SAN DIEGO –  A two-count criminal complaint unsealed in federal court Monday charges a U.S. Border Patrol supervisor with video voyeurism for allegedly placing a video camera in a women’s restroom at the agency’s offices in San Ysidro.
Armando Gonzalez, 45, is also charged with making false statements. He made his initial court appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jill Burkhardt, who set bail at $50,000 and issued an order forbidding the defendant from contacting alleged victims, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Two of the victims, including the agent who found the camera, have asked the court to grant them restraining orders against Gonzalez, claiming they’re afraid Gonzalez, who has access to firearms, will come after them.
A March 19 preliminary hearing and April 2 arraignment were set for Gonzalez, who was arrested Friday.
The complaint alleges Gonzalez made false statements when he stated that the images captured on the hidden camera, were not related to a drug investigation, were deleted, when in fact they were saved.
Prosecutors also said Gonzalez initially reported the camera had been in place briefly.
“He told agents when he self reported that the camera had been there for only a few days when in truth and in fact it had been there for at least two years, we have evidence of videos going back that long,” said Alessandra Serano, Assistant U.S. Attorney.
Serano also said Gonzalez made more than 300 videos.
Beginning in July 2013 and continuing through at least Jan. 9 of this year, Gonzalez allegedly captured images of women’s private areas without their consent, according to the charging document.
According to a statement of probable cause, the hidden video camera contained video files showing a white man believed to be Gonzalez using a screwdriver to install the camera in a drain in the women’s restroom; a woman’s undergarment clad breast as she changed her shirt in the restroom; and part of a woman’s naked buttock as she prepared to sit on the toilet and again as she stood.
Investigators searched the defendant’s office last month and allegedly found video files containing images recorded inside the restroom that showed the private areas of multiple female victims, including images of naked and/or undergarment clad genital, pubic area, buttock and/or woman’s breasts as the victims changed and/or used the toilet.
When F.B.I agents searched Gonzalez’s camera, they found more than 160 different recordings in the camera’s memory card.
According to the statement of probable cause, Gonzalez told officials that he placed the video recorder in the restroom because he suspected one of his employees was engaging in illegal drug use at work.
After the hearing, Gonzalez’s defense attorney, Jan Ronis, did not say much about his client’s defense or why and how the camera ended up in the drain. Ronis did mention Gonzalez is married and has a very supportive family.
The word came down yesterday from the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, an arcane organisation orchestrating a massive campaign against corruption, that top spy chief Ma Jian was being investigated for graft.
It’s the latest thunderbolt that has shaken the Chinese establishment since President Xi Jinping took over the helm in November 2012 and is turning one of the world’s biggest bureaucracies on its head.
“Corruption has been reduced but it has not disappeared,” Xi told the Xinhua news agency, describing the campaign as “a matter of life or death for the party and nation”.
“Our determination to use strong remedies to cure illness will not change.
“Our courage to rid our bones of poison will not diminish. We will also continue to hold the sharp sword of anti-corruption high.”
Tigers and flies
The president’s anti-graft campaign has already snared 100,000 officials of various levels, netting low-ranking “flies” and powerful “tigers”, but there are plenty of tigers named in recent investigations.
Xi has three official titles, as president and head of the armed forces, but most important of all, he is general secretary of the Communist Party, which runs China with an iron fist.
To maintain this level of control in China, the Communist Party has to be seen to be clean and honest. Xi said the campaign showed the party was “self-purifying”.
The hatred of corruption is viewed as destablising, as something that could threaten single-party rule, and there have been regular campaigns against graft over the years.
But none has been quite so sustained as the current dragnet.
The biggest scalp to date has been Bo Xilai, the former party boss in Dalian and Chongqing who was purged last year, and recently sentenced to life in jail for corruption and abuse of power.
Previously on the fast track for the very top until he disappeared from public view in April last year, following a scandal set off by the poisoning of a British businessman, Neil Heywood, by Bo’s wife, Gu Kailai, he is now sitting in jail, in disgrace.
Possibly of even greater significance is the arrest of former security czar Zhou Yongkang, who has his power base in the oil industry and was a member of the all-powerful standing committee of the politburo.
There are many euphemisms in this campaign. In this case, as in many before it, the statement said that the cadre is being investigated for “serious violation of party disciplines and law”.
Ma was said to be the mastermind behind one of China’s massive counter-espionage operations.
The investigation is said to be linked to activities involving the Founder Group, a Peking University-owned technology conglomerate, and kickbacks from securities trades.
These campaigns have traditionally faded after a few months, but this campaign is different, and last week Xi told a plenary session of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection that the campaign was “effective” and “far from over”.
The campaign was fought with “a strong sense of responsibility to the future” and “a deep commitment to its missions and an awareness of the risks”.
Big fish
Xi specifically named some of the bigger catches, including Zhou, as well as other senior figures such as Xu Caihou, Ling Jihua and Su Rong.
In one of the boldest developments to date, the campaign has been widened to include the People’s Liberation Army, and some 16 senior officers have been snared for “suspected legal violations”.
The most senior is Liu Zheng, deputy head of the PLA’s general logistics department.
In a standing army of 2.3 million, logistics is an area ripe for abuse – Liu’s predecessor as deputy head of the general logistics department was Gu Junshan, who was charged with embezzlement, misuse of state funds, abuse of power and taking bribes worth nearly $100 million (€86 million).
Other top brass under investigation include the former political commissar of the air force command school, Wang Minggui; the deputy political commissar of the Tibet Military Command, Wei Jin; and the deputy commander of the Chengdu military command, Yang Jinshan.
This is the story of John Brennan’s CIA spying on Congress and getting away with it. Â
Last March, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the CIA of spying on the Senate intelligence committee as it labored to finalize its report on the torture of prisoners. “I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution,” she said. “I have asked for an apology and a recognition that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. I have received neither.”
CIA Director John Brennan denied the charge. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said. “We wouldn’t do that. That’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we’d do.” It would be months before his denial was publicly proved false. “An internal investigation by the C.I.A. has found that its officers penetrated a computer network used by the Senate Intelligence Committee in preparing its damning report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program,” TheNew York Timesreported. “The report by the agency’s inspector general also found that C.I.A. officers read the emails of the Senate investigators and sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department based on false information.”
The Senate intelligence committee expressed appropriate outraged at these anti-democratic machinations:
A statement issued Thursday morning by a C.I.A. spokesman said that John O. Brennan, the agency’s director, had apologized to Ms. Feinstein and the committee’s ranking Republican, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, and would set up an internal accountability board to review the issue. The statement said that the board, which will be led by a former Democratic senator, Evan Bayh of Indiana, could recommend “potential disciplinary measures” and “steps to address systemic issues.” But anger among lawmakers grew throughout the day. Leaving a nearly three-hour briefing about the report in a Senate conference room, members of both parties called for the C.I.A. officers to be held accountable, and some said they had lost confidence in Mr. Brennan’s leadership. “This is a serious situation and there are serious violations,” said Mr. Chambliss, generally a staunch ally of the intelligence community. He called for the C.I.A. employees to be “dealt with very harshly.”
Late last week, that internal “accountability board” announced the results of its review. If you’ve followed the impunity with which the CIA has broken U.S. laws throughout its history, you’ll be unsurprised to learn that no one is going to be “dealt with very harshly” after all. “A panel investigating the Central Intelligence Agency’s search of a computer network used by staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were looking into the C.I.A.’s use of torture will recommend against punishing anyone involved in the episode,” The New York Timesreports. “The panel will make that recommendation after the five C.I.A. officials who were singled out by the agency’s inspector general this year for improperly ordering and carrying out the computer searches staunchly defended their actions, saying that they were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of John O. Brennan.”
Done at the behest of Brennan, who once feigned ignorance about the actions in question, going so far as to declare them beyond the scope of reason! “While effectively rejecting the most significant conclusions of the inspector general’s report,” the story continues, “the panel, appointed by Mr. Brennan and composed of three C.I.A. officers and two members from outside the agency, is still expected to criticize agency missteps that contributed to the fight with Congress.” Who’d have guessed that a panel appointed by Brennan to look into malfeasance presided over and in some cases ordered by Brennan would decide that neither Brennan nor any of the people Brennan leads should be held accountable?
Brennan and the CIA have behaved indefensibly. But substantial blame belongs to the overseers who’ve permitted them to do so with impunity, including figures in the Obama administration right up to the president and Senate intelligence committee members who, for all their bluster, have yet to react to CIA misbehavior in a way that actually disincentivizes similar malfeasance in the future. President Obama should fire John Brennan, as has previously been suggested by Senator Mark Udall, Trevor Timm, Dan Froomkin, and Andrew Sullivan. And the Senate intelligence committee should act toward the CIA like their predecessors on the Church Committee. Instead, the CIA is asked to investigate its own malfeasance and issue reports suggesting what, if anything, should be done.
TheTimes reports:
Mr. Brennan has enraged senators by refusing to answer questions posed by the Intelligence Committee about who at the C.I.A. authorized the computer intrusion. Doing so, he said, could compromise the accountability board’s investigation.
“What did he know? When did he know it? What did he order?” said Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is a member of the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview last week. “They haven’t answered those basic questions.”
Senator Levin, you’re a member of a coequal branch. You’ve flagged outrageous behavior among those you’re charged with overseeing. What are you going to do about it?
OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian police are investigating a possible spying operation by a foreign power after electronic devices designed to intercept telephone conversations were discovered near government buildings.
In its own two-month investigation, the daily newspaper Aftenposten detected signals from several surveillance devices that had been placed near the prime minister’s offices, the central bank, parliament and major company headquarters.
“We can’t exclude the possibility that this is coming from foreign state agencies,” said Siv Alsen, spokeswoman for the police’s intelligence unit, which will carry out the investigation.
Aftenposten said the devices were able to attract mobile phone signals and record conversations.
“If correct, such surveillance is completely unacceptable,” Justice Minister Anders Anundsen said in a statement. “We must make every effort to identify who or what is behind it, and how comprehensive it is.”
Norway, a U.S. ally and a founding member of NATO, has had its share of diplomatic conflicts in recent years.
Its ties with China have been virtually frozen since 2010 when the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. Norway has also followed the European Union’s sanctions against Russia this year.
Norway’s military also patrols vast parts of the Arctic, monitoring commercial and military activity.
(Reporting by Joachim Dagenborg; Writing by Balazs Koranyi; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)
“The government’s cover-up is continuing”: David Shoebridge. Photo: Simon Alekna
The release of a secret report into a police bugging scandal has been blocked by Premier Mike Baird’s department, leading to warnings the dispute may end up before the Supreme Court.
The Strike Force Emblems report examines allegations of illegal bugging by the NSW police’s Special Crime and Internal Affairs (SCIA) and the NSW Crime Commission between 1999 and 2001, but has never been made public.
Its contents are sensitive as the current Commissioner, Andrew Scipione, and a current deputy commissioner, Catherine Burn, worked at SCIA and one of the detectives being bugged was Nick Kaldas, now also a deputy commissioner.
Last month, the NSW upper house passed a resolution seeking release of the Emblems report to a parliamentary inquiry into Ombudsman Bruce Barbour’s two-year investigation of the bugging scandal.
Although the government opposed the motion, it passed with the support of Labor, the Greens and the Shooters and Fishers Party.
But the Premier’s department wrote to the Crown Solicitor asking if it was “arguable” that under parliamentary rules the report can be released only with the permission of NSW Governor David Hurley, as it concerns “the administration of justice”.
On Friday, the Crown Solicitor tabled legal advice agreeing with this view, because the report contains references to court proceedings and perjury. In response, the Premier’s department has declined to release it to the Parliament.
A motion requesting the Governor’s permission is not possible before the upper house inquiry because Parliament has risen until after the March 2015 election.
Greens MP David Shoebridge, a member of the parliamentary inquiry set to examine the Ombudsman’s inquiry into the Emblems report, said the decision showed “the government’s cover-up is continuing”.
“They appear to be willing to make any argument to prevent the release of what is obviously a highly damaging report,” he said.
Mr Shoebridge said he would refer the decision to the Parliament’s independent arbiter, Keith Mason, QC.
“But clearly there are substantial issues of legal principle here that may have to be determined by the Supreme Court,” he said.
