access

US Seeks ‘Consular Access’ for Americans Arrested in Haiti

PORT-AU-PRINCE/WASHINGTON — 

The U.S. embassy in Haiti has confirmed the arrest of U.S. citizens in Haiti Sunday and told VOA's Creole Service that it is seeking consular access for the detainees as soon as possible.

"We understand that the Haitian National Police detained a group of individuals, including some U.S. citizens," the statement said. "When U.S. citizens are arrested overseas, we seek consular access as soon as possible and provide appropriate consular assistance as provided by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations."

The embassy statement indicated it would not comment further on the case.

A view of a street market at dawn in Port-au-Prince, Haiti Feb. 19, 2019.

In an interview Monday with VOA Creole, Haitian National Police (PNH) spokesperson Michel-Ange Louis-Jeune said the men were arrested during a "routine check" on Sunday afternoon and that among the detained were a Haitian national, two Serbs and five Americans.

"In the three vehicles the police confiscated, we found weapons, assault rifles and pistols. The police subsequently arrested them," the spokesman said. He said police are investigating to see who else may be involved.

There has been concern in Haiti that the group had a plan to be rolled out under the cover of the massive protests and looting that rocked the capital for 10 consecutive days and resulted in at least seven deaths.

"We don't want to jeopardize the investigation," Louis-Jeune told VOA Creole. "So, we are not going to say too much about what we know. The investigation is continuing, and we will make more announcements in the days to come."

The spokesman did say the men were being questioned about where they got the weapons and what they were intending to do with them. He said the nation can expect transparency about their findings.

Arthur Jean-Pierre in Port-au-Prince contributed to this report.

With just $60 and internet access, researchers found and tracked NATO troops and even tricked them into disobeying orders

Enemies can use social media to not only inexpensively find and target NATO forces — but also manipulate them, new research has concluded.

Researchers with NATO's Strategic Communications Center of Excellence used open source data, primarily social media, to successfully identify 150 soldiers, locate multiple battalions, track troop movements, and even convince service members to leave their posts and engage in other "undesirable behavior" during a military exercise, WIRED reported Monday, citing a StratCom report.

And they did it for only $60, demonstrating how easy it is for an aggressor to target NATO with data available online.

The researchers used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other popular social media sites to find valuable information, particularly exploitable information, "like a serviceman having a wife and also being on dating apps," researcher Nora Biteniece explained. It is unclear which forces were targeted.

"Every person has a button. For somebody there's a financial issue, for somebody it's a very appealing date, for somebody it's a family thing," Janis Sarts, the director of NATO's StratCom, told WIRED. "It's varied, but everybody has a button. The point is, what's openly available online is sufficient to know what that is."

The Russians, NATO's primary adversary, are particularly skilled at this type of information warfare, which has shown up in the Ukraine.

Read more: Russian-backed separatists are using terrifying text messages to shock adversaries -- and it's changing the face of warfare

"The Russians are adept at identifying Ukrainian positions by their electrometric signatures," US Army Col. Liam Collins wrote in Army Magazine last summer.

"In one tactic, soldiers receive texts telling them they are 'surrounded and abandoned.' Minutes later, their families receive a text stating, 'Your son is killed in action,' which often prompts a call or text to the soldiers," he wrote, according to Task & Purpose. "Minutes later, soldiers receive another message telling them to 'retreat and live,' followed by an artillery strike to the location where a large group of cellphones was detected."

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2017 that the Russians were hacking the cellphones of NATO soldiers to "gain operational information, gauge troop strength and intimidate soldiers." At one point, the situation got so bad that Estonian troops were being forced by their superior officers to jump in the lake to enforce the strict "no smartphones" policy.

At the same time, the Russians are trying to better control how their troops use social media, as online activity has threatened to give away troops' positions or brought revealed their involvement in questionable or problematic operations.

Read more: Russia is trying to pass a law to keep its soldiers from acting like millennials

For instance, social media posts were used to determine Russian involvement in the 2014 shoot down of passenger flight MH17 over Ukraine, according to Reuters.

Social networks have also offered insight into Russian activities in Syria and elsewhere, so Russia is currently attempting to legislatively ban troops from sharing information online.

Supreme Court stands with conservation groups in Lake Michgan beach access case

The public’s right to the Lake Michigan shoreline stands after the U.S. Supreme Court announced Tuesday it was denying a petition to hear an appeal of an Indiana Supreme Court case over the matter.

Last year, the state supreme court ruled unanimously in favor of the Conservation Law Center and its clients, as well as the state of Indiana and the Long Beach Community Alliance.

In early 2018, the Indiana Supreme Court handed down its decision in the public trust case of Gunderson v. State. The law center represented environmental groups Alliance for the Great Lakes and Save the Dunes in a bid to protect the public’s right to use portions of the Lake Michigan shore.

In a unanimous decision, the state supreme court held in Gunderson that the boundary separating state-owned public trust land from privately owned along the shores of Lake Michigan is the natural ordinary high water mark, according to a release from the law center.

When Indiana was created as a state, one of the rights that came with admission to the Union was the state ownership of the beds of navigable waters within its borders, including the exposed shores between the ordinary high and low water marks on Lake Michigan, the release states.

The state holds this portion of the shoreline in “public trust” for the benefits of its citizens, and private landowners along the lake cannot erect walls or other barriers that prevent people from walking along the shoreline.

“This court’s opinion overall may be the most solid statement of core public trust doctrine yet by a Great Lakes state,” the release states.

The Conservation Law Center is a public interest nonprofit law firm based in Bloomington that serves as the environmental law clinic for the Maurer School of Law at Indiana University in Bloomington and the McKinney School of Law at Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis.

Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.