear. Putin could still agree to return Snowden to the U.S. But he may also let him stay in Russia or head elsewhere, perhaps to Ecuador or Venezuela — both options certain to earn the ire of the White House.

Fiona Hill, a Russia expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said she expected Putin to take advantage of a "golden opportunity" to publicly defy the White House.

"This is one of those opportunities to score points against the United States that I would be surprised if Russia passed up," Hill said.

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Follow Julie Pace on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

MÉXICO, D.F. (apro).- El espionaje generalizado de comunicaciones electrónicas practicado por el gobierno estadunidense podría ser mucho mayor y abarcar a más países, por lo cual organizaciones civiles piden al Congreso de ese país una investigación a fondo de lo que consideran una violación a las libertades civiles y la privacidad.

Además, la administración del demócrata Barack Obama enfrenta un proceso legal emprendido desde 2008 por un grupo de ciudadanos en contra del programa de intromisión.

“Es un escándalo que no sólo afecta la confianza en el gobierno, sino también las formas en que nos comunicamos. La privacidad está bajo ataque. Creemos que en esta situación se deben proveer todos los detalles”, dice a Apro Dave Maass, vocero de la Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF), con sede en San Francisco (California).

Esta organización, dedicada a defender la libertad en la ciberautopista, es una de las partes en la querella presentada el 18 de septiembre de 2008 ante la Corte del Distrito Norte de California por Carolyn Jewel, administradora de bases de datos, usuaria de la empresa AT&T desde 2000 y radicada en la localidad californiana de Petaluma.

Ese litigio, con el código 3:08-cv-04373 y revisado por Apro, acusa al expresidente George W. Bush (2000-2008), al exvicepresidente Richard Dick Cheney, al exfiscal general Alberto González, al presidente Obama y el actual fiscal Eric Holder, entre otros altos funcionarios, de 18 cargos.

El miércoles 5 el diario inglés The Guardian reveló que la Agencia Nacional de Seguridad (NSA, por sus siglas en inglés) ha estado recogiendo información de usuarios de Verizon Business Network Services, Inc.

Un día después, esa publicación y The Washington Post dieron a conocer la existencia del programa secreto PRISM, a cargo de la NSA, mediante el cual se accede a correos, documentos, audios, video, fotos y contraseñas de Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTal, AOL, Skype, Youtube y Apple.

Su fuente fue Edward Snowden, de 29 años y exempleado de la empresa contratista Booz Allen Hamilton, quien les entregó un dossier sobre el esquema de vigilancia.

Posteriormente, The Wall Street Journal reveló que la agencia también ha obtenido datos de AT&T y Sprint.

La intervención masiva de comunicaciones electrónicas acumula una larga historia política y legal, desde que la NSA fue fundada en 1952 por el entonces presidente Harry Truman para reunir información sobre organizaciones extranjeras.

El 4 de octubre de 2001, tres semanas después de los ataques contra las Torres Gemelas y el Pentágono, Bush autorizó secretamente a la NSA rastrear comunicaciones domésticas sin aviso. La Ley de Espionaje para Inteligencia en el Extranjero (FISA, por sus siglas en inglés) de 1978 prohíbe al gobierno la intervención de llamadas dentro de Estados Unidos sin la orden de una Corte.

El 26 de octubre de ese año el gobernante, quien reconoció la operación del programa en 2006, firmó la Ley Patriota, con la cual expandió los poderes gubernamentales de espionaje electrónico.

Progresivamente, las empresas de telefonía e Internet empezaron a transmitir la información al gobierno estadunidense tanto de los usuarios estadunidenses como de personas que usan la red fuera de Estados Unidos y sus datos pasan por servidores instalados en territorio norteamericano para rebotar luego a sus países.

El 11 de septiembre de 2007 el programa PRISM, cuyo costo anual es de 20 millones de dólares, empezó a obtener datos de Microsoft, según los documentos publicados por The Guardian.

El 12 de marzo de 2008, PRISM empezó a recolectar información de Yahoo, el 4 de enero de 2009 de Google, el 3 de junio de ese año de Facebook y el 7 de diciembre también de ese año, de PalTalk.

El 24 de septiembre de 2010 la NSA empezó a recoger información de Youtube. El 6 de febrero del año siguiente el programa cubrió a Skype y el 31 de marzo, AOL. La última fue Apple en octubre pasado.

En 2008 el Congreso aprobó una enmienda a la FISA que protege a las empresas de telecomunicaciones de demandas civiles por cooperar con el aparato de inteligencia de Estados Unidos.

Escala global

Las connotaciones de la interceptación indiscriminada podrían ser mayores, al decir de Maass. Hasta el momento, no ha quedado claro de qué países recolectó información la NSA.

“No sabemos qué dicen otros documentos del programa. Puede ser más serio de lo que pensamos. Estamos investigando si hubo más intercepciones. Este escándalo pone de manifiesto la necesidad de que las compañías liberen documentos sobre el programa”, sostiene Maass.

En su informe del 30 de abril último ¿Quién cuida tu espalda? Qué empresas ayudan a proteger tus datos del gobierno, EEF analiza las políticas de privacidad de 18 empresas entre redes sociales, blogs, tiendas electrónicas y prestadores de servicios.

“Con el crecientemente mundo digital de hoy, los proveedores de servicios en línea fungen como guardianes de nuestros datos más íntimos –desde contenido de correos hasta información de localización a nuestras conexiones sociales o familiares-. Las políticas adoptadas por estas corporaciones tendrán ramificaciones profundas y duraderas sobre si los usuarios individuales pueden comunicarse libres de la sombra del espionaje gubernamental”, cita el documento.

Las mejor punteadas fueron Dropbox, Google, Linked in, Sonic, Twitter y SpiderOak. Llamativamente, Verizon no recibió ninguna calificación.

La fundación evaluó criterios como el requerimiento de una orden judicial por el contenido de las comunicaciones, un aviso a los usuarios de solicitudes de información del gobierno, la publicación de reportes de transparencia y de lineamientos de cumplimiento de la ley y luchas por los derechos de privacidad de los usuarios en los tribunales y en el Congreso.

Ante la crisis desatada, una coalición de 86 organizaciones y compañías de Internet enviaron el día 10 una carta a los congresistas, en la cual demandan la creación de un comité legislativo de investigación, la aprobación de reformas legales para regular el espionaje doméstico y la rendición de cuentas de aquellos funcionarios responsables de la intromisión.

“Este tipo de recolección de datos por parte del gobierno golpea valores estadunidenses fundamentales de libertad y privacidad. Esta red policial de espionaje viola la Primera y la Cuarta Enmiendas de la Constitución de Estados Unidos, que protege los derechos de los ciudadanos a expresarse y asociarse anónimamente y protegerlos contra búsquedas injustificadas y decomisos”, argumenta la misiva, en la cual califican de “ilegal” el esquema.

La información recopilada por la NSA incluye cada llamada hecha, la hora, la duración y otros datos de los clientes de Verizon, AT&T y Sprint.

No es la primera vez que esa instancia se ve envuelta en escándalos de abusos de poder. De hecho, existe un patrón retorcido en la operación de esa agencia.

Entre 1945 y 1975, la NSA interceptó y revisó irregularmente más de 150 mil telegramas mensuales en casos que no fueron perseguidos judicialmente.

En 2003, una agente de inteligencia británica de nombre Katharine Gun filtró a la prensa un memo de otro agente de la NSA, Frank Koza, en el cual describió un amplio programa de espionaje de seis delegaciones ante las Naciones Unidas, indecisas sobre el apoyo a un ataque a Irak.

En 2007 Thomas A. Drake, un empleado de la NSA, entregó información a Siobhan Gorman, periodista del Sun de Baltimore, sobre fraude, desperdicio de recursos y abusos contra la privacidad en esa agencia, la cual no le perdonó lo que consideró una traición. El informante negoció y se declaró culpable en 2011 de un cargo menor, pero su carrera como analista tecnológico se terminó.

Drake testificó el 2 de julio de 2012 en apoyo a la acusación contra el gobierno de Estados Unidos.

Aunque en su campaña hacia la Casa Blanca Obama fustigó a Bush por políticas como la de la vigilancia indiscriminada, en su mandato se comportó como su antecesor.

El 1 de agosto de 2007, el entonces senador Obama dijo que la administración Bush “propone un falso dilema entre las libertades que adoramos y la seguridad que demandamos. Daré a nuestras agencias de inteligencia y de cumplimiento de la ley las herramientas que necesitan para rastrear y sacar a los terroristas sin socavar nuestra Constitución y nuestra libertad”.

La realidad lo ha terminado de desmentir.

La negación se ha vuelto un mantra de este gobierno. El pasado 12 de marzo el senador demócrata Ron Wyden le preguntó durante una audiencia del Comité de Inteligencia a James Clapper, director de Inteligencia Nacional, si la NSA “recolecta cualquier tipo de datos de millones o cientos de millones de estadunidenses”. Clapper contestó que no.

Disputa legal

El escándalo podría desatar una ola de demandas, además de las que están por resolverse en el tribunal californiano.

Aunque Maass se abstuvo de comentar sobre la estrategia legal de la parte acusadora, considera que puede haber más querellas. “Estudiamos las opciones, analizamos la información”, manifiesta.

Ahora, el Departamento de Justicia trata de mantener en secreto una opinión judicial del 3 de octubre de 2011 de 86 páginas que resolvió que el programa gubernamental había violado las leyes e incurrido en un espionaje anticonstitucional.

Además, el gobierno pidió el pasado 7 de junio a la Corte diferir “el análisis adicional de las mociones pendientes” y concederle tiempo “para analizar el efecto sobre los mociones pendientes de la decisión del gobierno de desclasificar cierta información” en un documento de tres páginas consultado por Apro. Por ello, solicitó que las partes puedan presentar un reporte del estado del caso, lo cual estaba programado para el miércoles 12.

El 25 de abril de este año el juez de la Corte, Roger Vinson, ordenó a Verizon entregar diariamente datos de más de 100 millones de estadunidenses, medida que expira el 19 de julio próximo.

Luego de asumir en enero de 2008, Obama pidió el rechazo del caso, lo cual fue concedido por el juez Vaughn Walker.

En diciembre de 2011, la Corte de Apelaciones del Noveno Circuito rechazó las demandas, pero autorizó a dos de los 35 acusadores iniciales a proseguir con sus reclamos, pues la cláusula de inmunidad de la FISA no aplicaba.

La Suprema Corte declinó en octubre del año pasado atraer las querellas contra las compañías de telecomunicaciones que participan en el programa de vigilancia durante la administración Bush.

En enero de 2011 la agencia de espionaje inició la construcción de un gigantesco centro de datos en Utah, a un costo de 2 mil millones de dólares, y que estaría completado en septiembre de este año.

Fuente: EL Proceso

BERLIN — Challenged personally by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany about American intelligence programs that monitor foreigners’ communications, President Obama said Wednesday that German terrorist threats were among those foiled by such operations worldwide — a contention that Ms. Merkel seemed to confirm.

Their exchanges, in private at the start of his state visit and later at a joint news conference, preceded Mr. Obama’s speech to an estimated 6,000 people at the Brandenburg Gate, near where the Berlin Wall once stood and other American presidents — John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton — had paid tribute to the German-American alliance against outside threats from communism to terrorism.

“No wall can stand against the yearning of justice — the yearnings for freedom, the yearnings for peace — that burns in the human heart,” Mr. Obama said in his speech.

He used the address to propose that the United States and Russia further reduce their nuclear arsenals. Yet the anticipation of the speech at the historic site was offset by attention to the dispute over the revelations of the breadth of American surveillance programs, which include both Prism, an effort to monitor foreign communications at American Internet companies like Google, as well as a vast database of domestic phone logs. The programs monitor the communications without individualized court orders.

“We know of at least 50 threats that have been averted because of this information, not just in the United States but in some cases here in Germany,” Mr. Obama said during the news conference. “So lives have been saved.”

He did not provide any details. But Ms. Merkel, who acknowledged that Germany has received “very important information” from the United States, cited the so-called Sauerland cell as an example of such antiterrorism intelligence cooperation.

In that case, four Islamic militants were sentenced to up to 12 years in jail in 2010 for plotting terrorist attacks against American targets in Germany. They were apprehended in 2007 and confessed in 2009. The Central Intelligence Agency was presumed at the time to have tipped off the German authorities, and the case has gotten renewed attention in Germany since the recent leak that exposed the Prism program for monitoring foreign communications.

That news has been controversial in Germany, where both the Nazi era and the postwar surveillance in Communist East Germany have fostered deep concerns about privacy and civil liberties, and the issue was expected to loom large in the meeting of the two leaders. Ms. Merkel said at the news conference that she and Mr. Obama had talked at length about the American programs, even indicating that the topic took precedence over their discussion of subjects like the global economy and the conflicts in Syria and Afghanistan. She made clear that she had expressed her own concerns, despite her stated understanding of the need for such intelligence efforts.

“Although we do see the need,” Ms. Merkel said, such activities must be balanced by “due diligence” to guard against unwarranted invasions of privacy. “Free democracies live off people having a feeling of security,” she added.

Mr. Obama, repeating defenses he has made to Americans, described how he had made sure when he took office that the intelligence programs “were examined and scrubbed.” He emphasized that the United States monitored metadata on phone numbers that were linked to suspected terrorist activities, and did not eavesdrop on the content of calls or e-mails without getting a court order. “So the encroachment of liberty has been strictly circumscribed,” he said.

“We do have to strike a balance, and we do have to be cautious about how our governments are operating when it comes to intelligence,” Mr. Obama said, adding, “This is not a situation in which we are rifling through the ordinary e-mails of German citizens or American citizens or French citizens or anybody else.”

Ms. Merkel looked at him he spoke beside her, expressionless but seeming to listen intently. “It’s necessary for us to debate these issues,” she replied. “People have concerns.”

The public interplay between the leaders reflected a mutual respect and even personal closeness that they have developed over recent years, despite some of their policy differences. Mr. Obama noted that he had given her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America’s highest civilian honor, and said that spoke to their relationship. He called the chancellor “Angela” and she, in German, used “du,” the familiar form of the pronoun “you,” in addressing him.

On some of the other issues — particularly regarding efforts to provide more aid to the Syrian insurgency, and plans for international forces to leave Afghanistan next year — the two leaders agreed, reflecting discussions they had on Monday and Tuesday in Northern Ireland with other heads of state at the meeting of the Group of 8 industrialized countries.

Ms. Merkel, at the news conference, agreed with Mr. Obama that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, had lost legitimacy because of his government’s bloodshed and should not be part of the new government that the United States, Germany and other European allies sought in Syria. And both expressed hope for resolution even as they acknowledged the strong opposition to regime change from the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, Mr. Assad’s ally and chief arms provider, who forced the Group of 8 to soften its statement this week on Syria.

Mr. Obama and Ms. Merkel were vague about their different approaches to the global economy. The Obama administration has pressed euro zone countries, in particular Germany, to provide stimulus or at least soften the demands for continued austerity measures and budget cutting from indebted European nations. The continent continues to weather recessions long after the American economy has returned to slow growth.

On an unseasonably hot day, under cloudless skies, Mr. Obama’s state visit began with the usual ceremonial pomp and red-carpet welcomes. He first went to the Schloss Bellevue, an 18th-century summer palace now used by Germany’s nonpartisan president, to meet the current officeholder, Joachim Gauck. Then he continued to the modern Chancellery building for the business of the day with Ms. Merkel: their private meeting, lunch and the news conference, which preceded the customarily formal dinner.

Berlin was unusually calm, its residents apparently heeding authorities’ pleas to avoid the historic city center, which was heavily policed and cordoned off near the Brandenburg Gate.

German newspapers carried large headlines, “Welcome to Berlin,” with the Berliner Morgenpost’s in English. But the left-leaning Berlin Daily Taz jabbed Mr. Obama with a headline in English, “Mr. Obama, open this gate!” along with a photo not of the Brandenburg Gate but of the prison for terrorism suspects in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that Mr. Obama, as a presidential candidate, promised to close. The headline paraphrased Mr. Reagan’s line at the Brandenburg Gate when it was part of the Soviet Union’s Berlin Wall separating the Communist East from democratic West Berlin, and spoke to the resonance of the issue here.

A German reporter asked about it at the news conference. “It’s been more difficult than I hoped” to close the prison given Congressional resistance, Mr. Obama said, but added that he was going to “redouble” his efforts.

Amnesty International held a modest protest at the Potsdamer Platz, a sprawling public square near the Ritz-Carlton hotel where Mr. Obama and his family are staying. Surrounded by dozens of police officers patrolling the plaza or looking on from the occasional patch of shade, 14 people in bright orange jumpsuits chained themselves together and chanted, “Yes, you can! Close Guantánamo!”

Alison Smale, Chris Cottrell and Melissa Eddy contributed reporting
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