Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas slams Donald Trump over ‘slap of the century’

Agencies
January 15, 2018

West Bank, Jan 15: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas railed at his US counterpart Donald Trump in a fiery, two-hour-long speech on Sunday, saying “shame on you” for his treatment of the Palestinians and warning that he would have no problem rejecting what he suggested would be an unacceptable peace plan.

The speech by Abbas ratcheted up what has been more than a month of harsh rhetoric toward Trump since the president’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Relations between Washington and the Palestinians have sunk to a new low, boding poorly for a peace plan the White House has promised to present.

Speaking to the Palestinian Central Council, a decision-making body, Abbas repeated the Palestinians’ opposition to Trump’s Jerusalem recognition and censured Trump for accusing the Palestinians of refusing to negotiate.

“He (Trump) said in a tweet: `We won’t give money to the Palestinians because they rejected the negotiations,”’ Abbas said. “Shame on you. When did we reject the talks? Where is the negotiation that we rejected?”

Trump infuriated Palestinians and Muslims around the world when he announced late last year that the US would recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move its embassy there, upending decades of US policy and countering an international consensus that the fate of Jerusalem should be decided in negotiations between the sides.

Abbas has said that by siding with the Israelis on a sensitive issue, the announcement had destroyed Trump’s credibility as a Mideast peace broker.

“We can say no to anyone if things are related to our fate and our people, and now we have said no to Trump,” he said. “We told him the deal of the century was the slap of the century. But we will slap back.”

Abbas also said that the Palestinians have rejected a US request to halt payments to roughly 35,000 families of Palestinians killed and wounded in the conflict with Israel, including suicide bombers and other militants. Israel argues that the practice encourages violence.

Hoping to secure what he has called the “ultimate” deal, Trump has for nearly a year dispatched his Mideast team, led by his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner, to the region to try to breathe life into moribund peace talks, which collapsed in 2014.

But the Jerusalem pivot threw a wrench into Trump’s peacemaking attempts. Since then, the Palestinians have butted heads with the US at the United Nations, winning a global rebuke against Trump’s move. Trump has responded by threatening to cut aid and to reduce US payments to the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency. The US is the largest donor to the agency.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has welcomed Trump’s tough line toward the Palestinians, while also pushing forward with more settlement construction on lands sought by the Palestinians.

Palestinian officials say that while they have not received a formal proposal from the U.S., they have heard from Saudi interlocutors that the U.S. is exploring the possibility of offering the Palestinians a statelet in the parts of the West Bank they already control, with Israel controlling the borders and the Gaza Strip. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss a sensitive diplomatic issue.

US officials have not confirmed the claims. But if true, the proposal would fall far short of Palestinian claims to the West Bank, east Jerusalem, and Gaza for an independent state.

Abbas said the Palestinians will not accept the US as a sole broker and believe a deal can only be reached if there are multiple parties, such as with the international nuclear deal between six global powers and Iran.

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Agencies
July 15,2020

Huawei will be completely removed from the UK's 5G networks by the end of 2027, the UK government announced on Tuesday after a review by the country's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) on the impact of US sanctions against the Chinese telecommunications giant.

In the lead up to this complete removal of all Huawei kit from UK networks, there will be a total ban on the purchase of any new 5G kit after December 31, 2020.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the UK's National Security Council (NSC) chaired by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, in response to new US sanctions against the telecom major imposed in May which removed the firm's access to products which have been built based on US semiconductor technology.

5G will be transformative for our country, but only if we have confidence in the security and resilience of the infrastructure it is built upon, said Oliver Dowden, UK Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS).

Following US sanctions against Huawei and updated technical advice from our cyber experts, the government has decided it necessary to ban Huawei from our 5G networks. No new kit is to be added from January 2021, and UK 5G networks will be Huawei free by the end of 2027. This decisive move provides the industry with the clarity and certainty it needs to get on with delivering 5G across the UK, he said.

The minister, who laid out the details of the UK's ban on Huawei in the House of Commons, said the government will now seek to legislate with a new Telecoms Security Bill to put in place the powers necessary to implement the tough new telecoms security framework.

By the time of the next election (2024) we will have implemented in law an irreversible path for the complete removal of Huawei equipment from our 5G networks, said Dowden.

The new law will give the government the national security powers to impose these new controls on high risk vendors and create extensive security duties on network operators to drive up standards, DCMS said.

Technical experts at the NCSC reviewed the consequences of the US sanctions and concluded that Huawei will need to do a major reconfiguration of its supply chain as it will no longer have access to the technology on which it currently relies and there are no alternatives which we have sufficient confidence in.

They found the new restrictions make it impossible to continue to guarantee the security of Huawei equipment in the future.

After a ban on the purchase of new Huawei kit for 5G from next year, the aim is to completely remove the Chinese vendor's influence on 5G networks across the UK by the end of 2027.

The DCMS said Tuesday's decision takes into account the UK's specific national circumstances and how the risks from these sanctions are manifested in the country.

The existing restrictions on Huawei in sensitive and critical parts of the network remain in place, it highlighted.

The DCMS said the US action also affects Huawei products used in the UK's full fibre broadband networks. However, the UK has managed Huawei's presence in the UK's fixed access networks since 2005 and we also need to avoid a situation where broadband operators are reliant on a single supplier for their equipment.

As a result, following security advice from experts, DCMS is advising full fibre operators to transition away from purchasing new Huawei equipment. A technical consultation will determine the transition timetable, but it is expect this period to last no longer than two years.

The government said its new approach strikes the right balance by recognising full fibre's established presence and supporting the connections that the public relies on, while fully addressing the security concerns.

It stressed that its new policy in relation to high risk vendors has not been designed around one company, one country or one threat but as an enduring and flexible policy that will enable the UK to manage the risks to the network, now and in the future.

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Agencies
March 1,2020

Washington, Mar 1: The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed a fine of over $200 million for all major US mobile carriers for selling the location data of customers to some agencies.

The Federal Communications Commission today proposed fines against the nation's four largest wireless carriers for apparently selling access to their customers' location information without taking reasonable measures to protect against unauthorised access to that information. As a result, T-Mobile faces a proposed fine of more than $91 million, AT&T faces a proposed fine of more than $57 million, Verizon faces a proposed fine of more than $48 million, and Sprint faces a proposed fine of more than $12 million, the FCC said in a statement on Friday.

The Enforcement Bureau of FCC opened this investigation after reports surfaced that a Missouri Sheriff, Cory Hutcheson, used a "location-finding service" operated by Securus, a provider of communications services to correctional facilities, to access the location information of the wireless carriers' customers without their consent between 2014 and 2017.

"American consumers take their wireless phones with them wherever they go. And information about a wireless customer's location is highly personal and sensitive. The FCC has long had clear rules on the books requiring all phone companies to protect their customers' personal information. And since 2007, these companies have been on notice that they must take reasonable precautions to safeguard this data and that the FCC will take strong enforcement action if they don't. Today, we do just that," said FCC Chairman Ajit Pai.

"This FCC will not tolerate phone companies putting Americans' privacy at risk."

The FCC also admonished these carriers for apparently disclosing their customers' location information, without their authorisation, to a third party

The four major US carriers mentioned sold access to their customers' location information to "aggregators," who then resold access to such information to third-party location-based service providers (like Securus).

Although their exact practices varied, each carrier relied heavily on contract-based assurances that the location-based services providers (acting on the carriers' behalf) would obtain consent from the wireless carrier's customer before accessing that customer's location information.

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Agencies
July 18,2020

Days after Twitter accounts of several billionaires were hacked to engineer a crypto scam, Twitter on Saturday said it is embarrassed, disappointed and, more than anything, sorry for what happened with some of its high-profile users as attackers successfully manipulated its employees and used their credentials to access internal systems, including getting through the two-factor protections.

In the first detailed summary of the "social engineering attack" via a crypto scam that hit at least 130 users this week, Twitter said for 45 of those accounts, the attackers were able to initiate a password reset, login to the account and send Tweets.

"We are continuing our forensic review of all of the accounts to confirm all actions that may have been taken. In addition, we believe they may have attempted to sell some of the usernames," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.

For up to eight of the Twitter accounts involved, the attackers took the additional step of downloading the account's information via "Your Twitter Data" tool.

This is a tool that is meant to provide an account owner with a summary of their Twitter account details and activity.

"We are reaching out directly to any account owner where we know this to be true. None of the eight were verified accounts," said Twitter.

The company said the attackers were not able to view previous account passwords, as those are not stored in plain text or available through the tools used in the attack.

"Attackers were able to view personal information including email addresses and phone numbers, which are displayed to some users of our internal support tools," informed Twitter.

In cases where an account was taken over by the attacker, they may have been able to view additional information, Twitter added, saying its forensic investigation of these activities was still ongoing.

"We are actively working on communicating directly with the account-holders that were impacted".

The company said it will soon restore access for all account owners who may still be locked out as a result of the remediation efforts.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the Twitter crypto scam can be traced back to a group of hackers who congregate online at OGusers.com, a username-swapping community where people buy and sell coveted online handles.

The report said that the Twitter hack is not from Russian, Chinese or North Korean hackers but was done by a group of young people, "one of whom says he lives at home with his mother".

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